CatastrophicFailure

Hah, that was great! Having recently acquired exactly that sort of furry bipolar viscuously clawed ball of floof and death, can confirm.

Wow... I'm amazed they're even allowed to get that close.

arglbargl The story on that, it was the theme song to the series Tour of Duty, which my dad watched religiously. I remember practically nothing about the show, as it was usually on in the background as I was doing something else, except the music, which looking back over it now, influenced me even more than I realized. Expect our motley crew to have a very well stocked RTR. Ah, Jeb. Pilot. Kerbonaut. Beatboxer. wicka-wicka-wicka

*readsreadsreadsreadsreadsreads* ahhhhhhhhh! But dang... a few chapters ago, your Kerbals hardly had any concept of war, now they're in fear of nuclear weapons. thatescalatedquickly.gif Really dying to see how this all turns out in the end. It will be a happy ending, right? Right?!

Hmm, hadn't considered that. Also worth noting, IIRC all ten of those sats are going into the same plane, so mucking about with changing the plane of all ten after launch is probably impractical, hence the window.

And now to clear out the hundred or so emails I get from the forum every time there's a launch. Not complaining.

They should bring the camera feed back up passing over Antarctica.

And in the space of like ten minutes, I am completely out of likes for the day.

NAILED IT!!!

GOGOGOGO!!!!!

Nothing that can be repeated here...

Webcast just went live.

@KSK a few months after finishing First Fight: Such is the trouble with creating Worlds... they have neither beginnings, nor ends... This is a particularly fascinating idea. Kerbals & rockets has been done to death (guilty), Kerbals before rockets... like, way before rockets, now... Must have pirates. Everything's better with pirates. Except real life. Those pirates are bad.

That's my thought. Since it's a demo flight it won't have a real payload, just a dummy mass if anything. I remember some of the early demo videos showing all three cores returning. Maybe they've got some specific data they're looking to get from it?

Well it's bloody brilliant. If slightly mad. Oh. Hmm. I'll have to check my sums, then. I keep getting Cleveland. Someone discovered a new Kerbal name generator. This one also allows some interesting mashups, like Mongolian and Welsh here...

Truth be told, I've never actually seen it. I just know the well-cliched parts. You can expect a cheap line about making Horror your BFF at some point. It means [smack] LДЙGЦДGЗ!! OK, it's tire, and I'm late... what's this from? Speaking of which, since math make brain hurt, can anyone solve the following equation for r to verify my own number? r=55* where y=5,000,000 ...because... no reason.

