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Is there any talk about a mission control??? I have been flying in the cockpit view for a min now and then I was flying an automated rocket/power unit to join the space station when I began to wonder how cool it would be to have the option to remotely control a satellite or a rover i.e. having to install cameras and radios and...and...and you get the idea.

After 6 months of waiting, I get to again talk about my favourite game of all time. Wrong. Shown here and here is that Wheatley hacked into (what I believe is) the Sputnik which is in Earth orbit. In Portal Chell had leg implants to let her fall long distances without getting hurt (replaced by boots in Portal 2) so why wouldn't she have implants in her arms to make them stronger? I mean, I own an ASHPD replica and it is heavy to lug around, so some arm implants would be needed to hold it for a long time. Also, the "shoot the moon" ending was planned to be an easter egg and not be the true ending, where Chell would be sucked into space and die.

I'm ending this challenge. This game is not mature enough (code and dev wise) for the mods. Basically this one would've required some good amount of mods, and the KSP team didn't set this game up where it's a 100% for all the mods to talk to one another. I'm not blaming the KSP team, but I am just saying the game is too new to do this one. However, you can still try to do this if you want.

Now this isn't some fake survey where you can win a free I-pad, no nothing like that at all. I just need some creative input for upcoming (hopefully) episodes of the kerbal show. So, just submit a reply in the form that answers the following questions (or don't. i live in freedom land so i can't force you) 1: Weekly, or every other week? I've asked this before, but i'm still wondering whether i should follow it or not, simply speaking would you rather have a good video every other week, or some crap video i put together at the last minute every week? (but bi-weekly might not always deliver good content) 2: Use dynamic hair with strands, or textured hair? Pretty straight-forward. no hidden meanings here. 3: What do YOU think i could do to improve the animation? 4: I'm thinking of once a month making a kind of "science talk with Drew" kind of thing where i pick a topic (like "Can still lakes of lava exist on Moho?") 2-4 minutes, may or may not be animated. 5: Are you happy with how much i haven't been delivering lately? I'm serious, if you think i'm doing a crap job with the uploading schedule and not delivering (like most OP's on Imgur with their safes) Please, feel free to speak your mind. 7: What kind of outfits do YOU think civilian kerbal's wear? 8: Are you aware there is no 6?

Ehh I needed an exuse to talk my parents into getting me a new one, Looks like I'll need to get my own though Or at least a new fan.

http://imgur.com/a/ptKgu This is the command ship and the AarnCo command orbital Station (aka clover station) also proof the torpedo ship can infact make it to jool. Final part count: AarnCo command3c (clover Station) : 300 AarnCo command3 ship armed : 246 AarnCo defence 3 with 12 torpedos and 4 fully armed fighters : 524 AarnCo Resupply3 with full re supply loadout : 325 AarnCo Surveyor3 with 4 torpedoes 2 fighters and 2 probes : 264 AarnCo Tanker3 with ion drive tug/adapter : 127 word of warning always send a tanker first as most of these end up on fumes by the time they arrive, and since barring the command ships most dont have RCS on the main body its a bit of a pain to dock. as always here are the download files http://www./folder/v8gpqdlycu47z/ksp_mk3 I also added the lifter Ive been using to get them in orbit in the VAB as its own thing since there was a lot of talk about people needing one. hopefully it will help. next update will be me trying to wrangle the mess around jool into a nice little exodus to pol and some nice screenshots of docking (my patients willing)

AMD was working on something like this. There was a lot of talk about their K8 chips back around 2006. The buzzword for it was 'Anti-Hyperthreading' where two or more cores would act as a single faster core. As far as I know, nothin much came of it. Not sure if it was scrapped or simply did not provide a significant boost in performance... *edit* Never mind, after doing some research, I now see that it was an unsubstantiated rumour...

