RealKerbal3x's Mission Report Thread (Warning, image heavy!!) [STS-7 with Kerbin Prospector 1]

[RealKerbal3x]

Hey guys...apologies for the long wait.

The reason I haven't posted anything here for the best part of a month is because the KSP 1.7 update is just around the corner (this week in fact) and I want to do my next report with the new skybox and improved manoeuvre node system. So I will pick this up soon

EDIT: Hey, a third page!

Edited April 9, 2019 by RealKerbal3x

[KerballingSmasher]

Yay! *throws confetti*

[RealKerbal3x]

Alright, I'm back, and the game is better than ever! After familiarising myself with the new stuff in 1.7, I got down to business and sent the first runabout lander to the Munar Transfer Station. Enjoy!

Spoiler

Mun Infrastructure Project Part 4a: Mun Lander 1

A Kraken V lifts off from the pad at the KSC, carrying the reusable Tender lander that will be used to shuttle Mun base crewmembers between the surface and Munar Transfer Station. You will note that I have scaled up the 'mode switch' element of the UI to 150% - this is because I found the new Manoeuvre Mode hard to use when it was scaled to 50%.

Anyway, onward to orbit and beyond! Here, the upper stage pushes the Tender towards an encounter with the Mun.

Once I had completed the trans-munar injection burn, I figured out this rendezvous. You may be thinking "hey, 3.3km is pretty far for a rendezvous." Don't worry - I used another manoeuvre node at apoapsis to tweak it down to 0.5km.

The powerful Rhino engine is generally a pain in the behind when it comes to precise orbital manoeuvring, so in future Kraken V upper stages may use clusters of Skiffs or other engines. Despite this, the rendezvous and docking went perfectly...I'd show a screenshot of the docking approach, but I'm usually in concentration mode during dockings and the F1 key is the least of my worries.

Eventually, the lander was docked at the MTS's zenith-1 port. Just look at that fantastic new skybox in the background...before the new skybox was announced, I was thinking of downloading Texture Replacer or DiRT to improve on the rubbish pre-1.7 one, but then SQUAD came along with this!

Well, thank you for reading, I'll see you in the next one... If you have enjoyed the experience of this report, why not share it with your friends?

If you can tell me what that last sentence was a reference to, you can have ten internet points.

 

Edited May 11, 2019 by RealKerbal3x

[RealKerbal3x]

The Munar Transfer Station needs its second lander! Sorry, this part is pretty much a repeat of the previous one.

Spoiler

Mun Infrastructure Project part 4b: Mun Lander 2

An identical Kraken V launches an identical reusable lander to an identical Mun!

This time I forgot to take a picture of the TMI burn, but here's a nice almost-eclipse.

The standard I've now set for incoming spacecraft destined to rendezvous at the MTS involves braking into an eccentric Munar orbit and then intercepting at the second periapsis. Here, I managed to get the rendezvous distance to 0.2km with a small inclination change at the ascending node, but then timewarp stepped in and messed it up, forcing me to do a last-minute correction burn.

Well, the docking was successful. Lander 2 is at the top of the image. I imagine this station will get pretty crowded during handover periods, when we'll have four Scout crew vehicles docked alongside the landers. You will note that the landers have LV-909 engines rather than the LV-303 that was used on the test mission - this is to allow a shorter and therefore more efficient landing burn.

With the MTS now operational, it's time to send in some uncrewed surface rovers to scout out a good site for the base. It needs to be a flat area, so maybe the Bob Basin area (where the Kerbollo 5 and Tender test landings happened) could be a good place.

Anyway, thanks for your attention  See you in the next one.

 

[RealKerbal3x]

Another update...I’m planning to reinstall KSP this weekend, just because it’ll fix a few irritating problems I’ve been having for a while, while possibly improving performance. Don’t worry, my save isn’t going anywhere (I’ll copy over the ‘saves’ folder from my old install) but I’m going to reinstall all of my mods and hopefully weed out a few that I don’t need or use.

Regarding what I’ll actually be doing next in-game, I’ve decided that I should install two fuel tank modules on the MTS, so I don’t need to send a refuelling mission every time one of the landers returns from a surface sortie.

[RealKerbal3x]

Hey guys... I'm still here  I just wanted to post another quick update because of this:

This new DLC is coming on May 30th, and the new surface experiments especially interest me because now I want to bring some of those along with my Mun base so that I can set up a cool scientific station near my base. That will probably push back the construction of the Mun base itself, but I still need to deliver those fuel pods to the MTS as well as send a couple of uncrewed scout rovers to the Mun's surface (notwithstanding that I'm planning a big trip around Kerbin in an airship and I need to prepare for that), so I'll have stuff to do in the 24 days until the Breaking Ground DLC arrives.

My next report shouldn't be too far off...stay tuned

Edited May 6, 2019 by RealKerbal3x
stupid post editor decided to add copious whitespace :P

[RealKerbal3x]

So while I'm getting really hyped for the Breaking Ground DLC (I really hope they've done more QA than they did with Making History) I still have some stuff to do in-game, and one of those things is deliver two fuel pods to the Munar Transfer Station to top up the Tender landers' tanks when they've returned from the surface. Here goes!

