Kimera Industries

I've been distracted from any major projects for a while, but some highlights include: a working f-14 tomcat, (with moving wings!) a non-working harrier jet, (how hard can VTOL be? Very hard) and my most recent one is trying to recreate Dyna-Soar. I got this huge book about the history of the space shuttle and the first few chapters are about early concept exploration of spaceplane designs. I've been inspired to make some high-speed planes, but Dyna-Soar is coming along the best. The wing configuration means that the CoL is really far back. To move the CoM back as well, I added some ore tanks as dead weight and the CoL is lined up perfectly now. Originally I had these cool landing skids like the real Dyna-Soar. They used pistons and I-beams to get the desired effect. Unfortunately for the accuracy of my little spaceplane, landing skids don't work (at all) in KSP, so boring, regular landing gear it is. The launch vehicle is close to getting into orbit, I need some more fuel tanks and maybe SRBs on the side. Taking inspiration from actual high-speed plane tests, I tried attaching Dyna-Soar to the wing of a stock aircraft with roughly the same proportions as the NB-52. Attaching it to the wing caused symmetry and imbalance issues, so I gave it bigger landing gear and mounted it on the bottom instead. Taking Dyna up to a high altitude and launching it worked reasonably well, but mostly it proved that it handles really well in flight. I just need to get used to flying it like a glider. If I undershoot the runway, it'll either land in the ocean (not good) or somewhere on land aside from the KSC peninsula (less good, actually). One of my tests forced Dyna to land on the mountain range next to the KSC, meaning no flat land was available (very not good). If I overshoot the runway, I can either turn around or aim for the island runway. If I massively screw up the retro burn, reentry profile, or anything else, I'll just load a quicksave. Anyway, in other news, I went on my main career save and did a bunch of stuff. I learned that the game gives you more contracts of the kind you accept. Early on, I had wanted to accept every contract, but that was a VERY bad idea. I ended up with a lot of contracts I couldn't complete. So I took a hit, declining the majority of them, and it's been fun! Rescuing kerbals 2 at a time, taking tourists to the Mun, and actually landing on the Mun, for once! No more "science data from this location in flight 20km or higher" for me!

Cool, thanks!

So how do I know if I got the badge or not

The Buran looks amazing! Nice work!

Thanks! I sure worked hard on this!

I finally did my mission! It's a mission report, link here. I flew an advertisement billboard to Dres with a loving message to help Dres feel loved and to bring awareness to potential space tourists and the population in general. The billboard's size isn't much, but my PC is as bad as a laptop and I'm not sure how much of a bigger craft it could've handled. (Update: I turned the graphics settings down a few days ago and while ships no longer cast shadows on terrain, my game is faster.) If you're interested, I used no mods at all. I did my best to document everything. I did forget the screenshots for the Dres transfer but if you compare my fuel and dv they've gone down by about 1600, ( the dv not the fuel) which is enough for a Dres transfer. This was also my first mission to be posted on the forums so I'm not used to taking so many screenshots of a single mission. Everything else is well documented though. It was on a sandbox world but that's simply because none of my science or career saves are far enough in the tech tree for this kind of mission. This mission was tons of fun and I got valuable experience too! I hope Dres appreciates it! I've always loved the dwarf planet Ceres, (Dres IRL) and this was also a way of showing support for Ceres as well.

This mission was part of the Dres Awareness challenge. The goal of the challenge was to show your love for Dres, with something BIG! Unfortunately, my PC is literally a hand-me-down, so extremely big was not an option. But there are other ways to be big. Dres Tourism Commission report: Reply to the previous report, from KSC Director Andrew Kerman: 18 months later... The sun was shining. The birds were singing. And another huge rocket was on the launchpad. Here's the launch: Trying to get a Dres encounter was pretty stressful, (small soi) so I forgot to get a picture of the transfer burn. However, as proof I didn't cheat, if you look at the D-v levels, they've gone down by 1629 m/s, which is pretty close to the 1540 my interplanetary transfer cheat sheet says. (The fuel has also gone down) However, I think I documented everything else pretty well. Transfer to Dres/ orbital insertion: Dres landing: Landed, safe and sound! I had fun doing this! I hope it's big enough for Dres! Maybe when I get a better PC I can do something bigger. (Like a hotel!) In previous attempts, I tried storing the billboard horizontally. It made the rocket flip over sometimes and even though I would revert the flight anyway, I tried recovering it using the remaining fuel. They all failed, but it made for some interesting screenshots. Bloopers: Enjoy! Try a Dres mission of your own if you haven't, it's an interesting challenge.