My math says a single medium detector that's never idle requires 10242 * 0.9s / (1 + ln(1000)) = 19 minutes, 25 seconds to scan every cell. This is a lower bound; you'll basically never get a full scan with one detector in 20 minutes because the only way to avoid enough overlap is to make adjustment burns, and that requires dropping out of warp. The NRE is normal and not a problem. I still don't think this is a Kethane issue; it looks like the overlay object is instantiated just fine, and then KSP runs out of memory trying to load a texture. The map overlay starts right as you're switching scenes, so a LOT of stuff is being loaded at that time and there aren't usually debug messages printed for them. I think you're just running too many mods (particularly part packs) and need to remove some or lower your texture settings. [EDIT] I don't have that power, talk to the forum mods.

This is indeed the way Squad are making Kerbal Management. Basically, [besides their starting stats] you train them in the field you want them to be. Some Kerbals will pick up on things quickly, while others will just not work out. Not 100% that the Kerbals can "control" any crafts you direct them to, but there have been Live Streams where Squad do talk about that aswell. Indeed KSP is definately better to Control for yourself, but there are some people out there who prefer to use Mechjeb's Autopilot, mainly because when you have Space Stations and you are constantly sending ships up to keep your Refueler happy, it can end up being abit tedious. Having Kerbals that could do this for you can help give you more time for enjoyable things to do in the game rather than constant chores over and over.

I have noticed that only very recently people talk about Kerbals loving snacks. Even when the Lander Can IVA and Cupola IVA were released, people payed little attention to the fact that both of the sticky notes have snacks referenced on them.

Welcome to Kennedy Space Center. What's that over there? Life size replica of the SRB/Fuel Tank assembly over the entrance. Nice. Right outside the entrance. The waiting area is filled with pictures and quotes from NASA engineers and astronauts. Inside the first theater the walls are covered in concept art. The first film uses actors to tell us the story from the start of shuttle development in the late sixties up to the first flight of Columbia. Then the doors open and you enter a second theater. This theater is pretty cool in that the screens sort of wrap all around the audience. We get to see a shuttle launch and then a bunch of different shuttle missions then it shows the final landing of Atlantis. Then the finale is this: I was talking with the employees and they all said that people were raving about the film and the shuttle reveal. I agree. It is a really cool effect to see in person. The star field effect is amazing. It's hard to tell from my pictures but it is possible to see the flight deck equipment is still in there. There is also a full sized Hubble. A separate SSME display. The exhibit also featured the ISS. Here is a miniature space station that is a crawl-through for kids to play in. A full size station for adults. ...wait. Is that...? Yes. Stephen Colbert has his own display at Kennedy Space Center. From the ground level you can see below the shuttle. The beanie cap. Space toilet simulator. They actually have a camera set up so you can practice your aim. Space bed. Looked pretty comfy, actually. Astro van. The first space shuttle model. This model was used in the pre-show too. The fleet. Like I posted earlier, the other thing going on this weekend was the visit of pretty much every space contractor to talk with the guests and hand out swag. I've now got a bunch of posters, stickers, temp tattoos, and informational handouts about everything from Orion and SLS to SPACEX and Sierra Nevada. Engineering test unit of Orion. Fresh back from an abort systems test. SpaceX. We talked about the Grasshopper's latest test (820 feet!) and I found out they are planning to launch astronauts to the ISS just a year from now. Boeing's new capsule on an Atlas V. Orion abort system. More Orion. They just moved this from the VAB to the visitor center. Sweet model of the ISS. You can see even more photos from today here: http://imgur.com/a/Q41I0 They really did a nice job with Atlantis. A couple parts are so close that if no one was looking I probably could have reached out an touched it. There were 3 levels. The first where you come in has the main view of Atlantis and Hubble plus lots of displays about working in space (including a full sized flight deck mockup, Canada Arm, and MMU). The second level had some displays on reentry plus this really cool slide for kids. It was advertised as being the same angle as the shuttle's landing glide-slope. Unfortunately it was closed as apparently a manager had tested it out and gotten injured. Finally the ground floor had all the station displays (including a cameo by Commander Hadfield), some simulators, plus the entrance to the shuttle launch experience ride. Another interesting thing was that the Space Center tours have a whole new focus. Our tour bus driver told us they just got new scripts on Friday that focus on the future of KCS. It's all about ULA, SPACEX, the Commercial Crew program, and Orion/SLS now.

