Doodling Around on Duna

[samwiseiam]

Welcome to my Kerbal Space Program career save

I started this particular save file after Breaking Ground came out to try a career file with all of the new parts and functionality. So far I've been impressed with the new surface science experiments and surface science features, and my Kerbals had a great time setting up stations around the Mun and Minmus and later landing bases and rovers on both of Kerbin's satellites. At this point in my game, the Kerbals are ready to take their first step out into interplanetary space and have accepted a contract to send a probe to flyby Duna and return. To this end, the KSC has developed the Quicksilver probe:

The payload for the quicksilver probe is mounted on top of an older style lifter developed during the early days of the space program, which should have more than enough delta-v to flyby Duna and return to Kerbin. However, the Mission Planners at KSC noticed that the transfer window for Duna only comes up very infrequently. So, in an attempt to launch the probe to Duna early, it was equipped with a slapped-together set of solid boosters for its initial ascent:

The hope is that the extra set of boosters will give the probe enough delta-v to reach Duna and return before the optimal transfer window, leaving the best time for a proper Hohmann transfer open for the first wave of full scale exploration ships.

Here we see the probe shortly after launch. It has very little control authority on initial ascent, but remains stable at least.

The probe reached orbit without incident and deployed its solar panels and antennas. After circularization it still had its lower stage attached, minus the boosters. After some messing-about with the maneuver node editor, the probe was on its way to Duna after its interplanetary transfer burn, now minus the its lower stages. The probe is seen here framed nicely in between Kerbin and the Mun on its trip out of the Kerbin system.

Shown below is the (very rushed and inefficient) transfer orbit the probe is on, as well as a picture of the probe's projected orbit once it enters the Duna system. There is a maneuver node planned in the Duna system itself to circularize the probe's orbit to match a satellite contract. The maneuver is tentative, as I am unsure if having this probe actually enter orbit as opposed to just flying by will prevent the next "Explore Duna" contract from being issued. So for now the probe will just head on its merry way until the KSP Mission Planners (aka me!) figure out how to best negotiate with the contractors to fund the full scale of the KSP Duna expedition.

Up next:

Designing craft for actually mapping and landing on Duna, as well as equipment and infrastructure for the first Kerbaled landings on Duna!

[KerballingSmasher]

Orbiting it on your first try will not cancel the next Explore Duna contract, but it will give you a head start if you accept the next one as soon as you enter Duna's Sphere of Influence (I'm talking fancy terms, yall!) and then burn for orbit.

[samwiseiam]

After extensive negotiations with the aerospace contractors regarding financing future Duna exploration (read: using a quicksave to determine whether the "Orbit Duna" contract would appear after I completed the flyby portion of the "Explore Duna" contract), the Kerbal Space Center was informed that the contractors were unwilling to offer any additional contracts for exploring the Duna system until the KSC proves that a craft can actually return from Duna. At this point, the mission controllers took a look at the round trip time from Kerbin to Duna, and then after checking the calendar for launch times in the next year, they turned their minds to designing the first set of exploration craft designed to actually stay at Duna.

 

The mission planners decided that there were main criteria for the mission:

1. The mission craft should be remotely operated since no Kerbals had actually left Kerbin's SOI or been in microgravity for longer than 90 days at a time

2. It should set up communication infrastructure around the planet, and

3. It should identify likely landing sites for future Kerballed missions.

The mission was designated "Azimuth" and the mission parameters were turned over to the spacecraft engineers

 

The engineers quickly created a solution to their problem: the Azimuth LInC and the Azimuth Pathfinder

The Azimuth LInC (Long-range Interplanetary Communications) satellite array carried a payload of 6 communication satellites to deploy in Duna orbit. Each satellite will be dropped off by a high efficiency maneuvering stage, with the largest dish dropped off in a very high orbit, the medium dish deployed in a 150km circular orbit, and the remaining small dishes deployed in 45 degree offset 150x51km orbits for consistent comms. coverage. The craft was launched into a LKO parking orbit to await the next transfer window, to await the other half of the Azimuth mission. The parked craft is shown in the image below with the Mun peeking over the horizon of Kerbin. The small and medium satellites are mounted on hinges which should allow them to deploy into their target orbits with ease.

 

The other half of the mission, the Azimuth Pathfinder, contained all the equipment necessary for a preliminary survey of the red planet.

The plan is for the craft to deploy into a polar orbit around Duna in order to easily deploy its payloads: a resource scanning and terrain mapping satellite, a series of 4 probe landers, and a small rover. The scanning satellite will identify likely landing areas with flat terrain and decent resource concentrations, after which the four most likely sites will be targeted for probe landings and the best one will later be targeted by the rover. The craft was also launched into a parking orbit to await the appropriate transfer window to Duna.

