THE BARTDON PAPERS - "Cancel all previous directives."

[Geschosskopf]

45 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

This. 

À ton santé! (clink)

 

Quote

And, as Geschosskopf mentions... thrusting in the background. There may come a time in the Camwise Logs where this will have to be a thing.

Even if it's just waving hands and saying, "It was aliens!", it's fine by me if it's necessary to roll the old chariot along advance the plot.

Edited December 6, 2017 by Geschosskopf

[Cydonian Monk]

I think in the case of these many-hours-long burns that if you prove it’s mathematically possible and that your ship has enough fuel to do it, then it’s perfectly ok to subtract the resources you would’ve used and place yourself in the orbit you would’ve been in. It’s really just a mathematical exercise at that point anyway.

Now if you’re using a random failures mod.... Not sure how to reconcile that. Roll a die?

 

BTW - I quite like the dirty and worn out spacesuit in this episode. 

[Geschosskopf]

47 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

I think in the case of these many-hours-long burns that if you prove it’s mathematically possible and that your ship has enough fuel to do it, then it’s perfectly ok to subtract the resources you would’ve used and place yourself in the orbit you would’ve been in. It’s really just a mathematical exercise at that point anyway.

Certainly.

But while I have your attention, can kOS do continuous burns in the background?  Just for future reference  

[UnusualAttitude]

1 hour ago, Cydonian Monk said:

I think in the case of these many-hours-long burns that if you prove it’s mathematically possible and that your ship has enough fuel to do it, then it’s perfectly ok to subtract the resources you would’ve used and place yourself in the orbit you would’ve been in. It’s really just a mathematical exercise at that point anyway.

My thoughts precisely. Whether I do these burns legitimately or not will ultimately depend on A: What day of the week will it be when these probes arrive at their targets..? and B: Will the weather be nice enough for me to go and ride my bike while Remote Tech does its job, or not..?

1 hour ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Now if you’re using a random failures mod.... Not sure how to reconcile that. Roll a die?

I still have my multitude of plastic polyhedrons from my roleplaying days somewhere at the bottom of a cardboard box in my attic. I put them there when I grew up and moved away from my roleplaying friends. Then the Internet was invented, and now I spend months designing space probes and crewed missions to distant planets in an attempt to impress people on the aforementioned Internet. This all takes a lot of my time, so I don't think I will leave such a huge amount of work to chance. That, and the feeling of nostalgia from rolling those dice will kill me...

1 hour ago, Cydonian Monk said:

BTW - I quite like the dirty and worn out spacesuit in this episode. 

Courtesy of Texture Replacer and Scart91's texture pack. I promise that Camwise will gradually get filthier over time.

Edited December 7, 2017 by UnusualAttitude

[Cydonian Monk]

42 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

But while I have your attention, can kOS do continuous burns in the background?

In background like we’re talking about? No. Closest thing I’ve seen was a slow-burn mod for solar sails; not sure whatever became of that. 

kOS programs will only operate on vessels that are “loaded” in the scene, at least as far as I’m aware. You can run a kOS program on a vessel that’s not the active one, again provided it’s not outside of physics range. I’ve done that in RSS many times (some of them accidentally).

 

[Geschosskopf]

25 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

In background like we’re talking about? No.

That was my impression. Thanks for confirming it. But bummer just the same.

[NotAgain]

On ‎06‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 9:59 PM, UnusualAttitude said:

It's the 3.75m 6-seat command module from the SSTULabs mod

Looking at the thread, it says it's not compatible with RSS/RO. How did you deal with that?

[septemberWaves]

2 hours ago, NotAgain said:

Looking at the thread, it says it's not compatible with RSS/RO. How did you deal with that?

I think I recall UnusualAttitude mentioning something a while ago about manually editing the part stats to balance them for RO. Presumably that's what's going on here.

Edited December 8, 2017 by eloquentJane

[UnusualAttitude]

12 hours ago, NotAgain said:

Looking at the thread, it says it's not compatible with RSS/RO. How did you deal with that?

