Operation: Bring Bob Back (Finale)

[Ultimate Steve]

Hello everyone! Good news, KSP 2 0.1.3 improved performance enough that I'm now actually getting above 15fps except for some Kerbin flying situations with reasonably sized craft. Sometimes it dips as low as 6 or 7 but there are some situations where I can get a stable 30 flying around KSC. Weirdly enough the same craft launched again and it goes down to 20 or 15 but that's not important.

The important part is that I can play it now without wanting to tear my eyes out most of the time.

I intend to do a proper long term save (and possibly a mission report to go along with it, although a mismatch between my willingness to play and my willingness to write has doomed many of my stories and saves so far), but I am likely going to wait until science mode comes out to do that.

Frame counters are shown so you can get a good idea of how it is performing for me.

The first thing I did in 0.1.3 was make a small plane and fly around the KSC, basking in the greatly increased performance. At takeoff I was managing a stable 30 frames per second and that's when I knew KSP 2 had passed the fun threshold for me. Granted it tanked down to 15 once the rest of the KSC was in view, but considering I got less before...

They did not have to go this hard on the KSC.

Like any self respecting KSP player, the second thing I did was send Bob Kerman on a one way trip to Laythe to check and see if I could do interplanetary without the game breaking on me.

The massive "E" will never not be funny. I wonder what it is made of. Is it iron? For Iron-E, or maybe concrEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEte.

Personally I think the reflections are slightly overdone but the game is certainly beautiful, enough to make me tear up in places.

New extendable engines are beautiful.

I eyeballed the Jool transfer and regretted it as I missed the first time around, thus Bob spent 13 years in space.

Jool is gorgeous, and I like how well defined the shadows are from afar. You can even see the great eye of Jool!

That is... A bit less gorgeous. The eye is now in "angry mode" and is very closely observing a terrified Bob. Does it seek to learn? Does it seek sacrifice? We won't know until we explore further.

After one flyby I time warped through, very nearly sending us plummeting into Jool, Bob begins his Laythe descent.

... And is promptly thrown out of Laythe's atmosphere at a 90 degree angle to the way he came in, on a steep suborbital trajectory, before smashing into the ocean at Mach 2. The new 0.1.3 drag bug has struck... Fortunately I was able to work around it in this case by re entering with the bottom stage still attached.

Eventually, Bob splashes down and then later the sun rises. A bit less grand of a sunrise than I was expecting, and the ocean textures and physics could use some work, but miles better than KSP 1's stock graphics.

I only really encountered 2 bugs on this mission. One, the catastrophic drag bug that basically prevents capsule landings for the time being, and two, the engine sounds turning off after a while. KSP 2 isn't quite there yet but the developers have earned my cautious trust for the time being at least. 

 

I initially was going to leave it like this, this was just supposed to be a save where I could pop in and test stuff before science mode comes out later, but I felt myself feeling kind of bad for Bob... And you know what that means.

It's rescue mission time!

This is the Laythe SSTO, which is weirdly the only picture I have of it for some reason.

Originally the mission was going to be two parts. A SSTO to rescue Bob, and a mothership to return him to Kerbin.

Due to concerns about the aircraft's empty performance (which was probably caused by a control bug rather than the flight dynamics come to think of it), the wet centers of lift and mass basically overlap, making this aircraft an absolute joy to fly, doing spins and flips and loops and bridges and everything in between, while also being Kerbin SSTO capable, and capable of holding up to three Kerbals.

In 0.1.0 and .1 and .2 I tried to make actual acrobatics aircraft and all of them felt really stiff, but I wasn't even trying to make this one maneuverable, just spaceworthy, and it cartwheels through the sky without a care in the world.

Come to think of it I'm going to rename it right now to the "Skydancer" and I would give it an X designation but I'm going to hold off on numbering things until my long term save starts.

Unfortunately, well... It sinks.

So I added the empty fuel tanks you see above, for use as pontoons.

...It still sinks.

KSP 2 seems to be a lot less forgiving than KSP 1 as far as buoyancy, which I'm alright with but I think there is still something fishy going on as when I added the pontoons, which are empty fuel tanks, it somehow sank faster.

And then a few days later I flew it again and it floated fine???

