capi3101

(1.8.1) Not a great deal to report for my weekend or for my day today, though what did happen was important enough. My day on Friday began at the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyards over Kerbin, where I ordered up the print of a Boop-Boop 7x probe to handle a satellite contract I'd picked up. I was in no hurry to have the probe finished and engineer Ceri Kerman, a proven idiot, obliged; construction time was just short of one Kerbin day. One of these days I've got to get a better staff at DP... That job done, it was time for LSV House Corrino to begin her historic mission to put an object in orbit of Eeloo and then return to the surface of Kerbin. Corrino began her journey by breaking orbit over Kerbin and warping to Jool. I knew that I'd have to bleed off a lot of speed to get out to Eeloo; heading to Jool was intended as a time saver, and I think that for the most part it did the trick. After five warpback maneuvers to bleed off much of the ship's speed over Jool, the ship proceeded to Eeloo. Unfortunately her arrival speed of 4,194 m/s was tenfold what it should've been to attain orbit and the planet's gravitational pull wasn't significant enough to bleed it off without a substantial number of warpbacks, so the ship departed Eeloo's SOI and headed to a position 1.25 Gm over Kerbol to take care of the rest of it. Corrino took the opportunity while she was in close proximity to Kerbol to recharge her exotic matter tanks. She eventually returned to Eeloo at 427.8 m/s and attained a 172.0 by 160.1 kilometer, 11.38° orbit over the outer planet. Upon attaining orbit, House Corrino launched the Pink Noise 7a long-range communications satellite carrier she'd hauled to Eeloo in her drydock. The new satellite, dubbed Eeloocomm Alpha, burned to an orbit of 250.6 by 164.7 kilometers at 0.01° inclination while Corrino's crew began construction of a second Pink Noise 7a craft; construction time was just over 48.5 minutes. Eeloocomm Alpha reached its final target equatorial orbit at 250.6 kilometers and released its sub-satellites, with the new Eeloocomms Bravo and Charlie burning for their respective positions over the planet. The second Pink Noise was finished, fueled and released, with the new Eeloocomm Delta communications satellite burning for a 250.6 kilometer polar orbit prior to launching Eeloocomms Echo and Foxtrot. Meanwhile, Corrino's crew began printing up a ScanSat; the new ScanSat Eeloo was finished, fueled and launched after 12 minutes and 39 seconds of construction time, with the new probe burning to a 176.4 by 160.2 kilometer, 90.15° inclined orbit to begin biome resource scans. The day on Friday concluded with Corrino beginning construction of a Hellhound 7 rover and skycrane, with construction expected to take one hour and 46 minutes. By building the G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft while still in Kerbin orbit and hauling it along to Eeloo rather than printing it on site, I had managed to save enough Rocket Parts for Corrino to print up the scout rover instead; that's the first time that's happened. Figures it'd be on the very last world I will visit in the Kerbol system... My day today began, as on Friday, at Dystopia Planitita; that probe had finished construction, and launched from the shipyard after fueling. I don't launch things from this shipyard very often. Part of that is the fact that I don't get as many Kerbin-orbiting missions as I thought I would. The other is the aforementioned idiot manning the place... The probe reached its target position for contract before the day was out. Unfortunately, the replacement contract was a two-kerbal tourist mission to Jool. LSV House Atreides hadn't yet left for her big interplanetary tourist mission and she still had open seats, so I reluctantly made the decision to go ahead and wrap that tourist mission into Atreides's mission - there are now nine contracts riding on it. I wound up spending the day finishing getting things set up over Eeloo, so Atreides wouldn't have been able to depart anyway, but the delay there is still starting to get a bit ridiculous... I did at least finish setting things up over Eeloo. All six communications satellites are now in position, and as far as I'm concerned, the system-wide communications satellite network is complete. One last set of triangles for old time's sake... I will still need to build a ground station at the upcoming planned base on Eeloo, but that will be the last bit of communications hardware I'll need to install. I've also spent a fair amount of time with ScanSat Eeloo and at this point I've finished taking the biome scans. Based on those scans, I want a Highlands/Midlands interface, preferably one along the equator somewhere. I've got a spot marked that also happens to be close to an Ice Canyon biome, which also had a fair amount of resources that weren't to be found in the Highlands (Highlands looks like my best bet though). Corrino has finished and launched the Hellhound at this point (and at this point it's in a 54.7 by 54.1 kilometer equatorial orbit awaiting the go-ahead to land), and I'm eager to get down to the surface as soon as possible. Last thing that happened today was the completion, at long last, of the orbital shipyard for Moho at the Aban Pearl outpost on the surface. Fuel was transferred to the booster upon completion and engineer Anemy Kerman climbed into the cupola module. Though the launch pad was destroyed in the process (a fact that doesn't sting as much owing to the fact that the base had two launchpads), the launch was a success, with the new Nonne Ardere Yards coming on-line after attaining a 76.7 by 76.6 kilometer, 0.46° orbit. Getting this thing in place only took rolling back the Extraplanetary Launchpads mod to the same version I was using in KSP 1.6.1. Probably oughta report a bug or two in there there somewhere... Next session I'll be fueling the shipyard and beginning construction on space station Mohoport first thing. After that will be an Auk Ia flight to get tourists Kerwin and Burtop Kerman up to House Atreides; the plane will stop for refueling at space station Kerbinport en route. Once that's done and the plane is away, Atreides will be heading out for Dres first. Eleven worlds in the system are on her itinerary, so I might as well begin with the hard ones first. Corrino, meanwhile, is ready to return to Kerbin; I'm giving Atreides priority due to the extensive delay she's already experienced. The G-LOC that Corrino is carrying will be de-orbited upon her return and the hope is that this will unlock surface landing at Eeloo. Corrino herself will likely begin construction of a TBD 7e base-seeding rover when she's back home for delivery to Eeloo along with the single remaining outpost crew aboard. Looking forward to getting that done. Other than that I don't have much else going on; Atreides has tied up nine of my contracts, three more are waiting for time to elapse, and Corrino's got the exploration contract. The other two are survey missions, one at Laythe and one at Eve, both of which I can do at any time (translation: when I have far less going on). I'll keep y'all up to date on things and let you know how tomorrow goes as early as I can on Wednesday morning...not anticipating getting anything else done today.

I think so...

Are you on PC or console? If PC, go to the save directory for your career. You can copy off the quicksave file into another directory, rename it as persistence.sfs and then copy it over the corrupted file. You'll lose whatever progress you made between the last time you quicksaved and the time your persistence file borked, but you won't lose the career save entirely. Before you do this, check the size of your persistence file - if it's 1 kb, it's already toasted and you should feel free to do as I suggest. Might also check your Backup directories for anything recent. Worth looking in any event...I've had to pull my own career save out of the can this way twice since I started it. If on console, I'll pour out a forty for it...nothing I can suggest there, I'm afraid.

