The Long Rhode Home

[jimmymcgoochie]

This series is on a temporary pause while I figure out exactly what to do next. A few mods aren't playing nicely together so in-situ vessel construction is proving more difficult than it should be, while Kerbalism's glacial ISRU systems mean even if I built something it would take ages to fuel it up. The Lua launchsite is also a bit lacklustre with pretty strict mass and size limits on the launchpad and runway meaning it can't be used to launch large vessels. I might try some config bashing to resolve some of these problems.

However, some good news too- a deal has been struck with @TheSaintfor an undisclosed sum of likes on The Scrape Of Things To Come funds to license-build the Independence-class SSTO spaceplane, so I might need to do some test flights of that soon to see how it handles Rhode's thinner air and lower gravity.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Spoiler

Bonus episode!

"Why didn't you tell us about this before!?"

Gene's incredulous shout drew everyone in Mission Control's attention towards him- and Mortimer, who looked suitably abashed.

"I put them in the wrong drawer when the deal got signed and forgot they were there."

Gene sighed. "Well, at least we have them now, though how we're going to manage to build the thing when we have no parts left at all-"

"Actually, about that." Wernher interrupted. "We might have a way to build something on the ground, but it's going to involve dismantling a lot of the ground facilities across the KSC."

"Like what?"

"Oh, nothing important- the Astronaut Complex games room, the cookers in the VAB canteen, some of the consoles in Mission Control, maybe a Tracking Station dish or two, nothing too important." He ignored the increasingly indignant grumbling from the onlookers in the room. "If it gets us back into space- and back into proper contact with everyone on Lua- I say it's worth it."

Gene watched the onlookers' expressions change to grudging agreement.

"Alright, let's do it," he said. "But this better work!"

Much facility dismantling and one desperate but unsuccessful attempt by Linus to save the karaoke machine in the R&D rec room later, their newest creation was ready. Unfortunately...

"What do you mean, we don't have anything to launch?!"

"We didn't think that far ahead! Just stick a big box of rocks in it as a mass simulator or something."

And that's what they did.

Jeswell, Tatiana and Panand weren't too thrilled by having their first flight into space be in a new spaceplane of dubious construction ("Why do all the light switches ping like a pinball machine when I turn them on and off?"), but Mortimer assured them all that the design was tried and tested with only a single minor mishap in its otherwise blemish-free service; he refused to elaborate what said mishap was, which did nothing for the crew's confidence.

"This is, uh, Independent? Ready for takeoff." Pilot Jeswell reported.

"Cleared for takeoff, Independence," the tower controller replied.

"Here goes nothing..." Jeswell muttered, pushing the throttles to full power.

"This thing is quick!" Flight engineer Panand exclaimed as they broke through the sound barrier. "The engines are producing more thrust the faster we go!"

In what felt like mere seconds they were well on their way to orbital velocity and climbing high into Rhode's atmosphere, the four Broadsword engines straining in the tenuous air to keep on accelerating.

"Switch to closed cycle mode." Said Jeswell. Moments later there were a series of ominous bangs from behind them. "What was that?"

"Oh. Oops..." Mission scientist Tatiana muttered. "Wrong button. I think I just folded out the solar panels instead of switching over the engines."

"And the engines?"

"Oh. Right. I should probably do that." Jeswell and Panand gave their crewmate dirty looks as she finally(!) switched the engines over to burning onboard oxidiser, producing another surge of acceleration.

"MECO in three, two, one..." The cockpit fell silent. "Circularisation burn plotted, rig for space operations."

The aircraft's cargo doors opened, the docking port on top of the cockpit extended and the solar panels- were scattered over an unexplored continent far from the KSC, torn off after being deployed into hypersonic airflow. Oh well, better make this a quick mission then.

Cargo erectors rotated from stowed to deployed, the forty tons of miscellaneous dirt, rock and minerals were released into an orbit that will definitely never hit anything else that happens to go to a low equatorial orbit of Rhode, ever.

Let's just blame it on the fact that the mission planners had to do their planning sessions while kneeling at their desks because someone stole all the chairs from the Administration Building to make spaceplane parts. Don't even ask what parts they went into though, it's probably better not to know...

The re-entry burn was performed nominally, however a brief aerodynamic anomaly (read: wild flip-flopping and pointing backwards due to an imbalanced CoM before dumping all excess oxidiser and a lot of excess fuel too) meant that they fell well short of the KSC and had to fly the rest of the way back using the engines in air-breathing mode.

Low-speed handling was described as "like pushing a shipping container through treacle" but Jeswell still managed to set it down on the runway in one piece. Well, apart from the solar panels, but that goes without saying.

Great success! And fully reusable too, assuming the crew presses the right buttons at the right times *scowls at Tatiana* and with a huge delta-V reserve it should be capable of handling much heavier payloads. Maybe.

Spoiler

With access to space now secured thanks to two separate SSTO spaceplanes, the KSC team took an inventory of everything they had in space and what it was doing. Someone had obviously "borrowed" some components from the big screens in Mission Control because the colour balance was way off; either that or all the planets had weird splodges of colour all over them, but that's definitely not happening...

