Jawkins' Space Prog

[Jeb Jawkins]

So - this is where I am going to post reports and pics from my ongoing space program.

Boring explanation:

Spoiler

 

In fact theres nothing special to be posted here. For most of the time I've been playing KSP using mods that somehow reflect history and reality. But I didn't want to take shots at repeating historical missions in detail. I came across Eyes Turned Skyward some weeks ago additionally and liked the ideas behind it. So this one might be seen as a mixture of history and eyes turned skyward with an emphasis of fun. I don't want to create anything competing with history or ETS. Basically I just asked to myself 'what are you taking all those screenshots for ?'. So I just came to the thought of posting them here and creating a little story around it giving my game a little more sense and direction to develope.

 

One more thing: I am running it on Mac and I'm forced to keep my system to 10.6.8 for business reasons at least for now. Therefor I am still running ksp 1.0.5 which is still enough for me.

Okay. Here we go.

 

Part I - Another beginning.

Part II - Munstep's aftermath

 

Where are we?

 

Two Kerbal Nations - american and soviet - have been battling for the Mun. Yeah, quiet common so far. Surprisingly US-american Kerbals made it there first during the flight of Apollo 8 with Jeb planting the flag in the surface.

Recently after successful completion soviet Kerbals have been launched to the Mun aboard Soyuz LOK-4 mission making Boris Kerman the first soviet Kerbal on munar surface.

 

But contact to the kerbonauts has been lost ever since during EVA-activities!

 

UP NEXT:

Starting desperate rescue-missions both american and soviet missions ran into technical difficulties with their vessels leaving the two Kerbals lost somewhere on munar surface. While trying to improve inflight-safety both nations came up with plans of spoiling the space with stations to increase mission duration and space knowledge.

 

P.S.: So. Introdutional part done. Feel free to love it or hate it. More to come with more in-depth detail. Don't mind the misspellings on the pictures - had to be quick there . This first should have also given me a better overview of which functions are available for creating posts. So I hope my quality of writing will improve soon.

 

Cheers!

 

 

Edited October 1, 2016 by Jeb Jawkins

[eddiew]

I like the concept   You could make this a lot more readable by linking the images directly, so that they embed in the page and don't need to be clicked one at a time.

Spoiler

Just go to the imgur page for it, right click, copy image address - post it into this editor and...

 

[Jeb Jawkins]

23 minutes ago, eddiew said:

I like the concept   You could make this a lot more readable by linking the images directly, so that they embed in the page and don't need to be clicked one at a time.

  Reveal hidden contents

Just go to the imgur page for it, right click, copy image address - post it into this editor and...

 

Done! Thanks a lot! That's much better.

[eddiew]

47 minutes ago, Jeb Jawkins said:

Done! Thanks a lot! That's much better.

Don't be afraid to take them out of spoiler tags too - people come here expecting many images

Also, Boris Kerman  

Edited September 29, 2016 by eddiew

[Jeb Jawkins]

30 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Don't be afraid to take them out of spoiler tags too - people come here expecting many images

Also, Boris Kerman  

Okay. Still been trying some of the coding stuff. Now I know much more. Thanks for the cool hints.

Sadly enough Boris Kerman seems to be gone forever . But don't worry: there are many great Kerbals left in the program and they will find their ways into posts here !

[Jeb Jawkins]

Part II - Munstep's aftermath

 

Apollo-Struggle

Prior to the mysterious failure of Soyuz LOK-4 several Apollo-missions had been scheduled. Those were rearranged as the Soviet Union called out for help. The decision taken by KASA (which in fact sent Jeb as it's negotiator) included maintaining most of the original objectives for each mission but redefining the landing sites to where the lost Kerbals could have been. So every Apollo-mission to the Mun carried way more equipment than Apollo 8  did. Though the missions did not ran into troubles during in-flight-operations they did when taking the LEM to munar surface. As the crew of Apollo 9 was closing in to it's munar landing target the lander suddenly went out of control making everything but the lander-can burst into flames. After regaining consciousness the crew found themselves in another need of rescue.

Soviet Union lost all of it's faith in finding the missing kerbonauts. But mission control was able to awake the unmannend Soyuz LOK-3 ship which has been left in munar orbit after completing an radio-controlled test mission. The stranded crew used this craft as an lifeboat for getting back to it's Apollo 9 CSM.

Because Apollo 10 has been scheduled to run an sattelite-recovery-mission Apollo 11 was launched ahead of it, repeating the Apollo 9 plan. It succeeded - especially in crashing into munar surface again.

This time the vessel also broke apart but most of the parts survived the impact being spread all over the place. Bill decided to take matters into his own hands - actually there was no rentable ship around - fixing the ascent engine of the LEM. In fact he putted it in upside down at first. After checking the manual again he completed the repairs saving the crews return back home.

After this second setback every mission that included the LEM was put on hold leaving only the CSM rated usable.

 

Stationbuilding

Still being shocked by Soyuz LOK-4 fail and the struggle of the Apollo-program, the soviet space agency realized that a change in it’s approach to munar missions was needed. The Salyut-program had a successful history providing kerbin orbit with stations for planetary studies and docking tests. So the Soviet Union of Kerbin decided to launch Salyut 8, dock a modular lab to it and send it into munar orbit. The stations primary goal is to get a better understanding of the Mun. Secondly it gives the possibility to dock a lander to the station. In doing so munar landings will be done using only one lander as a ferry and also safe a lot of shiny kerbin bling. The Soyuz LOK modification has been brought to an end being substituted by Soyuz TM crafts that carry an additional return engine.

