The Outer Planets Traveling Circus Episode 28: Superheroes (The End)

[Kekkie]

15 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

It might be, yeah--I've been thinking of installing OPM ever since reading the excellent reports in this thread. One planet at a time though, let's get to Jool first  

And then you'll probably build another giant lagbeast of a ship that'll make your komputer turn into a pile of molten silicon!

[Mister Dilsby]

8 minutes ago, Kekkie said:

And then you'll probably build another giant lagbeast of a ship that'll make your komputer turn into a pile of molten silicon!

I'd have to, to have enough endurance to make it all the way out there--unless I used Deep Freeze, of course. 

[Kekkie]

On 1/12/2016 at 7:46 PM, Geschosskopf said:

1. • On 2/15/2016 at 9:40 PM, Geschosskopf said:

     EPISODE 14: Took Out the Trash and Never Came Back

       Reveal hidden contents

      

     NOTE:  The title has nothing to do with OPM or OPM Tilt, but with the main ship involved in this episode.

     So now it's time to tie up the loose ends of the 1st Urlum Expedition and get on with other stuff, namely what to do with the SCANsat there.  Consultations with @Sigma88 proved beneficial on how to handle mapping Urlum's moons despite them having zero rotation..  The fix was to give them some rotation but unfortunately this is on the wrong axis to look good with their orbital plane when using OPM Tilt, so the hack to make that happen was removed once the mapping was done.  And of course it made maps of somewhat dubious value in terms of Lat/Lon for picking landing sites, but a bad map is better than no map.

     But early on while all that was playing out, TOEJAM, the Eeloo station of the 2nd Sarnus Expdition arrived after a journey of about 6.5 years, and a full 2 years ahead of the rest of SE-2.  But that's OK because much of the rest of SE-2 relies on TOEJAM so it was good to have it set up first.

     

     TOEJAM had an inconvenient meeting with Slate on the way in which resulted in having to burn more than expected to meet up with Eeloo.  This meant that the transfer stage wasn't quite up to the full job of parking it in a 90km Eeloo orbit and the small utility tug had to do the last 400m/s of the final capture burn.  Always nice to have backup plans for stuff like this.  And a gratuitous explosion.

     

     But that still left it with plenty of fuel so once TOEJAM was in place, the tug separated, went up to a 180km orbit, and shut down until needed.

     

     UE-1 SCANsat Urlum had by now finished with Wal and Tal, and was now arriving at Polta.  Not really anything of not happened there but it was still a pretty photo op.  Various milestones and science reports for Pol happened again apparently due to them keying off the 1st 3 letters of Polta.  It might be a good idea to rename Polta to "Ponta" or something to avoid such confusion.

     

     After this, the SCANsat moved to Priax and had a much easier time of this due to being in a prograde orbit around Polta.  The whole trip including capture (the main issue) was about 600m/s.  Priax's irregular diameter, high mountains, and small SOI greatly complicated mapping even with the rotation hack.

     

     Mapping turned up an anomaly here, the only one noted in the Urlum system.

     And that completed the mission of UE-1.  So now what to do?  At some point, the Scientists will certainly demand that the Urlum Probe go over and attempt to land at the Priax anomaly, but the SCANsat has no further business here.  And it still had about 6000m/s in the tank.  Therefore, a special session of Mission Control decided to send it to Plock-Karen, the only Outer Planet with nothing on the way there yet.  This required an expensive plane change to climb down out of the plane of Urlum's moons and get back in touch with the rest of the solar system.

     

     Then it was time to plot various options for getting from Urlum to Plock-Karen in Year 13, which by now it was.  None of them were very satisfactory, the most economical leaving Urlum about 65 years in the future and then taking about 140 years to reach Plock-Karen.  So instead the Boffins decided on a faster approach leaving Urlum in the "near future" (2.5 years hence) and "only" taking 44.5 years or so to reach Plock-Karen.  This would entail heading back into the "inner" solar system (inside the orbit of Dres, anyway), and then slingshotting back out.  It's doubtful UE-1 SCANsat has enough macho for what will likely be an insanely huge capture burn, but what else is there to do with it?

     

     That's what I mean about taking out the trash and never coming back.

