[[1.5 - 1.10] Kerbalism 3.11]

On 12/27/2020 at 2:24 PM, HansAcker said:

You can set up actions on power low/high and sunlight/shadow events. I often use it to turn on fuel cells on low power, turn them off at high power and likewise with electrolysis on in sunlight, off in shadow.

Note that at high time-warp rates, the latter won't work right on all vessels, though. Also, you'll eventually need to cycle through vessels to reset the dump-valves so that fuel cells continue dumping excess water and don't stop producing EC. It's where Kerbalism can get tedious when running long multi-mission games with a number of vessels in the background.

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ok, i got the hang of it, and i now set up my 4 mining vehicles properly to mine while they have energy, then shut down everything and activate fuel cells when they are low. i m not having any problem with dumping resources, the settings are saved.

it took me a while to figure out how to do this. first i set cycles based on day and night, and i had interruptions i couldn't figure out, until i realized at a specific angle of the sun, my solar panels would shade each other. and i was just about to ask how to stop the continuous messages, when i discovered finally how to block them.

i congratulate with the mod builders on this part

 

[That damn runway! [VTOL SSTO Issues]]

while this microbouncing problem is common, it is not normal that it is so persistent. generally with good landing gear you can stop it.

[KSP 1.11 Hatches Obstructed but theres nothing blocking the hatch]

On 12/22/2020 at 10:22 AM, Inker said:

so I just updated to KSP 1.11 and i was making a space station when i clicked the engineers report it says hatches obstructed and when i try to eva in the launchpad i cant get out of the cupola there was nothing blocking it can someone pls tell me why this is happening

post pictures please. maybe the kerbonaut is in some other module which is actually blocked. maybe there is something blocking the cupola that is not evident. without seeing, we cannot know

[The Ultimate Challenge Continued (originally by Just Jim)]

I've reached the point where this challenge is not particularly interesting to me alone. it's basically a matter of bringing isru equipment and refueling at every moon, or of bringing enough drop tanks. Unless there is something extra to spice it up

I have then decided to try this challenge with kerbalism installed. I will have to partake in this multi-year mission while dealing with life support, radiation damage, mechanical failures. To provide life support and redundancies, my main ship is 3600 tons and 1200 parts.

I am reporting my progress

So far, I'm dealing very well with life support and failures, but it sems solar storms are frequent enough that the mission cannot be stretched over a few years, even with the best mitigation techniques available. crew stress is rising even faster, even though i provided them with a flying luxury resort.

I wonder, in case I have to send my crew back and replace it with another, if i can get some honorary mention anyway

[I've flipped my rover, it doesn't have reaction wheels, and it will run out of electric charge soon.]

5 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

my lander though was flipped horizontally, no idea what went wrong here.  

you have to set the pitch at 90 degrees, for some reason the engine thinks the default position for most rockets is horizontal

[What should I do with the numerous surface bases on a Celestial Body once the contract is completed?]

why not leave them there? there's not much else to do with them.

i stopped playing career after i got to the point where there was no challenge, so i basically stopped playing with the stuff i don't need

[[1.5 - 1.10] Kerbalism 3.11]

4 hours ago, HansAcker said:

In any case, if you think you can improve the experience, open an issue on the github repository and provide a patch

 

I don't have programming skills. but i can provide feedback.

 

So, I have my spaceship that run out of power. I'm trying to figure out why, it has 4 packs of fuel cells running and i disabled everything that i found, anyway, that's the downside of having a 1200 parts ship. problem is, kerbonauts died of cold. After 5 minutes! It would take far more than that for a spacecraft to cool down, especially a large one. kerbonauts dead because the ship was unpowered for 5 minutes is way too harsh

[How are you meant to figure out transfer windows in stock?]

3 minutes ago, VoidSquid said:

I think this mod is meant

 

oh, i see.

But no, no, no need to install any mod! I didn't even knew there was a dedicated mod (though, if i ever thought about it, i'd have guessed yes, because this game has a mod for everything)

One can always open the transfer window planner tool on the internet browser. which, if you're playing from play station, you can do on your mobile phone.

Granted, that bunch of data about ejection inclination and angle isn't very easy to replicate. but it at least gives some good indication on when you should make your launch, and what kind of deltaV cost you can expect. and you already know more or less in which direction to launch, so it's all about fiddling afterwards

[How are you meant to figure out transfer windows in stock?]

4 minutes ago, VoidSquid said:

OP said:

 

that would be very explicative, if I had any idea what is twp.

Anyway, i didn't say that the OP should use that. I said that perhaps you were supposed to. I suggested multiple ways, more or less accurate, in which one can find a transfer window. Perhaps nobody bothered to implement some calculator in the stock game because they said, there are so many methods available, those that reach that far will find something

[How are you meant to figure out transfer windows in stock?]

I think you're supposed to mostly eyeball them. in most cases, they are large enough that launching a bit earlier or later won't make a big difference. that's why they are called transfer windows and not transfer pinholes. moho is a bit of an exception because it has a fast, eccentric, inclined orbit.

or perhaps you are meant to look online at the various tools available. or to use mechjeb.

