TerLoki

Starting things off with a bang today, the launch of Milbert, Ergan, and Adam aboard the Laythe 6 mission to service the Sextans space telescope in synchronous orbit around Kerbin. Experience gained since the first Laythe missions to Minmus has led to a reevaluation of the old Taurus 1 rocket, which performed flawlessly this mission. Using the upper stage to burn for intercept. The Laythe MPCV is a very capable ship, but it just can't make it to an orbit this high and back on its own with a good safety margin. Docked with the telescope, Adam prepares for his spacewalk to replace the blown processor. This is the first time we've used KAS modular components, so things are a bit tense. Retrieving the processor. Easy does it. Processor in place. This took a bit of finagling, apparently the mounts were placed on upside down by mistake on the ground. Burning for reentry, a good look at the MPCV with all its gizmos deployed. A quick look one of the four new Tylo type KSO shuttles, the Adamant, assembled in the VAB with a simulated payload. A KSO in this configuration could hypothetically be used for crew ferry and service missions inside of synchronous orbit. Orbital rendezvous and refueling could be used to extend that range further if needed, though fuel requirements for reaching a circular 100km orbit prior to reentry would severely limit this in practice. And speaking of the KSO, Sherfrey, Munmy, Corvan, and Geofrey lift off aboard the first flight of the Resolute, a long term mission to polar orbit to test the orbiter's systems and several scientific instruments. I'm not sure who in the KSO thread mentioned that how well the new NASA SRBs work with it, but I have to agree! I think I may have a replacement for the old LRBs, which for some reason are broken in my game currently. I blame HotRockets. Burning to apoapsis. Since this is its maiden voyage the Resolute is equipped with 6 radial parachutes, just in case things go pear-shaped during descent. External tank released and circularizing. We have orbit! STS-1 is carrying a long term habitat module, gravioli detectors, and ScanSAT equipment, basically turning the orbiter into a more advanced, reusable version of the EOL. Simulations were also carried out on the ground for a Buran-style KSO variant using a "direct to high orbit" launch system. Results were... Discouraging. The last new mission begun was Surveyor 2, a heavily upgraded version of the Surveyor 1 probe currently at Duna, which is bound for Eve. Launching it is the long-delayed but highly effective Draco 1 medium lifter. As a side note: I need to work on my ascent path. FAR did NOT like this thing without a tail, so I added four KSO stabilizers so I could save time and use the typical Taurus launch plan. Need to work on that. Surveyor 2 in orbit, testing its instruments. I'd like to give a shout-out to DMagic's science pack for providing some very sweet parts, some of which are prominently displayed here while others will be included on Sojourner 2 and the eventual Voyager series. Before that however, it's time for the Resolute and its crew to come home. Since the polar orbit made KSC a very hard target to hit (moreso that usual) and this was an unproven design, mission controllers and the crew opted for a "field landing" in the flattest place the could think of that could be reached from the shuttle's inclination: The south pole. Initial reentry heating. This went on for an eternity as the shuttle very slowly bled off speed and skipped across the atmosphere. It was expected, but highly annoying. This image was taken about ten minutes after the previous picture and after reentry effects had disappated once or twice. The only reason the effects are so intense is because of the altitude, otherwise the orbiter's heat resistant tiles were actually around 300 degrees cooler at this point. S-turning to bleed off some more speed. Despite flying on instruments for most of reentry, Corvan decided to dive below the clouds rather quickly to make scoping out a landing site easier. I don't really blame him, especially considering how well the orbiter glides. Gear down, brakes deployed, coming it for a landing. There's a little bit of slope to the landscape, but most of the ice sheet is so flat you don't have to worry about it. And I forgot a picture of the orbiter landed. Just ignore the altitude readout and picture the main landing gear touching down. Next time: Surveyor 2 departs for Eve!

Woot! Just did my first glide landing from orbit in the Resolute! Granted, it was at the south pole since I was coming in from an 85 degree orbit, and hitting KSC accurately isn't something I think I'm ready for yet, but I managed a soft landing without parachutes and without losing a single piece.

Just tried this mod for the first time, the models look great but my game gave up before leaving the VAB. Is there any way to use only the upgraded part models since I already use EVE?

Shut off the sun's magnetic field, watch what happens.

