KevinTMC

My fondness for old versions has a lot to do with what challenges I took on at the time. After trying and instantly falling in love with the demo (0.13.3), I bought the game when it was on 0.15.2. One's first missions--and especially first landing on Mun--will always be special and make that version of the game dear to one's heart...and there was something about the more cartoony and explodey wacky vibe of those early versions that I miss sometimes too. My first forum-driven missions were done in 0.21.1 for the "Doing It Apollo Style" and "Duna Apollo Style" challenges. (My thread recounting my entries in both can still be found here for historical interest. I'm still particularly proud of my engineering and piloting/docking feats on the Duna mission, and think I told the story reasonably well in the Imgur albums too.) After those milestones came the Better Than Starting Manned era, which for me ran from 0.25 (the version I started the "'Better Than Starting Manned' Career Challenge" with, and played BTSM the most on) until FlowerChild understandably got worn out with updates after 1.0.4. My Munar landing on Tier 6 of the Challenge (I dubbed my efforts on that tier "Project Fugu") was a special moment, almost like the first time all over again; but I was proudest of and remember most fondly my Tier 7 missions ("Project Guanaco"), which among other achievements sent a massive convoy to Minmus, which was wildly successful with biome exploration while also fulfilling some sometimes-wacky contracts. Through a combination of life evolving and getting busier, concern over reports of enduring and pesky bugs as more recent versions have rolled out, and never quite getting over the loss of BTSM, I've not managed to get back into the game to the same degree at any point post-1.0.4. (Though I do have an Apollo 11 replica project that I started around the time of the 50th anniversary--all stock parts except for the addition of kOS, so I can automate as much of the flight plan as possible--that's been fun to work on, and that I may even finish before the 55th anniversary. I very much hope the final iteration of 1.12.x is solid enough for me to migrate that project to.)

I also purchased directly from the store (and have not elected to transfer it to Steam). Nevertheless, I know my answer to the question of "how many hours?" with certainty and precision: NOT ENOUGH

Always meant to give Orbiter a spin, especially since HarvesteR himself was into it and it helped inspire KSP. Project Space Station looks rather like a precursor to Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space, which I've played a fair bit of (both the original and the 2013 remake, Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager). Might just have to see if I can get Project Space Station running in an emulator. As for your total-geek-girl historical expertise, I might have to pick your brain a bit about Apollo. One KSP project that I've been tinkering with for a little while is an Apollo 11 replica mission. I've put together the most similar craft I can using stock parts; I hope I'm at least in the ballpark aesthetics-wise, but where I really want to nail the verisimilitude is in the actual flight plan. Have started to learn my way around kOS (okay, so now the craft is stock parts plus kOS units) so I can program flight sequences rather than fly them all by hand...this will make for a better simulation in many respects. There are, however, a few details that have been hard to nail down, even after consulting some flight manuals and reports available online. For instance, I've gotten stuck trying to figure out the orientation of the craft (relative to direction of travel) during transposition-docking-extraction. I am also kinda sketchy on precisely what maneuvers the CSM/LM stack and S-IVB subsequently performed to establish a safe distance and then inject the latter onto a heliocentric trajectory. Anyhow, speaking of programming (and oh dear, this is where I'm really going to get self-indulgent, isn't it)... The C-128 was sweet! We had one of those at the computer store too (new, not on consignment, so yet more solidly out of my price range than the SX-64). Modest FPS or no, sounds like you got way beyond the few stabs I took at programming game-type substances. Knew my way around Applesoft BASIC (I had an Apple II+ that was later upgraded to a IIe), but never got far in machine language. Mostly I tinkered with and expanded games that I had typed in from some books and magazines that I picked up at the science museum. Wasn't too bad at that. Once I tried creating a graphical game from scratch, a simple drop-ball-onto-target thing...boy did that turn out lame. There was not even the slightest approximation of physics; the ball just went on a pre-scripted trajectory based on when the player hit the space bar to drop the (moving) ball. At least it was a polite program--it began by asking for the player's name, then responded with PRINT N$;" IS A NICE NAME." (I see some eyerolls out there...I was still in grade school, okay?) More of a success was the program I wrote (as a high schooler) to create banners, which I printed out on continuous rolls of paper fed into my trusty Epson FX-80 dot matrix printer. (I remember spending a good long while mapping out the letter forms on millimeter graph paper.) Even earned a little pocket money making banners for the odd birthday or retirement party...until Brøderbund put me out of business by releasing The Print Shop. Still not a patch on your lunar lander simulator I think (certainly not as fun surely)...but clearly I'm still proud enough of the project to blather about it here.

