Duna Outpost Mission Architecture Challenge

[Death Engineering]

4 hours ago, Laie said:

And, while I'm asking questions, what's the idea behind "backup plan"? 

Basically Backup Plan requires at least two Duna ascent vehicles,  in case Jeb gets ahold of one and has a kerb- up with it (destroyed).

Neither primary or backup DAV needs to hold the entire surface crew.  However,  since all crew must be returnable to Kerbin, something practical is advised.  IOW, if there are 200 crew on the surface there should be a way to get 200 crew back to orbit. 

This does include all the standard requirements (life support, capacity,  fuel reserves, etc).

4 hours ago, Laie said:

I have similar thoughts about requiring rover seats for everyone, or putting a city on wheels 

The open air rover seats are considered roundabouts and can be very basic.  I have a 6 seater design that is very few parts, for example. 

Rule relaxed:

Removed the over stressed penalty for actually using the backup plan.  

[Laie]

 

43 minutes ago, Death Engineering said:

Basically Backup Plan requires at least two Duna ascent vehicles,  in case Jeb gets ahold of one and has a kerb- up with it (destroyed).

*breathes sigh of relief* If that's all there is to it... thanks for that.

[Kerbolitto]

47 minutes ago, Death Engineering said:

Neither primary or backup DAV needs to hold the entire surface crew.

So we no longer have to send dozens of seats in a contingency DAV ?

 

47 minutes ago, Death Engineering said:

IOW, if there are 200 crew on the surface there should be a way to get 200 crew back to orbit.

Could be feasible in multi sequences with a lighter backup DAV which would refuel on the space station ?

 

Also would it be possible to park Backup ships in orbit to avoid too much lag on the ground ?

 

I already designed all my backup plans to re-orbit every crew at once (even if they split in multiple emergency ships), and they're dock at anytime onto the outpost should a volcano burps in the canyon or something, so if there's a way -within the rules- to improve performances or lighten the load on the outpost ...!

[hoioh]

Improved some stuff and started testing some things, lot's of work to do on mining!

[Kerbolitto]

Lookin good ! What kind of engine is that ?

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I've been thinking about how to bootstrap two transfer vehicles (TV) with minimal fuel and miners launched to orbit. I think I've come up with a way to launch only enough fuel 

First step is to launch TV1 with a miner that works on Ike and Minmus, and enough fuel to get into an elliptical Minmus orbit with its payload (not too much is necessary, since you can't launch very much payload before the first window).

Then you mine Minmus, fueling TV1 all the way up, and redock the miner onto it. This then flies to Duna on the first window.

While that's on its way, you launch TV2, all of its payload, and no fuel (or a very small amount).

Meanwhile, you mine Ike to refuel TV1, then fly the miner back to TV1.

Then TV1 departs Duna early, so it arrives before the second outbound window. This takes more DV, but it has almost no payload, so it should be possible.

Then you mine Minmus to refuel TV1, and use TV1 as a fuel transfer shuttle to fuel up TV2.

After both TV1 and 2 are fully fueled, TV2 departs for Duna on the second outbound window, with the miner.

The miner then lands on Ike, and stays there permanently.

Now you have a mostly fully fueled TV in orbit of both Duna and Kerbin, and infrastructure in place to refuel within Duna's SOI, to meet the "advanced deep space transit" requirement. Since only one is required for the achievement, it would make sense to only have one with capacity to support 5 crew.

By the way, can we resupply life support at Kerbin and still get advanced deep space transit if we don't refuel?

[Kerbolitto]

You might save a bit more fuel on the first trip to Minmus by sending only the ISRU and one large fuel tank that refuels your TV in LKO, before re-departing to Minmus with the whole SLV and refuel no ? I saved at the very least 500LF on my SLV01 this way. Takes a bit more time but maybe there's a quick way to inject on Duna from Minmus in the early days ?

You plan to move the ISRU at each transfer to refuel in LKO and around Duna ? If you got 2 efficients ISRU designs it may allow more flexibility, you can launch all your SLV with 0 fuel and top everything on Minmus, then refuel your TV on Ike to send them back in LKO. In the end, you send 2 heavy ISRU but after 3 or 4 SLV you have put less mass in orbit by substracting all the fuel.

It's just an idea, don't know if that'd suits your architecture^^

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

27 minutes ago, Kerbolitto said:

You might save a bit more fuel on the first trip to Minmus by sending only the ISRU and one large fuel tank that refuels your TV in LKO, before re-departing to Minmus with the whole SLV and refuel no ? I saved at the very least 500LF on my SLV01 this way. Takes a bit more time but maybe there's a quick way to inject on Duna from Minmus in the early days ?

