Diary of a hard career

[MarkusF]

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.

I think I'll trying several attempts at once, as I got some money left right now.

A spaceplane with enough fuel and power to launch from Duna is ready, but it became larger than I wanted it to be, so I think I'll also design a small one and just send both.

This one has a TWR on Duna of about 1.3 on the nuclear engines alone, which should give it about 1.0 in the atmosphere of Duna. In addition it has two rapier engines, raising the TWR even higher.

The four Ramjet engines are only used as boosters to get into Kerbin orbit. Two would be enough, but i wasn't able to put them on the same level as the center of mass, so they would flip the spaceplane, once the increase their thrust. They will be jettisoned, once they flameout.

Landing it back on Kerbin is quite hard, due to the low max. temperature of the airplane parts (wings, control surfaces), so the airbrakes have to be applied during reentry, to lower the speed as fast as possible.

Here are the pictures of the large Duna spaceplane, but I think landing speed will be insanely fast on Duna.

Then I'll try to design the rover with wings, as well as a lander/launcher with wings to glide it down, and also a small glider.

However, it seems that the hardest thing for everything with wings is to get it into the atmosphere. Mounting it on a rocket, turns out to be quite difficult, as the wings might not be on top, or they would flip the rocket.

[MarkusF]

The second plane I'm gonna try to land on Duna is this one. Powered by a nuclear engine (2546m/s vac, 2132m/s atmo at altitude 0 on Duna, TWR 1.57-2.17 on Duna)

The two upper rapier engines are only used to launch at Kerbin and will be jettisoned once the engines flameout.

[MarkusF]

Travelling to Jool really takes a lot of time, I designed launched and landed my Spaceplane missions to Duna while those vessels are still on their way, but more about the Duna missions later.

First I've explored another planet: My unmanned probe has arrived at Dres.

Seriously, when planning spaceplanes for Duna and Laythe, a landing on Dres feels quite boring. It just feels like the Mun, but a bit further away.

Anyway, the only bodies we've had no vessel on the surface are Eeloo, as well as the three inner Jool moons, Laythe, Tyllo and Vall.

Then Valentina arrived back home from Moho, and as she arrived few days before the next launch window to Dres, she took a slightly modified version of the Moho vessel and launched for a surface visit on Dres.

Let's talk about the more interesting stuff: The spaceplanes for Duna.

I've sent two spaceplanes, a large and a small one, a rover with wings, as well as an orbital refueling station and a refueling tug, which can fly from the station to the vessel that need to be refuelled and a small Mk1-Pod with a few parachutes and thrusters to land on Duna and launch back for Kerbin.

First about the orbital refuelling station: As I don't have a mining operation setup on Duna yet, I launched it with a full fuel tank mounted on top, so I can refuel my spaceplanes in Duna orbit right after arrival. The mass of the station itself (with full tank) is about 95t, the mass of the whole rocket at launch is 1040t.

The fuel tug is nothing special, just a small fuel tank with a medium and a large docking port. So it can also be used as an adapter at the refuelling station.

About the spaceplanes: They were actually flying much better than I expected, even though landing near my outpost has been quite a challenge, as the outpost is in a quite rough terrain.

The large one has a touchdown speed of about 80m/s at an 3km elevation, however, manouvering at that speed is nearly impossible. Future versions are gonna need much more vertical fins. Unfortunately I didn't realize, that I lost the left aileron due to heat damage when ascending through Kerbin's atmosphere. Due to the imbalance, the left wing has been constantly dropping, which had to be corrected all the time, and it proved to be difficult to keep the spaceplane level in the moment of touchdown.

The rapier engines proved to be quite useless, as the LV-Ns have an ISP of about 700 at an 3km altitude, and provide a TWR of about 1.3 when I don't have liquid oxygen on board. Even higher if I would get rid of the rapier engines' mass.

But the spaceplane really needs a second set of landing gears at the back, but further on the outside, so the plane is not that likely to roll over at touchdown, and we would have more breaking power.

About the breaking power: When designing a vessel, the breaking power is not set to maximum initially, so I raised it all the way up for the back wheels. Raising the braking power of the fron wheel has not been a good idea, as the plane lost ground contact on the back wheels when I applied the brakes.

