The Outer Planets Traveling Circus Episode 28: Superheroes (The End)

[Geschosskopf]

Episode 1:  Getting Started

Spoiler

 

The Supernova of '105 was just as devasting as all the others and once again burned the Glorious Kerbal Space Empire down to bedrock.  But this time it also did something unusual, which hasn't happened for as long as any of the surviving Kerbals could remember.  As soon as the astronomers reinvented the telescope, they discovered new planets in the sky, 4 of them in fact, all well beyond Jool.  Like REALLY far beyond Jool.  The Emperor decreed that these new planets would be added to the Empire as soon as kerbally possible, and created the Outer Planets Trading Company to carry out this mission.  Furthermore, he decreed that all the old planets were off-limits except as absolutely necessary to develop the technology and raise the money necessary to explore the new planets.  This decision was made due to the mind-boggling travel times to the new planets.  If the newly formed OPTC was to get anything done, no time could be wasted mucking about at the "inner" planets.

And thus the Boffins and Scientists set to work again, this time with a new purpose.  Both factions were intensely excited about the new prospects and worked together with less discord than normal.  Their first great  achievement was a 1-and-done landing on Minmus which, due to the rickety state of their technology at the time, required the abhored asparagus staging instead of the usual SRB and core stage.

Having thus proven the OPTC's ability to reach Minmus, space tourism soon followed with numerous Kerbals all wanting to land on the green moon.  Thus, the next several Minmus landings were all sight-seeing trips that returned  little if any science, but which filled the OPTC's coffers.  In the meantime, the OPTC did a number of odd jobs with probes that brought in the bulk of the Science!  This finally enabled the OPTC to pillage Minmus of its lovely, lovely Science! in grand style.  By now they could design a rocket they liked and pack it with all the new instruments the Scientists had recently reinvented.  It hit all 9 biomes in 1 trip and even came down close to KSC.

The Science! haul from the Minmus Pillager was immense, especially as the OPTC has a 200% Science! return value thanks to having done all this research many times before.  It was more of a matter of jogging memories than having to start from complete scratch.

After the Scientists assigned their research priorites and spent their points, the tech (greatly expanded thanks to CTT) had a respectable dent in it.

The new technology, especially in nuclear stuff, enabled the Boffins to design the OPTC's 1st interplanetary ship, a SCANsat for the moons of the new planet Niedon, which at times is the most distant thing from Kerbol.

Niedon is so far from Kerbol, in fact, that this ship would take over 22 YEARS just to reach its SOI.  This is why there was such a big rush, to meet this transfer window.  The SCANsat Niedon took over $300K with it on its long, long trip.  Here's a pic showing just how far it's going.

With that out of the way, the Boffins then turned to more mundane matters.  Such as, thanks to Antenna Range, which wasn't designed for such distances, merely communicating with SCANsat Niedon and any subsequent expeditions would be problematic.  Thus, the next interplanetary ship launched by the OPTC was the Jool Relay Carrier, to put relay satellites there.  Its trip will only take about 3 years so this will be in place (and others probably at the closer inner planets) long before SCANsat Niedon needs them.

All of this significantly depleted the OPTC's bankroll but fortunately, a slew of contracts came in involving Duna.  So the Boffins quickly put together a probe flotilla to fulfill them and also to grab as much Science! as possible while they were at it.  The rest of the tech tree isn't going to fill itself, after all.  Even the Emperor agreed with this, and thus was born the 1st Duna Expedition, although he refused to sanction any Kerbals on the manifest.

So here we have probe landers for both Duna and Ike, some relay satellites to help build the chain to the Outer Darkness, and a SCANsat for Ike which is only being sent because contracts want it done, not because the OPTC has any intention of colonizing such a nearby rock.

Thus, by Y1 D185, the OPTC had 6 interplanetary ships in space, 1 going to Niedon, 1 going to Jool, and 4 going to Duna.  Plus its very 1st probe ever is now in solar orbit thanks to an unplanned encounter with Mun.

