capi3101

SAS on. Pitch will accelerate forward or backward. Roll accelerates you left or right. Yaw points you some place. Up and down pretty much is dependent on throttle. Couple of mods out there for you nascent 'copter jockeys are VerticalVelocityController and RCSLandAid. They've helped me with the Echo Flyer. Couldn't say about Breaking Ground.

(1.6.1) Haven't yet jumped onto the Breaking Ground bandwagon just yet, but it occurs to me that I'm nearing the two month mark since 1.7.x was released, so I think I might begin the process today. Still haven't gotten past Gilly yet, so I'm once again liable to skip the early game, which is unfortunate... Did a pair of Alcubierre Drive warps yesterday, sending LSV House Atreides back to a 442x246 kilometer, 1.45-degree orbit over Kerbin from Eve, and then sending LSV House Harkonnen in the direction of Duna from Kerbin after the South Base outpost near KSC sent up supplies to both warp ships via mass driver. While still in interplanetary space, Jeb piloted Gilligan away from Harkonnen far enough to exit physics range, then turned around, rendezvoused with Harkonnen and docked once again. In doing so, Jeb cleared a pain-in-the-butt exploration contract to rendezvous two craft over Kerbol and unlocked the next Gilly exploration contract, which will be to dock two ships in orbit there and return a craft from Gilly orbit. Still haven't received a go-ahead to land there yet. Harkonnen proceeded from there to Duna, coming in at 5.5 kps; she began warp-backs at that time, and reached a 225x101 kilometer, 2.4-degree orbit over the red planet just this morning. Engineer Gemlorf Kerman and Bill boarded Gilligan's back seat upon arrival, and after refueling, Gilligan departed Harkonnen for the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards. Jeb is delivering Bill and Gemlorf there to help man LSV House Corrino when she launches, which is coming up in just a few days time. Part of Corrino's mission will involve the delivery of rescuee scientists Wehrdas and Lutop Kerman home; while the Bill Clinton 7c grabbing Lutop's Scrap has been in orbit of Duna for a few weeks now, a new G-LOC return-to-Kerbin craft design had to be made (the original was only Mun-rated) and printed up in order to get Wehrdas off the surface; he's currently parked at the Enchova Central outpost there. The G-LOC 7a will be finished in just over another hour's time. Both the Clinton and the G-LOC are docking-capable and the plan today is to get both of these craft up to BLK for the launch. Only other thing I did yesterday was send up an Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane to space station Kerbinport, docking safely there. The Auk hauled up a group of colonists for Minmus as well as a number of passengers heading towards Duna and Eve. I'll be sending out some folks to Minmus as soon as I can get a Minnow 7 craft over to Kerbinport; the only one available right now is T. Howell III parked at the Dystopia Planitia shipyards, and the whole shipyard is currently out of gas... Ain't as interesting as flying 'copters, true. Lack of screenies doesn't help either...

(1.6.1) In preparation for the upcoming mission to put a Pathfinder outpost, I began my day yesterday with the design of the TBD 7dG base-seeding craft. Major changes from the earlier TBD 7d base-seeding rover included the removal of the wheels, additional chassis pieces for monoprop storage, and some RCS thrusters. A pair of O-10 engines tweaked to 20% thrust were added as well. I also added a Micro ISRU unit; along with the design's dinky drill, this gives it the capability of self-refueling no matter how achingly slow that process turns out to be. Overall it has 200 m/s of delta-V; since you only need 30 to get to Gilly's surface from a 10-kilometer orbit, I'm cool with it; the craft should be usable as a VTOL for surface exploration (knock on wood). The trick will be getting it to Gilly. Current plan is to have LSV House Corrino construct and then deliver the craft to Gilly once she leaves the drydock of the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna, which means I'll ultimately need to get an engineering team there. Corrino's construction will be finished in another nine hours. Meanwhile, the Crater Maker 7 bulk lander conducted a landing at the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus. Pilot Melrie Kerman, scientists Siefen and Dumin Kerman and engineer Bartzor Kerman each piled out of the craft in turn to plant flags, and then Bartzor borrowed one of the outpost's KIS screwdrivers. He then proceeded to remove one of the extra Mineshaft docking tubes from the Crater Maker and attached it to the outpost, which allowed colonists Brian and Calble Kerman to disembark; their colonization contract expires in sixteen days. While still attached, the crew leveled up to two-star status and was refueled from the outpost's stores. Bartzor then unhooked the lander from the outpost, restored the spare Mineshaft to its original position, returned the screwdriver and leveled up himself before re-boarding the lander. All business completed, the Crater Maker launched and affected a rendezvous and docking with space station Minmusport, where the crew boarded Necessary Evil docked at the station. Fuel supplies were transferred between DH and Minmusport via mass driver, after which Necessary Evil departed and burned to return to Kerbin; she'll arrive at periapsis in another nineteen hours. After completing a quick ore-con job, I was tasked with the adjustment of satellite M-01059-053040 over Mun; took a single burn to adjust the plane of its orbit to fulfill the contract. Got another ore con as the replacement contract. Ugh... Not wanting to take care of that right away, I decided to send the Delta 1 quadcopter on Duna to go pick up scientist Wehrdas Kerman, who had a rescue contract active. The 'copter flew nearly 300 kilometers northwest of its previous location where I'd conducted a pressure survey earlier. The copter started down by the equator, so this pic oughta tell you something. Despite bouncing off of terrain a time or two, the 'copter did make it to Wehrdas's capsule. This guy stuck out his thumb. Can't tell if he knows where his towel is or not... After Wehrdas boarded, the 'copter took off and flew pretty much straight south until it arrived at the Enchova Central outpost. Once it landed there, Wehrdas planted a flag and then boarded the outpost, punching his ticket to two-star status in the station's habitat module. The plan at this point is to build Wehrdas a launch vehicle and send him into orbit, where he'll board House Corrino for transport back to Kerbin. This morning I decided to take care of the current exploration contract, which involved an EVA over Kerbol as well as science gathering. LSV House Atreides was over Eve doing not much of anything, so I decided to begin the process of sending her home. While still in interplanetary space, I disengaged the Alcubierre Drive long enough for engineer Jergar Kerman to conduct a quick EVA and transmit a crew report. The replacement contract involves a rendezvous over Kerbol. I'll probably be using a Minnow 7 touring craft attached to LSV House Harkonnen to send my engineering crew to Duna, so I'm hoping to be able to get that out of the way then. Meantime, Atreides is currently conducting warpback maneuvers over Kerbin to enter orbit; current speed is just under 12 kps, so it'll probably be another hour or two before she slows down enough to enter orbit. Aside from putting Atreides into orbit, I have no idea what I'll be doing today. I might take care of that ore con job since those are pretty easy to knock out. I'm up to twelve colonists and tourists that need to come up to space station Kerbinport from Kerbin's surface; I might do that before the number grows large enough to warrant one of the larger, pain-in-the-butt-to-dock spaceplanes. Getting Harkonnen ready for departure might also be a high priority. Nothing else really to do at the moment.

