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[nogoodnames]

I went back and tried a Venera landing again with a redesigned spacecraft. This time I went for the night side in case that actually makes a difference. A slightly too-powerful decoupler ended up putting me at an extremely steep entry angle but the new procedural heat shield managed to hold where the stock-based version had failed. Despite topping out at a crushing 52 Gs of acceleration the lander survived mostly intact, save some scientific instruments. Unfortunately the relay orbiter passed into Venus' shadow during my descent so I couldn't get any atmospheric data going down. Probably should have planned that better.

The landing itself was a bit rough, coming in at 20 m/s, but it only destroyed the heat shield. It should have been a lot slower but the stabilizer I had made out of procedural wings had randomly exploded way back in Earth orbit. Without it the craft listed from side to side and didn't get nearly as much drag.

All in all, it was a pretty successful mission. I just wish I had the visual enhancements, Venus without clouds is just wrong.

[BFEL]

Venus without horrible ship eating acid atmosphere is just wrong.

FTFY

[RedKing]

Kind of hit a science plateau where I didn't have the tech to go places to get big chunks of science needed to get the tech to go places to get big chunks of science to....you get the idea.


So I designed a basic temp/barometer probe with a NERVA engine, a big fuel tank and a lifter stage. Gets into Kerbin orbit with about 6500 km/s delta-V leftover. So I started launching craploads of them and shooting them at every body in range.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Have to wait quite a while but that's a pretty cheap investment (~57,000 Kerbucks) for some nice juicy science. Even managed to land one on Ike after doing both a Duna/Ike flyby.

[forsaken1111]

Kind of hit a science plateau where I didn't have the tech to go places to get big chunks of science needed to get the tech to go places to get big chunks of science to....you get the idea.

A duna flyby isn't much more delta-v than a mun flyby, and you could send home a good chunk of science. May be worth a shot

[RedKing]

Kind of hit a science plateau where I didn't have the tech to go places to get big chunks of science needed to get the tech to go places to get big chunks of science to....you get the idea.

A duna flyby isn't much more delta-v than a mun flyby, and you could send home a good chunk of science. May be worth a shot

See last sentence of my post. I've already done a Duna fly-by (was the second probe to get to its target, after the Moho flyby). It even dipped down into the upper atmosphere to get yet more science. Sadly, it tipped over after landing on Ike, or else I'd have lifted off again and tried a landing on Duna.

[forsaken1111]

Whoops, I missed that.

Selective reading and all that, sorry.

[Aseaheru]

Did you do the tour of the KSC yet?

[BFEL]

Could also throw up a basic station with the science lab on it and grind science that way.

[Sheb]

So you're pretty much where NASA is RedKing?

[BFEL]

So you're pretty much where NASA is RedKing?

No no, RedKing has no science, NASA has no money. RedKing is doing much better then NASA!

[nogoodnames]

I love how the merge feature lets you compare your various rockets against each other. I used it with Kronal Vessel Viewer to put together this scale image:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It has all the rockets I've used for the Soviet side of my historic missions RSS campaign, bar a couple minor variants. They're not replicas except in a very loose sense, but looking at the progression of design like this gives them a really neat historic feel.

[BFEL]

So am I the only one who noticed the absolute saturation of ISRU stuff recently?

I mean, used to be Kethane was the only thing that did that, then Interstellar did its own and I never touched Kethane again, but THEN Stock got its own ISRU system.
And then theres the stuff that builds off Kethane like Extraplanetary Launchpads and Umbra Colonization Crap.

Current build should be called "ISR U2?"


In other news I'm sorta planning my next modlist in my head. Abandoning Umbra stuff for now, both because it doesn't want to play nice with TAC life support despite being designed to do so, and because all the fun stuff in it has dependencies upon dependencies that all go back to Kethane which is "bunch of parts I won't touch the whole game" so its just a waste of space at that point.

So first off, my ESSENTIALS:
Interstellar Expanded- also requires tweakscale but I can't imagine KSP without Interstellar at this point so fuck it.
TAC Life Support- FOR MUH IMMERSION
KIS/KAS- So astronauts can do astronaut things and Munar Whaling can commence.
Kerbal Construction Time- Because waiting for shit makes it extra special
Biomass- Because TAC doesn't let you grow food, and the extra experiments are cool and make sense to be experiments

And now for the stuff I plan to add, most of which I have never used before:
Kerbal Engineer- REALLY shoulda been using this before, but wasn't, will probably become an ESSENTIAL after this.
Kerbal Alarm Clock- See above
ScanSat- Because satellites should actually satellite instead of just being space trash.
Asteroid Day- SQUAD made it and it looks awesome
Outer Planets Mod- PLANERTS??! PLANERTS!!!
Kopernicus- required by Outer Planets
BDArmory- Shooting things in space with other things in space.

Just so its not suggested, stuff I WONT add:
Umbrastuff- already noted why
RemoteTech- want it, but it apparently has lots of problems, so unfortunately have to give it a pass
"Beautification" mods- its plenty pretty already and they just clutter shit
B9- HAHAHAHA oh god its impossible to install and most of what it adds has already been added by something else

Things I'm looking for/wondering:
I heard there was something that added BDArmory contracts and spawned vehicles to murderize. Not sure if in BDArmory or if have to add something else.
Way to disable the apparent Outer Planets change to the RTGs so they stay infinite.
Any suggestions not in the Won't Add List.

[BFEL]

About your concerns with RemoteTech, I have yet to see any real issues with it. It hasn't actually malfunctioned for me in the past, and it seems to be rather high up on the download rate list.

Well, remember Scott Manley's Interstellar Quest? It worked for about 10 episodes and then spent the rest of the series uninstalled.

[nogoodnames]

I heard there was something that added BDArmory contracts and spawned vehicles to murderize. Not sure if in BDArmory or if have to add something else.

Yeah, it's one of the contract configurator packs. I tried it once, but most of the vehicles ended up spawning upside down. It may have been a conflict with another mod but I've also had a lot of problems with contract configurator itself.

Also, Re. Remote Tech, I've been using it for a long time and it's never had any major problems. The only issue it gave me was in my most recent game where it didn't apply the time delay correctly so probes still had realtime control for some things. That was using it with Realism Overhaul so there was probably just a conflict somewhere.

Speaking of RO and contract configurator, the latter has finally made my game using the former too unplayable to continue. I had wanted to get to the Apollo program historic missions, but the American space program completely stalled after completing the surveyor missions and now the game freezes if I try to cycle the contracts. It's a shame to lose the save, but now I can update and move on to a manned Mars mission (hopefully without losing motivation halfway through planning this time.) Maybe I can salvage the save and convert it to sandbox.

[MarcAFK]

I modded too high, and burnt myself out.