capi3101

(1.6.1) I've got the day off today, on account of my 43rd successful revolution around the Sun, so I figure I might as well give y'all a log report. Not all that much happened the last 24 hours; the day began at the Tradidit Lestum Yards over Laythe, where station engineer Jubald Kerman climbed up into the station's cupola module long enough to transmit a crew report for contract. That job done, LSV House Corrino still in orbit over Dres began printing up a Boop-Boop 7w probe to replace the earlier Boop-Boop 7x that would have completed its intended mission had it the correct type of scanner loaded aboard; printing took all of eleven minutes for the ship's crew to complete. After beginning printing, the G-LOC 7a craft docked to Corrino departed the ship and began maneuvers to take it to LSV House Harkonnen also currently in Dres orbit. Owing to the massive difference between the inclination of the two ships (Corrino being in a retrograde orbit), the G-LOC had to flip its orbit first before burning to intercept - time to intercept was 36 minutes, with the craft coming within 0.02° of Harkonnen's orbital plane. The Boop-Boop 7w finished up next, and was released from Corrino's drydock after fueling. The probe burned to align with the target orbital plane first, and shortly thereafter the G-LOC reached its intercept point, where it burned to set a rendezvous with Harkonnen; flight time to rendezvous will be one hour and 42 minutes. The Boop-Boop then conducted a burn to put it in a 6,082.6 by 37 kilometer, 6.51° inclined orbit. It will reach apoapsis in 34 hours, at which point a final burn will take it to its target orbit. I have the right scanner type on the probe - confirmed it before getting to far along this time - so I should finish up that contract at that point. I next turned my attention to the other Boop-Boop 7w probe over Dres, the one that was to establish a stationary orbit over a specific point; while I'd gotten it into the stationary orbit, I was pretty far off the target point, so I needed to figure out how much to drift the probe eastward. Having finished my calculations, I determined that an orbital period of 9 hours, 13 minutes and 59 seconds would put me over the correct spot, so I went ahead and burned the probe down to that period. At apoapsis, I'll re-establish the 9 hour and 40 minute stationary orbit and hopefully will find myself over the target point. I'll let y'all know if my math was correct or not... With a group of colonists having been frocked at the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe and a need for a second engineer at the Vermilion Block 380 outpost on Vall to complete an outpost expansion contract, I began printing up an Auk XIII single-passenger spaceplane; total construction time will be 83 minutes. The new crew included two engineers, so at this point I have one to spare. The plan is to get the engineer up to space station Laytheport, wait for a group of tourists I've got headed out that way to pick him up, head to Vall from there (tourists are headed that way too), then drop him off. Should work as long as I don't have any troubles with the plane (knock on wood). Finished up my day out on Ike with the India 2 rover, where I'd been commissioned to perform a temperature survey. At night of course. Only plus side to that is getting to use the night vision cameras, which admittedly makes for reasonably cool screenies. Still makes driving unnecessarily stressful... I hit three waypoints on the survey for a total of about eleven kilometers driving. Had to quit to get back to doing my paying job before I could proceed to the fourth waypoint; haven't gotten to it yet, but it's the first thing on my agenda for the next session. Don't know if that will be today or not. That's all I've got for today. Plan is to get the G-LOC to Harkonnen, dock up and get Harkonnen back to Kerbin, then deorbit the G-LOC; Corrino will remain in orbit over Dres to support space station construction operations there are complete. The Sleipnir A outpost on Dres is successfully cracking Xenon Gas at the moment; the thought to try and send some of that up to Harkonnen before she departs has already occurred to me, because I imagine the base will need to secure those operations while recovering from space station launches (she's only mining so much Ore, after all). I've got a colonist group that needs to head out to Minmus as well as the next interplanetary tourist mission to get underway; those flights will probably happen soon, and then I've got some survey missions on Duna and Eve to perform; those will have to wait for days where I don't have too much else happening. I'll let y'all know how everything goes and hope to have something more substantial to report next time, whether that's tomorrow or Thursday.

(1.6.1) Got busy Friday morning and then it turned out to be a shortened working day, so I never got around to putting up my log report for Thursday. It's been a busy last 96 hours so I'll get started typing it all up earlier than normal today. Hopefully this doesn't take me to 9 AM again. Eleven screenies - fair warning. Thursday began with a trip out to the Deepwater Horizon base on Minmus, where colonists Anfred, Seedous and Anford were officially frocked into the program (as a pilot, scientist and engineer) respectively. That done and with all of the hardware bound for the surface of Dres ready to go, LSV House Harkonnen broke orbit over Kerbin and warped to a position 1.3 Gm over Kerbol to bleed off sufficient speed for a warp to Dres; while the ship was over Kerbol, she took the opportunity to deploy her panels and self-recharge her Exotic Matter tanks. After securing from XM refueling ops and bleeding off sufficient speed, Harkonnen proceeded to Dres, arriving at 307 m/s. I overhot on the warp again and wound up having to burn to get the ship into orbit - coming within a kilometer of the surface at one point - but eventually I did get her to an orbit at 123.4 by 10.1 kilometers, 40.67°inclined. Upon arrival, the Hellhound 7 rover and skycrane Harkonnen was carrying was released from her drydock. Another day, another rover launch. Yawn. Way to pad my screenie count. With the rover released, Harkonnen began printing up a Boop-Boop 7w probe to replace the one that LSV House Corrino had dropped off in orbit late last week with the incorrect scanner type. Printing of the probe took 85 minutes. Meanwhile, the Hellhound rover maneuvered itself into an equatorial orbit and made preparations for landing in the previously identified target zone. Preparations complete landing proceeded without incident - the skycrane landed just 250 meters off the target in the equatorial Highlands to the north and northeast of the Canyons. I decided to put in one of those 'backing up' alarms on the rover. Didn't do any good of course, since there's no sound in a vacuum... The rover - redesignated Romeo 1 - quickly verified the viability of the site: I had placed the target a mere 125 meters from a boundary with the equatorial Midlands, close enough to easily access the few missing resources I'd need to establish a base there. Romeo 1 drove itself back to the target coordinates and plowshared the site (i.e. the terrain was flattened using Kerbal Konstructs) in preparations for the arrival of the TBD 7e Mun base-seeding lander/rover. After taking the time to fuel and launch Harkonnen's new probe, I decided to do some preparations for Corrino's glorious return to Dres with the TBD. Lots were drawn to assign a Dres crew; pilot Leo Kerman would head the mission, with scientist Malgar Kerman and engineers Calkin and Tanmon Kerman in major support roles. The four Kerbals transferred over from G. Grant docked to Corrino as well as from Corrino's Bigby Orbital Workshops. This left sufficient room aboard Corrino for pilot Neilrey Kerman and scientist Pasted Kerman to board Corrino, leaving just Val and Bob aboard G. Grant without passengers. With her role as extra crew accommodations completed and foreseeing the need to conduct a burn at Dres, G. Grant undocked from Corrino and burned for intercept with the Dystopia Planitia orbital yards, with flight time to intercept set at 27.5 minutes. At intercept, the ship burned to set a rendezvous with the shipyard, with flight time to intercept set at 57 minutes. Docking proceeded without incident. G. Grant putting into DP. I'm sure outpost engineer Ceri Kerman would like the company at this point, though I'm not really sure I want to inflict that idiot on Val and Bob... While G. Grant was en route to DP, Harkonnen's probe burned into a 736.4 by 733.1 kilometer equatorial orbit. It was then that I realized I'd missed one key detail about that probe's intended contract. Ah, so that's why I couldn't get rid of that stupid extra waypoint... I have yet to make maneuvers to try to get the probe to its intended stationary orbit over the target point at Area B-CBZ, but at least I have all the numbers to do so. Before closing out business on Thursday, I shot a load of Equipment up to House Corrino from the South Base outpost near KSC - one final necessary step for the TBD before Corrino could head out. That job done, Corrino secured her mass driver and warped to perform a maneuver nearly identical to the one that Harkonnen had done previously. Owing to various RL factors, I had to leave Corrino halfway to Dres at 20 Gm (at 308 m/s relative) at the close of business on Thursday and picked up Friday with completing the warp maneuver. I once again overshot and had to burn to get her into a final orbit at 384.8 by 20.4 kilometers, 159.57° inclined. An orbit is an orbit, though, and once in orbit, Corrino released the TBD from her drydock. The crew maneuvered their craft to a 36.1 by 30.1 kilometer, 178° inclined orbit (i.e. 2° retrograde, which still worked since they were going for a landing). Once in position, the lander began its burn to take it to the target site. Why the crap does stuff like this always have to happen at night? The lander set down on the surface without any incidents 481 meters east-southeast of the target point, at which point the rover decoupled and was redesignated as Romeo 2. Romeo 2 drove to the target point and after moving Romeo 1 out of the way, Tanmon went on EVA to deploy the Saddle, bringing the Sleipnir A outpost on the surface of Dres into existence. Tanmon and Calkin got to work unpacking the starting base equipment at that point, and once everything was transferred to the nascent base and with Leo, Malgar and Calkin aboard, Tanmon took Romeo 2 over to the Midlands to grab some Exotic Minerals in order to print up certain structures. I don't remember why Tanmon went EVA at this point...pretty sure I just wanted to highlight how close the Midlands were to the base in the Highlands or something. Dark screenie anyways. Before the close of business on Friday, Sleipnir A's central spine was complete and the base had seven Hacienda industrial modules inflated. The base's Saddle did spontaneously combust when Romeo 2 hooked back up to the base to transfer over her Exotic Minerals and it became necessary to keep the rover temporarily hooked up to keep the base anchored in place. A colonization mission at the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun also concluded, for which there was no replacement contract offered. Saturday was mainly spent with base construction. Tanmon flying back from having hooked yet another base module back up. You can see Romeo 1's skycrane (left) as well as Romeo 2's lander stage (upper right, you kinda have to squint) in this screenie, with Romeo 1 itself center. Alas for Romeo 2... I suffered one major Kraken attack during base construction that resulted in the destruction of Romeo 2, after the loss of the majority of the rover's wheels. At one point the Kraken also decided to eat the entire base; luckily I had quicksaved just moments before and was able to recover the base, with construction completed by day's end. The completed Sleipnir A base on the surface of Dres. Looks like pretty much every other base I've built this career save... Total construction time for the base was only about fifteen hours, which I think is some kind of record. The orbital shipyard for Dres is now under construction at the base, with construction estimated at just over seventeen hours to completion. Tanmon will be manning the shipyard at launch. The plan is to go forward with a launch of space station Dresport from the new shipyard once it's in position and up and running. Yesterday began with the completion of the colonization mission at the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe, after which I proceeded with the positioning of the second of House Corrino's probes (after a nineteen day flight). Unfortunately, this one too had an issue. Ah. This one was the one with the wrong scanner type. Well, hell's bells... Final position of the probe was 14,292.6 by 6,175.7 kilometers at 6.44° inclination, barely still within Dres's SOI, so y'all can understand me being particularly miffed about this one... To cleanse my palette after that debacle, I decided I would go one of those Sunday afternoon plane flights I get to do occasionally. Lutop boarded a Bad Idea 3 survey plane at KSC and took off to perform a high-altitude areal temperature survey 1200 kilometers west of KSC. Lutop showing off again. Bad Idea 3 nearing the Crater, approaching the survey area incidentally. Lutop hit all four waypoints successfully and returned for a safe landing at KSC 09 after about an hour-long flight, ending out the day. So with Sleipnir A built I need to turn my focus back onto getting some new contracts done. First thing I'll be doing today is retraining the colonists from the Piper Alpha and C. P. Baker missions - that'll net me eighteen new crewmembers. I need to check for replacement contracts after Lutop's flight (would've done it yesterday but the box was starting to use a little too much memory by the time the flight ended). Harkonnen is clear to return to Kerbin at this point but I think I want to have her haul a G-LOC module that Corrino happened to take out to Dres with her; this way I can wrap up the current exploration contract and move that along. I'm wondering if the next exploration contract will have me doing more things over Dres or if I will get to move on - going to guess right now that Moho will be up next on the itinerary, and I've only got a 50% chance of being wrong there. Other than that I really don't know. I've got a bunch of new contracts lately that I've yet to do much with in terms of planning. I've got a pretty good size tourist mission lined up now and yet another colonization mission ahead for DH. I have to re-do the one Dres probe mission (which Corrino can at least get started) and finish the maths on getting the other probe over the target point. Got some ore hauling to do at Ike, a pair of survey missions to do at Eve and Duna, some science at Laythe that I could knock out pretty easily, and another engineer to get out to Vall. Going to get a master plan together to do all that and let y'all know how it goes. Signing out 8:45 local...well, at least it wasn't 9 AM...

