Duna Outpost Mission Architecture Challenge

[Death Engineering]

21 hours ago, hoioh said:

Don't lose any Kerbals now, the penalty for that is severe!

Hehe indeed! Worst case scenario is evac to orbit where there are plenty of supplies.  

 

11 hours ago, Yoochem said:

So you have several outpost scattered around the planet? Or just some supplies?

There are two of these types of outposts roughly 180 degrees apart on the equator. Not attempting to land anywhere but low altitude equator sites.

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by Death Engineering

[jinnantonix]

Here is my Duna Mission 2 video.  It doesn't include shots of Jeb and Bill returning to Kerbin, I will put it in the part 3 video as a prologue.  28 Kerbals on Duna!

So far the mission is following to my cunning DOMA plan.  The only part  of Mission 2 where I had a challenge was when I found I had underestimated the amount of fuel needed to get a 155 ton craft from LKO to Minmus orbit.  I ended up needing to send my NERVA tug on a few trips from Kerbin to Minmus and back between the DOMA 6 and DOMA 7 launches.  For brevity, this was only shown as a single round trip in the video.  I may need to adjust the final two missions to take this into account, I am thinking of lifting each payload with the NERVA tug individually to Minmus, and assembling in orbit there.  I also think I do not have the dV for the Minmus - Duna Transit 3, - maybe need to add some fuel tanks, and reduce the number of Kerbals?

[somepersondunno]

I'm gonna wait a bit for my mods to update to 1.6 because the better performance is worth the time.

 

Any other recommendations?

 

I have on 1.5:

-Stockalike Station Parts

-Stage Recovery 

-Mechjeb

-KER

-TAC

[sturmhauke]

I'm still running 1.4.5 over here. I got burned on mod incompatibility with the upgrade to 1.4.1, and that was before I got heavy into part mods.

[Death Engineering]

5 minutes ago, somepersondunno said:

Any other recommendations?

Presumably you're using Kerbal Alarm Clock also. I forget it isn't stock until update day and I wonder how it isn't stock. Kerbal Flight Data is good too, if it still works. I don't think 1.6.0 has HUD data in flight screen..? I'm not an early adopter.

Although I might have a look at this update just to see what all the deltaV info hubbub is all about. 

[somepersondunno]

1 minute ago, Death Engineering said:

Presumably you're using Kerbal Alarm Clock also. I forget it isn't stock until update day and I wonder how it isn't stock. Kerbal Flight Data is good too, if it still works. I don't think 1.6.0 has HUD data in flight screen..? I'm not an early adopter.

Although I might have a look at this update just to see what all the deltaV info hubbub is all about. 

I don't know if KAC has been updated from 1.4ish yet, but I'll check out Flight Data. What do you use for your bases?

[Death Engineering]

2 minutes ago, somepersondunno said:

What do you use for your bases?

Mine are also Stockalike Station Parts Redux. They interface nicely with TAC.

 

[somepersondunno]

Just now, Death Engineering said:

Mine are also Stockalike Station Parts Redux. They interface nicely with TAC.

 

Oh, didn't recognize it. Are those the 2.5 cupola or the larger ones?

[Death Engineering]

57 minutes ago, somepersondunno said:

larger ones?

The larger 3.7m ones. Most outposts are comprised of PXL-9 Astrogation Module (4 crew) on top of a PXL-2 Shelter (6 crew). So about 13t for 5 crew which isn't great but it is mobile and self-contained landing system. The Shelter module has good options for LS extension (filters, Sabatier, water splitter) adding versatility but might work better on Laythe!

edit:

Correction on the Resource Converters on the the Stockalike Station Parts: The converters come from SETI Greenhouse

Edited December 21, 2018 by Death Engineering

[hoioh]

Cool though this challenge may be I'm going to put this way on the back burner because I got a lot of stuff to learn in a short time regarding buying a plot of land and building my own house on it (which may well be my project for the entirety of 2019 and takes precedent over fun stuff). Wanted to build my own for ages and my girl is in, found a potential plot, so the hustle has officialy begun. Mortgage(s), laws and regulations, local authorities, here I come!

[dire]

27 minutes ago, hoioh said:

Cool though this challenge may be I'm going to put this way on the back burner because I got a lot of stuff to learn in a short time regarding buying a plot of land and building my own house on it (which may well be my project for the entirety of 2019 and takes precedent over fun stuff). Wanted to build my own for ages and my girl is in, found a potential plot, so the hustle has officialy begun. Mortgage(s), laws and regulations, local authorities, here I come!

Good luck! My advice is see what the plot looks like after a rain. If it turns into a swamp you will have problems.

[sturmhauke]

1 hour ago, hoioh said:

Cool though this challenge may be I'm going to put this way on the back burner because I got a lot of stuff to learn in a short time regarding buying a plot of land and building my own house on it (which may well be my project for the entirety of 2019 and takes precedent over fun stuff). Wanted to build my own for ages and my girl is in, found a potential plot, so the hustle has officialy begun. Mortgage(s), laws and regulations, local authorities, here I come!

Are you going to build a launch pad too?

[dire]

[Yoochem]

12 minutes ago, dire said:

Wow! Is that an interplanetary skyscraper?

@hoioh good luck bro, that sounds like an amazing architecture challenge as well! 

[dire]

21 minutes ago, Yoochem said:

Wow! Is that an interplanetary skyscraper?

@hoioh good luck bro, that sounds like an amazing architecture challenge as well! 

It's snack tankage for 39 kerbals, plus hab space for about 62-ish (31 long-term) Once I stick NPM 6 on the end it should roughly balance out, I hope. And then it's all going to Duna. Assuming I can figure out how to get it off Minmus when it's fully loaded; I landed it empty on a pair of sparks at 1.07 TWR. Notice the main engines are on top, pointing down >.>

So more like an interplanetary tenement.

There will be more details about the ship over in my mission report, and there's some better pictures there where you can see more specifically how it's put together: 

 

 

Edited December 23, 2018 by dire

[dire]

Mis-post.

Edited December 23, 2018 by dire

[hoioh]

9 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

Are you going to build a launch pad too?

Highly unlikely the girlfriend would allow me to do that 

2 hours ago, Yoochem said:

good luck bro, that sounds like an amazing architecture challenge as well

Thanks! And yeah, been at it for a while already, so the ideas are coming quickly

9 hours ago, dire said:

Good luck! My advice is see what the plot looks like after a rain. If it turns into a swamp you will have problems.

That is good advice, but this being Holland, it'll be a swamp no matter where it's located 

[Death Engineering]

On 12/20/2018 at 7:16 AM, jinnantonix said:

Here is my Duna Mission 2 video. 

That was quite a landing! Bonus points for style. 

 

On 12/22/2018 at 6:46 PM, hoioh said:

Mortgage(s), laws and regulations, local authorities, here I come!

Hope it all comes together for you and it's a smooth move!

 

On 12/23/2018 at 2:47 AM, dire said:

So more like an interplanetary tenement.

Sure, nice but parking it could be tricky I bet   

 

I'm relieved to say that after 2400km of surface  exploration, we're ready to focus on completing this mission. In game date is Year 8 Day 240 with only two launches left. Life support supplies are holding out nicely giving the green light to continue expanding the surface team. Shortly there will be over 50 crew on the surface with the final launches delivering supplies and Ike mining systems. 

Crew transport back home will take quite a few trips with the base model Space Bus, so the final launch will include an upgrade to accommodate 23 crew for deep space missions (patch kit not included). 

Edited December 25, 2018 by Death Engineering

[Alchemist]

After a ton of reconsiderations (on how to pack everything) I think this is the final list of launches for the third window

Interplanetary shuttle (+DSS)

Spacebus (+2 rescue pods)

Miner (+2 rescue pods)

 

Yeah, in the end I ended up making a dedicated miner for supply runs on Duna, since being fully dependent on the spacebus for fuel is not what I'd call a good contingency setup. Even with 4 rescue pods capable (if kept fully fueled in polar orbit) of getting 5 crew each from any location (and let's be honest, the spacebus getting stranded with up to 10 crew in some random location is the most likely failure scenario) to equatorial orbit (but then they are dead weight mass unless you bring them fuel for plane change and then refuel them once again). Now with all this hardware the contingency plans and reusable crew return infrastructure will be finally operational (I'm planning on launching second interplanetary shuttle on window 4, which would ensure swapping 10 crew each transfer window with one shuttle going to Duna and the other returning back to Kerbin)

And since I'm not expanding the base on the third window (and not swapping the crew right away either), I'm considering taking DSS crew (4 or 5). Maybe they will also explore Ike. The station has its own greenhouse, but that still leaves the question of how often it would need to get supplies from the surface to keep it working

 

... Anyway, I still have 2 ships on the way to Duna on the second window, but I had to get this solved since one of the launches is before their arrival

[sturmhauke]

This is one of those things that can only possibly work with sekrut kerbal magick. 

[Death Engineering]

Mission Complete!

It is Year 10 Day 398 and the Ike mining operation is operational. This completes the main challenge missions and having refueled the Deep Space Taxi, crews can now be freely returned to Kerbin. 

The "base model" DST can bring five crew home on the first run, but an upgrade awaits on the Kerbin Space Station to bring the DST crew capacity up to 14. In the end, there were a total of 56 kerbals who landed on Duna with the peak population being 54 kerbals.

Greenhouse upgrade

Surface samples were recovered from eight of Duna's biomes during the science rover traversal. During the drive of almost 2500km, flags were planted on the highest and lowest points on Duna as well as the North pole and the 'face' anomaly. Plans were cancelled to also visit the South pole and other anomalies because.. 2500km! 

Score

• Mission Value: 62464
• Achievements: 26 (details in spoiler) 
  • Success rating #2: "The outpost succeeded...extremely well. You can now retire in elegant estates"
• Efficiency: 62464 / 640 = 97.6
  • NPM 40t * 16 Launches = 64

Some final pics.

Mission Architecture for continuing the Duna outpost

Crews will require one supply pod drop for each 10 crew on each Duna inbound window. A SupPod has a mass of approximately 10t meaning that current Duna outpost crews (54) will require about 60t of supplies on each window. Now that Ike mining is in place and all space tugs can return to Kerbin for refit and refuel, all SLV launches can be purely Duna-bound payload. There are comfortably four SLV launches per window of 40t (total 160t per window), that leaves 100t per launch window for base expansion or upgrades. 

Alternately, if no outpost expansion is planned only two SLV launches per Duna window would keep current crews safely stocked.

Spoiler

Scored

Not scored

Crew safety (add all that apply):

• Interplanetary expertise: All crewed interplanetary missions have at least two crew on board. (+1)
• Backup plan: Duna outpost has a backup ascent system to return all kerbals to Duna orbit separate from the primary Duna ascent module. (+2)
• Emergency Evac: if the 'Backup plan' ascent system is utilized with any kerbal on board. (+3) 

Mission robustness (add all that apply):

• Duna Space Station: Place a space station in orbit around Duna. The space station must have room for minimum of 3 kerbals (Habitation rule applies). (+1)
• Duna space bus: Deliver a fully reusable shuttle service to Duna that can ferry at least four crew between Duna's surface and Ike's surface (refueling permitted). (+2) *Provided missions do not exceed 10 days, 'Habitation space' rule does not apply. 
• Deep space transit: Implement a fully reusable crew transfer vehicle that can complete a Kerbin <-> Duna round trip without refueling (either direction). Must be capable of carrying a minimum of 4 crew. (+3)

Science value (add all that apply):

• Deep space laboratory: Duna outpost must include at least one Science Lab module. If 'Duna Space Station' is scored, it must also include a Science Lab module. (+1)
• Early mission prestige: Safely return at least two kerbals to Kerbin's surface from a Duna mission before Year 5 Day 1. At least one of the crew members must have walked on either Ike or Duna and return a surface sample with them. (+2)
• Biome diversity: Return surface samples from at least five of Duna's biomes. (+3) *This can be done all at once or separate. If scored, "Early Mission Prestige" sample does not counts toward the five.

Advanced mission objectives (add all that apply):

• Kerbin space station: Using SLV launch(es), place a space station in orbit around Kerbin. The station must support at least 4 kerbals and may be used as a staging platform for crew to and from Duna, although not required. (+1)
• Positive uplink: Place a minimum of three relay satellites in orbit around Duna and one around Ike. One of the Duna satellites must be in polar orbit. This also requires Advanced game setting 'Require Signal for Control' ON. (+2)
• Advanced deep space transit: If 'Deep space transit' is scored, it must support a minimum of 5 kerbals and refuel only in Duna SOI (travels from Duna -> Kerbin -> Duna without refueling) (+3)

Surface Mobility (add all that apply):

• At least 50% of the Duna crew have access to a seat in a Basic Rover during their outpost surface mission. (+1)
• Every crew member has access to a Pressurized Rover seat. (+2)
• The outpost is land-mobile/Pressurized Rover (Habitation rule applies). (+3)
  • Most of the modules are wheeled, but not all. Since the 'greenhouse' modules do not have wheels, the outpost is not completely land-mobile.

 Some thoughts on this challenge..

• This was a monumental effort for me and I really short-cutted it. Most of the launches were very similar payloads being combinations of habitat and surface supply modules. Some of the other efforts I've seen so far on this thread are humbling in their scope and complexity.
• The delta-v for Duna orbital insertion and ban of using aerobraking for nuclear engines had me rethinking the method for getting payload into Duna. In this playthrough, I used a multi-purpose nuclear tug to deliver nearly all payload to Duna. The thought was that the tugs would refuel then come back to Kerbin for more cargo then deliver more cargo back to Duna, but they would need to refuel first again at Kerbin. Initially, there was not enough extra fuel to get all the tugs back to Kerbin but now that Ike mining is running they could feasibly all could get back now.  
  
