Forgotten Space Program

[Just Jim]

1 hour ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Thanks! Took a bit longer than I figured for some of those screenshots, and I probably would've spent longer at it except I kept wandering off to edit real photos instead of the screenshots.... Turned out better than the similar effect from two years ago, I think:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Oh yes... much much nicer!!! I really like the tentacle-ish energy bolt things... whatever they actually are. The effect is sweet!!!

I'm curious, did you use Photoshop, or something else to add everything in? 

[Cydonian Monk]

Just now, Just Jim said:

I'm curious, did you use Photoshop, or something else to add everything in? 

GIMP, 100%. Mostly a mix of the gradient tool, the pen stroke tool, and the airbrush. 

[Just Jim]

11 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

GIMP, 100%. Mostly a mix of the gradient tool, the pen stroke tool, and the airbrush. 

Ahhhh... very nice! 

[Kerbinchaser]

What visual mods are you running?

[Cydonian Monk]

23 minutes ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

What visual mods are you running?

The usual: Scatterer, EVE, DistantObjectEnhancement, Texture Replacer. The full list of mods is up in the first post in case I missed one. 

[Numberyellow]

Now i REALLY don't wanna go to Vall....ever.

 

"If you go to Z'ha'dum, you will die"

[Thedrelle]

21 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Not saying that was a transporter, but one of the most horrifying things about Star Trek to me are the transporters. Yes, they make perfect copies of the individuals they transport, including the data and information that individual holds, but the person they are "transporting" is vaprorized, dematerialized, killed. The information survives, but it's a new instance - not the same thread of existence / conciousness as it was before.

you need to watch this. this is a bit about cloning, but it runs alongside the transporters theory. 

Spoiler

 

 

[cubinator]

That last scene was so epic, I had to make a meta fanart:

[Cydonian Monk]

24 minutes ago, cubinator said:

That last scene was so epic, I had to make a meta fanart:

Very cool. Thanks!

[NISSKEPCSIM]

So, the latest chapter is a bit like the ending of Ad Lunam, at least with Vallhenge and the blue plasma and whatnot.

On 5/8/2017 at 7:47 PM, Cydonian Monk said:

*snip* Not saying that was a transporter, but one of the most horrifying things about Star Trek to me are the transporters. Yes, they make perfect copies of the individuals they transport, including the data and information that individual holds, but the person they are "transporting" is vaprorized, dematerialized, killed. The information survives, but it's a new instance - not the same thread of existence *oops, snipped too much*

THE SCIENCE!? *wink, wink*

[Cydonian Monk]

I full well expect to have the next post ready for later today, but I wanted to touch on a couple things before that.

First, I screwed up. Or my PC screwed up. Or Dropbox hiccuped or somesuch, because when I loaded up ye olde forgotten space program earlier this week the Manganese 3 wasn't at the Mün. Neither was the Iron 2, which I found orbiting Kerbin. "Weird," thought I, "that I would have left this here." I sent it to a nearby abandoned fuel depot, filled up its tanks, and then wondered where it came from. I was about 99% certain I had sent it to the Mün with the Mn-3, and it was in my notes as such, but ultimately I had to go back and check these mission reports to be sure.

And that's when I discovered the Mn-3 was gone.

Again, I have no Kerbinly idea what in tarnation happened, but apparently the persistence files from where I launched the Mn-3, rendezvoused it with the Fe-2, sent both of them to the Mün, and then docked both with the Pequoni 2 never made it to Dropbox. Or got overwritten by something. Those missions were flown well _after_ the Vall landing, so it wasn't a matter of F5/F9 that killed them. They just disappeared. 

I haven't done anything since that mission that would have bene lost, so I launched another Mn-3, rendezvoused it with the actual Fe-2, Alt-F12 hyper-edited both to the Mün (the game or the universe cheated me, it's only fitting I cheat it back just a little bit), and put them back where they belonged. Or I started to. Once I had the Mn-3 docked to Pequoni 2, the Wiggles arrived. The same Wiggles that drove our merry band of kerbals off of Kelgee station. 

