ALIEN SKIES: A 6.4-scale playthrough of GPP/Rald

[qzgy]

On 4/2/2018 at 2:02 AM, CatastrophicFailure said:

and someone even remembered to pack the floaties, since it turns out ore is heavy.

The floaties look like they do more sinky-ing than floating considering how not in the water they are....

Neat reentry design though. Like it a lot. Might have to borrow it sometime later....

Edited April 3, 2018 by qzgy

[CatastrophicFailure]

By Grabthar’s hammer, this thread shall be avenged!

No, because it’s not quite dead yet. But this video that’s been sucking the brain juice out of me the last few weeks is. I’m giving myself another hour or so to slap a soundtrack on it tomorrow then moving on and getting back to actually playing the game and getting this save interesting again. 

[CatastrophicFailure]

It's finished!

Or as finished as it's getting and lacking polish.

The next time I even think about doing a video, please someone hide Ivan in my fridge... 

 

(Context and snarky commentary to follow soon™)

[CatastrophicFailure]

Year 9, Day 365...

Well for starters, we have confirmed that there are more than 365 days to a year, here. There has been a surprising amount of debate on the subject, which seems odd for a place filled with astrophysicists, but this place is strange.

Other staff members have lately been reporting the most peculiar feeling, as if nothing at all has happened for an entire month, or perhaps they've been re-living the same day over and over again.

These reports did, of course, do nothing but spur on heated debate about exactly how long a "month" is in the first place, which doesn't seem likely to be resolved any time soon.

Meanwhile, we sent a probe to Icarus, the innermost planet:

Trust me it's there somewhere.

Spoiler

It returned lots of useful data before overheating and exploding, but even that was tinted with strangeness. All the data packets were preceded by random strings of characters that read out things like: "It's hot." And "flarp, it's hot!" And "are you kidding? This is slow torture!" And "Dear sweet Kerm, please make the pain stop!" And "What kind of monsters are you people, why won't you let me die?"

The engineering team assures me that any similarity to actual words is purely coincidence, and no one should loose any sleep over this. And they're still working on exactly what a "Kerm" is.

Personally, I've just invoked one of the great traditions of our people and decided never to speak of the incident again. Ever.

 

Other than all that, it was basically a re-hash of the Eta lander.

 

But moving on to bigger and better and hopefully less anthropomorphically petulant missions, we have successfully launched the first of a new generation of super-heavy lifter!

Behold, the mighty Nero-X!

Our first foray into a full 10-meter-class booster, with engine bells big enough to house an entire clan of peasants from the Abvonovichatkaderivokistani interior, we--
Well, we're really still trying to justify the investment as no one around here has yet thought up a second payload big enough to actually need the thing. We have no idea how much it's capable of lifting to LGO, but the hydrolox core stage alone seems capable of SSTO operation with a small payload.

What we do know, is that it's capable of hurling 100 tonnes all the way to Ceti.

 

Booster sep!

They tell me that's supposed to happen like that. Perfectly normal.

 

And here we have said 100 tonnes, in the form of Prospector IIIb.

What happened to Prospector IIIa? Yeah, I'm invoking that grand tradition of our people again...

 

A refinement and expansion of the very successful Prospector II architecture, this mission will return an even heavier load of ore from our largest and most distant moon.

 

Here we see Prospector IIIb gently settling to the surface of Ceti.

 

No more leaving garbage behind, this time the hardware is fully equipped to return its equipment to Gael.

Because that stuff is expensive. 

 

After a few days on the surface, the ore tanks are full and... why is the contract not completing?
Pass me that hammer...

Anyways, the rig lifts off to return to Gael, after convincing GENE that the ore it just extracted from Ceti did, in fact, get extracted from Ceti.

 

Like it's predecessor, Prospector IIIb carried a full suite of ISRU hardware, enabling it to refill its tanks from all that ore that absolutely was actually extracted from Ceti!

