Shania_L

You get some funky airflow in the transonic region, its generally best not to linger there (here lie backflips and other directional uncertainties). When staging my rocket designs tend to drop their TtW ratios pretty close to 1:1, also the centre of mass and/or centre of lift can shift quite dramatically when releasing larger boosters which can also de-stabilise the rocket. If you can maintain a decent acceleration and ensure your CoM/CoL wont interfere with each other you should be ok staging there, but for me it has more often than not lead to 'bad things'.

Without the final R&D I am still limited to 3.5m procedurals and 3m fairings/thrust plates, HDIV will be a 30 tonne lifter. Triple arrangement like your KI-3, but weighing somewhere around 360tonnes, I still need to work out some details of it .. like trying to stage at the mach 1 boundary ... but I'm getting there ..... Although its in a bit of an SLS like situation where I will have a lifter but not really any payloads for it, yet. Considering I had just made a point about our differing day lengths, I then go and make a direct 92 to 300 day comparison . 300 being 50% larger than 92 makes sense now for an outward journey rather than inward.

Well, with my sceptical cap firmly in place I'd say that if you doubled NASA's budget they'd probably end up getting even less done, and waste 3x as much money on whatever it is they manage to spend so much on as it is. But on the plus side you would get a lot more (extra shiny) powerpoint shows of stuff they could do if you only gave them a little bit more. This is the way of public funded projects, noone has any incentive to keep stuff cheap and you know, get a return on investments. (or actually do what you set out to do.)

Cant believe you have lasted this long without a dedicated comn net, didn't you have a "not space station" that was handling your relays? I guess you are using the 24hr Kerbin day seeing as your KSO is at 26Mm (I use the 12Hr and get KSO at about 15Mm) 92 Days to Eve? I am looking at over 300 to get to Duna! I assume you are taking something of a shortcut? 2,900Dv burn? .... but, thats only 400m/sec more than Minmus!! 20tonne lifter ... hmm, seems I will have to speed up progress on HDIV

Awesome series, always a joy to read. Quick question, why do you use retrograde Mun orbits for your landers? surely you are adding to the Dv requirements to match velocity with the surface?

The claw is from RoverDudes Advanced Mining Technologies mod. However in looking for this link, it looks like it isnt being kept up to date so I cant promise the part will work in later KSP versions.

Yup, following investigation, the funds penalty is boosting the cost of building upgrades ... but at this stage of the game once I have paid for this R&D upgrade all the rest are cheap in comparison so there isnt really any point in fudging the persistence file to change it. But I will remember for next time !! Day 312, KSC (Missed from previous report) Day 316, KSC Day 317, High Kerbin Orbit Day 317, KSC

It wasn't so much a dig at you, more so the article, they didn't even manage to get through the title without mentioning the accident.

I know the media may love to focus on failure, but I would have hoped that especially KSP players would be more understanding of how difficult a task Virgin Galactic have taken on. The fact that they are not only the first to get anywhere near a commercial craft capable of carrying fare paying passengers, but to do it with a solution that has never been used for manned space vehicles before. I fully support their quest, and if I could afford the ticket I would be on the waiting list .

I had the very same bug not too long ago on my career game, if you have a quicksave or duplicated backup persistence file from not too long ago you could revert to that and the contracts will be there. I didn't, so I ended up cycling through the new contracts offered to try and find ones that were as close as possible to accept in their place and then editing my SF to remove the duplicated initial payments. For long term contracts in progress I just added (a best guess of) the completion reward and assumed Xmas came early Annoying, but not the end of the world .. thankfully.

Because what else would you want inside a telescope, but a bright light source? I was unaware of this, is this a recent development, or one that would exist in an older 0.90 version of KCT as I am using? IIRC the base costs of structures were reduced coming into 1.0.x, I had always assumed that was why my costs were greater than those encountered in a stock install. In terms of effect on my career, none of the prices has really caused me trouble except for the R&D lab, and even that to an extent has only caused me to hold at mid game, I currently have 4 of the 6.3 million I need to upgrade it.

I made sure to include a decent helping of sideways into the transfer stages final burn, it ended up falling at least 20km away from the lander. Day 309, KSC Later on the same Day (309), Pandora Station Day 310, KSC Day 312, KSC

Well, for starters we'll go with lack of thrust, then later we can add lack of control authority, lack of Dv, too slow, too low which generally ends up with designs getting too big and too heavy resulting in less control authority and eventually lower FPS. After that you have the issue of too fast at low altitude, phantom rolls that trimming doesn't solve, excessive response to the tiniest of control inputs (on the same craft that had minimal response to full input earlier in the same flight) resulting in forwards or back flips, flame outs, rapid unplanned disassembly, flames, explosions and death. Large pieces of flaming debris, toxic (and possibly radioactive) fuels and various parts of the crew falling from the sky, setting light to homes schools and vast tracts of pristine forest. Then over the next few years, countless deaths due to starvation as orphaned Kerbals attempt to grow food in irradiated soil, mutations from drinking poisoned water, visions of shattered lives as malnourished Kerblets wander across scorched and barren wasteland that used to be their homes .... So essentially I don't build SSTO's because I am not a monster!!!