It can stay constantly airborne at about 10-20% thrust on the LV-Ns.

The small spaceplane does not fly as stable as the large one, it has a tendency to yaw out of the velocity vector. Maybe this could be improved by adding more or larger vertical fins at the end... However, it's much more manouverable than the large one, the turn radius is much smaller. I think I'm gonna use this one to spot and survey a nice, flat landing site for a future mining outpost.

This one might also need a second set of wheels at the back, as it tends to roll to the side after touchdown.

I've achieved my best landings when deploying the airbrakes, but keeping the thrust at about 10-20%. Due to a high angle of attack at tochdown, the thrusters can increase the vertical velocity and by this you can touchdown at lower airspeeds.

Soo, now about the flying rover:

It's just a rover with two structural pylons, which can be jettisoned, with wings and engines attached. The two inner ramjet engines you can see at Kerbin launch will be jettisoned once we leave Kerbin's atmosphere.

It flew quite great, even on Duna. I've been able to fly right over my station, jettison the wings and pull the parachute. Touchdown has been only a few hundred meters from my base.

On the right of that picture, you can actually see my outpost:

The small return rocket had been a failure. It touched down 50km away from the outpost, way too far, even when using the rover to transfer Bob over there, but he already took a seat in the large spaceplane anyway.

And now some more pictures of the spaceplane, as it's just beautiful:

So next on the agenda is a unmanned probe for Eeloo, followed by the arrival of Jeb and his spaceplane at Laythe.

[MarkusF]

Wohoo, Jeb made it to Laythe! A full success... Okay, not a full one... Some stupid engineer back home on Kerbin forgot to put an antenna onto the spaceplane, so we can't complete the "Explore Laythe" contract by sending data back home... And we don't have enough fuel left, neither in the Spaceplane, nor in the Laythe refuelling station to make a trip to either the orbital Jool, nor the orbital Pol station.

So we have to wait for the next launch window + the 2 years for the trip to Jool to send something with an antenna. Now is year 9. day 156, the next vesses could arrive at Jool on year 12, day 148 :-(

At the beginning, I tried not to use timewarp except for waiting for SOI changes, manouver nodes etc, but now as I'm flying to further planets there's no choice, but to warp from launch window to launch window.

In addition, we need to send a fuel transporter, to bring fuel from the Pol Surface Mining Outpost to the orbital Laythe station.

Oh, and in the future, I really shouldn't put the main landing gears so close to each other, it makes landing in rough terrain really difficult.

Okay, here are the pictures. First the spaceplane docked to the refuelling station. Note that the station still has its cruise stage attached, as there hasn't been enough fuel left to get it into its final orbit, yet.

Next are pictures from from descent, flying, on the surface and ascent.

The ascent proved to be much more efficient than on Kerbin. The three rapier engines got me an apoapsis of about 50km, with a horizontal velocity of about 1400m/s while on airbreathing mode. It took me only another 500m/s on the "ClosedCycle" mode to get into a 75km orbit.

But seriously, those narrow main landing gears are really not funny. When you design a spaceplane and plan on landing on Duna or Laythe, don't make that mistake.

I'd really like to see another gas giant in the system, maybe like saturn with a ring system, and several moons.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and the probe to Eeloo is on its way, too. Nothing special, just a slightly increased version of the unmanned Dres probe.

I love how small those rockets for unmanned probes are.

[cybersol]

I've thoroughly enjoyed these, thanks for posting!

[DMSP]

I spent 1 hour reading through this, and I loved it!

Please continue!

I have a mission log to, people read it, but nobody really posts.

Just continue anyway, because you just don't know what player will be inspired to do career again (Me!).

Thank you.

DMSP

[MarkusF]

I spent 1 hour reading through this, and I loved it!

Please continue!

I have a mission log to, people read it, but nobody really posts.

Just continue anyway, because you just don't know what player will be inspired to do career again (Me!).

Thank you.

