Project Byzantium: A tale of renaissance and rebirth in Real Solar System 64K

Northstar1989 · March 3, 2015

Hi guys, so I decided it was about time to stop wasting my time debating rocket science (and racking up infractions) in the Science Labs, and put as many of my ideas into practice as possible in a semi-realistic Mission Reports playthrough- occasionally putting my knack for storytelling into action in the process. This is Kerbal, so don't expect full realism or seriousness- but some of the general ideas still hold, and I am playing with a large assortment of realism-mods...

The Premise:

Kerbal-kind had abandoned manned space exploration beyond Low Earth Orbit after a series of manned Mun missions (sound familiar?) for more than 40 years of mucking around with space stations and ground-science, and after a period of time let go of the capabilities to do even that. Knowledge and capabilities in rocketry slowly decayed since that time, but Kerbal ground-based physics, chemistry, and astronomy continued to advance...

Finally, after more than 70 years since traveling to the Mun for the first time (yeah, this is supposed to be set a bit in the future) Kerbals have decided, under the leadership of a charismatic politician- Northstar Kerman- to return to space. Some critics level charges of it being a waste of resources better spent on "other pursuits" at the renewed space program- but this has only energized engineers to seek ways to save on costs through new technology and reusability...

Plans have already been drawn up for In Situ Resource Utilization (including Propulsive Fluid Accumulators) to be made use of wherever possible to save on long-term costs and the chemistry has been extensively validated on the ground, Microwave Beamed Power is undergoing intensive finalizing research and development and is hoped will be available within 2 years, primitive Mass Drivers are currently undergoing extensive testing for a highly-reusable alternative to Solid Rocket Boosters for the initial boost off the Launchpad, and some engineers even whisper of something called a "Cycler Ship" as cheaper way to get Kerbals to Duna with plenty of onboard living-space available...

Although much knowledge has been lost (current capabilities barely exceed 1970's standards, aka. rocket tech level 5 in RealFuels+Stockalike) it is hoped that by the end of the decade Kerbals will have set foot on Duna and by paving the way for a brilliant new sustainable future in space.

Here is an except from Northstar Kerman's groundbreaking speech:

"In the words of one of my great predecessors, we strive to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. We must push forth, cross new expanses and explore new lands not because of today, but because of the future. If we do these things, our children's children's children's children will look to the stars some day, and see not Duna in the night-sky but Kerbin.

They will remember these days as being when Kerbal-kind first set forth and explored new worlds on their own feet. When adolescents were inspired to become engineers, and adults were inspired to become writers and poets dreaming of the stars. We will leave a legacy for future generations not of cowardice, but of bravery. Not of stagnation, but of progress. In my training as a biologist, I learned one thing- grow or die. That is the way of life. That must be the way of our species. By consigning our fates to this small planet we sign our death-warrants. By reaching for the stars, we birth our future.

Here are screenshots of the first set of launches, of Munar-1: the first attempted Kerbal Mun-landing in more than 70 years. Wanting to set a bold example, Gene Kerman (the new administrator of the KSC) has decided to place not two but FOUR Kerbals on the Munar surface for this initial landing...

The first launch consisted of a science-package for the Mun Lander and a refueler.

Due to limitations of the Vehicle Assembly Building construction-capabilities and the launchpad (30 parts, 36 meters of height, and 140 tons of dry-mass), a rocket that could lift both the necessary scientific equipment and fuel for the 5-Kerbal lander, as well as the lander itself, was deemed impossible until improvements to the facilities could be made.

Instead, to save on costs and work withing existing limitations, a series of rocket pushing the very limits of these facilities (and making use of on-launchpad refueling to increase the maximum rocket weight beyond what could be moved to the launchpad by the crawler) were designed. Each, highly-similar to the last, but with slight but significant modifications- for instance replacing one off-the-shelf rocket engine-cluster (R&D purchases are enabled in this save, but the engines ultimately selected were already purchased for earlier missions) with another more powerful upper-stage engine for the first launch, or attaching 3 radial boosters to the sustainer-stage of the Command/Service Module (which was the heaviest payload of the 3 launches)

This is not a game-bug with the recovery of the Lander Launch Vehicle's sustainer-stage. The crash-tolerance of the engine was 60 m/s, whereas its terminal-velocity was only 54 m/s. Engineers remained uncertain as to whether the empty balloon-tanks could manage to survive this impact- until somebody pointed out that they no longer had the mass of a 20+ metric-ton fully-fueled 5-man Mun lander or more than 70 tons of upper-stage hypergolic rocket fuels onboard to support, and that the g-forces experienced by the lithobraking would thus be well within their capabilities. Minor repairs to the equipment were still deemed necessary afterwards...

(OOC: Consider these repairs part of the cost-recovery factor, which honestly is excessively low for just loading an empty rocket stage onto a barge and shipping it across the ocean... IIRC real-life Sea Dragon launch-stage was, not coincidentally, designed for splashdown and recovery at exactly the same Terminal Velocity of 54 m/s... In some ways, splashdown is actually harder on the equipment when you have a vertical touchdown trajectory, as the pressure on the sides of the rocket becomes comparatively large due to fluid pressure- this horizontal pressure is actually why the Falcon 9 launch-stage that ruptured after splashdown in real life did so, not because of the vertical component of the forces of the soft-landing...)

The Lander and the Command/Service Module docked and rendezvoused in orbit before proceeding to the Mun together. Unfortunately, I missed out on taking screenshots of some of the rather spectacular scenes that resulted from the docking+transfer due to not deciding to start this Mission Report until after I realized I still really wanted to do one of these a day later. Rest-assured though, I'll try and grab at least a few more screenshots along the way (I won't be taking screenshots *quite* as obsessively as in some of my previous Mission Reports, where reporting became a chore, however- so don't be disappointed if you only see fragmentary records of the key moments of missions for long stretches at a time...)

Regards,

Northstar

Specialist290 · March 4, 2015

Intriguing idea. Glad to seeing Kerbal-kind making a triumphant return to the Mun in the "present" generation.

(I'll admit I skimmed over some of the bigger albums in your previous attempts, so the lower density of images won't necessarily be too great a loss That said, I understand perfectly the desire to want everything captured on camera -- after all, sometimes you don't know which little details are going to have big repercussions in the future.)

Northstar1989 · March 7, 2015

Northstar Kerman tossed and turned before the night of his second big speech. And he dreamed...

At first, he dreamt of the the Munar-1 mission going smoothly. But then came the landing...

"We're coming down too fast!" shouted one Kerbal, "Activate the abort sequence" shouted another. "It's too late- we're going to die!" shouted a third still...

Northstar Kerman, understandably, slept uneasily:

Then Northstar woke up, pinched his pale green cheeks a little to bring back some color to them, and remembered that the Command/Service Module still hadn't even yet made it to Low Kerbin Orbit...

As Northstar and the rest of Kerbal-kind watched the launch of the Command/Service Module that day they were giddy with excitement...

Sure, the CSM made it off the launchpad a little late due to some last-minute adjustments (engineers muttered something about wanting to optimize the shape of the nose...) and had to follow a mission-trajectory that wasted excessive amounts of fuel orbiting within the upper atmosphere for a period of time in order to keep up with the mission-timetable as a result, but the end was still undeniably exciting- the 4 Kerbal crew of the Munar-1 mission was now in space between the LEM and Command/Service Module, and all critical mission-equipment for the Munar landing was in place as well!

