Conquering Whirligig (Chapter 20 - Interplanetary Ballooning)

[Ultimate Steve]

On 10/7/2018 at 10:00 PM, GregroxMun said:

This is quite a nice report so far! But uh... there are other planets in this system!

Hold on there, we've got to walk before we can run! I've just sent my first interplanetary probe. I'm on purpose not zooming in on the planets so I'm surprised when I see them.

Actually, with the fact that it takes forever to go interplanetary... I think you did a great job with the Mesderbin system as there are 5 bodies to explore relatively close. Going interplanetary with crew is my main hurdle that I rarely pass in a career.

Interplanetary in Whirligig is also a bit more intense than interplanetary elsewhere... 4km/s to Mesbin escape from low orbit. I did just unlock the nuclear engine, though.

 

Anyway...

Chapter 7 - Going Farther

Spoiler

Three main things happened in this play session.

Thing one, operations of the Virtuoso/Vau Base mission.

Shown here is the engineer moving the wheels on the science glider so it's no longer nearly impossible to land.

Since we have biomes now, its task was to fly to the ocean to get science. But it ran out of fuel and landed about halfway. So, we sent the scientist and engineer in the rover with a few spare parts.

Disclaimer, driving a rover at 10m/s over tens of km gets boring, so what I'll do is drive for a bit and then use VesselMover for the rest. Sorry, but it's just not fun, and my free time is becoming more and more limited.

Anyway, the goal was to use KAS pipes to tow the glider to the ocean. But for some reason modifying a craft causes all of the wheels on it to break, leading to tedious repairs... I also jettisoned the forward heat shield on the glider, but it landed in the solar panels on the rover. It only has 2/6 panels left now...

The towing was successful at the cost of a lower top speed (if I wasn't skipping the boring part). Science had now been obtained from the atmosphere, the ocean, and the land. The only other biome on Kerbmun appeared to be the poles, but that's too far for this expedition.

^^^ Reference to a centuries old company many light years ago

Maybe, though, we could get the glider that far if we could refuel it... But it's not as if there's a convenient pile of fuel sitting around anywhere.

Oh, right, that convenient pile of fuel! AKA the Kerbmun Ascent Vehicle 1, which didn't have enough fuel, and was replaced.

But, due to the KAS glitch, as soon as I attached a fuel port the legs overstressed and the whole thing underwent mild disintegration.

It was now completely junk, unfortunately. But, this might be good news, it has three good solar panels we can salvage and add to the rover.

Picture after salvage, during refueling. There is enough in that tank for 2 more trips of the plane, approximately, but realistically we're not bringing the plane back after the first one.

After that, they roved to the site of the Kerbmun Ascent Vehicle 2, which hopefully will actually work. 21 science experiments were stored. Collecting any more would require some clever thinking, landing of the new seismometer experiment via a new ship, or going to the poles... So basically we're done with science for the most part, unless we need more experiments for the lab, which is unlikely, it took 3 experiments to fill up the lab here... Maybe we'll need one more, but we can easily use a surface sample or something.

Speaking of science labs, we have 83 days left of the 100 day surface mission.

Now, finally, we are going interplanetary!

This is the launch of the Interplanet 1, targeted for the Wers system, because it appears to have the same orbital period as Mesderbin and should be fairly straightforward to reach.

The final stage of the probe, nearly empty after the taxing escape burn.

Also I was having issues with teleporting to several AU away from Kaywell upon exiting Mesderbin's SOI but I fixed it by removing Sigma Binary.

One maneuver is planned to change the course about halfway into the mission. We also have the ability to encounter Vizea, Wers' moon. Unfortunately we will only spend 4 minutes in the Wers SOI.

But we have an unintended extended mission - we accidentally got an encounter with Tyepolbynar! No idea what that system is like, but I guess we'll find out! I only took 3 sets of expendable experiments, one for Kaywell, one for high above Wers, and one for low above Wers (now high above Vizea) so I will only have the thermometer/barometer for my encounter with Tyepolbynar.

Next up, we're going to launch our third "big" mission after Virtuoso and Faith Station. It's called the KSS Unison.

BTW the whole Universe Derp has meant I had to redesign the launch vehicles, I haven't standardized them quite yet, but I think I'll call this Liberation V. The reason for the redesign is that previously I needed 4.5km/s of high thrust Delta-V to reach orbit and a small to medium amount of low TWR DV to go places, but now I need 2.5km/s of high TWR DV to get to orbit and as much low TWR DV as possible.

The rocket is powered by 3 Twin Boars, staged asparagus, with 2 Skipper boosters (also asparagus) and 2 large SRB's. This gets it to orbit. The transfer stage is three asparagus poodles.

Now, the mission. The Unison will carry a crew of four to the Derbin system and land on Derminmus with a dedicated lander to perform science at all of its biomes. It will also deploy a probe lander and an additional relay.

The Delta-V budget included 4 for escape, 3 for braking, maneuvering, and returning, and 4 for braking at Mesbin and docking with Faith Station. Unfortunately, due to the long burn times of the stages, even with three periapsis passes, the Oberth effect was not strongly utilized and we used more fuel than planned getting to the transfer orbit.

We're saving fuel from here in two ways. The six detachable fuel tanks are now 3 asparagus pairs instead of one set. We're also ditching the 750kg relay early. It won't get to a perfect orbit, but it will be good enough for relaying data... The only thing that will suffer is my OCD.

It appears that Derbin has gotten a cloud overhaul, but I may be mistaken. There is the relay!

