capi3101

(1.1.3) Yesterday saw the arrival of the ferry ships Strange Cargo and Next Objective at the Munport space station, both ships arriving and docking at the station about two hours apart from one another. Engineer Liztha Kerman, coming from Strange Cargo, and scientist Kelbus Kerman, a recent rescuee brought along by Next Objective, boarded the station's Spamcan 7a lander and proceeded to attempt a landing in the vicinity of the Piper Alpha refinery, with a mission for Kelbus to plant a flag and for Liztha to relive the crew of the Piper Alpha refinery, who have been on the Münar surface for close to 150 days. Owing to a mishap and bad fortune, the lander tipped over on landing. I waited a few hours until daybreak, and then had engineers Barna and Corbas Kerman pile out of the refinery and board the nearby crane rover MIRV. The two of them spent some time removing parts from the nearby prototype Jiffy Lube 7 lander, removing and storing the craft's Poodle engine (in the craft's own KAS container bay, no less) before allowing it to settle on the ground on its tanks, then removing the landing legs, external lights, all but one of its RTGs, and the external fuel lines. One of the craft's outrigger FL-T800 fuel tanks was attached to MIRV to act as a counterweight for its crane boom. The two then reboarded MIRV and made their way to the Spamcan, where they will attempt an operation to right the lander later today (if I have any time to play today, that is). If they're successful, I intend to perform a refit on the lander; it has had a tendency to tip on landing and quite frankly I'm tired of that happening...

(1.1.3) Signed the lease on a new house yesterday, which put the kibosh on any KSP playing and likely will continue to do so into the near future. I had some time to play on Monday. Began the day flying an Auk II passenger spaceplane to the Kerbinport space station with pilot Jenwin Kerman and three one-star utter rookies (i.e. ex-rescuees pulled from LKO) aboard. After docking, the four were transferred to the ferry ship Next Objective, with Jenwin taking operational capsule command of the craft, ex-commander Buremy Kerman being transferred to command the sister ship Strange Cargo while Jeb is off to Duna. Strange Cargo departed for a Mün expedition and the remaining ferry ship The Great Artiste left for Minmus shortly thereafter. Next Objective departed Kerbinport last of the three and conducted a mission to rescue scientist Kelbus Kerman from LKO before burning for Mün. Strange Cargo and Next Objective should arrive at Mün in about two days, and The Great Artiste should reach Minmus in twelve days. I've confirmed that the Munport space station is fully fueled at the moment and I can go ahead and warp ahead to Strange Cargo's arrival when next I play, which is good since there are two expeditions inbound at this point. I imagine that the crew at the Piper Alpha refinery on the münar surface will be quite busy when those two ships arrive, especially given that there are no fewer than four surface excursions planned when they get there...

Hey all. Haven't fallen off the face of the Earth, just haven't done any KSP since last Wednesday. Spent three days last week building a DBG prototype that played pretty well in its initial playtest over the weekend, and I'm in the process of moving, so the missus had me sorting, shredding, boxing and hauling stuff out to our storage unit all weekend. Glad to be at work this morning - I'll get a chance to rest... Am hoping to play some KSP today. Going to have to look to see what I'm supposed to be doing again...

I've seen a few designs for submarines that made heavy use of SAS wheels - my own experiences with boats in general would suggest they're very important. Probably should've added more than just one. As to the second ore tank, the idea was to be able to use TAC to control how much weight was up front, making the bow more or less buoyant as the situation warranted. Can't say how successful that was; my design didn't want to dive at first, at least not until I got the engine cranked up and then it had a tendency to nose straight into the seabed. You might also note that I didn't use a Service Bay in my design; after Martian Emigrant's earlier post, though, I'm liable to incorporate one into a redesign. Having RTGs set flush with the exterior may have thrown off the dynamics a bit more than I anticipated. What kind of deflection did you have on those winglets? I use FAR, so I can tweak the deflection as necessary.

Yep. Pretty much an exact copy, except for the extra ore tank in the back. Also has a shock cone up front, which I'm not wholly convinced was a good design change...

(1.1.3) Yesterday was a relatively slow day, with only a couple of real things to note. Day began with the flight of an Auk VII heavy passenger plane to the Kerbinport space station, carrying aboard five tourists, five 1-star pilots and six 1-star scientists. The plane rendezvoused with the station and docked successfully. Station engineer Juluna Kerman noted the plane's successful arrival from the command module of Faux News 7 currently docked at the station: The view from Faux News 7; the nose of the Auk VII is obscuring the sun, and you can see the station's plane berths out the window. Two passengers, one scientist and four of the pilots were loaded aboard Strange Cargo, where pilot Buremy Kerman was gearing up for a Mün-bound flight. A replacement engineer for the crew of the Piper Alpha refinery was also aboard, whose name escapes me right now. The remaining scientists and three passengers were loaded aboard The Great Artiste, which pilot Genezer Kerman was waiting for a Minmus-bound flight. Owing to the fact that capsule commander Jenwin Kerman was inadvertently left behind at KSC, rookie pilot Rayny Kerman took acting command of Next Objective and the remaining scientist was loaded aboard. Next Objective will be dispatched to conduct a rescue mission around Kerbin before heading on to Mün to pick up the crew of Piper Alpha and bring them back to Kerbin (or on to Minmus; haven't decided which yet). All three craft will fully refueled from the station's available stores and will likely depart the station sometime later today. Only other thing I really did was fiddle around with the Barnacle 7 submersible probe. Had more success: Barnacle 7 at nearly 700 meters depth. I am going to have to remember Martian Emigrant's observation about cargo bays and submersibles; that strikes me as something to incorporate into future designs. Anyway, shortly after this shot was taken, I plowed the probe into the seabed (through no fault of my own, mind you). Would like to do more with submersibles simply because they're interesting; anybody know of any tutorials out there with their design, or are people largely just still learning through trial and error? That was pretty much my day yesterday. Since I said I would do it in my last post, I'll conclude this one with a screenie of Tater Catcher 7 and the Class C rock she caught: Tater Catcher 7 with ninety tonnes of errant space crap ore-filled goodness attached.