DMSP

:-) Thanks a lot :-)

So just for you, there's a tiny update right now. I updated the "Laythe Spaceplane", so i can send the improved version there at the next launch window, as the current one is way to dangerous for landings. I've just added an additional MK2 Liquid Fuel tank, so that we have more fuel available for flying at Laythe. For the atmospheric flights we can just reduce the amount of Oxygen at the refuelling station, but I want to keep the Oxygen capacity, in case I want to fly to a further location, like the low orbit Jool station or the Pol station. On spaceflight configuration (pure liquid fuel tanks empty) it now has fuel for 2748m/s. But it still won't be able to reach Laythe on its own from Kerbin, so we still have to dock a cruise stage to it in Kerbin orbit.

I tried aerobraking on Laythe once, but without any success and I had to load my last quicksave. Since the changes to the atmosphere model have been made, the atmosphere on Laythe seems to kick in pretty fast. Okay, I arrived there with an orbital speed of 4000m/s, but the atmosphere starts at 50km and my plane already burned up at 49km. Maybe Squad should increase the atmosphere radius, so that it starts a bit softer.

And in addition I've added another pair of landing gears under the wings, so that the plane is less likely to roll over to its side on touchdown. Those landinggears are accompanied by some struts going from the wing to the fuselage, and between the inner and outer elements of the fuselage, as the landing gears under the wins had a tendency to rip the wings right off the spaceplane on hard landings.

My tests on Kerbin showed, that I can touchdown with a vertical speed of 13m/s without damaging the spaceplane.

[DMSP]

:-) Thanks a lot :-)

So just for you, there's a tiny update right now. I updated the "Laythe Spaceplane", so i can send the improved version there at the next launch window, as the current one is way to dangerous for landings. I've just added an additional MK2 Liquid Fuel tank, so that we have more fuel available for flying at Laythe. For the atmospheric flights we can just reduce the amount of Oxygen at the refuelling station, but I want to keep the Oxygen capacity, in case I want to fly to a further location, like the low orbit Jool station or the Pol station. On spaceflight configuration (pure liquid fuel tanks empty) it now has fuel for 2748m/s. But it still won't be able to reach Laythe on its own from Kerbin, so we still have to dock a cruise stage to it in Kerbin orbit.

I tried aerobraking on Laythe once, but without any success and I had to load my last quicksave. Since the changes to the atmosphere model have been made, the atmosphere on Laythe seems to kick in pretty fast. Okay, I arrived there with an orbital speed of 4000m/s, but the atmosphere starts at 50km and my plane already burned up at 49km. Maybe Squad should increase the atmosphere radius, so that it starts a bit softer.

And in addition I've added another pair of landing gears under the wings, so that the plane is less likely to roll over to its side on touchdown. Those landinggears are accompanied by some struts going from the wing to the fuselage, and between the inner and outer elements of the fuselage, as the landing gears under the wins had a tendency to rip the wings right off the spaceplane on hard landings.

My tests on Kerbin showed, that I can touchdown with a vertical speed of 13m/s without damaging the spaceplane.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/528390642836064355/66DD538D492B0C3015A6F297054A2A3E54D2C7F1/

Nice!

Laythe is my favorite place!

Your Career rocks!

[legoclone09]

When's the next part? I love this!

[legoclone09]

R.I.P Hard Career.

[MarkusF]

R.I.P Hard Career.

I've had a lot of other stuff going on, so I had to take a short break from playing KSP, as you all know how much time it can consume.

But right now, I'm going to continue my career :-)

[Mister Dilsby]

Glad to have you back! So are you in 1.0.4, or is the previous stuff still an older version?

[MarkusF]

Okay, so first I'm gonna post the final things I've done at the end of may, but haven't posted yet.

Valentina, Geofdan (Engineer) and Caldous (Scientist) went for a trip to Dres, in order to get closer to my goal of setting foot onto every body in the Kerbal system. The vessel is a slightly modified version of the vessel which had been used to land on Moho.

The first picture shows the separation of the cruise stage, the lander and the command stage. The lander had been sandwiched between command and cruise stage during ascent and cruise. After the separation, the command stage has been redocked to the cruise stage (Second picture)

- - - Updated - - -

Glad to have you back! So are you in 1.0.4, or is the previous stuff still an older version?

I started this career short after the release of 1.0 (that release had been the reason to start a new career), but I'm not sure on which precise version I started.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm just going through my screenshots I haven't posted yet, in order to figure out what I've been doing last.

