Mister Dilsby

Welcome back! The whole "0.90 kerbals dealing with a 1.05 world" is very amusing, love the in-world descriptions of how the physics changed for the LV-N (of course the oxidant was for coolant! What else could it have been for?) and other parts

Excellent krakenfighting! "Signs and portents" indeed...

It is! And then you can't believe it, so you check all to see that both ports have an "undock" function--AND THEY DO! ? Will try that out--or might just shoot some views from various good angles and try my Powerpoint magic. We'll see And @Mad Rocket Scientist, thanks for the advice. Will put together some kind of package for the Exchange. It might be better if I didn't post the craft file, it would blow up a lot of folks' computers. But there might be some good construction techniques for the space doors and hangar that people will want to use. As my frequent Author Avatar, that's not surprising Getting on the train tomorrow morning to see CV-11 herself. Until then, this teaser. Dare we hope for a second good L-dock?

"Surprised" to find @Kuzzter has a sense of humor? If @Geschosskopf is my first mate, I think I couldn't survive without one.

Hm. Technically, no one really posts a screenshot to the forum, right? We post a link to an image file hosted elsewhere, and the forum software embeds the linked images in our posts. So, is there any chance you can track down the hosting site where you originally posted the image? If it still exists there, then you're all set. If it doesn't exist there, there may not be anything any mod can do for you. /notamod /butpostsalotofimages

Great craft, and fantastic piloting! Really liked the tail-to-belly landings on vacuum worlds and drogues+main chute sequence in low-pressure atmosphere. Next time, oxidizer drop tanks for Tylo?

Thanks! Not sure if we have cheese, but no doubt we can start culturing some dairy enzyNOMS now and it will be nice and cured by the time they get to Jool. Glad you like where the flag ended up Yeah, I love that scene! And now if anyone ever needs to steal the Skimmeroo, I know where to get the clip for reference Well thanks! As far as fun to fly, I haven't really done too much actual 'flying' since she got to orbit. But I can say that she turns very well for such a big craft. There's 18 or 20 large reaction wheels (can't remember) distributed inside her--half at the aft ends of L and R pod, under the life support sections, and the other half at the forward ends between the external and internal axial docking assemblies. Hm. As I throw around terms like "external and internal axial docking assemblies" I realize the readers may want a diagram. Maybe, if I can get to it--as you may have noticed, I'm doing my best to show where everything is and how it all fits together with my little white lines and breakout windows I wonder if a writeup in Spacecraft Exchange would be appropriate--though per standard Kuzzter policy I would not be providing a download link (I don't like to release a ships for scrutiny until after I'm done telling its story ) @Mad Rocket Scientist, you spend a lot more time than me over there--what do you think? JK=Just kidding! He knows why, because he was in on the whole multi-port docking discussion! Looking ahead, the Qhammer also has an L-dock. The Gumdrop landers are light enough that I think I can get away with a single, as are the probes--though I think I'll drain their fuel until they're ready to fly, just in case Well it actually wasn't so bad--it's easy to do precision maneuvers at one frame per second. (Always look on the bright side!) Might not have any comics to post as we're going out of town for a few days, but I will try to get a picture up of something very large with hull number 11

Great, great stuff! Love the TNG control panel, the Heroic Sacrifice overtones, and of course am very honored by the nods to the Kuzzterverse. I really hope you will make another graphic novel, time permitting

And the rest of what I was trying to do today... (there, that should get everyone back on topic!)

Canadienne And I meant the one in Paris, but canonically I think I did have her say "Sacre!" once so maybe she is Quebecoise.

I'll play along: Bill and Bob. Not that there's any sort of romantic love in my kerbalverse (as I've said several times before, Kerbfleet scientists don't really know where new kerbals come from--not surprising for a species that needed to go to the Mun to figure out how to use ladders) but my Bill and Bob have the most intimate relationship of any pair in the story (not that, if I did choose to introduce kerbal reproduction to the story, anything Bill and Bob did together would result in a baby kerbal--but you get my point...anyway...) As to the non-orangesuit characters, readers have paired easily forgotten pilot Gregmore with engineer and école polykerbique graduate Clauselle, and also scientist Lisa with a negative gravioli detector.

Welcome to the forums, Captin! Not sure if this is meant to be a Challenge, an omnibus Spacecraft Exchange thread, or what, but you're in the Mission Reports section, so if you look around a bit I think you'll find a lot of Reports of missions that are various users' " biggest, best-est, and hardest thing". You can certainly find my biggest & best-est in my reports. Cheers!

Brilliant! Nice job, Bob! I thought for sure "you'd get out and push" to orbit, then fire the retros to go home. But reversing it was even cooler!

I have never used AIRBRAKES as rocket-guiding drag elements but I admit I have been tempted. On the one hand, they fit flush to the body when not in use rather than always sticking out as fins do. Still on that hand, yes they're draggy but fins are draggy. I'm not sure how draggy they really are relative to fins, when used in 'steering' mode. And a third point on that hand (I think I'm allowed up to four, if it's a kerbal's hand), if the plan is to recover that stage then AIRBRAKES might be really useful. But on the other hand (finally!), on my designs it always ended up looking too derpy, so I found other solutions.

