Next Small Step: RP-1 Career Series

[Wiseman]

Let's do the science! We arrive at Vesta, and then spend a bunch of time discussing future technology plans.

 

 

[Wiseman]

It's a bit of a short episode, but we're launching a rover towards Venus, which is super neat!

 

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Rover wheels can break if you leave the motors on and the brakes off when they’re not touching the ground- they spin up instantly to silly speeds and immediately break. Keep the motors switched off (I set the gear action group to toggle the motors on/off) and brakes on until you’re landed and they should be OK.

[Wiseman]

Oh shoot, thanks for the workaround jimmy! I'll definitely try that. I'd love to not have to edit my save files to fix busted wheels, especially since I'm trying to do more rovers and landers.

Meanwhile, I did the thing again! We started this series on 1.7.1, upgraded to 1.8.1, and now we're on 1.10.1! With a fresh install, everything is working great except for my old craft files. (This is why you don't upgrade mid-career, people.) Also, we're going to the Moon, to do an Apollo-style crewed landing!

 

 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

I just started playing RP-1 for the first time because of you series! 

Im glad I get to have Waterfall in RO now (I’ve been using it in my stock system install for months)

because although RealPlume looks nice, I get way better frames with WF. 
 

[Wiseman]

I adore Waterfall! I didn't realize I wanted it 'til I had it, but now that I do, I don't want to go back. And now, part two of the Apollo Moon landing recreation! 

 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

41 minutes ago, Wiseman said:

Waterfall

It’s the best 

Re: the Landing engine. I think it’s probably not configured right. Do you have the latest ROEngines? 

Also, hopefully there will be RSS Parallax in the near future because it seems like Gameslinx has figured out to make that possible, so that will eventually provided the variation in terrain you’re looking for. 

[jimmymcgoochie]

@WisemanI don’t get a plume on the ROEngines LMDE either, probably a bad configuration somewhere.

Also- one small stepping stone to a Moon base?  And now you know why you should never put your ladders down to end at your landing legs (here be krakens...)

That sparkly effect is due to TUFX- I saw huge flashes of white light around Phobos which looked exactly like what you had in the same place, but they disappeared when I turned the TUFX profile off.

[Wiseman]

It was not configured at all, as it turns out. one of the Waterfall devs reached out to me about it and has since patched in a config, so it should be working now!

I'm not familiar with Parallax - I thought it was just a shiny planet pack sort of thing. Does it actually create terrain variation and interactable scatter, or what??

Good to know about TUFX, I'll play with the settings and see if I can't improve stuff. Thanks! Meanwhile, the next episode is a bit of a nail-biter!

 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

11 minutes ago, Wiseman said:

I'm not familiar with Parallax - I thought it was just a shiny planet pack sort of thing. Does it actually create terrain variation and interactable scatter, or what??

Originally it just added non-collidable terrain tessellation. Eye candy, but it would result in clipping through the terrain. Now, the entire surface is bumpy AND it collides with parts and kerbals. This adds a significant challenge to moving about. It is AWESOME. currently only the stock system and Beyond Home support it though.  I highly recommend you check it out. 
Gameslinx (the author of the mod) has been working on a feature that will allow a system as large as RSS to have this pretty and varied terrain. I’m not sure what the timeline is, as GL has only been working on this feature recently afaik. When it’s released hopefully you can check it out. 
 

Also, I’m loving the video cadence recently!

Edited April 13, 2021 by Spaceman.Spiff

[jimmymcgoochie]

@Wisemanthat looked a lot like one of my Moon landings- the only difference is that I didn’t run out of fuel  but trying to intercept a target in a different plane by burning suborbital isn’t a particularly good way of doing it, so I’ve stuck with the more traditional method since then- get into orbit, then intercept; much cheaper in delta-V and far less stress!

[Wiseman]

@Spaceman.Spiff Gotcha, that sounds super cool! I've always wanted to try Beyond Home or one of the other big total-conversion type planet packs, but, well, RP-1 caught me. Maybe another Multiplanetary Species type base-building series is in order?

@jimmymcgoochie I was going to just get into orbit first, but I was spooked by the 50 m/s I was going to have remaining according to PVG, and also my 1.5 hour battery life! It... seemed necessary? Although even the RP-1 devs are telling me I overcomplicate my missions these days...

Anyways, let's cool it down a little after that spicy mission with some nice calming mission plan talk!

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Oh.

Oh dear...

You didn’t read the fine print of that uber-camera experiment, did you? That thing generates almost 30kB of data per second. That’s around 230kb/s. You need TL5 S-band relays (TL5 S-band is for some strange reason the fastest transmitting level of S-band) to handle that bandwidth, or even X-band, plus pointing the dishes at the imagers and vice versa to make that work. Running it on a puny UHF omni will take literally centuries to send the data back.

[Wiseman]

I super duper did not! Help is on the way, though, with shiny new X-Band equipment in the ground stations, a new satellite constellation, and also a second Vis-Alt satellite. Darn it. Anyways, here's the Martian Moonhopper, and a power truss for Lunette station!

 

[Wiseman]

Time to make that jump! This time, we wrap up our science on the surface of Deimos, so it's time to make the transfer down to Phobos.

 

 

[Wiseman]

We've sent a lot of missions towards the outer solar system, and they're finally beginning to arrive. Some of the closer targets are even finishing their mission - like our exploration orbit of Vesta!

