Opus_723

Phase II has begun! The Lupus Station core isn't particularly heavy without the fuel pods, but it is very large and unwieldly. Definitely the largest thing I have ever tried to launch into orbit. The original plan was to launch the core in at least two pieces on Atlas and dock them together, then use Charon to tug it to the Mun. I was feeling a little gutsy, however, and designed a new launcher shell around the whole thing, including a small tug. Charon will get a break to go do other things. I present to you the launch of Lupus Station! That thing flew WAY better than I expected. Now, you probably noticed that the launch stage is pretty intertwined with the space station itself. We have to ditch the fuel tanks without damaging that large ring. The ring will serve as the shipyard for refueling as well as construction. In the future, large interplanetary motherships will be built piece by piece and fueled at Lupus Station, ready to leave Kerbin's SOI with little effort. This will also let me get away with low accelerations which are frustrating in Low Kerbin Orbit. But back to the current problem. I fired some seperatrons as well as the Thuds on the orange tank tug, hoping to slip the fuel tanks out of the ring without damaging anything. The large fins force me to go the long way, though (putting the ring in the back near the fins made the launch more aerodynamically stable, so that wasn't an oversight, just unfortunate). This was absolutely terrifying, and I didn't quite pull it off... I nicked off one of my struts. I probably could have carefully placed the separatrons around the center of mass of the empty tanks, but I didn't feel like making the tanks into subassemblies and I just eyeballed it. So the tanks tilted a bit and I lost a strut. It's alright though. I don't really need that strut. Right? Right. Right. And of course, we were responsible and dumped all of those tanks into the ocean. All in all, a pretty great first mission for Phase II of Operation Underhill! (except for that one strut) Lupus Station is much further along that I expected it would be by now. Launching the whole skeleton in one go has really accelerated things. It already dwarfs Ouroboros Station, the first and only other station I have built. But it won't look truly impressive until we attach the fuel pods. This is going to be a massive fuel depot, storing over 100,000 units of rocket fuel, over 175,000 units of liquid only, and over 9000 units of monopropellant , so... Next Mission: Launch Lupus Station fuel pods to LKO

Quick update: Contracts are all wrapped up! I snatched up a bunch of Ike contracts at once, then sent a miner and a scanner to Ike to gather some ore, do some gravity scans, and test some parts. I also rescued a couple of kerbals in Kerbin's SOI so that we have enough crew to keep all of the upcoming infrastructure occupied. I had tons of money, so I also set up a relay system that gets me a workable signal in Duna's SOI for all of my old probes with 5k antennas, sent my first ever ion-drive probe to Dres to collect a bunch of science, and finished upgrading my runway and the astronaut complex. After all of that, I still have over 3 million funds left in the bank, so Phase II of Operation Underhill should have all of the funding it needs. I'm gonna give the operations checklist a once-over and make sure I've got Lupus Station set up the way I want it. Once I'm confident in the plan, (and done toying around with the new plane parts I just unlocked) Phase II will commence!

Thanks for the help! That sounds like just what I need. I'll give it a shot!

I'm trying to rebalance the relay antennas to my preferences by tweaking the antenna ratings in the config files. Specifically, the RA-15 seems kind of useless to me, since I can cover Kerbin's SOI quite well with the RA-2s but the RA-15 can only go a frustratingly small fraction of the way around Kerbin's orbit. I successfully boosted the RA-15's performance so that I can just manage to bounce signals between 4 relays in Kerbin's orbit spaced at 90 degree angles and then on to Duna or Eve. But I'm still dissatisfied as boosting the relays ability to communicate with each other by increasing their antenna ratings also greatly boosts their connection with the Tracking Station. I only tweaked the antenna rating from 15G to 20G, but now the relay at Duna has a fantastic connection straight to the Tracking Station with no need for a wider network, which kind of removes the challenge completely. So I've realized that what I really want is a weaker tracking station but to compensate with better mid-game relays. That seems the most fun for me personally. So my question to the forums is if there is a way to edit the config files to decrease the antenna rating of the Tracking Station and/or other ground stations on Kerbin. I've looked through and I don't see a folder for "Buildings" or anything like that. I'm sure the numbers must be in there somewhere, but I've missed them. Thanks!

