Kimera Industries

Recently created a story/mission report I've wanted to do for a while: It will follow the exploits of MISE (Minmus Soviet Exploration) as they conquer the second moon of Kerbin! Where America beat the USSR to The Mun, but not to Minmus! Currently, the only mission is an unmanned probe, but a test of the new Kerbal launch system will follow. A direct derivative of the Soyuz, with significant technological improvements, including a simplified and more reliable system, longer range, and comfort improvements. Any suggestions for improvements or ways to increase historical accuracy would be much appreciated, thanks!

Wrong Red Moon You know the story of the space race as it happened on Earth (and maybe as it happened on Kerbin) but what if Earth's space race took place in the Kerbolar System? This is the story of how America beat the USSR to the Mun- but not to Minmus! Wrong Red Moon (WoRM)'s current date is in the year: 1971 For real-life historical context, the Wikipedia article on that year in spaceflight is linked. <><><> July 20, 1969- Kerbals set foot on the Mun for the first time. It would have been a crushing defeat for the Soviets, had Kerbin not had a second moon- a second chance for the Union. The advantages were immediately made obvious, along with the extra challenges- substantially less fuel was required, but it was a much longer, and harsher, journey. A new branch of the current space program was founded with one public goal in mind- exploring Minmus. Privately, however, the true goal was the complete and utter conquering and colonization of the small moon. The new branch was MISE- Minmus Soviet Exploration. After the successful first landing on Minmus, MISE was combined with the rest of the space program and upgraded into the KSSP. The KSSP's current goals are: Send unkerbaled probes to explore and map Minmus. Complete Land a kerbaled mission. Complete Explore further and build permanent bases on and around Minmus. In progress Mine ore for in-situ construction or selling on Kerbin. Planned Construct the Zephyr in orbit of Minmus. Planned Table of Contents: Missions slated for redo are marked <> Posts without a mission (story only) are marked * NASA or other international missions are marked [] Chapter 1: Discovery Myatnee I (Inside OP) <> Korolev I Myatnee II <> Korolev II + III Pravda I <> Korolev IV Apollo 13, [] Accident Investigation * [] Korolev V Crew Transport <> Korolev V Chapter 2: Exploration Korolev VII Salyut I Progress I Korolev X Intermission Part 1 * Intermission Part 2 * Intermission Part 3 * WoRM is on KerbalX! Check out the hangar for some sweet Soviet craft, more coming soon! Author's note on the timeline: Chapter 1: Discovery Examining the current resources of the space program, it was found step one could be completed with existing technology- a small probe/lander, originally designed for The Mun, later analysis with newer data proved that the design had insufficient fuel. It would be perfect for Minmus, however. Enter Myatnee. Launched from a derivative of the R-7 rocket, it has more than enough fuel for a mission to Minmus. This freedom allowed for several landing sites to be chosen and visited in the same mission, saving valuable equipment and money. August 7, 1969- Myatnee is launched. Orbital insertion at approx. T-12:14. Myatnee is ready for TMI, Trans Minmus Insertion. Myatnee I is meters from the surface. Controllers in Moscow wait with bated breath as the computer hopefully makes the correct decisions to land on its own. Our goals were well met in this mission. We mapped a portion of the surface and gathered data from the surface itself. Coming up next: A test of a new Kerbaled spacecraft in preparation for exploring Minmus!

It worked! Merely disabling autostrut was enough and I went through many old craft I had given up on because the hinges wouldn't work. For example, my Osprey landed on the Vab, and the Admin building. Everyone seems to forget it has a helipad.

You should be fine. I also always place the RCS blocks into the airstream and am not aware of any good alternatives. It might be possible to have a cargo bay with monoprop and RCS, maybe 2 on either end of the plane so you can have better control of translation and rotation. You would open the cargo bays in space (where you would need them) and then close them for reentry and takeoff to eliminate their drag. Not sure of how well it would compare to RCS blocks on the outside and an inline tank as far as drag, but it might be a slightly better alternative. Plus it would look better cooler.

YES THANK YOU! I am having the exact same problem (With all my hinges) It happened on/off, but while trying to make a Kerbalized Starship, the hinges would just not work. Sometimes one would go, or none, or the working one would switch- I'll have to try this, and I'm pleased to hear it worked so well. Also: I have a complete Aircraft of the World collection. It's super nice, and it's given me loads of KSP ideas, which is mostly a good thing. One of my favorite bits is "Weird and Wonderful," and it contains the Goblin. It's a very odd and useful idea, and it's super cool to see you replicating it! Personally, though, my favorite from that section is the XF-2Y Sea Dart or the Mayo Composite. (Note: They are seaplanes, do not attempt or else sanity will break, cause water is unsophisticated in KSP)

