Nekozjin Aeronautics Flight Files (aka eddiew's c'logs) - Season 5: Keeping it Simple

eddiew · June 23, 2017

(Apologies for the lack of narration on the next section. I've been away for a long time and I don't really know what the plot of these was.)

Minor Midjudgement

Gassian Blur

Planes, Hotels and Automobiles

eddiew · June 24, 2017

Season 3: Little Earth

Ok, so, basically I've had to put the GPP career on pause. Short of it is that my PC really isn't up to the task of running that pack in its full visual glory and with all the mods I want to involve, but I don't want to sacrifice anything at this point in time. So while I sort out some new hardware, I'll be starting a new career with a reduced modpack and using a new, undiscovered planetary system:

Yep, I have no idea what I'll find in this one. Going in totally blind, no research into the planets offered. I've also done some tweaking with the tech tree and made it so that the end-game techs are significantly more expensive, with each tier being about twice as expensive as the previous. This I think will encourage me to hang around in the mid game. If anyone's interested, the config for that is below and thanks to @JadeOfMaar for helping me with the syntax.

Spoiler


@TechTree:NEEDS[CommunityTechTree]
{
	// Excluding things like rover wheels and jet parts. These do not really get you to space any better
	// and imho shouldn't be so expensive.
	// Note that the mk3 parts are allowed to get more expensive.
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[fieldScience]]	{ @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[highAltitudeFlight]] { @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[advancedMotors]] { @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[hypersonicFlight]] { @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[aerospaceTech]] { @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[aerodynamics]] { @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[supersonicFlight]] { @cost *= -1 }
	
	
	@RDNode,*:HAS[#cost[10000]]
	{
	   @cost = 50000
	}
	@RDNode,*:HAS[#cost[4000]]
	{
	   @cost = 24000
	}
	@RDNode,*:HAS[#cost[2250]]
	{
	   @cost = 11250
	}
	@RDNode,*:HAS[#cost[1500]]
	{
	   @cost = 5250
	}
	@RDNode,*:HAS[#cost[1000]]
	{
	   @cost = 2500
	}
	@RDNode,*:HAS[#cost[550]]
	{
	   @cost = 1100
	}
	@RDNode,*:HAS[#cost[300]]
	{
	   @cost = 525
	}
	@RDNode,*:HAS[#cost[160]]
	{
	   @cost = 240
	}
	@RDNode,*:HAS[#cost[90]]
	{
	   @cost = 95
	}		
	
	// put the excluded parts list back to their original costs
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[fieldScience]]	{ @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[highAltitudeFlight]] { @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[advancedMotors]] { @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[hypersonicFlight]] { @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[aerospaceTech]] { @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[aerodynamics]] { @cost *= -1 }
	@RDNode:HAS[#id[supersonicFlight]] { @cost *= -1 }
}


// move KerbalFoundries' smallest wheels into a lower tier (alongside the buggy wheels from stock)
@PART[KF_WheelSmall]:NEEDS[KerbalFoundries]
{
	@TechRequired = fieldScience
}
@PART[KF_WheelTiny]:NEEDS[KerbalFoundries]
{
	@TechRequired = fieldScience
}

So with that said; let it begin...

eddiew · June 26, 2017

We like the moon

With low Earth orbit reliably conquered, a new challenge must be issued. Mission Control decides that we will go to the Moon. We we go not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

But since not even Shatner wanted to take the probably suicide mission of being onboard the first vessel to escape Earth's dominion, we built a probe instead.

This seems to inspire other space agencies across the world and a slew of rockets go up from various manufacturers. Turns out not all of them are very competent...

On the upside, the rescued kerbonauts prove reluctant to go back to their previous employers and agree to work for the KSC program for the cost of snacks and board.

Handsomely rewarded for our bravery in rescuing kerbals of many nations, Mission Control schedules the launch of a new, more adventurous Moon probe.

xendelaar · June 29, 2017

On ‎26‎-‎6‎-‎2017 at 10:56 AM, eddiew said:

We like the moon

With low Earth orbit reliably conquered, a new challenge must be issued. Mission Control decides that we will go to the Moon. We we go not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

But since not even Shatner wanted to take the probably suicide mission of being onboard the first vessel to escape Earth's dominion, we built a probe instead.

This seems to inspire other space agencies across the world and a slew of rockets go up from various manufacturers. Turns out not all of them are very competent...

