Diary of a hard career

[Bev7787]

Looks great!

[MarkusF]

Jeb's "Ike landing and return to Kerbin" capsule has arrived at the Duna system and went into an Ike orbit, so Jeb took the science experiments out of the outpost on Duna, an went for Ike, to rendezvouz with his new vessel:

Boarding the new vessel:

He landed within walking distance to the unmanned probe, so we don't have to make a rendezvouz with the probe in orbit:

Ike is just a beautiful place:

Docking the landing vessel to the unmanned probe's return stage, in order to use it to get back to Kerbin.

In the meantime, I've given up waiting for an "Explore Gilly" contract. Maybe it won't appear anymore, once you went into Eve's SOI, instead I accepted to take four seismic measurements on Gilly to get some money out of the trip:

Separating Gilly Lander from the station:

And because the Jool launch window comes closer and closer we need some money, in order to pay for the planned vessels, so we accepted a contract asking us to land on the Mun, Minmus and finally back on Kerbin using one vessel. I went for an unmanned approach, using the following vessel. I ended up at a reentry course with Kerbin having 1500m/s left...

Next stop: Jool!

Currently we have the following Contracts: Explore Jool, Build station around Jool, Explore Bop, Build Station Around Pol

For a low Jool orbit, we plan the science station, as well as an atmosperic probe, which should return to the station after dipping into the upper atmosphere, before going for a descent to the lower atmosphere.

For Bop and Pol, we plan a lander and an orbital survey scanner for each of them, for Pol also an orbital station, as requested by the contract.

The three inner moons will be targeted at a later launch window.

[MarkusF]

By now, Joolar-1, the Rocket for the low Orbit Jool Station, has been constructed. Getting a total of 5000m/s for Kerbin ejection and Jool injection has been pretty tough, but I found a way. There might be better ways, but I'm fine with my result. Following are pictures of the Rocket with closed and opened fairings, as well as a picture of a demo-assembly of the station in Kerbin orbit (with the Jool probe still attached to its top).

On top of the station is the atmospheric Jool probe and on its top is an additional array of solar panels for the station. I've heard rumors, that solar panels are pretty weak out there, and we don't have access to the RTG yet. So I've added them to be safe.

After launching the Jool low orbit station, we're also gonna send a return capsule for one member of the station's crew. The return capsule should then make a stop at the Pol station, in order to grab that data, too, and then get back to Kerbin.

[MarkusF]

Hmm, I thought designing a rocket, to bring a single-kerbal return capsule to a low Jool orbit, then to Pol, and then back to Kerbin would be simple, as it's only a small capsule...

But even for a small capsule, providing 11,000m/s proved to be quite a challenge.

But here's what engineers at KSC came up with:

In cruise configuration:

[MarkusF]

The plannings for our vessels for the launch window to Jool are going forward. This time the orbital station for Pol, as well as a Pol/Bop lander.

First about the lander. It's a three parts lander. One part is the lander itself for Pol/Bop, one is a cruise stage to transport the lander to Bop and back, and one is a science module containing two Materials Labs and two Goo Containers, which will be used at the first visit to Bop to gather high and low orbit samples.

The station and launch rocket are nearly identical to the ones used for the low Jool orbit, with a few differences:

The station has been enhanced by a liquid fuel/oxidizer, as well as a monopropellant tank, in order to refuel to Bop/Pol lander and it's cruise stage after its return from Bop/Pol.

The fuel of the first and second liquid fuel stages has been increased, and two more solid fuel booster have been added, in order to raise the TWR at takeoff.

The station in its final configuration (still in Kerbin orbit) with docked lander:

[MarkusF]

While all vessels are on their way to Jool I decided to send an unmanned probe into a low solar orbit, to gather some experiment results, and for me to get a close view of it (periapsis about 850,000km)

The new orbit has been setup in a way, that the vessel will get back into Kerbin's SOI on a reentry course after about 2 years.

[Snarfster]

Very cool, can hardly wait to read more

[MarkusF]

Very cool, can hardly wait to read more

Thanks a lot :-)

Right after the Jool launch window the launch window to Duna is going to open. Right now we're quite low on funds, at least until all our vessels currently on their way home from Duna and on their way to Jool will arrive at their target destination, so that we can fullfull our contracts. I accepted two more contracts, one to mine ore on Duna, and one to mine ore on Ike and deliver it to a Duna orbit. Due to the lack of funds I won't be able to send the mining ships right now, but we should at least launch two orbital survey probes right now

In addition, we can send our Mun->Minmus->Duna->Ike tourer on its way to Duna. Right now it already visited Mun and Minmus and is waiting on a high Kerbin orbit for the launch window to Duna.