Yeah, I know! Really love all the comments and engagement. You all drive me to better comics, or at least to better NOMS-based food puns BTW as an aid to first-time readers confronted with 53 pages of replies, I've posted links to Chapter 4 and to Bill's Engineering Updates in the OP. Thanks! Well, you can get much better technical advice from guys like @GoSlash27, @Rune and @Snark than you can from me. But since you're asking me, what I can tell you is that the first priority is making sure you can get up over 340 m/s at 8-10km. Depending on your jetplane TWR this might be really easy (as it is for Skimmeroo) or you might have to climb slowly, go level flight at 8km to accelerate or even dive slightly. This speed is key to reaching the "tipping point' where your jet thrust will continue to increase, accelerating the craft to maximum velocity. Other important factors for getting there are making sure you have enough intakes (you really don't need many) and minimizing drag. Again, this is easy with Skimmeroo--it has hardly any wing area and its payload is all in the cargo bays. Note that I could not SSTO this design when I had an external docking port, but I can do it with the Mk2 inline version. Most failed SSTO designs I've seen have too many doodads sticking off the exterior, or have too much wing area. Next you have to actually survive that velocity, which can be 1350-1500m/s. I usually use radiators: Skimmeroo has its inside the cargo bay. Gliido, a heavier ship, has its distributed abaft the cockpit. Your testing should reveal which parts are liable to exploding, and you can choose to move, eliminate or protect them. You can also change your flight profile--Skimmeroo is powerful enough that I climb at about 20 degrees until rocket mode transition, both (1) because I can, and (2) because in level flight at 20km it would overheat and explode. Gliido, on the other hand, accelerates at a more sedate 5 degrees until I light the LV-Ns at 18km (note it's a LF-only design, I carry no oxidant for the RAPIERS), then drives on jets+ rockets until i run out of air and nose up to 30 degrees to complete the orbit. And that's about all I have to say about that.

Very nice, modular design. I've no doubt you could put an Eve lander somewhere as well--of course you might have to lose some parts to get down and back up, but it might well be worth it

Regarding the Blocko timer: I was writing a response to explain that yes, Bill reset it (he didn't remember what he was resetting exactly, he was following a note he left for himself in his kpad)-- as I was typing the note I got a popup notification that @Starhawk had replied to the thread, and guessed correctly that he had not only answered the question but cited the correct reference to prove it. Which was great, because I was in the middle of a spaceplane launch... I wanted to play&post all the way through to docking, but ran out of time sorry! This Skimmeroo is a little different from the test version. First off, @Deddly was right about the canards, I rotated them flush with the cockpit body. Next I removed all the OX-STAT solar panels, which (1) tend to explode on ascent and (2) will be useless, and instead stashed a pair of RTGs in the cargo bay. Realized I had to do this, because life support will consume 0.5 kwatts/kerbal. (that's 0.5 EC/ second per kerbal, not 500 EC/second. Kwats are not to be confused with kilokwatts. ) More random discussion. Kuzz Jr. showed me a World War K video in which @EnterElysium tested a B-2 Spirit replica. EE ended up making a "derpy" version with four engines distributed above and below the centerline, rather than the RL config of two shrouded engines above. EE stated in the video that it would have been impossible to control the unbalanced config, however you can see that the Skimmeroo manages this quite well The key was rotating the engines upwards so that their thrust vector passes closer to centerline. You can see that angle pretty well in the third page, bottom panel, and also that I'm using RCS to hold the nose up as canards are no longer effective to maintain attitude in the stratosphere--this is with a max thrust offset of about 3 degrees, which reduces to a more manageable one degree once I get to orbit and can re-distribute some fuel

Should be another 1000 dV or so. In Minmus orbit you're practically at Kerbin SOI escape velocity already. That scene where I had 14 kerbs standing on the pad under a 508 part ship (3 pages) took me 3 days. Worst part was every time it crashed I had to reload all their custom uniforms.

So glad to have you back, and your SAVE working (other than being doomed in 64 days, of course ) Hoping Jeb's plan is something 'normal', like an EVA trip to Duna, rather than a heroic and firey crash to take out the VAB.

Oh my--- well, everything is fixable eventually, with enough savefile magic. Last resort might be to start a brand new install, load only the mods you need, then cut and paste your ships and kerbals from the old save to the new. Good luck, hope it all works out somehow.

Mission Control commands the probes only when they're in Kerbin SOI. More distant ones need to be commanded by a nearby Kerbal pilot, otherwise the signal delay is too long to be practical.

Well no, I never meant her to be a Cajun. It's just that my French is so terrible that whatever version she speaks isn't one found among actual human francophones. Canonically, all we know is that she went to L'Ecole Polykerbique, which would tend to indicate the author's intent that she's from some analogue of continental France. Melbe's home, on the other hand, might at least neighbor 'Kajun' country. We've never established where she learned to speak French Frankais, and of course her particular dialect of Kerblish is indicative of certain areas of the United States where large hats are worn and trucks are driven for sport. In all honesty, the only reason she (canonically) can speak French is that I once did a Marseillaise/tricolor gag and I needed someone with a blue speech balloon to be able to translate for Clauselle. Thanks! My daughter made the same comment, and I told her that sometimes I write the dialogue first and try to get an expression that matches, but sometimes it happens the other way around. This panel was one of the latter kind

Did you and @Geschosskopf take the same bass-ackwards Joolship design seminar? That thing looks like a hat rack trying to make love to a fire extinguisher. (And I mean that in the nicest, sweetest, Valentines-i-est way, of course )

I guarantee you couldn't place her dialect anywhere in the real world based on the kind of French I write. But I think Dman may have been referring to the style of food to which Geschosskopf alluded--Tabasco and crawfish don't show up in French cuisine per se, but they are a vital component of the cuisine of certain French-speaking parts of the US where a man might have to have a standing policy on what to do about venomous snakes on his property.

So... you actually made this uber-asteroid? And plotted it on a course for Kerbal extinction? Well now. That's what I call 'raising the stakes'. You have my attention