Alternis Kerbol Travelling Circus -- Episode 34: Over the Hills and Far Away

[Dman979]

3 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

I'm guessing this is what happened to Wilnie and Melfurt.  If so, their sacrifice was in vain.  Things have not improved. lately.

The ritual sacrifices will continue until morale improves!

[obney kerman]

3 hours ago, Dman979 said:

The ritual sacrifices will continue until morale improves!

Indeed.

[Geschosskopf]

On 10/1/2017 at 4:09 PM, Dman979 said:

The ritual sacrifices will continue until morale improves!

Without a doubt

EPISODE 10: Gone Away

Spoiler

 

Back on Kerbin, despite the strange disappearances of Wilnie and Melfurt, training indoctrination continued.  For once, it paid dividends, of a sort.

All this attention to the crew was in preparation for building a new space station in Kerbin orbit, and having at least some hands reasonably competent in its operation.  Such a station provided a good way to increase the Circus' slow flow of Science! so, after much arguing about the untrustworthy docking ports, Mission Control decided to try this again.  Only a more grandiose scale, and with various precautions taken about the docking issue.

The new station, Kerbin MOLE 2, was to be much more modular and capable of considerably more expansion than "Tarbaby", even if ships got stuck to it.  Thus, it was to be launched in 4 main pieces to start with.

• A Core Module with 2 habitats with Snacks! and recyclers, large stocks of Research Kits, significant solar power, and 6 connectors for additional modules.
• A Lab Module with the MOLE itself and lots of repair parts.
• A Plant Module with a Botany Lab and Greenhouse to grow more Snacks!
• A Docking Module which was essentially just a hub with 1 of each type of docking port the Circus currently possessed, plus numerous built-in KAS pipe fittings.

Due to the Core Module taking longest to integrate, the Lab Module was ready first, so the idea was to hibernate it in parking orbit for a while.  However, shortly after launch, the lifter engine failed entirely and the weakened upper stage engine was unable salvage the situation, so the whole thing plummeted at high velocity into Scrap Metal Bay.

This loss was partly offset by a couple of contract completions while waiting for the next component of Kerbin MOLE 2 to integrate.  Kerbin ConSat 1 got moved again, and Kerbin MagSat (whatever number finally got to orbit) managed to survive it's long-duration mission.

At last, the Core Module was ready to go.  Sadly, some (now-purged) junior Boffin forgot to put Sepratrons on the SRBs.  Thus, despite no malfunctions off the pad, the SRBs collided with the central stack and took out the lifter engine.  Mission Control was by now wondering if it would be easier to build the station on the bottom of Scrap Metal Bay.  Heaven indeed felt so far away.

By then, Lab Module Mk 2 was ready to go, and again would have to park due to there being as yet no Core Module to dock with.  Strangely, Lab Module Mk 2 reached parking orbit with no serious problems.  Then it was just a question of whether it would still be functional when the time came to move it.

Lab Module Mk 2's wait in parking orbit turned out to be rather longer than anticipated.  A few days before Core Module Mk 2 was ready to go, part of the VAB collapsed, destroying the rocket and most of the 50 mill workers hammering it together.

The Plant Module in the adjacent bay, however, survived this disaster and was soon ready to go, although it took several Goon Squads surrounding the bay to keep the surviving workers from fleeing KSC.  Given the circumstances, it came as a huge surprise that the Plant Module actually worked OK, apart from losing gyros and ending up with more inclination than desired.  It also went into hibernation once parked.

A few junior Boffins, meanwhile had been working after hours on a pet project of their own, which the Circus had not thought worthy of pursuing.  They now presented their superiors with their results, a custom Launch Escape System.  These junior Boffins argued that with all the investment in indoctrinating pressees, more thought should be given to keeping them alive.  After due and careful deliberation, Mission Control responded that:

1. Normal staging and parachutes had repeatedly demonstrated their ability to save crews by themselves;
2. Adding a special LES interfered with docking ports on capsule noses, and;
3. The junior Boffins were being paid too much and not working hard enough on Circus-approved projects, issues that were immediately addressed.

The Docking Module had by now finished integration.  It also somehow reached parking orbit without serious problems.

At long last, Core Module Mk 3 was ready to go.  It behaved perfectly, reaching its assigned orbit with a gratuitous explosion calling all the other modules home to roost.

The modules arrived in order of their stays in orbit so far, beginning with Lab Module Mk 2.  Rather than clutter up nearby space with discarded boosters, the OMS stages of all modules were staged off to explode gratuitously, a calculated risk given the frequency of staging malfunctions.  Somewhat surprisingly, however, nothing bad happened.

Next came the Plant Module, taking up station opposite the Lab Module.

And last, the Docking Module.

And with that, about 3 months behind schedule, the Kerbin MOLE 2 station Phase 1 was ready to go.  Now all it needed was a crew.

Before the Crew Delivery Ship was ready, however, another project intervened.  This was the Jool Moons Probe, which was simply a large fuel tank with a handful of Science! instruments strapped on.  Its mission was to fly by as many of the other 4 Joolian moons as possible, opportunistically using gravity assists as much as possible.  It got up OK except for one of its antennae exploding and another failing.  But that's why it had 4 such antennae--redundancy!  Still, being down 50% on antennae before even reaching orbit was a bit disheartening, as without antennae the probe would be useless.

As it happened, a transfer window to Mun, the next moon in from Kerbin, came up 2 hours after the Jool Moons Probe reached orbit.  And by making the fly-by extremely low (15km) on the retrograde side, the probe's Pe could be brought down to the level of Minmus.  This by-passed Laythe but the resulting orbit would present opportunities, with some adjustments, to hit Laythe after Minmus, and with any luck get out near Pol cheaply.  But that's for the future.  First things first---Mun and Minmus.

From a distance, Mun looks as gray and uninviting as it does in the stock system.  Up close, however, it's more sand-colored and uninviting.  Still, the topography looks rather smoother than stock, and certainly MUCH smoother than Bop.  It's definitely a place to return to, at least if the SCANsat issues ever get fixed.

