Jump to content

Starbound - A JNSQ Adventure [Chapter 15]


Recommended Posts

kjbWJII.png

BLVt0HS.jpeg

Look ma, I made a new banner!

S T A R B O U N D

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Introduction

Oh boy, here we go again! I'm Misguided Kerbal, and here I am starting but yet another mission report (hopefully, of course, we'll manage to actually see this one through to completion!) I've been meaning to complete a full JNSQ playthrough for quite a while now, so I am seriously quite excited for this.

This playthrough, of course, will be in the titular JNSQ - sandbox mode, but with my own personal restrictions, as I really do dislike the grind of Science and Career mode and would much rather prefer to be able to just do my own thing. This vision of the Kerbalverse is all entirely of my own personal interpretation, of course - although you'll definitely spot strong influences from real (primarily American, for rather obvious reasons, I suppose) programs and projects I greatly admire, such as Raptor9's absolutely spectacular craft catalog and the like. I'll be playing with BARIS, which, despite all the trouble it's given me (which, I suppose, is actually it just functioning properly...), I still do consider it the overall pinnacle of part failure mods, along with Snacks! - combined, I do think this adds quite a reasonably Kerbalized amount of mild challenge, for the sake of just general flavor and enjoyment and all that, et cetera, et cetera.

So what exactly are we doing here? Great question, narrating voice in my head superimposed into the perspective of you, the dear reader! The aspirational end goal: land a kerbal on every single body in the JNSQ system, and thoroughly document all of the trials and tribulations experienced in the process. We'll see how it goes.

 

Restrictions

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Modlist

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Completed Missions

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Chapters

Prelude [Rewritten]

Chapter 1 [Rewritten]

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

 

October 2023 TOTM

A huge thanks to everyone who's supported this mission report of mine! Here's to many more (hopefully, on-time) chapters to come!

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
Substantial OP revisions!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[Edit] - If you're reading this after the fact, you may notice an amount of various (mostly visual, as they should've been revised as well) inconsistencies with the rest of the early chapters. I've rewritten this chapter from the ground up in an attempt to better embody the original message I wanted to convey - that is, I do hope this rewrite does overall provide a much more poignant (and hopefully, well-written!) introduction to what I want to accomplish. To supplement such, of course, I may have taken a couple of new screenshots - hopefully the difference isn't necessarily too jarring compared to what was originally there. If there is enough demand for such, I have no problem archiving the old chapters in an attached spoiler or the like, as I've already gotten them personally archived with the conclusion of each chapter rewrite.

 

Prelude

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." - John F. Kennedy

wg1C0zF.jpeg

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
Major revisions - a rewrite, in its entirety, from the ground up!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[Edit] - Completely rewritten from the ground up! I have to say, I really didn't think I'd have so much fun going back and rewriting everything, (well, okay, we're still only on the first chapter, but I digress) but here we are! Hopefully that keeps up, anyway - and also, I do hope the additional story beats added now are quite enjoyable.

I meant to get this out on the same day as the prelude, but I started messing with some mods. Long story short, we have a few more mods to add to the modlist! Most notable are BARIS and Snacks, since I decided I needed more of a challenge. I think it'll be quite interesting to see how it goes since I've never really played with life support or failures before.

 

Chapter 1

"The rocket will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet." - Wernher Von Braun

ENYdpSs.png

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
Major revisions - a rewrite, in its entirety, from the ground up!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This one is a bit long, and might be slightly boring. To be fair, Mercury-Redstone wasn't the most exciting program. However, since this is complete, bigger, better missions will be coming up soon!

 

Chapter 2

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Wernher Von Braun." - Tom Lehrer

3Nr8GUG.png

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well.. I would have gotten this out earlier, but I proceeded to have 6 launch failures in a row, literally. If you thought the last one was long and boring... here we go again. I promise things will get more exciting - unless we happen to have 6 launch failures in a row again. In fact, I originally thought I only had 5 launch failures in a row but I got so confused I missed one. 

