This KSP Base was WAY HARDER Than it Should Have Been...

[@MattLowne]

Check out my new shirt/hoodie/sweater design! Unfortunately KZbin wouldn't let me tag it in the video because it's "too recent" smh so I had to link a different design when I mention it in the video :( www.bonfire.com/any-landing/

[@libertyprime656]

Any plans to make this a sticker?

[@Ethan-Sailer]

​@@libertyprime656I second this!

[@-mmix-]

its ok dude just the irl kraken

[@stutterpunk9573]

hell yeah, we love you Matt!!

[@toxicflame2902]

Mod list? or do you have a mod list in one of ur previous videos?

[@HistoryOnPaper]

It’s been 9 long years but Matt finally put a base on Kerbin

[@eenvulkaan]

lmao

[@djw7141]

It’s the most difficult destination

[@listener-tt1gw]

Kerbin!

[@JonahGreve-bn6jc]

Got a reference on space this week. Congrats🎉

[@EpicOcrafters]

You've been mentioned in space this week 😂

[@csljr1]

Technically, since you spent the first night at the south pole waiting for the next day to be able to see when deploying the base, your "50+1 day mission" could be considered a 50 day mission when fully deployed/'on site', since the first day consisted of getting to the destination and preparing to setup the base; not the actual extended duration mission in the antarctic base itself.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

The biggest surprise is that there is a sunrise the next day. Kerbin has no axial tilt, so at the south pole the star should be cinstantly just below the horizon. Earth has axial tilt and at the south pole the sun rises and sets only once per year.

[@tylisirn]

@@HappyBeezerStudios He wasn't at the pole, he was at some random spot on the ice shelf. At exactly the pole, the center of the sun would be the tiniest smidgen below the horizon (given how far it is, it's almost exactly on the horizon), but since the sun has angular size, you would still always see it. And since your vantage point is higher than the surface, that would bring the sun slightly above the horizon.

[@adrianeng6217]

I noticed the ladders are on different sides of each component. You should try to rotate them in the vab so the ladder is continuous in the minmus base. This could be one of the things the kerbals learn from their test. Sounds like a very kerbal mistake to me!

[@starmanxvi]

You should install the mod 'Kerbinside Remastered' it adds loads of other space centers and airports around Kerbin and quite a few are close to the poles. It's also a really fun mod with a lot of surprises and gives you a reason to explore Kerbin. One of the bases (Top Secret Area 15) is super close to the South Pole and features subterranean levels and elevators almost like an aircraft carrier.

[@RandomAkria]

I need footage of this : D

[@Ditere3368]

Is it possible to get this mod without starting a new campaign?

[@MinerBat]

the angled solar panels actually make a lot of sense! since at the poles kerbol only moves very close to the horizon, putting them that way makes sure that all panelt receive light. if they were in a straight line, then the outer panels would almost completely block light from reaching the inner panels

[@TubususCZ]

It would make even more sense if the panels were completely vertical (that is, their rotation axis), or if there were static ones on the sides of the base. As soon as I saw the horizontal panel on the deployed rover, I thought "that isn't going to get much sunlight..."

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@TubususCZ I tend to do that with small stationary lander probes. Sure light will never hit the panel directly, but it will hit the panel at every time of day.

[@fishman501]

Interestingly the Soviets had more than just the M-4 for transporting spacecraft, in fact the Antonov AN-225 (RIP) was originally designed to transport larger spacecraft than the M-4 would have been able to carry. It was even proposed that a small space shuttle could be launched from its back mid flight. It even somewhat resembles the aircraft you built.

[@luckycobble935]

I hope he names the Minmus base "Minmus base hotel and Casino"

[@alexb-mc4jo]

A true tribute

[@MattLowne]

Minmus Base Casino and Hotel

[@socialistrecyclebin]

minmus casino hotel and base

[@kyloben4848]

@@MattLowne i'm afraid it'll only be rated five out of four

[@Elliott-Burton]

​@@MattLowneYou are contractually obligated to name the base that now

[@RolIinStoner420]

Dang... those cumulonimbus clouds @5:58 look B-E-A-UTIFUL

[@nerfarian]

This. Especially with time lapse and God rays. Quite a sight

[@guywithincrediblylongusername]

The first thing I thought of was a nuclear bomb mushroom cloud😅😅

[@Skelbton]

What a lovely base! Hopefully no unlucky kerbals wake up any ancient alien creatures that can shapeshift and mimic their compatriots!

