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

[Geschosskopf]

17 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

It could work but that is not my decision to make

Capt just needs to change the inclination of Karen in order to match charon's

But I don't think he will do that because other than their weird mass ratio pluto-charon have another interesting feature

They are mutually tidally locked. Sadly in ksp high inclinations and tidal locking don't go together very well, that's why Karen has such a low inclination in OPM

And the same goes for my PluronKhato binary

Ah.  Well, I'll be content with just the binary thing.  I've got to go there someday just to fly around in that environment.  I imagine getting into orbit and landing on either Plock or Karon will be different from everywhere else in the game.  But that'll have to be done in its own game.  It just takes too long to get out there to fit it in with the stuff I've already got going on here, especially because this whole game is very likely going to be wiped out by 1.1

[Sigma88]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

Ah.  Well, I'll be content with just the binary thing.  I've got to go there someday just to fly around in that environment.  I imagine getting into orbit and landing on either Plock or Karon will be different from everywhere else in the game.  But that'll have to be done in its own game.  It just takes too long to get out there to fit it in with the stuff I've already got going on here, especially because this whole game is very likely going to be wiped out by 1.1

Actually gameplay-wise the difference is basically zero.

when you launch a craft to  a binary system, while you approach the two bodies you can see them "dance around the barycenter" but once you are close enough to enter the sphere of influence of the system, you will enter directly into the Primary body Sphere of influence (in OPM's case, Plock).

once you are orbiting plock, moving from plock to Karen is exactly the same (because your reference frame is linked to plock)

you never enter the barycenter's sphere of influence, and that is by design. because otherwise the kraken awakes and your ship most likely will be shot out the solar system at the speed of light (or some comparable bug)

btw, if you want a taste of binary without investing in a long trip to the outskirts of the solar system, you can find a Duna-Ike binary config file in the SigmaBinary download page. it is intended as an example to explain how to use the mod, but I know a number of players that use it in their base game  

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I read all this today, and it's awesome! I really like your ship designs, and the acronyms are hilarious XD

Well done! I'll be keeping my eye on this

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, Choctofliatrio2.0 said:

I read all this today, and it's awesome! I really like your ship designs, and the acronyms are hilarious XD

Well done! I'll be keeping my eye on this

Thank you, sir!  Glad you like.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 13 Continued

Spoiler

 

So, with another day off, it was time to pick up where I left off with the 1st Urlum Expedition.  As mentioned previously, the Urlum Science Probe got interrupted just as it was approaching Urlum's largest and outermost moon, Wal.  So that's where the story no picks up.

 

Wal is a bizarre-looking place.  It's most noticeable feature is a massive equatorial ridge that goes all the way around.  Elsewhere, the terrain is a hodgepodge of layers of different colors and more or less lumpiness and craters.  Surely some weird geological process were at work here.  The custom OPM science reports when you run instruments make some interesting comments.

Wal is also unique for being a moon with its own little moonlet, Tal.  So, after making a few orbits of Wal to see the sights in different lights, the Urlum Science Probe made the short trip over to Tal.

Tal is also a very strange place.  From Wal, it's small, dark, and brown, somewhat hard to see against the blackness of space.  But as you approach it, once you get about halfway there it starts to look all smooth and glossy,  This is soon revealed to be an illusion, however, and it's really all dark and drab once you get there, except for a couple of lighter patches of ground.  Tal is also shaped something like a d8 and a surface reminiscence of orange peel.  Instead poles, it has corners.

So that completed the initial science sweep of the Urlum system, all moons now having been orbited.  The Urlum Science Probe snagged about 8000 (unnecessary) Science Points but generated about $2.5 million of income from EPIKFAIL milestones.  This more than paid off the balance of the cost of the 2nd Sarnus Expedition, and the Travelling Circus now has $37 million in the bank, more than before it launched SE-2.  Yay!

Just as the Urlum Science Probe was completing its mission and being left orbiting Tal until some further use could be found for it, SCANsat Urlum began its final run in towards is capture burn.

The 1st stop of this satellite was Wal, so it captured into an elliptical orbit out that far and lucked into an intercept after a single orbit around Urlum.  Due to the limitations of the KSP map view, getting it into a polar orbit of Wal was a bit tricky but accomplished successfully, then the mapping sensors were deployed.

And here's where things started going wrong.  As @Sigma88 mentioned above, with OPM Tilt, Urlum's moons don't rotate around their axes.  Which means that orbiting ships always pass over the exact same strip of ground every orbit.  This pretty much makes mapping impossible because that relies on the planet rotating below the orbital plane of the satellite.  I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with this.  So Mission Control decided to call it a day and hit the bar for inspiration.

