Kimera Industries

Hey, life isn't so bad- *realizes DLC hinges are full of bugs* AAAAHHH *discovers mods* oh *mod install fails* AAAAHHH Realizing your rocket landed fine only to have wind and bad weather blow it off the drone ship

Rock-Paper-Scissors-Shoot, Anything you want to do!

Rock-Paper-Scissors-Shoot, Anything you want to do

"Hey, my cats will like this-" *Thunderous sound of disaster careening down the hallway* Realizing the FAA won't let you launch your new rocket because paperwork.

I finally got around to posting my Pravda I mission for Wrong Red Moon, the Pravda series is an orbital surveyor to locate anomalies and the best spot for a surface base. Orbital scanning is fun! Except... not when Minmus has only 2 anomalies. Sigh... Oh, and in other news I made an F-35 with Airplane Plus parts. I think it's one of my best VTOL planes ever, and it's really maneuverable! I tried to land on the VAB helipads like you do, and I missed and destroyed my starboard tailfin and corresponding tail boom. Long story short, I'm on the VAB but not on the helipads, so I try to rotate the plane to face the helipads so I can more easily make a short hop to land on them. I realize I am out of EC (this variant held only the electricity in the cockpit, something I fixed in the later model) so I fire up my engine at low throttle so the alternator can charge me up. I realized too late that my engine was facing forward, not down, and it pushed me to the edge of the VAB! My only hope now is to perform an emergency vertical takeoff before I fall! It slides over the edge as my engines warm up, and mid-fall I recover! I then landed on the VAB helipad successfully. Probably the coolest moment of my day.

Pravda I Only a few steps are left until MISE can complete its major goal- landing a kerbal on Minmus. One of these is to map out the planet and survey it from above. To accomplish this, MISE repurposes an old Kerbin surveyor satellite and renames it to something more fitting: Pravda. Pravda I has been upgraded with larger propellant tanks and a large antenna to serve as a dedicated relay once the surface is completely mapped. It will follow the standard protocol for a mission to Minmus, with one major difference: Pravda will orbit in a polar orbit, to map the moon's entire surface. Launch: Heading to Minmus: At Minmus: Mission success- we have discovered 2 anomalies on the surface with our advanced scanning tech, proving that Minmus holds some secrets just like The Mun. We also found the best location for a surface base- in a previously explored area, with ore levels above 80%, and in the plains, too! This location has been dubbed the Lunara Plains by mapmakers.

Rock-paper-scissors-shoot, anything you want to do!

We'll be fine, this thing hasn't erupted in 6 million yea- *rumble* *checks notes* or was it 6 days Forgetting parachutes after a grand tour of the solar system... in RSS.

Rock-paper-scissors-shoot, anything you want to do!

Today I changed my profile picture for the forum. This is the PrOP-M. It was a Russian Mars rover carried aboard Mars 2 and Mars 3. Supposedly, a PrOP-M was also carried aboard Mars 6 and 7. Every one of these vehicles crashed, failed shortly after landing, or coasted by the planet and missed entirely, so the PrOP-M never got to rove on Mars or was even deployed. It is the only exception to wheeled rovers. I also find it incredibly funny and cute- look at it! I'm torn between Sojourner and this little guy! Here's another gif- these little guys were the size of shoeboxes! I love them!

The docking port drive taunts the kraken and it destroys the ship it is mounted on, launching the kerbals on board at incredible speeds. The kerbals arrive at their destination anyway, and much faster than planned. The kraken gets a tasty new ship to munch on too! It's a draw! Rock-scissors-paper-shoot, anything you want to do!