What the ASAS in 0.21 would talk like: "This is your ASAS captain speaking, please prepare yourselves for takeoff by fasting your seat belts and choosing from a selection of beverages to drink on the way up; there's no need to worry about it spilling, this flight is going to be smooth and stable from here to LKO, at around 50,000 feet we'll be breaking the speed of sound, feel free to watch the trails left behind by this event from your luxurious self righting recliner. Enjoy your flight with ASAS spacelines." *cue liftoff protocols* *3 *2 *1 [.5 of a second later] *Bing* "This is your Captain speaking, we have left the launch pad and are now on our way to orbit, the seat-belt sign has been switched off now, feel free to move about the cabin." (In case you haven't seen, the new ASAS is the polar opposite of the old ASAS)

Unfortunately, using a plugin like that would mean that you'd need a relatively expensive computer to run the mod at a decent framerate. I'd rather not compromise that in any way. I suppose it might be doable if it was used only on the command pod, though. I'll talk to aphazael about it. What concerns me is the fact that it essentially removes the texture to use a reflection cubemap, and that is undesirable on something as complex as the command pod.

Crazy stuff. All i'm able to create is...aaaww... i don't even to talk abou it.

I have never really understood the fascination of the Japanese for anthropomorphic robots. Most of them just look creepy and because they are designed with form before function, they are less efficient at actual tasks than if they were designed with function over form, like most machines are. If it's just for human interaction, why the need for complicated hardware when you can render a rather expressive 3D face on a LCD panel? For example, a robot designed for microgravity has no need for legs or cute looking feet. If it's going to be mobile, the wire is only going to get in the way and it doesn't look like it has any way of moving around. No prehensile hands to grab handles or perform tasks. If it's going to be fixed in position and only used "to talk to astronauts", then there is no need for any flight hardware at all, because they could just upload the software to one of the laptops. It just looks like a publicity stunt aimed at the Japanese public, and a pretty big waste of astronaut time (and therefore money).

My point is that STS in regards to shuttle does not mean Shuttle Transportation System, it means Space Transportation System. STS was a program from the 1960s, the only surviving part being the Shuttle. If you're going to use the vocabulary, use it correctly. It irks me. (But when I was growing up, I had to learn the OV-XXX designations to be able to talk to my father about them, so I tend to be a bit pedantic about the terminology sometimes.)

There's enough of this floating around it makes me wish I'd been in on the forum pre-crash just so I could talk about the juicy stuff with authority. *sigh*

So if I have dishes in orbit around kerbin, can I just set their target as Minmus to talk to the dishes there, or is it better to target specific Sats.