[[1.5 - 1.10] Kerbalism 3.11]

A couple of additional remarks:

- the conditions to run experiments are hard to come by. I have deployed a scanner and tried a BEEP experiment, but it says invalid conditions. Except it does not say why those conditions are invalid and what should I do to make them good. A popup message stating "you need an orbit with such and such characteristics" would be helpful

- now that the stock game implemented EVA repairs and repair kits, it would be nice to tie the kerbalism maintenance to them. Have the engineer need an eva repair kit to perform maintenance on the engines and such

- i tested a ship around moho, and it never needed heat radiators. it should

- battery power isn't enough to sustain my life support during occultation, so during the night i am turning on some fuel cells. by day i use electrolysis to get back the hydrogen and get ready for the next night. Every day i have to activate manually the electrolysis and shut down the fuel cells, and viceversa every night. is there a way to make this whole process authomatically?

- pressurized tanks used for xenon are vastly more efficient than the stock xenon tanks.  perhaps they should be equalized?

[[1.5 - 1.10] Kerbalism 3.11]

So, I actually went and completed the spaceship to try and make a grand tour with this mod. It has 1200 parts for 3600 tons. We'll see if it really is impossible to do complex, long term manned missions with this mod, or if it just takes an inordinate amount of effort.

I think it will also be interesting for the mod builders, if they are considering some balance fixes. To see what happens when one tries really hard to overcome the obstacles set by this mod.

So far (I am around Eve, though I only update the report in chunks), stress and radiations are growing much faster than anticipated. I went to Eve in 200 days, and I took already 10% radiation damage on the crew - despite max shielding and a whooping 9 active shields. It seems there are solar storms every week! I actually didn't knew to stay inside a planet's magnetosphere, and anyway I have some deltaV issues on going to Eve and back, but I may be able to manage with shorter flight times.

What's surprising so far is stress! All my crew members are between 15 and 30% stress level. Despite living in a friggin flying luxury resort! I gave them every single comfort available. Even more than needed, actually. according to the VAB, they should last for 20 years. And yet, they are all very stressed already. Heck, jeb smashed a radiator in the very first day! (it could be fixed by an engineer). I have no idea what happens when I reach 100% stress, perhaps the mission can still continue. But I think stress should be toned down, at least if one has the level of luxury accomodations I have.

And I haven't had a single malfunction yet. Ok, every critical component is high quality, and I send an engineer to inspect the engines after every use, but I'd still expect that with 64 solar panels, one or two should have some accidents already.

It looks like I will probably have to send all the crew back home at some point and get some fresh kerbonauts to continue the trip, with the same ship. Which I would count as "partial success".

[Lucy in the sky with deadly radiations: An attempt to make a grand tour using kerbalism]

Part 2: Assembling the DREAM BIG

When I started this task, I wasn't even sure it would be possible to make a ship as big as DREAM BIG without it getting eaten by some kraken. Especially because kerbalism seems to have some conflict with autostrutting. Thankfully, all went well. Eventually.

Spoiler

First I launched Home, with all the 12 crew members. I brought so many to have spare crew members if I must send some back on a dolphin.

Home is by far the biggest thing I ever launched.

"Originally the result of a unit of measure conversion bug, the S4 series of fuel tanks transcend the preposterous into the truly absurd. When 'More boosters' fails and is replaced with 'More engines!', the S4 series tanks will be there to loft your dreams, no matter how ridiculous and over-engineered, into the sky on massive trails of fire."

"I'll buy a dozen of those. For the second stage"

It was a real challenge, because in addition to its mass, it also has several delicate parts that prevent a simple asparagus stack. I lost counts of how many early trials I blew up on the launch pad

It took 28 mammoths to lift this thing.

One of the most spectacular failures involved some of the launch stabilizers getting clipped inside some fuel tanks. On such a big assembly, it's easy to miss. When I activated staging, the clipped struts were no longer part of the same vehicle, hence they were no longer allowed to be clipped, and everything went kaboom!

Since I'm using kerbalism to simulate possible accidents, I wanted to make this launch safe (not counting experiments blowing up on the launch pad, of course). So I started the engines slowly; in case one malfunctioned, I could still shut off everything and repair the damage. Also, I planned for the launcher to keep flying even if one engine broke; luckily, I didn't have to test whether it would have actually worked.

The launch was most awesome!

The following pictures are taken from several different launches, that's why in some scenes it's night and in others day, and in one picture Home has only 8 rockets instead of the 12 of its final version.

Lift off! It's actually rising in the sky! It's actually not exploding this time!

With a ship this big, gravity losses are much bigger than aerodinamic losses. So, a steep gravity turn it is, even if it means going very fast in the atmosphere with two ridiculously draggy things in front

First stage separation

Second stage ignition! Also, deploying solar panels, since I'm now in space (bless whoever introduced action commands or I'd have to deploy each one individually)

Second stage separation

Orbiting!

 

Launching the Dolphins was pretty straightforward

 

Now the Diggers!

