slamming Minmus in the name of Science

[MPDerksen]

Typical contract.  I need 50% data from the deployable seismic experiment that's sitting on Minmus.  Already easily deployed with control, solar, comm station.  I'm ready to rig up a probe and go pounding the nearby surface.

How close, and how much mass do I need to throw at it?  It would be more fun to have like 4 small probes and hit it in sequence.  But too small and it will take dozens.  A single, mammoth probe could be pretty too.  

What are the rules to get this done without excessive trips?

[Streetwind]

I don't know the rules. But the contract is easier than you might think.

I dropped a spent transfer stage on my seismometer, from the surface base I was landing at the same site as the surface experiments, so that was just the convenient thing to do. Had a poodle engine, an empty Rockomax X200-32 fuel tank, and a decoupler - so less than 4 tons in total. The dead stage impacted a cliff face about 2 kilometers away, going at slightly less than orbital velocity (between 150 and 200 m/s).

This instantly put me from 0% to 100%.

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by Streetwind

[AHHans]

I don't really recall what I used to fulfill that, but it wasn't much. On the Mun, Minmus, and Ike I just dumped spent upper stages that I used in the transfer to these bodies or stuff that I had flying around in orbit and wanted to get rid of anyhow, without seriously aiming for the seismic detector site. (On Minmus I didn't even crash the crappy lander that I used on my first visit there, it doesn't have a probe core and by the time I got a Kerbal to it I had already maxed out the seismic science.)

Duna on the other hand was a different story. The atmosphere is pretty thin, but still thick enough that I had to build a dedicated (and streamlined) impactor craft and aimed it for the detector site to get the contract fulfilled. (After that I decided to not accept a deployed seismic science contract for Eve!)

8 hours ago, MPDerksen said:

It would be more fun to have like 4 small probes and hit it in sequence.  But too small and it will take dozens.

My standard probes use a FL-T400 and a terrier for propulsion (and then probe cores, solar panels, antennas etc. to match the job at hand). I think one of those might already be enough if impacting at high speed close-ish to the detector. Two of them should be plenty, four overkill.

[mystifeid]

On 11/1/2019 at 7:25 PM, AHHans said:

(After that I decided to not accept a deployed seismic science contract for Eve!)

It's been a few months and things might have changed but I got Eve to work by impacting 91 tons at 8km distance from the sensor. The craft comes down at floaty speeds and left to itself registers a negligible impact. What made it work was staging a few radial S3 tanks (with attached Rhinos) at 100m altitude.

Edited November 2, 2019 by mystifeid

[AHHans]

59 minutes ago, mystifeid said:

but I got Eve to work by impacting 91 tons at 8km distance from the sensor.

I didn't want to say it's impossible, but if that's what it takes then I'm not interested at the moment.

[MPDerksen]

Mission accomplished.  I made a 4-pack of little probes.  Antennae, QBE core, tiny reaction wheel, small battery, Oscar tank and a twitch engine.  Total package was 0.4tons full, and 0.2tons empty for each one.  I carried it to Minmus easy enough connected to individual couplers around a small girder above my HECS2 core.

Once I got 90 degrees from the target, I would launch 1 of them, go retrograde at a steep angle to drop on the target.  Once I was sure I was over the last mountain, I would burn prograde at the site.  I hit 200-2000 meters from it and cleared the contract with my little smart bombs in 3 impacts.  I still have 1 left as well as the carrier probe.  Too bad I didn’t stick a thermometer on there, since I could get $40K for “science around Minmus) that I forgot I had in the queue.

The total ship cost about $30,000, and I got 10x that for the contract.  

I would post a pic, but TinyPic site is gone, and I’m not sure where to host my images.

Edited November 2, 2019 by MPDerksen