On the upside, the rescued kerbonauts prove reluctant to go back to their previous employers and agree to work for the KSC program for the cost of snacks and board.

Handsomely rewarded for our bravery in rescuing kerbals of many nations, Mission Control schedules the launch of a new, more adventurous Moon probe.

Very interesting report(s). Those mods also look very neat. Is going to the moon more diffult than going to the Mun? It sounds like a nice challenge!

eddiew · June 29, 2017

1 hour ago, xendelaar said:

Very interesting report(s). Those mods also look very neat. Is going to the moon more diffult than going to the Mun? It sounds like a nice challenge!

Thanks

In Stock Scale RSS, the Moon isn't really any harder than Mun if you use KSC Switcher and choose the right launch site. Cape Canaveral is on the same inclination as the Moon relative to Earth's core, so if you choose your timing right you can go up straight east and be within 1 degree of perfection by orbit. I suggest using KER's rendezvous panel for this as you can sit on the launch pad and watch the relative inclination count down to zero. My typical transfers are about 900m/s, and it's certainly very similar to landing on Mun and returning home - if not actually identical

xendelaar · June 29, 2017

sounds really neat. ill have to take another look at it when i finish my current career.

there are so many interesting new things i learn every day on this forum. it is awesome!

eddiew · August 29, 2017

Ok, so... I forgot to update this week about 2 weeks of play, and then took a 2 month break because frankly my PC wasn't up to the task. I've now fixed this (I hope!) so it's catchup time!

Progress Montage

The technological advances created and freely shared by KSC turn out to have some mild consequences for less competent competitors.

But we use the money they pay to avoid a massive PR failure and send the first kermanned mission to the Moon!

Apparently the boys in engineering overspecced the deorbit stage. We're not complaining, but it does make the publicity photos a bit awkward. On the up side, once the camera is set up, every kerbal gets to take a selfie with Shatner at the same time!

Science institutions are soon clamouring for more data and samples, and many roots exchange hands in the short time before the second mission. And third mission. And fourth... etc.

Seeing as a few questions have been asked about our qualifications to perform docking manoeuvres...

And back to Mars, because it turns out we didn't pack enough solar panels on Aries Station

...and up to date. Next installments: Jupiter! Multi-kerman Mars landing! Exploding on Venus! Possibly not in that order!

eddiew · September 12, 2017

A Martian Oddity

After several orbits, it's time for the first two-kerman landing upon the red planet. Distracting Shatner with a selection of cereal bars, Nimoy provides cover while Takei and Doohan climb aboard the Tripod and detach.

Even with the Tripod's plethora of parachutes, descent speed is well over 50m/s. Fortunately nobody told Doohan this, and by the time she realised, she was already outside.

A blast from the rocket motors ensures a soft touchdown, and the rover is deployed.

Refreshed and showered, the crew continues onto the second goal; a long slog towards the vast canyons that scar the side of Mars.

We're pretty sure they're actually called the valles marineres, but apparently someone in the print department didn't get the message, so now they're the arean canyons and we all have to live with it.

The dust proves more of an annoyance than a hindrance, and after only (!!!) a 40 minute drive, Takei and Doohan are able to plant their flag and take samples.

Which makes them realise that there's nothing less exciting than a linear route you have to backtrack. Mission planning apologises and tries to work out a circular path for next time.

eddiew · November 20, 2017

Kermen are on Mars, Rovers are on Venus

Following Takei and Doohan's expedition and successful test of the rover's autopilot, mission control gives the go ahead to forgo the pilot and take a scientist; in this instance, Nimoy. The second landing site is necessarily in an already visited biome around the equator, but thanks to the autopilot (aka the Bon Voyage mod and a small patch integrating it into the command chairs) the kilometres flashed by

With the advanced autopilot proving its worth, Doohan and Nimoy decide on a brief hibernate as the rover trundles slowly from the frigid martian pole to the not-much-less-frigid crater of Olympus Mons.

The science team in orbit is more than happy to have something to sink their teeth into. Possibly literally.

Not for the first time, KSC discovers that somewhere on Kerbin there are competing space agencies, and none of them are as good as we are. Remember folks, if you don't see the our label on the box, you're buying a substandard product that could put your life at risk!

Meanwhile back home, the engineering team have come up with an exciting new option for the upcoming Venus window.

