Thunderbolt and Lightning - A Galileo Quest career

[AeroGav]

Not the most original move ever, but  Scott Manley's new series has me itching to try a playthrough of this mod.

I'm keeping the mods light for now, attempting to imitate Scott's Interstellar left me leery of big part mods.

We'll see if the huge distances to be covered are beyond the ability of stock parts.

Difficulty Options - Custom

• No Restart, No Respawn.       Dead Kerbals stay dead.  Fly Safe.
• Individual parts have to be unlocked within a tech node - unlock Aviation , for example, by spending 45 science points, each part within that node must then be researched with funds if you want to use it in your designs.
• 20% Funds Penalties, 30% Funds Rewards

The last point means that building upgrades cost just 20% of normal, however funds rewards for contracts are also greatly reduced.  So, the expensive things in my game will be the vessels themselves.  Need to ensure  high re-usability in most missions.

Our first launch earns a busload of science, as such things tend to do -

We unlock Engineering 101 and Flight control, but only the tier 4 techs have any kind of steerable fin.  Till then, I'm not happy launching a larger rocket if it can't be steered.

We get a contract to test the stack separator after landing and Flea booster on the launch pad.    

Since there's no point zooming to 9000m again, I casually reduce the amount of fuel in the flea.   Tragedy strikes however.  The nerfed rocket only takes us to 100 m, which is too low to give the parachute time to open, but high enough to kill Jeb.   Previous parachute fatalities have always been due to coming in so fast the chute is destroyed or because the velocity is too great to be arrested when it does open.  I'd not realised they actually take a few seconds to unfurl and had been lulled into false security by our relatively low velocity.

Lessons

• Unfamiliar vessel types should be tested unmanned first
• when modifying a proven type, make small changes, don't reduce fuel load by 90% in one step!

 

Val has to complete the Damp Squib programme.   She then mines the runway for a bit of science..

..and fulfils this test contract that gets us over the 45 science mark.   Even I couldn't find a way to kill anyone on the last two missions.  Well, we now have Aviation tech.    Let's see what that brings..