Cydonian Monk

That's an easy question for me: Neuromancer (William Gibson). "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

I was once told by an interviewer that folks who play video games contribute nothing to society. This was followed shortly after by a rather direct jab at my Engineering department and how we make terrible programmers. Needless to say I didn't get the job. I am one of those "real gamers" and have no trouble being labeled as such. Both of my primary hobbies involve creating intricate simulations of complex systems that are then played out by various actors, one using physical objects the other using video games. From the outcome of any given "game" we gather data and try to find better or more efficient means of completing the same or similar tasks. I also at times play Halo and the like, which I guess is what your "BS Facebook Ad" had in mind.

Interesting idea. Pretty much any of Nassault's early videos would qualify I'd think, at last the ones that use Stellardrone as their soundtracks. Those are the very definition of mellow.

Kanawha Space Program Year 5 Update 3 - Eve Visitors Competition for the first Eve mission was both the most fierce and the least surprising. With their "favored kerbal" statuses, Jeb, Bill and Bob had already been guaranteed a spot on the crew of four, leaving room for one more. One more good kerbal. With the mission projected to last two years, the science division (Bob) was pushing for the fourth member to be another of their own. They were not to be disappointed. The crew: Jebediah Kerman - Pilot and owner of the Scrapyard and Spaceship Parts company which bears his name. Jebediah is familiar to all kerbals everywhere, except for those few that that no one seems to remember anyway. Jeb has 26 flights notched onto his rather large belt. Judged "Not Sane Enough" to be mission commander despite being the senior-most member of the crew. Bill Kerman - Mission Commander and Chief Engineer. He has completed eight missions in his five years with the agency, most of them testing new designs or setting up new stations. No one is quite sure where Bill came from, but his many quick fixes over the years have saved countless lives. Most of them his own. Bob Kerman - Chief Scientist. Bob is by far the most mysterious of the bunch, coming from a government research organization that operates almost entirely in the shadows. Obsessed with the peculiarities and conspiracies that make up every day life on Kerbin, he has dedicated his recent years to studying the monoliths. Bob has only eight missions to date, at least that we know of. Ribzor Kerman - A member of the "Second Five" astronauts, Ribzor was the first researcher aboard Piquemetami 2 and a member of the second research crew for Piquemetami 1. His five missions make him the junior member of the Eve Expedition, though his background as a planetologist should come in handy while studying Eve. -- While the four members of the prime crew were training, the rest of the agency was busy launching and assembling their fleet. In all there were five ships planned for their flotilla, starting with the research station and ending with their own tin can. The most important piece of the mission was the Eve Research Station. This simple, single-piece research station would support the four kerbals and their research operations during their year and a half at Eve. Though not intended to be upgraded during the mission, later crews could swap out the existing solar arrays for larger banks of equipment should the need arise. The station would become "Weotowe 1" upon reaching Eve. It was heavy enough at launch to necessitate the creation of a new class of launch vehicle: The LV-24 Oriole. This beast featured four Mainsails on the first stage and a fifth on the second, with an estimated orbital payload mass of 86 tonnes. The new launch vehicle was used for the first three Eve-bound launches. Next up was the "Eve Visitor Hardware." This package included three craft: A high-orbit communications satellite (Holly 3), a small experimental probe that will attempt to land on Eve (Holly 4), and a new-fangled invention that the pilots were not happy about: an automated System Shuttle that doubled as a lander for Gilly. The hardware package would stay wrapped until arrival at Eve. The third launch was for the "Generally Depressing, Uninspired, Miserable Floating Tin Can," as Jeb called it. (Using more or less the same words.) Officially it was called the "Eve Visitor", but was christened the "Onepake 1" once in orbit. "You actually expect us to spend two years in _that_? Is it too late to switch over to the Duna