Alternis Kerbol Travelling Circus -- Episode 34: Over the Hills and Far Away

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 33:  I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink

Spoiler

 

The above title has nothing to do with the recent unpleasantness.  I got that out of my system shortly after it happened.  Rather, this is what the few remaining unpurged Boffins are currently thinking, as you will soon see.

==================

So, back on Kerbin, work continued on fitting out the 1st Eve and 1st Tylo Expeditions.  Ships previously launched were suffering various failures while parked and their orbits were becoming increasingly eccentric for no good reason, threatening the flotillas with ejection from unwanted encounters with Kerbin.  So, much tweaking of stuff already up was going on, and go/no-go decisions on faltering probes were made, and meanwhile the final ships kept launching and failing.  Vast numbers of Boffins were purged at all levels, as well as many Scientists who had not anticipated these quirks of orbital mechanics.  It was enough to make everybody remaining at Mission Control drink more heavily than usual.

For instance, here we see the launch of the 1st version of the TE-1 Duna Probe Lander.  It supposedly had a reliability of 125% and everything looked fine at first.  In fact, Mission Control was thrilled when the minimal SRBs required to give the desired safety margin of to-orbit dV burned out soon enough to hit the ground and explode in full view.

 

However, upon ditching the almost-SSTO lifter stage, the battery in the center of the probe's stack exploded for no good reason, bifurcating the whole thing.

 

Oh well, this was a fluke, right?  BARIS had been beaten months before and hardly a peep had been heard from it for some time.  So nobody was particularly concerned when TE-1 Duna Surveyor was dragged out the the launchpad.  Except it suffered a bunch of critical engine failures right off the pad and promptly fell into Scrap Metal Bay not far off KSC.

 

On a more positive note, the Kerbin BIGBY Solar Telescope managed to get up OK.  Not only that, but it managed to dock with the BIGBY station sans problems, too.  This enabled the station to farm even more Science!

 

But depression soon returned with news that the TERRAIN scanner aboard Mun SCANsat Mk 2 had failed.  This is surely the most unreliable piece of gear in the Circus inventory.

 

By then, TE-1 Duna Probe Lander Mk2 was ready to go.  Like its predecessor, it got to orbit OK, but then the transfer stage fuel tank exploded shortly after lifter separation.

 

Somewhat surprisingly given this series of events, TE-1 Dres Probe Lander made it to its cis-Munar parking orbit no problems.

 

But then the balky TERRAIN scanner on TE-1 Tylo SCANsat failed while this probe was in its parking orbit and as secured for hibernation as possible.

 

And then, the greatest launch failure in the Circus' history occurred when TE-1 Duna Probe Lander Mk 2 was wheeled out.  There were bad omens from the get-go.  The sun was exactly at its zenith so the shadows of the launch clamps formed crosshairs under the rocket, yet the rocket itself cast no shadow.  Like it was already dead.

 

And sure enough,  the main lifter engine and several other important parts exploded immediately after engine start.

 

This led to a series of unfortunate events...

 

Oh well, at least the payload survived even the destruction of the launchpad.  Its scrap value covered the cost of rebuilding said launchpad.  As yet another contingent of Boffins was being dragged away to the firing squads, one of them could be heard singing something about "...and our flag was still there...."

 

To end on a happier note, at lest the Eeloo SCANsat got up OK.

 

Well, that was a big waste of money.  Fortunately, the government-subsidized Circus isn't lacking there, but time's a-wastin' as transfer windows approach and rockets ain't built overnight.  At least the BIGBY station and Lizeny back on Laythe have been slowly but surely grinding out Science!

 

Tune in next time for more of the slow spiral into damnation.

Edited February 8, 2018 by Geschosskopf

[Just Jim]

6 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

And then, the greatest launch failure in the Circus' history occurred when TE-1 Duna Probe Lander Mk 2 was wheeled out.  There were bad omens from the get-go.  The sun was exactly at its zenith so the shadows of the launch clamps formed crosshairs under the rocket, yet the rocket itself cast no shadow.  Like it was already dead.

