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Gael Rocketry Corporation Chapter 10: The Atomic Age Begins (3.2x Gael System)


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Chapter II: Probes To Iota

Chapter III: More Money = New Rockets

Chapter IV: Jeb Wrote The Textbook

Chapter V: New Prospects

Chapter VI: The Search For More Money

Chapter VII: A Home, But In Space!

Chapter IIX: Project Iron Sands

Chapter 8.5: The Big Reveal

Chapter 9: Making The Public Interested

Chapter 10: The Atomic Age Begins

Hey everyone! Following my old Galileo System career save accidentally being replaced by another KSP folder (downloaded another ksp, stuff happened), I decided to this time go bigger. 3.2x was small enough so that I didn't need huge parts, but big enough that I could get some spacecraft parts with a more practical use. This will probably seem a lot similar to the KABOOM! Kronicle. I got a lot of mods from him, and so there's that. I will try to spice it up the best I can however, I just loved the mods he was using for the 3.2x Galileo System. Here's that series if you want to check it out. This guy is amazing.

Ground Rules:

No alt f4ing. Everything that goes is final.

No testing in a sandbox mode. Everything will be tested on the grounds of the ksc, or on an actual spacecraft.

I will try to hire more Kerbals when I get the money, as to not focus on Bill, Bob, Jeb, and Val for most of my missions.

Realistic progression. No crazy missions off the bat.

The more crucial, interesting the mission is, the more images of it there are.

Have as much fun as I can making this!

 

Anyways, here's all of the preliminary data for the career:

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And My Mod Folder:

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 Let's get into it!

 

Our first flight was the Auklet I, a very small spacecraft. If got up to 10km before flipping the other way. A good start.

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The Auklet II managed to snap the first pictures of the upper atmosphere, almost meeting the 98km mark to reach space.

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We were getting a decent bit of money from each mission, but the next step was to get into Orbit. I typically go a poor job of the gravity turn, etc, so I packed this thing with 6000 m/s of dV, 600 more than what is needed to Orbit.

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And finally, the Auklet IV is the first spacecraft to reach orbit of Gael!

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In fact, I had enough dV left that I managed to get this spacecraft on an escape trajectory out of Gael. Not too shabby for the 4th flight if you ask me

Using Strategia, the Iota Probes looked incredibly promising, so I accepted it, and made the Canary II. With upgraded technology, it was prepared to be the first spacecraft to fly by another world.

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The flyby was so close, you could even see some ground scatter!

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After using the last few units of fuel, it was recognized that the Canary II was going to do an accidental flyby of Ceti.

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More science, but since the Iota Probes contract is on, I will get less money from world firsts. Bummer :(

While we are almost done with Chapter I, we haven't touched manned space travel yet. With new technology, the Sheppard I was created. Immediately, Jebediah was the first to actually want to be a testdummy pilot of the spacecraft, so he was assigned the mission.

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Following the long 4 minute burn with the tiny spark engine, we are in orbit!

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To celebrate, Jeb goes on a little spacewalk, being the first of many to touch the stars in a 2 ton metal flying machine  spacecraft.

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After 3 hours in space, he heads home, and marks the first successful mission with a person to space and back!

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That is all for Chapter I. I would appreciate feedback or questions. I will probably end up bring in the Impact! Mod for the next chapter, but I'm not sure. I might stick with the mods I have. Thanks!

Edited by Steeeeve
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Well, ever since I came out with Chapter I, I have been playing a decent bit. The Iota Probes contract was underway, and the Canary program with it.

Chapter II: Probes to Iota

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The Canary IV had about 800 more dV than the Canary III, the previous probe to flyby Iota. As long as takeoff and orbit went fine, there was nothing to worry about.

It started to become more apparent that there may not be enough dV to land this. Here we are, 5km up, with very little fuel left.

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But we ended up successfully landing with just a sliver of fuel left!

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I nearly jumped out of my seat when I landed. I barely had any fuel left, but it was successful nevertheless!

Now, back to manned spacecraft. The Sheppard II was made to bring a scientist to space. It looks particularly bulky, because we will be in a polar orbit. Here's Bob on the launchpad:

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We successfully reached orbit, and now time to science away! Sadly, we didn't quite reached the 1000km requirement for high space, but we still got this glamor shot!

