The Retro Solar Rescue

[Spricigo]

 @herbal space program you will notice that as the velocity of the vessel in the planet SoI increases the effectiveness of the gravity assist decrease.  

So,  while you will be able to change you inclination a lot I'm the first few passes,  later several passes will be needed to a noticeable effect.  It can still be done but you will need a lot of patience and a mod to allow higher rates of time warp is highly advisable. 

 

[herbal space program]

On ‎7‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 11:19 PM, Spricigo said:

 @herbal space program you will notice that as the velocity of the vessel in the planet SoI increases the effectiveness of the gravity assist decrease.  

So,  while you will be able to change you inclination a lot I'm the first few passes,  later several passes will be needed to a noticeable effect.  It can still be done but you will need a lot of patience and a mod to allow higher rates of time warp is highly advisable. 

 

True, but Eve has got a whole lot of gravity and a pretty short period, so I think it might not be so bad. We'll see.....

Well plan A didn't work. I launched into a polar orbit and swung around Eve from there to get to an orbit that was the same size as Eve's but 8 degrees tilted, and that was as far as I could get. Subsequent encounters could not change my inclination any further as I had thought they might, because in that situation your motion inside of Eve's SOI is already completely normal. The only way to change that would be to push  AP in or out from there to create some prograde or retrograde relative motion going into the next encounter, which can then be converted to normal motion. I'm not giving up on finding a way to "flip the pancake" quite yet, but it looks to me like it will require some sort of back-and-forth between Jool, Eve, and Kerbin. I guess my next plan will be to see how much plane change I can get if I first fling myself to the highest resonant orbit I can off of Eve and then turn all that relative motion normal. Plan C I guess will be following the 3:2-2:1 ladder to Jool I worked out a while back: Album a/XQSnn will appear when post is submitted   and seeing what I can do from there. That method can get you out to Jool for around 1300m/s every time Kerbin  is ~33 degrees ahead of Jool, which is a bit more expensive but much more frequent that the PLAD KEKKJ route. I'm sure I can gin something up using that. My rescue plane makes LKO with almost 6km/s, so I still have hope that I can pull this off with a single stage.  Stay tuned...

 

 

Edited July 25, 2017 by herbal space program

[herbal space program]

On ‎7‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 11:19 PM, Spricigo said:

 So,  while you will be able to change you inclination a lot I'm the first few passes,  later several passes will be needed to a noticeable effect.  It can still be done but you will need a lot of patience and a mod to allow higher rates of time warp is highly advisable. 

Just re-quoting this by way of announcing that after quite a few hours I'm finally giving up on this approach. Starting from an orbit that went outside of Jool and well inside of Moho, I was able to use Eve to get to around 50 degrees inclination before the speed became so high that I was getting only a couple of degrees per pass on a 3:1 resonant orbit. I could have kept at it, dropping to lower and lower orbits, but timing the encounters properly was getting to be a real hassle already. I suppose that using Jool to do this would be significantly easier, due to the higher gravity and much lower relative velocities, but it would take just forever in game time to do it from a higher-energy orbit than Jool's. I think I'm going to back my game up to after my second Jool encounter and try again from there. So far, I've started by raising myself to a Kerbin PE outside-of-Jool AP orbit that encounters Jool inbound using only Kerbin assists and DSMs, for right around 1400m/s from LKO. From there, I ejected outwards and backwards to get  an orbit that went further outside of Jool's and dropped to a PE inside of Eve's, which re-encountered after about 1.3 orbits. From this encounter, it got to an orbit that went quite close to the sun and had its AP near Jool, from which I started using outbound Eve encounters to try to flip the pancake. This time, I think I'll use my first Eve encounter to fling myself out to a 30 year or so  orbit, then narrow than even further at AP and try to hit Jool inbound again. I'm pretty sure that will be enough to turn me around, but it won't be quick. Anyway, I'll post an album once I'm confident I've got a plan to at least get there...

