To the Mun! A Kerbal thread

[Josh]

Fucking hell man, what is wrong with you?

Gee doc, I thought this session was only supposed to be an hour.

I thought it looked all cool in the shadows, plus I wanted a shot with the sun in the frame because it's cool.

[Hotfoot]

"Oh, I vanted it to be cloaked in shadow to show ze despair of all human exploration, ja?"

Goddamned hippie! Get a terminator if you want shadow so you can juxtapose the light and darkness in one shot! Shit! Shoot it on the moon's terminator! Showcase the brilliance of your mad design, otherwise what's the point!? No one is going to fund a murky blob of millions of dollars! They want to see results!

[Josh]

God damn bean counters always getting all up in my artistic viz, yo.

[Hotfoot]

I expect to see results, sir.

Remarkable results.

You have our top men.

Top. Men.

[Josh]

Due to, ahem, "popular" demand, KASA is now releasing the following images of our latest Fuel Extraction/Tanker design, enroute to Minmus to plunder sweet, sweet Kethane from its surface as part of the prep cycle for a manned Moho mission.

[Josh]

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IMAGE NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL PUBLIC RELEASE
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Some dumb motherfucker forgot to function-test the kethane drill to make sure that it was pointed downward...

[Hotfoot]

There we go!

Now spend half as much time getting your equipment right-side up and we might just beat the Russkerbs to total orbital domination!

[Josh]

Given my colorful linguistic tendencies, y'all can probably imagine my response when that drill deployed straight up. I didn't even know that damn thing could snap onto that component upside down, hence why I didn't check it the way I check a lot of deployable parts.

Something like "What. Fuck. FUCK! FUCK YOU YOU MOTHERFUCKER STUPID FUCKING FUCK."

[Josh]

Speaking of Kethane drama, I've got a crew stuck on Dres (game equivalent of Ceres, except the game counts it as a planet) because the specified design system didn't work, and the return trip was predicated on finding a patch to refuel off of.

Man, what a hairy mission. Patching the fuel lines to the Kethane converter caused all kinds of funky imbalanced fuel drain from my engines, so by the time I was making orbit I had one engine out of five drained altogether, which meant I had to take two out of circuit to keep balance (fortunately the other one out of the circuit was feeding fuel to one of the other tanks by magic mystery.)

My centerline motor was almost out of fuel because it was feeding another tank, which meant that I barely made the landing- ten fucking pounds. I was down ten pounds of liquid fuel and another ten of oxidizer when the struts hit dirt. Ribbin fucking Kerman showed how he earned his wings that day.

Considering that they've got enough fuel in the twin outside tanks to make orbit again, I'm figuring I'll send a couple of unmanned tankers and a retrieval unit to meet them in orbit, then toss them all into a hitchhiker can to haul their heroic asses home.

[Josh]

I will say this for my new Hercules-class super-heavy mover: while I have yet to get it over seven klicks up, the mid-air disintegrations have been some of the best fireworks shows this game has produced.

[Josh]

MOTHERFUCKER.

FUCKING FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKER!

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

Just read in the hotkeys list that you can lock the current stage in (preventing ejections and so on) by hitting alt-L.

Fuck, I have no idea how many times accidentally smacking the spacebar has prematurely terminated a mission, usually in a spectacularly explosive fashion.

[White Haven]

Because face it. We've all done it at some point. Usually in an uncontrolled corkscrew death spiral.

[Josh]

I'm not showing my friend any more prototype missions. He somehow manages to always be present for spectacular mishaps.

I've managed to get the Hercules test model to an apoapsis of 57k so far, just a bit further it can make orbit and then never have to worry about being deep in a gravity well ever again.

[Josh]

Fuck yes!







After taking a frustration break, I tore down the base sections of the Hercules-class tug and rebuilt her from the ground up.

Finally got her into orbit and she's magnificent. I have no idea if she'll have enough ponies to move a big rock, but she can connect and drag no less than twelve other craft with her. Not that I ever expect to hook that many ships on, but the clusters of docking ports were more for symmetry than anything.

She's a dedicated spacecraft pushing 24 nuke engines, fuel enough that she should be able to make anywhere in the system, and the extreme docking set does make her somewhat modular for adding other dedicated craft, such as A/M sweepers or orbital refinery craft. Hell, the Herky could easily be the base stage of a space station, especially given that it's got an additional personnel capacity with two four-man hitchhiker cans.

She'll never see the surface of a planet again, at least not on purpose.

[Josh]

Minor correction: she can actually haul fourteen other craft, miscounted my docking rings. Also counting the grabber for docking purposes, may use it to rescue my crew on Dres.

[Josh]

Also, RCS does not feed off of standard fuel tanks, so I accidentally have a shitload of ornamental RCS thrusters, a detail I only learned after dragging the cow into orbit.

[Josh]

So naturally having built the space Cadillac, I'm all 'Dres? What crew on Dres?'

I probably should go recover them, but looking at this beauty, I want to load it up with eight unmanned probes and then ship it straight to Jool (Jupiter equivalent) and science dredge every moon there.

But now I gotta go tai chi and shit, sooooo.

[Josh]

So my imagination of what I would do if I had a conscience got the better of me and I have sent the Herc over to Dres. Learned a couple of things pretty promptly.

One, while the beast has the legs to make anywhere in the system, it's going to need tanker staging to get back.

Second, lack of RCS is crippling with a monstrosity this size. Soooooooo... damn... slow...

[Josh]

Orbital correction burn at Dres.

[Josh]

...okay, that was a bust. Should've hauled a lander along.

Grabbing shit with an immobile pig is hard. Going to scrap the current model Herc and update it to one that actually has some punch on the RCS.