A few hours after the launch, the Command/Service Module and LEM had rendezvoused+docked in Low Kerbin Orbit, and soon began the first half of their trans-Munar injection burn...

In order to save fuel, and reduce the needed engine-mass in orbit, the mission plan called for a "periapsis kick" maneuver during the trans-Munar injection: the docked pair of vehicles would first perform a burn to enter an elliptical orbit, and then follow that orbit back around to the next periapsis such as to perform more of the ejection-burn close to Kerbin and take greater advantage of the Oberth Effect... (named after one strangely-named Kerbal: Hermann Oberth)

Then came the launch of one more previously-unannounced vehicle that Northstar suspected was the real cause of the earlier delay: the launch of the Munar-1 fuel tanker, a vehicle designed to rendezvous with and refuel the Command/Service Module (which would burn more of its fuel getting the Lander to the Mun than in previous mission plans, so the Lander had to burn less) in Munar orbit to provide it with the fuel to get the Kerbals home...

Like with all the other Munar-1 launches, the sustainer stage was recovered and refurbished, for use in future high-payload launches such as additional Mun landings, and mission Northstar could only dream of... But dream he would- and Northstar did not forget about his speech on the future of manned Kerbal space exploration later that day...

Ladies, Gentlemen. I have heard some Kerbals criticize and complain about my earlier comments about our great, great grandchildren living on Duna some day. Allow me to explain.

The study of life sciences and evolution teaches one this above all. Life grows, life adapts. When it stops growing and giving birth to children, it decays and dies. But in order to meet the challenges in the meantime, life must adapt.

I do not fall prey to the fallacy that we will someday kerra-form Duna to be like Kerbin, as some critics have supposed. Rather, I believe that future generations will learn to adapt to the harsh climate of Duna. They will learn to dig their shelters underground to seek protection from the harsh, high-radiation environment and insulation from the cold. They will learn to rely on local energy-sources such as solar and nuclear power, grow crops in greenhouses to extract precious food and oxygen from the atmosphere, mine sub-surface water, and perhaps utilize the energy-sources that give rise to trace amounts of methane found in the Dunan atmosphere- should they be geological. They will learn to live in pressurized underground habitats and make them pleasant places to live instead of seeking to turn the surface into a Kerbin-like paradise...

And, most of all, they will learn to make use of local sources of rocket propellant- because without it communications satellites, solar power-collectors, and occasional passenger-trips to the Kerbin-system will simply not be possible in a sustainable manner. They will learn to do these things and more- not to save money- as motivates us today, but to survive, and someday expand their colonies to provide living-space for their children...

(OOC: The failed landing wasn't a dream, of course- I started the final landing-burn far too late and immediately after a quicksave- and as a result I had to revert all the way to a backup save right before the launch of the CSM in order to avert the disaster...)

Regards,

Northstar

Specialist290 · March 10, 2015

Ouch! Bad luck with the flubbed landing there... though glad to hear it was "all just a dream" for the crew! (Here's hoping the actual landing goes much more smoothly, both literally and figuratively.)

Northstar1989 · March 10, 2015

OOC: Oooh, you guys really aren't going to like this next one (I know I don't...)

Northstar Kerman woke up sweating from another dream.

"What is it with all these nightmares lately?" he thought.

"I've got a speech this morning trying to get the space program re-instated, and now I'm up at 0400 drenched in sweat, and unable to get images of a giant squid out of my mind".

Indeed Northstar Kerman had a terrible dream. In it, he had launched a glorious new space program starting with a return mission to the Mun when, out of nowhere, a giant squid-like creature everyone kept calling the "Kraken" appeared out of nowhere and devoured all the program's vessels in orbit...

"Good thing we haven't begun the program yet" though Northstar. "Better go and prepare for that speech..."

Later that morning Northstar Kerman did indeed make his third and final glorious speech arguing in favor of the Kerbal Congress proposal to re-instate the space program...

Some of your have asked, what will be the benefit of these future colonies to Kerbals here on Kerbin? It's too expensive to ship materials from Duna back to Kerbin you say- and you are correct. Taxation, you insist, has little meaning and no sustainability if these colonies can provide no useful services to obtain this money that can't be more easily provided back at home- and that is true, although there will always be some services (such as software-development) where Dunan firms could someday sell their goods alongside local ones in markets here on Kerbin. What then can they provide?

I answer your question with one word- knowledge. Knowledge not just of the solar system and the stars, but of the very nature of life- for if Duna should harbor life of its own, we will gain a great deal of insight into life here on our own planet from studying it. Knowledge not just of Dunan atmospheric chemistry, atmospherics, and geology- but a better understanding of how these processes work here on Kerbin. And, all the entrapments of civilization that are of benefit to improve no matter where we live...

A Cure for Cancer has eluded our scientists for decades, but has a greater chance of being discovered by the combined scientific prowess of the greatest minds of two planets- rather than just one. A new hardy perennial version of an annual crop that never requires replanting and can survive on less water will be useful for farmers and agriculutral scientists struggling to raise crops in greenhouses in Duna's low-temperature, low-light, low-water conditions: but a handful of seeds of this new cultivar shipped back to Kerbin will be just as useful for farmers struggling to raise crops on the edge of the tundras and deserts here on Kerbin. A solution to the problems of high-energy physics and nuclear engineering that have held us back from developing practical fusion power and improved fission reactors for decades will solve our energy-crisis here on Kerbin just the same as fusion-rockets will ease interplanetary travel and improved fission reactors will better provide power-hungry Duna colonies with the electricity they need to grow and thrive.

Many scientists on Kerbin have acquired the foul taint of becoming ivory-tower intellectuals who care little for the public good here on Kerbin, but on Duna practical results-driven science and engineering will not just be an ideal, it will be necessary just to survive. Someday, the benefits of this knowledge here on Kerbin will exceed our wildest dreams.

OOC: Yeah... You read that right- the Kraken came and ate all my vessels in orbit.

Something about updating TweakScale or Procedural Parts didn't sit well with the FAR aerodynamics module, and even after reverting both back to the previous versions (1.5.1 and 1.0.0) all my vessels continued to lose the majority of their parts upon loading (nothing but probe cores and solar panels remained- and even these would usually spontaneously explode upon physics loading...)

So, I'm going to have to launch my Munar-1 mission all over again, although this time a set of edits I made (and then reverted, and then made again) to Procedural Parts to relax the tech-limits to generally match what is possible with NovaPunch2 or stock (whichever is more permissive) at a given tech-level means that I can likely carry out the mission with fewer, heavier launches... My primary crew members will be dead until re-spawn, though, due to the termination of their vessel (loading the LEM/CSM up crashes the game), so I might have to carry out some minor contracts (like a bunch of seismic scan contracts near the KSC I've been accumulating in preparation for a rover mission) in the meantime...

