Project Intrepid (Chapter 59 - Life On Laythe)

[Ultimate Steve]

EDIT: Accidentally posted the next chapter before I was done, darn enter button. Ignore this post.

Thing is, I can't just copy and paste from google drive to here as the formatting will be messed up and I'll have to recopy all of the images from imgur as they will be the wrong size. So, I generally try to do everything in the forum editor and then copy to google drive as a backup, but sometimes that happens.

Edited Tuesday at 04:57 AM by Ultimate Steve

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter notes. Jool Expedition One was the second major flotilla mission I ever did, back in March 2016, predating Project Intrepid by a few months. If I remember right, it was my first time on Pol, Bop, Laythe, and maybe Tylo, I don't remember if I attempted Tylo on that mission. The Vall lander did not have enough fuel. This was to be followed by Jool Expedition 2, which I designed most of the ships for, but as usual, I lost interest and never flew it. I've probably said this before, but the Creativity's mission is very much a spiritual successor to the never flown Jool Expedition 2. I've decided to make Jool Expedition 1 soft canon, and it will be referenced throughout. Not exactly sure where in the timeline it belongs. If it wasn't confirmed that nobody had been to the Jool system before the Octavius mission, I'd say it was the last major thing the space program did before the Space Station Epic V disaster, which would explain why there was no Jool Expedition 2 (at least not immediately).

 

Chapter 59 - Life On Laythe

Spoiler

“Ahh, Moho!”

“Did you just lose a solar panel?” Podpont asked.

“One of the small ones, but yeah,” Bobwig said.

“No big deal,” Gemna said while doodling in the sand. “I think the RTG was doing more for us than all of those panels combined, to be honest.”

“Okay, I think I have the big ones installed, we can’t drive with them, at least not safely, but they should be great while stationary. I'll run some tests on rates.”
Some time passed as the drills worked their magic.

"Okay," said Bobwig. "We can make propellant almost twice as fast as we could previously... Not as big of an improvement as we thought, but we also don't have the submarine's RTG on our side... Not amazing... If we could figure out how to get back to that area with 11% ore, we could go like 3 times as fast as we are going right now, more or less."

"Tempting, but are we really going to be flying the planes that much?" Podpont asked. "We can fill the plane once every 7 days or so if that math holds up, more with the RTG. We're gonna be here for two years, that's many more sorties than we are likely to fly. I'm gonna tentatively say that our current rate is probably gonna be okay."

"Good point," Angie said. "Next order of business: Get this submarine off of here!"

There was a clunk as the submarine detached and tumbled off of the side of the Laythe Aeronaut III.

"Wonderful!" Angie said. "Now I can go flying!"

"Not so fast," Gemna said. "The centers of lift and mass are misaligned again, swapping the elevons should fix it."

"How does she do that?" Bobwig asked as he grabbed his wrench and went to work on the Aeronaut once more.

"You know," Bobwig said as he put the finishing touches on the last elevon, "Laythe Aeronaut III is a bit of a mouthful. How about we call it the leaf?"

"Leaf? Good one!" Angie laughed. "That thing is decidedly un leaflike... It's more of a twig than a leaf."

"Well, let's call it the Twig!" Mojorie said. "If it flies like one!"

"Twig it is... Alright, stand back, y'all about to see this Twig fly."

Angie put on her coolest pair of sunglasses, opened the throttles, and lifted off of the surface in the Twig.

"You know what?" Angie said. "This flies significantly better than it did when it had a submarine strapped to the top, who would have thought?"

"Oh, so it is like a leaf!" Mojorie said.

"Significantly better than the average leaf, but I think I like the name Twig too much to let it go like that," Angie said.

Angie flew around, assessing the Twig's performance.

"Yeah, she flies like a dream!" Angie said. "All it took to fix her was stealing the bow planes, making the wheel base wider, and not carrying a heavy, draggy brick on top."

"I bet it also helps not having Miteny shouting in your ear every 5 minutes," Podpont said.

"Oh yeah," Angie said. "I get he's concerned, but the way he's gotten all negative recently, you'd think it was the end of the world or something!"

"Well, uh, it is the end of the world," Mojorie said.

"Oh, right. It is, isn't it?" Angie said.

"So are we good to go into the tests straight away?" Podpont asked.

