Ore Travelling Circus 02: Episode 17 -- FOOL-1 Prospecting

[Mister Dilsby]

I guess you weren't kidding when you commented over on my thread what your crew would do with unlimited ethanol Great progress, and I love the feature names--will probably call that 'Cape MECO' on my Kerbin also.

[Geschosskopf]

I guess you weren't kidding when you commented over on my thread what your crew would do with unlimited ethanol Great progress, and I love the feature names--will probably call that 'Cape MECO' on my Kerbin also.

I've got a few other Kerbin placenames from practical rocketry. The Deorbit Mountains are on the western side of the desert and the Reentry Mountains are those just W of KSC. You know your pod will land on or near KSC if you deorbit over the former and have nice flames going over the latter. Then there's Overshot Island NE of KSC out in Boosterbottom Gulf, where a number of shuttles have ended up due to their pilots habitually following the above rules of thumb and failing to account for their wings .

Anyway, as to Kerbal imbibing..... In my universe, Kerbal society and the worldview of the Kerbals themselves are largely inspired by those of Georgian England. IOW, everybody of all rigidly defined social classes stays as drunk as possible as much as possible, despite which they're living in what later generations will call the Age of Reason, busy creating modern science and the Industrial Revolution, building and running a huge empire while steadily winning the 1st several global wars, developing modern social institutions, and doing other such impressive accomplishments. So alcohol is obviously beneficial .

[Mister Dilsby]

I've got a few other Kerbin placenames from practical rocketry. The Deorbit Mountains are on the western side of the desert and the Reentry Mountains are those just W of KSC. You know your pod will land on or near KSC if you deorbit over the former and have nice flames going over the latter. Then there's Overshot Island NE of KSC out in Boosterbottom Gulf, where a number of shuttles have ended up due to their pilots habitually following the above rules of thumb and failing to account for their wings .

Yup, that's exactly where I start as well. I most often overshoot, have had a lot more landings heading 270 than 090 I should remember to err on the short side, as if one undershoots then it isn't much trouble to add a bit of thrust to clear the mountains, and if one can't quite make it over them at least the ground is flat on the approach side.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 10: Elcano Challenge Part 10 -- Circumnavigation Complete

The 10th day's dawn came early for the hung-over Kerbals but they still managed to get VACUOUS underway for the last stage of their voyage. They were bound due West across Boosterbottom Gulf towards home port.

Riding right down the Equator, VACUOUS spanked along at her maximum sea spead of 49.9m/s and soon was halfway across Boosterbottom Gulf.

Before the forenoon watch was quite over, the familiar profile of Airbase Island appeared off the port bow. There appeared to be something going on over there but at this distance, it was impossible to say what it was.

Not long thereafter, the top of the VAB became visible ahead. The nav computer continued to track on the 1st flag by the Monolith, and Jeb and Val began to ready themselves for the inevitable photo-op and speechifying.

Val guided VACUOUS ashore.

So they were definitely back at KSC. There was the Monolith, there was their 1st flag to mark their departure 9 and a half days previously. But nobody else was visible. Didn't they know VACUOUS was coming home today? Where where the dignitaries? Where was all the champagne that should be popping, the booze that should be flowing freely? Hell, where was the brass band?

Oh well, their orders were to return to the Monolith, so that's what they did. And they got out to plant their 41st flag of the trip.

At this point, their headphones crackled with new orders. Proceed to Airbase Island, park VACUOUS in the #2 hangar, and await further instruction. Val was by now needing a nap and Jeb had slept most of the way so far, so he took the conn, not needing a navigator for this short trip.

Soon VACUOUS was climbing the steep, aluminum-plated slope at the approach end of Airbase Island's runway, which had seen countless fatal undershoots over the years.

Once up on the runway, Jeb saw a strange sight, a giant aircaft he'd never known existed, and what looked like Bill and Bob standing at attention at its feet. What the...?

What had happened was that the previous afternoon at KSC, about the time Jeb and Val were falling into drunken stupors at sundown on the other side of Boosterbottom Gulf, the Boffins had decided that VACUOUS should be preserved at Airbase Island as a monument to the spirit of Kerbal exploration. But VACUOUS lacked a probe core so couldn't get there by herself, meaning that they had to slap together something to ferry Jeb and Val back to KSC. Thus was born the KALTROP (Kerbal Atmospheric Long-range Transport Over the Planet), a VIP airliner that might have some trivial practical value in the future but which was really commissioned to carry Jeb and Val back home in style (and with a fully stocked bar). Its very 1st test flight was Bill and Bob, neither a qualified pilot, taking it over to Airbase Island.. Fortunately, the beast proved reasonably stable without SAS.

Back to the present, Jeb dutifully backed VACUOUS into the #2 Hangar, occupying the same position there as the sacred Mk 1 Pod did in Hangar #1. He powered down all systems and set the parking brake.

So Jeb and Val staggered over to the KALTROP. where Bill and Bob welcomed them back. No boring speeches, no dignitaries, just a plane with seats and booze for 36 and only 4 in the crew.

And so KALTROP wobbled into the air and headed back to KSC, leaving VACUOUS mothballed in Hangar #2.

Then, with an equal lack of fanfare, the KALTROP arrived safely back at KSC and taxied into the SPH.

Which of course was where the real welcome-home party was all laid out, out of sight of even your humble narrator (who was too lazy to build a complex cinamatographic set). All the senior Boffins and other dignitaries were waiting to congratulate Jeb and Val on their accomplishment. However, those 2 were by this point comatose from accumulated stress, fatigue, and the bar in the KALTROP.

Here's the final status:

Tune in next time for getting back to rocket stuff.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[Commander Zoom]

*wild applause*

[Mister Dilsby]

Well done! I hope your crews are enjoying their well-deserved libations. I'll have to come back here after I "spread some reputation around"

[Geschosskopf]

Thanks guys. I had a lot of fun with this. I haven't preserved a craft in a very long time (mostly because so few are designed to come back ).