Glad you enjoyed them! Yes, I wish I'd gotten pictures of the incident too. Guess I was too busy panicking...er, I mean managing a crisis situation with uncanny poise and a steady hand. I liked your album as well. (Got a good chuckle out of "Did anybody bother to spell check this thing before we left?") You and razark are tempting me to go off on an Infocom/interactive fiction tangent. (I have fond memories not only of the games, but also of some of the more peculiar machines I ran them on. Zork on an Osborne 1 running CP/M, in a college computer lab. Plundered Hearts on a Commodore SX-64 that was on consignment in a computer store where I was working...wish I'd bought that machine off the floor myself. The original Colossal Cave Adventure on a dumb terminal dialed in to a campus mainframe via 150-baud acoustic coupler.) (In related news, I may be getting old.) Thanks so much for starting this thread....I'm enjoying it enough that I've gotten the "Sorry, you cannot add any more reactions today" message after trying to hit too many Like buttons.

The following year, I did a series of Apollo-style challenges, which I gave full coverage in a forum thread (which still exists--yay!--but with broken table-of-contents links and obnoxious Photobucket watermarks--boo!). I bring it up here in part because the mission RobertaME shared at the top of the thread involved old-school fairings cobbled together from structural panels...and I certainly indulged in that here. Witness my Apollo K-X rocket at launch: (Frame rate in the early stages of flight was...not spectacular.) That Apollo-style mission to Duna is still one of my favorites. For the curious, it's documented in two Imgur albums. Part I (29 images, annotated; includes images of mission control and master checklist) Part II (36 images, annotated)

I, too, am still struggling to adapt. Career mode never quite feels right, and isn't truly fun for me, or well-structured and challenging in just the right way, like BTSM was. The time I spent working my way through Death Engineering's BTSM Challenge was truly epic. (I still have half a notion to go back and wrap up Tier 8 someday. Project Heffalump fell by the wayside when I couldn't decide how much contract grinding to do while my first interplanetary missions were en route...and I started running out of free time around then anyway, a situation which has been all too persistent since.) Maybe I should experiment with new career-oriented plugins when I have the time; maybe I should just give up on career progression and find a new challenge to take on in sandbox mode. Anyhow, looking farther back...for many of us, there's no memory quite like the first successful Mun landing. For me that came in 2012. (In my sig, I mention having played since version 0.15, and I'm sure that's where this happened; but in looking up my earliest posts I'm reminded that I did play around some with the 0.13.3 demo version first.) From my very first thread in this forum, here's the list of achievements I set for myself along that path, after realizing how much of a challenge it was going to be, and how many things could go wrong: 1. Reach the surface of Mun 2. Leave non-exploded parts on the surface of Mun 3. Leave a non-exploded capsule containing live kerbonauts on the surface of Mun 4. Leave a complete lander, still with all its parts, on the surface of Mun 5. Leave a complete lander, still with all its parts and upright, on the surface of Mun 6. Leave a complete lander, still with all its parts and upright and with some remaining fuel, on the surface of Mun 7. Land on Mun completely intact, and then take off again 8. Land on Mun completely intact, take off again, and escape Munar SoI 9. Land on Mun completely intact, take off again, escape Munar orbit, and enter Kerbin orbit 10. Land on Mun completely intact, take off again, escape Munar orbit, enter Kerbin orbit, and return safely to Kerbin surface I did achieve all 10 objectives in the end--though checked them off very nearly one mission at a time, if I recall correctly. I've rescued screenshots of that first Mun project from Photobucket (gosh, it has been a while hasn't it?). Cast your eyes on the booster-festooned asparagus beauty that got my Kerbonauts there and (eventually) back:

Oh, is the patcher working these days? I hadn't given that method a try for quite a while.

