Project Temerity: a Snarkiverse Kerbalism Grand Tour [Completed!]

[jimmymcgoochie]

Yes, it's me again, embarking on another perhaps foolish attempt at Grand Tour-ing the Kerbol system with Kerbalism on hard mode. This time is different though- instead of the normal stock Kerbol system, I'm using the Snarkiverse mod which rearranges all the stock bodies in new and interesting ways: Gilly orbits Moho, Ike orbits Eve, Dres pseudo-orbits Kerbin, Minmus orbits Dres, Eeloo orbits Jool and the Mun ends up in a highly inclined and elliptical orbit of Kerbin, swooping past the KSC every other day.

In some respects, doing a Grand Tour should be easier- Jool orbits where Dres used to be, Dres is right beside Kerbin all the time and Eeloo orbits Jool so there's no need to go nearly as far out from the sun- but on the other hand, Moho's orbit is now significantly lower to the sun, making it considerably harder to reach than usual and making the radiation levels there rather terrifying.

Good news: I already have a ship designed that can do a full Grand Tour with fuel to spare. Bad news: it took a not-insignificant amount of mod cheatery to get it into space last time, so I'm going to do this one properly. Of the ship's ~1100 tons, over 800 of them are just Xenon for the quartet of VASIMR thrusters or fuel and oxidiser for the chemical rockets on the various landers, which makes launching the ship significantly easier unfuelled but will require several tanker trips into orbit to get it ready to launch. The Eve lander is also a bit of a headache due to its size and weight, so that'll be getting launched last.

Mod list as required by the rules of the Ultimate Challenge:

Spoiler

Astronomer's Visual Pack (AstronomersVisualPack 3:v4.13)
Astronomer's Visual Pack-8k Textures (AVP-8kTextures v1.13)
B9 Part Switch (B9PartSwitch v2.20.0)
BetterTimeWarpContinued (BetterTimeWarpCont 2.3.13)
Breaking Ground (BreakingGround-DLC 1.7.1)
ClickThrough Blocker (ClickThroughBlocker 1:2.1.10.18)
Community Resource Pack (CommunityResourcePack v112.0.1)
Deflatable Heat Shield (DeflatableHeatShield 0.0.3)
Deployable Engines Plugin (DeployableEngines 1.3.1)
Distant Object Enhancement /L (DistantObject v2.1.1.9)
Distant Object Enhancement /L default config (DistantObject-default v2.1.1.9)
Dynamic Battery Storage (DynamicBatteryStorage 2:2.2.5.0)
Environmental Visual Enhancements Redux (EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements 3:1.11.7.1)
Hangar Extender (HangerExtenderExtended 3.6.0.2)
Harmony 2 (Harmony2 2.2.1.0)
Heat Control (HeatControl 0.6.1)
Kerbal Alarm Clock (KerbalAlarmClock v3.14.0.0)
Kerbal Engineer Redux (KerbalEngineerRedux 1.1.9.0)
Kerbalism (Kerbalism 3.15)
Kerbalism - Default Config (Kerbalism-Config-Default 3.15)
Kopernicus Planetary System Modifier (Kopernicus 2:release-1.12.1-139)
KSP Community Fixes (KSPCommunityFixes 1.23.0)
KSP_PartVolume (KSP-PartVolume 0.0.3.2)
Making History (MakingHistory-DLC 1.12.1)
Making Less History (MakingLessHistory 1.0)
ManeuverNodeSplitter (NodeSplitter 1.8.0.3)
MechJeb 2 (MechJeb2 2.14.2.0)
Minimum Ambient Lighting Updated (MinAmbLightUpd 1.2.6.2)
ModularFlightIntegrator (ModularFlightIntegrator 1.2.10.0)
Module Manager (ModuleManager 4.2.2)
Near Future Electrical (NearFutureElectrical 1.2.3)
Near Future Electrical Core (NearFutureElectrical-Core 1.2.3)
Near Future Launch Vehicles (NearFutureLaunchVehicles 2.2.0)
Near Future Propulsion (NearFuturePropulsion 1.3.5)
Near Future Propulsion - Xenon Hall Effect Thrusters (NearFuturePropulsion-XenonHETs 1.3.5)
Parallax (Parallax 1.3.1)
Parallax - Stock Planet Textures (Parallax-StockTextures 1.3.1)
PlanetShine (PlanetShine 0.2.6.6)
PlanetShine - Default configuration (PlanetShine-Config-Default 0.2.6.6)
Reentry Particle Effect Renewed (ReentryParticleEffect 1.9.1.1)
ReStock (ReStock 1.4.3)
ReStock+ (ReStockPlus 1.4.3)
Scatterer (Scatterer 3:v0.0838)
Scatterer Default Config (Scatterer-config 3:v0.0838)
Scatterer Sunflare (Scatterer-sunflare 3:v0.0838)
Snarkiverse (Snarkiverse 1.2)
SpaceTux Library (SpaceTuxLibrary 0.0.8.4)
System Heat (SystemHeat 0.5.6)
System Heat - Nuclear Reactor Configuration (SystemHeat-FissionReactors 0.5.6)
TAC Fuel Balancer (TacFuelBalancer v2.21.5.2)
Toolbar (Toolbar 1:1.8.0.8)
Toolbar Controller (ToolbarController 1:0.1.9.8)
Tracking Station Evolved (TrackingStationEvolved 7.0)
Transfer Window Planner - Fork (TransferWindowPlannerFork v1.9.0.1)
Waterfall - Restock (WaterfallRestock 0.2.3)
Waterfall Core (Waterfall 0.9.0)
Zero MiniAVC (ZeroMiniAVC 1:1.1.2.4)
 