GDJ got to it first - that was Gus Grissom you were thinking about. Alan Sheppard is famous for the Sheppard's Prayer - "Oh Lord, please don't let me fu[REDACTED FLUFFY BUNNIES] up." Incidentally, Grissom's craft, Liberty Bell 7, was on display at the Kansas Cosmosphere; it's currently on loan but should be back by 2018. They also have the CM Odyssey on display (a.k.a. Apollo 13, the real one, sans Tom Hanks). Lots of cool stuff to see if you ever happen to find yourself in central Kansas for some reason... Seen Liberty Bell a couple of times, and Odyssey once. What always strikes me about them is how insanely small they are. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'd get claustrophobic fast, even if I didn't get my butt stuck in the hatch (for how small those things are). The guys who rode those things had some serious stones... Anyways. (1.1.3) After a slow end to my last week, things picked up again yesterday. My day began with an aerial survey and crew reports approximately 1400 kilometers to the east of KSC, done by pilot Jenwin Kerman aboard a Bad Idea 5a surveyor plane: Bad Idea 5a at sunrise. Mission was completed successfully and Jenwin returned safely to KSC 27 with about a 20% fuel reserve. Landing was a bit harsh but the gear held. Replacement contract was to catch a new class A tater and none were in sight, so I went ahead and warped ahead for a pair of new contracts. One was an offer to haul a Hammer booster to a bad altitude/speed combination, so I passed that up. The other was an LKO junk hauling mission - for a small object weighing exactly ten tonnes. Due to the weight alone, I launched a Bill Clinton 7b long-range grabber probe and carried out the mission; BC7b has the bouncy house, which I figured was going to be needed in this case. The object turned out to be a default NRAP test weight, and it was retrieved successfully though I lost the bouncy house at splashdown (should've jettisoned it when the chutes opened). Replacement contract there was a VIP mission for Minmus orbit, adding to the growing list of tourists waiting flight. I warped ahead again to get rid of the crummy Hammer mission and picked up a contract to mine 550 ore from Mün, easily done with the Piper Alpha refinery. The next contract was equally lame, so I warped ahead and in the process the Tater Catcher 7 on a mission to catch and put a class C asteroid into orbit around Kerbin left Kerbin's SOI. A correction burn was affected that put the probe at a 18 kilometer intercept with the rock in 4 days. Going back to KSC, I accepted a contract first to test a set of Medium landing gear splashed, which was done with a Lusitania 7 floating test rig, and then I did a contract for orbital Kerbin science, which pilot Buremy Kerman took care of with the Kerbinport space station. Next contract was lame, so I set my alarm for its expiration and then set about catching me a 90 tonne chunk of errant space debris. Rendezvous and grabbing was successful, and a correction burn was affected to put the rock at a 50 kilometer periapsis with a 35 degree inclination (this from a 70-degree inclined collision course). Tater Catcher 7 still has about 1,400 m/s of delta-V remaining even with its cargo in tow, so I'll be making an attempt to reduce the inclination even further as it approaches Kerbin. It will re-enter Kerbin's SOI in about another sixty days. Occurs to me that I didn't take any screenies of Tater Catcher 7 and its space potato; I should remedy that and post it up tomorrow morning... Noted another class-C asteroid had been naturally captured by Kerbin; might take the time to try and catch it as well. Going to be harder to do owing to the fact that it's already in Kerbin's orbit... Next new contract was for science data from Minmus; I did my usual drill with these and sent engineer Barna Kerman out from the Deepwater Horizon refinery to the nearby crane rover Lunkhead, and had her use the rover's 88-88 antenna to transmit an EVA report. Replacement was ore from Minmus, so Barna got back into the refinery and hammered that one out as well. Finally, the replacement contract for that one was another VIP mission, this time for a Münar flyby. Currently have fourteen contracts, eight of which ride on the Duna/Ike expedition, four tourist/VIP missions, the tater-catching and an LKO rescue mission. I'll probably dispatch one of the Superfortress 7 ferry craft at Kerbinport to conduct the rescue mission, then treat the subject of that mission as a tourist, sending whoever it is on flag-planting missions at both Mün and Minmus. And I'll be bringing up the tourists later today. I ended my night with the Barnacle 7 submersible design, which was based heavily on Whiskey Tango Foxtrot's submersible design and is in fact a near copy (my design put ore ballast tanks fore and aft, setting them both at 70% full, and adding decouplers to ditch the landing gear when it got to the water). Using TAC to re-balance the ore load, I had some measure of success getting it to dive: Barnacle 7 on an early morning dive. Can't actually see the KSC 27 marker buoys in this shot but they're all floating on the surface... Worked well enough right up until it got "stuck" right there on the edge of the continental shelf and wouldn't budge again, even at full reverse thrust and balanced ballast; reverted it since it was mainly for fun anyway and I didn't set any world's firsts records, and the game crashed shortly thereafter, ending my night. I think I've still got too many floaty parts on the sub, as can be seen by that 20-degree....angle of attack, I guess I'll call it. Worked best with the front tank re-ballasted to about 87%, and even then it took some measure of control to keep it from nosing straight down. Might try again with the design later.

(1.1.3) RL has been thoroughly kicking my butt for most of the past few days (getting ready to move, so lots of packing and taking things out to storage so we have more room to pack more crap). Not a lot has been accomplished as a result. On Thursday, I accepted a pair of LKO junk hauling missions and analyzed the path of an incoming Class C asteroid, the latter of which was in preparation to go catch it for contract. Having satisfied myself that an intercept of the rock would be possible, I began a Tater Catcher 7 mission to put the rock into orbit following Claw's advice, putting the Rhino-equipped probe into a highly inclined orbit and then performing an intercept burn. The initial intercept burn puts the probe coming within 700 kilometers of the target in seven days time. Since the rock itself will not enter Kerbin's SOI for another 79 days, I'm actually pretty thrilled about this initial transfer burn. I will be making a correction burn when the probe leaves Kerbin's SOI in four days. Still have plenty of delta-V for correction burns at this point. I will be trying to get the rock into an equatorial orbit; part of me would like to see the ore hauler Nostromo making ore runs between this rock and the Kerbinport space station, which has an on-board ISRU... Friday saw the completion of one of the two junk-hauling missions with a Bill Clinton 7 grabber probe. Target was a spent LES, and the launch was timed well enough that I got a one kilometer rendezvous prior to the orbital insertion burn. I did go ahead and modify the base BC design so that the service stage had chutes, so that StageRecovery would potentially recoup the cost of that stage (should've done that from the beginning, but I was trying to save money at the time of the original design). I completed the second junk hauling mission with a modified BC7 probe on Saturday, this time bringing down a Mk1 Cockpit. Replacements for these two contracts are a surveying mission halfway around Kerbin and an LKO rescue, both of which I hope to attend to later today. Began debating whether to begin a new game when FAR is updated for 1.2, or just continuing the present save. Leaning towards the latter, actually. Don't get me wrong - I really think the early game is the fun part, but at this point I've got some pretty good infrastructure going. Might all depend on what happens with the Duna expedition. Haven't even reached the first of the transfer burns there... I should probably mention that on Saturday, Juluna and Milfred transmitted enough science from the Munport space station's science lab for me to unlock Ion Propulsion, which rounds out my tech tree. Going to save up a little bit of science, and then begin switching science over to rep. Still probably have a ways to go on that.