"We are, indeed!" Angie said. "Commencing range test. I'm gonna fly north until I reach about half fuel, then turn back home."

A few minutes passed.

"So, uh... I don't mean to freak you guys out," Angie began, "But, like... I'm not the only one seeing the green, glowing clouds, right?"

"I was wondering when someone would bring that up," Gemna said.

"Oh good, I'm not crazy!" Podpont said.

"I had just kinda assumed that it was residual aurora from the supernova," Mojorie theorized. "Maybe Jool's magnetic field captured a bunch of stuff."

"I'm just glad it isn't cataracts, I'm too young for that," Bobwig said. "Not that they're gonna kick me out of the astronaut program or anything. What are they gonna do, send me home?"

"While the aurora theory is cool, aurorae don't generally look like that," Gemna said. "I've done the math here, they probably wouldn't last that long. The only thing I can think of is bioluminescent algae."

"But that would mean - "

"Yes! Confirmed extraterrestrial life! I was wondering why nobody else was freaking out!" Gemna proclaimed. "Like, we flew through an alien layer and nobody talked about anything! The ITV-015 is basically dooming themselves for the chance to confirm that Eeloo has life! Here we are, we just kinda stumbled into it!"

"In my defense, those screens aren't the highest resolution. Stupid SSTO and its lack of windows," Podpont said.

"Well, if I have the fuel, I'll try to scoop up a sample," Angie said.

The minutes ticked by as Angie played with throttle settings in an effort to maximize range while maintaining operator sanity.

Angie grinned as Jool began to rise above the horizon.

"Why couldn't we have landed somewhere where Jool is visible?" she asked.

"We landed on the place with the best ore, but then had to leave for a bad place with significantly less ore," said Bobwig. "It seemed like a good idea at the time, but we could have, knowing what we know now."

"Alright, the northern ice cap is in view, I still have a bit over half of the fuel left... I'm gonna try to get the nauseometer measurements out of the way."
"Roger that, Angie!" Podpont said.

"Who made the wheel covers transparent?"
"Wasn't me!"

"Coming in, the pole is somewhere here... And, touch - AAAHHH!"

"Hahaha, it does fly like a twig after all"! Bobwig proclaimed. "Or at least, it lands like one!"

"Very funny." Angie used hack gravity her own pure strength to right the Twig. "Looks like the brake slider was waaaayyyyy too high on the front wheel."

"Sure, sure," Podpont said.

"I can tell Jool is on the high half of its orbit around Kerbol, inclination wise," Angie observed. "The north pole is completely dark, the south pole should be lit up, though. We will have to check it out sometime."

"The navigational computer says that the pole is right here, but I don't see anything," Angie said. "The nauseometer is still reading a flat zero."

"Weird. Maybe it is broken. Try getting closer?" Mojorie said.

"I'll try." Angie took a few steps forward. "Two meters, one and a half... One... Half a meter - "

"AAAAHHHHH!"

In an instant, Angie snapped back to reality and fell to her knees.

"Angie, are you okay?" Podpont asked over the radio.

Angie opened her helmet and threw up onto the polar surface. After she was finished, she responded. "Well, that was deeply unpleasant, but I'm okay, and the nauseometer appears to have recorded a maximum value of twelve.

Looks like the affect is extremely localized here, and significantly weaker than on Duna or Eve. Kind of like Kerbin's poles."

"Are you alright to fly back?"

"Yeah. Just give me a few minutes."

Shortly later, Angie was back in the air, as Vall rose over the horizon.

"Alright, I'm beginning my climb to sampling altitude," Angie said. The Twig flew through the twinkling green cloud layer, but kept going.

"Angie, you know you're all the way through those clouds, right?"

"Yeah, Podpont, but look at these aurorae!"

"They're so beautiful! I wish I could fly higher... If we have the spare fuel, we should fly the SSTO here, through the aurorae, that would look cool!"

"If it had windows," Podpont sighed.

Some time later, as Angie was returning south, she came across an oddly linear series of islands.

And proceeded to once again tip over on landing, proceeding to right the Twig through purely legitimate means.

"This series of four islands kind of looks like an arm holding a torch... So I'll call them arm island, thumb island, torch island, and flame island!" Angie proclaimed.