That one was spectacular! Reminds me of some of the early rocket test fails at Peenemünde... 

[Ultimate Steve]

Oof... That's like early 60's success rates there...

[Geschosskopf]

14 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

That one was spectacular! Reminds me of some of the early rocket test fails at Peenemünde... 

Wasn't it, though?  Sheesh... 

On the bright side, the active ingredients of the LV-2N interplanetary engine were wafted into the stratosphere by the intense updraft of the massive fireball, so will be evenly dispersed around Kerbin.  Nobody on the surface should feel any more radiation than an extra dental X-ray.  Oh, and that rocket that landed nearby in Scrap Metal Bay?  Water is a great shield from its active ingredients, too

 

1 minute ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Oof... That's like early 60's success rates there...

I think it was more like 60% failure  

[53miner53]

Ok, WHO overcharged the battery this time?!?

[insert_name]

14 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Wasn't it, though?  Sheesh... 

On the bright side, the active ingredients of the LV-2N interplanetary engine were wafted into the stratosphere by the intense updraft of the massive fireball, so will be evenly dispersed around Kerbin.  Nobody on the surface should feel any more radiation than an extra dental X-ray.  Oh, and that rocket that landed nearby in Scrap Metal Bay?  Water is a great shield from its active ingredients, too

 

I think it was more like 60% failure  

1959  failure rate then?

[Cydonian Monk]

Good old BARIS, obviously making up for lost time. 

[Geschosskopf]

11 hours ago, 53miner53 said:

Ok, WHO overcharged the battery this time?!?

Probably a faulty voltage regulator.  But OTOH, this 2.5m battery's charge density and position on the tech tree make me think it's probably lithium-ion.  Squishing a single cell of that due to some transient off-axis force during launch might therefore result in a chain reaction thermal runway.  Unfortunately, none of the wreckage was recoverable so the KTSB couldn't investigate.

 

11 hours ago, insert_name said:

1959  failure rate then?

Yeah, probably

 

10 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Good old BARIS, obviously making up for lost time. 

Yeah......

I'm not sure what's up with BARIS right now.  It's not acting like it was before but it hasn't been updated recently so that's not the cause.  KSP has, however, been crashing a lot since the Meltdown/Spectre "fix" so it would not surprise me if a crash and the recovery therefrom added a whiff of corruption somewhere in the save file.  I'll have to take a look in more detail.

BARIS does introduce a fair amount of overhead.  There's its own section in the save file for its settings and the score cards for every rocket part (of a type you've made vulnerable to BARIS) showing how many times you've flown or tested them and what their modified MTBFs are now.  Then for each ship in flight, each vulnerable part has its own score card showing how healthy it is and what's going wrong with it.  And then, of course, BARIS has to do periodic checks on ships in flight (based in part MTBFs) and, if you have launch failures enabled, also checking every vulnerable part of the ship each time you stage.

I've always had BARIS able to affect every type of part, and I've got launch failures enabled, so BARIS is imposing its max overhead.  I'm thinking I'll have to cut back on this somewhat in the interests of game stability.  So I'll put that to a vote.....

Which parts, if any, should I make immune to BARIS and still keep the story entertaining?

• Crewed parts (pods, cockpits, passenger bays, labs, etc.)
• Fuel tanks
• Engines
• Reaction wheels
• Electrical stuff (batteries, solar panels, fuel cells, RTGs, etc.)
• Antennae
• Other (BARIS affects everything except structural elements right now)

Should I keep launch failures enabled, yes or no?

Thanks.

[Angelo Kerman]

I am hoping that ksp 1.4 will have part failures built in from the dlc. If so that will hopefully reduce some of the overhead as functionality currently in part modules is handled by the base game. Ideally BARIS then just has to manage when a part breaks and not how. 

And rockets with no shadow are definitely vampires. Keep wooden stakes on hand...

