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Real-life bullying is something that's hard to get out of, but I don't get why people accept to be victims to online bullying when all it takes is to switch off the computer. You choose to stay online and to put up with it. You can also choose to switch it off and go and do something else. Go for a walk, watch TV, read a book, or play offline, whatever... Using threats to off yourself as a weapon to hurt others and to make them feel guilty is the last thing to do. It's emotional blackmail and will certainly not make you any friends. You will only appear as self-centered and manipulative. If you did go forward, it would only hurt the people you love and yourself by depriving you of a future that will always be brighter than any tough times you might be living now. **** only gets better. Also, giving out any personal info whatsoever on the Internet is a big no no, especially if you are vulnerable and the people are hostile. If you have been diagnosed with depression, then you must be getting some kind of medication and seeing a therapist. Talk to them about your problems. Depression is a medical condition and the last place you should be looking for help is on the Internet. If you are not seeing a doctor, see one now.

+1 on pretty much everything you say here. But I do have a couple of things to say on what you say later... ^^' First, a space station doesn't have to cost as much as ISS did. Especially if its only operational requirement is having a certain number of crew. Depending on how much Bigelow charges, substantially less than a billion including launch costs and excluding operations cost. And Thales Alenia or Energia I'm sure would be willing to talk similar prices. Likewise the operations cost would be greatly reduced without the science and pioneering engineering, and all the hungry mouths to feed at the government side. In fact I think you can make greater cost saving than in launch vehicles right there. But even in launch vehicles an incredible improvement can still be made. Look at SpaceX, and the only thing they did is get a handle on their supplier prices by doing it themselves. Imagine if you had a market for true mass production, that could lead to some advanced projects (like Skylon, I like that one) becoming suddenly profitable. Rune. It's a chicken and egg problem right now, but you if you squint your eyes, can see dinosaurs starting to look like birds.

I found the best way to deal with bullies was to join them. Not in bullying others, but in laughing. After all, being able to laugh at yourself is an important life skill! So when someone calls you names and starts laughing, laugh with them. Eventually it starts actually being funny. It also helps to not come across as attention seeking. You didn't intend to sound that way, but that's how it sounded to them. Instead of "im depressed thats not helping" try "thats mean." It accomplishes the same thing without making you sound like you're trying to emotionally blackmail them. You don't know those guys, right? This is the internet. They don't know or care about your problems, and the guy was right about one thing: everyone has problems. Your problems aren't their business, so why put yourself out on a limb like that? In some settings, the internet can be a great place to talk about your problems... but KLF isn't one of them. That being said, you need to get help for depression. That's no joke. I've been fortunate enough that my brushes with depression have been relatively mild and eventually went away on their own, but they gave me enough of a glimpse to know that it isn't something to be messed around with. Intellectually, I knew I wasn't really depressed enough to stay that way for long. But emotionally I was terrified that I would get stuck that way and maybe eventually do something I wouldn't get a chance to regret. So I spoke to my GI CNP (Not even close to her field), and just the act of talking about it with a professional I trusted was very reassuring. I was still scared, but not as much, and it felt like I'd had this tension in my chest that just suddenly got much better. Like when you're on the verge of tears, and then you have a good cry, and suddenly you realize you feel better. Except I didn't have to cry, which is always good for one's self image! So go to someone you trust. A doctor, a nurse, a counselor, a teacher, a parent, an aunt/uncle... anyone. Doesn't have to be a professional, but I found that extra analytical skill and level of authority comforting (It also helped get the conversation moving, since she had to ask me questions about that sort of thing anyway). I KNEW my CNP would find something to help me. She already had dozens of times with other of my pesky problems. Find someone like that and talk. Set aside a decent chunk of time, and just start talking. If you can't find someone like that, try this site. I visit the Crohn's board for my own problems when I need to vent and my parents aren't available or are feeling miserable themselves.

I happen to suffer from depression myself. I fully agree with Custard Donut. It helps to talk to those you know and trust. I saw a therapist myself when in my early to late teens, even been in group therapy with others that suffered from depression and anxiety issues. It greatly helped to be around others with similar issues, to know that I was not alone in my struggles. I also learned the same basic breathing exercise to help calm down and relax (breath in through the mouth, hold for 3 seconds, exhale through the nose, and to 'think' along of the lines of 'in with the good, out with the bad'). I also learned to channel my artistic and creative energies as a method of coping with issues and helping to deal with things when feeling down. To do writing and doodling to painting ceramic figures help focus my feelings in a more constructive manner. To be positive, and as silly as it sounds, to think 'happy thoughts' when life gets you down. As one saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I used to have problems with a bully when I grew up, and unfortunately the main path I walked home on originally went by his home. I came to ignore him and he luckily left me alone, and I started to take an alternate route home to be on the safe side (think Knight in chess, two options to get to the same destination, just made my turn before I went his house, instead of after). I guess he was one in it just for the kicks, and he probably lost interest because I was not feeding whatever sort of attention they were looking for. Either that, or someone in his family saw his behavior of him bullying a kid 'passing by' outside of his own house, and his family dealt with the issue themselves. Whatever the final cause, he stopped bothering me. Interestingly enough, my dad was a WWII vet, and I think his advice was to either ignore a bully, or to not give into fear and stand up to a bully. As stated before, I went with the ignore the bully option. A saying I cobbled together from a few movie quotes at a time I was dealing with severe depression. Never give up, never loose hope, never surrender. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

