Mister Dilsby

Writing and posting mission reports reinvigorated my game. Communicating the events to others made them more real to me, and gave me something I could look back on to 'relive' the fun. When I started putting reports in comic form, it added a creative element and also pushed me towards missions that would generate interesting images and storylines. Having about 253.57% more fun than ever now

9/10, have not seen you in a while but fondly remember you whipping kerbals to the stars over Minmus

Message coming in from Mister Dilsby's little Eve flotilla:

Big update--and many kudos for having that much stuff in the air, with life support to manage. Planning on adding NOMS to my own save in time for a Jool mission.

Ambitious. Settling in with some popkorn to wait for the munar kraken to arrive xD Hopefully your well-thought-out robustness measures will work!

Yes, I may release the Gliido or other support craft--but as Starhawk said, just not the Hummlebee yet. Will happen when I have time to work out the last couple of bugs in the design. I'll put a note here when I do release something. Thanks for reading!

Curious if there is such a challenge in RSS or another mod that models Kerbin at Earth scale. Do airbreathers still outperform rockets in getting to space when they are no longer launching from a "fun sized" planet?

Wondering if Ablate is tidally locked to Kerbol, and if that is taken into account in the radiative heating model? If so it could be fun to attempt a shielded approach to the 'safe' side.

Actually they didn't all blow up! Tedus might deserve a commendation after all for managing to save a couple. You can see two glowing yellow folded panels remaining in the shot of the probe descending on parachutes, and both OX-STAT panels also survived. I don't think any of them would have without judicious use of the descent engine--actually I burned all of it, about 1000 m/s worth, to reduce velocity whenever I saw the temperature gauges about to spike. So it's a good thing the panels survived and I packed a lot of batteries, because there's nothing left to run the fuel cell - - - Updated - - - Thanks! Like the others, that's just there so I know when the window is. I'm not actually planning to go to Dres. I mean...it's Dres.

- - - Updated - - - I suppose it just kind of happened that way--I didn't intend NOT to call it a Kraken, but since Clauselle was observing it it had to be French, and since no one else other than Melbe understands Frankais... - - - Updated - - - Thank you! Well, there will be another one, and I have BIG plans for Jool after these two missions conclude. Actually that is why I originally designed the 'bridge' for the Kerbahashi Maru simulator. Just have to figure out a way to pressurize it so they can take helmets off... - - - Updated - - - No, I have not done this... but of course it's the engineers who are 'force sensitive' around here, they all have varying abilities to feel what's going on beyond their apparent reality. Bill has even edited the .sfs file on occasion... but don't worry, I will mine every possible scifi and pop cultural reference eventually

Great stuff! Mecha King Ghidra fan over here, one of these days Kerbfleet will have to launch some kind of kaiju homage

I wish I could get a count of the posts I started to write, then thought better of and hit 'Cancel'. Those are the ones I'm proudest of.

All of the above. Here's a practical example, my Class E hauler the 'Kranefly' pulling a ~2000t rock. Other than an excuse to post a glamour shot, here's a few lessons I learned which I applied to this vessel: --Be prepared for low thrust if you want to move a big rock. I mean, IT IS A BIG ROCK. Kranefly has six LV-Ns which I think gives it an acceptable ~0.03 TWR when pulling something this size. It takes several minutes to do a big burn. That's why you have to... --Plan ahead to make your burns as small as possible. Adjust the asteroid's path when it is still months away from its destination. Do inclination burns at the high-altitude node. Make liberal use of gravity assists, etc. --Always pull, don't push. But this means you have to: (1) Make sure your engines are far enough away from the rock to operate. Otherwise they will not thrust, AND heat may blow up the asteroid! (2) Get your ship lined up right. Step one, set the maneuver node and orient the ship in the right direction. Step two, target asteroid center of mass and WITHOUT CHANGING SHIP HEADING get docked to the asteroid. Yes you will have to fly around the rock on RCS to do this. Now your ship/asteroid rig is aimed in the right direction and you will have minimum perturbations as you tow. Ready to tow? Not yet! You must (3) SET KLAW FOR FREE PIVOT and if you controlled from the klaw to grab, RESET CONTROL TO FORWARD PART OF SHIP. Note that any time you leave the ship and come back to it, the klaw may lock again and you have to make sure it's on free pivot all over again. --Now you can tow wherever you want--note that every time you change direction on a rock this big, you have to undock, orient to the next maneuver, and re-acquire the asteroid. I remember sharing my v0.90 Kranefly with someone a while ago, and that lovely person said the ship was no good because he couldn't steer the asteroid to a new heading...using reaction wheels. :facepalm: IT IS A VERY BIG ROCK! Hope this helps!