 

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

I can’t help feeling that that booster would have been useful to make up the delta-V shortage...

[Wiseman]

Our Venus rover has arrived! Will we be the first to put a roving spacecraft on the surface of the hellish planet?! Well, yes. But the question is, even if we land off-course, should I hyperedit it into the right spot? Or call the mission a failure? Let me know!

 

 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

4 minutes ago, Wiseman said:

Our Venus rover has arrived! Will we be the first to put a roving spacecraft on the surface of the hellish planet?! Well, yes. But the question is, even if we land off-course, should I hyperedit it into the right spot? Or call the mission a failure? Let me know!

 

 

That's a very pretty thumbnail!

[jimmymcgoochie]

@Wiseman fun fact- while Bon Voyage doesn’t detect RTGs, it does detect solar panels regardless of Kerbalism etc. changing their output- a relatively small 1m² TL3+ solar panel would be enough for a small rover to operate, while the RTGs power the science experiments and keep the batteries full (so it never stops driving). I did a Venus rover like that, which went fine until I loaded it up again and it spawned in 5 metres off the ground, did a few forward rolls and broke the solar panel  the flip side of that is of course that you’ll run out of power if all you have is that one solar panel; you did bring an RTG, right?

Assuming your solar panel isn’t broken by the whole ‘bouncing off the inside of the aeroshell’ thing (or just hack the save file to fix it, I won’t tell if you won’t ), you should be fine Bon Voyage-ing your way there. And remember- Venus rotates retrograde so you’re just into the night; you won’t get sunlight for some time where you are so drive towards the light then try to stay in it as much as possible.

Edited April 30, 2021 by jimmymcgoochie

[Wiseman]

Thanks! I thought that shot came out great.

I think for the Venus rover I'm going to just try re-launching - with the solar panel broken because of a failure to separate cleanly, that feels like enough of a user-error to just take the loss. But I definitely have been thinking about Bon Voyage a lot - I really want it to work! If I can work around the issues using solar panels, that might be worth reinstalling to try.

And now, watch me do math with the wrong numbers! Immediately after posting, someone on the RP-1 discord told me Kerbalism uses bytes when representing its data rates, while RealAntenna uses bits. 

 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

22 minutes ago, Wiseman said:

Thanks! I thought that shot came out great.

I think for the Venus rover I'm going to just try re-launching - with the solar panel broken because of a failure to separate cleanly, that feels like enough of a user-error to just take the loss. But I definitely have been thinking about Bon Voyage a lot - I really want it to work! If I can work around the issues using solar panels, that might be worth reinstalling to try.

And now, watch me do math with the wrong numbers! Immediately after posting, someone on the RP-1 discord told me Kerbalism uses bytes when representing its data rates, while RealAntenna uses bits. 

 

The title is amazing. 
Sir Benjamin Wyatt aka Professor smartbrain would be proud!

Edited May 4, 2021 by Spaceman.Spiff

[jimmymcgoochie]

X-band omnis are the way to go around Earth, especially for connecting to the DSN stations. Alternatively, just launch the relays into a much higher orbit so they can cover the whole Earth with their cones and add secondary antennae to communicate with each other to make it a proper network.

[Wiseman]

X-band omnis, really? I know I've heard not to do that with the higher bands (S+), but I have no idea why - is there not a transmission rate penalty or something? Or is it just not as bad? My current plan is to send much burlier geosynchronous sats, leaning on my old RemoteTech experience. Each one more carefully placed above a ground station and pointing directly at it with a big dish, and each sat pointing at the two others in the constellation, then a final dish pointing directly at the Vis-Alt 3 (yet to be launched). Would it be easier/better to just toss them up with X-band omnis?

Anyways, let's go land on the Moon, that's easier (somehow):

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

3 hours ago, Wiseman said:

X-band omnis, really? I know I've heard not to do that with the higher bands (S+), but I have no idea why - is there not a transmission rate penalty or something? Or is it just not as bad? My current plan is to send much burlier geosynchronous sats, leaning on my old RemoteTech experience. Each one more carefully placed above a ground station and pointing directly at it with a big dish, and each sat pointing at the two others in the constellation, then a final dish pointing directly at the Vis-Alt 3 (yet to be launched). Would it be easier/better to just toss them up with X-band omnis?

I should probably clarify- I meant X-band omni to connect to the DSN.

This is my X-band network- the relays are marked as ‘bases’, imaging sats not shown but the cones from the left and bottom relays are pointing at them:

I used an omni antenna on each of my high-throughput relays to connect to the DSN stations without having to worry about positioning or antenna cones, then a load of directional dishes to communicate with the other relays and each of four visible imaging satellites, which all had 3 dishes pointed at each of the three relays. At 1.4Mb/s or so the data rate is more than ample to get away with an omni, and at GEO altitudes (or lower in my case) even the built-in probe core antenna is enough to get full signal to the DSN.

I suspect the reason for not using omnis for higher bands is because they’re so weak compared to a directional dish so are useless for communicating interplanetary; for intraplanetary use they seem to work fine e.g. from a lander or rover to an orbiter which can then forward the signal to Earth.

You could always put your relays in a higher orbit so the signal cones cover the whole planet and interconnect them to guarantee a signal that way, the increased range is irrelevant for X-band signal strength and you’ll never lose sight of the DSN with all three at once even though Earth is rotating under them.

Edited May 7, 2021 by jimmymcgoochie