Tune in next time for either the solution to this problem or the arrival of the 2nd Sarnus Expedition.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 15, 2016 by Geschosskopf
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[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 14: Took Out the Trash and Never Came Back

Spoiler

 

NOTE:  The title has nothing to do with OPM or OPM Tilt, but with the main ship involved in this episode.

So now it's time to tie up the loose ends of the 1st Urlum Expedition and get on with other stuff, namely what to do with the SCANsat there.  Consultations with @Sigma88 proved beneficial on how to handle mapping Urlum's moons despite them having zero rotation..  The fix was to give them some rotation but unfortunately this is on the wrong axis to look good with their orbital plane when using OPM Tilt, so the hack to make that happen was removed once the mapping was done.  And of course it made maps of somewhat dubious value in terms of Lat/Lon for picking landing sites, but a bad map is better than no map.

But early on while all that was playing out, TOEJAM, the Eeloo station of the 2nd Sarnus Expdition arrived after a journey of about 6.5 years, and a full 2 years ahead of the rest of SE-2.  But that's OK because much of the rest of SE-2 relies on TOEJAM so it was good to have it set up first.

TOEJAM had an inconvenient meeting with Slate on the way in which resulted in having to burn more than expected to meet up with Eeloo.  This meant that the transfer stage wasn't quite up to the full job of parking it in a 90km Eeloo orbit and the small utility tug had to do the last 400m/s of the final capture burn.  Always nice to have backup plans for stuff like this.  And a gratuitous explosion.

But that still left it with plenty of fuel so once TOEJAM was in place, the tug separated, went up to a 180km orbit, and shut down until needed.

UE-1 SCANsat Urlum had by now finished with Wal and Tal, and was now arriving at Polta.  Not really anything of not happened there but it was still a pretty photo op.  Various milestones and science reports for Pol happened again apparently due to them keying off the 1st 3 letters of Polta.  It might be a good idea to rename Polta to "Ponta" or something to avoid such confusion.

After this, the SCANsat moved to Priax and had a much easier time of this due to being in a prograde orbit around Polta.  The whole trip including capture (the main issue) was about 600m/s.  Priax's irregular diameter, high mountains, and small SOI greatly complicated mapping even with the rotation hack.

Mapping turned up an anomaly here, the only one noted in the Urlum system.

And that completed the mission of UE-1.  So now what to do?  At some point, the Scientists will certainly demand that the Urlum Probe go over and attempt to land at the Priax anomaly, but the SCANsat has no further business here.  And it still had about 6000m/s in the tank.  Therefore, a special session of Mission Control decided to send it to Plock-Karen, the only Outer Planet with nothing on the way there yet.  This required an expensive plane change to climb down out of the plane of Urlum's moons and get back in touch with the rest of the solar system.

Then it was time to plot various options for getting from Urlum to Plock-Karen in Year 13, which by now it was.  None of them were very satisfactory, the most economical leaving Urlum about 65 years in the future and then taking about 140 years to reach Plock-Karen.  So instead the Boffins decided on a faster approach leaving Urlum in the "near future" (2.5 years hence) and "only" taking 44.5 years or so to reach Plock-Karen.  This would entail heading back into the "inner" solar system (inside the orbit of Dres, anyway), and then slingshotting back out.  It's doubtful UE-1 SCANsat has enough macho for what will likely be an insanely huge capture burn, but what else is there to do with it?

That's what I mean about taking out the trash and never coming back.

So here's the status as of Y13 D365:

The 2nd Sarnus Expedition has reached its Ap but is still 1.9-2.25 years from entering Sarnus' SOI.  At some point in there, UE-1 SCANsat will leave on its long, indirect trip to Plock-Karen.  Meanwhile, the 1st interplanetary ship launched by the OPTC, the Neidon SCANsat, still has 9.5 years to go.  Meanwhile, a transfer window to from Kerbin to Plock-Karen is coming up and there's a contract at stake for it.  And the trip is projected to last "slightly" less than that of the Urlum Scansat, perhaps a mere 43 years.  So the Boffins and Scientists are busy hammering something together for that.

However, nothing of note will happen until the rest of SE-2 arrives.  So tune in next time for mostly that.