I don't really have a need for a ladder, since the only time Kerbals are exiting the craft is in space, and anywhere it could feasibly reach with refueling, (Minmus, basically) Kerbals can use EVA packs easily. I already have space for 2 more crewmembers, so if the need ever arises, it's an option. The flight procedure that I've worked for this thing is to pitch 10 deg immediately after liftoff, then let Kerbin fall away as I get higher. When I stop getting faster, (about when whiplash TWR falls below 1) I activate the rocket engine, then ditch the jets when they burn out and continue burning until apoap. is 70 km. Keeping a high AoA will make apoap. slowly rise to a slightly safer distance from the minimal lift at high altitude and speed. Then I am left in LKO with usually about 500 m/s, which can be used for orbital shenanigans and deorbit. I'm thinking of having a separate "deorbit package," with some separatrons or something to give me a little nudge into the atmosphere, and that way I won't have to worry about the main engine running out of fuel. But, the drage from separatrons on ascent might not make it worth it.

I'll have to check my separation speed, but I think it is somewhere above 1200 m/s, and may be much higher. It gets me high enough that my engine's isp can be used effectively. I think one of the reasons my craft may not be performing as well as some others is that not only does it have a cockpit, it also has a monopropellant tank (not a radial one, to decrease drag) an inline clampotron and a crew compartment. All of these features are ones that are a must for the final design, so I think overall the only radial parts aside from wings are RCS and landing gear. Question- Do RCS blocks have higher drag than other options? Am I making a huge mistake using them? If not, then I'm not worried, because aesthetics went down the drain a while ago.

I did some more work on my small SSTO. I discovered that I cannot reach orbit without staging away the jets, making this more of a TSTO (Two stages to orbit) Not that impressive, but most of it's recoverable, a major step forward for my career save. I also tried ramp intakes vs. shock cones, and shock cones give me much better acceleration. I wanted to try the ramp intakes in the hopes that the lighter weight would allow me to reach orbit without dropping the jet engines, but no. I bet if I installed some mods, or did some clever flying and vessel switching, I could find a way to recover the jet engine pods. The vehicle has been named "STAFF" a bit randomly. If you think of a good acronym to go with that, let me know. Currently, I'm at Spaceplane Transportation for Astronauts including Freedom and transFerence, or Spaceplane Tactical Airborn Fireball Ferry.

I heard about the idea of using ChatGPT for mission ideas in KSP. I tried this, and it worked ok. Continuing on the topic of space, I asked what might have been done to save the Dyna-Soar program, and it gave good results. It also mentions the lack of development in space stations in the 60s, and whether that was true or not it inspired me to ask about a space station as a result of all the technological efforts of the era. It came up with "Cosmic Nexus," an LEO station built in the 60s and 70s, resupplied by "Voyant" reusable space capsules. Intrigued by where this was going, I presented an emergency scenario: "It is now 1979. On a regular resupply mission, utilizing a cargo variant of the Voyant capsule similar to the Russian Progress, the cargo capsule is meters away from docking with Cosmic Nexus' main docking port. A glitch in the computer causes a thruster misfire, propelling the capsule into the docking port at unsafe speeds. The entire docking module is badly damaged and Cosmic Nexus depressurizes. The only crew to survive are 2 astronauts on EVA and a crew member in a sealed-off portion of the station, who was controlling the remote arm to help the astronauts on EVA. How does the crew survive?" ChatGPT seems to avoid adding to the story and instead gives lists of sound advice. The crew faced loss of communications, power, and a damaged reentry module. It's ongoing, but if it wraps up I think it would make a good story to replicate in KSP. If so, it will have ended up being a much better mission idea than when I asked it directly. I just asked it the names of the crew members and a short bio as if it's a television broadcast. Here's an edited version, for clarity and consistency: Astronaut Profiles: (90% sure Dawson is just Commander Hadfield) Let me know how good of a KSP story this could be. I'm open to any suggestions you have.

So everything's been on hold due to like a 7 g launch from school. Hopefully, I can catch a stage separation break to play some ksp. My most promising plan is a small, cheap SSTO spaceplane idea. Mk 1 size parts, delta wings. It will transfer crew between Kerbin and my space station (called Mir but that's its only resemblance to the real one). The main thing about it is that it will have expendable tanks on the side. Powered by a rocket engine on the main fuselage, I am going to try different variations like rocket engines on the tanks, but probably the best idea will have jet engines on the tanks. I will probably use the Whiplash engine, but for cost reasons, I will see if the Panther works too. The biggest thing will be if I can take the whole thing to orbit or if I still have to ditch the jets. Woah, sudden idea! For aesthetic purposes, I want the drop tanks to be the length of the fuselage. For the jet engines, if that's all fuel, I think that will be too much, so some of it will be structural. Instead, I could make the jet part stage away, and instead of structural parts left, there are SRBs or rocket engines or something. If I want to use this in my career save where I might not have access to the best engines, that could help. All that's based on a small air-launched shuttle concept I saw in my space shuttle history book and I really liked how it looked. That's it. Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System, Dennis Jenkins if anyone's interested.