 

 

At this point, the celebratory pizza party at mission control was interrupted by the entrance of Kerbals from the finance department, who plopped a budget spreadsheet down in an empty pizza box and explained that, based on current projections, the space program would be unable to fund the follow up Kerballed mission to the red planet without a source of additional funding. The party atmosphere died for a moment as the assembled Kerbals looked at each other. Then an intern in the back of the room raised a grease-stained photocopy of a contract to place a space station in LKO. The contract had been passed over in the excitement of launching the Azimuth craft, however it now dawned on the assembled Kerbals that they had never actually put a station in LKO despite putting similar stations around the Mun and Minmus. The Kerbals wrapped up their party early by wolfing down the remainder of the pizza and then quickly began designing the core of what would become Kerbal Space Station.

 

 

[xendelaar]

9 hours ago, samwiseiam said:

After extensive negotiations with the aerospace contractors regarding financing future Duna exploration (read: using a quicksave to determine whether the "Orbit Duna" contract would appear after I completed the flyby portion of the "Explore Duna" contract), the Kerbal Space Center was informed that the contractors were unwilling to offer any additional contracts for exploring the Duna system until the KSC proves that a craft can actually return from Duna. At this point, the mission controllers took a look at the round trip time from Kerbin to Duna, and then after checking the calendar for launch times in the next year, they turned their minds to designing the first set of exploration craft designed to actually stay at Duna.

 

The mission planners decided that there were main criteria for the mission:

1. The mission craft should be remotely operated since no Kerbals had actually left Kerbin's SOI or been in microgravity for longer than 90 days at a time

2. It should set up communication infrastructure around the planet, and

3. It should identify likely landing sites for future Kerballed missions.

The mission was designated "Azimuth" and the mission parameters were turned over to the spacecraft engineers

 

The engineers quickly created a solution to their problem: the Azimuth LInC and the Azimuth Pathfinder

 

 

Interesting design. you went all in adding scanning tools and setting up a communication network relay. Can't wait to read the next chapter

[KerballingSmasher]

A grease-stained photocopy. Very Kerballic. Is that the right term?

[samwiseiam]

11 hours ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

A grease-stained photocopy. Very Kerballic. Is that the right term?

I’ve been using “Kerbal” or “Kerbalish/Kerbal-ish”, but I don’t think it is nailed down really  Considering how many snacks they seem to pack in some of their craft modules, I figure the ground crews and mission control Kerbs would probably take any excuse to throw a pizza party.

Edited August 1, 2019 by samwiseiam
Missing a verb

[Geschosskopf]

5 hours ago, samwiseiam said:

I’ve been using “Kerbal” or “Kerbalish/Kerbal-ish”, but I don’t think it is nailed down really  Considering how many snacks they seem to pack in some of their craft modules, I figure the ground crews and mission control Kerbs would probably take any excuse to throw a pizza party.

In this forum (can't vouch for elsewhere), the traditional usage has been as follows:

Kerbal (noun):  A little green humanoid from the p[anet Kerbin

kerbal (adjective):  Describing something conforming to the KSP stereotype of Kerbals being stupid, crazy, gluttonous, and/or thinking all problems can be solved with MOAR boosters.  For example, "The Northrop-Grumman OmegA launch vehicle is so kerbal--it's 1st AND 2nd stages are all SRBs!"  

 

[KerballingSmasher]

8 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

The Northrop-Grumman OmegA launch vehicle

That's a not-so-kerbal name...

[samwiseiam]

I ran into a bug on my save where a seismometer I placed on the Mun began giving sever readings a second, resulting in 2000+ notifications and slowing the game to a crawl. The particularly thorny issue at the time was that the seismometer was far away from any kerbals currently on the Mun and with the notifications causing the game to sputter constantly, this meant that sending a mission to recover the offending instrument would be difficult, slow, and frustrating. Eventually with the assistance of quicksave Halsy Kerman used her RCS pack to fly to the offending hardware on what she has named "Craterspike Mountain" and removed it. I did not take any pictures during the actual mission itself, mostly due to being preoccupied by frustration, but the crew of Munbase did take some pictures after the fact for analysis by mission control and posterity. Seen below is the flag Halsy placed at the peak of Craterspike Mountain after disabling the rogue siesmometer. The icons in the background are for Munbase and its corresponding flag, and are located at the point that Halsy started her jetpack journey:

And here, Halsy and Lusy  pose by the Munbase rover on the edge of the huge crater that Halsy flew over. Craterspike mountain can be seen in the upper right portion of the picture.