Key mods: Kerbalism (set to hard difficulty, but with solar storms disabled as they're broken); Near Future Propulsion for the VASIMR engines; Near Future Electrical for nuclear reactors to power the VASIMR engines; Near Future Launch Vehicles for the cargo bays to store the nuclear reactors to power the VASIMR thrusters, and also for rocket parts big enough to launch an entire spaceship in one go.

Launch attempt number 1, the Temerity itself.

A 7.5m fairing from Near Future Launch Vehicles was needed to fit the ship and all the attached landers in, so I built the entire launch rocket out of 7.5m NFLV parts. The first stage uses eighteen Ocelot(?) engines, while the second stage uses a trio of Rhinos.

That's no Mun... Except, it is the Mun. With a periapsis so low it crosses Kerbin's outer radiation belt on every orbit and a 62.5 degree inclination, the Mun isn't nearly as straight-forward to get to as it is in the stock Kerbol system.

The launch was going well...

...until it wasn't. Fairing panels took out several parts, wrecking one of the landers and then destroying most of the second stage. Oh well, it's not like this is twelve million funds' worth of spaceship and several tons of enriched uranium about to be scattered like confetti across Kerbin's surface. 

Next time: Proper fairing separation, probably with clamshell deploy to stop all those loose fragments from causing trouble. And by trouble I mean 'large explosions and RUD of the launch rocket'.

Edited October 1, 2022 by jimmymcgoochie

[jimmymcgoochie]

Let's try that again, shall we?

A slightly altered fairing shape was needed as I've moved one of the ion-powered space tugs to clear the docking port needed for the Laythe plane; but that's for later. Right now I have more pressing concerns, like 'will the fairing separate without causing another RUD?'

Yes, yes it would. Clamshell deploy plus cranking the separation force to maximum did the trick.

The rest of the launch was pretty straightforward and Temerity was parked in a 100km equatorial orbit of Kerbin. Solar panels and communications systems were deployed and the VASIMR thrusters were briefly fired up to get clear of the discarded second stage.

Even with a minimal load of xenon, the ship has over 14km/s of delta-V with the VASIMRs set to 50% - 0% is maximum thrust, 100% is maximum ISP and this setting can be changed at any time to shorten a long burn or to save fuel.

Next time: Carrying up several hundred tons of xenon, liquid fuel, oxidiser, probably a little bit of monopropellant too.

 

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Time to send up some fuel for Temerity's empty tanks. And by 'some' I mean about 700 tons, most of it xenon.

The rocket used before isn't powerful enough to handle the fuel tankers, so I added some boosters to the sides, surely nothing could possibly go wrong-

Top Tip 1: autostrut your boosters!

Much better!

Aside from the boosters, this rocket has had its second stage upgraded- the three Rhinos have been swapped for six NFLV Lynx engines which offer a bit more thrust and a marginally better ISP to better handle the heavier payload.

Unfortunately, the Lynx engines are only rated for a single ignition and began failing with each successive burn to rendezvous with Tenacity.

All six engines failed eventually, forcing the tanker to dip into its own fuel reserves to complete the rendezvous and dock.

Docking complete, a significant quantity of xenon is transferred into Temerity's tanks along with nearly all the LF/Ox and as much monopropellant as the ship's tanks could hold. With that done, the tanker undocked and, being the responsible citizen that I am, I disposed of the space litter- by turning it into ground litter instead!

The next fuel tanker carried a lot less xenon and a lot more LF/Ox, and was light enough that the boosters weren't needed (booooriiiing ). The second stage had a Wolfhound engine added to avoid the engine failures that caused trouble for the last one, which worked rather well.

This also allowed the second stage to be deorbited to land on a completely random part of Kerbin's surface, but the chances of hitting something were assessed as "meh, probably fine, it's not like there's much down there to hit anyway" and that's good enough for me!

Temerity's xenon tanks are almost full now, but there's a lot more LF/Ox required to fill up those tanks before the mission can really begin.

The tanker was deorbited after undocking, this time hitting the water and probably terrifying some fish that never saw it coming despite the massive trail of fire across the sky.

But hey, if Kerbals have decided to send a single ship mission to land on every (solid) planet and moon in the entire Kerbol system and come back again, powered by massive nuclear reactors and RTGs and using massive, single-use rockets to get it into space, I doubt they're particularly concerned by the environmental impacts.

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/37pVwxq

Next time: There are some important vessels missing- the Eve Ascender and the Laythe SSTO- so something should probably be done about that.

