Going to Minmus

[NewtSoup]

It looks like it's time for me to set up a Minmus Base, I wasn't planning to but I went and accepted some Minmus contracts and one of which was to return a sample of ore.  Easy enough I thought, clicking away.

Now Babylon K is in orbit of the Mun and has it's own mobile mining base I thought I'd revisit the Minmus contracts.  I've already got a station in orbit and a survey sat out there.

Errr, that Ore Requirement - I'm sure that said 50 units of ore not 3050 units!

I'm going to need a bigger boat!.

So like I say I am going to have to build a full on Minmus Base.

Me being me I can't do anything simply and I've decided on a modular, expandable form for the base and I've already done a little bit of research right here on Kerbin.



As you can see from the picture.  It's based on a cross shaped module made of a micronode, girders, docking ports and wheels.  Each Module is a rover in its own right and the docking ports, when modules are arranged in a grid do indeed interlock!. An amusing side effect is that the entire base can be driven like a rover itself.

I may need to unlock a few technologies before continuing though - Rovemax M1 Wheels might be better.   I thought about waiting until I could unlock the HubMax Multi Point Connector but I believe the micronode and strutting will suffice.

Edited July 27, 2017 by NewtSoup
Made the mission image less "BAM!"

[Vanamonde]

There is a subforum for posting accounts of one's missions, and this thread now occupies it.

Good luck with your project. 

[NewtSoup]

8 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

There is a subforum for posting accounts of one's missions, and this thread now occupies it.

Good luck with your project. 

Thanks, I'd looked for an appropriate place but hadn't realised there were sub forums.

[XLjedi]

Can't see the pics ATM, but will be interested to see how you set up your base.  

I would like to do something similar for a Minmus refueling outpost and was thinking along the lines of something modular to start with for a simple planet-side refuel station.  ...but maybe expand it later with an orbital fuel depot and dedicated lander to ferry the fuel. 

[NewtSoup]

I'm sorry you can't see the pictures.  They are on imgur and the album is public so I have no idea why.  Yes I will have a dedicated lander for ferrying fuel and as you say an orbital fuel depot. 
 

[XLjedi]

Just now, NewtSoup said:

I'm sorry you can't see the pictures.  They are on imgur and the album is public so I have no idea why.  Yes I will have a dedicated lander for ferrying fuel and as you say an orbital fuel depot. 
 

Without going into too much detail...  some people might not be able to access certain "social media" sites during certain hours of the day.  I'm sure this evening, I'll be able to see the pics just fine. 

[NewtSoup]

I'm considering naming my Minmus Base Rura Penthe and populating the habitats with hapless Kerbals from lowest profit tourist missions. "Hey, wanna go to minmus?  It's the holiday of a lifetime, I guarantee it!"

Edited July 27, 2017 by NewtSoup

[obney kerman]

"But I paid for a mun mission!"

[Spaceman17]

well, you give me an idea:

recently i was setting up a csm with a service stage, that can be put on orbit with my delta iv, so i will make a minmus mission

[NewtSoup]

So, I built a Sky Crane / Lifter for my Minmus project.  In the video I broke a solar array with the nose cone ( should have just nudged it out of the way instead of going full Kerbal at it ) so I did it again afterwards.  Recorded with "Record My Desktop" for Linux but if someone knows a better recording tool please let me know.

The lifter has a TWR of 60 in Minmus gravity and over 1300 dV so I'm confident it can lift and land some pretty heavy stuff :).

 

 

Edited July 28, 2017 by NewtSoup

[NewtSoup]

And so it begins.  The first labourer destined for Rura Penthe:

He thinks he can just buy a quick orbit around Kerbin.  Little does he know that he is the first cog in the machine of the great Kerbal Empire Expansion!

[obney kerman]

Yay, tourists used as slaves!

[NewtSoup]

Having made a successful Mun to Minmus Transfer ( way more efficient than going back to Kerbin and then out to Minmus ) Franwise has docked with Minmus station, transferred the bulk of her fuel over and is now ready to land at the planned site for Rura Penthe and oversee construction.

 

Meanwhile the first component of the base has been launched into orbit and is ready to be picked up by the Sky Crane and transferred to Minmus Orbit

[NewtSoup]

And now with some help from my friends in the game questions forum I have managed to put the habitats into orbit.



With a little more persuasion they actually made it to Minmus orbit to rendevouz with Mimmus Station.