I'm sorry about your depression and I know it can be a problem but I think you need to learn how to handle things a bit better. From those images, all I see them saying is "like a kid" and "Maybe he is only a child" and the rest of the time they're just trying to play the game. I mean if you're threatening to KILL yourself because you were called a kid I can't imagine how you'd react to serious bullying, and yet it seems you have experienced serious bullying as well as you mentioned up the top. I'd like to see what was said leading up to that, but as far as I can see, they say the tiniest thing and then you go on about stabbing yourself in the head in a VLOG. It all sounds like a severe overreaction and honestly childish, and it doesn't seem all that surprising to hear them say "maybe he is only a child". They obviously didn't see it as a serious threat of killing yourself and we can see it wasn't. Seriously, I don't see a lot of malice coming from them, just irritation at your antics, it just seems like you're trying to get attention and sympathy for your condition in an innapropriate context, and while I can understand that it is hard going through depression (I have been through it but not to the point where I was seriously considering suicide), bringing it into a game with strangers is completely inappropriate. You need to get some therapy, that is a healthy way to deal with depression, and while it won't solve your problems right away or anything it will certainly help you cope a bit better. Even if their intentions were actually simply cruel and malicious without basis. What you did still isn't going to help. I'm just being real here, if I were talking with you as a stranger and you said something I found unpleasant like "What you just said was really dumb. Makes no sense at all." and then I pulled out a pocketknife and threatened to slit my throat, would you think I was the kind of person you'd enjoy talking too? Sometimes people insult people and they don't mean anything particularly serious by it and even if they do, reacting to it in such an extreme way is not the way to deal with it. Ignore it and if they meant it they'll not get the reaction they want and if they didn't mean to hurt you then there's no harm done. If they keep it up, you can ask them to stop, but don't be crazy and reactionary about it, just explain why you have a problem with what they're doing. If they still refuse to treat with you with a basic level of respect, just don't talk to them. Go off and talk to someone else (if it's online this is easy) or do something else. I know I probably seemed harsh here, but just trust me that I am not trying to attack you, I'm trying to give you advice without sugarcoating it or absolving you of all responsibility for your actions. The way you were behaving was very provocative and is seriously not a good way to prevent bullying.

I know this could sound really cliche, but one thing you can do, well at least on ksp, is ignore them. You cannot be appreciated by everyone, sadly :/ Are they worth it? You don't know them, don't let them put you down, find someone else to play with Talking about that, we could play together sometimes, I don't have any friend that appreciate KSP, so I always play alone Edit : I would not listen to ROFLCopter64bit, you will just get more trouble from authorities and they will certainly want to take some revenge. Like I said, the best thing to do is learn to not be touched by them, or at least trying to not show it in front of them (They will stop, one day, if you don't react). I know it is really hard to accomplish, though :/ Start doing it in KSP, it should be easier since they can't see how you feel except if you want to (By writting, if you don't talk, they can not know)

Hi, Sorry it just seems like the posts are making this too confusing; talk of lagrange points etc...? I read where there is a geo-sync distance from Kerbin; Imay just look into that tonite (during my livestream)...why make this more difficult than the OP's question already isnt. I did breeze thru this thread mind you... Cdr Zeta

You should talk about the rocket engine's dV (approx., since not all users use Mechjeb or any other mod capable of showing dV for a given engine and tank)

That's a pretty low end video card.. I show it on http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=GeForce+GT+230M&id=1410 With a score of 341, my HD 6450, http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+6450&id=267 Scores only 293, and it didn't do all that good either with ksp. Not that you couldn't play it - but MET would always be flashing yellow, red, etc. And I had turned down the settings. So I picked up a 7750 with 2GB for like $99 from newegg.. Not the best video card in the world, but not huge hit on the budget - low power requirements, etc.. I don't have a lot of play time in since the upgrade, but from the few missions I have flown with it MET is always GREEN, and picture does look better. Need some tweaking, just have to find the time. So if possible you might want to look for card that scores better.. The HD 7750 I picked up scores 1600 on the above bench marking site.. I had seen other threads where they talk about scoring over 2000, but from my looking those types of cards were a bit out of my budget

Breaks it right now. I've had a chat before with r4m0n about making MJ2 and FAR talk to each other about basic drag values, I mighty have some time in the next couple of weeks to actually do it.

