Dave Kerbin

Tyson was the longest mission in days for my kerbal pilot Gregfield (251 days), but most of that was spent drifting in deep space. Looking at the video files it looks like about 2 hours of actual play time split over several sessions and between other missions. In terms of real time Martian 1 was more, it had a lot of complexity to it (so many readings to take at the right time and be collected in the right place) and I had to wait at 10x warp for my docking to line up. Video suggests a little more then 3 and half hours. The earlier missions didn't overlap with each other in game time so they where all played in one sitting. Approximate times are (because I'm not going to figure out how much of the video is a VAB tour and science review) Reach: 12 minutes Leap: 33 minutes Gander: 55 minutes (a lot of checking out the window to see if I was over a new biome) Cheese: 53 minutes Mint: 1 hour 25 minutes Berry: About 1 hour 10 minutes, missing the end of the video due to a crash I've flown Icarus 2, I just need to get it ready for reporting. The first video file (launch and injection burn) seems to be corrupt and I want to try to recover it. With Icarus 2 flown, it completed shortly after Tyson 1 landed, I am now at year 1 day 359 (or roughly Christmas) and have completed Phase 3. I already have some ideas for Phase 4 (the Icarus 2 systems factored into that). It won't have the same kind of mission planning and fancy science as the previous phases and in fact I'll be trying to run on existing hardware to safe money for the last phase, 'Future'. Phase 4 will mostly be about interplanetary travel and learning about getting around Jool's moons. I'll be landing on 3 moons (never been to Pol or Bop at all, only done unmanned mission to Gilly in my .22 career). I'm not sure how exciting it will be for observers as it will mostly involve me learning to estimate more complicated delta-v requirements. The last phase, 'Future', won't be big on science either (I have finished the tech tree after all) but it will be my biggest engineering challenge ever. I'll be doing a 2 kerbal mission to Moho (that should require some huge delta-v), a mission to Laythe (never been there) that will require me to bring and setup a base of some sort, and finally a manned return mission from Eve which is probably the biggest challenge in stock KSP. And it will all need to be done with 5 nuclear engines (2 are being saved from phase 4)

Sidenote: Ion powered Icarus probe Icarus 2 is not going to be ion powered, I've done ion probes outside of career and I just don't have the free time to do the burns. But that doesn't mean I can't design an ion powered version. The first step is the weight, it must still fit on the same launcher so the final mass needs to be 3.4t or less. A second requirement is delta-v, which I have some revised estimates for. And last it will need to be able to execute a capture burn in a reasonable amount of time. To solve all those requirements it's off to Excel. Based on data from Icarus 1 I have a realistic value for how much average power I will get from my 1x6 solar panels. Along with other data I created this little scratch sheet. At the top left are my delta-v estimates while to the right are my findings with various engine/fuel combinations. Below that is the craft stages in the manner that I normally do them in Excel. The blue highlighted numbers are the ones I was experimenting with, I wanted to see how many ion engines would be optimal. The lower right has some calculations used to determine the current builds burn time for the Moho capture. As you can see it seems like 6 ion engines meet the estimated burn time requirements. I can actually add a little fuel (2 more stack tanks) to the transit stage to bring it closer to 3.4t, providing me with some extra delta-v. The placement issues I've got marked are for configurations where I can't see the placement of engines and solar panels in my head - it would seem like the panels would overlap or clip each other though there might be a creative configuration. The probe itself is reconfigured. The mass is lowered by using static panels, we won't need to worry about alignment during transfer since the transfer/capture stage will be full of solar arrays. The batteries are also redesigned, same mass and capacity but using a stack battery to replace 2 radial batteries. This makes the weight balance a bit harder (I need the antenna and radial battery properly aligned to balance each other) but lets me introduce a big crumple zone. The highest impact rating part on the probe is the probe core so it is on the bottom of the survival section (the legs, engine and fuel tanks can all serve as crumple zones). Above that is everything needed to collect and transit data. The ion drive section is in two parts. The capture stage comprises most of the system while the transit stage is just some extra fuel linked to the center which can be released to reduce weight before the capture burn. The solar panels are setup in pairs - you'll notice the each panel has a neighbor on the next ion engine that runs parallel to it. When fanned out it should make 6 pairs of parallel solar panels.

Some of the EVA reports (and other experiments too) have the same descriptive text, Squad is still working on filling them all out with something clever. Once you get beyond Kerbin a lot of the Goo reports just say "You observe the Goo". The important thing to look at is the title, it will be something like "EVA Report from the space above Mun Midlands" or "EVA Report from the space above Mun's East Farside Crater". As long as those are different you are getting unique reports. You'll also know it is a unique report when you try to board your ship again; if there is already a duplicate report you'll get a message saying not all experiments can be stored and ask you if you want to dump the duplicate ones. Also make sure you are taking EVA reports, not Crew Reports (crew reports are the ones you do while still inside the capsule). There is only one crew report for high orbit and one for low orbit.