So things have been busy, but lately, I've done a lot of stuff! I did my second Minmus mission ever (Surprisingly!) and an ice cream restaurant will follow soon, as soon as I figure out how to launch weirdly-shaped payloads, with which I have minimal experience. Good news, I finally launched my Dres Billboard and it is sitting safely on Dres. Someday a nice hotel will land near it. I will put together a mission report soon! As I was thinking about interplanetary tourism, I thought of different reasons to visit each moon and planet. I couldn't think of anything on Bop that was an exciting reason to visit when out of the blue I thought CASINO! So eventually I'll put a big casino on Bop. Pictures will follow soon of Ginny landed on the VAB. (I didn't know I would be sharing all that about Ginny, so I only got screenshots of it landed. However, I also took a picture of the flight events, so you know I'm not a liar)

I decided to finally do a long- standing goal of mine, I recreated the Ingenuity (Ginny) helicopter. Fairly simple, I had some issues with the rotors like I always do, but not a big challenge. Then, as the ultimate test, I decided to fly Ginny to Duna land Ginny on the VAB. On the way there, I wanted to take a stop at the Admin pool. Big mistake. On "landing," Ginny pitched 90 degrees and lost 2 propellers. Fortunately, the 2 remaining propellers were on opposite rotors, so the rotation still canceled out. But then on my way out of the pool, to the VAB, I lost another one at the astronaut complex. I was down to 1 propeller. Rotation, imbalance, a host of problems could finish me for good. Thankfully, reaction wheels are OP and I made it to the VAB. I bounced upon landing, unintentionally aided by my propeller, but, unbeknownst to me, everything after that was broken. Ginny's kal-1000 controller and main batteries are on the bottom, which isn't covered by a structural panel. Upon bouncing, I lost the kal controller and the main batteries. The kal was important because it controlled blade pitch. The propeller was stuck at 30 degrees, full throttle. (At least, at the settings I had it at.) Somehow, through sheer luck, the will of the fates, and probably something else, I got this little helicopter on the VAB. It may seem small, but in the moment, it was a big adventure. I just hope I described it well enough!

Not much was done in KSP today, other than general shenanigan-type stuff. You know, the most efficient way to be inefficient, horrible planes, messing up crafts by adding robotic parts... Anyway, I found out today that 10 days ago, JUICE got its antenna unstuck! This is great news, as it means JUICE can continue with its exploration of Jupiter's super-cool moons. I have been praying every day for this to happen, I'm glad for the hard work by ESA, they are really neat! Also, I am working on a fanfiction. I plan to explore the larger part of the solar system, but it starts out on Dres. I will be creating some lore, inspired by the KSP1 easter eggs and KSP2 monuments. It takes place in the KSP2 solar system. Link here. That's all for now, see you later!

Good news! I finished (most) of that homework, so I can work on KSP now! I haven't really done a lot recently, but my current plans are: 1. Finish the lander design for my Jool 5. My plan is to use one lander for all moons but Laythe, with refuels of course. There will be 2 addon-modules, a rover for Vall and ISRU for Tylo. I think the aesthetic I want to go for is the lander from Europa Report. The Lander from Europa report. (Concept art only, as the film is shown through onboard cameras only and we don't get a good close look at it) I think the Thud engine would be a pretty good choice to replicate the radial engines. 2. Actually get Laythe-Planes into orbit. Tweak design as needed. 3. Land billboard on Dres. Experiment with mounting the payload on the bottom. 4. Explore anomalies on the Mun and look for anomalies on other planets/ moons. Extra notes: just get good at the game.

Interesting idea, sounds a lot better than what I've been doing trying to do.. However, I've never made a rocket after that design. How do I do stage separation if the fuel and engines are on top? That may sound like a stupid question but I really don't know a good way.

I've made the launch vehicle a lot less wide (And more stable) by mounting the billboard vertically. Turns out Dres is the smallest planet in the solar system ( but also the best one!), so no refueling mission will be needed. Several launch attempts failed, because when I had mounted the billboard horizontally, whenever I staged the first stage, the enormous drag from the huge payload fairing caused the rocket to flip. Attempts to stabilize the rocket via more reaction wheels or fins failed. If I make a mission report, I'll include pictures of my more humorous attempts at recovering these failed rockets with their remaining fuel.

