capi3101

I'm not familiar with the underlying code changes that were made between KIS 1.16 and KIS 1.17; I do know that with KIS 1.17 all of the old KIS parts were sunsetted and there was some new code that was put into place. Pathfinder was originally built using the older KIS versions as a dependency, so when that happened, some of Pathfinder's functionality went away (as well as some other mods). What I know is that with KIS 1.17 and beyond, I couldn't get OSE Workbench to work - the commands to open the workbench were non-functional regardless of what path was chosen, and the recycler commands were flat non-existent. Rolling that back restored the functionality. If you do roll back to KIS 1.16, you'll also need to roll back EL to v.6.4. I should mention that. One other thing you might want to do is follow the instructions for switching to CRP mode in the initial post on this thread if you haven't done so already. You have to first switch the mod over to Pristine mode, quit, go back into KSP, switch it to CRP mode, quit and then start the game one final time. It's important that those steps are followed exactly due to how Pathfinder shuffles configuration files around; if you don't do it right, you could wind up with conflicting config files going at the same time, which will also prevent Omni-templates from working entirely. I know that one from personal experience.

@Space Kadet which version of KIS do you have installed? If you're running anything after KIS 1.16, you need to roll it back to there. Try that and see if it helps.

(1.6.1) Yesterday was almost entirely focused on the Echo 2 rover on Eve. After having effectively driven 132 kilometers from its landing site the day before, the rover finally made it to its original intended landing zone. And it's about damn time it did, too... The target zone turned out to be flat enough, but there were two strikes against it - it was in the Highlands (which I already knew were unsuitable for a TBD base from surface scans), and it was 1.5 degrees south of the equator. Drive not quite done yet, the rover set off to the northeast, turning east when it reached the equator until finally a flat equatorial spot in Eve's Midlands was located. X marks the spot. The lack of Metallic Ore may or may not spell trouble if I want to make Rocket Parts here (those need Metal Ore, not Metallic Ore), but everything else checks out. As I'm a glutton for punishment, I marked the spot, quicksaved and then had the rover continue another twenty klicks east to the Lowlands, just to check that biome's suitability. Could've stood to do a slightly better job with those narrow-band passes, as it turned out... I'm glad for having roved the extra distance - the lack of Exotic Minerals is what made me have to cheat to get the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun up and running. Lowlands were unsuitable, so a quick revert put the rover back at my final target spot. Overall, the Echo 2 did over 200 klicks on Eve, and finally fulfilled the initial pathfinding mission for the establishment of the upcoming TBD outpost on the surface. Now I just have to get the damn thing down there intact...LSV House Atreides is continuing to work on a new landing stage for it at the moment. That's got the bulk of my attention for now, seeing as how much of what I've got going on contract-wise now depends on having an outpost down on Eve... With some time to kill and a seismic survey contract to do on Duna, I decided to go ahead and try out my new Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter. The craft was fitted with scientific instruments and a double-check was made to ensure the craft could be used on the red planet (it could; flight ceiling was a little under 9000 m), and then one was ordered up at the Enchova Central outpost. Enchova Central with an Echo Flyer 7 on the launchpad. After fueling the craft's SAFER reactor, the craft - designated Delta 1 - took off and headed for the target area 200 kilometers southeast of the outpost. Not sure I'll name future aircraft on other planets using my rover schema or not; probably won't but I don't have a convention ready. First time I've had an aircraft on a planet other than Kerbin... This would be a lot more impressive of a screenie if I'd left the flight data in place, I think. Or made it an animated GIF. Something. It was cool, trust me... The craft did alright on Duna, though as some of you may have already guessed from my listing of the flight ceiling, I did wind up having to revert once when the craft smacked into the side of a hill. I'm going to have to replace Enchova Central's launchpad now. I did finally get the craft to the target zone after a second twenty minute un-timewarped flight, and then struggled to land it at one of the mission waypoints. Need to work on safe landing, obviously. Good news there is that I've got three more waypoints with which to practice. Bad news is that I still need to hit three more waypoints... That's all I've got for now and I don't want to put any effort into a concluding statement, so I'm just going to end this post here. Done.

(1.6.1.) Not a great deal to report for goings on yesterday. T. Howell III completed a rendezvous and docking with space station Kerbinport, where engineer Ceri Kerman punched her ticket for her orbital flights over Eve, Duna and Ike; this got her up to 4-star status. After refueling from the station's stores, Howell departed Kerbinport and burned to rendezvous with LSV House Atreides in a resupply orbit over Kerbin. Howell successfully docked with the warp ship and Ceri joined engineer Jergar Kerman in the ship's Bigby Workshop. By himself, Jergar (a 1-star engineer) had the workshop's efficiency rating at 3.8. Ceri raised the efficiency rating to a whopping 5.1 - not even doubling it. The plan is now for Ceri to man the Dystopia Planitia Shipyards once the two engineers have completed the ongoing print of a Merde-to-the-N 7 entry stage aboard Atreides, which should happen in a little over a day from now. Supplies from the South Base outpost near KSC were shot to Atreides twice yesterday to keep up with the demand for Rocket Parts; the craft's fuel stores also received some replenishment while I was at it. Piddled around with the Echo Flyer 7 quadcopter a bit yesterday, continuing my efforts to learn how to fly the damn thing. Got pilot Kardon Kerman in there (she was dumb enough to volunteer). Managed to pass an important test of any VTOL design in KSP. Still don't know how I managed to pull this off... Sure, go ahead and look smug, Kardon... Came to the realization during my sleep that the corresponding control to a helicopter's collective in KSP are the thrust limiters, assuming that I understand what exactly a collective does. (I'm not going to even try to broach the topic of why it's called a collective - something tells me insanity lies down that path. I hear the word "collective" and my mind jumps to the Borg...). Biggest thing that happened yesterday was the continuation of the mission of the Echo 2 rover on the surface of Eve. Yesterday was a driving day for sure. With 109 kicks to go before it reached its original target landing zone at the beginning of the day, Echo 2 was able to go another fifteen klicks until Kerbol had gone below the horizon far enough that I could no longer see well enough to drive safely. The drive was put on hold for thirteen hours before continuing. If you think this is an unsafe speed, you're right. To translate for y'all who don't use metric, Echo 2 is going 113.79 mph in this screenshot... I damn near made it to the target area this morning. Alas, for a pebble... Couldn't tell you how much this broke my damn heart. To my credit, I didn't curse out loud when it happened, though being at work at the time may have had a lot to do with that... Fortunately, I had stopped to quicksave at the fifteen kilometer mark. I reverted to that mark just before shutting the game off this morning, and I'm very confident that Echo 2 will reach the target zone later this morning, at which point its mission of finding an equatorial site in the Midlands for a permanent TBD outpost on Eve can finally commence. My plan for today is to finish the Echo 2 mission and to finish Atreides's print job. When both are done, Atreides will be heading back to Eve, where its new payload will (knock on wood) safely put the TBD 7d rover currently in Eve's orbit on the surface and outpost construction can begin. Been waiting a long time to get that job done, and at this point a number of tasks are riding on my being able to successfully pull this off. Hoping it won't be all for naught...