[jimmymcgoochie]

The final launch before Temerity departs is carrying the two crew for the mission: Meg and Gerdorf. Or Meg'n'Ger as I'll probably be calling them from now on.

Docking was easy, but took a really long time due to the 4FPS and chronic slowness that ensued.

It was only after the crew had moved over to Temerity and their pod undocked that I realised I had forgotten a probe core, so the pod is now uncontrollable. Which is an issue, since it's supposed to be their ride home again once their mission is complete. Oops.

Meanwhile, a dead stage falls out of orbit...

It got most of the way to the ground before the engines suddenly overheated and exploded, followed by most of the rest of it.

What was left (a fairing base, decoupler and a QBE probe core) fell to the ground in the desert mountains and were destroyed on impact.

I might launch one final rocket to add a tiny probe to the return pod so it can be controlled, but other than that Temerity is ready to go. Too bad it'll take almost half an hour to make the burn to the Mun- without the massive time slowdown from having so many parts.

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

So I’ve definitely skipped a few posts here, jumping from a half-assembled ship to ready to leave without covering the Eve or Laythe crafts, or the new radiation shield for the Moho leg of the mission for that matter. Oops…

[jimmymcgoochie]

Double-checked the Imgur albums and I've missed out two posts. Time to make up for it.

First up, the Eve Ascender- the upper stage is already attached to Temerity, but the vast majority of the size, mass and parts is yet to be launched.

The Laythe SSTO was next, requiring a couple of attempts due to an underpowered launch rocket, power issues and running out of monopropellant during docking.

And finally, a new addition to this mission: the Moho shield. Going to Moho and back was just about survivable in stock, but with Moho so close to Kerbol in the Snarkiverse radiation would likely be lethal. The shield uses both active and passive protection (a Kerbalism active shield and a big ol' heatshield respectively) to try and protect whatever poor chump brave Kerbal goes to Moho; for delta-V reasons I won't be sending the whole ship if I can avoid it.

That'll fit in there, right?

CLUNK

Maybe not... The xenon tanks can't fit past the Cheetah engine on the Space Tug/Tylo ascent stage backup, a problem which I solved by undocking the lander that the shield was trying to dock to, docking those together and then re-docking the lander at an angle to cheese the part collision system. This might result in some MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS!!!1! when I try to undock them again, but I'll cross that bridge if I come to it.

With all that assembly finished, all that's needed is a crew-

Oh. Never mind then.

Spoiler

Albums: https://imgur.com/a/LASxDi3
https://imgur.com/a/RqRhQbX
https://imgur.com/a/uSQ4kLF

Next time: To the Mun! Which with such a low TWR and low FPS will take far longer than it should.

[jimmymcgoochie]

One final task remains before starting this mission proper: a last-minute EVA to check things over and ditch some excess fuel tanks.

Ger heads outside for some EVA construction and to check on various vital systems. Almost right away he spots something wrong:

There are meant to be three active shields in there, not two! One must have exploded at some point and I didn't realise. The mission should still work with two, but the loss of redundancy could be problematic in the future.

Ger complained of a loud crackling sound in his radio, but that's probably just static and definitely not the suit's built-in Geiger counter going nuts at the four huge nuclear reactors and nine(?) large RTGs spitting out radiation everywhere.

I'd like to have all the fuel tanks full before leaving, but with these frame rates and a lack of available docking ports it would be more hassle than it's worth- at this point the ship has over 50km/s of available delta-V with the engines at full efficiency, a number that'll only go up once the massive Eve lander is removed. A handful of tanks (five, weirdly, should be six but one of those probably exploded off-camera too) were drained to fill the rest, then discarded by Ger.

 

 

An action that was somewhat complicated by needing to add the KSP Part Volumes mod, required to make the Kerbalism parts (and others besides) EVA construction-friendly as they were for the Indefatigability. More space litter, but those Kerbalism tanks are prone to MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS!!!!1! in EVA construction mode so better out the way so they can explode on their own.

Once Ger was back on board, some save files were edited and reloaded to put the TVs and radiation detox units back into Temerity's Hitchhiker modules, since those had mysteriously gone missing at some point too. And then it was time to go.

Operating at 75% efficiency, those VASIMR engines use a total of 8000EC/s, generate about 380kN of thrust- and an ISP of 5000 seconds, meaning total delta-V is about 46km/s at this setting, but the TWR is about 0.04 and total burn time is about 20 hours. The 200m/s kick burns took about ten (game!) minutes each, followed by a final burn to get a nice close periapsis for an efficient capture.

So far, so typical Grand Tour. But here's where things change.

Normally, the first place any Grand Tour mission would go is the Mun. Easy target, equatorial orbit, hard to miss, easy landing to start things off. But not in the Snarkiverse- here the Mun orbits at a 62.5 degree inclination and a highly eccentric orbit, which isn't all that difficult to get to and from but means that going somewhere else afterwards is a lot more difficult to plan.

No, in the Snarkiverse, the most obvious first destination...

...is Dres.

Pseudo-orbiting around Kerbin in a slightly inclined and slightly eccentric solar orbit, Dres is always close enough to reach within about 15 days without having to try too hard; the low transfer velocity makes it very cheap to get to and capture; the low gravity makes it an easy first landing, saving fuel for later.

