(Chapter 3) Project Starman: Long Term Tekto Exploration

[Ultimate Steve]

This is a sequel to Project Odyssey:

It isn't necessary to read Odyssey before Starman, but if you want to, by all means, go ahead!

 

Prologue

Spoiler

 

The six crew of the Odyssey II were quickly ushered into a van.

“But we just got back!” protested Margaret. “I want to hug the grass, smell the air!”

“It’s been nearly 27 years!” agreed Munby.

“Well I’ve got some bad news for you,” said the driver of the van.

“You’re doing it this time?” asked the one in the passenger seat.

“Sure, why not… It’s been a while. So. Odyssey II, right?”

“Um… Yes,” said Bob. “You’ve been waiting for us, you even sent up the docking port melter thingy… Despite not contacting us for like three years after Eeloo! We thought our antenna was broken, but nothing looked broken! Did you just straight up stop talking to us?”

“So, thing is… There’s no easy way to put this… You’re not in the same universe you were in before.”

“April Fools was a few days ago,” said Jeb.

“I can’t explain it… Nobody can, but a couple years ago, astronauts started falling from the sky. First, we thought it was Kerbika, but they denied it, and then the ships kept getting bigger - And we have no idea where they are coming from.”

“Likely story,” said Val.

“Well let me prove it.” The driver stopped the van in a hangar. “Go on, get out.”

Jebediah stepped out of the van - only to be greeted by eight other Jebediah Kermans.

“What the -”

“Hi!” said Jeb.
“Hi!” said Jeb.
“Hi!” said Jeb.
“Hi!” said Jeb.
“Hi!” said Jeb.
“Hi!” said Jeb.
“Hi!” said Jeb.
“Hi!” said Jeb.
“Okay… I’ll tell you the rest later - there’s a press conference. Say as little as possible. And for the love of all things holy, do not mention Eeloo.”

“But we went there!” protested Bill.

“Do. Not. Mention. Eeloo. I’m Maloclm, by the way, nice to meet you.”

Malcolm herded the six astronauts onto a stage, surrounded by cameras.

 

“And today, six more so called astronauts have fallen out of the sky!” proclaimed the announcer. “Kerbikan propaganda… Or scientific misinformation? We decide for you on NFN, the only Not Fake News you can trust! Sponsored by the Moron party. Now what’s your name?”

 

 

“Uh…” somewhat flustered, Bob Kerman, the most famous one on the mission, began.

 

“Moron party? What’s going on?” whispered Margaret. Seeing as everyone else was lost, Jebediah faked a display of confidence.

“I am Jebediah Kerman.”

“Fascinating! Another Jebediah Kerman!” laughed the announcer. “And what’s next? Another Linus? Another Bob?”

“And another Valentina, too,” spoke Valentina. “And this is Munby, and this is Margaret. We are the crew of the Odyssey II, the ship that was dispatched from Kerbin 27 years ago to - “ Jebediah was cut off by laughter from the audience.

“Why, that was long after the first space program had been shut down!” laughed the announcer. “Built a spacecraft - using what money? Maybe to space, maybe barely to orbit - “

“It was a grand tour mission,” said an annoyed Valentina. “We visited all of the planets and all of the Moons. Stop joking around with us.”

“A grand tour?” The audience erupted in laughter again. “If we had gone - what a waste of money it would have been! And you would have gone to Eve - even more impossible! Unlike the last few, you aren’t even convincing!”

“Our ship is still in orbit, you know - and we have the rocks,” said Bill.

“Ah yes, the ships - probably nothing more than Kerbikan holograms, just like the others!”

“Okay, look - “ said Munby. “I don’t know what’s going on, or why you’ve decided to pull our legs like this - It was a big media thing. We broadcasted every landing, from the first planet to the seventh.”

“Look! These so called “Scientists” and “Engineers” can’t even get the number of planets right!”

“Okay, fine, two dwarf planets, five planets, however you want to count!” shouted a frustrated Munby.

“I thought you lot claimed there were ten!”

“Ten? What’s going on?” asked Val.

“Seven.” Jeb put his foot down.

“Oh really? Count them, please. I’m waiting.” prodded the announcer.

“Moho. Eve. Kerbin. Duna. Dres. Jool. And, well…” Jebediah remembered Malcolm’s warning about Eeloo.”

