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[GreatWyrmGold]

Looks pretty terrestrial to me.

Shut up. I tried to add some of the more alien-looking parts and moving the ship between saves, but that just screwed things up, so I had to work with what we've unlocked.
It's the best I could do.

[tahujdt]

Scientist: So, let me get this  straight. You found an 'alien artifact' on Minmus.
Bob: Yep.
Scientist: An artifact that was somehow broadcasting on a KSP frequency.
Bob: Uh-huh.
Scientist: and antennae that look just like ours, with what look like file scratches where we would put the letters 'KSP'.
Bob: Yep.

[BigD145]

It's probably some college pranksters backyard launch.

[MaximumZero]

Please tell me that, at some point, you played "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)".

[GreatWyrmGold]

Scientist: So, let me get this  straight. You found an 'alien artifact' on Minmus.
Bob: Yep.
Scientist: An artifact that was somehow broadcasting on a KSP frequency.
Bob: Uh-huh.
Scientist: and antennae that look just like ours, with what look like file scratches where we would put the letters 'KSP'.
Bob: Yep.

Oh come on, be reasonable. At least I'm not having alien computers use the same OS as Bob's Macbook.
Besides, there's a lot of alien stuff you can't see from the outside. Exhibit A: Where is it getting power to transmit stuff from?

Please tell me that, at some point, you played "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)".

I didn't think to. Besides, I didn't even walk 18.6 miles.

[Aseaheru]

Scientist: An artifact that was somehow broadcasting on a KSP frequency.

Who said it was on a KSP frequency?

[GreatWyrmGold]

To start, Bob is tired and wants to examine the probe more. A couple of engineers came up with a plan to solve this issue: Build a space car to take him to the spacecraft!
After explaining what a "car" is, they got to work designing one.


_{It's an omni-directional space car! Perfect for when you don't know what direction you'll be going in next!}

That little thing has 3,880 m/s of Δv. On its own, it could (theoretically) get from LKO to Minmus and still have most of its fuel left! Hopefully, that won't be needed. We have a to-Minmus stage, a little rocket with 1,650 m/s (under ideal conditions, 1,240 is needed to reach Minmus from LKO), and four liquid boosters for 2,811 m/s, and finally eight triple boosters (Rockomax BACC boosters with two Globe I SRBs attached) for 1,899 m/s. We'll need to dip into the Minmus stage for orbital insertion, and into the car itself to land, but eh.

After kicking Jeb out of the car, we're ready to rock and roll. Wait, didn't Jeb die in a plane crash?
...
Well, he apparently survived. Huh.

Ahem. Space car launch.


_{Just feel the power of an absurd number of rockets.}

The solid boosters run out around 10,000 meters, which is pretty good timing in my opinion. We're going 340 m/s at that point, so we wait and reorient ourself (once we're free of the booster ring).


_{Quick pic.}

We begin boosting to orbit.


_{It's smaller, but it still works.}

I push the apoapsis to 75 kilometers and coast into space. Once there, I burn off the rest of my booster fuel and prepare for orbital insertion.


_{Stop floating away so fast, I JUST WANNA TAKE YOUR PICTURE!}

I get in a roughly circular (112/121 km) orbit. Now to do a plane correction...


<sub>I wonder how much like real NASA this is.

And this.</sub>

...then a burn to get closer to Minmus...


<sub>Maneuver nodes are a pain. I've seen Scott Manley use some sort of maneuver node editor that lets you adjust the raw numbers; I wonder where I could get that...

Well. Better get settled.

Not as magestic as the boosters, but it gets the job done.</sub>

It takes me a moment to notice that the SASS didn't have me pointing in the right direction. D'oh. Thankfully, the gimbal helps the turn.
Well, we have something to fix up here.


_{Wow. I'm...um...wow.}

Next, fiddling with a maneuver node.


_{That was pleasantly fast.}

Excellent.


<sub>Ah, space car, flying through space.

We're almost to Minmus. I can see it.

Almost can't see the Mun. Kerbin's still there, though.</sub>

We've entered Minmal influence. Now we need to get into orbit.


_{Pretty circular, too.}

This maneuver requires 294 m/s of Δv, but the rocket's only got 247 left. We'll be dipping into the car's fuel to get into orbit, then land. Still, it has almost four km/s in it--Δv won't be the problem, my skill with landing will be.
I empty the rocket and...


_...Huh.

It seems that rocket had more juice in it than MechJeb predicted.
Of course, I screw up when I eject the rocket and realize I forgot to turn off the throttle. Now I'm on an escape trajectory. I spin the ship around, and...