I'm sorry tone doesn't come across well in forums. I'm quite aware of the longer history of the Kraken (stretching from old Scandinavian lore to more recent mariners' tales). I just thought it was cute that the Kraken is a beloved/dreaded part of KSP history...and now there's going to be an NHL team named the Kraken. (And hey, it's always possible that there's a KSP player out there who works for the new franchise, and is thus extra-pleased with the team name rollout today.)

Well, see, I've been around for awhile (since version 0.15 to be precise)... https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken

I'm not saying Seattle (where Boeing was founded, and home to an excellent Museum of Flight) had Kerbal Space Program in mind when they named their new NHL team... ...but I'm not saying they didn't either. Going to have to make a new mission flag or three from this, for sure.

Both pictures are 1.10. I haven't observed anything similar--or at least as dramatic--in 1.7.3. Also, I have CELESTIAL_BODIES_CAST_SHADOWS set to False...had thought that might stop it, but had no effect.

In 1.10, I've been seeing a fair bit of flickering from the lighting, as shown below. Also, large slices of some craft have blinked to black and then back again. Performance generally in flight scenes has occasionally gone very poor. Not sure whether the problem is my computer (which is not especially new or powerful), some new inefficiency in the program that is affecting me (1.7.3 runs better on the same machine), or what. Any advice or suggestions for further experimentation would be welcome.

I'm making the jump from 1.7.3 to 1.10; one of the things I haven't seen in the intervening changelogs is any mention of fixing the Munar Excursion Module's weight distribution and RCS thrust. Have I missed anything? And if I haven't...are there any plans to address the M.E.M.'s wonkiness, or is it just going to stay like that?

I managed to destroy the physics of an entire savefile by doing this in an earlier version of KSP. (All the attached craft got weird and noodly...and that was just for starters.) Is it no longer dangerous to attempt this? Would be nice if it is no longer so treacherous. I've been afraid to use the Klaw ever since.

Me too. I feel like an utter fool for having trusted Squad on this. (And I feel so very disappointed to have to say that. I love this game, and the team that made it.) We seem to be getting the silent treatment on this subject now...but I would like to add my voice to those calling for something to help us out...brief access to our old subscriptions lists, or something. I may learn to live with the awful new whitewhitewhite look...I may learn to deal with everything from code to smart quotes being broken in old posts...I may even manage to wrap my mind around this least intuitive and most bizarre set of forum controls I've ever encountered...but with subscriptions gone forever and the beautiful simple functionality of the /subscription.php screen seemingly gone as well, that's really the last straw preventing me from giving the new setup much of a try.

That would have been a smarter way of going about it, yes. (But then I would have had to go to the trouble of copying the -popupwindow flag over from one shortcut to another...and at the time I suppose that felt like too much work. ) But again, bottom line: I just wanted to make sure that Squad were aware that KSP is, in a limited way, paying attention to what is in the "Start in" field when launched from a Windows shortcut. My guess is that they'd prefer for whatever might be in that field to be ignored altogether (which it seems to be once the program has fully launched).

Oh, it was easy for me to do this. Step one: Create a shortcut that points to C:\KSP_win\KSP.exe. The "Start in" field will naturally be populated with C:\KSP_win. Step two: Make a copy of this shortcut, changing the target to C:\KSP_win_nomod\KSP.exe...but forget to change the directory listed in "Start in". Step three: ??? Step four: PROFIT! As I said, it was caused by my own stupidity, but I thought I should mention it, especially in case there might be people out there who are wanting to redirect their KSP data to another directory. (In which case they'd surely be disappointed that only KSP.log, PartDatabase.cfg, and Physics.cfg moved when they attempted to change the reference directory.)