After leaving Mun, the probe was able to hit Minmus with only a slight course adjustment.  Minmus seems to be a bit bigger but less dense than Bop.  They have about the same gravity and same tiny SOIs.  The main difference is that Minmus' is rounder and not quite as jagged, but still very lumpy.  And it's also several shades of orange, and potentially has some sort of lakes, although that might just be exposed substrate.  The probe's instruments weren't able to tell for sure, especially as the encounter was over in a heartbeat.  Diving from Mun to Minmus results in a wickedly fast fly-by .  If Minmus is subject to the same SOI-border fluctuations as Bop, the probe was going WAY to fast to notice.

So now the probe is outward bound from Minmus and trying to figure out how to get close enough to Laythe for low orbit Science! without being ejected from the Jool system.  But it can wait a while on that, assuming Jool doesn't eject it anyway like it's been doing to its moonlet asteroids.

While this was going on, the Kerbin MOLE 2 Crew Delivery Ship finally completed.  The bulbous pod on the end had 7 seats, which were filled with AM3 Bill, SM3s Bob, Hudlong, Billy-Bobford, and Shelbas, and sciencemate strikers Jean and Lizeny.  The plan is, 2 sciencemates each in the MOLE, the Botany Lab, and the Greenhouse, with Bill running the recyclers and fixing whatever the sciencemates break.  The Crew Delivery Ship had a standard Clamp-o-Tron and the plan was to test its ability to undock.  The CDS also had KAS pipe connections but the idea was not to use them this time, due to previous bad experiences.  If all else failed, it was hoped Bill could at least detach the stuck docking port, now that he knew how to use a spanner.

In any case, the CDS lifted off without issue and successfully docked with Kerbin MOLE 2.  Then the jolly crew was shock-collared to their assigned posts and the station powered up.  There is much toiling going on up there now.

With that part of its mission accomplished, the CDS now needed to test a few other things.  Such as its ability to undock.  But there were other questions as well.  The Boffins were PRETTY sure the pod would survive reentry despite bulging out wider than a 2.5m heat shield, and were REASONABLY sure it had enough parachutes, but wanted to be certain before risking the investment in indoctrinated kerbs.  Besides, the CDS couldn't bring MOLE Science! back down anyway, so there really wasn't any need to keep it at the station.  It's not like the station is going to fall out of orbit.  Fall apart, maybe, but hopefully the Snacks! would last the survivors long enough to integrate a rescue ship.

As it turned out, the CDS undocked without issue.  The capsule did get rather warm but not enough to QUITE explode.  And it hit the ground rather fast, but not hard enough to break anything, although any crew would certainly have complained.  It was thus thought best to come up with a better solution in the future.

Soon, the Boffins will be rolling out a pair of new ships to send the 1st Kerbals to Bop.  This is purely for contractual purposes, not because of any interest in Bop itself.  And, of course, the Jool Moons Probe must run its course.

 

Tune in next time for more of the slow spiral into damnation.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Geschosskopf

[B-STRK]

At the rate Kerbals are being killed in space, purged, killed in the high bays, killed in atmo, purged yet again, killed upon landing, did I say purged yet? there should have been enough Kerbals sacrificed to appease an entire pantheon, and still BARIS' hunger knows no end. What will appease its voracious demands on kerbal and mekanism alike? The sacrifice of all four orange suits? The eternal slavery of all Mission Control to the Kraken? Horrible puns from us every other post? Mort? 

I'd still take the junior boffins' side on the LES though. I mean, granted that St. Jeb did pull through for a couple of occasions, but when the math adds up, donating more saints to the cause ain't gonna bring home the Science. (That would be the capsule's job, sure, no need for kerbals except for data transfer as we've last seen, but hey, at least an LES will probably save a kerbal from the slow spiral to damnation, usually with a fast spiral into GLOC, I guess. )

And as to the question of interfering with docking ports, if the LES doesn't come with its own decoupler, then one could always add an upside down decoupler over the docking port and--oh, wait. That could be the one to malfunction. Okay, Mission Control's point is well taken. 

Edited October 2, 2017 by B-STRK

[Angelo Kerman]

37 minutes ago, B-STRK said:

At the rate Kerbals are being killed in space, purged, killed in the high bays, killed in atmo, purged yet again, killed upon landing, did I say purged yet? there should have been enough Kerbals sacrificed to appease an entire pantheon, and still BARIS' hunger knows no end. What will appease its voracious demands on kerbal and mekanism alike? The sacrifice of all four orange suits? The eternal slavery of all Mission Control to the Kraken? Horrible puns from us every other post? Mort? 

I'd still take the junior boffins' side on the LES though. I mean, granted that St. Jeb did pull through for a couple of occasions, but when the math adds up, donating more saints to the cause ain't gonna bring home the Science. (That would be the capsule's job, sure, no need for kerbals except for data transfer as we've last seen, but hey, at least an LES will probably save a kerbal from the slow spiral to damnation, usually with a fast spiral into GLOC, I guess. )

And as to the question of interfering with docking ports, if the LES doesn't come with its own decoupler, then one could always add an upside down decoupler over the docking port and--oh, wait. That could be the one to malfunction. Okay, Mission Control's point is well taken. 

The LES does indeed come with its own decoupler. I usually tie it into an action group, first adding Activate Engine, then adding Decouple, so that the LES shoots off into the unknown.

@Geschosskopf Loving the story! Your MOLE 2 looks great, and it sounds like BARIS is giving you some good challenges. Still more bugs to fix with it but at least it's mostly working.

[Deddly]

Nice job! You got TotM'd!

[Geschosskopf]

3 hours ago, B-STRK said:

At the rate Kerbals are being killed in space, purged, killed in the high bays, killed in atmo, purged yet again, killed upon landing, did I say purged yet? there should have been enough Kerbals sacrificed to appease an entire pantheon, and still BARIS' hunger knows no end. What will appease its voracious demands on kerbal and mekanism alike? The sacrifice of all four orange suits? The eternal slavery of all Mission Control to the Kraken? Horrible puns from us every other post? Mort? 