Edited July 30, 2017 by herbal space program

[linuxgurugamer]

Just an update on my mission:

Last night, Valentina successfully rendezvoused with Burberry, achieving a relative velocity of 0.0m/s only 200 m from his ship..  After unfreezing, he did a successful EVA and joined Valentina in the crew cabin of the rescue ship.

Val refused to let him touch the controls, and told him to get into the DeepFreeze chamber prior to maneuvers.  Good thing, because he almost took out one of the solar panels and tried entering the chamber through something which he thought looked like a hatch.

After setting up maneuver nodes and doing a bit of time warping, the return voyage began.  The burn had to be interrupted due to time constraints, there is currently 4 hours of burn time left on this maneuver.  Once the burn is complete, Val will join Burberry  in the DeepFreeze chamber until it will be time to enter Kerbin orbit.

Total mission time is going to be less than 1 kerbal year.  The ship is estimated to have more than 5000 m/s dV in reserve, so there won't be any issue in getting into a low kerbin orbit before reentry.

Mission will be finished next Sunday, at which time I will be doing a giveaway of a copy of KSP in celebration of the successful mission.

[linuxgurugamer]

FLASH!  Read All About It!  

Burberry Kerman Rescued!

Mission Details

Duration:  About 362 Kerbin days

Life Support Included:  USI-LS and Deep Freeze

Ship Details:

• Two launches
• First launch:  Propulsion and fuel
  • Part Count: 370
  • Mass: 20121.62t at launch
  • Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/linuxgurugamer/Rescue-1
• Second launch:  Crew cabins, Deep Freeze cabin and refueler
  • Part Count: 208
  • Mass: 5847.47t at launch
  • Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/linuxgurugamer/Rescue-2

 

Mod list.  Keep in mind that most mods arent' needed for the mission, I have a lot in there for the video stuff I'm trying to do and nice visuals

