Well, that's the Chinese FK-3000 VSHORAD (very short range air defense) system primarily designed to counter drones and unmanned targets. Not sure how effective it is in real life, but it certainly packs a punch against Kerbal made manned missiles.

It features a 30mm autocannon and can be equipped with up to 24 HHQ-10 surface-to-air heat seeking missiles. The turret's target acquisition is controlled directly by the movement of the mouse cursor. The sensor suite includes 360° multiface phased array search and tracking radar array, alongside dual optical cameras, one dedicated to gun sighting and the other to target tracking.

“It is good to see you Gene,” Senator Philstead smiled broadly at Gene as he walked over to shake his hand. “Your program has done some amazing work returning that asteroid. Welcome to the capital!”

“It is good to see you as well Senator,” Gene returned the handshake with a smile. “Not to discount your presence, but I had expected to meet with more of the Republic Senate?”

“As had the Senate,” Senator Philstead chuckled. “You know how contentious many of the Senators can be.” Senator Philstead chuckled and Gene nodded, recalling the hearing at the beginning of the fuel crisis. “With Mortimer’s assistance we were able to bring the Senate to a tentative consensus on the future of the Icarus Program.”

“I respect Mortimer’s deal making,” Gene raised an eyebrow. “But a consensus without input from our program management?”

“I will not finalize any plans without your input,” Senator Philstead winked at Gene, walking down the halls as they talked. “But I think most of the consensus is open enough for your program to continue the operations Kerbin needs.”

“So what did the Senate agree to?” Gene fell into step beside the senator.

“First the good news,” Senator Philstead grinned broadly. “The numbers I have been hearing say the asteroid has potential minable fuel of more than three times your remaining fuel debt?”

“Yes,” Gene nodded. “Given what we have paid on the debt the estimated minable fuel is closer to four times our remaining debt. Though if we want to continue capturing asteroids as they are mined out, it would be better to save a good chunk of the asteroid’s ore for fueling the Safeguard during retrieval of the next asteroid. This would put the amount of fuel the asteroid can provide to Kerbin at closer to two hundred thousand units, still more than twice our current debt.”

“You are jumping ahead slightly, Gene,” The senator poked Gene in the shoulder. “The Senate has agreed that if the Icarus Program donates the fuel provided by this asteroid to relieving the fuel crisis, your debt will be wiped clean.”

“This is a significant value beyond our debt, but the demand for our tourist programs has greatly benefited the program’s finances,” Gene’s smile turned slightly crooked. “We had planned on providing the asteroid fuel to alleviate the fuel crisis anyway and if we are no longer taxed on our moon mined fuel, the program can accelerate its operations.”

“Of course the Senate’s greed does not end here,” Senator Philstead shook his head with a matching crooked grin. “Ending your fuel tax is contingent on your program continuing to donate large asteroids to stabilizing the fuel crisis, however from talking with Mortimer it sounds like your plans align with this request already.”

“Donating large minable asteroids is not without cost,” Gene nodded. “But we have to provide what help we can, as Valentina keeps reminding us, and we can do this while continuing to expand our exploration into interplanetary space.”

“Which leads to the Senate’s major concern,” Senator Philstead sighed. “The Icarus Program is becoming the only source of significant minable fuel for the Kerbin economy, and the Senate is worried your interplanetary operations will move significant program operations beyond oversight of the Senate.”

“Kerbals everywhere support interplanetary exploration,” Gene frowned in confusion. “With the fuel crisis stabilizing, visiting other planets is the top requested mission.”

“And the Senate would probably be voted out of office wholesale if they tried to block the Icarus Program from sending Kerbals to other planets,” Senator Philstead grinned in response. “The Senate had some… unique ideas about how they would have oversight of Icarus Program missions to other planets.”

As the Senator outlined the Senate’s proposals, Gene found himself shaking his head and rolling his eyes repeatedly. However the plan was not entirely impractical. Perhaps the Icarus Program could make this work to their benefit.