The orbit lines should only ever be two pixels wide, give or take a little. If they're obscuring the moons then you are too far away to see the moon's orbit at all,unless I'm misunderstanding the situation. As for Atomic Space Navy, I don't want to talk it up too much at such an early stage, but if it comes to fruition I like to think it's something Nyrath would be interested in. Simply put it's an attempt to see if it's possible to make a space wargame with realistic ranges, speeds, and orbital mechanics and still have it be fun. Kerbal Space Program is one of the things that inspired me to first actually honestly try to make this.

I know what you mean. Because of sight problems, none of my childhood dreams, and almost all adulthood ones are unreachable for me. But Chobit's right, every step on the way counts, every part of it is necessary. If you can't fly the spacecraft, you can help build it, help steer it from the ground, talk to the general population about what it's doing and why it's worth spending so much money on, or you can sweep the floors, make coffee, do boring engineering things, whatever. I'm sorry to hear your dreams didn't work out, but I'm certain you'll find some way you can help if you want to.

I'm glad to see this plugin back out there. In the old thread, there was talk of spawning the new spacebuilt ship already docked to the spacedock. That way, large space station structures could be assembled on orbit from parts sent up. Have you considered whether that's feasible? Perhaps the spacebuilt identifier and the spacedock identifier could be reworked into special docking ports.

I got a friend who thinks moon landings are fake. He is an all around conspiracy theorist though. Sad thing is that he was once a computer science student at CMU. Then he got into pot, shrooms, LSD, DMT, and other stuff I have not heard of. He basically melted his brain and how he's afraid of everything and couldn't talk his way out of a paper bag.

What defines a person? Other people. No, seriously, that's my answer as a sociologist: Cognitive function is the defining attribute of a 'person' even legally in most cultures on Earth, which is the only thing we have to go by, death is defined by 'brain death'. The only adequate method we have for defining cognitive function and intelligence, flawed as that criterion is, (for example, existing software can fool you for a few minutes, but that doesn't mean it 'passes', does it?) is the Turing Test, even for cultures we only imagine. (Tolkien's elves called themselves 'quendi', 'those who talk' because no other object in their universe did at the time.) It can only be considered intelligent if it can possibly be communicated with. Since it is impossible to perform such a test without another object defined as intelligent in the universe, a singular 'person' is a type II nonexistent entity. (That is, it's definition can be reduced to a logical loop - "A is A".) Once a 'person' is capable of meaningful communication, it's cognitive ability can be inferred, and every other possible aspect of personhood can be derived -- very little, if anything, actually interests 'people' if it is not 'other people', nor 'self', nor can be thought of in relation to either. (Stars? You go there to find other people -- or at the very least, to brag about it to the other people.) Notice, however, that this has nothing to do at all with being 'human', which is a potentially far narrower selection, and, by itself, has no bearing whatsoever on ethics.

Translate says Chobito to be suspicious to talk die in Finnish The merger, yeah yeah yeah ....... my Japanese And what chobit said Your Finland needs work

CHAPTER 11: LEAVING BOP Bob: "Odysseus, do you copy? Odysseus, respond!" Odysseus: "-[sIGNAL DISRUPTION, UNABLE TO ESTABLISH CONNECTION]-" Bob: "GAH! Control, this is Bob Kerman, do you copy?" KSC: "We read y-- Bob, what'- -he proble-?" Bob: "I've completely lost contact with Odysseus from the lander. I'm on a sub-orbital trajectory around Bop, so I need to get comms sorted!" KSC: "We'r- talk-g to Odysseus right now, ---- patch you in but the-- will be comms lag." Jeb: "Bob, wh-t the hell happe--- down there?" Bob: "The Kraken happened, that's what. Hell, they spoke to me!" Jeb: "They?" Bob: "Turns out the name is plural too. Listen, I'll explain later, but right now I need to know your position." Jeb: "Bill, send our cur--nt position to the --nder. Bob, get an ---atorial orbit, we'll meet --u there." Bob: "Ok Jeb, I'll see you in an hour or two." Bob: "I suppose now is as good a time as any to go equatorial. Besides, that mountain looks ominously close..." Bob: "Odysseus, I'm in an equatorial prograde orbit." Jeb: "Copy that, we're now matchi-- orbits." 1 hour later... Bob: "I'm closing in now, 2.4km away." Bill: "We're monitoring you. May want to reduce your relative speed." Bob: "Will do. Sounds like comms have improved." Jeb: "Yeah, there was some disruption field coming from the location of the Old One, but we seem to be clear for now." A few minutes later... Bob: "Stay on target." *Beeping* Bill: "Your too close!" Bob: "Stay on target!" *Beeping* Jeb: "Slow down!" *Loud bang* Bob: "Aaaaaand I'm docked!" Lengas: "You knocked the flipping docking port out! That's going to take a good few hours to get right!" Bob: "Sorry. The lander control panel might be a bit damaged, because it was registering lower speeds than you were suggesting. Plus, I can't exactly use the window of the lander to see you." Jeb: "Yeah, sure. We'll check it anyway, but you're going to help Lengas repair that docking port." Bob: "Now that I'm back in the ship, I think it's time to release our third probe." Jeb: "Of course. Just don't land it next to the Kraken, or we may end up with another interplanetary invasion force attacking us, and if that does happen, it's coming out of your wages!" Bob: "I'm not that foolish..." Bob: "Probe is away, beginning de-orbit burn." Bob: "There we go, the probe is on the ground." Jeb: "Well piloted. Shame you weren't as good with your docking. Now, help Lengas, please." Bob: "Alright, alright..."

