Voyage to the red planet (Duna on Kerbalism)

[Geschosskopf]

13 hours ago, MacLuky said:

"28 km and we have capture! altitude is rising"

Good guess  Congrats to Odyssey and her jolly crew for overcoming so much adversity to reach Duna.  Hopefully now that they're there, things will go better.

[MacLuky]

Actually, I enjoy working my way around the things that go wrong. I just hope they don't die in the process. There is an interesting bug where Bon Voyage (which is powering my rovers) and MechJeb/Trajectories collide. Apparently, they both use the same drawing layer, which means landing trajectories and roving paths are combined to spaghetti (yum).

[Geschosskopf]

18 hours ago, MacLuky said:

Actually, I enjoy working my way around the things that go wrong. I just hope they don't die in the process. There is an interesting bug where Bon Voyage (which is powering my rovers) and MechJeb/Trajectories collide. Apparently, they both use the same drawing layer, which means landing trajectories and roving paths are combined to spaghetti (yum).

Well, no since having Bon Voyage until you're actually on the ground.

[MacLuky]

Indeed, so the bug is that paths that are built for my rovers "persist" when switching to other vessels. Once I finish the series I'll update to 1.3.1 and do the ritual upgrade dance of all the mods, and perhaps release my Taurus/Amarok mod as well ;-)

[MacLuky]

Chapter 10: Riding the stung bull

"Clean bill of health for all of you," Harrick sounded relieved. He was still puzzled and surprised by how well the shield was holding up. The earlier version he had tested around the Mun had far less power and by comparison, this team was probably the healthiest team since the early days of space exploration. Plenty of room, snacks, running on the treadmill and enjoying the gravity ring had resulted in stress levels of 2% and similar levels of radiation. "Better than expected, way better," he wrote in his report.

Meanwhile, Valentina took a picture of Tomoly who had headed out for the routine exterior check and started prepping the landing craft.

Tomoly was not a happy camper. "Okay, its as I expected." He radioed in. "The decent vehicle's life-support systems are ill-equipped. It's not just the nitrogen, but also the temperature controls." A backup-crew on Kerbin had tested a re-entry in space-suits, forgoing the need for nitrogen during descent, but their climatization systems were in a better shape.

"Basically the plan for a battery powered descent is bust," Tomoly explained. "I'll add a solar panel from the spares and make sure we keep it pointed at the sun." KSC had already updated their trajectory calculations for this. But for the periapsis to be low near the base, they would need to land in the twilight at best. "The rover better gets there quick," Naul worried. "We can hold out in our suits if we step outside," said Valentina.

"I didn't travel this far to look at it from high orbit only." She said. And so preparations were made. A small burn lowered the periapsis into the atmosphere. Now they would board the landing craft and Tomoly would raise the orbit of the Odyssey back up and wait for their 50 days surface mission to complete while optimising Odysseys systems and making sure they would get a fresh harvest.

"135 m/s correction burn complete, let's go, team." Valentina was excited to go. Just before detaching the landing capsule, Naul remembered to bring a tank of nitrogen to replenish the drained resources of the base and the rover. She quickly boarded the descent vehicle which was christened the "Homer" and detached it from the Odyssey. "Goodbye Odyssey, Tomoly take good care of her." Valentina booted up the landing computer and started checking the emergency landing system, which was based on 6 retro-rockets. That was when the first red alarm popped up.

"Retro rocket B4 is gone, we can't fire all at once," Naul said. She quickly rearranged the staging into 3 groups of two that would fire synchronously. "Here you go Val. I won't recommend firing that last stage unless you have no other option, it will cause the capsule to spin." "Let's hope the parachutes are enough then," Val replied.

"Try keep pointing that panel at the sun." Naul kept a close watch on the power levels that would drop fast each time the capsule would rotate. "You presume a level of control," Val replied. "Ever tried wrestling a bull that was stung by a hornet?." 
"Don't care, keep her roll between 30 and 45 degrees or we'll be popsicles in no time." Was Nauls reply.

"Chutes deployed and holding. We are slowing down to acceptable parameters." Naul's job was to relay the information to Valentina, who was sitting at the controls. "500m, traveling at 16m/s" The tension was rising. "200m, we are at 12m/s, 10 seconds till landing." "Firing first set of retro's, speed is dropping". "Touchdown at Duna in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1" And with a soft bump they hit the red soil.

