Cydonian Monk

Sounds like a plan! -- Balanced Imbalance A quick 5 minute review of the Silicon 1 launch showed the issue was caused in part by an imbalance in the payload. Despite the food modules being directly offset, the oxygen and water modules were opposite of each other. So the mass being slightly imbalanced, combined with the payload "lobes" being 45 degrees offset from the pitch/yaw axes was more than the avionics could handle. So the payload was rebalanced and the life support module slightly redesigned. The changes allowed the interns to cram in a couple more years worth of water and oxygen. They also added an extra reaction wheel to the "propulsion unit" upper stage to provide a bit more in the way of avionics control. Since the craft was already too heavy for the LV-06, Wernher spent a few minutes upgrading the design to provide a bit more ooomph. Thus was born the LV-07 Crescendo. With 8 Tantares-built "Walrus" main engines (with 4 nozzles each), and 8 smaller motors for pitch and yaw authority, the LV-07 sported an impressive 40 fire-breathing nozzles at its base. And it was more than capable to lofting the Silicon 2 into orbit. The second stage was powered by a twin-chambered AIES Produl VR-2 engine, which aside form having issues with gimbaling, was otherwise perfect. (I'm not sure what exactly was going wrong, but I had to abort the flight control program with the second stage as it was completely unable to alter its pitch with engine gimbal. The rest of the launch was conducted HOTAS.) The second stage was (by design) unable to place the entire payload into orbit, so the task was finished by the third stage. This third stage would do double duty as the ship's "propulsion module" during the initial craft tests. Once initial testing was complete, the Silicon 2's third stage would remain in orbit to be used as a space tug. (The trip to the Mün would require another, larger propulsion module.) It took at least two more orbits for the rendezvous with Kelgee Station to be completed. Initial approach was performed in the dark, as it only fitting. The final docking took place just as the sun limped over the limb of Kerbin. (For some unknown reason the RCS and SAS systems kept flipping on and off during this docking, which made things far more difficult than they should've been. Given that Kelgee Station now has 516 parts probably gives some idea as to what kind of frame rate I'm getting while in its vicinity, and that lag is a likely cause of the weird control glitches.) -- Some Assembly Required With the Silicon 2 docked up, Rondous was ready to head out and start his EVA work. First target was the RTG on the former SSTO docked at Kelgee. With that RTG safely in his bag-of-holding inspired inventory, he then made his way to the (once critically problematic) science pod. In addition to a few science instruments, the science pod included the second RTG at Kelgee Station. Until the rest of the Silicon DSH's bits and pieces were in orbit, the plan was to store the two RTGs inside the "trunks" of the ship. Afterwards the two RTGs, and any others harvested by the crew, would be attached to the ends of the solar trusses. The science instruments were installed straight away. Once final bit of work awaited Rondous - moving four batteries from the Silicon 2 to the habitat module being retrofitted at Kelgee. This move, as well as the addition of a set of cargo bags from a resupply craft to be launched later, would allow the habitat and its crew to survive a short amount of time should they become disconnected from the rest of the ship. With these tasks done, Rondous headed back inside and took the rest of the day off. Soon he and Gletrix would need to leave the station in search of at least two more RTGs. Navigation: Next Post

Basically this. There are only three real pitfalls here that I've stumbled into: 1) If you copy over a craft with a kerbal in it, you have to also copy over the kerbal and their stats or remove them from the craft. Search for "crew = " in the VESSEL entry in the save file to see how they're referenced. Having unreferenced crews in ships WILL break the save. Badly. 2) If you copy a vessel over from the "future" you won't be able to use Action Groups until you're Back To The Future. Basically, every time an action group is triggered a timestamp is set for it. Best bet is to always copy craft in from a game that's still at Year 1 Day 1 Hour 0 into a game that's further down the timeline. These can be cleared by setting them to 0 otherwise. The Action Group timestamps are at the end of the VESSEL entry (I think.... or may be at the end of each part.... will need to search for that one). 3) The flight state is important. Some values aren't initialized until the vessel has "launched". In your scenario, copying direct from the launchpad or runway, you should be ok. But copying from the launchpad pre-launch and into orbit can lead to Very Bad Things.