As a side-note, technically this means I am no longer playing with the standard version of Procedural Parts. But the tech-limits for RealFuels tanks there had not been changed since before the Asteroid Redirect Mission update, and did not reflect what was available with mods at all (the comments indicated it was balancing against the Rockomax-64 being the largest fuel tank available at a tech level where stock 3.75 meter parts and NovaPunch2 5 meter parts would normally be available, for instance). The effect was that I could have 3.75-meter engines available, but not be able to build fuel tanks wider than 3 meters (not even 3.75 meters), which frankly I found ridiculous. So, I created a more reasonable tech-limits config file (the limits disappear at MetaMaterials anyways...) and posted it on the Procedural Parts thread as a new suggested standard for the RealFuels tank tech-limits...

More launches (or takeoffs, or roll-offs) to come soon.

Regards,

Northstar

Edited March 10, 2015 by Northstar1989

Sampa · March 10, 2015

poor guy...

Specialist290 · March 11, 2015

Ouch! That's an unfortunate turn of events. Ah well, hoping you don't have too much trouble getting everything built back up again.

Northstar1989 · March 16, 2015

It was a disappointment. But it did give me an excuse to re-design my mission to be more efficient...

Anyways, the first thing I did after that disaster was to complete a contract to launch a Kerbosynchronous satellite to make a bit of money...

That went smoothly, Space-X style as is usual for my launches (although I didn't quite have enough fuel to make it back to the launchpad with the launch-stage...)

Regards,

Northstar

- - - Updated - - -

OK, so I decided to carry out my Munar-1 mission differently this time. The first launch was of a fuel-module...

This payload consists of a large fuel tank containing LqdHydrogen (which will be used by a Nuclear Thermal Tug transfer-stage) and some hypergolics for the Lander...

Following that, I launched the engine-module. I rarely use the same rocket twice, but for the sake of time I decided to just re-use the same launch vehicle as before with a few minor refinements... (re-using launch vehicle designs is more realistic anyways)

I called it a "tug" (like I called the fuel-module a "tanker") but it is really just a big liquid Hydrogen tank with a nuclear thermal rocket engine attached. It has no command or control ability of its own, and will rely on other mission-modules for that...

The pictures cut out kind of abruptly (as that's where I took my last screenshot), but what I basically did was park the engine-module extremely close to the fuel-module, leaving it attached to its upper-stage so I could keep the Hydrogen tanks in the payload topped-off at the expense of reserve-fuel from the upper-stage being used to replace boil-off... I'll use another module to dock the fuel and engine modules together later...

Regards,

Northstar

P.S. Despite recently drawing up a more reasonable set of tech-limits for ProceduralParts that allowed me to utilize 3.75 meter engines for the Launch Vehicles instead of being limited to 2.5 meter parts (as the fuel tanks are now limited to 4 meters at the tech-level when NovaPunch2 gives players their first 3.75 meter engines, not 3 meters...) and using them in this save while I wait for them to (hopefully) officially become a part of ProceduralParts (the current tech-limits were so ancient that fuel tanks limits were based off the tech tree before the SLS parts were even introduced...) I still have to conduct this mission with multiple launches. I simply can't lift heavy enough payloads with 4 meter diameter rockets to put 5 Kerbals on the Mun in just one launch (Saturn V was 10 meters in diameter in real life!)

Edited March 16, 2015 by Northstar1989

Northstar1989 · March 17, 2015

My next launch was of the Control Module for the Munar-1 tug...

This component contains the probe core (a MechJeb2 radial unit- mainly for the enhanced telemetry and Delta-V budget calculations- though the extra precision in executing maneuvers is also nice...) another large fuel tank (this segment containing both Ammonia and Hydrogen tanks...) and a reaction wheel...

As usual, the launch-stage was recovered after the launch:

The central engine (the launch-stage is propelled by a 7-engine cluster with a single engine in the center it uses for landing) cut out for no discernible reason just seconds from spalsh-down, though... (not pictured as I quickly switched back to the Main Mission before buggy water-physics could destroy any part of my launch-stage...) Luckily the launch-stage didn't have enough time to pick back up dangerous levels of velocity before it splashed down. I'm still not sure why the engine cut out, as it hand plenty of fuel left, though...

The Control Module then proceeded to rendezvous and dock with the Fuel Module- which proved to be a rather annoying/difficult docking as the Fuel Module had no attitude-control capabilities whatsoever...

And then, with only scant scraps of electrical power remaining, the upper stage decoupled and recovered to the near vicinity of the KSC... Only AFTER I acidentally decoupled the Control Module from the Fuel Module and had to kick myself and quickly dock them again...

All in all, it was a slightly bumpy, but largely successful mission...

By the way, take note of the fact that the Munar-1 tanker has tanks for both Nitrogen and Hydrogen, as well as Ammonia (which is composed of Nitrogen and Hydrogen).

Although I won't be using it in this capacity just yet, this DOES allow me to eventually use the tug for hauling Ammonia manufactured from ISRU around (for instance from Nitrogen scooped off Kerbin or Laythe with a Propulsive Fluid Accumulator, and Hydrogen from Jool or launched from the surface of Kerbin) or to hold Nitrogen and Hydrogen from breaking Ammonia back down via electrolysis (Ammonia is basically the densest possible way to store Hydrogen- holding more than twice as much hydrogen-mass per cubic-meter as actual Liquid Hydrogen, and having an even higher hydrogen-fraction than Water such as to beat it out for hydrogen-storage density despite Ammonia's comparatively lower overall density... Also, unlike Liquid Hydrogen, Ammonia will never boil-off in RealFuels or real life...) Both these functions courtesy of KSP-Interstellar Extended and the KSP-I ISRU Refineries in it.

These storage-capacities, as well as the overall high ISP of the Particle Bed Reactor-based Nuclear Thermal propulsion system (which won't soon become outdated, unlike chemical rockets, which increase in tech-level and thus slightly in ISP and Thrust with every new rocketry node I unlock in RealFuels...) mean that this tug will likely see extended re-use well into the future after I am done with the Munar-1 mission...

Regards,

Northstar

Edited March 17, 2015 by Northstar1989

Northstar1989 · March 26, 2015

OOC: OK guys, I know there's been a bit of a gap since my last post, but don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you...

Northstar Kerman looked through the reports of the past week. The Munar-1 mission had certainly been making a lot of progress!

First, there was the launch of the Supplementary Fuel Module:

This vehicle had launched and rendezvoused with the Control Module and Fuel Module #1, then docked to form a continuous vessel...

Shortly after that, the manned Lander Module had launched to orbit!

It had been another launch with launch-stage recovery, and that had went smoothly:

The upper stages were designed for recovery as well (although significantly further down-range). The recovery of the first portion of the upper stage went well:

However looking over the accounting department's records for the recovery of the second upper stage (which was little more than a fuel tank and a spent fairing with a parachute attached) Northstar couldn't help but notice that the space program had spent more funding on the recovery-systems than the estimated value of the recovered components!

Financial considerations aside, recovery of both upper stages had went smoothly- as had the circularization of the Lander's orbit under its own engine power...

After reaching orbit, the Lander Module then proceeded to rendezvous and dock with the Engine Module ("Tug"), and attach a solar panel to a prepared electrical conduit on the vessel as planned- with only a slight hiccup in the Kerbal engineer initially fastening the solar panel to the wrong part of the craft...

OOC: I know there is no such thing as a prepared electrical conduit in KSP- but I had to rationalize this somehow from an in-character perspective!