Fortunately, a way was found to do the plane change and Derminmus capture burn in less than 900m/s rather than the planned method, which would have used 1500m/s. A direct capture was performed, not even stopping in Derbin orbit first.

At this point the lander probe for Derbin was sent on its way, just barely managing to get an atmospheric PE before its fuel ran out... It took two passes to come down.

It carried the new seismometer experiment.

Unfortunately some idiot forgot to add parachutes... Derbin's atmosphere is thick, but not that thick!

 

Step 7 of evacuating Mesbin: Complete!

 

Next time, flying the Kerbmun glider as far as possible, doing more science, landing on Derminmus, and who knows what else?

 

 

[Kerbalstar]

Yay, more! Great job! How do you get so much science?

[Ultimate Steve]

Just now, Kerbalstar said:

Yay, more! Great job! How do you get so much science?

After I got over the "getting SAS" hump, science became much easier to get, although the exact position of the "hump" may have changed after V0.5. Once you have access to SAS you can get to Statmun and Graymun, and once you get antennas and upgrade the tracking station you can go to Kerbmun and the Derbin system.

As far as the Vau base/Virtuoso mission goes, the experiments I had were the science bay, the mystery goo, barometer, thermometer, surface sample, eva report, and crew report, giving 7 experiments per situation... Land and water give us 14 experiments. Because you can't take a sample of the air, flying high and low both have 6 experiments, so that's 12, so that's a total of 26, of which I got 21, forgetting 5... Best not to EVA while re-entering!

When I do bring Virtuoso home, though, I will need a rescue ship most likely... It was designed with the old Mesbin in mind, 3km/s to get back to low orbit, and the new one takes about 3.5-4. The science will be worth it, but I don't think it will fill the tech tree.

[Kerbalstar]

12 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

After I got over the "getting SAS" hump, science became much easier to get, although the exact position of the "hump" may have changed after V0.5. Once you have access to SAS you can get to Statmun and Graymun, and once you get antennas and upgrade the tracking station you can go to Kerbmun and the Derbin system.

As far as the Vau base/Virtuoso mission goes, the experiments I had were the science bay, the mystery goo, barometer, thermometer, surface sample, eva report, and crew report, giving 7 experiments per situation... Land and water give us 14 experiments. Because you can't take a sample of the air, flying high and low both have 6 experiments, so that's 12, so that's a total of 26, of which I got 21, forgetting 5... Best not to EVA while re-entering!

When I do bring Virtuoso home, though, I will need a rescue ship most likely... It was designed with the old Mesbin in mind, 3km/s to get back to low orbit, and the new one takes about 3.5-4. The science will be worth it, but I don't think it will fill the tech tree.

Cool, thanks!

[RealKerbal3x]

Hey, more Whirligig!

And KIS/KAS appears to be quite buggy. Maybe you should query those problems on their threads.

[Ultimate Steve]

4 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Hey, more Whirligig!

And KIS/KAS appears to be quite buggy. Maybe you should query those problems on their threads.

I heard someone say they were going through a ground-up code redesign. I'll check if there's been an update since I started this save.

[RealKerbal3x]

16 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I heard someone say they were going through a ground-up code redesign. I'll check if there's been an update since I started this save.

@IgorZ is making a new version of KAS (KAS 1.0) You could use that, but it has completely different (and more realistic) physics. Also, all the parts from old KAS are being deprecated, so you’d have to retire all of your ships using the old KAS parts before you upgraded to the new version.

[Ultimate Steve]

 

Chapter 8 - Goodbye to a World

Spoiler

Three of the four crewmembers of the KSS Unison undock in their lander and descend to the surface of Derminmus.

They visit all three of the biomes, gathering a lot of science, while also discovering that Derminmus is not made of chocolate ice cream.

After that, there's nothing else we can do. The lander is out of fuel, we've gotten all possible science, and both probes have been deployed. So it's time to go home!

Due to the remarkable efficiency of the NERV engine, a healthy margin of fuel remained by the time it docked with Faith Station. If we wanted to we could have probably skimmed the atmosphere for more science, but that's pushing it.

Next up, we designed a new sample return craft, which can now be really tiny thanks to the reduced fuel requirements of the faster rotating Mesbin.

The lander did a very fast but inefficient rendezvous and needed to refuel at the station, which is fine. The samples were loaded into the container and a landing was attempted, but due to not coming in low enough, a large vertical fall was required, using a lot of fuel, leading to a faster than anticipated landing.

But, hey! That's why we put the container inside a girder!

That's 1500 science, not counting the fact that we are processing a few of the experiments in Faith Station's orbiting lab.

At this point, we were running a bit lower than ideal in the cash department, especially if we wanted to do other cool stuff, like stuff involving the R&D upgrade, so we accepted a survey contract for Kerbmun.

I actually drove this one mostly legit, it wasn't that far.

Then we sent the rocket powered science plane off on its final journey, an attempt to reach the poles.

It made it a bit over the distance to the base before it started descending, so we decided to land it back at the base. This mission was sort of a failure.

Next up, I checked with KER and Kerbmun was indeed reading positive for oxygen, so I decided to send a third jet powered plane to test this, hopefully for the last time. This one had a larger engine.

Also, the spectrometer has been unlocked! Let's see if it tells us anything useful.

And sure enough...

Hallelujah, the atmosphere has enough oxygen for jets to work! But we accidentally landed literally on the other side of the planet... Almost exactly.  Well, we now had an excuse to go to the north pole! Also in the above picture you can see Kaywell, the main star, and Gememma, a second star, very far away.

