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


Geschosskopf

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40 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

I wouldn’t so much call it a bug as an unintended artifact. “Working as Coded” as we say in the business.

Thanks for the explanation.

I've been missing Engine Lighting for 1.3.0.  I see it's available in 1.3.1 but I'm still waiting on a few more mods to update before updating this game.

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EPISODE 16: Give Up the Funk

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Some time before, the Circus had accepted various contracts in the Tylo system (4x Tylo orbited by Dres and Duna).  They all had like 35 years to complete so there was no rush, but by now Circus technology had reached the point where it was possible to begin contemplating finally doing these missions.  But nobody had any idea of the dV costs to get from Kerbin to Tylo, let alone what maneuvering in that system would cost.  As a 1st step to learning some of this, the Circus needed something orbiting Jool on the ecliptic to use to estimate dV costs for interplanetary transfers.  The Boffins had recently developed the Sentinel IR telescope and this would serve the purpose wonderfully, besides perhaps giving warning of impending asteroid strikes on Kerbin.  So, despite not having a contract to launch a Sentinel, Mission Control ordered one up to park between Kerbin and Mun. 

Somewhat to everybody's surprise, it worked.  Perhaps it was the good juju engendered by the Emperor's continued PR campaign.

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It should be noted that most rockets leaving integration these days average about 85% reliability, some even going over 100% and a few down in the upper 70s.  This is a far cry from the early days when 35% was a high number.

There was also a contract for yet another long-term magnetic survey, this time at Laythe.  This didn't require any work so off it went.  Meanwhile, half the workforce in the VAB quit without even saying good-bye, ending production of the Boffin's secret project that needed 66 days to integrate.  At the same time, a number of junior Scientists also walked off the job, but things have a way of balancing out.  Most of the deserting Scientists were soon rounded up and found themselves riveting rockets together for a substantial pay cut.

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While Mission Control waited for the Laythe Magsat to get on station and for the workforce to get back up to strength, the Boffins busied themselves testing the newly developed 3.75m rocket parts and 2.5m SRBs they'd recently developed. Rather disappointingly, very few of these parts exploded despite numerous tests.  This should not be construed as BARIS taking some time off, however.  Various things already in space continued to fail at a seemingly higher rate than previously.  Also, bad events kept happening.  Fortunately, however, most such misfortune fell on obsolete stuff and even the wreckage of the ill-fated MOLE 1 "Tarbaby".

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Part of the ambitious secret project required a long-duration crewed ship in Laythe orbit.  To test some of the key rocket parts this required, the Boffins planned a rather similar run to Mun first.  But before that could be as effective as the Scientists desired, Mun had to be mapped.  Fortunately, Mun was one of the bodies for which the SCANsat software now worked, so off went a mapping probe, identical in all but name to the one sent to Laythe.  And it worked just as well as its predecessor, even though some funds turned up missing and the responsible bean-counters were purged.

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Mun turned out to be composed mostly of Midlands with a few mountainous areas of Highlands and most of the medium-sized craters being Lowlands.  There were big craters as separate biomes near both poles, several patches of Maria, and then all the bigger small craters were Scattered Craters biome.  Ore was also nicely distributed, most of it (about 8%) in the Midlands, which covered most of the surface.  There are also numerous anomalies to investigate someday.

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Meanwhile the sky above KSC was full of portents.  But what did they portend?  Nobody could say, nor explain how Jool's terminator ignored the direction of the sun.  Light works funny sometimes in Alternis Kerbol, especially in the Space Center view, where "space is broken" according to the developer.

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With Mun mapped, the Mun Skimmer was soon up and running.  Its mission (still on-going) is to get into a polar orbit at low altitude and scoop up applicable Science! over each biome.   The ship is a scaled-down version of something more ambitious soon to be heading for Laythe.  Mun Skimmer is crewed by newbies Trilock (bosunsmate striker), Shepgard (artificersmate striker), and SM3 Hudlong (recently returned from MOLE 2).  They would be the 1st Kerbals to leave the Kerbin system.  This was the most ambitious crewed mission since the ill-fated BLAHS-SLOB attempt at Bop that cost the lives of Handin, Lenski, and Jenmon.  Again, BARIS allowed them to be on their way without undue difficulty, although Hudlong had to kludge around several issues during launch.  The value of 1-star Kerbals was proved yet again.

