Odyssey Space Program- a 2.5x Beyond Home Playthrough

[Daedalus3000]

1st off- my save game is called Odyssey Space Program, but I realize this isn't a very original name so if need be I will change it.

 

I have finally started a mission report for this playthrough! By finally I mean I am definitely in the midgame at this point.

Major Accomplishments thus far:

Orbit!

Landing on Lua (1st moon out of three) like the mun, but with a very thin atmosphere that happens to contain trace amounts of oxygen

Did this apollo style, but don't have any pictures of the return.

Landing on Armstrong, which is basically Minmus minus the mint ice-cream

Spoiler

I didn't want the extra weight of a heatshield so this lander put itself into Rhode orbit, with 1km Dv left (so, much for needing to save weight), and I sent up an apprentice  to bring Jeb home

That reentry was weird, the command pod had much more mass than the service module, so the service module hit the pod and then went flying right above it as you see here

Aaand Jeb is back... again, I feel kind of bad leaving Val out, but in my defense I put her on Armazi station to fulfill a contract, and well, she has enough Life support to stay there for a year or so and I'm too lazy to bring her back (ok as I'm typing this I realize that this isn't a defense, and I should probably bring her home...) even though that station is outdated by Oculi station:

 I've also landed probes on all three moons, including ash, the moon that has a 1600 m/s orbital velocity and an orbit at the edge of Rhode's SOI... its a beast I sent a probe to land and return, and used all the fuel up landing. I have also sent Prospect 4 to well, prospect Hydrus (eve) and have Solar One awaiting a transfer window to Fury (moho, but not really, I think it has a decent atmosphere)

In this career I have been cheating myself funds, because without a contract pack for Beyond Home the only way I can get money is by doing grindy tourist stuff, and station building missions, which are difficult with life support. However, all science that I have earned is legit. I occasionally use the alt f12 menu to fix bugs (ex. I timewarped with a probe going to armstrong and the Ap of the orbit dropped 2 million km without reason, so I just cheated the orbit back), and I definetly quicksave scum, although I try to cut it down I hate killing kerbals, so the F9 usually wins.

Important mods:

TAC life support, Near future everything (but aeronautics, I'll probably add that later),  SSPX, Kerbal Planetary Base Systems, Eve, Scatterer, Tantares and Tantares LV, Kerbal Atomics, Cyro engines, Cyro tanks, (notice Nertea fever here, these parts are great by the way), Bonvoyage, Chatterer, Historian , KAS + KIS, Real plume, Restock and Restock +,  Distant object, enhancement,  ScanSat, Parallax, Beyond Home (duh!),  Astrogator, KAC, KER, Better burn time, and Trajectories. 

Also, due to RL I can really only play Kerbal on weekends, so that is probably when I'll post updates.

 

[Daedalus3000]

The Adventures of Muddy the rover

Ok, now that I have gotten the background info out of the way, let's get into how  I spent my Saturday this week... 

 

This is a rover, his name is Muddy, because Lua... is muddy. I built this rover because I needed science, so why not plunder every biome on Lua?

Spoiler

First we have to get him and his fateful crew to Lua, so cue the most massive launcher I have built to date!

The dimly lit payload... (that cyro engine has about 1800 Dv which is great for a 6 ton payload, but it has a twr of .5 (with ion engines fast approaching I fear the worst)

About to land (took around 6 tries)

And booyah, after bouncing around like a maniac and giving me a heart attack, the only thing lost was one of the spion engines from the skycrane, but this helped me dispose of it easier with an uneven thrust. The sky crane is in the background after doing a loopty- loop and then refusing to crash

I then cheated a bon voyage controller to the ship (I really thought the rover body had one built in, but I'm not launching another rocket just for one part) I then used the autopilot to drive the rover to the mid and lowlands in order to gather science.

 

By the way the rover barely has enough electricity to survive the night, so that was fun to learn...

Anyways, 

Hadzor and Franglong decided to take a trip to the beach, only got surface samples and eva reports from Franlong there though, didn't want to risk putting the rover in the water.

 

Then the rover took a trip to the south pole and I got this scenic screenshot (scatterer and eve are just great)

But more importantly we found these monstrosities: 

These are terraformers that supposedly gave Lua its thin atmosphere.

 

Well now that the rover has done its job, and every lunar night makes the rover run out of electricity and scrapes the two hour limit the kerbals have without electricity, it is time for an evacuation, I mean planned return. 

Spoiler

I forgot launch photos of the Achilles 1, but it is just the return module for the evacuation (I like doing apollo style in 2.5x to avoid massive landers)

Here it is awaiting the lander in Lua orbit

Anyways, here is Achilles 2 (the lander) launching on a Resistance launcher (named somewhat after the 6 reliant boosters)

Cue the satisfying booster seperation

And I forgot to take pictures of it getting onto Lua's surface, but it just used a 2000 m/s cyro transfer stage, hit Lua's atmosphere at 600 m/s after some breaking and used a 792 m/s terrier stage to further break, and finally landed with just a hint of fuel from the 1300 m/s pug stage. Then the rover took a VERY long hike to the lander (2,000+ kilometers, thank you bon voyage for saving me weeks of driving).

Also due to having a scientist and engineer onboard, shoddy piloting took out around 3 solar panels just doing the 2.5 km drive once I was in physics range, good thing I packed extras!

Umm this is awkward, the ladder is on the wrong side of the command pod... 

I could just jetpack, but why do that when we have an engineer, and KIS?

After Hadzor did a quick fix on the lander, and found time to plant a flag, with instructions on how to use the rover (needs batteries), while Franglong takes one last look at the moon's surface (Parallax is amazing! although I have yellow bar constantly cause this is a laptop)

Liftoff!

Rendezvous! 

Hello Rhode

Reentry! (trying two different links here so only one might be imbedded) 

  

and landing after 3 weeks away from home, this is my longest crewed mission to a moon in this career.

 

After all of that work Hadzor and Franlong are awarded with 2 stars each, and some well deserved R&R.

Also, SCIENCE!!!

This science was spent on smaller propulsion units (like sepetrons) and some construction type stuff. Also need to check in with my orbital lab for even more science. I usually outlaw the mobile lab, but with Near Future stuff (as well as maybe installing Extraplanetary launchpads, and Far Future stuff later) I need the science. 

 

[Daedalus3000]

I played a little Monday and have been working on a manned ash lander. Delta v was good, but the lander was cryogenic (aka really tall) and tipped over in ash’s high gravity even after 15 quick loads. Anyways I just scrubbed the mission and treated it as a simulation cause I can’t be bothered to do a rescue attempt. Did a redesign with more Dv and a terrier lander to make the lander small and wide as well as packing on more dv. Just need to build a 20 ton launcher or do some orbital docking...

Edited February 19, 2021 by Daedalus3000
Mobile typing means autocorrect funniness

[Daedalus3000]

                              Ash

I did it!!! Manned landing and uh.... return from Ash! Only took 3 iterations and uhhh some sweat and blood to get it done... The report:

Spoiler

After an hour the largest launch vehicle to date was developed in order to do this in one launch. It transports around 18 tons to orbit and is an absolute beast harnessing the power of 4 skippers, 6 kickbacks, and a poodle. Jeb’s in the cockpit ready to go.

Kickback separation 

After much debate and testing out Tantares LV engines, twin skippers were decided to be the sustaining engines. Looks pretty cool too.

And finally a poodle finishing the job... It’s called firefly 3 because the first was a landing probe it Ash and the second well... we don’t talk about that one (Cryogenic landers are tall and unstable).

It’s hard to see here but the Pavonis powered transfer stage is on the left and then in the middle is the descent stage and the final stage on the right is the lander.

Ok forgot to take screenshots of going there (this was like my 5th attempt others were reverted), and landing on Ash is very difficult when you need to bleed of 1800 m/s of speed with 1 suicide burn to maximize dv. Here is the landing:

and this is where I realized that the engineering cpu was clipped into the hatch so Jeb couldn’t even get out , but still good science and proof of concept.

Going back to orbit, and not doing an Apollo style return for this mission so every drop of fuel counts (lander has around 3000 m/s of fuel)

And going home... with 31 m/s of fuel left. But... I hit the atmosphere in 16 days and I have enough oxygen left for 14 and Jeb... can’t hold his breath that long... I noticed only 4 hours before he died and at that point a rescue mission would have taken too long to even get to him, so he angled his pod to the general direction of left. And then died of suffocation (probably a more scientific word for running out of oxygen). Look at him though smiling all the way... what a psychopath. He died the only kerbal to ever land on all 3 moons so I guess he had something to celebrate.

At least he angled the pod before he died so the heat shield could take the brunt of reentry, he also set the parachutes to auto deploy.

And my god without any quick saves it somehow worked! The capsule (and Jeb’s lifeless corpse) survived (it only lost the mystery goo) and it parachuted safely to the ground.

Boy was the recovery crew surprised when they found a dead Jeb with a sticky note on his helmet. What he wrote is classified (don’t want to get into a whole storyline too much so you can just imagine for yourself), but the KSC has said that he died quite satisfied with his life. 

got out the KSC car and transported the only  3 kerbonauts at the KSC to the flag to honor Jeb.

And yeah.. this is the first time I’ve let a kerbal die and stay dead, but at least I conquered Ash 

 

  In the background here are the solar series of probes going to Hydrus, Scindo, and Fury, but ill include these on a different post.

[Daedalus3000]

Artemis 9

 

Before we get to all the excitement of landing on Armstrong for the second time (I know big whoop, but it  still was a noteworthy mission, and I needed the science). I have put off showing the Solar probes for long enough (in spoiler below)

Solar probes:

Spoiler

These probes launch on my lightest launch vehicle LV-01 "Sparkler" named after the 4 spark engines on the second stage. It puts around 2 tons to LRO

This is the second Solar probe (First one was a probe sent to gain science from Tempolar orbit (Im just going to say Solar from now on)

Its being sent to do a flyby of Fury the closest to the sun (orbit would be great, but I hear braking burns at innermost planets are costly)

Almost identical launch of the third solar probe

The third Solar probe is being sent to Scaythe (At Duna's orbit, but it doesn't resemble Duna at all), has a moon Scindo that is dark and cool looking, this probe has same tech as the 2nd Solar probe so should make orbit and could even land at Scindo.

