TheSaint

Why, I'm glad you asked. <straightens tie> No, the tugs that are carrying the interplanetary probes don't circularize before they perform their departure burns at Kerbin periapsis. That way the excess orbital velocity they gain after coming down the gravity well from Minmus helps offset the dV requirements of their departure burn. For example, if we were to have launched Duna Explorer 1 directly from Kerbin Station, the departure burn would have required somewhere around 903 m/s. As executed, the departure burn required right around 300 m/s. Now, if you want to compare apples-to-apples, you need to include the departure burn from Minmus in your dV budget as well, which was around 142 m/s. But still, you can see that by launching the probes from Minmus we reduce the total departure dV requirement by a considerable amount. To coordinate the Minmus departure time with the Duna departure burn in Kerbin orbit we basically start about four weeks before the departure window, go into the map view for Kerbin Station and set up a Duna departure node, then warp forward until that node, Kerbin, and Minmus are lined up in a straight line make the interns in Orbital Dynamics figure it out. That gets us close enough. Obviously the departure burn almost never lines up with the optimum departure window date, but because of the dV gains from the Minmus slingshot that doesn't really seem to be an issue. We're working on better ways to coordinate this more closely, as well as other ways of reducing the dV requirements such as possibly performing plane change burns out at Minmus orbit where they require less dV. Obviously at this point these dV gains are somewhat academic. The tugs have more than enough dV to launch these probes from LKO. In fact, it looks like we didn't even need the extra tanks on the Duna Explorer launches, we probably could have launched them with just fully-fueled tugs alone. The goal at this point is to gain experience with the maneuver so that we can use it effectively with later kerballed launches. Shaving 400-500 m/s off of the dV budget of a large kerballed mission to Duna or Jool is huge. And when we begin to build a permanent base on Duna, these dV gains will translate directly to more payload per mission.

Duna Probes - Y1 D165-210 Well, now that Jool Explorer is off and away, it's time to focus on Duna. Our initial efforts in exploring Duna will naturally be unkerballed probes, just as with the outer planets. However, since the dV requirements to get to Duna are so much lower, we can afford to send a lot more hardware. Behold the Duna Explorer-series probe. Built by Kerman Systems Group on the same basic bus as the Sarnus/Jool Explorer probes, it has been heavily modified to accommodate operations in the inner system. The RTG power supplies have been replaced with solar panels and batteries. The single large communications array has been replaced with two smaller arrays. The science experiment suite has been updated to study the unique conditions on Duna. Most obviously, a roving lander has been added to enable surface exploration of Duna. Two separate Duna Explorer probes will be launched, allowing exploration of two different locations on the surface of Duna while the orbiters provide almost complete coverage of the Duna surface from orbit. In addition to pure scientific curiosity, one of the other goals of the Duna Explorer program is to provide imagery and data that will aid KSA leadership in selecting landing sites for future kerballed missions and possible locations for permanent Duna bases. So as we are currently about two months out from the Duna launch window, we should probably get on with bringing these things up to orbit. Duna Explorer 1 gets loaded on Marvin, the next spaceplane in the rotation, and gets flown up to Kerbin Station. Then, once Marvin is safely back on the ground, ArToo flies up carrying Duna Explorer 2. Then, once the two probes are stacked, Captain Keeling brings Orbital Tug 5 over to dock with the stack, and the tug departs with the probes for Minmus. Tug 5 arrives in the vicinity of Minmus about eight days later. It rendezvouses with Minmus Station and Captain Kirkpatrick brings it in to dock. Tug 5 gets moved over to an empty docking port where the engineers get to work refueling it. Meanwhile, the pilots get to work arranging the probe stacks. The station and base crews have been busy for a few days, getting Orbital Tugs 1 and 4 and their external tanks fueled and arranged. Now the station pilots bring the tugs around and dock them with their probes. Everything is now prepared for the probes' departure. All we have to do now is wait for Minmus to align itself properly so that the departure burns will take place at the proper time and place. About four weeks later, the planets finally align. Captain Kirkpatrick does the honors once more and undocks Orbital Tug 4/Duna Explorer 1 from its port and backs it away from the station. Mission Control takes over the tug and burns for Minmus departure. A day later, they repeat the same process with Orbital Tug 1/Duna Explorer 2. Once the tugs are clear of Minmus, they each separate the fairings that have been protecting the probes to reduce mass. The tugs coast down towards Kerbin, gaining orbital velocity as they go. Tug 4 reaches its Kerbin periapsis of about 400km, and then it burns for Duna. Once the departure burn is complete, the tug releases Duna Explorer 1, which immediately deploys its solar panels. Tug 4 then turns retrograde and burns to enter its return orbit. Much like Tug 6 after Jool Explorer, it will burn again in 9 days to return back to Minmus Station in about three weeks. A day later, Tug 1/Duna Explorer 2 arrives in the vicinity of Kerbin and repeats the same procedure. So both Duna Explorers are now on their way to the Red Planet, they should arrive in about six months or so. Excellent work, everyone. So, the next project on the plan will be some expansions and improvements at Farside Base and Minmus Base. We'll also be launching a probe to Eve when that window opens up, but that isn't for a while yet.