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Mun Skimmer launched at an inopportune time to hit Mun directly, but by not really getting too far from Kerbin to start with, it could come back to Kerbin for a gravity brake to hit Mun in good time.  While enjoying being the 1st Kerbals to escape Kerbin, the crew all took some spacewalks in Jool orbit and made sure the experiments worked.

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Then, at long last, the Boffins could finally roll out the LE-1 SLOP JUG (Laythe Expedition 1 Scientific Laythe Observation Planes -- Just UnGainly).  This was actually the 3rd attempt to build the thing, the 1st 2 having been aborted by the whims of BARIS and some unknown glitch.  Thus, it had taken close to 100 days from start to finish to get it out.  The whole purpose is to carry 4 small recon drone planes to Laythe, not because 4 are really needed to but have redundancy in case some of them fail en route.  With such wing area on the payload, which was impossible to put in a fairing at the time it was designed, there was no choice but to build a bass-ackwards rocket.  Simulations had shown the design could just barely reach orbit, and then the payload could just barely reach Laythe.  That was good enough---if anything in the main propulsion system failed, it was all doomed anyway.  

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As wheeled out to the launchpad, LE-1 SLOP JUG's reliability stood at 85% and BARIS chose to ignore it.  There were huge sighs of relief due to the long time it had taken to integrate the thing.

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Staging off the bass-ackwards lifter resulted in a long serious of gratuitous explosions as each of its many parts exploded one-by-one.  It was quite glorious.  There was much celebration in Mission Control, with top-shelf single malt for all hands.  This more than made up for the failure of the Minmus MagSat to fulfill its contract.

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And so LE-1 SLOP JUG departed for Laythe with no issues to report.  Meanwhile, Mun Skimmer is approaching its destination and the LE-1 CLOD (Controlling Laythe Observation Drones) is nearing completion in VAB Bay #2.  Things are FINALLY starting to get interesting.

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

Edited by Geschosskopf
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8 hours ago, insert_name said:

how big is the mun skimmer? I don't see any decouplers in that core stage but it clearly had a staging event

I'll definitely have better pics of it next time.  KAC said it was 15 minutes out of Mun's SOI when I quit playing.

Anyway, the actual Mun Skimmer spacecraft (what's left after that staging event) is a Mk 3 pod, a thing ring of SAS and Universal Storage, then a "half-sized" (as opposed to Jumbo) fuel tank with LV-Ns radially attached.  So in the 1st pic, the stage dividing line is the middle of 1st dark stripe down from the pod, about even with the tops of the SRBs.  One of the many cool things about Wild Blue mods is their low-profile, color-coordinated stack decouplers.  This DSEV 2.5m decoupler is the same color as the dark stripes at the ends of the tanks and is only about as thick as a stock 2.5m battery.  And because this joint is between 2 tanks without engines in between, there's no shroud.  That why it's hard to see where the joint is.

32 minutes ago, obney kerman said:

Another episode without a launch failure? Inconcievable!

Another?  Didn't Adaid barely escape from a spectacular failure last time?

Besides, it depends on how you define "launch failures".  BARIS says "launch failures" means every time you stage, it checks each part in the rocket for failure with an unfavorable DRM.  If any part does in fact fail due to staging, then it's a "launch failure" even if the staging event happened at MET Y3 D158 after actual launch.  I'm not going to argue with BARIS.  But the upshot is, a rocket can have a large number of "launch failures" during its actual launch and still keep flying just fine.  It all depends on which parts fail.

In this recent batch of launches, there were in fact quite a few "launch failures".  Both the Mun SCANsat's DTS-M1 antennae failed but at least 1 of them still half-way works because it was able to transmit Science! once it finished mapping Mun.  The Kerbin Sentinel had a Vernor engine explode.  The Mun Skimmer would have had several parts fail but Huglong averted them thanks to having 1 star.  But none of these failures had disastrous consequences so I didn't bother mentioning them.  And of course all sorts of things went wrong on the test stand, as intended.