The good news? I know exactly why Kelgee and Pequoni were acting up: Persistent Rotation. The bad-ish news? I have a very good idea why Persistent Rotation was doing it (confirmed through experimentation) and I don't see a good way of fixing it. (It appears that PR is trying to rotate each vessel by its Vessel ID, even when said vessels are docked to other, already rotating vessels... resulting in multiple parts of a compound craft attempting to rotate against itself.) So I uninstalled it. Pequoni 2 and Kelgee are back to their normal, serene, non-twisty selves.

I don't know when or why that behvaiour started, if it's a result of a change in KSP or not, but I have other fish to fry and it's really not that critical of a mod for me. It's also not the first time I've encountered issues with PR. I could temporarily fix it by deleting the file it uses to track rotations, but, eh, whatev.

So now we're back where we left off, I think. I hope. Minus lots of angular momentum lost; lots of energy bled out of the universe.

 

19 hours ago, NISSKEPCSIM said:

So, the latest chapter is a bit like the ending of Ad Lunam, at least with Vallhenge and the blue plasma and whatnot.

Coincidence?  At least this time it's in the middle of the story instead of the end.

Edited May 14, 2017 by Cydonian Monk

[Cydonian Monk]

Mission Report

"It's like I said, one minute he was here, the next he disappeared. We've been over the site several times but there's no trace. No suit, no helmet, no Thomlock. I should've stopped him. I could've stopped him, if only.... Anyway, the computer aboard the Sulphur 5 will be sending our mission reports from Vall. You should already be receiving the complete reports for the rest of the mission from the Jumble of Parts. It's good to finally be able to deliver them. Good to hear a voice from Kerbin again.

"Agake thinks there's a larger structure under the ice beneath the spires, likely the cause of the high energy readings the satellite recorded. Probably also what caused ... this. We'll continue looking until we find him or run out of supplies. It's cold out here, I won't abandon a kerbal. I keep thinking maybe he's hurt and out on the ice. I will find him.

Please advise as to our return to Kerbin. I've provided as much information on these forgotten kerbals as I have. Talk again soon. Over."

Rosuki and Macfred had been trading messages for several hours now. The distance between Jool and Kerbin was enough for a signal delay of about four minutes. Add in the distances between their communications satellites, the time it took for the ships at Jool to save and copy the messages, the delays while the Sulphur was out of satellite range, and other such vagaries of physics, and it was often more than fifteen minutes between messages. Fifteen grueling minutes.

Rosuki had been elated to find her wayward team again; she was almost giddy when that first reply came in. That giddiness lasted until she pressed the play button and heard the news. Thomlock gone, zapped up by some mysterious energy beam. Lost without a trace, as Macfred had reminded her in every message. 

And then there were the "forgotten" kerbals. She recognized a few names on the list, the crews one of their previous programs had sent to Eve and Duna. The others were completely unfamiliar, none of them part of Elite's old cell. They had sent a message to this base Macfred mentioned, the Edge of Infinity, but so far had received no response. Not surprising - sometimes the forgotten wish to stay forgotten.

Back to Vall. It was dangerous for them to stay at this ice castle, another one of these bursts could occur at any moment. Who could blame them? This was Thomlock they were talking about, the famously dead kerbal that had trained most of their pilots, the kerbal who had designed the first aircraft to fly on Laythe. She probably would've kept looking for him too, but from what Macfred had described of this energy beam there was little reason for them to continue and all the reason for them to leave. She was about to send the order to pull back when Hercas, their new chief radio operator, knocked on the radio shack door.

"Ma'am, you asked me to inform you when we found Jonbald."

She glanced over her shoulder, headset held in her hands. "Where is he?" She needed answers from Jonbald, and she needed them now. The events of the last two days were timed too well to be coincidence. 

"He's in his office. Landed with two new kerbals just a few minutes ago. He sent for you, said something about preparing a launch."

Good. Macfred could wait. He was a smart kerbal, capable enough to have continued on in the dark all these years, the loss of Thomlock not withstanding. She left the headset onto the radio and set off across the space center. Did she have a plan of attack? She knew the first question to ask, but how would he respond? And how would she respond to that? What if he ignored her question and smiled, as he usually did?