Well, BARIS has only killed 6 Kerbals astronauts.  4 of these (Jeb, Val, Samner, and Dizer due to exploding pods), 2 (Wilnie and Melfurt) for unknown reasons, probably unreported training accidents.  Non-BARIS things have so far killed 1 astronaut (Silong, chuckhole in the runway).  All of the purges were done by the Circus internally.  Oh wait, you care about the VAB roof falling on 36 mill workers?  Well, they knew the job was dangerous when they took it.  Normally, civilians wouldn't voluntarily come close to anything the Circus does, but this time around the Emperor was trying to involve private industry and paid rather more than the going rate.  And the vacancies were filled by the start of the next shift.  Life goes on  

Quote

I'd still take the junior boffins' side on the LES though. I mean, granted that St. Jeb did pull through for a couple of occasions, but when the math adds up, donating more saints to the cause ain't gonna bring home the Science. (That would be the capsule's job, sure, no need for kerbals except for data transfer as we've last seen, but hey, at least an LES will probably save a kerbal from the slow spiral to damnation, usually with a fast spiral into GLOC, I guess. )

And as to the question of interfering with docking ports, if the LES doesn't come with its own decoupler, then one could always add an upside down decoupler over the docking port and--oh, wait. That could be the one to malfunction. Okay, Mission Control's point is well taken. 

 

3 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

The LES does indeed come with its own decoupler. I usually tie it into an action group, first adding Activate Engine, then adding Decouple, so that the LES shoots off into the unknown.

For the record, there have been 7 occasions to date when crewed rockets have failed catastrophically before reaching space.  In all cases, the crew survived due to normal staging and chutes.  The tally runs as follows:

• Val:  once
• Handin:  twice
• Bill (alone):  once
• Jack:  once
• Bill and Bob:  once
• Hudlong and Billy-Bobford:  once

So why add the complication of an LES?  That's just 1 more thing for BARIS to make go haywire. 

You'll note that Darwinian pressures have caused me to modify my usual lifter design, doing without SRBs (and thus an additional staging event to orbit) as much as I can.  I'm also already sure I'm going to have to do without my usual flotilla strategy, as I can't integrate ships (especially considering repeats)  fast enough to have a large flotilla ready in time for a transfer window.

@Angel-125, I saw in the event card that this particular LES would fit on top of a specific chute.  It didn't say anything about other chutes or docking ports.  Given my feeling that LES systems are unnecessary anyway, I haven't even looked at this part yet.

 

Quote

@Geschosskopf Loving the story! Your MOLE 2 looks great, and it sounds like BARIS is giving you some good challenges. Still more bugs to fix with it but at least it's mostly working.

 

1 hour ago, Deddly said:

Nice job! You got TotM'd!

Thanks!  I'm quite honored to be stickied, although I think there are better choices out there..

[Dman979]

3 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Thanks!  I'm quite honored to be stickied, although I think there are better choices out there..

I can't say this enough-

NOMINATE THEM! We can only see a limited amount of threads on our own, so just like reporting, nominating a thread for TOTM brings things to our attention that we would have otherwise missed. We've never gotten a bad suggestion!

[Geschosskopf]

6 hours ago, Dman979 said:

NOMINATE THEM! We can only see a limited amount of threads on our own, so just like reporting, nominating a thread for TOTM brings things to our attention that we would have otherwise missed. We've never gotten a bad suggestion!

I didn't know there was a nomination process.  I'll try to do that from now on.

[KAL 9000]

Will BARIS' torture never end?! WHAT MUST WE DO?! 

Should we bring in Danny2462? Blow up the planet? Sacrifice the remaining Orange Suits? WHAT?! 

---

Kerbal News Network: News Happens - Or Not 

"The utter collapse of the Wonka snack factory continues to impact the daily lives of Kerbals worldwide. Luckily, a new company, Koylent, has started production of their Koylent Green snack. However, there have been reports of Kerbals mysteriously vanishing near the Koylent factory. 

We talked to detective Sherlock Kerman for his take on the disappearances." 

SHERLOCK: "This here case is mighty suspicious-"

REPORTER: "Aren't you supposed to be British?" 

SHERLOCK: "That there accent's copyrighted!" 

REPORTER: "Oh-kay..." 

SHERLOCK: "As I was sayin', that there missin' Kerbals case is mighty suspicious. I m'self think it could be foul play from that there Koylent comp'ny." 

REPORTER: "Care to elaborate?" 

KOYLENT EXECUTIVE: *Hands Sherlock wad of cash* 

SHERLOCK: "As I was sayin', it's not s'picious at all! Nothin' fishy 'round those parts!" 

REPORTER: "What? But you just said-" 

SHERLOCK: "That nothin' out of the ord'nary's goin' on!"

[Geschosskopf]

On 10/3/2017 at 8:01 AM, KAL 9000 said:

Will BARIS' torture never end?! WHAT MUST WE DO?! 

There's no stopping BARIS.  Parts have a max reliability < 100%  .   But don't be so hard on BARIS.  

--------------------------------

EPISODE 11: Crack in the Sky

Spoiler

 

When we left off last time, the Jool Moons Probe had just finished its high-speed fly-by of Minmus, innermost of Jool's moons.  The plan was to then hit Laythe and use a gravity assist there, or at Mun, and/or Kerbin to get back out to Pol, the outermost moon, without running out of fuel.  Minmus, of course, contributed nothing to this, as even scraping its surface at 5km had no visible effect on the probe's orbit before and after.  The problem was, although it happened to be fairly easy to hit Laythe coming straight off Minmus, the resulting gravity assist either did too much or too little.  Getting close enough to Laythe to acquire low orbit Science! ejected the probe from the Jool system.  Staying high enough to avoid that didn't give enough oomph to do anything useful afterwards.

Thus, to get the desired outcome as well as the low-orbit Science!, Mission Control found it necessary to reduce the probe's relative velocity to Laythe at the encounter.  This meant coasting to the probe's Ap out at Mun's orbit to raise its Pe a bit between Minums and Laythe.  After this, a radial burn shortly after Ap resulted in a Laythe encounter that not only got low-orbit Science! but put the probe's Ap near Kerbin's orbit.  Setting this up cost less than 600m/s.