SCANsat Niedon is between Duna and Dres, still several years from its mid-course correction burn.  The others have just started.

The main goal for the OPTC at present is to mount a major expedition to Sarnus, the closest new planet about twice as far out as Jool.  From telescopes, it appears to have rings and quite a few moons so should prove interesting.  Plus it needs some relay satellites :).  The transfer window is still some time in the future, hopefully by which time the Duna contracts will have brought in enough money to pay for such a trip.

Tune in next time to see what actually happens.

 

Song:  "It's a Long Way to Planet Sarnus"

Epsisode 2:  Stepping Stones

Episode 3: Shipping Up to Boston

Episode 4: Killing Time
Episode 5: A' the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border

Episode 6: I'm Movin' On

Episode 7: The Crown and the Ring

Episode 8: Will it Go 'Round in Circles?

Episode 9:  Weird Science

Episode 10: I Can Smell the Chemicals

Episode 11: Everything I Do Gohn Be Funky

Episode 12: Wait on Time

Episode 13: Mama Told Me Not to Come

Episode 13 Continued

Episode 14: Took Out the Trash and Never Came Back

Episode 15: Gonna Have Some Fun Tonight

Episode 16: 1000 Feet Closer to Hell

Episode 17: Spanish Moon

Episode 18: Shaman Dancing

Episode 19: A Song for the HOPELESS

Episode 20: Green Heaven

Episode 21: Voodoo

Episode 22: Junco Partner

Episode 23: Mining Camp Blues

Episode 24: Living Dead Girl

Episode 25: Bad Moon Rising

Episode 26: Bits and Pieces

Episode 27: I Feel Like Going Home

Episode 28: Superheroes (the end)

 

 

Edited April 2, 2016 by Geschosskopf
Update 28

[Mister Dilsby]

An excellent start! And it's been far too long since the circus came to town.  

[Geschosskopf]

10 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

An excellent start! And it's been far too long since the circus came to town.  

Thanks.  We'll see what happens.  All this outer planets stuff is way expensive and takes forever, but at least it's something new.  It's also inspired a new marching song for the OPTC's pressgangs:

It's a long way to Planet Sarnus
It's a long way to go
It's a long way to Planet Sarnus
But it's got rings ya know
Far past nearby Duna
Way past even Jool
It's a long, long way to Planet Sarnus
That's where yer goin', fool

It's a long way to Planet Urlum
It's a long way to sail
It's a long way to Planet Urlum
It's where yer rations fail
'Ave fun being frozen
They say it's all the rage
It's a long, long way to Planet Urlum
In a cryogenic cage

It's a long way to Planet Niedon
It's a long way to fly
It's a long way to Planet Niedon
To the very edge o' the sky
So long to sunny Kerbol
You'll barely see him there
It's a long, long way to Planet Niedon
But you'll love it, I swear

It's a long way to get to ol' Plock
It's a cent'ry or so
It's a long way to get to ol' Plock
Then there's no where else to go
Another cent'ry gettin' back home
All you've know will pass away
It's a long, long way to get to ol' Plock
But think of yer back pay

 

Edited December 9, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[lajoswinkler]

I love that song.

However it's Neidon, not Niedon.

[KAL 9000]

Moar Moar Moar! 

[Geschosskopf]

4 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

I love that song.

However it's Neidon, not Niedon.

Oops

However, my misspelling of Neidon is too far gone to save, having already been carved into the side of the mountain Old Shinytop, stamped into commemorative coins, printed on special-issue paper currency, embroidered on mission patches, incorporated in domain names, tattooed on OPTC fans (both voluntary and not), and otherwise permanently etched into the pages of history.  IOW, making a change now would cause an economic dislocation sufficient to topple the Glorious Kerbal Space Empire.  And that ain't gonna happen, so on se débrouiller.

However, the GKSP's Ministry of Propaganda will slowly slide the correct spelling into common use.