"You know that all these places have been named already, right?" Mojorie asked. "I'm pretty sure that Jool Expedition One landed there. I can look up their names - "

"Nah, don't," Angie said. "My names are better."

"Most likely," Podpont said. "It's not hard to improve on the original names, the pilot of Laythe Expedition 1 just named everything after his crushes. And besides, the original flags will have long since washed away. on an island that shallow."

"And this one's gonna be bean island! Because it kinda looks like a bean if you squint."

"And that kinda looks like a dead fish, so fish island!"

"Alright, coming in for a landing... Results. This thing can probably go like 60-70 percent of the way around the planet, but only one way. So while we can access everywhere on the planet, practically, we're limited to this hemisphere unless there's something worth getting stranded for."

"Don't tip it over this time, Angie!" Podpont teased.

"That was just two times!" Angie snapped.

Angie safely landed the Twig and Bobwig moved into position, beginning the long process of refueling, the first Laythian Air Mission being complete.

 

==========

 

Bill Kerman (the one from a parallel universe) entered Low Kerbin Orbit with the to be reassigned space fighter. Its load of oxidizer meant that it had to use aerobraking.

It ended up in a slightly elliptical orbit with very little fuel left (although in a pinch, the missile fuel could be used), awaiting Sergeant T's next orders.

Meanwhile, on Eve, the ESREP prepared for its next flight. Despite Gene's significantly not great health condition, he basically demanded to be on this mission - With what little vision he had at the moment, he wished to see Eve's north pole with his own eyes.

This would be an incredibly ambitious mission for the ESREP, taking many hops to reach the pole - potentially as many as six each way. This would be a long mission.

The ESREP fired up her engines, taking off northward, but the forward gear had not been lowered! The crew braced themselves for the worst as the ESREP refused to take off, but eventually she hit a ridge.

And took off into the great purple sky!

 

Those two exposed nodes really hurt the craft's performance, but she managed a decent hop of 185 kilometers.

Despite stalling and smashing into the surface at a 30 degree angle, the sturdy (but very heavy) landing gear absorbed the force of the impact.

Unfortunately, the ESREP landed in a zone of extremely poor ore, which we could not have foreseen as the clouds obscured the ore readout (Visual mods not letting the overlay show), I am searching for a better solution.

The next flight will thus be weeks away, unless a nearby higher ore site can be found that can be hopped to with a partially full fuel tank.

Planetary Airlines Flight 001 - KSC, Kerbin ---> Minmus City, Minmus. Duration 1 week.
Planetary Airlines Flight 002 - Minmus City, Minmus ---> Undeveloped Airfield, Eve. Duration several months (clock fixture has broken and I don't want to ask the others).
Planetary Airlines Flight 003 - Undeveloped Airfield, Eve --> Peregrine Point, Eve. Duration 10 minutes. Taxi from Peregrine Point to nearby Mount Peregrine.
Planetary Airlines Flight 004 - Mount Peregrine, Eve --> Delta Basin, Eve. Duration 12 minutes.
Planetary Airlines Flight 005 - Delta Basin, Eve → Prospector’s Folley, Eve. Range 185 kilometers.

 

==========

 

“Alright, Gemna, are you ready?” Mojorie asked.

“I’ve been waiting for this for so long!”

“We’re gonna see the deepest part of Laythe!”

“Well, uh, no. Unfortunately.”

“What do you mean?”

“According to our charts, the deepest part of Eve is on the exact opposite side of the planet, and the sub isn’t even attached to the plane any more, so we couldn’t go there if we wanted to without a lot of creativity.”

“A fact that Miteny would doubtless have a field day with... So we’re just gonna go as deep as we can here.”

Mojorie and Gemna boarded the Laythe Subnaut and descended down into the lifeless Laythian oceans.

"So, this terraforming stuff," Mojorie asked. "We've got a map, right? And what's our plan?"

"Right! So, ammonia is flammable. I believe you can even use it as a rocket fuel in Human Space Program," Gemna explained. "However, it is at a low enough concentration that you can't just strike a match, or even a bolt of lightning, and have the entire atmosphere go up in flames."

"That would be very bad!"