That's a good idea. I need to check whether my miner propellant transfer vehicle can survive Kerbin aerobraking, since that could save 

27 minutes ago, Kerbolitto said:

You plan to move the ISRU at each transfer to refuel in LKO and around Duna ? If you got 2 efficients ISRU designs it may allow more flexibility, you can launch all your SLV with 0 fuel and top everything on Minmus, then refuel your TV on Ike to send them back in LKO. In the end, you send 2 heavy ISRU but after 3 or 4 SLV you have put less mass in orbit by substracting all the fuel.

It's just an idea, don't know if that'd suits your architecture^^

I don't plan to move it every transfer, just for the ones described there. Then leave it on Ike, and only refuel on the Duna end of each round trip. Because Advanced Deep Space Transit requires that it only refuel in Duna SOI, so no Minmus mining.

[Kerbolitto]

2 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

 Kerbin aerobraking

Oh yeah that's a very good idea, I forgot you could do that, since I'm using lots of Nukes.. ! You might need to put batteries in a cargobay but it's not that harsh to capture !

4 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

I don't plan to move it every transfer, just for the ones described there. Then leave it on Ike, and only refuel on the Duna end of each round trip. Because Advanced Deep Space Transit requires that it only refuel in Duna SOI, so no Minmus mining.

I meant that you could launch every SLV until Y10 with 0 fuel, by refuelling them using Minmus to top up your TV at any planned transfer, in the end that's a lot of weight saving in my opinion.

As for the DST, I'm sending it empty with some other stuff on 3rd window to refuell it around Duna, but the transfer stage with the rest of the payload will be refuelled at Minmus.

So the 1st ISRU at Minmus will still be needed to fill the nuke pods at every transfer.

[hoioh]

7 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

Lookin good ! What kind of engine is that ?

Thanks!

It's one of the cryo engines, but I'm running a lot of visual mods, so it's possible the exhaust is visually enhanced

[hoioh]

5 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

Oh yeah that's a very good idea, I forgot you could do that, since I'm using lots of Nukes.. ! You might need to put batteries in a cargobay but it's not that harsh to capture !

I meant that you could launch every SLV until Y10 with 0 fuel, by refuelling them using Minmus to top up your TV at any planned transfer, in the end that's a lot of weight saving in my opinion.

As for the DST, I'm sending it empty with some other stuff on 3rd window to refuell it around Duna, but the transfer stage with the rest of the payload will be refuelled at Minmus.

So the 1st ISRU at Minmus will still be needed to fill the nuke pods at every transfer.

I'm also planning for a similar method. I made 3 differently sized tanks, each with a probe, a bit monoprop and RCS control. The miner takes only the tanks from each launch stage, refuels them on minmus and then reattaches them to the vehicle. The vehicle will take the tanks to Duna SOI, deorbit itsself, bit leave the tanks in orbit.

Once I have my space bus set up I plan to not just refuel in space, but also recycle my fuel tanks to save weight on later transfers. So initially my space bus might have fuel to go 1 way, but as the number of available, fully fueled, tanks increases it will be capable of a round trip without refueling.

Because each tank is a discrete unit I can just leave them, fully fueled, in LDO waiting to be picked up.

It's just that I have a lot of trouble doing the mining and ISRU... I keep either overheating my miner rig, or it's dead slow, even in high-ore reagions and I don't know how to fix that. Normally I'd leave my rig on the surface for 100 odd years, but that's not an option for this mission!

[Kerbolitto]

2 hours ago, hoioh said:

I'm also planning for a similar method. I made 3 differently sized tanks, each with a probe, a bit monoprop and RCS control. The miner takes only the tanks from each launch stage, refuels them on minmus and then reattaches them to the vehicle. The vehicle will take the tanks to Duna SOI, deorbit itsself, bit leave the tanks in orbit.

Once I have my space bus set up I plan to not just refuel in space, but also recycle my fuel tanks to save weight on later transfers. So initially my space bus might have fuel to go 1 way, but as the number of available, fully fueled, tanks increases it will be capable of a round trip without refueling.

Because each tank is a discrete unit I can just leave them, fully fueled, in LDO waiting to be picked up.

It's just that I have a lot of trouble doing the mining and ISRU... I keep either overheating my miner rig, or it's dead slow, even in high-ore reagions and I don't know how to fix that. Normally I'd leave my rig on the surface for 100 odd years, but that's not an option for this mission!

