Terran(ism) Space Program (finished!)

[jimmymcgoochie]

It turns out that removing a rated burn time entirely causes a lot of errors, so instead I did the next best thing and increased it to a frankly stupid number:

Ten billion seconds should do the trick.

With that problem solved, the first attempt at landing was a resounding success with plenty of fuel to spare and only one ignition used, although accuracy wasn't spectacular and it landed about 5km away from the base. A long distance to walk, but that's why I sent a rover!

A quick drive in the rover and Brian and Viktoriya headed over to fix up those deployed RTGs, doubling their power output and allowing the rest of the deployed science experiments to be switched on. The deployed communication dish is still switched off as it needs more power to run that too, but a third deployed RTG will be sent up with the second reusable lander later.

A quick crewed flight in LEO netted about 350k funds and a few months added to the three veterans' retirement dates:

That flight took enough time that my latest creation was ready- a reusable rocket to rake in data units on the NK-15-VM engine that I use extensively, but which now has a proper TestLite config which means engine failures and limited burn times. Due to the size and power of the engine, a suitable large rocket had to be made which meant a truly enormous parachute was needed to bring it down safely at the end of the flight:

Plenty of data units were gathered and the rocket landed intact and undamaged. It's back in the VAB being refitted slightly to increase the data units gathered from each flight before flying again, and hopefully several more times after that.

Another test flight next, but in a simulation- now that I have reusable Moon landers I need a fuel tanker to carry the necessary fuel to fill them up between landings. It sounds simple, but shipping 40 tons of hypergolic propellants out to the Moon is harder than it sounds!

This test flight was a success and rendezvoused with the station with a comfortable fuel margin, however I couldn't dock as there were two Apollo craft already docked to the two compatible docking ports. I've solved this problem using the simplest method possible- add both Apollo docking ports so it can dock to anything! Future designs will use an androgynous docking port such as the APAS or CBM to avoid this issue, but for now putting both ports on the same craft is the best way to do it.

Final scores for today:

I demolished the 150 and 700 ton launchpads due to a lack of use, leaving the 60t, 350t, two 1500t and an unlimited mass launchpad, of which four are currently in use as two Blue Backgammon visible imaging satellites (improved Grey Kebabs designed for higher orbits), another Yellow Croissant (LEO Apollo) and the second reusable Moon lander (designated Y as it uses a different engine config giving deeper throttling at a slight cost in ISP) all prepare for launch. There are about 10 days left on the timers for the Moon base and Moon station, even if neither contract is detecting their respective craft properly, and once the Moon base contract is done I'll probably send two of the crew back up to orbit while the other two head off to explore a nearby biome with the rover.

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/k1nbU0y

Coming up next time: More launches and more Moon action.

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

The first of the new Blue Backgammon imaging satellites was plagued with issues, requiring at least two rollbacks to fix critical issues discovered on the launchpad, and a third rollback for the second identical craft when I got this one into its final orbit only to discover that the solar panels weren't set to track the Sun:

It can operate with just one panel, but that's a blunder I could have done without. Subsequent models have been fixed and should be able to launch without any further fixes.

Now for some prototyping- at some point I put in an alarm for a fast transfer to Pluto, taking under a decade but requiring a lot of delta-V just to get a flyby of that no-longer-a-real-planet. Initially I tried to get away with using a 700 ton Blue Chess-class rocket, but the delta-V was inadequate and I realised that the probe could probably be made substantially lighter by using older, lower value science experiments that complete their experiments faster and are also lighter.

There were also some control issues with the 700 ton rocket...

Putting the probe on top of a White Nimbus rocket with the tanks stretched as far as tooling (and having a reasonable TWR at launch) would allow, then using the most efficient chemical rocket available (the Advanced OTV engine from CH4 with a whopping 492s ISP) and cramming a faintly ridiculous amount of fuel onto it boosted the range to over 30km/s vacuum delta-V on the pad.

3 kilotons of rocket, just 713kg of probe.

The new probe, named White Tombaugh after the discoverer of Pluto, has been added to the build queue, with a launch window in about 4 months' time.

The second launch of the Orange Arrow "sounding rocket" to rake in data units for the NK-15-VM engine went awry- first it flipped out while still fairly low over Cape Canaveral, then one engine failed to light twice, but I eventually recovered control and sent it straight up to an altitude of over 1000km; that was probably too high as the engines burnt off during re-entry and then the fins angled the wrong way so instead of cancelling the roll they made it worse and worse until the whole rocket broke apart. Bad for throwing debris across the middle of Florida, and for reusing that rocket again and again to really boost the engines' reliability, but two successful flights got a good chunk of data units and it was pretty cheap anyway.

Final scores:

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/q4xcApE

Coming up next time: Launching that second reusable Moon lander, and I should probably build a resupply mission to take food etc. to the Moon base and station- the station should be fine for a while, but the base will only last a couple of months with four crew aboard.

