Fudge Notes

Have launched simple rockets to see how much Dv needed to do something. Never launched a rocket the exact same I planned to fly for mission (have since stopped doing this and using actual calculations for orbital maneuvers)

Radial chute test I forgot to launch with an antenna capable of atmo flight and was out of range when it came time to deploy the long-range one. Reverted and re-ran mission with additional antenna. It was just too stupid a mistake to allow. Well, I mean its allowable for one person but simulating an agency with many eyes someone would have caught that

Lawn Dart first test flight crashed out too fast to open Kirk’s chute. Re-flew with similar results but managed to save Kirk’s life. Also reflew Jermal’s first Lawn Dart mission where he crashed. Again, story trumps actuality.

ComSat III “power failure” was a result of the tweet scheduling service going AWOL for almost an entire day

ComSat service mission used NO CHEATS OR EMBELLISHMENTS. Did fly a test rocket up to 779km orbit but ultimately threw out that experiment in determining Dv needed to get up that high. Instead, used the 3400m/s normal for FAR to 80km orbit and then used a hohmann transfer plot to determine Dv needed to get up to 779km and added a bit of fudge. I actually did insert into an orbit that lined me up with a close approach just like that. BOOYAH

Orbital mission “mysterious roll” fix was me unplugging and replugging my joystick, so I called it a “flight computer reboot”

gave myself 5 science points to get 90 to research aerodynamics to get proper aircraft. It was after a day-long mission so I granted myself an achievement

Had to fly the Raker multiple times in testing to debug an issue with the landing gear tweakables I set up, but craft seemed stable from the beginning

initial Raker probe fail was due to them landing too hard, but when FAR introduced dynamic pressure destruction and I realized the first mission I dropped probes I was talking about flying way too fast to avoid damage, I changed probe failure from too fast of a descent to being damaged due to flying too fast.

Flew the ComSat Mun rocket to test pics for in-pit shots and discovered missing auto-stager devices. Prob woulda caught on final VAB inspection anyways

Failed ComSat Mun I solar panel armatures was from forgetting to install the MSI plugin, just had the parts

Failed burn controller for ComSat Mun I was a compatabliity issue with EngineModuleFX, being used by HotRockets, and RemoteTech2

after placing first Munar ComSat manually, used Hyper Edit to make a perfect orbit – that still somehow got messed up so I said screw it and let it fall back into orbit around Mun

had to boost longAntenna by twice as much range (also doubled power) to make leading/trailing Mun satellite network feasible. This was mentioned as happening, but moving forward it has been ignored and the antenna are back to their normal 2.5Mm range as I have not yet unlocked the more powerful omnis in the tech tree (Communotron32)

disabled RT2 because of its omni LoS rule got in the way of a water probe drop 45Km from KSC. Omni antenna should not be LoS for such a short distance. I later realized curvature of the planet was to blame, but then rationalized it was signal bounce off the atmosphere

Raker exploded in badlands after it did in fact bounce bad and knock a wing off, killing Kirk but he really should have been able to punch out and survive with injuries so that’s how it happened, I was just too slow to mash the abort button.

Lack of radiators on LKO & Mun ComSats (built prior to my use of KSPI) solved completely unintentionally – both can orient to produce just enough solar power while not generating waste heat. WH generated when recharging after night transition can be bled by the time sunrise comes back around. Phew!

R&D costing not all done with money – did allow myself 0c purchases for a while until making all 0c parts 1000c at the end of May

fuel/EC costing only for fuel/EC expended once initial aircraft is built. If craft has solar panels, solar recharges EC for free

asteroid that shuts down the KSC in late august was a real-game event, not just a cheap way to get more time. Class C came down on the western shore of KSC’s continent, ridden via a quicksave hack to see what would happen to it. Exploded, but found so did larger asteroids. So the “cheat” here is that I decreed it exploded, even if it prob could have made it to the surface. Furthermore, this was an asteroid that was detected by the ATN and should have been expected leading up to the event – but I forgot about it and wrote it as an unknown asteroid. I decided to keep it that way to avoid a major re-write of events leading up to the explosion.

asteroid pass photo was done on second try – couldn’t locate the asteroid prior to approach on first try. Was only able to do so on second try thanks to Distant Object Enhancement making it a tiny moving point of light despite the fact that it was coming mostly out of the sun – realistically I shouldn’t have been able to really see it until it zoomed past. So we’ll say the scientists at KSA did an awesome job calculating where to point the camera and when to take the shot

Rover was driven under Local Control although I simulated it as requiring a comm connection. I later modified it to properly require a connection to the RT2 network when I decided not to simulate computer-controlled rovers using Local Control but actually program them using kOS

Greggan’s photos for after the test run and first flight crash of the Mk1.3 I accidentally only had the default heads loaded. Fortunately Greggan’s head is black scruffy hair with stubble so I just called him “clean cut” in the photo with him facing the camera and then took a shot of him from the back for the crash photo

Both Kirk and Greggan did actually eject safely when the Mk1.3 crashed. Although Kirk actually shot straight out and tumbled along the ground a good ways, I had him descend under chute

K-SCAN was simply me not having the info I needed in front of me. I was paying too much attention to getting my velocity vector towards 80 degrees and the Apoapsis display was not in my sight when looking at the navball. I also should have launched straight north and then turned to slow my inclination rather than trying to launch straight to 80 degrees

initial trouble with control groups made me unable to use science instruments. Turns out Action Groups Extended was doing something funny and not recognizing that there were control groups assigned and removing it fixed the problem.

solar panel rotations had me playing around with movement limits until I realized I could just invert the axis

Dessan’s first mission I paused after Apogee for a ****load of calculations since I thought I was supposed to insert at target Pe (Pe speed was in notes) but really it was supposed to be target Ap. Did not like having to use pause but I did. Then after rendezvousing with the debris and attaching a probe core I realized there was no torque so I used the kerbal to stop rotation – that was pretty cool. Then I realized there was a torwue wheel but it was disabled. So I just said it was damaged. Then I swear the first probe core I attached gave me a RT2 connection but I couldn’t get it to connect after unlinking the fuel pipes so I put on the spare FASA probe = that didn’t work either. So finally I attached my launch antenna. That worked. Stuck with the torque wheel being broken

Mk1-2 drop test #3 I pulled the craft back into the VAB after dropping it when I realized I realy should be using an antenna that won’t snap off during the drop. I just couldn’t see the KSA making that kind of mistake at this point

So the second KDO mission – turns out the debris that needed de-orbiting had a 66km Pe and had I noticed this earlier I could have stayed with the debris in flight so physics would affect it and gradually bring it back down to Kerbin. However I didn’t notice it until the in-game day before the second KDO mission. After /facepalming I decided to Hyperedit it to have a slight higher Pe so that when physics is applied during the mission the debris is stable. There was just already too much written about the two de-orbital missions for the new astronauts and it worked so well into the story that I didn’t want to go back and re-write a ton of

was seriously considering killing off Lanalye when she got sick (and replacing her with Gene Kerman), but ultimately decided not to because I like her strong female character role

