The Grandest Tour (Cencari A-C)

[Ultimate Steve]

The Grandest Tour

Kerbin is dying.

Years ago, shortly after the third wave of Jool exploration and the first serious interstellar probes were proposed, two major things happened.

One. It was determined for sure that Laythe would not be suitable for long term Kerbal habitation due to radiation.

Two. The world's leaders had dragged their feet and avoided the warnings for far too long. Too many greenhouse gases had been released into the atmosphere. Once the effects became noticeable, there was a flurry of panic. Trillions were sunk into carbon capture technologies, reforestation, and other, more exotic solutions, but the global temperature continued to rise. Barring a miracle, Kerbin was doomed the fate of Eve. Climate change was now irreversible.

 

Part I - The Launch

Spoiler

Many believed that Kerbin could still be saved given a technological breakthrough. All of the trillions there were were sunk into this. Some progress was made, buying Kerbin a few more years, but nothing more than that.

Some wanted to launch probes to far off stars, filled with Kerbal embryos in hopes that they would be able to autonomously seek out life supporting worlds and restart the population worlds away. Such a journey would take centuries if not millennia with current technology, and there was no guarantee it would work.

Duna would not work for more than an outpost. Terraforming would be extremely risky. Laythe had the radiation problem. Cloud cities on Eve, or even on Kerbin would eventually break down and fall. It seemed that there were no solutions among the stars.

 

Until one day, a climate researcher accidentally stumbled upon the secret to faster than light travel.

It was by no means an immediate life saver. The material required to make it work, dubbed "Cantonium," was in very short supply, and hard to extract, but Kerbalkind was able to scrounge up enough of it for a test vehicle and a medium sized warp drive. The test vehicle, launched on a small rocket, performed nearly flawlessly.

 

A plan was drawn up. An interstellar scouting mission would be launched, manned, packed with landers designed for every world one could reasonably expect. It would have three goals:

1. Search for worlds suitable to be homes for Kerbalkind.
2. Search for cantonium deposits to facilitate the construction of massive colony ships.
3. Raise the morale of Kerbalkind.

 

Cantonium was not able to be accurately detected from orbit, and as Kerbalkind only had one data point for where Cantonium was able to be found, the crew of this ship would have to land on as many worlds as possible in order to search for it.

 

Enter Star Sky.

 

A significant amount of funding was diverted to the creation of the first - and possibly last - interstellar spaceship, the Star Sky. It would launch with a crew of nine, be powered by a warp drive, an experimental Daedalus fusion engine, a positron reactor, and a quantum singularity reactor to replenish the positron supply. The only two limiting resources fuel wise were fusion pellets and hydrogen. The fusion pellets on board could provide more Delta-V than anyone could ever expect to need, especially since much of the maneuvering could be done with the warp drive. The hydrogen supply would last several years.

Star Sky carries four landers.

1. A light lander, powered by radioisotope rockets, with ~1.4km/s of Delta-V, for the lightest moons. Crew capacity 4.
2. A medium atmospheric or vacuum lander, powered by antimatter thermal engines running on liquid hydrogen with ~5km/s of Delta-V. Crew capacity three.
3. A heavy world lander, powered by antimatter thermal engines running on PVC with an extreme thrust to weight ratio, giving it the capability to land on a 10g version of Tylo and return to orbit. Crew capacity 3.
4. An All Atmospheric World Exploration Vehicle, a spaceplane powered by an antimatter thermal engine capable of running on PVC, liquid hydrogen, or liquid hydrogen and intake air. Capable of landing vertically, horizontally, on oceans, and capable of ascending from atmospheres as thin as Duna and thicker than Jool. Crew capacity 3.

The Star Sky carries massive amounts of liquid hydrogen and PVC for refueling, as well as smaller amounts of monopropellant and liquid fuel. It also has a large positron containment unit to hold antimatter to refuel the lander reactors.

 

The Star Sky was designed for a five year mission. Much longer and Kerbin would not be able to build colony ships in time, much shorter and the crew risked not finding what they were looking for.