As it turns out, the poles are not their own biome, so the trip was sort of pointless. We do have a seismometer and a spectrometer now, and we know about the oxygen, so  it's not that much of a waste. Also someone accidentally put the gear at an angle.

Kerbmun Plane 4 had enough fuel to reach the area around Vau base, and landed at the destroyed Kerbmun Ascent Vehicle 1 to refuel. The engineer was sent out in the rover.

The wheels were adjusted, and the plane was refueled. The remaining liquid fuel in the tank filled the plane up to about 70 percent before it was empty. So now we have no spare fuel on Kerbmun, only a bit of oxidizer. But that's not a problem, the expedition is almost over... They were scheduled to leave in 2 days but we postponed it a few more so the ascent could be made in daylight.

And the crew of three left Vau base shortly after transmitting their last science from the lab.

The scientist drove this time, it was less than 10 kilometers to the ascent vehicle. Surprisingly, the rover hadn't ever broken, except due to glitches which I had quickloaded for... The speed record was about 47m/s, set during a downhill run on the aircraft gear. That's 105 miles per hour or 169 kilometers per hour for a better comparison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2TE0DjdNqI - The song this chapter was titled after.

Despite warnings from the Mesbin Space Center personell, the danger that there might be microbes in the air, and the fact that the atmospheric oxygen was only just enough to support Kerbal life, the engineer took off her helmet for a few minutes.

Side note, I had to modify the TextureReplacerReplaced config to make it do this. There's a list of worlds that you can take the helmet off on, I added Kerbmun.

The rest of the crew did this for a while but do to the dangers of passing out they put them back on to climb the ladder. Everyone was already feeling tired after a while breathing the atmosphere, but they were the first Kerbals in this system to breath a world's own atmosphere since the Manifest Destiny left Kerbin.

They almost didn't want to leave. Looking at the ugly Mesbin the sky, they decided that if it wasn't uninhabited, they would rather stay.

The solar panels, probe core decoupler, parachutes, and ladders were detached. There was no going back now.

And the Kerbmun Ascent Vehicle 2 lifted off. When Kerbals will return there, nobody knows.

Unfortunately the fuel budget had been miscalculated yet again and all three Kerbals had to EVA jetpack to orbit, and EVA rendezvous with the Virtuoso.

The fourth crew member, Crisfrey (the only one i can remember the name of) was very happy to see another face, as she had been alone for over 100 days. The Virtuoso burned back to Mesbin.

But here's the thing - the Virtuoso had been designed with the old Mesbin in mind, which was hard to orbit but easier to transfer from. Unfortunately Mesbin had been updated, and Mesbin was now easy to orbit but harder to transfer from, which left the Virtuoso about 500m/s short of being able to dock with Faith Station.

No matter, we have a conveniently located space tug now! The Unison rescued the crew and experiments of the Virtuoso. The Virtuoso, having no RCS, and the Unison, having no oxidizer to refuel the Virtuoso.... That meant that sadly, the Virtuoso had to be abandoned in elliptical Mesbin orbit.

The ship successfully docked with Faith Station, and the crew were quarantined in a section of the ring. This was great for Crisfrey, because she hadn't felt substantial gravity for a really long while. A few of the experiments were analyzed on the lab.

The rest were returned in the second new sample return capsule. I just now noticed the text on the sample capsule, probably because I never used it before this.

This one also crashed, but was saved by the girder.

Not counting what was analyzed and what is being analyzed on the Kerbmun and Mesbin labs, as well as transmitted data, the mission returned just shy of 2500 science points. We now had nearly 4000 points, but we had almost maxed out the T2 R&D building.

And of course now I get all of the Kerbmun contracts...

So we did a few stupid contracts to get the money, like testing large landing gear around Kerbmun and transmitting science from one of the surface probes.

 

And that was it for a while. Unfortunately, all of the large scale space missions, the building upgrades, and the science facilities had stretched the metal-based economy to its limit. This was not good. And then a massive section of underground farm collapsed. Nobody died, but there was a large scale food shortage and metal shortage. There would not be very many large launches for quite some time, as the economy needed to recover.

Of course, this is just an excuse for me to launch my interplanetary probes and play through them without having to stop every 50 days to launch another mission...

 

Things we learned about Kerbmun:

• It has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere thick enough to support jets.
• The atmosphere can barely support Kerbals. Future surface operations don't need a full spacesuit, just a loose oxygen mask for intense effort.
• The oxygen comes from scattered clusters of very tall grass.
• The grass is not edible.
• A few edible plants can theoretically be grown in the sand, but we don't have enough samples of Kerbmun sand to prove this.
• It is very windy at high altitudes.
• Temperatures range from 297K to 205K, about 75 to 90F IIRC. A bit on the warm side! Granted, this is near the equator.
• The oceans are very buoyant.
• The samples of the oceans contain a small amount of single and multi-cellular life forms. There may be larger aquatic life on Kerbmun but we have no idea, as we  didn't spend much time studying the oceans.
• The next mission should have a marine biologist. However, as it has been forever since the Manifest Destiny left Kerbin, and forever since the Kerbals have seen an ocean, there were currently no marine biologists in the system...
• No evidence of intelligent life has been found.
• There is no evidence of pathogens harmful to Kerbals. We'll have to check to make sure, but we don't think there are any.
• No harmful pathogens were onboard the Manifest Destiny when it launched, so no Kerbal on the ship has gotten sick since Kerbin.
• Thus, the Kerbals' immune systems are very weak so caution should be observed on the next mission if helmets are not worn.
• This also means that Kerbal sicknesses can't sicken anything on Kerbmun.
• Thus, Kerbmun is currently the most suitable place for Kerbal colonization.

