Vat

Ambitious, I'll give them that. The third book, as the tech becomes increasingly speculative, won't be easy or cheap. There will be a lot left out.

Finally rescued two crews who were victims of underfueled, overambitious missions with my first proper asparagus rocket attempt. Still got to go and get Bill, who's floating just outside Kerbin's SOI.

Complex numbers are an important component in AC electrical theory.

Construction Worker: "Good news, there was a decoupler left over from that Eve lander build, so the money saved will go into the Kerbmas party" Engineer: "Oh, okay - I thought we'd ordered the right number, but whatever". Some time later....

Oh, and some fail shots:

With exams over, I can post an update. VAT Aerospace has made some enormous strides since the last update. Advances in science points saw the program develop larger engines and fuel tanks, allowing development of the Dresden launch platform, which allowed Mun and Minmus landers that were able to return to Kerbin. Small improvements were made to the Dresden series, initiating the St Petersberg platform, and a single manned capsule substituted for the probe head on the lander. And so, this platform completed major local system objectives for VAT Aerospace - to land a Kerbal on the Mun and Minmus, and safely return them to Kerbin. To wit... Jebediah - first Kerbal on the Mun Bob - first Kerbal on Minmus With these landings completed, the program is developing other priorities. A small probe was successfully landed on Duna, and adoption of the ScanSat technology has allowed full mapping of Kerbin, the Mun and Minmus, with a mapping probe sent to Eve, which has mapped around two thirds of the planet around the equator (insufficient fuel was left for polar regions - a later mission with a polar insertion is planned to complete mapping). A landing attempt with a probe was made but was ultimately unsuccessful due to the omission of a seperator between the de-orbiting stage and lander, but a lot of science was gained on the descent - a second lander, properly configured, is planned. Immediate priorities: - mapping of Eve and Duna, and their respective moons - unmanned lander on Eve - unmanned lander (as opposed to probe) on Duna - three man capsule landings on the Mun and Minmus, with an eye to investigating biomes on the Mun, and establishing more permanent facilities on the Mun and Minmus - investigation of anomalies On a side note, my flying skills are definitely improving. I'm getting much more accurate with my insertions now, with aerobraking used for the Duna and Eve probes (adjust early, adjust often...), and unmanned/manned missions returning from the Mun and Minmus. Landing skills are on the improve, with the manned Minmus landing being particularly smooth (although the flat areas make for a pretty easy time of it). Jeb's landing on the Mun was somewhat fraught, with the landing ending up on its side but able to be righted with gyros. I need to make a habit of landing in daylight - the lights aren't really powerful enough for someone of my skill to safely put on in sloped regions at night. I have installed two mods - Kerbal Alarm Clock and as mentioned above, ScanSat. The KAC mod is particularly helpful - I've been able to study and have the game run, setting the alarm and time warp to coincide with study breaks, as well as negating my unfortunate habit of warping past mission critical moments.

Yeah - got lucky in that I overengineered the first sat (which was literally just throw some parts together and put it up there) which had plenty of fuel to adjust the orbit to run the terminus (figured that out on my own ;D). Second one had enough battery to last the night after solar top up so I wasn't worried about adjusting it, plus I wanted to ensure I had enough fuel to deorbit them.

Downloaded SCANsat and did full scans (other than the BTDT) of Kerbin. With initial landings on the Mun and Minmus, now looking to expand the program into more landings and potentially base placement. This also makes interplanetary probes more useful so the fairly limited program that's been run so far (with a successful probe sitting perched on Duna and one failed landing at Eve) will get a kick along. Which reminds me, must get the Alarm Clock mod...

First go with it this evening - damn, only thing was power use but I got both sats into polar orbits with better sun exposure and it was fine. No issues to report - it's brilliant. Got Kerbin scanned for biome, altimeter and slopes very quickly. With landings made on both the Mun and Minmus I was hoping to find some more landing sites, and now I can get a SCANsat up and scope them properly. Feel sorry for Insewerants - the excellent ISA project has been dead in the water with the 0.22 update and his own personal issues, but tip of the hat, damny, this is a mighty fine replacement.

With my 'Mechjeb-less' reboot for 0.22, first proper aerobrake (not counting Kerbin) was Duna - had a probe that didn't have enough fuel for braking into an orbit and then descend, it was 'drop 'er in' and see what happened. Got an approach that put the probe in at around 10-15k and it worked a treat. Now that I've managed manned landings/returns from the Mun and Minmus, I'll be investigating aerobraking into orbit for interplanetary missions.

