The Orbits of CLOUD-ONE Space Station

[cubinator]

Hungry Moon

As the drills began their autonomous operation, the Kerbals climbed back into Lander 2 and lifted off back towards CLOUD ONE. A faint hiss accompanied the rumble of the engines as the ship collided with a cloud of dust kicked up from the surface, possibly due to their own activities. The surface samples they'd brought up were as strange and eerie as the moon itself, and they made strange little popping noises after being shaken, almost as if to complain.  Lander 2 docked to the station and the long wait for fuel began.

 

A poke...

Something is crawling on me.

Above, they are above....

Something is biting me!

Grrr...

What does it taste like?

It is metal...

I will eat it...

New pokers...Pokers from where?

Keeerrrrrrrr.......

[cubinator]

Escape the Cursed Moon

The miner probe was operating smoothly for a few hours - each time CLOUD-ONE orbited overhead, it received a radio signal that everything was a-ok. But then, one orbit, the signal suddenly went silent. The last telemetry it sent was an indication of loss of contact from the drills, followed by a sudden and immense vertical drop. Some of the Pol surface samples on the station emitted a new rattling sound, seemingly on their own, the moment this happened.

Since Pol was so small, it would be possible to see what was transpiring on the surface through a television. Megvey Kerman aimed one at exactly the spot they had previously landed in, and found nothing. The surface was untouched, as if they had never landed a giant probe there in the first place. The ISRU unit had simply disappeared. But there was no ambiguity in the Kerbal's minds about what the data sent by the probe meant.

The moon had opened up its maw and eaten the probe.

Unanimously, the Kerbals of CLOUD-ONE decided it was time to leave this terrifying place and get as far away from it as possible. Little planning went in to the burn besides to get closer in to Jool - they would use an elliptical orbit to get an encounter with one of the other two moons. Probably Laythe, since it was nice and blue and, with no ISRU and dwindling fuel, the crew would need someplace to stay until new spacecraft could arrive from Kerbin, and Laythe had the best chance of letting them survive.

 

 

[cubinator]

Phantom Moon

CLOUD-ONE dropped closer to Jool as they made their way towards Laythe. The angles were read, the trajectories were calculated, and it was determined and double-checked that the station would not crash into any moons of Jool on its way down. 

As Laythe and Jool grew larger in the viewports, the crew of CLOUD-ONE communicated their impediment to Kerbin. The ISRU stage was lost. CLOUD-ONE had just enough fuel to enter orbit of Laythe, and then it would have to stay there indefinitely. The station could support the Kerbals there as long as it needed to, but new ships would have to be sent from Kerbin to support any more extended exploration of the Jool system, or indeed a return to Kerbin. Pol was a cursed moon, and no further attempts to exploit its resources would be made. The Kerbals back on Kerbin radioed back reassuringly that they would get to work right away on a fleet to support CLOUD-ONE at Jool.

The station would pass in the shadow of Jool prior to its encounter with Laythe. All the Kerbals gathered to watch the sun set, something it hadn't done for the station in a long time.

An eerie pink glow engulfed the station as light scattered through Jool's topmost clouds. Radio communication with Kerbin was interrupted as their home was obscured. And the orbit continued nominally.

Until....

Out of the shadow the sun was born, but with it came along a void, which slowly engulfed the stars, then eventually the sun and Jool. A strange hiss overcame the radio arrays as the planet-sized anomaly moved toward the station.

On Kerbin, no communication from the station could be heard. Patrick Kerman was eyeing the sky through a television on the roof of the VAB when he got a fright, suddenly finding Jool with a fourth moon at its side, a moon as big as Laythe or Tylo, in a perfect orbit between the two, a moon which had not been there yesterday. As more televisions turned to the green giant, a radio burst conjured a fifth moon as well, a large asteroid which made a "BOP" sound as it hit receivers on CLOUD-ONE. Now the station was on an intercept trajectory with this new world which had usurped Tylo as the Second Moon of Jool.

The moon was approaching fast. As the sun finally rose over it, glinting mountains of ice reflected their distant host star.  The station was mostly powerless to adjust its orbit away, and the Kerbals could only hope they were not about to crash into the ghostly moon. As they drew closer and closer, it became increasingly apparent that they were grazing the surface. The station was pitched into a horizontal attitude at full force in the hope that the miniscule reduction in vertical stretch would be enough to keep them from scraping the station across the frost at 1.3 kilometers per second. Why had this moon suddenly appeared out of nowhere? What could it mean? Did it come from Jool? Or was it a product of the universe trying to tell Kerbalkind some kind of message?

None could tell.

 

Edited June 30, 2021 by cubinator

[cubinator]

Vall, the Frost Demon

CLOUD ONE zipped past the last mountain and the ground dropped away, bidding the station farewell for now. Suddenly the radio came back online and Jebediah phoned home to let them know they were all right. Several Kerbals likened the experience of having the moon pull them that close to looking into the eyes of some deep sea creature and then watching it swim off. It was as if the new moon had pulled them in, looked at them, studied them, and then let them go. Who knew if the moon really had any consciousness or intent, maybe it really was no more than a big ball of ice. But even a ball of ice can make you feel its presence in space.

