THE BARTDON PAPERS - "Cancel all previous directives."

[UnusualAttitude]

17 hours ago, insert_name said:

I feel sorry for Froemone, everything he builds seems to get slammed into a planet or moon and destroyed.

Yeah. Froemone spends literally years behind the drawing board. Camwise and Bartdon get to crash-test his stuff. That's the deal so far.

Although I will add that statistically, Froemone has a better chance of making it to the end of this story alive and well. 

[HamnavoePer]

49 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Hmmm... we might be on to something here... What if Camwise only used pirate speak until the end of part five...?

“Aaaaar! I'm plunderin' this 'ere space frigate, Special Bilge Rat. Be ye blind? I say ye all find something to anchor yerselves to right now, savvy?”

“Here's th' deal, Samrod. I be sailin' westwards and I will continue t' do so until th' perilune o' this ship drops 'neath th' Lunar waves, we'll keel-haul ye, to be sure! If me calculations be correct t'will strike a ridge betwixt Mare Nubium and Mare Humorum at five-thousand two 'undred knots. I'll welcome yer company if ye want t' come along fer th' voyage, but I do suggest ye weigh anchor if ye don' want' visit Davey Jones Locker, ye Earthlubber!"

I am ABSOLUTELY asking you to do this, and I want it soon. MOAR

[Geschosskopf]

On 1/8/2018 at 3:14 PM, UnusualAttitude said:

It's the final paragraph of Emile Zola's Germinal. In the original quote, I assume that he meant that social progress is a long, slow process, but an inevitable one. Patience, cricket. The seeds have been planted.

Heheh, I can't help but think of Kipling's "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" whenever I see the words "social progress". 

Edited January 10, 2018 by Geschosskopf

[UnusualAttitude]

5 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Heheh, I can't help but think of Kipling's "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" whenever I see the words "social progress". 

That's a rather, um... conservative worldview. Bartdon would be impressed. I think Camwise, however, would side with another famous author from the time on this one.

"Moreover, anyone who starts out with a pessimistic, reactionary view of life tends to be justified by events, for Utopia never arrives and 'the gods of the copybook headings', as Kipling himself put it, always return." (George Orwell).

PS: both Camwise and Bartdon have been to the Moon, and can personally confirm that it is not made of Stilton, or Dutch. 

Edited January 10, 2018 by UnusualAttitude

[Geschosskopf]

38 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

"Moreover, anyone who starts out with a pessimistic, reactionary view of life tends to be justified by events, for Utopia never arrives and 'the gods of the copybook headings', as Kipling himself put it, always return." (George Orwell).

Utopia cannot ever arrive due to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.   Whether a person chooses to accept this or hope otherwise has no causal link to the result 

Edited January 10, 2018 by Geschosskopf

[UnusualAttitude]

YEAR 16, DAY 260. CAMWISE.

I could delay no longer. My rendez-vous with the asteroid was drawing near. I had to set up that nuke.

More than eight months through the transfer to Y13-HO3, the remains of Station LDRO and I were drifting outside Earth's path around Sol, waiting for our target to swing in sunwards and catch us up. It had been a painfully slow process, and each day I had cursed my bad luck with the dance of orbital mechanics. Such a long journey for such a nearby target!

Week after frustrating week had slipped through my grasp, and the feasibility of my plans were as uncertain as ever. Still, there was nothing I could do except be patient, consider my options, and try not to screw up when the time came to make the tough decisions I would inevitably face.

The ballet of the heavens would continue as ever with a disregard for any of my projects that was both perfect and absolute.

As the RLL came to life and I strapped into the pilot's seat, I could see both Earth and Luna clearly, just five million kilometres sunward. Despite our recent breakup, Earth looked as breathtakingly beautiful as ever.

Make the most of the view, Cam. If all goes well, it won't last.

Concentrate, you idiot! You're about to do something difficult.