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 11: Off to Jool and Duna

Well, due to KSC still running on 24-hr days, the voyage of the VACUOUS only lasted 2.5 days on the mission clock depsite the sun rising 10 times along the way. Thus, when Jeb and Val returned home, it was still 40-odd official days to go before the departure of the 1st Jool Flotilla. Everybody at KSC feeling in need of some vacation, they decided to take the month off and return to busines just before the transfer burns.

The 8 ships of the 1st Jool Flotilla got on the road without any major problems. Most of them had chemical transfer stages so the burns were short and, with pretty much all transfers outwards, were on the night side of Kerbin. Thus, nothing much to see except for the few long-burning nuke ships, which burned into daylight towards the end. These also had lots of lights so showed up reasonably well anyway. Thus, not a lot of pics of this stage, just some of the better ones. For instance:

Here JF-1 COMMsat Carrier Jool drops its empty transfer stage immediately after completing the burn and TAC Self-Destruct cleans up the debris. It's always good to start flotilla launches with a nice explosion .

And here's JF-1 SLAC (the core of the nascent Laythe station) towards the end of its burn:

And of course, the JF-1 Dual FOOL early on in its burn, thanks to the landing lights on the FOOL probes.

Here's the entire 1st Jool Flotilla shortly after leaving Kerbin's SOI. All of them will make course tweaks along the way at times ranging from 9 to 94 days.

With that task done, the Boffins realized that a Duna window was now about 6 days away and they needed to get some long-range COMMsats there to ricochet signals around Kerbol to Jool. Thus, they took the same payload section off the JF-1 rocket, put a rather smaller lifter and transfer stage under it, and shot it off ASAP.

Because they were sending stuff to Duna, the Boffins decided they might as well send a SCANsat/Ore Scanner as well, knowing that would be handy eventually. Once again, the Boffins used what was on had, this time taking the JF-1 FOOLSCAP probe and fitting it to a smaller rocket. They also renamed it the FOODu (Finding Ore on Duna).

And to complete the 1st Duna Flotilla's collection of repurposed Jool probes, the scientists insisted on getting some data, so the JF-1's SPOOL was rechistened the PONDSCUM (Probe On and Near Duna, Science Collecting Ultra Machine) and sent along as well. The Boffins thought it was a rather .... rocket.

Once all 3 ships of the 1st Duna Flotilla were up, it wasn't long before it was time to burn them. The FOOD and PONDSCUM got off OK but the Kraken ate the COMMsat carrier just as it was leaving Kerbin's SOI. This one ship being the reason for the whole flotilla, the Boffins had quickly to cobble together another one and send it hurrying after the rest of the flotilla, which is why it's so far behind in this pic, which also shows JF-1 disappearing into the distance.

So that's about it for this update. 4 launches, 11 transfer burns, and 1 Kraken attack. Tune in next time probably for something getting somewhere.

Edited June 14, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 12: 1st Duna Flotilla Arrives

So time warped on and most ships of both flotillas currently en route finished their mid-course tweaks.

Soon thereafter, the 1st Duna Flotilla began arriving. First by about 2 weeks was the last to leave Kerbin and the reason for going here at all, the 2nd incarnation of the DuF-1 COMM-Long carrier. It aerocaptured at about 15.5km for an Ap about 260km in a polar orbit.

Once in this orbit, it shed its fairing to expose the 2 long-range COMMsats that will function as a link between Kerbin and Jool on most of those occasions when Kerbol is in the way.

As 1st long-range COMMsat separated and deployed its antennae.

When over Duna's north pole, this COMMsat burned for a 40Mm Ap. Due to its low speed out there, it will spend the bulk of its time in orbit way out of Duna's orbital plane so Ike won't be in the way.

In about 6 days, once COMM-Long Duna 1 was near its Ap, COMM-Long Duna 2 separated from the carrier and burned when directly over Duna's south pole, to establish its Ap also out at about 40Mm. Thus, the 2 COMMsats were about 180^ out of phase with each other, so one of them certainly would have a line of sight without either Duna or Ike in the way.

The COMMsat carrier remained in orbit. The Boffins originally wanted to crash it but decided at the last moment to land it near Duna's north pole just to see if the massive cliffs encountered the last time they'd gone to Duna were still there.

Yup, it's still pink up there, Orthanc is still there, and so are the cliffs.

By this time, the other 2 ships of the 1st Duna Flotilla entered Duna's SOI about 6 hours apart. First was SCANsat Duna followed by PONDSCUM Duna.

The Boffins had recently developed "Trajectories" technology which supposedly worked with the new atmospheres created by the Supernova of '102, but it turned out not to be even close to accurate. Thus, aerocapaturing was back to the old method of F5, see what happens, F9, tweak Pe, try again.

SCANsat Duna did an Ike flyby on the way in.

Once more or less in the correct orbit for biome, ore, and low-res radar scanning, SCANsat Duna shucked its fairing and transfer stage (which self-destructed) and begam work.

Almost immediately thereafter, PONDSCUM Duna came in, again needing trial and error to aerocpature. There's very little difference these days between not capturing, lithobraking, and getting an Ap you can live with. PONDSCUM Duna was inclined 45^ for the benefit of its cargo.

Under PONDSCUM Duna's fairing were an orbital probe stacked atop a probe lander. The orbital probe had all sorts of science gizmos that the Boffins really didn't care about but it needed to be in an inclined, eccentric orbit to make the Scientists happy. The orbital probe separated and headed into its assigned orbit.

Then the probe lander separated from PONDSCUM Duna.

It wsa aimed at a medium-sized crater not far above the southern ice cap.

It landed uneventfully, totally not needing the heatshield it inherited from the original Laythe version, and the Scientists were happy with all the data it sent back.

The Boffins, however, decided to show the Scientists what a real lander was like, so instead of crashing the PONDSCUM carrier, they decided to land it, too, not far away.

IN YO' FACE, SCIENCE DWEEBS!!

Needless to say, there then ensued yet another bench-clearing brawl between the Boffins and the Scientists, so no further work got done at KSC for a while.

