Northstar1989

@FractalUK It seems like there have been a lot of posts on this, but I haven't seen any specific responses (maybe you missed the posts), so... Is there any chance of including some form of asteroid-mining in KSP-Interstellar. It would be interesting (and realistic) for at least some asteroids to contains small but usable amounts of water-ice... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asteroid-24-themis/ http://www.space.com/9292-water-ice-common-asteroids-discovery-suggests.html (though, the comment on "comet water is different than normal water, the configuration of its atoms is different" made me face-palm. The authors of the article *DO* realize that water is two Hydrogen molecules and an Oxygen molecule, and that there is *only one* potential configuration of the atoms, the only variation at all coming from isotopes, right? ) Regards, Northstar P.S. Further research makes it look like the article simply simply didn't understand a recent study showing high Deuterium content in a comet, and suggesting that other comets might be similar... (in itself a dangerous assumption) Still made me face-palm that they didn't know what an isotope is...

Isn't there anybody else out there who has any thoughts on this? Regards, Northstar

I'd be thrilled too- because it would allow a more realistic implementation of VASIMR engines and ISRU if the devs ever added the two of these (both are extremely energy-hungry in real life). I just doubt it will ever happen... Regards, Northstar

Actually, it's the majority of the charge that's directed at the plate. Over 70% of the energy if my memory serves me correctly. The charge is not launched at the plate, so that's a completely invalid argument- it's dropped from the Orion itself, and detonated just below the vehicle's pusher plate. The vehicle can carry literally thousands of such charges, and with the amazing ISP and thrust generated (unrivaled by any other space technology we've developed, EVER) it's a lot more efficient than any of the alternatives- regardless of how much energy is lost to the surrounding area. My point is that containing a large thermonuclear explosion is so difficult you're better off just shaping the charge (yes, this *IS* a shaped-charge fusion bomb, and it DOES work- this was one of the key technologies they successfully developed for Orion) and dropping it below a pusher-plate... Regards, Northstar

Ahh, I've had Kethane installed for the past few months, but didn't realize some of those points (like that it creates mass from nothing, for instance- which honestly sounds like the biggest problem to me. Fix that so that mass is conserved, and the fuel tanks are just as heavy for their storage-capacity, and players will actually have motivation to create separate refineries, either as immobile orbital stations or on the surface, that don't move with the rest of their mission...) as I haven't actually used it at all yet except for a brief stint with a Munar scanning satellite... Regards, Northstar

Agreed. I've already done that in my Career Mode game in fact- with over 15 Kerbals and 12 kilotons (that's 12,000 tons) of fuel launched to LKO (all by "conventional" means- no ISRU required) I could easily never launch another ship again if I choose to just send up a handful of multipurpose module. Instead, I choose to build specialized vessels for every mission- why, because it's fun? Adding a way to harvest fuel off-planet (in fact I already run both KSP-Interstellar and Kethane, which allow me to do precisely that, and have choose to ignore them so far...) wouldn't have forced me to do anything differently... Regards, Northstar

