Brotoro

My regular version (longer, with more fuel) can get out to 500 km and still have enough fuel to deorbit and land by parachute. This one is much more limited (but it is intended for Laythe where it will do better, not really for Kerbin).

One of my concerns with these SSTO ships is that they might become useless once reentry heat damage is implemented. I'm hoping somebody will supply me with a toroidal inflatable heat shield, but in case such a useful thing never materializes, I have been considering ways around the problem. I presume we will get inflatable heat shields of a more conventional nature (that spread out into a shallow cone shape), but fitting those to my reusable rockets will require that there be open space in the center of the base to mount such a shield. So I experimented with a modified SSTUBBY design that moves all the engines out to the radial tanks. Below is the SSTUBBY 2. I has two LV-T45 engines instead of one, mounted under two of the side tanks. The RCS balls were moved to the bottom of the center tank for now, but could be radially mounted later so that an inflatable heat should canister could be mounted on the bottom of the center tank. Hopefully the size of an FL-T200 tank...but probably more realistically the size of a FL-T400 tank. The launch profile of the SSTUBBY 2 is the same as the SSTUBBY 1. Note that the fuel lines must be arranged differently! The fuel lines run from the side tanks with the jet engines mounted on them into the center tank; then fuel lines run from the center tank to the side tanks with the LV-T45 rocket engines mounted on them. The two jet engines can still lift and accelerate the ship fine with the extra 1.5 ton engine attached. At 18,000 meters, we fire the rocket engines again. 20,000 meters, we switch off the jet engines (below). The two LV-T45 engines are more power than this ship needs... but when I tried LV-909 engines, they weren't powerful enough. What I really need for this design is an intermediate engine (half the power of the LV-T45, at hopefully half the weight). But even though the two LV-T5s are not optimal for this ship, it can reach a 72 km orbit with a small amount of fuel left over. Depending on how heavy the inflatable parachute canister would be, some extra fuel will almost certainly be needed. And then we may get to the limit where the two jet engines aren't strong enough to lift the ship...especially if I can't have the desired half-size version of the LV-T45. Anyway...when it came time to try to land this ship back at the KSC, it ran out of fuel a little ways into the retro burn. It was enough for reentry, but it was going to end up several hundred kilometers beyond the KSC in the ocean. But I quickly fired the RCS engines to slow the ship up more...and was barely able to get it to come down on dry land (but I used all of the RCS fuel in the process). I also popped out the eight parachutes as soon after the reentry flames abated as I could (well, there were still a few flames licking the craft) to reduce the overshoot problem. But the ship landed at KSC over near the shore, but on kerba firm and not in the water. Success...barely.

My previous thread about the SSTO rockets I use to send kerbals up and down from orbit got lost in the Great Forum Wipe, but here is some information about an even smaller SSTO that I've been playing with today. I was testing some cut-down versions of my SSTO crew rocket to make a single-kerbal rescue vehicle for use on Laythe (so that if one the kerbals gets stranded on another island by wreaking his BirdDog rover/plane, there will be some way to retrieve him without using the bigger 3-kerbal SSTO to do so (which would be wasteful of fuel...and I'm quite limited on fuel out there). But I was a bit surprised and pleased when the cut-down version managed to reach a minimal Kerbin orbit during testing. The rocket: SSTUBBY - Single Stage To Up Barely Beyond Yonder. So named because it's rather tubby, being designed to be more compact for easier transport to Laythe. It has 40 parts and masses 17.86 tons at liftoff. Here it is, somewhat unexpectedly, in orbit at 74 km on its first test flight: If there is enough fuel left onboard these things after they make orbit, I can let MechJeb land them on their rocket flames. But for this first build, I forgot to include MechJeb on the ship...so I had to bring it in manually. I was pleasently surprised (since I fear at times that I've become too reliant on MechJeb for these targeted landings) that I was able to land the ship back on KSC property (below). I was coming in a little long, so I had to burn up all the rest of the fuel to keep the ship over dry land, but that's OK since it has lots of parachutes (6) for landing. That's more parachutes than it needs for this landing...but when it gets used at Laythe, it will drop from orbit and land with nearly-full tanks (because it must carry down the fuel it needs to fly back to orbit), so the extra chutes are needed in that situation. Below we see the SSTUBBY in the VAB. It has four side tanks, but they are not arranged in a cruciform symmetry because I wanted an easy route for the ladders that allow the kerbal to enter and leave the capsule. So the tanks are arranged in positions where some tanks would be located if 6-symmetry was used. Two of the side tanks have standard jet engines under them. All four tanks have ram air intakes on top (so I get two intakes feeding each jet engine). There are spherical RCS tanks under the other two side tanks, and there is a LV-T45 rocket engine under the center tank. Fuel lines run in from the outer tanks to the center tank...don't forget to add these! There is an OKTO2 probe body under that big-ass docking port (no kerbals were put at risk during the testing of this rocket...since I really didn't expect it to quite reach orbit around Kerbin). There is an ASAS unit and six parachutes (two on the center tank, one on each side tank). The four heavy-duty landing gear and the four RCS quads are located on the side tanks a tick beyond 180 degrees from the tank-to-center-tank connection line so that they are located closer to the 45-degree lines from the center tank. The quads are positioned so that they produce minimal rotation during translation firings. The action groups are set up as follows: 1 - toggles the rocket engine. 2 - toggles the two jet engines. 3 - toggles the ladders. 4 - toggles the air intakes (I have the 3 key as a buffer between the 2 and 4 keys so I won't accidentally close the air intakes when toggling the jet engines). All of the engines and the two lunch clamps are in the first stage of the staging setup. To launch the ship, turn on ASAS, throttle up to 100%, press "2" to start the jet engines. Wait for the jets to spool up to full thrust (listening to the pitch of the whine...if the overheat warning shows up, you've waited a bit longer than necessary). Then press the space bar...this activates the rocket engine and releases the launch clamps. We have liftoff. Press "1" to cut off the rocket engine once the ship reaches 50-60 meters/sec. The jet engines will do the work alone for the next phase. As the ship slowly accelerates, the overheat warning will come on for the jets, but the ship will reach 80 m/s before the overheat reaches critical level, and after that it slowly decreases. At 7,000 meters, turn 10 degrees east. As the prograde marker moves to the right, keep your direction indicator just inside the left edge of the prograde marker. If you do this, the ship will be approaching a 40-degree-from-vertical angle by the time you reach 18,000 meters. At 18,000 meters, press "1" to toggle the rocket engine back on. Tip over a bit more to 45 degrees, and by then your ship should be at 20,000 meters and about to flame out (but with the extra speed from the rocket engine push, the intakes bring in enough air to keep the jets going a little past 20K). Press "2" to toggle off the jet engines (I do this by 20,300 meters), and press "4" to close the air intakes (to reduce drag). The rocket engine takes you the rest of the way to orbit. I tend to be at around 40-degrees from horizontal at 30,000 meters, and 30 degrees from horizontal at 40,000 meters, and 10 degrees from horizontal at 50,000 meters (approximate values). When the apoapsis hits 72 km, I cut the engine. You will still be traveling through the upper part of the atmosphere for a while, so the apoapsis may drop somewhat...but as long as it stays above 70 km all is well. At apoapsis, burn prograde to circularize the orbit. You have now managed to throw yourself at the ground and miss, which is the secret to orbiting. Below, we see SSTUBBY is Spaaaaace! The amount of fuel you have left will depend on your launch trajectory. I had 97.2 liters of fuel left when I reached a 72-km orbit on this particular flight (and an excess of oxidizer, since the jet engines used a little fuel and no oxidizer during their part of the boost...but they use a surprisingly small amount of fuel, which is why these jet/rocket SSTOs work. The ship also has 80 units of RCS fuel, which can do rather a lot of orbital change as well. Time to return to the KSC! I had MechJeb installed this time, so I figured I'd let it try to land the ship on its rocket flame (I wasn't sure if 97.2 liters would be enough for this). Below we see the retro firing. It took 37.2 liters of fuel to do the retro firing and targeting, leaving 60 liters for landing. Reentry flames: Landing on the engine flame. The fuel ran out about a meter above the surface, and the ship dropped to the ground safe and sound. Actually, it barely missed hitting the VAB on its way down. MechJeb is such a showoff.

I can understand that. Nice image!

Some of my rockets sometimes take it upon themselves to spin around when asparagus staging approaches (but only sometimes). How helpful...but it's a 'helpfulness' I'd rather do without, since sepatrons do the job of getting the boosters away well enough for me.

I've visited the debris left behind on the surfaces of the moons and planets on subsequent missions. It makes a nice landing target and fun mission objective. So I keep my debris level set at a non-zero level to keep that stuff around.

Are there lists of the parts available (with specs) in the various mod packages such as KSPX?

PART 4 has been added to the thread (in post #4)

No, I couldn't target as well without MechJeb. But back when I did my first landings on Laythe, I had not yet gotten MechJeb, and I was able to land the Fido Pup rover and the manned mission that followed it into the same landing zone I'm still using for this mission... but if I got within 5 km I was a happy camper (I'd only been playing the game a month back then). If I NEEDED to land closer to a particular spot in my pre-MechJeb days, I'd use F5/F9 as needed to retry, and usually get where I wanted to be in a few tries. In any case, it's kind of hit and miss when you are using parachutes (not like when I'm landing on Minmus...then it's not hard to get exactly where I want to be even without MechJeb). When I did my original missions to the Jool system, I looked up aerocapture altitudes on line (but I found some that were wildly off). And I kept track of what I tried and what results I got (one of the reasons I wrote up my missions in detail was so I could go back and look up this stuff). MechJeb can tell you the expected apoapsis after aerobraking (for the current trajectory your on), so I use that if it's critical what altitude I reach. All of the aerocaptures at Laythe (after Jool aerobreaking) for this mission were around 27.6 km, and those resulted in orbits with 1,000 km apoapses.

