CatastrophicFailure

I think you’ve seen all that’s worth seeing, except maybe Ussari Space Program. We now return you to your irregularly scheduled First Flight, already in progress...

Sigh. Such a shame about those birds. They deserve better than being left to rot. What you see there are the orbital maneuvering engines (bottom middle), the Buran had no launch engines on board. The Energia booster was a complete launch vehicle in itself, able to fly without the Buran. And did, once. Worked great until the payload turned around backwards for its circularization burn... Buran was basically Shuttle 2.0, since the Soviets pretty much literally looked at the American Shuttle program, copied it, then fixed everything that was wrong with it. Then realized it was too expensive and ultimately unnecessary.

So SpaceX headquarters is across the street from a DIY hardware store, eh? Somehow, that seems fitting. Great photo by the way.

As @roboslacker is fond of saying, yay, [relevant] content!

Cactae.

Soooo... I'll admit to a little bit of cheating, here... But the game started it, dangit! Once the RaldBase was hooked up to the thing and chugging along, I was expecting it to take a long time. But I quickly realized that, despite an indicated 4-day supply, any time I tried to timewarp back at the Space Center or otherwise unfocused, the crew would instantly run out of water and die. Before Kerbalism could even throttle the warp back. Ok, s'pose I can deal with that, I'll just switch to the RaldBase and timewarp there, right? Wrong. Now another glitch kicks in, that I kind of remember, where the two crew begin gaining stress and radiation poisoning right before my eyes! Now I know Rald is a stressful place, but this is ridiculous! So quickly hyperedit the booster tanks full, unhook the base, and drive out of physics range, maybe that's causing the weirdness. Nope. Burrick and Hellenna now on the verge of going quite mad. So, I had to go in and tweak the save file. And what I found is that their "TimeSinceLast" entries were some bizarrely yuge number. Near as I can figure, it actually started accruing as soon as the rescue contracts were accepted (or spawned), so by the time they were both on board, somehow there was just too much of it for Kerbalism to calculate for and it went all wahoonie-shaped. But, a quick edit back to zero, and everything at least looks on the up and up. They'll still be hanging around the thing for a while anyway, other... things are happening. But not that sort of thing. Normal things. Not weird boostery things. Maybe I should have named it after all, this is confusing... But as you can see, Hellenna is perfectly fine...

Year 10, Day 160... Greetings, Comrades! Sigh. I still miss that guy. Is that weird? It feels weird. I haven't show my papers to anyone in, well, ten years and 160 days I guess. Not even sure where they are anymore, I think I needed coasters one time.But anyways... My Kerm, it's enormous...

I, for one, would pay an obscenely large quantity of hypothetical money to dive into a swimming pool on the moon. But y’all are being way too narrow minded, here. We should skip the half-ways and just start a colony on Venus. At MSL. With solar power. And a ski resort.

I know I’ve seen that look somewhere before... Ah, yes... ...any landing you can walk away from...

Just did some quick reminiscing googling. Might want to multiply by at least 3. Wow, model rockets sure have a come a long way in the last, oh 25 or so years since I was first dumbstruck by the awesome, mind-boggling power of the first Estes E engine.

O.o Why is this dude not working for SpaceX already?

Apparently this exists: And apparently model rockets now have gimballing engines and active guidance. I had no idea...

@Ultimate Steve If it’s really old, and slightly abused, it might need to be adjusted as well. I forget the proper term, and I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but telescopes need to have the tune/lenses adjusted periodically, takes some special tools & knowhow. Google prolly your friend, there.

This is kind of awesome. ...and practically begs for an Emiko cameo...

Others have chimes in with some good ideas, I’ll add this: Kerbal Construction Time. It forces you to slow down and time skip because ships actually take time to build, and you need more thought (and testing) in each one cuz you can’t just revert and change something. Also, try an upscaled system. For me, nothing refreshes the game like making just getting to orbit a challenge again. I’ve been playing my main game @ 6.4x in 1.2.2 for well over a year now, it’s still enthralling and I’ve just barely scratched the surface beyond the Gael system.

Ah, that would be why I couldn't find it. Missing that "E"...

So everyone here probably already knows this but...

Nearly any engine I use is from @Shadowmage's excellent SSTU mod, it'll make you not want to bother with stock parts ever again. The big capsule and heatshield (with built-in fuel tank) is the MEM-clone Estonian from @Angel-125's also excellent DSV mod (slightly tweaked), which... I can't find the link for at the moment. Both are also quite actively maintained and compatible with 1.4.x. Also some bits from @TiktaalikDreaming's Mod Pods. . While I'm at it, @GarrisonChisholm et al, here's the map of the RaldBase's journeys thus far, thanks to the BTDT scanner on board. It looks like it got switched off at some point tho, so there's some gaps, but that thing sure gets around. Should have a new episode up this weekend, lots of new material finally (and a big surprise... eventually).

[tongue chewing intensifies]

Have a look outside the window up at the roofline, that’s where they like to build nests.

@Galileo I’d just like to say thank you to yourself and @OhioBob, @JadeOfMaar, @Poodmund, and anyone else on the team I’m probably forgetting for what is still hands-down the best planet pack I’ve seen. You’re certainly earned a break, go enjoy it, and save up some patience for the move. That, too, shall pass (remember the road trip munchies!). Maybe when you come back Squad will have figured their stuff out... and I’ll have upgraded from 1.2.2.

@roboslacker beat me to the active one. Theres also Ussari Space Program, which actually plays right along with Whispers: These are the only two that went anywhere. There’s a smattering of false starts scattered around the Mission Reports folders, too.

We used sugar water when we first installed the package, but up until the other day we really hadn’t needed anything. Our gals have always been real docile, except for this one bee who really doesn’t like me and constantly headbutts me working the hive. Apparently she’s recently graduated to Forager, too, since she came after me once when I wasn’t anywhere near the hive.

You’ve got too many fins in the wrong place. Those fins in the middle are moving your center of lift too high, once you burn off a little fuel, your center of mass moves up, gets ahead of the center of lift, and your rocket makes like an acrobat. Eliminate the winglets in the middle, you should have an immediate improvement. All that rover on top of the rocket creates a lot of drag, especially right around the speed of sound (342 m/s give or take). If you’ve unlocked fairings, that would likely help too. Hang in there, this game has an incredibly steep learning curve at times.

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