“Go on.”

“...Eeloo.”

The audience erupted into laughter once more, and began pelting the crew with tomatoes. They quickly rushed off the stage, back to where they came from, but not before the announcer could get off one final. “And they still say we should trust scientists!”

 

 

Jebediah ran up to Malcolm, putting his finger against his chest. “You. What the Bop is going on?”

 

 

“This universe’s Kerbin is chock full of idiots, that’s what,” Malcolm replied.

“...Oh.”Cut the “Other universe” bullcrap!”

“I take it your universe really only did have seven planets.”

“Yeah? And?” Malcolm gestured to a telescope. Jebediah walked up to it.

“...Oh.”

 

========== Some  time later

 

“This is the Kerbanian Astronautics and Snack Administration, or KASA.” Malcolm gestured around him. “We are only about 500 people, and of those, about 150 to 200 of us have fallen from space, from other universes like you. We don’t know how. Our goal is to find out why, and to try to send them back.”

“There are only 500 people working on this?” asked Margaret, astonished.

“Our space program, operating normally, had thousands!” said Val, shocked.

“Yeah, back home this would be the biggest mystery of, well, ever!” agreed Bob.

“There’s one small problem with that… The Idiot problem. In this universe, for whatever reason, since about 50 years ago, there has been a growing anti-intellectualism movement across Kerbin, especially in this country, Kerbania, and everyone has grown super paranoid of our neighbors, the Kerbikans… It is madness, but for a long time, the presidents have all been from either the Idiot party, the Imbecile party, or the Moron party - and people like it! Our universities have largely shut down, not out of policy, but out of declining attendance - It is just pure, unadulterated, madness!”

“And that’s not all,” said another important looking Kerbal. “Everyone appears to be getting more and more stupid over time. Everyone who comes into this universe gets stupid too, eventually, and we all only have a few years where we are useful on this project before we succumb. We don’t know why this is happening, and we cannot currently stop it.”

“So… A bunch of astronauts from other realities have all been sucked into this reality, where everyone is stupid?” asked Munby.

“Yes, as best as we can tell.”

“And there are nine Jebs now!” shouted one of the other Jebs.

“Hold on, this is dope, I’m gonna go hang with them, I’ll catch up with you!” said Jeb as he went over to the others.

“And I bet they collectively share one brain cell,” sighed Margaret.

“Are there more Vals?” asked Val.

“Yes - three Vals, four Bobs, but zero Bills, until now. You’re the first.”

“Gee, lucky me.”

“Any Munbys?” asked Munby hopefully.

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Aww.”

“So,” asked Bob, “What’s the plan? What are we doing about this?”

“Well, step one is information. We don’t know much, but there’s one constant in all of this - The vast majority of the crew popped into our universe after visiting Eeloo, and in most universes, Eeloo is a dwarf planet, or a planet, and not a moon of Sarnus. The prudent thing to do seems to be studying Eeloo. The space program in this universe was shut down ages ago, but we have attempted to restart it.”

“You couldn’t possibly hope to reach Eeloo with 500 employees!”

“Yeah… Fortunately we have a constant stream of space related hardware from other, more competent universes slowly trickling in. We have sent probes to Sarnus and the planets beyond, and have attempted to locate the source of the anomaly. We, unfortunately, have no leads, besides the fact that it probably has something to do with distance.”

“So, we just go back to space, hop in the Odyssey II, and jaunt on over to Eeloo, right?”

“It would be simple, if Eeloo was actually the cause of the anomaly. All the probes we’ve sent, they have not revealed much, if anything. We’re really just grasping at straws here, but we’re thinking the secret might be uncovered elsewhere. There is a chance it has something to do with Tekto.”

“Just a chance?”

“Yeah. Just a chance.”

“You randomly selected a moon?”

“We have nothing else to go off of. We’ve mapped all of Eeloo with every instrument under and over the sun, and we can’t figure it out. Tekto is the easiest one to explore, as it has an atmosphere. We’ll go everywhere else, eventually, but, we have most of the hardware to go to Tekto, and you’ve just shown up with the perfect interplanetary stage.”

“The Odyssey II?”

“Yes. May we use it?”