Thanks, all! Part 3 has now been inserted (into the third post of the thread). I may get the next part written up tonight as well.

PART 2 has been added in post #2. Pardon me while I go edit the text for Part 3.

I generally prefer vanilla for my parts. The mods I use are mostly the ones that help get around User Interface problems (Haystack and Improved Maneuver Nodes), give me lots of information and some help (MechJeb and Engineer), make my life a bit easier in tedious activities (Lazor Docking Cam), or let me do something not possible with existing parts that seems natural to the level of technology in the game (like using Damned Robotics hinges to fold up a rover).

I've been to all the other moons on my initial round of exploration missions, using basically the same lander (with smaller fuel tanks for some of the smaller moons). You can find those write-ups by clicking the "Brotoro's KSP Missions" image at the bottom of my posts.

Yes, but one must do the tedious grunt work before you can get to the fun exploring part. I'm hoping to be able to mine fuel on Laythe once resources get released in version 0.20 (assuming they do), but I'm worried that most of Laythe's resource deposits will be under the ocean where I can't get them. I may end up having to set up fuel refining operations on Vall if that's the case.

Long-term Laythe Mission - Part 4 Continuing with our long-term Laythe mission... today it's rover fun time! Aldner will be testing out the roving abilities of the BirdDog, while Kurt and Nelemy will put the Folding Fido through its paces. Rover Reconnaissance It has been suggested that the terrain on Laythe is too hilly for the BirdDog rover/plane to be of any use on the ground. Mission planners had already considered this, and before they would allow Aldner to try to explore one of the other islands, he would first have to test the roving capabilities of the BirdDog on Dansen Island so that one of the other kerbals could come rescue him using the Folding Fido if he ended up wreaking the plane. (Landing and roving on the polar ice cap was not considered a risk, even during early mission planning, because it is so flat.) Aldner got up early and prepared for the drive by first packing the storage compartments of the BirdDog with lots of rations and survival equipment that could sustain him for many months in case he gets stranded. Not that this is expected to be needed on this mission, but standard mission rules for the BirdDog require this preparation. If he ever DOES get stranded on another island, the only way to rescue him at the moment is to use the SSTO rocket, boosting to orbit...refueling...then going down to get Aldner and coming back up. This would probably mean cutting the whole mission short for some or all of the crew. Since nobody wants this to happen, precautions are being taken...including this workout of the BirdDog on Dansen Island. Below we see Aldner driving east out of the base area. The first thing he comes across is a girder segment. Left behind by aliens!! Well, yes, but Aldner is one of those aliens. This must be a piece that survived the crash of the heat shield that was dropped by the incoming Base/Rover stack. As he climbs the slope of the ridge line to the east, Aldner comes upon a rock. There is no ground scatter in the lowlands by the Base, so this is the first rock found by the crew. Aldner gets out and chips off a sample and hugs it and calls it George. One of the things mission rules allow is that the kerbalnauts are allowed to name features of the landscape, and Aldner is letting everyone know he was awake when that rule was explained. Aldner continues up the slope of the ridge line. One of the things I tried to do with the original Fido Pup rover probe on Laythe was get up over this ridge so that the Fido Pup could visit on of the inland lakes...but all I managed to do was waste half of its RCS fuel and never made it to the top (and this was back in the versions when RCS was powerful stuff). In order to make it up this slope with the BirdDog, Aldner had to switchback a couple times, taking the slope at an angle (not straight on). But the BirdDog was able to top the rise (at an elevation over 1,150 meters), and made it into the valley on the other side of the ridge. When heading down the other side of the ridge into the valley, Aldner had to apply brakes to keep the BirdDog at around 20 m/s (although a couple time it got as fast as 30 m/s, but that was the absolute maximum speed allowed by mission rules). There were several fields of rocks on this side of the ridge, but one caught Aldner's attention: One of the mysterious rumored "floating rocks." It was too high to get a sample, but Aldner got out for some photos, and named the rock Feather. There were a couple patches of rough ground on the way down to the lake in the bottom of the valley, but for the most part the drive was not difficult. There was a nice flat area by the lakeshore, and Aldner got out to collect samples and do a little wading in the water. Aldner: "Yo, Cap'n Thomples! Are you monitoring the channel?" Thomples: "Like a hawk. What do you need, Aldner?" Aldner: "Please be so kind as to log that I have named this beautiful body of water Lake Joysina." Thombles: "Joysina? You mean that cute kerbalette from the Satellite Pub in KSCtown?" Aldner: "Oh yeah." Thompbles: "Well...OK. I'll radio it in." Aldner: "Thank you. Homecoming is going to be a sweet rendezvous." Thompbles: "Ah huh. Laythe Base out." Below is a view (from SPAAAACE) looking southeast along the valley containing Lake Joysina. Laythe Base if out of this view in the lower-right. Aldner's objective, assuming all goes well, is to try to navigate across this terrain to the bay visible in the distance. That bay is located at 4-degrees South latitude, which puts it fifty-something km away from Laythe Base, as the crow flies...Assuming kerbals know about crows. Aldner climbs back aboard and herds the BirdDog around the West side of the lake. Aldner points the BirdDog slightly upslope so that he's gaining about 1 meter of altitude every few seconds. As long as he's not sliding down the slope, he's happy. (This is a situation where you can't use time warp, or the rover is likely to just go sliding downhill.) Thomples: "Laythe Base to BirdDog. Aldner, you copy?" Aldner: "Yes, Governor Thompbles, Sir! What Can I do for you?" Thombles: "The mission controllers point out that they were really thinking in terms of famous kerbals when it came to naming things...scientists, kerbalnauts, politicians who support the space program, that sort of thing. They ask if you'd like to reconsider the name of the lake." Aldner: "No can do, Fearless Leader. That which is named stays named. Fact of nature. I read the rules...the only names excluded were obscene words and commercial products, much to the sadness of the Koca Kola people who talked to me, I can tell you that." Thompbles: "Hmm. OK, Aldner. But be aware that Mission Control has changed the rules. From now on, only famous kerbals." Aldner: "Roger, Commander. Mission already accomplished. No problems." Thompbles: "Yes. Laythe Base out." Rather than drive down into the next little valley containing a tiny lake, Aldner stuck to the high ground. But he did take the rover close enough to the edge so that he could look down the steep slope and get a look at the little lake. Aldner: "You awake, Laythe Base?" Thomples: "Yes, Aldner. What's up?" Aldner: "Please log that I have named this little lake Wernher von Puddle." Thombles: "Um. After the head mission controller?" Aldner: "Aye. Very famous scientist, him." Thompbles: "A little bored today are we, Aldner?" After a while, Aldner noticed that the BirdDog was handling a bit funny, and had a tendency to turn that wasn't there before. At first he thought it was the slope he was on, but it continued later after the ground leveled out. He climbed out and checked the wheels... sure enough, one of them was blown. He hadn't even noticed when it happened...perhaps a ways back when he had come down a slope a bit too fast and hit some sharp terrain changes. But fixing the wheel was easy. "This is why we need to send kerbals and not probes into space!" Thomples: "Laythe Base to BirdDog. Aldner?" Aldner: "I read you loud and clear, CAPCOM." Thombles: "Mission Control points out that you do not actually get to name that last lake because you only saw it from a distance and did not actually go there. Mission Control also points out that you should stop being a smart ass." Aldner: "Roger, understood. Say, do you remember that poll of school children the PR department did a few months ago asking them who the most famous kerbalnauts were?" Thompbles: "Umm. Vaguely. What about it?" Aldner: "Could you get on the horn and find out what the results of that poll were? Ooops, gotta go... bumps ahead. BirdDog out." Aldner brings the BirdDog down out of the hills into the bay area. The narrow strip of land between the bay and a lake on the side appeals to Aldner, so he drives the BirdDog along that sand ridge to the South shore of the bay. He passes over a strange terrain feature and goes back to check it out. Mysterious, but as long as it causes no damage to the wheels, he's fine with it. Aldner parks the plane/rover and wades into the chilly water of the bay for some samples. Thomples: "Laythe Base to BirdDog. Alder, you copy?" Aldner: "Always at your service, O Captain, my Captain!" Thombles: "The PR department says they sent the results of that poll to us over a month ago." Aldner: "Oh, I'm sure they did. But who can read all their email on a boring interplanetary cruise?" Thompbles: "Hm. Yes. And they point out the fact that this poll was taken during a period when our current mission was being hyped heavily in the news...so it's not a surprise that our own crew featured high on the list." Aldner: "I can see that. And the winner was?" Thomples: "That would be you, Aldner." Aldner: "Well bless those little kiddies' hearts. Please log the name of this body of water I'm standing in as Aldner Bay." Below is an overview of the Aldner Bay area. It looks like a pretty good area to set up a base. But not as good as the Laythe Base area, methinks. Aldner spent the rest of the day driving around the bay area, scouting out good landing sites, taking soil samples, and eyeing areas for possible commercial development. Near the end of the day he drove out onto the long peninsula that juts out into the bay. He'll spend the night camping there, and then use it as an airstrip the next day for his quick return to Laythe Base by air. The BirdDog has probably proven its worth as a rover on Laythe. While Aldner was off exploring the the Southeast, Kurt and Nelemy were taking the Folding Fido on a more rigorous trial toward the North and West. The rover has two single-kerbal capsules facing opposite directions, so either kerbal can drive the rover while the other sees where they've been. Not that you can see out of those capsules very well...they probably have video screens to see outside. Yeah...that would work. But before their main event, the boys take the Folding Fido a kilometer south to visit the old Fido Pup rover probe parked near the shore. It looks to be in surprisingly good condition considering it's been sitting there for almost 15 years. Below, comparison views of the old and new rover technology. Then they took a 5.5 km detour south to see the remains of the Carrier vehicle that set the Fido Pup down onto the surface of Laythe, then was boosted off the Fido Pup with a short engine burn that hopped it up and over where it crashed back down. Nelemy: "Dude, get a load of that ancient technology! LV-T45 engines! FL-T200 tanks! A STEADLER Engineering ASAS unit!" Kurt: "We still use all that same stuff." Nelemy: "Yeah... Weird, isn't it?" But enough dillydallying around. They got a later start, and they've been messing around near the base... let's get to the serious testing! So the boys bring the Fido back through the base area (and wave to Thompbles as they go by), and head for the hills. The hills to the North, that is. Bigger that the stuff Aldner went over. The grade is steep enough that even with eight powered rover wheels, the Fido needs to head along the steeper parts of the slope at an angle to make headway. But it handles very well...except that the hinges make this rover considerably weaker than its non-folding cousins (like I used on Eve and Duna). And high physical time warp is right out, because the mysterious extra time warp weight would smash the rover to the ground. Not that you would want to be doing time warp on a slope like this in any case...your rover would just slide down hill. On the top of the mountain at 2359 meters. Not the tallest mountain on the island, but a good size peak to test out the Fido. Kurt: "Fido to Base. Come in Base." Thompbles: "Base here, Fido. Are you guys on the top of the mountain?" Nelemy: "Yeah! Hey, Thompbles!...I can see your house from here!" The trip down the backside of the mountain was...scary. After one of the game saves, the structure of the Folding Fido rover was ragged. The hinges were a bit off kilter and not connected at quite the right angles. The sides of the rovers had a small angle to them that made the rover somewhat "duck footed" (or pigeon-toed, if it's going the other way), and the hinges seemed looser and sloppier than before. Or maybe it just seemed that way because of the difficult driving conditions of the steep descent. But right away I ran into problems where the sides of the rover would skew out suddenly and try to make the rover turn sharply and dig its wheels in and start to tip. Thank Jool for the stabilizing force of the ASAS unit, or these boys would have been tumbling down the hill is a cloud of debris. So I had to drive very slowly, and I had to be vigilant about correcting the sudden turns before they got large. It turned out to be easier to drive it in the "pigeon toed" direction than the "duck footed" direction. And things got easier once the slope leveled off more. But I think the moral of the story is that while a folding rover is cool, it would be much safer for your kerbals if you send them off to work in a rigid rover. I guess I'll put that on the wish list of stuff for the KSC to send out to Jool in the next shipment. In the meantime, Kurt and Nelemy are just going to have to poke along at a slow but safer speed. Of course, if the game allowed the kerbals to add struts to ships during EVAs, the rover's frame could be strengthened after deployment. Below, Nelemy and Kurt stop at a more impressive-sized rock than the one Aldner sampled. They had also heard about the floating rock he found, so they were on the lookout for some...but they didn't spot any. The boys made it safely down into "The Valley of the Three Lakes" as Aldner called it while flying over it before. Nelemy: "Hey, Kurt. Did you hear on the radio? Aldner named a bay after himself!" Kurt: "Well, everybody should have something nice." Nelemy: "I'm claiming this one! Yo, Thompbles! I'm naming this Lake Nelemy. Make it official." Thompbles: "Roger, Fido. I copy the name: Lake Nelemy." Kurt: "Congratulations." Nelemy: "Oh, hey! Don't wory...you can have the next one." Kurt: "Well good, because it's the biggest one of the bunch." Nelemy: "Whoa...it is?" Kurt: "Did you even LOOK at the maps?" The ridge separating Lake Nelemy from Kurt Lake (Kurt preferred "Kurt Lake" to "Lake Kurt") was a fairly high strip of land with steep sides, but they were able to drive along the top easily enough. A while after crossing the land bridge, the Fido suddenly ground to a halt with no battery charge left. Huh? A look overhead showed that Kerbol was being eclipsed by Tylo, blocking the light. I still get excited when I see an eclipse in KSP, but I assume these guys who grew up on a planet with a zero inclination orbit and a moon with a zero inclination orbit find these things to be ho-hum. Kurt suggested they get out and gather some samples while waiting for the batteries to recharge. Below: after the eclipse. The third lake had some nice flat beach-front property around it, so the boys decided to knock off early and set up camp on a little peninsula in the southeast corner of the lake. Nelemy: "Fido to Base. Yo, Thompbles, are you still awake?" Thompbles: "I'm here, Nelemy. What's up? Are you guys turning in now?" Nelemy: "We have a present for you, Dude. Check your email inbox." Thompbles: "OK, I'll get to that in a bit." Nelemy: "Cool, no problem. Be sure to log the name. Night, Thompbles. Fido out." The next morning, Kurt and Nelemy continue west and find that the area west of Lake Thompbles would be a pretty good area to set up a base. Larger than the Fido Bay site, but not as flat. Further west they came to another lake, and Nelemy insisted it was Kurt's turn to name one, so he chose Likeaglove Lake, which slightly puzzled Mission Control, but they did not object. Further west they reached the coast at the location of a nice little bay that Nelemy named Gusden Bay after the first kerbal to land on the Mun. Mission control happily approved. Kurt and Nelemy will be continuing this journey, probably heading north and driving all the way around the island on an initial geological survey, but I think we can leave them to it at this point. Meanwhile, down south, Aldner has ended his rover validation journey and lowers the nose gear to turn the BirdDog back into a plane. He fires up the jet engine and heads down the peninsula, quickly taking to the air. He flys out of the Aldner Bay area, and in just a few minutes he's on final approach to the Fido Bay site, and sets the BirdDog down on the sand. "Man, flying sure beats the hell out of driving!" Aldner used 12 liters of fuel flying back to base, so he makes a quick stop at the GasSation to top off the BirdDog's tanks. Happily, the plane still fits under the refueling boom. And that's it for this report. Have a nice reference map: Brotoro's Kerbal Space Program Web Pages NOTE: PART 5 is on Page 3 of this thread.

