A Bit of Reality, or an attempt at RSS

[aspacecephalopod]

A while ago, some Kerbals made the mistake of flying an SRB powered lander into the Kraken at Bop... and ended up on a giant planet much like Kerbin, but 10X the size and full of many life forms. One of these life forms had some very minor archaic spaceflight systems, so the Kerbals negotiated and traded the costly RTGs from their ship for some access to space centers around the world. This is the story of those kerbs as they do what kerbs do... build rockets, set off for worlds unknown, and explore whatever solar system they happen to be at!

This is an RSS+FAR playthough with stock fuels at the moment. While I'd like to try RO my computer is fairly taxed at the moment as is and I'm not sure about the time to learn RO at the moment, so that will have to wait for a future KSP install. That said, any and all feedback on craft design and mission planning is greatly appreciated! My current launcher is a behemoth 7.5M to 5M to 3.75M three stage which is very mass inefficient, weighing 1500T and only putting around 10T into orbit. I'd love to learn what can be done to make launch vehicles that need 9.4KM/s of delta-v efficient, it's a whole new world from the stock scale (pun intended).

 

Chapter 1: The Mün  Mun  Moon Landing Attempt 1

Spoiler

The Kerbals cobble together a few launch vehicles at Kourou. The "Carrot" three-stage launcher, named by the crew after a vegetable found on kerbin Earth, is wildly inefficient but does its job well enough to begin exploration. Three launches will be used for this mission. Up first is a small NTR propulsion stage:

The Carrot boosts away from French Guiana:

And the NTR Tug in orbit. It's extremely simple but functional:

Up next is more fuel for the mission, launched on another Carrot. This might have taken out the pad on launch... hopefully the Kerbals understand the human concept of "insurance," but I doubt it.

Onto the second stage, burning off into the sunrise.

The NTR unit makes rendezvous with the fuel tank module...

Docked! The third stage of the Carrot, done with its job, goes to eject itself into the Pacific Ocean.

Time for the third and final? launch for the mission if all goes well. It carries the Lunar Lander and a service/reentry module for our two intrepid explorers.

Maupin Kerman, Scientist, and Oblong Kerman, Pilot are the fearless crew for this mission. Well, they seem to have fear after all.

On orbit! The reentry capsule seats the crew, and the single seat lander is docked to the front. Behind the command pod is a small service bay, empty for this mission, used as a docking port spacer.

The combined NTR tug module matches orbits with the crew and docks...

And the completed Moon ship is now built! Stay tuned next time to see if they can actually pull this thing off.

 

 

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[Space Nerd]

Using stock parts for RSS is insidiously hard but it's a challenge by itself, maybe you should use SMURFF to get realistic performance on the stock parts and make the game not a lot harder than it should.

Also I will be impressed if you actually pulled this off.

(It's possible to do this, as @bayesian_acolyte

did a mission to all moons of Saturn and Jupiter with stock parts)

[aspacecephalopod]

44 minutes ago, Space Nerd said:

Using stock parts for RSS is insidiously hard but it's a challenge by itself, maybe you should use SMURFF to get realistic performance on the stock parts and make the game not a lot harder than it should.

Also I will be impressed if you actually pulled this off.

(It's possible to do this, as @bayesian_acolyte

did a mission to all moons of Saturn and Jupiter with stock parts)

Thanks for the encouragement and mod recommendation! That looks like more what I'd like to do with this save rather than full RO. Yeah the stock mass fractions are hideously hard to use for an RSS orbital launch, particularly as I was trying not to do crossfeed/asparagus staging. That mission definitely was an inspiration here, though I'm not sure how well some of those designs would play with FAR.

As for actually pulling it off... we'll see! Haven't flown the landing yet but the TLI burn(s) went well and I know I have enough fuel in the NTR half to capture to low orbit with the 5 tons of lander attached. Having enough fuel to return though... that's seriously up in the air still. I know I have the ability to mount a rescue mission with the same hardware (minus the lander) if getting back doesn't seem doable though.