It was not the measles....

Free association story of the night: Our last dog was an American Staffordshire Terrier. Colloquially known as a "pit bull". She apparently had been bred by someone who intended to use her for dog fighting or some other nefarious purpose, so when she was only a couple of weeks old they cut her ears off in the classic pit bull style. But they cut her ears too close to her head, so they became severely infected. And since dogs are disposable to that sort of worthless scum, instead of treating her they dumped her on the side of the road somewhere. Someone found her and dropped her off at the Humane Society, who nursed her back to health, and then my wife adopted her about six months before we met. She was the best guard dog ever. If someone came and rang the doorbell, she would charge the door and bark like she was going to tear the door off its hinges and swallow them whole. If we opened the door and let them in she would turn around and hide behind Mom. When salesmen came to the door if we opened it we were not surprised to hear their sales pitch from ten or twelve feet down the driveway. At one point, when we were still living in California, the doorbell rings one day. My wife answers the door, and it was a Los Angeles County Sheriff Deputy. Apparently the house next door to us had been burgled during broad daylight, and many of the other houses in the neighborhood showed signs of attempted forced entry. He wanted to inspect our house for signs of forced entry as part of his investigation. He and my wife went around the house and looked and saw nothing amiss. My wife looked down at our dog and said, "Good girl." The deputy laughed.

Well, mark time: The new dishwasher made it three years without needing a repair. That...doesn't seem that long to me. Oddly enough, it was the four-bladed chopper that died. So the dishwasher is down now until the new part shows up on Thursday. Get to washing those dishes, kids. Builds character.

I think there are ways that the Soviet Union could have made it to the Moon first. I've always said that if we want to thank one person for the U.S. winning the race to the Moon, we should thank Lee Harvey Oswald. I think that if Kennedy had not been assassinated Congress would have fought much harder against funding for NASA. The battle in Congress all through the Cold War was always "Guns vs Butter". NASA was neither of those. The only reason Apollo got the funding it did after 1963 was because we were doing it for Kennedy's memory. If there had not been those emotional heart strings plucked, sure, I think that Apollo could have been delayed past 1970, 1972, or later. Why do you think all the funding dried up after we landed on the Moon? Because we fulfilled Kennedy's goal. We were done. I also think that different circumstances in Soviet leadership could have changed things on that side as well. What if Korolev had not been imprisoned by Stalin, and therefore never developed the kidney disease that ultimately claimed his life? What if Khrushchev had played his cards better and hadn't been ousted by Brezhnev? There's all sorts of possibilities on that side of the pond. So there probably isn't one single inflection point you could tweak that would make it happen, but a number of different changes could make it possible. It just depends on how much you want to tweak history. Just remember: Ultimately, it isn't about technology. It's about politics and money.

Because, reasons.

Departure of Jool Explorer - Y1 D156-164 Wow. I had the weirdest dream last night. It was like everything was the same, but somehow totally different. Like the spaceplanes all had kerbonauts on them. And we built Farside Base before Minmus Base. And none of the orbital tugs had numbers on them and nobody could tell them apart. And Britney Spears was all crazy and shaved her head and was running around with knives and stuff. I mean, it was wild. No more coffee after dinner for me. Anyway, back to the tasks at hand. Jool Explorer is departing Minmus Station today. Captain Kirkpatrick does the honors and undocks the Tug 6/tank/probe stack from the station and backs it away. (Author's note: That was another change I made: I did away with the Interplanetary Tugs. I realized that I could get more dV by simply flying the probes with a regular orbital tug with a full hydrolox tank attached. That made the Interplanetary Tugs redundant hardware.) Once the tug is clear, Mission Control takes over and the tug burns to depart Minmus. Once the burn is complete and the tug is on a departure trajectory, they deploy the fairing around the probe to reduce the mass of the stack. Now everybody settles in and waits. The Jool departure burn won't be for about another eight days at this point. =========================================== Well, now it's day 164, and we can take a break from managing the crew changeover at Farside Base to oversee the departure of Jool Explorer. Tug 6 is approaching Kerbin periapsis. All systems check out, and we are go for burn. Burn complete. Jool Explorer separates and the tug turns around for its braking burn. Then the tug burns into a highly elliptical orbit around Kerbin. That went very well. The Orbital Mechanics guys just got back and told me that the tug is due to burn again in nine days to plot a course back to Minmus, where it should arrive in about three weeks. Good job everybody!