(1.6.1) Spent the whole day yesterday putting up a communications satellite constellation over Gilly. Gillycomm 2 entering orbit over a wildling potatoroid. Gillycomm 2's entry into Gilly's SOI fulfilled my current exploration contract (the flyby) and unlocked the go-for-orbit contract, which also including transmitting science back to KSC. The probe burned into a 45x16 kilometer polar orbit and reached periapsis shortly after Gillycomm 1 entered Gilly's SOI and made its initial orbital burn. At periapsis, Gillycomm 2 circularized to 16 kilometers, at which point the two side comm sats decoupled, being re-designated as Gillycomms Delta, Echo and Foxtrot. Echo and Foxtrot then did high burns to put them into their final dispositions. Gillycomm 1 mirrored this behavior along the equator, becoming Gillycomms Alpha, Bravo and Charlie. ScanSat Gilly also entered a 60 kilometer polar orbit about this time and conducted an initial resource scanning pass, fulfilling the science portion of the exploration contract. ScanSat Gilly entering orbit. This screenie is interesting to me because the positions of the six comm sats are also visible...these seven objects are all that I currently have at Gilly. ScanSat Gilly was able to collect narrow-band pass data from all three of Gilly's biomes before the day was out. Unfortunately, the critical combination of Exotic Minerals/Rare Metals does not exist in any of them, so like Mun the place isn't suitable for on-site Equipment manufacture to support a Pathfinder outpost. That said, I did mark a spot for a base along the moon's equator in the Midlands - distances are small enough at Gilly that it may yet be possible to make a set of distributed bases in an adjacent biome. All of the comm sats were positioned before the day was out. Da network. Gilly's low gravity really proved to be a challenge for the normal process of putting up one of these constellations. The force from decoupling alone was sufficient to knock the sats out of inclination alignment with one another, which had to be corrected for, and even with 0.5 thrust limiters on Ant engines, I couldn't achieve the levels of precision in the orbits that I've been able to do elsewhere. Necessary Evil also arrived at Minmus yesterday and conducted a course correction to put it towards a rendezvous with space station Minmusport. The ship arrived and docked at Minmusport this morning, and after fueling the craft, scientists Siefen and Dumin Kerman, pilot Melrie Kerman, engineer Bartzor Kerman and colonists Brian and Calble Kerman transferred to the Crater Maker 7 bulk lander, which departed the station en route to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface. I'll be landing the Crater Maker later today, where the colonists will disembark and the others will conduct flag-planting training. I've picked up a number of new contracts of late and I need to spend some time evaluating what will be involved with each one, so I couldn't really say what else today has in store. Probably going to be designing a TBD craft to handle the challenges Gilly's going to throw at me as likely as not. Also going to have to find a flat spot for a base, which will be a challenge in and of itself, no doubt.

(1.6.1) Morning, y'all. Coming in from an extended weekend with a fair amount of coded gobbledygook to share with y'all, mainly things I was doing while waiting for my probes to reach Gilly. Friday began with a resource transfer via mass driver between the Enchova Central outpost on Duna and the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards in orbit; BLK was scheduled to receive additional Rocket Parts in order to complete the construction of LSV House Corrino along with some extra Enriched Uranium and Xenon Gas to support the new warp ship once finished. BLK will finish Corrino in another seven days or so. After that, the Non Caseus Yards over Mun completed its print of Da Luv Boht 7, a mass-driver equipped resupply craft. The Piper Alpha outpost on Mun's surface sent up supplies via mass driver to NCY next, and after fueling the new craft launched, taking the name Pacific Princess. Pacific Princess then burned and rendezvoused with the stricken McFeely Sr. 7 speedy delivery craft in a 27-degree inclined low orbit over Mun and after docking with it began the process of hauling it over to space station Munport to pick up scientist Lageremy Kerman for transport to Kerbin. Meanwhile a Hodor 7 nuclear battery module began printing up at NCY, with a mission to switch the shipyard over from solar to nuclear power; printing took three hours to complete. A long-term colonization contract at the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus finished up about this time, and a Goo Study began at the Scan Queen outpost on Ike to round out the day. On Saturday, Pacific Princess arrived at Munport and after refueling it released the McFeely Sr. 7. I beginning to think that mass drivers might be a little bit cheatsy, but on the other hand, they're undeniably cool and save a lot of tedium. The McFeely docked with Munport and after Lageremy boarded, the module departed and burned for Kerbin. Pacific Princess then docked to the station to await further need for its services. The rest of my day on Saturday was spent with a pressure readings survey "near" the Echo 3 quadcopter on Eve, which itself was parked at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on the surface. If you get high enough into the atmosphere, flying on Eve is not much different than flying on Kerbin. You can't use jets of course, but electrically driven proprotors work very well. During this flight, I was under the impression that using physics warp would mess with the vertical velocity controller and so I flew it in real time. This was one of those "go to a waypoint for an anomaly, oh this isn't the place go to the next point" missions" as it turned out, with the final waypoint 815 kilometers northeast of ALK. The final waypoint. That far. Transonic speeds at best. No warping... After two hours of flying, the copter finally found the source of the anomalies and I parked the 'copter on a little spit of an island out in the Explodium Sea. My butt was plenty tired when I got to this point, but I do think I learned a fair amount about how to fly on Eve in the process. The return trip was reserved for Sunday. Meantime, I picked up this replacement contract... LEEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEEENNNNKKKIIIIINNNNNSSSSS!!!!!!!! During the return trip to ALK, I discovered that physics warp would be just fine. Return flight still took a little over an hour in-game, but only about fifteen minutes real-time. Only required occasional adjustments to keep the craft's speed over 200 up around 20,000 kilometers altitude. NCY did finish its Hodor print, which then docked to the station and Piper Alpha sent up the necessary supplies to fuel the new reactors. A Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe also was completed at the Dystopia Planitia shipyards over Kerbin, which launched after fueling and burned to rendezvous with some junk in Kerbin orbit. After taking yesterday off from the game, this morning the Clinton arrived at its target, which turned out to be a Mk 1 Drydock; grabbing and deorbiting were successful, with the craft coming down in the Highlands about 100 kilometers west of KSC. The McFeely also made it back to Kerbin and touched down safely, clearing two long-term science contracts and completing Lageremy's rescue contract successfully. Last thing that has happened today was the arrival of the Gillycomm 2 probe at Gilly. After clearing the flyby contract, Mission Control gave to go-ahead for orbit and Gillycomm 2 was put into a 45x16 kilometer polar orbit over the captured wildling asteroid. When the craft reaches periapsis a little under three hours from now, it will deploy the other two communications satellites it's hauling and the process of setting up comms over Gilly will commence. Gillycomm 1 will arrive about thirty minutes before that happens, and ScanSat Gilly will arrive about fifteen minutes after Gillycomm 2 reaches periapsis. Getting that comm network set up is my priority for today, as is performing the orbital scans of Gilly's three biomes. I have a contract which does require me to put an outpost on Gilly, but I have to see if it'll be possible to put up a full Pathfinder base or not. Meantime a crew for such an outpost is still going to be trained; if they wind up not going to Gilly they probably will go to the next world in the game's queue (Moho, I think - never have made it that far). Not really much of anything else interesting going on at the moment; i'll be sure to let y'all know when/if that changes.

