Kimera Industries

I took a much-needed break from my Jool 5 project, and worked on a mission. The mission is to show appreciation for Dres, link here, and my project will launch a billboard with an inspiring message to Dres. As practice for what will actually be my first interplanetary mission, I had a small craft with infinite fuel via cheats on a sandbox save and did a quick mission to Dres. Surprisingly easy! Several attempts to launch the billboard failed, then I had the idea to launch this long, vertical thing vertically instead of horizontally. I was concerned about weight imbalance from storing the billboard in the fairing sideways, but the stability gained from it taking up much less fairing space is worth it. Maybe this can be a mission report soon!

I'm so glad Dres got official rings in KSP 2. The planet honestly looks quite beautiful, and I think the contrast of the gray colors (and other subtle colors) is very lovely. The crashed hot rod was a brilliant idea. Really, there's no reason for people to hate it. Sure, it's orbit is inclined and eccentric, but not by that much, really. It's not hard at all to create an extra maneuver node, and before you complain about the extra deltav, Eve takes a heck of a lot more of it, especially if you are trying to get back to Kerbin, and nobody complains about Eve. Same for a lot of planets.

Very fun! I love the work that's being done. KSP2 looks so amazing, I wish my computer could run it just so I could stare in awe at the graphics and fancy features! I actually learned about JUICE just yesterday. Recently I've been looking into why we don't have more probes in the solar system. It's really sad that the main reason is the cost. Good thing that's not a concern in KSP!

So when I redesigned the LPs, (Laythe-Planes) I had to add more fuel because I had more engines, which meant more wing area, and then I added an lv 909 because the rapier has low isp closed cycle... You see were this is going. Too heavy, too hard to steer, a plethora of problems. So I've taken all that out and heavily simplified the design. Honestly, I don't know why I added so much more to it, the original design got into orbit with no problems. Also, the new design weighs only 2 thirds of the previous design.

So I've settled on my payload. Basically it consists of a large billboard made of wing parts and a loving message written with flags. My PC is handling the relatively high parts count from all the flags pretty well, and the launch shouldn't be too laggy because launch vehicle is simple- I call it the Manticore, a name for a super heavy launch vehicle I came up with at Space Camp with my friends a while back. The Manticore is nice, simple, and big-just a large fuel tank with large engines. The launch vehicle has to be big (mostly wide) is because of the awkward shape of the billboard, the thing itself barely weighs 2 tons- minus the weight of the landing equipment. Not sure if I should just get it into orbit and do a refuel mission or have all the fuel ready. I'm tempted to just go full moar boosters because I hate getting a rendezvous, but if I go the refuel route then I need a smaller rocket, which will be easier on my PC. Hmm. For once, the rendezvous option is looking really tempting. Anyway, it'll be a while until I actually have something to show off for all this work, as my current priority is a Jool 5 with my goal for completion sometime in the next 2 weeks.

