Boreas 1 - Landed on Minmus

[Findthepin1]

Well, I am doing a mission to Minmus if all goes well. I have a lander-orbiter, my general-use Orbital Activity Vehicle, but it's not meant for extended use. So, I must build a Transit Vehicle to get to Minmus. (The OAV can technically support kerbals for an infinite time but I want it to be realistic because I might write a story about it). I plan to not bring a rover.

I am calling this mission Boreas 1 after Boreas the Greek god of the north wind, or whatever he is. Boreas 1.

I had to delete all my mods except HyperEdit in order to launch the transit vehicle. I did not, and will not, use HyperEdit in this trip. I don't really use it anymore after Bob Kerman's desert incident. Anyway, this'll be the mission thread. There are pictures.

EDIT: The funny thing is, I deleted OPM to be able to do the mission. The save file is called OPM Sandbox.

SECOND EDIT: I broke the VAB. No items show up in the selector under the "name" category, and under the "mass" category everything shows up, including kerbals and flags. Also, the mission flag is stuck as a picture of a kerbal because I can't open the flag selection menu. Apparently this happened when I deleted my mods.

THIRD EDIT: Everything seems to be fixed and the mission is progressing as normal.

Part 1 is below.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

PART 1: LAUNCH

I'm just going to post pictures here for now. The launch of the Transit Vehicle was uneventful except for that I had to use the nuke engines to get into a stable orbit.

Transit Vehicle on launchpad:

Launching:

Dropping the boosters:

Safely in orbit:

The Transit Vehicle is almost fully fuelled and is unkerballed at the moment. I need a better launch vehicle so that I don't have to use the nuke engines to make orbit. Next we'll meet the crew.

Edited November 18, 2015 by Findthepin1

[Findthepin1]

The VAB is very buggy right now. It won't let me edit the Transit Vehicle, it won't let me open a craft or make a new craft, it won't show me parts when I list them by name, it won't give me a flag. This *might* slightly hinder the mission, but I'll try what I can. I have selected the crew, but it won't let me add them.

We have Hilly, Melald, Erke, and Dagrid Kerman! Hilly is the pilot of the mission. Melald is the engineer. Erke and Dagrid are scientists.

Right now the VAB isn't letting me build a vehicle to get everybody to the ship, or anything besides dozens of fully overlapping parts without size information needed for launch, so the mission is postponed until I find a solution.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Findthepin1

[SpaceplaneAddict]

sue da SPH!

[Findthepin1]

sue da SPH!

XD

I have an Ideaâ„¢! I can copy the Transit Vehicle craft file to another computer and play there. I will have to *HyperEdit* the ship into orbit, but it'll be worth it and I'll also have to select a new crew. Here goes.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

Or use a spaceplane to send your crew up.

[Mister Dilsby]

SECOND EDIT: I broke the VAB. No items show up in the selector under the "name" category, and under the "mass" category everything shows up, including kerbals and flags. Also, the mission flag is stuck as a picture of a kerbal because I can't open the flag selection menu. Apparently this happened when I deleted my mods.

This happens to me sometimes. Here's something to try: restart KSP and begin a new game. Go in the VAB of the new game and confirm it works. Exit, go back to the start menu, and open your career save. If the VAB still doesn't work you have a corrupted craft somewhere. Move all your craft to another folder, repeat from the beginning (with the new game), and once you have a working VAB in your career save you can start bringing the ships back into it. Good luck!

[Findthepin1]

Thanks. It isn't a career save. Does that still work with sandbox saves?

[Mister Dilsby]

Thanks. It isn't a career save. Does that still work with sandbox saves?

No reason it shouldn't. I should have said "your main save".

[Araym]

"Broken VAB" happened in the past to me, after I deleted/changed some mods: it's related (strangely) to all those mods that add an agency.

If a Save sense a "missing" agency, it corrupt the ALL the persistent files, acting back to VAB (never understand how it work)...

Any new save started after the corruption then start to work again.

... I lost my last career-mode save (pretty almost near a full development state, allowing me to play like a sandbox+mission found) just because I changed some mods (and I was unable to understand which one was involved) and the problem was very like yours.

But now, in a strange way, I'm happy about it: that was the culprit to "start it again" from scratches, adding the new idea to "comic" it

Beside, the decision to delete non-stock agency that comes with any mod...

Edited November 3, 2015 by Araym

[Findthepin1]

I'm gonna try to fix it now.

EDIT: It works. I fixed the VAB by making a new save, opening the VAB in that, deleting that save, and going back into the old save. The VAB works now, and Boreas 1 is back on track after the delay. Thank you to everyone who helped me fix it. Crew stuff is soon.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Findthepin1

[Findthepin1]

MOAR LAUNCHES

We have ourselves a crew for Boreas 1! Yes, we built and partially launched a mission before choosing astronauts. Here's a bit of info on them, and maybe backstories. Also, SCIENCE! (Not necessarily INGAME SCIENCE!)

Hilly Kerman is the captain of the mission. She will be commanding the mission.

Melald Kerman is the engineer on the mission. He worked on the Aeris 4A in the United Kerbal Air Force. Melald operates the ships because he knows how they work.

Dagrid Kerman is a scientist. She noticed Minmus' orbit changed slightly over the years, and hypothesized that Minmus had a subsurface ocean that sloshed around and wobbled the moon. (In my KSP it does, although this isn't actually in the game.) She also discovered Bop. (Yes, in my KSP Pol was discovered first, it's brighter.)

Erke Kerman is a taxi driver. He is registered as a scientist in the official documents because Dagrid wanted him to be on the mission, and Dagrid has some authority for having discovered the reason the mission exists.

That's everyone. The alternate crew, if this crew dies horribly in a fiery, Michael Bay-ish explosion has an issue and can't go on the mission, will be the Big Four.