In the light of this catastrophic discovery, mission control was faced with two options; scrub the descent, or kick off the aero shell and hope for the best. Since any chance is better than no chance, a swift drinking game was held and the drunkest intern had to press the button. At least if it blew up during landing, they would have plausible deniability.

Atmospheric entry went surprisingly well. The venusian orbital velocity is barely higher than Earth's, and the upper atmosphere no more fierce, with the result that the heat swiftly faded and a gentle descent began.

A very gentle descent. In fact a descent so gentle that mission control started another drinking game to pass the time.

The parachute failure was unexpected, but ultimately not significant. Even a sedate 12m/s descent turned out to be beyond critical velocity in this nightmare soup of an atmosphere, with the result the chutes remained closed, but the same soup led to a sufficiently gentle touchdown anyway.

...yes, we have rubber that handles pizza-oven temperatures. Why is that even a question?

Following on from the hugely successful rover missions, Mars is almost tapped out for useful data. After long consideration as to whether they really wanted Shatner back on staff, mission control gave the go-ahead to send a vessel to bring the crew back home.

While the Starswan is a shining example of an efficient and long-range SSTO, even it's advanced nuclear engines can't provide enough burn time to perform the transfer on fuel alone. As luck (or mission planning) would have it, the arrival velocity is no worse than Earth orbital, and as such an aggressive aerobraking pass can be used for capture without losing any more of the precious fuel.

Docked to Aries Station with a whisker over 2km/s left in the tank, Starswan is all set to bring the team home as soon as they've processed the last of their data.

eddiew · November 26, 2017

Ambling Towards Failure

Fortunately the science team has been busy at Aries station and many new technologies have become available since Ambler I was launched two years ago! Rather than perform another 15 Ganymede flybys over 3 years, mission control signs off the development of Ambler II, which will arrive sooner than Ambler I would have managed to finish its manoeuvres, packs more science, and should be capable of visiting all the moons.

(Apparently I used the same screenshot twice. Sorry... several days have elapsed for me between the two.)

At this point there isn't much for Ambler II to do unless someone pays for another survey on a jovian moon. Mission control considers bringing it home for a souvenir.

Bring Them Home

While the return of Ambler II is still up for debate, after seven long years, the Aries crew do finally get to board their shuttle home.

On the whole, the Starswan handles the descent rather well, surviving aerobraking at 3km/s and holding an aggressive posture throughout. She gets a little squirrelly during the final approach, but Shatner pumps the remaining fuel to the forward tank and it quickly settles out. A few minor course corrections later, and the Starswan's wheels are rumbling along the tarmac to a safe halt.

In other news, the torrent of data from the Jovian system has made mission control realise that they have nowhere to send it... clearly an Earth-orbit station is required.

Wings and Wheels

The annoying discovery that the Skywheel's crew were holding a subbuteo tournament in the canteen did little to improve tempers at mission control. The engineering team however were suddenly enthused to find the cheapest possible way of getting three kerbals up to low Earth orbit, and after several hours spent locked in a shed, they produced a new prototype.

Since the Cloudspear was evidently carrying excess fuel, a few hundred units are transferred to the station before the plane is brought back to ground under remote control. Turns out that three aerobrakes aren't really enough for a plane this pointy, and the Cloudspear ends up overshooting by several kilometres and having to loop back before landing, but there's a fair amount of wing for the weight and the final touchdown is surprisingly gentle.

And for some reason, various entities around the world have a sudden hankering for some lunar survey data, which gave the engineers a kick of glee and sent them scurrying back into their shed for 'round two'.

To be fair to them, they quickly produced a small, agile little spaceplane that was more than adequate for delivering an argon-fuelled probe to low orbit, with only 0.8 degrees deviation from the lunar plane. Returning to ground, it almost misses the runway because it turns out that it will happily stay in the air at anything above 50m/s.

Lil Hottie

The next project requires a bit more delta-v than is available in a format we can pack into Lil Lifter's cargo bay, which leaves the engineering crew shaking their heads and muttering things like 'brute force', 'uncivilised' and 'outdated on the launch pad'. Mission control suspects that it will henceforth be a battle to get them to design anything that doesn't have wings.