I previously reported that a craft consisting of just one Mk16 Parachute and one MK1 Command Pod had slammed into the ground at over 16 m/s when descending over land (land altitude was a few hundred meters--not especially high), after a descent that had been gentle until the last 500m, when the parachute's full deployment had been slow to kick in. I've been unable to replicate that precisely. I hadn't even come close, in fact (which surprised me, since prior to that crash, I'd had several rather close calls...some over water and some over KSC). Until just now, when I experienced what certainly felt like a close shave. This time, the craft had a service bay and heat shield attached to the bottom of the Mk16 chute and Mk1 pod. The parachute fully deployed over water--again at the default setting of 500m--with speed between 100 and 105 m/s right before deployment. The chute did manage to bring the craft under 7 m/s for landing, but only after it had dropped below 130m. The craft seemed to spend a longer time than usual at around 60 m/s as the chute was trying to ramp up to full deployment...another couple of seconds and Jeb would have been done for. I know that's not much hard data; I will continue to experiment and report back if I have another fatal accident on the stock Mk16 parachute settings. I will say that the full-deployment performance sure seems to be differing from one flight to the next, and I'm having trouble putting my finger on what might be causing the variance, as the speed right before hitting 500m AGL has been fairly consistent.

This is a small matter, and it was caused by my own stupidity, but I thought it should be mentioned. I have multiple installs of KSP on my Windows 7 PC (downloaded from the KSP store and unzipped into folders). I usually launch KSP via shortcuts on the desktop. Yesterday, when having trouble finding a PartDatabase.cfg, I realized that one of my shortcuts had the wrong folder listed in the "Start in" field on the shortcut, which was causing PartDatabase.cfg to spawn in that folder. I played around with it some more, and determined that no matter where KSP.exe actually lives, the KSP.log, PartDatabase.cfg, and Physics.cfg files will be generated in the folder listed in "Start in". I'm guessing that that is not the intended behavior, because everything else--e.g. save files, craft files, screenshots--appears to ignore the "Start in" setting and stays with KSP.exe in its actual folder.

Thanks for running the tests, Captain H@dock. I'll see if I can replicate the prior result this evening myself. Thanks for the suggestion, Claw...I've given that a try and will see if there's any difference. Is the PartDatabase.cfg file new to version 1.0.x? Seems to me like it is.

I've seen a couple of mentions of this in general discussion, but don't see a thread for it yet. In all versions of KSP up to and including 1.0, the Mk16 Parachute sitting on top of the Mk1 Command Pod (with no other parts) has ensured gentle touchdown in most any circumstance on default settings. This is no longer the case with 1.0.2. The chute is slow to fully deploy, or at least slow to reach its fully-deployed effectiveness. In my game (stock 1.0.2 for Windows downloaded from the website, no mods) this just killed Valentina when she slammed into the ground hard on what was an entirely routine and gentle re-entry up until the final 500 meters. Perhaps this is a natural and even intended consequences of the tweaks that were made to chutes in 1.0.1/1.0.2. If so, then at the very least the default altitude for full deployment of the Mk16 Parachute needs to be set higher, perhaps somewhere from 750-1000m.

That's a helpful perspective, Tiberion. I honestly hadn't thought of that when I found myself asking "how could that bug possibly have slipped by?" I appreciate all the insight you've provided in this thread, and I think it's good for you and KasperVld and Ted to redirect frustration away from the hard-working testers. And of course KSP is a tremendous achievement overall, and I for one have gotten orders of magnitude more value for my money than with almost any other software purchase I've ever made. And 1.0 is a big step forward for the game. But that doesn't mean there's not grounds for criticism in the wake of 1.0...even pointed criticism. A couple of the bugs are puzzling and vexing, but in my view, it's the overall level of polish (everything from lack of graphical polish to inadequate information presented to the player to the continued absence of the first whole tier of KSC buildings) that is the real disappointment, as it is not only a bit below what the 1.0 version number implies, but also below what Squad themselves had been describing as their objectives and expectations for the release. This followed on the heels of 0.90--also a big step forward for the game--objectively falling short of Squad's previously stated parameters for "beta" status (most obviously in that not all major game systems were yet in place). Now it's too late to do anything about the 0.25-->0.90-->1.0 development strategy, and more "told ya so"s will do nobody any good. But it's still appropriate to consider a broader lesson here about overpromising and underdelivering, which can provoke unhappiness with even the highest-quality product. The other major area of concern I have is the state of career mode, which I think is simply not well-enough conceived and executed right now to provide the fun it should, or to get new players hooked and eagerly tackling the learning curve. (I find it's far behind the BTSM mod in fundamental gameplay design.) But that's not so much a bugfixing or polishing or even balancing issue, as much as it's a game design or even philosophical question.

