Conquering Whirligig (Chapter 20 - Interplanetary Ballooning)

[Ultimate Steve]

Conquering Whirligig

Escape from Mesbin

 

Two centuries ago, explorers from the far off planet Kerbin left their home to colonize other star systems. Preliminary transit data suggested the third planet of Kaywell's star had an oxygen atmosphere and water. It did not.

Unable to correct their course due to piloting error, the U.S.C. Manifest Destiny crashed into the massive, 70 Kerbin Mass planet Mesbin. Luckily, Mesbin spins. Once every hour and twenty minutes it spins, and the centripetal effect pushes the equator outwards and negates some of the gravity. The 5 gees of gravity at the poles is reduced to a tad over 1 gee at the equator.

The payload of the ship survived, but the engines and fuel tanks were reduced to a lot of metal rubble along the surface. Unable to find somewhere else to go, they buried themselves underground and set up a stable ecosystem and environment down there. Eventually the colony was sufficiently industrialized to start looking up again.

Welcome to Mesbin. (It plays a bit like a more difficult Tylo Space Program, getting to and from orbit)

-@GregroxMun, creator of the Whirligig mod

 

Welcome. I should really stop starting stuff left and right... Don't expect this to go really far, it's just what I'm interested in now, and I'd like to share it with you! There will be minimal story, and quite possibly no character development, or dialogue even. For this one, I'm going to try my hardest to stick to "Mission report" instead of "Giant story with a beautifully complicated and lengthy plot" as to not interfere with anything else.

As far as mods go, obviously I have GregroxMun's Whirligig system installed, as well as many other visual and informational mods, KAS/KIS, but no parts mods. If anyone wants to suggest parts mods, then go ahead! Enjoy!

 

One of the most interesting things about this playthrough, I think, is the difficulty of returning things to Mesbin, meaning anything launched (including Kerbals) is probably up there for good!

 

Chapter 1 - Breaking Free

Spoiler

Being underground sucked.

Sure, there were some actual excavated areas, but those were for the leaders and a few lucky others. The rest of the Kerbals lived in lava tubes, hastily pressurized, always leaking and sometimes caving in.

The food was terrible. Due to the lack of an atmosphere on Mesbin, and the distance to the sun, the Kerbals had to grow their food in the lava tubes, with sun-mimicking light bulbs powered mostly geothermally. These light bulbs were the ones that had survived the crash, and therefore were over 200 years old.

There were 500 Kerbals on Mesbin. Due to Kerbin's impending doom, several hundred colony ships had been sent out to various star systems, taking hundreds of years to get there. The Manifest Destiny was one of the first to reach its destination. Unfortunately it crashed. What little supplies the Kerbals had were mostly from the wreckage of the ship. They were able to scavenge 5 years worth of supplies.

Those 5 years were spent trying to set up a sustainable system, food, water, and air, and they succeeded, barely. In their off time, Kerbals tried to make metals from the surrounding resources.

There were several things the Kerbals needed to figure out if they were going to survive. They needed a way of extracting and processing metal. They needed the excess farming capacity for fabrics, and animals. Only a few animals were still alive, they had been kept to a minimal number for the past 5 years. They also needed to figure out how to manufacture electronics, their supply from the crashed ship was dwindling. The supply chain, at this point, was unable to make spacesuits, which meant that most Kerbals were helpless in the event of a total colony depressurization. There were less than 200 usable suits remaining.

In time, they figured that all out, but barely. And being underground sucked. Scratch that, being on Mesbin sucked.

So it was decided to search for more habitable worlds in the system, they were unfound, as nobody had been to the surface in forever, and nobody had thought to accurately scan the system.

 

To quote the captain from WALL-E, "I don't want to survive. I want to live!"

 

So, let's go to space!

A space center was built resembling the old one, for nostalgia reasons. The first launch, Savior 1, was piloted by Jeb, and was a short hop to gather science, weighed down by extra boosters as to not exceed a dozen or so meters. He gathered enough science to unlock the stayputnik, which is lower in the tech tree in this version.

Some things about Mesbin - it has 5g gravity at the poles, but only a bit above 1g at the equator because of rotation. Orbital velocity of Mesbin is a whopping 8000 meters per second, but due to the rotation you already have 4500m/s so you only need 3.5 plus gravity losses (a lot) to get into orbit. According to the release thread 4500 is a good number to aim for. Fun fact, Mesbin has a higher low orbit velocity than Earth! Also the equator is at about 1500km above "sea" level, and space is considered space at 1535km. And fully a vacuum.

It was for this reason we unlocked the stayputnik. Because it's really hard to return a Kerbal from orbit. We may try someday, but that requires a vehicle with 9-ish kilometers per second of high TWR Delta-V. We're not going to send Kerbals on one way journeys until we find a world to send them to.

