Little Probes in a Big Galaxy

[rrowland]

Greetings fellow spacefarers! We transmit this message from LetoBound Industries (LBI) HQ, located near the equator of the planet Gael, a 3.8km wide tropical planet 89 million kilometers from our home star, Ciro. Today marks a momentous day in history, as we open our doors to the first contracts in what will likely be a long line of contracts in experiments leading up to our ultimate goal: To land one of our own on our most distant, icy dwarf planet: Leto. At 3.2 billion (!) kilometers from Ciro, we approximate this will take roughly 27,000 flea boosters to reach the delta-v necessary to launch into a bee-line to smash directly into Leto's surface at 5000m/s. While we save up our funds for all those boosters, perhaps our scientists could prove useful for once and figure out some way to keep our guts off the ice.

 

Home

Spoiler

Destination

Spoiler

Some silly "physicist" handed us this ridiculous "estimation"

Spoiler

 

We will be periodically transmitting our logs here, documenting our milestones and achievements, as well as any catastrophic failures (although I have been assured everything we do here at LBI is perfectly safe). We're currently working on the technology to transmit static images and video feeds as well, so those of you advanced enough to receive such media, be on the look out for those as well!

Our theoretical physicists suggest that the laws that govern our galaxy should be the same throughout the universe, but in case they're wrong we've transmitted their exact specifications below.

From whichever galaxy you hail, farewell and good luck!

Difficulty Settings

Slightly more difficult than moderate, plus no reverting flights and no save/loads.

 

Primary Mods

• Kerbalism - A life support and realism pack I'm using for added challenge.
• Galileo - A universe overhaul, changing the entire galaxy. Makes the galaxy new and pretty, as well as slightly larger and therefore more challenging.
• Sigma Dimensions - Makes all celestial bodies larger, and their atmosphere and gravitational fields stronger. My configuration sets sizes to 6.4x their normal size, meaning it will be harder to escape the atmosphere, and harder to escape / re-enter orbit.
• RemoteTech - A mod built around more realistic probe networks. Intricate networks must be set up to extend unmanned probe range. Since I will not be saving/loading, instead taking all of my losses (kerbals included), unmanned tech will be very important for me and this is a fantastic mod that adds challenge around that point.
• SETI - Unmanned before manned - Rework the tech tree to better facilitate sending unmanned probes before manned ships.
• SCANsat - More probe goodness, adding tons of features around mapping biomes, altimetry and other characteristics of celestial bodies.
• Kerbal Construction Time - No more launching ships rapidly. I'll need to plan them more carefully and make each long build process count. Each vessel should have a richer story as a result.
• KRASH - A vessel flight simulator! Build a vessel, run an inexpensive computer simulation of its flight before committing the time and money to build it (not to mention risk innocent kerbal lives). Excited to try this one.
• Final Frontier - Tracks awards / achievements for each kerbal. This should help to give a richer story to the playthrough.
• Near future sets - I haven't used these before, and wanted to add some depth to the research I can work toward. Hopefully they don't turn out to be imbalanced!
• KIS/KAS - Inventory system, because building things in space is awesome.
• Infernal robots - Because actuators and robots are awesome.