[Geschosskopf]

8 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

I am hoping that ksp 1.4 will have part failures built in from the dlc. If so that will hopefully reduce some of the overhead as functionality currently in part modules is handled by the base game. Ideally BARIS then just has to manage when a part breaks and not how. 

Oh geez.....   The last 2nd-to-last thing I want in KSP is a stock malfunction system (The real last thing is life support.  It used to be communications networks....).  But hey, Squad's deplorable history of incorporating so-called "realism" features indicates that IF they're working on malfunctions for the DLC, they'll make it part of 1.4 instead of the DLC where it arguably is necessary.

Speaking of the DLC, I have no intention of using the stock 1.8m parts as long as MOLE's still a thing.  I can't live without your resource-switching, decal-wearing, wireless-resource-transferring tanks   Plus, your IVAs are way better than what I've seen of the up-coming stock parts.

Anyway, back to BARIS....  I'm suspecting some flag got switched...  If I launch a rocket I haven't integrated, I'm no longer getting that warning message that it's more likely to fail as a result.  And such rocket's usually don't fail at all.  OTOH, if I do integrate a rocket, usually I get the "Integration failed.  Reload from BARIS" message, and then it usually fails despite having been integrated with a reliability well over 100.  In Episode 33 above, the only successful launches are the few where I hit the Load button in BARIS and did NOT get the "Integration Failed" message.

 

8 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

And rockets with no shadow are definitely vampires. Keep wooden stakes on hand...

Yeah, that was weird.  The launch clamps are part of the rocket and they cast a shadow, so why not the rest of the rocket?  But OTOH, the launch clamp shadows foretold the doom of the launchpad.  Like I said, the omens were definitely bad.  NOTE TO SELF:  Don't launch at solar noon again.

NOTE:  In Alternis Kerbol, tide-locked Kerbin's solar days are about 60 hours long, or 10 stock days.  But of the 5 consecutive stock "days" when the sun is above the horizon, about 1 stock day is during the "daily" total eclipse caused by Jool.  At KSC's longitude where Jool is just above the western horizon, this means that you have about 6 hours of dawn twilight, 18 hours of full daylight, 6 hours of weird, nearly dark eclipse light, a very brief interval of sunset twilight when the sun is between the bottom of Jool and the top of the WhoopsTooShort Mountains, then 30 hours of full night.  So the majority of the time, it's dark.  Vampires love this.

ALSO NOTE:  There's a mod called Kronometer that adjusts the calendar to run on Alternis Kerbol time instead of stock time.  I didn't realize this was a thing until this game was fairly far along.  This made me afraid to add it to my on-going game as I'm not sure KAC can handle the switch and I've got too much stuff on the to-do list to risk it.  But for those interested in playing in Alternis Kerbol, I'd suggest going this way from the get-go.  This changes the stock YDHMS calendar to the following:

• Joys:  Jool's orbital period around the sun, which is essentially the same as stock Kerbin's because Jool is approximately in the same orbit as Kerbin in stock.
• Rote:  Tide-locked Kerbins solar day orbiting Jool, about 60 hours.
• Sour:  1/60 of a Rote or 98% of an hour
• Minute:  1/60 of a Sour so 98% of a minute
• Tick:  1/60 of a Minute so 98% of a second

 

[boccelounge]

17 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Which parts, if any, should I make immune to BARIS and still keep the story entertaining?

...

Should I keep launch failures enabled, yes or no?

First off, my condolences on the loss of your colleague, and my gratitude for your work as a first-responder.  Don't know how to say it any prettier than that trite sentence, but it's true.

 

And to answer your poll, I'd say "Electrical Stuff" and "Crewed parts" should/could be exempt from failures.  My logic is that both types of components are heavy and expensive (relative to their size, form, and function) and are thus (one can rationalize) built to withstand the rigors of spaceflight.  Additionally, the other categories (reaction wheels, fuel and propulsion systems, etc.) are all elements that often fail in real spacecraft.  So, if your intent is use BARIS to make things challenging and to *nudge* your KSP experience toward realism, yet still make it a little more fun/playable, I vote for Electrical and Crewed.