_{Well, I was landing anyways.}

Either Minmus is really easy to screw around in your orbit with, or I have a very powerful little rocket-car.
It'll take about a day to reach the surface-ish, so...quicksave time, then time-accelerate time.

19 kilometers above the surface, I attempt to stop my horizontal speed. This fails, but I do reduce it from over a hundred meters per second to only 11.8. A while later, I begin working on killing my vertical velocity. About 4,500 meters from the surface, I slant a bit to reduce both velocities. I manage to get my horizontal (briefly) under half a meter per second before bringing it up to almost two, and I start going up. After going up hundreds of meters, I begin falling again.
3,000 meters above the surface, I manage to bring my lateral velocity down to under 40 cm/s! Then it started going up. Weird. I also killed a lot of falling. I do the same a kilometer later. Then, a kilometer later, same thing. I don't kill all my vertical velocity, just a lot of it--enough that I don't fall too fast and need to bleed off my speed at just the right time or explode.
800 meters and falling. I see my shadow!


_{Well, there's no one in the car to see it, but...eh.}

Killed vertical velocity at 500 meters. Same at 300 meters, then 150, then 70. Boy, was that hair-raising. I planned to do it at 50, but panicked a bit. I waited until 30, but lifted off a bit. I kept doing little slow-down burns the whole way down, and hit the ground at a few meters per second. And the music hit a crescendo! Perfect!


_{The Space-Car has landed.}

That reminds me.


_{Is this important? Not at all, and yet it is vital.}

Now to drive it. I tip it over, and of course it starts rolling. So I activate the brakes, and it slides before stopping. Good. Now, let's look for that Bob...


_{Oh, I am just the master of precision landing aren't I?}

Glad I put a probe on this thing.
Anyways, using the dinky reaction wheels up front and the big one in the middle, we turn this thing towards Bob and prepare to go.
Once we pass 50 m/s, I decide that even on minimal throttle, we don't need to keep it up the whole way. Minmus's icy surface is low-friction, the wheels lower that more, and really a rocket car on a low-gravity moon is just asking for trouble.
We bounce a lot as we coast. We turn some, too. Glad I put wheels on all four sides.
Once we cross the crest of the hill, we're flying more than rolling.


_{I bet I could take off into orbit with this thing.}

The bounce I took a picture of took it 43 meters into the air. 43 meters! The longer this goes on, the longer I worry that I'm going to end up running off a cliff or something and crashing. The more I think about it, the more attractive a suborbital flight sounds. So, once I land from that, I turn off the brakes and prepare to fly once more.
We keep bouncing for a while, though. This might not be such a problem, but we're going increasingly off-course. Eventually, I decide to just go for it...and I do. I take off, get an apoapsis above 5,000 meters, and try to quicksave. It seems I'm about to crash.
After trying to set up a maneuver node that gets me close without crashing, I give up and set it up on an orbital trajectory...


_{Better get to maneuvering.}

...then an alteration as we start to fly nearby.


_{Not bad. Not bad at all.}

I seem to have hit / and done something, but guess what? There's a lot of /'s on the Key Bindings page of the wiki. And after scrolling through twice, I'm still not sure what I've done. I couldn't non-physical time warp for a bit, but now I can. Why must everything be so confusing when I stress about it? Why can't I stress over anything simple?
That was a rhetorical question.

As I approach the burn place, I spy Bob Kerman popping up on the UI, 30 kilometers out.
Now, to land. Without screwing up my landing site too much.
At night.


_{Stupid Sun. Why are you not on the right side of the thing?}

There are some weird pausey moments as we get closer to Bob and the alien probe.
As we start getting close, I turn off the SASS, turn on the SAS, and start slowing down for a landing. Dammit, why do I always forget to save until I'm "about to crash"?
Funny thing: I land while still trying to figure out if I should be reducing my velocity more. Damn, I make a good rocket-car.


_{Did something break, or is this durable enough to hold up?}

We point towards Bob, spend some fuel, and go. A bit slower this time, starting just under 40 m/s. Bob's just under four kilometers out, so it'll probably take a couple minutes to get there. Especially given how much we fly.
The game really freezes up once we get within 2.3 or 2.2 kilometers. Stupid loading stuff. Well, that should be the last of it, right?
A kilometer out, and we're still going 36 m/s. A hundred meters out, I try to apply the brakes. Seventy meters out, I succeed. 94.5 meters out, the game freezes, and again at 188.1. A few hundred meters later, I take advantage of a flight to turn around. I use a little rocket fuel to try and turn this car around, and succeed. Great, now we're going roughly towards Bob at 50 m/s. I literally fly past him. I spin around again, and end up going up to 80 meters above the ground. Okay, I suck at parking this thing. Coasting along at only several meters per second, I point towards Bob. I remember to turn off the brakes just before we go below 2 m/s. Speed slowly drops, I think because I'm going uphill. When we get to 300 meters away, we're going 0.35 m/s, so I turn on the brakes and switch to Bob. We begin heading back.


