|
Mk5 Integration Kicks into High Gear
Two big milestones occurred this past week for the Progeny Mk5, the first being the arrival of all 10 boosters that will be used to make the first and second stages of the rocket. The third stages have been undergoing construction for the past two weeks already and all 5 are almost done and ready to be integrated with their payloads as launch draws nearer. Over this next week leading up to the first two launches two Mk5s will be completed with the other three finishing up as the first two and third are launching, assembly-line style. Everything is on schedule for launch #1 on the 12th.
The second event was running kOS code on flight hardware for the first time. Previously engineers had been using development kits with unfinished hardware but the Mk5 probe cores we got last month were the final deal & some late changes were made since the last shipment of development hardware. Thankfully USI did a great job keeping the programming team informed and they were able to run code on the new hardware with only minor issues. We are patching up our code but the hardware looks solid. We will periodically push updates to our source repository on Github. Now that we will be unifying control systems on both the ground and the rocket the AFCS has been renamed the Automated Flight Control System from Automated Firing Control System.
Genesis & KerBalloon Maintain KSA Income
Mortimer, Head of Finances, is still tidying up the books to publish our latest financial report next week but says despite some added expenses from the Deuce and Progeny Mk5 development in addition to purchasing two new communications dishes, thanks to the efforts of the Genesis and KerBalloon programs our overall fiscal outlook remains positive despite a large red number for this past month’s income. This past week KerBalloon launched both high-altitude and low-altitude payloads from land and sea. Genesis only flew a single Civvie mission as they’ve been having to turn down multiple contract submissions – a typo was recently uncovered in the submission guidelines that led companies to believe we can offer high-altitude aircraft flights. Fixed now, hopefully some more valid contracts will start arriving soon.
Remises Departs the Kerbin System
The second known moonlet of Kerbin, Remises, exited Kerbin’s SOI earlier today. Due to its accidental discovery already in orbit we don’t know when it was captured, but since it was discovered back at the end of January it has stuck around for 213 days and circled Kerbin 44 times. Remises’ multiple Mun encounters played a pivotal role in helping us advance our astrodynamics models, with several improper predictions showing that we still had a flawed understanding of how Mun tweaked an object’s orbit during flybys. Ironically, the first accurate prediction turned out to be the latest one, which sent Remises out of the system. It will now continue to be watched by the Asteroid Tracking Network, and updates to its database will include observations for Remises every time it laps the sun along its new orbit. Astronomers have been making tons of observations during the course of Remises’ stay and can now finally start to go through all the data they have collected these last couple of months.
ATN Database Update
The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 916 asteroids, 16 updates and no new alerts issued.
Edlu Kerman, head of the ATN, has also recently released information about the drop in Near-Kerbin Object findings. Recent months have seen a larger influx of observation data from amateur astronomers as telescopes continue to become more widespread and cheaper, in addition to more kerbs willing to spend time on the surface exploring. Overall asteroid detection rates have gone up, but it has also become more generalized and less-focused on the NKOs that could pose a threat to any future surface inhabitants. The ATN has gone back and reworked their search protocols in the hopes of being able to identify a greater number of NKOs moving forward.
Celestial Snapshot of the Week
It’s not just lack of time that has kept Bob & Valentina away from the telescope so much, but lack of any exciting celestial events this time of year. Currently the only grouping of planets to be had are Sarnus, Urlum & Neidon, which will continue to become a tighter and tighter cluster as the months go on, although their various inclinations will prevent any occultations.
From the Desk of Drew Kerman
Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuffWritten on 8/12/17
Have been lagging a day behind (still am) for most of this week since I had to take some time to finally plan out my trip to see the solar eclipse later this month. To be honest I was on the fence about going more than just procrastinating, but finally decided I had the money and really wanted to make sure I had the chance to catch an event that many people say should be on one’s bucket list. If I miss out, I still have a good shot at 2024, but the latest weather update over my planned viewing area says skies will be sunny – fingers crossed!
New KSA logo
Massive thanks to Three_Pounds on the forums for taking the time to recreate a vectorized version of the KSA logo so that it could be embiggened as much as needed for whatever (like finally being displayed prominently on the website, finally). The logo is actually a KSP logo I liked a lot when first starting out with the original KSA in 2014 so I just changed the “P” to an “A”. Problem was of course it was from a flag logo that is only 160 pixels tall, so upscaling that never looked good. It’s very nice to finally have a logo I can scale down more often than up.
New tracking dishes
So eventually I will need to remove the tracking dish from the roof of the Tracking Station, so I wanted to see if I could destroy it without destroying the entire building. So I loaded up the Object Thrower and chucked a ball at it – and the whole building blew up. Oh well. But then I noticed two interesting things: 1) the tracking dish on the lawn didn’t blow up and 2) there was no trace of the building left behind. HRRRMMMM – what happens if I blow up just the dish on the lawn? so I rebuilt the building and blew up the lawn dish and yep – empty spot, intact building. I then confirmed Kerbal Konstructs has the commnet ground station models, loaded one up, scaled it down to .1 (I just stuck the decimal in front of the default 1 scale value for a quick start at scaling it down and hey, perfect match!) and placed it where the original dish used to be. Then I added a second dish and now I have animated Tracking Station dishes! This is way better than my original plan to use KerbCam to position the camera, take a photo of the Tier 1 Tracking Station, upgrade to Tier 2 for the extra dishes, take another photo from the same spot, and then composite them to remove the extra dish that’s not supposed to be there yet and also the Tier 2 building. I will still need to erase the dish on the roof myself once it comes down but that’s fairly easy I’ve already tested out a good composite method for it.
New asteroid hunting method
The real problem with the NKOs isn’t really with finding them, it’s finding ones that are still on an intercept path with Kerbin. Now that there are a lot more NKOs, there are more that have already been to and exited Kerbin’s SOI than there are approaching it, meaning I find them less often and thus have less cool asteroid plots to share (not to mention finding any on impact/capture trajectories). So now I’ve rigged things so more approaching NKOs are discovered. Exciting times ahead! I still need to break down how asteroids are tracked and discovered but it really would be an entire Desk Notes entry all on its own.
Lame-ass observation locations
I keep getting contracts for crew reports like within 15km of the KSC, it’s really annoying. I finally got fed up and just moved the location to someplace more interesting. I think as my reputation score improves the game starts giving me locations further and further from KSC, which would make sense but currently the progression is a bit too slow for my liking. I’m also probably going to start changing the altitude requirements too if the game keeps insisting on giving me high-altitude crew observations more often.
Financial errors
So the reason there is only ever one finance sheet available via the KSA Google Sheets is because I often find clerical mistakes or have to go back and retcon something or other. The latest example would be the very first line of the expense lists on some sheets was not being tabulated, and oh I also forgot to include R&D costs for the negative gravioli detector back in July (R&D costs are the game’s entry cost value for unlocking the part. USI sounding rockets mod ships with no entry costs so I decided to write it that USI is footing the bill in this regard) – I also forgot to include an expense line for purchasing the gravioli detector but then I realized the one I tested on the balloon flight & in space was the one I spent the R&D money on.
Alright, time to knock off that one extra day of lag & then get back to the Operations Tracker (name change!) rewrite. Of course after next week’s road trip I’ll be several days behind again – so it goes!