     So here's the status as of Y13 D365:

     

     The 2nd Sarnus Expedition has reached its Ap but is still 1.9-2.25 years from entering Sarnus' SOI.  At some point in there, UE-1 SCANsat will leave on its long, indirect trip to Plock-Karen.  Meanwhile, the 1st interplanetary ship launched by the OPTC, the Neidon SCANsat, still has 9.5 years to go.  Meanwhile, a transfer window to from Kerbin to Plock-Karen is coming up and there's a contract at stake for it.  And the trip is projected to last "slightly" less than that of the Urlum Scansat, perhaps a mere 43 years.  So the Boffins and Scientists are busy hammering something together for that.

     However, nothing of note will happen until the rest of SE-2 arrives.  So tune in next time for mostly that.

      

      

      

      

      

What does the title mean?

 

 

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

You made me reconsider my opinion on nuclear lightbulbs. It's gonna be your fault if I use them. >:D

They're my go-to interplanetary engine for anything massive these days.  2 large folding radiators each and don't forget to use them.  Also, I recommend disabling their gimbal, or at least tuning it WAY down.

1 hour ago, Kuzzter said:

I'd have to, to have enough endurance to make it all the way out there--unless I used Deep Freeze, of course. 

You'd also need @MrHappyFace's BetterTimeWarp.  Otherwise you get too good an appreciation of how far away the OPM planets are.

[Geschosskopf]

3 minutes ago, Kekkie said:

What does the title mean?

Each episode title is a link to a YouTube video of a song that I think is apropos to the events in the episode or my own mood while doing it.  In this case, the song is Mojo Nixon's "Took Out the Trash and Never Came Back".  The song is about a guy ending his marriage by moving out of his house, but on his way out the door he takes the household garbage out to the trash can one last time.  I suppose this put a symbolic end to the relationship.  Like pretty much all Mojo Nixon songs, it's somewhat silly.

Anyway, I thought it appropriate to this episode because the Urlum SCANsat finished its job then set course for Plock-Karen, the outermost of the Outer Planets, via a sundive.  Given that it's starting from Urlum, which is rather closer to Plock-Karen than it is Kerbol, this maneuver could well result in the SCANsat blasting through the Plock-Karen system at ridiculous speed, kinda like New Horizons did at Pluto-Charon, and sailing out into the void, to all intents and purposes gone forever even if it doesn't have Kerbol escape velocity.  So it's never coming back

[RocketSquid]

3 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

I'd have to, to have enough endurance to make it all the way out there--unless I used Deep Freeze, of course. 

Yeah...

Go with DeepFreeze. Depending on what exactly it is that you want, Saru might be better than OPM.

[KAL 9000]

MOAR please?

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

MOAR please?

Well, as it happens, I'm just about to get started on that.  I had a hard Saturday at work and a bad hangover yesterday.  Then this morning I had to make some custom textures which grew from the 1 originally planned into 6.  I haven't made any textures in a couple of years so had to remember how, then they all had to be tested and tweaked.  And now it's lunchtime.  But hopefully I should have something to show by this evening.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 16  1000 Feet Closer to Hell

Spoiler

 

So, the Boffins and Scientists of Mission Control returned from the bar, made sure they had ample stocks of whisky, whiskey, and munchies on hand, and began the long, arduous process of getting the 2nd Sarnus Expedition doing its various things.  The plan was to get things set up in stages, thawing out only those Kerbals needed for the continuation of the mission at that point in time, in case something went wrong.  So first thing was the Slate Probe Lander which needed no Kerbals at all.  It shed its transfer stage with a gratuitous explosion and started on down aiming for the anomaly detected by the Sarnus SCANsat nearly a decade before.  A landing on Slate is pretty much the same as a landing on Tylo, as in no big deal if you don't plan to leave but an SOB of you do.  Fortunately, there were no plans to fly the Slate Probe Lander again and it ended up with a bit over 400m/s left for its Poodle-powered descent stage.

The anomaly was HUGE, easily visible from over 20km altitude.  Was it a crashed alien mothership?  Or at least the shipwreck from Alien?  No, it was an updated version of the Tylo Caves, more naturalistic in appearance, but floating about 2km above the ground.  To Mission Control, obviously this anomaly was the Mother Goddess of the Mun Arches, whom it is best not to annoy,let alone their Mother Goddess .  Therefore, they were thankful the Slate Probe Lander just barely missed the thing on the way down to the spot of ground under the floating caves.