(1.6.1) Not much to show for the last 48 hours, though between the way the weather's been here lately and the ongoing issues in RL, that's not entirely unexpected. Began my day on Tuesday by warping LSV House Atreides into a 428x180 kilometer, 5-degree inclined orbit over Kerbin; the ship had finished its mission to deliver the Echo 1 rover to the surface of Eve and was in need of resupply, and I needed it printing up a Merde-to-the-N 7 transfer stage, so it was time to send it home. I realized the M-T-N would be a pretty significant print job and I didn't necessarily want Ceri doing it by herself, and Ceri had earned certifications for orbiting Eve, Duna and Ike that she had yet to cash in, so I decided I'd send the crew of the Dystopia Planitia shipyard over Kerbin her way once she was in orbit. To that end, I checked space station Kerbinport for available Minnow 7 touring craft. T. Howell III was available, so the craft was fueled up and sent over to Dystopia Planitia. After transferring the crew over and receiving supplies via mass driver from the South Base outpost near KSC, Howell departed and eventually conducted a burn for rendezvous with House Atreides yesterday. Last thing that happened on Tuesday was the completion of LSV House Harkonnen's print of the Echo 2 rover and its deployment over Eve. It turned out that I didn't have the center of thrust aligned with the center of mass on the rover's deorbit stage, so I was only able to get it down to a 400x100 kilometer orbit. After T. Howell III's burn for rendezvous first thing yesterday, I did continue with my attempts to get Echo 2 down to the surface of Eve, moving it to a 104x96 kilometer orbit successfully by imparting a low spin to the craft as it burned and reducing max thrust to 20%; it wasn't a perfect solution but it did get me pretty close to my target 100 kilometer orbit. Howell arrived at Atreides shortly afterwards and successfully docked, swapping out the crew and then departing for a rendezvous with Kerbinport with Ceri aboard. Construction of a Merde-to-the-N 7 commenced shortly thereafter, with Atreides receiving initial supplies first from South Base via mass driver. The print should complete in 41 hours assuming I can keep Atreides supplies with Rocket Parts during that period. With the rover in position to land, I went ahead with the attempt to get Echo 2 down to the surface. After one false start, I finally managed to land the damn thing 150 kilometers off target. Echo 2 on the surface of Eve. Good news is that the rover is driving well. The decision to use the high stress-tolerance of Buffalo Grizzly wheels seems to have paid off and the SAFER reactor is providing much more power than it really needs. I've made it just short of 35 kilometers through Eve's Peaks and Foothills so far; still have just over a hundred klicks to go. I dare say it might actually succeed in completing Echo 1's mission, which was to find a spot in Eve's Midlands or Lowlands along the equator flat enough to establish a TBD base. Going to be quietly optimistic about this anyway... Ended my day yesterday with a bit of what turned out to be useful nonsense, using Buffalo parts to make a quadcopter, which I dubbed the Echo Flyer 7. Got key lighting but no back-lighting...can't really see the damn thing... Flew pretty well actually, and since the rotors are electrically driven, the design should prove useful to explore Eve's surface. KER reports that the design at sea level on Eve will have a higher max TWR than on Kerbin (6.37 as opposed to 4.08) and will have a TWR greater than 1.0 at altitudes up to 25.8 kilometers. I'm already considering deploying a working unit to the purple planet. Assuming I learn how to fly the damn thing properly, of course...had a few training mishaps there. Alright, who's the wise-guy out toasting marshmallows!! Don't think I don't see you!!!! Today I'm continuing Echo 2's drive. I also intend to get Howell over to Kerbinport, level up Ceri and get her back to Atreides, with the hope that her presence will at least double the speed at which the ongoing print job is happening (and if that doesn't happen, I'm going to assign her to Dystopia Planitia - a low priority outpost - permanently; my warp ships are too valuable to me to leave in the hands of the incompetent). Should the print job finish today, House Atreides will be heading back to Eve and hopefully I'll have a ground base there in a few days time. Not much else going on of note lately.

(1.6.1) First generally normal day I've had to play the game in quite some time yesterday; wasn't as momentous of a day as I had originally hoped. Having made and failed at a final attempt to adjust the wheel settings on the Echo 1 rover in Eve's Shallows such that the thing could go more than fifty meters before busting a tire, I decided to go ahead and scrub the rover's mission and get on with getting a crew down to the surface. Gilligan was already en route to LSV House Harkonnen in Duna orbit with the Eve crew aboard, affecting a successful rendezvous. Gilligan getting ready to botch yet another attempt to get off the island, obviously. After docking, engineers Gilford and Gemlorf Kerman checked the SAFER reactor that was included as part of the TBD 7d base-seeding rover's consist, pulling it out of storage to verify that it had a full load of Enriched Uranium aboard. The stowed reactor turned out to be loaded (an important design note for myself for the future!) and the two Kerbals elected to leave it deployed rather than put it back into storage (questioning the wisdom of that decision at the moment, to be honest). Once the two engineers returned to Harkonnen, the final checks for departure were made and the ship broke orbit. LSV House Harkonnen leaving orbit, officially (and finally) closing out the big Duna/Ike expedition. Harkonnen warped to Eve, eventually establishing itself in a 450x320 kilometer, 3-degree inclined orbit over the purple planet. Harkonnen over Eve, with the TBD 7d rover visible within the ship's drydock. Upon establishing orbit, pilot Edsy Kerman, scientist Rodemone Kerman and engineer Gilford Kerman transferred over to the TBD 7d rover and the rover launched from Harkonnen's drydock. TBD 7d over Eve. Time to play "Spot the design flaw!!" The initial attempt to land the rover at the target zone ended disastrously, with the entire craft disintegrating due to heat and aerodynamic stresses at about 30,000m. I've never seen a 10-meter heat shield get hot enough to explode before... Fortunately, I had the good sense to quicksave before the landing attempt, and instead of going for a direct landing I went ahead and lowered the rover's orbit to 100 kilometers at as close to zero-degree inclination as I could manage. The rover is now sitting in that orbit as of this morning with about 150 m/s of delta-V remaining. As with the issues I ultimately had with the TBD 7c rover deployed at Duna (what became the first Enchova Central outpost), I built the landing stage too small to cover both the transit down to low orbit and the final landing. I'm now in damage control mode, which at least has afforded me the opportunity to try and redo Echo 1's mission; a rover craft dubbed Turdbiter 7 - which will become Echo 2 upon successful landing - was designed and has been ordered up for printing aboard House Harkonnen. This new rover utilizes the Buffalo Grizzy wheel instead of the stock ruggedized wheels and is about a third of the mass of the venerable Hellhound 7 design (Echo 1 is one of these), so I hope to not have the same popping tire problem as before. I also have included a robust landing stage that should get the craft to the ground without issue (knock on wood). This morning, I went ahead with a design of a new grab-on landing stage for the TBD 7d, which I dubbed Merde-to-the-N 7 (hopefully I don't redacted on that name because it does accurately describe my mind-state regarding the Eve mission at the moment, including the apparent need to swear in French). Anticipating the need for parts and or fuel for the new craft (which includes a quad of J64 tanks, a trio of Vector engines and a 10 meter heat shield), LSV House Atreides already in Eve orbit warped back to Kerbin, where at a minimum she'll be able to deliver the needed supplies to Harkonnen (more likely, though, it'll take so many parts and so much fuel to build it that it'll fall to Ceri to build it - which means a significant delay in the Eve mission). That's pretty much where I am at the moment. Echo 2 finishes its print in a little over four hours right now and I need to get Atreides into Kerbin orbit before anything else happens. I've got some colonist contracts in progress as well as several Mun science projects, and then a bunch that are riding on me successfully getting a manned outpost on Eve's surface. Given the in-game events of the last 24 hours, I'm now a bit concerned about my chances of success... Occurs to me that I could still try to drive Echo 1 into Eve's seas...that way I at least don't waste that mission entirely. My current exploration contract includes a clause to have something that splashes down. Just need to keep the tires from popping long enough to get there...

