The Astronomers of Gael: Blind GPP at 3.2x Scale

[GehringGame]

I'm really enjoying this series, Starman. I've been out of the loop for a little while on KSP and the Gael system is new to me too. I think I will learn about it through your adventure as you explore it blind!

[Starman4308]

2 minutes ago, GehringGame said:

I'm really enjoying this series, Starman. I've been out of the loop for a little while on KSP and the Gael system is new to me too. I think I will learn about it through your adventure as you explore it blind!

Glad to hear it. I'll probably be tinkering with the life support configs soon; I pretty much completely forgot about the existence of fuel cells, so if I mod those to use hydrogen+oxygen instead of LF+O as resources, crack the output water back to hydrogen+oxygen during the day, and either mine hydrates or send water to replace what the astronauts went through for life support, I have a second backup system in addition to the nuclear reactors I'll be sending.

Also, "you are only allowed to give 25 likes each day". I visited the SpaceX thread.

[Starman4308]

So, as you might have noticed, it's been a long time since I updated. I started playing some Elite: Dangerous, and by the time I returned to playing some KSP, I'd completely lost track of what I was doing in KSP. Since then, I've tried to get back into a different GPP 3.2x career, got a bit bored of it, and then tried some RP-0, which I'm having some fun with. If/when I return to upscaled GPP, I'll probably go for 6.4x-10x scale. With Real Fuels, 3.2x just seems... small. I'd probably also not run quite so many rescue-Kerbal missions, that got rather tedious.

I don't think there will be any more updates to this series, though if I start any more mission reports, I'll see about editing links to them back into the OP and this post.

As partial compensation: the final mission I ran in this campaign appeared to be some sort of... rover?

In my second GPP 3.2x campaign, one of my favorite launch vehicles uses a pair of Kiwi methalox sustainer engines supplemented by a quartet of LV-T45 boosters.

A good old-fashioned Gael-rise from Ceti:

Zoomed-out night launches can produce some beautiful sights.

 

From my new RP-0 campaign:

The Bad Idea suborbital rocket.

The pilot was... skeptical at landing.

RP-0 Sputnik, launched on an unholy contraption of RD-100s, early AJ-10s, and Baby Sergeants could not have been more than 100 kg in orbit, of which just 12 kg was science payload.

In Real Fuels-Stockalike/GPP, I've noticed I've used mostly reaction wheels on dinky little probe cores up on the payload for control. RP-0? My Voyager probes are the only spacecraft I've launched that have reaction wheels, period, and upper stages have been spacecraft in their own right, with RCS, batteries, antennae, avionics, etc.

Finally, here's my current screensaver, of Voyager II approaching Jupiter: