Too Much Ike

[Geschosskopf]

13 hours ago, deater said:

AND THEN THE ORE FELL OFF AND SANK TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN.

You can still recover it through the tracking station, though, right?  If it didn't explode on impact, you should find it in the debris section, and should still get credit for it.

[max_creative]

Moho base! Transfer windows FTW! Also Moho comes with a built in trash can! (Mohole) 

[deater]

19 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

You can still recover it through the tracking station, though, right?  If it didn't explode on impact, you should find it in the debris section, and should still get credit for it.

I hadn't thought of that, but no, I think the ore containers themselves exploded.  The lander flipped at the last minute and landed ore-first, and I think the small tanks can take 7m/s impacts and we were coming down more like 10m/s.

[Geschosskopf]

6 minutes ago, deater said:

I hadn't thought of that, but no, I think the ore containers themselves exploded.  The lander flipped at the last minute and landed ore-first, and I think the small tanks can take 7m/s impacts and we were coming down more like 10m/s.

Still, wouldn't hurt to look.

[deater]

OK, so the ore mission was a failure (and no, there doesn't seem to be any debris leftover from the landing).  We did get Valentina back to Kerbin though, for which we had an ulteroir motive.

It turns out the tracking station had recently discovered a class-A asteroid on collision course for the Northern continent!

Valentina was our closest, best, pilot, and we needed her to fly a mission to save the world.  It was an expensive mission too because we had no idea how much delta-V we were going to need.  In the end we may have made some poorly thought out promises for a future Ike base to get the funds we needed for this mission.

Valentina launched, and eventually matched orbits (would have been easier if we had realized in advance how inclined the orbit was).

We had plenty of fuel, and the asteroid is now in a more-or-less reasonably safe orbit around Kerbin.

No disasters, who would have thought saving the world would be so much easier than returning a few crates of rocks from the Mun.  Although we did forget to provide an escape rocket for Valentina, so she's sort of stuck on the asteroid for now.

Pictures here:  http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y17_asteroid/

[deater]

We decided we wanted that asteroid in a better orbit.  Instead of sending up a lot of fuel, we thought we might send up a mining ship and produce the fuel locally.

The problem being that we severely over-estimated the amount of ore available in a Class-A asteroid.

Still plotting where to go from here.  A class-C asteroid arrives soon, but we probably don't have enough fuel to intercept.  We've also severely depleted our funds again with not much to show for it.

Pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y17_redirect/

[deater]

Well in the end we did decide to tackle that Class-C asteroid.

Although we used somewhat nefarious methods to gather the funds needed.

There was a lot of hassle, most of which involved tediously docking and undocking until we were firing through centers of masses.  Made more fun when we forgot to put solar panels on our refueler ship.

So now we have Valentina, the nuclear thrusters, and the mining ship all on the Class-C, and managed to get it into Kerbin orbit.  Now to see if we can get it around Minmus without having to send another refueling ship.

More pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y17_classc/

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, deater said:

Well in the end we did decide to tackle that Class-C asteroid.

Those are some seriously monstrous ships.  Good job getting them to the target despite their problems

I think it's safe to mine asteroids prior to delivery.  As long as it's still an asteroid, life is good.

[deater]

Valentina managed to get that Class-C asteroid into Minmus orbit.  That all went a lot easier than I thought it would.  Now to figure out what to do with our asteroid mining infrastructure.

And finally, after 10 years, Jeb made it home!  He had been out to Duna, ejected by Ike, stranded in space, his first rescue mission missed and ended up on Eve, and finally had to ride home on the outside of a robot probe for 2 years.  But he made it back, and had enough fuel leftover to attempt a targeted landing at the KSC.

Pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y18_jeb/

[Geschosskopf]

Yay!  Jeb's home!  Very well done on that!  And also on getting the asteroid to Minmus.  Hopefully your finances are in better shape now.

[deater]

On 3/31/2016 at 1:29 AM, Geschosskopf said:

Yay!  Jeb's home!  Very well done on that!  And also on getting the asteroid to Minmus.  Hopefully your finances are in better shape now.

Yes, that 700k funds really helped.  Though that's going to get used up quickly if I am going to try to finish up the remaining contracts we have pending.

Also I should probably rescue Bob too, he's stuck in a similar situation to Jeb.  It's a shame you can't set a "mayday" flag on your ship and then get a contract to rescue them.

Much more useful than some contracts I've been offered, such as a recent one where it asked me to "expand your base in orbit of the sun" where the base in question was actually a Jool mission halfway to Jool.

[Geschosskopf]

32 minutes ago, deater said:

Also I should probably rescue Bob too, he's stuck in a similar situation to Jeb.  It's a shame you can't set a "mayday" flag on your ship and then get a contract to rescue them.

But if you got yourself into that situation, why should you get paid to get yourself out of it?