One quick thought after @Mad Rocket Scientist idea, you can send your first mining pod + fuel tank on Minmus using nukes, and then take down the fuel tank in LKO using a very little rocket-powered pod, this way you can aerobrake it and since the pod could be very light you'd bring back a lot more fuel ! That's something that I should have done imo, the more I look into it, the more I see my SLV01 was too weight inefficient .. =/

Recycling tanks is a key thing to lighten transfer vehicles imo, as you may saw on my post I'm using DunaSpaeStation fuel tank which has 2 normal docks, on which I attached 2 light nuke pods, which provides enough power to push Ike's ISRU.  I also used KerbinSpaceStation fuel tank with a little nuke pod to retrograde in LKO my 2nd transfer so nukes could be used near Kerbin asap.

How did you set up your ISRU ? I've never used one with a 5 stars engineer before since I mainly play on career mode, and it's quite hard to find a good baseline since it overheats so much .. My set up is 1 big converto, 2 big drills, 2 medium radiatiors, 4 solar XL with fuel cell if needed (at sunshine / sunset mainly) the converto lacks ore but the drills are very efficient and it usually takes 2-3h to refuell.

Quick note, excuse me if I sound somehow pedantic but english is not my first language and after re-reading, I'm think I'm writing in a very litteral way .

Edited August 11, 2018 by Kerbolitto

[Ozelui]

Impressive ideas... I thought my plan was solid, but after reading your posts I'm not so sure anymore. I'll probably go back to the drawing board, my ships doesn't seem to be modular enough. 

I've chosen 30 ton payloads for a total of 22 launches.  I like having two launches before the first transfer window, and one very close to the 10 year mark.  The LV is under construction.

1- First launch:  Mining ship with a pilot and engineer as crew, and barely enough fuel to reach Minmus.  It will refuel every time it touches solid ground.

Spoiler

2 - Land on Minmus, and return to LKO using Mun to slow down and aerobrake gently on Kerbin's upper atmosphere ( no nukes ). Once the ship is low enough launch a shuttle to recover the crew in order to save LS supplies.

3 - Second launch:  Duna mobile base, crew of 5 but it can support up to 6 kerbals.  Rendezvous with the mining ship and fly to Minmus again, store some aditional water and ore for farming during the travel.

Spoiler

4 - Kerbin gravity assist and transfer to Duna.  Land both ships by aerobraking and parachutes.

5 - Bring the miner to Ike with 4 kerbals for the duna bus archievement, then back to Duna.  A month before the return window, launch to Ike again with two kerbals, refuel, then gravity assist at Duna and transfer to kerbin for early mission prestige.

6 - Back in kerbin, use the mining ship living module to expand the planned KSS, refuel (again) in minmus and reuse it as transfer stage. I was thinking about launching another miner for the second transfer, and some empty fuel tanks, since the payload is going to have a lot more mass. Also it can carry crew again, or an extra fuel tank, or supplies.

 

 

Edited August 11, 2018 by Ozelui

[Kerbolitto]

Don't forget to do the Minmus inclination burn with your SLV, this saves +/- 200m/s !

Also if you got powerfull transfer stages, you can wait -quite a long time- after 2nd transfer to Duna to bring back your Kerbals on Kerbin.

 

Your outpost reminds me of a RC car I had xD

[hoioh]

37 minutes ago, Kerbolitto said:

One quick thought after @Mad Rocket Scientist idea, you can send your first mining pod + fuel tank on Minmus using nukes, and then take down the fuel tank in LKO using a very little rocket-powered pod, this way you can aerobrake it and since the pod could be very light you'd bring back a lot more fuel ! That's something that I should have done imo, the more I look into it, the more I see my SLV01 was too weight inefficient .. =/

Recycling tanks is a key thing to lighten transfer vehicles imo, as you may saw on my post I'm using DunaSpaeStation fuel tank which has 2 normal docks, on which I attached 2 light nuke pods, which provides enough power to push Ike's ISRU.  I also used KerbinSpaceStation fuel tank with a little nuke pod to retrograde in LKO my 2nd transfer so nukes could be used near Kerbin asap.

How did you set up your ISRU ? I've never used one with a 5 stars engineer before since I mainly play on career mode, and it's quite hard to find a good baseline since it overheats so much .. My set up is 1 big converto, 2 big drills, 2 medium radiatiors, 4 solar XL with fuel cell if needed (at sunshine / sunset mainly) the converto lacks ore but the drills are very efficient and it usually takes 2-3h to refuell.

Quick note, excuse me if I sound somehow pedantic but english is not my first language and after re-reading, I'm think I'm writing in a very litteral way .

2 to 3 hrs, that sounds enticing! I've never put an engineer on it, which what I'm going to do next!

