Constellation Mission Packs Discussion Thread!

[Matuchkin]

On 5/22/2016 at 3:46 PM, pTrevTrevs said:

Back

Looks like a whole lab. Like a sketchy van, in the middle of nowhere, with blue fumes coming from its tailpipe.

[pTrevTrevs]

1 minute ago, Matuchkin said:

Looks like a whole lab. Like a sketchy van, in the middle of nowhere, with blue fumes coming from its tailpipe.

Let's just say that in case one of the crew develops cancer during the mission we have a contingency plan.

Can't really say anything else without breaking the rules anyway.

[PixelatedPig]

So here are some of my crafts so far (NEEDS MORE TESTING)

http://imgur.com/KNTrgdY&SNw8qQK&V2uU8wR&2xpeGNk

Ares I

Ares V

Orion

Altair

 

 

[Majorjim!]

Just now, PixelatedPig said:

So here are some of my crafts so far (NEEDS MORE TESTING)

http://imgur.com/KNTrgdY&SNw8qQK&V2uU8wR&2xpeGNk

Ares I

Ares V

Orion

Altair

 

 

Good stuff man! I cannot find the little link needed to show the pics here though.. Do you have another Imgur link?

[PixelatedPig]

28 minutes ago, Majorjim said:

Good stuff man! I cannot find the little link needed to show the pics here though.. Do you have another Imgur link?

Maybe this link will work : http://imgur.com/KNTrgdY

(I'm new to the ksp forum and Imgur ,I don't know everything yet.)

[Majorjim!]

Just now, PixelatedPig said:

Maybe this link will work : http://imgur.com/KNTrgdY

(I'm new to the ksp forum and Imgur ,I don't know everything yet.)

Take this part: KNTrgdY and paste it into the box that opens when you click the little White [ i ] in the top right of the toolbar.

[PixelatedPig]

Just now, Majorjim said:

Take this part: KNTrgdY and paste it into the box that opens when you click the little White [ i ] in the top right of the toolbar.

Fixed it. (I hope)

[PixelatedPig]

Got my SRP done. might need some changes to it but its a good start, I think.

[Majorjim!]

9 minutes ago, PixelatedPig said:

its a good start, I think.

It's a great start! I like it a lot.

[otblock]

Hey, I am interesting in taking this on, but before I really get down to business, I was wondering if there was some rule of thumb to see if a craft could feasibly get to Duna orbit? 

[pTrevTrevs]

9 minutes ago, otblock said:

Hey, I am interesting in taking this on, but before I really get down to business, I was wondering if there was some rule of thumb to see if a craft could feasibly get to Duna orbit? 

I've heard several different values, but it seems to me that a craft needs about 2,300 m/s of Deta V to make a flight to Duna and back. I suppose this number could be reduced somewhat by aerobraking, but it seems kind of cheesy to have such a fragile craft as the MTV aerobrake (after all, it uses an inflatable habitat and giant solar panels. You could probably cut the round trip number in half to get the amount you need for a one way flight (for the two landers).

[Majorjim!]

Just now, otblock said:

Hey, I am interesting in taking this on, but before I really get down to business, I was wondering if there was some rule of thumb to see if a craft could feasibly get to Duna orbit? 

If you take advantage of the Oberth effect it is a breeze, requiring only an extra 300 or so m/s at maximum Kerbin orbit. As long as it is highly eccentric. You need to take advantage of the speed generated heading towards Kerbin. Dumping the central tank further reduces dv required for a return trip. I would send a test craft out there and back. And as Trev says you don't really want to be aero braking anything except the two lander aero shells in a constellation mission. DV maps are very helpful and I recommend downloading the Kerbal engineer mod.

[otblock]

Oh, I think I may have phrased that incorrectly. I am more than capable of performing the transfers, the actual launch from Duna surface to Duna orbit is what I am curious about, since I don't want to abandon a crew on the surface, or crash them.

[pTrevTrevs]

I've managed to land a Cargo Altair on the Mun with an SPR.

Once the crewed lander arrives I'll figure out how to get the rover down.

[Majorjim!]