Got totally sidetracked and made a Mun orbital surveyor. Using the rovemax probe core, (100% anomaly detection) I've found 7 or 8 anomalies so far. I also tried to make a lander designed for use in a vacuum but could also land like a space shuttle. It didn't work, so I took off the wings and turned it into a Duna lander. I'll have to decrease the thrust limiter on the engines, by a lot. I won't be playing KSP for a while as I have a buttload of homework to do, mostly because I was playing KSP instead. Wish me luck, it's all due on Friday!

I took a much-needed break from my Jool 5 project, and worked on a mission. The mission is to show appreciation for Dres, link here, and my project will launch a billboard with an inspiring message to Dres. As practice for what will actually be my first interplanetary mission, I had a small craft with infinite fuel via cheats on a sandbox save and did a quick mission to Dres. Surprisingly easy! Several attempts to launch the billboard failed, then I had the idea to launch this long, vertical thing vertically instead of horizontally. I was concerned about weight imbalance from storing the billboard in the fairing sideways, but the stability gained from it taking up much less fairing space is worth it. Maybe this can be a mission report soon!

I'm so glad Dres got official rings in KSP 2. The planet honestly looks quite beautiful, and I think the contrast of the gray colors (and other subtle colors) is very lovely. The crashed hot rod was a brilliant idea. Really, there's no reason for people to hate it. Sure, it's orbit is inclined and eccentric, but not by that much, really. It's not hard at all to create an extra maneuver node, and before you complain about the extra deltav, Eve takes a heck of a lot more of it, especially if you are trying to get back to Kerbin, and nobody complains about Eve. Same for a lot of planets.

Very fun! I love the work that's being done. KSP2 looks so amazing, I wish my computer could run it just so I could stare in awe at the graphics and fancy features! I actually learned about JUICE just yesterday. Recently I've been looking into why we don't have more probes in the solar system. It's really sad that the main reason is the cost. Good thing that's not a concern in KSP!

So when I redesigned the LPs, (Laythe-Planes) I had to add more fuel because I had more engines, which meant more wing area, and then I added an lv 909 because the rapier has low isp closed cycle... You see were this is going. Too heavy, too hard to steer, a plethora of problems. So I've taken all that out and heavily simplified the design. Honestly, I don't know why I added so much more to it, the original design got into orbit with no problems. Also, the new design weighs only 2 thirds of the previous design.

So I've settled on my payload. Basically it consists of a large billboard made of wing parts and a loving message written with flags. My PC is handling the relatively high parts count from all the flags pretty well, and the launch shouldn't be too laggy because launch vehicle is simple- I call it the Manticore, a name for a super heavy launch vehicle I came up with at Space Camp with my friends a while back. The Manticore is nice, simple, and big-just a large fuel tank with large engines. The launch vehicle has to be big (mostly wide) is because of the awkward shape of the billboard, the thing itself barely weighs 2 tons- minus the weight of the landing equipment. Not sure if I should just get it into orbit and do a refuel mission or have all the fuel ready. I'm tempted to just go full moar boosters because I hate getting a rendezvous, but if I go the refuel route then I need a smaller rocket, which will be easier on my PC. Hmm. For once, the rendezvous option is looking really tempting. Anyway, it'll be a while until I actually have something to show off for all this work, as my current priority is a Jool 5 with my goal for completion sometime in the next 2 weeks.

Hey guys! I've had an idea for a story for a while now. I'd like to share my prologue with you, hopefully more will come soon! Journey to the Center of the Thing (JCT) Prologue: “Looks to me like you broke the front off the mark two again, but tried to hide it by sanding down the front.” “No, your professional opinion, Val! And for the record, it wasn’t an accident!” “Sure, Bill. Look, doesn’t the mark two have a pointy bit because it’s better for supersonic flight?” “Yeah, yeah, it does. I was part of the research team for that. But mark two was designed for supersonic flights on Kerbin- it has seen use in interplanetary SSTOs and the like, but that wasn’t its original intent. This baby was designed for space.” “Why did you build this thing again?” ---one year earlier--- ---location: Dres ---coordinates: (1° 57′ 18″ N 64° 8′ 33″ E) ---operation salty ---mining base arcturo II “What the heck is that?” “Dunno Jeb, but it looks like something big. Should we take the rover?” The orbital scans had been acting up for months. Ever since they arrived, the polar observation satellites had been reporting anomalies everywhere. Everywhere on the stark, tan-and-grey surface of the dwarf planet Dres. And mission control back on Kerbin wanted them to find out what was going on. “We’ll get MC to weigh in. You’ve tried debugging the sats?” Jeb stated. “I’ve tried debugging the sats.” Bob replied. “You’ve tried a hard reboot.” “I’ve tried a hard reboot.” “What we have yet to try is go where they’re telling us to.” “There are too many locations- we can’t ever hope to visit them all, not within the expected lifetime of Arcturo, anyway.” “Maybe something’s interfering with the signal? Maybe they’re getting a false reading from something?” “Like what, something at the cen-” Bob cut off. “What?” Jeb asked. “I need to see the lab. Now.” Bob’s voice was chock-full of urgency. “What? What did I say?” Bob didn’t respond. “You know I outrank you, right?” Jeb shouted. Bob’s reply was distant: “Not that you care!” “Fair point.” Jeb sighed to himself. I am editing this on Google Docs because it's just easier, so updates might be infrequent.

