capi3101

I agree with the advice that @Nixod321 has given you, particularly in regards to your wing loading. For a 28 meter long aircraft with a mass of 178 tonnes, a total wing area of 356 square meters will give you wing loading of .5 tonnes per square meter, which would be comparable to a Concorde (.5 is usually what I shoot for with my spaceplane designs). Add your 36 tonnes of cargo and that becomes 0.6, a bit on the high end but still acceptable. If you want .5 with your cargo, you'll need 428 square meters of wing area. I also agree with the notion of twin tails - my calculator for the same mass (178 tonnes) and length suggests a vertical stabilizer with a span of 6.78 meters (assuming a 3.5 meter root and 1.75 meter tip) is what you need, which is definitely out of the range of any of the stock parts...at least, any single stock part. I might suggest Procedural Wings if you find yourself having difficulty with the stock wing parts.

Started my day on Wednesday with a redesign of the Kerbal Tour Bus to turn it into a high-capacity, high delta-V rescue ship. The redesigned craft took off from KSC with Jeb at the helm on a mission to rescue four Kerbals, with the original intent to rescue engineer Theony Kerman first. The launch profile, however, passed within 5 klicks of pilot prior to apoapsis, so plans changed and I picked him up first. I realized after I made the rendezvous that I had a design flaw - the only way to get people in and out of the craft was through the hatch in Jeb's Mk1 Command Pod, so Jeb temporarily transferred back into the passenger cabins while Nelny boarded - I had to do this do-si-do with all four of the rescuees, and I also had to reinstall Ship Manifest before the game would let me move Jeb back to pick up Nelny (what I get for trying to use an outdated version of the mod). Theony was picked up next, with KTB passing within 1 klick on the next orbital pass. I then had to go high to redezvous with the other two Kerbal rescuees, engineer Eriemy Kerman and finally pilot Phoming Kerman. I was glad to find out Phoming was a pilot; my original intention was for Jeb to EVA while he Phoming boarded and got in the passenger modules (owing to the fact the craft was out of enough seats to do the switching about I'd been doing up to that point), but since Phoming could steer the craft, I let Jeb take a passenger seat for the final re-entry: Kerbal Tour Bus on re-entry, having just jettisoned its service module stage. Don't worry - I've got it on internal view; the sides of the craft are still there. Though there'd be something very Kerbal about it if they weren't... Re-entry was a success, with the craft landing 125 klicks west of KSC for four contracts cleared and about √200k. I next picked up a pair of tourist contracts for Munar fly-bys (a total of seven suckers paying customers in all). I also picked up another LKO rescue contract and a Mun science contract, and used the proceeds to upgrade the Tracking Station to Level 3, leaving the Administration Center, VAB and R&D facilities left to upgrade to full. Yesterday began with a redesign of the Fireball 7 Mun/Minmus lander owing to the unlocking of more advanced parts and the realization that I had forgotten to add a dedicated transfer stage to the craft - didn't want to burn up 40% of the craft's available delta-V just getting out to Mun. Redesign complete, I launched Bob Munward: Fireball 7 at launch. I couldn't tell you which iteration of the craft this is - I've had a craft named Fireball 7 since the v0.18 demo. Obviously this one's a bit more complex than that first one... Rest of the day was fairly non-descript. I launch a Boop-Boop 7 probe (dubbed Kerbin Delta once it was in position) into a polar orbit of Kerbin and then redesigned the probe's booster so that Stage Recovery would actually be able to recover some stages of the design. I had Jeb take off in a Bad Idea 2 surveyor aircraft to do a pressure survey near KSC - one of those "here's your first waypoint, no it ain't the source so here's the next waypoint" jobs. Five waypoints as it turned out taking me over to the next continent to the east, by which point I was already halfway over to another aerial survey area I had a contract for, so I went ahead and finished that one up too: Bad Idea 2 flying over some mountains on its way back to KSC from the second survey mission. Jeb ultimately returned safely to KSC 27 with about half of his fuel. Ended the night by adjusting the orbits of a pair of satellites for contract and a Kerbin space science contract, which I did with Bob aboard Fireball 7 by transmitting a crew report from high Kerbin orbit (already had done one of thems and there wasn't anything left to be gained from one, so it was a quick transmit job). Hoping to get Bob into Mun orbit to pick up science and maybe pull a rendezvous or two later today. Meantime I've a grand total of eleven tourists headed to Munar orbit. Might be just about time to start porting over all my craft designs from 1.1.3 to re-establish the infrastructure I had going there...