Long-term Laythe Mission - Part 3 Parts 1 and 2 covered getting all the equipment to the Jool system and landed safely on Laythe. Now to do some exploring! Polar Pilot I must admit that I was very curious to see how the BirdDog airplane would perform on Laythe (I'm new to flying planes in KSP, so it's still very interesting to me). And it certainly seems in character for Alnder to skip out on the tedious unpacking of supplies, setting up of equipment, and systems checks of the Base module to go do a little flying instead. Oh, look... there he goes running over to the BirdDog as we speak. Aldner lowers the nose gear (to raise the rover wheels off of the ground), lines up parallel to the lines of sand dunes (since that looks good visually, even though the dunes are just textures), and lights the fire in the jet engine. The BirdDog takes off with a short run just like on Kerbin. Excellent. Aldner swings around in a big circle to buzz over the Base, then points his nose North and climbs to 3000 meters to safely clear the mountain ridgeline north of the base. Thombles: "Hey, Aldner... I thought you said you were just going to do some system checks on the BirdDog. But I can't help but notice that you just flew overhead." Aldner: "Roger that. Doing those system checks now." Thompbles: "Ah, huh... How long is this going to take? We still need to get all the recycling systems setup and checked." Aldner: "I'll be back in a bit. Just going to check out the fuel efficiency of this baby." It's not too long before Aldner clears the north coast of Dansen Island and is out over open ocean. Aldner: "Yo, Thomples! Could you write down some numbers for me? I'm a bit busy flying. Throttle set to 1/3; altitude level at 3000 meters; speed 164 meters per second; fuel flow rate 0.00258 U; jet engine Isp currently 1895." Thompbles: "What? Oh, sure... let me find a pencil. OK...say again numbers." Aldner: "Throttle 1/3; level at 3000; speed 164; fuel flow rate 0.00258 U; Isp 1895. Thompbles: "Got it." Aldner: (several minutes later) "Yo, Boss! Throttle 1/3; level at 4000; speed 183.5; fuel flow 0.00273 U; Isp 1782." Thombles: "Hmm..OK, got it. Where are you? Your signal is kinda weak." Aldner: "Just heading North. Switch to high gain antenna through the Station." Thomples: "OK, switched to high gain." Aldner: "Leveling off at 5000 meters. Here's some more numbers..." And so it went for over a half hour. Going up 1000 more feet, and leveling off. Adjusting the trim for level flight. Double checking. Taking data (the fuel flow rate and engine Isp can be found by right-clicking on the jet engine). As the plane got higher, more pitch-up trim was required to keep it flying level. Also, as the plane got higher, the speed increased (because the thinner air caused less drag), the engine Isp dropped, and the fuel flow rate increased. That last part about the fuel flow rate surprised me because the only thread on the KSP forums that I could find about jet plane fuel efficiency suggested that the rate of fuel consumption was simply proportional to the throttle setting (times the number of engines)...but all of these measurements were being made at the same throttle setting. At 10,000 meters, the amount of pitch-up trim was getting to the point where the plane was becoming difficult to fly (wanting to pitch up even more...and having seen the thing do sudden back flips during test flights on Kerbin when pulling up too much, this was not a regime I cared to explore), so the experiment was stopped at 10,000 meters, and then the plane was taken down to fill in the data for low altitudes (checking the baseline values at 3,000 meters twice more). The data from the flight test are shown below, with graphs. Interesting things to note: The fuel flow rate (in whatever units "U" means) is simply mirroring the decrease in engine Isp. Apparently the jet engine makes this adjustment automatically as you change altitude. Even though the Isp is dropping and the fuel flow rate increasing with altitude, the speed of the plane is increasing even faster with altitude, so the fuel efficiency (found by dividing the fuel flow rate by the air speed) increases with altitude. The BirdDog uses a standard jet engine with two ram air intakes (because I thought those would be useful even for a standard jet engine in Laythe's thinner atmosphere). Another effect noticed was that each time the measurements were made at 3,000 meters, those values got a little better. This was because the plane was using fuel, so it was getting lighter and more efficient. The last graph applies a rough correction for this increase in performance (about 6% over the time of the test) assuming the data points are spaced equally apart. Aldner: "So it looks like flying high is more efficient, but I'll keep it well below 10,000 meters for reasons of flight stability." Thomples: "That's nice, Aldner. Say...where are you now?" Aldner: "Let's see... the inertial guidance system says I'm at 70.3 degrees north latitude." Thombles: "What?? Say again?" Aldner: "Hey, theres a small island below. First land I've flow over since leaving Dansen. Do you want me to name it after you, Thompbles?" Thompbles: "Huh? No. How's your fuel?" Aldner: "Loads of fuel...still over two thirds. I think I see ice off in the distance. It's OK if I go land at the North Pole, right?" Thompbles: (sighs) "OK, Aldner. As long as you're that far already. Keep in touch." Aldner: "Sure thing, Chief." ...and Aldner loses radio contact as he goes too far north for even the Station link. As Aldner neared 80 degrees north latitude, he started flying over some scattered ice patches. They looked quite dark, but that was because of the very low lighting angle. The patches were flat, so almost certainly ice. At about 82 degrees latitude, the BirdDog passed over the edge of the main ice cap (although there were still "inland lakes" so that ice cap was not total yet at that point). As he approached the North Pole, Aldner brought the BirdDog in for a landing. He passed over the pole at 1000 meters and landed about a half degree south of the pole on the opposite side. The total fuel consumption for the flight north was 139 liters of fuel (out of the 300 liters that BirdDog carries). Aldner then raised the nose gear to go to rover mode, then drove the BirdDog back to the pole. Finding the exact location of the pole is pretty easy because the view direction (and Aldner's gyrocompass) flips as you pass over it. And, as you can see in the picture below, four texture sections meet at the pole, so "X marks the spot." A little maneuvering gets the center of mass of the BirdDog to be right over the pole (to within 4 decimal places according to MechJeb's readouts). Aldner got out for a photo op, but he wasn't able to stand EXACTLY on the pole because whenever he tried, strange muscle spasms caused him to go all rag-doll and fall over. This is close enough. But he was able walk all the way around Laythe in a about ten seconds. A view toward Kerbol sitting on the horizon. For the return trip, Aldner used the electrically-powered rover wheels to drive south on the ices cap (well...all directions are south from the north pole, but he went down the 167-degree West longitude line toward Laythe Base). This would save jet fuel. The problem was, he was driving nearly straight toward the sun which meant that solar panels on the fuselage of the plane could not get sunlight. So he was only able to drive for about 1.25 degrees of latitude before the batteries ran low. Then he had to stop and park the BirdDog at right angles to Kerbol and let the batteries recharge (this first took about 15 minutes of waiting, but the delay got less each time he stopped further south because the sun angle was increasing). When Aldner approached the edge of the ice cap, he could see that the area near the edge was a different color and slanted down fairly rapidly toward the sea, so he thought it wise not to drive the plane out there. Aldner got out to check out the edge of the ice cap on foot. It turned out that he had fine traction with his space boots (for use in SPAAAAACE!), and he found that the ice cap ended in a sharp drop off (at least here). More photo ops: After a taking a couple more pictures and gathering a few more ice samples, Aldner backed the BirdDog a couple kilometers away from the edge of the ice, lowered the nose gear, and took off south. Aldner flew the return trip at about 8,000 meters. Uneventful views of mostly open water. (Mostly I just practiced flying the plane at physical time warp speeds.) Aldner: "Calling Laythe Base. Come in, Laythe Base." Nelemy: "Hey, Aldner! How's it flyin'?" Aldner: "Just fine, little buddy. How's the Grand Poobah? Is he all worried about me?" Nelemy: "Oh, sure. So worried he's having a nice nap. When are you going to get your ass back here to help?" Aldner: "ETA 40 minutes, give or take. Have supper waiting." The BirdDog approaches the north shore of Dansen Island. Passing over the Three Lakes area, the target for the upcoming Folding Fido's exploration mission. Then over the ridge line and Laythe Base comes into view. Aldner lines up for an approach parallel to the dune lines, then brings the BirdDog home and rolls to a stop. The plane rolls surprising well on sand. Who'd have thunk it? Aldner landed with 46 liters of fuel onboard, so the return trip took 120 liters of fuel (compared to the 139 liters it took flying up tot he pole). Aldner put the BirdDog in rover mode and rolled on over to the GasSation to refuel...and ran into problems. Hmmm...the plane would not quite fit under the refueling boom. OK...try another side. Nope...even worse. Third side's a charm? No. Well, bugger all. Didn't I test this refueling setup multiple times back on Kerbin?? Don't tell me I sent along a version of the GasStation with the booms set too low. Is this going to mean the end of the BirdDog exploring other islands? Damn. So the next day I fired up the six 24-77 engines of the GasStation and made it do a little hop to see if that would change the angle of the landing legs or something to adjust the height of the refueling booms. But as you see in the picture below, the docking port on the boom is still just barely too low. Grrr. The plane's docking port is SUPPOSED to fit under the docking port on the boom with a little room to spare, and then the lowering the nose gear is supposed to prop the front of the plane up so the ports make contact. But no joy. But then Aldner has a sudden inspiration and invents the "dog squat" maneuver. He gets lined up, then makes sure the rover wheels are free to move (things get 'stuck' if you sit still too long, and then take multiple key-presses to get moving). Then he toggles the rear landing gear...and as the rear gear fold down, he scoots the plane forward and brakes before the rear end bottoms out (since it would probably not be a good idea for the BirdDog to drag its nozzle along the nice clean carpet of sand on Laythe...mostly to prevent damage to the engine). And when he lowers the rear gear again to raise the back of the plane, *click!*, we have a perfect docking! Whew. Feeding the BirdDog is completed without any further problems. A reverse dog squat maneuver after undocking allows the plane to disconnect. Also, strangely enough, after having done this, the BirdDog is now able to just barely fit underneath the refueling boom without doing the dog squat again. The position of the GasStation must have shifted a little when the boom was pushed up. Happy day! And so ends the first exploration adventure of the BirdDog rover/plane, with everything working out perfectly in the end. Well, except that the other three kerbals made Aldner cook supper for the next four days while they sat around resting. Brotoro's Kerbal Space Program Web Pages