As it happened, this trajectory also gave a good look at Laythe.  The approach was on the daylight side, Pe at the terminator, and then departure on the night side.  The Circus' ground-based instruments had already determined Laythe had life--substantial O2 in the atmosphere, green groundcover obvious in the telescope--but the question was, how advanced was it?  The probe might be able to get a rough idea.

Entering Laythe's SOI, the Jool Moons Probe wasn't shot down by an automated defense system and its radios detected no interference from indigenous signals.  it's cameras saw no roads, canals, or cities (which is a pity, because Kerbals don't have any of those themselves so would have found them very mysterious and alien).  What the probe did see, however, was a beautiful blue-green planet with considerably more clouds than Kerbin.  Kerbin is rather sandy and drab in comparison.  The Jool Moons Probe also observed 2 major storms, perhaps hurricanes, one in the northern and one in the southern hemisphere, rotating in opposite directions.  NOTE:  These directions are backwards from Earth, so I'm saying that's due to Laythe being tide-locked, whether this weather phenomenon would really happen from that.

The probe then crossed the terminator and left Laythe looking back at its dark side.  There were absolutely no lights visible anywhere, not even lightning nor any fires it might have caused, which was strange given the obvious storms.  All of this answered exactly zero questions about the level of life on Laythe.  After all, the Kerbals had a thriving civilization of billions living underground but had only started getting onto their own surface (again) in the last few decades, and their space program was barely over 1 year old.  Thus, the Circus decided to proceed with caution in exploring Laythe, being prepared to encounter a civilization at least as advanced as their own.

Upon leaving Laythe, the Jool Moons Probe pretty much repeated the maneuvers that had gotten it there.  It coasted to Ap, raised its Pe to between Mun and Kerbin, and then set up a very similar encounter with Kerbin.  This again cost about 600m/s.

Then something unprecedented happened.  A Kerbal made her own way to KSC and volunteered to fly for the Circus!  Mission Control immediately notified the Emperor, who was overjoyed.  FINALLY, his advertising was starting to pay off!  Soon, he would lead the willing Kerbal masses to conquer space!  Knighthoods all around for Mission Control.  Of course, Mission Control didn't dare tell the Emperor that Crisdous' real motive was simply to escape fraud charges and a small army of enraged creditors and bookies---the Circus seemed to her a better alternative to debtors' prison.  Which basically just saved the Circus the trouble of rounding her up itself, which it likely would have done in the fullness of time.

Anyway, while the Jool Moons Probe had been pachinko-ing around the system, an ambitious project had been fitting out in the rebuilt VAB.  The Circus had accepted 2 Bop-related contracts.  One was to have Kerbals spacewalk and transfer between ships in Bop orbit, the other was to plant a flag on Bop.  Of course, the Scientists were keen to get more data from the surface, as well.  So to satisfy these requirements, the Boffins came up with a 2-ship mission.  First, send out the lander and, once it was safely hibernated in Bop orbit, send out the crew.  No docking, just rendezvous and spacewalk over.  Then land, get the Science! and plant the flag, move back to the crew ship, and come home, leaving the lander (which had enough fuel for about 10 landings) for future missions.  The detail designs called for 3 crew:  coxswain, sciencemate for multiple goo/materials uses, and artificersmate to keep the ships running.  Easy peasy, BARIS willing

Of course, BARIS wasn't entirely cooperative.  The first version of the lander, known as SLOB (Science Lander Of Bop) lost both its lifter and transfer engines on launch and the lander engine couldn't slow its fall enough to matter.  Thus, the bottom of Scrap Metal Bay got another layer of fragments.  It will be an interesting archaeological site someday.

While SLOB Mk2 was being integrated, the Jool Moons Probe made its pass by Kerbin.  It ran its instruments in hopes of snagging any loose Science! that had been missed so far, and also to make a good comparison with its recent Laythe observations.  The Kerbin fly-by put the probe's Ap out near Pol as desired.

Kerbin provided some interesting contrasts to Laythe.  It had many fewer clouds but did have a few spots of light on the surface, all at known facilities (mostly tracking stations).  The space around it was full of debris and a few functioning spacecraft all chattering on the radio waves.  Fortunately, the Jool Moons Probe threaded its way through this swarm with no difficulty, passing over 175km from the MOLE 2 station.  Strangely, EPIKFAIL wasn't impressed at all with performing the 1st Kerbin fly-by.

After leaving Kerbin, the Jool Moons Probe matched planes with Pol, then found it could get an encounter very easily with a small burn at Ap.  Getting the Pol encounter needed only about 300m/s.  However, that would take about 3/4 of an orbit around Jool so wouldn't happen for a month.  Hopefully it won't fall apart before getting there.

After a while, SLOB Mk2 was ready to go.  It managed to get into Bop orbit with nothing failing, perhaps due to a favorable event card temporarily improving the odds of a check.  NOTE:  in the pic below, the ascent stage is exploding gratuitously, it is absolutely NOT hitting the soundstage wall upon which an image of Jool is being projected.

With the lander in place, it was time to send the crew ship, known as BLAHS (Bop Landing And Home Soon).  The jolly crew consisted of "Hardluck" Handin, "BadS" Lenski, and Jenmon.  An absent-minded intern in the Kerbsonnel Department had misclassified Lenski as a sciencemate but he was really an artificiersmate, so the mission would not be able to re-use its goo and materials.  The Scientists were outraged and the intern was transferred to the astronaut program.

But meanwhile, BLAHS had made it to orbit.  The lifter had worked well for a change but the Poodle transfer engine had issues.

Once in LKO, Jenmon EVA'd to fix the Poodle while Lenski did something else vital inside.  Maybe having 2 artificersmates wasn't such a bad thing.  Strangely, the Poodle repairs took more parts than expected (100 instead of 70, unless the other 30 leaked out and that's what Lenski was trying to fix).

With the Poodle back in service, BLAHS went off to Bop and soon rendezvoused with SLOB Mk 2.  This was timed perfectly, the rendezvous happening in the dark, as is only right and proper, but just before dawn, so the spacewalks could happen in the light.  The 3 astronauts all made their transfers without incident, satisfying one of their contracts.