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Slow progress over the last few days, I've been trying to design a resupply rover for the Moon base to solve the "nearly running out of water" situation, among other things.

In the meantime, I went through the 86(!) albums of screenshots and picked out some of my favourites to use as loading screens. Montage!

 

And a bonus shot of my Black Arrow replica too, because for some strange reason I just like the Black Arrow, OK?

Link to the full album with MOAR PICTURES: https://imgur.com/a/GUlxtpH

Edited July 1, 2021 by jimmymcgoochie

[jimmymcgoochie]

The test flight of the Blue Counter resupply rover went well, until it didn't:

That's what these simulations are for! There's nothing wrong with the design, it's just hard to tell when to start braking when KER's suicide burn indicator tells you to start 10 minutes early or when you're under the ground.

On to another test- with new tech levels available, I upgraded the nuclear space tug concept and tested that it could still be launched.

Despite the comically large payload and fairing making this the tallest rocket I think I've ever made in KSP, ever, there were no issues with the aerodynamics or the weight balance and it made it to space comfortably.

Yellow Muffin Y headed out to the Moon. The payload fairing on top of the second stage is tiny because of an update to one of the RO-related mods that adds procedural fairings, there was a message about not using Craft Manager (which I do) and opening/saving each craft file to fix this, but a) I didn't do that and b) this design was already built when I did the updates.

My initial plan was to try a direct descent using the entirety of that upper stage to brake, but the base was in the wrong place so I ended up aiming for the Yellow Profiterole station instead.

There was just enough time left to launch another Blue Backgammon imaging satellite into a near-geosynchronous orbit.

Final scores:

Ironically enough, the resupply rover is going to take so long to build that the 30 day timer on the Moon base contract will have completed and I can send two of the crew back to space, making the resupply much less important. Still worth doing it though, if nothing else it'll work nicely as a proof of concept and add some tank space for waste water, allowing the water recyclers to work and extend the water supply quite considerably.

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/oyCmp1Z

Coming up next time: More Moon-related shenanigans- six crew are currently on or around the Moon, but I'm going to send some of them home and once the base is in daylight again the remaining crew will head out in the rover to explore nearby biomes.

Edited July 4, 2021 by jimmymcgoochie

[jimmymcgoochie]

Time to finish what I started last time- the Yellow Muffin Y arrives at the Moon station and, after a bit of finagling, docks to it.

The last Moonbound launch for a while, Blue Counter will bring supplies to the Moon base just after two of the four crew have left. While this makes it slightly superfluous, it's useful as a proof of concept and will also add the ability to recycle waste water into drinkable water, further extending the water supply.

Victoria and Viktoriya are leaving the Moon base as soon as the 30 days for the contract are done, using the last of the single-use Yellow Muffins. This ascent was a bit problematic- even with over 200m/s in the descent stage to give it a kick off the ground, by the time it reached the station it was running on fumes and barely managed to dock.

I suspect a mod update has changed something, most likely Kerbalism as the ECLSS modules now (correctly) only allow one type of life support system in them- this might have added weight to any in-flight craft, though I can't say for sure that this is the case.

A simple landing for the Blue Counter was marred by a strange Kraken attack where as soon as the rover decoupled from its landing stage the rover was hurled skywards at over 500m/s, minus a variety of parts and spinning wildly.

There's no obvious reason why this happened- no part clipping and the decoupler doesn't have much force in it. I had to use a combination of object thrower to destroy the landing stage and set position to put the rover back on the ground. After all that, the drive over to the base was uneventful as the ground is almost completely flat. With the crew rover directly between the landing site and the base, it made sense to grab hold of that and drive them both over to the base together.

A little bit of fiddling with the wheels so it could drive properly and both rovers arrived at the base a few minutes later.

No more supply issues!

I was originally planning to leave the Elviras and Vicky/Vikky on the Moon station, but having four crew in cramped places was causing stress issues- the Vs were first to get warnings as the Moon base is smaller, but the Elviras got warnings on the way back after I decided to call them all home. During re-entry, another mod update-related issue reared its ugly head- the heatshields are a little iffy and in this case the Apollo heatshield didn't shield the Apollo capsule as it's supposed to, and as it has done many times- only the "ignore max temperatures" cheat saved them this time.

It's a known issue on the RO/RP-1 discord, I've stuck a generic 4m heatshield on the next one to see if that's any better.

Two contracts- Moon station and Moon orbit- added two million funds, with the extended stay on the Moon base adding several years to Vicky and Vikky's retirement dates and even fellow Moon base veterans Elvira and Elvira adding over a year to theirs.