In the middle of fabricating the first expansion for a card game I'm working on, and on getting the core game ready to print. It's eating up a lot of my spare time at the moment (and since I'm making the expansion by hand, my hand aches quite a bit right now...). Yesterday I'm moved the Beep-Beep 7 probe to a new orbit for contract, relabeling it as comm relay Kerbin Gamma once that was done. The proceeds went to upgrade the Astronaut Center to Level 3, putting me at the halfway mark for facilities upgrades to full. That was all I was able to accomplish... Earlier this morning I was able to send Jeb out to do two aerial surveys on Kerbin aboard Bad Idea 2, this from a spot in the Grasslands northeast of the crater rim, where he'd finished up a ground survey in the area (after having done a similiar ground survey up on the Northern Ice Shelf the day before). He cleared both contracts handily before returning to KSC 27 with an 18% fuel reserve (for the record, Bad Idea 2 has three Mk1 fuel tanks and two Panther engines, and was running on afterburner a good portion of the flight). In the process, he circumnavigated Kerbin at altitudes below 20,000 meters (I seem to recall there being a challenge for that sort of thing at one time or another). In the wake of his return, I picked up another aerial temperature survey on Kerbin and two LKO rescue contracts. Since I now have four LKO rescue contracts, I plan to do some changes to the Kerbal Tour Bus to give the thing more delta-V and then send it out to pick up all four rescuees at once. Will let y'all know how that goes when the time comes.

Wasn't terribly busy over the weekend. Having unlocked Panther engines, I had Val fly a pair of upper-atmospheric pressure surveys in the vicinity of KSC and clear a pair of contracts in the process, earning enough science in the process to unlock Landing (there were better nodes to choose from but quite honestly I was tired of being told all my planes had "experimental parts", mainly). Next up was a test of a stack decoupler splashed down - I built a really primitive VTOL rig using a KER Balloon as its lift source and a Juno engine for forward momentum. I performed the test successfully, though it turned out the rig wasn't terribly buoyant and I wound up setting a record for a 240 depth before everything was said and done. Wasn't quick on the screenie button or I'd have something to show y'all this morning. Picked up/did a Structural Pylon test done and then finished up two sat placement contracts along with the early Munar flyby contract, returning Jeb safely to Kerbin. Upon his return, Jeb was sent to do surface EVA reports and crew reports up on the northern ice shelf: Isn't this the part where the sub breaks through the ice to refuel Clint Eastwood's plane? Bad Idea 2 landed and completed the mission without incident. I then had Jeb take off to another surface waypoint mission northeast of the crater rim, which required multiple reverts didn't go as smoothly though he did land safely with his plane entirely intact, and on the first try too. Jeb will be sent to conduct another three aerial surveys at various points across Kerbin pending the success of a satellite moving contract, whose burn is coming up in the next half hour (game time). I'll probably have Jeb tend to those flights after the sat's been dealt with, hopefully later today.

Hey Bob, you might want to, you know, come to a stop before you try to clean out the experiments. Just saying. You can tell it's Bob and not Jeb - if it'd been Jeb, the speed would've been higher by at least another two orders of magnitude... Tried out a redesigned early Scimobile yesterday. Worked a lot better - later on in this run Bob got it up to 130 mph and did a nearby ground survey with it. Also turned out to make a pretty decent boat. Got Panthers and Skippers for my efforts.

