Scarecrow71

Unfortunately, per Nate's last communique, the next patch will drop somewhere between April 7 and April 14. And as they have been eerily silent since the AMA, even April 14 isn't looking like it will happen. So unless we get a patch in the next 8 days, it will bleed into being longer than a month. With that said, I am still playing the game. But I am also using the buggy opportunity to learn how to mod the game. I am no C# coder, but seeing the bugs and comparing the current state to KSP1 is giving me the chance to try coding mods to make the gameplay better. It shouldn't be this way, and the devs should have given a better product. But lemonade from lemons.

And the 1960's are off to a roaring start.

DATE: 11 August 1960 FLIGHT: Explorer XIII ROCKET: Thor DM-21 Agena-A FLIGHT DETAILS: Explorer XIII was the first man-made satellite to reach orbit and then be recovered after landing back on Earth. This was a major accomplishment as all previous attempts saw the satellites either burn up in the atmosphere or be entirely wrecked upon impact. Explorer XIII was recovered in whole, or rather, the interior of the bus - the probe core, radio beacon, and some telemetry equipment - was recovered in whole and intact. The interesting thing about the recovery is that the bus was supposed to be recovered mid-air, but the plane that was supposed to pick it up flew the wrong direction, causing the capsule to land in the Pacific Ocean. For this flight, I was able to nearly nail down the correct amount of dV; I was over by about 300 m/s, which is really good for not having to freehand the satellite, bus, and the rocket. I also did not splash down in the water, instead coming to rest in the forest somewhere.

Not sure if you are interested or not, but I created a challenge for KSP1 specifically fir the historical space race.

Continuing on with the Historical Space Race, I launched Luna III and did the first gravity assist around the Mun. This now completes the 1950s.

DATE: 7 October 1959 FLIGHT: Luna III ROCKET: Modified R7 Semyorka FLIGHT DETAILS: Luna III was the first satellite to fly to the far side of the Moon and take pictures. The flight was coordinated so that the far side of the moon was in the sunlight, allowing pictures to be taken and sent back to Earth. 29 total pictures were taken, but only 17 of these were successfully sent back to Earth. This flight also marked the first time a gravity assist was pulled off, with the Moon's gravity altering the course of the satellite on its way around the far side and back to Earth. The satellite is believed to have burned up in the upper atmosphere during its return trip. I had to make 1 small correction burn, after hitting the far side of the Moon, to put the satellite into a trajectory to get it under 70km on the return trip. This will, in time, help decay its orbit and have it crash into the ground. Not exactly burning up in the upper atmosphere, but close enough. It needs to be noted that I altered the design of the rocket, allowing for far less fuel than I have been taking on these flights. Still way more than I needed, but less than I would have used had I stuck with the medium tanks/engines. I took 2 images of the Mun, one at Pe and another just before leaving its SOI. Just because. This completes the 1950s for the historical space race.

I got a question for @Nate. Why are you guys showing us multi-player stuff, which is like 5 releases down the roadmap, instead of what is next on the roadmap (Science)? Are you changing the roadmap? Have priorities shifted? Is Science done?

Landing is easy. Getting off the surface, even if just back to Low Eve Orbit...not so much.

I posted this under ShadowZone's latest video, but I feel it bears mentioning here. I'll start by saying I will never do multi-player; it simply isn't my cup of tea, nor is it the reason I play KSP. With that said, it's a bit concerning that they are showing us stuff 5 features deep from the roadmap when they have given us nothing on Science or Exploration. Science is supposed to be the first feature they release, but we have been shown nothing. Instead, Nate gets all giggly over something that is supposed to be several releases away. I sincerely hope that I'm worried over nothing. But why are they working on that and not bugs, or performance, or features ahead of that? I am highly concerned that Nate is talking about multiplayer now, when that is several feature releases away, yet we haven't seen anything related to the first feature release which would be Science/Exploration. It's great to see they are making progress, but at what cost? Bugs, performance, and other roadmap features should be coming BEFORE they work on multiplayer, no?