 

Chapter 3

"Our two greatest problems are gravity and paperwork. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." - Wernher Von Braun

HL2W9Ay.png

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Sorry for the delay, the first time I wrote this chapter I was about 90% done when I accidentally hit refresh, and the forum editor didn't catch it like it usually does. Also, I've been trying to fix a few mod issues (all fixed now!). Anyways, this isn't the most exciting of chapters, but it does lay the foundation for the next one.

Small sidenote, I probably spend the majority of the time I spend writing chapters actually just looking for a quote, so if anyone has any good quotes, please send them to me. 

 

Chapter 4

"You're going very fast when you're on orbit, going around the Earth once every hour and a half." - Robert Crippen

06r6uxV.png

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the design of your Explorer rocket.

The only failure mod I have deal with is via kerbalism, and that does not have any failure modes for the fuel tanks, but I have encountered engine failures on several occasions. Similar to what you mentioned, I have designed most of my crewed vessels with multiple engines out of fear that a  failure of the engine will strand/kill the crew. And with requiring life support there really isn't a possibility for a rescue.

Good call on running several static fire tests.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  On 6/8/2022 at 2:26 AM, cxg2827 said:

The only failure mod I have deal with is via kerbalism, and that does not have any failure modes for the fuel tanks, but I have encountered engine failures on several occasions.

Expand  

Interesting, out of all mods I would have thought Kerbalism would have had failure modes for everything.

 

  On 6/8/2022 at 2:26 AM, cxg2827 said:

Similar to what you mentioned, I have designed most of my crewed vessels with multiple engines out of fear that a  failure of the engine will strand/kill the crew. And with requiring life support there really isn't a possibility for a rescue.

Expand  

Indeed, I originally designed a lot more spacecraft for future programs, but with lessons learned here, I'm going back and designing them with even more redundancy out of fear. It's something that I never even considered before installing a failures mod, which has been really eye-opening. You really have to do a lot more testing and design than just 'haha space rocket go boom.'

 

  On 6/8/2022 at 2:26 AM, cxg2827 said:

Good call on running several static fire tests.

Expand  

Hopefully, they actually work!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This one is a short one, and for once I don't actually have that much commentary. Here we go!

 

Chapter 5

"Zero G and I feel fine!" - John Glenn

wrcKxq0.png

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  On 6/15/2022 at 7:03 AM, Maria Sirona said:

Also, i thing the space program needs more reliable non-military rockets (just for that awesome diversity, if nothing else).

Expand  

Definitely! I do have a bad habit of designing a singular launcher (at least, one for each size class). I switch them out if they get old, but there's not much variety. I'll try my best to mix it up this save.

 

  On 6/15/2022 at 7:03 AM, Maria Sirona said:

I really enjoyed that storytelling part, more of that in the future please :D

Expand  

I'll try my best, though I did mostly do some extra storytelling for this one since it's an important mission. I do enjoy writing storytelling parts, but it does get a bit exhausting (and repetitive, I feel. You can only have the same launch sequence so many times.) I do think it adds a lot of neat perspective for sure, so I'll try my best to incorporate some more.

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Sorry for the long wait - I had everything ready but I just didn't have time to write this, since I was getting into a few other commitments.

 

Chapter 6

"I see Earth! It is so beautiful!" - Yuri Gagarin

ph6bDyI.png

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Getting back into the rhythm of things!