"KSC, we have landed on Duna. 4 hours left until dark. 8.6km from the designated LZ." Valentina sounded calm. "I have a link with the rover," said Harrick. "It's homing in on our position, let's hope it gets here in time." At least the solar panel was pointing it the right direction.

 

Edited January 13, 2018 by MacLuky

[Angelo Kerman]

Congratulations on a successful Duna landing!

[MacLuky]

Thanks! I just read your Duna series, very cool. I had set up a Greek temple for Ike, but you have beaten me to it. Love the model of the head and the movie reference.

[Angelo Kerman]

5 hours ago, MacLuky said:

Thanks! I just read your Duna series, very cool. I had set up a Greek temple for Ike, but you have beaten me to it. Love the model of the head and the movie reference.

That was a custom model I made, it was an interesting challenge! Anyway, looking forward to your adventures.

[Jammer-TD]

gotta love VTOL

I used the chutes but I didn't need too..it just looked good for the photo.. the cargo has arrived 7 "kh" large cargo bays worth

Edited January 14, 2018 by Jammer-TD

[MacLuky]

4 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

That was a custom model I made, it was an interesting challenge! Anyway, looking forward to your adventures.

Yes, I had set up something similar, but your head is better, and OS X high siera is messing up unity big time.

@Jammer-TD love the craft, but i am playing a bit more near future. What engines are you using, the look awesome if they can lift off something of that size?

[Geschosskopf]

On 1/13/2018 at 2:15 PM, MacLuky said:

"KSC, we have landed on Duna. 4 hours left until dark. 8.6km from the designated LZ." Valentina sounded calm. "I have a link with the rover," said Harrick. "It's homing in on our position, let's hope it gets here in time." At least the solar panel was pointing it the right direction.

Bravo!  I hope they have something to get back to space with

 

[MacLuky]

Chapter 11: First flags

"I'm not sure how your clock works, but I won't get a tan if this is sunlight," said Valentina to Harrick. "Indeed, it appears that our calculations were a bit off," was the reply. Solar panels were producing less and less power, and batteries started to drain. "Gear up team, we are going outside with 2 hours of life-support rather than staying in this soon-to-be refrigerator." Valentina was making the tough shots as usual. "Rover should be here in 20 minutes," Harrick kept staring at the monitor. 

And he was right. Atlas 4 showed up, right on the mark, while the crew was busy planting the first Flag on Duna soil. Naul started up the nuclear reactor on the back and confirmed power levels and heat radiators were working properly. She then enabled the habitats and transferred the nitrogen container to the Atlas 4. Pressure regulators sprang back to life and Valentina and Harrick boarded the rover while Naul kept making repairs to the components that had given out during its 2-year stay on the red planet. "Not bad, she said," while fixing a solar panel with duct-tape and removing broken parachutes. "But half the chutes are gone. I wonder what the state of the chutes on the Dragon return vehicle is."

"I'm seeing still no abnormal ratings of anything. We are good to go," And with this clean bill of health, the rover departed for its 14 km drive to Hab-1. Hab-1 was deployed a year earlier and served as a shelter base. Comprised of an overdose of solar panels and a huge battery, the base should be able to remain powered throughout the night. With over a year on supplies, it was designed as an emergency home away from home, in which the team could hold out long enough for a re-supply and/or rescue mission. Apart from having no atmosphere, it should be in good shape.

Naul was the first to disembark and do some more repairs on the Atlas 4 and started running the diagnostics on the base. All seemed in order. By updating the software on the atmospheric analysis instrument, she had turned it into an atmospheric filter that would sift out the nitrogen from the atmosphere and replenish the one in the rovers depleted supplies. Originally it was supposed to convert to oxygen but ironically enough the had plenty of that.

Valentina was the first to head over to the base. Harrick could not be pulled from the first functional lab in two years and a bounty of goo and material science that could be analyzed. "Let's see, deploy ladder, activate lights, hmm how is this supposed to work?" Val looked at the ladder system in great confusion. "Let me guess, that tall guy in the engineering team designed the ladder?" A reasonable assumption, since the ladder, proved to be just out of reach.

Fortunately, a small jump was all it took to grab the lower sports and pull yourself up to the airlock, after spending hours in the "homer" she was glad to be in a larger room. "Now lets' pressurize this baby and get out of these suits."
 