Once aboard SLOB Mk 2, the crew powered everything up, moved slightly away from BLAHS, then waited for Mission Control to tell them where to land.  The Boffins insisted on as close to level ground as was possible on Bop, the Scientists wanted someplace reasonably far from the initial landing to see if Bop contained multiple biomes, and also with some interesting topography to learn about.  Eventually, Mission Control agreed on the bottom of an irregularly shaped basin with spiky edges.  This was attractive as it didn't look quite like an impact crater but, if it wasn't, then what could have formed it?   

So the orders went out and bosunsmate Handin began the descent.  Immediately, the lander's engine began acting up but Handin somehow worked around this.  Mission Control was quite surprised at this, given that he wasn't an artificersmate.  Even stranger, this same engine kept burping like this every 5 seconds, and Handin kept on activating one backup system after another.  Even the Boffins were surprised they'd built so much unknown redundancy into SLOB Mk 2.  BARIS was really working overtime here, apparently trying to make up for not smiting this ship long before.

But BARIS needn't have bothered.  Despite overcoming one engine failure after another, there was a fatal danger lurking unseen below the descending lander.  At an altitude of 1227m ASL (whatever "ASL" means on dry, crazily lumpy Bop), SLOB Mk2 hit a crack in the sky that had teleported a small piece of terrain into space.   Colliding with this at 17m/s caused the lander's capsule and all the science instruments to explode.  Thus perished Handin, Lenski, and Jenmon.  The erstwhile troublesome engine, fuel tank, and legs then fell the rest of the way to the surface, lost the single surviing solar panel, and bounced to a halt as a tombstone to the crew.  Planting this instead of a flag would have to do.

At this point, there was nothing for it but to bring BLAHS home empty.  It arrived uneventfully, demonstrating that the mission concept was entirely valid apart from the unforeseen space-time anomaly.  Oh well, such is life in the space program.  Is it worth trying again, accepting delay in other projects?  Mission Control is still debating this question.

The 1st order of business, however, was to hold the memorial for Handin, Lenski, and Jenmon.  And while they were at it, the undertakers also put up a memorial to the workers killed in the recent VAB disaster.  During this job, the undertakers noticed that the flags for the mysteriously dead Winlie and Melfurt had fallen but were strangely balanced on their points instead of lying flat on the ground.  Was this a sign of poltergeist activity, of unhappy spirits seeking the attention in death that they didn't get in life?  The undertakers didn't want to find out so left the flags alone rather than replant them.

 

Tune in next time for more of the slow spiral into damnation.

Edited October 8, 2017 by Geschosskopf

[KAL 9000]

HANDIN, YOU WERE MY FAVORITE! 

[Just Jim]

I'm wondering if we'll make all the way around the flagpole before this is over... 

[Geschosskopf]

42 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

HANDIN, YOU WERE MY FAVORITE! 

Yeah, I was pulling for that guy, too.  Quite the underdog, never had any luck.  Of course, that just means it's not surprising at all he came to a sticky end.

 

2 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

I'm wondering if we'll make all the way around the flagpole before this is over... 

I have no doubt at all.  I'm wondering how many laps we'll make  

NOTE:  If anybody wants to start a pool on that, or just the number of fatalities in general, please don't let me know about it, so I can remain impartial

I keep waiting for the Hearse to explode one day en route to the flagpole.  As it has to be ready on a moment's notice, I never integrate it, so I always get the message "it is HIGHLY likely this vehicle will fail".  However, it's a rover so has no staging events, which decreases the odds of failure significantly.  Still, it's only a matter of time I expect

[KAL 9000]

We need to go to Laythe! Land on it! Take samples! Analyze the life! Drill into the surface and scare the s**t out of some poor Laythean in his/her burrow!

[Cydonian Monk]

On 10/4/2017 at 12:12 PM, Geschosskopf said:

NOTE:  in the pic below, the ascent stage is exploding gratuitously, it is absolutely NOT hitting the soundstage wall upon which an image of Jool is being projected.

I’m not sure I believe you....

On 10/4/2017 at 12:12 PM, Geschosskopf said:

At an altitude of 1227m ASL..., SLOB Mk2 hit a crack in the sky that had teleported a small piece of terrain into space.

Especially after SLOB Mk2 hit the soundstage wall shortly thereafter!

 

I noticed KSP v1.3.1 was released today. Think I might give BARIS and this new patch a quick spin this weekend while I’m migrating the forgotten things forward to v1.3.1. That seems like exactly the type of failure mod this game has always needed. Decidedly more tongue-in-cheek than whatever RSS/RO/RP0 used.

[Geschosskopf]

On 10/5/2017 at 11:58 AM, KAL 9000 said:

We need to go to Laythe! Land on it! Take samples! Analyze the life! Drill into the surface and scare the s**t out of some poor Laythean in his/her burrow!

Laythe definitely has the most potential for having some sort of story eventually emerge from this, so I expect I'll be devoting a lot of effort in that direction soon.  However, I just got done with the Pol fly-by and that place is so weird I have take a better look at it in the future.

 

21 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

I’m not sure I believe you....

Especially after SLOB Mk2 hit the soundstage wall shortly thereafter!

That was totally different.  SLOB Mk2 actually hit some scaffolding carelessly left on the set by the props department.   

 

Quote

I noticed KSP v1.3.1 was released today. Think I might give BARIS and this new patch a quick spin this weekend while I’m migrating the forgotten things forward to v1.3.1. That seems like exactly the type of failure mod this game has always needed. Decidedly more tongue-in-cheek than whatever RSS/RO/RP0 used.

Hmm... (quickly reads release notes).  Wow, what a lackluster patch.  No fix for the docking port stickiness, taking away useful features like Kerbal maneuver nodes (although I guess tomorrow we'll have a mod to give them back).

Anyway, BARIS is largely what you make it.  I have it cause pretty much all the problems it can, in the worst way, but in compensation I have it set to improve parts as rapidly as possible, and I upped the max quality from the default of 80% to 95%.  The idea is, I want it to cause lots of problems with new tech but eventually things become pretty reliable.  You can set it up very differently.  For example, you can disable staging failures, scale back the frequency of wear-and-tear failures, and protect certain types of parts from failures entirely.  You can also make it so only engineers can make repairs or anybody, whether EVA is required or not, whether you have to spend time integrating rockets prior to flight, etc.