I flicked a couple of switches and there was a jolt as RLL undocked and backed away from the station's main node. My fingers fumbled with the attitude control systems, and I somehow managed to keep her straight, translate to one side of the station, and then inch alongside its structure aft-wards.

Hey, you might get the hang of this, eventually...

I made it round the corner, passing one of the LH2 tanks and brought the RLL to a halt alongside one of the rearwards-facing docking ports. The bulky craft swayed back and forth for a few moments as I sought to kill its velocity relative to LDRO entirely. Once this was done, I rotated the craft slowly in order to position the equipment rack as close as possible to where I would be working.

Any slight drift would make my next job impossible, if I was lucky. With no pilot onboard the lander to keep station, if I was unlucky I would be crushed against the uncaring truss of a massive tank of liquid hydrogen.

A hammer and anvil situation that would come as a most embarrassing and disappointing end to my adventure.

I snapped my helmet shut and crawled into the tiny airlock. As it cycled, I turned my head mechanically to suck on the little tube that allowed me to drink during EVA; an old pre-space ritual of mine that had become instinct. Cursing my own lack of focus, I realised that I had forgotten to refill my suit's drink bag.

Hell, I was in for a long night.

I'd performed EVAs before. More than I could possibly remember, in fact. Suiting up and stepping out into places where my fragile and squishy body had never meant to be taken was now second nature. Many of these spacewalks had been untethered.

Come to think of it, I reckon I stopped having nightmares about helplessly drifting off into the void a few hundred EVAs back.

But tonight was a first. An untethered spacewalk from a craft that was designed to be crewed (but wasn't), parked alongside a station that was supposed to be crewed (but also wasn't). My goal was to extract a nuclear reactor weighing 300kg from the RLL and fit it to the station's docking port along with its radiators and a couple of heavy cryocooler units. On my own.

Of course, neither the reactor or the docking port had been designed for such a hack. I wouldn't be asking them for their opinion on the arrangement, anyway. I just hoped that when I drilled into the docking port to attach the reactor's mount, I wouldn't go right through into the fuel tank itself. If I did, things would get messy pretty quick.

Then there was also the small matter of switching on the nuke and it not delivering a fatal dose of radiation to the crew quarters at the far end of the ship. One thing at a time, Cam.

The airlock cycle ended and I slipped into space.

As I rummaged through the RLL's equipment rack for the bolts that would hold the mount in place, I realised that the lander was already drifting away from the station. It was slow enough to be almost imperceptible, but sure enough minute by minute the distance between the container and the docking port increased. At this rate, I would have to go back onboard the RLL and reposition it every half an hour or so.

Hell, I was in for a really long night...

Spoiler

 

 

 

YEAR 16, DAY 290. CAMWISE.

I made it.

Matching orbits with Y13-HO3 had taken me more than two weeks.

Burn, refill tanks, check radiation levels, correct course, burn again.

More than three kilometres per second to kill relative to the target. With the additional power provided by the little reactor, I could crack water and fill the lander's hydrolox tanks in just over three exhausting days of non-stop electrolyser-nursing.

But unlike Prosperity and her ability to glide effortlessly from one Near-Earth Object to another using electrical propulsion, my pile of hand-me-down space junk was subject to the limits of chemistry. Each burn gave me just over five hundred metres per second initially. As I left reaction mass behind, this increased to more than seven hundred for the final push. All the while Y13-HO3 was streaking up widdershins towards aphelion.

If any element of my hacked conversion system had failed during that time, the asteroid would have slipped past into deep space leaving me with nothing else to do except contemplate why my life sucked so much.

Spoiler

 

 

Miraculously, all systems remained nominal, and at long last Y13-HO3 loomed out of the darkness astern in exactly the same orbit I had left it in the previous year.

I approached the rock from beneath its South pole, using the station's attitude thrusters to steer well clear. When I peered at the mining unit from afar using the station's small telescope, I couldn't spot the red warning light that was supposed to blink when the massive reactor was still active, but I didn't intend to take any risks.

