Missions in New Horizons with 100+ mods

Tiber9 · July 3, 2015

Update/Change: The install I was using for this sandbox-story-mission recently became unstable (my fault), and I was feeling like the goofy storytelling was getting in the way of going on missions anyway, so I created it anew! Newest save incarnation starts in the 4th post.

This is now 1.0.4, 64bit on linux. Ckan lists 127 mods at the moment, plus others I added manually. This was always what I wanted to do, honestly.

So, I'm still working with my original premise

(after a series of disasters, kerbin's manned space program is shut down, but Jeb and a mysterious benefactor have created a new space center elsewhere on kerbin, from where I will do all my launches. Jeb isn't telling his team much, but there does seem to have been an alien spacecraft, perhaps secret ancient tech, and a desire for secrecy from the rest of kerbin, be it because manned space programs are outlawed, or just because Jeb's secrets are potentially dangerous. [Re]Creation of space infrastructure and exploration of New Horizons solar system is planned),

but I'm going to focus more on the missions and less on specific kerbals or dialogue. Posts below are the original story, mission reports from the new install soon to follow.

Everything that follows in this post is now a bit out of date, but I'm keeping it up so if I ever reach an 'end' of this project, I can look back on it.

Greetings!

I'm starting this story/mission report thread to help focus and share my ideas in a new save, using many mods including the glorious New Horizons Planet Pack. Not a lot of craft engineering in this report, but there will be more as I go.

Mods at the moment:

Toolbar

AquilaEnterprises Bulb

ALCOR

EVE

Chatterer

Community Resource

DangIt

Action Groups Extended

Fusebox

G-effects

HabitatPack

HeatControl

Heat Resistent Plane (mostly for looks more than heat concerns)

HullCam

Raster Prop Monitor

KER

Landglider

Kopernicus -> New Horizons

kOS

KSCSwitcher (messed with this with hilarious results)

KW

Infernal Robotics

Docking Alignment Indicator

Planet Shine

Remote Tech 2

TacFuelBalancer

TACLS + TACLSMining

TankLock

TextureReplacer with some KSPRC textures and Epic Suits

KAC

TweakScale

VesselView

VNG

Others I see in the parts but don't remember downloading and can't find the folder for... lol

And an old save with B9, for later...

My Goals with this save are:

Sandbox mode, as if Kerbals have already invented space-flight. The story must motivate my missions. I always just unlock tech trees from Mun and Minmus otherwise.

Fluid Updates and Mod-list changes, meaning I want to keep playing this save, even if things change or update slightly, instead of the habit I have of starting from scratch with every new release or new mod update.

Fly ships from IVA using RPM (and my controller), and fly unmanned ships with kOS scripts.

Explore new places without looking up every last detail before I go anywhere. Delta-v requirements will be all different in New Horizons, and there are tons of new places to go!

Most of all: try new and varied things, and challenge myself to be more creative with each project, and share what I do so that I can be exposed to all of your ideas. Let me know what you think about the format, the story, my ships, etc.

Thanks to Squad and all of the mod developers! Also, thanks to my awesome girlfriend who helped me with the story.

Story:

It is nearly thirty years after the first Kerbal reached space. Though the funding for such efforts has all but dried up, die-hard explorers are still reaching into the void, hoping to learn the secrets of long-term space habitation. Leena Gammara is the third long-term, manned spacecraft the space agency has recently launched. Their mission: to leave Kerbin's sphere of influence, orbit the Mother-planet Sonnah, and spend several months at Mun, another moon of Sonnah, testing their own health and responses to life in space.

Meanwhile, on Kerbin, what was supposed to be a routine CommSat launch fails horribly in every way:

In the aftermath of the satellite launch failure and, more importantly, the mysterious and unsolved loss of the Mun explorers, the Kerbal Space Agency was shut down.

Ex astronauts, initially active in their outcry to continue their missions, eventually lost hope and filled their time by thrill-seeking, terrestrial adventures.

Many years later...

To Be Continued....

Edited July 24, 2015 by Tiber9

Tiber9 · July 3, 2015

Quick out of character mission report:

While I sort out some technical issues with my main install I did some concept testing in vanilla 1.0.4 (my Kerrick's tale is 1.0.2 ATM).

I wanted to put together a manned lifting system that simply put my commsats in orbit, since I moved the KSC but I don't feel like figuring out why my Remote Tech config edit didn't move the KSC antenna location. Plus, i wanted to see if i could make a guided return vehicle which could reliably land back at the new KSC, since, in the story, secrecy is a concern.

Basically it goes monoprop-powered glider/return vehicle, fuel, (hypothetical cargo area), fuel, upper stage engine, fuel, lower stage engine.