Tune in next time for what will probably be the arrival of the 1st Jool Flotilla.

Edited June 14, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[Mister Dilsby]

Epic launch! I like the look of your ships: utilitarian and clean, no doubt what each one's role is. I think the JF-1 SLAC is my favorite. Will be interesting to see the rest joining up with those Sr. ports.

[Geschosskopf]

Epic launch! I like the look of your ships: utilitarian and clean, no doubt what each one's role is. I think the JF-1 SLAC is my favorite. Will be interesting to see the rest joining up with those Sr. ports.

Thanks. I like simple, non-asparagus rockets. Nearly all my lifters have only 1 LFO stage to orbit, aided by SRBs if necessary. When I have a heavy payload, I just get a mod with 5m stacks . I used FAR more often than not prior to 1.x, which shaped my habits at an early age, and this has served me well since. I've never had a problem with rockets tumbling that so many others have complained of in 1.0.2.

As to the SLAC, I really have no idea yet what will eventually get bolted onto it yet except for a tree of standard docking ports. Almost certainly a few more fuel tanks, maybe some more living space. But otherwise it'll just have ports available for transient ships. Tugs, a crew transfer ship or 2, an SSTO or 2, and the fuel tanker that will eventually shuttle between Vall and Laythe. The main purpose of Laythe Station is to be a transshipment point for whatever Kerbals are passing through to or from Laythe. It'll be where they transfer from transfer ship to SSTO or vice versa, where the transfer ships, SSTOs, and tugs will refuel. I've got several SSTO designs already working but I haven't yet decided which, if any of those, will eventulaly go.

Future plans for Jool are all waiting on the results of the ore surveys of 1JF. This will determine what needs to be on the surface of both Laythe and Vall, and that will set the parameters of the Vall-Laythe tanker system. All that will have an impact on what form Laythe Station ultimately takes.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 13: 1st Jool Flotilla Arrives Part 1

I'll be out of pocket the rest of the week so I wanted to get the 1st Jool Flotilla to the target. However, due to real life, I wasn't able to complete the job, so the rest will have to wait a week.

But first, back at Duna, the FOODu SCAN/Ore sat did it's thing. Turns out that in this game, Duna is quite meh with Ore. The poles and highlands have 3.75%, the lowlands have 2.98%, and the midlands have didley squat. I seem to recall there being more biomes on Duna pre-1.x, but this is all we've got now.

Then the FOODu lobbed itself under Duna to hit Ike already in a near polar orbit.

And after a couple weeks, it finished scanning Ike. Ike is marginally better than Duna. The south pole has about 6.5%, the central and western mountains have about 5%, the lowlands have about 4.5%, and not much anywhere else.

And now, warping forward about 250 (24-hr) days, the 1st Jool Flotilla is finally nearing its target. Fully 1/2 its travel time was spent hovering just beyond Jool's orbit.

First to reach Jool was the SPOOL, that orbital probe/lander thing the Boffins grudgingly agreed to send for the Scientists. This was fortunate because this ship is essentially expendable as far as the Boffins are concerned, so could be used as a guinea pig. It turned out the SPOOL could hit Laythe on the way in so it aimed to capture there directly instead of bouncing off Jool first.

A few days later, the COMMsat Carrier Moons also entered Jool's SOI with a Laythe encounter right off the bat. This is an important ship so it would watch what happened to the SPOOL and still have plenty of room to sidestep Laythe should that turn out to be necessary.

After about 2 weeks in Jool's SOI, the SPOOL finally approached Laythe and paused for a pretty picture.

Then it was some FIERCE aerobraking. The SPOOL came in at nearly 5km/s and had to dive to about 28.5km in Laythe's atmosphere to have even a small chance of stopping. Simulations showed even this wasn't quite low enough to capture but the Scientists refused to let the Boffins try it lower and used some of the ample fuel left over to finish the job. At least nothing burned off.

So SPOOL was parked in an eccentric orbit to wait on the rest of the flotilla. Speaking of which, VAPID now entered Jool's SOI. No Vall encounter on the way in so this one would bounce off Jool.

Then it was time for COMMsat Carrier Moons to have a go at a Laythe aerocapture. This ship was a bit slower than SPOOL, only about 3.5km/s, so didn't need to get quite as low. Still, 31.5km wasn't quite enough and still cooked off an antenna on the side of the OMS stage. But a minor nudge upon leaving the atmosphere left it in an elliptical parking orbit. The ultimate plan is to get into a synchronous orbit to space the probes out so this is fine for the time being.

NOTE to RemoteTech users. It would probably be a good idea to make a ModuleManager file to tweak the maxTemps of antennas, given as you can't protect them during aerocaptures at distant planets, even when they're retracted.

Anyway, about this time the PERV Carrier, the SLAC, and the FOOLSCAP all entered Jool's SOI but for some reason I didn't get pics of the 1st 2. None of them got encounters with their ultimate destinations on the way in so all aimed for Jool.

And by now VAPID had finally worked its way down to Laythe's orbit so the Boffins wanted to do some simulations of the aerocaputre, picking 185km as their 1st Pe choice.

The fireworks didn't last long due to such a shallow penetration, but the dense atmosphere still worked VERY well at slowing VAPID down. Too well, in fact. She ended up with an Ap inside Laythe's orbit, rather a bummer for a ship bound for Vall. And it was at this point that the Boffins realized that, due to a computer glitch, they hadn't done a simulation but the real time (IOW, I accidentally hit F5 instead of F9 after this pass).

So now there was nothing for it but to burn back out to Vall. Burning prograde at moonrise worked for Vall just like it does for Mun.

After this burn, VAPID encountered the bug where it's impossible to use real warp at Jool between the atmosphere and 1Mm altitude, so it was sort of a long ride up to that height at 4x physical warp. The burn exhausted the transfer stage. Fortunately, it had been designed with such a contingency in mind and the actual VAPID probe had enough juice of its own to capture into the desired polar orbit.

