Cashen

I'd thought of that after the fact, but decided it was more important to have minimum inclination versus minimum eccentricity. Plus, undocking prevents both issues.

Anubis-Osiris Test Project, Part 3: New Mun Lander & Decommissioning Mun Station Today is the 45th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, and so it's fitting that this (rather large) update take place on Mun. In the last update, we saw the resounding success of the new Mun base. It drives around about as well as you could ask for something of that size. So now, MASEC has the go-ahead to transfer the orbiting crew down to the surface. It's a fundamental shift in Mun exploration, that will consist of the mobile base, a small unmanned orbital outpost/fuel depot, and a new lander for crew rotations. It's also a tad risky: No longer will escape be a moment's notice away. If there are problems on Mun, help has to come from Kerbin. Also, the crew on the ground will not have the ability to leave. Someone would have to come and land first. But given the relative closeness of Kerbin, this is considered an acceptable risk. What will happen to Mun Station, you ask? Well for now it will remain in Mun orbit, unmanned and unused. The habitation module however will be detached and brought back, eventually, to be re-purposed as a future space station at Duna. This will save MASEC from having to construct a new habitation module. It'll be paired with a different service module, though, and the current Mun Station service module will probably be left as a piece of orbiting debris at Mun. Let's get started! This is what will become UKS Mun Outpost. It has a small habitable space where Kerbals can stay temporarily at the top, followed by a four-way docking node, and then a large orange propellant tank. This is intended to orbit Mun at around 50 km up, and will act as a transfer point between space-based craft and landing craft during crew movements to and from Mun Base. This design is part of the test project, since outposts like this are planned for Ike, Vall, Tylo, Bop and Pol in the future. The launch vehicle for this is designated as Lupus III, owing to the 3.75m diameter and the triple Bearcat engines in the core stage (the L-III stage). The core stage has a poor thrust-to-weight ratio so was assisted by the two large SRBs. The upper stage is your standard L-IVB, this time sporting the brand new NovaPunch K-2X engine. With the solar panels out, the L-IVB stage sends the outpost towards Mun. Okay, now that that's taken care of... This is the new lander. It's called ALCOR, or Advanced Landing Capsule for Orbital Rendezvous, and it's been designed and built by ASET Industries (link to thread), intended to replace the current 2.5m lander can. All new landing craft will be designed around this, with different tank/engine configurations for different roles. It's small, light, and flexible, and in addition it carries three kerbals instead of two. It also uses a small chemical rocket from AIES Aerospace, which marks a return to chemical rockets for landing craft, a new MASEC policy. Nuclear engines are now only to be used for orbital craft, not landers. This means there will be no more NAMLARV vehicles produced. Mission Outline & Objectives First flight of the ALCOR Mun Lander Launch unmanned and rendezvous with Kerbin Station. Desbree and Neweny Kerman will board and fly ALCOR to Mun Station. Ferry the remaining four crew members at Mun Station down to the base, in two landings (one piloted by Debsree and one by Neweny) Dock ALCOR to the new Mun Outpost. Return to Kerbin Station using Mun Station's Aten COV, which they no longer need. The ALCOR is encapsulated and launched at night, atop a single 2.5m ascent stage. The lander's own engine is used to complete the orbit, and then rendezvous with Kerbin Station. Desbree gets a look at the interior. The displays are set up as three different "stations", depending on what the pilot is doing. On the left is the landing station, which has a large screen for the downward looking landing camera, and the leftmost navball for orientation info. The center station is your basic data readouts, including the navball, resource status and orbital info. The righthand station is the navigation station, showing a map with their position on it. The top station, just below the upper rendezvous window, is the docking station, with another navball and the docking camera display. They're still docked to Kerbin Station, which can be seen out the forward looking window. Desbree and Neweny then make their escape to Mun to begin the mission. Notice the KAS port on the front of the core propellant tank. This is to allow surface refueling of the lander by the base. The outpost, having a head start, gets to Mun first and begins to brake into orbit. It's hoped to place it in a 50km orbit, about 10km higher up than the current Mun Station (I did this so I could use the 1000x timewarp if I wanted to). Once in proper orbit, the L-IVB separates and de-orbits itself into Mun. The force of decoupling boosted the outpost into a 50x57km orbit instead of the planned 50km circular orbit. So in the future, outposts will be placed by undocking rather than decoupling. Desbree: I love this instrument layout! So many screens! I don't think docking has ever been this easy! Debsree is docking