totm january 2020 Community Caveman Jool 5 mission

[Pds314]

@IncongruousGoat How do I access your landers???

[dvader]

@ManEatingApe @IncongruousGoat Good work on the mission plan. It would be nice to do Tylo and Laythe early since those are the highest risk missions and I would not  like to be responsible for screwing up hours of hard work if the Laythe mission fails for some unexpected reason (like the staging issue that turned off SAS). Maybe parking the return craft at Vall instead and do Tylo-Laythe-Pol-Bop-Vall?  Sorry for being late with suggestions but life is a poodle right now.

 

[Pds314]

Since I don't know how to find the crafts on GitHub yet, I decided I would make as many as possible of my own devices.


Reentry pod and launcher:

Spoiler

Reentry pod Launch Vehicle. Val has already entered the pod so the lander can tower is no longer useful. The reason for the docking ports is so the orbital construction worker drone(s) can grab it from one end and place it on the mothership from the other. At which point the nosecone is not needed. Vehicle is overbuilt. Like, probably capable of sending Val to Duna instead of LKO. And it comes in at less than 13 tonnes at liftoff so I could carry some other stuff up in the same launch. Although partcount would need to be reduced by replacing the crew tower with something different.


Reentry pod. Includes probe core and solar panels and a single ladder.


Reentry pod reentering at 3150 m/s near-vertical, 26.5 G peak acceleration, from an 8600-kilometer drop.


Over 8600 kilometers, it appears Val drifts about 250 meters most of the time. This is unfortunate because of what it implies about interplanetary warping.

Tylo/Vall/PolBop Lander:

Spoiler

Vehicle to put it in LKO. Somewhat overpowered.


In LKO. Docking ports are for orbital construction and can be ejected to save weight.


Landing. Initial orbit was 10 km which means some gravity-induced cosine losses are needed unless your TWR is insane.


Landed. This thing has a marginal TWR at first, but it has 5138 Delta-V which is pretty overkill no matter what landing profile you want.


Launching back to orbit. With enough spare delta-V to Rendezvous with just about anything in lowish Tylo orbit without wasting Kerbal jetpack fuel.

Orbital construction worker drone:

Spoiler

Launch vehicle. Basically just a drop tank sitting on the drone's nose that it lifts using its engine, and a BACC booster with small fins. Pretty small and basic launcher.


The drone is generously equipped with a Terrier. This is so that it can move big things around in orbit. And so that it does not need a separate 2nd stage motor. Just a drop tank.


The drone is equipped with luxuries that are rare in this sort of mission. Generous RCS. Solar panels. Huge batteries. Actually-good reaction wheels. A docking port it can actually wield effectively. An efficient Gimbaling engine that's extremely powerful for its size. A full TWR of 3.5. The point is that it sticks parts together so the parts don't need to try to dock themselves. And if necessary it can tug things into different orbits too.

 

Edited August 21, 2019 by Pds314

[IncongruousGoat]

On 8/21/2019 at 1:25 AM, Pds314 said:

@IncongruousGoat How do I access your landers???

I haven't put them in the GitHub yet.

I'll do it when I get off of work today.

Edited September 1, 2019 by IncongruousGoat

[ManEatingApe]

Wow, so much activity!

20 hours ago, Jacke said:

This is me at my least Caveman, but delta-V is base stock in 1.7.3, so....

What's the delta-V sums of the planned mission (from LKO since orbital assemble) and how much padding will be needed for Caveman performance?

This is still update for debate. From LKO to Jool is at least:

2000 m/s Hohmann transfer + 200 m/s capture + 200 m/s to raise orbit to Tylo = 2,400 m/s

But that's with perfect precision so I'd at least 50% as a buffer!

9 hours ago, dvader said:

@ManEatingApe @IncongruousGoat Good work on the mission plan. It would be nice to do Tylo and Laythe early since those are the highest risk missions and I would not  like to be responsible for screwing up hours of hard work if the Laythe mission fails for some unexpected reason (like the staging issue that turned off SAS). Maybe parking the return craft at Vall instead and do Tylo-Laythe-Pol-Bop-Vall?

I have full confidence in your Laythe ascent abilities, especially after your nifty video!
Working our way inwards and leaving Laythe till last gives some nice dV benefits, so I'd stick with it.
As a last resort we can always revert to a previous save iteration and try a new approach if things go south.

