Mission of Gravioli: Mostly Stock Mission to Mesbin's North Pole!

[Watermel00n]

 

(taken from the Whirligig World thread) 

Mesbin is a giant planet with 70 kerbin masses, extreme oblateness, no air and about 13 gees at the pole, though its fast rotation makes it have 1.3 gees at the equator where the KSC is located in this mod. Though many people have aimed to leave Mesbin for good, not many have explored its vast surface.

My aim for this mission to reach Mesbin's North Pole and gather science. Vehicles will be destroyed and replacements will be necessary, so I will use SimpleConstruction to build replacement vehicles in-situ.

Mods used:

EVE, Scatterer, SimpleConstruction, Kopernicus, Whirligig World, ModuleManager, ModularFlightIntegrator.

Spoiler

and yes, the name is a reference to Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity but kerbalised. I recommend the book!

Parts:

1.Preparation

2.Base Build

3.The Expedition Begins

4.Going Industrial

5.Grounded

6.Leaving

--------------------------------------------------

1. Preparation

The mission will be in two parts:

1. Launch on Rocket to 5 gee area

2. Drive to Mesbin's North Pole.

Spoiler

This was my original idea for the Driving Segment but it wouldn't work at 5 gs.

 

Introducing: 

THE GRAV-MOBILE!

Spoiler

i dont know how many wheels there are

The grav-mobile has workshops and mining stations. If it crashes I can build a new one. Rover wheels wouldn't work because of a weird bouncing glitch so I used NERVS and aircraft wheels.

Spoiler

Here's the WIP base with Jeb in a Smol Rover.

To be continued.

Edited June 22, 2022 by Watermel00n

[Vanamonde]

Mesbin looks like something strange happened to Ike. 

[Watermel00n]

2.Base Building

NOTE: all tests are done with cheat menu gravity increase to 5g

Spoiler

My first attempt was designed to land horizontally on its own power. But...

yup, that happened.

Second attempt! Skycrane and short stubby-legged base should make this more stable. 

After many hours, I nailed the test skycrane landing.

Ground tests showed the need of a rear airlock and more radiators as well as moving the drills higher.

To be continued.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Watermel00n

[Watermel00n]

3. The Expedition Begins

Base landing at ~1.7gs (rip my dreams)

Spoiler

The original launch vehicle. Literally the largest sub-orbital rocket I've ever made.

Booster detachment in a test.

Failed landings in the spoiler!

Spoiler

Attempt 1: Span out of control

Attempt 2: Phys-warp killed it.

Attempt 3: so close but span out of control at the last moment.

Attempt 4: The drill went missing  

Replaced drills.

Attempt 5: Snapped.

Attempt 6: Not even close.

Attempt 7: WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Attempt 8: *sweating*

 

Attempt 9.

*sweating*

*heavy breathing*

 FINALLY! 9 attempts, not counting the other tests and failed launches.

Base operations (recommended music I played while doing this)

Spoiler

Bye skycrane!

Base deployment.

Whoops, a solar panel's gone. Hopefully I won't have an electricity shortage.(that's called foreshadowing)

Built a small rover for the funsies!

Jeb: OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWwwww

Obligatory flag.

Building the OreMore should solve the electricity needs cuz the ore mining has been painful after running out of electricity EVERY NIGHT!

thank you very much

more solar panels for more of them ELECTRICITY.

Welcome to Optimism Base.

Population: 7

Crew: Jeb (PLT), Bill (ENG), Val (PLT), and some 4 other engineers I forgot.

 

 

 

To be continued.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Watermel00n

[Whirligig Girl]

interesting report. i'll be interested to see how this goes.

[Watermel00n]

4. Going Industrial

(image heavy warning)
 

Spoiler

Metal storage built.

Rocket parts storage built.

Well Bill crashed the rover...

...about 500m form base.

Shouldn't be that long a run.

The suns' going down.

Finally back at base.

More mining modules.

When I tried to build the Grav-Mobile this happened. Rip.

 

 

So why not build an entirely new base?

All our problems will be gone! The kraken attacks, electricity, glitching underground and wrongly placed docking ports! Here comes the imaginatively named...

 

OPTIMISM 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!11ONE111 *cough* *cough*

New modules. Notice the missing solar panel. Bill, i'm looking at you.

View from the new module.

New solar/fuel module.

...that's instantly rendered obsolete by the new solar farm.

Farewell Optimism... you caused me a lot of pain.

New 16 drill mining module built. I can feel the ground's pain.

A NERV powered Tug. Strangely, objects seem to move towards the equator. Is it the Coriolis effect or something? I don't know. Behind the tug is a new fuel/launchpad module.

A fuel module. (look kerbmun hi!!)

Attempt to dock ended up flipping the fuel module because I accidentally used phys-warp. I'll have to rethink this mission.

 

To be continued.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Watermel00n

[Maria Sirona]

1 hour ago, Watermel00n said:

Is it the Coriolis effect or something?

It's the same centrifugual force that makes Mesbin oblate

[Watermel00n]

Design of the Mesbin Surface Vehicle.

The original plan was to use a large surface vehicle to transport all the items needed to reach the pole, but it was too unstable and didn't cooperate with timewarp. It would also be putting all the eggs in one basket.

So I opted for a smaller vehicle carrying just enough rocketparts...

to build a workshop and mining if needed.

 

Yes, this mission will continue! 

[Watermel00n]

5.Grounded
 

Spoiler

Leaving Optimism 2, farewell old friend.

Sunset

Sunrise. Hopefully I'll leave the ore-less regions soon.

Uh-oh.

Perhaps an electric tractor was the better solution. This is my first attempt at a electric car, which proved unstable in phys-warp.

MK2 version which focused more on utilities than crew capacity.

Testing.

 

To be continued.

[Watermel00n]

6.Leaving

Spoiler

Building and docking the Carthing MK3.

Oops!

 

To be continued

[Watermel00n]

Ok guys, now that my grand tour is nearing completion, i aim to complete this mission at the end of this year! I will launch a new mission based on my earlier mistakes. Watch this thread!

[Watermel00n]

Sorry guys, my life got busier and my grand tour is taking longer than expected. I don't think i can finish this mission this year. Expect updates twice a week.

[Watermel00n]

7.Basically what happened to the first attempt

So i built the small electric car. I planned to use it like a tow truck to tow the rocket cars to the next ore deposit. This car also contained some solar panels for extra power.

Here is a picture of the electric car docking to the rocket car (how many times do i have to use the word car?)

Eventually I decided it would be smarter to just leave the rest of the rocket cars behind to increase the speed.

Notice how the front parts of the electric car bends?(the batteries) This was a major problem because the bending would sometime cause the rover to kraken or hit the ground, especially at 3x warp or greater, resulting in a 'splosion. Also, the front wheels of the rocket car were destroyed in a glitch, further reducing the amount of structural stability.

Then it blew up and I quit.

So what did I learn?
1. Rocket cars are a bad idea. If there's no ores, you can't move.

2. Remember to use autostrut.

3. Don't use too many visual mods like EVE and Scatterer. My game was lagging really bad.

4. Use Breaking Ground wheels. They are the best!

[Watermel00n]