Ash Sat 1, currently orbiting Ash:

Interprobes Hydrus, Rock and Scaythe heading out of Rhode's SOI:

The Lua Glider, damaged beyond repair by some weird part glitch prolonged exposure to Lua's strange atmosphere.

The team at the Lua Space Centre decided to wheel it into their Spaceplane Hangar and dismantle it for much-needed parts. When they weren't live-streaming their karaoke sessions down to Mission Control much to Linus' dismay.

The three Mining Rovers on Lua, which were ordered to drive over to the Lua Space Centre to be decommissioned. Plans for a new all-in-one production system are still in their infancy, but it's clear that more work needs to be done to make off-world vessel production a reality.

It appears that Lua is bioluminescent at night, unclear if it's a soil-dwelling microbe or the rock itself glowing.

The early OrbSci probes are still gathering science around Rhode...

Lua...

And Armstrong:

The two scientific rovers on both Lua and Rhode have filled their hard drives with data and are trying frantically to transmit it back to the KSC so they can keep on sciencing, but with gigabytes of data to send and a maximum transmission speed of a mere 6kB/s it's going to take a while...

Meanwhile Solar Sat 1 is slowly descending towards the binary stars to take up permanent residence between Rhode and Hydrus and spot potentially hazardous asteroids heading Rhode's way.

This next contraption is listed as "Station One", though it's little more than a rudimentary orbital fuel depot with delusions of grandeur. Still, plenty of room to expand it.

And finally, the two Super Scanner satellites are busily scouring every inch of the surfaces of Rhode and Lua to map them like they've never been mapped before (because they haven't been mapped before!):

Any questions? *hands go up* No? Good. Class dismissed.

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/dcRVbOx

And thanks to @TheSaintfor the awesome SSTO that I'm probably going to butcher horribly in the not too distant future

Edited September 5, 2022 by jimmymcgoochie

[jimmymcgoochie]

When I loaded this save today, vessels in the background weren't generating power. Load one up, the solar panels point at the suns and all is well; look away again and it immediately stops producing power.

I've been trying to change over to the Kerbalism science only setup as the ISRU stuff in Kerbalism is painfully slow and I can't be bothered with all the life support etc. in this particular game, with limited success; Kerbalism is at version 3.16 and the science-only config only 3.14 and this seems to cause loading exceptions related to greenhouses in other mods that full-fat Kerbalism configures with life support related stuff. I'm going to keep poking at this install for a while, but if I can't resolve these issues then this report will have to end  .

 

UPDATE: I tried making a brand new install and loading an older save, but got a gigantic wall of Kerbalism exceptions as soon as it tried to load. Plan A is remove Kerbalism and see if it loads, plan B is make a new save and copy+paste the existing vessels over to it, plan C is start from scratch.

 

UPDATE 2: I don't even need Kerbalism, since I'm unlocking tech nodes as and when I feel like it and so actually doing experiments isn't important. The new install sans Kerbalism is working well enough so this series can continue after all.

Edited October 6, 2022 by jimmymcgoochie

[tilliepops]

On 10/3/2022 at 6:39 PM, jimmymcgoochie said:

When I loaded this save today, vessels in the background weren't generating power. Load one up, the solar panels point at the suns and all is well; look away again and it immediately stops producing power.

I've been trying to change over to the Kerbalism science only setup as the ISRU stuff in Kerbalism is painfully slow and I can't be bothered with all the life support etc. in this particular game, with limited success; Kerbalism is at version 3.16 and the science-only config only 3.14 and this seems to cause loading exceptions related to greenhouses in other mods that full-fat Kerbalism configures with life support related stuff. I'm going to keep poking at this install for a while, but if I can't resolve these issues then this report will have to end  .

 

UPDATE: I tried making a brand new install and loading an older save, but got a gigantic wall of Kerbalism exceptions as soon as it tried to load. Plan A is remove Kerbalism and see if it loads, plan B is make a new save and copy+paste the existing vessels over to it, plan C is start from scratch.

 

UPDATE 2: I don't even need Kerbalism, since I'm unlocking tech nodes as and when I feel like it and so actually doing experiments isn't important. The new install sans Kerbalism is working well enough so this series can continue after all.

any updates?

[jimmymcgoochie]

On 10/28/2022 at 6:56 PM, tilliepops said:

any updates?

Still got some things to sort out mod-wise, and a purpose/goal for the save beyond “knockoff version of Carnasa’s Coming Home”. It’s pretty low on my priorities so don’t expect too much in the near future.

[jimmymcgoochie]

This install is completely broken and won't load, all I get is an unending wall of exceptions whenever I try to load the save.

I tried making a new install and reinstalling the same mods, but with the "normal" Beyond Home, however this didn't work either as CKAN refused to install it, acting as if it was already installed when it wasn't.

I might make another more story-driven, stock-ish report in future, but for now this one is over.

[Maria Sirona]

15 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

This install is completely broken and won't load, all I get is an unending wall of exceptions whenever I try to load the save.

I tried making a new install and reinstalling the same mods, but with the "normal" Beyond Home, however this didn't work either as CKAN refused to install it, acting as if it was already installed when it wasn't.

I might make another more story-driven, stock-ish report in future, but for now this one is over.

F