to Mun Station, which can be seen out the rendezvous window, as well as clearly on the docking camera. They don't stay docked for too long. The Aten COV docked to Mun Station soon joins them, with the four remaining Kerbals stationed there: Wehrrigh, Milmon, Adwise, and Obcan Kerman. Since there are six of them, and someone has to fly the lander back up, they'll do this in two landings, and Desbree and Neweny will each get a shot at landing. Of note is that of the six Kerbals on board, none of them have actually set foot on Mun before (Mun Station's crew is relatively inexperienced as most of the original crew were reassigned elsewhere), though Wehrrigh has walked on Ike. Desbree: Tell you what. We should make a wager. Whoever lands further away from the base, has to dock the lander to the outpost at the end of all this, and then EVA back to the capsule. Neweny: Haha! You have a deal. Desbree: Oh man, these displays make landing super easy, too! The landing display, in addition to showing a downward view, also displays both horizontal and vertical velocity, plus radar altitude. The navball on the center console is placed on the left side to make it easily visible while doing IVA landings. Here, Desbree has the autopilot in "Surface Velocity Retrograde" mode, holding proper attitude (automated pitchover), while working the throttle manually. I do all of my landings like this, since I generally do not trust MechJeb's landing autopilot, and I enjoy the challenge. Also useful on the landing display is the predicted touchdown velocity (shown as current impact speed), which is the touchdown speed with the current throttle setting. Here it shows zero, which means they'll likely stop and start going back up, so Desbree is about to reduce throttle. The slope indication can also be really helpful; here it's just 4 degrees. Desbree: We're here on Mun! Obcan and Wehrrigh are the first two passengers. They get some time to wander around and explore the local area, while Mac and Kirmin begin driving the base over to where they are. Mac: We'll be there in a few minutes. The base handles comfortably at about 6 meters per second, so it takes about 12 and a half minutes to travel the distance. During that time, they traverse the edge of a crater, and the base handles a slope of 20 degrees! Not too shabby! Mac: Okay, we just crested a hill and I can see you guys off in the distance now. That lander looks tiny! That's because the lander is pretty tiny. Or the base is really big. One or the other. Anyway, there's a cable at the back end of the base, and they're using it to refuel ALCOR. The lander is designed with enough fuel capacity to comfortably land on and then take off from Mun. Normally landers are refueled in orbit, and begin the descent with full tanks. Here the procedure will be to refuel on the surface, and ascend with full tanks. This way, the lander can use fuel derived from Mun kethane, rather than kethane imported from Minmus, as had been the case before. After spending a while on the surface, Desbree launches back into Mun orbit, to rendezvous with Neweny and the remaining two kerbals. Desbree: Okay, see if you can beat 4.5km. Neweny: Alright, I'll give it a shot! Now it's Neweny's turn, this time carrying Milmon and Adwise Kerman down to the surface. By this time I've gotten the hang of landing from IVA. I (or rather, Neweny) have the throttle set to a good touchdown velocity form 100 meters up, and so I can just relax and keep it right there until it touches down. Neweny! Yeah, 2.8 km from the base! Eat that, Desbree! Meanwhile Adwise stands on the lander's roof, admiring the view of Kerbin, while Milmon is just climbing down the ladder. Here's a closer view of the refueling. ALCOR went up and then came back down on the last refueling, validating the concept. The base holds 495L of oxidizer and 405L of fuel in its own fuel tank, while ALCOR's capacity is just 306L and 254L respectively, meaning that on paper the base can refuel ALCOR about 1.6 times, though given typical fuel consumption, this is in reality 2-3 times. This doesn't consider the base's internal storage of 2000L of kethane, which can be turned into even more fuel. Long story short, the base can carry enough fuel and kethane with it to support a few crew changes even while away from a kethane reservoir. Mission complete! All six Mun-based kerbals are now in the surface base! It's time for Neweny to head back up and wrap things up before going back to Kerbin. An interesting photo: Neweny was able to capture the base descent stage laying on the ground as he passed overhead while heading up into orbit. Their mission complete, all that's left to do is park the ALCOR at the new outpost, where it will live. Desbree, having lost the bet, gets to do this part of the job himself. Here he's undocked and backing away from Aten, getting ready to dock with the outpost. Once completed, he then has to EVA himself back to the capsule for the return home. Here they are arriving back at Kerbin. This brings a successful conclusion to the Anubis-Osiris Test Project. The mobile base design is good to go on Duna, Vall, Tylo, and anywhere else MASEC thinks it might be useful! I'm really happy and excited about this mobile base. Desbree Kerman: Neweny Kerman: Adwise Kerman: Obcan Kerman: Milmon Kerman: Wehrrigh Kerman:

The reason they went retrograde was for the free return trajectory. Going prograde would put them at risk of a slingshot into solar orbit if the SPS failed, but a retrograde approach would throw them back towards Earth. It's also much easier for the TEI burn to be going retrograde.

For extra realism, you should totally aim for a retrograde orbit around Mun.

Anubis-Osiris Test Project, Part 2: Improved Mun Base So, while drive-testing the mobile Mun base, Mac and Kirmin came to the conclusion that the base design wasn't going to work on Mun. It stalled in inclines as shallow as 10 degrees, and was prone to sideways sliding when tilted at all to one side or the other. It was stable on its wheels, but the conclusion to be drawn was that the base was too light for its footprint and could not gain much traction. An unfortunate and expensive conclusion, which means the first base iteration will have to be abandoned on Mun. However, MASEC engineers were already working on an updated design. The problem it seems is weight. The mobile base is too light, much like the original design of Fennec was on Minmus. So they've come up with a design that adds more than 10 tons of weight, and reduces the footprint from 8 large wheels to 6. Where did the extra weight come from? Well, they've solved another problem with that. The middle habitation module was deleted in favor of a pair of kethane drills, converters, and small storage tanks. This means the base will be able to refuel landers from the surface, to take advantage of Mun's supply of kethane and so that operations are less dependent on kethane and/or propellants imported from elsewhere. So, Mac and Kirmin park the old base and use Fennec to drive back to NAMLARV, which is parked right where they left it. The new mobile base will land atop a kethane reservoir, and nowhere near here. So, their mission is rather simple: Get back into orbit and await the new base's arrival. NAMLARV carries enough fuel to perform two landings without requiring refueling, so they get into a low orbit and wait, without heading back up to Mun Station. The new base is prepared for launch. Because of the extra weight, a slightly modified launch vehicle is used, containing four large SRBs and a much larger upper stage. The new six wheel design can be seen clearly. SRB jettison coming up through the clouds. In this view you can see the two side-mounted kethane drills. Also, this design takes advantage of external cameras, like we saw earlier on the new Shuttle. The new upper stage, the L-IIB, marks the first flight of the new NovaPunch K-2X engine. In this case, five have been clustered together in a 5m package, providing an increase in thrust over The Matriarch, used on the normal L-II stage. NovaPunch also makes single K-2X engines in 3.75m and 1.25m packages, and the single 3.75m engine stands to become the new standard upper stage engine, but we'll see that in the future. The L-IIB provides the Mun injection burn, and then the new base separates from the stage and corrects its course to miss Mun. The original trajectory is an impact course, as can be seen here. The L-IIB stage seen just a few seconds before it smashed into Mun at nearly 900 meters per second. The base has a brand new descent stage design. The added weight of the kethane equipment has lessened the asymmetric center of mass, so a ballast tank is no longer needed. That being said, it's still off-center, so powerful RCS thrusters have been added. Also, the descent engines are four NovaPunch radial engines, which have up to 2 degrees of gimbal range, to further enhance attitude control. Atop the twin kethane drills are structural mounts for four large retractable solar panels. The body mounted ones are intended for use when driving, and are adequate to power the large wheels, but the bigger panels will be needed for powering the power-hungry kethane equipment. Here's the chosen landing area. It's a reservoir of about 190,000 liters of kethane, in a fairly densely cratered area and adjacent to a massive impact basin. This should provide an interesting area as a base of operations for a while! Another interesting feature of the descent stage is that it only has two landing legs, on one side. Because the center of mass is much more balanced with this design, this is meant to case the stack to tip over wheels-down on landing. Like the old design, the descent stage is meant to be left on the surface. The design works flawlessly. Well, almost. There was a rear facing camera mounted on the cupola module at the back, which was destroyed on landing, but that's a really small issue. Mac and Kirmin are going to attempt to land much closer to the new base site than previously, so they start their de-orbit sooner. Mac: I can actually see the base from here. We're going to be about 600 meters from it when we touch down. Kirmin: Excellent! Mac is correct. They land 625 meters from the new Mun Base. Here Kirmin climbs down from NAMLARV as Mac gets Fennec ready to drive over. Mac: Oh, this looks much better for sure. Much more practical with the kethane equipment. We won't be so dependent on Minmus now. This design is critical for use at Jool as well, as it'll allow MASEC to utilize the kethane on Vall and Tylo, which would otherwise be impractical to exploit. This applies equally for Duna, of course. This time Kirmin is in the front seat of the base's front command pod. There were originally five external cameras: Forward, backward, right, left, and one aimed at the ladder from atop the left kethane drill, which is shown here with Mac visible climbing the ladder. The rear camera was smashed on landing, unfortunately. It's not that big a deal though, because there's a nice, big glass cupola at the back, and here Mac looks at the discarded descent stage, while on his displays are: A display of the base showing the status of all parts, the view from the forward-facing camera, and a topographic map of Mun showing their location. Kirmin extends the solar panels, lowers the drills into the ground and activates the kethane converters. Everything works beautifully! They drive up the hill towards NAMLARV. The base makes the lander look quite small, actually. The most important thing? It handles much, much better! Here it's shown ascending a 15 degree slops with no issues maintaining heading or speed! It definitely looks like a design that works and can be genuinely useful! This marks a shift in MASEC's exploration of Mun: From orbital to surface. With the success of UKS Mun Base, the go-ahead has been given to relocate the remaining Mun Station crew to the mobile surface base, and Mun Station will be decommissioned, to be replaced with a small orbital outpost servicing as a way-station for crew transfers. But we'll see more on that in the next installment!

