Kelmoir

I got some more time, and flew additional missions here. Finally reached day 500. Now onwards to day 1000. 6 Kerbals hit Duna on day 353 in average, resulting in an early mission score of 147*6 = 882. With 15 Launches of my 23t -reuseable Lifter, which are 345t of nominal payload. That is an efficiency of 2.55. Well, at this stage the 3rd Interplanetary ship to Duna is already finished, and the 4th has begun construction. I'll have to see, when I'm start to send them back to Kerbin in order to save on launches. I'm a bit short on aero-break heat shields without the DCV's. It the nonimal payload capacity required to calculate the efficiency, or the actual intended payload weight? If latter, will orbital manouvering stages count as payload? Achievements so far: Mission Execution: 1 Crew mobility: 2 (7 pressurized rover seats for 6 crew. Idk if I will keep sending one rover per Kerbal over there...) Base mobility: 3 (the Crane has actually towed every piece of the base to the Base's location) Crew safety: 1 (I got enough spare modules/supplies/rovers, but the DCV requires both engines to work, or it will spin to death, while the DCVmk2 tackles even that) Mission robustness: 1 (Crew gets there after supplies are there, I could cancel out on additional supplies to recover from any single failure. But atm the Crane/Kethane fuel truck/DCV have no replacements there and are essential) http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/31510-Duna-Permanent-Outpost-Mission-Architecture-Challenge?p=809014&viewfull=1#post809014 Images of part 4 will get added later. Atm my I-net isn't that good.

Congrats, kookoo_gr for finishing! I just finished part 3 of the challenge. Not single Kerbin launch included, but lots of other necessary stuff. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/...014#post809014 Btw.: Please get theBlind that weird stuff he is asking for. Moody, unsatisfied Kerbals can become very dangerous.

Progress has been made. See first Post.

Rovers: I remapped the rover wheel movement keys to JKIL instead of ASWD. Learned that from Bobcat, as the rovers used these keys. No reaction wheel interference any more, when not needed. But additional reaction wheel steering avaiable if needed. This is most useful, when your control device faces forwards. Saved me a lot of rovers. Note: If rcs is turned on, it will still boost. Landing: activate SAS just before touchdown. On Slopes it will immediately try to counteract the forces, and reduce the chances of tipping over. After sitting safe you can turn it off.

Hi, Over here, where I live it is really common to put those candle arcs into the windows, when Christmas is getting close. But I don't like the mass produced ones. Thus I usually create my own, unique ones. 2 Year ago, I did a minecraft themed one, and this year KSP is due. The imagery are pretty related to my Duna permanent outpost challenge. The actual lights will be integrated. And I won't use candles, but LEDs. And I wanted so somewhat document the process here, in case anyone would like to follow the Idea. The Parts that actually get cut out are not explicitly classified, but basically the background will get cut out, and internal lines will translate into sort of highlights. I started this first sketch to get some general Ides of the layout and the used designs. After that I did transfer and rescale the pencil sketch with some changes on the Plywood. And I was also able to saw out all of with with an electric jigsaw. Since I need 2 sides, I used screws to stick them together. Albeit that arose some other issues in regards to the working table of the electric jigsaw. But any ways, I'm quite happy with the result. Finally I managed to get the missing part - assembly and lighting done. Lighting took it's time due to too short cables from the string lights. I had to prolong them. Be warned though, IO know what I'm doing in terms of that electric stuff. And I learned, how cheap those string lights were made... But anyways, I added those drilled separator pieces in, after I glues the LEDs into some of them. I placed them pretty much everywhere where I wanted some support. Finally, I glued the front onto it, and it was finished..

I added the 2nd Part to my post. I'll keep everything in there, and just bump things. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/31510-Duna-Permanent-Outpost-Mission-Architecture-Challenge?p=809014#post809014