"It would be. However, that little tiny bit of Ammonia is practically the only thing preventing Laythe from being habitable. As far as terraforming goes, it barely counts. So we made a fleet of vehicles that would rove around to high wind areas and use high temperature combustion, with the help of a catalyst, to artificially force the ammonia to burn completely into nitrogen and water, although you can't have perfect combustion, so some of it ended up as nasty stuff like nitrous oxide... But I digress."

"That's still, like, a planet's worth of ammonia, though!" Mojorie said.

"Yeah, about 1 gigaton."

"That's a huge number!"

"Well, you have, say, a plant that can burn 1000 tons of ammonia a day. That's not very much, that's like, what, the consumption of approximately one thud engine running constantly? Counting the oxidizer. A year is 426 years, and they've been running for, say, 55 years nonstop, a bit more because they started before the war, a bit less because of downtime, and each plant alone will have removed 2.3 megatons of ammonia. That's like 40 plants. "

"That's a much less huge number!"

"The problem is, those plants are mobile, we don't know where they are. The rest of the crew up in orbit are trying to locate them. We know more or less what islands they are supposed to be on, but imaging the whole planet is going to take a while... The other problem, well, with terraforming, is that ammonia is water soluble. It is pretty slow, but ammonia does leach out of the ocean, so constant upkeep is needed... I seem to recall that there was an underwater base dedicated to studying this phenomenon, I think it was built by the USKN, though, so details are sketchy."

"Speaking of underwater, uh, the mission?"

"Oh, right, yeah! The mission! Ah. That's a problem."

"What?"

"Well, good news first. We made it to a depth of 2,278 meters. About 500 meters short of the deepest point, although it is half a world away."

"And the bad news?"

"The bad news is that, well, there's nothing down here. You've been running the samples, right?"

"Yes!"

"Nothing that exciting, and we only made it a few kilometers, before, well... The really bad news, look at the fuel gauge!"

"Oh no!"

"Yup, we've got about a third of the tank left. We can ditch the ore and float to the surface for reduced resistance, but there's no guarantee we won't have to swim back! I do indeed get distracted sometimes..."

"Ok, I'm done with the experiments, you can dump the ore... I'd hate to abandon the sub and its valuable RTG after only one mission!"

"Ore has been jettisoned, ascending now!"

Some time later, the duo surfaced, and lit up the jet engine to try to reach home, having also attempted to "glide" on the water on the way up (this ended up using up a lot of fuel and was not worth it).

"Thirty meters per second, 5 kilometers, and 3.3 units of fuel at 0.05 per second!" Mojorie reported.

"That's only enough for 2 kilometers," Gemna calculated. "I don't think we're going to make it! Gah, I get distracted so easily!"

"Is there anything we can do to reduce resistance?"

"We're at the best angle for that already, unless we go ludicrously slow, and I don't think that will be enough!" Gemna reported.

"She looks so close to taking off!" Mojorie said.

"If only we hadn't taken the bow planes off, we could probably just take her up into the sky!"

"Wait... WAIT! Hold on, I have an idea! Hold onto something, Gemna!"

"Mojorie, what are you - "

"WOOHOO!"

"How did I not think of that?"

"We're flying!"

"Hold on, we're not out of the woods  yet," Gemna said.

Running on the slightest of fumes, the Subnaut, which could now also be classified as an Aeronaut, soared towards the Solar Sands Base, the distance ticking down as the fuel ticked down.

Everyone held their breath as the Submarine touched down near the shore and motored the last few hundred meters.

"Phew!" Gemna said as the submarine became beached.

"And with a whole half unit of fuel to spare!" Mojorie cheered.

"Good thinking there, I was thinking we'd have to swim!"

 

==========

 

A few days later, after the Twig had been refueled, Angie took it out on another mission. The purpose of the mission was threefold: Scout out Laythe's tallest mountain (which was pretty nearby, on the same island chain), to see if it might be possible to get the rover there (although such a feat would involve crossing the ocean and would require some creativity), do more aerial exploration, and check out a contact that the orbiting assets had picked up on the surface.

It was discovered that Jool was present on this same island chain. A shame, as we could have had cool views and not have gone too far away!

Laythe's tallest point is over 6 kilometers up, and given the Twig's earlier performance at four kilometers, landing was deemed impossible, which is why the rover was being considered.

Despite protests, Angie found that the modifications to the Twig had made it a formidable flying machine, and went in for a landing anyway.