(1.6.1) While I was awaiting the completion of a new Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve, I decided to go ahead and get started with the training of my intended crew for my next outpost (which will hopefully be on Gilly). Pilot Melrie Kerman, scientist Dumin Kerman and engineer Bartzor Kerman boarded an Auk XII 6-passenger spaceplane along with scientist Siefen kerman and colonists Brian and Calble Kerman. The Auk took off from KSC 09 en route to space station Kerbinport. Plane flying - there's something I haven't done in a while. And with an Auk XII - the hot rod of the Auk series. The plane affected a successful rendezvous and docking at Kerbinport, at which point the assembled crew boarded Necessary Evil docked at the station with pilot Gregald Kerman at the helm. After fueling, Necessary Evil departed Kerbinport and burned for Minmus; she's scheduled for arrival in Minmus's SOI in 37 hours. Necessary Evil at departure. It's been a while since I've flown a Superfortress 7 ferry craft too... Next I began a print of a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe at the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyard over Kerbin to perform a junk hauling mission; Ceri will have the probe ready in 23 hours. I then had engineer Jergar Kerman aboard LSV House Atreides in high orbit over Eve transmit a crew report to fulfill an orbital science contract there, and then had the Auk return to KSC 09; none of the kerbals currently en route to Minmus will be returning to Kerbin anytime soon. Landing was a success, if a bit hard and left of the center. ALK then signaled the completion of the new Echo Flyer, which was unimaginatively dubbed Echo 3 upon release from the outpost's launchpad. The craft took off on its mission, which was to splash something down in Eve's oceans. I remembered seeing sea to the northeast while the Echo 2 rover was driving to the current ALK site; it turned out to be not all that distant. A suitable patch of explodium was quickly located and the 'copter carefully made its way over it. Looks like Kool-Aid... Splashdown was a success. Little bit of an overshoot as far as landing on the explodium is concerned. Was pretty sure I didn't want to leave the 'copter down in this stuff for too long...Eve's atmo is dense enough, so just how dense is this crap? With the conditions of the contract fulfilled, the 'copter returned to ALK. Home sweet levitating home... The splashdown had the intended effect of completing the current Eve exploration contract, and as hoped, it unlocked the first Gilly exploration contract to conduct a flyby. After waiting in Eve orbit for forty days for a go-ahead, the Gillycomm1, Gillycomm2 and ScanSat Gilly probes all made burns to meet up with the 'roid. Gillycomm2 is scheduled to arrive first in twenty hours time; ScanSat Gilly will arrive last, in 26 hours. All three probes are going to go into orbit whether the next exploration contract says to or not. Before they arrive, I have a scheduled resupply of the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna to perform (she'll be just about out of Rocket Parts for the construction of LSV House Corrino), Da Luv Boht 7 is scheduled to launch from the Non Caseus Yards over Mun, I'll have a colonization contract at the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus finishing up, and Ceri should have that Clinton ready to go garbage collecting. Fair amount of stuff going on at the moment; really looking forward to seeing if I can support a surface base on Gilly or not.

(1.6.1) Ruddy weather prevented me from playing too much yesterday - was making sure my house wasn't either going to a) get blown away or b) get washed away. Lucked out down here; hoping none of y'all have had to deal with any of that. I began my day at the South Base outpost near KSC, which sent up several loads of supplies via mass driver to LSV House Harkonnen recently returned from Eve to a high equatorial orbit over Kerbin. The base turned out to have insufficient available fuel supplies to completely refuel Harkonnen, but it was able to send up enough to refuel the two Bill Clinton 7c grabber probes the ship was carrying as payload. After Gilligan (which was docked to Harkonnen) transferred three science experiments into the business end of the Bento Box 7 and the probes were fully fueled, the two Clintons undocked from Harkonnen. Dreamcatcher, the only named Bill Clinton 7c probe I've ever launched, casting off from House Harkonnen, with the Bento Box 7 in its claw. Both probes then descended to a 100 kilometer equatorial orbit, using space station Kerbinport as a target for purposes of an exact alignment with the equator. The Clinton hauling scientist Siefen Kerman's craft then deorbited, with the probe ultimately making a safe splashdown fifty kilometers to the east of KSC and fulfilling a contract to bring both kerbal and craft from orbit of Ike. After that it was Dreamcatcher's turn. Dreamcatcher casting off its docking shroud, with KSC targeted for landing. Burned the engines a little in atmosphere...kinda liking the data I'm getting from Trajectories at this point. ...ah, so that's how you do that. Good to know. Dreamcatcher landed safely, missing the inner marker of KSC 09 by less than fifty meters. The probes' landing fulfilled several first world contracts involving returning to Kerbin from Eve, and Dreamcatcher's return in particular with the Bento Box 7 fulfilled my Exploration contract's requirement to bring a craft back to Kerbin's surface from Eve's surface. So glad that actually worked... I haven't finished the Exploration contract's other requirement yet, which is to splash a craft into Eve's oceans. For that, I've got a revised Echo Flyer quadcopter under construction at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve, which should complete in about another five hours. When finished, I plan to fly the copter to the ocean, splash then hopefully take back off and get it at least back to land (ideally back to the outpost at some point), and I'm hoping that will unlock Gilly for me. I've got a crew selected for the Gilly outpost but they're all rookies, so next up in the pipe is an Auk XII 6-passenger spaceplane flight to Kerbinport for ferrying to Minmus along with two colonists heading that way. Da Luv Boht 7 is still under construction at the Non Caseus Yards over Mun and I've got three contracts riding on the craft's completion; it might finish up later today with any kind of luck. Other than that I've got LSV House Corrino still under construction at the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna with a contract riding on its completion, and I've still got the Ray Charles 7 solar telescope heading out to its final position over Kerbol - it won't arrive there for another 75 days or so, definitely my longest-range contract at this point. Everything else is on hold until this all finishes up, which will happen hopefully soon. Still trying to come up with a good name for the eventual shipyard I plan to build over Gilly. Only thing I can think to do there is make a reference to the Game of Thrones character. I'm open to suggestions...

(1.6.1) Not much to report to y'all today. After Saturday's successful launch of the Bento Box 7 from the surface of Eve and a couple of days off from the game, things picked back up yesterday with the Dreamcatcher probe, which rendezvoused with the Bento Box. This is my first public screenie of the Bento Box payload - as y'all can see, there's not a whole lot to it. Then again, with a classic Temstar-style asparagus rocket, you'd be lucky to get much more than five tonnes off of Eve... After successfully grabbing the Bento Box, Dreamcatcher made a burn to rendezvous with LSV House Harkonnen in higher Eve orbit. Tada! One warp ship, one Bill Clinton 7c grabber probe, one hopefully fulfilled contract payload... Dreamcatcher was slated to dock up to one of Harkonnen's central ports but I discovered they were all occupied, so Jeb went ahead and undocked Gilligan and the docking adapter module from Harkonnen and moved them both to one of the side ports off the craft's Bigby Workshop module. Dreamcatcher then moved to dock to the vacated port. Coming into dock, with Gilligan docked to Harkonnen in the foreground. After Dreamcatcher docked, I made a quick check to ensure that Harkonnen's business at Eve was concluded - it was - and to ensure that everything currently docked up would fit within the ship's warp bubble - it did, though Gilligan's Poodle engine just barely made it in. All preparations complete and with her mass driver secured from operations, Harkonnen warped to return to Kerbin. Time to go cash in a few checks. I spent the rest of my play time yesterday getting Harkonnen into orbit over Kerbin. The ship ultimately settled into a 593x549 kilometer, 0.28 degree high orbit over Kerbin, and is now set to receive a resupply from the South Base outpost near KSC. Harkonnen used up a lot of its available fuel stores - including those aboard all the craft docked to it - to launch the TBD 7d rover that ultimately became the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve's surface. I have to replace all of it to complete Siefen's junk-and-kerbal rescue from Duna, get the Power Tools study I did at space station Dunaport checked off, and get the Bento Box down. Guessing Harkonnen is ultimately going to be heading off to Gilly next; I've got a crew standing by for that mission, but I've got to get them trained first. I have a pair of colonists heading out to Minmus so the Gilly crew can tag along and do some local flag-planting at the same time; I'll try to get all that started today. Everything else is pretty much waiting for various construction projects to finish up at this point. Hoping to clear out the current Eve exploration contracts soon so I can begin Gilly missions; with luck the game will give me a go on all that today. Going to depend on how much KSP time I get...