Those are more complex, having a 3 stage launch system. I could have used their own rockets, but I wanted to keep their fuel. I will need to launch DREAM BIG fully fueled anyway

Here kerbalism makes its first kill! An engine malfunctioned, sending the whole rocket into a spiral. I could have saved it if i shut down the engines promptly, but I wasn't ready. Anyway, it was just an unmanned launch. Add 900k funds to the total cost and build another!

I've never seen this effect before kerbalism, so I assume it has something to do with the pressurized gas tanks. It's beautiful, though

And here we have the first kraken victim! The lower fuel tank partially detached along the hinge. Though not sure how much it can be kalled a kraken and how much inadequate structural stability. Anyway, I scrapped this Digger and I added some struts to the design.

Assembly begins

Home, by itself, is 330 parts, and the cpu still manages. Each Digger is adding over 100 parts, and the game is lagging more and more.

Here we have a second kraken victim! I had to autostrut those parts during launch, or they'd fall off. But kerbalism+autostrut tend to cause those scrambled attachments. I don't know if it can even be prevented, but it's non fatal, so I keep the ship like this.

But the kraken has much worse in store: the shacking, that accompanies all sufficiently big ships and threatens to tear them apart. Here it ripped one of the main tanks.

And here it ripped off a piece of tank (harder to notice in the night, but the tank on top left of the image is floating freely, and it's not supposed to).

I was reluctant to use autostrutting, given the previous problems, but I was convinced of its necessity, and a small, carefully applied use of it was enough to stabilize the DREAM BIG. As of this writing (I'm orbiting Eve) I didn't have further problems.

 

Next the Wings. The game is now taking over a minute to load every time DREAM BIG enters physical range. To reduce this time, I decided to send both Wings in a single package. Designing the launcher probably costed more time than it saved, but whatever.

The most observant may realize that there is no spaceing between the Wings body and the cargo bay. Indeed, they got attached from the fuel tank instead of the docking port, and now cannot be detached. I had to send up a new one

Starting to get crowded here

 

Now comes the Tylo stage

And the Trucker Moho stage

I'm definitely having a hard time docking those final pieces without bumping into anything

The Can lander

.

 

Finally FU Eve for last, as it is the single piece with the highest parts count (except Home, of course); the amount of strutting on it is incredible.

This thing was a bit challenging to launch, in that the huge wings on top are needed to keep it stable while it's aerobraking in Eve's atmosphere, because those wings have a very strong tendency to go in the back. Unfortunately, they manifest this tendency also during launch, when I would want them to stay in the front. Ultimately, I resolved to launch with a very low TWR and just try to keep the flipping force to a level that the engine gimbaling could compensate. Unlike other vehicles, I also decided to have a minimalistic launch vehicle and use FU Eve's own fuel to reach orbit; I was already planning a refueling mission.

8 inflatable thermal shields and 8 500-kg wings, but I still put in the effort to place a nose cone at the tip

Docking was very tricky: I had to stick a 400 ton ship with a 3000 ton ship using a clamp-o-tron jr. I had to be very, very, very soft for contact. Good thing Home has an RCS system (at least in 4 directions, the remaining two got deleted accidentally during some of the many revisions). Even so, the two parts bounced and then, sloooowly, they touched each other at a wrong angle. I put the game in background and went to do other things. It took several minutes for the small pull of the clamp-o-trons to turn the ships around enough for docking.

The mammoths are only rated for one ignition, two if high quality. After using them, I send an engineer for refurbishing. At this point I really realized the ludicrous size of this spaceship I'm building

I'm doing a lot of waiting with DREAM BIG; as it takes several minutes to load in most circumstances, I usually put ksp in background and play a chess game. Incidentally, my lichess rating is taking a blow, as I don't have full concentration during those matches.

Finally, it's time for the refueling flight. There is only 1 medium docking port left free, and all around it it's cluttered with other shuttles. I decide to make something with a very long, thin nose to reach inside all those obstacles more easily. It ended up looking like a syringe. It also has a syringe's purpose.

Kerbalism hit hard on this one. I can understand the mammoths, but the thuds are rated for a dozen ignitions

This last stage has only RCS. Even though I had 6 vernor pointing forward, It still was painfully sluggish. The lag from the 1200 parts of DREAM BIG contributed. Docking was very difficult. 

Coupled with another 400 ton ship, for a little while DREAM BIG was EVEN BIGGER!

All in all, I docked 14 parts (4 Dolphins, 1 Trucker, 4 Diggers, 2 Wings, 1 Tylo stage, 1 The Can, 1 Syringe). With the lag, loading times, and general difficulties with parts so big - and occasional accidents with krakens - it took me two days of hard playing. I'm almost reluctant to actually fly. What if, after all this effort, the DREAM BIG won't do as well as I hope?

[Lucy in the sky with deadly radiations: An attempt to make a grand tour using kerbalism]

Ever since I learned about the kerbalism mod, I knew I wanted to try my hand at it after I’d be good enough at the stock game. And I wanted to create a big, self-sustaining spaceship.