One thing that bothers me a bit is the Solar Science station, that we've send out 2 years ago. It's gonna come back into Kerbin's SOI in about 255 days, however I planned it to pass Kerbin in a safe distance so I can send a ship up there to pull it into a stable orbit, or at least recover the two scientists. Right now I realized, that instead of passing Kerbin at a safe distance, it's actually on a collision course with a periapsis below Kerbin's surface. I don't know how I should recover it once it enters Kerbin's SOI, so I'm gonna send a ship out there to try and catch it, before it gets too close. Unfortunately it has no thrusters on board to adjust its orbit on its own... I even didn't realize, that you need at least some kind of command module in order to transmit the science back, I thought the science module would be sufficient. So right now, it also carries the accumulated 500 science points, created by the science module.

Here's the science station's course. I didn't hide the UI this time, so you can see the alarm clock, with all the vessels we have to take care of.

Oh, and there's one more change of my initial plans: Instead of sending Valentina home from the orbital station around Eve at the next return launch windiw, we're gonna send here a new vessel, so that she can set foot on Gilly before leaving the system. She won't land on Eve however, as I have no idea whether I would be able to get her back into orbit again.

- - - Updated - - -

The solar station rescue ship is send on it's way. Nothing special, just an MK1-2 pod with a junior docking port to dock with the station. We then just evacuate the scientists and slightly modify the course to send both, the capsule and the station onto a safe reentry course. Safe at least for the Mk1-2 pod... The station will be destroyed in Kerbin's atmosphere.

- - - Updated - - -

The two orbital survey vessels for Duna and Ike are now on their way:

[MarkusF]

Wow,, the low solar orbit probe just went through the periapsis... That's a very extreme environment... even though we had a high periapsis of 825,000km (low orbit starts at 1,000,000km) everything got really really hot. Even though the reaction wheels did not take permanent damage, right at the periapsis the stopped working, but now as the probe is climbing away from the sun with an orbital velocity of more than 44,000m/s everything cools down again. And I can confirm, that the reaction wheels are functional again.

At periapsis, each of the small 1x6 solar panels had a power output of about 30/s. After passing the periapsis and as they cooled down, the output increased, peaked at about 100/s and is now slowly reducing again, as we're gaining distance to the sun.

Hopefully the probe will be able to do the Kerbin reentry without any of the heat shield's ablator left, as it slowly burned down...

However, I think we haven't been close enough for a really beautiful view of the sun. At some point in time we're gonna send a probe down there again, and as that probe won't have to return any science experiments, we can send it much closer to the sun.

Oh, and at periapsis (825,662km) the thermometer reading peaked at about 1150K and now, as we're on an altitide of 827,220km it already dropped to 968K.

But at some point I have to send a Kerbal down there (but staying closer to the 1,000,000km line), just because I want to read the crew and eva report.

[MarkusF]

Time to send a "Gilly landing vessel" to Eve, so that Valentina can plant a flag there before return home from Eve's orbit.

Even though she has a vessel to return to Kerbin, she just wouldn't have enough fuel to visit Gilly on her way home, so we have to send her a new vessel. As she's not a scientist, we're gonna send her also five sets of material labs and goo containers, so she can gather all available science points at Gilly, which is low and high orbit as well as all three biomes:

I have then been busy warping from alarm clock entry to alarm clock entry, in order to make sure all vessels are on course and do some course corrections, when finally something really great happened:

Jebediah has arrived back home, after visiting the surface of Duna and Ike! After playing KSP for more than 1000 hours, this is the first time, that I'm returning a Kerbal to Kerbin, after visiting another planet!

[MarkusF]

My first try to rescue the scientists of the solar science station on collision course with Kerbin has been a failure. My rescue vessel entered Kerbin's SOI after one orbit, which wasn't shown by the manouver planner, so I had to use a lot of fuel, in order to get back on course. At the rendezvouz, the station had been passing my vessel at a speed of about 1000m/s, while I had only 300m/s left... Now I've set the rescue vessel on a reentry course with Kerbin and had to start a new rescue operation, this time commanded by Jebediah himself. I've built a rather large rocket (at least for the little payload), in order to rendezvouz with the station, before it enters Kerbin's SOI, 68 days after launching the second rescue vessel.

This time it has been a full success, Jeb has had enough fuel to burn away the 1600m/s speed difference between his vessel and the station, docked with it, took over the scientists and put his vessel on a safe reentry course with Kerbin:

The rescue vessel docked to the solar science station:

[MarkusF]

By now my Mun/Minmus/Duna/Ike probe has been sucessfully passing Duna and Ike, rewarding me with 750,000 credits.