Can we get a screenie of your .../steam/steamapps/common/KerbalSpaceProgram/GameData directory? (The root GameData directory). A lot of mod issues can be traced that way. Also, any particular reason why you've got KSP in your ProgramFiles(x86)? That directory is generally reserved for 32-bit programs.

(1.6.1) Managed to get in a few sessions of KSP since this past Wednesday, though everything going on in the wake of my wife's surgery last week has continued to heavily put the kibosh on my KSP playing. On the plus side, I've finally caught up on some other things that should free up playing time in the evenings. No screenies today, alas. The rest of my day on Wednesday was pretty minimal. I transmitted a temperature report from probe M-01017-043349 to satisfy an orbital Mun science contract, and then LSV House Harkonnen in orbit of Duna transmitted a crew report to complete a subsequent orbital Duna science contract. I also performed an ore con job using the Enchova Central outpost on Duna, the Scan Queen outpost on Ike and the Infans Calcitrant Yards in Ike orbit. With the Power Tools evaluation at space station Dunaport finally completed, the results were transferred over to Gilligan docked at the station, and all crew members aboard with the exception of scientist Willin Kerman transferred aboard. After taking on fuel supplies, Gilligan departed Dunaport and burned to rendezvous with Harkonnen. The rendezvous is scheduled to take place a little over an hour from now. That's been pretty much it since Thursday. I've spent some time with the landed Echo 1 rover on Eve attempting to get it to go anywhere...I quicksaved shortly after landing it originally and I'm glad I did. The rover has a tendency to go about thirty meters from its landing point before popping tires - this with ruggedized wheels, mind you. Been reverting and adjusting parameters just to see if I can get the thing to get a little further along. Can't say I've had much success as yet. Something's obviously overstressing the tire, but it's happening so fast that I don't catch what's causing it until after the tire has popped. Closest engineer right now is on Kerbin... Also spent some time this morning designing the Christmas Tree 7 nuclear jump-start module, which is basically eighty SAFER reactors cobbled onto some structural fuselage. The idea there is to have something that can fill up the exotic matter tanks of new warp ships - kinda like the older General Electric 7 jump-start module except much more efficient (since 80 SAFERs in concert produce the 10,000 EC/s needed to run an exotic matter generator). I have no immediate use for the module so it's just design work for the moment; I won't deploy one unless it becomes apparent that I really do need a third warp ship out there. Getting the 8,000 units of Enriched Uranium required to power the module may also prove to be interesting, should the need for it ever actually arise. Should have a little more time to play this week; hopefully my next post on this thread will be more interesting. Heading to Eve very soon.

Couldn't say; I still use Pathfinder with KAS 1.1 and KIS 1.16; I do know that later versions of Pathfinder doesn't play well with the later versions of KIS.

(1.6.1) Howdy, y'all. Hadn't fallen off the face of the Earth, just haven't had a great deal of time to play this past week. Missus went to the hospital on Monday and had to have a cholecystectomy yesterday, so I have a bonafide excuse for not playing much...RL kicked my butt over the weekend also, just not quite so hard. Took some time to go into work today so I figured I'd use the opportunity to tell y'all about what little has happened. On Friday, got a signal from engineer Ceri Kerman aboard LSV House Atreides orbiting Eve. After seven days of working hardly, she had finished the construction of the Hellhound 7a rover/skycrane. The nascent rover was fueled up and released from Atreides's drydock. Hellhound 7a rover, take two. After clearing the drydock, the rover was lowered into a 100-kilometer, 3-degree inclined orbit, burning for a landing point in the Midlands upon reaching the target coordinates. Here the mission hit a hiccup - I misjudged the timing of the burn and wound up fairly far off target. At least this time I was able to get the damn heat shield jettisoned without destroying the whole damn thing in the process... The rover finally settled gently to the ground intact about 140 kilometers east of the target zone in the Shallows, on land. Phew. After releasing the rover, I went ahead and terminated the skycrane itself in the Tracking Station. I consider this action a cheat - the skycrane didn't have sufficient thrust for liftoff and it turned out that it was too tightly wrapped to the rover to allow it to slip out from underneath. At least at this point I have an intact rover on Eve. Still have yet to initiate its primary mission of attempting to locate a flat enough zone in the Midlands or Lowlands suitable for the establishment of a ground base. Got a 130 kilometer rove ahead. Here's hoping I don't bust any tires in the process... Nothing to report for Saturday as usual, but I did do a little Sunday drive flight with the Bad Idea 4. The plane was modified to haul up two Wheesley engines each stuck to a piece of structural fuselage and a parachute, which in turn was cobbled onto the wingtips via structural pylons. Pilot Kardon Kerman took the modified craft up to 11,000 m for a quick parts test; after that was done, the extra engines were jettisoned at the plane proceeded to do a 5-point high-altitude temperature survey just under a thousand klicks southeast of KSC. I don't use the Whiplash engine for much of anything, so I still get excited about stupid things like shock rings... Survey complete, Kardon returned the plane intact to KSC 27. Things are largely on hold at the moment until my wife gets out of the hospital. I've still got the Eve mission coming up and the science team is just about done with their experiments aboard space station Dunaport, so that will probably be getting started sooner rather than later. Got a rove to do as well, and I have a couple of small contracts that I could knock out relatively fast; I'll probably wind up doing those today just so I can feel like I accomplished something.

No problem; I strongly suspected that's what the issue was from the screenie. The 2.5m engine needs quite a bit - a little over 90/s with stock power, or 2250/s if you've got any of the four mods I mentioned in the previous post. Firmly in the center of the five available engines in the mod power-wise.

Well, those aren't too far off of the names of Culture ships...you ever want an actual list, check out The State of the Art. There's a pretty funny conversation about the topic in the middle of the main novella there. Alternatively, Wikipedia has a reasonably comprehensive list. Hell, Elon Musk uses Culture ship names for his recovery barges... As far as my own ship names go, I started reading through the Dune saga at the beginning of the year. I'm up to Heretics of Dune (book 5) right now, so it was on my mind when I got back into the game at v.1.5.x; my original operational warp ship had been named MSV Fat Man, which is why when it came time to launch my first warp ship this career save, I went with LSV House Harkonnen. Smaller ship overall, hence the reduction in designation. Incidentally, my prototype warp ship was MSV Little Boy. I was still heavy on my nuclear weapons-and-related-topics kick back then. Still have ships named Strange Cargo, Next Objective, Necessary Evil and Laggin' Dragon... The Gilligan's Island references are recent; it's because the ship type is called Minnow 7, the first of which was just used for an up-and-down flight. The designed proved far better/useful than originally intended. God Emperor of Dune (book 4) was not as utterly nuts as I thought it was the first time I read through it...