(1.6.1) I got the shortest log entry I've had in quite some time. Basically, aside from LSV House Harkonnen in HKO finishing up its print of the Hellhound 7 rover and a pair of refueling mass driver shots from the South Base outpost near KSC to Harkonnen and LSV House Corrino (fuel to both, Material Kits to Corrino and Rocket Parts to Harkonnen), I spent the entire day working on the nascent Boot Hill outpost on Mun. I'm happy to report as of this morning that construction of the base is 100% complete after nine in-game days. Boot Hill outpost on Mun. Told y'all yesterday that this was liable to keep me plenty busy, and I was right... So, both Corrino and Harkonnen are ready to head to Dres and that'll be my focus for today. Harkonnen's rover will scout an area I've pre-selected for a base on the surface and if all looks good, Corrino will be supplying the rover/lander. That's liable to take care of things today. I did also manage to finish one of the colonization missions I've got ongoing yesterday so I'll probably be replacing it in the near future, and then I should probably turn my attention back to getting contracts finished up. Lost a fair amount of time there with BH's construction... I hope to have something more substantial for y'all tomorrow.

I'll agree with you for the nowadays - five years ago (you know, the time period from which you've quoted me), not so much. Game's evolved quite a bit since then.

(1.6.1) Fairly good past 24 hours to report to y'all this morning. Screenie-heavy post with relatively little other substance ahead; fair warning. The day began with the Rogue 7 base-seeding rover on Mun, which had (as reported at the end of my last post) sent out scientist Stadous Kerman to find the boundary between the Munar equatorial Lowlands and the Midlands; Stadous had found it about 6.5 kilometers ahead. Rogue 7 proceeded as carefully as possible to Stadous's position, a drive made more interesting by the fact that it was already known that Stadous was at the bottom of a crater... This is not the sort of thing you really want to see when you're driving a fifty tonne rover...pretty much anywhere...... Aside from one end-over-end flip which I was able to recover (for a tonne of bonus points in games that are not KSP), no mishaps occurred and soon the rover arrived at Stadous's location. Engineer Linbo Kerman got out of the rover and began unpacking the equipment, beginning the construction of the Boot Hill outpost on Mun. Attach an upchuckwagon to the side of the rover, move all the garbage over there, grab the Saddle and Pondy, hook it up. Simple as pie - the beginnings of a new base. Linbo attached and inflated the stowed Casa module along with three Haciendas and three of the four Chuckwagons, and Stadous helped with the installation of four of the six stowed SAFER reactors before boarding the new outpost. Engineer Giller Keman and scientist Roddon Kerman also boarded at that point, after which the remaining Equipment resources were transferred over and Linbo detached the new outpost from rover and stowed all the parts used for the initial base establishment. Base establishment is fun (at least to me). It's even better when you get paid for it... Linnbo went ahead and moved the rover's Micro ISRU unit to the base and that point and attached a few exterior lights, another Casa unit and the remaining two SAFER reactors (with Stadous's help once again). Base construction continued throughout the day yesterday and into this morning. Boot Hill outpost on Mun as it looks as of this morning. With no Exotic Minerals at the site, the plan is to forego the presence of anything that requires them for structure construction - so no lab modules, ground transmitter or central Castillo hub. I do have the Rangeland launch pad that came with the rover; god willing I either never have to use it as a launch pad or, assuming I do, nothing blows it up. Won't be able to build a new one without an infusion from somewhere else... While base construction proceeded, I got notice from the Non Caseus Yards in Munar orbit that the print of ScanSat Mun-2 was complete. After fueling, the new probe was released and immediately burned for a polar orbit. 2° to 90°? No problem. Helps that the shipyard is already oriented in the correct direction. The new ScanSat burned to an initial 100 by 24.6 kilometer orbit at 90.00° inclination, later burning to 101.8 by 100.4 kilometers. I got some confusing readings at first - I thought I'd detected Exotic Minerals in the Lowlands at first and started to get excited for Boot Hill - maybe I could build a normal base after all. Alas, the readings I picked up were for the Midland Craters; the closest of those was fifty kilometers away in either direction (but I could've done it had I'd driven west from Rogue 7's original landing point instead of east). Breaks my heart...and annoys me that it took me four days to drive 25 kilometers in the first place... Still, it was enough for me to get Stadous out to go verify the reading. Plenty of reasons why the base isn't 500 meters further east, boss... After Stadous returned to the base, it was time for me to conduct an alignment burn for the Boop Boop 7x probe over Dres; the burn put the node over the apoapsis. The probe is still fifteen degrees off the target orbit but at this point I should be able to take care of the rest of it and circularize at the same time. The probe will not reach apoapsis for another 105 hours though, so that's a while off. I noted that my "midpoint" alarm to check in with LSV House Corrino in high Kerbin orbit had gone off while I was fiddling with the probe, so I went straight to South Base and transferred up a full load of Rocket Parts via mass driver. Going to Corrino to verify delivery of the payload, however, I discovered that rather than having four more hours of construction ahead, the ship's crew had finished the TBD 7e Mun base-seeding rover/lander they were building; I happily mashed the button to finalize the construction. Gas up and then it's time to head to Dres. I still need to send up the remaining supplies to Corrino, but once that's done the ship can depart for Dres once more. I'm still waiting for LSV House Harkonnen's crew (i.e. just engineer Beamon Kerman right now) to complete her build of a Hellhound 7 rover to scout the intended target area on Dres - that's still a little under five hours off. Once that's done, though, the process of the first landing on Dres and outpost construction there will commence. Today I plan to continue building out Boot Hill and, if construction finishes, to send my two warp ships out to Dres. I'll likely wrap things up at Boot Hill before switching gears to Dres. Warps and building a base (possibly two bases) should keep me plenty busy for the foreseeable future; I'll worry about all the other stuff later and let y'all know how everything goes tomorrow.

(1.6.1) There was really only one thing I wanted to accomplish yesterday, and that was to get the Rogue 7 base-seeding rover to the Midlands on Mun from its starting point. Didn't happen on account of my box being stupid and Unity garbage collection being utter crap. If anybody's got a suggestion for a good SD card to slip into a Dell Latitude E5470 office laptop (with 8GB RAM) for ReadyBoost purposes, I'd love to hear it. When the game gets up to around 5.5 GB usage for no real reason...well......... Day began yesterday with some refueling mass driver shots - the South Base outpost near KSC shot monopropellant, liquid fuel and oxidizer to space station Kerbinport (taking the opportunity to do so while there weren't any planes parked there) and to LSV House Corrino recently returned from the initial exploration missions of Dres. South Base also shot up some replacement Rocket Parts to Corrino; the ship had pretty much used up its entire supply in the printing of five probes while still at Dres. Resupplied, Corrino printed up a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft for the next phase of exploration; construction time was estimated at 23 minutes and 34 seconds, which decreased to about twenty minutes once engineer Necale Kerman transferred from her seat aboard G. Grant docked to Corrino and resumed her post in one of Corrino's Bigby workshops. When completed, monopropellant was transferred aboard and the G-LOC was released; it promptly maneuvered to dock at one of Corrino's centerline ports. Corrino then began the print of a TBD 7e Mun base-seeding rover/lander, with total construction time estimated at 8.5 hours. This craft will ultimately be responsible for the creation of the upcoming Dres outpost. Speaking of which, I went ahead and put the target coordinates I'd gathered over the Thanksgiving break for the Dres outpost into Waypoint Manager and was able to verify visually that I'd gotten them input correctly this time (avoiding the 850 kilometer debacle I had with the Usumacinta base on Tylo...). With the TBD under construction, I finally got over to SL Shai Hulud in HKO to transfer Alcubierre Drive fuel supplies - Xenon Gas and Exotic Matter - to Corrino via mass driver, and after ordering up a new ScanSat for Mun at the Non Caseus Yards in orbit (the old one - a very old design - had no M4435 narrow-band scanners installed and therefore couldn't give me specific biome readings), I finally made it over to Rogue 7 to do some driving. "Squishy things". Kind of a vague warning - does it mean that there are squishy things in it, or things that are squishy should stay out of it? Can't imagine it'd work too well with fuel refining if there were squishy things in it... Made it all of 11.4 kilometers before I had to shut the game down for the day. This morning I have had some time to play - I went ahead and ordered up a Hellhound 7 rover aboard LSV House Harkonnen currently in HKO; it'll be done in 7.75 hours. The idea is to have the rover available for an initial scouting survey of the target region on Dres - the hope is to put the base there fairly close to a Highlands/Midlands boundary so that going to get Exotic Minerals (absent in Highlands but present in Midlands) won't be too big of a hassle. I also finally got around to printing up and reinstalling a new Rangeland launch pad at Usumacinta; the old pad was destroyed during last week's launch of the Nomina Perplexa Yards. That done, it was back to driving - Rogue 7 did another 7.5 kilometers before I once again had to shut the game off (this time to start doing my paying job of course), but for the hell of it I decided to have scientist Stadous Kerman EVA from the rover and jetpack ahead until he could find the equatorial Midlands. He was able to do so before running out of jetpack fuel and took the opportunity to use Kerbal Konstructs to Plowshare the target site into level-grade goodness. Rogue 7 doesn't have all that much further to go as it turns out. Just one serious into-a-crater-on-Mun cliff between here and there. No problem, right? So my priority today is to finish Rogue 7's drive - it's got 6.6 kilometers to go before meeting up with Stadous and there's a nice flat region already set up there. It is at the bottom of a crater (which has the potential to cause headaches of course), but I should be okay as long as I drive carefully. Kinda miffed that I missed the mark by a mere 25 klicks, but on the other hand, that could be a lot worse (850 klicks on Tylo was one thing but 850 on Mun would've been cause for me putting a discount brick through someone else's laptop, methinks). I should also have the new Mun ScanSat ready before too long; it'd be nice to get some better readings for Mun although if I find a more suitable biome for base-building in the process I'm liable to be quite angry about it. Corrino and Harkonnen should be able to finish up their respective prints today as well, and so they should both be heading to Dres in the very near future. Not much else going on at the moment; I have a new tourist expedition to get under way, I have some ore hauling to do at Duna, a seismic survey at Eve and some science to collect from Laythe - all of which I have yet to get started. Still got a probe heading to its target orbit over Dres, still have to replace the one I screwed up out there, still need to get another engineer out to Vall, still tracking asteroids and still got four colonization missions already stewing. Hope to have more to report for y'all tomorrow.