(1.8.1) Yesterday was spent finishing up preparations for LSV House Atreides's long-awaited interplanetary tourist and colonization mission as well as wrapping up LSV House Harkonnen's tourist mission. The day started with Roy Hinkley docked at space station Kerbinport, which had taken on six passengers delivered via an Auk XII 6-passenger spaceplane near the tail end of business on Wednesday. Hinkley departed the station and burned to intercept House Atreides, with flight time to intercept set at 26 minutes. Once Hinkley was away, pilot Gregeny Kerman joined pilot Aldler Kerman already in the pilot's seat of J. G. Backus docked at Kerbinport; decided to give him something to do while the tourists were appropriating his ride. Backus departed the station at that point and burned to intercept Samdock's Shipwreck, with flight time to the intercept set at seventeen minutes. At that point I got notice from House Harkonnen that her print of a Plane Pylon module for House Atreides was complete. The print was finalized and launched from Harkonnen after taking on fuel from the ship's stores. I'm posting this screenie because it's the only one I've got today that doesn't have the same damn plane in it. Boring as hell...looks like Harkonnen is taking a crap more than anything else...... Owing to some good fortune, Harkonnen and Atreides were in phase with one another when the Plane Pylon launched; after burning for plane alignment the Pylon burned for Atreides and rendezvoused with the ship just fourteen minutes later. During its flight over, Roy Hinkley aligned her plane with Atreides and Backus conducted its burn to set rendezvous with Samdock's Shipwreck; flight time to rendezvous was 47 minutes. The Plane Pylon docked to one of the seldomly used docking ports attached to Atreides's Bigby Orbital Workshop without incident (a trickier feat than it sounds, as the RCS thrusters on the Plane Pylon aren't particularly well balanced...). The Pylon's transfer stage was cut loose after docking and deorbited; surprisingly, the transfer stage would later be recovered successfully thanks to Stage Recovery - I hadn't designed that piece to be recoverable... After Roy Hinkley conducted the burn to set up rendezvous with Atreides (flight time to rendezvous 48 minutes), I had a free window to get a few extra idiots staffmembers assigned to the South Base outpost near KSC. Pilots Elfrod, Thomlas and Elon Kerman were all loaded aboard an Echo Flyer 7b quadcopter and flew the 3.1 kilometers distance to South Base, landing safely just outside the base. Thomlas EVA'd and connected the copter to the base via a Pathfinder Mineshaft Crew Tube, and then disconnected it after the others piled out through the tube before joining the others aboard. The 'copter was recovered, bringing this little interlude to a close. At this point, the only kerbal staffmember still available at KSC proper is once again pilot Lutop Kerman. Got a little tired of the others trying to hitch rides aboard my passenger planes... With the capability of docking a spaceplane now available and a window to do so still open, I ran out of excuses not to launch the second of two planned Auk XVIII 20-passenger spaceplanes to deliver the remaining passengers to House Atreides. Colonists Irrey, Camler, Jack, Debbus, Thomton, Desley, Jedster, Eldo, Anfel, Pawin, Jedlo and Marson Kerman along with tourists Ferke, Alger, Nellner, Siguki, Maxpond and Janfrey Kerman all boarded an Auk XVIII, which pre-flighted and then took off from KSC without delay. It's odd for me to not have a targeting meatball visible on the nav ball during a plane launch... The plane burned to a 104.9 by 99.8 kilometer, 0.09° LKO sixteen minutes into the flight (breaking atmo just short of the nine minute mark), then aligned with House Atreides and conducted a burn for rendezvous after a seven minute delay. Flight time to the rendezvous was 25 minutes, during which time Backus rendezvoused with Samdock's Shipwreck. Scientist Samdock Kerman EVA'd from their stricken Hitchhiker module and boarded Backus, which then began maneuvers to take it back to Kerbinport; total return flight time for Backus was 63 minutes. Roy Hinkley also arrived at Atreides and docked without incident about seven minutes ahead of the Auk, with her tourists joining the other colonists and tourists already aboard the Bus Module parked in Atreides's drydock. The Auk then rendezvoused with Atreides. Probably could've stood to have gotten this thing a little closer to the ship, methinks... Owing to a large distance at rendezvous and the relatively poor RCS characteristics of the Auk XVIII (still better than some of my other designs but not by much), docking took the better part of ten minutes in-game. Nevertheless, I was eventually able to get the Auk safely docked to House Atreides via the Plane Pylon without incident. Note to self - this would be a very bad time to engage Atreides's Alcubierre Drive...not unless you want plane scattered all over the place...... Once docked, the Auk transferred her eighteen passengers into the Bus Module, bringing the total number of passengers aboard to 44. Capacity of the Bus Module is 48, which makes me extra glad that I opted for a third Mk3 Passenger Cabin in the design when I was originally planning this mission instead of sticking to just two. I didn't overbook the flight... Its delivery job completed, the Auk departed from Atreides, burning to a 100.8 by 99.6 kilometer, 0.03° orbit in preparation for de-orbit and landing. Backus arrived at Kerbinport and docked safely. After Samdock transferred aboard, the Auk XII still docked to the station with Harkonnen's passengers finally was allowed to depart and a time for its deorbit was set up. The Auk XVIII was given clearance to deorbit and land first. De-orbit was successful but I did have an incident at landing that resulted in the loss of all twelve of the plane's engines as well as the horizontal stabilizer. Damn design is bouncy at landing when it's low on fuel, apparently. Still, it's better to get most of a plane back than none at all, right? I mean, the passengers would've survived, had there been any aboard at that point... Not exactly the best way to close out your day, but I still let the damage stand rather than revert for a better landing. It's not like my program is strapped for cash right now. Earlier this morning it was the Auk XII's turn to deorbit; the plane came down safely and landed without incident at KSC 09, in the process bringing two tourist and one rescue contract to a successful conclusion. Two replacement contracts were offered - a survey mission at Laythe and a satellite launch mission over Kerbin, both of which have been accepted and filed under the broad definition of "Sunday afternoon missions". Only have one other one of those at the moment, a mission to conduct a survey near the Echo 3 quadcopter parked at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve. At this point my KAC calendar has just one entry on it - the completion of the orbital shipyard for Moho, which is scheduled at this point to complete in three hours and 47 minutes. It does occur to me that I should visit the Aban Pearl outpost on Moho where the shipyard is being constructed to double-check on that time estimate, which will probably be the first thing I do next session. Other than that, though, I have two warp ships ready to head out to their destinations: LSV House Corrino has been ready for some time to head back to Eeloo to orbit, begin establishing communications and begin orbital resource surveys. She's got top priority for departure. After that it will be House Atreides's turn to go. Not sure which destination to head for first, but I'm leaning towards Dres since the colonists headed there have the longest-term contract. She'll be hitting most of the worlds in the system before she'll head home in any event. Other than that and my Sunday missions, I haven't got anything going on - Samdock will eventually head back up to Kerbinport when an opportunity arises and that's it for now. I'll be sure to keep y'all up to date as the interplanetary missions progress; hope to have some good progress to report to y'all on Monday.

(1.8.1) Had some pretty hefty amounts of traffic going on in my career save yesterday with one tourist mission about to wrap up and a hell of a lot of other missions getting underway. The day started over Duna with LSV House Harkonnen, where J. G. Backus had just arrived and docked and all preparations for the ship to return to Kerbin had been completed. Harkonnen broke Duna orbit and warped to Kerbin, arriving at 8,111.8 m/s. After fifteen warp-backs to bleed off the required amount of speed, the ship was able to settle into a 635.7 by 456.2 kilometer, 1.48° inclined orbit. Backus departed for space station Kerbinport as soon as Harkonnen secured from warp, rendezvousing with the space station after a 57 minute flight. While Backus was en route, the Boop-Boop 7w probe I launched over Mün on Tuesday made a third and final burn to reach a contract position of 1586.1 by 1103.8 kilometers at 165.05° inclination. The replacement contract turned out to be yet another six kerbal tourism mission. My original plan for this group was to send them out with House Harkonnen later on - refueling mass driver shots for the ship took place from the South Base outpost near KSC and SL Shai Hulud in high orbit next - but I realized later on in the day that LSV House Atreides, the mothership for the big interplanetary tourist and colonization mission just getting underway, would still have seats available, so I elected to roll this contract in with that mission as well. Everybody deserves to have eight contracts riding on a single flight at least once in their KSP careers, right? After beginning the print of a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft aboard LSV House Corrino in preparation for the ship's return to Eeloo (print time 46 minutes), it was time to start getting tourists and colonists to House Atreides. Twenty colonists were already at space station Kerbinport aboard Strange Cargo, Necessary Evil and Gilligan docked there, so the three ships departed in staggered intervals. Been a while since I've had the big ferries out of dock. Here's Strange Cargo departing. Ship looks weird without the old-style Rockomax decoupler amidships, IMHO... Strange Cargo departed first, burning to reach an interception point 23 minutes later and aligning its plane with that of Atreides. Necessary Evil departed ten minutes later, with its intercept point set for seventeen minutes after that; she also aligned planes with Atreides. Just before Gilligan was originally scheduled to depart though, Backus arrived and rendezvoused with the station, and before she could maneuver into dock, it was time for Strange Cargo to make her burn to set rendezvous with Atreides. SC's burn took place, with flight time to rendezvous set at 42 minutes. Backus then docked and Gilligan finally was allowed to depart. Being the show-off that he his, Jeb burned Gilligan straight for rendezvous with House Atreides immediately upon departing the station, with flight time set at 23 minutes - though Gilligan departed last, she wound up arriving at Atreides first... And now for a brief intermission...for no reason. Look, a Mun castle!!! Necessary Evil also conducted her burn to head to rendezvous; flight time was 49 minutes. House Corrino finished her print of the G-LOC next, and released the craft after fueling it with monopropellant. The G-LOC docked on one of Corrino's central ports, at which point the print of a Pink Noise 7a long-range communications satellite carrier began. Total print time there was 48 minutes and 38 seconds, during which time Gilligan, Strange Cargo and Necessary Evil all arrived and docked safely to House Atreides. Running out of docking ports awful fast here... The twenty kerbal passengers aboard the three ships all transferred aboard the Bus Module still currently in Atreides's drydock. This left sixteen kerbals (at the time) still scheduled to head to Atreides, with the original intention being to send up a second Auk XVIII 20-passenger spaceplane directly to the ship, but shortly after taking the above screenie I realized the flaw with that plan - there wouldn't be anywhere particularly convenient to park a plane for a tourist transfer - crew perhaps, but not tourists. I decided Atreides needed to have a Plane Pylon installed at that point. She couldn't do the job herself since she needed to keep the Bus Module in her bay and House Corrino's drydock was in use, but I still had the drydocks at the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyard and at House Harkonnen available. Harkonnen could get the job done faster (I really need to replace engineer Ceri Kerman at DP - she's always been a bonafide idiot), so that's where the print began; construction time was 68 minutes. Corrino completed her print of the Pink Noise shortly thereafter and I ended my day with refueling shots from South Base and Shai Hulud. At this point, House Corrino is ready to head back to Eeloo as soon as I can get an adequately large window of opportunity for the warp. I still needed to get Backus's tourists down from Kerbinport, so this morning I loaded the six new tourists I'd picked up in the wake of the Mün satellite mission aboard an Auk XII six-passenger spaceplane, which took off bound for Kerbinport. Sixty degrees positive pitch and everybody's doing fine. Had these tourists pull six gees at one point... After breaking atmo less than five minutes later, the Auk burned to rendezvous with the station, arriving and docking without incident 23 minutes later. Pilot Gregeny Kerman relinquished his seat aboard Roy Hinkley docked to the station and the six tourists boarded, while the five tourists still aboard Backus boarded the plane. That's all that's happened so far today. Current plan is for Roy Hinkley to depart the station for House Atreides to join the expedition as a fourth craft. Meanwhile, Backus will shortly depart on an orbital rescue mission to pick up Samdock Kerman. Plan there is for Samdock to ride down to the surface in the sixth seat currently available on the Auk. Might as well kill two birds with one stone, right? Other plans for the day are to get the Plane Pylon to House Atreides; the print is finished at this point and I need to get it headed that way. Once that's in place, the final plane flight can take place - this is liable to take up much of my time and attention if things go the way I think they're going to go. Assuming I get the remaining tourists and colonists to House Atreides today, she'll be ready to depart. Worlds on the itinerary include Moho, Duna, Ike, Dres, Laythe, Pol, Bop and Vall; there's even a tourist aboard with Mun and Minmus landings on their itinerary, so she'll be heading to a great many different places before everything's said and done. House Corrino is also ready to depart for Eeloo, and I'll be doing that if the opportunity arises. Only other contract I've got now is a survey mission at Eve near the Echo 3 quadcopter, which I may deal with if I find myself with more free time today than I anticipate. I also want to get a few extra staffmembers over to South Base as well. I'll let y'all know how the day goes.

