king of nowhere

Three years ago, I run a Jool 5 with the objective of collecting all possible science. While the mission scored the record in the category, it felt incomplete in many regards. I regret many things I could have done, but didn't. I failed to collect all possible science. Most pivotal to that are two discoveries I made recently: the first is, if you are on sea, but standing on top of a vehicle, you can collect science as "landed". "Landed" science and "splashed down" science are different, which means I could have collected "landed" science for a bunch of water-only Laythe biomes. And second, I discovered that with some experimets you can collect them more times (up to 4) and get some extra science. Second, while I was there collecting science from every biome, I did drive rovers halfway around both Vall and Tylo. I could have completed circumnavigations, but I didn't. Well, this time I want to be thorough. And I want to do it with style. Or I want to do a few wild and silly things because they amuse me. The boundary between "style" and "wild silly thing that amuse me" is hard to define. Part 1: Proof that I'm getting old, aka mission design In most missions, I start with a mothership, then I build the landers, then I found some ways to adapt the landers and mothership to each other. Not in this case. This time I'll bring more oversized vehicles than in any other mission. So I'll first design the vehicles, and then I'll try to sort out what kind of mothership I need for them. I need the following capabilities: - a rover for all moons - landing and taking off from Tylo - a plane for Laythe, capable of taking off from water - an aircraft carrier for the Laythe plane, so that the plane can collect "landed" science on water biomes. - something to reach the inner atmosphere of Jool and return. And just like an old geezer living of past memories, I'm going to recycle a lot of old designs for this mission. Because I liked them and I'd like to use them again. After this sneak peek, aren't you curious to see what the rest of the ship looks like? 1.1) Leaping Mantis small rover 1.2) Tamarromobile Tylo rover 1.3) Phoenix Jool plane 1.4) Absolutely Not An Albatross, Laythe seaplane (Not Albatross for short) 1.5) Garibarge, Laythe aircraft carrier (sort of) 1.6) Flying Christmas Tree 2

As far as I'm aware, this is the first grand tour of the whole Kaywell-Limnel-Gememma system. I saw someone else trying, but failing. I suppose I should warn there are spoilers inside, as every celestial body is landed on, often enough it's driven on with a rover or flown on with a plane, and described in detail. A really great experience, despite all my complaints about the crazy amount of gravity assists I needed in the end to pull off the Ammenon landing and back in a fully reusable fashion.

Wow, so few people post in the grand tour challenge... Well, it's not exactly qualified because it's not stock but a modded planetary pack; but given that the planetary pack in question had 44 bodies with a surface, a couple of them bigger than Eve, and a bunch of other challenges, I figured it was worth posting here. As far as I'm aware, the first successful circumnavigation of the whirligig world planetary pack

Part 12: Bring them back It was very difficult to go to Ammenon, it is also difficult to return. Boundless has completed all the landings, now it will bring the crew back to Mesbin (after a refueling stop on Oshan). I didn't envision a vehicle to land the crew, so I had to improvise one with what I had. Mission is completed successfully. All nine crewmember home safely. Yes, that's home. In this mod, kerbals live on Mesbin, which has no atmosphere. I swear, this is not any of a dozen other unremarkably grey celestial bodies 12.1) Seeing red (Lowel flybys) 12.2) Seeing blue (from Mandrake/Rutherford to Tyepolbynar and Valyr) 12.3) Seeing red, blue, and a bit of white and brown too (Oshan, refueling, and Kerbmun) 12.4) Parachutes? where we're going, we won't be able to use parachutes I already recommended this mod several times, but it's worth repeating: this is a great planetary pack. And now, once more, I need to find another challenge.

I've done another circumnavigation in the whirligig world pack This time it was an inanely tiny rock, a submoon of only 400 meters of radius. I normally wouldn't bother, except that I saw a unique opportunity: to make a "planetary circumnavigation" without wheel, or any other mean of surface propulsion - except using the reaction wheels to push the body of the spaceship against the ground, trying to crawl forward. Indeed, I decided to take the extra step and eschew the use of rockets entirely while within Didd's sphere of influence. Escape speed is only 1.7 m/s, so I could safely lithobrake from interplanetary intercept, and launch back in space by pushing with reaction wheels extra strong.