A proud day for VAT Aerospace. Working my way through Career Mode in 0.22 sans Mechjeb, which has been an interesting experience, and one well worth it. I'm getting a much better grip on landing now - particularly killing horizontal speed to get the lander to descend vertically. Still getting the odd close shave - Jeb's landing ended up on its side, but I was able to right the ship with gyros without breaking anything off. Insertion burns are getting much better - better with the initial burn, and learning to adjust early to fine tune approaches. As my science has progressed I got to the various probe bodies allowing unmanned flights, and used this to develop large lifting bodies and landers. My Williams platform managed to parachute a probe onto Duna, allowing expansion into the bigger engines and development of the Dresden platform which when combined with a larger lander proved capable of landing on both the Mun and Minmus, and then returning home. The decision was taken to develop the lander into a manned one, with the single Kerbal capsule substituted in, and thus the St Petersburg launcher/manned lander platform was created. So today, history was made... Jebediah was first - he's been the mainstay of the manned program and was rewarded by being first Kerbal on the Mun. Bob's unfailing dedication and not complaining about being second to Jeb was rewarded by being first on Minmus. Both boys were returned home safely for good science returns. Bob's Minmus mission went particularly smoothly - daylight landing was smart (!) and the lakes make for nice targets.

Two further launches of revised versions of the Dallara series saw the Vat Aerospace program take some further big steps. Lehto - as per 1.0b (the de Cesaris), except solid fuel boosters mounted via lateral decouplers, and aero parts (nose caps, wings) added to the solid fuel boosters. This ship proved successful, boosting the capsule and upper stage comfortably to a orbit height of over 150,000 metres and easily returning. Electricity supplies continue to be an issue Caffi- As per 1.1, but with additional fuel capacity for the final stage. This vessel was enormously successful, orbiting the Mun and seeing the upper stage travel to approximately halfway between the Mun and Minmus before safely splashing down on Kerbin after using aerobraking assist to supplement reverse thrust (the vessel was low on fuel). The Dallara "Caffi" sits on the launchpad Caffi at its furthest point from Kerbin

The Chaves series proved to be the last of the Coloni series, and with new parts having been invented it was decided to retire the core platform and commence the Dallara series, which would combine the experience and lessons of the Coloni platform and the new parts to hopefully achieve orbit and advance the program. Of particular interest is the ability to decouple vertically now, which should assist considerably in shedding weight in the final climb to orbit The Dallara series kicked off with the de Cesaris, a three stage platform, with four Rockomax BACC Solid fuels attached via structural pylons to a second stage of two FL-T400 tanks and an LT-T45 engine, and final stage of a capsule, an FL-T200 tank and LV-909 engine. Initial launches carry a Communotron 16 and Goo containment unit. The initial configuration was amended with the structural pylons dropped after the vehicle developed uncontrollable rotation after lift-off. Thanks to the ability to jettison lower stages, this 1.0b version comfortably achieved orbit with Jebediah Kerbin able to conduct an extended EVA (well....let's just say it took a while to get things under control and a few attempts to safely get him back to and inside the ship) and perform Goo observations. The vessel completed four orbits before making a parachuted landing on dry ground. The Dallara 1.0b "de Cesaris", which successfully launched Jebediah Kerbin into orbit. Note the two Goo canisters are mounted to provide symmetry Further developments have been made in the area of decoupling, with a new lateral decoupler now available. This will be incorporated into the next update for the Dallara series. Of particular concern at the moment is the inability of the craft to produce sufficient power to allow Communotron transmission once the vessel is in orbit.

The Coloni series is the first very basic set up of rockets under the limited parts available at the start. Raphanel – configuration of eight RT-10 boosters attached via structural blocks to two stacked FL-T200 tanks fuelling a single LV-T30 liquid fuelled engine, with capsule equipped with a Communotron 16 and Mk16 Parachute. Vessel proved uncontrollable in testing, configuration abandoned. Larini - configuration of four RT-10 boosters attached via structural blocks to two stacked FL-T200 tanks fuelling a single LV-T30 liquid fuelled engine, with capsule equipped with a Communotron 16 and Mk16 Parachute. Vessel successful launched on sub-orbital trajectory to a height of 82k (with insufficient fuel to achieve orbit) and during period in space brief EVA performed. Vehicle successfully splashed down north east of the Space Centre. The VAS Coloni "Larini", the most successful of the Coloni platform's models Tarquini - three stacked FL-T200 tank version of the Larini. Additional structural blocks added to improve platform rigidity. Vehicle achieved a suborbital flight of 70.000m in Jebediah Kerbin's hands, but benefit of additional stage marginal if of any benefit. Additional set of four RT-10 boosters added to upper stage on a testing version made the vehicle impossible to control. Chaves - the four RT-10 solid fuel boosters were replaced by four two stacked FL-T200 tanks and engines. Tested in basic form, this unit was unable to achieve 10,000 metres before running out of fuel