Been doing early career stuff all this past week. Maybe if I can get more than a few minutes to post I'll share it all with youze guyz... I suppose in the meantime, y'all will have to settle for a few screenies:

Seeing the same thing here: Not sure if this is really a bug or not, though - just corroborating an observation. I might try removing the Mk-16 entirely on the same craft setup to see just how much of an effect the drogues are having on their own.

Still early career for me. Sent Jeb up aboard Derpstick 3 on Kerbin's first orbital spaceflight, collecting temperature, barometric, materials bay and goo readings on the way up and in orbit. Also got him to do several EVAs and crew reports from high atmo, low orbit and high Kerbin orbit. Successfully brought him back down in Kerbin's deserts with a decent amount of early science and with all four of the initial contracts fulfilled. Formally began the grind with some parts testing and low-altitude surveying flights in and around KSC. The Level 1 Runway and the bush-plane landing gears are still a bad combination. They're better than they used to be, but I was still lucky to get Jeb back down without his cockpit exploding. Couldn't say the same for the rest of his plane, the aptly named Bad Idea 1... This morning I've designed a new version of the Kerbal Tour Bus with a contract to launch three suckers paying customers on a sub-orbital flight. Went ahead and made the KTB an orbital craft, and will try to get a landing close to KSC if I can manage it. That'll probably happen later today. Might also put together a scimobile so that I can eek out enough science from the KSC biomes to unlock some better landing gear.

Discovered the issues I had yesterday weren't with ModularFlightIntegrator - I had simply downloaded an older dev version of FAR. Once that was corrected, the game fired right up with all my mods ready to go. Mainly just kinda flew around in the sandbox for a little bit. Did start a new career save on my home box; did some early launch pad/runway science and a couple of sub-orbital science-gathering flights. Decided to try out KERBalloons as well; launched a primitive rawinsonde using a Stayputnik for the core along with a barometer and thermometer. Was going to try for an upper atmospheric reading but was dismayed when the ascent stopped around 10 kilometers. Hoping to do my first orbital hop later today.

Traced the issues I was having last night to ModularFlightIntegrator; took it out and the game fired right up. Still trying to get some of my mods to behave with one another - the big one is the dev version of FAR, which is kinda working as best I can tell (can't access it in the SPH for some reason, which could just be a matter of "you don't have it plugged in right, stupid"). Will try to fiddle with it some more as the day progresses today. I'm sure I'll be rolling around the space center before the day is out.

Figured I'd farmed and built Rome for long enough, so today I installed 1.3 and grabbed mods. One of them's making the game crash, so I'm still grounded...but I'm sure it won't be long before I'm back with you guys again. Going to have to decide if I want to bring stuff over from 1.1.3 or not...most of it didn't have antennas......

I'll give it a try. TL:DR is that the red arrow is your torque vector; the way you get it go away entirely is either by putting your thruster on your center of mass OR by putting an equal amount of counter-force at a distance exactly as far away from the center of mass as your initial thruster. There are three components to torque - the amount of force applied (which depends on the output of your thrusters), the length of the lever arm (i.e. how far the thruster is from the center of mass, which is going to be your fulcrum), and the angle between them. In this case, your force vector is going to be at a right angle to the lever arm - sine of ninety degrees is 1, so that factors out of consideration. So, the magnitude of your torque in a given axis is going to equal the thrust times the distance to the center of mass. The direction of the torque vector can be determined by using the right hand grip rule: if the fingers of the right hand are curled from the direction of the lever arm to the direction of the force, then the thumb points in the direction of the torque. What RCS Build aid is doing when it's telling you the total torque on a single axis is that it's calculating the torques for all thrusters that will affect that axis - the amount of force they provide, how far away they are from the selected CoM, and what angle they are to the axis. It then adds those up and gives you the result. If you're really wanting to use RCS thrusters for rotation with a craft like the one you've pictured, I'd start by putting a series of thrusters at the top - up by the parachute. These won't be at a ninety degree angle to the lever arm, and so the net torque they'd produce will be less than those you could put at the same distance from the CoM on the bottom. Myself, I use RCS thrusters for docking, which is a procedure where you want as little torque produced when you fire a thruster as you can possibly manage (so therefore I put them around the center of mass) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque - mandatory wikipedia link on the topic of torque. I don't think I've really explained this particularly well; hopefully at least some of this is helpful.