I know, right? I always laugh when people talk about how they spent their 21st birthday. I spent my 21st birthday 400 feet underneath the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, transiting back from my first Mediterranean deployment. "Happy birthday! Now go relieve the watch!" LOL. <rolleyes>

Okay, so, I have a confession to make. I've been cheating on you all. I rebooted the save months ago. I got to a point in the original save where I (once again) started to encounter some instability and kraken-errors in the save. So I started to troubleshoot what was going on. And I thought I figured out what was going on, and what I thought was going to fix it involved starting over again from scratch. So I started over again. But since I was starting over again I said to myself, "Self, since you are starting over again, instead of doing everything exactly the same, why don't you just fix some of those nagging little things that have been bugging you for the last year?" So I did. And then I got to the point where I thought that the fix was going to fix things, and it didn't. And that happened to coincide with the time when my life was getting really busy and overwhelming, so I kind of just let this drop to focus on the rest of it. After a little while, I got back to this. After some really extensive troubleshooting, I finally figured out what was causing the kraken-stuff, and it had nothing to do with starting over. But I had already started over and put all the work into fixing all the little annoying stuff. So, after some brief deliberation, I've decided to just forge ahead with the second save. If this offends you, I apologize. So, here is a quick rundown of what is different now in The Scrape of Things to Come 2.0: Of course I started with Kerbin Station. It's mostly the same. A small change: I swapped the escape pods and the supply module, because having the supply module on the south side makes it easier to swap supply modules on resupply. But then things start getting different. I added a couple of elbow modules to provide permanent homes for the cargo drones. And one of the biggest changes I made (everywhere) was that I added actual numbers to all of the drone vehicles. It makes it much easier to keep track of which vehicle is which. Another major change to the timeline: I built at Minmus first. Development went much faster because I didn't have to fly as much fuel to build at The Mun. So now, on Day 164, Minmus Station is much more developed. But it has otherwise followed the same development path. Minmus Base is also much the same. Although I did decide to only use two pylons for lander connections, which let me place the reactor even further away. (Safety Third!) The only other change on base design was that I redesigned the airlock module, which cascaded down and made the entire base construction process much easier. I realize that probably isn't very intuitive, but you just have to trust me there. Then I moved on and built Mun Station, which is identical to the one in the original save. Farside Base is also mostly identical. Although I think I like the original site better than the site in Save Two. It was flatter and had less rocks. But the biggest change in the second save is to the spaceplane. I decided to redesign it to be unkerballed. This was a huge quality-of-life upgrade for me in the second save, because I no longer had to manage these huge rosters of kerbonauts. The only time kerbals go up is when they are going to stay up. Plus deleting the mass of the life support system and replacing it with fuel increased the payload capacity of the spaceplane. Although in practice all that really did was increase its operational margin, since most of its payloads never even come close to its maximum payload mass. You may be asking, "If it's robotic, how do the kerbals get into space at all?" Well, that would be the Cargo Bay Personnel Pod, or "The Pod", as the hangar guys call it. It carries up to sixteen kerbals in relative comfort up to or down from orbit in the spaceplane's cargo bay. It's actually safer than the original design, because in the event of a vehicle failure the entire pod can be ejected from the spaceplane. It can survive reentry on its own and lands with parachutes. (Yes, I've tested it.) Another side effect of having an unkerballed spaceplane is that I decided that it is no longer required to operate only during daylight. Unkerballed flights can launch and land at night. Which really increases the operational tempo. We're back in black. Since the Kerbal Space Agency only numbers robotic spacecraft, the four drone spaceplanes don't have official names. However the ground crew have given them unofficial nicknames which are painted on their sides: ArToo, Robby, Gort, and Marvin. So, that's where I'm at. I'm otherwise roughly in the same place I ended the first save. Sarnus Explorer is on it's way, and Jool Explorer is just about to leave. The Duna rovers are a couple months away from departure, and Project Draco is still waiting in the wings. I'll try to squeeze out another update this week. Thanks for hanging in there with me!

My wife did her PT internship in Yreka and Bend. She concurs on everything, including the beer.

LOL. Actually it's Margerie Glacer, at the top of Glacier Bay.

We went on vacation last week, took a cruise to Alaska. Alaska was wonderful. (Pics in the spoiler.) However, the cruise itself was not wonderful. The quality of the food and service was way below what we were expecting based on cruises we've taken in the past, despite the fact that this was one of the most expensive vacations we've ever taken. It was very disappointing. That, combined with the other news we received last week, made me come back feeling like I needed a vacation after I got back from my vacation.

My best friend's niece committed suicide last week. Nineteen years old. I never met her, but he and I had talked about her a lot, because there had been a lot of family drama revolving around her over the last couple of years. It has shaken him a lot, and by extension shaken me a lot. If any of you are inclined to pray, send one up for Eric and his family tonight. And if any of you ever think about that sort of thing, talk to somebody. Anybody. It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Well, I'll see what I can do about that then. I don't have the time on my hands that I used to, so it will probably wind up being more of a highlight reel. And the next two weeks I'm pretty slammed, so don't expect much until the middle of October.

Just curious. Is anyone interested in me continuing this?

LOL I've played Juno: New Origins. They are correct, it is not Kerbal Space Program.

Sorry, I'll stop free-associating now....

Apparently so...

Mine isn't that bad. But I know if I go forward one revision on the firmware the printer will stop working if it detects a non-HP toner cartridge. So I am stuck on this firmware revision forever.