 

And now for something completely different:

The first of the Mars flotilla, the Blue Knight Mars parks itself in a 495km polar orbit and within 48 hours completes the low-res altimetry scans, netting almost a million funds from a contract to do that plus a Mars orbital science probe contract too. It then moved to a higher orbit- all the way up to 4950km- to complete the high-res altimetry and biome scans more effectively, as those scanners work better at much higher altitudes.

A few hours after this, the Blue Queen sample return probe arrived for its circularisation burn- and then the game crashed . I'll pick that one up another time.

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/zKjGNdH

Coming up next time- a lot of probes capturing around Mars and making course corrections for the four Jupiter-bound White Herschel probes. This is why I wanted to move forwards in time, lots of missions in flight and this Mars flotilla has many contracts riding on it too.

[jimmymcgoochie]

I did it again...

Those two, plus contracts to do All The SCANs of Ceres and Vesta were enough to pay for a new unlimited-class launchpad and throw a lot of KCT points at R&D.

With that out of my system, I went back to check on Blue Queen and fortunately enough it saved after capturing into orbit, before the game crashed! Unfortunately it doesn't have the fuel to get back to Earth even without all the samples aboard, so I'll have to steal some fuel from something else.

There was a short break in the list of capture burns and course corrections, so I launched the first White Planck fuel tanker up to the Moon:

It'll take a few days to get there; in that time there are more Mars missions to take care of.

First up- the White Pawn sample launcher, which suffered an engine ignition failure during its capture and ended up on a suborbital trajectory, but that worked in my favour and made an equatorial landing possible.

Spoiler

And one that glitched:

White Planck then arrived and docked at the Moon station. It's blocking the port for the second Apollo craft, but it was late at night and MJ already messed up the docking once so I just wanted it done at that point; I'll move it when I need to.

The next day, four White Herschel probes had course corrections to set them on course to visit their respective Jovian moons.

Some weird boiloff issues happened though- two of the probes had lost ~20% of their lox but had no boiloff, but the other two were full of lox but had active boiloff. Weird.

And the weirdness continued with the Orange Island rover- the moment the cruise stage decoupled, the whole craft began spinning wildly and the fairings looked like they were peeling apart. This was a problem at 5500m/s during a direct descent into the Martian atmosphere, but amazingly the rover survived unscathed, pulled some staggering G-forces as the parachute deployed and landed safely.

Now it's a simple 7000km drive to the waypoints to complete the rover contract, plus however far it is from that point to the landing site of the Blue Pawn to drop off the samples it's collecting along the way.

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/hqqX5Tz

Coming up next time: The last of the Mars flotilla arrive, plus the Black Galileo arrives at Mercury. There's another probe arriving somewhere too, but I can't remember its name or where it's going...

[jimmymcgoochie]

Blue King arrived at Phobos to begin sample collection. The orbiter section has a healthy fuel reserve, which will be useful as any fuel it doesn't use will go to the Blue Queen to make up the shortfall there.

There was also a juicy contract for doing a landing on Phobos.

On the subject of contracts- due to the really low movement speed on the Orange Island rover it'll take 93 days of continuous driving for it to reach the rover waypoints- and that's without stopping at night, which it might not have to depending on how Bon Voyage reacts to the batteries being charged by an RTG that it doesn't recognise but which still generates power.

And on the subject of roving- Brian and Dave took the Yellow Mille-feuille rover out for a spin to visit some new biomes and grab some surface samples to analyse in the base's lab. This went mostly according to plan...

Bon Voyage kept spawning it in standing on its nose, but the front section is angled so it always dropped down onto its wheels and no damage was done. I then discovered that Brian and Dave couldn't get the samples out of the rover; this might be fixed by a reboot and reload, or I may have to do some grappler-related shenanigans to transfer it to the supply rover and from there to the base.

And last, but certainly not least, Black Galileo arrived at Mercury, braked into orbit and then landed on the daylight side. The upper stage had a huge fuel reserve- over 3km/s when I had to ditch it just before landing- so the lander itself had almost all of its fuel remaining after touching down in the midlands.

Two million funds for the Mercury landing contract, well over a thousand science even from the lightweight set of experiments chosen to maximise delta-V and enough fuel to do a short hop over to the nearby highlands for double the science! (The target in the image below is the engine from the crashed transfer stage seen in the image above)

With all the science from the Moon, Mars and Mercury rolling in, the KCT points really stacked up:

That's a lot of freebies! And a lot of science points to throw a lot more nodes on the research queue, and plenty of funds to add even more KCT points to speed up R&D even more.

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/tdWbaQz

Coming up next time: After the big science gains from Moon roving, I think sending a proper science rover to the Moon would be a good idea to scrape up every last dribble of science I can get. I also need to send a replacement crew up to the Moon as Dave and Brian need to get home for a contract, and a break from their several months in space.