You may all know this song. I decided since I dont have a mic,just make lyrics. Here ya go! _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Jeb: We're orbiting Eeloo,trying to get home. All of my time we spent on you. Where is KSC? It had gone wrong. When we ran out of fuel with you. Bob: Yeah,we,thought we would be heroes,back on kerbin's surface. It's even harder to picture,the worried KSC. We say its too late to return. But should we even try? And when we never returned,KSC was in debt. Theres no mission,coming for us at anytime. Now we're done,stuck in this can. Where we called it done. We'll be here all the time. All: We're orbiting Eeloo,trying to get home. All of my time we spent on you. Where is KSC? It had gone wrong. When we ran out of fuel with you. If happy ever after did exist,we would be home at Kerbin as heroes. But still we're stuck in this tin can. One more little problem I'll be sick. Bob: We thought we could be home for dinner. But we didn't make desert. We wasted all our fuel now,on that transfer stage. They can't expect us to make it. They don't expect us to live. I know I said it before but we'll be here all the time. Theres no mission,coming for us at anytime. Now we're done,stuck in this can. Where we called it done. We'll be here all the time. All: We're orbiting Eeloo,trying to get home. All of my time we spent on you. Where is KSC? It had gone wrong. When we ran out of fuel with you. If happy ever after did exist,we would be home at Kerbin as heroes. But still we're stuck in this tin can. One more little problem I'll be sick. Im orbiting Eeloo Space-Kraken: Bye-bye A-team Ill be out wreckin' your ship While you sittin' round. Wondering why you are wastin' all this time for nothin' Made it from kerbin, now you see meh im wrecking. And all my 'struction from the flash of the big bang. Give me a chance to blow you all up in a cloud of smoke Switchin' all your cables,now you can only hear me. My name so popular than your little kerbin friends on it Boom,there goes your engine. Had a good chance to get home then I blew up your engine so you talk about what could happen when you die. Or if you coulda lived. but sad to say the chances are slim. I parked here your tiny little ship. Boom there you go. Got what you lookin' for. Now get out of my town or else I crush you. So you can go And take that little capsule with you Bill,jeb,bob: We're returning from Eeloo! Thank the kraken. Hes such a friendly guy after all. We have connection. Yell out some woo-hoos. We land just about at home. They all ask us how we got here We'll just tell them this: We have returned home like this. We just say the kraken is real,he is such a friendly guy to meet. Now we returned home. (NOTE:THIS IS MY FIRST PARODY,I MAY HAVE MISSED SOME PARTS)

Short version: Ain't gonna happen. Long version: Physicists like to play with impossible ideas sometimes. It's sort of the scientific version of telling stories about elves and wizards, and it's easy to do on paper. You can write down equations that describe magnetic monopoles, then see what consequences their existence would have. You can write down equations that describe a universe with no mass in it, and see what would happen. You can examine the consequences of changing the speed of light to ten miles per hour, or making Planck's constant a billion times bigger, and all sorts of crazy sh*t comes out of the equations. It's fun, it stretches the mental musculature, and it has no implications whatsoever concerning the actual existence of any of those phenomena. There are no magnetic monopoles, the universe does contain mass, the speed of light is not ten miles per hour, et cetera. One of the more amusing fictions turns out to be the existence of matter with negative mass. You can write down Einstein's field equations for a metric that incorporates negative mass, and find that crazy sh*t happens -- specifically, certain arrangements of it cause pockets of spacetime to do very strange things, like drag matter along at speeds greater than c relative to matter outside that odd little pocket, which then breaks causality. Miguel Alcubierre did that, and published a paper about the curious consequences of that particular nonexistent universe. Attention whores like Harold White seized upon this and started trumpeting "Warp drive can be real! Give me money and I'll have Captain Kirk banging green chicks by this time next year! Just don't look to closely at the part where none of it works without a galaxy's worth of negative mass packed into a cubic meter, which you have to conjure into existence and then make disappear at will." More recently, further media attention was attracted when they figured out that if you make the nonexistent stuff magically appear and disappear really fast, then you can get by with a lot less of it. White et al. are very careful to downplay the fact that the entire concept is built upon fiction. In their papers, they will very occasionally mention "exotic matter," which is their preferred euphemism for things that don't exist, but will otherwise treat it as granted that you can drive down to Costco and buy the stuff by the pallet. In the recent paper, they never even get as far as admitting that mass-energy (negative or otherwise) tends not to appear and disappear, despite the proposed scheme depending on exactly that. Most physicists, sadly, tend to enable them due to a tendency to be exceedingly precise about what we can prove mathematically, and what is mere empirical fact. When asked about the Alcubierre scheme and its negative mass, they say things like "Well, negative mass has never been observed, but there's nothing in the equations that explicitly prohibits it." This is true, but possibly misleading -- there's nothing in the equations that prohibits the existence of magnetic monopoles, or Planck's constant from being a billion times bigger than it is, but those situations are quite solidly not the case. Journalists, naturally, translate that quote as "Warp drive is real! Physicist says negative mass can be made," which is utterly wrong. And as agencies like NASA are populated with people who know sh*tloads about turbopumps, electronics, metallurgy, and hypersonic aerodynamics, but are usually no more familiar with general relativity than the journalists, this occasionally results in research funding for the Unicorn Fart Warp Drive. To be clear, my beef with White is not that he's continuing to examine the implications of metrics with strong local negative curvature. That's fine and dandy, and wild hypothesizing is even worth funding sometimes. The problem is that he's selling it (quite literally, I've heard his funding pitch disguised as a conference talk) as practical technology, which is a flat-out lie.