Flying Fox Laythe Flight Test Flight on Kerbin is nothing new, and Kerbin's atmosphere is thoroughly understood. Therefore, the flight characteristics and engine performance in Kerbin's atmosphere are well known. Laythe however is an alien atmosphere. It contains oxygen but in different amounts, and contains other gases. Its pressure and temperature relationship with altitude are also different. It's not known exactly how jet engines perform in it. So, the two engineers on the surface, Milke and Ellorf, are going to flight-test the Flying Fox in Laythe's atmosphere. Mission Outline & Objectives Perform a non-stop equatorial circumnavigation of Laythe using the Flying Fox. Use on-board instruments to record dynamic pressure, altitude, velocity, and fuel consumption on 1 second intervals for the first 1024 seconds of flight. During the first 1024 seconds of flight, perform a gradual ascent to at least 14km altitude. Establish maximum cruise speeds and altitudes in Laythe's atmosphere. Flying Fox Crew: Ellorf Kerman & Milke Kerman Milke is climbing into the back seat of the Flying Fox, while Ellorf prepares to get into the front. The two of them are going to attempt a circumnavigation of Laythe. You may recall Jebediah Kerman performing a circumnavigation of Kerbin during Horus 3. He was able to complete the flight but ran out of fuel near KSC and had to glide the rest of the way. Laythe is smaller, so if all goes well, they'll land with some fuel left over. Ellotf: Wheels up. Milke: Okay, instruments online. I'm starting data recording. They're using the Grapohtron 2000 data recorder to record atmospheric pressure, dynamic pressure, altitude from sea level, surface relative velocity, as well as the intake air quantity sensor and the fuel quantity sensor. After the mission they'll do some data processing. The recording takes measurements every second for the first 1024 seconds (just over 17 minutes). Ellorf: There's that small lake east of the landing site we saw from orbit. During the data recording, they perform a very slow climb. The goal is to get velocity and fuel consumption details as a function of altitude, assuming that the Flying Fox is in a state of dynamic equilibrium with the atmosphere. That is, with the engine throttle fixed at 100%, the speed they travel is the maximum speed they can go at any given altitude. If they ascend too quickly, they could rise vertically quicker than the Fox's twin turbojets can accelerate them horizontally, and it would not be valid velocity data. Here we can see Ellorf's recently updated displays. The software update was sent to Laythe from Kerbin. It includes a HUD, an updated navball, plus Ellorf has configured the two other displays to show the topographical map of Laythe, and the status of their consumables. Out the window can be seen the eastern coastline of Osiris Island. Out over the vast ocean, they begin to rise through the clouds with Jool looming large, dead ahead in the sky. There is a vast expanse of ocean on Laythe's retrograde side, and the timing of the flight is such that this stretch will take place at night, maximizing visibility of land during daylight. By now they are getting shock heating effects. A large island is visible to the north. Data recording has by now stopped, at just over 14km altitude and about 1.2km/s velocity. Nevertheless, they continue a very gradual ascent to test the limits of flying on Laythe. It's dark now, and the map shows the large stretch of open water they're flying over. Meanwhile, the fuel quantity now shows just under 50%, but they are slightly more than half way around Laythe, so they will indeed make it back with a little fuel to spare. As it turns out, a pitch of about 5.4 degrees holds a steady altitude, with a vertical rise of just 0.5 meters per second. By now they're at 15km altitude and 1.25km/s speed. Ellorf: Hey look, I got a good shot of a crescent Tylo coming over the horizon. Rotated the camera to give a proper north-up orientation. There's some land in the lower left of this picture as the sun rises, and the four innermost planets can be seen: From the bottom up are Moho, the Sun, Eve, Kerbin, and Duna. This puts in perspective how far away they really are from home. Ellorf: I got one of the larger islands below. This one looks relatively mountainous by Laythe standards. Milke: That's also a really big lake there. I wonder if that's an impact crater, volcanic, or just a natural lake. Ellorf: We'll have to check it out close-up sometime. Milke: Oh, Vall is coming over the horizon. They capture a photograph of Vall similarly. You can see in this picture how high and fast they are now. Jool begins to rise above the horizon again, while the first hints of the western shore of Osiris Island begin to appear in the distance. They're almost there! Milke: Oh wow, what a view of the great lakes from here! You can see the whole area Thompler and I drove through yesterday! They cut the engines and glide down, but overshoot slightly. You can see the nose-down attitude here, as they try to get into thicker air and slow down before turning around. After getting turned around, they come in for a gentle landing. Most of the fuel is gone so the Fox is light, and even in Laythe's thinner air, it glides amazingly. Successfully landed, and driving back towards the LCTRV on the electrically driven rover wheels. They have 92.9 liters of fuel left, having burned 843.1 liters to fly roughly the entire 3142km of Laythe's equatorial circumference. As a rough estimate, they flew 3.7km for every liter of fuel on average, but the post mission data processing will shed more light on that. Thompler is outside to greet the pair as they park the Flying Fox and dismount. Mission accomplished! Now, let's see the data. This graph shows the important raw data, as a function of time, during the first 17 or so minutes of the flight. You can clearly see the gradual and steady climb in altitude, and how it began to level off around 14km. Velocity showed a similar steady upward trend, but began a more dramatic slope upward between 600 and 700 seconds, and rising the fastest between 700 and 800 seconds. This corresponds with a spike in dynamic pressure, indicating that their acceleration may not have been in equilibrium with the rapidly thinning atmosphere at this point. Beyond 800 seconds the dynamic pressure falls off as their ascent and acceleration level off. While it's not shown, this is the point at which their intake air sensors showed a reduction in oxygen mass flow, indicating they were approaching maximum altitude. Note the fuel quantity is nearly a straight line. Fuel consumption varied only slightly with the other variables, and was effectively a constant with respect to time. It varied between 260mL and 280mL per second the entire flight. Here we've shown velocity purely as a function of altitude. This is more or less what one would expect. The velocity rises with altitude, accelerating upward as the air gets thinner, before starting to taper off again once the engines become oxygen limited. Unfortunately the recording stopped before they reached their final cruise altitude of about 15.5km. This graph shows fuel efficiency as a function of altitude. This graph, and the next one, required some data processing. For every pair of data points in the raw data, an average altitude and velocity was calculated (simply the average of the two data points), and the amount of fuel from the second point was subtracted from the first to give the volume of fuel consumed between each data point. Since the data points are 1 second apart, the average velocity (in meters per second) can be assumed to also be the distance traveled (in meters), and we can calculate the average meters traveled per liter of fuel, which is our measure of fuel efficiency. The graph clearly shows it's more efficient to fly at higher altitudes. Similarly the fuel efficiency is plotted against speed. Since fuel consumption varied only with time (and throttle position), it follows intuitively that fuel efficiency increases linearly with speed. A successful mission with some meaningful data! Milke Kerman:

Well I won't be doing any contracts since this is all in sandbox mode, though the new stuff coming in 0.24 is the first time I've been tempted to give career mode a try. I'm running with the Active Texture Magament in aggressive mode, plus my environmental effects is in low resolution. So that's what keeps things running nice and stable. I was experimenting recently with texture manager in basic mode and I was getting memory-induced crashes, but it made things look nicer. So that'll be what changes when 64-bit is available.

Yeah, I'm excited about the 0.24 update because of the 64 bit version. I don't have a lot of other mods I want to add, but it will let me use less aggressive texture compression and higher resolution clouds and environmental effects, so it'll make things look prettier. Of course it will probably break mods too, so I'll continue in 0.23.5 for a while after the update until the mods are all updated.

Horus IX: A New Shuttle? While we're about to fly some old designs on Laythe, let's take a moment to fly a brand new design on Kerbin. You may remember the Horus Space Shuttle development from earlier. Well, the Project Horus team has come up with a new design. It's tentatively just called the "Commuter". The HSS was a compromise design, a vehicle that could carry passengers and fuel as cargo. The original design was going to ferry fuel down to the surface of Laythe from orbit (effectively replacing the Unmanned Refueling Vehicle already there) as well as ferrying crews. While it's an excellent design, it's big and consumes a lot of fuel, so the Horus team have been collaborating with SpacePlanes Plus to design a smaller, more economical SSTO spaceplane specifically for crew transfers. A prototype has been constructed, and now, the veteran test pilot Jebediah Kerman will team up with rookie engineer Matgard Kerman to fly it into orbit for the first time. Matgard climbs the ladder up to the Commuter's hatch, while Jeb waits on the runway. The forward part of the fuselage is the pressurized cabin. In the middle of this is a retractable docking port affixed to a small, cylindrical air-lock with hatches fore and aft. The front hatch from the air-lock leads to the crew cabin, and the back hatch leads to the passenger compartment. The spaceplane can carry 2 crew and 4 passengers, equaling the usual team size of 6 kerbals. The rear half of the fuselage is propellant tanks. The vehicle is powered by 4 RAPIER engines, 2 inboard and 2 outboard, in a design reminiscent of the Shuttle, only scaled down. It carries 1417.5L of liquid fuel, 1732.5L of oxidizer, and 165L of monopropellant, most of which is stored in a pair of tanks on either side of the docking airlock. It takes on the crew transfer role of the Shuttle, without the added weight of cargo fuel tanks. This is the first of four basic designs around the same fuselage structure that will be demonstrated. Plans are in the works for a smaller 2-seat SSTO to replace the Flying Fox, a jet-only 2-seater design, and a 2-seat electrically powered propeller version. Hopes are high that this along with the smaller SSTO design can be developed in time for the second phase of Project Osirus. Another development is the upgraded computer systems and glass cockpit. While all vehicles have been retrofitted with this, no other vehicle demonstrates this concept as much as the Commuter. Here we see Jeb's view looking down the runway with KSC in the background. The displays include four integrated external cameras (three visible), an improved navigation ball, integrated map displays, as well as various configurable data readouts. The cockpit is also quite roomy, especially when compared with the Flying Fox. The engines are powered up on air-breathing mode and Jeb and Matgard begin to head down the runway. Their mission is to get into orbit and dock with Kerbin Station, before returning. Another design philosophy change is the omission of solar panels in favor of a pair of RTGs mounted on the back of the plane to provide electrical power. One of the roles of this craft will hopefully be crew transfers on Laythe, and solar power is less reliable there both because of the greater distance and the frequent eclipses behind Jool. Jebediah: Wow, this thing is crazy maneuverable. The canards up front really give good pitch control, almost dangerously so. Jeb is referring to the fact that the canards have place the center of lift slight ahead of the center of mass, so the design is somewhat inherrently unstable. Rate of pitch change has to be controlled carefully because the canards make it possible to pitch too fast and lost control. Jeb switches from air-breathing to closed-cycle mode, but some of the air intakes fail to close. Minor design issues. They get into space. The three lower displays are showing, from left to right: Their ascent profile (altitude vs. time), their current orbital situation (this is pre-circularization, so their current orbit, in blue, intersects Kerbin, while the yellow orbit is the projected post-circularizatin orbit), and the current state of resources. This is Matgard's first spaceflight. During the first orbit, while they