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Nov 18 2016

Operations Summary – Week of 11/14/16

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Civvie Prototype Cleared for Flight Trials

Yesterday Commander Valentina Kerman climbed aboard the Civvie fixed-wing prototype and took it out for its first real shakedown to test out all systems while on the ground, parked and taxiing. The two ground trials ensured that avionics, control cables, power, control surfaces, lights, engine, etc all functioned as designed while under operation. Engine run-ups were also performed – while the engine itself is not new technology it has never been integrated with a vessel in this way so assurances were needed that it was functioning properly. Take off roll testing was undertaken after careful review of the taxi data. The take off roll test ensured that the undercarriage was clear of any issues and the engine could power the craft up to take off speed. One of the concerns was the aircraft may have been built too heavy, since it was designed to withstand horrible crash tolerances to help ensure the safety of the test pilots. It successfully reached take off speed by the end of the runway on only half power though, which was a great sign.

Val was very excited to be piloting, even if it was only on the ground for the initial trials. She likened the experience to “driving a car with a horrible suspension”. The taxi tests were also meant to see how the aircraft performed on different surfaces – dirt, tarmac and turf. Val reported that she liked the firmness of the turf and would recommend take offs be done to the side of the runway. However the dirt offered up more friction, and she says she would prefer to land the plane on the runway rather than the turf. This will be taken into consideration for the flight trials, which have been approved for next Monday after second sunrise. Captain Jebediah Kerman is still recovering from an injury and will not be able to pilot the aircraft until the end of next week at the earliest assuming he receives his medical clearance.

The first flight trial will be to simply leave the ground and return in one piece. Val will take off, climb to around 1km and then turn about and deploy the recovery chute to assist in bringing the aircraft in for a landing on the runway. If all goes well, the chute will be repacked and Val will take to the skies again the same day to begin more and more rigorous flight tests to see how the aircraft performs under various conditions and how well it matches simulations. Flight trials are expected to last at least all week.

Progeny Mk2.1 Assembly Begins

The VAB work crews today began to assemble the three Progeny Mk2.1 rockets that will be launched in December. We are still missing the new Mk1-B boosters that have been redesigned to overcome the self-ignition problem, but they will be integrated late after they are delivered at the end of the month. We will have more details on the upcoming Progeny launches sometime next week.

KerBalloon Launches Continue to Pad Coffers

Thanks to the Progeny Mk2 failure shutting down all rocket flights, we’ve had to rely solely on our KerBalloon missions to bring in money and thankfully companies have been more than happy to send in contracts for the gathering of atmospheric data that our balloons offer. Being able to climb 3x higher than airships opens up a whole new frontier for weather scientists. We had two missions this past week on the 15th and 18th; so far our most unique mission this month has been deploying a balloon during an eclipse to observe how much Mun’s antumbra cools the area beneath it as it passes over.

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

Hot on the heels of last week’s capture came this one from Jool, which shows Laythe dropping a shadow on the cloud tops as it passes by. Jool is the furthest planet from the sun that can still have shadows appear on its surface. The moons of Sarnus and beyond are too small and the light from the sun too diffuse to allow shadows to be visible on the planets. (NOTE: this statement has been proven false in later years). Val hopes to catch a double-shadowed double-transit later this year as we approach opposition with Jool.

There’s literally a pixel in the lower left corner that is Bop

Thanks to weather and prepping for her test pilot duties, Val did not have a lot of time this week to go chasing after transits. Most likely next week will be just as busy for her as well.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman

Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff

Written on 10/7/16

v1.2 next week!! Can’t wait, despite all the recent turmoil that came of the huge developer departure. It’s a shame things went down the way they did. Sure a lot of them could have had expired contracts they couldn’t or didn’t want to renew but the way they left just smacked of dissatisfaction with their working conditions under Squad management. I really hope most if not all of them eventually return to the modding community and go back to enjoying doing their own thing. Regardless they left KSP in a great state as far as I can see.

Another rather large issue that has come up is the fate of KerbalMaps.com, which seems to have gone under for good. I was working rather closely with the author of the site to increase the zoom levels and update the terrain and biomes to the newer versions when he suddenly stopped communicating in early July. I poked him twice since then but never got a response. Then the site went down in late September and since it had happened earlier this year I waited to see if it would come back. It didn’t, so I tried another email. Nothing. I then did a whois lookup for the domain and found a phone number registered to it. Called that and left a message on a generic voicemail so no idea if I actually reached the author. I know his full name and location but couldn’t dig up any news articles about him. The domain itself is locked down probably because he failed to pay his server bills.

An unfortunate state of affairs given how much the Flight Tracker relies on the service to provide its dynamic content. I will now have to divert time and effort to bringing it back in some capacity to use, and hopefully that won’t have too detrimental an effect on my lead time in the process. We shall see.