Uuuokozetistan Space Program 2/6/2016 (DUNA BITES AGIAN!!!)

[Kuansenhama]

I know a lot of people make threads like these to share their adventures in KSP. This is mine.

My space program is called Uuuokozetistan (Ooh-oko-zet-ih-stan) Space Program, Uuuokozetistan being a fictional country that I created when I was a kid. The country was referenced in a couple of ways. For one, it existed when me and my friends drew 'drawing wars'. (Large battles shown from the side view of stick figure soldiers, tanks going head to head in all out combat, usually drawn on the back of our algebra homework.) In order to be 'in' in this group of friends, you had to create your own country and have your own uniquely designed military. And my country, was of course, Uuuokozetistan. When I got older, I started (and I still do) draw and imagine these relics and items. Often with unusual or even magical properties, such as a three-spouted teapot that an only be used if you have three teacups and is meant to symbolize mother, father and child, and be used in that context. So I called it the 'Three spouted Teapot of Uuuokozetistan.'

Long Story Short, Uuuokozetistan is a weird country that I made up as a kid. Obviously, even the name sounds weird.

This is the flag I'm using. The country has had a couple of different flags in the past. I was trying to make one that would look like the three U's, I wound up with this three colors meeting thing surrounded by a circle. I like it, and it's set to a transparency and looks pretty nice on the side of most of the parts.

One other thing, I probably won't be using TOO many screenshots. Uploading screenies and linking them can be annoying, particularly when there's a lot. So the format will be partially written with maybe a screenshot or two filling in where I was too lazy too. If someone requests I show off a particular rocket or something else (I doubt anyone will since most of my rockets suck pretty badly.)

I'm not right at the beginning of my playthrough, because, though I haven't looked at too many other career diary threads, I know that people aren't the biggest fans of the ones that start off with a picture of an RT-5 stuck to an MK1 command pod. Particularly because this is HARDCORE career mode and for the most part, It was just a grind for me to get enough cash for space center upgrades. I'm completely lost without having the VAB, Pad, Tracking Station, Astronaut Complex and Mission Center at T2. I need the VAB/LP upgrades to build anything reasonable. I need the Astronaut complex for EVAs and the Tracking Station/Mission Center mostly for Maneuver Nodes. (At this point, I already have all of those upgrades)

Most of that money grind was me doing part test contracts. Any part that needs to be tested on the launchpad, in flight or suborbital, I take. I have an unmanned rocket and I just strap whatever it is I need to test onto it and fly to the correct altitude. If it's suborbital, I pop the chutes and let Stage Recovery do the rest. If it's splash down, just fly an arc a kilometer or two out over the ocean and test there. I do my best to recover all of these rockets. Stingy? Yes. Effective? Yeah, Kinda. (That little bit of science you get from part tests make them even more worthwhile)

The rest was tourist contracts. I actually have a screenie of the beast I used to fly these. I called it the Pelican, since the Kerbs were stuffed inside like Sardines. Using the MK1 Passenger cabins, i made a pseudo command pod continuation with aggressive clipping into a structural fuselage. (I only use part clipping if one on the parts is structural or areodynamic, on the logic that structural parts can always be cut and shaped to fit onto/into things. Fuel tanks and what not cannot be clipped otherwise it would lose functionality.) I was surprised that this rocket was safe, reliable and under 30 parts thanks to some semi-OP gimballing SRBS that I think come from SpaceY.

I have yet to lose any Kerbals. I've been playing it pretty safe, either flying unmanned missions or making extra sure that the pod has a chute and a sheild, so all my orange suits are still alive. Now that I have tracking available, I can start getting rescue contracts. I usually like to Rescue out a Krew that owes my space program a life debt, and use them in favor of keeping the orange suits alive for particularly dangerous or groundbreaking missions. It's also a good way to get some funds and a bloated roster of kerbs. That will be my objective when I get on tomorrow.