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(This might just become my wallpaper, if it was in a higher resolution)

Now, to wrap up, we attempted quite the dangerous mission, and it didn't go the best. I won't spoil it, so here you go.

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The Sheppard III's mission plan was to have Jebediah flyby Iota in a 14 day mission. Once we were already burning towards Iota, we realized that there was a much bigger issue. The waste tanks only had enough space to hold about 5 days worth of waste. Luckily, we were only just in the middle of the burn, so we had enough time to abort the mission, and wait out the 5 hour orbit to return home. Lucky Jeb :cool:. We did get an amazing shot simply titled "Home"

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With the upgraded heat shield using Kerbal Research and development, we were able to safely return home after what was almost a deadly mission. Feedback is much appreciated, and I will see you guys next time! Thanks!

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Here we are again. The Iota Probes contract was fulfilled, as we managed to land in 3 biomes on Iota's surface. Now, it's time for Ceti! Ceti is a lot more demanding, so we need some much larger rockets.

Chapter III: More Money = New Rockets

 

The Geminius III is our most costliest spacecraft as of yet, with about 9.2k dV in the spacecraft. Despite that, it makes back most of it's profit upon landing.

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I got a bit greedy, and tried to fly to another biome with the 10 unites of fuel left, and failed. Lost the engine and an antenna, and still didn't get into another biome. It didn't matter much anyways, the probe had fulfilled it's purpose.

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And now, what you've all been waiting for! The Sheppard IV, with it's intentions to flyby Iota and return with Valentina Kerman, quite the trained pilot in the space program. Using basically the same booster stage as the Sheppard III, we are go for Iota!

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Not as close of a flyby as we wanted, but a flyby nevertheless.

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We safely returned home, and Val received some merits while putting our funds in the 7th digits!

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That's all fine and dandy, but what about a spacecraft meant to orbit Iota? The R&D team came up with an upgraded Sheppard IV vehicle, dubbed the Sheppard 4.5, but most called it the Sheppard V.vmOqbwq.png

Jeb was strapped in the rocket, and was ready to go for Iota!

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After orbiting Iota 4 times, Jeb returned home, leading the way for future Iota landings.

To end this chapter, as the title of this chapter suggests, we have enough funding for some new spacecraft. However, we haven't had more than 1 person go to space at a time, and so the R&D team developed quite the amazing spacecraft.

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The bottom stage, dubbed the Grissom booster, was one of the more efficient of it's kind. The spacecraft's purpose was to haul cargo, science, or passengers to LGO before returning. It would stay in orbit with a crew of 2 for up to 4 months if it needed two. The crew of the Sheppard VI was Aslee, a pilot, and the first ever space tourist, Tito. He signed the waiver, and we are ready to launch!

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We used some of Dmagic's orbital science materials, and picked up some science we didn't know we needed! Aslee picked up some sweet merits, and we end this chapter with a cool 1.5 million funds. Sure, most of that money will go into upgrading buildings, but most will go for future projects!

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Anyways, that's all for chapter III, and I will see you guys next time!

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Before you guys go onto reading this, I would ask each and every one of you to comment what I should do next chapter or the next few chapters. There are 4 options at the bottom of this chapter, but any other suggestion is appreciated

The program is reaching the next step, which is to send a person to the surface if Iota! I was really excited for this mission, and so anyways, here it is

Chapter IV: Jeb Wrote The Textbook

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Costing 200,000 funds, the Sheppard IIX is the largest rocket as of yet. It's size is quite insane.

It has more than enough fuel in LGO, and so we are go for maneuver towards Iota!

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The lander isn't anything special, but it is packed with almost 3k dV, as it went for a decent chunk of the burn towards Iota

Here we are on the surface, with Jeb writing his name in Gael history! This will no doubt be the first of many crewed Iota missions

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Everything goes flawlessly, and we return home!

Now, following this ginormous mission, we will have a few smaller missions, so that we can build up enough funding. Something we haven't done yet is dock, and so the Glenn program was born. this program will carry us from Iota to Ceti, but it will start fairly small. The Glenn I will dock with the Glenn II in orbit, marking them the first two spacecrafts docking in orbit.