So BARIS is still very much alive and well.  I was just lucky this time that I had no failures to the main engines, pods, or other insta-death parts.

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39 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

Speaking of the whole "fake space program" thing... I once retextured a 2x2 panel so it had the Mun's surface and a lander on it. I then posed a Kerbal in front of it... On Duna!

That was you?  I always thought somebody else did it.  But it was so long ago I've forgotten.  Hilarious.

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12 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

That was you?  I always thought somebody else did it.  But it was so long ago I've forgotten.  Hilarious.

No, I did it independently of that. Someone had the same idea.

Speaking of which, one of my IRL friends, who also plays KSP, did this:

*A standard BDArmory fighter jet flying over an ocean* 

NARRATION: The K-57 Hummingbird is a capable fighter, able to intercept and destroy most aircraft with ease. It has high thrust, excellent fuel efficiency, is very maneuverable... 

*Zooms out*

*Jool looms large in the sky* 

NARRATION: And it has an EXTREMELY long range.

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Nice!

Got around to binge reading this thread. Well worth it! The carelessness in which lives are consumed is an interesting strategy. What's the effect on hiring costs?

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On 10/25/2017 at 10:41 PM, qzgy said:

Got around to binge reading this thread. Well worth it! The carelessness in which lives are consumed is an interesting strategy. What's the effect on hiring costs?

Thanks!

The Circus use Custom Barn Kit to have hiring costs fixed at $10K each.  This cost is for the following expenses:

  • Payments to crimps who shanghai mill workers from various dives in industrial areas (source of most artificersmates)
  • Payments to press gangs who sweep up vagrants (source of most bosunsmates)
  • Administrative overhead when transferring convicts from prisons to the Circus (source of most sciencemates)
  • Consumables used during initial indoctrination (various brainwashing drugs, cattleprod batteries, uniforms, etc.)
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EPISODE 17: Roll the Old Chariot

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Well, I've been busy at work, busy with behind-the-scenes stuff for a bit later in this thread, and also finally getting this save updated to 1.3.1.  That last was a lot of work but it was worth it.  The game seems to run much better in 1.3.1 than 1.30.  So not only is this update a bit late, it's also a bit short and really doesn't have much narrative value.  But hey, at least it;'s something :)

The 1st order of business was to deal with Munskimmer, whose trip to Mun only took a few hours.  It snagged the high orbit Science! on the way in, then captured into a rather low polar orbit with the plan to get low orbit Science! over each of the 9 or 10 biomes.  As Munskimmer was trying to set up the capture burn, the reaction wheels started acting up but Trilock managed kludge around it and the burn went OK.

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However, before the Scientists could start raking in the Science!, Mission Control had to divert its attention to getting LE-1 SLOPJUG captured at Laythe.  Thus, there was some old-school Circus juggling of ships all needing attention at once.

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As the simulations prior to the mission had shown, LE-1 SLOPJUG just BARELY made it to Laythe.  The Boffins publicly congratulated themselves for making such an efficient design, but privately they swore never to cut things so close again :) 

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At last Mission Control could return its full attention to Munskimmer.  Its close examination of the Munar surface showed that it was rather more cratered up than had been supposed from Jool Moon Probe's brief look.  But at least it still had contrasting colors.  While Hudlong of course was always EVA-ing on each biome tending to the Science!, Trilock and Shepgard also had to go see what Mun smelled like.

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After a couple days, Munskimmer had flown over all the biomes.  Being in a polar orbit, however, complicated getting home.  Conventional transfer windows wouldn't work, but nobody wanted to waste the fuel needed to get into an equatorial orbit.  Fortunately, Mission Control had practiced a lot for such situations.  After a few more days, which were usefully spent cataloging the Science! and making sure the life support system would work that long, the plane of Munskimmer's orbit more or less lined up with Kerbin, so Mission Control set up what they called a "Massé shot", leaving out from under Mun's south pole for the transfer.  This only required a bit less than 300m/s compared to about 1500 on the outward trip.

