(v2.3) The Planet Six Probe Challenge: Now With Moons/Science Defs

[Whirligig Girl]

In the administration building, several of the KSC staff and a couple of extra presenters were gathered to discuss new findings in the astronomical community. Two Kerbals stood at the front of the room and turned on the projector screen.

 

"What's that?" Linus Kerman asked.

"That," said Chadlo Kerman, "Is End."

"Is it a star?" Linus asked.

"Nope. It's the Sixth Planet."

"Wait, are you telling us that you discovered a new planet? I don't believe you." Bob Kerman said.

"Oh yes indeed. It's a new planet." said Chadlo. He flipped to the next slide.

"We found a bunch of dwarf planets and Eelinos in weird orbits, and were like 'bro how'd that happen?'" said Scottsperd Kerman, who was standing next to Chadlo.

"So we ran some simulations at KSC's Unreasonably Powerful Computer, and found that these orbits totally make sense if there's a sixth planet." Chadlo said.

"So then we started looking." Scottsperd said.

"And we found it. And now we want a space probe sent there." Chadlo said.

"Alright, fair enough. Werner, get your boosters together." Gene said.

"Oh and one more thing: we'd like to see it reach the planet before we die." Chadlo said, as the KSC staff left the room.

 

THE CHALLENGE

(All times measured from vessel launch date, not game start)

"Well You Tried" Mode: Send a spacecraft to fly by the Planet End.

Easy Mode: Send a spacecraft to fly by the Planet End in less than 20 Kerbin Years (or 5.8 Earth Years).

Normal Mode: Send a spacecraft to fly by the Planet End in less than 10 Kerbin Years (or 2.9 Earth Years).

Difficult Mode: Send a spacecraft to enter a low orbit (Apoapsis below 10,000,000 meters) around the Planet End in less than 15 Kerbin Years (or 4.35 Earth Years).

Hard Mode: Send a spacecraft to land on Planet End's moon, Erkers, in less than 15 Kerbin Years.

Super Mode: Send a crewed spacecraft to land on Planet End's moon, Erkers, and return to Kerbin in less than 40 total Kerbin years (11.6 Earth Years)

Hyper Mode: Impress Me.

Evanitis made these cool badges for Normal and Hard modes, and I modified some to fit the new challenge types. (If you've completed any challenge, then you can put them in your signature)

 "Well, You Tried" Mode

 Easy Mode, Normal Mode

 Difficult Mode, Hard Mode

 Super Mode

 Hyper Mode

THE RULES

• No Near-Future Propulsion mod (Nuclear and Solar are fine.)
• Take plenty of pictures for proof.
• Do not look at the planet or its moons up close until you have a ship in the S.O.I.
• Put any pictures or albums that show the planet up close in spoiler boxes.
• Try not to look at any pictures of the planet that would show details, the point is to see them for the first time in a spacecraft.
• While not strictly required, I recommend for your own sake that you use the 1.1.3 unofficial build of Better Timewarp. It allows much faster timewarp rates as well as several more features.

THE MOD

Download from SpaceDock, but make sure you have installed Kopernicus and its dependencies, ModuleManager and ModularFlightIntegrator.

The pack contains one gas giant planet (fully featured with a custom atmosphere curve and coloration, as well as an original texture), two inner irregular-shaped moons, and one very distant captured dwarf planet which itself has a moon. All of this in proper stockalike style. If you want to see what they look like, go find them with a spacecraft in game! Don't even tab over to them in the map view or tracking station, but  instead wait until you get close. I guarantee it will feel so much more rewarding. But if you're really dying to see them, there's an album below. There are science definitions for all planets and moons.

There's also an optional config that can be changed in the settings.cfg that will allow for OPM compatibility and a more authentic orbit when set to = True. By default, and for the challenge, it should be set to = False.

SPACEDOCK LINK (v2.3 of Planet Six: The End)
Mirror (v2.3)

Mod Album: Spoiler Alert!

Spoiler

Are you sure you want to  see the whole album? How about a little teaser?

If you really want to see the whole album, fine. Here it is.

Spoiler

 

This might be the fastest I've ever thrown together a planet pack, taking a little over three hours to finish. It's reusing assets and config pieces from some of my other mods, but most of the art is original. The gas giant's texture, for instance, is original. The subsatellite is, however, completely unoriginal because I was low on time: it's literally reusing the entire Joolian moon Kev from Revamped Stock System.

