dire

Landed Behemoth on Minmus for refueling. Decided to change its name to Leviathan to keep more in line with the mythology theme. Docked the other landers to it, but I'll take a screen shot tomorrow.

In this challenge we can explore the fine details of setting up a colony on Duna. It'll go into more depth than a Duna Speedrun or an SSTO to Duna challenge, but hopefully will be less intensive than the Duna Outpost Mission Architecture epic. If you are doing a DOMA challenge, that may count for this challenge also. This challenge is open-ended; you can technically send a scouting party to Duna, come back and then ignore Duna and colonize somewhere else and still get full points. Rather than bothering with NPM and near-Kerbin shuttles and pizza delivery SSTO's, your limit for each phase is a budget in normal credits. Since I'm giving everyone tons of money I'll also limit the total number of colonists available. If people also record their tonnage that might be interesting to put on a leaderboard. In summary, the challenge includes three mission profiles; Investigation - Budget: 1 million kerbucks and 2 years. In the investigation phase of the colony, you need to figure out what this murky red dot on your telescopes is. This phase is complete no sooner than when you first * Send at least two equatorial satellites, a polar satellite and an unmanned lander to Duna. +50 points. -10 points for every craft destroyed or permanently out of communication with KSC after completing objective (having an uplink only sometimes is OK). (Optional) The lander may be manned. In this case it must meet the Exploration objectives and uses the Exploration budget instead. (Optional) Send a satellite past Ike before it enters its final orbit. +5 points OR put an additional satellite in permanent orbit over Ike +10 points (Optional) Return a lander with Duna ground data to Kerbin +20 points (Optional) Return a lander with Ike ground data to Kerbin +10 points (Optional): Leave an unmanned science lab (+5 points), 2.5 meter ISRU and mining rig (+5 points), and return vehicle for 4 Kerbals (+5 points) on the surface for the Exploration crew. (Optional) Silver Age of Rockets: Use only tech costing 300 science points or less to unlock. +10 points. OR use only tech costing 160 science or less to unlock +25 points (Optional) All stock (for this stage): +5 points * Staying on budget. +5 points per 100k kerbucks UNDER budget up to +25, -5 points per 100k OVER budget up to -25. If your craft costs 750k credits, you get +10 points. If it costs 5 million, -25 points. Rescue craft and unplanned refueling trips count! * Because SCIENCE: Per 100 science brought home +2 points (for all phases). (Optional) Career mode with schedule starting on Y1 D1 with 5,000,000 starting cash and 1000 starting science +50 points OR start with 10 million funding and 5000 science +25 points. Building upgrades don't come out of mission budget, but still count against your career total funds. Any launch that leaves LKO (250km altitude over Kerbin) counts against your total mission budget, even if it nets funds in total because of contracts or discoveries. Launches to LKO count against total mission budget if they score points (for example, if they score science points that are counted towards Because SCIENCE). Exploration - Budget: 2 million kerbucks and 3 years. Budget and schedule are tracked separately from Investigation phase. During the exploration phase, you establish the feasibility of keeping Kerbals alive on a mission to the Red Planet and figure out whether or not you can ever get them home. * Plant a flag and bring a surface sample home from Duna +50 points. * Send two Kerbals to the surface of Duna and return them safely home +50 points. -25 points for every kerbal who dies in this phase, including optional objectives. (Optional) Send up to 8 extra Kerbals to the surface of Duna and return them safely home +5 points each, up to +40 points, and they are bonus colonists. * Kerbals Need Food Badly: Use a life support mod OR bring 0.04 units of ore per kerbal per day for them to eat. Ore that's been eaten already can be dumped prior to maneuvers. Kerbals starve and die after 30 days. * EVA suits have 6 hours of life support. Kerbals that spend too long on EVA die. Kerbals in a command chair have no life support limit but still need food. * Staying on budget: +5 points per 200,000 kerbucks under budget up to +25 at 1 million cost. -5 points per 200k over budget up to -25 at 3+ million cost. * Slept through the apocalypse: +2 points per 3 months ahead of schedule. -2 points per 3 months behind schedule. (Optional) Plant a flag and bring a surface sample home from Ike +10 points. (Optional) Per other planet and moon explored (flag and sample returned home and recovered) +5 points. (Optional) Golden Age of Space Exploration: Use only tech costing 550 points or less to unlock. +10 points OR use only tech costing 300 points or less to unlock +25 points (Optional) Not using Near Future mods and equivalent +10 points OR stock +25 Colonization - Budget: 3 million kerbucks and 5 years. Budget and schedule are tracked separately from Investigation and Exploration phase. * Bring colonists to Duna. Keep them there and alive for at least 3 years. Per colonist-year on Duna +5 points (25 habitation points per colonist possible). * Once the technology has proven itself, the people will flock to space like rats fleeing a sinking ship, but until the 5-year trial period is up only 80 colonists are brave or foolhardy enough to risk their lives chasing the dream of living in a tiny box for 5 years eating freeze-dried food and drinking recycled urine. Your recovered