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During the capture burn back at Kerbin (into a 100km retrograde orbit), the reaction wheels again acted up, no doubt due to the severe manufacturing defect noticed by BARIS.  But fortunately, the crew was able to deal with it again.

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After the de-orbit burn, Mission Control again specified manually dropping the last stage, but Shepgard got confused and hit the main STAGE button.  This nearly resulted in another Samner/Dizer-type disaster but Hudlong's quick action (remember, he'd spent 200 days on MOLE 2 so was an old hand) saved the day.  The LV-Ns had performed better than expected, not even needing radiators (YAY!) and came down harmlessly in Scrap Metal Bay a bit east of KSC, along with the capsule and all its wonderful Science!

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All in all, the Munskimmer mission had been a great success.  Not only had it brought back much knowledge, but it had demonstrated the Circus could send Kerbals out of Kerbin's and get them back (various flybies  and a failed landing at Bop don't count).  Also, many components of Munskimmer were test articles for the next big launch, LE-1 CLOD (Controlling Laythe Observation Drones).  This had been in integration for a while, so really it was too late to make any major changes, but at least the Boffins didn't have to start over and got more confidence this CLOD would actually work.

Despite having what they thought were autonomous probes, there had been some control issues testing the SLOPs at Kerbin of all places.  Nobody could figure out what was wrong so they couldn't solve the problem.  Thus, Mission Control decided to make sure the SLOPs were always under full control while at Laythe.  This was CLOD's mission.  Because the mission depended on several sequential instances of the desired terrain to be scouted being in daylight, SLOPJUG being positioned to drop a SLOP on it, and CLOD being in the right place in orbit to control the SLOP for the duration of the flight, this mission was expected to take a long time.  Hence, CLOD was a big ship.  It needed 2 bosunsmates to control the drones, it needed a sciencemate to do its own Science!, and it needed an artificiersmate to run the Snacks! recycler to keep the mission going long enough.  And for that, it needed a lot of electricity.  The crew had been selected several months before and had been subjected to long sessions of watching instructional videos and performing simulations in the mock-up even as the Boffins were continually revising the design.  But at least the day finally came when LE-1 CLOD rolled along to the launchpad.

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The launch was a near-run thing, with the main lifter engine giving trouble, but at last LE-1 CLOD was safely in her parking orbit.

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Mission Control noted some distension amongst the crew but it was no worse that what had been happening in Mission Control itself as various failure lights had been flashing.  Thus, everybody put it down to the stress of the launch and assumed that the grog ration would smoothing things out.  Besides, LE-1 CLOD had to wait 4 days for Laythe to get into the right position, which was just about the maximum time possible.  This would allow the crew to become more bonded under the shared duties and hardships, and an upped dose of indoctrination chemicals in their rations.  Then they'll be off to Laythe to see if any of the SLOPs still work and if they'll actually be capable of seeing the sights.

 

Tune in next time for more of the slow spiral into damnation.  And thanks again for making this TOTM.  Huzzah for the next TOTM :) 

Edited by Geschosskopf
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EPISODE 18: The Green Hills of Tyrol

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Ha!  Managed to sneak one more in while this is still TOTM :)   BTW, in what follows, any resemblance to @Cydonian Monk's ingenious Laythe scout plane is purely intentional.  I started with that and added a few things.

Anyway,, to business.

The 4 days in LKO between launch and Laythe transfer had, as expected, healed whatever rifts had been present in the jolly crew of LE-1 CLOD, especially once Bill figured out how to kludge the Snacks! recycler to make grog and Bob had hacked the ration accounting computer to not notice the extra grog rations.  They even shared the spoils with the bosunsmates.  As such, when the transfer burn finally happened, the crew was very jolly, ranting and roaring like true Circus spacers!  Adaid proved to be a strong tenor with the others mostly being baritones.

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A bit over a day later, LE-1 CLOD entered Laythe's SOI and Bob was busy doing sciencemate stuff.  Morale in general was raised by the whole crew being promoted to 1st Class petty officers in their rates, now being senior to all other astronauts.  Even the Munskimmer crew hadn't gotten promoted.