And you didn't mention the Science Jr, did you take a path on the Tech tree that avoided Science Tech, maybe you went through Flight Control to get to Advanced Exploration (Barometer). Until you reach very far in the tech tree (to the last two tiers which cost 300 and 550 a piece to unlock) your highest grossing experiments by far are going to be the Science Jr experiments, EVA Reports made by your Kerbal and Surface Samples collected by him. The Goo container, Crew Reports, Barometer and Thermometer will give you some science but most of your science is going to come from the 3 bolded sources. Very late in the tech tree you'll get the Seismic Accelerometer and Negative Gravioli Detector which return a lot of science as well as the Sensor Array Computing Nose Cone which is situational.

A very good way to earn science while orbiting the Mun (or Minmus) is to get outside and take a direct look at the landscape - on your kerbal click EVA to have him get outside of the spacecraft, then right click him and choose EVA report. He'll file a report about whatever region of the Mun you are flying over, such as the Northwest Crater. These reports are valuable (24 points each IIRC) and you can collect a number of them in a single orbit, just go back inside your ship to store the report and come back out to take more observations when you pass over a new area. Edit: Also the barometer won't do anything on the Mun, though it can take readings in Kerbin's atmosphere (not worth very much though).

Tyson 1 The last and longest mission in phase 3 (not counting Icarus 2) is the manned mission to Dres. It uses the same launcher as Martian and a V-Type variant of the same lander (same capsule design, radial pods leave out the atmospheric components). The only piece of new hardware is the nuclear powered transit stage. This transit stage is heavier then the one carried by Martian and has no science components or probe, it needs all the mass to provide the delta-v to reach Dres safely. This mission will be a major test of the feasibility of a mid course correction (Icarus didn't go so great but I think there where several factors there). When we burn from Kerbin we will not have an encounter shown for Dres, only an orbit around the Sun. At the correction point we will either need to make Dres with our budgeted delta-v or abort and come home. The launch is at night though this isn't really an issue, the heavy booster proved itself simple and easy to use. Orbit is the same 80km orbit used for Martian and a similar launch window is setup. The first burn for is for 1461 m/s and again we borrow some delta-v (72 m/s) from the orbital booster. This puts us on a path to Dres, but without the inclination. Without a correct in 51 days we'll pass far below Dres's orbit (brown). Because Tyson 1 was launched back on day 98 you can see Martian 1 on it's way to Duna (it will arrive and land in 28 days and then return safely before Tyson 1 even reaches Dres) and the doomed Icarus 1 probe a week prior to impact The correction burn works out nicely, 497 m/s to adjust inclination for an encounter with Dres 100 days later. Martian 1 is also on it's way home with the Ike probe abandoned in orbit. The radial transit tanks are finally depleted here a little more then half way through the burn. Dropping them shaves 0.45t from our mass and improves efficiency - despite carrying less fuel the lighter center stage provides more delta-v. The final PE is lowered to 174km but the alignment makes lower it below that difficult (with the nuclear engine still attached it's tedious to change angles and find the correct orientation). Arrival at Dres also goes as planned. A few hours before entering the SOI the expected PE is lowered to 30km. The capture burn is simple, costing a little under 1500 m/s. Science is done at high orbit and low orbit, using 2 of the landing pods. Originally the low orbit science was planned to occur during landing, but the capture came in a little lower then expected, putting the ship low enough for data to be gathered. The plan is the same as Duna, the ship will land and perform more science and then all the science can be collected from the pods before discarding them on take off. Descent begins with the last of transit stages fuel before being handed over to the main engine, feeding off the fuel in the landing pods. I think this was the point where I was sure things where not going right. I still have 70 m/s to cancel out. Speed is 22.2 m/s, rapidly changing to -5.1 m/s. The second landing is more gentle at 3.2 m/s. Torque from the pod combined with a little seesaw motion is enough to tilt the ship upward and unblock the hatch. One Science Jr. is responding and it's the unused one so it might as well be exposed on Dres surface. Gregfield carefully gets out to take a better look at the damage. Ok, so things aren't good. All 3 Goo containers where smashed. They have an impact rating of 12 m/s (same as landing legs) and absorbed most of the impact. Two of my Science Jr. units also acted as a crumple zone. The bad side is that the two destroyed containers where the 2 I used in orbit and hadn't recovered data from. The good side is that they protected the engine which is intact and functioning. I also still have all my fuel and the fuel lines are intact - if I had lost a fuel line it would mean imbalanced fuel flow. I'd have to lock off the good tanks, burn from the center tank and then manually transfer fuel once there was enough space to put it in the one good center tank. The situation seems salvageable. If Gregfield uses torque to lean while carefully throttling up he should be able to get off the ground without scraping the fuel tanks along the surface. Before then he might as well do some science and collect from the Jr. after all the trouble he's been through to get it. Take off is successful. Things should be coming back on track. 15% of the pod fuel is left after reaching orbit. The trip home is estimated at 2971 m/s which the capsule alone could make with some margin to spare. After the injection burn and exit from Dres's SOI the Kerbin PE is lowered to 20 km. It takes another 100 days to reach home and land off the coast. Video seems to be busted for the final splash down and recovery which makes it more work to account for science. Working backwards the numbers suggest the mission added 1446 science, which sounds about right as I remember it being 1400ish it also matches the expected yield when the destroyed equipment is subtracted. This is enough to complete the rest of the tech tree. Project Tyson completed Reached the surface of Dres and returned home Collected 1446* science

