Echostatic

That was just the first flight, to test if it was an effective method of debris removal. Turns out it is, or will be with some small changes.

Clipping structural stuff into other structural stuff makes perfect sense to me. So you want a custom part welded together, why not?

I decided that, rather than leave debris floating up in space, I would build a ship to capture it and take it back down. This is what I came up with. It's basically a large box with some essential bits stuck on it. Lots of engines to get it into orbit. And lots of struts to keep everything attached to everything else. The winch and electromagnet can be seen at the top of the box here. Got it on the launch pad, Jeb is really excited to go back into space! This test has the objective of intercepting one piece of debris, bringing it into the cargobay with the electromagnet, and taking it back to Kerbal. Aaaaaand no. Sorry Jeb, you will not go to space today. At least he survived, and still seems very excited about it all. Turns out the launch clamps were clipping into the SRBs. The clamps were rearranged, the launch pad tidied up, and attempt two resulted in a successful liftoff! Carefully thrusting away from the spent stage, which was left on a suborbital trajectory, of course. In orbit! Now, to find a piece of debris. Found one! Jeb made the necessary burns to get an intercept. Looking good... Ah, it's a large stack separator. This will make for an excellent test. Time to step outside Jeb. Jeb needs to go inside the cargobay and retrieve the electromagnet. So far so good, now he needs to stick it onto the ring. Anywhere will do. 'Atta boy! Now, time to get back to the ship and reel it in! He is so excited because he knows he is doing a very good job. Start reeling carefully until it's in the bay... There we go! Now just disengage the magnet and close the doors! I don't have any screenshots, but I had to load from a quicksave after discovering that loose debris will not stay put in the bay if you time warp. The separator got lodged partway in the ship creating an uncontrollable spin and ruined everything. So, after fixing that, and keeping the debris safely in the bay, it was time to come home. Time to bail! Rotate the ship so it doesn't plow into you when you blow yourself free... Aaaand detach! Looks like a safe splashdown is in Jeb's future. The garbage box keeps going. The ring is still inside. Moments before impact. Somehow the electromagnet survived. So that concluded the test. The craft is perfectly capable of collecting debris and returning it to Kerbin. The clipping during time warp is going to be a big problem if more than one piece is collected per flight, but I believe quantum struts will fix that. I should be able to use them to carry up to four pieces of debris at a time, if I can manage my fuel well enough to get that many. Overall, I would say it was a very successful flight!

I made a garbage ship. I'm about to post a thread about it's test flight actually. Here it can be seen retrieving an old stack separator via electromagnet. The doors close behind it.

Hmm... I just might start a new save. Rediscover everything again. Do it all better.

Yes. Yes we do.

I don't spend a *whole* lot of time in the VAB, but I do like to make new rockets for everything I do. Mechjeb does not appeal to me, but I like some mods. My goals are spontaneous and all over the place. One launch I may be trying to place a satellite in orbit around Moho, next launch I may be sticking a new collection of parts on a space station, and next launch I may be gluing a bunch of SRBs together for Jeb to play with.

You really never forget. I remember the first time I reached the Mun, I came down on the dark side with no lights. Kaboom. But the second time I reached it, I totally made it! Going on EVA was the biggest thrill.

That moment when you finally place a large rover onto Dres, only to have it jitter slightly when at a stop, preventing you from quicksaving or going to the space port. Or that moment when you are in the middle of a beautiful launch and a storm kills the power.

The hardest part of docking for me, for a while, was figuring out what I was supposed to align with what on the navball. I had to dock several times before I really understood how it all worked, but now as long as my RCS thrusters are properly aligned, it's no problem. Docking is still one of the most satisfying things to do in KSP for me.

I was giggling like a maniac from the moment it left the pad.

I'm sure things like birds and animals would be easy to put in as 2 dimensional critters with minimal animation. They wouldn't look good up close, but seeing herds from a distance would still look nice.

I enjoy this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_csZvamJvg

The deserts have cacti

I've had a bug a couple times now, where my ship will automatically pitch in one direction without touching the controls. I have to go to the tracking station and back to the ship to make it stop...

Hope they quicksaved.

Mine have recently started to do so. They've been contemplating other things, too. It's starting to make me nervous...

My most recent experiment uses a few of the tiny SRBs to push the spent stages away. Glad to finally find a use for 'em.

Just wanted to say, this is pretty amazing.

I only play lightly modded, but as far as anything I consider essential? Two words. Quantum. Struts. I consider them practically essential when making something like a station that will be made up of multiple parts docked together. Makes the whole thing very rigid.

Aliens. Always aliens.

Are you talking about a plane using jet engines and stuff? If so, Eve's atmosphere has no oxygen, so they won't produce thrust.

My system is clean now. I had so much debris, I couldn't select my stations as targets. Got fed up with it.

One of my space stations is armed with four heavy missiles. Just sayin'.

I never understood how to read that one, the numbers don't make sense like they do in the first image posted.