Full Mods List

Spoiler

KSP: 1.2.2 (Win64) - Unity: 5.4.0p4 - OS: Windows 10  (10.0.0) 64bit
000_AT_Utils - 1.4.2
Filter Extensions - 2.8.1.2
Toolbar - 1.7.13
USI Tools - 0.8.15
AutoAction - 1.7.3
B9 Part Switch - 1.7.1
Community Resource Pack - 0.6.6
CommunityTechTree - 3.0.3
Contract Configurator - 1.22.2
Contract Pack: Anomaly Surveyor - 1.7
Contract Pack: Field Research - 1.2
Contract Pack: Bases and Stations - 3.6
Contract Pack: RemoteTech - 2.1.3
Contract Pack: Tourism Plus - 1.5.2
CustomBarnKit - 1.1.10
DMagic Orbital Science - 1.3.0.8
CapCom Mission Control On The Go - 1.0.2.5
Contract Parser - 1.0.5
Contracts Window Plus - 1.0.7.3
Progress Parser - 1.0.6
Firespitter - 7.5.1
GalileosPlanetPack - 1.1
JanitorsCloset - 0.2.14.6
RasterPropMonitor - 0.28
Kerbal Attachment System - 0.6.2
Kerbal Construction Time - 1.3.4
Kerbal Engineer Redux - 1.1.2.8
Kerbal Inventory System - No Fun - 0.1.2
Kerbal Joint Reinforcement - 3.3.1
Kerbal Inventory System - 1.4.3
KRASH - 0.5.22.1
KSP-AVC Plugin - 1.1.6.2
Infernal Robots - 2.0.2
ModularFlightIntegrator - 1.2.3
Docking Port Alignment Indicator - 6.5.2
NearFutureConstruction - 0.7.5
NearFutureElectrical - 0.8.4
NearFuturePropulsion - 0.8.4
NearFutureSolar - 0.7.2
NearFutureSpacecraft - 0.6.2
Final Frontier - 1.2.7.3080
PlanetShine - 0.2.5.2
QuickSearch - 3.1.2
RCS Build Aid - 0.9.1
RealChute - 1.4.1.2
RealPlume - Stock - 0.11.4
RemoteTech - 1.8.4
SCANsat - 1.1.6.11
SETI-Contracts - 1.2.2
SETI-ProbeParts - 1.2.2
SETI-Rebalance - 1.2.2.1
ShipManifest - 5.1.3.3
Sigma Dimensions - 0.7.4
StageRecovery - 1.6.8
StationPartsExpansion - 0.4.3
Stock Visual Enhancements - 1.1.6
Stock Visual Terrain - 2.0
TAC Fuel Balancer - 2.12
TextureReplacer - 2.4.5
ThrottleControlledAvionics - 3.4.1
Kerbal Alarm Clock - 3.8.4
Alternate Resource Panel - 2.9.1
Transfer Window Planner - 1.6.1
TweakScale - 2.3.4
USI Exploration Pack - 0.7.3
Freight Transport Tech - 0.6.7
Konstruction - 0.1.11
Unmanned before Manned - 1.2.2
VenStockRevamp - 1.9.5
Waypoint Manager - 2.6.2
[x] Science! - 5.4

[rrowland]

Day 8, Morning

After days of research and construction, we've finished building our first unmanned vessel, ingeniously named "Vessel 1". Equipped with a thermometer and a couple other knick knacks we found around the lab, we aim to take some ground samples to help boost our research before maintaining a steady hover near the ground to fulfill our initial contracts. Unfortunately, we're not sure how to use liquid fuel engines yet so we're just going to make our best guess at where should pre-set the throttle in an RT-3.

On the launchpad

 

Day 8, Morning +45 seconds

We underestimated the power of the solid fuel booster (or overestimated the power of gravity) and managed to fly around a thousand meters before crashing into the ground at 65m/s. We lost everything, including our science samples. However, our contractors seem to have taken pity on us and granted us the reward regardless.

 

Day 14, Morning

Since being so successful with our previous contracts, we've been bombarded with other contractors looking to test out their products. One even let us borrow one of their parachutes, which is nifty since we're not quite sure how they work yet. While we've got this, we'll try to launch toward the edge of the atmosphere, gathering science along the way.

Vessel 1.1

 

Day 14, Morning +7 minutes

After reaching an apoapsis of 65km, Vessel 1.1 got flipped nose-down and lit up like a ball of fire as it plummeted back toward the earth. We admit it, we were scared. We thought this would be our second failure. But we were slowed by some magical force (as if air had some physical property?) and were able to issue the command to deploy chutes just in time. We landed gracefully in the lowlands and returned home with our data.