In continuing with the historical space race, this morning I launched Explorer VI into orbit. This ends the ret-con portion of the 1950s.

DATE: 7 August 1959 FLIGHT: Explorer VI ROCKET: Thor DM-18 Able III FLIGHT DETAILS: Explorer VI was the first satellite to take pictures of Earth from orbit and send them back. Technically, it was designed to perform a series of experiments in space, one of which was to photograph the Earth's cloud cover. The other really significant thing with this launch, apart from now being able to capture images from space, was it was used as an ASAT test (anti-satellite), with a Bold Orion rocket fired at the satellite. It was deemed a success as the rocket came within a distance of 6.4 km, which was used to help with later rendezvous operations (as well as guidance systems). By this point in KSP2, I've taken a whole bunch of shots of Kerbin from space, so that's not really needed. However, I tried to stay accurate and got this thing to within 2 degrees of its original 47 degree inclination, while getting pretty darned close to the actual Ap/Pe of the historical flight. And that completes the retcon. I'm hoping I don't have skip stuff later...but I probably will.

Well, looks like micro-engineer for the win.

@Casellina X I did the pull request...and now I have to rebuild my local repository. I HATE github for source control; I have changes showing in VS that won't go away regardless of push, pull, fetch, sync. I use DevOps at work, and DevOps WORKS. I will figure out Git at some point, but there has to be an easier way for this to take place. I shouldn't have to add and delete files to Git manually, which is what I had to do in order to get your code into my local repository so I could rebuild the solution and push up to SpaceDock.

That is odd with the dll file. It should be there by default. Unless you pulled this from github, in which case no, the dll isn't there at all as it is on spacedock. I will have to take a look at the pull request. EDIT: That refactoring is actually something I am going to be pushing with my next update already.

Seems like the Kerbals could potentially be riding the kapybaras. Either way...

Perhaps I'm blind, but I can't seem to find where the TWR gauge is in the HUD. I know where it is in KSP1, but here I've had to rely on a mod to give me this information. Someone help a guy out?

Although I am a bit bored with the lack of parts, I am not bored with playing the game. I prefer Science and/or Career modes, so I had to find something to give me direction. To that end, I dusted off my historical space race challenge and am going through that. There is four decades' worth of flight firsts for me to deal with, and this helps me learn the ins and outs of KSP2.

I realized that I actually skipped 2 American flights between Luna I and Luna II, and so I have to do a bit of a ret-con with my Historical Space Race recreation.

And I made a mistake in the above flights. There are 2 flights that I completely skipped between Luna I and Luna II, both of which are American flights. I am going to have to do a bit of a ret-con here and get those flights in. DATE: 28 February 1959 FLIGHT: Discoverer I ROCKET: Thor Agena-A FLIGHT DETAILS: Discoverer I was the first satellite to be placed into a polar orbit, with an inclination of ~89 degrees (heading towards the south pole from the launch site). A lot of information regarding the early flights is, for some unknown reason, a bit convoluted and confusing, so in KSP2 I went with what I could find. It is believed that during the firing of the upper stage, the rocket/satellite actually slammed into the nose cone that had been ejected, damaging and/or destroying the 2 antenna that had been seated under it. This caused the status of the flight to be unknown, and it is believed that the satellite crashed into the south pole at some point. A lot of the information about Ap and Pe are guesswork due to the lack of early tracking equipment. Once again, I built the rocket based upon what was given, and it ends up having far more dV than I needed for this flight. I am going to have to start scaling back the rockets, probably doing away with entire stages lest I end up with a bunch of satellites that don't need all that stuff on them. I have 1 more flight to ret-con here - Explorer VI.

Continuing on with my recreation of the historical space race, I was able to impact the surface of the Mun with Luna II. And I've got video to show impact speed of ~3.6 m/s (which is well shy of the 3.3 km/s in real life). And yes, you read that right - 3.3 KILOMETERS per second IRL.

