The Saga of the Sauron

[RoninFrog]

Seventeen kerbals stand in the sandy desert next to a massive pile of mammoths and tanks strapped together with struts named the HMS Sauron.  These kerbals have been to strange places and done awesome things, and now they have gotten bored of building sand castles for the last week.

Jeb, the pilot, fills the empty tanks with sand.  This is a commonly used way to make the fuel gauges read full.  (Anyone know why there are no shadows?)

Now, what to do.  What to do.  Suddenly, a voice thunders from the sky, "Thou shalt go and visiteth the Mohole."  Well, okey-doke!  Punch the throttle, then!  Haha, we have LIFTOFF!!!  By the way, the backstory to this mission can be found here.  Short story: the Sauron just got back from a Jool-5.  The voice was @HansonKerman, by the way.

Valentina yells from the crew cabin, "Hey Jeb, when you gonna stage?"  "Nope!"  Yup, this is an SSTO.

Blast, forgot to take a screenshot when I got to orbit.  The tanks are empty, and the Mun is getting old since the kerbals have already refueled there twice, so Minmus it is!  Yup, this is an SSTE.  Hey presto!  Ideal launch conditions!  Minmus will reach the Ascending Node soon, and my non-equatorial mining site actually reduced the inclination difference.

Look at that G Force gauge!  Here's a great shot of the engines burning for Minmus.  Yup, this SSTE uses only mammoths.

Oy!  Look a' that burn time!  We ain't usin' ions or nukes on this 'ere rocket!

Forgot to take a screenshot of the orbital scan.  Oh well.  Minmus had decent ore.  I landed in the Midlands, which read 9.45% on the Narrow Band, which means around 14.2% on the Surface Scanner, by my calculations.  That dV value is incorrect, I landed in the night and mined until day time.

Hooray!  Jeb planted the flag correctly!  I would give him some extra snacks if there were any left.

I have to make a quick pit stop at Gilly before going to Moho.  I checked the dV to circularize their, and MAN!  That's gonna be rough. (3500 m/s) Pretty sure the Sauron (5300 m/s) can handle it with a quick refuel at Gilly.

[HansonKerman]

awww SWEET! Can’t wait to see this mega rocket land on the space potato(s)! (I call Gilly and Moho potatoes)

[RoninFrog]

53 minutes ago, HansonKerman said:

awww SWEET! Can’t wait to see this mega rocket land on the space potato(s)! (I call Gilly and Moho potatoes)

I'm not going to land on Gilly.  Gilly is going to land on me. 

[HansonKerman]

12 minutes ago, RoninFrog said:

I'm not going to land on Gilly.  Gilly is going to land on me. 

oof. Get roasted Gilly

Edited April 27, 2020 by HansonKerman

[KerballingSmasher]

On 4/27/2020 at 9:48 AM, HansonKerman said:

the space potato(s)

SPACE POTATES! (not a typo)

[RoninFrog]

Space potato (potate?) number 1: Gilly!  (I've also never been there yet)

I go to orbit using only a smidgeon of fuel.  Minmus is nice that way.

Unfortunately, Eve was a little ahead of Kerbin, which meant I would have to timewarp for over a year if I didn't want to end up on Duna.  A long time later and several tons of liquid fuel less, my trajectory looked like this:

I had to make a couple not insignificant correction burns (note the maneuvers above), but I did manage to organize a Gilly intersect from way out in the interplanetary.  Gilly is really hard to hit!

Gilly really does look like a potato!

The ore scan was almost instantaneous for Gilly.  Gilly looks like it's got really good ore on the M700 (this is at 80% cutoff), but a Narrow Band estimate says about 11% on the southernmost red patch.

I actually aimed for landing in the spot on the right, but it took so long to get around Gilly that it had potated by then and I landed smack in the middle of the spot on the left.  I found that using only one mammoth instead of all 29 is about right for this low of gravity.  Gilly is lumpy like Pol, but it's more of a smooth up and down instead of a lot of sudden, jagged angles.  Easier to find a good spot to put down.

The kerbals were actually being orderly and civil in this low gravity and stayed in a nice crescent, unlike on Tylo where they were running around like a bunch of hungry squirrels.  Nice job on the flag, Jeb!

The next leg should involve a lot of high speeds and drastically different inclinations.  Gonna need to use more than just one mammoth next time, Jeb!

Edited April 28, 2020 by RoninFrog
Just saw a great pun

[HansonKerman]

3 hours ago, RoninFrog said:

potate

I s’pose

[Space Nerd]

Can this launch to orbit from the highest mountain on Eve?

[RoninFrog]

5 hours ago, Space Nerd said:

Can this launch to orbit from the highest mountain on Eve?

Nope.  I'm pretty sure it's not possible to do a practical Eve SSTO.  But the original design for the Sauron actually was a failed Eve ascent vehicle to go rescue all my stranded kerbals.  I just took all the decouplers and fuel lines off of and slapped on a few ISRU's and fuel tanks.  

[HansonKerman]

1 hour ago, RoninFrog said:

Nope.  I'm pretty sure it's not possible to do a practical Eve SSTO.  But the original design for the Sauron actually was a failed Eve ascent vehicle to go rescue all my stranded kerbals.  I just took all the decouplers and fuel lines off of and slapped on a few ISRU's and fuel tanks.  

the birth of sauron

 

19 hours ago, RoninFrog said:

potated

lmao <laugh emoji >

[RoninFrog]

Well, Moho is hard.  That capture burn is a real killer.  I have recently been poring over dV maps, reading about inclination changes, reading through lots of threads about Moho, plotting maneuvers, and calculating dV values.  After ejecting from Eve and doing some calculations, it looks like I'm gonna be ~130 m/s short.