 

Day 21, Morning

With one booster, we got halfway out of the atmosphere. Surely, adding 4 more boosters in stages should propel us far from home. Borrowing some stack separators from a contract, Vessel 1.2 is born.

 

Day 21, Morning +30 seconds

Near the end of the first stage, we began to lose control, but recovered before stage 2. On activating the second stage, some malfunction caused Vessel 1.2 to spin around and rocket back toward the earth. Our engineers are still not sure what caused the malfunction. Next launch, we will preempt with a flight simulation.

Oh, and a few pieces of rocket smashed into and broke our launch pad. Reconditioning...

 

Day 40, Morning

After a few iterations in the simulator, we arrived on a much more classical approach:

All went exactly as simulated, so we had 1.3 take some science samples of nearby space and turn retrograde for descent.

 

We hadn't thought to simulate the landing, since our engineer said he'd done it hundreds of times. Turns out the gravity of a planet 7 times larger is slightly stronger, as 1.3's pod slammed into a 14km high mountain peak at 2200m/s after most of the external pieces had evaporated off the side of the capsule in an instant as the pod blazed through the atmosphere at 90 degrees going 2800m/s.

Looks like we'll have to start thinking a little harder than usual about our re-entry...

Edited February 25, 2017 by rrowland
Added log

[rrowland]

Day 48

Despite being instructed to work on our re-entry problem, I have learned today that Bill, our veteran engineer, has instead spent the last week tuning up his rover.

He spent today testing it around our facilities, collecting samples.

We'll be keeping this vehicle in the garage. It proved to remain quite stable at speeds of up to 30m/s, and stay upright around sharp turns at up to 15m/s.

Day 55

Not an exciting report, but we need some funding. Rolled out a little abomination of parts for testing on the launchpad. Gotta keep the doors open.

 

Day 55, Evening

Over a beer, Bill mentioned he ran some simulations earlier in the day. The good news, he says, is as long as we come in at a shallow angle and point a heat shield retrograde, we can safely re-enter from orbit. However, he calculates that to achieve a stable Gael orbit our vessel will need to be traveling at close to 5000m/s. We don't have the funds to staff a mathemagician at this point, but by my napkin math, we may be looking at Δv ≈ 10,000m/s to escape Gael atmosphere and achieve a stable orbit.

Our immediate focus will need to shift to raising funds to improving our launchpad, which currently can't hold the weight necessary for that magnitude of sheer tonnage.

Upgrade Cost: ☋112,500

Current Funds: ☋47,378

We'll have to pause our funding for simulations as well; we've already received bills of up to ☋2,000 for a single simulation.

Update: A representative from Communication Satellite Group must have seen our last transmission, as we have been approached with a very attractive offer of advanced funding in exchange for setting up Gael's first satellite network. Although we were not planning to aim for this goal so soon, this is in line with our goals and will provide the funds we need today to upgrade our launch pad, so we've decided to accept the contract.

 

Day 70

Construction on the new launchpad just wrapped up, and our simulator software has been updated accordingly. We've run a few simulations, and we've been able to reach the 5000m/s mark, but to our surprise this was just short of closing a tight orbit around Gael.

On the plus side, we achieved this with a Δv of only ≈ 6,500m/s, meaning the required Δv may be lower than anticipated; around 7,000 ~ 7,500.

Our VAB is quite basic, so our bottleneck now seems to be the amount of parts we can safely weld together. However, a new VAB is out of the question in the near-term at a pricetag of ☋337,500.

Our second and third stages are both TR-30s, which have proved to be good mid-stage boosters but are not quite as efficient in a vacuum as the terrier. If we could get the resources to discover how the terrier system works and recreate that engine, I'm positive we could reach orbit...

Update: Eureka! Bill realized our Pomeranian is basically an undersized Terrier, and ran the simulation with an oversized Pomeranian. With a little smart piloting, this vessel may go orbital!

