capi3101

Ah - I think I understand; you either had the worthless NERVA sheath collision on staging problem, and/or the its-not-as-secure-as-you-think-because-you-can't-make-things-merge-once-they've-been-split problem. My solution from those days was to put a Modular Girder XL directly under the orange, then slap a quad of BZ-52s or Cubic Octagonal struts on the underside of the tank and stick my NERVAs on the end of them, and attach the mess to the booster via the Girder. And then strut the living crap out of the whole thing... Here - I even made an imgur album a long time ago (november 2013, so ca. v. 0.22) detailing the process. It might be useful or not. (1.1.3, FAR to go) I took the latter part of my day off on Monday to catch up on sleep and do some Christmas shopping, and wound up not playing the game until yesterday afternoon. I started that session with an evaluation of my current technology for its viability for a trip to Duna. It looks like most of what I've got could do Duna with little or not adjustment as is - the Piper Alpha 7 refineries being a notable exception, since they don't carry sufficient fuel for a successful Duna landing and don't at present incorporate chutes. I may ultimately make a few tweaks to some of the others just to be on the safe side. It is looking like I'll be going with an armada instead of a mothership when I go. Thirteen separate craft will be quite the challenge... Once that was done, I went ahead and loaded Val, Jeb and Buremy up into a new Superfortress 7 passenger ferry and shot it into LKO, dubbing the craft Laggin' Dragon upon orbital insertion; Dragon is the replacement for Big Stink, which was lost a couple of days ago. Laggin' Dragon made its way to the Kerbinport space station, where Jeb was reunited with his ferry craft Strange Cargo and Buremy likewise was reunited with Next Objective. Next Objective had been previously loaded with tourists and VIPs headed to Minmus, so the craft shoved off from the station and made the burn for the minty moon, where it will arrive in twelve days. Meanwhile, Strange Cargo was dispatched to Mün to pick up a quartet of refugees needing transport back to Kerbin. It should arrive in just under two days. With a fresh junk-and-Kerbal mission to Minmus, a second Bill Clinton 7a grabber probe was dispatched that way to end my day. This morning I had an overnight shift and played the game for a few hours. Not much was done; I sent the Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler craft at both the Munport and Minmusport space stations to the Piper Alpha and Deepwater Horizon refineries respectively, conducting precision landings and refueling both craft. They were then sent back up to their respective space stations to await the arrival of the incoming ferry craft and refuel them when the time comes. During the process of refueling the craft at Deepwater Horizon, I fulfilled part of a contract to mine 600 units of fresh ore from Minmus. After I had returned both craft to their respective stations, I switched over to Kerbinport and was promptly awarded the rest of the contract - the ore hauler Nostromo was docked to Kerbinport and had 1100 ore in the tanks, which was enough as far as the game was concerned. Makes me glad I hadn't processed it yet. Finished my morning by refueling Laggin' Dragon with stores from an Auk III tanker spaceplane still docked to the station, then landing the plane successfully at KSC 09. Came within a hundred meters of the surface near Mount Killakerbal there about 60 klicks west of KSC - which was pretty hairy - but otherwise had an uneventful landing. Laggin' Dragon is slated to go to Duna when the time comes, and in the meantime she's available for missions if any arise, though I'll keep her berthed at Kerbinport for the time being.

Stick one of the short 2-meter fuel tanks (an "X200-8") between your engine and the orange tank and see if it still 'splodes...twas a problem with how heating affected with certain engine/tank combos back in the day. Orange tank/Mainsail was utterly notorious.

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Began the latter portion of the day on Friday by dispatching the Spamcan 7 monoprop craft from the Munport space station to pick up pilot Magsan Kerman and engineer Phovie Kerman from low orbit of Mün. The craft performed admirably and returned the two rescued Kerbals to Munport, where they'll be placed on the next available transport back to Kerbin along with Kelzor and Willberry, who were previously rescued aboard the same craft. Next, VIP Raynart was loaded aboard an Auk I rescue spaceplane for a contract into LKO, conducting a mission to rescue scientist Sidbrett Kerbman. Aside from bouncing the plane on touchdown and ripping off the engines, the mission was a total success. Bouncing seems to be a perennial issue for the Auk I and I'll be looking into ways to help curtail it with a future re-design. With contracts to put ore from both Mün and Minmus into orbit of Kerbin, I designed an ore lander, which I dubbed Nostromo 7; two Nostromo craft were launched - Nostromo headed for Mün, and Lewis and Clark headed for Minmus. Ended the day on Friday with the arrival of a Bill Clinton 7a grabber probe in vicinity of Mün to conduct a junk gathering mission. It rendezvoused with the module - a spent Launch Escape rocket - and then made the burn to return to Kerbin. Saturday was my birthday, so I didn't do much that day. An Auk III tanker spaceplane left the Kerbinport space station and returned safely to KSC 27, and then an Auk II passenger spaceplane was launched to Kerbinport with three tourists aboard bound for Minmus, docking with the station before the day was over. Yesterday I decided to go ahead and use DPAI's ability to re-name docking ports and gave each of the available berths at Kerbinport a unique name, anticipating issues with getting two planes docked at the station at the same time. An Auk III was sent up to finish refueling the ferry craft Next Objective docked at the station; docking was a success though I am glad I relabeled the ports first. Nostromo arrived at Mün and landed at the Piper Alpha refinery site, where it was promptly refueled and loaded with the required amount of fresh ore. A Bill Clinton 7a craft sent to retreive Willberry's craft from Mün returned to Kerbin successfully, though it flipped upon deployment of the airbag and I was briefly concerned that either the Claw would fail or the module would burn up in atmosphere. This morning I had an overnight shift and wound up playing the game for about three and a half hours; spent the rest of the time helping out a problem she was having with an Excel spreadsheet misbehaving. The Bill Clinton 7a probe carrying the Launch Escape Vehicle arrived back at Kerbin and was retrieved successfully, coming down in between the 10 and 15-kilometer marker buoys for KSC 27. Having it arrive so close to KSC was completely unintentional, but I was delighted nonetheless. I picked up a four-Kerbal tourist contract afterwards; since those Kerbals were all headed to Minmus, I sent down the Auk II docked at Kerbinport and then sent up an identical craft with the four tourists aboard, arriving and docking successfully with the space station. Nostromo returned to Kerbin's orbit and fulfilled its contract, ultimately arriving and docking successfully at Kerbinport on vapors; a junk-and-Kerbal mission to Minmus was picked up in the wake its return and and another Bill Clinton 7a was launched to conduct that mission. Finally, the ferry Big Stink returned to Kerbin, but I realized too late that the craft was on a trajectory that would take it too deep into Kerbin's atmosphere - an emergency landing was affected, with the drive section cast off and almost promptly exploding at about 40,000 kilometers above the surface. Crew and passengers of Big Stink were retrieved safely, including Val, Bill, Jeb, pilot Buremy and scientist Frovey, the last of which was the subject of a Minmus rescue contract. Big Stink is the second Superfortress 7 craft lost to date (after Necessary Evil) and returns my space ferry fleet to just two craft - Strange Cargo and Next Objective, both of which are docked at Kerbinport. I was thinking about sending Big Stink to Duna when the time came, so now I'll either need to launch a new Superfortress or just send one of the other two extant craft.

(1.1.3, FAR to go). After having spent the last three nights doing overnight shifts, last night I got to sleep. I probably needed it. So, not a lot to report this morning to y'all. An Auk III medium tanker spaceplane flight was successfully sent up to the Kerbinport space station to refuel the passenger ferry Strange Cargo, with leftover payload fuel going to its sister ship Next Objective also docked at the station. I'll be sending up another Auk III in the near future to finish fueling Next Objective, since I need both craft ready to go back out when their sister ship Big Stink returns from Minmus, which will happen in just over five days. And I'll be landing the current Auk III at the next opportunity. I spent the rest of my evening attempting to make a working submarine in the litterbox, dubbed Nautilus 7. After figuring out the best way of getting the eighty-tonne monstrosity out into the water, I discovered that subs with stock parts are hard - the fewer floaty bits you have, the better, and apparently a single piece of structural fuselage is sufficient to keep eighty tonnes of sub on the surface if you attempt to use it as a conning tower. I suspect that balancing your CoM is also a must, putting subs on a level of difficulty on par with VTOLs - which I have done before, but are also difficult to do well. You can't have enough of the large SAS wheels, and you can't expect to go anywhere fast if you're only using a pair of Wheesleys for propulsion. I did see a YouTube video where somebody built a successful stock sub that could do 9 m/s by building an actual screw-type propeller with stock parts; I might try emulating that design to see what I can learn from it, and not just try to go off of memory next time...