But can we do better? We'll have to go to other planets to find out.

Step 8 complete!

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 9 - Other Planets Exist

Spoiler

WARNING: THIS CHAPTER DEALS EXTENSIVELY WITH OTHER PLANETS AND MOONS, SPECIFICALLY WERS, TYEPOLBYNAR, AND VALYR. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED AS TO WHAT THESE LOOK LIKE, SKIP THIS CHAPTER!

If you're fine with spoilers, go ahead!

 

 

 

 

In case you've forgotten, we have one currently active space probe, Interprobe 1, which is conventional, I probably got its name wrong in Chapter 7, and is on its way to Wers.

Because Wers is likely to be a tiny asteroid based on its orbit (As of time of launch I hadn't zoomed in yet) we're sending a small but sophisticated probe to the Gememma system.

6 SRBs, a liquid stage, a nuclear stage, and an ion stage... Hopefully Gememma is bright enough for ions.

Major problem. The Gememma system is insanely inclined. Unless I wait a few windows my trajectory will be nowhere near the inclination of most of the planets... We're looking at a massive capture/plane change burn. But whatever, we have ions.... It should work... This is very reassuring...

There appears to be 3 bodies orbiting Gememma. From what our telescopes can tell, the outer one is actually a binary system with several moons... As more bodies mean more chances to find colonizable planets, we're targeting that system, named the Mandrake/Rutherford system.

Some time later we accumulated enough metal to launch Interprobe 3, which is targeted at the Valyr system. It is close in design to Interprobe 2, but with much less fuel, fewer engines, and as a result is cheaper.

The first to arrive at its destination was Interprobe 1, at Wers. Upon closer inspection, it had a moon - Vizea.

Unfortunately we wanted to fly by both to get as much science as possible, so we got good pictures of neither. That is Wers.

And that is Vizea. Both worlds are tiny asteroids, 50 and 23km in radius with 0.03 and 0.025g gravities, respectively. We don't know what they are made of yet, mining may be profitable, but neither world is a suitable candidate for exploration.

Shortly after the encounter, Interprobe 1 began its extended mission, an encounter with Tyepolbynar, which has a name so complex it will henceforth be referred to as Typoball. The initial encounter was a mistake, but looking back Typoball has such a huge SOI it is pretty easy to encounter by accident. Some of the craft's remaining fuel (not much) was used to adjust the trajectory to a really close flyby.

It was a gas giant, as predicted. It also had several moons, few of which would actually be explored due to the probe's dwindling fuel supply. The pass was adjusted to be just beneath the atmosphere of Typoball, as to get the science without burning up.

The probe burned a bit more fuel to enter a very elliptical orbit, then performed a plane change, and made an attempt to fly by Tannor, which due to the name had made me expect something akin to Tylo. I was wrong.

Tannor appeared to be a giant snowball, 270km in radius with a gravity of about 0.2g, comparable to the Mun or Eeloo. Not that we landed, as soon as we were there, we were gone. The probe had just enough fuel to encounter one more moon, which happened to be the preferred target of the five moons of Typoball - Imterril. A pass was made at the altitude where we thought the atmosphere started. After the pass the probe would be sent out of the Typoball system, having less than 2 units of fuel left.

AAAAA OCEANS CLOUDS IT LOOKS LIKE HOME!

Scientists crazily checked the instrument readings to see if this could be a potential world for colonization, but before they could do much, the probe was abruptly incinerated in Imterril's abnormally tall atmosphere.

The radius was 760km and the atmosphere was another 249km... Abnormally tall, indeed. Extrapolation gave a very thick atmosphere at sea level, and also a very hot temperature. Unfortunately not a place for Kerbal habitation.

The three other moons of Typoball have not been explored yet, but I plan on it.

And then, Interprobe 3 arrived at Valyr... Where do I start?

I'm going to get this next bit extremely out of order, but after the probe entered orbit it spent some time looking at Valyr... 1.2g gravity, a slightly warm 307K (34C, 93F) temperature, but a really high pressure at the surface, 6ATM. Plus, when the atmosphere was skimmed, the initial report was mostly hydrogen with some nitrogen and water. The water is a good sign, perhaps that is what the oceans are... But this world is high pressure. Theoretically Kerbals can survive 6ATM if they regulate their atmospheric intake (thanks, google) but it's best to not. At least it's better than Imterril...

I think I landed on Fophie next, an asteroid moon a bit larger than Gilly.

Going inwards, we have Plaph, which can almost be mistaken for Mesbin if you look carelessly enough.

The probe is in that shot somewhere, I think...

Denna is big, pink, and not spherical, it's sort of elongated like Statmun. I was going to land but I didn't have enough thrust and shot right past, but I got an encounter with the almost co-orbital Rik.

The reason the engine lights up the planet is because at a certain distance the planet is replaced with a really close smaller model to save on processing power IIRC, so EngineLight allows these to be illuminated by engines... So, no. Rik is not blue.

Me on Rik. Or just above it. I spent most of my time on Rik bouncing off of that solar panel.

Oshan is the largest of the moons, having a very thin atmosphere, and surface features that make it look like Pluto. I know this one is out of order because I still have the nuke stage attached...

The last moon is Manonam.