11 hours ago, Pds314 said:

What kind of partcount/weight capabilities does each lander, etc need to have? Like, is a 2 tonne Tylo lander too heavy? Is 10 parts okay? 20? Where can we rely on Kerbal jetpacks if ever?

What about physical form factor? Does it need to be <Mk1? Mk1-ish, in between Mk1 and 2.5m? What about other vehicles?

Also WRT 4600 m/s vacuum Delta-V being enough to land on Tylo with a sane TWR and then return to orbit, then leave orbit and go to Bop and Pol, how? Tylo ground-level orbital speed is like 2145? You're gonna land, take off, leave Tylo orbit, escape Tylo orbit, and land on Pol, leave Pol, land on Bop, leave Bop, and return to the mothership with 4600 Delta-V? When it necessarilly takes 4290 even with impulsive burns to do a Tylo landing and orbit? And 900 more to leave Tylo SOI???

Or maybe I'm confused. Is the idea to have three separate Tylo landers? But only land one of them on Tylo and use the other two as long range lander-transfer stage combined?

I'll attempt to answer as best I can:

• Like, is a 2 tonne Tylo lander too heavy?
  Not at all, most of the landers are around the 2.0 to 2.5 ton mark. We'll need 3 landers, one Laythe ascent and a return Kerbin vehicle, so total payload to Jool hopefully comes in and around the 12.5 ton mark.
• Is 10 parts okay? 20?
  Part count only matters when you're launching, if you want to a single vehicle to orbit (no launchpad assemble). Mass rather than part count will be more important on the mothership.
• Where can we rely on Kerbal jetpacks if ever?
  Our intrepid Kerbal will be on a ladder from LKO all the way to Jool and back. We'll need their jetpack fuel to rendezvous with the craft after each time warp, so I wouldn't assume any spare dV for other reasons.
• Does it need to be <Mk1? Mk1-ish, in between Mk1 and 2.5m?
  I'd say Mk1-ish is a good compromise. We can design the mothership to have enough distance between docking ports.
• Is the idea to have three separate Tylo landers? But only land one of them on Tylo and use the other two as long range lander-transfer stage combined?
  Yes, 3 landers of the same design, 2 as lander-transfer combined. This is my fault for calling them Tylo landers, we need a name! Until @IncongruousGoat comes up with an official moniker I'm going to dub the design "Little Rascal".
  1st rascal will descend to Tylo surface and back.
  2nd rascal will remain in low Tylo orbit, land on Bop & Pol then go to Vall.
  3rd rascal will start in Vall orbit, land on Vall, then go to Laythe

6 hours ago, Pds314 said:

Since I don't know how to find the crafts on GitHub yet, I decided I would make as many as possible of my own devices.

Nice work on the re-entry shield and construction drone, they will come in very useful.
We have designs for the Laythe, Vall, Tylo Bop & Pol landers - would you like to take the design brief for the return craft?

Requirements:

• Capable of returning Kerbal safely from low Laythe orbit to Kerbin surface
• Ideally less than 3 tons
• Mk1-ish in size

3 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

I haven't put them in the GItHub yet.

I'll do it when I get off of work today.

As merge conflicts are unlikely when adding new craft files to the save file  @IncongruousGoat @dvader @Pds314 please feel free to open PRs with your designs and I'll add them to the save game.

Edited August 21, 2019 by ManEatingApe

[Jacke]

Would there be enough room in the mass budget on the Kerbin return craft for a Mk1 pod for our valiant Kerbal pioneer?  Just so not to taunt the Kraken with the station-keeping exercise of drifting during time warping on the way back.

[Pds314]

2 hours ago, Jacke said:

Would there be enough room in the mass budget on the Kerbin return craft for a Mk1 pod for our valiant Kerbal pioneer?  Just so not to taunt the Kraken with the station-keeping exercise of drifting during time warping on the way back.

How do you get the Kerbal back to the pod? I know they can't exit them unless on a surface, and I think they can't enter them either without astronaut complex upgrade, and at a mass budget of ~3000 kg to get from low Laythe orbit to Kerbin intercept, doing, say, a quick landing on a low gravity moon would seem to be impractical. Considering that a Mk1 pod minus monoprop is 800 kg on its own while a ladder and an Octo probe core are 105 kg. Or if you really want to go full every gram counts, a Stayputnik and a ladder are 55 kg.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Pds314

[ManEatingApe]

36 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

How do you get the Kerbal back to the pod?