Much to the chagrin of Bobwig, She neither crashed, nor tipped over!

"Think of it this way, Bobwig, this embarrassment is much less than the embarrassment of getting the mining rover stuck halfway across the ocean!"

Ignoring whatever previous name the mountain may have had, Angie christened it "Mount Dull," due to how not sharp it was.

Then, she explored the eastern edge of that island, finding terrifyingly steep cliffs that absolutely screamed "Don't mess with me!"

After some more time in the air, she came across the contact that had been picked up from orbit.

"Hold on... Is that... Is that a - "

There was a loud crunch as Angie once more managed to tip over the aircraft.

"Leaning on the nose, that's 20 points to me!" Bobwig proclaimed in triumph.

"Oh don't worry, I'll catch up!" Mojorie joked.

"Are you guys seriously betting on my landings? While there's a literal skeleton? That's two forms of life on Laythe in one week, after looking for decades!"

After the Twig was righted and taxied over to the anomaly, Angie did some closer investigation.

"I'm no biologist, but It's definitely a whale, and a Kerbin whale at that," Angie observed. "If there was a big enough food chain here to support a Laythean whale, we would have seen it."

"Sad," Podpoint radioed in. "I guess we are the alien invaders here."

"And there's a bowl of petunias here?" Angie said, thoroughly confused. "Is this some sort of reference I don't get?"

"You've never read the Munhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?" Mojorie said, astonished.

"Someone doing this as a joke doesn't explain how they got a whale skeleton here," Angie said.

"There's a perfectly reasonable explanation," Gemna said. "There used to be a Laythean traveling circus back in the day, they somehow managed to fly an entire live whale all the way out here and she was part of their at. Kinda weird. I guess she must have died at some point."

"They flew a WHALE to LAYTHE???" Podpoint said, shocked.

"You spent two years on a spaceship to get here, and you didn't even bother reading the history of the moon?" Gemna asked, equally shocked.

"Okay, so the whale is irrelevant," Angie said. "But these petunias... They are fresh. And completely not native to Laythe."

"So someone's definitely alive and well," Bobwig posited. "Any footprints?"

"The wind here is high enough that they are all gone... But I'll stay here for a few days and see if anyone comes back."

"Good idea," Gemna said. "In the meantime, we're going to take those samples of those glowing clouds up to the Creativity for further analysis. Bobwig is closer to a biologist than Mojorie is, and there's a full on scientific lab up there, all we have down here are tents."

"Except Bobwig," Podpont said. "He gets to lounge in the rover all day."

"This chair is indeed really comfy," Bobwig teased.

"Alright, then. Let me know if anything changes, I'm going to set up camp for the night," Angie said.

 

==========

 

Meanwhile, back on Kerbin, the news of all the goings-on on Laythe had permeated through the Kerbal Space Center's exploration division, who were all immanently about to be reassigned within the next few weeks. Given the lack of a proper visit (or even more, the lack of feasibility of a visit) to Laythe's deepest point, and the shortcomings of the equipment that had been sent out with the Creativity, and the fact that a number of ships were bound to depart for Jool in the coming months, they decided to, completely unprompted, prepare a number of upgraded vehicles for the third wave of Intrepid era Laythe exploration.

The Laythe Aeronaut V, or Laythe SSTO 2, depending on who you ask, was a significantly larger Laythe SSTO designed to fix the shortcomings of the previous design. It had ten seats instead of six (of which only four were usable without modifications), RCS for docking, and, most importantly, windows!

Apart from a slight shortfall of liquid fuel, the SSTO was successfully able to complete a mission to Low Kerbin Orbit and back.

On re-entry, the crew noticed a strange, levitating piece of debris from one of the Flat Kerbin Society's launches, and added it to the list of things to explore at some point.

The vessel, however, did overshoot the space center significantly. 

It just barely made it to the island airport, practically stalling onto the runway's threshold.

Nevertheless, the design was deemed successful, and 100 extra liquid fuel was added.

The next vessel to be tested was the Laythe Circumnavigator, or Laythe Aeronaut VI. Its aim was to allow access to everywhere on Laythe with seats for 3 to assist with exploration, rescue, and access to the land nearest to the deepest part of the Laythean ocean.