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The capture burn was routine for everybody except Bill, who was busy kludging stuff to keep them from exploding.  (NOTE:  I've thought things have become a bit boring so I gave BARIS a few more teeth, including scaling way back on the impact of Kerbal experience.  But the little green bastids, once they know how to fix stuff, won't seem to die in exploding spaceships anymore.  Oh well, I'll have to be even harsher on them in the future, I guess).

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What with the Laythe Relay already being there, the plan was for LE-1 CLOD to get into a similar orbit but out of phase with it.  As it happened, had LE-1 CLOD circularized immediately, it would have been pretty much in the same place as Laythe Relay.  Thus, a bit of finagling was necessary.  The end result was CLOD being about 90^ behind Laythe Relay, thus between the 2 of them providing about 270^ of coverage of Laythe's surface, taking it in turns to control the SLOP drones.

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About 1 orbit later and LE-1 SLOPJUG was approaching the daylight side of Laythe with Laythe Relay overhead and LE-1 CLOD coming up behind.  Thus, Mission Control decided to release SLOP 1 (which was still, somewhat surprisingly, functional).  It was aimed at a piece of ground conveniently running more or less E-W more or less along the equator.

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Due to some problems getting SLOP 1 sure of which direction it was pointing, it's de-orbit burn was a mess.  Instead of coming down just off the W coast of the landmass, SLOP 1 arrived somewhat inland.  Thus, once it had finished its fireworks (which caused no harm to anything), it did a split-S and headed back for the west end of the peninsula and dove for the deck to see what the surface looked like.

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And there was Kerbalkind's first incontrovertible proof of complex, multi-cellular life on another planet.  There were big trees all over the place, their branches laden with yummy-looking white fruit.  So much for thinking all the green surface area of Laythe was just pond scum.  Naturally, the Scientists at Mission Control were in an uproar and will be for some time to come.  Meanwhile, the Boffins were just glad SLOP 1 was able to stay out of the treetops.

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SLOP 1 then turned SW and found that at least some coastlines sloped gently down to the sea and had wide beaches.  This filled a big gap in the low-res SCANsat data which was all the Circus had had up to this point.

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Having followed the coast to the west end of the peninsula, SLOP 1 turned about and headed back east along the central spine of it.  This peninsula was mostly rolling hills covered with trees and low clouds with high humidity.  However, it had a number of low, swampy areas that were mostly mud and some puddles.  A number of what were apparently bug analogs splattered on the camera lens but fortunately it had been equipped with a winding spool of clear plastic film covering, so the Boffins were able to keep the view clear most of the time.  The more militant members of Mission Control rejoiced in having slain their first noticeable extraplanetary foes (nobody counted the millions of bacteria analogs no doubt already sucked up by the jet engines).  Meanwhile the mineral scanner confirmed the dismal quality of Ore ashore, but had shown it was even better than expected in the oceans, like 15%.

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As SLOP 1 continued heading east, absolutely no trace of any animal life at all, let alone intelligence, was apparent other than the bug splats on the camera.  It was all trees in places, and all green groundcover (pond scum, moss, grass, who could say?) elsewhere apart from a few mudflats around the lakes.  But now, SLOP 1 was approaching the place where the peninsula it had been following joined a larger landmass, and there was what appeared to be a hurricane.  The chance to go hurricane hunting on another world was too much for Mission Control to resist, so orders went out to see if SLOP 1 could reach the eye.

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This turned out to be a big nothing.  No surface winds to speak of, although the cloud shadows made it hard to tell where the ground was, especially as the area under the storm had no trees.  This nearly resulted in more than 1 crash but Jack and Adaid were up to the challenge.

SLOP 1 then continued east hoping to reach the Crater Lake biome before its fuel ran out.  But it ran out of daylight first, so Mission Control decided it would be best to ditch SLOP 1 in the ocean somewhere nearby.  It would still have about 10% fuel.

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As the Laythe Hydrometer had shown, stuff floated really well in Laythe's ocean.  Lots of salt implying lots of marine life.  And that will likely be the last discovery made by SLOP 1, as there's not much worse in the universe than salt water.