Awesome! This is a really interesting alternate history, I'm loving where it's going. I have an idea myself for a cold war/ ksp universe crossover, where America beat the USSR to the Moon but not to Minmus!

I've been distracted from any major projects for a while, but some highlights include: a working f-14 tomcat, (with moving wings!) a non-working harrier jet, (how hard can VTOL be? Very hard) and my most recent one is trying to recreate Dyna-Soar. I got this huge book about the history of the space shuttle and the first few chapters are about early concept exploration of spaceplane designs. I've been inspired to make some high-speed planes, but Dyna-Soar is coming along the best. The wing configuration means that the CoL is really far back. To move the CoM back as well, I added some ore tanks as dead weight and the CoL is lined up perfectly now. Originally I had these cool landing skids like the real Dyna-Soar. They used pistons and I-beams to get the desired effect. Unfortunately for the accuracy of my little spaceplane, landing skids don't work (at all) in KSP, so boring, regular landing gear it is. The launch vehicle is close to getting into orbit, I need some more fuel tanks and maybe SRBs on the side. Taking inspiration from actual high-speed plane tests, I tried attaching Dyna-Soar to the wing of a stock aircraft with roughly the same proportions as the NB-52. Attaching it to the wing caused symmetry and imbalance issues, so I gave it bigger landing gear and mounted it on the bottom instead. Taking Dyna up to a high altitude and launching it worked reasonably well, but mostly it proved that it handles really well in flight. I just need to get used to flying it like a glider. If I undershoot the runway, it'll either land in the ocean (not good) or somewhere on land aside from the KSC peninsula (less good, actually). One of my tests forced Dyna to land on the mountain range next to the KSC, meaning no flat land was available (very not good). If I overshoot the runway, I can either turn around or aim for the island runway. If I massively screw up the retro burn, reentry profile, or anything else, I'll just load a quicksave. Anyway, in other news, I went on my main career save and did a bunch of stuff. I learned that the game gives you more contracts of the kind you accept. Early on, I had wanted to accept every contract, but that was a VERY bad idea. I ended up with a lot of contracts I couldn't complete. So I took a hit, declining the majority of them, and it's been fun! Rescuing kerbals 2 at a time, taking tourists to the Mun, and actually landing on the Mun, for once! No more "science data from this location in flight 20km or higher" for me!

Cool, thanks!

So how do I know if I got the badge or not

The Buran looks amazing! Nice work!

Thanks! I sure worked hard on this!

I finally did my mission! It's a mission report, link here. I flew an advertisement billboard to Dres with a loving message to help Dres feel loved and to bring awareness to potential space tourists and the population in general. The billboard's size isn't much, but my PC is as bad as a laptop and I'm not sure how much of a bigger craft it could've handled. (Update: I turned the graphics settings down a few days ago and while ships no longer cast shadows on terrain, my game is faster.) If you're interested, I used no mods at all. I did my best to document everything. I did forget the screenshots for the Dres transfer but if you compare my fuel and dv they've gone down by about 1600, ( the dv not the fuel) which is enough for a Dres transfer. This was also my first mission to be posted on the forums so I'm not used to taking so many screenshots of a single mission. Everything else is well documented though. It was on a sandbox world but that's simply because none of my science or career saves are far enough in the tech tree for this kind of mission. This mission was tons of fun and I got valuable experience too! I hope Dres appreciates it! I've always loved the dwarf planet Ceres, (Dres IRL) and this was also a way of showing support for Ceres as well.

This mission was part of the Dres Awareness challenge. The goal of the challenge was to show your love for Dres, with something BIG! Unfortunately, my PC is literally a hand-me-down, so extremely big was not an option. But there are other ways to be big. Dres Tourism Commission report: Reply to the previous report, from KSC Director Andrew Kerman: 18 months later... The sun was shining. The birds were singing. And another huge rocket was on the launchpad. Here's the launch: Trying to get a Dres encounter was pretty stressful, (small soi) so I forgot to get a picture of the transfer burn. However, as proof I didn't cheat, if you look at the D-v levels, they've gone down by 1629 m/s, which is pretty close to the 1540 my interplanetary transfer cheat sheet says. (The fuel has also gone down) However, I think I documented everything else pretty well. Transfer to Dres/ orbital insertion: Dres landing: Landed, safe and sound! I had fun doing this! I hope it's big enough for Dres! Maybe when I get a better PC I can do something bigger. (Like a hotel!) In previous attempts, I tried storing the billboard horizontally. It made the rocket flip over sometimes and even though I would revert the flight anyway, I tried recovering it using the remaining fuel. They all failed, but it made for some interesting screenshots. Bloopers: Enjoy! Try a Dres mission of your own if you haven't, it's an interesting challenge.