wait to catch up to Kerbin Station, he performs an EVA to check out the Commuter's exterior. Here he's checking out the in-line dockng port/airlock and monopropellant tanks Jebediah: Having fun out there? Matgard: Absolutely! The view from here is incredible! Jebediah: I can see you out the front window and on the forwrd camera. Note the display that formerly shows their ascent profile has been switched to docking mode, indicating they are targeting Kerbin Station. The orbital display also shows the planned rendezvous. One of the features of the new displays is they can be customized by the crew to suit the situation. Arrival at Kerbin Station, the inboard engines provide the velocity-matching burn. Jebediah performs the docking. The different software handles docking differently, and so it takes him a while to get accustomed to it. He also uses substantially more RCS fuel than normal, but again, this is a different method (I had never docked purely from IVA before). Docked successfully! They spend one complete orbit at Kerbin Station, during which the station's occupants visit the new craft and tour its crew and passenger cabins. Everyone seems quite impressed with the roomy interior! The RCS configuration is a little different as well. It uses eight of the streamlined RCS thruster blocks, four on each of the outboard engine tanks, two top and two bottom. Unlike normal RCS quads, these blocks can thrust in five directions instead of four. Re-entry later in the day over the mountains west of KSC. Their landing predictor kept moving about, and as a result, they slightly overshoot. The canards become an issue again. The craft can move around so quickly that it can easily go out of control. But nevertheless, they get turned around for another go at the runway. This low on fuel, the craft glides quite well, and landing isn't much of an issue at all! They get stopped and drop the ladder at the end of a successful mission! Improvements to be made: The canards aren't needed. The vehicle has good pitch control without them. They date from an earlier iteration that showed poor take-off rotation and pitch control, which was remedied as the design evolved, rendering the canards redundant. The action groups for closing the intakes missed the right outboard intakes, so that'll need to be fixed. Also there was a fuel line missing to the right outboard tanks which required manual transfers (via the fuel balancer mod) to maintain a balanced load. This is because I had picked up the outboard engines/wings and moved them in 2x symmetry, which broke the action groups. I had fixed this for the engine, but not the intakes. The MFDs support up to eight external cameras. The cockpit comes integrated with four, leaving four free. Since the cameras weigh almost nothing, future designs will incorporate four additional cameras for better views from inside. These improvements and issues will be fixed quickly, and a second test flight is probably not necessary to verify. Also I think the think looks beautiful! What does this mean for the existing Horus Shuttle? Well, the compromise cargo/passenger design is no longer needed. So likely, we'll see physically different Shuttle designs - one designed purely to haul passengers (and large numbers of them, to give it something of a purpose beyond what the new, smaller design can do), and one optimized for carrying fuel as cargo, without a passenger cabin. We may also see a third design of the larger shuttle with an open-able payload bay for placing payloads, such as probes, in oribt. In the meantime, work continues on the other three derivatives of this new craft, mentioned earlier. Matgard Kerman:

For anybody who is having trouble getting the SpacePlanes Plus IVAs to work with RasterPropMonitor 0.17 and the latest version of KSI MFD, here's a fix you can apply. Open these two files: GameData/SpaceplanePlus/Spaces/Mk2CockpitInlineInternals/internalRPM.cfg GameData/SpaceplanePlus/Spaces/Mk2CockpitStandardInternals/internalRPM.cfg And replace all instances of "RasterPropMonitorExampleMFD" with "RasterPropMonitorBasicMFD"

A quick update from my last post: I managed to solve the problem. The problem was indeed in SP+. It's a pretty easy fix but I'll post it here for anyone else who runs across this issue with SpacePlanes Plus as well. Open these two files: GameData/SpaceplanePlus/Spaces/Mk2CockpitInlineInternals/internalRPM.cfg GameData/SpaceplanePlus/Spaces/Mk2CockpitStandardInternals/internalRPM.cfg And replace all instances of "RasterPropMonitorExampleMFD" with "RasterPropMonitorBasicMFD"

In my mission reports, the three of them are test pilots. Everyone else is an engineer or scientist of some sort. They featured quite prominently in the first part of my mission reports, but since then I've mostly kept them on Kerbin test-flying various aircraft and spaceplanes while the others go off into the solar system. The generated characters are somewhat unique to me and so I mostly focus on them now as far as character development.

Kethane features pretty prominently in my mission reports thread (link in signature) and I've only mined seriously from Minmus and Pol so far.

