CatastrophicFailure

poop.

Well now, that was quite the whirlwind of Newtonian mechanics!

Any word on what the issue was?

That's the Astroniki sunflare, @JadeOfMaar's skybox, @Galileo's planet pack, and Rald, via Scatterer, EVE, etc. Its quite the package.

This. That is all.

While I continue to plug away at the rest, here's a trailer for Kraken3(working title). I don't think there's any spoilers here, but still proceed at your own risk. THE FOLLOWING PREVIEW HAS BEEN APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES. Probably. Maybe. OK, we didn't ask anyone at all.

*yoink* Also, what's that sliding door cargo bay from?

Wow it really has been a month. I think I just finished the hard part and the rest should come quickly, but it will be quite a while still. In the meantime, something has been itching at my brain so I'll see if I can jot it down quickly and, ahem, throw y'all a... bone.

Aaaaaand cue Iron Eagle soundtrack! ...or maybe Hot Shots!

When they're ready. See also: Soon™

Awesome! Now... make it yellow...

Fascinating. I never knew an airship went over the pole at all.

Year 2, Day 32... Happy new year to us, yay! Although time here is still confusing. Gael has only a 15 hour day, while we're still running officially on a standard 24 hour day. Judging by the rest of the crew, eventually you get used to it... or you have a psychotic episode. So it's probably been more than a year, but I leave the math up to the engineers. So... remember that incomplete objective I mentioned a while back? I'm going to read the contract offers better. The engineers had to build a whole new lifter for this... I named it the Gael 1a. I offered to let Vlad name it first, as sort of a peace offering, but some things just aren't fit to print. Apparently he's still upset that the swelling hasn't gone down. The doctor mentioned something about eggplants, but I didn't stick around for the details. This first launch won't even get us to our goal. The whole thing is mostly a test flight, but GENE had the decency to throw us a bone and pay us for it. Still haven't figured out what the bone is for... Booster separation and all normal. With only half its fuel remaining, the core stage has enough power to continue on. Gael's towering atmosphere is proving quite the challenge. We're running a trio of hypergolic engines on the upper stage. It's not the most efficient setup but we needed the raw power over the Gandalf's efficiency. Payload separation, still quite a bit short of a proper orbit. Here we have an experiment into an all-in-one universal buss for future missions. It's ridiculously overpowered, but lightly loaded packs over 2km/s into a very compact package. This test bird packs a suite of experiments, including our first orbital telescope. According to our earlier radar scans, there's no sign of civilization anywhere else on the planet. This new telescope series should pinpoint anything the low-res SCAN missed. Boosted into an eccentric final orbit, the instruments prove the existence of at least one band of dangerous radiation above low orbit. This may prove problematic to future missions. Oh, that yellow line in the background? I'm going to read the contract offers better. GENE wanted a polar orbit. Simple, right? We were already sending the SCANsat into a polar orbit, easy enough to tack this one on, right? It's three times the orbit of Rald. I'm going to read the contract offers better. Barely off the drawing boards, and the Gael series already gets a major upgrade. The trio of Gandalfs on the boosters is replaced by a single, non-gimballing Robin engine, and two more boosters added. Behold, the Gael 1b! All our control authority is coming from the center cluster of Gandalfs, now. I'm sure it will be fine. The extra kick of the new boosters is a welcome, er, boost, to the flight profile. We added a fourth hypergolic engine to the upper stage, but it's still not quite enough to loft the payload into a proper orbit. At apogee, the first of two solid kick motors will ignite. Once the probe swings back around, the second motor will fire. Then it's up to the buss's own engines to boost into the final orbit. Even stripped down to nothing but reaction wheels and antenna, we had a razor-thin margin. Contract finally complete, with a mostly useless satellite in a mostly useless orbit. I'm going to read the contract offers better. Ooooh, this one looks easy! *accept*

It's like... right there... see? Totally right there... Me? I let KSP run for a few hours and just enjoyed the view.

Given that both NASA and SpaceX have made their announcements, I'm kinda surprised BO didn't say something sooner.