 

Day 81, Just after Dusk

A monumental day for us here at LBI. We were so excited about this launch, we decided not to wait until morning, and instead launched in the dark. Meet Gael Watcher Mk1:

With a total Δv > 8,100m/s, we definitely have the muscle to reach orbit. It should all come down to piloting, now.

Day 81, Just after Dusk, Video Log

We are taping this monumental occasion live, and broadcasting to the entire universe. Enjoy!

 

Day 81, Just after Dusk +16 minutes

Well, today has surely been monumental: A monumental failure. Overcoming an initial issue ship control issue shortly after launch (1:40), everything seemed to be well. However, our limited tracking technology does not seem to be adequate on such a large celestial body, as we lost all control of the probe a minute or so before we could complete our circularization (9:50). Our control center back at home began to lose its mind and attempt to somehow fix our mistake by pressing random MechJeb buttons. This didn't seem to work, so we resigned to grabbing some popcorn and watching our useless hunk of metal plummet back to Gael. To our surprise, re-entry didn't completely vaporize the capsule, and the parachutes deployed, allowing us to recover a small portion of our investment.

We are still researching video broadcast technology, so please excuse the poor quality as we will strive to improve it next run.

Day 113

It has been very quiet around the space center for a while as we've been running odd-jobs for cash, but today we've secured the funding (☋112,500) to upgrade our mission control center. With the orbital exploration contract and the satellite network contract, we could only manage to handle one extra contract at a time. Once the upgrade is complete and we can staff more coordinators, we should be able to complete multiple contracts at a time, and manage our time more efficiently (currently it can take up to a week to build a single contract vessel).

The upgrade should be complete in 14 days. In the meantime, we will continue to raise funds...

Day 133

While we haven't been setting any records lately, we have been nailing down our testing, deployment and recovery process. We've found that performing a launch, no matter how small or fool-proof it seems, almost always goes wrong if it is not simulated first. Simulation is now a mandatory step of our launch process. Additionally, we've found that it is much faster to modify a recovered vessel than to build a new one from scratch, so we've made it a goal to design all part testing vessels in a salvageable way.

With those improvements, and some help from RoveMate on a couple contracts, we've finally secured the funding (☋225,000) to upgrade our tracking station. Not only should this allow us the extra antenna range we need to reliably circularize around Gael, our new facility will also have improved computing technologies that will allow us to plot our maneuvers to plan ahead. Our probes' flight computers can follow these maneuver nodes without a direct connection, as long as the plans are received in advance. Exciting!

Our new tracking facility should be live in roughly 18 days.

Edited February 26, 2017 by rrowland

[KerbalKore]

This is great!

[rrowland]

Day 145

With 6 days of construction remaining on our tracking station, the staff has gotten tired of running odd jobs for money. To add some challenge, Bill and Bob (our science intern) got together and put together a slew of contracts to fill at once.

Total reward: ☋181,085, ⚛15, ★30

Spoiler

We've run around a dozen simulations now, and the "Pulse it, Chute, Remove it" Mk1 prototype looks promising:

The simulations ran around ☋3,500 and the ship will cost ☋6,718 to build over 7 days. The launch process is very precise, but if we can pull this off we're looking at over ☋170,000 in profit!

Day 153, Morning

Today we launch "Pulse it, Shoot it, Remove it"! Glob speed, little money maker. Enjoy our live feed, which we've been assured will be of better quality this time:

 

 

Day 153, Morning +6 minutes

Success! After a slight misshap causing the vessel to lose control (1:27), Bill was able to steer us back on course remotely. Our first stage of parachutes was intended to be deployed on the ascent, but we missed the window. Luckily, we were just barely able to catch the window on the way back down. A beautiful and gentle landing followed.

P.S. We're pretty sure the cause of our poor quality is our broadcast provider, Free Really Awful Picture Service (FRAPS). We will be trying new providers before our next broadcast.

Day 173

We finally have the technology to send a kerbal to... Gael! Through no small feat, we manage to get Bob outside LBI HQ with the rover, which he promptly tipped over 10 meters from the launch pad.