“After nearly 27 years in space, I think I speak for all of us when I say that we want nothing to do with the Odyssey II ever again.”

“Perfect! Now, without further ado, the fruits of the past ten years’ labor - Project Starman.”

 

Chapter 1 - Project Starman

Spoiler

Welcome to Project Starman, my quest to build a minimalist base to explore Tekto with! This is largely inspired by this video:

 

And the novel that video was based on. I haven’t read the book but I did read the wiki article on the book, and I quite like the concept - A space agency fighting against the government to explore a strange anomaly on a far away world using leftover hardware, even making the mission minimalist and more or less one way in order to get it done. This will be a bit less dystopian and edgy than the vibe I’m getting from the article about the book, though.

I’ve been noticing recently that my stories all eventually balloon into 90% story, 10% gameplay, with half of the gameplay being building sets and taking story shots. This slows the story down into effective abandonment, which is a trap I do not want to fall into this time. I’m going to try to keep this 20% story, 80% gameplay or thereabouts.

 

So, to sum up, we have a minimalist mission to explore Tekto, which I’ve tentatively capped at 500,000 funds, which is going to be mostly gameplay focused with some story in between.

 

Anyway, on with the story!

This is the Tekto Exploration System, also known as SOL-04. It isn’t completely finished yet, but it represents the most critical part of the Tekto base I’m planning on building, the part that will allow me to fly around the planet and explore it in a timely fashion.

 

My first plan was to just build a propeller plane to explore Tekto on, but it turns out that Tekto is pretty huge, and stock props don’t really work under physics warp, so that was a dead end. My second plan was a low speed, efficient rocket plane. I was able to go roughly ⅙ of the moon’s circumference with it, but that’s not enough.

 

My third idea was to make a massive airplane and mobile base with ISRU on board, so it could go forever, quickly, but it would be hard to maneuver at that scale, and would go against the minimalist feel I wanted, so I dropped it.

The next few ideas came all at once - Using a reusable boost stage (would require a stage recovery mod), reaction wheel based props (might still not be time warp friendly), installing a fuel breathing jets mod (I want this to be as close to stock as possible), and having the close in exploration done by a small deployable craft.

I went with none of those individually, but eventually combined them into this monstrosity:

This unwieldy contraption is three craft in one. How was supposed to work is that the large part, the boost stage, boosts the craft to effectively orbital velocity but not orbital altitude, separates, performs a boostback burn, and lands back at the base to be refueled.

 

The second part, the smaller plane, would do glide skip maneuvers to fly up to half of the moon away, and land near a site of interest with a full fuel load.

 

The third part, the paramotor, would exit the cargo bay of the smaller plane, and would fly directly to the locations of interest, landing, doing science, planting flags, and looking for anything that might help the stranded kerbonauts get back to their home universes.

 

After it was done, it would return to the cargo bay and dock. Then, the small plane with the paramotor inside it would fly back to the base under its own rocket power, gliding to a stop, and would use rover wheels to re-dock with the large plane. Both would refuel and then would repeat the process for another geographic region.

Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done. The paramotor was the most challenging part. At first I just ripped someone’s paramotor design off of KerbalX and attempted to modify it to suit my needs, but it just didn’t work out, as the single propellor just didn’t play well with SAS or even MechJeb’s smart A.S.S., it just kept rolling no matter what I did, so I eventually just clipped a second, oppositely spinning motor into the first one and reduced the power of both to compensate.

 

After a frustrating time trying to get it to fit in a Mk2 bay, trying to get it able to land in a Mk2 bay, dock to the plane, and fly quickly, I realized the solution: Drop the para part, just make it a motor. The new craft, which I’ve been calling a hovercraft (not that type of hovercraft), is VTOL, powered by 2 counter rotating ducted fans, has a docking port, lands on the docking port, and can land in - and fit in - the cargo bay of the smaller plane no problem. I even had some extra room to mount science experiments in the cargo bay.

 

Speaking of the smaller plane, this was the part that required the least iteration. The large plane, however, had endless stability issues, as it had to be stable on its own, in space, in the atmosphere, at varying fuel levels, and with the small plane attached, with the position constrained. I’m gonna skip over most of this, but it is complete.