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Well, the last 24 hours have been pretty big for my space program. After having previously retrieved five Kerbal tourists from the Kerbinport space station and with eight more Kerbals still there - including two who had been the subjects of Minmus rescue contracts - an Auk II passenger spaceplane was dispatched to pick up the remaining Kerbals and finish out their contracts. Managed to do very well on the launch window; I got a rendezvous before the plane had completed its first orbit. Docking was another matter - I must've bounced the plane off the station's solar and radiator panels four times before I finally got frustrated enough to pull the damn things in. After doing that I got the plane docked and the Kerbals transferred. Before de-orbiting, a long awaited window to adjust the orbit of Beep Beep 7d came up; I finished that contract up and then put myself to the task of de-orbiting and landing the plane. Had a damn beautiful landing at KSC 27 (overshot the Runway coming in and had to come around). The plane's successful retrieval netted me √880k - putting my space program up to nearly √3M - and cleared seven contracts at once, leaving me with just two: Fly By Duna and Explore Duna. First transfer window comes up in another seventy days. I had my final overnight shift of this week last night, so once again I've had five hours this morning to play KSP. I decided I'd kill the time between now and the Duna window by taking more contracts. First up was an job to mine 550 units of ore from Minmus, easily done with the Deepwater Horizon refinery. A Goliath test at the landing site was next - which I did with Lusitania 7 and took two tries because I made the idiotic attempt to complete the mission before I actually accepted the contract - followed by a quick VIP up and down trip, which I did using a Kerbal Tour Bus 7c craft. I then proceeded to unlock many more contracts: one to deliver Ore from Mün to Kerbin - I finally get to use the Auk VI for its intended purpose! - a rescue mission at Kerbin, another rescue mission at Minmus, three rescue missions from Mün, a junk-and-kerbal mission from Mün, a junk mission at Mün, two tourist missions to Minmus and another VIP up-and-down. After cleaning up some of the extant craft of Kerbals whose rescue missions had been fulfilled, Big Stink arrived at the Minmusport space station. Jeb, Buremy, Milrod and Edner will transferred to the craft, while Val and Bill transferred themselves into the station's Spamcan 7a lander and headed down to the surface. The two Kerbals landed safely and planted flags before heading off to rescue pilot Frovey from orbit, after which the craft safely returned to Minmusport. Meanwhile, I decided I would attempt to complete two rescue missions over Mün with the original Spamcan 7 monoprop craft docked at the Munport space station. The first mission to rescue Engineer Kelzor Kerman went without incident. The second mission to pick up Engineer Wilberry Kerman was much trickier on account of the fact that his pod was in a high orbit retrograde to the Spamcan. Wilberry was retrieved, but the Spamcan ran out of fuel after having readjusted its plane to match Munport. The station's Old Bessie 7 refueling lander was dispatched with a full load of monoprop and affected an emergency refueling operation, with both craft returning to Munport almost simultaneously... Old Bessie 7 making its rendezous with Munport, with Spamcan 7 nearby. Juggling their rendezvous burns was fun, as was their docking - I left Old Bessie parked 100 meters from Munport when I went to conduct Spamcan 7's docking; it had drifted to 250 meters by the time I was able to return. The worst part of it is that Wilberry was the subject of the junk-and-Kerbal mission...he didn't need to leave his craft. Enough monoprop remains at Munport for me to refuel the Spamcan and conduct the other two rescue missions later; I've already verified that they are in low Münar orbit and all ships are going in roughly the same direction. Strange Cargo will be dispatched to pick up the four Kerbals once I have picked up the other two and Jeb (the ship' nominal capsule commander) returns from Minmus. The Hellhound 7 rover dispatched to Minmus - which I dubbed Lunkhead - arrived and made planetfall in the vicinity of Deepwater Horizon, being put immediately to work to see how good of a site the refinery was based on. Turns out the site wasn't great but it wasn't terrible either; the ore reading jumped from something like 2.13% to 6.32% just 200 meters away from the refinery's site. I may look for a better site later as time allows. Meanwhile, the Old Bessie lander stationed at Minmusport was dispatched and loaded, and then returned to Minmusport where its payload was used to refuel Big Stink. Big Stink then departed Minmusport and made the burn for home; she was still in Minmus's SOI when I finished playing this morning, but history would suggest she'll be back at Kerbin in another five or six days. Ended my night with a pair of Bill Clinton 7a grabber probe launches, which I'll use to conduct the junk clearing missions I've got at Mün. I still need to pick up the other two Kerbals from Mün, get Next Objective prepped up to run tourists to Minmus and get said tourists up to Kerbinport. I'm thinking about using an Auk I double-capacity rescue spaceplane to couple the LKO rescue mission with the VIP up-and-down; might as well give the VIP a story, right? I also need to design an ore lander - Old Bessie isn't designed to haul anything but fuel, and Auk VI is limited to LKO range, so I've got an unfilled niche in my space program that I suddenly need to fill. Last thing I need to do - start prepping for Duna. I need to re-evaluate my current tech to see what's capable of making it to the red planet and make adjustments to anything that I'll need out there that's incapable of making the journey on its own. I might've forgotten to mention the contract I took to haul ore from Ike to Duna, so I've committed myself to hauling Piper Alpha 7 refineries out there...good thing I've made all that money......

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Later in the day yesterday, I began my activities by having Next Objective shove off from the Minmusport space station and burn for Kerbin with Ziggy in the command chair and eight tourists, regular pilot Buremy Kerman having given up his seat so that the Ziggy could finally make it back to Kerbin and fulfill his rescue contract. About the time Next Objective was escaping Minmus's SOI, the Overlook Hotel expansion module arrived at Minmus and was put into orbit, and then made the burn to land near the Hojo Beta outpost. The craft successfully made planetfall almost exactly fifty meters away from Hojo Beta; Edner ran out to hook up the winch cable and suddenly I was √450k richer. With the contract fulfilled, the winch was disconnected and reeled back in before anything could go boom. The transfer stage of the Old Bessie 7 refueling lander that had been sent to Minmusport was mostly drained of remaining fuel, with most of it going to the Spamcan 7a lander attached to the station. Enough fuel was left in the stage so that it could de-orbit for a crash landing on Minmus after being discarded. Shortly thereafter, the Deepwater Horizon refinery craft arrived at Minmus's SOI in a 105-degree inclined orbit. I searched for a relatively ore-rich landing site close to the equator along the craft's flight path. Locating one, I went ahead and set down the refinery and began drilling operations, refilling the refinery's tanks. I'm not convinced that the site I'm at is optimal, but that's something that will have to wait until the arrival of the Hellhound 7 rover I dispatched to Minmus - taking the time to add a surface scanner prior to launch. The rover should arrive in another six days or so. This morning I had another overnight shift and I spent a few hours playing KSP. I had a contract to test a 3.5 m heat shield landed; I went ahead and popped one aboard the Lusitania 7 even though I didn't need to go into the water with it. Easy cash. Next, I loaded Jeb, Buremy and scientist Milfred Kerman into the Spamcan 7a lander at Minmusport and sent them all down to Hojo Beta, where the trio planted flags. Edner climbed out of the outpost, planted a flag his own self, then got aboard the Spamcan and the four Kerbals returned to Minmusport, where they'll wait for the arrival of Big Stink in a few days to take them all home. Val and Bill will make a similar journey to the surface when they arrive. The Spamcan should have enough remaining delta-V for the trip without a refuel, but with Deepwater Horizon down on the surface now a refueling hop may be made if needed. Big Stink will probably need more fuel once it arrives anyway; she wasn't fully fueled before leaving Kerbin in the first place. Next up was a Bill Clinton 7a grabber probe mission to retreive craft and Kerbal from Münar orbit, a job made somewhat difficult by the craft - a Mk2 lander can. Probe and target returned successfully to Kerbin; all I can say there is that I really like the 10 meter airbag heat shields - I was convinced that one was going to go south at one point during entry. Finally, Next Objective returned to the vicinity of Kerbin and performed an assisted aerobraking maneuver, entering LKO after a single pass. The ferry then affected a rendezvous and docking at the Kerbinport space station. With thirteen Kerbals at Kerbinport all needing to return to the surface, an Auk II passenger plane was dispatched to the station, performing a successful rendezvous and docking. Capacity of the Auk II is eight Kerbals maximum; five Kerbals were selected from the group of thirteen to head down, with plans for a second Auk II run made. The Auk II returned successfully to KSC 27, clearing one contract and netting me somewhere around √500k. The second Auk II flight is scheduled for later today - and I expect that one to be particularly lucrative (it will clear seven contracts simultaneously), if it's successful of course. I have no reason to expect it won't be, but then stranger things have happened...