Always in the stock game I would have liked to make things elaborate, but had no reason for it. An external crew pod seat and an engine is already enough for a grand tour. I give my kerbals more luxurious accomodations, but aside from that, why bother? Kerbalism gives me exactly the excuse to do what I was looking for: make something big and majestic. And not just by adding parts that look good, but in a way that would have a purpose.

First I experimented a bit with a career, but I soon got bored. Making routine missions in all safety is just not for me. Making a Mun landing with just a food canister and a couple oxygen tanks is not really different or more entertaining that playing the stock game. I need challenges. So I skipped directly to the prize.

The mission purpose is to build a majestic spaceship called DREAM BIG and perform a grand tour with the kerbalism rules. There is one exception: I will use the stock ISRU functionality, but I will only refuel at Duna. I will liberally use save scumming to protect myself from failed manuevers (as I keep saying, I have no patience for making everything just so), but I will never use it to revert a malfunction. Or, if I do, I will admit the defeat.

A spacewalk around the final version of the ship

 

On 12/17/2020 at 5:25 AM, Gotmachine said:

If your goal is to make self-sustainable bases, yep, it is hopeless. In fact, even doing "basic" manned missions outside of the Kerbin SOI is quite hard.

Kerbalism difficulty balance make what is achievable in KSP roughly in the realm of reality.
I've yet to see proof of a successful manned mission to Jool with Kerbalism. And I believe that there are only a handful of people that can claim a successful mission to Duna.

Well, that's one more reason to try.

To make my mission reports easier to navigate, I'll try to organize stuff into collapsible chapters.

0) Why refueling only at Duna? Considerations on Kerbalism ISRU

Spoiler

ISRU in real life is difficult. In kerbalism, it is made even more difficult by ignoring the most convenient route, plain water electrolysis into LH-LOx. 

Quote

We consider ore to be generic regolith (because it is available everywhere). The carbon content of regolith is usually ridiculously low. Less than 100 ppm on the moon. There are potential localized source of carbon rich minerals on mars, but we simply ignore that.

In kerbalism, liquid fuel is methane, and methane requires carbon and hydrogen. Hydrogen can be obtained from water electrolysis at a high, but manageable, electricity cost. But since the mod does not account for carbonaceous ore, there is no practical way to mine carbon. The only way to produce it from ore is by Molten Regolith Electrolysis. But this process is too expensive to be practical: it takes 450 electricity to make 1 unit of CO2, and 7000 CO2 to make a single unit of fuel.

With a ship of my size, I need at least 10 tons of fuel per day to refuel practically (and even that would take the best part of a year); to get that, I’d need 300 million electricity. Which would be over 10000 per second. Make it 20000 because half the time will be night. And I’d need to sustain that far from Kerbol too. Impossible.

But there is a shortcut that you’re supposed to be using: harvesting CO2 from an atmosphere. Which can only be done at Duna (and Laythe, but it’s too expensive to get away from it to make it worthwhile. And let’s not mention Eve).

Even on Duna, though, it’s crazy to get the amount I need. One spectrovariometer in atmospheric harvester configuration can get 0.2 CO2/second. Long story short, to make my 10 tons per day I’d need 1600 spectrovariometers, plus 80 water drills and 320 gigantors to power up the whole thing, mostly for water electrolysis.

Getting those numbers would be potentially possible with a Duna base. But not in the game. Can you imagine 2000 parts on the ground? The kraken would feast upon them before they can even be remotely complete.

But I could, in theory, do it. So I’ll just pretend that I sent a big base on Duna to produce all the fuel I need, and that the “easy” ISRU comes from there.

Even I am not so crazy as to try a 2000 parts land base.

And if I wanted to make things easy, using drop tanks would be more convenient. Perhaps a cluster of 500 ion engines.

Part 1: Projecting the DREAM BIG

1.1) Home mothership

Spoiler

This is my mothership. Its purpose is to keep my kerbonauts healty and sane for decades, and to provide plenty of fuel for the various missions. I called it Home, because that’s what it is: a home to live in for a spacefaring race. I needed plenty of living room for everyone. And every system had to have multiple redundancies. And of course all those things will be very heavy, so I will need a crapton of fuel to keep a decent deltaV.

Then I must power up life support; I can’t use RTG because radiation will be already an issue without adding to it. I need panels, even at Eeloo. And I need greenhouses. Yes, it would be easier to just add some 10 tons of canned food, but what the hell, you’re not conquering space until you become mostly self-sufficient. So, it takes 2 greenhouses to feed a kerbal, I need 24. And better to keep some extras, especially after I realized I won’t be able to work them all around Eeloo. I need some extras to restock supplies when I can. So I have 32 greenhouses. But those greenhouses consume a lot of electricity. I’d need over 100 gigantors to provide for them in the outer solar system. I actually tried to fit all those panels around my ship, but they caused too much stress on the girders. In the end I settled for the most I could fit without causing too many structural problems; 64 panels.