 

When I went to test it however, it turns out, Tekto’s atmosphere is even more oppressive than I remember it being (although I have only been there once, years ago). 95km, ~1.25atm, it just sucks for getting off of (but is great for flying around on). I’m pretty sure you could make a brick fly on Tekto, but getting a plane to fly long distance, then do a flip in the atmosphere, is, well, not advisable.

So I changed the mission profile - The large plane will launch into low Tekto orbit, detach the small plane, de orbit, and land back at the base after one orbit. The small plane will de orbit and target its landing site, land there, and after the hovercraft explores, it will go into orbit again and de orbit over the base again.

This kinda removes some of the concept of the mission being one way, but I’ll take that over not being able to get anywhere.

The last major change to the flight profile came when I realized that the small plane could fly with the cargo bay open and get thrust from the hovercraft - enough to fly. Not only that, but enough to fly pretty fast, too - Useful to get closer to a target, or useful to fly back to the base if I ran out of fuel short of the base.

And that’s pretty much it so far. It costs about 106k, but about half of that is the hovercraft’s RTG and the science equipment on the small plane. I still have to design the actual base, a rover, a mapping satellite, possibly a boat and a submarine, launch vehicles for those, and a way to get it to Tekto (Probably utilizing the Odyssey II).

 

But that’s all for now! I hope you enjoy! Finals are coming up soon, so progress on this will probably be slow for a while.

 

 

I will make a note here. Somehow, my entire life, I have misread "Tekto" as "Tetko" and referred to it as such throughout the entirity of Nightmares: A Jool Sarnus 10 Story. For this I sincerely apologize, as it was a really dumb mistake... But nobody noticed, so that makes me feel a bit better!

The ultimate goal of this is to map out and possibly name a number of geographic features on Tekto, kinda similar to Brotoro's old Long Term on Laythe series. Whether I'll actually get that far remains to be seen... Half of the stuff I do spirals into year long epics and the other half fizzles out after one chapter.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Ultimate Steve

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 2: Liftoff

Spoiler

"Smile!"

There was a bright flash, Tanya Kerman blinked.

-120,988 funds, 379,012 funds remaining.

"So, you're going to another planet?" asked the lone NFN reporter.

"Well, moon."

"Right, right... What's the difference again? Moons are brighter or something?"

"Moons orbit planets."

"That's a fancy word."

"Moons are generally smaller than planets, and circle around them. Planets, in turn, circle around the sun."

"Fascinating, fascinating. I don't know much about rockets... Proud of that... But doesn't that look a bit dangerous?"

"Oh this thing? Couldn't be a safer ship in the whole universe." Tanya kicked the front tire. Unfortunately, that part was a lie. It was a complicated reusable set of three separate craft, flanked by four solid rocket boosters as it was too heavy to SSTO from Kerbin itself.

"And a one way trip, too!"

"Oh, it isn't one way. The other crew on board the Odyssey II will drop me off, go do sciencey things, and pick me up a few years later."

"That assumes they survive."

"I'm not worried about them."

"And being alone that long."

"I work better alone... And besides, I've got that robot thing that they are sending me along with to keep me company and do the mining."

"Do you believe that Plock is real?"

"Absolutely."

"Noted. How close can I stand?"

"Not this close."

"Ok." The reporter took a single step back."

"Further." The reporter took another step back. "Like, a few hundred meters... These rockets tend to get pretty loud."

"Noted."

"And if it explodes..."

"Also noted." The reporter turned a bit more pale and abruptly turned away. He stopped to shout one last question over his shoulder. "Do you even want to come back?"

"I... I'm not sure. I'll let you know when I get there! What's your name?"

"Wheaton, Wheaton Kerman."

"Pleasure to meet you, Wheaton, I'll name a mountain after you!"

Tanya strapped herself in. "Well, here goes. Worst case scenario, I die. No biggie." she chuckled to herself. She pondered the question the reporter had asked her. Does she want to return? To a planet getting supernaturally dumber and dumber by the day? Maybe... They seemed so happy in their ignorance... But she had a job to do. Explore Tekto, see if this could somehow be reversed.

"Tanya to Jeb 2."

"Jeb 2, reading you loud and clear. Man I wish I was there. Not the spending years alone part. But like, man, that ship sure is something."

"She sure is." Jebediah 2 was the sole mission controller for this flight due to the staff being so small.

