To Titanus and back - New horizons

[Aludra]

Titanus, a 2.1 G pretty ring planet in New Horizons KSP mod with a 160 km. atmosphere.

Going there is tough. Getting back ... Aah well watch the video.

I used mods and stuff to make the craft manageble in size but in the end it didn't matter

I did this mission and failed to reach the surface in one piece to well "unforeseen consequenses". But I got there.. Going back however ?

Titanus and back Preparations

Titanus and back Landing

Did you get there and back ?

[septemberWaves]

I feel like Titanus is somewhere you go if you have Extraplanetary Launchpads installed, so that you can construct a launch vehicle on its surface. The spaceplane was a nice idea, but I feel like you would've benefited from a heat shield and some parachutes.

[Firemetal]

Welcome to the forums! This isn't exactly a challenge. If you meant it to be, take a look at this first.

If you didn't, I'm sure a moderator will come and move it later.

[Aludra]

A challenge. I did not mean it to be a competition. But it is definately a mission idea. Just to see if someone else has done this and how. Im not familiar with your challenges, I am just reading about them now.

And yeah this post should be moved if this is strictly for challenge submissions. It was a challenge to me, so that word stood out. I didn't think of it as a diskussion otherwise it would have gone there.

It could be one. I have not seen anyone go there and get back. It would be fun to do so. I might need help working out how to make it a good one. Especially how to measure succes.

Might be a fun challenge. I'm not done trying. But I need a break ;).

---------

Challenge: Get to land on the surface of Titanus with at least 2 crew. Plant a flag and fly back to Kerbin.

Rules for this one:

Multiple launches allowed.

Popular mods allowed, like near future mods, interstellar and tweakscale.

Silly cheats like unrealistically cheating modifications not allowed.

How to measure the victory between several successfull trips. Part count (Not really a good measure either...)?. Total price (Not comparable between mods)?

[Aludra]

2 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

I feel like Titanus is somewhere you go if you have Extraplanetary Launchpads installed, so that you can construct a launch vehicle on its surface. The spaceplane was a nice idea, but I feel like you would've benefited from a heat shield and some parachutes.

Yeah I missed a heatshield as well. Should have brought a big one. One to attach to the docking port on the nose. Will definately try that and a breaking parachute for the weird ground behaviour next time. And maybe a grabling hook from KAS. And when I get to the ground succesfully and mine a full tank of fuel. Then lets see what it takes to make an escape from the planet.

[Snark]

40 minutes ago, Aludra said:

Yeah I missed a heatshield as well. Should have brought a big one.

....Interesting.  The last time I played New Horizons, which was admittedly quite a while ago, Titanus' atmosphere was somehow tuned so that it generated practically no heat at all.  (Sonnah was the same way.)  Not knowing this, I spent a lot of time engineering my first (one-way) mission to Titanus so that it would survive what I assumed would be the horrible punishing heat of reentry, but then it turned out that it just generated a lot of Mach effects but no flames at all, and heat wasn't even slightly a problem.

Has it been re-tuned since then?  Is reentry heating at Titanus an issue now?

[Aludra]

Just now, Snark said:

Is reentry heating at Titanus an issue now?

Yep. Definately is now. I barely made it in without a heatshield. Had to circularize right above the atmosphere and then ever so slowly fly in to avoid blowing up.

[septemberWaves]

@Aludra Quite honestly, I think it's enough of a challenge to go there and return from its surface. It has nine times the atmospheric pressure and 2.1 times the gravity of Kerbin, so landing something there is difficult and getting it back is even more difficult.

I plan on doing this later on, but it might take me a month or two because I want to get through most of Xen's planets and OPM before exploring New Horizons. I already know how I'm going to do it (sort of) but the requirement for multiple crew members really makes it interesting. I will probably end up doing a serious overhaul of my current Eve HAAV (Heavy Atmospheric Ascent Vehicle) design, adding at least 4000 more delta-v and much higher thrust. Alternatively, if I can I'll edit my new HAAV that's based around my Hyperion Mass Crew Transport - this new HAAV will be able to take 18 kerbals from the surface of Eve in two stages, one of which is reusable. But I honestly have my doubts about how doable that will be for Titanus, especially considering the fact that a heat shield may be needed for the ascent as well as for atmospheric entry.

Also, perhaps you should make it a requirement to plant a flag, so that the kerbals have to be able to leave their vessel and return to it.

[TheAurora]

Hmmm. This is an interesting mission idea. I haven't played KSP for months. Maybe this will get me back into it. I wonder how hard this would be on a 10x rescale with only stock parts...looks like I have a challenge. Never played with New Horizons though, so I'll have to learn the system.

[septemberWaves]

@TheAurora Try making something that can get out of Titanus's atmosphere on its usual scale. It's not easy. Comparing Titanus to Eve would be functionally equivalent to comparing Eve to Duna. If you can get into orbit around Titanus from its surface legitimately at 10x scale with only stock parts, then that probably means you've pretty much won the game.

[TheAurora]

So Titanus is supposed to have an atmospheric pressure of 9 atmospheres? In my game, a re-scaled version, it has .7 atmospheres of pressure. For you guys is it still 9 atmospheres? If it isn't, I'll try to figure it out in other threads.

[septemberWaves]

It should also have a surface gravity of 2.1g, so you might want to check that as well. But seriously, you might want to attempt a stock Eve SSTO before trying to conquer a 10x scale Titanus once the atmosphere is what it should be.

Also, since you say you've never played with New Horizons, I feel like it might help to know that you'll be launching from a Kerbin that is in orbit around the gas giant Sonnah, so you'll have to plan your transfers accordingly and you won't be able to use MechJeb for planning an interplanetary transfer directly from Kerbin orbit (if you usually use MechJeb for that, that is).