Edit: I apologize for the wall of text below. If it seems a bit disorganized it is because it was written on emotion without thought. I am not aiming it toward you, far from it. It is just that it contains sentiments that I have wanted to share for some time. Nice dude! I never realised programming was so time intensive. I used to think that one needed a super high education and lots of money to live happily but I have learned recently that is not the case. I'm 21 and feel a similar way about college. I went to a special school in Miami called "The School for Advanced Studies" which basically meant I went to High School at Miami Dade College and took some College classes as well as High School courses. I graduated with a 3.3 gpa (I was bottom Fifty percent at my school XD) and went on to Florida International University to study Astrophysics (what else do you think would bring me to this game ). Right after summer my girlfriend of about a year and a half left me (no faults to her, I was kind of a douche at times). The thing is that I was madly in love with her and got to a really low point in my life. For about six months I got into a wrong crowd and started skipping classes, drinking, smoking, even drugs at times. I was a real mess. During that time I decided I wanted to do something else with my life but couldn't see a way out. My sister invited me to go live with her for about two weeks to get my mind off of things (She is like twice my age XD). There I learned about the bible, something I had always wanted to study but never got around to. I do hate to sound a little corny, but the life lessons I read about really helped me to change my life. I was going down a very bad path, I was even contemplating suicide at some point, but I realised that my grief was unfounded. For that one year I lived with my sister I did a couple of odd jobs; worked as a laborer for a construction company, (I quit though, 60 hour work weeks laboring on an interstate was too much), then I was able to work as an electrician's Apprentice for about four months. That was fun! And now I work in the Office Services department of a Miami Law Firm; something I have been doing for about a year and a half. I have my own apartment and live on my own. Though I am very young, I feel like I have learned some pretty important life lessons early on in life. I now know not to get unevenly yoked to someone. In retrospect, my girlfriend never really loved me. I think she just liked having fun with me because I was a sociable guy in a school filled with unsociable people (I was captain of the Salsa Club in my school ). I also learned to develop my own personality before I try to get involved with anyone else. Part of the reason I was such a douche is because I would always overreact to things in an overemotional manner. I have learned to temper my temper and think before speaking. I am a much more balanced individual now than I have ever been in my life. So now when I talk to my friends, the ones who stayed in college and ask how they are doing I realize that they are stuck with a teenage mentality. They go to school, go home, play video games, hang out with friends, study, homework, hang out, etc etc. Sounds like fun right? No. They have no responsibilities, have never held a job. Don't know what it means to take crap from a boss, to reprimand someone in the workplace when they need it, to not have enough money, to depend on themselves, etc etc. I don't mean to say to drop out of school. Not by a long shot. But do take some time to see the world beyond school. Work for about a year if you can. Take a break for a semester or two. Try to live on your own means for some time. Talk and socialize with others that are not of your immediate peer group; those who do not share your interests. That is what I did and I am a much better person for it.

You shouldn't be concerned about what others want if you are doing something you like. If you like doing this series, continue it. Why does it matter if anonymous people on the internet want you to continue it. Do you honestly think that people are mad because your artwork doesn't depict American symbols or don't like anime-style art? That doesn't seem likely, especially since you yourself talk about the connections between your symbology and historical nations and systems of government. I think you are being purposely dense about the real deal. You seem like a Nazi sympathizer. Not someone who endorses Fascism (I haven't seen any Mussolini or Franco inspired images). You haven't endorsed a political ideology (like someone being a devout Communist); you have tied your work and words to a specific political party that many people associate with specific images and actions. This is all beside the point of what your personal beliefs actually are. My point is what you appear to be, what your online persona says about you (regardless of the high quality of your artwork). I think that is why some people may feel uncomfortable with you or your work, not because you draw kwaii Kerbals or the rockets lack an American flag. Hopefully you take my point in the spirit it is offered.

