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[Rabid_Cog]

Those Giganto solar arrays are going to have some difficulty in turning themselves. The angle they are at means they will intersect your ship.

[BigD145]

The easiest way to visualize gigantors is to pivot them in vab. You get a sense for their full rotation.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Quick note: For the rest of the week, updates may be reduced in length. Hopefully, I'll still be able to do all I want to.
Which is one daily.

I just realized we have no docking ports. This will negatively affect our ability to dock, and hence use, our lab.

So, what will we do instead? We'll send another mission to Minmus, of course! But this time...we'll make the rocket and the rocket car the same thing!

Well, I redesign the thing after a first imagining, which had a big complex return pod and a front-heavy, back-wheeled car. I didn't get much past that before deciding that there was A Better Way.

It involves a lot of fuel (over 3.3 km/s), plus a couple materials bays, mysterious goo containers, and such. It's on top of a smallish rocket.


_{The next version may involve 100% recoverability. It would be neat to do that.}

After the failure of our line of civilian rocket-cars to take off, or of them to not explode once they did, Meleny is trying to re-introduce confidence in our brand of rockets.
We're spinning at first; we need more reaction wheels on the next version. We're also starting to tilt. We may need to abort and introduce the new version now. Also, a stronger engine--initial TWR after dropping the solid boosters is 0.75, which I suspect means we will not go to space today.

So. Redesign of the launch stage:


_{Eight Wildcats, then a Poodle...either a pretty big rocket or the weirdest pet shop ever.}

And then I added a reaction wheel to the car, and we're ready to go.
The Mark Ib, or the "Ib," is going to Minmus, baby. With Jeb flying it, because he needs to get away from base for a while. At the request of Ground Control.

Takeoff is swift and straight. The gravity turn is a bit clumsy (partly my fault, but this does maneuver...poorly...technically also my fault), but I'm basically turned by the time I eject the boosters. Good news: This makes the ship a lot easier to turn! Bad news: I didn't actually get a significantly stronger engine. Time to make the Ic, I guess.

KW's Maverick, despite being smaller, has higher thrust. Man, whoever made the Poodle is not a good rocket scientist.
After the gravity turn, I adjust this estimate, because the rocket seems to have no gimbal, making the rocket...difficult to control.
All seems lost...then, I realize that the radial engines have great gimbal, and six would provide more than enough thrust! So, putting some of those on the fuel tank, and reducing boosters to let them fit...add more fuel to compensate for lower isp...


_{The Mark Id should be good.}

Takeoff is slower. Eh.
The gravity turn is horrible. The Mark II is getting some cheap, disposable reaction wheels or something!
Half of the radial engines get knocked off. Not symmetrically, either.


_{Those lazy seperatrons were supposed to prevent this!}

Silver lining:


_Yay!

...Maybe I should take a break for the day. Especially since I probably don't have enough time to launch again.

[BigD145]

You may want to reboot-ish for .23.5. Perhaps just unlock things up to where you are now. Asteroids show in new game.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I hear save files will be gone.

When it updates (doesn't Steam do that automatically?), I'll start over.

[BigD145]

You'll still have save files. They'll just be incompatible with asteroids. Asteroids won't show up. You may or may not have a useless research center.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Alright. I think I'll wait for other opinions before deleting the universe, though.

[BFEL]

Yeah, personally I'm just gonna wait till .24

Should be somewhere around the corner.
And it should mean I don't need Mission Controller, so it will take away some of my mod lag.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'm not sure if I should start over. That is my official reason for not updating tonight.

[BigD145]

0.23.5 runs better. It's more optimized. Joints are better. It's more than just ARM, it's bug fixes. Apparently the version pushed to Steam was problematic but it was fixed. Save should be compatible.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Good, because it auto-updates.

[GiglameshDespair]

start over, get dem space rocks

[Aseaheru]

SPAAACE ROCKS

[WillowLuman]

Don't start over, just update and copy the save file. I tried it with my career save, it works fine.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I already have the new version, thanks to Steam. And the consensus seems to be asteroids above continuity. Ah well.

The Kerbal Space Center is open and ready for business! We can't wait to begin. Unfortunately, our rocketry options are...limited.
I perform a few quick, boring missions to get the first few tiers cleared out.


_{Clearly, the screwing around on the launchpad, sending a pod into the ocean, and messing around on the runway was vital to the early stages of our program!}

The next step involves seeing how good of skids you can make from landing legs.


_{Ah, the kinds of improvisations we make at low tech levels...}

The Goo Skier is skied down the runway.


_Yes!

A bit of attempted driving determines that I need at least 50% throttle to overcome friction, and that turning is hard. Oh, and it handles slopes...


_{The first unintended explosion of the space program! We should put this on the fridge.}

...poorly. And we're still on the runway, as far as the game is concerned. Well, let's modify the design.


_{We're thinking of making it a stamp.}

The new version has fins, hopefully stopping it from rolling over explosively, and a rocket with more thrust vectoring. It's also stronger, so only three ticks are needed to move forward. I turn a bit (much easier, especially holding both q and a), turn off my engine before going over the edge, and...


_{I've never felt so proud of doing something so stupid!}

As far as the crew report and goo are concerned, this is close enough, but the EVA stuff disagrees. Well, just need to drive it a bit...um...


_{Not ideal planning.}

I'm struck by inspiration. Could we turn the thing around in the hangar?


_{Man, I'm getting a lot of petty triumphs tonight.}

As we slide farther and farther from the runway, we start to bounce a bit. Let unchecked, this leads to the destruction of the entire craft save a few scattered legs. Further launches prove that we need to be careful with this.


_{Hey, no one died that time!}

I try extending the landing gear...nope, we just kinda rock around. We head forward...


_{Wait--what--I don't--}

Screw it. We're going to space.
Today.


<sub>And here's how.

And here's us doing it.</sub>

And that was way more power than we needed. We are past 10,000 meters and well past 500 m/s when the solid boosters run dry. The main rocket brings us to greater altitudes and velocities. There's still nearly a quarter-tank of fuel in that booster when we stop, apoapsis ~75 kilometers. We drop it partway through the orbital insertion burn.


<sub>Actually, my "meta-experimental burn"--I'm interested to see if it counts as having gone to orbit if the periapsis never comes above 7,000 meters.

Pretty.</sub>

And with that brief flight, which did count as orbital, we have a bit over 50 Science, enough for one of several technologies. Choices:

• Advanced Rocketry: Bigger fuel tanks and more powerful engines. 45 Science.
• Flight Control: Reaction wheels, winglets, the Stayputnik, the Mark One Cockpit, fairings, and MechJeb. 45 Science.
  
  • General Construction: Struts, LSEs, tri-couplers, and a couple variant decouplers that I sometimes have a use for. 45 Science.
  • Science Tech: Batteries (radial), the Science Junior, and a more powerful antenna. 45 Science.
  
  Jebediah likes the idea of bigger rockets and supports Advanced Rocketry. Bill notes that Flight Control would help avoid crashing, and would also let us explore the ground more easily. Bob thinks that Science Tech would be a good investment of science. Archibald (I hacked him in) notes that General Construction would allow us to easily and safely make bigger rockets with the parts we have. Meleny (ditto--sadly, I can't add an orange jumpsuit) notes that MechJeb was--hey! I could have done all sorts of stuff without MechJeb! Everything I did with it, in fact! It only makes things quicker and more efficient!
  Director GreatWyrmGold notes that the winglets and reaction wheels of Flight Control would be useful, but material experiments are vital for our furthered scientific development.