Mission Improbable "We're now tracking well over 320 pieces of Stuff and 20 or so Things, not including our own satellites." MacFred posted an updated map view on the conference room's big board, scrolling out from Kerbin into the greater Solar System. "As expected there's considerably more around Kerbin, but there appears to be Stuff on or orbiting every known planet and moon. And thanks to the comms network Sieta discovered on Baile Speir we know a few of the frequencies and protocols used by the older equipment. At the same time the Magnesium satellites have been more useful than we could've hoped, though the real heroes are the Neon Heavies." "How so?" "Noise, Gene. Radio noise. While the Magnesiums have shown us flares to track, the Neon Heavies have just been listening. And there are still lots of things talking, just, we can't talk to them. Or don't know how to talk to them. Or they're talking and not listening." "Ja, like on that KerbSpace website all ze jungenkerben are using." "The what now Wernher?" "KerbSpace. On ze DubDubDub." Elkin looked up from his notes, face contorted in confusion. "Aren't we already in space? Well, not right this minute obviously, but..." The Boss's hand raised and the conversation refocused. "What's the situation at Jool?" MacFred flipped through some notes and pulled up the Joolian System on the big board. "Well, as we'd expect with five moons, Jool shows the highest concentration of noise outside of Kerbin. There are a couple candidate Things, but almost all of what we've recorded falls under Stuff. We're fairly certain one of the Thing-candidates is a communications link, but so far it's refusing to respond to our commands." "Ok, change of plans." The Boss stood and tossed a set of folders onto the conference table. "Your next mission, should you choose to accept it or not, is to send astrokerbs to Jool." The room gasped. Wernher jumped up and started pacing. "Jool? Mein kraken. This, but, yet, ... Why? Shouldn't vee go to ze Mün und ze Minmus first? Our crews have never flown beyond Close Kerbin Orbit...." "I have" Thomlock interjected. "... Ve don't know what effect such travel und such time will have on the biology. And the food needed? The amount of time spent there? The fuel? Impossible." "The requirements are measurable," countered The Boss, "and noted in those plans. And they'll be going to the Mün first to test the ships." "What about power?" Mardi waved a stack of papers from one of the folders in the air. "The life support's ventilation system alone will use more power than our best solar arrays can generate at Jool." "You won't use solar, at least not entirely." The Boss pointed upwards at nothing specific. "There are three Things in orbit that have RTGs attached to them, and good odds there's nore. Some may have decayed beyond use, others might still be salvageable. You'll use those. You also won't need to launch habs for the crew. There are enough extra modules at Kelgee to meet the requirements, enough to build the first ships I have in mind. Most of these ships will be assembled from recycled parts." Wernher sat down and started furiously scribbling notes. "Why? Why this sudden und dangerous change of plan?" "None of the Things we've stumbled on have had any crews, living or dead, and none of their notes hint as to where they went. If there's anyone still alive, if they're out there and not dependent on Kerbin, they're at Laythe. Simple math." Gene looked around the room to get a consensus. Most were still in shock, some were absentmindedly munching on crunchy snacks. Gletrix was staring through the window at something outside. One of the interns was using the spring in his ink pen to launch it into the air like a rocket. Nobody seemed to object or raise any other questions. "Ok, we'll do it." "Good. Assemble your teams and get to work. This meeting will self destruct in five seconds." "What?!" "Sorry, old joke. Good luck." "Excuse me," Mortimer raised his hand, casually pointing his gold-plated pen at nothing in particular while reading over the plans. "How do you propose we pay for this Jool-Shot?" "I'm glad you asked." The Boss waved towards one of the doors. "Would someone kindly let the World's First representative in?" The door opened and an exasperated-looking kerbal wheeled in a cart stacked dangerously high with plaques and reward envelopes. He started into his speech without delay. "We at the World's First Record Keeping Society have discussed your recent accomplishments. Namely establishing proof of objects in orbit of and/or landed on Moho, Eve, Gilly, Duna, Ike, Dres, Jool, Laythe, Tylo, Vall, Pol, Bop, and Eeloo; and suborbital and atmospheric flight at Duna. We understand the origins of these craft are largely unknown, and have decided that, in the absence of the space program responsible, you should be awarded for their accomplishments." "Atmospheric flight at Duna?" Macfred shook his head. "Don't ask." The Boss handed the thick stack of award checks to his accountant. "Does this answer your question?" Mort's smile was the only answer needed. -- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle The first ship to visit Jool would make use of one of the three-hitchhiker-unit habitation modules at Kelgee. (Of which there were five.) The vessel would remain as a microgravity ship, meaning its crew would be without the familiar downward force of gravity for several years. Thankfully weightlessness has only a minimal impact on melted cheese and corn chips. Project Silicon would oversee the build-out of this Deep Space Habitat (DSH), reusing as much of Kelgee Station and other such Things as they could. Including two of the solar array armatures (four of which were no longer used in Kelgee's current configuration). The only completely new portions of the ship would be the life support and propulsion modules. Life support as the ancients apparently had no need of such, and propulsion because nothing so far discovered would be able to propel such a heavy craft to Jool and back inside the natural lifetime of the crew. The purpose of their mission was twofold: Conduct a cursory survey of the Joolian System and its moons; and Conduct a ground survey of Laythe by aircraft. A second (or third, or fourth) ship would be sent along with landers for the smaller moons, a small shuttle to get between the interesting points, the aircraft needed for flying around Laythe, a small surface base for refueling said Laythe aircraft, and the Laythe Descent/Ascent Vehicle (LDAV). A third ship would include extra fuel for orbital operations and the return journey, while a fourth would transport several communications and mapping satellites. The Silicon DSH would be tested first with a trip to the Mün, a rather short shakedown cruise for a ship expected to be in use for seven or more years. (Unfortunately the agency was lacking in the technology needed to develop a drive capable of propelling the Silicon DSH to Jool, so such a mission was absolutely essential. Science points don't grow in cheese afterall.) The first step in assembling the DSH was to round up all of the old RTGs. To meet basic electrical needs, the designers estimated they would need at least 4 of the older ones, provided they were still in good condition. They were as-of-yet unable to produce such a magical device, nor were they able to refine the blutonium needed to power it, but there were rumours circulating that AIES had one such device in the works should the older ones not pan out. -- Nitrogen TC-12 Gletrix and Rondous were chosen as the first assembly crew for the Silicon DSH-1. They would dock at Kelgee Station and begin retrofitting the crew modules while awaiting the DSH core to arrive. Once that was at the station, Rondous would venture out and remove the various RTGs from the ships docked to Kelgee and transfer them to the core. The duo would then venture out to other locations in Low-Kerbin orbit to hopefully recover more dangerous and hot nuclear material. Another standard Nitrogen TC class, another perfect launch. The crew were delivered to Kelgee after less than one orbit. To facilitate the latter portion of their mission, the upper stage of the Nitrogen was left fully fueled at launch, and as such still had half of its fuel reserve available when the Nitrogen TC-12 arrived. Safely docked, the two began work on what would soon become the home of four lucky kerbals for a five year mission to Jool. -- Silly Silicon The life support core of the Silicon DSH consisted of seven years worth of food, five years worth of water and oxygen, a carbon scrubber and a water purifier, and attachment nodes for the utility trusses. (The two trusses would include four solar arrays borrowed from Kelgee, four radiators, more batteries, and perhaps some other amenities.) A utility tunnel runs down the length of the core, with access to all four of the life support pods as well as the electronics for vessel control. Finally, the ship's short-range communications equipment was attached to the "spine plates", structural members to be used to strut the fore and aft sections of the craft together once the drive section was in orbit. Launching such a beast was outside of the capabilities of all of the launch vehicles presently in use, which presented quite a problem. Wernher had something of a solution: Eight "V-2" LV-01s strapped to the side of an LV-06 Cadence rocket with an SRB kick-motor inserted into the core of the same. (There is a void inside of the LV-06's eight motors where just such an SRB can be attached.) The liftoff was glorious. Sixteen liquid-fuelled engines and one tiny RT-10 "Hammer" SRB provided just enough thrust to lift the seven years worth of food, five years worth of supplies, and other miscellaneous equipment off the launchpad. The command center broke into open celebration as the Silicon 1 sailed upwards out of the billowing cloud of smoke and vapor. And then gradually the room fell silent as the massive tower of burning death began to turn towards them. Eyes were glued to the windows as it roared to the West, soon out of sight but not out of mind. "Are rockets supposed to turn West?" "Solid booster burnout," called the Booster officer. "Stage 1 separation." "Flight, RSO. That booster is going to crash on the VAB." "Copy Range. Signal shelter in place. Issue the abort to Si-1 once the bulk of the rocket is clear of the space center." The VAB was strong enough to withstand a single Hammer (having survived at least three Fleas), but the damage done to the roof of the building might cause issues should anyone want to land there. More concerning was the Silicon 1 was now veering towards the densely populated towns West of the space center. Towns where many of the employees and interns lived. Town where much of their funding came from. This launch was highly unlikely to help their reputation. "Flight, RSO. Si-1 negative Abort. Zero control." Nor would it help their bank balance. Much of the money from the World's First awards had been spent on upgrading facilities and on adding variety to the eternally molten fountain of cheese in the snack room. (Determined snackers now had a choice of liquid kheddar, kolby jack, feta, and other such diverse cheeses.) This was not an inexpensive launch. "Flight, RSO. Debris projected to fall short of inhabited areas, 9 kilometers due west of the space center. May want to step away from the windows though." Gene let out a sigh and shepherded a few other curious onlookers away from the windows. He was staring blankly at the press gallery at the back of the room when the concussive blast from 180 tonnes of fuel and hardware being atomized caused the building to rattle. Nearly 140,000 funds worth of rocket; seven years of food and five years worth of supplies, now burning in a crater somewhere to their West. The oxygen-fed fires would burn for days. "GC, Flight." "Go ahead flight." "Lock the doors." ... Which was remarkably easy to do, as the debris from the Silicon 1 crash had somehow corrupted the universe and made it impossible to open the doors. Or the save. Yay. Time for a redesign. And for a quick cleaning of the old persistence file. And for a quick snack. Or maybe dinner. Navigation: Next Post