Part 12B: No wheels, no rockets, no problems! Another spinoff chapter. I realized Didd, the submoon of Valyr, is so small (only 400 meters of radius) to allow a unique record: running a whole circumnavigation using only reaction wheels as propulsion. And since I was already headed to Oshan for refueling, I took the chance to get this silly achievement. In fact, I made a point of never using rockets while in the moon moonlet asteroid puny rock sphere of influence, using reaction wheels also to return orbital. This is part 12B, there's no paging error. Part 12 is the last one, so I want to close with the crew returning on Mesbin.

I surmise the most silly was an accident happened during A'Twin maiden flight. A'Twin is a ship designed to complete a real solar system grand tour with stock parts and kerbalism. kerbalism does add a bunch of additional complications to the game in the form of complex life support, difficult isru, radiations, and a bunch of other stuff. great to add extra challenge. to tackle all that, A'Twin was enormous. It needed a large habitable section to keep stress levels in the crew under control, and it needed 100 tons just for radiation shielding, and 200 tons of water to be able to support the crew in the long voyages between worlds, and it needed multiple spare parts to deal with malfunctions... and then all this huge ship needed a lot of fuel to have a good deltaV, it topped at above 7000 tons. life support with kerbalism is a complex chain of events. kerbals eat, drink, breathe, and they produce carbon dioxide, waste solid, and waste water. and i had a bunch of processes to recycle all of that as best as possible, so that the total consumption of resources was only 500 kilograms per crewmember per year. in particular, after many calculations, I determined that the most efficient way to reuse solid waste was to burn it in a chemical reactor to produce carbon dioxide, which was then used to grow plants in the greenhouses. it turned out, though, that the chemical reactor only burns solid waste if there is a "solid waste" resource. and i did forgot to include a solid waste container. so the solid waste produced could not be stored, and the chemical reactor could not burn it and turn it into CO2. the other sources of CO2 in the ship were not enough to provide enough to grow the plants fast enough for the crew to eat, and the whole life support system was made unusable. Yep. I had a 7000 ton ship made unusable because i forgot to include a crap container. I couldn't even fix the issue easily with eva construction: crap containers are kerbalism parts, and were not upgraded with the newest functionalities yet: they could not be manipulated with eva construction. I had to launch and entirely new ship. A seven thousand tons ship. Because the crew could not be instructed to take a dump in a plastic bag.

there are many possible reasons why you can't throttle. maybe it's a probe and you lost control for a variety of reasons?

you must also have researched the tech that gives regular struts. before that, you don't have autostruts. you mention you just started a new build, maybe you don't have that yet

If your plane had docked parts; I once had a bug where I had a rocket with docked parts, and it was subject to insane drag on Laythe - because the game was somehow glitching both large docking ports as fully explosed to the airflow, instead of docked together in a straight shape

a terminal velocity chart doesn't make any sense. terminal velocity is not a function of the atmosphere. it is, first and foremost, a function of the object moving through it. its drag coefficient, its mass, its aerodinamic characteristics. even for a generally rocket-shaped object, the square-cube law makes a lot of difference. what is actually used to calculate such a graph? what is taken as a reference? how can it be extrapolated to different ships? besides, if you need to know the terminal velocity of your speed, you can easily see it from the aerodinamic window, when drag equals weight. all in all, i fail to see how such a graph would be useful

it it happens after you've taken flight, it is most likely a problem with aerodinamics. you need to post pictures of your plane(s) to get more specific help

you make it sound like a lot of effort, but it's a pittance compared to what i've done for every single serious challenge i ever undertook. like, really, i once spent 2 months tossing over 100 small parts into orbit and assembling them one by one, because i wanted to run a jool5 without upgrading any building, and i needed 500 tons of motherships to account for all the errors of eyeballing maneuvers without maneuver nodes, and I could only make rockets of 18 tons on the level 1 launchpad. unocking every single experiment before upgrading the vab is child's play in comparison. anyway, something even I only learned recently: did you know that if you land a ship on an ocean, and you send out a kerbal and take a sample, if the kerbal is swimming in water it counts as "splashed down", and if the kerbal is standing on top of the ship it counts as landed on solid ground, and they are two different samples. they do sometimes even have different science messages. so you can take two different samples when you land a kerbal in water. this also works if your ship lands on top of another ship, then all the experiments it will take are landed, not splashed down. but you do need to land another ship first, and the whole setup is a bit complicated. not that it's stopping me from doing exactly that