To keep up-to-date with my Psyche recreation episodes as they come out, check out the original post here. For posterity, I present: Making the Psyche Mission: Episode 2 Miniaturizing and Asteroid Hunting Making a scaled-down version of Psyche was much the same as making the original, of course, with the benefit of hindsight, I could streamline it more. Packed full of batteries (the solar panels provide enough charge but just in case) and adding some monoprop tanks for the cold gas thrusters, (I forgot to add the RCS itself but I'll do that later) I actually like the scaled-down version better than my original. There's more to add but I'll do that later. Then, I slapped together a quick probe with a telescope and got to work mapping asteroids. Turns out that asteroids in KSP are extremely unrealistic as far as orbits go. Nearly all of them have orbits that intersect with Kerbin, frequently. If the Kerbol (Kerbolar?) System is anywhere as old as ours, then asteroids with orbits that intersect with a planet's so frequently would impact, become a moon, burn up, break into rings, and be filtered out of the population of asteroids in general. Kerbin should be a wasteland with all the near-Kerbin asteroids it has. No wonder about the big crater, then. In reality, they should mostly be between Duna and Jool, as that is where the biggest gap between the orbits is and also where the analog of Ceres is, Dres. This made finding an accurate stand-in for 16 Psyche rather difficult, as far fewer asteroids spawn in the orbit of Duna, and of course, all asteroids by Dres are part of the Dres-teroid ring. After an hour of searching, I found an asteroid whose orbit did not take it past Jool, and that didn't intersect Duna's. I built in the ability to grab another asteroid into this probe, so I rendezvoused, grabbed it, and renamed the asteroid. As far as I know, this is the only way to rename an asteroid. I'm using cheats, but since I am not altering the orbits of the asteroids in any way and this is only to find a suitable one and name it 16 Psyche, I'm ok with it. If you choose to do so with your attempt, feel free. At the last second, I decided its orbit was too close to Duna's. (It did not cross the inside of Duna's orbit but if you zoomed out it looked like it was right on top of it.) More searching, and finally, I found it! Its orbit is visibly apart from Duna's, and its distance from the orbit of the red planet means a Duna gravity assist might actually help me out. I had already named the previous asteroid 16 Psyche, so after I renamed the new one, I went back to the old one and called it 40 Mothball. Not quite sure where the name came from but I went with it. (Perhaps it can be a secondary target after 16 Psyche.) Oh, I named my asteroid exploration craft Psyche-ologist. Not the main focus but just as important all the same.

The planet of scissors collapses from all the empty space in between, generating enormous heat from friction. The intense heat bakes the pizza to perfection, people enjoy it, and it loses its sole purpose in life to be cursed and undesirable. @Deddly wins! Rock-paper-scissors-shoot, anything you want to do!

Being mushy means it'll be easier to carve! Burning food in your oven.

Based upon my examination of the image, and my past experience with airships in KSP 1, I would say there are either vertical jet engines in the engine pods or passenger compartment. They could be rocket engines but the lack of plumes plus the comparatively low Isp and heavy weight of rocket fuel leads me to say that it's definitely jets. The fairing is probably mostly empty and only for show or full of reaction wheels for stability, you could get several minutes to an hour of flight time or more if the engine pods or passenger compartment were filled with fuel and the fairing is empty. Definitely enough time to fly over the astronaut complex and get a screenshot. Alternatively, it could be a bug exploit/kraken drive, or they have modded the game to give certain parts negative weight, but I think my first explanation is most likely.

"Fuel pipe A was supposed to connect to Pipe B on the engine assembly, right?" A Kraken attack.

"Naw, it's cool guys! I'm the main character!" *He showed up only twice* Columbus accidentally coughing on the Native Americans in 1492.

The drop bear drops from the ceiling in the tracking station and presses the button to terminate the stellar engine in orbit! @Deddly wins! (They've really got to put a cover on the terminate button) Rock-paper-scissors-shoot, anything you want to do!

"Top Gun looks easy. I can do that in KSP, no problem!" *They just got KSP* Running out of fuel 400 meters above an airless body's surface.

I don't see why so many people are giving Tim C so much flak. Plenty of people have middle names, and Kerbals have no reason not to either. Besides, it's a clever way to tell people he was a developer. I agree with you about Bill, though. Well-engineered ships and good flying can prevent any disaster.

