New Horizons Travelling Circus -- INTERLUDE: Everything is Broken

[Torgo]

I remember that bug. I lost my grand Minmus fueling station to it a few times. I'd be warping in to rendezvous for docking, get into physics range, and the whole thing lit up like the Death Star. I ended up re-loading a bunch of times, then finally just making sure to ALT-F12 and ignore max temperature before it loaded. Then the whole thing glowed yellow and red for an hour or two after docking. 

[Geschosskopf]

4 minutes ago, Torgo said:

I remember that bug. I lost my grand Minmus fueling station to it a few times. I'd be warping in to rendezvous for docking, get into physics range, and the whole thing lit up like the Death Star. I ended up re-loading a bunch of times, then finally just making sure to ALT-F12 and ignore max temperature before it loaded. Then the whole thing glowed yellow and red for an hour or two after docking. 

Well, I guess I'll have to do the same until this gets fixed.  Do you have a pic of the glowing station?

[Just Jim]

54 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Well, the story went totally off the script there    That was an actual emergency and it played out pretty much exactly as shown.  I was really expecting the whole thing to go up in smoke and Kerbals to pop immediately on going EVA.  I'm rather surprised the damage was as limited as it was.  Of course, that could well happen next time.

This seems to be a stock bug, not a Pathfinder problem, BTW.  @Angel-125 found a bug report for this same thing happening with stock parts.

Well done evacuating everyone.  I've had a couple things like that happen, my munquake being the most recent.  For a while the base had that landing gear bug and really did jump about 10 meters off the ground. 

The big trick is resisting the urge to hit escape or F9, and let the bug play out instead, getting as many screenshots as possible.  This is KSP after all, and often what seems like a disaster turns into some great fun, and a very good, albeit unexpected, chapter. 

Edited July 23, 2016 by Just Jim

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, Just Jim said:

Well done evacuating everyone.  I've had a couple things like that happen, my munquake being the most recent.

You mean the base breaking up and the Chariot flipping wasn't done by the special effects department?  Or do you mean the first time?

 

1 hour ago, Just Jim said:

The big trick is resisting the urge to hit escape or F9, and let the bug play out instead, getting as many screenshots as possible.

Well, I rather failed in the screenshot department.  I missed all the explosions and was so frantically running around I(and needed to see so many right-click menus) that the shots I got aren't pretty.  But hey, it was the most exciting thing to happen in my space program in a long time, and presents an interesting problem to solve.

[Just Jim]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

You mean the base breaking up and the Chariot flipping wasn't done by the special effects department?  Or do you mean the first time?

The first time.  That was the landing gear bug, and I wrote the munquake chapter around it.
The second time I dropped the base from about 80 meters using HyperEdit, and I flipped the Chariot by getting it up to about 50m/s and making a hard right...  That was great fun! 

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

But hey, it was the most exciting thing to happen in my space program in a long time, and presents an interesting problem to solve.

That's the best part about KSP... you never know what may happen, and even after playing hundreds of hours it can throw you a curveball...

[Cydonian Monk]

Poor Bob. Hopefully he gets paroled and shows up again sometime. I do wonder though if fired kerbals stick around forever or if they get deleted after some point. 

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 10: From the Ashes of Disaster

Spoiler

 

First off, thanks to the readership for 2000 views

Second, I have a question.  Does anybody ever click on the episode titles, which are links?  Each is the theme song for the episode and I put a lot of time into finding something semi-appropriate, then trying to find the most authentic version of that song.  If nobody uses them, I'll stop doing it.  But this episode's theme is special because it's sung by the Boffin Chorus themselves so please give it a look

Anyway, on with the show...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everybody on Mun and Kerbin waited anxiously for the next couple of hours to see if anything else would explode.  Fortunately, nothing did and in fact the heat in Munbase ISRU began to dissipate into other parts of the base and to go down in general.