3/10 Seen you around a few times, never really gotten to talk to you yet. Might be a good thing.

Interesting, what's the point though? Why do we need a little robot that can talk in space?

While there are some places where I'm not quite that good at (attachment node positioning), I can write configurations for the various parts. So, if you want, I can assist in that task. SLBMs? Much fun can be had with them, though they aren't the best as satellite launch vehicles (and you don't get the most out of them unless you can launch from underwater). Though the Polaris is a multistage missile, so it wouldn't really be a good SRB, but it would probably make a nice sounding rocket, or extremely light satellite launcher. Presuming, of course the Polaris can get an object to orbital velocity not just a long-range suborbital trajectory. Well, if you want the flash, go talk with the person in charge of the Orion drive mod. (Which is a propulsion method that cam be described as "drop a nuke behind you and detonate it, repeat ad infinitum.") He's got his mod working so that each nuke detonation provides a flash. Actual blast effects would be far, far more work then anyone would be willing to realistically work on; while it would be easy enough -- I presume -- to put in simple mushroom cloud graphical effects, the actual effects of the (thermonuclear) boom would require lots more work, and probably lag out most any computer.

Today, IPEV Tailwind took to the pad to rendezvous in low orbit with her sister Excursion, just returned from the Mün with news of disaster. Tailwind brought many design improvements to the IPEV hull design, including greater RCS fuel capacity, and carrying the recently-upgraded Kea Civik rover. A Mosquito dropship arrived on orbit soon after, and met with Excursion to egress the crew after shutdown procedures were completed (Excursion had suffered some damage during her voyage, and Kontrol ordered her parked for a follow-up assessment). Johnoly, the Mosquito pilot, ferried Jeb and Bill back to Tailwind one by one, where they would take up their duty quarters in the flank pods in preparation for the upcoming münar rescue mission. "Those lucky jerks," Jeb commented almost bitterly on the first run back, "I can't believe one of them almost got taken out by a one-in-a-million debris strike!" Johnoly frowned and looked upward as if to will his disapproving glance through the hull at Jeb in the topside seat. "You call that lucky? He could have been killed." "If it had been me down there, it would have been a sure bet. In fact I could have FINALLY collected on the pool back home if it had been me!" "You'd have been dead, Jeb." "Pff... Mere detail. I'm working on fixing that one, too." Johnoly was still shaking his head in disbelief as he came back to pick up Bill. "Your kab's here," he called, "Time to get your krap and get the heck out!" "Yeah yeah," came the dismissive response. "Just finishing up." The distinct sound of chewing followed intermittently over the comms, and Bill appeared minutes later at the airlock. "Bring any snacks for me?" Johnoly asked jokingly. Bill responded by waving a Kit Kat bar across the canopy as he proceeded to the topseat. The final trip back to Tailwind was uneventful while the pair reflected on the critical task ahead: the rescue and safe return of Jenlas and Hanry, currently stranded on the Mün. On final approach, it never occurred to Johnoly to ask Bill to hop off and head for his quarters before docking; Tailwind's new docking guidance system made the process almost completely effortless. After the docking clamps had thudded firmly in place, Johnoly signaled all-clear and began switching the Mosquito's systems over to the support umbilicals. "Thanks for the smooth ride, see you on the flip-side," Bill called as he disconnected his harness. "With any luck the rest of this mission will go just as smoo-"*WHAM* Bill's comm was abruptly cut off by a massive thud, followed by alarms all across the Mosquito's status boards. The lighting in Tailwind's Mosquito bay instantly flipped to an angry red, and Johnoly knew something "Very Bad" had just taken place. "Bill?" he called, hoping