Despite having worked with Jonbald since her earliest days in the space program, he was still an unknown to her. Unreadable, unshakable, mysterious. All the strange things they universe had thrown at them, from the shadow corporations trying to replace their pilots with robots, to the malicious governments that sought to use them against their own people. And through all of it, Jonbald had presented himself in that same calm, cool, collected manner. Almost as though he expected everything and anything, greeting it with his smile and a nod.

She had always responded to him with the same demeanor. Thought of him as a peer and as an elder to learn from. Perhaps that was her mistake, trusting that he would appreciate an equal. Or perhaps he was just oblivious to how the rest of the world saw him. No, this was no time to experiment with a different tactic. She burst through the Jonbald's office door and marched up to his desk, doing her best to appear angry.

"Ah, Rosuki. Do come in, take a seat. I'd like to introduce..."

"I know who they are. Wernher, Gene." She paused to smile at her two familiar yet alien coworkers, seemingly reborn from the ashes of memory. It was amazing, really, and one of the completely unexplained phenomenon they had to live with, how these kept reappearing. She wondered briefly if Jonbald knew why, but that wasn't the question she intended to lead with. The anger returned to her face. "Why did you block comms with the deep space crews?"

"To protect you from them."

That... wasn't one of the answer she had played out in her head. "What?"

He smiled and raised his hand to stop her. "Perhaps we should discuss this another time. As I was about to say, Gene and Wernher are to be the first crew of our new rocket, the Nickel. I had the VAB prepare their craft before I left, and it should be nearly ready to go. If you would be so kind, please accompany them to the flight preparation room. It's quite a nice bird, I promise, and should resolve our little difficulty."

Wernher perked up at that last word. "Vaat little difficulty? If there is something gersplunkt ve need to..." 

Gene interrupted. "I still don't understand why you're sending me to space. Us to space. I'm supposed to be in Mission Control. We have crews in the field, crews we need to bring home. He's supposed to be in the science hall. How can we do our jobs if we're in orbit?"

They both railed on about these minutia, each debating why they needed to stay on the ground. Jonbald only smiled, his gaze never leaving Rosuki's. "I think you'll find they remember more than you might expect, Miss Kerman." Perhaps it was better to wait. To continue to play along with Jonbald's game, whatever it was. She smiled back, a so very fake gesture, and led her two old bosses to their new spaceship.

--

Wooden Nickel

At its core the Nickel is a very simple spacecraft. Jonbald had cooked it up from older designs, designs recovered from the data stores  left on the Mün. The two-seat capsule rode atop a very simple two-stage launcher, the LV-12 Tango. Developed originally for the low-cost tourist market, the Nickel would be their resource-strapped agency's answer to sending crews to orbit. At least until such time as they could resume flying Titanium shuttles.

As Jonbald requested, the VAB crews had set about preparing the first Nickel. The pieces of the craft were built by the time they arrived at the crashed UFO, assembled in the VAB before they reached the North Pole, and mated to the crawler before they made it back to KSC. Fully automated (again, its intended use was in the tourist industry), the Nickel would be more than capable of delivering its two passengers to any station this side of the Mün.

Of the two, Wernher had been the most difficult to prepare. He was insistent on wearing his eyeglasses, even in the capsule, which the pad technician Guenter would simply not allow. "No, you will see what you see when you see it," he would say, "Guenter is always right, you will see." Eventually he snapped Wernher's helmet on and smacked the top of it. "Good luck, you need it." Afterwards they were sealed in the capsule and the rocket began its slow trip to the launchpad. Rosuki slipped out and made her way to Mission Control.

The craft was airborne sometime later. Rosuki had Mission Control running like a fine watch or a well-oiled metaphor; she was almost hesitant to turn it back over to Gene. Sure, he knew exactly what to do and when to do it, running missions as though programmed for it. Yet she had doubts his Mission Control had ever run as smoothly as her's was now. 

Koffee sprayed into the air from one of the trenches as the first stage cutoff caught the booster officer off guard. The call of "second stage ignition" came gurgling through the headset just a few moments later, followed by the subdued laughter of the other controllers.