 

The storage tank actually had enough fuel in it to send Megris home, from before Munbase StripMine exploded.  Mission Control was desperate to get those 5 biomes-worth of Science! home ASAP, the Scientists so they could play with it and the Boffins so they could make new stuff with it, especially the base parts needed for Phase III.  So, once the temperatures had reached this point, Mission Control ordered Bill to start pumping the fuel into the lander via the remote controls in his command pod.  This actually worked and the fuel didn't heat up the Munhopper TOO much....

Megris had other opinions about it.  The Munhopper didn't have any radiators on it so she had already gotten a bit toasty from the LV-Ns during her jaunts around Mun, even with the heatshield in between. 

 

Fortunately, however, the heat of launching and leaving Mun plus the heat from the fuel wasn't enough to cause SERIOUSLY light-threatening heat in Megris' pod, and she made it home safely with about 4000 Science! points (including what she'd already transmitted).

 

By the time Megris was home, Munbase ISRU was back down to ambient temperature and Bill gave the order for Marllian and Jedley to reoccupy it and check for damage.

 

Amazingly, nothing was broken   The Brew Works still had a fair amount of Ore left in it, so once Marllian got the Hot Springs geothermal plant back online, Jedley started crunching the remaining Ore into LF so there'd be some on-hand when the next ship arrived.

 

In fact, 2 ships left Kerbin a few days later on the next transfer window.  These were Munbase StripMine 2, pretty much identical to its ill-fated predecessor except with updated wheels, and Munhopper 2, same as before only with a couple of small radiators added.  New pressee Luden was selected for the mission of pillaging the remaining 8 Munar biomes of their Science!

These ships left Kerbin 1 hour apart but due to the vagarities of space travel, ended up arriving only 10 minutes apart at Mun.  Fortunately, neither one's capture burn was more than 20 seconds so this caused no problems.

 

First to come down was the replacement StripMiner.  It landed with no problem.  There were no thermal spikes in any of the remaining parts of Munbase BBQ or in the surrounding neighborhood.  The LZ was by now a mix of crusted and shattered glass but the new tire design, with better grip, paid this no mind.  The skycrane crashed and exploded about 950m away but, unfortunately, this was too far away to get a good pic of the gratuitous explosions, so Bill immediately turned to getting the new unit into position.

 

Once Bill had the unit where he wanted it Sara had to go out and push the discarded wheels away prior to inflating the modules.  The new wheels don't eject as far as the old ones.  However, they do come with optional self-destruct charges.  The Boffins were very tempted to use that because Gratuitous Explosions! but refrained this time because 1) they were keeping the wheels as spares for future rovers, and 2) they plan on sending a scrap metal unit at some point in Phase III or Phase IV, and the wheels would be fodder for that.  Oh well, maybe next time.

 

Soon Sara had the water in the geothermal plant and cooling tower and got them up and running before the batteries on Munbase StripMine 2 totally discharged.  Then it was time for Philing to move in, policing  up the wheels and installing the satellite TV antenna in the process.  Everybody was very thankful to have another habitat to live in and for the resupply of grog, which had been running low what with the trauma of recent events.  Philing then got the strip-miner's drills running, sending Ore over to Jedley's ISRU, and with that, Munbase BBQ was back up and running.  "From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success!" 

Bill hadn't parked the new mining unit quite straight, but no matter.  Meanwhile, Jedley and Marllian decided to change the color of their unit's lights, thinking the previous red shade had been asking for trouble.  The Kerbals also did some checks on the now-cool ruins of the first Munbase StripMine and determined that itheremaining parts would still work.  A future mission might effect a rebuilding.  But anyway, things were definitely looking up at Munbase BBQ.

 

Meanwhile, up in orbit, Luden's Munhopper 2 had the vast bulk of its fuel still aboard so Mission Control told him to hit the Twin Craters instead of going directly to Munbase BBQ.  The Twin Craters were nearly at the antipode of the base so getting them now would save trouble later.  Besides, it was in daylight.

Mun looks WAY better with KASE than stock, IMHO.