The modules we had left on the surface all appeared to be present: as well as the mining unit, L'Orphelin du Vide was still attached to the access hatch of the burrow we had dug, and the antenna mast looked like it was intact. The same old motley collection of modules still clung to the surface. Not for the first time, I wondered whether it was actually possible to design an asteroid station that looked a bit less like a haphazard shanty town that had been abandoned by its inhabitants for decades.

I parked my ship beneath the asteroid and prepared to spacewalk over to make sure that no-one was home. Not that I expected anyone to be around.

I left LDRO and jetted subjectively straight upwards. When I drew close to the rock I hugged its surface closely, making sure I was shaded from the reactor.

I floated over one last ridge, and there it was, my former home.

But first things first: I needed to go pull the plug on coms. There was no need for panic: even if the proximity warning system had alerted Mission Control to my presence, there wasn't much they could do about it. The subtle modifications I had made to the override chip of the master control panel before I'd left would see to that. But I would feel better if I knew that they weren't looking over my shoulder while I worked. Besides, I'd be taking the dish and its amplifier with me.

I reached the main antenna situated just over the next ridge. Grasping the power line that connected it to the crew quarters' distributor, I wrenched it out.

It's just you and me now, Y13-HO3...

I then made my way back to L'Orphelin and entered the burrow via the airlock. I needed to check out the status of the reactor before I got to work.

All was dark inside the tiny space beyond the outer hatch. We'd left the entire station depressurised when we'd left, so there was no need to wait for the airlock to cycle before opening the inner door. I fumbled for the lights, discovered that they no longer worked, and pushed off into the short tunnel that lead to the main crew quarters, the light from my suit's headlamps bouncing off the smooth walls.

Beyond lay a black hole that was the source of so many bad memories. I shrugged them off: I wouldn't be staying long. A quick glance at the main console confirmed what I had expected: the reactor had been shut down for some time and was therefore cool and ready to move. Oh, and the two water tanks were full to the brim. One hundred and eighty tonnes of pure, freshly squeezed asteroid juice for my ELF thruster. My guardian angel was still watching over me.

I was now officially the proud owner more delta-vee than any other Kerbal in history. But where I was going, I would need every last metre per second of it.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do, and a transfer window to catch.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

YEAR 16, DAY 293. CAMWISE.

Done.

I floated in the crew module of the spacecraft formerly known as Station LDRO. The cockpit of the RLL lander had become far too cluttered so I had decided to move all the control panels over to the main hab, despite the slightly higher radiation levels that reigned there with the reactor running.

I hadn't slept in more than three days. My brain was fuzzy. My gestures were slow and awkward as I selected my new target from the pull-down menu of the auto-navigation system. A tiny, icy moon called Dia that would hopefully allow me to refuel before I ran out of water to shield me from the neutron radiation streaming from the far end of my ship.

An 11.5 km/sec burn that would get me to my target in one year and five months. Slowdown would be just under 10 km/sec. I stared at the console in a complete lack of surprise. This is what you get when you improvise a transfer to one of the outer planets. Well, it could be worse, I suppose.

Just one more matter needed to be settled. A name for this pile of junk that I had cobbled together. A suitable handle for the ship I had created from the various modules I had found kicking around far beyond the suburbs of the Earth-Moon system.

As I racked my brain, I passed out for a few moments. The snooze alarm I had set to go off every five minutes blared through the crew quarters and dragged me painfully back to reality once more. OK, OK... Crunching yet another caffeine pill and tossing the empty bottle into the trash can, I came to a swift conclusion.

L'Enfant Sauvage. The Child of the Wilderness. The ship that should not have been. A spacecraft born and bred in the outback of the inner Sol system, untamed and free to roam the skies as she wished. And an ugly pile of crap, come to think of it.

I had told them to head for Saturn. The chances were remote, but I hoped that if anyone back on Earth now had the power to act upon this, they would heed my advice. There were plenty of places out there where the Crew of Colonisation Mission Seven could be hiding.