Lusy and the Munbase rover became involved in the mission after Halsy attempted to return to base via RCS pack, but ran out of propellant 3/4ths of the way back and slammed into the crater wall at 50m/s and slid to the bottom of the crater. Fortunately, Kerbals are composed largely of gelatin and similarly elastic materials, so Halsy survived the impact, but Lusy then had to recover her since she had no other way to return to Munbase. Fortunately, after carefully descending and then ascending the crater wall, both kerbals returned to Munbase, where Halsy's EVA suit was retired, both to serve as a future museum piece and due to fears that after its high-speed impact, it was no longer structurally sound enough for future EVAs. Lets hope that things are going better with the Quicksilver Duna probe.

Said probe reached Duna's SOI and passed by at high altitude and high velocity, recording temperature and atmospheric data as it went, confiming that the space around Duna is indeed composed of vacuum. The craft then made an intercept burn within Duna's SOI to return to kerbin, adding some radial component to the burn in order to attempt to return to Kerbin sooner. The burn itself can be seen below with Duna and Ike visible in the background:

It was at this point that the head engineer notified Mission Control that the planned heat shield and payload fairing decoupler had not, in fact, actually been installed. This was problematic since the Quicksilver probe was designed to return to the surface of Kerbin after its interplanetary journey and the current mission profile was for the craft to aerocapture around Kerbin and then deorbit almost entirely using Kerbin's atmosphere to provide breaking force. The kerbals at mission control were divided into teams to present alternate plans for recovering the craft, and it was eventually decided that the craft would use its remaining fuel upon returning to Kerbin's SOI to enter a highly eliptical orbit with a periapsis slightly inside the planet's atmosphere, at which point repeated passes through the planet's atmosphere would hopefully deorbit the craft eventually at a velocity low enough that the science package would survive until landing.

I seriously don't know how I missed this when building the craft. I specifically designed it with a fairing protected pod that houses the science storage unit and the probe core, with the intention to decouple this pod upon return to kerbin and let it deorbit protected by a heatshield, but I completely forgot the parts critical for the entire plant to work. I'm lucky I hugely overengineered the spacecraft so I have enough delta-V to enter orbit once I return to kerbin, otherwise the entire mission would have to be scrubbed. Next time, hopefully Kerbal Space Station will actually be launched to orbit, and we will discover the fate of the poorly designed Quicksilver probe.

[Geschosskopf]

The message spam from deployed science, whether it's working or because it isn't, is VERY annoying.  I've edited the config file by adding about 8x zeros behind whatever was there to begin with.  This helps sometimes.  But mostly I just go to the tracking station and delete the whole package.  Then swear never to use it again until  another patch hopefully fixes the problem.

[samwiseiam]

As mentioned before, the kerbals at the KSC were working on a design for a space station to be placed in LKO, creatively titled the Kerbin Space Station. The final design they decided on is seen below on the launchpad and consisted of a cupola module, science lab, dock for a small orbital runabout, docking hub, and habitation module. All of this is powered by two deployable arms that have Gigantor solar panels installed along them, and cooled by a pair of medium radiators. Also mounted to the arms are science experiments and a communication dish.

The Kerbal Space station is serving a dual role as a functioning space station and a prototype of the core of the planned InterPlanetary Vessel (IPV) in which the space program intends to send kerbals to Duna. Below, the craft lifts off the pad and ascends skyward.

As you may be able to see in the picture above, the communication dish causes an excessive amount of aerodynamic drag during ascent. I would have enclosed the entire payload in a fairing, but experiments in fitting the station inside a fairing while still mounting it on an appropriately sized launch vehicle resulted in an even less controllable vessel, and so I launched to orbit without a fairing. In the picture below, Valentina Kerman fights to keep the ascending station under control.

Because of the difficulty involved in controlling the asymmetrical craft, Valentina was not the kerbal that actually ended up in the KSS in the picture below, Jeb has in fact taken that honor. The picture below shows the station payload detached from the launch stages in its undeployed state.

And below, the station is unfurled in all its glory!

In the future, I plan on using this general design as the core of the IPV that will get sent to Duna. I plan on moving the garage for the runabout to the base of the craft and I need to develop a new launch vehicle and a drive section in order to be able to actually get the entire package to orbit and then to Duna efficiently, but other than that I'm really happy with the design!

[Geschosskopf]

I do like how you can fold up station arms these days   Looks nice!