Cydonian Monk

A quick update as this next story-post is taking me a little while to get composed.... First, I bought a new gaming PC! I finally grew too weary of KSP on my OS-X machine needing 2.7GBs of memory _just to run without mods_. And there are other games I want to play that I've not been able to, and with this being the shopping season there were some good deals on off-the-shelf systems. So I picked up a sweet little thing that has a rather nice GPU (Nvidia GTX-770) and an i7 that should be enough for several years to come (i7-4790). So... KSP runs really well on this setup! My Mac will always be my main PC, but it can now return to the video rendering, virtual machine running, code compiling, photo editing, trying to take over the world-ing, and all the other things I bought it for in the first place instead of being abused by games that weren't meant to run on it. Next, the save file I was using for the alternate space program, the "19th" KSA as run by Gene from Cape Kerbin? Well, it ate itself and did a good enough job of it that I can't even find a working copy in the previous versions stored on Dropbox. Even the quicksave is borked, which loads directly after Barting's landing in the Kestrel 3, as shown here, and refuses to do anything else: I spent some time trying to figure that one out, came up empty, and have decided to just scrap it and move on. Instead copying over the R&D node from the old persistence file, I just granted myself a bunch of science when I started the new save and unlocked most of what I already had unlocked. And then I unlocked some more, as a form of reparations taken from KSP for glitching my save. The other save file, with all the Ad Lunam / 18th KSA stuff is still in good shape, and I have plenty of backups of it should something happen. Though honestly I've not yet built anything big that would be missed or difficult to copy over. (At least not until you read the next post....) And all the stuff Remote Tech glitched out of existence has already been deleted by whatever Kraken RT2 prays to. So that's where we are. Now that I have a shiny new system I've been spending some time doing things other than playing through this save. Such as loading my "Unity" save that has everything I've ever launched in it. Amazing what you can do when you're not up against the RAM wall! Remarkably all the old, large stations and bases I've built now are a smooth as silk with barely a framerate drop. All that from running on a real graphics card instead of the Intel HD4000 that lives inside my MacBook Pro's i7. I've also been toying with Kronal Vessel Viewer, which is one of my new favorite toys. The very first thing I did was load up the two vessels from when I was playing the Demo in May of 2013, shown below: This is the Falcon 1, the very first ship I built in KSP, and the very first ship to kill Jedediah in a freak staging accident: And this is the Hawk 3-2, the first vessel to achieve Kerbin escape velocity, sending Thomlock Kerman to his forever home among the stars: As you can see, I left the reaction wheels at their now-resized KSP 0.25 size. Following that, I went on a trip down "Apollo Memory Lane", and quickly reviewed all my old Apollo-style launchers. Several of these wouldn't open because of the Procedural Fairings part change a year or so back, and I'm missing the one I used for my Apollo-44th reenactment. Otherwise everything cooperated. Most of my 2-stage Munar landers have used a mono-propellent ascent stage, the exceptions being the Apollo-44 lander and the newer Hawk lander. Monoprop may be less efficient, but it's enough to get the job done for these types of landers and avoids some potentially complex fuel piping requirements. Changes in the underlying KSP parts and my increasing understanding of the game have allowed efficiency gains over the year(s), with the C/SM shrinking noticeably. I also now tend to "hide" parts alongside the engine on the bottom of the C/SM. Most of my early launchers were of a Parallel/Asparagus-style staging, while the advent of the Aquila saw a switch to an exclusively serial-staged launch vehicle. The 3.75m "SLS" parts have only made that more common. (Along with the broken radial decouplers in stock KSP.) The overall delta-v budget of these craft have not changed, however, though some of the older ones were flown less efficiently. Note the massive amount of external struts on the older launchers. Older players will remember that until the attachment-node rework a few versions ago, that much strut-age was needed just to keep things from coming unglued. (Or that plugin of Nova Silisko's that fixed it.) Only with the larger, 3.75m "SLS" parts did that become less of a concern. To finish this little update, here is a sneak peak of two things that are coming in that next story post I mentioned.

Weird? Maybe. We're all a bit off anyway. I've always kept around an install of the previous version, and typically have a third install for RSS too. Because we want everyone to know who we are so they can shower us with pity for gaming on an inferior platform.

Plushie Kerbals that explode into a cloud of white dust if they hit anything with too much force? Nevermind: The shapeways kerbals already have that feature.... Just plushie kerbals then.

I like it! Beta / 0.90 is on the way, so I felt the need to add yet another flag to my rotation. And this one's a bit... recursive.

Fugi... The spaceship you can toss into orbit like a frisbee. Looks good (again) so far!

So we're Go for Zed-dot-Ninety-dot-Nought? Hype On!

Has there been any news on an OS-X 64-bit build? I'm not terribly optimistic about it, given the current OS-X Unity 4 bugs, but figured now would be the time to ask. Congrats Felipe! I think the whole lot of you Squad devs need to take a good long break after 0.90. Especially those of you that are suddenly married!

Not entirely, though something along those lines. More will be explained in time.

