Mission Control Multiplayer... kind of

[Tobmaster]

Over the weekend, Monday, May 27th to be exact, a three member team decided to attempt a mission control style multiplayer game with the Telemachus Mod. It was quite interesting. 1001sd, AustralianFries, and I took part in this mission. I acted as pilot and was stuck in IVA mode only while the other two would call out Ap and PE values, times to Ap and Pe and so on from the data transmitted through the Telemachus mod.

The ship I took for the mission was an excellent design, for landing on minmus, but had a few shortcomings for a munar landing, largest of which was a improperly designed lander leaving too little fuel for reentry to Kerbin's SOI from Mun. In hindsight, a few simple modifications could have been done to make a smoother experience, but all in all it was a success, mostly due to the inadvertent use of KAS on a staged part close to the munar surface allowing the refueling of the craft for the return trip.

Mission Details. Taking off from KSC was a simple task using the onboard instruments, the altimeter was priceless, throughout the entire mission. During the turn for orbit around kerbin, the Ap altitude was called out until a lofty 300,000m AP was achieved. Accelerating the time warp, while getting a countdown of time to Ap, we got close to Ap,. There, a burn was started bringing up the Pe above Kerbin and continued to burn to intersect Mun's path at about 12,000,000m. Without using map view, we had to proceed like a rendezvous attempt and circularize our orbit a tad smaller than Mun's, at about 11,000,000m, still within Munar SOI and just wait with time warp enabled. Angling the small window of the mk1 craft to visually determine how close we were getting, all that could really be said is: "Well, its getting closer." Once the orbital velocity switched to reference Mun, we dropped from time warp and made our orbital adjustment burn until we had a Pe value on the chart... Now started the hard part.

Normally landing on the darkside of Mun is dangerous/ PITA, but there was really no difference when confined to IVA and off we went to burn for landing with only the altimeter to go by. When the landing burn started, I then realized the flaw in my landing vehicle's dv and had to take the command vehicle down to the surface without separating, but this section had no landing legs, meaning I needed to jettison it with enough time to recover with the smaller lander and put it down. I took the decent slow and when within just a few meters of the surface, the secondary module was released, but caused major instability with the tiny landing craft and the fact that the small craft had no sas. Using the 6 radial engines, I had to boost higher to recover which caused me to burn off much needed fuel. It was at this time that I was informed that telemetry data went dark... Well, that command module contained the antenna for the telemachus mod, overlooked detail #2. Luckily that wasn't completely overlooked as I had placed a secondary antenna on the mini lander. Once that was brought online, after touching down, and time warp accelerated so there was sun to charge the batteries for it to transmit, it was time to take off. Without knowing exactly where we were, I received information earlier that were were almost perfectly equatorial, Bob went EVA to get a look at the location of Kerbin so we had a rough guess of where to go.

Once the burn started I realized that big dv mistake was major, we didn't have enough fuel to make it into munar orbit and I had to reload from F9 to rethink the situation. Luckily, the secondary module landed with the fuel tank still intact just a few meters away. Thinking about my options, Bob was sent to push the tank closer to the lander in hopes of somehow being able to use the docking clamp to transfer fuel, that was when he noticed that a KAS winch was attached to the secondary module and it could be used to transfer fuel the few meters. Now with a full tank, Bob climbed aboard and took off for home. Once in munar orbit, the burn to Kerbin was started once the planet disappeared behind Mun, real scientific.

Early during this burn it was noticed that a retrograde burn increased Ap, which ended up being a retrograde orbit. Coming in retrograde was extiting and we hit Kerbin atmosphere at only a touch over 3300m/s. All I got from mission control was: "You're at 90,000m... uh 3000m! Deploy the chutes!" Once the chutes were deployed, Bob woke up from his brain damaging deceleration to a soft landing on the surface of Kerbin, just one continent to the east of KSC.

All in all, it was great fun, but the resolution of the IVA navball needs to be better, it is hard to be as accurate as the exterior navball. THis is definitely something everyone should try at least once.

Edited May 30, 2013 by Tobmaster

[Pursuedtank]

I always enjoy reading about people doing this, it sound like a lot of fun and something I should try at some point, when I have the time and the people to do it with. There was a thread that got wiped out where people had done exactly this. Anyway congratulations on a successful mission.

[shand]

haha well done guys. glad it worked!

Not sure why you didnt stage the capsule off... may have helped bobs head!

[Tobmaster]

haha well done guys. glad it worked!

Not sure why you didnt stage the capsule off... may have helped bobs head!

Could have, but I knew Bob could make it... not much inside his head to damage, besides, there was a lot I should have done different.

[1001sd]

Pursuedtank: I guess that if you want to, we (or some of us) can play with you, if you don't have any ksp friend/ no ksp friends who wants to play mission control.

Also, thank Tobmaster and AustralianFries, it was lots of fun. We should do it again

Would anyone be interested if we livestreamed while we play?