I had my quicksave all set to test returns from a 100km orbit, and was proud to only slightly overshoot on my first attempt. Most of all I was happy to see that my little glider, even with solar panels, did fine with the re-entry heating. Deadly reentry may not have let those panels through, i'll have to check...

Anyway, only problem was a terrible glide ratio at low speeds (stubby wings) and a lot of drag (square tail). After some testing I added a few emergency monoprop engines and a safety chute at the stern, to be covered by a decoupler. Pics of the glider below, Further updates when I get back into the main save.

Tiber9 · July 4, 2015

Kerrick looked around himself in amazement while Leonora taxied the vtol plane towards the mission control building. A new space program! They deplaned and approached the building.

"Where is everyone?" Kerrick asked. Just then he noticed movement overhead, and looked up to see a Kerbal standing on the roof of the mission control building, silhouetted against the sun. A familiar voice called down Kerrick's name. But, it couldn't be, thought Kerrick.

Then, the figure on the roof did the unthinkable: it stepped casually off the edge and plummeted down to where Kerrick and Leonora stood. At the last moment, the kerbal deployed his rescue chute and landed nonchalantly in front of Kerrick.

"Jednah!" Kerrick shouted. "But-what happened to you?" he stammered.

"Oh," Jednah replied, "You'll never believe the crazy mission I just finished...

"Since we've been cut off from our old satellites, we needed to put up a new comms network for unmanned launches. But Jeb is adamant that we keep everything secret, so he decided to put a tiny glider on top of a rocket to make sure I would land back at this space center, instead of wherever my capsule ended up.

"But the rocket was wobbly and my wings kept making it unstable and flipping me over during launch. Eventually, we stole a few jet liner tail fins and stuck them on, and that seemed to work. The problem was, I'm used to launching from the old space center, where the runway faced east! Even with all the fancy new instruments in my cockpit--seriously, it was awesome--I somehow got confused and ended up launching to the west!

"So there I was in a retrograde orbit, but Jebediah being who he is, he just had me level out my inclination on instruments only and go ahead and deploy the satellites backwards! It was all fine until I tried to come home, because I was aero-breaking the wrong way. After everything, I still ended up coming down thousands of kilometers away from the space center! Luckily that was in the middle of the ocean and nobody noticed, but I was really embarrassed when Jeb had to come pick me up in the plane..." Jedna said.

Kerrick cleared his dry throat. "That's crazy...but not as crazy as the fact that you are alive! Your ship was lost in orbit of Mun years ago! We were all told you were dead!"

Jedna shook his head. "After our systems went offline, we waited almost a week with emergency power. Somehow Jeb got in touch with us, helped us get the ship working, had us land here. Been here ever since."

"But that was years ago!" Kerrick cried. "Why did no one tell us at KSA?"

"I think Jeb should be the one to explain that. All of this is his project. After the ban on space flight, he found some kind of secret backer who helps him pull off this operation. But what I can tell you is that we are not just going out to explore. This all started with what we found on Mun..."

"And what did you find?" Kerrick asked.

Jedna smiled. "Something really cool. Come with me, I'll show you." As the sun set, they all took a [very] long walk to the other side of the space port where Kerrick saw, for the first time, what could only be the recovered remains of an Alien spacecraft.

Tiber9 · July 20, 2015

The order has come down from Jeb and his mysterious contact: hack into the old ksc radio network in order to conceal our new comm sats. Once all three are up, unmanned launches will be possible.

My RogueSat Manned launch system. Pretty sure this is the smallest manned, payload-bearing launch system I've made. I ditched kOS as until i get better it would require constant re-loading, but I did fly some of these manned launches all from IVA using raster prop monitor, very fun!

Mission Summary:

[TABLE=width: 500]

[TR]

[TD]Launch[/TD]

[TD]Crew[/TD]

[TD]Vessel[/TD]

[TD]Report[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]1[/TD]

[TD]Trichel Kerman[/TD]

[TD]RogueSat Manned Launch System (RSMLS)1[/TD]

[TD]Success! Crew Recovered, Roguesat in place.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]2[/TD]

[TD]Jorfrod Kerman[/TD]

[TD]RSMLS 2[/TD]

[TD]Failure! Launch profile inefficiency led to premature engine shutdown and cancellation of deployment. Crew Recovered.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]3[/TD]

[TD]Gwenmie Kerman[/TD]

[TD]RSMLS 3[/TD]

[TD]Success![/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]4[/TD]

[TD]Chadbur Kerman[/TD]

[TD]RSMLS 4[/TD]

[TD]Success![/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD][/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

All crew recovered, Satellites in place. Brief blackout every hour and fifteen minutes is manageable.

Tiber9 · July 20, 2015

Aptur: the 40Km asteroid that lurks just outside Kerbin's SOI. Jeb wants.