It's taken rather a while (real life is such a bother sometimes), but Project Guanaco is now complete. I may or may not be able to continue the challenge on to Tier 8 (I'm still playing on 0.25 here, and KSP 1.0 is being released in one week!), and I may or may not be eligible for a score in the end anyway (I broke down and used some quicksaves during Theoby's first and third trips down to the Munar surface)...but more about that later. Here's the program report. Tier planning notes, part two: Guanaco 1K is on its way home, and should arrive back on Kerbin in no more than 27 hours. I'd like to get interplanetary probes underway the instant those soil samples are delivered to R&D--so the key question is, how much science will I be able to gather in that time? There's still a bit more Minmus science that can be collected at this tech level: a surface scan and one last gravity scan (Poles), for a total of 205 points. Per my usual plan lately, I will send a craft in that direction first; with an aggressive transfer trajectory, it should able to transmit its science before Alddorf and Guslie return. Electronics will thus be one of the two node purchases I'm making right now (thanks to transmitted science from Guanaco 1). I had my eye on Refined Rocketry for the other one, since I've got a couple of crazy contracts that want me to fire off big boosters on escape trajectories out of Minmus and the Mun...but it looks like the tweakable fuel ability only applies to liquid fuel tanks. Rats. In that case, I think I'll unlock High Altitude Flight instead, and work on atmospheric science around Kerbin whenever I've got some free time. New kerballed missions to the Mun are also a priority of course. I'm hoping I can run at least two missions there and back by the time Guanaco IK returns. I'm not going to delay these missions any further with lander tests--I'll just slap a second Probodobodyne X100-??? on the lander instead of fooling around with smaller tanks, and call it good. Who knows...with a somewhat excessive amount of fuel on board the lander, and a refueling station already in position, it might just be possible to collect all the Munar surface samples needed to clear the tier on a single mission. So, the lineup for the second part of Tier 7 is set: 1) Surface scan/gravity scan probe to Minmus 2) Crewed mission to Mun 3) Surface scan probe to Kerbin orbit, then on to Mun 4) Atmospheric science missions while other craft transit to/from Kerbin And of course I'll be raising funds along the way too. Onward! Mission report album, part two: Tier 7 is now complete, at Day 8, 12 hours, 3 minutes. (That's 2 days, 9 hours, and 49 minutes since the completion of Tier 6...over 25 hours shorter than the time it took to complete the previous tier.) 14 different Guanaco craft were constructed (7 fewer than Fugu); with repeat flights, there were 16 Guanaco launches in all (13 fewer than Fugu). 819,237 funds are in the bank (a decrease of 14,371 since the completion of Tier 6). 727 science is available; that will only be worth 0.323 nodes in Tier 8. (I began Tier 7 with 2.63 nodes' worth of science saved up.) The following modifier points were definitely claimed: Tier 7 - "Minmus master" (6) - Biome Hunter IV (4) - Take a Breather I (2) Other modifiers - - Take a Breather II (4) The following modifier points are up in the air: Duna Dominance I - Prime is still possible, but it will have to be launched at the start of the next project--Guanaco is closed. Survivor IV was achieved, after a fashion...but it did involve loading from quicksaves. I started using quicksaves just to deal with problems I believed were caused by glitches in the game...but then, when preparing for Theoby's first Mun landing, without hardly thinking about what I was doing, I performed a couple of test landings and then loaded from a quicksave to do it again "for real". Later, rusty from not having played for some weeks, I wound up using quicksaves in much the same fashion during Theoby's third sortie to the Munar surface. (It's a bit ironic, I suppose, that Theoby's second run--the most exciting, risky, touch-and-go one of the bunch--was the one I performed all in one go, without a safety net.) I'm a little disappointed in myself; but on the other hand, this challenge is a long slog, and I'm a little surprised that I, an incurable perfectionist accustomed to free use of quicksaves, made it as far as I did without cracking. If Guanaco 5K had turned out to be a complete failure--which was certainly possible, though not inevitable, without quicksaves--I would at the very least have lost the Survivor IV bonus (as well as the later Survivor V bonus). My completion of Tier 7 would also likely have been delayed a bit...perhaps by half a day or so. So, a penalty of a day or more, and the surrender of the Survivor IV and V bonuses, would certainly be fair if I were still allowed to submit a score for this challenge; but if I'm deemed to have just plain disqualified myself, I certainly understand. Whether I post a final score or not is really incidental at this point anyhow. The real point of the exercise--and the real joy of it--has been tackling the challenge that is BTSM, and reporting back on my experiences. I'm glad that others have enjoyed reading my accounts. Also, the question of a final score will of course be moot if I do not go on to complete at least one more tier in this challenge. I like finishing what I start (even when it's a bit mad really...or maybe even especially then), and I've been looking forward to experiencing BTSM at the next, interplanetary level; but then KSP 1.0 is now upon us, which will put me two rather significant updates behind. (Since it came out, I've spent an hour or two seeing what 0.90 has to offer, but no more.) In the event that I don't get around to playing Tier 8 under this challenge: many thanks to Death Engineering for sponsoring the challenge and thereby getting me to try the BTSM mod (and with the important added wrinkle of trying to minimize in-game time), and many many thanks to FlowerChild for such a well-designed, challenging, intriguing career experience.

