[Project Intrepid (Chapter 58 - Starry Poles And Salty Oceans)]

EDIT: Accidentally posted the next chapter before I was done, darn enter button. Ignore this post.

Thing is, I can't just copy and paste from google drive to here as the formatting will be messed up and I'll have to recopy all of the images from imgur as they will be the wrong size. So, I generally try to do everything in the forum editor and then copy to google drive as a backup, but sometimes that happens.

[Artemis Discussion Thread]

19 minutes ago, farmerben said:

It's possible that NASA is corrupt, that Elon doesn't keep his promises, and the Starship-Artemis approach is fundamentally flawed.

I haven't watched the video, but I wouldn't put too much stock in anything Thunderf00t says. It's possible he's changed since I stopped paying attention to him, but at least back in the day, he wasn't at all a credible source and let his opinions dominate the discussion rather than facts.

[Project Intrepid (Chapter 58 - Starry Poles And Salty Oceans)]

And, two chapters in one day! The previous one had been sitting in my drive for a few weeks, not sure why I didn't post it earlier, but after so long, we have another gameplay chapter, most of which was done in the past two days. University is calming down a little bit now (but don't expect it to last haha) and instead of planning ahead for life I took the weekend to play some good old fashioned Project Intrepid. Meaning mostly, that I have to put up with craft that were designed by 2016 me!

I messed around with visual mods a bit, so the visuals may be inconsistent in places, but I think I've landed on a combination I like.

There's another third of this play session that didn't make it into this chapter and will be in the next one.

Chapter 58 - Starry Poles And Salty Oceans

Spoiler

There was a thunderous roar as the ITV-028 lifted off from the launch pad at the Kerbal Space Center with the power of several pallets of Vector engines, operated by a skeleton crew of four individuals.

The spaceship, one of three Philosopher of Time class Intrepid Test vehicles (also known as the Sagan class in early internal documents), had previously been mothballed along with her other sister as the original produced far too many Localized Adverse Graviolis. It was said that any Localized Adverse Gravioli detector (also known as a L.A.G. detector) brought within 2.5 kilometers of the ship needed re-calibration in order to be useful again.

Thus, the class was mothballed (and there wasn’t much of a need to bring 916 Kerbals anywhere). Indeed, the L.A.G. levels of the entire solar system had risen dramatically with the number of ships, so a lot of unnecessary hardware was stripped off of the ITV-028 in a (mostly in vain) attempt to remedy this. (Note from beyond the fourth wall: I think it has something to do with the IVA overlay functionality, or something else related to having a lot of (even empty) crew cabins. I stripped this down to so few parts and it still lags very badly. Might be why it performed fine in older versions. Might have to replace the passenger cabins with stand in cargo bays with ballast.)

However, there was a need for the vessel, a need its crew intended to fulfill - assisting in the evacuation to Minmus. The third sister had been left unfinished and wouldn’t be ready for a while longer.

The launch had occurred at a fortunate time, the whole planet had been stunned by the news, on the edge of either resolve or despair, but the rapid wheeling out of the vehicle from the hangar to the launch pad, in under six hours since the announcement, firmly tipped the majority of the planet towards the resolve side of the scale.

The ITV-028 was christened Deliverance and remained in Low Kerbin Orbit for checkouts, awaiting the first test flights of the new 200 Kerbal LKO SSTOs.

 

==========

 

“This is Steven Kerman of the ITV-027 Dragon Parade to the Kerbal Space Center, I’ve got those L.A.G. measurements you were talking about, and they’re not good.”

“This is Sandra Kerman at mission control - “

“They put you on mission control?”

“Shut up, nobody else was doing it.”

“No, I mean, congratulations! Sorry. Emotions are hard.”

“No problem.”

“Anyway, the detector is reading 805 - “

“Good heavens, how did that ever get approved?”

“Beats me.”

“Well, we have another idea for what we’re going to do with stuff. Feel free to undock the space fighter.”

“Finally, we’ll do so right away. Nobody ever wanted it. Good riddance.”

“Don’t get excited. It is still going to Jool, just not with you.”

“Bill Kerman, well, the other Bill Kerman, go for undocking!” There was a clunk as the space fighter dropped away.

There was a rumble as it fired up its engines and flew away into orbit, awaiting further assignment.

“Looks like we forgot to turn off the oxidizer tank before refueling everything, this ship is full of oxidizer!” Bill said.

“Another headache,” Sandra said. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.”

“Steven to home, L.A.G. levels have decreased to 622!”

“Not the best, but passable… “

“Ugh, who designed this thing?” Bill complained. “There’s literally no way to generate power besides running the engines. So many parts, and they didn’t think to slap a solar panel on it.”

“They are considering replacing it entirely with something better,” Sandra said. “Sergeant T is taking command of all military forces of the Kerbol system… Well, it was supposed to be just the space assets… In light of the news, several cities have pledged their entire military might to the KSP, and all of that falls under Sergeant T’s domain… He is perhaps one of the most powerful men alive right now. Anyway, He wants you in Low Kerbin Orbit for the time being.”

“Got it.”

“Be aware, you may be assigned to a different ship.”

“Sure, anything’s better than this thing.”

 

==========

 

Over the past few days, packed with events, the spaceship Ultima, operated by the Order Of The Two Poles, had reached orbit and had successfully navigated to the Mun despite the Order having lost custody of Jebediah Kerman.

“This is Albert Kerman of the Ultima, calling the Kerbal Space Center.”

“Ugh, FINALLY!” Sandra said. “You know, it really would have been nice for you to call us earlier before we almost blew the planet to smithereens, arguably twice!”

“Oh, water under the bridge.”

“As you’ve probably heard in our numerous unacknowledged hails, sit tight where you are and we’ll send a rescue mission.”

“Negative, no rescue mission is required, nor requested.”

“You mean your amateur built ITV-level ship is doing just fine and isn’t falling apart?”

“Yup! Jebediah sure is a legend! Too bad he isn't our legend any more...”

“...Well, just know we have a couple 100 Kerbal spaceplanes we no longer need that can get to you, we were preparing them for launch, they will be here when you need them.”

“If we need them. The Ultima is perfectly capable of landing on Kerbin on her own, we even tested her!”

“Didn’t all the chutes rip off?”

“I’m pretty sure we fixed that - Oh, what’s that Gustav? We didn’t fix that? Ehh, no matter, we’ll just fly more carefully.”

“Anyway, so if it isn’t to request a rescue, why are you calling?”

“We’re about to brake into low polar Mun orbit, and we can’t decide between the north and south pole. We will do a visual survey if we have to, but we were wondering if you could send us some charts so we can select the best landing site.”

“I don’t think we have that, unfortunately… The radar data of the Mun from before the war is long gone, and all data we have now is purely visual, nobody has been to the poles in a good long while. Unfortunately, you’re on your own.”

“Right, it was a long shot. What about nauseometer calibration data?”

“That, we can manage.”

 

==========

 

The Ultima braked into a Low Munar Orbit, switching to its final stage.

Its crew approached both poles, looking for signs of the mysterious polar rifts that seemed to be cropping up all around the system, 

"There!" said Albert. "A slight rift in the north pole! Can you see it?"

"I can see it!" said Gustav. "Not much of a landing site, though."

"We're awfully close, are you sure we're above the minimum safe altitude?"

"Of course we are! I double checked and - Oh."

"Okay, well, for this orbit, at least, we were safe. We should probably raise it a bit for the next one, though."

Some time passed and the Ultima passed over the Mun's south pole.

"Look at that!" said Albert. "Beautiful! Not the ideal shape, but well defined!"

"And there's flat land!" said Gustav. "I think we have come to a decision!"

One orbit later, the Ultima fired up her main engine and slowly came to a stop right next to the south pole.

"Nauseometer reading 0.007," Albert reported.

"Roger that. You know, if it read anything but zero anywhere but next to the poles, we could probably make a latitude measuring instrument," Gustav mused.

"Hmm, good idea."

"Alright, we're within visual range!"

"Nauseometer 0.092 and rising."

"Hey, there's the pyramids!"

"We're really close now, concentrate, Gustav!"

"It would be easier to concentrate if you didn't bug me about it, Albert!"

"Right, sorry. Nauseometer 0.37. Much tamer than Duna's poles."

"Hovering... On this historic day, the Order of the Two Poles has - "

*THUNK*

"...Landed. Well, I've seen worse landings. Great job, Gustav!"

"Thank you, Alfred!"

"Alfred Kerman calling Kerbal Space Center mission control, about that rescue mission..."

 

==========

 

"Nauseometer 0.47," Alfred reported as he cautiously walked towards the Munar south pole. "The Duna mission didn't feel intolerable discomfort until after 7.6 or so, so we should be good for long term habitation at this distance."

"Approaching the pole now," Alfred said, while jetpacking. "Nauseometer 1.7, 1.8, 1.9... I've been waiting for this my whole life."

Alfred touched down and cautiously crept to the edge of the ridge overlooking the Munar south pole. This wasn't the exact vertex, but provided the best approach angle.

"Oh my - I see it!" Alfred cheered excitedly. "I can see the stars!"

"It's so... So beautiful..."

 

==========

 

The Order assembled and deployed one of their carried craft, officially designated the Pole Illuminator. However, it was quickly renamed to the Illuminati. If everyone was calling the Order a cult, they might as well lean into it all the way, they thought.

The purpose of the Illuminati was to take over the world illuminate the very dimly lit polar regions to survey the polar region and make way for the Order's equipment.

Of interest was the ridge of pyramidal spikes leading up to the north pole.

The Order counted ten peaks that could be visibly discerned. The ridge continued, but each peak quickly became less and less prominent to the point of not really being a peak any more. They named these peaks after the greek alphabet. Peak Alpha was the one closest to the pole, with the lettering increasing the further south you went.

In the middle of this image, Peak Eleven is shown, the first thing that can be called a peak after the eleven distinct peaks closer to the pole.

The pole was also dotted by a number of deep, steep pits of unknown origin. The Illuminati descended into one to measure it, and then, running somewhat low on fuel, returned to the Ultima. Its crew began unpacking the Order's scientific (or pseudoscientific, depending on how you ask) equipment, preparing the first in a series of experiments to harness the polar nauseometric energy.

 

==========

"So, given the news, what now?" Bobwig asked from his residence on the surface of Laythe.

“Well, seeing as we’re going to be here a while, I think we should do some housekeeping,” said Stabel Kerman, commander of the ITV-011 Creativity.

“We’re going to be based around Laythe, most certainly,” said Patfrey. “We’ll send ships out to Bop and Pol, and we may consider re-basing around one of those for refueling operations in a few years when the others get here. But for now, gravity and an oxygen atmosphere are of the utmost concern, though science expeditions to the other worlds are also of paramount importance.”

“Most importantly, we need to relocate to the coast,” Angie said.

“And your reasoning?” Miteny asked.

“Look how hard it was to land the Laythe Aeronaut III,” she said. “That narrow, tall wheelbase, with no control, it’s abysmal. I’ve tried to take it off in the sims several times, I haven’t succeeded once. If we can find a flat area down by sea level, flight operations go from virtually impossible to somewhat reasonable.”

“Great, now the planes aren’t working,” said Miteny.

“But what about the ore?” Bobwig asked.

“There’s still some ore on the western coast… We could move to another island, but we really can’t, as that mining rover can’t swim. We’ll just have to hope it is enough, because landing here repeatedly for years is a non-starter.”

“Woohoo! Road trip!” Bobwig shouted.

“What we really need to do, though,” Podpont said, “Is to redesign the plane.”

“The next plane is two years away,” Miteny pointed out, “And we aren’t going to leave Bobwig down there that long, I hope.”

“I’ll gladly stay if it means not having to endure any more of Miteny’s yapping!” Bobwig joked.