Edited July 7, 2021 by jimmymcgoochie

[jimmymcgoochie]

Short update today but some useful progress.

A short trip to LEO to complete some crewed orbit contracts had to stay up for 16 days, pushing the supplies to their limits.

All went well, the two time periods passed in the tracking station as I took care of a few other missions, and then when I brought them down again I got this:

 How does going to LEO for a couple of weeks trigger this? I didn't even look at Mars! I refunded 3 million funds from these two contracts and will put that back when I actually return samples from Mars and Phobos. The two LEO contracts, as usual, didn't fire as I didn't focus on the craft the entire time, but I force-completed those.

The other mission I was focussing on was a second Moon expedition as Brian and Dave headed out to explore the northern reaches of the Moon. Two new biomes were visited- north pole and Mare Frigoris- and then there were some Bon Voyage related difficulties that nearly got them stranded in the dark with no power until I found a solution (hack the save file to put the mysteriously disappeared hydrogen back so the fuel cells can run and power them in the dark). Game plays dirty, I play dirty...

The science income is starting to run away now, I spent about 5000 science today alone and there's still more coming in along with copious KCT point bonanzas.

Oh, and that mystery probe I mentioned last time? Turns out it's Orange Tureen 1 and is hurtling down into Saturn's gravity well right now. A small course correction set it on course to fly past Enceladus, though due to that moon's small SOI and the high speed of the flyby it'll be an encounter barely a minute long. Nice pictures though hopefully.

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/cewUimP

Coming up next time: A new crew is ready to take over Moon base duties. For some reason the Mk2 lander can won't let me remove samples with an EVA Kerbal so I've resorted to using the resupply rover to grab the other rover, remove one sample and put that in the base; it's a bit time consuming but it does the job, though at the rate the samples get processed it'll take forever to get through them all. I might send a sample return mission of some kind to take them back to Earth...

[jimmymcgoochie]

Update- all my free time recently has gone into Dyson Sphere Program, somI’ve had no time for KSP; that‘ll probably be the case for a while because a) DSP is a real time sink and also really good fun, and b) I’ve gotten a bit burnt out with this game lately so some time away will mean I can come back fresh to make that Mars mission happen.

I’ll be back 

[Pipcard]

On 7/15/2021 at 4:59 AM, jimmymcgoochie said:

Update- all my free time recently has gone into Dyson Sphere Program, somI’ve had no time for KSP; that‘ll probably be the case for a while because a) DSP is a real time sink and also really good fun, and b) I’ve gotten a bit burnt out with this game lately so some time away will mean I can come back fresh to make that Mars mission happen.

I’ll be back 

I played DSP (my first factory game) for a while in February, and while I love the overall concept, I went back to KSP as that game really needs blueprints to prevent tedium when the production chains become really complex. I'll also wait for further quality-of-life improvements. Right now, I am also taking a break from KSP by playing Project Wingman and the Halo Master Chief Collection, because I don't want to get burned out either.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Pipcard

[jimmymcgoochie]

Update- my graphics card failed yesterday

Fortunately it's still under warranty, but until it gets repaired/replaced I simply can't boot up this save due to all the graphics mods I'm running and I'm not going to remove them all as it would look terrible compared to the rest of this report.

I'm still coming back though (eventually ) to get that Mars mission done- and more!

[Spaceman.Spiff]

27 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

my graphics card

That’s too bad 

I hope that all gets resolved soon. This is probably my favorite active mission report. 

[jimmymcgoochie]

While my GPU is off for repair, I’ve been doing another little career report thingy- this time with less reporting and more storytelling. Check it out here:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/203971-into-the-snarkiverse-or-what-im-doing-while-my-graphics-card-is-kaput/

[jimmymcgoochie]

Quick update- new GPU is working, I fired up this save again and launched another Green Condor contract satellite and everything still works. That wasn't guaranteed due to save-breaking changes to things like RealFuels in their most recent versions, but fortunately I haven't installed any of that so I can continue this when I come back to it.

Mars isn't going to get flags and footprints on it by itself!

[JoeSheridan]

Nice to hear that  Too bad that, of all the parts, it exactly had to have been your GPU to fail  Bad timing to buy a new one.

And i hope they make some of that save breaking changes in RealFuels etc. "un-save breaking" again in future versions.

So... you still say "Then Mars it is"   you have great plans...... i am for myself still working on breaking a kerbal to duna and back alive with kerbalism BEFORE there comes AGAIN either some mod (or in the past game) update and kills my save or my ships. For real: The last couple of years i try to to that with the plan to move afterwards towards what you do now: going to mars in RSS and every single time when i just unlock the needed techs,  then comes either some update, some bug ore just my stupidity to build a lander that can bring a crew down in one peace AND back into orbit.