I dealt with that by, umm... not even noticing the RSS/RO incompatibility warning and installing it anyway. 

To the best of my knowledge, all of the command modules, crew capsules and station modules work perfectly well. So do the numerous solar panels, if you're using the stock EC system. The mod is well worth it merely for these parts (the bridge and solar panels of Prosperity, the core of LDRO Station, the Opulence command and service modules, etc...)

I had to write in some Real Fuels values for the engines (I only use a few of them). As eloquentJane said, I edit the part statistics. There are several ways of doing this, and I can explain some of them if you're interested. You can create a Real Fuels config file, you can write a Module Manager patch, or you can modify the part .cfg file directly. My gamedata file is an absolute mess of various .cfg hacks, which is also the main reason why I have never shared any of the craft that appear in the Logs. Any other user opening them and launching them with another setup would likely have a lot of nasty surprises... 

[MatterBeam]

@UnusualAttitude

I performed tests. Extreme physics warp won't work out (

Here is testing of a 0.026m/s^2 craft at x10000 physics warp.

It seems that KSP just doesn't apply the thrust in between calculation steps at high warp, resulting in a 10x to 1000x reduction in effective thrust as you increase the physics warp multiplier. 

[NotAgain]

On ‎08‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 10:18 PM, UnusualAttitude said:

I had to write in some Real Fuels values for the engines (I only use a few of them). As eloquentJane said, I edit the part statistics. There are several ways of doing this, and I can explain some of them if you're interested. You can create a Real Fuels config file, you can write a Module Manager patch, or you can modify the part .cfg file directly. My gamedata file is an absolute mess of various .cfg hacks, which is also the main reason why I have never shared any of the craft that appear in the Logs. Any other user opening them and launching them with another setup would likely have a lot of nasty surprises... 

Crikey.

Okay, I may try that when the time comes, but I doubt that I'll need an advanced capsule until at least the late 80s.

[UnusualAttitude]

YEAR 15, DAY 257. CAMWISE.

The dreams and nightmares were sometimes horrific.

...my finger hovered over the switch, trembling.

This particular switch was the one that would retract the control rods fully and bring the nuclear reactor up to full power almost instantly, delivering a fatal dose to my pilot Jenbles. Sitting in the cockpit of L'Orphelin du Vide, stationed mere metres away from the mining rig and protected by only thin aluminium, plastic and laminated glass, he would be hit by the full force of the radiation emitted by the unshielded containment vessel.

The prototype Kastria MX-L could be pulsed quickly from shutdown up to full power for brief periods of time without risk, in theory at least. Even if Jenbles realised what was happening and attempted to manoeuvre L'Orphelin out of the way, by the time his craft's sluggish plasma thrusters carried him to safety, he would have received a dose of several Sieverts. Dozens, maybe. Enough to leave him incapacitated due to the nausea and vomiting within minutes.

Back on Earth, with the best medical attention available, his chances of survival would be remote at best. Out here, he would inevitably expire from acute radiation poisoning within a few days, if he even lasted that long.

I, on the other hand, would be perfectly safe. We had moved the reactor's monitoring station into the living space we had dug into the asteroid's surface as soon as it was suitable for occupation, allowing me to operate it from the safety of our underground hab. I was protected by at least twenty metres of solid rock. My ploy to get him to inspect the reactor while I remained on station to diagnose the system had worked.

“I'm in position, Kerski. I see nothing unusual.”

I wiped the sweat from my brow and strained to keep my voice neutral.

“Are you sure? My readouts here suggest heavy damage to one of the radiators. Maybe a micrometeorite strike. Can you get any closer?”

“Well, both radiators look OK to me, and if I get any closer I'll run slap bang into the rig. Look, if you don't believe me then come out here and see for yourself.”

Do it Camwise. Flip the switch. Once you're rid of him, the reactor, the drive and the asteroid will be yours...

“No!” I snapped. To Jenbles. To myself.

You will become the most powerful Kerbal in the Sol System.

“No...”

“Right, mate. Whatever. But you're gonna have to take my word for it, these radiators are fine...”