Been there. Daily. When you start developing shorthand, you know it's time to consider checking into rehab... Here's my shorthand: 4/18: Gil r&d ICY, xe-Lucas ICY. HDR r&d ICY w/ 5 dV. ICY xMOF Gil, Gil dep ICY, b4r, r&d Iport, xBill, xe-Gemlorf Can. Can dep Iport, Il. SQ xMOFXRP ICY. Bill, e-Gemlorf plf. Can +, r&d Iport. Iport xMOF Gil, Bill, Gemlorf bd Gil. Gil dep Iport, b4D, r&d Dport 4h later. Bill, Gemlorf, Gilford xLab, 12 boost, -2d exp. EC xRP HH. Twarp. Auk a K, b210x70 LKO, lost 2 airbrakes/antenna at entry. 4/19: Auk b 100,0 LKO, b4l, l KSC 09 ==== CURRENT CONTRACTS: MC Alarms: 0 <C> N 45 - Pado, Camdun, Matmon, Supont, Merul, Dudke, Johnler, Wehrrey, Sigfrod - clock running <C> N 33 - Valman, Trafred, Tatiana, Calkin, Dudfen, Sheplorf, Samger, Rorim, Nelrie - clock running Z K Wheesley, 11-13k, 220-300 V K temp 17.7-19.2, 5 pt <S> M breakthrough tech - in progress PA, possibly completes six days thanks to Observatory. <S> M materials exposure space study - in progress NCY. <S> M temperature study. - in progress Venkmann. S Mo <&> D Siefen 0.8t 1.1x1.3x1.3 - docked Harkonnen, awaiting transport to K <S> D power tools eval - should be doable at Dport but will need someone manning the lab there first. Having the experiment available will also be required. D D-> Io 2900 <M> S 12xE, 10.678M x 10.490M - in progress, will be a while in getting there. <X> E RTK, splashdown. Will want to see how far from ocean the base winds up being. Bento Box should be orbit-capable. <F> E - ...you stupid, stupid man. <D> G -> Eo 2350 Still trying to get my insurance to cover it...that's not happening anytime soon, so I guess I'll go ahead and interpret this for the rest of y'all. Ahem... (1.6.1) Yesterday's activities began with the arrival of Gilligan at the Infans Calcitrant Yards in orbit of Ike. Upon successful rendezvous and docking, engineer Lucas Kerman transferred over to the shipyard to assume her (yes, her) post as the station's chief engineer. The remaining crew aboard Gilligan - Val, Bill and engineers Gilford and Gemlorf Kerman - remained docked at the station awaiting the arrival of the Hodor 7 nuclear reactor probe, which has been printed up from the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna the day before and which had a very low remaining fuel supply by the time it arrived at Ike; Gilligan remained to be available to deliver additional fuel if it proved necessary. Fortunately, it did not - the probe affected a successful rendezvous and docking at ICY, with a mere five m/s of delta-V to spare. One of those rare occasions where the level of relief involved warrants a docking-in-progress screenie... Once the probe docked and the station began receiving power from the probe's SAFER reactors, fuel supplies were transferred over to Gilligan and the ship departed for a rendezvous with space station Ikeport. Gilligan arrived and docked without incident, at which point Bill and Gemlorf went down to the surface in the station's Spamcan 7a passenger lander for flag-planting training. The two engineers landed safely and planted their flags, and while they were awaiting the launch window to return to Ikeport, multiple fuel supplies and Rocket Parts were shot up from the Scan Queen outpost on the surface to Infans Calcitrant via mass driver. The Spamcan then returned safely to Ikeport; Bill and Gemlorf finally were able to punch their tickets and earn full 4-star ratings. Gilligan was refueled from the station's supplies, and after Bill and Gemlorf re-joined the crew, Gilligan departed for space station Dunaport, arriving safely four hours later. The three engineers boarded the station's Bigby orbital workshop and boosted the efficiency rating from about 1.4 to just over 12, knocking a full two days off the expected time of completion for a Power Tools experiment currently underway there (the same experiment that is holding up the Eve mission at this point). At this point, everything at Duna is on hold until that experiment finishes up; as a final step of preparation for the Eve mission, a supply of Rocket Parts was sent up to LSV House Harkonnen from the Enchova Central outpost on the surface via mass driver; Harkonnen is now fully supplied and ready to do its part to support the Eve mission. With nothing else productive to do at Duna, I went ahead and timewarped ahead about a day, to the point where the Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane I had sent to Minmus was about to arrive back at Kerbin. Obligatory glamour shot. The plane is still intact at this point, for reference... The Auk was put onto a trajectory that put it in the plane of space station Kerbinport's orbit (i.e. close enough to dead-on to the equator to count) and on a 47,500 m periapsis. This proved to be a bit too low at entry - the plane lost its two ventral airbrakes and its nose antenna/airspike to entry heating. Fortunately, nothing else was lost and I was able to get it into a 210x70 orbit initially, correcting to a 100-kilometer circular orbit for entry just this morning. After reaching the proper entry point for KSC, the plane de-orbited and made its way safely for landing at KSC 09. The plane bounced at landing and lost its two ventral engines, but suffered no more damage after that, and tourists Obsey and Erbal were able to de-board the plane none the worse for wear. I probably will adjust the gear setup on the plane all the same; it's what I get for going with a nose-up resting gear configuration over nose-down. I'm just glad I was able to land it - maiden flight and all that... At this point, things are starting to gear up for the Eve mission. Engineer Ceri Kerman aboard LSV House Atreides over Eve has been hard at work for the past seven days building a new Hellhound 7a rover to scout for a site flat enough to support a TBD outpost, a job that I tried to do last week but failed due to poor heat shield placement (payload survived to the surface but exploded when I tried to jettison the shield thanks to it sticking into other parts; this has been rectified at this point). I'm hoping to get that rover onto the surface today and knock on wood I'll find a suitable outpost site as well. The experiments at Duna are almost done, and once that happens the crew will be heading over to Harkonnen to warp to Eve - it'll be time for that mission to get going at long last...

Alright...so, you've got some non-standard parts there below the Alcubierre Drive; can you tell me what those are? A screenshot of the craft on the launch pad with the resources tab open would also be helpful. Assuming everything aft of the Drive is straight-up booster, my question becomes - what are you doing as far as power generation is concerned? If there's any power production (panels, fuel cells, etc.), it's not immediately obvious. Corollary question - do you have Far Future Technologies, Near Future Electrical, Kolony Tools or DSEVUtils installed? Those four mods have a bearing on power requirements for the Drive.