My path would be a darker one, but a glimmer of hope drew me on into the shadows.

I needed to find one of the Crew's officers or commanders. I needed to speak face to face (or with whatever components these robots had in place of faces) without the full weight of my planet and its population on my shoulders, or the Board of Directors breathing down my neck. I needed to explain the dreadful plight of my people.

Surely any species that was sufficiently advanced to have made it across the gulf between the stars would understand that there could be no mutually beneficial relationship between us in the present state of affairs.

Ninety-nine percent of the population of Earth wouldn't even care that the greatest event in history – the discovery of intelligent alien life – had just taken place, because they would be too busy just trying to pay their bills and survive. The remaining one percent would try to sell the Crew a full tank of fuel at triple the fair price, steal from them whatever technology they could, and send our alien visitors on their way as quickly as possible in case their presence disrupted the system that was so comfortable for them.

There had to be a paradigm shift, or this couldn't end well. Maybe, just maybe, the technology available to the Crew could help the Kerbals of Earth free themselves from the tyranny of the Resource Companies. Maybe we could help each other.

As I brooded, the ELF thruster kicked in and started the long, slow burn that would push L'Enfant Sauvage out of the inner Sol system, maybe for good. The asymmetric mass distribution of my botched design meant that the ship's arcjet attitude thrusters strained to hold her on course, even with the main engine running at reduced power. Nevertheless, they held the craft to her manoeuvre node. Barely. I would have to process more liquid hydrogen for the arcjets as soon as possible.

The effects of the caffeine pill began to wear off, and I slumped against the console, too tired to think anymore.

I'd be up against deadly radiation, massive delta-vee requirements and completely unknown mission parameters.

I brought a complete joke of an interplanetary ship to the fight, as well as nineteen years worth of food and my own two hands.

“C'mon, Big J. Bring it on!” I whispered to myself before finally passing out for good.

L'Enfant Sauvage fled on into the night.

 

 

Edited January 24, 2018 by UnusualAttitude

[insert_name]

Im curious as to how dia looks, especially considering there are no images of it as anything other than a point source. Though to be fair most  of jupiter's minor moons are that way

[Starman4308]

Camwise's diet is not going to be pleasant, is it? Even well-preserved foods don't taste good forever... and I have no idea how much variety there is onboard L'Enfant Sauvage. Between that, and a cobbled-together spaceship whose modules were probably designed to operate closer to the Sun's warming rays, Camwise is going to be one very lucky Kerbal if he survives this.

One very lucky, very miserable Kerbal.

[Geschosskopf]

5 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

I'd be up against deadly radiation, massive delta-vee requirements and completely unknown mission parameters.

I brought a complete joke of an interplanetary ship to the fight, as well as nineteen years worth of food and my own two hands.

Sounds like a fair fight

 

2 hours ago, Starman4308 said:

One very lucky, very miserable Kerbal.

To say the least.  I'm still wondering where Crazy Lady ran off to, and whether any of the Mars crew has been in hiding.

Edited January 21, 2018 by Geschosskopf

[UnusualAttitude]

3 hours ago, insert_name said:

Im curious as to how dia looks, especially considering there are no images of it as anything other than a point source. Though to be fair most  of jupiter's minor moons are that way

The plan at the moment is to simply use the biggest asteroid I can spawn and hyperedit it into the correct orbit. I might look into creating a custom body if I have the time/ability (which I probably won't, see below), but Dia is supposed to be only 2-4 km in diameter, and if I understand correctly, very tiny worlds can be pretty buggy in KSP. 

The choice of Dia is intentional: very low gravity, lots of water ice. It will merely be a gas station for bigger and better destinations further inwards...

3 hours ago, Starman4308 said:

Camwise's diet is not going to be pleasant, is it? Even well-preserved foods don't taste good forever...

I once dug up a jar of Marmite that had been sitting in a cardboard box in my garage and was several years past the expiration date. Marmite is difficult to find or expensive in France, so I cracked it open and ate it anyway. It tasted fine. Some foods are immortal. If Camwise returns, he might appreciate some fresh fruit or a good rare steak or two, though.