(1.1.3, FAR to go). Had to make myself a new log book first thing yesterday... My activities yesterday began with the landing of the Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler at the new Piper Alpha 7 refinery site on Mün. The craft affected a landing eighty meters from the refinery - too far away for the refinery's winch cables. But, with the previous day's arrival of Corbas from the since-abandoned Wildcat 7 drilling outpost, I had the KAS tools available to remove a winch from the refinery and reattach it to the Hellhound 7 rover parked nearby, using the rover to bridge the gap between the two vehicles. After a lengthy repair and refitting EVA, the plan was ultimately successful and Old Bessie was successfully refueled. The lander then returned to the Munport space station where the passenger ferry Big Stink was still parked; Big Stink was refueled and sent back to Kerbin with Val, Bill and tourists Gragy and Jesthis aboard. Big Stink returned successfully to the Kerbinport space station one day later, offloading the two tourists. An Auk IV tanker spaceplane was still parked at the space station since it still had available mission fuel to offload, so Big Stink was refueled as much as possible and then Val shoved the craft off on a mission to pick up personnel from Minmus, where it should arrive in eleven days. I concluded my night with a contract to put a satellite in a polar orbit around Kerbin; Beep Beep 7m was launched and I successfully completed that mission. I've been awake today since 2 AM local to man a security gate at the library at which I work - the slow gate - and so I spent my time playing KSP to help me stay awake. I began with a contract to test a Mk16 parachute at flight level; Jenwin piloted a Bad Idea 1a aircraft modified for the job on a quick up and down, successfully completing the mission. After taking the time to retrieve the now-empty Auk IV from Kerbinport, I launched the Hojo Delta outpost towards Mün for contract with Jenwin aboard, arriving at Mün and landing in the Midlands before the morning was over. Next up was an atmospheric analysis above 18,000 m and 1,300 kilometers from KSC, which Billy-Bobfurt completed aboard a Bad Idea 5a surveyor craft fitted for the job. A Mk3 to 2.5 m adapter was retrieved from LKO using a Bill Clinton 7a grabber probe, and a contract to gather surface science from Minmus was fulfilled by Edner aboard the Hojo Beta outpost. Strange Cargo then arrived at Kerbin from Minmus and after three aerobraking passes the craft was docked to Kerbinport. An Auk II passenger craft was sent up to retrieve Strange Cargo's passengers, docking and then successfully returning to KSC 27. Over √900k was raised from the completion of the itineraries of those eight passengers - the thing is, the way they wound getting split up while they were still at Minmusport, that didn't clear any of the tourist contracts I have in progress. All five of them, however, should be cleared when Next Objective finally returns from Minmus. The proceeds were used to launch a Hellhound 7 rover to Minmus to help with ore prospecting efforts there. Finally, the Old Bessie 7 and Overlook Hotel 7 craft have arrived at Minmus; the Old Bessie has arrived at Minmusport and Next Objective has been refueled, so I will be dispatching the ferry for home at the next opportunity. I'll also be landing Overlook Hotel in the very near future - which will pay out √450k by itself once it's in place...

Takes me back to my meteorology undergraduate classes at OU, where we were supposed to use method number four to measure the height of the tower at Sarkey's Energy Center (a 15-story building). One of us used method number three instead. He got a correct answer, and then he got the bill from the department for a new barometer...damn things aren't cheap...... (1.1.3, FAR to go) Had another reasonably busy weekend. No screenies, unfortunately, but then again imgur is being jerky again. Friday began with me picking up contracts to adjust the position of the Bleepity-Bleep 7c probe around Minmus, test a Rhino engine splashed, an equatorial sat around Kerbin and an expansion of the Hojo Beta outpost on Minmus - the last of which with a reward value of √450k. Accepting these contracts put me over the √1M mark for the first time in the current career save, money that quickly got spent as the weekend progressed. I went ahead and flew an Auk IV satellite delivery plane to deliver the Bleepity-Bleep 7d probe for the one contract, reaching orbit and landing the plane safely. After putting the probe into it's final position I got a replacement contract to test a Goliath splashed, so I decided to build a little boating testing rig which I dubbed the Lusitania 7. I conducted the Goliath test first, returning the craft to the Launchpad afterwards, then swapped out the payload for the Rhino on what was essentially an identical mission. Craft worked pretty well overall. Replacement contract was to grab 500 Mün ore for √150k, easy cash for the Piper Alpha 7 refinery. I finally felt comfortable upgrading the Administration Center to Level 3 after that, finally bringing my KSC to full status. Haven't engaged any strategies just yet. I also conducted a orbital junk collection mission with a Bill Clinton 7a grabber probe, a mission to haul a radial chute to low flight level with Jenwin aboard a Bad Idea 1a aircraft (with IVA landing), a mission to grab surface Minmus science using a crew report from the Hojo Beta outpost, and launched Bleepity-Bleep 7e towards Mün, returning the Auk IV launch plane safely. All in all a busy day doing a bunch of little things. On Saturday I wanted to conduct an orbital rescue mission; since I only had one Kerbal to pick up, I went ahead and modified the Auk V repair craft for the job; the Auk Va successfully retrieved scientist Nasame Kerbin from orbit though I remembered later on why I didn't particularly like the Auk V - as a tailless delta, it has a few issues with pitch authority, enough to make me a little nervous using it for rescue work. After that, my eldest son goaded me into playing with Whack-A-Kerbal; why I didn't switch to my career save, I don't know. Lessons here - if you're going to play Whack-A-Kerbal, A) quicksave first, B) use a Sandbox, C) watch your aim. Fortunately, the damage was reasonably limited - I wound up taking out my 30 kilometer marker buoy for KSC 27 rather permanently. Spent the rest of the afternoon trying to replace the stupid thing, during which time I discovered that the Yeah, Buoy 7b tender craft didn't work nearly as well as I had hoped. After several capsizes and reverts, I wound up deploying the original Yeah, Buoy 7 tender to drop a new marker buoy. Other things that happened was the launch of the Overlook Hotel 7 expansion for the Hojo Beta outpost, a successful adjustment of the Bleepity-Bleep 7c probe and the final positioning of Bleepity-Bleep 7e. And after sixteen days, the new Spamcan 7a lander arrived at Minmusport and docked to the station. Yesterday began with the arrival of the ferry craft Strange Cargo at Minmusport. With the arrival of the ferry, four Minmus-bound tourists were loaded aboard the Spamcan and sent down to the surface of the minty moon for contract, landing and returning successfully to Minmusport. Their return gives me a total of eighteen Kerbal tourists whose itineraries are now complete, leaving their return to Kerbin as the final step towards getting paid. While that mission was ongoing, I received word that I had successfully orbited the Sun - checking, I found that the Beep-Beep 7c probe had indeed left Kerbin's SOI, though how it happened remains a mystery; I'm guessing a close encounter with Mün probably kicked it loose at some point and since I don't pay attention to my sats, it happened without my knowing. Nothing has come of this just yet, but I'm sure it will. With two passenger ferries parked at Minmusport, the time had finally arrived to set up a refueling operation at Minmus; a new Piper Alpha 7 refinery craft, which was dubbed Deepwater Horizon, was launched with engineer Barna Kerman overseeing the site. It will arrive in eleven days. I then did a crew report for contract, and needing a little extra cash at that point, I accepted a contract to establish a new Münar outpost. The funds went towards the launch of an Old Bessie 7 fuel hauler for Minmus; it was sent there and will wind up arriving ahead of the refinery. I have two extant contract to rescue Kerbals from Minmus - Carta, who was in orbit, and Ziggy, who was on the surface and has been at Hojo Beta for quite some time. With the passenger modules aboard Strange Cargo and Next Objective full, I decided to go ahead and send these two back in the command seats of the ferry craft; Buremy and Jeb were offloaded to Minmusport. The Spamcan was sent down again to pick up Ziggy from the surface, leaving Edner down there alone for now (somebody will need to hook up the Overlook Hotel to Hojo Beta when it arrives, after all). Ziggy was loaded aboard Next Objective and Carta aboard Strange Cargo. I then shifted resources around; with the craft fully refueled, Strange Cargo left the station for Kerbin. Next Objective will remain where she is for now, until the refueling operation is set up - mainly this keeps me from having to deal with a simultaneous rendezvous of the two ferries once again. Last thing I did at Minmus was move Bleepity-Bleep 7c yet again, this time into a position where it could begin scanning the surface for ore readings. The launch of Deepwater Horizon reminded me that I needed to finish moving the original Piper Alpha site, so I set myself to doing it; the outpost's final landing spot was about 1.7 kilometers from where the refitted Hellhound 7 rover had located a Münar ore deposit at 10.22% (which turned out to be the maximum reading I would find). I got Paphe out and jet-packed her over to mark the site of the rover, then drove it to Piper Alpha's new position, where the ore was measured at 10.20%. I decided not to sweat .02% and let the refinery sit. Since it was now fifty kilometers away and had an ore concentration of less than half that of the new site, I decided the time had finally come to abandon the Wildcat 7 drilling outpost site entirely. I waited until daybreak, then sent the Hellhound 7 rover the fifty kilometers to pick up Valcy and Corbas from the outpost. I drove carefully to avoid sending the rover into small craters, though considering where Wildcat 7 was parked originally (on top of a mesa), I had to enter that final big one. The drive went largely without incident, though since I was steering carefully I guarantee you it went more than fifty kilometers. With Valcy and Corbas retreived, I then drove to where I had marked the flat area north of the site to remove a flag I had planted there and then went to where the debris had landed from the accident the rover had incurred when it was originally driving over to the new site a few days ago. I found the undercarriage plate with the attached ore tank still intact and it was a simple matter for Corbas, who still had the tools from Bill's earlier visit, to re-attach the plate where it had been. The two struts holding the undercarriage plate will need to be replaced eventually but the repair work held for the remainder of the trek. The rover then made the long journey back to Piper Alpha, with rover and Kerbals all arriving safely - overall, a rove of over a hundred kilometers round trip on Mün. Not terrible, but not something I'd want to do again, either. The rover has been a real champion - I need to get around to giving it a proper name at some point...

I hope you enjoy it - I can't say in the three years since the game was built I've heard of too many people playing it. Can't believe it's been three years...KCP is in need of some updating, no doubt...