Spoiler

All Y'All (AllYAll 0.11.0)
Automated Screenshots & Saves (AutomatedScreenshots 0.8.0.1)
Camera Focus Changer (CameraFocusChanger v1.0.1.0)
Camera Tools (CameraTools v1.8.0)
Chatterer (Chatterer 0.9.93)
Chatterer Extended (ChattererExtended 0.6.1)
Color Coded Canisters (ColorCodedCans 1.5.1)
Community Category Kit (CommunityCategoryKit 2.0.1.0)
Community Resource Pack (CommunityResourcePack 0.7.1.0)
Community Tech Tree (CommunityTechTree 1:3.2.0)
Connected Living Space (ConnectedLivingSpace 1.2.5.3a)
DeepFreeze Continued... (DeepFreeze V0.23.6.0)
Docking Port Alignment Indicator (DockingPortAlignmentIndicator 6.7.0)
DockSafe (DockSafe 1.0.3)
Editor Extensions Redux (EditorExtensionsRedux 3.3.13.1)
Environmental Visual Enhancements (EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements 2:EVE-1.2.2-1)
Fuel Tank Expansion Rebuilt (MunarIndustriesFTX 0.9.5.4)
Fuel Tanks Plus (FuelTanksPlus 1.12.1)
FuseBox Continued (FuseBoxContinued 0.1.14)
Fwiffo's Rareden Skybox (FwiffoRaredenSkybox 1.0)
GravityTurn Continued (GravityTurnContinued 1:1.7.6)
HangerExtender (HangerExtenderExtended 3.5.0)
HyperEdit (HyperEdit 1.5.4.0)
IndicatorLights (IndicatorLights 1.2.11)
Interstellar Fuel Switch (InterstellarFuelSwitch 2.6.3)
Interstellar Fuel Switch Core (InterstellarFuelSwitch-Core 2.6.3)
Kerbal Alarm Clock (KerbalAlarmClock v3.8.5.0)
Kerbal Engineer Redux (KerbalEngineerRedux 1.1.3.0)
Kerbal-Konstructs (KerbalKonstructs 1.1.0)
KerbinSide Core (KerbinSideCore 3:1.4)
Kerbin-Side Kampus cont. (KerbinSideKampus 3:1.3.0)
KSP AVC (KSP-AVC 1.1.6.2)
KSP Interstellar Extended (KSPInterstellarExtended 1.14.15)
KSPDev LogConsole (KSPDev-LogConsole 1:0.15)
KW Rocketry Redux (KWRocketryRedux 3.1.4)
KW Rocketry Redux - Instant Power Response Configs (KWRocketryRedux-InstantPwr 3.1.4)
LoadingScreenManager (LoadingScreenManager 1.2.0)
MechJeb 2 (MechJeb2 2.6.1.0)
MechJeb and Engineer for all! (MechJebForAll 1.2.0.0)
Module Manager (ModuleManager 2.8.1)
NASA CountDown Clock Updated (NASA-CountDown 1.3.2)
Navball Docking Alignment Indicator CE-2 (NavballDockAlignIndCE 1.0.2)
Part Commander Continued (PartCommanderCont 0.1.2)
Part Wizard Continued (PartWizardContinued 1.3.4)
PlanetShine (PlanetShine 0.2.5.2)
PlanetShine - Default configuration (PlanetShine-Config-Default 0.2.5.2)
QuickStart (QuickStart v2.14)
RealChute Parachute Systems (RealChute v1.4.4)
Reentry Particle Effect (ReentryParticleEffect 1.2a)
REPOSoftTech-Agencies (REPOSoftTech-Agencies V1.5.0.0)
S.A.V.E (SAVE 1.4.5-2843)
SafeChute (SafeChute v2.1.7)
scatterer (Scatterer 2:v0.0320b)
scatterer - default config (Scatterer-config 2:v0.0320b)
scatterer - sunflare (Scatterer-sunflare 2:v0.0320b)
Ship Manifest (ShipManifest 5.2.0.0)
Show FPS (ShowFPS v1.1)
Simple Adjustable Fairings - KW Rocketry Pack (SimpleAdjustableFairings-KWRocketry v1.0.1)
Simple Adjustable Fairings - Plugin (SimpleAdjustableFairings v1.0.1)
Slingshotter Reslung (SlingShotterReslung 1.1.2)
SmartStage (SmartStage 1:2.9.8)
SpaceY Expanded (SpaceY-Expanded 1.3.1)
SpaceY Heavy Lifters (SpaceY-Lifters 1.16)
Stock Visual Enhancements (StockVisualEnhancements 3:1.2.5.0)
Stock Visual Enhancements-High Res Textures (SVE-HighResolution 3:1.0.1)
TAC Fuel Balancer (TacFuelBalancer v2.13)
TextureReplacer (TextureReplacer v2.6.0)
The Janitor's Closet (JanitorsCloset 0.3.2)
ToadicusToolsContinued (ToadicusToolsContinued 0.22.1)
Toolbar (Toolbar 1.7.14)
TotalTime (TotalTime 0.6.6)
TRP-Hire (TRPHire 0.6.2)
TweakScale - Rescale Everything! (TweakScale v2.3.6)
Universal Storage (UniversalStorage 1.3.0.0)
USI Life Support (USI-LS 0.6.1.0)
USI Tools (USITools 0.9.2.0)
WasdEditorCameraContinued (WasdEditorCameraContinued 0.6.10)
Zero MiniAVC (ZeroMiniAVC v1.05)

Pictures are in 3 albums

Launch of Rescue 1, propulsion and fuel

Launch of Rescue 2, Crew module and docking

Rescue of Burberry Kerman, from orbit to splashdown

 

Edited August 7, 2017 by linuxgurugamer

[linuxgurugamer]

On 4/27/2017 at 1:23 PM, Physics Student said:

@linuxgurugamer took his time with a very well planned and executed mission. He burdened himself by using USI Life support, resulting in a very massive ship that required orbital assembly. Total mission time was less than a Kerbin year.

