The Kerbal Space Agency: To Be Continued...?

[Drew Kerman]

yea the world building is going to get pretty deep as time goes on. Thx for checking it out

[Mr. Quark]

Are we gonna be having the Week in Report thing on the 7th or is there gonna be a longer wait this time around?

[Drew Kerman]

first Ops Summary for 2018 will be at the end of next week

[Drew Kerman]

The all-in-one replacement for the Flight Tracker/Crew Roster has finally arrived after nearly half a year in development! Head on over to check out v1.0.0 of the Operations Tracker and please let me know what you all think

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The Operations Tracker is your view into everything that is happening right now at the Kerbal Space Agency. There is a lot to view and explore - we suggest starting with the Wiki to get an idea of all you can do here. We ask you take note the Operations Tracker is under heavy ongoing development and may at times be inaccessible for short periods. Please help us make this the best experience possible by submitting bug reports if you come across any problems not listed in our Known Issues. Enjoy exploring the Kerbol system with us!

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 1/8/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Looking Ahead to 2018 Operations

We had a pretty tumultuous 2017, what with the Monolith Incident and dealing with newfound hazards of surface living. Still, despite a lot of operational downtime we managed to also accomplish a lot, logging just as many historical firsts as in 2016 when pretty much everything was a historical first. We aim to keep up the pace in 2018 with a number of exciting events that are planned to happen this year:

Jan – Deuce flight trials resume
Feb/Mar – Progeny Mk6 Block II launch
Apr/May – Ascension Mk1 launch
Jul/Aug – Kerbin I orbital mission
Aug – Arekibo Radio Observatory commissioned
Sep/Oct – Extremis I mission finalized
Nov/Dec – Final crew capsule design
All year – Astronaut training/testing for space flight

Of course these are all just the very broad strokes to give everyone a sense of what we want to accomplish. Orbital flight and prepping for astronauts in space (not necessarily on orbit) for 2019 are the biggest goals, but Genesis will see more exploration into fixed-wing flight while Ascension works to give Extremis a better idea of how much resources they will have available for their long-term missions.

One thing we’d like to elaborate on is the Progeny Mk6, which we tweeted about at the end of last year. Due to the obvious visual design changes being made to the Mk5 (the removal of stage three fins) the decision was made to move on to a Mk6 designation with its own patch to match the look of the rocket and avoid confusion.

Operational Growth Leads to KSC Expansion

Currently the Extremis and Ascension programs are being managed from KSA headquarters in Umbarg but as both these programs begin to mature it will be more beneficial to have the teams onsite at KSC. Our current administration building is not up to the task of holding that many kerbs so over the next three months it will undergo renovation and expansion. This is the first major structural change to KSC since it was first constructed back in 2015/16, not counting the Tracking Station’s dish rearrangement. The cost of the project is 780,000 funds, with KSC footing some of the bill as investment into their own infrastructure. 300,000 funds from our operational budget will be allocated to the project, which starts us off with a negative lifetime net income for 2018 but Head of Finances Mortimer says we are projected to be back in the green by the end of the year, though our yearly net is probably lost to the red ink.

Ascension and Extremis Post Major Updates

The Extremis program completed their Phase One trajectory calculations at the tail end of last year, which has been a months-long project we’ve referenced many times but never fully explained. Now you can read all about it to learn how we setup the planning for our multi-year multi-planetary flyby missions.

Ascension also shared some big news this past week, the selection of their 1.25m lifter engine. They also detailed how getting a probe into orbit is going to be a lot more complex than initially planned due to having to rely on the highly radioactive Kuudite for a power source.

Deuce Trials Begin Anew

The Deuce has finally begun trials again after a nearly 4-month hiatus to completely rebuild the aircraft to remove possible flaws that may have worked their way into the original prototype and also apply several improvements to the undercarriage, avionics and control systems. Today started off with a ground trial, which was expected to lead straight into flight trials but unfortunately some issues were uncovered with the new main gear that warranted further investigation, postponing the flight portion until the start of next week at least. C7 also said they wanted to further review the data collected during the trial and at this time have still not clarified whether or not they had possibly uncovered other issues that needed looking at.

Progeny Mk5 Block I Launch Date Set for 1/19

Really says something when the rocket launch gets pushed to the bottom of the report. Is it getting old already?? Nonsense, but certainly in light of other things it is becoming a bit routine. Anyways, we’re already well into the process of constructing the next Mk5 Block I rocket that will make its launch attempt this coming Friday at 19:29 UTC. We are hoping that this is The One which will perform as expected throughout its flight and allow us to retire the Mk5, move on to the Mk6 with a regular launch cadence and begin building the Block II for its first launch!

Operations Tracker Deployed

Teased since mid-2017 the new Operations Tracker has been officially deployed as replacement for the combined Flight Tracker/Crew Roster. If you haven’t already, check it out! You can learn more about the various functions and features via the wiki and use our Github page to submit bug reports and suggestions. It is actually a bit lacking in features compared to the old Flight Tracker but we will gradually be adding things back in as they are needed. Early next week should see the addition of being able to once again render aircraft plots on the surface map once we have some new Deuce flights to show and late next week with the Mk5 launch we’ll have data updates for the flight status similar to how it was in the Flight Tracker as this functionality will be used for data updates in general across all aspects of the tracker. Once this is locked in we can look at real-time streaming of data for launches.

ATN Database Update

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,416 asteroids and 19 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

Technically it counts because Mun is in it – look everyone! Mun! But really we just want to show off the full image that now adorns our website and various social media outlets in banner form. The changes are subtle, but KSC does have a different look than it did at the start of 2017. We’ll be continuing to update our banner yearly and expect to see more and more changes as time goes on.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 1/12/17 (at 4:30am)

Hrrrnnngghhh writing and playing out this week was going so well at the end of last week but I got bogged down in so so many details that needed to be resolved in order to move forward that here I am, finishing up Friday at the start of Friday. Really hoped to push my lead time back way out over the holiday break but it just didn’t work out that way. Here’s why.

Ops Tracker

I finished playing and writing up to Jan 2nd on Dec 23rd, and from that point on after upgrading to KSP v1.3.1 it was pretty much nothing but coding the Ops Tracker to a point where I could feel right about taking the Flight Tracker/Crew Roster permanently offline. Still barely made it, was coding up the deployment to Jan 2nd and so actually ended up for the first time ever being at a point where reality was ahead of where I was in the game. Yikes. That would be why the building survey took a few additional days, which was a thing I had in my back pocket I was hoping I didn’t have to use, was really looking to resume regular ops on the 2nd but I’ve learned to build escape hatches into the story so I can duck out and recuperate if needed. There was nothing hugely frustrating or worth telling about the final development up to deployment-ready status for the Ops Tracker, it just took longer than I had hoped it would, as such things tend to do. I thought I was done a couple times before remembering “oh yea, I have to do that too.”

KSP update

The second big factor was finally moving up to KSP v1.3.1 from v1.2.2. I’m no stranger to updating so the process wasn’t really hard it was just a lengthy process due to how I have things setup and need to install everything manually and make sure along the way that no serious mod conflicts arise because the more I add the harder it becomes to track down instances where the game just refuses to start or load completely. Only had one major issue there tho that was resolved rather quickly. Again, experience! Still, it took me three days of nothing (except eating and sleeping) but working on installing mods and setting up the environment and porting over various bits of v1.2.2 to reach a point where I could say I’m playing on KSP v1.3.1.

Progeny launch prep

Getting set for the next launch meant I had to go back and add some missing features to the Ops Tracker that I would need to show a newly scheduled launch. I changed a lot of the database structure and the biggest change was planned launches and maneuvers no longer had their own database, instead the AJAX call from the Ops Tracker for this information had to search through all the vessels and pull out the information contained in their database tables to determine if any launches or maneuvers were planned for the future. It’s a bit more work on the coding end but now that it’s done it means a lot less work for me when inputting database information as I only have to record a launch date in one location and it’ll be used for the vessel page and by the events calendar.

Kuudite details

There was a ton of research and decisions I had been putting off for Kuudite that I finally had to dig in and take care of in order to write up the Ascension report and be able to say how it stacked up against batteries and how long the RTG built for the orbital missions would last and how much it would weigh – all these factors are dependent on the half-life, the Watt/kg rating of the material and its cost/kg – all this needed to be solid numbers I could re-use for future missions and RTG builds to remain consistent while also considering gameplay balance and how I wanted this power source to stack up against batteries and future solar (kerbolar) power. What I ended up with was material that was very heavy and expensive but reusable if recovered, although that of course led to all the other considerations that now had to be planned for as covered in the Ascension brief.

Ascension lifter

Up until last week I had no idea what my orbital lift vehicle design was. At all. So that needed to be done and I had to choose not just and engine but a tank and fins, controls, how it was going to be transported to the pad (can’t wait to show that off), etc etc. Thankfully the engine choice wasn’t as bad as I feared even with the 200 or more part mods I have the early engines in my 1.25m size only numbered 12 (yea that bit about 12 designs in the Ascension report was accurate, as were the agency names). This is where I actually make use of the Tech Tree in the game, which I don’t unlock with science but based on my own progression. So unlocking just the Basic Rocketry node gave me the engines I could select from. Stuff like fuel tanks and control surfaces and other rocket bits I rely less on Tech Tree placement to decide whether they should be used or not, but still try to keep their spots in the Tree as a general guide as to what part is considered more advanced than another. I actually did spend a good amount of time also on the Kerbin I probe design which is what led to my decision to go with RTG power.

Deuce craft file issues

So of course the Progeny rockets all load fine and the Civvie loads fine but when I opened the Deuce in the HAB for the first time I got a crapton of errors about “prefabs” and improper module indices in the craft file when I looked at the error log and I was like what?? But after a bit of thought I realized that the “prefab” is the part config file and there must be modules in there that were not in the v1.2.2 config file. So I did a Diff check of the part in the craft file versus the part config file and sure enough there were. I manually inserted the missing modules into the craft save file and that solved that problem but then I also had an issue with missing Kerbal Inventory System items that I had to manually delete from the file. There was also a re-named attachment node for the fuel tanks attached to the engines I had to update. Finally I got the vessel to load an realized I would have to revert to old v1.2.2 textures for the nose, of all things! Still, I was so so so so happy I didn’t have to rebuild the whole craft again, because that’s what I literally did towards the end of last year when KSA said Deuce was being rebuilt.

Deuce ground trial issues

So all that above is the past three weeks not to mention all the writing for the Extremis and Ascension posts. I finally ran up to this point trying to get the Deuce ready for ground trials due to having to hunt down and debug various issues and dutifully make the reports to the mod authors. I just ran out of time to do all the work that is required after performing a flight mission, not to mention still having not coded the Ops Tracker to show aircraft plots. I bought myself the weekend by pushing things to Monday so here’s hoping I can keep up! I also threw the aircraft up into the air just to check if it still behaved as it did after I rebuilt it in v1.2.2 and… well… that’s for next week’s desk notes after I write about the flight trials I have yet to actually play but already know how things will go.

Oh and the work I had to do for the new 2018 financial spreadsheet and aircraft stats tracking… will save that for the end of the month when the finance report is released.