Naul didn't board straight away. She had noticed that the pressure regulator on Hab-1 was struggling, so she decided to move one of the spare docking ports of the Atlas 4 and connect the rover and the base to overcome this. "Welcome team! We are finally at our destination!" KSC has studied the telemetry maps and come up with some really interesting sites that we will need to visit, so get some sleep and tomorrow, well that means in two days, we will roll out!" Valentina sounded relieved and enjoyed her first rest in a long time.

Back on the Odyssey Tomoly finished the harvest and ran the calculations. Then he decided not to grow a new crop. "The food will be enough. It's the water I am worried about." He said to himself.

Edited January 15, 2018 by MacLuky

[Jammer-TD]

On ‎1‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 3:47 PM, MacLuky said:

Yes, I had set up something similar, but your head is better, and OS X high siera is messing up unity big time.

@Jammer-TD love the craft, but i am playing a bit more near future. What engines are you using, the look awesome if they can lift off something of that size?

they are "19 x 180 humingbird's" centered to the bottom and LBSI skyswipe 2800 for the primary engines, with its cargo is 253t at 58m long

this is cargo hauler 4..it is an "easy to fly" craft.

I enjoyed chapter 11.. 

Jammer

 

[MacLuky]

That thing is huge. I'm planning a "hermes" style vessel for jool, but first lets get these kerbals home.

[MacLuky]

Chapter 12: The face of Duna

"Rise and shine crew, today is day!" Valentina was excited, after 3 Duna days around the base they had gathered enough rocks and done enough vital checks to know that everyone was in good shape and the rover was fine. They would be relying on its life-support systems and most importantly it's fusion reactor to travel long distances. Should the reactor give out outside battery range of the base camp, they would die a very painful death.

But nobody was thinking about that when they decoupled from Hab-1 and set out to drive roughly 20 km north where the R18 scan-sat probe had discovered an unknown anomaly. Something that seemed way off. Harrick was studying the image that had been uploaded in what KSC referred to as "high-res". They had been unable to download the image through the deep space network due to it's size, but since the Atlas 4 had a very strong downlink from the satellite they had been able to download it to the rover.

"Hard to make out what it is," Harrick said to Naul. "It definitely has a thermal signature different from the other rock formations." After a several treacherous hills, the team decided to slow down the rover to 8 m/s. 

While the sun was rising over Duna, the rover slowly crawled towards the horizon. "We are getting close," said Naul who had been keeping Harrick company in the lab. She had managed to build a small triangulation network using R14, R16 and R18 who had been left in orbit, to create a ad-hoc GPS network.

"That is unlike anything I have ever seen," said Valentina. She had done quite a bit of driving on the Mun and was well aware of natural rock formations. She put the rover in high gear and accelerated down the hill.

The whole team was staring out of the window and no longer paying attention to the controls when driving the last few 100m. Not noticing that the terrain was downhill and the rover was picking up speed. "Heading straight for the small side," said Val while steering slightly left, and that was when they hit the anomaly.

We will never know if it was just fast driving or an magical force, but all of the sudden the rover was pushed sideways and started to tilt over. "What the," Val exclaimed while activating the SAS. The rover toppled over and due to some miracle the high gain antenna didn't suffer any damage. "Deploying gear," Naul shouted. Which caused the top of the rover to miss the surface by a fraction.

Shaken and stirred the team tried to arrest their breathing while dozens of red alert lights illuminated the cabin. "Crap, we lost a stabiliser and a solar panel." Naul was not happy. "What happened?" Harrick asked while trying to judge the size of the bump on his head. Naul quickly stepped out to verify the reactor and check the cooling system for leaks. After a small inspection, Harrick left the rover and began the climb of this strange rock formation. "I wonder what the bird's eye view of this would be?" He wondered while climbing the outer facade with help of this rocket pack.

"This material is anything we have seen before. Let me take some samples." Harrick was excited again and totally forgot about all his bruises. "The matter seems to be in a different state than regular matter, I wonder what happens if I jump on it."

Without warning, he started to sink through the surface, it was like the structure's appearance and colliding properties were not in sync. Where others would panic, was Harrick just amazed. "It seems like this material can bend space and time! I need more samples," he said while sinking further in the structure.

With his sample bags full, Harrick worked his way towards the edge of the structure and glided down the slope to reunite with an astonished team. "Let's analyse this in detail." Harrick said, "and radio KSC with this find!" "Please do," said Naul, "but do so from inside the Lab. I want the Atlas closer to the base to make sure we can reach it, if the reactor was damaged we need to be able to get back."