With the release of 0.22, I decided to reboot VAT Aerospace by starting from scratch in career mode. This thread will act as a journal of VA's missions. It should be noted that I have been reliant on Mechjeb for the vast bulk of my achievements in 0.21, so the new frontier of doing my own piloting is somewhat daunting. As the company motto goes, "Cheap Laugh Engineering Meets Poor Piloting Skills"

No, I didn't mean just pilot related - so yeah, that would be unfair. I'm talking more along the lines of things done incorrectly by people that were avoidable and lead to the accident. Many, many, many examples - actually, if you include maintenance, engineering and adminstration/policy and procedures as well as air crew, 80/20's probably conservative.

The old 80/20 rule applies to aerospace as well - in this case, 80% of incidents (hate the word "accident") are human related, 20% are hardware related. There's an old engineering theory about safety being like a block of Swiss cheese. Ostensibly the cheese looks solid, but there are holes throughout the structure. If you think of the holes as problems with the various safety systems - well, sometimes the holes line up. Each of the three major disasters involving loss of life for NASA were avoidable - Apollo 1 and Challenger as mentioned above, and Columbia was brought down by a known issue (indeed, it was identified as a risk in the design phase, and Columbia's captain was advised of the issue a week after launch).

Pretty sure I got some of these guys home, although not in the vessel pictured (that's the first habitat, Mun Base Alpha). I will confess the reason there are eight guys is because I managed to crashland the first 'shuttle' to change crews over, but the capsule survived.

Thanks - hadn't considered a tow configuration, but that sounds like a good solution, and easy to implement without redoing the launch vehicle from scratch. I'll have a play and let you know how I get on, and put up some shots.

Came back to KSP a few days ago (combo of uni and GTAV) and started working on something I'd been meaning to do for a while - put an interplanetary transfer platform into orbit, and then launch four landers to rendezvous and dock with the platform. Worked out issues with resetting the staging, and then decided to move the now load platform to a higher orbit (from 80k to just over 500k, mostly for warping for potential alignments but also to get an idea of how the platform performed loaded) - problem is, I'd docked the landers perpendicular to the long axis of the platform so the moment thrust was applied they proceeded to bounce around. Not enough to break the docks, mind you, but enough to get a good oscillation going and eventually lead to the entire platform spinning. The landers are at the end of long struts, so any movement is going to be pretty leveraged, and whilst the boosters are in a similar configuration (basically an X shape) they're inside the landers which is doubtless worsening things. I'm having a think about redesigning the platform, but was wondering what other people had done on this front. One thought that came to mind was to dock the landers from underneath, so they're in line with the axis of the main platform. I could try sitting them closer to the central axis, but that will make docking trickier. I could also try docking them from the side, so they're closer to the central axis, but again they will move under thrust. Double docking ports also came to mind, but I suspect they'd be a catastrophic PITA to build and dock with. The landers themselves are fairly weighty and could probably do with some weight off. I was thinking of sitting the main platform somewhere off Jool and sending the landers in, so there would need to be capability of doing that. I might send a regular one probe mission to Jool to about where I was thinking and seeing what I could get away with lander-wise.

Got the Mun shuttle program off to an inauspicious start by landing on a slope a fair hike from Mun Base Alpha, getting panicked about fuel levels in trying to find a flattish place to land before finally dropping the thing properly into the terrain and breaking it. So Mun Base Alpha has a population of eight now. The shuttle is the original Mun lander and its Alpha+ launch platform which has been replaced by the X-Wing series of launchers, so it's probably time to uprate the lander/launcher combination The manned Mun rover has found a nice flat area about 5km away that will serve well as a second base and landing area. Managed to place a manned rover on Minmus on a lake on the other side of Minmus to the existing base, so that's been flagged for a second base. The rover is 'challenging' to drive in Minmus' low-G environment, surviving a couple of tight turn induced rolls, so a rethink will be needed for further Minmus and interplanetary rovers.

