Sights of Kidonia (Jool-5 Challenge Attempt 3) - on break pending Jool arrival

[problemecium]

Part Seventeen: Opps I swallowed mah Oxidizor!

After finally getting Kidonia completely and totally fueled up, a few final checks were in order, for example whether enough resources such as MonoPropellant or Xenon were available. A second Monopropellant tanker was launched to top off the last bit of MonoPropellant, and then it and the last fuel tanker were removed, leaving Kidonia free to depart.

Unfortunately there was yet another complication. Kidonia requires a partial fill of Oxidizer with which to refill some of its landers. I'd remained aware of this and made sure to drop off a bit of Oxidizer whenever I dropped off LiquidFuel, but I'd inadvertently ended up supplying over twice the necessary amount.
Since this would weigh down Kidonia unnecessarily, to minimize the risk of coming up short on delta-V I decided to remedy this using a large empty fuel tanker, which is to function henceforth as an orbital fuel reserve. A few short trips back and forth were then made with the existing fuel tanker to skim off the extra Oxidizer and store it here.

[DMSP]

Cool!

I'll start following this!

[problemecium]

So. As some of you may have inferred, or at least hoped, based on this last update, as of today Kidonia is now actually officially completely really ready to go. I even have a maneuver node and everything, only 15 minutes in the future, so there's literally nothing left to do but press "Z" and hold attitude until I have a Jool encounter.

So that live stream where I was going to broadcast and narrate the (beginning of the) maiden voyage... any interest? I can't be certain about my schedule for the rest of the week, but I should be able to clear out some time soon (particularly if I can't play my Career save in the meantime). I'm thus willing to take input on when anyone interested would prefer I do a stream, so, you know, say something

Edited December 2, 2015 by parameciumkid

[problemecium]

Okay so the stream was canceled due to a complete lack of responses, and I just went ahead and did the ejection burn, which brings us to...

Part Eighteen: You Thought It'd Never Actually Set Sail, Didn't You?

All the preparations were finally complete and Kidonia was at last fully ready to depart. It turned out to be a truly massive beast:

Yes indeed, 1398 parts, 1332.42 tons, and at an expense to my space program of well over 3 million funds in total.

When Kidonia actually began its long, tedious ejection burn from Kerbin's SOI, its sheer bulk made for an abysmal TWR of less than 0.2, leading to a projected burn time of over 30 minutes. While I had the option of splitting it into several smaller burns across multiple orbits, the already late departure time made me impatient to get going, so I stuck with it and went with a slightly less efficient and much more boring single burn.

Due to the massive part counts involved, the physics engine was only able to run at about 8% speed - yes, that's right. Time in KSP was running about 11 times slower than realtime. Thus my 30 minute maneuver, by my calculations, would take between 5 and 8.5 hours. This in itself led me to dedicate an entire post just to the departure burn. In addition, due to some thermal changes that I believe came in KSP 1.0.5, I was unable to run the nuclear engines continuously at full power, so with breaks to cool off and a reduced throttle, the maneuver was projected to take even longer.

Fortunately for me, way back at the beginning I had designed Kidonia to withstand up to 4x physics warp, a feature on which I was very happy to capitalize. My real time spent on the ejection burn was cut from possibly over 8 hours to just under 4. Due to the late departure, somewhat more delta-V was spent ejecting than planned, but hopefully my earlier fuel optimizations will end up helping. As it stands Kidonia burned 75,227 units of LiquidFuel, or just under 44%. Since I'll be leaving some components behind, as long as I maneuver judiciously within the Jool system I should, with any luck, have enough left to get back when I'm done. Of course I can't be certain until that time actually comes...

As visible here, Kidonia is now on a transfer orbit to Jool, but it still has a small inclination correction to make on the way. Meanwhile, the KSC staff plans to take a very well-earned week-long vacation!

Edited December 7, 2015 by parameciumkid
I hate this new editor >:[

[Mister Dilsby]

Yow that's big. 

[DMSP]

Nice ship, and it's great to see you depart Kerbin.

More soon please!

[problemecium]

^ In response to this, as long as I'm still (barely) on the front page: Don't expect anything soon, unfortunately - between now and the Jool arrival are well over 100 days, during which it'll have nothing to do and during which my Kerbals will be busy with my Duna mission and other missions. I'll post an update as soon as something actually happens involving Kidonia, but that's likely to be in a few weeks at best. Sorry!

[burnoutforzai]

Amazing stuff!

[rbt0583]

Hi this is AMAZING. What mods did you use for this (if any). Can't wait to see more.

[problemecium]

^ No mods! All stock.

Okay, all stock parts. I make liberal use of Kerbal Alarm Clock for mission planning, use Navball Docking Alignment Indicator for docking information, and have EVE and PlanetShine installed for shinies. Some of the early components were built with the assistance of Kerbal Engineer, but since the 1.0.5 patch I haven't had it installed. So long story short, no mods that add any features I can't replicate without them.

[rbt0583]

On January 15, 2016 at 1:48 PM, parameciumkid said:

^ No mods! All stock.

Okay, all stock parts. I make liberal use of Kerbal Alarm Clock for mission planning, use Navball Docking Alignment Indicator for docking information, and have EVE and PlanetShine installed for shinies. Some of the early components were built with the assistance of Kerbal Engineer, but since the 1.0.5 patch I haven't had it installed. So long story short, no mods that add any features I can't replicate without them.

Cool thanks!!

[TopHeavy11]

Awesome! I bet flying the entire thing was kinda like flying a building. Or did you have enough reaction wheels?

[problemecium]

Yes and no.