Nonetheless, Lil Hottie proves to be a sturdy and competent probe, arriving and Mercury and completing her 12 minute insertion burn without complaint. Winding down to a low orbit on the second pass, she unfurls her radar and begins mapping the radiation-blasted surface below.

A copy of all data is sent to Skywheel Station, just in case the crew have forgotten their jobs.

Tinlion

The day started out simply enough; mission control, after watching some videos on the internet, asked the engineering team if they could let their designs be a bit more inspired by nature and organic.

The engineering team responded.

Not to be out done, mission control stuck it on a rocket and sent it to Saturn. Annoyingly, Tinlion turns out to be precision balanced and packing 9.3km/s of range, thus disproving the idea that the engineering team are a load of useless old grumblers.

eddiew · December 15, 2017

Bring Tin Home

Working his way inwards through the orbits, Tinlion hops from Rhea to Dione. And then to Tethys.

Turns out all of Saturn's moons look alike...

Enceladus doesn't look much different to Rhea, Dione or Tethys, being still grey and mostly icy, but it's polar regions are particularly lumpy and "interesting". For some reason, multiple contracts immediately come in, asking for seismic and laser ablation readings.

Also, Saturn is looking pretty swole, casting an increasingly ominous pall over the mission as the inward jog continues down to teeny tiny Mimas...

With just under 6km/s left in the tanks after landing, mission control has two options for Tinlion; first, map Titan and then land on Iapetus before terminating the mission. Second, bow to the massive public pressure demanding that the probe be brought home and put in a ~~petting zoo~~ museum.

They opted for the latter, since nobody really wanted to look at another creepy photo of Saturn peering over the edge of the world. Soon enough (well, about 6 years later) he is back in low Earth orbit.

It doesn't take long for the engineering team to realise that he is not going to survive re-entry. After a (very brief) pondering, they rush off to the shed, and a few hours later the appropriately named Kitty Grabber is launched. Using advanced aerodynamics calculations, the flight team assure mission control that they're going to not only bring Tinlion down, but bring him down right on KSC.

They lied. Fortunately, Tinlion has wheels, and despite over 12 years in the far reaches of the solar system, all of them still work, and he embarks upon a long trundle across the wide open plains of the Amazon ~~rainforest~~ grasslands.

It's about this point that Nicols Kerman notices the misalignment of Tinlion's rear wheels, which might explain why he's really squirrelly when driving...

The successful return of this valiant little probe/rover (prover?) sees a swell of approval from the public, and a number of additional sponsorship deals materialise. Tinlion is decommissioned and now has a new home at a children's playground, where starry-eyed young kerbals clamber through his steel framework and dream of the day that they, too, can misalign the wheels on an expensive piece of technology and get away with it.

eddiew · December 15, 2017

Cloudspear

With Stragegia set to maximum Scientist Focus, even the 3-star scientists Lenard and Barrett will function at maximum rank during their tour of duty at the orbital lab, so mission control decides to retrieve Nimoy and Kelley Kerman for the next extra-terrestrial duty shift.

At 37 tons on the runway, the Cloudspear II is about the heaviest thing we ever lifted and ever want to lift on two rapiers, but that futuristic double-nosecone seems to be surprisingly low drag and the engineering team tells us they put a subtle 2-degree inclination on the wings, which is apparently undetectable to the naked eye. Whether this is true or not, we have no way of knowing, but either way a shallow degree ascent profile pushes over 1400m/s on air+nuke. It gets warm in the cabin and Koenig is soon down to his underpants, but it's all well within tolerance. Switching the rapiers to closed cycle at 28km kicks the apoapsis up to about 65km, and even with a feeble 0.25 twr, it's possible to get this thing to orbit with patience (and timewarp) and after docking it's able to leave nearly 1000 units of LF on Skywheel for future use.

Attempting a landing on Europa

(This mission launched twice. The first time, the rover reactor overheated moments after decoupling. Back to the SPH, removed radiator, put it back in the same place - worked fine from then on. Thanks, KSP...)

Starblaze III is certainly not the largest thing we've ever launched, but it certainly is the largest thing we've ever fired as far as Jupiter! We mean, sure, Tinlion recently got back from Saturn, but he weighs about 3 tons. Starblaze III is nearly a hundred times that...