Good story and good lernin'! what else could you ask for from a series? I may balk at the prospect of a full RSS/RO career, but I have been applying some of your sciencey thinking to my seat-of-the-pants design principals for my own 64k missions.

Just noticed you are using Sigma Dimensions for your rescaling, rather than the 64k mod, how have you found it to be behaving? When I finally get around to leaving 0.90 on my career (probably to 1.1) I was thinking of going with Sigma Dimensions. From what I can see on your pictures have you managed to reduce the scale height of terrain features? I had a try with Sigma Dimensions for a x6.4 rescale and I ended up with 30+km high mountains west of KSC. Have you also done manual rescales for time warp and the reduction in solar power for distance from the sun? as these are both handled by the 64k mod.

Heya, welcome to the 64k club, glad you like my reports. In addition to KCT, mods like RemoteTech and a Lifesupport mod are pretty useful to enhance the realism aspect of a career game. Also for a 64k game you should consider the Custom Barn Kit, mod, this will allow you to adjust the progression steps of the KSC buildings in career. Increasing the part count and max mass allowed on the starting launch pad/VAB would be a very good idea. (I dont have this on my 0.90 game, it is new to 1.0.x) SETI was an all aspect mod that hit just about all parts of the game, the developer had a very specific style and outcome he was aiming for. When you try to apply that in addition to a mod like 64k which already ramps up the difficulty and makes you play in a different style to stock then they can clash and you end up between rock and hard place. ("Better Than Starting Manned" was another, if more extreme version) RP-0 again is tailored to specifically cater to a full RSS/RO game (and full modlist), and such could be too restrictive for someone not wanting to follow in the footsteps of reality.

Well, I suppose that is good and bad news, I had thought it was related to the monkeying about I had been doing to try and get re-textured fairings into my game ... at least this way I have an alibi that it wasnt my fault \o/ Exactly! the engines, fuel tanks and landing gear wern't needed anymore, so its err, more efficient? maybe? Depending on what I find it may not be me chasing the asteroids!! =================================================================================================================== Day 403, Minmus (cont) Day 304, Minmus (yes more) Day 306, KSC

Hey there, good start to your career, orbital in 3 launches! you're certainly not wasting time!! Always good to see new career reports, and as you are joining the 64k club I'll be watching especially closely ... certainly nothing to do with industrial espionage though ... much.

So yeah, an update to the update. I had a glitch with the contract system, my entire contract history and current accepted contracts have all been wiped out. The best part was the game didnt even crash or have the good grace to inform me that this had happened .... I continued playing and as a very careful and conscientious player always worried by the possibility of crashes .. I have repeatedly overwritten my quicksave file ... meaning I do not exactly know when the issue happened or have a recent revert point, my backups backup is over a month old. So I have patched up as best I could, accepting all the contracts that seemed pretty similar to those I had before, and deducting the payments from my budget (filed on a T-12 temporal disturbance clause, hence fully tax deductable). Scanning and remote-tech contracts are going to take time to re-initiate though.. if they do ever. In other news, I completely missed last weeks anniversary, this thread is 1 year (and a week) old, so that means in 371 Earth days I have managed to play 304 Kerbal days ... which are 4 times shorter .... I could have played this career without using time acceleration and been further ahead than I actually am