Next up was Savior 2, which tried to find out where space was, and was pretty overkill. Also, I don't have SAS. It will become annoying.

Space found, it was time to get to orbit. For this, Savior 3 was launched, basically Savior 2 but with a sepratron upper stage.

Due to the lack of reaction wheels, it fired downwards, destroying the probe. A staging mishap destroyed Savior 4. But on Savior 5, everything went right...

At this point, we noticed - "Hey! Mesbin has moons! We should throw stuff at them!" And thus, more precious metal and precious electronic circuits were assembled to build the Hopper 1. Because we didn't actually have enough science to get the reaction wheels necessary to get to the moons yet, and we didn't want to send a Kerbal into orbit.

Valentina was briefly sent into space to get some science, and succeeded in a mostly vertical landing. Any landing you can walk away from...

Munar 1 was built, this time with a reaction wheel and an upgraded VAB. Its goal was to investigate what had been dubbed Statmun, as it was (I think) in a stationary orbit and was static. Unfortunately it failed due to the fact that the circularization burn would have taken place out of comms range.

Munar 2 was built, with much larger tanks and more boosters.

This also attempted to encounter Statmun. Unfortunately it failed for some reason or another, maybe the same issue. So a copy was built, Munar 3.

This was the closest it got. Without AN/DN markings, patched conics, or SAS, this is as close as we were able to get, and even then fuel was low.

We needed science to do anything else, really, and that was short to come by. Actually, I read that the mod doesn't have biomes except for a few, so science will likely be scarce the whole time.

A copy was sent to the largest moon in the sky as visible from Mesbin. The probe was Munar 4, and the moon Graymun because it was the Gray Mun and resembled Kerbin's Mun. Science was barely returned. The probe was out of comms range at this point, so we had to cross our fingers that our orbit would take us within the range of a groundstation, which somehow exist despite the colony being tiny.

Unfortunately it crashed into the Mun, being out of comms range, so I couldn't save it. Not that it had the fuel... The Delta-V requirements for this system are pretty large.

Munar 5 used the most advanced technology available at the time. Seven Trashcans were used for the initial boost so that the rocket could tip over (no atmosphere to clear, just mountains!) and 7 thumpers were the second stage. The third stage was an LV-T45 with several fuel tanks.

The fourth stage was a single LV-T45 with three FL-T200 tanks and the probe itself. The decision was made to attempt an encounter with the third moon of Mesbin, which was far away and required almost 3km/s to reach from a low Mesbin orbit.

And despite having a blind transfer, with no possibility of course corrections, the probe encountered the body and recorded its data. But it was flung onto a trajectory on which it would not be able to communicate with home. So we upgraded the tracking station and got the data.

A Kerbin-like world with an atmosphere and oceans. They didn't know what the atmosphere was made of, or what the ocean was made of, but it was hope. More probes would have to be sent to evaluate this body - dubbed Kerbmun - for future Kerbal colonization.

The science from Munar 5 was enough to unlock a larger antenna and the LV-909 engine.

The Munar 9 required the biggest launch vehicle designed by the space program (which needed a name, you can suggest in a reply if you like). The first stage was 7 thumpers with 2 swivels for control authority. The second stage was 5 LV-T30 engines, and the fourth stage was four LV-909s.

The final stage was one LV-909 with all of the science experiments. Hibernation was used extensively as solar panels had not been unlocked yet.

The Munar 6 actually had more than enough fuel left to enter orbit. The limiter was electricity - we were unable to get goo from low space because of the remaining power levels. So, in one more experiment, Munar-6 was de-orbited onto Kerbmun to learn about its atmosphere.

And that concludes the first step of getting off of Mesbin!

 

 

 

 

Edited December 28, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[RealKerbal3x]

Woot! Yet another cool series from @Ultimate Steve! I will follow this.

(by the way, the images took nigh on five minutes to load. Imagine what it’ll be like when this is the length of Intrepid )

[Kerbalstar]

Very cool @Ultimate Steve! I will be following! Also, as for a name for the launcher maybe Gravity, or Hydrogen.

[Whirligig Girl]

You know it's funny, you got a fair bit of the actual W.I.P lore correct. (Including the bit shamelessly plagiarized from the WW OP )

 

EDIT: Hey do you want to play with a wip prerelease of the next version of the mod?

Edited October 5, 2018 by GregroxMun

[Ultimate Steve]

2 hours ago, GregroxMun said:

You know it's funny, you got a fair bit of the actual W.I.P lore correct. (Including the bit shamelessly plagiarized from the WW OP )

  

EDIT: Hey do you want to play with a wip prerelease of the next version of the mod?

I probably should have asked first, but I did try to make it evident that that section is yours. 

