Year 22: Spacecraft Testing

With Requisite Explosions

After the last update we managed to pick up Valentina around Minmus and bring her and the Duna crew home. So with so many Kerbals safely on Kerbin, we decided it was time to try out the dreaded KSP 1.1.2.

The savefile transferred over mostly OK. I did manage to make it completely unplayable at least once, and of course all the flags fell over (known bug I guess).

So anyway we embarked on some ship testing. I always try to make my signature ship, but it always ends up looking like a deformed space shuttle due to the lack of an appropriately shaped cabin.

Well taking off horizontally didn't work out.

Metroid is being a good sport about all of this testing:

Transparent windows are great, they should be available even without enabling the special IVA mode.

It's more or less controllable now, though still really ugly.

Now the big reason we were testing ships, plans are underway for a giant Jool mission. So let's see if we can get part of the ship in orbit. Don't mind the crazy glowing texture glitches, let's assume those are intentional.

Well that's two test pilots who aren't going to space today.

Although they somehow survived in their little cabin.

We did finally get the core of a Jool transport into orbit. Now to work on the landers. We'll have to bring those up, plus a lot of fuel, which I'm sure is going to be a horrible docking experience.

Most of our designs were variations on this. We want at least 4000 deltaV and refueling/drilling capabilities.

Also trying to use the new inflatable heatshield, as we hope to land on Laythe. Re-entry goes horrible, even when I don't make the mistake of separating the shield while still supersonic. We flip and lose control when the atmosphere gets dense and I can't seem to design a ship that doesn't do that. How do people land larger ships in one piece?

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