And yes, that's Minmus in the background. Another good reason to come here first, two landings in one system without even needing to refuel between them.

Spoiler

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

Flags planted so far: 0.

Next time: That flag count is about to go up. With a modicum of planning, the lander should be able to land on both Dres and Minmus in one go before returning to Temerity, and I might get some syrupy smooth framerates again for a little while.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Getting a lander out of the complicated mess of parts and vessels that is Temerity requires a bit of shuffling and a bit of light rocket surgery:

With the docking adapter moved to a different port and the port and decoupler removed from the lander's engine, Meg can head down to the surface of Dres.

Minmus is almost directly overhead, so why not just launch straight up and intercept? There's plenty of fuel in the lander for that and I'm sure I won't need that later, right?

Spoiler

Look carefully in the top right quarter of this image and you can see Kerbin from here:

Back to Dres orbit and back to Temerity with two flags planted and two surface samples, er, sampled.

]

One painfully slow docking later (mostly due to the 3FPS) and Meg is back aboard.

Cue much save hacking to put the radiation detox units and TVs back into the Hitchhiker cans, again, because they keep disappearing for some reason. This may be a recurring theme for this mission, but there's no way to complete a mission like this without the RDUs to undo radiation damage- getting to Vall or Laythe and back again got the last crew over 90% irradiated and the Snarkiverse doesn't touch those so they're equally deadly now.

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/DgO9isi

Flag count so far: 2

Next time: To Eve. Technically Duna is easier to get to and the window is sooner, but that Eve lander is heavy both in terms of mass and part count so the sooner I get rid of that the better.

[jimmymcgoochie]

I've switched over from Spectra to AVP due to some weird graphics issues at Eve with Spectra. The skybox may look different in some images as a result, but it also means I can see the surface of Eve through the clouds which should make avoiding the oceans a little bit easier.

Goodbye Dres... (eventually)

And hello Eve!

Another very long burn later and something resembling an orbit is established. There's a close encounter with Ike near the apoapsis, might as well use it.

Ike seems lumpier than I remember...

A bit more logistical shuffling around to free up the lander before Gerdorf could head to the surface.

Flag number 3 planted.

A few hours of waiting for the orbits to align again and Gerdorf is ready to leave just as Temerity crosses the horizon.

An efficient and well-timed ascent resulted in a quick and easy rendezvous and docking. In the dark, as is right and proper.

Rather than sending the entire ship down to Eve, I'll probably use one of the Ion Space Tugs to tow the heavy Eve lander down there and then return the ascent stage to Temerity in Ike orbit afterwards.

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/vrs3eAo

Flag count so far: 3

Next time: Eve landing, the most challenging in terms of raw delta-V and thrust required to pull it off. This may take a few presses of the F9 key...

[jimmymcgoochie]

I ran into a problem last week: the Ion Space Tug, the one with the solar panels, wouldn't detach from the side of Temerity's cargo bay. Nothing I did would fix it, and then I had a week of doing tourist-y things and zero KSP time so couldn't fix it.

Fortunately, the issue has now been solved thanks to some fellow KSP forum-goers and the mission can continue as planned. Cue the docking port shuffling.

The Moho sunshield won't be needed yet, so it can go back and dock to Temerity.

The structural girder that allowed the Eve Ascender to attach to the front of Temerity was discarded as the upper stage was moved into place, with the Ion Space Tug docked to the front of it. As Eve appeared over the horizon, the four ion engines began firing at full power-

-oh. Right. Turns out four of these 'AFTER' ion thrusters use waaaay too much power to run them on solar power at Eve. I can run two of them at two-thirds power and just about break even on power, or a little bit more thrust for a while and use the two small capacitors to periodically boost the battery charge before a long recharge cycle of their own.

Side note, I discovered that adding one autostrut made this craft completely stable even at 12x physics warp, which is great because these burns took FOREVER...

A TWR of 0.06, in Ike's puny gravity, tells you all you need to know about how painfully long it took to even get out of Ike's SOI, never mind get the periapsis down towards Eve's atmosphere. I even resorted to using Ike for a gravity assist even though the orbit was pretty inclined compared to Ike's, requiring a small but significant plane change burn.

But eventually, seven days after undocking from Temerity, Gerdorf was finally ready to undock from the IST and fire the lander's deorbiting engines to send it hurtling towards the clouds.

In the dark.

Ah.

Spoiler

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

Flag count so far: still 3.

Next time: Serious save-scumming for the hardest landing-and-return in Kerbol system. Did I pack that nosecone for the front of the pod?

[jimmymcgoochie]

Let's get this over with...

Many, many aerobraking passes (and a few reloads after coming down on steep slopes or just too close to sea level and being unable to return to orbit) later, finally a good landing site- in the mountains, but with a relatively benign slope.

The flag was planted, the surface sample taken and some questionable EVA construction performed to shuffle the ladders around a bit so Gerdorf could climb back up to the pod; much of said climbing was done upside-down, apparently the game doesn't like it when you put some ladders pointing down and others pointing up.