But would we be KSP-Players if we would let us stop by such things? No, instead we try it again without regards to what (among others) Einstein said: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

We are just a bunch of insane maniacs that try again and again until we have done the job  There is no stop: Not by bugs, game and mod updates, nor by crashing computers. Let´s bring some little boots on the red ground and show us the smiling green faces behind their visors  

Good luck   

[Kerminator K-100]

On 4/28/2021 at 1:55 PM, jimmymcgoochie said:

@Spaceman.Spiffthis one's for you... There are good greens- the green of freshly grown grass, of leaves emerging as the last frost of winter thaws, of crisp apples, juicy kiwis and zesty limes. And then there's the green of pentaborane combustion, now even greener thanks to Waterfall plumes:

The green color of glowing uranium?

Also I love the names your giving the rockets! This was a good read, I'm hoping it comes back some time

[MCWither_Storm]

Is everything going good?

[jimmymcgoochie]

On 10/5/2021 at 8:34 PM, MCWither_Storm said:

Is everything going good?

Yes, but this series is on a temporary pause. A while ago my GPU died and while I was waiting for a replacement I started a new career game in a much more stock-ish KSP that turned into a mini story (INto the Snarkiverse) that’s taking up nearly all my KSP time right now. I’m also running a space race and so trying to complete my own challenges to know if they’re possible, which takes what little KSP time is left.

Don’t worry though, Terranism Space Program will return!

Edited February 1, 2022 by jimmymcgoochie

[jimmymcgoochie]

Booted up this save again after some mod updates (I'm really not missing those 30 minute load times! ) and managed to launch a boring old Orange Cliff into a Molniya orbit. Good to see that everything still works, I'll be back fairly soon to concentrate on this full time once my "Into the Snarkiverse" series is done.

[jimmymcgoochie]

I'm back!

With a functioning GPU and my Snarkiverse playthrough completed, it's about time I got this Mars mission done, don't you think? Unfortunately this will require a lot of contract sat launches to pay for the ship (launched in 4 parts) plus the nuclear space tug which will grab them in orbit and put them together.

So obviously this save realised that I was away for a few months and was pretty bitter about it- three engine failures in the first three launches. Fortunately none were problematic- two failures on RD-58s which have many restarts and one on an M-1 on the pad which I caught before it released the clamps.

Ann, Arkady and Daniel are heading up to the Moon- Arkady and Daniel will be going down to the Moon base to replace the current crew, who are getting a bit irradiated and a bit stressed, while Ann will stay on the station and possibly travel back with the old base crew to avoid leaving her alone on the station for an extended period of time.

Rendezvous was a bit close for comfort, flying past the station at about 100m/s; then during the final closing phase I timewarped a bit too far and crashed into the station at about 1m/s (oops). No damage done though and docking could proceed.

Or at least, it should have, except for the minor problem of having a lander refuel module docked to one port and the last Yellow Pain-au-chocolat docked to the other. The tanker's design had this exact scenario in mind, however, and it simply undocked from the port on the end and moved to a side port instead- the ports on the end are the concave part to work with the Apollo capsules' docking probe thingy, while the ports on the sides have the docking probes and are where the landers will dock as they use the concave bit; the fuel tanker has both types of ports.

Spoiler

Yes, using an androgynous port for everything would be a lot more convenient, but I launched this station a while ago and the Apollo capsules can't use non-androgynous ports anyway.

With the crew now waiting for the Moon to rotate around so the base was under their orbit, there was time to launch a few contract sats to make some easy money. Each Green Condor takes a whopping 38 hours to build, rising to about 90 hours for the larger Orange Cliff, so I expect to do A LOT of these contracts in the near future to pay for the Mars mission.

Final scores:

The next major launch will be the White Tombaugh probe, aiming to reach Pluto within a decade (and named after the man who discovered it); a series of Blue Draughtsman science probes also await their transfer windows.

The first part of the Mars project, the nuclear space tug, is also on the build queue; further launches will require a superheavy rocket, probably one of those pentaborane-powered monstrosities I was experimenting with a while back. The whole ship will be over 2000 tons when fully assembled, which gives you some idea of the challenge I'll have to get the thing into orbit.

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/GBOan8Q

Coming up next time: I might put together a Venus lander/rover for the next transfer window to break up the monotony of launching cloned rockets for contracts. There's also another Moon landing to do.

 

Edited November 17, 2021 by jimmymcgoochie

[jimmymcgoochie]

So, those pentaborane super-rockets I made a while ago? Turns out between then and now someone has (very inconsiderately) added a rated burn time of under 150 seconds to the RD-270M so now none of them work. Back to the drawing board, I guess...

Spoiler

You can see some of the attempts to launch them, and some intermediate steps between them and this next rocket, on the Imgur album.