“Just use the EVA construction tool!” Gemna said.

“The what?” everyone said at the same time.

“The EVA construction tool, duh. Bobwig is an engineer, he can move things around. We can extend the wheelbase, move the elevons, detach the sepratrons, and make the aircraft into something slightly better.”

“Wait, you mean we had this the whole time?” Bobwig asked.

“Uhh, yeah?” Gemna said. “I remember training with it back on Kerbin.”

“Huh, I don’t… Weird. That would have been very useful earlier.”

“I swear, this entire crew is suffering from severe memory loss! It’s like that time y’all forgot we had EVA parachutes!” Gemna scoffed.

“Alright, moving rear landing gear… Wow, this tool is ridiculously intuitive… Moving front landing gear… A bit weirdness. Now, the elevons… I don’t know where the center of lift is, but in order to get this thing off the ground, its gonna need to be a canard configuration.”

“I can tell you right now that it’s too slightly forward and will pull up and stall if you try to take off in that thing,” Gemna said.

“You don’t even have a calculator out!” Miteny said.

“Oh, right, most people need those, my bad, sorry.”

“She does lift calculations in her head, then apologizes!” Mojorie said.

“You know,” Angie said, “I bet those bow planes on the submarine would be better used here.”

“Fantastic idea!” beamed Gemna. “That should put the centers in just the right spot and also allow for better control authority. Quite frankly, I have no idea what the original designers of this craft were thinking, it is almost like this entire mission was dreamed up five years ago by a high schooler in half an hour in a mexican restaurant in a notebook.”

“How oddly specific,” Podpont remarked.

“Alright, I’m done with the modifications,” Bobwig said. “Angie, you ready with the remote control?”

“As I’ll ever be… Here goes!” Angie lit both Juno engines and steered the Laythe Aeronaut III downhill in preparation for the takeoff run. Everyone held their breath as the only means of long range exploration thundered down the takeoff strip…

“Woah, that’s quite the angle of attack! I’m basically flying this thing in a permanent stall!” Angie said.

“Try to fly it down that canyon, it should get better,” Podpont said.

“The first thing we’re doing when we get down there is deploying the submarine,” Stabel said. “That thing’s gonna perform so much better without that extra mass.”

And so, Angie flew the Laythe Aeronaut III westwards along the Laythian island.

“Huh, this doesn’t look like a great landing spot.”

“Sensors show a flatter spot further south,” Patfrey said.

“The further south we go, the less ore we get,” Miteny cautioned. “We can’t run the drills below a certain point!”

“That’s a problem for a little later,” said Bobwig. “We’re at 11 percent up here, we don’t really need that much for the small amount of refueling we will be doing.”

“There!” Angie said. “That’s a good flat area!”

“Angie, you’re stalling!” Patfrey said.

“Oh no - AAAHHH!”

“Oh. A bit shaky, might need to adjust the friction control, but that’s much better. It was so difficult to land this thing up on the mountain, and here we basically crash landed it into a dune and it stayed on its wheels!”

“Good job, Angie!”

“When we go down, please don’t stall us and crash us into a dune!” Miteny said.

“Now, to drive 30 kilometers,” Bobwig said.

“You know, your rover could use some modifications too,” Gemna said. “If I were you, I’d stand it up on its side and move the wheels down, axially out, and maybe a small amount laterally out. You’re coming awfully close to hitting the terrain with that radiator, and any slight incline is gonna absolutely tank the entire craft if you’re going anything over 5 meters per second.”

“Thank you for the insight, Gemna, I’ll see what I can do.” “How in the world does she know that?” Bobwig thought.

 

==========

 

After some time fiddling with the wheels and coming up with a solution Gemna praised as “Adequate,” Bobwig Kerman discovered the wonders of MechJeb’s rover autopilot.

“It’s so great!” he shouted. “At no point in time do I feel in danger of crashing! I can’t believe I’ve been manually driving for years!”

“Self driving cars, am I right?” Angie chuckled.

"Frankly, I don't know how they expected me to drive this thing normally, given the absolutely wonderful view I have from the driver's seat."

(From author: I would crash this thing every kilometer. MechJeb did 20 kilometers, straight shot, downhill, zero crashes. I’m never going back!)

After the drive was complete, Bobwig pulled up to the Laythe Aeronaut III to test the drills. He klawed on, turned on the equipment, and sat back to read a story on his Kpad.

After a full day of testing, it was determined that, at least in daylight, the rover could produce a paltry 5 liquid fuel every 40 minutes, which amounted to roughly 25 per day.

“This sucks,” Bobwig proclaimed.

“It wouldn’t suck so bad if we had more power,” Angie said.

“Wait, hold on… I’m still getting power. The sun is down, this shouldn’t happen!”

“Check the craft schematics? That’s odd… Is Laythe perhaps transparent?” Podpont posited.

“Aha, found it!” Miteny proclaimed. “There’s an RTG in the submarine… How did we forget that?”

“Looks like we’ll have to steal it after we’re done with the sub, or transfer it between a few different uses,” Gemna said.

“Hold on a second… We are extremely power limited right now,” Bobwig said. “We can’t even power one small drill, let alone the other one, or the very power hungry ISRU unit. This is the one place where power matters, on the rest of the ships, everything beyond a single panel is basically just there for aesthetics.”

“I’ll go EVA now to check it out!” Stabel said. After a brief delay, Stabel had approached the Laythe SSTO.

“Alright, so good news, we have an RTG on the SSTO that we can pilfer. We can replace it with some small solar panels from what little of the TYLO ARMY remains, they have way more than they need.”

“Wonderful, that will double night time production and significantly increase daytime production.”

“Okay, this is gonna be a bit unpopular, buuuuuut… The Creativity herself has six Gigantors.”

“I always thought the 3 by 2 arrangement looked kinda stupid,” Miteny said. “We can go down to 2 by 2, if you can find room to put them on the SSTO for transit.”

“Already done!” Stabel said.

“And it is possible that we can even bring them back up when we are done!”

“Fantastic, problem solved!” Gemna said. “The next step, however, is to actually land.”

“Right then,” Podpont said. “I’ve been simulating this enough, let’s do this.”

“And, you know, even if we can’t get the refueler working at full tilt,” Patfrey said, “Now that we’re not going back home, we have a lot of extra liquid fuel in the Creativity’s main tanks. While refueling the sub and the exploration plane may prove difficult, we don’t really have to worry about how many trips we can make with the SSTO, within reason, at least... Well... Actually, that thing uses a LOT of oxidizer... So maybe we'll have to worry about oxidizer but not liquid fuel. I don't know, we'll see."

==========

“Hello there!” Jebediah Kerman approached the monolith.

“...Hello?” Jebediah stood, as did the monolith.

“Look, I know I never paid you a visit, even though you were right here, and I know I’ve been rather irresponsible. And I know I’m the apprentice of your worst enemy and all that. But can we just talk for a while?”

“No.”

“Ah, so you can talk! Why don’t you want to?”

“I can only change things in the name of order,” the monolith replied.

“How much does Tomfurt know?”

“As much as he needs to.”

“And I suppose if you aren’t gonna tell him anything, then you sure aren’t gonna tell me anything.”

“Typical Jebediah. Very clever, often just barely too late.”

“Well, if you change your mind, you know who to call.”

“I cannot call.”

“I mean, I can get  you a cell phone? See you at Jool somewhere. Good luck with the surface samples!”

“Wait,” the monolith said.

“What, now that I’m walking away, you want me?” Jebediah said, exasperated.

“Deliver me a surface sample from Kerbin.”

“I’ll do that if you tell me everything I would understand about how magic works, the magic boulder, this portal thing… I just want to know.”

“I will not teach you.”

“Well, then here’s your surface sample!” Jebediah scooped up a chunk of dirt and tossed it lightly at the monolith.

“You knew what I meant.”

“And you know what I meant. And unless you want to let me in on what the Bop is going on with this universe, even just a little bit, you’re gonna have to get your Kerbin surface sample from somewhere else.” Jebediah turned around and walked away, and the monolith said no more.

 

==========

 

“This is commander Ermore of the ITV-015 Independence calling the Kerbal Space Center.”

“Roger that, Independence, reading you loud and - Ah, right. Light speed delay,” said Sandra, tired after a long day of attempting to control the space program’s various solar system assets.

“We have received your message about Jool diversion and we will not be following your recommendation. We will proceed to Eeloo. Our crew is dedicated to unveiling the mystery of Eelooian life, even at the expense of our own. That being said, if you can put together a crewed mission to Eeloo in short order, we will divert, if not, please try to ship us some express hibernation kits. Surely you can spare a small ship. Anyway, we’re gonna play around with lightening the ship, our Delta-V is a tad low. That’s all, have a great evening. Ermore out.”

“Great,” Sandra let her head fall into her hands, and her hands onto the console. “Gene, how did you ever manage this… Hey Gus! Jeb! We need another ITV!”

“What now?” Jeb asked, looking up from his pile of schematics and calculations, obviously very sleep deprived.

“The Eeloo gang isn’t gonna divert, they want us to send them kits or a different Eeloo crew.

“Wonderful, another space mutiny,” sighed Jeb.

“I’m beginning to see why Sergeant T wants to have a space force so much,” Gus said.

“Well, if we can spare enough ships for the space force, we can probably get something to Eeloo,” Jebediah sighed.

“Looks like someone needs more coffee!” Kari said, cheerful and perky as ever.

“No thanks, it is too late… I’ll much better be able to work the problem after a good night’s rest.”

“Ditto to that,” Sandra said.

“Good night, everyone, I’ll see you all tomorrow,” Jebediah said.

“Good night, Jeb!” Gus yawned from his desk. “I’m gonna try to get the plans for the third Sagan finalized, then it's lights out for me… Might not make it, though.”

“Alright, don’t exert yourself too hard.” Jeb walked out of mission control and shut the door.

 

==========

 

"Alright, are we all go?" Angie asked.

"I'm go," said Podpont.

"So am I!" said Mojorie.

"Ready as I'll ever be!" Gemna proclaimed.

"Who on Kerbin designed that thing," Miteny scoffed over the radio. "You can't even use two of the seats, they are too close."

"We will fix it on the surface," said Podpont. "Anyway, hang tight up here, y'all. I'll see you down on the surface in a few days or weeks!"

"See you! Don't crash the thing!" Patfrey said.

"Okay, this is ridiculous!" Miteny said. "That thing doesn't even have RCS? How did we dock it in the first place?"

"Beats me," Angie said. "Radio home and tell them to send better aircraft with the next wave of ships."

"I would, but why would they?" Stabel said. "There's just not much reason to explore at this point, beyond search and rescue, of course."

"Perhaps for redundancy," Gemna said. "We do only have one of each, and as we've proven, it is very, very easy to crash stuff."

"Good point, I'll let them know that," Stabel replied.

A short time later, the Laythe SSTO (the actual name of which had been lost to the sands of time, but the crew had come to call her the Laythe Aeronaut IV) de-orbited, and began a long, cool, slow re-entry. A textbook descent.

Well, textbook besides the inversions needed to keep the gigantors cool while still reaching the landing site.

"Hey, I can see you guys from here!" Bobwig said. "Welcome to Laythe!"

"Hi Bobwig!" Angie shouted. "I'd wave, but this thing only has screens, no windows! Whose idea was that? That's the stupidest idea ever, not having windows on a spaceship..."

With much less protest than the exploration jet's earlier landing attempts, the Laythe SSTO touched down on the flat area of the beach.

The flat part was a decent distance away from Bobwig, but still within easy taxi distance, especially as most of it was downhill.

"And, wheels are stopped!" Podpont proclaimed.

"Excellent flying, Podpont!" Angie said.

