Mister Dilsby

Welcome to the Forum! Have you considered using these? Seriously, people have built monstrous craft of thousands of tons and hundreds of parts in the stock game. Right now I'm working on a ship that will carry--internally--several landers of up to 80 tons all the way to Jool. Sometimes it just takes some clever engineering. Others swear by mods such as Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. (KJR) to make their really big ships behave.

Welcome to the Forum! I recommend you start by typing "Duna" into the search box at upper right, then click the down arrow to change from "All Content" to "This Forum". Then you should see several threads that discuss craft meant for various operations on Duna. If you don't find what you want in those threads, you'll at least know what to ask for

Yes it did, along with Sandwich Guy. Love those videos, there's gold in them if your screencap is quick enough Good idea! Even if Random Word Salad and the various forms of Space Madness are mutually incomprehensible, no one involved in that conversation will notice! Me too. I stared at that last panel for a few minutes trying to come up with some brief 'end of page zinger' words for Gene and Wernher and then thought, "I can't think of anything, which means they can't think of anything, which works pretty well actually" Apparently it is, according to Not-@Starwhip

Just two, sorry:

Who's been smoking ore now? And I am TOTALLY stealing that one. (Unless @Parkaboy or @Just Jim gets to it first )

It's worse. He might have broken some of these: { }

"Our S.A.V.E. is corrupted" -- AWESOME! I wish I'd thought of this Unified Theory of yours, would have saved me loads of typing today

Generally I agree with this 100%. But I think this case is a little different for a couple of reasons. First, before I'm an author I'm a KSP player and forum-goer like everyone else, and this is as much a Mission Report as it is a novel. I should expect some discussion about any parts of the Mission that other players don't think are reasonable given their own gameplay experience. Second, this is a novel that's being published, serially, within in its own comments section. I think that knocks me down several pegs from lofty and unassailable Dead Author status. In any case I really do enjoy the discussion and respect that quite a lot of you know quite a lot more than me about quite a lot of subjects. Some things I don't really want to discuss are: 1) Unjustifiable insinuations that I, or any other author providing content on this Forum, stole an idea from any other author here. 2) Which mods I will or won't use, or other personal gameplay choices we all have to make for ourselves. 3) Narrative/story direction: Suggestions are fine, and so is rampant speculation. But I'm pretty deaf to demands. 4) Issues arising from the game itself (and my decision that the story take place within the observable rules of the game) 5) Worldbuilding choices: My Kerbals are different from your Kerbals. Yours might do smoochy things, or shoot at each other. But your Kerbals are your Kerbals, and my Kerbals are mine I'm not listing these to try to give any 'rules' for this thread--I wouldn't want to do that even if it was my right, which it isn't. But I do like to respond to as many reader comments as I possibly can, and if I don't respond to something... well, maybe it's because it fits into one of the above categories.

@r_rolo1, I really appreciate your civility in respecting what I don't want to discuss on the thread. Thank you. You do raise some points about observation, though, which are fair and deserve to be addressed. The question: Why didn't anyone notice Kerbulus before? Well, the real answer of course is that I didn't invent Kerbulus until sometime during the Eve story. :shrug: But I think I can show some plausible reasons why everyone with an opportunity to do so did not notice it until the needs of the Story dictated that someone should: 1. The mission to Duna Obviously Kerblus is invisible when the crew leaves Kerbin for Duna, so their first chance to see it is when the Hummlebee's solar orbit diverges from Kerbin's enough that Kerbulus is no longer behind the sun. However, I think that for the entire trip Kerbulus would only have appeared in the daytime sky, and would therefore be as invisible to the Hummlebee crew as Mars is to you and me at noon. Here's the positions of the planets as the crew is getting ready to leave Duna. At this point they've only been at Duna for a few weeks, so this should be a good indication of where everything was the whole time they out there: ...and Kerbulus is of course 180 degrees around from Kerbin, pretty much behind and to the left of the sun. I think that even if someone were looking for a planet over there, they wouldn't have seen it. And besides, both on the way there AND the way back, the entire crew was in hibernation and thus couldn't have noticed an extra planet in the sky no matter how bright it was. 2. The journey to Eve Again, the crew is in hibernation. 3. Operations in and around Eve No time right now to search for a map to see where everything is. (but if I find one later I'll edit to add it) If there was any time where Kerbulus should have been visible, I'll just say everyone was too busy to notice, what with craft exploding and all. Either Eve's brightness or Gilly's shadow could have interfered with a visual observation--and again, no one was looking for it. Remember, this is a species that mistook some very large objects for smudges on their instruments for years, and needed to go to space to figure out how ladders work. We can't judge them by human standards. 4. Bob and Tedus on Eve's surface Since I am playing with EVE installed, I can truly say the night sky over Eve is too cloudy to see any celestial objects. The only reason they could 'see' the satellite overhead is their suits picked up its transponder. 5. Departing Eve for home Well, Jeb saw it. He was looking at Duna and noticed a bright, blue spot. He doesn't know the sky well enough to 'connect the dots' on his own, so when Bob arrogantly dismisses his observation (totally in character, and I hope I get no arguments on that point ) he just goes back to being goofy old Air Service Jeb.

Hey now. IE is still the number one browser in the world... for downloading Chrome.