[Hell_Raiser]

Alright, you have me confused, did the planets come from mods or the 1.0.5 update?  I have been playing 1.0.5 since it was released and never noticed any new planets, but your wording suggests that the update added the planets.  Granted, I have been so focused on getting to Laythe (and maybe surviving) that I could have easily missed it.

[lajoswinkler]

It's called Outer Planets Mod (OPM), you should totally check it out. Stockalike extension of KSP system. Not goofy as most other extensions are.

[Geschosskopf]

19 hours ago, Hell_Raiser said:

Alright, you have me confused, did the planets come from mods or the 1.0.5 update?  I have been playing 1.0.5 since it was released and never noticed any new planets, but your wording suggests that the update added the planets.  Granted, I have been so focused on getting to Laythe (and maybe surviving) that I could have easily missed it.

As @lajoswinkler said, the new planets are in the Outer Planets Mod.  To make OPM work, however, you also need the Kopericus mod that lets mod-created planets exist to begin with.  Kopernicus is a very clever and memory-friendly thing so don't be afraid of it.  It also comes with tools that allow users to build their own planets to be loaded into the game via Kopernicus, so there are at least a dozen Kopernicus-dependent mods that add/rearrange planets to the game.  The quality of these mods, and the quantity of planets and moons they contain, varies greatly.  Also, some of these mods conflict with each other by putting planets in the same places, or conflict with Kepler in terms of their spacing and other characteristics. Some of them alter the stock KSP solar system, some do not.

OPM is, IMHO, the cream of this crop.  It's been around a long time, it's got a coherent and Kepler-friendly plan behind it, it extends the analogy of the KSP solar system to our own by introducing equivalents for Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, and it includes the main interesting features of the real planets and their moons.  But that's a lot of territory to cover so it's till a WIP.  For instance, the Pluto-analog is still a single thing ("Plock") without moons, and has yet to incorporate the knowledge gained from the recent fly-by of Pluto although that's on the to-do list.  Also, Neidon's moons only got biomes in the most recent update and Thatmo's biomes need a major adjustment.  However, the changes to the stock KSP system are minimal.  The only one (besides adding the stuff beyond Jool) is that Eeloo is now a moon of Sarnus (the Saturn-analog) instead of being its own thing (which job is now done by Plock). 

BUT, once you install this mod, you might not think it worked at first because the new planets aren't immediately obvious in the tracking center.  Sarnus, the closest of them, is about twice as far from the sun as Jool and it gets Keplarianly worse from there on.  So zoom way out.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[Guest]

"For the Glory of the Emperor!" or somesuch.

[Kekkie]

More!!!!!!!!!

Also post that song in a google doc please.

Edited December 12, 2015 by Kekkie
Need those lyrics

[Kekkie]

Ignore

 

[Geschosskopf]

6 hours ago, Kekkie said:

Ignore

Oh, I can't do that :).  I appreciate your support too much.

Anyway, a quick update here.  The OPTC currently has about $2.5 million in the bank.  The Boffins have been doing a lot of R&D for the 1st Sarnus Expedition which will be leaving in about 120-160 days depending on which timetable you believe (KAC itself provides 2, MJ another, and then there are web pages).  And before then, the 1st Duna Expedition will have done at least part of its work and brought in about $2 million in contract payments at least.  In between then and SE-1 leaving, there are windows for Dres and Plock.  Dres is definitely getting relays if nothing else.  Plock, OTOH.....  Right now, a transfer to Plock will take about 35 years which is the minimum for the next few decades, during which interval the transfer time will reach a century and stay in that sort of timeframe for a while due to Plock being at Ap and moving even slower than usual.  So it's tempting to send something that way.  After all, I've already got something on a 20+ year trip to Neidon so any Plock trip and warp along with that.  So I'm thinking I might as well send something that way to scout the terrain at least, which will give me a few decades to decide what to do with the info.

But in the near term, far less glorious things will be happening for a while.