Edit: Just read up about SMURFF. Think it's going to end up in the list of mods for this for sure... Maybe Stock Fuel Switch as well if it still works. But definitely going with this Moon mission as is just for the challenge.

Edited July 4, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[Space Nerd]

Also which mod have the 7.5 m tanks? NF LV?

[aspacecephalopod]

52 minutes ago, Space Nerd said:

Also which mod have the 7.5 m tanks? NF LV?

Yep-there's a really nice set of 5m, 7.5m and stockalike engines in NFLV. Also includes a 5m docking port and some giant RCS which could be really fun down the line.

Edited July 4, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Moon Landing!

Spoiler

Did a bit more flying... it goes after all! First up was the burn away from Earth to the Moon. Split into two parts cause this ship has a low TWR here...

This resulted in a decent but not perfect trajectory. Not free return or anything but it'll do:

By this point the extra fuel tank in the middle of the ship was close enough to empty that the contents could be drained and the tanks jettisoned. It's close enough it'll fly by the moon and out into interplanetary space.

Maupin: "That's a funny looking Mun."

Oblong: "That's no Mun, that's a Moon!"

Capture burn on the dark side:

Alright, time for Oblong give this a shot!

Good luck, Oblong. We are counting on you.

Landing on the real Moon is very different from the Mun-the high velocities make it almost feel like a Tylo landing, but the gravity is of course the same as the Mun so TWR and burn timing are less of an issue. I packed about 300 m/s of spare dV (based on the 'subway map') on both stages, just in case.

Almost there...

Oblong goes out for a walk. Congrats Oblong! You've really made the grade. And the papers want to know why you used plane landing gear.

With that, here's the current state of the Moon with the LZ front and center:

The NTR and capsule half of the ship read 1200 m/s right now, possibly more if Oblong can bring back a few drops of fuel from the lander. Will they make it back? Quite possibly!

 

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Moon Chapter Three

 

Spoiler

Oblong decided he'd had enough of the surface after a few hours, so he lit the engines and took off for orbit. Staging happened fairly quickly and the lander's first stage can be seen below:

Oblong continued out to orbit...

A couple orbits later, matched up with Maupin and the tug that will hopefully bring our two kerbals home:

Oblong did a good job managing fuel and brought a bit of LF back for the tug. Total dV to get back: 1300 m/s, sufficient! The lander got left in Lunar orbit, as is fashionable for a two-stage moon lander.

Homeward bound!

Upon atmospheric entry, the NTR is discarded and the capsule and its heat shield continue on.

First entry pass. The crew didn't have quite enough of a low orbit to land on the first go (I was worried about heating).

But by the time half an orbit had passed, Earth's atmosphere brings the Kerbs back safely.

Chute out!

Our pilot and scientist back on Earth, somewhere a few hundred km east of Hawaii.

And no, I can't believe this mission worked either off to go install some balancing mods to see how things look then for future missions!

 

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Some logs from the two kerbals while off-duty:

-Log: Maupin Kerman, Scientist-
Well, we pulled off a Moon landing and return with some hideously bad hardware. I’m genuinely shocked and impressed it all worked! The Humans seem to be happy as well and have provided some more advanced resources. I don’t know how us Kerbals haven’t realized how heavy our engines and fuel tanks are, but that’s one are where we were able to improve. We’ve redesigned the Carrot with fewer 1st stage engines and better mass efficiency, and it can now put 25T into LEO. Progress! Now, we just need to get back to the Moon with more hardware as a proof of concept, then onwards to Mars… or maybe one of the gas giants or ice giants. It doesn’t look like we can get back to kerbin any time soon, so might as well see what’s around this system. ‘sides… Oblong got the first landing. That means I gotta catch up!

-Log: Oblong Kerman, Pilot-
Riding the high of the last successful mission, our little ragtag Kerbal crew put together a new thing: a Kerbal Space Station, or KSS. It’s the first launch on the revised Carrot and the ship did well. This deployed a small orbital station to LEO, although “station” is a bit of a misnomer; it’s also using an NTR for propulsion to move about orbits. This could come in handy to pick up crews and such as needed.