"Space weather looks good, a decent -270 Centigrade, solar wind going a bazillion miles per hour, and pretty much no traffic in the past several years. In the event of emergency, please consult the emergency supply of stale memes stashed behind your headrest. Good luck, you're go for launch whenever. We believe in you, Tanya."

"Thank you, Jebediah."

Tanya took a deep breath.

"Three. Two. One." Tanya pressed the ignition button. Nothing happened. "Uh, Jeb, I think we've got a faulty igniter."

"Hmm. Odd. I'll talk to - " Suddenly, all four solid rocket motors burst to life!

"AAAAAAH! Oh, okay, here we go. Talk to whoever did the quality control on those igniters, Jeb!" As the craft barelled down the runway, Tanya kept it centered and gently pulled back on the stick.

"The Tekto Exploration Craft is Airborne!"

Tanya soared theough the skies, flying higher and higher.

She watched Kerbin slip away as she went supersonic.

The boosters burned out and decoupled safely - the most dangerous part of the mission was over.

"Good ignition on the twin aerospikes," reported Tanya.

"Fantastic! Now you just need to manage your fuel well," responded Jeb 2.

Tanya did indeed manage her fuel well, and minutes later, she was in Kerbin Orbit.

Launch one of Project Starman was a success.

Due to limited funding and engineering ability, the remaining launch vehicles were rather spartan. The Tekto Base was effectively launched on a single "Thoroughbred" solid rocket motor.

-66,343 funds, 312,669 funds remaining.

Not much to say about it - It is a base. It has a cool upper balcony and looks kinda cool from the one angle I didn't take any pictures of.

The third launch was the Tekto ISRU rover, piloted by the namesake of the series - none other than the Starman himself - But more on him later. This was a very hefty payload, requiring 3 SRBs instead of 1.

-112,681 funds, 199,988 funds remaining.

The final launch of the chapter, the Tekto Submarine, was piloted by Jebediah number 5, and was on the cheaper end.

-38,159 funds, 161,829 funds remaining.

Not gonna lie, I designed this like a month ago and have already forgotten how it works... So here's hoping I can successfully operate it when it comes time!

This was the first ship to actually dock to the Odyssey II. For some of the bigger stuff, I don't actually know how its getting to Tekto, but, well, I'll find a way.

161,829 funds remaining, and in that amount, I have to include:

• Tekto scanning satellite
• Landers for the mothership's outer planets grand tour
• Hopefully a light rover for use near the base on Tekto
• Hopefully a very light Tekto system exploration package remaining in Tekto orbit so Tanya can fly around a bit.
• The crew launch for the mothership
• Any launches to add more docking ports to the mothership and launch things I forgot about.

Speaking of things I forgot about, how does spare tires sound? Because I definitely forgot those!

 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 3: Onward and Upward (and Downward)

Spoiler

-25,320 funds. 136,509 funds remaining.

Shortly after the events of the previous chapter, the Tekto Scansat was launched, although there's nothing stopping it from lingering around Tekto for a bit, re docking to the main ship, and scanning all the other worlds, although that would be tedious, so I don't know what I'm going to do.

The satellite was too light to justify a larger launch vehicle, but due to the awkwardness of the required equipment, it looks ridiculous and is super draggy.

As such, we went for a very steep ascent trajectory.

The docking was done with no RCS, but due to the magnetic docking ports, I've been used to doing RCS free dockings on small stuff for ages now, so no big deal. Kinda wish I had a reaction wheel though.

Now that I got a better look at the ship, I decided that the ISRU setup and the base will be docked opposite each other. Unfortunately, due to an incident above Laythe during the previous grand tour mission, a docking port is missing and will have to be delivered later.

The ISRU rover was, however, brought in early to the last currently available docking port on the mothership.

"Ah, finally!" said Jeb 5. "The top secret robot shows up! Someone to talk to!"

"Hello, Jebediah Kerman. I am the Starman," spoke the robot in a robotic voice.

"Man, if Kerbin found out about you... That you weren't just a mining AI like we told them..."

"That would certainly be an unmitigated disaster," responded the Starman.

"Well, what are they going to do, send the space police after us? Half of them don't even believe Plock exists."

"Unfortunate, but I was thinking - not for our sake, but for theirs."