I have both KIS and KAS installed - KIS version 1.24.7279, KAS version 1.5.7239.

(1.8.1) The last 24 hours have been quite eventful. I kicked it off with something I've been trying to for the last week or two - I was finally able to order up construction on a Dystopia Planitia 7 Moho orbital shipyard at the Aban Pearl outpost on Moho, with total construction time estimated at 17 hours and 23 minutes. It took rolling Extraplanetary Launchpads all the way back to version 6.4.0 (i.e. the same one I was using in KSP 1.6.1) to do it, but if the choice is between hearing AVC kvetch about the mod being out of date versus not being able to print at all, I'll take the kvetching. I've got young children so I'm used to it... After next ordering up a Boop-Boop 7w probe at the Non Caseus Yards over Mün to handle a loose satellite contract I've picked up, my next biggest priority for the day was to get the Spamcan 7c lander carrying tourist Gledorf Kerman off the surface of Duna and back to space station Dunaport. The timing of the launch was good - the lander launched successfully and rendezvoused with the station three minutes and 48 seconds later, docking without incident. Fuel supplies for the station were shot up via mass driver from the Enchova Central outpost on the surface, after which Gledorf boarded J. G. Backus docked at the station. Backus then departed Dunaport and burned to rendezvous with LSV House Harkonnen in high Duna orbit. Total flight time to that rendezvous was estimated at just under three hours total. After dealing with Backus's burn to set up its rendezvous with Harkonnen, I next turned my attention to LSV House Atreides in high Kerbin orbit. The ship's re-print of the Bus Module was finally complete and finalized after a 53 minute delay. All that fuss over three lousy Mk3 passenger cabins... The completion of the Bus Module meant that I could finally get the long-planned 38-kerbal interplanetary colonization mission underway. Colonists Danler, Mazon, Danlie, Ellmund, Joerim, Wehrner, Genefurt, Bartney, Halgar, Munmore, Tomeny, Jesemy, Chadfal, Berburry, Tilan, Lening, Ribdock, Tikin, Newvan and Viroly Kerman were all loaded into an Auk XVIII 20-passenger spaceplane, which took off from KSC 09 bound for space station Kerbinport after a 21 minute delay while the station came into position. During the wait, I ordered LSV House Corrino in high Kerbin orbit to begin printing up a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft in anticipation of its historic Eeloo flyby - total construction time was 46 minutes. Once again, we begin a colonization mission as we normally do - with RAPIER engine starts. Doing twelve this time. Launch of the Auk was a success, with the plane reaching rendezvous with the space station after a 28 minute flight (including take off). While en route to the station, NCY finished up its probe print. After fueling, the probe was released and burned to a 1100.9 by 24.8 kilometer, 1.14° inclined orbit on the first leg of its journey to get into the target position. House Corrino also completed its G-LOC print during the period; the new craft was fueled with monopropellant only and released, docking on one of Corrino's central ports. The Auk then docked at the station without incident, fulfilling a contract to expand Kerbinport with at least five additional seats in the process. The twenty colonists took up seats aboard Strange Cargo, Necessary Evil and Gilligan all docked to the station in preparation for delivery to House Atreides. Once all the passengers had de-planed, the Auk departed the station and deorbited. I fear the day that I finally take a wing off of one of my aircraft while flying past Mt. Killakerbal here. I really do... The plane landed relatively safely and intact...by which I mean that it bounced twice on touch down and took off two RAPIERs in the process, but no other parts were lost in the process. That job finished, I next turned my attention to LSV House Corrino. All preparations complete, the ship broke orbit over Kerbin and warped to Eeloo, successfully reaching the planet's SOI on a flyby trajectory at 8,358.9 m/s. Pilot Nellrey Kerman climbed aboard the G-LOC long enough to take a crew report before returning to one of Corrino's Bigby Orbital Workshop modules, after which the ship warped back to Kerbin, arriving at 1,638.9 m/s. A few quick warp maneuvers later, she settled into a 669.6 by 510.6 kilometer, 1.76° inclined orbit. Total flight time from Kerbin to Eeloo and then back to high Kerbin orbit was 8.5 minutes total. Upon establishing Kerbin orbit, Corrino transferred bipropellant fuel into the G-LOC and cut it loose, with the craft making its way down to a 668.2 by 100.0 kilometer, 1.8° orbit to close out the day yesterday. Backus arrived at House Harkonnen first thing this morning, docking without incident. That done, the G-LOC conducted a final burn prior to de-orbit, establishing itself at 99.6 by 98.6 kilometers and 0.02° inclination. A second burn of the Boop-Boop 7w over Mün took place, after which the G-LOC conducted its deorbit burn, ultimately landing 3.4 kilometers to the south of KSC to fulfill the latest exploration contract. I took this same screenshot just yesterday. Lighting conditions are a tad better today, though. With the new exploration contract, I have permission to orbit Eeloo; I have to get to orbit and then bring a craft back from orbit, so the building priorities for House Corrino will be a G-LOC first followed by a Pink Noise 7a (i.e. the long-distance model). She'll be heading back to Eeloo at the first available opportunity, with a second Pink Noise and ScanSat prints occurring while she's still there. House Harkonnen is ready to return her passengers to Kerbin at this point, though, so I'm liable to be dealing with that first today. There are no spaceplanes currently at Kerbinport so I'm going to have to send one up to get her passengers home at some point. I've also got three ferry ships ready to head to LSV House Atreides today, which I'll need to do sooner rather than later. I've got another 18 colonists to get up to Atreides from the surface, and since the intent was for the plane delivering these last kerbals was to head for Atreides directly, that means a second plane flight today. i suppose I could send the plane to Kerbinport after it has delivered its colonists to Atreides to pick up Harkonnen's passengers; fuel would become a concern there. The probe over Mün will likely reach its final position after its next burn today, which will be a contract done, and I've got a contract expiring at Mission Control soon as well; going to have to see what the replacement offering is there and hope it doesn't interfere with my current plans. Other than that I don't have anything on the KAC calendar until the shipyard's ready to go at Moho. I'm sure plenty will come up between now and when that happens, though. I did pick up another survey at Eve in the wake of the station expansion contract; fortunately, that one's in the vicinity of the Echo 3 quadcopter on the surface already, so that one should be pretty straightforward to do when I get a large enough window to deal with it. Plenty going on right now. I'll keep y'all updated as best I can.