Long-term Laythe Mission - Part 2 Part 1 covered the launching of the five Laythe Armada ships into Kerbin orbit, and getting them on their way off to Jool. Now we continue as all five ships are approaching Jool spread out over a period of 18 days. Juggling at Jool Below you see the incoming hyperbolic trajectories of the five ships (two of them are only four hours apart, so their icons overlap). I had snuck them all across the Sphere Of Influence boundary a 1x time warp to maintain their targeting, and that worked well. One of the ships did have its periapsis go a bit wonky at some point during the approach to Jool within the SOI, and I had to burn to correct that (it was one of the two really close ships, so I also burned to spread their arrivals apart a bit more). It just so happened that the first ship in was Tug #1 with the crew and Laythe Space Station (it was the last ship to leave Kerbin). Below we see it dropping in toward Jool, with Laythe, its eventual target, the small blue dot off to the left. These were my first aerobrakings at Jool since the introduction of version 0.19, so the entry flames were fun. Good thing all those station parts were heavily coated with Jebediah Kerman's patented Snake-oil Ablative Spray Paint. It worked just as he said it would...no damage at all. I had targeted a periapsis of 116 km, trying to end up with a apoapsis near Laythe's orbit...but that put me out too far, so I had to burn retrograde just after the aerobraking to correct to an apoapsis just beyond Laythe's orbit. There was plenty of time to let the ship reach apoapsis and perform the kick maneuver to raise its periapsis safely out of Jool's atmosphere (up to 250 km). Don't forget this step, kiddies! As the other ships were coming in, I was watching the orbits of the captured ships to be sure they weren't going to have any unexpected encounters with Laythe. As it happens, the orbit I put the crew in had almost exactly one half of the orbital period of Laythe, and was about 90 degrees out of phase with Laythe, so there was no danger of this ship having a surprise encounter with laythe during the upcoming juggling. I wish I would have spotted that fact sooner so that I could have left this ship out of the constant rotation of checking that I was about to go through while juggling the incoming ships and their Laythe encounters. In came three more ships for aerobraking. Tug #5 with BirdDog. Tug #2 with the Base. Tug #4b with the SSTO. I had all of these targeted to periapsis values of around 114 km, and they ended up with apoapses near Laythe's orbit, where I kicked prograde to get their periapses up to 250 km. Jeb's magical spray paint worked every time. The SSTO passed very close to Laythe on its way in and I contemplated going for a direct aerobraking at Laythe...but those can be tricky, so I stuck with the original plan and skirted Laythe. Only the Tanker was left to do its Jool aerobraking... ...Whoop! Watch out, there! The BirdDog and Tug #5 are about to have a close encounter with Laythe. A judicious burn shifted the encounter to a trajectory that would aerobrake it into a prograde orbit, adjusted to be near the equator. As you can see below, the aerobraking was...dismal. No fire. Laythe, I am disappoint. But the aerobraking caught the ship into an orbit with a apoapsis of about 1000 km as planed...then I let it do half a turn around the moon...then gave it a kick at apoapsis to lift its periapsis out to 70 km. And quick! Check the other ships! No...We're fine. That looked like a close encounter coming up for Tug #2 and the Base, but it was pretty distant, so I didn't try for a capture...but Laythe did pump Tug #2's orbit up to a higher apoapsis and periapsis. Fine by me. Ah, look... the picture below shows Tug #5 and the BirdDog in Laythe orbit with the nose of the ship cleverly pointed to show you our intended landing area: Fido Bay on Dansen Island (named for my first rover probe and first kerbal to land on Laythe at that very location...and the best landing location on Laythe it is!). But stop admiring the scenery, boy, because Tug #3 is still dropping in toward Jool with its load of fuel. Whoops! Before that, here's another close encounter with Laythe coming up, this time with Tub #4b and the SSTO. Adjust! Aerobrake (no flames)! Turn! Kick! Watch the other dancers! Are you sweating as much as I am? The SSTO is safe in Laythe's loving grasp. Check the other ships! Whoa! Encounter for Tug #2 and the Base. This one's a bit weird because of its pumped-up orbit, and a bigger burn is needed to save it from smashing into Laythe. Hey, look! Entry flames! Half turn about to apoapsis...kick! Another ship safely in orbit. And here comes Tug #3/Tanker for its belated Jool aerobraking. Then let it turn around out to apoapsis. Then kick its periapsis out to 70 km. Then rest. Whew. I've become an expert at this getting-captured-by-Laythe thing now, so listen up, since I have time now to explain. I targeted Tug #3's aerobraking to put its apoapsis a little ways below the orbit of Laythe (see diagram below, which is back in the more familiar Conics Mode 3. The other elliptical orbit that goes a little ways beyond Laythe's orbit belongs to the Tug #1/Space Station ship). Then I waited several orbits for Laythe to wander around past the apoapsis spot as Tug #3 was already there loitering in the slow part of its orbit. Laythe comes along and scoops up Tug #3 into its SOI, and I adjust as needed for the desired aerocapture periapsis. In this case, the aero-"braking" is really a matter of using Laythe's atmosphere to speed up Tug #3 to nearly match Laythe's orbital speed around Jool. Because Tug #3 was loitering around on the Jool-side of Laythe, it gets captured into a prograde direction (see diagram below). An aerobraking periapsis of around 27,800 km ends up capturing Tug #3 into an orbit with an apoapsis of 1033 km. Dance around to apoapsis, kick the periapsis up to 70 km, and rest. Tug #3 got a tiny bit of aerobraking flame at Laythe. For Tug #1 and our intrepid crew, the apoapsis needed to be lowered to inside Laythe's orbit to break out of the orbital resonance that kept the ship from encountering Laythe, then wait for an encounter as described before. Aerocapture showed only minor flames. Finally, I kicked the periapsis out to 70 km. Done. The boys are safe in Laythe orbit, and there is plenty of time now to admire the scenery. Below we see the result of all that juggling: Five orbits with apoapses near 1000 km and periapses near 70 km. That capsule icon in the circular orbit is the docked Lewis and Clark landers from the first kerballed expedition to Laythe from 12 years ago (Earth years, in-game time...not Kerbin years). What seems to have mysteriously disappeared is the nuclear transfer stage that brought the Fido Pup rover to Laythe...I was sure I left that in orbit, but it's gone now. Maybe the Kraken ate it? Anyway...before I went on to land the hardware, I took a break. Landings on Laythe We last left our intrepid crew and all their shiny space hardware in 70 to 1000 km elliptical orbits. While the orbits were still large, the ships did plane change maneuvers to all get as close as possible to zero-degree inclination orbits. Then the crew dropped their periapsis back down into the atmosphere and used aerobraking to bring their apoapsis down to 80 km, and then kicked their periapsis up to 80 km. Laythe Space Station with our gallant heroes was now in its final orbit. The other ships were maneuvered in similar ways to get then into orbits with periapses of 80 km and apoapses of 90 km. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the faster Space Station to catch up to each ship in turn, and then adjust the orbit of that ship for rendezvous and docking (if desired). Meanwhile, the boys were finishing high resolution photo surveys of Laythe. Below is a picture of the leading hemisphere of Laythe (the hemisphere that faces forward as it moves along its orbit). This is the target area for the crew's explorations. The plan is to set up their base at Fido Bay (named for the first rover probe landed there) on Dansen Island (named for the first kerbal who landed on Laythe, also at that same spot). The other nearby large islands are named for Fredoly (who landed his Clark lander on the small arc-shaped island just to the north of the big island that bears his name), and Jenlan (who stayed in orbit, but who gets an island named after him anyway). (Even Michael Collins got a lunar crater named after him, you know.) Up in Laythe orbit, Laythe Space Station was taking shape as the hardware rendezvoused and docked with the station core. In the picture below, Tug #1 (which carried the Station to Laythe) is on top. Tug #3 with the Tanker payload is docked on the left side. And Tug #4b with the SSTO is docked on the right (rear-end first, so the SSTO can depart later). I got desperately low on RCS fuel with Tug #4b (the ship would wobble and waste lots of RCS while I was trying to dock). Tug #3 did not have that problem (but that's because it had a lot of extra RCS fuel in the Tanker). Note to mission controllers: Send extra RCS fuel in the first resupply mission. I didn't even TRY to dock Tug #2 to the Station. It had by far the wobbliest payload (the Base/Rover stack), and there really wasn't a need for it to go to the station anyway, since the Base/Rover would be dropped directly. Below we see Tug #2 depositing the Base/Rover stack in an 81 km circular orbit and backing away a little. Tug #2 would be left in this orbit and could be brought to the Space Station later if its resources were needed. The Base/Rover stack, on the other hand, is about to have Funtime! The Base/Rover stack has an LV-909 rocket engine and an FL-T200 propellant tank under its token heat shield for deorbiting. I used MechJeb to target the payload into the desired landing trajectory. MechJeb wouldn't be able to actually land it because that involved parachutes and a special deployment sequence. The landing site at Fido Bay is located 0.992 degrees north of the equator, so a small northward component is needed for the retro burn. After the final targeting burns are done, the retro pack is jettisoned from the heat shield. In we go! The entry fire effects are pretty unimpressive. That heat shield could stand to be a bit bigger. Good thing there are no real atmospheric-entry heat-damage effects yet. After the anemic flames abate, the heat shield is jettisoned and falls away to crash to the east of the landing site. Two drogue-style parachutes are deployed to stabilize and slow the descent of the Base/Rover stack. The landing legs on the Base are deployed, and the Damned Robotics hinges on the Folding Fido rover are activated to unfold the rover. The sides of the rover are left partly