Together with the four giant S4 fuel tanks, those make the most of the station. It then has a bunch of amenities, like multiple research labs, gravity rings, cupolas, that are not strictly needed (I’d only need one to get the bonus) but I’m including anyway because I want this thing to be nice. There are 12 medium docking ports and 4 small docking ports, plus a small port on the front for asymmetric loads (basically, the Eve lander). I thought that was overkill, but I ended up using all of them.

Everything has maximum radiation shielding, of course, and there are also 4 active shields; both too many and not enough. TWR is 0.13 fully loaded, which is not too bad for this kind of vehicle.

Cost: 1,61 million + 2,20 millions for the launcher.

1.2) Dolphin escape pods

Spoiler

So, Home should be all safe and snug. But say one of my kerbonauts has a nervous breakdown. Or has radiation poisoning. Or too many solar panels broke and I can’t feed everyone anymore. Or too many engines break and I have to get back to Kerbin.

For those eventualities, I designed an escape pod. I called it Dolphin because dolphins occasionally help shipwrecked sailors to the shore.

It can’t have too much comfort or life support, especially radiation resistance, so I wanted to keep travel time short; 1 year to reach Kerbin, from any place and time in the solar system. This can’t be achieved while waiting for transfer windows, so I loaded some ion engines with 11 km/s of deltaV available. It can force an intercept from anywhere in 1 year, and it has supplies for three.

It will also produce a high speed intercept, so the reentry capsule must be able to withstand it. I tested it at up to 7 km/s, and heat is no problem – the limiting factor becomes acceleration.

To further stretch the range, when arriving near Kerbin i will dump the living space and spent xenon tanks, gaining some more deltaV to slow down to a manageable speed.

Each of those can evacuate three kerbals, so I'm carrying four.

Cost: 290k + 30k for launcher, *4. Most of that is the Xenon

1.3) Digger mining vehicles

Spoiler

Those refueling vehicles are the backbone of my mission. I can’t go far without them. After calculations, I realized my crew would have to spend quite a lot of time inside of them, so I decided to put some extra comfort; living space, cupolas, an active radiation dampener. It carries an exaggerate amount of drills because those are less effective in kerbalism.

I also included smaller drills for water and nitrogen and a CO₂ atmospheric harvester, I should not need them but I prefer to have the capacity for it. Since they will only be used on Duna, I included parachutes, though of course it needs rockets to slow down in the end. They carry 4500 m/s and will need some 1500 to go up and 500 (safety included) to go down. Hopefully that will translate to 50-70 tons of fuel left that I can transfer to Home. I will need dozens of trips. I am not looking forward to that.

Both to speed up operations, and because they are at high risk of breaking, I am carrying 4 of them.

Cost 418k + 512k for the launcher, *4.

1.4) The Can lander

Spoiler

A simple lander. Minimal comfort, the crew is not supposed to stay inside more than a day. It can couple with a Digger for greater range, and it can attach to an extra stage for Tylo. I’m only carrying one of those, so I gave it plenty of engines for redundancy. In the worst case, though, I can still use a Digger to land anywhere.

 
Cost: 61k + 10k for launcher. Most of it is the high quality life support and the science instruments. An additional 20k for the Tylo stage, + 162k for the Tylo stage launcher.

1.5) FU Eve lander

Spoiler

This is when I realized I really hate Eve.

I spent a month trying to make an Eve ssto, and failed. To date, that’s the only challenge I tried that I really failed.

Ok, I will use multiple staging. I had devised, for a previous challenge, a spaceplane that I used to reach the inner layers of Jool. From there it must reach 6000 m/s orbital speed, and it does so with 1000 m/s to spare. And it survives a Jool reentry, of course, to get there first.

I tried that model on Eve. Eve trashed it effortlessly. Really. You’d think reaching inside a gas giant would be the bigger achievement. Nope, Eve is still much harder than that. My Jool spaceplane didn’t even come close to it. Despite 6000 m/s, despite using propellers to reach 8 km of altitude and clear some atmosphere, it didn’t get to orbit. Worse, it didn’t even get suborbital! Not even after I loaded a couple extra engines to increase TWR.

And by the way, I don’t like spaceplanes. Why do I keep finding myself making some?

So, at some point I decided I had enough. I tried to go nice, and it failed. I tried to go fancy, and it failed. This time, I’ll just go big. I’ll defeat Eve by throwing stuff at it.

And I made this massive thing, at over 400 tons, with 8 inflatable shields and a bunch of wings to keep the whole thing pointing the correct way during reentry. I still had to try an inordinate amount of times to get this right. And then I had to face further hassle because those wings on top kept capsizing me at launch.

I called it FU Eve (the meaning of the acronym is left to the reader’s imagination) because I had ENOUGH of that goddamn planet.

The last stage of this vehicle is a readapted version of the Laythe lander I used in my no contract career challenge. I liked that rocket and was looking for an excuse to use it again, so I did.

Cost: 646k + 90k for launcher. Most of it are the massive mammoth engines and fuel tanks

1.6) Trucker Moho transfer stage

Spoiler

I won’t have enough fuel to get to Moho and back, and I can’t refuel there. And I won’t use drop tanks. So I designed a one-off small spaceship to carry crew to Moho. No, don’t ask me how is this any better than using drop tanks. It’s not even cheaper, since I’m spending over half a million on xenon alone.