explorers are also willing to tag along, meaning you potentially have as many as 90 vic--er, volunteers. (Optional) Be fruitful and multiply. Per colonist-year in space, Mun, Minmus or Ike +1 points. Per colonist-year on other moons, +2 points. Per colonist-year on other planets, +5 points. Colonies must exist for at least 3 years to be worth any points. Done right, an interplanetary transport ship can count as a colony in its own right, but passengers who spend less than 3 years aboard are worth zero points. * A colony ceases to become viable and stops generating points if it has no kerbals inhabiting it. However, colonists that previously scored points there still keep their points. * Colonists need food. Either use a life support mod, like Snacks!, or assume each colonist will need 0.04 units of ore per person per day. Ore that's already been eaten can be flushed. Colonists with no food for 30 days starve and die. * Unlike the brave, bold explorers, colonists need space. Each colonist needs either a full Mk1 passenger cabin, half a HitchHiker, or 1/6th of a mk3 passenger module to themselves. Colonists without sufficient space become krazy kolonists after 30 days and are worth zero habitation points, but are still worth recovering. Command modules and science labs do not prevent colonists from becoming krazy, but science labs still score Because SCIENCE! points for research done. Explorers still ignore this requirement. If your life support module uses a habitation/homesickness system, use that instead. * Colonists are worth zero points before the Explorers land safely home, even if they've been somewhere for a while. You cannot complete Colonization before you complete Exploration. * Colonists that die are worth zero points and incur a penalty of -10 points per dead colonist. Your explorers are still heroes and their deaths are still national tragedies. -25 points per dead Explorer who dies in this phase. * Colonists that spend more than three consecutive days in a command chair, staring unprotected into the yawning abyss of space, become Krazy Kolonists. Explorers do not face this limit as they are already a bit krazy. (Optional) Bring them home. +10 points per planetary colonist safely recovered to the KSC. +5 points per colonist recovered from other moons. Colonists must have inhabited a colony for at least 3 years, but even krazy kolonists score points for being recovered. Perhaps someday, with proper treatment and living with their loved ones, they might recover from their traumatic experience. (Optional) Colonists who are given an entire Mk2 cabin to themselves or a personal, one-seat rover, flyer, or orbit-capable escape pod consider this the height of luxury and generate 6 habitation points, instead of 5, per colonist-year on a planet, or 3 habitation points instead of 2 on distant moons. * Staying on budget: +5 points per 200,000 kerbucks under budget up to +25 at 2 million cost. -5 points per 200k over budget up to -25 at 4+ million cost. * Staying on schedule: Time starts when the Explorers are recovered. Recovering colonists does not count against the schedule. (Optional) Not using Near Future mods +10 OR stock +25 Mods: -All craft and kerbals must originate from Kerbin, although secondary launch sites are acceptable on that planet. -Alcubierre drive and other space warps are prohibited. This contest follows the universal speed limit. Most really fancy drives are also really expensive and high-tech; if you find an exception that you want to use please ask. Examples I used: Lithium Plasma Ion drives from Near Future, - In general for mod parts, each kerbal needs at least 2 seats to stay sane. Especially light parts, like command seats and airlocks, don't count; and especially heavy parts might count as "luxurious" and generate extra points. When in doubt, plan to bring the Kerbin home since even krazy kolonists are worth points if you return them. Entries and top scores * My entry will be the DOMA Arigato mission log, up to the start of Year 9 and will include Aries, Artemis and Leviathan. My Investigation phase is completed at the conclusion of the Duna Insight challenge, and the Exploratory phase will end with the return of Artemis and the exploration crew around the start of Year 4, at which point the 5-year scoring countdown for Colonization will begin. The crew I leave on Duna prior to year 4 don't count for this challenge, although they will handily be in place or almost in place when Colonization scoring starts. Tips and tricks Example scores: - Colonist who spent 5 years on Duna with a personal rover, who was later recovered to Kerbin: 40 points each: 6 habitation points per kerbal-year times 5 years, plus 10 points for recovery. - Colonist who spent 5 years on Ike with a personal orbit-capable escape pod and a Mk1 passenger cabin, who was later recovered: 20 points each: 3 points per kerbal-year times five years, plus 5 points for recovery. - Colonist who spent 5 years in a command chair on Ike and was brought home in a straightjacket: 5 points each: Zero points for a krazy kolonist, plus 5 points for recovery. - Colonist who spent 10 years in interplanetary space in a research lab, but then starved to death: -10 points for killing a colonist, plus many points for all the doomsday weapons they invented (2 points per 100 science). Budget is still spent from the Colonization budget and the Mad Scientist still counts against your total colonists available. - Colonist who spent 8 years on Duna in a research lab with an attached Hitchhiker cabin, who is abandoned on Duna: 25 points for the sane scientist (5 per year up to 5 years), plus many points for all the doomsday devices.