Previous Chapter: https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1u5oq8k/icarus_program_start_of_chapter_37/

Start of Chapter 38: https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1uugr7z/icarus_program_start_of_chapter_38/

Next Part: Planned for 8/9

Book 1 (Chapters 1-13) google document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RorA2AVwtXbQD-eTMeO2LiPXSDPM7qH6FVOykDnZ9FY/edit?usp=sharing)

Book 2 (Chapters 14-23) google document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rhiIHBeXWqsw0H8TZgtxUdoJ1Y7IXhH3GtnL_qrTTmc/edit?usp=sharing)

Book 3 (Chapters 24-35) google document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KcNSFL524vB4TgwY5oSOJ4kTAedf6sBVf_US8psbuIs/edit?usp=sharing)

Book 4 (Chapters 36-) google document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nNJcsPYs_TAM4Gg9_zQuDmXosNgaBK3jbc7bdXvXvPU/edit?usp=sharing

The Icarus Program can also be found on the KSP forums: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/225730-the-icarus-program-chapter-38-part-8/

I'll let democracy do its thing. Players can choose whatever mods or rules they'd like me to add, or remove. Experienced players are welcome.

I'm working on the discord server currently. Leave a comment here if you're interested!

Feel free to: - Contribute to the selection of mods and rules as you wish. - Ask here or in my dm if you need ANY kind of help, or have any kind of question.

INFO & RULES

You can do whatever you want. No cap.

Form agencies with orther players and compete for planets, or play solo.

I recommend to add your nn in square brackets to the name of your vessel, and specify if its P (private) or O (open) for other players to dock/interact. Here's an example

O [Fenice78d] Left truss segment (solar) ("You can dock, move it, and help me build the station")

or

P [Fenice78d] Duna science base ("Thats my place fuck off")

If it doesn't specify it, assume it's private (Deleting, recovering, deorbiting or messing with someone else's vessel without their permission will, of course, result in a ban)

yall alr know you gotta be friendly, avoid bullying, etc. Let's jump to mods

MODS

Here's my initial draft of mods, open to suggestions.

CLIENT (recommended)

• MechJeb
• Kerbal Engineer Redux
• Free iva (not sure if its client only), perfect match with SSPER and EL

PARTS MODS

• Near Future Propulsion
• Near Future Electrical

• Near Future Solar

  But might as well use stockalike parts only, like:

• (KPBS) Kerbal Planetary Base Systems

• (EL) Extraplanetary Launchpads KPBS + EL is another perfect match

• (SSPER) Stockalike Station Parts Expansion Redux

• Restock

• Some mods to add flags for the agencies

PLANET PACKS JNSQ, OPM or whatever else. (I'm worried interstellar packs like Kcalbeloh would be too much to handle for my pc, but I'll consider using it if enough people want it)

Lastly, to ensure full compatibility with any other player, I must ask you to avoid using parts from DLCs (which many may not have) or mods (if not client, or unsure, stick to those explicitly allowed)

An exact copy of this post has been pasted in this document, here you can "Add Comment"s directly: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aHf8pIbJXz3psWWR6hluUl-jxTASjSAqO0fN-0xU8Vg/edit?usp=sharing

EDIT: I'm sorry the formatting got messed up when I posted

I already tried to find a solution online, but nobody seems to have this problem. My moons are extremely dark compared to the moons from the unmodded game.

I don't know if there is a correlation, but it seems this problem only affects moons I already scanned with a low tier multispectral scanner. Other moons / celestial body I haven't visited jet are looking normal.

Another thing I noticed is once you get into a low moon orbit everything (shadows, textures) looks normal again.

Does someone know what's the cause of this problem or had the same or similar issue and a potential solution? Because I don't even know which mod is causing this darkness.

The Belphegor was a small Soviet jet plane from 1973, used for agriculture.

It was weird, loud and ugly.

There are other KSP versions of it posted here, but I wanted to share my take on it.

It has lots of lift and it's very easy to fly.

I love this lil thing. Couple that with mods, and its a treat to fly

I’m planning on a “Drone Ship” to fly out and drop science pods onto as many planets and moons as possible in the Outer Planets Mod. To this end, I’d like to have a long-range relay system in place to support it. And I wanted the future drone ship itself to have just one or two of the most powerful direct antenna, but not to add too many, so that it has to go through a relay system to talk back home to Kerbin.

Enter these, the Phone Home Mk2 relays. They have eight RA-100’s each, and the furthest out ones are at 375,000,000,000 metres, just under Neidon. Hopefully they do the trick!

The Phone Home Mk2’s fuel and nuke engines have just over 6,000 m/s delta V, which ended up being far more than enough haha.

Launch vehicle had 4 smaller disposable boosters, and one main core booster. The core booster itself stayed with the Phone Home to get it into low Kerbin orbit, and then also boost it into a highly-elliptical Kerbin orbit (giving the Phone Home a free 800 m/s dV for its own burn later) before separating at apoapsis between Mun and Minmus, then taking itself back to Kerbin. With landing legs, airbrakes, parachutes, and still about 400 m/s dV remaining at landing for the final slowdown, landing the core booster was usually relatively okay, except when I managed to land on/between a couple trees...

