Finwen

Mission 6 completed This mission went almost as planned... I had problem with flexing. After my mission to Moho i said that i never should build a such long ship again... I Guess i forgot that part... It flexed allot while turning but was almost stable during the long burns... (Transfer to Jool burn took like 3 hours...) I was afraid of the aerobrake at Jool but it went without problem and was really stable then. I landed the first rover on the island without problem but the second one i did overshot the target and almost missed the island. Landed like 10 meters from the east shore of the island.... Drove the rover to a flatter area and after that i drove the first rover to the same spot. (a long 26 km drive) Deployed the first M55 spaceplane on other side of Laythe. After i dropped the heatshield i had a superstall and lost control. tumbled down toward the ocean and only got control of it at around 500m altitude... After a long flight i arrived to the rovers and after pumping fuel forward i could land vertical. I also had problem with second M55 but a stall but i could get out to stable flight faster. I did some science and then the Kerbal from the rover should board the second seat on M55 i discovered a problem. The ladder was below the canard so he could climb to the cockpit... But after moving the small rover he could climb in from that.... Circumnavigation Laythe failed due to low fuel left in M55. The first one had very little fuel and barely made it to orbit. But my Big ship could move to M55. Second one had no problem to dock by itself. I had only planed to take the core ship back to Kerbin but i forgot to remove Kerbals before departure so i had no room for the 3 Kerbals from Laythe on the core ship. But the whole ship had plenty of fuel left so i decided to take everything with me home... Return journey went fine and after i disabled the reaction wheels on the M55 planes it didn't flex so much either. I could land with both M55 planes a KSC without problem. Each with 2 Kerbals on board. Leaving 3 in orbit. Scores Mission Completion: 1000 points Multi-drop: Deploy two rovers and two planes to complete the mission: 400 points VTOL Master: Use VTOL aircraft designs for your air craft: 250 points Eat your vegetables : 5 points I know what I need : 25 points (unplanned...) Jet engines are for planes : 5 points Bring the gang along for the ride : 3 x 10 = 30 points Home Sweet Home : 4 x 5 = 20 points NASA knows best : 100 points

I am finnished with mission 6. Report and images later today.

I have landed 2 rovers now and i am currently flying plane one from other side of the moon to rovers now. It will take some time i guess Update: Landed with both planes

Mice mission report Sensi. I jusr reach Laythe orbit myself.

Yes its wobbling allot but i am going slowly forward now.... And i have learned to control it now. quit stable with very gently control... But arrival at Jool might be interesting....

I am ready to launch my mission to Laythe now. Just need to fill up the fuel. 600+ ton ship ready to launch.... Hopefully it will work as planned....

Its time to build some more for mission 6 after some vacation and Diablo III playing.... I did build a heavy 30t+ VTOL plane. Slow vertical liftoff. Docked at KSS. Several components for LAythe is also docked like a driv module and a fuel module. I can lift of vertically on Kerbin. Dock to my spacestation and then land safe again on Kerbin. Hopefully i will work on Laythe too.... I need to construct a heatshield for the plane and lift up a rover or 2. I have not decided yet id i should go for double rover/plane mission yet.

I like the Kethane mod and but I think using Kethane mod to fill up fuel on a ship should give some negative points. It is almost like refueling and make it a little easier of we don't need to get fuel for the return trip. 4. We're gonna need a bigger boat - You didn't bring enough fuel to fully complete the mission = -25 points Kethane drill rig and converter that weights allot so i think refueling with Kethane should give some negative score like -10 points. I used Kethane refueling on mission 4. On mission 5 i had Kethane drill and converter with me but i didn't use it. I took it with me for fun and for future possible use on Duna. On mission 6 i am planing to bring it with med but not use it on the mission.

Yepp that a good idea to cap it. I did wounder why it wasnt capped to something per mission and i was thinking of asking here. makes sense. It is not clear what you mean with KSC HQ mission. I thought it did mean a mission flown from KSC 16. NASA knows best - Use NASA style launch vehicles to get all of your mission payloads into orbit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...aunch_vehicles) = +100 points per KSC HQ mission (Not included on Mission 01)

I have no problem to lift of vertically but the problem is then i turn the engines from down position to backwards. Its very hard to fast enough control thrust on the forward engine to balance it. It was a cool idea. I have constructed a new experimental plane called M52 (the one with thrust vectoring was M51). It has 2 downward mounted jet engines on the wings pointed down close to mass-centrum. I can easy lift of vertically with M52 and then turn on aft engines to pick up speed. After i have enough speed i can turn off the lift engines. After that i made it to orbit without problems with plenty of fuel to spare. I have no idea how it will work on Laythe and my only atmospheric experience on Laythe is one aero braking with a small probe. Does it have enough fuel for Laythe mission? I guess it does but maybe i will add more margin. I will refine my prototype tonight and then do a test flight to my space station and back to Kerbin.

