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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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SRB Grand Tour has arrived in Low Eve Orbit.

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Except it's only inclined at 5 degrees and the landing site is at -25 degrees. If I burn all of my fuel I can reach 8 degrees. Time to reload a quicksave...

Somewhat more technical info:

Spoiler

I'm basically out of fuel at this point. The above picture was taken before I lowered my orbit even further... Currently I have one thumper and seven hammers left giving me about 120m/s of delta-V.

I'm going to redo the capture and hopefully I'll be in the right orbit this time.

Also, you probably got this by this point, but I'm not doing it all the way without refueling. I'm going to send new SRB's from time to time to "refuel" the ship. I had to launch three to the ship to get this far, but fortunately I will not need three for each transfer. The mass of the crew quarters plus all of the landers is 300t, 200t of which is the Eve lander, so by logic I should need 1/3 of the fuel, hopefully.

Also, there will be a mk2 version of the refueler, I discovered so many problems with the current one. The correction SRBs jiggle around a lot leading to Delta-V losses, they should be able to be detached (current ones can't do that), forward and back Vernors have to be jettisoned in order to fire the center boosters (meaning elliptical orbit rendezvous was hard), and most noticeably, I don't need as much LFO as I thought I would. I had an X-200-32 on each refueler and I should only need an X-200-8. One last thing, they were too long and wobbly. The original ship, with four segments (mothership plus three refuelers) triggered Kraken attacks. The new version will be shorter.

Also, regarding the use of Vernor RCS:

1. Separatron docking is possible, but I don't have the strength of computer or the patience necessary to have 100-200 extra parts per segment. Thus, to save time (and sanity) I am allowing the use of limited Vernor RCS.

2. RCS may not be used on any lander. Period.

3. RCS may only be used when within 2.5km of the vessel you are trying to rendezvous, or for corrections of less than 0.5m/s while attempting a rendezvous.

4. When within 2.5km of a vessel, RCS may only be used to slow down 10m/s relative to the target. Any more and I have to use SRB's.

5. RCS may not be used on purpose for rotation, only translation.

6. The EVA jetpack may only be used within 2.5km of a vessel I'm trying to rendezvous with. Yes, I have a dedicated SRB Gilly lander.

 

Also, I'm thinking I'll name the mothership Impossible.

 

 

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Worked on my next version of a SSTO spaceplane the EX RS1. It is still an experimental WIP, but is able to get to a 185x185k orbit with 700m/s remaining so it might turn into something useful.

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Once again I overflew KSC at altitude (~28k) and had to turn around and use remaining fuel to land.  Was able to line up with KSC...

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..almost...

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Discovered that temperatures hot enough to melt lead don't actually melt aluminium, copper, or steel...

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In the light of this catastrophic discovery, mission control was faced with two options; scrub the descent, or kick off the aero shell and hope for the best. Since any chance is better than no chance, a swift drinking game was held and the drunkest intern had to press the button. At least if it blew up during landing, they would have plausible deniability.

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Atmospheric entry went surprisingly well. The venusian orbital velocity is barely higher than Earth's, and the upper atmosphere no more fierce, with the result that the heat swiftly faded and a gentle descent began.

A very gentle descent. In fact a descent so gentle that mission control started another drinking game to pass the time.

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The parachute failure was unexpected, but ultimately not significant. Even a sedate 12m/s descent turned out to be beyond critical velocity in this nightmare soup of an atmosphere, with the result the chutes remained closed, but the same soup led to a sufficiently gentle touchdown anyway.

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...yes, we have rubber that handles pizza-oven temperatures. Why is that even a question?

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@eddiew so glad to see you back!

I’m all out of likes for the day so here’s a bunny with a teapot on its head:

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Also, as you’re probably aware, the Soviet Venera landers didn’t bother with chutes in the lower atmosphere at all, they just had like a big, disc shaped... hat... and a crush ring on the bottom. 

Also, what mod are those wheels from? 

Also, that poor rover!

(they’d best hope it’s not discovered by a technologically superior species, upgraded,, and returns seeking vengeance. Or it’s creator. Or whales. Or... no idea where I was going with this, carry on.)

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17 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

 

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Are we doing this? I'll play along. shush I know its not even past thanksgiving.

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In other news, I crashed a rover into kerbin.

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After a lot of quickloading, a dozen aerobraking passes, one solar panel explosion, and lots of frustration...

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Low Eve Orbit at 30 degrees inclination has been achieved. I was going to land tonight, but it's 11:00 and tomorrow is Monday... GRR!