Since I turned on communications in 1.2, I haven't had contact with my probes in the Duna and Eve systems. So today I started setting up the Mid-Kerbolar-Relay system. Managed to load up four relays into a fairing and launch on an escape trajectory. We deployed one of the relays while still in Kerbin's SOI, and it circularized into a large orbit containing the entire Kerbin system. Notice that I don't have the largest relay dish yet. I'm pretty sure this setup will get me a good signal, though. The main deployment ship then left Kerbin's SOI and entered orbit around Kerbol. It burned off a precisely calculated amount of DV in order to achieve and elliptical orbit with a period of 3/4 Kerbin's period. The plan is to release an additional relay each time it comes back out to Kerbin's orbital distance and let the relay circularize. I should end up with three relays in Kerbin's orbit, spaced at 90, 180, and 270 degrees from Kerbin, plus the relay we left behind AT Kerbin. We also packed some extra DV in case I have to maneuver to avoid Eve at some point, since the elliptical orbit crosses Eve's. Finally, I have a contract mission to Ike currently parked in LKO. One more relay is hitching a ride to the Duna system on that mission, and will circularize near the edge of Duna's SOI. The end result is that, even when Kerbin and Duna are furthest apart, I should be able to bounce signals to the far side of Kerbin's orbit and then to the Duna system from there. I'll send a similar relay on its way to the Eve system soon. It'll take a few in-game years to set this up, but I should have a good signal throughout the middle solar system at the end of it (eclipses will still be a problem, but I'll deal with that later), as long as I don't miss a burn.

I've been toying with the idea of putting a station into a solar orbit between Duna and Jool to serve as a waystation and fuel depot for large missions to the outer solar system (Or between Eve and Dres for the inner solar system). The practicality seems a bit dubious though. I can't think of a good reason not to just use Duna as the rest stop if I'm really going to do that, and it's kind of a waste of fuel anyway. Mostly I just want a deep-space asteroid station for the heck of it, and a reason to go there.

Here we go: our first refuel mission. Sisyphus L descended from its parking orbit to a smooth Mun landing. Fairly routine. Looks neat with all the thrusters going though. Then we drove on over to Tower Station and docked for the fuel-up. This is thankfully getting much quicker after the practice I got with the equipment beds. That and I discovered the "Aim Camera" feature which makes the alignment WAY easier as you can see. After a very painless time warp, we had 35,000 units of liquid fuel ready to put into orbit. We also topped off the chemical rockets with L+Ox mix and the monoprop tanks as well. Sisyphus was now quite heavy. I was a bit nervous to see how well I could actually control it in flight. I waited for the launch window to meet up with Charon, and we attempted our first laden ascent! Sorry the first liftoff images are dark, I was forced to do a night ascent to meet Charon properly. We quickly got high enough to see the Sun and take some better shots, though. We ran into Charon across the terminator on the day side. Surprisingly for its mass, docking the Sisyphus to Charon was rather painless. The RCS seems nicely balanced. And there we go! We proceeded to refuel Charon completely! This marks a milestone for me. I have, for the first time, mined ore on a celestial body, processed it, and transferred the fuel to a ship in orbit! Sisyphus L still has quite a bit of fuel left over, so it will simply stay in orbit for now, serving as a temporary depot until more permanent infrastructure can be put into place. Charon, on the other hand, has to get back to Kerbin. Jeb's got work to do yet. Just a few housekeeping tasks left. This is a fun one though: I don't actually need that set of girders that the equipment beds were attached to anymore, so we should really dispose of it. I meant to deorbit it at the Mun and just slam them into the surface several posts ago. But then it occurred to me that Charon would be heading back to Kerbin, and I thought of something much more dramatic. Direct reentry from the Mun. We got some nice fireworks off of that one! I think its important to bring a few things along on a mission that are supposed to blow up. It helps Jeb stave off the temptation to blow up the important equipment and/or himself. Meanwhile, Charon adjusted into a non-deadly orbit and performed a periapsis burn to get its apoapsis away from the Mun's orbit. Jeb then took one more long-ish orbit out in order to adjust the inclination efficiently in order to get a nice equatorial orbit. One more burn and Charon is now settled into a tidy 120km parking orbit around Kerbin, ready to pick up the next payload when its ready. Alright everyone! This concludes Phase I of Operation Underhill. We have completed Tower Station and broken ground! Our mining operation is humming along nicely, and we have tested every component of the system. Our space program now has the proven infrastructure and capability to refuel liquid-only ships in Munar orbit, provided they have a large docking port. This alone should be extraordinarily useful to our future endeavors. But we're not done yet! I'll be taking a short-ish break from this mission report in order to raise funds for the next phase of Operation Underhill. But as soon as the funds are ready, we'll begin Phase II! Phase II centers on the construction of Lupus Station, an orbital Mun fuel depot and shipyard. It will be the orbital complement to Canis Base, serving as an entry hub for all visitors to the Mun, a launch point for interplanetary travel, and as the munar fuel reservoir for Tower Station's mining operations. Thanks to everyone who has followed this mission report so far, I hope you've enjoyed it!