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After sitting in orbit for one week, the Glenn II was sent to dock with the spacecraft, and led to quite the amazing scene!

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The two spacecrafts return at roughly the same time, and bring back a decent chunk of funds from the contracts we completed in Orbit.

Now that leaves me with a question.

We haven't left the Gael system, and there aren't any reasonably close interplanetary windows, so I ask you this.

Do we

A. send a probe or two towards Gratian (window in 10 days)

B. work on our relay/orbital probe collection, then send a probe to Otho (window in 80 days)

C. stay with manned spacecraft with Iota

D. build an orbital space station

Write your responses in the comments. Any other feedback is appreciated, and I will see you guys next time!

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I would definitely use the window to Gratian. A flyby or even an orbit? Can you keep the radio connection with Gael over this track? While the probe is on the road, you can also place some relays around Gael.

By the way: Interesting report. I like the way you do one step at a time. The mod list would interest me, since I myself have not used a single partmodule and since I do not know at all.

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1 hour ago, astroheiko said:

I would definitely use the window to Gratian. A flyby or even an orbit? Can you keep the radio connection with Gael over this track? While the probe is on the road, you can also place some relays around Gael.

By the way: Interesting report. I like the way you do one step at a time. The mod list would interest me, since I myself have not used a single partmodule and since I do not know at all.

Yeah, I have a relay system set up in high Gael orbit, but I may need to upgrade it. Also, I only chose some extra part mods because of the scale up. I didn't want to have to make massive stock spacecrafts just to reach orbit.

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Now, the Iota program is slowly coming to an end. We don't really need to send more people to Iota as of now, since it costs ~150,000 per rocket, and only half of that is made back on a typical mission. So I present to you,

Chapter V, New Prospects

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Thought I would quickly add 2 pictures of the last Iota mission. Not too important, but cheaper

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We also now have 2 probes going to two different places! the first probe is heading towards Gratian, and  costs a whole 400,000, since it has a quite, large payload.

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The spacecraft really ended up breaking the bank, and cut our funds down by one third. Hopefully it will make up for it!

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The rover will arrive in ~1 year, so we have plenty of time in between then.

Spoiler

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In other news, we have a probe heading towards Otho, a Gas Giant. This will be a much longer trip, taking 3 years to get there. Luckily, the payload was much smaller, and so the cost was 200,000, nearly half of the Horizons I.

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Hopefully, we will have a good enough relay system!

Spoiler

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And so, that leads me to the conclusion of this chapter. We haven't dabbled in aircraft, and so the aircraft team decides that it would be a great idea to build an aircraft to explore Gael a bit more!

Only issue is, we don't have an aircraft team

 

Pull Up, Pull Up!

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Jeb then promptly crashed into the ground. I thought I had lost him, despite the parachutes deploying, but upon entering the space center...

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He's alive under that rubble! I had already recovered him, but you can take my word on it. Anyways, I won't be able to post much this week, finals and all, but after this, I will try to post more. Thanks!

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With a lot more experience in our space program under our belts, we are ready to take on Ceti!

Chapter VI: The Search For More Money

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One of our largest manned spacecrafts yet. Where's it going? To Ceti, of course! 2 people will be in the capsule, Aslee and Kerford

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The funds out of this mission were Immense. We got around 800k funds, and a few hundred science to boot.

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We are now ready to launch the Glenn V! This huge spacecraft has about 13k dV, enough to land on Ceti, biome hop, and return home.

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With about 16 engines on the first stage alone, we were ready to bring Valentina to Ceti

Day 20 Of The Mission

Val had finally done it, and had landed on a world thought to be too large and too far out to land on. She managed to get to 1 more biome before needing to return home.

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We return home, and bring the funds to 2.3 million!

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And now with the program not really doing much, we tested a few spacecraft, but ultimately, everyone was waiting for the Horizons I to enter Gratian's SOI

Chapter 6.5: New Arrival At Gratian

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The Horizons I has already returned 150 science from Orbit around Ciro, but that number will soon be dwarfed by how much it will get if it successfully lands on Gratian.