I can fully back up John FX, you can get the science without spamming or using weird piloting tricks (like using solid boosters as makeshift seperators or landing on the nozzle of engines). The only important thing is going for the science parts first. If you've got a bit of experience, especially experience in developing lighter ships instead of mainsail monsters, then going to the Mun with the first few techs (get everything up to the Science Jr) is pretty straight forward and nothing fancy. Check out my .23 career here. I'm doing roleplay so I didn't do any of the Kerbin spamming (ie collecting soil samples from the launchpad) and I have been following a set of predetermined roleplay missions instead of a pure science grab. Right now I need to rerun one of my missions that crashed into Moho (first time there, way more delta-v then I calculated), but with my 9th mission (Dres) already on a return course to Kerbin it will bring in enough science to complete the entire tech tree. Even after my Mun landing I was starting to struggle to figure out how I would avoid unlocking LV-Ns and other advanced tech too soon.

This is the shroud on the LV-N which fires off with some force (they don't just gently drift off). The LV-N is fragile, and if those shrouds bounce off something and come back at the LV-N it will likely be destroyed. The same goes if you have a cluster of LV-Ns, you'll need to make sure the shrouds don't hit one of their neighbors.

Martian 1 As I've mentioned before Project Martian and Project Tyson are designed to share most of their mission hardware. They use nearly identical landers, sharing the same J-Series return capsule and differing only in the radial landing pods. Martian 1 uses the primary A-type pods (atmospheric) which include 3 parachutes, 2 barometers and a thermometer. Tyson uses the V-type pods (vacuum) which omit the parachutes and atmospheric instruments to reduce weight. I will likely try and reuse the J-Series lander design in phase 4 to keep design and testing costs down. The landers, plus required transit hardware, are built to a 15 ton design parameter which allows them to be launched on identical J-Series Heavy Boosters, a man rated (it has a higher delta-v safety margin) launcher built around the same 3 way symmetry as the landers. The 3 way symmetry allows the launcher to do something interesting, it is designed to seat the payload in a lower then normal position. Instead of being seated at the very top of the launcher the payload is mounted farther down. This way the usually tall interplanetary craft (with their transit stages attached) aren't wobbly towers with a center of mass far above the booster rocket. Instead they are mounted half way down, keeping their center of mass inside the body of the launcher. This greatly simplifies the attachment of payload tie downs which can be hooked up to the body of the return capsule itself for best stability. In the second picture you can see how radial portions of the transit stage (the part with a goo container on top) easily mesh inbetween the large booster rockets. The first manned mission to another planet will be piloted by Rayfrod, my first kerbonaut. Take off is safe and stable, the 4 skipper engines providing plenty of power and a large reaction wheel keeping things steady. A number of my recent launcher designs have begun to take advantage of an understanding of how much delta-v is required to clear most of the atmosphere and reach the 'coasting' position before the AP burn. This design is no different and the 3 heavy boosters run out of fuel at a good time to start coasting. The center engine is left running for a split second longer to ensure the boosters safely clear the spacecraft before likely converging. They are assisted by a tiny Sepratron I each, as parts secured with struts don't get the same acceleration when decoupled. At this point the stubby little orbital booster is used at the AP to establish an initial 80km orbit and then refine it by fine tuning the AP, PE and inclination. The reaction wheel helps it turn the payload (that's what the big batteries are for, so the reaction wheel doesn't overload the payload's power systems). I'm quite happy with how the aesthetics of the orbital booster came out, being suitably fat for a booster but not being too large in comparison to the payload. Part of that was because it has a full tank of fuel when it burns at the AP while in the past the last booster stage is usually carrying a lot of empty tank space by then. In proper orbit solar panels are extended and Rayfrod settles in to await his injection burn in a few hours. The ideal burn would be at MET 4 hours and 2 minutes, but since the orbital position is more important then the time he actually has a single orbit window, approximately 3:45 to 4:19, where he will make his burn to Duna. The fuel remaining in the booster is burned to provide 40 m/s for free, then it is released and the transit stage burns another 1016 m/s. Martian one then coasts out into deep space. On day 28 of the mission a tiny correction burn is made to line up the Duna encounter. The full details of that burn where in an earlier post, describing the usage of the RCS thrusters to provide the small adjustments needed to slip around Duna's moon Ike which was blocking our path. The stop over in deep space also allowed some science to be done. A full range of readings where taken, including material experiments using one of the 3 pods mounted radially on the transit stage. Arriving at Duna the PE for aerobraking is calculated to be 11715m. With some knowledge gained from orbital adjustments Rayfrod used a newer technique, which was to reduce the engine output to the smallest amount, 5.5% (right click on engine and use the new tweakable) and then burn at minimal throttle to produce even less thrust then RCS (which was still used to help find the right angle to fire at). This let me adjust the PE to 11719m while still over 45,000km from Duna. More science is done in high Duna orbit, using up the 2nd of the 3 science modules attached to the side of the transit stage. Aerobraking doesn't go exactly as planned. I'm not sure if the calculations where wrong or the input figures where but following the mission plan I retracted the solar panels and then monitored AP during braking. When it reached 60km and kept falling I turned and engaged the transit engine to counter the drag, halting the AP at 45km and bringing it back up. Oddly enough there where not any obvious reentry flames while braking over the night side of Duna. Once in orbit science is recorded on the 3rd transit