TrooperCooper

The last Life Support Processing Unit incoming for landing at Mun Base Alpha (see prior posts here and here)... Decoupling the travel-stage... While the travel stage impacts on the surface next to the base, creating another wreck, the rover is descending to land... Touchdown within spit range... Moved into position and deployed the payload. Bill already came out to do his part... Doing the dirty ground work again... And then the base was completed. The following Mun day all life support processing units were running round the clock without a problem. And now the time has come to do the 5-year habitation study experiment and proove that Kerbalkind has gained a fully independent foothold away from its home planet Kerbin.

I think to make it usefull you ideally have a Kethane operation going on Minmus. It offers a good supply of the ressource and by converting it into rocket fuel there, you can have a refuelling station within its orbit that allows you to leave Kerbin for interplanetary travel with nearly full tanks (or much smaller ones heh), since the home planets gravitational force out there is much weaker. You basically have most of the exit-burn done already when you are at Minmus. So take off from Kerbin with your interplanetary ship, head to Minmus to dock with your refuelling station and then do a much smaller exit-burn to Moho or wherever you want to go. Should take much less dV. Basically the same why IRL the Moon is considered as a potential stepping stone for a Mars mission.

Yeah, quitting KSP is not difficult. I do quit it about ten times a day... everytime I go for a smoke. Then again, quitting smoking is no problem either. I do that just as much... about ten times a day, everytime I return to my PC to play KSP again.

TNT is MUCH easier than that. Game still runs smooth at the base, but once I got to many debries arround, I'll just delete them. Of course its cheating on the one hand. But on the other hand, its only cheating because the game / computer cant handle the ammount of parts in one area when it gets to much...

Landed and installed two more modules to my Mun Base. Maybe three more and the whole thing might be operational already. I am accumulating quite some waste in the vicinity though.

Thank you! No, I dont use a mod for the landing / approach. All piloting is done manually, no mech-jeb etc. Only Kerbal Engineer for in-flight data-readout. When you have enough dV on your ship, it becomes relatively easy to make a close landing, since you can always make corrections during the approach. You can even stop while in space, adjust your heading a little bit and accelerate again if you have to. All you got to do is have enough maneuverability on your ship (reaction wheels / RCS) and get used to the navball. Set it to surface mode and then use the retro-/pro-grade markers during the descend to control your heading. My base is set up right on the mun equator. So when I come from Kerbin, I go into an orbit with 0° inclination. And once I am way above the base, I just kill all horizontal velocity by burning horizontally retro. After that, I just control my nearly vertical descend as described above. But really, it comes down to practice and when you have enough dV, its just a matter of time to get really close. You could even land further away and then make little hops towards your target if you feel more comfortably that way. The Mod for life support and such that I am using is "Better than starting manned" (BTSM), which also completly re-arranges the tech-tree and thus draws out the gameplay progress much more. See here.

Completing my Duna and Ike exploration project rewarded me with about 10k science, which allowed me to unlock the first 16k tech-tree node. With better energy collection tech and the basic equipment for colonization, it is now time to return to the Mün and begin working on the 5-year habitation study of the BTSM-mod. As a first step, a location for the planned mun base had to be found. To do that, I sent an automated ship that carried a series of micro landers. Each of these tiny lander probes (weight less than one ton) was put down along the muns equator within the tidaly locked window that allowed permanent visual contact to Kerbin. The last one finally found a spot that offered flat enough ground to establish the base. The next step was to bring a lander up that had all the neccessary equipment by itself to allow a Kerbal to serve as a Mün ground worker for a considerable ammount of time and keep him alive. The TSSU (Temporary Surface Survival Unit) was designed and Bill took off from Kerbin in it. The massive lander would allow him to stay on Mün for half of an (earth-) year. When Bill arrived in a Mun orbit, he was quite shocked to find himself randomly next to the remains of the spot-finder mothership. Luckily it passed without causing harm just 200 meters from Bills ship and for a few minutes the two huge crafts were flying in a nice formation... One orbital period later, the Kerbal landed his ship right next to the spot-finder probe. Next I had to find a way to bring all the equipment that is neccessary to keep a Kerbal alive on the Mun indefinitely. First I planned to bring the containers each included in an own lander, but I figured that would drive the part count of the base up to much. So I had to figure a way out to get rid of all the unneccessary parts once the payload had arrived. For the life support processing units I came up with this deployment system, integrated into a flying rover. After decoupling from its travel stage,... It landed by itself near the TSSU. After moving into position... The payload was deployed. Now Bill had to remove the remaining junk parts with TNT (read: termination through the tracking station) and then connect the life support processing unit with the TSSU. First module installed, and Bill is happy with it. Next, shortly before the beginning of our first Mün night, I brought an energy storage unit with a similarly designed deployment system. Here it is de-coupling from its travel stage during the final approach on Mün Base Alpha, which is visible just below the rover. Shortly before touch-down. Payload deployed next to the processing unit. Bill connected this new module as well and then took a look at the complex under construction. Next up I probably will bring the actual habitat lander with the experiment. And then quite a few more life support processing units. But now, Mun night is coming. Here is hoping Bill will make it through the darkness.