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2016 by Geschosskopf
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[Sigma88]

@Geschosskopf scansat maps for the tilted urlum system should be 100% accurate

Let me know in case you find any discrepancies

[Geschosskopf]

4 hours ago, Sigma88 said:

@Geschosskopf scansat maps for the tilted urlum system should be 100% accurate

Let me know in case you find any discrepancies

Well, it's a question of the Lat/Lon of the planetary maps.  Instead of being tied to the planet's surface, it's tied to the ecliptic plane of the solar system.  So consider Wal, which is easy to discuss because of its equatorial ridge.  To somebody on Wal, the ridge always runs E-W all around the equator regardless of whether the system is flat or tilted.  But with the tilt happening, SCANsat says the ridge runs N-S around the prime meridian so isn't equatorial at all.

Thus, on the rectangular map projection, the ridge, instead of being a horizontal line across the middle, is a figure-8 with half of it vertical in the center and the other half split on the left and right edges, connected by strips along the top and bottom edges at the "poles".  And in the polar projection, the ridge is also vertical instead of horizontal.

Now, I haven't tried landing on any of Urlum's moons yet so I don't know whether the SCANsat Lat/Lon corresponds to the planet's actual Lat/Lon.  And I'm curious as to which direction the Navball will point when on the surface as well.  Finding this out is actually the main reason I plan to try landing the science probe at the Priax anomaly.  This will determine if the map, the planet, and/or MJ are all using the same coordinates or not (plus might disclose strange navball behavior)   We'll see.

EDIT:  Wow, 3000 views already!  Thanks, folks!

Edited February 15, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[Sigma88]

@Geschosskopf those maps reflect the position of the ridge

I had to change the ridge from equatorial to polar in order to make it lie in the same plane as wal's orbit.

Scansat, hyperedit and MJ should use the same set of coordinates, so if you choose a landing spot on the scansat map you should end up there.

The only difference is that the scansat maps are rotated 90'

So the poles are at latitude zero instead of 90.

But that is true in the game as well, so the maps are consistent with the moon geography

[WhiteKnuckle]

54 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

EDIT:  Wow, 3000 views already!  Thanks, folks!

A few of them are from me. This thread has pretty much sold me on OPM. And I'm a fan of your distributed approach to mission design.

[Geschosskopf]

36 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

Scansat, hyperedit and MJ should use the same set of coordinates, so if you choose a landing spot on the scansat map you should end up there.

Great!  Thanks.  Now we'll see what the navball does

34 minutes ago, WhiteKnuckle said:

A few of them are from me. This thread has pretty much sold me on OPM. And I'm a fan of your distributed approach to mission design.

Thanks.  Heheh, at first I thought you said "disturbed approach"

I much prefer doing flotillas to motherships.  I've done both and both have their pros and cons, but the flotilla's combination of these factors suits my own tastes better.

[Sigma88]

@Geschosskopf the navball will be consistent with those coordinates as well. So if you follow the ridge it'll show your latitude changing and your longitude remain the same. (As you would expect from the scansat maps)

[Geschosskopf]

9 hours ago, Sigma88 said:

@Geschosskopf the navball will be consistent with those coordinates as well. So if you follow the ridge it'll show your latitude changing and your longitude remain the same. (As you would expect from the scansat maps)

I was thinking about the direction to take off in

[Sigma88]

6 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

I was thinking about the direction to take off in

If you want to get an orbit 90' tilted from the ecliptic you need to point north (or south)

While if you want to get an orbit lying on the ecliptic, you just point east (or west)

[Geschosskopf]

6 hours ago, Sigma88 said:

If you want to get an orbit 90' tilted from the ecliptic you need to point north (or south)

While if you want to get an orbit lying on the ecliptic, you just point east (or west)

That's what I was thinking.  IOW, a bit of confusion.  Good .  I've gradually gotten used to maneuvering around within the system so haven't accidentally gotten into a retrograde orbit again, but it's still sometimes a chore wrestling with the map view's limitations.  Which makes Urlum a new an interesting place.  That's why I was kinda hoping all the surface-related stuff would be inconsistent.  But oh well, every little bit helps

 

 

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 15: Gonna Have Some Fun Tonight

Spoiler

 

The 1st thing that happened, naturally, was to send the UE-1 Urlum Science Probe to the anomaly detected on Priax.  It duly arrived and landed safely in the microgravity but couldn't find anything.

Priax is a nasty place.  All steep slopes and bottomless pits.  The probe landed at 28.5km elevation, far from the highest point on the moon.