My reusable rocketry program continues to make strides. Here, I present a launch of my latest redesign of the Medium Microwave-Thermal Reusable Launch Platform (finally worthy of the name "Medium Lifter", as I've managed to push its payload capacity to LKO up to about 17,500 kg- aka 17.5 metric tons). This model's primary innovation is that of reusable drop tanks for getting off the launchpad, to increase the total staging... It's true, the payload-capacity of this rocket is fairly puny compared to that of most disposable rocket launch platforms (especially those relying heavily on SRB's). But thus is the cost of reusability... The nicest thing about this technology is that it can easily be scaled up with more beamed microwave power- which would increase the thrust of the thermal rocket nozzle (currently a bit better than a Skipper Engine, with much lower ISP in the atmosphere) without changing the ISP... All I have to do then is add more fuel tank capacity to the lower stage (or increase the size of the drop-tanks), and swap the upper stage engine for something more powerful, and !VOILA!, increased lifting capacity... Obviously I'm making use of this design for roleplay reasons- and to get used to more efficient technologies in preparation for budgets... (for the first time in a long time, I have to be careful about what I bother to lift to orbit again, which is good...) Anyways, here the payload can be seen circularizing: And by this point, some of you must certainly be wondering just what the payload is... If the name didn't give it away, it is a supply ship meant to transport RocketParts and fuel from my 350 km spacedock to my Munar and Minmus orbital installations. The purpose is to efficiently transport out all the material there before decommissioning the spacedock there once and for all (it might be replaced with a small fuel depot at some point, but no promises...) Why, you might ask? Well Extraplanetary Launchpads' orbital construction dock turned out to be too buggy to build anything useful there, for one (large craft tend to cause Kraken attacks, due to spawning docked with the spacedock instead of a couple km away...) Second, I simply haven't gotten much use out of it, and wouldn't have even if it were a functional orbital shipyard. The fact is, there's nothing interesting in LKO- it's not the best place to start off from for interplanetary transfers in terms of minimizing burn length (Munar orbit, or an elliptical orbit's periapsis dropped down from Minmus orbit is better for that). I've already exhausted all the science there. And I don't really have any intention of dropping down another alternative launchpad somewhere on Kerbin... (even a mountaintop launchpad is vastly inferior to a Munar one) So, LKO will probably continue to serve as a refueling waypoint for vessels en-route to more distance destinations (primarily spaceplanes and heavy RocketParts shipments to the Mun/Minmus). But I see no reason to have a large space station there capable of constructing huge rockets any longer- better to re-task the resources to building up infrastructure on/around Kerbin's moons instead... The other component of the payload was a skycrane intended for delivering base components, rovers, etc. to the surface of Minmus (primarily) and the Mun. The radial thrusters on it and extra fuel capacity also helped with getting a larger payload to orbit (over 25 tons on the launchpad- though I used its thrusters and much of its fuel to get about 18 tons to orbit...) than the medium launch platform could normally handle (it's only rated up to about 17.5 tons- any more and the upper stage won't be able to carry the payload into a stable orbit). So, I'm about to finally get serious about my colonization efforts... Anyways, the lower stage made a safe recovery: And then the upper stage split off the payload (taking a portion of its remaining fuel with it), and made a safe return to near the KSC as well (the trajectory was originally plotted to take it right next to the launchpad- but I opted for an earlier landing in order to go make a burn for one of my vessels in interplanetary space...) Also, you may have noticed the entry "Ultra-Heavy Scrapper Ship" on the Kerbal Alarm Clock screen. Here it is making a transfer to Duna. Somehow I managed to eject it out into interplanetary space without finishing its transfer to Duna before... Oops... And then I set that crew module from my last reusable launch onto the same orbital plane as the Williams Laboratory/Relay, to act as a relief crew when it gets there (and retrieve the stored scientific data). Partway through the inclination-change burn I detached the upper stage, and then after the burn set it on a re-entry trajectory and the crew module on an aerobrake trajectory to lower its orbit and bring it into a good (close) phasing orbit with the Williams Lab/Relay... Did I mention that I'm planning on starting a new heavy-lifter challenge: one limited purely to reusable vehicles? Should be fun... Regards, Northstar

Awesome. I always look forward to seeing new entries. Regards, Northstar

ISRU is a goal in itself. It's something to do. If it doesn't interest you, then don't do it... Of course, yes, it'd be nice if there was more to do on planets. But, aside from science, which would be hard to actually simulate in detail because, ya' know, most of us don't have PhD's in astrophysics, what is there they can realistically add besides ISRU? Speak up, because I'm all-ears. In real life, the two main motivations for space exploration are science in the short term, and colonization in the long term. ISRU allows us to at least imagine we are paving the way a bit for the latter goal- even if we'll never get any actual colonization mechanics in KSP... I actually can't believe I'm seeing Endless Space being held up as a *good* game. It's a terrible game. I would know- I've played way too much of it myself (and still do, sometimes, for variety). You go and conquer the galaxy- and then what? You get told you won, and that's all. That's just not interesting in the long run... There's a reason games with "Win" or "Lose" conditions lose replay value very quickly. The devs were right to explicitly *AVOID* structuring KSP as a closed-ended game like that... Space Engineers, on the other hand, is an interesting game that I'd like to play if my graphics card could only handle it... Life is an open-ended game. Nobody will ever tell you you've "Won" at life- that is entirely up to your own definition (that being said, we can certainly fail to meet the goals we set for ourselves). Why should our actual games be any different? Regards, Northstar P.S. If you *REALLY* want a set of win/lose conditions for KSP, create your own. There's nobody stopping you. Write them down on a piece of paper somewhere, and make a commitment that if you ever fulfill either of them, you'll delete that particular save then and there and start a new one...

