The raid on Area 51 will require a massive amount of supplies for all those narrato runners. The development of Centari Spaceworks new Grasshopper cargo transport has come at just the right time to supply them.
The Grasshopper also has a Heavy variation for additional cargo and range.
Accessing all the cargo in the Grasshopper Heavy
Stage separate the tug if not already done.
Dock
Unload cargo.
Undock.
Use the thrusters on the Orion SM to start moving toward the docking port.
Stage separate the Orion SM. The vehicle should continue moving toward the docking port and re-dock.
Nooleus had a small surprise update this past weekend. It added the ability to backup and restore your game data. This is very exciting for the inevitable time when you need to get a new phone. No longer do you have to worry about what will happen to all your hard work in Space Agency.
Full disclaimer, I haven't tried the restore functionality yet, but I did back up my progress.
In other Centauri Spaceworks news, the whole crew has been focusing on the Station Blueprint Designer app. Hope to have some more blog posts on that soon.
The 1.9 update of Space Agency introduced a new part type. Engines powered by electricity instead of fuel. Centauri Spaceworks immediately began research into building an all electric ship, the Electric Scorpion. Despite high hopes, this test was solid failure.
The Electric Scorpion was constructed and tested in the Centauri Spaceworks Workshop. Left, right, forward and back worked well as expected. However, the ship was unable to achieve any rotation when firing diagonally opposing engines. Initially, it was suspected that the cause was the same mechanism that allowed ships like the Hummingbird or the Slug Transport to operate in a straight line was preventing the rotation even though their engines were offset from the center-line.
The Electric Scorpion was modified with arms that offset the ion pods from the main body. This would move the engines even further away from the center line of the ship to increase the torque. Unfortunately as, seen in the video below, the Electric Scorpion was not able to rotate even with the longer arms.
Without the ability to rotate itself the Electric Scorpion was not very useful as an independent vehicle. However there was still more testing to do.
The second round of testing involved checking if the Electric Scorpion could be brought to a complete stop. This would validate the use of ion engines for keeping a station in a fixed location. Station keeping doesn't require much thrust, just enough to offset the occasional bump from a missed docking attempt.
The ion engines were good at bringing the Electric Scorpion to a near stop. Unfortunately, they were not able to precisely cancel out all of the velocity like a burst of RCS thrusters does. There would be small amount of velocity going forwards, and a burst of the ion engines would result in a very small velocity going backwards. While the station was visibly stationary, the navi-comp still displayed a red velocity vector indicating that the station may very slowly drift over time.
Linked ion drives are still an exciting technology, however they are not yet able to completely replace chemical fuel engines.
Here are the highlights of the 1.9 release of Space Agency:
2 new missions
New ion drive station parts
New Arianne 6 and PSLV rocket parts
Draco Trunk bug fix.
Overall this is a great update: new parts, new rockets, new missions, and a key bug fixed.
New Missions
As usual, there are new missions to introduce the new parts. I really enjoyed Mission 36. In mission 36 you need to attach two parts, on of which is the new ion drive, to a test vehicle. What I really liked about this mission was that you don't have easy access to one of the docking ports that you need to attach to. The vehicle is parked so close to STA that even if you were to fit the part it, the tug would impact STA when it released the part. This added a bit of extra challenge on top of the standard launch and attach parts style mission.
Mission 37 is similar to mission 36, but it uses 4 parts and includes the new linked ion drive parts.
New Ion Drive
I am very excited for both the new ion drive parts. They are both small sized engines, which was one of the aspects that I was hoping for when the Mighty Joe Thruster was designed. They also do not have atmosphere which was another key aspect of the Might Joe Thruster.
Having the ion engine run off of power instead of fuel is a great way to add more variety to the game play. If that weren't enough, the linkable ion drive engine allows you to fire multiple engines at the same time. This eliminates one of the major constraints to ship design in Space Agency. Because you could previously only fire one engine at a time, the engine needed to be located close to the center line of the ship to keep the thrust balanced. Linkable ion drives no longer have that constraint because they can be fired simultaneously.
New Rocket Parts
Not one but two new rockets: the Ariane 6 and PSLV. Both also include new boosters as well. Centauri has started using the Ariane 6 body with the Airaine 5 boosters as one of the go to rockets for launch.
Araine 6
PSLV
Draco Trunk Bug
Very happy to see this bug fixed. Now you can access the cargo inside of the trunk. This means that Draco can now carry a huge 11 cargo.
Nooleus announced that that there will be an update to Space Agency tomorrow, and that we can expect a new engine in this update. Everyone at Centauri Spaceworks is very excited for this update.
But before the update drops, Centauri designers would like to put out their idea for a new engine. They have no idea if it is anything close to what Nooleus will release but it is something that would make ship building more interesting.
This is the Mighty Joe Thruster. It is designed to be used on larger ships and stations that can support a stand alone engine module. The Might Joe has two advantages that make it a great choice for an engine.
It does not have any atmosphere. This means you can mount it on any part and not get the annoying no atmosphere warning when looking at your station or ship.
It it fits in the width of a standard station module. This means it can fit in smaller places that other engines cannot.
These two attributes make it ideal for an engine on your next station or ship!
The Crystal Starliner was a cruise ship designed to be a sister ship to the Crystal Voyager. It included a Pod for excursions, as well as an Orion III lifeboat. The initial prototype model was constructed in September 2017.
Despite the solid design and construction found on every Centauri Spaceworks vessel, it was it never put into mass production. However the cabin design with four hubs and two viewing cupolas lives on as a part of the Palm Tree Hotel.
