Kerbfleet: A Jool Odyssey-CHAPTER 22 pg 2: Yet >another< narrative device!

[Mister Dilsby]

Hey, I'm back! And I really don't mind folks wanting moar. You SHOULD want moar, if I'm doing my job right! Just don't expect moar to appear with any set frequency or schedule  That said... here is moar.

For those playing along at home, the official length of KSS Intrepid is 56.1meters.

And, erratum: yes, I did list Tedus as a 1st Looty in the splash page 'roll call' of Chapter 10. That's fixed, and will also be fixed in the imgur album. I had considered running with the gag that 'kaptin' and 'captin' sound completely different to Kerbal ears, but decided that calling Tedus 'kaptin' aboard Intrepid rang untrue to my own ears, and thus Kerbfleet adopts the practice of courtesy ranks, which i first learned of in Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

 

 

Edited July 18, 2016 by Kuzzter

[spacebrick3]

Basing on the size of your "helipad", I'm guessing Mohoball is where one side tries to get the ball into the Mohole and the other side tries to stop them? That's the only "goal" on Moho I can think of.

[Mister Dilsby]

1 hour ago, spacebrick3 said:

I'm guessing Mohoball is where one side tries to get the ball into the Mohole and the other side tries to stop them? That's the only "goal" on Moho I can think of.

Well, you're making some big assumptions there... like that there are two sides. Or that the number of sides is even a positive integer. Or that there is a "goal", in any sense of that word. But I do believe there is at least one Mohole involved in the game. Unless there isn't.  

 

[Geschosskopf]

14 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

For those playing along at home, the official length of KSS Intrepid is 56.1meters.

Be sure to file a claim on that LZ with the county clerk ASAP!  That's obviously the only bit of Pol real estate that's worth owning

 

[Mister Dilsby]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

Be sure to file a claim on that LZ with the county clerk ASAP!  That's obviously the only bit of Pol real estate that's worth owning

 

Quite so. However, I'm going to have to put that landing off for a bit--due to eclipse! 

This morning the Intrepid successfully recovered Gumdrop One, thanks to some nice flying by Dilsby. I took about a hundred pictures, which I must somehow get down to one or at most two comic pages. Have I mentioned that flying carrier ops is awesome? Because flying carrier ops IS AWESOME!

Spoiler

Dilsby-eye view on final approach

...so then I switched to Gumdrop Two, parked at the LZ, to decide whether to recover that boat as well or simply move it to a safe distance while the Intrepid lands. That's when I noticed the LZ was in total darkness! I hope Nimzo brought a plushykub to squeeze, he's going to be very scared otherwise...

Spoiler

Interestingly, the sunlight seems to make it through Jool to strike the top of the lander, but not the ground around it.

No problem, I just have to wait for morning. So I zoomed out in map view to figure out when that would be, and:

Spoiler

Flag at left is Gumdrop One landing site; the lander icon is Gumdrop Two, and the orbiting base is of course Intrepid.

Yup. The LZ would be in full sun, if Jool weren't in the way. So I'll most likely return Gumdrop Two to the ship and wait until we emerge from Jool's shadow later in the polth.  

[Geschosskopf]

3 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

Yup. The LZ would be in full sun, if Jool weren't in the way. So I'll most likely return Gumdrop Two to the ship and wait until we emerge from Jool's shadow later in the polth.

Hmm, that's going to take a while.  Neither Jool nor Pol move very fast.....

[Mister Dilsby]

3 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Hmm, that's going to take a while.  Neither Jool nor Pol move very fast.....

Yeah, looks like a sidereal day on Pol is about 250 hours, and it just now moved into darkness. So we're looking at, what, 8-10 days for a "crescent Pol"?

I suppose I don't *have* to land the ship--I could always shuttle the Qwammer...twenty times. Ooh! Or I could just have Tedus and Nimzo stand at the edges of the LZ and turn on their helmet lights! Or land all the boats and turn on their floods! Or just have the Kerbulans attack now and get it over with! 

OK, back to work. Who said this would be easy? Stay tuned!

 

ETA: found this nugget in the wiki: "Longest Time Eclipsed 11381 s" -- well that's only three hours and change, so looks like we will be good to go!

Edited July 18, 2016 by Kuzzter

[Torgo]

Just have some redshirt scrape all the green glowy stuff from the emergency exit signs on the Intrepid, then use that to paint the perimeter of the LZ. It's not like the Intrepid is going to face any emergency situations anytime soon, right?

Edited July 18, 2016 by Torgo
I are has not gud grammar

[FyunchClick]

18 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

(...) and thus Kerbfleet adopts the practice of courtesy ranks, which i first learned of in Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

I think I first heard of it from one of the Honor Harrington books, but in my defense I eventually did get around to Heinlein, and Starship Troopers, following that somewhat awful and somewhat wonderful movie. Heinlein can of course kerbalized into Keinlein, which must look very weird in German. To my shame I still haven't read the Mun is a hard mistress, which I'm told is one of Keinleins best.

