TrooperCooper

So, after several attempts of re-vitalizing this career while my RL-job is keeping me pretty busy, it has finally died off due to a faulty HDD that caused me to loose an enormous load of data. And my mainboard died as well. Time to buy a new computer in a couple weeks. On the plus side, I am making enough money now to buy me a real killer system with 4.7 GHZ and a GForce GTX 1080 or something like that. Then I will start a fresh career. Probably a vanilla-scaled, heavily modded one in (hopefully) 1.2. Untill then, thanks to all followers during this UNSA campaign here. I learned a lot during this and while I have not reached my goal of landing humans on Mars yet, at least I did bring some back alive from within its SOI and got the hang of gravity-assisted flight OPs.

It works! Thanks so much! EDIT: except for the bump NRM stuff

Parachutes FTW!

I have the same issue as Gordon Dry... how do I do that?

Yes, most definitely. I got a new RL job which is slowing my progress down somewhat and I am also in the process of migrating to 1.1.3, which is quite a hassle. But I have gone to far to end this now. Expect more episodes soontm.

1986. Contract to land people on Mars till 2032 IIRC accepted.

You might like this: http://kerbal.curseforge.com/projects/rename-vessel-in-tracking-station Its supposed to be fixed with 1.1.3 though.

Thanks PLAD! I can not figure out the exact speeds at which parachute deployments began since I dont remember and can not accurately tell from the screenshots I made. My best guesstimate is, that the first drogues prolly kicked in at about 1,000 m/s surface speed. And the others followed subsequently by their settings as below. The Mars landers had three chutes total. Two drogues and one main chute. All of them Kevlar material with standard Mars settings, altitude-deployment adjusted as below: Drogue Chute One: Wanted speed at target alt: 250 m/s Target altitude: 4,000 m Predeployment altitude: 6,000 m Deployment altitude: 5,000 m Parachutes used: 1 Drogue Chute Two: Wanted speed at target alt: 80 m/s Target altitude: 2,000 m Predeployment altitude: 4,000 m Deployment altitude: 3,000 m Parachutes used: 1 Main Chute: Wanted touchdown-speed: 18 m/s Predeployment altitude: 2,000 m Deployment altitude: 1,000 m Parachutes used: 1 (four radially) There was an element of luck involved though, as they all deployed in yellow risk-state. Airbags crash tolerance of 80 m/s could have helped with that if only one would have failed maybe. But I was lucky and they all held together anyway. Good luck with your landings!

Trying to finally land a probe intact on another planet, the United Nations have sent out two missions to Mars and Venus each. Click here to see more.

Episode 17: Planetary Inspectors (click on the spoiler below the picture to open)

I admire your spaceplane. Thought an SSTO is not possible in RO/RSS. And that with 25 tons payload. Nice stuff!

From the 1.1.3 patch-notes: * Reduction in the creation of Garbage Objects in Flight scene. * Reduction in the creation of Garbage Objects in Space Center. * Optimize Part.GetConnectedResources and Vessel.GetActiveResources for speed and to not create garbage. I am still on 1.1.2 since I play a heavily modded RSS/RO career. So I am gonna wait for the mods to update before checking out 1.1.3. But this might help with our issue.

Ahoy @PLAD ! Just a big THANKS for this great tool. I have just started using it the other day and completed an Earth-Venus-Mars-Earth roundtrip based on its data last night. With this program you have really opened up the possibilities within RSS enormously. My hats off to you.

The United Nations have launched their Odysseus flight, a low-budget mission to perform a gravity assist based round-trip to Venus and Mars and a return to Earth in under two years. Click here to see more.

Episode 16: Odysseus (click on the spoiler below the picture to open)

Hehe, sorry... but its gonna be a while untill I have played enough for another episode. But yeah, it seems like Odysseus is go for launch!

Sneak preview: => Oh... my... god!

Thats not a moon! Thats my spacestation!

Thank you! All Visitor class probes are just ment to be lightweight fly by missions. Orbital insertions would cost a huge ammount of dV (Pluto Visitor for example would need 11,558 m/s of dV on its planned flight path for an additional capture burn) and so far I am playing "as if" the Agency would not have figured out remote techniques of aerobraking (something that was not used historically untill the Hiten probe in 1991 as far as I know) yet. Transfer times to Uranus and Pluto I totally have forgotten to mention above, thanks for mentioning it. The Uranus Visitor mission is a traditional direct transfer based on the good old Transfer Window Planner plugin with a travel time of four years and eight days. The Pluto Visitor is a Jupiter-slingshot flight based on the Flyby finder tool. It has a travel time of 12 years and 316 days if everything goes as planned. Considering this is mid 1970s and Pluto is still very far away, this is quite a fast transfer, especially for just 7,000 m/s of dV from LEO. Good spotting. Yep, I deliberately choosed that name. I am completly new to using slingshots and I have serious doubts about this mission. Considering I play without reverting / reloading (except for obvious bugs) and without MechJeb or any other sort of precision-enhancing autopilot, it will be extremly dangerous and a cancellation based on Pluto Visitors outcome is not unlikely...

The United Nations have reached Jupiter with a probe mission and are now actively preparing for manned interplanetary flights. Click here to see more.

Episode 15: Meeting the Giant (click on the spoiler below the picture to open)

if its shaking, turning off SAS might help, too.

Sounds like TweakScale <> FAR conflict again. You got tweakscaled fins on that rocket? If so, either remove them or adjust their mass / strength modifier in the VAB according to the re-scale factor. See if that helps... If in doubt, try without TweakScale

Nice series. Keep it up! One little hint: you were worried about the dV lost due to adding struts to your top stage / fairing base connection. IIRC if you attach the first connection of the strut to the fairing base and then connect it to the satellite from there, its weight is added to the lifters top stage and not to the payload. Given the much higher mass of the lifters top stage, the minor weight addition does not make much of a difference in terms of dV this way, compared to putting it on the light satellite.

Tight! I wish you good luck!