Looks like a correct install so far... Contents of the FerramAersopaceResearch sub-directory?

My apologies; been busy. Unfortunately I've made no headway - home box CPU temp got up over 70C just idling the other day and I haven't had time to figure out why. Hoping it just needs a good dusting. Wrong installation is a possibility, I suppose. Can you give me the full directory structure you've got leading up to the FerramAerospaceResearch directory? And forgive me - I've slept a bit since you first posted - but as I recall you were doing a vanilla install with FAR as the only mod, is that correct?

That's comparable to my home box; no worries. Did occur to me that I tested in the 64-bit version of KSP this morning. Will look into the combination of 32-bit KSP and Lewis to see if that makes a difference or not.

Can verify that it's not FAR - just installed a fresh copy of 1.2.2 with Lewis only and got the Firehound airborne. The plane's other design flaws aside (which I'll leave for you to discover on your own), I realized quickly that I've gotten quite dependent on Atmosphere Autopilot's fly-by-wire controls... So...let's try some other things. Any particular reason why you're using the 32-bit version of KSP on Windows 7? If it's a slow box/low memory, I totally understand - my own home box has "made in Byzantium" printed on the side in Sanskrit somewhere and it uses a live hamster in a wheel to provide electrical power.

Might try 1.2.2 and see if that makes a difference or not. Meanwhile, do you have a picture of a FAR craft with which you've experienced this issue? Better yet, would be willing to share the .CRAFT file?

Pictures would help us to diagnose the problem. Also, since someone will mention it to you anyway (and probably not as nicely), I'll tell you that this thread is generally reserved for the mod's development - for FAR-related design questions, go here. Meantime, I'll give the problem some thought. Might start with the basic "is it plugged-in" questions - which version of FAR are you using, which version of KSP are you using, do you have the FerramAerospaceResearch folder installed in the KSP>>GameData folder, etc.

"Pudel'-sobaka" and "grot" come to mind...you know, the Russian translations of 'poodle' and 'mainsail', respectively...

(1.1.3) Last Friday's session began with a final check of the Bullet Bill 7 probe. Despite the recent repair mission to slap an antenna on the craft post-launch, the game still did not credit me with the contract. Alas. Bullet Bill 7, post repair. Still hoping to get some kind of profit on the thing later... Since it was clear that a new launch would be required, Bullet Bill 7a was put on the launchpad and successfully shot into LKO. Naturally, the optimal Minmus transfer window for the craft is currently in shadow so there will be insufficient power for the ion engines to work, but I did go ahead and take the time to align the plane of the probe's orbit with Minmus (ascending node was on the sunny side of Kerbin). Ordinarily I wouldn't want to waste the delta-V, but in this case I know I have it to spare. I'll keep watching for a better transfer window to come up in a few days. Meanwhile, I wanted to get my next expedition to the moons of Kerbin underway, with four tourists headed out that way, two recently press-ganged rescuees rookies in need of two-star training and two scientists at the Minmusport space station that needed a pick up. Scientist Irula Kerman, engineer Gersen Kerman and tourists Jaysef and Rodbas Kerman were loaded into an Auk IX passenger spaceplane and prepped for launch to the Kerbinport space station. I discovered that I'd failed to save the tweaks I'd made to the craft after its shakedown flight, so those were quickly re-affected before takeoff. The plane successfully arrived in LKO with no issues and a rendezvous burn with Kerbinport was affected. The plane is currently on schedule to arrive at Kerbinport in about 35 minutes; rendezvous and docking will be the first order of business during my next session, after which the four Kerbals will join tourists Neilby and Crisdia Kerman already (at the station) and head towards Minmus first. I should also have a rock to put into orbit soon unless I'm mistaken...