As someone who's often asked "how the heck do you come by that particular fact?", I always wondered if I was the only one who secretly picked up a lot of such trivia from the most unlikely sources (like scifi novels), but I guess I am not.

[Mister Dilsby]

Just now, FyunchClick said:

As someone who's often asked "how the heck do you come by that particular fact?", I always wondered if I was the only one who secretly picked up a lot of such trivia from the most unlikely sources (like scifi novels), but I guess I am not.

Oh, that's definitely me too. The trick is being able to identify where you learned such-and-such a fact. The harder trick is knowing when something you picked up from a work of fiction doesn't actually exist in the real world! Fortunately that last bit doesn't matter so much when what you're writing is just some random pastiche fanfic headcanon graphic novel about a video game.  

[Wildcat111]

19 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Hey, I'm back! And I really don't mind folks wanting moar. You SHOULD want moar, if I'm doing my job right! Just don't expect moar to appear with any set frequency or schedule  That said... here is moar.

YAY!!!!!! MOARRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[FyunchClick]

11 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

(...) The harder trick is knowing when something you picked up from a work of fiction doesn't actually exist in the real world! (...)

LOL because it's true. Which if fine of course if your usual audience wouldn't know one way or the other, but running into another trivia buff who does could lead to a very painful public dethroning.

[Flow]

1 hour ago, FyunchClick said:

I think I first heard of it from one of the Honor Harrington books, but in my defense I eventually did get around to Heinlein, and Starship Troopers, following that somewhat awful and somewhat wonderful movie. Heinlein can of course kerbalized into Keinlein, which must look very weird in German. To my shame I still haven't read the Mun is a hard mistress, which I'm told is one of Keinleins best.

Haha, in addition to looking weird it also is really funny  The ending"-lein" is the German way to express a diminutive. "Kein" means "not". So Keinlein would be "the little Not". 

[Mister Dilsby]

OK, I managed to keep it to two pages. I might release a larger Imgur album without dialogue later to show off more of the complete docking procedure  

Over the weekend I was telling my nephew (a gamer who's heard of KSP but doesn't play it...yet...) "once you can dock, you can do ANYTHING in this game"  

[Mjp1050]

1 hour ago, Kuzzter said:

I might release a larger Imgur album without dialogue later to show off more of the complete docking procedure

When you do, would this be of any assistance? 

 

[Wildcat111]

4 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

OK, I managed to keep it to two pages.

YAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EVEN MOAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[The Error]

Good trap. I guess it's kinda hard to catch the #3 wire, but hey.

 

Happy (upcoming) landings!

[Just Jim]

You make that docking look so easy... and I know it's not!  Outstanding! 

[Dman979]

21 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

OK, I managed to keep it to two pages. I might release a larger Imgur album without dialogue later to show off more of the complete docking procedure  

Yes, please do that!

And how many pictures did you end up taking? I'm betting 50.

[superstrijder15]

On 18-7-2016 at 0:23 AM, Kuzzter said:

Tedus: We’re going to plant flags all along the edge of the plateau.

Nimzo: But I already planted mine!

Tedus: There’s more in the cockpit… same place we keep the extra jetpack fuel.

I lolled at this bit! 

[Mister Dilsby]

On 7/19/2016 at 1:17 PM, Just Jim said:

You make that docking look so easy... and I know it's not!  Outstanding! 

Thanks, of course it's really not that bad once you've done it a few times. The main trick for flying around inside a big ship like the Intrepid is to point the boat's nose right at the relative velocity prograde vector. (after getting close, zeroing relative, and "calling the ball"). Then flying the boat is pretty much intuitive, you can make small translational corrections with RCS and rotational corrections with reaction wheels using the prograde vector and target vector as a guide.

21 hours ago, Dman979 said:

And how many pictures did you end up taking? I'm betting 50.

It might be about that many. I've docked both Gumdrops now, so will collect whichever sequence looks more representative to me  

7 hours ago, superstrijder15 said:

I lolled at this bit! 

Heh, I hoped someone would catch the "infinite cockpit resources" joke  

[Mister Dilsby]

OK, here's the album of Dilsby's dock to Intrepid. Some limited commentary included to describe the procedure.

 

[Mister Dilsby]

Annnd let's do the other one:

So just because there wasn't any on-panel radio chatter with Jeb doesn't mean he wasn't directing Tedus into the bay: I just decided repeating the sequence wouldn't be as interesting the second time around   

 

[Just Jim]

"There's no such thing as zombies..."

OMG, awesome!  I can't stop laughing! 

I'm out of likes for today... but I'll catch up tomorrow!

Edited July 21, 2016 by Just Jim

[Angelo Kerman]

There! Are! Four! Lights! Moons!