Kerbolitto

CHAPTER 11, KerbinEarlyReturn capture, Dissipating heat Part 1 : *cough* "Tell me again how we get there?" Mike and Franfen had just finished assembling their ship that it's already time to leave. No one at the KSC thought time would have run out so fast. After gathering infos from the Tracking Station, Mike was able to plot a set of maneuvers that'll send them to a very close encounter with the incoming KER. At first he found a way to use Kerbin for a gravity assist but the encounter would have been close to Kerbin's Pe and he feared that it would have reduce too much the time allowed to prepare the capture. Second option was an encounter in solar orbit which would require a large radial burn on Kerbin, but save more time to dock and maneuver the KERH(eat)S(hield). The 4 burns would have to be very precise since a tiny error in thrust would result in a miss by hundreds of kilometers. After verifying the Nerva's cooling system (there was none) Franfen strapped into her seat and watch Mike crank-up the fuel pump.. Part 2 : Thermonuclear all the way ! The ship's computer would not let Mike see how the encounter develops, and after trying one or two tricks, he then let it down and turned the ship for a heavy nuclear burn on anti-target. Nervas had to spit liquid fuel during 30+ minutes, without taking lateral drift into account.To avoid wasting time and fuel, Mike decided to gradually lower the ship's orbital speed into different corrections. Ground control thought that the switch between solar and Kerbin's SOI had somehow crash the tracking capabilities of the computer. They crossed fingers when they saw the nuclear engines glows on the infrared. Part 3 : No time to waste ! Mike and Franfen pulled a very impressive maneuver but the clock was still running (actually they got more time than expected). They parked their very hot ship next to KER and prepared KERHS module to allow Catburry and Anlorf's transfer, only waving at them through a window. Mike quickly docked longitudinally to the Mk3 fuselage, and then attached on the KER at an angle that allowed all engines to burn at the same time. He then prepared to capture around Kerbin using all remaining fuel. Ground Control was extatic and promoted Mike to First-class Interceptor Pilot. He and Franfen will surely be sent to new acrobatic adventures in the future ! Part 4 : KERHS "Catburry, what's glowing outside?" In between those last events, Catburry and Anlorf transferred to KERHS prototype. This very parcitular module was designed by some of the craziest minds of the SPH teams, to build an extreme re-entry pod. It is very rough around the edges and features almost nothing but heat-resistant parts. Also, nobody ever tested it in Kerbin's atmosphere. First thing to do was to bring the datas to this new contraption, and turn on the 4 Spiders to slow down orbital velocity. Not only would this make re-entry cooler (kind of) but this would allow the Tracking Station to help KER capturing before they'd switch onto KERHS to follow its descent to the ground. As expected, coming into the souposphere at more than 5500m/s put quite a strain on the crew.. and the ship. Part 5 : Recovery Tracking Station received the module's beacon at 1h28 and quickly sent greenlight to the rescue mission. Catburry and Anlorf were really strained by their journey. Team was ready four minutes later and was very happy to meet their friends. They have been away from home for many years and everyone was super excited to help them, and also discover what kind of datas they brought back. SPH provided another very strange creation to rescue team, the extensively tried and tested (not quite, but still !) H(ydro)P(lane)EVACv4. This low efficiency and busy looking airplane was, for once, designed with high-safety in mind (also it looks cool and has lights for purposes). Part 6 : "Breaking News : Catburry and Anlorf finally made it !" Once the plane landed on KSC runway, the whole thing went crazy. Friends were here, ground control, SPH and VAB teams, launchpad's maintenance guys, medias, everyone but the tracking station team who had to monitor the path of KER to Minmus. Thousands of people (not seen on those pictures) were present to congratulate the two heroes, and the whole KSC efforts behind their success ! Scientists were extremly pleased with the new studies the two brought back, but this would have to wait the end of the celebrations and 5th new year's party which would happen just a week after this success ! I'm quite happy with how this thing turns out, and how the solar rendez-vous developped ... ! Next chapter should be some mining at Minmus and maybe SLV 05 before 3rd injection to Duna Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the maneuvers

Haha love the crazy packaging !!

Hard to find .. I've landed a few SSTO on the midland sea if I remember, but even there there's small bumps (20-30m hills) which makes things quite dangerous with low l/d ratio =/ I can try to find the landing flags in one of my sandboxes if you want.