It looks like a cross between Ike, Dres, and the Mun. I think we have enough thrust to attempt a landing, but I think that should be the last thing we attempt with this probe, as once we land the solar panels will probably break and that will be the end of Interprobe 3. Instead, we went for the smallest celestial body on record - Manonam's submoon, Didd.

It's dull and Gray, and I felt it really hard to get a sense of scale. I couldn't tell if I was right next to it or kilometers away... Then I descended closer and it was made apparent how small Didd really is.

That right there is my probe landed on Didd... Wow. WOW.

At this point I was at something like 3% signal from Mesbin as the planets had been going farther away from each other. I had entered the SOI with about 30%. The mission was now limited by communications range and not fuel... But from this flurry of exploration, we now have 2.5 million funds from worlds first awards. So we spend about a fifth of that on the new tracking station. In addition to greatly increased signal, we noticed two peculiar things.

First, see that green speck on the right? That's a monolith, which again puts the scale of Didd into perspective. Its radius is so small that it rounds down to 0km in the information window.

But the really interesting thing is that Didd had a moon.

It was an ARM asteroid part, not an actual body, hardcoded to spawn here, but still... A Sub-Submoon! It was named Diddmun. And that's when I had to go to bed and this play session ended.

With these two probes, we have skimmed the atmospheres of 2 planets, landed on 4 moons, and encountered 7 more moons... Not counting Diddmun as it's not actually a celestial body. I'd call those successful missions, and Interprobe 3 still has about a fifth of its Xenon left, hopefully enough to get back to Denna and then back to Manonam.

None currently appear better than Kerbmun as far as colonization goes. Valyr is the closest second candidate and is definitely way worse than Kerbmun. But we're made progress, we've only been to about a third of the worlds at this point, maybe there will be a habitable one somewhere!

 

Step 9 complete!

 

 

 

 

[Kerbalstar]

5 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

With these two probes, we have skimmed the atmospheres of 2 planets, landed on 4 moons, and encountered 7 more moons... Not counting Diddmun as it's not actually a celestial body. I'd call those successful missions, and Interprobe 3 still has about a fifth of its Xenon left, hopefully enough to get back to Denna and then back to Manonam

Wow! Great job!

[RealKerbal3x]

Two new chapters! Jet engines on Kerbmun! Planetary probes! Asteroids!

Noice.

Edited October 15, 2018 by RealKerbal3x

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 10 - Back in the swing of things

Spoiler

Using the last of Interprobe 3's fuel, we aerobraked around Oshan, entering orbit to complete an explore contract, and doing gravity surveys to complete another contract. Then we took the probe to Denna to attempt a landing.

Except I forgot which moon I hadn't landed on and landed on one I already have landed on... Oh, well! Interprobe 3 was still extremely successful, maybe our most successful mission yet! If it goes anywhere it will be only to Denna orbit, as it only has 55m/s of Delta-V left.

Now, Interprobe 2 en route to Gememma is not due to arrive for a few more years, and was originally going to target just the Mandrake/Rutherford system, requiring a 4km/s insertion burn, as I was coming in extremely fast and extremely inclined... The lowest possible angle I could come in at was about 45 degrees. The game, however, ate my encounter due to rounding and I had to redo it.

Then I realized I needed to work smart, not hard. We literally have a conveniently  located gas giant far out from a star... Gravity assist, anyone?

Well, I feel somewhat dumb, why didn't I think of that earlier? Coming in with near zero inclination in an elliptical orbit where I can peek at the other planets, too, for only the 500m/s correction burn... It seems too good to be true! Also we are now going to have 9km/s starting from that shown orbit, so the mission has been extended to target all three worlds orbiting Gememma, although it may take years to visit them all.

 

Finally, the economy has recovered to a place where we can launch stuff. It's been between a year and a year and a half since the end of the Virtuoso mission. The crew of Faith Station is still doing well, but we thought it would be wise to give them more space, more power, and more company.

Faith Station module 2 offers just that, as well as 5 open large docking ports to facilitate future, non rotating modules or ships.

There are now 30 Kerbals in space... 6% of the population in this system! This is slightly unfortunate as now we have fewer skilled people on the planet, putting more economic pressure on the others, but at the same time we are learning so much.

The population is kept at 500 Kerbals because that is all that Mesbin can sustain safely. With 30 off Mesbin, and improving conditions, the government is considering increasing this to 550.

 

Since we've been through two interplanetary missions, and a third one ongoing, with no place more suitable for colonization than Kerbmun. It was decided that a more extensive mission needed to be conducted - a semi-permanent base. If everything went alright, then the Kerbal community on Kerbmun would remain there, but provisions to return them would be provided, and used if anything went wrong. It was decided that approximately 15 Kerbals would be deployed on this mission - ambitious indeed.

The relay capability was doing well, but we still might upgrade it a bit more. ASIDE: Even with T3 tracking station and the biggest antenna on Interprobe 2, it is about to exceed communication range. Antennas sort of stack, so I think I'm going to launch an Uber-relay into Kaywell orbit at some point.

All of the equipment from the Virtuoso mission would probably need to be replaced, although it would be kept onhand. Vau base and the rover were not sufficient for a crew of 15, although Vau base was a valuable asset as it had a research lab currently onboard.

A transfer vehicle, ascent/descent vehicle, base, and rover were needed at the minimum. The transfer vehicle would be nuclear powered, single stage, and would have the fuel to go to Kerbmun and back utilizing a high mass ratio and perhaps a bit of refueling. The base would not be monolithic, it would consist of a central building and a few smaller ones, the idea being that Kerbals could walk between them without needing a space suit. The ascent/descent vehicle would be a 18 seat SSTO.