Also, I only had 4 solar panels and now I have three... So, hopefully it will be enough.

Edited by Ultimate Steve
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Explorer 1 arrived at Dres!

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After capturing and circularizing I sent my fuel transport up from my mining outpost (where it had been sitting, fully filled, for quite some time) to replenish the ship's liquid fuel stores and give her enough oxidizer for a landing. Her tanks filled, the next step was to send down the single-use landing craft.

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The lander has no landing legs of its own and instead sets down on the wheels of its attached science rover.

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After its successful landing, scientist Mirtha Kerman exited the craft to take Kerbalkind's first steps on Dres's surface (and confirm once and for all that it has a surface) and plant a flag. The rover contains a gravioli detector, thermometer, accelerometer and barometer while the landing craft contains a Science Jr. and Mystery Goo container. Combined with Mirtha's crew report, EVA report and surface sample this allowed her to run every experiment possible on an airless body and load the results into the lander's ESU.

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Its mission complete, the lander separated from the rover and blasted back off into space with its data (and passenger, of course.)

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With the single-use lander safely re-attached to Explorer 1's bow docking port, the multi-use lander (which will be left behind in Dres's orbit) made its own inaugural journey, taking engineer Joezor Kerman to the mining outpost in order to boost its output so that it could quickly generate enough fuel for the rest of the mission.

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One fuel shipment later, it was time for pilot Obgel Kerman and scientist Wehrely Kerman to make their landing, touching down at Mirtha's original landing site. You see, that rover has a command seat attached, and it would be a crime most heinous to allow it to go unused.

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Whee!

So Joezor's still on the surface but aside from that I've finished all I need to do on Dres. All that's left now is to wait the 1 year and 65 days for the transfer window home.

 

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7 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

@eddiew so glad to see you back!
...
Also, what mod are those wheels from? 

Thank you :)  I'm likely to drift in an out every few months, I don't think KSP is a game I can put down forever :wink: 

The wheels are Kerbal Foundries Continued. I may have moved the smallest two options forward in the tech tree, because otherwise I'd be at Jupiter before I could put a rover on the moon, and that never made sense to me. Nonetheless, even these 'basic' options have gearing, scaling, and anti-roll options, so you can make a rover that is seriously hard to flip by accident; or a rover which behaves like wheeled vehicles actually behave, depending on how you see it :D  Either way, KFC's wheels are far better all around than stock, imho.

 

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Following on from the hugely successful rover missions, Mars is almost tapped out for useful data. After long consideration as to whether they really wanted Shatner back on staff, mission control gave the go-ahead to send a vessel to bring the crew back home.

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While the Starswan is a shining example of an efficient and long-range SSTO, even it's advanced nuclear engines can't provide enough burn time to perform the transfer on fuel alone. As luck (or mission planning) would have it, the arrival velocity is no worse than Earth orbital, and as such an aggressive aerobraking pass can be used for capture without losing any more of the precious fuel.

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Docked to Aries Station with a whisker over 2km/s left in the tank, Starswan is all set to bring the team home as soon as they've processed the last of their data.

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Built a thing! 

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Spoiler

 

...which turned to need more power than I calculated, so I had to scavenge a bit of science with rovers...

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Although lander turned to be have structural integrity issues rover managed to survive...

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...so after few more generic launches first ship of reborn fleet left its dock...

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...featuring big Hangar for minimal part count cargo stowage...

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...and then I tested nearly 160 tons of argon propulsion running at ~1600ec/s,

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Xplorer is now running on its own life support and, with its own swarm of tug drones, have no need to stay in dock. Hopefully that oversized nuclear dongle wont melt...

 

 

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This is the worst thing i ever sent into space.

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Here is a list of flaws:

-The Fairing Cap cant deploy correctly

-It can't generate enough power to sustain the radiatiors.

-It has little battery capacity.

-The Nitrogen fuel drains incredibly quick.

-Its pretty much useless since it has the same transfer capacity as the Saturn 5, so i could just make a Saturn 5 and use that instead.

-It looks very ugly when launched on the SLS.

Most of these problems i can easily fix, but might need a complete makeover.

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Sending more modules for my asteroid base (From left to right: Nuclear industrial center, Crew quarters, Communication tower)

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Let's attach it one by one...

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Hmmm... That looks like a mess. Let's tidy it up a bit

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There! More like that, looks better

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More modules will be added later, probably mining rig, laboratory and external chair for crew to relax outside (Or having the VIP seat of doom whenever the asteroid decided to head on a collision course with kerbin)

That's all for today :)

 

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