Chapter 92: Toruk Makto The Converter was painted the standard olive drab, with Andacamian markings in a dark, subtle grey. But the gunships... Valentina shuddered just to look at them. They wore a broken, visually jarring pattern of white and black that would easily stand out against the sky or ground. Splashed along the flanks in red paint —she hoped it was red paint— was what she could only assume was Ceriman writing. It wasn't the same, but... She could see faces in it, and they certainly weren't smiling... yet somehow it reminded her of the symbols she had seen scrawled on the walls of the abandoned Münbase. Topping it all off, on a field of black on each tail was a skull and crossbones. She thought they might even be real. The two disturbing constructs hummed ominously as the group approached. A sound like a shifting mountain came from Igor. He probably was still unhappy over having to fly cargo. "Buenos dias," the Andacamian Converter pilot nodded, then returned to his inspections. His flight crew, though... "Yes, well," Reginald began as he mopped his brow, "that's Juan. He and the transport are leased from the Andacamian government, but our security contractors are all Ceriman. This is Vachirmynydd, Yisurcapel, and Bill." Valentina blinked for a moment, wondering how he'd just made those sounds. This gave her time to take in the three Kerbals and their... unusual garb. It might once have been uniforms. Uniform. One fellow's sleeves had been unceremoniously torn off. What remained was covered in an incredible array of badges and insignia. The steel helmet on his head had a very prominent bullet hole... right in the middle. There was a playing card stuck in the fabric band around it, the King of Clubs. The next fellow dispensed with the shirt entirely. What he wore was little more than a few pockets held together by strips of ragged fabric and bandoliers full of ammunition. He carried a ridiculously long rifle with a cruel bayonet that she instantly recognized. She had seen the same kind in her... whatever the Kommissar had shown her. Judging by the worn blueing and scarred stock, for all she knew it was the same rifle. It was twice as tall as the Kerbal holding it. On his helmet, was the Ace of Spades. The third, fellow, well... he was in nothing but his underwear and a raggedy flak vest. And boots. Oddly, they all wore very stout boots in good repair. His helmet, of course, bore the joker. Valentina put on her best diplomat's smile and offered a hand in their general direction, "um... hello..." The one with the King on his helmet seemed to be in charge, no doubt this was... Vachi... or maybe... Yisu... certainly not— "Mi Bill," he said staring at Valentina's hand for a moment. Then he gave a slight bow, more of a nod, and made a gesture on his forehead with his right hand, "ismet, Mhysa." She blinked. ...on that, I am counting, Mhysa... Behind her, Igor rumbled ominously. "Mhysa... what does it mean?" she asked... Bill. Reginald wiped his face and answered, "roughly it means 'mother,' it's one of the very few Ceriman words that doesn't change its meaning based on context, inflection, body language, time of day, or the relative velocity of the fourth nearest partially swallow. It's sort of a general term of respect." She noted the slightest flick of Bill's eyes toward him, and a look she recognized as 'I would kill you right now but it's simply not worth the paperwork.' Best defect this if she could, "er, do you speak Kerblish?" she asked Bill. This time Bill answered, "tok-tok Pisin, Mi-Bill. Laitin' Seri-mah'." "Laitin'," the other two agreed. Valentina blinked, again. "Enlightened, is what he means," Reginald offered, blotting his head. There was that look again, "Cerimans typically struggle with proper Kerblish." Ah, she could relate. She tried to give Bill an understanding smile, but hadn't quite opened her mouth when— "Some of them have picked up a sort of pidgin of the tongue," he wrung the rag out, "you gain an ear for it eventually, but nearly all of them—" "ШHУ HЗ TДLК FЦЙЙЧ?" Igor boomed. Valentina had to resist the urge to put a hand to her face, "HЗ SPЭДКS FIЙЗ, HЭ'S PЯФЬДЪLУ Д PФLЧGLФT." "LДЙGЦДGЗ!" "PЦTIЙ." Wait, Igor doesn't know Kerb— "I beg your pardon?" Reginald paused wiping his face, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Ussari." Bill seemed to take all this in with the same blank look. Suppressing a sigh, Valentina tried for that diplomatic smile again, when the underdressed Ceriman nudged his comrade... and said the most peculiar thing.... "Milli vanilli <blink> [blank] ari no mama no |alveolar trill| sugata miseru no yo {glottal stop}?" The other one nodded thoughtfully and said, "¡libertad sin [click] <clack> vuelta atrás! ~lateral fricative~ [left armpit fart] deadmau5." The first one gave him a rough shove, "pthbthbthb milakunis <gleek> wszystkim wbrew na ten gest mnie stać {rising belch}?!" "Ke$ha, ke$ha <mouthpop> [left blink]!" the other one waved