 

Spoiler

Indeed, the new Carrot worked well, other than destroying the launch pad again...

Fairing deploy during the third stage burn. The Station/tug is visible here.

Deployed in orbit!

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Orbiters and Stations

 

Spoiler

Another quick update... it was decided a small orbiter was needed with hab capacity and OMS engines. The Pear continues the launch vehicle naming theme as well as the conical stages. Really liking the conical stepped stages-while hardly nice looking they fly great and are quite stable in FAR aero (which is really pleasant to work with). Base drag is a lovely thing.

Two crews launch and dock with KSS, the tug/mini-station. Pear One has Danson, Triwell, and Marsha, and Pear Two flew with just Jessel (since the station needed two engineers for habitat module deployment). Here Jessel checks her handiwork with both shipds docked and the hab deployed:

A view over South America from one of the portholes.

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Chapter 2: Back to the Moon, so soon?

Spoiler

-Log, Maupin Kerman, Scientist-

Well we've decided right away that a small colony on the Moon might be a good idea, to begin the search for resources there to fuel future exploration. With this in mind, a new lander and NTR tug have been designed, both fully reusable. Hopefully this can get Earth Space program there for a more thorough exploration than Oblong and I did.

We also put together a new set of much needed communications satellites, which constituted the first launch of the 'Pear' as a cargo rocket not a crew capsule booster. It mostly worked but we needed to burn the fuel from one satellite to make LEO, so changes will be needed. Still, it put four satellites in a constellation of oblong orbits (not to be confused with Oblong orbits, ones my pal Oblong flew in). The fifth sattelite couldn't make it past LEO and was deorbited.

Finally, two more Carrots have been sent up for the LunaStation and its tug. This small station will provide fueling and docking ops in LLO once crews return to the Moon.

-End Log, Maupin Kerman, Scientist-

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Some interim stuff

Spoiler

-Log, Jessel Kerman, ENG Pear Two mission-

Well, I helped get KSS setup and Mission Control immediately recalled me home after that. However, they completely forgot how big Earth is compared to Kerbin and I ended up stranded in what I've been told is called the 'Outback.' No word on when they'll be able to send me back to North or South America, where our species currently has setup camp. There are only fifteen of us on Earth (well, three in space currently) so we'd better be careful with not getting our crews separated. Or maybe I'm just grouchy cause there's sand everywhere. I hate sand. On the upside, some kind travelers gave me a ride back to the nearest town in one of those big rovers that runs on exploding LF that the humans love so much. Now, to find some food and a place to camp out...

-end log-

While Jessel was being stranded in Australia, the crew did get another ship to orbit. It's a small 4 seat crew shuttle with an NTR and 9km/s of dV. This should be enough to go LEO-LLO-LEO without aerobraking...

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Jessel's Journey

Spoiler

-Personal Log, eng. Jessel-

Well, I’ve finally made it back to civilization! Took long enough. After three weeks at a local hostel, one of our pilots, the ace Chuck Kerman came to give me a lift out of here. He brought with him a new little number that he and Triwell designed, a twin-engined supersonic jet. It seems to be a good plane, but he did skid out landing so maybe we need to work on the landing gear layout a bit. No harm done though and it was good to see the old dude, he’s quite the character. Flies like Jeb but somehow we made it back to Woomera to refuel. But he did miss the runway… again! We’ll refuel here, then it's back onwards to the Americas with a stop in Europe to refuel. Earth is flipping big! It’ll take several stops but we’ll get back to Kourou eventually. Turns out the crew is designing a new heavier launch vehicle and they need my help adding more boosters. Wish they had just given me a ride back earlier though.