stage science module. An EVA is then performed to collect from all 3 modules and return the data to the command pod. Now preparations for landing start with a maneuver mapped out to land on the day side in what looks like a valley and the science pods are ejected to cut down on mass and save fuel during the deorbit burn. The transit engine is used for the deorbit burn, saving fuel in the lander. However at this point things go a little differently. Normally the transit stage would just be ejected and discarded. But this transit stage is a little special. The ship is turned around so that transit stage is pointed away from the direct the ship is traveling and released. A tiny push is given to send it away. Then control switches over to the transit stage which has it's own probe core. Next a preplanned orientation change is made so that the transit engine is pointing in the correct direction for a vertical burn. This is only a small burn intended to push it out of the descent path of the lander so that it doesn't 'catch up' with it when the lander deploys parachutes. Next a docking port that previously allowed fuel flow is decoupled, releasing the transit engine and an empty fuel tank. A tiny engine matching the landers (and which was previously being stored directly opposite to it in the separator) lights up and begins pushing prograde to restore orbit to a small probe that a part of the transit section. This is the Ike lander, it was designed to take advantage of a 1.5 ton weight difference between the completed Martian and Tyson transit systems. At one point I examined making the probe reuse the transit engine, so that the transit stage would simply shed any radial loads and become a probe, but the extra weight was too much. Instead the Ike probe has it's own engine and needs about 30L of fuel left over from the transit stage to fly. With the probe back in Duna orbit the lander continues to descend. Two of the pods are used to collect science in the upper and lower atmosphere. The checklist includes highlighted diagrams to help quickly locate the correct instruments to operate at each stage, since the pilot won't have a lot of time to mess around. The ground is approaching quickly with two piece of debris (the seperator and the transit engine) passing ahead of the lander as thrust is applied to help slow me down. The thin atmosphere wasn't providing enough drag to get the velocity down to a safe point for parachute deployment (I'd prefer to be under 150 m/s, 300 m/s as a last resort). At a little under 500m from the surface Rayfrod has hit 190m/s and the chutes are opened. There is a sharp tug and the G meter hits 15. Everyone seems to still be in one piece though. Descent speed is now 7.3 m/s. Touch down is with some thrust to lower speed to 5 m/s, nd there is a slight incline causing the lander to bounce and slides a little with the RCS kicking in to compensate. That bounce isn't entirely good, without RCS the lander might have tipped. A more rigid construction might have been better. Rayfrod Kerman is on Duna. Rayfrod performs some important experiments on the surface and collects data from all the science gear on the radial pods. At this point Rayfrod can enjoy a day on Duna, though we won't be watching him. Instead we're going to leave him on the surface and go back up to orbit where the probe is. The probe is sent on a course to Ike where it will begin collecting data. The probe carries 3 GRAVMAX instruments, a pair of 2HOTs and a single DOUBLE-C and Science Jr for the surface. It also carries an antenna though that is only as a backup. After capturing and taking low orbit readings the probe lands on Ike's surface at a gentle 2 m/s. It still tips a little though the reaction wheel stabilizes it just before the solar panel touches the ground (at the slow speed it was tipping the solar array wouldn't have been damaged, it would have actually acted as a convenient support). This is where the single Science Jr is used to collect data closest to Ike. No Goo containers where brought along because of their very poor science:mass ratio. After surface operations are complete the probe takes off and plots a return to Duna orbit - so far this is very similiar to a typical Mun mission. Back at Duna I tried to aerobrake the probe to save on fuel. Since I had no plans for calculating it I was just doing it freehand, which required 3 conservative passes and finally a burn to circulate. Fuel seemed to be low by this point. On the surface Rayfrod monitors the probe and when it is passing overhead he launches into what will hopefully be a renderous orbit. The plan is for the probe to do the work. Rayfrod lifts off and immediately ejects the science portion of his landing pods. As he ascends the fuel portion of the pods, which was also used for braking during descent, reaches zero and is released too. With the return ship now in Duna orbit the probe makes an inclination burn to match, but this depletes all of its remaining fuel. A review of the fuel situation on the capsule indicates that there is a good safety margin - there is 135L of liquid fuel and plotting a course home shows it would take 1979 m/s. With a safety margin that would be 100 L of fuel leaving a good amount extra that can be used to get to the probe, instead of the probe coming to the ship. If it had been impossible to reach the probe (or if the probe had failed somewhere) it was equipped with an antenna for transmission and a priority list for which data to send first in the event that the solar panels where damaged. Since they had originally been on a close intercept but the fuel situation delayed it both ships have to spend hours orbiting Duna at 10x warp until a cheap intercept was possible. Once the craft where close together the relative speed was zeroed out and Rayford went on an EVA to collect the data from all the probes instruments. At this stage it didn't matter if he accidently broke any of the solar panels so no effort was made to retract them. He also repacked the ships parachute before returning to the cabin. The burn to return to Kerbin is uneventful, the capsule accelerates away from the probe and toward home. Arriving in Kerbin's space there was something familiar, another moon getting in my way. I couldn't avoid this one completely so I passed over it, my speed preventing my path from being adjusted too much. Landing was polar but straight forward. Rayfrod is now also the first kerbal to visit Kerbin's tundra. Total science for the mission was 4495. Project Martian completed Manned landing on Duna, unmanned but returned probe on Ike 4495 science gained