It then turns around and burns off all that fuel just before re-entry.

Easy come, easy go...

 

I'm... pretty sure that was nothing important...

 

Drogue chutes deploy, and heatshields are released...

 

 

Now landing without nothing important, this handy side-mounted parachute allows the probe to flip around...

 

In an absolutely controlled manner that absolutely does not break off anything else not important...

 

Followed by the main chutes, and a gentle kiss of solid landing motors to cushion the final descent...

 

We have once gain returned a nearly valueless quantity of ore for a contract that didn't come close to paying for the whole mess, and insisted what was wasn't when it really was, not was. Open the door, get on the floor...

Someone please get Vlad off the floor...

 

These "extract and return ore" contacts may not be as lucrative as they sounded...

 

But, to end on a good note, after many months (GIVE OR TAKE! GEEZE, GIVE IT A REST, GUYS!) relaying data from the surface lander, NOVA Otho finally heads off for an encounter with the last unexplored moon there...

 

While the flyby was brief, the transfer burn cost a bit less than expected, leaving us the prospect of a second flyby in the not-too-distant future...

If the on-board nuclear reactor doesn't run out of juice before then...

 

This, like the definition of "month," becomes the topic du jour around the facility, possibly because it serves as a very convenient distraction from the big, stinky elephant in the room that we are clearly detecting two distress calls. From Rald.

 

Vlad! Get this flarping elephant out of here! I don't care if it followed you home, you're not keeping it!
And bring a... sponge, or something. I warned you not to feed it tacos, they eat hay.
Bring... lots of sponges... and a mop...

Edited June 3, 2018 by CatastrophicFailure

[roboslacker]

Yay content!

[CatastrophicFailure]

Year 10, Day 17...

Getting back into the swing of things now...
...which has nothing to do with Vlad being swung around by an enraged, irregular elephant...
The NewShip design has served our crewed program well, but despite the name is already showing its age. And with the more... interesting... developments on the horizon, the engineering team has begun designs on our next-generation crew transport.

However, this is not that.

What this is, is several proof-of-concept demonstrations, depending upon what the definition of is, um, is.

Spoiler

This new 5-meter class booster is efficient, easy to refurbish, and best of all, cheap.

The SRB's were a necessary addition for this mission, but will likely not be needed with the finished architecture. 

 

They give a fairly small bit of oomph, jettisoning at only 10,000 meters.

 

Here we see the business end of the new as-yet-unnamed booster, with our brand new RS-68 hydrolox engine, packaged in a svelte shroud.

 

The oversized, lightweight booster propels the spacecraft much higher and faster than a typical profile. We're hoping what we get back isn't too melted.

But just after burnout, we have our second poofing test: validation of the abort motor ring for the new crew transport.

Which isn't this.

 

Modified from stage separation motors from the massive Otho booster, the abort ring has no trouble moving the spacecraft forward at over four G's, a much heavier mass than it will see in its final use.

 

Once spent, the ring automatically separates, leaving a single LF/OX Gandalf-C engine to propel the spacecraft the rest of the way into orbit.

 

And here we see the business end of our new space transit initiative. At long last, the engineering team has finally solved the problem of how to make an engine and a heat shield coexist in the same place: Just cut a big hole in the heat shield!

The engineering team assures me that this direct line into the sensitive innards of the spacecraft will not result in spectacular explosions or melted engines.

 

The spacecraft is likely a one-shot design, it show some potential as a cargo craft but is far too volume-limited by the narrow payload bay. First order of business on orbit: deploying a new Pathfinder satellite, as this particular orbit seems very well suited to interplanetary transfers.

 

How do we know this? For this is the same orbit that once hosted the trouble-prone UpLab space station, and still hosts the tumbling-out-of-control LDEF, which we're finally going to return this time.

Right, engineering team?? Don't make me get the elephant in here...

 

Next up, the spacecraft releases a capture probe. It's equipped with a matching docking port to the LDEF, but docking while it's tumbling is a non-starter. Instead, brute force and sharpened steel is the order of the day.