Despite the technical challenges, the engineering team actually manages to make it work, and Starblaze III settles into jovian orbit with about 7.5km/s left in the tank. And then burns another 1.5 of that getting down to Europa's orbit. The return trip will be kinda tight, but it should be viable. Worst case we think that (most of) the Starblaze would survive a high altitude aerobraking manoeuvre.

With the shadow of Jupiter barely missing the icy moon below, the crew set out on the descent.

The crew looks down in trepidation as Rover's paw-thrusters are about to contact the forbidden ice of Europa... Suddenly everyone gasps as... they land safely.

On a very, very rough patch of terrain. In fact so rough that Rover can't stay still and just slides down the slope (although this later turned out to be due to a broken wheel that nobody noticed). Going with gravity, the crew eventually arrives at a slightly more level patch where they take some samples, measure the concentrations of ore and useful materials in the ground, then leave a marker for future expeditions. Who almost certainly won't land here because it's really not a good spot at all. Although Doohan does have a good time playing about on the low friction surface, enjoying a long slide down each and every hill that requires her to get off and fix a tyre. Thanks, Doohan.

Given the terrible landing zone, it's clear that we need to do better. Mission control authorises plan B, and the crew begin an excursion southwards towards the flatter ice plains near the equator. Some jets of the argon engines are needed to clear the worst of the terrain, but indeed, the final destination is much more favourable, although the ore concentration drops a little.

(Truthfully, I dropped the landscape height multiplier in the configs because Europa is seriously, seriously hilly in SSRSS, which doesn't match my knowledge of an ice world with ice boulders. There should probably be many, many more boulders, but I felt that the kharst landscape was worse than the lack of icecubes.)

An optimal return window turns out to be a conveniently close 77 days away, and in almost no time - or in exactly 77 days, depending on your point of view - the Starblaze III makes an ejection burn. Which, Jupiter being Jupiter, means that it leaves the SoI 106 days later.

(There was enough fuel in the tanks to stop off at Ganymede on the way back, but I wanted this to be the scouting mission to the jovian system, rather than a full exploration. We shall return - and in greater numbers.)

The voyage home is rather slow, broken only by sighs of disappointment as the crew realise that the magnetic fishing game they brought kind of needs gravity to make any sense. With a cabin now full of floating plastic fish, they focus on their work, managing to process 99% of the gathered data by the time they reach Earth orbit.

Which probably means we should bring them down to ground, but now that mission control know of the existence of magnetic fishing games, it's getting hard to find anyone actually at their desk... hopefully the thrill will wear off before the Starblaze's snack supplies run out.

Skylance I

Did the engineering team need to make an ultra-light spaceplane with just 1 engine? No. There are already multiple craft available in the hanger that would have performed this mission. However, someone rightly pointed out that we had never made a single engine spaceplane with more than 1 seat, which immediately sent every engineer in KSC into the design shed for three days, refusing to communicate with the outside except to phone out for takeaway.

To give them their due, the little Skylance is a very efficient ship. Weighing 17.9t, she comes close to Cloudspear's weight/rapier (and exceeds Cloudspear's weight/engine by a significant margin), and is by far the lightest useful SSTO in our fleet. Packing enough fuel for 600m/s of orbital manoeuvres, there's just enough monoprop aboard to perform 1-2 dockings under the care of a frugal pilot. Everything else however is stripped to the bare bones minimum. The reaction wheel is a 0.625m model, there's just a single solar panel, zero science instruments, no room for cargo, and even the standard-fit cupholders have been removed from the passenger cabin. It's also necessary to use the pilot seat for an actual pilot, since there's no probe core or comms antenna.

Despite the minimalism, the flight profile is simple as they come; unstick speed is around 90m/s, after which the pilot retracts the landing gear, aims 5 degrees above the horizon and leaves it alone until 1450m/s before kicking to closed cycle mode in what is as close to a dead-stick ascent as you're likely to find anywhere. Re-entry can be a little squirrelly, needing some stick wiggling to avoid the nosecone or pilot's cabin taking all the heating, but the aerodynamics are clean and she won't spin or tumble. Once below 30km the twin airbrakes are quite enough to slow the dry weight of this little plane and she'll soon drop. Final approach is controlled and steady, with a returning glide speed of 65m/s resulting in an easy touchdown.