I'm not entirely certain. It's really more of a trucking company simulator with an emphasis on driving, with the business aspects gamified. No different than any other business simulator, which is the part that looks attractive to me. A bit like Elite: Dangerous or Privateer in that respect. And it was $17 or something cheap. The driving can be a bit peaceful at times. There's none of the stress of everything you mentioned (aside from the occasional idiot in a Prius jumping in front of you at 30MpH while you're cruising around Nevada at 80), and you can just get out and drive. I did something similar for a year and a half after college, though our trucks were all fixed frame boxtrucks, no semis (so we could skirt CDL laws). One of the most pleasant parts of it was just being out on the road, even in winter. (Getting a truck stuck sideways on a frozen creek that doubled as a county road is more fun than I care to remember... or not.) But again that wasn't long-haul, so I was home every night. This game captures a bit of that, in a sorta-free-world exploration type of game. In 1:24th scale near as I can tell. Otherwise it doesn't have much appeal to it. Parking trailers is still a [colorful four or five letter word]. Along those lines, I know many professional railroaders that are into model railroading (both real and virtual), and a few still happy ones that want nothing to remind them of work when they're off-duty. I'm 100% certain none of my cousins would go for a Fire or EMS simulator (no, I'm not talking about Surgeon Simulator....) though most of them love their work. So it's hard to say what pulls certain folks to certain games.