All that said, I don't recommend BARIS or any other malfunction mod unless you're willing to see carefully crafted, meticulously planned, flawlessly executed, and very expensive (both in money and time invested) missions fail.  Because that's what's going to happen.  Progress will be slower than your used to due to the need for much part-testing before use, and repeating many failed missions anyway, so the grind will be much increased.  Everything will be more expensive and part-heavy due to redundant systems.  Rockets will be less efficient due to continuing to use older, more reliable tech.  Missions requiring multiple ships, or multiple launches to assemble something in orbit, will be harder to do because some of the components will surely fail and have to be repeated.  Your communications infrastructure will be in a constant state of decay, requiring frequent commsat replacement.  If you have things tuned to the nastier end of the options, money will be a real problem without increasing contract rewards substantially.

So basically, if you have any specific mission or story goals in mind, don't mess with malfunctions because they'll throw everything off.  But if you've only got a general idea (or no idea at all) and are willing to roll with the punches, then malfunctions are an interesting change of pace.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Geschosskopf

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 12: Another One Bites the Dust

Spoiler

 

(I'm sure some folks were wondering why I hadn't used this as a theme song already   )

Anyway, some time went on with the various disasters noted last time, but eventually the Jool Moons Probe began to get close to Pol.  When 10 days out, it adjusted its fly-by to pass on the daylight side for better pics.

 

Meanwhile, back on Kerbin, Mission Control wanted to test another mapping tool, the TERRAIN scanner from Pathfinder.  So the Boffins knocked together a quick design to house it and sent it up.  Amazingly, especially in light of later events, it worked the 1st time.  Sadly, it didn't provide a map.  So STILL the Circus will be proceeding essentially blind when it eventually, maybe, someday, mounts an expedition somewhere more interesting/safer than Bop.

 

By this point, the 1st batch of experiments on Kerbin MOLE 2 had been complete for some time, so the Scientists demanded they be fetched home and more sent out.  Plus, they wanted to swap out one of the sciencemates up there to use on other missions.  And hey, the Circus had its new volunteer Crisdous, whose aptitude tests had put her on the sciencemate path, and the Emperor was all for putting her to work immediately.  So the Boffins cobbled up a revised MOLE Science Runner using the stock 1.25m docking port instead of the 0.625m MOLE port in hopes it wouldn't get stuck on the station.  As soon as this finished integrating, Crisdous jumped in voluntarily, laughingly saying "When the ship lifts, all bills are paid!"  But she hadn't reckoned on owing a blood debt to BARIS.  She only reached an altitude of about 200m before the entire ship exploded.  While nobody really noticed at the time, this was the 1st fatal rocket launch of the Alternis Kerbol Travelling Circus.  But it did solve the somewhat awkward situation of the Circus having to deal with an enthusiastic astronaut.

 

By now, Jool Moons Probe had entered Pol's SOI.  Pol doesn't have any gravity to speak of but, being about twice as far from Jool as Kerbin, has a relatively large SOI although ships are still fairly slow in its vicinity.  Thus, Mission Control could take more care with this encounter.  Pol also has VERY lumpy, non-homogeneous terrain.  It looks like the Uncaring Gods took all the leftover bits of rock, sand, and ice from making everything else in the solar system, plus everything needed for a few abandoned side projects, wadded it all into a loose ball, tossed it at the wastebasket but missed, and left it where it fell.  Then shot at it with BB guns.  Such is Pol.

Anyway, by sheer chance, there happened to be a deep, narrow valley between towering masses of mismatched terrain lined up more or less with the probe's path, so Mission Control took advantage of the time they had in the SOI to tweak the probe to skim through it, well below the peaks on either side.

 

This made for an interesting fly-by.  To start with, the probe was facing down as left after adjusting its trajectory to skim through the valley.  But looming hills at the end of the valley caused Mission Control to flip it nose-up just in case it needed a boost to clear the terrain.  This wasn't needed, but explains the orientation of the probe in the pics below.

 

At the completion of the Pol fly-by, the Jool Moons Probe had ~1800m/s left in the tank.  It had begun in LKO with ~4800m/s.  So, its path of Kerbin - Mun - Minmus - Laythe - Kerbin - Pol had consumed ~3000m/s.  Not too shabby.  There was enough left that Mission Control, at the insistence of the Boffins, decided to bring the well-travelled probe home if at all possible.  It couldn't land at Kerbin but the Boffins figured they could find a way to send up something to bring at least part of it down, to much profit.  After all, the Jool Moons Probe had made serious money for the Circus, given all the EPIKFAIL awards it had earned,. so the Circus could afford to bring it down and get even more.

Thus, once Jool Moons Probe reached its next node relative to Kerbin, it matched planes and plotted a burn to bring its Pe just inside Kerbin's orbit.  The whole process of getting it back into LKO would take a couple months, assuming nothing failed.

 

In the meantime, the Mk 1 Kerbin Relays had pretty much ceased to exist as anything other than debris, so it was time to replace them.  The Boffins had recently developed a huge SIGINT dish that also made for a mondo relay antenna, so they designed a simple SSTO lifter to get it to LKO, after which a small OMS stage would take it into the desired highly elliptical polar orbit.  The 1st such thing worked with no trouble at all, plus got some good Science! analyzing the Circus' own signals.  This was the last good luck the Circus would have for a while.

 

By now, the MOLE 2 Science Runner Mk 2 was done integrating so sciencemate striker Jedvis was sent up.  He didn't get any farther than Crisdous, despite a favorable DRM.

 

During Jedvis' memorial service, the undertakers noticed that poltergeist activity had increased at the flags of Wilnie and Melfurt.  They were still balanced on edge, but now they were also levitating well above the ground.  This redoubled the undertakers' resolve NOT to mess with those flags.

 

At this point, the Kerbin Relay Mk 2-2 was ready to go.  it started OK but essentially everything, including the OMS engine, failed upon staging the lifter.  Thus, the probe re-entered and burned up.