From  there, it was a long hop to Munbase BBQ.  Luden landed safely with a comfortable amount of fuel remaining.  However, as he was on final approach, the last few rocket-blasted tatters of the LZ marker flag, put there back in the days of the 2nd Mun Expedition, finally gave out.  Thus, while his lander was being topped up, Luden got out to replace it with another.

 

Then it was a long hop up to the Polar Lowlands at about 82^N.  Luden was very thankful for the radiators added to the design since Megris' trip.

 

The plan at this point was to hop over the north pole and get the Poles biome on the other side, then take a short skip to the nearby Northern Basin before returning to base.  So Luden flew to the designated spot in the Poles, which proved to be VERY hilly.  But the Boffins' decision to use box girders instead of lander legs paid off because Munhopper 2 only slid about 2m and then stuck firmly on the steep slope.

 

Luden at this point had a little over 1500m/s left in his tank, which the boffins had estimated to be his bingo point.  Therefore, instead of continuing to the Northern Basis, Luden was ordered to return to Munbase BBQ.  This proved a wise move because Luden was literally on fumes when he finally landed.  But no sooner was he on the ground than the magic underground fuel hoses came up out of the vitrified soil and began replenishing the lander.  However, Luden's new flag proved to be far less durable than the original, so he had to put up another one.

 

Luden hadn't been gone long enough for Munbase BBQ to make a full load of fuel, however, so while waiting for the rest, he reported in to Bill in Munbase Pathfinder and took a break.  He'd had a very busy couple of days with little rest.

Tune in next time for when Luden continues to grind out Mun biomes.

 

 

Edited July 30, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[Just Jim]

15 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Second, I have a question.  Does anybody ever click on the episode titles, which are links?  Each is the theme song for the episode and I put a lot of time into finding something semi-appropriate, then trying to find the most authentic version of that song.  If nobody uses them, I'll stop doing it.  But this episode's theme is special because it's sung by the Boffin Chorus themselves so please give it a look

Absolutely I click on the titles! 

I discovered what you were doing with them back with the Outer Planets Travelling Circus, and always use them for background music.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was definitely built by Kerbals!  

15 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

But the Boffins' decision to use box girders instead of lander legs paid off because Munhopper 2 only slid about 2m and then stuck firmly on the steep slope.

Great job sticking the landing!

Question: What mod do the smaller round domes come from? 

 

Edited July 26, 2016 by Just Jim

[Torgo]

16 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Second, I have a question.  Does anybody ever click on the episode titles, which are links?  Each is the theme song for the episode and I put a lot of time into finding something semi-appropriate, then trying to find the most authentic version of that song.

When I do, it tends to take me down a You Tube rabbit hole that mysteriously sucks about 3 hours of my life away!

Keep linking. Some are great, some are ok, but it's almost always something I haven't heard before. 

[Just Jim]

10 minutes ago, Torgo said:

 ...but it's almost always something I haven't heard before. 

Those are my favorites...

[Geschosskopf]

7 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Absolutely I click on the titles!   ... Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was definitely built by Kerbals!  

Thanks!  That one even has gratuitous explosions .  It really needs to be watched, not just listened to.

 

7 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Question: What mod do the smaller round domes come from? 

Which "small domes"?

On the Munhopper, the small dome on top is a parachute from @NecroBones' LIthobrake mod.  At the base, all the main parts are from @Angel-125's Pathfinder, except the 3-seat lander cans on top which are also from Lithobrake.