(1.6.1) Screenie-less day for y'all today. Yesterday was pretty much a "shuffle things around" kind of day anyways... My day started with work wrapped up at the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna. Bill along with engineers Lucas, Gemlorf and Gilford Kerman boarded Gilligan docked at the shipyard, which then departed after taking on fuel supplies. Gilligan then departed and burned for Ike and an eventual rendezvous with the Infans Calcitrant Yards in orbit. As of this post, that rendezvous is set but won't take place for about another 75 minutes. Engineer Ardon Kerman remained at Bi-La Kaifa, where she'll serve as the shipyard's permanent station engineer. The second of two Hodor 7 nuclear reactor probes printed at BLK also burned for Ike and a rendezvous with Infans Calcitrant, and like Gilligan, that rendezvous is set. Because the probe is low on fuel, I've got it making several orbits around Ike before coming to the shipyard - it will be close to a day before it finally arrives. Having completed the mission to rendezvous and pick up Siefen's Craft to take back to Kerbin, a Bill Clinton 7c grabber probe made its way to LSV House Harkonnen in a resupply orbit over Duna. I had left Nostromo 7 docked to Harkonnen the other day when I'd had it deliver Materials Kits to the warp ship, and it was taking up the last docking spot along the Harkonnen's central hub, so I went ahead and transferred off the fuel from the side tanks and had Nostromo depart for space station Dunaport; even without the side tanks, the lack of cargo gave the craft nearly 5000 m/s of delta-V; she arrived at the station safely late in the day. Meanwhile, the Clinton docked to Harkonnen and scientist Siefen Kerman should be set to return to Kerbin at the next opportunity. Not much else happened yesterday. The Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane left Minmus's SOI en route to Kerbin with two tourists aboard, the Crater Maker 7 15-passenger lander docked safely at space station Minmusport and fuel supplies were shot up to the station from the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface, multiple supplies were shot up to Harkonnen from the Enchova Central outpost on Duna, and I did a check of all ongoing science experiments - they're still going to be several days finishing up. I did finally figure out that I needed to release the Venkmann 7 lander from the drydock at the Piper Alpha outpost on Mun in order for its science experiment to finally start; it'll be fifteen days before it finishes up at this point, but at least the damn experiment is finally running... Today I hope to get Gilligan and the Hodor 7 to ICY; Lucas will be manning that outpost. I'm keeping Gilligan there for now in case it becomes necessary to go grab the Hodor and deliver more fuel to it. After that, Gilligan will be heading over to space station Ikeport, where Bill and Gemlorf are scheduled to go down and plant flags. They should both be eligible for promotion to 4-stars once that's done. From there, Gilligan heads back to Dunaport to await the completion of science experiments there in a few days, after which everybody not staying at Duna will be heading to Harkonnen for departure. Eve's next up on the long-range itinerary. I'll see how far along I get today.

First bit of advice I can give is to check what's going on with your EC as you activate the drive. If you run out of power with the drive running, you will be spaghettifying your ship today. On a similar line, if you try to run the exotic matter generator at the same time you're trying to use the drive, you will be spaghettifying your ship today. Without seeing your craft, I'd be hard-pressed to give you specific advice. General advice here.

(1.6.1) My log looks pretty busy this morning - taking up three whole lines of coded text, which is definitely longer than normal... With the arrival of my team of engineers - Bill, Lucas, Ardon, Gilford and Gemlord - at the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna on Monday, it was time to put them to work. The Enchova Central outpost on the Dunan surface shot up fuel supplies and Rocket Parts via mass driver, at which point the engineers began the print of a Bill Clinton 7c grabber probe. With an efficiency rating of 18.6, it only took the team ninety minutes to print it up. While that was ongoing, the CM Crew Adapter module I'd printed up at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus on Monday finally arrived at space station Minmusport. If this thing looks to you like three Mk-I crew cabins and a Mk-I lander can cobbled onto a piece of structural fuselage with a transfer stage, there might be a reason... Once docked to the station, the Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander undocked from the station and proceeded to dock with the Crew Adapter. Double-docking. Yea... Once docked, colonists Valman, Trafred, Tatiana, Calkin, Dudfen, Sheplorf, Samger, Rorim and Nelrie Kerman boarded the composite craft, which then departed from the station then landed at the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface. The lander was hooked up to the outpost and the new colonists transferred into the second of three Castillo modules at DH, where they will stay for the next 33 days. Still haven't gotten the mechanism that is supposed to allow me to retrain colonists into crewmembers working, unfortunately; at this point I've got a really big candidate pool otherwise... Once unloaded the lander was refueled and then took off to rendezvous with the space station; the rendezvous is scheduled to take place ten minutes from now and will likely be one of the first things I take care of in my next game session. With the colonists away, some fuel stores were transferred from Minmusport directly to the Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane that had delivered the colonists to the station along with tourists Obsey and Erbal Kerman, who just had contracts to take them to Minmus's orbit. The plane departed the station afterwards and burned for a return to Kerbin. Auk XVI departing Minmus. The plane should reach Kerbin periapsis in about 25 hours. I decided next to address a basic flaw with the Dystopia Planitia 7 orbital shipyard design, namely that they were solely dependent upon solar power; their receiving-end mass drivers require a lot of power and it turned out that at Bi-La Kaifa there weren't sufficient solar panels installed to keep the mass driver operational even in daylight. I adjusted the base design to include a quad of SAFER nuclear reactors for future stations, but needed to do something with the existing ones To that end and with Game of Thrones on my mind of late, I designed the Hodor 7 nuclear extension probe, basically 4 SAFERs cobbled onto a piece of structural fuselage with docking ports on both ends, with a detachable docking and transfer stage. Once the Clinton was completed at BLK, I began printing a Hodor 7; it took my engineering team a mere 45 minutes to complete the first one, which was quickly docked up to BLK. Once the enriched uranium supply for the reactors was shot up from Enchova Central, the station finally had a steady supply of ample power. A second Hodor was prepared at BLK for installation at the Infans Calcitrant Yards over Ike; the second unit completed printing earlier this morning and is currently on its way towards Ike. Meanwhile, the Clinton successfully rendezvoused and grabbed Siefen's Craft from low Duna orbit, and at this point has a rendezvous set with LSV House Harkonnen in high Duna orbit. That rendezvous is likely to take place later today. At this point, my crew at Bi-La Kaifa is done with their basic job, which was to deliver Ardon Kerman to her post; they just did a few prints while they were all still together. Next on my to-do list is to delivery Lucas to Infans Calcitrant, and maybe have Bill and Gemlorf visit the surface of Ike; neither is rated at higher than two-stars despite the fact that both of them have been to Ike, Duna and Eve orbit at this point, so bare minimum they need to visit an outpost with a lab module so they can punch their tickets. I've got the Clinton's rendezvous with Harkonnen coming up as well as the Crater Maker's return to Minmusport, and I could really stand to spend some time at Enchova Central recharging the outpost's resource stores; they've taken quite a hit lately with everything that's been going on. I'm not done at Central yet either - Harkonnen still needs to take on supplies for the TBD rover she's hauling. After all that though, I should finally be able to relax a little bit for a few days, at least until the Auk gets back to Kerbin, and definitely until experiments finish up at space station Dunaport here in a few days time. Still plenty busy in the meantime.