As far as avoiding tumbling is concerned, FAR will help you there, as will Atmosphere Autopilot. So will a large vertical stabilizer. So will draining all the fuel out of your craft in the SPH as a pre-flight test; you can see where your CoM is going to wind up in relation to the CoL when the tanks are empty. It's a simple thing but it kills a lot of ersatz spaceplanes... Don't want to drain your tanks? There's an app a mod for that - RCS Build Aid, which has a "dry center of mass" marker that does the same thing. It's also occasionally useful for checking the balance of RCS thrusters on your rockets. I use a number of other mods for aerospaceplane flight; it'd take me a while to go through them and I'm finding myself in a position where I need to go rushing off at the moment. Other than that I don't have much to offer for re-entry besides A) use airbrakes in your designs (one per engine is my general rule but it's really more a factor of how heavy your plane is) and engage them the moment you hit atmo, and don't let off until you're down to a reasonable flight speed/altitude, and B) keep your nose up as you're coming in - forty degrees above the horizon is generally good; expect to cook if you can't do much more than ten degrees above the horizon. Use RCS if you have to though don't expect miracles. Drop the nose at the same time you let off the brakes.

I'm pretty sure the stock game does use overall lift for its physics, and I agree that it's not the best way of doing it. Sounds like you're a serious (actual?) plane flier...so if you're not adverse to mods, I'd strongly suggest adding FAR - it lets planes behave like planes should, and the stability analyses it provides are absolute godsends. More importantly, it lets a wing control surface act in the way it should, regardless of whether it's oriented in the direction the stock game says it will generate lift or not. The whole reason why I haven't switched to 1.2 yet is because stock atmo has always had a degree of non-intuitive dumbness to it (it's better than it used to be but still could be better) and FAR hasn't been updated for 1.2 yet... I'd also suggest a fly-by-wire mod such as Atmosphere Autopilot so that you're not trying to use stock SAS controls while you fly. SAS is really meant for rockets; it's pretty lousy when it comes to planes. You'd be amazed at how well something not really airworthy can fly if it's got a fly-by-wire controlling it...then again, maybe not; the F-117 comes to mind. (1.1.3, FAR to go) Yesterday began with the transfer burn of Big Stink to Mün, with Val at the helm along with Bill and tourists Gragy and Jesthis in the cans. I went ahead and checked the Spamcan 7a lander parked at Munport to make sure I had refueled it for their use when they arrived; the lander was ready to go. While they were en route I went over to the Minmusport space station, where Next Objective was parked. I had received a contract to conduct a rescue in orbit of Minmus and Next Objective was available, so I had Buremy pile out of the cockpit so there was a seat available and sent the eight tourists aboard Next Objective on the mission. The rescue craft was very low around Minmus, with a periapsis of just six kilometers, but I was able to affect a successful rescue and return Next Objective to Minmusport. Pilot Carta Kerman has joined my ranks and will be returned to Kerbin on the next available ferry. While I was still killing time, I returned the booster stage of the Hellhound 7 rover from Mün to Kerbin (unsuccessfully as it turned out, which was not really a surprise) and I established the Hojo Charlie outpost on the surface of Mün in the Midlands just northeast of the East Crater, about 65 kilometers east-northeast of the Piper Alpha 7 refinery site. Big Stink then arrived at Mün and a rendezvous and docking at Munport was affected. Since Bill had business on the surface, I decided to wait until early morning at the Piper Alpha site so there would be daylight, then drove the Hellhound 7 rover to the flat area I had discovered while driving the previous day about six kilometers north of the site. The passengers and crew of Big Stink were loaded into the Spamcan and sent down to land in the vicinity of the rover, which was successful. Bill hopped out and performed a KAS refit on the Hellhound, adding a surface scanner, a KAS connector port and replacing a strut that had blown off during the previous day's nighttime rove. He then hopped into the newly refitted rover and began taking surface ore readings on his way to the Wildcat 7 drilling outpost (parked 700 meters from Piper Alpha). I discovered something pretty quickly - I had parked Piper Alpha on the wrong side of the East Crater and while the site was getting decent ore where it was, there were areas in the vicinity far better. Upon arriving at Wildcat, Bill handed off his tools to engineer Corbas and Corbas refitted the Hellhound with one of the outpost's radial ore tanks. Bill then re-boarded the rover and headed back to where the Spamcan was located, and the lander returned to Munport. Those two tourists definitely got their money's worth, though in retrospect the whole point of bringing Val along was so that she could plant a flag on Mün - and I forgot to do that... Most of the rest of the day was spent roving to find a better spot to move Piper Alpha to. Wound up hitting the ground hard enough at one point to blow off the underside plate - unfortunately, that's where I had mounted the ore tank. There was nothing I could do as I watched the plate and the tank slide away from the rover. Luckily the RTGs immediately above the plate were spared damage; losing those wouldn't have crippled the rover beyond usability since there are two more in the back, but it would have made me have to start managing the rover's power consumption and ultimately would've reduced its top speed, which is frustrating (I know since it's happened before a long time ago). Anyway, after roving about 80 kilometers across Mün - almost to the place where Bob had planted the flag for the East Crater - I found a spot with an ore concentration above ten percent - twice that at Piper Alpha's site - and decided to try to move the refinery (I have a screenie of this attempt but imgur is being persnickety this morning). I overshot the rover's position by about eight kilometers, but the nice thing about moving a refinery is that you can always refuel for more attempts if you need to (something I may or may not do later today - I need to double-check where the refinery is now in relation to the good ore area, and it's possible that the ore concentration may be even higher than where the rover is parked). I also need to decide what to do with Wildcat 7. Since I took off one of the ore tanks, the outpost is no longer symmetrical - I'd have to remove the opposite ore tank from the outpost to re-balance it. Even then, I don't recall if the outpost has sufficient fuel to be moved. If not, I'm probably looking at another long rove to go pick up Valcy and Corbas and bring them to Piper Alpha (there's room) and abandoning the outpost entirely. Ended the day by putting the Bleepity-Bleep 7c probe into its final position around Minmus. Promptly got a contract to move it again...I've only been trying to get this probe into its current position for the last six game days......

If I were to guess, I'd go with a craft that can make orbit from the surface of Eve that also survives the landing intact...certainly true in the days before 1.0. Could be "putting anything around/on/through Moho", I guess. @kraden; there are plenty of folks here who can give you pointers. What specific problem are you having?

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Compared to my activities on Tuesday, yesterday was a good deal quieter. I began with Valcy and Corbas's ongoing roving mission in the vicinity of the Wildcat 7 drilling outpost on Mün, which saw them go about thirty kilometers from the outpost, with some areas having grade up to 43 degrees. Makes me glad I sent a Hellhound 7 rover for them to complete the mission - they would never have been able to venture quite that far on jet-packs alone, certainly not on Mün anyway. I did lose the light as they were heading back; roving on Mün is dangerous enough during the daylight, but doing it at night is just plain suicidal. Let's just say the Hound caught a lot more air yesterday than the day before, and damn near flipped completely over at least once (fortunately there was sufficient air on that one for me to bring it back around the right way before it slammed into the ground). I'm proud of the Hound for not blowing any tires on the entire trip or for ejecting Kerbals; damage to the rover was limited to a busted strut and the BZ-52 that was used to connect it to the booster, neither of which were crucial for the vehicle's continued operations. The rover also came across a considerably flatter region of Mün (in the 3-5 degree grade range) about twenty kilometers north and northeast of the current Piper Alpha 7 refinery site, so I was understandably curious to see how that area compared to Piper Alpha in terms of mineralogical density (a comparable or greater density would warrant a relocation of the site). So, I embarked on a project to do a KAS refit of the Hellhound, with the goal of putting a surface scanner on it (the Hound's design dates back to 0.21 and surface scanners didn't exist until 1.0, which is why the Hound didn't have one already installed - though why I didn't add one during the refit is beyond me). To that end, I had Val board an Auk II passenger spaceplane to the Kerbinport space station, where Bill had already been stationed. Before departure I loaded her up with some tools and parts - she got a screwdriver, two strut connectors, a connector port and a surface scanner - using KIS. Plane docked successfully, the tools were handed off and Val returned to KSC along with VIP Alemma. Came in on a three degree glide-slope to KSC 27 in what turned out to be one of the smoothest landings I've affected in a while. With both Strange Cargo and Next Objective dispatched to Minmus and unavailable, I decided the time had come to add a third Superfortress 7 craft to my passenger ferry fleet and launched Big Stink, with Val at the helm. The craft arrived safely at Kerbinport on the final booster stage and docked after the booster was discarded. Val will now head to Mün with Bill and two tourists bound for the Münar surface; the plan is to send all four Kerbals down in the Spamcan lander docked at the Munport space station. I'll probably be handling the pre-planning for all of that (translation: put the Hound out in a safe landing zone and make sure the Spamcan is fueled and ready to go) later today. Also launched Hojo Charlie - a Bates Motel 7 outpost - to Mün for contract. Nothing much to say about that; pretty routine launch and transfer burn so far. Will probably land it today if I have time.