I downloaded the lastest version, and I have to say, I experienced this bug too. I know orbital drifting, and I suddenly got a lot more acceleration than drifting could be accounted for. it's something that only happens occasionally, though, so it was fixed on reload. it's just one of many little bugs that are annoying but not critical.

As I approached Ammenon, my latest target in the whirligig world grand tour, I was struck by its beauty and couldn't help circumnavigating it EDIT: by the way, I looked at the written entries for modded planets, and they always mistake diameter for radius. the number given is radius, not diameter. For the record, Ammenon is 95 km of radius. Jifgif has a nominal radius of 6 km, but the lobes extend 10 km more on each side. Its actual size is roughly 35x18 (long and short axis) Thresomin has a 2 km radius, so 4 km diameter is actually accurate there. Wolda has a nominal radius of 9 km, but the lobes extend 15 km on each direction - and even the "neck" rarely goes below 5 km of altitude, so 50x30 (long and short axis) is a more accurate count

Part 11B: The land of molten rock and frozen water This spinoff chapter details the circumnavigation of Ammenon. I can drone on how much I liked the little planet without cluttering the main chapter worse than usual.

Part 11: The most inaccessible planet Boundless has to stretch to achieve the 30 km/s necessary to reach Ammenon, the last planet left. The fuel cost to reach Ammenon is staggering. 5 km/s to lower periapsis, followed by 10 km/s to circularize. And the same amount must be spent on the way back 11.1) Blue planet, red planet 11.2) Half a million km in nine years 11.3) Making the fuel last 11.4) Step by step, climbing up the gravity ladder

I completed circumnavigation of the most remote world I know: Ammenon, from the whirligig world planetary pack Ammenon is the innermost planet of the red dwarf Gememma, itself orbiting the main star Kaywell. The reason it's so remote is exactly its being innermost: it sits deep into Gememma's gravity well, at barely 130000 km from the surface. It moves at 35 km/s and completes an orbit in seven hours. It takes 15 km/s to reach Ammenon from the nearest planet, of which 10 km/s are the intercept speed and can't be reduced by gravity assists. Ammenon is tidally locked on Gememma. On one side it is a scorching desert, and under the star itself there's an ocean of lava. But the dark side is covered in ice. Ammenon is half as big as Mun, a bit low on gravity (and definitely too small to provide gravity assists) but good enough to drive a rover semi-comfortably. I landed on the dark side, on a mountainous region. this is natural light, provided by Kaywell despite the distance (the bright dot in the sky). Kaywell also allows using solar panels on the dark side. When Kaywell is below the horizon, it's pitch black. In this picture I'm coming closer to the dayside. Stopping in twilight. the report describes the surface as very hot, but the thermometer does not seem to agree. Look at how much electricity is producing the solar panel; that's a glitch, though. Gememma in all its glory One thing I liked about Ammenon is that it has varied terrain. Most worlds are similar in every place; Ammenon alternates highlands - rugged terrain - with smooth maria. Here shown in the transition between the two. elevation is really low, with most of the surface between 900 and 1500 meters - though it goes down to 0 m around the molten sea. it's probably the world with the least altitude variability I know; despite that, it's remarkably differentiated. too bad my landed-rover was pretty crappy for long distance driving, it kept exploding in the highlands due to hitting bumps. I regret not bringing a better rover, Leaping Mantis would have been a lot of fun here. And here, arrival to the molten sea And taking a swim in the molten sea. it's a lot less hot than I was expecting, it doesn't even overheat the kerbal. The light is very strong while directly under Gememma, it's somewhat hard to see in perspective. This rock formation is one of my favourites. it's a crater, but the walls were either eroded (possibly by solar wind), and/or the bottom was filled with lava. it's a sign of ongoing geology. and it's very rare to find on most planets. much less on a small one without atmosphere. leaving behind gememma, back on the ice Ammenon starts from the Mun model, so it has all the same anomalies in the same places. here crossing the arc near the equator. The ice cap is also a mix of rough and smooth terrain. for most of the driving, it was smooth. while shortly before the landing spot, there was a patch of highlands. which was quite hard to cross, because Kaywell does not provide much solar power, so I kept running out of battery. a very beautiful world, I'd recommend it to anyone. at least, to anyone willing to undertake the trip. With its huge deltaV requirement, Ammenon is exceptionally difficult to reach, but well worth the effort.