Edited July 13, 2016 by GregroxMun

[LaytheDragon]

You just mandated me to search "Planet 9 News" (when I should be sleeping) and filter it by the last week on Google to see if I missed on any developments (which I did) that would remind you to post this.

Edited July 13, 2016 by LaytheDragon

[septemberWaves]

I have a couple of questions, regarding mods. Are the following mods allowed or not allowed:

1. MechJeb
2. KJR
3. Vx Series II Engine Pack
4. Interstellar Fuel Switch
5. Mk2 and Mk3 Expansions
6. Station Parts Expansion
7. Planetary Base Systems

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

we must know the rules before we start dont we??

[NotAgain]

@lajoswinkler I think that I've found a target for Kron 7...

[Elowiny]

Reply deleted because it was too stupid.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Elowiny

[lajoswinkler]

1 hour ago, NotAgain said:

@lajoswinkler I think that I've found a target for Kron 7...

Possibly, but unlikely. Eve, Joolean system (Tylo, I'm looking at you!), Ablate  , Dres, there are stock targets to tackle and they have #2 priority (#1 is OPM).

Maybe in the future, if the mod gets more developed.

[Whirligig Girl]

7 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

I have a couple of questions, regarding mods. Are the following mods allowed or not allowed:

1. MechJeb
2. KJR
3. Vx Series II Engine Pack
4. Interstellar Fuel Switch
5. Mk2 and Mk3 Expansions
6. Station Parts Expansion
7. Planetary Base Systems

All of those are fine, but Gene Kerman will be staring at you, judging you silently for using MechJeb.

7 hours ago, LaytheDragon said:

You just mandated me to search "Planet 9 News" (when I should be sleeping) and filter it by the last week on Google to see if I missed on any developments (which I did) that would remind you to post this.

Actually it was @GarrisonChisholm who was messaging me asking about the previous Planet Nine Challenge that I made (which had only a single gas giant) and I decided to update the challenge.

[HoloYolo]

Is Kerbal Alarm Clock allowed? Also, what is the Delta V to transfer there?

[Whirligig Girl]

Just now, HoloYolo said:

1) Is Kerbal Alarm Clock allowed?

2) Also, what is the Delta V to transfer there?

1) Yes.

2) Not checked, but a hohmann transfer doesn't take much more delta v than a hohmann transfer to Urlum or Neidon. But unless you're going for the "Well, You Tried" challenge, you're going to be using a more direct transfer, and that's gonna be variable depending on what your plan is.

[Elowiny]

Okay. After way too many tries and fails, here is my entry for the Difficult Mode.

I used Kerbal Engineer, to know the Delta-V, as well as DMagic Orbital Science, just so the probe had some instruments on it.

 

Here is my craft, the Pouchequine Stellar Explorer, on the launchpad :

Liftoff!

Beginning gravity turn, while jettisoning the lower boosters. Surprisingly stable.

The large mammoth engine is released

In space, getting rid of these two engines. Getting ready to open that fairing.

Fairing released! Here comes the transfer stage, it will travel from here all the way to planet 6!

While burning to get out of Kerbin's SOI, the Mun gave the ship a little kick

A second gravity assist near the Mun kicks the ship straight out of Kerbin's sphere of influence

Adjusting the nodes to get an intercept with the planet

Burning! For one hour...

Here we go!

Now, I just have to wait for the ship to arrives, and it takes a long time...

A really long time...

After quite some time (I couldn't find a working timewarp mod), the probe finally enters End's SOI. Here, things started going bad. Very bad.

I was planning to do an old-fashioned capture burn. However, after burning, I realized that it would take 60 YEARS for the ship to arrive at it's periapsis. And I think that's a bit too long, so I reverted.

To circumvent this, I played around with the shiny blue node I never use, and I adjusted my trajectory a bit.

That stupid nuclear stage ran out of fuel, so I had to use the probe's engines. The one who designed it was really stupid. Oh, wait...

And guess what. The probe ran out of fuel too! And my apoapsis was really close to 10 million meters. Fortunately, I still had some monopropellant remaining, so I used the RCS as a form of propulsion for the probe.

The following pictures reveal the planet, so they are hidden under a spoiler.

 

In the end, I finally completed my maneuvers and I ended up in that nice little orbit, just slightly below the 10,000,000 meters mark. Yay!

The probe took some nice pictures of End too!

Good job on the textures, it looks amazing!

You can see I only had about 7 units of monopropellant left after that maneuver. It was really, really close.