"We're here!"

"It is very good to see another face again, and an intact way off this rock!" Bobwig said as he ran over to hug the four additional Kerbals who now called Laythe home.

"Gemna, I dare you to take your helmet off!" said Mojorie.

"Isn't the atmosphere poisonous?" Podpont asked. "Like, didn't Jebediah Kerman almost die due to ammonia poisoning his first time here?"

"That depends entirely on how long the terraforming machines ran after the war started," Gemna said. "That ammonia is like the one thing preventing Laythe from being mostly habitable. Given how often they broke down even with a supply chain, chances are that a few weeks or months after the war started, they all broke, and Laythe's atmospheric ammonia composition is like 80 or 90 percent of what it was."

"Hmm, well, I'll get the spectrometer - "

"Oh, there's no need for that!" Gemna said, yanking off her helmet, much to everyone's panic.

"Uh... Huh," she said. She took a good long look around, took several deep breaths, and gazed up into the sky.

"Gemna, get your helmet back on!" Podpont demanded.

"No, hold on," Gemna said.

"What is it?" Mojorie asked.

"Smell for yourself," Gemna responded, opening up Mojorie's helmet.

"Oh!" she said. "But how in the world - "

Angie and Bobwig took off their helmets, followed shortly, with a sigh, by Bobwig.

"Not a hint of ammonia to be found," said Podpont.

"Which means?" Bobwig asked.

Gemna smiled. "It means that there's someone, or a lot of someones, out there, and they have been keeping those terraforming machines running to this very day."

"Well then," said Angie. "I guess that means we've got our work cut out for us. Let's find them, and rescue them." 

 

The Story Of Project Intrepid Will Continue...

 

 

[Project Intrepid (Chapter 58 - Starry Poles And Salty Oceans)]

Chapter 57 - Picking Up The Pieces

Spoiler

The senior executives of the Kerbal Space Program waited anxiously in one of the conference rooms in the administration building.

In attendance were:

• Rick Kerman, chief financial officer
• Walt Kerman, public relations officer
• S.A.M. Kerman, head of the Experimental Engineering Division
• Sergeant T, chief security officer
• Gus Kerman, KSC vehicle assembly manager
• Kari Kerman, Research and Development lead
• Sandra Kerman, representative of Krypton Laboratories
• Jebediah Kerman, astronaut
• Jebediah Kerman, Minmus construction supervisor (attending virtually)
• Katie Kerman, Mayor of Minmus (attending virtually)

With an empty chair for Linus Kerman, chief scientist, and another empty chair for Wernher Von Kerman, chief designer.

The old grandfather clock in the corner kept ticking onwards.

"Will someone please shut that thing up?" Walt asked. "It's really bugging me."

"Yeah, it's like, every second matters now," Katie Kerman said. “I don’t need a second by second reminder.”

"I don't know what you're on about, you can just mute it seeing as you’re attending virtually," Sergeant T said. "I don't want to mess with it, it was a gift from Cloneus."

"Well, we've already destroyed enough of his stuff today, what's one more." Jebediah stood up from the table, made his way over to the clock, opened up the window, and with a grunt, pitched the entire device backwards, where it plummeted several meters to the ground below with one final dissonant clang of its bells. "Problem solved."

"Where are they..." mused Kari Kerman.

The doors burst open and Linus Kerman ran in, breathless, and took his seat. Everyone looked up at him with anticipation.

"Well, spit it out, no sense doing introductions!" demanded Rick.

"The new measurements suggest that Kerbol and most of its planets will be swallowed into the Krion-B black hole on Year 6, Day 389, plus or minus a few days. The planets not swallowed will be ejected into deep space to die a cold death." Everyone in the room erupted into expressions of despair.

"Today's Year 4, Day 174," Rick Kerman said. "Someone do the math?"

"426 days in a year, 6 hours a day..." Walt Kerman plugged the numbers into his calculator. "Two years, 215 days. 1067 days in total. 6402 hours. You mean I'm supposed to tell the general public that they have 6400 hours to live?"

"Better you than some amateur who's inevitably halfway through the calculations already," said Linus.

"But they're gonna ask for our plan," Walt said. "We don't even know our plan! How are we going to have a plan before this leaks? We can’t just tell them we don’t have a plan and expect them not to panic, but how can we make a plan in the time it takes them to simply just look up?"

"I don't even know the old plan at all," Sandra said.

"We were using secrecy to prevent people from panicking, and to try to get people excited, but I think now the opposite strategy is warranted," began Gus Kerman.

"So, just so we're all on the same page. What was the old plan?" Jebediah asked. S.A.M. Kerman opened his mouth. "The FULL plan, S.A.M.!" Jebediah snapped.

"Phase zero," Kari began. "Rediscover how to build, operate, and navigate large spaceships as practice for later."

"Phase one," Katie continued. "Create a colony and shipyard on Minmus to facilitate the construction of planetary evacuation ships."

"Phase two," S.A.M. continued. "Research, develop, and produce advanced technologies to locate and explore a world to colonize."

"And finally, phase three," Gus said. "Once we determine how to do so, build enough colony ships to evacuate all 5 million or so Kerbals on Kerbin to this new world."

"And let's go in order. What have we accomplished so far?" Jebediah asked.

"Phaze zero has launched 27 Intrepid Test Vehicles so far, 29 if you count all of the minis," Kari said. "A number of spares and unrealized concepts exist in storage. Of those 27, 16 reached orbit, of which 15 are still operational today, again counting the triplets as one. We have successfully reached every world except for Eeloo, Bop, Pol, and Vall, solved a number of mysteries, including the whereabouts of Valentina Kerman, and the nature of the Teddy Monster. We have successfully ascended from Eve, located three separate instances of successful or semi-successful hibernation, and demonstrated the operation of a ship that can carry nearly a thousand Kerbals. We have, however, underestimated the need for redundancy on these short journeys, and also underestimated the threats that they would face, leading to a number of simple failures cascading into catastrophes, and leading to a number of stolen spaceships."

"And what were you planning to do next?" Sergeant T asked.

"Well, explore more. Do search and rescue missions for any surviving Kerbals in the system. Investigate the possibility of life on Eeloo, I suppose."

"Thank you, Kari. Katie, you're up," Jebediah said.

"Phase one launched 1500 tons of supplies to Minmus to jump start a colony. The ITV-020 Philosopher of Time launched 916 Kerbals to Minmus, of which about 500 stayed behind to continue the construction of Minmusville, 400 of which went to Gilly. Despite intermittent at best resupply missions from Kerbin, we able to extract local resources, create a large space colony, extract large amounts of fuel, and domestically produce most of the non-electronic components for two Intrepid Test Vehicles. We were later planning on completing Drydock One, and beginning on the phase two ships, but Minmusville was severely damaged by that gravioli blast and likely needs to be completely rebuilt."

"Believe me," Jebediah 2 said, "if Minmusville was intact enough for me to be streaming from its spire, I would be doing so."

"Thank you, Katie and Jeb," Jebediah said. "S.A.M., you're up, please. Tell everyone everything. And I mean everything."

S.A.M. took a deep breath.

"The Experimental Engineering Division was founded a long time ago to create advanced technologies, back in the day we stumbled upon a sparkly asteroid in space around Dres."

"You knew about those?" Kari stood up and looked at him. "Send us all you know, we still don't know what we are dealing with here!"

"I will, but, please understand. Those boulders are extremely dangerous, but only if you know what you are doing. It is very hard to accidentally destroy a planet with them."

“The space pirates know what they are doing,” Kari said. “Who knows, maybe this elemental portal thing isn’t as insane as we think it does.”

“No, the space pirates do not know what they are doing,” Jeebdiah said. “I have reason to believe they might know someone who does.”

“Well, do tell!” Kari said.

“Guys, I was talking!” S.A.M. said. “I was about to reveal the entire plan, and you interrupted me?”

“Alright, then, we can put a pin in this whole sparkly asteroid thing, then,” Jeb said.

“Project K was… Well, is… An attempt to utilize the material in these sparkly asteroids to create a propulsion system of unspeakable power, one that could theoretically enable interstellar travel in mere weeks, or even days. But it is obvious we have bit off more than we can chew. We almost blew up Kerbin twice testing it, and we sent Kerbin into the future? We’re still analyzing the data on that… But we’re also working on time travel as well, without much success, but we got a lot of good data from, uh… dooming the planet… It was an accident.”

“Keep going.”

“We also have been working on other propulsion advances, such as the 2.5m Rapier and the clipped Mammoths. We have a fusion program, but it is fairly halfhearted. But the big stuff… For phase 2, we had three steps. Step one, locate a habitable world. In order to do that, in an operation called Project Searchlight, we used several dozen tons of silver, a local resource extraction setup, and the manpower of 400 Kerbals to embark on a project that would turn Gilly into a massive optical telescope, capable of identifying any habitable world in reasonably reachable distance.”

“I still think we should have just built it here, on Minmus,” said Katie.

“We anticipated better long term results in the lower gravity environment, but knowing what we know now, Minmus would have been a better short term option,” S.A.M. admitted. “It isn’t done yet, but it is getting close. Step two was to send K-drive probes to nearby candidate planets, and Step three was to send a crew to assess final habitability… Needless to say, steps 2 and 3 are no longer feasible to complete.”

“And that’s everything?” Gus asked.

“I mean, unless you want me to go into more detail on time travel.”

“Tell me what your name stands for,” Gus said. “Then I might believe you.”

“What? No, that’s a secret!”

“Tell him,” Jeb said.

“I’m only telling if Sergeant T tells first!”

“Twinkletoes,” Sergeant T admitted. “My name is Twinkletoes Kerman.” Rick Kerman stifled a laugh. “It’s not funny!”

“It kind of is,” Kari said.

“It stands for Secret Agent Man,” S.A.M. snapped. “Are you happy now?”

“Terrific, I’m overjoyed on this glorious day!” Gus sarcastically threw his hands up in the air.

“And Phase Three,” Jebediah said.

“We were going to build a prototype generation ship on Minmus,” Gus said. “There were a number of designs, but it was looking like we were going to build O’Neill cylinders. Creating something that could support people for that long was gonna be huge and a massive undertaking. There would have been thousands of these ships in the end, but then we found out that Valentina, then later Gene and Leah, and Tomfurt all managed to create hibernation setups. This would tremendously simplify our operations, but we have thus far been unable to safely recreate the technology.”

At that moment, Wernher von Kerman burst into the room and proclaimed “I’VE DONE IT!”

“You’ve done it?” Gus said excitedly.

“Yes! I’ve successfully entered hibernation and returned alive! Mostly! My pinky finger is looking kinda weird though, huh…”

“What was the problem?” Gus asked.

“Well there were like 15 problems, but the main one was that two of the computers weren’t communicating because the complete bodge of a UART connection we had involved soldering thin wires directly to SMD pads, but when connecting those with alligator clips we forgot we had to scrape off the insulating coating, which made the connections not really work, but - “

“He’s gonna talk for 2 hours if we let him, there are kinks to work out, but it works now,” said Gus. “First good news all day. That means we can build a lot of smaller ships with existing technology, assuming we can mass produce 5 million hibernation units in 2 and a half years. But we still don’t know what kind of planet we are going to land on or how fast, so we have to be ready for anything. We were going to wait for Phase Two to find something, but I don’t know if we are going to have that luxury any more. We were also going to send colony supplies beforehand, and an early team to set up the colony, but who knows if we can any more.”

“Alright,” Linus said. “That’s what we were going to do. Now here’s what we are going to do: We’re going to build the smaller but still big colony ships and design them to land on most reasonable atmospheric worlds, and start building them before we know where we’re going. Once we know where they are going, we’ll make any modifications we need to and then launch the ones we built one by one, and keep building and launching more until everyone’s out.”