[@MaximillionBucks]

Also, hopefully nothing bad comes though the stargate thats buried underneath

[@CASA-dy4vs]

Hope no weird alien ship with super humans is frozen under the ice!

[@neuronoc.7343]

"I know you gentlekerbs have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS RUD'ING COUCH!"

[@gwagabogo]

If you want one that works very well on ground bases, there's K&K Planetary Systems. It's like the stockalike station parts but for ground bases. It's very horizontally oriented.

[@DeadBaron]

Deploying a base via barrel roll is the most kerbal thing I've seen Matt do

[@jgus6]

You should use planetside exploration technologies- it meshes perfectly with Stockalike Station Parts and it has a bunch of useful parts for surface bases, space stations, and rovers. It’s not too much of a major addition, but it really makes it a lot easier to build vertically-oriented structures like the base you made.

[@jgus6]

It’s also fully compatible with freeIVA btw

[@Cramblit]

That phasing through the ground happens when you have your settings set to Ultra. It turns on the Tessellation. Which is what you're going through. To fix this you can do 2 options: 1) Turn on Collisions in the config. This will make the trees and rocks and stuff also have collision (if I remember right). Or 2) Turn your ground settings from Ultra to High. The only thing this will change is removing that tessellation issue where you're phasing through the ground in certain areas and planets/moons.

[@ulle85]

Wow didn’t know you could have collisions with terrain features such as trees! Did anyone ever succeed in making caves in KSP?

[@MaximillionBucks]

Ooh, I love arctic bases in KSP. It's kind of a weird staple on my channel

[@fourthvacban4574]

Didn't you airdrop an antarctic base too?

[@exozoid7883]

thank you for still uploading after all this time! my mom just recently got seriously injured and your videos always help take away the stress. thank you matt!

[@gwagabogo]

Man, flying through those clouds is great. I've got a video on my channel where I was prototyping a bomber to use on an enemy Duna base but I got carried away and went to go look at a storm.

[@Ratkill9000]

Working on flying to the south pole, but have been to the north pole a few times by plane. With my flying it's about 45 minutes to the north pole, using quad J404 engines. I forgot I usually put two on the wings with 2 or 3 fuel tanks each.

[@greatdisnub]

If you're wanting a larger runway, and possible a little spiffed up KSC, I'd highly recommend KSC enhanced. I find it strikes a good balance of a larger space center without adding an excessive amount of runways/launchpads

[@Cranberrie123]

Your videos are good for things like background noise for like gaming or doing homework/paperwork. In a good way, its not too crazy high energy but you keep up a steady pace of talking.

[@sgeb4996]

Dude, I have no idea who did this volumetric clouds mod but looking at this damn sunset/sunrise at the pole made me start thinking about all of this. AAA (and above) category game developer companies have some serious explaining to do if some game enthusiast outranks them in terms of work quality like the creator of this mod did.

[@Marc83Aus]

Blackrack developed visual mods for KSP then was hired to work on KSP 2, after the studio shut own he went back to releasing visual mods for the original game.

[@bubbatheman4067]

@@Marc83Aus do you happen to know what his mods are called by chance?

[@Marc83Aus]

@@bubbatheman4067 The General recommendations I get for current KSP visual mods are: true Volumetric clouds: Deferred rendering Scatterer Parallax TUFX EVE redux and waterfall. Blackrack did EVE redux, scatterer, deferred rendering, and volumetric clouds

[@Leopard_211]

3:30 that plane definately does NOT look inspired by the myasishchev vm-t atlant, it looks far more like the An-225 which was also used to transport the buran

[@alexb-mc4jo]

Rip An-225 🫡

[@ltmoonpie4311]

Quick tip Matt, on those larger aircraft that need the ENTIRE runway and then some, it might work to include some trailing edge flaps. I've found the perform a bit strange in KSP but have reliably reduced take-off distances. Worth a shot in the future. Also, love the idea of doing an entirely Kerbin-based mission, brilliant.