(1.6.1) Went ahead and typed this all up tonight. With the extended weekend and tomorrow being the first working day of the month, I have the unfortunate combination of too much to talk about and too little time to tell it to wait until morning... My day on Wednesday began at LSV House Harkonnen recently returned from delivering colonists to Laythe. Gilligan had conducted a burn to take her from Harkonnen to intercept with space station Kerbinport last thing on Tuesday, and so (as I mentioned in my last log post) my first task was to get J. G. Backus headed the same way; the ship successfully burned to get an intercept. Flight time to that intercept point was 25 minutes, during which Gilligan conducted an alignment burn with Kerbinport and Roy Hinkley arrived and docked at the space station. Hinkley was carrying four tourists returned from missions at Minmus and Gilly, who transferred to an awaiting Auk IX 4-passenger spaceplane upon arrival. The plane went ahead and departed the space station as soon as the last passenger was aboard, though I was pretty sure (and rightly so) that it'd be a little while before I'd have sufficient time to deorbit it. Shortly after that, Gilligan conducted her burn to take her to rendezvous with Kerbinport; flight time to the rendezvous was set at 51 minutes. Meanwhile, LSV House Corrino printed up a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft while still in orbit of Dres. After transferring monopropellant to the craft, it was cut loose from her drydock and proceeded to one of the central docking ports. G-LOC docking with Corrino. one of those "why did I take this screenie" screenies... Job done, Corrino began printing up a Boop-Boop 7x probe for a contract to put a satellite over Dres. Total printing time of the probe was 8 minutes and 22 seconds, during which time G. Grant departed Corrino and burned to increase her apoapsis to 203 kilometers as part of the ongoing exploration mission, in this case to rendezvous two craft over Dres. Backus reached the intercept point with Kerbinport at that point and burned to set up a rendezvous; flight time to rendezvous was set at 41 minutes, during which time Corrino finished its probe print. The new probe was fueled and burned to a 732.99 by 108.1, 0.91° inclined orbit as the first leg of the contract. While that was going on, Corrino began the print of a second Boop-Boop 7x probe, which was again completed 8 minutes and 22 seconds later. Corrino had just enough Rocket Parts remaining to complete this second build, but only about 39 units remaining once she was done... After a hiatus from the game on the Thanksgiving holiday, play resumed on Friday with refueling mass driver shots from the South Base outpost near KSC and SL Shai Hulud to LSV House Atreides in high Kerbin orbit, which had returned Roy Hinkley from Eve's SOI. Those shots complete and verified, my next priority was to place the Drescomm Alpha and Drescomm Delta communication satellite carriers into their final positions in 166.4 kilometer circular orbits; Alpha was orbiting at the equator while Delta was in a polar orbit. Once both sats were in position, they released their respective child satellites; all four of these satellites conducted burns to set up triangular constellations. Gilligan arrived at Kerbinport shortly after Drescomm Foxtrot conducted its positioning burn. Gilligan got a bit close to the Auk just before her rendezvous burn; if you look hard you can see the plane - it's just above that little peninsula. Gilligan successfully docked at Kerbinport, followed less than five minutes later by J. G. Backus. Meanwhile, G. Grant conducted a burn to take her back to rendezvous with Corrino, with flight time to rendezvous set at exactly one hour. Corrino completed its second satellite print shortly thereafter (she had actually been done for about 40 minutes before I headed back out her way to finalize construction), and after transferring fuel to the new probe it was released and conducted a burn to put it in a 14,283 by 100.3 kilometer, 3.59° inclined orbit. The apoapsis is such that the probe will just barely remain within Dres's SOI; it will be 95 hours before it reaches that point for a circularization burn. The Auk then had sufficient time to go ahead and land; the craft was finally deorbited and conducted a successful landing at KSC 09, completing the tourist mission. Shortly thereafter, G. Grant conducted her burn to rendezvous with House Corrino; this came about the same time that Drescomm Bravo was nearing the time to circularize, so docking was put off until that burn was complete, after which engineer Necale Kerman aboard Corrino went on EVA and transferred over to G. Grant. This completed the second of three requirements for the current exploration contract (the first of which was the rendezvous itself). After G. Grant docked back up, it was time to circularize Drescomm Echo's orbit; that maneuver concluded my day on Friday. Not too much to talk about for the weekend proper. After refueling mass driver shots occurred from Shai Hulud and South Base to House Harkonnen, the first Boop-Boop 7x over Dres burned to put it into the correct contract position. Unfortunately, I had the wrong type of scanner attached to the probe. Resource scanner. Not narrow-band scanner. Dagnabbit... Corrino of course didn't have enough available Rocket Parts to print up a replacement probe, so the mission was put on hiatus for the time being. For now, though, the extant probe was kept in its spot; with any luck, I'll get the opportunity to make money with it at a later time. Drescomm Charlie and Foxtrot were put into their final positions next, completing the communications satellite system intended for Dres. That job done, I went ahead and began biome analyses using ScanSat Dres in preparation for establishment of a ground base on Dres's surface. The probe gathered reading of six out of eight biomes on Saturday before the Bill Clinton 7b that had been inbound from Minmus for much of this past week finally arrived at Kerbin. The probe conducted a braking maneuver putting it in a 300.0 by 34.8 kilometer, 17.47° inclined trajectory. NYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!! FIRE! FIRE-FIRE!!!! #channelling_beavis Yesterday I finished taking the biome readings and finished deorbiting the Clinton, with the probe coming down safely in the Deserts. Not the kind of terrain you want to see underneath the craft that spent the last seven days coming back from Minmus immediately prior to landing... Once the probe had landed, I had a sufficient window to return House Corrino to Kerbin orbit; the craft broke orbit from Dres and warped to Kerbin, arriving at 7,042 m/s; twelve warp-backs later, the ship had slowed sufficient to enter a 670.8 by 561.9 kilometer, 6.24° inclined orbit. The G-LOC was fully fueled once Corrino attained orbit and departed from Corrino, burning to deorbit for a landing near KSC; the craft set down safely in the ocean approximately 52 kilometers east of KSC, completing the current exploration contract. The new exploration contract has given me the go-ahead for a surface landing, so planning is now underway for that expedition. My biome scans showed that there weren't any single biomes adequate for base construction; the Impact Ejecta had six of the heavy seven resources available but had Exotic Minerals in such a low quantity - 0.01 concentration - as to not really count. The new base will be situated in the equatorial Highlands very close to a Midlands boundary; there's such an area northeast of the Canyons on Dres and slightly north-northwest of an impact crater. I have the exact coordinates jotted down and will be programming those into Waypoint Manager at the earliest opportunity. Current plan calls for a visit to Dres from House Harkonnen for the delivery of a Hellhound 7 rover and skycrane to scout the area and confirm the resources there. Meanwhile, House Corrino will begin printing up a TBD 7e Mun craft while still over Kerbin; once the Hound has confirmed the viability of the target site, Corrino's rover will conduct the actual base establishment mission. One of the two ships will print up a Boop-Boop 7w probe to re-do the first Dres satellite mission; meanwhile the second satellite mission is proceeding and I will have an alignment burn coming up there shortly. I did get a new tourist mission recently which will be taking me to the moons of Jool and to the surface of Gilly; at this point I've got nine Kerbal tourists so I may be getting that underway soon. It's almost daylight at the site of the Rogue 7 base-seeding rover on Mun; I'll be driving that craft to the Midlands to put up a new base for a contract. Still concerned about the lack of Exotic Minerals there but I should have everything else I'll need to begin a new base once I've got it in a better location that where it is. I've also got an ore hauling mission from Ike to Duna, a 2-point seismic survey to complete at Eve and a mission gather scientific data from Laythe that I can complete any time I'm good and ready to do so. Things are starting to wind down at this point; looking forward to base-building in the near future, whether that's happening on Mun, Dres or both. I'll keep y'all posted.

T. Howell III had an unfortunate incident while docking at space station Minmusport a couple of months ago (of the "solar panels exploding for no apparent reason" variety) and had to be scrapped; J. G. Backus was her replacement ship. Well spotted that all of the names of my Minnow 7b touring craft come from Gilligan's Island (as is the class name itself, obviously). The seven such craft in service in my fleet are Gilligan, Jonas Grumby, J. G. Backus, Eunice Howell, G. Grant, Roy Hinkley and M. A. Summers (in theme song order). You only hear the Skipper and the Professor's real names in the pilot episode, IIRC, and it was never specified whether Gilligan had any other name nor if that was a given name or surname... Right now, Grumby is attached to Dunaport, Howell is at Eveport and Summers is at Laytheport; the others have all been mentioned lately as they've been conducting various missions.

Everything? Oof...well, okay, I'll give it a shot next opportunity I have. Might be more than one screenie involved.