 

The MOLE 2 Science Runner Mk 3 was now ready to go.  The Circus at this point remembered that it had, out of habit and nostalgia, given all astronauts all traits like back in the old days, before the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned class system.  Thus, the craft line listed on the union card didn't matter to BARIS, only the actual trait.  YAY!  (I REALLY appreciate this in mods) But this explained why the late Handin had been able to keep his OMS engine from exploding---any astronaut with 1 star could do such things.  As it happened, there was only a single 1-star astronaut on Kerbin at this point (the other 7 were aboard MOLE 2).  Given the catastrophic history of the MOLE 2 Science Runners so far, Mission Control decided to put Jack in it rather than a sciencemate striker (a type rapidly becoming an endangered species).  Jack hadn't been up since he'd become the 1st Kerbal to achieve orbital trajectory but not actually orbit, so it was time to fix that anyway.

Jack wasn't too thrilled about this.  He'd come to expect to be kept as a museum exhibit, shaking hands and signing autographs at any future KSC open house, so being crammed into a notoriously explosive ship came as a shock.  He was terrified.  But he'd been around long enough to know the Circus as yet lacked a saint of launches, so he appealed to the spirit of the absurd Crisdous to protect him.  Whether Crisdous had anything to do with it or not, or whether it was just Jack's own skill at kludging around malfunctions, the MOLE 2 Science Runner Mk 3 not only made it to orbit but also docked to MOLE 2 without incident.  Still, as far as the Church of Kerbin is concerned, any miracle is good enough, so its Synod for Finding New Saints took note.

 

Then it it was time to try again with another new Kerbin relay.  This suffered the same fate as its predecessor, losing its sustainer engine and falling back to Kerbin.

 

Mission Control had meanwhile despaired of MOLE 2 grinding though the new experiments brought by Jack any time soon, so decided to take what they had and bring him home, the sooner to send up a sciencemate.  Amazingly, the MOLE 2 Science Runner Mk 3 was able to undock just as the original MOLE 2 Crew Delivery Vehichle had done originally.  Jack, being rather superstitious, thanked the shades of Samner and Dizer of "Tarbaby" infamy for this, although nobody's seriously considering them for sainthood.  They remain hearth spirits amongst the lower deck.  Still, Jack prayed to St. Jeb to make sure he got home safely, and he did, along with a good load of Science!

 

Then it was time to try again with getting another mondo Kerbin relay up (this was #4).  Things didn't go well, but Mission Control managed to avoid destroying the launchpad or anything else worth caring about.  In fact, part of the payload survived impact to be recovered, recouping a small amount of money.

 

By now, Mission Control itself was beginning to get a bit superstitious, especially given how they were being repeatedly purged in recent times.  When Kerbin Relay Mk 2-5 was ready to go, one of the Mission Control Boffins couldn't take it anymore and went public with prayer to Crisdous, as that had seemed to work for Jack.  And it worked again for this probe.

 

The Church of Kerbin had seen enough.  In due course, its High Synod Kanonized Crisdous as the Saint of Rocket Launches, with her feast day set on Day 123.  And there was much rejoicing.

 

Tune in next time for more of the slow spiral into damnation.

Edited October 13, 2017 by Geschosskopf

[Angelo Kerman]

Wow, lots of launch failures! Hopefully once you upgrade to 1.3.1, the new BARIS tools will make vehicle integration a little less painful. Looking forward to seeing what happens next!

[Geschosskopf]

28 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Wow, lots of launch failures! Hopefully once you upgrade to 1.3.1, the new BARIS tools will make vehicle integration a little less painful. Looking forward to seeing what happens next!

Well, that was only 5 out of 9 launch failures.  That's WAY better than when I started this  

The Circus has millions in the bank at this point so has taken to buying integration time.  Hence all the launches in this episode.  But yeah, I'm looking forward to all my other mods getting up to 1.3.1 so I can try out the new BARIS.  In the meantime, I'll just soldier on here in 1.3.0

[Just Jim]

3 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

During Jedvis' memorial service, the undertakers noticed that poltergeist activity had increased at the flags of Wilnie and Melfurt.  They were still balanced on edge, but now they were also levitating well above the ground.  This redoubled the undertakers' resolve NOT to mess with those flags.

I think this was my favorite part... hehehe.... 

[Geschosskopf]

12 hours ago, Just Jim said:

I think this was my favorite part... hehehe.... 

Yeah, this has the potential to become a thing.....

[KAL 9000]

Well, Saint Jeb has a new friend! That's a win in my book!

[Geschosskopf]

On 10/9/2017 at 9:38 AM, KAL 9000 said:

Well, Saint Jeb has a new friend! That's a win in my book!

I don't think Crisdous would agree.

 

EPISODE 13: So Much Trouble

Spoiler

 

After all the recent failures, the new batch of Boffins coming in the wake of the latest round of purges decided they'd better spend some more time running test rigs, especially as they'd recently got some new parts that had never been tested yet at all.  This resulted in many, many explosions, but then they stopped happening, so everybody decided things were about as good as they could get and went back to building rockets.

 

One of the newly invented parts was a nuke turbojet, which might prove handy on Laythe, at least before some sort of refueling system can be set up.  So Adaid and Jack took turns flying it around KSC, amazingly without TOO many meltdowns.  The engine's performance was way less than advertised, however, although this might be due to the Circus' lagging technology in regular airplane-related stuff like intakes.  In any case, it's doubtful any real Laythe scout plane will look much like this.

 

Something that actually DID go to Laythe, without any malfunctions even, was the Laythe SpySat, with a "small" SigInt dish and spy camera to really look for signs of intelligent life on the surface before going further.  The big dish, of course, also acts as a powerful relay antenna, a good start for the Laythe network.  As of yet, the are still no indigenous radio signals detected and the camera didn't see anything noteworthy in its rather random sample before it ran out of film.  

 

About this time, the Jool Moons Probe came home and captured into a low equatorial orbit.  At some point, the Boffins will build something to go up and return at least part of it for the Imperial Space Museum but as yet, the technology to do that doesn't exist.  Things were not helped when the Emperor's PR campaign backfired.  Again.