In KSP, you would be perfectly capable of ignoring the ISRU system. Personally, I think having a realistic setting and chemical reactions, amidst the backdrop of a *realistic* space program, makes it a lot more interesting... And this isn't just wishful thinking or unproved predictions- I'm having an awful lot of fun with just the beamed power system of KSP-Interstellar... (I haven't even dented the rest of the ISRU system yet, despite having it installed) That's not the proper way to use Kethane at all. Specialization improves your efficiency. Efficiency gives you more fuel to play with... And specialization also creates a much more interesting set of design challenges... I'm glad you're not in charge of Kethane then... That sounds absolutely horrendous to me... Limited supplies is entirely arbitrary without a realistic (plausible) explanation for them in the form of a real chemical equation, for instance. And I don't like arbitrary... In the end I'd remind you that Kethane, like anything else, is all about how you use it... Where was that link to the Constellation YouTube video again... Ah yes, here: Regards, Northstar

Multi-posting is the only way I can really address multiple people's post without any one post becoming (even more) unreadably long... The whole point of optional features is that they don't have to be completely balanced against the "core dynamic" (which there will enver be agreement on), but OK... [quote name=Kegereneku;1184520We've been trying to discuss the "Why" rather than the "How"' date=' but I think we could try to answer the "What ?", as it : - What is the point of ISRU ? - What make KSP enjoyable ? - What is KSP aiming for ? Everybody's going to have a different answer to those questions... For instance, I enjoy the open-endedness and realism of KSP (yes, it's not completely realistic- but it's better than most games, and I would prefer if it were more so. The only reason I don't install a bunch of realism mods is because I'm already close to memory limit... Overwriting stock files with realism re-balances tends to degrade game performance...) I see the point of ISRU as expanding that scope and open-endedness. I like a game that is "vast". The more features allow me to realistically imitate real space program ideas/propositions, or some crazy but realistic idea of my own, the better... KSP doesn't have a specific aim. That's the beauty of a sandbox game. The development of this game started off as a passion-project, after all, not an attempt to create one coherent gaming experience... I think the open-endedness and lack of a specific focus is the game's greatest strength. Rocket equation hogwash- I don't come to a game just to be ruled by the "tyranny" (as one astronaut described it) of an equation that we already have ways to work around in real life... The Sabatier Reaction has been known for over 100 years, for instance... That over-simplifies things. Everybody is a little of all of those... For instance' date=' I would love to play tycoon and colonize other planets (in fact, that's precisely what I've been up to in my Mission Reports thread for a long time now...) But I want to do so as realistically as possible- interplanetary colonization *WILL* happen someday in real life, if we don't blow ourselves up first. I just want to speed the process up as much as possible in my little game, by attempting to establish permanent self-sufficient outposts with modern technology (and while I don't want/expect to see this in the stock game, I *will* play with mods that allow extraplanetary construction, as long as it's appropriately balanced... This goes along with the idea of creating a self-expanding outpost in a very late stage of its development...) And, as for gameplay experience, there are some areas where I'm perfectly happy to see realism a bit compromised- for instance with the thrust of ion engines (although I would [b']prefer to see implementation of more realistic ion engines to allow that, for instance the VASIMR with nuclear reactors, and downgrading of the thrust of the stock ion engines a bit...) [quote name=Kegereneku;1184520Making the tyranny of the rocket equation irrelevant would indeed destroy the "Core" gameplay of the game' date=' however I think most ISRU proposal wouldn't even dent it. Not even if you made possible to produce every type of fuel. All parts still come from Kerbin, and since only a few hard-players are going to make a "single design to rule them all" the impact for most player would be that they can launch more rocket from Kerbin without fearing as much to run out of fuel. In short, ISRU don't have to turn the game inside out. Building away from KSC however... I agree. ISRU would hardly dent the tyranny of the Rocket Equation for most players... Even if you can create fuel on every planet (for balance and realism, you shouldn't be able to), there's still the matter of establishing the infrastructure in the first place... Regards, Northstar