(1.1.3) Yesterday after taking the time to recharge the fuel stores of the Deepwater Horizon refinery on Minmus, I decided it was finally time to launch engineer Phovie Kerman on her scheduled repair mission to the orbiting Bullet Bill 7 ion probe: Phovie jetpacking towards the Spamcan 7 lander, passing the crane rover Lunkhead just after local kerbolset. She had a wait of about an hour and a half before her position on Minmus came into a close enough alignment with the probe to launch. In the meantime, the Old Bessie 7 fuel lander, which had landed for a fueling run at Deepwater Horizon during the previous session, was returned successfully to the Minmusport space station - the station's fuel stores are definitely sufficient to support future excursions for the foreseeable future. The Spamcan 7 lander's launch window came up next and launched with Phovie aboard into a 10k polar orbit around Minmus. She made a 30 m/s burn after achieving orbit to bring the craft up to an interest point in three orbits. While I was waiting for that time to pass, KAC sounded the next Mission Control alarm for a new contract, which turned out to be for a group of two Minmus bound tourists. Went ahead and accepted the contract before going back to the Spamcan. Phovie successfully rendezvoused with the probe: Phovie on EVA between Bullet Bill 7 (left) and the Spamcan 7 lander (right) The mission to fit a new antenna on the probe was a success. Phovie returned to the Spamcan and reduced her orbit back to 10 kilometers, at which point her concern became returning to Deepwater Horizon. She had about 800 m/s of delta-V remaining, which turned out to be plenty to attempt to perform a direct plane change for landing. She safely returned to the refinery with about 400 m/s of delta-V to spare, coming down so close to the refinery that I had to roll the craft so their respective solar panels wouldn't collide with one another: Spamcan 7 returning to the Deepwater Horizon refinery site, with Lunkhead (left), Deepwater Horizon (center) and the Jiffy Lube 7 parts supply craft (right) visible. The Spamcan was refueled, Phovie re-boarded the refinery and the waiting scientists Danwig and Isavie Kerman were loaded aboard the Spamcan for a trip up to Minmusport. DH has already refilled its supply of monoprop as well. The real crapper of it is that the game still hasn't awarded Bullet Bill with the completion of its mission, despite the fact that it now meets all the requirements. I may give it one more shot today, but if the game still won't count it, a new probe launch is going to be in order. Which would be a real shame, given how close Bullet Bill's orbit is to the requirement parameters of its mission... Next session I'll be sending the Spamcan up to Minmusport and sending up my two tourists from KSC to the Kerbinport space station. Since I want to pick up Isavie and Danwig from Minmus, I have four tourists wanting to go to Minmus and Mün and two KSC staff requiring two-star training, I'll probably launch one of my available ferry craft - probably The Great Artiste - on an expedition shortly thereafter. Tater Catcher 7 is also about a day away from finally returning to Kerbin's SOI; gonna have a rock to put into orbit soon.

(1.1.3) Spent my time yesterday refueling, mainly. Sent down the Spamcan 7 lander to the Deepwater Horizon refinery on Minmus first: Spamcan 7 (center foreground) at touchdown, with the remains of Jiffy Lube 7 (left), Deepwater Horizon (center background) and the crane rover Lunkhead (right). I get the impression the little monoprop lander will work very well on the minty moon. I plan on using it to send engineer Phovie Kerman at DH on her repair mission to fix the Bullet Bill 7 probe; intent is to launch it on a polar orbit, make the repairs and come back to the refinery when it swings back around. Hopefully it'll all be that simple. I still needed to refuel the Minmusport space station in the wake of the recent visit by Next Objective, so the station's Old Bessie 7 lander was sent down to pick up fuel, landing close enough to Deepwater Horizon to hook up with KAS winches and refuel directly. I had intended to pick up the Spamcan with Lunkhead and haul it into refueling range, but the damn electromagnet decided it no longer wanted to behave. Probably will have to send a replacement. Wound up having to use Lunkhead to bridge the distance and refuel the 'can that way. Next session I plan to send Old Bessie back to Minmusport, recharge Deepwater Horizon's fuel stores, and then sent Phovie on her way. Scientists Danwig and Isavie are currently at DH and if all goes according to plan, they can ride the Spamcan back to Minmusport when Phovie returns. And they can run the refinery if something goes horribly wrong (a scientist can hook up a winch cable if nothing else...).