[TheAurora]

8 minutes ago, eloquentJane said:

It should also have a surface gravity of 2.1g, so you might want to check that as well. But seriously, you might want to attempt a stock Eve SSTO before trying to conquer a 10x scale Titanus once the atmosphere is what it should be.

Also, since you say you've never played with New Horizons, I feel like it might help to know that you'll be launching from a Kerbin that is in orbit around the gas giant Sonnah, so you'll have to plan your transfers accordingly and you won't be able to use MechJeb for planning an interplanetary transfer directly from Kerbin orbit (if you usually use MechJeb for that, that is).

The surface gravity is fine, just not the atmosphere pressure. Just curious, where did you see that the pressure was 9atm? Is that what it reads in your game? I looked around and I can't find anything suggesting it has 9atm of pressure. Not that I don't believe you, it's just that I wanted to absolutely make sure that it's supposed to be 9atm before I go on a hunt to solve the problem.

oh, and thanks for the tips! They will be very helpful.

Edited July 16, 2016 by TheAurora

[septemberWaves]

Last time I used New Horizons it was 9atm. I haven't played with it for a while though so it's possible that it might have changed (I wouldn't have expected it to but that pack has seen quite a few changes). I now realise that this is probably out of date information, but I have no idea how out of date it is since I'm not great at keeping track of time.

Edited July 16, 2016 by eloquentJane

[TheAurora]

21 minutes ago, eloquentJane said:

Last time I used New Horizons it was 9atm. I haven't played with it for a while though so it's possible that it might have changed (I wouldn't have expected it to but that pack has seen quite a few changes). I now realise that this is probably out of date information, but I have no idea how out of date it is since I'm not great at keeping track of time.

I just checked the mod on a fresh stock install and Titanus has .6atm of pressure. They must have changed it since you played.

The mod's change log shows it being reduced too. I assume "Tidus" meant Titanus.

Oh wait, Tidus is another body. Hmmm, guess I need to look some more.

Edited July 16, 2016 by TheAurora

[septemberWaves]

New Horizons has an enormous number of celestial bodies. I think there's more with just New Horizons than there are with XPC and OPM installed.

[Aludra]

Titanus atmosphere in the most rescent version is 0.6 overall. Version 2.0.0 (14 june 2016)
I stumbled upon this and thought wow. It was what brought me back to KSP.  That and scatterer ocean mod and the see through cockpit. So many nice details.
More than a year since I played last. I stopped playing around before KSP 1.0 release.

Barometer reads about 500 at surface (kerbin 100).
You can run an engine in the atmosphere.
My little SSTO can take off and get back up to 25 km before running dry.
With 6 hyperedit refuels it can make it back to orbit. (Did not use Ion engine. Not time enough above atmo) So long way to go.
Fixed the brake issue with a larger set of landing gears. Now my drills look silly though. But has to scale this up drastically anyways.
No heatshield needed to go back out of atmo.

As I recall from long ago when I played on Eve. Eve has no oxygen. I downloaded an electric prop back then to fly around.

It might be possible to fly back out with a craft x10 the one I have. So it should not be impossible (With mods)) Stock however... OMG if you can do that completely stock :D)

I also recall a interstellar Fusion drive antimatter combo that should take on Titanus with ease. If they havn't nerfed that since. So many things change in this game that its hard to keep up

 

Edited July 17, 2016 by Aludra

[TheAurora]

37 minutes ago, Aludra said:

Titanus atmosphere in the most rescent version is 0.6 overall. Version 2.0.0 (14 june 2016)
I stumbled upon this and thought wow. It was what brought me back to KSP.  That and scatterer ocean mod and the see through cockpit. So many nice details.
More than a year since I played last. I stopped playing around before KSP 1.0 release.

Barometer reads about 500 at surface (kerbin 100).
You can run an engine in the atmosphere.
My little SSTO can take off and get back up to 25 km before running dry.
With 6 hyperedit refuels it can make it back to orbit. (Did not use Ion engine. Not time enough above atmo) So long way to go.
Fixed the brake issue with a larger set of landing gears. Now my drills look silly though. But has to scale this up drastically anyways.
No heatshield needed to go back out of atmo.

As I recall from long ago when I played on Eve. Eve has no oxygen. I downloaded an electric prop back then to fly around.

It might be possible to fly back out with a craft x10 the one I have. So it should not be impossible (With mods)) Stock however... OMG if you can do that completely stock :D)

I also recall a interstellar Fusion drive antimatter combo that should take on Titanus with ease. If they havn't nerfed that since. So many things change in this game that its hard to keep up

 

So you are saying that Titanus has a surface level pressure of .6 on your game too? If that is the case, then that helps things a bit. I'm over on the New Horizons thread trying to see if it was a deliberate change or a bug. If it is a deliberate change, that would help my efforts to get there and back on a 10x scale, with only stock parts.

[PT]

Kopernicus 1.1.3 is having issues in KSP 1.1.3 (unfortunate version numbers).

I did some testing on my KSP 1.1.2 with NH 2.0:

If I am not mistaken, I am still using ancient Kopernicus 1.0.5 without new bugs

Edited July 17, 2016 by PT

[TheAurora]

I just tested the game. 1.1.3 with Kopernicus 1.1.2.   Kopernicus 1.05 was not compatible with KSP 1.1.3. Using Hyperedit I found that the surface pressure is 6.2 times Kerbin at an altitude of 2.7km above sea level. It appears that the atmosphere is still what it should be, the tracking station just doesn't show it. Knowing this, I'll continue work on the challenge assuming Titanus' atmosphere is correct.