Once aboard, more EVA construction was needed to remove the ladders entirely and steal one of the boosters' nosecones for the top of the ship, since I completely forgot to take the nosecone that was stashed aboard Temerity and don't have the patience to do all those hours of long ion burns again. The last step before liftoff was to jettison the wings and parachutes, at which point one of them decided it wanted to become a boomerang.

It fell under the landing legs, got yeeted off into the air while spinning, flew about 200 metres away and then turned and came back- fortunately not straight back into the lander. Eventually it ran out of momentum and hit the ground.

No screenshots of the ascent since I was rather preoccupied with just flying the thing through the absolute soup of an atmosphere and making it to orbit before the fuel ran out, but here's one of the final circularisation.

Nearly a Kerbin day of ion burns later and the Ion Space Tug has managed to rendezvous.

And even more ion burns sent the combined craft spiralling back up to Ike, taking a few days to get there in the end. The lander's supplies would have run out by then, but the IST has loads more so it can go to Moho and back.

The final rendezvous was done with the lander's engine and the small rocket fuel reserve in the IST, because there's no way I'm doing a 5 minute ion burn at 3FPS...

Both the lander and the IST were set to auto-dock to some free ports and I left the game running for a while until everything was done.

Free of the heavy, bulky Eve lander (the upper stage will be stripped for parts and then discarded since it's unshielded and unpressurised) the next step for the mission is a trip to Moho. This will definitely require the Vall lander with its superior shielding, as well as the new Moho sunshield module and the theft of Temerity's pair of Gigantor solar panels for the IST to use all four engines at once instead of just two.

Spoiler

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

And an Eve launch that didn't quite go according to plan:

Flag count so far: 4!

Next time: To Moho, and also Gilly.

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Next on the list of landings are Moho and Gilly, probably the highest delta-V part of the mission because Moho is stupidly close to Kerbol in the Snarkiverse (its perihelion is under 2Gm compared to over 4Gm in stock) and so orbits really fast.

A quick check of the VASIMR engines:

And a quick bit of EVA construction to steal all the usable parts from the Eve lander before abandoning it in Ike orbit:

And then Temerity heads to a high Eve orbit, outside Ike's reach, to wait for an efficient Moho transfer window. They're frequent, but the inclined and eccentric orbit means some are much cheaper than others.

When the window is open, Meg hops into the Vall-spec lander and takes the combined Ion Space Tug-Moho Sunshield (now called the Moho Space Tug) along with the two Gigantors stolen from Tenacity and prepares for the trip sunward.

Five minutes in and she had to abort the burn due to power issues, but by moving two of the Gigantors to allow all six solar panels on the craft to face the sun at once, the day-long transfer burn could continue.

With that complete, and a fairly small plane-change to set up a nice encounter, Meg keeps the craft oriented so the sunshield will protect her from the ever-increasing radiation as she spirals down towards Kerbol. External temperature readings peak at over 1000 Kelvin!

Total solar power production is about 7000EC/s because at this point Kerbol is less than 1.5Gm away- that's less than five times the distance from the Earth to the Moon! AVP adds an effect to Moho that makes it look like the surface is being ablated away due to its proximity to Kerbol, which I think is even more appropriate in the Snarkiverse.

Another extremely long ion burn was interrupted by Moho eclipsing the craft, which coincided with Gilly popping out from behind Moho to say hello.

A lot more braking later and at last an apoapsis appears. A few more burns were needed to raise the periapsis back above the surface and then capture into a low-ish orbit before Meg could begin her landing.

Dodge the lava...

Touchdown and flag planted. Radiation levels here are high and temperatures are higher so the less time spent out on EVA the better.

Taking the lander with full shielding has had an unfortunate side-effect though: there's not enough fuel left to get all the way back to the Moho Space Tug. If only there was a vessel with over 60km/s of delta-V in Moho orbit...

MST did the rendezvousing but the lander used the last dregs of fuel to match velocities since the rendezvous itself took place in the dark, rendering the MST's ion engines useless. Moving in under cover of darkness, Meg poked her head out the hatch to stick the docking port back on before docking back to the MST to refuel and prepare for a jaunt to Gilly.

A little bit more EVA construction, putting the larger docking port on top of the smaller one, allowed the lander's engine to perform the Gilly capture burn due to a double eclipse just before reaching periapsis.

Landing on Gilly is a trivial business. I could have landed the entire Moho Space Tug with the lander attached, the gravity is so low.

Meg found a nice rock, but forgot to take a picture of herself with the flag she planted. Maybe heatstroke is to blame?

Whatever the reason, the flag actually was planted and now all that's left here is a fairly short wait for the next Eve transfer window. Active and passive shields plus Moho's magnetosphere are keeping radiation levels relatively low for Meg in the lander can, but they can't quite block it out entirely. Hopefully she'll last long enough to get back to Temerity where the radiation detox unit awaits.

Spoiler

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

Flag count so far: 6!

Next time: Back to Eve, then onwards to either Duna or Jool.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Moho is done, so it's back to Eve to link up with Temerity again.

This took a while...

But after a really, really long time, it eventually got captured by Eve's gravity and a rendezvous could happen.