Edited December 13, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 2: Stepping Stones

Spoiler

 

The 1st Duna Expedition would be en route for about 150-200 days.  In the meantime, the OPTC had to scrounge up some more money due to the projected cost of the 1st Sarnus Expedition of about $1.6 million.  Some decent income came from doing magnetic surveys of Kerbin, Mun, and MInmus, sometimes repeatedly with the same probes.  Another contract involved getting science from a Class A asteroid which, because it was going there anyway, the OPTC decided to capture into Kerbin orbit in case it might be useful later.

This venture provided some unexpected windfalls of cash due to milestones, on top of its hefty specified payment.  First off, there was one for achieving a rendezvous in solar orbit.  Strangely, however, grappling the rock triggered a milestone for beginning construction of a station in solar orbit.  The Boffins were baffled but couldn't refuse this extra $75K.  Stangely, there was not a milestone for achieving orbit around Kerbin.

FWIW, the orbit is HIGHLY inclinded, very eccentric, and somewhat retrograde, and fixing this is beyond the fuel reserves of the attached Asteroid Sniffer Mk 1, so for the time being it remains there.

Somewhat later, a window for Dres came up and the OPTC decided to put some relay satellites there, too.  At the timescales of the oPTC's objectives, the planets will all move around so having multiple relays from Jool inwards will likely be essential.  The OPTC would really like the bigger antennae that were rumored to be under development prior to the Supernova of '105.  But anyway, the Scientists had by now recreated the TAC Self-Destruct charge so launches could once again be accompanied by gratuitous, debris-removing explosions :D.

By now, the 1st Duna Expedition was beginning to arrive.  First to get there was the Ike Probe Lander which was intended to satisfy 2 contracts.  The 1st was the generic "Explore Ike", the other was to do specified experiments while in orbit.  And it also gathered some extra science as it went by Duna.

Being the 1st thing to reach Duna, the Ike Probe Lander triggered many milestone awards.  It ended up being about the most lucrative ship the Boffins had ever designed, especially considering it was pretty cheap to bulid.

The Boffins were a bit surprised at one of the milestones, however.  The probe was never suborbital at Duna, except perhaps when it first entered the SOI on an impact course, before raising the Pe to aerocapture altitude (in this case about 15km).  But again, they were grateful for the money.

Shortely thereafter, both the Duna Probe Lander and SCANsat Ike entered Duna's SOI in quick succession.

Fortunately, there was a nearly a day between them so the Boffins had no trouble getting the lander down before having to deal with the SCANsat.  The lander made a perfect landing in the big NW-SE canyon that connects the Face to the Camera-on-a-Stick.

The Duna Probe Lander scored a fair amount of cash, too, although not nearly as many milestones as the Ike Probe Lander.

Then it was time to deal with the Iike SCANsat.  This one also had 2 contracts to do, comleting the orbital survey of Ike and then achieving a specific orbit prior to beginning its scanning.  This "position a satellite" contract is what required it to have an ore scanner and be a separate thing from the lander.

All of this preliminary stuff (some not shown) brought in about $5 MILLION and also accumulated about 2000 Science! points.  The extra money allowed a 5th ship to be added to the 1st Sarnus Expedition.  But because the 1st Duna Expedition arrived only a few days before the 1st Sarnus expedition was due to leave, most of SE-1 had already been launched into parking orbits a week or so before.  Thus, these ships didn't incorporate the big fuel tanks that the Scientists unlocked from DE-1's data.

The 1st ship of SE-1 was a set of relay satellites to form another link in the chain out to Neidon and Plock.  Indead of having a single nuclear transfer/OMS stage, to save some money the Sarnus Relays had 2 chemical stages, one ofr each purporse.  In this case, the transfer burn would be done by a single one of the new Vector engines, which have proven to have ungodly thrust and ISP (although they're heavy and expensive).  Still, this rocket cost about $300K.