(1.1.3, FAR to go) I had a pretty busy day overall yesterday. Kicked off my day by dispatching an Auk III medium tanker to the Kerbinport 7 space station, where the Superfortress 7 passenger ferry Strange Cargo was docked. Rendezvous of plane to station was successful and Strange Cargo was refueled for a trip to Minmus and departed shortly thereafter, with Jeb at the helm and eight passengers. Strange Cargo will arrive at Minmus in about sixteen days. Since it still has payload fuel available, I went ahead and left the Auk at Kerbinport for the time being. Kicking myself for not giving Kerbinport any capacity to store fuel on its own... Afterwards, I launched a brand new Spamcan 7a lander towards Minmus; maneuver planning went very well on that one and it should arrive in thirteen days. The hope is that the 'can will have sufficient fuel to pull everybody off of the surface of Minmus and still have enough gas to go down with four tourists that have extant contracts. The two launches left me a little strapped for cash, so I did contracts for orbital Kerbin and Minmus science for a quick buck and picked up a Mün outpost and junk hauling contract - I quickly loaded a Bill Clinton 7 orbital grabber probe for the junk contract and got a rendezvous with what turned out to be a Thud engine before I had circularized, and then I had a very successful de-orbit, landing the probe with junk intact within eighty klicks of KSC. The replacement was a lucrative contract to mine 600 units of fresh ore from Mün; I dumped out what I had saved aboard the Piper Alpha 7 refinery on Mün and got to drilling, meeting the required quota with just two hours of drilling time. The money raised gave me sufficient funding to launch a Hellhound 7 rover to Mün. With contracts to collect surface samples within the vicinities of the Wildcat 7 drilling outpost and Piper Alpha (which are parked 700 meters away from one another), I landed the Hellhound in the general vicinity of my mining operation, coming down about four klicks from Wildcat 7. The rover made its way there without issues: Hellhound 7 rover arriving at the Wildcat 7 drilling outpost. Since they'd been parked on Mün without sufficient fuel to go home for close to sixty days, I decided to let pilot Valcy and engineer Korbas pile out of Wildcat 7 to start work on the surface reading contracts. Roving around on Mün is a pain, all the more so due to the fact that the area around Piper Alpha is pretty hilly. Naturally the stopping spots were all on some pretty significant grade, reaching 39 degrees at one point. Had several instances of Valcy getting up to take the surface reading then spending several minutes trying to maneuver her back to the rover while they both proceeded to slide around; kept on having visions of her puffing out of existance in a cloud of smoke, which thankfully hasn't happened (yet). I haven't finished roving and she's just about out of jetpack fuel at this point, so I'll be finishing up the contracts using Korbas to take the readings as likely as not. I am pleased with how the Hound has held up, though - she hasn't popped a tire yet, despite catching some serious air (vacuum?) at least once. I do wish that I'd packed a KIS screwdriver aboard Wildcat so I could convert the Hellhound into a light ore hauler when I'm done with it. Maybe for the future - who knows. After the launch of the Hound I was once again pretty badly strapped for cash. I had a contract to put a probe in an equatorial orbit of Kerbin but insufficient funding to launch an Auk IV probe carrier spaceplane, so I did it the old-fashioned way with the launch of Beep-Beep 7l. The craft was finally put into the position specified by the contract and I picked up another junk hauling contract, which I may turn my attention to today. Meanwhile, the Bleepity-Bleep 7c probe, the Hojo Beta outpost and Minmusport 7 space stations all finally arrived in Minmus's SOI. Minmusport was put in a twelve-kilometer equatorial orbit and the passenger ferry Next Objective, which had arrived six days prior, made a successful rendezvous and docking with the station. Some passengers were exchanged between ship and station, mainly leaving tourists bound for the surface aboard the station and loading the ferry with Kerbin-bound folks. I'm awaiting the arrival of Strange Cargo and the Spamcan at this point before any thought of returning these passengers to Kerbin will take place. Hojo Beta was parked on the Flats approximately seven kilometers from the hill that Hojo Alpha has been sliding down the entire time it's been on the surface; Edner and Ziggy both jetpacked over successfully and the earlier outpost has been terminated. Unlike Hojo Alpha, Hojo Beta has sufficient fuel aboard to return to orbit of Minmus, and since I have an extant contract to retrieve Ziggy, I have yet to decide whether I'll just launch the outpost back into space or send down the 'can when it gets there to retrieve them. It'd be nice to round that particular contract out. I'm still working on getting Bleepity-Bleep 7c into position, but I imagine I'll get that taken care of when I get an opportunity later today. So yeah, busy day.

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Yesterday began with more fiddling with the design of Yeah, Buoy 7b, mainly looking to see if I could add a sea rudder for underwater operations. Damn things kept on blocking my wheels, so I ultimately settled for an aboveboard rudder. Makes sense, I guess - it is a Whiplash-powered craft after all - but I'd still would've liked to see how a rudder below the waterline fared. With two contracts to survey waypoints in the vicinity of the Wildcat 7 / Piper Alpha 7 drilling site and a failed attempt to get Valcy out there to survey the points via jetpack, I came to the realization that what she really needed was a rover. So, I went into my Dropbox and brought out a very old, very reliable friend into my current litterbox - the Hellhound 7 heavy rover: The Original Hellhound 7, screenie taken in early August 2013 (v. 0.22). Note the old style 88-88 antenna dish...suggesting I was still playing in v. 0.21 at the time. Naturally, I didn't expect a three-year / twenty-version old craft to work without some tweaking, and I wasn't disappointed there. For one thing, the game wouldn't even let me put the thing on the Launchpad before going to the VAB where I built it originally (didn't have a grasp on the SPH at the time) because it (naturally) didn't have size and mass data. The positioning of the main probe core had to be adjusted in order to steer it properly without Kerbals in the seats and the wheel properties needed to be re-set, but those were the only tweaks needed. Within half an hour of the rebuild, I was trucking in and around KSC: My first visit out to the KSC Obelisk, if you can believe it. Only busted one wheel getting out there, too - my fault for launching it off the end of the Runway at 45 m/s... With the rover confirmed working, my next task became getting it out to Mün, where it was needed. I did have a booster and skycrane built for the rover...from version 0.21, once again, in the days of old non-FAR atmospheric soup, where moar mass equaled moar drag. Junked that thing on the quick-fast and started from scratch, though I generally kept the same overall design for the skycrane itself. Originally went with a fairing but dumped it since it added both enough mass and enough drag to prevent a successful orbit - removal of the fairing resulted in a craft where the final booster stage had enough excess delta-V to act as the transfer stage as well, and then return itself to Kerbin afterwards. Skycrane design was...adequate, I suppose... The Hound Rides Again! Took some pretty helacious peaks at unsafe speeds. Only real problem I have with the redesign is the exposed position of the new control core - I did blow it finally, bringing my shenanigans to a halt. Could've proceeded on the original control core, I suppose, but they've changed how docking mode works in the past three years and I have yet to re-learn. Used to be that was the safe way to drive rovers. Anyway, once I was done with the testing I loaded the craft file into my main save game and switched over; I'm now tasked with earning enough spare cash to afford to put one on Mün. With two rescue contracts for LKO, an Auk I flight was dispatched. Burned a bit much on the first rescue and I was worried I'd have to come back with only one of the two Kerbals, but I did some judicious maneuvering and was able to pick up the other Kerbal as well and de-orbit with 18 m/s of delta-V to spare. Landing was once again the hairy part; wound up setting down hard and tearing off both of the engines in the process, but otherwise the plane returned intact. I have a tendency to do that with the Auk I design, so perhaps larger landing gear is in order. I then went ahead and launched the Kerbinport 7 space station with Bill and three tourists aboard, one simply desiring a suborbital Kerbin flight and the other two Mün-bound. I went ahead and docked Strange Cargo to the new space station and later came to wonder why I did that, since the craft's current load of passengers are all bound for Minmus. I might get a coat tree up there soon so my VIP can return to Kerbin; I don't have a single-kerbal space plane capable of docking aside from the Auk V, and that one requires a winch cable to dock, which is doable, but probably not advisable. Next Objective arrived at Minmus with its load of tourists and I ultimately put it in a ten kilometer equatorial orbit around the minty moon. Most of her passengers are now ready to return to Kerbin but there are a few bound for the surface, so I will be waiting for the arrival of the Minmusport 7 station before I do anything more there - six days from now. Ended my night with a contract to test a Juno engine splashed. With my recent adventures in boating, I decided to try to fill the contract that way and built a simple canoeing/rover rig. The contract was fulfilled successfully and I was able to drive the craft back to the space center for full parts credit, though I need to research ways to improve roll stability in watercraft; what I built turned without capsizing, but it came awful close. New contracts include orbital sci contracts for Kerbin and Minmus; easy pickings which I'll do first thing when I go to play later today.