Enterprise is the series I've seen the least of, so I can't really judge it from my own experience, but the general consensus I hear is it got cancelled right as it was really getting good (and that the last episode was horrible in part because it's not actually even an Enterprise episode). DS9 is the only series I've been able to watch all the way through, though I've caught most of TNG and Voyager. Of those three I have to say DS9 is my favorite, full stop, Sisko is best captain (well, Picard's a close second), end of discussion. I prefer TNG to Voyager as well, though I've seen a little more of Voyager I think. TOS is pretty good, but I mostly watched it when I was a kid and haven't really had the urge to watch more of it than the movies and the odd rerun I find while flipping channels. Also, I have to say my favorite Star Trek movie is Wrath of Khan. Galaxy Quest is my second favorite. No, I'm not kidding.

My name is TerLoki, and I'm addicted to mods.

I doubt it, if I recall correctly it wasn't too serious, and he's had at least a year to recover.

Well I'm rather proud of my Apollo-style career mode Mun lander: This wasn't actually the final design, the finalized design had more fuel capacity, a lower materials bay in the center, and used RTGs. I have a habit of doing what would be a full overhaul in real life of most of my space craft between missions. Even though it didn't even get to orbit last save and I have yet to get all the needed parts unlocked this time around, I think that this bad boy is my crowning achievement if only because of all the tweaking it took to get things juuuuust right when fully constructed in the VAB. I designed this after the (relative) success of the Dyson and its manned Eve flyby mission. Ignore the name, the first one would have been the Oberth. It's designed as a VASIMR driven, nuclear powered, TAC compatible, reusable interplanetary mothership for manned missions all around the solar system. The habitat and payload section. Again, I forgot to take pictures of the final design, which was the same save for having twelve docking ports at the center of mass rather than eight. This ship was to be assembled on orbit in roughly fourteen launches. Payload for the first mission to Duna would include two crew vehicles, two landers, two orbital probes, and two to four probe landers. The habitat segment has room for thirty when fully deployed, but the crew would be kept to six for actual missions. The drive module, two 200kw argon VASIMR engines powered by two 250kw reactors and two smaller supplementary reactors to help pick up the slack, since for some reason the batteries drained at 100% thrust despite both main reactors being fully operational during ground testing. If all went well on the first Duna mission the Oberth would have gotten a sister ship, the Tsiolkovsky, and a larger and more advanced ship would have been designed to visit Jool while these two second generation designs would have been sent to Eve, Moho, Dres, and maybe even Eeloo. Eventually the Oberth and Tsiolkovsky may even have been called on to haul components and crews for space stations and colonies on Duna, Ike, Gilly, Moho, or even the Joolian muns. But alas, that's all on hold thanks to 0.23.5. Gotta get those first space stations up and suck Minmus and the Mun dry of science before moving on to bigger and better things like this.

I'm not sure if I'd count the GreenLab as a full-on greenhouse module. Aesthetically it's basically a lab with a few potted plants inside, and functionally it's a materials bay.

Gemini is sort of the odd one out of the three stations in that it doesn't have a real "need", but if it were to have one fuel depot would be it. Thing is, since most of my rockets and spacecraft can get to Minmus in one shot with no problems and most fuel would be coming from there. I never really like the idea of launching up fuel tanks except when necessary, mostly rescue missions. So what fuel would it be holding in theory? Argon, xenon, and hydrogen, mostly argon though. Yeah, I love NFP to death and all my big interplanetary mission use it, so the only ship I could ever see docking at a Kerbin Orbit is a big honkin' VASIMR driven interplanetary expedition ship. Gemini... Could do that, but I'm not sure if it would work. The part count of Gemini and a ship docked together might melt my computer, but it might work if I used a smaller sleeker design than my usual design of "big core, four modules, two trusses, two fuel tank docks". Maybe something like Ophiuchus Station that I planned on putting up last career would be best for that, "core, three stripped down hab modules, three docking arms, three fuel tanks".

Okay I've been having that problem too, and I want to apply the fix, but I have absolutely no experience editing .cfgs and I'm afraid to break my game. So where exactly do I put this? I've got a crew waiting to replace a processor that got 'sploded by the sun (curse you Moho!), but can't yet because of this bug.