3 hours ago, Starman4308 said:

One very lucky, very miserable Kerbal.

That sums up Camwise very well.

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

Sounds like a fair fight

"Camwise doesn't cheat death, he wins fair and square."

"Camwise beat the sun in a staring contest."

"Death once had a near-Camwise experience."

I could go on... 

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

I'm still wondering where Crazy Lady ran off to, and whether any of the Mars crew has been in hiding.

Now that we have at last sent Camwise on his way, we will find out. However...

Tomorrow  I'm buying a house. It's on the edge of a small village out in the countryside. It has huge potential but there's a ton of work to be done to bash it in to shape. I'll be quite busy with that over the next few weeks and months. Patience will be required.

This will be my first purchase of real estate. I'm 37. My thoughts are with all my fellow Gen-Xers and Millennials who haven't made it onto the property ladder yet due to low wages, low interest rates and banks not wanting to take the risk. Give them hell, keep pestering them and they will cave in eventually.

[Geschosskopf]

9 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

I once dug up a jar of Marmite that had been sitting in a cardboard box in my garage and was several years past the expiration date. Marmite is difficult to find or expensive in France, so I cracked it open and ate it anyway. It tasted fine. Some foods are immortal. If Camwise returns, he might appreciate some fresh fruit or a good rare steak or two, though.

I envision space food, especially for such long trips, to be the same as sailor food from the Age of Exploration.  "Salt horse", ship's biscuit, and strong, hop-filled beer all last forever without refrigeration,  Just need a dash of lime juice to go with it

 

9 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Tomorrow  I'm buying a house. It's on the edge of a small village out in the countryside. It has huge potential but there's a ton of work to be done to bash it in to shape. I'll be quite busy with that over the next few weeks and months. Patience will be required.

Well, good luck!  Hope you don't regret it.  Having done both, I prefer renting to owning due to the time and labor required by owning.  But that's a matter of taste.

[NotAgain]

On ‎17‎/‎03‎/‎2016 at 12:39 PM, UnusualAttitude said:

Question: Where would I get the landing legs for Escamps?

[UnusualAttitude]

11 hours ago, NotAgain said:

Question: Where would I get the landing legs for Escamps?

Oh... uh... that looks like mid Jurassic.

That must have been AIES Project part pack. I'm afraid it kicked the oxygen habit and is currently examining the radishes. It's dead, Jim.

Damn shame, it had some great parts for probes and satellites.

Edited January 24, 2018 by UnusualAttitude

[NotAgain]

16 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

That must have been AIES Project part pack. I'm afraid it kicked the oxygen habit and is currently examining the radishes. It's dead, Jim.

Damn shame, it had some great parts for probes and satellites.

Did it have a 1.1.3 compatible version?

[UnusualAttitude]

5 hours ago, NotAgain said:

Did it have a 1.1.3 compatible version?

I don't think so, and the original thread got deleted. I think the curseforge download page is still there, though. 

[NotAgain]

Thanks, @UnusualAttitude. I shall go on a quest to search for this fabled Curseforge page.

Yeah. The Curseforge page is still up, but it's only good for 1.0.4. Anyone know any other RO-compatible mods with nice landing legs?

[HamnavoePer]

Is this still alive?

[UnusualAttitude]

5 hours ago, HamnavoePer said:

Is this still alive?

I find your lack of faith disturbing... 

I'm just a little busy at the moment. Look at the state of my living room...

Spoiler

 

 

As I mentioned above, I have just bought a house and there is a massive amount of work to be done. Basically, we're adding the entire ground floor (which is currently a garage and workshop) as living space. Insulation is non-existent, and the electrics are a mess. Only then we can get on to actually furnishing the place.