Currently this pair is waiting in orbit until their respective transfer windows which are 40 and 80 days away at my current point in playing (not using KCT, but trying to finish exploring all 3 moons in first year)

 

Paladin 2: (This is was just a routine mission to rescue 2 kerbals and bring Val home)

Spoiler

Launch on I think a LV-03 "Aristocrat"

This launcher is far to overpowered for the Paladin crew transport and the second stage has around 1000 m/s left after orbital insertion

And the bus stops:

Don't know why Historian displayed a different flag here, probably due to him coming from a Tantares pod.

Also I updated Kopernicus and got this new bug:

Can fix it by just having the solar panels follow Destiny and not the barycenter, still annoying though

Reentry and parachutes went according to plan and the trio returned safely to Rhode

 Artemis 9:

Spoiler

Yes, this is really the ninth Artemis because I have used this name for every probe that has orbited, landed, or even flew by some the three moons as well as every crewed mission to each moon (except ash... that is so difficult it needed its very own name hence the firefly series.)

This is another Apollo style mission except this time the crew module and lander launched together! Hence the use of the LV-06 "Galleon" which is currently the largest LV I have made. Its slightly overpowered for this, but there is a huge difference between the LV-05 "Eruption" which sends around 14 tons to LRO and the "Galleon" which can haul around 22 tons to LRO, and this payload was around 18 tons. I'm also quite happy with the fairing covering the lander, and I haven't ever tried this design before. 

Auto strut your boosters kids... or they clip into your ship and on separation they go kablooey, good thing we have a Launch escape system!

Artemis 9 take two:

I love how Val is so excited even after the first fiasco compared to Kimlock not enjoying Val's piloting skills. 

Fairing seperation:

burning for orbit

And in orbit, note how the third stage of the LV is still attached, it still has around 400 m/s in it and can be used for the injection burn

3rd stage detached and cyro transit stage finishes the bulk of the burn (it takes around 1500 m/s of dv just for trans lunar burns on 2.5x scale)

Good look at the full craft

Neat view of Rhode from the interior (splendid work Nertea)

Braking

Kimlock heads to the lander to pilot it (she is a scientist so it was... interesting to do all of the lander stuff with no SAS)

At this point the cyro stage still had around 600 m/s so I used it to help brake but I only needed 150 m/s to decelerate so I had to drop it with 400 m/s of fuel left. Its not a big deal though, the lander will prove to be insanely overbuilt with over 2000 m/s of fuel for biome hopping and making orbit

Landed (took some time and fuel to navigate to a flat spot, but Kimlock made it)

(I took this after I planted the flag)

Admiring parallax for a moment, my gpu isn't great, and I have a yellow bar all the time, but this makes it worth it. 

First biome hop (for science of course!)

Second biome hop

Kimlock sees how high she can jump and its impressive (this is 2.5x rescale too!)

Burning for orbit

setting up intercept with retune module

And... docked 

The lander ended up having enough fuel left to return to Rhode so I didn't even need to use the return module's fuel

Reentry

And SCIENCE!!!

 

 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2021 by Daedalus3000

[Daedalus3000]

Ok, I’m back and playing this save again, scrapped tantares and TAC-LS and uhhh I have two ships left in the tracking station (all kerbals in stations were poofed out of existence so got to hire some more). I wanted to get MKS and USI-LS in order to prep for manned interplanetary, so had to drop TAC, and tantares was just making loading times an extra 10 minutes.

[Daedalus3000]

So after I accidently purged most of my save file by forgetting the amount of antenas I used from Tantares (Literally not one of my saved ships in the VAB could be loaded and half of my subassemblies aka launchers disappeared) The first thing I had to do was replace the solar satellites, with some New Solar sattelites. These Sattelites had been downgraded to LFO instead of LH2O in order to fit 4 of them into the Horizon Satellite launcher

Only 3 of the four sattellites got to orbit due to a staging error when depolying one of them. It was wired correctly but just bugged, but there are only 3 transfer windows approaching anyways so oh well. 

The next order of business was to replace Oculus station, which had also poofed due to removing TAC-LS.

Also any advice on how to remove the annoying pixels on the horizon would be helpful. Guessing its a scatterer thing, but don't know what settings I need to tinker with.

Paladin 1 launched a crew of 3 consisting of a Val (the last orange suit left), an engineer (new guy forgot his name), and Franglong the scientist from the rover expedition.

Also loving the boattail to totally help with the stock aerodynamics (Does it actually do anything? idk looks cool though)

It docked safely, forgot to take pictures though, had a staging error during the docking and had to quickload back to an autosave (it was a minute before docking so I was lucky) so forgot to take any the second time around.