(1.1.3, FAR to go) On Friday I began fiddling around with @Brownhair2's buoy design, thinking I could use it to extend my existing manual ILS system for KSC's Runway into the water for the first time. The design is simple enough though the RTG does make individual buoys expensive, as I learned later in the weekend...which I'll talk about later. Having reverted the flight the day before, I did a quick tweak of the Auk IV probe delivery spaceplane design to lock down the fuel load of its paywad in the SPH, saved it and tried again. The probe was delivered to orbit safely this time and the plane landed semi-successfully (down intact but off the Runway again). The Bleepity-Bleep 7c probe is now on its way to Minmus for contract. With a contract to establish a new outpost on Minmus, a Bates Motel 7 craft was launched sans Kerbals and was dubbed Hojo Beta upon reaching LKO; it too is now headed towards the minty moon. I plan on renaming the original Bates Motel craft Hojo Alpha later today. Strange Cargo arrived at the Munport space station with its load of three passengers and the Old Bessie 7 refueler craft was dispatched to the Piper Alpha site to get the fuel needed to refuel the craft, a precision landing operation that went relatively smoothly for once (aside from Paphe grabbing the wrong winch cable at first and running out about a meter away from the refuel port - could've sworn the winch cables were a little longer than they are). Upon Old Bessie's return to Munport, tourist Theopold was sent down to the Münar Midlands for contract aboard the Spamcan 7a lander, landing in a relatively flat area and becoming the first tourist I've sent to the Mün who didn't have to leave right away because the 'can was tipping over. With Theopold's return to Munport, he and four tourists already aboard the station were loaded into Strange Cargo, and the craft departed, leaving the station on automatic for the first time since its launch. Strange Cargo later successfully returned to LKO and an Auk II flight was dispatched to pick up some of her passengers returning to Kerbin, returning successfully. I need to dispatch an Auk III flight to refuel the craft; Minmus is next up for Strange Cargo. Meanwhile, the Bill Clinton 7a craft arrived at Minmus to pick up Billy-Bobfurt and his craft from the moon's orbit, affecting a successful rendezvous and grab, and then burned to return to Kerbin. Putting the 10 meter heat shield on the craft worked better than expected - despite having grabbed the craft off-center, I was able to keep all the vital bits safely ensconced behind the shield and returned it successfully, landing in the water about 200 klicks from KSC and netting a fair profit in the process. I had a contract to haul a Juno engine up to a reasonably low speed and flight ceiling, so I got the Bad Idea 1 airplane out of mothballs and sent up Val to do the contract, having swapped out the plane's crappy little bush-plane gear for some small gears. Contract was completed before the plane finished ascending after takeoff, so I flew a quick holding pattern out to thirty klicks and decided to try an IVA landing, the first time I've done that... Bad Idea 1a on final to KSC 09. Landing was successful enough to convince me that I may want to do more IVA landings in the future. Plane touched down intact, but wanted to veer off - so once again it's time to go checking gears, I guess. I picked up three new contracts in the wake of this mission, including one to take surface readings in vicinity of the Wildcat 7. Since I've already got a contract to do the same for Piper Alpha and the two craft are parked 700 meters apart from one another, I figured I might double-up. But I also realize that I'm likely going to need a rover - so it may be time for me to bring the Hellhound 7 out of mothballs and see how well she fares in 1.1.3... Spent the rest of my weekend learning how to boat, so I could drop those buoys in the water. I built a simple watercraft capable of dumping one buoy at a time in the water, and channeling some Vanilla Ice, I dubbed it Yeah, Buoy 7. Two buoys were dropped successfully and I later spent some time making refinements building a craft capable of hauling and dropping more buoys - the Yeah, Buoy 7a: Yeah, Buoy 7a passing the KSC 27 ten kilometer marker. Discovered a lot about KSP boating in the process - it's kinda like a cross between learning how to rover and how to plane. The floaty bits are absolutely necessary and you need to be able to steer. Keeping your thrust in-line with your CoM is helpful, and keeping that low helps the craft stay stable in the water. Since Yeah, Buoy was sent out on a mission to do precision station keeping of buoys, being able to reverse thrust was essential, which is why I went with Whiplashes. Got this design up to 90 m/s at one point with no signs of problems - there aren't many watercraft extant capable of 175 knots... Didn't play but for a short time yesterday; fiddled with the design again and came up with the Yeah, Buoy 7b craft - capable of deploying five buoys and costing a third of the price of the 7a. I plan on trying to alter the design to include some rudders later today, though getting them to not interfere with the operation of the craft on land is going to be tricky. I removed the RTGs favoring panels and batteries, and re-positioned them to deploy vertically instead of horizontally. I did have to lengthen the upper spine a little bit to fit in the fifth buoy, which was not really an issue.

(1.1.3, FAR to go). Not much to report to y'all for the past couple of days. Continued active litterbox testing of the Auk VI ore-recovery plane on Wednesday. Tweaked the fuel load yet again, added some space tape to connect the interior ore containers to the far end of the cargo bay they're in, and double-checked (then doubled-up) on the rear landing gear. Finally brought a full load of ore - 4500 units, 15 tonnes, ♫ and what do you get / another day older and deeper in debt... ♫ - back to KSC 09 successfully by the end of the day. Damn thing still has a tendency to steer to the left on the ground but I did get the plane stopped kinda on the Runway, so I'm calling that a win. I'm hopeful that when I transfer the craft to 1.2.1 eventually that it'll steer straight on the ground. Yesterday being Thanksgiving, I was separated from my box with my main save for most of the day, not getting there until about 9:45 PM and being sent to bed about an hour later. During that time I attempted to launch a Bleepity-Bleep probe bound for Minmus aboard an Auk IV spaceplane, which would've been successful had I locked down the payload's fuel; that flight got reverted. Decided to go ahead and launch the four remaining tourists at KSC to Minmus aboard a space station core; Minmusport 7's launch was successful, and the station should arrive in sixteen days, six days after the arrival of Next Objective. The idea is to have someplace to house those tourists wanting to make surface excursions until I can get a Spamcan lander out there, and in the meantime return tourists whose contracts only involve orbits and fly-bys. Ultimately I'd like to set up another refueling operation like I've got for Mün out there, but I'll need capital to do that, of course. Hey, anybody out there know of any tutorials regarding A) how to boat and B) how to sub? And if anybody knows about any mods that help you put landing gear on straight, I'd like to know about those too...been dealing with that particular issue ever since I first started trying to plane (I guess sometime around 0.23).

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Spent all day yesterday doing test mission flights of the Auk VI ore-delivery SSTO spaceplane. All I can say is that I royally fubared this design. Did a total of four test flights yesterday after adding rudimentary RCS capabilities to the craft. On the first, I discovered I'd pigeon-toed the landing gear and got the deflections on the flaps and spoilers backwards (had flaps at 85 degrees deflection and spoilers at 15), and not all the action groups had been staged corrected. Despite this, the plane made orbit alright and affected an orbital rendezvous and cargo transfer only to run out of fuel in the de-orbit burn. I did the best I could to get the plane's periapsis down on RCS but by the time it reached atmospheric interface it was only at 45k, and I overshot the space center by 450 kilometers to the next continent over. I had problems keeping the nose up and burned off the airspike (a Communotron 16 attached to the front end of an Avionics hub) before entry was complete, and then the landing zone wasn't exactly flat - wound up bouncing hard enough to blow two of the ore tanks and detach the third from the plane along with its RCS supply, this despite the fact that all of the above were safely ensconced in a cargo bay. Came to the conclusion that I had overloaded the plane with too much RCS. Second flight reduced the RCS and made the tweaks I needed to the plane's action groups and control surfaces. Came to the determination that I was still didn't have sufficient fuel to affect a successful rendezvous and recovery. Third flight, I tried adjusting my ascent profile. Same result. Rechecked my calculations for fuel for the number of engines the craft had and came to the determination that I had assumed the plane would have a much higher mass than it did, so it could handle a bigger fuel load. Changed the fuel to what I would load onto a seven-RAPIER plane, and finally made it to orbit with sufficient fuel after rendezvous and docking to de-orbit normally. Which brought me to the final problem - once in atmosphere, I couldn't keep my nose above twenty-degrees above the horizon, and this with Atmosphere Autopilot helping me out. Overshot KSC by 300 kilometers and wound up ditching the plane trying to fly back. In the post-crash analysis I came to the determination that the positioning of the ore tanks shifted the CoM far enough forward to induce lawn dart behavior when they were full. Today I'll try increasing the deflection limits of my pitching surfaces and adding another large SAS wheel, and I'll consider adding more liquid fuel; I still haven't reached the theoretical maximum acceptable takeoff mass for six RAPIERS just yet and another tonne or two of gas might make a difference. If those changes don't work, I'm looking at a fuselage change, always a gigantic pain but you gotta do what you gotta do... So yeah, putting in a lot of work for a plane I may or may not wind up ever needing. There's a reason why Squad included a sandbox mode, y'all, and it's called....uh, the design process, I guess. I mean, Career Mode wasn't around until 0.22 or something like that, IIRC......

Have you tried adjusting the surface material? It's one one of the options for the wing parts that you have to open up with the little plus signs out on the right-hand side and below the sizing bars, something easily missed. Took me a time or two using Procedural Wings to find them my own self. Sorry for the "is it plugged in" type of question, but it's always good to cover all your bases, right?