Analyzing their new trajectory, it turned out that CLOUD ONE was miraculously on perfect track to fall into Laythe's gravity, and it would be a single very easy burn to park in orbit. As the station pulled farther away from the moon and into daylight, it got a good view of the frozen world...

 

[cubinator]

Oasis

Laythe was the water world, even Kerbin did not have water like this. Only the highest mountaintops peeked above the vast ocean, leaving scattered archipelagos and islands as the only dry ground on the moon. CLOUD ONE only had enough fuel to insert itself into a high orbit, and would not be able to drop in closer to the pretty moon as a whole. However, five Kerbals could make the trip down in the Phoenix, which was a well-proven spaceplane. Laythe was a smidge smaller than Kerbin, so this should be even easier than its previous flights at Kerbin. Perhaps the plane could even make multiple trips? It would have to be seen at a later time...For now they had to get SOMEBODY down to the surface, to see what this other blue planet was like. The Kerbals wished to see this place because it was so similar to their home, and they needed to know what this place shared in common with Kerbin besides looks.

So, five Kerbals packed their bags and boarded the plane, and waited for an opportunity to drop to shore.

[cubinator]

Landing at Laythe

As Laythe rotated, a group of large islands moved underneath the path of CLOUD ONE. Now was the time to depart and make a landing on those islands. Phoenix fired up its engines and sped away from the space station.

They would fall over the south pole of Laythe before entering the atmosphere and gliding to land. Because they were in such a high orbit, it would be a slightly more intense reentry than optimal, but the brave Kerbals posited that it would not really be much more intense than entering Kerbin, because of Laythe's gentler gravity and atmosphere. Would the surface prove to be as gentle? There was no going back now.

Flame engulfed the airplane as it drew closer to Laythe and met its atmosphere. Sanster watched the thermal sensors diligently, pitching and deploying the airbrakes to slow down before getting too hot. Soon enough Phoenix was gliding on a gentle breeze.

Thin white clouds floated over the surface, which appeared to be a grayish brown color and made of some kind of sand or sediment that was blown into dunes by the wind. There appeared to be a land bridge between the island they were on and another larger and higher island to the west. This seemed like a good place to land and set up camp, so they glided down to solid ground.

[cubinator]

Shores of Ash

A mixture of what appeared to be sand and ash covered the surface. It was probably safest not to breathe it in, but luckily something about it made it wash out pretty easily in the water, which was easy to come by.  The air clearly had oxygen, even enough to breathe. It also had trace chlorine and carbon dioxide in greater amounts than were present on Kerbin. This probably contributed to the warming effect allowing the moon to remain oceanous. Long term effects of breathing the air unfiltered were probably not optimal, but a few Kerbals wanted to take the chance with a few minutes of alien fresh breeze on their faces, starting with Sanster.

The air was humid, and smelled like salt and faintly of acid and sulfur. It did not smell of plants and life as Kerbin usually did. The Kerbals wondered what kind of salt was in the water, and set about on their long stay to wander around the nearby area looking for anything interesting or new. Of course, literally everything was new, so they had no trouble with this. With Jool and the other moons in the sky, the Kerbals made themselves at home on a planet that looked very much like where they came from. As they stayed, they would find out whether Laythe was really habitable...

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by cubinator

[cubinator]

Other Missions

While the crew of CLOUD ONE were exalted to be exploring Laythe, the issue still remained that they could not return to Kerbin or indeed go anywhere else until some kind of mining rig was sent to them. The engineers at Kerbin had a few ideas of what to do...

Would this giant lander work? It probably had enough solar panels, but wouldn't lift off Kerbin on its own...was it still too small?

Kerbal astronauts were now standardly trained flying the Mini Plane to Minmus.

Gilian 1 was launched and crashed into Gilly.

An asteroid was attempted to be moved to Laythe, but there was not enough fuel to do it. Should we try to move it the rest of the way, or backtrack to Ike with droplets of fuel remaining?

All the while CLOUD ONE pressed on with science at Laythe, having faith that they were not forgotten on Kerbin.

Edited July 6, 2021 by cubinator

[cubinator]

Alright folks...I think I need some bigger rockets.

The "send a Class E asteroid to Laythe" contract is not going well - the asteroid is out of resources to mine, and I need to give it about 1000 m/s if I want to get it to Laythe. Otherwise, I can intercept Duna and have about 200 m/s left to get into orbit of Ike. Actually pushing it to Laythe might be so expensive that it negates any actual profit from the contract. (Maybe if I had built in nuclear engines instead of high-thrust SSMEs...?)

CLOUD-ONE was ambitious. I am now looking for mods that will let me go even further. Tweakscale, station parts, base parts, nuclear engines...I didn't need it before, but I do now. We are going to have to build something new, and something big.