MIR moment

[PB666]

Start out with some eye-candy. This is KSC day 223 and essentially its pretty much career mode end game because I essentually have just about everything except money for fuel to complete all science with out having to further leave the kerbin system.

Been playing career mode pretty much by the books save 6 mods (wheel, that stripy conical tank you see on the lander, a larger fusiform tank, an LV-909 replacement engine, combo controller and MechJeb).

So in career mode hard you have limit cash and science reward is diminished. I set out to build a science station in which the lander cycled between two biomes on the planet and return to the station.

Section A was sent to the Mun, while section B was placed in orbit, originally 30K and somehow it ended up at 38K (and for some odd reason all my RCS fuel disappearred).

Despite the result things did not go as originally planned. In previous normal career I did not earn anything on the Mun in the processing lab (science over time), but when I transported the lab to Minmus, it did and I though hmmm, they've got something going here.

But anyway I tried doing the science and it didn't work again, but this time I decided to split the landings into two separate events for each biome, going for the Siesmic and Gravity experiments later. So I decided to burn one of my Mat. sci and goo in the processing lab, thinking I would get a boost as in pre-1.0 in transmitted science.

This I learned was not the case, it instead loaded up the lab with data and on the Mun it quickly filled, and difficult to operate.

I learned from this

-Processing experiments provides data (and apparently nothing else) for long-term processing at the rate of maybe 0.5 sci/(experimement*day)(discussed below)

-Using goo (30 data) and Mat (75 data), 5 biomes fills up the lab, and it takes weeks to empty.

-Processing on full data (close to 500 as possible) takes alot of power

-Battery capacity at night should be 10 times what you think it should be.

So then I added another mobile processing lab C after fortuitously rescuing 2 scientist. I learned from this

-This lab processes data twice as fast, instead of providing a power boost to B, it sucks even more power

-D, not shown in the photo, is a huge fusiform fuel tank I hauled C up with and attached where section F now sits.

Lacking Gigantor I built a stack of MGS and attached the el-cheepo 1x6 panels in a bilateral array on the MGS. In case you are wondering the docking port of E was the nose of the launch.

-More power but as soon as the station moved over the horizon battery went to zero. At least I had 50% of experiment running.

-note that a balancing small docking port on the other side is missing (I did not quite have my MIR moment but it was coming)

Managing to run a few missions I finally did get the Gigantor, by that time however I mysteriously loss all the Monoprop (which I had a great abundance of). It is one of many strange things that happened between leaving the game and coming back to it. I should point out that several of the MP tanks were set not to feed, so . . . . . .

So I brought in 2 size2 Monoprop tanks, on another lab (F) with 2 gigantor panels and some additional docking ports (5) two of the side ports are occupied with housing (cough,choke) and shuttle (a 1965 volkswagen beetle would be considerably more safe in the same occupation). The panels are sort of cockeyed with respect to the side mounted panels. This occurred for several reasons. The station core B was not equipped with near enough RCS ports (the complexity of the craft was not anticipated). It became cumbersome to rotate the craft. Once I realized it simply wasn't worth the effort to straiten the craft out, I realized I had reincarnated the MIR space station (sort of like a Babylon IV moment). I learned after attaching this

-Both C and F have to detached to add New Science data, you can add new experiments to the modules via the store data function, but only B in the collective will be able to add data at the end of the processing gui in the review science panel for the experiment.

-As soon as you detach this large stations angle to the decoupled piece begins to turn, any attempt to straighten the core station causes it to gyre.

-Since I did not have enough scientiest, I put an engineer instead, the lab processing works, but much more slowly so that I assume that the rate of science is dependent on the skill of the scientist, in the future I will rotate scientist back to kerbin so that I can increase their science skill.

All the while building this I was doing missions, and kept having moon survey missions. My lander is simply too expensive to operate for a landing mission or a soil grab mission, although I must say, I wish I had a low-mass capsule in addition to the lander-pod, for survey data storage. I built G a seat on a satellite combo core and 4 side mounted engines. Now this was a risk because I have here-to-forth never managed to get the seat to work in any previous version of the game. So even before I took off to Mun, I tested the seat in kerbin orbit. The command craft for the seat is attached to F at 90' rotation from the. As soon as I got him to the Mun I realized the landing mission was for a siesmic survey, and but fortunately I manage to take a sample collection mission. I learned:

-Put some low weight science (seismic, temperature, and gravity ) experiments on the low-weight seat lander. Future landing missions....because afterall it has a port and can refuel!

-Always add a couple more small ports than what you think you need, they come in handy with low weight stuff.

-There is no capsule, so you can't do crew reports, unless you mod the seat.

-There is no capsule so you can only keep one soil surveys and one EVA report.

- (I eventually brought a satellite down to gather the siesmic, but the damn thing was not stable, and fell over, lost its engine. The combo core needs a reaction wheel to provide it with better stability, but given superb solar panels and battery I simply roled it to 4 destinations - rover not needed).

So finally I go the 3.38 million spasoes needed to fund the R&D upgrade and unlock the gravoli. I had a mission to the Mun to satellite a mat science. So I attached the bidirectional port H on top which has both the seismic and gravity having just completely the first round of Munar surveys. Mir ain't so bad, it managed to get the two last science types before moving onto Minmus, which if I had not completed by first round of Minmus surveys it would have been a delay. Having completed the satellite mission I simply flipped the orbit and transffered to the MIR almost-well-planned Science station. Then I simply undocked the lander, attached the adapater, detached the mat.sat, and redocked the lander, and done.

Now you may say, but MIR got smashed by a refueling ship and almost had to be prompt abandoned.....what I learned:

-If you have a massive station, don't count on the engine sound to work, before I knew what had happened the adapter-mat.sat core hit the station at 9m/s, fortunately did not blow up the damn station.

-See if your station has power before attempting a close approach, loosing power during a docking can cause Kerbalesce bounces to happen.

Anyway we are headed off to minmus to harvest science.

Some other tips

-Cash limits fuel, which limits landing missions, the big science payback is getting experiments data back to kerbin by ship. Cheap ways to get fuel to refueling station pay-off

-When landing pick spots that can take-off and land on a close by biome, if you can get up and down without surpassing 75m/s relative to surface, its as good as a free landing.

-Missions should be mixed in-between pure science missions, for example you might want to wait a few days before landing in a dark zone, throw five or six low-cost sat missions up.

-Some missions are just not worth it, for example a satellite mission around the sun, is not going to get the R&D facility upgraded, the mission takes too long.

-For rescue kerbals, you can snatch them and use them for missions before you kerbin them, but you need to get them into space and check to see what their profession is ("I" button in Map view). Its a pain sometimes to get it to work.

-RCS is both good and evil, if the rotation is not going right, hit the "R" key and if it gets worse, turn it off. I keep it off most of the time.

[TimePeriod]

This is the wrong section of the forums.

This post goes to Mission Reports.

[Red Iron Crown]

So it does, moving.