his hands frantically with a look of panic on his face, "Jöjjön száz orkán, és közben a szívemen ül a jég {hiccup}!" Underwear recoiled as if slapped, then charged and the two of them disappeared into a roiling cloud of dust punctuated by fists and boots. Igor moved a huge, protective hand in front of Valentina, who could only stare in shock. Bill turned with a sigh, produced a hammer from somewhere, and dove into the fracas. BING! BONG! The dust slowly cleared, revealing the other two sitting on the ground, holding their heads. Their helmets seemed to have acquired a new pair of dents. Bill was now yelling at them in an entirely new language. Valentina didn't recognize it, but there was no mistaking the unique tone of a noncommissioned officer dressing down his subordinates. Who were half undressed to start. "ШHУ THЗЧ DФ THДT?!" Igor boomed, glaring with suspicion. Valentina just gaped, shaking her head slightly. "And there you have the core of the Ceriman problem," Reginald explained, mopping his brow, "he said, 'well, she's quite the looker, isn't she?' and then he said, 'yes but your face looks like the blunt end of a deceased raccoon,' so he said, 'why would you say something like that to me?!' but then he said, 'sorry, sorry, what I meant to say was, a pox be upon your family and may the fleas of a thousand camels copulate in your armpits.'" Valentina's expression never changed, she just turned slightly to stare at Reginald. He didn't seem to notice, just kept wiping his face, "this is precisely why we forbid the contractors from speaking Ceriman. Somehow they've adopted an old dialect of Atezacan as a lingua franca. Well, most of them at least." He glanced nervously toward the gunships, his sweat running a little more. She followed his eyes. One of the pilots paused going over his switches to grin at her beneath his dark, bug-eyed helmet, causing her to step back. His teeth... Reginald seemed to avoid eye contact deliberately, "they don't speak anything. No tongues, you see." The pilot just kept grinning at her. She made herself hold his gaze, until his sharpened, interlocking teeth parted just enough to bite down on his own lip, sending a glut of blood down over his chin. She shuddered, and looked away. "Even the other Cerimans fear them," Reginald had gone as pale as his rag now, "stories, you see. Like, they consume the bodies of their slain enemies, and mortify their own flesh, and delight in..." he swallowed hard, "well, probably all just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo anyway. As long as they're paid, they do as they're told. And the powers that be always ensure that they're well paid." Valentina could feel her headache coming back. Igor rumbled like a storm cloud. At some point, Bill had stopped yelling at the other two. He pointed to the gunships, "Valar Arctûctis." "Erm, yes," Reginald wiped his brow, "it means—" "Children of the Kraken," Valentina's said without looking up. Reginald froze in mid-blot, "well... yes, I suppose that does work. It's a bit flowery, I'd always just translated it as 'Brood of the Squid' myself, but how did you—?" How... did she know? "I have dealt with those before." "You have?" for a moment he seemed to have forgotten to wipe, confused, "well, you're lucky to be alive, I must say! If that pilot ever finds you again—" "He's dead. I knocked him out of the sky," she still didn't look up. Bill's head whipped around. "You... shot down a Ceriman gunship?" Reginald nearly dropped his handkerchief. "I outflew it and dropped it in a river." "Toruk Makto..." Bill whispered, then spun around to the others, "Toruk Makto!" "Toruk Makto!?" "Toruk Makto!" They all stared at her with eyes wide, "Toruk Makto!" She blinked, "Toruk Makto... what does that mean?" "Well... er... that is..." some color finally returned to Reginald's cheeks, mostly red. He dabbed at his face, "diplomatically speaking, um... it means... one who acts, uh, without thinking." Then added hopefully, "or perhaps just out of ignorance." Valentina opened her mouth. Valentina closed her mouth. "Nobody takes down a Ceriman gunship!" he blurted and blotted incredulously, "that's how you get El Grande Muerte! And worse! " She looked at the three other Cerimans. In unison, they took a step back. "That's why we hired them in the first place. Things beyond the wall can get a bit... sticky," he peeled the rag from his face. Slowly, Valentina raised a hand to her face. Her head was throbbing. Wonderful. An infernal shadowy shadow trying to corrupt the world with mind-controlled goons, a cadre of sub-kerbal mercenaries with a blood-vengeance against her, and a jungle full of giant irradiated hungry things. And now said mercenaries were about to escort her over said jungle with probable said goons. Reginald seemed harmless enough, as long as you didn't get within spraying distance, but still... Dunna trust anyone... "Let us just get this over with," she said with resignation, "I have a rocket