It was tested by circumnavigating Kerbin, and did so with flying colors, landing with over a quarter tank of fuel remaining!

The pilot of this mission arrived back to an unusual scene at the space center. For in the hours since she had left, talk about logistics had progressed. This vehicle could get a crew to the other side of Laythe, but was incapable of water landing (the equipment for which would likely hamper its range significantly). For access to the submarine, which would likely be as part of a floating base landed in place, if the chatter was to be believed, a different aircraft was needed.

...Or, a method was required to land this aircraft near the submarine without the use of draggy pontoons.

The prototype aircraft was wheeled onto the Interplanetary Aircraft Carrier (IAC)-01 Gunkly for testing.

The circumnavigator's width left much to be desired in terms of landing tolerance, but takeoff testing proceeded regardless.

Needless to say, a narrower aircraft was needed.

The logical thing would have been to drop the carrier idea and instead build a medium range seaplane, but what is this, Project Lame? No! This is Project Intrepid!

The new aircraft, the Laythe Aeronaut VII, exposed a flaw in the carrier design, namely that there wasn't enough buoyancy.

Nevertheless, the vessel could successfully take off from the carrier.

And while the landing was very sketchy, the aircraft could land as well! Due to a weird flight rule that means surface vessels can't move unless within 350 meters of a flying vessel, landing is very difficult, as the aircraft must circle the carrier, wait for it to accelerate, and keep pace with it, before landing. The good news is that after a while you don't have to circle, as the carrier's top speed, on Kerbin, at least, is higher than the aircraft's stall speed.

Two more prototype carriers, the IAC-02 Skrunkle and the IAC-03 Peanut Butter And Jelly Sandwich were constructed with various improvements, including ramps (front and back), and better floatation. After an embarrassing number of Laythe Aeronaut VII crashes, a successful landing was performed by Roduki Kerman on the IAC-03.

The crew celebrated (amongst the floating wreckage of several more Laythe Aeronaut VIIs) the achievement and stowed the aircraft using a Klaw for cruise.

After landing, cruise tests were undertaken. After a brief moment where the Peanut Butter And Jelly Sandwich nearly crashed into the island airfield's island, the course was corrected, and the carrier was piloted about halfway back to the space center.

There was then a successful takeoff... There was then an unsuccessful landing attempt. A number of changes to both the carrier and the aircraft were ordered, and testing concluded with the IAC-04.

The main change was the addition of a robotic ramp to rescue splashed down aircraft, and also potentially small submarines if the infrastructure worked out that day.

"But how on Kerbin will we land this on Laythe?" one Kerbal asked.

"You know, that gigantic flight deck is kinda like a giant wing, and - "

"SAY NO MORE!"

Ground crews strapped wings to the IAC-04 and it was test flown using her onboard jet engines.

She performed significantly better than one would expect from a flying aircraft carrier.

After a mostly successful landing (the canards were destroyed, no big deal), the wings were jettisoned and the test campaign was declared a success.

Jebediah Kerman yawned as he woke up to the sunrise, having had a much needed rest (though at his desk) after several days straight of preparations for the upcoming Jool window. He walked outside.

"Oh hey there, Mel, what have you guys been up to while I was asleep?" There was a flash of light and a rumble, and Jebediah turned to face the runway.

"Oh, that's what you've been up to."

"You aren't mad, right?"

"I'm just mad I'm not on board!"

The IAC-04 thundered upwards to orbit, at the steady hands of captain Haymon Kerman.

Stage separation progressed without a hitch, and the two second stage Rhino engines successfully started up.

"But how do we classify this?" Jebediah asked Mel. "It can't be part of the ITV series," he said.

"Why not?" Mel asked.

"It's an aircraft carrier, not a space mothership!"

"Well, let's see... It is a large vessel that carries other smaller vessels, and goes to other planets, for the purpose of exploring places and testing new concepts. That screams Intrepid Test Vehicle to me."

"That seems wrong," Jebediah said.

"Well, it's more of an Intrepid Test Vehicle than whatever we were thinking when we built the ITV-021 Triplets," Mel said.

"Fair," Jebediah conceded.

And with that, the IAC-04/ITV-029 entered orbit, and was named the Celestia.

 

The Story Of Project Intrepid Will Continue...

 

 

Edited 7 hours ago by Ultimate Steve