As it turns out, a sick day off work meant I had most of a day to burn and spent most of that time iterating on the previous Black Emperor 750TTLEO rocket to the point where it didn't use a single RD-270M at all- the core became hydrolox with six M-1s and the boosters became kerolox with 2x F-1A and 1x E-1 slotted in between for a bit of extra oomph off the pad; the boosters were comically oversized as they had to hold both the kerolox mix for the booster engines but also a significant quantity of hydrolox for the core stage too, acting as drop tanks in the same way that I often do with solid boosters in stock-ish KSP.

In the end it proved more than up to the task- while total payload to LEO is down to about 700 tons, that's still more than I need to put the various component parts of the Mars ship into orbit, plus it doesn't need any new tooling beyond the newest avionics available (which pay for their own tooling the first time you use them, the cost goes down by the same amount as it costs to tool them; ironically enough I then unlocked another tech node with the last avionics upgrade shortly afterwards...)

The only trouble with that whole plan is the cost- about a million funds per launch, with four launches required to assemble the ship (plus a lander that I really should think about designing...) and I simply don't have that kind of cash. Fortunately, I do have a means of getting it which involves sending two crew down to the surface of the Moon and bringing the pair already down there back home. Moontage!

And now for the egregious bug, tentatively blamed on Procedural Parts:

Brian and Dave drove the rover over to the Yellow Muffin X lander to return to orbit; note the correct paint job with the white, red and black pattern. I then drove the rover back to the base, just outside physics range, then when I switched back to the lander...

Paintjob gone! This happened every time I loaded a craft- in the editor, in flight, previously built craft spawned in via KCT on the launchpads- and it's always resetting the tanks to the default values of plain metal sides and custom ends (annoying circles, see below); weirdly the paint scheme on the sides seems to persist the first time the craft is loaded even though the settings have changed, but load it again and it resets itself to a single colour. I've rolled back PP to see if that prevents this issue, but several crafts have already been affected and I may have to redesign some stuff to fix whatever hasn't been launched yet.

After returning to the station there was a bit of an awkward moment as disabling the lander's generic thrusters also caused one of the Yellow Pain-au-chocolat Apollo craft to undock; worse still, its RCS thrusters refused to fire due to a strange propellant imbalance. Pilot Ann jetted over and managed to sort things out, docking back to the station and fixing up the propellant issues before Dave and Brian joined her for the return trip.

During their five day return trip there was plenty of time to launch some probes.

The White Tombaugh was first, suffering a minor mishap as part of the fairing got stuck on the edge of the S1-S2 interstage for a while after separation but proceeding to orbit without any harm done. A periapsis kick to lessen the transfer burn duration, an apoapsis kick to avoid the atmosphere and a near 30 minute burn hurled the probe off towards Pluto at a staggering speed. No chance of an orbit out there, but the probe is aiming to bomb into Pluto's "atmosphere", which makes Mars' look like Venus', or attempt a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flyby of Charon.

Spoiler

Not helped by the weird bug that caused the probe to pull 1250G when it decoupled from the upper stage, accelerating 5km/s instantly and throwing the trajectory off; it took a while to fix that one...

Next to launch was the first of two Blue Backgammon Mk2 orbiter/rover missions destined for Venus. The first Blue Backgammon worked pretty well and has returned a plethora of science, but the Mk2 features better science experiments and minor tech upgrades across the board.

Following on the heels of that launch was the Blue Draughtsman Venus, the first of a series of Blue Draughtsman probes that will head to various planets in the next year or so. Featuring more and better science than the Blue Backgammon Mk2 orbiters, this probe should rake in the science.

The second Blue Backgammon Mk2 wasn't ready in time to be launched with these probes so will launch when it can to catch the tail end of the transfer window.

A few days later, Ann, Dave and Brian returned to Earth, definitely didn't explode because the Apollo heatshield is bugged and lets the capsule behind it overheat on re-entry and splashed down safely, completing two contracts- the first, rotate the crew of the Moon station, paid a handy half million; the second, expanded Lunar surface outpost, paid out ten times that amount, enough to build all the parts of the Mars ship and tool all the parts that needed tooling for it too.

Final scores for this report:

There has also been a veritable flood of science coming in recently- over 3000 points since the last report!- which gave a ton of KCT points and allowed nearly every tech node that actually has something in it to be added to the queue. Not that I plan to actually get that far along, but you never know...

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/oWnuFGo

Coming up next time: The second Venus rover, maybe a sample return device to get all the samples currently stuck on the Moon's surface back to Earth (five in the rover, five in the base being processed at a heady 3B/s) and possibly the launch of the Nuclear Space Tug. I'll also assess the damage to the planned vessels' paint schemes and fix it where possible, though anything currently in existence is probably borked for good

[Spaceman.Spiff]

13 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Paintjob gone! This happened every time I loaded a craft- in the editor, in flight, previously built craft spawned in via KCT on the launchpads- and it's always resetting the tanks to the default values of plain metal sides and custom ends (annoying circles, see below);

That’s an issue with updating to the newest versions. 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Rolling back a version of Procedural Parts fixed the paint issues, at least on everything I've looked at so far; I haven't looked at anything that got mangled last time but I might be able to do some save file hacking to fix it, maybe...