mission?" Bill and Bob didn't seem to mind, mainly because Jeb wouldn't be flying it. The new fully-automated onboard computer handled everything except precision docking. Which admittedly wasn't much more than a burn here and a burn there, but it was enough to rile up the Pilot's Union. (The Navigator's Union was still quite happy, though concerned at the risk automation posed.) The crews continued training on the surface while the three major pieces of hardware rested in orbit. The fourth item, the Holly 2 communications relay satellite, would not launch until after they had left for Eve. The plan was already very detailed: The Eve Visitor 1 mission would burn for the Purple Planet on the 211th day of the 5th year. One mid-course correction halfway to the planet would place them into the plane of Eve's orbit. Arriving on the 392nd day of the 5th year, the three "low orbit" sets of hardware would enter into an orbit around Eve that shared the same inclination as Gilly and was roughly 1,000km above the planet's surface. In the 34 days remaining in the year, the crew of four would deploy the two commsats, set up the Weotowe 1 "Eve Research Station", send the Holly 4 to its likely fiery demise in Eve's atmosphere, and land on Gilly. If they were good, efficient little green dudes they might have enough fuel left over for a second Gilly landing, but otherwise they would stay at the station conducting research on Jeb until the 69th day of the 7th year. If all went according to plan they would return to Kerbin on the 231st day of the 7th year, 872 days after they left. Just in time to begin training for the large, 8-kerbal mission to Jool which is scheduled to leave on the last day of the 7th year. (A mission all four were guaranteed a spot on thanks to their trip to Eve.) -- The crews launched to Jeb's "Tin Can" in two sets. Not because the agency was worried about losing the entire crew in an accident, but because the only crew ferries they had available were the three-kerbal Keninshekas. And those still required a pilot. Jeb and Bill were ferried to the Onepake 1 by Svetlana aboard the Keninsheka 6, while Bob and Ribzor followed seven days later in the Keninsheka 7 with Edlu doing the flying duties. As the Tin Can had only a single docking port, each Keninsheka returned to Kerbin immediately following the crew transfer. (Incidentally, the first North Pole Research Expedition had come to an end at some point during the training montage. Day 105 according to my records. That's the trouble with montages....) One change made to the Keninsheka spacecraft in the new 1.0.4 Universe was the addition of a set of drogue chutes. These are attached on top of two of the three main chutes, which looks good but sadly doesn't automatically cut them when the mains deploy. The crews were allowed a few days of rest once in orbit prior to the departure burns, which came up a münth or so later. First out (and last to Eve) was crew aboard the Onepake 1. The Tin Can's low mass really helped out here, along with the Skipper, in making for a quick burn. Once the crew was safely away the research station was given the go-ahead, which was another mercifully short burn. (I'm going to miss these short burns when I eventually start using the LV-Ns.) Finally came the Visitor Hardware package, consisting of the Gilly Shuttle / Lander and its two small probes. Curiously, each of the first three pieces launched had a close encounter with Minmus on their way out of the system. The Eve Research Station and the Visitor Hardware were both a good distance away, but the Onepake 1 "Tin Can" had to adjust its trajectory slightly to keep from becoming a new crater on the minty moon. As it was they still came within 10km of the dark side of Minmus. With the first three components outbound for Eve, the last piece of the puzzle was launched: the Holly 2 commsat. This critter would stay in a very high orbit to relay data back to Kerbin. It was also one of the rare night launches for the Third Space Age, on account of its planned trajectory. It burned directly for Eve shortly after reaching orbit, and did not dwell in its parking orbit. It too had a close encounter with Eve, some 2Mm out. And with that, the agency's 4-ship flotilla was outbound to Eve. (Or inbound to Eve, depending on your perspective.) -- That's it for now. Next time we'll jump into the Duna Visitor mission, including the crew selections, hardware choices, and specific mission goals. It's a much longer mission (with almost 4 totals years of flight time, versus the 2+ years for an Eve mission), so the four lucky astronauts sent to the orange planet will have a bit more to do.

