The Robinson Missions

[Ultimate Steve]

So, uhh, hi. This is a report for @5thHorseman's Kerpollo challenge: 

Basically I have to visit all of the planets in just nine missions, plus a pad science spam or two if necessary and NO other missions, in science mode. I can only land in one biome per mission. And all the missions, once I've unlocked docking ports, must be apollo-style with a lander and orbiter.

So this is my attempt at that challenge!

I did this in my stock-ish 1.4.5 installation, meaning visual, informational, and a few other mods. Actual physics performance should be stock, and I used no mod parts in the missions, although KAS/KIS was installed (I didn't use them though). Mod list:

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ClickThroughBlocker

Toolbar Controller

Atmosphere Autopiloted

BD FPS (handheld weapons for BD Armory, which I have uninstalled as I was using it for something else but forgot to take this out as well)

BurnTogether (not used)

Distant Object Enhancement

Easy Vessel Switch

Engine Light

Environmental Visual Enhancements

Hangar Extender (not needed)

Kerbal Attachment System (not used)

HyperEdit (Definitely not used, I promise, this is also my Project Intrepid installation, it's there for testing and setting up sets and stuff)

Kerbal Engineer

Kerbal Inventory System (not used)

Modular Flight Integrator (TBH I still have no idea what this mod does but it's a requirement for something I think)

Pood's Skybox

Pro Props (not used)

RealPlume

RealPlume stock configs

Scatterer

Sigma Replacements (might be TR or TRR but that's what the folder is called)

SmokeScreen

Stock Visual Enhancements

Take Command

Kerbal Alarm Clock

Transfer Window Planner (used HEAVILY, if I could choose just one mod to have it would either be this or KER I think)

TweakScale (Not used)

Vessel Categorizer

Vessel Mover (also not used but in the install for the same reason as HyperEdit)

Water Sounds

Waypoint Manager (Not used)

Module Manager (what doesn't use MM these days?)

Game was played on default difficulty settings. Enjoy!

 

 

Robinson I, Science on the pads:

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Self explanatory.

Bob rolled around and got three or four biomes, if I recall correctly. Maybe it was only three.

58 science gained, not bad!

 

Robinson II, Orbiting:

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Pretty standard.

Jeb goes EVA while still in the atmosphere in the pursuit of SCIENCE!

Jeb has enough fuel to go into an elliptical Kerbin orbit and gets the high orbit science. Also, he got EVA reports from above all the equatorial biomes. This stage of the mission can be further optimized by going into a polar orbit.

During re-entry, Jeb notices the Mun, where Kerbalkind will go next.

Splashdown, and some ground science! I should have mounted the goo on the capsule so I could have gotten a bit more science.

251 science earned!

Current tech tree.

 

Robinson III, Mun (easter egg spoiler):

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Not the prettiest ship ever, not by a long shot, but it will hopefully get the job done.

SRB Jettison.

LFB Jettison.

Coming in for a landing at the Mun arch, because I felt like it.

I try to plant a flag on top of the Mun arch and fall off of it twice.

Eventually I get it, though.

Back to Kerbin now!

957 science earned!

Now, you'll notice that I have just enough science to unlock docking ports (in the rules you have to unlock tier by tier, no jumping ahead) but I decided not to to make Minmus more straightforward.

 

 

Robinson IV, Minmus:

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Now that's a good looking rocket! Pictures like these are why I play with visual mods. That and the several hundred dollar Christmas present PC sitting to my right. Definitely an improvement over my dad's laptop, which was an improvement over my grandpa's Windows 7 laptop, which was an improvement over my family's ancient Windows XP laptop which would run KSP at 2FPS and didn't have the power to render re-entry so it turned the whole ship hot pink...

If every computer was a powerhouse then these views should be the stock experience. Maybe togglable. But seriously, it would not take that much extra computer power to improve the game from what it is now to something more acceptable. Maybe not this level, but still.

Approaching Minmus.

Bob Kerman (on most missions from now out due to being able to reset science equipment) on Minmus.

Return from Minmus.

I forgot a tech tree shot but I got 1065 science from this mission, not that much more than the Mun, probably because I didn't do the EVA reports above most biomes like I did with the Mun, I think.

Also, while time warping to the next planetary window, Kerbin gained a moon.

Except it didn't have a periapsis. If I warped fast enough it didn't matter though.

RIP whoever lived there.

 

Robinson V, Eeloo:

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I was impatient and decided to go to Eeloo next instead of waiting for an easier window. Note the fact that I don't have NERVs yet.

Beautiful launch. It took several tries to not flip. This picture might not be from that attempt. I probably should have added nose cones. Also, going to Eeloo, one of the highest science locations, without all of the experiments unlocked, may not have been the best idea.