Spoiler

Mun Infrastructure Project part 5a: MTS Fuel Pod 1

A Kraken V with a half-size upper stage climbs away from KSC's peninsula. The two lines sticking out into the sea are from the Water Launch Sites mod.

On to orbit insertion. You will notice that the 1/2 Kraken V upper stage now uses two Skiff engines rather than the single Rhino of old. While the Rhino is more efficient than the Skiff, switching to this engine makes the stage more compact and allows more precise burns. The stage is also equipped with a large reaction wheel (OP reaction wheels are OP), a probe core, RCS thrusters and propellant tanks, and solar panels to provide power.

I was able to begin a trans-Munar injection burn soon after I entered orbit, because the Mun was more or less in the correct position. In this image, it's easier to see the engine plate that the two Skiffs are mounted on. The engine plates really are a brilliant engine mounting solution, especially since SQUAD fixed delta-V calculations with engine plates in 1.7.

I'm sure you've seen me getting to the Mun and rendezvousing before, so I skipped ahead to the docking. The fuel pod connected to the upper stage was rather slow and cumbersome to manoeuvre, especially since its woefully inadequate RCS system was in slightly the wrong place (meaning that it wasted a lot of fuel trying to translate). Added to the fact that I had to dock to an off-axis port, near delicate solar panels and other equipment, this took a few quickloads to get right. But I managed it in the end.

After the pod had safely been docked to the station, it was time to dispose of the Kraken V upper stage that was no longer needed. Luckily, it still had RCS and some fuel, so it could back away after being detached.

The stage then performed a deorbit burn. It had quite the TWR without the heavy payload attached.

I attempted to perform a test landing on the surface, because I'm thinking of building a heavy cargo lander based on this stage. Unfortunately I crashed it, but some debris (the RCS system and a couple of batteries) survived, so maybe some Mun base crew on a rover mission can come and salvage those later.

Here's the station as it is now. The next thing to do is repeat this mission and dock another fuel pod to the opposite side. I've done the calculations, and the amount of propellant in both pods combined should be enough to refuel both landers 3-4 times. This means that I'll only need to send a refueller to this station approximately every 6 crew rotations.

Thanks for reading  Next part should be very soon.

 

[fulgur]

Interesting report! I like the evolving station.

1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Water Launch Sites mod. 

Does this require Kerbal Konstructs?

[RealKerbal3x]

43 minutes ago, fulgur said:

Interesting report! I like the evolving station.

Thanks  The station should be finished by tomorrow, and then I can move on to preparing my Kerbin exploration mission. The construction of the actual Mun surface base should begin on June 1st, which is when I'll first be able to get my hands on the new DLC.

43 minutes ago, fulgur said:

Does this require Kerbal Konstructs?

Yes, here's the thread if you're interested.

 

Edited May 11, 2019 by RealKerbal3x

[KerballingSmasher]

@RealKerbal3x-- it's great to once again see these mission reports return to my inbox!

[RealKerbal3x]

24 minutes ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

@RealKerbal3x-- it's great to once again see these mission reports return to my inbox!

Thank you...and sorry for the sporadicity of the reports. I tend to do most of the big things happening in these at once and then take a bit of a break. While the big thing I’m building up to at the moment is building my Mun base, a lot of the things I need to do to prepare for that (like flying to the Mun and rendezvousing with the space station) are routine and as a result, incredibly tedious and I’m not very motivated to do them.

However, since doing surface construction and exploring the Mun is more interesting than docking for the 354th time, I hope you’ll see a higher frequency of reports when I get to doing that

[RealKerbal3x]

Here's another mission report for everyone to read. While the mission plan to deliver this module is identical to that of the previous mission, it ended up going quite differently when it came time to enter Munar orbit and rendezvous with the station.

Spoiler

Mun Infrastructure Project part 5b: MTS Fuel Pod 2

In this lovely shot (if I do say so myself ) the Kraken V carrying the second fuel pod for the Munar Transfer Station lifts off from the Kape Kernaveral.

Onwards to victory (and orbital insertion burns). You may notice that this fuel pod is different to the previous one. Since the large monopropellant tank on the other pod will be sufficient for many refuellings of the landers' RCS tanks, I decided to replace it with a KIS container on this one. I was going to bring some tools for the MTS's resident engineer, Seanvis, inside the container, but I forgot 

I wasn't able to begin a TMI burn as promptly as I had done on the previous mission, but it wasn't too bad. What came next was really interesting...

I was able to get a decent rendezvous without even braking into orbit beforehand. While I was able to bring it even closer with a manoeuvre node, I had never done a rendezvous directly from a hyperbolic orbit. The image above does show a manoeuvre node to brake into an eccentric orbit, but I later ditched this as it didn't help me get any closer.

Luckily, I was able to pull it off, removing the need to spend another couple of hours (in-game time) coasting up to apoapsis and then coming in to circularise the orbit at periapsis to rendezvous.