Getting it up and running again was relatively easy.... had to delete a 0-part "debris" craft and the rogue antenna from the persistence file. (Chalk this one up to "things not to do when using KAS and/or IR.") Just to be safe I deleted every other piece of debris named "Nitrogen TC-11", and the save loaded perfectly afterwards. Speaking of Infernal Robotics... as I've not been using it or SCANsat, I'm planning to drop them from the modslist temporarily, and perhaps a couple other plugins. Things are getting SSSLLLLOOOOOWWWWWW in the old framerate department, and buying any extra process cycles I can will help keep things going until KSP 1.1 hits. First stage of the next big project is in orbit, so we should have an update on that tonight or tomorrow morning, depending. Took a break from the game midweek to explore American Truck Simulator, which runs smooth as milk on a flat glass pane sitting atop a silk sheet when compared to KSP. Can't wait for that game to include the parts of the country I drive on a regular basis (I-69/I-30/I-40/I-65/I-64/I-79). But that's not KSP.....

Maybe tonight. Depends on how much time I have when I get home. Busy week, just like the weekend. I did have to fix a run-away bug in the persistence file related to that last mission.... There were bits of debris that caused some sort of weird nullref chain. Likely related to the "destructive welding" incident.

The list in the very first post is up to date, I think. Might add Space-Y and some other stuff in the future, if 1.1 is the panacea everybody seems to think it will be.

Well, the antenna range isn't coming until 1.2 now, and from what I understand you won't need anything on an ascent flight. There are a number of new antennas I think, not sure if a static low-gain will be one, since I'm not sure the game will ever require one. In other news - Busy weekend, haven't touched Kerbal. Big "new" project coming up once I'm back in the game.