 

With little trouble, the capture probe harpoons our wayward whiteish whale.

The engineering team has assured me that stabbing a battery with steel spikes should have absolutely no detrimental effects. Probably because they're all dead.

 

Equipped with both reaction wheels and RCS thrusters, the capture probe is able to stabilize the tumbling module.

Now the spacecraft moves in...

 

Hey, lookit that! It fits!

 

We can even close the doors this time, with the capture probe still attached, no less!

 

Now that the LDEF is secured, the spacecraft waits another day until its orbit lines up with the space center, then begins its descent...

 

...which proves to be unsatisfactorily unstable, yet just enough that nothing too important burns off. Like, the engine...

 

All that wobbling around has thrown off the final course, it's coming down just south of the space center island.

 

To everyone's not-at-all surprise, the Gandalf-C engine fires right back up even after being bathed in the hypersonic plasma stream of re-entry.

 

And just like that, the LDEF is finally back on solid ground.

Sort of. Not really. But the new things floats well enough, and more importantly, all the critical components of the new crew transport have been successfully verified!

 

Now, to come up with a name...

Oh, and actually build the thing...

 

Edited June 3, 2018 by CatastrophicFailure

[insert_name]

This craft reminds me of TKS for some reason.

[roboslacker]

I propose the rocket be named Bob.

[CatastrophicFailure]

6 hours ago, roboslacker said:

I propose the rocket be named Bob.

DONE!
sort of

[Patupi]

On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 6:18 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

DONE!
sort of

And so continues the long serving rule of spacecraft being named after planets.

[CatastrophicFailure]

5 minutes ago, Patupi said:

And so continues the long serving rule of spacecraft being named after planets.

You are far too quick.  

[Patupi]

You know what they say, only the quick and the Euk UEEERGH ARRRGGHHH!

 

(Of course it loses something in translation)

Edited May 14, 2018 by Patupi

[CatastrophicFailure]

Year 10, Day 28...

A quick update, as we're quite busy around the Space Center.

First off, we've launched our latest Flagship-class interplanetary mission! The engineering team has learned well the lessons from our previous rovers and long-distance landers...

...I think. Mostly there's been alot of undignified giggling as they peek behind their technical manuals. I've learned it's best not to ask too many questions, there.

Spoiler

This mission also marks our first return to an outer planet beyond Gael, the target: Gratian.

It seems that while the science team was pouring over the reams of data returned by the NOVA Gratian mission, they uncovered something... very strange. Well, two things.

 

Aside from the entire place being a reminder that omelettes du fromage are available in the canteen. Anyways, the team uncovered spurious data that the atmosphere of the cold, distant planet actually contains oxygen. NOVA Gratian was not able to confirm this at the time, since it wasn't equipped to actually detect oxygen. Long-range telescope spectrography never revealed any hint of the element, so no sensors were provided. Finding telltale evidence of the stuff buried in the data returns was confusing to say the least, but that wasn't the half of it.

There's something... else. A substance that's been defying any attempt to properly quantify given the limited information returned by the lander, if it even exists. The science and engineering teams have checked and re-checked the readings a dozen times, and can't find any hint of malfunction to chalk it up to. So between the tantalizing possibility of an oxygen atmosphere, and an uncatalogued compound that seems to defy the very laws of physics in its potential as an energy source, Gratian has suddenly and unexpectedly found itself at the top of the list for an eventual manned mission.

But first, we need to figure out what we're getting into.

The new Gratian rover, dubbed Audacity, comes equipped with all the sensors!

Seriously. We're completely out. We're going to need to make more. It even has sensors we didn't know we had. No one's really quite sure how that happened, but again, I've found it best not to ask questions sometimes. It'll be over a year and a half before we get any answers, anyway. And just a bit longer to get real answers.