The ship would be far out. While FTL travel had been invented, FTL communications hadn't. There would be no constant link between the ship and Kerbin. Some amount of data could be sent using the warp drive to shoot off bubbles of spacetime, but this was very energy intensive. This maneuver was planned to be limited to once every ninety days barring a significant discovery.

The discovery of intelligent life was a real possibility. Orders for scenarios like this were sealed in special envelopes, stowed on board the ship.

 

Star Sky was incredibly ambitious, potentially the single most complicated machine Kerbalkind had made. Design and construction ran into several problems. The image above was of the first rollout. In the days before launch, however, many, many problems were discovered. Upon closer inspection, problems ran rampant in the ship. The final nail in the coffin was the fact that the lifter had a shelf life much shorter than anticipated. The solid fuel began cracking, and many bits began rusting. The entire vehicle was rolled back to the assembly building and underwent a complete overhaul. The final version was similar to the original, but definitely not exact.

Nearly a year of precious time had passed, but the Star Sky was finally ready for launch on its brand new launch vehicle.

 

The crew: Steve, Dia, Jacob, Emille, Katherine, Martin, Jebediah, Bill, and Bob Kerman.

All of Kerbin watched and held their breath as the Star Sky lit its engines. The cloud of smoke grew... And then...

Liftoff.

The Star Sky had no launch escape system. Any failure meant a probable detonation of the antimatter holding tanks, which were needed to provide the energy to start the quantum singularity reactor. If those blew, the entire vehicle, and anything for kilometers around, was done for. There was no practical escape system.

The first stage, one of the largest ever built, detached and fell away. The Daedalus engine would perform the rest of the circularization burn, albeit at a high angle due to the low acceleration.

And then, several minutes later, the engine cut off. The six massive radiators were unfurled, and the quantum singularity reactor was brought to life, managing to avoid destroying Kerbin in the process.

A few orbits later, all of the systems were checked out. A star had been pre-selected as the first target - Cercani.

The crew said what could be their final live goodbyes for five years, or possibly forever.

All around Kerbin, people looked upwards.

 

And then the Star Sky warped into the great unknown.

Well, first off, don't expect everything to be that dramatic. I certainly got carried away with the intro! Expect short-ish updates detailing the worlds I land on.

Also, as with my other projects, expect long periods of inactivity as my interests jump around really rapidly.

So, my goal with this mission is to land on as many worlds as possible with the ship I designed. I don't know what will give out first, the fuel supply, or my motivation. I expect that the fuel will last for at least 100 landings depending on the average size and type of the body that will be landed on.

This is not done completely legitimately. During warp jumps I need to turn on unbreakable joints and ignore crash damage or else the entire ship will rip itself apart. In addition, the tanks that hold the hydrogen that powers the reactor have ridiculously low heat tolerances. When maneuvering near stars, ignore max temperature is on just for these tanks. If anything else overheats then I am definitely too close and will back off. Lastly, convenience over integrity in some cases. If I have to do a boring monotonous task that will decrease my enthusiasm for the project, then I will most likely cheat it. However I will not cheat for the smallest things. This installation doesn't even have HyperEdit installed, something that rarely happens.

The game version is 1.6.1.

I will be going through the various stars supported by Interstellar Consortium. I am unsure if I will even get past the first planet pack, Other Worlds, as it has I think six star systems with many bodies. If I do, I will be taking votes as to which star to do next. Maybe even within Other Worlds... My computer is not beefy enough to handle all of even just Other Worlds at once. Each star will be installed and uninstalled as I need it.

Questions are welcome. This is actually supposed to be more of a technical mission report than a dramatic story, but again, I got carried away writing the intro.

In Part 2, a few worlds are landed on, and I may explain what I have learned about warp maneuvering. In addition, some of the landers will be introduced.

Mod list and world list maybe coming soon. Not now, I need my sleep.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by Ultimate Steve

[RealKerbal3x]

@Ultimate Steve Nice dramatic intro! And since this is giving me strong Star Trek vibes:

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Star Sky. Its five year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no Kerbal has gone before!

[Ultimate Steve]

1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

@Ultimate Steve Nice dramatic intro! And since this is giving me strong Star Trek vibes:

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Star Sky. Its five year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no Kerbal has gone before!