Advice like reducing the number of engines is very good. Reducing mass has cumulative benefits. Removing 1 ton from the lander might let you remove 3 tons from the transit which might let you remove 10 tons from the orbit which might remove 50 tons from the booster. To move mass you need fuel, and fuel is mass so you need even more fuel to move that fuel and so on. Once you are out of the atmosphere TWR doesn't really matter (unless you use those tiny LV1 engines meant for probes). Landing on the Mun or Minmus should be possible with just 1 engine as long as your lander doesn't resemble a building. Figure out the minimum you need to carry on your lander (mass wise) before you add fuel. Then add fuel until you have the delta-v you want. It's also useful to consider using decouplers to remove mass that is no longer needed. In .23 you no longer have to return science experiments to get the data, your kerbal can retrieve it and store it in the command pod. This really isn't the best rocket for beginners, but with minimal tech this was my most recent Mun mission (two landings): http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/62464-Dave-s-Voyage

So it's really one ship that immediately seperates into 2 ships, then comes back together? When the no RCS docking challenge was up on Reddit I did a fast docking to compete with another entry (with no RCS obviously). Only I used seperate ships so it's the same craft file, but the first one is driven off the launchpad and over to the grass to make room for the second one. MET is 4 minutes 16 seconds. Seperate ships, no RCS, and they where placed into a stable orbit (no falling back down as soon as they're docked). Doing it with one ship that just seperates and doesn't need to make it into orbit makes it viable to dock in under 2 minutes (atmospheric dock), especially now that .23 has tweakables.

For a non-ion powered version I had two thoughts. The first is taking the T200 tank (90L) and instead of the tiny T100 tanks (45L) held on sideways with docking ports, go full side with radial decouplers. From my calculations there would be 6 attachment points. 4 of those attachment points would recieve T400 tanks (180L), these tanks would be the main fuel through the injection and transit and hopefully provide a little fuel during capture. The last pair of attachment points would recieve smaller T200 tanks but these would be equipped with an engine each, tripling my thrust (well not really, I'd be carrying 3.5 tons compared to the original 1.5, but the intent is to keep thrust up). That design would weigh about 13 and a quarter tons, meaning it would need to be launched on the bigger Heavy J Series Launcher. Since the launcher supports 15 tons I might consider the inclusion of a Science Jr to be used in Moho orbit. Some other thoughts I had where that the landers delta-v could be extended by a useful margin if I ditched the batteries (a battery would be carried on the transit stage instead, once we got close to Moho we would rely on high solar input for transmission) or cutting down the solar panels, and I have thought about a crumple zone or other landing protection (the M-Beam 650 I-Beam and Octagonal Strut could be useful). However I'm not really keen on using the heavy launcher for a little probe, it seems wasteful. An additional piece of data I have from the filed Moho capture is how much time I would have - my capture window was almost exactly 60 minutes before I would slip back out of Moho's SOI. Now if I'm burning that window will extend slowly but I don't want to rely on that, but it still gives me a somewhat solid number that I can crunch against ion engines. Since the light booster was designed for 3.4 tons and the probe weighs 0.58t I would have a 2.82t budget for an advanced ion system. Since an ion system was already designed for the probe once I'm wondering if that design could be adapted quickly, keeping the cost of the 2nd Icarus probe down by reusing as much of the original design work as possible (if the same lander design is used I might be able to assemble most of it from the spares and testing articles used in the originals construction).