I am inexperienced with planes in Kerbal but this challenge will make me allot better on building planes I did allot of experiments yesterday and i got a bright(stupid) idea och building a VTOL plane in F35 style with a jet engine at front and possibility to turn the engines downward. With some practices and right angle on engines it was easy to lift off vertically. The big problems was to go from vertical flight to normal flight. It almost always ended up like this... If i had an option to control the thrust on front engine separately then it would be possible to go to normal flight easier. It was a nice idea but i will rebuild it with some easier way to control it

The wait is long But i got time to build a new lifter (NASA Style) with 100t to LKO capacity. Will mission 6 be hole in one? Fill a Mohole with asteroids

I had some problems with imgur but i solved it: Looking forward to mission 6

Mission 5 debrief: Mission 5 completed without problems. It was a smooth mission compared to the others I started with construction of a lift/lander to help my Core ship to land and ascent from Duna. I reused my big 20t Rover from Mission 4. och docked it to the core ship. Launch the Duna lander ship and docked it to core ship. After that i constructed a small lighter car. My 5 year old son helped with construction and named it Johannes car 2. Lanched and docked at a temporary spot. We diced to use 2 cars so we did build and adapter to hold 2 vars at the end of the ship. Launch the adapter and then the 3rd rover (Johannes car 3 no image of this launch) I did build a small garage for one of the small rovers. Little woobly at launch but it worked After that 0.23.5 was released so i constructed a new fuel module with the new big fuel tank. And i got an idea to reuse it later as a part for future Duna space station so i added 4 large and 4 medium docking ports. My NASA style launcher could only lift it empty.... After that i created a science lab and after liftof it was time to assembly my Duna ship with all modules at the right spot. Time to refuel the ship and i did experiment with some of the new engines and made SLS launcher lookalike.. After a test fire with the Duna lander stage with more thrust i decided that using those make the ship instable so i ended up using the core ships weaker engine. Core ship was at front so it was draging all modules so it was very stable but the buurn to Duna took over 2 hours of real time. At duna i did a shallow aerobrake and i needed to burn with my engines some to go into orbit. I used Dunas atmosphere again to circularize the orbit nut ended up close to Ike so i had do dive deeper into dunas atmosphere to avoid Ike.... After reaching a stable orbit it was time to deploy all parts. All 3 rovers had a heat shield each with deorbit engines. First i landed the big rover and landed it without problems. Second rover i did over shot the landing spot allot and landed it 67km away..... But my son had a fun time driving it for an hour 3rd rover landed closer. Just under 1 km away. Then i landed the garage module. Missed the spot with over 1 km but the rover could move to the garage And a small rover did fit into it too. I managed to land the science lab realy close to the garage. Now it was time to land the core ship. I didn design it to land but with the duna lander module i had extra thrust and landing legs. I had plenty of fuel so i didn't use the parashutes. Managed to land close to the garage to without wasting to much fuel. The plan was to use the lander stage to aid the core ship to low Duna orbit. But i found it that with the core ship not fully fueled it could lift of by itself! It still had plenty of fuel to reach orbit and then go home to Kerbin. No refueling needed. Only debris i had was the big fuel tank that i ended up as a core module for DSS (Duna space station) Possible score: Mission Completion: 500 points Land a rover and a rover garage: 200 points Land 2 rovers: 100 points Land a science module of at least 6 tons: 50 points Littering the system -5 point (fuel mode that became DSS) Jet engines are for planes 5 points Bring the Gang along for the ride 4*10 = 40 points. 5 Kerbals on core ship. all 5 returned to orbit. NASA knows best 8 launched with Delta IV lookalike lifter. Big Rover Core ship Lander/Lifter Small rover 1 (johannes car 2) Small rover 2 (johannes car 3) Adapter to hold 2 rovers Garage Fuel tank (empty) Science lab 8*100 points.