Damn. What about the craft file for the Ikeport Core craft file specifically? I'm grasping at straws here... What about in CRP mode? Shouldn't make a difference. Not sure what this statement is about. I was trying to help someone on the Pathfinder thread recently who had this issue, but it wasn't something I was experiencing myself.

Did you follow the instructions I gave you exactly?

Yes, it's part of the process of setting up CRP mode, and it's the most tedious thing about the Pathfinder mod IMHO, but it's necessary if you want to use CRP mode. Had this same problem myself when I was using 1.3.x, and this process solved it. So - here's what you do: 1) Delete the WBI directories you've got already entirely. You need to start clean. Make sure you delete the WBIPlayMode.cfg file from the root GameData directory while you're at it. 2) Re-download the WBI mods you want if necessary, or just reinstall them if you've still got the zip files. 3) Fire up KSP. Go into any of your save files (doesn't matter which), hit the WBI button whilst looking at the space center and select "Pristine Mode". 4) Exit KSP. Fire KSP up again. 5) Go into your save file, hit the WBI button whilst looking at the space center and select "CRP Mode" (or whatever the damn button says - I'm not looking at it right now). 6) Exit KSP. Fire KSP up again. 7) Profit. I know the prospect of firing up the game three times sucks, but it should fix the issues you're seeing (keyword is should - if for some reason it doesn't, post back again and let us know; we'll figure out what's going on from there).

(1.8.1) It's been a good 24 hours, y'all. So as I mentioned in my last post, I was in a position where both LSV House Harkonnen over Tylo and LSV House Corrino over Moho were ready to head to their next destinations - Duna and Kerbin, respectively - and I anticipated spending a fair chunk of my day at warp. First up was House Harkonnen. Before heading out for Duna, one of the tourists aboard wanted to do a Laythe flyby. House Harkonnen over Tylo aimed directly at Laythe. Part of the fun of jumping around the inner Joolian system... Harkonnen warped over to Laythe, arriving seconds later before departing to head over Jool to gain speed for the warp to Duna. It's hard to tell in this screenshot, but this is called "cutting it close". The ship's on a direct course for Jool and the failsafe altitude for the Alcubierre Drive for Jool is 3000k. A few more seconds without a course change and the drive would no longer engage... Overshot on the speed ramp-up as it turned out but not too badly - Harkonnen departed Jool and warped to Duna, arriving at 3,223 m/s. Thirteen warp-back maneuvers later, the ship settled into a 411.2 by 360.9 kilometer, 2.87° inclined orbit. J. G. Backus docked to Harkonnen departed upon orbital entry and made her way to space station Dunaport, arriving and docking safely after a flight of just over two hours. While Backus was en route to Dunaport, the Tradidit Lestum Yards over Laythe finally completed their disassembly of the Auk XVII ordered up weeks ago that would've come out of the bay sideways; this was the plane that was ultimately ordered up successfully at the C. P. Baker outpost on the surface with its own headaches (which involved a full replacement of the nosecone assembly). Not really much to say about this one other than it wraps up a sidenote and all activities at Laythe, at least until LSV House Atreides arrives with the colonists bound for Baker. House Corrino also had a window for warping while Backus was en route to Dunaport. The ship broke orbit from Moho and warped to Kerbin, arriving at 6,111 m/s. Eight warpbacks were required to put her into a 711.9 by 587.8 kilometer, 1.23° inclined orbit over the planet. Upon orbital entry, the G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft she'd hauled to Kerbin from Moho departed and burned down to a 104.1 by 81.1 equatorial orbit in preparation for atmospheric entry. At that point, Backus arrived at Dunaport and docked without incident. Backus took on fuel from the station's stores while tourist Gledorf Kerman boarded the station's Spamcan 7c 4-passenger lander. The lander departed the station and conducted an immediate burn for deorbit and landing; the deorbit burn wrapped up my day yesterday, with the final landing burn happening first thing this morning; the craft touched down safely in one of Duna's Craters. Gledorf looks happy to be fulfilling a lifelong dream of staring out onto a Dunan landscape. Me, I'm just happy for a daytime screenie... Once the Spamcan was safely on the ground, it was time to deorbit the G-LOC. The craft deorbited safely and eventually touched down 1.9 kilometers south-southwest of the Administration Building at KSC. Crappy screenshot but it's one of the rare ones where both KSC and the South Base outpost are visible - South Base is that little lit-up cluster of buildings bottom left. The G-LOC's successful recovery brought the current exploration contract to a close. It was time at that point to wrap things up and get started with my paying working day, but I did take a moment before mashing 'quit' to go into Mission Control to take on the next exploration contract. ...aw yeah, baby. We're wrapping it all up now. Plans are underway now to send House Corrino to Eeloo, my final destination in the Kerbol system. So for today my first priority will be to get the Spamcan back up to Dunaport. That done and everything refueled, House Harkonnen will be making her way back to Kerbin; her passengers have all finished up their itineraries this point and it's time to get them home. House Corrino has some building to do - she'll need a G-LOC to take with her to Eeloo. If that wraps up, she can head straight there and back; ordinarily I'd stick around long enough to drop off communications satellites but the contract is not going to allow that just yet, so it should be a straight-forward there-and-back. That might happen today. House Atreides is close to being done with the Bus Module she's been printing up over the last few days, so her big interplanetary mission is about ready to kick off. I'll be sending up nearly forty kerbals to various destinations throughout the system, including twenty colonists for C. P. Baker on Laythe, nine for Sleipnir A on Dres and three for Petrobas 36 on Pol. Bop and Vall are also on tap for the six general tourists tagging along for the journey. I'll need some of my ferry ships for passenger delivery from Atreides to orbital space stations and I've got a contract to "expand" space station Kerbinport with five extra seats, so one of the spaceplanes scheduled to deliver passengers from Kerbin to Atreides will be making a stop at Kerbinport along the way. I have a satellite I need to begin printing up over Mun and some drilling to do at Bop, but other than that I don't have anything else going on contract-wise. Got an MC alarm up (I'm not doing that damn goo study at Ike because I know the game won't credit me when it's finished); don't know what the replacement contract will be and I certainly hope that I don't have to change my plans when the time comes. I've also got some extra personnel (of the less intelligent variety) at the space center that I plan to deliver to South Base when I get a free minute. Looks like I'll get to head to Eeloo before upgrading to 1.9, y'all. Looking forward to it.

Alright, thanks for the update.