“We’ll need to get everyone to Minmus,” Katie said. “We will need to rebuild the city as everyone’s arriving, and while building even more infrastructure!”

“Good,” Gus said. “We will need the practice for building our colony on our next homeworld as everyone’s arriving.”

“Okay, hold on,” Wernher said. “We won’t be able to launch people for the first bit of our time left due to not having the planes, and the last bit, we’ll be too close to Krion-B to escape. If we assume we have 2 years, our average rate of launching will need to be 16 Kerbals a minute.”

“Then we’ll launch 16 Kerbals a minute!” Sergeant T said.

“That’s a 96 Kerbal spaceplane every 6 minutes,” Wernher said. “If it takes three days to get there, three days to get back, and a day to load and unload, which is a great deal optimistic, we need a fleet of 420 craft. Four crew per ship, and no breaks, we would need 1,680 trained pilots. We barely have 100, and most of them are in space! And then there’s the fuel requirements! We can’t operate 420 spaceplanes! We can’t even land two of them reliably!”

“We can’t make the scaled up Rapiers that fast,” S.A.M. said. “We could barely make the four prototypes.”

“Then we will need to change our strategy,” Linus said. “What if instead of sending everyone all the way to Minmus, we just launched everyone to low orbit, waiting for a transfer ship? We could maybe get 200 Kerbals per flight that way, that’s only one every 12 minutes. We can launch each plane every two orbits, if there aren’t delays, so each flight will take, what, an hour and a half? That’s a fleet size of eight, a crew of 32. Plenty of room for spares and relief pilots.”

“The transfer ships can get their fuel from Minmus,” said Katie. “Or, refuel themselves. If we can take 1000 Kerbals a trip, we need one ship to depart Kerbin every hour, so we would only need like 40 or 50 of them, less if we go faster or can fit more people on each one. We’ve already built around 30 large ships, and we can reliably operate them and land them on Minmus, at least more reliably than we can land large spaceplanes.”

“And we already have one and a half unused Philosopher of Time class ITVs in storage to get us started,” S.A.M. added.

“I’ll get them refurbished immediately,” said Gus.

“If we can fit a thousand hibernating Kerbals on each ship, we need 5000 ships,” Katie said. “That’s about one per hour. If we can get a hundred thousand people up here all focused on cranking these out like tin cans, that’s a hundred thousand man hours per ship when we’re firing on all cylinders. That sounds like a lot, but we have to make EVERYTHING. The electronics, the hibernation kits, some of that is probably easier to make on Kerbin, but we don’t know how much. So, we need to get the man hours per colony ship down to at least that.”

“Rick,” Linus said. “You’re the finance guy, you’re great at cost cutting and economies of scale. We’re sending you up to Minmus as soon as possible, you’re gonna supervise that production line and get it going as fast as Kerbally possible.”

“Roger that,” Rick said.

“Double all those rates,” said Jeb 2. “We’ll need at least as much cargo as we do crew, both to Minmus and to the Homeworld.”

“But the logistics of planetary evacuation,” said Walt. “We’re going to need an industrial base to make all of this stuff, and a million Kerbal colony on Minmus, while also preparing the supplies necessary for a Homeworld colony.”

“Well, fortunately, tens of thousands of engineers around the planet just became effectively available,” Sergeant T said. “These past three years have been a few thousand nerds learning how to walk, being interrupted by war every few months. But now, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to see what a whole planet looks like running.”

“Alright. I can work with this,” Walt said. “We’re gonna build an evacuation city near the KSC to simplify logistics, then another city on Minmus. We’ve got to reallocate as much of our industrial base as possible to this effort. But we’ve done the math, and it is possible. I’ll start working on the press release, it will be out in the next half hour.”

“Don’t forget farming,” Sandra Kerman said. “You can’t just send 5 million Kerbals to Minmus and expect them to not starve. Or the Homeworld for that matter.”

“Younger me, I’m so glad I’m not you right now,” Jebediah said.

“This is not going to be an easy task,” said Jeb 2.

“Okay, didn’t we put a pin in something?” Sandra said.

“Right,” Jebediah began. “The space pirates are going on and on about magic and stuff… And we’ve heard them call those sparkly asteroids magic boulders, which makes me think they may be in contact with the monolith.”

“The monolith?” asked Sandra.

“Right, here we go… There are two ancient creatures that inhabit this solar system. The Deep Space Kraken, and the Monolith, eldritch creatures of chaos and order, respectively.”

“Wait, so there’s actual aliens?” Sandra asked.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Jebediah said. “I met the Kraken during the OCTAVIUS mission on Bop. They told me that they used to move planets, and they taught me the magic of this universe. Or at least an abbreviated version. They sought to control me, and almost won, but I managed to break free. We killed them, or so I thought.”

“Wait, so you have the powers of an ancient space wizard?” Katie asked. “Why don’t you just teleport the entire planet away?”

“I would, but the universe ran dry of magic long ago,” Jebediah said. “I have enough left to undo one, maybe two small mistakes. But the Monolith… The other ancient space wizard… Just as the Kraken took me as their apprentice, so to may the Monolith have chosen an apprentice, and I’d bet all my money, if I had any, on it being Tomfurt Kerman.”

“For real? The Flat Kerbin guy?” Linus asked. “No idea how he got past screening.”

“Ehh, practice,” Walt said. “We’ve got to launch the entire general public to space, and we need 10,000 starship captains. Gotta set the competence cutoff somewhere.”

“The point is,” said Jebediah, “I had one magic lesson by a hateful magician who barely told me anything, and for all I know, he was lying to my face. We have no reason to assume Tomfurt knows what he’s doing, but the Monolith… They have a plan. And if the Monolith thinks that these boulders are important… And are possibly a source of magic… And thinks we can escape the solar system by creating a new element using surface samples from every world… I need to talk to them. If it takes launching a hundred Asteroid haulers to Dres to gather enough Magic, maybe we can move Kerbin after all.”

“Yes,” said Linus. “I am a man of science, but in this situation, we need to pursue all possible avenues of escape… Except for Project K. That can wait until we are a little more desperate.”

“Don’t we need a surface sample from the sun for that?” Jebediah 2 asked. “Even with my piloting, that does seem rather hopeless.”

“Actually, if an atmospheric sample can be substituted… Maybe we might have a shot at that,” said S.A.M. “The Experimental Engineering Division has been working on some interesting heat shielding technology.”

“What about time travel?” Sergeant T asked.

“I’ll keep you posted on that,” S.A.M. said. “We don’t yet have a working prototype, but it might be worth a shot.”

“And don’t forget about me,” Sandra said. “Cloneus founded Krypton Laboratories underground mostly to keep everyone busy. We haven’t made anything revolutionary, but we have perfected a great deal of rocket parts that may aid you, for instance, ducted fans, and complete lineups of 1.875 and 5 meter rocket parts.”

“Alright, so it is settled!” said Wernher Von Kerman. “Two and a half years to escape this planet. I’ll work on perfecting and producing the hibernation gear. Walt will tell the general public and coordinate planetary logistics and morale. S.A.M. will complete project Searchlight, work on perfecting the larger Rapier engines, pursue time travel, and maybe, if we are desperate, resume theoretical, and possibly eventually practical work on Project K. Sergeant T will ensure that no disgruntled parties will disrupt the evacuation efforts, organize the defense of the space center from any more large scale attacks, and if necessary, deal with the space pirates. Gus will work on getting the Minmus transportation network up and running. Kari will work on colony ship design. Rick will deal with mass producing colony ships. Sandra will integrate the new parts into the supply chain. Jeb 2 will deal with the logistics of rebuilding Minmusville. Katie will deal with the human factors and production side of things on Minmus. And Linus, you will get better estimates of impact time, velocity, the Delta-V and times needed to escape the system, and which planets are being ejected versus swallowed.”

“Could we not just move to Laythe if it isn’t being swallowed?” Rick asked.

“And then we’d be drifting through space without a star,” Kari said. “We’d be dying a slow death at the hands of entropy.”

“I don’t suppose we could nudge Laythe a bit and set off a gravity assist chain that ends up with us orbiting the black hole system,” Sandra said.

“That would rely on about seventeen improbable things, including Jebediah and this so called Magic Boulder, but once I have better numbers, I’ll see if it can be done,” Linus said.

“Alright then, that’s it, meeting adjourned,” Wernher said.

“Hold on,” Jebediah said. Everyone turned to face him. “What about the Intrepid Test Vehicle program?”

“We’re going to shut it down,” Gus said. “It was a success. We figured out how to build and operate large ships. Now we need to put that knowledge into practice. We will soon no longer have the manpower to spare to waste on exploring the system.”

“Okay, sure, but we can’t just leave everyone that’s currently out there!” Jebediah protested.

“We’ve got maybe 1200 guys up there, maybe 200 not counting Minmus and Gilly,” Gus said. “We have 5 million Kerbals down here. I’m sorry if we can’t continue to spare custom experimental gigantic motherships at the drop of a hat.”

“The Independence isn’t even scheduled to get to Eeloo for another 2 years, what am I supposed to tell them? “Hi, yeah, you’re dead and we’re not coming to rescue you?””

“Yes.”

“Man, we really botched that transfer, five years to Eeloo, we’re a bunch of amateurs,” Linus said. “How could we possibly evacuate an entire planet in two and a half years if we can’t even do a simple Hohmann transfer correctly?”

“Okay, settle down,” Rick said. “We have plenty of unused ITVs in storage, and there will be a transition period between what we have now and full tilt evacuation. We can probably produce a handful of custom motherships, but it will have to be in the next month or two.”

“You’re in charge of that, Jebediah,” said Wernher. “Get as many of them home as possible.”

“Right then. We’re aborting the Jool mission.”

“But we can’t,” Linus said. “The space pirates have got our entire database hostage, they will delete it if we don’t deliver them the JAVELIN. We can’t get the Dragon Parade there and back in two years!”

“Okay, here’s what we’ll do, then,” said Jebediah. “Wernher, can you get me a hundred hibernation kits before the upcoming Jool window?”

“It will be a tight squeeze, and they won’t be of fantastic quality, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Alright then. The ships that we can get home, we’ll get home, but the others, we’ll send to Jool. We’ll complete all of our… unfinished business… there, and send a delivery of everything needed to retrofit those ships into interstellar hibernation capable vessels. Then, we’ll depart from Jool.”

“They aren’t going to trust us, you know,” Sandra said. “Yeah, we’ll just send you guys a bunch of borderline untested experimental equipment and ask you guys to fly between stars in prototypes that could barely fly between planets… Let alone how they’re gonna land. They totally won’t desert back to Kerbin at all costs! Those that can, at least.”

“If they won’t trust empty words, then I’ll go there myself,” said Jebediah.

“What?” said Wernher. “You’re mad!”

“As always, old pal. I want the conversion kits loaded onto the Intrepid before the Jool window. I need a full load of fuel and ideally some sort of ISRU setup. Assuming my crew is willing to come with me, we will depart and complete our business at Jool, and then depart for the Homeworld in the last few months or weeks.”

“And what if we never find the new Homeworld?” Walt asked. Jebediah took a deep breath.

“Well, we have to, don’t we?”

“But what if we don’t?”

“Well, we will. I’ll bet my life on it.”

“We all are.”