Are You Still Alive?, First orbital assembly

Not mentioned, but the crew capacity was a total of 7 for this:

Mk1-2 Crew Cabin:  3

Deep Freeze: 4

If needed, the Deep Freeze unit was left in orbit, so another mission to retrieve any kerbals still remaining in it could have been mounted

[linuxgurugamer]

I think im going to use the same mission profile to see if I can do the rescue faster.  Means the timing will be much tighter, but hey, why not.

[Human Person]

7 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Burberry Kerman Rescued!

Really impressive Mission. I can't wait rewatching the stream once I come back from vacation. 

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Not mentioned, but the crew capacity was a total of 7 for this:

It is worth mentioning indeed, and a new record to introduce.

44 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

I think im going to use the same mission profile to see if I can do the rescue faster.  Means the timing will be much tighter, but hey, why not.

It will be hard beating @Aetharan on mission time, he used close to 60 km/s if I remember right. Maybe you'll find a better way to do it.

Edited August 7, 2017 by Physics Student

[linuxgurugamer]

6 minutes ago, Physics Student said:

Really impressive Mission. I can't wait rewatching the stream once I come back from vacation. 

It is worth mentioning indeed, and a new record to introduce.

It will be hard beating @Aetharan on mission time, he used close to 60 km/s if I remember right. Maybe you'll find a better way to do it.

Did that 60000 meters per second include the launch or only after he gets into space? If it includes the launch, then I probably have him beat in terms of total delta-v available. The timing will be critical but I'll see what I can

[linuxgurugamer]

26 minutes ago, Physics Student said:

t will be hard beating @Aetharan on mission time, he used close to 60 km/s if I remember right. Maybe you'll find a better way to do it.

According to the OP, he used 50km/sec.  Which my ship in orbit has more than that.

[Aetharan]

On orbit, the ship had 48,548 m/s of delta-V available.  I was not perfectly efficient with its use (with some of the waste going into correcting having missed the Goliath by 110 Mm, which also cost me 11 days on the rendezvous) .  Having more delta-V to work with is useful, of course.  Timing the burns right would have helped me quite a bit.  I keep meaning to go back and try again.

[linuxgurugamer]

5 hours ago, Aetharan said:

On orbit, the ship had 48,548 m/s of delta-V available.  I was not perfectly efficient with its use (with some of the waste going into correcting having missed the Goliath by 110 Mm, which also cost me 11 days on the rendezvous) .  Having more delta-V to work with is useful, of course.  Timing the burns right would have helped me quite a bit.  I keep meaning to go back and try again.

I've started again, using the same ship. 

I'll need to do some work regarding timing, but I think I'll be able to beat your record   

I'm certainly going to try.  The first time I figured to catch Kerbin on the second swing around, this time I'm going out to meet him, similar to what you did.  But I think I have a bit more dV available, I'll certainly try to use it all.  I also have an inflatable heatshield onboard, so coming back, if I need to, I can just go straight in rather than going into orbit.

Going to take a little while 

[Aetharan]

I'll be putting effort into a third round later in the week, when I have more free time.  Not sure if I'm going to meet my actual goal, but I certainly intend to cut at least 40 days off of my previous run.  Good luck with your venture!

[herbal space program]

So just to let everybody know I'm still at it, I've so far managed to get to a reverse orbit with AP between Duna and Kerbin and PE around Moho's aphelion, for a total of 1638m/s from my initial LKO. My album so far, very much still a work in progress, is here:

I'm using a SSTO space plane that makes orbit with right around 5.9km/s dV, so it's beat  @jonny's record or bust!  I've dropped the idea of using plane changes, instead using several Jool encounters to incrementally reverse direction. So far I've used 15 gravity assists to get here, consisting of Mun, Kerbin twice prograde, Jool four times, Eve eight times retrograde, and then Kerbin three more times retrograde. So far, other than many small corrections to dial in the next encounter, I've only had to burn four times to change my orbit significantly, comprising three DSMs of 207, 81, and 37m/s to set up my first Jool encounter, and also one 10m/s retrograde burn to find a Kerbin encounter in the gulf between 4:3 and 2:3 resonanace. The rest of it was just about setting up the next encounter to raise or lower my orbit between different resonant energy levels. From here however it will get more complicated, as I don't really want to lower my orbital energy beyond where it is now. I'll therefore probably keep boosting prograde after each successive Kerbin encounter to stay at 3:2 (for about 100m/s per encounter), to keep raising my PE and lowering my AP with Kerbin's help. I estimate I could get to Burbarry for about 2300m/s by brute force from here, but I'm hoping I can cut that in half or better by doing several more gravity assists at 3:2. My gut feeling is that getting home won't be nearly as difficult, as I suspect I can probably get captured by Jool if I can hit it from a sufficiently eccentric reverse orbit, which should allow me to get home for a few hundred m/s from there using Tylo-Kerbin 2:1 - Kerbin3:2 - re-entry. Anyway, we'll see about that. I still obviously have a long way to go, but I'm optimistic I can pull this off for less than 5.9km/s....

Edited August 8, 2017 by herbal space program

[jonny]

26 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

I'm using a SSTO space plane that makes orbit with right around 5.9km/s dV, so it's beat  @jonny's record or bust!

Mind you: I only used 5.2 km/s from LKO, but I would like to see my previous record beaten. That would give me the opportunity for a third run...

I am looking forward to see your second orbital flip / Jool capture. It is surprisingly difficult, I guess you will need to Aerobrake in Jool's atmosphere.

 

[herbal space program]

42 minutes ago, jonny said:

Mind you: I only used 5.2 km/s from LKO, but I would like to see my previous record beaten. That would give me the opportunity for a third run...

I am looking forward to see your second orbital flip / Jool capture. It is surprisingly difficult, I guess you will need to Aerobrake in Jool's atmosphere.

 

Oops! I read 5912 instead of 5219. And I'm sorry to hear the second flip isn't so easy. I was able to get captured without aerobraking from my final prograde orbit, so I figured it wouldn't be so hard with the small additional relative velocity going retrograde. My plan was basically to do part or all of the resonant ladder I took down to Burbarry backwards and then get captured from that highly eccentric reverse orbit, but I guess we'll see...

[Aetharan]

...wait a tick, guys.  Are we, after all these weeks, finally starting to actually compete with one another for top slots in specific categories, instead of everybody going for his own "I topped this metric!"?

[linuxgurugamer]

1 minute ago, Aetharan said:

...wait a tick, guys.  Are we, after all these weeks, finally starting to actually compete with one another for top slots in specific categories, instead of everybody going for his own "I topped this metric!"?

Yup!

But, the mere fact of completing this is impressive in and of itself.  

[Aetharan]

@linuxgurugamer A bit of advice for my direct competition:  Your best bet, with enough delta-V available, is to push yourself into a prograde orbit with PE closer to Kerbol than the Goliath's.  You'll burn a lot of delta-V there, and your encounter will be well over the usual 20 km/s relative velocity, but it's possible to get the encounter in under 70 days.  If you can get the timing right so you actually pull up alongside him instead of missing by thousands of kilometers like I did, then I'd assume that a return to Kerbin thereafter should be doable in under 20 days after that.

That's my plan for my next attempt, anyway.  I'd estimated that a ship with 60 km/s of on-orbit delta-V should be able to pull off the goal of "Get him home before his abandoned ship has its first conjunction with Kerbin".

[Human Person]

1 hour ago, Aetharan said:

...wait a tick, guys.  Are we, after all these weeks, finally starting to actually compete with one another for top slots in specific categories, instead of everybody going for his own "I topped this metric!"?

Yup, it's a slow challenge, but it's very nice to see all of you still going for it.

@herbal space program: This was supposed to be a challenge impossible for a single Stage, it was my initial motivation for setting this Challenge. Please prove me wrong!

 

I want to do the Callenge again too and have a crazy idea.