I was thinking Ziggy Stardust my own self... (1.8.1) Had a hell of an end to my week last week - one of my kids wound up in the ER having needed his epi-pens while at school. He's fine; I'm annoyed at the teacher for a major brain fart but other than that no lasting harm done. Did kill my day off pretty effectively on Friday, and combined with the usual rigors of a weekend followed with a morning playing catch up, I don't have a great deal to report to y'all today. Going to be screenie-light too, I'm afraid... So in my last post, I was kind of up in the air about what to do with my day - I had a large window of time to kill before J. G. Backus en route to LSV House Harkonnen over Tylo arrived for docking. The third test flight of the Auk XVIII 20-passenger spaceplane was a complete success, so I didn't have much else to attend to during the period. I had mentioned that the window was large enough to begin the long-delayed survey mission to Eve's north pole, and that's what I wound up doing with my time - the Echo 3 quadcopter parked near the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve's surface took off and conducted the nearly 1,200 kilometer flight to the target zone, conducing seismic readings at the two target waypoints for contract. I noticed something while I was still in flight. This thing's not supposed to have "nuclear fuel" as one of its resources. Was damn glad to have it, though - stuff gave a kick to the SAFER reactor output when I really needed it... "Nuclear Fuel" is one of the Classic Stock resources utilized by Wild Blue mods such as Pathfinder and MOLE, both of which I used. I play my career save in CRP mode, which doesn't utilize any of the Classic Stock resources, so the Nuclear Fuel should not have been there. The fact that it was there indicated to me that I had missed a step during a recent update to the MOLE mod, so after finishing up the survey mission, I quit the game and did a full wipe and reinstall of Pathfinder and MOLE and reconfiguration to CRP mode, in the hopes that in doing so I'd regain functionality to my remote launchpads and shipyards (specifically the launchpad at the Aban Pearl outpost on Moho, where I've been trying without success to build an orbital shipyard for the better part of the week). Unfortunately, the reinstall did not do the trick, though I did ultimately come to the determination that it was only my craft that contained the Bigby Orbital Workshop from the MOLE mod that was causing trouble - all other craft I could still print up normally. While Pearl could not print a shipyard, she had no problems with printing up a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft, completing the print after a 59 minute delay. After the craft was fueled, it launched and burned for an intercept and rendezvous with LSV House Corrino still in orbit of Moho. The craft arrived and docked safely without incident after a 64 minute flight. Shortly afterwards, Backus arrived at House Harkonnen, docking without incident. Not much else to report for the weekend proper. I completed a parts test as a replacement to the Eve survey mission, and had pilot Shepry Kerman at Aban Pearl plant a flag on the Mohoan surface for contract. I also attempted a roll-back of the MOLE mod to see if that would fix the issues with Aban Pearl and allow the outpost to begin printing the shipyard. Didn't work, I'm afraid. Only things to report so far for my day today are a transfer of Rocket Parts via mass driver from the South Base outpost near KSC to LSV House Atreides in Kerbin orbit and the successful return flight of Echo 3 to ALK. The first of these ensures that Atreides will be able to complete the re-print of the Bus Module it needs for its planned huge interplanetary mission, the second wraps up operations at Eve for the time being. So the next thing on my horizon is warping. I can either get House Harkonnen to Duna for the final leg of its current tourist mission next or I can have House Corrino get home from Moho with the GLOC in an effort to continue system exploration missions, possibly unlocking Eeloo (i.e. the last stop in the system). Assuming Harkonnen goes to Duna, I've got one tourist heading towards the surface, and when that's happened she can head for Kerbin to close things out. Time permitting, I may try to do both but I wouldn't count on that happening today. I've still got the Tradidit Lestum Shipyards at Laythe recycling the print of a plane from a couple of weeks ago, Atreides printing the Bus Module and an MC alarm in my KAC calendar (i.e. i'm waiting for a lame contract offer to expire rather than refusing it outright), but that's it. The big tourist mission is riding on the Bus Module and it can't get underway until that's ready to go - which will be soon now. I've recently picked up a mission for a new satellite over Mün, so I can get that started, and I've got a new mission to add five seats to Kerbinport. I can probably take care of that by having one of the two spaceplanes scheduled to head to Atreides stop by Kerbinport and I believe that was part of the plan there anyway, so it dovetails. I've also now got a new mission to drill at Bop and put the contents in orbit over Jool, an ore-con I can deal with whenever I feel ready to do so. So not much going on of note. Hope to have more to report to y'all tomorrow. More screenies too...can't really post just one o' thems...

Did you switch to Pristine Mode at any point?

Are you switching directly between Classic Stock and CRP? If so, switch to Pristine mode first before switching to CRP. And make sure you completely exit the game after each switch (that bit probably goes without saying but I'll say it anyway).

Did some more experimentation today - it's definitely all of my craft with a BOW that I can't print anymore. I remembered that I did have a craft with a Pipeline without a BOW (namely the mass driver prow I installed aboard SL Shai Hulud) and was able to load it for printing at Aban Pearl without issue. Not just the Pathfinder Rangelands that are having problems. For good measure I tried to print up the same shipyard craft file aboard LSV House Corrino (which has a MOLE Mk1 Drydock). Rather than loading correctly, the ship just kinda pooped out the shipyard...would've kept the end result but I figured that it was Kraken-bait...

Need to report an issue; pretty sure it's a MOLE-based issue but I could be mistaken. So, I've been attempting lately to fill out my Aban Pearl outpost (a Pathfinder base) on Moho. That job is done, so my attention has been attempting to turn to an orbital shipyard. Every time I attempt to load the shipyard craft file up in the outpost's Rangeland, though, it summons a Kraken (sometimes taking the base with it, other times just summoning the shipyard into existence but sideways and several meters away from the base proper). Now, I am able to load up other craft files into the Rangeland for printing with no issues - it replies with the standard amount of resources required for construction as normal. I did some experimentation last night and have come to the determination (why I'm posting about this on the MOLE thread) that it's only my craft files that contain Orbital Pipelines and/or Bigby Workshops that are summoning Krakens. Here is the log file for the session in which I did my experimentation. For good measure, here is the craft file for the Ikeport Core 7, the orbital shipyard design I'm attempting to build. Using a clean install in CRP mode of MOLE 1.21.1, Buffalo 2.8.1 and Pathfinder 1.35.0 with WildBlueTools 1.75.0 on KSP 1.8.1. If you need any more information from me or need me to do more experimentation, let me know.

(1.8.1) Fairly minimal day to report to all y'all, though I did get some fairly major things accomplished. The day started with the Tango 3 rover, freshly off the presses at the Usumacinta outpost on the surface of Tylo with pilot Dunfred Kerman aboard. The rover proceeded the 175 meters distance out to the Spamcan 7e lander, which had been waiting for a refuel operation with tourist Nafel Kerman aboard for the better part of a Kerbin day. Upon arrival, Dunfred got out of the rover, discovering its major design flaw in the process: there was no provision made for anybody riding it to get back into the passenger cabins afterwards. This will be something I'll have to address if and when I can get OSE back up and running once again. Anyway, Dunfred hooked Tango 3 up to the Spamcan, at which point its load of fuel supplies were transferred into the lander. Dunfred hiked the distance back to Usumacinta, after which the rover proceeded back as well. Dunfred went ahead and attached Tango 3 to Usumacinta for refueling operations and general storage, at which point he rejoined his fellow crewmates aboard the outpost. At that point, with no further reason for delay, the Spamcan 7e launched and burned to meet up with space station Tyloport, rendezvousing with the station after a 35 minute flight. Spamcan 7e approaching Tyloport, with Vall and Laythe visible in the background. After a much longer surface excursion than originally planned, the Spamcan finally docked safely back at Tyloport, at which point Nafel transferred over to J. G. Backus docked at the station. Fuel supplies were shot up to Tyloport from Usumacinta via mass driver, at which point Backus departed Tyloport and began maneuvering to head towards LSV House Harkonnen in high Tylo orbit. The craft reached an intersect point with Harkonnen after a seventeen minute flight and burned for rendezvous at that point. Rendezvous is scheduled to take place in just under 3.5 hours. Most of the rest of my playing day yesterday was spent working on the Auk XVIII 20-passenger spaceplane. The original design had a pair of six engine RAPIER clusters, which proved to be a bad design owing to the fact that they all cooked each other off during the initial test flight. The redesign saw their with a pair of engine quads and the replacement of the tail unit with a third engine quad, which had the unfortunate side effect of shortening up the craft's length (fuselage length being one of the two critical factors - the other being mass - I use to determine all my design numbers). FAR was giving me both Mw and Lß reds for Mach 3 at 15 kilometers with bad results for the dynamic stability simulations under those conditions as well, ordinarily a sign to move the wings back (or lengthen the fuselage, whatever gets the CoM forward) and lengthen the fin, respectively. But I elected to be stubborn instead...and to conduct a test flight with no-one aboard, just in case I was being dumb and stubborn. The second test flight did a little better in that the plane made it off the ground intact, but the engines went to closed cycle fairly soon after takeoff - a sign of insufficient intakes. Back to the SPH for some structural intakes after which a third test flight took place. I'm happy to report that the third flight was a complete success, with the plane taking off, docking at space station Kerbinport, deorbiting and landing without issue. I credit the Atmosphere Autopilot fly-by-wire mod for keeping the plane stable through the indicated unstable flight regime......truly a king among KSP mods there. Auk XVIII on her third shakedown flight passing Mount Killakerbal nearing final approach to KSC 09. Flying by this mountain always makes me more than a little bit nervous... Now, if I really wanted this thing to look like a space shuttle, what part(s) do I need to stick on the nose? I've never figured that one out... All I have to report of note to y'all today, aside from efforts to print an orbital shipyard at the Aban Pearl outpost on Moho. I've still got a Squad of Krakens there - some of which have resulted in the base's destruction. Better believe I'm counting on the power of quicksave-and-revert there. The hope that it had just been a conflict with data between the north and south pads proved to be a false one, unfortunately. If there's a positive to this effort, it's that I cleaned up a bunch of old Extraplanetary Launchpad data from my quicksaves...shaved off five megabytes from the length of my persistence file in the process (currently sitting at 47 MB, so still fairly substantial...). Plan for today: the big one is getting Backus back to Harkonnen. Once that's done, Harkonnen will be heading out for Duna after a quick Laythe flyby. Backus has a passenger wanting to land on Duna, after which it will be time to head back to Kerbin. I'll also be heading back out to Pearl to try some other print jobs. If I can get something else to print, I'll at least know that it's something endemic to the shipyard design that's causing difficulties and not the ExL mod in general. If not, I may try a print somewhere else just to see if it's something about Pearl itself. Either way, I might have to delve into craft files to ultimately track down what's going on. LSV House Atreides currently in high Kerbin orbit is still printing up its Bus Module, but aside from that all of the needed infrastructure for her big interplanetary mission is now in place and ready to go. Plan there is to send up two groups of nineteen kerbals each in Auk XVIIIs, one of which will deliver their passengers to space station Kerbinport while the other flies directly to Atreides. Ferry craft at Kerbinport will then deliver the passengers to Atreides and assist with passenger transport to orbital space stations at the various destination bodies for whatever needs to happen there. It's going to be a huge mission; I anticipate needing at least two of my larger Superfortress 7-type ferry ships and maybe one of the Minnow 7s at a minimum. No real reason why I couldn't go ahead and start getting people in place. Still got a fairly large time window at the moment before Backus gets to Harkonnen (which is why I did Auk XVIII test flights), so I might go ahead with the long-delayed survey mission to Eve's north pole today. Who knows?