(1.6.1) TL,DR: The last several days have been quite eventful. Going to be a screenie-heavy post; my apologies in advance. Thursday began with my efforts to bring the Christmas Tree 7 nuclear battery, which had launched on Wednesday from the Infans Calcitrant Yards over Ike, to dock with the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna. The Tree affected a burn to bring it to rendezvous with the shipyard, after which I went ahead and sent a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe over Mun to rendezvous with the Non Caseus Yards in orbit there. The Clinton for its part had boosted a Venkmann 7 probe on a course that would take it to entry at Kerbin, then had burned to return to Mun orbit on Wednesday. After the Tree arrived and docked safely at BLK, its transfer stage was sent on a course that would take it back to ICY for recycling, while the Clinton arrived at NCY and grabbed ahold of the station successfully. Shortly after that, the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun signaled that after several in-game months, a Breakthrough Technology experiment ongoing had completed and a Temperature Survey began. I'd been fighting the breakthrough tech experiment for some time and was quite happy when it finished itself up. The Venkmann probe made its way back to Kerbin next. Glamour shot of the day. The probe successfully entered Kerbin's atmosphere and survived to splashdown, completing a materials space exposure study contract in the process (which is why this particular probe has seating for two, which itself turned out to be unnecessary in this instance). The Christmas Tree 7's transfer stage arrived at ICY shortly thereafter. I don't know. I think it would look better if I put some fake teeth on the end of the drydock. You know, give it that whole "sandworm getting ready to devour you" vibe. Of course, that wouldn't really work for launches... Once the stage was recycled, a pair of Bill Clinton 7c dockable grabber probes were ordered up - one at ICY, the other aboard LSV House Harkonnen in orbit of Eve. The first would conduct a junk-and-kerbal mission over Ike, while the second would be the part that would bring the payload of the Bento Box 7 back to Harkonnen for transport to Kerbin, assuming that launch went off. The Dystopia Planitia shipyards over Kerbin finished up the print of a Bill Clinton 7b shortly thereafter and after a quick resupply via mass driver from the South Base outpost near KSC, the Clinton launched from the shipyard and burned for a rendezvous with component HR-7LD in Kerbin orbit. Friday saw the rendezvous of the Clinton 7b with its target, which turned out to be a loose Poodle engine; the probe grabbed ahold of the Poodle and deorbited safely, landing about 85 kilometers to the west of KSC for contract. The crew aboard Piper Alpha completed their temperature survey shortly thereafter, so the results of both that survey and the breakthrough technology survey were loaded aboard a waiting McFeely Sr. 7 speedy science delivery craft awaiting launch on the outpost's pad. After fueling, the McFeely launched. Could've stood to use the zoom controls on this one, I'm afraid... The McFeely established itself in a 15-kilometer, 26-degree inclined orbit over Mun. Unfortunately, this put the module in orbit but without insufficient fuel to send it on to Kerbin. Plans for a resupply mission didn't really materialize until Saturday, but they'll involve the use of this kludge: ♫ Soon you'll be making another run... ♫. The fact that I know any of the lyrics to that song really dates me, I think... The day on Friday ended with the completion of the Clinton print aboard Harkonnen. It was necessary for LSV House Atreides also in Eve orbit to send some additional fuel supplies over to Harkonnen in order to completely fuel the probe, but once that was done, the Clinton launched safely from Harkonnen's drydock. To distinguish it from the other Clinton 7c, this particular probe was given the launch name Dreamcatcher. Seemed appropriate given its mission. On Saturday, ICY completed its Clinton probe under construction, and after the Scan Queen outpost on Ike resupplied the shipyard via mass driver, the probe launched from the shipyard's drydock. The probe easily affected a rendezvous and grab of Pilot Lutop's Scrap over Ike, then burned and finally arrived in a 108x98 kilometer, 0.62-degree low orbit over Duna. The probe with Lutop attached will await the final construction of LSV House Corrino currently under construction at BLK, and will dock to the new warp ship once it's launched; Corrino's first mission will be to bring Lutop home. Da Luv Boht 7 was designed after this, with a new instance of the ship ordered up at NCY; construction should take 4 days. Shortly after that, I got the signal I'd been waiting for from the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve - construction of the Bento Box 7 was complete. Bento Box 7, a big rocket with a really small payload, on the pad at ALK awaiting launch. Of course it'd have to be at night... Once the outpost had finished fueling it up, I quicksaved - I figured there was no way I'd get the launch right on the first try, and I was right. Never did get the damn thing to launch straight up. Of course, that might've had more to do with the fact that the whole base was trying to tip over due to the rocket's weight... On the first two tries, the rocket disintegrated due to atmospheric stresses. On the third try, I decided to keep the thrust down a bit and let it fly up until the Q started coming down - it still got up to a very impressive ~280 kPa all the same - at which point I started to nudge it over a bit more towards horizontal. Wound up doing Elon Musk's flight profile for the Falcon Heavy really...did something like a 2300 m/s orbital insertion burn. But it worked. Bento Box 7 in a 192x183 orbit over Eve, somehow with 1,687 m/s of delta-V still aboard its booster. Makes me wish I'd loaded some experiments on the thing... With the Bento Box 7 successfully in orbit over eve, ALK began the print of a new Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter; construction will take 4 days. If I decide to try to launch something else from Eve's surface in the future, I'll work on optimizing the ascent profile then. Myself, I accredit the successful launch of the Bento Box to Kerbal Joint Reinforcement and FAR... Today, my goal is to get Dreamcatcher to scoop up Bento Box's payload and get it back to Harkonnen. When that happens, Harkonnen can return to Kerbin to drop off its payloads and do a resupply. If I finish up Da Luv Boht, I'll be sending it to get the McFeely - the fact that it'll have an operational mass driver aboard means that I can resupply DLB as much as I need to until the McFeely is in a position to get into equatorial orbit. Ideally, I'd like to get the McFeely to space station Munport, where it could transport rescuee scientist Lageremy Kerman home and kill off all three of my current Mun contracts in the process. I'll have to see how the day goes. If I can get the new Echo Flyer built and splash it down in Eve's oceans, and Harkonnen safely gets the Bento Box to Kerbin, I could be looking at a go for Gilly missions as early as today. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Quick news update - Bento Box 7 successful launch to 180k orbit from Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve. Details tomorrow sometime between 13-15Z.