Jenbles' voice faded into the background noise. My hand inched towards the switch, twitching. How did we get to this point, already?

Oh, yes. The Resource Companies. The Board. Last night, I dreamt of Earth.

Earth. That planet where I was born. In a cave, a lifetime ago.

On asteroid Y13-HO3, Earth was the brightest object in the sky apart from Sol.

At closest approach, Earth was less than three million kilometres away. At such a distance, it wasn't quite the blue marble that was so majestic from Lunar orbit, but it was still instantly recognisable against the inky void. A bright azure disk, on which everyone I'd ever known had lived and almost everyone I'd ever loved now lay buried.

Sometimes we drifted further out on our long trip around Sol. Earth faded, its pale light clearly visible nonetheless. Next to the eternal radiance of our star, Earth's glow was as cold as ice.

I dreamt of the small mound of snow in Antarctica that I had dug to cover the victims of station Vrijheid 2. The frozen remains of a group of Kerbals left to die alone in the murderous cold. Good folk, bad folk maybe... Who knows? Their stories are all long gone, buried in the deep drifts of a polar winter. But I knew that they had had one thing in common: all of them had struggled and died because they believed that maybe, just maybe, there was a better way of doing things.

I dreamt of the Board of Directors of the Resource Companies. In my dream, they were all faceless ghouls, as I had never met any of them in person.

I had however experienced firsthand the consequences of their near absolute power over every living soul on the planet many, many times. Before I first went to space, this had all been beyond me. This was simply the world that I had been born into, just like millions of other Kerbals. This was how it was and – I'd assumed – how it was supposed to be.

Some say that traveling afar gives you superior perspective. If that is so, my journey to Mars and back should have made me one of the clearest thinkers of my age. Whether or not this was true, little by little the systemic and unnecessary cruelty of life on my home world became first discernible, then evident, and finally – when Quissac went down – abhorrent.

And, improbably, after so many years of accepting what was and not what ought to be, fate decided to gift me with the ability to change things.

To strike back at the faceless, suited oligarchs who held the fate of my people in their grasp and who had decided that my family and the kerbelle I so desperately loved could be discarded as so much collateral meat. To tip the balance of power, and bring the Resource Companies to the negotiating table.

An asteroid. My asteroid. When I wriggled my way back into the kerbonaut corps last year, I had spotted this opportunity straight away. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of mass. A massive stockpile of potential energy that could be used as a kinetic threat to anyone who happened to be living down in the gravity well of Earth.

I'd got this far with surprising ease. Impressive, but not enough. I still needed a means of propulsion.

Fortunately, Trans Pacific had provided the missing link. I figured that this had probably been probably Froemone's idea, in his eagerness to capture a rock into a closer orbit that would allow more frequent transfer opportunities, as well as to test our ability to redirect bodies that posed a potential threat to Earth. The irony of it all...

And so, just over a month ago, an eTug arrived bearing empty water tanks for us to fill, in exchange for the ones we had slowly filled up over the previous months. The uncrewed craft would haul more than 150 tonnes of propellant back to Lunar orbit.

She also carried the prototype unit of a larger, more powerful ELF thruster. The Kastria MX-L, with hindsight, had clearly been designed to power this new engine.

This gap of a month between us receiving the thruster and the arrival – scheduled in just two day's time – of Prosperity to collect us was required for us to extract more propellant. Prosperity would be low on fuel when she got here and would need a top-up before we all returned to cislunar space together, abandoning Y13-HO3 while the thruster performed a long, slow transfer burn. The asteroid would meet Earth in another six months, and brake into a highly elliptical orbit around our planet.

Obviously, the Board hadn't expected its mining colonies to go nuts and start flinging themselves back at their homeworld as soon as the first thruster was delivered. To their credit, they had taken precautions, but I already knew them to be inadequate. I had spotted the override shutdown chip nestling in the innards of the reactor's control monitor the very first time that I had stripped it down for inspection. I knew that it would require a screwdriver and all of thirty seconds to get rid of it, when the time came to do so.