Don't know, mine works pretty well .. But I did not do any math around it so it might be over engineered I usually always watch what ISRUs are doing, to adjust fuel-cell consumption, so yeah maybe you can't leave it do its thing during one month, I don't know.

Well if you're stuck with the weight capacity, you could use a miner which refuel in 2 days rather than 2 hours it's no big deal since first transfer window is 170 days after launch? Don't know, mine has a big convertotron with 2 large drills and it refuels 2 medium mk3 fuselage in less than a day. The small converto that's on the outpost refuels 22.5t. in around 3 days with only 1 big drill. Point is, you can use 1 or 2 little ISRU on first launch just to get enough fuel to inject to Duna, then use this stuff to mine Ike. For the next injections if you got more weight in orbit, you can plan another big / more efficient ISRU which'll stay near Minmus. (just an idea !)

What if you send 2 or 3 small ISRU instead of one big ? Or only one drill ?

You might find a way to change your packaging so there's no docking maneuvers in LKO, you may add a bit more fuel by removing all monoprop or just use very little ? Too bad that would have been awesome !

@hoioh That's a good looking miner ! You may use the Mun to come back in LKO, that save quite a lot of dV at the expense of 3-5 days in orbit. What's the problem with weight balance, design is assymetrical ?

Chapter 10 (already?) is finished, I'll post chapter 11 later this evening after I take a break SLV 04, mining ops, Kerbin Early Return (with sample) on its way. Things are getting hotter by the minute cause there's an incoming bullet train to catch !

CHAPTER 10, SLV 04, Fuel ops, KerbinEarlyReturn's planification Part 1 : SLV 04 KSC is on fever those days. SLV 04 will be launched in a few days and the teams are trying to fit everything right on time, there were some tensions when the fairing's office tried to reach every manufacturers to cover the enormous payload. They had to complete it with rolls of paper coming from the surrounding trees.. SPH division took a long time to make sure that all docks are in line for interplanetary transport and ground docking. The S4 15-3 is based on a old design with high margins in regard to it's dV budget and also has a fairly good TWR, it once again puts the 87.5t. payload in LKO with ease. Part 2 : Deployement, docking, transfer to Minmus SLV 04 consists of 4 modules : _Heavy autonomous rover powered by fuel-cell, which docks on top 2 rather large habitats with room for 26 each. _Wolfhound pod with handcrafted heatshield, will be used for very special operations. _Mk3 medium fuselage with some fuel. _KER HeatShield, super lightweight module with extreme heat resistance. Mission planning's squad would have liked to launch food rather than fuel but there was no other choice. The last ops at LKO used a high liquid fuel volume due to the sheer weight of the 2nd transfer to Duna. First step was to refuel HNPKerbinInjecter, whose last service was to retroburn around Kerbin after transferring the mothership to Duna. In order to get more maneuvrability Mike and Franfen will then depart to Minmus, using the trusty ISRU 2-g and a collection of giant Mk3 fuel tanks. They will rendez-vous with the ISRU using a quite inefficient shuttle, with fancy red lights. Part 3 : Minmus once After rendez-vous-ing with a complete ISRU ship, Franfen and Mike headed a first time to Minmus to bring back some fuel and monoprop, which will be use to dock properly modules form SLV 04 to KSS. Nothing special happenned, Kerbin is blue and Minmus isn't. Also nuclear radiations are good for tanning. Part 4 : Fancy dockings ! Our 2 Kerbals are back in LKO with a tons of fuel to share. Ground control asked them to use some monoprop to move some hardware to KSS and take some nice pics for the press conference. SLV 04 had some weight margins that allowed for the installation of various light bulbs, which makes ships even cooler to attract future Kerbonauts ! Part 5 : Minmus twice ! Second trip to Minmus, now with litteraly tons of room for liquid fuel ! Franfen supervises the drills while Mike is speaking with Mission Control. He needs informations for the following maneuvers and takes many notes, never before KSC put so much burden on a pilot and Mike starts to understand why nobody wanted to jump into that shuttle.. Franfen doesn't care while she's making holes into the ground, but she'll be part of the journey too and will receive her fair share of excitment ! Part 6 : Was the sun this big yesterday ? "Anlorf, stop washing your hairs, this dust's not gonna leave anytime soon.. Come see here and tell me what you read" "Hmpf damn pranks .. Well, 14350, 14400 and counting ? Wait, isn't that the speedometer ?!" "... I hope they know what they're doing" Next chapter will show why there's no need to use Nervas for Duna missions, but what's possible once you get them in sufficient numbers As always after each SLV, ship's list has been updated.