Then there was a window for Plock-Karen coming up so Mission Control decided to have a race between a probe launched from Kerbin and the UE-1 Urlum SCANsat to see which could get there first.  So the Boffins dusted off the UE-1 Urlum Science Probe design, tweaked a few things that had been a bit bothersome on the Urlum mission, and shot it off to Plock-Karen.  The new probe soon departed or, in the parlance of Mission Control (via David Bowie), it "put on its red shoes and danced",

But enough of that.  We have much more important things to do.  The 2nd Sarnus Expedition is almost there.  Let's do this.  It should be fun

Of course, TOEJAM had gotten there some years before, but it was appropriate that leading the main herd was CRACKHEAD-COPROLITE carrying the jolly crew of 9.  It entered the Sarnus system on Y15 D356 (although the pics below were taken later when Sarnus was close enough to be photogenic.  The mighty ship rigged out its radiators in preparation for its capture burn.

CRACKHEAD-COPROLITE lucked into an Eeloo encounter right off its Sarnus Pe and was soon in orbit.  She then rendezvoused with TOEJAM and separated COPROLITE.

Docking COPROPLITE, basically just a Hitchhiker with small engines, was no problem.  But CRACKHEAD proved to be a beast.  Not squirrelly, but SLOW to answer the helm and requiring vast clouds of monopropellant.  Which was why she had a large tank of it, about 2/3 of which was consumed.  But that's hopefully the only docking she'll have to do.

In any case, both were eventually secured.  Doing this caused EPIKFAIL to award the Travelling Circus nearly $500K, which more than paid for the Plock-Karen ship.  Something about rendezvousing, docking, and building a station at Eeloo.

Next to arrive was SE-2 TRASHCAN CArrier.  This also had luck with the moon positions, not only getting at Tekto encounter right off the bat but also right at its descending node so no plane change needed.

Then the Slate Probe Lander (left) and HOPELESS (right) arrived only a few days apart, and both also quickly got encounters at captured at their destinations.

HOPELESS soon rendezvoused with TOEJAM and safely docked.

By then TRASHCAN Carrier had made the long trip out to Tekto.  Once in orbit, TRASCHCAN-1 was released, moved away, and prepared to receive its crew from COPROLITE.

Various signs and portents then informed Mission Control that The Kraken was in the neighborhood so they shut down for a while.  Here you can see one of the portents, a red line painted on the skybox.  That's actually an artifact from the map view when TRASHCAN had set its carrier as its target to make sure they wouldn't collide any time soon.

Despite these precautions, the game crashed and corrupted the persistence (only saved 4.5MB out of the usual 12.5MB).  KSP wouldn't even continue any of my other saved games until I renamed the last quicksave to persistent and even then, The Kraken ate TOEJAM and its accumulated parasites.  But a quick reload of the quicksave fixed that and the mission continued.

Soon thereafter, both of the mobile bases, STEAMINGPILE and BATHMAT, entered the system.

STEAMINGPILE hit Eeloo easily enough but BATHMAT needed a lap around Sarnus to hit Tekto.  Thus, long before then, not only STEAMINGPILE but also the last ship of SE-2, FLAKEE, had captured safely at Eeloo.

STEAMINGPILE entered a 90km orbit on the opposite side of Eeloo from TOEJAM et al, while FLAKEE got into a 200km orbit in preparation to dock with TOEJAM.  But the Boffins had had enough of docking big, clunky ships for a while so decided to leave it there for the time being.

Eeloo's orbit was getting rather busy by now, with some of SE-1 and most of SE-2 all there.

A while later, BATHMAT finally arrived at Tekto, which was also getting a bit crowded.

So there we are, Y16 D178.  It had taken 246 days from the first ship of SE-2 entering Sarnus' SOI until the last was at its destination (not counting TOEJAM which arrived 2 years earlier).  That's actually a pretty tight formation considering the length of the trip.  There were actually several times when I had to juggle quickly between 2 or more ships either entering the SOI, doing their capture burns, or encountering their moons.  Plus a lot of docking.  The Boffins considered this was a good enough night's work and hit the bar

But the crew of the 2nd Sarnus Expedition was oblivious to this.  They remained frozen throughout, having last-minute training beaten into their heads and experiencing life-changing dreams and visions.  Now that everything's in place, it's time to start thawing them out and getting on with the various jobs they came to do.  If they're still able to do them.

Tune in next time to find out.

 

 

Edited February 23, 2016 by Geschosskopf
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[Sigma88]

Very interesting as usual

[Mister Dilsby]

Excellent krakenfighting! "Signs and portents" indeed...

 

[Geschosskopf]

9 hours ago, Sigma88 said:

Very interesting as usual

Thank you.  Hopefully things will get more interesting once I put the Kerbals in the microwave

6 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Excellent krakenfighting! "Signs and portents" indeed...

