A noob exploring in career mode

[Nefrums]

This is the story of my first really successful mission in KSP. I'm just picked up this game a week and a half ago, and I must say that i am really hooked.

So after restarting career mode twice I have sort of getting the hang of how to do things. I have been to the mun three times and have now unlocked nuclear engines! Time to go explore minmus and get enough science to go to other planets. I spent the last science points i had to unlock all other science modules!

So here is the nuclear powered ship i built:

With the orbit booster package attached:

X-wing inspired for easy landings

6.5 k dV after kerbin orbit should be enough to explore all of minmus i hoped.

Jeb and Bob was running the show and another scientist i had found drifting around the mun was on board for the exp. There where also 3 tourists on board to finance the trip.

the trip started by a detour to the mun to make the tourists happy and continued to minmus.

Landing on minmus proved very easy.

Here is a pic of Bob doing some experiments on minmus north pole. Having all of the science stuff in a cargo bay easily accessible from one ladder proved to be very convenient.

I leaned that the "Atmospheric Fluid Spectro-Variometer" does not work when there is no atmosphere....

A made several sub orbital flights on minmus and visited all 9 biomes.

The trip back was no problem and i had more than 500 dV left.

Coming in for the landing. The air-brakes made hitting KSC alot easier.

Almost hit the launchpad I used parachutes.

The rewards: 7k science!!!! And i got lots of money back as the expensive science modules was safe in the cargo bay.

Now i could unlock most all the stuff i needed to go to my next stop: Duna! (I'm half way through that mission and will post a report on that later)

[LittleBlueGaming]

Wow, great work. Can't wait to see your report on Duna.

[Cydonian Monk]

Nice. And I'm impressed that craft made orbit - I was trying something equally weird (a Mk2 shuttle wedged between two tanks) and eventually just decided to wait until v1.0.3.

[Nefrums]

It was really not a problem getting to orbit, it was much more stable like this than having the booster below the craft.

[Falkenherz]

Hey, nice report! Once I will have Nerv unlocked, your example is how my spacecraft is going to look like! Right now I am stuck with Sparks, Terriers and Poodles.

Edited June 3, 2015 by Falkenherz

[Nefrums]

One this i forgot to mention, It is important that the stuff in the cargo bay is not attached to the bottom of the cargo bay. That is to close to where the engines are attached. Science modules, batteries etc. do not handle the heat very well and tend to explode.

[Mister Dilsby]

Not bad at all, for a n00b! Clearly you learned a lot in a week and a half. Am curious if it came from the Forums (and if so, what threads/tutorials were most helpful?), trial and error, or are you just some kind of kerbal savant?

[Geschosskopf]

Nefrums, we'll have to keep an eye on you. For somebody who claims to be a noob, you've definitely got a flair for this. If this is what you're doing right off the bat, I can't wait to see what you do in a few months . Bravo. And welcome aboard!

[Nefrums]

Thanks.

Right of the bat i did this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/32027-You-Will-Not-Go-To-Space-Today-Post-your-fails-here%21?p=1990196#post1990196

I did read/watch quite a few tutorials, mostly from the wiki. The parts page on the wiki + excel is a fantastic way to endure boring work meetings. But it was most trial and error.

I am an engineer so the math part of the game was simple.

[Nefrums]

So I wanted to go to Duna next.

If i were going to explore more than one biome i needed en engineer to repack the chutes, and after a long time pondering different designs i decided to go for the very heavy mk1-2 cockpit. Using that made the lander a bit bigger but it simplified everything a lot.

Here is the rather large ship:

7 Nervs with 3.4k dV for the interplanetary tripp and 7500 extra fuel for the lander.

I waited until the right planetary alignment and launched of towards duna!

Approaching duna all 18 air brakes extended in preparation for arobraking maneuver.

Then it was just to lower the air brakes when the orbit approached what i wanted.

Time to bring out the lander:

Brakes and chutes slowed the lander to about 15m/s so only a small burn was required for landing.

Back to orbit was easy, but a bit slower than expected. I fooled myself by looking only at TWR from the engineer mod. I thought that 1.5 was fine, as that works well on kerbin.

But: 1.5 TWR on kerbin means 0.5g ~ 5 m/s2 acceleration. On Duna (that has 0.3 g) 1.5 TWR givers 0.15g ~1.5 m/s2 acceleration. I could just have had 2-4 more engines on the lander, the wight is negligible. As it was now i needed all of the 2k dV the lander had to get back to orbit.

I made refueled the lander and made 3 more trips down to duna. Visiting 4/5 biomes. I could not find the last.

Another thing i hadn't thought about was that the dV of the interplanetary stage went up with each trip down do duna, as it used up the rocket fuel reserved for the lander and decreased the mass of the ship.

I decided to swing by ike.

I made a few sub orbital flights and then went back to orbit for a last refuel.

I visited 6/8 biomes on ike.

Then it was time to head back.

Then i found this contract:

Sounds like easy 650k i thought.