(1.6.1) Yesterday as I was typing up my daily report for y'all and came to the bit where I would have to figure out a way to get some Materials Kits over to LSV House Harkonnen in orbit of Duna so that construction on the TBD 7d rover could wrap up, I had an epiphany. I had the Nostromo 7 resource lander docked at space station Ikeport. Now, that craft has three Mule reconfigurable resource containers from the Pathfinder mod and the ship was designed for hauling Uraninite from Ike to Duna and then Minerals from Duna to Ike. Long story short, I reconfigured the central tank for Materials Kits and the side tanks for extra fuel, and then shot up the necessary resources from the Scan Queen outpost on Ike's surface via mass driver. Nostromo then left Ikeport and burned for Duna. After that all took place, I busied myself with some design work. I had picked up a junk-and-kerbal mission over Duna, so I needed to come up with a way of grabbing the target and then have the grabber probe latch on to a warp ship for return to Kerbin. In the end, I took the existing Bill Clinton 7c grabber probe design and added a disposable docking port to the underside of the craft's heat shield. Simple fix overall but I have yet to see if it'll work as intended. While I was fiddling around in the VAB, I finally got around to designing a passenger cabin expansion for the Crater Maker 7 8-passenger lander; the CM Crew Adapter adds seven seats and (most importantly) and accessible exterior hatch. One of these adapters was ordered up at the Non Mentha Yards over Minmus. Next on the to-do list was an aerobraking pass of an Auk XIII spaceplane carrying rescuee scientist Nielman Kerman from HKO. Auk XIII at entry. The craft slowed down enough that Trajectories was projecting a final entry on the next orbit, so the plane was put into a 230x100 orbit over Kerbin so that a re-entry coincident with KSC could occur later. The orbital stabilization unfortunately left the plane without sufficient fuel for entry, so Next Objective was dispatched from space station Kerbinport on a mission to deliver some fuel stores to the plane. Incidentally, this is not what the Superfortress 7 ferry ship design was designed for, but whatever works, right? Rendezvous and docking were accomplished fairly quickly, and after transferring fuel, Next Objective undocked from the plane and burned for a rendezvous with Kerbinport. The plane was able to make a safe landing at KSC 27 while Next Objective was still headed towards rendezvous, completing the rescue mission. For its part, Next Objective affected a successful rendezvous and docking with Kerbinport, Caught an eclipse from orbit during the rendezvous and docking to boot. Shortly thereafter Nostromo made its rendezvous with House Harkonnen. Nostromo maneuvering to dock with LSV House Harkonnen, with Gilligan also visibly docked to the warp ship. After docking, construction of the TBD 7d took a mere five minutes to complete. As of this morning, I'm sitting with a base-seeding rover in Harkonnen's drydock. Still have yet to add the remaining supplies to the craft, but otherwise the ship is ready to deploy the rover to Eve. Knock on wood the damn thing may even survive entry... With their work aboard Harkonnen done, Bill along with engineers Gilford, Lucas, Ardon and Gemlorf Kerbin boarded Gilligan, which then departed with Jeb at the helm for the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards also in LDO. Gilligan arrived at BLK this morning and the engineers boarded the station to begin construction of a Bill Clinton 7c probe. Construction is not yet underway - I need to transfer the necessary resources up to the station before that can occur, but that should be a simple matter of shooting them up from the Enchova Central outpost on the Dunan surface via mass driver. I will have to turn BLK's mass driver on; right now she's on the night-side of Duna and I'll have to wait to get the shipyard onto the day-side so she doesn't burn through all the Electrical Charge all at once. Non Mentha also completed its print of the CM Crew Adapter this morning, and after fueling, the new craft launched and burned for rendezvous with space station Minmusport. I still have a fair amount of things going on. At this point, I need to print up the Clinton, get it to go pick up Siefen's Craft and haul it over to Harkonnen, deliver Lucas to the Infans Calcitrant Yards over Ike, and then get everybody else over to space station Dunaport before I can sit around and wait a bit for things to finish up at Duna completely. I'll probably dock the Crater Maker bits together and then I do have a group of colonists ready to go down to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on Minmus today; delivering those folks will allow me to send a couple of tourists back to Kerbin as well. Long term, once Harkonnen gets to Eve, the TBD will land, and if all goes according to plan, a new outpost will become available. With a required goal now to return a craft to Kerbin from the surface of Eve, this outpost becomes a launch center regardless. I did one final piece of design work yesterday: The numbers say the craft should be able to get to Eve orbit (definite operative word: should). Won't know until I try, of course. But the beauty will be that I A) don't have to land it first, B) won't lose anything if it fails except for the amount of time it takes to build and C) can readily try again if necessary. Final payload on the Bento Box 7 is a mere 500 kilograms. Assuming the Bento Box enters orbit, the plan at that point would be to use a Bill Clinton 7c to haul it to a warp ship, warp it home and have it enter Kerbin's atmosphere. I see only one difficult part of this plan, and that's the launch. Will let y'all know more as this whole thing unfolds - hopefully this will all happen fairly soon.

Might. My big one is going to be the Rockomax Decoupler; I've got at least three active ships with those installed.

(1.6.1) Not a lot to talk about with this morning and only one screenie for y'all (and not a great one at that). My day on Friday began with the arrival of T. Howell III at space station Kerbinport. Got a little close to the station's mass driver while I was killing off the last of the relative velocity. Howell affected a successful docking, after which I went ahead with plans to send LSV House Atreides back to Eve; the warp ship eventually entered a 717x674 kilometer orbit at 1.37 degrees inclination over the purple planet after a relatively small number of warp-backs, but not before Strange Cargo also reached Kerbinport and affected a successful docking maneuver at the station as well. Atreides is currently building a replacement Hellhound 7a rover/skycrane for deployment on the surface to replace the one last week that successfully landed but promptly exploded when the heat shield was jettisoned. The new print should be completed and deployed before LSV House Harkonnen is scheduled to arrive. I discovered that Harkonnen is going to need a supply of Materials Kits to finish its print of the TBD 7d rover, and without the ability to hold any at the moment I may be deploying engineer Ardon Kerman to the Bi-La Kaifa Shipyards over Duna earlier than I originally intended. The Auk XIII flight that picked up scientist Nielman Kerman from high orbit over Kerbin made its first aerobraking pass at the tail end of the day on Friday. The craft only has 333 m/s of delta-V remaining so I will be doing at least one more aerobraking pass before I attempt to deorbit it on a trajectory that will take it in for landing at KSC. I'll have to let y'all know how that one goes. Howell and Strange Cargo had brought back tourists Lanard, Wehrming, Matby, Eligan, Lanwell, Podgun, Jedmore, Kenrod, Hellin, Geofsted, Henfal, Matkin, Hudory and Jenny Kerman from an expedition to Duna and Ike, with tourist Hanson Kerman already at Kerbinport having opted for the cheaper package of trips to Mun and Minmus. These fifteen Kerbals were all now at Kerbinport awaiting transportation down to the surface to close out their respective contracts, so to that end I launched an Auk VII 16-passenger spaceplane to Kerbinport on Saturday. The plane successfully docked at the station and collected the tourists, then departed and landed safely at KSC 09. During the final approach to landing, though, the craft lost both sets of spoilers and the flaps; this is something that has never happened before with this design. On the other hand, I haven't flown an Auk VII for a while (definitely the first flight of one in 1.6), so I may just need to go into the SPH and adjust the craft parameters a bit. Despite the exploding control surfaces, the plane did affect a safe landing - she just came in a little hot and wound up needing the entire runway to come to a stop. The plane's recovery cleared four contracts and officially brought the Duna/Ike expedition to a close. Replacement contracts include an aerial survey on Kerbin - something I haven't done in a while - and a junk-and-kerbal mission over Duna. The j&k mission may be interesting; I'll likely have to make some kind of adjustment to the Bill Clinton 7 design to have something that can both grab the target and then dock it to a warp ship to get it back to Kerbin. So at this point I have design work to do - I need to get an extension module added on to the Crater Maker 7 passenger lander currently at space station Minmusport so the craft can haul more kerbals in one go, I need to make the aforementioned adjustments to the Clinton design, and I need to see what happened with the Auk VII. I've still got the TBD and Hound under construction and I'll need to get something that can haul Materials Kits over to Harkonnen, so I'll be busy at Duna for a while yet. Also have the Auk XIII with its rescuee trying to come home and a bunch of science experiments in progress. Overall things are still busy. Also need to get into the VAB and SPH to start getting rid of parts deprecated in 1.7, apparently...I've got a while to go before I make the switch, but it wouldn't hurt me to get started...