Though today, i had my most ambitious mission yet. I had been trying to avoid leaving LKO, but I started getting some pretty tempting contracts for Minimus, and the only thing left to upgrade was the Astronaut Complex. The wonderful 'explore minimus', a Fly-by contract and an orbital survey graced my mission control screen. So instead of going to the Mun first like a normal person, I went straight for Minimus. I sent Jeb and Bob in the two man 1.25M caupsle. Originally I was planning on having them land, but fuel was really low by the time I got out there, and settled on an eccentric orbit that I could easily eject from. (I also unlocked the ability to go EVA midway through the mission, very useful for resetting my science experiments.)

Other than not actually landing, the mission was a massive success. I still got a ton of science, and funds to burn from all the contracts. This second screenie is of Bob and Jeb on EVA for the first time in high kerbin orbit, and the only one I took from the mission. The big thing that I managed to unlock from this were solar panels. This means that I can start putting up satellites and flying longer-duration unmanned missions.

So next time, hopefully less wordy, I plan on:

-Going back to Minimus, and Landing!

-Rescuing a Krew of recruits.

-First orbital Rondevouz/Docking. I have a worlds' first contract for it.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Kuansenhama

[Kuansenhama]

So a very busy day for me...

First, some housekeeping. I had some leftover tourists still waiting for LKO, so I loaded up the Pelican one more time. Should have been a walk in the park, no? Well it turns out there was a staging error on the Pelican and it finally caught up to me. So I wound up dropping the orbital stage and finding myself sub-orbital with nothing I could do about it. Fortunatley for me, I was able to just reenter from suborbital and nobody was killed in a firey explosion. (So an expensive mistake, but thankfully not a deadly one...)

This is a Hardcore Career so it is only a matter of time before there is a catastrophie that leads to some poor kerbal meeting an explodey demise...

I was able to re-fly that mission with fixed staging and somehow still pulled a slight profit.

Next order of business, I needed to rescue some kerbals so that when there IS a real disaster and someone DOES die, I have some backup ready to go. I built this rocket called the 'Guardian'. A pretty simple liquid fueled Xfed orbiter with a probe body for auto pilot. It's not the prettiest rocket I've seen, but it's cheap and it works.

The first time I did this, I also got that orbital Rendezvous contract out of the way...

I did three of these rescues. Algan, Jenise and Misei became members of our Krew. But I needed a scientist, and I didn't get one right away. But I'll get back to that...

KSP Improvement Idea #1

A contract type to rescue a whole team of Kerbals. Pays more and you get a whole team.

Third order of business: I wanted to make science probes. I threw some sounding rockets into the ocean until I had enough science to unlock the RWPS antenna from Dmagic. This opens up this contract type called 'Magnetic Feild Survey', that requires a probe in an inclined orbit. I also have the ScanSat plugin and wanted to use the low-resolution mapper. The science payout for transmitting a complete map is pretty good as well. So with this, I can kill two birds with one stone. I can have a surveyor for contracts and make planetary maps.

I put one of these babies in orbit of Kerbin and the Mun and put them to work both mapping the magnetic feilds and making maps. For now, I don't have one around Minimus, but Minimus got plenty of love from me already today.

Pathfinder 1 was the name of the first rocket that I sent to Minimus. Bob and Jeb were on it and they didn't have enough fuel to land. I decided this would be Pathfinder 2. Totally re-designed with a 2.5M launcher and 2-kerb lander. But wait, there's only bob in there. Well, I got one more rescue contract, but the catch is, the Kerbal is in orbit around Minimus.

So after transferring out there on the world's most robust transfer stage (still halfway full of fuel), I picked up Haigela K. And she was another scientist! Yay! And I know it's a rescue contract, but Bob and Haigela had a job to do...

This of course meant Landing on Minimus. I think I went to about 6 different biomes. This screenie is from the Highlands, the third biome they visited if my recall serves. I remember it was just after I had set her down. I also had to go back to KSC, take the advance funds on a couple of meaty Duna/Ike contracts and upgrade the R and D center before I could start taking surface samples.