Suspect the IP ComSat breakup on launch was due less to the booster hit to the main engine and more with me nosing over too much. When the forward momentum from the boosters ceased the controls immediately whacked out and tried to point towards the velocity vector and the rocket flipped then broke up. The main engine hit was just easier to explain via twitter and worked better in that I had recovered the SRBs and could use them as well for evidence in what happened. I also realized I launched south off the pad which would have been over the heads of spectators!! Not very safe, so I didn’t mention doing that

I almost launched my Mk1-2 test rocket with an orbital stage that had a .47 TWR /facepalm – I’ve been so used to building 1.25m rockets that just work with the engines I normally use that I forgot when scaling up I needed more thrust, not just high ISP. I actually had to go back and rewrite some tweets and fix a composite VAB image showing the teeny orbital engine

imaging the Mun arch from orbit? total conincidence!! I knew it was on Mun but didn’t know where. Was getting a shot of east crater for landing reconnasance and there it was!

for all the rover testing missions on Kerbin, code refactoring was done in real-time. Meaning the game kept on running while I worked to fix bugs and such.. If a tweet said the rover was waiting on code updates and then got an update 20mins later – that’s how long it took me

Lupek’s 163km rove on 11/4 ended with a KSP memory crash (stupid desert biome always crashes on me) after W6 so I attributed it to a hardware failure on the rover

Mk1-2 first test was me changing chute deploy to 500m at the last minute before launch and forgetting to adjust the antenna deploy from 900m, so it ripped off. But I wrote it in as being ripped off regardless – which probably would have happened anyway since chutes didn’t have enough time to slow down the capsule at all

Flew the second IP ComSat launch 4 times, the most I have ever allowed myself to repeat a launch. Was first launch under 0.24.2 and was dealing with numerous issues, like the radial decouplers not applying proper force and the smart controllers not firing. Funny thing is 3rd time I finally got through the lift stage fuel and staged to the orbital engine the fairings were still attached and so the payload just stuck out a bit I realized after the second launch I need way more torque authority but didn’t allow myself to redesign the rocket. Made for an interesting launch when I finally got through it all!

The second failed IP ComSat launch, I tried to yaw the rocket closer to 90 degrees and it lifted my nose and spun me out.

Did some more launch testing with the second Mk1-2 test vehicle, but this time after launch since the first attempt was successful. Finally decided that the radial decouplers were too fucked up to use properly and reverted back to the old module for decoupling and then they separated wonderfully.

totally forgot the AOP was supposed to watch the second Mk1-2 test so had to write in post a tweet about maintenece issues. Which sucks because it makes it seem like I’m stringing people along regarding cool aerial launch photos

Mk1-2 test wasn’t as complete as it could have been, especially after watching the Orion test flight. Should have done the higher orbital re-entry and kept the heat shield attached for recovery.

HyperEdited a probe around Duna to see what the solar panel performance was like. 39%! Wow, did not expect that much of a fall off. Du-SCAN design should not have been finalized before doing this, but is still functional

got bored in the hiatus between the Mk1-2 recovery and next IP ComSat so declared the rover problem “fixed” so I could do another test rove. It was not fixed, because a new kOS hadn’t been released yet. But the issue was easy to pretend it was fixed. I later changed this back to being broken when the bug failed to be fixed in the next major release of kOS and I had more than two months still before the actual Mun rover mission.

spent a couple weeks ignoring days where no asteroids were supposed to be found, once I started using the multiplier. Realized this was stupid and started to honor the find-less days again at the end of Nov, then went and took all the days I ignored and populated ahead the weeks with those days where no asteroids will be found to hopefully balance things out again a little

Duna I initially failed to launch due to two issues. All testing to solve the problem was done with straight-up launches that were terminated before the 2nd stage. Still, the initial destruction did clue me in to the vehicle needing a slightly steeper ascent to have good control.

Mun I was built with v0.9.1 of TAC Life Support, and v0.10 changed some supply rates and weights. When I upgraded I found things hadn’t really affected Mun I all that bad – supplies were rather unbalanced (more food than water, etc) but for a 3-day mission it didn’t mean a whole lot. Rather than rebuild any portion of the rocket or reverting back to v0.9.1 I simply alluded to the issues with “life support problems” that were resolved the day prior to launch

Mun I was built with parts I needed to access within a cargo bay. I never tested though whether a kerbal could actually reach that far in and around to grab the parts, so before launch I actually moved them all up front closer to the doors to make sure I could get at them since this was after I had done blueprints and screenshots showing the original setup. I eventually just ended up adding a turnstyle via IR docking washers and made it a “late addition” with approval from Simon.

The decision to have the Presider present for the Mun I was made prior to flying the mission, since I wanted to be able to write it either way depending on what happened.

Mun I structural issue was due to the KM shroud bay. It wouldn’t have made the launch fail, but it did actually come close and the rocket was easy to rip apart in later tests. The real fail was me forgetting I had the main engines thrust limited to 41% from testing TWR options in the VAB.

RCS test rocket launch went totally wrong – meant to insert into a normal 100km equatorial orbit. On the launch pad, the navball looked oriented normal but on takeoff it became completely reoriented. I have no idea why. I went back and reproduced the problem and I still have no idea. But when I clicked “control from here” on the probe core before launching, the navball stayed oriented properly. So I’ll just have to remember to do that from now on. Anyways I totally stopped watching my apogee when I realized I might not make it high enough for my fairings to drop and my orbital engine would activate before the fairings dropped. But I just made it and realized my apogee was past 200km. Doh! But I burned out my lift stage since I had just a bit of fuel left and used all my orbital fuel to lift my Pe to 65km and then used RCS to get the rest of the way, which actually was fine since I had planned to use up all L/O fuel to make craft lighter and RCS more efficient. I used the flight path to create wargames to reference growing tensions across the kerblantic (was originally going to have war break out in the east before UKKR twitter account came onto the scene)

I found the reason the craft control was wonky for prev launch was due to having the probe core start as a root part and then changing it in the editor with SelectRoot.

I derped hardcore on the launch for the Docking Test Probe and was reading the altimeter in Km instead of M. I don’t even know. But it did let me write a guidance error for a conversion mistake, which is exactly what caused NASA to lose a probe going to Mars one time. So that’s pretty cool I guess, haha

Neil deWeet Kerman is an obvious reference to Neil deGrasse Tyson, as is Edlu Kerman, which was ripped from Scott Manley’s IQ series and based off astronaut Ed Lu

There are two easter eggs in the 12/18/2014 8:16:00 AM tweet – 152.420R is the published control frequency for Kennedy Space Center and 117 refers to 1/17, the day the first build of KSP was compiled

“Optimal Control for Proximity Operations and Docking” was a real published paper

Mun II launch was very unstable due to the looong fairing that was supposed to be internally strutted by Procedural Fairings but obviously not strongly enough. I later learned the payload strutting feature was not what I thought it was and an actual feature to strut payloads withing long fairings was later added to the mod

Mun II telemetry signal issues were from me not properly saving my mission states as I progressed, so when I had to go back months later to acquire data for the flight tracker I couldn’t recover everything. Hence, telemetry corruption was the excuse for not being able to update the tracker. However it also gave me something to use to play with the CCCP kerbal account (sattellite network jamming?) if that account was still active then.

Mun II landing was indeed botched by not having the craft right-side up when in final landing mode. I noted the rollover orientation of the flight computer earlier in the mission but forgot about it, detached from the transfer stage and went to pitch forward but ended up pitching back then over corrected and it all spun out from there.