I included tons of reaction wheels, and when I did a "test" of the empty hull early on using HyperEdit, I found it pleasantly maneuverable and stable. However, with over 1000 parts added, it still felt like dragging a skyscraper sideways through Gorilla Glue. ^^;

[max_creative]

HOLY MOHO THAT'S A BIG SHIP!!! 

[problemecium]

Well now that the thread's been bumped, allow me to make a sad announcement.

When Kidonia is loaded in KSP 1.1, it immediately and spontaneously explodes. I have yet to find the specific cause or any workarounds. I'm currently pondering whether to attempt to salvage the mission using HyperEdit or save file editing, to reconstruct the ship and hack it "back" into place, or to just give up and build a new one.
I do still have my copy of KSP 1.0.5, so if demand is very high and I find no better solutions I do have the option of trying to finish the mission there, but I'd like to make use of 1.1's performance improvements if at all possible.

For the time being, Sights of Kidonia continues to be on hiatus :\

[max_creative]

40 minutes ago, parameciumkid said:

Well now that the thread's been bumped, allow me to make a sad announcement.

When Kidonia is loaded in KSP 1.1, it immediately and spontaneously explodes. I have yet to find the specific cause or any workarounds. I'm currently pondering whether to attempt to salvage the mission using HyperEdit or save file editing, to reconstruct the ship and hack it "back" into place, or to just give up and build a new one.
I do still have my copy of KSP 1.0.5, so if demand is very high and I find no better solutions I do have the option of trying to finish the mission there, but I'd like to make use of 1.1's performance improvements if at all possible.

For the time being, Sights of Kidonia continues to be on hiatus :\

Awwww  the bigger the Jool-5 ship the more awesome!

[rbt0583]

1 hour ago, parameciumkid said:

Well now that the thread's been bumped, allow me to make a sad announcement.

When Kidonia is loaded in KSP 1.1, it immediately and spontaneously explodes. I have yet to find the specific cause or any workarounds. I'm currently pondering whether to attempt to salvage the mission using HyperEdit or save file editing, to reconstruct the ship and hack it "back" into place, or to just give up and build a new one.
I do still have my copy of KSP 1.0.5, so if demand is very high and I find no better solutions I do have the option of trying to finish the mission there, but I'd like to make use of 1.1's performance improvements if at all possible.

For the time being, Sights of Kidonia continues to be on hiatus :\

Shame I was looking forwards too see what would happen.

[CaribouGone]

On 4/24/2016 at 7:31 PM, parameciumkid said:

Well now that the thread's been bumped, allow me to make a sad announcement.

When Kidonia is loaded in KSP 1.1, it immediately and spontaneously explodes. I have yet to find the specific cause or any workarounds. I'm currently pondering whether to attempt to salvage the mission using HyperEdit or save file editing, to reconstruct the ship and hack it "back" into place, or to just give up and build a new one.
I do still have my copy of KSP 1.0.5, so if demand is very high and I find no better solutions I do have the option of trying to finish the mission there, but I'd like to make use of 1.1's performance improvements if at all possible.

For the time being, Sights of Kidonia continues to be on hiatus :\

Aw, that's very sad news, indeed. This is one of the greatest kerbal creations i've ever seen.

I don't know about cargo bays (that doesn't mean they didn't change), but with the changes to wheels and legs, maybe one of the other vehicles on board is causing the problem. If you're lucky, maybe its just the save file, and reassembling it will go smoothly.

If you're willing to share the craft files, i could poke around and try to narrow down the problem.

Make Kidonia Great Again! 

[problemecium]

Good news everyone! I identified and fixed the bug with Kidonia. It turned out to be a thermal bug, like the one I had documented before. When first loading the vessel, apparently some parts spawned at ridiculous temperatures and blew the whole thing up. By momentarily turning on the "Ignore max temperature" cheat and giving the game a few seconds to recalculate the proper temperatures, I was able to save the ship.
And if I might say, I'm quite pleased at the increase in framerate ^^

That said, I'm still facing a minor dilemma. KSP 1.1 has introduced a number of changes in Science functionality, and also changed the model for the small landing gear, which was in use on the Laythe plane. If I continue the mission, it looks probable that I'll be unable to perform the planned Laythe landing due to the plane not working (gear blocked = probably true). Also there is some uncertainty as to whether my other landers are still properly equipped for Science harvesting. For example, the atmospheric spectro-variometer now requires several hundred units of ElectricCharge for each transmission, the power consumption of rover wheels has been multiplied, and the small landing gear seem to be more fragile than before.
I'll try and keep this thread updated on what I decide to do. In the end, I might still end up restarting the whole mission after all >_>

[Andem]

35 minutes ago, parameciumkid said:

Good news everyone! I identified and fixed the bug with Kidonia. It turned out to be a thermal bug, like the one I had documented before. When first loading the vessel, apparently some parts spawned at ridiculous temperatures and blew the whole thing up. By momentarily turning on the "Ignore max temperature" cheat and giving the game a few seconds to recalculate the proper temperatures, I was able to save the ship.
And if I might say, I'm quite pleased at the increase in framerate ^^

That said, I'm still facing a minor dilemma. KSP 1.1 has introduced a number of changes in Science functionality, and also changed the model for the small landing gear, which was in use on the Laythe plane. If I continue the mission, it looks probable that I'll be unable to perform the planned Laythe landing due to the plane not working (gear blocked = probably true). Also there is some uncertainty as to whether my other landers are still properly equipped for Science harvesting. For example, the atmospheric spectro-variometer now requires several hundred units of ElectricCharge for each transmission, the power consumption of rover wheels has been multiplied, and the small landing gear seem to be more fragile than before.
I'll try and keep this thread updated on what I decide to do. In the end, I might still end up restarting the whole mission after all >_>

Remember, Hyperedit is your friend, I was able to rebuild an entire save with it.