Ad Lunam - Nightfall [And... we're back! At least I think we're back. I've been busy with life, other hobbies (it's National Model Railroad month for another 5 days or so), random colds, work, respiratory cruft, weak excuses, blah, didi, blah, blah, blah, and haven't been playing much KSP lately. Well that's behind us now, so let's see if I can get this ball rolling again....] Year 76 day 348 - Somewhere over the Ocean Rebel "18th" Kerbal Space Agency Shepgee watched the fuel gauge nervously. Flying low to stay below the radar was eating into the fuel faster than he liked, but there wasn't far to go now. Any minute and the islands should appear over the horizon. Any minute and he might fly over an unfortunate boat or under some other jet out on patrol. Just enough to raise the alarms and force him to abort the mission. Since they couldn't trust the propaganda-heavy news broadcast by the Government, their only choice for reliable information was to have kerbals in the crowd and eyes on the space center. The first step of Shepgee's plan was to install a listening and observation post atop the tallest of the islands near Cape Kerbal. And it didn't feel right for him to ask anyone else to go in his place. It was his mission, it should be his risk. [Weird glitch time - the island runway was about 50 meters to the north from where it was supposed to be....] Thankfully the seas and skies were empty today, and Shepgee was able to approach the island unnoticed. He cut the engine some distance out and landed on a glide, turning the plane quickly into the hanger and out of sight. He grimaced when he checked the fuel, but shook it of and set about prepping for the ascent. He didn't have much gear for the climb, just a camera, radio, and satellite uplink, but it would prove heavy enough. It took him the better part of the morning to make it to the summit. The climb was easy enough as long as he took a break every couple hundred meters or so, and the physical conditioning required to be a kerbonaut certainly helped. He took a few minutes to plant a flag at the top, somewhat surprised to not find one there already. If there had already been a flag here it must have been claimed by one of the many storms that shake the equatorial climes of Kerbin regularly. Hopefully his flag would fare better. He set up camp and prepared for several days of surveillance. The listening station deployed easily enough, and linked up immediately to one of the new comsats they had launched. It was unlikely it would pick up anything more interesting than a launch, but that would be enough to give them an idea of what Gene and the Government Kerbals were up to. Or at least that was his hope. Year 76 day 348 - Cape Kerbin 19th Kerbal Space Agency "Hey Gene? Got a minute?" Gene was deep in a stack of mission reports when Carl knocked at his door. He used a paperclip to mark his spot then waved him in. "Sure Carl. What's up?" "Well, three or maybe four things. Probably more than that, truth be told. Things we can see but can't see. Well, can't see with the radar at least." Gene gave him a blank stare and motioned towards the endless stacks if reports on his desk. "Sorry, I'm not following you. My mind's still swimming in these Minmus reports. One guy says it's a ball of water ice, another claims it's frozen CH4. None of them can explain why it's not outgassing or sublimating. Anyway, what is it we can't get a track for?" "I'm not sure, really. Flares from objects in orbit that I've been tracking visually for the last several munths. There are several around Kerbin that I'm sure of, and perhaps one around Minmus. We've worked out their orbits fairly precisely, but when we do ranging passes there's nothing there. Like these lights in the sky are just hallucinations." "Hmm. And you're looking in the right place?" Carl nodded. "The radar array is properly calibrated?" "Of course." "Are any of these in orbits we could reach?" "Well, there's one that has a low reflectivity in Low Kerbin Orbit at a rough 30° inclination. The others are harder to get to, either due to altitude or inclination. One of them is in a perfect 90° six-hour orbit." "That can't be a coincidence." "Which is why I noticed them in the first place. All of these objects appear to have been placed where they are deliberately." Gene thought for a moment. "Sounds like a good candidate for a near-Kerbin mission. I'll talk it over with Wernher and see what he thinks. Right now we need to get prepped for tomorrow's Peregrine launch, and I need to make sense of these Minmus reports. Thanks Carl." Year 76 day 349 - Lake Fortunate Rebel "18th" Kerbal Space Agency A strange voice was counting down in Neilny’s left ear, some new public affairs kerbal they’d hired that he hadn’t had the chance to meet. Lots of new kerbals around now that they'd settled here in the League of Eight. A dull rumble rang through the cabin when the voice reached five. Neilny wasn't sure they should trust any of them. The rumble grew to a roar and a familiar shudder when the voice reached zero. The clamps released, the ship lurched upwards, and Neilny was pulled violently backwards into the seat cushions. A wicked smile crept onto his face as Luzhin 6 shot forth into the night. He glanced to the empty seat to the left, disappointed he had no one to share the launch with. Riding the Luzhins was always a thrill, and one likely to be short-lived with the new Tantares launchers nearing completion. A new, different shudder ran through the ship as the three first-stage boosters were jettisoned. No explosions, all good. Shortly afterwards the fairings kicked off, exposing the small cabin window to the empty darkness. “Couldn’t you boys have launched me when there was something outside to look at?†“Negative, Luzhin, the station sets the clock. And the Anomaly. Not us.†'The Anomaly,' as they were calling it on open channels, was presumably another kerbal stranded in orbit. A mysterious courier had delivered this contract to Shepgee and Milzer, the only information provided being a name and an orbit. 'Lem Kerman. 109km x 106km. 0°.' To reach Lem and Bernoulli, the Luzhin would need to perform a 20° plane shift followed by a 30° plane shift and a sizable altitude change. An extra 2000m/s of ÃŽâ€v if done cleanly - not the easiest thing to ask for. The first burn of the "Block B" second stage ended abruptly, pushing Neilny forward into his straps. He checked the flight profile again, pointed the ship southwards, and set up for his first burn. The plan was to expend as much fuel as possible from the Block B to rendezvous with the Anomaly, then complete the rendezvous with Bernoulli using the Luzhin 6's thrusters. It would leave the craft nearly dry, but the hope was they could refuel while at Bernoulli station. "Lake, Luzhin. I've set up my plane shift burn and will execute in... 66 seconds. Over." No response but static so he repeated the message. Static again. "Guess we're doing this alone then." Not surprising, as so far they'd only managed to get one of their new relay satellites into orbit, and it was on the other side of the planet. The plane-change maneuver placed the Luzhin 6 on an intercept trajectory with the Anomaly, on the daylight side and barely 10 minutes out. Neilny armed the RCS and started broadcasting on the various EVA frequencies. "Luzhin 6 calling anomalous EVA. Do you copy?" It wasn't long before he got a response. "Thank Kerbol." It was a weak signal, but Neilny knew it had to be his target. "I was starting to think they'd succeeded." "Copy that." Neilny wondered who 'they' were. "I'm about 5 minutes out from you, a bit to the south, ahead, and, uh," he checked the orbital tracks quickly, "upwards. Do you have a visual yet?" "Not yet. Who do you fly for, Luzhin? Shadow or Flame?" "Not really sure what you're asking, EVA." Huh? Shadow or Flame? Neilny was already lost. "Can you give me a resource check? O2? CO2? Name?" "Lem Kerman. My tanks are fine. Who do you fly for?" Neilny scratched at his chin. "Well, we fly out of the League of Eight, but honestly? I'm not really sure we fly FOR anyone." The line went static-y for several seconds and Neilny was wondering what this was all about. Finally the 'Anomaly' responded. "Ok, guess beggars can't be choosers. I've got a visual and am headed your way now." Year 76 day 349 - Cape Kerbin 19th Kerbal Space Agency Gene glanced over