"So, Starman, wanna come in here and play some spaceball? Space bowling? VR? Beatsaber never gets old."

"I am unable."

"What do you mean?"

"This is just a facade - I am not this avatar. I am built into the Cupola surrounding me. I am immobile."

"Well isn't that great."

"One does not easily separate a supercomputer from its surroundings."

"Well, at least the rest of the crew is coming up tomorrow..."

 

The rest of the crew did not, in fact, come up tomorrow.

It was two weeks of agonizing torture for Jeb 5 up in space before the mission got off of the ground. Why?

In order to save money, KASA had been using an old tourism SSTO for general crew transportation. This early SSTO, designed for 10, maybe 12 flights, had now completed over 100, and was showing its age.

Endless mechanical faults plagued the craft, and on the days it worked, the weather was bad, or Jeb 1, the designated pilot, showed up drunk, but everything eventually lined up.

The crew:

1. Jeb 1, the most senior, and the most stupid of all of the Jebs, just piloting the plane up and down.
2. Brian Kerman, scientist
3. Donvan Kerman, engineer
4. Luvis Kerman, scientist
5. Carbas Kerman, pilot
6. Magel Kerman, engineer

Due to the nature of the craft, the cost of the launch was negligible.

"And, off we go!" cheered Donvan.

"As long as it doesn't end up like that attempt where an engine failed halfway through the runway and we just barely stopped before the end," nervously remarked Luvis.

"Relax," slurred Jeb 1, "I'm awesome. I can do anything."

"Jeb are you drunk again?" asked Magel.

"Oh shut up, Bagel," he responded.

"It's Magel!"

"And, liftoff!'

"Woah, that's steep!" cowered Brian.

"It's a sporty thing, isn't it?" said Jeb. "Personal point to point space travel for some old gazillionaire."

"We're supersonic already?" said an astonished Luvis.

"You bet!"

A minute or two later, the spaceplane surpassed mach 4, and kicked on its rockets, startling the crew. Jeb nonchalantly explained that although the spacecraft didn't need four engines, it was a style choice, making space travel artificially aggressive to sell it better. As if space travel needed more aggressiveness.

Jeb 1 entered orbit, passed out, woke up for about 2 minutes to plan a rendezvous, and passed out again, waking up right on time a few hundred meters from the target.

"Huh? Oh. My bad. Wrong rendezvous target," said Jeb.

"Brian to Tanya."

"Tanya here... Hey, Brian!"

"How've you been holding up this past month or so? Must be lonely."

"Oh I'm fine."

"What have you been doing? asked Donvan.

"Oh, twiddling my thumbs mostly."

"Haha! No, for real."

"They've got calluses now."

"...Okay. Hey, Jeb, can we take this time to bring her to the main ship?"

"Well, you see, Donvan," he began, "this thing only has six seats. Now tell me, can you plot a rendezvous?"

"I mean, yeah, probably."

"Alrighty, let's free up a seat." Jeb pressed a button and the door swung out wildly, explosively decompressing the ship. Fortunately everyone was equipped with an emergency helmet closing system. As everyone screamed, Jeb 1 exited the craft and de orbited himself.

Everyone plead for Jeb to return to the ship, as what he was doing was suicidal, but he just dozed off again.

He was awoken by the sound of his parachute opening.

"Oh hey it worked! A bit off target, though. How y'all doing up there?"

"You SURVIVED?!?!?!?!?!?" asked Donvan.

"Naturally."

"How are we gonna land the plane?"

"Well, I didn't think of that, but ehh we'll think of something." Jeb passed out again.

He woke up in the water a short distance from the island airfield. "Man, so close. Anyway, anyone got a boat?"

 

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by Ultimate Steve
tetko -> tekto

[Maria Sirona]

Oh dang. Didn't notice at first, but now i found this.

Time to bingeread!

On 5/1/2022 at 7:42 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

“And today, six more so called astronauts have fallen out of the sky!” proclaimed the announcer. “Kerbikan propaganda… Or scientific misinformation? We decide for you on NFN, the only Not Fake News you can trust! Sponsored by the Moron party. Now what’s your name?”

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by Maria Sirona

[Maria Sirona]

9 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Tetko Scansat was launched, although there's 

You did it again

[Maria Sirona]

Content?