Deadweasel

.craft or it didn't happen!

AODS-11 "Sparrow" delivers a last-minute navigational upgrade to WhiteRaven flight D001's engine platform... ...hours before Bill arrives in another WhiteRaven to retrieve Mac, D001's launch pilot and orbital assembly supervisor. Mac's final task was to power down all systems and transfer control to the maintenance computer before disembarking for the last EVA of his mission. The only glitch in the mission surfaced as soon as the computer took control, and immediately turned the "porch lights" back on. Every attempt to extinguish them only resulted in them instantly flaring to life again. After a few minutes of this, Mission Control decided to leave it be, as on-board generators would prevent the lights from depleting power completely anyway. It wasn't until well after Mac's return that it was discovered Jebediah had been at an unmanned console in Mission Control, manually switching on the lights because he thought the panic in everybody's voices was hilarious. D001 remains on-orbit at standby while mission crews update software, and monitor the telemetry sent via the engine platform's automated control unit. Jebediah has been duct taped to a chair in a closet to keep him from inserting yet more "Ow, my balls!" videos from the internet into WhiteRaven's data storage. WhiteRaven flight R012 (retrieval) settles onto final approach at KSC, bringing a close to Bill's three day flight, and Mac's four month deployment. WhiteRaven's V/STOL engines proved to have another benefit beyond mission scope, when overflight of the runway resulted in the killing and cooking of a small flock of Kerbin Kockatoos that had been causing headaches around the airfield. Jeb commented they "taste like chicken!" Meanwhile, HSTAC-01 Silverhawk testing enters its final phase under Alan Kerman, recently appointed lead of the High-Speed Trans-Atmospheric Courier program. The faster HSTAC-01 will proceed WhiteRaven flight D001 and LGV DragonFly-10 to Duna, and provide landing target telemetry.

LOVE the new docking port sr. It's all the stability I'd wanted in a docking port-turned-structural-integrity-centerpoint, and makes awesome builds like this one much more feasible!

*facepalm* D'oh! Carry on sir, carry on.

I'm confused... If the lander is drained of its fuel, how can they get back with fuel to spare??

Two options for you here (and I'm assuming you're saying you have a probe body on-board so it can still be controlled afterward: Build the ship so your pilot can disembark after the ship is on the pad Use a mod called Kerbal Crew Manifest (.20 updated) to "delete" the pilot while the ship is still on the pad I use the mod option for my ships, especially when I'm dealing with a small vessel with a single pod and probe body intended for crew rescue. In other words I want the pod to be the lifeboat, not already crewed at launch. The mod also has a "permadeath" option that is on by default, so if you don't want that, be sure to click the little clipboard icon at the Space Center scene (before you go into the VAB, SPH, runway or launchpad).

I think your single image links are pointing to a non-public location on your Dropbox account, because they simply toss a 404 at me when trying to view them by URL. As for DR, it's not officially updated yet, but there is a workaround posted to at least let you load ships that are using it in the meantime: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/30591-20-Compatible-and-Incompatible-incomplete-mods-list-fixes-%285-25-2013%29

He was referring to the new Tracking Station functionality, where you can filter the vessels you can see (to make cluttered orbits easier to sort through), and select a ship to jump to, or even delete debris components without having to go to them and End Flight.

Here are some mods and crafts from SpacePort that will fill your hunger for probing planetary orifices... I make no claim as to compatibility with the mods Custom struts: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/0-19-1-jarfr-tri-hexagonal-structural-strut/ RemoteTech (simulates communications delays over distance): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/remotetech-3/ & http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/remotetech-probe-compatability/ K2 satellite (.craft with stock parts): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/k2-satellite/ Prometheus Solar Rover (mod parts): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/0-18-2-prometheus-solar-rover-v5-0/ DSL Pandora rover (Curiosity replica, mod parts): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/dsl-pandora-rover/ Thor Pole Explorer (mod parts): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/0-18-2-thor-pole-explorer/ UIPAP Voyager (mod parts): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/uipap-voyager/ RoveMate XL (mod part, big version of the stock rover body): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/rovemate-xl/ Multipurpose Space Probe (stock parts): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/multipurpose-space-probe/ Hubble Space Teleskope (stock parts): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/hubble-space-teleskope/ Have fun!