Trajectory was steep to avoid flipping.

SRBs and first set of liquid fueled boosters away. Took off two of the fins, but who cares about those?

The next two boosters are away.

Kerbin escape burn takes up the center core and four of the side tanks on the main ship. The side tanks have sparks on them so I can more easily read the fuel levels.

Bye, Kerbin! I hope the Kerbals won't mind having around 10 cubic meters of space for the next several years...

The last two outer fuel tanks are used during Eeloo insertion.

Landing is targeted for that oddly perfectly circular and distinct crater that I've always noticed but have never been too. Even though I think I've only been to Eeloo 3-4 times prior, two of which were during speedruns where I didn't have time to look much.

First time on Eeloo with these visual mods. This does not help the landing.

Down on the surface!

Back up again!

About to leave for home. I'm pretty sure I left the lander behind after stealing its fuel to have as much Delta-V as possible.

3430 science earned!

 

 

Robinson VI, Duna and Ike:

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That's a tall boi

Shorter boi

Nucc boi

Hott boiiiii

Nucc boi but with no solar panels or batteries because nucc boi is too hot for solar panels and batteries

Thicc boi and Nucc boi

Thicc boi and two kerb bois

Shooty bois

Thicc boi and Kerby bois on big red boiiiii

Nucc boi and thicc boi together for the last time

Nucc boi goes home

Bacc at home, boiiis!

Wet boi

Also rip nucc boi

4918 sci bois

Also we were really low on fuel bois during this mission because I designed it to go to just Duna and I forgot about Ike, but through aggressive aerobraking (which actually turned out to be a good thing, blowing up over half a ton of nearly useless stuff) we made it home!

Tek tre boi

 

 

Robinson VII, The coolest looking one, Moho (Easter Egg spoilers):

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By far the biggest rocket yet. I'm glad we're in science mode, where I can play with huge rockets that just involve a lot of copying and pasting rather than designing a small but effective vehicle.

The first set of boosters separate. They have giant fuel tanks strapped to the side as well.

The next set of boosters separate. These and the last one use fleas with minimal fuel as very large sepratrons.

The last set of boosters separate, leaving the nuclear core and two nuclear side boosters behind. The craft starts looking cool.

Leaving Kerbin.

Arriving at Moho after a two orbit rendezvous. This maneuver is done by not waiting for a transfer window, but waiting until Kerbin is at Moho's ascending or descending node so I can cancel that as far away from the sun as possible, to minimize the plane change burn Delta-V, which can be really large. Then I go down to a Moho-altitude periapsis and burn retrograde until I get an encounter.

We're landing at Moho's south pole, because there's supposed to be a sinkhole there like Moho's northern Mohole.

Except, uhh, either an update deleted them, or I've been lied to...

That is Moho's south pole, or at least within a few meters of it. Only a few hundred meters above "sea" level, and no sinkhole/Mohole, unlike the north pole. Oh, well. At least I know now. That's sort of disappointing.

Back to the mothership, then...

The outer two cores are empty, after detaching the ship has reached maximum epicness.

I somehow had enough fuel left to brake so I could try re-entering near KSC with the whole ship. I wish I had added control surfaces and landing gear... Imagine landing that from orbit! I did try to glide it a bit, but shifting fuel around, but that didn't help. The whole thing spiraled out and a lot of it exploded and/or detached.

Later, closer to the ground, I deployed the chutes.

And the shock of the deployment shattered a few things, and we nuked our landing site.

But we're home!

3426 science! I forgot the scientist so I could only do the goo and bay once, so it could have been more... I also forgot a gravioli detector so I could have gotten a few hundred more science.

 

 

Robinson VIII, Dres (Not an Easter Egg but interesting terrain spoilers):

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Quite smaller then the last ship, but still way bigger then it needs to be.

Booster separation.

Kerbin escape burn and jettison of poodle stages.

In Dres orbit and releasing lander.

Landed at a steep angle at the Dres canyon.

It's still a gaping chasm of doom!

Redocked.

Going back to Kerbin! If I remember, this ship was somewhat low on fuel.

Entry.

Landing!

1888 science, a bit less than past missions.

And here's our tech tree!

 

 

It's late, this took longer than I thought it would, and I have school tomorrow, so I'll wait on the Eve-Gilly mission and the Jool-5 mission.

 

 

[roboslacker]

Yay content!

[Ultimate Steve]

Robinson IX - Eve. Dun dun dun!

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Robinson IX takes off, bound for Eve. The lander is a modified version of my speedrun class Eve lander, the most significant change being the addition of two more cores, tripling the power upon liftoff from Eve.

First booster separation.

Second booster separation.