Journey to the Center of the Thing Prologue Billions of years of nothing. Straight-up nothing. A few asteroid impacts here and there, but they were lost in the heavily dimpled face of Dres. Perhaps the most interesting thing to hit it would be a car, thanks to a private space company. Gray. Desolate. Rings arcing across a deep back sky, the most interesting feature to remain for millions of years. For billions of years, Dres whirled around a distant sun, almost undisturbed, until an alien race particularly good at leaving trash on other planets made it the focus of their attention. Chapter 1: Anomalies “Another one?” “Looks big. Should we take the rover?” The orbital scans had been acting up for months. Ever since they arrived, the polar observation satellites had been reporting anomalies everywhere. Everywhere on the supposedly empty surface of the dwarf planet Dres. (Well, except for that sports car.) And mission control back on Kerbin wanted them to find out what was going on. Because people in charge like picking on people they are in charge of, Arcturo I Commander Jebediah Kerman had been tasked with figuring everything out. Like most people in charge being picked on by higher-ups, he picked on someone lower than him to help. Specifically, Head Scientist Bob Kerman. “Perhaps. We’ll get Mission Control to weigh in. You’ve tried debugging the sats?” Jeb asked. “I’ve tried debugging the sats.” Bob replied. “You’ve tried a hard reboot.” “I’ve tried a hard reboot.” “What we have yet to try is to go where they’re telling us to.” “There are too many locations- we can’t ever hope to visit them all, not within the expected lifetime of Arcturo, anyway.” “Maybe something’s interfering with the signal? Maybe they’re getting a false reading from something?” “Like what, something at the center-” Bob cut off. “What?” Jeb asked. “I need to see the lab. Now.” Bob’s voice was chock-full of urgency. “What? What did I say?” Bob didn’t respond. He had ran out of the office and down the hallway. “You know I outrank you, right?” Jeb shouted. Bob’s reply was distant: “Not that you care!” “Fair point.” Jeb sighed to himself. Bob wasn’t seen all that night. The other research scientists said he was in the lab with “one of those conspiracy theory boards” and papers scattered everywhere. Jeb placed Bob’s dinner by the bulkhead and rapped gently on the sealed door. “Whatcha doing, buddy?” he called through the thick metal. There was no reply. “Um- come out when you feel like it, I guess. Just eat your food.” Jeb’s words hung in the air, unanswered, as he left the meal behind and headed back into the base. He could only speculate on Bob’s shenanigans, and it wasn’t the first time he’d had to do so. <><><> beep beep be- *SLAM* Jeb peered upward at the ceiling, and unfortunately, directly up Bob’s nostril. “I know what the anomaly is.” Bob’s voice was ragged, tired, clearly showing he had been up all night. Yet full of excitement that made a kid on Christmas Day look absolutely depressed. “Grug. Flzmp.” Jeb flumped back onto his pillow. It was too early to be early in the morning. “Jeb, this is important- you’ve got to listen!” “Who let you into the coffee again, Bob?” Not again, Jeb thought. “No one. Isn’t adrenaline wonderful? But that’s besides the point, look at the map!” Jeb was slowly coming to. As he shook off the shackles of sleep, he noticed Bob had dragged in a painter’s stand. A map projection of Dres was resting on it. The stand looked like it had been jury-rigged out of various pieces of scrap lying around, which wasn’t far from the truth. “Whazzat?” Jeb was still one-fourth asleep. “Look! The patterns! And the frequency, too-” Jeb cut him off. “As your commander, it is my duty to leave the knowing and understanding things to people lower ranking than me, or whatever.” “But- but- look!” “I am looking, and I almost wish I hadn’t. S’plain.” As Jeb woke more fully, he noticed various scientific instruments and papers had been brought in and his commander’s desk pushed into the hall. “See, see- right here, they’re all the same distance apart, and here, a reduced signal, corresponding with higher elevation, and here-” Bob’s arms were waving frantically, spreading the smell of unwashed kerbal everywhere. “Just tell me what it is already, OK?” “Well, isn’t it obvious? From the data here, we see-” Jeb sighed. This was going to take a while. He decided to let Bob rant. He was shaken out of his stupor when Bob said: “-at the center of Dres.” <><><> Arcturo I revolved around a central hub, shaped like a dome. Most of the time it was a cafeteria, but it could be rearranged into practically anything with its cleverly designed modular tables and chairs. (One of the more popular arrangements was an arena, where dart-gun battles were held every Saturday. It was every