But VAPID's difficulties weren't yet over. Note in the pic above that the bottom parts of the fairing are still stuck on the probe. I think this was because when I built the ship, I ran struts from the 2.5m adaptor below the fairing up onto the probe to keep it from wobbling, then built the fairing through the struts. Anyway, when fairings get stuck to the ship, weird things happen. Specifically, while the ship is actually still moving through space as it should be, part of the game thinks it's actually on the ground. Thus, the orbital path goes away, the ship is reported as landed, and you're unable to use real warp (but can use physical warp).

Fortunately, I recently read a thread in the gameplay questions topic about this very situation. The guy reporting this problem had noted the fairing pieces hadn't come off even during thrust, nor had an EVA'd Kerbal been any use. Somebody suggested spinning the ship in roll, so I tried that and sure enough, the fairing bits came right off. With the fairing pieces gone, all returned to normal.

And so, after great tribulation, VAPID took up her station and began mapping Vall and scanning for ore. I thought this made a pretty pic, too.

And that's all I had time for. 3 of the 8 ships are either in their desired locations or in parking orbits. 3 others are inbound somewhere between Jool and the edge of its SOI, and there are still 2 more just about to enter the SOI. Tune in hopefully towards next weekend to see what happens with the rest of 1JF.

Edited June 14, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[Mister Dilsby]

Very nice, glad they all arrived on station all right. Very useful notes on aerocapture as well! Duna is indeed 'meh' for ore... hoping to get some faster refuels in the poles than I have been in the lowlands/highlands. Also appreciate the notes on the fairings bugs.

[Geschosskopf]

Very useful notes on aerocapture as well!

Thanks. I reported the inaccauracy of the Trajectories mod and they say that's because my ship had fairings, which they haven't been able to figure out the results of yet. Which is rather annoying given that aerocapture at most distant worlds involves thick atmospheres and thus the need for fairings.

Also appreciate the notes on the fairings bugs.

The fairing thing is strange. When I spun the ship, the fairings flew off at the high speed they normally have when their decoupler fires, and quickly vanished in the distance. This was totally unlike when say a normal radial decoupler fires but the part just sits there even after you spin the ship. So apparently running struts through a fairing puts the decoupler force of the affected fairing parts on hold instead of it being a dud.

I am, however, using Claw's Stock Bug Fixes mod, which impacts fairings in several ways (varies the decoupler force with size, for one thing). That might have something to do with it as well.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 14: 1st Jool Flotilla Arrival Part 2

After the arbitrary stoppage of play from the last episode, the bombardment of Jool with more ships of 1JF continued. Next up was the PERV Carrier's aerocapture at Jool.

This ship was bound for Vall and, with a Pe of around 188km, managed to capture with an Ap a bit beyond Vall's orbit. Both dish antennae on the sides of the fuel tank burned off even though retracted.

The bug where you can't warp below 1Mm at Jool after aerobraking affected this ship and all subsequent ones doing the same. The Boffins noted that the trajectory shown on the big map screen went straight for a while, which they suspected had something to do with this problem.

Shortly thereafter, the SLAC came in for its pass by Jool en route to Laythe, both of which are shown in this glamour shot:

Simulations of aerocapturing, given this ship's slower speed, again tried 185km, which VAPID had survived no problem. While this produced an Ap near Laythe, it also resulted in the loss of most external fittings such as the docking ports. So the Boffins went for a higher Pe.

The Boffins eventually decided on a Pe of 192km, which put the Ap out near Val but resulted in no damage to the ship.

The SLAC was able to make a very slight burn at Ap which both got its Pe out of Jool's atmosphere and gave it a Laythe encounter on the next orbit at an angle of about 80^ to Laythe's orbit. Still, a fairly gentle aerocapture at about 30km sufficed to put the SLAC into a fairly close orbit, from which it wasn't any work to circularize into a 100km orbit.

By this time, the PERV Carrier had arrived at Vall in an orbit inclined about 45^, the better to land wherever VAPID showed might be good spots. It finally shed its fairing once there.

The VAPID had been at work for several weeks by now in a 260km polar orbit and had produced a rough map of Vall's topography, biomes, and ore. Vall proved to be reasonably decent, with 6% ore in the lowlands, nearly as much in the highlands and at the poles, but nearly nothing in the midlands.

VAPID now moved to a 771km orbit for hi-res terrain mapping prior to sending down the PERVs for ground-truthing.

There was now some time to kill before anything else of true import happened as far as the Boffins were concerned, so at this point the Scientists insisted that the probes on the SPOOL be set to work. So the SPOOL moved from its highly elliptical parking orbit down to a low circular orbit, the better for eventual deployment of the lander probe, which would have to await altimetry data from the FOOLSCAP, which hadn't yet reached its Jool Pe. But in the meantime, the orbital science probe could get to work.

There still being some slack time, the Boffins decided to get the short-range COMMsats up at Laythe, even though they had nothing to talk to yet as the long-range COMMsats were still on their way towards their Jool aerocapture. After dropping 2 short-range COMMsats 180^ apart at Laythe, the COMMsat Carrier Moons moved to Vall to repeat the process.

Shortly thereafter, the Dual FOOL finally entered Jool's SOI.

And here time again arbitrarily ran out on what I could do in one evening, so that marks the end of this episode. Still, I made a fair amount of progress. All ships of 1JF are now in Jool's SOI. Short-range COMMsats are up at Laythe and Vall, Vall has been scanned for ore (which isn't instantaneous if you combine it with SCANsat), the core of the nascent Laythe Station is in position, and nothing went badly wrong.

Tune in next time for the 1st Jool Flotilla hopefully finishing all its tasks.