You're right, it does sound an awful lot like a barely-contained H-Bomb... So why contain it at all? Project Orion was a perfectly viable plan that simply utilized shaped warheads to direct the majority of the blast at a pusher-plate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29 The technology was nothing new- they even built test models with chemical explosive pellets. There's no reason to think we couldn't do it, if we had a use for putting a few thousand tons of payload into orbit... (my guess would be a massive Methane-Oxygen or Kerosene-Oxygen fuel depot, and supplies for dozens of manned interplanetary missions... Or enough solar power satellites and microwave transmitters to power the Continental United States for decades...) Regards, Northstar

Indeed. Nahhh, I'm telling you, it's all about the electrics man! But seriously, chemical fuels don't make sense from an energetic perspective if you have to synthesize them. You put all that energy in to make them, and then lose most of what you manage to store when you combust the fuel again. You're much better off with electrical vehicles. The main thing people seem to worry about, with electrics, is the "range problem", i.e. that they won't be able to make that 2000-mile road-trip that they've been always planning, but never got around to. There's an easy solution to that though: battery-swap. Better Place had the right idea- just bad management/execution. Regards, Northstar

I didn't think you read because most people don't, and because some of your comments betrayed that you hadn't read nearly as much about it as I had... (I assumed you read at least a little- but a *little* understanding is sometimes the most dangerous...) First of all, because battery-swap technology is still in its infancy, now is the perfect time to standardize. There's no reason why it couldn't develop as a standardized infrastructure (as it would have if Better Place had succeeded). Companies are farsighted enough to know they need to plan for the future like that... As for the "left holding the bag" problem, it's hardly an issue at all. The main batter-swap system proposed so far (by Better Place) worked by having customers not own the actual battery, but only a subscription to battery use. this avoids the customer having to pay the high up-front cost of purchasing an Electric Vehicle battery. It's not unlikely that any future plan would eventually imitate this same model. For all its mismanagement, Better Place was based on a fundamentally sound idea... But ideas are just that until successfully implemented, no matter how good they may be... (several reusable rocket launch technologies come to mind when I say that, after all this is KSP...) I appreciate your focus on identifying potential problems, but these are issues that have already been solved. The greater obstacles are things like getting customers to buy into the plan (Tesla Motors had a good idea with generating a lot of publicity and then selling *binding* early buyer contracts with a $5000 down-payment. Better Place would have been wise to imitate...) Regards, Northstar

So... This is quite intentionally a bump of the thread. Does anyone have any ideas of any launch systems I've missed? (preferably rather than criticism of why they don't think these systems are unrealistic- though I'll keep discussing that too) I've only named a handful, so there certainly should be plenty more out there... Regards, Northstar

You should read up on the idea behind Better Place. It was a great, amazing idea- unfortunately ruined by a horrible, narcissistic CEO (Shai Agassi) with a Steve Jobs complex... It looks like TESLA MOTORS in implementing the technology, though. They'll probably take it a lot further: Tesla's Model S car, it turns out, has a swappable battery. Musk never seemed to put much stock in that technology, but he had the intellectual flexibility to allow that Agassi might have been right about a few things. In June 2013, just three weeks after Better Place's bankruptcy filing, Musk hosted an event in which someone drove a Tesla onstage and a contraption below the stage swapped its battery in 90 seconds. The plan is to roll out a handful of battery-switch stations this year between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Customers will be able to choose between a free charge or a paid swap. As for battery range- it doesn't matter much if you use battery swap. Sure, it helps- but the vast majority of all driving is less than 30 miles at a time. The 80 mile range on the batteries used by Better Place cars were easily able to handle that. No law needed mandate battery standardization for swap technology- the company managing the infrastructure can easily arrange that. Better Place, had the company not went under, would have negotiated standardized batter design/packaging with a variety of car companies... It's such a shame- I've rarely seen such a wonderful idea, and yet it failed miserably thanks to an arrogant CEO... Read the articles if you haven't. Read up more on the company. It's such a great idea you won't regret learning more about it. Simply because the company failed doesn't mean the idea was rotten- just the opposite, it took an astoundingly horrible CEO to ruin such an otherwise great idea... Regards, Northstar