Isn't programming "funâ„¢"?

Thank you! (Edit: And welcome to the forums!) I'm not sure the SSMEs have come up in a DevNote yet, but they were dangled over folks like a carrot during the Charity:Water stream two weeks ago. They've also been (mostly, I think?) confirmed for 1.1, or at least the new jet parts have been. There were a few different discussion threads, but you can skip those and the miscellaneous grumbling they turned into and check out this album for the pictures: http://imgur.com/a/NkzMp

Even were it true, there is a high likelihood we will never know. So I give Yuri his due rights as "First dude in space" and call it that.

AppleTV.

Thanks! I'm really looking forward to the new jet engines and the SSMEs coming with KSP v1.1. Already plotting and scheming.... I suspect that won't come up until I'm done with at least the Eve mission, depending on where things live in the tech tree. (I haven't even unlocked the SLS parts yet, as I was getting by just fine with just Skippers and the occasional Mainsail. Still 2300 science points to go.)

It's actually a frustratingly bizarre mix of Twitch and Youtube, where regular YouTube videos show up next to the YouTube live streams. I haven't figured out yet if comments left on a video in YouTube Gaming show up in regular YouTube, but I suspect they do. (Unlike comments on Google+-shared YouTube videos, which only show up on YouTube if you're in the circle or community they were posted from. Meaning the video creator sometimes can't see or respond to the comments on their own video.) And yes - I find the website interface noisy to the point of being incomprehensible. Which isn't that much different from YouTube, to be honest. Just very, very Red. The iPhone app is better. It also apparently doesn't work yet in many countries, and may never fully work in places like Germany thanks to "differences of opinion" on copyrights.

Kanawha Space Program Year 5 Update 2 - Training Rocks Rocks, I tell you! Rocks! While I was busy building the North Pole lab a bunch of small Class-A asteroids decided to pester the little green folk. So, as any aspiring space miner would do, the kerbals formed the Void Eagle Mining Company and sent out a couple of robots to snag two of them. The two asteroids selected for capture, SSD-577 and MWB-887, both entered the Kerbin System at a strange inclination, resulting in odd, semi-polar launches such as this: The rendezvouses and captures occurred during the various North Pole Research Lab missions. The first asteroid, MWB-887, was caught by the Void Eagle A-2 and placed into a prograde equatorial orbit around Kerbin, roughly 3,500km above the planet. This small rock required very little effort to move around, though most were suspicious as to whether or not it would prove to be a useful source of ore. This tiny rock was named after Milbas Kerman, an early victim of space exploration. The second capture was the SSD-577, quickly renamed after famed explorer Thomlock Kerman, who was rumored to have been the first kerbal to escape from the gravity of Kerbin and even Kerbol. This little rock was spinning rather fiercely, and so required a bit of "bumping and scraping" to get it to stand still enough for the Klaw to catch it. Some of these maneuvers were a bit on the unorthodox side. The rather large Class-A asteroid was deposited into a much higher orbit, some 29,000 kilometers above Kerbin. A later ship may come along to move it into a lower orbit. Interested in obtaining a sample of the closer of the two, the mineral division pushed the agency to launch a crew to visit Milbas (MWB-887). The misison planners couldn't think of a reason to say no, and so Svetlana, Grazy and Lindra suited up and launched aboard the Keninsheka 5. To avoid any potential kraken strikes, the Keninsheka 5 was sent up without a second Klaw. Instead the craft would match orbits with the asteroid and Grazy, the team's science officer, would EVA over to MWB-887 to perform the sampling. She took a flag with her too, but was disappointed to find there was nowhere in the rock to stick the flag pole. The samples were enough to tell them the small rock would serve well enough as a test bed for the mineral division's planned orbital ore refinery. The slide-rule pushing geeks were still busy trying to determine if it was more economical to extract ore from the Mün and deliver it to Kerbin than it was to capture an asteroid to refine, but to finish the equation they'd need more ore samples from the Mün. Which they wouldn't get for some time to come. Training Montage The race was on for the crews to qualify for the upcoming Eve Visitor and Duna Visitor missions. Four kerbals would be sent to each location, but all four were required to have a two-star rating. For some strange reason the best way to get a kerbal to 2-stars is for them to plant a flag on both the Mün and Minmus. Lots of kerbals to train and very little time to do it. It's time for a montage! Tiskelwah 8 with Urcella, Eriemma, and Lindra at the Armstrong Monumen; Lindra running up the crater rim: Tokebeloke 4 took Svetlana, Eriemma, and Lindra to Mint Green Sound on Minmus; Eriemma ran off to visit a Dogwood lander: Tokebeloke 5 took Edlu, Ribzor, and Jermin to Chading Flats on Minmus: And Tokebeloke 6 took Urcella, Roster, and Mind to the North Pole of Minmus: <Fade out, makes it look like more time has passed...> With that done, the agency had enough information to make the crew selections for both Onepake 1 (for Eve) and Lakeweketon 1 (for Duna). Who made the cuts? Find out next time.