[snip] Edit: Oh, I did another landing while we were talking. Full training wheels, landed on the engine bell, not enough reaction wheels, not enough LFO to get more than 2 m/s dV for most of the descent. Because sometimes you gotta refuel an interplanetary engine stage and you don't want to make ten trips with your shuttle. The green tins down the middle are Snacks, not fuel; 40+ kerbals from the other two landers will chill on the Behemoth for eight or nine months on their way to Duna and they will be hungry.

Build a giant ground-based laser station at the KSC. This is now your "terminate debris" option.

1. Thrust for RCS means the same thing as thrust for rockets. Take the thrust and divide by mass and you get meters per second squared acceleration. Torque is like thrust, but for rotating and spinning your craft. More of both is better up to the point where you can control your craft. 2. Yes, shifting the RCS outwards gives you more leverage, increasing your torque. It doesn't increase your thrust. 3. I don't know.The solution to your problem is reaction wheels. Since you're keeping the build a secret, I don't know what you are making available to yourself to compensate. Perhaps another solution might be to build a 3-ton lander instead of a 22-ton lander. Since you're not a beginner you should be able to find articles like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque, read them and understand at least the general idea of the physics KSP is simulating. Especially if you're using phrases like, "Assume a spherical cow." Sorry I can't be more helpful to you, but perhaps if a beginner reads your question they'll find my answers helpful.