If you're talking about cars (I thought this might have been a discussion of rockets- i.e. Kerosene vs. LH2 stages...), then batteries matter less than you think... There was this great idea called "Project Better Place" for a while. Unfortunately, due a combination of the global economic meltdown (which greatly restricted their access to startup financing) and poor marketing of their cars in Israel (I know this on both a public and personal level- I talked to a friend of mine who visited the country just as the cars were about to hit the road, and he had never seen a single advertisement for them while he was there, despite the plan only working with a relatively large market share...), it never made it off the ground, and the company went bankrupt... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place http://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/01/shai-agassi-project-better-place/ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/business/global/israeli-electric-car-company-files-for-liquidation.html?_r=0 It looks to be the case, however, that the company has found a buyer. So the plan might continue... (I hope it does- because it's probably the only way the world will escape the otherwise inevitable thermonuclear war when the oil is almost dry and the major powers start fighting over it...) http://gas2.org/2013/07/16/project-better-place-saved-15-charging-stations-to-stay-online/ EDIT: Nope, that info was outdated. That sale fell through at the last minute for some reason... I found an interesting analysis of why the company failed though- looks like it was mostly bad management. In the words of one former employee "The technology worked, customers were satisfied". http://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-place Something seems rotten about the whole deal... Somehow I have a hard time believing that all the things went wrong were just coincidence. Oil companies screwing it over behind the scenes, anyone? Regards, Northstar

I was actually referring to his post *before* the one I quoted... (post #123) I found the phrase "but I'll repeat if you like" particularly abrasive, for example... Regards, Northstar

I have to agree with Red Iron Crown. Kashusha, why is something unrealistic that can be done with current understanding of chemistry, physics, engineering, etc., and in fact *is* being proposed and actively developed by NASA *as we speak* (I can re-post the links to the Sabatier Reactor on the ISS, the prototypes for CO2 capture equipment for Mars, the Design Reference Missions calling for ISRU on both Mars and Callisto, and just about anything else if you'd like...) in any way "unrealistic". Just because something hasn't been done doesn't make it unrealistic. By that logic, reductio ad absurdum, every single rocket that's ever been built in KSP is unrealistic simply because it's not a replica design of a real-life rocket, even if the player is playing with so many realism mods that its performance essentially is identical to real life (it's not that hard, really: install FAR, Realism Overhaul, and Real Solar System and you're 90% of the way there...), and every single new rocket design proposed in real life is unrealistic simply because it's never been built before either... Regards, Northstar

Seret, please keep in mind that the only reason the mods are letting this discussion live is because so far it's been (mostly) civil. Please try and be a little more diplomatic... You have every right to voice your opinion- I'm just worried about it causing some sparks... Pertaining to your views themselves, though- I can't possibly see where you're coming from. ISRU, if implemented, would be an entirely optional feature. One you could easily ignore if you so choose. If you wanted to continue launching ALL your fuel from Kerbin, as unrealistic as that might be (like I've said, *every* recent NASA design reference plan for interplanetary manned exploration calls for ISRU in some form...), than go right ahead- nobody would be forcing you to use ISRU. But if you wanted to give ISRU a try some day, you could do that too... Why would having ISRU in the stock game in any way detract from what you call the "core" of the game if it were entirely optional to use? Regards, Northstar