Regards,

Northstar

Northstar1989 · March 26, 2015

After assembling the full Munar-1 mission vehicle (not shown) the transfer to Munar orbit was carried out:

I had actually hoped to perform the transfer with a periapsis kick, but it appears I had begun my transfer too early for this to work- the Muna would have been well past position by the time my transfer orbit could have carried the Munar-1 vessel out that far if I had waited for it to swing around an elliptical orbit before completing the transfer...

Thereafter, the recovery of remaining upper-stages still in orbit went smoothly:

The capture-burn at the Mun went smoothly:

After which I performed plenty of !SCIENCE! in Low Kerbin Orbit (bonus-points to anyone who recognized what other gaming-community that phrase comes from...)

And finally, the moment you've all been waiting for! The first LANDING of this Career Save:

This wasn't my most fuel-efficient landing ever, but it was a success- and left me with more than enough fuel to get back into Munar orbit. But before I did return to orbit, I took the time to do a little !SCIENCE!

Among the achievements, these 5 Kerbals were the first to set foot on the Mun in more than 60 years! (or the first ever in this save) All 5 of them took turns walking around a little on the Mun, despite the lack of scientific necessity for so many Kerbals to descend from the lander to the surface...

The ascent and rendezvous+docking with the tug went just as smoothly, perhaps more so...

Then came the return-trip to Kerbin:

As planned, the Mun Lander carried the Kerbals to Low Kerbin Orbit (with a propulsive-assisted aerobrake into orbit) but did not return to Kerbin's surface. Instead, it transferred four of the five Kerbals over to a specialized lightweight re-entry vehicle which featured little more than a de-orbit engine, a parachute, a fuel tank to act as heat-shield and protect the Kerbals, a probe core, and 4 External Command Seats... (one Kerbal will remain in orbit to accompany a future mission before returning to Kerbin)

The re-entry vehicle then carried the four lucky Kerbals brave enough to endure the terror of riding a fuel tank down through about 30 seconds of peak 200+ degree re-entry temperatures on their side of the heat-shield (lucky their suits are probably highly-insulated and actively-cooled like real astronaut suits!)

Not for the squeamish or the faint-of-heart to be sure. But all my Kerbonauts survived the experience, and while I'm sure they probably all had heat-exhaustion, possibly even a few first or second-degree burns where the heat of their command seats managed to penetrate through the thick insulation of their space-suits (which I can only assume were built partially with this particular set of environmental conditions in mind, as this is the first major manned space mission in more than 60 years for my Kerbals...), they're all alive, and THAT'S what's important here...

Oh, and I saved what would probably be the real-life equivalent of millions upon millions of dollars by using such a bare-bones re-entry vehicle, some of which savings I'm sure would probably go to compensate the Kerbals for their discomfort, and the rest of which will go to future space missions!

Notes to self about the Re-Entry Vehicle design (just to remind you guys I'm not infalliable- this brilliant design actually only barely worked)

- The fuel tank capacity was highly excessive, and served to increase the re-entry temperatures (which *barely* remained within materials limitations on the side of the craft exposed to compression-heating, and led to the loss of 3 struts to the heat) by increasing the ballistic coefficient of the craft during re-entry. Make sure to use a lighter fuel tank next time...

- Make sure to not deploy the parachute until very late in the re-entry. "Simulations" (quickloaded attempts) indicated that deploying the parachute too early would cause the vessel to flip around- exposing the less heat-tolerant side of the vessel to significant re-entry heating, and on average killing 2 of the 4 Kerbals on-board via incineration (I can only assume the other 2 would have been badly-injured, as heat levels apparently reached 50% lethality if the vessel was spun around too early...) Reducing the fuel-tank size should help make low deployment safer by reducing the terminal velocity...

- Strut the probe core to the main fuel tank next time. The structural stresses placed on it during parachute-deployment were sufficient to break both it and the engine off the vessel during even the successful re-entries (although, again, reducing main fuel tank size should help reduce the speed and thus stresses during parachute-deployment...)

Regards,

Northstar

Edited March 26, 2015 by Northstar1989

Specialist290 · March 26, 2015

That is indeed one scary reentry procedure! I'm glad it worked out in the end, but you're right -- definitely not something for the faint of heart.

I'm going to bet that you had an awful lot of !!fun!! with that one

Northstar1989 · March 30, 2015

Indeed. I'll just need to watch out for little green men that AREN'T Kerbals, and want to donate their metal armor to my cause by way of falling into traps..

I've got a significant backlog of screenshots to post at this point, but I just thought I'd tide you guys over with one small mission I carried out in the meantime (and DIDN'T revert- for those of you who watched my latest ultimately-unsuccessful attempts at a RSS 64K spaceplane on Steam recently... Something about trying to fly at only Mach 2.4 at 42 km didn't sit too well with my control-surfaces' ability to control a monstrously large spaceplane...)

I present, my High Altitude Research Plane:

Mostly, this was just a proof-of-concept to see if I could really use Stanford Torus mod's over-sized solar panels as wings (turns out I could- with some very small Procedural Wings hidden underneath as supports, and struts!) - but this plane could also very well have utility for flying around on Duna...

Yep, that's right, I *STILL* haven't given up on the Flying Duna Challenge- in fact that was part of the motivation for my recent focus on planes and aircraft... I also designed an ultra-light helicopter at about the same time (which, with a bit more refinement, will probably have enough TWR to fly around Duna...) I might try out on Duna someday first... (helicopters are *much* easier to launch on a rocket because they don't have huge wings to destabilize a rocket, obviously...)

Geschosskopf, if you're reading this- I know it's been more than a year (almost 2 years!) since I first posted on your thread- but my entry is still coming someday, even if it doesn't end up being until after 1.x!

Regards,

Northstar

Shania_L · March 30, 2015

I'd love to hear some more about the 6.4k spaceplane attempt. I know you said it wasnt successful but how close did you get?

I havent got as far as spaceplane development on my 6.4k yet, but its something I really want to get into so just seeing your design ideas and methodology may point me in a decent direction

Northstar1989 · April 1, 2015

The best way to document that would be screenshots- but I haven't got any. What I *DO* have are plenty of screenshots of the my first SUCCESSFUL spaceplane design- which I think might actually be the first successful Horizontal Takeoff Horizontal Landing spaceplane anybody has *EVER* managed to build in RealSolarSystem 6.4x + FAR (although it's worth pointing out it was only made possible by TweakScale, Procedural Parts, Procedural Wings, and KSP-Interstellar: I couldn't IMAGINE having done it without those four mods...)

First, though, I've got some other missions to catch you guys up on...

Regards,

Northstar

Edited April 1, 2015 by Northstar1989

Northstar1989 · April 1, 2015

I present the launch of my "Hypergolic Refueler"

Seeking to make use of the remaining fuel onboard the Nuclear Thermal Tug used for the Munar-1 mission, as well as the Hypergolic Tug (previously a Kerbosynchronous satellite- rather then deploy a separate satellite the transfer-stage was not staged from the probe core+ solar panels + antenna...) currently in orbit, this vehicle contained a quantity of hypergolic fuel destined for the Hypergolic Tug...

As with most of my missions, it was carried out with a recoverable launch-stage:

I really ought to start packing more extra fuel into these launch-stages, or build a barge to land them on out at sea, Space-X style. Because I am losing a LOT of Funds by splashing down so far down-range of the KSC instead of flying these back to the Space Center like Space-X plans to do with their launch-stages...