I dreamt of the rocket equation. Based on the efficiency of the thruster and the twenty percent ratio of water contained within the hydrates locked up inside Y13-HO3, I would have just over six hundred metres per second of delta-vee to play with. With sufficient patience this would be enough. Enough to strike at any target I should choose to aim for within the Earth-Moon system. I would also be able to protect myself against any attempt at being boarded by hostiles by cranking up the reactor for a few moments, if need be.

In order to negotiate anything, you need a plan B. But you can't intimidate anyone unless they truly believe that there is a chance that you might carry out your threat. With regards to this, I held all the cards. None of the Board members had ever heard of Kerski. He was the biggest nobody ever sent to space. His superiors at Madang Space Centre would describe him as bland, discreet, instantly forgettable... They wouldn't have a single useful thing to say about him that might help the Board decide whether this dude was serious about his threats or not, and so they would have no choice but to fear the worst possible outcome.

Besides, once the dice were cast, I would no longer have to pretend to be Kerski anymore. How I would love to be a fly on the wall of the boardroom when they learn who they are really dealing with. “What is his name again? Camwise? As in former Senior Engineer Camwise? That kerbonaut we sent to rot in the Antarctic? Uh oh...”

I can almost smell the cold sweat from here already. You'll need a change of suits pretty soon, my friends.

My demands would be simple. The immediate resignation of the entire Trans Pacific Board of Directors, including its Chairman. The Board would be replaced by a council of elected officials from all over the Pacific region, representing the interests of their respective settlements. During the transition process, my one and only contact would be Senior Engineer Froemone (who I felt sorry for already). He would oversee the process and report back to me.

If I felt that the process was taking too long, then I would wipe Tanegashima off the map.

If SE Froemone came to any harm during this time, then I would wipe Tanegashima off the map.

If any craft came within range of Y13-HO3 station's proximity warning system during this time, I would crank up the reactor, spin up the asteroid using the thruster and spew deadly radiation in all directions. Then I would wipe Tanegashima from the face of the Earth.

In the mean time, I had enough food and nuclear fuel for several years. I would watch and wait.

I dreamt of the impact event. A flaming bolide streaking through the atmosphere bathing the doomed city below in its ghastly light. The serpent had many heads, and it would take more than the loss of their corporate headquarters to get rid of Trans Pacific for good, but that was beside the point.

The fact was that the destruction of the city would be a major setback for the space programme. Our ten-year deadline to reach Jupiter or Saturn would never be met. According to the Martian Transmission, my rock from the heavens would merely be the first of several, or perhaps many...

Shock the system. A full reset. If this is the best we can do, then maybe this galaxy is better off without us.

The final pieces were slotting into place. The puzzle was almost complete. One final obstacle stood between me and my goal.

Jenbles.

After working with him and breathing the same recycled air for nearly a year, I had to admit that he was OK. We had shared a tiny sarcophagus with no windows carved into the bowels of a 4.5 billion year old lump of rock flying through space for months on end without ripping out each other's throats: this simple fact spoke for itself. In any other circumstances, I would have vowed to watch his back for the rest of my days.

He hated the Resource Companies as much the next Kerbal, this I knew for certain. But was he prepared to take this to the next level? If he had the choice, would he be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if there was the slightest chance that it would improve the lot of his brethren back on Earth?

Probably not. We can't take that risk.

Unlike myself, Jenbles often talked about the future. He had plans for when he would return to Earth to collect more than a year of back pay. He wanted to build a small house on the more temperate west coast of Australia. He intended to buy shares in one of the electric airships, because they were less vulnerable to the fluctuations of fuel costs...

He spoke of these plans with emotion. He cherished them. If he realised that those dreams were not going to happen, he would definitely try and stop me from sending us both hurtling to a fiery doom, and taking a major city with us.

He would have to go.

“Hey there, Kerski. You still there?”

My hand touched the switch, shaking more than ever.