For posterity, I present: Making the Psyche Mission: Episode 2 Miniaturizing and Asteroid Hunting Making a scaled-down version of Psyche was much the same as making the original, of course, with the benefit of hindsight, I could streamline it more. Packed full of batteries (the solar panels provide enough charge but just in case) and adding some monoprop tanks for the cold gas thrusters, (I forgot to add the RCS itself but I'll do that later) I actually like the scaled-down version better than my original. There's more to add but I'll do that later. Then, I slapped together a quick probe with a telescope and got to work mapping asteroids. Turns out that asteroids in KSP are extremely unrealistic as far as orbits go. Nearly all of them have orbits that intersect with Kerbin, frequently. If the Kerbol (Kerbolar?) System is anywhere as old as ours, then asteroids with orbits that intersect with a planet's so frequently would impact, become a moon, burn up, break into rings, and be filtered out of the population of asteroids in general. Kerbin should be a wasteland with all the near-Kerbin asteroids it has. No wonder about the big crater, then. In reality, they should mostly be between Duna and Jool, as that is where the biggest gap between the orbits is and also where the analog of Ceres is, Dres. This made finding an accurate stand-in for 16 Psyche rather difficult, as far fewer asteroids spawn in the orbit of Duna, and of course, all asteroids by Dres are part of the Dres-teroid ring. After an hour of searching, I found an asteroid whose orbit did not take it past Jool, and that didn't intersect Duna's. I built in the ability to grab another asteroid into this probe, so I rendezvoused, grabbed it, and renamed the asteroid. As far as I know, this is the only way to rename an asteroid. I'm using cheats, but since I am not altering the orbits of the asteroids in any way and this is only to find a suitable one and name it 16 Psyche, I'm ok with it. If you choose to do so with your attempt, feel free. At the last second, I decided its orbit was too close to Duna's. (It did not cross the inside of Duna's orbit but if you zoomed out it looked like it was right on top of it.) More searching, and finally, I found it! Its orbit is visibly apart from Duna's, and its distance from the orbit of the red planet means a Duna gravity assist might actually help me out. I had already named the previous asteroid 16 Psyche, so after I renamed the new one, I went back to the old one and called it 40 Mothball. Not quite sure where the name came from but I went with it. (Perhaps it can be a secondary target after 16 Psyche.) Oh, I named my asteroid exploration craft Psyche-ologist. Not the main focus but just as important all the same.

I saw the eclipse! It wasn't the full thing, but at max, it was about 70-80% covered. The cloud layer was just right so we could look directly at it! In other news, my recreation of the Psyche mission is going OK. Little did I know that asteroid hunting would be so hard, but that's for another time. Here's what I posted on the Psyche Recreation thread: For posterity, I present: Making the Psyche Mission: Episode 1 Cursed Robotics Out of Scale In making Psyche, I decided to start with the probe itself. Placing a probe core, I surrounded it with structural panels and filled my new box with batteries and some small xenon tanks. Psyche has 4 Hal Effect thrusters, placed at angles so each is pointing through the CoM. The Dawn engine is too big to have 4 at this scale, and I don't need the redundancy anyway. To maintain some semblance of accuracy in the matter, I chose to have two engines. Since I would only really use one at a time, since the fact that they are angled means I would lose dv if I used both, I created action groups to toggle them and docking ports so I could control from the center of thrust. Next, I added "greebles" to the exterior, meant to be the cameras, star trackers, etc. Psyche has two "horns" that are scientific instruments held away from the craft via struts, then covered in insulation. (It looks like foil but it actually isn't) You can see it in the pictures. Anyway, I made those with science bits (this isn't all aesthetic) and triangular structural panels. Next, DSOC: Deep Space Optical Communications. I just wanted the look of the thing, so I used two magnetometers for the cylinder and SP for the base. I added an antenna dish, and we were done. Except for the solar panels- oh, the solar panels. Psyche (and JUICE) use plus-shaped solar panels. None of the deployable panels in stock KSP come close, and I haven't found any mods with one either. So I would make my own deployable panels with DLC hinges and static panels. Two large OX-Stats clipped side by side made the right rectangular shape, so I mounted them on a small SP and added hinges and more "panels." I got it to look visually correct, and it could unfold normally- but the panels all clipped through each other. I decided to make a KAL sequence to get a cooler-looking deployment, and the problems began. Whenever the craft loaded in, the folded panels would stay in place, while the hinge connecting it to the craft rotated 90 degrees, in its fully deployed position. Attempting to deploy the panel results in the final thing being 90 degrees from where it should be. I discovered that if I rotated the entire assembly 90 degrees the other way, then it would load in normally. I figured this would be the best I'd get, so I put the array on Psyche. Suddenly, the problems vanished. Frustrating, and something I've seen a million times before: Problems with DLC hinges, spending several hours crying and diagnosing the problem, and discovering that the solution is stupidly simple. RIP Starship with moving flaps... I tested out the fully assembled craft (well, mostly) and then It was this moment He realized He messed up The solar array is all out of scale! It's too small! Way too small! Okay, it's not that bad, but to me, who has spent several hours in the last week on the Psyche website, it's a glaring mistake. Rather than make the solar arrays bigger, which would mean more panel clipping than I was already doing, and redoing the robotics, (which I hope never to have to do again) I decided it would be much simpler to redo Psyche itself but smaller. Instead of 1.8m SPs, I would do only 1.2m ones. The only problem I think I'll have is the Ions being a bit big, and I'll have to figure out a new antenna dish. Well, that's all for now, except for the fact that my PC crashed and I lost all the data, meaning I'll have to restart. Psych!