It is now 5:35am (but don’t feel bad, I’ve only been up since 3pm yesterday)

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 1/15/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Deuce Trials Deemed Overall Success, PR Tour Planned

Throughout this week the Deuce saw a number of flight trials take place after ground trials were concluded on Monday. Various aspects of the aircraft’s flight characteristics were tested so data could be collected to validate modeling done during the design process, be used to extrapolate various ranges of performance limitations and make the full-motion training simulator even more effective. Some of the highlights from the testing:

High-Altitude Flight

Unlike the Civvie the Deuce features a cabin that can be pressurized, allowing for the aircraft to fly higher than 4.5km, where outside pressure drops below 50kPa into a range where kerbals cannot survive for long without supplementary oxygen. The further up you go the faster you die when exposed to the thin air. The Deuce reached an altitude of 6.5km, which offers better fuel economy both from just the engine’s fuel usage reduction combined with less drag on the aircraft.

Dual-Engine Failure

While performing high-load maneuvers in excess of 5Gs, the Deuce lost power to both engines. Captain Jebediah was flying solo and reacted as he was trained, preparing for an emergency landing (he was too far to make the KSC runway) and then attempting to restart the engines, which thankfully came back to life after a few tries. Both engines were broken down afterwards to determine the cause, which was found to be inadequate fuel pumps allowing the fuel to be pulled back from the engine, causing the failure. Restart attempts were numerous having to overcome the negative pressure that slammed shut fuel valves – once the Deuce descended from 3km to less than 2km outside pressure was able to help force them open. This is simply an overlooked design shortcoming in the engines, which are a well-used and reliable model for airships that are never put under such high loads. C7 has their own powerplant under development to replace the Deuce’s current engines for more power and have made note of this incident.

Single-Engine Flight

The final test was to operate the Deuce with only one engine, and it passed with flying colors. Having only one engine produces asymmetric thrust that needs to be countered with rudder and aileron to maintain level flight, thankfully the Deuce has proven it has enough control authority from both to not only still fly straight with one engine but also run that engine at full power! This is a good sign considering the newer engine under design is more powerful. To top it all off Jeb brought it in for a safe landing with the one engine still out. This was a major feature of the Deuce we have been looking forward to exploiting, allowing for much safer trips out over open water, for which the Civvie was mostly restricted from doing in excess of 10km from land.

Next week Jeb and Val will take the Deuce on its first cross-country flight up to Kravass, where they will spend the week allowing the flight instructors there some hands-on time, followed by passenger flights for several influential local kerbals. From there the following week they will head to the newly-opened airports at Sheltered Rock and Ockr to give more rides, exposing many kerbs to fixed-wing flight for the first time. They’ll be back at KSC by the end of the month and in early February C7 expects to put the Deuce into service with us here at the KSA and order a second aircraft. It will still be a few months before the Deuce enters production for public commercial use but C7 is hoping this upcoming PR tour will give them some orders to fill once that happens.

Progeny Mk5 Block I Launch Delayed

During the final integration checks after stacking the rocket vertically a weakness was exposed in the structural adapter that reduces the width profile from 0.625m to 0.35m connecting the first and second stages. It’s questionable whether this would lead to a collapse during ascent but we see no point in taking chances and so have delayed the launch until next Tuesday, Jan 23rd @ 19:42 UTC. Thankfully we’ve had a spare adapter sitting around in storage since last October when we ordered all the parts needed for assembling a Block II so the turnaround here is relatively quick with the adapter being swapped out today and final integration checks being performed again on Monday. If all looks good, the rocket will be rolled out for launch the following day.

KerBalloon Logs First Missions of 2018

Our sustaining income remains the KerBalloon program, which successfully launched and recovered both a high-altitude and low-altitude balloon this past week to kick off operations for the new year. The missions involved the longest overland trek yet covering more than 800km round trip using our 3 remaining Utility Task Vehicles, which when traveling together with a single balloon can cover 604km before needing to resupply. KerBalloon is already busy looking over new contract submissions to handle next week after lending their support to the Progeny launch for high-altitude wind monitoring.

ATN Database Update

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,442 asteroids and 23 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

We reached opposition with Sarnus this week, coming as close as 117,179,867.642km. The Kerman Observatory atop Kravass Mountain scoped in on the gas giant for this photo of it and its major moons (L-R) Tekto, Eeloo and Slate. Take notice that although Eeloo is transiting we can’t see its shadow – but it’s not just because we are looking at it straight-on, the shadow is actually hidden behind the rings as the sun is angling down on Sarnus at this time, allowing us to see a bit more of its lovely rings.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 1/18/17 (at 9:34am)

Well the good news is that I haven’t been awake all night up to this point. In fact this week has gone pretty damn well considering how much flying I’ve had to do. I really enjoy flying – I’ve been flying virtually since I was like 8 or 9 when Flight Simulator was just a bunch of vector lines on the screen. It’s a very time-consuming thing though for KSA operations because I can’t timewarp any of it, and then afterwards there is a lot of post-op work to do. I certainly couldn’t have done any more than I did this week and would have felt lame doing any less, so it’s been a good week and I’m a day ahead of where I was last week – but that probably won’t last because…

Ops Tracker update

Time constraints forced me to push the Progeny launch back to next week, especially when I realized the majority of this coming weekend would see me away from the computer. The Ops Tracker is still not able to auto-update for new vessel events and now that all the work to initially load and display data has been completed with past events I can get a better sense of how I want to do it with upcoming ones. I’ve outlined how the updates work in this Github issue and it will definitely be at least a two day task to get it all implemented. The upshot however is that it will lay the groundwork for the notification system which would let you leave the Ops Tracker open in a separate tab and it would tell you when things are happening like a crew member starting or finishing a mission, whether a vessel or crew has updated information and what information that is. That’s still a ways down the road though – for the upcoming launch it will just update the page without notifications.

Deuce trials IRL

So as I said much flying was done this past week, although initially the aircraft did not want to behave. Last year when KSA announced the Deuce was going to be rebuilt that is literally what I went and did in the editor, and when I took it for a spin everything seemed to be great – there was no more left roll tendency and the numbers in the FAR derivatives panel were all green and dandy. Fast forward a few months and after I got the Deuce to load into KSP v1.3.1 I took her up and to my dismay found the same roll issue was present. what. I loaded back to my KSP v1.2.2 save and flew the Deuce to the same results. WTAF. Am I just remembering things wrong? If it still had problems I wouldn’t have set the project aside these past few months, even out of frustration. I also couldn’t get the FAR window to give me decent numbers like I thought it did. Rrrggghhhh. But overall the aircraft handled just fine except for the roll, so I just said “love it” and used the Angle of Attack tweakable in the FAR control settings to increase one aileron and decrease the other so the aircraft would keep itself upright. This setting doesn’t adjust them visually so everything otherwise appears normal.

There’s also a related issue in that AirPark no longer works as it did in KSP v1.2.2 by allowing me to park a vessel up in the air and load back into it from the Space Center. In KSP v1.3.1 the physics easing kicks in and lowers the aircraft back down to the ground. I’ve submitted a bug report and hopefully it gets resolved soon but until then I have to move back to my KSP v1.2.2 install when I need to take inflight photos, which are already a pain in the ass in and of themselves for a variety of reasons which is why there weren’t all that many this past week. I was happy to discover VesselMover now hides the movement cursor on F2 as I requested a few months ago but the control window stays visible so I have to paint it out and the Camera Tools camera does not stay locked to one place while the vessel is being held up by VesselMover. So any photos that require compositing are not possible unless I use KerbCam, but I can’t zoom with that. Oh the trials and tribulations…

GPU is dying

Another thing that didn’t help this week was my computer shutting itself off due to my graphics card overheating. Thankfully I didn’t lose any large amounts of work but it still was unsettling because I was only running KSP and that usually hasn’t given me any trouble in the past. It’s been mostly giving me shutdowns playing Grand Theft Auto 5 but doing it while in KSP was not good. Then a short while later it shut off without me even playing KSP! In that case however I realized the floor fan blowing at my PC case had been inadvertently unplugged. And in the case of shut down while playing KSP I realized the ambient temperature of my room was approaching 80°F. I’ve been keeping things around 70°F since then and haven’t had any issues since.

Still, last year I was planning to upgrade my HD7970 I bought back in 2013 with a Vega 56 but wanted to wait for the non-reference boards to hit the market, then wanted to wait for any Cyber Monday deals, and then they were all gone come December and the ones that weren’t were being sold for ridiculous amounts ranging from $1k to $1.5k. I was thinking of switching over to Nvidia but their cards are just as scarce. It’s the whole bitcoin crap thing. I even found the same HD7970 I bought being sold for only ~$100 less than I paid for it. Craziness!! Hopefully things calm down before springtime because once the weather starts to warm up I’m going to have trouble keeping my room cool enough to allow my PC to operate.

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 1/22/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Again Into Space with the Progeny Mk5 Block I

After numerous delays adding up to almost a week we were finally able to launch the first rocket of the year as the latest, and likely last, Progeny Mk5 Block I took to the skies early Thursday. The flight was a wild success, implementing a further-refined ascent profile and climbing to a height of 546.46km – just one of several records that were broken. We almost lost the rocket on re-entry however due to the high 2km/s+ speeds at which it slammed back into the atmosphere. The current theory is that the chute either was only able to partially deploy due to the high speeds or did deploy and was ripped apart shortly afterwards. One way or another the rocket was sent into a tumble because it managed to strike the water nose-first, but slow enough that it wasn’t completely obliterated and just wrecking everything down to the probe core. Whatever happened after the chute was triggered, it was violent enough to rip the batteries from their mounts and deny the probe core any power to log the final moments before impact. Another important aspect of note was the fact that radiation levels once again remained elevated throughout the climb to apokee, which continues to be worrisome for our future kerbed spaceflight plans. We’ll have further analysis into this plus more details on the flight next week, primarily in comparison to the second Block I launch, which was the previous altitude record-holder and flew a very different ascent profile that placed it just shy of 500km at apokee.

KerBalloon Tackles Most Difficult Mission Yet

The highly-logistical mission currently underway involves gathering temperature data in the region of the Great Desert, which will involve all modes of transportation. Earlier this week Bob, Bill and two other crew members drove two Utility  Task Vehicles down to Umbarg with the low-altitude balloon mounted on top. They loaded everything up into a cargo airship and flew out to Site 0B-RZ. From this point we have had no contact other than from the airship returning the following day saying they had been dropped off without issue. The plan from that point on was to release and recover the balloon, then trek overland roughly 130km to get to the shore where they would load everything onto MSV Tongjess, which left here yesterday after the rocket launch carrying the high-altitude balloon. They will deploy and recover from Tongjess today or the following days when weather is good, then sail home. We hope to have word of them pulling into port at Umbarg sometime this weekend.

ATN Database Update

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,482 asteroids and 7 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

The Deuce kicked off its PR Tour this week by flying Bill and Bob up to Kravass General Airport, the first fixed-wing passenger cross-country flight! Bob managed to snag a shot of Mun out his window as they were descending to land at KGA. We’ll have a full report on the PR tour once Jeb and Val return with the Deuce at the end of the month.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 1/25/17 (at 9-something am)

Funny thing, here I am on a Thursday morning again except this time I have been up all night! Will catch a few hours sleep after the launch before throwing myself back at things. It is still an ongoing effort to keep the train from derailing as I attempt to lay the tracks out in front faster than it travels. I don’t want to say things will slow down in February but it’s likely things will slow down in February just to make sure I can keep up. But we shall see.