(1.8.1) I've had a reasonably busy past 48 hours; events in RL kept me from affecting a report yesterday, which was unfortunate but unavoidable. Got plenty to talk about today. Going to be screenie-light though; I had them, just most of them were boring as hell... With the need to perform some repairs during the final stages of construction at the Aban Pearl outpost on Moho, my day began in the VAB with a very quick redesign of the Phase 3 module recently deployed at the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo. All that happened there was the addition of a Pathfinder Walkway and Pipeline mass driver to the KIS storage unit. While I was still there, I went ahead and transferred the Bus Module unit design from the SPH to the VAB and made sure to save it as a VAB design. That job done, my next stop was LSV House Atreides in high Kerbin orbit, where I ordered up the updated Bus Module; construction time will be nineteen hours and 4 minutes. Atreides will require a single resupply of Rocket Parts to complete the module about 2/3 of the way through. About this time, the Crater Maker Heavy 7 16-passenger lander recently launched from the Non Caseus Yards over Mün reached its intercept point with space station Munport and burned to set up a rendezvous. Flight time to rendezvous was 43 minutes, during which time the revised Phase 3 module was ordered up at Aban Pearl, with total print time estimated at 66 minutes. The Crater Maker made its rendezvous with Munport and docked without incident. Before I could affect further operations, though, the Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane recently returned to Kerbin from Minmus was ready to make its second aerobraking pass. Things on fire tend to be interesting, right? The craft completed its pass and then conducted a series of relatively small burns to put it into a 153.5 by 75.1 kilometer, 0.39° orbit. I later conducted a subsequent burn to adjust this to a 75.6 by 75.0 kilometer orbit in preparation for landing. In between, NCY completed its print of a Plane Pylon module for Munport and launched it after fueling. The Plane Pylon burned to set an intercept with Munport, with flight time to that intercept set at sixteen minutes. At intercept, the Pylon burned to align planes and set up a rendezvous with Munport to close up the day on Monday; flight time to rendezvous was two hours even. While the Plane Pylon was en route to intercept and after an eleven minute delay, Aban Pearl completed its print of the Phase 3 module. The KIS container was recycled after its contents - 12 Mineshaft Crew Tubes, the Walkway and the Pipeline - were transferred into the base for future installation. Yesterday's activities kicked off with the Auk, which was deorbited and affected a safe landing at KSC 09, bringing its delivery mission to a close after nearly three weeks in space. The twelve colonists it delivered to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus still have at least another forty days before their contracts are up and they can join the program. I'm just glad to have it off my plate, honestly. That job done, my attention returned to the Crater Maker at Munport. Fuel supplies were transferred to the lander from the space station and the twelve colonists that had been awaiting transportation to the Piper Alpha outpost on the Munar surface were finally able to board for departure. The lander affected a successful deorbit and landed safely at Piper Alpha. That lander is resting more securely than it looks at first glance. I-beams rock. Outpost engineer Sherlie Kerman EVA'd to hook up the lander to the outpost and after some minor crew shuffling, the new colonists boarded one of PA's two Castillo modules, where they will stay for the next 42 days. The lander took on fuel supplies from the outpost, at which point Sherlie detached it from the outpost and resumed her post in PA's factory module. I took a quick opportunity to finish up a drilling contract for 400 units of ore from Mun, after which the Crater Maker launched to return to Munport, affecting a safe return and docking after an 85 minute flight. During that same time, the Plane Pylon also arrived at Munport and affected a safe docking maneuver of its own. Once fuel supplies were transferred up to Munport from the Boot Hill equatorial outpost on the Munar surface, all ongoing operations at Mun were finally brought to a close. I wrapped up the day at Aban Pearl, with engineer Anemy Kerman going on EVA to install and inflate the new Walkway module, attach the Factory module to it, and replace the existing badly-oriented Pipeline mass driver module with the new module. She then rejoined her fellow crewmates and over the next few hours the Factory Module, Observatory and new Pipeline module were all inflated and brought online. I'm happy to report this morning that construction on Aban Pearl is now 100% complete, just leaving Eeloo as the only world in the system without a permanent kerbal presence on it. I did realize during the final stages of Pearl's construction that I had neglected to reset WBI to CRP mode after a recent update to the MOLE mod, and efforts to fix this oversight (namely two restarts of the game) effectively put the kibosh on any further activities for yesterday. I just count myself lucky that I was able to get Pearl finished up...indeed, I think it's because I was playing in an unstable hybrid state between CRP mode and Classic Stock mode that let me finish the base up faster than I ordinarily would've, but I could've just as easily been visited by the Kraken... Which is what happened this morning out at Pearl when I attempted to order up construction on the Moho orbital shipyard. After the third attempt and revert there, I decided to table that for now and went over to Usumacinta, where the Botulism 7 refuel rover had been ready to go for about the past twenty minutes. After a false start there (got to remember to pick the right clock facing for those SPH builds), the new rover rolled off the pad with outpost commander pilot Dunfred Kerman aboard. Outpost engineer Geoffrod Kerman EVA'd briefly to install a Mineshaft Crew Tube to which to hook up the new rover - designated Tango 3 - for fueling, but that proved to be unnecessary for the time being. Owing to the reverts this morning, I didn't have time to perform Tango 3's first mission, which is to refuel the Spamcan 7e lander with tourist Nafel Kerman aboard and already at the surface 175 meters from the outpost. That'll be first on the agenda in my next session. So the plan for today is to get the Spamcan 7e back into Tylo orbit after fueling and then get it to space station Tyloport, where J. G. Backus is waiting to pick up Nafel. That done, Backus will head to LSV House Harkonnen in high Tylo orbit for the final stage of her ongoing interplanetary tourist mission - she'll be heading to Duna after a quick Laythe flyby. I need to figure out what's going on with Aban Pearl and why trying to just get the outpost to print a shipyard is breaking things. I suspect it's because I'm trying to use the north pad for construction when it was the south pad that was last used for construction, and if that's all it is I can just use the south pad. Kinda hoping that's all it is - I've still got a G-LOC to build there to send back to Kerbin, which I can't do if I can't print things. Longer term, I have a plan for revisions to the failed Auk XVIII 20-passenger spacelane that cooked off all its engines at launch last week, and I hope to be able to implement that plan today or tomorrow for a new test flight. I'm highly confident that the new Bus Module won't be sticking out of the side of Atreides's drydock this next time and so I need to finish getting ready for her big interplanetary mission quickly; the plane is part of those plans, so I need to get that done. Other than that, the only other thing I've got in the pipe is the long-delayed survey mission to Eve's north pole, which I hope to take care of soon. Replacement mission for the Mun drilling was to plant a flag on Moho, which I'll do as soon as I can figure out what's breaking AP's launch pads (higher priorities at the moment, see). I'll keep y'all updated.

Yeah, if I knew what was causing those I'd do something about it. They haven't been a hindrance to my gameplay so far (except once), so I'm just living with it. All the same, I'm hoping they'll go away when I can finally make the switch to 1.9.x.