Congrats on a smooth and thoughtful install process! What kind of mods are you looking for? There are probes of all kinds, but most of them built using parts from stock and various other parts packs. I don't know if there's a whole mod just for probes in particular.

This is a great take on a passenger vessel. Funny, I was just looking at that spherical tank on SpacePort earlier, too! I have a smaller ship that uses the same crew cab layout, except mine can be ejected and 'chuted to safety after re-entry (it's a crew return ship).

I know, right? Imagine if tugboats IRL were rocket-powered. Carnival cruise lines would have to start tallying hull damage from more than just bad captains.

Clamp-ception!! /BWAAAAAAAAAAAM

Because I'm going through another round of collecting and installing fixed mods and parts, I had an opportunity to go in and try the parts re-loader functionality again. Here's a clip of what I see when I commit a reload while a "ship" is on the pad, and what prompted my previous comment about it: The first time I tried it, I had a 290 part SSTO on the runway, and all those models starting loading in right in the middle of it. KABOOOOOM!!!

Guys, whatever you did to this, it works BEAUTIFULLY! Maybe it's the changes in the game engine or something, but now I don't see the odd glitch where the flash modes seem to fall back to the interval mode when there are multiple ships deployed. Under .19 it would work fine for a while, but then would flip over to the 1 second interval cycle if I had about 3 or 4 vessels in-flight. Now, it's PERFECT, and it makes these things so much more fun to fly. The changes to the flash cycle timing are exactly what I was looking for too. THANK YOU!!

WhiteRaven flight DE002 catches a partial eclipse while en route to the drive platform

"Blue Ice" base? Is Delta Airlines flying to Minmus now too? Man, I'm behind the curve.

Wow. Just... wow. Did you create your own custom parts for this? That looks incredible.

"Haystack" functionality is there, yes, but the sub-assembly loader will probably take some time to implement, especially now that they've just switched over to a new parts management system. Doubtless it really is no small thing to implement within the core game right now, but hey, I'm sure the subassembly loader mod will be updated soon (if it hasn't already) in which case there's no cause for angst.

You might be able to get some help with the problem if you gave people some information to run with to help find the bottleneck. What kind of hardware specs do you have? What operating system are you using? Latest drivers installed? What else is running besides KSP on the computer? (Watching 1080p videos while the game is running tends to make the computer gnomes commit suicide after a time) How many parts in that rocket? KSP is power hungry and pushes the limits of any system if you go too crazy with the part counts. Give us something to work with besides grumbling about what you're seeing and we might be able to help! That is, unless you're already aware of the problem, can't do anything about it and just wanted to vent, which is okay too.

Hey nightshadow404, make sure you're enclosing your image links in tags, or they won't show on the forums. On Imgur, click on one of your pictures. In the image popup, look at the options to the right. There's a line titled "BBCode (message boards & forums)". Click the icon that looks like two pages underneath that title, and Imgur places a ready-to-post version of your links in the clipboard. All you have to do is simply paste into your forums post, and it will be placed with the tags already in place so you don't have to worry about them.

Well, it's going to be relative for everybody based on what they've got to work with. I feel your pain, I've been in that rut a few times where I'm stuck with old or even failing hardware that makes it a chore to just watch a video, let alone play a game. I hope things come around that lands you a newer powerful system soon. It's nice to not have to worry about performance issues with a game... not that I don't still have those with THIS game, mind you!

Anybody else get the feeling Squad grossly underestimated just how ginormous we'd end up building our ships?

LOL that's near the edge of Duna's northern polar region. It's "snow", not red Duna dirt.

I would like to add real quick that Duna's atmosphere *is* thin in the first place. If you're looking up from an elevated point, you might just see darker sky. Any screenies we can compare with? /heads off to begin Duna mission immediately