(1.6.1) Probably going to be the last post I make before the Thanksgiving holiday, so I need to make this one count. Good thing I've got interesting stuff to talk about... Yesterday saw the continuation of my efforts to get my warp ships to their respective destinations - specifically, LSV House Harkonnen and LSV House Atreides were heading to inevitable conflict over Kerbin, while LSV House Corrino was heading out for Dres. The day began with Corrino still completing a transit to get into orbit over Jool; the ship eventually settled into a 6,825 by 6008 kilometer, 4.46° orbit. That done and thinking I wouldn't have much to talk about today, I next headed out to the TBD 7e Mun craft - redesignated as Rogue 7 - in the Munar Lowlands along the equator due north of the Piper Alpha outpost (i.e. a little ways northeast of the Twin Craters). The rover successfully separated from its landing stage and landed upright, then proceeded the 800 meters to the designated target coordinates to conduct a surface scan. I knew that the Lowlands lacked Exotic Minerals (Mun was a place where Exotic Minerals and Rare Metals never showed up in the same biome; Rare Metals is the more critical resource), but had forgotten that they also lacked Uraninite ore - which means no nuclear power, which I've learned is a completely unacceptable state of affairs. It's currently nighttime at the rover's site and I apparently forgot to equipment with a night-vision camera, so the crew will begin an eastward drive to the Midlands at daybreak. I might also visit ScanSat Mun again to get some fresh biome readings - I know a little more about how Pathfinder works now as opposed to when I first started using it... Next up were twin warp maneuvers. I decided to put my research in trying to warp directly from one planet to another on hold for now (especially given that the data was pointing to it being an unlikely proposition unless the two worlds were close to alignment with one another) and just went with what I knew. Harkonnen was up first, breaking Joolian orbit and warping to Kerbin; she arrived at 4,306 m/s and required four warp-backs to attain a 673.9 by 625.9 kilometer, 3.59° inclined Kerbin orbit. Atreides followed suit, arriving at 4,064 m/s and attaining a 795.7 by 643.6 kilometer, 5.12° inclined Kerbin orbit after three warp-backs. Finally, it was Corrino's turn to attempt to warp to Dres. The ship minimized the relative velocity as best it could while still over Jool before heading out. Corrino damn near hit Tylo on her way out of Jool. Made for a nice screenie... Even with the minimization over Jool, Corrino was still travelling far too fast - over 4000 m/s relative - for orbital entry at Dres, so it was necessary for the ship to proceed to a position 1.2 Gm over Kerbol to bleed off the remaining speed; the ship took the opportunity to deploy her solar panels and recharge her exotic matter tanks while still in close proximity. After bleeding down to 310 m/s relative, Corrino secured her exotic matter generator and solar panels and proceeded to Dres. She overshot a bit on warp entry and wound up on a suborbital trajectory, but a quick burn with her conventional drives put her into a 106.3 by 11.1 kilometer, 19.7° inclined orbit - an ugly one, to be sure, but still good enough for government work. Yeah guys - you managed to not die, so now you get to go do work. Sounds like the thought that runs through my head every time I wake up in the morning... Upon attaining orbit, Corrino immediately began work on a ScanSat, which the crew had finished just over five minutes later. The new probe was fueled and ScanSat Dres launched, burning into a polar orbit. Boring screenshot...not sure why I took it, nor why I bothered to put it on Imgur and then post it here... The satellite eventually burned into a 109 by 105.3 kilometer polar orbit in preparation for biome scans, an effort that hasn't begun just yet. Meanwhile, Val aboard G. Grant docked to Corrino went on a brief EVA. Ugh. Bad! Bad Screenie! No soup for you!!! Climbing back aboard, she then transmitted a crew report; these actions finished out the current exploration contract. The next phase of exploration includes a rendezvous between two ships in Dres orbit, a crew transfer between ships and the return of a craft from orbit, so Val will probably be up to additional shenanigans in the near future. Meanwhile, Corrino began the printing of Dres's communications network - a Pink Noise 7b communications satellite carrier (the RA-15 based model) was ordered up and finished sixteen minutes later. After fueling, Drescomm Alpha launched; burning the probe to target altitude didn't occur immediately owing to the 19° inclination from which it was launched. Corrino began work on the polar satellite set and in the meantime burned to even out her orbit around 105 kilometers. This morning I managed to find some time to play, and decided to begin with having Roy Hinkley depart from House Atreides after fueling. The craft burned to set a rendezvous with space station Kerbinport; she'll arrive there after a 24 minute flight. Gilligan then departed Harkonnen, burning for intercept with Kerbinport; she'll arrive at the intercept point in 27 minutes, at which time she'll burn for a rendezvous. My intent had been for J. G. Backus to head out ten minutes after Gilligan, but I didn't have sufficient time to conduct that maneuver; it's first up on the agenda in the next session. Meantime, Drescomm Alpha conducted burns to put it in a 166.4 by 62.2 kilometer, 0° inclined orbit, with the burn set up to circularize at apoapsis. The second Pink Noise finished up at Corrino; after fueling, Drescomm Delta launched and immediately burned to a 166.4 by 106 kilometer, 90.00° inclined orbit; its burn to circularize has also been set up. I ordered Corrino to begin printing a G-LOC 7a return-to-Kerbin craft last thing; the ship will have it done in twenty-two minutes. If I wasn't busy before, I surely am now - my first seven KAC alarms are all for events that are going to happen within the next in-game hour... So yeah, a lot going on today. I want to get Gilligan, Backus and Hinkley all back to Kerbinport if I can. Hinkley is hauling surface-bound passengers; if I don't attend to that flight today, it's going to be soon. I want to deploy the Dres satellites and get the GLOC printed so I can finish the next step of exploration there and possibly get Corrino heading back to Kerbin today. I'd wager good money that I'll have clearance to land on Dres soon, and when that happens I need to have biome readings already taken so I know where to establish the ground base. Printing the ground base is going to be a necessity also, of course. I do still have those two old sat contracts over Dres to begin working on and I may try to get those out of the way; it's really going to depend on how many Rocket Parts Corrino still has once the GLOC is done. Also got that Mun base/drive to get going, and I've still got junk inbound from Minmus. I may try to do a log post over the next couple of days, but assuming that doesn't happen, I hope all the rest of y'all here in the States have an enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday, and I'll post again on Monday.

(1.6.1) I didn't get as much accomplished yesterday as I'd hoped, but it was still a red-letter day for my career save. The day began at the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo, which had completed the print of a Dystopia Planitia 7 orbital shipyard with an attached Kerbin-rated booster. The outpost transferred fuel to the shipyard and engineer Madorf Kerman took a seat in the forward cupola for the launch. Upon release of the docking clamps, the booster promptly destroyed Usumacinta's launchpad; I have yet to get back out there to install a replacement. Extraplanetary Launchpads hosed me over again fuel-wise, only loading each stage with 45% of their rated capacity - if I was planning on launching anything else directly from Usumacinta to Tylo orbit, I might be rather annoyed at this. As it was, I hit quicksave when I meant to take a screenie, which kinda committed me to the launch. As may be expected, the booster ran out of fuel before attaining Tylo orbit, and it was necessary for me to activate the shipyard's mass driver for an emergency shot of fuel supplies from Usumacinta, draining the base in the process. It turned out to be enough, however - the newly launched Nomina Perplexa Yards was able to attain a 127.8 by 126 kilometer, 0.14° inclined orbit over Tylo before discarding and deorbiting its core booster stage. The point from which I'll be launching anything else Tylo-related in the future. The successful launch not only completes the intended infrastructure for Tylo but for the Jool system as a whole. After shooting up fuel supplies via mass driver from the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe to space station Laytheport in wake of the recent return of the Auk XI 10-passenger spaceplane to the station, the rest of my day was spent in warp maneuvers. LSV House Atreides was up first, breaking orbit over Eve and warping to Dres for the scheduled initial flyby. Oh yeah, I can easily kill off 15 kps to enter orbit... As hoped, the flyby's success unlocked Dres for orbiting. I've had two satellite contracts for the untrustworthy regions for quite some time now; it'll be nice to finally knock those out. Atreides then proceeded to Jool en route to Kerbin. Mildly aggravating, in all honesty - to fly all the way out to Jool so you can lose enough speed to get to Kerbin. This was my thought as I took this particular screenie... Atreides arrived at Jool at 5,982 m/s, slow enough for direct orbital entry; the ship settled into a 6,808.6 by 5,723.1 kilometer, 1.33° orbit. After that, LSV House Harkonnen broke orbit over Laythe in her first step towards heading back to Kerbin, arriving over Jool at 4,215 m/s; she settled into a 10,483.3 by 9,187.9 kilometer, 1.44° orbit fairly rapidly. With Dres at go for orbit, I next checked the fuel status of LSV House Corrino in high Kerbin orbit; resupplies of Xenon Gas and Exotic Matter were shot over from SL Shai Hulud also in Kerbin orbit and Corrino began maneuvers to take her to Dres. Now, lately I've been attempting to solve the mathematical problem of being able to warp directly from one planet to another, and I thought I had it all grokked out before leaving Kerbin. Nope. Wound up spending nearly 45 minutes trying to get Corrino slowed down sufficiently for direct entry at Dres without success; at the present time I'm trying to get the ship into orbit at Jool. She's almost slowed down enough for that at least, but it's still going to be the first thing I attend to in my next session. Was so focused on the math I didn't bother to record how fast she was going at SOI entry nor how many times I've had to warp back so far... Plan for today is still to get House Corrino to Dres and to attempt to get House Atreides and House Harkonnen to Kerbin. I don't like doing multiple warp maneuvers at the same time; right now I've got all three of my warp ships trying to get places, so that's liable to eat up my time today. If I do manage to get them to where they're going, I'll be busy enough - Atreides has tourists returning to the surface, and Corrino will be setting up satellites at Dres to begin biome analyses prior to outpost construction. I've still got a new outpost on Mun to try and get started, and I'm about twelve hours away from the return of some garbage from Minmus. Not much to talk about otherwise. I'll keep y'all posted.

People have done it before. The trick is to utilize a mod that has some kind of electrically driven propeller (stock might be capable of doing the trick nowadays) to get you through the thick soup so you don't have to carry fuel for it. Between 12-15 kilometers ASL, atmospheric pressure on Eve is the same as sea level on Kerbin; 27.5k or so on Eve very roughly corresponds to 15k on Kerbin where you're generally ramping up your speed. You do have to get to a higher orbital velocity for 100k, so you would need more fuel for the rocket portion of the flight. Same general idea though: get as high and as fast as your conventional motors will get you without melting in the process, then switch over to rockets and get the heck outta Dodge...