A minor mishap caused by the control point facing the wrong way later (just wasted some xenon is all) and it's time to head to...

Jool! The transfer window was wide open and most of the remaining mass of stuff will be used there- the Nuclear Space Tugs, Tylo Lander, Laythe Plane and the Vall-spec Lander With All The Shielding will all be used and in most cases discarded in the Jool system.

Spoiler

Side note: All four moons are visible in the screenshot above.

After arriving, a quick bit of resource management will allow some empty xenon tanks to be dumped, fuel to be put where it needs to go and-

Whoops...

I blame autostruts, specifically to the heaviest part which most likely changed as the fuel was pumped between tanks. This is why I saved before doing the resource juggling.

Spoiler

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

Flag count so far: 6.

Next time: Which moon first?

[jimmymcgoochie]

The first landing in Jool system will be...

*drumroll*

*more drumroll*

Eeloo!

Mostly because the transfer from Temerity was the closest, and the trajectory avoided almost all of Jool's Death Zone^TM (a.k.a. the deadly radiation belts) both for the journey and at Eeloo itself.

Spoiler

You might notice that the surface of Eeloo is really, really dark up close. Parallax on Eeloo makes it inexplicably dark compared to how it looks from a distance.

A bit of light rocket surgery later...

And then it was down to the surface.

I'm not sure if this is the same as in the stock system, but Eeloo spins rather quickly- 2 1/2 hours per day, which meant that while I landed with a great view of Jool and Laythe near the horizon, by the time the five minute crew report was done Jool was gone and Laythe was rapidly retreating

With the flag planted, it was back to orbit to link up with the Nuclear Space Tug again, followed by a ~70 day trip back to Temerity to dodge the Death Zone^TM.

Rather than splitting them up and trying to dock two vessels at painfully slow frame rates, I just docked it in one to do a quick bit of resupplying before the Tylo mission, which may or may not be next depending on where the encounter will be. Time it right and Tylo skims the outer edge of the Death Zone^TM and minimises radiation exposure; time it wrong and you get obliterated by radiation before you even make it to the surface.

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/ib1eHi5

Flag count so far: 7!

Next time: Three more moons to go.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Forget Tylo, it's time to get rid of the huge mood debuff that the Laythe plane's "unpressurised" cockpit is generating.

The other Nuclear Space Tug did a second burn after throwing the Laythe plane at the atmosphere, setting up its own encounter half an hour earlier to ensure it would have time to capture into orbit before the plane arrived. Gerdorf used the time before atmospheric entry to remove the spare RCS tanks (added to the plane when the first one ran out of monopropellant and couldn't dock to Temerity during assembly), but fixing the aerospike engine will wait until after landing.

Day turned to night, the heatshield was discarded (with a complimentary 720 backflip with every decoupling!) and then the not inconsiderable challenge of landing a heavily-laden plane with tiny wings and a three-figure stall speed on very uneven terrain in the dark began.

So I cheated and used parachutes.

Not that it helped...

Spontaneous disassembly occurred as soon as the wheels touched down, even at 0.1x physics warp and with the indestructibility cheats turned on. Oddly enough, landing with the gear retracted worked first time.

Even oddly-er, Gerdorf had the wrong flag.

Someone probably put the wrong flag in the plane when it was hastily assembled for launch. While the team back on Kerbin start trawling the CCTV footage to find out who is responsible for this heinous mistake, Ger was scraping sand into a bag as fast as he could to get back into the relative safety of the cockpit- radiation levels on the surface may be only a fraction of those in orbit, but they're much higher than even Moho at its perihelion.

The takeoff procedure took a bit of refining (*kaboom* F9 *crunch* F9 *splat* F9 *how did it do that?!* F9...) but eventually the correct technique- launching it up a hill with all the engines at full power to get airborne- was found and we were flying again.

Using the aerospike at lower altitude used up precious oxidiser though and it briefly looked like the plane wasn't going to make it to space due to a lack of thrust, but eventually the NERV got it up to speed and a hasty rendezvous with the Nuclear Space Tug occurred followed by an equally hasty launch out of Laythe's SOI and Jool's Death Zone^TM to avoid death by radiation poisoning.

There was time to do a bit of rocket surgery before the departure burn so Gerdorf stripped every plane-related part off the craft along with anything else that wasn't needed any more.

The four Hall effect thrusters suffered failures during a burn to set up an encounter with Temerity, caused by a maximum burn duration limit that isn't present when they're using the default argon propellant (or with the 'normal' ion thrusters) but which the Xenon HET patch seems to introduce. I think it's a Kerbalism bug but a minor one and I had to revert to an earlier save when Gerdorf EVA'd but somehow had zero EVA propellant despite doing another EVA seconds later with the jetpack full.

The unpressurised cockpit made itself felt during the long trip back to Temerity with Gerdorf suffering stress-related breakdowns every week, causing minor damage to some ancillary parts but without compromising the mission.

With Gerdorf stationkeeping off Temerity and the frame rate back to single digits, I called it a day. It'll take a while to do a double docking especially as the NST's forward ion RCS thruster seems to have melted due to the long burns causing the engines to overheat a bit, then Gerdorf will have a long stint in the radiation detox unit to recover from the 86% radiation exposure from that trip.