Icarus 1 Project Icarus is not the first mission in the Journey phase but Icarus 1 was planned from the start as the first that would finish. Launched a week after Martian 1 (the first project in this phase) Icarus had a much shorter trip to reach Moho and being a one way probe cut down the mission time even more. Unfortunately Icarus 1 is the first mission in my save-disabled career file to fail completely. While a few missions have missed some of their intended side goals (such as some missing atmospheric data on Berry 1) this is the first one that did not reach the primary goal and was in fact destroyed. As part of budget saving measures Icarus 1 was built as another ultra light probe like Berry. The materials bay and goo containers have a very low transmission rate which when combined with a relatively high mass made them unsuitable. The resulting lander design weighed in at 0.58 tons. Learning from Berry there was no trickle charging, instead Icarus carried enough battery power to transmit any single instrument reading without recharging. With no atmosphere a powered landing with legs was in order and the solar system was upgraded to articulated solar arrays. Total delta-v was 1615 m/s, which was slightly less then ideal but seemed to be within the range of safety to land the probe from low Moho orbit. To get the probe to Moho additional fuel would be needed. Research suggested that Moho would require 3400-3800 m/s to capture and that the capture window would be very short. For that reason a light ion drive was rejected, though one was briefly considered for the transit portion. The result was a capture+transit fuel system that attached one large tank to the top of the lander with a fuel feeding docking port, with 3 smaller tanks carried radially and discarded before the capture burn. The launch system went through some revisions until a simple launcher was eventually created. I've decided to name this the Light J-Series Booster. It's composed of a central orbital insertion engine (a thrust vectoring T45) which is carried to 11km by solid boosters which are then dropped to allow the ship to make a gravity turn. The launch of Icarus 1 early in the morning went fine with an insertion into an 80km, zero degree incline orbit (the Mun is used to measure inclination since it is also at 0 degrees, simply selecting it as a target allows the difference to be seen). After the orbit is precisely set the injection stage is discarded. This is important because the probe is actually carried upside down. During launch the fuel feed docking port is used as the point of control to orient the navball correctly. Once the booster is discarded the navball is reset to match the probe's correct orientation. The launch window and angle arrive and the 1500 m/s injection burn seems to go ok, with the probe coasting out of Kerbin's SOI. The troubles begin when I come back to the probe a few days ahead of its mid course correction burn (after having just done the same for Martian 1). The correction should be about 10 m/s and result in an encounter from previous calculations, but that is not the case. In fact it takes over 700 m/s to setup the planned encounter. With little choice the burn is made. This uses up the radial tanks and reduces the delta-v in the transit tank to just 2900 m/s. While I have several sources claiming a capture requirement of 2000-2400m/s my own claimed closer to 3500 m/s. Combined with my lander's delta-v I have 4515 m/s in total. My plan at this point becomes to make the capture burn and hope it is closer to the lower number then the higher one, then look for a very cheap landing site - I'm told the northern hemisphere is quite mountainous which could reduce the delta-v needed to land. However even that turns out to be wishful thinking. I arrive in Moho's SOI traveling at more then 5 km/s and find it will take about 4400 m/s to capture. After reviewing the video data I realize that there might have been a 1 in a million chance that I could land based on the lower altitude, but at the time it didn't seem like there was any good way to do that. One thing I did discover is that being so close to the Sun my solar panels where generating a huge amount of power. The reference power for a 1x6 panel at Kerbin's orbit is just 2em, but near Moho I was getting a maximum rate of 12em. This meant I could transit with no power loss (power charged faster then it was consumed). This piece of information could be useful in the future. All that is left is trying to transmit information about Moho's low orbit - a gravity scan for which I'll need to be coasting below 80km altitude and then a temperature scan. The temperature scan finishes transmission at MET 35:10:50:17. Seven seconds later Icarus 1 abruptly ceases all communication, ending the mission after 35 days 10 hours 50 minutes and 24 seconds. Project Icarus Incomplete 160 science collected Moho has frequent transfer windows so another attempt can be made. The most promising window would allow the mission to be launched while Martian 1 is on its return trip and finish before Tyson reaches Dres. With my new delta-v figures it will require a heavier rocket - possibly it might need the same Heavy J-Series Booster that the 2 manned missions where launched on.

It would be a bit more complex - you'd need to know their burn rate to figure out the correct ratio of fuel being burned by each engine. For example if you had a Poodle engine (very efficient, ISP 390) and a pair of LV-1R (the little radial ant engines, ISP of only 290) the 'average' would be around 320 ISP right? But in actual use the ISP would be almost 390. That's because the big Poodle is literally burning 100 times more fuel per second then a LV-1R. You'd be burning 50 tons of fuel at 390 for every 1 ton burned at 290.