(1.8.1) Had a pretty busy weekend this past weekend with a fair amount to talk about in my log for a Monday. Been a while... The weekend kicked off on Friday at the Aban Pearl outpost on Moho, where on Thursday completion of the non-Konkrete structures had been delayed due to a Squad of Krakens blowing up my base repeatedly. The four remaining Pathfinder Chuckwagon modules were finally inflated successfully without subsequent explosions. That's the way it should look, dadgummit... After attaching exterior lights to the Chuckwagons, engineer Anemy Kerman proceeded with the next portion of base construction - getting the Castillo modules into place. That began with the attachment and inflation of the main walkway unit followed by the attachment of the main Castillo dome to the far end of the walkway. To facilitate the attachment of the remaining modules, the Hotel 1 rover proceeded over to where Anemy was working. Nothing particularly interesting about this screenshot, but night vision is almost always cool... Once in position, Anemy proceeded to attach the rest of the base structure boxes to Hotel 1 for later deployment. Before calling things done for the time being, she went ahead and re-attached a Mineshaft Crew tube to the side of the nearby Hotel 2 rover as well. About that time, word came from the Nomina Perplexa Yards over Tylo - the print of the Spamcan 7e 6-passenger heavy lander was complete. The Usumacinta outpost on the surface subsequently sent up replacement Rocket Parts and some desperately needed fuel supplies to the shipyard via mass driver, at which point the new lander launched. Spamcan 7e at launch, with Jool, Laythe and Vall all visible in the background. The Spamcan 7e set course for space station Tyloport. Flight time from launch to rendezvous was 66 minutes, during which time the Auk XVI 12-passenger plane I had sent out to Minmus to deliver a group of colonists finally returned to Kerbin after a twelve-day return flight; the plane aerobraked to a 5,058.4 by 47.3 kilometer, 0.02° inclined orbit. I had other things I wanted to do besides deal with a plane landing, so I kept it up high for now - it will come back to periapsis in just over five hours. At that point the new lander affected its rendezvous with Tyloport. Magenta square!!! Rendezvous and docking were both successful, and after the station transferred fuel supplies over, tourist Nafel Kerman transferred from J. G. Backus already docked at Tyloport to the Spamcan, which then departed. After a one orbit delay, the Spamcan 7e made its historic descent to the surface of Tylo (historic in that it was the first time I landed something on the moon without crashing it in the process), landing 206 meters to the west of Usumacinta and fulfilling that portion of Nafel's itinerary to close out the day. Nighttime, of course. Because god forbid I ever would actually want to show y'all what my designs look like. At least Nafel seems happy... Unfortunately, the lander put down outside the fifty meter limit imposed by KAS/KIS and it didn't have sufficient fuel to attempt to land again, so I hit on the idea of building a rover to go out to the lander in order to refuel it (and in the future to offload passengers if necessary). I hit the SPH first thing on Saturday, with the end result of my Spamcan-servicing craft dubbed the Botulism 7. Something very offputting about this design...I can't quite put my finger on it either... I did spend some time driving it around on Kerbin afterwards just to make sure I wasn't going to blow any tires, and while it won't go very fast while fully loaded it should handle itself well enough on flat terrain like what I've got at Usumacinta. Unfortunately, when I went back out to Usumacinta to order up the print, the main walkway between the tent portion of the base and the main Castillo decided to spontaneously combust and I had to change my priorities. So that's all i managed to get done Saturday. Anticipating the situation like I experienced with the C. P. Baker base out on Laythe wherein all the walkways blew themselves up, I began my day on Sunday with the design of the Phase III module, a KIS container with a dozen Mineshaft Crew Tubes stuffed inside. After piling the crew out of the Foundry module (on the Castillo side) of Usumacinta and having them walk over to the original base (where the launchpads were located), a Phase III module was ordered up; total print time was 57 minutes. Spent the rest of the day at Aban Pearl, which had printed sufficient Konkrete to deploy the main dome. After deployment, Anemy proceeded with the attachment of the remaining base structures. Before the end of the day, the base's ground station transmitter was up and running as well as the ground-based Pipeline mass driver. I only have the Foundry, Depot and Observatory left to go before base construction is complete at Pearl - not quite where I wanted to be at this point, but further along than I honestly thought I'd be this morning. I did have two snags there - one of the Walkways was attached wrong and blew itself up, and the Pipeline got installed sideways - it's pointing northward instead of eastward. That wouldn't be a big deal except that the placement interferes with the intended placement of the observatory module. I have yet to decide how I will ultimately want to correct all this, but I probably will before finishing things up at Pearl. The shenanigans at Pearl did wind up delaying a few ongoing construction projects, which I went ahead and began finishing up earlier this morning. The Non Caseus Yards over Mün finished up its print of a Crater Maker Heavy 7 16-passenger lander after a delay of one hour and fifty minutes. After transferring over fuel, the new lander launched from the shipyard. That's why this design bugs me...it's kinda reminiscent of a squid. Considering how many Krakens I've experienced lately.... Once clear of the bay, the lander burned to set an intercept with space station Munport; intercept will occur in sixteen minutes. Next up was the print of the Bus Module aboard LSV House Atreides in high Kerbin orbit, which unfortunately didn't go quite according to plan. Ugh. Do you guys seriously not know which direction to point this stuff in? The sideways print might've still been acceptable had the nascent Bus Module not been directly underneath one of Atreides's conventional engines. I reluctantly recycled the module, sending up new Rocket Parts from the South Base outpost near KSC via mass driver for another attempt. I'll be heading into the VAB later today so that the final Bus Module will face the correct way (i.e. parallel to Atreides's drydock). The further delay at least gives me a chance to fix the Auk XVIII 20-passenger spaceplane; I have yet to conduct the necessary re-design there. Finally, the Phase III module at Usumacinta completed printing; after the 12 Mineshafts were transferred into the base, the KIS container was recycled and then outpost engineer Geoffrod Kerman went ahead and used a pair of Mineshafts to put the base back together again. Job done and everyone moved back to the Foundry module, Usumacinta began the print of a Botulism 7; total construction time is anticipated to take six hours and 25 minutes. I also ordered up a long-delayed Plane Pylon for Munport at NCY; it will be finished in 77 minutes. So today I plan to kick things off with getting the Bus Module restarted aboard Atreides, followed by getting the Crater Maker on course to Munport. I've had colonists bound for the Piper Alpha outpost on the Münar surface stuck aboard the station for a while now, and it'll be nice to finally get them where they're going. After that it's back to Pearl to try and see about fixing the issues I had with construction as well as to get the new structures inflated, after which it should be time to deal with more Auk aerobraking and getting the Plane Pylon installed at Munport. I do hope to be able to get to the Botulism print done today so I can get the Spamcan back up to Tyloport; LSV House Harkonnen currently in orbit can't leave until J. G. Backus returns, and Backus can't leave Tyloport until Nafel is aboard. Not much else is on my immediate horizon; I've still got a plane being broken down over Laythe and I still need to do a survey mission to Eve's north pole at some point. Also have some extra crewmen at this point to assign to South Base; been looking for an excuse to get them over there for a while now. I'll be sure to keep y'all updated.

Well, I hate to tell you this, but that's not going to work. Best you could probably do is put in a belly docking port on the plane (preferably somewhere amidships) and launch a separate Alcubierre carrier craft with as much space as you can manage for it either forward or aft of the Alcubierre Drive proper. The size of the Alcubierre engine you choose is going to limit how big your plane can physically be. For example, if you base the carrier on a 2.5 meter drive and you have nothing forward of it except perhaps the control module and a docking port for the plane, you've got in the neighborhood of 15-20 meters in all three dimensions in which to fit the plane. With a big plane, you're going to want the three meter z-drive model. Smaller planes, you can't really go wrong with the 2.5 meter drive. Make sure the entire plane fits inside the bubble. Nothing worse than taking a plane at warp someplace, getting there and finding the tail fin sheared off during warp. Speaking from personal experience here - that really increases the tendency for the plane to want to sideslip...

None, last I checked. Last time I attempted to de-orbit an Alcubierre-capable probe, the thing's speed increased as it got deeper into Kerbin's atmosphere...this with a pair of 10 meter heat shields attached, mind you. It's all about the difference in the way FAR calculates drag. That said, I do have both mods installed - FAR works just fine for my planes, and my warp ships fly without issue between planets and moons all the time. Just don't expect to be able to make a warp-capable spaceplane if you're using FAR.