First launch today is the second Blue Bungalow Mk2, following its twin a day later:

It was dispatched to Venus, course correction plotted- only an hour later than its sibling despite leaving a day later, oddly enough. The new science experiments returned a nice haul of science data as they flew out of Earth's SOI too.

And now for some pure eye candy- my first Saturn flyby, ever!

A minor course correction was enough to swoop past the south pole of Enceladus at a mere 3km altitude; sadly no geysers detected, which could be because a) the south pole was in darkness due to Saturn's position in its orbit so the geysers simply weren't active, b) EVO's effects didn't load correctly/at all or c) both. Either way it gave a nice little science boost, although I missed an opportunity by forgetting that once the Saturn flyby contract was completed it would unlock flyby contracts for the moons, so I didn't take the Enceladus flyby contract until after this flyby was complete.

With the RTGs depleted noticeably from when the probe was launched, power is a bit of an issue especially when trying to dump half a gigabyte of image spectroscopy data; that single experiment was using the most power, lasts the longest and producing vastly more data than all other experiments combined, yet had a really poor science reward for it, so I switched that off and the power situation was largely resolved. There should be enough power to complete the remaining experiments and transmit their data before leaving Saturn's SOI.

The probe also came fairly close to Titan, getting a glimpse of its distinctive orange colouration; with a bit more trajectory finessing, maybe a Titan flyby would have been possible instead of Enceladus?

Final scores for this report:

The first of the new Green Condor Mk5 weather sat rockets launched with no issues at all; the first Orange Cliff Mk4, not so much- it reached its initial orbit fine, but ran out of RCS propellant and power before it could boost to its final tundra orbit. Both shortages have now been resolved (hopefully) and future models should be able to reach their target orbits without such issues.

I also looked at adding some SCANsat parts to the Blue Draughtsman probes going to Ceres and Vesta, however the parts required are far too large and heavy for a Blue (700t) class probe. Rummaging around the craft files I came to the White Planck, the Moon fuel tanker that's built to take propellant out for the reusable Moon landers, which can handle about 40 tons of payload with a decent delta-V. Chopping off the propellant tank and replacing it with some SCANsat parts, solar panels and RTGs created a probe that has a delta-V of about 9km/s- which should be more than enough for this mission. It also has the added bonuses of using existing parts and tooling, reliable engines with many restarts, reduced lox boiloff due to the distance from the Sun and it can be launched using a two-booster White Cloud which reduces launch costs.

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/gbux2Gv

Coming up next time: Maybe I'll do that Moon sample return thing that I said I was going to do last time, or maybe I'll forget about it again...

Edited November 22, 2021 by jimmymcgoochie
Added imgur album link

[jimmymcgoochie]

I finally did that Moon rover thing I was talking about. Nothing fancy, just an old Orange Mug rover from many reports back stuck on top of a modified Orange Cliff.

Direct descent Moon landing, just like I used to do many months ago (in real time- in game time it's the better part of a decade now), was successful at the  "putting the rover on the surface in one piece"bit, less so for the "landing on the same hemisphere as the base" bit. I'll let Bon Voyage make up the difference.

A veteran crew of Moon landers went up to do some crewed LEO contracts, which wasn't terribly interesting for them judging by their 2-4 month retirement extensions but made a tidy sum in contract money and also proved the latest iteration of the Yellow Croissant is fully capable of completing these contracts. This mission also took this save over to 1964- the year when I aim to launch a crew out to Mars, though they'll probably arrive in early 1965 due to the timing of the transfer window.

As usual for these flights, the upper stage deorbited itself after stage separation.

Onwards to Mars, where there's action on the surface- the Orange Island rover finally made it to its rover waypoints to complete the Mars rover contract after thousands of kilometres of driving and will now have to drive thousands more to get over to the Blue Pawn sample return craft. Beat that, Percy!

It was also time to move the Blue King lander on the surface of Phobos- I ended up landing it in Stickney Crater to get a second batch of science readings, but after this I think it's probably best to head back to the orbiter and set a course for Deimos to get at least one sample from each for the return contracts.

Spoiler

See that little black speck on Mars' surface just below the ice caps? That's the shadow of Phobos as it transits in front of the sun; complete coincidence but nice that that's a thing.

Simulations then followed for the crewed Mars rover, which weren't particularly successful...

800m/s at 10km altitude isn't a good thing, but some parachute tweaks should make it able to slow down in time. Hopefully.