deployed to give the rover more ground clearance and shock absorbing ability for the touchdown. Once the drogue chutes fully deploy at 2,500 meters, the four main parachutes are deployed in reefed condition. Then the Folding Fido rover is separated and drops away (oh...we are controlling the vehicle from the OKTO2 probe body on the top of the Fido, by the way, so we follow that down). The four parachutes on the Folding Fido are deployed quickly. You don't want to fall too far away from the Base so that it doesn't despawn and vanish. The parachutes on the Folding Fido open fully at 500 meters, and the rover sets down. You can see by the shadows that the Base is coming down very close to the same spot, so as soon as the Fido lands, the "i" key (remapped rover control key) is pressed to move it out from underneath. The Base module descends under its fully deployed parachutes. Off in the distance you can see the marker for the Fido Pup Laythe rover that was landed here almost 15 years ago (15 Earth years, in-game time). The base is coming down a little over a kilometer away from the ancient rover (which is good, since that rover is parked right near the edge of the bay that's named after it, and we wouldn't want the base to end up in the drink). Laythe Base is down safely and its antennas are deployed. The Base has an RTG for continuous low power needs, and six solar arrays that can deployed for more power. The Base has several battery packs to last through the night or handle power-need spikes. One of the reasons I love this landing site is because Jool is permanently visible over there on the eastern horizon. Meanwhile, up in orbit, Tug #5 with the BirdDog airplane and its GasStation (in the foreground below) is approaching Laythe Station with Jool as a backdrop. This ship is also not going to be docked to the Station right away, but it is brought in to about 100 meters distance, and then Aldner heads out on an EVA to get inside the BirdDog plane. The plane was originally designed with a probe body to allow it to land unkerballed, but Aldner thinks that's a silly idea and intends to fly it down himself. Once Aldner gets aboard the plane, he separates the BirdDog and its GasSation from Tug #5, and then the Tug is sent over to dock with the Space Station. Annoyingly, even without its wobbly payload, Tug #5 expends a large amount of RCS fuel docking to the station (on the near side at the bottom in the picture below). The ASAS just did not seem to be doing its job, because when I did any translation, it resulted in a LOT of rotational motion. I suppose I should have switched to the Tracking Station and come back to see it that would make it behave...but I just bulled ahead and wasted a lot of fuel. Meanwhile, Aldner is no doubt smirking at my efforts as he floats upside-down in the BirdDog. Next order of business: Landing the GasStation. The picture below was taken in Laythe's shadow (sorry about that), but the BirdDog's forward light illuminates the GasStation as they tumble away from each other after separating. The GasStation is mostly made up of seven jet fuel tanks, but it does have 12 little toroidal propellant tanks on top to supply the six 24-77 radial rocket engines that perform the deorbiting burn. Below we see the GasStation coming in with entry flame effects. The automatic control system of the GasStation deploys the three legs and six parachutes as it descends into the Laythe Base area. And by "automatic control system," I mean me. Judicious timing of when to pop the chutes determines how close you get to your target. The GasStation descends for a gentle landing no too far from Laythe Base. The GasStation is down and its antenna and solar array are deployed. It certainly doesn't need that giant solar array...but it was actually added because it had the right mass to balance the girder to which the BirdDog was attached by a radial decoupler. And it's a good thing that the GasStation doesn't need that solar array, because it mysteriously vanished later on. I don't know why...it just wasn't there when I came back later. I know solar panels can easily break off of moving rovers, but this GasStation is just sitting there. So I think I'll leave the panels solar panels on the Base module closed for now. Next down: Aldner and the BirdDog. I didn't want to mount any unnecessary rocket engines on the airframe of the BirdDog itself, so I added a retro-rocket pack to its docking port (since that's located at the CG). I also included a small OKTO2 probe core as part of the stack so that I'd have a core lined up in the right direction to control the ship during retro-fire. But I ran into a problem: when I tried to select that probe body to "control the ship from here," the navball was displaying 180 degrees off. Weird. I pondered this a while and went back to a BirdDog prototype in Kerbin orbit to try to figure out the problem. It turned out that the problem was I was NOT clicking on the probe body to select "control from here," but was clicking on the docking port (which is oriented in the opposite direction). Ah. It's very hard to select the tiny sliver of the rather thin OKTO2 probe body that's visible between the docking port and the toroidal fuel tanks. Anyway: TL;DR... Retro-fire time! After the final targeting burn, Aldner pops off the retro pack (which drifts very slowly away) and gets the plane's nose lined up for entry. He's done this same maneuver entering into Kerbin's atmosphere, but now we see how the plane will handle in the thinner atmosphere and lower gravity of Laythe. Atmospheric-entry flames! I presume this plane uses the finest in spaceplane thermal surface protection, but I thought the rover wheels looked very exposed...so I added some token heat shield plates in front of the wheels. Aldner was looking particularly maniacal in this screen shot, so I was sure to include him in the cropped picture. After the entry flames disappear, Aldner pops off the wheel heat shields. He fires up the jet engine for a short burn, but he's coming into the landing area well, so he cuts the engine and lowers the landing gear. Second picture: Aldner on final approach to Laythe Base. After landing, Aldner raises the nose gear only. This lowers the rover wheels to the ground and the BirdDog is now in rover mode. He drives the two kilometers over to Laythe Base and gets out, becoming the first kerbal to stand upon Laythe in a dozen years. Man, don't you wish we could say a similar thing about humans returning to the Moon? I sure as hell do. Aldner climbs into the Laythe Base module to pick out the best bunk. Actually, the thing is probably packed to the gills with boxes and boxes of supplies filling all the normally empty space, so you can picture him unpacking most of that stuff and setting up a tent to cover the big pile of supplies on the ground next to the base module. I know that's what I'm picturing. At least with Laythe they don't have to bring along years worth of oxygen and water, since those can be extracted from the environment. The Base has three levels: The top level is a 4-kerbal container that serves as the sleeping and living quarters for the kerbals. The middle level is the 2-kerbal lander can that serves as control and communications center. The bottom level is another 4-kerbal container that serves as laboratory and experimental equipment workspace. But lets not forget the other three adventurous crew members still in orbit. The three remaining kerbals transferred fuel from the Tanker to the Laythe SSTO ship, and probably spent a lot of time and EVAs hauling over supplies and equipment from the Station to the SSTO and packing it to the gills, with barely room for them to fit. No wonder Nelemy is out having fun EVAing around in some open space. Anyway, all the Station systems are put on automatic, and the three kerbals get aboard the SSTO for the trip down to the surface. Below, the SSTO separates from the Laythe Space Station, controlled by Kurt Kerman's steady hand. Retro-fire uses a small percentage of the fuel on board. The ship is going to be landing heavy, unlike the usual landing profile for my SSTO crew transfer rockets on Kerbin. The SSTO heads down butt first into the thicker atmosphere, as flames lick the engines. I hope somebody fulfills my wish for an inflatable toroidal heat shield before atmospheric-entry heat damage becomes a reality in the game. All appears to be going well with the entry... ...And then one of those "what!??" moments occurs as four of the eight parachutes pop out unexpectedly. Nelemy: "Dude! What are you doing?? You popped the chutes!" Kurt: "I didn't deploy the chutes." Nelemy: "You did! They're out! We're going to land short! Kurt: "I didn't deploy the chutes. They just came out." Nelemy: "Dude, if we land in the drink and sink the ship, they're gonna call you Mr. Squirmy Chute-Popper!" Kurt: (rapidly flipping switches to prepare for emergency manual sideways-hovering or reboost-to-orbit maneuvers, if needed). Thombles: (monitoring ground track) "We are coming in 2 km short, but still over land. No problem." I don't know why the chutes popped out prematurely... I hadn't pressed anything. MechJeb was turned off. Maybe some random spacebar press long ago while the ship was attached to the station set them to release early. Don't know. Anyway, a bit of undesired excitement. The chutes attached to the bottom fuel tank opened fully at 500 meters, taking the shock on that most massive structural component, and then it was safe to deploy the four other chutes mounted further up. But the ship still has almost-full tanks, so even with all eight chutes open, it descends at a little over 10 m/s and won't survive the landing undamaged without some extra cushioning from the engines. So at 100 meters, Kurt gives a blast from the rocket engines and brings the ship in. "Easy...eeeasy...Touchdown!" The boys disembark and have a look around at what will be their new home for the next couple years. Meanwhile, Alnder remotely guides the Folding Fido over to come pick them up. The original target landing location for the SSTO was beyond the Base module, but landing on this side is OK, too. The Fido only holds two kerbals (in separate single-kerbal capsules), so Nelemy and Kurt hop in for the drive over to the Base module, leaving Thombles to hoof it. I tell ya, a base commander don't get no respect sometimes. Later than evening, Thompbles admires the Kerbol-set from outside the Base module, with Jool in the background. The daytime temperature is a chilly 4 degrees C ...not the kind of weather you'd lounge around wearing your bikini in, but at least you can breathe the air. OK! Laythe Base is set up and open for business. Next time, the boys start the exploration missions. Brotoro's Kerbal Space Program Web Pages