Day 340... As we approach a full year stranded here, the time has finally come to send one of our brave number on the first step to... anywhere else. Once more, brave Triti Kerman has been thumped over the head selflessly volunteered for the role! Vlad drew the short straw and had to distract her. That's probably gonna leave a mark. As is customary before such a momentous occasion, we asked Triti for some profound and encouraging words before she was unceremoniously crammed heralded into the capsule... Written here for all posterity are her historic words: I'll kill you. I'll kill you. I will flarping kill you. I swear I will kill every last Oedipus here. Don't shut that hatch. Don't you dare shut that hatch. You bunch of hornswoggling gobnobbed clatterfarts, so help me I'll-- *edited for content and to run in the time allotted. The single solid booster was based on the same one that successfully lofted our first SCANsat. 6 gees might have been a bit excessive, but the capsule and it's science package successfully separated just before apogee. Also, there were experiments. Fearless Triti was lobbed to a height of just over 112 kilometers, barely into space. But barely is close enough. We again asked for some enlightened words upon engaging in this historic first flight, but all she said was "My Kerm, it's not full of stars!" We were mostly expecting the star thing, but whatever a "Kerm" is and what she was doing with one in a tiny capsule is still anyone's guess at this point. 10 gees on the descent have demonstrated that Kerbals are surprisingly resistant to liquefaction. Mostly. See? We take care of our staff. Not just one but two parachutes! Triti was in surprisingly good spirits when we recovered her, although soaking wet oddly enough. We attributed the former to her brief time in the sublime embrace of the cosmos, and turning the oxygen supply way down. Because, you know, every gram saved... Everything was going well until Vlad tried to help her out of her space suit. The doctor says the swelling should go down in a couple days, but he'll have to wear the supporter for at least a week.

Soon™?

Quick question. I'm trying add a very basic antenna to command pods with a MM config, but it doesn't seem to be working. Code is below. What am I missing here? @PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleCommand]]:NEEDS[FeatureSignal]:FOR[Kerbalism] { { MODULE { name = Antenna type = low_gain cost = 0.1 dist = 5e6 rate = 0.016 } MODULE:NEEDS[FeatureReliability] { name = Reliability type = Antenna title = Antenna redundancy = Communication repair = true mtbf = 72576000 // 8y extra_cost = 2.0 extra_mass = 1.0 } } And as long as I'm here, what's the proper MM syntax to add Kerbalism support to other mod's antennae? I've got my own little cfg of tweaks this'll all go into.

Quite. With no proper kommissar or political officers present, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before this isolated little society begins to implode.

True equality means anyone can be the designated butt monkey. Just you wait.

Day 317... The limited part count supported by the current assembly building continues to be our bottleneck, so it's back to more surveys for GENE. Our engineers made some... slight modifications to the plane, and managed to coax Triti back in with some chocolate... The look on her face was pretty priceless. I'll probably regret that, but maybe I can just blame it on Vlad... Triti, that's coming out of your paycheck! What? You don't get a paycheck? None of us do? Hmm...

No, I meant ethereal. The rocks don't disappear, they just behave like air when I run into them. Noted. What in the config needs tweaking? note to self: go run into a tree on Gael, need to test.

Hey wait a sec... I thought rocks were supposed to be solid? Or did that get turned off at some point? The rocks on my Rald are proving rather... ephemeral...

Well now. That just opens up all sorts of disturbing fridge logic. Knew I shoulda gone to bed. Think I'll go stare at the wall for a while.

I'd say they're in an even better position. Like you said, they're standing on the shoulders of giants. Nothing involved here is new technology-- it's evolutionary, not revolutionary. The FH is an extension of the well-tested F9. The D2 is an extension of the well-tested D1. And they have plenty of NASA experience to glean from, too. I think it's entirely plausible that they pull this off. Now is it probable? Ask me in about December. It depends on how the rest of this year goes for them... and on just how bad this rich dude wants to go to the Moon. Who might just be Jeff Bezos with a Truly Awesome but fake mustache. ETA: an article with more details: https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/02/27/spacex-to-send-two-private-citizens-around-the-moon-and-back/