The base units are built of the following Pathfinder parts:

• The central hub is the Conestoga, which is a 1.875m tank that can be configured to hold pretty much everything in the Community Resource Pack.  It also has some built-in external lights and mounting nodes at the bottom designed for the Mountain Goat wheels from the Buffalo mod, which is included with Pathfinder.  I'm using them as water tanks to carry the water needed to run the cooling towers and geothermal power plants.
• The Mountain Goat wheels have a built-in separator to eject them from the Conestoga.  You can set this up to show on the staging menu or not, or require an action group.  A new feature in the latest release here is a built-in self-destruct charge (which I think can only be done with an action group for safety) to make gratuitous explosions instead.
• The oblong inflatable pods are Haciendas, the industrial unit of Pathfinder.  You can set these up to be drills, ISRU, 2 types of power plants, and factories for use with Extraplanetary Launchpads and OSE Workshops.  So far, I'm using them as drills, ISRU, and geothermal plants.  Phase III and/or IV will probably add some of the other functions.
• The larger round domes with the smaller windows are Casas.  This part can be a habitat, a life support recycler, a greenhouse, or a geology lab.  The geology lab's experiments can increase the efficiency of drilling, refining, life support, and science in a biome.  Munbase BBQ currently has 3 Casas:  2 habitats and 1 geology lab.  I'm not using life support in this game but am pretending to so the Kerbals all need some space.
• The small dome with the whole  roof being a window is a Chuckwagon.  This is just an inflatable storage tank that can be set to hold anything.  Right now I've only got 1 in the base, for LF.
• The things that look like cooling towers are in fact cooling towers, called Old Faithful.  They're basically just a type of radiator, but they give the complex a fittingly industrial look what with their clouds of steam.  I hope someday the Haciendas get tall stacks that belch thick, black smoke

 

21 minutes ago, Torgo said:

When I do, it tends to take me down a You Tube rabbit hole that mysteriously sucks about 3 hours of my life away!

Keep linking. Some are great, some are ok, but it's almost always something I haven't heard before. 

Thanks.  Glad you mostly like it.  Not responsible for YouTube-induced life-sucking 

[Just Jim]

9 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Which "small domes"?

 

50 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

The round one on the lower left was what I meant. 

Spoiler

I'm thinking it might look really cool underwater... 

 

[Geschosskopf]

6 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

The round one on the lower left was what I meant. 

That's the Chuckwagon storage tank from Pathfinder.  The decals on it say what's in it, in this case LF.  All the Pathfinder parts have different decals depending on what you've set them up for, which is great because there are only a few parts that can do many different things.  For instance, in that same pic, the 2 oblong domes are both the same Hacienda part, but they're set up to do very different things.  The closer one with the beer mug decal is the ISRU refinery (called the Brew Works configuration in Pathfinder) while the further one is a geothermal power plant (called a Hot Springs).  It's decal shows heat rising up from below a base.

[Angelo Kerman]

@Geschosskopf I didn't know about the music videos until you pointed them out, very appropriate! Glad to see things are working again too. Frustrating weekend, and I apologize for the outburst, but glad it's done and the mods are stable again.

@Just Jim Funny you should mention that, I've toyed with the idea of making underwater base parts for Pathfinder. It depends upon whether or not I can make a kerbal swim underwater. if I can, Subnautica is coming to KSP, and the Buffalo will get a Buffasub.

[Just Jim]

5 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Funny you should mention that, I've toyed with the idea of making underwater base parts for Pathfinder. It depends upon whether or not I can make a kerbal swim underwater. if I can, Subnautica is coming to KSP, and the Buffalo will get a Buffasub.

I've also been toying with the idea of using some sort of underwater base since "underwater" became possible.  I don't necessarily need it, but I could find a way to use one if some cool underwater parts were available. 

6 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

That's the Chuckwagon storage tank from Pathfinder.  The decals on it say what's in it, in this case LF.  All the Pathfinder parts have different decals depending on what you've set them up for, which is great because there are only a few parts that can do many different things.  For instance, in that same pic, the 2 oblong domes are both the same Hacienda part, but they're set up to do very different things.  The closer one with the beer mug decal is the ISRU refinery (called the Brew Works configuration in Pathfinder) while the further one is a geothermal power plant (called a Hot Springs).  It's decal shows heat rising up from below a base.

Awesome, thank you!