And although it doesn't feel like it, spring will be here soon. Compared to my old garden, I now have huge tracts of land to play with, relatively speaking. We received our seeds this morning, including some Habanero peppers that look awesome, clocking 500,000 on the Scoville scale. The 2018 edition of The Gardening Thread should be epic.

Spoiler

And with all this happening, I somehow still managed to find time to record my bass lines for an EP with a new band.

Spoiler

The next episode is actually in progress. It's just that I usually fall asleep in front of my computer after a few lines. Patience, I'll get there in the end.

[Geschosskopf]

Have fun with it all  We'll see you when you're settled.

[HamnavoePer]

On 11/02/2018 at 7:26 PM, UnusualAttitude said:

I find your lack of faith disturbing... 

 

I don't HAVE any faith... in anything... not even myself...

[UnusualAttitude]

11 hours ago, HamnavoePer said:

I don't HAVE any faith... in anything... not even myself...

I truly believe that this is exactly the right frame of mind with which to approach life. Doubt everything. Question all things. Always. Including (and most importantly) yourself.

However, if you can't trust me to (eventually) come up with another episode of The Logs, then you haven't been paying attention. 

Wow, dude. From your previous comments I just realised that you must have started reading this crap when you were, what.. 13, 14...? That's impressive.

[Geschosskopf]

34 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

I truly believe that this is exactly the right frame of mind with which to approach life. Doubt everything. Question all things. Always. Including (and most importantly) yourself.

I find this true only when time is not of the essence.  When it is, then you must have absolute confidence in yourself and your stock of knowledge acquired when there was time for contemplation.  Only then can you make the snap decisions, even though they carry life-or-death consequences, that the situation demands.  And to do this, the most important bit of knowledge to acquire beforehand is that doing ANYTHING, even if it's wrong, is better than doing nothing while internally debating the decision.  Once you do something, you've changed the situation, which gives you immediate feedback, which can steer subsequent snap decisions in a more optimal direction, assuming you live through the next instant.

Fortunately, life is at least 98% boredom spiced with at most 2% sheer terror.  Thus, there is ample time to study things in slow motion to understand the underlying principles.  However, you must also devote some of this time to practicing making snap decisions, or you won't have the ability to do so when required.  IOW, you must approach everything in life as a martial art.  Learning the form in slow motion, then gradually increasing speed, only builds muscle memory.  But to put those moves to good use, as tools in your toolbox that you can use as the circumstances warrant, you also must spar in real time with an equally skilled opponent.  Only when the fists, blades, bullets, fires, oncoming drunk drivers, cross-examination questions, and whatnot are moving at full speed can you learn to react to them, defend against them, and seek the resulting openings.  And the more you do that, the more of the Zen of it you get into and the slower things move even at full speed, so you then CAN take a moment to balance your options.

[HamnavoePer]

9 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

I truly believe that this is exactly the right frame of mind with which to approach life. Doubt everything. Question all things. Always. Including (and most importantly) yourself.

However, if you can't trust me to (eventually) come up with another episode of The Logs, then you haven't been paying attention. 

Wow, dude. From your previous comments I just realised that you must have started reading this crap when you were, what.. 13, 14...? That's impressive.

1

Damn, do I come across as that old? I started reading this when I was 11 or 12, somewhere around that. As it happens, this is the reason I made a KSP forums account, because I wanted to comment on this. I've had KSP since I was 10, I will be 14 in 3 months. 

Edited February 17, 2018 by HamnavoePer

[NotAgain]

11 hours ago, HamnavoePer said:

Damn, do I come across as that old? I started reading this when I was 11 or 12, somewhere around that. As it happens, this is the reason I made a KSP forums account, because I wanted to comment on this. I've had KSP since I was 10, I will be 14 in 3 months. 

*Internet High-Five*

I didn't start quite that young, but fairly close.

[Geschosskopf]

11 hours ago, HamnavoePer said:

I started reading this when I was 11 or 12

 

43 minutes ago, NotAgain said:

I didn't start quite that young, but fairly close.

Never grow up.  IT'S A TRAP!!!!!!