For his heroic act, we've awarded him a ribbon.

Edited February 27, 2017 by rrowland

[rrowland]

Day 198

Time flies by as we prepare to take the next steps toward launching our satellite network. After a handful of failed simulations while trying to get into orbit, the limitations of our VAB proved to be too great. We upgraded, and now we're capable of building much more complex vessels. Additionally, we've been planning out the specifications for the network we're going to build. Taking into account how large our galaxy is, and how many planets there are we've realized we need to research docking technology (to create modular satellites which we can expand on as we expand our reach to further planets) and more specialized satellite dishes (Gael is far too large to create an omni network). So we've set out to explore more of our immediate world in order to gather more research.

Today, we launched a vessel that (with the help of our new VAB) was able to reach outside of our atmosphere, take samples, and return to the surface without vaporizing or smashing into the side of a mountain.

Next, we'll aim for high space. Also, what's that giant circle in the sky near the sun? We will need to investigate as soon as we get out relay system up and running...

 

Day 223, Noon

Today, our mission is to point up and burn. We hear rumors of radiation, an invisible poison, at around 2 million kilometers above our atmosphere, so the plan is to study it. Our trajectory is simple: Straight up, take samples, straight down. Building and testing the vessel was actually quite difficult. We ended up close to our launchpad's max weight, at 120 tonnes!

We've confirmed the radiation in this area is deadly, so we'll need to think on how to cross this when the time comes to send our own into space. In the meantime, this should give us exactly the research we need to build our comm satellites!

Edited February 28, 2017 by rrowland

[rrowland]

Day 268

After more than a dozen unsuccessful launch simulations, we've finally arrived on a launcher with a success rate over 30%. But before we get to the delivery vehicle, let's take a look at the relay probe.

Meet LORA:

LORA, or Low Orbit Relay A, is a carefully designed relay probe crafted specifically to operate as one of four relays circling Gael in low orbit:

- The large dish, the Communotron HG-55, will point polar north, acting as a relay for HORA (can you guess her function?). This dish was chosen specifically for its range; with a range of 700Mm, this dish allows us to position our high orbit relays to ap out to up to 700Mm of the planet's enormous 900Mm SOI.

- The two small dishes each point toward LORA's brothers, LORB and LORD, allowing them to communicate directly. She will unfortunately never meet LORC, as they will be on opposite sides of the planet, however her brothers can pass messages along between them. These dishes were chosen again for their range. Each probe will be 5.5Mm away from each other in orbit; too far for any omni-antenna currently known to kerbal-kind.

- The omni antenna (The skinny guy on top) can both transmit to/from the various comm towers around Gael, and to/from anywhere on Gael's surface within 3.5Mm radius. Once connected with her brothers, these omni antennas will cover practically the entire inhabitable surface of Gael. The only holes will be near the poles. We plan to address this shortcoming with our High Orbit Relays, however the latency in these areas will generally be quite high as a result.

- The two batteries and HECS battery bank store slightly over the minimum electricity required to sustain LORA in the dark for roughly 1400 seconds, until she has enough time to recharge.

- The three solar panels will produce much more energy than required at full charge, however a little redundancy was desired in case LORA got turned to an bad angle.

 

LORA's escort

To ensure LORA reaches her destination safely, we've built her an 80-ton escort:

Through much (very expensive) trial and error in the simulator (and maybe a couple failed attempts we don't really want to talk about, OK?), we've tweaked this lean machine to reach orbit using gravity turns for a Δv of ≈ 7,500m/s (That extra delta-V is LORA's, for reaching her destination orbit from starting orbit).

Day 269, LORA in position!