In 0.25 for some reason when I went back to my Mun II mission saves Mun wasn’t rotated properly or something, my trajectory from the save no longer went over the landing site. I decided to take the signal troubles up a few notches and just declare the craft lost during descent for unknown reasons. Kind of a cop-out in terms of gathering the proper data for the flight tracker but also makes for a better story IMO

DGG-392 was actually not post-commentary. I used Mission Architect to accurately plot the behavior of the asteroid and scheduled the tweets ahead of events in the game.

The KSC trivia on the radio dishes was based off the ARO 12m Radio Telescope, and the trivia on the observatory scope was based off the Hale telescope.

The entire C7 purchase of the Aerospace Group and the New Year holiday, launch pad refurbishment (actually an idea stolen from KSP Build Time mod) and computer overhaul were to push my lead time way ahead to spend time learning how to fucking build fucking airplanes with fucking FAR. I was tired of the constant failures showcased on the twitter account, when aircraft were supposed to be something kerbals in my universe have pretty much nailed (which is why I tried to convey the Mk3 was a new-tech experimental craft as much as possible). So I took some time to design a fleet of basic aircraft that I could say came from C7. Then I can start failing again with spaceplanes, which would be a genuine new frontier for my kerbals.

Due to a FAR release bug, aerodynamic stresses were disabled for some K-130 science missions, but craft itself had already been proven stress-free at normal operating speeds and such

CCCP Kerbal agency started up this conspiracy against the KSA hoping a launch would fail, which it did. Had them run with it. Also worked out that I had already written that improper guidance code had misflown the rocket and attributed it to newly-designed recoverable SRBs not being taken properly into account. But was easy to stick in a reference to the new account’s tweets by allegating code hacking through the established Daily Kerb news outlet

HXF-644 was actually discovered in the game on 8/2/14 but not noticed by the ATN until 1/23/15. Unknown if it was a rock that previously passed through the Kerbin system, was first discovered around the time Custom Asteroid came out

legit staging issue for first K-130 science flight. And I actually checked and re-staged the craft prior to taxi, and again prior to takeoff, made note to check staging in checklist for future flights. Can’t beleive I missed that parachute!! Blargh Somehow the staging got modified between taxi and takeoff, tho I don’t know how.

did not anticipate Thanksgiving, luckily scheduled a launch the day after rather than on the holiday. Did anticipate Xmas/New Years at least

orbital telescope issue was to give me more time, things were getting hard to keep up lead

K-130 engine reverser issue was actually me slewing off the runway after reversing thrust and taking out one of the engines. Rest of plane undamaged tho so didn’t call it a crash

reverted after altering IP ComSat II’s orbit for an aerobrake to speed up orbital period. Really it was IP ComSat I that needed to do that, but also wanted to wait to hear back from Arrowstar on problems with his KSPTOT program’s aerobrake feature

created the garbled hack tweets by generating random codes and running them through a gibberish generator

I Hyperedited a probe into orbit to use for launch timings of my Minmus satellites since I couldn’t get the AN/DN from targeting Minmus itself. Now Mission Architect has a launch window calculator yey

Did a straight-up launch of the first Minmus ComSat to test that everything was still working as it should in 0.25 – auto-staging, decouplers, thrust settings, etc

CSMinI was not flown in real-time for orbital insertion. I paused the game to give myself time to figure out the burn calculations needed to get into orbit. Still managed to mess it up

Used Persistent Trails to log my mileage into orbit so that once I took over with MA I could for the first time keep an extremely accurate tally of total mileage for the space craft

Graph showing spacecraft distance to tell me when I would be out of omni range was extremely accurate – to the second. I actually figured out I would lose contact with LKO ComSats just seconds before it happened and scrambled to set up the dish, then found I was still in range of KWO-1 and ultimately IP LinkSat – did not think to even bother checking those.

example of my mathematical genius: prepping for CSMinI correction burn and think for the first time how if my burn offset includes a fraction of a second (like this one did at 1.54s) I could actually enter in the fraction to the flight computer delay so I could just command the burn on the whole second shown by the countdown timer in the game. So I set the burn delay for 10m0.54s. Thankfully in that 10 minutes I realized NO, I need to set it to xm0.46s! Then of course I almost didn’t notice after cancelling and re-sending the command I accidentally managed to type in 43m0.46s instead of 4m0.46s. Thankfully signal delay to Minmus is negligible but a mistake like that on Duna I? Whooo! Not good…

Had to time-travel to determine what my Minmus SOI change time was in advance since the game would not show me an encounter until literally 3 minutes prior to it happening. Mission Architect was no help due to an issue I discovered.

The issue with MA also affected Ike and Mun, which rendered my Mun kerbed mission plan useless and thus delayed the mission entirely. But in the end this was a good thing because I shouldn’t have planned to have the mission happen over the Duna insertion event anyways. Way too much going on at once.

the craft file I had modified and saved as Mun III still had the damn main engine thrust limit set at 41. Thankfully I made sure to check for that prior to the mission

the idea to keep moon portraits on the right and planet ones on the left fpr the flight tracker was never a concious decision, it just happened that way when I took Minmus and Duna photos and noticed and decided yea, that’s how it should be

took a few real days too in order to figure out the problem with MA, which was finally revealed to be the behavior of RSS. While not having any serious affect on my missions already underway, it will probably wreak havoc with a lot of asteroid SOI crossings.

Forgot that I had to search for new asteroids at the start of the day for save #2 but since I didn’t have to find any “misses” I just made sure that all the new ones were picked from the Undiscovered list.

some kind of weird funky symmetry or FMRS staging bug was really screwing up my K-130 science missions. Made for interesting stories though. No idea why the stages get so messed up. I check them in the SPH and everything seems good. Then when I drop the first pod, the second one doesn’t drop but the chute activates! Even though they are in separate stages!

The RSS issue also means that there really isn’t an Ike encounter that would have occurred if I had ignored DOI, but since I wasn’t going to do that anyway I left it in.

I realized for the Duna I mission any shots of the control room needed to be posted 1min later than the game time since what’s shown on the flight displays in the game is not affected by signal delay

Dropped science gains multiplier down to just 0.05. Let the long grind begin!!

lied about the cloud photo taken near the terminator by IP LinkSat. Wasn’t near the terminator but had to think of the image making sense with cloud shadows only being able to be “cast” straight underneath the clouds with current graphics engine

there was no hard drive crash wiping out the one year infographic. I did really want to make one, but too little time and graphics design talent meant I really couldn’t

assuming I had started at 9am in the game, the time when it was posted about the Mun III flight plan is how long it actually took me to re-optimize everything

I actually killed the improper thrust of Du-SCAN right away and realized that wouldn’t have been possible with signal delay so I had to reload to let the whole thrust carry out.

Had to completely rebuild Du-SCAN in the VAB and edit it into the SFS file to overcome the issue of RT’s flight computer being unable to hold a heading and just spinning the craft wildly. Was a problem after thrusters fired in the wrong orientation, I clicked Control From Here on the AEIS probe core and it started flipping out. Same issue where changing the root part in the VAB affected steering like the atmo test probe.