The Slate Probe Lander somehow came down safely and transmitted about 10K points worth of Science.  Plus it scattered 4 @DMagic seismic probes, 3 of which survived, to pick up the thumping of its hammer, but until a sciencemate gets there to retrieve the data, that was essentially pointless.

That done, it was time to see if a refueling base could be established at Eeloo.  Without that, nobody was going home, so there was no point in waking anybody up.  As a first step to determining the viability of the rest of SE-2, STEAMINGPILE had to land on Eeloo.  It barely had enough dV for the job, but that was of course intentional because it didn't need any more than that and any more would have made it transfer stage even bigger.  That transfer stage, BTW, is intended as a back-up means of getting the crew home so is a fully functional tug.  Anyway, STEAMINGPILE separated from it and then landed next to the SE-1 Eeloo PEST-1 with no problem.  Then it drove about 100m away so as to reduce the chance of FLAKEE landing on it.

STEAMINGPILE brought mining, refining, and Kerbal life support-sustaining to Eeloo, which meant the Kerbals had to be sent down next in FLAKEE, which meant FLAKEE had to dock with TOEJAM, an operation that Mission Control had been dreading.  It proved to be just as difficult as anticipated.  But hey, there were multiple gratuitous explosions thrown in due to how TAC Self-Destruct works depending on which way you're looking at it.

And here your humble narrator had to go on a wild goose chase in the driving rain looking for a reported wreck along a 7-mile stretch of US Hwy 61, home of the Blues.  The search ended up going 15 miles but nothing turned up, even when looking deep into the various gullies along the way.  I left the game paused on the F3 screen and it was getting pretty shaky when I finally returned, so I restarted the game here.

With FLAKEE docked to TOEJAM, it was time to wake up the Eeloo Crew, the 1st of which was its NCOIC, Truiki.  She wasn't quite clear where she was when thawed out.  Especially because the internal lights of the 10-seat DeepFreeze weren't working at first.

After only about an hour for diagnostics and video to get to Mission Control, another hour for the Boffins and Scientists to argue about what it all meant, and then another hour for their corrections to get back to Sarnus (as in I quit the game and restarted it), the lights came on and the rest of the Eeloo Crew woke up.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

It was actually harder than anticipated to herd the Eeloo Crew into FLAKEE for the descent to Eeloo.  The usual electric shock collars didn't work here due to the long signal delay.  Chief Artificersmate Truiki was effectively out of it for the time being and Sciencemate 1st Class Munmy and Artificersmate 2nd Class Orbles (all had learned much en route) were becoming aware of each other as bitter religious enemies.  But for the time being they were functional and indoctrinated enough to cooperate in shuffling Truiki through the corridors and into FLAKEE.

Once the jolly crew was aboard, FLAKEE's AI cast off and started its descent of its own accord.  This is why the Travelling Circus invests heavily in probe cores.  Fortunately, FLAKEE managed to land itself within spitting distance of the rest of the Eeloo Base components, even in the dark.

All the crew were still hung-over after spending 8.5 years in cryosleep, but they were thoroughly indoctrinated in the mission requirements so immediately upon landing, they all stumbled out for the obligatory group picture.

Munmy and Orbles were rational enough by now to realize that neither could survive without the other.  Without Munmy running the life support systems aboard STEAMINGPILE, they'd all starve.  Without Orbles running the drills and IRSU, they'd never get home.  And both were quick to spot that their nominal senior kerb, Truiki, was not going to be of any use for the time being.  So for the nonce, they bundled Truiki into STEAMINGPILE's hab unit and set about carrying out their orders.

Once the drills were running, it was time for Science!   STEAMINGPILE, like the Slate Probe Lander, had ejected 5 seismic probes so Orbles had to modify PEST-1 so that Munmy could go gather their data.  To do this, Orbles repositioned PEST-1's Surface Scanner to it's now-useless landing probe core on top, and attached a command chair from STEAMINGPILE's stores in its place.  Munmy then drove out to the seismic probes and discovered nothing of value.

When Munmy returned, he and Orbles turned to their duties, Orbles mining and refining like crazy to get FLAKEE able to return to TOEJAM and refuel CRACKHEAD so they could all leave this horrible place.  Meanwhle, Munmy was absorbed with keeping them all alive tending the various life support functions.  And all this time, Truiki was curled up in a corner still crying for her Gardener....  During this time, Eeloo revolved around Sarnus enough for the sun to come up and show what the Eeloo Base looks like in the dawn's early light.

