jfull

Maybe I'll grab a bunch of them and connect them all to a space station. it would be interesting to look at if nothing else...

From a difficulty and technical standpoint? That would probably be my Moho landing and return mission:

Its probably fine that its less dense than Jool, but I really doubt it would be realistic to have its density be less than 1 g/cm3, considering that all planets in KSP are an order of magnitude denser than their real-world counterparts. Anyway, keep up the good work. Too many of the planet packs I've seen either add too many objects, add unrealistic things like moons around moons, or are just not in the spirit of KSP.

Praying that the Kraken is really dead

Part 5: Onward to Bop After 2 months of leave on Kerbin, the crew takes yet another shuttle ride up to the Intrepid. This would be the flight the ship was always intended for, to reach Jool and survey its outer moons. It would take them further than Kerbalkind had ever been. After Bill safely landed the shuttle back on Kerbin (I really hope I don't ever have to do any more landings from a retrograde orbit any time soon) the crew got to work restarting all the systems that had been left in sleep-mode while they were away. Lofal: "Hey, where's where's the icecream sandwich I didn't finish? I left it right here between the life-support coolant tanks so it would stay frozen 'till I got back!" Bob: "I saw you leave it there and I threw it away, we both know you shouldn't leave anything in there" Lofal: *grumbling* "Whatever... but you owe me a dessert." Just before the transfer window to Jool reached its most optimal point, I sent the Argon tanker on its way to Jool. And now for the Intrepid itself. The engines are set to a higher thrust, lower efficiency setting than usual, but the ejection burn still needs to be split up between two orbits around Kerbin. You have to wonder, would the sight of your home world shrinking in in the window become routine after a while? Or would continue to have emotional impact every time? While the crew could simply go into hibernation for the long transfer to Jool, many Kerbal scientists have raised concerns that hibernating for extended periods could have adverse effects on the physical and mental capacity of Kerbalnauts. So, in between their hibernation shifts, the crew keep themselves busy with boardgames, watching and re-watching their movie library, and exercising in the centrifuges. Finally, after months staving off boredom, the Intrepid draws close to the majesty of Jool and its moons Lofal: "Hey, everybody get up to the cupola, Jool's moons decided to but on a little show for us" After a minute everyone crams in behind Lofal's seat in the cupola. Jonnie: "What are you talking abou- oh wow, they're all lined up!" BB: "Wait a second, whats that little speck by Laythe?" Hans: "It must be Bop!" Sure enough it was Bop, just barely close enough to be seen. Oddly enough, despite the Intrepid launching toward Jool a few days after the tanker, it arrived a few days before it. As the ship drew close to periapsis, the reactors were brought up to full power for the breaking burn. This brought the Intrepid into an orbit that was just inside Bop's. about a day or so later, the argon tanker reached periapsis, and performed its breaking burn. Rendezvousing the Intrepid with Bop would be tricky, just like with Gilly, and I didn't want to waste Argon. I an easy method would be to just match Bop's inclination, but I had another idea. If I treated Bop like a ship I was trying to rendezvous with, and payed close attention to the closest approach indicator, I could adjust the Intrepid's orbit to meet Bop at the ascending or descending nodes. I worked out fairly well, but it meant that I'd be coming at Bop from an odd angle. And by "odd angle" I mean completely vertically. The crew remark that, aside from the huge impact markings, Bop just looks like a much larger Gilly. Surprisingly, it doesn't take too much to turn this polar orbit into an equatorial one. From here at Bop, we can see all of the inner solar system, with the markers of every mission undertaken by Kerbal-kind. I kinda had a slightly emotional moment when I saw this, it reminded me of how far this space program had come. Just like on Gilly, the 2 landers would be used to investigate different sites on the surface of Bop. First to the surface would be Hans, who was feeling a bit nervous, apparently something about Bop was making him uneasy. BB gave him a pep-talk though and soon he was on his way down to Bop, bound for the center of the large impact site. Hans begins taking samples on the surface and reports nothing out of the ordinary. Jebediah himself will make the next landing. Originally he was supposed to visit a site of suspected tectonic stress to the west of Hans' landing, but yesterday KSC sent a message containing a revised landing site, far to the north. Ever since that message came through, Jeb hasn't been as talkative with the other crew... Suddenly, as he descends to the surface, something happens. Jeb: "What the heck!?" Bob: "What is it Jeb? whats wrong? Jeb: "Nothing, nothing's wrong I just thought I saw something is all, my mistake." Jeb makes a gentle landing between some hills Bob: "okay Jeb, everything looks good, you are go for EVA" Jeb: "Roger that... wait... I think I'm getting........ losing... ower..." Bob: "Jeb, are you there? Please respond!" *silence* --[THE FOLLOWING IS CLASSIFIED]-- Jeb shut down his radio, and deactivated the lander's homing beacon to make it look like he'd lost power. The rest of the crew weren't supposed to know about this. He exited his lander through the airlock, and lifted off with his EVA pack. Slowly, he flew over Bop's lumpy brown surface. And then, as he crested the next hill, he saw what he had been sent to find. He set down a few dozen meters from the object, and approached it on foot. There was no denying it, it was an alien life form. Or at least, it had been. It seemed very lifeless now... it must have crashed into the surface with enough force to kill it. Or maybe it had simply come here to die. Jebediah didn't feel like speculating. He had a job to do and he wanted to get it done as fast as he could. He jetpacked up onto the massive creature, took some samples, and placed a flag to mark the location. As Jeb jetpacked back to his lander, he wondered if his crew deserved to know about this find. But the orders were to keep it secret unless absolutely necessary, and he was going to follow those orders. Unknown to him, something small and curious had been following him since he had arrived... --[Classified Report Ends]-- Suddenly, after 20 minutes of silence, Jeb's radio was back online. Jeb: "This is Jebediah calling the Intrepid, can you hear me?" Bob: "Yes, yes! we read you loud and clear Jeb!" Lofal "What the heck was that about Jeb?! You had us all worried sick!" Bob: "Please disregard Lofal's comment Jeb, we're all very relieved to know you're okay. But what happened?" Jeb: "Looks like an electrical surge shorted out main power, I just spent the last 20 minutes replacing all the fuses." Bob: "Well thats no good, Hans is all done surveying his landing site, I recommend we get both of you back up to the Intrepid asap." Jeb: "Uhm, sure, yes. I'm taking off now, tell Hans to do the same." In short order, Hans and Jeb were back in space and docked with the Intrepid. (I've become somewhat of a pro at rendezvous and docking by now) After storing all the experiments and samples from the surface (including some strange ones in sealed black bags), the engines were brought up to full and the Intrepid departed Bop for its next destination, Pol! This update took a little while, probably because I've been playing other games and dealing with real-life things lately. As you can see, this one has a bit more going on story-wise than some of the other updates. Thanks for reading!