Quick update: Tower Station was very nearly destroyed by the almighty Kraken last night. Thankfully Bill is an accomplished student of Autostrut, and with quick thinking he was able to calm the Kraken's wrath before the station was torn apart by rogue gravitational waves. Tower Station is unharmed. The moral of the story kids, is that the kraken doesn't like spindly little I-beam skeletons with lots of wobbly solar panels attached, and you should autostrut them BEFORE landing such things (and docking them to even more such things with part counts in the hundreds) on the Mun. Everything appears perfectly functional now, though. A real update will come soon.

I've heard of these, but have no clue how they're supposed to work. Could someone point me to an explanation/instructions on building one?

*AHEM* Begin initiation sequence. Extending Solar Array... Activating Radiator Bank.... Engaging Drills.... Firing up Fuel Processors.... Tower Station online! Operation Underhill has broken ground!!! We did it!!! Bill has banged on all the right pipes and the mining equipment is creating more fuel than I can handle! In less than six in-game hours, the station filled all of its on-site tanks. That's 4 orange tanks of L+Ox mix, an additional 10,000 units of liquid fuel, and 4 of the largest monopropellant tanks. It also filled 9 small ore tanks which are on standby in the lower deck. All of that in less than six hours, and I only have a level 3 engineer. Once I train up a level 5, this station is going to be an absolute dream to work with. You can see all of the resource capacities in the upper right corner of this shot: By the way, I also do love the view from Canis Base now: But all of that capacity is just for local emergencies on the Mun and to keep Bill from getting too bored in between fuel ascents. It will be dwarfed by what we can accomplish by docking the Sisyphus class rovers. Our next project, now that Tower Station is operational, will be to attempt our first orbital refuel. Charon could do with topping off after lugging all that mass to the Mun. After all, Jeb has more work to do. Operation Underhill is just getting started. Next Mission: Landing and Fueling Sisyphus L

Same procedure as before: we needed to do a quick orbital adjustment, as the Mun has rotated under us since we landed the radiator bank. Jeb is dealing with an asymmetric payload this time, though. His strategy was to turn on all of the RCS thrusters and slowly throttle up the nukes, making sure he didn't start to spin out of control. He settled into the sweet spot and it worked out okay. Then the undocking of the solar array, followed by a straightforward landing (or as straightforward as it gets when piloting a spindly skeleton frame of I-bars with a bunch of engines strapped on). The mobile bed drove on over to Tower Station and proceeded to dock. This time I discovered that shutting down the rear engines and lightly firing the engines closest to the docking port gives me a VERY helpful bit of vertical wiggle. I got a successful dock almost instantly when I tried that, even though I barely moved. I'll definitely remember that when docking the Sisyphus class rovers. And the assembly of Tower Station is COMPLETE!!! Bill is ready to break ground! But the grand unveiling deserves its own post!

I've always considered landing within sight of my Mun base "good enough" and used rovers to make up the difference. But I've had enough. I'm ready to move on and start making precision landings. This was my first concept test. Spider engines action-grouped to behave like RCS. I plan to use this method to build a new Mun biome hopper that can land on a docking port to refuel, and maybe a construction skycrane for vertical expansion of the base. Test was done in roughly Mun gravity with Alt+F12. That'll do, pig. That'll do.