It's not on the list, but what about the Galileo spacecraft? I could also do the atmospheric probe. I've always wanted to send something into Jool.

For posterity, I present: Making the Psyche Mission: Episode 1 Cursed Robotics Out of Scale In making Psyche, I decided to start with the probe itself. Placing a probe core, I surrounded it with structural panels and filled my new box with batteries and some small xenon tanks. Psyche has 4 Hal Effect thrusters, placed at angles so each is pointing through the CoM. The Dawn engine is too big to have 4 at this scale, and I don't need the redundancy anyway. To maintain some semblance of accuracy in the matter, I chose to have two engines. Since I would only really use one at a time, since the fact that they are angled means I would lose dv if I used both, I created action groups to toggle them and docking ports so I could control from the center of thrust. Next, I added "greebles" to the exterior, meant to be the cameras, star trackers, etc. Psyche has two "horns" that are scientific instruments held away from the craft via struts, then covered in insulation. (It looks like foil but it actually isn't) You can see it in the pictures. Anyway, I made those with science bits (this isn't all aesthetic) and triangular structural panels. Next, DSOC: Deep Space Optical Communications. I just wanted the look of the thing, so I used two magnetometers for the cylinder and SP for the base. I added an antenna dish, and we were done. Except for the solar panels- oh, the solar panels. Psyche (and JUICE) use plus-shaped solar panels. None of the deployable panels in stock KSP come close, and I haven't found any mods with one either. So I would make my own deployable panels with DLC hinges and static panels. Two large OX-Stats clipped side by side made the right rectangular shape, so I mounted them on a small SP and added hinges and more "panels." I got it to look visually correct, and it could unfold normally- but the panels all clipped through each other. I decided to make a KAL sequence to get a cooler-looking deployment, and the problems began. Whenever the craft loaded in, the folded panels would stay in place, while the hinge connecting it to the craft rotated 90 degrees, in its fully deployed position. Attempting to deploy the panel results in the final thing being 90 degrees from where it should be. I discovered that if I rotated the entire assembly 90 degrees the other way, then it would load in normally. I figured this would be the best I'd get, so I put the array on Psyche. Suddenly, the problems vanished. Frustrating, and something I've seen a million times before: Problems with DLC hinges, spending several hours crying and diagnosing the problem, and discovering that the solution is stupidly simple. RIP Starship with moving flaps... I tested out the fully assembled craft (well, mostly) and then It was this moment He realized He messed up The solar array is all out of scale! It's too small! Way too small! Okay, it's not that bad, but to me, who has spent several hours in the last week on the Psyche website, it's a glaring mistake. Rather than make the solar arrays bigger, which would mean more panel clipping than I was already doing, and redoing the robotics, (which I hope never to have to do again) I decided it would be much simpler to redo Psyche itself but smaller. Instead of 1.8m SPs, I would do only 1.2m ones. The only problem I think I'll have is the Ions being a bit big, and I'll have to figure out a new antenna dish. Well, that's all for now, except for the fact that my PC crashed and I lost all the data, meaning I'll have to restart. Psych!

As far as sun tracking, what I'm gonna do is have a servo at the base of the assembly. During non-phys time warp, I will manually align the solar panels to the sun beforehand, and as long as I don't warp too far, (like halfway around the orbit) I will get constant EC. During maneuvers, I will re-align them to the sun again and since maneuvers won't take up a massive chunk of your orbit, only a small amount, the panels will get max EC for the entire burn. Sounds good in theory but Mark Watney taught me no plan survives first contact with the enemy, so I'll test it out as soon as possible on a demo probe. Worst case scenario, you just warp to the other side of your orbit (around the sun) to face the solar panels the right way again if you run out of EC.