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Opus_723

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Everything posted by Opus_723

  1. @suicidejunkie I'd really like to do a landing pad, but I'm not sure I'm a good enough pilot to actually, um... land on it. Mostly my base pieces just land where they land, and I'm quite happy if they end up within a kilometer of each other so that the drive isn't too much of a pain.
  2. Great job! It's nice to see such a sleek little lander just for Minmus. I always end up recycling Mun landers and while they get the job done, it's not very efficient or elegant. Congrats!
  3. This is all great! Keep 'em coming. @HebaruSan: I like the idea of an emergency escape system. I'll probably have shuttles at some point, so I think it should be more creative than a regular ship. Maybe some kind of solid fuel fire-and-forget ejection directly to a Kerbin re-entry in case of emergency. A small capsule would be easy to do like that, but it might be a challenge to see how many kerbals I can evacuate at once like that. @Sharpy: Geez, I thought I WAS being ambitious. The fuel infrastructure I'm assembling now will lift 4 of the largest tanks to munar orbit at a time, and will bring 4 at a time to LKO as well. Twenty is a whole other level. That's impressive. But this is my first mining operation ever, so maybe when I expand my colonies to Minmus I can shoot for 20 then. On second thought, maybe I'll wait til I get a new computer for that. My frame rate is already a bit annoying.
  4. I'm getting ready to build my first Mun base, and I want it to be a really sprawling, lively thing with lots of kerbals and lots of things to do. But in stock, there's not really any need for large bases. There are a few obvious things: -Science lab -Communications -Power Generation -Resource Extraction and Fuel Processing And at that point, you have pretty much satisfied all of the game mechanical reasons to have a land base on a celestial body. Now, I've got the first three on my Mun base already, and I'm currently working on the fourth. The mining operation will be rather large, and it will all be processed on the ground, so I have essentially infinite fuel to play with. What I'm looking for are some fun, unnecessary ways to expand a Mun base. Anything beyond what's listed above, I'm game. I just want creative ideas for things that my kerbals can do to build a thriving community without mods. Here are some of my ideas so far: 1.) Obviously my kerbals need some rovers to tool around in. That's next on my list, and I plan to build a largish permanent garage to attach to the current base, filled with a variety of rovers. Ideas for rover specializations are appreciated. 2.) Aerial transport. Vehicles designed for biome hopping to finish off the Mun's science by bringing data back to Canis Base. I will also need shuttling to and from orbit once my orbital station is complete. Ideas for variations on aerial (aerial? vacuumal sounds wrong) vehicles are also appreciated (ie: cargo dropships, scooters, etc.) If I get good enough at designing and piloting these ships, maybe I could build an actual landing pad for them, with fuel storage built in? At the very least I'll probably light up a patch of ground over the long munar night. 3.) My base is not too far from a nice crater lip, so I had the idea that I might set up a little outpost on the lip, specifically for stunt attempts off the edge. 4.) Some unnecessary habitation modules, just for more spacious and luxurious living conditions. 5.) A large mobile base that will roam the Mun, refueled on occasion from Canis Base. 6.) Maybe another stationary base in a different biome, just so they can be neighbors and occasionally travel between them. This is my last resort though, as it feels a bit more tedious than the others unless I can come up with a unique role for the new base. But I'm running out of ideas now. So what are your ideas for unnecessarily elaborate bases? Feel free to show off anything you've already built as well!
  5. With Val doing all of the piloting, Jeb was going a little stir-crazy on the long trip, so he went on an EVA to inspect the payload and serve as a scale for glamour shots. While Jeb completed that very important job, Val was busy preparing for the capture maneuver as Charon approached the Mun, which came off perfectly. Sisyphus L wasn't far behind, and it had enough thrust to burn directly into its final 20km polar orbit. Finally, Charon completed its capture orbit and performed one final burn to lower the apoapsis into a 20km parking orbit. That's it for now! Tower Station and Sisyphus L will remain aloft in their parking orbits until the final landing site, which has already been scouted out since I am in the process of constructing a base there, comes around to the day side of the Mun so that Val and Bill can land with more precision. We're finally getting to the exciting stuff! Next Mission: Landing Tower Station.