(1.6.1) Okay... time to decode this garbage... 5/15: Can7a dep Mport, r Lageremy’s capsule. S-Lageremy EVA xCan. Can b4r, r&d Mport. SQ ptd Hound, Hound + SQ, b4V, l 1.5k oft, hit 3pts 4c. DH + 45dCc. NCY ptd BC7b, BC + NCY @r w/Venkmann, g Venkmann, b4K, g-Venk, b4Mo. ICY ptd CT7, SQ xUe ICY, ICY xMOF CT7. CT7 + ICY b4r BLK, wa2h30m int. 5/16: PA bp McFeely Sr7, wc 7h. So yesterday I got back to business trying to start taking care of my ongoing contracts once again. The day started with the departure of the Spamcan 7a lander from space station Munport, which was dispatched to rendezvous with Lageremy's capsule in a high, inclined orbit over Mun. The rendezvous was completed successfully. There's nothing particularly impressive about this, but I wanted to note that for once the game actually gave me a freakin' stock part for the rendezvous. I'm shocked... Scientist Lageremy Kerman EVA'd and climbed into the Spamcan, at which point the craft returned to Munport. Lageremy will remain at Munport until I can get an available craft to take him back to Kerbin. Next up, the Scan Queen outpost on Ike printed up a Hellhound 7 rover with its skycrane in order to conduct a seismic survey in 900 kilometers away in the Eastern Mountain Range. Once fueled, the rover - designated India-3 - launched to the target zone, missing its target landing point by only 1.5 kilometers. The rover hit all three points of its survey, fulfilling the contract. While conducting the survey, I received word from the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus that a 45-day colonization contract for nine Kerbals was done; I visited the outpost briefly to clear the contract fully, netting me a cool √7M (mind you, my Strategies are set to where the bulk of the funds route into Reputation instead; I have yet to see where that's sitting now but it was at 96% before the contract finished up. I'm still plenty rich from the last time I finished up one of these long term colonization contracts...). The Non Caseus Yards over Mun completed the printing of a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe next, which was fueled and then launched to rendezvous with the Venkmann 7 probe I'd launched from the station several days ago carrying a completed Materials Survey. It had turned out that the design of the Venkmann didn't have sufficient fuel for a return to Kerbin, hence the need to give it a boost. Serendipitously, the Venkmann was making a very close approach to NCY at the time of the Clinton's launch - it was within 600 meters of the shipyard at the time, so it was an easy matter to grab it. Talk about your waste of monoprop... After burning sufficiently to put the Venkmann on a course to enter Kerbin's atmosphere, the Clinton released the probe and then burned to return to a stable orbit over Mun. At the moment its orbit is something like 150x15k, and this morning I had the idea that I should have return to and then grab on to NCY; it's a perfectly good probe capable of performing another grabbing mission if I ever need to do one (likely), so I might as well refuel the thing. Plus that'd clear up a flight. Last thing that happened yesterday was the completion of the Christmas Tree 7 nuclear battery at the Infans Calcitrant Yards over Ike. A small supply of Enriched Uranium was shot up to ICY from Scan Queen via mass driver in order to give them an initial power generation supply for the craft's intended trek over to the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna, and standard fuel supplies were loaded aboard prior the battery's launch. Christmas Tree 7 over Ike preparing to burn for Duna, with the Infans Calcitrant Yards in view. Still think that's a hell of a lot of SAFER reactors - but the intended job needs a hell of a lot of them... Christmas Tree burned for Duna and will reach an intersection point with BLK in about 2.5 hours. In the meantime I've been hanging out at the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun, where after months of research, a Breakthrough Tech experiment is nearly complete. This morning, I ordered up the print of a McFeely Sr. 7 speedy delivery craft at the outpost in anticipation of that experiment's completion and the subsequent need to return it to Kerbin. Construction should take seven hours. On the agenda for today is to get the Christmas Tree docked to BLK, and to finish up the experiments ongoing at Piper Alpha. Since NCY is now available for use, I might also begin the process of printing a return craft for Lageremy as well. Got a lot of stuff happening between now and when the Bento Box 7 finishes construction at the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve; that mission is the one I'm looking forward to at this point. Might happen today, might not - going to depend on how much time I can find.

(1.6.1) Spent a fair chunk of my day finishing up the construction of the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve. Engineer Gilford Kerman finished positioning the base structures and from there it was simply a matter of producing enough Konkrete to finally deploy them all. I'm still concerned about a 300+ tonne base floating a couple of meters over a world with 1.7 gees of surface gravity, but as long as nothing explodes, I can work with it. The base's mass driver was able to connect with the mass driver aboard LSV House Harkonnen; early tests show a payload limit of 0.5 tonnes to Harkonnen's present orbit, which is about an order of magnitude less than I originally calculated. Still trying to figure that one out. It's not nothing, though. I didn't get a connection with LSV House Atreides also in Eve orbit and I need to see if that's because it's out of range or merely turned off. Guessing the latter. With the base's construction finally finished up, it was time to get back to business as usual. ALK began the print of the Bento Box 7, an attempt to fulfill the exploration contract that returns a craft to Kerbin from the surface of Eve. Construction is expected to take forty hours to complete and it's yet to be seen whether the outpost will have sufficient fuel reserves to fully fuel the rocket upon completion or if it'll be necessary to keep it on the pad for a while (a concern given the fact that the base is floating because Kraken eggs or something). ALK also completed a contract to drill 500 ore from Eve's surface, and the crew aboard went ahead and planted flags both for the additional experience and to fulfill a contract to plant a flag on the surface of Eve; the three kerbals went ahead and punched their tickets in the base's Habitat module shortly thereafter. A redesign of the Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter took place next - the new design adds a SAS wheel for additional control as well as three more SAFER reactors to avoid the power supply problems the original craft had. A pair of Bill Clinton 7b grabber probes were ordered up at the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyards above Kerbin and the Non Caseus Yards over Mun; the first of these will fulfill an orbital junk hauling contract, while the latter will be grabbing a Venkmann 7a probe lander that ran out of gas trying to return an experiment to Kerbin from Mun. The Piper Alpha outpost on the surface of Mun began a WBI temperature survey that likely will begin after an ongoing breakthrough technology study completes (eventually). The Scan Queen outpost on Ike began printing up a Hellhound 7 rover with skycrane on a mission to conduct a seismic survey on the far side of Ike; that print will take nine hours to finish. Finally, I went ahead and retired the Echo 1 rover on Eve; the gravity and terrain proved to be too much for the venerable Hellhound design, apparently. Given that the Hellhound was designed mainly for Mun though, that's not that big of a surprise. So I'm back to the point where most of my contracts are in a holding pattern, either waiting for things to get to where they're going or (in most cases) for construction of the necessary craft to finish up. I do have a rescue mission over Mun that I will be attending to later today, and I hope to be able to attend to some of the other contracts as well. The Ike seismic survey is liable to happen today. Couldn't say about the others.

Any of y'all having problems attaching boxed parts onto certain KIS nodes of the Castillo? KIS nodes 3 and 7 are the ones that are giving me the biggest headaches. When I go to attach something to them, the part I'm attempting to attach will flicker. If I then go click to actually attach the part, about half the time it positions itself correctly but the rest of the time it attaches inside the Castillo and I can only retrieve it again if I'm lucky. Using Pathfinder 1.32.4 with KSP 1.6.1; I realize I'm out of date on both counts but would still like to know if any of y'all are seeing the aforementioned behavior.