Good to know; thanks. I was also having issues where it would shoot out of the water backward and have a case of rapid unplanned disassembly...

Sure would like to know what your ore settings are on those tanks. I built a replica and the thing either noses down and starts going backwards or won't sink at all... Been doing other things, y'all, but I'll talk about 'em on Monday. This week has been insane in RL...

(1.1.3) Another slow day yesterday owing to exciting events in RL (upgrading from a rental apartment to a rental house, which is still plenty a big deal for my own self). I decided to accept the two easy contracts being offered me, to test an Ant engine at the launch site and mine 400 units of ore on Minmus. An Ant engine was loaded aboard a Lusitania 7 testing rig and the test was conducted, and then I went over to the Deepwater Horizon refinery on Minmus and mined the required amount of ore. Came back to Mission Control; the replacement contracts were essentially identical, except that a Hydraulic Manifold was the subject of the test and this time they wanted 600 units of Minmus ore. Lather, rinse, repeat as the saying goes. A pair of LKO junk hauling contracts came up next, and I'm debating as to whether or not I want to do those. I also decided to accept the mission to put a Class C asteroid in orbit of Kerbin. To that end, I designed and performed a test launch of Tater Catcher 7, designed specifically for high-end class C rock-catching duties. Design performed well at launch, though I am not wholly confident in the rig's ability to steer 192 tonnes of errant space crap. Reverted the test flight, accepted the contract and then went looking for an unknown class C rock. Promptly found one - and on a collision course with Kerbin, no less. Rock will arrive in Kerbin's SOI in 72 days; I will be following Claw's advice for affecting a rendezvous in interplanetary space. Pretty confident I can pull the mission off with the craft designed. Honestly hoping to get more done today...

(1.1.3) RL curtailed my time to play yesterday pretty efficiently. I was able to get the ore hauler Lewis and Clark back up to the Minmusport space station and refuel it with the station's reserve tank, and I was able to get the ferry ship Next Objective docked at the Kerbinport space station, offloading five passengers and the pilot to a waiting Auk II passenger spaceplane. The Auk departed and landed safely at KSC 27, freeing up four contracts in the process. Next Objective was fueled for its next run though Kerbinport is currently a tad short on fuel for the auxiliary craft parked at the station, so an Auk III refueling plane will be sent up at the next opportunity. Replacement contracts - none of which I've committed to do just yet - are an Ant parts test at KSC, a new Minmus Outpost, mining ore at Minmus and capturing a Class C asteroid and putting it into Kerbin's orbit. Two of those sound easy, one sounds boring and the other sounds interesting; I'll let y'all know what I decide to do later on.

(1.1.3) Yesterday began with an Auk IV probe delivery flight into a retrograde orbit; this is the first time I've flown an Auk westward and I'm happy to report that the plane performed admirably, delivering the Bleepity-Bleep 7k probe to a 97 kilometer orbit. Plane returned safely to KSC 09 and the probe was placed into the target orbit for contract. Replacement contract was a VIP heading for a Minmus landing - this puts half my extant contracts into the Duna/Ike mission and the other half into tourism. Spent pretty much the rest of my time continuing the refit of the rover Lunkhead into an industrial crane and fuel hauler. Engineer Barna Kerman, chief engineer of the Deepwater Horizon refinery site, went out and stripped down the Jiffy Lube 7 rover parts delivery lander as much as she could by herself (getting the Poodle engine off was impossible due to its mass, which turned out to be as far as she could go. I did get to the point where the KAS electromagnet was able to pick Jiffy Lube up and I decided to reattach the three remaining lander legs onto the lander. It's technically upside down now, but at least it's not just laying on the ground waiting to explode... The refitted rover Lunkhead, having uprighted Jiffy Lube 7, with Deepwater Horizon in the left background. I didn't really need that large SAS wheel on Lunkhead but the ore hauler Lewis and Clark was nearby, so I drove Lunkhead over and was able to refit it with the SAS wheel (had to remove and a Docking Port, small-size RCS tank and Rockomax Adapter to do it first - and then put them all back afterwards). The refit took a while to complete but was ultimately successful, and I promptly used the new SAS wheel aboard Lewis and Clark to help affect a much smoother and closer landing of the ore hauler next to Deepwater Horizon for supply. Barna drove Lunkhead back to its default position, hooked up Deepwater Horizon to Lewis and Clark and refueling commenced. The refinery was disconnected and recharged, and now Lewis and Clark is finally ready to make its way back up to the Minmusport space station, which I will do at the next opportunity. Last thing that happened last night was the return of Next Objective to LKO; powered aerobraking maneuver was successful, and the ship will come within a kilometer of the Kerbinport space station in five orbits on its current trajectory. I am debating whether or not to try to affect a rendezvous sooner, but in any case I hope to bring the ship in for docking later today.