beyond hope his crewmate was okay. Panicked breathing answered. "I don't know what happened! I just took off my harness and BAM, I was crashing through the hull!" Johnoly craned around to peer through the canopy, looking for signs of damage. In the distance, he caught a pair of light reflections, one of which looked disturbingly like a broken solar panel. A fine mist of atomized fuel began to spread in the bay, prompting Bill to switch to the ship's primary comm channel to warn the bridge. He needn't have bothered. "Mosquito bay, bridge!" came mission commander Shepdo's urgent voice, "What's going on back there? We've got proximity and collision alarms going off all over the place!" "It's Bill," Johnoly called back, already reversing his ship's standby status, "he dismounted and something shoved him through the hull!" After a moment's pause came worriedly "So, all these debris pings are... Bill?" "No, Bill's okay, but he just went through the aft hull of the Mosquito bay! Apparently he quite literally cannonballed through it!" "Well whatever it was just dealt us a death blow. We just lost most our maneuvering capability, and two of the main engines aren't responding. Kontrol is ordering us to ditch!" "But we're in a parking orbit!" Johnoly objected. "We can just scrub and wait for the repair shu-" "They're demanding de-orbit in thirty minutes; this boat's maiden flight will be her last. You are to capture the rover, retrieve the crew and make landing at soonest opportunity, understand? Prepare for emergency separation." Johnoly's blood ran cold. They'd practiced this maneuver many times, but only in simulators. Shepdo had to repeat the order twice more before the Mosquito pilot realized he'd only been nodding while he numbly ran through the emergency startup checklist. Some detached part of him listened as Shepdo contacted Bill and made sure he was okay, then worked with second officer Dongard to initiate emergency ejection of Tailwind's payload. "Black Shoal protocol is active," Shepdo uttered the dreaded words with a strained voice. "Initiate in...3...2...1..." Johnoly gripped onto the handles on his canopy as the Mosquito lurched violently upward out of the bay and into open space. Directly ahead, he watched the automated rover rise with him and immediately stabilize, prompting him to follow suit. "Mosquito clear," he called, "rover is clear and stable. Standing off 300 meters." He guided his ship away to the predetermined docking rally point, and watched his displays to be sure the rover was following as well. Shepdo came back on the comm. "Copy clear. Bill you get yourself back to the Mosquito and settle in once he's got the rover tucked in. We'll be joining you in ten minutes.... mark." With that, Tailwind's comm channel fell silent for the last time. Johnoly looked back just in time to see her "boo" lights flicker and die, a tell-tale of just how badly her power systems had been damaged. "So much for those damned things scaring off the Kraken," he thought to himself sadly. Bill was making his way back to the Mosquito as ordered, offering a debris tally as he went. "So far I've got eyes on at least six components in the local area, many more moving away at high velocity. Tailwind's legacy is going to be a constellation of junk." "You sure you didn't bump your MMU controls when you dismounted?" Johnoly asked calmly, still trying to wrap his head around how quickly things had gone so wrong. "Right," Bill returned hotly, "because these things routinely do 20 g's, is that it? Let's ask Jeb what kind of chicanery he's been pulling with them, why don't we?!" "Hey," came Jeb's voice, obvious from the tone that he was already back in his suit, "I had nothing to do with this! Plus, they won't give me the green light on it anyway." Bill was stunned. "You mean you're already working on th-" "HEY!" Johnoly cut across the retort. "Act now, talk later. Get your butts on-board ASAP, I've got the rover locked. "On my way," Bill sighed. As Bill finally got back in-range, he spotted a suit already on the Mosquito's topseat. He could just make out Jeb's face behind the faceplate as he turned to grin at him. "Dibs on the