Year 1 tallies:
650km+ total rover distance driven (estimated from actual tracked distance of 617.1km, since there was lots of driving that was not tracked or fully reported)
45 rocket launches, 5 failures, 8 mission failures (overall 82% success rate)

really did try the Duna terminator video. Really was boring. And took up massive amounts of hard disk space – I had no room left to render anything anyways

“I Was Lost Without You” was actually playing in my media player while getting set to film the Kerbin rise video over Mun. Took me three reloads to get the spacecraft oriented properly in the short time I had since the last quicksave and deciding I wanted to make a video. KSPTOT real-time system helped a lot by giving craft orientation I could plug into RT flight computer.

performed a straight-up/straight-down launch and recovery for Mun III to ensure that all systems were working properly under 0.90. They were!

my original motivation behind the idea of strong winds prior to the Mun III launch was simply to add a little bit of extra suspense – the launch had already been delayed once by the planning software glitch and I also threw in the hydraulics problem to delay a little bit but wanted the winds to be there so people would think that maybe the launch would be cancelled. However after a pretty horrible ascent, I decided to use the winds as a partial excuse for the rocket tipping over so much

had to fly the Munar Orbiter III approach multiple times to work out a nasty kraken issue I discovered with KAS that would occur if I reloaded the game after linking the craft and attempted to unlink them and grab the pipe end point. What I ended up doing however was some save file editing so I wouldn’t be re-flying the approach with extra experience, because I did find ways to make it better the more I did it. I then found a work-around that let me use my original flight/EVA data by just saving and reloading after unlinking the craft.

Fuel transfer was done via SFS edit, because a) I wanted to transfer over a very specific amount and b) since Desson was supposed to be doing this simultaneously while bob was on EVA

Mun III originally crashed into Mun because game let Pe fall to 4km instead of holding at 6. re-flew with time warp to prevent “decay” of orbit

reloaded after mun III sep because I thought it was an accidental staging or a bug, but then realized the truth and kept it, did the whole next hour or so real-time with no warping. No saving or reloading either.

Did not notice that Mun III was missing a solar panel untl 2/23. Thought it was a game issue so I copy/pasted the parts from an earlier save and came out the same. I must have broken it off when maneuvering around Munar Orbiter III, so I went back and wrote that in.

I went back and forth A LOT on installing the Outer Planets mod. Ultimately I decided it wasn’t feasible for my play style of real-time missions, and I had already established really well that Eeloo was the outer planet and even designed and showcased a mission heading there. Plus it was not compatible with the Dwarf Planets mod that I was more interested in

I did a poor job keeping track of Mun III trajectory changes, enough so that there was a “jump” in the line when loaded into MA. So I reverted the orbital parameters back to the last burn maneuver. It doesn’t really have any effect on the mission but moving forward will try to keep better track so I don’t have to “fix” the orbit and can instead let it be properly perturbed over time from ship movements.

when I originally designed the Eeloo I plans I built a week safety margin into launch prior to transfer (unlike two days with Duna I) and planned to use it for some creative launch delays… then Mun III happened and I don’t even need to get creative I can just use the rescue craft assembly to push the launch date back

I tried to rebuild Duna I in the VAB and hyper-edited it into orbit to test orientation with the RT flight computer and it still wanted to flip things out when I used the AIES probe core in the atmospheric descent probe. So I ran some burn tests using the FASA probe in the service compartment to make sure there wouldn’t be any serious offset issues since it’s radially attached to the side of the craft. But a long prograde burn show no radial or normal effects on the orbit. That seems to also allow RT to orient the craft properly

Kelvin Kerman’s injury was not an in-game event but a plot decision I made myself. I did go into the astronaut complex and select the bravest, least stupidest kerbal there was as the one to have injured, so I certainly paid for it…. if those stats actually mattered. But someday no doubt they will.

after performing two small maneuvers to raise Du-SCAN’s orbit to 795km I noticed the mass for the spacecraft had changed significantly. In fact the masses for all of them had. I went back and restored all my older mod versions from after the date of the last orbital manuever save file and still couldn’t figure out what the hell had changed the mass. Then I remembered that the KSPI Extended install had included Real Fuels, which wasn’t in any previous install and this wasn’t in my Outdated folder to remind me to take it out of GameData when rolling things back. Real Fuels changed the densities of the stock fuel types, thus affecting craft mass.

…, I realized when planning for the CSMinII mission I inserted CSMinI into an “operational orbit” that was higher than specified in the craft blueprint – 1,500km instead of 1,150km. I have no freaking idea where I got 1,500 from 0_o had to go back and schedule in a tweet explaining the error. …

K-130 staging issues were determined to be from Saitek software sending multiple button presses into KSP, or KSP poorly handling input and registering multple button presses. Switched to joystick control mod and even got my X55 working with the game now, although it took me like 4 freaking hours to get fully setup and a bug currently makes it useless for rockets. But can at least split my throttle and use engines to help me turn now.

K-130 crashed on kOS drop test flight – it landed but for some reason bounced back and forth from wingtip to wingtip before it finally flew off the runway and broke apart. crew survived but I called it a landing anyways because I have no idea wtf went wrong to make it do that (after add’l consideration it was prob the propeller tips from landing too hard)

I did some basic flight testing of the K-130 with my new X55 setup and also made sure the altimeter settings worked properly on the chutes and sensors

for the first successful drop test runs, I had to fly the K-130, drop, switch to the probe with FMRS after re-stabilizing the craft, then run experiments and debug the code, keeping track of how long it took me to do this. Then I switched back to the main mission and had to fly around for that amount of time before being able to go on and drop another probe. Which took long because my game timer was yellow. And then of course flying over the desert I had to restart the game 3 times. All in all took me about 3hrs real world time to do the whole flight.

I don’t know why, but the antenna for the last two probes deployed prior to drop and broke off in flight. It may have been my X55 throttle, which I had noticed on an occasion triggering all sorts of commands when it is moved for some reason. (realized teh next day it was from flying over the mountains the radar altimeter fell below 3km. That damn radar alt!! will I never learn!?)

original plan for the Mun III rescue vehicle after not having enough fuel in the transfer stage to make it to Mun impact was to pump fuel down – I spent like over an hour working the mission plan until I realized there’s no way I should be able to just pump fuel down into the lower tank without a fuel line. So then had to scrap and go with the atmospheric de-orbit scenario

took three tries to do the RCS thrust – first was a non-responsive joystick, second I found that the capsule RCS thrusters, which I disabled in the VAB, were actually not disabled.

so, my plan to lower Pe into atmo so debris would eventually return forgot one important factor – how the TMI burn would affect the orbit. It turns out it’s no longer within the atmo afterwards. But I also forgot to save the original burn I split to know exactly when to stop the engine so I ended up burning too long and coming closer to Mun than expected. Therefore I wrote it as the burn going wrong throwing off the debris deorbit plan as well

originally flew Mun III out to rescue vehicle (asymmetric RCS thrust translation wasn’t actually that bad at all), then EVA’d Bob to move over to capsule and managed to kill him accidentally thrusting full-force into a solar panel. Had to reload back to when the rescue craft first parked 1km from Mun III and realized it would make way more sense to send Bob over and pilot the capsule in towards Mun III

Although I actually EVA’d Bob to put out the endpoint and then link the rescue capsule when I went to write it up for twitter I realized how dumb that is, since Desson isn’t holding station or really doing anything useful. So I swapped his EVA time with Bob’s in the Final Frontier stats and had him go out for EVA when it was written up.

to help increase the amount of findable asteroids I’ve been taking out the ones that are added to the #1 ATN save and my main save and pasting them into the #2 ATN save. Problem is I advance the #1 ATN save to the next day before #2, so for a little while I’ve been adding in asteroids that appear later in the day, the beginning of which is when I go hunting for rocks in save #2. Time traveling asteroids!