This is actually a really neat design for female Kerbals. Simple and unoffensive

Its a beautiful IVA, the only problem is that everything in it appears to be under the influence of gravity. not just the pencils and the containers but the liquids in the test tubes too. It would be fine as part of a ground base, but its just not a realistic zero-g lab

The B9 attachment nodes are slightly off of stock actually, I'm pretty sure these fit better to stock than B9 does. And of course B9 has a bicoupler, but this mod has its own. Its not as if everyone is using this mod and B9

fatass? Its beautiful!

That might only scatter it's spores!

Obviously it was all an elaborate marketing scheme to promote Call of Duty Ghosts a few years in advance. Seriously though, I have no idea what its for

Just be thankful there isn't B9 levels of part-bloat in this mod.

Squad should just pay you for these and integrate them into the stock game.

This would actually qualify for a gravity assist challenge I posted a while ago awesome work

I'd say it isn't any one thing. You have to either be amazing at a few aspects of the game, or a bit above competent at everything.

Except thats... kinda what they managed to do with Apollo. I'll admit that modern NASA doesn't work the same way it did in the Apollo era, and probably won't any time soon, but just remember that necessity is the mother of invention.

Alternately, it might be possible to use the SLS upper stage as a wet workshop, like in the Apollo Venus flyby proposal.

Looks alright, if a bit small. I wonder if an inflatable module of similar weight could be used instead

Has anyone speculated on what kind of craft would be used for this? Would it be a scaled down MTV/Copernicus type vehicle, or perhaps something closer to a scaled up Deep Space Habitat: Also, will this require the use of an NTR or could it be done with a chemical rocket?

It might not be too hard to "piggyback" a small probe for Phobos on this mission. Plus, having a crewed vehicle so close by would mean that they could act as mission control for the probe, with nearly real-time control. Actually... this is starting to sound pretty clever, somebody send this to NASA!

This is true. From a scientific standpoint, we'd probably learn a lot more from a robotic mission to Europa or another probe to Titan than we will by this flyby. One has to really consider whether manned exploration makes a whole lot of sense when you weigh the costs and the risks. However, I feel like this mission would be worth it, if only because it pushes the development of Orion and the SLS. Honestly, it seems to me like things have been looking up in the world of aerospace lately. The economy is (maybe) stabilizing, the US might be reducing military spending, we have probes that will be arriving at dwarf planets and comets soon, and most importantly I think both the government and the general population have realized that we're falling behind all our expectations for space exploration.

Why do you seem to suddenly have full fuel after landing on Duna? Am I missing something? Wait, nevermind, it only looked that way because you weren't using fuel pipes and had to move fuel around manually. Wonderful design by the way

Uhm, all the proposals I've seen for landing on Mars require a lander and a habitat to be sent to Mars separately before the crew-carrying craft. Also, said crew carrying craft must carry enough propellant to eject from earth, brake into orbit at Mars, and then eject from Mars. A flyby only requires a single craft with fuel for ejection from Earth, and a small amount more for getting the right trajectory back to earth after the flyby. This would be much smaller in scale and could be done much sooner than a full Mars landing. Plus it will provide a much needed opportunity to test the technologies necessary for a full-scale mission. Just like Apollo program included manned flybys of the Moon to test the Command Module. I know it doesn't seem like it would be a very significant mission, but it IS progress, and it IS necessary to ensure the safety of future missions.

I think it's a good goal to do a Mars/Venus flyby along with a Near Earth Object mission before we go all the way to Mars. Sure, we're theoretically capable of going right to a full Mars landing, but I don't think people appreciate how much could go wrong with a mission that complex. We need to get a feel for interplanetary travel first before an interplanetary landing.

Lucky, usually my dreams are never consistent like that and keep changing the rules they operate by. Anytime I dream about a video game I switch from being in the game to just being me playing the game, and eventually it fades into some boring real-life situation