Tune in next time for the adventures of one of the other crews still sleeping aboard CRACKHEAD.

 

 

Edited February 24, 2016 by Geschosskopf
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[Cydonian Monk]

Wow. Don't know where you found that song, but I know what I'm listening to tomorrow while hacking around at work. (And I'll only be half as crazy as the Eeloo crew....) "Pillar robbing for my pay...." (That's a story that don't end well.....)

[KAL 9000]

Who's Gardener? Also, MOAR!!!

[Geschosskopf]

7 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Wow. Don't know where you found that song, but I know what I'm listening to tomorrow while hacking around at work. (And I'll only be half as crazy as the Eeloo crew....) "Pillar robbing for my pay...." (That's a story that don't end well.....)

Glad you like the music.  You should check out that band, Jasper Coal.  I've been a fan for years.

I seriously considered using "Workin' in the Coalmine" but decided "1000 Feet Closer to Hell" was 1) better and 2) about people and places connected vaguely connected to me.

[Geschosskopf]

19 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

Who's Gardener? Also, MOAR!!!

In my universe, Kerbals reproduce by spores, which are only released when a Kerbal dies.  If these fall on fertile ground, they sprout and eventually grow big enough to break free of their rhizomes and become miniature versions of the Kerbals we see in the game, and eventually grow up.

So Kerbals never know their parents.  But long ago, as social behavior developed, certain adult Kerbals took it upon themselves to collect the spores of dead Kerbals, plant them in prepared plots, and tend the growing sprouts.  These are the Gardeners.  The sprouts become aware before they're big enough to be mobile, so develop a parent-child type of relationship with their Gardener.  IOW, "I want my Gardener!" is the Kerbal analog of the human "I want my Mommy!"

[Just Jim]

A Psychopomp???

Outstanding!!!!!  

[Geschosskopf]

1 minute ago, Just Jim said:

A Psychopomp???

Outstanding!!!!!  

Yup, and I have a feelilng he's going to be doing a brisk business......

[Mister Dilsby]

Ah, I see you made good use of your "deep freeze wake up random psychosis" manual dice-and-paper method. Should be featured next Modding Monday, I expect a brisk business in kerbal-themed polyhedra. 

[Geschosskopf]

13 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

Ah, I see you made good use of your "deep freeze wake up random psychosis" manual dice-and-paper method. Should be featured next Modding Monday, I expect a brisk business in kerbal-themed polyhedra. 

Hehehe, yes, a stand-alone mod you don't need ModuleManager for

Given that your Kerbals all have fairly established personalities now, I suspect they'll be more resistant to the process than mine.  Of course, mine were having training info pumped into their heads (aka Field Experience mod) so at some level they weren't entirely unconscious, and it was a very long trip.  I suppose it's natural that their minds........  wandered

The problem with thawing them out, however, was real and troubling.  When I 1st thawed Truiki, the lights really were out and not only that, Truiki herself wasn't drawn---her portrait had an empty pod.  I was a bit afraid the whole mission was hosed at that point.  Fortunately a restarted fixed that.  But hey, malfunctioning cryopods and waking up in unexpected circumstances is such a trope that why not?

[Mikki]

@Geschosskopf

I really enjoy your writing, my own playtime went to zero recently due to heavy RL workload... 
I guess my plans to go OPM vanish, therefore it is mere fun to see your crews going nuts up there .
The authors life experience (yours) is undoubtly messing up the protagonists destiny...
The white eyed Kerbal in the fridge is terrible, most scary Kerbal i`ve ever seen. For science err no... for thrill! 

EDIT: Your "Kerbal genesis" canon should be stock. Just great!

Edited February 23, 2016 by Mikki
Kerbal genesis8D

[Geschosskopf]

37 minutes ago, Mikki said:

@Geschosskopf

I really enjoy your writing, my own playtime went to zero recently due to heavy RL workload... 
I guess my plans to go OPM vanish, therefore it is mere fun to see your crews going nuts up there .
The authors life experience (yours) is undoubtly messing up the protagonists destiny...
The white eyed Kerbal in the fridge is terrible, most scary Kerbal i`ve ever seen. For science err no... for thrill! 

