Decades of life support

[ruiluth]

Recently I've decided to switch computers so that I can play with OPM, because the stock system gets just a tad boring at times. However, upon sending a ship to test for trajectories, I've found that anything beyond Sarnus involves crazy long flights with durations longer than my longest game ever. That's fine for probes of course, but what about sending manned ships? USI-LS requires hab space for long trips, which massively increases the required mass of the ships. Sending very small crews would be an option, but I prefer not to do that for roleplay and safety reasons...

How do you all build extreme-range ships with life support mods? How do you explore the Outer Planets?

[Mastikator]

At a certain size recycling the air and growing food becomes cost efficient. But I'm also playing with insterstellar so I figured that a mega expensive warp drive would probably help.

[PT]

Make popsicle. 

Edited July 29, 2016 by PT

[ruiluth]

6 minutes ago, PT said:

Make popsicle. 

...I had totally forgotten that this exists. It's exactly what I need. Thanks for the reminder! I had seen it before but forgotten. I love it when difficult problems are this solved this easily

8 minutes ago, Mastikator said:

At a certain size recycling the air and growing food becomes cost efficient. But I'm also playing with insterstellar so I figured that a mega expensive warp drive would probably help.

I had been growing food from fertilizer, yes. That certainly is more efficient

[FyunchClick]

58 minutes ago, ruiluth said:

I had been growing food from fertilizer, yes. That certainly is more efficient

It may be obvious, but you can consider to cut out the pilot by adding one of the advanced modules that allows for additional SAS options (especially on low TWR ships I find the maneuver hold option very useful). It saves you another third on supplies consumption assuming you planned to send one of each.

[ruiluth]

7 minutes ago, FyunchClick said:

It may be obvious, but you can consider to cut out the pilot by adding one of the advanced modules that allows for additional SAS options (especially on low TWR ships I find the maneuver hold option very useful). It saves you another third on supplies consumption assuming you planned to send one of each.

I actually fly all my missions almost exclusively with MechJeb. But I have to bring Jeb because... what even is a ship doing in space without Jebediah Kerman on board? Besides, for RP reasons I always like to have the real Jeb, or at least a trained pilot, to keep an eye on the Mechanical Jeb.

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

Broadly speaking, you have two options (other than the popsicle approach... but if you're freezing the kerbals, why even bother with life support?):

1. Decrease the time spent in transit
2. Increase the time that you can support them

Option #1 boils down to "kerbals go faster", and there are various ways to accomplish that.

The simplest approach is one that requires no mods at all.  Launch your main mission ship uncrewed.  It has crew space, yes, and tons of life support supplies, but you launch it without any crew aboard.  You can lob it on a long, slow trajectory that takes years or decades to get to the destination; it can take all the time it wants, since it's not actually using any of those supplies.  This ship can be as massive as you like, since you don't have to launch it fast.

Give that ship several years head start.  Then you launch your crew, on a separate ship that is lighter but much faster.  It's a stripped-down hot-rod that consists basically of just crew space, fuel, the highest Isp engines you can manage, and only enough life support for a high-speed, one-way trip to the destination.  You launch it on a much-faster-than-Hohmann trajectory.  It meets up with the main ship at the destination.  Transfer to the main ship, do all your exploration.  When you're done and ready to go home, transfer back to the fast crew ship, refuel it, top off its supplies, and send it streaking home.

Not only does that approach not require any mods... but it's actually realistic.  It's a plan that's been considered for real-life crewed missions to Mars.

If you're lightweight and pack lots of dV, you can get from Kerbin to Sarnus in just one year-- or to Urlum in two, Neidon in three.

If you're willing to consider more mods, there are some other options.

One approach that I like is using Extraplanetary Launchpads.  Send just one ship, which is the fast crew transport.  It includes a bit of extra equipment:  drilling rig, workshop, launchpad.  Send it fast to the destination, then land somewhere, mine metal, and construct your main mission ship on-site.

Or you can send your main, huge mission ship at high dV, if you use a mod that includes very high Isp engines.  I like Porkjet's Atomic Age, it has some options that are interesting and fun without being (IMHO) game-killing "easy mode".

 

The other approach, besides "get the kerbals there fast", is to use a mod like UKS/MKS so that you can build a fully self-sustaining ship that makes all its own supplies, has greenhouses for growing food, etc.  Then you can take all the time you need to get where you're going.  I've done that, too... though in retrospect, I probably won't do it again.  It was interesting, and worth doing once (for me), and I'm glad I did it.  However, it massively shifted the focus of KSP from being about flying rocket ships to logistics management, to the point that it became essentially a completely different game.  Nothing wrong with tht, it just happens not to be the game I prefer to play.

 

[ruiluth]

10 hours ago, Snark said:

Give that ship several years head start.  Then you launch your crew, on a separate ship that is lighter but much faster.  It's a stripped-down hot-rod that consists basically of just crew space, fuel, the highest Isp engines you can manage, and only enough life support for a high-speed, one-way trip to the destination.  You launch it on a much-faster-than-Hohmann trajectory.  It meets up with the main ship at the destination.  Transfer to the main ship, do all your exploration.  When you're done and ready to go home, transfer back to the fast crew ship, refuel it, top off its supplies, and send it streaking home.

Not only does that approach not require any mods... but it's actually realistic.  It's a plan that's been considered for real-life crewed missions to Mars.

If you're lightweight and pack lots of dV, you can get from Kerbin to Sarnus in just one year-- or to Urlum in two, Neidon in three.

This is an excellent idea! I had realized that faster transfers would be possbile but I hadn't considered sending multiple missions in advance. I think this is definitely the solution I'll use, thanks for the advice

10 hours ago, Snark said:

Or you can send your main, huge mission ship at high dV, if you use a mod that includes very high Isp engines.  I like Porkjet's Atomic Age, it has some options that are interesting and fun without being (IMHO) game-killing "easy mode".

Nertea's Kerbal Atomics for me, same thing but the LH2 part makes it even more interesting