Huh? I played KSP with an XBox 360 controller from the get-go until I bought a 3D joystick. Really needed three axes on one stick to make precision docking easier, but otherwise I don't recall any serious control scheme issues. Curious what you found difficult, aside from familiarity. I think KSP being on console is perfect. Sure, it won't have the number of mods or options that we PCers have, but it's far from an "unplayable" idea.

I have a BS degree in Computer Engineering (BSCpE on the skinned sheep hanging on my wall) circa 2003 from West Virginia University. I once had plans for a dual Aerospace (focusing on controls and automation, not so much airframe or powerplant) and an MS in Systems Engineering, but that'll never happen. And, despite being a software developer, I've never done anything even remotely related to what I did in school. I too had life smack me in the face and I left school in Spring of 1998. (Though I finished out the semester so I could properly fail everything... and even failed at that, somehow passing a CompSci class I never attended.) Returned a year later and started over, and over, and stumbled, but eventually found a way to fight through the boredom of my third time through Calculus and finish. Advice? If you take advanced levels of Calc in high school find a college that will let you test out of it and give you credit. Credit towards the equivalent classes, not some unaffiliated generic math course.

I picked less than 200, but it's right at 199MB. At least for my stock-ish install. For RSS/RO? That's closer to 1.7GBs. Both of those on PC, and both run reasonably smooth. They still crash every 119 minutes, but other than that no major issues. On OS-X my GameData folder (outside of Squad) is about 200KBs, consisting of only my flags. Even at 1/4 image resolution and low graphics settings that's still unplayable, and crashes every 20 minutes or so. But I'm only putting info for my main Windows stock-ish install into your poll since they other two are edge cases. And here I was hoping you were just going to sell it to belligerent space aliens instead....

Today I made a thing. Or rather over the weekend I made a thing. And fought with KSP stuttering and my own editing software constantly reminding me of a failed export from 2 years ago. Today I uploaded the thing from the weekend to the video thing place, which took 3 hours. As for the thing? It's just a short (10m) vid set to Hungarian Rhapsody No 2, for no reason other than it's a song from the YouTube Audio Library that shouldn't get me swatted down by ContentID. Bit of spaceplane, bit of station, bit of reusable spacecraft action.

I like both of them, and would rather not see the current Mk1 replaced. Apparently that's a heretical viewpoint.

Jeb laughed. Bob cried. Bill died.

Oooh. Jool. Looks like a nice, compact mission. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to send out my first big Jool mission in 1.0.4 or wait for 1.1.... I'm thinking that with the 1.1 and Unity 5 changes I may be able to run a legit "Really Large Ship" out to Jool, with all the goodies hitched to that one ship instead of in a large fleet.

Oh I know. My lab at Eve is chock full of data and will probably finish out the tech tree. But Kerbin, by Year 5, was almost completely dry of science data and so the lab had nothing to start with. (They're not really there for the science points though.)

Today? Today a giant Jebediah joined my burgeoning KSP nerd shrine. Except somebody sealed him up in a plastic bag! Might explain why he's so pale..... (Some kind soul poked a hole or two in the bag before shipping. And yes, I did eventually free him from the plastic. Still pale. Not as bad as it looks in this photo though.) Not really sure where Giant Jeb is supposed to go... doesn't fit into the language section of my bookshelf very well. Also, I posted the First Update for Year 5 of my Kanawha Space Program: Researching the North Pole! I'm building a small research station to study the lack of oxygen and temperature at Kerbin's Poles. That also includes a mining rig to generate fuel for the aircraft I use to ferry the researchers to and from the polar ice. And a bit of infrastructure to make it all work. Research is a bit... on the slow side.