There are 3 more SLOPs still in orbit on LE-1 SLOPJUG and there's still the anomaly to see.

 

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

Edited by Geschosskopf
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36 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

BTW, in what follows, any resemblance to @Cydonian Monk's ingenious Laythe scout plane is purely intentional.  I started with that and added a few things.

Nifty!

I think when I send some similar probes out to Laythe again I’ll include token wings and maybe a tiny center wheel to land on, something like the U-2. That tiny jet probe was one where I got to Laythe and realized it was missing almost everything - even the parachutes for the heatshield / lander module. Thinking about it now, it’d make more sense to enter the atmosphere nose-first, ditch the heatshield explosively/violently, and then the probe aircraft is already facing into the airstream for the jets. I had to improvise in real time just to salvage it.

This version of Laythe looks far more interesting though.

Surprised there were no problems with heat on that probe from your Laythe entry profile. Are the atmospheres tweaked as well?

 

I did give BARIS a quick spin a week or so ago, then I was distracted by grown men dressed in orange abusing leather blobs with their feet and/or large wooden clubs. Tense sporting days here in Clutch City. I just wish they could either not play to 90-minute ties or not drag 9 innings out past five hours...... 404: Sleep Not Found. So my little green dudes are temporarily safe from both the random neuroses generator and my schemes.

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19 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

I think when I send some similar probes out to Laythe again I’ll include token wings and maybe a tiny center wheel to land on, something like the U-2. That tiny jet probe was one where I got to Laythe and realized it was missing almost everything - even the parachutes for the heatshield / lander module. Thinking about it now, it’d make more sense to enter the atmosphere nose-first, ditch the heatshield explosively/violently, and then the probe aircraft is already facing into the airstream for the jets. I had to improvise in real time just to salvage it.

Well, it did a good job even so.  I found it so inspiring I had to cobble together a bass-ackwards SSTO lifter to get 4 such things to Alternis Laythe :wink:

 

Quote

This version of Laythe looks far more interesting though.

Surprised there were no problems with heat on that probe from your Laythe entry profile. Are the atmospheres tweaked as well?

In AK, Laythe has 0.8 the gravity and 0.8 the air pressure of Kerbin, and the atmosphere extends to 65km, but it's pretty thin until you get down to about 20km.  These little SLOPs are so light they have about zero momentum, which KSP seems to regard as a major factor in atmospheric heating.  Just come in aiming about 90^ of longitude downrange with about 90^ angle of attack so the little wings (from @Angel-125's Buffalo) cause the most drag, and the fireworks are soon over with not even the exposed atmospheric sensor on the bottom getting a heat bar.  It's almost like parachuting.

I was trying the recent official "Brick From Orbit" challenge the other day, trying to land just a probe core on Eve (it needed to be less than 12m/s to survive, I kept impacting at 13).  I found that I could cut the ablator on the 2.5m heatshield down as far as it would go (180) and make it just fine because the thing's extreme drag : mass ratio slowed it down in a heartbeat.  Same thing here.  The more mass you have, the more you burn.  So in less-extreme atmospheres like Laythe, you can do without a heatshield entirely if the payload is light and draggy enough.

 

Quote

I did give BARIS a quick spin a week or so ago, then I was distracted by grown men dressed in orange abusing leather blobs with their feet and/or large wooden clubs. Tense sporting days here in Clutch City. I just wish they could either not play to 90-minute ties or not drag 9 innings out past five hours...... 404: Sleep Not Found. So my little green dudes are temporarily safe from both the random neuroses generator and my schemes.

Is that 04:04 Sleep Not Found?  :D  I turned it off in the 10th with it 12-12.

What did you think of BARIS?

Edited by Geschosskopf
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21 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

What did you think of BARIS?

Should be stock.