It was a small isru with 6 small drills, but its inefficient. I'm upgrading my SLV to launch double capacity because it makes balancibg loads easier and I get 4t of extra launch weight to play around with. That should be adequate to adjust my mining rig. But manned means life support, though a couple days should be easy peasy.

[Kerbolitto]

5 minutes ago, hoioh said:

But manned means life support, though a couple days should be easy peasy.

Reading my notes, Kerbin-Minmus-Mun assist-LKO took average 24 days with nukes engines (2/3 retroburn to avoid drifting).

[hoioh]

30 minutes ago, Kerbolitto said:

Reading my notes, Kerbin-Minmus-Mun assist-LKO took average 24 days with nukes engines (2/3 retroburn to avoid drifting).

Thanks for the info!

I'll stick with a 50 day supply for 1 kerbal and use a probe core for piloting (lighter than a pilot) communications should be easy to avoid the 10 days alone rule in kerbin SOI

@Ozelui  I saw your rover base in the temple selfie thread, it looks AWESOME

[Kerbolitto]

3 minutes ago, hoioh said:

 use a probe core for piloting

It may be heavier if you consider the com-network , 2 lander cans or a Mk2 command pod are not that heavy and you could later use them to complete one space station for example !

[hoioh]

1 minute ago, Kerbolitto said:

It may be heavier if you consider the com-network , 2 lander cans or a Mk2 command pod are not that heavy and you could later use them to complete one space station for example !

Decissions decissions... utilizing brain at max cap 

[Death Engineering]

16 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

So we no longer have to send dozens of seats in a contingency DAV ?

Never needed to. 'Single-launch' and 'no refueling' was never stated. 

16 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

Could be feasible in multi sequences with a lighter backup DAV which would refuel on the space station ?

Also would it be possible to park Backup ships in orbit to avoid too much lag on the ground ?

Exactly. I plan on leaving the backup DAV in orbit most of the time so that I can put it down where it is needed as there will soon be a Duna plane and an Elcano attempt in later missions and I'm certain the plane is going have a kerb-up.

14 hours ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

By the way, can we resupply life support at Kerbin and still get advanced deep space transit if we don't refuel?

Yes.

 

[Kerbolitto]

Oh that's good news ! Actually I can delete all my emergency vehicles since I planned to reorbit Mk3 passenger module for the return trip. They will act as backup DAV since there's no stress penalty anymore if I use them this way.

 

This 119 parts monstrosity should have been part of SLV04 (12 seats in each cargobay).

Edited August 11, 2018 by Kerbolitto

[Death Engineering]

@Kerbolitto

On 7/8/2018 at 10:24 PM, Death Engineering said:

• External Command Seats do not count towards habitation space and cannot be used for landing or launching on Duna/Ike or for interplanetary transfers. Rescue/contingency missions may ignore this rule, but any crew utilizing a command seat to land on or launch from Duna/Ike will void their score for Mission Value. 

The External Command Seat is virtually massless (read: 'cheaty'). It really is only meant for plodding surface rovers or in vacuums. I guess since a payload bay can be pressurized, if enclosed as you have them, this is fine for atmospheric flight but is definitely not "Habitation Space"

Your designs are quite unique. Transformer-like.   

[Kerbolitto]

14 minutes ago, Death Engineering said:

I guess since a payload bay can be pressurized, if enclosed as you have them, this is fine for atmospheric flight but is definitely not "Habitation Space"

Of course I'm only using seats for contingency vehicles or rovers, but since you softened the rules I'll be able to define my Mk3 modules as back up plans, since they are reorbited using a different DartTug than the one that'll stay under DunaSpaceBus.

 

14 minutes ago, Death Engineering said:

Your designs are quite unique. Transformer-like.   

Thank you I take that as a compliment I'm now designing bits of modules to complete the main emergency vehicle to transform it as a lander, and using it's wheeled module to make a tiny pressurized rover.

See ? There's room for everyone xD

My next two launches will land dozens of Kerbals on Duna so I'm now focusing on sending them distractions, with various rovers or science vehicles.. It's more fun than plotting how much Kerbals and food I'll be able to stuff in the very last SLV !

 

Edited August 11, 2018 by Kerbolitto

[hoioh]

6 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

Quick note, excuse me if I sound somehow pedantic but english is not my first language and after re-reading, I'm think I'm writing in a very litteral way

I noticed you had to be French or at least lingually French, the image hosting site you use is in French, ergo...

For a Frenchman your English lauguage skill is excellent! The average Dutchman (I'm Dutch, but certainly don't think of myself as average) would be jealous of you!

My French is certainly worse 

[Kerbolitto]

Merci beaucoup