Pupper Fetcher

With increasing public pressure to bring the Europa team's Rover back to ground, it started to make good financial sense to send up a larger version of the Kitty Grabber. The landing prediction was no more accurate this time around, and indeed Rover ended up several kilometres from the landing pad. Unlike Tinlion, he also arrived in pretty battered shape, with 3 out of 4 ~~paws~~ wheels inoperable.

Normally we'd just drive an engineer out to fix them, but standard operating procedures prevents us from operating a rover on Earth without an engineer aboard - and we just yesterday launched two of our three available engineers into space! (Pics to be inserted at a later date... got out of sync, sorry!) With only one left, there seems to be no logical way to bring Rover home, and it looks like it will have to be returned by a third party delivery company.

Unless...

Never underestimate the power of leaving Doohan Kerman in the design shed overnight when a rover's life depends on it. Her solution turns out to be surprisingly effective, given its total lack of articulation, and the manoeuvre is only complicated by Rover's broken ~~paws~~ wheels causing him to slowly slide down the slope as she approaches.

Despite this annoyance, Doohan manages to snare the wayward rover on the third attempt - promptly breaking his last ~~paw~~ wheel in the process. Poor Rover has taken a bit of a beating, but at least he's now on his way back to the ~~vet~~ repair bay.

It takes all six of Pupper Fetcher's six-wheel-drive to get the combined weight up the slope to the runway, but soon the valiant rover has been delivered back to KSC, free of charge. After a systems check and decontamination, Rover is transferred to the London Museum, and now lives in the cafe area where he is prodded daily by curious kerbal children who dream of the day when they too can go to Europa and attempt a landing there.

eddiew · February 8, 2018

(To explain the hiatus and change of scene; it was at this point that I realised our real solar system has a lot of small icy moons that look just like all the other small icy moons. The tour thus far was enjoyable, but it was clearly going to become a grind.)

Career #4 - 1.3.1 - Galileo's Planet Pack + Grannus Expansion Pack

1. Passing the Garman line

JadeOfMaar · February 9, 2018

@eddiew I've wondered when I'd see someone pull the "Flat Gael" card.

eddiew · February 13, 2018

2. Boostenthruster

And so kerbal kind were able to sagely nod over their toast and newspapers next morning, knowing that 'they' had done it. 'They' had gone to space and stayed there, and 'they' had come home at a time of their own choosing.

With the success of the Boostenthruster still bounding around the headlines, mission control quickly commissions a successor, and imaginatively titles it the Boostenthruster II.

...its job was actually just to carry a better science payload to low Gael orbit, but due to a confusion between metric and imperial measurements, the vessel turned out to be wildly overspecced. Not wanting to waste this happy accident - or as the engineering team referred to it, fortuitous synchronicity - mission control gives the nod to take Boostenthruster II up to high orbit, gathering some never-before-seen views of our homeworld.

Mousebat

A little time passes before next launch, but the engineering team assures us it will be worth the wait; a new, advanced 'probe' as they call it. We think it's mostly a beer crate with some wires in it. The morning TV guys think it's dark magic and have already started a campaign to send positive vibes to cleanse the GSC. Either way, the Mousebat does its job admirably, swooping around the far side of Iota before following a free-return trajectory back to ground. Perhaps there is something to this 'probe' malarkey after all.

Birbish

By this point, our resident pilots were becoming bored and destructive, so the engineers threw together something to keep them busy and make them feel useful. This not only bought us several weeks of peace and quiet, but actually delivered some useful Gael science to boot.

On 09/02/2018 at 5:47 AM, JadeOfMaar said:

@eddiew I've wondered when I'd see someone pull the "Flat Gael" card.

Had to be done

Edited February 13, 2018 by eddiew

eddiew · February 13, 2018

3. There's something behind Iota

Despite our pilots having made innumerable appearances on breakfast TV, the edict came down from above that the next kerbal into space had to be trained to actually learn something from the experience.

This did not please anyone (except the trained kerbal in question) but after much grumbling, a vessel was put together that could be handled remotely from the ground - and assigned a flight profile that would keep it in communications with home at all times. All our boffin has to do is hang onto her seat and try not to barf.

Not until Llew was back home and the data from her trip was being analysed did we quite understand the significance of what she'd seen...

Geschosskopf · February 15, 2018

Velly intellesting! Is this thing behind Iota a normal thing from GPP or something you put there?

eddiew · March 4, 2018

The Iotian ~~Anemone~~ Anomaly

Business as Usual

On 15/02/2018 at 12:01 AM, Geschosskopf said:

Velly intellesting! Is this thing behind Iota a normal thing from GPP or something you put there?