(1.1.3) After spending the day on Thursday sending the 20-craft Duna/Ike expedition to their destination, I picked up the day on Friday at the Minmusport space station, where a tourist expedition had arrived aboard the ferry craft Next Objective just prior. Pilot Jenwin Kerman and tourists Glema, Elcott and Loul Kerman were loaded aboard the station's Spamcan 7a lander and sent down to the Lesser Flats, where Jenwin conducted advanced flag-planting techniques before the expedition returned to Minmusport. Crew and passengers were reloaded aboard Next Objective and the craft was refueled, then departed to return to Kerbin. Next I busied myself with a contract to conduct seismic readings in the vicinity of the rover Lunkhead on Minmus, which itself was parked in close proximity to the Deepwater Horizon refinery. As a Hellhound 7 rover, Lunkhead had a seismic sensor installed all ready, so it was capable of doing the job itself; it hit four waypoints relatively easily before fulfilling the contract and returning to Deepwater Horizon. The replacement contract was to extract 500 units of ore from Mün, which I then did readily with the Piper Alpha refinery. An LKO junk retrieval mission came up next; a Bill Clinton 7a grabber probe was sent up to perform the mission, and the module involved turned out to be a Poodle engine, which was successfully retrieved. The replacement contract was a satellite contract - which didn't interest me - so I set an alarm to go back to Mission Control when the contract expired but made plans to add a Faux News 7 module to the Kerbinport space station so I could see if, when such contracts came up in the future, any in situ constructed Faux News probe could be used to fulfilled them. I warped ahead two days, to when the Duna/Ike mission began leaving the Kerbin sphere of influence. Sequence of departure was as follows: I'm sure the Bleepity-Bleep 7j probe left somewhere in that mix. Couldn't say when though - apparently I didn't log it. Anyway, the list of SOI departures differs from the list of transfer burn order, for those who don't want to go back and check. In each case, when the craft left Kerbin's SOI, I set KAS alarms for the descending node and arrival at Duna's SOI in order to plan timing of correction burns. Craft will reach their node points in 49-292 days, and will arrive at Duna in 206-303 says on their current trajectories. It looks like at the present time there will be a wide enough spread in the timing of arrivals that I shouldn't have to worry about two craft coming in at once. That could all change of course, but I won't know for a while... While all that was going on, a Jiffy Lube 7 rover parts delivery system (the second one launched) arrived at Minmus and I put it into orbit. While waiting to get it lined up for a landing near Deepwater Horizon, I went ahead and launched the Faux News module to Kerbinport. The timer went off on the Mission Control alarm and to my delight the satellite contract was replaced with a different satellite contract. Unfortunately, while engineer Danuna Kerman aboard Kerbinport was able to assemble the probe without difficulty, the contract called for a retrograde orbit and the one thing those Faux News probes do not have is excessive delta-V. I'll probably be conducting a standard Beep-Beep or Bleepity-Bleep mission soon to fulfill the contract. In the meantime, my experiment there will have to be put on hold. Finally, the Jiffy Lube landed near Deepwater Horizon, and refinery engineer Barna Kerman boarded Lunkhead to refit the rover into a fuel delivery and electromagnet-equipped crane module, with an immediate job to upright the ore hauler Lewis and Clark, which had tipped over during a previous landing attempt. Refitting the rover was actually a lot of fun; I wound up making a lot of back-and-forth trips between Jiffy Lube and Lewis and Clark, which I shouldn't have had to do if I'd just done a full refit from the get-go. Ultimately I was able to get Lewis and Clark uprighted but I hadn't noticed that it had broken off one of its lander legs during its accident, so I decided to take one off of Jiffy Lube (the craft is essentially there to be cannibalized, after all). Of course, Lewis and Clark used the type 1 lander legs and Jiffy Lube used type 2 (government projects for you), so I had to make sure and stick it higher up along the external tanks. Then to ensure that I could extend the legs without anything bad happening, I decided that I should try to extend them above the surface - for that, Lewis and Clark needed fuel, and that's when I did the fuel hauler refit (should've done it first thing, see, and I hadn't). Took fuel from Deepwater Horizon into the new tanks on Lunkhead, then delivered that fuel to Lewis and Clark; the craft launched, extended its lander legs, and then touched back down - I had gotten the replacement leg in the correct place. And then I promptly tipped Jiffy Lube over trying to put all the tools away...oh well. It wasn't going anywhere else... That was all I did for the entire weekend; haven't touched KSP since Friday. I still have a few things to do with Lunkhead; now that Jiffy Lube is on its side, it oughta be easier for Barna to reach all the parts inside the KIS container...

Yeah...I was going to ask "should we really be seeing this on a public forum?", but since the answer to the question is an obvious and resounding NOT ONLY NO BUT HELL NO, I won't ask it... (1.1.3) Yesterday began with two fueling runs at Mün with the Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler from the Piper Alpha refinery to the Munport space station. Old Bessie was on the surface already from the previous day's shenanigans (and Final Destination-esque storyline), so I just had to hook it up and pump the fuel in for the first run. Return to the station was uneventful for once and I was finally able to determine the optimum time and trajectory to launch for a quick rendezvous with the station. The second fuel run was uneventful, and at this point Munport has sufficient reserve fuel for another expedition to the surface. Nobody's en route right now, but one less thing to take care of and all that. After warping ahead to get rid of a ridiculously craptastic contract, I picked up one to extract ore on Minmus, which was easily done with the Deepwater Horizon refinery. Next contract was to capture and land a newly discovered class A asteroid, so I went to look to see if any were available. Discovered a Class C already in Kerbin's SOI and on a collision course, but no untracked Class As, so I skipped that contract. Does make me want to pay closer attention to the rocks from here on out. After warping ahead to put Next Objective into dock at Minmusport, the long awaited launch window for the Duna/Ike expedition arrived, and I spent the next three in-game hours making transfer burns for twenty craft in the following order (which I'll hide behind a spoiler shield for the sake of y'all who don't really care all that much): The craft of the Duna expedition, finally all en route. Thanks to Precise Node, I was able to get Duna encounters with only between 1025-1040 m/s of delta-V spent for each craft, leaving in most cases about 700 for the rest of the transfer and orbital insertion. Most of the craft will reach the edge of Kerbin's SOI in 3-4 days, and my plan is to have each perform a correction burn at the Duna ascending/descending nodes to get them plane-aligned and hopefully down to aerobraking altitude. Of the craft, the only one I'm really worried about is Malaise. With its Rhino-powered launch and transfer stage, it had the shortest duration transfer burn of any of the craft, but it also now has the least amount of delta-V for course corrections (250 m/s). I suppose if need be I can dump the transfer stage, get into into orbit around Duna on the skycrane and then use some of the parts from one of the Jiffy Lubes to hook it up for a mid-flight top-off with one of the other ships, but that's going to be risky as all hell. I could also just launch another Rover-in-a-Can 7 to cover my butt, I suppose; launch window is still open there. Laggin' Dragon departing last was incidental, but appropriate, I think. Mainly I was just launching craft as they came up to the right spot. What will happen when they all arrive? I'm hoping it'll be a situation where they're not all arriving all at once... And in way of anti-climax for this morning's log report, I accepted a contract to perform seismic readings near the rover Lunkhead on Minmus. Lunkhead is equipped with a seismic sensor, so I should be able to perform the contract without even having to get Paphe out of Deepwater Horizon, unless she really feels like getting out to stretch her legs. That's on my plate for today. I've also got an expedition at Minmusport to attend to. And I'll probably begin scheduling correction burns...

I've seen somebody make an attempt where they had airbags on both ends; might be hard to implement in your case. I think @-M-TheDoctor's advise is probably your best bet. (1.1.3) RL really killed off my time yesterday, so not a lot happened. First thing I did was set a KAC timer for when the most recent craptastic contract being offered will expire, so I'd know when to go look for something (hopefully) better. Next up was the return of the ore hauler Nostromo and the ferry craft The Great Artiste to the Kerbinport space station from space station Dunaport (which is still going to remain in Kerbin's orbit for the next five days). Both rendezvouses were pretty standard and the station had sufficient reserve fuel to refill the tanks of The Great Artiste, though an Auk III tanker plane run may be in order to take care of Nostromo. Next, I sent the Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler at Mün on another trip to bring fuel from the Piper Alpha refinery to the Munport space station. I came down two klicks short of the refinery on my first try but had sufficient fuel to make a hop over; I quicksaved and attempted the hop. On the first try, I got the burn just a little too good - I wound up ramming Old Bessie into the rover MIRV, blowing most of the lander and kicking MIRV right into the refinery, which suffered catastrophic damage. Ordinarily I wouldn't report on my failures, but in this particular case the carnage was so spectacular that I felt it worth documenting: Aftermath of the disaster at Piper Alpha. MIRV (right) is still "airborne" in this screenie, having ricocheted off the refinery's radiator and solar panels. If you look real hard you can see a large SAS wheel just above and to the left of the refinery; that was all that remained of Old Bessie... Occurs to me that I probably could've put the refinery back into operation, and that I didn't bother to check to see if I busted any wheels on MIRV - in fact, the rover itself still appears to be mostly intact. Old Bessie was really the crux of the Munar refueling operation I had set up, though, and with it gone, well... I reverted and tried again; got a better result, with the lander now parked intact within fifty meters of the refinery. First order of business today will be to refill it and send it back up to Munport. I think I want to do one more fuel run today as well, but after that I won't have much to do until Next Objective reaches Minmus in four days. And then after that, it's pucker time...