Kerbals can enter a pod at any time, they just can't leave a pod, except on Kerbin's surface.

[Pds314]

2 hours ago, ManEatingApe said:

Kerbals can enter a pod at any time, they just can't leave a pod, except on Kerbin's surface.

Oh. I didn't know this.

Ofc concerns over weight still apply. Especially since it would actually have to land. Not fragment a fairing and have the Kerbal jump off and parachute.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Pds314

[IncongruousGoat]

@ManEatingApe I've got a commit ready for the Tylo lander, but I think you need to add me as a contributor to the repo before I can push my branch to the remote & make a PR. My GitHub username is tmaxthomas.

Oh, and something else I found out: KSP saves its files using whatever the native line ending convention is for the system it's on - which, on Windows, means that everything is saved using CRLF, and on Mac and Linux everything is saved using LF. Which, in turn, means that any time a file that was last committed on Windows is changed by someone on MacOS or Linux (or vice versa), git is going to report every line as having been changed. Which is fun.

[Pds314]

Amusingly, in launch failures for my return capsule, I have found that you don't need to have a parachute on the Kerbal or the craft. Its terminal velocity even in a warm climate (though not at the top of a mountain!) is under 50 m/s when the fairing is opened and the heat shield is jettisoned 

This is perfectly safe. At least if you wobble it a little left and right to ensure it slows down and the retrograde marker is off vertical by a tiny bit.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Pds314

[Pds314]

It works on land too. =D

Edited August 22, 2019 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Help! I need an adult!

"Do a Jool flyby" they said.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Pds314

[JAFO]

6 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

Help! I need an adult!

<snip>

No.. you need several more bucketfuls of dV than you've got...

Edited August 22, 2019 by JAFO

[Pds314]

5 minutes ago, JAFO said:

No.. you need several more buckets of dV than you've got...

I didn't realize no patched conics would mean it wouldn't tell me when I escaped Laythe's SOI. x_X

But hey, at least we have a reentry pod for our... 9.. kilometer... per second.... perfectly vertical... Jool... Reentry...

oh no.

I am ok with the events that are unfolding right now.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Pds314

[JAFO]

38 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

I didn't realize no patched conics would mean it wouldn't tell me when I escaped Laythe's SOI. x_X

Welcome to the world of KSP, Caveman style! Now you know why we generally cut our teeth on easier missions than a Jool5.

That said, it's good to have you along for the ride!

(Hint: For the real thing, after the current design/testing phase is complete, I can see several mods you're going to have to uninstall.. the dV tool, HyperEdit, and Vessel Mover at minimum. There's a couple of others there I don't recognise, but per the rules in the OP "no mods (except visual & audio)")

[Pds314]

1 hour ago, JAFO said:

Welcome to the world of KSP, Caveman style! Now you know why we generally cut our teeth on easier missions than a Jool5.

That said, it's good to have you along for the ride!

(Hint: For the real thing, after the current design/testing phase is complete, I can see several mods you're going to have to uninstall.. the dV tool, HyperEdit, and Vessel Mover at minimum. There's a couple of others there I don't recognise, but per the rules in the OP "no mods (except visual & audio)")

Well yeah, but this is for testing purposes.

Progress on 3.0-tonne Laythe Return vehicle:

(also known as guided crewed missile to dangerous objects)

It has 400 DV to spare, which is definitely enough to dodge Kerbol, if not by enough to be totally fine, then enough to micromanage the heat shield and be fine minus all ablator, but probably not enough to get a Kerbin SOI intercept, so at least I know it has a margin. Most of which I think can be cut I think. That or used to fix mistakes.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Pds314

[tfantonsen]

9 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Oh, and something else I found out: KSP saves its files using whatever the native line ending convention is for the system it's on - which, on Windows, means that everything is saved using CRLF, and on Mac and Linux everything is saved using LF. Which, in turn, means that any time a file that was last committed on Windows is changed by someone on MacOS or Linux (or vice versa), git is going to report every line as having been changed. Which is fun.