Yep. Running like a finely oiled train wreck.

Their launch timing had been a bit off, and the Nickel 1 was entering into an orbit ahead of the transfer station. They made an adjustment to the ascent program, increasing the Ni-1's target apoapsis so that Transfer One would catch up to it. This mistake meant the rendezvous would be at night, not that they would have it any other way. Half of the interesting things in her space program had always taken place in the dark, as was only right and proper.

Rosuki could hear Wernher's voice in her left ear, the famous rocket scientist ecstatic over his first trip to space. "Never had I dreamt I would swim amongst the starlit dust. Vundershöne." She wondered what he was seeing, or if he was even seeing anything. With his eyesight as bad as it was and with his glasses stowed safely away it was hard to imagine. Couldn't be more than blurs, halos, smudges of light. Unless.... Knowing Wenher he had probably snuck an extra pair of spectacles into his flight suit. Contraband. She could ask, but why spoil the occasion?

Gene was handling the play-by-play, by far the most level-headed of the two. He wasn't beyond an occasional exclamation, offering an occasional "wow" or a mysterious "I should've done this years ago."

Ten minutes after reaching their zenith they performed their rendezvous burn with Transfer One. The second stage was spent, now discarded into a trajectory missing the station. With that done they turned final approach over to Transfer One and to Tetris, who was waiting at one the remote operator console aboard the station.

As it turned out there was one small problem they had not anticipated: The Nickel was equipped only with the smaller size docking ports. This was something they had all known going into the flight, and yet something which all of them had missed. (Rosuki's Mission Control could perhaps use a slightly more awake Visiting Vehicle Officer.) 

Thankfully there was one such port open on one of the craft at the station, as the older transfer shuttle was equipped with such a port on its dorsal side. Tetris brought the craft in to dock, reported a hard seal, and that was that. Launch complete, mission successful. Everybody could go for snacks, celebrate the day's events. 

Everyone except Rosuki. For her it was time to get answers.

--

Navigation: Next Post

Edited May 24, 2017 by Cydonian Monk

[DragonsForce]

5 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Everyone except Rosuki. For her it was time to get answers.

Yes. Totally only for Rosuki and not for us as well.

[KAL 9000]

Gene and Werner won't keep having amnesia anymore! (Because, you know, they've been in space now) 

[NISSKEPCSIM]

18 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

Gene and Werner won't keep having amnesia anymore! (Because, you know, they've been in space now) 

Unless... there is no Gene... (Yep, totally legit Maxtrix pun)

[DragonsForce]

5 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

Gene and Werner won't keep having amnesia anymore! (Because, you know, they've been in space now) 

Question is, will new versions still spawn every cycle?

EDIT: Derp, I think I remembered that wrong, they just forgot what they were doing and left, right? Only the orangesuits spawned new?

Edited May 15, 2017 by DragonsForce

[Cydonian Monk]

7 minutes ago, DragonsForce said:

Question is, will new versions still spawn every cycle?

EDIT: Derp...

I've not touched on the limits of who respawns when at Cycle / New Release yet, but I don't see why the Crisis of Infinite Jebs wouldn't also apply to Wernher/Gene. 

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, Cydonian Monk said:

I've not touched on the limits of who respawns when at Cycle / New Release yet, but I don't see why the Crisis of Infinite Jebs wouldn't also apply to Wernher/Gene. 

I guess it could be a good thing to have many of Wernher and Gene's bright minds working together on the big issues of the space program, if they could all be brought together. 

[Cydonian Monk]

1 hour ago, cubinator said:

I guess it could be a good thing to have many of Wernher and Gene's bright minds working together on the big issues of the space program, if they could all be brought together. 

I do wonder if you could parallelize a person's work like you can a computer's. Wouldn't help much if 30 Wernhers were sitting around a table coming up with the same 30 "A ha!" solutions to the same problem. "I just had a great idea!" "Me too!" "Oh, not again...."

[greenTurtle1134]

Alright, so let me try to summarize this mess for my own sake...

V1S1 - Cycle 1.1.3's space program reaches low orbit, discovers previous Cycles with the help of Thomlock Kerman, who falls from solar orbit.

