Interstellar Dreams - Kolonization [MKS-KSPIE-others]

[kurgut]

Hi !

I will post here significant log about this career, which has already started, not every flight tho, just the ones I find interesting to share ! The save is started already so for a while it will be getting up to date.

The goal is to colonize every possible body, and establish permanent colinies as much as we can. Harvest everything. Every last piece of ore, the last picogram of space dust, the last bit of antimmater, even absorb the Sun, if we could. Incentive given on complex ISRU chains, on top of MKS (see below). And finally, to claim Kerbals superiority over the konwn Universe, and show the Kraken who is the boss. Also calm down maybe ? 

 

Additional career rules/ bits&bobs (see Gameplay mods used below too) :

- science progression is heavely nerfed (custom patches), just to not be bored after Minmus. 

- no quickload on dumb mystakes, kraken emergency reload allowed

- To add challenges, make the end game more interseting : I cannot launch "complicated" ressources from Kerbin (all Nuclear ressources except early tech, all charged particles, antimatter, maybe some epxensive gas as well, some manufactured MKS ressources maybe too). Meaning If have a KSPIE reactor I can launch it, but without fuel. To acquire theses ressources, I have to ISRU them (not from kerbin tho, too easy), and either use them in-situ, or ship them back to Kerbin where the amount recovered will be stored in the KSC warehouse (my notepad basically ^^), to be available for future launches. I believe this will open new interesting gameplay loops, and avoid the I-throw-funds-at-problems in regards to KSPIE, and also give each engine/situation a more unique feel, and a greater sense of achievement. 

- Custom Engines nerf : nerf all engines ISP at sea level by *0.6, thus forcing me to make at least a 2 stage rocket to reach orbit, contrary to stock where rocket SSTO is absurdly easy, and giving more value to near future stuff when unlocked.

 

- Mods used (most noticeable ones) : 

Spoiler

Gameplay :

KVASS (building rocket takes time)

Custom Engines nerf : nerf all engines ISP at sea level by *0.7, thus forcing me to make at least a 2 stage rocket to reach orbit, contrary to stock where rocket SSTO is absurdly easy, and giving more value to near future stuff.

KSPIE

Kerbal Launch Failure

USI MKS/LS

Rational Ressources (using lower ressources abundance/rarity settings)

Persistent Rotation

Real Chute

Scansat

Extraplanetary Launchpads

KIS/KAS

FMRS

Planet packs :

Quack Pack (3 planets, inner solar system past Moho, very challenging destination (h e a t + Deltavvvvvvvvvvvv) )

OPM

Kcalbeloh

Parts :

B9 aerospace/HX

Benjee10 MMSEV, ORION (only the capsule)

Cryo engines/tanks 

FFT (for now only tanks (because they're 1000x times better than KSPIe ones, and maybe engines too at some point, if so they'll be patched in KSPIE functionnality)

Infernal robotics

KerbalFoundries

KPBS

Near Future suite (heavely pruned, no reactor, no engines, mostly structural and tank parts kept)

OPT (no engines)

Procedural parts / B9 procedural wings / procedural fairings

Station Parts Expansion Redux

SXT

Visuals : 

Spectra

AVP-OPM component

DOE / planetshine / shaddy / shabby / scatterer / tufx / TU / Better kerbol / Io visuals (tweaked) / Neidonplus (no moons, only visual revamp) / random personnal tweaks

 

- Current state of exploration / kerbal presence :

Spoiler

Kerbin : space station (permanent presence)                                             Mun : space station, planned mun base                                                 Minmus : manned landings

Eve/Gilly : unmanned landing/scan

Duna/Ike : first interplanetary manned mission on route (3 crew, land on duna/ike) / unmanned landing/scan

Moho : unmanned landing/scan

Blas : unmanned flyby

Jot : unmanned flyby

Cind : it's so damn hot / unmanned mission ongoing

Dres : on route unmanned mission

Jool : on route unmanned mission

 

- Chapters :

Spoiler

Chapter 1 : Usual buckets & firecrackers beginnings

Chapter 2 : Deep Space Pebble, TDRS & Munokhod

Chapter 3 : Starlab-1, Minmus BOOTS, and inner planets exploration

Chapter 4 : Kerbin surface activities, Deep space telescopes & Eve foldable glider

 

See you in deep space !  

