StrandedonEarth

imgur works great, that's what I and a lot of others here use. But the lighting on that screenshot makes it almost impossible to see anything.

Oh look, it's open some 5 years early

Well, my upper stage was big and heavy enough that it was able to head back to Kerbin from Eve. It helped that the LV started from about 2km

Some gems from the T-800 "Terminator": (can you guess which one of my favorite movies I ran across on Netflix?) "I'll be back" "Hasta la vista, baby!" John Connor: You can't just go around killing people! The Terminator: Why? "I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle" John Connor: Jesus, you were gonna kill that guy. The Terminator: Of course; I'm a terminator.

Hmmm, that complicates things. It could work as a crusher, depending on how much weight it carries. The crawlerways at LC-39A&B were made of gravel which the Crawler-Transporter crushed to powder under the STS and Saturns. This would be counter to the purpose of LZ prep as it could tear up the sintered surface (tank treads are murder on roads). That said, if it's not heavy to crush on it's own, it could always carry a crusher unit to crush the 'lith when it would be otherwise idle. Maybe have some mirrors around the berm to focus sunlight for repair sintering

Well, if you have Making History (which includes the extendable docking port) then the Wolfhound (even post-nerf) makes a fantastic upper stage engine Not sure why one would need fins and a Vector. That's just extra drag in the Evian soup. I had a massive two-man Eve vehicle, that landed fully fueled. And yeah, ditch anything you don't need for the ascent.

The hab area itself shouldn't need a sintered pad to be assembled on. A sintered LZ with a blast-berm around it should be sufficient. The berm could have a movable wall section to cover the roadway out of the LZ; the wall section would also be useful as an experiment to quantify the effect of exhaust-driven ejecta on the surroundings. Alternately, simply move habs "around the corner" so they are not in line with the gap in the berm. Use a vehicle similar to the Octagrabber. to move the hab sections (made from descent modules) out of the LZ

Some more pictures from our trip to Port Alberni, BC, last July long weekend. Specifically, from Hole-in-the-Wall trail on the edge of town. To me, there's some fascinating geology here. The cliff is made of layers of hard rock separated by layers of a darker, softer rock that can crumble in your hands. I assume it is ancient seafloor, although one webpage claimed it was glacial deposits. The slabs of hard rock are great for building inukshuk statues, which seems to be a favorite pastime of visitors: At one spot along the cliff the layers are bent, practically folded. I assume this is the result of an ancient, massive mega-thust earthquake, probably one of the many that lifted Vancouver Island out of the ocean and and helped form the coastal mountain ranges. More bent layers. I couldn't catch the whole folded area in one shot, due to the tight confines of the forest and creekbed and the sheer scale of the cliff:

Launch from Boca Chica, recover at Canaveral. Aside from getting cooked on the way down

Reminds me of...

Well, I did a quick test on the pad. It doesn't look like Konstruction ports like to be multi-welded into a loop.The top ports are connected in the VAB, the bottom ports connect on the pad This happens no matter which port I initiate the weld on, or if I try to compress them.

This might be an effect of how Unity "builds" crafts, as a tree structure. In the VAB, you can't connect anything at two points, i.e. a tank attached to two radial decouplers. The only exception is with struts or fuel lines. Once in flight, the other workaround is with multiple docking ports. It's entirely possible the Konstruction ports revert the .craft (definition? structure?) file into that tree structure, not allowing multiple hard connections. Since the mod is written by @RoverDude, perhaps he has a better idea of what's going on.

When on "hold target" use RCS to translate (IJKL) so that your prograde indicator is centered over the target indicator. Then you will be approaching it straight on, not drifting past it sideways, although orbital mechanics may make it drift a little. Make sure your navball is in target mode. As for the docking ports, it's easy to get the Sr ports backwards, although I don't know if that would make them repulse. Pic(s)?

Generally to move the Ap/Pe without affecting the height too much, use a combination of radial in/out and pro/retrograde. Most efficiently done on the other side of the orbit from what you're trying to adjust

Because plastic would need to be imported. The less that needs to be imported, the better. Except nobody would be landing a plane on the Moon. Presumably the site would be analyzed first to ensure there are no hollow pockets. And really, all the sintering needs to do is ensure there are no pieces light enough to be kicked up by exhaust.

My son has started 'Flixing on Friends, so I had that theme song stuck in my head for awhile... But then it got to that certain episode, and unfortunately now this is stuck in my head: Bonus track:

Wait, what, huh?

Could this be mitigated using a SkyCrane approach, putting the engines farther from the surface? Presumably the farther the engines are from the ground, the smaller/lighter the particles that get kicked up. Still not really ideal. The only logical approach to basebuilding anywhere, Mun Moon, Mars, or anywhere that isn't a sheet of ice (which would present its own challenges, is that the first lander should be dedicated to building a landing pad. The best way to do that probably depends on the surface composition. Short of mixing up some sort of cement, it might be easiest to melt the surface , which would probably require either nuclear power or some sort of solar focusing arrangement. (lenses or mirrors). Regardless, a berm would need to be built around the LZ, and maybe a higher shield wall to protect valuable assets. At least if the LZ is on the outskirts, protection is only needed on one side. Something similar to the OctaGrabber would be useful to remove landed craft from the prepared LZ

RCS tweaks - disabling RCS for rotation and leaving it on for translation. Great for docking small craft. Although the massive tankers I've been building need full RCS if you don't want to measure rotation acceleration rate with a calendar

Yeah, HG-5, that’s the one. It should be all you need to relay from the Mun, especially as a pair

I suppose dropping an Earth-sized planet on them should work. Too bad for anyone not zombified though.

Well, they should be able to get more boots on the regolith with more cargo doing it this way, and with more re-use. But yeah, still seems wasteful. Unless they launch on re-usable boosters (but that's not the NASA way, yet), and find a way to repurpose the descent stage once landed.

This is Textures Unlimited in 1.3.x...: But now that those old tanks have been revamped, they're a little harder to find in the VAB. But they're there.

Well, you certainly don't want the Stayputnik, so that leaves the OKTO. Bear in mind that for a relay, you have to put a relay antenna on the craft. The foldable dish relay should be plenty within the Kerbin system, especially since I tend to mount them in pairs for balance. I don't know what level your pad and VAB are at, but I often stack two pods together and let them renter one by one. Once I even did this, to get two rescue contracts done (or was it 3?): That was in 1.0.4, I never turn reentry heat off, but it managed to reenter like that. It must been from LKO, and maybe a shallow entry profile. But I could have separated them, de-orbited separately, and re-entered just the pods.