I suppose they must have been in hibe for much of the time; without an alarm set on their craft to wake them up or Mission Control calling them, they could have overslept their way to madness. Or else Kerbals cannot truly live without attention from the unseen, non-green, ten-fingered entities that some say truly control their destinies. In any case, if they tried to call in I never heard them, 'cause I completely forgot they existed until I landed next to the lab and made it the active vessel. Besides, I needed something like SPACE MADNESS to explain what happens... next.

Well I'm not gonna, except to say this: My story exists entirely within the observable universe of the KSP game, as I play it. I will no longer be responding to comments about SQUAD's choices for modeling or not modeling the real world, or my choice to try to write a fun story about my missions within the confines of (mostly) stock KSP.

Outstanding update! I feel ya on all those random docking port issues, that's my number one reason for having to mess with a persistence file. The towers look really, really great--should be stock! But yeah I think I'm not going to mess with those either, I have enough problems

And that's exactly why "Mort" gave the order for everyone to come in. Well, what can I say? I was more occupied with making comics out of my game than I was with checking everything in it! I guess now's as good a time as any to go through the roster in the Astronaut Complex and see if I missed any-- oh, crap.

Look, I'm just playing the stock game, OK? I don't know what kind of mods you've installed that give you gravitational lensing and n-body physics, but I don't have them. This story has always existed within the rules of the game as I play the game. That's why Bill can edit persistence files (because I sometimes do) and why we see things like, "Hey Mission Control you have to be looking at us when we cross an SOI or we might disappear from the universe!" (i.e. NaN Kraken) If you're looking for hard sci fi based on Kerbals, sorry that's not what I write. Now that's out of the way, let's introduce something else for my Esteemed Readers to completely misinterpret: So yeah, I forgot I never sent anyone to get Kurt and Melgee out of the lab. Oopsie! It was actually pretty funny, when I played through the Minmus landing I really did say "Ooh! there's my old Minmus lab! I think I'll roll up and check it out!", thinking that it was in fact abandoned. Then when I switched active vessels to get a better camera angle on the Quadhammer and saw poor Kurt and Melgee staring out at me--AAAAHHH!!!!

What a contraption! I think you may have invented 'kerbpunk'

Same way human astronomers didn't notice Uranus until 1781: it's really far away, they didn't have anything bigger than a hand-held telescope, and they weren't specifically looking for it! (and in this continuity i.e. my career save that started in v1.0.2 the Eve mission where Jeb noticed Kerbulus was in fact the first time any Kerbal or probe went to Eve, and only the second time anyone left Kerbin SOI.)

Oh, and I don't know that I'd characterize it as a psychic connection between the Kenlies. Each one is 'seeing' bits of the other world and is writing stories about it. In the few examples I've given so far of K. Kermulan's writing, the view is quite imperfect--being filtered through his own notions of what life and society are like. We've seen K. Kerman's 'visions' of the ugly SSTO but not what he's written about it. (don't worry, you will!) So, until something else happens, all that's going on as far as the Kenlies are concerned is visions of another, possibly parallel universe. Sort of like you guys were on the Eve thread before someone finally looked closely at Jeb's "20/5 vision" view out the cockpit window

Then I would have had to make Order Zero "be excellent to each other" Thanks! Since Kerbfleet has never sent anything to Jool before, if they do end up "interacting" with something that did not come with them on the [REDACTED], I guarantee you it will not help them. (Dun dun DUUUUN!)

Stock craft: the Quadhammer, now undergoing trials on Mun and Minmus. Fits comfortably in three Mk2 cargo bays laid end to end, which is the design requirement that drove the rather odd layout you see below. Generous tanks and four aerospikes give it enough TWR and dV to land on Tylo, fuel and reach orbit again. Seating for six. Four drills, ISRU, and six fuel cell arrays so the mining equipment still runs well even in total darkness. 80t fully fueled, and carries a full science package in the cargo bay aft. Works OK as an RCS-powered rover in light gravity, though of course it would need to use the main engines to hop over any serious hills. ...the Mk1 pictured above is a little bendy at full thrust; will add some bracing around the center section for the Mk2 that goes to Tylo and Vall. I admit that flying it can take a bit of getting used to. There's a little probe core just above that tiny ore tank, on the COM, as a 'control here' point--but I often find it more intuitive to control from the cockpit and aim the nose where I need it to go even though the thrust is orthogonal to the cockpit's control direction.

To wit: I know I haven't shown the date in a while, so for reference, Kenlie Kermulan left Kerbulus for 'the purple planet' 30-40 days ago.

Yeah, you get about 10% more for planting a flag than for just landing. But I always thought spamming flags was cheesy so I tend not to do it except when I have a good reason to mark a landing site. In any case, the max XP available for this trip without flag planting is over 18 (Kerbin orbit, Mun and Minmus landings, solar orbit) so everybody will be at least Level 3 when they come back.

Any interplanetary return that you can walk to KSC from... is OUTSTANDING! Well done!

Thanks! Well, unfortunately the forum AFAIK doesn't let you do that (attach screenshots). You have to have it 'published' somewhere with a URL that the forum can use to embed it. Many users find imgur of flickr convenient, I'm sure there are a 'host' of others.

That's what flags and plaques are for! Moving on... Next stop, Minmus!