Then again, the recovery percentages are already unrealistically high in KSP (refurbishment and/or inspections are going to cost SOME money, even if you land back on the launchpad), so I'm somewhat OK with what I'm doing now...

The upper stage also safely recovered after an orbit:

The upper stage had its parachutes pre-configured, and de-orbited via a set of retro-rockets rather than an onboard probe core and retrograde-burn with the main engines as it was cheaper to use retro-rockets rather than a probe core for a rocket in this size-range... Larger rockets still need a probe core because a single small parachute is not enough to slow them to a safe touchdown speed, and the main engines are needed for a landing-burn, however... (and if even smaller/cheaper parachutes had been available, I would have done the same with this rocket...)

The upper stage DID splash down with excess LOX onboard, however- which tells me I should have packed more LqdHydrogen before. Not that I will get the chance to fix this in future launches- this was a one-off mission anyways: I will be retiring the Hypergolic Tug in the near future...

The Nuclear Thermal Tug then proceeded to undock from the Munar-1 Lander, and rendezvous+dock with the Hypergolic Reueler tanker:

This went smoothly enough- but after here things started to go wrong... I didn't notice that the Nuclear Thermal Tug lacked sufficient Delta-V to rendezvous with my Hypergolic Tug in a much higher elliptical orbit, and ended up having to install TAC Fuel Balancer and dump more than half the hypergolic fuel onboard the tanker just before rendezvous in order to have enough Delta-V to match velocity with the tug... This also didn't leave me with quite enough fuel to aerobrake the Nuclear Thermal Tug back into a low Kerbin orbit, although I came up with a creative solution to the latter of these problems...

My solution to the Nuclear Thermal Tug lacking sufficient Delta-V to aerobrake back to a lower orbit on its own was to have the Hypergolic Tug complete a portion of the retrograde burn, detaching just before the periapsis fell within the atmosphere...

Overall this was not a BAD solution, as I needed to lower the Hypergolic Tug's periapsis as well for easier rendezvous in the future (and greater utilization of the Oberth Effect when departing for destinations further out). However IDEALLY I would have dumped just a bit more of the hypergolic fuel, and had the Hypergolic Tug and NTR Tug each lower their orbits separately. This way I wouldn't have been hauling any hypergolic fuel all the way out to the Hypergolic Tug's orbit just to use it to help lower the orbit of the NTR Tug again (where using Hydrogen onboard the NTR Tug for that would have been lighter and more efficient...)

This isn't the end of my recent missions I have to catch you guys up on, but for the sake of post brevity (and my own sanity) I think this is a good place to cut this update for now...

Regards,

Northstar

Northstar1989 · April 1, 2015

In the spirit of recovering as many mission-components as possible, I designed recovery-capabilities into the tanker itself, and attempted to recoup some of my costs by recovering it...

Unfortunately, the tanker recovery-systems *did not* pay for themselves... The tanker ended up splashing down on the opposite side of Kerbin, and the recovery-factor was so low that the parachute (cost of 400 Funds) barely ended up paying for its own part-cost, and certainly did not pay for the reduction in payload-capacity of the rocket that including the parachute entailed...

I guess I should have been a bit more careful about the re-entry trajectory the Nuclear Thermal Tug dumped the tanker on... However I was *extremely* tight for fuel at this point, and more concerned with simply stabilizing the orbit of the NTR Tug (which is worth a LOT more Funds than the tanker) at all than where the tanker ended up...

Anyways, it wouldn't be fair to burden you guys with all these screenshots of a simple refueling mission without showing you why I wanted the Hypergolic Tug refueled in the first place...

So, I present the launch of my Minmus Probe:

Launching atop a rather odd launch platform designed to complete a contract to test a Novapunch2 Aerospike Engine at a certain speed and altitude, the Minmus Probe actually rode to orbit atop a vertical-takeoff rocket SSTO... (rocket SSTO's are actually quite easy to develop compared to spaceplanes, both in Real Solar System with RealFuels, and in the real world- where numerous plausible designs have been suggested, unlike HTHL spaceplanes where most of the proposed spaceplane designs have been barely-feasible at best...)

Anyways, after setting up the Minmus Probe on a trajectory that took it reasonably close to the Munar-1 Lander (more on that later) the launch-stage turned around and performed a de-orbit burn to take it back as close to the KSC as possible... Unlike with the Hypergolic Refueler Tanker, the upper stage was large and expensive enough to make a controlled re-entry desirable: both for getting a more precise re-entry trajectory that could take the craft close to the KSC (maximizing recovery-factor) and for a landing-burn (which I turned out not to have enough fuel for- the leftover fuel boiled-off before landing, which was luckily *just* slow enough not to cause any damage to this rocket-design without a landing-burn...)

The controlled re-entry was desirable for a landing-burn during splash-down (where water-pressure on the sides of the rocket can cause a rocket to explode even at splashdown speeds as low as 10 m/s... Which is a bit too much and is fixed by Ferram4's Better Buoyancy mod, but is not as unrealistic as you might *think*- water pressure on the sides of the rocket really would be an issue in real life...) However IF the touchdown had been on land, the rocket could have safely touched down at even faster speeds- up to 100 m/s (the crash-tolerance of the boosters, which extended below the aerospike engines) would have been possible, so long as bouncing didn't manage to cause a part other than the boosters to hit the ground... So, the real benefit of the controlled re-entry was getting a trajectory that very precisely took the rocket near the KSC (and the increased recovery-factor), not the landing-burn...

The Minmus Probe, meanwhile had several sets of orbital maneuvers to carry out...

First, rendezvous was necessary with the Munar-1 Lander to pick up scientific equipment I would be re-using (a thermometer and an accelerometer- as I have decided not to use the lander again as I have no need for a 5-Kerbal lander with engine-technology that has now become outdated by newer, higher tech-levels of RealFuels engines I've unlocked...)

Then, the Minmus Probe rendezvoused with the Hypergolic Tug in a higher orbit, taking advantage of my lowering the periapsis before to match velocities near pariapsis and thus take maximum advantage of the Oberth Effect... (matching velocities with a craft in an elliptical orbit is the same thing as boosting into that exact elliptical orbit without the other craft being there- and necessarily is most efficiently performed by performing as much of the burn as possible at high speeds and in the prograde direction...)

Finally, the two craft began their burn towards the Mun together (where I will be making use of a gravity-assist to curve the orbit towards Minmus, which is currently on the wrong side of Kerbin relative to the orbital axes of the Hypergolic Tug's elliptical orbit...) The Minmus Probe still had some fuel left in its supplementary fuel-tank (which provided the fuel to rendezvous with the Hypergolic Tug, and doubled as a nosecone during ascent from Kerbin...) so it made sense to have the two craft start their burns separately and then rendezvous partway through the transfer-burn after the Minmus Probe had emptied and ejected its supplementary fuel-tank... (the relative positions of the Mun, Minmus, and Hypergolic Tug's orbit dictated that I perform the transfer-burn at apoapsis of the Hypergolic Tug's orbit, meaning I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the Oberth Effect, but would have more time to perform tricky maneuvers like this without messing up the transfer-trajectory to the Mun...)