I want to say, I used to hate Dres. That was when all I knew about it was that its orbit was highly inclined and eccentric, making transfers very hard. This seems to be the main reason people don't like Dres. One day, I was trying out a deployable rover design using some new robotics parts. (I used cheats btw, but I'm fine with that if it's for testing a craft on a sandbox world) So I was testing this rover on Pol when I had the idea to put it on Dres for even more fun since the test was basically over. *opens the cheat menu* *Dres, altitude 10 m or so* *wait for it to load* Love at first planetary excursion. I love the contrasting colors, its quaint size, the easter egg referencing SpaceX, the Dresteroid Belt- I just love the little dwarf planet just as much as I love Ceres! (which is a lot) I really hope I can pull off this mission and show my appreciation for Dres. Don't worry, little buddy, I'm coming! (sorry if this seemed like me just rambling on, I just like Dres)

I've decided to do a bit of a design overhaul on the Laythe-Planes. Instead of just a single RAPIER engine, I have two on the ends of the wings. On the central fuselage, I had added a Whiplash engine, but I found that the 2 RAPIERs were enough to get into orbit, and the Whiplash engine sucked up almost all my liquid fuel, leaving my RAPIERs useless once in space. I might replace the Whiplash with either a liquid fuel tank or maybe the Nerv atomic engine. I'm thinking the fuel tank, I don't really have a use for a long-range, low-thrust engine like the Nerv, as the Laythe-Planes will rendezvous with the mothership in orbit.

Well there is an altitude limit for propellers, they are basically tiny wings after all. The general rule of thumb is the higher altitude flight, the faster you have to go. On Eve this is made much easier by the dense atmosphere, but there is still a limit. If you are trying to get a contract on Eve at an altitude above 20km (which is my exact scenario lol) then all you need is a temporary boost in speed to get to the proper altitude and maintain flight. Try some twitch engines (small, radially mounted to save node attachments) and some small fuel tanks. Pros: high thrust Cons: horrible fuel efficiency, dead weight when fuel runs out. This will work if it's only like 4 contracts, but not if you want sustained flight for extended durations. If you want that, you could try... More propellers. At a higher altitude, with less air, they won't work as well, so if you add more, they might make up for the loss in efficiency. If you haven't, try adding solar panels on the wings (the OX-STAT non-deployable kind) to fill the electrical requirements and try finding ways to fit in more wing area. Pros: sustainable flight might be possible, goes much faster at a lower altitude Cons: higher launch mass + payload size Hope this helps, at least it's not like my earlier attempts at Eve planes before there was a DLC and it all had to be rocket powered... EDIT: Oh, I just reread that and I see you're trying to do a launch assist plane to get to a low orbit. (Not sure if that's the actual name for it but it works) If you don't have mods for that you'll lose the plane when you switch to the craft that gets into orbit. Unless the rocket itself has propellers on it? Can you describe your launch vehicle or post a picture, that would help a lot.

Well dang guess it's time to stop accepting those "get a science scan from this area" I hate those kinds

Well I haven't played KSP yet today but yesterday I worked a lot on my Laythe-Planes Wolf and Coyote for my upcoming Jool 5. I didn't get to fly them yet, but I added detachable fuel tanks, because these planes were getting heavy and I needed to save weight however I could. They're not very big, so calling them heavy is relative, but they were getting heavy for the single R.A.P.I.E.R. engine. Also, Coyote has a deployable rover! I just love the DLC rover wheels. (BTW, the rover's speed record is 21.4 m/s. I could go faster but I was worrying about the integrity of my wheels, especially on a low gravity moon like Laythe. I think it went faster but if it did I didn't catch the speed before I hit the brakes.)