It really wasn't remote tech that killed it though... just the stock game deciding the cargo bay was too far out of range. (The antenna, being low mass and extremely aerodynamic hot closer to the capsule.) Must admit I've never been a fan of the way RT antennas just fall off in the wind, even though it makes sense. Once (and whenever) the stock Antenna Range stuff hits, I'm planning to switch to that. If it doesn't have a signal delay then I'll probably write my own plugin for that.

At some point Remote Tech caused its antenna to fall off. The game then decided the antenna was ok but the cargo bay wasn't, and unloaded the cargo bay. It was about 4km away at the time, and I had been trying to switch back and forth between it and the capsule, but it still unloaded. The antenna survived.

Now _that's_ a kraken attack! There'll be more tests on my part in the future, and I'll send up a wider variety of the KAS parts too, so I'm likely to see all sorts of voodoo and kraken mess. Perhaps if I put a docking port on the end of an infernal robotics arm and attach that to a claw which grabs a winched ship with the winch locked then I will finally and utterly destroy the universe. Can confirm that it doesn't happen every time, just often. Funny thing is that "explosion" seemed to merge the two craft together, with the soon to be destroyed monoprop tank being the only piece of KSO-Comm-1 left. Couldn't switch to the other craft, only the Nitrogen and the EVA'd Mardi, couldn't force it out of the cargo bay, etc. Destructive welding?