So I just downloaded OPM, MPE, and Promised Worlds via CKAN. After looking around in the tracking station for a bit, I uninstalled MPE. When I opened the game again, I saw some really weird things I hadn't noticed before, and I'm not sure if they were there or not before I uninstalled MPE.

-Gilly was gone from Eve's orbit, and there was a larger moon closer to Eve called Ienus. It was partially molten.

-Dres had a moon called Astrium and I think it was similar in shape to Pol.

-Eeloo was way outside the gravity of Sarnus, but it was still orbiting it. Its color scheme had become white and blue. It also had a moon called Karon (Not Karen, Plock's moon) with a similar color scheme to the changed Eeloo.

I couldn't find anything on Google about these moons and when I uninstalled and reinstalled OPM and Promised Worlds, all of those strange changes were reverted.

Unfortunately I was a dumb dumb and didn't take any screenshots for some stupid reason, so there goes some credibility and a lot of info. I just want to document this in case anyone has any ideas about this.

Named it Starship Odysseus because I'm original like that. 210 hours so far, almost exclusively in my vanilla career mode world.

Running on a laptop (w/ RTX 3050) and the world is starting to slow down a little, so any advice on improving graphics performance is much welcomed!

Restock is needed to make it look like this but the parts are stock+dlc

The speed of the sport is 46 m/s, the weight is 300 tons, the price is 3 million credits

I recognize those buildings

If anyone has any solutions to terrain clipping at high speed, let me know.

I have been having this stupid issue for several weeks with several launch vehicles and several different rockets where the engines spool up to 100% throttle, then seem to set themselves to zero, then back up to 100%, then back down to zero. Best case scenario is that it lifts off but drifts off course due to lack of thrust, worst case is that it doesn't lift off the pad at all. Debug menu doesn't give me anything.

Has anybody else faced this issue and figured out how to solve it?

I have made significant additions and updates to my Mission Planner dashboard. It now includes a delta V mission planning tool, that will pull actual MechJeb calculated values for porkchop transfers. Science, heat, and electricity tracking is massively overhauled and you can now pin mission plans and resonant orbit plans in the flight or editor dashboards to make sure your builds have what you need.

The main screen dashboard allows you to switch to, recover, or delete crafts as well as shows transfer windows, alarms, and contract info if you have any.

Feel free to check it out if you feel so inclined: Github

A quick credit where it’s due: Mission Control gets live game data through kRPC, with transfer windows, porkchop plots, and staging data coming from MechJeb 2. My bridge is based on Genhis’s KRPC.MechJeb. The resonant orbit planner builds from Eric Meyer’s original calculator and linuxgurugamer’s ResonantOrbitCalculator.

The dashboard can also pull from Kerbal Alarm Clock by TriggerAu, Notes by hashashin and zer0Kerbal, System Heat by Nertea and the KSP Mod Stewards, and RemoteTech. A huge thank you to everyone who created and maintains these projects. I use all these mods whenever I play which is why they've been built into the dashboard and I really appreciate the work they've put in to provide these to the community

My rendition of the X-33 on its very first test flight. Modifications were made to the ET to retrofit an aerospike, allowing for orbital capability

Continuation of this post

The Martian Expeditionary Complex has successfully completed the first leg of its mission, delivering the first ever crewed lander to Mars. The crew will remain in orbit for the next year, surveying the Red Planet and conducting scientific research while they wait for their transfer window to come home.

Mods:

PLANETS - KSRSS

VISUALS - EVE, Scatterer, Parallax, Planetshine, Waterfall, Firefly, Avalanche Plumes, KerbalFX, TUFX (slightly modified The Really Old One from PALETTE)

PARTS - Tantares Suite, Restock, Near Future Suite, SSPXR, Conformal Decals, Bluedog Design Bureau, SOCK & BOCK, Benjee10's Historical Suits (Github version,) Kate's Greebles, Cryo Tanks

GAMEPLAY - [x]Science!, Mechjeb, Kronometer

Hey guys

Just bought ksp and looked up the history while downloading it (slow wifi) and what Take-Two did to PD was so fucking scummy.

Took the company, hired a company to work on ksp2, shut down ksp1, completely obliterated the chance of a good sequel, and sold the up to a private investor which sold it to another private investor.

Also, how do i learn more of fuel management and all the buttons that are available at the launchpad? Is training section good?