The loose storyline was extrapolated pretty much entirely from those 4 paragraphs, so I didn't expect it to be fully correct, nor did I need it to be.

As far as the prerelease goes, would it break active flight? And what all has been added? EDIT: How stable is it?

Loving the mod so far, although I've only done one more mission than what I've reported above!

Another edit: Once I've done more I can help write science report texts if you want help with that.

 

Edited October 5, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[roboslacker]

Is Timberwind still on?

[Ultimate Steve]

3 hours ago, roboslacker said:

Is Timberwind still on?

Yes. I tend to bounce between things fairly quickly. Timberwind's playstyle is different from Whirligig's playstyle, is different from Intrepid's playstyle, is different from Voyage's playstyle. I'll work on whatever I feel like working on, generally.

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 2 - No Return

Spoiler

So! Kerbmun has oceans and an atmosphere. Let's see what it's like!

This is Dipper 1, launching on this launch vehicle which does not have a name as it is a cluster of low tier parts. Its mission was to soft land on Kerbmun and measure atmospheric pressure and temperature.

The launch went off without a hitch. One problem was discovered during atmospheric entry, and that was that the antennas like to snap off, but we brought two, so we're fine!

From here, Mesbin's oblateness can be properly observed. Also we unlocked the OKTO, which has basic SAS capabilities.

We unlocked a bunch of stuff with this science, so we built a near identical probe with landing legs and sent it to Graymun, managing to grab two relevant contracts.

This was Dipper 2, which had excess fuel to land. A note about the Mesbin system, it's about 4.5km/s to low orbit, and 3km/s to transfer to Kerbmun. It's 1.5-ish to transfer to Graymun and another 1 to capture, approximately. This system does not like Delta-V.

The landing was successful, although the legs were a tad short. Much more was learned from this probe. It had enough fuel left over, so it was put into an orbit of Graymun in order to act as a relay. A planetwide relay system is being considered.

Dipper 3 was an exact copy of Dipper 2, but this time we sent it to Statmun.

Which is bumpy and possibly radioactive, according to the description.

I am most likely the first person ever to go to Statmun's north pole.

The final probe in the series, Dipper 4, was IIRC identical to Dipper 1, maybe with a few minor changes.

Its mission was to fly by Derbin, which was the world that shared a barycenter with Mesbin. Antenna power was at its lowest about 50% due to the tracking station being level 2. It was determined that Mesbin is not a nice place. It is still unknown what the atmosphere is made of, but it's probably not good.

It had just enough fuel to do a really fast flyby of its moon, which was named Derminmus for its minmus-like patches. After that, the periapsis was lowered into Derbin's atmosphere in an attempt to land.

Only the heat shield and 2 parachutes survived entry, neither survived the impact. This atmosphere is pretty harsh. The flames started immediately, there wasn't even time to transmit  most of the atmospheric data.

We will have to do more with probes to investigate the five worlds we explored today. A plane is being considered for Kerbmun to test if the atmosphere contains oxygen. BTW Kerbmun h as 0.6ATM at sea level, so it should be livable, if the temperature is decent (I forgot the temperature reading) and if the atmosphere is oxygen. Good news for the evacuation.

The next choice was a very controversial choice. The Kerbals needed to figure out of they could sustain life in space with the limited supply chain available. They had extensively tested this technology on the ground, but the only way to make sure it worked was to test it in orbit.

Using new technology, a space station was launched into a 1800km orbit of Mesbin (it sounds high but the surface is at around 1500km already). It was called "Treehouse station."

I'm never going to get used to designing lifters without nose cones, fairings, and fins...

The first stage was a skipper with the equivalent of one orange tank (I'm still going to call it that even though it's not always orange any more) coupled with two large SRBs. The second stage was a poodle, and the station had four sparks for maneuvering.

After it was shown that everything was in working order... The controversial bit began. A crew of two had to be sent to the station. Some people opposed it, some people volunteered just to get off of Mesbin. The two candidates required were a pilot and an engineer, who were randomly selected from the list of volunteers.

The controversial part is that there was no provision for a return trip. They would be stuck up there for good until we either moved them to a habitable planet or developed the technology and had reason for a return lander. So these two were not going to see any other Kerbals for quite some time.

This was the Fearless 1, caryring Johnbo and Maddrin, who both had a high courage stat and were randomly selected. The rocket was angled for greater efficiency upon liftoff, although the gravity bent it a little bit. They said extensive goodbyes, stocked up on luxury snack items, and boarded the rocket.

And then they arrived at their new home, home for who knows how long... They will have many experiments to perform, especially with the newly developed Kerbal Attachment System. They have the supplies to last a year ish (I won't be enforcing this for the sake of progression) and will need a resupply mission at some point. There are a few plans floating around to launch a refueler or even a dedicated transfer spaceship so they can explore Statmun or Graymun while they are up there.