[@MichaelCoombes776]

16:52 is definitely the laugh of someone realising they're doing things in the wrong order. Love this. It's like Matt was flying to the sun with the first attempt. KSP1's graphics mods are incredible.

[@jeffspaulding9834]

Three words: Atmospheric Autopilot Mod. Gives you an aircraft-style autopilot system that works much better for planes than the stock SAS (which is really made for spacecraft). Once you're in the air and you've set your parameters, you can go eat lunch while the game does the boring part of the flight for you. Autopilot systems go way back, so they're not an anachronism. Pretty much anything more advanced than a Piper Cub has one.

[@diogocarvalho5715]

I'll be sure to try this, thanks!

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

I'm too lazy to look into anything more specific so I just use the mechjeb spaceplane autopilot. It does the job decently well and managed to keep a plane afloat and on course while I went for groceries.

[@entropic-decay]

The base landing reminds me of how I recently did a Duna surface base - I assembled the whole thing in orbit, covered the underside in heat shields, and then just used a booster to drop it on the spot I wanted it at and some landing thrusters to keep it from exploding on impact

[@shazmodeus2795]

Matt, there are several different aircraft auto pilot mods, I don't remember their names off hand, but one I used let you set a specific Altitude and heading and would hold that until you told it to stop (or plane ran out of fuel). I used it many times on treks to the poles for missions like this.

[@SFS_OlympiaAerospace]

That tour of the base is just too good! I really like the way you transported the base there!

[@terrakotta6293]

Matt, MechJeb has autopilot setting in which you can set parameters such as holding altitude, heading, speed, bank angle, etc. It's probably useful for repetitive task such as assembling huge space station. You can pilot it yourself for the first mission but then for several missions after it you can ask mechjeb to send payload to orbit, rendezvous with it, and dock all done automatically. It can also land rockets a la SpaceX with its landing guidance autopilot

[@AMPS1]

Atmospheric autopilot is much better for planes.

[@mgalyean]

Nice job, Matt. I've always liked the stock a like parts and have had some extensive ISRU on Minmus using them along with the mining parts. Being at the pole, your rover's up-facing panel will never see much sunlight though. So maybe the engineer can deal with that along with the strut? Ez-Pz

[@Kaelygon]

I don't think Ludwell and Mugar walked away from that landing 6:25

[@RicardoNirep]

*whoop whoop* "PULL UP" *whoop whoop* "PULL UP" was heard

[@alexb-mc4jo]

another happy landing

[@momokochama1844]

"If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing." Chuck Yeager well, I'd say it was "just" a good landing 😆

[@AndrewCollins7]

What may have happened with the disappearing surface base is the airplane left the "physics range" of the base before the parachutes deployed, meaning it hit the ground without parachutes. Just a guess though.

[@sambal5108]

I think accepting the crashes, going along and dealing with whatever mishaps occur could be really fun for content. If you were forced to launch a second aeroplane with a new rover after what happened in the first timeline, there'd be more of a story to the video and the mission - let alone the stakes it'd bring! Think of the stakes Matt! The idea that something *could* go wrong is such a powerful and interesting thing.

[@alexb-mc4jo]

Imagine if he had to rescue the kerbals from the plane crash. Imagine how big the plane would be

[@OwenBestic]

I think you should download a mod for kerbal life support so that the green houses and hydroponic labs are actually useful. Also it would make the space stations more useful so that they could produce the necessary material for the base and crew. You could store the materials on the space station and have a space plane transport them down to the base and resupply it.

[@oliversavage99]

Hey Matt. I would recommend Planetside Exploration Technologies as well as Stockalike Station Parts to build the Minmus base. It adds cool hab modules as well as nice new rover parts.