While heading back they tracked into a new biome. "And now for some good news: the atmosphere levels are back in the green and we have collected so much nitrogen that the Atlas 4 will no longer have a problem with its pressure control. Until one of the pressure regulators breaks down of course." Naul was feeling quite smug.

"This looks like a great spot for water. Let's run an experiment." This time Valentina stepped outside to drill the sample pole into the ground.

"Sample extraction complete, checking moisture levels." The results looked promising. The soil was definitely darker around here, but was it due to residual water or something else?
 

Val ran additional tests using the laser drill, which turned out to be mounted at such a low position that it lifted the entire rover. 

Still the results were negative. Having checked 3 biomes and not found any water, the scientists back at KSC started to worry. Any follow up mission would require large amounts of water and ore. The water was vital for the production of food. Oxygen and nitrogen could be extracted from the atmosphere, but the water was just too heavy to bring in large quantities.

The team took the long road home and pondered how to proceed. The only sensible biomes would be quite a long way from the base. Despite the fact that the rover could support them, the question was what they would do in case they would suffer from another flip. Also, the base proved to be better shielded than the rover. How would the radiation affect them? Questions, questions, questions.

 

Edited January 17, 2018 by MacLuky

[Geschosskopf]

On 1/17/2018 at 9:20 AM, MacLuky said:

We will never know if it was just fast driving or an magical force, but all of the sudden the rover was pushed sideways and started to tilt over.

Whoops

 

On 1/17/2018 at 9:20 AM, MacLuky said:

Questions, questions, questions.

Both the mundane (resource-consumption type) and the scary (the FACE!).  Good story!

[NCommander]

How are they handling the radiation? I'm working through a Kerbalism career in another thread and I've noticed skimming the kerbalism thread that radiation more than anything else seems to be the common killer.

[MacLuky]

@NCommander I've added 4 active shields and full shielding on the crew cabins. Passive shielding gives you 200 days, active close to 400. I did some tests in LKO and Mun Orbit before constructing the Odyssey. You can also MM patch the shield of course.

[NCommander]

@MacLuky

400 per active module or total? On my career play-through of Kerbalism, I'm eyeing a manned Eve or Moho flyby as the first interstellar mission. I've been told Duna is harder than a Jool-5 when you have Kerbalism due to the travel times alone, and testing in sandbox shows that Jool is very good at irradiating crews.

It's been awhile since I did the math, but the dV totals for making the burns in solar orbit to return within a year aren't terrible, but until I have all the necessary tech, I'm not quite ready to send anything there (getting a two man can to Minnus with enough life support on a T2 launchpad is proving close to impossible).

[MacLuky]

So what I did in this career game

- Amarok program: get kerbals in space

- Mercury program: long duration study, get variables on food, oxygen, stress etc/

- Apollo program: short trips, landers, radiation and climatization 

- Salyut program: long duration in orbit of mun & growing food.

Those steps got me the knowledge needed. Especially when it comes to radiation, I believe that the 400 days was per active shield generator.

[NCommander]

I've been screwing around with a Duna mission in sandbox mode somewhat. What I've discovered is the biggest problem is the nuclear engines. After a fair bit of testing, what I discovered is that if you send up a Lab with full shielding, two hitchhikers, and the culpa with two shielding generators, you get six years of protection and the planner says it should survive one or two CMEs esp if you combine it with the convert-o-tron 250 to make more shielding. However, if you put two nukes on that bad boy, it suddenly plummets. The nukes generate a constant source of radiation even when deactivated, and it shaves the radiation meter to a 1/6th of what it was. RTGs are almost as bad.

It looks like I'm going to be sending a manned Duna mission on chemical rockets, or suck up the cost and time to embrace ions. Alternatively, I might simply make the nukes dockable, and detach them and let them catch up to the rest of the space craft in LDO. I'll still have to do the braking burns with chemical rockets, or dock with the nuclear stack before it enters Duna SoI.

 

[MacLuky]

I'm using an old bobcat engine, which is hugely overpowered and runs on LFO. My Eve mission just ran into the problem you described. 30 days into the mission radiation levels were at 50%, I discarded half the nukes and got back just in time, but on a very steep trajectory to avoid the exposure time in the van-allen belts. So undock and dock seems like a fun thing. Also Scott just released a video on cyclers which might be very cool to try.

That many nuclear engines and crew safety do not go together.