Just now, pTrevTrevs said:

I've managed to land a Cargo Altair on the Mun with an SPR.

 

Once the crewed lander arrives I'll figure out how to get the rover down.

I would send another lander with a ramp rover on it to unload all the cargo modules. It would be so much more elegant than dropping them from the platform.

[pTrevTrevs]

2 minutes ago, Majorjim said:

I would send another lander with a ramp rover on it to unload all the cargo modules. It would be so much more elegant than dropping them from the platform.

Right now I have a small monopropellant tank and some RCS thrusters on top of the rover and I'm planning to use that to slowly lower it from the lander. I want to keep the number of landers at a minimum to make flying the mission simple. I am considering making another version of Altair to carry living quarters to the landing site, but I'm not sure yet.

[Majorjim!]

Just now, pTrevTrevs said:

Right now I have a small monopropellant tank and some RCS thrusters on top of the rover and I'm planning to use that to slowly lower it from the lander. I want to keep the number of landers at a minimum to make flying the mission simple. I am considering making another version of Altair to carry living quarters to the landing site, but I'm not sure yet.

Yeah that would negate using another lander base. Although I am getting silly good FPS on Duna at the moment. over 500 parts at 60FPS!

 Having said that the wheels exploding when docking to a larger craft is still present even on Duna for certain craft.. It really is irritating although I think i will just release before Squad release 1.2 as it could easily be three-four months away..

[pTrevTrevs]

After making several revisions, modifications, and tweaks to both Ares V and Altair, I have the second crewed version of Altair in orbit waiting for an Orion to arrive. If everything goes well, this one will land next to the cargo lander , in a medium sized crater on the Mun's near side. I should probably mention that I've never made an accurate landing on the Mun, I don't have the benefit of Apollo's precision landing procedure (because I forgot how they did it). If I remember correctly the closest I've ever gotten to landing next to a target is about 2 kilometers.

 

And one for the bloopers reel:

Spoiler

This... incident happened twice. The second time (the one pictured) I was able to recover by forcing the rocket through the entire spin, effectively doing a 360 in flight, but by the time it was back on course the SRBs had spent so much fuel that making orbit and having enough fuel to propel Altair and Orion to the Mun was impossible. To prevent this I doubled the gimbal range on the Vector engines, bringing it to 40% of standard range.

 

Edited May 27, 2016 by pTrevTrevs

[pTrevTrevs]

Oh boy, I have more pictures to share and I'm too lazy to edit them into the post above, that means I get to double post... 

I decided to use Orion to perform the Munar Orbit Insertion because ever since the first landing attempt where I ran out of fuel just before an abort became impossible, I've been paranoid about not having enough fuel to make it down. Of course... this does mean I might not have enough fuel to get out of Munar orbit, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

How could I do this mission without an obligatory Kerbinrise photo? It's even more obligatory now that Scatterer is working fine (well... almost fine) on my computer!

[Majorjim!]

17 hours ago, otblock said:

Oh, I think I may have phrased that incorrectly. I am more than capable of performing the transfers, the actual launch from Duna surface to Duna orbit is what I am curious about, since I don't want to abandon a crew on the surface, or crash them.

It does not take much at all man. If you don't want to fly an unmanned test mission I would check out a dv map and use Kerbal Engineer to check the dv levels of your ascent craft. Then make sure you have excess dv and pin hopes on your ability to fly an ascent.

[Majorjim!]

I've been doing some in depth testing of all the power systems on the two lander craft. How the Power cart and ISRU systems work with various power systems in use and the best trade offs for fast refueling of the ascent vehicle.

 I am writing up detailed instructions for the use of these systems and what is needed to use the different parts together. It is slow but very fun!

Next on the list is the Ares V and that is the last part I need to build.

Edited May 27, 2016 by Majorjim

[pTrevTrevs]

Next phase of the mission has been completed.

Spoiler

 

Before the landing the crew took photographs of the landing site from orbit.