(1.6.1) Not a whole lot to report to y'all this morning. After the weekend's fun of trying to get all the parts and Equipment in place, the construction of the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on Eve so far has been damn near routine (aside from the fact that the base is floating a few meters off the surface). Yesterday I was focused on base expansion, with pilot Lerod Kerman and scientist Rodemone Kerman manning the fabrication lab while engineer Gilford Kerman put structures into place as they came off the assembly line. All of the main Pathfinder structures are in place at this point and the remaining boxed structures have been printed up; this morning saw the construction of the central Castillo dome as well. One RL day's worth of progress, closer to three days in-game. Sorry for the night screenie. The Echo 2 rover is on the right if you squint hard enough. Once I got the Rangeland launch pad deployed, I did go ahead and maneuver the Echo Flyer 7a quadcopter onto it and proceeded to recycle the craft. I can print up a new one in the future (one with more SAFER reactors) if the situation warrants it; in the meantime, I don't necessarily need the extra parts in the area contributing to lag. I'm keeping the Echo 2 rover out of sentiment mainly - out of all the craft I deployed to the surface of Eve for the purposes of establishing ALK, it's the only one that actually worked as intended without having to kludge up a Plan B. Plan for today is to continue construction at ALK. I've got five walkway modules ready to go ahead and fully deploy and the structures that will go on the end of those modules are ready to attach, so I'll be doing that at the next opportunity. That should be the last bit of EVA work that Gilford has to do for the construction of the base, barring the need to deploy additional SAFERs once the base's mass driver goes online. I'm still not certain that I have the configuration of Pipeline mass driver's tweaked sufficiently to provide enough oomph to get supplies to future Eve-orbiting bases; my calculations puts the maximum payload at 5-8 tonnes, which is still better than what you can generally get off of Eve using a Temstar-style asparagus rocket (best calculation there is 4.8 tonnes maximum). Means I'll need a lot of fast charging reactors to use the mass driver repeatedly. No biggie all things considered. Other construction is still going apace as well; I did have to take a moment to shoot up a load of Rocket Parts from the Scan Queen outpost on Ike to the Infans Calcitrant Yards in orbit this morning. ICY is continuing the construction of the Christmas Tree 7 nuclear battery, a craft designed to provide the 10,000 EC/s required to charge up an Alcubierre Drive's exotic matter tank without requiring a sundive. That's got about seventeen hours left to finish up. The plan for that craft is to send it over to the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna, where it be charging up LSV House Corrino once construction is finished. There are still a few weeks to go on that construction. Just about to get back into the saddle on doing other things. A key thing I've got coming up is the launch of the Bento Box 7 from ALK - if all goes according to plan, the craft will be my very first attempt to launch something from the surface of Eve. KER says the craft has the 8,000 m/s it needs to put its payload into orbit. We'll see...

(1.6.1) For a brief, shining moment this past weekend, I had a brand new, fully functional manned outpost on the surface of Eve. Sadly, the nascent base received a congratulatory message shortly thereafter from a certain cephalopod, requiring a revert... So to recap: the TBD 7d rover proved to be an unusable design for Eve on account of its weight; even after adding sixteen wheels, I couldn't get it down the hill it was parked on without tires exploding/popping, so the decision was made to establish a small storage depot (Echo Station 1), offload all the usable equipment and parts to the depot and scuttle the rover, using the Echo Flyer 7a quadcopter to ferry everything to the desired site 37 kilometers away in Eve's Midlands. That process began on Thursday with the delivery of the first base structures and engineer Gilford Kerman's absent-mindedness; he left the screwdriver he'd need to start building the new base back at Echo Station 1. When I last reported, pilot Lerod Kerman and scientist Rodemone Kerman were bringing him the screwdriver and still had seven klicks to go before they returned to the Midlands site. So on Friday, the Echo Flyer did finally make it back to the site, with Rodemone handing Gilford the screwdriver. To assist with the future flights between the two sites, Gilford and Rodemone carefully detached the SAFER nuclear reactor from the nearby Echo 2 rover and slung it underneath the Echo Flyer's starboard pylon, with Gilford attaching the first set of base structures to Echo 2 for temporary safe keeping. The two kerbals then re-positioned the Echo Flyer's existing SAFER reactor underneath the portside pylon to re-balance the craft's mass accordingly, which had the effect of doubling the steady power supply. Gilford then boarded the Echo Flyer, which then departed for Echo Station 1; Rodemone stayed behind with Echo 2 and the starting base structures. The extra reactor didn't completely solve the Echo Flyer's power supply problems, but it did go a long way towards it; the fourth flight of the craft proved to be the only one where it was unnecessary to land to recharge the batteries. Upon returning to Echo Station 1, the remaining base structures were loaded aboard; I had at this point rediscovered the Pathfinder mod's button on the sidebar and the little cheat button that said "top off resources". It occurred to me that I could use this button to save myself half-a-dozen flights between the two outposts, since I could reconfigure the craft's Mule container to hold Equipment. I made careful note of how much Equipment there was aboard Echo Station 1; while I had decided to cheat, I didn't want to overdo it. Ran into a slight snag after loading up the remaining base structures; try as I might, I couldn't get Gilford to Climb Out at the top of the ladder to get back inside the craft. So I decided to test his grip strength. Keep hanging on there, Gilford - you're doing great! Mind your head!! I kept the Echo Flyer low and slow until finally it went over a patch of ground that had a slope of just over nine degrees; landing there, Gilford finally was able to Climb Out and get back aboard the Flyer, at which point the craft headed towards the Midlands Site. The extra weight taxed the engines a little more heavily on this flight, and it was necessary to stop and recharge just once. Arrived. Finally. Upon arrival, the second SAFER was returned to Echo 2 and Gilford unpacked the base structures. After hooking up the Echo Flyer to the Pondarosa Blacksmith fab lab module via KIS resource transfer station, the cheating plan was instituted and the Pondy was inflated, after which all the equipment transferred aboard. Gilford deployed five more structures including a Geology Lab and a storage module for Equipment; the remaining Equipment was transferred off to the Mule along with one and a half more Equipment loads. Kraken ultimately shook this initial base apart, but not before I got some crucial data from the Geology Lab: Metal Ore abundance - not zero. I can build the Bento Box here... I was able to revert to the point where the Flyer arrived and this morning I have three of the outpost structures rebuilt, with the Equipment resources transferred over and the resource transfer station stowed. I quit the game with the base's airbrake off, so I'm hopeful when I begin the game again nothing will explode and strand my three kerbals out on the surface. At this point I just have to keep the Kraken from eating the Alexander L. Kielland outpost on the surface of Eve again, or at least, keep it from happening long enough to launch something from there. All the indicators say it's possible. Keeping my fingers crossed.