Thank you The object is homebrew - I had to widen Iota's SoI quite a lot to allow something to be in its stationary orbit.

eddiew · March 4, 2018

A Bigger Rocket

True to their word, mission control's next launch is both larger than the Moongoose, and piloted by Jay Gaelan.

The Moondog is heavy, tall, and... quite traditionally rocket shaped. Which on the whole makes it perfect for the job of landing three kerbals on Iota at the same time.

5 Star Safety

Neither Lyssa, Otter, or any of the engineering team back at GSC have any explanation for what happened to the Cattercrawler. One minute it was humming along, then there was an explosion, and the crew had been ejected, alongside an antenna, tailfin, and two solar panels. But since nokerbal was hurt, the Cattercrawler is considered a viable rover for future use.

eddiew · March 7, 2018

Aiming Higher

Following the success of the Moondog in maintaining wide fuel margins while making an Iota landing, mission control decides to re-route the next scheduled mission and aim for a higher target!

...and that was that. With a reliable workhorse already established, kerbalkind's first mission to Ceti went without so much as a slip and tumble. Indeed, there are already a few nut-jobs saying that the landing was faked and that these are actually just recoloured pictures from Iota.

Ceticean Institute

In an effort to prove the whackos wrong, mission control decides that a long-term habitat around Ceti is warranted. Not only will this deliver a flood of photographic 'proof' but it provides opportunity to try out a new orbital lab that the boffins have been putting together in their spare time.

With the Ceticean Institute parked up around the pinkest moon, the crew began the prep for their first descent, only to notice... there's no lander.

Which was in no way an oversight because mission control absolutely always intended to send the lander as a secondary package. (Because it completes those stupid rendezvous and dock world firsts.)

With the new Kricket Squad-Rover docked, the two scientists draw straws and lucky Llew Gaelan gets the seat on the first descent. Leo will have his turn on the second expedition, and is secretly quite pleased to be left alone for a while so's he can cherry pick the snacks out of the cupboard before anyone else gets back.

For a rover using 'classic' wheels, Kricket Squad performs surprisingly well, rarely threatening to tip or spin and finding traction on slopes of up to thirty degrees. In a surprisingly short time, the survey locations have been scouted, and the crew have made the 10km trek to the lowlands biome.

Launching the Kricket Squad is no more elegant than landing it, being an awkward 'point at the sky and fire the engine' manoeuvre. Nonetheless, it works fine, and launching at the right time to directly intercept the station gets them back aboard the Ceticean Institute in mere minutes.

As for the fuel margins... we're not sure. The engineering team is suggesting that their original designs did not include full tanks of monopropellant, since there is no reasonable way that Kricket Squad would need that much. Care will be needed with future expeditions to avoid running dry at an awkward moment.

eddiew · March 18, 2018

Training Montage

Desert Beagle

Tellumite

Honestly, we're not sure what happened to Tellumite's relay... but despite the reconfiguration even, all its systems continued to work, so mission control continued with the landing anyway.

Anemone Station

Jets are Useful!

With increasing demand for orbital tours, we turned to our engineering team for a more cost effective way of getting wealthy kerbals to orbit. There were sceptical noises at first, but after some thought and mulled wine, opinions began to veer towards the optimistic.

And rightly so. It turns out that turbojets and aerospikes are all we need to get a small number of tourists to orbit and back, with zero costs aside from fuel!

With the success of the Cloudspike II and the possibilities opened by its impressive orbital range, we issued another challenge to the engineering team; give us something that can retrieve the crew of the Ceticean Institute.

Which they did. Sure, it may not win any prizes in the aesthetics category, but Cloudspike III is remarkably competent as a crew transporter within Gael's SoI.

But so are rockets

On the other hand, if you want to land on a moon rather than just orbit it... that's when you need a rocket.

eddiew · May 6, 2018

The Niven Expedition

Enthused by recent advances in spaceplane technology, mission control commissions a budget friendly mechanism for returning the crew of the Ceticean Institute back to Gael.

And with our seasoned team landed, fed, and ready to launch once more, preparations begin to send up the most ambitious mission yet. So ambitious that we couldn't work out how to fit it onto one rocket and had to send it in two parts.