But for now, they're there to stay.

 

And that concludes the second step of getting off of Mesbin!

 

I think that's the first time I've sent a Kerbal into orbit with no way of returning on purpose. I know it's part of the goal, to evacuate Mesbin, but at the same time I can't help but feel a tad bit guilty.

 

Edited October 5, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[Kerbalstar]

Wow, looks great @Ultimate Steve! May I add that you forgot to update the title?

And: 

4 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

...who both had a high courage stat...

And presumably a high stupidity stat too.

[Kerbalstar]

I see @Ultimate Steve has changed the title! Thank you! Also, I’m going to try playing Whirlwig world!

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 3 - Sending People Places

Spoiler

So, continuing with the theme of Kerbmun, the next thing to do should be to find out if it has an oxygen atmosphere. The only way we have to do that right now is using jets.

This is the Liberation 1 Lifter, our most powerful yet, and pretty much all of it is necessary to get its payload off to where it's going - 4.5km/s to orbit, 3.3km/s for the transfer, 1.3km/s for the capture, and as much as possible for the de-orbit.

A thing about EngineLight... It tends to illuminate the planet below. Anyway, due to lack of a more powerful engine, a skipper and 4 swivels power each Liberation core. Two SRBs are also there for added oomph. Asparagus staging is used here.

The poodle stage is enough to get it to orbit and begin the transfer.

The three LV-909 cores are needed to complete the transfer. The middle one has some fuel left.

The vehicle entered orbit with some margin, which is good news. So we picked a landing site, de-orbited, and re-orbited the lower stage which was designed to function as a relay, as the plane only had a wimpy antenna.

Unfortunately, we drifted out of communication range, so the only controls we could really use were stage, SAS, Z, and X. Re-entry happened quickly and at least one intake exploded along with the science equipment.

And Kerbmun Plane 1 crashed into Kerbmun.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to test the jets, so the oxygen levels are still inconclusive.

Luckily, the other half of the mission was successful. The relay entered a perfect 500km orbit.

The next mission was almost identical, save for a reaction wheel, doubling SRBs, and a few other improvements.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, if Kerbmun had oxygen in its atmosphere, it was not enough to run the basic jet engines. The jets did not ignite at all. Sad face.

This posed a big problem for the space program. They had been hyping Kerbmun a Kerbalkind's next home, and were planning on sending the two Kerbals in low orbit to Kerbmun after it was viable. There was still hope... Maybe there was enough to run a larger jet engine with many intakes? Probably not, though. A spectrometer will have to be sent to further analyze the atmosphere... If it has even a hint of oxygen, it's still a better place than Mesbin, at the very least we can extract oxygen from the air.

Oxygen can also be extracted from the rocks on Mesbin, which is why nobody has suffocated, but unfortunately it is a very energy intensive process. (insert explanation for why oxidizer is still cheap here)

Next up, also on a Liberation 1, was an expansion for treehouse station, a very important one.

It doubled actual living space, and provided a lander designed for Statmun and Greymun. The crew's first task? Use the massive amount of fuel left in the stage 2 tank and go to Statmun.

Landing was straightforward. But Texture Replacer Replaced doesn't like me right now so the visors are hot pink. (insert plausible explanation)

One of the crewmembers even visited the older Munar probe, which still had a lot of fuel left. However, as there was no scientist in orbit, they couldn't get the science from the probe.

He also went to the north pole, as it was not 300 meters away from the probe.

By transferring some fuel around, it was found that they could keep the bottom stage attached and still have enough fuel to return, a big plus, as they would need this fuel margin to explore Graymun.

And then they were back at their home away from home, back to fixing various subsystems and paving the way for the evacuation.

At this point we had a surface sample worth about 60 science points sitting up there, pointless to transmit... So a test was conducted.

Launching on a Liberation variant, with only one core and 2 SRBs, was the Sample Return Capsule 1. Returning things to Mesbin was thought to be extremely impractical, but if the stuff being returned was extremely light, then maybe there was a chance.

The surface sample was transferred, and the descent began.

The impact was a bit rough, but the sample survived! Someone just had to drive halfway across the planet to get it...

Next up, a mission to Graymun. It was decided that since sample return technology had been tested, that science experiments and a scientist to work them must be sent.

Fearless 2 launched, piloted by Pilot Crisfrey, and Scienced by Scientist Shelemy. It reached Treehouse Station successfully. There were now 496 Kerbals remaining on the planet Mesbin.

Next, on another Liberation variant, was the Graymun Science Lander, with a seat for 1.

Upon reaching Treehouse station, many things were juggled.

Using the fuel from the transfer stage to replenish an older transfer stage, the mission began.