Yeah, I was talking about that did you do in KSP today However, its allright if you talk about your everyday life aswell I wanna see more pictures of your rockets and stuff however

Hey Nhnfong, I've seen you talk about life Philosophy for some time now. (who ever knew you can get to know people without ever seeing, touching, or hearing them) I would like to know what it is that you do for work/play etc. Reason I ask is that I am very much in agreement with your sentiments and am curious.

Good luck with it. I like your ship designs, but your narration is hardly bearable. You need to speak up, intonate your voice more vibrantly, and talk about the exciting parts, never complain.

_ Hem, WHO ON KERBAL will tell Camrie that we made HUGE mistakes on the TWR at sea level on Eve, on the D-V needed to get out of Eve, AND on the altitude of the landing site ? _ Well I can't, I'm going to the swiming pool _ Neither I, some emergency is calling me far away.... _ Suckers... Hem, Camrie, control mission here ! _ Can hear you loud and clear ! _ Got to talk, boy, you gona laught...

will do, thanks for idea! As for MJ, I can definitely confirm that Land at Target feature works. I almost landed right on top of my other rig earlier. Talk about panic when I saw where I was headed right before the suicide burn.

Space Tugs: they are so useful! Look at this list of things they can do: • Space station support, assembly, orbit keeping and payload transfer from shuttles. • Satellite placement and retrieval from high energy orbits. • Crew shuttle between different orbits. • Munar orbit-to-surface-back-to-orbit crew and cargo transfer. • Rescue missions! • Small payload cis-munar transfer capability. The current fad at KSC? Using Space Tugs as reusable launchers for robotic planetary precursor missions! Well, it’s actually not really so much a ‘fad’ per se, rather the green eggs and spam in a can to ‘science’ ratio being what it is, disgruntled Kerbal astrophysicists and planetary scientists threatened to visit dire bodily harm upon the mission planners unless they launched more robotic science missions. The planetary scientists, who inwardly worship the pure, impassionate logic of the machines, tend to see manned missions as a ridiculous waste of resources… Perhaps they’re right. The robotic precursor mission profile offers yet another opportunity for the versatile Standard Space Tugs to amiably comport itself: 1. Probe boosted to orbit piggyback on a Valkyrie Mk3 SSTO shuttle. 2. Shuttle rendezvouses with a Space Tug in a minimum stable altitude orbit. 3. The Valkyrie shuttle deorbits to fly back to KSC. 4. Space Tug mates to the probe. 5. When there is an opportunity the Space Tug burns for a Hohmann transfer orbit. 6. As soon as the burn is complete the probe demates, the Space Tug tumbles 180~ and burns retrograde to lower its apoapsis to within Kerbin’s SOI. 7. At apoapsis, the Space Tug adjusts its orbit to aerobrake in Kerbin’s atmosphere. 8. Space Tug rendezvouses with an orbital propellant depot. 9. Sometime later the Probes make mid-course corrections. 10. Yet later still, the Probe aerobrakes into orbit at its destination planet or else performs a flyby. When the mission planners first finished cooking up their harebrained robotic precursor mission scheme, some engineer helpfully pointed out that “the next launch window to Duna is…let’s seeâ€Â, fumbling for his slide rule, “uh… tomorrowâ€Â. From the general pandemonium which immediately ensued the double threat Pilgrim 2 orbiter/ Ragamuffin propulsively landed surface rover was the final product. Pilgrim 2 was actually not the first probe to visit Duna, as the lovingly named Vermilion Varmint probe which somebody had assembled out of duct tape and beer cans captured that honor a year earlier. Pilgrim 2’s mission objective, besides being a golden opportunity to play with what is in essence a billion credit RC miniature-truck, was to search for clues to the presence of life on Duna past or present. This search yielded inconclusive results. But it was not without a herculean effort! Precautions had to be taken to prevent the spacecraft from carrying a cargo of microbial invaders from the planet Kerbin that might unintentionally contaminate the red planet. Prelaunch everything was carefully UV sterilized, and the engineers even took extra special care to not let anything untoward grow in the office fridge, as is usually wont to happen. After encountering Duna, aerocapture and braking took 7 orbits over roughly 5 days. The lander did a deorbit burn, discarded its heat shield and opened its parachute, but over eager mission controllers, in spite of the 12-second light speed delay, had been repeatedly mashing the ‘cut chute button’ at mission control. Suddenly chuteless, and still several hundred meters up, the terminal descent retrorockets fired, but having only 3 seconds of fuel at full thrust, what occurred was an accidentally textbook suicide burn. That Ragamuffin survived its landing, being the cobbled together rush job that it is, is frankly something of a miracle. Exploring Duna takes teamwork; trying to optimize mass to the surface, engineers decided that instead of making a heavy and power hungry high-gain antenna