 

When the spacecraft arrived in Munar orbit the landing site was still in darkness, and although the lander has lights on it, a night landing is still undesirable, so the landing was delayed for a day while the sun rose over the site. After a small inclination correction, Altair separated from Orion (with the entire crew inside this time) and spun around slowly so camera on Orion could check for any problems.

Altair fired its DPS to place itself in its descent orbit over the East Mun Arch. 

Shortly before pitch-over the drop tanks were jettisoned. The crate in which the landing site is situated is visible just to the right of Altair.

Pitch-over is complete, and Altair steadily burns its engines at a low throttle setting to hover over the surface. At this point the pilot has taken manual control from the computers to bring the lander down next to the Cargo Altair already on the surface.

Final descent, one of the most tense and stressful parts of the mission. The lander touched down some distance away from the Cargo Altair to avoid damaging it with the DPS's exhaust.

To quote Alan Shepard, "It's been a long way, but we're here". I don't think I've given more care and attention to detail to a craft since I built my U-boat. Fortunately, it looks like it's paid off.

 

Surface activity photos will follow shortly.

[Majorjim!]

1 hour ago, pTrevTrevs said:

Next phase of the mission has been completed.

Looking great man!

 Are the toroidal drop tanks really needed though? Your descent stage is easily big enough to hold enough fuel for the trip. 

[pTrevTrevs]

2 hours ago, Majorjim said:

Looking great man!

 Are the toroidal drop tanks really needed though? Your descent stage is easily big enough to hold enough fuel for the trip. 

The drop tanks are really meant to be used for course corrections or the orbital insertion burn, I just happened to have enough fuel left over to use during the descent. I did nearly run out of fuel during the descent, but that was because I realized that I was going to land short of the target and had to adjust accordingly, spending more fuel and time.

Here'a an album of the next phase of the mission. it included the EVA, SPR activities, munar liftoff, and docking with Orion.

Spoiler

I wonder if that EVA follower mod I saw one time still works, it would be really helpful in situations like this.

The rover was delivered to the surface easily, but I realized that I had attached the decoupler backwards (it's actually attached to a cubic strut on the rover's underside and moved to the top with the offset tool), so the RCS pod stayed attached to the rover the whole time.

I planned on doing two or three EVAs, each including some activities near the landers and an excursion with the SPR to various locations around the crater that I thought looked interesting, mirroring the later Apollo landings. The first destination was a smaller crater on the edge of the big crater. It involved driving uphill for the first part and finding a way over the rim of the big crater into the small one. it turned out to be a rigorous test for the SPR.

Climbing over the crater's rim was dangerous and tense, but the rover handled it quite well.

Inside the small crater the crew stopped and got out of the rover to walk around a little bit, place a second flag marking the point of furthest excursion, and pose for a photograph with their rover.

Unfortunately, the driver (Macvan Kerman, not me) had come to believe that the SPR was indestructible, and was much less careless on the way back down the crater. The rover did survive this jump unharmed, however it did not arrive back at the landers in driveable condition.

Along the way the front windows, one of the things on the side (I have no idea what they would have been in real life), and the front left wheel all broke off the rover, leading Mission Control at KSC to cancel the other two EVAs and get in touch with the DMV to have Macvan's driver's license revoked. The SPR was declared unserviceable and the crew abandoned it as soon as they returned to the landers.

The lander was originally scheduled to lift off a day after the EVA, but due to an eclipse (and due to scatterer actually making the skies dark when it happened), the launch was delayed one day.

Altair back in munar orbit. 

One and a half revolutions later, Altair redocks to Orion and the crew transfer all the rock samples and written reports over to the Command Module. 

After moving everything that doesn't need to come back to Kerbin into Altair, the crew seals the hatch and jettisons the lander.

Altair fired its APS to depletion and then used its RCS to place it in an uncontrollable spin (only because because I thought it looked cool). it impacted the munar surface and was completely destroyed.

I promise to not post as many pictures this weekend. I feel like I'm dominating this thread, since I've probably uploaded at least 30 images today. I still have a few things to fix, but my pack will be released soon. 

Then I can start thinking about doing the Mars portion...

[PixelatedPig]

I diceded to remake my Orion, it looks more like the real Orion now.