Are you trying to softland somewhere or are you trying to build a skycrane? A picture or craft file might help. Here are some lander/rovers I have on Minmus refueling right now that I eventually plan to softland on Duna. Two of them are 30 tons dry, about 60 tons full wet mass. My rules of thumb for landers: Parachutes are cheap, easy and can be used to keep you oriented.If you are landing somewhere with an atmosphere, add some chutes. Wheels or landing struts are a must. If you want your big, expensive lander to survive, don't try to put it down on its engine bells unless you never want to use that engine afterwards. Have RCS at the top of the craft and not less than one big 2.5 meter reaction wheel per 30 tons. 2 plus command reaction are better. If you want to keep your lander, use a pilot or turn off radio blackout. You are absolutely going to lose connection to KSC right when you want to start that suicide burn. Take the suicide burn delta-v and bring at least 50% more than that. Double is better, triple if you aren't familiar with the landing. (v1.5) Use Flight Engineer to keep an eye on your altitude over ground and paint a big red target on your landing spot. Later versions let you see your radar altitude. (Experimental) Am experimenting with separatrons around center of mass for that final landing kick. Worth mentioning the obvious: Is your lander center of mass over your center of thrust when you are landing? Are your RCS thrus centered around at least one axis of your center of mass? You will need more reaction wheels the less true those things are. Also worth mentioning: You say "Average center of mass." That's probably not your actual CoM when you're landing. In the editor set your fuel tanks to what you expect in the last ten seconds of touchdown and then look at your actual CoM with that fuel.

There are single-piece large wings designed for just that sort of craft. Depending on just how big your plane is, you may need lots. In general, the closer to the fuselage the wing attaches, the stronger it is, and in my experience once you get more than about 3 blocks out there's no structural strength to speak of. Other thoughts: More engines, close to the fuselage under the wing, will tend to decrease the loading on liftoff. KSP prefers planes shaped like hotdogs to planes shaped like T's. If you are still having trouble add at least one wing on each side of each fuselage piece to help balance the loading and reduce strain on your main wings and the other fuselage pieces. A plane built like a series of flying train cars can be much larger than a plane that places all its forces on one fuselage piece.

It's fine,I spent literally all of yesterday flying over to Minmus with it, and reconfigured it so once it's got some gas I can add more engines to the thrusty end. That'll make it a lot more pleasant to fly. I should rename this flight the "Sunk Cost," though.

Probably not going to win any records since I'm using Hohman transfers, but my DOMA challenge would probably qualify as an entry for this. Duna launch 1 left on Y1D249 and is expected back around Y3 D350 or so, for a total of 2 years 100 days or so. By "return to kerbin" do you mean "enter kerbin SOI" or "landed safely at KSC"? Because one of those is a lot more likely to result in a rapid unplanned disassembly.

Alright, I have literally wasted an entire day of my life babying this behemoth into a minmus orbit, and it's STILL got a 120 m/s burn to finish it off. I got the docking arms situated so I -can- put the rovers into a pusher config, but then I realized I don't have very much LFO to actually push with, and the limiting factor on the lithium engines is actually electric charge. So even though I've got plenty of lithium, I can't even really fire my main thrusters at more than about 20% consistently for long burns. I've got some capacitors but I'd probably need about a million electric charge to sustain a full burn. So there's no point spending a lot of time playing Transformer until I'm ready to land on Minmus, because I can't really spend any more LFO until touchdown anyhow.

Ok, Behemoth 1 has 45 kerbals on board, including around a dozen tourists who really want to see the Aries up close. I have additional cabin capacity on board, but I don't think I can pack enough Snacks to keep more kerbals alive for the full trip. I also think I'm going to send it over to Minmus again for another round of refueling before the big transfer to Duna rather than having it leech off an orbital shuttle for the last two months of its wait time. I do have SLV-7 which I'm thinking will be an SLV-6 rover with the Mk3 passenger cabin swapped out for a Mk3 LFO tank. I am leaning towards having that plus the Prospector stay in the Kerbin system while the rest of the Behemoth departs from Minmus, but I also kind of want to reconfigure Behemoth to have the rovers help push it during the transfer. It's going to take a long, long time accelerating at 1 meter/second to get from Kerbin to Duna.