V1S2 - Cycle 1.1.3 finds Kelgee and other relics from previous Cycles in low Kerbin orbit, begins exploring them.

V1S3 - They experiment with space telescopes and shuttles, resulting in GrandMa and the Aluminum series.

V1S4 - Memory of Tomorrow, an interplanetary exploration vessel based around an all-purpose shuttlepod called the Sulfur/Sulphur/Sulpher, is constructed using radiothermal generators from various Cycle relics.

V1V5 - The crew of Tomorrow travels to Mun, where they meet the Crazy Space Pirate with the bananas, and he steals their ship.

V1S6 - Leveling up new recruits, missions to Mun to plant time capsules, and various references to pop culture (Mario's Another Castle, Paradox's Stellaris). A replacement Jool ship is built, called the Jumble of Parts. Kerbin 1.1.3 is destroyed

...am I right so far? It gets very crazy, very fast, what with communists and man-eating bugs...

 

[Cydonian Monk]

26 minutes ago, greenTurtle1134 said:

...am I right so far? It gets very crazy, very fast

Sounds right. Sorry about the crazy, it just kinda happens [with new releases of KSP].

[Chel]

On ‎20‎/‎01‎/‎2016 at 5:32 PM, Cydonian Monk said:

Vertical Assembly Building

The VAB, in both the real-life Kennedy Space Center and the Kerbal Space Center, stands for Vehicle Assembly Building, not Vertical Assembly Building. Although originally at the KSC (Kennedy Space Center, not the Kerbal Space Center), it was called the Vertical Assembly Building before it was renamed to better suit the purpose of the whole site (for launching and recovering space vehicles).

-----------------------SEPERATE POSTS, WERE MERGED INTO ONE, BUT SEPERATE POSTS-----------------------------------------------------

Quick question, is the 'Spice Moon' a reference to Star Wars? Since there is an asteroid in the Star Wars Universe called Kessel, and on Kessel there are spice mines, so it is commonly called the 'Spice Moon Of Kessel'. So is it a reference to Star Wars, or am I just thinking that it is.  Anyway, great series!

Edited May 16, 2017 by The_Cat_In_Space
Both posts were merged into one, although they are suppost to be seperate!

[Cydonian Monk]

51 minutes ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

The VAB, in both the real-life Kennedy Space Center and the Kerbal Space Center, stands for Vehicle Assembly Building

That's nice; this isn't real life and I'm not terribly concerned with being exactly correct with whatever semi-canonical name it has. (Likewise for Baikobananaramanour.)  

Vertical Assembly Building is more correct for the time period KSP tries to represent anyway, given in real-life it wasn't rechristened to Vehicle Assembly Building until after political stuff happened Apollo was replaced by less ambitious projects that better benefitted the citizenry of certain hand-picked areas.

 

53 minutes ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

So is it a reference to Star Wars, or am I just thinking that it is.

Nope. It's just shorter than saying "Billy Bob's Cajun Spice Shack in the Sky" every time. Maybe it has spice. Maybe not. Definitely no Wookie slave labour though.

 

1 hour ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

Anyway, great series!

 Thanks!

[Chel]

1 hour ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Wookie slave labour

Yeah, why would anyone use slave labour for a moon, or any 'small-moon sized space station' anyway? I've also noticed that the first couple of 'episodes' in your 'series' seem to be based around the beginning years of the space race.

SEPERATE POST, GOT MERGED ANYWAY!

I've also rated the topic five stars. Hope that compels you to churn out more episodes for your addicted fanbase or something!

[Chel]

On ‎14‎/‎02‎/‎2016 at 9:12 AM, Cydonian Monk said:

A second (or third, or fourth) ship would be sent along with landers for the smaller moons, a small shuttle to get between the interesting points, the aircraft needed for flying around Laythe, a small surface base for refueling said Laythe aircraft, and the Laythe Descent/Ascent Vehicle (LDAV). A third ship would include extra fuel for orbital operations and the return journey, while a fourth would transport several communications and mapping satellites. 

That's a lot of craft needed!