(1.6.1) Fairly active weekend to report to y'all today. My day began on Friday at the SPH, where I designed a Wisent 7 utility rover variant (the Wisent 7c) to tow the Auk XI 10-passenger spaceplane that I landed at the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe on Tuesday back into takeoff position and offload its passengers. The design also included a pair of RAPIER engines to replace a set that had been lost during the landing. Design work done, I headed out to Baker to order up construction. Now the damn Runway shows up! Where the hell was the stupid thing when I was trying to land?!?!?! Construction of the Wisent took 3 hours and 44 minutes to complete, which was an awful long time for the plane's passengers to be sitting on the tarmac. Hopefully they won't try to get a refund... While that was ongoing, I headed out the Samwell Tarly Yards over Gilly, where I'd gotten news that the new space station print scheduled for a contract was finished. After passing along supplies of monopropellant from the shipyard, the new space station launched. Something finally went according to the gorram plan. It's about time... Once the contract had been awarded, the unnamed space station's RCS thrusters were activated to send it back into the drydock, wherein it was promptly recycled - as I've said before, I had no need for a third orbital station over Gilly, but the exercise did show me that production of my standard weigh station design could take place at orbital shipyards. That could save me the headache of a ground launch at my remaining three worlds as I get ready to head to them, so it's worth noting. At that point I got the signal from the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve - the redesigned Woodsy Owl 7 Eve Ascent Vehicle was ready for a second attempt to haul Module L-H80 to orbit. The same crew that had been doing the mission up to this point - namely pilot Lerod Kerman and engineer Taning Kerman - went on EVA to mount L-H80 to the new launch vehicle. The payload area on the redesigned booster wound up being a little higher up than on the original design and as a result the effort to mount the payload got a little ridiculous. This worked for that team out on Minmus...why isn't it working here? Hold still, Lerod!!! During the operation Taning went to go get the ladder off of the Echo 3 quadcopter like she had done during the first attempt, but the ladder decided it was done taking abuse and exploded. The two eventually did get the payload into position, at which point Taning re-boarded the outpost and Lerod took shelter aboard Echo 3 (which had a second ladder, fortunately). Fueled up, the Woodsy Owl 7 launched. Then promptly RUD'd. Another launch, another crappy booster design... After the fourth launch attempt, I was at rage-quit point - I went to Mission Control and told Gus to stuff the contract where the sun don't shine, then had ALK recycle the craft, payload and all. Lerod re-joined the crew aboard ALK in disappointment. Maybe next time I try to haul garbage off the surface of Eve (assuming there is a next time), I'll design a better booster. The abort left me with a Bill Clinton 7c grabber probe - the recovery vehicle - in orbit of Eve that I didn't have an immediate use for. Fortunately the thing was still within physics range off the Caue Serpente Yards in orbit where it had been built, so I simply had it grab ahold of the shipyard for possible future use. Those things tend to wind up being useful at some point. Baker finished printing up the Wisent at that point, so I had pilot Jedbrett Kerman and engineer Monty Kerman board it and head out to where the Auk had come to a stop. Once they arrived, the first order of business was offloading the passengers; Monty hooked up a Mineshaft crew tube to the plane's docking port at the passengers offloaded to the Wisent. That job done, the plane was temporarily detached so that Jedbrett and Monty could get into position to mount the replacement engines to the plane, a job that went fairly well all considered. Monty and Jedbrett looking at a pair of freshly mounted RAPIER engines. That job done, the Jedbrett put the rover right in front of the plane and the Mineshafts were re-attached, this time to tow the plane onto the Runway and over to the base for refueling. A snag occurred there when it came time to get the plane onto the Runway resulting in the loss of the front four wheels of the Wisent; fortunately the craft was reasonably well balanced so it was still drivable and could continue its job. Still, it became necessary to unhook the rover from the plane, drive the rover onto the Runway and then use the plane's own engines to get it onto the Runway. The two craft were re-linked and proceeded down the Runway. - Nope. Not getting close enough to fuel, dammit... Given all the issues I'd had getting the plane onto the Runway in the first place and the fact that I'd have to get the plane off the Runway to refuel it, and given the fact that the plane actually still had most of its fuel stores (it used a little for deorbiting and then some for powered flight prior to landing and that was all), I elected to go ahead and tow it backwards to the start of the Runway instead of fuel it up all the way. The plane was placed into takeoff position, at which point the Wisent detached from the plane and Monty retrieved the Mineshaft from the plane's docking port (which happened first thing on Saturday). The Wisent drove back to the base where Monty made the necessary fixes to hook the rover to the base for passenger offloading, with Jedbrett taking the opportunity to board the outpost at the same time. Monty detached the Wisent from the outpost, and then given the damage it had sustained, proceeded to recycle it before resuming his post aboard Baker. During towing, the outpost's mass driver spontaneously combusted; the crew printed up replacement parts for them and Monty proceeded to install them. All that work finally complete, the Auk was given clearance and the plane took off for a rendezvous with space station Laytheport. Fuel turned out to be a little tight but otherwise the rendezvous took place without incident after a 55 minute flight. For a while there I was pretty sure this plane wouldn't be returning to this particular station. Glad to be wrong in this case. The plane docked successfully, at which point Gilligan and J. G. Backus - both of which were still docked at Laytheport - departed and conducted separate burns to rendezvous with LSV House Harkonnen in high Laythe orbit. Gilligan was able to get a direct rendezvous at its intercept point with a total flight time of sixteen minutes. Owing to the delay in departure, Backus wasn't quite as lucky but still got an intercept scheduled for eighteen minutes later. So while this was all ongoing, I got the word from the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun that its print of a TBD 7e Mun base-seeding rover and lander was finished. When I began my day yesterday I saw that the print had finished two hours prior and went ahead and headed out to PA without bothering to look further down the events list (i.e. without remembering just how soon it was to Gilligan and Backus's scheduled intercept events. The new lander was fueled and given the previously planned amount of Equipment for its mission, at which point scientists Stadous and Roddon Kerman along with engineers Linbo and Giller Kerman boarded and the craft proceeded to launch northward toward a target point along Mun's equator. While burning retrograde in preparation for landing, I got a KAC alarm for an alignment burn for Backus, at which point I realized the need to plant the rover on the ground as soon as I could. Fortunately, it turned out I still had time - the TBD set down at 0°5'37" S by 142°23'48" E in the Munar Lowlands not terribly far from the Twin Craters. The biome is different (PA is in the Midlands), so I'll need to get out there next opportunity to see if the spot is viable or not. If not, I'll have a little bit of driving to do... Didn't blow Backus's alignment burn by too much; got to within 0.88° and was able to burn to set a rendezvous with Harkonnen after tending to Gilligan's rendezvous and docking. Seventeen minutes later, Backus arrived at Harkonnen. The practical end of a long and event-filled weekend. With Backus in dock, my next order of business was to head out the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo - the Tylo shipyard was finally completed and ready to launch. Unfortunately, Extraplanetary Launchpads didn't bother to fuel its booster when I hit the "Release" button (as it's been doing out there the entire time) and after the very long revert process MemGraph was showing the game using 5.7 GB of memory (my KSP box only has 8 total), so I decided the time had come to call it a day. The shipyard launch is first up on my agenda for today. So aside from the shipyard launch, today I'll probably be doing a refuel run between Baker and Laytheport; Baker's mass driver may or may not have enough accumulated guidance data yet for a shot but I need to try anyway. Both House Harkonnen and LSV House Atreides are ready to come back to Kerbin at this point (Atreides had been staying in Eve orbit to pick up the Clinton hauling the Woodsy Owl payload, which isn't going to happen now), so I'll likely also be sending them that way today. Atreides was scheduled to do the initial flyby of Dres for the exploration contract; I have no real reason to deviate from that plan. The only other long-term thing I have going on at the moment is the return of a junk-hauling mission from Minmus; that's still got about two more days left on it. I do have a new tourist mission but it's only for three kerbals, so I want to wait a bit before getting it started. It's also interplanetary and LSV House Corrino is probably going to be heading to Dres in the very near future, so I'll have to get one of the other warp ships home first anyway. I do have a new Mun base to attend to and I may get to that today, but I'm thinking my day is probably going to be filled with warp maneuvers. I'll keep y'all posted.

(1.6.1) Most of my day yesterday was spent in efforts to get a batch of ten colonists down to the C. P. Baker outpost on the surface of Laythe. The day began with a quick mass driver shot between the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface of Minmus and space station Minmusport, sending up replacement supplies of monopropellant from my recent hijinks there. That job done, Gilligan departed LSV House Harkonnen recently arrived in Laythe orbit followed five minutes later by the departure of J. G. Backus. Both ferry ships completed burns that would take them to space station Laytheport in just under half an hour, with Gilligan arriving at rendezvous first but Backus completing the first docking maneuver. Backus arriving at Laytheport as I'm losing my lighting. No, that's not Gilligan docked already - that's M.A. Summers. Forgotten I'd left her there... After both ships docked, they both took on fuel from the station's stores. With time to kill at that point, I headed over to the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on the surface of Eve, where KAC was telling me that construction of the redesigned Woodsy Owl 7 was complete. In preparation for an Eve launch, the same crew that had retreived the target Module L-H80 - namely, pilot Lerod Kerman and engineer Taning Kerman - went EVA and proceeded to move the module over to the site of the base's new launchpad, the original pad having been destroyed during the initial launch attempt. Okay Lerod, I'll mount this thing - you get ready to stand underneath and light the fuse... Unfortunately, I'd never bothered to check on the craft's progress while construction was still ongoing - turned out the Woodsy Owl still had nine hours to go on construction thanks to a relative shortage of Rocket Parts. Kinda miffed about that but it is what it is, and what it is is my fault for not bothering to check on the craft's progress. Lerod and Taning went back aboard and I stayed with the outpost until I was sure there was enough Rocket Parts aboard to complete the job. The launch will take place in nine hours - that's guaranteed now... The delay gave the Tradidit Lestum Yards in Laythe orbit sufficient time to complete the ongoing print of an Auk XI 10-passenger spaceplane. The new plane was fueled and launched from the shipyard, and was delivered to Laytheport after an eighty minute flight. After loading all ten colonists aboard and taking on replacement fuel stores, the plane departed the station and proceeded to deorbit for atmospheric entry. Auk XI leaving Laytheport with passengers aboard. I've got Vall in the background to try to prove that this isn't Kerbin, for all the more good it's doing... Perhaps putting Jool in the shot would be better proof - that ain't Kerbin... Inherent coolness level: Triforce of Awesome. The plane entered successfully and proceeded to follow the NavUtilities data I'd input earlier this week for a landing at Baker 36, the north-south Kerbal Konstructs Runway that I'd even earlier put out there. When I got within range of the Outer Marker and still didn't have site of the Runway, I knew something was amiss; crossing the Middle Marker with no Runway in sight is usually cause for a missed approach and go-around; naturally I decided to go in for landing anyway. Plane survived but I lost both ventral engines in the process. Important thing is that the plane did make it down to the ground intact, which is more than I can say for the first plane that tried to land at Baker... Auk on the ground. Showing y'all the good side, not the damaged side. Never did figure out what happened to the damn Runway...y'all saw my screenies a couple of days ago, there's proof that it was there... The landing marked the end of my day yesterday. Occurred to me that I had performed no provision for getting the passengers off the plane, something that I'll have to turn my attention to rather rapidly now... Aside from getting my passengers off the plane, getting it repaired and refueled and back up to Laytheport and figuring out what the crap happened to the Runway, I've got the Woodsy Owl launch probably coming up today, and I'm liable to see the launch of the new Mun outpost from the extant Piper Alpha Mun outpost; that one's been kinda low on my radar but it's coming up fast. The nascent and expected-to-be-short-lived new space station over Gilly is also nearing completion, as is the launch of the new Tylo shipyard. Last entry on my KAC calendar right now is the return of the junk I'd hauled up from Minmus. Don't know how much of this I'll get to today - my playing time lately, if y'all can't tell, has been rather severely curtailed thanks to IRL events. Hoping the weekend won't be quite as busy and I'll be able to get more things done. I'll let y'all know on Monday.

Hey y'all. Trying to work out some Alcubierre Drive-related math this morning. So, I figured out a while ago that while you're out over Kerbol in interplanetary space, if you switch over to your target relative velocity display you can check to see how close you are to being able to warp directly into orbit over the target; that value will match your orbital velocity reading upon arrival. Lately though I've taken to using Jool as a transfer station to other worlds; you can get closer to Jool than you can to Kerbol resulting in higher gravitational accelerations without the associated "parts getting hot enough to explode" risk. Having trouble grokking the math needed to pull off the same shenanigans though, i.e. figuring out what the target relative velocity needs to be reading in order to warp directly into orbit at the target. I think there's a dot product involved there somewhere but I'm not sure. Example time: I recently warped from Kerbin to Jool. At departure, my target relative velocity read about 2600 m/s; orbital speed around Kerbin was around 1700. When I got into interplanetary space, the target relative velocity jumped to 10,025.8. Jool was directly overhead at departure, and the two planets were at roughly a 90 degree angle with one another. There's a maximum of 1.304° difference in the inclination of the planes of the two bodies; don't know what it was. Kerbin's orbital velocity was 9,284.5 m/s at departure; Jool's was 4,287.5. If I wanted to arrive at Jool at a velocity of 4,852.2 m/s (to enter a 6,000 kilometer orbit directly), what should my target relative velocity indicator have been? Not necessarily looking for a solution to this specific problem (though that would be nice) so much as I'm looking for the methodology needed to find the solution.

(1.6.1) Not much to report for my day yesterday; it was pretty much just a day of getting things where they needed to be going. The day started with the departure of the Spamcan 7 2-person monoprop lander from space station Minmusport with pilot Johnler Kerman and engineer Deston Kerman aboard. The original intent had been to get the two kerbals back to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface prior to the arrival of Gilligan and J. G. Backus at rendezvous with LSV House Harkonnen in high Kerbin orbit, but when the time came for the plane change that would put the lander over the outpost prior to landing, it was obvious that the maneuvers were going to take longer than what I had available. I went ahead and let the lander go around for one more orbit, and in the meantime the two Minnow craft completed their rendezvous and docking maneuvers. Had issues with Backus's docking of the "hitting the wrong button" variety. At least this time it was the time warp button resulting in a nuisance bounce-off, instead of the "full thrust" explody variety. With the two ships safely docked, my attention turned to getting the lander down to DH. Only took two tries. Note to self - while screenies like this may be cool, make sure you can get to the thruster controls when you take them. 1.2 seconds to suicide burn is not really a time to be taking screenies... Once the lander was on the ground safely (i.e. on the second try), Johnler got out and attempted to hook up the resource transfer station from the outpost's exterior to the lander; it was just out of reach at first and had to be maneuvered to a closer position, but once that was done and the lander hooked up, fuel was transferred successfully. Johnler detached the hose from the lander and went inside the base, with Deston following suit shortly thereafter. The lander then took off yet again and affected a successful return rendezvous and docking with Minmusport after about two hours. With that job done, the rest of my time yesterday was spent getting House Harkonnen to Laythe; the craft broke orbit from Kerbin at the optimal point and warped to Jool, arriving there at 10,025.8 m/s; three warp-back maneuvers were required to slow down sufficiently for Jool orbital entry, but instead of entering orbit the warp ship continued to slow to the point where she could perform a direct warp to Laythe orbit, arriving there at 1,564 m/s and settling into a 495.2 by 458.3 kilometer, 3.37° inclined orbit. First up on my agenda today is a quick refueling shot to Minmusport, after which I'll be getting Gilligan and Backus over to space station Laytheport. The plane that will be ferrying the colonists those two ships are carrying is not yet ready, and in the meantime construction of the remodeled Woodsy Owl 7 at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve has concluded, so I'll likely be making the second attempt at hauling crap off of Eve today. Assuming that goes well and I can get the payload all the way to LSV House Atreides currently in Eve orbit, I'll be bringing its payload to Kerbin today. Might be getting colonists down to Laythe as well if I have enough time. Longer term I've plans to build a new surface base on Mun, another briefly extant space station for Laythe and a shipyard for Tylo. I've also got initial ops at Dres on the immediate horizon as well. I'll let y'all know how things go.