So it turns out the next alarm I've got set is to return Artemis home with 4 crew, but because Kerbals in my game eat twice as many Snacks as normal, the 200 snack-days they had was just not going to cut it. So I sent Aries up with a full load of food and they now have a year and a half of snacks, which should be plenty for the six-month trip home. Now I can advance time to the return date.

Dusting this mission off so I can complete it. Based on my previous reports, it looks like I've already checked off the "fully reusable" duna lander and kerbin-duna shuttle, so for the sake of my sanity I'm going to focus on stageable payloads I think. That will help with the noodle problems I was reporting earlier, I hope. Based on the craft name, it looks like NPM 6 got launched successfully and it's 18 days later, so probably that was part of the Minmus run. Based on the mission timers, it looks like the next thing I need to do, after I dock a snacks shuttle to the behemoth, is send some Duna crew back to Kerbin.

Hey if I pick this back up can I redo launches 3-6 ? Or if not I might just scrub them and take the points hit. That giant tower of doom is difficult and tedious to work with.

Decided running the prospector up and down was too inefficient and taking just way too much effort, so I put the whole vessel down on Minmus. Now I just have to figure out how to get it back off-planet again. Am thinking I should probably cannibalize the Prospector. Maybe just pull the engine columns off and stick them on Rover Hotel, dock the rest somewhere and reassemble it once I get back in orbit for one final fuel run if needed. Y2 D404 - Refueling on Minmus completed and I've arranged the prospector's engines around the base of Rover Hotel in what I hope is pretty close to symmetrical around the center of mass, but I'm going to be very glad the Hemi-Cuda engines have lots of gimbal. KER says I have 4000 dV in this configuration (I should have more like 6000 once I bring my main engines online, but we'll see). KER also says I have a 5.6 TWR and a top acceleration of 2.6 m/s, but I think the plasma engines are confusing it again. I -probably- have enough thrust to get off the ground, as a pair of sparks was enough to get me landed and I only weigh about twice as much now. Original launch mass of this vessel: three 31-ton NPM's (NPM 3, 4 and 5), so just a hair under 93 tons NPM. Current tonnage: 196.2 tons. So I more than doubled my mass by launching almost-dry tanks instead of full wet tanks. And it's looking like the ship will at have plenty of delta-V to get to Duna even after NPM 6 joins it, which will be excellent. Next step: liftoff!

Mis-post.

It's snack tankage for 39 kerbals, plus hab space for about 62-ish (31 long-term) Once I stick NPM 6 on the end it should roughly balance out, I hope. And then it's all going to Duna. Assuming I can figure out how to get it off Minmus when it's fully loaded; I landed it empty on a pair of sparks at 1.07 TWR. Notice the main engines are on top, pointing down >.> So more like an interplanetary tenement. There will be more details about the ship over in my mission report, and there's some better pictures there where you can see more specifically how it's put together:

You are totally right, I had to reload my landing and try a second time on the big one in this image because it turns out, even though the parts i landed on are rated for a 45 m/s impact they just split apart and explode anyway!!!1 15 meters per second was totally doable, though. Landed the big tower on a pair of sparks (the 0.1 mass engine) at 1.07 TWR. And yes, it bounced several times (7 m/s, 3 m/s, 1 m/s....) but luckily it's pretty SASsy when its tanks are completely empty (those green rings are 39,000 Snacks! that I need to grow on Minmus, not to mention I completely drained the fuel tanks landing it...)

If you want to post your craft file I can take a look at it and give you a more definite thumbs-up or thumbs-down, or if you prefer you can try this ship out, which very definitely has enough dV for Ike and back. https://kerbalx.com/direstorm/Duna-Express

@ManEatingApe I'll start it off with 89,132 of gifts, plus Planes, Trains and Automobiles. https://kerbalx.com/direstorm/Merry-Christmas The tricky part was landing within 2.3 km of the probe so it wouldn't vanish, and then turning around and driving to its LZ to watch it come down.