to catch." "Quite so, quit so," he gave the rag one last good ring, "you heard the lady, boys, tallyho and all that rot!" As she swung herself up into the cabin, Valentina noted with a frown that both of the Converter's sliding cargo doors had been removed altogether. In each hatchway now was a pair of large pintle-mounted machine guns. The rest of the craft didn't exactly look... regulation, either. She took the side-facing jumpseat next to the hatch just behind the pilot, then took a cue from Reginald as he plopped into the seat on the far wall, and clipped her harness on. "You look nervous," she observed. He gave a longing look to his handkerchief before pressing a flight helmet onto his head, sending a curtain of sweat down his face, "nervous? Me? Oh, certainly not! It's just this heat, bother it." He didn't sound very convincing. With a grimace, she pulled on her own helmet, which smelled exactly like one would expect from well-used unwashed helmet in an equatorial jungle. At least it had some decent noise-cancelling headphones, so she could actually hear over the Converter's shriek. The plane listed to one side as Igor pulled himself in and moved toward the front. Incredibly, Reginald's hands went up, "oh, er, terribly sorry, ah, big fellow, but you'll have to sit at the aft bulkhead berth." Igor's eyes narrowed, and the entire structure rumbled. Reginald tried to force his face into a helpful grin, "weight and balance and all that." "I ШILL ЬЗ FIЙЭ," Valentina put a hand on an arm like a boulder, "PЗЯHДPS IS ЬЭST TФ DФ ДS HЗ SДУS." Reginald just blinked in confusion. Igor made another noise like a distant rocket launch, but stalked to the back of the cargo area, sitting down with a thump that made the front wheels jump off the ground for just a moment. Reginald blotted and blotted at his face. A small puddle was growing beneath his seat. She hoped it was just sweat. But something about this did smell awfully fishy. Other than the helmet. The three Cerimans seemed to take no notice. They bounded into the cabin with practiced grace, busily setting about prepping their weapons. The one with the big, silly rifle popped it into a rack over his head, and neither one bothered with safety straps or helmets. Bill conceded to only a small headset. From somewhere, he produced a wheel of magnetic tape and fitted it into an ancient reel-to-reel player bodged into rear bulkhead. Even Igor raised an eye... bulge at this. "Is... is that to scare the enemy?" Valentina distinctly asked Bill, "something about valkyries, over loudspeakers, yes?" Bill looked about to answer, when Reginald broke in, "oh, heavens, no! The noise of an incoming Converter is quite enough to send any fool with a brain running. And if not, well, there's..." he nodded out the door towards the gunships. He'd gone quite pale again. That pilot was still... staring. In the back, Bill just rolled his eyes. He thumped a fist twice on the hull, then spun a finger in the air. The pilot began the familiar old hand-ballet that led to the engines spooling up through ever more grating levels of ear-splitting. The gunships lifted off first, their nuclear-powered engines somehow still belching oily black smoke. The Converter shuddered, Reginald squealed, and it too slowly rose into the air. Igor's face bore a look of grim determination. He reached up, grabbed a random fuselage stringer, and bent it around himself as a makeshift belt. Far from being unsettled by this, the Cerimans seemed quite bemused. Andacamian buzzed in Valentina's ears, "Vuelo de banana, están permitidos cruzar la Muralla... hasta Cerima." As the Converter lumbered ahead, Reginald seemed on the verge of hyperventilating. The two gunships took up echelon positions on either side, just a little behind. Valentina watched as they crossed over the top of the Wall. The far side looked like a loosing battle against the jungle, the land had been cleared for perhaps a couple of hundred meters at one point, but already vines and small trees were moving back in. The Wall itself bore the scars of many... things with more determination than brain power. Looking out the glazed nose past the pilot, the jungle seemed to stretch on, unbroken, forever. This place didn't feel right. It wasn't the utter wrongness of the Mün, but still... it just wasn't right. The feeling itself was layers of madness, but Valentina was beginning to learn to trust those feelings. That, and... She had known what would happen even then, she had known it, but... she had the growing feeling that something terrible had happened to Anastasia. Bill pressed a button on the tape machine, and Valentina's earphones filled with the twangy sound of an instrument she'd never heard before. A primal, syncopated drumbeat followed, and as the unusual little formation wailed out across the jungle canopy, the singer painted a dark picture... I see a red door and I want to paint it black... No colors anymore, I want them to turn black...