required for direct communication with KSC integral to the rover, that the rover would instead depend on the orbiter for support. The Pilgrim 2 orbiter acts as a mothership for Ragamuffin and as a comms relay with Kerbin. Ragamuffin has a UHF transmitter and omni-directional antenna for downloading telemetry data to the orbiter, which then beams it back to the Spacebase, its relay satellites in LKO, and the big tracking stations on Kerbin’s surface. The Pilgrim 2 orbiter features an ultra-high bandwidth data rate: 1000 bits per second at opposition! Ragamuffin’s central computer ‘sleeps’ during the nights, because damnit its tired after a long day of space exploration, and also to help conserve power for keeping the critical heating elements alive that warm the rover during the long, frigid Dunan nights. The little rover would likely perish trying to weather a Dunan dust storm, however, should one arise. Duna has so many anomalous features. A chain of what appear to be small impact craters lie centered on a great north-south axis canyon and its web of vein like channels and arroyos. Are they relics of an ancient orbital carpet bombing by fragments of a comet? What formed the datum maria, are they ancient seabeds dry for a billion years? By the fact that the datum maria have so few impact craters they must be extraordinary young by geological standards. Perhaps only 100 million year ago or so Duna had cold, sparkling oceans of its own. What caused them to dry up? Due to its small mass, Duna has a low escape velocity which makes it difficult for the red world to retain much thickness to its atmosphere. Given the low atmospheric pressures scientists had imagined that the Dunan sky would appear black or perhaps deep blue, but surprisingly the sky has a pink hue. It is thought that this is caused by extremely fine dusts suspended in the upper atmosphere. The orbiter’s first impression of Duna was of a heavily cratered world, implying the world has been geologically dead for eons and that the rusty surface rocks are incredibly ancient, perhaps going back nearly to the original formation of the red world. Duna’s moon Ike by contrast is odd in that it has so very few impact craters. More tests are needed. Ragamuffin is currently investigating a medium sized crater near Duna’s North Pole, while Pilgrim 2 is currently walkabout visiting Ike. The Vagabond 1 spacecraft was a Jool Flyby and Laythe Orbiter. This was the first mission launched of the robotic precursor program and among the last to arrive at its destination. The Space Tug booster did not have enough delta-v to return to Kerbins SOI and so it was expended for this mission. With its propellant tanks empty the poor workhorse was left to silently sail away from Kerbin into a lonely Kerbolorcentric orbit, there to remain... forever. This mission suffered from a regrettable series of poor design decisions. Because of the position of the docking ring fairing that Vagabond 1 required to mate with its Valkyrie shuttle and Space Tug carrier craft the maneuvering engine could not be placed along the main axis of the spacecraft. Instead the motor was mounted radially, and the heavy boom mounted RTG powerplant positioned to balance the center of mass. Nevertheless the thrust vector still ended up located along a line of action not passing though the center of mass, and this made the vehicle want to tumble wildly under thrust. Additionally the maneuvering engine’s asymmetry with respect to the probe core made for very problematic navball references. Several harrowing mid-course corrections were required since the Vagabond 1 had to ‘eyeball’ a star as a fixed point of reference for the probe core and then rotate with respect to it until the engine was pointed in the correct position. With the aforementioned torque acting on spacecraft, the difficulty of maintaining attitude during a burn without even the help of useful navball was basically a nightmare. Though solar power would have been technically more efficient for this mission, the RTG was brought along just to be safe (engineers can’t shake their primitive superstitions that solar insolation should drop exponentially with distance from Kerbol rather than linearly as has been repeatedly determined by experiment). Jool is an incredibly alien object compared to more familiar rocky planets like Kerbin or Duna. The world is humongous: it holds 100 times the enclosed volume of Kerbin, and it exceeds the combined mass of every other body in the system by a factor of 16. It reigns over a solar system in miniature; several of its myriad of satellites rival Kerbal itself in size. Its dark and hugely turbulent atmosphere flows in an unending gale of slipstream velocities, plunging to murky depths truly unfathomable to the merely Kerbal mind. It is difficult not to wonder whether there is even any solid surface at all under those cold green clouds. Scientific instruments were unable to directly measure the temperature of the giant planet, but a value of between 30-80K has been estimated for the upper clouds based on the supposition that Jool’s escape velocity must greatly exceed the rms speed of gaseous propellium (which is believed to make up the bulk of the titanic green world’s