I tried an Eve slingshot when coming down from Duna and it would have been very effective, except the trip would take too much time to complete the achievement. Aslo I can't intersect too far from Kerbin because at the angle it's coming, the departure burn and encounter would cost a lot more. So there's 2 options, one is to encounter the ship 1/2 days before Kerbin's Pe (6600m/s). Second is to wait the first retroburn of the ship (save 3300m/s) which will put it on a very elliptical orbit and an encounter with Minmus but time margins are tighter (10 days at best).

Mmh I may have troubles with KerbinEarlyReturn I planned a solar intersection which costs 6600m/s in total, 5500m/s (approx 30minutes burn) to catch up with the target.. Ship's coming so fast that it would enter and leave Kerbin SOI in less than 2 days. There's a backup plan but it's far less fun (also re-entry is more standard) so I'm not sure what I'll choose.. Should I go full kerbal on this ?

Awesome !

If there's little weight left send tiny bits of life support or monoprop, it fits quite well and is always usefull :p

Welcome citizen !

Noice !

Why won't you refuel in Duna SOI ? Say that you inject average 123t., you need 6 nukes to get 0.3TWR (too high but allows for heavier payloads), so that's 25t. fuel contained in 2.5t. tankers + 18t. engines + docks / probe / battery / stuff. So your transfer stage is +/- around 22/23t. empty. You will only need 6t. of Lf to get 1800m/s (700m/s duna -> kerbin without using Ike, 1100m/s circu LKO). So based on this average, fuel capacity of the transfer stage alone is 3 mk1 liquid fuel fuselage. Again this is very quick math and average assumption but it's a baseline. For example my 2nd transfer to Duna weighted 183t. with tanks half empty so I needed 8 nukes. With 2300m/s total I was able to retroburn 4 nukes to LKO once injection was complete. This retroburn burned 780 Lf (should have been 600Lf for 4 nukes, 1200m/s quite far from Pe + maybe 500-600 circu) but there was more weight to slow down due to a little habitat + mk3 fuselage tank's weight, so it's +/- around the numbers stated above. edit : its funny to see patterns once everything succeeded and it may seems that I had everything under control, but most of my flights were done the empirical way, after many, many fuel tests in the SPH to see how I should combine the various modules / engines / tanks in orbit.

If you followed the life support part, you may have notice that the outpost will run out of food around Y6 D143 at the extreme maximum. This will happens around 120 days after the 3rd mothership's transfer to Duna occurs. In the following chapters will take place : _Early Kerbin Return, or how it will be possible to land 2 Kerbals before Y5 on a ship that's coming at 7000m/s at Kerbin's Pe (rough estimation) and has not enough fuel to circularize in LKO. _Food Express Delivery, or how a rescue procedure is designed to transfer 2 Kerbals and supplies to the outpost, departing Kerbin around 250 days before 3rd transfer. They will also use a home-made heatshield to circularize around Duna before transferring the supplies to DunaSpaceBus which has a little food capacity hidden in its fairing. _SLV 04 planned at Y4 D337 _SLV 05 planned at Y6 D10, followed by the injection to Duna of this 3rd mothership. (combined modules of SLV 04 / 05). The restrictions of this challenge (weight, timing, no aerobraking with nukes and so on) implies a lot of actions and acrobatic transfers

Wow that's awesome, never thought it would be possible to grab one so quickly ..! That would cut a lot of transit time and fuel wasted between Minmus & LKO !

@Laie You got time to get a large asteroid down in LKO before first transfer window ? In the 180x180 maximum SLV's orbit ? :0 Might be feasible if you're lucky, with aerobraking, maybe Mun slingshot to change the plane but it might be short before D210 ? I think its a fantastic idea you could get rid of the ISRU propulsion. How much fuel can you extract from a big asteroid ? I've never put a fuel-base on one, down in LKO.