[@wxb200]

7:30 Look at those Clouds! WOW!

[@couryswan2448]

I have been looking forward to your sat video all week, thank you Matt! It's a good one!

[@tankhistoryfordummies]

I did a similar thing and have built a fully stock base at the North Pole of Kerbin, on top of the ice shelf. I flew a stock C-5 Galaxy there to deliver larger components like drills (used gravity hack to install them to base).

[@Sir_Southpaw]

MattLowen. From one matt to another. I must you from the other side of the pond. I've watched your KPS videos back 8 plus years ago. Probably even further when I was young teen playing KSP. Now, in 2024 I got a 2 year old son who love to watch you videos with me. Loved space related stuff. And those funny little green frog men

[@The_ISD_Guy]

I have a suggestion that can help you. For space stations I slipped up saying it one time and called it a “spation” and i have called it that ever since. it’s convenient for me.

[@xerolad4086]

This savefile would be super cool with the Kerbalism mod.

[@solomars]

challenge: build a hollow piramid ship and park it on a piramid on kerbin. Stargate vibes intensifies

[@0osk]

You should start including a pastebin link with your modlist in the description! I want to know exactly what you're using.

[@davidgilbert5048]

With free iva you can also pick up stuff like mugs and cargo bags, and they float around in zero g. Also the fire extinguishers actuality work and will propel you backwards!

[@IneptOrange]

Hey Matt, I spoke with you personally on Discord around 2018 or so. Just wanted to say you're still a cool dude, thanks for making content like this for so long. Have a good evening :)

[@johnynuke3310]

I actually did something like this recently in my ussr roleplay campaign, I sent a base to the north pole via an ekranoplan, and a MAZ-537 with an Il-76

[@Salamandra40k]

Matt, I dont know how many mods you might want to end up using, but one of the best mods I've tried recently and will never play without now that I've tried it is the B9 Procedural Wing mod. It makes building wings and operating aircraft just so....much...easier. AND, its akin to what KSP was trying to do with their wing editor.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

combine that with simple repaint and you basically get all the fun of KSP2 wing design. Oh, and procedural wings also allows to have tanks in the wings, which is pretty much standard for commercial jets.

[@Salamandra40k]

@@HappyBeezerStudios I made that comment the same day I actually figured that out and my god it makes wings actually damn useful because you can use THEM as a center of lift fuel tank instead of having to fiddle around and balance out your tanks and shit and makes things infinitely easier (almost like they figured that out in real life for a reason)

[@Super_Pershing_T26E1_1]

the transporter looks more like the Antonov AN-225, which also carried space shuttle and rocket parts for the russians, but was sadly destroyed recently in a airfield bombing in ukraine. one of the biggest planes built, designed to surpass the aging AN-22 and Tupolov aircraft

[@joasek]

A video idea, to make an autonomous mining base and refinery on the surface of Minimus, but the launch vehicle will not be discarded, it will be refueled in Minimus by the mining base and will make the bridge from the surface and the refueling station in orbit! There will be enough fuel left for larger ships to launch from Minumus to the rest of the Kerbal system!

[@stubbornspaceman7201]

You should probably put these videos into a playlist so that it’s easier for people to keep track of them.

[@anonymous_2373]

"Ultimately, this is a game about space frogs. none of it matters" best quote ever uttered

[@XavierBetoN]

Excellent kerrestrial experiment for future extrakerresttrial colonizations.

[@Freak80MC]

As someone who recently flew to a contract location, I (sorta) feel your pain here lol Also I'd probably land the plane and then rocket the base off the top and flip it over in the air and activate the parachutes, at least that's my initial idea.

[@kaiwilliams2181]

As someone who lives on the other side of the world, I’m contemplating sleep or watching Matt lowne

[@maxlin3442]

Is that even a contemplation?

