Mister Dilsby

Your withdrawal, my grind Here's a teaser/spoiler/update to keep you going for now: Yep, I docked EVERYTHING. Missing from the picture is Alouette, which was on the Evestation port at far right but is now on the surface getting yet another 15 tons of ore. (the light wasn't good enough for a picture when Alouette was docked). I played for a while after taking this picture, and after two docks of Alouette and one of Kranefly there are about 20,000 units (100 tons) of oxidant in the M7. The OX is the rate-limiting step, as Kranefly can carry a huge amount of LF from the surface but only about 9 tons of OX plus 15 tons of ore. Mortingale is in Eve orbit and will be at Gilly in five days, by which time I think the M7 will be full. It's actually surprisingly fun for me to grind this out rather than just "take it as read" and hyperedit to full tanks. Shuttling the two oreships, docking and undocking, even the Gilly landings... I've become an expert at abusing low gravity for personal gain, I think.

I like it A LOT! Maybe because it reminds me of a certain other ship -- but seriously it looks to be much more capable than Hummlebee, able to SSTO AND neatly solving the drill drag problem with that belly mounted cargo bay. Well done!

I hate to admit, I've sort of done this. I learned some Spanish in school but have been studying French on my own for the last several years. On our recent vacation it turned out that the concierge of our apartment in Paris was Argentinian. My wife "helpfully" told him I spoke Spanish, so he immediately switched to castellano...French being his second-best language, and his English not very good at all. Not being very multi-lingual myself, my speaking brain can generally only distinguish between "English" and "not-English". So having just spent a considerable amount of time replacing Spanish with French in the "not-English" file, I found myself unable to fully revert. Quite often I would start a sentence in one language and finish it in another. Somehow it all worked out, though. After a few minutes we had settled on a mix of Spanish, French and English and were communicating well enough for me to understand his detailed instructions for sneaking into the Louvre without paying. But if I had heard a single word of Italian or Mandarin at that moment, I think my cabeza would have exploded.

The dance continues! Three more pages. Even if this latest stupidity does work, we have a LOT of fuel and oxidant to get up to the M7. Don't worry, I won't show all the boring bits According to the clock, Evestation should be making it back to Gill orbit shortly, and Mortingale will be in Eve SOI the next day--probably getting a Gilly intercept a week or two after. This will give Jeb time to embarrass himself and Bill in at least a dozen more languages.

No coincidence; I never respond to such baseless and scurrilous allegations except as advised by counsel.

It seems to do fine, though of course framerate suffers. Fortunately, while very large, all three ships have comparatively few parts. Now, before someone points out that I could just use Kranefly to tow everything to Gilly-- no. I could probably do it if I had to, but I don't have to. There isn't a "target center of mass" option for a non-asteroid tow load, and I'm really not interested in baiting the Kraken by poking around with the klaw looking for a low thrust angle. If only Evestation or the M7 had just one axial port to match up with the nose port on the Kranefly...but they don't. Two Gilly intercepts it is

Sorry Parkaboy I started a bad precedent there--generally it's better to point out errors in PM, or preferably written on the back of a 500 fund banknote. My fault for opening the can o' worms And yeah, imgur hates me too sometimes arrgghh

A Lewis Carroll reference AND "Fair Joolish Ladies!" So much to love here. I especially love the technobabble explanation of Jeb inventing cryogenic hibernation. I mean, I just sort of.. (waves hands) made it part of Kerbal biology. Your explanation simultaneously makes more sense and less, which I mean as a very Kerbal compliment (ps--'in their midst' is the usual idiom. I know, I know, we don't use that word anywhere else... that's English for you, muito louco )

Remember, transfer windows are like buses--if you miss one there'll be another along later. Also, sometimes they run you over.

Thanks! If you get around to redoing mine, Eve: Order Zero is the current comic to link to. (I no longer have an "ongoing" mission to the Red Planet ) Links to all the D,OB! stories appear in the OP of the Eve thread so it's one-stop shopping.

Indeed! It just keeps building and building... at this writing D,OB! and this are the second and third most commented, and the third and fifth most viewed, threads in Mission Reports. "Wow" is pretty much all I can say about that...other than that I have the finest readers and fellow authors any writer could ever wish for! And finally, here are some pages for Chapter Six! Yep, save that last half of page five, it'll be a collector's item! Should not be a problem, but I already know from driving the Kranefly/M7 that the KER dV numbers are not to be trusted for this rig. So I will have to manually figure out just how much fuel (and oxidant, which is at this point useless to both ships) to distribute to make sure everyone can get to Gilly orbit when that very annoying little potato comes back around. ETA: Calculations complete, now it's up to the execution. I really wish I could drive both ships at the same time in stock... as it stands I think I'll send Kranefly/M7 on this set of burns and either find a second solution for Evestation (e.g. starting with a burn at the descending node) or just wait until Gilly comes around again. It's still 11 days until Mortingale reaches Eve SOI so there's no hurry...am really hoping that Mortingale has enough in the tank to make Gilly in one go, because I do not want to do all this again! - - - Updated - - - What plot? You can't prove they were a part of any plot! They were ordered to go to Eve, and any commands Val gave to Enzin (now Looty) Kenlie were made given the best information she had at the time. But hypothetically, given the choice, do you think they would want to leave fellow Kerbonauts stranded?

