The Sky is Not the Limit: A Modded KSP1 Career Playthrough - Volume Two: Settling the Frontier

[TwoCalories]

Hello, everyone. I've been a bit busy recently, but I haven't forgotten that The Sky is Not the Limit is now a little over one year old! I'm sorry that I haven't been posting chapters often anymore, but I promise there's more coming down the pipeline. Here's to another year.

Edited May 8 by TwoCalories
Page 9!

[TwoCalories]

Just took this really nice photo while planning out new *pssst ss roadhouse expansions* and wanted to put it here, just to show let you know this thread is still alive. It has definitely been slow recently, but I promise that new chapters will be coming really soon.

[TwoCalories]

Chapter Twenty-Two: On-Site Laboratory

Spoiler

It was another beautiful morning at KSC, Koaington. Vankadia's southern regions were well known for their fair weathered climate. But thousands of Kerbals weren't there for the weather on July 1st, 1971. KASA was preparing to launch the biggest expansion of SS Roadhouse yet. Well, there had been relatively few expansions until then, but still.

Once again, two Jovian-5 stacks are prepared on the launchpad, the foremost carrying the new station module and the one beyond it carrying the crew. They say Mortimer Kerman breaks into tears when he sees the 180,000 Funds of rocket on the pads, but at least the R&D division is happy.

The module that's being added to the station is a laboratory module. It has some more solar and batteries to satisfy the station's hunger for electricity. It also includes a much-needed airlock. Technically, the station already had an airlock, but it took up half the main module since it was built into. Now that space can be freed up for storage and such. The airlock is also in easy access with the science instrument pallets. The dream is to be able to swap out the science instruments on the two pallets for different ones as time goes on.

But first, we need to focus on the current station's needs. The crew is onboard Roadhouse-3. Ridesharing with them is a care package module carrying food, water, oxygen, and fuel to restock the station's supply. Roadhouse-3 will be going to orbit first and will dock to the station before the Lab Module launches. From there it will autonomously rendezvous somewhere around one kilometer from the station (we don't want debris from the discarded Upper Stage to get any closer to Roadhouse) and Roadhouse-3 will dock with it and bring it to the station, before moving to its own home port. That means the pilot of Roadhouse-3 will need to dock a whopping four total times this mission, so we're bringing in our top gun Jebediah Kerman as mission commander. Coming with him are two new hires, Robert Hallis K. and Luke Perron K. Both of them are scientists, as they will be manning the lab, the main focus of the mission.

Orbit established.

Extracting the care package.

It took almost a whole day to rendezvous with the station. The supply module doesn't contain much habitat space, or much anything. It's just a big dumb container with a docking port, filled to the brim with rations and monopropellant. The greenhorns Robert and Luke passed time by gazing down on Kerbin as well as acclimating to space for the first time.

Docking with SS Roadhouse.

After gingerly maneuvering around the radiator and solar panels with the bulky care package, Roadhouse-3 finally made a hard dock with the station. The crew could access the station from there though, but KSC decided that they'd only be waiting a couple hours in the capsule, before retrieving the Lab and docking it, then moving to the crew docking port. It would be simpler than moving to the proper port twice.

The Lab launches late at night.

The launch was uneventful, and within a few hours, the Lab was on course for the station.

<<Roadhouse-3, engage!>>

Retrieving the Lab Module.

Docking the lab module.

Finally, after almost two days in the capsule, the crew moves up to the station.

The station's so far completed state.

The crew gets the day to settle in and unload their supplies and gear. It's been a long day a work for the crew, and the next 70 days they'll be spending on the station will actually give them something to do this time, since there's a lab. We won't get much science from the lab using samples from LKO, so the guys at R&D are developing some kind of probe to gather data via flybys of Kerbin's moons. But that's not going to appear any time soon, let alone this mission. Everyone at KASA is pretty sick of rendezvouses for the time being.

Author's note:

Spoiler

Hi, everyone. It's been kind of a while since I last uploaded a chapter. Well, I've just not been so motivated to play KSP these days. I guess the whole iffy situation with KSP2 is one factor, but the biggest thing is how buggy and unoptimized my game is. It's a pain to do anything is Vessel Builder now because I get 2 FPS when I even edit a stage on a vessel of 100 parts. The loading times when launching are horrendous, and 1 out of 6 quickloads leads to a game crash. SS Roadhouse also started wobbling at the joints but I'm not sure if that's a mod issue or not. Whatever the case, I'll be taking some time to trim down the mods in my install until it gets stable enough to play, because this is not sustainable, especially keeping the plans I have for this save in mind.

 

[TwoCalories]

UPDATE: Some trimming down of my mods have made my game performance go from unplayable to still pretty laggy, but also playable. I'll keep on trimming down my install to get better performance. Maybe I'll try deleting some of my huge abandoned save games and terminating debris in the mission report save.