Third booster separation. The power now comes from three Rhino engines. That is more than enough fuel to get into a low Eve orbit. Usually I underbuild and have to aerobrake as Eve has a really deep gravity well.

Once in low Eve orbit, the return ship is undocked from the lander.

Unfortunately, the modification from one core to three has messed with the design - there is now too much stress on the central heat shield decoupler, meaning that the whole thing will collapse once it starts decelerating fast enough. Luckily, I had a few hundred meters per second of Delta-V left in the last Rhino stage, and after several attempts I was able to get it through the atmosphere without it imploding.

The central heat shield has some sepratrons mounted on it to blast it away. It would be really bad if it recontacted the rocket.

Unfortunately, after quickloading there is a lot of stress applied to the upper heat shield decoupler, and it breaks off immediately. At this point, the parachutes are deployed. Also, if you were wondering, the fairings at the top and bottom aren't just for aerodynamics - I use the interstage nodes to mount the heat shields on. Some might consider it cheating, and I'll admit it's definitely physically impossible without the strut structure, but my only other options are not making it aerodynamic, using a radial decoupler, or using all of the fuel to de-orbit so I don't need a shield and refueling on the surface.

Option one was not viable because on Eve, Aerodynamics is one of the most important factors in being able to reach off. One of the only things more important than that is the elevation of the landing site, which I didn't really care about for this particular landing. Option two is more prone to stress, which is already paramount considering all of our heat shields had problems with snapping off due to aerodynamic forces, and option 3... Well, this lander was adapted from my speedrun design, and I was trying to minimize time taken on Eve.

A short burst of engine power (and a few attempts) later, we are landed!

I think that's Valentina. Most of my Eve landers, this one being no exception, use the split command pod method of crew transfer, which could maybe be classified as an exploit, I guess, but the alternative is a complicated and dangerous ladder system. Unfortunately, with this method you can't transfer science experiments up to the ascent capsule. And I brought experiments because I could. So, the only science we can get is an EVA report, a crew report, and a surface sample. Which isn't terrible, I guess.

After a while on the surface, the parachutes are decoupled, the landing gear is jettisoned, and the engines are lit. One of the landing legs (the important one, with the pod, ladder, electrical equipment, and science) decides to come along for the first few seconds of flight.

The side boosters are jettisoned before the cloud layer is breached.

The central core is detached and the LV-909 stage fires. The last two stages have actually been enlarged compared to my speedrun lander. As it turned out, I didn't need the extra fuel and was able to do a very elliptical transfer to get a rendezvous and still have an entire stage left over.

The 909 stage had to be jettisoned shortly after takeoff, however. It did not have enough Delta-V to reach orbit... Something I've never been able to say for Gilly!

Tech tree complete! Except for the modded node from KAS/KIS, which doesn't count because I'm doing stock although I have those mods installed, and it is a node unique to KAS/KIS which doesn't show up in the stock game, as such it should be immune to that rule about unlocking tiers in order.

Jool will be posted tomorrow if all goes well.

 

 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

And here is Robinson X - Jool! The final mission!

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Here is the Robinson X launch vehicle.

There goes the outer four boosters, which are taller than the others. Later on , the next 8 will separate, and then the next 4. After this happens, it's safe to release the fairing.

There go the last 4 boosters and the fairing. I think that's 15 nuclear engines there.

There go two of the three main nuclear cores. There is also a final nuclear stage with one engine above those. Now we can get a better look at the payload. There is a return capsule, a Laythe lander, a Tylo lander, and a Bop/Pol/Vall lander. We're orbiting Jool now.

First stop, Laythe!

After we wait for the eclipse to be over.

Chutes out.

A bit of engine thrust for the landing.

And landed! A few days pass, and we can get cool surface pictures.

Then comes the ascent.

Jettisoning landing legs and parachutes.

Detaching lower stage and also burning sideways to get an immediate intercept.

And, reconnected! Now, to Tylo!

Tylo lander undocking.

And, landed on Tylo! In one stage, too! I don't think I've done that very often!

Soon after takeoff, the side boosters are detached.

Then, the center stage is detached, leaving only the last stage.

Back to the ship! Now, to Pol!

Ditching the second pair of nuclear cores. I think the ship is pointing this way because I was going into orbit the wrong way, so I was burning inwards to shift my trajectory to the other side of the moon.

Orbiting Pol now, releasing the light moon lander.

Landed. I didn't see a flag picture in the folder, unfortunately.

Takeoff!

Docked to the front port for accessibility.

Bye, Pol!

Executing the large plane change burn to match Bop's inclination.

Going into an orbit of Bop.

De-orbit and landing burn.

Landed on Bop! There was an earlier attempt where I tried to find the Kraken and couldn't... And then there were a few attempts where I crashed into the surface looking away while time warping due to the time warp altitude limits. Or maybe that was Pol, I don't remember.