==========

“This is Jebediah Kerman calling all Intrepid Test Vehicles. You have doubtless heard the news by now. We are living in the final years of the Kerbol system, and the Intrepid Test Vehicle Program has been all but canceled. We still have a few more launches ahead of us, but we are now focusing almost exclusively on Project Homeworld. I have been tasked with ensuring your safety. Most of you will either be returning to Kerbin or consolidating at Jool. I will be personally delivering interstellar conversion kits in the ITV-009 Intrepid, and we will progress from there onwards to the Homeworld. With that in mind, here are your orders:”

“The ITV-011 Creativity is to continue her mission around Jool. Rather than remaining until the next transfer window, she will set up shop and wait for the arrival of the other ships for the next two or so years. During this time she will complete her science mission, set up shop for the next ships, secure the system against any possible space pirate threat, attempt to solve any pressing Joolian mysteries, and search the system for any survivors of the Sixty Minute War.”

“The ITV-015 Independence is to divert immediately to Jool as not enough time remains to complete an Eeloo landing, and no fuel remains to accelerate the process.”

“The ITV-019 Homecoming is to return to Kerbin at the next Dres to Kerbin transfer window, and is not to attempt further conflict with the space pirates. We anticipate their departure to Jool in the near future using a maximum fuel usage hyperbolic trajectory requiring a rescue. Do not follow them, if you arrive at the same time, we will likely not be able to rescue you both. Upon return to Kerbin, she will assist with the evacuation to Minmus.”

“The ITV-020 Philosopher Of Time will return to Kerbin at the next transfer window upon the success of Project Searchlight. Project Searchlight must not fail. Upon return to Kerbin, she will assist with the evacuation to Minmus.”

“The ITV-021 Ice Cream will continue her mission to Jool. Upon arrival, she will complete her planned construction and scientific objectives, and will then refuel arriving ships for their interstellar journeys, if necessary, completing hyperbolic rescues for any ships coming in particularly fast.”

“The ITV-022A Dr. Wily, the ITV-022B Marble Machine, and the ITV-022C Applesauce will complete their scientific objectives at Duna, search the system for survivors, although with three spare seats and so little time, there might not be much we can do, and then return to Kerbin at the next transfer window.”

“The ITV-023 Valkyrie will return to Kerbin at the next transfer window, but if needed, will stay as late as possible to return critical Project Searchlight personnel to Kerbin in the event that Project Searchlight runs long. Upon return to Kerbin, she will be retired or used as general cislunar transportation.”

“The ITV-024 Avalon will return to Kerbin at the next transfer window if hull integrity permits. If hull integrity does not permit, she will transfer her crew to the ITV-020 Philosopher of Time and be left in Eve orbit.”

“The ITV-025 Heart of Courage will continue her mission to Moho and complete her scientific objectives and strategic objective of recovering the ITV-013 Magician. Additionally, she will stay as long as necessary to search the planet for survivors and return them to Kerbin. The ITV-013 Magician will be returned to Kerbin as soon as possible and will assist in the evacuation to Minmus, and possibly, after a minor refit, the evacuation of the Mun.”

“The ITV-026 Flamedancer will complete her scientific mission at an accelerated timescale with fewer, more aggressive orbital passes, and then return to Kerbin. There are no post return orders at this time.”

“Lastly, the ITV-027 Dragon Parade will undergo a rapid interstellar refit if there is time, and depart for Jool, targeting the earliest possible arrival, to the extent of having minimal fuel remaining. If necessary, we will construct booster rockets and drop tanks to assist. The sooner the JAVELIN is delivered to Jool, the sooner we can stop worrying about the space pirates, assuming they keep their word. The ship will remain at Jool and complete scientific, search and rescue, and refueling objectives until it comes time to evacuate the system.”

“And lastly, the ITV-009 Intrepid will undergo a refit to add additional capabilities, and depart for Jool carrying the equipment necessary to modify herself, the Creativity, the Independence, the Explorer, the Ice Cream, and the Dragon Parade into interstellar starships. Our plans for additional Intrepid Test Vehicles are still very much up in the air at this point, we will keep you posted, but we will do our best to leave no stone unturned, and save every single Kerbal in the Kerbol system from the jaws of Krion-B.”

The Stories of Project Intrepid and Project Homeworld will continue…

 

 

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

Wait, that's not a meme engine? Huh. Scrolled past it on reddit assuming it was a meme. I knew SpaceX was the company most likely to name their engine after a meme, but I didn't think it would be this overt.

Engine turbine would be more akin to how jet engines work, but there's probably many very good reasons why it hasn't been done before.

[Artemis Discussion Thread]

2 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Get it but we docked for half an century  now and has it ever been issues outside the pre Apollo learning experiences and the Mir crash? Having to move back and retry is like an turnaround on landing. 
Has any mission failed to dock? Outside of launch fails and starliner who did not reach correct orbit?

Soyuz 10 is the one that comes to mind.

[Simple but fun; Dessert Airfield Race.]

Here's my 7:39 or 7:42 run depending on how you count, in a ship I call the Pluto I as it kind of looks like a Project Pluto missile.

My strategy was to try to get as close as possible to the Rapier speed limit of Mach 5. Mach is higher lower down due to the higher temperatures, so the lower you go, the faster you can go, but then you run into heating issues. I attempted to make a decently thermally resistant craft using creative though not excessive node routing, without going into straight up total thermal/aerodynamic occlusion tech.

There is an additional bonus from flying low, the total distance traveled is shorter because the world is round.

The vehicle in question.

The Vector is responsible for rapidly accelerating the vehicle to about 1000m/s, which makes our time faster, allows the Rapier time to spool up, negates the need for landing gear, and gets the Rapier into the regime it works best at, avoiding the transonic doldrums.

After it is out of fuel, the Vector is jettisoned. The fuel tanks and engine are shielded from aerodynamic and thermal forces due to being in a fairing, and the forward fairing, heat shield, and intake are routed in a way where it is pretty aerodynamic and the heat shield takes the brunt of the heating, while still allowing the intake to work, though this is a little cheesey.

The first challenge is clearing the mountains and not going too high.

The next challenge is heat. If you wanted to, you could probably do the run without the elevons with a redesign, but the elevons are the limiting factor right now because you can't stick them in a fairing. 2-3km seemed to be the sweet spot, but I had to constantly manage throttle to keep the elevons from melting. A few runs were ended because of this.

Due to the adjustments required and the 1 degree resolution of MechJeb, at one point I tried 2 elevons in the middle to act as adjustible wings with the deploy function, but they melted very easily and were removed.

I was able to keep a cruising speed of roughly 1820m/s for the whole thing, up to 1830 at times, with the elevon overheat indicator between 99 and 99.5%, although the average was definitely slower as I frequently cut the throttle in a panic when the heat rose too high, and dipped down to the 1700s for a while, taking some time to recover.

The Pluto I is slowed down by blowing the fairings. I blew them a bit early here, so early I had to go to full throttle and pull all the way up to just barely reach the runway.

The parachutes are deployed in 3 stages. There's a drogue, which allows you some amount of engine control if you over or undershoot (the sideways runway is a very small target in this axis), the first main, which lets you pick your landing site for good (engine control can't do much after this point), and the other 2 mains, which were supposed to be deployed right above the ground to cushion the impact. Unfortunately, I came in too fast and deployed both of them early to slow down, so there were several seconds of falling.

Touchdown at 7:39.

Stable on the ground at 7:42.

This design can be improved perhaps down to 7:10 with better piloting - I did a very conservative approach and slowed down way too early. You can probably pass over the runway at full speed at 7:00 (no slowing down for landing).

There's not much better you can do with the Rapier alone without doing actual thermal exploits and I don't think that's within the spirit.

I suspect that this design is near a local maximum, and that the optimal design for the challenge is a gigantic booster pancake that goes high enough to avoid heating and drag.

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

This could either go here in the MSR thread (wait hold on, do we have an MSR thread?), but since we are talking MSR already I thought I'd bring it up, as the subject matter is both MSR and Red Dragon/SpaceX related. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26274117

That's an old post from someone who was working at NASA around the same time as Red Dragon was being proposed for Mars Sample Return. While it is an anonymous personal account and should be taken with at least a few grains of salt, if true, the contents are interesting. The OP discusses how company and government politics and not internal cancellation prevented Red Dragon from happening. I recommend reading the whole thing.

TLDR, if the person who made this post is to be believed:

• SpaceX proposed (or planned to propose) Red Dragon 3 times
• The first attempt  (2013) was not a sample return and was shot down by NASA/the government (rumor)
  • Falcon 9 had only flown 4-7 times at that point depending on when in 2013 we are, SpaceX was very much still the underdog
  • NASA didn't want a crew rated capsule to be seen going to Mars and propulsively landing when Orion couldn't do any of that
  • The main rumor is that some higher ups in the government (think shelby types) threatened to withhold future CRS and Commercial Crew and other contracts (which SpaceX was very much trying to get) if Red Dragon happened
• The second attempt (2014 or 2015, post uses both years) was a sample return but was shot down by JPL
  • JPL is protective of their role in planetary exploration
  • JPL had previously scheduled their missions to assure a steady stream of funding
  • JPL did that with MSR as well, the fact that it is 3 missions is part of that
  • MSR going to anyone other than JPL would be a severe threat to JPL's prestige and funding
  • JPL tried very hard to discredit Red Dragon via numerous (often underhanded) methods
• OP notes that neither proposal was actually submitted, and posits that there aren't many other reasons why you would prepare a proposal and not submit it
• OP doesn't know much about the third attempt (2016)
  • Obviously it didn't happen
  • This is when SpaceX pulled the plug and decided to go all in on Starship (ITS at the time)

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

Given the MSR news... I'm not saying this is a good idea and I'm not saying it will happen, but proposing a manned Starship mission to complete Mars Sample Return is a completely on brand thing for SpaceX to do.

Would be quite the plot twist but the 21st century of space exploration has been filled with so many plot twists already that I doubt anything would surprise me at this point.

[ULA launch and discussion thread]

The guys making the Delta IV had to exert so much mental fortitude to resist calling it "Phoenix" after its pyromaniac tendencies, so that the superior joke of there being a Delta V could happen someday, only for there to never be a Delta V.

 

["Great American Eclipse" II: April 8 2024]

2 hours ago, Mars-Bound Hokie said:

3 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

 

Really? Where specifically?

Lorain County Ohio

["Great American Eclipse" II: April 8 2024]

I saw it! Clouds covered nearly the whole sky in Ohio, but they were thin and high enough that we could see right through them. Pictures coming later maybe. Was really cool watching the sky change colors, especially right before totality ended, like a really fast sunrise but in an unusual spot!

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

In the recent presentation Elon says they are not working on Mars propellant production yet. This almost directly contradicts Tom Mueller's claim that he spent his last 5 years at SpaceX working on ISRU.

One if the negative nancies on the Discord is saying this proves that they stopped working on ISRU after Tom left.

I don't want to accept this but this is the only way to reconcile both sentences if we take both statements at face value.

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

There were also slides showing up to date thrust numbers and such. No isp or dry masses, sadly, but might be able to reverse engineer some of those numbers from telemetry.

[[1.12.5] The Kerbol System B-Sides]

31 minutes ago, wpetula said:

Does the low friction actually work on Eeloo? I've been trying to get that feature to work in Precursors for what feels like forever now.

I don't know,  actually. I felt it working but it could have just been placebo. I haven't done any rigorous testing on it, I'll add that to the list of things to do.

[[1.12.5] The Kerbol System B-Sides]

Ultimate Steve's Kerbol System B-Sides

Hello everyone! The Kerbol System B-Sides mod is a set of Kopernicus configs to adjust the stock system to provide interesting navigational, piloting, and engineering challenges, while ramping the characteristics of each world up to 11.

This mod is inspired by the B-sides from the game Celeste. Each level in the game (except the last one) has a B-side, an optional non-canon remix of the level with increased difficulty, largely keeping the same theme, expanding on what made the original challenging. There are also the C-sides, which are even harder than the B-sides.