Edited June 26, 2023 by kurgut

[kurgut]

 Chapter I : Usual buckets & firecrackers beginnings 

 

So I sadly don't have any screenshot from my early game, but it followed the usual route : hoppers, hoppers, hoppers, and hop... ! orbiter !

I sent some probes first to explore the Mun and Minmus, as well as early Scansat sattelites, that would serve as polar relays as well. I then did a first batch of crewed manned mission, landed on the Mun and Minmus.

The actual first picture we have is from the first rendez-vous & docking in LKO :

The front page of the Kerbal Space Gazette had the headline "the First ever Space Kiss" :

Sadly at that time, the last picture was censored due to the interstellar law on spaceporn media. 

Please contact me if you find the very rare uncensored version ! 

 

After that, with some new shiny but still krappy tech unlocked, I sent the first missions to Eve and Duna. Here's a picture of the probe, Marinok, in the Vab. The design will prove to last and be used extensively by the space program for inner planets exploration, while keeping the general design and improving it along later :

 

Here's my first multi flyby probe sent to Blas and the inner system, those very short orbital periods and gravity assists opportunities makes it very enjoyable and challenging to fly there, since the DeltaV requirement + heat are crazy ! Those planets are also VERY close to Kerbol, with shorts orbital periods, meaning that you can launch there every few days.
Mission control noticed and acknowledged the presence of this tiny caked shaped moon : Geet.
First spectrometry results induced that the yellow tint of the Blas planet was due to ancient cosmic-banana-radiations.
Further investigations will be concluded to evaluate if the surface ocean is indeed made of banana smoothie, thus providing infinite life support supply for near future kolonization...
Hopes the heat won't too bad when flying by Cind, the lava planet close to Kerbol... (spoiler : you know what will happen...^^)

 

Finally some pictures of an evening relaxing flight, to ferry a few tourists to the Island Airfield and back, on the good old Cesnuk !

Cheers

Edited June 17, 2023 by kurgut

[kurgut]

 Chapter 2 : Deep Space Pebble, TDRS & Munokhod 

Continuing with the better unlocked, I sent 3 new sattelites over to Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus, with better Scanning equipment, so kerbals could get amazed by how beautiful our planets are, full of precious ressources and biomes to explore !

The one launched to Kerbin : As you can see, it keeps the core design of the Marinok serie, slightly modified  

It's named Scanuk-2 (who is even naming those spacecrafts can you tell me ?^^)

D.S.P.

Some days later, our 2 brave kerbonauts Bob & Bill, performed their first rendez-vous with a class-A D.S.P. (Deep Space Pebble), which was ask to be investigated by Mission Kontrol :

Mission kontrol said to be very careful and respect to the letter interstellar security protocoles about such things as "contamination", "radiation", "collision", "death", and certainly not
attempt any EVA activities before having more data.

Bob took good notes of that, acknowledged, and consequently proceeded to immediatly venture into space,  incapable he was resisting the scientific appeal of the Deep Space Pebble...

And Bill even managed to take a nice shot of Bob, the spacecraft, the pebble, Kerbin and even the Mun in the background ! Sure it'll be on the tomorow's Kerbal Space Gazette front page !

Indeed Bill noticed Bob was starting to get greener and to glow slightly, as he stayed near the asteroid.  Also he observed that after Bob took a sample from its surface and tasted it (for
scientific motivations of course), his eyes were eventually widening open with a constant big smiling face. He tought this wasn't safe, but said nothing since he never saw Bob so fulfilled.

next here : ) :

Spoiler

They were 4 hours from kerbin reentry, and sadly they didn't have any means of saving the Rock from colliding into Kerbin's atmosphere, which made Bob feel very sad, as he already  
sensed that a certain mutual relationship started growing between him and his beloved space dust aggregate.  