Yeah, I noticed that too! It wasn't completely intentional, but it was a little bit. Hopefully the Star Sky won't get destroyed however many times the Enterprise did...

[KerballingSmasher]

WOAAAAAAAAH!! I would never have the patience for something like this, plus it's @Ultimate Steve. What could go wrong?

[Ultimate Steve]

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

What could go wrong?

A lot, not going to lie! I'm really glad for the quickload option!

[KerballingSmasher]

10 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

A lot, not going to lie! I'm really glad for the quickload option!

Otherwise, we're gonna hafta call Matt Lowne for some Blunderbirds!

[Ultimate Steve]

1 minute ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

Otherwise, we're gonna hafta call Matt Lowne for some Blunderbirds!

Interstellar blunderbirds, now that would be interesting!

[KerballingSmasher]

38 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Interstellar blunderbirds, now that would be interesting!

Hmm... does he have a forum account? We should ping him and see what he thinks!

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

Hmm... does he have a forum account? We should ping him and see what he thinks!

He does actually, but I believe he’s most active on the KSP subreddit and doesn’t come here often.

[Ultimate Steve]

Part 2 - Cercani A-C

Spoiler

The Star Sky dropped out of warp near the bright star Cercani. The onboard scanners were turned on in order to find planets. One of the first identified was one fairly close to Cercani. The ship carried an extensive list of names submitted by all of the Kerbals on Kerbin. Rather hastily, without even seeing the planet as more than a dot in a telescope, the world was named Vassa.

Now, to get there.

Warp maneuvering is a bit daunting at first, but not that difficult once you get the hang of it. The main thing is that the warp drive isn't just a really big rocket engine. When you drop out of warp, you still have the same velocity in the same direction as you had when you entered warp. So, for example, if the warp drive was activated at 2km/s in LKO, and was right beneath the Mun (the Mun travelling in the same direction as the ship), once the ship dropped out of warp around the Mun it would be travelling far too fast to orbit.

In order to warp directly into orbit of a body, your pre-warp velocity RELATIVE TO THE TARGET BODY must be less than that body's escape velocity but greater than orbital velocity. This means that the velocity window scales highly with the mass of the body you want to orbit. Fortunately, for minor adjustments, the Star Sky carries a fusion engine.

You want to lower your relative velocity to your target. In some cases, all that is required for this is time. If you are already orbiting a body, or low around a star, your relative velocity will change a lot during one orbit because you reverse directions twice. However, this isn't always enough. Sometimes you need to slow down or speed up in a particular direction.

A good technique to use for this is something that probably has a technical name, but I like to call it gravity bleeding. Warp into a place where you are travelling straight up (with the right sideways component - this is hard to judge) and low above a massive object. You will be slowed down fairly rapidly by gravity, and you can warp away when you are satisfied with your new relative velocity.

Gravity bleeding, actually gravobraking may be a better word, can also be used if you are going too fast when you get to a body. If yo are going to fly past Jool at 13km/s, use gravobraking. You can keep jumping back to near Jool, so repeat until your velocity is low enough to orbit. Then warp to the altitude (and position around the planet) where your velocity and direction would give you a circular orbit, or a non circular one if you desire.

Correcting inclination to near zero can be done fairly simply too. wait until you are directly between your ascending and descending nodes, so you are not drifting "up or down" and warp "downwards or upwards" to the correct plane. You will still be travelling "sideways" but if you stayed at the same altitude your relative inclination to your target will be near zero if you dropped out of warp at the correct time.

Unfortunately, the degree of warp precision isn't great simply because you are moving too fast. With these warp drives, it takes the least power to go exactly one C. More or less than that, and it takes more power. This limits your maximum and minimum warp speed to the available power supply.

With the main positron and quantum singularity reactors engaged, power supply on board fluctuates between about 0.9 and 1.5 gigawatts based on something, probably heat. I haven't figured out that bit yet. This means that sometimes we have the necessary 1.21 gigawatts necessary to go back to the future.