The Mun III parts retrofit EVA I actually flew two kerbals at the same time. It actually got pretty easy after a little while – I would set the kerbal on a slow course in the general direction and swap to the other, steer him, swap back, steer him, etc etc – moving slow enough it was possible to keep them both moving pretty much the entire time. Only real annoyance was constantly forgetting which key swapped back to the other kerbal without going through the ship first, which would hang the game a second or two while it loaded

the monotank life support I did a comparison in the VAB to determine what the reasonable volume would be for the containers. 5 days resources was more than capable when comparing the tanks to the resources canister. Probably could have done the whole remaining 10 days but decided to keep it at 5 since the canisters do look small and ppl can’t see the resource canister to compare. Resource values were changed in the persistence file then piped over in the game

Du-SCAN maneuver had to be performed around same time as Mun III re-entry so needed to wind back the clock after completing the Mun III mission and do the maneuver then resync the saves (VESSEL data as well as scanned data)

After installing the CTT I lost some SCANsat parts that got shifted into their own tech nodes. I awarded myself the science needed to re-unlock them. There were no other parts in the node

had a minor scare with KSP crashing before game window even came up, traced it to SweetFX DLL so replaced them and still the issue and finally realized something had deleted the SweetFX folder 0_o (happened again)

Doing some Eeloo I vertical ascent tests I noticed the rocket had a tendency to roll increasingly fast as it climbed until it was spinning rapidly. Realized it was something with the launch clamp control at the load of the rocket – making sure to Control From Here from the probe core fixed it, but I used it to create the guidance code issue that was uncovered during readiness checks

WTF!! My /Ships folder is just… **gone** 0_o no idea how it could have been deleted. Not in my Recycle Bin. Not in any of my backups. Fortunately I still had it in my previous 0.25 install so I didn’t lose all my craft, and a lot of things I had still done via sub-assmebly so my newer drop pods were relatively saved although some recent iterations were lost… and then I found the /Ships folder had somehow been moved inside of my /Subassemblies folder. Wha??? No idea. but *phew*

the ultimate fate of the night janator was inspired by Aaron Allston’s X-Wing: Wraith Squadron book where Wedge dismissed an otherwise promising candidate when he realized the holo of his family was missing from his desk after the interview. RIP Aaron…

noticed long RCS thrusts the maneuver marker would move off my vector several seconds before end of thrust. Will have to try and let the spacecraft follow it next time and see if that does produce better accuracy. My main fear is that the craft tends to spin out of control a bit chasing the maneuver marker, however I realize with the thrust script coded for a hard time limit, it won’t succumb to forever chasing the node marker and will cut and remove the marker leaving the craft nothing to chase. Still, used it as an excuse to tweet about upgrades needed to the thruster control script

RT 1.6.2 introduced a “bug” that let you WASDQE control craft wih no signal delay. I’ve found this actually to be really nice, becuase to be honest pointing the craft properly to get good solar power or good pictures was a royal pain in the ass. If there was a tool able to tell me what heading/pitch/roll to use to do this, I wouldn’t complain. But manually entering the numbers into the flight computer and guessing adjustments until you have something satisfactory is just not fun, at all. And is merely a lame attempt at being realistic for the sake of realism. For sure actual mission controllers know how to point their damn spacecraft. So now I used the WASDQE keys to point the craft, but only for solar alignment and photos.

Duna I science around Ike was done w/o signal delay to the craft, bypassing RT through AGX. It is simulating automatic routines programmed into the probe to take new readings at intervals and beam back any new data. While out of comm contact in Pe I keep re-trying science experiments until I have one with data, then wait for re-connection to beam it back.

All science around Duna and Ike was done without looking at VOID’s biome readout. Since it is at the bottom of the planetary data window I can move it offscreen without losing the rest of the window information. Once I had Duna biome information I used the SCANsat Instrument window to determine biome changes. Around Ike I just did regular science checks hunting for new data

new rule – only one science pass per probe per day

KSPI messed something up with IntakeAtm throwing NaN errors and making the K-130 unflyable. So that led to the story of a rodent making a nest in the engine intake. Turned out it was due to me not loading IVA spaces because I changed the folder I was storing them all in and forgot to update the batch files.

Yes, I really ran Desson away from the model rocket for a minute. Not the minute before launch tho.

“general rule” of 60% or more chance of weather violation being a concern is based on my motorcycle riding experience – 60% or less chance of rain usually means little to no rain, or rain that isn’t hazardous to riding

while it turned out not to be the case in the KSA save, in my asteroid sandbox save LLH-725 did in fact end up on a trajectory that came only 1.1Mm close to Kerbin, but then I also unintentionally warped through its SOI change while in the tracking station so I figured that probably messed things up. Still, on the chance that it might happen to the KSA save too I came up with the indie astronomer group sowing some doubt

CSMin II flight plan was developed in real-time w/ tracking station running in the background to track time

Dunno what the hell happened to WKF-848. Originally spawned with a 30km PKerbin Pe (have the Mission Architect file to prove it) and then ended up several Mm away from Kerbin at Pe – even before SOI intercept. But I kept it in the story anyways, even though its orbit post Kerbin SOI won’t be nearly the same as a 30km “aerobrake” no one can check it against anything

Yes I had fine control enabled during the CSMinII ascent, but no it was not by accident

ROQ-711 could very well have been discovered prior to impacting Kerbin, but it wasn’t and I’m glad.

Original ground plot for LLH-725 was way off, should have done an aerobrake event to get a more accurate landing area. Doesn’t really matter tho since I was going to make it splode on re-entry anyways. But still, pretended it happened over land when it really happened over water. Image was taken from the spot the asteroid exploded tho to get the proper lighting (moved a flag there). In order to get the explosion I built a truss monstrosity that would blow up well and replaced the asteroid with that. Took multiple video angles of the re-entry and explosion, used Distant Object Enhancement to completely dim the skybox for a pure black background I could easily remove. Several explosion elements were composited and rescaled to create the final explosion picture

I had 3/27 all scripted out and complete and went to check up on ROQ-711 which was supposed to hit tomorrow and found it was erased, as if it had already hit. So I restored an earlier save and sure enough it water impacted around 13:30. This was a weird rock, Mission Architect could not tell me anything accurate about it – never had a Kerbin SOI intercept in MA although it did in the game. I decided to just keep it on 3/28 as MA originally told me so that the pacing was better, I liked the whole day focus on just LLH and the UKKR subplot

CSMin II transfer stage burn may have gone wonky because I switched to tracking station to get around FPS drop bug (caused by Ship Manfest when CSMin II unloaded) and then reloaded with the saved Flight Computer maneuver data. Something may have gotten screwed up on the reload that caused all the fuel to get used up.