 

Chapter 7

"Shoot for the Moon - even if you miss it, you will land among the stars." - Unknown

hGYVmi9.png

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by Misguided Kerbal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  On 7/10/2022 at 4:19 AM, Misguided Kerbal said:

"Shoot for the Moon - even if you miss it, you will land among the stars." - Unknown

Expand  

False. Any KSP player knows that id you miss the Moon you will land among the humans, or end up in a high and remote Earth orbit, or even worse, get sent to a solar orbit

  On 7/10/2022 at 4:19 AM, Misguided Kerbal said:

Minmus was a ball of rock, just

Expand  

HERESY! Minmus is made of ice... Cream! Mint-flavored ice cream! :D

  On 7/10/2022 at 4:19 AM, Misguided Kerbal said:

when an engineer's mother came to tell him a bedtime story and tuck him into bed, he realized that wrapping a satellite in nice warm blankets would probably make it nice and smug

Expand  

Awww, that's so cute (:

Edited by Maria Sirona
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  On 7/10/2022 at 6:13 AM, Maria Sirona said:

HERESY! Minmus is made of ice... Cream! Mint-flavored ice cream! :D

Expand  

Green cheese! :sticktongue:

  On 7/10/2022 at 6:24 AM, Maria Sirona said:

Oh, why do you need an equatorial orbit? Isn't an inclined orbit better because it goes over more surface?

Expand  

I didn't think of that, because I'm dumb The Pioneer satellites are pretty much engineering testbeds, so there's not much (I literally just stuck a magnetometer and a thermometer on it, and only because it looked cool). In the future, I'll send dedicated satellites (I have SCANSAT installed), but for now I just stuck them into equatorial orbits because they looked cool. They might be useful as relays for future missions.

  On 7/10/2022 at 6:24 AM, Maria Sirona said:

Also, poor kerbonauts :(;.;

Expand  

BARIS is a cruel mistress. Luckily, I did check back up on the Astronaut Corps and they're all okay.

LBi3evz.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  On 7/10/2022 at 4:19 AM, Misguided Kerbal said:

18 days later (which confused me, since the previous transfer was only 2 days), Pioneer-3 arrived at Minmus. (I am still confused about why that took so long. My best guess is just different transfer timings.)

Expand  

2 day transfer to minmus is pretty quick. Looking at your trajectories for Mun and Minmus intercept, it looks like you are burning for short-transit instead of delta-v efficient. from my experience, a hohmann transfer to minmus is usually 7-8 days.

A rocket with enough Delta-V to get into Mun orbit should also be able to reach Minmus typically. If you aren't already, use the included Delta-V chart they added with the mod as reference. For Minmus, i usually wait for the space center to be under the path of Minmus' orbit so I can launch into it's plane and not worry about the inclination change. This makes the transfer burn a little easier as well.

I also recommend downloading PreciseNode, as this makes plotting transfers so much easier (I dont see it on your mod list).
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  On 7/13/2022 at 3:35 AM, cxg2827 said:

2 day transfer to minmus is pretty quick. Looking at your trajectories for Mun and Minmus intercept, it looks like you are burning for short-transit instead of delta-v efficient. from my experience, a hohmann transfer to minmus is usually 7-8 days.

Expand  

Looking back at what I did, I think I forgot to account for the Minmus transfer windows. I was launching at odd times, that's probably what screwed the transfers and astrogator up.

  On 7/13/2022 at 3:35 AM, cxg2827 said:

A rocket with enough Delta-V to get into Mun orbit should also be able to reach Minmus typically.

Expand  

Yeah, Pioneer-2 did get to Minmus, but it was about 100 m/s short of the braking burn. With the SRBs stuck on, I got the boost I needed for Pioneer-3.

  On 7/13/2022 at 3:35 AM, cxg2827 said:

For Minmus, i usually wait for the space center to be under the path of Minmus' orbit so I can launch into it's plane and not worry about the inclination change. This makes the transfer burn a little easier as well.

Expand  

That's probably a smart idea, I'll keep that in mind for the future. 

  On 7/13/2022 at 3:35 AM, cxg2827 said:

I also recommend downloading PreciseNode, as this makes plotting transfers so much easier (I dont see it on your mod list).

Expand  

Never heard of it before, I'll go check it out! Although the mod list isn't up to date, I've been adding mods. I should probably get around to updating it actually.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...