the small rover Cigar. It's made to be a minimalistic lander for small planets, with rover capabilities. it's not a great rover, quite frail, but in only 4 tons it has a decent deltaV and thrust as rocket, while being able to move on the ground and run science

i'm not an expert of planes, but seems to me like the wings are way too small for the mass of that thing. and 2 nervs won't be enough to circularize.

I haven't updated in a month, so I want to give a quick update. it took me a couple weeks to gather the courage to start. I was worried I wouldn't be able to reach Ammenon, and being defeated after spending nine months on this mission was a daunting prospect. even in the most positive scenario, I'd still be looking forward to a slow slog of dozens of gravity assists - it took 29, actually. I safely landed on Ammenon a couple days ago, and I found it a lot more interesting than I was expecting, so I'm now circumnavigating it. I want to stop the next chapter of the mission report when I rejoin Boundless, so I can't write it until I finish the circumnavigation in the first place. So, it will take some more weeks. there is also the issue of the forum being bugged; editing posts may malfunction, and since I write my reports by gradually editing the post (at first I would just write the post in one go, then I accidentally closed the browser and thus lost several hours of work) I am not sure I can even keep making posts. so, all this to say that it will take a few weeks to a month for the next chapter.

I occasionally read my old mission reports. Sometimes I find a typo, and I used to edit the post and fix it. I used to, because now the forum is telling me the post can no longer be edited as too much time has passed. it's something that happened a few weeks ago. A couple months ago all was fine. then for a while, probably related to the forum stability problems, editing became impossible entirely. at least, i would get the "post too old" message already after a few minutes. today I checked, and i seem able to modify some recent posts, but not always. does anyone know what are the actual limitations on editing, and whether they are accidental or they are meant to stay? furthermore, when i do write a mission report, since I tend to ramble quite a bit, i often post a partial version and then edit and continue writing. I do it since I accidentally closed the browser page and lost hours of writing; by posting, I save the current progress. but it would be mighty annoying if I tried to do that, and got an error message that the post cannot be edited instead. I'd really like to understand how the forum is working in that regard

I'll further add that the more you become skilled, the less those tools are useful. gravity assists will make a world of difference in where you can actually go. I haven't looked at a deltaV map in a year

I established a personal speed record going in low orbit around a red dwarf. like, a really low orbit. going that low on kerbol would result in overheating, even with good thermal shields. https://imgur.com/cDyuiNp it's incredibly expensive to move this deep into a gravity field. I have this small planet orbiting very close to the star, and i must land on it, and it orbits at 36 km/s. so, the intercept speed is 10 km/s. anyway, I was just going at it, when I realized I've never been this fast. not even the time I made a 10 km/s burn at solar periapsis in an attempt at a jool speedrun. so I took a picture for the posterity. I am not posting it as some kind of record, for a couple reasons. first, if one wanted to make a record for high speed, it would not be too hard to beat. second, having a modded planetary pack creates a different environment where it's easier to reach low orbit around this star. wait, just as I was about to post, I did realize I already went close to solar periapsis to explore inner planets in this very mission. and while I could not go as close, those stars were a lot more massive. I went to check, and indeed I got a lot faster: 57 km/s. again, not a real record because of the same aforementioned reasons. but still worth noting

it may depend on your difficulty setting giving lower returns. you should be more clear on what settings are you using and what milestones are you achieving. anyway, there is a specific subforum for questions.