GPU replaced

So despite saying I had a handle on things last week it all began to unravel literally that day. I even bothered to muddle in the AMD graphics panel to underclock the card so it wouldn’t over heat itself while under load but there were times it would just refuse to idle when not under load and also jack itself back up to stock speeds and then heat up to 100+°C and shut down the PC. The thing was totally whack and I couldn’t control it. I was getting dangerous temperatures watching videos. So that day I was like “loveit” and found a cheap $100 card on NewEgg (holy hell it’s already out of stock this GPU buyup craze is insane) around the same level as my current HD7970 and was able to pick it up from the warehouse 30min from where I live the next day, which was pretty sweet. I still plan to get a Vega 56 once prices return to sane levels and migrate this card over to my secondary PC which I have plans for if the KSA ever gets a space station set up…

Mk5 launch

So yea the delays were real in a sense that without pushing the launch back there would have been no way I would have been able to do it with the Ops Tracker also being able to serve updates. Thankfully the upgrade to the update system went rather smoothly and I am extremely pleased with the result, I think it’s pretty damn slick now watching the ascent states change during the flight. I can build directly off this system to serve up notifications if you have the page loaded in a tab, but that’s still a low-priority item at the moment.

The launch itself took 5 attempts, which is one of the reasons I’ve been up since yesterday. These flights are pretty long and I don’t timewarp them so the video logs have data from the screen for the entire time. Plus it takes several minutes to reset everything if I need to make another attempt then several more minutes to set everything back up. The first try was ruined early on the pad when I forgot to set a part tag for kOS to reference and couldn’t get back to a clean state without reverting to the VAB. The second attempt was wrecked after the first stage decoupled and kOS couldn’t find the button in the Part Action Window to trigger the fins to blow up. Turns out when you use the Part Action Window Sorter-Outer mod to clean up a PAW and remove stuff it also makes it inaccessible to kOS. Dammit. So I fixed that and the third attempt was the first one that I got all the way through, but then I went and did something extremely stupid by taking just the rocket payload section out to the pad to HyperEdit it into place to satisfy some contracts. Doing this meant the onbard boot script overwrote the entire telemetry data file *sob* and I didn’t even realize this until a little while later while doing my post-flight work. I had to step away from the computer for a while after that one. When I came back the first thing I did was remove that line of code that deletes any previously-existing log file. Then before I launched my 4th attempt I realized the lower fins were set to explode immediately instead of on a 1s delay (I had deleted and attached new ones in the editor earlier this month to adjust their angles) so that’s why it had bumped the 2nd stage on my third attempt instead of separating cleanly. So I actually needed to redo the whole thing anyways. That made me feel a little better. Still, after a clean stage sep and flight up to apokee on the way back down kOS encountered a file share issue and crashed attempting to write out the log data. excrementsexcrementsexcrementsexcrementsexcrements. Okay one more time and finally on the fifth attempt I got everything.

The third attempt that went all the way through didn’t get quite as high, just over 500km, and actually did survive landing so when the payload was destroyed after its chute failed coming back from near 550km I decided to take a middle-ground approach and have it mostly survive. KSP is sometimes pretty black and white when it comes to situations, you either live or you die and at times it works better to have a more grayish scenario.

FAR stability controls

The lack of time I have to do things means I’ve for now given up on the kOS PID controller for keeping aircraft wings level and instead just switch on the roll stability in the FAR window to let me take a break from balancing the aircraft myself on long missions. Would still like to eventually develop a full autopilot suite in kOS for aircraft but that’ll be a ways down the road

Deuce landing

I have a video uploaded if you want to check out what the Deuce looks like when landing. As with the Civvie I need to keep wheel friction disabled during takeoff and landing or the aircraft wants to slide out of control when traveling at around 30-40m/s. Am thinking of writing up a short script in kOS that handles turning the friction on/off for me based on speed. The stupid bounciness is still there but in this instance I was using all stock wheels because of a bug in Kerbal Foundries that doesn’t let the tail wheel touch the ground and the lack of friction control for Kerbal Foundries wheels – but I’ve since learned you can enable friction control for KF wheels in the settings menu, so I’ve switched back to those for the main gear.

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 1/29/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Deuce Wraps up PR Tour

The hop from airport to airport around Kerbin ended this week when the Deuce successfully returned to KSC after its longest continuous flight yet. Earlier in the week pilots Jebediah and Valentina took the aircraft from Kravass to Sheltered Rock, then from Sheltered Rock to Ockr. Along the way for each flight various records were broken for altitude and speed, which can be reviewed on our records page. Overall the reaction to the Deuce has been lukewarm from the average commuter looking to get from city to city. Although it can travel over 3x faster than airships, it is much louder due to the engines being so close to the cabin and more cramped than a normal airship passenger gondola. The views out the windows don’t show much except wing and engine unless you’re sitting far to the rear. Ultimately the style and comfort of airship travel has seemed to have won out over the speed of aircraft – but for companies that ship cargo between cities speed is of the essence and comfort is not a concern. C7 has been approached by several interested parties along these lines and although demand for the Deuce looks to be nowhere as high as hoped, purchase orders are still looking like a good possibility in the near future.

Right now the Deuce is back in the Horizontal Assembly Building undergoing a full maintenance checkout to see how it handled the long series of flights these past two weeks. We expect a report from C7 on their future plans next week. We do know that once the checkout is complete the Deuce will have a camera system installed and be ready to carry out further contract and science missions. As for the Civvie, right now it is mostly replaced by the Deuce but should the one aircraft we have fall out of operation for any reason all three of our Civvie fleet are ready to step up, and they are still useful for any atmospheric sampling missions, which require speeds remain under 100m/s.

Progenitor Advances to the Mk6 Block I and II

The announcement earlier this week made the Progeny Mk6 Block I the new current rocket in use, retiring the Mk5 and looking ahead at possible plans for an orbital Mk7. Exciting stuff! The engineering team is still making a careful review of all the data from the last Mk5 flight and comparing it against previous launches, most notably the second Mk5 Block I flight that flew almost as high as this last one. They will have their comprehensive analysis published next week, and we can see about scheduling the next launch, likely to be a round of several now that the design has been locked.

February Outlook

A new month has arrived, and it’s time to get an overview of what we’re expecting over the next 28 days of this short month:

• Regular Deuce missions – we’ll be pressing the aircraft into full service with Jeb and val operating. Genesis says they already have numerous observation contracts lined up and Lead Scientist Cheranne is ready to load it with instruments
• Continued KerBalloon missions – ever the stable income getter, Bill and Bob will be busy releasing numerous balloons across the surface of the planet, with greater experience leading to more mission autonomy and further-flung research sites
• Extremis Phase Two – the final round of trajectories will be selected for deep analysis over the next few months
• Ascension K2-X testing – the engine prototype will arrive this month for integration with its fuel tank in the VAB then be installed out in the test stand currently under construction on the R&D campus for static firings
• Progeny Mk6 Block I launches – we fully expect to be launching rockets this month, don’t worry!

ATN Database & Financial Update

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,494 asteroids and 5 updated with new observation data.

Head of Finances Mortimer Kerman released our first financial report for the year. Lots of red, but this was to be expected thanks to the large expenditure needed to get our new Administration Center built. While Genesis has managed to stay in the green despite all the Deuce testing, Progenitor has fallen back into the red thanks to the failure to fully recover the last rocket. Overall though we project growth once again for this year so in time those numbers will all turn green.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

We are approaching opposition with Duna, which brings us closest to the red planet on each orbit. Now is a particularly good time to watch Ike drop its massive shadow on the planet since we are still at an angle great enough to not have Ike be in the way at the same time. No other body in the system gets thrown into darkness as much as Duna does from Ike, which is a serious consideration that needs to be taken into account for future Duna missions, both on orbit and on the surface.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 1/30/17

It’s TUESDAY BABY!! I don’t feel horrendously tired and overworked but I still managed to get a crapton of work done, so that’s a great thing. 19 images posted this week, and those in-flight photos are no joke – some of them take me upwards of an hour or more for each shot due to getting things setup and needing multiple layers to composite into the final image. It’s rare that I just snap a screenshot and post it. Generally there’s something that needs to be touched up in some way or another. I don’t really have much to say this week, just want to keep myself moving now that I have good momentum and am working on getting my lead time built back out again. The one thing I wanted to cover was the finance sheet.

I spent a good deal of time at the end of last year reorganizing the finance spreadsheet I use not just to track income/expenses for the Agency and its programs but to also keep track of my part inventory, crew status and aircraft status. When I made up the end of year graphics I almost had a tough time coming up with the flight statistics because I never kept things discrete and just lumped totals together. Thankfully the limited amount of operations in 2016 meant that I didn’t have many missions there to go back through and add up distance and stuff that I could subtract from the overall totals I had on record to get numbers for just 2017. Moving forward now each aircraft has its own logbook that totals everything up in a separate sheet so I have a quick reference for totals but can easily go an find out how many kilometers were traveled in a just a given month. I also learned how to link to the 2016-17 workbook to ensure that if there was any reason I had to go back and retcon some finances the changes would carry over automatically to the 2018 workbook. Basic Excel stuff but still a first for me. Because I like people seeing how things are really done, here is a snapshot of the full financial spreadsheet up to this point.

One other thing I want to comment on is how the Progenitor Program has progressed. I had indeed originally planned out up to the Mk5 and that was it – I had no original plans for the Block I or Block II variants and I had no plans for a Mk6 and had also originally planned for this rocket to be a sub-orbital option only so the Mk7 was also not conceived of originally. The fact that the Block II stands as a means to fully explore the radiation around Kerbin was also completely unplanned. Yes I do think out a lot of things but I also just go with how things play out in a lot of cases as well.

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 2/5/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Progeny Mk5 Retirement Complete, Mk6 Launch Date Set

With the release of the final flight analysis report the Mk5 has officially been laid to rest and the first Mk6 Block I is now fully set to make its debut flight just next week on 2/15 @ 21:01 UTC. This was made possible by having on hand nearly all the parts necessary to construct the rocket since we’ve had them waiting to build a Block II for the past few months. Now with the Block II delayed indefinitely it’s time we put these parts to good use. We have ordered parts for 3 more Mk6 Block I rockets that will arrive over the next few weeks and allow us to launch another Mk6 every 1.5 weeks or so. We could probably shorten that time but we want to keep the VAB crew from getting overworked as during this time the Ascension K2-X engine will be arriving for integration and testing followed by the first full Ascension rocket.

Deuce Enters Service, Suffers Early Mishap

After being checked out and fitted with a new external camera system and full suite of science instruments the Deuce performed its first official mission yesterday. Unfortunately it seems the mechanical checkouts were not as thorough as they should have been because a hydraulic leak was not found in the lines that serviced the left-side landing gear. This forced Val and Jeb to perform a rather unusual landing with one engine and only two good wheels. Damage to the aircraft was inevitable but Commander Valentina showed her skill and reduced the impact as much as possible, enough so that the mechanics say they can have everything patched up in just a few days.