Mods using: Kethane, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Deadly re-entry, TAC life support, KAS, RealChute, procedural wings (might remain unused, though), docking allignment, Techtree loader, Kerbal engineer redux (for iguring out masses of my payloads). I managed to get the first part of the mission Launched, after sketching out the general scedule for the first time. I do totally intend to use the first transfer window to bring the first supply and critical equipment over there. My Launcher is reusable, since 66% of it can be recovered and land really close to KSC. Well, the final Stage does even make it's decent, What I can't quite understand, because deadly re-enrly is active(albeit mainsails are quite heat resistant)... I'll also try to get this aligned with some decent youtube Videos. The actual mission planning Table will be added, after I did all the missions. Text log: Right in the tide of the growing Space exploration, the prod Kerbals of Kerbin decided, that it is time to venture further, then just to their moons. Something with bearable gravity, somewhere with atmosphere to help the protecting from the deadly radiation of space, somewhere where they can aquire water and what they need to life, somewhere close enough. Duna. It was settled, then. They would go to Duna, to build an great settlement there, to learn more about their neighbour. To advance. Since the other regular space missions wouldn't be turned down, They had somewhat limited resources. They hat to construct a Lifter that would be partially reuse-able. They had to come up with Ideas for a stationary settlement, but still the the possibility of relocating if, if the time would say so. They hat to ensure, all the brave Kerbals, who were happen to go there, would life to tell the tale. They needed to provide comfort and room to life for years. But they would never step back in their great quest, of making the Kerbals an interplanetary civilisation. The first running design was their Lifter. The Pluto. Simple in design and function, Lifts 22.5-23t into LKO yet 2/3s reusable. The final stage would even de orbit itself, preventing additional hazards in the orbit. It does shred the outer tanks right before the gravity turn, and they will land near KSC on parachutes. Simulations were successful. Then, they addressed the Issue of moving Parts of their future Settlement, and how the assemble them, while on Duna. The result here was the magnificent Crane. Remotely operated, yet providing a seat for a Kerbal, it can easily lift 200% of it's own weight, and tow it around at full speed. Yet it can do all the assembly of the base Modules, that will ever get moved to Duna. As the First transfer Window was getting close, and They didn't wanted to waste the opportunity to send first Supplies, Kethane scanner Probes and the Crane for reconnaissance over to Duna. They decided to Launch them first. They strapped life support for 3840 days under their Crane to get close to the payload limit. They added 2 Kethane scanner probes in some crude way to the Crane. And it was ensured, the crane would survive the aero braking an entry into Duna atmosphere with ease. The Launch was done on day 10. They reached orbit easily. 35 days later, they had refurbished and rebuild the Pluto. They could do the second launch. They send the IPES (interplanetary engine segment) up. Nothing fancy, but a lot of fuel and LV'ns to get everything over. And They could mount it in line. The Launch itself caused no trouble. They had to use the LV-Ns to help with the circulation, after they left the Atmosphere. Unfortunately the Mainsail from the Pluto stuttered right before the fuel was used up. It ripped off the back Docking Port. But someone was smart enough to put another one in front, so they could still use it, to ferry everything over to Duna. Some hours after the launch both vessels docked without any further trouble. Awaiting the transfer window scheduled in 10 days. ---Part2--- It was time for the first transfer over to Duna. The Crane and everything to prepare The landing site, find precious Kethane and for just being awesome was ready. It took only 2 acceleration runs to get on an interplanetary trajectory. Even the correction burn was really small. The heatshields inflated just in time, and everything was ready for the aero capture. But thanks to weired aerodynamic issues, the heatshields flipped themselves almost immediately backwards. rendering them utterly useless. Luckily though, by that time it was slow enough to not have any issues with entry effects. Closing in the orbit and jettison the Kethane satellites was easy as eating snacks. The crane set of to land at some relatively deep terrain, because the landing would be parachute powered. And once more, as soon as there were some serious aerodynamic pressure, the heatshields turned themselves into weird drag chutes... No entry effects, though. The whole twisting ans wiggling due to the heatshields stopped as soon, as they were detached, and the parachutes opened. Everything worked fine then, and it touched down gently with 10m/s, at 770m altitude. The Kethane satellites went into orbit around Duna an Ike and started searching for Kethane. The crane would then move to a somewhat nearby deposit. Meanwhile on Kerbin: The next ship needed to get built in orbit. Engines, space habitats, ground base stuff, Rovers, Kethane truck and an the ferrying ship were lifted up. Well, the ferrying whip (DCV) lifted itself the later half way due to some Mainsail detaching unintentionally. On the Rovers, 6 ambitious Kerbals were aboard. In he 30 days before the transfer window, they ensured everything works, and the snack in the space habitats were tasty. Right before the next transfer window, the next vessel construction even started. They could have made this one bigger, but even Jeb was against that. Too slow he said. After 5 acceleration burns, they actually made it into interplanetary space. Still 2 days early, resulting in some bigger correction burn. But they reached Duna safely. Because of the known issues with inflatable heatschields, they hat metal plated heathield with