Anyway. Comfort enough for a few months. 13 km/s with ion engines to get there regardless of orbital mechanics. It will get coupled to The Can lander, which will make the actual descent. I completely forgot to put some heat radiators on it, but I run some experiments and it works without. Seems like a weakness in the mod.

.
Cost: 660k + 37k for the launcher. Most of it is xenon

1.7) Wing reconnaissance probes

Spoiler

The initial plan, when I still thought I could refuel anywhere and I could take my time exploring, was to have a flotilla of those. I would detach them and send them on polar orbits, detecting all anomalies. Being unable to refuel away from Duna, and being forced to go fast at Jool because of radiations, put a wrench into that plan. Still, I included a couple. Why not?

Cost: 130k for both Wings and the launcher

1.8) DREAM BIG, fully assembled (and musing on realism)

Spoiler

Total cost of all the ship is 11,73 millions, including 1450k for the final refueling. Finally an adequately funded space program!

The full ship has almost 1200 parts, and weights 3600 tons. When I load it, my pc takes upwards to a few minutes. When I use it, I get maybe 2 or 3 frames per second.

And it’s beautiful. It gives me the chills when I perform a spacewalk amid its multiple docked shuttles and I really realize how incredible this creature is. It's the "quit ksp aterwards because you realize you'll never be able to top it off" kind of achievement.

Let this stand as my argument for realism. I’ve been told that such a mission can’t be done, because the mod is about realism and we wouldn’t be able to do this in reality. But I contend that we would actually be able to do it, if we had this kind of resources. Because this marvel would be, what, twenty times more expensive than the whole Apollo program? Fifty? And of course it would be less efficient than sending individual missions to single planets. But we could actually do this, if we really wanted. Let others play rehearsals of real missions; I’d rather read about those in books. This game is a canvas for our dreams, and I want to DREAM BIG

1.9) Analysis: reliability and redundancies

Spoiler

The DREAM BIG will stay in space for up to 15 years. A lot of things will break in that time, and I must make provisions for that.

Home itself has so many redundant life support systems, I didn’t even bother to make them high quality. Same for solar panels, I will lose some along the way but it’s all right. I didn’t make them high quality because they’d be 50% heavier, I’d rather pack more solar panels to have some spare.

I have 12 wolfhound rockets in a twofold symmetric distribution. If I break one, I can shut down its opposite and keep going. I can lose at least 3 engines without too much trouble, more if they are not all on the same side. And of course I have engineers on board to fix all that can be fixed. No problems here.

The various shuttles are a bit harder, I cannot afford the same level of redundancy, though wherever I could, I made sure they could survive with a broken component.

The Dolphin escape pod has 6 gigantors and 2 ion engines. I assume it can keep going with just 1, its reaction wheels keeping it pointed in the right direction against the asymmetrical push, but i’d rather not have to find out. There is only one antenna, but that’s not essential for the mission.

The Can has 16 engines, it can lose some. The Tylo stage is a bit more delicate, but I made sure it can lift off with one engine down (and its symmetric shut down). But I will have to use that only twice, and those engines are all high quality. I also stocked emergency fuel cells in case of power loss, and at least 3 reaction wheels. Those things are safe.

There are two factors worrying me, though.

The first is the FU Eve. It’s a single point of failure. If an engine breaks while I am on Eve, the crew is dead. Nothing to do, period. Making an Eve rocket is hard enough already without trying to make one that can work without any one of its engines. But I only need to use it once. To further mitigate risk, I will have an engineer on board, and when I lift off, I will first start the engines slowly. So if one malfunctions, I can still shut off everything and repair it. A critical failure will leave me dead on Eve anyway, but not a malfunction.

The second and third stages, instead, will definitely leave my kerbnaut dead even in case of a malfunction. A high quality rocket has a 0.2% chance of malfunctioning, and one accident in four will be critical (if I interpreted things correctly). All things considered, I have 99.4% chance of everything going well. Good enough.

The last stage of FU Eve will also be used on Laythe, as SSTO. Again, there is a single point of failure. Let’s say I will turn on the engine a few times for manuevering, there is maybe a 1% cumulative chance I will lose it before landing. In which case I will skip Laythe and continue the grand tour. It can still be a partial success. If I lose my engine on Laythe, my Kerbonaut dies. It can happen twice: first to slow down descent (the parachutes slow me to around 15 m/s, if the rocket malfunctions it crashes; the kerbonaut probably lives, but is stranded on Laythe with no hope of rescue and will die by radiation poisoning). And then to restart.

Accounting everything, there is roughly a 3% chance that something with FU Eve won’t work. I have to accept this risk, because I spent two weeks drawing vessels, and I am too tired to keep at it.