kerbonaut’s goal to make sure no one back home found out, and also to someday be champion of the dart battle.) Currently, it was something like an auditorium, with Arcturo’s crew spread out in rows of chairs in front of a cluster of tables grouped into a stage. Bob was setting up his makeshift stand up there, with several sheets of scientific diagrams and a laser pointer. Jeb was up there as well, delving into the mysteries of the microphone and sound system. The crew’s seating choices had placed them as far away from each other as possible. Most sat clutching a warm drink or other morning food with a space blanket wrapped around themselves. After a few minute’s tinkering, the sound system sputtered to life. “Testing test- ahh!” The volume was intensely loud. Some might have said it rivaled a Saturn V launch. A quick adjustment decreased the volume to more of a Saturn 1B . Jeb realized the hub was small enough a microphone wasn’t really needed, and switched it off. “Ahem. Uh. Well. We are gathered here for an emergency meeting, I guess. Sorry about waking you up so early, but Bob’s got something important to say.” As Jeb sat back down, he walked by Bob and whispered into his ear. “Remember, you’ve already interpreted the data. Just tell them what it means. But don’t-” Bob didn’t hear the rest of the whispered sentence as he stood up and grabbed the laser pointer, overly enthusiastic to begin. “So you guys know the anomalies we’ve been seeing, right?” A brief chorus of agreement from the audience. “So uh, I had an idea today-” “Yesterday.” Jeb muttered as he sat down. “Right, yesterday, so I went to the lab and took measurements of all of the anomaly’s locations, signal strength, etc. and I got this chart here.” The laser pointer rested its sights on the map of Dres. Higher elevations were marked in red, and lower areas in blue. Thumbtacks had been placed in various locations and connected with string. “Um, one of the things I noticed was that they’re all an equal distance apart from their neighbors. And that the signals were weaker in higher elevations and stronger in low elevations.” Jeb noticed that the thumbtacks had been color coded to show signal strength. Anomalies didn’t really emit signals, they just bounced back interesting variations from the background that scientists took a look at and said, “Hey, that’s weird.” But these anomalies were signals themselves. “It’s not much variation, but it’s enough to suspect that something underground is causing this.” The crew began to mutter amongst themselves. “Something deep underground, and, since they are all around the planet, probably at the center of Dres.” “I don’t buy it. I still think the Mun landing was fake!” Dasmir, head of the fuel refinery, was a person who would make statements like that even if he had been the first kerbal on the Mun himself. “Dude, you’re literally standing on Dres.” That was Dasmir’s assistant. “Wait, guys, I’ve got an explanation for this. It’s-” Bob was cut off by more shouts and louder conversations from the crew. “All I’m saying is, the Mun landing’s photos-” “Come on, let’s not start that again, Dasmir-” “I think Kerbin is flat!” That quieted things a little. “Wait, really?” “Well, no-” The noise picked up again. “I just want to say it’s-” Bob struggled to be heard. Uh oh, thought Jeb. At least don’t let him say the A-word… “I know, I know, it seems unlikely, but it might be-” The shouting was growing louder, and the chaos escalated rapidly. A bottle of water soared over the audience to end up splashing on someone’s hot chocolate. Don’t say it, not now, they’re not ready, don’t say it! Bob’s devotion to science was too much. Yelling to be heard over the mess, he said, “Considering the data, it’s likely to suspect it’s-” I believe you, Bob, but this needs to be broken to them slowly- “Alien in origin.” He said it. Complete silence dominated the hub. Normally, there would have been an errant cough to break a silence like this, but even those were restrained. Jeb took advantage of the moment to regain control over the crowd. “Yes, alien. We don’t know anything about it except that it’s at the center of Dres, so I don’t want a million questions about it, alright?” One of the crew members hesitantly raised his hand. Jeb nodded, and the kerbal said “What do we do?” Jeb thought for a moment. “I think our first priority is to report it to Mission Control. Secretly, of course. Any other questions?” “If it’s at the center of Dres, how are we gonna get to it?” “I never said we were going to go to it-” Jeb suddenly was interrupted by Bob. “Well, Dres’ core cooled down about a billion years ago, so sufficient equipment could reach it.” Silence reigned once again, until someone fed up with its rulership said: “Isn’t there that drilling device en route to Jool?”