Thank all that is good for CrashPlan revision backups!! I had a “kink” in my Duna I Ike plot when combining multiple orbital updates, which meant at some point I changed Duna I’s orbit or just loaded the craft in flight mode and forgot to save an orbital update file for it. So I had to go download a bunch of revision off my backup server and use the FNR tool to search through and find one that had a diff orbit in it to fill in the blank.

atmospheric asteroid graze by WKF-848 was supposed to happen 3/27 but I honestly thought it was later in the month around 3/30-3/31. I realized I was wrong as I was writing into day 3/30 and didn’t want to go back and re-write and also wanted a bit of a breather before the next one so I just moved it to 3/31. I think the pacing works much better

a kerbol-impact asteroid was not discovered before it vaporized

so I figured the blimp idea for the drop pods would be much easier to deal with than the plane, also something different. Well, it was a fucking pain in the fucking ass!! Still cool tho. I think once I get the kinks ironed out it will be easier than the plane. But to start with it was a pain to get working properly

holy cow that first blimp mission was fucked all to hell haha. However it actually did land itself without exploding! It was really close for a little while, it was looking good descending 4-7m/s while wobbling about then stabilized and increased to 14m/s before becoming unstable and dropping back down to around 10 then finally 8ish before landing. *phew*!!! IP ComSat link was total chance as well but really happened.

skipped a Class-C on impact with Kerbin

Phos discovery was timed to coincide with actual close approach distances between Duna I and the moon as plotted out by KSPTOT

Jastu & Rafera are given random numbers to be discovered at some point by the ATN

nothing special for the overnight thruster maneuver w/ CSMinI, just played it out like that

second blimp flight was almost perfect until dropping probe I realized that I had forgot to change code to account for new high altitude procedure of not caring about descent speed. I couldn’t tolerate the whole script being void from that error and not even running again so I reloaded but didn’t have a save prior to drop so I had to roll way back to launch and hyper-edit the craft into position thankfully had screenshot diary of the flight to know final position and height of drop, also exact time. Then I hit the logic errors and didn’t have a log saved to disk at the end of the probe descent so I redid it *again*. Antenna only snapped off the second probe drop but I kept it.

CSMinIII placement plotting tweets reflect actual time it took to get the plot right. Tried just using the optimizer (which worked for CSMinI) but then decided on a two-burn placement and using the mission animator to get an approximate correct trajectory and then refine with the optimizer and graphing. Same for the re-plotting after I realized I forgot to account for some things

*something* was consistently causing the game to throw fatal exceptions during the CSMinIII eclipse transit prior to maneuver thrust for close Minmus pass. Tried three times before finally saying screw it and warping through the eclipse in the tracking center then jumping to the ship for the maneuver. Most likely candidate is the NFE capacitors I had to keep discharging one at a time throughout the eclipse, as they were never fully updated to 0.90 at the time

I actually copied letters out of the MFD font image file to construct the “kOS Terminal” header for the one screen in the mission control room image. The kOS text was black/white version of the console pasted onto the screen in Paint.NET. There was actually someone who had a kOS MFD working but I didn’t have it bookmarked, didn’t want to take the time to track it down and was pretty sure it wasn’t actually released ever anyways, just proof of concept

because of the crashes from last time I tried using capacitors through a night transition I just did the calculation to ensure CSMinIII could make it through a 2hr+ eclipse with only 1 dish operational. 7286 seconds at .82/s of EC came out to 5974.52EC required and the craft has 6400 of capacitor charge alone before 820EC of battery

Mitnie’s balloon jump idea is of course inspired by the Red Bull stunt but is feasible thx to a balloon from USI and a parachute backpack being cooked up from RealChute

missed out on another sun-diving asteroid

went to test a non-controlled Mi-SCAN launch just to check that the VOID display numbers were set properly and discovered the launch clamps (not umbilicals) were placed too high up and actually trapped the rocket on the pad, where it bobbled around funnily. Lowering them down to the thrust plate was good enough and still gave a good look

Mi-SCAN was *not* flown anywhere near real-time. Paused during booster sep fail, paused to do OIB calcs. Then I got the Dv for the OIB and realized I would have more fuel in the lift stage than I needed so decided would just stage the lifter early, but forgot to throttle down before staging! I also forgot to update the weight in the burn time calculation /facepalm. I *also* actually took off on the proper heading KSPTOT gave me to align with Minmus to find myself inclined the wrong way. Turns out there’s a bug in KSPTOT and I was doing it wrong all along and mistakenly ending up on the right inclination. Wow I’m awesome. Not

It took me almost 5 hours to do the fucking launch video. Re-creating that launch was tough, and using new techniques to record some footage with CameraTools

did actually disable one battery and capacitor on Mi-SCAN, also locked gimbal of transfer engine

Mi-SCAN service bay was supposed to open at orbit so I could get in easily without having to bother opening it myself, but it looked kinda dumb opening for no apparent reason in the video and screenshot so I called it a glitch

Wehrtop’s romance novel title was generated: http://novelistvmd.awardspace.com/RomanceTitleGenerator2.htm

Phos being visible in the Duna I photo was indeed chance. I saw it there when I went to take the photo but I did not plan to photograph it at this time. In fact I was about to write off the entire Pe pass as nothing photo-worthy when I spotted it and decided this would be a nice reveal

holy shit the correction burn happens right near one of the orbital nodes! I discovered this when I loaded up the telemetry in KSPTOT – I did not think to plan the correction burn (which includes a plane adjustment) at an orbital node but managed to do so anyway. Win!

VAB blimp landing was epic!! That whole flight tho was a shitstorm because at some point KSP would begin throwing non-stop NREs and I would be unable to quicksave or recover. So I had to fly the blimp up, stick with the probe on the way down, then reload the game and hyperedit the blimp back up to where it dropped the probe and fly it down, then restart the game and hyperedit the blimp back up to where I recorded some science data and hyperedited back down so I could recover it. Had to do the same for the second flight later in the day, except I hyperedited the pod to recover data afterwards.

second flight was originally set up to be a straight up and down flight because I wanted it done quick. Was going to go more into the iffy weather, and how on descent the blimp slowed thx to drag and couldn’t descend 50m/s all the way down and how that meant it wouldn’t land in time to escape some nasty weather incoming – but then I accidentally set the gas density adjustment to its broadest setting and increased the gas density to like 1000% and lost control so that made for plenty of drama on its own. Yes, I actually did lose and regain control, if it had crashed then it would have crashed.

had to fly the KST launch 4 times because I got up to MECO and went to save, couldn’t and found my log being spammed with NREs. Luckily the culprit was easy to track down – it was happening after I disabled FMRS (which would explain the NREs for the blimp flights as well) so I removed it for the second launch. Was good tho since I forgot to save the booster drop. It turned out more complicated than a simple FMRS issue. On second launch attempt I discovered it still happened after FMRS was removed, it seems FMRS was just delaying the inevitable. Eventually I discovered that if I went to the tracking station, loaded into another vessel and then loaded straight to the pad I was okay. However then on my third actual launch attempt the DP-10 antenna, inside the fairing, would break off due to aerodynamic pressure. I think it is because it is attached to the root monoprop tank that gets shrunk by a kOS bug so the attachment was also minimized. So I had to disable aerodynamic stress failures for my fourth attempt. Oh, also good thing the third attempt failed because I was mistakenly launching a test rocket that didn’t have the telescope on it! Holy fuck. On fourth launch I did it straight from the VAB to the pad to launch and that worked.