_{Night is pretty here.}

Bob walks over there, and having spent days here on Minmus, mostly napping by the alien probe, waiting for the car, and discovers...


_{"We did not plan for this eventuality!"
"Why did you not plan for me needing to enter the vehicle?"}

We could try tilting it, except...the battery died. It was solar-powered. The car needs a driver now.
Time to jump in. With no EVA assistance.


_{"I cannot adjust my vertical trajectory mid-flight!"}

I try getting a walking start.


<sub>"Theory number two..."

"...disproved..."</sub>

I'll figure something out tomorrow. Right now, I need to take care of miscellaneous biological functions. Four hours of flying and such is long enough.

[BigD145]

The mod is probably PreciseNodes. It doesn't play nice with some other mods. I forget which.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Obviously, it's possible to jump right on top of the rocket car, EVA fuel or no. I've jumped too little and too much from the same spot. I just need to find somewhere in the middle.

I quickly determine that jumps are too uneven in length. So, instead of trying to jump onto the command pod directly, I settle for jumping onto the craft.


_{My master plan in action!}

I lined it up wrong AND overshot it, so two mistakes for the price of one. The second try was lined up better, but I still overshot. The third time...


_{Spinning! Surely this is a good thing?}

...he almost hits the engine. Back up some, and...I overshoot. One more try...


_YES!

Now, for the next (and one of the last) stage of our journey...


_{I considered just flying the rocket car home, but A. it's more useful here, and B. most of the science is in the other rocket.}

I try to turn, then remember: No electricity, no reaction wheels. Dammit. All I'll have is gimbal until I can get into the sun. Better just launch then. Right after I save.


_{That'll be...more than enough...}

I wonder if I'll be able to refuel this later...say, does adding the kethane mod into an existing game do anything funny?


<sub>Maneuver nodes don't make the world go 'round, but they're pretty darn useful when you try to go around the world.

Can't forget the pretty pictures.</sub>

Oh, did I mention that the jump gave our solar panels a boost? 'Cause it did. We're at full power again, baby!
I manage the burn rather well. No shifting up and down after the initial boost, no worrying, just shift, x, and I'm basically there.


_{And here I had half-convinced myself it would make it.}

Well, i always said it was just a what-if thing. I never intended to keep the results of that. Reload time.

I reduce horizontal velocity to just under 50 m/s. I know it can handle that kind of speed, repeatedly, from experience. Now I just need to avoid...you know...vertical splattitude. I reconsider when I see my horizontal speed climbing (really, why does it do that?); I shouldn't take chances.

Meanwhile, Bob seems to be okay.


_{Either that or he's suffering from oxygen deprivation. No way to tell.}

((...Okay, that was just an excuse to share that expression. It was just so...amusing.))

I work on reducing lateral velocity and vertical ("splatting") velocity. I'm pretty sure I've done pretty well.

And I did. It was a bit nerve-wracking, but I managed to successfully land! Sure, there was some tumbling...


_{Like a ballet on Minmus.}

...but the whole thing stood up well, even when it landed on the Stayputnik.


_{A preply to "Pics or it didn't happen". It's a frikkin' top.}

It's tough enough to spin around like a toperina and has enough torque to stand up at an angle if I want it to (or hit the t key while trying to kill the spin). Moreover, despite fuel-wasting screwups, come the end of the mission I still have almost over ¹/₃ of my fuel--enough to fly home, if I wanted. If anyone ever denies that I overengineer things, this car proves them wrong.
And a good thing, otherwise I would have plowed into the Minmal surface at orbital velocities, not been able to turn the radially symmetrical thing towards the base, and/or busted it doing so.

We glide at about 14 m/s, dropping because we always end up driving uphill, rising when I give it a boost. Naturally, the game gets funny a few times for a few seconds once we get within 2.2 kilometers, which must be KSP's "draw distance". Assuming you only count sub-lunar objects, of course. Hell if I know how far away KSP draws those.

I decided to mess around a little.


_{"It's...um...intentional!"}

Soon enough, we get there.


_{Almost home, little Bobby.}

Steering's kinda fun, as was judging distance in the time between when the markers vanished and when I remembered I could just hover over the thingies with my mouse. Not that it's perfect, I discovered...