the control panel one last time. All lights green, all stations a Go. This was a big mission, sending Anny Kerman off to slingshot around the Mun using an unproven launcher and a large stack of batteries. Wernher had tried to talk Gene into delaying the mission until they'd finished certifying the OX-STAT photovoltaic cells, but Gene was insistent. "If we don't launch now, we'll be in second place for the Mün. And besides, we need the science." And now that they were ready to launch, Gene wasn't so sure. Something about the ship just wasn't right, didn't 'ring.' Nevertheless, all stations were Go. Gene leaned into the microphone. "Ok, Peregrine 1, you are Go for launch. Begin the terminal count." Things wen't wrong immediately, as though physics had been waiting for the countdown to begin before it cast judgment. Gene watched as the Peregrine started to rock, and then tilt. Then something exploded. He was rapidly pounding on the Abort button, to no avail, and all he could do was watch as the entire world turned to fire in front of him. He put his arm up to shield his eyes as the shockwave hit the windows, but the windows held. Gene was glad this time he was _inside_ the blockhouse. All through this he could hear Anny screaming on the radio from the Peregrine. After a few seconds the screaming became a cackling laughter, followed by an audible gasp. Gene was about to key his mic when Anny's voice boomed across the feed. "Wooo Hooo! What a thrill!" The worry on Gene's face melted into anger. "Peregrine, Flight. What's you're status?" "A-O-K! Wow! Can I have another go?" "Negative, Peregrine." Gene glanced over at the Medical officer who waved his hand sideways a bit then gave him a thumbs up, "Are you clear of the blast site?" "Am I clear of the blast site? You better believe it! I staged like mad when that big rocket of yours started tipping. When the world exploded I shot out of those fires sideways like a bat out of Kerbol!" "Calm yourself, Peregrine. We're sending an evac bus. Prepare for immediate extraction." Gene turned away from the microphone and started issuing orders to those gathered in Mission Control. He glanced up at the slagpile that was once a launchpad and wondered how anyone could have survived. Then he wondered how much this was going to cost to fix. Year 76 day 350 - Low Kerbin Orbit Rebel "18th" Kerbal Space Agency "Luzhin 6, Lake. We show you on approach to Bernoulli. Be advised we've been unable to reestablish communication with the station and suspect electronics may be non-responsive." Neilny shifted in his chair and pulled the RCS controls forward from the main panel. "Copy that, Lake. Preparing for rendezvous now." He spun the tiny craft around to prepare for the final rendezvous burn. He tapped the fuel gauge for the main engines, but it still read 1%. "Guess we're doing this on monoprop." "Luzhin 6, the flight surgeon would like an update on your passenger." Neilny glanced over to the kerbal in the seat next to him. Lem Kerman. "Lake, the Anomaly is still taking and extended nap." Thankfully. Neilny had heard all the conspiracy theories, wacky robot tales, and strange psychological mind benders he needed for the rest of his life. If anything was certain, this stranded kerbal had an active imagination. He checked the time and started his RCS burn, bringing his velocity down to match the station. The ship twisted around to give Neilny his first look at Bernoulli in more than a year. He grimaced when he saw the damage. "Lake, Luzhin 6. Think I know why the station has been unresponsive. There appears to have been a seal failure between the lab and the central docking node. I can see a bit of daylight through the gap." He used RCS to maneuver around the station, looking for other holes. "Good bet that whatever happened also ripped the power system apart." "We copy Luzhin, proceed with caution. Make sure both you and your passenger are suited up before attempting to enter the station." No, really? He almost responded as such, but decided against it. Enough useless chatter on the line already. The station might be salvageable if they could seal off the habitation module and fix the bits that were torn to shreds. Neilny would've preferred to have a mechanic with him instead of, well, whatever Lem was, but any extra set of hands should suffice. First order of business was to move the docking adapter form the lower, now vacuum-exposed port, to the one on the hab itself. Lem woke up as soon as the Luzhin and the station clanged together. He glanced around, looked at that station, looked to Neilny, and was about to start into another tirade when Neilny stopped him. "Look, I get it. Your world is all kinds of messed up right now. Can we just cut the psycho nonsense and concentrate on fixing this station?" Lem stared at him blankly for a moment then started off into his spiel anyway. Neilny shrugged, ignored him, and moved up into the orbital module so he could unhook the docking adapter. He closed the hatch behind him so he could suit up - and get some peace and quiet. The docking adapter itself was in good shape, but a quick check of the pressure beyond showed what Neilny had feared - the station internals were exposed to the vacuum. So he unlatched and undocked, moved the ship around to the port on the hab module, and docked back up. He keyed the cabin microphone. "Lem." Silence. "You've got to hit the big blue button next to the speaker." "Ok. What now?" "Get suited up. I'm going to head into the station and try to stop any leaks. To do that I need to equalize the pressure between the orbital module and the station, which probably means venting the cabin into space." "Ok." The damage wasn't as bad as Neilny first thought, aside from the lack of an atmosphere. There was no way they'd ever be using the lab module again, at least not without serious repairs. He radioed the damage reports to mission control, sealed the habitat module off from the rest of the station, and headed back into the Luzhin. If he was right, they had just enough supplies onboard to repressurize the station and keep them breathing good air for a few days. Maybe a full munth. At least they'd have more room to spread out. Maybe that would shut Lem up. Year 76 day 352 - Lake Fortunate Rebel "18th" Kerbal Space Agency Milzer and Haloly were reviewing the Bernoulli damage reports when Shepgee sauntered into the conference room. Milzer glanced up at him and did a double take, not expecting Shepgee to return so soon. "You're back?" "Hello to you too, Milzer. And here I thought you'd be happy to see me." "Just didn't expect you back so soon. Any news on what our amnesiac flight director and his famous rocket scientist cohort are up to?" "Well, they're not up to much of anything much after the launchpad explosion." Shepgee slumped into one of the large, overly-comfortable conference room chairs and started poking through the reports scattered around the table. "They're busy cleaning up the mess and I didn't see much need to stick around to watch dirt move. Hmm." Shepgee pointed at a particular diagram in one of the Bernoulli reports. "Is Neilny sure about this?" "Yeah. Blew a hole big enough to squeeze your hand through. We were planing to replace the station anyway, but not this soon. So, is Gene really sending a crew to the Mün?" "Looks that way." He nosed through another report and tossed it back on the table. "I say let them have it. We've been there, done that. I want Duna." Shepgee motioned towards Haloly, who had all bit ignored him so far. "Any update on this idea of yours? 