Edited June 16, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[Mister Dilsby]

I am really paying attention to the aerobraking here--am planning a flotilla for Eve next, and Jool after that, and will definitely take advantages of "simulations" as well as uncrewed probes. Looks like due to Jool's strong mass we are stuck with that 9-10 km/s entry velocity. Your ships are designed well enough to survive that, at the right altitude...I'll have to make sure mine are as well

[Geschosskopf]

Yeah, interplanetary aerocaptures at Laythe and Jool are pretty intense, so I expect arriving at Eve and returning to Kerbin will be as well. IIRC, Pe speeds at Eve are on the order of 6.5km/s. I keep seeing people complaining that stock reentry heating is too weak and fairings are useless, just based on operations between Kerbin and Minmus, maybe Duna as well (where the air is totally benign these days). So they make things harder on themselves and I suspect they're all in for rude shocks when they finally venture further afield .

Anyway, besides the absolute necessity of doing F5/F9 "simulations" (and not hitting F5 when you mean to hit F9 ), there are some other things I've noticed.

#1. DO NOT USE WARP OVER 100x FOR FINAL APPROACH TO ATMOSPHERE CONTACT

Yes, KSP will slam on the warp brakes at contact if you're at 1000x, but this has a reaction time, and warp works by teleporting the ship between widely spaced points. The result is that you usuaally skip the thin, outermost layers of air and find yourself in the solid, deeper part still carrying your maximum speed. Plus your ship is probably not pointed retrograde. The result, when time gets back to 1x, is often catastrophic. Using 100x warp seems to be OK but if you're having trouble, you might want to use even less and see if that works better.

#2. Exposed Antennae Are Toast

If you use RemoteTech, you're in trouble. While the main probe's antennae might be all nicely protected by the fairing, you can't deploy stock antennae nor right-click fixed RT antennae that are inside a fairing, which basically means you must have an antenna outside the fairing to control the ship en route. The stock dish antenna is unlikely to survive an interplanetary aerocapture even if retracted. I don't know about the RT dishes but I'm guess they're not much tougher. Thus, to keep your antenna intact, you'll either have to use MM to up its maxTemp or settle for aerobraking instead of aerocapturing, meaning you'll need to bring enough fuel to close your orbit after the air slows you a litlte, on top of whatever fuel you need for the rest of the mission. Or, perhaps, rig up some sort of retractable antenna using a cargo bay, so the antenna used en route can survive. But that makes for a bigger probe.

#3. Parts Get Hotter From Leading to Trailing Ends of the Rocket

This one is kinda strange. You'd think that the part at the leading end, taking the full brunt of the air, would get hotter than anything else on the rocket, but this isn't the case. Observe my SLAC's "simulated" aerocapture in Episode 14 with the big explosion. The part on the leading end was a 2.5m docking port which survived just fine but the identical radially attached 2.5m docking ports further back on the orange tank all burned off. I suspect this is the result of the rather inaccurate way KSP handles heat. I think I read somewhere that they now have "convection" where the leading part heats up the air it hits, which then flows back along the ship. Thus, parts further aft not only get the normal reentry heat from impacting the air themselves, but also extra heat created by the leading part. "Convection" isn't the proper name for this (it's actually conduction by direct contact), and it shouldn't work like this anyway. But this is a law of physics now in KSP so we have to deal with it.

#4. Fairings and Heatshields

Because of #2 and #4, probes covered with delicate instruments need fairings remaining intact until you're done with aerocapturiing. Fairings add weight but OTOH they also add lift, which helps keep the ship weathervaned and pointing retrograde when aerobraking, instead of getting sideways. Heatshields, however, seem useful only in certain applications, such as on pods and fuel tanks. Engines and docking ports can take the heat just fine so if you've got them leading the ship, you should be OK without needing a heatshield. Even during a harsh interplanetary aerocapture. And that's a good thing .

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 15: 1st Jool Flotilla Arrival Part 3

The next thing on the agenda was getting FOOLSCAP on station. This ship came in at about 192km at Jool no problem and captured with an Ap between Laythe and Vall. So far, so good.

However, it turned out that the FOOLSCAP's resulting orbit was practically resonant with Laythe's so it soon became apparent that they'd never meet within a reasonable time (like before the COMMsat Carrier Jool's Pe in about 8 days), and FOOLSCAP only had a about 500m/s left in the transfer stage so couldn't make major changes to the situation. Thus, over the course of nearly a dozen orbits, FOOLSCAP slightly nudged its trajectory at Pe each time around, so as to inch closer to a Laythe intercept. Eventually this did the trick, Aerocapture at Laythe was no biggie and soon FOOLSCAP was mapping biomes and ore deposits.

It got there with about 2 days to space and just managed to complete this task before the Boffins had to divert their attention to the commsats. In this game, Laythe has a hair over 6% at the poles, a hair under 6% in the relatively rare dunes, and just a trace on the shores.

The Boffins began the process of pondering this vital info over the course of many drinks, plotting future missions. Meanwhile, FOOLSCAP went up to a higher orbit for high-res terrain mapping, a prerequisite for landing anything. This job would take a while but I thought it made a pretty pic.

Then it was time for COMMsat Carrier Jool, bearing its vital long-range commsats, to come in. The idea here was the same as used at Kerbin and Duna: put 2 satellites about 180^ out of phase with each other in highly elliptical polar orbits above and below the plane of Jool's orbit. To minimize the time spent by the commsats close to Jool, the Boffins wanted the lowest possible Ap (but still greater than 1Mm to avoid the no-warp bug) after aerocapture. It turned out that the best they could do was about 3Mm, from a Jool Pe of about 188km. Simulations showed that trying for anything lower made the ship lithobrake. As it was, this ship still suffered what was by now the routine loss of its exposed-but-retracted antennae.

Naturally, COMMsat Carrier Jool had come in with the highest inclination it could get (about 86^) under Jool's south pole. The Boffins were surprised to note that the no-warping-below-1Mm bug doesn't seem to bother ships in polar orbits. Thus, COMMsat Carrier Jool kicked it into gear as soon as she left the atmosphere.

It also turned out that raising the ship's Pe to 3Mm required about 5m/s more than was in the tanks. But that would suffice. So COMMsat Carrier Jool shed its fairing and deployed the 1st of its satellites.