It also looks more gray than brown, I don't think I've landed anywhere on Bop before this that was this light.

Docked again! Now, for Vall, the final body!

It is here that I must thank @5thHorseman for starting this challenge... It has lead to the most Kerbal moment I've ever experienced. You're probably wondering what I'm talking about, but, well...

I accidentally left the engine of the lander on while doing the Bop --> Vall burns. It ran the lander dry of fuel. Transferring the remaining fuel in the Laythe and Tylo landers netted only 33 units of oxidizer, not enough to conduct a landing and return. Vall is actually harder than it looks (my first trip to Vall I underbuilt the lander, as a result Vall was the last Joolian moon I landed on). I could have loaded the last save from around Bop, but I didn't want to do another transfer.

Then I had an idea. The rules don't say you can't interchange the roles of the orbiters and landers... They just say you have to have an orbiter and a lander, along with guidelines for each... The light moon lander fulfills the criteria for being an orbiter. And the orbiter just happens to fulfill the criteria for being a lander.

But this would not be easy... Although the orbiter section has more than enough to land, return to orbit, and complete the mission, it only just has enough thrust, in theory, for a landing and takeoff. As a result, much of the landing burn would have to be pointing substantially far above retrograde. And the mothership does not have landing legs. An extremely flat spot would need to be found.

Bill has undocked in the light lander at this point, leaving Jeb and Bob to land.

Barely into the descent, and limiting vertical speed was already a concern. KER was a Godsend here!

Eventually, however, the ship bled off all of its horizontal velocity and now had a TWR of approximately 1.25, which slowly increased due to the fuel being burnt. The ship hovered downwards, but the terrain was not flat! The leading option here was a touch-and-go landing, lasting only a fraction of a second.

And that was what was done! A very short blip on the surface leading to a bounce back into the air!

But, well... I really wanted to plant a flag on Vall. So...

The SAS was set to radial out. The throttle was precisely adjusted so the ship would have a TWR of as close to 1 as possible (thank you, KER!) and...

And then Jeb, after only a few seconds on the surface, jetpacked back up to the Orbiter, which was now a lander, and the two Kerbals went back into orbit.

Jeb and Bob looked at each other, each unable to believe what they had just managed to pull off!

Docked once more!

And, leaving Vall! The last nuclear core is detached, leaving the very odd shaped final nuclear stage, still attached to all three landers. The escape burn was plotted. An interesting thing happened then.

The transfer burn was a bit of a race to outrun Tylo's SOI. Which wasn't hard. Tylo doesn't orbit at escape velocity, that would defy the definition of "orbit!"

After burning in to an elliptical orbit, I think this is a periapsis reduction burn.

This is either the burn into a low orbit or the de-orbit burn. These burns were unnecessary, as the return capsule could withstand any reasonable direct entry from Jool (efficient transfers that don't intersect the planet at more than a few degrees) but I wanted to try to land the whole ship.

And I wanted to land it near KSC.

Unfortunately I fell a bit short.

The landing burn.

Landed, somehow! I fully expected to blow up the nuclear engine. Which probably wouldn't be good.

But the heat shield exploded during the topple. I guess it was angry at not being used!

Jeb can just barely see the top of the VAB from his viewpoint.

And there you have it! Robinson X has completed her mission!

2726 science earned. 23 years (it's year 24 but you don't start on year 0), 380 days! And I managed to recover on the exact first minute of that day!

 

This was fun! Thank you for this challenge! I'll always remember the Vall landing!

 

 

 

[zanie420]

Just excellent! Congrats on getting first..... was hoping I could catch you 

[Superfluous J]

Very awesome. I love Eve lander/orbiters mostly because I personally have SO MUCH TROUBLE with them my own self.

  On 1/13/2019 at 4:38 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

 

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-=( Haha! )

( What? )=-

-=( You look like Mary Poppins! )

( ... Is he cool? )=-

-=( Yeah. He's cool. )

( I'M MARY POPPINS Y'ALL! )=-

  18 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Tech tree complete! Except for the modded node from KAS/KIS, which doesn't count because I'm doing stock although I have those mods installed, and it is a node unique to KAS/KIS which doesn't show up in the stock game, as such it should be immune to that rule about unlocking tiers in order.

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Yes that's totally cool, though I'll admit it gave me pause even though you mentioned it earlier.

 

  On 1/13/2019 at 9:39 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

This was fun! Thank you for this challenge! I'll always remember the Vall landing!

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I will as well! That was awesome. I love that nothing in the rules said you had to plant a flag (Though really it should) but you did anyway, making it EVEN HARDER.

Welcome to the finish line!