I want to say, I used to hate Dres. That was when all I knew about it was that its orbit was highly inclined and eccentric, making transfers very hard. This seems to be the main reason people don't like Dres. One day, I was trying out a deployable rover design using some new robotics parts. (I used cheats btw, but I'm fine with that if it's for testing a craft on a sandbox world) So I was testing this rover on Pol when I had the idea to put it on Dres for even more fun since the test was basically over. *opens the cheat menu* *Dres, altitude 10 m or so* *wait for it to load* Love at first planetary excursion. I love the contrasting colors, its quaint size, the easter egg referencing SpaceX, the Dresteroid Belt- I just love the little dwarf planet just as much as I love Ceres! (which is a lot) I really hope I can pull off this mission and show my appreciation for Dres. Don't worry, little buddy, I'm coming! (sorry if this seemed like me just rambling on, I just like Dres)

I've decided to do a bit of a design overhaul on the Laythe-Planes. Instead of just a single RAPIER engine, I have two on the ends of the wings. On the central fuselage, I had added a Whiplash engine, but I found that the 2 RAPIERs were enough to get into orbit, and the Whiplash engine sucked up almost all my liquid fuel, leaving my RAPIERs useless once in space. I might replace the Whiplash with either a liquid fuel tank or maybe the Nerv atomic engine. I'm thinking the fuel tank, I don't really have a use for a long-range, low-thrust engine like the Nerv, as the Laythe-Planes will rendezvous with the mothership in orbit.

Well there is an altitude limit for propellers, they are basically tiny wings after all. The general rule of thumb is the higher altitude flight, the faster you have to go. On Eve this is made much easier by the dense atmosphere, but there is still a limit. If you are trying to get a contract on Eve at an altitude above 20km (which is my exact scenario lol) then all you need is a temporary boost in speed to get to the proper altitude and maintain flight. Try some twitch engines (small, radially mounted to save node attachments) and some small fuel tanks. Pros: high thrust Cons: horrible fuel efficiency, dead weight when fuel runs out. This will work if it's only like 4 contracts, but not if you want sustained flight for extended durations. If you want that, you could try... More propellers. At a higher altitude, with less air, they won't work as well, so if you add more, they might make up for the loss in efficiency. If you haven't, try adding solar panels on the wings (the OX-STAT non-deployable kind) to fill the electrical requirements and try finding ways to fit in more wing area. Pros: sustainable flight might be possible, goes much faster at a lower altitude Cons: higher launch mass + payload size Hope this helps, at least it's not like my earlier attempts at Eve planes before there was a DLC and it all had to be rocket powered... EDIT: Oh, I just reread that and I see you're trying to do a launch assist plane to get to a low orbit. (Not sure if that's the actual name for it but it works) If you don't have mods for that you'll lose the plane when you switch to the craft that gets into orbit. Unless the rocket itself has propellers on it? Can you describe your launch vehicle or post a picture, that would help a lot.

Well dang guess it's time to stop accepting those "get a science scan from this area" I hate those kinds

Well I haven't played KSP yet today but yesterday I worked a lot on my Laythe-Planes Wolf and Coyote for my upcoming Jool 5. I didn't get to fly them yet, but I added detachable fuel tanks, because these planes were getting heavy and I needed to save weight however I could. They're not very big, so calling them heavy is relative, but they were getting heavy for the single R.A.P.I.E.R. engine. Also, Coyote has a deployable rover! I just love the DLC rover wheels. (BTW, the rover's speed record is 21.4 m/s. I could go faster but I was worrying about the integrity of my wheels, especially on a low gravity moon like Laythe. I think it went faster but if it did I didn't catch the speed before I hit the brakes.)

Best option is probably to undock and try redocking. If it doesn't have RCS thrusters, an engineer could add some. Also, it seems the tilted module is resting on the Rockomax Attachment Node thingie, which means it doesn't have a very wide base to rest on. If you add landing gear on the sides, it might be less likely to almost fall over like that. Good luck! Surface docking is really hard!

Thanks- if you hadn't told me, I probably would've quicksaved much too little, and I might end up with a situation I've had before, where a mission got really far- And then something went wrong and the closest quicksave I had was the launch. I'm not super worried about ISRU, it's only really for the Tylo lander because the fuel requirements are *big*, and the station has more than enough fuel to brute force a transfer. Anyway, thanks!