[@MaximillionBucks]

W A T C H L O W N E

[@Konocti-republic]

I have an idea for transportation of large object to far away places. Instead of transporting them on the back of a large jet aircraft and jankily dropping them, you can build a large helicopter/bicopter/quadcopter where you would hold the object below and drop it off as you land. What do you think? I feel like a quadcopter would be really cool to build anyways, maybe a tilt rotor?

[@jebediahkerman4251]

i remember when i made a bsse for the Artic, i decided to launch it on a Balistic Trajectory from the KSC, then re entering and using parachutes since my planes werent powerful enough, much faster and fun 😂

[@Bender_430]

With that large observatory dome, you can walk around in the outside section if you board with the doors on the outside!

[@Bulltoad_Real]

Matt, I highly recommend installing all of nertea’s mods. They are insanely high quality and are just so fun to use.

[@yenius3203]

Matt there's an excellent mod called AtmosphereAutopilot that makes flying planes so much simpler than the stock method of constantly having to make adjustments!

[@DarkTheFailure]

By the way, you can go into the parallax configs to enable collisions so your parts would be sinking into thr ground like how it did when you landed in the poles

[@MaximillionBucks]

It's always a good day when you wake up to a new Matt Lowne video

[@DecPlays_]

Awesome flights for the decoupling of the base from the plane. Fun fact though, despite the more modern meanings of Arctic and Antarctic referring to the North and South poles respectively, what they actually refer to bears. As in the North Pole has bears (arktos) and south pole does not have bears (anti-arktos = antarctic). So Bear and Not Bears. 🐻‍❄

[@Akotski-ys9rr]

I love how happy the kerbals get when you take off

[@hjcks1]

so glad you finally made an arctic base! I commented about making one in ksp2 like a year ago

[@DeepProbe]

My "normal" Kerbin exploration plane is mach 2 "needle", and even piloting it I praising all the gods for atmospheric autopilot mod. Moving subsonic flying brick for 1/4 of kerbin's equator's lenght manually is, indeed, a heroic endaevor...

[@chitak985]

You should install the mod Kerbalism, it makes the game a lot more realistic by adding life support, supplies and etc.

[@amhuman5138]

To me the carrier looks a lot like a compressed version of the AN-225 Mirya, which was used to carry the Soviet Buran, so it does sort of fit the bill.

[@messiermitchell4901]

I love how this mod has reference to other mods, i saw a poster for Outer Solar System in there!

[@ProfessionalIdiot-mf8lj]

Hope you feel better soon Matt. Sorry about the cold.

[@Dukenukem]

With those 6 turbofans it is nothingn like Atlant or modified 747, your transporter is reminiscent of AN-225 Мрія, the real aircraft designet to carry Buran shuttle.

[@Ze_Techno]

I havent played the game in so long, I can't believe it can look so good now!

[@hexlart8481]

When you play KSP and you have all these space stations and spacecraft going kilometers per second, its really easy to get a distorted sense of scale when it comes to flying an aircraft. Flying a plane anywhere on kerbin takes hours, which makes sense given that planes in real life take hours to get to their destinations. The really efficient way to travel in KSP is using ballistic trajectories, where you just send a rocket where you want to go instead of flying there. Takes a lot less time _and_ you can timewarp. Although if we are mentioning realism, technically its unlikely this particular plane mission would have ever happened. Kerbin would have civilian infrastructure in place and it would be possible to ship the base to the arctic piece by piece and assemble it there. So technically the most realistic way to perform this mission is to use the console to just move your base there directly, skipping the flight.

[@privatepessleneck]

ah this brings me back, 90% of my ksp hijinks were just aero craft trying to get to the north pole or somewhere else on kerbin.

[@drake52]

when you mentioned the fact that you just saw that you had space and decided to build a rover is kinda similar to the real life moon rovers that were brought on the Apollo missions. if I recall correctly someone saw that there was some empty space on the lander and figured out that it might be possible to fit a small rover in there.

[@MadPirateShin]

That tower is huge when seen from the inside!

[@Tagson]

Seeing how you decided to choose a plane that had a split tail-fin so that you could flip the plane upside down and drop the base, is very how the soviets would've done it, I would classify this plane 100% soviet style.