-End Log-

 

-Log, pilot. Oblong-

We are putting more things in space! This continued moon mission is requiring a lot more ships than we thought! In addition to the two landers and their tugs, the crew ship, and the station, two rovers have been designed and were both launched to orbit on Carrots. A scansat was also launched on a Pear and got to Lunar orbit today. It found some Ore* of all things in a couple areas-not great concentration but it was a relief to find any at all. It’s in the biome called the “Sea of Tranquility.” It’s where the humans first landed on the moon a while ago and I don’t know why they haven’t returned, it looks awesome! We plan on launching a new mining lander that can link to either an ISRU on the surface or carry Ore to orbit where it can be refined there as well. The surface ISRU will be part of a larger surface base. All this is riding on Jessel getting her mega-launcher rocket design working however. But if anyone can do it, it’s Jess. She may be cynical but she spots areas to fix and improve on rocket designs from a mile away. What are these ‘mile’ things anyway? Some humans use them, some don’t...

-End Log-

*keeping it simple with stock ISRU for the moment. The scansat can always switch as needed...

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

 

New rockets (and more)

 

Spoiler

-Log, Jessel-

Well, I did a bunch of tweaks to the mighty Onion class lifter that a few of our engineers drafted up. Triwell is still on station at the moment, so Jane and Leia* threw this rocket together and they both did a good job. I had several complaints and concerns, but after some tweaking Oblong and Chuck both said “send it” and who am I to disagree with launching rockets? The payload for this is the mining lander that Oblong has previously mentioned. It’s a large beastie of a lander, with a cone of fuel tanks and mining hardware that really only exists with the purpose of shuttling Ore from Lunar Surface to LLO, with occasional conversion on the surface from a yet-to-be-designed base module. I let the rest of our team know the lander doesn’t stand a chance of pulling off a landing without refueling but it can make it to LLO, and Chuck said “hit it, anyway!” So here we are with the launch of the largest thing to date we’ve built here on Earth. The Onion lifted off with an almost-earth-shattering kaboom taking the pad with it once again. It then onion-staged the outer boosters and tanks, with some very gratuitous explosions there as well. Eventually the third stage got all 60 tons of lander to LEO… so now I’ll hand off the mission control to the capable Oblong and Maupin who handle this sort of thing. A pretty good day in Kourou it seems!

-end log-

*Leia is actually in the normal Kerbal name lexicon. I randomly tabbed through names on the alt-f12 ‘generate kerbal’ page to get the crew of 15 with fairly unique names. (Captain) Kirk is also in the crew of 15

-Log, Oblong-

Well it’s true that the first ship in the armada to leave for Luna won’t actually have enough fuel to complete its mission. We have some orbital fun to get everything lined up in such a way that kerbs can actually get to the surface, but it’ll work in time. In the meantime, it seems time to get the fleet underway to Luna! Right on the heels of the miner was Lunastation. Rovers A and B followed suit, then the landers. These will all be entering lunar orbit with various states of fuel-the rovers will be good to land no worries, the landers will dock to the station just fine and supply fuel there. The Miner will need some orbital refueling but should be workable as well.

-end log-

 

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Deploying the Fleet

Spoiler

-Log, Maupin-
The final pieces of hardware for the first stages of Tranquility Outpost have launched. First was the castle-like Surface Hab where we’ll live on the Moon for longer stays. It masses in at 60T and has fuel storage and ISRU. To get this to Luna, the newly designed BLT, or Big Lunar Tug, was launched. This represented launches two and three for the Onion, and Jane, Leia, and Jessel continue to be surprised that this crazy rocket design continues to work. Jess had a bad dream where some of the boosters didn’t clear the central core, so we added more Sepatrons just in case and all went well. These two components will dock and depart for Luna in about a week, by which point the rest of the hardware will be falling into place there. Then, crew time! I wanna land this time, and as mission leader I get to pick the crew so I’ll be there :-)

-end log-

 

-Log, Kirk Kerman-
Well, I should introduce myself for any humans who may be reading about our lunar escapade. I. Am. Cap’n. Kirk. Kerman. And. I. Fly. Spacecraft! Anyway, it was my duty to get the orbital setup at the Moon all set up, so to speak. Up first was the mighty Moon Miner, the pride of our small fleet. Close behind was Lunastation, then the rovers and landers. The rovers had some drop tanks that were jettisoned into orbit, and those two ships will go straight to the surface as needed with no fueling stop. The other three ships will dock to Lunastation for the time being.