The cmmsat burned at Jool's south pole to a 45Mm Ap, same as back at Kerbin. That should suffice to keep a clear line of sight back to home port. Then about 8 hours later, as the 1st commsat neared its Ap, the 2nd commsat went on its way in the opposite direction. Long-distance communications were thus finally tied in, with Duna available as a detour when Kerbol is in the way.

And then it was time for the Dual FOOL to try its luck. This was the beginning of a long, hard-fought battle using every dirty trick I could think of. And it still just barely worked.

Given all the antennae Jool had already eaten, the Boffins were extremely worried about the NBS scanners on the FOOLs. It turned out, however, that those were perfectly safe and it was other, more trusted parts that caused problems. And here I again proudly trumpet the fact that ever since 1.x came out, I've had a ModuleManager cfg file that solves numerous completely unrealistic heat-related problems with KSP. A lot of the patches in this file raise the maxTemp of parts. Considering that no element in the KSP universe appears on our periodic table (due to the blatantly obvious differences in the strong and weak nuclear forces), imposing Earthly temperature tolerances on KSP is by definition as wrong as possible, so that any arbitrary number you care to use instead is more realistic. Yet even with various aero parts able to tolerate 3000^, key parts of the FOOLs (intakes, vertical stabilizers, etc.) were still cooking off at any Pe lower than 195km.

What's up with that? All 7 of the previous ships, with fewer parts to distribute heat around in, had made much lower passes at higher speeds without needing special treatment in the cfg files. Something is badly, badly wrong with the heat model (besides its fundamental flaw of more massive objects heating up the quickest). This bodes ill for sending more planes and SSTOs to Laythe.

Anyway, a 198km Pe was of course far too high to capture at Jool, so the Dual FOOL needed to burn about 800m/s to close its orbit and then, rather than run through Jool's atmosphere again, pull its Ap down to the level of Tylo.

A burn of about 20m/s at Ap got the Pe out of Jool's air and also resulted in a Laythe encounter at a steep angle to its track. However, speed at atmospheric entry was only about 3.5km/s, about like coming home to Kerbin from Minmus, and Laythe's air isn't as thick as Kerbin's. Should be OK, right?

WRONG. The pass through Laythe's atmosphere was even worse than in Jool's. Even more stuff would burn up even with a mere 40km Pe, which not only wasn't enough to capture, but also gravity-assisted the ship back out of Jool's SOI. And previous ships had made it just fine at Laythe, at significantly higher speeds, going down below 30km. THIS IS BROKEN.

Of course, I already knew that, hence my MM cfg file. But that was just putting BandAids on the problem and still trying to play along with it. This time, however, the game threw the gentlemanly rulebook out the window. If it was going to be that way, I felt no compunction in retaliating in kind, but just enough to still keep things interesting and to preserve as much dignity as possible. After all, this ship is vital to the whole enterpirse and I'm not starting over on account of a bogus heat model.

The result? I admit it, I used the debug window to ignore maxTemp values and used a Pe of 38km, a full 10km higher than ships that had already hit Laythe's air at 5km/s with no problem. Then I burned another 600m/s to actually close the orbit after the pass. This gave me an Ap just barely inside Laythe's SOI.. a slight burn raised the Pe back to 45km and the Dual FOOL then made 4 more passes at this benign altitude gradually lowering its Ap to about 700km. This was to save fuel, the Dual FOOL having less than 500m/s left.

At this point, it was becoming obvious that Dual FOOL should dock with SLAC to start with instead of releasing the FOOLs first; otherwise it might not get there. So after the 4th post-capture aerobraking pass, it raised its Pe just barely out of Laythe's air and then matched planes with SLAC in the equatorial oribt. Dual FOOL now had slightly more than 400m/s left.

Then there was the issue of rendezvousing with SLAC. There was insufficient fuel to clean up the criss-crossing orbits first--this would be all or nothing. After fiddling with different options, the Boffins ultimately decided on a prograde burn just after matching planes with SLAC, which resulted in a rendezvous with only 200m separation. Matching velocities at that point would require 398.3 m/s, by which time the Dual FOOL would have only 397.0 left in the tank. But ample RCS reserves could take it from there.

IN YO' FACE, BROKEN HEAT MODEL!

It was about 5 seconds after this docking was complete that the Boffins remembered something that could possibly have saved them a lot of trouble and grief, not to mention not having to mention using various scams and cheats to be able to pull off a dead-stick docking at Laythe (and HONESTLY, I didn't plan that, it just happened). Both FOOLs have airbrakes, specifically installed to eliminate reentry heating when landing at Laythe. This had been proven to work exceptionally well in many simulationed landings prirt to this show ever getting on the road for real. But all the Boffins remembered at the time was that they'd disabled all control surfaces on the FOOLs prior to launch because leaving them active had made the bizarre Dual FOOL lifter (see Episode 1) flip out and they feared similar consequences during aerocapture attempts. As such, the Boffins had been regarding the FOOLs are mere dead weight all along, and had even installed Firespitter info pop-ups on them to remind them to turn the control surfaces back on prior to landing. They'd forgotten the airbrakes. Would they have made a difference? Probably. Will we ever know? Probably. I'm sending more planes and SSTOs to Laythe, of course.

But the Boffins, being rather uncaring, let all this slide off their backs in no time and got back to business. By now, FOOLSCAP had completed its high-res altimetry scan of Laythe. Combining this with prior knowledge of where the Ore was in the high dunefields, the Boffins were naturally drawn to the group of large islands. Their main objective for 1JF was to find a good location for a spaceport, somewhere on or near the equator with ample level ground and not too far from a major Ore source. Thus, the island near the right edge of the screen, with the big crater on its eastern edge, immediately attracted their attention. The terrain looked pretty steep all about there.

Only 1 way to find out for sure, and that would kill 2 birds with 1 stone. The Scientists were now all in a tizzy about getting SPOOL's probe lander down, now that the altimetry data was in. So the Boffins decided it should land on this particular island to scope out the terrain on the spot. The Scientists weren't happy about this but, as they were the minority in Parliament after the completion of the tech tree, they couldn't prevent it. Thus, the SPOOL's lander was released to being its 100km fall to the surface.