Now there's not much to do outside the Kerbin system, as all launch windows are more than one year away, except for Kerbin->Eve in 293 days, however there's nothing to do there for us, as we need the launch window back to Kerbin. The return vessel / Gilly lander for Valentina already arrived and orbits around Gilly.

So let's have some fun:

First Jeb want's to take a crew report and do an EVA on a low solar orbit, so he went out of Kerbin's SOI and set his Sun periapsis to 900,000km. It's a bit disappointing, neither the crew, nor the EVA report tell anything besides the default sentence... I basically used the rocket, which we sent out earlier as a return vehicle for our low orbit Jool station, as it's able to accelerate a command capsule by more than 10,000m/s. We only need about 5,000 to get to the low solar orbit, but we might need the additional fuel to get a sooner reentry course with Kerbin. I don't want to send him on a two year trip, with several orbits around the Sun, like I did with my first low orbit solar probe.

And one more thing: I've sent a small ion powered probe very close to the sun, or at least I tried. I've set the periapsis to 10,000km.

At an altitude of 476,000km, the gigantor solar panel exploded, at 450,000km the probe core, and finally at 262,000km the reaction wheel exploded. The batteries exploded way higher, I think at 600,000km or so, but I failed to check the altitude when that happened. The debris then had been hit by the kraken, it's orbital speed had been set to "not a number" and so on. I think this happened because of the destruction during the "on the rails" timewarp, as I have been able to avoid the Kraken for the debris by waiting for the vessel to reach the periapsis, before switching to it. Without being at a timewarp, things exploded, too, but I have been able to switch to the debris, which then exploded and so on, until the undestroyable part of my vessel has been left: The MechJeb module.

Watch MechJeb 10,015km above the Sun's surface:

I've heard people saying, solar panels would be inefficient near Moho, due to the heat. That's not what I experienced, at least not if no additional heat from engines is involved. Without any engines running, the solar-panels achieved their maximum power output somewhere between 900,000km and 1,000,000 km. The gigantor panel's power out on my probe peaked at about 2500/s.

Edited May 17, 2015 by MarkusF

[MarkusF]

There's still a lot of waiting for the next launch windows and our current financial status won't allow us to start mission to other planets than Duna, Eve and Jool, without the appropriate exploration contracts.

I've also so many active two- and three-star contracts, that I'm only offered two one- and one two-star contract. So let's do a nice two star contract in order to make the waiting period a bit more interesting. I accepted a contract called the "Duna 4 Journey", which asks me to land on Mun, Minmus, Gilly and Duna using only one vessel. As Duna is the only one with an atmosphere, we're gonna land there last.

The contract will be done by a small probe powered by 5 ion engines:

Landings on Mun and Minmus have been completed, and the probe is now waiting in a high Kerbin orbit (higher than Minmus) for the transfer window to Eve, for the landing on Gilly. 180 days to go until the ejection burn.

Note to myself: I should avoid landing the probe with the sun right at the horizon. It seems the solar panels could break on landing, when in full vertical position.

[Windspren]

Very nice! The reason that I don't play Career is that it takes a lot of repetitive playing, but you have combined fun and funds!

[MarkusF]

A lot of cool things happened in the last few days:

The launch window Eve-Kerbin came closer, so Valentina left the orbital Eve station, in order to meet up with her new Gilly lander and return vehicle in Gilly's orbit.

I've never had a Kerbal on Gilly before, so it was new for me, too.

This is Valentina's jumping height, without using her jetpack!

After visiting all three Biomes on Gilly, she flew home, returning 3700 science points, so that we've been able to complete the techtree.

The Mun->Minmus->Gilly->Duna lander sucessfully arrived at the Eve system, headed for Gilly and and landed there safely.

As the launch window Kerbin-Duna had arrived, I constructed a mining/refinery outpost for Ike. It consists of three parts, a miner, a central hub, and a refinery/fuel tank, all based on those large rover wheels. I will post pictures of them after they arrive at Ike, so I can post the whole mission at once.

After launching those ships I had 27,000 credits left. Yes, thousands not millions, so let's just wait for our Jool missions to arrive there.

In the meantime, our reputation has been increased a a bit, and we've been offered an additional three-star contract. We could grab "Explore Pol", which is great, as we have a station on its way there anyway.

Here are some pictures form the arrival at Jool.

The Jool station burning into a low Jool orbit. I was planning for an altitide of about 250km, but it seems that timewarp doesn't work below 1,000km around Jool, so I went for an altitude 1050km.