Anyhow, a new chapter will be coming out something soon.

Edited June 1 by TwoCalories

[TwoCalories]

Made some new flags! This one's the Socialist Union of Zolosten and its air force roundel.

The flag...

...and the Air Force roundel.

[TwoCalories]

UPDATE: I continue procrastinate making new chapters by making a new lore update! This one only involves the first chapter, setting up some more backstory. I wanted to make some lore for the craters you found on Kerbin, so I did. I also wanted to integrate some lore into why military technology is so advanced (i.e. F/A-18s alongside Apollo 11-esque spacecraft) and why crew seemed to be launched before satellites.

Also, I modified the Vankadian Air Defense Force roundel. Here's the new one:

Edited June 14 by TwoCalories

[RedAl1en1]

I love the flags dude! This mission report is great.

[RedAl1en1]

TYSM! My first rep!

 

[TwoCalories]

I've been thinking about this mission report for a long time. As of now, my KSP game is quite horribly optimized, and the lag is still painful anywhere in the save file. And for the mission report itself, I've noticed that the bulk of any updates I've added for the past couple of months are just retcons. Even now I'm not completely satisfied with the storyline. And it's hard to fix these issues, especially the optimization, because removing mods will probably break the install. Also, old screenshots don't align with the changing storyline.

So, I made a decision. I've put a lot of thought into this, and I've decided that the best course of action is to shelve this report. BUT this won't be the end of The Sky is Not the Limit. I'm going to start an entirely different thread and a new save file. Consider it a reboot, if you will. I'm doing this so that I can safely remove mods without breaking vessels to optimize my game better, and I can revise the storyline and make it something that I can build upon for not only the report itself, but perhaps some spinoffs, too. The same space race and KASE plots are still going to continue, and once the new save and mission report are created, I'll make it my goal to quickly catch us back up to where we left off. It was a hard decision to undo a literal year of progress, but I want to be able to take this save to big places.

The TL;DR version of this is that this specific thread is going to get shelved due to lag and stuff, but the storyline will be restarted and continued in a different thread.

However, like I did say, this report was already a year's worth of dedication. While I promise that I'll go through with the reboot of this report, I'll have to take a bit of a break before I start again. I'll also have to take that break so that I can lay out a storyline that I'm satisfied with so that I don't have to do nearly as many retcons.

I hope you guys are okay with this decision. I'm sorry if the wording is a bit confusing, but I promise this storyline will be continued, just in a different thread, and potentially with a name change.

Thank you all for the continued support of this mission report. -TwoCal

[Kerbalsaurus]

17 minutes ago, TwoCalories said:

I've been thinking about this mission report for a long time. As of now, my KSP game is quite horribly optimized, and the lag is still painful anywhere in the save file. And for the mission report itself, I've noticed that the bulk of any updates I've added for the past couple of months are just retcons. Even now I'm not completely satisfied with the storyline. And it's hard to fix these issues, especially the optimization, because removing mods will probably break the install. Also, old screenshots don't align with the changing storyline.

So, I made a decision. I've put a lot of thought into this, and I've decided that the best course of action is to shelve this report. BUT this won't be the end of The Sky is Not the Limit. I'm going to start an entirely different thread and a new save file. Consider it a reboot, if you will. I'm doing this so that I can safely remove mods without breaking vessels to optimize my game better, and I can revise the storyline and make it something that I can build upon for not only the report itself, but perhaps some spinoffs, too. The same space race and KASE plots are still going to continue, and once the new save and mission report are created, I'll make it my goal to quickly catch us back up to where we left off. It was a hard decision to undo a literal year of progress, but I want to be able to take this save to big places.

The TL;DR version of this is that this specific thread is going to get shelved due to lag and stuff, but the storyline will be restarted and continued in a different thread.

However, like I did say, this report was already a year's worth of dedication. While I promise that I'll go through with the reboot of this report, I'll have to take a bit of a break before I start again. I'll also have to take that break so that I can lay out a storyline that I'm satisfied with so that I don't have to do nearly as many retcons.

I hope you guys are okay with this decision. I'm sorry if the wording is a bit confusing, but I promise this storyline will be continued, just in a different thread, and potentially with a name change.

Thank you all for the continued support of this mission report. -TwoCal

I'm sad to see probably my favorite mission report go, but I'm excited for the new one to come out! And take all the time you need to work on the new report and get into it. After all, it's not fun to read a mission report that the writer's not into. Thank you for the awesome report, TwoCal!

[Kerb24]

If it will lead to a better story, then do it! I'll be patiently awaiting the return of one of the best mission reports I've read!

[RedAl1en1]

The sky is not the limit 2: The sky IS the limit.