top bunk!" Jeb sang happily. "Masochist," Bill muttered too low for the comm to pick up, and moved to take one of the rover's seats. A few minutes later, Dongard arrived and strapped himself in next to Bill in the last open seat. Bill asked the question that had been bothering him since the commander had first called Black Shoal. "Where's commander Shepdo going to ride?" Dongard quietly avoided Bill's gaze and became interested in watching a far-flung bit of Tailwind as it drifted by instead. "Bill," Johnoly said on the private channel, "Dongard was supposed to assume command. Skip's been with the IPEV project since day-one, so he was making the launch of Tailwind his final mission before retirement. He was going to catch a shuttle back to Exterra station before we left." "We can't just leave him-" "Tailwind's dying, Bill. Kontrol has ordered us to scuttle her before she blows apart in orbit and creates a hazard to the space program. Somebody's got to fly her in." "So? He can set the autopilot to fire and bail before it does! I've done that before! YOU'VE done it!" Bill struggled to keep the anguish out of his voice. "Not with something as big as she is," Johnoly answered matter-of-factly, "somebody has to stay aboard and make sure she goes in over water or wilderness instead of drifting over populated areas. Black Shoal means 'ship down, crew lost'. You know this." "But...!" "Let it go. It's already done." Before Bill could make another plea, Johnoly pulled the flight stick and brought the Mosquito about in preparation for emergency landing. The survivors contemplated their fate in silence from there. Landing site chosen and marked, Johnoly keyed up the command channel. "Mission Kontrol, this is Rescue One. Transmitting intended landing coordinates now. Be advised commander Shepdo has departed with Tailwind on final run. Repeat: Shepdo is with Tailwind on final run." "Rescue One, Kontrol. Fortune favors the brave, and Shepdo will be remembered as one of Kerbin's most fortunate children. We'll be monitoring your beacon, see you on the... of... ckou..." The signal was lost to a storm of static as the dropship entered the blackout zone with its precious cargo. The descent was violent and terrifying, much worse than any among the survivors had ever experienced during practice drops. Must be from the passengers on the rover, a distant corner of Johnoly's mind mused. The violent orange glow of ionized air was whipping by his canopy; he could only guess at what the rest of his crew were experiencing of it. His eyes flickered to the rover status panel, where he could verify his passengers below were still okay. Terrified and white-knuckled on the braces for sure, but still okay nonetheless. He didn't need to bother with doing the same for the topseat. Jeb was issuing his own audible lifesigns. "WOOOHOOO!" he bellowed over the comms, "Why the heck didn't I save the marshmallows?! I could've had S'MORES!!" "Can have my Kit Kats when we land," Bill groaned, "I'm gonna be too sick to eat anything for days." "Gimme a break, gimme a break!" Jeb sang the commercial tune, seemingly oblivious to the danger they were all in. Minutes later, the dropship's velocity began to fall dramatically, helped along by Johnoly's expert guidance. Slowly and carefully he leveled the craft, gradually bleeding off lateral speed and curving into a vertical descent, the Mosquito's engines rumbling confidently. Johnoly heard Dongard issue a quiet sigh of relief, certain the worst was behind them. On the monitors, Bill's heartbeat slowed and his breathing relaxed, though he'd otherwise fallen silent. Jeb was busy being Jeb, to everyone else's annoyance. "Hey guys! I can see my house from here!" The ground approached. Johnoly bled off speed. Jeb spotted a lark in the grass, and Johnoly bled off speed. Dongard leaned over and aimed a hand-held ground radar gun to calibrate altitude readings, and Johnoly bled off speed. At 30 meters, the Mosquito was drifting lazily down like a dried leaf. They were going to make it! Suddenly, the Mosquito's engines coughed and sputtered. The fuel tanks were dry! "Hold on!" Johnoly called as he cut the throttle as