True to its name, Audacity is merely the spearhead to a much more... intrepid mission, to not only explore the distant world, but to return samples from it back to Gael.

I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong.

 

But as we open this new page, sadly so to are we closing one.

Further out, NOVA Otho is nearing its second pass of the middle moon Hephaestus. Nearly out of propellant and with its nuclear reactor also running on metaphorical fumes, the science team decided the risk of it possibly crashing into Augustus at a later date and contaminating it were too great.

Because vaporized nuclear waste would be incredibly harmful to a dry, dead world.

But scientists can be strange like that. One final thruster firing is transmitted to the intrepid probe...

Which will instead scatter vaporized nuclear waste across the equally dry, dead world of Hephaestus. 

 

Swinging low over unexplored regions, NOVA Otho keeps transmitting to the very end.

LOS year 10, day 28, 22:23:34.

 

But anyways, continuing this emotional rollercoaster, final launch preparations are now underway for the first test flight of a successor to the NewShip, the Enhanced Space Transportation Initiative.

 

Meet ESTI:

 

 

Edited June 3, 2018 by CatastrophicFailure

[JadeOfMaar]

iNTENSITY INTENSIFIES....

I'm not sure if I'm just eager for this story to progress, or the room is being irradiated thanks to the machinations of one of the not so fine Ussari engineers.

Edited May 15, 2018 by JadeOfMaar

[CatastrophicFailure]

10 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

iNTENSITY INTENSIFIES....

I'm not sure if I'm just eager for this story to progress, or the room is being irradiated thanks to the machinations of one of the not so fine Ussari engineers.

Told ya it was coming.  You may get run over by a glacier before it actually gets here, but it’s coming.  

[Patupi]

15 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Told ya it was coming.  You may get run over by a glacier before it actually gets here, but it’s coming.  

Cooooool!

[CobaltShock]

Love this

If you don't mind me asking, what are your settings for cash rewards for contracts/milestones? I'm trying to balance the perfect cash system for a 6.4x GPP career, but haven't had success yet. 

Edited May 18, 2018 by Steeeeve

[CatastrophicFailure]

On 5/18/2018 at 9:24 AM, Steeeeve said:

Love this

If you don't mind me asking, what are your settings for cash rewards for contracts/milestones? I'm trying to balance the perfect cash system for a 6.4x GPP career, but haven't had success yet. 

Ack, sorry I missed this.  I don't recall my exact settings off the top of my head, but I think they're not too far off from normal. I am, however, heavily reliant upon stage recovery with the aptly named StageRecovery mod, and for a while now I've had the Admin building strategy nearly maxed out that trades science for funds. It makes for a slow tech progression, but the cash flow is about right for a balanced game. Lately, it's simulations that have been really sucking the cash flow. I've got some things in the works where the cost of the sim rivals the cost of the mission.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Year 10, Day 103...

We continue to forge ahead with a newly re-energized (if slightly delayed) space program! A few weeks ago saw the launch of our first ground-up design in many years, the Enhanced Space Transportation Initiative, or ESTI.

Spoiler

 

ESTI is not just a spacecraft or launch vehicle, but a unitized system designed for maximum flexibility, robustness, and, well... it's cheap. Cheaper in that we've finally realized our goal of a fully and rapidly re-usable crewed launch system.

Here, we have booster separation at approximately 80km altitude, velocity 3km/s.

This makes for a very hot re-entry for the booster, as we expected, it was a little cooked upon ocean retrieval. 

 

And this takes us right into our first problem. The Gandalf-C engine propelling the 50-tonne spacecraft into orbit is, well, a bit disappointing. Trying to squeeze enough margin out of the prototype launch led to a booster stretched beyond its initial design and that much higher separation speed. Here, the spacecraft struggles to maintain sufficient time-to-apoapse by pitching up in a rather inefficient flight profile.

Fortunately, there's no one on board this maiden launch to get embarrassed.