'It's for Kerbals' and whatnot? Is it possible to get it built in the time we have?" Haloly shook his head. "No. Not without larger parts and a station in orbit to build from. I've worked out a smaller version that should suit our needs in the interim. Only big enough for a crew of eight though." "Eight? Hmm." Shepgee leaned back in the chair, almost to the point of tipping over. "Ok. So let's do this. We'll scrap the station and concentrate on this Duna thingy Haloly here has cooked up." Milzer didn't like that. "We were already sending a new module up for Bernoulli. A small Tantares-built hab. Plan was for Neilny to salvage as much from Bernoulli as he could and move it into the new hab. That's already built and being prepped for launch." "Ok, we'll keep that one then. When does it go up?" Year 76 day 356 - Lake Fortunate Rebel "18th" Kerbal Space Agency "Gads, that thing is ugly." Meldo turned to Milzer and made a deliberately sour face to try to get his attention. He failed. "How is that thing even aerodynamically stable?" "You tell me. You designed it." Milzer flipped over to the next page on his checklist, then looked around the control room. All the lights were still green. "Aspdin 1 is go for launch. Begin the count." One of the newer kerbals hit a button and the large clock in mission control started counting down from 5 minutes. Uncrewed flights had a shorter terminal count for some reason having to do with impatience. "Why do we always launch at night these days anyway?" Milzer just shook his head and half ignored Meldo as he punched in a few settings on his panel. "Station sets the schedule..." "Yeah, yeah. Station sets the schedule, not us." The five minutes were gone quickly and the Aspdin 1 was away. Aspdin was the planned expansion program for the Bernoulli Station, meant as a stepping stone back into space. Pressure from the worsening political situation and the damage suffered by Bernoulli [by shrinking 0.25 parts] had turned it into more of a planned mothballing operation. The module being sent up today would instead serve only as a storage unit. The launch had gone exactly as planned, right up until the core stage of the Luzhin booster separated from the orbital stage. The base of the fairing shroud caught the exhaust from the retro rockets and it to exploded into a thousand bits of shrapnel. This time it was Milzer who gave Meldo a nasty look. "Hey, don't look at me. I just designed the thing. Oh." Year 76 day 357 - Low Kerbin Orbit Rebel "18th" Kerbal Space Agency A couple days later and the Aspdin 1 had caught up with Luzhin 6 and Bernoulli Station. [Ten days later here on Earth..., more than a month ago now.] First order of business was for Neilny and the Luzhin 6 to undock from Beroulli and head over to meet the Aspdin. Once docked and secured, they transferred some of the fuel from the Aspdin's orbital stage to their own ship (which was running on fumes). When he finally was satisfied with the fuel situation, Neilny decoupled the Aspdin orbital stage from the new habitation module and installed it on Bernoulli. "Good news Lem!" Lem, already irritated by his longer-than-desired stay in space, glared at Neilny. "What?" "Moving day! Time to move all that cruft from the old station to the new!" "Can't that be left to the next crew? We've now got enough fuel to return to Kerbin, yes?" "Nope! Plan is to remotely deorbit the old Bernoulli once the new power system is here, and the guys in charge would rather not send another crew up until that's done. So it falls to us. Aren't you excited?" Lem wasn't. They spent the next several hours moving what they could salvage form Bernoulli into the glorified storage unit that was the Aspdin 1. Meanwhile the discarded orbital stage was parked nearby, waiting for the docking port used by the Luzhin to free up. It had jettisoned its stack decoupler to expose a docking port. Once everything was packed Neilny made sure the station was battened up tight, then closed the Luzhin's hatch. A quick RCS burst and they were away. He glanced over at Lem, who was suddenly all smiles. "Glad to be away from that station. It carries a strange odor." "Don't like space much, huh?" "Not really. Space is a dreadful place. No up, no down, no sideways. All up, all down, all sideways. Confusing and disorienting. Probably why they punished me by flinging me out into it." Neilny set up the remote link to move the Aspdin's orbital stage in to dock with the station. "Who's that?" "I already told you, several days ago. The Shadow Council. My fake news reports were not to their liking, and they claimed they gave out too much information to you rebels." Neilny agreed silently, trying to avoid more of Lem's crazy-talk, and finished the remote docking. Once done he checked the orbital maps and found they were in a good position to return directly to Lake Fortunate. [big thanks to the Trajectories mod here. Another plugin I can't live without.] "Well, good news for you, since you like these Shadows and all. Seems this mission gets to end just like it began." "How's that now?" Neilny punched the maneuver into his flight computer, spun the Luzhin around to face the burn marker, and punched the throttle forward. "In the dark." Year 76 day 369 - Cape Kerbin 19th Kerbal Space Agency "And Kestrel 3 is away!" Barting could hear the announcer in his earpiece as the small rocket leapt from the new launchpad. It had taken several munths to repair the damage from the failed Peregrine launch, and they still hadn't completed the work on the fuel and water plumbing. Yet there was a launch window coming up to rendezvous with some strange object Carl had spotted in orbit, and Gene didn't want to miss it. Barting already knew exactly what they were after. Just a few minutes into the flight and the first stage was away. These launches had become old-hat for Barting. What was he up to? Twenty? Nineteen? Who could say for sure with all the old records they'd destroyed. No matter. This flight would be no riskier than any other. The numbers radioed up from mission control told him the rendezvous would be just before the terminator. Just before he would slip over to the dark side of Kerbin. That should make it easier for him to spot the mystery object, hopefully flared against the dark planet and dark sky. He finished off the last burn to match orbits with what the mission planners had projected, and started spinning the craft to get a look around. Barting almost jumped when Bernoulli Station loomed large into his tiny window - the launch had placed him practically inside it. "There you are." He performed a quick station-keeping burn then keyed his microphone to report back to the ground controllers. "Cape, I'm at the desired orbit but I'm not seeing anything from inside the cabin. Permission to EVA to get a better view?" "Permission granted, Kestrel. Be advised you're coming up on the terminator." "Roger Cape." Exactly what he wanted. Barting made sure his helmet was sealed before he vented the cabin, and released the hatch locks once the atmosphere read nil. "Cape, still no visual on your orbital anomaly. Maybe Carl needs some glasses like Wernher?" He pushed off of the capsule and jetted the rest of the way to the station. Someone had installed a new module since he had last seen it. A new hab and a very useful set of thrusters. A plan started to form in his mind, but he thought it best to check inside first. No need to needlessly kill any kerbals that might be onboard. Year 76 day 369 - Gene's Office 19th Kerbal Space Agency Gene, Wernher and Carl watched as Barting jumped from the hatch, oriented himself to face the target, and fired his pack thrusters to head to the station. The station he couldn't see. He jetted about, inspecting this non-existent station, casting a long and ominous shadow on that which did not exist. "Does he know we have installed the camera alongside the capsule?" Gene sighed. "No, Wernher, I'd guess not. Which is good for us, as who knows what he would've done otherwise." Wernher pulled back as Carl snatched at his glasses, but was too slow. Carl back away and tried on the thick-rimmed black spectacles, then started making weird faces. "Nope, not that blind." He handed them back to the highly irritated chief designer. They watched as Barting worked open the hatch to the station and disappeared inside. The station had passed into the shadow of Kerbin before Barting reemerged. His lamps cast a strange glow over the station. In the dark it reoriented itself, fired its main engines, then disappeared off camera. Two lights spun into view and started moving towards the camera. Wernher scratched at the side of his head with one hand and pointed at the screen with the other. "Did he just deorbit the space station?" Gene turned off the screen and pounded his fist on his desk. Everything jumped (including Wernher and Carl), and a stack of reports slid off of the desk and into Wernher's hands. "At least now we know Barting is in on this... conspiracy," Wernher handed the folders to Gene and continued, "or whatever it is that is going on here." Gene signed, then tossed the folders back atop the stack. "I think it's time we give these so-called 'rebels' a call."