Laythe's fickle air made a great show of fireworks but didn't even singe the heatshield (still had all 200 ablator remaining when the fires went out).

The Boffins learned a lot from this landing. Primarily, that there were no good landing fields in this neighborhood. The Scientists were of course ecstatic over all the data the probe sent back, but nobody else cared because the Kerbals had nothing left to learn at this point.

Tune in next time for the FOOLs exploring Laythe.

Edited June 27, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[damerell]

I just caught up with the circumnavigation - gosh, thanks for naming a cape after me.

[Geschosskopf]

I just caught up with the circumnavigation - gosh, thanks for naming a cape after me.

Not a problem. You earned it .

Before 1.0.4 came out, I carried this on a bit more, putting a couple PERVs down on Vall and a FOOL on Laythe. It wasn't enough for a full update but now I'm not sure this game will ever be continued, so I'll post it up in a while because it does have a few interesting points in it.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 16: Prospecting on Vall and Laythe

So, after some shady doings getting the Dual FOOL on station (the less said about that, the better), it was time finally for the 1st Jool Flotilla to start doing what it came to do---figure out where the good ore was so the Boffins could start designing what they'd need to stripmine it. Having had quite enough of the Dual FOOL for a while, and Laythe not entirely scanned and mapped yet, they decided to start with Vall where things were all in readiness.

I'm using SCANsat it has an option for non-instant ore scans, so I'd used that. This painted in the ore deposits the same as mapping the terrain and in full detail for the whole planet at once, like a full-screen NBS display. I'd put the PERV Carrier into a 45^ orbit thinking I'd have to land at some inauspicious place where high-ore biomes came together to deduce which biomes were best and then find a patch closer to the equator but now I was thinking this might be unnecessary. I already knew the Lowlands biome had the best ore I could get to with relative ease and there are numerous patches of that right on the equator. So I just waited until a good patch passed under the PERV Carrier's orbit and sent down PERV-1, expecting to just verify what I already knew.

PERV-1 quickly discovered this patch of Lowlands wasn't all that flat, and in fact needed some last-minute juggling to avoid landing on a steep hill.

Once safely down, PERV-1 shed its descent engines, switched control to an inline probe core to get the navball oriented correctly, and turned on its Ground Sensor and NBS.

At this point, the Boffins discovered that even though they'd already mapped the Ore via SCANsat routines, the NBS still didn't work because they hadn't used the default "Run Survey" thing on the Orbital Scanner. So they quickly had the VAPID do that (glad they hadn't crashed it already as they planned to do someday).

Then back to PERV-1. PERV-1 then made an interesting discovery. Back on Kerbin, all biomes had constant Ore values throughout. But on Vall, the Lowlands biome's concentration varied slightly over its surface. Still everything in the area was 5.5-5.7% so there wasn't much point in driving very far. PERV-1 then parked for a beauty shot.

The Boffins were a bit disappointed with PERV-1's results, especially since it was below what they thought they'd find there, so they decided to try another place. This meant sending down PERV-2 to the opposite side of Vall on the same orbit of the PERV Carrier.

PERV-2 had better luck. At the very western edge of its NBS display, the lowland concentration increased sharply, a real hotspot. So it drove over there, a distance of over 39km from its landing site, and parked on a spot with 8.7%. That's the good stuff there, and not far off the equator, and about as flat as Vall gets. Perfect.

OK, that would do Vall for the nonce. Now it was time to do Laythe, so the Boffins detached FOOL-1 (remembering to turn its control surfaces back on, thanks to the FS infopopup).

With airbrakes deployed and pitched up about 30^, FOOL-1 didn't create any flames during entry (as designed). It was aimed at the long, low, flat, equaltorial peninsula on the big island made famous by Brotoro.

Unfortunately, this peninsula counts as being in the ocean (must be low tide), and the ocean is hard-coded to have zero Ore. Because the Shore has just a trace and only the Dunes have a decent amount of Ore, this spot, while great in all other respects as the main spaceport for the colony, would entail driving an inconveniently long way to truck fuel from the mines to the peninsula. Thus, the Boffins decided to see if they could find something better.

So FOOL-1 flew west along the equator, crossing the other islands nearby to see if any of them would do. Sadly, all were too steep, as had already been foretold by the SPOOL lander.

FOOL-1 also noted that Laythe is like Kerbin in having constant Ore values in biomes, probably because the biomes are such small patches.

FOOL-1 flew quite well, easily doing about 120m/s at just 1/3 throttle. Thus, as it crossed a stretch of ocean west of the big islands, heading for what the Boffins called "Block Island" due to its shape, it ran out of sunlight.

However, as had been seen on the radar map, the SE corner of this island (also on the equator) is quite flat and FOOL-1 had no trouble landing there in the dark (it has good landing lights). That was a promising sign. And the map had shown that this island is almost all Dunes very close to this flat area. So the Boffins were quite optimistic that this would be a good spaceport. However, it was too dark to really eyeball the slopes to the Dunes biome so the Boffins decided to shut down here and wait for dawn before making any decision.

And that's as far as I got before 1.0.4 came out. Fortunately, I'd taken the precaution of cloning the whole game before that happened so I can keep on playing this in 1.0.2. I'll probably do that, given that 1.0.4 is hopeless and has the certain prospect of bringing another round of game-breaking aero and heat changes.

So tune in next time for more exploration of Laythe.

Edited June 28, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[B-STRK]

Between your adventures and "Duna, Ore Bust!", I just learned you can use Narrowbands on the surface.

(And all this time I thought they had to be at altitude to work.)

Great to see surface action going on!

[Geschosskopf]

Between your adventures and "Duna, Ore Bust!", I just learned you can use Narrowbands on the surface.

