After the successful removal of orbital debris earlier in the month, the final piece of orbital debris awaits removal by the KSA’s second new astronaut, Captain Wehrtop Kerman. This mission will serve him well to apply all the training and skills he acquired during his 6 months training as a kadet, including overcoming any unforeseen obstacles during execution. The debris being removed was part of the rocket that took Captain Bob into orbit where he was finally able to successfully rendezvous for the first time with another craft in space.
Oct 19 2014
Munar Satellites – 10/19/14
Green = Communication satellite
Orange = Operating satellite
Oct 19 2014
Kerbin Satellites – 10/19/14
Green = Communication satellite
Orange = Operating satellite
Red = Orbital debris
Oct 15 2014
Eight Month Update
This has been another busy month. I was playing hard for a while and managed to almost build up a 4-month lead time. Then I ended up burning myself out and had to take a break from the game, which was okay because I had a related project to work on anyways. The current game date is 1/17/15 so I’m almost back to a 3-month lead and need to pick up playing again this week. Although the mod updates have been really fast this time around I’m still going to wait at least another week before porting my entire game over to 0.25. So what were the highlights from this past month?
Oct 13 2014
#033: Mk1-2 Capsule Recovery Trials
The recently-unveiled Mk1-2 capsule has spent its first few weeks undergoing recovery trials to ensure that it can safely return astronauts to the ground/water after passing through re-entry. Three tests were designed to put the Mk1-2 systems through their paces as well as test automated functions that will be used for its first orbital flight, which will be unkerbed.
Oct 10 2014
#032: New Astronaut Training (Flight 1)
The KSA is looking to clean up two spent stages floating in space, and it has two astronauts fresh out of the Academy to prove their mettle on individual missions to de-orbit the debris. Capt Desson, by virtue of alphabetical order, is launching first atop a revised version of the craft Capt Bob used to perform the first-ever orbital rendezvous earlier this year. After a range clearance issue forces the launch later into the day, Desson carries out his mission, but not without problems.
Oct 08 2014
#031: Rover Development Phase 1
The first extra-planetary goal of the rover program was Mun, a close neighbor that would provide minimal signal lag and 24/7 communication thanks to the established satellite network around both Mun and Kerbin. However rather than sending a rover directly to Mun, the team knew they had to test a version here on Kerbin first to make sure the design was capable of handling lower Mun gravity. They also wanted to begin working towards a completely automated drive capability, despite the low signal lag allowing for manual control. This first phase of development looks at the design of the rover, the first delivery vehicle concept, and the beginnings of automated drive software.
Sep 29 2014
#030: K-SCAN Mapping Satellite
Just prior to receiving two new astronauts into the program, the KSA launches its first mapping satellite into orbit around Kerbin to test new technology to gather surface data on planets from space. The instruments on board measure terrain altitude and slope, as well as vegetation and land surface to create a biome map. Future missions to Mun and other planets in the Kerbol system depend largely on the success of the technology deployed by K-SCAN.
Sep 16 2014
#029: Munar Relay Network Completion
The KSA finally recovered enough from the atmospheric asteroid explosion just over 150km west of the KSC at the end of August to complete assembly of the third Munar comsat and launch it on its mission to complete the Munar relay network. The previous attempt had ended in failure due to wrongly-tuned boosters, but Lead Engineer Simon personally oversaw the final stages of the rocket construction to ensure booster thrust was set properly. In addition to completing the communications network around Mun, once separated the transfer stage would perform a fly-through of the impact cloud kicked up when the previous Mun comsat transfer stage, still in orbit, slams into the Munar surface. Lead Scientist Wernher Von Kerman had devised a new dust collector experiment for this purpose, although the collectors are also capable of collecting interstellar particles. Finally, there was a chance to arrange a very close (1.3km) fly-by of a passing asteroid in the hopes of photographing it prior to the launch of ComSat Mun III.
Sep 15 2014
Seven Month Update
I didn’t leave myself a lot of notes for this month’s update, but plenty of cool stuff went down to talk about. First off, I’m happy to say the KSA is already operating through to the new year – current operational date is 1/4/15. I had hoped to extend my lead out to a full 4 months but still getting to 3.5 is pretty good. I’m wary of the fact that at some point as things become more complicated I could drop close to a 1:1 ratio in terms of real days versus in-game days as the amount of tasks I need to perform per in-game day increases. Thankfully when needed I can introduce plots to momentarily slow things down to make it easier for me to catch up on in-game time. I have also slowed down operations in general – meaning that now after launching a new satellite into space while in the game it takes me a few minutes to deploy everything and stuff, I make it take a day or two. The time it takes to build rockets has also been gradually increased, which I feel is realistic given the increasingly complex tech being employed.