I decided to go full steam ahead into Tier 7--and now that the big centerpiece mission for this tier is winding down, it's time for a status report. Tier planning notes, part one: All the science I will need to complete Tier 7 can be obtained from Kerbin and its moons. If it weren't for this challenge, then, I wouldn't even be starting to think about interplanetary missions yet. But as the scoring is overwhelmingly weighted toward time elapsed, I have to keep an eye on getting those looooong interplanetary probe missions underway as soon as possible. In particular, I'll be wanting to get a head start on the big Tier 8 modifier, "Map Master", since the halfway-decent transfer window to Eve that the game starts with is already closing, and a good opportunity to head to Moho is also coming up very soon. I don't yet know which node purchases (if any) I'll be able to do without when sending my first batch of interplanetary probes, but my hunch is that possibilities might start to open up once I get to seven or eight nodes unlocked. There is enough non-Minmus science available to get eight out of ten nodes unlocked, and the only new technology absolutely required to collect it would be the nodes with the new science instruments. I could just skip Minmus for the moment, then, since it takes so much longer to get to. But I'm not positive that eight nodes will be enough to send useful interplanetary probes...and if it's not, that path could wind up costing me a lot of time. Besides, how quickly could I realistically expect to collect 14 different Munar surface samples? Could I afford to do so? And wouldn't I be volunteering for quite a bit of tedium even if it did work out? I think the smart play here is to go ahead and unlock Field Science and one other node, and get a kerballed Minmus mission going straightaway. It will certainly be easier (and, I think, considerably cheaper) to bring home a complete collection of surface samples from Minmus than from the Mun. And there won't be anything stopping me from running Mun missions concurrently, so long as I can keep scraping together the funds. I'll almost certainly have to wait for the Minmus mission's return before I can start sending interplanetary probes; but transmitting a lot of high-value science from Minmus might still prove helpful. To help that happen, I could send a refueling station ahead of the main craft, with supplies of liquid fuel, monopropellant, and life support to go along with tons of batteries. I would probably want solar panels on the refueling station (and on all future Minmus-bound craft, really). That means I'd be opening this tier with Field Science and Large Electrics...leaving me without the surface scanner at the start. Would it be better to instead open with Large Electrics and Electronics, spend around 7 hours getting surface scans of Kerbin and the Mun to earn a third node, then unlock Field Science and get the Minmus mission underway? Or should I just plan on picking up the Minmus surface scan at a later date, when I'm sending some cargo that direction anyway? I think the latter. 180 science is nothing to sneeze at, but there's 1477 extra science available from Kerbin and its moons over and above what I will need to complete this tier; it won't necessarily delay things to leave that scan (and the one remaining gravity scan, over the Poles) for later. My big kerballed mission will be designed to pick up everything else: all eleven crew reports, the EVA report, and all nine surface samples. If I can pull that off, the mission will yield 2190 science (and achieve "Minmus Master" and "Biome Hunter IV"). The science that can be transmitted back from Minmus should be more than enough to unlock the new instruments. While the Minmus mission makes its way home with the non-transmittable surface samples, I could then get 360 science from surface scans of Kerbin and the Mun, and 600 from a complete set of Kerbin atmospheric scans (accomplishing "Take a Breather" along the way). Add two Munar surface samples--also quite feasible in this time frame I think--and I'd reach nine nodes unlocked once the Minmus samples were delivered. Another four samples from the Mun would unlock the tenth and final node. I'm hoping there won't be a big gap between the return of the Minmus mission and getting my "Duna Dominance I - Prime" craft out of Kerbin SOI, but I won't be surprised if that one isn't ready to launch until the tier is complete. I think I've got a better chance of getting an early start on the "Map Master" probes (one headed to Eve/Gilly, one to Duna/Ike, probably an extra to Moho, and maybe even one to Jool and its moons). Okay, enough strategizing and gabbing. It's time once again to see how my plans survive contact with reality. Mission report album, part one: The Guanaco 1 mission was massive. It involved four launches totaling 2321.688 tons of launch weight, at a total cost of 707,490 funds. (I expect it to turn a profit of around 5,000 funds following successful return of the crew.) Six distinct craft were put into Minmus orbit: command module/transfer vehicle, crewed lander, refueling station, tug/resupply ship, commercial payload, and jet engine test lander. It is now 13 hours and 13 minutes into Day 7. I have 487,183 funds in the bank, and enough science on hand to unlock two more nodes. To complete Tier 7, I will need to bring the Minmus surface samples home to Kerbin, and earn another 1788 science.