18 asteroids discovered the day that UQF-104 hit Kerbin and exploded in the atmosphere. Ended up skipping this event entirely anyways. Thought I saved entry coordinates but couldn’t find them afterwards, no idea where it hit the atmo.

had to go back a few saves and redo the VUR-856 Kerbin intercept because it somehow got lost and was no longer crossing Kerbin’s SOI, then reload it back into the current-time save

finally found Rafera, then accidentally discovered 10 asteroids instead of 9, so reshuffled Rafera back into the Undiscovered – didn’t like how it felt like I was trying to spice up downtime during audit, so close to Putto announcement

campsite scene was a bitch. First attempt tents kept exploding when placing on the ground. Got a fix for that from the mod thread but waited a week to try again. Worked, but couldn’t reload a save with the tents as they would spam the log with errors. So I had to get it all right in one take. But had trouble with command seats storing in KAS boxes – took them out and nothing showed up on kerbals backs. So just attached them straight to the damn bus. Got one scene setup then realized I didn’t have Mun glow texture loaded so had to restart the game. Got the scene all set up again and accidentally brought up the EVE config window when placing (alt+n also toggles part rotation) and frames dropped so I went to open debug log to check and hit alt+f4 instead. Fuck. Reloaded and set everything once more, hit time warp and the empty command seats exploded. Fuck fuck. So that’s why there are only two instead of four. Wanted to take some daylight shots to merge w/nighttime to create a glow from the fire but the camera moved slightly after time warp. &@$#^%$@$ just took a night pic and brightened it. Oh, and I didn’t pay attention to times in any of the shots, I just posted them whenever.

6/4 sounding rocket launch was live tweeted so I couldn’t have gone back and retuned the SRE thrust limiter even if I had wanted to

improved code that placed launch script in function was actually first tested when doing a second launch for the tracking video, but the script performed perfectly with no errors so I let it count as if that was the script version that ran during the actual launch

Jastu was found in a normal random search of 15 asteroids in one day – it was the last number on the list

the day of the jool/mun occultation was almost missed tweeting in real time since I decided not to do the day the previous day, luckily was awake early enough, by only about 20 mins

the earthquake was used as an excuse for the KSC to run a pad inspection, which was something that was originally planned to take place while KSA ramped back up operations but after taking too long playing DA:I to get to that point, decided to kick start it and give me more to talk about.

I used the term “earthquake” /facepalm – changed to “groundquake”

had a horrible time getting the v5 sounding rocket to launch without the chute popping right as the engine kicked in. took me many redos before I finally though to check the persistence file and saw it had changed its situation to LANDED at some point instead of PRELAUNCH

BCF-204(E) not a planned event. No idea what caused it to change to an impact trajectory but was not originally supposed to impact Kerbin

several issues with mods not behaving needed to be hunt down prior to the V5.1 sounding rocket launch, but was also delayed anyways due to the decoupler addition I didn’t think about until Sat morning when finally working on the launch

dunno what added the 100km radio into the Sounding Rocket nose cone chute, but rolled with it

went to take a photo of Val right next to the rocket base and realized how badly I screwed up the scale in relation to the SPH photos I had taken earlier, which showed a viewpoint well above the base girders when Val’s head barely comes up to their tops! So had to move her farther away

the shit I had to go through to get that stupid launch video for the v5.1 rocket holy crap. Can’t use kOS to launch it from another vessel because it won’t allow use of the STAGE command. Nor will it let me launch using part commands (launch base and stick disappear while rocket and clamp remain and rocket hangs in mid air running). So I go and get BDArmory to tweak physics loading distance but using a timer part to stage the rocket it won’t fire if I’m too far away. So finally have to park the crew van near the rocket, start the timer, switch to the van then CameraTool the camera way off to the 500m observation point where I left a kerbal to show me where it was. Then I had to have a kOS script running to monitor the flight and trigger the abort at the right time. Oh and spending time getting the exhaust and smoke effects… and editing the footage to take out stutters… geeez I know I missed writing down some stuff even….

uploaded the In One Year of Dres infographic three times. Second time to add the arrow pointing towards the start of the timeline, third time to add the planetary progress graphics for the remaining outer planets – made by creating them in KSPTOT and sizing the output window way down

longest asteriod to go unfound was KCI-098, tracked on 1y 250d discovered on 2y 208d

code issue attributed to new USI parts was actually from RealPlume changing the ModuleEngine module to ModuleEngineFX which was causing errors

C7 Aerospace engineer was ferram

A couple more Rafera hits, but I ignored them

DMagic scope doesn’t actually act as a scope like some other dedicated scope mods so use CamerTools zoom instead

spent like 30-40min re-plotting Duna I travel from Ike to Duna because I saw mission times were way off what I thought I had planned after I updated initial state with fresh orbital data – I forgot that the Coast to Pe event had been set with 5 prior revs since I had plotted it with data a few days older, so that pushed everything ahead. Redid the whole thing and then realized what I missed when I uploaded the first maneuver and it was a day later. ARRRRGGHHHH!!!!

had to completely rebuild Lupek thx to issues with MSI legacy parts loading from 0.90 save files. It’s better now tho

Remote Tech fixed the “bug” that let me WASDQE craft in real time. FUCK. Used CameraTools to remove craft from view and take photo at that vantage point. Wasn’t happy with that but eventually figured out how to hack a kOS script together that let me use action groups to command the craft’s orientation w/o signal delay by turning it off in Action Groups Extended.

completely rebuilt Duna I to try to fix ship orientation control issues. Maybe fixed? Still dunno but have also noticed NRE spam from inflatible heatshield and had to remove option to inflate, so will have to have that fail during the mission if I can’t get the mod maintainer to update it. Took me a while to narrow down the issue tho and got me really annoyed and demotivated

idiot that I am, took laptop to do work on a fireworks show and forgot to update the FTP password to be able to login and get files needed to do KSA stuff

the above two things led to me delaying the Duna I and K-130 missions to build back up some lead time. Made it to a week and then lost almost all of it the next week, bah!

didn’t actually fly the k-130 all the way to the “front lines” dropped the probe, switched focus to it and never went back to the k-130

spent like a fucking hour or more trying to figure out why KSP Advanced FlybyWire was making my controls act crazy and allowing the throttle to control the pitch and roll – finally when trying to reset AFBW realized the axis were still active even tho the reset should have wiped them and realized it was KSP axis settings causing it. Why the fuck didn’t that bother me on earlier flights??????????