(1.1.3, FAR to go) With my main save game transferred back onto my home desktop over the weekend, I didn't get a whole lot accomplished yesterday. I did build a practice target in my litterbox for the Auk VI ore hauling spaceplane, testing to see if the plane could return safely to Kerbin's surface with a full load of mined ore. Realized that I didn't design the Auk VI with RCS capabilities and neither did the target, so that target got scrapped awful fast. The new target has rendezvoused with the Auk at this point but I have yet to try to bring it into dock. If I get a chance today, I'll try to finish up this testing - it'd be nice to know if the Auk VI will work if I ever need it to do its intended job. I might also want to break down and put some RCS on the thing... In my main save game, I sent Jeb and Strange Cargo onto Mün with three tourists aboard. The job there is to meet up with the Munport space station, let one of the three go down to the surface for contract, then haul them and four other tourists currently at the station back to Kerbin, closing out all of my current extant Mün-related contracts. With passengers on the way, Old Bessie 7 was dispatched from Munport to the Piper Alpha 7 ore refinery site to bring back another tank of gas for Spamcan 7 and Strange Cargo's arrival. I'm not certain that I won't need to make another fuel trip specifically for Strange Cargo; it's certainly doable, with only the precision landing as the difficult part. The Auk II ferry plane that brought the three passengers to Strange Cargo was also landed. I decided that I would use NavUtilities for gross guidance and then use the old visual marker system for the final approach and landing, since that's how I used to handle landings prior to installing NavUtilities (the whole notion of "go with what you know"). Plane came in okay, and it would've probably been a smoother landing had I not been going off the approach data for KSC 27 instead of KSC 09 like I should've been. Realized my error in time and didn't overshoot the Runway, though the final landing could've been a little better - I landed on the far left. I picked up a contract to do some EVA checking in the vicinity of the Bates Motel 7 outpost on Minmus. With Ziggy aboard awaiting retrieval for contract, it fell to Edner to do the contract, which was made all the more interesting by the fact that Bates Motel was still sliding down the hill from its initial landing - there's a 32-degree slope slope in the vicinity of the outpost. Wound up hitting all four nav points and ran out of EVA fuel about a hundred meters from the outpost; Edner did slide a bit but was otherwise okay, and made his way back to the outpost on foot. Would've done more, but my oldest was watching and I had to shut the game off to get him to go to bed...

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Friday began at the Munport space station, shuffling Kerbals around the four habitable craft docked at the station according to plan and re-balancing resources as needed for the twin landings of the Spamcan 7 and Spamcan 7a landers. With everyone in place, Spamcan 7a undocked from the station and began its descent with four tourists aboard: Spamcan 7a's deorbit burn Wound up coming down on a ten degree slope in the Midlands and started to tip over, so the craft's visit to the surface was just long enough for the four contracts to be counted. Spamcan 7a then successfully returned to the station, after which it was time for the smaller Spamcan 7 to make its descent with another pair of tourists: Spamcan 7 preparing for landing Spamcan 7's landing and retrieval took several tries to get right, admittedly. The craft is better suited for Minmus than Mün - and I think that as soon as I can cobble together a craft capable of doing the job, I'll move it out there. The six tourists having made their trips to the surface and back were then loaded aboard the ferries Strange Cargo and Next Objective (both docked at Munport) for the return to Kerbin. Strange Cargo departed first, with Next Objective leaving half an hour later. Strange Cargo departing Munport While both craft were en route to Kerbin, I went ahead and sent the Bill Clinton 7a long-range grabber probe onto Minmus, with a mission to rendezvous and rescue Kerbal and craft from the moon's orbit. With both craft having been refueled to 2/3 capacity by the Old Bessie 7 fuel delivery craft prior to their departure, powered aerobraking maneuvers were made to put them back around Kerbin; both craft were in low orbits after their respective third passes. I had to circularize Strange Cargo to prevent it making another pass while Next Objective was doing her second aerobraking maneuver... Next Objective aerobraking, with Strange Cargo staying just above the atmosphere nearby. Strange Cargo had been deliberately loaded with a group of tourists whose contracts were effectively completed, so an Auk II passenger drone plane was launched to rendezvous with the craft and bring them all back down. Rendezvous and landing were successful, clearing three tourist contracts in the process and bringing my coffers up to √890k, still √30k short of having enough funding to launch the Piper Alpha 7 refinery craft to Mün, which was my goal for the week. Checking replacement contracts, I picked up a Kerbin orbital science contract, another 2-Kerbal contract for Mün orbit, and a satellite adjustment contract. The Kerbin sci and sat adjustments were easily done, with one of those replacements being a fast parts test contract; I made up the √30k pretty fast. After picking up a Mün surface science, LKO rescue and Minmus outpost contracts, Piper Alpha 7 was launched with engineer Paphe aboard. Like Old Bessie, the craft's fairing gave me issues and I wound up launching without one, and the launch was successful despite the increased drag. Piper Alpha 7 in orbit with final booster stage preparing to separate. Piper Alpha was sent to the landing site of the earlier Wildcat 7 outpost, which had proven to be reasonably ore-rich. She landed 700 meters from Wildcat and operations commenced at once, filling all of her storage tanks up in just a few short hours, clearing a contract to mine ore from Mün in the process. Wildcat herself was used to clear the Münar surface science contract. A contract to adjust another satellite was picked up before I called it quits for the day. And that was all Friday. With Piper Alpha in place, Old Bessie was sent down first thing on Saturday for a precision landing at Piper Alpha to refuel and then bring up a load of fuel for Spamcan 7a still at Munport, all of which was successful (admittedly, Old Bessie's landing took a few tries, but that's why the craft was designed with excessive delta-V in the first place). Four tourists that had been left at Munport following the departure of Strange Cargo and Next Objective made landings on the Mün in the Spamcan in the Canyons - not a place you should send tourists, incidentally. As with its prior flight, the Spamcan stayed just long enough for the contracts to be counted and had to launch before the craft had a chance to tip over. After the craft's successful return to Munport, an Auk III medium-capacity refuel plane was launched to rendezvous with Next Objective in LKO, with that craft deliberately loaded with Minmus-bound tourists prior to its earlier departure from Munport. Rendezvous and docking were successful, and with the craft fully refueled, Next Objective made a burn to go to the minty moon, where it will arrive in another 14 days. I then adjusted the orbit of the Beep-Beep 7c probe for contract. Yesterday was spent on spaceplane shenanigans of various types. The Auk III sent to refuel Next Objective was landed, but she completely overshot the Runway and had to double back and wound up overshooting the Runway again, finally coming down about 700 meters off Runway 27. I'm just glad the craft didn't wind up in the water, honestly. A second Auk III was launched to rendezvous and refuel Strange Cargo - launch and docking were successful, but I utterly botched the re-entry burn; I had failed to return the craft's point of control to its drone core prior to the burn, instead leaving it at its docking port, and the craft wound up coming down in Grasslands completely on the opposite side of Kerbin (and I'd quick-saved just after completing the burn - before realizing my error - so I couldn't correct it). Landing was successful at least but I only got a 41% return on the parts and took a pretty substantial financial hit for the mission as a result. Next up was the flight of an Auk I rescue plane, which I decided to do since I had two LKO rescue contracts. A double-rescue mission was affected, with launch, rendezvous and recovery of both Kerbals successful. Landing was once again eventful; I wound up bouncing the plane on the Runway, then coming down hard and tearing off both engines and the starboard wing before coming to a stop. Obviously, landing is something I need to work on. I picked up a VIP contract for a Mün flyby; with three Kerbals at KSC headed to Mün and four tourists at Mün ready to head back to Kerbin, the three KSC Münbound travelers were loaded aboard an Auk II plane and launched to rendezvous with Strange Cargo; rendezvous and docking were successful. Today I'll be sending Strange Cargo on its way, and I'll try to have better luck landing the Auk II...

Seems like the Kerbal Corps of Engineers is putting the taxpayers' money to good use once again... (1.1.3, FAR to go) Yesterday started with a bit of bookkeeping, figuring out which tourists aboard the Munport 7 space station would be heading down to the surface once the Old Bessie 7 fuel delivery craft arrived with the gas to refuel the landers. I also took the opportunity to standardize the controls on the Auk series of spaceplanes - six different craft and you'd think I would've tried to make life easy on myself by giving them all the same set of controls before now. Made notes on the setup so that future planes would be the same way. The bookkeeping showed that I was going to need to haul more folks home than what Strange Cargo could carry, so Next Objective was dispatched to Mün, Buremy piloting the trip solo. With six hours of nothing to do besides watch three craft hurtling toward Mün, I elected to do a pair of probe launches using Auk IV spaceplanes. The first launch took care of the little geosynchronous orbit probe snafu I had the other day (I still don't know what happened there), while the second was a contract to put a probe in a polar orbit of Mün. Both probe launches were successful, and there were no major issues recovering the planes either (I discovered how to use rocket mode in Atmosphere Autopilot, which made re-entry a lot less intense. Seriously, if you're a flier and you're not using that mod, you need to be - even if you just use it for the fly-by-wire system). Later that evening, Strange Cargo, Next Objective, Old Bessie and Bleepity-Bleep 7b all made it into the Mün's SOI. The first three craft were docked successfully to the Munport station, with the only real issue coming when Strange Cargo's burn to rendezvous with the station came right on the heel's (within five seconds) of the completion of Next Objective's capture burn. Once Old Bessie arrived at the station, Spamcan 7 and Spamcan 7a (the two landers docked at the station) were both refueled to the gills, with enough fuel transferred over to Strange Cargo to fill her main tank up as well. I wasn't planning on having both of the landers available - so now I need to figure out which pair of tourists I want to send down to the Münar surface in addition to the four I planned yesterday... Munport with five craft docked: Old Bessie 7 (upper left), Spamcan 7a (upper middle), Next Objective (upper right), Strange Cargo (lower left), and Spamcan 7 (lower center) Meanwhile, the Bleepity-Bleep 7b probe was put into a polar orbit - only for me to realize I had it going the wrong direction after circularizing. The probe still had sufficient delta-V for me to raise the apoapsis to just within Mün's SOI, flip the direction of the orbit and re-circularize for the contract. I decided to skip the replacement contract - to put a new orbital station in orbit of Mün... Ended the night with a mission to retrieve a Kerbal and his craft from Minmus. I did a quick redesign of the Bill Clinton 7 probe for longer range and larger heat shield (one of the ten meter inflatable jobs), and launched the craft to orbit. Today I'll be sending this craft to Minmus and landing Kerbals on Mün. Time permitting, I'll retrieve said Kerbals from Mün and try to make some serious money in the process. Immediate goal: √950k, so I can finally launch the Piper Alpha 7 refinery to the Münar surface...