(1.6.1) Today I've got a bad combo of 'need to write quickly' with 'a fair amount of stuff to talk about' going on. I'll try to make this cogent. Maybe a dramatis personae would speed things up? Capi's KSP career campaign (in order of appearance): Lima 1: Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter design at Laythe. C. P. Baker: Fourth generation Pathfinder/TBD outpost design on Laythe. KSC Marker: Primitive Juno-powered/Stayputnik controlled rover designed to mark the ends of runways, largely obsolete but still sometimes useful. Woodsy Owl 7: Eve-launch booster rated for 1.5 tonnes; second iteration currently under construction. Alexander L. Kielland: Fourth generation Pathfinder/TBD outpost design on Eve. TBD 7e Mun: Fifth generation TBD base-seeding rover design, specifically designed for Mun landing. Piper Alpha: First generation Pathfinder/TBD outpost design at Mun. Auk XI: 10-passenger spaceplane design. Kerbinport: orbital weigh station around Kerbin. Gilligan: Minnow 7b 6-kerbal rated medium touring craft, first of her class. J. G. Backus: Minnow 7b 6-kerbal rated medium touring craft, fourth of her class, replacement craft for T. Howell III. LSV House Harkonnen: Muad'dib 7 Block I Alcubierre Drive-equipped interplanetary transport, first of her class. Laytheport: orbital weigh station around Laythe. Tradidit Lestum Yards: orbital shipyard around Laythe. Deepwater Horizon: Second generation Pathfinder/TBD outpost design at Minmus. LSV House Atreides: Muad'dib 7 Block I Alcubierre Drive-equipped interplanetary transport, second of her class. No, I don't think that sped things up at all...and it looks weird too. Day started out with Lima 1, which I flew 4.5 kilometers over to C. P. Baker in order to check my NavUtilities data for the new Runway I'd put out there. Doesn't look too far off to me. I dare say I'll be able to use this thing when the time comes. Test completed, I had engineer Monty Kerman step outside long enough to recycle the KSC Marker craft that had gathered the data needed for the ILS, its mission complete. Call me crazy, but I think that thing kicked up a larger cloud of dust than the first iteration of the Woodsy Owl 7 did when I had to recycle it... That finished up my current activities at Laythe, so next it was to the VAB and the design of the TBD 7e Mun craft, which largely replaced the booster/Tylo-landing stage of the previous TBD 7e craft with a smaller one rated for Mun launch and landing. Job done, I went out to Piper Alpha and ordered construction of one of these craft commence; printing will take 16 hours and 56 minutes. I noted some of my staff out on Mun didn't have any registered experience. Theofel decided to help them out while I was out there with a quick flag-planting. PA has some spare staff at this point and some of them will be manning the new Mun outpost, which I'm building for a contract. PA is several versions old at this point as well, and I've been thinking about replacing the base for a while now. The contract gives me an excuse to do so. Chief among things I've learned: the resources in one biome are consistent throughout that biome, i.e. the Midlands at the equator are going to be just as good as the Midlands at 40 degrees south, about where PA is... With all my other contracts in a waiting pattern, I turned my attention to my latest colonization contract. Colonists Karie, Enfry, Sidcal, Podvin, Kerden, Mildin, Bartrick, Dudtop, Agahat and Mitvin Kerman were all loaded aboard an Auk XI and launched for Kerbinport, their window coming up almost as soon as the plane was out on the tarmac. Auk XI, four starts. And so yet another colonization mission begins. The plane took off successfully and rendezvoused with Kerbinport after a thirty minute flight. I really oughta get that other Auk down at some point - it's really killing my frame rate around the station...not to mention that I've only got four kerbals scheduled to return to the surface and that one can haul twelve... Once docked, the colonists transferred to Gilligan and J. G. Backus docked to the station, with Gilligan taking on fuel supplies from the station's stores; Backus was already fully fueled. Fueling complete, Gilligan departed the station and burned to intercept LSV House Harkonnen in HKO; flight time to intercept was 25 minutes. Backus departed the station for Harkonnen ten minutes later; flight time to its intercept was nineteen minutes. Both ships hit their intercepts and conducted burns to take them to rendezvous; Gilligan will arrive in 95 minutes, while Backus will arrive in one hour and 45 minutes; there's about twenty minutes difference between their scheduled arrival times. Once at Harkonnen, the plan is for the ship to warp to Laythe, where Gilligan and Backus will deliver their passengers to Laytheport. I should have an identical Auk ready for flight at Laythe at that point (it's currently under construction at the Tradidit Lestum Yards) that will take them down to C. P. Baker. I don't have the length of their stay written down, apparently...I should remedy that at some point. I probably will; I'll likely be continuing to mention this mission as it progresses. Ended the day by landing the Auk at KSC 09. Took two tries but I got it down. Not exactly a perfect landing. Beat the hell out of the first one, though...I have to remember that the Auk XI has a higher stall speed than other members of the Auk series. Don't know how this thing is going to behave on Laythe... So today I'm likely going to be dealing with the colonization mission first. I've got a crew to deliver to Deepwater Horizon at the moment; they finished getting junk off the surface and I still need to get them back home. The Woodsy Owl reprint is about done, so I have that mission coming up soon as well. LSV House Atreides will be handling the return of the payload from that mission to Kerbin and conducting the initial Dres flyby at the same time, as well as returning some passengers from a Gilly-touring mission to Kerbin. Longer term I've got a new space station over Gilly to build and then recycle, a new shipyard is going up over Tylo, and the aforementioned junk from Minmus will be arriving at Kerbin. Lots of things going on right now; I'll be sure to keep y'all posted as best I can.

(1.6.1) Yesterday was a fairly minimal day. I began it with a pair of refueling mass driver shots to LSV House Corrino recently returned from Tylo, the first from the South Base outpost near KSC for normal fuel supplies and the second from SL Shai Hulud for to refuel Corrino's Alcubierre drive. That job done, i headed out to the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe, where the crew there printed up a new Hacienda industrial module. Engineer Monty Kerman went ahead and deployed the module, configuring it as a new mining unit. I'd say they needed another drill about like I need a swift kick to the head, but honestly you can never have too many drills. That Xenon storage unit, though... The crew at Baker then began printing up a Lab module using the outpost's launchpad; total construction time was seventy minutes, during which time I went ahead and dared to use Kerbal Konstructs to plowshare the surrounding area for two klicks in every direction and flattened the terrain. Nothing blew up (thank God), but the operation buried Baker's old KK Runway, so I went ahead and scrapped that one and put a new one out there. The terrain is level and so is the Runway, so I'm a lot more confident the damn thing will actually be usable now. When the Lab module was complete, a contract to expand Baker quickly followed suit; I didn't actually need the Lab, so it was recycled and I went ahead and ordered up a KSC Runway Marker for purposes of finding the inner markers (Baker 18 and Baker 36) of the runway. I've always kinda thought these Pathfinder bases I've been making were a fair size; this operation showed me just how small they really are. Having grabbed the coordinates/elevations/headings of the inner makers (which I'll use for a custom configuration in the NavUtilities ILS mod), I went ahead and attempted to returned the Marker to Baker's launchpad for recycling, but the craft didn't have enough oomph to get back on there. I'll have Monty do the job at the next opportunity. No replacement contract was offered after the base expansion, so there's that as well. While the Lab was printing up, I did go ahead and do a few things elsewhere. Having checked the VAB for a design matching the necessary criteria for a contract to put a new space station in orbit of Gilly (and making some very minor modifications to an existing design), I went ahead and ordered up said space station at the Samwell Tarly Yards over Gilly; construction will take just under 21 hours. The plan is to have the space station extant just long enough to fulfill the contract, then run it through STY's recycler. I've got two stations over Gilly already - I really don't need a third. I also had the crew at the Vermilion Block 380 outpost on Vall print up, deploy and inflate a Castillo Walkway and Castillo Depot, fulfilling an outpost expansion contract's requirement for five extra seats in the process (not to mention increasing the storage capacity for things I didn't need to increase the storage capacity for, namely Oxygen and Water in this case). That expansion contract is still ongoing - it requires the presence of a second engineer, which I'll have to figure out how to manage at some point. Monty didn't get out and recycle the Marker right away because at that point I had to turn my attention to Roy Hinkley inbound to Eve from Gilly. The craft conducted an alignment burn with LSV House Atreides in high Eve orbit and then set up an intercept; flight time to that intercept was 43 minutes, after which a pair of burns were required to bring Hinkley into Eve orbit and bring the two ships to rendezvous. Hinkley made the rendezvous and docked to Atreides successfully, but I don't want to think about how close I wound up cutting it... Let's see...88 m/s minus 31.5 m/s is what now? Atreides is slated to bring the Woodsy Owl 7 (with Part L-H50) back to Kerbin, so she'll stay in orbit until that happens. The plan is for Atreides to do the initial flyby of Dres on her way back as well. Not too much going on at the moment that hasn't already been mentioned. I do have a Laythe colonization contract for C. P. Baker that I need to get underway (hence the focus on getting a working Runway over there), so I'll probably be focusing on that today. Plan there is to send up an Auk to space station Kerbinport, transfer the ten Kerbals involved over to Gilligan and J. G. Backus docked at the station, get them over to LSV House Harkonnen in HKO, warp over to Laythe, get everybody over to space station Laytheport where hopefully a second Auk currently under construction in Laythe orbit will have been delivered by then, and then fly everybody down. I still need to consider plane refueling and passenger offloading, something the Auk series does not do natively. I think though that the tour bus Wisent design I recently used at Mun might do the trick; Laythe's got a bit more gravity than Mun so the control problems I experienced there should (keyword: should) not occur. I guess I'll find out. Also got a contract to establish a new outpost on Mun. Going to go ahead and put that one in the equatorial Midlands using the extant Piper Alpha outpost on Mun as a starting point, since I have spare staff there. Odd notion to colonize a world from a colony, but I guess that's the plan. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