Ouch. Thats make my Duna rover lifting plattform stable I hope it holds together all thr way to Moho....

Thanks i made a test and forgot to edit back.... Before this missions I had never been to another planet with a maned mission. Fun challenges and i learned allot during the process. Looking forward to see your missions and your satellites looks nice.

Landed with 3 rovers without big problems... One rover did overshoot the target with 67 km but my 5 year old son had a fun time to drive it back to the base... To the left a garage with 1 small rover in it. And just behind the garage is the science lab module. In the middle a small rover and to the right is my core ship with lander module. I though that the lander would need to assist the core ship to orbit but with less then full fuel onboard the core ship it just had the TWR ratio to liftoff by itself (image 2). Now the core ships orbits around Duna waiting for transfer window to Kerbin. Plenty of fuel left so it will be an easy trip home. More images later and a full debrief than i arrive at Kerbin.

Good luck on mission 3. For me it was the hardest so far. I did aerobraking at Duna and with a few minutes of additional burn i entered a highly elliptical Duna orbit. I did a higher aerobraking maneuver to circularize the orbit (during seveal orbits). IKES!!! First aerobraking orbit did put my directly into Ike and it and i was about to crash into Duna after that.... With RCS i dived very deep into Duna atmosphere to avoid the influence of Ike and got down to periapsis under 200km. So now i am parked in a nice 70 * 178 km orbit around Duna. Time to land later this evening.

I think i have enough fuel and the mass on return mission will be allot less. Turning this long ship takes a long time to. A few minutes for a 180 degree turn for aerobraking now...

Yes it did wobble some but i ended up using my nuke engines on core ship further ahead for more stability. Then it was allot more stable but i did only had 0.03 TWR so the transfer burn to Duna took about 2 hours real-time.....

My ship is ready for Mission 5: I will bring 3 rovers and a science lab and some extras....

Yepp the plattform made me nervous too. The challenge of bringing home a flawed design is fun too. But i will not use that design again

A space rock mission could be interesting. But first i will work on mission 5. I am soon ready to launch. Just need to send up a few more things.

Bold or a desperate engineering idea... Thats the question... Disney like fireworks over KSC should give some bonus points too i think

Mission 4 complete with image gallery. Marlbree was a "little" skeptical of the rescue ship but it was his only choice. After he had refueled the rescue ship he drove the rover onto the platform and secured the rover with 1 fuel line so it would not fall off the platform. Liftoff. It was stable at liftoff and was no problem at all to g o straight up. I decided to do a turn very lite to have time if i encountered problems. At 100 km i stopped for circulation burn and immediately i had bug problems. The rover bounced all over the place and made the rescue ship to wobble allot. But after allot of work i reached a stable Duna orbit. This problems wasted allot of my fuel to. After docking with the core ship i came up with the bright idea to secure the rover with 2 fuel lines so it would be a little more stable The best solution would be to dock the rover at front of my core ship but I didn't think of it..... The wild ascent from Duna wasted allot of the fuel and now we had little fuel to reach Kerbin. Jebediah thought it would be possible so we left Duna and made a transitburn for Kerbin. After transitburn i only had around 150 dv left. Aerobraking gave me a arbit around duna and a few more orbits with less aerobraking to cirulize the orbit. Nw we had a low orbit but only 106dV left. We did send up a refueling ship to refuel the rescue ship. But Marlbree on the rover thought the strutural integrity on the ship could be less then stellar so we decided to land the rescueship without the rover. The landing of the rescue ship went without problem until it was a few km above KSC. Then it suddenly started to selfdisintigrate. Losing engine after engine and then bigger parts broke of. About 100m above land the remain ended with a big explosion.... Tho bring down the rover we designed a small vessel with a heat shield to dock with the rover. Plan worked fine except that the vessel didn't had solar panels and did run out if power...... My trusty core ship brought the rover to the heat shield vessel and after the rover docked to heat shield ship we was ready to land. Heat shield worked fine. Maybe outer parts of the tires got little hot After undocking the shield at low altitude the rover landed very close to the runway...... Possible score: Mission completion 250 points Rover landed at KSC 100 points: Littering the system - 5 points Eat your vegetables - Launch a craft or attachment into orbit without asparagus staging = +5 points Bring the Gang along for the ride - = +3*10 points