Kanawha Space Program Year 5 Update 1 - The North Pole Cold. Why was it always so cold? He looked around the barren and empty ice, yet there was nothing Edlu could see except his flag and the plane he'd flown here. And ice. An endless sea of biting cold whiteness. Some distance over the horizon he knew he could find a small research jet, much like the one he had abandoned at the South Pole. He activated his helmet's navigation system to check the distance. 20km, two small dots blinking on the edge of the ice. Except the markers showed only as "Unknown Contact." Both for the jet and the flag Jebediah had left behind. A little red icon showed the reason: "No Satellites in Range." He quickly scanned the sky and horizon, surprised to see another contact some 19km off to the South. Yet no Mün. And no Mün meant no relay satellite. And no relay meant no data. A thought occurred to him, so he radioed up the geeks back at the Cape. "Feather 16 to KSC." "KSC tower. Go ahead Flight 16." It was crackly, as one would expect from a signal bounced (how many times?) off the ionosphere and ground. But at least the radio worked. "It's quiet up here on the ice, and the geosync commsats are below the southern horizon. Might want to tell the girls and boys in operations to launch a few into high orbit over the poles. Something that just hangs over the Tundra." It's also really cold, but he couldn't force himself to admit as much. He was in a climate-controlled spacesuit, after all. "Copy Flight 16, message relayed. Flight Ops is requesting an ETA on your return." "Return?" He took one last look around the ice and climbed, no, raced up into the Transport's cockpit. "90 minutes, give or take. Thought I might try to find a route back that doesn't involve hopping over mountains." The Cape radioed back their acknowledgement and he was airborne in no time. Airborne and away from the endless cold of the ice. He was tempted to fly over the unknown contact to the South, but just as he hit 8km one of the sats came into view and that data connection dribbled its sweet goodness into his flight computer. With a short, sharp blip it updated: "Val's Ice." What a strange name for a waypoint, he thought, and then remembered the days when all the astronauts first returning from orbit left flags to mark their spots. His had been somewhere around the equator, but was lifted by relic hunters some münths later. They'd probably sold it five or six times now on kBay. No doubt Val's flag would eventually meet the same fate as his, but no kerbal was yet brave enough to venture out onto the ice for it. Smart ones, those. Avoiding the endless cold. Yet that cold was far behind him now, and he was headed due South. Straight back to the warm shores of KSC. Straight back so he could turn around and fly North onto the endless Ice once more. Never a moment's rest. SouComm NorComm The Agency's operations branch agreed with Edlu's communications idea and decided to launch two small relay satellites into Tundra orbits over the North Pole. They also took the opportunity to reposition two older satellites into the equivalent orbits over the South Pole. Two satellites that had either been abandoned by their previous owners or were already within the control Agency were retasked as SouComms A and SouComms B. The first, 1-013 3.0-OMB-1A, was previously launched in the first year for OMB (as a replacement for a satellite lost during a launch). It wasn't much of a communications satellite, with only a couple cameras and a few antennas, but it would work for their purposes. The second, 1-017 3.0-Stead-01 had also been launched in the first year, for Steadler, and was of a nearly identical design to the OMB satellite. They weren't much, but they'd be enough to bounce a signal back to Kerbin or out to one of the GeoSats. Following the reassignment, two new small relays were prepared for launch: 3.0-NorComms A and 3.0-NorComms B. These two relatively lightweight relay satellites were nothing more than a bunch of antennas and solar panels, sufficient to pass signals to and from the satellites in geosynchronous equatorial orbit and the surface. The first satellite in the cluster, NorComms-A, was launched into a low-Beta orbit, while the subsequent was launched into a high-Beta orbit. (Though both had sufficient electrical storage for time spent in the shadow of Kerbin.) To maximize the amount of time that a satellite would be visible from over the North Pole, the orbits if the two NorComm satellites were sychronized to those of yhe SouComm satellites. All four were in six hour, polar orbits with an apoapsis of [look it up] and a periapsis of [also look it up]. This provided good, if not complete coverage of both poles. Habitat for Cold Kerbals Next came the construction of the North Pole Research Station. Intended to study the peculiar atmospheric anomaly first discovered by Edlu at the South Pole, the facility would house at least two research scientists with room for two more kerbals. The goal: To observe and study the lack of oxygen and severe cold temperatures at the planet's North Pole. There were three key components to the North Pole Research Station. First, obviously, came the laboratory itself. Possibly one of the strangest suborbital flights yet launched, it was heavy enough to need a Bluejay launch vehicle, bringing the mass at launch to 93 tonnes. To survive reentry at near-orbital speeds it included a heatshield. Following drogue chute deployment the heatshield would be jettisoned and the lab would