Check your KSP/GameData/Squad/zDeprecated folder. Some of those should be there and you should be able to copy them back into the operational Parts directories. If they aren't there, I'd surely like to know - I've got active ships in my career save that are still using freakin' Rockomax Decouplers. If I have to retire my entire fleet, it'd be nice to know about it. If it turns out I'd also have to get rid of almost every operational space station I've got, it'd be a strong reason for me to stick with 1.6...

(1.6.1) Pretty slow day overall yesterday. It began with the rendezvous of an Auk XIII single-passenger spaceplane with Neilman's Wreckage in high Kerbin orbit. Scientist Nielman Kerman EVA'd over to the plane, which then retroburned to bring its periapsis down to aerobrake. At this point, the plane only has 333 m/s of delta-V remaining, so it remains to be seen whether I'll be able to bring it in for landing at KSC or not without a refueling op. Hoping not, in all honesty. The Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane I'd sent to Minmus with a batch of colonists aboard several days ago burned into orbit and set up a rendezvous with space station Minmusport, safely coming into dock one orbit later. Adding that extended docking pylon to the station last week was a solid idea, as it turned out... With the plane's arrival, I'll be sending down the colonists to the Deepwater Horizon outpost on the surface at the next opportunity. I've noted that the colonists keep coming in batches of nine or fifteen. My colonist lander carries eight, so I'm going to design an add-on piece that will hopefully improve its passenger capacity without diminishing any of its other capabilities. I'll add that before I send this group down - other things going on and all that. The bulk of my day yesterday, though, was spent getting LSV House Atreides back to Kerbin from Eve. Going to hit the planet! Fooled you!! - not hitting the plane... Going to hit the planet!!! Got you again!!!! --- the process of warp-backs in a nutshell. After about two in-game hours of warp-back maneuvers, Atreides finally was able to settle into a 670x550 kilometer equatorial orbit over Kerbin. Once safely in orbit, Strange Cargo undocked from the warp ship. After undocking, Gwenlock had to put up with complaints from her passengers about "not being a damn yo-yo", while dealing with some lingering seasickness her own self... Strange Cargo burned to rendezvous with space station Kerbinport, a rendezvous which is set up and will likely take place later this morning. T. Howell III departed House Atreides as well, and also conducted a burn to bring it to rendezvous with Kerbinport. I could so totally believe that Thurston Howell is actually Slender Man...same goes for most of the castaways, in truth. It's those new dual nozzles of the revamped Poodle engine - something about it just creeps me out, y'all... With all of her passengers offloaded, idiot engineer Ceri Kerman aboard House Atreides began the print of a new Hellhound 7a rover; the ship already has sufficient supplies aboard to construct and fuel the craft without a refueling op, and with House Harkonnen not leaving Duna for the next ten days at least, Atreides will be heading back to Eve for the rover's deployment - I'll let Ceri do the job on her own time while I take care of other things. Construction of the Hellhound will take 43 hours (just over seven days). I am confident that the new design will not experience the explosive failures of the original. Speaking of House Harkonnen, a fresh supply of Rocket Parts were shot up from the Enchova Central outpost on the Dunan surface via mass driver last thing yesterday - the ship now has sufficient Rocket Parts aboard to complete the construction of the TBD 7d base-seeding rover currently being built aboard. Additional supply shots will be required once the rover is complete to make sure the base is fully supplied before Harkonnen heads over to Eve for deployment. Today, I've got Howell and Strange Cargo heading into dock at Kerbinport, so an Auk VII flight is scheduled to bring all of their tourists home (which should clear four contracts). I want to at least begin construction of that add-on module for the Crater Maker 7 lander at Minmusport, and I want to see if I can get Nielman down safely. House Atreides can also head back to Eve at her leisure; going to try to time the departure to where the relative orbital velocity is minimized if I can help it - that should cut back on the amount of warp-backs needed, not that that's a particularly time-consuming thing over Eve thanks to the planet's gravity. I already know today's going to be a short playing day due to events in RL; hopefully I'll have something substantial to report to y'all on Monday...