You can also use the Surface Scanner in flight, you just have to be below about 1000m. That's pretty easy to do when the ground is flat but in jagged terrain where the plane/lander has to skim the hilltops, you usually only get those and miss the valleys.

To summarize what I've learned about Ore:

* Ore concentration is based on biome and thus more or less on the terrain of the planet. In each biome, ore concentration is constant UNLESS the patch of biome is relatively large, in which case there can be local hot- and coldspots. But separate patches of the same biome in different parts of the planet all have the same average concentration.

* * On any given planet, higher Ore concentrations seem to favor living in biomes that are "extreme". That is, the poles and also the highest and lowest elevations elsewhere. Middle elevations typically have only trace amounts.

* Orbital Scanner (stock): The only option is "Perform Survey", which gives you the semi-instant "heat map" map view of the planet. This shows areas where more of the promising biomes are located than not---it does NOT show the overall Ore distribution of the planet and the "cut-off" values do NOT reflect actual Ore levels. From this point, you have use the Surface Scanner or NBS to deduce which biomes have the best Ore, and then (if those biomes cover large areas of terrain, find any local hotspots).

* * Using the "Perform Survey" action requires an antenna and a fair amount of electric charge.

* * Probe must be in "polar" orbit (seemingly within +/- 80^ inclination).

* * Must be done for NBS to work.

* * Apparently (not yet tested) will work with mod resources, not just Ore.

* Orbital Scanner (with SCANsat). Has option for non-instant resource scanning and adds "Start Resource Scanning" action. This makes the scanner work like other SCANsat instruments, painting the map as the satellite moves over the surface, even if not the focused ship. Creates a resource overlay on the "big map" which shows the exact percent of Ore at any spot on the ground.

* * Apparently (not yet tested) this works with mod resources as well.

* * Only works in same altitude band (250-270km for most planets) as SCANsat biome and low-res radar scanners. This isn't mentioned in the text---I found this out the hard way.

* * Still requires running stock "Perform Survey" for NBS to work.

* * Having SCANsat to create a biome map is VERY helpful because it tells you both where each biome is and how much Ore is there in general.

* Surface Scanner has a text display that shows the vehicle's lat/lon, the biome it's currently in, and the exact amount of Ore (unknown about other resources) directly under the scanner. Doesn't tell you the average Ore in that biome so you don't know if where you're at is hot or cold, and has no map so you have no idea if any hot- or coldspots are nearby.

* * Works at up to about 1000m above the local terrain.

* * Before you get the NBS, the Ground Scanner just tells you which biomes are good and which are bad, but you won't know where any local hotspots are.

* * Without SCANsat, you won't have a biome map unless you use the debug menu.

* NBS ONLY WORKS (SCANsat or not) if you first do "Perform Survey" with the Orbital Scanner. Once the orbital survey is done, NBS shows a small map (about +/- 2^ lat/lon around the ship) that color-codes Ore concentrations (NOTE: NBS functions from the ground up to its max altitude). It has a button to select other resources but I haven't tested that yet. I recommend adjusting the color to show the multi-colored "heat map" option (red is good, green is bad) for best results. This map is a snapshot, not a video, so you must hit the Refresh button periodically if your ship is moving. However, the map is interactive in that most of the text it displays is based on the cursor's position on the map. There's a lot of good info here:

* * Target: This is the lat/lon of the cursor on the map.

* * Abundance: The amount of Ore (or other resource) under the cursor, not under the ship.

* * Biome: The biome under the cursor.

* * Map Center: The lat/lon of the ship at the instant you opened the map. If the ship is moving, it's not there now.

* * Resource: Shows the resource currently being looked at (default Ore) and, VERY importantly, the planet-wide average concentration of that resource within the biome under the cursor. This is vital info because it lets you know when you're looking at a hot- or coldspot.

---------------

As far as I can tell, getting to the good stuff requires a combination of all 3 scanners. The procedure I've come up with (which requires the NBS) works like this:

1. Perform Survey with the Orbital Scanner. If you're stock, this is the essential starting point. If you're using SCANsat, you still need to do this for the NBS to work.

2. Use SCANsat to map the Ore concentration and biomes of the planet. This will save you a lot of time in showing you where the biomes are across the planet and what level of Ore to expect in them in general. You can also, with a lot of tedium, zoom in on various likely spots and perhaps find the best place to land without having to use the other scanners. However, this requires a lot of time and is complicated by the resource overlay hiding the terrain contours. So all in all, I find it better to use SCANsat as a 1st pass to select several candidate landing sites for more detailed exploration on the ground.

3. Closely investigate each candidate site with a low-altitude, mobile, landable vehicle equipped with BOTH Surface Scanner and NBS. You need to be as low as possible, preferrably landed, to judge the levelness of the terrain for a landing field, and the severity of any slopes you'll have to drive rovers across between the landing zone and the actual mine. You need NBS to see if there are any hotspots in the vicinity of where you came down, mobility to get there, and the Ground Scanner to tell you when you've arrived. And then you need to be landed to mark the spot for future missions.

The selection criteria for the final choice must weigh and balance the following needs:

* Proximity to the equator. If the refueling base is intended for ships going back to space, this is very important unless the base is on a tiny moon with miniscule gravity. If the refueling base is for purely planetside needs, then this doesn't matter.

* Level ground in proximity to the good Ore. You need a fairly wide, flat area as a landing field/runway. Ideally, the good Ore will be in this same flat area but that's often not the case, which means you'll have to truck fuel to the LZ. It also means the actual mining/refining hardware will have to drive from the LZ to the hotspot. The danger (and tedium) of this increases with travel distance.

* Ore availability. This is actually the last consideration. It doesn't matter if the mountains have the highest Ore concentration on the planet if you can't safely land or drive to/from there. What you want is the best Ore you can find in areas that meet the other 2 requirements.

[Mister Dilsby]

^very comprehensive--you might consider copying over to Tutorials.

[Geschosskopf]

^very comprehensive--you might consider copying over to Tutorials.

Thanks. I was also told this by some others so, with some additions, I wrote it up properly.