And I'd definitely keep launch failures.  I can't imagine how much that sucks (for you) but you can easily imagine how entertaining it is (for us).

BTW and FWIW, while catching up on the latest Circus updates, I was returning a probe from the Mun.  A tiny, 520kg probe, carrying data from my first two (in this SAVE) landings.  Except I was reading the forum and not watching the probe on the other computer...  and it impacted at 2x warp in Map View, wasting 2358 Science! and about 20 minutes of my time (after a F9).  Your excellent report cost me twenty minutes of valuable KSP time.  Eh, it was worth it.

Edited February 2, 2018 by boccelounge
typos

[Geschosskopf]

8 hours ago, boccelounge said:

And to answer your poll, I'd say "Electrical Stuff" and "Crewed parts" should/could be exempt from failures.

Seems reasonable to me.

 

8 hours ago, boccelounge said:

And I'd definitely keep launch failures.  I can't imagine how much that sucks (for you) but you can easily imagine how entertaining it is (for us).

I figured you'd say that   I do plan on keeping them because they're entertaining to me.  I love watching a good explosion.  It's only after that I realize, "Hey wait a minute, I had to pay for that!"  

 

8 hours ago, boccelounge said:

BTW and FWIW, while catching up on the latest Circus updates, I was returning a probe from the Mun.  A tiny, 520kg probe, carrying data from my first two (in this SAVE) landings.  Except I was reading the forum and not watching the probe on the other computer...  and it impacted at 2x warp in Map View, wasting 2358 Science! and about 20 minutes of my time (after a F9).  Your excellent report cost me twenty minutes of valuable KSP time.  Eh, it was worth it.

Hehehe, thanks!  That was quite entertaining so karma is balanced

 

 

 

[qzgy]

On 2/2/2018 at 4:40 AM, boccelounge said:

I'd say "Electrical Stuff" and "Crewed parts" should/could be exempt from failures

I would also support this.

[Kerbalstar]

On 2/2/2018 at 2:40 AM, boccelounge said:

say "Electrical Stuff" and "Crewed parts" should/could be exempt from failures.

Aye!

And keep the launch failures. They are funny(if expensive)!

Edited February 3, 2018 by kerbalstar

[obney kerman]

On ‎2‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 3:40 AM, boccelounge said:

And to answer your poll, I'd say "Electrical Stuff" and "Crewed parts" should/could be exempt from failures.

I think not on crewed parts. After all, it is the circus! Lives are expendable!

Edited February 3, 2018 by obney kerman

[53miner53]

9 minutes ago, obney kerman said:

I think not on crewed parts. After all, it is the circus! Lives are expendable!

I think the crew capsules should be exempt because the “expendable lives” concept is less funny when they just spontaneously explode. 

[obney kerman]

1 hour ago, 53miner53 said:

I think the crew capsules should be exempt because the “expendable lives” concept is less funny when they just spontaneously explode. 

Fair point.

[AVaughan]

Personally if you have a failure mod, then I think things like batteries should be able to fail, but most of the time that should be a non-catastrophic failure, ie the battery no longer holds any charge and becomes useless.  Same sort of thing for solar panels.  And with enough tech and "practical in use testing" things like batteries and solar panels should end up with a mtbf measured in years.  (Though deployable solar panels might have a significant chance of failing to extend/retract).

Edited February 4, 2018 by AVaughan

[qzgy]

5 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

most of the time that should be a non-catastrophic failure, ie the battery no longer holds any charge and becomes useless.  Same sort of thing for solar panels.

Actually.... you're right about that. @Angel-125, is that a feature of BARIS?

[Geschosskopf]

@qzgy, @kerbalstar, @obney kerman, @53miner53 @boccelounge  OK, crew capsules and electric stuff are now off BARIS' menu.  That should cut a bit of overhead.