And so it all ended in fire.
the Deep Space Pebble was absorbed by Kerbin. And Bob, desperate, jealously kept his unique sample jar for himself. He would never tell to the R&D guys. 
But the next day, he noticed the air "tasted" different... And indeed all the kerbals of Kerbin displayed a slight and constant smile, on their slightly greener faces... His pebble was in the air,
everywhere and forever. Bob was feeling better.   

Later the same day, Mission Control made an announcement :
"D.S.P. of class I - Gargantuan class - spotted 354 Mm of Kerbin, ETA in Kerbin's SOI 15 days, start preparing for rendez-vous and redirect mission procedures."
Bob's heart started pounding...  

Nothern Ice Shelf expedition

After all those emotions, some calm was needed : pictures from a scientific trip to Nothern Ice Shelf, to help with the early science (that was a contract that required me to go there) :
So I made a modified version of the Cesnuk that could land on water !

Munokhod
 

I then sent our first ever rover to the Mun, to investigate some crater-like formations that Bob spotted when he landed there, few months ago.

It's in fact made from an old car that Bill found in the "Kerbal General Junkyard", and strapped with a few antennas on it, as well as this nice scanner arm, repurposed from a filmmaker camera.
Doesn't drive straight, but it works !

Upon examination, the crater appears to be much bigger than expected. And, some "green genetic ooze" traces are still present of its surface and suggest, after analysis, that instead of being a crater, it was in fact a "nest" that held some eggs of an unkown ancient "extra-kerbinal" specie. Quite strangly, certain parts of its DNA code are very similar to the Kerbal one...

Further investigation required...   

Cheers

Edited June 19, 2023 by kurgut

[kurgut]

 Chapter 3 : Starlab-1, Minmus BOOTS, and inner planets exploration 

I launched Starlab-1, our first space station, in LKO. It will mainly focus on testing  medium term stay in space on kerbals, to prepare for future manned initiative on Kerbin's moons, and beyond, later !

Standing by to launch, in a beautiful sunset, as every other sunset is on Kerbin really... Kerbals don't even know the word "rain" exists or what it means... 

next here : ) :

Spoiler

Liftoff !

Nice booster Sep :

As altitude is gained, a more beautiful view of the planet is revealed, showing those cities, that yet not a single kerbal knows about ^^ Who lives there ?  

Aaaand MECO, followed by second stage ignition.

Orbit achieved ! Orbital height is 150 km, to avoid more intense radiation found in the farther space, until we're prepared to go there... Aren't we green enough ? 

After a few days, the first crew comes for a first 70 days stay. The longest ever time a Kerbal spent in space (Bob is worried to be bored in this tin can for so long).

Inner Kerbol system exploration by the Marinok spacecrafts

Marinok-D arriving at Duna :

next here : ) :

Spoiler

It inserted in a polar orbit, and released this tiny lander :

Aaand landed !! The planet is beautiful. Through the atmosphere, we can even see Blas, Jot, and Cind, the 3 inner planets very close from Kerbol...

Marinok-I landing on Ike :

Almost at the same time, Marinok-M, one of our earliest probe, arrived at Moho, after having used a gravity assist from Eve to get there. Tho it will only do a flyby, for now ; )
And attempt to go even further in the solar system, thanks to gravity assists, but that did lead eventually to... nowhere ^^

 

Minmus Boots !

This is same spacecraft that landed on the Mun (no pics from this : (), but slightly modified for Minmus. This will be hopefully the last flight of the Geminik spacecraft, until we upgrade to a better capsule, capable of holding 3 kerbals...

Tower JET

Orbit achieved, and after TMI, the flower opens..!  

Jeb was sleeping so Bob had to attempt the docking procedure by himself, sweaty moment !

See  ya soon home !

Next here : ) :

Spoiler

Some EVA activities before landing, checking our new shiny experiments, that yet Bob doesn't understand a thing about

Landing is go ! Good ignition

How beautiful is a Minmus sunset hmm ? Yeah it is  

Bob trying to assure mission kontrol he's doing very serious field work...

Bob was bored after 14 min on the surface, so mission kontrol kindly allowed him to launch for rendez-vous, but carefully.