_{"Mechanobraking maneuver!"
"You crashed."
"...Cut me some slack, Ground Control, I've been up here way longer than intended."}

I tried taking a nice screenshot of everything while it was all clustered, but tried doing so with Steam, which didn't work, so I tried to go to the steam community, which is Shift-Tab, and...well...that disrupted things. Still, I got the shot.
I probably won't be Steamshotting too much. It's too complex, and I evidently have a limited amount of space.


_{Anyways. Here's Bob, ready to leave, and me, checking Δv.}

I burn as I tumble upright, and achieve escape.


_{Did I word my request too vaguely?}

...Not what I had in mind. Well, once I escape Minmal influence, I can just burn retrograde and why am I not turning?


_{What happened to my--oh, right. I broke those, didn't I?}

Thankfully, I have thrust vectoring, which quickly points me the right way. And then, I just thrust until I've got basically a straight-line descent. Amusingly, I get a brief Minmal encounter.


_{"...Alright, I'll visit once more, but that's it!}

MechJeb suggests it'll be a couple days before landing, which will make Bob's round-trip be just over three weeks.


_{"Bob, in an hour you'll be welcomed back home."
"You know the first thing I'm going to be doing when I get back? After I recuperate, at least?"
"What?"
"I'm going to get to work on those samples, and on the analysis of what I could glean from that probe..."}

The rocket still has over 60% fuel, so I don't want to leave it behind, but...eh. What the hell. This sentiment quickly turned to "What the hell?!?" when it briefly froze my game.


_{That's right, you'd BETTER float away at a sedate pace!}

Well, Bob's in a tin can heading straight for Kerbin, already past 1.2 km/s, damn near straight down, accelerating at 0.2 m/s²; time to relax. And time-warp, of course.


_{I forgot to take more pictures of Kerbin on the way down...ah well.}

It's kinda surprising how fast we fall. 26 kilometers above sea level, and evidently the acceleration from that last partial hour of falling exceeded the air resistance so much that we're moving well over three kilometers per second! And look at this!


_{Mach effects!}

Man, I will never get used to aerobraking from near-interplanetary space. Well, probably; this was only my second time. I'll give it this: There's not much time wasted waiting for landing!

Let's see what we've got from that mission.



_{...Okay, yes, the image editing sucks, but between my effort (unsuccessfully) trying to put a cool craft on Minmus and that neat rocket-car, I feel I deserve a little compensation!}

Anyways. With that much new science, it simply wouldn't do to leave it unspent! But first, we need to pay off that Fuel Systems rain check. We don't want a repeat of that embarrassing little incident, so let's double-check our math when suggesting what to research next, natch?

Well, let's see what we've got, as far as research options go.


_{Man, if we don't clear out the lower areas of the tech tree, we're gonna need a bigger screenshot.}

Again, the tech choices (this time using the list function of the forum, which is the first time I've done so):

• Advanced Construction (90 Science): 2.5-meter tanks and adaptors, plus some other neat little toys. One of two remaining on its rung.
• Advanced Exploration (160 Science): Barometer; Extendable ladders.
• Advanced Flight Control (90 Science): The Mark Two cockpit (which has a spot on the front for something), the Probodobodyne OKTO (which has flats spots on each edge to put stuff on), and a new winglet and reaction wheel. One of two remaining on its rung.
• Advanced Landing (160 Science): Heavier landing legs, "Drogue Chute" (which would probably be more useful if we had Deadly Re-entry).
• Advanced Rocketry (45 Science): Longer fuel tanks, radial engines, and a couple power upgrades to what we already have. This will nicely clean up that corner of the tech tree. Prerequisite to some neat-looking stuff.
• Electronics (300 Science): A few experiments, a new antenna, and some "cryostats" for storing various stuff that I'm not sure what to do with. Interstellar stuff, probably.
• Large Electrics (300 Science): A large stackable battery, Gigantor solar panels, and--ooh, Interstellar parts! Specifically, various thermal generators (which we need a source of heat for) and heat radiators.
• Precision Engineering (160 Science): Small radial engines, one small inline engine, small fuel tanks, small decoupler.
• Supersonic Flight (160 Science): Bigger airplane parts and new air intakes.

There are also a few unavailable technologies visible. We need more prerequisites before we get them.