Edited July 26, 2016 by Just Jim

[Geschosskopf]

2 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

@Geschosskopf I didn't know about the music videos until you pointed them out, very appropriate! Glad to see things are working again too. Frustrating weekend, and I apologize for the outburst, but glad it's done and the mods are stable again.

Outburst?  I hadn't noticed.  But anyway, thanks for all your hard work and I"m glad to be able to help a little.  Your mods are my favorites (at least for the time being..... I'm a mod gigolo).  They're fun, funny, very Kerbal, have ingenious features, and the production values are superb.  Plus,the author is very responsive to user feedback and works extremely hard.

Glad you like the music.

 

2 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

@Just Jim Funny you should mention that, I've toyed with the idea of making underwater base parts for Pathfinder. It depends upon whether or not I can make a kerbal swim underwater. if I can, Subnautica is coming to KSP, and the Buffalo will get a Buffasub.

I also have been wanting to make an undersea base.  But it'll have to wait until you get the "sandcastle" thing up and running as inflatable modules would be hard to keep on the bottom   Speaking of keeping things down, I was going to experiment with using the DSEV's Mascon as a ballast tank.  Can those weights be adjusted in flight?  If not, that would be a 1st step to making subs.

But really, the main reasons I haven't done an underwater base yet are as follows.  It will take mods to fix these.

1.  EVA Kerbals
They float and their jetpacks don't even activate when they're in the water.  Thus, EVA at and around an undersea base is impossible.  Any mod focusing on undersea bases must therefore provide a ballast tank for Kerbals so they can walk on the bottom, and an underwater version of your Jetwing so they can move around easily down there.

2.  Lack of Ore
The whole stock Ore thing came out before going underwater was possible.  Thus, there's no distinction between the bottom of the ocean and the liquid above it---it's all the same biome, which is defined to have zero Ore.  It's easy enough to change that with MM, but you still can't separate the liquid from the bottom, so a floating Ore base would work just as well as one on the bottom.  So there's another thing a mod needs to do.

3.  Lack of Biomes
All the ocean is 1 big biome, so there's nothing really to explore down there that you can't do from the surface.  If I was a modder, I'd divide it up into several layers like the real ocaan (epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathypelagic, absyssopelagic, and--such as for the smiley face--hadopelagic).  And I'd divide the bottom up in the same way, so that you'd have both land and sea biomes at each level.

[Angelo Kerman]

Some of this I can solve today:

I filled the Outback with Lead (created a template to do that), strapped it on, and let the kerbal sink to the bottom. Once on the bottom, the kerbal can walk around but not jump. Dumping resources didn't make the kerbal rise, so not sure how to make the kerbal go up just yet. But it's a start.

Project Sandcastle (love the name) is ongoing, and will be instrumental in an underwater base.

[Cydonian Monk]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

Second, I have a question.  Does anybody ever click on the episode titles, which are links?

I do, at least when YouTube lets me. I'm on a 15-day trial of YouTube Red (because I wanted to check out the YouTube Music app), and more often than not it tells me I can't watch videos because they're "offline only", whatever that's supposed to mean. So I just sign out and watch them no problemo. I'm assuming it'll go back to normal (tomorrow) once my trial period is over (since the YouTube music app is 100% worthless to me), or maybe it'll delete my entire Google account..... The same boffins that run your space program seem to run the parts of Google I interact with.

And we must've watched that movie a dozen or more times a year when I was in grade school. Boffins indeed. It was one of the two "safe" films they had to show when things weren't going according to plan, or when we had some open time. (The other being The Never-ending Story.) There was once a third movie they'd play for us, but it never existed..... Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah..........

 

As for underwater bases, that would be uber cool right about now. 

[Geschosskopf]

34 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

I filled the Outback with Lead (created a template to do that), strapped it on, and let the kerbal sink to the bottom. Once on the bottom, the kerbal can walk around but not jump. Dumping resources didn't make the kerbal rise, so not sure how to make the kerbal go up just yet. But it's a start.