(1.6.1) Welp, the extra tires on the TBD 7d base-seeding rover didn't do the trick, so my plan to put a permanent outpost on the surface of Eve went over to Plan B this morning. First thing I did was to have engineer Gilford Kerman unload a stowed Pondarosa Habitat module (all non-stock modules mentioned in this post are probably from the Pathfinder mod) and set it up to inflate, using a Saddle Muncrete Slab as a foundation. Once that was done, a Chuckwagon storage module was set up for Equipment and attached to the Pondarosa, at which point Gilford started unpacking the rest of the base modules from the rover's rear Wagon to the Pondarosa. With that job complete, the contents of the rover's forward Wagon - the remaining Equipment resources - were piped into the Pondarosa via KIS resource transfer station. The transfer station was unhooked and stowed aboard the Pondarosa, at which point pilot Lerod Kerman got out of the rover to assist Gilford in unloading the stowed SAFER reactor and attaching it to the nascent outpost. With that job complete and with the TBD 7d verified as being effectively stripped of all useful resources, scientist Rodemone Kerman joined Lerod and Gilford aboard the new temporary outpost designated Echo Station 1 and Mission Control scuttled the TBD 7d rover from the Tracking Station. Had some issues with the Buffalo Airbrakes when I went back to continue the plan... Okay, that's it. I quit... To date, this has been the only time I've left off an airbrake and had the structure fall to the ground without immediately detonating. I'd've left Echo Station 1 floating in mid-air, except it obviously is rather worthless in that configuration. So now as the only means of transport available, the nearby Echo Flyer 7a quadcopter was drained of the Equipment it had onloaded the day before and its Mule container reconfigured for general KIS storage. The second Pondarosa module - the Blacksmith fabrication lab, what I think of as the core module - was loaded aboard the copter along with a second Saddle, at which point Lerod and Gilford boarded and made the 35-kilometer flight to the target zone. Owing to the power supply problems I mentioned in my post from yesterday, it was necessary to fly in stages ranging from eight to ten kilometers or so per flight. Lots of quicksaving, some crashes and reverts - but the two kerbals ultimately arrived at the target area first scouted by the Echo 2 rover. Your new home, guys. Obviously the landscaping was done by Thanos. Gilford got out to unpack the structures that had been brought along, which was when I realized that he'd left the KAS screwdriver back at Echo Station 1. Lerod and I took turns insulting him - Gilford was left standing on the surface with 1.1 tonnes of Pondarosa on his back while Lerod flew back to Echo Station 1 to go get the screwdriver and pick up Rodemone while he was at it. Ideally, Lerod would've picked up a load of Equipment to bring back with him, but the KIS resource transfer station had been stowed aboard the outpost rather than left out where it might've been able to make the transfer... At the moment, Lerod and Rodemone are about seven klicks out from the target site with screwdriver in hand. At this rate I can expect to make eight nerve-wracking trips between the two outposts - one to get the rest of the base components, and the other three to load all the Equipment. It does occur to me that I really only need one load of Equipment to get the base up and running, but there's not much sense in leaving it all out there. Besides, I'm going to want that nuke reactor at some point. This is liable to be my gameplay for the foreseeable future, y'all, and it's probably going to be as exciting as it sounds, so if you don't hear from me for a while, be rest assured that I haven't fallen off the face of the planet...

(1.6.1) After three attempts at putting the Echo Flyer 7a resource quadcopter on the surface of Eve yesterday morning, I finally got it right it right; the craft landed safely in the Highlands approximately thirteen kilometers from the stricken TBD 7d base-seeing rover. That was where I left things yesterday. This morning has been quite the trial. So apparently, I missed the bit that says a Typhoon tiltrotor blade (of which the Echo Flyer has four (rather obviously) - they're a Buffalo part) requires 148 EC/s at maximum thrust. The Echo Flyer has a grand total of 1 SAFER reactor aboard for a power source, which outputs 125 EC/s. Craft probably worked just fine on Duna because the engines weren't being taxed to full power, and I didn't note the power supply problem on Kerbin because I was keeping the flights short. Sure proved to be problematic on Eve. Nothing I couldn't overcome with reverting and experimentation; ultimately, I flew the 'copter in bursts of about 4-5 kilometers each, flying until the onboard batteries were at about 40% charge before landing. I'd make sure the autopilots were off, quicksave, let the batteries charge back up and then get back into the air. After three or four flights, the copter finally arrived at the rover. Yep. This was unnecessarily painful. Going to have to recycle this copter eventually... Once the copter arrived, engineer Gilford Kerman was tasked with getting the tires the copter had brought onto the rover, a task made unnecessarily difficult by the rover's tendency to slide down the slope on which it was located. It was necessary to move the copter in front of the rover's path of travel due to it sliding as far as it did. Mind you, this was with the Buffalo airbrake set; thing shouldn't have been moving at all. Gilford did finally get all the extra tires put on and at this point all that remains is to offload 5000 units of Equipment onto the copter. I'd have done this already except TAC chose an inopportune time to take a nap on me. I'm still hopeful that the transfer of the Equipment will remove enough extra weight from the rover that it will finally be able to drive without popping tires; it's still doing that at the moment. If that doesn't solve the problem, I'm stuck with Plan B, which is to fly the copter over to the intended outpost site with all the outpost parts and Equipment in multiple loads. Given the recent discovery of the power supply problem, that option isn't as appealing as was at the start of my day today... Tomorrow marks one month since KSP 1.7 dropped. A fair number of the mods I use still haven't been updated for compatibility with 1.7, so I'll be sticking with 1.6 for a little while longer. I'm still going to remain optimistic about the TBD 7d and its mission to establish a permanent base on Eve, something that I'm sure will happen some time in the next day or two with any kind of luck at all.

43% ain't bad. At least I think it's that. Been up since 12:30 AM local the past few days so at the moment I a tad sleep-deprived...

I'd agree with this statement; I've had the Knuts survey come up before in my contract list. You can only do that one if you've got life support mods, which I don't.

(1.6.1) Going to be one of those posts where a lot of stuff happened aside from me pressing the F1 key at multiple opportune moments. You've been warned. So after landing the TBD 7d base-seeding rover on Eve on Monday and quickly realizing that I had failed to include enough wheels for its mass, I spent much of the rest of Monday trying to figure out how I was going to add more wheels to the existing rover (the mods I have installed allow for that sort of thing). By the end of the day having had all attempts at a working in-situ solution thwarted, it became obvious to me that I was going to have to deliver extra wheels to the site. I had the bright idea to modify the design of the Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter to hold a Pathfinder Mule resource container, something that could be reconfigured for both cargo and resources. The default configuration of the modified 'copter would use the Mule in a KIS storage configuration and haul down the extra wheels to the rover. It occurred to me that if that plan failed for some reason, the 'copter would still be capable of hauling all of the rover's base equipment to its intended final destination, then come back and haul over the needed Equipment to start deploying it (or whatever order I finally elected to do things in). A test flight of the new design was conducted at KSC, with the craft landing easily on top of the VAB. After the addition of an entry stage and a de-orbit stage, the new Echo Flyer 7a was ordered up for construction aboard LSV House Harkonnen in orbit of Eve. This brought up a new problem for me, though - Harkonnen didn't have sufficient Rocket Parts to print the Flyer aboard, and while LSV House Atreides also in Eve orbit had a full supply aboard, there still wasn't enough between the two of them to finish the build. In a panic as to how I was going to get the needed Parts to Eve, I ordered the construction of a new warp ship at the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna; LSV House Corrino will be under construction for the next three weeks. Meanwhile, a Christmas Tree 7 nuclear charging station is under construction at the Infans Calcitrant Yards over Ike; it should finish up in eight days. Neither of these addressed the problem of getting more Parts to Eve in time (since the Flyer would only take a mere fifteen hours to complete), so why I started these projects is rather dubious. Chalk it up to sleep deprivation... Earlier this morning, with a mere 24 Rocket Parts on board, the total supply from LSV House Atreides was transferred over to LSV House Harkonnen via the ships' respective mass drivers. Atreides then warped over Kerbol to recharge its exotic matter supply and slow down for return to Kerbin. In the meantime, a Venkmann 7 science processing probe finished up a Material Exposure Space Study at the Non Caseus Yards over Mun; the probe was released and would've burned for Kerbin except that it was about thirty m/s of delta-V too short to do so. I'll have to figure out another way of getting the probe's payload back to Kerbin and redesign the probe itself at the next opportunity. A Venkmann 7a science probe lander parked on the launch pad at the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun finished up a Temperature Survey, so it launched from the outpost and made its way back to Kerbin; it splashed down safely and cleared a long-standing contract in the process. Atreides then returned to Kerbin and entered orbit, staying just long enough for the South Base outpost near KSC to refill its supply of Rocket Parts via mass driver. Atreides then warped out of orbit and returned to Eve. Upon arrival, the supply aboard Harkonnen was evaluated and Atreides was able to refill Harkonnen before attaining orbit, ensuring the other warp ship would be able to complete the print of the Echo Flyer. Atreides reattained orbit, and an hour later, the Echo Flyer 7a was complete, rolling out of Harkonnen's drydock. From there, the trick was to get the craft down to the TBD 7d. Echo Flyer 7 around 300,000m over Eve, burning for atmospheric entry near the TBD 7d rover. Owing to the way the craft was built (namely, the fact that the cabin should not be the control point but I have no way of accessing the part I really want as the control point), I have had to make three attempts so far to get the craft to the surface; the third attempt would've succeeded had the game not chosen to lock up (copter was unstowed and flying at the time). I have the entry profile from the third attempt written down, and will be making a fourth attempt to get it to the stricken rover later this morning (knock on wood). I'm hopeful that the copter's mission will be a success one way or another - whether it enables the TBD to drive the thirty kilometers to its final intended destination or it ferries the passengers, equipment and crew over there itself. Should make an effective auxiliary vehicle for the new outpost no matter what. Going to get that outpost going, y'all...