The SSTO, dubbed Accelerando, was powered by 2 RAPIERs and 2 NERVs. In theory it would work, but we have no way of testing it as we are on Mesbin, so fingers are definitely crossed.

Since the crew are not there yet, the Accelerando was parked in a low, inclined Kerbmun orbit. The inclination was because we wanted the base to be at a higher latitude, because the temperature at the equator is a bit much (90 degrees F).

The next launch was the Kerbtown City Hall/Courthouse, called so because it was to be the central element of the mini-colony.

...Let's ignore the fact that we just dropped 4 nuclear engines onto Kerbmun.

Landing was accomplished by a combination of parachutes and engines.

The base had an ISRU system, KAS ports for refueling (and no pesky landing legs to break!), 2 science labs, a main habitation area, 2 large solar panels, an observation window, and a deck. Unfortunately there were zero ladders on the entire building, meaning we will have to use KAS to attach them later.

The Skycrane was detached and flown away.

Next up, we got a contract for a Kerbmun station... Convenient! It was valued at somewhere around 700k I think. Unfortunately the rocket and its nuclear transfer stage exploded, destroying the launch pad. The total loss on this launch, including the pad, was about 200k.

Luckily, the second launch, with way more thrust, went alright and the station, called Grace Station (maybe Mk2) was launched onto a Kerbmun transfer trajectory.

It was at that point that I had to rush off to practice for the musical, so it hasn't actually gotten to Kerbmun yet.

Also, the main Kerbmun mini-colony will attempt to build small vessels in-situ, for on surface purposes. It will also attempt farming, and explore a wide range of the moon.

 

Step 10 complete!

 

 

[LordOfTheNorth]

For a planet without an atmosphere that launchpad is burning rather well 

Anyway enjoying this series and looking forward to the next chapter

[Kerbalstar]

Very cool @Ultimate Steve!

[Whirligig Girl]

I am really enjoying these mission reports!

[Kerbalstar]

2 hours ago, GregroxMun said:

I am really enjoying these mission reports!

Me too!

[Pretorian28715]

Me three

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 11 - Invading a Planet with an Army of Soldiers, but we're actually visiting a moon with a just 20 astronauts

Spoiler

Grace station entered Kerbmun Orbit, inclined enough to reach the colony site, powered by Standardized Tug 1.

Next up, what's a colony with just one prefab building?

In order to enhance the colony vibe, we're sending three small residential buildings. Maybe they also have workshops, I don't know, not everything has to be imagined to that level of detail.

To conserve part count, they aren't much more than a mk3 passenger bay with a ladder. Each one has a landing system, though, with limited crossrange capability.

The landing system used five parachutes for the final descent.

And the entire wing/chute section was supposed to fly away and be destroyed, but, err, most of it survived, so we'll need to send explosives to get rid of the rest... Or maybe use them for spare parts.

After all three buildings were landed, we decided we should give Kerbmun a giant network of highways and thousands of cars of varying sizes. However, this is drastically outside of our budget so we settled on one large all terrain streamlined exploration vehicle.

Also I've made another attempt at standardizing launch vehicles, this is the Accent 60 (at the time of the launch Accent 1A) which can get 60 tons to orbit. The Accent 90 also exists and is an extended tank with another twin boar. Extrapolation should be fairly simple, so Accent should be modularizeable to maybe 200 tons?

Standard Nuclear Tug #3 brought it to Low Kerbmun Orbit before de-orbiting and re-orbiting so we don't nuke our future home. The rover undocked and re-entered.

In retrospect this thing needed way more than 4 parachutes, it came in at about 14m/s. Luckily, this design features aircraft gear for landing and very fast downhill stretches to not stress the main wheels.

The rover is designed around being as streamlined as possible, except for the docking ports, of course. I'm still not sure what I'm going to use those for and I probably should have just used nose cones... Maybe I can ship some there, who knows!

Also, it achieved a velocity of 72m/s coming off of a very steep hill. Unfortunately it exploded, so we reloaded. Unofficially, that is the Kerbmun land speed record, 161 miles per hour or 259 kilometers per hour. Even if the average speed is much lower, it's still way better than the first rover.

Unfortunately it is much more finicky during time warp, so we may not see a real-time improvement in speed, but it's still a better vehicle, it can carry ten, can do hills better, and is more durable, hopefully.

An interesting design decision was the decision to use fuel cells instead of solar panels for the most part. Those two adapters are full of fuel. The reason was that radial solar panels cause drag, and so do deployed solar panels, and deployed solar panels will likely break off at the speeds this thing can reach. We still have a few panels in the cargo bay for slower operations and stopped charging, but primarily it's the fuel cells.

There's also two KIS containers in the cargo bay, along with a bunch of other stuff, but I did not get a picture.

Next up on an Accent 60 and Standardized Nuclear Tug #4 is the Kerbmun Exploration Plane. Outfitted with a full suite of science experiments (not that we need them, we have 3 tech nodes left to unlock) it will be well suited for exploring Kerbmun, especially because a little birdie told me that Kerbmun is getting biomes in 0.6... It can carry one Kerbal and is powered by one basic jet engine.

You know, the thing is... Long story short, due to weirdness in orbits, assuming a standard Mesbin departure, I can only come in on the night side of Kerbmun due to the high latitude of the landing site for this half of the year unless I'm in a very inclined orbit. So sorry for the lack of light.