  But I asked myself why send the whole tug out to Duna in the first place? I think a better solution would be to use a nuclear "payload chucker" to toss payloads towards Duna then about-face and quickly return to Kerbin orbit for refit and more cargo. In this configuration, the payload could have a relatively low mass aerobraking/circularization package which would be jettisoned before landing. I estimate I could have increased my mission value by at least 30% by doing this.
• In-situ life support generation is something I should have focused on more (and earlier..). While my simple method of dropping supply pods for the outpost modules was effective and reasonably mass-inexpensive, it was not a clean solution. There was already a collection of depleted supply pods accumulating on the surface and it wouldn't take long before a 'garbage dump' would be needed. (That was a sobering thought.)
• Bugs? Glitches? Jimmy legs? With multiple base modules and supply pods within physics range, occasionally when changing between vehicles an entire module would just vanish *poof*. Yes, I saved often and didn't permanently lose anything but what a hassle to have to check that nothing was lost pretty much after every time dealing with Duna surface modules.
• Fairings are unrealistic-bordering-on-silly. More a KSP thing than a challenge thing, but really obvious when KSP happily complies with putting just about anything under a payload fairing.
• The "Success ratings" are derived from the classing Commodore 64 game M.U.L.E., which after completing this challenge will be a welcome break..

Good luck to all still playing through their DOMA challenge and to any who care to join the fun.  

 

Krazy Kerbal Fairing

[sturmhauke]

Congrats! I do plan on entering this challenge eventually, but the truth is I'm a little intimidated.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Congratulations on completing the challenge, especially on keeping the momentum up. I hope to sometime be able to return to my partially completed architecture and finish it, but I'll probably end up just spending all my time getting a new mod install working. 

1 hour ago, Death Engineering said:

But I asked myself why send the whole tug out to Duna in the first place? I think a better solution would be to use a nuclear "payload chucker" to toss payloads towards Duna then about-face and quickly return to Kerbin orbit for refit and more cargo.

How would you refuel that though? I was planning a capture a B-class asteroid and use that for LKO refueling (only requires a surprisingly small vessel), but I feel like this would increase total prop mass required. OTOH, the return to Kerbin would be without payload and so require much less fuel. On another hand, if you're already on a escape trajectory, maybe you should just refuel at in Minmus orbit, but that requires deciding whether miners and refineries should be integrated, which probably depends on how big the payload chucker is, and whether you're using an engineer on board the miner, which requires life support...

This challenge keeps sucking me back in.

[jinnantonix]

Well done @Death Engineeringon completing the challenge.  I am impressed by how much effort you put into the science collection on the Duna surface, there would have been many game hours in that.  I will be just hopping around in the Duna Space Bus to the nearest 5 biomes.

Quote

But I asked myself why send the whole tug out to Duna in the first place? I think a better solution would be to use a nuclear "payload chucker" to toss payloads towards Duna then about-face and quickly return to Kerbin orbit for refit and more cargo.

I have found that having two autonomous NERVA tugs with integrated ISRU capability is working fine, swapping on each transiit window, no requirement for any aerobraking or tossing payloads at Duna.  The only challenge is in ensuring that I have enough fuel tanks to move 155 tons of payload with each transit.  The key is in transiting fully fuelled from Minmus and refueling again at Ike.  After dropping the payload of Kerbals and resources in Duna low orbit, the tugs seem to always have enough fuel remaining to return on the next transit window to Kerbin/Minmus without a need to refuel at Ike, although that option is always available.

Quote

In-situ life support generation is something I should have focused on more (and earlier..). While my simple method of dropping supply pods for the outpost modules was effective and reasonably mass-inexpensive, it was not a clean solution. There was already a collection of depleted supply pods accumulating on the surface and it wouldn't take long before a 'garbage dump' would be needed. (That was a sobering thought.)

I got very confused about how to best implement TAC-LS components most efficiently, and just gave up and designed the mission with just lots of containers of food, water and oxygen.  No, not even a greenhouse or water filter.  This has resulted in a lot of empty containers attached to the outpost habitation modules, which looks very ugly.  In retrospect, I wish I had spent more time on a more space/mass efficient life support system.  At this stage I do not propose to leave the outpost fully Kerballed, and will have everything in place for nearly fully abandoning the base post year 10, with perhaps just a few Kerbals remaining to process the science in the labs.

I am currently prepping the third transit to Duna with 36 Kerbals aboard.  The third video will be ready in a few days.  I expect mission complete in about 3 weeks from now, depending on how much leisure time I get.

[hoioh]

5 hours ago, Death Engineering said:

-- snip --

 Score

• Mission Value: 62464
• Achievements: 26 (details in spoiler) 
  • Success rating #2: "The outpost succeeded...extremely well. You can now retire in elegant estates"
• Efficiency: 62464 / 640 = 97.6
  • NPM 40t * 16 Launches = 640

Congratulations Death Engineering!

I will go sit down at my PC tonight and prepare a shiny badge with these values for your proud enjoyment!

Well done