Link to Most Recent Update: PART 45 (24 Apr 2016) PART 44 (10 Mar 2015) PART 43 (14 Feb 2015) PART 42 (23 Jan 2015) PART 41 (24 Dec 2014) PART 40 (12 Dec 2014) PART 39 (8 Nov 2014) PART 38 (26 Oct 2014) PART 37 (19 Oct 2014) PART 36 (5 Oct 2014) PART 35 (27 Sept 2014) PART 34 (13 Sept 2014) PART 33 (19 May 2014) PART 32 (2 May 2014) PART 31 (17 Apr. 2014) PART 30.5 (3 Apr. 2014) PART 30 (23 Mar. 2014) PART 29 (13 Mar. 2014) PART 28 (23 Feb. 2014) PART 27 (21 Feb. 2014) PART 26 (28 Jan. 2014) PART 25 (22 Jan. 2014) PART 24.5 (16 Jan. 2014) PART 24 (14 Jan. 2014) PART 23 (24 Dec. 2013) PART 22 (17 Dec. 2013) PART 21 (13 Dec. 2013) PART 20 (10 Nov. 2013) PART 19 (6 Nov. 2013) PART 18 (26 Oct. 2013) PART 17 (16 Oct. 2013) PART 16 (8 Oct. 2013) PART 15 (2 Oct. 2013) PART 14 (28 Sept. 2013) PART 13 (25 July 2013) PART 12 (6 July 2013) PART 11 (6 July 2013) PART 10 (22 June 2013) PART 9 (22 June 2013) PART 8 (6 June 2013) PART 7 (31 May 2013) PART 6 (31 May 2013) PART 5 (15 May 2013) Parts 1-4 are in the first four posts of the thread. Historical Note: NOTE: This sequence of missions was begun in version 0.19 of Kerbal Space Program (in a game file that was stated in version 0.18). There have been many changes in KSP since then. I mention this in case you are wondering things like, "Why didn't he use Senior Docking Ports there," etc. ...but that's because such parts did not exist at the time. This does give you a taste for how the game has evolved over time. Long-term Laythe Mission - Part 1 Kerbal Space Center mission planners decided that the Next Big Mission should be a long-term stay on Jool's moon Laythe. All of the previous interplanetary missions have been mainly just to get to all of the moons and planets, have a look around, and come back home... with the notable exception of Desdin on Eve, who's still enjoying his life as an interplanetary hermit. Because KSC planners have been limiting themselves to reusable rockets and spacecraft as much as possible, the option of using a gigantic super-booster to launch everything to Laythe in one go was right out. They considered the option of assembling a massive ship in orbit and sending everything in one go from there, but the lack of any ability to add struts to a vehicle while in space would mean such a ship would be very wobbly... so that option was eliminated. (Man, we really need to get our kerbals the ability to do a little strut construction work in space!) So that left the "Armada Option" of sending a fleet of smaller ships. Initially planned to be four ships, this was later changed to five when mission planners decided to add an airplane/rover to the mission. Let me tell you right up front that controlling five ships simultaneously on an interplanetary expedition is NOT five times harder than controlling one ship... it's more like 5-squared times harder. Well, maybe not that much, but it did take up most of my free time for a couple weeks. Tug Time! The workhorse for this mission would be the Standard Nuclear Tug, seen below being launched on a Reusable Rocket. This tug is quite similar to the core of the Mark Twain spacecraft that I've used for all my previous interplanetary missions. A notable difference is the addition of token radiation shielding ahead of the nuclear thermal engines. On a typical interplanetary mission, the nukes would get less than one hour of runtime, so they wouldn't build up a huge amount of fission products in their reactor cores. But I plan to use these nuclear tugs for many trips back and forth between planets, so they would get "hotter" over time than the nukes on previous ships. For the trip to Jool, the tugs will include two X200-32 fuel tanks, the main one in front and an additional rear tank. The problem is that the Tug's 48-ton mass is more than the Reusable Rocket can put into orbit (it's limited to around 38 tons). And we can't just drop the sustainer stage and let the tug continue on into orbit because the sustainer stage must also get into orbit so that it can come around and land back at KSC for re-use. This problem was solved by having the tug fire its engines during the final part of the sustainer's burn... which added enough delta-V to get the combined stack into orbit. Then the tug could donate enough fuel (if needed) to the sustainer for it to return to Kerbin. Typically the tug used about less than 1/4 of the propellant in its rear fuel tank for all this. Below: Laythe Tug #1 in Kerbin orbit, waiting for its payload. Next came the launches of Tugs 2, 3, and 4. All using reusable rocket parts that I imagine are refurbished from the launch vehicles used to launch the sections of the Kerbin Space Station in an earlier project. But unfortunately Tug #4 got into trouble... ...and "flipped out" during boost. I don't understand why, but I sometimes run into the situation where a rocket will become very difficult to control during some part of the boost. For some of my asparagus-staged rockets, this can happen during the burn of the last two side boosters. For this Reusable Rocket, it can happen during turnover (which occurs rather late at 19,000 meters so that the separated boosters can land at KSC). The rocket just does not respond well to control commands, despite having vectoring engines, fins, and RCS. And it only happens SOMETIMES...not all the time. Weird. Frustrating. Most of the time, the weirdness can be gotten back under control, and all that is lost is some delta-V due to the rocket's wanderings from the desired path. But for Tug #4, the sustainer completely tumbled and ended up firing retrograde. Bugger. We ain't goin' to space today, kiddies. Since this was an "official mission flight," I couldn't just ignore it. And there was the question of what would happen to the two nuclear engines... do I just allow those to smash in at suborbital velocities, possibly annoying the neighbors? So I took action, separated the tug and got it stabilized, then separated the rear tank, then fired the engines all the way down to reduce speed and burn off as much propellant as possible, hoping for a slower impact velocity. I managed to get it down to just over 80 m/s before impact, and the reactor cores should be able to survive that. The trade off was that I made the reactors more radioactive from the couple minutes of firing. Ah, well... more obnoxious environmental impact paperwork to fill out. In the meantime, the deep sea fishies can have some nice heaters to warm their fins in the cold abyss. So mission rules got changed: No more launching nukes without an emergency recovery system. So parachutes were added to the nuke side-pods (the same setup used to recover the nukes from the Mark Twain ships, so I know it will work if needed). And up goes Laythe Tug #4b and #5. If you're keeping score, that's six rockets so far, with only one sustainer and one tug lost. I can hear the accountants scribbling even as I type. Hauling Hardware Now we start launching the actual mission hardware that the tugs will be tugging around. The first item is the Laythe Space Station, a scaled-down version of my station in Kerbin orbit. It will serve as a place in Laythe orbit where ships can be gathered and stored and refueled. In addition, on top of the station there there is a 2-kerbal lander can (upside-down) and a 4-kerbal container that are not technically part of the station, since they will be used to carry the kerbals back home to Kerbin several years from now. Below we also see the separation of the reusable boosters from the sustainer at 18,000 meters, just before turnover, so the boosters could be recovered at KSC (if the game bothered to follow them down). The sustainer deposits the Laythe Space Station into Kerbin orbit, then separates to return to the KSC. Unlike the Tugs, the other payloads for the Laythe mission are easily lifted by the Reusable Rocket because they only mass about 21 tons each (so the tugs can handily boost them to Jool). This leaves plenty of fuel in the Reusable Rocket's sustainer stage so that it can do a rocket-powered landing at KSC, rather than using its parachutes, which is always a crowd pleaser. Here are a couple landing sequences of the reusable sustainers, just for giggles, with MechJeb doing the controlling... If I had to do the controlling, I'd just pop the chutes. In fact, one of the sustainers fumbled its touchdown (I had the landing velocity set too low in MechJeb), and it tipped over, damaging the forward tank. Scribble, scribble, go the accountants. The next piece of mission hardware is the combined Laythe Base and Folding Fido rover package, which the Reusable Rocket deposits smartly into orbit. Then we have the Tanker payload. There should be enough leftover fuel in the tugs to complete the mission, but the Tanker gives us an extra safety margin (so that we could have enough fuel to rescue a kerbal stranded on a different island if the airplane is damaged). It's always good to have extra fuel. The hope is that when the hard working staff in KSC Division 0.20 come up with ways to locate and refine rocket fuel from the Laythe environment, we can ship the necessary equipment out to our Laythe kerbals. The late addition to the fleet was the BirdDog airplane/rover for exploring other islands. It's being boosted along with its GasStation on the Resuable Rocket below. And if you're still keeping score with my accountants, that's a total of ten rockets so far with no additional losses of reusable parts (except for the damaged sustainer mentioned above). Docking Docking Docking Now comes The Great Docking Fest! Below, Tug #1 rendezvous and docks with the Laythe Space Station. I don't have MechJeb 2.0 or any other auto-rendezvous/docking mods installed, but I do use the Lazor Docking Cam mod, and it makes docking so much easier -- not just because it helps you easily line up the ships to be docked (everyone tells you that), but because the camera view makes it easy to sort out which direction the i,j,k,l keys move you (which