Kerbin dedicated rescue system

[sardia]

I've decided to try a dedicated system of independent landers, tug, and reentry capsule to see if it's more efficient than sending up the same rocket with a lander that flies back to kerbin. 

It consists of:

A 3 seat nerv lander that lands and flies back to low munar orbit. Plus another that orbits minmus. 

a nerv tug that seats 3.

a cheap $20k rocket that brings a 3 man reentry pod back to kerbin. 

A fuel hub that docks the return capsule and tug together. 

A resupply ship for fuel hub. 

Is this more efficient than my $70k 3 man moon rocket? It's a bit of a project and investment. I'm not sure when or if it will pay off. Have I become more efficient or did I just trade my time savings for more docking time?

The design goal is to vacuum up kerbal rescue contracts for a future jool mission. I use routine mission manager, usi and KAS/KIS to maintain things. RMM mod allows me to automatically order return capsules, and refueling trips so I can get more rescue contracts completed. 

Edited March 21, 2016 by sardia

[Snark]

Certainly, a reusable rocket system is generally going to be cheaper in the long run than a use-and-dispose system, especially if you're powering it with nukes.

For your throwaway 3-kerbals-to-reenter rocket:  what are you using for your crew accommodations?  A Mk1-2 command pod, or a Mk1 pod with a Mk1 crew cabin behind it?

I mention this because the former option is more than twice as heavy as the latter; the Mk1-2 command pod is extraordinarily overweight.  You can build a much lighter, cheaper craft with the latter option.

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, sardia said:

The design goal is to vacuum up kerbal rescue contracts for a future jool mission. I use routine mission manager, usi and KAS/KIS to maintain things. RMM mod allows me to automatically order return capsules, and refueling trips so I can get more rescue contracts completed. 

This is a gamble.  The frequency and locations of rescue contracts are totally luck of the draw.  Sometimes you get a lot, sometimes you hardly get any.  Therefore, any investment you make in a dedicated rescue network is potentially just wasted.  There is also the fact that you need to be turning a healthy profit to save up for that planned Jool expedition, so the more money you sink into your rescue system, the less you have for Jool.  Granted, rescues provide income, but some of that will be consumed by building the rescue system.  And then there's in big intangible:  your own personal time required.  All these different units to build, launch, position, use, dock, replace, refuel, etc.

So before doing any of this, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• How much money are you willing to risk on what might not turn out to be useful?
• How much time are you willing to invest running this system instead of doing other things?
• Assuming the system actually gets a decent number of customers, how long will its business take to pay off its own construction costs and acquire the extra cash needed for the Jool project?

My own feeling is that on average, there aren't enough rescue missions to justify building anything dedicated to that purpose, especially as rescues aren't that lucrative anyway.  And the more time you invest into just the overhead of the rescue system, the less time you have to pursue more profitable contacts of other types.

[sardia]

I'm using the mk1 inline pod for airplanes because the connecting nodes are even and sized correctly. It's connected to the mk1-2 crew capsule. 

The jool mission needs roughly 30 engineers, so it'll take 90 rescue missions to complete. 

I'll post a picture of each craft later. 

[Geschosskopf]

3 minutes ago, sardia said:

The jool mission needs roughly 30 engineers, so it'll take 90 rescue missions to complete. 

Or, you can just hire them.  Get the Custom Barn Kit mod, which allows you to set a low, fixed price for buying Kerbals on the open market.  Which is only appropriate given that they come to you completely untrained.  And then use Field Experience so they don't need to return to Kerbin to get the benefit of what they supposedly learned on their trip anyway.  This is the only practical way to create large populations and have them actually be useful at distant planets.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, sardia said:

The jool mission needs roughly 30 engineers

Holy smokes, that's a lot!  Gonna be one heck of a mission. 

Out of curiosity, why so many engineers?  Even if you're simultaneously landing on and mining all moons at once, why need more than 5 engineers at most?

I'm sure you've got a good reason, just having trouble picturing it and am interested in what the mission profile looks like. 

 

[sardia]

Usi workshops and extra planetary launchpads needs a literal boat load of engineers who have to be committed to their projects if I want construction to finish in a timely manner.  And they just can't be any old engineers, they have to be smart ones... The dumb ones get assigned to mining duty or KAS KIS retrofitting. 

I do have field experience installed so my colony should be self sustaining. Not that I expect to get there before 1.1 but the goal is nice to have. 

KIS and KAS require engineers unless you edit the config files. For example, I sent a mk3 crew cabin full of kerbals, and I ended up rationing engineers and shuttling them around on  Duna during field test. That's not gonna fly on jool. 