This mod was created because I found that the stock Kerbol system had gotten a bit too easy for me. Rescales and hack gravity challenges really only increased one or two dimensions of what made things difficult, and the planets were still largely unchanged. Planet packs are largely based around stock difficulty, and RSS/RO/RP-1 can get to be a bit too much sometimes. When I first started playing KSP, everything seemed impossible. Then I gradually learned how to do everything, to the point where I now know you can do a grand tour in under 8 tons. I used to plan for weeks how I would get to Duna, and I would be so elated when I finally got there. Now, I just simply go to Duna. This mod aims to restore those senses of impossibility and accomplishment while still remaining possible with stock parts (probably).

The difficulty tuning is roughly based off of the Mun being a bit easier than stock Tylo. Not every world is scaled exactly like this, but that is the general idea.

Brief Descriptions Without Many Spoilers (for those who would rather discover the challenges themselves)

Spoiler

• Kerbol - Just a size increase to make interplanetary transfers a bit more costly.
• Moho - If you thought old Moho's orbit was challenging to get to... Make sure to pack radiators!
• Eve - Good luck.
• Gilly - Gilly really does want you to be there.
• Kerbin - MOUNTAIN!
• Mun - If you can get there, it is quite the view!
• Minmus - Inclination? What's that?
• Duna - It's atmosphere has teeth!
• Ike - About 10x more obnoxious than usual.
• Dres - Dres doesn't exist, silly!
• Jool - I dare you to land there.
• Laythe - Might have a hard time finding a place to land.
• Vall - Also might have a hard time finding a place to land.
• Tylo - Also, good luck.
• Bop - The Kraken wants you to come closer. He promises he won't bite.
• Pol - Because what's a video game without a pit of spikes?
• Eeloo - Want to go sledding?

All of the details

Spoiler

Kerbol

• About twice as wide
• Supposed to be 2-3x as bright but I have tried many things and I can't get it to work. Was supposed to make ion engines less painful (and Moho more painful).

Moho

• Moved to a lower, more eccentric, more inclined, and more argumentOfPeriapsis'd orbit.
• Higher gravity and radius
• Lava oceans
• A super hot atmosphere

Eve

• About twice as big
• About twice as high gravity
• Mountains about twice as tall
• Atmosphere about twice as high
• Atmosphere about thrice as thick
• Might be impossible, may rebalance

Gilly

• Smaller
• Rotates very fast

Kerbin

• Twice as big
• About 1.8g surface gravity
• Atmosphere 1.8x as high
• 1.6atm sea level pressure
• Landscape scaling greatly exaggerated, enjoy flying through the mountains!
• Orbit made slightly imperfect to increase the difficulty of interplanetary transfers

Mun

• Significantly closer to Kerbin
• Larger
• 0.87g gravity
• This makes it a really good gravity assist machine, but its orbit is now slightly imperfect

Minmus

• Terrain scaling exaggerated
• Orbit is now highly inclined and somewhat elliptical
• Slightly larger
• Higher gravity
• Rotates in about an hour. Makes lining up a landing spot on the flats require some forethought.

Duna

• Significantly larger
• 1.7x gravity
• Atmosphere is now significantly shorter
• Atmosphere is now slightly thicker at sea level
• Orbit tweaked to be more imperfect

Ike

• Now orbits obnoxiously close to Duna. There is a very narrow corridor of space where you can orbit and not burn up in Duna's atmosphere or get ejected by Ike.
• Increased radius
• Increased gravity

Dres

• Orbits retrograde
• Doesn't exist
• If it does exist, you might want to look at your radar altimeter

Jool

• Surface gravity is 2g (was 0.8g) to increase transfer Delta-V
• Now has an ocean you can land in

Laythe

• Significantly less terrain pokes up out of the water
• What terrain that does poke out is hillier than usual
• Slightly bigger
• Atmosphere shorter and thinner
• Significantly closer to Jool

Vall

• Bigger
• Higher gravity
• Now has an ocean, presumably the increased solar heating got to Vall and it is slowly melting away...
• Terrain significantly exaggerated, may take time to find a landing site that isn't a sheer cliff dropping into a lake

Tylo

• 3.8g gravity
• 50% bigger
• Was originally gonna be more but it turns out that's plenty hard already

Bop

• Significantly smaller (I wanted it to be even smaller but it broke)
• About 7g gravity
• Nearly flat
• The Kraken decided to get into black hole forging but hasn't quite made it yet

Pol

• Increased orbital inclination
• Increased gravity and size
• Drastically exaggerated terrain

Eeloo

• Significantly increased eccentricity and inclination
• Increased gravity and size
• Lowered surface friction and exaggerated height map (I want to make a sled)

More Pictures

Spoiler

The Aeris 3A flying at about its service ceiling with a view of the Mun

A Mun landing (without enough fuel to get home)

A test craft over Laythe, over Jool

Another view of the mountains

The world's first Kerbin-B SSTO, was unable to return due to re-entry heating. If anyone can make an SSTO that can return (and carry a payload), you have my admiration.

BSV-01 Europa orbiting Duna

 

Known Issues (I am accepting help)

Spoiler

Increasing luminosity doesn't work. I have tried several things, solar panels still produce the same amount of power close to Kerbin. I might have to nuke Kerbol and recreate it from scratch (and reparent every other planet) to get it to properly work.

New oceans are not showing up in scaled space. I've tried a lot of things. The oceans still show up when you get close, though.

Some bodies look like their vanilla versions in scaled space, ignoring any additional PQS mods - especially evident on Laythe. I've tried a lot of things, the issue is likely related to me modifying existing worlds rather than creating new worlds.

Sometimes there were massive FPS drops around Duna due to Ike's proximity. I think I've fixed them but let me know if it pops up again.

Vall FPS drops, might have been my imagination.

Jool's ocean is disappearing at higher than normal camera angles.

Jool's sky texture sometimes partially disappears at the surface.

I can't figure out how to adjust minimum safe altitudes, so don't trust the KER readout, and debug menu teleportation might put you inside a mountain.

Time warp limits are not implemented yet (this is mostly just laziness). Install better time warp continued, you'll probably need it anyway for using ion engines more than normal.

Development Outtakes

Spoiler

This still happens, I don't know why, but someone took a bite out of the Joolian sky

Minmus was extremely spiky for a while and I didn't know why, I think it had something to do with scaledspace.

This was an attempt at fixing Minmus. Needless to say, it didn't work. Neat that we can play Minecraft in KSP though.

My initial attempts at rescaling (pre Sigma Dimensions) did not move the ocean texture, but did move the collider (or vice versa? I can't remember). This resulted in the appearance of levitating ships when they were splashed down.

I'm pretty sure Eve isn't supposed to be that purple.

I fixed the spikiness, but the color scaling was the next problem.

When I shrunk down the Laythe terrain, I had a weird issue with some of the ocean disappearing. There is apparently a PQS mod that removes ocean tiles below land to reduce lag, and I had to turn that off as it was still set to the default heightmap.

I have no idea what happened here, but I managed to create two Gillys.

Jool's ocean was originally a surface, but the surface didn't work properly so I made it an ocean instead.

Another shot of spiky Minmus for good measure.

Thanks to everyone who helped me fix these issues!

Installation

1. Install Kopernicus Planetary System Modifier and its dependencies via CKAN.
2. Install BetterTimeWarpContinued via CKAN. It isn't strictly necessary but it will make ion burns far less painful, and will eliminate any problems from vanilla time warp limits still being applied on smaller bodies.
3. Install the latest version of Sigma Dimensions from GitHub (https://github.com/Sigma88/Sigma-Dimensions). The version on CKAN is not up to date (was made for 1.3.1). I'm unsure if the version on CKAN will work, it's best not to chance it.
4. Install the Kerbol System B-Sides mod from GitHub (https://github.com/UltimateSteve99/KSP-B-Sides) (License: MIT) (Also has source code) by unzipping the folder and copying the contents of GameData to your installation's GameData folder.

A mod such as J2X antenna is also recommended as the stock antennas likely won't work when Eeloo is at apoapsis. Kerbal Joint Reinforcement is also recommended as rockets can get quite large.

Other legal stuff: Some code was taken from the Kittopia Dumps. As far as I can tell, the Kittopia Dumps license allows that, and I think that's all I need to say, if not, let me know.

Advice

This mod is not meant to be played in career mode, things will probably not work (some biomes may become inaccessible, etc). It is recommended to play in sandbox mode, but science mode is likely doable by increasing the rewards sliders.

Everything is balanced around an experienced player using stock + DLC parts. Every world is intended to be possible, though some of them get quite difficult.

I have playtested a bit, but I haven't tested everything. If you find a bug, or if you think something is balanced incorrectly, let me know! While each world is surmountable in a bubble, the sizes of the rockets necessary to launch them, even in pieces, may exceed reasonable limits. If that is the case, I will rebalance things.

Where are the C-sides?

The C-sides will be worked on once every B-side world has been conquered with stock+DLC parts. Visual and informational mods are allowed, MechJeb parts are allowed, bigger antennas are allowed, the only two physics mods allowed are BetterTimeWarpContinued and Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. If Eve, Jool, or Tylo end up being impossible, I will rebalance them to be more reasonable.

 

Let me know if you do anything cool in this mod, or if something is broken/way too hard!

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

 

46 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:

If so, increasing a turbopump rocket engine power just 10% to 15% cuts engine life in half. And conversely, decreasing it by 10% to 15% doubles engine life. And would this still work if we repeated the concept multiple times? If we reduced the thrust by .9^5 = .60, i.e., to 60%, which most turbopump engines can manage, then we could increase the lifetime by a factor of 2^5 = 32 times? Then a Merlin engine with a lifetime of, say, 30 reuses by running it only 60% power could have its lifetime extended to 1,000 reuses? 

Material lifetime curves are unpredictable and vary based on lots of things (material, temperature, stress, amplitude, cycle count) and are usually empirically tested for rather than calculated. I don't think you can extrapolate rules of thumb like that.

 

I'm not the most knowledgeable about this (Haven't even finished Aero undergrad, I guess you could say I technically specialize in command and data handling and spacecraft communication and not propulsion or structures), but I don't think rules of thumb can be applied like that to something so complex.

There's going to be three types of wear that I can think of. Creep, fatigue, and wear.

Creep, deformation under constant load, is like if you took a blob of silly putty and hung it from something and watched it stretch. Any well designed propulsion system designed for long term reuse, jet, rocket, or otherwise, will (if I am being sensible and know what I'm talking about) not operate in the creep regime. You can operate above the creep limit for a short period of time and have things not break. Non reusable rocket engines such as the RL-10 will do this to enhance performance, as they only need to run for a few minutes. In this case, reducing power can drastically prolong engine life, taking it from a few minutes to practically forever (or until something else fails first). I can't imagine that Merlin has this problem. From what I remember, for a given temperature there's a sharp cutoff where creep doesn't occur. Increasing stress beyond this point will quickly decrease time until failure.

The engines that do this, I'm pretty sure only do this with the nozzle/maybe combustion chamber and not the turbopump, as you can't have a precision component like that changing size throughout the burn without causing major problems.

I could foresee a future in which "emergency power" is available to reusable rockets, where an engine can slightly increase in power for a few minutes to compensate for other losses, at the expense of the rest of that engine's operational lifetime.

Then there's fatigue, weakening due to repeated cycles of stress, like if you took a paper clip and bended it back and forth repeatedly until it broke. Some metals are susceptible to this at all stresses, some metals have an endurance limit where you can do an infinite number of cycles as long as you remain below a certain amplitude. The alloys in jet engine and rocket engine turbines are crazy stuff and the graphs for them probably aren't available online, but the factors in the equation are stress amplitude and number of cycles. Rocket engines haven't yet gone through a lot of macro cycles (startups and shutdowns), and many graphs aren't even available for numbers below 1000, so macro cycles probably won't be an issue.