With the upgradeable buildings mechanic in place, at the very least we can take a mod-based path to a greenfield space program. Thanks for the response!

Not so much Air Traffic, but I've toyed with the idea of adding in "AI"-controlled Space Traffic. Basically: other ships spawned randomly (perhaps using the asteroid spawning logic?) that are pulled from pre-built templates and make random course corrections. They'd have ownership set to some non-player value, and would be named sequentially. Adding actual Air Traffic would be difficult considering the game deletes uncontrolled craft that are in the lower atmosphere. (Guess there are ways around that.) Adding AI Air Traffic Control, on the other hand, may be as simple as adding a request/response dialog. (Range Control for rocket launches.) Probably could add a random check + a nearby vessel check to see if there's something in your desired airspace. Might be useful for folks that use Multiplayer.

Question regarding upgradeable facilities: Is there a "Stage 0" of upgrades where there are no buildings and just an empty field? (Edit: So while in sandbox, for example, you could just have an empty field where the inaccessible buildings are.... Or run a spaceplane-only career and save from ever building a launchpad.) And a big congrats to Rowsdower and the Mrs!

My thoughts on the Thrust and/or ÃŽâ€v topic: I think the thrust for the core stage (stage 2) is good at 300. That lets the full Tantares "stack" have a TWR of about 1.5 after booster separation. Perhaps add a second config for the booster engines that have about 50-60% of the thrust of the core, but are otherwise the same part? That would differ from the real R-7, where the RD-107 and RD-108 are effectively the same (thrust-wise), but the dynamics of KSP are different from reality too. Dropping atmospheric ISP slightly is a good solution to curtail the excess ÃŽâ€v. These are fairly early-game parts, and should be somewhat inline with the early stock parts for balance purposes. At the same time they should still be able to deliver a payload as heavy as the Tantares to a reasonable "station" orbit around Kerbin. Ultimately if you change everything or change nothing I'll still be happy with it.

Don't know why Beale chose to do it that way, but I like it. Lets me split that tank in two and use the upper half of it as the upper stage. (Only 200m/s less with fuel lines from the boosters feeding the core.)

Cool. Now if I can get the stuttering issues I'm having with Yosemite to go away, I might be able to hold off on building a new system until next year.

Having shadows from clouds will look fantastic! You're gonna make me build a new PC now, aren't you? I've been loving the Overhaul releases, but... KSP in OS-X on my crap Intel HD-4000 barely runs as-is, and the Overhaul kinda murders what little is left. (Nothing you're doing wrong, of course. And Yosemite just made it much, much, MUCH worse.) So for now I'm kinda stuck on whatever previous version I've been recompiling each release.... Oh well.

Thanks. That trick works, for the most part, but I found when I reclaimed a particular piece of hardware by docking that it wouldn't switch back to "owned" like asteroids do. Maybe only the claw can do that? So I still had to go back and tweak the setting manually. (Not really a big deal.) -- I've been working on the next update, but I've also been having graphical issues with OS-X 10.10... which may or may not be the fault of Apple, flux and/or Unity. It's playable, but just barely at times with lots of stutters. I also seem to hit the 4GB Virtual Memory cap quicker than I did in System 10.9. I'm thinking about building a mid-tier gaming PC anyway. KSP has finally outgrown my meagre integrated Intel HD-4000m..., and my "PC" at the moment is still sporting a Pentium-D. (I've also been spending too much time playing the Charlemagne expansion to Crusader Kings 2. The idea of playing 1100 years of history [across CK2 and EU4] in a game where 1 turn = 1 day is intoxicatingly addictive. Thankfully the keyboard input no longer works as/of OS-X 10.10, so I've been freed from that dungeon... temporarilly. I'm sure it'll be fixed sooner than my reclaimed sanity would prefer.)