So after Biome-Hopping for awhile, Fuel got low and it was time to head home. I was seriously worried that I wouldn't have enough and would find myself in high orbit above Kerbin awaiting rescue or worse, sub orbital on Minimus with only a few minutes to save myself from crashing to my doom. Luckily, everything went according to plan. I had just enough to areocapture at Kerbin. (20km Peri) and came down east of KSC. No problems. Reentries never fail to make me nervous, particularly when there's a ton of science involved.

The mission gave me an almost overwhelming amount of science. I gutted the 90-level nodes on the tree, and still has over a 1000 science points to burn. (Should I maybe take one of the strategies at the admin building and convert that to sweet, sweet funds) But that's a decision for another day...

So, I have contracts to do science and explore Duna and Ike, and the transfer window is only 74 days away now... I'm not sure what the mission profile is going to be, but I suspect it will be one way, and unmanned.

Next time:

-Send some Kerbs to the surface of the Mun, I have yet to land there...

-I got a few more contracts, (Science Data, Flags) That are asking for me to go back to Minimus. So the Pathfinder 3 may fly. I haven't visited the Midlands or Poles yet. I also want to put a scansat/surveyor in orbit of Minimus.

-Possibly my departure for Duna.

[Shania_L]

Hey nice career so far! Its always nice to see another different way to do things, one of the reasons I love this forum section.

Quick Q, though, Bobs rescue mission to Minmus, you sent him in a 2 man 1.25m capsule? is that from a mod, if so which one?

[Kuansenhama]

Thanks. Here is the link to the mod. Next update coming soon.

http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/226484-k2-command-pod

I thought about doing a mod list, but I've been removing and installing a couple mods here and there. I'll be sure to do that soon.

 

Edited January 18, 2016 by Kuansenhama

[Kuansenhama]

Uuuokozetistan space program part 3: This mission is... 30% Successful.

 

Spoiler

 

Interlude/Meanwhile:

I rescued another crewmember, Alsine kerman, a pilot from high kerbin orbit, bringing my roster to nine.

I placed one of my standard scansats in orbit of minmus and got a full map+mag scan contract going.

But since four of the seven contract slots I have are for Duna-Related missions, so I figured that the only logical thing was to warp about 75 days ahead to the Duna window and launch a mission. I actually had a random crash during my first launch, and had to launch the mission a second time.

Gettin into orbit. KSP: Those moments when you have a lot of probes, but only want to build ONE rocket.

This was a first to me. A direct transfer from kerbin's SOI to Duna's.

Alrighty... I completely forgot the correct areobraking altitude for Duna, but I know it's low. How about 12k?

If anything is gonna be burned off, I figure it might as well be the transfer stage that's out of fuel anyway.

crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap areobreak too low... This was a failure. And this is a HARD career so I'm not allowed to quickload or anything. But this mission had already paid for itself 3 times over with all the milestones, so I just figured I'd open the chutes and see what happens.

So I landed this noodle of probes on duna... I actually transmitted a lot of science data as all of this happened. Making the best of a really sour situation, I suppose.

After detaching everything and some fenagling, I managed to get the Ike lander back upright.

Launched it. I also learned that the magnemometer was heavy and seemed to want to be pulling it to one side.

I don't know why I did this, but I just kept burning once I made orbit and transferred back into orbit around the sun. Remember that, everyone. Even when you fail horribly in KSP, you can still sort of succeed.

So the next update might not be quite as interesting, as I will continue to play around in Kerbin's SOI I know there's an Eve window coming up soon. But I'm going to need to make some more preperations before I'm ready to send a mission there. I still haven't got any Kontracts for the Mun yet. That's been on the back burner although I think it would be great to go to the Mun. (Though I have 1300 science and only 300,000 funds after today's events...)

 

Next Update:

-Busywork in the Kerbin System: Rescue Kerbals, Satellite Contacts, maybe a space station or Base or two...

-Land on the Mun. (How many space programs land on Duna before they land on the Mun?!!??!)

-Go To Eve (Or at least get ready for it...)

Edited February 4, 2016 by Kuansenhama
Put a very pic-heavy mission into spoiler tag.