Next up was the Sarnus SCANsat.  This one had 2 nuclear stages, both transfer and OMS.  The nuke OMS stage is to allow the probe to survey at least 2, hopefully 3, of Sarnus' big moons.  This was another $300K rocket.

The overall plan for Sarnus is to make the major effort on Tekto, the outermost and by far the most interesting moon.  To support this, there are plans for a fuel system based on Eeloo to refuel interplanetary ships passing through.  It seems to be the best choice.  The 2 inner moons, Hale and Orvok, are tiny things embedded in the rings.  The 3 bigger moons, Eeloo, Slate, and Tekto from inner to outer, have their own problems.  Slate is essentially Tylo, Jr., definitely not a place to haul up fuel from.  Tekto is not only far out but also inclined.  And while it doesn't have terrible gravity, it has an EXTREMELY dense atmosphere that's thicker than Kerbin's.  Thus, Eeloo seems the best of a bad.

To pave way for the eventual exploitation of Eeloo, the Boffins decided to send a pair of prospecting rovers there, the PESTs (Prospecting Eeloo, Slate, and Tekto) because the same vehicle can be used on all these moons needing only differently sized descent stages.  In fact, these rovers are nearly identical to the PERVs previously used on Val before the last supernova.

The PESTs each cost about $100K, making this whole rocket cost nearly $500K.  It seems a shame to spend so much on a rover of limited use so eventually another expedition will fit external seats on them.

The cash influx from the 1st Duna Expedition allowed the creation of another ship to do some Science! in the Sarnus system.  This was, in fact, a slightly updated design originally conceived to explore multiple Joolian moons but dropped from the JE-1 due to financial constraints at the time.  Again, this ship has 2 nuclear stages to enable it to visit multiple moons.  This cost about $400K.

And last but definitely not least, there are the TOPERs (Tekto Ore Prospectors and Exploration Rides).  Tekto is very easy to fly on (provided you can do it without oxygen) due to both low gravity and dense air.  Furthermore, the terrain is all cut up by lakes and rivers (of methane, apparently) where it isn't mountains.  IOW, it's not good rover country.  Therefore, prospecting for ore for local use and then exploring the planet by future Kerbalnauts is best done with aircraft and the SE-1 TOPER Carrier sent out 2 of them.  These are capable of autonomous operation but have enclosed cockpits for future use.  They can also taxi on electric motors in their Firespitter landing gear and fly indefinitely on their thermal jet engines.

Because Tekto's air is so dense, planes there don't need much wing, but it's still enough to provide problems getting off Kerbin.  Thus, the Boffins used their by-now traditional method of lifting aircraft to orbit---using them as tail fins for a bass-ackwards SSTO rocket.  The SSTO ascent stage didn't move very far away before the self-destruct charge went off, but no harm done to the payload of 2 TOPERs and their transfer stage.  Which is fortunately because this whole rig cost over $500K.

So, all in all, the 1st Sarnus Expedition cost about $2 million.  It will depart soon and spend 3-5 years in transit.  And the Boffins are going to wait until its various ships report back on conditions before even beginning to design the equipment for the 2nd Sarnus Expedition.

Tune in next time for the departure of SE-1 and probably also some token things going to Urlum.

 

 

Edited December 19, 2015 by Geschosskopf
Add soundtrack

[KAL 9000]

Moar!

[Mister Dilsby]

Great craft as always, this is shaping up to be a very comprehensive look at the Outer Planets. Especially love the 'puller' style lifter for your Topers--both elegant and Kerbal. 

[Geschosskopf]

18 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

Great craft as always, this is shaping up to be a very comprehensive look at the Outer Planets. Especially love the 'puller' style lifter for your Topers--both elegant and Kerbal. 