TheGamerAlchemist had tried to bring it to RSS and actually made it to Category II

Maybe a full RSS rescue is possible. Brute-forcing would take 120 km/s, maybe more. 

Edited August 8, 2017 by Physics Student

[linuxgurugamer]

45 minutes ago, Aetharan said:

@linuxgurugamer A bit of advice for my direct competition:  Your best bet, with enough delta-V available, is to push yourself into a prograde orbit with PE closer to Kerbol than the Goliath's.  You'll burn a lot of delta-V there, and your encounter will be well over the usual 20 km/s relative velocity, but it's possible to get the encounter in under 70 days.  If you can get the timing right so you actually pull up alongside him instead of missing by thousands of kilometers like I did, then I'd assume that a return to Kerbin thereafter should be doable in under 20 days after that.

That's my plan for my next attempt, anyway.  I'd estimated that a ship with 60 km/s of on-orbit delta-V should be able to pull off the goal of "Get him home before his abandoned ship has its first conjunction with Kerbin".

That's essentially what I'm planning to do, thanks for the suggestion.

One thing I need to do is to figure out exactly how much dV I actually have in orbit after docking and refueling.   I need to spend a few minutes to fix the staging, since it is not at all correct after the docking.  I noticed while doing the previous mission, that after I made some adjustments in mid flight, I ended up with an additional 5-10k dv, which was because I fixed the staging in flight.

I'm not using fuel lines on the main ship, but am using TAC Fuel Balancer to be able to drop stages which aren't needed in flight.  

Mechjeb gets rather confused and both Mechjeb and the game can't display the total dV properly.

[jonny]

12 hours ago, Aetharan said:

If you can get the timing right so you actually pull up alongside him instead of missing by thousands of kilometers like I did

@linuxgurugamer I think Scott Manly made a Video about a similar problem it was something about the fastest possible transfere to a other planet. He used a very neat trick to get the velocity down with the right Timing: He compared the time to closest approach with the ingame clock and adjust the throttle so that the time to closest Approach ticket down at exactly half the Speed.

If you aim for 70% throttle I guess that would leave plenty headroom for errors. Keep in mind that you will fall twards Kerbol during the flip. You might want to aim initially a bit high, depending on the TWR.

[linuxgurugamer]

Interesting, but will take too long.

Im going to have ti go out to him as fast as possible along the lines ofwhat @Aetharan said

[jonny]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Im going to have ti go out to him as fast as possible along the lines ofwhat @Aetharan said

That is exactly what I had in mind. That technique of watching the timer should help you avoid missing the target by hundreds of Kilometers, like @Aetharan did. Because if you start the burn 2 seconds early or late you end up 40 or even 60 km in the wrong place depending, on the relative velocity. By watching the Time to closest approach you can determine whether to throttle up or down while you cancel out the relative velocity. You just want to make sure the timer decreases by one second every two seconds.

[linuxgurugamer]

4 minutes ago, jonny said:

That is exactly what I had in mind. That technique of watching the timer should help you avoid missing the target by hundreds of Kilometers, like @Aetharan did. Because if you start the burn 2 seconds early or late you end up 40 or even 60 km in the wrong place depending, on the relative velocity. By watching the Time to closest approach you can determine whether to throttle up or down while you cancel out the relative velocity. You just want to make sure the timer decreases by one second every two seconds.

It's called mid-course corrections.  

first burn from orbit gets me into a solar orbit.

Near leaving Kerbins SOI, I do an app. 3000m/s burn prograde, and towards the sun, in order to do an interception.  This burn gets me to within about 200 km.

I don't warp directly to the intercept, I break it up into abut 4 segments.  At each segment, I do a minor burn to fine tune, each is something less than 1m/s.  This is getting me an intercept of about 1.5 km (test mission in progress right now, in the middle of the 5 hour rendevous burn)

There is the minor matter that I'm going to be jettisoning a stage midway through the burn, and it's headed directly to Burberry.  But space is huge, and Burberry is tine, it shouldn't be a problem