Following to the letter this last explicit word, Bob took a very safe close pass, almost hugging this nice mountain... Closest atlitude achieved was 4 meters from the surface at orbital speed^^

He called Jeb to arrange a rendez-vous later, after some quick phasing orbits..

Aaand, hard docked..

The lander will be let in minmus orbit, for later reuse. While everybody already knows we aint gonna reuse that piece of scrap, but use shiny new and more powerfull equipment instead ! But  that's one of the quirks voted by the ecological kouncil at KSC, to impose a minimal re-use kuota. (I can confirm today I never reused that haha)

Coming back, hotness atmospheric things :

Jeb is awake this time, by chance, and can manage the delicate reentry procedure...

Chutes deployed !

We come back with quite a chunk of science, and most importantly : a jam's jar of delicious Minmus green dust, sampled from its surface... Very good for the skin, or to make ice cream !

Cheers   

Edited June 19, 2023 by kurgut

[kurgut]

Chapter 4 : Kerbin surface activities, Deep space telescopes & Eve foldable glider

Baobab study:

After all those years, I finally made it, my first helicopter using breaking ground parts (yeah I know, it took me some time )

It's ugly as a kraken face, if anyone has ever seen one, but hey, it flies ! Our kerbals will takes this to do some test takeoffs/landings/hover flight, and fly to the nearby biome in search for weird giant trees...
We'll do a more streamlined and nice looking version in the future for sure ! This is just to measure safety, and maneuverability !

Spoiler

Easy, eeeaaasy..

Well, we did smash in the tree, so the flight ends here.. But hey you know the N°1 rule... "Any landing you can walk..."

Acrobatics :

Then, I designed a little and maneuvrable plane for Jeb :

Spoiler

Jeb is indeed experimenting a new way interesting way of piloting aircrafts.

He looks rather stoical, considering his situation.

With this flight, I did complete a contract asking us to fly under the 2 bridges of the lvl3 R&D center, but I was so concentrated not blowing Jeb in 36 pieces that I forgot to take screenshots : /

Well he survived ! 

 

Space telescopes :

I then deployed 2 space telescopes, one for taking very high definition pictures of Kerbol's bodies, and the other to track for potential DSP (Deep Space Pebbles) endangering Kerbin...

Spoiler

This first one, Kubble-1, could at some point be serviced by a spaceplane, to retrieve the pictures data, for further analysis in a lab.

Then I launched Pebble Tracker-1 :

This last one served as a test platform for this diode laser transmitter, that may be used, in quite a long time, for future beam power network applications... (here it serves as a powerful antenna)

Eve glider & further exploration of Moho

I designed this unmanned Eve glider, for the next Eve window.
It will be attached inside a 1.25m fairing, with a heatshield, itself attached to an orbiter.Upon entering Eve SOI, the reentry module will detach from the orbiter, and perform a direct Eve entry from its hyperbolic trajectory. Once passed the heat and fire things, the glider will detach and unfold its wings. It can also do incremental deploy, to control wing span and thus lift/drag.
Sweet goal would be to aim at a spot with a lot of biomes, and glide as long as possible ! I tested this on Eve and could achieve a landing at 7 m/s, so no landing gear needed ^^ And water or land are both fine : ) For comms, it uses a standard C 16-S, and will talk to the orbiter which has the bigger relay antenna.
It's in 0.625m size (using tweakscale), weights ~500 kg, and can even fly without any SAS/very little imputs !   

Spoiler

 

Here's also some video of me testing this Kerbin :

 

 

Aaaand finally, I designed a new heavy orbiter for Moho, that would do all the high resolutions scans of its surface, and also carry a small lander :

It features deployable panels, both for the scanning instruments and the lander, to protect them during their deep space journey  

Spoiler

The lander is here at the top :

And some "exploded" view, to see the inside :

In the meantime, I did the first crew rotation on Starlab-1. I can confirm our Kerbonauts didn't turn into green gelly, which is fantastic ! I also started working on a very low tech SSTO reusable spaceplane, to improve funds efficieny (since we're not the richest space program right now....).

Next coming soon !

Cheers  

Edited June 26, 2023 by kurgut