To really see the Outer Planets, read @lajoswinkler's excellent "Kron" thread.  He's already been to Sarnus and is currently at Neidon.  My R&D so far has been at those same places---I haven't messed with Urlum or Plock yet.  I'm actually not going to mess with Plock at all until OPM updates it with something more in lines with the real Pluto system, which I hear is in the works at present.  And Neidon isn't really a great tourist destination---there's just not a lot to do there and nothing jumps out screaming "Visit me!".  Plus it takes forever to get there.  Urlum, however, looks quite interesting, including a moon with its own submoon orbiting it.

Sarnus has a lot going for it.  It's RELATIVELY close (the trip isn't that much longer than going to Jool), it's got spectacular rings, and it's got cool moons.  The moons all have something that makes you want to go there, either great views or good challenges.  Being moved to Sarnus is the best thing that ever happened to Eeloo, which in stock is essentially Dres but further away .  But in OPM, it's placed in the middle of the Sarnus system with good views and conveniently located as a fuel base.  Slate is just begging to be Elcano'd, and Tekto is hauntingly beautiful with everything glowing green.  Even the itty bitty moons in the rings have such spectactular views that I'm definitely going to them, even though they impose the same very annoying sssssllllllllooooooowwwwwwwnnnnnnnnneeeeeeesssssssssssssssss on your gameplay that Gilly does.  I mean, Hale, the innnermost, has only a 6km radius and a 41km SOI (escape velocity is 16m/s!) and Ovok isn't much better.  Kerbals will have to be careful to avoid stepping off them .

 

[lajoswinkler]

Those are some massive parts you got there.

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

Those are some massive parts you got there.

Yeah, I love Space-Y lifters by @NecroBones.  I haven't needed the 5m parts in this game yet but I use the Hell outta the 2.5m and sometimes even 3.75m SRBs.  I like simple lifters, just a central LOF sustainer with SRBs to get it started.  This keeps the cost, part-count, and complexity down, and beside I think asparagus staging is an exploit.  Thus, I use the same basic lifter design throughout a career game, just scaling it up from 1.25 to 2.5 to 3.75 or even 5m as needed and I unlock the parts.  Space-Y also has a 1.25, 2.5, and a 3.75m engine that have more thrust and less ISP than stock ones, which are sometimes quite useful.  Plus, it has a variety of thrust plates that let you have larger interstage shrouds than the diameter of the engine if you use say a 1.25m engine on a 2.5m stack, and also allow you to make all sorts of engine clusters with shrouds---much more elegant than using cubic octagonal struts.

This all works for me because I mostly do flotillas.  When I do need a mothership, however, having bigger lifter parts lets me get its pieces up in fewer launches and often fully fueled so I don't need tanker runs before sending it off.  I might even get Space-Y Extended (with 7.5m parts!) if I ever need that much horsepower

 

 

[Parkaboy]

Really liking the spaceships here!

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 3:  Shipping up to Boston

Spoiler

 

Be sure to click on the link in the episode title for some nice music to read this by (and now you know where Samuel Adams Brewery got its theme music). 

Not a lot of pics here but it was still a lot of work involving sending 2 major flotillas and a lonely probe to 3 different planets,  And most of the transfer burns were a bit over 5 minutes so this took a lot of my day.

But first, you might be wondering where the OPTC's money is coming from.  Well, here's a big chunk of it.  The advance paid for the 1st Urlum Expedition and it complete while the Boffins were flying all this stuff, so right now the OPTC is doing quite well for money.

Anyway, it was soon time for the 1st Sarnus Expedition to get on the road.  The burns of all 5 ships went uneventfully.  Because they were all going outwards, they left on the Dark Side of Kerbin so the pics would have been even less spectactular than they are were it not for their glowing radiators.

Shortly thereafter, the 1st Urlum Expedition launched and left.  This consisted of a set of relay satellites, a SCANsat, and a science probe, both of the latter being able to go to multiple moons.  In fact, the latter 2 were exactly the same as sent to Sarnus a few weeks previously.  The relay rocket was slightly different and rather cheaper, using 2.5m parts throughout.  Thus, UE-1 only cost about $900IK.  Because they also left on the Dark Side, the Boffins didn't bother with taking pics of their transfer burns but satisfied themselves with launch pics.