As i by now had over 3k dV in the interplanetary stage i decided to be nice to the kerbals and go home right away. Doing a 2k dV burn

When i approached Kerbin i began to doubt my decision as i was coming in rather fast, and only had 1k dV left to do a flyby of minmus nd mun...

Time for some air braking when hitting the atmosphere at close to 5k m/s.

Things blowing up. Who needs winglets in space anyway

I was not captured by kerbin, but a 100 dV burn was enough. As this left me with an extremely elliptic orbit it was time for a minmus flyby.

With a 10 dV correction i manged get the minmus and mun encounter on the same orbit...

Pure luck

After That i used the last of the fuel in the interplanetary stage to leave that in a circular orbit. Then detached the lander with half a tank of gas, and made for home:

Rewards: 14k sience!!!!! Another successful mission.

Whats next. The joel 5 chalange looks fun.

[Mister Dilsby]

Well done! I really like that picture of your lander approaching the polar region. Looks like you made it to Duna and back ahead of me

[Geschosskopf]

Excellent stuff. Keep it up. Us old codgers need the inspiration

[jocker-il]

I'm also envious, but then - you're an engineer and good at math, so that's an advantage you have...

Back to orbit was easy, but a bit slower than expected. I fooled myself by looking only at TWR from the engineer mod. I thought that 1.5 was fine, as that works well on kerbin.

But: 1.5 TWR on kerbin means 0.5g ~ 5 m/s2 acceleration. On Duna (that has 0.3 g) 1.5 TWR givers 0.15g ~1.5 m/s2 acceleration. I could just have had 2-4 more engines on the lander, the wight is negligible. As it was now i needed all of the 2k dV the lander had to get back to orbit.

If you look at the top of the K.E.R. display when in VAB or SPH you can change the orbiting/landing body and situation (atmospheric or not) so you can have KER compute the TWR & Dv you'r welcome

[Nefrums]

If you look at the top of the K.E.R. display when in VAB or SPH you can change the orbiting/landing body and situation (atmospheric or not) so you can have KER compute the TWR & Dv you'r welcome

Yes This is exactly what i was doing without realizing that the 1.5 TWR (on Duna surface) i aimed for, didn't give me a 5 m/s2 acceleration but only 1.5 m/s2

[Nefrums]

RL have been getting in the way of KSP lately :-(

But I have managed to build my first two part ship in orbit, the "Joel Explorer 1". And also the second one the "Joel Explorer 2" as the first one had some heat issues.

I will post pics later today when i have run some more tests and made sure "Joel Explorer 2" is ready for the Joel 5 challenge. For now it is waiting in orbit :-) (and will probably have to wait there for 6 months for the transfer window)

It is a 900t ship with 4 landers.

The mission will be to land Bob & Jeb on all Joel moons and recover science data from alteast half of the bioms on each moon.

One thing i leaned from "Joel Explorer 1" is how to keep the nervs running without overheating. The trick is to have as much mass as possible within 2 connections steps of the engines. The preliminary testing on "Joel Explorer 2" seems to indicate that it can run the 16 nervs at full power for about 8 min before they start to blow up. And I'm going to need it as the acceleration is only slightly above 1 m/s2.

[Mister Dilsby]

It is a 900t ship with 4 landers.

Well that's ambitious! I'm sure you already know some tricks to make the long burn time more manageable, but one of my favorites is what I call the "swingset maneuver" a.k.a. periapsis pump. Set your maneuver node for Kerbin escape/Jool transfer (or Joel, whatever ) but don't do the burn all on one orbit. Instead, do your first burn for just a few minutes (half before and half after the node, of course), then reset the node, make another orbit, and repeat. Start doing this a few days before your ideal transfer window so that you can give the ship that last kick right on time. I did a transfer like this for my Eve mission in 0.90, and was even able to refuel the ship before the final kick. (needed to, as a design problem prevented me using the LV-Ns and i had to transfer on aerospikes.

You can also transfer from Minmus orbit if it's the right day of the 'minth' at much lower cost than from LKO, and of course you can fuel in LMO. Since you will need far less dV departing from an altitude of 46,400 km your burn will not be nearly as long.

Hopefully some combination of this and heat management will get you there--good luck!

[Nefrums]

Thanks,

I came to the same conclusions regarding the "periapsis pump", while trying to launch "Joel Explorer 1". But i gave up as some of the Nervs where overheating in less than 2 min.

Launching from Minmus orbit might be a good idee, I have not thought of that. Will have to try that.

Edit: Crap, I have misspelled Jool in the name of my ship.. Will have to rename it.

Edited June 9, 2015 by Nefrums

[Nefrums]

Ok. Now my attempt At the Jool-5 challenge is about to leave orbit.

The ship is assembled in orbit:

It was launched in two parts

Tail section:

Simple construction. With 2 long MK3 tanks in the center, each with four Nervs attached. Radially there are 12 medium mk3 tanks attached individually to the center tanks. At the top there is a large docking port and a detachable expendable AI pilot along with some batteries.

Only 95 parts exuding the AI. 492t and 81200 units of fuel for the nervs.

