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Post by Julian Sharps on Aug 19, 2013 18:29:44 GMT -5
Successfully docked Li'l Man to Gusble Station, but lost the rover and construction probe when I tried to put them on another docking port and I ran out of monoprop in the process. Ah, well. As long as I can plant a flag, it shouldn't be too hard to locate my landing spot. Now, if I can just dock my CTV to Kerman Station so I can refuel it to go retrieve my stranded kerbonauts, all will be well.
I also seem to have a manpower surplus at my space center. This needs to be corrected, preferably by establishing a couple permanent Munbases nearby some of the easter eggs, and by sending manned missions out to other worlds.
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Post by Trooper One-Nine-Seven-Four on Aug 20, 2013 9:47:35 GMT -5
Screenshot of L'il Man, please? I haven't played at all in a couple of weeks either. The all-nighters I was pulling messing with Kerbal were totally messing me up...
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Post by Soap on Aug 20, 2013 10:31:47 GMT -5
I haven't played at all since I downloaded it. Need more time to geek in my life!
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Post by Adkenpachi on Aug 20, 2013 11:53:39 GMT -5
With no phone line till 4th of September earliest I may get time fur adventure... asuming I left steam in offline mode. It sucks you can't turn it to offline mode unless it's online, what's the point?!
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Post by ElegaicRequiem on Aug 20, 2013 14:23:46 GMT -5
You can. I do it all the time on the comp I brought to work. You have to change the settings, though.
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Post by Adkenpachi on Aug 20, 2013 16:18:06 GMT -5
Last time I tried it wouldn't even open without being online
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Post by Julian Sharps on Aug 20, 2013 19:44:46 GMT -5
Well, Alkin Kerman is officially insane. After being stranded in his capsule for no less than 15 days, he decided to bail out and try to get to Kerman Station using only the Sun and Mun to guide him, and his EVA thruster pack to get him there.
It didn't work, but it did put him on an orbit closer to Kerbin, as well as lining himself up nicely with my crew transfer vehicle. Unfortunately, the CTV ran out of monoprop while attempting to rendezvous with him, so I diverted a fuel tanker probe that was enroute to Gusble Station, which was also nicely lined up with their orbits. The new plan was to dock the tanker to the CTV, retrieve Alkin, and then boost up to a rendezvous with Gusble Station. However, the tanker has also run out of monoprop, and must attempt to dock with the CTV using only its main engines and what little torque the probe core can exert.
However, if all else fails, I can always send up another tanker to dock with the CTV. All three of them are in stable orbits above Kerbin.
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Post by Julian Sharps on Aug 24, 2013 14:49:26 GMT -5
Today's adventure marks a great accomplishment in Kerbal history. After successfully refueling my CTV with a tanker probe sent up from Kerbin, I succeeded in rendezvousing with Alkin Kerman and, after crashing into him a few times to get him facing the right way, successfully retrieved him after he ran out of thruster pack fuel. Now, for a docking with Kerman Station, and then I can send my CTV out on the rescue missions it was designed for.
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Post by Julian Sharps on Aug 29, 2013 11:59:49 GMT -5
Well, I docked my CTV with Gusble Station, so it looks like Alkin The Madman's going to the Mun (I might have him sit in the lander next to Bob, Jeb or Bill, whoever gets to Gusble Station first). Afterward, my CTV made a successful rendezvous with one of my stranded capsules, but because there weren't enough seats on the CTV (I probably should've added a crew tank), I had to leave someone behind.
Anyway, my CTV gets a perfect rendezvous with Kerman Station, only to run out of monoprop while attempting to seal the deal, so I sent up a tanker to try to refuel it (which I've had a hell of a time trying to match orbits, such that I can almost abandon the fuel tank it's carrying). So, once my CTV is refueled, I can continue to try to get to Kerman Station.
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Post by Julian Sharps on Sept 2, 2013 23:11:39 GMT -5
Fun fact about ion engines: so efficient that they get a 0.1 unit/second fuel consumption rate, but a sloth could sprint faster when it comes to pure thrust.
Yeah. While I was waiting for my tanker to get its closest approach to my CTV, I decided to launch an ion-powered kethane probe to Duna. My encounter burn is in about 60 days or so, and I'll be following Kerbin's orbit around the Sun for most of that. In fact, I think I even get a Kerbin encounter with that one. That'll give me some time to assemble a space station mission to Duna so I can get at that sweet, sweet kethane.
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Post by Julian Sharps on Sept 13, 2013 17:50:56 GMT -5
Well, I seem to have hit a brick wall in my space program. I've made no less than three separate attempts, and I can't seem to get a tanker up to my CTV before it runs out of fuel. I don't understand it; I've done it before, I'm doing my relative stop burn just fine, and then my orbit decides to screw up on me. I've been designing a new tanker, but it hasn't managed to get out of the atmosphere yet after ~20 tries.
In the meantime, I've begun to map Kerbin for kethane deposits so that I can experiment with scooping kethane from the water. If there's any kethane on Eve or Laythe, I'm going to find a way to get at their ocean deposits.
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Post by Adkenpachi on Sept 13, 2013 18:34:02 GMT -5
So I wanted to try and get back into it.. had 20 minutes to spare... built a basic rocket to mun land... over shot the mun... ended up landing on the red planet, begins with a D I forgot it's name... success??
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Post by Julian Sharps on Sept 14, 2013 0:56:32 GMT -5
It's called Duna, and yeah, I'd call that a success.
Tomorrow, I have some cartooning-related stuff to do, but I'll try sending up another tanker and see if I can't dock it with my CTV with enough fuel to mean anything.
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Post by Adkenpachi on Sept 14, 2013 5:09:58 GMT -5
Yeah that's the one, I don't know what happened... my exit boosters lasted till the mun so I used my mid stage booster to just burn past it... then I wound up in a near perfect orbit around Duna, next time I really must make a space station but I don't know how :=/
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Post by Julian Sharps on Sept 14, 2013 13:56:49 GMT -5
Well, you'll have to learn how to dock spacecraft, which is all kinds of crazy and counter-intuitive. I strongly suggest you look into docking tutorials because otherwise it'll likely result in madness and things exploding.
Granted, much of the game involves madness and things exploding, but docking is hard and often infuriating, and it doesn't help that the UI isn't really set up for it. I suggest you take a gander at Scott Manley's Reusable Space Program (now defunct, sadly, but it was great while it lasted. He managed to set up a Munbase, two space stations, and had two manned interplanetary missions (one to Jool and one to Moho), one of which successfully landed on Moho (he had only one shot at success, with practically no fuel, and his instrumentation was dubious at best. His lander had all the stuff needed to mine and process kethane, so if the Space Program had continued, he would've been able to refuel his mothership for the journey home).
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Post by Adkenpachi on Sept 15, 2013 12:37:13 GMT -5
So me and my son built a basic rocket... flew to minmus and tried to land. I had a perfectly vertical trajectory and was only going 100kmph with plenty of fuel when I blew up at 5000ft... apparently that's where the surface is :/ it was pitch black too so I had no idea!
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Post by Julian Sharps on Sept 15, 2013 19:34:36 GMT -5
Yeah, the Minmus Highlands are pretty tall. Don't ever believe the altimeter unless you're going in for a water landing.
It's also a good idea to put lights on your spaceships so you can see where you're landing/docking.
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Post by Trooper One-Nine-Seven-Four on Sept 15, 2013 19:54:20 GMT -5
We need to petition Squad to make this possible in the game: That is a picture of a frog jumping/being blown out of out of the sound absorption pond around the launchpad from which the LADEE mission was launched last week at the Wallops Island facility on the eastern shore of Virginia. I have a friend who is actually an engineer for the company that is managing the project.
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Post by Adkenpachi on Sept 16, 2013 1:56:26 GMT -5
Yeah that was funny, was all over tv here the other day
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Post by Trooper One-Nine-Seven-Four on Sept 16, 2013 13:50:19 GMT -5
Yeah that was funny, was all over tv here the other day I deputize you to take the lead in petitioning Squad to make this a feature of the game!
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Post by Adkenpachi on Sept 17, 2013 3:10:06 GMT -5
Wouldn't surprise me if it came in
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Post by Julian Sharps on Sept 17, 2013 20:01:41 GMT -5
Today brought an unexpected success to my Kerbal Space Program. After seeing Scott Manley's design for the Orange Effeciency Reddit challenge (the idea was that you had to build a stock-only probe that could be launched from Kerbin, do a Munar flyby, and safely return to Kerbin using only a single Rockomax Jumbo tank (the orange one) for fuel storage, no RCS or ion engines allowed. Mr. Manley one-upped it five times by instead going to Duna, landing on Duna, going to Ike, landing on Ike, and safely returning to Kerbin using a stock-only manned spacecraft that only used that orange tank), I was inspired to modify the design so that I could have a better surface-to-orbit tanker.
After more attempts than I care to count, I succeeded in getting one of these things into orbit, going through the entire orange tank and half of my monoprop in the process. I then went on to successfully dock with my CTV, transferred all of my monoprop over to it, and separated. I'm now in the process of continuing my CTV's mission to finally dock at Kerman Station, drop off the Kerbals inside, refuel from the station's monoprop reserves, and go attempt another rescue mission.
This reminds me that I need to get refueling missions up to both Kerman Station and Gusble Station. Especially Gusble Station, since it needs to get out to Munar orbit so I can start mining that sweet, sweet kethane.
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Post by Julian Sharps on Sept 18, 2013 21:13:02 GMT -5
And, another victory for all kerbalkind! Pulled off a really tricky docking with Kerman Station (the CTV ran out of monoprop during docking, so I had to send the station over to dock with the transfer vehicle), got a successful refueling mission up to Kerman Station, and sent the CTV (unmanned this time) to rescue Bill, Jebediah, and one other generic kerbal who have been stranded in orbit for almost two months now (I'm surprised they haven't started eating each other yet, since they must have run out of snacks ages ago). The CTV's stranded once again, so I'm in the process of sending up another refueling tanker.
I also plan to get another refueling tanker up to Gusble Station, to prepare for its trip to the Mun. All in all, a productive day.
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Post by Julian Sharps on Sept 25, 2013 13:51:31 GMT -5
Well, I think I'm getting better at docking. I got my CTV refueled with some liquid fuel to spare in the tanker, which made the rendezvous with Jeb's stranded ship much easier, I got all three of them into the CTV without problems, and I made a successful rendezvous with Kerman Station, giving them all a chance to stretch their little legs for the first time in months.
At the same time, I sent up some more kerbals in a second Mun lander that's going to act as temporary housing for the kethane mining crew, at least until I can get my trailer-based Munbase operational. The spacecraft that towed it out there is going to be my temporary Kerbin-Mun space tug, at least until I can be bothered to build a better one.
Afterward, I sent the tug to rendezvous with Kerman Station, and I put Jeb and a couple other kerbals into the CTV, and sent them on their way to Gusble Station. I have about half of an orange tank full of liquid fuel/oxidizer, and I'm still debating whether that's enough fuel to get the station out to the Mun. It probably is.
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Post by Trooper One-Nine-Seven-Four on Sept 25, 2013 18:18:40 GMT -5
I would like to request that people take screenshots of their epic achievements during the game, and post them to the thread so I can partake in the visual glory, please, since I don't have time to play right now.
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