Final assembly of the station.

One of the scientists grabbing the data of the atmospheric probe, after it slightly touched the upper atmosphere.

The probe's descent into Jool's lower atmosphere:

After putting the Eve station as well as the Pol station into their final orbits, our money increased to nearly 3,000,000 credits. And we still have to send our unmanned landers towards Pol and Bop, which will reward us with another million credits due to the "Explore Bop" and "Explore Pol" contracts.

Oh, and solar panels are very very weak around Jool. The large "Gigantor" arrays have a power output of about 1, the small ones of about 0.05.

We have been able to gather some more exploration contracts, now. In addition to Pol and Pob, we now also have exploration contracts for Dres, Moho and Laythe. For Laythe we also have a "World's First" contract, "Orbit Laythe".

Here's an overview of our current active contracts:

The optimal launch window to Moho is only 4 days ahead, so I'm gonna start some kind of mission before landing the "Bop/Pol lander" on those Jool moons. However, I'm not yet sure whether I should send manned or unmanned vessels to Moho and Dres. Both Jeb and Valentina are currently at the KSC, waiting for their next assignment.

[legoclone09]

So cool! I love this, very interesting to see what I can't do! I should try this sometime, but I don't have very much time to play.

[RapidUnplannedDissasembly]

Very nice mission report! I don't play Career much, but this makes me want to give it a try!

+rep

[MarkusF]

So cool! I love this, very interesting to see what I can't do! I should try this sometime, but I don't have very much time to play.

Very nice mission report! I don't play Career much, but this makes me want to give it a try!

+rep

Thanks a lot :-)

I just started a manned mission to Moho. The crew consists of Valentina, a scientist (in order to restore the Mat.Lab and Goo Container), as well as an engineer.

The mission to Dres will then be unmanned, as i don't have many crew members left at KSC, and Jeb will be required for a manned mission to Laythe.

The vessel consists of a cruise stage, a lander and a command pod. After releasing the lander from its center position, the command pod will use its RCS thrusters to redock to the cruise stage for the return trip.

Now it's only 4 more Kerbal days, until my mining outpost bound for Ike arrives at Duna's SOI.

[Dilli]

Really enjoyed reading your mission reports and admiring the craft.

[MarkusF]

Update! Update! Update!

The mining outpost has arrived at Ike. It consists of three modules: A mining module, a central hub and a refinery module. Using the largest rover wheels turned out to be quite difficult, as the fairings required to cover them are huge and create a lot of drag during ascent, but somehow I managed to launch all three modules into Kerbin orbit without flipping them during the ascent. A second problem has been jettisoning the fairings at an altitude of 40km (I couldn't wait for orbit, as I had to get rid of that dead weight). The fairing parts are so large, accelerating into them destroyed the rocket, so I had to throttle down, jettison and then wait for several seconds until the debris cleared the flight path.

I used the RCSBuildAid mod during the construction of the modules, in order to perfectly place the little thrusters, so that the thrust vector goes right through the center of mass.

Here's a picture of the lauch of the largest module, the refinery, as well as a picture taken during jettisoning the fairings:

I couldn't take a picture at launchpad with opened fairings, as the falling debris destroyed the rocket...

Now some pictures, from the modules arriving at the Duna system:

First the mining module:

Next the central hub:

And finally the refinery:

All outpost modules linked together on Ike's surface:

But as the contract said "mine ore and get it into Duna orbit", I'Ve sent another vessel to fullfill the contract, as I wasn't sure, whether it would qualify for the contract, to mine the ore with one vessel and transport it with another one:

Then the launch window to Dres came up, so it was time to launch an unmanned probe:

The next launch window will be to Jool and I want to send Jeb there togehter with a spaceplane to land on Laythe.

I have to admit, that I've never even tried to build a spaceplane before. This is mainly because I've always played career mode (haven't played before 0.90), and never even checked out sandbox mode, and I hadn't progressed far enough in the techtree in my earlier careers.

So I had to do some experiments, and you can trust me, that it took me several hours to come up with those results. It gave me quite a headache, until I realized how to get through the mach barrier...

My first try has been a rather large spaceplane, however it might be a bit too large for Laythe. Remember, there are no runways, so we would have to land at rough terrain, and this one has a rather high take-off and landing speed. But maybe I'll take it for a ride to Kerbin's north pole...

The next one has been just an experiment. It's not usable for Laythe, as we would need a two person crew in order to restore the experiments on Laythe. In addtion it doesn't contain a Mat.Lab or a Goo Container.