them. albeit a little small. So they went for an 15.5km aero brake. They performed the missing parts of the capture right outside of the atmosphere. They finally adjusted the orbits with 2 more aero brakes, and some fiddling around. Time for the first manned landing! Of course, Jeb would do it. But first preparations, the DCV needed fuel and snacks. Someone snatched all the snacks from the Kethane rover and from the DCV in the Transfer... Jeb went on EVA to board the DCV. As soon as he wanted to grab the ladder, something flung him away, disassembling a retracted solar panel in the process. Several tries later Jeb gave up on entering the DCV and manned the Kethane Rover. The initial Plans were to skycrane it down via KAS winches. But reality didn't like that. He ended up digging the Rover front first into Duna while balancing the DCV not to flip over. And Even the metal heatshield on the DCV turned itself quickly into some not really working drogue chute. The Landing went well (for Kerbal understanding), it just lost the backward Docking Port (note: it hit Duna with the frontal one). After some wiggling He managed to put the rover back on it's weels, and droove the final way over to the Kethane deposits. And he forgot to plant the flag. Gotta do it when he returns to refuel the DCV. ---Part3--- After quite some time the Kethane Fuel truck reached the Crane, and They had indeed stuck Kethane. While Jebediah mined and refined all the precious Kethane, The DCV made a somewhat small hop towards the Truck. After that, things were just a matter of refuelling the DCV. And some really close place was selected as the appropriate location for the outpost. The DCV finally launched itself from Duna for the first time, to grab the connector parts from the IPS. Upon preparing landing, it was clear, that the DCV had a really tight fuel budget, if it was supposed to do one round trip with a full tank. With that in Mind, Jebediah choosed a shallow trajectory to maximize the atmospheric drag to slow down his Vessel. It worked as intended. And the landing itself was becoming the standard Duna skycrane style - hover over terrain and undock the payload. Obviously something broke off. But nothing important. On exiting the DCV it suddenly became clear, that the heatshield was a grave danger to Jebediah. He got stuck in it and got shaked in the event. Mission control even called him dead for suffering too high G forces. But Jebediah doesn't die that easily. He manned the Kethane truck, though. He didn't liked it, obviously. The DCV went into Orbit to fetch the first living quarter and Live Support package. The fuel budget was so tight, that it was refuelled in orbit by a little bit. After precice landing, once more the Payload lost an unimportant part. While refuelling the DCV, the crane managed to assemble the first Base parts to prove that the concept was also working on Duna. Big cheers at KSC. After the DCV launched (it remained unmanned), Jeb placed down the flag in front of the Duna base, labelling "Duna Town". While the DCV was docked with the IPS, the precursory ship docked there, too and brought over loads of fresh supplys for the Kerbals, ready to get shipped down to Duna. The 3rd and 4th Landing were pretty boring, tight fuel and such. Albeit on the 4th landing they tried to some advanced atmospheric manoeuvres (thrusting upwards at 10 km) to increase the slowing down by atmospheric drag before hitting the ground. It worked, and the DCV hat enough fuel to recover from some post-undocking payload problems. The crane then finally assembled the full Duna outpost, now just waiting for the remaining 5 Kerbals to join them. Part 4: All the remaining Kerbals got down on day 353 and an day 354. Jet Kelley was on day 354, and just some hours overtime. That makes 6 Kerbals landed around day 353. The landings itself were performed by using the rovers with their lander can command modules to hold ther Kerbals. Ans as always, the landings were safe, and sound. Even though Jebediah wasn't happy to stay on ground. The Ground base was now functional, and The Kerbals could go and do loads of science with the help of their rovers. each featuring vast scientific equipment. Meanwhile on Kerbin: The R&D department tried to get an long range exploration Vessel for Duna done: the Duna Kethane jet. It did provide great engineering obstacles. They had to tackle the issues of no working Jet engines by using The Kethane jet engines. The point of the plane tipping over onto its wings by using gears on the edge of the wings. Even though it hat big winds, they were still to small. So they redid them into some biplane style. Further testing revealed that the plane would have serious issues with breaking (not apart) during landing. Once more, rockets came to rescue there - retro rockets with fuel to break during the critical stage of landing for 3-4 times. But one big issue remained. If the plane would climb over 2800m altitude, the Kethane engine would simply run out of intake air, and won't be able to be turned on until it came to a full halt. Effectively rendering the plane unusable. Jeb felt like crying upon those news. Even without the Kethane jet work continued at KSC, subsequently they launched another IPES and IPSH into Orbit. Because the Duna orbit was getting crowded, they also decided to add some structure to Duna orbit by adding a space station to the orbit. The groung habitaty had to endure some reworking. The life support was now directly attaced to them, and reduced in terms of storagable amount to save upon weight. And the tacked the issue of the DCV not being able to bring any excess fuel into low Duna orbit to refuel the interplanetary ships. They did that by constructing an DCV mk2 that can easily land on Ike's slopes, and can optionally carry an Kethane harvesting unit while doing that. Effectively using Ike as fuel source for additional interplanetary flights. As with the first Row, the 6 crew contained with the flight were sent up, using the rovers to provide the accent vehices. While the 3rd Interplanetary Ship is on its' several burns to break Kerbin's Orbit, this episode it over. screens:

Just for Completness: ISS recycles water. They are using Silver Ionisazion devices, And additional filters, to they can re-use the water to some degree. Thanks for the answers, I will start to lay out a mission to Duna.

Hi, I would like to participate, but for the actual mods sticking me to the challenge, I got 2 Questions: The TAC life support parts (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/40667-0-22-WIP-TAC-Life-Support-0-5-17Nov) do really enforce the supply thing. But they are superior to the Vanilla tank solution. And They can even recycle water and Oxygen, with energy input. Will that be fine for the challenge, or are they considered to be to powerful? For the Challenge I would dismiss the recycling part, though. If I use deadly re-entry, will any craft, that survives an re-entry/aero-brake be valid (unedited parts, of course!)? Because half shielded engines can survive an re-entry with standard parameters... Thanks in advance .

Honestly, even though 10 years might be a tight time scedule, I think that they deserved a fair chance. Guess how much media attention curiosity drew, and Mars one will start the draw media attention, when they go to the selection round 4. Which is on TV. And that alone should deliver quite some money, if you compare that to all those casting shows. Finally, I guess, that this is totally worth a decent try. Because of that and I would like to be part in that (and I thought about the one way trip thingy to an deadly planet), I did sign up. And even if it turns out to be some scam, I don't mind the registration fee (that thought I had, before paying the fee). If no one ever steps forward, nothing will be accomplished. NASA has barely enough money to keep their robotic exploration going, let alone the development of that Orion capsule. I'm not that well informed, how well ESA does, but it is kinda silent around them, for whatever reason.

Well, I did my second entry on that spot. After accepting, that I did leave quite some optimization potential behind, I had to realize, that I still did only scored 3rd. But I did a vid this time, at least... http://youtu.be/vMEbCLBAprM And for the scoring: Score: 9784 Price of the craft - 160 KER =9624 "basic price" 18000 - 9624 = 8376 + 300 Lighting + 200 Solar + 150 Battery + 1000 Red. Para + 500 Docking + 50 no MechJeb + 1500 Full science + 500 Full thing Bonus =12676 Maybe I do an 3rd try, and then pictures only...

So, this is my Entry: Inside the VAB, as you see: -docking -Light, solar, battery -2 capsules, 2 times full sci equipment (baro, temp, acc, gravi) -no Mechjeb -4 Parachutes -16738 Credits in total (after deducting the enigneer) The pre-launch Closing in on the Station (the standard scenario one, just lifted it's orbit- had noone ready at that heigt) Docked... I'm going to pick... Jebediah Back home - Bob doesn't show up in the bottom right, so I clicked the crew hatch to prove, he is in there. The engine was used for the Deorbit burn, and also hit Kerbin. 18000 -16738 = 1262 + 2500 extra cap + 300 Lighting + 200 Solar + 150 Battery + 1000 Red. Para + 500 Docking + 50 noMechJeb + 1500 Full science + 500 Full thing Bonus = 7962

Finally, I got the video for my flight finished. And yes, I'm very well aware, that my moderation isn't totally perfect, but I'm working on improving. http://youtu.be/zD_XlAeTeOU Points (which I would assume, since if the return replaces almost everything, the challenge was already over some days ago, and the others would require being recalculated...): -See space: 10 - orbit: 20 - meet outer Planet: 2500 - meet inner planet: 1500 - return from interplanetary 50000 total: 54030. (and plain 50000 by the weird measurement)

Just finished my flight, Video will being added soon . But for teasers: Kerbin-Duna-Ike-Eve-Gilly-Kerbin

EVE is hard. Only fly what you can afford to loose. Projectile turrets, missiles and drones don\'t require any cap, still doing damage. FOF missiles do damage like the other missiles, if skilled to 5. in small scale combat, know your optimal range and the tracking of your guns, and you enemy\'s ones. And never forget the Aggression timer. And low sec sucks, as quite everyone can be your foe.

Record title:Fastest time to the Mun Record time: 03:58:08 Game version when record achieved: 0.15.2 Screenshots: Mods used: only MechJeb (It did the first full successful mun landing for me - this one, the others are at best lonely command pods that lost their spaceships...)

Record Title: Airspeed Record Statistics - 833.3m/s Game Version When Achieved: 0.15.2 Mods Used: none Screenshots: see spoilers No, I didn\'t even bother trying to land this beast. It got out of control soon after the engines went out. Jettisoned and chuted crew successfully, but they didn\'t survive the impact. And obviously, constructed specially for this contest. Landing gear was dropped somewhere in mid-air.