 

 

 

So here you go, this is my entry for the Difficult Mode. You can see it only took about 10-11 years to enter a stable orbit around End, and the limit was 15. The ship on the launchpad had about 16k delta-v, which is my personal record for a ship. This is also the very first challenge I ever accomplished and recorded. It was quite difficult, but in the end I feel like it was worth it. So, do I get the right to put that Difficult Mode flair in my signature?

Edited July 13, 2016 by Elowiny

[lajoswinkler]

1 hour ago, HoloYolo said:

Is Kerbal Alarm Clock allowed? Also, what is the Delta V to transfer there?

Unless you don't use life support mods, I would not recommend Hohman transfers. Targets beyond Jool aren't suitable for such trajectories. Just use hyperbolic one.

[Whirligig Girl]

14 minutes ago, Elowiny said:

Okay. After way too many tries and fails, here is my entry for the Difficult Mode.

*Snip*

I used Kerbal Engineer, to know the Delta-V, as well as DMagic Orbital Science, just so the probe had some instruments on it.So here you go, this is my entry for the Difficult Mode. You can see it only took about 10-11 years to enter a stable orbit around End, and the limit was 15. The ship on the launchpad had about 16k delta-v, which is my personal record for a ship. This is also the very first challenge I ever accomplished and recorded. It was quite difficult, but in the end I feel like it was worth it.

 

 

Wow, very nice work. I would however request that you put your images of the planet itself in spoiler tags. They're right next to the smileyface and quote buttons on the top of the WYSIWYG text editor.

Edited July 13, 2016 by GregroxMun

[HoloYolo]

5 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

Unless you don't use life support mods, I would not recommend Hohman transfers. Targets beyond Jool aren't suitable for such trajectories. Just use hyperbolic one.

I actually am on a trajectory (made from Kerbin orbit) that gets me there in 11 years. No people or TAC yet, though.

[Elowiny]

18 minutes ago, GregroxMun said:

Wow, very nice work. I would however request that you put your images of the planet itself in spoiler tags. They're right next to the smileyface and quote buttons on the top of the WYSIWYG text editor.

Do I also need to hide the pictures showing the orbit of the planet? Also, do I get to right to put the flair in my signature?

[Whirligig Girl]

2 minutes ago, Elowiny said:

1) Do I also need to hide the pictures showing the orbit of the planet?

2) Also, do I get to right to put the flair in my signature?

1) No

2) Yes.

Science Definitions and an optional feature to move the planet to orbit in an orbit that corresponds to TransNeidonian rather than TransJoolian is coming soon. Note that for the challenge, you only have to do it in TransJoolian mode, though using TransNeidonian/TransNeptunian mode might impress me sufficiently for the Hyper Mode.

[HoloYolo]

Completed Difficult Mode with 4 years to go. My rocket was insanely overbuilt. I didn't even jettison my other fuel tanks and engines on my transfer stage. It was my first try too!

 

Spoiler

 

 

No titles or anything like that. The mission was hard enough and 41 pictures is too much. Only mod other than the planet one was KAC. Completed in Sandbox.

[septemberWaves]

I overlooked a couple of mods that I would like to check if they are allowed: DMagic Orbital Science, and all of Necrobones's mods. Sorry if I'm filling this thread with too many questions, but I'd rather avoid sending the (big) thing that I have planned to the new planet just to find out that it doesn't qualify.

[Friend Bear]

I'm totes cray cray stoked to try this challenge!

Am I safe to assume you cannot land on the primary planet?

Edited July 13, 2016 by Friend Bear

[Elowiny]

6 minutes ago, Friend Bear said:

I'm totes cray cray stoked to try this challenge!

Am I safe to assume you cannot land on the primary planet?

It's a gas giant, so no. If you attempt to land on it, your ship will be crushed by the intense heat and pressure. However, you can land on the moons safely.

[Friend Bear]

4 minutes ago, Elowiny said:

It's a gas giant, so no. If you attempt to land on it, your ship will be crushed by the intense heat and pressure. However, you can land on the moons safely.

A very safe assumption on my part. Thank you.

 

[Whirligig Girl]

Hold off on doing the challenge for now. I accidentally an orbit in 2.1.

[Whirligig Girl]

The mod is updated to 2.2. Fixes the bug that makes End too far away.

[HoloYolo]

@GregroxMun How's my entry?

[Whirligig Girl]

Just now, HoloYolo said:

@GregroxMun How's my entry?

Good job.