(1.6.1) Thought about confusing all y'all by just posting my log short-hand this morning, but then I decided against it. My day on Friday began at the Scan Queen outpost on Ike, where I used the base's mass driver to shoot up a supply of Rocket Parts to space station Ikeport; upon then transferring over to the station, I completed an extant station expansion contract (the Rocket Parts were the final missing component). Two replacement contracts offered in the wake involved expanding the C. P. Baker outpost on Laythe as well as sending a group of ten kerbal colonists there. With colonists finally en route, I ordered up an Auk XI 10-passenger spaceplane at the Tradidit Lestum Yards in Laythe orbit; construction will take 25 hours and ten minutes to complete. I haven't tried out the spaceplane runway near C. P. Baker yet; it isn't on level ground, so there's no telling if it's really safe to use or not. Leaning towards the latter... With the Tango 3 touring craft docked up and all other business complete, my next order of business was getting LSV House Corrino back to Kerbin. Corrino broke orbit over Tylo, warped to a position to pick up speed over Jool for the transit, then warped the rest of the way to Kerbin. The ship arrived at 6,637 m/s, requiring ten warp-backs before slowing down enough for orbital entry. While warp-backs were ongoing (in fact, uncomfortably close to their completion), Roy Hinkley reached her intercept point with space station Gillyport in Gilly orbit and conducted a burn for rendezvous - rendezvous was set for 62 minutes later. Corrino then finished her warp maneuvers, settling into a 511.8 by 405.5 kilometer and 1.46° inclined orbit. After securing the warp drive, activating the on-board mass driver and transferring fuel supplies out to G. Grant and Tango 3, Tango 3 departed Corrino and began a mission to rescue pilot Sansel Kerman from LKO; flight to the intercept point was 21 minutes. While that was going on, daylight finally reached the Spamcan 7 Bop-A lander on the surface of Minmus. Pilot Johnler Kerman and engineer Deston Kerman continued their efforts at that point to mount Part G991D, a Mk-3 to Mk-2 adapter, to the top of their lander. So, KAS rules for grabbing and moving objects require sufficient kerbals to be within three meters of the object's center of mass. The position of the CoM on one of these things is rather awkward, as Deston was realizing in this screenie... After some serious amounts of finagling, the two kerbals actually managed to mount the payload onto their craft. That last push was a bit of a doozy. Good thing the gravity on Minmus is so low... That bit of the job done, the two kerbals set their drills and started mining ore to refine into monoprop for their lander. This did require a quick EVA - the drills on the design are too low and I've not yet taken the time to redesign the craft in the VAB - but ultimately they got some Ore flowing into their tanks. After Tango 3 aligned and burned to set a rendezvous with its target (flight time to rendezvous just under one hour), Roy Hinkley arrived and docked safely at Gillyport. Tourist Carfurt Kerman boarded the station's Spamcan 7 lander and proceeded to a brief visit to the surface, returning shortly thereafter to Gillyport. Carfurt then returned to Roy Hinkley, and after taking on fuel supplies from the station, Roy Hinkley departed and set up a burn to take her to rendezvous with LSV House Atreides in orbit of Eve. Tango 3 then arrived at its rendezvous with Sansel's Capsule. A Mk1-3 command pod...I never really use these. Stats have gotten better on them over the years apparently; maybe I should start. In any case, it seems a bit big for just one kerbal... Sansel transferred over to Tango 3 without incident, at which point the craft began maneuvers for atmospheric entry. There was a time when all Minnow missions would've ended with the craft entering Kerbin's atmosphere. That was before I realized their full utility. I've since grown attached to them apparently, which kinda made this a little hard to watch. Tango 3 set down in the Mountains fifty kilometers east of KSC, and fortunately found an area of twenty-degree grade rather than a fifty-degree slope. The craft's return not only fulfilled Sansel's rescue mission but completed the current exploration mission. The new exploration mission: flyby Dres. Hallelujah. Also picked up a mission to expand the Vermilion Block 360 outpost on Vall, most of the conditions of which should be easy to finish at my leisure. There is the second engineer that I'll have to get there at some point, but... Saturday didn't see much done (as is usual for me - IRL it's my busiest day). The Non Mentha Yards over Minmus finished its print of the Bill Clinton 7b probe that was scheduled to take Part G991D to Kerbin, and launched said probe after fueling. I also had the Boop-Boop 7x probe recently launched at Pol conduct a burn to put it in a 617.9 x 591.5 kilometer, 110.76° orbit; this was close enough to mission target parameters to count and complete the associated contract, at which point the probe received the designation P-02022-015810. And that was it for the day. Like I said, not much. Yesterday was a little busier. Roy Hinkley conducted the scheduled burn for Eve and will arrive at periapsis in just over eight hours. An initial burn to align with House Atreides has also occurred; she's still 5.67° off the plane but it's still a fair sight better than the some-odd 37° she was at initially. The Spamcan on Minmus finally accumulated sufficient Ore for refining up 80% capacity, which was enough to launch; the spacecraft took off and entered a 16.2 by 15.7 kilometer, 0.01° inclined orbit, at which point the docking port decoupler was utilized to cut Part G991D loose. The lander burned for rendezvous with space station Minmusport (flight time 68 minutes) while the Clinton began maneuvers to rendezvous with Part G991D; total flight time to rendezvous was just short of two hours, during which time the lander arrived and docked safely at Minmusport. Johnler and Deston transferred over to the station's standard Spamcan 7 lander for eventual return to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface. The probe's rendezvous with its target went without incident. Bill Clinton 7b docked with Part G991D while I make a check for memory leaks. Yep. I've got them somewhere... With the target in place, the Clinton made a burn to take it to atmospheric entry at Kerbin. The craft will arrive at periapsis in 42 hours and 13 minutes. I haven't really taken the time to plan for everything that needs to happen in the wake of this weekend's activities. I have five new contracts that require some degree of initial planning - two outpost expansions, a new outpost mission (decided to finally build a second base on Mun though I need to get some data from Piper Alpha - mainly its biome - to see if I can't position this one in a little more lander-friendly of a spot), a new space station mission and a colonization contract that needs to get underway. I'm most likely to begin work on the colonization mission, which means a spaceplane flight in the near future. Probably will have Atreides do the Dres flyby on the way home from Eve when the time comes - that won't happen until the remodeled Woodsy Owl takes off from Eve (hopefully without incident). I am anxious to get on to Dres - one of only three worlds I've yet to visit this career save.

(1.6.1) Another fairly minimal day to report; hoping RL calms down soon so I can get more time to play. Isolating which mod is leaking memory in torrents would be nice as well... Began my day yesterday at the Infans Calcitrant Yards over Ike, where construction of the Moneybux 7 expansion module for space station Ikeport was complete. The module was loaded up with fuel supplies from the shipyard's stores and launched. Another day, another piece of garbage I have to add to a space station to increase the lag... The module burned for an intercept with Ikeport. Originally that was to take place twenty minutes later, but unfortunately I forgot to set a KAC alarm apparently...it was a couple of orbits before I got around to performing the burn for rendezvous. At least I was able to get it plane-aligned with the target... After clearing a filament jam from the 3D printer at the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo, it was time for Tango 3's rendezvous with LSV House Corrino over Tylo. The craft performed a successful rendezvous and closed to within five meters of the warp ship before coming to relative station-keeping. At that point, Val left G. Grant docked to Corrino for a brief spacewalk. Val mooning the camera. Val boarded Tango 3 and went ahead and put it into the dock before transferring back to G. Grant. Her spacewalk cleared half of the current exploration contract; at this point Corrino is cleared for departure as soon as I can get a sufficiently large window to focus on the warp. With luck, probably today sometime... From that I went back to Usumacinta and ordered up two Castillo Depots again (that's what got jammed in the printer), sticking with the outpost this time until they were done. Engineer Madorf Kerman went on EVA when they were complete and loaded their steamer trunks to the Tango 1 rover, then got in the driver's seat to find a spot to deploy them. The outpost had sufficient available supplies to inflate one of them immediately upon attachment and allowed Madorf to at least attach the other one; inflating that one took a little bit of time for the outpost to prep up more Konkrete. I was able to inflate the second depot by the end of the day, with the end goal being sufficient storage of Rocket Parts for the orbital shipyard currently under construction at the base as well as sufficient fuel to launch the damn thing... Realized I'd goofed with the Moneybux about the time I was pulling the Depots off the printer, so that's where i went next. At the next pass at the intercept point a burn for rendezvous took place, with said rendezvous occurring 75 minutes later. The module was successfully docked to the station and the transfer stage was discarded and deorbited. At this point, to finish up the contract that required the module in the first place, I'll have to transfer up 4000 Rocket Parts to Ikeport, an easy mass driver shot from the Scan Queen outpost on the surface. That's liable to be first thing that happens next session. Between the Moneybux's burn and its arrival at Ikeport, I conducted a third and final burn of the Boop-Boop 7x probe I've had over Duna most of this past week, putting it in a 4,182.1 by 3,638.3 kilometer, 178.81° inclined orbit. This burn put it close enough to the target parameters to complete its contract. The Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus also completed its print of a Spamcan 7 Bop-A self-refueling 2-passenger monopropellant lander; after fueling, pilot Johnler Kerman and engineer Deston Kerman boarded the new craft and took off, landing near the target Part G991D, which turned out to be a Mk-3 to 2 Adapter tank. Owing to the size of the part, the two kerbals have rather wisely opted to remain on the surface until daylight to try to mount it to the lander. Meantime they'll be attempting to refuel their craft - the drills are (once again) giving them some issues... Aside from the aforementioned probable activities (namely sending Rocket Parts to Ikeport and House Corrino going back to Kerbin), today I'm liable to be continuing to get Roy Hinkley to space station Gillyport; I got the craft plane aligned but it'll be two more hours before she hits her rendezvous point. I've got garbage to haul off of Minmus, which will hopefully happen before the probe that'll take it from Minmus orbit over to Kerbin is ready to launch; that's coming up soon. Longer term, I've got a probe over Pol that'll make its first maneuver to a target orbit in several hours, and the launch of the remodeled Woodsy Owl 7 from Eve is on the horizon, as is the Tylo shipyard. I've also got an orbital rescue mission to conduct at Kerbin once House Corrino arrives. I'm hopeful that Tango 3's safe delivery to Kerbin's surface will unlock one of the three remaining worlds of the system for exploration and colonization. I'll let y'all know what happens over the weekend on Monday morning, time permitting of course...

All of them? I don't know that I can list them all off the top of my head...but I'll give it ago. On the left (Blizzy's Toolbar) you've got Docking Port Alignment Indicator, Kerbal Flight Data (the on/off toggle), Protractor Extended Continued Continued ad infinitum, TAC Fuel Balancer, Trajectories, and WaypointManager. Then down the right hand side and starting from the top there's Extraplanetary Launchpads, PatchManager (I think), Kerbal Konstructs, Ferram Aerospace Research (I'm low res on account of playing on an office machine rather than a dedicated gaming rig, so it appears black instead of proudly saying "FAR" unfortunately), Stage Recovery, EVA Enhancements Continued, Velocity......something or other - it's a vertical velocity manager related to RCS Land Aid, RCS Land Aid, Action Groups Extended, Pathfinder, Pathfinder's Flight manager (for tiltrotors, mainly), Kerbal Alarm Clock, ShipManifest, NavUtilites, Kerbal Flight Data (again) and Kerbal Engineer Redux at the very bottom. I have a couple more there but they're out of sight in the screenie.

(1.6.1) RL cut into my time pretty heavily yesterday, so I don't have much to show for my day other than beginning a lot of construction work. To summarize, I ordered up... ...a Boop-Boop 7x probe at the Non Pollinis Grano Shipyards over Pol, to be completed in 82 minutes. ...a Dystopia Planitia 7 Kerbin shipyard at the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo, to be completed in 35 hours and 49 minutes. ...a Bill Clinton 7b probe at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus, to be completed in five hours and 35 minutes. ...and a Spamcan 7 Bop-A refinery lander at the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus, which those show-offs will have built in half an hour. Non Pollinis Grano hadn't been supplied after its launch a few weeks ago, so I had to rectify that rather quickly with a mass driver shot of Rocket Parts and fuel from the Petrobas 36 outpost on Pol's surface. Otherwise that probe would've taken quite a good deal longer to build. I did finish up that construction before the day was out and the new probe was launched after fueling, burning to a 617.8 by 27.7 kilometer, 110.78° inclined orbit on the first leg of a contract. Usumacinta also prepped up a pair of Castillo Depots to support the construction/fueling of the forthcoming Tylo shipyard. I still need to get out and deploy those Depots... Only other thing to report yesterday was the arrival of Roy Hinkley over Gilly. Roy Hinkley still before the encounter. Gilly is dinky, y'all... The craft arrived with sufficient fuel to attain a slow orbit and set up her intercept with space station Gillyport on RCS thrust; she'll arrive at the intercept point at two hours and 24 minutes, where a burn to take her to rendezvous with the space station will occur. Hoping to have a busier day today. I'd tell y'all about it but I really should be working right about now...