Okay, wow - been a month! Been busy with work, uni, training etc, but the KSA program has been progressing well. Crews were successfully recovered from SSA1 and SSA2 and the stations await their next crews. Further work with the Alpha+ platform saw Kerbollo 1 successfully land a three man crew on the surface of the Mun, with plenty of fuel for a return home. Sadly, the lone crew member (two other crew members remained onboard the first permanent settlement subsequently delivered by a new launch platform) was killed on re-entry due to poor time management by the Space Centre (i.e. didn't come off accelerated time quickly enough). The Alpha+ platform has been retained for Mun shuttle missions to Mun bases, and testing will be performed to see if the Alpha+ can perform shuttle missions to Minmus. If so, a single Alpha+ platform will be used for all manned ferrying activity in near-Kerbin space. Whilst that crew explored their surroundings, VAT Aerospace worked on a new very large launch platform, due to concerns over the Alpha platform's tendency to 'spin up' during launches and difficulties in carrying 'wider' payloads. Development began on the X-Wing series, so called due to its distinctive X shape, with engines located at the end of structural framework. Development of this platform has been very successful, with the proof of concept placing a probe in orbit around Jool, and a lander placed on Eeloo. Much to KSA's frustration, we have been unable to successfully land probes on Duna (crashed), Eve (landed in ocean) and Gilly (lack of power whilst searching for flat landing space) or Moho (current upper stage package appears to have insufficient delta V to arrive in controlled fashion) but these are doubtless due to upper stage packaging rather than the platform. The X-Wing has been put into service for the manned program and this has seen permanent settlements landed at the Mun (at the Kerbollo 1 landing site, which offers excellent terrain for safe landings) and, with the excellent performance of the package during the Mun delivery, the first manned landing on Minmus was achieved with the same permanent settlement delivery package. A manned rover was developed around the Space Station cupola part, and a skycrane developed and tested for delivery. This system successfully delivered a manned rover to the Kerbollo 1 Base. Concerns about performance of the rover in low gravity missions mean further development will need to be done for adaptation to Minmus (and other lower gravity environments). Current development is focussing on whether to further develop the X Wing platform for even heavier lift missions, or to develop techniques to assemble vessels in orbit, so as to allow manned exploration of the Kerbol system. With science packages announced as part of 0.22, the probe based science part of the KSA program has been put on hold for the moment, although given the short attention span of the department it is likely further missions will be attempted.

After some experimentation with heavy launchers I got enough courage up to attempt my first manned Mun landing. That went well, three Kerbals safely landed with plenty of fuel to get home. I was confident enough in the space station launcher I'd developed that I bolted together a small tower of hitch-hiker cans, and another crew of 3 went up in what successfully became a small base with accommodation for 11 Kerbals, around 100 metres from Kerbollo 1's landing site. I forgot to put ladders on, but it's easy enough to jetpack up... Anyway, with six Kerbals on the Mun, I decide to send one guy home to make sure the Kerbollo package can safely return to Kerbin. It launches easily, and we're on way. Quick game speed acceleration, and....oops, too far - Kerbollo 1 smacks into Kerbin at high speed.

Investigation of recent disappearances of Alpha 4-S platforms uncovered a secret KSA/VAT Aerospace operation to launch space station bodies into Kerbin orbit. It was discovered two launches had taken place, designated KSA Skunkworks SSA1 and SSA2, which lead to confessions that both stations had run out of fuel (but were powered!), and the relevant staff had no idea how to get the pair of two man crews home. Two Alpha 4-S platforms used for the KSA Orbital 3 and 4M missions were modified to allow docking with the stations and set upwith a single crew member, so two seats were spare for the two kerbanauts to be rescued. After some trials and tribulations, KSA Rescue 1 successfully docked with SSA2 (as SSA2 had a more stable orbit), and buoyed by the success, KSA Rescue 2 was launched and successfully docked with SSA1. As the SSA1 crew had been aloft for quite some time, and included hero Jebediah Kerbal, the decision was taken to bring this crew home first. At this point, it was further discovered that the docking system used by KSA Skunkworks was not able to be used to transfer Kerbals, necessitating EVA's by the two stranded crew members to get to KSA Rescue 2. After a fairly fraught journey using the jetpacks for the first time, both crew members boarded and the rescue vessel undocked, damaging one of SSA1's solar panels as it left. KSA Rescue 2 deorbited uneventfully and returned to the KSC Space Centre. KSA Rescue 1 remains docked with SSA2, as after the rescue of the crew of SSA1 the crew members are "feeling a lot more relaxed about things" and "taking the time to enjoy the view". Relevant employees have had their pays docked to cover the cost of 'borrowed' hardware.

Ahead of planned probe and manned landings of the Mun and Minmus, the opportunity to upgrade the Alpha platform to Alpha + status (essentially larger solid boosters and more fuel capacity) was taken and mapping probes were successfully launched into ideal mapping orbits of the Mun and Minmus. High quality maps of both were obtained and KSA/Vat Aerospace will be going through the maps identifying anomalies for future landing, and possible base locations. The Alpha + platform performed well and will be used for future Kerbin space work. Both probes remain in orbit around their respective moons.