The launch for the crew is in a few minutes. They're doing last-minute checks, like adding moat struts and pulling flagpoles out of the launchpad.

EDIT: Here it is.

CREW LAUNCH

The crew were loaded into the Orbital Activity Vehicle (OAV) lander/orbiter as usual, with the Really Big Catapult. It's called the Really Big Catapult because it was built by the United Federal People's Democratic Kingdom Telescope Company of Telescopes. They built the Absopositively Humongousaurus Telescope on Mauna Aka in Iwahaki. Yes, that is the map I use when it concerns location-specific KSP things, and yes, in this universe these kerbals get into ships by catapult. Everything went "smoothly". Melald decided to use the PA system to calm everyone down. Playing the Footloose theme helped this until the ship caught on fire. Then everyone panicked except Hilly, who was trained not to panic. Anyway, here's your pictures.

On launchpad.

Launching.

This is Melald and Erke about 10 kilometres up. This is about a minute before the ship caught fire. I don't know what Erke was looking at.

Above Iwahaki, looking east-southeast. There's nothing but sea here. The ship isn't covered in flames anymore.

Orbit burn. The debris behind the ship is the spent boosters.

The OAV is in a stable 81x96km orbit. There's 2154 units of fuel left in the big orange tank.

You might have noticed that the first two pictures don't have parachutes in them. I noticed this as the ship was going up. I fixed it and took the rest of the photos as the ship is now.

Erke is asking when they can get to Minmus. They have to rendezvous with the transit vehicle first, because they don't have more than a week or so of air in the OAV.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Findthepin1

[Findthepin1]

RENDEZVOUS WITH TRANSIT VEHICLE (TV)

The rendezvous burn went perfectly. I didn't get any pictures of it because it lasted a second and a half. Melald is playing random songs in the cabin PA. They watched a movie. It's now time for the rendezvous with the TV.

The crew has arrived at the TV. The TV is operational and ready for the crew to live in.

The OAV has successfully docked with the TV.

The big orange tank is jettisoned.

The crew will find snacks and stuff in the TV. There isn't any gravity onboard, because I didn't want the rocket to have to carry that much extra mass.

No, seriously. I've built wheel stations before. You can have gravity onboard a ship in orbit, using centripetal force. Thing is, it's very heavy to lift, quite power-intensive to spin, and when you raise your arm it moves in the direction of the spin, whether you want it to or not. Also, try running and jumping in the opposite direction to the spin of the station, it's weird. It's cool, actually. The gravity changes.

I digress. The crew is onboard. They're gonna do some experiments, then go to Minmus.

[Findthepin1]

TRANSIT AND ARRIVAL

Well, they waited another hour or so before beginning two burns. They spent that time doing "gravity experiments" by spinning the ship around as fast as it could go without actually breaking apart. Here's your pictures.

That's the plane-correction burn. The thing in the background is debris from the OAV. It's still there.

That's the transfer burn to Minmus. It was kinda hard to get a trajectory not to encounter the Mun. I had to overshoot this one, to get onto an escape trajectory, to get past the Mun.

This is Boreas 1's course right after the transfer burn. There's a course correction planned at the Mun's orbital distance, that's the one to slow down after speeding in front of the Mun.

This is the first course correction. It was supposed to be the only one, but I could cut the Minmus periapsis by eighty percent if I did a second burn before the encounter.

This is the second course correction. Minmus looks like Vall. Nobody's seen Vall in person in this universe, but we know what it looks like because of a Jool atmospheric probe in Year 0.90.

This is the course of Boreas 1 after the second course correction. Old periapsis (after the first correction) was about 1 451 500.

This is the ship, braking into Minmus orbit.

And there you have it. Boreas 1, with Hilly, Melald, Erke, and Dagrid Kerman on board, is safely in a 320x360 orbit around Minmus, with enough fuel to get back home. Landings will be tonight or tomorrow. They're very happy to have arrived, after having spent six days stuck in a rocket-powered Pepsi can with each other. They will finally be able to get out into the open. Hilly even went EVA and held onto the ship with her feet.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Findthepin1

[Findthepin1]

Sorry for the delay, I had 1.0.5. Posting soon.

[Findthepin1]

LANDING

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/ojgbRV2.png[/IMG]
Here's a view of the ground out the window of the orbiting TV before undocking.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Eqo1W4M.png[/IMG]
The lander has undocked from the TV.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/7AqHXLz.png[/IMG]
I missed a picture of the lander (named Norðri) deorbiting over Minmus, because it was a short burn, but I got this (admittedly bad) picture of the TV in the distance behind it.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/78B56cO.png[/IMG]
Descent. Temperature is around 220 Kelvin.
The crew is a bit worried. There's a 50% chance that the Norðri will crash. This is "not" supported by actual crashes that were reloaded before this landing. :D

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/FgzueJ3.png[/IMG]
This is the Norðri over Minmus, almost down on the ground.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/x7ggjbB.png[/IMG]
Landed!

Surface temperatures are around 211K or -62C. Gravity at 0.042 g. Crew is not to EVA for a while, because Kerbin is going to go below the horizon and they don't have time to do anything outside before transmissions are blocked off. They can't communicate except through the TV, which probably won't pass over them until Kerbin is overhead again anyway. They want to see what happens live. It was possible to land somewhere they could get out immediately, but since Minmus' rotation wasn't accurately known their landing ellipse spanned twelve degrees of latitude and [I]every[/I] degree of longitude. So, yeah, new part will be out later than today. Maybe tomorrow.

[Wallygator]

Nice RP. Huge ship for Minmus - but I assume you will reveal all later. Well done on the reporting! Looking forward to seeing what you have in store.