Maybe someone just put in some numbers and called it good. I wouldn't be surprised, especially considering what other things in the game are over/under powered- and what's been approximated or oversimplified so life isn't impossible. If KSP were perfectly realistic, then it wouldn't really be that fun.

It's almost like the game Astroneer- electricity is just measured in mysterious "Units" of power- EX: a rover might use 1 Unit of EC per second it is running, but since there's nothing to base it off of, it's super ambiguous.

Fuel cells are indeed quite interesting. The only time I see them used is in the in-game stock propeller-powered aircraft, and when making the service module for a Saturn V Apollo CSM, but they have a lot of potential, though- for example, ion-powered craft could really benefit from the quick power generation.

Thanks, I couldn't seem to find that before writing this post! Do you have any specific recommendations/advice that will make it easier?

Yeah, that's still significant, but I can't say KSP is perfectly realistic, something strikes me as being just a little bit off from reality... Interesting observation, though.

Even though they are way underpowered when compared to real life, fuel cells in game are still one of the quickest ways to get electricity, the fastest being engine alternators, of course... Very nice math!

I am planning a Jool 5 mission on my creative save to prepare for science and career worlds, and I need some help. EDIT: So it turns out there are official rules for this. I have rewritten the following questions in response. 1.Is refueling (ISRU) recommended? For Tylo, my lander will carry a small surface base with them. This base will have ISRU with the intent to fill up the lander so it has more fuel to rendezvous with the station after it gets into orbit. Refueling makes things easier on fuel but they take up a lot of space-what should I do? 2.Multiple landers? Or just one, all-purpose plane-LEM crossover? The current mission plan has 4 landing craft-1 small lander for Pol, Bop, and Vall; a (very) large lander for Tylo; and 2 planes for Laythe. I've seen both done (one lander vs. multiple) so what should I go with? Which is generally simpler? 3.Where should the mother ship orbit? My plan is to leave it orbiting somewhere while the landers do their stuff, but I'm not sure where. For the smaller moons, (Pol and Bop) the small lander will have enough fuel to rendezvous if the mother ship is orbiting Jool, but the Tylo lander (and probably the Laythe planes) will not. Should I leave it orbiting just one of the moons, (i.e. Laythe because of its decently sized, but not too large gravity well) and have the landers meet up with it? Or should the mother ship orbit whatever moon the lander is currently at? I hope it's not too much trouble to answer these questions! Hopefully the mission will proceed as planned, becoming a mission report!

I honestly love Dres. Sorry if that's a sharp contrast to your beliefs, but I do. I love the color scheme. The light grey (with hints of tan) and that deeper grey contrast very nicely, I think. It also has a "Dresteroid" belt you can reliably find mining asteroids in, and an easter egg on the surface that I think is very fun. I also like Ceres, Dres' IRL equivalent. I think the name Ceres sounds nice. I used to "hate" Dres when all I knew about it was that it's orbit really sucked for transfers. But then I saw the surface first hand, and it's been my favorite ever since. You could say that Moho is worthless as well, after all, it's a small rock orbiting the sun. But so is Kerbin, and Eve, and Duna... And the moons too, Mun, Minmus, Tylo, Ike... Don't get me started on Gilly, though. Talk about your captured asteroids.

Awesome work and amazing pictures! Excited to see the Buran, it's sad it only ever got one flight IRL, but really impressive that it was all automated.

It really is such a great feeling, in my mind, it's totally worth the extra few minutes (or hours, in some cases) to tweak it until you like it! BTW, what mods are you using? (For the launch failure mod / those space station parts)

Thanks! I've looked into that and am seriously considering breaking my rule of no mods... Even if I never need LES because I can revert the flight, it's always fun to watch it in action before I do so. Especially if you spent literally 3 DAYS trying to get the stupid stabilizing grid fins to deploy on your stupid Soyuz because you just have to have a realistic Abort Sequence! (In case you're interested, I'd say it's the most realistic LES I've seen for a stock Soyuz, so definitely worth it)

Nice plane! Interesting choice to go with only one motor, I would've put two spinning opposite directions, but that's probably just the Kerbal in me saying moar thrust...