Assembly is coming along nicely. Jeb made a small adjustment to Charon's orbit to account for the rotation of the Mun since Tower Station landed. After that, he undocked the large radiator bank that will be needed to keep those 16 large drills and 4 ISRU nice and cool. These equipment beds, as I mentioned before, are just the stripped down skeletons of the Sisyphus class fuel lifter, so they're tremendously overbuilt for a Mun landing. I didn't even fill those tanks halfway. I just calculated how much fuel I needed to get the dV for a Mun landing and filled them up that much plus a bit extra. They could be more elegant, but after fine tuning the Sisyphus docking ports to line up with Tower Stations ports, I really didn't want to do all that work again. The upside, though, is that I got a break from all of that low thrust maneuvering and got to do a pretty straightforward Mun landing. These beds are a little spindly, so the wobble at full thrust was a little concerning, but it didn't end up causing any problems. Then it was just a short drive over to the station, and we were ready to dock. The largest rover wheels are great for docking, I think, since you can rotate the vehicle in place. If you need to translate laterally, just rotate in place, drive forward a bit, then rotate back. Still, this was a bit more difficult than in my testing on Kerbin since the ground here isn't perfectly flat. It took a few tries to get the docking ports just right (the largest ports are very picky). I was glad that I made Tower Station's ports very flexible. The tower was hardly affected by even my most clumsy docking attempts, and the flexibility is probably the only reason I was able to dock at all given the slight slope. So, a bit of a pain, considering that I will have to dock this way every time I want to lift fuel to low munar orbit in the future. But it's not as awful as I was afraid it might be. And the Sisyphus rovers will lift massive amounts of fuel to orbit. More than I know what to do with, in fact. So I won't have to do this very often. All things considered, this docking process is something I can live with, and I'll presumably get better at it over time. So we have our radiator bank! I won't extend them yet, though, even if we have the battery capacity to run them for quite awhile. We'll wait until the solar array is attached. Then I'll unveil Tower Station in all of its glory when we fire up those drills and break ground! Next Mission: Landing and attaching the Solar Array

Oh, this got serious. I actually had this ready earlier, but it felt a little mean to post it right after that cute 11 m/s QBE rover. So here's my best attempt: 53.4 m/s And a quick carriage shot to confirm no batteries or other shenanigans: The black wheels have 58.0 m/s listed as their max motor speed, so I have a feeling that we're not going to go any faster than that. From here on out I think it's just a matter of getting the mass as low as possible while keeping a serviceable amount of solar panels to try and eke out those last few m/s. We've all seemed to independently converge on black tires+cubic struts+stat-XL panels as a winning formula. Hmm. EDIT: Also, Martian Emigrant, you should redo yours on the runway instead of flat grass to qualify under the new rules. If you can repeat that speed you'll beat me for the top spot!

Thanks! I have to admit, I'm considering that I should probably have gone higher thrust, if only to save myself a lot of tedium. This landing was kind of adhoc, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to kill my velocity fast enough. Speaking of which... THE LANDING! Tower Station will be the resource extraction complement to my existing Mun base, Canis Base. Canis Base was actually my very first attempt at base building, and I started it shortly after my first Mun landing. It's not the most elegant thing, but I think the first modules came out pretty good for a first attempt. The resident scientist Sany Kerman has provided a considerable amount of science since arriving at the base. Canis base unfortunately never got beyond a science lab and a communications/power generation module. My construction method relied on disposable rovers, which quickly accumulated into a small junkyard since I was also using separate connectors between modules. I decided that I needed to rethink my methods before the debris got out of hand, and left the base unfinished while I worked on other projects (my first Duna landing, then Operation Underhill) for awhile. One of my next projects after I set up Tower Station and its associated fuel infrastructure is to come back and give Canis Base the attention and expansion it deserves. After transitioning to a new construction method while grandfathering in these initial modules, I plan to develop it into a glorious hub for all Mun exploration, commerce, and science. But that's all a project for another day. Today is Tower Station's day to shine. The landing, as I said, was tricky. I couldn't do anything close to a suicide burn, due to the low acceleration the heavy mass and weak thud engines. I ended up sort of frantically setting one maneuver node after another, burning off about 100 m/s at a time while moving my projected landing closer and closer to Canis Base. I wanted to keep Tower Station at a remove from the science base, so the landing didn't have to be super precise. We can't have the noise from the mining equipment disturbing anyone's sleep, after all (and a bit of distance might help frame rates in the future as well). But I am surprised and pleased to say that Val brought this beast to a gentle landing less than 500m from the base proper! All that was left to do was detach the sky crane and send it off to a glorious crash landing. Now that fancy cupola actually has a view! Also, I brought that old mining test Olivine over a bit closer for a proper comparison. So far, I feel quite proud of my second attempt at mining in KSP! Finally, Valentina hopped out of the cupola, stretched her legs, and then jetted over to settle into Canis Base with Sany and Taniella until the next crew shift arrives and she can catch a ride back to Kerbin. Bill, on the other hand, is going to be running Tower Station until we get a proper engineer training program going. I also discovered that Tower Station lives up to its name, and actually looks quite impressive on the horizon from Canis Base. Next Mission: We're almost ready to fire up the mining operation! Tower Station still needs its full accoutrement of radiators and solar panels before we can safely turn on those drills and ore processors. The equipment beds are still in orbit with Jeb, so we have two more landings before Operation Underhill can officially break ground. Nonetheless, finally landing the core of the operation on the Mun's surface is a huge milestone, and I want to take the moment to thank everyone who has been following along! Whether you've commented, liked a post, or just checked in without making your presence known, I've enjoyed writing this mission report for you all, and I probably wouldn't have stuck with this project without it. I'm still pretty new to KSP and I know there are far more polished and ambitious projects on these forums, so thanks for stopping by to read mine anyway!