EDIT: Your "Kerbal genesis" canon should be stock. Just great!

Sorry to hear of your grounding.  Hope things slack up for you soon (unless you're making money hand-over-fist, in which case, are you hiring?)

Yeah, Orbles' white eyes do look kinda creepy, don't they?  But looking at the list of maladies that the rest of the crew has/will have, he's one of the saner ones.  And thanks for the props on where baby Kerbals come from

 

[WhiteKnuckle]

Great episode, great song!

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 17: Spanish Moon

Spoiler

 

So, with the senior member of the Eeloo Crew down, Mission Control faced a dilemma.  It was an open question whether the Eeloo Crew would ever get CRACKHEAD refueled, so should they wake up anybody else?  The argument for leaving them frozen was that eventually they could be rescued.  But the latest data on the instability of Kigma-11 showed that it would probably go supernova long before any rescue mission could get to Sarnus, and even SE-2 might have trouble getting home in time.  Thus, Mission Control decided it might as well wake everybody else up to get whatever Science! and milestones they could.  And so a senior Boffin pushed the button to awaken the Tekto Crew.

Things did not go well.....

Elite was non-functional with a massive hangover, Midi was high on Glycerol and freaking out, and NCOIC Gergas was doing badly.  Needless to say, it took most of the day for the crew to drag themselves into COPROLITE, especially given that Mission Control's exhortations, demands, and words of encouragement were so delayed as to be WAY out of context and thus caused even more confusion.  But eventually the 3 members of the Tekto Crew were buckled in, and COPROLITE cast off from TOEJAM.  It then waited in Eeloo orbit for several days before a good window to Tekto came up.

 

 

Meanwhile, down on Eeloo........

You might think that after all the time, thought, and money that the Travelling Circus had poured into setting up a relay satellite system specifically designed to talk to Sarnus, that it would work better than this, especially at this critical time.  The Emperor certainly thought so, and many senior Boffins began writing their wills while Mort searched the archives for clues as to who might have made the fateful decisions.

As it happened, Sarnus itself, most relays, plus the Kerbin SENTINEL were all in conjunction providing about the best possible path down to the level of Kerbin's orbit.  But Kerbin was on the opposite side of the sun from all that.  Still, the relays at Duna could avoid that problem but for whatever reason, the logic of the system decided it was better to talk through Kerbol's corona than bounce around it via Duna, and so all the RFI in close proximity to Kerbol hosed everything.  It turned out that some junior Boffin had written a decision tree for such situations but his immediate supervisor had commented it out as unnecessary, opting instead for a shortest-distance solution, never thinking that such a planetary alignment could occur.  So the senior Boffins were saved and this faceless frontline supervisor was transferred to the astronaut program.

Munmy and Orbles, now that they had sobered up from cryosleep, had gotten over their initial overt, instinctive, matter-antimatter hatred of each other.  In fact, in their first few days on Eeloo, they had come to respect each others' skills and intelligence under the bonding pressure of mutually shared survival.  As such, they put their opposing faiths up to a kind of wager.  Whoever could convince the other of the power of his gods would win.

However, their nominal NCOIC, Truiki, was still thinking she was a new sprout.  This had to be corrected or nobody could leave STEAMINGPILE to explore Eeloo without endangering the survival of all.  Munmy and Orbles, however, differed on the best way to solve this problem.

So Munmy got on his knees (as best he could in the low gravity of Eeloo) and began praying for all he was worth while Orbles drummed on the bulkheads and summoned his spirit guides until he entered a trance state.....

Meanwhile, in Eeloo orbit, it was time for COPROLITE to shove off for Tekto.

That was a good question.  Back home, Gergas' vital signs were a bit off.  Off the chart, not just off the norms.  And this question came long enough into the mission for the Tekto Crew to have recovered, more or less, from their ordeal.  Mission Control wanted answers.  However, the Tekto Crew could provide little useful information, even if there hadn't been 2 hours between asking the question and receiving its answer.

Every couple of hours, Mission Control would nag them again.  And nothing changed in the meantime.  Gergas continued to claim he was OK despite looking like total mulch.  Elite continued to suffer from a terrible hangover.  Midi continued to fight her Glycerol jones by trying to get lost in her music and ignoring everything else.