Then again I’ve played both BARIS (the game) and the newest attempt at it (BASPM) for more hours than I recall. There’s another early access game that seems to be getting the same formula right, except for cars - Gear City - though I’ve not played enough of it to say for sure. KSP desperately needs something like that, except tightly integrated with the base game. I suspect the upcoming expansion will add just enough that I’ll end up wanting the full BARIS experience, both in stock and RSS/RO. RP-0 has started down that path, ex: forcing you to train your pilots for the specific craft they’ll operate; and BARIS gives a good deal of tweakable options so you aren’t forced to always be uber-hardcore. I think the difficulty sliders and options are just as important.

There’s a nicely sized market that could be exploited by a space game that lets you build a space program up from the start, design your own craft, train your own engineers and astronauts, (actually) research new technologies (through testing; not with magic science points), and plot your own missions. A mix of KSP, BARIS, Orbiter, and management sims. And when that game comes along it’ll eat everything else’s lunch.

Edited by Cydonian Monk
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21 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Should be stock.

As long as it had the option to turn it off entirely, and that actually worked.  Unlike, for instance, how the not requiring a network for probe control option doesn't work.

Personally, I'd MUCH rather that any Squad-made game as you describe above NOT be KSP but some totally new, from scratch, thing set in the real world of real humans.  As @Angel-125 says in the BARIS thread, "Don't talk about realism in a game with little green men."  IMHO, there is a need for 2 separate products, a simulation and a toy.  KSP is a toy and I want it to stay that way.

Edited by Geschosskopf
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2 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

The Laytheans obviously live underground! 

Operation DRILLBOT is a go!

Well, given their own history, many leading Kerbal Scientists think this is highly likely.  Which is scary.  It would imply the Laytheans are more advanced than Kerbals, because they've evolved the good sense to stay underground.  Thus, it might be dangerous to go poking holes in their roof :) 

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5 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

some totally new, from scratch, thing set in the real world of real humans.  As @Angel-125 says in the BARIS thread, "Don't talk about realism in a game with little green men."  IMHO, there is a need for 2 separate products, a simulation and a toy.

Orbiter 2010?  

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8 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Orbiter 2010?  

Or the newer 2016.  But Orbiter is not the embodiment of @Cydonian Monk's desires, much less mine.

Orbiter is a highly accurate spaceflight simulator,m but that's it.  Imagine if you could only play KSP with RSS, RO, Real Fuels, and every single Real-Whatever mod, and only in scenario mode, not even sandbox.  Of course, if you're geek enough, you can make your own scenarios.,  And if you're a real geek, you can build your own ships as mods.  But if you're not geek enough for any of that, not only are you stuck flying other people's ships, but also other people's scenarios.  Hell, last time I played Orbiter, the base game didn't even allow multiple stages.  Thus, everything except a stock, totally OP SSTO spaceplane had to start in space, unless you had the mod that allowed staging and then used other people's mod multi-staged rockets.  Or you were geek enough to make your own multi-staged rockets.  And there was no such thing adding ships to an existing scenario without a bit of haxoring, without which everything was a 1-and-done mission, no real persistence.

I had a lot of fun with Orbiter and its progenitors for a couple decades.  But I kicked it to the curb as soon as I discovered KSP.  I paid my realism dues tenfold, and I was willing to ignore realism completely just to be able to do my own thing.  Besides, Orbiter is depressing.  It brings home, in no uncertain terms, just how stuck we are on this rock.  Without hypothetical UFO-type technology, we'll never get into space in any meaningful, useful, demographic-shifting way.

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22 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Well, given their own history, many leading Kerbal Scientists think this is highly likely.  Which is scary.  It would imply the Laytheans are more advanced than Kerbals, because they've evolved the good sense to stay underground.  Thus, it might be dangerous to go poking holes in their roof :) 

But we must! FOR SCHIENCE! 
(Also we must conquer them so they know the might of the GLORIOUS KERBAL EMPEROR... sorry, got a little W40k there)

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15 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

And there was no such thing adding ships to an existing scenario

Press cntrl f4, and it opens scenario editor.  It is easy to use and allows you to move vessels however you like.    

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Its in 2010.  (Why did it take 6 years to make orbiter 2016?  KSP was developed from nothing into 1.2 between O2010 and O2016!)

Anyway, Orbiter is off topic.  Great mission reports!  Is BARIS compatable with 1.2.2?  

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