More Housekeeping.... The communications satellites in low orbit discovered by Sieta made nice juicy targets for any attempted recovery operations. Especially those labelled "LKO-Comm-X" sitting in a nice, 220km orbit. Five satellites in a series ranging from Comm-1 to Comm-5. None of the five were responding, meaning none of them showed as a green light on the Baile Speir's control board, which helped alleviate a new jurisdictional issue. Sieta, lone occupant of Baile Speir, had proclaimed herself "Queen of the Airwaves!" and was broadcasting somewhat peculiar commentary from her perch 100km above the surface. Trying to recovery one of "her" satellites might prove problematic, so these dead, low-orbit relays would do nicely. The crew for the recovery flight included Verly Kerman, one of the Carbon veterans, and Mardi (Girl Tuesday?) Kerman, of the Aluminium kids. Both Engineers, both equally qualified to use a wrench and other such tools, and both eager to get their mittens dirty with ancient technology. Officially labeled as a TB class, the Nitrogen 11 was the heaviest Nitrogen yet launched. (63.9 tonnes vs the 59.7 of the Nitrogen TC class.) Instead of using the more standard orbital module the TB class sported a set of Functional Cargo Blocks. Atop this "bay" module were enough parachutes to land it safely, a heat shield on the opposite end, and its own avionics and RCS. The plan was to open the bay near the satellite, use a harpoon to spear it, a winch to reel it back in. Afterwards it would be strapped down, the more delicate electronics would be transferred to the capsule, and the whole mess would be returned to the surface for later study in the nice, safe lab at the space center. Naturally that didn't work. It quickly became obvious the satellite wouldn't fit in the bay without substantial modification.... or perhaps by forcing the antennas closed, which is what Mardi ventured out to do. In no time she had the little probe boxed up and ready to go. The satellite in question was KSO-Comm-1, with an estimated flight time of 75 years. (Exact numbers would only be available once the craft's chronometer could be reviewed in the lab.) The onboard batteries were dead when the Nitrogen TB-11 pulled up next to it, having lost efficiency over the generations of hot and cold in the nothingness of space. Those batteries started to heat back up slightly as the communications equipment was shut down, and reached a near full charge by the time Mardi had moved the satellite back to the Nitrogen. Within range of the Nitrogen's ship-to-ship communications link. Somewhere in the darkness a light blinked from red to a soft green. Eyes squinted. Mardi was more than a bit nervous about letting the small commsat warm up too quickly.... Batteries that have been dead cold for how ever many decades might not take kindly to a sudden influx of energy, and many, many cases had been documented of just such a scenario causing a catastrophic explosion. (Or at the very least bursting the seams of a cell or two.) Naturally this was when the trouble started. Mardi pushed the satellite towards the bay, trying to position it directly over the harpoon. (The wisdom of this next move is debatable.) The initial test of the harpoon in orbit had shown that it didn't "eject" so much as "leak", so Mardi hadn't even considered that the harpoon might be capable of dealing a mortal wound. And so she asked Verly to "eject" it. As before, it moved slowly out from the winch base. The mild force it imparted on the Nitrogen was enough to spin the craft off-axis, which in turn pulled the winch cable and resulted in it missing both the satellite and the questionably sane kerbal holding it. So Mardi tried to spear the satellite from considerably closer range. That time the harpoon "leaked" backwards through the wrong side of the cargo bay. Hmm. Moving the winch to a location outside of the bay saw similar results, just with the cable spinning wildly (yet slowly) around the craft. Attempting to run a strut between the anchor points in the bay and an anchor point she had attached to the satellite didn't work for reasons yet unexplained. Strapping the probe in by running struts in front of it and closing the bay doors didn't work. The satellite merely cheated at physics and phased through the door, escaping back into the void. (Phasing is a peculiarity of physics the super-genius interns in the lab have yet to adequately explain.) Firing the winch head without a harpoon attached worked as expected, but with nothing to attach with, the cable head bounced off the satellite, sending it spinning away from the Nitrogen. Grabbing the winch cable to flying out to the satellite didn't work, as Mardi then had nothing to attach it to the satellite with. (And no space blowtorch to weld it in place.) Somewhere along the way one of the Nitrogen's solar arrays were destroyed. Mardi glanced up only to watch their flimsy yet critical debris drift off into the void. Nothing was going according to plan. And that's when the idea hit her. They could dump everything they had in the return capsule, glue that junk to the cargo bay, disassemble the satellite, and then squeeze it into the various nooks and crannies of their tiny ride home. It might work. It had to work. It was the only way. And so she set to work. First order of business was to drag the satellite back to the craft. Not much daylight to work in, so she needed to hurry. She decided it was best to start with the large pieces, and so disconnected one of the craft's two monopropellent tanks to attach it inside the bay. That's when things went _really_ wrong. At first Mardi wasn't sure what hit her. One moment she was working in the Nitrogen TB-11's bay, the next she was spinning wildly in the blackness. It took more than a few seconds to get the tumble under control, and several near-panicked moments before she found her bearings towards the Nitrogen again. Verly was nearly screaming in her ear about the explosion, but all Mardi could remember was a cloud of expanding gas passing in front of her suit lights. And darkness. It would seem 75 year-old tanks of cold gas don't take very kindly to being moved, punctured, or punctured and moved. Mardi got back to work once the two were sure everybody was alright. The blast had oddly fused the satellite to the cargo bay, meaning they wouldn't need to secure it externally or really even pack it in the capsule. After some discussion, Mardi and Verly decided it was best to pack the important bits in the capsule anyway. The inside of the cargo bay was badly beaten and dinged, with numerous puncture marks left by the explosion's shrapnel. Not only had a wild tank of monoprop been playing billiards in it, but the harpoon had torn holes in it, the front seemed to be made of swiss cheese (mmm.... cheese). There was little chance it could survive reentry. So Mardi worked on through the darkness, salvaging what she could. Some short time later and she had secured all of the important pieces on the side of the bay or in her inventory. Afterwards she moved as much as possible into the capsule. Remarkably the probe core and its battery fit inside the tiny Tantares return module, leading many to speculate as to whether or not the capsule violated any dimensional laws. Once everything was aboard they ran the numbers, and discovered their primary propellent had been exhausted by lugging the huge cargo bay to their 220km operating orbit. The fuel remaining only produced a whopping 39m/s of ∆v, leaving them to perform an extended RCS burn to lower their orbit. Slowly they pulled their periapsis down to 15km, more than enough to ensure a permanent aerocapture. They waited for atmospheric interface before blowing the three modules apart, hoping to keep the cargo bay close to the cpasule. The Nitrogen capsule righted itself into the airflow and Verly commanded the cargo bay to do the same. For a short time both cruised through the atmosphere side by side. Shortly the Nitrogen return capsule slipped well ahead of its cargo bay, as expected. And then, at some unknown altitude above the surface, the cargo bay disintegrated. None of the kerbals in the tracking station witnessed this (given both craft were in the blackout period), and the two kerbals in the descent module were too distracted by their own rather violent reentry to notice. Only when the plasma had subsided did Verly mention the missing radio link. No debris from the cargo bay was ever located, its existence cleared from the universe, its atoms returned to Kerbin. The Nitrogen capsule touched down a bit heavy and a bit fast, burrowing into the sand at well over 12m/s. Shortly after landing, Verly leapt from the capsule, eager to collect the first ever surface samples from Kerbin's deserts. (Not sure why they need rockets when just exiting capsules can propel a kerbal tens of meters into the air.) Even with the sand getting into everything she was happy to have it. And maybe, just maybe, she was glad to have that weird business with the winch and the exploding satellite behind her. Navigation: Next Post

Eject. I'm going to try it once more tonight after I rearrange some things, along with a few other tests. (Though I've used KAS in the past for moving or removing parts, this is the first time I've tried to use the winches.) Afterwards I might send up another probe with spare parts and small docking ports (and some fuel) to try something else.