But then the thought hit me:  MY ORE TANKS ARE FULL!!!!!!  There is still hope for this mission!  Moho landing is hopefully coming soon!

Edited April 30, 2020 by RoninFrog

[Space Nerd]

I thought 5000 m/s is enough?

[HansonKerman]

9 hours ago, RoninFrog said:

But then the thought hit me:  MY ORE TANKS ARE FULL!!!!!!  There is still hope for this mission!  Moho landing is hopefully coming soon!

mid flight conversion, adventurous!

[KerballingSmasher]

7 hours ago, Space Nerd said:

I thought 5000 m/s is enough?

Pfft, so you thought. In reality you need about 5000 to ORBIT. trust me, I used 4200 and only got a fly-by with another 800 in the tanks, but not enough for a capture.

[RoninFrog]

Space potato number 2: Moho!  It's been a while, so I have lots of pictures. 

Gilly takes almost no fuel to get to orbit.  I decided to eject retrograde from Gilly and zip by Eve, gaining a lot of dV from the Oberth Effect, I think it is called.

Burning at a rippin' fast speed near Periapsis.  I ended up exiting Eve's SOI at around 2000 m/s for the cost of ~1200 m/s of dV.

A couple orbits of Kerbol later and thousands of meters per second of dV less, My trajectory looked like this.  So far so good!

I had finessed my encounter a lot and lowered my Apoapsis to about halfway between Eve and Moho, so the actual capture was less than 1200 m/s dV.  Before I go spelunking, I gotta refuel those tanks (no I don't, don't know why I made a refueling stop).  Moho has some insanely good ore!  Not concentrated like Tylo, but generally good everywhere on the planet, as most of the planet is above 13%.  I found a good area on the Narrow Band marked by those markers:

And I landed to grab some fuel.  This refueling stop was really unnecessary as I'm gonna have to come back here later anyway, but whatever.

No flag planting this time, I'll do that on the next stop here.  Time to go find that Mohole!  I didn't have a probe core to find it, so I had to cheat.  I just googled the location.  Warning: I'm about to spill the beans about the location of an anomaly.  Keep reading at your own risk.

Just "yeet" myself on up there.  Hey!  Lookie there!  That's a little scary.  Let's pop down there and check it out!  The NavBall and camera were being weird this far north.

Jeb, you landed *this close* to eternity.  Nobody move.

This was the scariest landing I have ever done.  The terrain is sloped and I actually bounced a couple times towards the abyss. I sent Jensen down to do some exploring and see how bad the situation was.  Oh, man.  Valentina is definitely going to be flying if I land next to the Dres canyon.

Then, I noticed the engine bells were creeping towards the edge.  The entire rocket was sliding down the slope.  EVERYBODY OUT!  PLANT A FLAG! NO TIME FOR A CRESCENT!

NOW GET BACK IN!!!  WE GOTTA MOOOOVE!!!

In 5x warp, there is no sliding, so I shoved some rocks in the tanks so I could get back to my mining site.  That drill isn't working properly for some reason. 

Hurtling through the lack of air back to a land with flammable rocks:

Landed in a dark, flat spot with some decent ore.  Maybe it's a solidified lava lake.

Ok, I gotta do some sort of picturesque shot I can remember Moho with, so all the kerbals hopped out for a screenshot.  Jeb has been doing well at planting flags recently.  Nice job.

So... Should I go to Dres?

[HansonKerman]

3 hours ago, RoninFrog said:

So... Should I go to Dres?

yes. Infact all of the Sauron missions should be this one. Also, that Mohole (okay tbh it’s called the Northern Sinkhole by Kerbal scientists but whatev) landing was EDGE OF THE SEAT. However... there was no expedition in by a Kerbal, sad but whatev.

ideas:

dres canyon

install a planert pack and go somewhere (maybe Tekto or Plock, or a moon of Sarvin (Kerbol Origins). If you had the dV (I don’t think u do tho), smthin like GPP_Secondary)

grand tour

helipad

 

[RoninFrog]

10 minutes ago, HansonKerman said:

there was no expedition in by a Kerbal

You mean the one where Jeb got wedged and I had to load a quicksave?

Spoiler

Didn't include this in the actual mission report since I rewound the clock and erased it from history.  But here it is:

Jeb is in a tight spot.

 

[Space Nerd]

15 hours ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

Pfft, so you thought. In reality you need about 5000 to ORBIT. trust me, I used 4200 and only got a fly-by with another 800 in the tanks, but not enough for a capture.

I mean I thought 5000 is enough to get to LEO from 7000m on Eve, but now I think it's not enough to get to orbit and go to gilly to refuel.

[HansonKerman]

15 hours ago, RoninFrog said:

You mean the one where Jeb got wedged and I had to load a quicksave?

  Hide contents

Didn't include this in the actual mission report since I rewound the clock and erased it from history.  But here it is:

Jeb is in a tight spot.

 

thank you

[KerballingSmasher]

21 hours ago, HansonKerman said:

Northern Sinkhole

Wait, does it really have a canon name?

[RoninFrog]

5 minutes ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

Wait, does it really have a canon name?

Pretty sure the Northern Sinkhole is actually a biome near the north pole (or should I say "north hole"), not the Mohole itself.

Don't know if these charts are up to date: https://imgur.com/gallery/a7sKY

Edited May 1, 2020 by RoninFrog

[KerballingSmasher]

Just now, RoninFrog said:

or should I say "north hole

hehehehheehehhh...

[HansonKerman]

2 hours ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

Wait, does it really have a canon name?

yep it’s the Mohole’s biome. It’s Mohole in our hearts tho

[KerballingSmasher]

20 hours ago, HansonKerman said:

yep it’s the Mohole’s biome. It’s Mohole in our hearts tho

Always.

[VoidCosmos]

Sounds interesting