Well maybe I can provide something for you to talk about. #isflying Huge orbital dance around Eve with all the ships coming in, all bingo fuel naturally...might take me a bit of time to (1) get everything organized and (2) tell the story in a way that makes ANY sense

You are all the absolute best Makes me feel bad I have no update today--busy weekend including a race (the running kind), then Kuzz Jr's birthday, then a couple of tough days at work. Hope to be in Eve SOI tonight and with an update tomorrow sometime!

Well done--if you had any more fuel in the tank it just wouldn't be a proper Hummlebee landing! Note you can toggle off the AIRBRAKES but leave the wheels locked with an action group. (7 or 8 IIRC)

Hey thanks Rune! You're right of course. I was not too worried about drag since it was only going to launch to orbit on Kerbin one time, and would spend its mission either in vacuum (Ike) or in the thin air of Duna. The decision to use vernors rather than a conventional rocket was driven primarily by control considerations: the vernor of course runs on the RCS system which permitted me to trigger it in bursts with the "K" key while independently throttling the main engine. I don't think I ever fired it for more than a few seconds in any landing or takeoff. So from my perspective the drag didn't matter too much, control was superior, and I didn't have to carry the mass of an engine pointed the wrong way which I would not use for 99% of the mission. That drag on that drill tho-yeah, huge vector which you can see in D,OB! when I have the aero forces overlay enabled. I did attempt to put it in a bay but was a bit afraid of clipping bugs summoning Krakens and the like. I think that in the end though, having that much drag on the tail helped the ship make a stable landing on Kerbin--very little trouble putting Hummlebee in the middle of the runway. Also very glad you like the comics! The OP in each thread gives links to the Imgur albums in recommended order for anyone just starting to read--note that I started with D,OB! and began E:O0 concurrently, so if you read the whole Eve story first some things may have appeared out of order for you.

Happy landings! Cool! Very strange and wonderful to see a familiar ship docked in an unfamiliar setting. Looking forward to seeing her on the Minmus flats!

1.1 is going to be a new experience for me; so far I've started my career save over with each significant rev and made all new crafts. This time I have story continuity to think of, so I want to keep the save even if none of the crafts work anymore. Hence I have a lot of work going on now "behind-the-scenes" to bring crews home from Mun and Minmus with as much soon-to-be-obsolete hardware as we can salvage.

I got some feedback by PM from someone who tried getting the Hummlebee to orbit, quite unsuccessfully. Anyone still attempting to do so may find the following useful: It has been quite correctly pointed out to me that a ship needing manual fuel transfers and thrust management to get to orbit is pretty darn Kerbal

I like that message more than I probably should. I'm going to make some popcorn later and do a search for threads containing the text "is locked" or "is now locked".

That never made sense to me, so in Kerbfleetverse he does not. Maybe the "Jeb's Junkyard" people licensed his name and image for their advertising. Or that is a completely different Jeb.. maybe a "James Ewell Brown Kerman" is the one who really owns the junkyard! In other news, following an excellent suggestion I received by PM I updated the OPs both here and on the Duna thread to give the complete Kerbfleet canon for both stories in chronological order. New readers (or re-readers) can now click the links in order and see the pages as the author intended the story to be told. If I got the order wrong or if there are other suggestions, please let me know!

Last night my family and the neighbors were all out on the sidewalk looking at the eclipse. Four adults, four kids, and two big cameras (one on a tripod) all staring at the moon. Two college-age girls parked at the curb and walked by. I asked them if they'd seen the eclipse, which at that moment was about half total. "Eclipse?" said one, "Where?!"

It looked pretty good in Kuzzterland!

I installed BD Armory for him, so he's been too busy blowing stuff up. Right now he's playing Minecraft and says "I'll work on it tomorrow but I might not finish it."

Appreciate the infinirep, but whatever 'rating' Plan Kappa has it deserves every star and more. Parkaboy is an amazing storyteller and a far better graphic designer than me. I've been learning a lot from him since he started posting and if my recent stuff looks at all good, Parkaboy deserves much of the credit.

Thanks, will take a look and report back. My other suspicion is that I left a stray config file when installing/removing mods for my kid. Am downloading a fresh 1.0.4 and will try that tomorrow sometime. ETA: Found it. Culprit was a stray file left over from OPT Spaceplane Parts. All's well and fast air heats things again.