New new winner. 21.4 m/s.

Hmm, getting ideas for my someday Minmus colony. I've been trying to make everything bigger and more epic lately, but now I'm in the mood for a swarm of little one- and two-kerbal scooters whizzing around Minmus. Maybe a little army of scooter-kerbals will ride along with the next base.

I've tried building a suborbital guided missile, and I've had some success. But I'm trying to increase the impact speed. So far the best sea-level impact I can get seems to be about 1400m/s. If I try to use the engine to surpass that, the fairing overheats and explodes. And the heat shields are far too blunt. I was hoping to at least crack 1500m/s. Any tips on surviving atmospheric flight at those speeds?

@suicidejunkie I'd really like to do a landing pad, but I'm not sure I'm a good enough pilot to actually, um... land on it. Mostly my base pieces just land where they land, and I'm quite happy if they end up within a kilometer of each other so that the drive isn't too much of a pain.

Great job! It's nice to see such a sleek little lander just for Minmus. I always end up recycling Mun landers and while they get the job done, it's not very efficient or elegant. Congrats!

This is all great! Keep 'em coming. @HebaruSan: I like the idea of an emergency escape system. I'll probably have shuttles at some point, so I think it should be more creative than a regular ship. Maybe some kind of solid fuel fire-and-forget ejection directly to a Kerbin re-entry in case of emergency. A small capsule would be easy to do like that, but it might be a challenge to see how many kerbals I can evacuate at once like that. @Sharpy: Geez, I thought I WAS being ambitious. The fuel infrastructure I'm assembling now will lift 4 of the largest tanks to munar orbit at a time, and will bring 4 at a time to LKO as well. Twenty is a whole other level. That's impressive. But this is my first mining operation ever, so maybe when I expand my colonies to Minmus I can shoot for 20 then. On second thought, maybe I'll wait til I get a new computer for that. My frame rate is already a bit annoying.

I'm getting ready to build my first Mun base, and I want it to be a really sprawling, lively thing with lots of kerbals and lots of things to do. But in stock, there's not really any need for large bases. There are a few obvious things: -Science lab -Communications -Power Generation -Resource Extraction and Fuel Processing And at that point, you have pretty much satisfied all of the game mechanical reasons to have a land base on a celestial body. Now, I've got the first three on my Mun base already, and I'm currently working on the fourth. The mining operation will be rather large, and it will all be processed on the ground, so I have essentially infinite fuel to play with. What I'm looking for are some fun, unnecessary ways to expand a Mun base. Anything beyond what's listed above, I'm game. I just want creative ideas for things that my kerbals can do to build a thriving community without mods. Here are some of my ideas so far: 1.) Obviously my kerbals need some rovers to tool around in. That's next on my list, and I plan to build a largish permanent garage to attach to the current base, filled with a variety of rovers. Ideas for rover specializations are appreciated. 2.) Aerial transport. Vehicles designed for biome hopping to finish off the Mun's science by bringing data back to Canis Base. I will also need shuttling to and from orbit once my orbital station is complete. Ideas for variations on aerial (aerial? vacuumal sounds wrong) vehicles are also appreciated (ie: cargo dropships, scooters, etc.) If I get good enough at designing and piloting these ships, maybe I could build an actual landing pad for them, with fuel storage built in? At the very least I'll probably light up a patch of ground over the long munar night. 3.) My base is not too far from a nice crater lip, so I had the idea that I might set up a little outpost on the lip, specifically for stunt attempts off the edge. 4.) Some unnecessary habitation modules, just for more spacious and luxurious living conditions. 5.) A large mobile base that will roam the Mun, refueled on occasion from Canis Base. 6.) Maybe another stationary base in a different biome, just so they can be neighbors and occasionally travel between them. This is my last resort though, as it feels a bit more tedious than the others unless I can come up with a unique role for the new base. But I'm running out of ideas now. So what are your ideas for unnecessarily elaborate bases? Feel free to show off anything you've already built as well!