always took me time to get oriented so I wouldn't keep wasting RCS fuel firing in the wrong directions). Tug #2 mates up with the Base/Rover payload, which will be its constant friend all the way to the Jool system. Tug #3 docks with the Tanker payload. You may remember that our Tugs had to use some of their fuel to help the Reusable Rocket get them into orbit. So this Tanker payload was boosted along with a little Top-off Tank that replenished the fuel and RCS tanks of Tug #3, and then the Top-off Tank is dropped back to Kerbin. Tug #4b also docks (backwards) with Laythe Space Station ship. It will wait there for the crew to come up with their SSTO ship, which it will be Tug #4b's job to boost to Laythe. Tug #5 rendezvous and docks with the BirdDog/GasStation payload. One more Reusable Rocket launch is used to boost a Reusable Refueling ship into orbit. This ship then makes the rounds to all of the Tugs that still need their tanks topped off (below we see it docking with the Tug #2/Base/Rover ship). The Refueler ends up at Laythe Space Station ship where it tops off Tug #1 and Tug #4b. And then we wait. The hardware sits in orbit for almost a whole Kerbin year for the launch window to Jool to open before we send up the crew. Crew Casting About a week before the launch window to Jool opens up, I get the crew ready for the trip (well, I'm sure they've been training for a couple years now, but this is when I got them sorted out). I like the random nature of letting KSP choose the crew members for me...unless it makes silly choices. This long-term mission is going to need four brave, personable, and hygenic kerbals. They will ride up to the Laythe Space Station ship inside the SSTO rocket they will be taking with them to Laythe (where it will hopefully perform years of service ferrying kerbals down and up from the surface there). To get the crew for this ship (which appears on the pad unkerballed), I first "launch" two of the Crew Cart ships that hold three kerbals each, and drive them off of the launch pad (all the way beyond the circular raised area, so they don't get removed as pad debris), then bring out the Laythe SSTO. From Crew Cart #1, I got Aldner Kerman (makes sense, since he flight tested the BirdDog prototype in Kerbin orbit), Thompbles Kerman (previously the commander of the Minmus Moonbase, so he will be in charge), and Kurt Kerman (oldest member of the crew, and a very experienced pilot). From Crew Cart #2 I chose Nelemy Kerman (who had been with Thompbles on the Poll/Bop mission and Minmus Moonbase mission). So Nelemy got out of Crew Cart #2 and hopped onto the ladder of Crew Cart #1, and the team drove up to the SSTO on the launch pad for boarding. This is a special mid-range version of the SSTO rockets I use to ferry kerbals to and from Kerbin orbit. It will struggle a bit to get into Kerbin orbit, but will do fine around Laythe. It has four jet engines and two LV-T45 rocket engines. Initial liftoff is on both the jet and rocket engines, but the rocket engines are quickly turned off and the jet engines carry the ship up to 20,000 meters where it switches over to the rocket engines for the rest of the trip to orbit. Kurt gets it to orbit ("smooth as silk," or one of the other expressions he's famous for using) with 10 liters of fuel and 84 liters of oxidizer left in the tanks (there's more oxidizer because the jet engines used 74 liters of fuel during the boost). That wouldn't be enough to deorbit the SSTO...but it's not going back to Kerbin, it's heading for Laythe where it will be refueled for its job there. Below, at the Laythe Space Station ship (still in Kerbin orbit, of course) the Laythe SSTO docks to Tug #4b, which will be carrying it to the Jool system. The four kerbals EVA over to the various modules of the Laythe Space Station. On the trip out to Laythe, they will have two 4-kerbal containers and a 2-kerbal lander can to live in, so they should have plenty of room to be comfortable during the almost year-long trip (that's an Earth year, not a Kerbin orbital period). The Reusable Refueler puts a little fuel into the SSTO's tanks (which are still mostly empty), but keeps enough so that it can deorbit and head back to a parachute landing at KSC. The Laythe Space Station with Tug #1 then separates from the SSTO/Tug #4b combo, and we now have the Armada of five ships ready for the trip to Jool. Journey to Jool The boost to Jool takes a little under 2,000 m/s of delta-V, which for the two nuclear engines and the payload sizes of the various Tugs worked out to around 17 to 20 minutes for the injection burns. To be more efficient, I do these burns in two parts: the first burn (around or 10 minutes) throws the ship out beyond the orbit of the Mun; when the ship comes back around to periapsis (in about four days), the second part of the burn is done to send the ship off to Jool. This two-part burn is more efficient because more of the burn is done close to Kerbin where it takes advantage of the Oberth effect. This delay is why the crew started getting ready about a week before the Jool launch window. Below is one of the initial trajectory plots to Jool. I will now point out to you the Improved Maneuver Node mod in the upper right corner, and sing its praises! I had to do a lot of maneuver plotting for this mission, and I always used to go crazy from the way the maneuver nodes like to close on me when I didn't want them to close. GRRR. But no more! One of the features Improved Maneuver Node adds is the ability to reopen a maneuver node that just closed by simply pressing the "o" key. Now I laugh in the face of maneuver nodes and their capricious closing ways. Also, note that the mod allows you to set the "Conics mode". The default conic mode is 3, and I'm used to working with that, but I find it very difficult in mode 3 to tell what kind of orbit I'm getting at the destination planet ("hmm...is that a prograde squiggle or aretrograde squiggle?"). But setting conics mode to 0 lets you see the intercept orbit drawn relative to the planet (it's drawn at the current location of the planet, which some people find a bit off, but that's fine with me). By clicking on Jool to give it focus, I can zoom in and see exactly what the encounter trajectory will look like relative to Jool. It's so much easier to see what's going on. Sure, you can change the conics mode setting by editing your config file, but this mod lets you easily change it on the fly to whatever mode best suits your current operation. Now...if only I didn't occasionally switch focus to some probe I have in the Jool system instead of Jool itself when I click on it, I'd be deliriously happy. I started the burns with Tug #5, then #4b, then #3, then #2, and last #1 (the crew) so that I could abort the mission for this window if something went wrong with any of the important payloads. The good news is that all of the first burns were successful and the Mun did not get in the way. The bad news was that the payloads were somewhat wobbly (damn, I want my kerbals to be able to add struts in space), especially the Base/Rover stack. This meant that I couldn't just turn on ASAS to keep the ships pointed (or they would start wobbling like mad) or use high physics time warp (or they would start wobbling like mad), so I had to baby sit them a lot to keep them pointing on the maneuver node marker on the navball. The five images below show the five ships of the Armada during burn #1...and that represents about an hour of work there. And that's only half the boost. Below we see the orbits of the Armada ships after the first burns (the last one, Tug #1 with the crew, is still close in near Kerbin). The burns were spaced out roughly 3/4 of a day apart so that the ships would be coming back spread out over time so I could easily handle their second burns separately. As each ship came back around toward periapsis, I re-plotted the trajectory to Jool (which took about 1100 m/s delta-V now), and sent them on their merry ways with another 9 to 10 minute burn each. The pictures below of the ships' second burns represents another hour of work. You may be thinking about now that the option of boosting one giant ship to Jool in one go (and damn the wiggling of the huge structure) is a better way to go... and I won't necessarily argue with you. What I got after those two burns were five pretty transfer orbits, a couple of which are so close together that they overlap in the image below. The last time I sent multiple ships to Jool (three ships at once), my transfer orbits were quite a bit more spread out. And while I can smugly admire my handiwork and improved targeting skills, I also know that this means all those ships are going to arrive at Jool and want aerobraking attention at about the same time...and that will be one fun juggling act. Oh...the node for aligning with Jool's orbit was fairly close to Kerbin. There was plenty of time to get all the ships injected on their way before they got close to the node. The plane change burns took roughly two minutes for each ship (about 265 m/s delta-V). I also targeted the ships (with wonderful Conics mode 0) for periapsis values of around 120 km in prograde, near equatorial trajectories. Gotta love Conics mode 0. After the injection burns and plane changes, most of the ships had depleted the fuel in their Tug's rear tank, and had between 94% and 75% of the fuel left in their main tanks (the Tanker ship, with it's heavy fuel load, was the one down to 75%). Tug #1 with the Laythe Space Station and crew was the lightest, and it still had 11% of the fuel left in its rear tank. I did not jettison the empty tanks because they will eventually be left attached to the Laythe Station to hold fuel that will hopefully being coming up from future refining operations on the surface of Laythe. Next, in Part 2, the big juggling act of the payloads arriving at Jool, and then getting all the equipment landed on Laythe. Brotoro's Kerbal Space Program Web Pages