However the event did uncover a serious mechanical issue with the landing gear. The culprit was a very small leak in the hydraulic lines servicing the gear bay, which would have not been a problem if the flight had been shorter. By the time the Deuce returned to KSC all the fluid had leaked out, which meant the doors could not be forced open against the air stream. A manual deployment crank is available and was used by co-pilot Captain Jebediah but the gear would not lock. The manual deployment crank is not designed to impart enough force to lock the gear in place, a small independent reservoir of hydraulic fluid is meant to provide additional push at the point of full extension. It was empty, because during the build of the aircraft someone erroneously tied it into the main system that had the leak. A check of the right-side landing gear found the same assembly flaw. In addition to fixing this, a full review will be made of assembly procedures as well as maintenance procedures so such a small leak can be caught in the future and any newly-assembled Deuces are put together properly in this regard.

In additional Genesis program news, check out what’s coming next – a dedicated cargo hauling aircraft in addition to a new Deuce built with some design changes.

KerBalloon To See Decline in Mission Cadence

Wrapping up a low-altitude balloon mission this past weekend, KerBalloon has a new contract lined up for next week but has informed Head of Finances Mortimer to expect a possible reduction to income given that the missions they plan to execute this coming year will be more far-flung from KSC and take longer to carry out. Factoring this into our 2018 fiscal outlook Mortimer says we are still looking at a good year ahead if the Deuce and Mk6 can do their part in carrying out numerous successful missions. Although the vehicles themselves are both still operating at a loss, their parent programs are seeing profit or near to profit, and both are seeing reductions in their debt.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,543 asteroids and 4 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

We’ve posted shots of Minmus and Mun in close proximity before and also after or near an occultation but low to the horizon during sunset gives this particular image a nice hue to go along with the sight of seeing Minmus “rise” from behind Mun.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 2/6/17

Oh hey, it’s Tuesday again. That’s cool. Better than Wednesday. Still, I had hoped to push ahead a bit more but mainly ended up feeling a bit under the weather and burned out so I spent some time watching movies and playing GTA: Online with one of my pals. Also some IRL work related stuff that consumed a greater portion of my time than is normal. So yea, I’m happy to have “broken even” and ended up where I was last week. It was a good week to take a break too since not much was happening. Doubt I’ll be able to push ahead much in the next week with all the Ascension and Progeny stuff coming up, plus another long Deuce flight to take care of. Nice to have a few days lead still, if I actually get sick with flu or whatever I should be able to make it back before my lead time runs out.

Deuce gear issue

So I had a real surprise on final approach when I realized only one gear had extended. I was like “errrr…..uhm…. ok guess I’m making a go-around…” yea I was completely baffled. This was not planned. I retracted the gear okay and made another approach but extension on the one gear failed again, so I was forced to come up with a plan to land that would still save the aircraft from being out of service for weeks or months. I have plenty of flight sim experience and watched plenty of air crash investigation shows (I loveing love those) so I know how various emergencies are handled and this is pretty much what you would attempt in the real world when possible.

So what happened? Turns out for some reason the “cannot deploy while stowed” issue reared its ugly head. I have no idea why because I don’t recall making any changes to the landing gear or engine pods in general, so can’t explain how this issue came about now and not earlier. I also didn’t notice the onscreen message saying the gear couldn’t deploy because it is mostly hidden under all the UI windows I have open in the upper-left corner of my screen. I saw it on review of the flight video. Thankfully this issue has an easy fix in the form of the “Deploy Shielded” option in the Part-Access Window, so I can just enable that and not worry about this anymore.

Well, it was something interesting that was fun to write about at least. It also gave me an excuse to delay the flight on Friday – if I had flown that I would not be writing this now. Will admit I almost forgot to actually show the gear partially extended when I took the crash photo of the aircraft. Just started the animation and snapped a photo at the right moment when it first touched the ground.

If you want to see what the actual landing looked like, here’s the video. God dammit those wheels, man. I still don’t know how to set them up properly. Even when I land normally they’ll bounce me around all over the place. But whatevs I still land.

Deuce rebuild

So I said a few weeks ago I was happy I got the Deuce working from KSP v1.2.2 even though the FAR numbers were wonky. Well, it’s still been bothering the hell out of me and since I knew I had to give the Deuce new engines that would change the weight distribution and lead me to have to modify the aircraft anyways I decided to rebuild it from the ground up again. It actually only took a few hours and the FAR numbers were pretty much perfect on the first checkout. Awesome. I think I may even be able to take off without having the landing gear slide me off the runway unless I disable their friction.

The new engines were needed not just for performance reasons but because the current ones I’m using have screwed up AJE configurations. I can actually get negative thrust if I throttle all the way back while flying. Thankfully I found perfect engines to upgrade to that use good , recent configs, supply greater horsepower, reside in the same level on the tech tree and are actually based off the ones used on the DC-2, which is largely the aircraft the Deuce is based off to begin with. There will be more info on the engines released next week.

Ops Tracker updates

The tracker is now up to v3.1.0 and I’ve been putting some time into finally getting ready to update to the most recent version of Lealfelt, which runs the dynamic map of Kerbin’s surface (and the other bodies when I get to them). First step was to host all the image tiles myself instead of pulling them from the webarchive.com servers. I had hoped this would be faster and prevent any grey squares from showing up due to loading time outs but unfortunately my shared host has turned out to be not much better, although things do seem to not load less often. I hope sometime this week I’m able to convert over to the recent Leaflet version without breaking too much stuff in the process regarding the dynamic map. If it’s a lot I will have to revert and block out some extended time to really work on it, which won’t be this week for sure. Regardless, I want this done soon because the known issues with the current map are preventing me from adding live streaming telemetry for rockets (and aircraft in the future).

There’s also been renewed discussion and progress in the creation of new map data that could update the biome maps and allow greater levels of zoom. Collaborating with a few forum users and hopefully can share more soon!

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 2/12/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Progeny Mk6 Block I Nails Debut Flight, Fails Recovery

Yesterday saw the first successful flight of the Progeny Mk6 Block I, but this wasn’t much of a surprise given the Mk6 has technically launched 3 times before already when it was still designated as the Mk5. The fin-less 3rd stage is what changed the visual profile enough to warrant a move to the Mk6 designation. Regardless, everyone was pleased with the flight especially since a new factor was present – launching 15° south. It’s easy to fly a ballistic rocket in the same direction that the planet is spinning, but once you start shooting off-axis you can expect the planet’s rotation to have an effect on the flight. 15° did not cause any significant issues and further review of telemetry data is ongoing to spot any effects that could become serious as we continue to increase launch azimuth to further probe the radiation field above the planet.

Unfortunately despite the success of the flight we appear to have lost the rocket on splashdown. Traveling a record 258km downrange by the time signal was lost over the horizon, MSV Tongjess arrived in the area over 5 hours later and could not detect any locator beacon from the payload (the independent power source for the beacon lasts 10 hours). The rocket was traveling at 2.178km/s when signal was lost and speed was still increasing. Despite our efforts in deploying the chute later and detaching the fairings to induce more drag it seems the speed was just too much. The unfortunate thing about a water landing is that it leaves no trace of impact, so we can’t deduce how fast the payload was traveling when it struck the water. Who knows, maybe we came close to landing intact.

As we said, further data analysis is ongoing and a full report is expected early next week.

Deuce Science Mission Encounters Radiation Hazard at Northern Polar Region

Another big mission this past week was the Deuce flight up to the Northern ice Shelf, a region of Kerbin that has not been explored in nearly half a millennium. Yes, some trips have been made to the North and South poles for the sake of fame but interest in the regions never amounted to much scientifically – they were just frozen wastelands. The Deuce carried a large suit of science instruments in its expansive cabin and Captain Jebediah and Commander Valentina were also tasked with visual observation of the area in addition to gathering data with the instruments. They failed to make it all the way to their objective as the radiation detector started picking up increasing levels of radiation when they flew north over the Tundra and Ice Caps. Originally at more than 6km Jeb turned around and dropped lower to see if levels would increase or decrease. The pair made a few trips into the radiation zone at various altitudes to record data the scientists back at KSC could analyze. Jeb and Val received nowhere near dangerous dosages but since this was an unknown factor in the mission they made the decision to terminate and head for their destination at Sheltered Rock.

Analysis of the radiation data showed that the lower the Deuce was the less radiation it received, which clearly indicates that the atmosphere is blanketing it out as it falls from space. How this ties into the radiation we’ve detected in our rocket flights over the equator has yet to be determined. We don’t plan to change our launches to northwards to see if we can connect the two regions. It could be that this is just radiation that sits over the poles only, and maybe even just the north pole.

The discovery of a radiation region also provides a potential opportunity for future studies and testing involving radiation to be carried out on the surface rather than in space, which is exciting for scientists. We mentioned that previous explorers have traversed the area in a time before radiation was known (you can read more about its discovery here) and none were known to have died from any kind of radiation sickness, so either the radiation doesn’t get too strong within the region or it doesn’t cover the entire pole. Lead Scientist Cheranne plans to work with Genesis team scientists to plan another polar mission but before then equipping the Deuce with some radiation shielding to allow Jeb and Val to safely push deeper into the region to find out.

KerBalloon Heads Far West

The Deuce wasn’t the only mission to go far this past week. Specialists Bill and Bob boarded Maritime Service Vessel Lymun on Monday to sail ~575km west and release a high-altitude balloon over the sea that lies between the two horns of the Great Desert. The launch was near the coast to get temperature readings as the balloon passed over land. They then deployed in two Utility Task Vehicles to track it down and recover it. While the launch went off without any delays, recovering the balloon took more effort than planned when the UTVs kept getting stuck in the sand. Eventually they had to give up, take supplies with them and trek on foot to the balloon and drag it back over 30km, which took over a day. Not a day cycle, an entire day. By the time they returned to port in Umbarg it was too late for MSV Lymun to resupply and head back out to recover the Progeny rocket launching shortly.

Ascension Readying for Engine Testing

The fuel tank, same as the one that will be flown on the actual rocket, arrived this week for the VAB to inspect and prepare for the K2-X engine to be mounted to it next week. The test stand is nearing completion out on the R&D campus lawn and will hold the entire tank and engine vertically. Initial rounds of testing will have short firings at various thrust levels going from low to high before a series of full-length burns are conducted. The testing will last around 2 weeks after which further analysis will be performed to decide whether the engine has met our requirements and can be rebuilt to perform the first Ascension flight by late April/early May.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,562 asteroids and 4 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

This image taken from the cockpit of the Deuce by Val shows that she didn’t tilt the camera sideways, this is just how celestial objects look when you are gazing at them along the same plane. Here at higher latitudes, you are standing more upright atop the sphere that is Kerbin, and so looking out into space everything else is horizontally aligned as well. Down at the equator where KSC is, you’re on the side of a sphere, so looking out you see things stacked vertically. We’re sure the flat Kerbin truthers have a different explanation of course that somehow makes sense to them.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 2/14/17

Writing this in my text editor cause the website is still down. Something server-side got screwed because I didn’t touch any code or settings and suddenly all my WordPress sites began to have some sort of infinite redirect loop. A chat with support caused my issue to get escalated to a higher technician and eventually instead of redirecting infinitely the sites just said they couldn’t connect to the database. And then my host resolved my support case ambiguously, so I re-opened it asking what and that’s where we are now. I will have another support chat later today if it’s not fixed by then.

Olympics!