(1.6.1) For a while there yesterday, I didn't think I was going to have much to talk to y'all about today, but it turned out to be fairly eventful after all. After Monday's failures with the launch of the Woodsy Owl 7 junk-ascent-from-Eve craft, I began my day at the VAB addressing the inherent flaws in the design. From the launch of space station Tyloport over the weekend, I'd learned that it was worthwhile to put Sepratrons on remote launch vehicles as they would be filled miraculously with solid fuel during construction, so Woodsy Owl received some. I decided some test flights were in order though, and it was a good thing; on the first test flight, I had the Sepratrons up too high and the boosters slammed into the core for loss-of-vehicle again. Moved those down and on the second try the vehicle made it to orbit over Kerbin at under 1/3 thrust with fuel still in the third booster pair, which is what you want to see with an Eve launch vehicle test. Redesign work complete, I next had the task of removing Module L-H50 from the Woodsy Owl at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve. The job again fell to pilot Lerod Kerman and engineer Taning Kerman, since they were the ones that had attached the module to the launch vehicle in the first place. Taning running out to the Woodsy Owl while Lerod stands someplace not entirely safe. "Wait, that's not an owl that cares about pollution! It's the Goblin King!!" A complication arose in that Woodsy Owl had taken out ALK's launchpad; the loss of the pad put the payload just out of reach of the two kerbals. Fortunately, Taning had the bright idea to go grab one of the two ladders off of the Echo 3 quadcopter nearby and attach it to the Woodsy Owl's service bay (i.e. where the paywad was). A normal ladder...not something out of an M.C. Escher painting, fortunately... Both kerbals ultimately had to climb the ladder to get the payload out and at one point it was necessary to attach it to the bottom of an engine bell, but eventually it did get detached from the rocket successfully. I think Lerod finally realized just where exactly she was standing. Taning seems unconcerned at least... Once the module was detached and Taning reattached the ladder to Echo 3, she went ahead and entered the outpost, with Lerod closely following suit. It then fell to engineer Gilford Kerman, the only 4-star engineer at ALK, to get rid of the unneeded, flawed booster. "You have no power over me, Jareth!!!" That job done, ALK's crew set about with repairing the damage done to the base with this whole fiasco. A new Rangeland launch pad was printed up along with a new night-vision camera for Echo 3, both of which Taning deployed. Taning wanted a selfie in green. Which is kind of odd considering she's green in all of her selfies...you know, because she's...a......kerbal.........I'ma gonna shut up now. Once that's done and Taning had returned to ALK's factory module, I ordered up a redesigned Woodsy Owl at ALK. Construction is expected to take 25.5 hours to complete. Finally at the point where I didn't have to be at ALK anymore, my attention turned to the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo, where construction of a Minnow 7b with ground booster had completed. The new craft, which my middle child christened Tango 3 (despite the fact that it's not a rover) was fueled and proceeded to launch from Usumacinta, successfully attaining a 100 kilometer orbit after thirteen minutes of flight. Landing on Tylo is difficult, but launches just need Kerbin-rated boosters; I could do those in my sleep. T3 entering orbit. Once in orbit, Tango 3 aligned with LSV House Corrino in higher orbit over Tylo and then burned for an intercept, reaching that intercept point 31 minutes later where it conducted a burn to take it to rendezvous. Flight time to rendezvous will be two hours and fifteen minutes. Today should be plenty eventful. Picked up a contract to put a satellite in orbit of Pol, so I'll likely be firing up the Non Pollinis Grano shipyard in orbit first thing this morning. Also got a mission to haul junk off the surface of Minmus; going to start attending to that soon. Roy Hinkley is almost to Gilly; I expect to be able to finish up the tourist run there today, and then maybe get Hinkley heading back to low Eve orbit and rendezvous with LSV House Atreides for the journey back to Kerbin depending on how everything goes. House Corrino is scheduled to leave orbit for Kerbin as soon as Tango 3 docks up. Tango 3 will not be staying in service - she'll help me finish up the current Tylo exploration mission and then conduct a rescue mission over Kerbin before deorbiting. Only other things I've got cooking right now are an expansion module for Ikeport still under construction and what I hope to be the final burn of a satellite in orbit of Duna right now. I'll let y'all know how things go tomorrow morning.

(1.6.1) Not a lot to report for my efforts yesterday. After sending up fuel supplies and Ore via mass driver from the Usumacinta outpost on the surface of Tylo to the nascent space station Tyloport, it was time to head out to the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve for the glorious launch of the Woodsy Owl 7 Eve surface-to-orbit garbage hauler. Nothing exploded upon mashing the finalize button aside from the night-vision camera on the Echo 3 quadcopter (I think the launchpad may have whacked it when physics kicked in), so pilot Lerod Kerman and engineer Taning Kerman piled out of the 'copter and began the process of attaching Module L-H50, a Convert-O-Tron 150, to the Woodsy Owl. Taning getting ready to unhook the load from the 'copter's roof while Lerod provides some light. Okay, so what we want you to do Lerod is wait here until Taning gets the payload attached, then go light the fuse... Once the payload was attached, Lerod and Taning got back into Echo 3, the rocket was fueled and launched. Launch #1 of Woodsy Owl 7 from ALK. I really wish I'd designed a better rocket... Alas, a clean launch was not to be. Having skimped on Sepratrons and placed the radial decouplers too high, the first booster set collided with the main stack upon stack separation resulting in loss-of-vehicle. Thrice. Reverts and subsequent launches took out ALK's launchpad. As of this morning I've reverted again and I'll be having Lerod and Taning unload the payload from the rocket at the next opportunity so I can try again with a better design later. I'll need to replace ALK's launchpad (once again) and put a new camera on Echo 3, but these are items that can all be easily dealt with at the base. If I'm annoyed about anything, it's the delay...the Woodsy Owl was performing beautifully up to that point. Ended my playing day with the scheduled warp transit of LSV House Atreides from Kerbin to Eve. The ship did a direct flight, arriving at 15,805 m/s and requiring 35 warp-backs to settle into a 644.1 x 483.3 kilometer, 3.61° inclined orbit. Number of warp-backs for a Kerbin-to-Eve flight is definitely trending downward as the two planets slowly come into phase with one another. The plan is still for Atreides to haul back Module L-H50 from Eve as well as to haul Roy Hinkley home after she's done visiting Gilly; she won't arrive there for another nine hours or so. Got the launch of the new Minnow at Tylo to handle first. Also got an expansion module for space station Ikeport almost finished building; probably will be dealing with that today too.

(1.6.1) Spent much of this past weekend working on a project to make an origami Piecepack set (what notes I have on this are over at the BGG forums). Damn near finished it - three chess pawns and it's done as of this post. Had the unfortunate side effect of cutting into my KSP time but then again I didn't have a whole lot going on in the first place... On Friday, after heading out to the Enchova Central outpost on Duna to complete a colonization contract, I went into the VAB to design a test rig. The part was an IFS cryo tank (a CDT2002 IIRC), and the target parameters were to test it in a sub-orbital trajectory over Vall. The rig was designed and designated with the functional name of Test Rig 7 Vall, and then ordered up at the Non Est Hic Shipyards in orbit. Construction took two hours and 34 minutes to complete. While that was ongoing, I went ahead and slapped a Kerbin-rated booster onto the design of the Minnow 7b touring craft in the VAB (I had a booster designed already but had it saved as a subassembly) and I went ahead and drilled up 2600 units of Ore at the Ocean Ranger outpost on Gilly; heading from there straight to the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve (where there was that much ore extant already) fulfilled a mining contract. The test rig was completed at Vall and the test took place as planned, after which a new Boop-Boop 7x probe was ordered up at the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna; construction took three hours and thirteen minutes, after which the probe was fueled, launched and put into a 4,167.4 by 4.0 kilometer, 178.37° inclined "orbit", the first burn in a maneuver to put the thing into a final position out past the orbit of Ike for contract. TL, DR: Friday was spent knocking out small potatoes. Saturday didn't see a lot happen. I decided I'd go ahead and take care of getting Module L-H50 back to ALK, something that's been needing to happen for much of the past week. The Echo 3 quadcopter was still out there with pilot Lerod Kerman and engineer Taning Kerman aboard, so I had the two kerbals pile out to mount the module to their vehicle. "Made in China. I wonder where that is", sez Taning. I was just noting that this was not a Buffalo ISRU like I thought, and now I'm wondering if it'll fit in the service bay of Woodsy Owl when it's all said and done... The two kerbals wound up having no trouble getting the module mounted to the top of the craft. Even moving Echo 3's chute out of the way turned out to be less of a hassle than I anticipated, and soon they were able to begin the long flight back to ALK. Echo 3 at Kerbolrise on Eve. After about two and a half hours of flight covering a distance of 1,530 kilometers, Echo 3 returned without incident to ALK. To minimize the effort once again when the Woodsy Owl 7 launch vehicle completes construction at ALK, the copter was parked as close to the base's launchpad as I dared to go. Man, I hope when I mash finalize on that construction button it doesn't take off a rotor...I'm already kinda worried about the launch. TL, DR: Saturday I hauled junk a long-ass way in a copter over Eve. Yesterday my limited play time was spent at the Usumacinta outpost on Tylo, where the construction of space station Tyloport was finally completed. After transferring fuel supplies to the booster, the new space station launched, successfully attaining a 101.3 by 100.98 kilometer, 0.5° inclined orbit over Jool's largest moon. Space station Tyloport on the pad at Usumacinta. Would've gotten a shot of the launch itself but by then I had my hands full... A backlit nascent space station in final orbit, with the two inner moons and Jool itself visible. With the space station away, construction of the Minnow 7b with the Kerbin-rated booster (unimaginatively designated Minnow 7b Kerbin) was ordered up at Usumacinta. Construction will take eight hours and 32 minutes to complete. Plans for this craft are to have it rendezvous and dock with LSV House Corrino still in orbit of Tylo, with Val conducting an EVA over to the new craft prior to docking. From there, Corrino will head back to Kerbin to undock the new Minnow, which will then deorbit (it's not like I really need another Minnow right now). This should fulfill the latest exploration contract. I'm hoping it opens up one of the three remaining worlds for visitation. Hoping for Dres. Finished yesterday up with a second burn of the Boop-Boop 7x over Duna, putting it into a 4,171.4 by 3,638.2 kilometer, 178.37° inclined orbit. I still don't have the thing in final position. TL, DR: Damn, you people are lazy, do you know that? I only wrote three sentences for what I did on Sunday...you can go read that in its entirety. I'll wait... So not a lot going on in general right now. My notes have me fueling up Tyloport and then doing the stuff with the new Minnow, and that's it. Contracts are still tied up with things either needing to get where they're going, needing for construction to finish up, needing for the clock to run out, or needing permission to visit their target worlds. Only have thirteen contracts right now because three of them being offered are lame. I'll let y'all know if anything interesting happens today; it's not looking like it...