I've had the same bug and I've been using OS-X 10.9 since release, so I don't think it's that. More often than not I find the hang at scene change is due to hitting 4GBs of RAM allocation/reservation. Older, large save files seem to be mem-leaky, and the autosave that happens at scene load is often enough to push it over the limit, if only temporarilly. I've also had issues whenever OS-X decides my persistence file needs to be journalled/versioned. Drives the load times through the roof.

Very cool! And quite possibly the first solar calander built on Moho?? How do you account for the lack of a sunset (or rather just a very long day) for such constructions at sites above the arctic? I'm guessing one built at the exact poles would be rather useless. (Or simple - just chuck a stone in the hole and be done.)

Most impressive. Reminds me... one of these days I need to go rescue the poor nameless kerbal I stranded on Eve....

Good question. I started with this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/76545 (which probably no longer works) but as KSP changed and some bugs exposed themselves I decided to start using a fork of RSS and only compiling the KSC Switcher part of the code. (It's not the cleanest hack, and as the code is 99% the same as RSS it wouldn't really make sense to distribute it.) I'll take a look at RSS this week when I'm setting its install up and see if it's possible to make a config that only loads alternate launch sites. Pretty sure it is, as plenty of folks use it for larger (and smaller!) Kerbins, but I've not set up a full RSS install since 0.23 so things might have changed.

The Southern Space Center is what I was using back early in 0.23.5 around the time I was building Pioneer Mün Base. I may have posted a screenshot from there at some point, but maybe not. Site W would be the Kerbal equivalent of Peenemünde, where in my head canon Wernher von Kerman cut his rocketry teeth before moving to KSC. I never gave it a full name, though I might use it at some point in the future.

Yeah, me neither. Think maybe I sent too much time building weird things between releases.... The Short: I'm running two space programs. One with the crews from the first part of this save, having now moved to the other side of the planet. The other with some "borrowed" personnel from the first, still running at KSC.