Day 294, Minmus Day 295, Minmus Day 296, KSC Day 299, Minmus Lunic IIIb completes another round of Surface seismic surveys, this time for Reaction Systems. 5x 50,797 Funds, 29 Science, 21 Reputation. + 348,555 Funds, 58 Science, 250 Reputation completion reward. With a little over 730Dv in the tank, completing another contract could be a close run thing, we shall see how the Lunic Luck lasts, these two probes have been gold mines earning far more than their initial launch costs. Day 300, KSC With a break in both build schedules and contract commitments (Lunic IIIb has fallen into the shadow of Minmus) Wernher is able to concentrate on some of the other issues that have been piling up ignored on his desk. A surprisingly large number of these issues are from amateur space-gazers who have been claiming discoveries of odd fast moving planets which not only seem to ignore all the usual rules of being a planet, but that dont appear in the official listings of 'proper planets' either, The tracking station at KSC was unable to confirm any of these reports, however seeing as they are restricted to listening for the pings of transponders in Kerbal made craft and debris it is hardly surprising. One Kerbal in a dark set of overalls far too large for him, who had obviously drawn the short straw, approached Wernher with a proposition to upgrade the tracking station to be able to track objects that didnt want to be tracked, for 1.75 Million funds. If Wernher had been even 10 years younger he would have caught the other Kerb long before he made a hasty retreat out the office door. There is no use tracking something if we cant find it though, he mused, and the KSC wasnt going to sit around in a field with a telescope on a stick, ohh no, this was a Space Centre, simply looking at space wasnt good enough. The guys in the Helmdar division could give the problem a ponder he decided, after all looking up was very similar to looking down ... wasnt it? Day 304, Minmus Verity VII-Mi arrives in Minmus SOI, 30m/sec burn to align Pe to 20km 35deg inclination, estimated 760m/sec capture burn to a 20x1000km orbit. 80 minutes later Lunic IIIc arrives in Minmus SOI, Where Verity had been efficient and gentle, Lunic was was, well... not. Burning over 100m/sec simply to correct an initial retrograde intercept, Lunics initial 50m/sec increased escape burn had become a 500m/sec velocity advantage at the SOI boundary, with Lunic also requiring a much lower orbit to deploy its lander the capture burn was looking to be nearly twice that of Verity, 1,200m/sec. .... Lunics transfer stage has 870Dv aboard ... typical! // At this point game related issues raised their ugly heads, I am still trying to untangle the mess. So far my game has been pretty stable and well behaved, karma caught up to me tonight.

Day 290, KSC Administration building In a slight change of direction, the "Fund Raising" strategy was cancelled today, experts have decided/guessed that perhaps a better income could be sourced by allowing reputation to build up and accepting higher quality contracts than directly converting Reputation into funds... We shall see. The science -> funds contract has been left in operation. Day 290, KSC Launch pad Day 291, KSC Day 293, KSC

Ohh, 200days? so its 'that' meaning of Soon(TM) Ahh ... MehJeb ... , I have the porkchop plotter with Kerbal Alarm Clock, its probably user error missing the Hohlman transfer, just my latent impatience showing through again restricting transfer time to something I can stand waiting for. 100days to build!! wow, my Duna class probes, are taking about 20days each (~10t payload for a HDIII), so unless you are building some Wackjovian monstrosity, I would really consider either dropping some hints about Kiberian holiday camps, or you know maybe paying your techs a working wage? Ohh I have heard of them Smart parts. Would be V useful for atmospheric landing of probes. Timing launch clamps? fairing separation? why do these things need automation? Other than KW motors having a spool up time so get themselves a stage 0 ignition everything else goes in 1 launch stage. I just watch the thrust output till it nearly matches max before releasing the rocket. Fairings again get a stage to themselves which I fire at 91km, its not like I have anything else to do while I wait for the rocket to empty its tanks.

Ooo purdy moving pictures!! You have an Eve window approaching? you must be skipping through days far faster than me, my calc isnt showing an Eve window for at least another 300 days ... but then it wouldnt be the first time it has lied to me . Only realised last week that I have completely missed the efficient Duna transfer point, gonna have to go inefficient now... but faster so there is that How are you timing all the action groups? I think you said before that you had a falling out with the RT computer, which only allows pure 'time from now' events to be setup, your airbag and antenna seem to be triggered from making landfall ... how!!? I have disabled the light-speed delay on probes, but even so having the ability to re-activate delicate antenna after landings (without putting in a 30min delay) would be v-useful.

How you managed to write that entire OP without mentioning the British Interplanetary Society who designed it is quite an achievement in itself. As others have mentioned it was to be assembled in space, the pic of it at ground level was simply for scale reference. The BIS is not in the business of actually designing spacecraft for production, this (as well as many other designs) are indepth design proposals created to simply show what can or could be done, there was/is no serious intention to ever actually build this. The BIS serves as a discussion group, a loose collection of people interested/experienced in the subject of spaceflight who provide their knowledge to form these proposals. The early communication satellite ideas put forwards by Arthur C Clarke for example went through "sanity checking" at the BIS. The Megaroc project was another example of this ahead of its time concept mission, Megaroc was a slightly expanded, fully reusable, manned V2 suborbital launcher "designed" in the very late 40's based on little more than the few test launches the British did with V2s after the war.

"Soyuz Inside", that made me chuckle, I always love how someway or somehow even big organisations allow a little humour into such serious business.