Next up, the KSS Arpeggio launching on an Accent 90. Nobody is on board right now, it will take 20 colonists from Faith Station.

This thing was really hard to dock, just saying. I had to put the game down and did something else partially because of frustration. I biked about 10 miles.

No Kerbmun veterans were on this flight, the crew all have never gone anywhere except for 2, Crisfrey (Orbited Kerbmun for 100 days and probably landed on a Moon before that) and Valentina (Landed on Statmun). The original 4 are onboard, but of course they aren't the original original 4, they have just been chosen to bear their name in honor of them. The real original 4 are in cryo-sleep light years away.

The Arpeggio docked with the Accelerando which was in Low Kerbmun orbit. Here we can look at the Arpeggio's design, which is minimalist in order to increase Delta-V. Everything here has a justified use:

 

Fuel tanks, duh.

Engines, 3 to have reasonable burn time while still keeping mass down.

Crew cabin, we need to get them here somehow.

Cockpit, a bit mass high, but completes the aesthetic. Also acts as the RCS tank.

8 RCS thrusters - probably the minimum required for docking while still retaining sanity.

Reaction wheel - to conserve RCS fuel turning. Still really slow to turn.

Probe core - Always good to have!

Docking port - We need to refuel this somehow!

2 Solar panels - Originally 2 Gigantors, trimmed for more Delta-V. Could have gotten away with 1 but wanted the aesthetic.

Radial attachment points - to attach the engines.

 

The Arpeggio lacks even an antenna! The reason I needed this to to be so Delta-V heavy is because I wanted it to SSTO from LMO to LKO and back. However, that requires 10km/s minimum, 8.8-9km/s with aerobraking. I managed to squeak out 8.7-ish kilometers per second from the Arpeggio, but my numbers assumed perfect rendezvous, which is near impossible in practice, so I stole some of the Accelerando's fuel to make up for it. But then I had to do a 600m/s burn to get to the Kerbmun station,  I had to do the rendezvous with two targets, I didn't aerobrake as much as wanted, so it was moot... We'll need to refuel this thing... Maybe we can do it with fuel trips from the surface, despite the fact that the Accelerando is optimized for crew transport and not fuel/cargo.

Heck, I don't even know if the Accelerando will work! I haven't tested it because I can't test it!

I'm planning a Mk2 version which will look ugly but might work. Ditch the cockpit, use static panels, just 2 engines, cubic struts as mounting points, the lightest probe core, a smaller battery, only 4 RCS, balanced as well as possible, a smaller RCS tank, and KAS ports instead of docking ports. This might work.

Anyway, the Accelerando could only seat 18, so two were left in orbit temporarily. They were sent to Grace Station.

Meanwhile, the 18 other colonists descended in the Accelerando, which had to turn quite a bit to reach the high latitude base. It was also almost out of fuel because we stole most of it.

And with barely any fuel left, the Accelerando pulled up to the Kerbville City Center to refuel. Bill, the chief engineer, connected the ships, installed the ladders on the city center, and immediately noticed a few problems. First off, the solar panels were blocking access to the hatch and had to be moved. Second off, the drills were mounted too low and would hit the ground. And third of all, the framerate near the base was abysmal.

Because in one spot, we have the main base, three buildings, the debris from three gliders, an SSTO, an exploration plane, and a rover. Totally optimized! We may fix this by keeping the planes 3km away (Kerbville Interplanetary Airport, anyone?) and using the rover to transport between them, and blowing up some of the debris.

If we go forward with the airport plans, we might want a tiny ISRU shack.

And we are going to drop some supply pods, KIS containers with supplies for building stuff on Kerbmun. For that we definitely want to be far away from the base.

 

But that's for another time! Step 11 complete!

 

 

 

 

 

[obney kerman]

I just discovered this, and... wow!

[Kerbalstar]

Wow, great job @Ultimate Steve!

Only 3 tech nodes left to unlock... Just wow.

[Whirligig Girl]

Found here: http://www.josleys.com/show_gallery.php?galid=313

This, alongside Jacobi triaxial ellipsoids and Maclaurin oblate spheroids, is an example of a possible equilibrium shape for "whirligig" planets. It's called the Poincare Pear. It's my new favorite shape and, even though I couldn't possible do it realistically in a way that would let the surface gravity be pointing parallel to the surface everywhere, I *really* want to put one in Whirligig World. The mod's supposed to be pretty much system-complete I know but come on. It's a golly danged to hecking kraken "pear."

EDIT: This was supposed to go in my thread, but I guess it's okay here too.

Edited November 1, 2018 by GregroxMun

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 12 - Balloons and Model Rockets

Spoiler

First order of business, get the remaining 2 crew down to the colony!

Before that, let's salvage the debris to make a ramp up to the top entrance since some idiot forgot ladders.

Alright, let's refuel the SSTO! Oh... I forgot the radiators, so we basically can't use the ISRU.

Anyway, let's take a break from Kerbmun for just one mission...

I bit the bullet and installed a few part mods, Hooligan labs and Eve optimized engines, both to assist at Derbin.

It launched on the now standard Standardized Tug and Accent 60 combination. In an ideal world the nuclear tugs would return to Mesbin orbit to be refueled at a future asteroid base and reused, but ain't nobody got time for that. Who cares if we leave nuclear engines lying around?

Also we updated to Whirligig 0.6. Not many changes that affect what I'm currently doing, but Mesbin looks different and Kerbmun has a taller atmosphere and biomes! I might need to move a station to a higher orbit, now that I think about it... It might be in the atmosphere...