That might be a good mod part--a 'sepracone' with a small rocket motor integrated into an aerodynamic nosecone. Or yeah, clip away I am generally an anti-clipper myself but I think this solution definitely passes the reasonableness test.

I wonder if it has something to do with orbital speed versus surface speed? When you fly east your orbital speed is a couple hundred m/s faster than surface speed, because you are going with rotation. Going north this would not be the case...is it possible you were looking at the wrong readout, and thus had a surface speed (and therefore airspeed) that was actually a bit faster than you thought?

F1 to get the screenshot, then upload to Imgur or another hosting site, then use the 'Insert Image' button above the post, then paste the URL of the hosed image into the popup.

Great point. The world record on turbojets is 980m/s, (3539 km/h), set by the SR-71 Blackbird. That plane also has a ceiling of about 26km. Take out the radar and photography equipment, some of the fuel, and throw a Merlin 1D back there and you'd be able to reach orbit if Earth were Kerbin-sized. Actually we Earthlings would have a significant advantage here over Kerbals, since we can operate two ships in atmosphere at the same time without one of them disappearing--enabling things like in-flight refueling in "stock".

Ah, you noticed that The alarms for Jool and Moho are just so I know when the transfer windows are, there are no ships involved in either. I thought about sending a probe to Jool at that window, but decided I would wait for the next one as it would distract from the comic. The Hummlebee alarm is indeed for the ship in the other comic--just like Spider-Man and the Avengers, both that one and this one are running in parallel timestreams And just like in the real comics, there will be crossovers from time to time like we just had in the Interlude. Readers of "Duna, Ore Bust!" will note the difference in time between Hummlebee's intercept and the "official" Duna-Kerbin transfer. (Nice job, Bill!) As to the others, Dwagonfly is the second of my two large asteroid haulers, presently wrangling a Class C destined for Minmus orbit to fulfill a contract.

Great, great stuff. You're steadily planting a bug in my brain for a Kerbfleet mission to Sarnus...maybe for V1.1

Thanks! Mr. Dilsby will of course do his best, and as we've seen Clauselle is pretty quick on the hotkeys. And the rest of the crew may have some hidden talents as well - - - Updated - - - "Simulations" on one of the probes showed that that would be a Very Bad Idea. Dilsby's order to keep the shields for now is in case it becomes useful to brake in atmosphere post-capture. We'll see how that goes.

All right, you lucky Kerbs, three pages today--things are going to happen a bit faster now that I have my asteroids wrangled and the flotilla is nearing Eve! As always I love getting your comments, PMs etc--your feedback (positive and otherwise) lets me know what you want to see in the comic.

So am I to understand you had two craft intersect accidentally? If so, am amazed you were fast enough on the F1 key to capture that incredible picture! Me, I have had a spent stage orbiting wrongway for about a game-year now, and am just waiting for it to Kesslerize some poor sod in LKO. No luck yet, but I've seen it whizzing by more than a few times

Ah, good point. 9km/s prograde + [tiny amount of vector pointing solar up/downwards] still equals about 9km/second - - - Updated - - - Thanks, and thank you for prodding me in this direction--I had overlooked Dilsby as a focal character and was going to make this pretty much the Bob and Tedus show until your note a few pages back

Thank you! You can get the Pogo over at the Spacecraft Exchange. I'm holding off sharing the Hummlebee until after the mission ends, same as the three main ships in "Eve: Order Zero". Are there any specific ships you are looking to try out other than these?

Does this involve giving Tylo an atmosphere by firing a probe into the surface? If so, you may want to put some your crews through my Kerbahashi Maru simulator first