 

11 hours ago, AVaughan said:

Personally if you have a failure mod, then I think things like batteries should be able to fail, but most of the time that should be a non-catastrophic failure, ie the battery no longer holds any charge and becomes useless.  Same sort of thing for solar panels.  And with enough tech and "practical in use testing" things like batteries and solar panels should end up with a mtbf measured in years.  (Though deployable solar panels might have a significant chance of failing to extend/retract).

In KSP, every part that holds a resource is treated the same under the hood.  IOW, fuel tanks, heat shields, air intakes, and batteries are all the same species.  The difference comes from what other parts of the game do to the resources.  So for the most part, BARIS can't do much with any of these other than either have them leak resources or explode.  The things that BARIS can make stop working are parts that actually do something, like via a module of some sort.  So that's engines, reaction wheels, ISRU stuff, etc.  However, if these things have any resource storage, they can also leak.  And, of course, if you have it enabled, they can also explode.

Apart from the little dry-cell batteries in our flashlights and such, real-life batteries aren't all 1 thing that can fail all-or-nothing.  All the vehicle-sized batteries of whatever type of chemical are a bunch of small cells.  Each of these cells can fail individually, which lowers the output voltage and reduces the time between recharges of the whole battery.  So in effect, you don't have as much battery as originally installed.  Thus, BARIS having batteries "leak" is a good approximation of this happening.

As a firefighter, I can expound at great length on the various ways batteries can burn and/or explode .  We've all heard of various recent lithium-ion fiascoes but even good old lead-acid batteries can explode because they release hydrogen gas when being recharged.  That's why I had batteries vulnerable to BARIS.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 34:  Over the Hills and Far Away

So, despite having declared itself "Ready" a couple episodes back, the Circus still had work to do making up for repeated launch failures and another tempest that wrought havoc on everything in Jool's SOI inside Kerbin's orbit.  Alternis Kerbol is built for Principia but sometimes I think it acts, at least in the Jool system, as if Principia is in effect even if it isn't.  This new tempest did for all the relays and everything else in Laythe orbit., as well the Jool MagSat, plus disrupted the orbits of EE-1 and TE-1  parked between Kerbin and Mun.  So there's been a lot of scrambling to get EE-1 and TE-1 fit to go again.  The stuff at Laythe and Jool MagSat will not be replaced as they've served their purpose.

However, the Circus still had a number of launches to do to finish up TE-1.  So this brought TE-1 Duna Surveyor Mk 2 to the new launchpad.  And in an example of present trends continuing, its main lifter engine promptly exploded upon launch.  Fortunately, it wasn't in use at the time so the "small" (as in 2.5m) SRBs were able to carry it clear of the new launchpad.  Then the probe itself separated and the main lifter stack was high enough to self-destruct prior to impact, and the payload once again survived.  As did the SRBs, amazingly enough.

 

Mission Control had decided, given that Tylo has 4x Kerbin's gravity, that the SCANsat sent there might not have enough oomph to do Dres and Duna, so had built another SCANsat for that.  It managed to get up OK.

 

Meanwhile corrections of the tempest-tossed parking orbits of EE-1 and TE-1 continued sporadically.  Interestingly, TE-1 UberRelay had been captured into a stable orbit of Kerbin (along with TE-1 Dres MagSat), so they had to be put somewhere else.  As has become the norm in the Alternis Kerbol Travelling Circus, interstage adapters came adrift and provided cause for concern but, once again, nothing bad happened.

 

4th time was the charm for TE-1 Duna Probe Lander as the Mk 4 got up safely.  So had the 1st 2, but they then broke up in orbit.  Not so Mk 4.

 

Given the problems with Jool orbits inside Kerbin, TE-1 Duna Probe Lander Mk 4 and every interplanetary ship launched from then on will park between Kerbin and Pol where things seem safe.  This costs about 200m'/s more than parking between Kerbin and Mun, but will probably be worth it.