I dreamt of the crew of Quissac. First of Karanda, staring at me silently in disgust at what I had become, even as the Mars shuttle broke up around her and smote her remains across the desert below. Lisabeth still struggling with the useless controls, eyes wide as she stared at the ground looming through the windshield, yelling something I could not make out.

Bartdon was inexplicably calm. Well not calm, exactly – merely his usual self. As the fuselage panels were torn open behind him by the blind wrath of aerodynamic forces and sunlight cut into Quissac's crew cabin, he looked down at me with his trademark glare of disapproval.

“Blast, I see you're slacking again, boy. Got yourself a big rock, eh? How's that working for you? Feeling all entitled, now? Well it won't do you any good, you know. This might sound a bit rich coming from me, but trying to boss people around just doesn't work.

If you want something done properly, then you have to do it your damned self!”

Bartdon and the others disappeared into a flash of light, and the nagging voice was back.

“Kerski, come in. Are you OK..?” said Jenbles.

Yes! Do it..!

Then my fingers curled...

Do... It... Now!

...into a clenched fist.

“No.”

Defiance, resistance. But not that way. No other Kerbal would die by my hand. Ever.

Bartdon was right. I had to pull my finger out and do what had to be done myself. Besides, my anger and sorrow had blinded me all along and had taken me down the wrong road. No single individual should have the power to decide the fate of an entire planet. That was just wrong, and deep down, I had known it all along.

“Sorry, Jenbles. We just needed to purge the cooling system. I can fix this from here. You are good to dock.”

I knew what I had to do. The new path that now lay before me was vertiginous: billions of kilometres of loneliness and danger. Just thinking about it was absolutely terrifying.

Later, Jenbles and I took our supper rations together in awkward silence. I couldn't meet his gaze. Eventually, he got up and flipped a few switches on our comms console, tuning into the chatter from Mission Control. We learnt that Froemone's monster lander had finally passed acceptance tests and was ready to be launched, and this happened to be just what I now needed.

A special envoy sent by the Board intended to take it for a trial run down to the surface of Luna to check out some of the anomalies there. This dude's name was Samrod, and the schedule for the next few months suggested we would get to meet each other on LDRO station when Prosperity brought us back from Y13-HO3.

Hello, Samrod. I hope you packed a change of pants. Your plans are about to undergo some slight... adjustments.

The following night, I dreamt of Lisabeth once more. This time, as Quissac broke up around her, she smiled at me.

Edited December 14, 2017 by UnusualAttitude

[Geschosskopf]

Well, that was a bit dark.  I like dark  

Still, I'm glad Camwise changed his mind.  Otherwise, the story would have been over too quickly.

[UnusualAttitude]

2 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Still, I'm glad Camwise changed his mind.  Otherwise, the story would have been over too quickly.

Yes. I'm not going to let him go yet. He hasn't suffered nearly enough. He had many more places to be and things to do first... 

Also, that simulated asteroid strike didn't go quite as planned, anyway...

Spoiler

 

First of all, it sank into the ground on impact, up to nearly half of its diameter.

Then, would you believe it... it bounced.

The (virtual) Earth rejected it, spitting all 350,000 tonnes of it back several hundred metres into the air. All of the mining structures were destroyed by the collision, except a particularly stubborn KAS ground pylon.

It then crashed into the sea and settled on the bottom, spinning gently. I reloaded at that point, before the Kraken appeared...

If I'm bored one evening, I may perform some additional testing. Hurling one million tonne rocks at the Space Centre might be mildly entertaining after enough beer...

 

 

[HamnavoePer]

Ahh, the darkness of Camwise's brain... I LIKE IT!

But does he not need to get put on some kind of "Rehabilitation" thingy for dark thoughts, only for him to break out awesomely?

[Geschosskopf]

6 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Also, that simulated asteroid strike didn't go quite as planned, anyway...

I haven't tried landing an asteroid in about a year I guess.  Last time I tried, it exploded from the heat.  Glad to see we can get them on the ground again.  It used to be fun bowling with them  

[UnusualAttitude]

12 hours ago, HamnavoePer said:

But does he not need to get put on some kind of "Rehabilitation" thingy for dark thoughts, only for him to break out awesomely?