Today we have a tale of probes, what could very well be the last hurrah of the Explorer series, and a lesson on the importance of safety margins. First to blast off is Explorer 10, on a quest to finish Explorer 6's original mission of landing on the mysterious purple planet, Eve. Lined up for a proper descent with a periapsis of 50km, the probe's systems are primed and ready to see what lies beneath the dense cloud cover. The during entry the heat shield reaches an unprecedented 1254 degrees Celsius, hot enough to bleed through the thermal protection for a brief moment and fry the secondary battery bank. Despite the intensity of the upper atmosphere the rest of the descent goes slowly, as Explorer 10 dives through Eve's thick clouds toward the ground. From initial parachute deployment at 25km up, it takes roughly 7 minutes to fall through the cloud layer. Between the extreme heat, high pressure, and thick atmosphere, I don't think any samples are going to be coming back from Eve's surface any time soon. Up next are the twins Explorer 11 and 12. Launched atop separate rockets the two probes are bound for Jool, hoping to finally get a good look at its atmosphere and, more importantly, make the first landing on Laythe. The reason for sending both probes near simultaneously was for redundancy. Engineers predicted HUGE stresses on the spacecraft entering Laythe's atmosphere directly from interplanetary space like this. Therefore it was decided that Explorer 11 should take the plunge ahead of its twin passing Pol's orbit. That way in the event of catastrophic failure Explorer 12 could alter course for a second attempt at the Laythe landing at a shallower angle. It seems this caution was well-founded. Minutes after entering the atmosphere Explorer 11's signal was terminated, and Explorer 12's instruments observed a tiny explosion in Laythe's upper atmosphere. The probe had broken up on entry from the extreme G forces associated with hitting the atmosphere at 5km/s. In order to avoid repeating that mistake, Explorer 12 would come in on the day side and use the last bit of fuel in its transit stage to shed speed before hitting the atmosphere. Here we go, there's no turning back now. Just like Explorer 10's Eve landing, temperatures exceeded 1200 degrees Celsius on the heat shield. Unlike Explorer 10 however, the twins were prepared for this, and had come equipped with a secondary heat shield just in case. Turns out it was necessary after all. The primary shield, disintegrated under the extreme heat and stress. Chute deployment! The entire room cheered when this signal came back. Explorer 12 had survived the most difficult atmospheric entry in CosMech history, just barely withstanding the intense heat and a peak 15 Gs of deceleration for 30 seconds. With the parachute deployed and heat shield discarded, Explorer 12 begins relaying atmospheric data before splashdown. Unfortunately the force of atmospheric entry had just been too much for the little probe, which broke apart on splashdown. Meanwhile back in Kerbin orbit, the new Sextans Telescope is deployed and begins providing images of the planets and stars. Unfortunately some scientists on the ground were a bit too eager to image Moho, and blew out the processor as the Sun came into view. Whoops. In light of this a repair mission is being prepped to replace the damaged processor, using the latest Laythe crew vehicle to carry it out. Milbert, Ergan, and Adam will be launching for the telescope shortly. And now I have a question for you, the reader (I'd make a poll, but I can't find the option while editing the first post found the option, poll is up): Which long term project should CosMech undertake after the telescope service mission? Gemini Station: A modular station using 2.5m parts in a high Kerbin orbit (possibly synchronous). Capricorn Station: A modular laboratory and fuel depot in Loonar (Mun) orbit to facilitate Loonar exploration with a reusable lander. Libra Station: A station of the same design and purpose as Capricorn, but with added Kethane refining abilities, that will be located above Minmus. Libra Outpost: Alternative to Libra Station, a small Cygnus-style station is deployed in Minmus orbit to service a surface base complete with reusable landers, kethane refining equipment, and on-site labs.

Sent two probes to Laythe. The first one burned up and exploded due to high G forces, the second survived entry but was damaged by the G load that it fell apart on splashdown.

Well Eeloo has no atmosphere, and its gravity is pretty much the same as the Mun. So maybe BERTY is so laser-focused on completing the mission and Jeb is just so out of it and suicidal at this point that they'll actually try to land Proteus on the surface. What's the TWR on that thing anyway? Could it theoretically be done?

Well considering ground controllers for the Mars rovers are already using Martian time here on Earth, then I don't see why astronauts wouldn't just go based on the length of a Martian day when actually on Mars.

I don't really see how it would be "crowded", since anything else they add would likely be along Dres' orbit (asteroid belt) or out beyond Jool. Personally I'd at least like to see an asteroid belt, GP2, and an ice giant, the two giant planets of course having their own set of muns like the Jool system.