  6. Okay! I finally got time to make some progress here, so here we go! The Charon ferry was originally designed to take moderate payloads to other planets, but its inaugural mission today is the bring a 323-ton payload to low munar orbit. But since it was built for distance rather than thrust, it has a problem here. With Tower Station, its skycrane, and the equipment beds in tow, Charon can only accelerate at 1.5m/s^2. That's sort of impractical for getting a Mun intercept efficiently. I could boost to a higher parking orbit, where the 10-minute burn I need would take a smaller fraction of the orbital period, but it would be more fuel-efficient if I could still do it straight from my 74km orbit. I could just waste the fuel, since Charon is such a beast, but I wanted to work out this trick so that I could be assured of using it in the future if I ever need it. So here's my solution. I split the long burn into 10 burns less than a minute long, so that I was always pretty much on my periapsis. The problem with this is that the Mun swings around way further than usual while you're going on all of those progressively longer intervening orbits. So where do you point the apoapsis to be sure you'll hit the Mun in the end? I majored in physics, so I was able to dust out the cobwebs in my brain to derive a formula for the new period of an orbit based on the delta-v you add. From there it was just a matter of making a quick excel spreadsheet to calculate the periods of all the successive orbits and add them up to get the total time of the maneuver. Then I could compare that to the Mun's orbital period to find the angle I needed to lead the Mun by. Turned out I needed to aim 217 degrees ahead of the Mun. So, hoping I hadn't made a mistake, I took off. I'm ashamed to say it, but after all of that math, I just eyeballed the angle. I couldn't figure out how to measure it quantitatively in stock, so this was pretty nervewracking. Here we are leaving the Sisyphus rover behind on the first burn: Then it was a rather boring task of orbit, burn, orbit, burn, repeat. The orbit doesn't change much for the first five burns or so, and the Mun hardly moves, but we do make some progress eventually.... And there's my Mun intercept! The math all came out perfectly! Sure enough, when I came back around to the last burn node, the Mun was sitting right on the horizon where I needed it to be! In fact, the math worked almost too well. At least the course correction was obvious enough: Finally, we brought Sisyphus L off the starting line as well. That was quite a lot of report for just the intitial burn to the Mun, so I'm going to break this post here and write up the rest of the journey in a minute.
  7. Meh... I apologize for the cliffhanger, but real life has gotten in the way. First holidays, now grad school applications. And I need to do some math before I start the munar burn, since I want to try a simple-but-sorta-neat formula that I derived for low thrust maneuvers. And with all that weight behind Charon, this is the perfect opportunity. So, unfortunately, the mission is on pause until I make some progress on my applications.
  8. Haha! Well, I guess recovering funds is helpful for rookies like me who spend way too much money, at least. Good to see just how much room for improvement I've got, though.
  9. It sure helps when you launch a 200 ton payload on a single stage and recovery of the lifter gets you 400,000 funds back. Especially when it's not for a contract. Of course a disposable lifter would've been lighter and cheaper, so who knows. But I'm not sure I could have shaved off half a million funds.
  10. Aww, I really want to do this, but it'll be awhile. I was dreaming up an extensive Duna/Ike expedition, and started designing the mother ship awhile back. I want to launch some large missions to thoroughly explore/colonize the Duna and Eve systems, but... That is a lot of fuel to launch into orbit. I decided that I really needed to invest in some Kerbin SOI mining and fuel infrastructure if I'm really gonna start doing missions on the scale that I want. So I'm spending all of my money in Career mode to develop a very large set of fuel depots, in the hopes that I'll make it back and then some as I start to colonize the middle solar system. When I finish with that, I will definitely be back.
  11. That's a nice lander for your first Minmus mission! I only managed a Mk I capsule when I did it, but you got three whole kerbals. And your lander didn't tip over at all! You did good. Looking forward to the Duna mission!
  12. Jeb, Val and Bill worked through the night to dock the Charon ferry and its payload to Tower Station. The ferry and utilities weigh almost 300 tons and Tower Station just over 200, so that was... tedious. And of course, only the heavier one had any RCS or a pilot. Bill helpfully pointed the tower toward the ferry as best he could though. At last, we've got everything we nee... But wait! I said we were going to refuel Charon at the Mun! How are we going to get the fuel back up to Charon? Well, we're bringing one more thing along, but it doesn't need to hitch a ride. Introducing the Sisyphus Class Fuel Ascent Rover: This is Sisyphus L, a remote-controlled rover/lifter which will lift 35,000 units of liquid fuel and 3,000 units of monopropellant to munar orbit on each ascent. It's the first of a pair. The other will carry liquid-oxygen mix and even more monopropellant. For the initial setup of the mining station and fuel depots, though, we'll just need liquid fuel for the heavy-duty tugs, so Sisyphus L will do for now. Since it's meant to lift its heavy full tanks to munar orbit, it has plenty of dv to get to the Mun on its own with empty tanks. So it'll just follow behind Charon. Yeah, I didn't really need to rendezvous them, but I couldn't resist a group photo. So here we are, with Phase I of Operation Underhill assembled and ready to burn. On to the Mun.