If it bothers enough to fix, add a  .gitattributes file that is committed in the root of the git repository.

This file should contain the following:

# no eol conversions!
* -text

Then everyone will commit their own kind of eol.

Whether KSP will read save games with non-native eol is to be tested. Perhaps it is better if everyone participating switches to macOs (ducks and covers )

Edited August 22, 2019 by tfantonsen

[IncongruousGoat]

3 hours ago, tfantonsen said:

Whether KSP will read save games with non-native eol is to be tested. Perhaps it is better if everyone participating switches to macOs (ducks and covers )

KSP will read non-native files just fine, but it'll convert them to native when writing changes back to disk. This is how I found this out - ManEatingApe's original commit contained files from MacOS, which I loaded on Windows... only to watch git diff freak out about line endings.

And if I'm switching to anything, it'll be to Linux. Which I just might, even if it means repairing my currently only half-functional Debian install.

[ManEatingApe]

15 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

I've got a commit ready for the Tylo lander, but I think you need to add me as a contributor to the repo before I can push my branch to the remote & make a PR.

Awesome, looking forward to the 1st contribution!
I'd like to stick to the open source fork-and-pull style (as then I won't have to manage permissions for many people) e.g.

• Fork repo
• Push change to branch on your fork
• Open PR between fork and original repo

6 hours ago, tfantonsen said:

If it bothers enough to fix, add a  .gitattributes file that is committed in the root of the git repository.

2 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

KSP will read non-native files just fine, but it'll convert them to native when writing changes back to disk. This is how I found this out - ManEatingApe's original commit contained files from MacOS, which I loaded on Windows... only to watch git diff freak out about line endings.

And if I'm switching to anything, it'll be to Linux. Which I just might, even if it means repairing my currently only half-functional Debian install.

Not only are we pushing the boundaries of Caveman knowledge but also cross-platform KSP compatibility

@tfantonsen Thanks for the .gitattributes tip, that wasn't something I was aware of!

I have now done something no self-respecting software developer should ever do and actually read the manual.

@IncongruousGoat Could you try creating a .gitattributes file with contents:

*          text=auto
*.md       text eol=lf
*.sfs      text eol=lf
*.craft    text eol=lf
*.loadmeta text eol=lf

This (allegedly) should instruct Git to convert Windows line endings to Mac/Linux when committing and reduce the noise in the diff.

@Pds314 Thoroughly enjoying your return vehicle testing, keep up the good work!

Edited August 22, 2019 by ManEatingApe

[Pds314]

11 hours ago, JAFO said:

Welcome to the world of KSP, Caveman style! Now you know why we generally cut our teeth on easier missions than a Jool5.

That said, it's good to have you along for the ride!

(Hint: For the real thing, after the current design/testing phase is complete, I can see several mods you're going to have to uninstall.. the dV tool, HyperEdit, and Vessel Mover at minimum. There's a couple of others there I don't recognise, but per the rules in the OP "no mods (except visual & audio)")

Delta V is not a mod. It's stock 1.7.3 even with no tech or upgrades.

[JAFO]

3 hours ago, Pds314 said:

Delta V is not a mod. It's stock 1.7.3 even with no tech or upgrades.

Ok.. I guess this shows it's been a while since I actually ran KSP. Last I knew, stock showed dV in the VAB and in the staging info in flight, but I don't recall ever seeing a button for it in the toolbar. That's why I kind of assumed it was for DMagic's Basic DeltaV mod. My bad.

[Pds314]

19 minutes ago, JAFO said:

Ok.. I guess this shows it's been a while since I actually ran KSP. Last I knew, stock showed dV in the VAB and in the staging info in flight, but I don't recall ever seeing a button for it in the toolbar. That's why I kind of assumed it was for DMagic's Basic DeltaV mod. My bad.

Who is that lol?

[JAFO]

2 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

Who is that lol?

Seriously?

It's still useful even with the stock dV displays.. it improves on them considerably.

[Pds314]

Maybe not super useful, but in trying to figure out the exact launch speeds and burn DVs to reach Kerbin, I did find that the return pod can do okay against Jool at a 30-degree angle coming in from Laythe. Obviously it is Jool so you're screwed either way, but I think that pretty much proves it should survive any concievable Kerbin reentry one might want to throw at it.


 

Edited August 23, 2019 by Pds314