Thanks! That's pretty high praise. I started out the same way. I was heavily inspired by Brotoro's Laythe thread (which is still active on this forum with over 200,000 views!) so it's nice to see things come full circle and now I'm inspiring other people in a similar way. Thread is a little slow right now, but it's not for lack of trying, or lack of things to do. I'm actually playing around with some more mods (RPM, KSI MFD, SpacePlanes Plus, ALCOR Lander) and planning ways to integrate them into the story, and getting them to work together and with the mods I already have. Things aren't quite working right and I've been troubleshooting, but if things drag on and I have to wait for devs to update mods, I have other things I can do in the meantime, like more Laythe stuff. I try not to do too many updates on the same thing though, I like to space things out to keep the big picture.

I do have that file: I checked once you gave me the location, and it's there. I'm unable to wrap my head around how I could have uninstalled 0.17 wrong since it's really just a case of dumping the contents of its GameData folder into my GameData folder, yes? And since I just started using RPM a few days ago, 0.17 is my first and thus only install of it - there was no 0.16 to delete. As for the MFD, this issue only happens with the SpacePlanes Plus Mk2 cockpit. The Mk2 cockpit that comes with B9 Aerospace for example works just fine. So it seems to me it might be an issue with SP+ and not RPM, maybe. Perhaps there's some secret Dev version that I haven't been able to find (this happened with SCANsat for example). So I wasn't sure how the person on the previous page was able to get SP+ to work properly (EDIT: They didn't. That was the older 0.16 RPM MFD. I have yet to find evidence of SP+ working properly with RPM 0.17). The only other point of commonality is Hyomoto's KSI MFD mod, which I know hasn't been updated since RPM 0.17 was released, but again, that's why the B9 cockpit has MFDs and they function just fine (EDIT: That's because you patched them ).

No I do not. I've just taken careful steps to make sure the latest versions of RPM, MFD and SP+ are correctly installed as per their instructions. I haven't patched anything beyond that.

That looks like the Mk2 cockpit from SpacePlanes Plus. I have not been able to get RPM 0.17 to work with that at all, it always says "INITIALIZATION ERROR", and I just assumed SP+ wasn't updated for RPM 0.17 yet.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! Glad you enjoy the thread. You've kind of hit on the reason why I'm still playing in sandbox mode. I'm not sold on the career mode science, because of that lack of context. So I kind of make it up as I go, but try to make it sound realistic. I do plan to visit both poles fairly early on in the exploration. Regarding their existence, I had a few lines written here giving a really simple explanation for why they would be there, but I decided to not spoil it. Thanks for bringing it up, though, because I wouldn't have thought of it otherwise. So you'll see that explained when they go there. Gravity assists: I've not attempted them mostly because orbital maneuvering isn't really a part of the game that interests me all that much, and because they require longer transit times. The only time I did a gravity assist was the first time from Laythe to Pol, and that was because I needed to save fuel desperately. It's the exploration on the ground once I get there that really interests me. For example, that last rover excursion across Laythe was one of the most enjoyable missions I've done. The Duna drives were also a highlight. For manned missions I've always used high energy fast transfers to reduce transit times. I figure at this point MASEC has a budget that can allow them to get away with that, unlike NASA. The reason for the fast transfers is that I try to keep the MASEC schedule somewhat realistic, and if I have a year between a Jool departure and Jool arrival, I don't want to put everything on hold for a year, I'll do missions in between. A gravity assist would make much more sense for probe missions, but I have none planned. Thanks for reading!