Chapter 9 is available (for free!) Features some exploration on Ike with the long awaited SpaceBus, and finally, a pic of everyone's on the ground ! (you may count 34)

CHAPTER 9, Visiting Ike using DunaSpaceBus ! Part 1 : Refuelling on Ike, getting down in Duna low orbit to meet with DunaSpaceStation At the end of the last chapter, we left Catburry and Antlorf on their way to Kerbin. You may spot Duna almost right on top of the antenna ! This time we'll see more actions near Duna, once that DunaSpaceBus cranks up. In order to start-up this new module Bill and Valentina had to mine Ike anooooother time. They then plotted a new encounter with the Station. Part 2 : DunaSpaceBus blips on the screen One part of this challenge is to service a Bus which could ferry at least 4 Kerbalz between Duna's surface, onto Ike. In order to reduce overall weight, the engineers decided that a pointy habitat module docked on top of a DartTug would be sufficient enough, they even wrote a very safe landing procedure to accomodate Ike's rough terrain ! Once Val finished the completion of module, she and Bill took place in it and prepared to finally walk on Duna after years in orbit. Part 3 : Valentina and Bill touchdown, and finally : la photo de famille ! After defining a suitable deorbiting procedure, Bill and Valentina landed on Duna to meet with the outpost's crew. They brought back old memories of mining Minmus, Ike, Minmus Minmus, and Ike, also waiting in orbit. Everyone had a good fun, especially when looking at the champagne's bubble on a low gravity planet. KSC called and required a family picture of all members, Walt Kerman at PublicRelations stated that's what social media asked so why not please Kwitter audience? The mood was so good that someone started the idea to light-up the rover and do some rounds around the outpost, hopefully no one felt motion sickness allegedly. Only Bob is looking the other way, because that's what scientists have to do. Part 4 : Lalong, Jacan, Alkin and Stelwig first hop to Ike A mission to Ike was plotted, once everyone calmed down. Jacan and Alkin, 2 scientists, were asked to land on Ike to study samples of the dark stuff Bill and Valentina were still covered of. They'd be supported by Stelwig (pilot) and Lalong (miner, parachute repacker). Their first hop would be a rather simple landing on the equator, mainly to test the Bus. They also needed a refuelling encounter with the Station. Stelwig choked a bit after reading how she would have to modulate the ship in order to be able to touch the surface on the pointy end. Part 5 : Extended mission Almost all DSB systems were clear, which was a relief, only a minor instability coming from the Tug pod, still within the counter torque SAS capability, annoyed a bit Stelwig. Alkin and Jacan were able to produce fantastic science on Ike (read : 2 surface samples and 1 badly written report) and asked for an extended mission to take cool pictures visit something else on Ike. Once the green light received, Stelwig took a phone call to the ISRU 2-d probe and asked it to join the crew around Ike. Maneuvring on a polar orbit after landing / take-of was well beyond the capacities of the ship so a complete refuel would have to happen. Lalong and Stelwig deorbited the ISRU, after cleaning the smell of Bill and Valentina's very long period in the ship, and completed all fuel tanks. Even if the south pole had no volcano, as it was supposed after seeing the planet in orbit, the crew landed and sat a bit to appreciate the view. Jacan stated that it was at least 7/10 breathtaking. Part 6 : Mission complete, returning to the base ! The crew was really taken aback by the beautifull scenery from the south pole. They let the ship's probe plot maneuvers to LDO (refuelling at Station) / Surface, which explains why it took so long and was probably a bit innefficient .. After being spotted by the outpost tracking radar, they landed near the target and sent a beacon to be recovered just before midnight, right on time to the pyjama party. Here it is for Chapter 9, next one will be SLV 04, which will take place on Y4 D337 so choose a front row seat because this will be a big one ! (probably too big for the fairing :D)

Welcome

Haha never heard that !

@Mad Rocket Scientist Well if you look at hohmann transfer, you put average 123t. in orbit at each window. Roughly, if you go nuclear, that's 25t. of Liquid fuel each transfer to push 123t. at Duna (1780dV with high margin), not accounting monoprop and Lf+Ox (to power your relays for example, or a deorbiter). So at Year 8 that's 100t. of Lf which means 20% of all your SLVs has to be liquid fuel. If you are able to design a light ISRU you may have a return on investment as soon as the 2nd launch.