This mission is intentionally overbuilt. There are a number of new technologies that need to be tested, and Aptur provides the perfect subject. Objectives:

Determine a simple, low-cost way to reach Aptur from Kerbin.
Test all available resource scanning equipment.
Scan Aptur's entire surface and map resources.
Make note of any anomalies.
Determine Aptur max distance from Kerbin for Comms Dish purposes.
Deploy three repeater comm sats around aptur to facilitate future unmanned missions.

Jeb has hinted at his intention to establish a large base on Aptur, perhaps even with its own production capability (via Extraplanetary Launch Pads).

The Launch:

Leanora, Kerrick, and Jorfrod Kerman will now begin plotting their course for aptur.

Tiber9 · July 20, 2015

Well this mission involved a lot of surprises. Usually I line up planes and inclinations, then worry about phasing orbits, but with Aptur it didn't matter if I was ahead or behind because at some point in each orbit Kerbin will cut just ahead or behind. So I launched into a nearly-matching phase and then worried about inclination and eccentricity. It took a couple orbits, but after two days our crew had achieved the elusive Aptur Capture!

I thought getting to aptur would be the hard part, as the thing is tiny and should have been easy to achieve polar orbit around. But this is when we encountered some strange problems.

First, looks like some last-minute adjustments in the VAB had moved one of my comm sats to clip into the orbit scanner.

Second, our brave kerbals suffered a failure in the robotic arm (read: the cargo bay part had attached to the hinge instead of to the tank above, resulting in a 'folding spacecraft'). This prevented the deployment of all instruments except the stock orbital scanner, a huge blow to the mission. But it got worse...

Finally, and someone should tell me if this was a bug or a feature, Kerbin swallowed up my orbit from inside Aptur's SOI.... photo evidence below haha.

So, we're learning things...

The moment he knew his crew was safe, Jeb stepped out of mission control to the locked office from where, Kerrick had been told, Jeb spoke with his secret ally over some un-known means of communications. He stayed there for hours while the rest of the team waited, wondering what he would ask of them next.

Tiber9 · July 22, 2015

Kerrick and his team, frustrated by their aborted mission, have barely arrived back at the rogue space center before another rocket is rolled out, but no one seems to know anything about it. Finally, the order comes down from Jeb: Geyser 3 is to launch in a few hours for Mun. Geyser 4 is apparently nearly complete, and will be launched for Serran before Geyser is even arrived at its destination.

Aptur can wait. Whatever phenomenon that caused the Geyser 2 spacecraft to be pulled back into Kerbin's SOI from within a stable orbit of Aptur can be investigated at another time. But for now, Jebediah seems determined to map the other moons of Sonnah. If they didn't know better, his team might think that Jeb was worried about something.

Geyser 3, and the nearely-identical Geyser 4, have been upgraded from the original design. The previous failure of the robotic arm has been resolved, the floats (which were really just me messing around) have been removed, and additional fuel tanks and life support have been added to accommodate unforeseen circumstances.

Each carries four orbital scanners:

RADAR Altimetry Sensor
SAR Altimetry Sensor
Multispectral Sensor
M700 Survey Scanner

Their mission is to remain in polar orbits of their respective bodies until surface mapping is complete. In addition they will test the viability of low-energy transfer orbits from and to Kerbin, as well as communication range and blackout times.

Kerbin, on the other hand, can now be mapped using unmanned satellites. So, a few days after the Geyser spacecraft arrive at their destinations, a short, stocky rocket is rolled out of the VAB and launched into a polar orbit.

The launch goes well, continuing the trend of success at the new space center. Out of the atmosphere, the payload fairing is cast off to reveal the largest satellite yet: a solar-powered Kerbin MapSat equipped with the same suite of scanners used by the Geyser Missions.

And finally, with terrain and resource mapping well underway for all three major moons of Sonnah, one more rocket is launched, this time carrying a simple satellite equipped with a narrow band scanner to remain indefinitely in Kerbin's orbit.

Tiber9 · July 24, 2015

Ok, got some story stuff and silly challenges I set for myself, and then a ton of launches later, but first, can we take a second for this:

So... yeah.

Anyway, a few days have passed, and the mapping of the Sonnah system is continuing apace. One morning, as Jebediah's rogue space center is preparing to roll out another satellite for launch, the warning alarms begin to sound, and the perplexed Kerbals see Jeb running out of mission control towards the hangar. Eventually someone spots the approaching airplane. Spies!

And so the spy-plane escaped. I had a lot of fun chasing after it for an embarrassingly long time. I'm pretty sure the grapple idea is possible, but eventually I had to stop :confused: . I'd love to hear if anyone has attempted something like this. The Interceptor was fitted with a number of parachutes meant to allow the two planes to fall gracefully once the grapple had locked on. Would love to try again some time, perhaps with more similar planes, the speed matching was near impossible.