Micro cycles, like a slightly unbalanced turbine spinning, or something vibrating, could be an issue if the stress is high enough or they are using a material without an endurance limit, as those things go through a lot of cycles. Fatigue failure of rapidly spinning jet engine components has been a major cause of aircraft crashes, but reducing power would indeed dramatically prolong the life of the engine... However, this timeline is generally measured in years, today's reusable rockets have total runtimes measured in hours.

And then there's wear, either by friction or slow burning chemical reactions with the hot propellants, or through other means. I'm not well versed here, and I'm not sure if any rocket engine has run long enough to properly characterize these phenomena in these environments.

The above phenomena generally manifests over very long engine runtimes (think months), reusable rocket engines currently have runtimes measured in single digit hours. It isn't impossible for it to run fine for 10 minutes and then fail on minute 11 due to fatigue or creep, but I would be very surprised if that is what's happening. It would require either devious new failure modes almost nobody has run into before (e.g. flammable titanium, solid lox) or unbelievable stupidity for the leading experts in reusable rocketry to aim for something that runs for days with thousands of cycles to fail in 5 minutes 2 or 3 cycles in (excluding those tests where they push it further to see how high they can go and where it fails, like those tests where they push Raptor to ridiculous chamber pressures).

I don't think Raptor has a massive widespread reliability problem right now, we haven't seen many failures that weren't related to the fuel feed system. But if there is a widespread Raptor reliability problem, it almost surely isn't directly the fault of the design being too close to fatigue or creep limits.

Merlin did indeed have fatigue issues early on, a few came back with (presumably fatigue) cracks at the beginning of the reusability era, but I haven't heard anything about them in years (likely pre block 5), and to my knowledge, they have long since been fixed and didn't ever cause a failure (although IDK if we ever found out the exact reason behind the CRS-1 Merlin failure).

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

3 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Why do people in this forum continue to take potshots at the Space Shuttle?

It was a fantastic system, that absolutely pioneered the practical reuse of space vehicles. Nearly every part of a shuttle was reused -- the only thing that wasn't was the external tank.

Beautiful vehicle, a marvel of engineering and an excellent first step towards rapid reusability and a sci-fi future, that we stuck with for decades and never got followed up with a second step.

The bulk of the troubles people tend to have with it is the gap between what it was billed as being able to do and what it actually did. Most of its turnaround, reusability, and cost goals were never reached. I'm all for aiming high, but you can't get something that ambitious right on the first try. Going from Apollo to 2001: A Space Odyssey in one step was never going to work, but they tried to get close with the one try they were allowed. We ended up with something that was promising but not particularly revolutionary. Instead of iterating on the shuttle (well, they did minor iterations), we kept the same design for 30 years and never committed to properly funding replacements or upgrades until after it was gone.

This was however largely a funding/political problem, though.

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

Grammatically, full duration can be both in reference to the test duration and the mission duration. It can mean both things. Maybe there should be different terms for the two, I don't know. Simply saying full duration is shorter, and we have seen that saying in 2 places. Twitter/X and in mission control speak, both of which are places where brevity counts.

I think Exoscientist might be concerned about SpaceX deliberately and maliciously using this ambiguity to mislead. Maybe a dumb investor would fall for that, but nobody in the know would see "full duration" next to a video 20 seconds long and think "gee, I should buy a mission from them because they are firing the upper stage for a full 8 minutes/their upper stage is so powerful, it can enter orbit in 20 seconds!"

Now if they were specifically claiming full mission duration, that would be cause for alarm.

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

21 minutes ago, tater said:

They've fired them before

Hmm, looks like they did. Memory is a weird thing.

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

I wasn't aware that they could safely fire the Vactors at sea level.

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

5 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:

  There is speculation on space forums the reason Starship just barely makes orbit with 0 payload in IFT-3 when it should have payload capacity of 100 to 150 tons is perhaps it was only partly fueled.

But SpaceX has said it was fully fueled:

SpaceX @SpaceX
“Propellant loading complete; Starship is fully loaded with more than 4500 metric tons (10 million pounds) of propellant”
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1649041734062714882?s=20

 Then the question remains: when payload capability is supposed to be 100-150 tons, why does a fully fueled SuperHeavy/Starship just barely make orbit(actually slightly less) carrying no payload, fully expending its propellant?

 Think of it this way, what SpaceX demonstrated with IFT-3 was a launcher with a payload to LEO capability of 0 tons even when fully fueled and fully expending its propellant. Then how can it do Artemis Starship HLS refuelings when it gets 0 tons to LEO?

  Bob Clark

Is this speculation credible?

We do know they had to at least have enough propellant on board for the prop transfer demonstration, the contract specified at least 10 tons and they probably had more left, as they had planned to relight an engine for a few seconds, though they cancelled that due to bad angular velocity. That's not a lot but it is a lot more than zero.

On IFT-2 they had too much propellant (likely a re-entry constraint and they didn't want to vent it in orbit for whatever reason) and venting it caused the failure. I don't remember if they dumped on ascent during IFT-3 or not, but if they did it would give the illusion of Starship barely making orbit.

Or maybe they found some other way to burn fuel (Gimbal Raptors all the way out for cosine losses, early stage separation, etc) to not have to vent stuff at all.

If this speculation is true, V2 Starship is right around the corner and the V1 ships being a little overweight probably isn't the end of the world.

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

@Exoscientist on the Artemis thread, you were talking about how to best utilize Starship to carry payloads to the Lunar surface. I had originally written this for that thread but right as I was about to post it, the mods said to stick to Artemis stuff, so I'm posting here instead as no Artemis payload is as large as the numbers I'm working with.

As I'm about to post this, I just realized that, for some reason, I had jumped to cost per ton of cargo to the surface rather launch than cost per mission. If you are thinking cost per mission, you can ignore the rest of this post as I may have made a bad assumption. Under the new assumption of a single launch of an Apollo-style mission, then yes, the launch costs of a fully expendable Starship with reasonable assumptions (as described in scenario 3) would be lower than the launch costs of a fully reusable Moon-and-back Starship, but then you have to make the expendable Apollo-esque hardware cost less than what the difference would be, which would be a challenge.

Nevertheless, I spent too much time on the cost per ton analysis to throw it all away, so here is that analysis:

Quote

But a single expendable launch would only be $90 million by which because of the higher payload SH/SS could do single launch missions both to the Moon and Mars.

There are four valid mission profiles I can think of:

• Single launch expendable Starship + Super Heavy
• Single launch expendable Starship, reused Super Heavy
• Several refueling launches, 1 expendable Starship that stays on the Moon
• Several refueling launches, 1 reusable Starship that comes back from the Moon

And I am unsure which two mission profiles you are comparing. I have analyzed three (was originally two) of them below:

Spoiler

Global assumptions (mostly carried over from Exoscientist's post with a few of my own):

• Flight operations cost is 10 million dollars
• Expending a Starship costs 80 million dollars (Exoscientist's 90 million number minus operations cost)
• Expending a Super Heavy is free (only applicable to steel man the argument, obviously it isn't free, only used once)
• The baseline is 10 tanker missions to deliver 1200 tons of propellant to LEO
• Starship can hold 1200 tons of propellant
• Direct landing, no stopping at Gateway
• Negligible boiloff
• Negligible non-instantaneous burn losses
• Negligible other losses
• Depot launch costs not considered

Scenario 1 - Single Launch Expendable Everything

Optimism level: Extremely optimistic to steel man in Exoscientist's favor. Uses the most unrealistic performance numbers I could find.

Assumptions:

• 400 ton expendable payload (speculative unrealistic V3 Starship number from Elon's Twitter)
• 40 ton dry mass (speculative minimum dry mass no fairing deep space probe launching Starship number from a long time ago)
• 382s isp (Only vacuum Raptors firing in space with the highest numbers I've seen for them)
• 1 expendable launch (80 million dollars hardware, 10 million dollars fuel)
• LEO payload is interchangeable with fuel remaining in tanks

Results (Starship launches hydrolox lander to TLI):

• 150 tons of payload to TLI
• Total cost 90 million
• Massless 450s isp hydrolox lander can land 85 tons on the surface
• 1.05 million dollars per ton to the Lunar surface assuming hydrolox lander is free

Results (Starship lands directly on Lunar surface, landing engines, landing gear, and anything needed for multi day flight are massless or not needed):

• 150 tons of payload and propellant to TLI
• Total cost 90 million
• Starship delivers 56 tons to the Lunar surface
• 1.6 million dollars per ton to the Lunar surface

 

Scenario 2 - Refueled in LEO, Expendable Lander

Optimism level: Somewhat pessimistic to steel man in Exoscientist's favor. Uses numbers so pessimistic that the Artemis 3 mission profile becomes impossible.

Assumptions:

• 150 ton payload capacity (a bit high for the optimism level but we are assuming 120 tons of propellant payload already, not much of a stretch to suggest that without retaining ~12t landing prop, in total having 132 extra tons of propellant to burn, 150t could be achieved but I'll talk more about that later)
• 150 ton dry mass
• 360s isp (Both vacuum Raptor and sea level Raptor need to burn for control, both are falling significantly short of their isp targets)
• 10 refueling launches (total 100m)
• 1 expended lander (total 90m)

Results:

• 150 tons of payload to the Lunar surface (such a pessimistic starship may not be able to lift 150 tons to LEO, but it can take 150 tons from LEO to the surface when refueled)
• Total cost 190 million
• 1.27 million dollars per ton to the Lunar surface

 

Scenario 3 - Refueled in Elliptical Orbit, Reusable Lander

Optimism level: Middle of the road (an attempt to use reasonable numbers)

Assumptions:

• 120 ton dry mass for both refuelers and lander (lander would probably be slightly heavier but makes math easier)
• Average vacuum isp of 367s (both Vactor and SLaptor fire at more or less their public isps)
• Staging orbit is an elliptical orbit 800m/s closer to the Moon (more work shifted onto tankers so the ship has to do less work)
  • This number is not optimal and I pulled it out of thin air, I could write an optimizer but I don't feel like it
• Starship can get 100 tons of payload to the intermediate orbit without refueling in LEO first (a bit of a stretch but if it doesn't work it needs 1 more tanker flight max)
• Tanker starship's LEO heat shield can handle 800m/s elliptical orbit

Intermediate steps:

• Assuming 300m/s needed for de-orbit and landing (conservatively high as shuttle de-orbited with like 90m/s and Starship's terminal velocity is 80m/s, this accounts for residuals, gravity losses, and Starship burning off-axis for part of its landing burn), a 120t dry tanker would need 12 tons of reserve propellant for landing.
• If such a tanker could originally deliver 120 tons of propellant, to enter the 800m/s elliptical orbit, it would need to use about 50 tons of propellant, leaving it with only 70 tons to deliver to the ship
• This increases the number of tanker flights to 17, costing 170 million dollars
• Assuming Earth landing fuel for tanker and lander is the same even though lander doesn't have to do a de-orbit burn because I'm lazy and it's in Exoscientist's favor

Results:

• Starship masses 367 tons upon landing on the Lunar surface (120t dry mass, 12t landing propellant, 135t return propellant, 100 tons of payload)
• Starship delivers 100 tons of payload to the Lunar surface
• Starship masses 267 tons upon taking off from the Lunar surface (120t dry mass, 12t landing propellant, 135 return propellant)
• Total cost 180 million
• 1.8 million dollars per ton to the Lunar surface

 

The expendable Starship and expendable Starship+Super Heavy analyses were effectively combined into one optimistic one using the everything expendable payload numbers but the just Starship expendable cost numbers.