If it seems like I just rushed through rather complicated and impressive set of orbital maneuvers you're right- because I've got something even MORE impressive I want to showcase to you guys in the form of my first ever (and possibly *THE* first ever) RSS 6.4x Horizontal Takeoff Horizontal Landing spaceplane! I also only have so much time I can or wish to dedicate to posting screenshots and explanations instead of playing (or recently, watching or broadcasting on Steam) KSP...

Regards,

Northstar

Northstar1989 · April 1, 2015

Ladies and gentlemen, I present a TRUE, REAL, AUTHENTIC spaceplane for Real Solar System 6.4x, and I can promise you- this is no April Fool's joke!

The ascent of this thing was rather tricky, I must say (as would be expected of a spaceplane with this much Delta-V: in fact with use of all the reserve Nitrogen it might have even been capable of making orbit on full-scale Earth...)

This design only became possible with a radical paradigm-shift: instead of trying to build the spaceplane like a plane, I needed to design it like a winged rocket. As such, it makes use of very large diameters (for the high Ballistic Coefficient- which is invaluable once switching into rocket-propulsion and pushing out of the atmosphere), very lightweight fuel-tank construction (in fact the fuselage is comprised of an insulated balloon-tank, which actually had problems with sometimes imploding due to aerodynamic stresses it was so incredibly weak... Realistically this only would have worked because the weight was hung below wings spread out along the length of the craft, so no part of the fueselage had to support much weight other than its own cross-section...), and relatively high Thrust for a plane (in the lower atmosphere, the spaceplane was capable of an almost-vertical ascent before it started to run out of atmosphere for its Thermal Turbojets and had to level out for speed...)

All this aside, there was still room for improvement...

For one, I made use of a tri-wing design as the front two wings were actually both giant canards that evolved from an earlier failed design (which had only one pair of canards instead of two). However I would like to try enlarging the front canards and rear wings, and doing away with the middle canards altogether so that I can make use of larger, more highly-swept wings for the improve Lift/Drag ratio that they would offer at hypersonic speeds (the Lift/Drag fell below 1.00 soon after switching to rocket-propulsion, due to the 45-degree delta shapes used for the wings instead of something more highly-swept...)

Additionally, I would love to figure out how to pre-cool more of my air intakes, as Thermal Turbojets are theoretically capable of operating up to a bit over Mach 5 (both in-game and in real life) with sufficiently powerful and advanced pre-coolers, but I was forced to rely on a combination of precooled inline-intakes and radial intakes that were not attached to any precooler (KSP-Interstellar Extended makes it possible to pre-cool radial intakes, but they still have to be attached directly to a precooler to receive its benefits...) limiting their operation up to about Mach 4.3 (which, in practice, meant I could operate them up to my maximum speed before activating the rockets, but could not take much advantage of the ram-effect that operating a mixture of rockets and jets provides to shove more air into the intakes and allow higher Thrust-production by jets under intake-limited operating conditions...) due to compression-heating in the Thermal Turbojet's compressors forcing a shutdown at around Mach 4.4 to avoid the Thermal Turbojets failing (read: exploding) due to overheating!

Regardless, it was a highly-successful ascent (read: the plane made orbit in one piece, even if the ascent was not the most fuel-optimal possible- in fact it fell back into the atmosphere after apoapsis before circularizing...) and the spaceplane soon began with its mission-objective for its virgin flight: which was to recover Bill Kerman form the Munar-1 Lander, where he had been waiting in orbit for over 24 hours... (and 4 days of total mission-time)

All the fuel-balancing shown was about keeping the remaining Hydrogen in the smallest tanks possible that could hold the entire volume to minimize boil-off during wait-periods, or as far forward as possible to maximize stability during burns, by the way...

You'll also notice I had significant amounts of LqdNitrogen leftover- which was my highest Thrust and lowest ISP propellant- upon reaching orbit. This was kept both to act as an emergency reserve-fuel during the virgin flight, and can be exchanged for more useful payload in future design iterations with a larger inline fairing at the nose of the craft...

The inline-fairing acts as a kind of simple lightweight cargo-bay, (and will protect Bill Kerman and a magnetometer from re-entry heat this mission...) and as forward-ballast during re-entry. In future missions, I intend to have a Propulsive Fluid Accumulator in orbit that will supply an orbital fuel depot with unlimited quantities of Liquid Nitrogen, and will refuel the spaceplane with Nitrogen before re-entry: allowing me to use this Nitrogen reserve earlier in the ascent, and deploy larger payloads as a result... (future design-iterations will include a longer and possibly wider inline-faring at the front of the spaceplane, allowing the existing Nitrogen-tanks to be elongated and pushed lower in the fairing, and providing more room for payloads- which I estimate could reach up to 2.5 meters in diameter...)

Regards,

Northstar

Northstar1989 · April 6, 2015

OK, so the recovery of my Nuclear Thermal Spaceplane Mk2 (so-named because of the earlier failed design I did not show) went smoothly:

This thing flew like a dream- much better than any other spaceplane I had ever built before...

And with Bill Kerman safely back on the ground after a nice, slow, low-G re-entry aboard the NTR Spaceplane, I decided to continue with the mission of my Minmus probe...

With a single burn during a Munar gravity-assist, the Minmus probe set itself on an impact-trajectory with Minmus. Although tiny course-correction was necessary after leaving the Mun's SOI, due to game errors when switching SOI during time-warp...

After which I followed on with ANOTHER spaceplane mission:

This was the launch of my NTR Spaceplane Mk3, which featured a reduction in its number of wing-pairs from 3 to 2- a main wing and a canard; as well as an increase in wing-sweep and an increase in the length of the cargo hold (made using Procedural Fairings inline-fairings). This actually somehow moved the Center of Lift forward relative to the Center of Mass (one possible explanation is that FAR seems to generate too much lift from fairings...) made the spaceplane MUCH harder to control, though, and although its Lift/Drag was improved by the increased wing-sweep, it barely made it to orbit due to control-issues... (a number of quickloads were required...)

The payload of this mission was the first (and larger) half of a Propulsive Fluid Accumulator satellite, and after deploying it the spaceplane returned to the runway at the KSC:

Re-Entry and Landing was even more difficult for the Mk3 version of the NTR Spaceplane than the ascent, as the deployment of the payload and loss of fuel and one of the cargo hold fairing sections (necessary to deploy the payload without a proper cargo bay...) moved the Center of Mass backwards and increased the drag at the forward end of the spaceplane...

The spaceplane DID eventually end up making a successful landing, though (after *MANY* quickloads) and the mission controllers were able to breathe a sigh of relief at the recovery of the 990,000 Fund vessel...

The next mission was the launch of a Control Section for the Propulsive Fluid Accumulator (due to limitations of the length of the cargo hold on the NTR Mk3 Spaceplane, the Propulsive Fluid Accumulator section launched this way lacked a probe core or as much empty tankage as was desired for efficient propulsive fluid-accumulation operations...)

The payload for this mission weighed less than 200 kg (more than half of the weight being in a probe core, and the rest being in empty Procedural Parts ballooncryo tanks and two Clamp-O-Tron Jr. docking ports) this was my lightest launch vehicle yet. The LV was still recovered at sea though using a small parachute...