This post has an unsettling lack of yee! and Haw!.

@DarkOwl57 Since I haven't seen it mentioned lately, I'll lay down the most important part here: Write for you. Don't write to please others, or for upvotes, or to start a career. Write because it pleases you, because it makes you happy, because somehow your mind has encountered the Story, and you feel that if you do not tell the Story somehow that somehow you will go quite mad. All the other stuff, the intricacies of language, how to find an audience, all this can be learned, and sometimes takes quite a bit of effort on its own, but should always be secondary to the Story. It's a pretty small audience here on the KSP forum, but a great place to learn that which need be learnt.

Whoops, missed this... Quite so, quite so, the emphasis is always on the second "eyes." So, this... thing... sort of creeped into my head. And now it's distracting me. So I'm dropping it here to get it out of my head so I can go back to trying to transliterate Ceriman. Ah, the perils of an overactive imagination. Absolutely not a half-baked promo for an ill-conceived spin-off script! Coming this spring to KRBL-TV3 (in color where available)! He's a washed up former Kerbonaut with a thirst for justice, and he's... a chicken. And together they're cleaning up the mean streets of Kerbin City in this season's grittiest new cop show! They are: Derpy... and the Bird! [cue 70's disco wacka-wacka] Featuring:! A cigar-chomping hard-nose police chief! "My office...NOW!" A shifty internal affairs guy! "You can't put a chicken on the police force!" "I'll have you know that chicken is a Master of the ancient art of Cluck-Fu!" Adequately choreographed but horribly dubbed fight scenes! "Bwaaaaaa-GOK!" *THUMP!* *BIFF!* *SOCK!* *BAM!* "Ouch, my shin!" The red-shirt rookie! "Is it bad, Derp?" "You just stubbed your toe, ayuh." "Tell my wife I love her! *gak*" "NOOOOOOOOOO!" A corrupt politician... "Ah did not. Have. Textual relations. With that. Chicken." The Teflon Don Totally legitimate businesskerb... "I'm gonna build a big, beautiful mall... and bury you under it! It'll be yuge!" A wisecracking foreign national of questionable immigration status... "I've got you now, Derpy and the Bird!" [screeeeeeeeeech] *thump* "In Ussari Union, cab find you!*" "Ouch, my shins!" With a soundtrack featuring brand new hits from three guys who sound like they just got kicked in the jimmys... "♫Hah-hah-hah-hah stayin' alive, stayin' alive!♫" And all the latest fashion... [record scratch]"why... why you dress like that?! Put chest hair away, look like bear in clown suit!" You can run, but you can't hide, from... Derpy... and the Bird! "I'll get you for this Bird! And you too, Derpy!" "It's prrrrrrrronounced," [clang!] "Dor-pay." "Buh-Gok!*" Joolsday nights at 9, only on KRBL! "Hi, Ah'm bill, this is Don, we're your new cellmates!" "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!" We now return you to your regularly scheduled story...

I bodged up some Kerbal ejection seats featuring Omicron Flying Space Car parts by @Climberfx (awesome parts btw, needs stock ejection seats!) Then spent entirely too much time making this hastily-edited video:

So... any word on that "official" 6.4x config?

And some critical new information, too: at least I've never heard it before. According to the article, such buckles are a natural place for solid LOx to condense. Additionally, it sounds like SpaceX had been trying something slightly different with the fueling procedure on that static fire. If all this is correct, it goes back to some observations brought up months ago, that this failure was a result of a combination of circumstances never seen or considered before. Hindsight is always 20/20. The long term solution is to eliminate buckles in the COPV tanks. I forget if SX makes these in house, but given that they're planning to use some MASSIVE composite tanks on their BFR, this is definitely something to get right. Short term is simply to change the fueling procedure to avoid solid oxygen formation. Sound pretty reasonable to me.

How'd you rig up the escape tower there on top of a used node?

AFAK, they are leaving some/most of it, and may reuse it manned D2 launches. Ah, 2015. No wonder there's no sign of a strongback. Yes, much better and cool! I think Vandenburg is kinda/sorta scheduled for the 9th as RTF, that would be a real coup if they can pull off both so close. (After the pic above, I was kinda hoping they'd go for the PR slam dunk and start right off with the Heavy.)