Transfer to Graymun is surprisingly expensive, 1.5km/s just to get into a transfer orbit.

The lander was actually a tad overbuilt, though.

Shelemy hopped around for a bit. Science was done. But unfortunately I forgot a picture of him on the surface.

Now, take a look at this... Fuel margin was extremely tight. I got down into monopropellant to complete the final docking. This mission was almost a failure!

Now, to return the samples!

And this time, all of the samples were returned safely, and the lander intact with quite a fuel margin left over... Could this be the beginnings of a crew descent vehicle?

Next up, with all that new technology we unlocked, it was decided to attempt a manned mission to Kerbmun. However, due to the insane Delta-V requirements of getting there, many different launches had to be used. This was the prototype ascent vehicle, launching on a Liberation 2 lifter.

The five cores were asparagus.

The second stage was an "orange" tank and a poodle.

The third stage was a half-jumbo and a poodle... Aerobraking needed to be used to get into a low orbit even though we used the largest lifter available.

It went in for a landing.

And did so successfully!

However I built it for a 2.5km/s ascent, and Kerbmun looks like a 3-3.5km/s ascent... And it has no ladders... So back to the drawing board on that one!

 

Step 3 complete!

 

 

 

[RealKerbal3x]

Shame about Kerbmun. Maybe it has oxygen, but not quite enough for jet engines.

This is really great though, keep it up!

[Kerbalstar]

50 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Shame about Kerbmun. Maybe it has oxygen, but not quite enough for jet engines.

This is really great though, keep it up!

I agree about Kerbmun.

Keep up the great work @Ultimate Steve!

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 4 - Whirligig does not like Delta-V

Spoiler

Despite the disappointment that there was not enough oxygen to run jets (if any at all) the Kerbals still wanted to send detailed scientific instruments to find out. But, the spectrometer was still a bit up the tech tree. So, their only option was to send a crew.

This would require a lot of ships, a lot of patience, a lot of metal (money), and a lot, a LOT of Delta-V. As I said before, 4.5 to LMO, 3.3 to TKmI, and another 1 to LKmO, approximately. 0.5 more accounting for plane changes and such. To low orbit of Kerbmun it's about 9km/s, just short of the Delta-V required to get into LEO in real life.

And that's there! You can use aerobraking to shave off most of the circularization burn and most of the landing, but it's 3.5 back to orbit, 1 back to a transfer trajectory, and 3.3 plus a plane change to LMO. We're stopping at LMO because of the whole no returns thing.

Add that all up, and you have roughly 17.5km/s of Delta-V. The Apollo missions used 9 for LEO, 3 for TLI, 1 for orbit insertion, 4 for landing and ascent, and 1 for back home, roughly, netting somewhere around 18km/s. This means that what I am attempting to do is on par with the Delta-V requirements for doing an Apollo mission... With the bad mass ratios of the stock parts. Curse you, Mesbin.

 

What could go wrong?

 

First off, the Kerbals launched a 3 core version of the Liberation 2 lifter to launch another probe to Derbin because we got a lucrative contract to land there...

How exactly would contracts work in a system where there are only 500 people on the planet? Actually, only 496 now? Maybe if we substitute "funds" for "scrap metal and oxygen." Apparently one of the guys who controls a lot of metal is interested in Derbin.

For those who have forgotten, Derbin is binary with Mesbin. Derbin is still huge, a bit larger than Eve, but not as huge as Mesbin.

The entry went well.

Results cannot be transmitted, however, because someone forgot a long range antenna because I forgot I didn't have a relay around Derbin yet.

There we go! Much better!

As it turns out, Derbin is pretty hot, pretty stuffy, and pretty heavy. 2g, 7atm, 350k (177f) at the surface if I remember right.

I'm most likely not sending a manned mission to Derbin. It's looking like it will be Eve but 3x as hard. Maybe if I get one of those airship mods...

Good news! We have enough science to unlock long ladders now! Jeb is shown here testing the Mk2 lander's ladder system. It will hopefully have enough fuel to ascend this time. We think. Hopefully.

Launch was successful.

The fuel margin was so low we had to aerobrake for this part. Stuff almost exploded.

For continuity's sake we tried landing near the earlier ascent vehicle.

I'm never going to get used to seeing Mesbin in the sky like that, it's just so unnatural. So, if we evacuated to Kerbmun, we wouldn't see beautiful Kerbmun in the night sky, we'd see ugly Mesbin... Hopefully there is another planet out there with a better atmosphere and a better view.

But, the landing legs exploded due to forgetting to fire the engines at the last moment.

And the probe core's service bay broke off. So there aren't batteries. But everything important to the actual ascent still seems to be intact, so we're going with it.

At this point a manned expedition became top priority instead of back seat. So, what exactly would we need for a manned mission?