After hours upon hours of simulations, stress tests, and calculations the Sojourner mission lifts off. Rather than multiple rockets launching four separate spacecraft (two rovers and two orbiters), the unmanned operations center had to make due with two vehicles, the Surveyor 1 orbiter and Sojourner 1 rover, launched atop the same Taurus 4 rocket. While this cut costs and minimized the need for careful timing and coordination between multiple spacecraft, it added a larger degree of complexity to the launch vehicle and orbital insertion maneuver. Burning for Duna. The trip will take about 200 days, at which point the entire payload will have to be carefully disassembled in precisely the right order for Duna entry and capture. Duna looms ahead. The payload propulsion system prepares one final burn to bring periapsis down 4km, ensuring the Sojourner rover will be captured rather than simply skipping off into orbit. Payload separation. Both the rover and the orbiter are now operating on their own independent power and guidance now. Free of its fairing, Surveyor 1 extends its solar panels and activates its argon-fueled ion thruster for the first time, adjusting its orbit to avoid entering the atmosphere along with the rover and now useless propulsion module. This is it. Screaming in at over 1500m/s, Sojourner 1 hits the top edge of the atmosphere and passes the point of no return. At roughly 8km over the terrain the parachute is predeployed. Passing through the clouds at 4km over the ground, the parachute now fully deploys and the heat shield is jettisoned. At this point the rover was still traveling over 1000m/s At a speed of roughly 180m/s final descent begins. The parachute, fairings, and underside mount are released to allow the rover to execute a powered landing on rockets. Braking at full thrust. It may not be the insane 1500m/s of atmospheric interface, but 180m/s is still a lot of speed for those little LV-1s to shed. Onboard SAS brings the rover upright. Only a few meters above the ground, the rockets are only firing at one-third power now. Less than a meter above the ground, traveling at only a half meter per second, the rockets decouple and throttle up to crash land away from the rover. Landed! With the rocket pack discarded and all six wheels on Dunan soil, Sojourner 1 is officially the first spacecraft to soft land on another planet. Meanwhile in orbit, Surveyor 1 executes two long burns of its ion engines to bring it into a highly inclined 132km orbit above Duna. As night falls for Sojourner 1 the orbiter begins mapping out the surface, searching for anomalies to investigate. The arrival of dawn brings about Sojourner 1's first, and sadly last, day of work on the surface. After running through all of its experiment modules and relaying the data back to mission control the rover was directed to investigate a valley near its landing site. Unfortunately the slope was steeper than controllers had expected, and contact was lost with the rover not long after. Telemetry shows that it had gone out of control at roughly 30m/s moving down slope, being unable to slow down the rover began tumbling end over end and crashed. Sojourner 1's stay was sadly brief, but it was deemed a resounding success. The little rover was the first craft to land on Duna, the first to bring back readings from the surface, and the first rover deployed by CosMech. The Surveyor 1 orbiter is still fully operational, and engineers are already hard at work prepping a new rover to investigate whatever it may find on the red planet. Also, on yet another sad note, Cygnus Station was deorbited just before the launch of the Sojourner mission. Having served its purpose and seeing no real reason to upgrade the station rather than construct a newer, more advanced one in equatorial orbit, Cygnus was crashed into the ocean. It will be succeeded by the first Constellation series space station in missions to come.

Yesterday got Sojourner 1, my first combination rover/orbiter mission, into Duna's SoI. Today comes the tricky part: Landing. Wish me luck!

Sojourner 1 model rover. If all goes well this little guy (and maybe a second one) will be my first rover on Duna. It's shown here packed and ready for the fairings to be added. The whole thing is designed to work like Curiosity minus the skycrane maneuver, the descent rockets will instead take it all the way down and then fly away on touchdown. The main reasons for this are to keep down complexity and because while I do have KAS I don't have any experience using it, let alone for something that wild.

