A Typical Space Program - 1.0.4 - Image Heavy

[TicTacToe!]

First off, let me get this down, credit goes to all the mod makers on this forum for your work, I use lot of mods, you make my game a lot more of an enjoyable experience. Secondly, credit to Mulbin for his flags (example above), I use them religiously and they are brilliant.

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Hey all! After a long time lurking around the forums but not actually playing KSP, I've really managed to click with my 1.0.4 modded save. I've found I take a lot of screenshots, so hopefully my posting them here will give at least some of you a bit of entertainment (and inspiration, if I'm being optimistic), so here we go.

The links you’ll see are in a rough chronological order, but it can be a bit confusing as interplanetary missions can mess up timescales quite a bit. For example even though my transfer window to Sarnus came up really early in my save, I won't actually post a link to it until it gets there and actually completes its mission (which is in 5 years' time). But, I’ll make note of things like this in my other chapters to try and create some semblance of a smooth, forward-flowing timeline.

My first mission/project will be in this OP, and I'll link other projects as I complete them. As I play, I'll post! This will evolve with my save.

Hope you enjoy!

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Links:

- Project Moho (BELOW!) -

- MORE SOON! -

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Project Moho

So here we are, kicking off the Kerbal Space program with Project Moho (not predictable at all, right?). It seems Kerbalkind have finally decided to explore the vast unknown, but due to there only being one KSC and no prospect of a Space Race, I have a tough time imagining why. Let’s go for good old-fashioned “innate need to explore†excuse.

Sifted from amongst the vast amounts of applications, the "Moho 5" were picked. Shining exemplars of what a Kerbal can be, here they are, from left to right: Lodbart, Jebediah, Johnsen, Valentina, and Dohat Kerman. These would be the few to take the first steps.

With safety of paramount importance (no, I’m not joking), Project Moho got underway. As you’ll see, all of the flights had a reliable escape system to bring our brave kerbals home. By Day 52 of Year 1 of the program, we were ready. The following album shows the first two flights of Project Moho, the “sub-orbital phaseâ€Â:

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Christened “Unity 5†by its pilot Jebediah, the capsule took off from KSC atop a Moho-Bluestone rocket on a sub-orbital trajectory. Because the Bluestone missile is just a “Kickback†SRB with an ASAS unit attached, the Bluestone missile can only put the Moho capsule into a ballistic trajectory. Reaching an apoapsis of 229km, Jebediah enjoyed a successful 15 minutes of flight in space, with Mother Physics in the driving seat, eventually reeling him back in. As Jeb rattled around in “Unity 5†during re-entry, an alarming bang was heard from outside. The omnidirectional RCS thrusters had been unable to hold up to the required specification and had blown up in the heat. Whilst not fatal, the mistake was remedied for further flights. Jeb plopped down in the ocean east of KSC.

Seven days later Valentina blasted off from KSC in an identical rocket, but her capsule she had named “Halo 5†(so excited for that game). Her launch trajectory was much more vertical than Jeb’s in “Unity 5†leading her to break his altitude record by 40km, reaching a 269km apoapsis. Valentina had what was arguably a greater shock than Jeb, as when she turned off the capsule’s reaction wheels to preserve the limited electric charge stored in the Moho capsule, and tried to do an orbital burn to move her landing point away from KSC, the capsule went into an uncontrollable tumble. Recovering the craft by turning back on the capsule’s torque, future missions had to deal with the fact that orbital burns must use capsule torque and suffer the electric charge drain from it. Due to her straight-up, straight down trajectory, re-entry for Valentina was safe, but fierce. The redesigned RCS system of linear RCS ports far up the pod as opposed to RCS thrusters on the heatshield decoupler meant that no overheating issues occurred, and Valentina touched down on land (not preferable, but within specification) just west of KSC.

It was at this point Project Moho had to go on the backburner for a while as the transfer windows for Sarnus and Urlum arrived, and I sent SCANsat missions to them both (accounts of their travels comes roughly 4 and 14 years later):

20 days on from Valentina’s flight it was time to initiate Phase 2 of Project Moho, orbital flights. Due to the Bluestone missile not having sufficient dV to fling the Moho capsule into an orbit, a new launch vehicle had been designed, the Globe V. Due to previous problems with the Moho capsule being ironed out, flights were given the go-ahead. The following album details the final three flights of Project Moho, the orbital phase:

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First was Lodbart Kerman launching in “High 5†on Day 79 of Year 1. The new Globe V proved very reliable and capable, placing Lodbart into a stable 73x73km orbit, where after one revolution and 41 minutes, he re-entered with a textbook trajectory that plopped him into the ocean east of KSC. Kerbals had orbited Kerbin.

After Lodbart’s successful mission, Project Moho’s objectives became more time-based. Improving on Lodbart’s 1 orbit, Dohat Kerman aboard “Babylon 5†(heh, I’m proud of that one) was to stay up for 3 hours, approximately half a day. Launching on Day 104 into a 79x82km orbit, the flight was flawless much like Lodbart’s up until re-entry, where things nearly took a turn for the worst. In previous flights it had been pointed out that when the heatshield was decoupled after use, it spiralled off backwards and posed a collision risk with either the capsule or the parachute. Dohat watched the shield fly just outside his window, but thankfully the shield didn’t make contact and he splashed down in the ocean west of the KSC continent, after 3 hours 31 minutes flight time.

Finally, to round off Project Moho, Johnsen Kerman was to spend a day in LKO. Launching on Day 111, Johnsen in “Maroon 5†spent a successful, if slightly boring day in an 79x81km orbit, landing near the mountains just west of KSC after a botched re-entry trajectory.

The Kerbal Space Program now had a foothold in the unknown, and now they had to move forward.

A little bit about Project Moho:

First off, it’s clearly NOT inspired by Project Mercury… much. I tried to follow Mercury relatively closely, for example I think Moho-Bluestone looks relatively close to its analogue, but to make an Atlas booster was a bit too fiddly for myself, so I relaxed the rules a bit there. Same as RL, no EVA’s were performed, and I followed a similar program structure, but again you’ll notice I didn’t stick religiously to Mercury in mission profiles. My style of KSP has always been inspiration instead of imitation.

The Moho capsule’s propellant is solely monopropellant. Radial monoprop tanks were clipped inside the decoupler (if there’s space, then by my book it’s fair game). There is no facility for generating charge, so reaction wheels in the capsule must remain off as much as possible to save electricity, and orientation done by RCS.

Every manned rocket in my space program has a tested abort procedure, as you no doubt saw with the launch tower.

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And that’s it for now, hope you enjoyed!

[Geschosskopf]

Good luck at Moho And that's a pretty steep intercept at whatever new trans-Joolian planet that is. Hope you packed your dV.