So yea it’s Wednesday, which actually isn’t so bad considering the huuuuge Deuce mission I had to fly and also a rocket launch and wow 22 images generated this week that is a whopper. The main hold back though has been keeping up with the Winter Games, which I completely forgot to factor in when I was writing about my progress last week. I’m all about the alpine events, mainly downhill since that’s pretty much how I ski on the slopes. Sliding events I mainly stick to bobsleigh but like watching highlights of skeleton and luge. Speed skating is another favorite of mine, mainly short track but time allowing I catch long track too. Halfpipe, snow cross – good stuff and now they have mass start speed skating! Hands down favorite though is Aerials, because I love trampoline and can do multiple twists and flips on it and love seeing the skiers go up doing that stuff. Crazy! So yea, these next two weeks won’t see much progress is building out a lead time

Mk6 launch

Whoo hoo, finally nailed a launch on my first try! No repeats! Such satisfaction. Despite being the exact same rocket as the Mk5 that went up last there was some significant variation in the first and second stages of the flight I attribute to the southward launch that I look forward to exploring more in the data analysis and subsequent flights pointed further south.

I also figured out why Graphotron was messing up and not recording the start of the launches – I no longer use the STAGE command in kOS to kick off the launch, I actually ignite the booster and release the clamp programmatically and Graphotron needs a staging event to kick off its run. So now I modify the launch code a bit at launch to use the STAGE command but on Github you’ll still see the code doing it “properly”. Also looks like Graphotron uses Electric Charge while it is graphing, which is not a thing it advertises and something I never knew about until now. I made a post on the forum thread about it so the author makes this aspect more prominent on the tin and maybe include an option to disable it. I know I was already factoring in the use of the high data rate logging into the EC draw I set the probe core to.

Weird thing I noticed in the VAB was moving the lower stage fins around on the rocket would alter the length/width values shown in the engineer report. This is an issue because I use these numbers to calculate deploy costs. Now that I know it exists, I can keep an eye on it to make sure they are consistent, but not sure what’s going on there. Sticking the larger fin directly underneath the smaller upper fins seems to hide them from the dimensions calculator or something. I dunno didn’t mess with it much, just FYI to anyone else.

Lastly I’m starting to only keep video of the rocket ascending to space and descending through the atmosphere, lowering the video size from over 1GB down to around 100MB. Because my ascent script saves the game as soon as I enter space, I can always go back to check on anything that happened from that point on to re-entry. Still, I don’t trust the game to entirely set things up the same way, which is why I still record the re-entry.

Deuce mission

Yup, long flight – longest by far. Thankfully by the end of it the game was still running well with around a 60% time fraction meaning time was running 40% slower which did drag things out a bit in real time but not that much. The polar radiation was a real surprise, because I haven’t paid much attention to Kerbalism‘s radiation simulation. I’ve seen the fields made visible around Kerbin a few times before, but forgot about how they are laid out and that they affect the poles. But hey this works out great and the timing couldn’t have been better since Progeny is also probing out radiation regions. So yea again not a planned thing I just wanted to get to the polar region because I finally had a way to get there.

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 2/19/18

Images from the Week Gallery

KSC Completes Shutdown, Operations Ceased

We had to share the unfortunate news earlier this week that the Kerbal Space Center would have to temporarily cease all operations after it was served a court order. In the days that followed we moved most of our onsite staff over to our headquarters in Umbarg, many taking up temporary residence with other employees that live in the caverns there. We don’t have enough room for everyone though so a portion of our workforce are telecommuting from their home caverns in Ockr, Sheltered Rock or Kravass. Everything at KSC was shut down by the end of today, with any parts and vehicles still under construction properly storaged. Everyone is of course frustrated by having to do this, but at the same time we are all committed to making the best of a bad situation and continuing to push forward however we can – our crew especially are driven to use this “time off” from their normal missions to get a head start working on their spaceflight training.

Progenitor Program Confirms Flawless Mk6 Flight

The flight analysis for the latest launch was released earlier this week and data has confirmed the rocket performed perfectly during ascent although the lack of recovery was unfortunate. While a new launch date had been set, that has obviously been postponed. The good news though is that USI will still be cranking out the parts we need, so by the time we are ready to return to launching we should be able to assemble and launch the remainder of the 3 Mk6 rockets in relatively quick succession.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,602 asteroids and 6 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

It’s very hard to resist a shot of Mun and Minmus hanging out together. We’ve taken a number of these over the past year and change but new variances to their appearance always give reason to snap another. Here, both in a gibbous phase they set towards a bed of clouds, with Minmus about to be occulted by Mun.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 2/22/17

I’ve been working hard to prevent this from happening the past two weeks but it’s finally just reached the point of being too much. IRL stress from the “day job” led to a little bit of depression even – thank goodness for the Olympics being an easy escape route to keep my mind off stupid crap and remain inspired. The good news is that even though I had to pull the emergency chute and cut out the majority of KSA’s operations things are now on the mend, and the work situation has already improved with the potential to continue to do so and remain stable. I still have a feasible recovery plan in my back pocket if something catastrophic occurs and I’m forced to just completely stop everything but that will hopefully not come to pass ever.

So yea, with the main fear of falling too far behind gone now that the work situation has stabilized far sooner than I hoped it would, I’ll be using this time to finally rebuild my 3-week lead and roll back into active operations with better pacing and the goal of maintaining it. This means that it will indeed be at least 3 weeks until full ops resume, most likely closer to 5 weeks or so. However don’t let the IRL need to scale back operations make you think that I didn’t plan this very carefully – the act of the Monolithic followers filing this injunction is just another salvo in the ongoing plot line that will continue to see further developments many years into the future, developments which will have a great impact on KSA operations and provide the drive behind numerous mission concepts. Let’s just say I’ve thought about some of the non-scientific things that I would like to do in the game and asked myself “why would the kerbals do that?”, then came up with the reason(s) and worked out how to get there. Strap in for the ride people!

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 2/26/18

Images from the Week Gallery

This past week saw two new articles posted to the website:

• Extremis Phase 2 Plotting – an overview of the trajectories chosen to undergo more intensive trajectory analysis over the next 2-3 months
• Space Radiation Data Analysis – an in-depth look at what scientists can determine based on the limited radiation data collected so far

The astronauts have all departed on a Badlands excursion to test their survival training skills. Pretty much the worst case scenario would be to have a capsule making an off-target landing to this area of Kerbin and forcing recovery crews to search for it. They will have to last two days and nights with just the minimal supplies that would fit into a capsule (yes, we have some early design specs to base this off of). They will be located nearby each other for the sake of easy rescue should the training exercise go awry but not close enough they can rely on each other for support.

Tomorrow a rally is being held in Sheltered Rock, the current government seat, in protest of the shut down action handed down to us at KSC by the judiciary. Many KSA staff, family and friends are expected to attend along with members of the public. We have our court hearing scheduled for next Thursday, hoping the case will simply be tossed out.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,628 asteroids and 5 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

The Kerman Observatory atop Kravass scoped in on Jool and Duna as they made their closest approach to each other for our current orbit around Kerbol. Doing so they caught something by accident that until now had not been seen in any previous photos of Jool’s moons (or any other planet) – one of them entering the planet’s shadow. Here we see Laythe starting to disappear as half of it enters the shadow of Jool.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 2/28/17

Yea I’ve been slacking a lot, finishing up my Olympics replay viewing and screwing around on GTA: Online, although this past weekend I put in some serious time to get over $1M so I could afford this sweet vehicle and all the customization and performance upgrades to it. I have a 370Z in real life and would love to own a 240Z as well for my classic car someday.

I still have no idea what the hell is going on with my servers, the page that includes the WordPress headers refuses to work still and no one appears to know why. Okay. Also it seems the orbital GeoGebra figure was failing to load because someone renamed the MIME type and the support people claim none of them would have reason to ever do that. So I got hacked? Ugh. No idea but as far as the general public is concerned the site functions fine now, so that’s something at least.

The plan remains to push out to a 3-week lead and then start ramping back up to full-scale ops, so it all depends on how fast I can do that, but I’m putting all effort and focus into it now.

Also I happened to watch a video on Earth’s magnetic field over on the Curious Droid channel just after writing up the radiation article, which helped me go back and rewrite it better. Great timing, that!

 

Edited March 2, 2018 by Drew Kerman

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 3/5/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Injunction Upheld by High Court, Return to Surface Operations Further Delayed

We had our appeal case heard in the High Court this week at Sheltered Rock, the current government seat. Unfortunately the judges voted unanimously that the injunction filed against surface operations was legal and now our only other option is to amend the laws that the Monolithic followers turned against us to close the loopholes they found. Normally this process would take months due to the crawl of bureaucracy but we’ve already begun to lock in majority support among the Assembly members and the Presider has already pledged his support to sign the amendments into law. It is a fortunate time for us, as Monolithic followers do not fully control the Assembly during this term, but the battle will still be hard-won as a few Assembly members also have strong ties to the airship industry, which has seen competition for the first time ever via our partnership with C7 Aerospace to build better cargo-hauler aircraft. We hope to negotiate the political and legal hurdles with as much haste as possible in order to return to KSC within the next few weeks.

Space Rocks Rain Down

Kerbin is currently being pummeled with small to large asteroids on a regular basis over these past few centuries since the near-extinction event caused by the kilometers-wide rock. These asteroids only range in size from a few meters to a few dozen, smaller than 100m and nowhere near 1km or more but they can still pack a serious wallop depending on their mass. Because nearly all infrastructure is deep underground surface impacts rarely affect anything but this past week two significant impacts occurred.

The first happened over the past weekend when a rock slammed into the ground between another impact site under active study and the base camp conducting the research. Luckily 50km separated the two and the asteroid, which had not been seen coming, hit almost right in the middle, sparing both sites any considerable debris fallout and fortunately claiming no lives among the research team.

The second impact was one we saw coming well beforehand, but updated observations days before impact showed it would strike almost 400km further east than planned, lowering concerns of any large waves inundating Umbarg or KSC. Unfortunately for some reason the updated impact location was in error and the asteroid ended up striking at the original location. Again, fortunately nothing disastrous resulted from the event – this time at least. The Asteroid Tracking Network is still investigating how they got the updated impact location so wrong.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,674 asteroids and 4 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

Looking east as the sun sets and Mun rises from a weather camera atop the 160m-tall Umbarg communications tower, which is itself atop a 380m hill, the shadow of which you can see falling across the water

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 3/3/17

Making good progress. I think that despite the KSC shutdown things are still moving pretty well and anyone following should still be entertained. It’s not like I’ve been trying to come up with “filler” to use for the lack of KSC operations – both asteroid events this past week were actual game events! I of course track all asteroids so when one that has not yet been discovered by the ATN slams into a significant part of Kerbin I can use that, which is what did in fact happen. And the mistake of the asteroid impact location could be seen as me “spicing up” the story but those were the coordinates I got when I used a different set of data from KSPTOT. I’ve notified the author to see why there was such a huge discrepancy between the data I used, which was stored in the program, versus the data that was used for the original impact location, which was taken from the game itself.

So yea, like I’ve said before sometimes this stuff just writes itself, which is one of the cooler things IMO. I’m also liking the ability to explore Kerbal politics and religion a bit more deeply. However I’m still keeping everything very high-level and abstract because I personally hate politics nor do I partake in religion and have no desire to really get into the nitty-gritty of things in this regard.