I agree that having too many parts could get tedious- which is why I think they'd be wise to do what KSP-Interstellar does, and just have a handful of parts that can each utilize a broad variety of resources (they got that part right in the chart on the OP- one part for atmospheric resources, one for oceanic ones, and one for land resources) That way, you would design your ISRU vessels more to the type of resources they would be exploiting rather than to any specific one... As for the fetch-quest bit, I don't see how that would necessarily happen. Like I've stated many times, all you need to make LH2 and O2 (LFO mix), and H2O2-based RCS propellent, is water. Some of the more advanced fuels would require multiple different resources on the same planet- such as water and CO2 to make methane-based fuel (I would suggest methane be a separate resource from LH2, since it burns in a drastically different mass ratio with O2 than does H2- but one could technically have a "methane-burning" mode for engines via tweakables, and "methane" fuel tanks that simply burn and hold LiquidFuel and Oxidizer in different mass ratios to be appropriate...), which has the advantage of giving you more fuel mass for your effort- but that would be part of the challenge and reward for more advanced players setting up more advanced ISRU infrastructure (it should be noted that as water can be present as a ground resource as ice, and CO2 is atmospheric, these could easily be present in the same location on some planets- such as Duna...) Things have changed a lot since the early days of KSP. Now, players can get fairly far science-wise simply by flying around on Kerbin in planes... Rocketry, meanwhile, has become easier due to stiffer join connections, more parts, and larger diameter stacks (SLS) that allow more realistic rockets that decrease in diameter with each stage up... They could reduce the difficulty even more with 5 meter parts if they wanted- and to compensate, increase the Delta-V to orbit by scaling up the solar system to 20% scale. Realism lovers would be happy, and newbies would still have a reasonable (but not overwhelming) challenge... I only discuss that tangent here because a larger solar system- where it takes more Delta-V for interplanetary transfers- would increase the motivation to make use of ISRU... (right now, for advanced players it's too easy to launch a behemoth rocket with staging to get anywhere you want- and even with budgets such giants are cheaper than sending fuel tankers, and thus still preferable...) Regards, Northstar

It's highly unlikely the devs would ever add a nuclear reactor to the stock game- as much as I would like to see it myself... They would also need larger solar panels to feasibly represent something the equivalent of the VASIMR-200 with the kind of power consumption you're suggesting... (go bump my thread suggesting larger solar panels if you still think your idea is good) Regards, Northstar

Here are the rest of the pictures, by the way... First of all, the redesigned (heavier) Microwave Reusable Launch Platform- now made to operate off LFO for the majority of the ascent (after using MethaLOX to get off the launchpad) for greater total impulse, and thus a heavier launch capacity. The microwave receiver and thermal rocket nozzle were also upgraded to 3.75 meter variants- as the 3.75 meter variants provided more thrust and total power (but at the cost of higher fuel-flow, and possibly lower ISP) than the 2.5 meter variants, partly due to the larger thermal receiver area- capable of capturing a significantly larger portion of incoming microwave radiation... (note that the TWR is still lower than the 2.5 meter variant, however, due to the lower ratio of captured power to receiver/nozzle weight- diminishing returns are observed with larger receiver area...) The screenshots show the launch of the combined crew capsule/ relay payload- which still had to be carefully controlled for weight, due to the limited lift capacity of of my Reusable Thermal Launch Platform to KEO (disposable platforms have higher payload fractions than reusables; due to their increased staging, ability to rely on throw-away SRB's to get off the launchpad, and lack of independently-operating guidance/landing/return systems for the lower stages... I'm REALLY looking forward to budgets, where I might be able to make a reusable launch platform really pay off...) Here's the first part of payload delivery, by the way. Note that the upper stage is still attached: due to its generous fuel capacity (I could have given the launch stage more fuel- but it would have done very little to extend range or payload lift-capacity compared to the same mass of fuel on an upper stage...), it is easily capable not only of delivering a payload to KEO (KErbostationary Orbit), but also of then delivering a separate payload (the crew capsule in this case) to an alternative orbit, or even ditching the payload and making a Munar orbital injection... (The thought of a Munar injection has crossed my mind- I need a good way to move fuel to and from my planned surface Mun base since ditching my previous fuel-lander designs, and from a roleplaying perspective it make perfect sense to re-purpose the reusable upper stage this way since the demise of the launch stage, as a new upper stage will probably be designed to match the demands of my next thermal reusable launch platform design...) As always, I hope that you, the reader, enjoy my post. Look out for announcements of my new thread "Kerbin and Beyond: Colonization" soon- outposts on Duna (where there will be a full colony), Minmus, and the Mun are my next priority... Regards, Northstar