I forget what the minimum speed that Star Sky can warp at is, but I believe it's less than 0.01c. On smaller worlds, this is too fast to get into perfect orbits, and in most cases I just said "good enough" if it was an alright orbit that didn't intersect the orbits of other bodies.

 

 

Phew, that's a mouthful, but now it's out of the way.

Here is an example of gravobraking.

The crew warped into view of Vassa. It had a fairly large and close by moon, given a temporary numerical designation. The world looked promising. An ocean world with clouds! Few had expected the first world to look as good as this one was.

Unfortunately, the atmosphere was not breathable, it turned out to be mostly nitrogen. The gravity was lower than Kerbin, and IIRC the pressure was substantially lower too.

A short time later, it was discovered that Vassa was also tidally locked, and that the day side was much, much warmer than the dark side.

Nonetheless, after the orbit was refined, three crewmembers were sent down in the Wyvern II model spaceplane (I need to come up with lander names) in order to collect a sample of the surface.

After flying around a little bit (the efficiency of the engine is good enough to do that for a short while, especially considering the fuel margins), an interesting set of islands was noticed.

A landing was attempted on the nearest one.

There was a nearly flat section on the top, and the landing proceeded without issue.

Steve Kerman, about to take the first steps on this new world.

Also, given the popularity of these sort of planet packs, I would be that I am the first person to have landed on this island, and probably the only person that ever will.

Beauty shot! Gear was retracted because I was slowly sliding downhill.

The island was named Peregrine Spire.

Dia took this opportunity to jump off of the side and glide around for a while. She managed over one lap around the spire before splashing down in the oceans.

The Wyvern II went cliff diving and splashed down near Dia to pick her up. This was no problem for the vehicle, it was designed with water landings and takeoffs in mind. That thing on the front is a hydrofoil, designed to help with takeoff and prevent the front from getting smashed on landing.

Yes, yet another gazing into a star (can't say the sun anymore, can I!) picture, expect a lot of those. Their work done, the crew departed Vassa.

Once in orbit, it was decided that instead of immediately returning to the mothership, the crew of three would fly to Vassa's moon. While not an atmospheric world, it was still doable with the current margin. It would save on fuel and time.

The landing went a little oddly, but the hydrofoil got hooked on a cliff edge and the vehicle stayed in the same general spot. The world, not given a proper name by the modpack, was named Vantage due to its amazing view of Vassa.

Samples were collected. The moon definitely could not support Kerbal life.

The crew packed up and left, redocking with the Star Sky. From there, they warped inwards to the first planet of Cercani, dubbed Troni. It was expected to be Moho-esque.

During the warp journey, the Star Sky got alarmingly close to Cercani. Also, it was noticed that five of the six base radiator fins have disappeared. Odd. Hopefully that will stop happening.

Troni was indeed Moho-like.

The major difference, however, was the presence of what appeared to be lava lakes on the surface.

Also, this was the medium lander, designed to be used on worlds ranging from less than the Mun to medium worlds with thin atmospheres, like Duna, or Kerbin if its atmosphere was really thin.

A landing was attempted on a small island in order to better study the lava.

Minor-ish problem... The landing legs are not long enough.

*facepalm*

Whatever, those nozzles are decently robust, it should be fine.

However, a few seconds later, the craft began overheating severely due to proximity to the lava. An emergency takeoff was initiated, and the craft was re-landed up a nearby hill.

There were many triangular shaped islands in a row, including some out of the frame. The crew decided to name this area either Illuminati Beach or Cipher Beach, they couldn't decide which.

You may be wondering why there hasn't been a dramatic staring into the star moment. Well, that's because...

It's just a bit bright.

Jacob Kerman did a really risky experiment. It is possible to jetpack to the shore, dip in for a few seconds, and get out really quickly without melting, but it isn't recommended. If this mod ever gets science definitions, the surface sample and EVA report from the oceans better be something along the lines of "AAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

After the samples were collected, the light lander took off.

I feel like with a star that bright, the actual planet should be way hotter. Maybe I'm just accustomed to the sun and Kerbol, and this is a different type of star.