Once in a stable orbit along side Minmus Station, the Sky Crane detached, docked with the habitats and took over.  The fuel tanks from the habitat transfer craft were added to the station as storage and the engines discarded.

Now it was time for a landing attempt.  Did this go smoothly first time?  No it bloody well did not.  But I did record the final ( successful ) approach to Rura Penthe and landings.  I'd have preferred to get closer but within 1km was close enough for a twenty ton payload suspended under four terriers and a handful of girders on a single docking port junior.
 

After some shuffling of habitats across the Minman Surface the base looks like this.

[NewtSoup]

Remembering that the whole point of going to Minmus was to mine ore, Valentina has ordered the construction of an ore barge capable of carrying the 3050 units of ore and landing it safely on Kerbin.  Although the Rura Penthe mining facilities are not up and running yet the Babylon K Mobile Miner is docked at Minmus Station with 1200 ore from the Minman Surface. 

Kerbal Engineers quickly came up with this.

12 x 300 unit ore cans, a 2.5 - 1.5 m quad coupler at each end, struts because 3 of the stacks of ore cans don't actually link to the quad coupler at the bottom end! 44 MK2-R and 8 MK25 R Parachutes and the rest yada yada..
Sitting underneath LfOx and Motors to put a small town into orbit. 

The craft was carefully transported to the launchpad.

Where it promptly exploded.

Everyone agreed this was a very promising start, if only they could get the tanks to go up as well.  However a quick redesign of the fairing produced a vessel that was far less exciting.

 

At 10km up the velocity was a little lower than optimal but it was increasing steadily and flight was smooth so it was decided not to abort.

 

To everyone's surprise it actually made it into orbit with plenty of dV to reach Minmus.  The extra fuel tank capacity was designed in because on the way back the 25 ton craft will be a 53 ton craft.

Coming soon - Minmus supply and re-entry into Kerbin's Atmosphere and more base building and expansion of Minmus Station as a refuelling depot.

[NewtSoup]

There's been a lot of argument at Mission Control recently.  Whether to complete the request for Ore using the Babylon K mining Vessel or whether to focus on the expansion or Rura Penthe.  Given that the simple solution was to mine the ore with the K's Mobile Miner it was decided to focus on the expansion of Rura Penthe.  This caused many more planning meetings and extra snacks had to be brought in from local cities.  Arguments went back and forth as to whether to land the drills, holding tanks, fuel tanks, fuel cell arrays, solar power or ore processing first.  This was finally settled when a contract came up to attach a Lab to the base.  The Deputy Mission Director however still wanted to discuss further. Bob Kerman came to the rescue by putting him in a space suit and demonstrating first hand the principles of a Mass Relay.

All arguments now agreed settled six scientists were rounded up, welded into a mobile lab and duly launched vaguely in the direction of Minmus.



Eight days later the team, having managed to grind off the welds celebrated a safe landing and arrival at Rura Penthe.  At least they wouldn't be doing the mining.

[NewtSoup]

So here we are at the final leg of going to Minmus.  With Rura Penthe Almost complete Empress Valentina has demanded that the final shipment of ore be transferred to Minmus station and the Ore Barge.

 

 

This required a brief reconfiguration of the base so the Orange storage tank was detached from the base and redocked at the lab/ore tank intersection.

The Sky Crane then took off, landed on the end ore tank module, refuelled and prepared to lift it to Minmus Station.

Apologies for the pause in the video.  Something odd happened during rendering.  The only thing missing is the transfer burn from Minmus to Kerbin.
Deceleration was done in several burns at Kerbin Periapsis, use was made of all the monopropellant too.  The sharp eyed will notice a few explosions during re-entry - these were just the communotron 16 S antena burning off.  Aside from that minor excitement the mission was a total success with a rather surprising landing.
 

 

Edited August 17, 2017 by NewtSoup

[NewtSoup]

And that concludes Going to Minmus.  Rura Penthe will of course be expanded.  Kerbin Orbtial Tourists will be transferred to work on the drills and in ore processing.  More LfOx and RCS tanks will be added.  But for now the base is functional.  

Incidentally the VERY tall Orange Tank is a refuelling ship.  It's built on the same basic block as the rest of the base but incorporates landing gear.  Rather than using the power of the wheels to translate across the minmus surface it uses the RCS thrusters.,  That way it doesn't fall over splat into the base.

[FlyingPete]

Looks good! I like the use of a common wheeled base section to each of the modules- should make constructing the base a bit simpler without worrying too much about lining up docking ports vertically, particularly with the flat being level. On Minmus I presume traction is low enough to make a double-port docking. I suggest making a mobile tanker that has a grabber claw as well as the same docking port- that way you can refuel nearby ships from the base

Just needs a little short-range lander to make hops around Minmus to each of the biomes so your scientists have something to do.

I might have to steal this design for a modular base now

[NewtSoup]

4 minutes ago, FlyingPete said:

Looks good! I like the use of a common wheeled base section to each of the modules- should make constructing the base a bit simpler without worrying too much about lining up docking ports vertically, particularly with the flat being level. On Minmus I presume traction is low enough to make a double-port docking. I suggest making a mobile tanker that has a grabber claw as well as the same docking port- that way you can refuel nearby ships from the base

Just needs a little short-range lander to make hops around Minmus to each of the biomes so your scientists have something to do.

I might have to steal this design for a modular base now

Feel free

Minmus Station has a science lander. I was intending to do orbital drops to the various biomes then back up to the station to refuel before dropping on Rura Penthe to fill the lab.  I will definitely be adding a refuel Rover, Minmus station is mostly fuel tank too but it's perfectly possible I'll have something that won't dock well with it.  That design does indeed dock properly on all ports.  I tested in on Kerbin grasslands first

[Wallygator]

On 17/08/2017 at 4:21 AM, NewtSoup said:

And that concludes Going to Minmus.

Well Done!  This was an enjoyable read.  Looking forward to your next adventure er... mission.

[FleshJeb]

Good gravy, that was a lot of work.

I thought the "skycrane droppings" habs were a brilliant bit of problem-solving.

[NewtSoup]

18 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

Good gravy, that was a lot of work.

I thought the "skycrane droppings" habs were a brilliant bit of problem-solving.

It was a lot of work and a lot of fun and I will do it again.  This time I have extra ground stations turned off so I am in the process of setting up a Minmus SatNet right at the moment.  All prep work before base building.  I'm doing contracts in Career mode to keep the funding sufficient.  Also thinking ahead to what technologies I will have available to me.  Also just used my first "Wolfhound" engine - superbly efficient in space! much better than a poodle which was my previous interplanetary bulk cargo engine.  412isp on the Wolfhound! nearly a 25% improvement on fuel efficiency

Here's one of my new Minmus Relay Sats in orbit - the first one I dropped.  Sort of.  I will admit I did this when I was very tired.  On the first attempt I did. I reached Minmus Orbit and then realised I'd left a KER module off the ship so I couldn't work out my orbits correctly to drop 3 synchronous satellites.

Second attempt I had Ker module.  Dropped my first sat and then realised the sats didn't have ker modules so I couldn't fine tune their oribits back to synchronous after the kick from the decoupler ( even 1% makes a difference ).  

Third attempt I dropped the first satellite and then realised that the solar panels weren't up to the job.

So I went back and changed the satellite and for my fourth attempt I thought - I've done the work 3 times already - I subtracted the funds for the lifter and then "set orbit" 3 synchronous satellites.  everything was paid for in funds.  And I truly believe I'd worked hard enough

[FleshJeb]

Oh man, that's rough.  Yes, cheating the orbits in that situation is perfectly justified.

If you ever get stuck in that situation again, Orbital Period using Ap and Pe from map view:

 
a  = [ (radius + ap) + (radius + pe) ] / 2
mu and radius for Minmus is on the wiki. (Probably in KSPedia as well, but I always forget it exists.)

I rarely forget parts, but that's one of the reasons I use the MechjebAndEngineerForAll patch to add their functionality to all probes and command pods. I figure if it's a command unit, it should have software installed in it! I believe the patch respects the tech tree as well.

I need to get off my butt and actually complete a project. I usually end up designing the mission, building the craft, testing to make sure they're fit for the intended purpose, and then coming up with a new project before completing the original--I had one save with 1200 craft files...

[NewtSoup]

Thanks  that's good stuff.. By rearranging the equation I should also be able to calculate the required PE for 2/3 orbits and 3/4 orbits for dropping 3 and 4 satellites at regular intervals with the correct AP so they only need to burn back to the correct PE to be geosynchronous again.