Ideally, I would have saved a bit more fuel on the launch-stage to fly it back to the launchpad, but I cut so many corners on this mission that I was having a difficult time getting the upper stage high enough and fast enough to circularize without either losing control during the ascent due to dynamic pressure in the gravity-turn, or falling back into the atmosphere with the upper stage before circularization or ending up on a sub-orbital trajectory... Thus, I had to use every gram of propellant aboard the launch-stage possible, and could save none for recovery... (note to self: give more consideration to developing a Space-X style barge for recoveries at sea...)

In hindsight, I probably would have been better off giving the launch stage even more fuel-capacity, or launching this module as a secondary payload on a larger rocket...

Anyways, after the successful recovery of the launch-stage, I then proceeded to rendezvous and dock the Control Module with the other half of the Propulsive Fluid Accumulator, using the upper stage for propulsion:

The only reason I didn't launch this payload as another spaceplane-cargo (besides being completely worn out with spaceplanes for a little while) was that I needed the upper stage for propulsion to rendezvous and dock with the other half of the Propulsive Fluid Accumulator... (my other option would have been to perform TWO additional spaceplane missions- one to launch the Control Module and another to launch a small tug capable of carrying it to the rest of the Propulsive Fluid Accumulator...)

My first Propulsive Fluid Accumulator is now assembled and ready to operate in orbit! The only reason I have not yet showed it off in action is because of a resource-naming bug with KSP-Interstellar Extended I had to clear up first (it was collecting Nitrogen, but the wrong resource-definition for Nitrogen due to a naming issue: rest assured this has now been cleared up as of the latest update of KSP-I Extended...)

Regards,

Northstar

Northstar1989 · April 8, 2015

OK, so with recent code-changes to KSP-Interstellar Extended, the Propulsive Fluid Accumulators now work up until about 250 km above Kerbin in stock (I haven't determined exactly how high they work up to in RSS 6.4x) as the Thermosphere of Earth extends about 500-1000 km high in real life.

As such, I moved my Propulsive Fluid Accumulator up to a 240 km orbit. This should allow it to easily transfer to a fuel depot in an even higher orbit, and will make it easier still for spacecraft to phase into position with the fuel depot (or for reusable fuel-tankers to drop down to meet with spacecraft just above Kerbin's atmosphere...)

Regards,

Northstar

Northstar1989 · April 20, 2015

Hey guys!

Sorry I've been out of the loop for a while! I've made a good bit of progress since my last update, but the screenshots had been piling up on my computer- with it becoming a more and more arduous task to upload the ever-growing pile...

OK, so first of all, my Minmus Probe-Lander captured into Minmus orbit:

After which I made several landings- including one that completed a contract milestone for a contract to perform seismic surveys on Minmus! (THAT was a particularly difficult precision-landing)

After which my Minmus Lander ascended back to orbit and rendezvoused with my Hypergolic Tug:

And then returned the whole thing to Kerbin- where I performed a propulsive landing of both the tug and lander...

Of course, this wasn't all I was up to... I also launched a tanker to refuel my Munar-1 Lander:

This was actually a particularly difficult launch to get right, as I was having some problems getting the right TWR on the launch and upper stages for this mission... Anyways, like almost all my launches, it involved recovery of the launch-stage:

The upper stage then proceeded to rendezvous with my Munar-1 Lander, dock, and refuel the lander:

The intention of this was originally to see if I couldn't land the Lander on Kerbin, but several "simulations" (reverted attempts) revealed that a Kerbin TWR of 0.9 was simply not enough to safely land a Mun Lander back on Kerbin...

I was able to recover the tanker with a parachute-assisted propulsive landing, though:

The two tiny parachutes were Tweakscale scaled-down variants of the stock radial parachute applied in 2x symmetry on the top of the interstage...

Regards,

Northstar

Specialist290 · April 22, 2015

Impressive work as always

Sorry for the late reply!

Northstar1989 · May 8, 2015

Sorry I've been slow on the uploads again!

My next mission was to launch a capsule to rig up some parachutes on the Munar Lander. Along for the ride was a very scared-looking engineer, there to do the actual parachute-rigging!

In keeping with tradition for me, this was another Space-X style mission:

I then rigged the Mun Lander with parachutes for landing on Kerbin:

And performed the landing...

Not all the parts survived re-entry, but ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

Following this I rigged the Nuclear Thermal Tug used for the Munar mission for re-entry as well:

In the future I will be relying on larger tugs, launched empty as a single payload instead of assembled in orbit (thus saving mass and part-count on docking ports) with an occasional extra-length of fuel tankage for especially heavy of high Delta-V payloads. But more importantly, the Kerbin-system tugs will be fueled almost entirely by Nitrogen harvested by Propulsive Fluid Accumulators (tugs around other locations, such as Duna, will be equipped with different propellants...) As such, a replacement of the NTR tug I so handily relied on before was in order...

Surprisingly, the tug managed to splash down in one piece. I wasted no time in recovering it before the buggy/unrealistic 0.9 water-physics could eat it...

I then wasted no time in recovering the parachute-rigging vessel itself (as I also did with the Tug Refueler- not shown). If I had known I would have this much fuel left over, I would have launched some sort of small depot to hold the reserve fuel for future missions...

A while passed without any major activity (I messed around with some helicopters and other stuff around Kerbin I didn't bother to take screenshots of) until an update of KSP-Interstellar Extended required a name-change for the cryogenic nitrogen resource from "LiquidNitrogen" to "LqdNitrogen" to comply with the new Community Resource Pack 2.0 naming standards...

As such, I was forced to launch a new Propulsive Fluid Accumulator- this one with LqdNitrogen tanks. the KSC has a *cough* 'communications failure' with the older Propulsive Fluid Accumulator (out of laziness, I didn't bother recovering it, and terminated it instead...) and I immediately activated the new PFA to take its place for scooping small amounts of nitrogen for probes and other small missions over time...

The scooping-capabilities of the small, new PFA were still deemed woefully inadequate for the needs of larger, flagship-class missions (such as a manned Constellation-style mission to Duna's surface using Nitrogen for orbital propellant instead of chemical fuels) however, so I launched a heavier, 2.5 meter Propulsive Fluid Accumulator (featuring 5 independent atmospheric scoops for a faster collection-rate and "redundancy") soon afterwards to prepare for a major planned mission to Duna...

I haven't updated to 1.0 yet, and won't be doing so for a good while (I'll give SQUAD this chance to apply some of the additional bug-fixes and further balance-tweaks that they should have applied BEFORE releasing 1.0 in the first place...) Instead, I'll be continuing with 0.90 and my large and relatively well-functioning set of mods, carrying out a MAJOR Duna mission before I update to 1.0

It won't be THIS good- but if you want an idea of what my mission will look like, I drew my inspirations from real-life Constellation and Mars Direct, and Katateochi's YouTube Constellation-style Duna mission, as well as some design-ideas and refinements of my own (such as use of Propulsive Fluid Accumulators at both Kerbin and Duna to collect propellant gasses...)

The video is, of course, probably one of my favorite KSP videos *EVER*.

I'm considering recording video-footage (and yes, even editing it to improve presentation!) of my own mission. If I do so, expect some not-so-subtle tributes to and even mirroring of certain aspects of his own video. It will be my own unique product (there were many aspects of actual mission-design that I think could have easily been improved on for efficiency, if not necessarily style... Of course, Katateochi was limited to simply mirroring real-life Constellation plans using some relatively vanilla mods of KSP...)- but I particularly liked his choices of music (and have acquired a taste for some of the same and other tracks by the same bands) and the use of split-screen presentation of multiple launches in the beginning and such...