Well it looks like Icarus 1 might fail in its mission and crash into Moho. I haven't narrowed down where the mistake was made - reviewing all the numbers I was tight (only about 200 m/s safety for the journey and 200 m/s safety for the expected landing for the delta-v I expected) but it doesn't seem like I got any of them entirely wrong. Fuel usage was also correct, my fuel and mass values matched calculations so I didn't forgot to account for any weight or botch the fuel usage. That leaves the angle of the injection burn though my orbital numbers made it seem like I had it right. Unfortunately I never got video of that section (I am getting more problems where it seems like I'm recording but no video is saved) so I can't review it for any errors made. The simple matter is what should have been about a 10 m/s inclination adjustment to perfect my Moho capture actually required 715 m/s just to get the encounter (with a 24 hour difference between the planned arrival and actual). That means I probably don't have enough fuel to capture and land. After burning another 1.07L of liquid fuel to lower my PE to 5km (maybe I should have stopped at 10km) I have the following: Exactly 2900 m/s in the big tank, which I need to throttle off and rotate before ejecting Another 1615 m/s in the lander itself That's 4515 m/s in total. My estimates are based on the assumption that it will take just under 3400 m/s to capture and another 1400 m/s to land. However some sources don't agree with those numbers. The 'more accurate' delta-v map believes that a landing with 810 m/s is possible, though I suspect that is a perfect suicide burn. Several delta-v maps also claim numbers closer to 2200 m/s to capture, but I think that may be based on if Moho's orbit was circular, reducing the relative velocity at intercept when transfering from Kerbin. I have considered the idea of a 'direct' landing, where I simply fly straight at Moho and try to land without orbiting. That sounds crazy though and is probably not sound from a physics perspective (not enough dV). If I tried that I've have to consider what low orbit readings I might try to transmit before landing. The GRAVMAX uses almost all my battery power to transmit which would leave me in a tough spot especially for a night landing. A night landing is especially dangerous because I have no radar altimeter in a probe (it would actually be neat if that was an actual part rather then just being an invisible extra from command pods). In talking it through like this I think my only real choice is to raise my PE to between 8km and 10km, do a capture burn which will probably leave me with 1000 m/s, do my orbital science safely (which isn't worth much compared to what I can do on the ground) and finally start looking for a very high altitude landing site during the day that I can try to perform a suicide burn landing on. My landing legs and engine provide a small crumple zone, but after that I'd be losing the batteries which would require me to use the timewarp transmission trick again if I wanted to send anything using the solar array to provide trickle charge.

This is a large part of the fun in KSP. Finding a problem that seems impossible, then through trial and error having some lucky success that you can't replicate, then finally understanding the underlying concept and becoming very good at it very fast.

As someone who plays stock but does extensive pen and paper planning as you've asked, this is exactly what I do. Even if I've calculated the mass on paper using the launchpad weigh in is a good way to catch if I've missed a part or assembled something incorrectly. Also if you go the paper route be aware that a few parts in KSP are marked as 'insignificant', which means the physics engine ignores their mass and drag values. For example you can add as many fuel lines, struts and cubic struts to a ship and it won't change the mass shown on the i tab or the performance you get in game.

The missions are finally under way after a few days with little sleep I forced myself to at least get them running. For time warping when I need to setup launches I've established a time keeping drone on top of the VAB. So far I've done the first 30 days of what will probably be a 280 day 3 mission package, consisting of the launch and injection burn of Martian 1 and Icarus 1 and the correction burn for Martian 1. I would have probably done the correction burn for Icarus 1 (after that Tyson 1 needs to be launched) but I ran into a problem with Martian that needed to be fixed. After the correction burn I found that my PE for Duna was 700km and it couldn't seem to be adjusted with a maneuver node (it would stay at that value or fly right off the Duna encounter). The reason was a rather big problem - Ike just happen to line up with my path to Duna. I recorded the information and went back to the spec sheets. According to the fuel usage I had at most 270m/s with which to navigate. One option was a change to the mission plan that would see some equipment be dropped in Ike orbit as I passed rather then sent up the hard way. While this would save some fuel the staging meant that I couldn't use it where I needed it, I would actually be lower on fuel for a critical ascent portion. It also messed up the staging of some science equipment which would have removed my ability to gather some data on Duna's low orbital conditions. I didn't like the idea of having to wait until the last moment (after passing Ike which orbits very close to Duna) to figure out if I would have enough delta-v to setup the proper capture. I went looking for a setting that I knew would help give me some more information by showing additional projections. Ultimately it didn't help, maneuver nodes just where not refined enough to figure my way out. So I switched to the experimental approach, using a design feature I specifically envisioned being used for very fine course correction. I aligned my ship to prograde and turned on RCS. The ship only has 2 RCS thrusters and 15 units of monopropellent in the command pod, but that is enough to both provide thrust when the command pod is used as a life boat and to make or test very small adjustments. With the 2 thrusters I can make forward or reverse changes at a tiny scale (tip: caplocks doesn't just turn on precision mode for turning, it also reduces the throttle for RCS). With this experimental approach I was able to nudge my course just enough to bypass Ike and lower my PE to 25km. At that point even the thrusters couldn't provide the accuracy needed to set it to 10km (I could raise or lower about 20km with one tap of thrust). Anyway, the report for Icarus should come soon. It is the middle mission and launched second but timing means it will be completed before Martian arrives at Duna and Tyson won't even have done a mid course correction. Martian will be a bit longer, the mission has a lot of tasks to complete as evidence by the mission plan: 5 packed pages for Project Martian, 1.5 pages for Icarus and 2.5 pages for Tyson.