(1.1.3) Having been unable to come up with a better name, I started the day off in the litterbox with the design of Faux News 7, a probe parts delivery craft. I got Bill out on the launchpad and had him put together a probe using KAS tools and the parts provided. Satisfied with that part of the testing, I reverted, turned it into a proper spacecraft, launched one to orbit and had Bill build a probe again under real operating conditions. Despite Bill having a tendency to slip off the ladders, he was able to put something together with the same capabilities of the Beep-Beep and Bleepity-Bleep series. I'll be taking a Faux News 7 craft with me to Duna, bringing the size of the Duna-bound armada to an even twenty craft. After making a quick change to the Jiffy Lube 7 rover upgrade package delivery craft - basically just the addition of a pair of long girders to the sides of the craft since there isn't sufficient room for them in the KAS container at this point - I launched a trio of them, sending one of them on for a date with the rover Lunkhead on Minmus and an attempt to put the ore hauler Lewis and Clark back into action. I had an open contract spot and picked up a contract to expand the Dunaport space station; what was annoying about that one was that the contract stipulated that it had to be in orbit of Kerbin. Conditions of the contract - add five more passenger spots and 1000 ore - were pretty simple to fulfill, though; I loaded the ore hauler Nostromo at the Kerbinport space station and dispatched her to Dunaport, and I had The Great Artiste head that way is well. The contract was fulfilled successfully after The Great Artiste, the second craft to arrive, docked. I will be returning both ships to Kerbinport later today. Next up was the return of the Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe from Minmus hauling Lemsy's Hulk down for contract. Had a pretty harrowing ride once the probe reached Kerbin's atmosphere; I realized that I was going to come in too low for a safe retrieval of the payload and was able to affect a quick radial out burn to raise the periapsis to a safe altitude, but it left precious little delta-V for additional braking. Still, the probe did its job and I was able to bring the hulk back in, fulfilling that junk-and-Kerbal mission (Lemsy himself had come back to Kerbin aboard Strange Cargo and rode down in the Auk VII a few days before). I picked up a new tourist contract that sees Kerbals heading to orbit around both moons, but no landings. I had yet another open contract spot and the game decided to fill it with a string of easily completed missions - the first was the testing of a bouncy wheel splashed down; I loaded one aboard a Lusitania 7 car-boat, did the mission and busted two wheels after finishing the mission heading back towards the space center. Next was the testing of a Hydraulic Manifold, also splashed; a quick part change and a nearly identical mission, with a nearly identical result (don't know why I'm busting rover wheels all of a sudden). Next was an LKO junk retrieval mission done with a Bill Clinton 7 grabber probe; the module turned out to be a spent LES, and was easily retrieved, splashing down about 50 klicks east of KSC. After that was a Minmus surface science contract; Barna hopped out of the Deepwater Horizon refinery, went over to Lunkhead - which is equipped with an 88-88 antenna - and transmitted an EVA report. The final contract it gave me was one to mine 450 ore from the surface of Mün, which I did with the Piper Alpha refinery. The next offering was a spaceflight survey over Kerbin, on which I passed. I did discover when I had Piper Alpha mining the ore that it was daytime on that part of Mün, so I decided an attempt to move the Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler closer to Piper Alpha for refueling was finally in order, the craft having received a small load of fuel from the refitted rover MIRV yesterday. MIRV was moved back within spitting distance of the refinery and Old Bessie was able to move close enough for a full refueling op to commence. Refueling completed, Piper Alpha reloaded its tanks and Old Bessie left for the Munport space station, where it made some good headway in refilling the craft docked at the station. Another fuel run will be required, which I hope to be able to do later today. Next Objective arrives at Minmus in five days, and then it's on to Duna...

(1.1.3) Yesterday began with the flight of an Auk VIII heavy tanker plane. I had some significant problems just getting the plane into the air; despite having had a successful flight several weeks ago, this time around the aft landing gear kept on buckling on me. I blame KJR, which has otherwise been a very useful mod up to this point - adding it has been the only major change I've made to my save since that initial flight. The plane was redesigned with more aft landing gears and a pair of canards, and finally took off for a rendezvous with the Kerbinport space station. The plane docked successfully but immediately afterwards the station got the wobbles again, so I hurriedly offloaded the entire payload tank at 5x time warp and undocked the plane - the station stabilized pretty much immediately. The Auk then deorbited and made a successful landing at KSC 27. The successful Auk mission refueled every craft currently at Kerbinport and even filled up the station's reserve tank to 43% (says TAC). Next up was the flight of an Auk II passenger spaceplane to Kerbinport, with engineer Danuna Kerman as the only passenger on board. Flight was textbook and the plane successfully docked. Danuna's arrival means that once again the entire Kerbal engineering corps has been deployed. Engineer Liztha Kerman boarded Strange Cargo for that craft's next outbound run to Mün, where she'll be relieving the crew of the Piper Alpha refinery; those guys have been deployed for well over a hundred days at this point and it's time they came home. Similarly, engineer Phovie Kerman boarded The Great Artiste, with the intent that she'll be relieving the crew of the Deepwater Horizon refinery on the ferry craft's maiden flight to Minmus. Tourists Anya and Kertrid Kerman boarded the Auk and are awaiting for the return of Next Objective from Minmus, which will have five more tourists heading for home when it arrives. Seeing that Next Objective hasn't reached Minmus yet, they'll be waiting for a bit... With nothing else better to do, I went ahead and warped ahead to the arrival of the Jiffy Lube 7 parts container craft at Mün, putting it in orbit and then almost immediately de-orbiting it to land in the vicinity of Piper Alpha. The craft successfully touched down - at night, of course - about a kilometer south of the refinery. Engineer Corbas Kerman boarded the nearby Hellhound 7 rover MIRV and drove to Jiffy Lube, and then spent the next half hour refitting the rover into a combination fuel hauler and crane. My initial impression of the Jiffy Lube is that it needs to have an exterior ladder of its own, and needs to be hauling just one more long girder if it can. And a pair or two of portable struts. Other than that, though, the refitting mission went very well, and at the end of the half hour MIRV was ready. Corbas hooked up the rover's winch to a KAS port that he had attached to Jiffy Lube and drained four tonnes of fuel from the empty container craft's tanks, and then drove the five kilometers from there to the waiting Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler, which had landed the day before too far away from the refinery and without sufficient fuel to take off again. The rover imparted enough fuel to the lander for it to take off and make another attempt at getting close enough for a proper refueling (I'd use the rover itself to do the entire job, but it would take nine trips to fuel the lander up entirely and there is no provision at the present time for MIRV to refuel monoprop). The attempt to move the lander will be made at daybreak. So as a fuel carrier, I'd say the refit was a success. As a crane...well, I haven't had a chance to really judge that yet. But I'm hopeful and confident enough in the design to send a Jiffy Lube to Minmus so that the Lunkhead rover there can make the attempt to upright the ore hauler Lewis and Clark, and I'll be sending two along to Duna and Ike for the rovers Apathy and Malaise so they can do the same set of jobs if need be. Also had a thought for a probe parts hauler craft that I'm considering sending to Duna, the idea being to use it as a launching platform for new probes. My first thought is to call it the Faux News 7, though I haven't settled on that name just yet...