Project Fugu is now complete. Here's the rest of the report. I've continued to exhaustively document my progress; I hope the end result is not unduly exhausting to the reader. Tier planning notes, part two: So, what are the priorities now? While I wait for the Minmus probe to return successfully, I can work on the "Team Effort I" and "Biome Hunter III" modifiers. Since the latter will take a whole lot more time--and since more Munar science will be needed if the Minmus probe burns up on reentry--I should get it underway first. The main question is which three node unlocks will be the most help in pursuing this objective. Modular Design, with its increased launch capacity, is a no-brainer. (The Rockomax decoupler will also be a help.) Larger craft will require more thrust, and will be more difficult to control, so both Heavier Rocketry and Thrust Vectoring seem important...if I can do without the other two nodes for now. Advanced Landing can easily wait until the Apollo-style landing attempt; and while it would be convenient to have the bigger RCS tank from Precision Engineering, that node's main benefit is to probes, which I don't have a burning need to launch right now. That settles it then. Time to design the successor to the Fugu 6K. Mission report album, part two: Tier planning notes, part three: I had planned to unlock the last node in Tier 6 before organizing "One small step...", but that would require waiting for Fugu 13 to get all the way home again, and the clock is ticking. I'm going to put together the best prototype I can without Precision Engineering, and see how it goes. Mission report album, part three: Tier 6 is now complete, at Day 6, 2 hours, 14 minutes. (That's 3 days, 10 hours, and 57 minutes since the completion of Tier 5.) 21 different Fugu craft were constructed (4 more than Emu); counting repeat contract grinding, there were 29 Fugu flights in all (5 more than Emu). All modifier points were again claimed: Tier 6 - "One small step.." (6) - Team Effort I (2) - Survivor III (3) - Biome Hunter III (4) 833,608 funds are in the bank (an increase of 568,580 since the completion of Tier 5). 1422 science is available; that will equal 2.63 node purchases in Tier 7. (I began Tier 6 with 2.38 nodes' worth of science saved up.) The tension leading up to the Munar landing, and the sense of accomplishment when it succeeded, was quite extraordinary...it reminded me of my very first landing on the Mun, back in version 0.15. What a great mod, and what an intense challenge. I must say I'm a little torn on what to do next. On the one hand, I'd like to finish out a "Normal Mode" entry in this challenge (even though I wonder where I will find the time, if Tiers 7 and 8 are significantly more intense than Tiers 5 and 6 were...which I suspect they are). On the other hand, I haven't played around with KSP 0.90 at all yet, much less one of the newer revisions of BTSM...and there's a lot of shiny goodness calling to me. I suppose what it boils down to is that I should really have found this mod and this challenge a few months earlier!