  13. Thanks! I'm still terrified I'm gonna get to the Mun and realize that I screwed up a vital part.... *shudder*. Anyway, onward and upward! ---- Presenting the new and improved Atlas Reusable Heavy Launch System! Now with only....Um....fifty-two parachutes. *Ahem.* So I'm not a brave person. But that's 16 less than I used on the first launch! Anyway, the solar array and the radiator bank (AKA the S+R Utilities Package) are kind of funky looking, awkward things. I designed the docking ports on Tower Station and the yet-to-be-debuted fuel rovers around each other, and I didn't feel like adding any more complications, so I just stripped the fuel rover down to its skeleton to make dockable equipment beds. It's not pretty, but it works. They were also tricky to load up because they don't weigh the same. I couldn't fit them vertically, so they had to go lengthwise, and I messed around offsetting girders until I got the center of mass just right. Strapped to Atlas and ready to go! Charon will come pick that up in a little bit. But we have more important news. I TOTALLY LANDED A SHIP AT THE KSC YOU GUYS!!!!! Yeah, I've never done that before, with any ship. I burned way too much fuel to make that happen, so I lost some funds. BUT IT WAS WORTH IT! All the kerbals are like, "what's that sound?" Then the ATLAS LANDS OUTSIDE THEIR WINDOWS ON THE GRASS and they're like "whaaat?" *AHEM* It was also the first night landing of the Atlas, so that is a significant milestone, and will be noted accordingly. Alright, that was silly, but I was excited. It's time to get back to work. Jeb and Val rendezvous'd with the utilities package and carefully docked with it. That's it for now! Next I need to dock this whole mess to Tower Station. It's getting awfully heavy, so I don't think that will be fun. But at least I included some RCS thrusters on the girders in the utilities payload so that my thrust isn't horrible unbalanced.
  14. Thanks! I'm actually having a lot of fun documenting the process. I've never done a long-term project like this, and I hope the mission report will keep me motivated long enough to finish. Second launch complete! Today we brought up the Charon Class Ferry, along with Jeb and Val. Val is actually going to pilot Tower Station down to the Mun's surface with Bill, but I hadn't decided which pilot was going yet when I launched. But here she is. Charon was designed to take payloads as far out as Jool, and after Operation Underhill is complete it will serve as a workhorse for more exotic missions. It is also my first attempt at a permanently skybound ship, and it will rely on the performance of my new fuel infrastructure. Since it was designed for interplanetary cargo, it should be able to tug a far more massive payload to the Mun. In fact, I haven't docked it to Tower Station yet because I've decided, after a bunch of calculations, that Charon will be bringing several more pieces of Operation Underhill on its first trip, which I'll have to squeeze in front of the mining tower itself. If I'm correct, we can just barely bring enough equipment along to actually start the mining operation and refuel Charon in Munar orbit before returning to Kerbin for more equipment. This will save me several trips and a planned fuel launch that I think I can skip now. I hope this works. Brief update on the Atlas: It now comes with slightly fewer parachutes! It's also getting easier to land now. I think I can even take some more off. Tower Station and its skycrane was the heaviest payload and Atlas was pushed to its fuel limits. The rest of Operation Underhill should go pretty smoothly, as long as I keep managing to find flat ground to land on. Upper arm struts seem to have eliminated the landing wobble. But of course, the important thing is that it looks cool. Next Mission: Atlas will bring up the solar array and radiator bank for Tower Station, as soon as I decide how to secure them for launch.