much as he dared, but the engines only gasped and cut out again. The Mosquito dropped sharply, and the rover rammed into the ground. Through his frantic attempts to recover, Johnoly heard one of the laser struts overload and explode, and the suspension underneath groan in protest. Through the chaos, Dongard issued a short yell and fell silent. The engines sputtered and the Mosquito began to lift again. Johnoly slammed the rover deploy button, cutting the rover loose from the ship. The Mosquito lurched and angled backward sharply, taking the rover out of view just as it appeared to be toppling. The engines sputtered one last time, seemingly bent on the ship's destruction, pushing the Mosquito further backward until it was now pointing back toward the sky. Finally the tanks ran dry, and the engines died out completely. The sudden silence was immediately broken by Jeb's angry voice. "Who the hell was drunk enough to give you a pilot's license dude?!" Less than a second later, the ship toppled over and slammed into the ground, upside-down. Johnoly was slammed violently into his seat amidst the deafening thunder of Armageddon. Blackness enveloped all. Johnoly awoke to a throbbing pain in his head, and silence. Though his vision was blurred, he struggled and finally found the canopy manual release. Climbing and coughing, he made his painful way out of the cockpit. When he stood, what greeted him stunned him cold. Very little remained of his ship but his cockpit module and the broken, battered remnants of the aft fuel and power core. The mid-section, the section to which the topseat had been mounted, was gone. An angry scorched patch of ground marked where it must have landed. Jebediah Kerman was no more. Beside himself with anguish and pain, Johnoly looked around for any signs of life. Nothing moved. He wasn't sure how long he'd been out, but the wreckage wasn't even smoking anymore. It could have been days. A gentle wind moaned across the plains. In the distance, Johnoly spotted the rover. Though it was definitely toppled, it was, for the most part, intact! His heart soared. He'd been in countless simulated wrecks with that rover! After all, it was designed to protect the drivers if it ever went over! Running toward the rover as fast as his suit would allow, Johnoly called out breathlessly to Bill and Dongard. When no response came, he told himself that his suit comms must have been damaged in the crash. As he drew near to the rover, he knew he'd been very wrong. In the field a short distance from the rover was a single command chair, twisted and bent. There was no body to be found. Still holding on to hope, he scrambled to the rover. By the angle at which it was laying, he knew what he'd find before he even came around destroyed wheel: the remaining rover seat, similarly deformed. Most of the rover's safety supports had been crushed, so violent had the landing been. Despondent and alone, Johnoly made his way back to what remained of his ship to try to bring the comm systems back to life. His grief was only mildly dampened by the fact that the radio was still intact and working. It crackled to life, screaming with static. A sharp, annoyed stab at one of the controls re-tuned the unit back to the command frequency. "-ue One this is Mission Kontrol, do you read!" Johnoly half-heartedly pressed the transmit button. "Mission Kontrol, Rescue One," he intoned. Taking a careful breath, he spoke the words he'd hoped to never hear once, let alone twice in one day. "Black Shoal."

Hey guys. Anyone of you have an idea to get a small rover (using the default body) to say like, Duna, that uses KAS? I'm looking for one that can be strapped to a small rocket + skycrane with parachutes. This is what I made, but I think it'll be a tad too heavy. It has a fixed arm with a vertical winch + magnet, for RP purposes, can scan the planet surface. From what I've read in this thread so far, KAS is best used for space stations. But I haven't really seen anyone talk about getting one to another planet, to serve something like this. Either it being a tow rover to tow damaged rovers back to a base on another planet, or what I want to use it for.