So things have been busy, but lately, I've done a lot of stuff! I did my second Minmus mission ever (Surprisingly!) and an ice cream restaurant will follow soon, as soon as I figure out how to launch weirdly-shaped payloads, with which I have minimal experience. Good news, I finally launched my Dres Billboard and it is sitting safely on Dres. Someday a nice hotel will land near it. I will put together a mission report soon! As I was thinking about interplanetary tourism, I thought of different reasons to visit each moon and planet. I couldn't think of anything on Bop that was an exciting reason to visit when out of the blue I thought CASINO! So eventually I'll put a big casino on Bop. Pictures will follow soon of Ginny landed on the VAB. (I didn't know I would be sharing all that about Ginny, so I only got screenshots of it landed. However, I also took a picture of the flight events, so you know I'm not a liar)

I decided to finally do a long- standing goal of mine, I recreated the Ingenuity (Ginny) helicopter. Fairly simple, I had some issues with the rotors like I always do, but not a big challenge. Then, as the ultimate test, I decided to fly Ginny to Duna land Ginny on the VAB. On the way there, I wanted to take a stop at the Admin pool. Big mistake. On "landing," Ginny pitched 90 degrees and lost 2 propellers. Fortunately, the 2 remaining propellers were on opposite rotors, so the rotation still canceled out. But then on my way out of the pool, to the VAB, I lost another one at the astronaut complex. I was down to 1 propeller. Rotation, imbalance, a host of problems could finish me for good. Thankfully, reaction wheels are OP and I made it to the VAB. I bounced upon landing, unintentionally aided by my propeller, but, unbeknownst to me, everything after that was broken. Ginny's kal-1000 controller and main batteries are on the bottom, which isn't covered by a structural panel. Upon bouncing, I lost the kal controller and the main batteries. The kal was important because it controlled blade pitch. The propeller was stuck at 30 degrees, full throttle. (At least, at the settings I had it at.) Somehow, through sheer luck, the will of the fates, and probably something else, I got this little helicopter on the VAB. It may seem small, but in the moment, it was a big adventure. I just hope I described it well enough!

Not much was done in KSP today, other than general shenanigan-type stuff. You know, the most efficient way to be inefficient, horrible planes, messing up crafts by adding robotic parts... Anyway, I found out today that 10 days ago, JUICE got its antenna unstuck! This is great news, as it means JUICE can continue with its exploration of Jupiter's super-cool moons. I have been praying every day for this to happen, I'm glad for the hard work by ESA, they are really neat! Also, I am working on a fanfiction. I plan to explore the larger part of the solar system, but it starts out on Dres. I will be creating some lore, inspired by the KSP1 easter eggs and KSP2 monuments. It takes place in the KSP2 solar system. Link here. That's all for now, see you later!

Good news! I finished (most) of that homework, so I can work on KSP now! I haven't really done a lot recently, but my current plans are: 1. Finish the lander design for my Jool 5. My plan is to use one lander for all moons but Laythe, with refuels of course. There will be 2 addon-modules, a rover for Vall and ISRU for Tylo. I think the aesthetic I want to go for is the lander from Europa Report. The Lander from Europa report. (Concept art only, as the film is shown through onboard cameras only and we don't get a good close look at it) I think the Thud engine would be a pretty good choice to replicate the radial engines. 2. Actually get Laythe-Planes into orbit. Tweak design as needed. 3. Land billboard on Dres. Experiment with mounting the payload on the bottom. 4. Explore anomalies on the Mun and look for anomalies on other planets/ moons. Extra notes: just get good at the game.

Interesting idea, sounds a lot better than what I've been doing trying to do.. However, I've never made a rocket after that design. How do I do stage separation if the fuel and engines are on top? That may sound like a stupid question but I really don't know a good way.

I've made the launch vehicle a lot less wide (And more stable) by mounting the billboard vertically. Turns out Dres is the smallest planet in the solar system ( but also the best one!), so no refueling mission will be needed. Several launch attempts failed, because when I had mounted the billboard horizontally, whenever I staged the first stage, the enormous drag from the huge payload fairing caused the rocket to flip. Attempts to stabilize the rocket via more reaction wheels or fins failed. If I make a mission report, I'll include pictures of my more humorous attempts at recovering these failed rockets with their remaining fuel.

Got totally sidetracked and made a Mun orbital surveyor. Using the rovemax probe core, (100% anomaly detection) I've found 7 or 8 anomalies so far. I also tried to make a lander designed for use in a vacuum but could also land like a space shuttle. It didn't work, so I took off the wings and turned it into a Duna lander. I'll have to decrease the thrust limiter on the engines, by a lot. I won't be playing KSP for a while as I have a buttload of homework to do, mostly because I was playing KSP instead. Wish me luck, it's all due on Friday!