While this was going on, a "grand tour" contract became available.  The Travelling Circus had never done one of these and it paid quite well, so the Boffins decided to go for it.  Note that this one lits the destination in order "Duna, Mun, Ike".  Shortly thereafter, another "Duna 3 Course" contract came up listing the destinations in the order "Duna, Ike, Mun".  Does the order make a difference?  This makes a big difference in the required dV so the Boffins are quite curious about this.

So here's the situation as of Y2 D106.  1 ship heading to Neidon, 3 to Urlum, 5 to Sarnus, 1 to Jool., 1 to Dres, 1 to Duna, and 1 more about to leave for Eve.  The Boffins are not entirely happy with the huge excesses out beyond the outer planets, which wasted dV on the transfer burn and will require more dV to capture there, but such is life.  The Boffins plan to do gravity braking off large moons when they arrive at these planets, but also designed the ships with beaucoup dV so things should work out OK.

EDIT:  Whoops forgot this pic:

After the 2 flotillas left in quick succession, it was time to send a MagSat to Eve.  This contract had been accepted long, long ago, when its $300K award seemed like big money and the OPTC couldn't even afford to build the ship and park it at the time.  But things changed in the time waiting for the 1st Eve transfer window.  Still, a promise is a promise so off it went.

By this time, the Duna Relays finally arrived, a full 120 days after the rest of DE-1.  Despite being late and slow, the polar orbit required for the relays necessitated a very low aerocapture pass at 12k.5km, but this sufficed.  Within 2 weeks of arrival, both relay satellites were in their proper positions, going to 30Mm Aps above and below Duna's poles.

The Boffins then crashed the carrier vehicle that had brought the satellites.  No sense cluttering up Duna's orbit with unnecessary stuff.

And while this was going on, the Boffins cashed checks (again) for their MagSats at both Mun and Minmus.  These things are really cash cows.  This was at least the 3rd time they'd done magnetic surveys (which take like 180 days) and the one at Minmus had also done a reposition contract.

Tune in next time for what promises to be a fairly long wait before anything interesting happens.  SE-1 will be nearly 4 years in transit, UE-1 will be over 10 years.

 

 

Edited December 19, 2015 by Geschosskopf
Add missing pic

[KAL 9000]

Moar!

[Mister Dilsby]

My guess is that the order of visits for the contract is irrelevant--after deciding that it's a "Duna n" contract, it goes:

FOR x = 1 to n-1 

    PICK a random moon from a list that hasn't been picked yet

NEXT x

 

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

My guess is that the order of visits for the contract is irrelevant--after deciding that it's a "Duna n" contract, it goes:

FOR x = 1 to n-1 

    PICK a random moon from a list that hasn't been picked yet

NEXT x

There are some that have a "finally" clause, which place has to be last.  But from what the gurus tell me in the questions forum, that's the only thing that matters.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 4: Killing Time

Spoiler

 

So now it was a long wait before any of the Outer Planets stuff gets anywhere near its destination.  While the OPTC was under orders to ignore the "old" planets as much as possible, it still had to do some contracts to pay for all its big stuff.  Thus, a minimum of that happened.  Besides, the Boffins wanted to test some things out.

The 1st extraneous thing was the Kerbin Exploration Jet, using the thermal jets already en route to Tekto with the TOPERs.  Given that they'd gotten paid for "discovering" Airbase Island in the past, the Boffins wanted to see how much they could get going to other anomalies, plus perhaps do a Kerbin survey contract as well just to say they had.  So the KEJ with rookie Lizula flying and Bob tending the instruments set off for the Pyramids.

The payoff wasn't great, even with the load of science instruments aboard, but Lizula discovered she could climb the big statue, which hadn't been possible the last time the Travelling Circus was here.  Sadly, the pyramids themselves remained unclimbable.  Lizula also discovered she was levitating once she reached the top of the statue and for the rest of the trip was convinced she was the Chosen One as foretold by the Ancestors.  Bob, however, scanned his instruments and decided it was a force field that would do the same to anybody.