Good luck! My advice is see what the plot looks like after a rain. If it turns into a swamp you will have problems.

Hey, great question! So, you'll need about 3500 dV for Kerbin ascent, ~1000 (roughly) for Duna transfer, between 0 and 900 to circularize on Duna, between 0 and 900 to land on Duna, about 2000 to return to LDO, and around 500 to return to kerbin. Then you'll need between 0 and 1000 to circularize and between 0 and 500 to land on Kerbin. So far, just for a Duna round trip, we're at 3500 + 1000 + 900+900+2000+500+1000 = 9800 dV to get back to LKO. Obviously, it depends a lot on how you fly, how much you aerobrake, and how much you spend on docking maneuvers, but I did include a fair bit of margin for error. So, Duna would be questionable. You probably would make it down to Duna, but you might get lost in space on the way home. Ike on the other hand is another matter. Instead of 2900 for a down-and-up on Ike you need closer to about 600 or 800 I think. So if you skip Duna and just do flags and footprints on Ike you should have plenty of delta-V left over. My advice is to try adding a top-most stage with a heat shield, and find out whether the heat shield (with half ablator) costs you at least 900 delta-V. If it does, don't bring it and do a powered circularization on your Kerbin return trip with only very slight aerobraking. If it doesn't cost at least 900 delta-V, you should bring a heat shield and use aerobraking to capture on Kerbin.

Y2, D358 Standard Launch Vehicle 5 launched Space Truck 2, which has docked with all the other stuff in LKO and wandered off to Minmus for fuel and snacks. Two weeks later the Prospector is now drilling its second refueling load and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to reassemble all this stuff in orbit so I can get all this stuff, plus another Rover Hotel, over to Duna without everything acting like a wet noodle when I start pushing. Also discovered a new way to make a transfer, where I push my apoapsis above my current apo and can then make a transfer potentially a little bit faster than with a hohman orbit, but the planets are still not quite aligned for the Artemis to get home without either spending massive amounts of fuel that I'm not confident she has, or spending massive amounts of time in transit which I am sure she doesn't have. I could leave right now if I left the rescue mission and a crew member behind on Ezekiel, but my transit time would be about a year and I have no idea if I'd even be able to deorbit and circularize when the Artemis arrived at Kerbin. So I plan to wait about three months and refuel the Artemis's snack supply before she leaves Duna.

Did you try to do the rendezvous with the big ship, or with the little ship in its cargo bay? It's an apollo-style craft: the big ship picks an orbit and parks it, and then the little craft goes off and does stuff. I can believe you lost 4000 dV trying to rescue an astronaut in space, because I did something similar once, but you probably don't even need 400 dV in the little craft to complete your mission. The big ship only has about 6000 dV total, including launch to LKO, which is "enough" if you are reasonably efficient, but not a ton of margin for error. Hence the little ship. The nominal delta-V for the rescue should be something like this: 3400-3500 dV to orbit, 1000 dV to Duna, 500 dV to circularize with aerobraking around Duna, 500 dV to return to Kerbin, and then a margin of 500 dV to play around with. And then the lander has 4000 delta-V, which is about 900 to land, 1500 to take off and 1600 to do docking and maneuvers. And you don't need to land or take off with it. You can control the lander remotely by opening the big direct link antenna in the big ship's cargo bay, then activating the two relay antennas on the sides of the craft to establish a comlink to Kerbin. It needs to stay in line of sight, but that isn't usually a problem for landing, I've found; it's more an issue for taking off but on takeoff you'll be piloted xD Sometimes KER lies to me about the delta-V though, and I only tested takeoff and landing with the craft, so I should probably check that it actually can get to Duna and back. I'm not playing stock right now and sending a Kerbal to Duna would be problematic for me in my current save with a stock craft because they would eat all their Snacks and then starve to death. Which would not make a good rescue.