Even with the incredibly optimistic numbers for the expendable version and more pessimistic numbers for the semi-reusable version (normal numbers were used for the fully reusable version if you didn't read the analysis), refueled Starship always was capable of getting more cargo to the Lunar surface than single launch expendable Starship.

For cost, discounting the crazily optimistic zero cost zero mass hydrolox lander I had included for comparison, the analysis, heavily weighted in favor of expendable Starship, gave a cost per ton of 1.6 million dollars per ton to the Lunar surface for expendable Starship and 1.27 million dollars per ton to the Lunar surface for reusable tanker, expendable lander refueled Starship.

I used the most outlandish numbers we have and semi-reusable still came out cheaper, so I can only assume Exoscientist was comparing to fully reusable.

I did the third (fully reusable) analysis mostly to compare to semi-reusable. The optimism level is what I would call realistic as when I tried to use the pessimistic numbers, Starship couldn't return from the Moon at all, even to the Gateway orbit (starting from LEO at least). I found it interesting that with the cost numbers used, it is cheaper to expend the lander even with the pessimistic numbers (for starters, that 150t dry mass could be stripped down as that was originally chosen assuming it would come back but it ended up not being able to to the analysis was swapped to expendable). I didn't expect this to be the case.

Fully expendable vs fully reusable wasn't my intention when creating the third analysis, but for completeness, expendable only just barely edges out reusable in cost per ton with all of those ridiculous assumptions (1.6 vs 1.8 million per ton) and in reality, reusable would almost surely win, but having to conduct fewer launch operations might make it an attractive option (if the numbers were actually physically possible).

I'll also reiterate that the 800m/s elliptical orbit is a number I chose from thin air because it sounded alright, I'm doubtless of by at least a hundred or two m/s from the optimal, it is possible that fully reusable beats the hyper-optimistic fully expendable profile with a more intelligently chosen parking orbit because it is only off by 13% or so.

 

TLDR, with current cost numbers and my assumptions, unrealistically optimistic expendable is barely cheaper per ton than realistic reusable. Unrealistically pessimistic reusable-tanker expendable-lander beats both of them by a significant margin, also leading both in payload per landing. With these assumptions, it makes sense to use expendable Starships for cargo, but reusable Starships to transport crew back and forth (and to return samples) are not that much more expensive.

[Artemis Discussion Thread]

That's got a lot to unpack. If my take is worth anything, I offer it.

 

47 minutes ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

But Starship isn’t exactly reliable. It fails almost every flight

My dispute is that Starship was never really expected to be reliable three flights in. Arguably, in terms of flight count, it is doing better than expected.

Starship is arguably aiming a lot higher than any other rocket in history. They want a cheap, reusable, rapid turnaround platform that can refuel in space and send people to the moon and Mars. That was widely considered a pipe dream upon announcement in 2016 and still is by many. Nobody thought they would get it right, let alone the first try. SpaceX knew this. You can't make something that revolutionary and expect it to be perfect the first time around. The space shuttle, a much less ambitious system, put a LOT of effort into doing things right the first time, and just barely succeeded (the mission anomalies section on the STS-1 Wikipedia is so long that I don't want to go through it here). The Littoral Combat Ship program is another example of this, it tried to incorporate a laundry list of revolutionary technologies at the same time, and now a lot of those brand new ships are being decommissioned because they don't work.

SpaceX understands that you can't do something that revolutionary and have it go right the first time, so instead of putting all of their eggs in one basket, they built not just iteration, but rapid iteration, into the design process. The Space Shuttle was crew rated from the start, and each vehicle was so expensive that any design changes you make can't be done by scrapping and rebuilding, they have to be built into the vehicle. Thus, if you found out something was wrong with it, your options for fixing the problem were rather limited. The LCS program is working on an improved second batch of ships, but they are coming along fairly slowly.

This focus on iteration also allowed them to be a bit riskier with their design decisions early on. Ideas that might work were actually tested, as the worst that could happen was waiting for the next vehicle to be done. While exactly how risky is the best amount of risky is a topic of contention, they have learned a lot about what is needed vs what isn't needed, and disproved some assumptions nobody has really challenged since the beginning of the space race.

The end result of this is that immediate success is not the expected outcome. Three failures is eyebrow raising but not necessarily the end for any other conventionally developed rocket. Falcon 1 failed 3 times before succeeding and look where SpaceX is now. The Firefly Alpha failed twice before its first success (then promptly failed again) (admittedly 2 partial failures which placed the satellites too low to last more than  a few weeks), and nobody is saying Firefly is dying.

As for how many failures it takes to doom a rocket, Astra's Rocket 3 failed four times (six if you count suborbital tests) before getting to orbit. It then proceeded to have 2 more failures and 1 more success, failing on 3/5 of its customer serving launches before going bankrupt. That is what is required to doom a rocket if you don't have strong financial backing.

3 failures before succeeding is not that unexpected for any normal rocket, much less the most ambitious rocket in history which was intentionally developed in a way where more failures than average were expected.

 

1 hour ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

and frankly I don’t even know why they’re shooting for orbit, considering it could barely go to sub orbit.

My dispute is with the idea that Starship can only barely go to sub orbit, and with the idea that there is a meaningful engineering difference between a vehicle that can reach the type of sub-orbit they are doing and an actual orbit.

Had IFT-3 been a Starlink deployment flight it likely would have succeeded in deploying Starlinks. It made it to the planned trajectory (the only difference between it and orbit being a few seconds at most of engine burning time), and opened the door. It was later unable to control itself and was destroyed on re-entry, which is something that nearly every other rocket does by default. IFT-3 showed that Starship is capable of doing pretty much everything a baseline expendable rocket can do, the only issues were in space restart (which not all expendable rockets do) and long term attitude control (which not all expendable rockets do). The only reason the mission profile wasn't 100% of the way to orbit rather than 99% was likely because they were concerned about their ability to restart the engine and wanted to prove they could do that before needing to.

This profile allows them to collect re-entry data even if the engine fails (or would have if attitude control didn't fail), and avoids another Long March 5 incident - a few years back on the early Long March 5 launches, the core stage makes it all the way to orbit on purpose and passively de-orbited. As the landing site was unknown, it caused a bit of a panic as it was big enough for parts to reach the ground. A larger and more robust vehicle already designed to survive re-entry would be far worse.

I do know why they are shooting for orbit (or near orbit at least), they have proven they can do the prerequisite steps and are ready to test out re-entry and in space operations.

 

1 hour ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

And Starship is taking so long to fix,

My dispute is with what the expected fix duration is. May I ask what you are comparing this to? Seems pretty fast to me.

There are two parts to this, turnaround time between launches and development time.

Starship had 212 days between flights 1 and 2, and 117 days between flights 2 and 3. That includes the time needed to fix everything both physically and regulatorily.

For Saturn V those numbers were 147 and 261 days. For the N-1 it was 132 and 723 days. SLS has yet to have a second flight after 493 days. While this sample size is too small to determine much, the numbers are in the same order of magnitude.

Comparing to other things SpaceX has done, Starship is very fast. Falcon 1 took a year between 1-2 and almost a year and a half between 2 and 3. Falcon 9 was 7 months from 1 to 2 and a year and a half between 2 and 3. Falcon Heavy was 14 months between 1 and 2, and about 2.5 months between 2 and 3.

 

On the development time side of things, Starship on average is taking about twice as long as expected using the targeted timeline from the Q3 2016 announcement. The details are quite cluttered so are in a spoiler.

Spoiler

Doing the math quarterly because days are a pain.

Ship flight testing was to start in Q3 2018, and ended up starting in Q3 2019 (taking the 150m Starhopper flight as a conservatively late start time), taking 1.5x as long as expected.

Orbital testing was to start in Q1 2021 and ended up starting in Q2 2024, taking 1.75x as long as expected.

Booster flight testing was to start in Q2 2019 and never ended up happening. Taking a conservatively late number to help your case, the first attempted all engines static fire of a booster took place in Q1 2023, taking 2.35x as long as expected.

Ship flight testing was to end in Q4 2020 and ended up ending in Q2 2021, taking 1.1x as long as expected.

Booster testing was to end in Q1 2021 and hasn't ended yet as it is implied to extend into the orbital test campaign. I would say booster testing ends once landing is achieved. It has so far taken at least 2x as long as expected.

Orbital testing was to end in Q3 2022 and hasn't ended yet. It has taken at least 1.25x as long as expected.

Using values of 3x and 2x for booster and orbital testing end dates, the average of all milestones excluding Mars comes out to 1.95, or roughly 2x schedule slip.

A 2x schedule slip isn't unusual. 

SLS was funded in 2011 and targeted a 2016 debut, taking 2.2x as long as expected.

JWST design started in 1999 targeting a 2007 launch. While there were a lot of redesigns, taken at face value this is a delay factor of nearly 3x.

The state of Falcon Heavy was nebulous for a long time, but was mentioned in 2008, and by 2011 they were targeting a first flight in 2013. This is a delay factor of 2x to its first flight in 2018.

I'm tired of doing math but I remember a time where New Glenn, Ariane 6, Vulcan, and H-3 were expected to be online in 2020. Just now in 2024 we finally have 2 of those.

 

Maybe the reusability program is taking longer than expected?  Falcon 9 is probably the closest thing we have.

Falcon 9 did 13 low altitude tests (grasshopper and F9R dev) plus 9 various full up landing tests before successfully landing a booster.

So far, Starship has done 5 low altitude tests, 5 medium altitude tests, and 1 full up ocean landing test, for a more ambitious vehicle. The booster has done 1 fill up landing test and no hop tests. It is difficult to gauge how far along we are in comparison, but in terms of test count, they appear to be getting closer to flight readiness with fewer flights. Assuming it takes 12 flights to get to a successful booster catch and land landing of the ship, that's 23 Starship test flights compared to the much simpler Falcon's 22.

 

2 hours ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

yet it’s advertised as the future of space travel.

My dispute: Every space agency/company advertises their rockets as the future of space travel.

The shuttle was billed as a low cost rapidly reusable space tug, the SLS was supposed to be NASA's low cost flagship rocket for the next several decades, Rocket Lab and Astra were talking a hundred flights per year... On the positive end, Cygnus and Dragon were billed as low cost shuttle replacements and worked. The shuttle was indeed the future of space travel, covering several decades for better or worse. And Falcon 9 nearly reached 100 flights last year.

But more relevantly, any moderate cost low refurbishment fully reusable vehicle is going to be the future of space travel. I am not convinced that in 50 years we are going to throw away our rockets after one flight like we are still doing, even with Falcon's second stage. Starship and Terran R are the only two rockets seriously aiming for that future, and of the two Starship is by far the closest one. If any rocket can claim to be the future, I think we have a winner.

 

2 hours ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

Also, let’s talk about Elon himself.

I won't go too much into detail because this is probably going to get moderated if we go much further, but I do frequently have major concerns about what could happen if Mars is run the way SpaceX is run. Even just how SpaceX is run. A friend of mine has a final interview there tomorrow and I am both excided for and concerned for her. I can see people accepting a high stress high reward environment like that for a couple years without a family (I will likely apply there soon, admittedly I am a bit behind on the graduation job hunt), and obviously the first Mars missions will be high stress, high risk, high reward positions crewed by professionals. But long term, Mars has to be a place for everyone. Musk isn't the only one that would be involved with the colony, though, and will likely be dead before a Mars colony gets going.

For what it is worth, while it may not be fully convincing, he has condemned the tweet you are referencing as the most foolish thing he has ever said.

 

[Artemis Discussion Thread]

Speaking of, what's the plan if the rover dies? And how did Apollo manage this? For contingency you would have to remain within walking distance on one tank of oxygen (or whatever else the limiting factor is on those suits) anyway. Seems like you would want two self driving rovers or a simple backup apollo style rover strapped to the main rover.