(1.8.1) Yesterday went pretty much as I expected it to, which is more than I can say for things these past couple of weeks. As mentioned in my last post, I decided to go ahead and forego the desperately needed necessary changes to the design of the Auk XVIII 20-passenger spaceplane that became readily apparent during its test flight, and instead opted to go ahead and get LSV House Harkonnen from Bop to Tylo. The ship's Alcubierre Drive engaged and she broke orbit. Upon departure from Bop's SOI, I found that the ship's speed relative to Tylo was already below what it needed to be for a direct orbital entry (630 m/s relative to be exact), so she went straight there and after a little bit of maneuvering settled into a 2,700.9 by 385.1 kilometer, 5.88° inclined orbit. Apoapsis is a bit higher than I'd like it to be but that's something I can burn out around periapsis if I feel the need to do so. Upon orbital establishment, J. G. Backus docked to Harkonnen departed and burned for an intercept with space station Tyloport, reaching the intercept point about an hour-and-a-half later, at which point she burned to set up a rendezvous. Rendezvous occurred 51 minutes later. I hear tell that Tylo's surface texture has been improved in 1.9. Too bad that A) it'll be at least another month before I could conceivably verify that and B) my hardware hasn't changed since 2015 and isn't liable to anytime soon, so who cares... Docking occurred without incident. At this point Backus's mission is in a holding pattern until the orbital Nomina Perplexa Shipyards over Tylo finish up the print of the Spamcan 7e heavy lander. Wait time there should be just over 2.5 hours if the KAC alarm schedule in the above screenie is to be believed... After Backus docked I checked in at the Aban Pearl outpost on the surface of Moho, and discovered that the print of the Phase 2 base-parts module was in fact much further along than anticipated: the estimated print time decreased immediately to just over five minutes. Pearl completed the print, at which point the base structures were transferred into positions closest to where they would be installed and the storage containers recycled. Engineers Anemy and Gwenuki Kerman then took turns putting the structures into place, which is what I did for the rest of my day yesterday. I nearly completed the tent city portion of the base last night; alas that after a certain point, another Squad of Krakens decided to descend upon my base - after the third spontaneous combustion and revert, I decided to go ahead and call it a day. It was a productive day though - aside from 4 Chuckwagons to store extra Rocket Parts and Konkrete and some exterior lights, the tent city is finished and the Castillo modules just need to get sufficient Konkrete to begin putting up. Aban Pearl on Moho as of this morning, where it's going to night for quite a little while just yet... Owing to an early morning doctor's visit today, I haven't yet had opportunity to play today. I'm giving priority to finishing up Pearl though; I hope to be able to report that the base is complete on Monday morning with some inroads made towards building a craft to return to Kerbin. I anticipate the Spamcan will also finish its print today, at which point an attempt will be made to land tourist Nafel Kerman at the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo - the lander's going to be one-way based on the design unless I'm much very much mistaken, so a surface refuel op will be necessary. After that I've got an Auk XVI 12-passenger plane coming back from an extended trip out to Minmus that's about made it home to land. A Crater Maker Heavy 7 16-passenger lander under construction at the Non Casueus Yards over Mün is also nearing completion, after which I intend to build a spaceplane pylon for space station Munport to avoid the difficulties I had with getting the batch of colonists already there in the future. The lander itself is scheduled to take said colonists down to the Piper Alpha outpost on the surface, and since the Heavy 7 is designed for Duna landings, I don't anticipate problems there. I'm going to have to get the Auk XVIII redesigned if I really intend to use it to send up the passengers for the big interplanetary mission I've got set up, especially since the Bus Module currently under construction aboard LSV House Atreides is getting reasonably close to completion as well. Only other things on the horizon aside from the big mission are a drilling mission at Mün (should be easy enough) and the long-delayed survey mission to Eve's north pole, which has been awaiting a relatively quiet Sunday for a while now. I'll let y'all know how the weekend goes; hope to have something more substantial for all y'all then.

<sigh /> Well, it was fun while it lasted. Typical cycle...Squad updates the game, I wait for my mods to update, by the time they're all updated I get a month on the outside before Squad updates the game again. A month is generous...there was one time where it was literally a day (I want to say that was from 1.0.5 to 1.1). Anyways... (1.8.1) In case y'all missed it, 1.9 dropped yesterday. As usual, I'll be waiting at least one month before I consider updating to give modders a chance to get their mods up to date, and then I'll have to consider whether or not to continue my current career save or start anew. At this point in the career save I started back in 1.4, I've got just Eeloo left to visit/colonize. I think I might need to start a new career at this point given that the persistence file is now clocking in at 50 MB of data (I wrote a two-volume, 1500 page RPG system once that was half that size for comparison), so I'm going to be booking it to try and make that happen... My day yesterday started with an update to my WildBlue Industries mods - Pathfinder, Buffalo and MOLE - to their latest versions. The update for me was largely a quality of life upgrade, as it allowed me to stow multiple Pathfinder base parts in a relatively small number of storage bins once again. This in turn made my ongoing major efforts for this week - to repair the Auk XVII 24-passenger plane recently built and damage at release at the C.P. Baker outpost on Laythe and to fill out the nascent Aban Pearl outpost on Moho - far more accomplishable. Gameplay itself resumed at Baker, where the crew completed the print of the Wisent 7d utility rover started up late in the day on Tuesday. After transferring a supply of Liquid Fuel to the craft, engineer Enfry Kerman climbed aboard and the new rover drove over to the wounded bird on runway Baker 36. Upon arrival, Enfry constructed a new nose cone assembly. NCS Adapter, check. Avionics hub, check. Communotron antenna, check. Working fabrication labs...still trying to get that one done...... Once assembly was completed, Enfry successfully mounted the new nose cone to the plane. Plane? I don't see a plane here...mainly on account of FREAKIN' NIGHT AGAIN!!! Repairs complete, Enfry's next task was to tow the plane into a position for takeoff. Here I ran into a little bit of a snag...while I had included a Mineshaft Crew Tube on the Wisent for the job, I had failed to include a second one to attach to the plane so that it could be utilized for towing. Baker had one available though, so Enfry ran all the way back to the outpost to go grab it before running all the way back again. The connector was mounted to the plane and Enfry successfully attached the plane to the rover, after which towing commenced. You ever done a seven-point turn with a two hundred tonne, fully fueled rocketplane attached to your hitch? Yeah, it's a bit nerve-wracking... Enfry didn't want to press her luck, so the plane was only towed (in reverse, mind you) about two hundred meters further south down the runway. Enfry really should've towed it all the way to the end to give the plane maximum takeoff distance as things turned out, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Job done, Enfry detached the rover from the plane, retrieved and stowed the towing-end Mineshaft collar, drove the Wisent back to the outpost proper and then resumed her post aboard the outpost's Factory module. Once safely aboard, it was time to get the bird out of there. I've been waiting for this damn plane to get built and into space for a long time...bad lighting or no, you better believe I took a screenie of the moment. The plane did run out of Runway space but by then it had sufficient speed for takeoff; it proceeded to a rendezvous with space station Laytheport upon breaking atmosphere. Auk XVII over Laythe, the new wallpaper for the day... Flight time to rendezvous was 43 minutes and despite grazing the atmosphere at rendezvous, the plane arrived at Laytheport safely. I did have one minor issue upon arrival - there were already two planes docked up at the station, which meant finagling the usual docking procedure so the new plane could all fit. Among other things, I had to stow the station's solar panels and radiator arrays. But ultimately, the Auk docked without incident. I knew the Auk XVII was a big plane. Just didn't quite realize how big...it's damn near the same length as the assembled space station... Not much else happened yesterday. I did find myself in the SPH at one point for the design of Phase 2, the follow up to the prior Phase 1 module successfully utilized at Aban Pearl for the initial base expansion. Thanks to the WBI update, I was able to get the rest of the intended base structures - including all the Castillo modules - into some storage structures. Phase 2 is now under construction at Aban Pearl, with a total expected construction time of just five-and-a-half hours. I really kinda shocked at just how little it's going to take to get Aban Pearl up to full capability. Might be using this same strategy when the time comes to go to Eeloo. Day wrapped up yesterday with a mass driver shot of Rocket Parts from the South Base outpost near KSC to LSV House Atreides in orbit; Atreides is still working on the Bus Module to handle the hauling of all the tourists and colonists she will be sending on the next big interplanetary expedition. This morning with a 3.5 hour window to the next KAC alarm - the completion of Phase 2 - I decided to go forward with the test flight of the Auk XVIII 20-passenger spaceplane I designed last week. Good thing I did - this test failed spectacularly, with seven of the craft's twelve RAPIER engines cooking themselves off before the plane reached 1000 meters altitude. Definitely going to have to go back to the drawing board and re-work the engine assemblies before I put passengers aboard. I don't know if plane design is something I want to do today, though, so since I still have a 3.5 hour window, I might as well get LSV House Harkonnen from Bop to Tylo; this is something I've been needing to do for the past week or two at this point, so it's high time it got done. The Tylo lander is still under construction, so tourist Nafel Kerman's jaunt to the surface will have to wait for a while still. I anticipate Phase 2 completion's today as well, and hope to be able to show y'all screenies of a finished outpost tomorrow if all goes well. Space station construction for Moho will likely take place after that, but not before the base personnel at Aban Pearl send up a craft to return to Kerbin from Moho's surface. At this point I want to get to Eeloo, so anything I need to do before that happens has top priority. I'll be sure to keep y'all posted.