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 3/12/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Ascension Mk1 Lifter Plans Finalized

Although we’ve been unable to begin testing the K2-X engine as planned this month progress is still being made in getting ready for the Ascension program‘s first launch, which was originally targeted for April/May. Unless something goes seriously wrong with the engine tests we still have a chance of making that original window given that we can continue to work on everything else up to the point of assembly. The most recent milestone achieved was the finalization of the designs for the two variations of lifters that will carry payloads into space for orbital insertion.

  
You can also check out the vessel patches here

The design is pretty much our Progeny rockets scaled up, with fins at the base clustered around a single engine. The main difference is that the fins are large enough to support control surfaces similar to the ones used on aircraft that will hopefully allow us to maneuver the rocket onto an optimal ascent path rather than relying on gravity and aerodynamic forces to lower the nose as the rocket climbs. The radial boosters are also a design element in the Progeny rockets but such an arrangement has still not been tested since the Progeny Mk6 Block II has yet to fly, so the Ascension Mk1 Block II is not going to be launching before that happens.

It is important to note that the “Lift Capacity” specified in the blueprints refers to the amount of added mass the rocket can push off the ground at sea level. We don’t yet know (for sure) how much energy is needed to get something into a stable orbit around Kerbin so we have not yet made any calculations for the mass of payload it could deliver into low-Kerbin orbit (LKO) or higher.

The lift stage will be coupled to a second stage or payload and is not designed to be re-usable, however we may attempt to include parachutes for the first few flights just so we can recover the vehicle for study.

The first payload for the Mk1 during initial flight tests will be just a test weight and the Kerbin I probe is still being designed to actually attempt the first orbital insertion towards the middle of the year.

Shutdown Update

As we clarified on twitter earlier this week although our lawyers are working on the amendments we don’t have an in-house legal team so they also have to attend to the needs of their other clients. Still, KSA Operations Director and founder Drew Kerman has spent the past week talking with Assembly members to lock in support for the upcoming revisions so progress is being made on the political front. The Monolithic followers have not been putting up any strong resistance to the upcoming changes, which is a relief but no doubt they are holding back to retain some bargaining capital when discussion comes back around to re-opening the Monolith visitation office after further study is conducted once on-site operations can resume. We wish we could give a timetable for when we will be able to return to KSC but for now it’s still up in the air.

ATN Cites Lack of Precision in Data for Impact Location Error

Last week’s impact of AXX-667(E) could have been disastrous if it had been a larger event given that we were no longer expecting it to happen so close when the Asteroid Tracking Network updated their atmospheric entry location almost 400km further east. Upon realizing they were wrong an investigation was launched and the reason was found to be the lack of numerical precision used for the updated calculations. This error was unfortunately hidden behind the program used to access the data and the astronomers did not realize the problem at the time. Corrective measures have been taken to ensure that all data is stored to the same high precision and that values are checked before calculations are made.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,692 asteroids and 8 updated with new observation data.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 3/9/17

Blew this week off a bit on some GTA: Online, Jessica Jones and extra sleep but writing this puts me back out to a week of lead time so that’s not too bad. Still, it’s been a bit harder than I imagined to get back up to 3 weeks of lead from what I can remember doing it last year. There is definitely still some IRL work stress getting in the way though, so hopefully that will subside more over the coming weeks.

Have confirmed with the KSPTOT author that there is a precision issue, although I’m not sure right now if it will be addressed other than to say “don’t use stored data to make accurate calculations, always pull from the game”. Either way, now that I know the problem exists I can avoid it myself if I need to.

I have no clue what happened to the tweets that were supposed to post last Saturday. Unfortunately I was grinding all day in GTA:O for some money and I didn’t pay attention to twitter at all so I never noticed they weren’t being posted until the following Monday when I went to refer to a tweet and it wasn’t there. I’m 99.9% positive they were actually scheduled to go out, so this could have been the first time Tweetdeck failed on me to post things. I will have to keep a closer watch on it but hopefully it was just a minor glitch.

Back to work!

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 3/19/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Shutdown Update

Our legal team continues to wrangle with the laws that need amending, making double-sure this time to not leave any room open for alternate interpretation. We could pay them more to hurry things up but having not really made any money at all this past month we’d rather just sit back and wait for them to do their jobs and also not rush them into making mistakes that could cost us down the line with more legal issues. They have told us the first draft is nearly complete and they hope to submit it for review before the Assembly sometime next week. Meanwhile we are continuing to do what work we can from our headquarters in Umbarg, which celebrated its first year of operations this week.

Extremis Wraps Up Phase Two for 2018-2019

The astrodynamics team have completed re-calculating 29 of the 68 trajectories for Phase Two of mission planning, reaching this point sooner than anticipated. Unlike Phase One, where searching for the best route from planet to planet was done 50 times, Phase Two is running the planet combos through 500 iterations. So far none have taken more than 24 hours to complete, with 2-3 being done in a day’s time at most for come combinations of routes. The majority of best results were found well beyond 50 runs, which is a good sign that the search algorithm is really exploring the bounds set on it, which include a 10-year max mission time and coming no closer than 2/3 of Moho’s orbit to the sun – further away than the original constraint, which was 1/2 of Moho’s orbit. Despite this change, almost half of the results after 500 runs matched the results from 50 runs, greater assurance that an optimal route has been found. Only one planet combination returned a Not Feasible result. Some results were a bit worse in terms of delta-v required but came with a shortened mission time while others came up with lower delta-v requirements but longer mission times – a few were worse or better overall. Planners are sure now they can hit their May/June target for wrapping up Phase Two planning.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,725 asteroids and 4 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

One of our staff checking up on KSC took this photo of Eve & Urlum at appulse. So close together it’s easy to see how much brighter Eve is, which isn’t surprising given that at this time Urlum is 235,671Mm further distant. A bit of light from the gibbous Mun lets us see the unlit buildings. Our staffer described the whole scene as “eerie”.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 3/12/17

Breezed through this week, not a whole lot going on. Coming up on two weeks of lead time so should be on track to resume normal ops in April.

Mystery Goo

I’m curious as to whether anyone saw this coming with the tweets about the discovery of the bacteria. I can’t remember where the inspiration for this came from but it wasn’t me – I maybe read it somewhere on the forums but the idea of mystery goo having an origin story instead of just being a random science experiment from the start of the game was always something I liked. The Goo will continue to have its own role – anyone who was here for the first KSA iteration knows that it can be a bit of a character.

Admin Complex

I destroyed the original admin building and showed it destroyed because I thought the new one looked considerably different. I don’t know why I thought this, although I remember checking what it looked like beforehand. So yea, no clue why I remembered something different but no big deal, it fits well that the original building could be remade with new materials given that surface construction is still an evolving field. Again since I for some reason imagined something a bit more grandiose than just the addition of a block building I had to add that there was underground space otherwise really I wouldn’t consider this to be a significant upgrade that could handle enough additional personnel to support program operations.

KSP Expansion

By the time you all read this the new KSP expansion will have been out a while now. As usual, I expect it to be 2-3 months at least before I’m able to upgrade to the latest and greatest, but in the meantime there’s really nothing about the new update that I would benefit from so no rush really.

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 3/26/18

Images from the Week Gallery

KSC Shutdown Update

This week our legal team submitted their first draft of amendments to the Assembly for it to review sometime next week. Hopefully the draft will not get kicked back and forth too many times before it is voted upon and, should the vote carry, sent to the Presider to sign into law. Operations Director Drew Kerman has spent a good deal of time in Sheltered Rock lobbying for the KSA and has found a lot of support so we do not anticipate too much trouble moving forward to get KSC operations back underway sometime in April. That’s not to say it’s all a done deal at this point but safe to say we are confident in a good resolution.

Arekibo Completes Major Milestone

The Arekibo Radio Observatory has been under construction since early last year and has seen its fair share of troubles as engineers worked to design and assemble a monumentally huge structure to support a dish 180m in diameter. At first it was planned to be built directly into the ground but despite early engineering tests at the location the earthen bowl structure refused to cooperate. After multiple collapses the decision was made to shrink the size of the dish significantly in order to build it above ground. Engineers and astronomers alike however were not happy to have their original grand vision reduced to a mere 86m and threw themselves at the problem, coming up with a radical new support design that could potentially allow for the dish to be 200m.

This week the 200m dish was completed and announced to the world! The increase in size and scope of the project was kept under wraps in case of failure but the construction has succeeded and is now moving to install the giant beam collector, steering mechanisms and support columns. Construction remains on track to complete later this year so the observatory can begin its commissioning work to be fully online and ready for observations by mid 2019. Congratulations to all involved with this incredible project!

Extremis Science Instruments Announced

All of the instruments that are planned to attempt to be crammed into the Extremis probes have been declared. The design of the probes are still very much in flux, dependent largely upon the success we have with Kerbin I and later orbital missions. Whether or not we can actually fit all these instruments aboard the space craft due to size and mass limitations will have to be seen. Over the coming weeks we will be featuring posts that contain more information about the various instruments that have been selected.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,751 asteroids and 6 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

Minmus makes a pass in front of the sun, which happened to occur at the right time to catch it during sunrise from above Umbarg. Sunrise and sunset are optimal times to easily see a Minmus transit thanks to the greater amount of atmosphere in the way. You should still not look directly at the sun with your naked eye, but pointing a regular camera its way won’t damage it.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 3/15/17

Although regular ops are suspended I still feel like the KSA is really moving again now that I’ve been able to breeze through several days. Before, when I was struggling just to stay ahead of the next day, it felt like things were really slogging along. Real time sucks when you’re actually living it! Really the only thing I’m a bit annoyed about right now is that I haven’t spent any time at all working on the Ops Tracker, although I have filed a few more bugs to patch up when I finally do get back around to it. Please, if you notice anything while exploring do let me know with a bug report! Hopefully by the time anyone reads this I will have at least released a new version update. Have to remember I’m writing these well ahead of time again now

I did manage to take some time to address and issue that ‘s been bugging me on the website, which was the About page not showing tabs properly when viewed in Firefox Quantim although it worked in Chrome fine. Firefox would also not run my twitter script that assigned proper dates and times to tweets displayed on the site and properly resized the twitter timelines on program page tabs. Again, it all worked fine in Chrome. Despite loathing the time I expected to spend fixing it, I got it patched up inside of 20 minutes which left me a bit embarrassed I didn’t bother with it earlier. Firefox is still for some reason not adjusting date/times for tweets in mission reports like Chrome does but that’s the next battle.

Arekebo

I’m still working with Omega482 on statics for my various surface structures around Kerbin, I do hope everyone appreciated the fabulous Arekibo bowl he built for me. Just wait till the finished product! He did a lot of research into Arecibo and the full observatory model is stunning. Other dishes and optical observatories are being worked on as well for ATN South, Central and North locations. Of course I also plan to make extensive use of his KSC statics set still under development as well.

Update 3/29: as of right now I’m not sure what is up with Omega and his modeling as I’ve been out of touch with him for the past two weeks and have gotten no response to messages on the KSP forums. While I was supposed to feature a photo of the under-construction Arekibo dish, I pulled it for fear of never getting the final model to use in the future. Hopefully he will be back and be able to deliver the full model.

So this is a day past two weeks of lead time now and I should be able to bang out 2-3 more days at least just today. Unless life decides to throw more curveballs things are looking good for an April restart to operations.