My second main worry are the Digger mining vehicles. I made sure that each of them can fully function with one engine down. But I will use them a lot of times. I don’t want to try to calculate the odds there, but I’m pretty sure two engines broken are likely. My contingency there is to bring 4 of them. And even in the worst case scenario, the crew should survive and be available for pickup by another Digger. Having 4 of them also let me relax about breaking a convert-o-tron. If I lose 3 of them and the last one is one engine down, I will scrap the mission and limp back to Kerbin with whatever accomplishment I managed.

1.10) Mission plan

Spoiler

Having decided to refuel only at Duna, I must plan the mission around it. I have 4000 m/s available. 4500 if I really squeeze it. That’s not enough to reach Moho and come back, hence the Trucker stage. Drop tanks could do the trick, but I want my mission to be as reusable as possible.

So the DREAM BIG will go to Eve, where it will drop the really big lander. From Eve I will send on the Trucker, while Home will wait in orbit, maybe around Gilly. After the Moho stage comes back, DREAM BIG will go to Duna and refuel. This should take a couple years; I will try to minimize time at the cost of slightly more expensive trajectories.

From Duna I will launch to the Jool system. There I will park Home around Pol, well away from the deadly radiations of Jool, awhile the shuttles pursue different targets. The Can, coupled with a Digger for extra range, will land on Tylo and Vall. FU Eve, coupled with another Diggger, will go to Laythe. A third Digger will go to Bop. Then back on Duna for refueling. I hope to make this second part in 3 years.

At this point I’d miss only Dres and Eeloo; ideally I’d make both in the same go, but it will really depend on orbital mechanics. I’d hope to make 1 year travel time, for a total of 4 years, but that’s optimistic. So, in the best case, the mission should take 10 years, but the DREAM BIG should be able to stretch to 15.

1.11) Goals and success

Outstanding success!

Grand tour is completed successfully; DREAM BIG returns to Kerbin and it’s mostly in good conditions, ready to make the trip again with minimal resupplying.

Complete success!

Grand tour is completed successfully, and all the crew returns home in some way.

Partial success!

Grand tour is mostly completed, but one or two planets are skipped. Some inconvenience forces me to cut the mission short. All kerbins are safely returned home. Example: Time and malfunctions force me to skip Eeloo and Dres.

Mixed success

One or two kerbal die on the mission. The mission still reaches most of its objectives, though. Example: FU Eve explodes during reentry, killing a kerbonaut and forcing me to skip Eve and Laythe landing, but the rest of the mission goes fine.

Mixed failure

As mixed success, but with more casualties and/or more planets skipped. Example: FU Eve explodes, and I also have to skip Eeloo.

Partial failure

Several things go wrong; many kerbonauts die, and/or the tour fails to reach even half of its intended targets. Still there are some highlights to justify this not being a complete failure. I must at least reach Duna to qualify for this.

Complete failure

The tour doesn’t even come close to completion, and/or there are lots of casualties.

To make an ass of myself

I lose all the crew without even going far towards completing the objectives

This is the first time I perform a challenge I'm not sure I can succeed at. Heck, I'm not even sure it can be succeeded in the first place. How well will I fare?

[[1.5 - 1.10] Kerbalism 3.11]

Are ships inside a planet's magnetopause protected from solar storms?

[Dealing with very large ships]

6 hours ago, Zhetaan said:

I have some:  post pictures.

well, the report will be long and wordy and will wait tomorrow, but I can share some pics

This is Home in all its illogic glory

In more detail, the fuel tanks and shuttles

greenhouses and various amenities

the eve lander

A perspective to fully appreciate the number and variety of service ships

but i didn't really realize how goddamn BIG this thing is until I came to this last perspective: an EVA kerbonaut went to repair the engines, and upon coming back, it was faced by a wall of spaceship

1191 parts. 3662 tons when full

 

For a moment it was even bigger, I sent a special fuel tank to replenish it, to start the voyage with full tanks.

it's 400 tons of tanks, but it's dwarfed by the colossal ship

 

[Dealing with very large ships]

2 minutes ago, Zhetaan said:

I have some:  post pictures.

I will open a detailed mission report for it as soon as i have the whole thing assembled. Several people told me it's impossible to make a grand tour with kerbalism, and I intend to settle the matter one way or another. But first I want to have the whole ship assembled, because I wasn't sure the game would even be playable at all with it. Now I am quite optimistic. As long as I can deal with the roughly 5 frames per second, and the couple minutes load whenever the main ship comes into physical radius.

I like my monstruosity enough to deal with that. the only thing I regret is not being able to put a gigantic  "DREAM BIG" logo on it.

[Dealing with very large ships]

ok, putting some autostruts stabilized the structure against shaking. I hope it won't mess too badly with kerbalism. I felt safe in autostrutting to heavier, because

1) I have 4 S4-512 tanks on the main body that are, without competition, the biggest parts. no risk of priority being swapped

2) the heaviest parts were often quite far from the center. as in, the mining vehicles are attached through a docking port, and attached to that is an RGU, 2 food containers, one adapter, a crew pod, a crew living space, a convert-o-tron, and finally a big S3 tank. If I root the S3 tank to grandparent, I fear it may get strutted to a crew pod, or food container, with no gain; i need it strutted to the main body.