Yay!  Keep up the good work.  Kerbals will definitely need some sort of mobility device underwater, to do work on the upper parts of bases or to just get around the immediate neighborhood.  That's why I was thinking of a Jetwing-like thing, only shaped more like those things Jacques Cousteau used to have.

 

34 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Project Sandcastle (love the name) is ongoing, and will be instrumental in an underwater base.

Feel free to use the name.  If you don't, I'll keep using it anyway

 

8 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

I do, at least when YouTube lets me. I'm on a 15-day trial of YouTube Red (because I wanted to check out the YouTube Music app), and more often than not it tells me I can't watch videos because they're "offline only", whatever that's supposed to mean. So I just sign out and watch them no problemo. I'm assuming it'll go back to normal (tomorrow) once my trial period is over (since the YouTube music app is 100% worthless to me), or maybe it'll delete my entire Google account..... The same boffins that run your space program seem to run the parts of Google I interact with.

Never heard of YouTube Red.  Thanks for saving me the trouble of looking it up.  Glad you like the music.

I like to think my Boffins are a bit more intelligent then those at Google.  They've had self-driving cars in general use for years already   

[DMSP]

Huh! I didn't know the titles were links to songs! I just though they linked back to the Chapter... I'm not the brightest light around . It's probably jetlag. I don't know.

I'm really loving this, I hope you keep going and explore the whole system.

[Geschosskopf]

21 hours ago, DMSP said:

I'm really loving this, I hope you keep going and explore the whole system.

Thanks   The ultimate purpose of the Munbase is to build interplanetary ships so I do intend to see the sights.  I can't leave anything parked in Kerbin orbit and a low Sonnah orbit is better for leaving the system than a Kerbin orbit anyway, and Mun is the closest moon to Sonnah.  We'll see how far I can get before the Supernova of '120 hits....

I originally started this game on a lark and didn't expect to get so far with it.  It was just something to fill the time while I waited for various mods to update to 1.1.3 so I could continue where I left off with the OPTC story.  I have all kinds of stuff waiting in the wings for that, but it's all being held up by the lack up updates to a couple of key mods.  But as those updates continued not to happen, I've put more effort into this game, to the point where I want to do more with it than I originally expected.  Now the main mod I was waiting on has been taken over by new management so I'm beginning to get conflicted.  All the work I put into the OPTC sequel is calling to me.  But OTOH, I've started this Munbase and have its next expansion already designed, and that's more recent so more urgent in its demands.

So for now, ONWARDS!  I shall turn Mun into an industrial wasteland!  Several more stripminers and factories, not to mention tank farms and mobile VABs, are needed.  And bigger rockets to get them to Mun.  And, sadly, the money to pay for all this.  I've been riding high on the advances for several ambitious contracts accepted earlier but since then it's been chump change.

 

21 hours ago, DMSP said:

Huh! I didn't know the titles were links to songs! I just though they linked back to the Chapter... I'm not the brightest light around . It's probably jetlag. I don't know.

Well, in the OP, they're just links to the individual episode posts..  In the individual episode posts, the big blue "Episode Whatever" at the top is the link to a music video.

[insert_name]

@Geschosskopf just fyi eli is not one big surface biome, it has a slopes and craters biome as well. also when do you find is the best angle to go to arin?

[Geschosskopf]

22 minutes ago, insert_name said:

@Geschosskopf just fyi eli is not one big surface biome, it has a slopes and craters biome as well. also when do you find is the best angle to go to arin?

Yeah, I've learned that since.  Still, it's in no way lander-friendly and has only 3 biomes so I'm not tempted to go back there any time soon.