(1.1.3) Had a pretty busy weekend. Given the recent near-disasters I had with the Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler on Mün and the ore hauler Lewis and Clark on Minmus, I began the day designing a combination crane/fuel delivery rover to attempt to at least give the Old Bessie enough fuel to make another shot at getting close enough to the Piper Alpha refinery for refueling (thus resuming Münar in-flight refueling ops), and to upright Lewis and Clark. After the sixth trial run in a row at KSC where the wheels simultaneously broke off just trying to get the damn thing over to the testing load, I decided to go with a hardware delivery system instead with the notion of adapting the existing Hellhound 7 rovers near both sites to do the jobs needed. To that end, I designed the Jiffy Lube 7 equipment delivery system, and launched the first load to Mün. The craft has yet to arrive in Mün's SOI, but should do so in the very near future. I've already considered sending two of these craft on the upcoming Duna/Ike mission, increasing the size of the Duna-bound armada from seventeen craft to nineteen... After the launch of Jiffy Lube, both Strange Cargo and Laggin' Dragon made their respective rendezvouses with the Kerbinport space station, Strange Cargo arriving just five minutes ahead of Laggin' Dragon. Strange Cargo docked successfully, but Laggin' Dragon - having left Mün for Kerbin with only 63% of her fuel - ran out of gas a mere ten kilometers from the station. Fortunately, an Auk III tanker spaceplane was docked at the station having made a fuel delivery run several days prior, so the plane was refueled with payload fuel and dispatched to dock with the Dragon. The emergency refueling operation was successful, and the Dragon went on to dock at the station. Both ferry craft had passengers going down to the surface (twelve in total) and so, contrary to my earlier protestations, sending up an Auk VII heavy passenger spaceplane in lieu of a smaller Auk II passenger spaceplane a few days prior turned out to be a wise decision. Personnel were shuffled around to their various destination craft and Laggin' Dragon was refueled in preparation for her departure on the Duna/Ike mission. The Auk VII departed the station and entered the increasingly-busy traffic pattern in LKO. Next up was the landing of four spaceplanes in a row - an Auk VI ore delivery hauler, an Auk IV probe delivery plane, the Auk III that had been dispatched to refuel Laggin' Dragon, and finally the Auk VII. I was offered a contract to move the Auk IV into a new orbit but on closer inspection the plane didn't have sufficient fuel for the job, so I gave it a pass. All four planes landed successfully at KSC 09; the arrival of the Auk VII cleared a Minmus rescue contract, which I replaced with an LKO tourist mission and another Ore delivery mission in Duna's system (in this case, a delivery from Duna to Ike - I already had one such contract going the other way). Last thing that happened Friday was the successful docking of a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe to Lemsy's Hulk - a Mk 2 Cockpit - in high retrograde Minmus orbit. Probe reached the proper burn point and headed for Kerbin, where it should arrive in about five days. On Saturday, it occurred to me that my ferry fleet would be down to two ships - Strange Cargo and Next Objective - while Laggin' Dragon was off on the Duna mission, and that launching a new ferry would be in order to keep up three-ship operations at Kerbin in the interim. I made the decision to launch a new Superfortress 7 passenger ferry craft, The Great Artiste, with Genezer Kerman as capsule commander. The craft launched successfully to Kerbinport with Jeb, pilot Buremy Kerman, tourists Anya and Kertrid Kerman and engineers Wilberry, Kelzor, Phovie and Liztha Kerman aboard. Once docked at Kerbinport, Jeb was transferred to Laggin' Dragon along with Wilberry and Kelzor - the final manifest of the Duna/Ike mission was thus set: Val will command Laggin' Dragon with Jeb, Bill, Bob, engineers Edner, Wilberry and Kelzor and scientists Ziggy and Megissa Kerman aboard. Two of the engineers will be stationed permanently to the Duna system on the refinery craft Enchova Central and Scan Queen, a determination to be made when the expedition reaches Duna. I'm also debating whether or not I will be leaving Ziggy and Megissa there in the lab at space station Dunaport or not. With many of the other craft at Kerbinport low on fuel, I decided to attempt an Auk VIII heavy tanker flight to the space station later in the day, but wound up having to revert that flight. The VIII was giving me some pretty significant problems and wound up disintegrating on re-entry. Don't know if that was the plane or FAR having a migraine - I've flown that plane successfully before even though it's a really bad design, so it could be either one. I'll probably be making another attempt in the near future. I also need to bring an Auk II passenger spaceplane up to Kerbinport so that I can bring down tourists once Next Objective finally returns from Minmus, and I'm anxious to see how well the Jiffy Lube 7 system will work once it arrives. Duna launch window is coming up - now seven days away. Everything's ready to go - still awful nervous about launching so many ships that way... In RL, I've begun house hunting. Hoping that won't cut into my KSP time too much.