We'd need an ascent vehicle (check), relays (spotty, but check), a return vehicle, a descent vehicle, a rover (landings are inaccurate), science experiments, and a small base. The crew would be 3 Kerbals, probably a pilot, engineer, and scientist, as that was all the ascent vehicle could carry.

Shown here, Jeb, Bill, and Bob test the first version of the rover. Probably due to a weird code, the wheels loved to break due to the 5g gravity even though only 1 was felt. For the final version, there were way more wheels, a rear ladder, a probe core, some plane wheels in case the default ones broke, and parachutes for landing.

It was discovered that the space center floated several meters above the surface for some reason.

The final version launched on another Liberation 2 derivative.

This time the lower stage was disposed of instead of made into a relay.

It was discovered that you could sort of glide the rover, and it "flew" to within 15km of the ascent vehicle... Not bad. Of course that means I'll have to drive at least 15km at 10m/s... 1500 seconds. 25 minutes. Let's hope it's stable at x4 warp! Although due to the airplane wheels I can go downhill faster than uphill, so maybe it will be less.

The rover promptly touched down in front of a patch of grass.

Wait, what? Grass? GRASS? LIFE! LIIIIIIIFFFFFEEEEEEE OOOOOOOONNNNNNNNN KKKKKKEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRBBBBBBBBBBBMMMMMMMUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This came as a massive shock to the mission planners, they had not anticipated life being a thing on Kerbmun! It seemed to be close to the common forms of grass found on Kerbin! Further analysis was necessary, but another problem - the things that had gone to Kerbmun had not been sterilized... Ah, whatever, who cares about planetary protection! There's only 500 Kerbals in this entire star system, not enough for there to be a planetary protection officer... Or much of a government.

If this was close to Kerbin grass, that meant there had to be carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and it had to be producing at least some oxygen... But that was only if it was the same type of life.

Further analysis was necessary, we've decided to add a science lab to the base.

Upon jettisoning the parachutes, two solar panels were broken. Sorry, grass!

 

The rarely used "GREAT ANTENNA OF AWESOMENESS" was then used to tell the other 1000s of colony ships about their discovery of alien life. The nearest ship would take a few years to respond, but still.

So far only 8 colony ships had actually heard that the Manifest Destiny had crashed, and responses had only been received from 2.

 

Next up were the science experiments, which were delivered on a partially proven platform - a modified plane, but with rocket engines.

AAA LOOK OUT ITS THE GIANT OVAL IN THE SKYYYYY!!!

Sometimes, spaceflight is as boring as watching grass grow. Sometimes it's as exciting as watching grass grow.

Oh, hey, we're out of money. Another wealthy Mesbiner is willing to give us a lot of metal to set up a station around Statmun, presumably to help look for radioactive isotopes there, because they are hard to find on Mesbin.

We've got some cash now!

This is the launch of the base.

The landing was cushioned by twelve partially filled sepratrons. The job was done almost perfectly, but they were triggered just a bit too late and the base bounced a few centimeters into the air.

Also, on the top was a detachable 1.5-ish ton pod with a bunch of KIS supplies for experiments.

Only two launches remained for the manned mission to Kerbmun - the descent/return vehicle and the crew. Since the descent/return vehicle doesn't have an exposed docking report to conserve mass (and due to bad design) the crew was launched first, on Fearless 3.

The crew was pilot Calny and engineer Sido, both guys. I've been getting pretty good at direct rendezvouses from Mesbin, the crew made it to Treehouse station in just a little over 20 minutes.

At this point, the actual descent/return vehicle would be launched. Buuuuut we're out of money again, so the station will have 6 for a bit longer than scheduled.

Luckily, we have a very substantial contract (700k funds) from another rich miner guy who wanted to send some of his personal belongings to the orbit of Kerbmun. The fact that these personal belongings look just like a science bay and a mystery goo can is completely a coincidence.

We were also able to add a relay antenna, because 3 sats is better than two!

It looks oddly like a potato from here.

So due to that and a science contract, we now have 1.1 million funds to play with. I've come to realize that money will be the hard part, not science... There are tourism, rescue, and explore contracts that are all insanely impractical to complete because most of them require a return. This means that my source of money is pretty much halved, and it takes way more funds to get places than in vanilla...

But, hey! We can afford the ship now!

Step 4 complete!

 

 

 

 

[Kerbalstar]

Woohoo! 1.1 million funds! That’s a lot! I just recently achieved my first Mesbin orbit!

@Ultimate Steve.

[Ultimate Steve]

1 minute ago, Kerbalstar said:

Woohoo! 1.1 million funds! That’s a lot! I just recently achieved my first Mesbin orbit!

@Ultimate Steve.

No need to mention me, I'm following the thread.  Congrats on the orbit!