Staying with Mars, I also tried turning the Yellow Pain-au-chocolat into a Mars lander by sticking some landing legs and parachutes on it. This had mixed results- I had to add a heatshield to avoid the fuel tank incinerating itself (perhaps aerobraking with a tank with maximum MLI wasn't the best idea...) and then the final descent speed was a bit too high due to a slightly too late braking burn and, well...

The idea shows a bit of promise so I won't be abandoning it completely, but it's clear more work is needed.

I also took a look at a rather different destination- Titan. With low gravity, a thick atmosphere (600km total height and over 1.3atm at sea level) and orbital velocity less than that of stock Laythe, Titan is completely survivable even when bombing into the atmosphere from a very high apoapsis and with a negative periapsis, with no heat shielding required. With that in mind I created a tiny little science lander that should get a load of science from the surface.

I considered a rover, but Titan has some "oceans" and stuff on it that might hamper rover-based exploration and besides- launching a cluster of probes like this could mean some land in the oceans and can produce useful data while splashed down, whereas a rover couldn't do that. The plan is to use the same chassis used on the Ceres/Vesta scanners, but replace the heavy scanning gubbins with eight landers, four relays and a really big folding dish: the landers use their X-band omni antennae to communicate to the relays, which then use their quartets of X-band dishes to communicate with each other or with the main craft, which then sends the signals home using its big Ka-band dish. It's a bit expensive as everything needs RTGs for power- solar panels are barely 1% as effective out at Saturn compared to at Earth- but the returns should be significant and having that many landers means that even if some don't land in the right places or get destroyed the returns should still be huge.

Final scores:

Coming up next time: I need to fix the typo in the White Huygens' name (that's the Titan mission, in case you didn't get the connection) and then there'll be a bit more work on a Mars lander and a bit of active mission management. A few transfer windows are approaching- Ceres, Vesta and Saturn are getting particularly close, though others aren't too far off either. 1964 should be an interesting year.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Welcome back to another episode of "What's that little grey lump?"

So, is today's celestial speck a) Vesta, b) Ceres, c) Amalthea, or d) Dione?

 

The answer is- A, Vesta. The Blue Bishop Vesta has finally made it to its destination after seven real life months (though quite a lot of that was when I was doing Into the Snarkiverse due to a dead GPU) and a little over two in-game years ago.

Either this probe wasn't balanced properly when it was built or something has changed the mass of a part(s), because it's unstable using its own thruster and takes a lot of RCS effort to keep it pointing straight. Odds of a landing are greatly diminished, though I might try it once all the orbital science is done as a 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' final goal of the mission.

And now for something completely different:

I call this the White Hubble NST- for Nuclear Space Tug, not Space Telescope- and it'll be an important part of assembling the Mars ship in orbit. For some reason, most likely related to having two separate versions of this craft with different names, it has zero reaction wheels in it, which is a bit problematic as it'll probably burn through its RCS propellant far too fast. Stealing any excess from launch stages will only go so far, but without the ability to do EVA construction (without everything exploding, at least) there's not much I can do about that.

A quick look over to the Moon where the first Blue Counter resupply rover temporarily leaves the base, grabs the crew rover and steals all its water, then grabs the base again. Incredibly, this gave the base an entire year of water supplies!

I spent a lot of time simulating the crewed Mars lander- the idea of converting the Yellow Pain-au-chocolat didn't pan out (or is that 'pain' out? ) so in the end I resorted to doing what I've done in the past- blatant plagiarism.

Spoiler

Why yes, that is in fact a (questionable) replica of the lander from @The Destroyer's Terminal Velocity, though mine is undoubtedly worse in some critical way that I haven't realised yet...

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/197774-terminal-velocity-a-rp1-cinematic-career-series-episode-22-crewed-venus-orbiter-in-1962/&tab=comments#comment-3874406 This is how RO/RP-1 should be done!

The good news is, using someone else's design that I know will work means it did in fact work; the bad news is I then realised that the top part had zero life support supplies and had to re-jig all the resources for a while. But in the end, it can meet the mission goal of getting from orbit to the surface of Mars, and then getting back into orbit again.

I also revisited the crewed Mars rover design that will look familiar in earlier in this report, because it's very similar to the crewed rover currently on the Moon; of course it is, the Moon rover is effectively a prototype of the Mars one!

Despite hammering into the atmosphere at close to escape velocity there were no heating problems, the parachutes opened safely (carbon fabric chutes can take A LOT of heat and force, it turns out) and landed safely on the surface.

Final scores for this report:

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/dC23Lfn

Coming up next time: A few launch windows with launches for them, plus the Mars ship to assemble and another Blue Bishop that should be arriving at Ceres soon. Contracts for crew in LEO and to the Moon station also await completion, but odds are whatever crew do those won't be available for the Mars mission so I'll need to choose carefully.