Regards,

Northstar

Edited May 8, 2015 by Northstar1989

Northstar1989 · May 25, 2015

OK, sorry I've been a little slow in uploading more progress again lately. I've been quite busy planning and executing my Duna mission, learning some basic video-editing techniques in YouTube's Video Editor, seeking out permissions to use songs for the video music, etc. for the past couple weeks.

Anyways, before I started on my Duna mission I made quite a bit of additional progress. Here are some of the highlights...

First of all, I launched a fuel-depot to orbit to store up LqdNitrogen from my latest Propulsive Fluid Accumulator...

As has become my standard practice, this was a Space-X style mission with launch-stage recovery:

The upper stage was recovered as well:

After a wait for phasing, I was then able to dock my Heavy Propulsive Fluid Accumulator with the propellant depot..

I originally considered placing the depot in a higher orbit and having the PFA make trips to it each time it was full, like would be used in real life Propulsive Fluid Accumulator plans (as higher orbits require much less station-keeping propulsion, and the whole point of a PFA system is to accumulate a net-surplus of propellant), but decided this would be too much work, and so just left the two docked together to accumulator LqdNitrogen for my planned Duna mission...

I also carried out a test-launch of my Duna Lander. This version was not the exact design I decided to eventually use for my Duna mission (which is currently in progress- and will be posted as an edited and cut-down video instead of a screenshots compilation), but it was close- and confirmed that the basic design was functional:

The lander launch was actually unintentional- it was supposed to be a "simulation" (with a revert after reaching orbit), but loading the quicksave instead of reverting after one failed launch (where I was too aggressive with my gravity-turn and failed to reach orbit) caused me to be locked into a buggy situation where a physics-bug caused the launch clamps to dance around on the launchpad and explode if I didn't immediately launch (leaving me no time to hit "Recover"), forcing me to actually make a lander-ascent for real... (I guess I could have just discarded the launch stage near the KSC and landed the lander back at the launchpad/runway- but this way I got more practice using the lander and some additional missions on my Kerbals' Final Frontier jackets...)

After reaching orbit with the lander (and failing to remember to swap back to the launch-stage and recover it with FMRS) I then transferred over the crew to the crew recovery capsule that rode to orbit atop the lander as a secondary cargo, and brought both the lander and the crew capsule back to the ground separately (allowing me to test both the lander and crew recovery system in the same mission...)

The lander, unfortunately, suffered heavy damage during spalshdown- but that was partially due to pilot error and partially due to the lander only being designed for operation on Duna- where the gravity is much lower. I was sufficiently satisfied with the performance of the lander to conclude it could operate successfully on Duna and meet all mission-requirements with some minor refinements to the design...

After this, my next mission was to lift a small probe to Low Kerbin Orbit to complete a contract testing a SRB there. I decided to use my latest Nuclear Thermal Spaceplane design to accomplish this...

The ascent went extremely well- and my spaceplane reaching orbit without even having to use any of its LqdHydrogen (which was meant to provide the final push to orbit, after depleting the LqdNitrogen and Hyhdrazine tanks...) was testament to this. It appears my latest spaceplane has a much higher payload-capacity than earlier spaceplane models... (and once again, my spaceplanes are the ONLY ones I know of that don't use fusion or antimatter reactors to yet reach orbit in RealSolarSystem 6.4x/64K...)

The recovery of the spaceplane, however, went... Less smoothly. A bug with TweakScale that caused the main reaction wheel (which I had set as the root part while editing the spaceplane in the hanger- and forgot to change back) to shrink down to a fraction of its size caused MAJOR issues. I know that, supposedly, when this bug occurs parts retain their normal stats and the bug is only visual- but the spaceplane definitely lost the vast majority of its reaction wheel force, and what's more the part shrinking created a structural weakness that caused the nose to wobble all over the place...

Still, the spaceplane managed to stick a successful landing on the runway on the first try (although the re-entry didn't go quite so smoothly at first, as I was initially surprised by the much-reduced reaction wheel force, and had to adjust my re-entry profile accordingly...) and I moved on to other things... I must say, though- she really was a rather beautiful spaceplane, and I'm going to miss using her when I eventually update to 1.0 (where the new aerodynamics will almost certainly cause her to stop working correctly...)

Things like: performing a Munar flyby with the small probe my spaceplane lifted as payload. I must say, though- this probe was meant to bu much more capable that it was. Somehow, while editing it into the spaceplane cargo bay in the hanger, I managed to remove the hypergolic fuel-tanks from the second stage of the probe. As a result, its only propulsion system was a single SRB- which prevented it from establishing a Munar orbit with the probe as was originally the plan...

I got considerable amounts of data from the mission nonetheless. Enough to research Experimental Rocketry- which provided one last tech level (Tech Level 7) to my chemical rockets- ensuring I carry out my Duna mission with the absolute state-of-the-art for the propulsion of my launch vehicles (reasonably mimic'd Ares V expendable launch vehicles) and Duna lander...

My Duna Mission, despite being Constellation-inspired, will also include Microwave Beamed Power, however. I will be using it both Microwave Thermal propulsion to escape the Kerbin system with one of my lighter modules, Microwave Electric propulsion for one of my more massive modules, and for a tiny transceiver on one of my modules that not only acts as a receiver for power beamed from Kerbin, but as a transmitter for extra-atmospheric transmission (where a tiny transmitter could realistically be used- as use outside the atmosphere allows use of shorter wavelengths which require much smaller transmitters and receivers...) as part of a supplementary power-system that provides an extra boost to the available power of another module when capturing at Duna...

Most of the Microwave Beamed Power used during the mission (all except the supplementary power-system described above, which re-uses a small deployable transceiver as a transmitter as well as its main purpose as a receiver...) will come from the ground on Kerbin, near the KSC, however- as this is the cheapest and most realistic way to set up a Microwave Beamed Power infrastructure... Here is the transmitter:

Due to the inability to properly construct permanent ground-based infrastructure in KSP outside of the KSC, the transmitter was basically an enormous rover. But you can imagine it as being a proper facility dug into the ground with foundations and connected to the electric power-grid if you want...

A Microwave Beamed Power infrastructure is most effective when coupled with an orbital relay system, however- so that the power is available in more places than just when spacecraft are directly within line-of-sight of the transmitter. Thus, I deployed a single relay in a Kerbostationary orbit overhead the transmitter such as to increase the range of the beamed-power system (even where there is direct line-of-sight over the horizon, it often makes more sense to beam the power straight up and then bounce it off a relay, as the atmosphere will act to diffuse the beam to near-useless intensity if it is aimed at a low angle over the horizon...)

I am afraid these will be the last screenshots for a good while, though- after this my next update will take the form of a link to a video posted on YouTube of my Duna mission- which will require quite a while longer to finish executing, and even longer to create a cut-down and edited video of... I will do my best to make the video suitably-epic, though!

Until next time, this is Northstar, signing off...

Regards,

Northstar

Project Byzantium: A tale of renaissance and rebirth in Real Solar System 64K

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Join the conversation