Since I had equipped the upper stage with a more powerful and better positioned RCS system, docking went much more smoothly than it had done previously.

With the upper stage's work done, it was time to smash it into the Mun at many hundreds of metres per second. 

Surprisingly, when the stage hit the surface the probe core survived and flew for a few minutes at ~200m altitude. However, it eventually met a fiery end in a Munar hillside.

Well, there we go. I now pronounce the Munar Transfer Station officially complete! Now it only needs to wait for the Mun base to be completed and for its crew to use the station as a car park. (Really, if you think about it, that's all the MTS is. A glorified car park).

See you in the next one

 

[RealKerbal3x]

Hi Kerbonauts. Remember that big trip around Kerbin in an airship that I'm planning? Let me just reveal some info about it.

First, I think I'll be posting updates on that in their own thread, because I want to give it more story than I do for my usual mission reports - and mixing everything up in this thread will probably confuse people. However, I'll post a link here every time I post a chapter in the other thread.

In-game, I've been working on the various vehicles for the Kerbin Exploration Project (yes, that's the official name now). The only one that's fully complete is the airship, UKS Deep Purple (registry LTA-0101) Here's a picture:

I have made a couple of minor changes since this picture was taken. First, the front engines on the rear engine pods were removed, and the rear-facing engine will now only be used for reverse-thrust. I would just use all of the engines for that, but a bug in the Heisenberg mod prevented it (Angel-125 says he will try to fix it when he has more time).

The other vehicles are a tiltrotor (almost finished, since it's only a slightly modified version of a craft that comes with the Buffalo mod), a rover, and a small tractor for moving the tiltrotor around inside the Purple's spacious cargo hold. I considered bringing a submarine, but it'd need a specialised drop bay to deploy and I'd probably have to move the aft gondola to do that, so just too much hassle.

Preparations are going quicker than I'd originally envisioned, so I'll probably be able to start some shakedown cruises for the Purple pretty soon. The only things remaining on my preparations list are adding docking ports inside the airship's cargo bay to secure payload in flight, and selecting a crew. Stay tuned for more

[RealKerbal3x]

Sorry for the long hiatus, guys. I've been focusing on the Kerbin Exploration Project (link in my signature) but here's another conventional mission report. This mission was actually necessary for the story: in chapter 5 the crew of the UKS Deep Purple have a meeting about the recent STS-7 launch and its payload. But anyway, on with the report!

Spoiler

STS-7 with Kerbin Prospector 1

Engine ignition on STS-7! This mission achieved two firsts: first shuttle in polar orbit, and first shuttle to land at the Dessert airfield.

The launch went nominally and soon I was preparing to insert the orbiter into low polar orbit with its OMS engines. I had considered replacing the Cormorant shuttle mod I currently use with the newly released Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit by benjee10, but I decided against it on the grounds that it's not particularly stockalike and wouldn't fit in as well as CA does.

The orbital insertion was fine, but it did take quite a bit more dV than a standard equatorial-orbit mission. Mission Control (aka me) decided that this would rule out building a space station in polar orbit, because the increased dV requirements would mean that shuttles couldn't reach it.

A nice pic of the Orbiter as it passes over Kerbin's northern polar ice cap. It's a shame we never got to see this in real life...

Time to get down to business! Another objective of this mission was to test a robotic arm - now improved with Breaking Ground DLC robotics. This was not entirely successful.

The robotic arm's various servos and hinges are bound to axis groups, which means that I can use the attitude control keys to move them without rotating the orbiter itself. The problem here was that the satellite was mounted too far back in the payload bay for the Jr docking port on the arm to grab. I did learn a great deal about the nuances of operating a remote manipulator system, but the satellite ended up drifting out of the bay instead of being deployed in a controlled manner by the arm.

With that, it was time to go home. STS-7 was planned to land at the Dessert Airfield, but the shuttle's orbit wasn't lined up with the longitude of the base, so the crew had to wait about a day in orbit before they did their de-orbit burn and reentry.

The deorbit burn was quite large - almost 200 m/s - but the OMS still had enough fuel to do it. Entry interface was over the South Pole.

Re-entry was...interesting. As the orbiter passed over the edge of the desert, it began a slow and inexplicable pitch-up from its nominal angle. I wasn't doing anything, and the SAS wasn't doing anything; in fact, the SAS was trying its best to keep the orbiter locked on course. I even activated RCS to stop it, but the orbiter ended up in an uncontrolled tumble anyway.

By the time I had stopped the orbiter from spinning every which way, it was pitched almost straight down. I was worried that the loss of control had sent us off course, or we were going to undershoot the landing site, but luckily Dessert was still relatively close, and we had enough energy to reach it.

Despite the mishap during reentry, I was still able to land successfully, with no damage. At first I thought we were going to run out of runway, but the drogue chute and wheel brakes brought us to a stop in time.

Thanks for reading. These mission reports may be a bit sparse for a while, because I'm focusing most of my KSP time on the Kerbin Exploration Project. But I will try to keep this thread as close to the first page as I can