 

[Warzouz]

Very nice set of mission reports !

Inspiring !

[max_creative]

On February 14, 2016 at 9:12 AM, deater said:

 

• The launchpad has started exploding on every launch for some reason, even though I don't think the ships I am launching are significantly different than previous ones.

That happens to me occasionally. Try checking to see if there is debris on the pad. A probe core took out 14 launchs once.

[deater]

On 4/2/2016 at 10:36 PM, Geschosskopf said:

But if you got yourself into that situation, why should you get paid to get yourself out of it?

 

Well I'd like to think in the real world if some astronauts got stranded someone would provide money to rescue them.  Probably at a large cost of reputation points.

[Geschosskopf]

44 minutes ago, deater said:

Well I'd like to think in the real world if some astronauts got stranded someone would provide money to rescue them.  Probably at a large cost of reputation points.

Or their exes might pay you to NOT rescue them

[deater]

OK, so trying to clear out some of the huge mass of accumulated contracts.

Let's see about that 400-ore from the Mun one.  Doesn't sound like it should be so bad.  Let's add some struts and chutes (and lights for the lander) and we're set, right?  Just-returned Jeb is going (he misses space) and Leaukiki has finished her science training and is returning to hopefully improve the efficiency of the science lab.

We land and dock OK, but it's going to take a few days to mine the ore and process a little more fuel.

In the meantime we launch a rescue ship for Bill and Deatrix, who you might recall are stranded out beyond Duna orbit.

Jeb makes some fancy maneuvering to leave the Mun base and makes it back to Kerbin.  We try to land near the KSC forgetting that there's a mountain range on the prograde approach (oops) but manage to avoid that particular disaster.  Just like last time though, we flip when the chutes deploy, land ore first, and we lose half the ore load and contract is incomplete

Just about now the Duna window is opening so we send Jeb with that Ike base we unwisely promised a while ago.  That looks like it might work out, although the contract vaguely calls for the base to be on wheels, and despite having wheels all over the base it's not marked off in the contract list.  I guess we'll see how that goes when we get there.

Pictures and more details here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y18_ore/

 

[deater]

We're not going to give up on this ore thing.

• Let's do some testing on Kerbin (should have done this first, obviously).  After some annoying mistakes did finally come up with a design that could land 400 ore safely.
• Got the new design ready for launch, we're on the pad, about to press space when *bloop* "contract complete".  What??? We're still on the pad?  Did they finally finish scraping the 400 ore off the mountainside from last time?  I have no idea what just happened.  Well we have the ship ready, let's go get some ore anyway.
• Managed to snap off our transfer engine when staging.  Sigh, let's try again.
• Made it to the Mun this time, landed in a deep hole.  Our ghostly rover driver managed to knock our lander over.  We did recover and fly back upright, but then the sun set.
• While waiting for Munar dawn we launched a ship to Duna.  Unmanned, as it turned out there wasn't a single pilot available in the entire astronaut complex.
• Finally, dawn on the Mun.  We loaded up on ore and fuel and flew back to Kerbin.
• Flawless landing.  Retroactive contract complete I guess.

See more details and pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y18_enough_ore/

 

[deater]

Took a long time to continue on this game, other things going on.  Still running on 1.0.5 for now, too much of my infrastructure depends on landing legs and wheels for me to risk 1.1.

Anyway, finally our robot crew rotation trip made it to Duna and (eventually) we got it docked to Ike Station Zebu.  The crew have 100 days or so to decide which three of them get to return to Kerbin.

Meanwhile, in deep space, another robot ship approaches Bill and Detrix who have been stranded for 10 years since their IkeStation expansion mission went horribly wrong.  The meetup went well and Bill and Detrix are super happy to be rescued!  Trying to find a maneuver node home involved a lot of clicking all over (the other ship was too close).  This might have unknowingly caused disaster.  in the end we scuttled their old ship so we could navigate properly.

What about Jeb?  In his darkly lit cabin he is piloting an Ike base we have a contract for.  He actually launched before the other Ike rocket but he had a less ideal Hohmann orbit.  Anyway he managed to land on Ike first try no problems!  That never happens.  He fired up the mining gear and all was looking good.

Did we get the contract?  I was worried about that because it specified "on wheels" and while we had wheels on the base we probably weren't really "on" them.  Check the contract list?

*blank*.  !?!?!?!  It sounds like we might have triggered a known bug where if you click a lot in interplanetary space it erases all your contracts.  Fun times.  Maybe the auditors finally figured out how we got the money for this mission and zeroed out all contracts as a consequence.

Well not sure what to do about that.  Luzor arrived in Jool space for our Pol mission, but a bit pointless without a contract.  Maybe that's a good thing, he's in a horrible polar orbit and steering is fun because he's a scientist without SAS skills.