Ad Lunam - Rebellion "Seems like only yesterday Gene, doesn't it?" Gene blinked at the sound of the voice and looked around. He was in his office, the nice one at Cape Kerbal, sitting at his desk. It was a sunny day outside, not a cloud to be seen. A handful of kerbals were gathered, all of them looking at him. Staring at him. Studying him. He was holding something. Something square. A framed photo. Brown parcel paper was scattered around as though he had just unwrapped it, some of it still clinging to the frame. An old black-and-white photo. Reference! "Bumper 8, our first launch here at the Cape." Gene blinked again and looked up at the voice. Senator Robert Kerman. Head of the Program. Gene could feel himself smiling, but wasn't quite sure why. Wasn't he just somewhere else? A dark room? He looked down at the photo again, four kerbals standing entirely too close to the large, explodey, mostly untested rocket roaring its way up from the makeshift launchpad on the beach. At least they were wearing fire-proof suits. "Remember, Gene?" Senator Kerman smiled at him, seemingly unsurprised by his lack of a response. An old memory flashed back to Gene's mind. "Yeah, I remember," Gene said as he pulled the picture frame clear from what was left of its packaging. "I remember you and Wernher hiding in that hack-job of a blockhouse, watching through meter thick glass." Gene pulled the stand out from the back of the frame and sat it on a clean spot on his desk. "Never mind that had that rocket exploded, as by all rights it should've, it would have torn through the tin foil roof of the blockhouse and killed you anyway, glass or no glass." The senator jumped up and clapped his hands. "Now there's the Gene I remember! Hot dog!!" He laughed nervously and looked around at the others gathered in the room. "Look, Gene, we're going to need that fire of yours if we're going to beat these League of Eight rebels in this little space race they've started. You up for a challenge, my boy?" Gene blinked again, his mind telling him there was something he'd forgotten. League of Eight? What was it with the memory of the dark room that kept flashing back? Rebels? Gene shook his head and looked at the Senator quizzically. "Who?" -- "Y'know Haloly, when I said we needed wheels, I had something a bit faster and less conspicuous in mind. Like motorbikes. Or a tank." Shepgee, Sigsey and Gusbrett were gathered around what had to be the oldest and strangest looking van they'd ever seen. They'd spent the last several Münths hitchhiking, working odd jobs, and saving funds, all to make their way to some spot on one of Shepgee's maps. Every now and then they'd pool their money and send someone off to find a ride. Usually they returned empty handed. "Yeah, Hal, where'd you find this old thing anyway?" "Sigsey, if I told you, no, if you had been there you probably still wouldn't believe me." Haloly leaned back in the drivers seat, eliciting a squeal and creak from the van. It was a wonder it hadn't rusted away to nothing yet. "See, there was this dog. Biggest dog I've ever seen, and I've seen some big dogs. Anyway, he and his scraggly-looking friend just offered it up once I regaled them with the story of our plight. Besides, how was I going to bring 4 bikes back alone?" Shepgee glared at Haloly. "You told some random stranger who we were? Are you insane?!?" "Of course not, man, kerb, whatever you are." Haloly jumped out and helped load their gear into the van. "I told them we were space aliens, little pink men wearing heavy green masks, right? That we'd heard tales of the females of this world from all the way across the galaxy. He just grinned back, said 'Cool, dude. Take our ride!' and tossed me a bag of dog treats." Shepgee shook his head and climbed up into the van. "Whatever. Look, are we ready to go?" "Go where?" -- "There." Shepgee pointed down at the sprawling facility below. It appeared from nowhere as they crested the last hill, the lake coming into view long before everything else. "Site K, built beside a lake that appeared only 76 years ago when the asteroid hit, and not yet on any maps." The lake was a welcome sight, as they'd spent the better part of eight days driving the worst of the Badlands. "A slightly acidic lake that nothing can live in, but a lake none-the-less." "I thought you said there wasn't a site K?" Gusbrett was too busy digging in the bag of snacks to look out the window. "That it was just some code to tell us some secret agent level message or something?" "Well, Gus, I lied. Sorta. Gene sent Milzer and Meldo to talk with the leaders of the Central District sometime after Archimedes 4. That was before the district split from the Government and reestablished the League of Eight, sometime when we were on Minmus." Gusbrett was growing impatient. "Yeah, we know all this. Except I thought M&M were after parts?" Shepgee ignored him and continued. "Gene was busy finding a permanent home for us, so we'd been keeping an eye on our satellite drops. We could tell from that reconnaissance they were building something here, but we weren't sure what until the launchpad showed up, so we... Oomph." Haloly hit a particularly nasty bump, causing the entire van to rattle and creak. Shepgee glared at him. "What? Look, there's only so much I can do, man, kerb. The suspension on this thing probably hasn't been replaced since the Unification." "Anyway, the official story was M&M were here to investigate the lake to see if it was actually a crater. They brought some of the science team as a cover. Unofficially, they were negotiating with the Centrals about setting up Site K. I just didn't know if they'd finished, if they were arrested along with Gene and Wernher, or worse." Sigsey had been napping in the back seat, but woke up when the van slowed and the ride smoothed out. "Whoa. Looks like KSC. How long was I out?" Nobody answered. Gusbrett was watching the buildings for signs of life. So far, no one. "Where is everybody?" "No idea." Shepgee pointed to a building at the west end of the facility. "Pull in there and lets take a look." "Wow! They've got a pool!" Sigsey jumped out before Haloly could stop and ran over to check it out. "It doesn't feel like water, though. Weird." Gusbrett sauntered over to keep the younger engineer out of trouble. Haloly and Shepgee took a look around the facility. It didn't take long for someone to find them, though, as Milzer was wheeling their way at high speed on a small cart. "Shepgee! Haloly!" Milzer spun the cart into a nearby parking space and jumped out, slapping both Shepgee and Haloly on the shoulders. "We were starting to worry about you guys. What kept you? Ahhh, don't tell me yet. Let's go inside and I'll show you the new digs." Milzer wasted no time and set off towards the closest building at a brisk walk. "C'mon!" Shepgee shrugged and started to follow, but stopped when he heard a splash behind him. He turned to find an angry Gusbrett climbing out of a pool with Sigsey standing over him, pointing and waving his arms. "See, I told you it's not water!" Kerbal Space Program 0.25 Economic Boom? Not exactly.... Our merry band of Kerbal refugees have been stripped of their hard-earned funds, science, and even several members of their crew. They've scampered off to the far side of Kerbin and settled amidst the Mountains, Badlands, and poisoned waters of the Central Continent at a site I'm calling "Lake Fortunate." In my head-canon these mostly unoccupied lands are a part of the League of Eight, an organization of eight merchant cities scattered along the coasts. Their territory is marked by Light Blue on the map below. At some undecided point in the recent past, five of the six lands listed on that map Unified into a single government. Only the Commonwealth - the CCHR - remained independent, though its territory slowly withered away once the deserts spread. Now, 76 years after 0.18, the League of Eight has left that Unified Government, taking with it The Disputed Lands and laying claim to all territory on the Central Continent. You'll need to cut and paste this and tweak the other Real Solar System settings to fit your needs, but here's my list of Launch Sites, both old and new: LaunchSites.cfg The one exception being KSC-2 proper, which I've always launched from by either editing the save file or using KerbTown. To set up Ad Lunam in 0.25 I did what I usually do - I started a new game and copied the ships over. Except now that we have Progress Tracking and the allegedly-soon-to-be-completely-reworked Contract System, and since I was resetting both tech and progress, I didn't want the satellites around Moho and Eve or the landers on the Mün to "cheat" for me and trigger events or give science I hadn't earned. Thanks to the Asteroid system from 0.23.5 I can set the "Discovered" state of those craft to -1 with an infinite lifetime and they go back to being uncontrolled. Just like asteroids. Which means they need to be visited before I can use them again. Just like asteroids. Next up were the difficulty settings. I decided to base these on the Hard defaults with a few exceptions: Quickload is allowed (to get around bugs), and I increased the penalty percentages for failed contracts. At least at first. When I saw how absurd the failure penalties were with the sliders at 1000% I quickly moved them back to 100% (by editing the save file). An example: One