Finally, Midi couldn't take it any more.  She had to escape the buzzkills she was trapped with and she needed a hit of Glycerol.  So she stepped outside to where she'd moved one of CRACKHEAD's spare Glycerol tanks to COPROLITE.  Sometimes, it pays to be an artificersmate.

Somewhat surprisingly, Midi hadn't drifted too far away from COPROLITE by the time she regained consciousness.  But it would be another 8 days before COPROLITE got to Tekto, so she'd have other chances.

In the meantime, Mission Control woke up the HOPELESS Crew.  This crew seemed in general better off than the others.

NCOIC Sanny, in charge of all of SE-2, was much more enthusiastic about the trip than she had been at launch  Cox'n Lizula didn't much care one way or the other.  Neither had major hangovers and between them, they had little trouble getting the wildly hallucinating Jaysef into HOPELESS.

In due course, HOPELESS cast off from TOEJAM and entered a parking orbit to wait several days for a window to Orvok, its first destination.

And so things sat for a few days.  On Eeloo, Munmy was still praying and Orbles was still in a trance while Truiki sat huddled in a corner.  Aboard HOPELESS, the time for the burn to Orvok slowly ground down.  And aboard COPROLITE, Elite was still nursing the Mother Of All Hangovers while Midi was lost in her music and periodic hits of "Chill".  Neither paid any attention to Gergas because he wasn't demanding any, and Mission Control had decided he must be OK despite his anomolous vital signs on their end.

.....

.....

Until, 8 days later....

 

Dun dun dun

Tune in next time for more of the madness.

 

 

Edited February 28, 2016 by Geschosskopf
add spoiler

[KAL 9000]

Just so you know, my Boffins have developed the Kerbal-Cryosleep-Malady-Fixer-O-Tron 5000 (patent pending). How long would it take to ship it up to Sarnus (seriously, Gergas looks awful (no offense to you or him))?

[Geschosskopf]

7 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

Just so you know, my Boffins have developed the Kerbal-Cryosleep-Malady-Fixer-O-Tron 5000 (patent pending). How long would it take to ship it up to Sarnus (seriously, Gergas looks awful (no offense to you or him))?

Hehehe, yes, this mission is demonstrating an unforeseen need for some sort of medical and/or psychological care system on long-term missions.  It's not all about grabbing Science! and mining Ore---Kerbals sometimes need maintenance, too, and can't get help from home.  Sadly, at this moment, a trip from Kerbin to Sarnus would take about 10 years, so thanks anyway but I don't think your invention would arrive in time to do any good

Hmmm, I might RP it someday that the otherwise useless pilots are corpsmen and counselors, just to have a reason for including them on missions.  Or just bring along an otherwise useless MPL for an automated sickbay and robot shrink.  But OTOH, hopefully next time the Travelling Circus will have the bugs worked out of its DeepFreezes so that won't prove necessary.

As to Gergas specifically, THANKS!  That's exactly the look I was going for   

[Mister Dilsby]

Well, well, well, look who's putting text in balloons now. Welcome to the dark dork side, @Geschosskopf! Love the innovation of the handy eyeball madness overlay. Should be stock, or at least have the symbols drawn in on your 'deep freeze effects' notebook sheet for easy reference.

[Geschosskopf]

3 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

Well, well, well, look who's putting text in balloons now. Welcome to the dark dork side, @Geschosskopf! Love the innovation of the handy eyeball madness overlay. Should be stock, or at least have the symbols drawn in on your 'deep freeze effects' notebook sheet for easy reference.

Thanks!

But I've occasionally used text balloons off and on for years. Here's an example from nearly 2 years ago.

All the pics in this thread are made quickly and cheaply with the standard MS Paint.  That includes just hand-drawing the "eyeball madness overlays", which I'm glad you appreciate.  I also hand-drew the red lights and upside down "ERROR" message on Gergas' cryopod, and it looks that way, but I figure that's Kerbal, what with all the post-it notes they leave scattered about  

Gergas's face required using PaintShop Pro with multiple layers and transparencies and such, starting from one of the Human Colored Faces.  I have a desire to use that also for a depiction of the Spirit World, but I'm putting that off for as long as possible, mostly because I dread having to first build a "green screen" set to capture images of the Kerbals against.  Maybe this coming weekend.....