In any case, Jeb returned to the space center, but refused to answer the many questions of his team. Many became worried about what punishments they might expect at the hands of the Kerbal government, if they were indeed breaking laws. But Jeb was silent.

That night, there was an unauthorized landing...

Jeb went out to meet the new arrival on the tarmac. It was Valentina Kerman.

Tiber9 · July 24, 2015

If someday i want to write a ksp novella, there's no shortage of material. But for now, i'm just going to summarize the story:

Jeb and Valentina talk. She has come to warn him that the government seems extremely alarmed by his program. She doesn't understand it and she isn't being told everything, because it's about something more dangerous than just an independent space program. She has come in secret to warn him of an impending attack.

Jeb seems to know why the government would attack them. Val is angered and tries to get him to explain. He insists that he can't tell her yet. He asks her to stay, and to trust him. She says she has to take the plane back or it will be missed, but that she will return soon. She takes off and Jeb gathers his team in front of the astronaut complex.

He tells them what Val said, and he even admits that there is more going on that just a space program. He offers them a choice; they can bow out now and stay safe, or they can trust him and come with him on a grand journey, exiled in space. He hints that the fate of the whole solar system is in the balance.

No one chooses to leave.

Jeb then lays out a plan of escape: Operation Launch Everything.

Some express concern about their ability to build so quickly. Jeb takes them into the VAB, where they stare in shock. All of the equipment they have been using for rocket construction has begun to move... by itself. Something is controlling their production line, turning out parts at an unheard-of rate (Kerbals were already rather fast, after all).

Over the next few days they churn out ship after ship:

(note*: I have no idea what I'm doing. I am sort of setting the challenge to not think so hard about getting off Kerbin, and rushed myself in the VAB, to see if we can survive out in space on what I remembered. We will see how it goes:D).

Launches:

Spelunker -- (ignore my misspelling in the game) is a one-man Mun lander equipped with an inline ore drill and designed to mine the mun's surface. It is the only drill the kerbals currently have. I launched it on a single booster core from the gene kerman lifter, with four BACC solids to extra dv and twr. Launched unmanned. Had some fairing glitches, please ignore...

ISRU+ -- unmanned launch of 2.5m stack of supplies, ore tank, and ISRU refinery.

Workshop 0 -- and EPL workship fitted with docking ports. Lack of power generation meant i had to get creative during ascent to make sure I got my Pe out of the atmosphere before the batteries died.

Most launches are going into the same plane (about 10 degree inclination due to location of space center). This is the first time I've had to worry about launch windows. Makes things extra fun.

The next morning, Frofurt Kerman is on lookout duty in the observation blimp. He sights an object, coming in fast, and does just as Jeb has instructed him...

The blast destroyed Mission Control and the Space-Plane Hangar, but because of Frofurt's quick action, the Kerbals had plenty of time to evacuate. Shaken, they return to work with more motivation than ever.

More Launches:

Geyser 5 -- Based on Geyser 3 and 4, but this time carrying rocket parts and extra tanks for ore, metal ore, etc instead of scanning equipment. The rocket parts were so heavy that I went ahead and added fuel lines to the booster so that the sides would burn out leaving a full center tank. Before I had just had the center throttled down. Chadbur, Jedner, and Jorfrod aboard.

RegOlMuLan (ROMLan?) (Regular Ol' Mun Lander) -- not feeling creative with names. This is a one man mun lander with scanning equipment meant to get more accurate resource data before the drill lands. Launched on a lower stage copied from that stocky satellite launch, plus an upper stage for Mun xfer and three bacc boosters. Standard Fare. Launched without worrying about plane matching and went ahead and burned for Mun xfer. Dudhat is the lucky volunteer to spend lots of time alone in the can.

Smelter -- not sure what this part does but in case i need it i put it up there. Lifter was the same as ROMLan but with the boosters and the second stage stripped out. Launched into plane with other craft.

Geyser 6 -- New design (for this save) mostly based on the SDHI parts plus extra life support and an upper stage. Thing turned out to look a lot like the concept art for the Orion capsule with service module and exploration upper stage. Launched on a single Gene Kerman booster core with Frofurt, Titrice, and Tedgar Kerman at the controls.

At this point, Jeb just tells everyone to get in a rocket. The VAB seems to not need any help making rockets anymore, so almost the whole staff piles into the next ship.

Habitation Module 1 -- just a bunch of hab parts and life support. Launched on the same 3-core medium lifter I've been using.

The next launch window sees two launches back to back: one from the Pad and one from the Runway.

Geyser 7 and Geyser 8 -- Identical to one another and to Geyser 6 except for the crew, launched only a few minutes apart.

There are now only a few Kerbals left at the space center, including Jeb. They know the attack is coming, and are eager to leave. But Jeb is determined that one final project is completed first. It is taking all of the remaining resources, and he won't let anyone else into the VAB.

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