I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing operations or activities without the approval of [REDACTED].

The only proper way to read Fahrenheit 451 is to have someone recite it to you. (Find an audiobook version.)

Can confirm, at least on the non-struttage part. Crew is presently in orbit attempting to move pieces of their own ship around using wrenches and spacetape. When I tested the winch on the ground, the harpoon shot out at a good velocity. In orbit it kind of trickles out, so I'm trying to figure out what to do with that too. Attempting to shove it into the other satellite using a hammer is the next option. Also: The front of the FCB doesn't have a collider, so this might instead be a ferry operation to a nearby space station. Of course I didn't bring any docking ports..... And there's a small fuel problem. Thank you! There might be one or two, here or there.....

Maybe, maybe not. It's an experiment. It's definitely possible to harpoon other crafts, which is why I'm sending the winch. Worst case I just reenter with it inside the Functional Cargo Block. Provided I don't timewarp it should be ok.

Strut anchors. The plan is to shove the target satellite in a box (made out of Tantares FCBs), send a kerbal out on EVA to attach strut anchors, then strut it to the inside of the box. Alternatively I might use a winch to pull it in.

Bring on the era of supervessels! Carriers like this are one of the reasons I always enjoyed Macey Dean's designs - they have unique engineering requirements that usually break the game or at least push its buttons. Intrepid will no doubt be the first of many such. Looks good. Good name. And one of these day's I'll get to NYC when the USS Intrepid is actually open. My last time through a transformer exploded and took out the electric and hurt three folks. At least I got to explore Hell's Kitchen and the docks a bit... had a good breakfast and whatnot. (After paying to park in Manhattan I wasn't leaving without at least a glass of orange juice.)

Claw? No. Not sure where it is in the tech tree, but I know I don't have it unlocked. I'm going the KAS route instead.

The Boss, The E-Street Band, and a rogue Jimmy Cliff confirmed! Maybe. Time will tell.