touch down under the silks. Precision was not required with the landing of the lab, mission specs requiring it only to be within 1° of the actual North Pole. (So as to be within the anomaly zone.) The landing took a couple tries to pinpoint, with F5/F9 being exploited willingly. The small second stage of the launch vehicle was used to fine tune the landing site. In the end it was brought down just outside of 1km from the North Pole, placed precariously over one of the planet's four ley lines. Following the Lab came the NorPo Hab-A, first of the three habitat modules planned for use at the North Pole. (And the only one launched in Year 5... the others will come later.) Unlike the lab, this module required some precision and the possibility of being moved slightly once on the ground. The "skycrane" approach was used instead of rover wheels or other options as the research team had expressed horror at the suggestion they might be spending up to a year living in an RV. The added complexity brought the liftoff mass to 101 tonnes. Same as the Lab, the Hab-A was fine tuned using the second stage, reentered behind a heatshield, and then landed under parachutes. Once on the ground the skycrane was used to move the habitat closer to the lab module. Once completed the skycrane was jettisoned, flying off to land nearby. Next came the habitat for the North Pole Transfer Air Station. Identical in every way to the Hab-A, this time it needed to land near the flag placed by Edlu late in the 4th Year. The last and most important piece of the puzzle was a rover to move between the NorPo base and NP-TAS. Instead of delivering the rover some normal way, like driving it, the loons in the R&D department decided they wanted to fly it there in a reusable aircraft. The idea being the combined rover and aircraft would touch down, the nose would undock, the rover would be ejected, and then the aircraft would dock back up to its nose and fly back to KSC. And for the most part it worked. At least until the rover got to NP-TAS. The nose was ejected as planned, the rover rolled away as expected, and then the aircraft tried to dock up to its nose. And that's when everything ran out of power. Unable to get the nose reconnected remotely, and unsure if exactly what was going wrong, the administration decided it was time to send the research team up to the base. And they'd send an engineer along to help. [And, thanks to some weird glitch, the disconnected aircraft was still drawing power from the rover. The rover itself is powered by the small solar panels and a hidden RTG, but it was losing power faster than the control copy back at KSC. So I edited the persistence file and swapped the locations of the two. In more glitchiness, the aircraft and its nose were "acquiring" each other when the aircraft lost power, so we get to see some weird physics later. I eventually edited the persistence file to fix that, too.] The First North Pole Research Expedition There was some debate as to which kerbals should be sent to spend half a year at the cold and oxygen-deprived North Pole. It would prove as good training for the upcoming missions to Eve and Duna, but the crews had already been selected for those two missions and were entering their final training schedule. And a bored Jeb and a bored Val at the remotest of remote locations on Kerbin just sounded like a terrible idea. So instead they sent along three guinea pigs. Or, more precisely, they sent the three scientists they had rescued from orbit in the previous years: Daselle, Ersen and Elley. They had been press-ganged into research duty at Piquemetami 2 so surely they'd know how to cope with being forced into service at the North Pole. Remarkably none of them complained, and instead were eager to check out this atmospheric anomaly. Edlu once again was selected to fly them North, having the most experience with the route so far, and Mind Kerman was included at the last minute to fix the rover's power situation. The flight North was perfectly serene and pleasant... until suddenly it wasn't. [image condensed to protect the bandwidth. Personally I like how all of the target nodes are at the same spot on the navball - radial, prograde, retrograde, etc.] No idea what ripped open the universe that time, but a quick F9 restored sanity to everything. The flight North was perfectly serene and pleasant... or so they had thought until they reached the open ice. And then the serenity and pleasantness went into a repetitious overload and became cold and hostile. And empty. Edlu brought the jet in for a slow landing and coasted over to where the rover's plane was fast becoming useless debris. He would admit in later interviews to being depressed about drawing a flight to one of Kerbin's poles for a third time, but tried to seem happy and upbeat about it while around the three scientists. (He had no qualms about speaking his mind to Mind though.) Cold. Empty. Barren. Lifeless. Did I mention cold? Once everyone was disembarked, Mind climbed aboard the rover to fix a few things with the electrical system while Edlu went over the mission plan. He and Mind would stay at NP-TAS to help with setting up and testing of the Mining and Fuel station while the three geeks would press North and start trying to extract understanding from the insanity that is the North Pole Atmospheric Anomaly. Once Mind had completed the "repairs" to the rover, he waddled off to get the NP-TAS Habitat up and running. Edlu helped the three transfer their bags into the rover while Mind