Northstar Kerman sat at his desk, and sighed. Yet he also had a small grin peeking out from underneath his concern... Looking over the files from the past week, it was hard not to see that things weren't looking good for the new "co-director" of the KSC. Since Jake Kerman has, essentially, taken command of the KSC, failures and accidents had stacked up like buttery pancakes at his aunt's house on a Sunday morning... First, there was the latest test-flight of the "Thermal Test Jet Mk2". Jake Kerman had been so confident in the new design's success, that he had opted out of the engineers placing an ejection-seat system on the new model of aircraft, despite repeated warnings... Initially, it looked as if his gambit was going to pay off: the airplane showed performance and maneuverability beyond any thermal-powered design ever seen before. But then, the plane entered into an un-recoverable dive, and subsequently spiraled out of control due to diving into excessive air pressures at supersonic speeds... (the boffins blamed the dive on the strongly nose-dragging, high-thrust, inclined-wing design: which they said would have made it impossible for the pilot to pull above the prograde vector when sufficient airspeeds were attained at low altitude...) Jake Kerman had shrugged that accident off, but it wasn't the last... Next, there was a problem with the rigging of the parachutes on the launch stage of a heavier-capacity redesign of the Medium Reusable Thermal Launch Platform he had ordered the engineers to come up with in order to launch both a Microwave relay satellite to KEO and a crew capsule to the Project Williams Laboratory/Relay (as it had come to be called after exhausting its Xenon supply in polar LKO) as a single payload... The result had been catastrophic- the launch stage smashed back into the ground at close to terminal velocity, its one active engine proving insufficient to slow it down to a safe speed (engineers calculated that without the proper deployment of the parachutes, even with infinite fuel the launch stage would have been incapable of making a safe recovery on thermal rocket power alone...) The politicians had heard enough after this latest incident... Nuclear reactors in the ocean, following Jake Kerman's order to ram Asteroid-684 with the Amadeus. A dead test pilot. And the complete loss of the lower stage of a highly-engineered and extremely expensive reusable launch platform. Kerbal politicians had held an immediate hearing, and issued a vote-of-no-confidence in the new KSC co-director. By comparison, Northstar's flub-ups seemed minor and inconsequential. They had ordered him to take a secondary role to Northstar Kerman "until a suitable replacement could be found..." Thing were looking up again for Northstar Kerman's career. Regards, Northstar P.S. The parachute "rigging failure" was actually a bug I accidentally discovered- apparently if you quicksave/quickload a vehicle with parachutes already deployed, the parachutes then fail to produce any drag, and the vehicle accelerates back to a terminal velocity as if they were not present...

I've been busy while the forums have been down... First of all, I captured Asteroid-684 in a stable polar (and slightly retrograde) orbit around Kerbin! Second, uhhhh, it didn't turn out so well for the Amadeus... I was, growing increasingly frustrated with the inability of the grappling hooks to eject from their KAS winches: as the only way to attach them to the asteroid was to first detach them from the ship, then extend the winch, then plug them onto the winch with a Kerbal in "undocked" mode (if they didn't drift too far away to be found again first), and then make use of conservation of momentum to sling them into the asteroid via ramming- which also proved relatively ineffective at low velocities... (and if unloaded and then re-loaded while attached, the ship became Kraken-bait, or the hooks detached, as seen in the album's two pics after grappling 'success'...) So, in the end, out of desperation to prevent the asteroid from making a second pass through the atmosphere- which I knew it wouldn't make it back out of (and from a roleplaying perspective, would risk a massive impact somewhere on Kerbin's surface, enough to make it to the surface if one assumes a 10x larger asteroid to match real-life scale), I set the engines to full-throttle, and rammed the darn thing. That seemed to work... You can see pieces of its debris in the atmosphere in some of the later pictures: The collision also had an interesting after-effect: both the NERVA engines remained attached to their (nearly) full fuel tanks, and proceeded to shoot out of loading distance on full throttle. When I loaded them back up as debris, their engines began running again- leading one to de-orbit right in the middle of Kerbin's oceans. There's going to be some interesting storytelling focusing around THAT, and whose decision it was to order the suicide-ram, later... I also re-positioned the Nuclear Power Cart (deployed a new one, and recovered the old one) to move it out of physic loading-range of the runway (it was already out of range of the launchpad) in preparation for some new vehicle tests... Sorry that most of the pics of moving that are just of tire-changes: I had a lot of problem with tires popping even with an extra pair of wheels vs. the first design... (I only later discovered I could auto-repair rover wheels as long as a vessel was still on KSC grounds by right-clicking them...) Regards, Northstar