For you cave dwellers out there, KSP v1.7 dropped yesterday around 18Z. Thus begins my standard one-month countdown to the upgrade - got to let those mod makers have time to get everything recompiled and make sure things still work. That also means I have a decision to make in one month's time whether to keep going with my current career save or start afresh. Right now I'm leaning towards continuing, on account of the fact that I still haven't made it past Eve exploration since contracts became a thing way back in KSP v0.24, and yesterday's events make it look likely that I'll be at that for a while still. So, without further ado... (1.6.1) With all final checks complete at the start of business yesterday, LSV House Atreides engaged her Alcubierre Drive and departed Duna. This screenie might've been more impressive had I had the Alcubierre Drive's POW window up where y'all could see it...trust me, she was going plenty fast already... She arrived at Eve a few minutes later going about 12 kps and warpbacks began to bring her into orbit; she was ultimately able to acheive a 500x300, 3-degree inclined orbit over the purple planet. Shortly thereafter, Gilligan conducted a burn to bring her to a rendezvous with LSV House Harkonnen still in orbit over Duna, and about that same time the Auk XVI 12-passenger spaceplane I'd sent to Minmus late last week finally arrived in the SOI of the minty moon, conducting a radial-in burn to bring her approach periapsis down to the altitude of space station Minmusport. With time to kill at that point, I went forward with the launch of the Hellhound 7a rover from House Atreides's drydock. Hellhound 7a rover and skycrane departing LSV House Atreides. After lowering its orbit to just above Eve's horizon, a retro burn was made to have the rover enter the atmosphere, targeting the coordinates of the potential TBD site for landing. And now it's time to play "Spot the Design Flaw!!" The rover did survive entry and made a successful touchdown a mere seven kilometers off the target, but I ran into a major problem - the heat shield was positioned such that it clipped into the skycrane while inflated, and when it came time to jettison the thing so the rover could do its job... For clarification, this is not a position from which the Hellhound design operates - rather the opposite, in fact. I wouldn't be going anywhere with four blown tires anyway. The landing wasn't a complete waste, though - it did clear the current Eve exploration contract as expected. What was unexpected was the next exploration contract... You want me to do what now? 'In for a penny, in for a pound', as the saying goes - I mashed the little green checkbox. For as long as I've been playing, it's about damn time I did an Eve launch to orbit...just have to be smart about it, right? The failure of the Hellhound mission will necessitate the landing of a second rover at the potential colony site; after these shenanigans, I hit the VAB and did an extensive redesign of the Hellhound 7a to make sure I could actually jettison the damn heat shield. The new design puts the shield on top of the skycrane; upon atmospheric entry, the skycrane will point to prograde instead of retrograde, flipping to retrograde for landing when the bulk of the entry heating is over with. That should make it easier to jettison the shield safely. With nothing else to do at Eve, House Atreides departed Eve at that point. Again, she's already going plenty fast... The ship arrived at Kerbin a few minutes later going 18 kps, well above the speed needed to attain orbit. Warpback maneuvers to slow down commenced at once; they're still ongoing as of this post. Meantime, Gilligan arrived at House Harkonnen, at which point engineers Lucas, Ardon and Gilford Kerman joined Bob and engineer Gemlorf Kerman in the ship's Bigby workshop, boosting the ship's already considerable efficiency rating to a whopping 18 points. Their presence knocked the estimated time remaining on the construction of the TBD 7d base-seeding rover being built in the ship's drydock from 10 days down to 4.5 hours. This did necessitate a resupply of Rocket Parts; the Enchova Central outpost on the Dunan surface shot up a full load to Harkonnen via mass driver. Today my focus is going to be on getting Atreides into orbit over Kerbin and then getting her fourteen tourist passengers back to the surface; combined, they represent four contracts. I'm going to need a new Hellhound 7 rover and the engineers currently at Duna are still my best bet for building one quickly, so I'm going to have to have Atreides return to Duna at the next possible opportunity. The saving grace there is that Harkonnen won't be heading to Eve until after scientist Rodemone Kerman finishes up a science experiment ongoing at space station Dunaport, and at the current rate, that won't wrap up for another eleven days, so there's still plenty of time to get a new rover built and onto the surface of Eve before the crew is due to go set up an outpost. The return of Atreides to Duna may involve a side trip to Mun so the ship can pick up a supply of Xenon gas for her Alcubierre Drive; while it's not critically low yet, it's still getting down there. I also have an upcoming rescue mission to finish up over Kerbin and the Auk XVI is nearing periapsis at this point, so I'll also be needing to get a batch of colonists down to the surface soon. Things are still plenty busy for the moment overall.

Nope. Mod works fine; used it myself just this afternoon...

I continued the process of wrapping up my ongoing Duna/Eve expedition yesterday, starting with a burn to send T. Howell III to a rendezvous with LSV House Atreides in high orbit over Duna. Strange Cargo affected a similar burn mere moments later. While the ships were en route, the Spamcan 7c lander touched down on the surface of Duna, landing about fifty meters off of the designated landing zone for the Enchova Central outpost. Pilot Gwenlock Kerman, scientists Rodemone and Willin Kerman and engineer Gilford Kerman piled out of the lander in turn and each planted a flag. Gilford retrieved the necessary equipment from the outpost to hook up the lander to the outpost and fuel supplies were transferred. Once all the equipment was stowed safely back aboard the outpost, the four kerbals got back in their freshly-fueled lander and awaited their launch window to return to space station Dunaport in low orbit. Strange Cargo and T. Howell III both arrived at House Atreides within seconds of one another. Strange Cargo steering for the sixty second approach in preparation for docking at LSV House Atreides. I really need to stop doing these multiple rendezvous events... Both ships then docked safely to the warp ship, after which it was time for the Spamcan to return to Dunaport. Quick, ma! Somebody dun set the upchuckwagon on fahr!!! The lander returned safely to Dunaport, at which point the station loaded fuel supplies aboard Gilligan docked at the station and the landing crew transferred back to the station. The two scientists went to the station's Skylab module along with pilot Edsy Kerman, where they are now conducting a Power Tools evaluation experiment for contract; that experiment is scheduled to complete in eleven day's time. Meanwhile, Jeb and Gwenlock along with Gilford and engineers Ardon and Lucas Kerman departed the station aboard Gilligan, setting course to rendezvous with House Atreides. While Gilligan was en route, I received notice from the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyard over Kerbin - an Auk XIII single-passenger spaceplane I'd ordered up a few days ago was finally complete. Some of the station's fuel stores were transferred to the spaceplane and she then launched from the drydock on a mission to rescue Nielman in Kerbin orbit. Originally I'd only filled one of the fuel tanks, thinking I only needed enough on board fuel for a quick low-altitude rendezvous and deorbit for landing. The target turned out to be close to the orbit of Mun, so it was necessary to send the Auk over to Kerbinport to fill up her rocket tanks to capacity before sending it on to the rendezvous with Nielman's Wreckage; the plane is en route at this point and should make the rendezvous in about 4 hours. All the business with the Auk happened while Gilligan was awaiting the transfer window to head to Atreides; the transfer window finally did come up and Gilligan arrived at Atreides about twenty minutes later. Gilligan arriving at House Atreides, preparing for final rendezvous burn. Gilligan arrived safely; Jeb parked the craft about thirty meters away from Atreides. At least that's what the instrumentation said...looks closer than thirty meters to me, but what do I know, right? House Atreides only has one Minnow Adapter unit installed, and with T. Howell III currently parked, there was nowhere available for Gilligan to dock. Since I wanted the engineers aboard, it was necessary to transfer them over the old-fashioned way. Moving Kerbals like it's 2014. Hard to think I've really been playing this game for that long... Lucas, Ardon, Gilford and Gwenlock all transferred over via jetpack, with Gwenlock resuming command of Strange Cargo docked at Atreides and the engineers going straight to work in the drydock. Val took the opportunity to transfer back over to Gilligan as well, resuming her position in the copilot's seat next to Jeb. The engineers boosted the efficiency of Atreides's drydock twelve times, and the estimation for completion of the Hellhound 7a rover under construction aboard the ship went from over three days down to a mere sixty-five minutes. Gilligan kept station near Atreides for that period, with Jeb and Val making periodic RCS corrections to maintain a 30-40 meter distance from the warp ship. Once the drydock signaled complete, the three engineers EVA'd back over to Gilligan, which then departed for a rendezvous with LSV House Harkonnen also in Duna orbit. Fuel supplies were shot up via mass driver from Enchova Central to House Atreides this morning and at this point all final preparations have been completed for Atreides to leave Duna; she'll be warping to Eve to drop off the rover later this morning, after which she'll be heading back to Kerbin to drop off the tourists. My focus is now going to shift to Harkonnen and the TBD 7d base-seeding rover under construction aboard. Once it's finished, I'll have to conduct a full supply run to make sure the rover is ready to go for a drop to Eve's surface - the goal is the establishment of a permanent base there. Harkonnen won't be able to leave until the Eve crew is aboard, and with Rodemone currently engaged with the experiments aboard Dunaport that'll be a few days yet. I've got Nielman's rescue coming up, and I'll also be ferrying tourists down to Kerbin in the near future as well. My latest colonist expedition to Minmus is almost there as well, so I'll likely be doing that as well in the very near future.