-end log-

 

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Lunar problem solving

Spoiler

-Log, Jessel Kerman-
Crewed Lunar Mission II, Day 0
Blast it! I knew things were going to go wrong. All the hardware that needed to go to Lunastation is now there thanks to some nice flying by Kirk, but that doesn’t fix the problem that fuel quantities are way too low to get the landers and base modules both down in place. Which I told Command about beforehand, but they said we’d be fine. Now I gotta engineer a solution. We have full tanks in both Landers and some reserve in the tanks attached to them. The Miner tanks are near empty and the Hab tanks are below half. But, if we can get both the Miner and Hab fueled enough to land, and they can land pinpoint next to each other, we’re alright, cause the lander can use the Hab ISRU. And it sure looks like there’s enough fuel to fill the Hab tanks and have enough leftover to land, but not takeoff with the Miner. But someone will need to be on the surface to link those two units together if we ever want the Miner to fly after that. Krakens and boosters! I know what we have to do now. This ain’t going to be easy, but I think we can pull it off...

Day 1
Well we got our away team put together very quickly! Maupin insisted on tagging along since she didn’t get to land on the first mission, she’ll be a great scientist for this mission. If we get to land. I told them no promises at all. It’ll be very lucky if we get any part of this base operational. For our pilot, we have the one and only Chuck. Figured having an ace pilot would be useful here. We launched on a Pear, which again shockingly failed to provide any explosions. I built a launch escape system into the silly thing for nought!

Day 2
We docked with KSS… or tried to. For some reason the Pear capsule wouldn’t latch. Maupin asked if I could ‘engineer a solution’ but before I could think of a bad plan, or worse, a good plan, Chuck had put his helmet on, made us do the same, and he opened the airlock and we EVA’d over to the Lunar Shuttle docked to KSS. Finally, a ship with some delta vee to spare! We burned for Luna and should arrive soon enough in a few days. Now to figure out a bold and daring plan to get systems online there… it was all supposed to work remotely but we need to be there now to make refueling happen. Transfer should be a few days, then it’s go time! Plenty of time to figure out how to un-break all the stuff not working as planned, right. Right?
-end log-

-Log, Chuck Kerman-
Crewed Lunar Mission II, Day 9
I’ll never forget the last words Jess said to me before she stepped out the airlock to board the Moon Miner.

“Hey, if this doesn’t work, just know it’s been an honor. I give this decent odds, but no promises. Either this terrible, stupid plan works, or things are gonna be a bit rough for a while. Thanks for the excellent flying and rebuttals to my cynicism, give Maupin a hug from me and Oblong a high five."

And so she left for the lander and began her descent. But I should back up a bit to explain why we’re in this tough situation in the first place. The landing of the main surface hab… didn’t go as planned. Specifically, it ran out of fuel 1km above the Sea of Fertility, our landing target. I was flying it by remote control (no one on board, thank the Kraken), and when it became clear bingo fuel wouldn’t align with a safe landing both Maupin and Jess yelled “save the ISRU!” so I did my best to save the little refinery that was our ticket to getting Luna Base operational. It did in fact survive the landing!

So Jessel took it upon herself to go see if the ISRU worked, knowing full well if not we might be stranding here there. She deorbited the Moon Miner, burned for landing, and actually was able to hit the target area spot on! Not bad for someone who had never flown that lander before. Though in all fairness, no one had flown that lander before. Glad it worked. Maupin and I breathed sighs of relief when we heard her message.

“Lunastation, this is Jess. I’m in one piece and so is the lander. The ISRU is fine! But the tools I need to link it were destroyed by the crash landing.”
“Yay Jess! We read you, it’s Chuck. I’m sending one of the rovers down, it’ll have tools.”