By the time the KEJ made it home, it was dark but landing went OK despite some tense moments.  While the plane had flown perfectly well on the way to the Pyramids, it behaved quite squirrelly on the way home with a tendency to roll to the right.  So once it got down, the Boffins modified it in an attempt to improve stability, plus removed some instruments that turned out had to be in space to work.  Then the KEJ Mk 2 headed across the ocean SE to do a survey mission, with Mimi and Munmy aboard.

Again all was well on the way out but the plane was nearly impossible to fly on the way home, with a VERY strong tendency to roll to the right.  It was so bad the Boffins ran some diagnostics and discovered that 2 of the wing panels had decided not to provide any lift.

The rolling got worse as speed increased and it was soon apparent that a transoceanic flight was out of the question, so Mimi killed the power, landed again, and the KEJ Mk 2 returned in shame to KSC via the recovery crews.

As mentioned previously, the Travelling Circus had accepted 2 Grand Tour contracts, both called the Duna 3 Circuit involving flybies of Duna, Ike, and Mun, although listing them in different orders.  But there were no express instructions on the required order of the flybies so the Boffins decided to experiment.  They made a ship that could go do a quick flyby of Mun and return to Kerbin orbit.  If this made both contracts happy (neither of which had Mun listed first), then they'd keep it in a parking orbit back at Kerbin until the next Duna window.  After all, by now the OPTC had about $10 million in the bank so could afford to gamble a mere $64K on this venture.  As it turned out, both contracts were happy so now the GT-1 Duna 3 Double is ready to continue in the future.

The Duna 3 Double had a small Poodle stage to transer out to Mun and then adjust into the parking orbit after sevreal aerobraking passes.  This left the main transfer stage with over 4000m/s which should be enough to return and go back again if that should prove necessary.  And the probe core can parachute back to Kerbin if that ends up being needed, too.

So with all that out of the way, it was time to get back to warping ahead for when ships already in flight would start doing things.  Here's the status as of Y2 D237.  This update covers up to the mid-course adjustment burn of the SE-1 TOPERs 116 days after this pic was taken.

The 1st thing of interest to occur was the arrival of the Dres Relay satellites.  After deploying the relays, the Boffins gleefully put the carrier vehicle into a death dive.

Interestingly, there was no milestone for doing the 1st Science! at Dres (the relays had thermometers), just for getting there and crashing landing

While this was going on, the Boffins were setting up to move the SENTINEL asteroid-finder to a slightly different orbit to do another contract with it.  However, the probe managed to find all the acceptible asteroids it needed while still en route to its 1st maneuver node, so that contract completed without any work or even maneuvering.  Talk about easy money, although only about $150K this time.  Stil,l that's about 1/2 a small ship for the Outer Planets so every little bit helps.

Next, the Eve MagSat arrived.  This one put up a fight (as had several of DE-1 some time before) with the map constantly flickering between having an encounter with Eve and not, despite a Pe just above the clouds.  This didn't settle down until the Eve MagSat was very close to Eve.  But all went well and soon the MagSat was in its highly eccentric, highly inclinded, long-term survey orbit.  It snagged a few milestones, too.

Then time marched ahead to the first 2 mid-course tweak burns of the 1st Sarnus Expedition, the relays and the TOPERs.  Both of these easily got encounters with Slate which will be fine-tuned once they get in Sarnus' SOI.  Slate being essentially Tylo, Jr., the Boffins hope to gravity brake off it to save on the capture burn.

So now it's about Y2 D350.  The remaining ships of SE-1 will do their tweaks over the next 100 days and by then it will be time to send a science probe to Dres for big contract money.  Tune in next time to see if anything interesting happens

 

.

Edited December 21, 2015 by Geschosskopf
add spoiler