Install the custom biomes mod and every celestial body gets a full set of biomes (yes, they work with scientific experiments, too).

After Bob had been exploring every Biome on Duna during the prior stage of his mission, it was now time to move on to Ike. The 2nd lander, which was specifically designed for Ike with goo canisters, science junior and all the other experiments, was moved into the moons orbit... A few hours later, Bob arrived in his travel ship (the one top right) After manning the lander, the Kerbalnaut landed on the moon, put down his flag and performed all the experiments. Shortly after, he rendevouszed back with the travel stage and docked up with it. The lander was not designed to return back to Kerbin. But the experiment canisters had to be brought back to get the scienctific data from them. So Bob had to do a construction EVA as planned and tied the head of the lander to the travel ship. Once that was done, the main-section of the lander was jetted and left behind. After a brief return to the Duna service station for re-fuelling, the travel ship accelerated out of the planets orbit to get back home. Two month later, Bob arrived at Kerbin with loads of science to be analyzed in our labs. After transferring over to the Ike landers head, it became the re-entry vessel. Though there was a minor design flaw discovered. The stack decoupler which seperated it from the lander was mounted into the wrong direction and thus it was now blocking the return-vessels heatshield. Thankfully, that didnt cause a fatal catastrophy to Bobs descend, since the decoupler simply exploded once it overheated and freed the heatshield flawlessly in time. Shortly after, Bob was hanging on his chutes and returned home safely...

Bob took off with the travel ship from Kerbin to head for Duna... Just like Jebediah many years ago, he gets to watch a solar eclipse before leaving the planets orbit. Launch stage dropped and heading out... Unlike Jebs ship, Bob should have enough solar panels... About two month later, Bob arrived at the Duna service hub... After docking up with the Station, the travel-ship was refuelled and the lander prepared for the exploration journey... Bob undocked and went for his first Duna landing... Starting to farm science in every Duna biome...

After giving up on Moho for now, I am preparing to re-visit Duna. Technological improvements allow me to land in every Biome except for the polar regions this time to get more science out of the operation. And on top of that I will visit Ike as well. So I brought quite some fuel and set up a new hub in a low orbit... Reactor core in the center, one tanker below and above. And the lander (with travel stage) at the top. Now waiting for the arrival of Kerbalnaut Bob.

Made this one a while ago already. Prolly pretty standard compared to the designs I see around here. Didnt use it much, but it was fun to create, considering I havent made many rovers yet. I wish there were more reasons to use rovers in career etc...

The link you were looking for, in case you need it in the future.

Working on a Moho Monster. Kicker stage + travel stage + lander... to be assembled in space... And thats just one of probably two or three ships I have to send I guess...

I went to Gilly yesterday in my modded career with Bill... Take off from the launchpad... Approaching the tiny moon... Planted the flag... After take off, docked with a pre-positioned modular service station that provides lifesupport untill the return-window opens and also refills the fuel on Bills ship... Coming home for christmas... with loads of science.

Oooooh, I didnt know that one. Good info, thx.

Huuuh? Why would you want to carry two samples from say... the Mun Lowlands?

Kerbal Engineer for info readings Better than starting Manned (including its (imo) mandatory DRE addition ) for an expanded and more meaningful career Custom Biomes so that I can truly explore every celestial body

You can store as many different surface samples as you want in a pod. They only replace each other if they come from the same location... in which case you wouldnt get more than the one science ammount anyway.

Nah! Thats no problem. You just have to change the units labels from like... space-station to... submarine.

All righty. Thanks for the input, guys. Much appreciated!

So I am wondering if there is any more or less feasible way to do direct transfers to the moon of another planet. I am certainly no expert on interplanetary maneuvers, but I can hold my own using the launch window planer, precision nodes etc. and get to my target without burning more than a few extra tanker loads of fuel. But I am struggeling on how to get from... say Kerbin orbit to a Gilly orbit. Well, unless I get a lucky shot on my approach, I can go to an Eve orbit and then do another regular transfer to its moon. But somehow I think thats not how NASA would do it. I know Gilly is small and its tiny SOI makes it more difficult to move in on it. But I'm wondering about the principle... Using just a swing arround the planet without an actual stable orbit of course is an option, too. But then the question arises of when its best to approach and from where to minimize dV costs... and thus the launch and initial transfer burn moment becomes a critical factor as I see it. The launch window planer from Alex Moon doesnt give me an option to choose moons as targets. So how are other people solving this problem. And is there a feasible way to do this without spending an afternoon with the calculator (nope, dont have a degree in astronomy )? Sorry if this was answered elsewhere already. I checked several guides and tutorials, but they seem to usally cover regular planet-to-planet-transfers or just going from a planet to its own moon...

After successfully completing my Duna project and then goofing arround near Mun and Minmus with new experiments for a while, I am now slowly getting the hang of SSTO planes. This is the SSPX. Got her up to about 50 km and everything seemed to be working fine. Then the whole cockpit disintegrated since its not a pressurized pod. Prolly need a little more tech unlocks...