GEPEG_Unconscious

@darwinpatrick, glad you're still enjoying it. I feel the last couple of posts may have been a little monotonous because they were just launches and docking, but the next few should be a fair bit more interesting. Mostly because... Destination Toutatis: Lightly Toasted Hilvey Kerman takes a quick EVA around Coyote to collect and reset experiments after entering Toutatis Orbit This is gonna be a long one, so bear with me. There's a lot happening, and has been happening in the background throughout the last couple of posts. I felt it would be easier to consolidate them into one post, rather than spread them out. So, without further ado: Landings #1 and #2: Automated Rovers Landing #3: Tou-AV Landing #4: Crew Rover And lastly, Crew Arrival and Landing #5: With everything in place, the surface exploration of Toutatis can begin in earnest. Some knowledge for anyone looking to do similar landings on bodies with very thin atmospheres and tweakchutes. Toutatis's landing dV states (from the dV chart included in the mod) that a landing requires chutes + 200 m/s. Since main chutes are out, that leaves the player with just drogues. The 200 m/s holds true for lighter payloads, such as all the rovers, but heavier payloads will need more dV to brake, more chutes, or additional methods to slow down (the inflatable heat-shield is great at creating drag. Dunno how air-brakes would do.). I don't like overlapping chutes, so any more than four drogues was out. Higher thrust engines help too, as Toutatis's gravity pulls you down rather quick. The Tou-DVH had terriers, and I had to start braking 15 km up to slow down enough. (These aren't supposed to be critiques or critical thoughts of any sort, just my observations. It was actually quite fun overcoming challenges presented by tweakchutes and a low atmo body. I bet landing on Thatmo in OPM would behave very similarly in these conditions).

Destination Toutatis: Crew Castoff The crewed Nautilus NTV-LA, nicknamed Coyote, assembled in orbit It feels like there was a lot more prep for the Toutatis Mission than I planned, but everything is finally in place, and the crewed aspect of the mission can begin.

A large mission meticulously planned out across multiple spreadsheets?! Memeing aside, you've got an ambitious plan there. It's real neat to see all the thought and organization you put into this via the spreadsheet. Good luck with your endeavors.

Destination Toutatis: Crewless Crafts Complete The Tou-AV and its NTV-LA braking into Toutatis Orbit This is the second half of the convoy heading to Toutatis during this window. Last time the Descent Vehicle and Habitat were thrown into Nodens orbit. This time it is the Ascent Vehicle. I wanted to try and do both at the same time because 1) I wanted to see how difficult it was to juggle sending mulitple interplanetary craft to a destination at a time, and 2) I didn't want to draw out this mission too long. So without further ado: Launch of the Toutatis Ascent Vehicle: And Now for Departures: Arriving around Toutatis: That's three transfer craft around Toutatis and three payloads ready to land on the surface. All three transfer vehicles have 1000-1500 m/s of DV, which is plenty to refuel the crew's transfer vehicle when it arrives. All that needs to be sent up from Nodens is the Transfer Vehicle, the crew hab, and the crew themselves.

@Kerballing (Got Dunked On), this should help. Loving it so far, @TonyC

Huh. Well alright then, I learned something today. I've done many reentries and too-fast launches since 1.4 and until now never had it happen. At least it is only a minor visual anomaly.

News to me. I thought it was a weird interaction. This was only the second time I've seen it, and the first time at night. The other time was a really fast ascent during the day where I got re-entry effects pretty low. I've never seen this in stock, but it has been a while since I used plain stock.

Destination...Multiple: Mission Menagerie The Tou-DVH on approach to its Nautilus NTV-LA in the far distance So we are a little all over the place right now. There's another Toutatis window opening soon, crew have been selected for the mission, and anomolies are surprisingly still being discussed. The Toutatis mission has been updated too. It is still a go, but more toys are being sent out. For reasons, that means two Nautilus's are going to Toutatis this mission. Mod Stuff, Snacks: Stop #1: A Quick Return From Belisama Stop #2: More Toutatis Preparations Stop #3: Now About that Potential Anomaly

A routine launch uncovered an anomolous area on Nodens. Jedbin and Hilvey went to check it out.

This KSC is on Nodens, not Kerbin, from GEP. I'm slowly going through and exploring each planet in this system and seeing what there is to be seen.

Sometimes I get distracted by what I could use on a mission instead of working on what I actually need.

Destination Toutatis: Rovers Everywhere A completed MK 1 Nautilus NTV-LA with its payload around Nodens So it's been a little while since we've been around Toutatis, but now it is time to prep for crewed exploration again. The Toutatis mission will function similarly to the Caireen mission. The goal is to see what Toutatis looks like from the surface, so rovers will be critical in allowing us to see many locations. There will be no space station this time; the crew will spend the majority of their time on the surface. As a result, a larger crewed lander will be sent ahead of time. Once both of those are in place, then the crew will show up. First up, a new Transfer Vehicle A couple days later, when the Toutatis window opens

Perfectly understandable. Can't wait to see what's to come.