To get it into orbit this was used:

What the separator is doing there in this picture i have no idee....

7 mammoths and 24 kickbacks is all that is needed to get 500t into orbit

The front of the craft is a bit more exiting as it holds all the landers.

276 parts hut only 397t. it brings 8 more nervs and 41200 more fuel for them as well as 8300 units of rocket fuel to refuel the landers. Al radial mounted tanks are detachable and the ones with fairings on them will act as tugs for the Tylo landers.

Lander 1: "Sparrow"

Useful for landing on small moons and will hopefully make it back to kerbin. At 9.5t it is the smallest of the landers, 2,2 kdV should be enough for most of the jool moons. It holds 900 units of rocket fuel, with means that it can be refueled 9-10 times with the spare fuel in the Jool Explorer 2. It caries all non atmo. science stuff.

Lander 2: "Eagle"

SSTO Plane capable of reaching orbit from Kerbin. This is intended to be the lander of choice for Laythe. It is fully reusable but as it wights 22.5t it will probably be abandoned after use. It caries all science stuff.

Lander 3: "Badger"

This but ugly thing is a meant to be one way trip to Tylo surface for Bob, where he can drive around and do some science while hoping Jeb will come down and save him.

Lander 4: "Piglet"

This is the heaviest of the lander at 26,8t. 40 parts whereof 17 engines... This thing is how Jeb will save Bob from Tylo. With 6,8k dV and over 2 TWR it should be easy.

Launching the unbalanced front of the ship proved harder than launching the tail section, despite being 100t lighter.

The same booster where used:

With 50dV left in the booster, it reached the tail section:

Docking big ships is not fun!!!!

I used the last of the fuel in the tail section booster to refill the tanks of one of the landers that fore some in-explainable reason where empty, then pushed the the ship up to a slightly higher orbit where the first pic on this post i taken. (You can even see the booster drifting away in the background.)

Now it is of towards Jool!!!!

(but first a Bob and Jeb have to wait 6 months in space for the transfer window...)

[lajoswinkler]

I see you like those fuel tanks with flat sides. I like them, too.

[Nefrums]

The "Jool Explorer 2" will not make the trip to Jool after all. As I have decided to try for the "JEBEDIAH'S LEVEL" of the challenge instead. This will require a slight redesign of the front part of my ship to accommodate 5 scientists + Jeb and get them back to kerbin safely.

I will post new pics of the launch of the new front section of the ship, the "Jool Explorer 3". I will load the save I had after the lunch of the tail section into orbit and continue from there. I dread having to redo the docking of the ship parts a third time...

[Nefrums]

So there have been a slight redesign of the ship, as the mission parameters where changed.

I will be going for "JEBEDIAH'S LEVEL" of the Jool 5 challenge.

This ship will now carry one scientist specially trained to do experiments on each moon, and Jeb.

When going for "JEBEDIAH'S LEVEL" Jeb relay should plant flags on all the moons as well, so he will get lots of exp and level up.

The "Jool Explorer 3" is not very different from the "Jool Explorer 2" only the nose of the ship have been redesigned.

A 6 kerbal return craft is now added. This is a simple ion powered design capable of landing safely on kerbin.

Air brakes and chutes where removed from the Sparrow lander as that is no longer is intended as a return craft.

The tail selection of the ship is the same.

Some images of the launch and docking of front section of then "Jool Explorer 3":

I accidentally docked a bit wrong, the central tanks are twisted 90 degrees so the radially mounted tanks do not line up perfectly. But that does not matter to much as they anyway will be dropped early in the mission. And as the docking is so painful to do i did not what to redo it.

After doing some em.. "training" in orbit for close to a year it was time to head of to jool. Having disabled the fuel from all but two of the last tanks i have 458 dV before they are going to be drooped.

The first burn lasted about 9 min at full power, that is the limit of the configuration i have before the nervs overheat.

I balanced the center of gravity of the craft by transferring fuel for tanks on one side to offset the wight difference of the landers.

I made a second burn at the Periapsis before making the final burn to Jool. The final burn lasted 15 min. where i had to run the engines at about 70% to prevent overheat.

I used close to 40000 units of fuel and drooped 6 of the 12 radially mounted tanks in the tail section:

Jool intercept plotted.

[Geschosskopf]

Quite a monster. Good luck

[Nefrums]

today i have failed at arobraking at Jool, tomorrow i will try Lathye...

[Geschosskopf]

today i have failed at arobraking at Jool, tomorrow i will try Lathye...

How can one fail to aerobrake at Jool, unless one totally misses the atmosphere? That thing will slow you down amazingly well with only the slightest touch

[Nefrums]

and make your craft explode, all parts of the ship overheated within ~1 second of entering the atmosphere, even when the periapsis was at 198km.

I managed to survive it once with a periapsis close to 199km. But then the ship was not slowed significantly.

If anyone have any tips on how to do it I would be glad to hear.

I did go in at the right side of jool so the surface velocity was lower than the orbit velosity, but still close to 9km/s

Edited June 12, 2015 by Nefrums