(1.1.3) Log has built back up on me again with a bunch of half-hour days... So...let's see. Earliest entry I've got is for last Monday, which is when I finally finished the landing sequence of the Auk Ia light passenger spaceplane. If y'all will recall, I had test flown the thing up to the Kerbinport space station to deliver a pair of tourists and had to quit with the plane still trying to get back to KSC after a rather badly botched re-entry (by which I mean I'd overshot the Runway by 400 kilometers). After quick-loading my progress back up and quickly activating the fly-by-wire, I was able to get the plane back under control and returned successfully to KSC 27. Had a 5% fuel reserve on touchdown, said TAC. I began Tuesday by putting the Bullet Bill 7 ion probe into its final disposition around Minmus. And by final disposition, I mean close enough that the game should've awarded me the contract. And I imagine it would've, had I packed an antenna on the stupid thing. <facepalm /> So I began looking around for spare antennas in and around Minmus as well as engineers with tools to perform a KAS repair job. Antennas I had to spare - there were two at the Minmusport space station and four at the Hojo Eta outpost, which I planned on abandoning anyway. So I was good there. On Engineers, though, I came up short - the only one at Minmus is Phovie at the Deepwater Horizon refinery. Naturally, plans began then to get her up to repair Bullet Bill, but that would have to wait until she finished refueling operations - Next Objective was parked at Minmusport with an expedition in progress. Finishing that expedition became the priority - scientist Catxie Kerman along with pilots Billy-Bobfurt, Frovey and Carta Kerman were loaded aboard the station's Spamcan 7a lander and made their way to the surface to plant flags. Having arrived safely on the surface and conducted their mission, the group returned to Minmusport, a verification check was made to ensure that all required landing operations were complete, all crew transferred back to Next Objective and the craft was refueled. Next Objective's next port of call was the Munport space station, so a transfer burn was set up and executed; Next Objective will arrive in the Mun's SOI in 24 days. I have the time to kill... On Wednesday, I decided I needed a change of pace. I've noted recently that while I have spaceplanes for 16, 8 and 2 passengers capable of docking in LKO, I didn't have one for four passengers, a niche that needed to be filled. So I set about with the design of the Auk IX: The Auk IX four-passenger spaceplane - the Edsel of the fleet... Auk IX on re-entry. The test flight commenced on Friday, where I discovered three flaws - first, it wasn't given any Z-axis thrusters, so while I could align it with the desired docking port at Kerbinport, I couldn't close or open the distance to the port. Test docking had to be scrapped. A second flaw happened on re-entry; I had failed to give it any battery storage - she almost ran out of power coming out of re-entry into powered flight. A final flaw was a bad setup of the control surfaces on the trailing edge of the wing - I had given her insufficient roll control and as a result she had unstable dynamic lateral stability (i.e. horrific sideslip) at low speed and altitude - FAR gave me green on the L-sub-beta but it showed up on the lateral simulation in the after-action analysis. I originally thought I had left the craft in Atmosphere Autopilot's rocket mode (which I've done before) and I nearly botched the landing before I realized what was actually going on - that said, I did get then plane down on the Runway and in one piece. All three of those flaws have been fixed at this point and other than that she flew beautifully. Still don't know how often it'll be necessary for me to transport four passengers as opposed to two or eight, and one thing I've noted is that this craft is more expensive than the Auk II, the 8-passenger variant. Not sure why... Yesterday I went back to getting things ready to go with the Bullet Bill repair mission. Scientists Isavie and Danwig Kerman were transferred from Hojo Eta to Deepwater Horizon and Phovie went over to pull an antenna off the thing. I actually spent a fair amount of time trying to pick up Hojo Eta with the crane rover Lunkhead in an attempt to haul it closer to the refinery; I ultimately disillusioned myself from that idea after having to revert several times when the crane tipped over... Next session will be a refueling run for Minmusport, and then I need to figure out exactly how I'm going to get Phovie off the surface and over to that probe. I did mention that the probe's in a polar orbit, didn't I?