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The parachutes are more than enough to slow the spacecraft down, and we successfully landed our first spacecraft on another world!

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While it would take several hours of driving in one direction to reach another biome, I might try if I have one night spare to just watch videos while I make sure the rover doesn't fall over. ERdP95S.png

We end the chapter with a whopping 1000 science. I have some other projects I will be looking forward to in this career save, and I hope you enjoy the series so far! Any feedback/criticism is appreciated. Thanks!

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We have done a lot in the Gael system in terms of manned spacecraft, so what's next? Well, one of the projects I had eluded to was:

Chapter VII: A Home, But In Space!

Before we get to the name of the chapter, the Horizons III has arrived at Niven. You never discussed the Horizons III you say? That's because I forgot to take screenshots of it, and it wasn't a significant craft.

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The Horizons III Probe is quite the sophisticated piece of technology, and transmitted a lot of science. It has spent a few months in orbit, before attempting to land on the surface. We thought we had enough fuel, so it was a good plan.

Yeah... No

Turns out we didn't have enough fuel, and bounced off the ground, but it stayed intact!!!

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Who knew the floor was rubbery enough on Niven that you could survive a fall from orbit, eh?

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Another picture of the Niven landscape

Anyways, about that home in space I was talking about? Well, that is Station One, a $600,000 project for an orbital Gael station that was meant to do low orbit science, and also make a bit of money in the process. Here's an album of the construction of the station:

Spoiler

 

The crew will stay up there for a whopping 500 days, and collect some decent science before coming down.

Nothing To See Here, Just Move On....

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Anyways, I am starting to get pretty excited about this series, because we are getting to the science level where the fun stuff will start to happen. Feedback is appreciated, and I appreciate any comments! Thanks!

8 hours ago, insert_name said:

As far as your Rover goes in would recommend the bon voyage mod, adds Rover autopilot

I may do that, but I've first gotta see which biome I can get to in a reasonable time. Probably no leaving computer on for 10 hours at night on x4 time warp kinds of stuff. Thanks for the suggestion!

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2 hours ago, Steeeeve said:

I may do that, but I've first gotta see which biome I can get to in a reasonable time. Probably no leaving computer on for 10 hours at night on x4 time warp kinds of stuff. Thanks for the suggestion!

it can drive them in the background as well (you can timewarp or do other missions)

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Now, we are ready to branch out from what we are so far doing. Nothing too crazy, but I present to you:

Chapter 8: Project Iron Sands

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The Horizons IV probe is preparing to flyby Tellumo. It has quite a lot of dV in that there's no way we can safely areobrake without burning up. In fact, we came in at almost 11 km/s. That's more than the speed it would take to get to the Moon in real life!

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We got some nice snaps of what looks like a nice place to live and return from, but is really Eve on steroids.

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And now, we had almost 2 million funds, and most of Iota still hadn't been explored by man, so why not make a lander/station combo that will bring home much more science? I present to you:

Project Iron Sands

No reason for the name, just sounded cool, even though this isn't like a Mars mission where the sand could be iron?? Anyways....

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This craft is crazy (sorry for brightness) It could theoretically do up to 8 Iota landings with the little lander it has, but we only realistically need to do 4 for all of the biomes we have left.

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After a lot of engine usage, we are now in orbit of Iota, and we prepare the lander for several landings!

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The first two landings went completely fine, with about 200 science each trip.

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And Landing #2:

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In fact, we landed fairly close to the Geminius II, so we went over to it to say hello at now outdated technology

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And then landing 3 came around. Everything seemed fine at first before and during the landing. We even landed fine and studied a rock on the surface

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But right as we started to take off, we started to spin! And spin and spin. SAS did nothing to help on or off!

Abort, Abort!!!

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Luckily, we were already traveling at 200 m/s, and Iota is quite the cakewalk to get to orbit form, even in 3.2x as long as you have a kick.

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That's about half of the worth of the $600,000 mission gone. As long as Val comes back, it's completely fine. We decided to cut the mission short, and return home with about 500 science. Good enough, but we surely could've done better. I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, and soon enough, we will be going bigger and better!