Edited January 24, 2018 by MacLuky
added pictures

[NCommander]

Yeah, there was a fair bit of debate on nerfing the ionizing radiation in the Kerbalism thread, but unless you've got a kilometer long spaceship, you're never going to completely null out the nuke's radiation. It's basically living right next to a nuclear pile. Nukes for me are probably going to be used to just get a ship started, and to send fuel depots across the solar system (which can be recovered for spare engines). Critical part failures are going to be fun when I start looking at Duna, but given the size of KSP, it's actually surprisingly reasonable to get a non-trivial payload screaming across the solar system despite launch windows. I just send an Ike orbiter screaming with a 5 km/s ejection burn out of Kerbin's SoI, and it will spend another 2k trying to hit the brakes when it reaches Duna without using the nuke (haven't unlocked it yet).

An asparagus staged NERV can *seriously* get some impressive dV numbers. The fuel cell array actually puts out enough gas that it can power roughly two ion engines a pop at full tilt though you very much hit diminishing returns with the ion drive, and they're stupidly expensive in career mode. Eve mission looks impressive. My biggest fear is I'm going to send the return vechile, and an engine fails before departure. You *really* don't get much of a margin when trying to punch out of Eve's atmosphere.

[MacLuky]

Chapter 13 Snowstorms

The sound of the explosion shook the kerbals from their beds. Naul, who had improvised a hammock in the cupola so she could look at Kerbin at night managed to fall on the floor. Fortunately the gravity on Duna was about half of Kerbins.
Harrick crawled through the docking tunnel, "something happened on the right side of the rover," he said.

"Naul, can you suit up and take a look? pressure is still stable" Val kept her cool and needed more data to make a decision. About 10 minutes later Naul came with the explanation. "Landing strut got overstressed. Not sure why, but no biggie. The rover is still intact. We are go for expedition Valhalla."
 

And with the sun rising over the horizon the team headed north for a 180 km expedition in the hope to find water in the other biomes. But first they would need to make a detour to the landing site of the "R18 Ranger". Ever since they had activated the pressure regulators on the Atlas 4 they had seen the pumps struggling to maintain proper atmosphere. "I've analysed the sfs data file," said Harrick, "there appears to be a hidden resource called atmosphere, which is not shown in our resource tabs or life-support monitors." "The problem is:" he said, "it's draining." The atmospheric harvester that Naul had created on the rear of the rover was providing the craft with fresh nitrogen was doing its job, but just not efficient enough on this altitude." KSC however had come up with a cunning plan. 

The ranger series were a series of probes that launched to Duna (and other planetary bodies) to not only gather scientific data, but also map biomes and get radar maps prior to a landing. Starting from R18 the probes carried small rovers or descent modules that could land on a body and search for landing spots. They also carried radiation and temperature sensors that helpt with the design of later manned missions.

The R18 ranger was long gone. It had roved off in a different direction to gather data for alternative landing sites, but the descent module was still here and contained a very important piece of equipment. Naul quickly scavenged the wind battered remains of the descent module and attached the atmospheric probe to the rover. "

"There, this should do the trick." and indeed, the instruments were now showing perpetual pressure control. "That is, until one of these breaks down," Harrick explained. Meanwhile the satellite R18 had completed its radiation studies and mapped the magnetic field around Duna. KSC was already plotting a new task for this probe since it had plenty of delta-v left.

By the time they reached their destination 2 days had passed. The landscape changed tone but the biome map still indicated lowlands. Apparently the change was only cosmetic. "

"We will need to push on," Harrick said while accessing the Kerbnet scanner. Valentina was tired. Two days of driving takes its toll. The first rover on Duna had landed on the south pole and had been lost when crossing into a crater, so it was a gentle balance between speed and terrain.

"What is that?" three green heads almost collided with the glass of the cupola while they scrambled to witness a previously unseen phenomena. "It looks like dust storms, like the Kerbin desert." Naul said. "But I'm reading moisture and increased pressure," exclaimed Harrick. "No dust then," Val said, as she pushed on. "And may I remind you that the cupola is a single kerbal pod." she smiled.

A couple of hours later the rover came to a halt and the first kerbal ever stept on what looked like ice of another planet. "Things are looking good," Harrick said when he unlocked the sample tube to take collect a sample from below the surface.

"This is great! I'll need to confirm in the lab, but it looks like the ice extends meters below the surface." Half an hour later when Harricks words were received by KSC a crowed erupted in joy and applause. This would mean longer missions and possible, permanent colonisation of Duna. 

 

[NCommander]

Screenshots look like they got eaten by the forums software. Only the Dust Clouds image is showing.