And so I deorbited one of the landers and put it on course to land at Jessel’s crash/landing site. But that’s her story, so I’ll leave it to her!
-end log-

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

More Lunar Improv

Spoiler

-Log, Jessel-
Crewed Lunar Mission II, Day 12
We did it! After two blasted days of changing software to get the reactor online, running around getting moon dust everywhere, and generally fighting both broken equipment and the Kraken at every turn, I was able to get both the mining unit and the ISRU working for a few glorious hours and fill up the Miner with LFO and Ore. In doing this however, I’ve completely missed the window to boost back to orbit and the next opportunity won’t happen for another Lunar month. Not too bad though, that gives the team time to send out new bases and ISRU hardware for Lunastation. As for me, I have an entire moon to myself now! So naturally I hopped into the rover, seeing as it’s my only hab space for the time being, and went exploring.

After a short trip I ended up at the nearest crater to the south. This moon ain’t so bad. Gotta say, I have an entire world to myself, a rover, and all the fuel and ore a kerb could ever want. The next month could be fun even!

-end log-

-Log, eng. Gemdock Kerman-
While our three crew are in orbit and on Luna, it’s time for us to get them some supplies! But first, an update about stuff going on back at Earth. Triwell, Danson and Marsha touched down somewhere in the Saloman Islands today. A flight from Woomera will pick them up.

Next up was some stuff for the struggling Luna Outposts. An ISRU module was launched for Lunastation, bringing back the Carrot design which hadn’t seen use in a while.
 

Finally, a new smaller surface hab was very much needed. This proved to be a tricky design for our crew, but eventually we settled on taking the Lunar Rover and trading battery and solar capacity for hab modules. It's a funny layout but ought to be easily serviceable, plus it can dock to a rover for longer missions. We'll launch a few of these over the next few weeks and get them on station at Luna.

-end log-

 

 

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[KerballingSmasher]

On 7/10/2020 at 7:17 PM, aspacecephalopod said:

I. Am. Cap’n. Kirk. Kerman. And. I. Fly. Spacecraft!

YES!

[aspacecephalopod]

Jessel's Setup

Spoiler

-Log, Chuck Kerman, Year 1 day 113-

Presents are arriving in Lunar orbit today! Both hab/rovers arrived along with the big Lunastation ISRU. The ISRU rendezvoused and docked so now we can convert Ore to fuel up here… but the miner is on the surface awaiting a transfer window, and Jess is out joyriding the rover so Maupin and I will have to sit tight. There’s not enough LF to put a lander down at the moment. So we get to sit and wait for the Lunar night to end for Jess to boost back here with lots of fuel, hopefully.

-end log-

-Log, Chuck Kerman, day 120-
We got Jessel back! And she brought a full tank of Ore. Good news, operations are go now! The Moon Miner actually performed as hoped-with a full Ore tank and full LFO tanks on Luna surface, it made orbit with enough fuel to make it back down and do the whole thing again, having delivered 15T of Ore to convert as needed. We immediately fired up the ISRU and topped off enough LF for at least one lander mission, as well as some other maneuvers.

And that’s when Jessel gave us the bad news.

She explained, “I think the Sea of Fertility might be cursed. By the Kraken or something else. The ground was shaking a few times, and I swear I saw debris from the crash fly away when I drove the rover back. Right around 2.3km, the lander hopped a bit and all the debris moved around.”

I replied. “Surely you’re joking, right? There’s no way this star system has the weird activity that surrounds Kerbin and Jool back home?”

Jessel looked grim. “I’m serious, and that doesn’t seem to be my name Chuck…"

Maupin chimed in. “Well I’ll let Earth know we are on the hunt for a new main base of operations then. Hopefully one in driving distance. Since the ISRU isn’t mobile, you have any idea how to work with this for some more Ore runs Jess?”

Jess lit up for a moment. “HAHA. Yes I do. I think it’s time to call in some support from Jane and Leia and get some more ISRU hardware up here pronto!”

-end log-

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[SuperMiiBrother]

Uh oh...
 

It seems this may become a story! Stay safe from the Kraken, Little Kerbals! Remember your struts!

[aspacecephalopod]

On 7/13/2020 at 7:46 PM, SuperMiiBrother said:

Uh oh...
 