And given all the trouble this ship has caused, here's a look at it safely in orbit with both sets of fairings ditched.  The main part from the solar panels aft will remain in Duna orbit as a relay.  It has 4 of the smallest antennae, both for redundancy and to make more of them in combination.  Given that there (hopefully) will be an UberRelay in the Tylo system, this should work.  From the solar panels forward is the actual lander on its wider heat shield.  Whether it will work or not is anybody's guess.

 

The Circus decided it might as well have a look at all the other planets as well, so put up the Moho SCANsat.  It probably won't leave for nearly half a year, when it will be on Moho's AN/DN axis.  In the meantime, orbiting outside of Kerbin, it should be safe.

 

At this point, a number of Scientists walked off the job.  They won't get far, though

 

So eventually, things looked like this.  The bulk of EE-1 and TE-1 were between Kerbin and Mun, and a few replacements and other late-comers were between Kerbin and Pol.

 

The Circus had meanwhile decided to send a rocket up to the Kerbin BIGBY station.  It was to bring up another batch of experiments for the Skylab and a resupply of Research Kits, and then wait until it could bring home the 1st batch of experiments.  Unfortunately, it completely exploded just off the pad.  Shades of St. Crisdous!

 

But at long last, about Y3 D3, it was time to get the 1st Eve Expedition on the road.  All 4 ships, or their replacements, were in proper parking orbits and off they went, over the hills and far away.  First off was EE-1 Eve Probe Lander Carrier.  It has 2 landers and the carrier vehicle is a relay to remain in orbit.

 

Next was EE-1 Eve SCANsat, which will map the planet before dropping the probe landers.  It had been parked for a while, the senior member of EE-1, so was by now obsolete in both instrumentation and propulsion.  But given all the launch failures recently, it had never been replaced with something better.

 

Then it was the time of EE-1 Eve SpySat.  This ship was a revamped version of the LE-2 Laythe SpySat Mk 2, same basic instrument core but with all sorts of additions and a much more expensive impressive propulsion system and bigger antennae.

 

And finally, EE-1 Eve Relays departed.  This carries 2 big relays destined for elliptical polar orbits while the carrier gets as equatorial as possible and functions as a short-range relay.

 

So that's all of EE-1 away.  It'll take about 2 weeks for them to leave Jool's SOI and then 150-200 days to reach Eve.  Meanwhile, the 9 ships of TE-1 will leave over the coming 5-24 days.

 

Somewhere along the line, LE-2 FORLORN HOPE will make a road trip and maybe the Boffins will figure out a way to get Geoflan and Company off Laythe.  Whether they'll ever be allowed back on Kerbin, however, is anybody's guess.

Tune in next time for more of the slow spiral into damnation.

[KAL 9000]

Off to Eve, eh? 

 

[Geschosskopf]

20 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

Off to Eve, eh? 

Yup.  In Alternis Kerbol, Eve is yellow and has rings but no moon (Gilly is a comet).  According to the info in the tracking station, it's got 1.12x Kerbin's gravity and many times the atmospheric pressure, more or less like stock.  The main purpose of EE-1 is just to have a good look at the place.  I don't have much desire to do much at such a planet, but I want to see the sights and get the Science!

BTW, I prefer Bagel Rabbit's "Eve" song.  It has much more misery and despair in it   Besides, Venus isn't a "bringer of peace".  In ancient Mesoamerica, Venus was regarded as a baneful war deity associated with the sacking of cities and the fall of dynasties.  Due to the climate of that region, Venus is brightest during the campaigning season.

 

[KAL 9000]

On 2/11/2018 at 10:26 AM, Geschosskopf said:

In ancient Mesoamerica, Venus was regarded as a baneful war deity associated with the sacking of cities and the fall of dynasties.

Fitting! Venus is an acidic, burning hellhole!

[DAL59]

3 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

Fitting! Venus is an acidic, burning hellhole!

Until you go 50 km up!