Is this something still in the pipeline? Or have you focused on other things? Not asking for a release date, just curious what its status is.

Field testing a lander.

There is an anomaly right next to the KSC, but I can never seem to find it. Might be the monolith you see next to the KSC on Kerbin. I suspect it is under the terrain, or the the question mark is actually supposed to represent the KSC itself.

Destination Belisama: Belisama Station, take two A CV-2N Hermes approaches Belisama Station. The station, 30 km distant, can barely be made out as a dot against the backdrop of Belisama Well, it's been a little since one of these was posted. That's what happens when exam season rolls around. We continue around Nodens and Belisama today; we have to make up for missing the station last time. Forewarning, there is a lot in this post. First up, some small stuff: While the Belisama crewed mission architecture is being redesigned, KSC sent a small probe to the surface of Belisama to assess a location as a viable landing site. And finally, the resumption of crewed missions to Belisama I think this is the biggest post I have made here. I hope I don't make more this size, this was a lot. I could've split it all up, but everything kinda worked off each other, so it felt right to keep it all together. Next time though, we are back to the main Toutatis mission.

Destination Belisama: Boot Camp Washouts The first crew to Belisama Station perform an inclination burn on their way to Belisama While payloads are being transfered to Toutatis, the mission planners at KSC thought it would be a good idea to keep their kerbonauts occupied and ready for future missions. As a result, the Belisama Station project was started. It's end goal is to provide an intermediate point between Nodens and the surface of Belisama so kerbonauts can practice orbital, landing, and ground maneuvers closer to home. First up, some comms and imagery data: Next, the station itself: And lastly, the first crew of the station...: So more successes and another small flop. I have a couple more noteworthy missions around Belisama before returning to Toutatis infrastructure. Both are going on at the same time though, so launch times are quite important.

@OhioBob, I'll be 100% honest, I completely forgot about the custom resource distribution you guys did for GEP and GPP. My goal with the RR configs for GEP was to insert resources necessary to create an LH2 extraction architecture for all the craft I build, as well as the means to extract resources. The resource setup you did in GEP already covers the first part, while the parts included in RR covers the second. If I am reading @JadeOfMaar's mod interaction of GEP and RR correctly, the GEP configs trump my configs, so everything I have been seeing in testing has been GEP resources. @JadeOfMaar, based on the previous conversations, I don't think my RR configs need to be maintained unless GEP_Resources gets removed from the mod. They would be redundant, and while I did my best to set templates as accurate to the data @OhioBob provided in GEP with his Celestial_Bodies pdf (this was especially critical in determining the atmosphere templates. The ones I chose matched almost 100% with the atmo compositions provided in the pdf, which I see as proof of RR's lineage back to GEP's and GPP's development), I think my copy would be only a shadow of the original. As an aside, I would like to mention my comment about resources in lava oceans was more of a comical statement. But, if something interesting comes out of it and makes its way into RR, I wish you luck and look forward to what it may be.

Destination Toutatis: Why Didn't I Go Here First? A probe enters Toutatis's sphere of influence for the first time Mod stuff first: TL;DR - Rational Resources is a cool mod So the plan today - Figure out what Toutatis looks like and how hard it is to get there (In case you didn't read the title, its quite easy) Launch #1: Exploratory Probe And Launch #2 - Scanning Probe And once more with feeling! Launch #3 And phase 1 of Toutatis exploration is underway. That was a lengthy post.

Cheated a craft into orbit then landed it on the daylight side before reading your post. Got around 275 K at my random landing spot, which is far below what you mentioned. I'll hyperedit something to the 0 lat, 0 lon spot, but I think the first case you mentioned (hot and cold spots shifted 45 degrees, aka stock heat settings) is working here. That's a shame.

I have the plugin installed, but haven't played with it yet. I'll take a few readings on Nodens and Toutatis and record what I get. I take it the changes introduced to KSP 1.8.x are what enabled this plugin to function, so any sort of back-port would not work correctly?

Wow. That's literally still hot from the press. So the way I am reading this, if I watch the thermometer experiment readouts as I drive from the sunlit side of Toutatis, through the dusk band, and into the night side, I should see the temperature values drop? Does the temperature change in a smooth gradient?

Ask and you shall receive. I was already playing around with this, so hope this works. I've got tweakchute installed so main chutes are very much out. Drogues should still work though, and assist with powered landings. The atmosphere is very much like Mars's irl: to thin to be useful but thick enough to complicate everything. Coming in at interplanetary speeds will still overheat things, but unless you go real deep (~10-15 km above the surface) you can't really aerobrake effectively.

Classic might not be the right word, but I agree with @Kerballing (Got Dunked On) in that it should be read. The HSP thread is the primary ones I think of when I go through mission reports. The structure of it worked really well. I know I've gone back to it when making a couple of my posts.