Spoiler

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

Flag count so far: 8!

Next time: Vall is probably the next destination as Meg can do that trip while Gerdorf recovers before he goes to Tylo. Once that's done, only one more planet and four landings in total- Duna, Pol, Bop, and of course the Mun.

[jimmymcgoochie]

OK, so I went to Tylo instead of Vall.

But first, Gerdorf, the Nuclear Space Tug and what's left of the Laythe Plane had to dock to Temerity.

With that done. Meg assembled the Tylo lander and headed inwards towards Jool's largest moon. The timing for this trip was just right- the trajectory going to and from Tylo avoided the outer belt and Tylo was right at the edge of it when Meg arrived, minimising radiation exposure.

Getting to Tylo wasn't difficult- standard transfer burn then a quick plane change just inside its SOI to turn a polar orbit into an equatorial one- but landing on Tylo is a much more challenging task. High orbital velocity (comparable to Kerbin) but with no atmosphere to aerobrake in, it takes a lot of delta-V to land safely and the terrain is far from hospitable. Add to that the challenges of landing in daylight and on the not-irradiated face of the moon and a few attempts were going to be required...

And by a few I mean about twelve. Either the landing stage ran out of fuel just before touchdown or the whole thing tipped over after touchdown, or sometimes both. This was usually terminal for the mission as the lander can't get itself pointing the right way up again in this gravity.

But, after a lot of attempts, finally a safe landing with the pointy end up and the fiery end down.

Plant flag, grab sample, do science, launch back to orbit at the next opportunity and get out of there before Tylo moves deeper into the Death Zone^TM as this lander has relatively light shielding.

Despite having carried both the Laythe and Tylo landing crafts to their respective moons and back, the Nuclear Space Tug still has a huge amount of delta-V left- and a burn time of about 90 minutes.

One seventy-day orbit later and Meg was back at Temerity.

All docked up, fuelled up and ready for the next landing, which will actually be Vall this time. After that it's over to Duna and then back to Kerbin, with a brief stopover at the Mun before the mission is over.

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/XRSd5Pm

Flag count so far: 9!

Next time: Vall landing.

[jimmymcgoochie]

With Gerdorf still recovering from radiation poisoning after the Laythe landing, Meg has recovered from the trip to Tylo and so is going to Vall to complete the Jool system landings. This is where having a space tug with immense delta-V comes in handy- Vall is by far the most lethal place to land on due to the incessant radiation from Jool and the lack of a protective atmosphere like Laythe, so getting in and out as fast as possible is vital to the crew's survival. Even with maximum shielding on the lander can, a lethal dose can be accumulated in under 3 Kerbin days (18 hours).

A well-timed transfer with a bit of extra oomph means that Meg arrives at Vall after spending just 6 hours in the Death Zone^TM and so has only 38% radiation exposure.

Vall is a strange place: besides the radiation problem, it's the shiniest body in the Kerbol system (besides Kerbol itself, obviously) and the biomes are a bit muddled up, running lowlands-highlands-midlands-peaks in order of altitude.

Meg cares about precisely none of this extra information of course, since she's trying to tell if that odd smell is an electrical fire or just ionised particles that were previously part of her body but which have been dislodged by the intense radiation.

A quick and simple descent later...

Flag planted, surface sampled, time to get out of here. Watch out for the mountains, Meg!

A rendezvous within an orbit was followed by what I like to call The Tactical Yeet^TM which involves pointing away from Jool and expending huge quantities of delta-V to escape the radiation as soon as possible. There was a possibility of a Tylo gravity assist due to the moons' positions, but Meg would have been fried before even entering Tylo's SOI let alone leaving it. Once clear of danger, Meg burned retrograde to shorten her orbit and set up a close approach with Temerity, fine-tuned the distance- and then blew right past the intercept because of a failed engine when starting the burn which she repaired but forgot to turn back on again afterwards.

Shut up, Meg, it's either your fault or my fault and I'm the one writing this report, so  

With that technical problem resolved, a rendezvous and double docking were completed in short order.

Only one planet left to visit and that's Duna. The next transfer window is about 220 days away, so 220 days later...

With Bop and Pol orbiting Duna in a strange resonant orbit and their SOIs overlapping much of low space around Duna, I opted for a polar orbit instead of equatorial to avoid any unwanted interactions. A small course correction and an EVA by Meg to service key components and discard some empty xenon tanks were carried out during the year-and-a-bit long trip down to Duna.

Now captured into polar Duna orbit, Meg and Ger can look forward to three landings in rapid succession and a bit of EVA construction to stick some rudimentary landing legs and parachutes onto the Tylo lander to perform the Duna landing, plus cool views all around and some actual warmth from the sun on their faces after a long stint out at Jool.

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/3MTGP5b

Flag count so far: 10!

Next time: Three landings to pick from and probably some dubious space drifting to reach near-equatorial orbiting moons from a polar orbit.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Sizeable update incoming due to three landings and a perhaps excessive number of "screenshots that look cool".

