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Flight Analysis Posted for Both Recent Launches
Progeny Mk6 Block I Flight 6
Ascension Mk1 Flight 2
With the Progeny flight being mostly routine other than some extreme testing of the air brakes the more interesting read would definitely be the Ascension analysis, which covers why the rocket failed to make orbit. It is a shame the guidance system seemed to lose roll control, because if the rocket had been able to continue to pitch over as planned it would likely have succeeded in making orbit. At the same time this makes us confident that we can get there on the next attempt, which also unfortunately won’t be until late September or early October.
Heat Wave Hits KSC
A thankfully rare event transpired this week when a high-pressure system became trapped over the region around KSC and proceeded to bake the surface over the course of several days before finally collapsing into a swarm of severe storms. Such an event happened before back in late 2016 and we were only able to work during the cooler night time hours. This event was a bit more severe and even at night we were unable to keep our facilities cool enough to allow for comfortable working conditions – especially the larger buildings like the VAB and HAB. The decision was made to pull back to Umbarg HQ underground. The headquarters is only partially staffed on a regular basis so there was extra office space but not enough for everyone from KSC so most worked remotely from temporary housing. We returned to the surface on Thursday and as of today everyone and everything is back up and running.
ATN Database
The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 2,266 asteroids and 6 updated with new observation data.
Celestial Snapshot of the Week
Oh look, more Mun! This time it is working its way out from in front of the sun after a Kerbolar eclipse as they both set behind the mountains to the west of KSC
From the Desk of Drew Kerman
Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuffWritten on 7/27/18
I really do think the Ascension flight analysis is pretty dope. I hope people enjoy reading that stuff. I really actually don’t know why the rocket rolled – like I said that was an honest effort to make orbit. I may have to post to the kOS reddit or forum thread about it.
Heat wave
Last time I put up a heat wave striking KSC, it was me actually baking in the heat of summer and unable to really use my PC comfortably. I had just moved into a new place and hadn’t gotten any A/C setup. This summer now I’m able to stay cool enough even in 90+°F that I can continue to work, but with a big new DLC dropping for GTA Online this week I knew I wasn’t going to have as much time to work on KSA operations so I needed things to slow way down for a bit.
Of course, I expected to get more work done than I did and it wasn’t because of GTA Online but mainly I was sleeping very erratically, even for me, and I think I was fighting off something. I don’t really ever get sick – I can’t recall the last time I had to take any sort of medication to fight off even a minor cold or infection – so when I am tired and want to sleep a lot I just do, and it’s probably due to my immune system needing the extra energy.
More crash annoyances
Still having some trouble with KSP not wanting to load my save files when all my regular mods are installed. I singled out KSP Interstellar Extended before as being an issue, but last week all I had to do was delete the folder and re-install it for things to work again. This week, despite changing absolutely nothing else about my KSP install, the game decided it just wasn’t going to work with KSPIE installed. So, fuck it. I just deleted it entirely. Good news is that I don’t really use it for anything yet since it features a lot of very advanced space tech. At the same time though its a pretty deep mod that ties into many game functions so it’s possible it could have an affect on current rocket launches somehow, I will need to keep an eye on things.
More annoying annoyances
As if dealing with the game causing trouble wasn’t enough, now it seems that TweetDeck is deciding not to give me access to all my twitter collections anymore. Randomly. So, twitter collections are where I can group various tweets into their own timeline and it’s how I compile mission logs and event sequences. They are a huge backbone in my storytelling. Normally, if I want to edit a collection to add/remove tweets I can select it from a list in TweetDeck to add it as a column, then I can drag & drop tweets into it. Now for some reason some of them are missing from that list, and I can’t figure out why the ones that are no longer available were removed. The collections themselves still exist, thankfully, but I can no longer edit them in TweetDeck. Now, it only took me about 15 minutes to write my own little javascript page using codebird, which lets me add tweets to the timelines, but it’s just a tad bit more time consuming to do this now, which doesn’t help things. Hopefully TweetDeck can get their shit together, I sent in a bug submission but it’s not a support service that guarantees a reply to all submissions.
Yes it really is my birthday today. I turn 36, if anyone was curious. *twirls finger in air* yippeeeee