More details and pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y19_ike/

[deater]

It's finally time to rotate the crew back from IkeStationZebu, and Bill and Detrix should be arriving back on Kerbin around the same time.

First we got a contract to rescue a Kerbal from low-Kerbin orbit.  We decided to send Metroid Kerbin in a way-overpowered ship.  She stopped along the way to pick up the remnant of the Class-A asteroid that's been getting in the way.  Then we rescued Sigbert and tried to land the asteroid on the VAB.  (Sigbert was happy to go along with the prank).

We missed the KSC by 20km, but somehow mananged to land our large ship mostly intact.  I consider the mission a success in that no one died.

Meanwhile, in the Joolvian system, Luzor finally got a Pol encounter.  Sadly he was about 150m/s short of entering orbit, but he tried to EVA his way to the surface.  Hurtling toward the ground at 100m/s he was rethinking this plan, but then amazingly he hit the surface... and bounced.  And bounced again.  And somehow lived.  So, contract complete I guess.

Back near Kerbin, the Ike crew returned and stopped by to orbit Minmus to see what Valentina was up to.

Bill and Detrix swung by the Mun and managed to land really close to KSC.  Having an asteroid on the plains makes a nice navigation marker.

More details and pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y20_physics/

[deater]

With at least 1/3 of the Kerbals back on Kerbin it was decided this might be a good time to *upgrade to 1.1.2*.

That went better than expected, with the worst effect so far being all the flags falling over.

I think the current plan is to make a large Jool mission.  So we've been testing (and exploding) a lot of command ships and carriers, though we did finally get something into orbit.

Lander testing has been going worse.  Even with the inflatable heatshield we can't seem to land a large lander without it flipping disastrously.  Not sure how we'll manage a Laythe landing if we can't figure this one out.  (The last time we landed on Laythe was pre-deadly re-entry).

Some pictures of explosions here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y22_explosions/

[deater]

After a long hiatus it was time to continue the buildup to the Jool mission with a new director in charge at KSC.

The lander testing had been... sort of.. successful, so it was time to send them up to the mothership.  That more or less went OK.

Then it was time for Valentina to fly up the captain's yacht.  It's mini-shuttle design (for aesthetic purposes) just did not want to launch straight past 3000m.  After lots of spectacular explosions (which Valentina kept annoyingly surviving, costing $$$) we eventually came up with a booster with enough control surfaces to get to orbit with only one major spinout along the way.

So docking the yacht... should be easy?  Did anyone double check the measurements?  What do you mean it won't fit?  Argh!  Luckly Valentina did some clever piloting with a claw, although it's unclear it will survive the acceleration of a Jool insertion burn.

Next up is a bunch of boring fuel launches I suppose.

Pictures and more commentary here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y22_docking/

[Geschosskopf]

16 hours ago, deater said:

After a long hiatus it was time to continue the buildup to the Jool mission with a new director in charge at KSC.

Glad to see you back.  This is really a classic story and this new chapter is no exception.  Glad you haven't lost your touch  

Anyway, launching flying machines on rockets is quite difficult.  Putting them on the nose, a la Dreamchaser, is usually the worst option in KSP.  I tend to build the rocket above them, using the plane's wings as the tail fins of the rocket.  Much more stability during launch.

And "KSP for Apple II"  LOL!  Geez, that took me back to circa 1980 and my high school computer lab, which was one of the first in Texas and one of my classmates went on to become the 1st person prosecuted for hacking in the state

Edited July 27, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[deater]

OK, let's fuel up our Jool ship!  We need some refueling rockets, let's just slap something together with our existing booster, how hard can it be.

Oh, we forgot solar panels and reaction wheels   We did manage to get near enough so our passenger could EVA over but the fuel load was a total loss.

A quick redesign and we sent two successful refuel missions, although even when using the claw it's a pain docking (too many parts for my machine, things drag to a crawl within 2.2km).

About to launch, when Houston interrupts.  One more refueler?  But we're at 95% fuel, I thought we were good!  A surprise on board... this might be fun.

But it wasn't fun.  Four tourists?  What are we going to do with them?  Sigh.

Time to launch... first burn goes OK.  Second burn is a horrible mess.  The last burn is just unworkable.  Thrust vector is *not* through the center of mass.  Valentina, we need you to adjust the position of your shuttle.

Valentina: I'm going to adjust my shuttle back to the Mun, see-ya!

Well, um, OK.  I guess you've been promoted Detrix.  Off to Jool!

And they made it!  Though they had to seriously dip into the landers' fuel supplies in order to make orbit so I am not sure what's going to happen next.  The landers have ore processing capabilities but I am not sure if there's enough fuel left for them to land anywhere useful.  Should be interesting trying.

Pictures and more here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y22_departure/

[Geschosskopf]

Monster ship there