Laythe Fennec Excursion By the time everything was successfully landed on Laythe, it was slightly past local noon. However, the urge to explore is strong, and there's plenty of daylight hours left. So, Milke and Thompler will climb aboard the Fennec rover and drive northwards to a large group of lakes. Now, for the first time, the issue of naming geographic features has come up. This happened to a lesser extent on Duna, with features like the East and West Massif that bracketed the Anubis Valley. But Laythe has a lot of islands and features, and it's been decided that the large islands will be named after the various MASEC project names. The island they've landed on will therefore be called Osiris Island. The lakes they're visiting to the north are the largest inland lakes on all of Laythe, and so understandably they're being named the Great Lakes, each named after their relative positions to each other: North, West, and East Great Lake. With that taken care of, let's do some exploration! Ellorf and Milgas have finished doing the fuel transfer with the Flying Fox, and have climbed back inside. They're going to drive it over to the LCTRV landing site, which will act as a temporary base of operations. Milke and Thompler, meanwhile, have climbed into Fennec and are about to head off. Since Laythe's most interesting feature is its large amount of surface liquid, the first point of interest they're going to visit is a small inlet in the peninsula, which is visible in the background. Milke: Weird. It's blue but its opaque, you can't see very far through it at all. Thompler: I'm not sure why that is. It might be mineral content, like you see in glacier fed lakes on Kerbin. Some kind of colloidal suspension or something that gives it that cloudy appearance. Milke: The area around this inlet is extremely flat and smooth. This might be a great base location, since its close to water and would probably be easy to land aircraft in the area. Access to the ocean is a key base location criteria, in case vehicles are brought along intended to operate on water. The pair begin driving north, along the east side of the inlet, with the landing peninsula visible behind them. It's around noon local time, as you can see from the position of the shadows. Watch how the shadows gradually move during their excursion. Milke: Let's stop here a bit. The view here is amazing. Thompler: That's East Great Lake, yeah? Milke: It is. And I can see what I think is part of North Lake just beyond that. They're separated by a narrow isthmus. Thompler: The terrain here is much darker, and this is the first time we've seen boulders and rocks strewn about. We did not see any of these at lower elevations. The pair arrive at East Great Lake. Milke: How's the water? Thompler: Well the suit seals pretty well. It's tricky not being able to see the bottom though. I'll grab a sample, maybe we can compare with the ocean water we collected earlier. They're in radio contact with Elmon and Carson up in Laythe Station for brief periods while the station is above the horizon. Elmon: So, what can you tell us from down there? Milke: We're on the southern coast of East Great Lake. Looking north, we cannot see the isthmus that separates it from North Great Lake. These lakes are big, and the curvature of Laythe prevents us from seeing that far. From here you'd almost think this was a bay of the ocean. Thompler: The temperature here is 4.67 degrees, pretty consistent with the data we got from the probes. Thompler is referring to the IAOP and IALP probes that gathered data on Laythe's atmosphere some time ago. They revealed surface temperatures above freezing. Elmon: Pol should be in the sky overhead. See if your camera has enough zoom to see it. We'll downlink the exact position in the sky to your computer. Thompler: Okay, panning and zooming... Negative, can't see it. Must not be bright enough. Elmon: Okay. Maybe we'll try at night. Try looking at Jool from there. Thompler: Jool's a little hazy because of the angle looking through the atmosphere, but we can see a fair amount of detail on the high zoom. What about Vall and Tylo? Elmon: Negative, Vall and Tylo are "behind" Laythe at the moment and not visible from where you are. Elmon means on the retrograde side of Laythe. The landing was on Laythe's prograde side. A few minutes later, Laythe Station is below the horizon again and out of contact. They are still in radio contact with the LCTRV though. Meanwhile, they're circled around the western shore of East Lake, and can see the narrow isthmus that separates East Lake (right) with North Lake (left). North Lake is the largest of the three. This time Thompler ventures further out, and tests the suit's buoyancy and his ability to swim with it on. Thompler: This is a lot easier than I expected. In my head I was thinking, before we got here, the pressure suit would be rigid but on Laythe there's no pressure difference, so you have total freedom of movement. Milke: I'll have to give it a try. This lake is so large I can't see across it at some points. It's starting to get later in the day as they venture toward West Great Lake, the smallest of the three. There's a narrow and shallow inlet on the eastern side they're going to check out. Milke: I bet we can drive across this inlet. It looks so shallow here. Thompler: How can you tell? You can't see the bottom. Milke: Tell you what. I'll swim across, and if it's not too deep, you can drive through after me. Thompler: Sounds like a deal to me. Thompler: Hey, this thing fords across the water pretty well! Milke: Sweet. Tell you what, you can drive it back to base. It's starting to get dark, we should head back there. Incidentally, this is one of my favourite screenshots in the whole history of this thread. The sun is getting low on the horizon as they head back towards the landing site, passing East Lake in the background agian. As they come over the ridge and can see the inlet again, the sun is setting below the horizon, with only the rock outcroppings illuminated. Jool of course is very bright in the sky. When they get back, it's absolutely dark, but the LCTRV's lights are on to light up the surrounding area. Ellorf and Milgas are already inside, and the four settle down for their first night on Laythe. An estimation of their route, with the four stops they made to study bodies of water. Their maximum distance from base was about 55 km and they probably drove a total distance of three times that much, making this the longest single drive of a Fennec rover ever. Milke Kerman: Thompler Kerman:

Alternatively, you could decouple the two lower stages and see if the lander can right itself by extending its own legs. The idea of using the legs to prop up the vehicle while the SLS fires seems really cool but there's a good chance you'll break off the legs and crash.

Also, it seems the modified S2 cockpit is incompatible with RPM v0.17, though all the other standard B9 pods seem to work just fine. EDIT: This may actually be a problem with MFD, though it's weird that all the unmodified B9 IVAs work fine with RPM v0.17

Thanks for the help. Updating SCANsat and Kethane now. EDIT: That worked. Thanks again.

Using SCANsat v7rc2.4 (the one on the first page of this thread) and RPM 0.17 (also on the first page of its thread). I uploaded a KSP.log file here.

I think this was mentioned previously, but I assume SP+ IVAs aren't yet compatible with RPM 0.17? I ask because all the other mods I'm using are compatible. It's not a big deal for me, I'm willing to wait and deal with the non-functioning displays for a while just to have the beautiful spaceplane parts. This is quickly becoming my new favourite mod and I've been playing with it constantly the last couple days.

Can anyone confirm that SCANsatRPM.dll works with the latest version (0.17) or RPM? Because I'm getting this error: Before you ask, the craft had a MapTranq part attached to it. Note: The MJ-RPM light was also not green, but I was able to fix that by updating to the latest MJ. The error shown above happens with the 0.6 release of SCANsat or the Dev release in this thread.