(1.1.3) I've had a bunch - and I mean a bunch - of half-hour days for most of this last month dating back all the way to March 15. Log's getting ridiculous in length, so I figure I either should get around to telling y'all about or just dump the whole thing... Y'all saw my Michael Bay-inspired launch of an Auk VIII heavy refueling tanker to the Kerbinport space station; that was one of my last posts on this thread. Mission was a success; I got a load of fuel delivered to the station though it was touch-and-go there for a while with the amount of RCS fuel being used. Auk VIII docking at Kerbinport, with Mission Bloat in the foreground. The tank was drained to the station's reserves and to the ferry Next Objective docked at the station, after which the plane departed and de-orbited. Damn thing skidded on touchdown, blew the freakin' Runway again and sat down on its tail... Auk VIII's graceful crash. Obviously the Auk VIII has some serious design flaws with its landing gear, and I'll be dealing with those at some point. Probably when I have little choice but to use the damn thing again... While that was going on, I accepted a constract to extract 400 units of ore from Minmus. The Deepwater Horizon refinery had plenty of space to do that, so I knocked it out real quick and got a nearly identical contract for Mun. At the time, it was night at the Piper Alpha refinery, so that waited a few days. I also noted the arrival of the engineering craft-cum-rescue ship Mission Bloat at Kerbinport, having successfully retrieved scientist Leema Kerman from LKO around this same time. Leema's retreival gave me an even eight Kerbals requiring two-star training (the last of the current batch of KSC employees), so the other seven were sent up to Kerbinport aboard an Auk II passenger plane, which docked successfully to the station. The crew and Leema were transferred to Next Objective, which then departed and burned for Minmus - that happened on March 17th, and she didn't get there until March 30th, so the craft had a literal 13 day journey this time around. In the meantime, I completed the mining contract for Mun and then did a quick parts test for easy cash with a Lusitania 7 testing rig. I was then given the opportunity for a contract with a Minmus probe, and I figured that would be a good time to test and see if the Faux News 7 module docked at Kerbinport would be capable of doing its intended job (i.e. putting probes up for contracts). Danuna performed a fifteen minute EVA to assemble the Faux News Alpha-2 Probe, which then was cut loose. Danuna coming back into Kerbinport with the newly constructed Faux News Alpha-2 probe (right, nadir) built and ready to deploy. I learned that, despite it being a "new craft", the game wouldn't call it as such, so it was time to try something else. That something else was the first launch of the Bullet Bill 7 probe, my first attempt at an ion-drive craft. Launch of the craft occurred on the 22nd with its correction burn happening on the 23rd. Bullet Bill burning for Minmus. With another expedition en route, I decided to check the fuel stores at the Munport and Minmusport space stations. Minmusport was okay without having to retrieve fuel, but Munport was not so the Old Bessie fuel lander headed down to Piper Alpha. Got a little too close on the landing - the lander initially set down on one of the refinery's solar panels. Luckily it was going down slowly enough that no damage occurred to either craft and I was able to get the lander down safely. The lander was refilled, the refinery recharged and Old Bessie made her way back to Munport, refilling all of the craft docked at the station and getting the station's reserve tank up to 80%, which was good enough for me to secure refueling operations. After warping ahead a few days to get more interesting contracts, I picked up a rescue craft to get scientist Irula Kerman from LKO. The Hojo Zeta outpost was nearing its descending node at the time - the first craft of the Duna expedition to do so - so I performed the correction burn and then reviewed the schedule of correction burns for the other eighteen craft en route to Duna. I wound up making several adjustments to at least get a few craft on corrected trajectories twenty days ahead of their scheduled arrival at Duna. The