The next warp jump took the crew to a planet that they called Pequar, which had a thin atmosphere. The medium lander was again used.

The landing site was called the "Desert of Souls."

Ah, there's a good sun picture!

Sunrise or set.

After a standard ascent, the lander redocked.

The small lander went to an unnamed moon.

The landing site was directly on the ridge that encircled the entire body. Luckily, it didn't fall off.

Also, look at that view!

The lander then redocked to the mothership, which then warped into orbit of the other moon, Disole.

At first, it looked Duna-esque.

The Wyvern II was sent down.

The world had a pretty substantial atmosphere, but low gravity.

After some science, it was determined that the crew had landed in an ancient riverbed. Most evidence pointed towards this planet being able to support life in the past - but it was a dead world now.

The atmosphere was not breathable for very long, but...

It had enough oxygen for a while breathing unaided. Dia Kerman became the first Kerbal to breathe the atmosphere of a world other than Kerbin and Laythe.

I also flew to the north pole. The oxygen allowed me to use LH2+intake air to run in jet mode. The north pole is weird. I wish I could have explored it more, but I lost sense of scale, those ridges are a lot closer than they look. I crashed, and the game crashed when I loaded the save, so I just moved on.

The spike goes up to a whopping 4600 ish meters above sea level.

The ship took off and returned to orbit.

And warped to the next world.

 

World reviews (There may be something I missed from a world, but my impressions after visiting each for a few minutes, I may have missed stuff):

 

Troni - 6.5/10. Cool lava lakes that are almost survivable, but extremely bright and can be fairly taxing on the eyes.

Vassa - 8.5/10. Cool concept, good looking oceans, cool islands. Not rated higher because if I find something absolutely amazing I'd have to go over 10.

Vassa's moon (Dubbed Vantage) - 7/10. Amazing views but other than that, not much reason to go.

Pequar - 7/10. Cool storms and cool ring system. Generally the surface is pretty barren, but that can be said about almost every body in KSP.

Pequar's unnamed moon - 5/10. Cool views, great concept, but ran into invisible terrain issues when trying to land not on the ridge. Also had that weird glitch where the entire moon comes rushing towards you very fast.

Disole - 8.5/10. Cool views, variety of sunset colors, oxygen atmosphere, interesting backstory, and one of the most prominent polar features I've ever seen. Surface felt a bit plain, but then again I didn't explore much

 

 

 

 

 

[KerballingSmasher]

@Ultimate Steve-- If you need better names for things, (as I commonly do for my series) I'm sure that @KnightofKessler (I can help as well!) would be sure to help you out!

[Stormpilot]

On 5/9/2019 at 12:19 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

Laythe would not be suitable for long term Kerbal habitation due to radiation.

Radiation from the sun? Well, I suppose with a thin atmosphere that would make sense.

[Ultimate Steve]

Just now, STORMPILOTkerbalkind said:

Radiation from the sun? Well, I suppose with a thin atmosphere that would make sense.

I am referring to the theorized massive radiation belt surrounding Jool, a semi-popular fan theory.

[Xurkitree]

Gods this is amazing! Where are you scavenging these mod packs from?

Also what are theire ingame names?

[Ultimate Steve]

11 hours ago, Xurkitree said:

Gods this is amazing! Where are you scavenging these mod packs from?

Also what are theire ingame names?

The in game names are the same as what I have been calling them except for some small unnamed moons.

The part mods are basically just Interstellar, Near Future, and some minor ones.

The current planet pack is called Other Worlds, and if I have time I plan on going to all of the planet packs compatible with Interstellar Consortium, a community mod designed to support an entire Galaxy of stars with Kopernucus.

[insert_name]

Would this be a prequel to the whirligig world series you started?

[Ultimate Steve]

4 minutes ago, insert_name said:

Would this be a prequel to the whirligig world series you started?

No, that was not the plan, and there are some major canonical differences between CW (Which I should continue sometime) and TGT.

But it is an interesting proposal. WW is IC compatible, so assuming I don't get bored with this, I will be visiting the WW system at some point, probably later on, as I've already visited many of the worlds in that system.

Next part requires just one more landing.