contract advance was for 20 funds, the payout 30 funds, but the penalty was somewhere around 32,000 funds. Just absurd. I have also used the in-flight settings menu to allow a temporary "Revert to VAB" after one of my rockets phased through the launchpad and exploded before launch. To bugs I give no quarter (except when funny). On top of the game's base difficulty, I decided to use Kerbal Construction Time. Great mod, but the base unit of construction time is a 24 hour day, so I cut that by 1/4 to match Kerbin. I then disabled the slow tech unlocking (because long research times don't make sense for this universe). Now that I've played through the first several missions I'm considering bumping the construction time back up, as even with 3 1.2-rated High Bays in the VAB it's only taking a day to build almost everything I've launched. Part of that is due to the inventory parts effect, but ultimately it looks like the mod was already well balanced before I started tweaking with it. Aside from that the mods and changes are listed in this thread's second post as always. I've had to leave a few mods behind to save RAM, and will only use others occasionally when they're needed as set pieces or for visual effects. I'd love to play 100% of the time with the EVE Overhaul, but my poor integrated graphics just can't handle it. (Someday I'll build a real gaming rig again.... Someday.) I mean, just look at this shot of Lake Fortunate at night. Gameplay wise, I'm now running with two save files. The main file with Shepgee, M&M and Haloly will be the "canonical" save file. I'm using a second file for the "19th" KSA to track funds, research, and all that jazz. As they launch things and put them into the universe I'll copy them to the canonical save and set the ownership just as I did for the pre-existing craft. Occasionally I'll need to copy things back to the "19th" save, and will likewise have to set the item ownership. Not the most ideal situation, but I'd rather not set up something insane like a Dark Multiplayer server or something even more complex. Besides, copy and paste is an easy thing to do. (An old programmer once told me copy and paste is half of software development. The other half is waiting until you can copy and paste.) The ban on using Rockomax, Kerlington, and Kerbodyne parts for craft in the main save still stands, and still includes contracts. (The small number of contracts not from those three agencies has made things... interesting.) Everything else is fair game. Rediscovering Concrete Rebel "18th" Kerbal Space Agency Lake Fortunate Year 76 day 330 "We call it the Concrete Program." Milzer clicked the button and the slide projector whirred, clunked, and the next frame appeared on the wall behind him. "Three similar and sequential projects with the goal of getting back to where we were before the raid." He glanced around the room to make sure everyone was still awake. He wasn't too sure about Sigsey, but continued anyway. "First is Project Smeaton. We'll work our way through flight and equipment test until we're sure we know what we're doing. Only then will we put a Kerbal into orbit. As is customary, Jebediah Kerman of Jeb's Junkyard will be making the first flight." Milzer motioned towards Jeb, who was leaning against the side wall of the conference room, arms folded, exuding the very essence of cool. Gilvin, oblivious to the importance of the moment that had just passed, spoke up. "So, why exactly are we starting over?" "Because Wernher is still unaccounted for, and all of our engineering know-how was locked away inside of his brain. Especially after Linus here," Milzer motioned to Meldo's new intern, resplendent in white lab coat, "left to finish his degree. We have a basic understanding of how things work, but we'd rather be cautious than dead." "Next is Project Aspdin. Officially Aspdin will see the launch of the first of our new generation of stations. Unofficially, Aspdin may be the first act of space piracy in the history of Kerbin." Milzer clicked the clicker and an image of Bernoulli Station ka-clunked into existence. Several kerbals in the room gasped audibly. "We built Bernoulli. We launched Bernoulli. We lived in Bernoulli. And now we're going to take it back. Assuming it's still in one piece, that is. So far we've been unable to establish a comms link with the onboard systems, so it's possible there's no power. Regardless, once we've recovered the station we're going to proceed with the Phase 2 expansion plan." "Third and final is Project Monier, which will see our return to the Mün and Minmus." Ka-clunk, and Eutocius Station appeared. "Like Bernoulli we're going to reclaim Eutocius, and like Bernoulli we've got expansion in mind. We're planning to use this little outpost to reinforce the next chapter of our space program's history. Any questions?" "Yeah." Neilny stood and pointed at the kerbal standing next to Jebediah. "Why is he in a hazmat suit?" -- Rebel "18th" Kerbal Space Agency Lake Fortunate Year 76 day 334 "Does anybody know how many times he's done this?" Haloly glanced over his shoulder to see Loald shrugging a response to Derbald's question. He looked back just in time to see Jeb's liftoff. This was a pretty simple mission and Haloly only had one objective to track. The "Best and Greatest" records keeping organization wanted them to break the 5km altitude record, again. As Director of Mission Operations it was up to Haloly to let Jeb know when he'd crossed the line and could head back. Shepgee had temporarily taken over as Flight Director. Just a few days before the launch he was appointed Program Director by popular vote and recognized by the the League, but continued to refer to himself as a test pilot. Milzer, the actual Flight Director, was busy preparing for his flight in the Smeaton 2. Meldo, who had taken over as Chief of Research and Design in Wernher's absence, was slated to fly on Smeaton 3. None of the newly appointed officers were willing to relinquish their old duties, a good thing since they were desperately short on qualified pilots. Haloly was trying to decide if he was going to keep his spot on the Smeaton 4 or let one of the rookies take it. He watched Jeb's altimeter cross the 5km mark and waved to Shepgee. Shepgee nodded and tapped Gusbrett on the shoulder. Gusbrett, the only other pilot from their group and today's CAPCOM, relayed the information to Jebediah. "Smeaton 1, Lake here. You've hit the mission objective and can head back down. The crews on the VAB roof have cleared to their safety stations." "Copy Lake, way ahead of you." The mood in the room was tense as they watched Jebediah descend towards the VAB. He was coming down too far towards the front of the building to land on the helipads, and even too far forward to make the building itself. For a few moments no one was sure if he was going to hit the to of the VAB or scrape along the door. Some wiggling and wrangling and Jeb managed to bring the Smeaton 1 down safely mere centimeters from the edge of the main building's roof. "Lake, VAB here. Smeaton 1 has landed." And Jebediah, again, claimed the Vehicle Assembly Building in the name of Courage and Stupidity. -- Three days later and everyone was gathered again in Mission Control, running through simulations for Meldo's upcoming flight in the Smeaton 3. Milzer's flight had gone as well as Jeb's, setting a new 11km altitude record, though he opted to not land on the VAB. They pooled the gains from the first two flights and hired on researchers from the greater League of Eight. There was only so much they could do in-house, not having the full resources of the planet behind them, and they need the research boost. It was going to leave them tight on Funds for a while, but creepy new accountant ensured them they'd be ok. Milzer had just finished running the team through the launch simulation when something on the TV caught his attention. It was video of a kerbal, clearly in orbit, slowly crawling out of his capsule and into the void. A familiar face looked up at the camera and smiled. "Hey, is that Dudry?" He motioned towards the TV, getting Shepgee's attention. Shepgee fished around in the mess at his station, found the remote, and unmuted the set. "Reports from Cape Kerbal today where Dudry Kerman has become the first Kerbal to orbit Kerbin. Flight Director Gene Kerman says the mission was a resounding success, and is confident they can beat the rebels of the League of Eight to the Mün." The video cut to a clip from the press conference, where Gene was describing the Kestrel 1 and Dudry's flight. They watched the broadcast for a few minutes before Shepgee muted the TV and tossed the remote back atop his station's junk pile. "I guess we know what happened to Gene and Dudry now." Shepgee shook his head. "What do they mean by 'first?'" "Yeah, Shepgee, everyone knows Haloly was first." Milzer smiled jokingly at Shepgee, eliciting an angry glare. Shepgee was about to quip back when Meldo burst into mission control. "Shepgee, Milzer, did you see the TV!?" "Your a bit late to the party, Mel." "Hmm. So I guess you were right about Dudry. A good bet that Barting guy is there too." Milzer scratched at the back of his head, watching the silent TV and thinking. "Doesn't explain Gene. Do you figure they've got Wernher as well?" "I think it's high time we found out."

OK, that's what I suspected. Thanks.