Commander Zoom

Switched out all of my old ISA MapSat equipped probes for SCANsat (just basic radar). I've finally given up on the former as a result of what I did last night, which was enduring crash after crash as a result of its memory-hogging. But because I stubbornly wanted to make the swap in-situ, including preserving mission times, that meant copy-and-pasting a dozen "new" probes (or the parts thereof) into the persistence file in place of the old ones.

Amazing work. I'm very much looking forward to where this is going.

Just FYI, the reason why most greenhouse mods use that one model is that it was created by modelmaker "zzz" (who also made most of the parts for Interstellar) and thrown out to the community for anyone to use. And it looks pretty cool. So everyone did/has. Personally, and only slightly more on topic, I'd love a version of the toroidal hab with a scaled-up hub and centrifuge ring; all the ships I'd put such a thing on use parts wider than the current 1m hub, requiring adapters, and I've never quite been able to convince myself that kerbals can fit inside the centrifuge with as much room as the IVA shows, given its (inflated) diameter. Maybe TweakScale is the answer?

I love the little touches, like "Tom" and the mythology of the planets. Nice ship design, too.

It's a much bigger game now, with lots more features. Which means on the one hand that there's lots more to do, and it's closer to being "done", but it also means that it's a LOT more complex. And that means that updating it is a much bigger task. As shown above, I started playing in a time where people basically tried for the biggest explosions and the most absurdly unaerodynamic stacks of firecrackers they could bolt together. Because that was all there was to do. It was fun, but we've moved on from that. Or at least I have.

Alas, no. I thought I did, but either I've misplaced it, or my memory has betrayed me. Here are a few of similar vintage, however, showing a craft like the one I did that in:

So far my only "colony" worthy of the name is my Mun base. Here are a few shots showing it in its current, "finished" (at least for now) state, along with the shuttle/skycrane used to land most of it. The three tall landers were the initial core of the base, and still serve as the emergency return vehicles should it ever need to be abandoned. The flags between them commemorate the founding. The power and comms mast was landed next, followed by a proper habitat module, which was assembled in Munar orbit (from the core and four wings, each of which was a separate launch/module), strutted (with KAS struts) and then very carefully landed in much the same fashion as the expansion is in these images. The latter includes two greenhouses, workshop space (the arm connecting to the hab), and a science lab. The supply pallet of KAS parts nearby had a small central fuel tank (now empty, of course), to simplify attachment to the shuttle and offset the fuel cost of bringing it down. Off to the other side, you can see the base's fuel tank farm (the upright orange Jumbos), with refueling lines leading past the first shuttle, now used as a surface-to-surface hopper for the base. The tanks lying on their side are discarded empties; three of them have been welded together to serve as a solar storm shelter. (One of these days I'll get a bulldozer up there to pile some Munar soil on top of them for extra protection.) There's talk of turning the rest into wet workshops or the like, but the technology for that is still under development.

The OP's question has surely been (thoroughly) answered by now, but I'm 44, and I've always been fascinated by space. Born during Apollo, saw the birth and the end of the Shuttle program (and both of the disasters in between), the first stunning pictures of the outer system brought to us by the Voyagers...

I clicked on the first page of this thread by chance, and discovered that it's exactly one year old today.

No Mun, no planets, no persistence, no nodes, no orbital view... nothing to do but build an elaborate and/or hilarious fireworks display, or actually try to get into a stable orbit - the only way to know was to check your height and velocity against a table someone had worked up. If you were at altitude X and traveling at Y m/s, congratulations! No time acceleration either. I once left my computer running while I went to work, and came back eight-ish hours later, pleased to find my orbiter had made some sixteen orbits in that time. (~30 minute period, a bit low because the atmosphere ended in a sharp edge at 35 km.) Took a few moments to appreciate it, then brought them in for a splashdown (no re-entry fx), took a screenshot of the recovery report, and closed the game, at which point it all ceased to exist. (Oh, and I had to be sure to come down on the light side, 'cause if you landed on the far side of Kerbin, you'd explode.)

Counterpoint - this would (1) make SQUAD, not the various modders, responsible for checking and updating all of that additional code for every single update (e.g. your job is to watch twenty gauges, and now five more have just been added - have fun!); and (2) unless they recoded it all themselves, taking nothing from the existing mods but example and inspiration, they would know that code far less well than the current authors/maintainers.

Another great post, and congratulations on the lucky expert rendezvous!

*admiringly* Oh, you *******.

Weeping. Kodspeed. *salutes*

Birnham Wood hath come to Dunsinane. And it appears to be composed of kite kerb-eating trees...

Glad you got 'em all down safe and with minimal explosions. I chuckled at toggling the docking port status (*shakefist*) and at Kurt's "breaker one nine" solution.

Completed my drive at least halfway around Duna - from a base camp on the equator in the vicinity of 60 degrees E, to the South Pole, and then up the other side to the Face. After an overnight stay, I'll be returning via the grand valley. (Thought about going up and over the north pole too, but it's a much smoother drive this way. Just have to land a single kerb there by lander before the ship leaves orbit.)

I'm with you, Ned.

Congratulations! Looking forward to hearing (and seeing) more from you.

Jcewazhere: Glad you found a solution. Tex_NL: Oh my stars (wars), a platform from TIE Fighter (and subsequent games in the series). That takes me back twenty years, to the origin of my callsign...

Mounted an ion engine to a probe upside down. Discovered this only when I attempted to throttle it up and nothing happened. Sent another, similar probe to Jool, enclosed in a Procedural Fairing for the aerobraking maneuver (I don't actually run a re-entry mod, but I like to pretend). When I got there, I discovered that the shadow of the fairing fell over the solar panel I had mounted on the side of the transfer stage. No power, no control. The only other panels were on the probe, inside the fairing...

I use MechJeb, and I'm not sorry. I've used HyperEdit, but only to test landers on Duna and Laythe. I don't do spaceplanes. At all. My past attempts have been unflyable - whether due to KSP's wonky flight model, touchy joystick controls, or my own ineptitude, I'm not certain. I've been playing since 0.9 or so, but it wasn't until .21 that I finally left Kerbin's SoI and went to other planets. In the course of my current mission - driving across a considerable portion of Duna - I have flipped and reloaded countless times. Sometimes, if the rover winds up on its back but is otherwise intact, I use Hack Gravity instead - same result, just slightly faster. I've made non-functional versions of life-support modules just so I can have the look and feel of such mods without being strictly bound by their requirements. Ditto comm sats.

well, did you thank him?

More driving across Duna's ice caps - at one point, to the tune of Rascal Flatts' "Life is a Highway".

Reached the south pole of Duna, having driven there from a landing on the equator. Planted a flag. Now I'm gonna drive back up the other side of the planet, to the Face; and from there, back through the valley to the start point.