Grand Tour Adventures!

[BagelRabbit]

I'm beginning work on a grand space station, that will eventually be able to visit any celestial body in the Kerbal Space Program.

Here's a quick summary of the project so far:

Modules One and Two were docked almost entirely without the use of RCS thrusters, because the stupid manufacturer left off some of the RCS ports. Nonetheless, without much ado and with minimal swearing, the craft were successfully docked. Module One was a stock Space Station Core, Module Two was basically two Hitchhiker storage containers duct-taped together.

The Science Module went on even easier, due to advanced construction techniques and actually putting on the god-danged RCS thrusters, for a change. This module contained a mk2 Lander-Can and a two mobile processing labs.

A Basic Shuttle was docked to add two crew members, then returned safely home despite a hard landing.

The Undocking/Landing video:

Ship Mass: 65.8 t

MonoProp: 472/1040

LiquidFuel: 1889/1980

ElectricCharge: 6630/6630

Kerbals: 6/20

So that's it so far. I'll add on more modules later, prior to taking the craft anywhere.

[BagelRabbit]

The Corvus Space Station mk2 is coming along famously. Three modules are currently docked to the first HubMax of docking ports. One is an unmanned orbiter designed to take plenty of science despite its small footprint. Another is a lander that is designed to undock, land, and redock without difficulty. The third is the second-generation Kerbal shuttle, carrying six Kerbals to a safe docking with the station.

The unmanned orbiter will likely eventually go on the aft HubMax, along with other unmanned spacecraft. In addition, an enormous fuel tank with nuclear engines and a massive solar array will be placed in the rear of the station, as soon as I figure out how.

Two EVAs have been done to examine struts that were not removed by staging and remain clinging to the aft section. They have been determined to not be a problem, but Kerbal ground control is still a little wary about docking anything onto the port.

Crew morale is high, and all members of the station are excited about their role in Kerbin's newest space station.

Videos:

[Captain Sierra]

A space station which moves under it's own power ceases to be a space station. That's a grand tour ship.

[BagelRabbit]

Noted. I'll change the title.

(It's a space station for now, and it will be up until the installation of the nuclear engines, IMHO. But that will hopefully happen soon, whereupon the spacecraft can truly take the title of Grand Tour Ship.)

Edited February 1, 2014 by UpsilonAerospace

[BagelRabbit]

The Transportation Module has been attached! This module, larger than anything ever docked to the space station before, is an absolute beast:

-12 Gigantor solar panels

-4 Nuclear Engines

-More than a Big Orange Fuel Tank's worth of pure rocket fuel

-Two Mini Clampotrons for docking small unmanned craft

-More than 900 units of RCS fuel

As I said before, it's a beast.

The launch went kind of smoothly except for the part when the periapsis dipped below 55km. This caused the craft to enter the atmosphere, but through the power of air resistance, it dropped the intercept distance from fifty kilometers to thirty. Several careful burns brought the craft within three kilometers of the station, and the docking went pretty well from there.

Of course, the crew tried to open a bottle of champagne in weightlessness, and the resulting gush of weightless fizzy beverage damaged several electrical boards and short-circuited an experiment or two.

Picture:

Video:

[BagelRabbit]

So, just a little video to keep the thread alive.

First time docking without RCS and all in all, it went great!

(Oh, and I fired up the nuclear engines to boost the craft to a more circular orbit, depleting much RCS but otherwise going well.)

Here's a question for y'all: Should I fill all of the docking ports? Right now, there are six radial docking ports that haven't been occupied and I'm wondering whether I should try to put science probes and landers on all of them. I don't want my computer to melt down but I really want the extra gobs of Science!

[BagelRabbit]

Sorry for not posting for a while. Don't worry, the Kerbal Station is still alive and well.

Here's the first part of a video chronicling my attempt to dock a total of five modules to the station with one grand multi-part ship!

The remainder of the ship is currently merrily bobbing along about seventy meters away from the station. I'll dock it in the next episode.

[BagelRabbit]

...I'm actually kind of ashamed of this...

...Four of the modules went on okay but the fifth ran out of ElectricCharge. Very humiliating, and because I have pledged not to do-over any of the missions, it's just going to have to drift around next to the grand-tour craft.

Now, I am confident that we can get to Eve on the fuel this thing has... any opinions? It has ~4,800 gallons of fuel.

[TomFallion]

Hey Sierra. I didnt know you were on here. I noticed by the flag Lol

[BagelRabbit]

Back again. What a long wait.

After discovering that the craft would have to burn its engines for ~14 minutes to even get a Mun encounter, I decided that I needed a rear-engine section for a further boost. I am confident that this section will not cause any wobbling, as the front engines will make the thrust distribution fairly uniform.

I'm thinking of making an AAR section in the Fan Works for this as soon as it gets underway. Which might be fairly soon. I don't have any good planetary transfer windows right now, but I'll probably go to the Mun first. You know, test the handling and fuel consumption while the craft isn't too far from home.

Anyway. Here's the newest episode of my YouTube series, Cinematic Style!

...I grabbed all of the audio off of thirty seconds' worth of an older video, so don't be surprised if the Kerbals repeat themselves a bit. (I included the same phrase five times! See if you can spot where the phrase reappears.)

This project was mostly for fun, as I discovered some new features of my editing software and wanted to put them to good use. However, I would love your opinion on whether or not I should make more cinematics.

Off to edit my next project!

[BagelRabbit]

...now, we burn for the Mun...

Well, we're now on a low-orbit Mun encounter. All systems are working reasonably well, despite the large amounts of RCS that were depleted throughout the burn.

I've decided to keep this on the Mission Reports, because I don't want to begin the AAR series with the ARM patch coming out very soon.

Edited March 31, 2014 by UpsilonAerospace

[StevenLawyer]

Here's my single launch, no refuel, stock grand tour ship that includes a reusable lander for all planets except Eve (Eve is a separate one time use lander), including Tylo with reusable rover and reusable probes (you're not going to land on a planet without first sending an unmanned probe, are you?). I finished the mission with fuel to spare.