[galaxyguy]

Like it

 

[Kuansenhama]

Okay, I've been playing a lot, and gotten a lot done. but haven't taken many screenies and don't actually have a lot of time to update this. I have class early tomorrow.

First of all, Pathfinders 3 and 4 have both flown successfully out to minimus. Both managed to rescue kerbals, complete contracts and clean out the lower level science experiments on every biome on Minimus. Pathfinder 3 used monoprop engines that turned out to be sluggish and not really fit for landers, but nobody died... This is one of the few screenies I did take of Pathfinder 4 heading home. But it's a good one. Quality over Quantity, I suppose.

I also deployed a new generation of scanning satellites in the kerbin system making use of the biome mapping and resource scanning.

I got contracts for orbital surveys of Eve and Dres. The Eve window came and went, and I sent a probe called EVEN out to Eve. I'll show what this probe looks like before it arrives, but if I know one thing for sure, it's that I'm not gonna try and areobrake this time... When the Dres window rolls around (and it is coming up) I plan on sending a duplicate of EVEN with a few more solar panels called DRESDEN. We will also be heading back to Duna when that window rolls around.

We got a space station contract for kerbin that I took. I don't have a screenshot of the station hub either, but it's pretty rudimentary and nothing special at the moment. This also ended quite disastrously. The rocket fliped a few kilomters up and lost control completely. The Kerbal was able to jump and by some miracle, survived.

Still have yet to have a death in this save. We've had a lot of close calls.

The second launch of the space station was done by our friend Jeb. I figured if anyone could get that wildly unstable rocket into orbit it was him. And he did. Go jeb.

But most importantly, we finally landed on the Mun. Oversight 1 and now Oversight 2. I flew one landing and am in progress of a second. I was biome hopping today. I made the stupid mistake of trying to push for four biomes. Failed. And only had enough fuel to recover into Low Munar Orbit. I guess I should just be happy that I've done so many rescue contracts at this point that rescue missions are like second nature.

I also know that I've started to use the administration building. I took up patents licensing since Dmagic overloads the amount of science you get and the leadership initiative so that I could bring in even more science from field work. I like the idea of becoming more independent of contracts and having our cash flow come from our science intake. This means that I'm planning on building stations and bases that can farm science points and convert them to cold hard funds.

So next time:

-Munar Orbit Rescue.

-I'll show you the EVEN probe.

-Get some labs up and running. I should show you the LKO station thats going up.

On 1/23/2016 at 9:29 PM, galaxyguy said:

Like it

 

Thanks. I'm open to fan imput. If there is something you want me to consider doing, let me know. (A mod you want me to incorporate, A specific place you want to see me visit in the future. I have OPM.) For now, my only real goal is to have flags and footprints on every planet including all the OPM worlds.

[Kuansenhama]

Uuuokozetistan Space Program Part 5: Just some updates

 

I really thought I might be more into keeping a diary of my KSP escapades. Really, this is more a diary so that I can look back upon fondly what I am doing in KSP. Anyways, today I got in a nice long play session and got loads done in my career game.

And since I have homework that I really should be doing right now, I'm going to stick to the highlights. Nothing super interesting has happened, but these are some photos.

The first thing that I've been doing is rescue lots of Kerbals. The astronaut complex is at double capacity. I'm trying to get scientists so that I can crew labs. I've been thinking of how I want to use the Patent's liscencing+Leadership Initiative in the admin building to rake in funds without having to always resort to contracts.

There's also the matter of training them. I plan on taking a large crew out to Duna when the Transfer window rolls around. (And perhaps another crew to Eve.) Crew cabins are pretty light. (Hitchikers or MK1s), and if I can stuff enough Kerbals into my landers when I head out there, I can hold mass landings and bust out the 3, 4 and 5 star Kerbals. The only downside to this is that if something goes wrong in that sort of landing.

 

Eventually, I figured out a way to rescue 12 Kerbals at once. How is this possible, you may ask? Well with this abomination, it (sort of) is. Essentially this is a station with small spacecraft that can decouple, fly unmanned to the kerbal, and take them home. This saves me the trouble of having to launch a new rocket every single time I want to rescue a Kerbal. And for a busy college student like me, time is a valuable asset when playing this sort of game.