That red line in the sky was a new omen of doom for me.  What it was, you know how when you're trying to rendezvous and it draws those red and orange lines from the closest approach markers to the planet's surface?  It was one of them, drawn on the skybox when not in the map view, and magnified greatly as a result.  It was kinda funny because it was stuck in that 1 spot so if I hadn't rotated the view around the ship looking for a good photo op, I'd have never seen it.  But I went back to the map view and cleared the ship's target, and the red line remained both in the map view (regular size) and the XL size on the skybox.

So I quicksaved, which worked, then tried to exit the game, but it crashed on exit during the persistence finalization.  The last quicksave (which I coipied and renamed as persistent, was just after FLAKEE docked and before the TRASHCANs arrived, so was focused on TOEJAM when it loaded.  TOEJAM immediately got the shakes and started spewing parts in all directions, but hitting F9 to load the same file as a quicksave instead of persistence solved that, thankfully.  I was a bit worried there for a while.

[Cydonian Monk]

14 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Various signs and portents then informed Mission Control that The Kraken was in the neighborhood so they shut down for a while.

KrakenSign.... Not unlike Dune's WormSign with the crackling lightning along the sand. Your kerbals are far, far from home. Many Krakens abound.

Increasingly KrakenSign is nothing more than the Main Menu.

(The forum is convinced I pasted content with formatting, so appologies in advance if this is Font Size 99 or something.)

[Geschosskopf]

29 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

KrakenSign.... Not unlike Dune's WormSign with the crackling lightning along the sand. Your kerbals are far, far from home. Many Krakens abound.

Increasingly KrakenSign is nothing more than the Main Menu.

With me, it's more a darkening of the sun, the sudden wilting of plants or silencing of the frogs, and a spike above the normal background level of poltergeist activity,  Either that or it's just means Elvis is on final approach in his UFO.  He drops by to see me every few months

We do have actual "wyrmsign" where I live, though.  When you see lots of little methane bubbles rising to the surface of the bayou to form a track about 3-4 feet wide that advances at about walking pace, that's a pretty good indication that a reasonably large gator (say about the size of your kayak) is walking on the bottom there

But yeah, the main menu is sho'nuf Krakensign.  If you leave the game running at the main menu for any length of time, it will either crash there or soon after you actually start playing.  But if you hurry past it and into the game, you might have no problems for hours.

[Kekkie]

On ‎2‎/‎18‎/‎2016 at 7:17 AM, Kuzzter said:

Excellent krakenfighting! "Signs and portents" indeed...

 

But maybe the Kraken will engulf Eeloo? Dun dun DUUUUUNN!!

Also, could you visit the Outer Planets with the Intrepid? It would be so cool to see how the Skimmeroo does on Tekto!

[Mister Dilsby]

9 minutes ago, Kekkie said:

Also, could you visit the Outer Planets with the Intrepid? It would be so cool to see how the Skimmeroo does on Tekto!

It might be, yeah--I've been thinking of installing OPM ever since reading the excellent reports in this thread. One planet at a time though, let's get to Jool first  

[Geschosskopf]

4 hours ago, Kekkie said:

But maybe the Kraken will engulf Eeloo? Dun dun DUUUUUNN!!

Also, could you visit the Outer Planets with the Intrepid? It would be so cool to see how the Skimmeroo does on Tekto!

The Kraken would already have eaten all of SE-2's stuff at Eeloo but for a fortuitious F5/F9 thing.

And yes, I agree, @Kuzzter or one of the numerous other great bards of the present KSP epoch should do an OPM story.  @lajoswinkler can show how to do it with crisp and sparkling engineering, every jot and tittle accounted for to the last erg.  I can, perhaps, show how to do it (or fail) with brute force, ignorance, and an unwilling crew of galley slaves.  But it takes an actual writer to do real justice to the grandeur that is OPM.  And "grandeur" is perhaps not a good enough word for this wonderful mod.  @CaptRobau and his numerous collaborators, plus of course @Sigma88, have made something here that should be stock, and none of that would be possible without @Thomas P.'s Kopernicus framework.

Damn, I feel like a NASCAR driver doing a post-race press conference for dropping so many sponsor names, but credit where credit is due.

4 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

It might be, yeah--I've been thinking of installing OPM ever since reading the excellent reports in this thread. One planet at a time though, let's get to Jool first  

I'm sure you'll make something even more awesome when the time comes.

[lajoswinkler]

You made me reconsider my opinion on nuclear lightbulbs. It's gonna be your fault if I use them. >:D