I may edit the mods so that not everything requires engineers. 

Edited March 21, 2016 by sardia

[Snark]

40 minutes ago, sardia said:

Usi workshops and extra planetary launchpads needs a literal boat load of engineers who have to be committed to their projects if I want construction to finish in a timely manner.  And they just can't be any old engineers, they have to be smart ones... The dumb ones get assigned to mining duty or KAS KIS retrofitting. 

I do have field experience installed so my colony should be self sustaining. Not that I expect to get there before 1.1 but the goal is nice to have. 

KIS and KAS require engineers unless you edit the config files. For example, I sent a mk3 crew cabin full of kerbals, and I ended up rationing engineers and shuttling them around on  Duna during field test. That's not gonna fly on jool. 

I may edit the mods so that not everything requires engineers. 

Ah yes.  Yeah, UKS/MKS would do it, if you've got your cap set for a self-sustaining colony.  Say no more!

Even then, though, 30 engineers seems like a lot to me.  I've done only one UKS/MKS playthrough; it was interesting, I'm glad I tried it, but I won't be doing it again-- it made the game mostly about logistics and micromanaging resources rather than flying rocket ships (which is what I like KSP for), so it turned KSP into a different game that's not really my cup of tea.

Anyway, I was playing full-on UKS/MKS, with TAC-LS, and with KIS/KAS.  I built up a base on Minmus, then used it to build a giant self-sustaining mothership for an extended tour of duty of the outer solar system (this was with Outer Planets).  Yes, it consumed quite a few engineers... but nothing like 30.  I think I had about a dozen engineers, maybe slightly more, and that was plenty.  Along with about half that many scientists, and a couple of pilots thrown in (not 'coz I needed them, because they're basically ballast, but I figured that Jeb and Val had earned their spots by helping out in the early days of the space program).

[sardia]

Good point, how many engineers did you need? Might be able to shave some time off. Full system below.

Return capsule recently undocked from resupply station.

Odyssey Transport Tug recently undocked from my resupply station.

Eagle Lander

[FancyMouse]

To efficiently rescue, you could do this:

Only accept 1-star LKO rescue contract. In this case it will always be an equatorial orbit ~80x80km. Accept 4 at a time.

Build a rocket with a hitchhiker and about 4.5km/s delta V.

Trajectory is like this. First launch to LKO, match inclination, then (important part) burn apoapsis to 100km~200km so that you can have a rendezvous in the next 1~3 period (depending on the phase angle of the target). Upon rendezvous, switch to rescued kerbal, use its(/his/her) EVA monoprop to match your hitchhiker's orbit.

Then change the apoapsis at periapsis or at least low altitude to rendezvous with the next target (btw this is also the trick to control the rendezvous position - to avoid rendezvous at night time). Repeat this procedure until you rescued all 4, then descend. It should take about 1 Kerbin day or plus a half to finish everything.

That is my way of earning early-career money and kerbals. After all it's ~20k cost versus 4-contract income... Until I found it became so mechanical and not fun to me to play like that. But if you really need 90 kerbals, this might help.

[sardia]

On 3/23/2016 at 7:59 PM, FancyMouse said:

To efficiently rescue, you could do this:

Only accept 1-star LKO rescue contract. In this case it will always be an equatorial orbit ~80x80km. Accept 4 at a time.

Build a rocket with a hitchhiker and about 4.5km/s delta V.

Trajectory is like this. First launch to LKO, match inclination, then (important part) burn apoapsis to 100km~200km so that you can have a rendezvous in the next 1~3 period (depending on the phase angle of the target). Upon rendezvous, switch to rescued kerbal, use its(/his/her) EVA monoprop to match your hitchhiker's orbit.

Then change the apoapsis at periapsis or at least low altitude to rendezvous with the next target (btw this is also the trick to control the rendezvous position - to avoid rendezvous at night time). Repeat this procedure until you rescued all 4, then descend. It should take about 1 Kerbin day or plus a half to finish everything.

That is my way of earning early-career money and kerbals. After all it's ~20k cost versus 4-contract income... Until I found it became so mechanical and not fun to me to play like that. But if you really need 90 kerbals, this might help.

Unfortunately, the most common rescue missions occur on minmus and the mun as well as kerbin. I'm actually in the process of upgrading the ships in my system to increase their range.  I think I can do this with a much smaller set of engineers if I get lucky with their attributes. 12 for the EP mod workshop, 3 for the ground version and then last 5 dumbest engineers get stuck on refining/KIS/KAS retrofitting duty.  I may cheat a bit, and remove the engineer requirement from KIS/KAS, so that cuts it down to only 20 engineers, aka 60 rescue missions.