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 4/2/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Ascension Initial Flight Plans

Last month we debuted the final plans for the Ascension Mk1 lifter but did not really explain what we plan to do with it other than say it would initially be launching with a test weight. Since then Flight Director Lanalye and her team of controllers have been working with the Ascension project managers to lock in our initial flight plans. For this first series of flight we will be assembling as many as 5 Ascension Mk1s, though whether all of them will be used for testing or not will be dependent upon how the rocket performs. The first launch will carry a 1t test weight that will be integrated with comms, electrical power, a flight computer and data recording instruments. Radial parachutes will be attached to the upper sides of the fuel tank to attempt to recover the entire rocket after the flight.

We’ve said multiple times before that these initial flights will not put the rocket into orbit, but that’s not technically true – it probably would have been better for us to say we will not be putting the rocket into a stable orbit. We do in fact hope to achieve orbit on the first launch, but the flight computer will cut off the engine when the perikee exceeds 60km, placing the rocket in a decaying orbit. This will be done for three reasons, the most important being the fact that our lifter engine, for the sake of simplicity, cannot be re-lit, so if we achieved a stable orbit we would be unable to bring it back down. A second and related reason is even if we could re-light the engine the rocket has no means of re-orienting to face backwards for a de-orbit burn. The third and final reason is we plan to use the orbital decay to further study aerobraking through Kerbin’s atmosphere.

Depending on how the test flights go, we may also be able to integrate some cold gas Reaction Thruster Control into the test weight as well as increase its mass to check out different ascent profiles. Ultimately things will culminate with the launch of Kerbin I, which will be the first payload to be placed into a stable orbit. We’ll have more details on Kerbin I over the next two months.

KSC Shutdown Update

Frustratingly no word was heard out of the Assembly regarding our amendments submitted late last week. It seems the slow crawl of legislature has managed to affect us, although we thought we had assurances that things would be reviewed sometime this week. Operations Director Drew Kerman has remained in Sheltered Rock to keep close tabs on the proceedings but has been unable to get any definitive answer from anyone as to what happened. Right now we can only sit back and hope that next week brings better news.

Alaba Remains on Track, New Predictions Made

This past weekend Alaba encountered Mun’s SOI on the day that was predicted back at the end of 2017 as well as to the minute that was predicted back at the end of February. This is great news to astronomers, who have had trouble in the past calculating where our various moonlets (not just Alaba) would wander over the course of weeks and months, let alone years. After spending two days observing its new orbit and calculating the next SOI encounter everyone was pleased to see it was the same day predicted back at the end of 2017, July 24th. This time around the SOI encounter was timed down to the second, coming at 19:51:08 UTC. If this prediction turns out to remain accurate then astronomers will attempt (as they tried before) to propagate Alaba’s orbit years into the future to see if it will be crashing into Mun, into Kerbin, or being ejected back out of the system.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,779 asteroids and 9 updated with new observation data.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 3/17/17

Aaaaaannd done! Three weeks of lead time again. Starting to once more get that weird feeling of not really knowing what day it is – here I am actually midway through March but doing stuff at the start of April – it can mess with my head sometimes. I will literally wake up and think it’s April or whatever time the KSA is currently in ahead of real time. I’ll get used to it again.

Now to just bang out this weekend and moving into next week I’ll be doing just one day of operations per day and devoting the remainder of my time to working on the Ops Tracker and other ancillary tasks that require my attention – like upgrading some graphics configs and minor game tweaks that I’ve been putting off. I’m also going to tweak the pacing of things a bit, slow down a little, to ensure I can maintain this lead.

This week didn’t see much in the way of asteroid entries/impacts or noteworthy celestial events so not many pictures or tweets posted. I certainly didn’t plan for it to be an easy week but it turned out to be.

So yea, not much else to comment on this week (which has only been two days since I wrote my last desk notes, lol) but I’m really really really looking forward to kicking off operations again and finally getting something into orbit – hopefully! A lot of this stuff is not scripted so I honestly can’t say for sure whether the Mk1 will be capable of actually flying properly. I’ve never actually tested it and I won’t test it until that first launch happens. So your guess is as good as mine right now as to what will happen!

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 4/9/18

Images from the Week Gallery

KSC Operations Ramping Back Up

This week started with some incredible news out of Sheltered Rock when the Presider leapt over the Assembly (figuratively speaking of course) and ratified the amended laws that closed the loopholes the Monolithic followers were using to lock us out of our surface structures at KSC. You can read more about this unprecedented political maneuver in this report.

We’ve spent the past week moving back into KSC and also finishing setting up the new administration offices. There will still be some minor things to sort out over the next week or so but overall operations will resume this coming Monday.

All the parts needed for the next 3 Progeny Mk6 Block I rockets have been staged in the VAB for assembly to begin. We will know by Wednesday if the first rocket is on track and can announce the upcoming launch dates.

After completing checkouts on Monday, assuming no issues are found we will fire up the K2-X engine on its test stand after second sunrise on Tuesday. It will only be a short 10-second firing, followed by an inspection and igniter replacement with a 30-second burn the following day cycle. Wednesday will be devoted to data analysis and firings will resume on Thursday with longer burns if all the data checks out.

Specialists Bill and Bob have been getting the KerBalloon program back into order and hope to see program managers sign a contract for them to carry out late next week. They’ve also assembled a balloon that will stand ready for the Deuce to test deployment of off its rear upper fuselage once it returns to KSC.

Speaking of the Deuce, the original prototype is still at Sheltered Rock, where it was last flown to by Commander Valentina and Captain Jebediah. It will stay there until Jeb and Val have completed testing of the recently-built Deuce with the new engines, set to be completed later this month. If the newer Deuce turns out okay that will be flown back to KSC while the prototype is flown to Kravass to be retired in the Air History Museum.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,849 asteroids and 4 updated with new observation data.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 3/23/17

Ready to really get back on the horse and ride this sucker up into orbit. Again, I’m going to take it a bit slower on the pacing of things to make sure I can do everything I need to do for a day’s worth of ops in no more than 3 real days. I’ve given myself that much time because I can make it back up slowly over the weekends if I need to. Hopefully. We’ll see how it goes.

One Orbit of…. what?

Poor Dres Poor, poor lonely and unloved Dres! Just have a look at some of the reddit comments posted to my info graphic detailing the major events that have happened to the KSA during the time Dres circled Kerbol once. I’m really not sure if some people were serious and some where just joking but it was pretty sad nonetheless The most ironic thing of course is that it got a way better reception than when I posted my first one of Moho.

Since I haven’t really had more than one image worth sharing I haven’t done any reddit weekly posts lately, but those will start up again next week

 

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 4/16/18

Images from the Week Gallery

K2-X Hot Fires Show Good Data

Engineers are seeing what they expected to see in the test results coming out of the various hot fires that have been performed this past week, with more to come next week if the data continues to look good after careful review Monday and Tuesday. You can review all the tweets from the firings in this timeline.

The K2-X has been through its own detailed qualification phase over the past year in NovaPunch’s underground facility as part of the design competition to allow us to select an engine for the Ascension program, however these firings are the first time the engine has been hooked up to actual flight hardware and controlled by the actual flight software that it will be used with. A lot of these tests are repeated events from what has been done before but just with all the extra complexity of flight hardware included. So far, things have been proceeding extremely smoothly thanks to the very simple and straightforward design of the engine itself along with our past experience with the Progenitor program’s LF/O rockets, even if they are on a smaller scale.

Next week will close out integrated systems testing and by the end of the month we will be able to make the decision as to whether we have flight-ready hardware on our hands!

Future Progeny Launches Announced

As excited as we are for the upcoming Ascension Mk1 debut flight we still have plenty of unfinished business with the Progenitor program to keep us busy. Three more rockets remain to be built, with one nearing completion and a second getting started. The dates and times for the next three Progeny Mk6 Block I launches, assuming no scheduling delays or flight anomalies, are as follows:

4/26 @ 17:58 UTC
5/2 @ 18:18 UTC
5/8 @ 18:38 UTC

These launches will hopefully provide us enough data to better answer the question of what type of hazardous radiation field exists over the planet. If not, they should at least point us in a better direction to take with future launches to ultimately find out. Whether the radiation discovered over the polar regions will tie into the radiation field(s) being researched by these rocket flights remains to be seen. Ultimately we would rely on orbital probes to completely map radiation zones around the planet but for now poking around like this is the best we can do.

Deuce Set for Engine Testing

Confirmation late today out of Sheltered Rock is the latest Deuce aircraft is set to take to the skies next week after Captain Jebediah and Commander Valentina performed a series of ground check outs to ensure all systems are functioning properly. This aircraft features the newly-designed Pegasus rotary engines built specifically for aircraft flight, as opposed to the airship engines we were using before. The main difference, other than increased power, is that these engines are capable of operating under higher G loads without suffering fuel starvation due to drain back in the lines, which almost took down Cpt Jeb on a test flight earlier this year.

If all goes well, our two pilots will fly the Deuce back to KSC for it to begin active operations, while the original prototype is flown to Kravass to be disassembled for transport underground to the Air History Museum and reassembled as an exhibit alongside the original Civvie.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,857 asteroids and 6 updated with new observation data.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

Both Minmus and Sarnus wander about the sky on inclined orbits, so passing near each other is a relatively rare event, especially close enough that you can get a decent look at Sarnus in the same frame. The Kerman Observatory atop Kravass was able to capture this shot just before dawn. Sarnus’s moons Slate (left) and Tekto (right) are both visible, with Eeloo also in sight but mostly obscured by the rings.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 4/1/18

Hahahahaha OMG I just realized I’ve been copy-pasting this section of Ops Summary for so long that I never actually changed the year in the date from 17 to 18 until now. Why does no one else see these things? Why doesn’t anyone tell me? IS ANYONE READING THIS?!? HELLOOOO???? I’ve left it alone in previous desk notes even though I could go back and fix it – let’s see if anyone else notices before this. 

I also screwed up this past week by leaving an ATN database report not fully edited down so all the other undiscovered asteroids were visible for pretty much the entire week. But nobody said anything. So maybe no one saw it? I don’t know. I know people read stuff but I don’t get a whole lot of interaction. I’m still not sure how I feel about that. I mean, I’m doing this regardless of whether anybody really reads this – I’m doing this for me and it’ll be fun to read up on again in a couple years like I do every now and then for my Sims character. Still, I do very much like when people ask questions about things or try to poke holes in what I’m doing. It can really make me think about things better or give me ideas. Speak up!

Update 4/13: there was a good deal of discussion today on this tweet here. It’s a bit annoying when people ask questions about things I thought I made pretty clear in previous tweets and updates but alas I must remember that not everyone follows everything and not always do I do a good job communicating things. But again, I generally don’t realize things like that unless people come to me confused! So yea, twitter is my favorite platform to interact with people on but responses to my reddit and forum updates are enjoyable as well.

Update 4/19: Here is another great example, that not only made me have to elaborate on something I didn’t really think about, but even gave me an idea for a future event! I’ll reference this in my desk notes once it happens

Less asteroids? More asteroids?

The game spawns them, not me, so if there’s a lull or uptick in the rate of asteroids, especially the ones swinging past Kerbin, that’s not really me doing it for sake of story or whatever. Like, March didn’t happen to have a crapton of asteroids just because operations were suspended and I needed stuff to tweet about. I wish there hadn’t been so many I could have pushed my lead time out faster! I did do one thing, which was decrease the max spawn count from 4 to 3 – which has made a difference although I can’t say for sure yet whether the effects are just long or short term. I made this change back at the start of the year and still had a lot in March. I don’t fully understand the spawn system and some days I end up with a lot of new ‘roids and other days it’s a few or none. I am considering ways of weaving NKOs into the overall story I have planned but not sure yet if I really want or need to.