With Val doing all of the piloting, Jeb was going a little stir-crazy on the long trip, so he went on an EVA to inspect the payload and serve as a scale for glamour shots. While Jeb completed that very important job, Val was busy preparing for the capture maneuver as Charon approached the Mun, which came off perfectly. Sisyphus L wasn't far behind, and it had enough thrust to burn directly into its final 20km polar orbit. Finally, Charon completed its capture orbit and performed one final burn to lower the apoapsis into a 20km parking orbit. That's it for now! Tower Station and Sisyphus L will remain aloft in their parking orbits until the final landing site, which has already been scouted out since I am in the process of constructing a base there, comes around to the day side of the Mun so that Val and Bill can land with more precision. We're finally getting to the exciting stuff! Next Mission: Landing Tower Station.

Okay! I finally got time to make some progress here, so here we go! The Charon ferry was originally designed to take moderate payloads to other planets, but its inaugural mission today is the bring a 323-ton payload to low munar orbit. But since it was built for distance rather than thrust, it has a problem here. With Tower Station, its skycrane, and the equipment beds in tow, Charon can only accelerate at 1.5m/s^2. That's sort of impractical for getting a Mun intercept efficiently. I could boost to a higher parking orbit, where the 10-minute burn I need would take a smaller fraction of the orbital period, but it would be more fuel-efficient if I could still do it straight from my 74km orbit. I could just waste the fuel, since Charon is such a beast, but I wanted to work out this trick so that I could be assured of using it in the future if I ever need it. So here's my solution. I split the long burn into 10 burns less than a minute long, so that I was always pretty much on my periapsis. The problem with this is that the Mun swings around way further than usual while you're going on all of those progressively longer intervening orbits. So where do you point the apoapsis to be sure you'll hit the Mun in the end? I majored in physics, so I was able to dust out the cobwebs in my brain to derive a formula for the new period of an orbit based on the delta-v you add. From there it was just a matter of making a quick excel spreadsheet to calculate the periods of all the successive orbits and add them up to get the total time of the maneuver. Then I could compare that to the Mun's orbital period to find the angle I needed to lead the Mun by. Turned out I needed to aim 217 degrees ahead of the Mun. So, hoping I hadn't made a mistake, I took off. I'm ashamed to say it, but after all of that math, I just eyeballed the angle. I couldn't figure out how to measure it quantitatively in stock, so this was pretty nervewracking. Here we are leaving the Sisyphus rover behind on the first burn: Then it was a rather boring task of orbit, burn, orbit, burn, repeat. The orbit doesn't change much for the first five burns or so, and the Mun hardly moves, but we do make some progress eventually.... And there's my Mun intercept! The math all came out perfectly! Sure enough, when I came back around to the last burn node, the Mun was sitting right on the horizon where I needed it to be! In fact, the math worked almost too well. At least the course correction was obvious enough: Finally, we brought Sisyphus L off the starting line as well. That was quite a lot of report for just the intitial burn to the Mun, so I'm going to break this post here and write up the rest of the journey in a minute.

Meh... I apologize for the cliffhanger, but real life has gotten in the way. First holidays, now grad school applications. And I need to do some math before I start the munar burn, since I want to try a simple-but-sorta-neat formula that I derived for low thrust maneuvers. And with all that weight behind Charon, this is the perfect opportunity. So, unfortunately, the mission is on pause until I make some progress on my applications.