[Kerbalstar]

Ah, I was wondering who closely you were following it. I follow mine with an email every time new content is posted. Thanks! I have an idea for a story... With different mythology then the standard Mesbin mythology...

[RealKerbal3x]

GRASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! 1.1 MILLION FUNDS!

Sorry. Do you ever plan to build a Mesbin descent vehicle? 

Edited October 7, 2018 by RealKerbal3x

[Ultimate Steve]

7 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

GRASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! 1.1 MILLION FUNDS!

Sorry. Do you ever plan to build a Mesbin descent vehicle? 

Well, I have for the sample return pods. I was vaguely considering using an EVA seat or two instead of the sample container, as that could actually work, but then I remembered I haven't unlocked EVA seats yet!

But, Whirligig 0.5 just got released and stuff has been changed... Mesbin is smaller and rotates even faster (every half hour!) and Statmun has doubled in size... I have no idea what these changes will mean for Delta-V requirements, but I'm going to try installing it... Hopefully it won't break active missions! Ch.5 coming soon.

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 5 - WE ARE THE ALIENS

Spoiler

Virtuoso - a person highly skilled in music or another artistic pursuit. Also what we decided to name this absolute monster of a cluster rocket, which will hopefully take three Kerbals to Kerbmun.

The Liberation 3 lifter was powered by 12 SRBs and 4 twin boars on the first stage.

The second stage was five skippers.

Four of them fed their fuel to the central one and detached... The central skipper was just enough to get the ship into orbit.

The poodle stage had to be used just a little bit for the rendezvous with Treehouse Station. At this point, a crew was selected. It was decided that we'd need our most experienced crewmembers on this mission, so the four that had been up there for quite some time were chosen - Johnbo (pilot), Maddrin (Engineer), Shelemy (Scientist), and Crisfrey (Orbital module pilot).

All four outer tanks were depleted during the transfer, and there was also a plane change burn. This led to lower than expected fuel levels at Kerbmun, so some aerobraking had to be used.

And Crisfrey said goodbye to the landing team, who boarded the Virtuoso's descent module. They would be the first Kerbals in this entire system to land somewhere using parachutes. After several quickloads, a proper accurate descent trajectory was realized using what little propellant was in the poodle stage of the Virtuoso.

The return module immediately burned back into an orbit to avoid being incinerated. Crisfrey would now wait for their return assuming all went well... She had a substantial amount of supplies.

Due to the atmosphere being so thin, the capsule was still going about 11m/s at touchdown, and the heat shield exploded. Future missions would need more parachutes.

And so, pilot Johnbro stepped out of the capsule and tried to walk.

And that was the first step on a planet with aliens. Great job, Johnbro. Actually, he has been in 0g for the past hundred days except for his trip to Statmun and the acceleration of burning engines, so he does need time to readjust.

Can I count this as an alien invasion?

Also, I got the visors working! It was a known issue with the Windows version of the shaders.

So, how did I do as far as accuracy goes?

Pretty good, it looks like! Everything is within a 30km diameter circle, I think.

The rover drove over to pick the crew up. The crew noticed that Kerbmun's clouds move insanely fast, showing large levels of wind a few kilometers up.

First contact with alien life - really tall grass.

On the rover drive to check out the ascent vehicle it was realized that Mesbin sort of looked like a face. Mesbin does not approve of the ascent vehicle.

Upon checkout, it was thought that the ascent vehicle was in good condition. The ladders worked. The solar panels were deployed. The snacks were raided.

And then they arrived at the base, named Vau Base. Some KAS things were set up, like science experiments, pipes, and lights. Also, the landing legs on the base broke the instant I attached anything with KAS... The wheels on the rover did the same thing.

And then the science glider - which is insanely hard to land as it turns out - was flown over to the base. All of the experiments were going to be processed in the lab, but there were only room for three... And "life support" is ticking... We don't want to leave Crisfrey alone in the Virtuoso for more than a few months. So, we may have to turn this little base into something more permanent...

 

 

Step 5 complete!

 

 

[Kerbalstar]

Out of likes! Very cool @Ultimate Steve, you’ve established the first permanent Kerbal presence on another ( habitable ) world!

[Pretorian28715]

Following. Nice and simple..

[Ultimate Steve]

2 hours ago, Kerbalstar said:

Out of likes! Very cool @Ultimate Steve, you’ve established the first permanent Kerbal presence on another ( habitable ) world!

 

27 minutes ago, Pretorian28715 said:

Following. Nice and simple..

Thank you both for the kind words! The base module might be permanent, but the crew is definitely not, at least for now.