Mesbin looks much nicer now! Anyway, this mission was the Derbin Balloon Explorer 1. Its mission was to test balloons to see how they worked, test lift capacity, and maybe perform an ascent from Derbin.

Meanwhile we got a report back from the atmosphere. Lots of lifting gases. Some water, which is nice. And if we could plant plants, we might be able to turn some of that CO2 into oxygen. But, really, why go to Derbin when we can go to Kerbmun?

Wait, actually you can literally make tons of balloons from Derbin's atmosphere, we're scrapping all Kerbmun plans and going here to have a party. Who cares about an almost breathable atmosphere when you have balloons?

Fortunately, the balloon worked, but the lifting capacity was much lower than expected. The fully laden vehicle got to nearly 20 kilometers before refusing to go farther, so we came back down and transmitted the science instead of trying to get it into an orbit.

After some hops up and down, we expended all of the rocket stages except for a bit of fuel in the last one. It was discovered that by varying direction and buoyancy, the direction of the balloon could be controlled a bit... But for full exploration we'll be better off sending a ship designed for moving around.

For now, Derbin Balloon Explorer will remain on the surface.

I'm considering getting Firespitter so I can explore oxygenless worlds easier.

I'm also considering repeating this experiment but with much larger balloons, I think that was the smallest one in the mod.

I'm also considering sending a rigid zeppelin to Kerbmun for looks, heavy lifting, and luxury travel, but getting a rigid airship through the atmosphere would be a nightmare...

...Right, we need a radiator.

Kerbmun Supply Drop 1 was launched, which contained 10,000 liters of rocket parts (filling up all the slots) and theoretically 8,000 liters of supplies and personal stuff. There were also many Halloween costumes on board.

The drop landed about 13km past the colony, close-ish to the ocean.

Which reminds me, we haven't checked the ocean for large life very much! We should do that! We should send a boat and a submarine to Kerbmun! I heard that Hooligan messes with sinking mechanics as well, I should check that out!

Although the drop had 4 parachutes, 3 were cut to test the landing. It went well, so we'll save mass in the future by using just 1 or 2. We sent the ever enthusiastic Bill over to collect the radiator.

However, when he got there, he found not only the radiator, but a ton of rocket parts and an instruction manual.

Also, side note:

So it turns out that Kerbals cannot really breathe the Kerbmun atmosphere. If we equate Kerbals to Humans, I did some research. Below 19% is not good, below 16% is really not good, and below 6% means you're probably dead.

So, I guess Kerbals can breathe it for a very short while, but they carry oxygen masks rather than helmets to help them breathe.

 

@GregroxMun Thank you for putting the atmospheric analysis values in, this clears up a lot of stuff!

 

Right, back to Bill and his some-assembly-required thingy.

Bill followed the instructions for the most part.

Bill was proud of his creation, which he dubbed the "IKEA-1." Its mission was to validate construction of rockets on Mesbin using prefabricated parts, and to put a satellite into polar orbit for (insert plausible purpose here).

In order to produce a more picturesque launch site (dubbed KSC, also just realized that I've been calling the actual KSC the KSC even though it should be the MSC) Bill took the rover and shoved the supply drop off to one side and prepared to launch.

IKEA-1 had more than enough fuel to reach orbit. In fact, it had around 1500m/s left. Kerbmun rocket assembly has been validated... Now we just need a supply chain. But I suppose the biology aspect of the colony should come first, there's much that can be done without building rockets.

The tentative manifest for the next supply drop consists of another IKEA and a small rover.

We have a transfer window to Egad coming soon.

I want a submarine, a boat, and an airship on Kerbmun.

And an airship mooring tower.

And I need to get all the biomes.

And I need to go get the two guys in orbit.

And I want that asteroid station.

And I want to make a Derbin ascent vehicle.

 

But unfortunately we're under 700,000 funds now, not all of those will fit! The metal based economy may crash again if we launch too much...

 

Step 12 of evacuating Mesbin, complete!

 

 

 

[Kerbalstar]

I'm out of likes! Also, IKEA 1, ha! I like the KAS assembled rocket! I totally have to do that!

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 13 - Useless expensive hunk of metal

Spoiler

Alright, we have a radiator! Let's go get those two Kerbals who are stuck in orbit!

Okay, we're chugging.

Chugging.

Slowly.

Barely getting off the ground.

This is after like 30 seconds of flight. We did manage to clear the mountain.

Okay, we're at 3km, we need to climb or go supersonic, so let's turn nervs on.

Not helping.

Closed cycle to get supersonic.

And we're supersonic! Open cycle.

Subsonic again...

Oh, we're running short on fuel...

Back to base, I guess.

Well, the Accelerando did not accelerate. And will not go supersonic on jets.

So those two guys are stuck up there for a while. We're going to need a bigger, better SSTO.

And our colonists are actually stranded now.

Great!

 

I'd say Step 13 complete, but this is more like a step backward...

 

I think I'm going to send some more rapiers to try to modify the plane before sending an entirely new one. Not sure if it will work, but it's worth a shot, especially when we're running low on cash. No sense sending another unless we absolutely have to.

 

I think this is because of Kerbmun's 5% oxygen atmosphere... SSTOs might be impractical here.

 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[Kerbalstar]

7 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

 Useless expensive hunk of metal

That sums up many, many of my early rockets. Also, I played around with KAS, KIS, and @Snark's Snarkerverse, and built and launched IKEA 2 frm the Mun. It was great fun for Bill and me.