  15. First Launch was successful! But first, a bit of context. I've never done even a tiny mining operation before, so I slapped together a testbed to make sure I understood how the parts worked. This little ship is Olivine, and I sent it to the Mun. I planned ahead when I started work on Canis Base, so I already had the best ore spot mapped out. This is absolutely the only prior mining experience I have: Now, to demonstrate the ridiculous learning curve I'm forcing on myself, here is the crux of my new mining operation: Tower Station. 16 large drills, 4 ISRUs, large battery capacity for night-time emergencies, tanks for Liquid Fuel, L+Ox mix, and monopropellant so that it can still do some work while the fuel ferries are away, and spacious seating for 29 kerbals, including a fancy cupola so the engineer isn't too bored.The 4 Senior Docking Ports are meant to be a bit flexible so that docking doesn't jolt the tower too much, and one of them will be used to attach the solar panel and radiator banks, which will arrive separately. The rest will remain open for the fuel rovers. I might be biting off more than I can chew, but here we go! Now, this thing weighs about 150 tons dry. I have never launched anything close to that into orbit, let alone to the Mun. And I'm doing this in career, so we need to save as much money as possible. I needed something truly massive. And I needed it to be 100% reusable. Can we do it? Yes! HAHA! I've never launched anything that massive before. And I've never built a reusable launcher before, so this is just fantastic. That is the new Atlas Reusable Heavy Lift System, carrying Tower Station and a disposable skycrane that will land the station on the Mun's surface. The tug that will take that whole mess to the Mun will come up on the next launch. And yeah, the parachutes are way overkill. I'll come back to that. For now, we've just got to get Tower Station and Bill into orbit... The Atlas actually makes a surprisingly good gravity turn. I'm ridiculously pleased with it so far. Now, we part ways with Tower Station and Bill. The Atlas itself is entirely remote controlled. Bill will stay in a parking orbit until we bring the ferry up. Our challenge now is to... *gulp*.... land the Atlas. It's designed for a powered landing, and it even has to burn a little bit on reentry to keep it at safe speeds since the central docking port is unshielded, so this is a bit tricky. The insane number of parachutes is not strictly necessary, but I'm honestly still learning how to land this thing, so the margin of error is appreciated. Here we go! IT WOOORKED!!! Phew! I'm ecstatic that the first mission was a success! But Atlas will undergo some slight improvements: 1.) We'll add a couple of small solar panels. The batter drained substantially as I waited for the orbit to come back around to the KSC. I set SAS to retrograde the whole way down, and I ended up doing a couple of unnecessary burns just to keep the battery charged. 2.) The upper parts of the arms will get some struts. The Atlas performed beautifully in flight, but the landing sent those arms wobbling more than I like. *EDIT* 3.) I just realized looking at the pictures that the Mammoth engines are on crooked! We'll have to fix that too. With these tweaks I think I will be using this lifter for a long time. I recovered about half of the funds from this launch, and most of what I spent was just the dry mass of the station. (Still cost a lot though *grumble*). That's it for now. The next mission will be to bring up the ferry that will take Tower Station to the Mun. This project has a long way to go...
  16. Hi all! This will be my first mission report, so that's exciting. I only started playing KSP a few months ago, and I've only played sporadically, but I'm loving the game, and I know I'll be playing it for years to come. But so far I haven't done anything I felt warranted a mission report. I haven't even finished the tech tree. I've landed on the Mun and Minmus, built a small science station in LKO, started work on a small Mun base, sent a few probes and rovers to the Duna and Eve systems. The biggest mission I've launched was my recent first landing and return of a couple of Kerbals from Duna, which was a huge milestone. But now I've been dreaming up even bigger projects: large expeditions, expanding my Mun base and building more on other worlds, interplanetary stations, and adventures to the outer and inner planets. The stuff I want to do is far beyond anything I've set a precedent for. If I'm going to do all of this in career, I need to plan ahead. So I've decided that I need to invest the time, effort, and funds into some mining and fuel infrastructure. My goal is to set up a system where I can mine the Mun and process fuel there and send it up to an orbital fuel depot. I'll also set up a depot in LKO and ferry fuel there from the Mun depot as needed. I know that it would be easier to mine Minmus, but I want to start with the Mun as a challenge. If I can build a substantial mining operation on the Mun, then I can build an even more effective system on Minmus some time in the future. The operation is going to be fairly ambitious, as I want it to be as future-proof as I can make it. I plan to make depots with far more fuel than I could use right now. I think every single launch in the assembly of this operation will be larger than my Duna mission, often by a huge margin. Fingers crossed. Hopefully this is interesting to some people, and it might serve as inspiration to any other rookies like me that want to try something like this. I know most people here could probably design something far more efficient and lovely than what I've come up with, but I think it'll be good to have a newbie mission report. I'm sure I'll have some educational failures along the way . Also, this is going to be expensive, so I'll have to take some breaks here and there to raise funds. I'll leave a note when that happens so that everyone knows I haven't just given up and gone home. Anyway, first pictures in the next post!
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