 

The downside of this configuration and mission style, as reported by Yuri Kerman (first soviet Kerbal in space), seems to be the capacity of the Soyuz TM crafts. Only one scientific specialist can be carried aboard one craft making two flights necessary for having two scientists at a time in munar orbit. To solve this problem Yuri and Korolev Kerman took a box of screwdrivers to the VAB, ripping vernier engines  from the R7 and applying them to Proton’s  upper stages. This modification helped making the Proton more stable. So the TKS-program came to new life with TKS 4 being the first but unmanned flight since a long pause. TKS 6 than became the first manned flight of the relived program.

 

Making TKS work again, the soviet agency was looking for a new series of space stations that could provide even more space for even more personnel. So Almaz 1 was launched as a kerbin-test-station. It is unmanned so far but provides docking ports for TKS, Soyuz TM and Progress A, making Almaz 1 the largest and heaviest station that has ever been launched so far. Some reports suggest that there might be equipment for reconnaissance as well. TKS 7 will be the first mission to this station.

Meanwhile US Kerbals have been the first to put their feet on the Mun. But there hasn’t been any American station in orbit so far. US space agency agreed on following quiet a similar plan to Soviet approaches, using space stations as a kind of ‘space-bus-stops’. Apollo 10 has been an intercept mission, reconfiguring a munar satellite by using an equipment module carried in the LEM fairings.

So NASA decided to put their own test-playground-station into orbit: US Kerlab. This station will be visited by Apollo 12 – 15 missions, using the modular docking technique of Apollo 10 to check out different equipment like the tether applied during Apollo 14 (latest mission) tested by Johnny Kerman.

As of now only three Kerbals can stay at US Kerlab for a maximum of 12 days, which is way shorter compared to Soviet stations. Future plans for the station program remain unclear mainly because NASA doesn’t have a supply craft of it’s own. So Jeb and the agency are discussing whether a new station should be launched or a supply craft will be designed first.

New players in the game

Meanwhile the Soviet agency wants to improve the munar-landing program, which includes improving current vessels and maintaining the two stations. To improve safety Yuri Kerman asked for satellites that could provide a better knowledge about Kerbin and the Mun. But the high costs of the current programs did not allow any other program to be added. So Yuri Kerman remembered a friend he had met during survival training some years ago: chinese kerbal Yang-Wulei Kerman. Being a space pioneer himself Yang-Wulei’s agency struggled in finding a suitable spaceport for it’s space plans. Yuri and Yang-Wulei agreed on a deal that allows Chinese agency the use of Soviet N1-launchpad and training facilities if they help by putting up some satellites first.

This deal helped starting the Chinese Space Program.

 

ChiSat I became the first ever Chinese object launched to space. It carries a camera to study the ground structure of Kerbin for “scientific reasons” and “locating landed vessels”. Bill sometimes pretends that it might be used for other purposes. ChiSat II carries a terrain scanner to underline the scientific nature of the Chinese satellite program but Bill argues the camera might just have been forgotten or broken. Anyway he might be mad about the limited abilities of the US program compared to the large number of missions coming up within the Soviet-Chinese partnership.

 

CONCLUSION:

Now the thread has been brought up to date with the actual state of the career. We’ve got two big agencies with another one developing under the wing of the Soviet agency. The main goal of both, the US Kerbals and the Soviet Kerbals, is getting back to the Mun and establish permanent bases on it. Those bases should allow each agency to study interplanetary flight and also use the Mun as a resource for space travel.

Soviet Kerbals are now working on crafts that will make munar landings much safer.

US Kerbals try to compensate the current lack of long-duration-stations and cargo crafts.

 

What will happen next?

 

Edited October 5, 2016 by Jeb Jawkins

[DDE]

Least. Pretentious. Campaign name. Ever.

[Jeb Jawkins]

Yeah! Check out the new pics in the edited posts.

Part III curently under development.

 

UPDATE - IN THE NEWS:

- Unknown craft launched to space

- Apollo 16 reported to be close to unknown object

- Soyuz TM-14 returned from munar station Salyut 8. Media-reports speculate about Salyut-8-operations being on hold 'till new Soviet lander is available

- Nasa plans successor for US Kerlab.

Edited October 5, 2016 by Jeb Jawkins

[TheEpicSquared]

@Jeb Jawkins How do you make a link to each chapter for the OP? I've been wanting to do it for a while now. Thanks  

[Jeb Jawkins]

On 7.10.2016 at 11:39 AM, TheEpicSquared said:

@Jeb Jawkins How do you make a link to each chapter for the OP? I've been wanting to do it for a while now. Thanks  

Took my a bit to find out but it's not that hard once you know how to do it.

I will send you a message soon (on tour this weekend) because I think the forum will transform the code when I put it into a post. 

[NISSKEPCSIM]

Cool thread! Interesting reality-kerbal-alternate history mix.

On 05/10/2016 at 3:23 PM, Jeb Jawkins said:

*snip* - Apollo 16 reported to be close to unknown object *snip*

I'm expecting a certain... something to appear in the next part...

Spoiler

 

Edited April 14, 2017 by NISSKEPCSIM