 

I've decided to not take by chances landing the Skydancer on water, and I have designed another craft to land near Bob and fly him over to the nearest patch of land.

Here is the HydroHopper!

...Aaaaaand it sinks too.

Falling back on my KSP 1 Alpha knowledge I built the HydroHopper with some radial intakes as they were stupidly buoyant back in ~2013 and maybe the devs have a sense of humor. However I have a hunch that the struts there added more buoyancy than the intakes.

At this stage its land performance was actually pretty good although hard to land as usual considering it is a jet lander.

3D modelling devs, continue doing what you are doing, you didn't have to go this hard on the ground support equipment, I just have one request. If there isn't too much of a performance impact, let us walk around inside! There's invisible walls blocking everything off.

Parking spaces are oddly huge but that's probably because the mission controllers know Jeb likes to drive his planes to work some days.

I attempted to show off my precision landing skills by landing on the launch tower only to find that is has no colliders at all, which is probably to avoid the same controversy as the really old KSP 1 launch tower, which is fine.

Eventually I got it floating, but no matter what I did, it always flipped upside down upon landing. I haven't checked in KSP 2, but in KSP 1 the jet engine's mass center was offset to simulate the engine internals, and that might be why this thing has such a high dry mass.

After trying a lot of things to make it float upright, I gave up and attached a really long ladder so the ship could be boarded in this state.

And ascent is now performed by activating the thrust reverser to take off backwards.

The HydroHopper is ready for flight! It still needs a de orbit system I guess... I'll probably just slap a few sepratrons on it.

Stay tuned for part 2 of Operation: Bring Bob Back.

This is completely unrelated but I'm not the only one seeing the 60 ton monopropellant tank, right?

In KSP 1 if I use RCS at all, usually the cockpit RCS stores are sufficient... I can see how someone would use the 1.25m containers especially if they aren't a docking expert yet, but I thought everything 2.5m and above was fairly excessive.

I shudder to think of the infernal contraptions that would need 60 tons of monopropellant... Although maybe this is just future proofing for the massive interstellar ships and such.

Come to think of it, it kinda looks like an eye... We might need to hold a staring contest with Jool.

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Ultimate Steve

[BechMeister]

On 6/25/2023 at 9:40 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

I eyeballed the Jool transfer and regretted it as I missed the first time around, thus Bob spent 13 years in space.

This made me giggle... poor dude.

On 6/25/2023 at 9:40 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

I initially was going to leave it like this, this was just supposed to be a save where I could pop in and test stuff before science mode comes out later, but I felt myself feeling kind of bad for Bob... And you know what that means.

Yeah the guy has been through enough as it is 

On 6/25/2023 at 9:40 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

Parking spaces are oddly huge but that's probably because the mission controllers know Jeb likes to drive his planes to work some days.

your humor is on point sir! damn.

On 6/25/2023 at 9:40 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

Come to think of it, it kinda looks like an eye... We might need to hold a staring contest with Jool.

perfect ending.

I am intrigued.. Looking forward to see Bobs fate.

[TwoCalories]

It's been five months and Bob is still waiting. Any updates?

[Ultimate Steve]

5 hours ago, TwoCalories said:

It's been five months and Bob is still waiting. Any updates?

I've played some more but I bit off more than I could chew this semester and haven't been able to post it. When I do have free time I usually just want to go back to bed these days.

[TwoCalories]

TOTM! Nice one!

[Ultimate Steve]

Well, I got TOTM! Last time I got TOTM was probably with Voyage and the whole month went by without me posting, but this is a lot lower stakes and somehow I have some time so ehh whatever I'll post the stuff I had done a few months ago.

This is all still either on 0.1.3 or 0.1.4. Performance has improved for me since then although I think I'll need to buy an SSD to appreciate this game properly as scene to scene load times are still very long for me.

Every good mission needs a mothership! This is the ISS Infinity, which will carry everything to Laythe.

Well, it would if it wasn't for the curse of wobbly rockets!

After a quick revert and some extra struts, the Infinity was once again ready to go.

Booster sep.

And, orbit!