(1.1.3) It was back to business yesterday getting geared up to go to Duna. Having left her on the surface of Minmus a couple of days ago, the Old Bessie 7 fueling lander near the Deepwater Horizon refinery made its way back up to the Minmusport space station, returning successfully with sufficient fuel to refuel itself and every other craft still docked at Minmusport and still have about 70% in the refueling tank. So that whole trip down was probably unneeded as it turned out. Of course, some of that fuel would've been used to refuel the ore hauler Lewis and Clark once it returned to Minmusport, but until I can figure out how to upright the lander it's going to be a rather permanent addition to Deepwater Horizon. The ore hauler Nostromo was dispatched from the Kerbinport space station to meet up with a stranded Auk VI ore delivery plane to offload as much of its cargo as possible as well as to impart some needed fuel for re-entry. the rendezvous went better than expected - Nostromo completed its mission and successfully returned to Kerbinport. I have yet to land the plane but will do so at the next opportunity. Meanwhile, Laggin' Dragon entered Mün's SOI and the Old Bessie lander assigned to the Munport space station was dispatched to the Piper Alpha refinery to get fuel for the ferry ship's return to Kerbin. I had a minor disaster happen to me here - Old Bessie landed 4.5 kilometers from the refinery with insufficient fuel to take off again - too far for KAS connections and too far to attempt to tow. The Dragon had a job to do, however, so as much fuel as could be spared was drained from the Dragon as well as from the Fireball 7a science lander docked at the station and transferred to the station's Spamcan 7a lander. Pilots Buremy and Lemsy Kerman, Engineer Danuna Kerman and Scientist Catxie Kerman were loaded aboard and sent town for flag-planting duties. Once that was finished, the quartet returned to Munport and transferred back to Laggin' Dragon. All remaining fuel was then pumped into the Dragon, enough to only get the tank up to 62.7% (said TAC). It turned out to be enough, though - Laggin' Dragon made a successful burn back to Kerbin and had sufficient fuel to affect a powered aerobraking maneuver and begin rendezvous operations with Kerbinport. A final approach did not occur yesterday because her sister ship Strange Cargo was returning to Kerbin from Minmus at approximately the same time. Strange Cargo is now in LKO and has also begun rendezvous operations. I intend to get both ships docked at Kerbinport later today - both crews will need to return to the surface to get their tickets punched, and Laggin' Dragon will need to be refueled and prepped to go to Duna. Final thing that happened last night was the retrieval of Lemsy's pod from high retrograde Minmus orbit with a Bill Clinton 7b grabber probe. I will be returning said pod to Kerbin at the next opportunity, though it may be several days before the probe is finally in position for the return burn - I'd rather not have a repeat of the last BC mission to Minmus, which took three weeks to return due to a botched burn when the time came... I'm also considering taking a contract to put an Auk IV probe delivery plane - which did its job and is now just waiting for me to have enough time to land it - into an adjusted orbit around Kerbin. On the one hand, it's a totally ridiculous contract. On the other, it's a totally ridiculous contract...

Try NavUtilities. Gets you close to Mt. Killakerbal without actually smacking it (unless you're being stupid in the first place, that is). (1.1.3) Yesterday I began my activities with the loaded Auk VI ore descender spaceplane, which I'd sent up the day before to deliver 2100 units of ore to LKO (not the job it was designed for, but it did the trick), in order to fulfill an ore delivery contract. Contract was completed successfully, so my attention now turns to getting the plane back down again - it only has 20 m/s of delta-V left for want of LF and I'd like to offload at least some of that ore... Replacement contract - Explore Ike. Couldn't believe it. Since Ike was on the itinerary for the upcoming Duna mission already and the launch window was coming up in another fourteen days, I decided to get the rest of the expedition's hardware into LKO and spent the rest of the day doing that - a grand total of ten launches in this order: 1) A Rover-In-A-Can 7 delivery craft, which has the pieces aboard to assemble the Hellhound 7 rover Apathy on-site, 2-3) two Nostromo 7a ore haulers dubbed Bellerophon and Prometheus, 4) the Hojo Zeta outpost, 5-6) two Fireball 7a science landers dubbed Yokohama and Kyoto, 7-8) two Spamcan 7b personnel landers, and 9-10) two Bleepity-Bleep 7 probes (specifically B-B 7i and 7j). The probes were both delivered using Auk IV probe delivery planes and I had sufficient time to land one of those planes successfully at KSC 09 yesterday. I was prevented from making the attempt at landing the second plane because real life decided to butt in. I now have seventeen craft bound for Duna and Ike in orbit (including the Dunaport 7 and Ikeport 7 space stations, the refineries Enchova Central and Scan Queen, the rover Malaise, the Bleepity-Bleep 7h probe and the ferry ship Laggin' Dragon; LKO is pretty full right now... Current operations include retrieving an Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler from the surface of Minmus, getting Laggin' Dragon to Mün and back and refueled before the Duna mission is scheduled to depart, getting the Auk VI back to the surface, and retreiving Lemsy's Hulk from Minmus. Pretty well tied into Duna/Ike at the moment; over half of my extant contracts involve the red planet and its satellite. I'm confident the hardware will be up to the challenge, but I guess I won't really know until launch day arrives.

(1.1.3) Wound up not doing much of anything yesterday. I still wasn't satisfied that the redesigned Hellhound 7 rover delivery system would have sufficient fuel to make it to Duna and then land, so I decided to look at alternative means of delivering one. I had the thought, "Hey, I have KAS and KIS, I wonder if I could put all the parts into a container or two and have it constructed on site." So I spent my day working on the Rover-In-A-Can 7, which largely involved putting together a lander that would make it to Duna with enough storage space for all the parts involved, separating the essential parts from the non-essential parts and then figuring how how the hell I was supposed to put the damn thing together (Bill complained that the instructions were all written in Farsi). On the fourth try and after twenty minutes, Bill had put together a working Hellhound, and he and Bob took it for a test drive that lasted exactly four minutes (idiots ran it into one of the R&D buildings at 30 m/s trying to go through the building tunnel and blew most of the front end clean off). Concept proven, the rest of the day was spent building and testing a transfer stage and booster that would get the lander to Duna. The craft is certified at this point, so I'll probably be launching one (the rover Apathy) in my career save later today.