In your case, it's because you don't have any of the parts that can do the job installed. You need MOLE or Pathfinder - one or the other. Sorry that I can't offer better help than that.

The others I can name (because I'm using) are Pathfinder (which gives you parts for inflatable/mobile bases), MOLE (which gives you Gemini-style parts) and BARIS (for part breakdowns, because that's fun in the Dwarf Fortress sense apparently - I don't actually use that one). There's another one that gives you zeppelin parts but the name escapes me (Bison, I think), and then there's the flying saucer one, whose name also escapes me. There may be other WBI mods out there; someone else can check me on this. Buffalo by itself doesn't have access to the experiments you're looking for; double-checked that this morning. I'll suggest downloading MOLE; I rather like the Gemini-style parts myself and it offers a fair bit of flexibility. The Long-Duration Exposure...Facilities? Something...(LDEF) parts that come with it have the experiments in question as individual parts, which you can hook up to a central core. It also has the MOLE lab, which you can set up with a 2-star scientist or better and an antenna. Do that and you can get orbital experiments sent up from KSC as you need them. If you also get Extraplanetary Launchpads, MOLE comes with a pair of drydock parts that let you build stuff in orbit. Add Pathfinder to the mix and you get access to a whole slew of remote base parts, including Pipeline mass drivers, which make keeping those orbital bases supplied a fair sight easier. All a question of what kind of in-game experience you want, of course.

(1.6.1) My log has a single entry that, after decoding, says I landed the TBD 7d rover in Eve's Highlands, 30 kilometers from the target zone in the Midlands. It quickly became apparent to me that the rover doesn't have nearly enough in terms of wheels to support its mass, so I spent much of the day yesterday trying to figure out how to correct this oversight. My original thought had been to whip out the fab lab and start printing some more tires up, and this idea might've worked if the rover hadn't landed on a 16-degree slope and started sliding away - this with the brakes on and even the damn Buffalo airpark set. At this point I'm thinking about printing up and sending down a care package - both LSV House Harkonnen and LSV House Atreides are currently in Eve orbit, and both have supplies of Rocket Parts available, so it may just be a matter of which one can get the job done faster. That'll probably be Harkonnen. Nothing else going on; nothing else accomplished this morning. No screenies aside from this one either... 46 tonnes, Eve...and eight wheels. What the crap was I thinking...

Would you mind posting the details of each contract? It'd help us answer your question better. Also, which specific WBI mods are you using?

(1.6.1) Almost had something awesome to tell y'all about today. Almost... (Caveat on this post - I had my first semester overnight shift last night after getting essentially no sleep whatsoever yesterday evening, so if any non-sequiters appear in this post, I'm blaming that. Also picture-heavy today). I managed to get a few things done over this past weekend (for once). On Saturday, I finished up the seismic survey flight of the Delta 1 quadcopter on Duna, hitting the other three required waypoints in succession. I'll admit to having found a mod that would help me hold my horizontal position as I flew, which made landing easier for me. Delta 1 has been left at the survey area for now; if I need to return it to the Enchova Central outpost at a later time, I'll do so. Meanwhile, the crew at EC printed up a new Rangeland launchpad for the outpost, since Delta 1 took out the existing one after a needed revert. Sunday afternoon I got the message from LSV House Atreides in orbit of Kerbin; the print of the Merde-to-the-N 7 landing stage was finally complete. A snag presented itself almost immediately upon finalizing the print, however - the end of the stage stuck out past the end of Atreides's drydock, which meant that it would stick outside of the ship's warp bubble; a quick test confirmed this was the case... Yeah, that Claw is the part of the stage that's supposed to hold it onto the payload it's sending down to Eve's surface... The fact that only one piece was lost didn't deter me, though. A spare KAS screwdriver was printed up at the South Base near KSC and shot up to Atreides via mass driver along with supplies of Rocket Parts, Xenon, Monoproellant, Oxidizer and Liquid Fuel. With screwdriver in hand, engineer Ceri Kerman got out of the ship, floated over to the detached claw and gave it a push in the direction of the ship; when it got close enough, she was able to attach the Claw to the ship's exterior safely and the fueling operation continued after she climbed back aboard. Ultimately, the South Base mass driver transferred up 128 tonnes worth of rocket fuel supplies, a definite record for the program. With the fueling op done, pilot Rodhat Kerman boarded T. Howell III docked to House Atreides along with Ceri, and the two departed for the Dystopia Planitia shipyards over Kerbin. Howell arrived and docked successfully very, very early this morning and with the final checks completed, House Atreides departed Kerbin for Eve. Heading out. It took about two in-game hours for Atreides to enter a 1054x977 kilometer, 8.8-degree inclined orbit over Eve. Once in orbit, engineer Jergar Kerman was tasked with the repair of the Merde-to-the-N, performing a tricky EVA to move the Claw back down into its correct position. "And you stay there, you hear me?!?!?!" The repair operation was a success; Jergar climbed back aboard Atreides and the Merde-to-the-N was launched from the ship's drydock. The landing stage subsequently made its way to a successful rendezvous with the TBD 7d rover in a 100-kilometer equatorial orbit over Eve and grabbed it safely. The final finished assembly. Would've preferred to grab the TBD by the craft's 10-meter heat shield, but the Claw wouldn't latch onto it. Just as well, as things turned out. Shortly thereafter, attempts to land the craft at the Midlands site that the Echo 2 rover scouted out a few days ago commenced. The first attempt failed when I released the landing stage too early, causing complete disintegration of the craft. The second attempt... And now, once again it's time to play "Spot the Design Flaw!!!" The rover did land on Eve's surface about thirty kilometers from the target zone. Alas that three of the tires blew themselves off straight away and the remaining five popped flats. Despite engineer Gilford Kerman getting out twice to fix the flats, the remaining tires just weren't up to the task of driving a 45-tonne load anywhere...wound up destroying another three...... ...damnation. I'll admit that I reverted at this point, but in hindsight what I could've done was go ahead and deploy the Pathfinder fab lab stowed in the rear Wagon and printed up a new set of tires on site. Could've even increased the number to 12-14, maybe made it to where there was enough to support the load. Offing the 5000 units of Equipment it would've took to deploy the fab lab and a supporting mining unit for production of Materials Kits would've still left me with enough to establish a new base and it would've lightened the whole load a fair amount. Another attempt to land the rover will be made in the near future. With luck, I might even put the rover even closer to the target. Or I might wind up doing the printing job anyway - you never know. Came so close to being able to tell y'all I had a base on Eve today...only been trying to do that most of this past month......