DATE: 12 September 1959 FLIGHT: Luna II ROCKET: Modified R7 Semyorka FLIGHT DETAILS: Luna II was the first man-made object to strike or impact the surface of another celestial body. In this case, Luna II impacted the surface of the Moon 5 full days after launch, on 14 September 1959. The satellite was traveling with an initial velocity of 11.2 km/s, and impacted the Moon at 3.3 km/s. 3.3 KILOMETERS PER SECOND. That is not a typo. For this recreation, the satellite I created ended up striking the surface of the Mun at ~3.6 m/s, which was more than enough for it to actually continue to stand straight up on end...until I turned off RCS and it toppled over. I actually had 571 m/s of dV in the tank when I landed, and I still had a pair of Separatrons that I was originally going to use to slow descent quickly and strike a bit hard, but I didn't need them. I have images, as well as a video to show the landing. It's a bit grainy, which is odd considering it processed up to HD on YT. It needs to be stated that yes, I did an impact burn to hit the surface, which did not happen in real life. In real life, the satellite left Earth's SOI and directly impacted without the need for an additional burn. Here, in KSP2, I had to do the additional burn as my original burn was just a bit off.

If you're taking suggestions... Bop on Bop: This challenge has 2 parts to it. First, send a crewed lander to Bop and perform a hard landing. A hard landing is defined as anything greater than 2 m/s, but you should be aiming for as hard of a landing as possible. You know, you are trying to bop Bop (like landing a punch). The second part is to take that crew and get them on the surface and dancing around. Gotta have at least 3 Kerbals present to call this a party.

I did 2 things in KSP2 today. The first thing was I released my first-ever mod for this game series! It's a simple thing that makes focusing and targeting bodies in the Kerbol system easier (at least I think so). You can find it here: The second thing I did was to put Luna I in orbit as I continue on my path of recreating the historical space race.

DATE: 2 January 1959 - 4 January 1959 FLIGHT: Luna I ROCKET: Modified R7 Semyorka FLIGHT DETAILS: Luna I was the first flight to leave Earth's SOI and enter the Moon's SOI. The satellite was designed to impact the surface of the Moon, but an error during the final stage burn placed the craft into a heliocentric orbit. This makes Luna I the first man-made object to enter Sol's SOI. The rocket I used for this had more than enough fuel to get out of Kerbin's SOI, but I didn't get into a heliocentric orbit immediately after entering Kerbol's SOI. I had plenty of fuel leftover after the ejection burn, so I time-warped to a good spot and then burned the remaining portion of the second stage and all of the third stage to get a really nice heliocentric orbit around Kerbol. I will say that my MapView Focus and Targeting mod (shameless plug; link in my signature) made targeting the Mun way easy.

Scarecrow71, lead developer and only employee (unpaid, no less) of No-Show Entertainment, hereby releases his first-ever mod for Kerbal Space Program 2! Are you excited? Are you not entertained? And don't you want to know how it all works?!?! MapView Focus and Targeting is a simple little mod that allows players to focus on and target celestial bodies in the Kerbol system using keyboard shortcuts. No longer will you have to zoom out, right-click in the vicinity of where you want, zoom in, right-click again, and then select either Focus or Target, and then zoom out and find your active vessel...too messy! With this mod you can do the following all from the comfort of your keyboard: Cycle through the planets and moons with Page Up/Page Down. Target/Clear Target planet or moon with Keypad+/Keypad-. Return the focus to your active vessel with Home. So much easier, says I! And I hope you do too! And now, the legal stuff. Or, rather, linkages! SpaceDock Link: MapView Focus and Targeting on SpaceDock Github Code Repository: Scarecrow-71/MapViewFocusTargeting (github.com) The README file, in both the zip file and on the repository, has all the instructions you need for install and use. Just let me know what you think, and if you experience any problems! EDIT: This mod has been validated as working in 0.2!