The second thing I did was arrive at Eve. I'm lacking a lot of screenies from this mission but it was quite a fun one, even if it was unmanned. I didn't meet the same fate when Areobraking here (since I didn't attempt to areobrake to begin with.) This sattelite paid a visit to silly lil Gilly before going into a polar Eve orbit and started scanning it. The science payout from this mission was pretty darn good.

The third and final thing that I did was assemble my first base on Minimus. Sure, it's farther than the Mun, but its gravity is more forgiving making it easier to land things like this... I also had a contract for a base there, so I could get paid a little extra. I then got a context contract to expand my outpost from the initial 10 crew capacity to 17. I then got another contract to expand the crew capacity to 25. There are only four kerbals at the base right now, so I can rest assured they have plenty of space to stretch inside that base.

The one problem I have is that (thanks to the memory ceiling), I don't have access to mods like USI Kolonization or PBS. So I have to pretty much make do with the cheap junk the stock game gives you. Base building needs more support.

That Gigantor is clipping into the base. That bothers me more than it should.

I did learn something. I had a strategy for base building that I would send the modules with no crew in them. Then send the crew in a separate lander capable of returning to Kerbin. (You can't see the lander in this pic so just imagine a really cool lander is near the base, OK?) This turned out to be smart as I had quite a few expensive mishaps getting this base launched and assembled. If I remember correctly, at least 3 rockets undergoing rapid unplanned disassembly during launch, so I ended up paying for two bases when I only got one. So I don't think the base was necessarily a profitable venture.

But we still have yet to kill a Kerbal. We have 24 crew members (but only five scientists, counting bob, so far.)

I've been planning for the future. The next big goal on the agenda is unlocking the refinery, and a Manned Duna mission. Though getting that thing is going to require updating the R&D, that's disgustingly expensive at 3,300,000 funds with my current settings. (I only have about 1.1M funds ATM)

Honestly as for what mission I want to use for training a large crew, I'm split. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. A manned Duna mission would be tougher. More Dv to transfer and land on either body in the system, and the window is sooner giving me less time to prepare. But it would offer two bodies that I know I could land on. Eve window is a bit further out, but if I take a crew to Eve, I could for sure take a training mission to Gilly. But that's only one body, since I have neither the funds nor tech for a return from Eve's surface. (Granted, I get experience for both.)

What I might end up doing is sending smaller crews to both planets. But I don't think I'll have the refinery in time for that. I don't know, we'll see what happens.

[Kuansenhama]

So I got some more play in. Not much, but I've been getting ready for the launch of my two manned missions to Eve and the Duna-Ike System. I might play them later today, if I'm productive and can get through my homework.

The Dresden shipped out and has an encounter with dres now. Screenies of launch and correction burns in space. Even though my 'space' burn is in shadow and makes it pretty hard to see the final spacecraft. I had no idea the 'Mighty' atomic rocket motor had this cool purple particle trail. (I unlocked the nuke engines, figured I'd need them for my missions out to Eve and Duna.)

I also started a Mun base that ended up costing four times as much as the contract paid me for it. The first attempt did THIS on the launchpad thanks to a staging error.

And the second attempt spun out of control and crashed into the Mun at 380m/s. The third attempt was a success, until I realized that I had forgot an antenna, so decided to send up a science rover/module to satisfy that requirement and be able to get tons of science to fill the lab. The base is unmanned at the moment, but I'm planning on sending a crew of scientists to mine science as I did on minimus.

 

[Kuansenhama]

First Spoiler: DRESDEN at Dres

Spoiler

It seems like a lot of people don't care about Dres. I kind of like it. It's small, looks fairly rugged and interesting. And it doesn't do to my spacecraft what Duna Does...

D.R.E.S.D.E.N. Arrival.

Whoever made DMagic clearly doesn't like Dres as much as I do, reading the science prompts.

Ouch. Sorry Dres.