Okay, so it seems I've launched a refining oupost to land on Duna's surface, even though I can't really remember anything about it, so I have to go through my stored vessels and figure it out...

The outpost had been launched as several modules into Kerbin orbit and had been assembled there into a layout optimized for the cruise to Duna, where it will be reconfigured into its final layout before descending to the surface.

The first screenshot show the outpost's central hub (left), the fuel storage module (center) as well as a tug (right), in order to move the modules around in orbit.

Here the refinery module has been added between the fuel module and the tug.

Finally a cruise module (right) has been connected in order to make the trip to Duna. This also shows the final configuration during the cruise.

Please note, that I've installed Kerbal Attachment System (KAS), in order to refuel spaceplanes on Duna through winches and pipes, instead of having to dock them to the outpost.

[MarkusF]

I'm still going through the stuff I've already done few months ago, but haven't reported about it, yet.

Okay, here's the next thing: As the old "Laythe Flyer", the one which is with Jeb in Laythe orbit at the moment, proofed difficult to fly (especially difficult to land), I designed a new one in order to send it to Laythe as a replacement. This time it features two nuclear engines in addition to the ramjet and rapier engines.

In order to make it to Laythe, it has to refuel in Kerbin orbit after the ascent.

After the refueling, I've set the refueler on a reentry course to be destroyed. This was not planned for, but I nearly hit KSC on the return. That was pretty close!

And the last thing I did before I took a break from reporting in this thread was to launch a refinery outpost, supposed to land on Pol:

As we're still at the launch window to Jool, I have to design a fuel-transport vessel, in order to pick up fuel on Pol and transport it to Laythe orbit.

[MarkusF]

Okay, here's a bit more progress, I've launched a fuel-transporter in order to transport fuel from Pol's surface to Laythe orbit as well as a small lander, to land a single Kerbal on Pol and Bop.

Oh, and I just realized, that there's an open "Jool 6 challenge" contract, asking me to fly by every body in the Jool system, so I have to design a probe for that task, too, as long as the transfer window Jool is still open.

[legoclone09]

I've had a lot of other stuff going on, so I had to take a short break from playing KSP, as you all know how much time it can consume.

But right now, I'm going to continue my career :-)

Ah, good. I loved this. Here, have this rep cookie I found on the ground for your dedication.

[MarkusF]

Ah, good. I loved this. Here, have this rep cookie I found on the ground for your dedication.

Yay, Cookies :-)

Okay, so I've launched three additional vessels to Jool. First a small ion-powered probe for the Jool-6-Challenge.

Second is a scanner-probe for Vall:

And last but not least, a lander to bring two Kerbals to Vall's surface and back into orbit. The plan is, that Jeb + 1 are gonna use the Laythe spaceplane to make a transfer to Vall, board the Lander, get down and back up, and return to Laythe using the spaceplane.

Now there are 7 vessels heading for Jool, 1 for Duna, 1 for Eeloo and one is returning to Kerbin from Dres.

[MarkusF]

So there's another update:

First I've brought the refinery for Duna into a stable orbit around it. However, I haven't assembled and landed it yet.

Then Valentina & Co returned to Kerbin after visiting the surface of Dres. Unfortunately, they arrived on the night-side of Kerbin, so there was no opportunity for a good screenshot:

Then I timewarped quite a bit, so all my vessels headed for Jool finally arrived.

First the manouver planning for the new Laythe Spaceplane and the arrival at Laythe:

All vessels have been parked into stable orbits around their target bodies, however I haven't taken screenshots of them. I will do so, when I' going to fullfill their tasks, like landing on Pol.

Now the whole Jool-6-Challenge. The contract states, that I have to fly-by all bodies and finally end up in a sub-orbital orbit on Tylo:

Arrival at Jool:

Due to the limited storage for electricity in combination with an ion engine, I can only make burns in chunks of about 270m/s.

Initially I burned the full 270m/s at Jool's periapsis, to get into a stable orbit and drop the apoapsis as far as possible.

Next, I burned at apoapsis, to get an encounter with Laythe, which also drops the apoapsis due to the fly-by:

Fly-By Laythe: Completed

After visiting Laythe, I burned at the apoapsis, in order to get an encounter with Vall.