But, the spacecraft does finally manage to claw its way into a low, but stable, orbit with a sufficient reserve for landing, but not much else.

The engineering team has christened this class-leader Spaceship Bob.

Triti Kerman promptly appeared and attempted to explain to them that one simply cannot call a spaceship Bob, any more than one could call, say, a planet Bob. The engineering team then accused Triti of making herself out to be the Queen of Bob, and if she didn't like it, well, no one said she had to fly on Bob, to which she responded in a soft, unusually soothing voice, "'I'm never... calling it... that..."

 

And then there was running, and... screaming...

 

But moving along, Bob spends a full day in orbit running automated checkouts, which was fortunate since the entire engineering team somehow wound up in the infirmary with wounds. Right on time, Bob fires up its disappointing Gandalf-C and begins a decent descent.

 

Against all odds, despite being directly in the superheated plasma flow, the engine weathers the heat just fine...

 

Stay on target... stay on target...

 

Everyone who was not still in the infirmary was outside to watch the blazing trail in the sky streak towards them.

Right towards them.

 

Once again there was running, and... screaming...

 

But fortunately Bob was just a little off-target, coming down just a few kilometers from the space center.

 

The burnt and buffeted Gandalf-C fires up right on time...

 

And the automated landing subroutine gently sets down.

Right on schedule, Bob is back home in one piece ready to fly again!

 

After a significant overhaul...

 

So, a few weeks hence brings us to ESTI Flight 2, the first crewed flight of our new system. Piloted by, oddly enough, Triti Kerman, who dragged along Lodvin, Leelanna, and Ferdin. This is not quite a record for number of Kerbals in one ship, but is the first time we've launched such a compliment. From Gael, anyway. ESTI can be configured for a crew of up to 8 in the future.

 

However, the under-performance of the Gandalf engine has led to some temporary design changes until it can be upgraded. Six small strap-on boosters have been added to supplement the main booster's single RS-68 engine and get the whole mess moving.

 

They burn for around a minute before jettisoning at an awkward time just after max-Q.

Fortunately, nothing too important explodes. We're going to need a lot more science to squeeze the needed performance out of our troublesome engine.

 

Booster separation. Here we see the drag brakes automatically deploy and tumble motor fire. Hopefully this gives the recovery team something a little less... melted...

 

Soon after, Triti and company are safely in orbit, this time with a much more useful reserve of around 1.2km/s of delta-V available.

 

On the second orbit, Triti takes the opportunity for a quick EVA to test procedures. And verify that no one did anything stupid like blocking the hatch with a fin...

The lineage to the old NewShip is quite apparent, here. This, at last, in the spacecraft we've always wanted (thanks, @Angel-125)! The scale is a little more apparent here, too. That's a 5-meter section at the base. The solar panels are mostly redundant at this point, primary power comes from a trio of RTG's buried next to the engine. I'm sure the crew won't mind a little extra radiation. Also visible here are emergency parachutes in case that pesky engine fails to light on landing. 

 

After two days in orbit, the crew prepares to head home.

Really, Lodvin? It's barely two days, how are you stubbly already? Maybe it's not Jencine clogging up all the drains...

Hey!

 

It's another spectacular re-entry...

 

Coming in right down the pickle barrel...

I want pickles! When did we get pickles?!
Shush, Haylotte...

Bob has enough margin on this flight for a last-minute braking and correction burn...

 

Burning off the extra fuel actually makes for a more efficient and safer touchdown...

We'll cover abort modes later...

 

Bob retires to the VAB now with two successful flights under its belt. Further Spaceships will be in the production line just as soon as we figure out names for them that won't send Triti into a rage. 

 

We're going to need them, soon. About those Raldean distress signals....

I'm still never calling it that!

 

 

Edited June 3, 2018 by CatastrophicFailure

[roboslacker]

12 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

You did it!

[CatastrophicFailure]

4 hours ago, roboslacker said:

You did it!

But of course. 