It seems this may become a story! Stay safe from the Kraken, Little Kerbals! Remember your struts!

Indeed it would seem this is!

In which Leia builds things and Chuck flies things

Spoiler

-Log, Chief Engineer Leia Kerman, day 122-

My lovely fellow kerbs seem to have STRANDED themselves in LLO. Well, not stranded per se, but with a severe lack of fuel for exploration and also rumored Kraken issues at the Sea of Fertility, they aren’t going anywhere. May the Kraken be not with them. So, Jane and I got Oblong to relay rover design specs and we sent up two new ISRU modules that dock to the rovers. This will allow for a triple rover “road train” with the main drive rover, hab modules, and ISRU. A third main drive rover was launched too, just in case the new exploration site turns out to be very far from the old site. Hopefully they can get some real base ops going now!

-end log-

 

-Log, Maupin Kerman, day 135-

New plan! It took long enough hanging out in orbit, but we’ve got one. With the new ISRUs arrived, we are going to land at a new site, see how safe it does or doesn’t feel from kraken attacks and terrain quality, and based on that we’ll bring down equipment or return to Lunastation. The new target is the Sea of Serenity-another flat plain with good Ore, it should offer the potential for a decent base.

With the three ships in place, the fun could begin! I’ve been waiting on this for quite a while and am pretty thrilled. Lunar Landing at Last! Chuck undocked one of the landers with me and Jess in the hab module right below the pilot’s seat. Chuck fired the single LV909 engine-this lander is a Lunar SSTO for reusability. Landing went very well, and soon we were walking on the surface!

I got the first steps on this landing and remarked on my first time on the Lunar surface. “Let’s sea if the Sea of Serenity is serene,” I said to no one in particular but I got a bit of a laugh from Chuck and Jess for the pun. I wrote that on the flag’s plaque-the Kraken ore something ate the flags Jess planed on the Sea of Fertility but Oblong’s flag is still standing elsewhere, so it ought to be a good test of the ground here. We all posed for a photo-it was local noon so the lighting wasn’t great but still, three happy kerbs doing the exploring thing. Lots of science to be had here, while Jess and Chuck don’t particularly care about the rocks beyond the “can we fuel rockets with them?” part, I really like the Lunar Maria.

-end log-

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Packing for a road trip (on a moon with no roads )

Spoiler

-Log, Jessel Kerman, day 137-

Blast! The Lunar base problems just keep coming! This site seems to be cursed as well. Maybe the whole Moon is cursed. We started to land base modules but when I looked outside the flag had vanished and the lander bounced around a bit. Blast again. Welp, guess we are working with what we have-there aren’t any other good Ore sites on the orbit of Lunastation. But we’re going to need to be careful for sure. Maupin has a theory that only the flat Maria are problematic, but I’m not so sure myself. A road trip to some more cratered areas will settle that either way. So we went ahead, weird terrain aside, and landed the three modules…

Behold! Our latest moonstrosity. The Rover, Hab Module, and ISRU module all link together to form one long road train of a mobile outpost. We have comfy beds (for up to four crew), tons of seats and living space, life support, and various power systems to keep the lights on, motors ready, and ISRU spinning. It’s got 12x12 all wheel drive with hub motors on every wheel, and the steering links can be activated and deactivated from the driver’s seat-typical steering will be active on the front 4 and rear 4 wheels, but front-only may be useful for long high speed cruises.

To test out the ISRU, we linked the to-be-named train up to the Lander. The little single drill didn’t exactly make quick progress, but within one Earth day we had converted some moondust into full Lander tanks. Not needed to get back to Lunastation, but useful to save on the limited refueling resources there for sure. I’m very happy about this. Where’s something to go wrong and need fixing now?

-end log-

Got some base stuff to work properly for a change! Loading vessels still sometimes launches them but F9 eventually levels things out and exploration can continue. The triple-rover is nice and zippy on Luna so exploring should be fun.

[SuperMiiBrother]

Kraken go away, Nokerb likes you!