As to going to Arin, I really don't know.  I use MJ's "Advanced Transfer to Another Planet" porkchop to decice when best to go (assuming a start in Sonnah orbit).  As long as the intercept is essentially tangential, that's all I care about.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 11: Workin' at the Munbase Blues

Spoiler

 

When we left the Travelling Circus, Luden in Munhopper 2 had already snagged 3 of the 8 remaining Mun biomes and was refueling at Munbase BBQ as it was getting dark there.  Refueling Munhopper 2 was completed before dawn but the hopper itself didn't have batteries to last out Mun's night, which lasts several days thanks to being tide-locked to Sonnah.  So there was nothing for it but to await the Munar dawn, even though Munhopper 2 had been refueled long since.  Luden was thankful for the break, actually.

Next Munar morning as Luden took off towards the Southwest Crater, he noticed that the new StripMiner 2 unit was somewhat askew from where it was originally placed.

 

No harm seemed to have happened despite the drill stems being twisted about 45^, and the unit seemed to have reached an equilibrium point so everybody just went with it.

Luden had 5 more biomes to pillage, all craters or depressions in specific locations, all far from Munbase BBQ.  Only once were 2 of these within his range, so he made 4 sorties, refueling again after each one.  He was usually gone about an hour or so each time. When he returned to Munbase BBQ, he needed to sit on the ground another half-hour or so to top up his tanks.  Thus, while the work was extremely repetitive and grindy, at least not much time was wasted, and all hands managed to complete their tasks in the course of a single Munar day with room to spare.  Because this was so repetitive, your humble narrator hasn't included many pics of this process.  But there are a couple of note.

Here's just some routine pretty scenery:

 

Here's a view of Munbase BBQ in daylight with Munhopper 2 landed and refueling.

 

And here, finally, is the last Mun biome being pillaged, the East Crater as it happened.

 

Flags in all Mun biomes with Luden on his way back to Munbase BBQ to top up for his trip back to Kerbin.  Note the contract marker next to the base.

 

As soon as Luden was back down, Bill had another job for him while Munhopper 2 refueled.

 

Yes, StripMiner 2 had found some inconsistencies in the geodata and needed a 2nd opinion..  So Luden had to go get it.  He wasn't happy about this as it was a bit risky, but once he finally reached the crater's lip....

 

 

So Luden grumpily returned to Munhopper 2, which by then had been refueled.  And speaking of fuel, Luden had just barely enough to get back.

 

So Luden finally burned up into Munar orbit.  Where he had to wait 5 days for a window back to Kerbin.  Luden was grumpy about this, too. thinking he could have been more comfortable waiting at Munbase BBQ, but Mission Control still didn't quite trust the base and the Scientists wanted Luden's Science! where it was safe from the base and easy to reach with a rescue mission.

 

While Luden was waiting to go home, the Boffins sent up a SENTINEL to map asteroids in Sonnah's vicinity.  This launched from Kerbin into a low Sonnah orbit, went around the gas giant once, then burn out into a solar orbit.  It would take it 62 days to escape Sonnah's vast SOI.

 

Finally, Luden came home after a trip of another 2 days.  The Munhopper capsule is quite draggy and so, despite aiming well offshore east of KSC, Luden nearly hit the same mountain as the 1st Mun Expedition and landed less than 400m from the flag planted by its glad-to-be-alive crew.  Luden cleared the WhoopsTooShort mountains by a comfortable margin, unlike his predecessors, but his trajectory soon steepened.

 

Luden brought home about 5500 Science!, in 80 data sets, which wasn't all that much more than Megris had snagged with the 1st Munhopper, despite Luden having hit 8 biomes to her 5.  Nobody could explain this discrepancy.

The Boffins' eyes now turned towards Sonnah's rings, where several small moonlets had been detected.  Maybe these would have the right stuff to use for fuel by the interplanetary ships Munbase BBQ would soon be building.  They decided to send a ship to see.

 

Tune in next time for some asteroid-wrangling.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[Angelo Kerman]

Neat! That is a lot of science! No explosions, hopefully? I have seen bases shift due to collider issues, which is why small bases are better than big ones (and why the distribution system exists). Anyway, really cool to see Sonnah, that is a classy gas giant. Makes me want to put OPM into my next career game.