Engine testing

So, I was going to make this the first testing of the K2-X engine ever until I did some research and read this document on engine testing to get ideas on what I should be talking about during the tests. Yea, I knew there was a lot of stuff involved but holy excrements is there a lot of stuff involved. No way this could be the first test and then I just fly it off like a month or so later. I mean, sure the document I read was based upon years of past experience in rocket engine development, which is something my kerbals don’t have yet, but going from first test to first flight in 1-2 months seemed a bit much. Hence, the added backstory above about previous testing done beforehand, with this being the first “integrated” test. Legit? I feel like it is.

Unfortunately this engine has no emissive texture, so it doesn’t glow hot when its firing. I couldn’t find any reason the engine bell shouldn’t be glowing red hot so I added the effect in post after snapping the image of it firing. I also had to capture a ton of screens to find some that didn’t have the smoke particles clipping into each other or into the ground. Of course, the addition of the emissive post-effect wasn’t something I could easily achieve in video (well, maybe but I didn’t want to take the time to figure out how), which is why the camera angle is different and not really showing the engine bell at all.

How’d I do the smoke? Well the original plan was to just use the physics ability of Smokescreen particles which is another reason I designed the flame bucket so well. But then I realized this engine wouldn’t produce any smoke on its own (and in fact the engine particle effects do not include smoke) so instead I just clipped a 0.675m sounding rocket booster into the flame bucket and had it firing off with the plume removed and the smoke particles edited to grow larger as they are spouted out. I think it looked great.

I did write a kOS script to run the engines for the specified times and throttle settings to get accurate fuel usages to plug into the financial spreadsheet. The script was based off the AFCS so I could do data logging to graph stuff out but it wasn’t really an operational script that would be used in a future launch so I’m not sharing it.

Ascension blueprint edits

I forgot to change the price and mass of the K2-X engine before I calculated the specs that went into the Block I and Block II blueprints of the Ascension Mk1. The changes are due to the fact that by default the engine is able to be gimbaled, which is something I removed in order to have the design be more simple. The actuators and hydraulics can take up a good deal of mass – I couldn’t find any good specs to use for reference but I figured 200kg should be more than enough – the original engine weights 1.2t and this one weighs just 1t. I also completely screwed up the dry mass of the Block II by forgetting to remove all the fuel before I made note of it. DUH. Thankfully this was all realized before I actually have reason to use them all over the place.

 

[DAL59]

On 4/20/2018 at 8:10 PM, Drew Kerman said:

IS ANYONE READING THIS?!?

yes

[Drew Kerman]

58 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

yes

good to know. Was hoping for more discussion around here when I started the thread but I guess people are just happy to sit back and enjoy. I'm cool with that

[Drew Kerman]

Operations Summary – Week of 4/23/18

Images from the Week Gallery

Preliminary Flight Report for Second Mk6 Launch

This week's launch was a complete success, which is exactly how we wanted to kick off spaceflight operations again after our two month forced hiatus. Engineers are still studying the data retrieved from the payload but it looks like we are starting to find the edge of the radiation field, although the next two flights will make this conclusive - we'll either completely miss the radiation or find a new area as we continue to launch further south.

The other highlight was the use of new airbrakes attached to the third stage fuel tank to help increase drag during the plummet through the lower atmosphere and slow the payload enough for the chute to deploy safely. They have been in development these past few months and Head of R&D Wernher von Kerman was unsure if they were yet ready for use. However we knew for a fact we would lose the payload without them so having them posed no additional risks - they rest within the slipstream of the slightly large probe core unit so their effect on the rocket during ascent was negligible. Despite the success, we are still wary - things could have worked out just right this time - every re-entry is a little different and this rocket also did not travel as high as the last one. We will be re-using them for the next flight, and have ordered several more in case the current ones begin to wear out.

Expect a more detailed report Monday or Tuesday as data is further analyzed to determine if we want to change anything for the flight profile of the next launch, scheduled for this coming Wednesday at 18:18 UTC

K2-X Engine Completes Full-System Testing

Hooked up to its fuel tank and system controller these past two weeks, the K2-X engine planned for use on the Ascension Mk1 underwent a series of tests in order to prove all the components work together properly. You can read more about the testing in this ops summary. The original plan after testing was to send the engine back to NovaPunch for further analysis and order a brand new one for the first Ascension Mk1 flight but if we want to stick to our original schedule of launching by May then we need to refurbish and use this engine - we won't get a new one in time. The whole tank and engine assembly will be unmounted from the test stand next week and moved back to the VAB to begin getting ready for flight. We hope to have a launch date set by mid-May for the end of the month.

Deuce Returns to Service

After being redesigned and rebuilt yet again to overcome some lingering issues, the Deuce is once more a fully-operational aircraft in our fleet. This week Captain Jebediah and Commander Valentina put the fresh aircraft through its paces, shaking down the new engines and performing some high-G maneuvers to test the aircraft's structural limits as well as also ensure the new engines performed as expected under high-G loads. This all culminated in a return flight from Sheltered Rock to KSC earlier today with a science mission performed along the way to help the Genesis program start to claw its way back out of the red (as far as the Deuce itself is concerned).

We look forwards to putting the new aircraft to work, but next up will actually be a Civvie mission flown by Cdr Val at the start of next week to take care of another old contract from earlier this year.

KerBalloon Sees Continued Success

In case you missed it, the first KerBalloon expedition since operations resumed returned to port this past Saturday with a successfully recovered payload, which landed out in the desert and had to be retrieved by UTV (better-equipped this time to handle the sandy conditions!). Although more launches are coming up that will require high-altitude balloons to be released, these operations do not actually fall under the control of the KerBalloon program so while that will still be taken care of, the KB team will embark on another mission this coming week.

ATN Database

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,876 asteroids and 5 updated with new observation data.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman (Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff)

Spoiler

Written on 4/8/18

Rough week, getting back up to speed on things. Even though I really like simulated flying and was looking forward to getting the Deuce back up in the air when I opened my flight checklist, which contains about 150 items, I was just like ugh…all this work… but I eventually took a deep breath and dove back in. It’s better now that I’ve slipped back “into the groove” so all the work involved doesn’t seem quite as daunting now. I was actually 2-3 days behind on things, which wasn’t helping my motivation any, luckily I had a week off from IRL stuff so was able to slack around a lot and still catch up – I remain two days behind but it’s just the weekend, which I can bang out easy in a day.

Deuce flying

This was another complete rebuild of the Deuce in the editor from the ground up and things really seem to be great this time around. It really does seem to make a difference how much attention you pay to assembling all the parts together – take your time! I even thought I fixed the issue of the gear wanting to swerve the aircraft off the runway on the takeoff roll but although it does handle a lot less wobbly on the ground it still has some wheel issues I simply counteract with a kOS script that disables wheel friction above 30m/s.

Yea so the aircraft is as easy to fly as a Civvie now, no more weird handling issues or having to tweak the AoA of the ailerons during the flight to keep the thing balanced. I can point it where I want it to go and let go of the stick – slight adjustments needed every now and then as it does like to lazily roll in one way or another like the Civvie tends to do but that is natural. I could give the wings some dihedral to help stabilize that but it’s not a huge deal – the Roll Hold feature of FAR can handle it fine.

Mk6 launch

Of course after having no real trouble getting the Deuce flying after coming back to operations after several weeks it couldn’t be the same for rocket flight. I almost went back into a funk again when I took the Mk6 to the pad and saw the nose cone chute trying to deploy itself. I don’t use launch clamps for the Progeny rockets but for testing things I had reason to use them and they would drop the rocket after loading out onto the pad. This is why I keep a running record of the order in which I install mods, because I was able to work back through the recently-updated ones since I last launched to figure out it was KSPIE causing the trouble – turns out I missed updates to it because the author moved the thread out of the Add-Ons forum where I check for updates and into a support forum. The whole process took me over two hours of testing. Bleaugh.

Apparently the first Mk6 launched with a 500km antenna in its nose cone – whoops. I corrected that for this launch and moving forwards, luckily it doesn’t make a real difference (noticeable, but not huge) in the EC use and no difference at all in the mass.

Although I completed the whole flight on the first try, none of the radiation data was properly logged due to a bug I didn’t notice when I ran my code check straight-up test launch. Thankfully since I auto-save the game as soon as the rocket enters space I was able to re-fly the trajectory and re-log the data afterward. I also fixed the logging bug.

Finally, I should note that I totally did not expect the airbrakes to work. When I tested them during the code check flight, where I launch the rocket straight up off the pad just to ensure there are no obvious runtime errors in the program, they destroyed the rocket promptly upon deploying even to their first minimal setting due to aerodynamic forces. But again, that launch profile was different than the actual launch. Still, I was literally shouting and clapping with glee as I watched the airbrakes deploy, the rocket not blow up, and it splashing down intact. Moments like that make all the hardship worthwhile.

So. Moving on then…

 

[Beetlecat]

On 4/20/2018 at 5:10 PM, Drew Kerman said:

IS ANYONE READING THIS?!? HELLOOOO????

I am now!

Honestly, it's become quite a work of art/performative piece in and off it self. The dedication and details are inspiring. 
 

Spoiler

And I have to admit -- I've been beginning to "follow along" and try to recreate some moments of the KSA in my local copy of KSP lately. I've learned a bunch by modeling your early launches, and even just picking up spin stabilization for the sounding rockets has been an eye opener. Being able to be more efficient with these simple parts will help me save tons of fuel later on.

Do you have a "recipe" that can be followed for a craft like the Mk4 for timing the coasting between stages? Is it all about maintaining G acceleration? I was amazed that by tuning down the thrust on the SRBs, and coasting a bit between stages, it can make the difference between ~30km to +~70km!

My VAB is too small to build the MK5 or bigger yet.

 

Edited April 27, 2018 by Beetlecat

[Drew Kerman]

15 hours ago, Beetlecat said:

Do you have a "recipe" that can be followed for a craft like the Mk4 for timing the coasting between stages? Is it all about maintaining G acceleration? I was amazed that by tuning down the thrust on the SRBs, and coasting a bit between stages, it can make the difference between ~30km to +~70km!

I've mainly based coast times on how low the nose drops during the coast. I don't want the trajectory to flatten out too much since I'm not heading for orbit. Progeny launches these days waits 1.5° of pitch change for the second stage coast. Back during the Mk4 it was the same, with 1.5° pitch change as well for the third stage coast. I used KER to track the pitch change manually at first, then when computer control came around it took care of that

[Beetlecat]

On 4/28/2018 at 8:25 AM, Drew Kerman said:

I've mainly based coast times on how low the nose drops during the coast. I don't want the trajectory to flatten out too much since I'm not heading for orbit. Progeny launches these days waits 1.5° of pitch change for the second stage coast. Back during the Mk4 it was the same, with 1.5° pitch change as well for the third stage coast. I used KER to track the pitch change manually at first, then when computer control came around it took care of that

Okay -- that makes total sense. It's one of those pieces of the puzzle that I wasn't quite picking up on for some reason. Your diagrams even spell it out pretty clearly.

I'd like to start playing with KOS soon, so once again Sounding Rockets + KSA will be a good guide.