It probably decided that the fuel tank is not connected to the engines it is calculating delta-v for. What I mean is that if you just attached a fuel tank to the side of your ship with no fuel lines it wouldn't be counted for delta-v. Depending on the orientation of docking ports fuel will not flow automatically through them and can only manually be transferred. Check if fuel is automatically drawn from those tanks when the engines are run. If the engines do automatically draw fuel from those tanks then it must be a bug in mechjeb and should be reported (though I think there might be a different bug in KSP itself that occurs when you manually disable the flow from some tanks which for some reason alters the behavoir of some cross-feed parts).

I've seen that delta-v map before and I'm sorry to say that while it is more accurate then the one used in the wiki it's still not entirely correct. There is also the small matter of bodies with an atmosphere. While you may choose not to aero-brake and instead do a powered capture, there is simply no good way you're going to be able to spend as much delta-v going down as you do coming up (and coming up is what the delta-v chart is showing). Just to help point out how important this is, consider the return values. Based on the chart it's 4500m/s to land on Kerbin which is what you've included. Even without parachutes it only takes a few hundred delta-v to land after you hit terminal velocity (mathematically you can deorbit and land for around 300m/s which I've done but it was for a challenge under very controlled conditions). This really throws off planets in the list like Eve where the chart has told you it takes 19380 m/s for a one way trip. With no aero-braking and no parachutes you can land on Eve for under 8000m/s starting from the surface of Kerbin. With those common aids it costs less then 6000 m/s.

That was exactly my thought. A small nuclear or ion powered ship could perform low orbit passes of most of the bodies (no need to waste dV with a capture or landing) for about 9k in science, maybe landing on a few small bodies like Bop, Pol or Gilly where the cost is low and the reward is high to pick up another 1k-2k. Finish off with a detailed orbital survey of the Mun and Minmus with a possible landing on the Minmus biomes.

Despite having several other missions on my plate I'm pretty convinced that a competitive score to Death Engineering could be made with half the launch mass. I'm going to have to find a chance to try it.

At the end of the day it doesn't actually matter what unit they are since the game doesn't those quantities in the physics simulation. Instead the fuel and other quantities are multiplied by a constant (5kg for fuel and oxydizer) and added to the mass of the part before the physics engine gets a look at it. As far as the physics simulation is concerned a fuel tank is just a solid object that mysteriously changes mass between calculations, all the quantities in litres we have talked about are just window dressing. This becomes apparent when you start shifting fuel around on a spinning ship - you can actually change course without any apparent forces acting on the ship because the fuel is magic mass that can be swapped around without obeying the conservation of energy. Scott Manley (whose else) made a demonstrating this effect a long time ago.

To be honest I find the single mission ones a bit off putting because they rely on silly looking thrust decoupling and monster ugly looking rockets. Unlocking everything in the fewest in game days is an interesting challenge and I've thought about it before but it would be a bit of work to do it all (and more if I documented the whole thing). I agree that it's a really good test of mission planning. My personal goal would be under 3 days though it would take a lot of sweat to do it (before .23 when transmission spam was possible I would say it could almost be done in a single 24 hour day).

Docking is actually rather advanced in real life space flight. The Apollo program wanted to do a direct ascent mission largely because of how difficult and risky docking two ships in space was. As for passing around fuel that's complicated even today. As for probes I do sort of agree that probes don't provide an early enough return to be sent off to other planets ahead of manned missions. That's because for a lot of your early space program your instruments will consist of your kerbals, the goo containers and the science jr. The two material experiments are not only heavy for a probe they have the worst transmission rates (which is realistic for the type of experiment they represent). Probes using the DOUBLE-C seismic scanner or GRAVMAX are very viable, but those instruments come too late except for experienced players who know how to go straight for them. What the game needs is an earlier probe friendly instrument. I've actually made such a suggestion before, some kind of cosmic ray detector that would have a similar biome specific behavoir as the GRAVMAX (maybe it only works in orbit) but with a much smaller data value (maybe 4 or 5 compared to 20 for the GRAVMAX). This way you have probes that can fly around a planet mapping out biomes early in the game. They offer more to do then just a single reading for an entire planet without generating too much science.