The next one is the one I'm gonna use for Laythe, I just have to add some RCS thrusters for docking in orbit. I think I'm gonna send a a small orbital refuelling station for Laythe, as well.

Right now, the problem is just getting it to Laythe, as it doesn't have enough fuel for Kerbin ejection and Jool injection... Maybe I can launch it without the center engine, and replace it by a docking port (or add a seperator together with a docking port behind the engine), so that I can dock a LV-N based cruise stage to it in Kerbin orbit.

Edited May 20, 2015 by MarkusF

[legoclone09]

Cool spaceplane! Can you upload the .craft for it? Also if you like the old Mk1 Inline Cockpit, I can upload the old 0.90 file to the forums. I personally think it would look great on the smaller (second) spaceplane.

[MarkusF]

I've just put all my ships of that career (VAB and SPH) into an archive. VAB is quite crowded, but you won't get lost in SPH.

At least one MechJeb module is installed on most of the vessels, so you might need MechJeb in order to loead them.

http://www.file-upload.net/download-10632712/Ships.rar.html

[MarkusF]

The Laythe Spaceplane has launched and is on its way to Jool.

It turned out, that two Rapier engines are not enough to get the plane through the mach-barrier. In order to have a central dockingport anyway, I just added a decoupler->docking port->decoupler->ramjet engine to the center Rapier engine.

The spaceplane meeting with its cruise stage in Kerbin orbit:

The spaceplane burning for the Kerbin ejection:

The docking port turned out to not be very stiff, and the whole assembly started swinging around the docking ports. It took me a few tries to figure out, that commanding the assembly from the cockpit ("control from here"), while deactivating the cruise stages reaction wheel works perfectly.

In the meantime, I totally forgot, that there's a lander attached to my orbital station around Pol, which is supposed to land on Bop and Pol.

If you ever thought Mun had a rough terrain, you should visit Pol...

Finally returning to the Pol station:

After our scientists grabbed the data, the lander docked to the cruise and one-time experiment modules and went for Bop.

The return to the Pol station after landing on Bop has been very close to running out of fuel, as I forgot to take the delta-v into account, required to align the inclination with the Pol station.

A few days later Valentina & co arrived at Moho. Getting into a low orbit has been very tricky, as I didn't realize what it means to accelerate by 3000m/s. I've hardly made it and had to use some of the fuel reserved for the return to Kerbin, but it seems to be fine.

Because the burn started way before arriving at the periapsis, the periapsis lowered from 13km when activating the engines to 5km when reaching it. The lowest altitude above ground was only about 3km.

Having the nuclear engines on full thrust for about 20 minutes generates quite a lot of heat:

Val and her engineer immediately left the cruise vessel and went for a landing on Moho:

The sun is quite large there:

Welcome to Moho:

One more contract has been completed, the Mun->Minmus->Gilly->Duna lander arrived at its final destination. As expected, the landing has been quite rough and the solar panels broke on touchdown. But we got the 850k reward.

After fullfilling the "Explore Bop", "Explore Pol" and "Explore Moho" contracts, I've been able to acquire "Explore Eeloo", as well as a contract, asking to fly a vessel by all Jool moons.

So the only exploration contracts we haven't acquired yet are for Vall and Tylo.

[MarkusF]

I think I need some input now: I realized, that Bob is still sitting on Duna, so it might be time to get him back home, but this requires me to do a precision landing on Duna.

First idea was a spaceplane which is able to fly in Duna's atmosphere, so I could fly it to the surface outpost. However, I'm not sure how much lifting surfaces a plane on Duna would require. In addition it would need to have enough delta-v to launch back into orbit with Bob.

Second idea was a normal lander/launcher rocket, and a small rover in addition, to drive to the outpost and bring Bob to the return vessel.

Hmm, no idea what I should do.

[Mister Dilsby]

I think I need some input now: I realized, that Bob is still sitting on Duna, so it might be time to get him back home, but this requires me to do a precision landing on Duna.

First idea was a spaceplane which is able to fly in Duna's atmosphere, so I could fly it to the surface outpost. However, I'm not sure how much lifting surfaces a plane on Duna would require. In addition it would need to have enough delta-v to launch back into orbit with Bob.

Second idea was a normal lander/launcher rocket, and a small rover in addition, to drive to the outpost and bring Bob to the return vessel.

Hmm, no idea what I should do.

One craft could do all those things, if you're willing to build a flying refinery. I can't unreservedly recommend that approach yet, as my own Hummlebee is still en route to Duna:)

For a low-risk approach I'd put wings, control surfaces and chutes on a rover. You'll be able to glide in close to Bob, land soft, then drive the rest of the way.