Second Spoiler: Hyperion At Duna. (Disaster)

Spoiler

So I assembled a spacecraft in orbit of Kerbin. I named it Hyperion. It carried 3 lander. One bound for Duna and two for Ike. But you don't see the landers here.

The Hyperion's engines was Red-Hot by the time I finished the transfer burn. Guess I had just enough Radiators.

Blah Blah Blah transfered the Hyperion. (I'll spare you the orbital transferring shenanigans, since there were a lot of them.) I sent some probes ahead of it since my previous attempt to send probes burned up in Duna's atmosphere, so I could scan for anomalies and the likes. The problem came when I entered Duna's SOI and found that my DV numbers were not quite where I wanted them.

I recalled the previous time I sent to Duna. I had a 12km Areobreaking altitude and landed my tower of probes perfectly. I realized I could split the lander off of the Hyperion and land it using an interplanetary areobreak to slow down and save a lot of mass on my circularization burn with the Hyperion.

I've got none other than Jebediah flying the lander. He's the only one who would be willing to attempt a maneuver this absurd.

I think this was the point that I realized this was probably a stupid idea... Something exploded due to overheating. I would later realize that it was my landing gear. Enh. It was redundant anyway, I can land on the engines... I slowed down, barely using the engines at all and wanting to save as much fuel as I could for my return to orbit.

But I started to realize how low I was actually getting so I gunned the engines and popped the chutes. It did nothing else other than make me hit the ground horizontally at 50m/sec.

Caught Jeb frowning agian...

Well the command pod survived but nothing else... I was laughing like a seal as it slid across the surface. I guess even experienced players like me can be subject to the classic 'only the command pod survived' disaster.

On the bright side, I lost enough extra mass from the Hyperion to bring it into a stable orbit.

The Hyperion will continue its mission. I have Ike landers, but I don't think they have enough DV to land on Duna and bring back the Kerbals. Point is, I'm not going to try. So it seems that Jeb, Ronfrey and Haijorie will be staying on Duna a much longer than originally planned. Sorry guys...

Moral of the story: If you try to recreate a previous disaster, it will happen again.

Next time:

The Hyperion will continue its mission and deploy Landers on Ike.

The DRESDEN will land on Dres even though it is not designed to.

Heck if I know. Honestly this is hard career and I didn't think I'd make it this far.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Kuansenhama

[Kuansenhama]

Part 8: The Game Bugged. Imgur Bugged. Everything is Bugged.

IMGUR isn't working today. I'll edit pics later.

I De-oribted the E.V.E.N. Satellite on the whim of a Juicy contract to enter the atmosphere. She had a good run, olde EVEN, but it was time to go.

I Did several Ike landings with the small lander left on Hyperion. Unfortunatley, of the 10 Kerbals I took on that mother-ship, only 2 of them were scientists, and one of those scientists is on the surface of Duna.

I kept getting contracts for Dres. Orbital Survey. Science Data. Magentic Feild Scans. I just kept taking them. The DRESDEN was a beast of a probe and was working great.

I did some stuff on the Mun too. I built this flying rover using the Monopropellant Engines and took Val out to do some seismic surveys not far from my Mun base.

With that, I Finally had enough funds to get that shiny T3 R&D and unlock the ISRU. I went to check up on my Kontracts after that, and saw that they had all disappeared.

So apparently the SF got hit with a bug or something. All my Kontracts went missing, and the archive is empty... Seemingly I can take new ones, but I don't know what happened to the old ones, or the archive. This means I'm gyped out of at least a million funds. So I think I might just SFE the save file add a bunch of money or just convert it into a sandbox save, build a big ship and land on every planet before 1.1 comes out.

[Shania_L]

I had the very same bug not too long ago on my career game, if you have a quicksave or duplicated backup persistence file from not too long ago you could revert to that and the contracts will be there.

I didn't, so I ended up cycling through the new contracts offered to try and find ones that were as close as possible to accept in their place and then editing my SF to remove the duplicated initial payments. For long term contracts in progress I just added (a best guess of) the completion reward and assumed Xmas came early

Annoying, but not the end of the world .. thankfully.