While ground teams work tirelessly to upgrade and work out all the bugs of the Duna L and Dres L the unmanned operations center has seen a few of its projects bumped up the launch schedule. The most impressive of these being the brand new Pyxis space telescope. The first orbital observatory above Kerbin, the Pyxis has been hailed as a great achievement by the scientific community. In its short time in orbit the Pyxis has already provided invaluable data on Kerbin's atmosphere, studied distant star formations beyond the reach of ground based telescopes, and provided superb images of the other planets. The Jool system, with Laythe, Vall, and Tylo visible. Unfortunately the Pyxis has several faults in its software and power systems, and is set to be supplemented by a second more advanced telescope some time in the near future. Meanwhile the major faults of the Dres L lander have been sorted out, and Bill, Sherfrey, and Munmy launch aboard Duna 2 for the second Mun landing. Docking and orbital injection went boringly smooth. Here we see the crew just entering the Mun's sphere of influence. Bill and Munmy head down to the surface. Despite continuing the tradition of taking one of the trio down to the surface as lander pilot, veteran Sherfrey decided to stay up in the command module and let rookie Munmy walk on the Mun instead. Sherfrey later said he preferred the view from orbit anyway. Posing with the flag. The slope of the landing site was greater than expected, and at one point it was thought the lander might tip over. But some quick thinking by Munmy and a blast from the RCS thrusters quickly sorted that out. Lift-off! One important feature of the improved ascent module is the four engine propulsion system. Multiple engines plus a high thrust-to-weight ratio enables "engine out" operations in case of failure on one ascent engine (or two if they happen to be non-adjacent). Safety first! Docked back in orbit. With crew aboard, samples transferred, and the ascent module deorbited Duna 2 heads home. A few weeks after Duna 2's safe return Duna 3 lifts off, carrying Bob, Jenbert, and Geofrey. The Dres lander has received one last modification in the meantime, as Bill and Munmy were unable to retrieve data from the materials bay on their lander. The now fully realized Dres 2L fixed this problem as well as providing additional fuel reserves for the descent stage. Bob and Geofrey disengage from the command module. Note the newer, less cluttered service module design. the Duna CSM is now finally operating at full specs with all the technologies developed for it. Including improved solar panels and regenerative life support. Descending to the surface. The Dres 2L also has upgraded electrical systems compared to older designs, adding landing lights and replacing the solar panels with four RTGs to enable dark-side landings. Bob and Geofrey smile for the camera. The third Mun landing was also the most successful to date, bringing back data from all instruments and having no problems during flight. Returning to orbit from the newly named Hutton midlands. Geofrey got to pick the name, all the non-geologists at CosMech are scratching their heads as to why he chose that one. Deorbiting the ascent module. Jenbert's aim when computing and executing the automatic burn was impeccable, crashing the crew cabin right outside of Newton crater, site of the Duna 1 landing. Bob, Jenbert, and Geofrey reenter Kerbin's atmosphere after a successful mission. Not content with current fairing systems, management was directed to acquire the rights to a new "procedural" system currently in development. Our engineers are quite pleased with the results so far. Finally, with the problems of Mun landings sorted out for the foreseeable future and plans for a larger modular space station to replace Cygnus Station occupying our manned engineers, the unmanned operations center has set to work on project Sojourner. Sojourner is their most ambitious endeavor to date, consisting of a minimum of two spacecraft (four optimally) including an orbital mapping satellite and rover to explore Duna. Having never successfully landed on Duna or any other body outside of Kerbin's SoI before many are skeptical, but the engineers are undaunted and say it can be done. We'll just have to wait and see if they're right.

Twice. Once waaaaay back in the 0.17 (I think) when I tempted fate with a Minmus kethane refining station that had two external tanks and three or four other craft docked to it. I'm not sure what I tried to do exactly, I think I just switched to it from the tracking station, but the Kraken looked at it and said "no", so it exploded. The second time was a few days ago. While trying to get a B class asteroid to Duna the Kraken decided that said asteroid and tug combination should not be allowed to turn. Then it also thought it would be funny to amplify the RCS thrusters to the point where my attempts to turn said asteroid became a deorbit burn.

One thing I've noticed recently is that location means everything when it comes to docking. Rendezvous and docking with an asteroid flying past Kerbin? Easy, just catch it on the way out. Docking over the Mun or Minmus? Easy, gravity is so weak out there you can practically point and shoot in a medium orbit once you're a kilometer or so away. High Kerbin orbit? Pretty simple. Low Kerbin orbit? Tricky. Really low Kerbin orbit? I think I hear playing in the background, because this is just a dizzying ballet whacko if you're not ready for it, and a good way to waste a lot of RCS fuel if you start out far apart.

I had to return a crew from the Mun before they could land because I hadn't noticed some absolutely insidious little screw-ups with the descent stage until it was on orbit (seriously, how did I screw up the fuel lines THAT badly?). But while it wasn't able to land the lander itself was still quite spaceworthy for about 300m/s of dV, so I decided to have some fun and role-play out a catastrophic failure of the main service module and several other systems while in orbit, forcing the return burn to be done by hand, no SAS, using the descent stage engines with gimbals locked and only the lander RCS system for attitude control, basically making my own Apollo 13. Yeah... Jack Swigert had a much tougher time flying back Aquarius and Odyssey than I had with the Dres 2L and Duna CSM. Turns out that the lander was the aproximate center of mass anyway. :/

That is just beautiful. I can't wait to see the capsule with full textures and IVA. One question though, how exactly will the cargo capsules work?

Indeed. Testing a new rocket? Yeah, I'll go with a few manual launches to feel out the optimal flight path, sure. Launching my fifteenth Taurus 3 rocket to a standard 200km orbit? Snoozefest, turn on auto-ascent and go make a sandwich.