 

By now, the 2nd batch of experiments in MOLE 2 were done cooking so Beaney went up with a fresh batch, plus a couple of newly invented glycerol tanks needed for some cryogenic experiments.  Given the bloody history of the MOLE 2 Science Runner, everybody was rather surprised when she reached the station without problem.  This was, of course, ascribed to newly minted Saint Crisdous.  There are no longer any atheists in the Circus.

 

Once Beaney docked, she relieved Bob, who was slated to come home for a periodic debriefing/dissection (he'd been in orbit well over 100 days by now).  Meanwhile Bill, the only artificersmate aboard, EVA'd to move the glycerol tanks from the Science Runner to the MOLE lab module.  This job proved only slightly torturous and was completed before MOLE 2 rotated out of the sunlight.  However, at this point, the sciencemates discovered that the cryogenic radiation experiment brought up by Beaney required being at an altitude of 300km, but MOLE 2 is at 180km, so the glycerol was useless.  This resulted in the purging of a number of senior Scientists, even though they swore they had no way of knowing this in advance.  At least the temperature studies Beaney also delivered could go ahead.

 

In any case, Bob loaded up the completed experiments and managed to undock without incident.  That's the 3rd successful undocking from the standard Clamp-o-Tron so Mission Control ALMOST trusts it now.  Bob then returned safely to Kerbin (thanks to Saint Jeb) with a good load of Science! and was whisked away so the Scientists could learn the effects of longterm space exposure on Kerbals.  They were eager to do so, having been cheated of their last specimens (Samner and Dizer) in an unfortunate pod explosion just before re-entry.

 

After this short run of reasonably good luck, however, normality returned to the Circus' efforts.  The next rocket was the Jool MagSat.  This wasn't expected to be a successful mission as it's one of those long-term (100-day+) magnetic survey things and Jool had already shown how it ejects objects inside the orbit of Minmus, where this probe was intended to go.  But the Scientists figured that if it DID get ejected, it could learn something about interplanetary space and EPIKFAIL might be impressed, too, so the mission went ahead.  However, it barely got off the pad before about half the clustered lifter engines exploded.  Mission Control tried unsuccessfully to land the payload but it merely added another layer to the bottom of Scrap Metal Bay.

 

Strangely, the next launch went without a hitch.  This was a relay probe for equatorial orbit around Laythe.  With this and the Laythe SpySat in polar orbit, the Laythe network was now pretty much serviceable.

 

Then it was time for the much-anticipated Laythe SCANsat, complete with resource scanner.  Although a software glitch still prevented getting usable maps for Kerbin and Bop, at least it would now work for Laythe.  Given that Laythe has a lot of clouds, the Circus really had no good idea of the lay of the land, let alone what resources might be there.  Unfortunately, Laythe SCANsat Mk 1 suffered numerous explosions upon lifter separation, which included the loss of the transfer/OMS engine, although most of the instrument package survived just fine.  So there it sits, another piece of space junk, unable even to de-orbit.  And it's in an equatorial orbit, so can't even do much good at Kerbin assuming the software ever gets fixed.

 

This was such a disappointment that Mission Control opted to work 3 shifts to rush Laythe SCANsat MK 2 through integration and send it up as soon as possible.  And guess what?  It suffered exactly the same fate as its predecessor, only the transfer/OMS engine waited until just after the start of the transfer burn to explode.  So now this sits helplessly in an eccentric equatorial orbit.

 

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in Mission Control.  In a desperate effort to save themselves from being purged yet again, Mission Control again rushed Laythe SCANsat Mk 3 to completion.  Fortunately for them, this one finally worked.  As you can see in the pic below, the probe's engine is still attached as it burned successfully away from Kerbin.

 

And it actually got to Laythe and into its assigned 265km polar orbit and got to work scanning and mapping.  One of its antennae failed but it had several others as spares.

 

Alterinis Laythe proved to have a lot more land than ancient Circus legends from the Dreamtime mentioned.  In fact, it's rather like Kerbin in having 1 big spaghetti continent with a number of large and small islands.  It is mainly composed of 5 large biomes:  Ocean, Icecaps, Southlands, Equatoriallands, and Northlands.  There are volcanoes in both hemispheres and some mountains in the northern hemisphere.  There is also a Crater Lake with an Impact Crater central rise in one spot.  The current low-res mapping radar only has a 500m resolution on altitude so the steepness of the terrain is unknown.  Most of the landmass shows as 1000m.  Some mountains and volcanoes go up to 5000m.   Hopefully, the Circus will soon develop high-res radar but this will have to do for the time being.  The Circus is just thankful to have a map at all.

 

The resource scan was VERY interesting.  There's LOTS of Ore on Laythe, but most of it is in the Ocean (10%).  The Equatoriallandsl have 8%, the Icecaps 5%, and the rest of the land area has only 1-2%.  But because there is Ocean at nearly all latitudes, fuel would be available everywhere provided the Circus can figure out how to get it out of the Ocean.  This will require some research, maybe even ModuleManaging.

 

But the most interesting thing was the detection of an anomaly.  Could this be a sign of intelligent Laytheans?  Mission Control is in a swivet over this question, especially because the Emperor wants to know, too.

 

The Circus, therefore, is still playing it cautiously with Laythe.  The plan now is to send some small flying drones to Laythe to get a close look at the anomaly and to see how steeply the terrain meets the sea.  There are no wide stretches of beach visible from space.  Another important experiment will be to drop something into the ocean to see how high it floats compared to on Kerbin.  If there's much difference, this could have repercussions on many aspects of future exploration.

 

Tune in next time for more of the slow spiral into damnation.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Geschosskopf

[B-STRK]

I'd probably point out to Crisdous that death with little to no estate (given all the debts involved) IS the ultimate ship lift. No way to enforce a court judgment in the afterlife, and nothing on Kerbin the creditors can go after, leaving them up an escape trajectory without a Poodle. That's the ultimate win. 

Of course, that doesn't help things if Jeb is busy scaring the Kraken out of Crisdous with barrel rolls in the Great Keostationary Orbit In The Sky. 

I think there may be a mod that has oceanic scoops (not for ore, though, but it's a start for some MM magic). I think Karbonite did, maybe Mining Extension too? (Again, must check.)