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Thanks for the props in the OP.  I hadn't looked into Mission Reports for more than a week, so I missed this until now.  It's nice to see 3.2x GPP getting some more love.

What sort of upgrades are finding to be most useful for your parts?  Any house rules regarding upgrades?

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On 5/22/2017 at 10:55 PM, Norcalplanner said:

Thanks for the props in the OP.  I hadn't looked into Mission Reports for more than a week, so I missed this until now.  It's nice to see 3.2x GPP getting some more love.

What sort of upgrades are finding to be most useful for your parts?  Any house rules regarding upgrades?

I typically go for engines or Crew Modules. I haven't really dabbled into Nuclear stuff yet, and so I might have to do that. The Skipper has become Ol' Reliable, since it is much more efficient now that I have dumped 400 science into it. Also, no rules really, since this is my first time with the mod installed.

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Well, I have finally gotten enough time (and lack of procrastination) to update this career save. Once big projects roll around, what used to be one day projects become multi day projects, and balancing other things in life doesn't help out too much.

I present to you:

 Chapter 9: Making The Public Interested

As mentioned in the leak, the program has been designing giant spacecraft boosters, capable of carrying large payloads. This meant that we would have to get our funds from somewhere. Several campaigns were released to get the public interested in space travel. These include the following:

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While these projects may have never come true, these really interested the public, and the funds started pouring in. Station One was completed, and it was quite the time to be alive.

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And now, the big mission was prepared. The release mentioned before led to some incredible hype for space exploration, and the Glenn II was born

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This massive spacecraft was prepared to flyby Niven with 3 crew, marking the first crewed interplanetary travel.

But this was not what happened

After the first stage had separated, a large explosion occurred that would only be described as devastating

*Boom!*

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The exterior stage had collided into the middle stage, resulting in a still functional spacecraft, but about 3k dV less.

Ground control improvised, and it was decided that the crew would only be out of Gael's SOI for about 90 days, without the whole Niven part.

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Still, the crew made some of the money back, but this will go down as the biggest failure in the program's history. And even worse, we will have to wait for another window to travel to Niven. Bummer :(

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Interestingly enough, the exact same model of spacecraft had already been flown, with a Gauss bound probe, the Horizons VI (yes, keeping along with the Horizons series.

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In other news, the long awaited Horizons II has finally arrived at Otho, bringing back a ton of science, and some stunning pictures!

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We have now explore most of Gael's neighbors, and it might be time to target some moons in those systems! We will see. Feedback is appreciated, and I will update this whenever I can. Thanks!

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Research and development has been focusing on a very big project. In the propulsion department, they believe they have come across it, and then, it was born.

Chapter 10: The Atomic Age Begins

 

The Grissom V is the first spacecraft to show off it's atomic capabilities. Costing only $135,000, it will do some extra science on Ceti, and mark the start of the Atomic Age.

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This middle stage has about 4k dV, making this type of fuel and propulsion incredibly powerful.

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We only ended up hitting one biome, since I used too much fuel trying to go for what I thought were the lowlands. We did a few more missions like this to Ceti, since we had the funds.

We also hurled a probe towards Icarus! The Eros V had a whopping 15k dV, which sadly would not be enough to slow down at Icarus, but would instead make an incredibly fast flyby. fpE4LNn.png

We got fairly close, but not close enough to really see ground scatter. I sure love the colors of Icarus. Thanks Galileo and others!

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Icarus down, only Thalia to go for near Gael planets. I believe that a transfer is in about 1 year, but we may be busy with Niven stuff (we are in year 6 btw)

A shot of the Grissom VI, quite the efficient spacecraft

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With the invention of Atomic and Nuclear power, we are making bigger and better spacecrafts! Who knows what will happen next time once a Niven transfer rolls around!

 

 

 

Edited by Steeeeve
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  • 11 months later...

Wow! Cannot believe it's nearly been a full year since I started this series. Obviously it was discontinued, mainly due to finals and then me forgetting about the game for a while. Sadly, this save is long gone. Got a new computer over the summer, and have had to start from new. I really want to start something up like this again. Perhaps I could set something up this weekend?

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