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Yesterday began with a design for a booster for the Münar fuel delivery rocket I had started to design before I went to bed the previous night. Without anything better to name it, I went with a Futurama reference and called the craft Old Bessie 7 - makes me wish I'd put some fins on the thing. I had some issues with it when I finally went to launch the craft at the tail end of my day; it kept on having a structural failure while still on the pad which I traced back to the craft's fairing. In frustration, I removed the fairing and tried to launch the thing, fully expecting either the payload to overheat and explode before it made orbit or to run out of gas due to drag losses. Surprisingly, the craft flew just fine without the fairing, and Old Bessie is now on her way to the Munport 7 space station, where the plan is to refuel the Spamcan 7a lander so that a group of tourists can go down to the surface. Old Bessie will then head down to the area of the Wildcat 7 drilling outpost, where the Piper Alpha 7 drilling and refinery rig is still headed once I can raise sufficient funding to launch the damn thing - I'll need both craft for sustained Münar refueling operations to commence, but then I should be able to start raking in the cash from those tourist contracts. Old Bessie's launch cost √421k (with some of that recouped thanks to Stage Recovery), so I've got some work ahead of me. I sent an Auk III refueling flight to Next Objective; the refuel op was successful and the plane landed successfully at KSC 27. With both of my intermunar ferries refueled, I decided I would try to send both of them back to Mün with a load of 4 passengers, so I checked the current tourist roster - only seven of the available tourists had Mün-bound contracts, so I loaded them all aboard an Auk II passenger ferry spaceplane and had it ferry them into LKO, starting with a rendezvous with Jeb aboard Strange Cargo. Rendezvous and docking were successful but it was abundantly obvious that the Auk wouldn't have enough fuel to also reach Next Objective in the same flight, so I changed my mind and loaded all seven passengers aboard Strange Cargo. Jeb set the course for Mün and kicked the engine on at the right time - Strange Cargo is now Mün-bound once again. Strange Cargo, heading on a return trip to Mün. Retreival of the Auk was...interesting. I came in too high and wound up overshooting the Runway, barely missing the probe-rover that marks the inner marker of KSC 09 in the process. Snapped off the ventral airbrakes, but otherwise the plane came to a stop just off the Runway, still close enough to get full marks for most of the parts. The Plan for today is to get Strange Cargo and Old Bessie to Munport, send down a batch of tourists and then see who's ready to head back to Kerbin. If needed, I'll send Next Objective that way too to pick up other Kerbin-bound folks. If it turns out that I don't need Next Objective for that task, I might see about loading up Minmus-bound travellers and sending them out that way. Still hoping to recoup enough funds to launch Piper Alpha - I have a total of nine active tourist contracts at the moment for 27 tourists total, and it sure would be nice to clear a few of them...

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Yesterday's fun and games began with the design of the Auk V light refuel and refitting spaceplane, designed to deliver four tonnes of fuel to orbit. Using KAS parts, the craft is capable of refueling anything with a connector port, and it carries the tools to attach craft that don't have said ports already, such as the Bleepity-Bleep 7 probe delivered to LKO yesterday by the doomed Auk IV. Of course, such operations require the use of a Kerbal, preferably a Kerbal engineer such as Bill, who apparently I haven't sent on any missions prior to yesterday. Shame on me... I hadn't intended to do Auk V as a tailless delta design since I've had issues with those in the past, but the overall design parameters of the craft pretty much required it. Took a few tries to get enough pitch authority to fly the stupid thing, but ultimately I got it up and got a quick rendevous with Bleepity-Bleep 7. The rest was cake. Auk V approaching Bleepity-Bleep 7. Bill has attached the connector port to the probe. Probe and plane successfully attached via winch cable. Fuel transfer took place and the Auk V landed successfully at KSC 09. One thing I hadn't noticed - and didn't notice until the plane was on final - was that the fin was tilted to port. I'm surprised that didn't affect the flight adversely; it's a design flaw that has been corrected at this point and a relatively minor point on what was otherwise a successful mission overall. So with Bleepity-Bleep refueled and ready to go, I went to put the probe into its final orbit for contract. Got it there with a minimal amount of deviation and...the damn game didn't give me the contract. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Antenna, check. Power generation, check. Contract accepted on Friday, probe launched on Monday and put into position Tuesday, check. WTK? Really cheesed about this - I need the money from that contract badly... Later in the day I designed the Auk VI, a ferry plane designed to haul ore from orbit to the surface. I have no immediate need for this plane and I still need to do some testing on it to see if it can do its intended job without running out of gas. At least it makes orbit okay. Auk VI with bay doors open. Ended my day by replacing the Panther engines on the Bad Idea 5 surveyor plane with a pair of Whiplashes, and then sending the thing on a surveying mission 1200 klicks from KSC towards the poles with Val aboard. I've never noticed that Kerbin has rivers before... On her way back to KSC, Val landed to do a ground temperature survey, which went well. Overall the flight went well but I botched the final landing at KSC 09 badly and the plane disintegrated - fortunately, Val survived the crash and is now being treated for minor burns and sued for loss of craft... Also began preliminary design on a craft that would deliver an X200-32's worth of fuel from the Münar surface to LMO, but that's not all that far along - barely worth mentioning, actually. Haven't really got a good name for it yet, either.

(1.1.3, FAR to go) Spent most of yesterday building and rebuilding craft. A fair amount of time was spent on the design for a booster for the Piper Alpha 7 refinery craft; as feared, the craft came in at just over a thousand tonnes with a price tag of √916k, too expensive for me to launch at the present time, so I decided I should try to knock out a few more contracts to gain some capital. I built a testing rig for the Rhino engine (I didn't need the contract any more since I'd unlocked the Rhino) and made a quick √50k, then picked up a second temperature survey contract. I'll be taking a look at possible tech upgrades to the Bad Idea 5 surveyor plane, mainly to switch out its Panthers for Whiplashes so I can go higher, faster. Probably do that later today. With a contract to deliver a probe to geosynch orbit, I set my mind to designing the Auk IV, a probe-delivery spaceplane. The craft was mostly successful - it did make it to orbit, delivered its payload and re-entered successfully - though it had two critical design flaws: I forgot to lock down the fuel on its payload, so I didn't notice it didn't have full tanks once it was delivered, and the wings were too loose; there were a couple of times during the re-entry that I would've sworn they were coming off the plane. Flappy Bird 7 would've been a good alternative name for the craft - that bad. And ultimately what prevented a successful recovery, which sucked since I was trying to save money... Auk IV delivering a Bleepity-Bleep 7 probe Bleepity-Bleep 7 deployed with Auk IV in the background. Since I was designing planes and I'd had success with a redesign of the Auk I rescue spaceplane the previous day, I decided to take another look at the Auk III medium tanker, and came to the determination that really it just needed another pair of engines. Engines added, fuel load re-distributed, and this happened: Auk III tanker docked with Strange Cargo Auk III was recovered intact and now Strange Cargo is ready for another ferrying run to Mün. Debating as to whether I want to load it up with more passengers or just send it empty so it can haul a few of the tourists already there back. The sister ship Next Objective is next up on the refuel list now that Auk III is finally operational. I'll likely send one craft empty, one craft full I also recovered the initial Auk II launched to retrieve the passengers from Next Objective, a successful landing that brought back in the money for the craft's parts. In addition to the refueling flights, I have plans to either send up a Bill Clinton 7 grabber probe to try to haul down Bleepity-Bleep 7 or send Bill up for a KAS refuel flight, and I'm thinking about building an ore-hauler - one will become Auk V, the next Auk VI, of course. Probably will attempt the refuel of Bleepity-Bleep 7 to try and recoup some of the losses from Auk IV's maiden voyage. I've already corrected the flaws of that design and hope to try again in the near future. End this with some screenies from the other day: Bill Clinton 7 probe hauling down a Hammer booster. The Munport 7 space station.