[KerballingSmasher]

You want a train name? How about...

 

THE HYPE TRAIN

 

(I'm sorry but I had to do it XD)

[aspacecephalopod]

More building and testing...

Spoiler

-Log, Maupin Kerman, day 140-

Driving has begun! We don’t really have a dedicated destination in mind, but have lots of supplies to wander as we please. Tentatively heading due East thus far. We’ve finally started to see mountains after about a day’s journey (150km)

-end log-

-Log, Chief Eng. Leia Kerman, day 145-

Rockets are boring. There, I said it. Spaceplanes are FAR more fun to design and pilot. So I put together the first draft of the Suborbital/Orbital Transport design. Triwell (eng) and Danson (pilot) took it out for a spin. They took off on rocket thrust horizontally from the runway and blasted vertically. They cleared Earth’s 140km atmosphere by a mere 10km, but enough to get a few seconds of EVA time on the ladder. Re-entry was vertical and easy, and sixteen minutes after the launch the touched down back at Kourou, barely making it to a stop by the end of the runway! Both were pretty stoked in talks after the flight, and we’re plotting and planning how to get this plane orbital soon.

-end log-

 

Edited July 31, 2020 by aspacecephalopod

[aspacecephalopod]

Looks like we've got us a CONVOY

Spoiler

-Log, Eng. Jane Kerman, day 150-

Apparently our first interplanetary target is Mars, the big Duna-like planet. There’s some debate about how useful its atmosphere is, so we’re sending two different lander designs out at the next transfer window. The Mars Quad lander launched first-it has four large outboard engine pods, four big airbrakes, and a crew capacity of 4. To propel it, the new stackable Mars 50/50 Tug was launched and docked. Then, a large fuel tank maxing out the weight of the Onion was launched to provide a drop tank for some much needed extra dV. It has 3000 m/s in the drop tank and another 5K in the tug, so hopefully Mars will accept this first offering. Also for those counting, getting one 35T lander to Mars took three launches of the largest rocket we have! Yikes. We need to get working on some form of electric propulsion soon to make for easier transfer ships.

Up next is the crew ship. Same tug and drop tank as before, but with a lightweight hab module with lots of crew space. Leia asked if we really needed a separate crew ship from the landers, so naturally I decided to make this the Phobos and Deimos lander! The crew cabin can detach from the tug and use monopropellant thrusters to maneuver and land. In addition, we also set up the Martian Moon Miner, which does exactly what the name suggests. Weighing in at a measly 5 tons, the 50/50 tug with a drop tank is massively overkill for this lander, but that’s exactly the point. One way or another, this ship is getting to its destination with over 12km/s of dV. Unlike the previous two ships in the Mars Convoy, this light payload allowed the miner and tug to launch together-only one more launch for a fuel tank.

Next up was the Octopus. A massive lander, it will be the primary mission lander with the Quad kept in reserve. The Octopus uses a large command deck and a hab module, which should provide plenty of space for our crew to chill on Mars. This required a whopping FIVE launches of the Onion launcher. What a drain on resources-but worth it, and the rest of the ships are much smaller. Eventually all the pieces were brought to their respective posts and the largest ship we’ve built from earth-by a huge margin-was complete! 300T of hopes, dreams and aspirations of Kerbalkind and the core of the mission.

The final two pieces of the mission were ground support-a two part road train rover like on Luna. Both have a new chemical rocket lander stage and will be sent off to mars with the same tugs as the rest of the fleet. Each used three launches-a Carrot to put the rover and landing modules into orbit, and then two Onions to get the tug together. Expensive! But with all that hardware in place, the Mars Convoy expedition is ready to go. Six ships, four to six brave Kerbals, and lots of complicated hardware. My fingers are crossed whoever we send can pull it all off.

As of now, here are all the ships ready for Mars. 270 days until we depart…

Lots (and lots and lots) or orbital assembly but the fleet of ships for Mars is go! We'll get back to the lunar crew soon, the mars crew needs an engineer and the lunar crew could use another crewmember or two...