Fly-By Vall: Completed

Next I planned for another Fly-By at Laythe, flollowed by a Fly-By at Pol:

Fly-By Pol: Completed

Next I planned for an encounter with Bop, at the point, where Bop's orbital plane intersects the inner planets' orbital plane, so I won't have to change my plane in order for the final encounter with Tylo.

Fly-By Bop: Completed

Unfortunately, I have a high orbital energy now, due to the high apoapsis, therefor I planned to use a first fly-by at Tylo in order to decrease the apoapsis, and will burn into a stable orbit and finally go into sub-orbital flight on the second encounter.

And finally the burn to get into a stable orbit.

Sub-Orbital flight on Tylo: Completed

Reward 2,500,000 credits!

Unfortunately, it was night when the probe crashed onto the surface of Tylo.

And finally my unmanned Eeloo probe arrived at its destination, after a very long journey.

[MarkusF]

I've just landed my Pol Miner/Refinery, and realized, that I forgot to install a narrow band scanner and a surface scanning module, so I can't really find a good spot to land on. I only have the basic ore information from the survey scanner. I've landed it anyway, but I have to send a small scanner craft at the next launch window (+68 days) in order to find a good landing spot.

Another problem is the energy consumption, so I guess I should also send a small module with some RTGs up there.

Let me tell you about the landung of the refinery:

During the burn to reduce horizontal speed, I had to reduce thhe maximum thrrust of single engines, as the vessel started to rotate due to tthe shifting center of mass.

- - - Updated - - -

Unfortunately, all my other vessels around Jool's moons depend on the fuel created on Pol, so there's nothing to do right now, until we improve the refinery.

[MarkusF]

Just in case my upgrades to the Pol refinery don't work as expected, and in order to not have to wait for the refining, I'm gonna send an additional S3-14400 fuel tank into Laythe orbit, in order to refuel the Laythe Spaceplane. The amount of oxidizer has been reduced to 3000, which is enough to refuel the Laythe Spaceplane twice. While the tanks liquid fuel is full at launch, I estimate it to contain about 4500kg upon arrival at Laythe. I'm gonna to use a flyby at one of the inner Jool's moons, in order to save some fuel when going to intercept Laythe, like I did with the Jool-6-Challenge probe.

Stage 1:

Stage 2:

Stage 3:

Stage 4:

- - - Updated - - -

Next is the Narrow-Band scanner for Pol. It's a small payload, so there are no difficulties in designing a rocket to bring it to Jool.

Stage 1:

Stage 2:

Stage 3:

[MarkusF]

And here's the power upgrade module for the Pol Refinery. It contains 4 RTGs, as well as 12 large Solar Panels and will be docked on top of the refinery.

[MarkusF]

As my new vessels for Jool's moons are waiting in Kerbin orbits for the launch window to Jool, I took care of the refinery designated for Duna's surface. There's also a contract waiting to be completed, asking to mine 1000 units of ore on Duna.

First I had to split up the cruise configuration and assemble the outpost into its final configuration, while in orbit around Duna:

Finally I had to reattach the cruise stage, to transfer some fuel into the outpost for the deorbit burn.

I had to manually cut some chutes, in order to make a level landing. Touchdown speed was about 12m/s.

[Mister Dilsby]

Very nice! And well done on the manual 'chute cutting, that takes a bold and steady hand.

[MarkusF]

Very nice! And well done on the manual 'chute cutting, that takes a bold and steady hand.

I had set all chutes to open at 5km above the surface, so I've had plenty of time to cut some chutes. I actually had to cut three chutes on the right side (with the orange fuel tank), as the outpost was descending like a dart towards the ground at a vertical speed of about 13m/s. I first cut the two on the outer end (monoprop tank), which helped a lot, but the outpost had still been slightly lower on the side with the refinery. I didn't want it to touch down only on the two outermost landing legs, so I've cut one of the innermost chutes on the orange tank, which turned out to be just enough to make it level.

[MarkusF]

I've just accepted another contract, asking me to test the launch escape system while landed on Tylo. Yeah, even an unmanned lander prooved to be pretty hard to design, let's just hope it works as expected. The lander itself should be able to launch back into Tylo's orbit after landing, so this will be a nice trial run for a later manned mission to Tylo's surface.