Even then, I quickly speed up the game every time i finish manuevering, just to ensure there is no remaining structural stress.

For now it's holding. i never had problems with shaking again. And I am almost done. I only need to attach 2 more pieces, a rather small one with 40 parts, and the big eve lander, that's a 200 parts behemot. On the plus side, Eve is my first stop, so I will drop that pretty fast.

It still lags horribly, but there's not much to be done for it. It's less bad if I restart the pc regularly.

Yes, the smart thing would be to not launch a ship so big. but as soon as i installed kerbalism, I wanted to see if I could run a grand tour mission, dealing with life support, radiations, and malfunctions all along the way. planning and anticipation have been obsessing me for the last couple of weeks, and I will see my dream to the end, successful or not.

 

thanks everyone. any further advice would still be welcome

[Dealing with very large ships]

Just now, bewing said:

Use grandparent autostruts across each docking port boundary and decoupler boundary, and a maximum of five root part autostruts -- one from each section of the craft. If it has more than five sections, start at the very back section and work forward.

Are you trying to launch this from the ground, or is it already in orbit?

 

it's already in orbit. the biggest part i launched from the ground was 550 parts, reduced to 330 after staging. to that i added 4 refueling vehicles, because i will have to do a lot of refueling, and with a chance to blow up an engine at every trip i wanted backups. and 4 crew escape pods. and now I will need a few landers, but i'm mostly done

[Dealing with very large ships]

also, my behemot is making the game lagging hugely. which is absolutely expected, but not also when i'm not controlling it. i am in the space center, going from the tracking station to the vab, and still it lags hugely. why is that?

[Dealing with very large ships]

I have discovered that when it starts shaking, i can quickly speed up time to stop it. the loss of rotation upon speeding time is considered a bug, or an engine limitation at best, but in this case it's saving me. anything else?

[Dealing with very large ships]

I have a ship with 900 parts, and i'm afraid that count is going to become higher before it can become smaller. No, don't ask, I need ALL of them, and I already tried to keep the numbers down. I am using kerbalism, so I need to include extra redundancies in case something breaks. I really do need this huge thing. And I spent a couple weeks planning the mission, I'm not keen on giving it up.

As you all know, ships with too many parts, especially when connected by docking ports, are prone to breaking. at some point some parts will start shaking, and the shaking will propagate to everything and get worse, until you lose some parts of the ship. turning SAS off helps, but only mildly. I'm not sure if autostrutting makes things better or worse, but it has some problems with kerbalism, so i'm  trying to use it as little as possible.

Any advice on how to handle ships with huge part count without them disassembling spontaneously?

thanks

[Breaking Ground Propellers Help Needed]

I've made extensive use of them, but they are quite complex. you need to do 3 main things

. first thing to discuss is angle of attack. if your propeller blades are flat, you won't get any propulsion. in fact, they need to be angled just right, and the right angle changes with air speed. for this, you need to tie your blade angles to a KAL controller, and move the controller to change the blade angle during flight.

i guess you'll also need instructions on the KAL controller... it's easier to do than to say it. You place the KAL anywhere on your vehicle, then you select it and open the editor. Now from the editor you go in the actions menu, and you select the blades. you select the angle of attack, and you put the two extreme values you want (you will have to experiment with those, they depend on how you made the propellers). Now you can open the KAL and mode the bar on it, and it will move all the propellers. Use f12 to activate aerodinamics show during flight, it will show you a bunch of blue, red and purple lines; you are looking at the purple ones, you want them to point forward. move the KAL to make them do so. if they always point backwards, you got the angle inverted.

- Also, one propeller will cause your plane to spin. You need two propellers rotating in opposite directions, so their momentum will cancel

- to accelerate the propellers with the normal accelerator, you have to go in the action menu, under "main accelerator", and select the propellers and their torque.

I don't feel like i'm doing a good job of explaining. It's easier done than said. unforrtunately, very few people in this forum understand propellers, so not many to explain. feel free to ask clarifications

[What did you do in KSP1 today?]

11 hours ago, Rakete said:

Also built the other day an astronauttrainer. A device, that flips and twists the kerbals around in 3 axis. Poor Kerbals, but if they want to be astronauts, they have to train nasty g-forces without getting sick. But all of the trainees got a whole bunch of snacks afterwards. The looked very happy about the sweets. Love my kerbals.

pictures?

[Mission Name Ideas]

I generally call stuff "mun lander", "laythe plane", "orbiter", or some other unimaginative things.

sometimes random bouts of creativity strike me, and i give real names. they are generally caused by random though associations, they often are references to something and they generally refer to some actual traits of the ship. for example, a ship with a nuclear engine made to explore multiple planets was called Marco Polonium, joining the great explorer marco polo with nuclear power. or another whom i flooded with lights, i dubbed it flying christmas tree. but sometimes i am more serious, my latest mothership, built using the kerbalism mod in an attempt to have life support run for decades, I decided to call it Home, because that's what's supposed to be