Chapter 6 - The Great Universe Derp

Spoiler

Whirligig has been updated to 0.5. Most of the changes involve far away worlds that I have not visited yet, but two major things have changed. Mesbin and Statmun. Mesbin is now way smaller and spins way faster, every 28 minutes. Statmun is still tidally locked in a stationary orbit, but is twice as large and completely redesigned.

The good news? You only need 2.5km/s to get into a low orbit. The bad news? You need more to go from there to anywhere else. I think it evens out, though, and we have a slight decrease in the total delta-v required to go places.

But two major things in the save have been messed up. Due to Statmun's sudden increase in size, it ate our one module Statmun station... Not a huge loss, to be honest. But the major thing is that Treehouse Station is now in a medium orbit instead of a low orbit, making it impractical as a stopping point. The delta-V from Treehouse to Graymun and Statmun are about 2km/s each way for both... We'd want to optimize for one.

So, instead of moving the pitifully tiny Treehouse station which can only support a few people for a short time, let's take advantage of the lower Delta-V to LMO and build something just a little bit bigger!

AAAA NO! I said "A little bit bigger!"

Faith Station has a very large crew capacity, and has an artificial gravity ring. It also features several normal size docking ports and 6 jr ports for older generation ships. It also has a jumbo 64 worth of fuel capacity, a science lab, and space for *does math* 209 Kerbals, although it will never carry that many... That's over 40% of the planet's population!

It also cost over half a million funds and was right up to the 255 part limit. So I won't do anything this extravagant for a while.

Also the rocket would have been about 3x bigger on the older, larger Mesbin.

Another thing - Statmun now orbited just behind KSC, much better than 1/3 of the way around the planet, much more accessible. Onboard Faith Station were Jeb, Bill, and Bob.

The two Kerbals on Treehouse station grabbed everything useful, including two antennas (forgotten on the new station), the entire KAS box, all of the remaining fuel, and most of the supplies and personal stuff, and stuffed it into two of the Fearless spacecraft.

The lower stage of one  was used, then separated, and then the engine on the other used the rest of the fuel to get the whole stack to Faith Station.

So at this point we'd do do some stuff with Vau base, but due to tech tree changes, some parts are locked and I don't want to load it just in case... So, let's get some science!

Due to the new Delta-V requirements, it was determined that the Fearless spacecraft, with some modifications, could be used as a Statmun lander. And so, on Fearless 4, Pilot Valentina and a female scientist I don't remember the name of launched to Statmun.

Okay... It's really weird orbiting, seeing both Mesbin and Statmun literally not move as the star field moves. It's so disorientating.

The second stage still had a bunch of fuel left at this point but we needed the landing legs, so we ditched the stage.

*ominous*

A landing was attempted... Notice I say attempted. I bounced off the surface and fell up and sideways. You want to know why?

Most of Statmun's equator now rotates faster than orbital velocity. This makes landing there rather problematic. It's also a great curiosity as to how the moon stays together. Maybe it's one giant chunk of metal... It is covered in rust, after all.

In order to have a safe touchdown zone we relocated to a really deep pit. At first everything looked good...

But then everything started floating upwards. We had to jam the flag in really hard to ensure it wouldn't go flying.

The lander flew upwards, to the right, then to the left, and crashed into the northern wall as I was writing the flag, flinging it into the opposite wall, destroying the docking port. The decision was made to quickly finish the science and go back to the north pole.

The old Munar lander was now buried beneath the surface. Trying to extract it did not go so well.

The other flag is also buried and its text is lost to the persistence files. After a quick stop at the north pole (now much less pointy but more voidy) the lander went to Faith Station.

The engineer there installed a new docking port so it could dock. This came at the expense of one of the 6 docking ports on the station, so now there are only 5. Whatever!

Now, to get the science home...

Previously, returning crew members was considered extremely impractical and returning science experiments required a huge rocket, but now, with 2.5km/s each way assuming  perfect suicide burn, it was definitely possible.

This was the CASTLER - Crew And Sample Two-seat Lifeboat Extra Return. Designed to return 2 Kerbals and a sample container to Mesbin from low orbit.

CASTLER was briefly docked to Faith Station, and promptly undocked after the experiments had been loaded. Nobody was onboard for this landing test.

Due to a badly timed suicide burn three times over, the lander stopped too early and wasted its fuel margin. On the final landing approach it ran out of fuel.

Fortunately, the crew compartment and the samples survived! About 550 science was recovered from this mission, which was enough to unlock the missing parts.

Mesbin's size difference is really apparent from Kerbmun.

 

And that's step 6 complete!

 

 

 

[Kerbalstar]

Yeah, I started over after the update. Like how you handled it! Crew return is a thing! Nice to know, thanks @Ultimate Steve!

[Whirligig Girl]

This is quite a nice report so far! But uh... there are other planets in this system!

Edited October 8, 2018 by GregroxMun