[@lolpowarthunder]

3:59 it’s honestly closer to the Myria than anything else, known as the biggest aircraft ever flown

[@Francois424]

Stupid question (maybe) - I've been out of the KSP loop for more than a year now... Matt's interface looks STUNNING. Darker when important, nicer colors, more krisp, easier to read. Can anyone point me towards the mod that makes it look like that ? I'd very much like to use it on my next playthru. Thank you !

[@cheezysot]

Once you get far into this save, I would recommend checking out the Paraterraforming mod. It features true blue colony parts as well as O'Niel Cylinders.

[@funtimewithfalco]

You should put a giant release station a part of that base and make that like a southern launch site to make it easier to go into polar orbit

[@legitjafa]

Headcanon. Lowne aerospace wanted a larger test base in the arctic but due to budget cuts the base was reduced to a single self sustaining tower

[@RedTail1-1]

Had no idea we were doing that mars training mission... Thought we were going back to the moon first. Figured we'd be focusing on building a sort of temporary-permanent base there for an in-between for mars missions..

[@luigirota7964]

6:25 Kaboom kamikaze time

[@chriswoodend2036]

Parachute landing on Minmus is next!

[@thedatatreader]

Only one minor missed opportunity, but I think it would have been cool if you could have gotten the plane to level off and then used Free IVA to take a tour of the several day long flight to the arctic base. There's just something so immersive about that mod..

[@Avetho]

I almost went to suggest turning the damping down to 0 on the hinges, and then I went back and realized you did just that XD Well, at least the arms will go up just fine on Minmus.

[@Key_Smasher]

It has been the case for a long time that when you go too far from another craft you turn the high level of physics simulations that craft is going through. This includes any atmospheric flight and of course parachutes. So essentially you are declaring that craft to be debris you don't care about. This is what makes SpaceX style boosters difficult to manage because you have to ensure your vessel has a high enough Apogee to remain in space while you land your booster and return to the vessel to circularize your orbit when it reaches the Ap.

[@stuchris]

i flew to the north pole on kerbin once or twice, and yeah it takes aaaages. much easier to do with a rocket, but wheres the fun in that.

[@MattKitten]

I've always felt it was stupid that KSP starts with space, and then you can unlock plane parts later on down the road, like, I get it, they're meant for space planes, but still. So, I make way too many planes and helicopters to compensate for my lack of a clue how to really get into the space side of things efficiently. You're not wrong. The arctic flight is a long one. Longer still is around the world. I don't recommend it unless you have a REALLY good soundtrack to listen to. Or a book. Or both.

[@AnomalyXero]

Double-Tap Brakes. I never play without it.

[@Bobbymoe_]

Hey Matt nice video! I’d recommend checking out kerbal planetary base systems, it does modular flat bases very well. You can easy keep expanding bases as long as you put one of their docking ports on the end of a module!

[@FolgoreCZ]

Ah yes. If only there was a soviet six engine, split tail, high-mounted wings aircraft, that was used for carrying shuttles and rocket parts on it's back. But alas, we have to compare the design to the Atlant. :-D

[@FloppaSPACEAGENCY]

i come here for the commentary and i keep getting more than i expect.

[@FailSpace2]

Matthias Lawnmower, please try out the USI mods. it makes it so that if kerbals don’t have enough food or living space, they will get homesick and refuse to work. it makes things much more fun.

[@TooLateForIeago]

If you want to make your planes look amazing, get the OPT space plane mods. HUGE cargo bays too.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

waiting for daytime on the south pole. Remind me again about the axial tilt on Kerbin. Because on earth that would take between 2 1/2 and 4 months with sunset on the 22th of march and sunrise at the 20th of september.

[@crispico4727]

I just tried freeIVA and by god, it's beautiful

[@luigirota7964]

13:30 Maybe penguin

[@CertifiedMicrowave]

this reminds me of a time where i was on a discord call with my friend and we were making planes and sent some kerbals to the north pole then back, it was really fun!