mass) for the planet to not gradually boil off its atmosphere. It is thought that far below the outer layers of green chlorine… ...uh…chlorineium clouds, there exists a shell of metallic propellium congealed around a small core of incredibly dense exotic matter. The light-speed lag problem compelled the engineers to push a number of technological envelopes for this mission. Unlike rudimentary self-test and repair electronic circuits used on previous missions, Vagabond 1 features a digital microcomputer, with a full 10kB of memory! These truly automatic probes will be able to ‘think for themselves’. Naturally, appropriate precautions are being taken to prevent a revolt of the robots against the {harsh taskmasters} REDACTED enlightened benefactors of KSC mission control. Considering the lengthy Jool transit time (229 days) the microcomputer will come with solitaire preinstalled to help it cope with the boredom. Telemetry is transmitted and command uplink is received via a 1-meter X-band high-gain paraboloid; it’s almost big enough to get signal on your TV antenna back home on Kerbin! Actually no, don’t get excited, the last sentence was a lie. Vagabond 1’s onboard thermoelectric nuclear power provides about as much power to the communications system as is needed to light a small lightbulb: 20W. At Kerbin’s distance from Jool, the power flux density from Vagabond 1’s transmissions is only 1.13E-18 W/m^2. If you had a parabolic dish the size of Kerbin itself it would take 82 years to accumulate the energy of released by a single burning match (it’s amusing to imagine a world sized antenna dish all wired up to a solitary AA battery). Therefore a phased array receiver equivalent to a 28 meter diameter parabolic antenna is required for good telemetry. The KSC engineers were heartbroken to discover that they couldn't use the dish to steal the Kermunists’s wifi. Kerbal scientists were quite curious to study Jool’s hypothesized magnetic field and trapped radiation belts. It is thought that Foucault currents within the metallic propellium core of the world power a terrifically strong magnetic field which traps charged particles from Kerbol. Trapped, these cosmic rays clang around, tirelessly ricocheting of the interior of the great magnetic field and presenting a major radiation hazard to any would be gallant space explorers flying close by to Jool to aerobrake. Hence mission planners decided to ‘send the droid’, in advance of any future manned missions. We must feel some regret at the peril facing Vagabond 1: 54 million kilometers from home, alone but for a great and horribly ancient entity, a god who though totally ambivalent to the probe’s tiny existence, the merest lingering proximity to whom is death. And all the while forced listen to the eerie, soul scarring song of the alien world: radio noise resulting from colossal discharges of electricity in Jool’s upper atmosphere. Well… have fun! Mission controllers, having been heckled endlessly by queries of “are we there yet†by the planetary scientists over the long transit were understandably restless at the prospect of a gentle capture and arobraking at Jool over 3-4 orbits, and subsequent aerocapture at Laythe. They opted instead for a direct aerocapture by Laythe with 8km/s relative velocity. What could go wrong? Much hull carburization later the Vagabond 1 orbiter found itself soaring high above the cloudless oceanic moon. It was only when at long last the probe arrived that Kerbal engineers realized what it was they were forgetting: scientific instruments of any kind! Well, that’s not completely true, they did bring along a thermometer (thank god), a barometer and a ‘GRAVMAX Negative Gravioli Detector’; the planetary scientists were most displeased. Vagabond 2 was an Eeloo flyby mission. Transit time for the Hohmann transfer was 323 days. Questions regarding the distant, Kerbol forlorn snowball abounded. Is Eeloo an escaped moon of Jool? Given its eccentric orbit does Eeloo’s albedo change as it swings by its closest approach to Kerbol produce a fleeting tenuous atmosphere? Also, how to explain Eeloo’s relatively large size; is it representative of the dark shroud of icy worlds though to exist far beyond Jool’s orbit? What made this mission unique was its pioneering use of a 2-stage ‘mostly reusable’ mission design. Two Space Tugs are used in this mission profile. The 1st Space Tug in the stack burns till it has just enough delta-v left to return to LKO, whereupon explosive bolts on the launch separation fairing are fired and the tug burns retrograde back to Kerbin while the 2nd-stage tug continues the burn prograde. When the desired transfer orbit is achieved, the 2nd tug demates from the probe, which is left to continue on its merry way, while it follows its sibling down a long elliptic back to the homeworld. Compared to the Vagabond 1 Jool flyby, this mission profile expends roughly twice as much propellant but this is compensated by the fact that all of the Space Tugs were recovered to be reused another day, and we all know how important this reusability shtick is to the Integrated Plan. Frankly KSC engineers are baffled that this maneuver works without the tugs possessing a dedicated heat shield, but it is speculated that should a Kerbin aerocapture ever prove infeasible for some reason, a ‘hot-rod’ RNS could rescue a Space Tug stranded in a highly eccentric Kerbin orbit, though it is currently unknown how economical that this procedure would be. Mission planners are hoping to use this style of mission architecture as inspiration for a much larger scale manned planetary mission to Duna featuring outboard flyback RNS kick stages. After the Eeloo encounter flight controllers initiated a bi-elliptic sundive transfer which utterly fried all of the delicate deep-cold adapted instruments. “Uhhh…why were we thinking that would be awesome again?