considered the empty expanse of nothingness he'd been sentenced to. The view from the West side of the habitat was at least mildly interesting, looking out on the desiccated ruins of the rover's plane and the transport jet. Probably not enough to keep Mind and Edlu sane, but they would have some extra work to do soon enough. Meanwhile the three scientists drove off to the North Pole. NP-TAS quickly disappeared into the distance as they drive off through the white twilight. Twenty kilometers of nothingness. And then, as suddenly as NP-TAS vanished the North Pole Research Station appeared. Just two dots on the horizon at first. And as the dots grew larger another appeared at absolute North: Jeb's R-1 research jet. Once at the station the three kerbals set about unloading their gear into the lab. And soon they started into their research, generating a less than amazing 0.0203 science per day. At that rate they might unlock the secrets of freeze-dried koffee before the next millennium. And maybe they'd even someday figure out what was going on with the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere at the poles. All good cover for the true and secret purpose of their trip. The [insert-Name] Eagle Mining Company And so enters the Mineral Reclamation Division of the Space Agency. This curious extension was rooted in the ancient trade of all kerbals: mining. Using the best legal tricks known to kerb, the MRD had decided to set up each mining operation as its own business entity using a formulaic naming system: [insert-Name] Eagle Mining. That way, should one particular mining outfit prove to be wildly unprofitable, it wouldn't drag down the rest of the operation. (And surely nobody would ever be able to figure out the naming trick.) And thus was born Ice Eagle Mining. A test rig was set up at KSC prior to launching the NP-TAS Fuel Station, but no photos from that aside from the parachute deployment have survived. The plan was simple: have a combined rig capable of drilling for and refining the ore. The end product of the refining would be pumped into a small rover, which would have an arm angled such that a T-01 Transport could "kneel" down and connect up. Once connected the refined fuel would be pumped into the transport. This was tested, and worked without issue. (After a few re-gauging edits.) With the hardware proven, Unit 1 of the NP-TAS Fuel Station was fitted to a rocket and fired North. Similar reentry and landing protocol to that of the Habitat Modules. To avoid any potential accidents from drilling too deeply into the ice, the Fuel Station was placed a half kilometer away from NP-TAS. That way, should the ice crack and collapse, the odds were greater of the equipment at the transfer station surviving. Once landed, Mind Kerman walked over to the fuel station to get it up and running. First order of business was to push the heat shield's decoupler out from underneath te facility. Following that he raised the legs so he could climb aboard, lowered the legs once on so that the drill equipment wasn't resting directly on the ice, and set about mining a small batch of Ore. All working exactly according to design. Next came the fuel rover. In a slightly boring change of pace the rover was delivered by the mysterious Astronaut Recovery Team. [because by this point I couldn't be bothered to fly or drive anything else to the North Pole.... And we're still on Kerbin after all.] Mind and Edlu were a bit surprised when it suddenly appeared one morning, but chalked it up to their windows only facing East and West, not South. Edlu climbed aboard the T-01 Transport while Mind transferred the first batch of jet fuel into the rover. Yet again no photos survived of the rover docked up with the fuel station, but the fuel transfer into the T-01 garnered a few. And that's because, unlike the tests at KSC, the tires on the fuel rover decided to explode when the nearly-empty T-01 knelt down to dock up with the rover. Hmm, that's annoying. Mind waddled his way over from the fuel station to fix the tires, only to discover he's not skilled enough to do so. Even more annoying. I think it's time for some intense Kerbal Training. But that'll be next time.

Wow. I agree the geometry on the current Mk1 is a little weird, and while I really rather like this new part I'm sad to hear it's replacing the old one. These look like two completely different things. The current Mk1 makes sense for a spaceplane. The new one looks like a purely low-atmosphere craft. How many times has the Mk1 cockpit been redone now? 3? And yet we're still using the same two capsules that we've had for at least two years?

See, I was expecting something more like the Heinlein "paint the Moon" ads and not just a can of dehydrated sweat.

If you're worried the kitten-baconater-hater is lonely I could always go dislike the vid with one of my alternate accounts.... It'd nullify the like I just gave it from my main account though. (Actually looks to be a second dislike now. And no, that wasn't me. Sometimes I wonder if the majority of dislikes on YouTube are bots - I already know many of the Likes and +1s in the GoogleVerse are. Once a post or video gets over a certain threshold the bots go to town on it.)

Folks don't like Dres because it's where the kerbals chose to build their insane asylum. (Though some question whether the patients interred there were crazy before they arrived....) That, and it's kinda dark and grey and miserable. A bit like landing on the Mün's north pole all day every day.