(1.1.3) Had a four-day weekend on account of an ersatz Icemageddon in my part of the world (hit northwest of where I live - caught the edge of it down here but they still unnecessarily called work early and cancelled schools in the area). With the ferry ship Strange Cargo on the way from Mün with pretty much the entire KSC engineering corps aboard (sans Bill and Edner Kerman) on Friday, the Old Bessie 7 lander assigned to the Minmusport space station had gone down to the Deepwater Horizon refinery to pick up more fuel. Landing and refueling ops were successful and the lander made its way back to Minmusport, with Deepwater Horizon recharging its fuel stores after the lander's safe return to the station. After the Bleepity-Bleep 7g probe was put into its final position around Minmus for contract, Strange Cargo arrived at Minmus and successfully docked at Minmusport (finally correcting reverted shenanigans that happened on Thursday). Shortly thereafter, the ferry ship Next Objective arrived at Kerbin with a batch of tourists, returning KSC staff and two Minmus refugees. A powered aerobraking maneuver was affected successfully and the craft returned to the Kerbinport space station shortly thereafter. Juluna and Milfred Kerman, scientists assigned to the Munport space station, transmitted a batch of science that allowed me to unlock KAS Electromagnets, leaving Ion Propulsion as the only remaining node left to be unlocked on my tech tree. The four engineers aboard Strange Cargo then made their way down to the surface of Minmus to plant flags. Jeb, capsule commander of Strange Cargo, also went down to plant a flag after their successful return to the station, though checking his logbook afterwards it seems he had already done that (so sending him down was a waste of time). With the crew safely back at Minmusport and loaded back aboard Strange Cargo, the ferry was refueled, departed from the station and burned for home. The final thing that occurred on Friday was the arrival of a Bill Clinton 7b probe on a mission to retrieve Lemsy's Hulk from orbit, commencing orbital maneuvers before the close of business on that day. Saturday's activities were relatively light. Tourists Theoski, Dodun, Franbella and Megayne Kerman all departed from Kerbinport aboard a waiting Block II Auk II passenger spaceplane and made their way back to the surface, landing successfully at KSC 27. Their safe arrival cleared two tourist contracts; I picked up a contract for orbital Kerbin science and a contract to deliver 2050 units of ore from Minmus to Kerbin's orbit, a contract at which I fully intended to cheat... On Sunday I decided to send up a replacement for the Auk II to Kerbinport, and doing some math (which turned out to be rather erroneous), I sent Tourist Lugan Kerman to Kerbinport aboard an Auk VII heavy passenger liner. The plane made it to orbit and successfully docked at the space station, but after rearranging folks I realized that when the time came to return to them to the surface I wouldn't have enough warm bodies to fill all the seats, and an Auk II would've done the job just fine. Bad planning there, I guess. With five tourists at Kerbinport bound for Minmus, Next Objective was refueled and dispatched with Jenwin at the helm - his log showed that he had yet to plant a flag on the surface of the minty moon. This makes Jenwin the craft's second acting capsule commander; Genezer Kerman, the first acting capsule commander, is aboard Kerbinport and is slated to return to KSC at this point. Yesterday I loaded a group of KSC staff - including Next Objective's true capsule commander Buremy Kerman as well as refugees Danuna and Lemsy Kerman - aboard the only ferry craft remaining at Kerbinport, Laggin' Dragon (which is scheduled to head for Duna). Laggin' Dragon departed Kerbinport with Val at the helm and burned for Mün; plans were made to ensure the craft would be able to be refueled as soon as possible since the Duna window is now just fourteen days away. With the Duna window approaching, I realized the time had come to start making launches for Duna-bound craft, so I affected four such launches: a Piper Alpha 7a refinery craft dubbed Scan Queen, the Ikeport 7 space station, a Hellhound 7 rover dubbed Malaise, and the Bleepity-Bleep 7h probe; the last of which was delivered by an Auk IV spaceplane, which was de-orbited and landed successfully. I also wanted to knock out the Minmus to Kerbin ore contract, so I decided to launch the necessary ore load to LKO aboard an Auk VI spaceplane. Problem there was that the Auk VI was designed to retrieve ore from LKO, not deliver it. Took two tries for the plane to reach orbit and even then it's questionable whether or not it will have sufficient delta-V to de-orbit. Next, I undocked the Old Bessie 7 lander from Minmusport once again (since there was a ship en route to Minmus) as well as the ore delivery lander Lewis and Clark, intending to send both down to Deepwater Horizon. Old Bessie landed successfully, but Lewis and Clark tipped on landing and I could not get it upright again; I went ahead and hooked both ships up to the refinery, loaded fuel aboard Old Bessie and then used L&C's ore tank to help satisfy the requirements of the ore contract. I'll be sending the Old Bessie back up to Minmusport at the next opportunity. I'll probably also send the ore lander Nostromo to dock with the Auk VI, offload some of the plane's ore and impart a little bit of fuel so that it can make its way back down to KSC. Still hoping to make a profit on this contract if I can... Of the seventeen craft scheduled to head to Duna in two-weeks time, seven have been launched. I still need to launch another rover, two Nostromo 7a craft, two Fireball 7a science landers, two more probes, an outpost and two Spamcan 7b landers. Still plenty of time to get all that done but I imagine LKO is going to be a tad crowded once everything's said and done...

Hey y'all, I've gone back thirty pages or so in this thread over the course of the last hour or so, and I haven't been able to find the link to the dev build. Would anybody be willing to please help me out?

(1.1.3) Yesterday began at the Minmusport space station, where the ferry ship Next Objective had arrived at the tail end of business on Wednesday. Engineer Danuna Kerman boarded the station's Spamcan 7a lander along with tourists Megayne and Franbella Kerman. After departure, they were sent to pick up Pilot Lemsy Kerman from a high retrograde orbit for contract; rendezvous with his crippled ship went well and afterwards the Spamcan was sent down to the moon's surface. Danuna and Lemsy conducted flag-planting duties before the lander returned to the space station. Next Objective was refueled and the occupants of the lander were transferred back into the ship. Also embarking aboard Next Objective from the station was Pilot Buremy Kerman, the current capsule commander of Next Objective, who had given up his seat during his last visit in exchange for another refugee from Minmus orbit. After Next Objective departed the station, the Old Bessie 7 lander assigned to Minmus went down to the Deepwater Horizon refinery and picked up a load of fuel to store in the station's reserve tank in anticipation of the arrival of Strange Cargo. The Bleepity-Bleep 7g probe arrived at Minmus and was placed in its final disposition. While making the final burn, I noticed that I had received a message stating that a tourist had made a successful flyby of Minmus; the only ship scheduled to enter the Minmus SOI was Strange Cargo and she wasn't supposed to arrive for another five hours, but I checked anyway - after I had made some course corrections using Protractor the day before, I had failed to reset the KAC alarm on Strange Cargo's arrival, and as a result she was there five hours ahead of schedule and was past periapsis by the time I noticed. A quick burn put her in orbit and rendezvous operations began. Next Objective arrived at Kerbin about the same time that Strange Cargo was affecting her rendezvous with the station; I attended to the aerobraking maneuver before resuming docking operations. Things were going well right up until I accidentally hit the left-Shift key on Strange Cargo about forty meters from the station. Slammed into the station and knocked the docking port off of Strange Cargo; KJR probably prevented a much more catastrophic event. Still, with no way to dock to the station, I felt that a revert was in order. Revert put me all the way back to Old Bessie getting ready to land near Deepwater Horizon... So yeah, I lost about half my day yesterday. But stuff happens. At least this way I can put Strange Cargo into orbit sooner, right?