I think any attempt to send Camwise to rehab would be doomed to failure. He would either escape by jury-rigging a jetpack made of toilet rolls, soda and mentos, or alternatively talk the entire personnel into a state of catatonic depression merely by telling his story.

6 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

I haven't tried landing an asteroid in about a year I guess.  Last time I tried, it exploded from the heat.  Glad to see we can get them on the ground again.  It used to be fun bowling with them  

Be advised: this is still a 1.2.2 install. I'm also using Roverdude's mod that makes asteroids much larger and brings their density up to a realistic value (which explains the 350,000 tonne mass).

For the purposes of my screenshots, I simply "dropped" the rock from 200 km straight above the target, so re-entry speed was far lower than reality, but still comparable to a stock Kerbin re-entry.

[Sorabh]

On 14/12/2017 at 3:28 AM, UnusualAttitude said:

The following night, I dreamt of Lisabeth once more. This time, as Quissac broke up around her, she smiled at me.

Is it bad that i pictured my long lost lady love, smiling at me?

Damn it.. this is going to be a night full of tears and self loathing for me again...

Although i must congratulate you @UnusualAttitude, your writings invoke all sorts of emotions..

Edited December 17, 2017 by Sorabh

[UnusualAttitude]

3 hours ago, Sorabh said:

Is it bad that i pictured my long lost lady love, smiling at me?

Damn it.. this is going to be a night full of tears and self loathing for me again...

Although i must congratulate you @UnusualAttitude, your writings invoke all sorts of emotions..

Hello @Sorabh. First of all, thank you for joining us and commenting.

I don't really know how to respond to this, though. Yes, as a writer, it is always satisfactory to learn that some of the emotion I put into my story trickles through to the reader and speaks to them on a personal level. It is however quite rare for any of my readers to comment on this aspect of my stories, which is understandable in this context of this forum. But that's not really the point here.

If you lost someone truly close, then I am very sorry to hear about that. And I hope that in time, like the main character of this story, you will be able to banish the ghosts and find new purpose, whilst still cherishing those memories. Stay strong.

[Sorabh]

1 hour ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Hello @Sorabh. First of all, thank you for joining us and commenting.

I don't really know how to respond to this, though. Yes, as a writer, it is always satisfactory to learn that some of the emotion I put into my story trickles through to the reader and speaks to them on a personal level. It is however quite rare for any of my readers to comment on this aspect of my stories, which is understandable in this context of this forum. But that's not really the point here.

If you lost someone truly close, then I am very sorry to hear about that. And I hope that in time, like the main character of this story, you will be able to banish the ghosts and find new purpose, whilst still cherishing those memories. Stay strong.

I'm Okay! I'm okay! Just bawled my eyes out in a crowded bus but I'm OK now.

Thanks BTW.. and keep writing!

[HamnavoePer]

On 14/12/2017 at 8:57 PM, UnusualAttitude said:

Hurling one million tonne rocks at the Space Centre might be mildly entertaining after enough beer...

 

No, After NO beer what so-ever

[Geschosskopf]

3 hours ago, HamnavoePer said:

No, After NO beer what so-ever

Well, have a beer and reconsider  

[HamnavoePer]

7 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Well, have a beer and reconsider  

That would involve effort, which I'm not into. anyways, I'm not allowed beer until I'm 16...

[Sorabh]

6 hours ago, HamnavoePer said:

That would involve effort, which I'm not into. anyways, I'm not allowed beer until I'm 16...

I got you covered bro! Despite what the general populace may think,  hurling rocks after a couple of beer is certainly entertaining! 9/10 would totally hurl rocks again. NCR=2

edit: NCR = number of cans required.

Edited December 21, 2017 by Sorabh

[HamnavoePer]

On ‎21‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 7:37 AM, HamnavoePer said:

I'm not allowed beer until I'm 16...

And THIS is why being a teen is rubbish... Want to do everything, but can't do ****... idc that I quoted myself