Aluminium Cans of Boom The X-2 design was nice for high-speed, high-altitude research, but as a regular old grocery getter it was a pretty terrible aircraft. After some discussion as to what exactly was needed for a "Research and Exploration" jet, the eggheads and interns produced the X-3. And this Aluminium can had everything a kerbal could want in a mobile science lab. Mostly. The best part of it? The X-3 was capable of nearly an hour of continuous flight time in low-altitude environments. Meaning a pilot could hop around all sorts of biomes, provided they were within a half hour or so of the space center. The really, really best part? Twin engines. And not just twin engines, two of the newest and most efficient (and most powerful) engines yet made. With a combined thrust to weight ratio greater than 2, the pilots could point it upwards and keep going. Reaching Mach 1 was as simple as aiming the jet and slamming the throttle. Gletrix didn't really need to taxi to the far end of the runway when she took off on Aluminium X-3 6, but rules are rules. She pulled up to 4km quickly, then circled around the space center before giving the science equipment a test. The aircraft wasn't without its flaws. Attempting to run the science experiments strapped to the top of it was ok, but transmitting the data back? The craft was a little short on electric charge. And by a little short I mean it could've flown around for the next hour and not finished recharging the batteries, and it exhausted what little charge it had in only a couple seconds. Problem. Another issue was the craft's behaviour in the transsonic region. For some strange reason it would pitch up stiffly as it passed through Mach 1. Over Mach 1? Fine. Under Mach 1? Silk. At Mach 1? Push down. Problem. Ish. These two issues alone were enough for the engineering crews on the ground to cancel the rest of the tests for the flight. Gletrix brought the plane around again and came in for a nice landing. Another benefit of having the new engines was the ability to reverse the thrust, allowing the plane to land nearly on a dime. (A 600 meter long dime perhaps, but whatever.) Doing so at full throttle? Problem. The power was dead, the contorls systems constantly resetting due to low voltage, and the steering on the lead wheel didn't work, so Gletrix just left the plane on the runway for the recovery crews to clean it up. This bird needed some tweaks. -- A short time later the X-3A was ready for flight. Some small adjustments were made - more batteries, a slightly tweak positioning of the wings, a new set of elevators on the tail, other amenities for crew comfort such as extra snack storage. Not a huge change, but enough to make the craft more airworthy. Tetris took the new bird out for its tests. Aluminium X-3A 7. Once again the craft had a deliciously short take off distance, and easily got up to speed. Tetris even managed to buzz the tower at liftoff, proving just how maneuverable the little bird was. Even with the extra batteries strapped to the top of the jet, one block of data from the air sensor was enough to drain all the electric charge. Tetris just went along with it, and flew out to the island runway where she planned to do a touch and go. Except the World's Firsters had a... different idea. Discovered? Really? You can see it from the space center! Oh well, free money is free money. With the touch and go aborted on account of the unexpected award, Tetris circled around and gained altitude. She was well over 8km once past the space center. She took the Aluminium X-3A 7 a bit further inland before executing the final test of the day: a Split-S. After a short period of inverted flight, she was to drop into a 4km dive, then pull up, aimed directly for the runway. Except this craft does NOT want to fly inverted. Every attempt at keeping it turned 180 upside down resulted in the aerodynamic forces pushing it over one way or the other. (Somewhere in the back of my mind Kelly McGillis was droning on about 4G inverted dives and impossible maneuvers and such.... which I can confirm are quite impossible in my X-3A in KSP.) Regardless, Tetris completed the Split-S, brought it down safely, and overshot the runway on the first past. More "unable to slow down from Mach 1.5 in time" than "overshot", but the result was the same. Once down, she taxied the X-3A and parked it next to the X-2 outside of the spaceplane hanger. Mission accomplished. -- Housekeeping There were a few housekeeping items the crews needed to get out of the way before they could move on to their next project. None of the kerbals were quite sure what the next project was, though the rumour mill was strongly suggesting a crewed mission to the Mün or Minmus or both. The Boss was being uncharacteristically silent on the matter too. First, Rozor and Agake were due to bring the Nitrogen T-7 and their first batch of science results home. Having spent almost 80 days in space, the two of them had second place for "most time away from Kerbin" pretty much locked up. So they packed up whatever they could, transmitted the last bit of science waiting in the Kelgee Station lab, and hightailed it out of there. Reentry was a short wait, placing them down in the ocean all the way on the opposite side of the planet. No big deal for the magical mystery tour (ie, the recovery team), but it still cut into the recovery value a bit. -- Next, some spring cleaning needed to be done with the satellites in orbit. Nobody was quite sure what springs had to do with cleaning, what with the bouncing and all, but they went along with it anyway. The three low-orbit and equatorial Lithium satellites had served their purpose, but were incredibly redundant now that the Neon Network was up and running. Not to mention dangerous, as each of them had a periapsis near 70km and an apoapsis above 400km, meaning they intercepted the orbits of almost everything. More than a few missions had experienced near-misses with the three probes, so the time had come to bid them adieu. Each of the three executed a deorbit burn at apoapsis, resulting in a light show half an orbit later. Farewell, tiny probes. You'll be missed. -- Finally, the kerbals had yet to complete one of the first tasks assigned to them by The Boss: Capture an old satellite for study. Something they aimed to get to... in the morning. There was a plan, and even a ship ready to conduct the "extraordinary recovery", but all of the crews had missed their nap time and were plum tuckered out. Tomorrow! Navigation: Next Post

Just? No, they've been that way for a long, long time. I know the feeling. Just got caught up on a few other long mission reports the other night. 11PM was suddenly 2AM. Time flys! More soon.

Thank you. I do try to keep it so this would make a bit of sense if all the pictures disappeared.

Sci-Fi: Cixin Liu's "Rememberance of Earth's Past" series. Only the first two have been translated so far ("The Three Body Problem" and "The Dark Forest"), but as I understand it the third ("Death's End") should be released soon. (Can't remember if I preordered the third one, but it's not yet on my Kindle.) As for what I'm reading right now, I'm finally at the 50% point in "Blue Mars". I'm convinced Elon Musk will set foot on Mars before I finish the trilogy. (And Blue Mars is the last book.... Oy.)