first attempt at the long-haul K-130 flight was actually pretty decent, but after getting to the ice caps for some reason joystick trim commands no longer worked at all or properly, and there wasn’t enough default satellites loaded up to cover the polar region while I was up there. So since all was so fubar’d I decided to go with my original plan to fail an engine and RTB, only didn’t do that to begin with because flight was going so well I changed my mind. And then on top of that I had to restart the game like 4 times and restart the saves like 6-7 times so the timeline was allll fucked up and I was just like “fuck it” especially since I was down to a day’s lead time

fuuuuuck just realized the RMA-3 engine had its stats adjusted and now puts out 77kN @ 350isp instead of 75kN @ 410isp. Adjusted it back

have had to launch some craft from the sandbox and then edit them into my career because the re-arranged tech tree took away some parts I already had

yea, coulda written script to fold down panels and stuff and re-open when done with atmo dip for Duna I but… that was a bit too mundane to bother with when I can just use part commander to do it without dealing with RT or kOS. Easier faster better

duna dip series 2 dip 1 had to restart because I forgot to enable graphotron

thought science gain was a bit much from a duna atmo pass (~100) so checked and saw my multiplier set at 25% because I’m an idiot and should have set it to 0.025. Zeroed out my science since I had just gotten a bunch from previous reports since I restarted at 1.0.4 and had purchased two new tech nodes that had stuff in them I had already unlocked so it was part gimme

K-130 flight was legit, 3.5hr real time thx to game physics lag. Was going SO WELL and everything until for some reason the nose-up trim went wonky over the badlands and would rise up on its own and then it even stopped resetting when commanded. Went to Alt-F5 save the game to restart and hit Alt+F4 instead >.< other than that though the flight really did go off without a hitch and the plane was handling extremely well! Go figure. Seriously was only at 3.85GB VRAM. Although – it was getting on 6am so stopping was kinda good anyhow

holy fuck re-doing those three drop pods from the k-130 flight what the fuck two fucking hours fucking code wouldn’t work that ran just fine last time with some stupid fucking nonsense errors like too many params to a function that only has one what the fuck just bypassed remote tech and action grouped through everything as if the code were running fuck it can’t fucking believe how much of a fucking pain in the ass and multiple restarts cause I kept forgetting to set something or fucking another fuck why am I even writing this dfon’t wanna fucking remember t fuck

sci multiplier for 0.90 was still set to 25% for K-130 mission so I had to adjust the amount of science that was received after the fact. Is now set correctly in the 0.90 SFS config

have a code breakthrough in solving the problem of detecting when orbit lines run off the map in flight tracker and I finally understand why it causes an infinite loop so now it should work and I go to upload and test and my internet is fucking down. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK thankfully it didn’t stay out long because I also hadn’t scheduled any tweets for the next day yet. And it’s 4am.

need photo of crew tower on launch pad. Figure offset ship off pad, offset tower onto pad, disconnect and photograph. Do that, but after disconnect since tower is non-persistent it shortly vanishes before I can take photo. Try again, notice this time tower is tilted and raised slightly out of pad. Return to VAB with new plan to just launch rocket, snap photo before tower disappears, snap another after it and ground clamps vanish so I can remove ground clamps from final photo. Game crashes out of memory. Reload & take rocket out to pad, but crash into the existing craft because it was offset off pad so didn’t warn me pad was occupied with a launch tower still. Back to VAB thru space center after recovering both craft because I can’t revert to VAB for some reason. Back out to the pad & I realize I forget to remove umbilical towers. Back to VAB to remove umbilicals. Back to pad and I disconnect tower but forgot to remove CollisionFX mod which seems to think disconnecting the crew tower is blowing up something and displays effects on capsule. Then notice flag is still default KSP flag (game bug) and wanted that in picture. BACK TO FUCKING SPACE CENTER which sets my flag to the proper KSA logo. Back to pad and all that loads is the ship capsule in mid-air which then falls to the ground. WTF?!?? Back to the VAB thru space center to recover capsule from pad. Back to the pad, setup camera and now notice the staging list is completely gone. What. The. Fuck. Disconnect the crew tower and the staging list comes back, but I can’t stage – light is blinking. Attempt to manually get things activated through right-click menus for liftoff and rocket falls over. Fuck it. Running high on RAM usage, restart game. Back to pad and still no staging menu, check debug log and find it full of NRE spam, which is why I can’t revert to VAB & staging is screwed up. FUUUUUUUCCCKKKKK. MissingMethodException: Method not found: ‘EventReport..ctor’ was the most generic error ever so had to start stripping the Docking Test Capsule vehicle down stage by stage then part by part to see what was causing it, and I had at most 2-3 trips to the pad before the game went OOM. Before I got to part by part tho I realized I wasn’t seeing any IVA windows pop up in the bottom-right corner which meant I had forgotten to load the IVA space, so I closed the game, added the internal to the batch file that loads all the ship parts, but forgot to actually *run* the batch file before reloading the game, so had to quit, run it and reload it again. That brought back the staging UI and revert function (have seen this before, should have known) but the exception was still there. Finally narrowed it down to the floats on the capsule – the bouyancy module was not up to 1.0.4 spec. So I disabled the inflation module via MM. Game crashes on MM reload so just restart the game, put the full rocket out on the pad and everything seems to be fine – FUCK I FORGOT TO SET THE FUCKING FLAG. Back to space center but don’t make it back to the pad without the game going OOM. Fucking god damn fucking shit. Restart. Change flag. Go to VAB. Remove umbilicals. Have inspiration to put kerbal in launch tower so it persists. Out to pad. All good, no NREs. Launch – ground clamps don’t disappear. Wait a while. Nothing happens. Go to space center, tower and clamps do not persist and are gone. SON OF A FUCK. Back to VAB, game crashes. Restart. New plan – offset the ground clamps out of the way entirely so only crew tower is visible on pad but isn’t holding up rocket by itself. Go to pad. Launch. Take photos at long last. Two fucking hours later. Holy fuck

3GB VRAM loaded for launch of docking test probe. Nice!!!

almost missed tweeting about Meeny’s Mun pass because I forgot to list the event in my calendar and only happened to realize it was going on while I was checking through all craft pages in the new flight tracker for bugs and saw that Meeny’s encounter was literally *happening right now* had to scramble to get tweets composed and new update created. Fuck.

in my sleepy stupor I said a Mi-SCAN maneuver would take 6s when it was really 3s and I used the full burn time as the half time – *twice* and *actually programmed it that way for both maneuvers* this is why having no lead time sucks as you are forced to rush to get things done in time. Thankfully maneuver error was insignificant and didn’t have to mention error in burn execution

Storm squalls. Extreme weather. Best excuse for sleeping all day

MOIII calibrations were a plot decision, not an actual event – although I was having a bitch of a time getting the camera oriented which gave me the idea

Solar array really did get stuck on Duna I, might have been a bug since that array was blocked by the craft from getting sunlight. No idea why it eventually closed on its own but it did. Was really going to roll with it if it remained deployed

Was going to MM the base of the balloon mooring to make it heavy enough to hold down the balloon but adding the legs (with the end struts I was going to say were anchored to the ground) made it heavy enough on its own

Balloon power issues were part real part plot decision – I initially thought power routing was screwed because Fusebox was telling me I was only draining 0.04EC/s and generating more than that when it was really 0.17EC/s being drained. But I liked the idea of the battery dying overnight.

Knew the balloon was going to shoot up and destroy my solar panels from when I did initial testing after install to ensure it functioned okay in 1.0.4 but let it happen anyways during the actual event cause it was hilarious. I didn’t expect to get a photo of them shattering off tho – expected (and was prepared) to have to ‘shop them in to the launch photo, but there they were… hahahahaha

balloon battery drained extra fast because I forgot one of the science instruments I attached had kOS MM’d into it to use as a second CPU on my sounding rockets and so I wrote it as a bad electrical connection