You can expect an angry letter from Triti in the interdimensional mail soon. 

[CatastrophicFailure]

Year 10, day 113...

Elsewhere...

Back on Rald, Stinky the living shadow rouses himself from his dark slumber and the RaldBase grinds back to life again.

It's a little the worse for wear after sitting idle for over two years, now, but the issues all seem fairly minor, due to the high degree of redundancy due to being cobbled together from bits found lying by the side of the road...

So to speak...

 

It's a trek of nearly 4,000 kilometers, nearly halfway across the planet again, from the shores of the northern sea to the high dunes just within spitting distance of the Raldean south pole.

With its low air pressure and grabbity, one can spit a very long way on Rald...
The terminal hypoxia is another matter...

 

But, finally, the base grinds to a halt...

ahem, grinds to a halt...

STOP THAT THING!!!

That's better. Wouldn't want to run over that pod before it's been cataloged.

 

And there she is.

 

Just sort of... staring off into the distance, real eerie-like...

 

Hellenna Kerman.

As in every one of these rescues so far, Hellenna has no idea how she got there, or any memory at all before the RaldBase snuck up on her so rudely.

However, she was amenable enough to cooperate with us once we agreed to tell her how her suit controls worked before she suffocated.

 

Oddly enough, despite having no memories she comes to us as a mildly skilled engineer, enough to fix most of the issues with the RaldBase.

Aaaand then we let her inside and Stinky tried to introduce himself.

 

Yep. Running and screaming, again.

 

She calmed down a bit once she'd beaten Stinky enough with her power driver to realize one really can't beat Stinky. It was about at this point that Stinky once again proved his own usefulness by being sent outside on a rare away mission, to try something that had never occurred to us in all these rescues: to examine Hellenna's pod.

Which, according to his report, was filled with... leftovers.

Perfectly preserved leftovers at just the right temperature, despite sitting in an unpowered pod on the surface of an alien world for no one knows how long. It seems someone, somewhere, had been having themselves quite the lavish feast at some point. Any further analysis of the contents was limited, however, as, well, Stinky + leftovers...

 

So with Hellenna's pod entirely stripped of its contents and most of the insulation panels as well, the RaldBase moved on, deep into a Gaelclipse...

 

A few hundred kilometers on, and we found... Burrick Kerman.

 

Burrick Kerman is apparently the lone exception to all the wayward castaway amnesiacs we're recovered and turned into a Kerbonaut corps. He claims to still have vivid memories of being a large, bipedal, lizard-like creature living happily in a subterranean cavern with his kin, until some taffer snuck up behind him and hit him over the head, whereupon he promptly farted himself to death.

We think Burrick's mental situation may not be entirely stable...

 

Also, he claims to have been sheltering in some sort of large, deflated beachball.

We cut his comm feed before he blurted out that this was also, apparently, filled with leftovers.

We managed to send Hellenna out to lash it to the hull. We'll be returning it to Gael for further analysis, and possible late-night fridge raids.

 

The RaldBase then makes the long trek back to where it'd just come from, on the northern shore, to complete several contracts and await the arrival of our third (AND FINAL!) ore return mission...

...Prospector V.
...don't even ask about what happened to Prospector IV...

[IncongruousGoat]

2 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

...Prospector V.
...don't even ask about what happened to Prospector IV...

This... we do not speak of.

Another great installment as always.

[GarrisonChisholm]

4,000 km drive?  Good gracious, how long did that take you at the PC?  On my system it would be days, literally.

[CatastrophicFailure]

8 hours ago, GarrisonChisholm said:

4,000 km drive?  Good gracious, how long did that take you at the PC?  On my system it would be days, literally.

Oh, I use the Bon Voyage  background-roving mod for that.  Rald is beautiful, but even with MechJeb driving there's only so much of that I can take at 12 FPS. BV has allowed the RaldBase to drive pretty much all the way around the planet at this point, I'll try to remember to grab a screen cap of that map...