next correction burn will be for the rover Apathy in 47 days. After picking up another contract to adjust the orbit of the Beep-Beep 7e probe over Minmus, Mission Bloat departed Kerbinport to go pick up Irula. Had a mishap there - I sent the craft to rendezvous with Leema's Debris, which I didn't realize until six orbits later when I rendezvoused with it. I did finally pick up Irula successfully and brought her safely to Kerbinport, transferring her to long-term habitation aboard the station. With nothing else to do, I warped ahead and made the correction burn for Beep-Beep 7e, netting an easy 15k. The Spamcan 7 craft arrived at Minmus about the same time and I went ahead and made the rendezvous and docking with Minmusport, refueling the craft from the ample RCS stores available from the station's reserve tank and the Old Bessie lander docked there. Warping ahead to the next Mission Control alarm, another LKO rescue contract was picked up - this one for engineer Gersen Kerman. He was retrieved successfully and brought back to Kerbinport, at which point I had a decision to make. Both his and Irula's rescue contracts were taking up contract spots and if I wanted to be able to do more things, I really needed to clear those contracts. Easiest way to get those clear would've been to spaceplane them down with the waiting Auk II, but it seemed a waste to me to leave six seats open. I did have a two-Kerbal spaceplane design, the Auk I rescue plane, but it wasn't designed to dock. It was modification time - a Mk 2 docking port was added to the Auk I, RCS was added and FAR analyses conducted, and the Auk Ia light passenger spaceplane was born. The test flight took place to retrieve the two Kerbals; it was successful despite the design needing additional air intakes at takeoff and me forgetting to set the docking port to toggle via an action group. Auk Ia closing to dock at Kerbinport. Those design flaws were corrected for future flights; the prototype successfully completed its mission and made a beautiful return and landing at KSC 27. Already considering a four-seat variant to fill that particular niche. Next Objective and the Hojo Eta outpost both arrived at Minmus around the same time. Hojo Eta was put into an orbit aligned with Minmusport with the intent of getting it close to the Deepwater Horizon site, to facilitate easier retrieval of the two scientists aboard after their mission was completed. Next Objective required a pretty substantial correction burn to get her to rendezvous with the station. After both craft were put into orbit, Bullet Bill arrived and was also put into an initial polar orbit around Minmus, still with plenty of delta-V to spare. Next Objective arrived at Minmusport and docked with the station, after which pilots Kerlin and Magsan Kerman along with scientists Leema and Graphie Kerman departed for the surface aboard the station's Spamcan 7a lander. The four landed in the Flats and conducted their flag-planting training. Hojo Eta also landed successfully about two kilometers from Deepwater Horizon, an easy jetpacking distance away. The two scientists aboard will be transferred to the refinery at the next opportunity. The Spamcan returned from the surface of Minmus to Minmusport. I still need to get the other four Kerbal trainees down to the surface - still haven't done that yet. Having picked up a two-Kerbal Mun tourist contract, I took the opportunity to try out the new design of the Auk Ia to deliver my tourists to Kerbinport. The plane performed well, though I botched the re-entry burn rather badly and overshot KSC by a good 400 kilometers. Technically that flight is still in progress; I quicksaved the game with the plane on course back to KSC and will have to quickload it next time I play... So, still trying to get Bullet Bill in the proper orbit, still got Kerbals to send to the surface of Minmus and still got to get that plane landed. Things to do on my checklist for the next playing session. And I can finally clean out my log...

@Triop - that is brilliant. Stealing this idea... Haven't fallen off the world, y'all. Just been too busy to get in more than thirty minutes a day. I've got my activities logged for something like the past two weeks and I really need to get them on up here so I can bore y'all...