†On the bright side… literally… the spacecraft reached a velocity of 28 km/s at periapse as it swung by Kerbol. Due to confusing mission naming conventions, Pilgrim 1 actually launched later than Pilgrim 2. This mission comprised a ‘mini-tour’ of the inner planets, being the very first gravity assisted multi-planet flyby of Eve and Moho. Eve is a world wreathed in enigma. Since the dawn of time Kerbals have gazed upon that bright morning star and wondered. Was Eve a sweltering, humid hothouse of continent swathing tropical rainforest and swamp? Was it a boiling hellhole crushed under the tremendous pressure of a world’s worth of evaporated oceans? Well, neither it turns out. Eve is a deep indigo marble covered with what look like seas of liquid metal. This makes the planets lack of clouds easier to explain considering the lack of water oceans; given Eve’s relatively rapid rotation it was posited the world would poses a magnetic field that would keep atmospheric water from being ionized and blown away by Kerbol’s wind. But the shining metal oceans are tantalizing to say the least. Some have suggested that oceans are composed of molten blutonium. If this is true it means not only that you probably wouldn’t want to let the kiddies swim in it, but that the whole damn planet of Eve would be in essence one huge nuclear reactor! Eve’s atmosphere, while dense, appears to be composed of inert gases, which sadly means no flying around with air breathing engines for future Kerbalnauts, unless the greatly missed Project Plutino nuclear-ramjet blueprints are retrieved from whichever Tartaruian hellwell an intern errantly tossed them in. The inert atmosphere also renders difficult an explanation of Eve’s perplexing purple color; afterall it might have been expediently explained as a result of some strange oxidization chemistry. Given the multitudes of organic chemical reactions that can produce a purple color, planetary scientists are very anxious for a follow up mission to include a surface probe. At any rate Pilgrim 1 continued on to flyby sunblasted Moho. With the unprecedentedly low mission perkerbolion, of 0.38 KU, the spacecraft design had to somehow deal with the solar heating problem. Because the intense radiant energy flux from Kerbol at Moho’s orbit, the number of solar arrays needed (in theory) was one half to one eighth of those required at Kerbin’s orbit, but due to the questionable literacy of some of the engineers at KSC engineers the design requirements documentation was read upside down and double the number of arrays was installed instead… whoops. To keep the heat from building up to intolerably high levels, the spacecraft was spin-stabilized such that its spin axis remains normal to the plane of the solar elliptic and therefore the solar panels present the smallest angle to Kerbol. Thanks to the magic of angular momentum, the spin stabilization would also help keep small torques from throwing off the probes attitude. That was the idea anyway, but unfortunately it was realized rather late that the solar panels rotate on bearings, utterly defeating this plan. Ah well. Anyway, for good measure any reasonably useful scientific instruments such as spectrometers, or magnometers were left at home as well, as is now the custom. Not even a proper telescope, alas. It does turn out that Moho is not tidally locked to Kerbol after all, so there is one mystery solved, though it does have very long days: only 1.3 of them in its whole year. What does the future hold for robotic precursor missions? There is much enthusiasm for a ‘Grand Tour’ to the outer plants (here defined specifically to mean a mission that uses gravitational assist trajectories to make flybys of several plants during an alignment), perhaps to visit one of the heretofore undiscovered outer planets beyond Eeloo. While Hohmann transfer windows to the outer planets are frequent, (on account of their low orbital velocity Kerbin constantly overtakes and passes them), Grand Tour opportunities are far less so. There is also talk of a mission to visit the supposed ‘asteroid garter’ at 3 KU, but astronomers seem, leaving aside Dres, to be unable to locate any other objects out there bigger than dust specks. Of course Dres is the last planet that remains unvisited. A liquid metal sample return mission from the seas of Eve holds tremendous interest to the planetary scientists but the mass ratios required drive one to nihilism. Also, there is a general consensus that there needs to be far more ‘atmospheric probe’ (i.e. impactor) missions … planned ones that is … because they are awesome.