Now for your regularly scheduled unsolicited advice for what to order our R&D team to do.
Jebediah notes that Advanced Construction and Advanced Rocketry would let us build bigger, more powerful rockets. Bill, having watched Meleny and Bob's aerobraking, requests Advanced Landing; he notes that the heavier landing legs would also let us conserve fuel by hitting the ground a little harder (he stresses the little bit). Bob demands that we look into Electronics for all the Science it offers. Archibald suggests Precision Engineering and Supersonic Flight, the former for elegance and the latter to become the masters of our own domain. Meleny notes that the IR Telescope that comes with the Electronics package sound like they would let us look farther than ever before, maybe even seeing other words.
Director GreatWyrmGold notes a desire to clean out the lower rungs of the tech tree, although he admits that Advanced Flight control could wait. He agrees with Bob's sentiments on Electronics, and also notes that longer-term missions (let alone space stations!) will probably want more power and some heat radiation capability; hence, he urges us to consider Large Electrics.

Remember, we have 723 Science. Our research budget must be less than this.

[BigD145]

I would vote for everything in line with the first wheel, all the way up the tree, and to the left. Just get all the early and cheap stuff. If there is still more left over then look at thermoelectric generators and/or the very top branch with big fuel and engines.

[BFEL]

My suggestion goes to Advanced Rocketry first off.
Also, what path is mechjeb on? I don't know what you need to research to unlock its higher functions. Probably Advanced Flight Control. Which I suggest for the later mechjebs (unless they are somewhere else) and also for that sweet ass cockpit.

Seriously, the Mk2 is awesome.

[BigD145]

Mechjeb unlocks are all along the probe body unlocks.

[GiglameshDespair]

Advanced flight control
Advanced rocketry
Large electronics

And whatever others you want.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Alright. Everyone seems to want Advanced Rocketry, so we'll start with that.
Also requested are Advanced Flight Control and Advanced Construction, and implicitly the new technology of Heavy Rocketry. We finish the stuff off with "Large Electronics," which doesn't exist, so I go for Large Electrics instead. At this point, we have 108 Science, not enough to unlock much.

Heavy Rocketry was unlocked, giving us a couple new fuel tanks and a couple new engines. Currently unlocked techs:

Spoiler: Brochures (click to show/hide)

_{Hey, Electronics comes with complementary cupcakes!}

Anyways, Bob's Rocket Car inspires a new product people are demanding: Rocket cars! Sure, they're a little less effective on Kerbin, but who cares? Not the customers!
We lose the initial market to various entrepreneurs, but now that they're reeling from regulatory shock, we can release the next model, a hybrid of Rocketcar and airplane!


_{"The Model K: A Rocket Car for the next generation. The Model K combines the best features of airplanes and rocket cars, producing a safer, smoother ride. Buy now and you'll be able to get the Meleny Model, with fancy control surfaces!"}

A bit over ten tons and with just over 2900 m/s of ideal Δv (est. ~2230 in atmosphere), it can't reach orbit, but it probably can go far. Meleny Kerman, our star, prepares to give it a test-flight.
Sadly, it has trouble taking off.


_{Eh, I've seen worse.}

While taking the screenshot, it spontaneously took off! Sadly, I didn't manage to get a screenshot before it landed (sorry, but I can tell you that it was missing the left wing and soaring maybe a couple dozen meters off the ground!
...Yeah, it crashed into the VAB. We're going to try something...else.


_{"The Model K: No, It's Always Looked Like This."}

Under 8.5 tons and with two stronger engines, the new Model K is more promising. It flies well, but...


_{Um. I shouldn't have turned.}

...not great. It didn't really take off, and turning made it tumble. We add more winglets, hoping this will add control.


_{"The Model K: Needs to stop releasing advertising before they've made sure this stupid rocket-car is safe!"}

I fly it, take off, and discover that my throttle's being reduced! Opening the MechJeb tab reveals a bunch of new things, including "Limit to terminal velocity". Well, that's one less thing to worry about! I start checking out the new options, but the Model K runs our of fuel in its ascent and begins slowing. It reaches a maximum height of just over 10,400 meters, before falling.
A design flaw is noted: No matter hat we do, the nose remains pointed more or less directly at the ground as we fall, up until we open the parachutes at 1,000 meters. We manage to swing it around the other way, but it's not comfortable-looking. Next version needs a way to deal with this, and ideally separate Landing Gear and Takeoff Gear buttons. More fuel might be nice--look how far we got!


_{Eh. How far are people gonna try and fly these things, anyways?}

More "practically," we prepare another mission. We decide to set up a little research base on Minmus, then return. Lovely little plan.


_{The first design of the SpaceLab, which remained largely unchanged.}

The full rocket is pretty big. At 146.5 tons, it's one of the biggest rockets we've launched.


_{Some say it's a work of art. Others say it needs some LSEs and struts.}

We will launch this tomorrow, if none have objections. EDIT: I just realized that, if we want to be able to use it for much, we'll need to add a docking port somewhere. So, I'll need to redesign it first. Dag nabit!

[Aseaheru]

Next we need ladders. All the ladders.