Yes, but that's where the bother comes in, having to toggle it off for every little maneuver. I can see where this is helpful if your ship is tiny (especially just a capsule) because then the capsule's amazing torque can cause things to spin so fast that kerbals should be getting squashed against the hull. But for any ship large enough to warrent adding separate SAS modules, this is not a desireable feature. The SAS modules should be smart enough (at least if an ASAS module is present) to NOT oppose my control inputs. In fact, it would be very helpful if the gyros in the SAS units actually worked WITH me to turn the ship. They can be passive dampeners the rest of the time. THAT would be an SAS module I'd find useful.

So the SAS parts are rotation dampeners...and they don't actually provide you with any torque when you try to steer (or when the ASAS tries to point the ship in its set direction). I did not understand that at first, but now I do. BUT...Do the SAS units also OPPOSE the motions I try to apply with my RCS or capsule torque? Because that would be annoying.

Huh. It never occurred to me to do that...I always just added one of the bigger capsules, but more probe cores would take less mass. Although you'd have to feed them electricity and there's the higher part count as tradeoffs.

I've wondered about the answer to this question myself. Certainly when you are coming UP from the surface of a planet and want to escape, the most efficient way to use your fuel is to boost into a very low orbit and make your escape burn from there (instead of going to a higher orbit first). BUT if you are already in a higher orbit, is it more efficient to expend energy to climb down into the planet's gravity well just so you can take advantage of the Oberth effect? Would you suggest that somebody in orbit around Pol drop way down to Jool to make their escape burn as well? Or is there a distance for which it is most efficient just to leave directly?

I don't "get" Quantum struts. If these kerbals had some force beam technology, I figure they'd be using it all over. So the concept looks out of place.

All my Kerbal Firsts in one image. All these guys returned safely (except for Desdin who's still living on Eve).

The ability to fold up a rover is cool... But now that I've been driving one around a lot on Laythe, I wished I would have just sent an non-folding version (like I used on Duna and Eve). The hinges have begun to act a bit strange over time. When I came back to the game after a save one day, the hinges were all a bit off in their connections, and not just in the direction the hinges move... The side parts of the rover are now on a bit crooked, so it's a little duck-footed or pigeon-toed (depending on the direction I drive it). It still works, but this small angle makes it more difficult to control going down hill. Also, the weakness of the hinges makes running at hugh physics warp impossible, since that phantom extra mass that the rover gains at physics warp causes it to bottom out... So driving long distances is tedious. It would be nice if my kerbals on EVA could just add some struts to the thing. The again, a lot of my other recent problems (wobbly vehicles assembled in orbit) could also be solved if the devs gave our kerbals the ability to add struts while on EVA.