First off, Meg does some, uh, "EVA construction" with the Tylo lander in preparation for the Duna landing.

Once clear of Temerity and the awful FPS the trusty Nuclear Space Tug threw the lander at Duna's atmosphere and Meg heads out again to configure her lander properly. 

Yes, the "landing legs" aren't actually touching the rest of the craft. Deal with it.

Everything went to plan, the hilly terrain was avoided and the parachutes slowed the lander down to about 20m/s, more than slow enough for the engine to cushion the final touchdown. At which point I noticed what was going on in the background...

Pol at periapsis races over Duna, its SOI coming within a couple of kilometres of Duna's atmosphere, and by complete coincidence this landing took place while that was happening and with Bop in the background too. Those screenshots were taken over a period of maybe 10 in-game minutes at most.

Sightseeing over, Meg headed back to orbit to link up with the NST.

A bit of space littering later...

...and she was back, ready to head to Temerity-

Oi, Meg! Where are you going with that lander!?

What do you mean, "you just felt like going to Pol"!?

Spoiler

Nice little orbital resonance thing going on here:

See, you came in too fast and flew straight through Pol's SOI and out the other side. Nice work. *sigh* Point at Pol and fire those Hall effect thrusters a bit more, you'll get there eventually.

The NST has well over 20km/s delta-V left with its current payload, but the lander itself maybe 500m/s at most. Pol's orbital velocity is really low, barely 100m/s, but there's no way I can do Bop and Pol in one go now.

Might as well get it over with Meg, but when you get back to Kerbin ....

Pol's surface appears to be made of cheese, or possibly cheap vanilla ice cream that's been left in the freezer for too long.

Also, Meg found a nice rock and decided it was coming back with her. Because that'll really help with the "lander low on delta-V" situation.

Getting back from Pol wasn't easy due to Temerity's polar orbit, but with delta-V to burn in the NST it didn't take too much effort to force a rendezvous.

Meg had only just docked the lander and NST to Temerity when Gerdorf turfed her out and took her place, topping up all the fuel and life support tanks on both vessels before undocking them, joining them back together and heading off towards Bop.

Bop's orbital velocity is less than I thought, only about 170m/s, but it spins very rapidly (less than 2 hours per rotation) so surface and orbital velocities can be wildly different and picking out a landing spot in a polar orbit that's practically mirroring the terminator, isn't easy.

The combination of higher gravity and full rather than empty fuel tank means that the lander can't quite hover on RCS alone over Bop, whereas it could on Pol.

Not to be outdone by Meg, Ger went and found an even bigger rock on Bop- so big, in fact, that he couldn't bring it back with him.

A brief pause to admire the view and wait for the NST to be orbiting overhead...

...and it's back to the NST to plot a return course to Temerity.

Two auto-dockings later and everything is set for the trip back to Kerbin, where the Mun awaits! And also the little pod that took Meg and Ger out to Temerity and will take them back to the surface again, but after nearly 9 years in LKO all the solar panels have failed and it's dead in the water. At least some of the broken parts are fixable, so it should be as simple as getting over to it, fixing it up and heading for the surface- with all those precious samples, of course! (and a random rock from Pol)

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/Hgj5bUJ

Flag count so far: 13!

Next time: The finish line beckons with just one flag to go, but the Mun's eccentric and inclined orbit may yet pose a challenge, especially when the ride home is in low equatorial orbit of Kerbin and can't move.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Bonus!

Video of Pol moving across the sky from Duna.

https://imgur.com/U6V4GZX

(This is in real time!)

[jimmymcgoochie]

Time to end this.

Stand by for capture burn in *nyooooom* three hours ago, thanks auto-warp-to-node button .

Mun intercept plotted.

And since I accidentally gave Meg 9 landings and Gerdorf only 4, Gerdorf gets to do the final one.

Getting back to equatorial orbit of Kerbin when the Mun orbits at over 60 degrees inclination isn't easy, unless you do a wonky departure burn that leaves from the top of the Mun's SOI and ends up practically equatorial. Rendezvousing with the return vessel was a much more challenging problem: even with the engines on maximum thrust mode it was still a very long intercept burn which meant that several more burns were needed to not "rendezvous" at a distance of about 90km.

Gerdorf and Meg went over on EVA- Gerdorf to fix all the failed parts and Meg bringing the big box of surface samples (and one cool rock from Pol).

They waved goodbye to their trusty ship Temerity and headed for the surface.

And since the return craft was overbuilt with a big excess of fuel, they managed to do a precision landing almost directly on top of the KSC!

Mission accomplished, the crew returned on Y10, D311. Screenshots of all the flags are included in the Imgur album linked below, the Eeloo flag decided to turn itself into a base for some reason but it's definitely a flag.

Spoiler

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/GL06UD4

Flag count: 15 (out of 14?) and done!

Temerity was more than a match for the Snarkiverse, finishing the trip with enough delta-V to revisit most (if not all) of the planets again, if I was willing to put up with the glacially slow acceleration of full efficiency VASIMR thrust. It could probably handle a system with more planets and moons to visit, but I'm not about to do another one of these as I like my KSP sans slideshow FPS thankyouverymuch.