After a painstaking 5 hours, we have finally managed to get LORA in position above Gael! It was a very close call, and fuel was just barely enough the entire launch. A few photos we took along the way:

Congrats LORA! Now to get your brothers into space... One one hand, they will need more Δv to perform orbit-correction maneuvers to get into the exact correct orbital position, but on the other hand we can wait for LORA to be directly above the launch and use her to extend our control window. The most difficult aspect of launching LORA was that Gael's terrain would cut off our link with LORA before we could finish her burn, so we had very limited control.

Day 289

We made a couple small upgrades to our launch vessel to give 900 more Δv, which should help our other Low Orbit Relays get into exact position, and launched another successful mission. LORB is now orbiting with his sister at a stable distance of 7,834Mm!

 

And on a side note, we realized during the mission that the 3,840km is not the diameter of Gael... it's the radius. Luckily, our important ranges had enough room for error that we're not too affected, however the claim that the omni-antennas will cover most of Gael is quite incorrect. Surface coverage will be spotty at best... Perhaps in the future we will extend the network to add full ground coverage.

Edited March 2, 2017 by rrowland

[astroheiko]

This will certainly be an interesting story. I like the technical details you describe. And...
Welcome to the forum.

Edited March 2, 2017 by astroheiko

[rrowland]

Day 330

Comms have been sparse lately, and admittedly this message will be quite short as well. We've been having some technical difficulties with our galaxy [[RemoteTech update dropped everything to < 1fps]] so we all decided to take a few days off and play video games. We're back now, and after way, way too long we've managed to get four probes around Gael. Instead of sitting at 1.7Mm as planned, we've moved these out to 6Mm and strapped them with High Gain antennas with 20Mm range and 90 degree coverage. This way, they just barely cover the whole surface of Gael with coverage, and we don't have to worry about pesky mountains blocking their communications between each other.

 

Next step is lifting a relay into high orbit, so that we can start sending jeb out in the ship instead of probes (he refuses to go anywhere without his radio).

[rrowland]

Day 332

Today, we've begun upgrading our research and development building. As part of the upgrade, we'll also be paying to further our scientists' education; once complete, they should have the skills required to take surface samples. Shortly after, we'll be upgrading our astronaut center as well and offering EVA training to all of our crew members. Small steps toward getting our first kerbal on Rald!

In the mean time, we will be building our first manned craft for orbit, dubbed "Long Boy":

Weighing in at 139.9 tons, Long Boy almost breaks the launch pad. In fact, we can't even fit the girders on the launch pad with it, so instead we'll be hiring on some extra janitors to help scrub the burn marks off the launch pad. Getting a single kerbal into orbit and back requires a delta V of 8300, which we can only barely fit on the launch pad with our current technology. We're going to have to continue seriously upgrading our facilities if we plan to get to another planet and back.

[rrowland]

Day 360

Today, we launch Valentina Kerman into Gael orbit on Longboy's maiden voyage! Well, his only voyage I suppose, since most of the ship will burn up in the atmosphere.

 

Aggressive use of solid fuel boosters. With finely tuned gyroscopes and aerodynamic fins, we're able to keep a steady 65 degree ascent path at 100% solid fuel booster throttle. Luckily nothing (important) melted.

 

Valentina releases the solid boosters, and longboy lives up to his name

 

Valentina burns toward the horizon, keeping at apoapsis until completely circularized

 

And Valentina is officially the first kerbal in Gael orbit!

 

Let's hope she makes it back. We only gave her a single parachute, and our command pods don't feature gyrostabilizers so Valentina has absolutely no control over the pod once detached from the engine!

 

Luckily for Valentina, we designed the pod to be bottom-heavy, so gravity and the atmosphere work together to do our job for us. The ablator points roughly retrograde for the entire atmospheric descent.

 

Coming in for a water landing, Valentina pops her helmet off and enjoys a breath of fresh ocean air. It's never felt so good to be home!

 

Valentina achieved many kerbal firsts today, and as such we've awarded her with many ribbons.

 

Among them:

• First in space
• First to EVA in space
• First to orbit Gael
• First to return from Gael orbit
• Reached mach 2 in Gael atmosphere (On the descent!)