Tied for first place in my KSP 2 feature list is the magnetic EVA boots. The other item in first place is Blackrack's new atmospheric retouches, it makes the game so beautiful (none of that will be in these 0.1.3 or 0.1.4 screenshots though).

I know they aren't particularly realistic, but they just add a certain something. In KSP 1 I could EVA fly around the ship and look down at the planet below and think "Wow!" but something about also being able to stand on the ship while doing that makes the whole experience several times more impactful. I don't remember if it was this mission, but I have definitely teared up looking down at the planet while attached only by using magnets.

I still can't pinpoint the root cause of why standing on something is more impactful than floating, but it is something I will continue to consider.

Next up is the launch of the Skydancer, sans pontoons, as we are now going for a land landing. Boosters flexing on us, the showoffs.

I was eager to test out the new to me at the time vacuum engines, unaware of how little thrust they actually had. My brain saw the isp and went "OOOOOH MONKE LIKE ISP" and did not take into account the notion that maybe I did not have enough thrust to enter orbit.

The good news is that it can survive re entry just fine!

A side note related to ISP: Once KSP 2 gets stable enough to do grand tours and low mass challenges like in KSP 1, I am very excited for the relative buffs of the ant and spider motors relative to KSP 1. When you get down to incredibly light stuff, ISP almost ceases to matter as the next largest engines are several times heavier. For some reason, the devs decided to buff the Ant, already the best engine for the job for small stuff, from 315s of vacuum isp to 330! I am unable to find any gimbal information, but some part of me thinks they may have also added gimbal, but I'd have to check, don't quote me on that.

Xenon tank mass ratios were also buffed and I think they have the same mass ratio as liquid fuel tanks. In KSP 1 the mass ratio was awful, this will also help low mass missions a lot, although with the lack of EVA construction for the forseeable future, lack of reliable propellors, and less knowledge of aero exploits, the record will remain significantly higher for a while or maybe forever. Still, a lot of interesting buffs to small craft to think about.

With that mostly unrelated tangent out of the way, the replacement Skydancer launched, with one of the next size up engine instead of two of the smaller ones.

It made it to orbit without issue and will proceed to Laythe under its own power.

Next up is the HydroHopper, on a much more conventional launch vehicle.

Launch went without incident.

The captain (It might be Jeb, I don't know. EVA suit nametags would be an interesting thing to have to make keeping track of Kerbals in screenshots a lot easier for mission reports.

However, we can't just send an unbalanced ship to the depths of space! (Although with time warp under acceleration and lack of persistent rotation, you might actually be able to do so now)

To counteract the imbalance, a probe was launched to - Aaaaaaaand it flipped because small fins.

Attempt number 2! A probe was launched with the aim of descending into Jool's atmosphere.

Second stage was Poodle powered.

The probe approached and docked to the ISS Infinity without incident (A side note, if possible I would love LF+O multi directional RCS thrusters. They would probably have to be heavy to not disincentivise normal RCS use but I don't like how I have to spam the single direction vernors for multi axis control.

The ISS Infinity is now ready for departure! With time warp under acceleration, this should be a breeze!

Unfortunately, I then ran into this bug:

And didn't notice it was happening until I had burnt a lot of fuel. KERB says that this will be fixed as of 0.2, hopefully they caught all of the causes!

But for the meantime I had to execute some corrections and sit through a painstakingly long burn. I had also designed this ship with the ultra low thrust but crazy isp vacuum engines, so this was pretty painful.

The same procedure was executed with the Skydancer and its crew of just Bill.

I can't wait until this whole time warp system works in combination with this maneuver system, because I love what they are trying to do with the non impulsive maneuver planner. Should lead to significantly less pain for new users going interplanetary once it is completely functional (and also supports maneuvers for fuel you don't have or thinks you don't have).

Off to Jool!

The Skydancer is the first to reach Jool.

It also experienced the "Eye of Jool" bug, which I think but I'm not sure is either fixed by now or will be fixed in 0.2. I recall reading about it somewhere but I can't find it right now.

Clouds were off to preserve performance, less of a problem in 0.1.5. Laythe normally looks cooler.

Turned clouds on for the actual landing though, and another magboots shot! Also showing off another bug that is fixed/is being fixed, the extendable nozzles retracting upon save load.

The Infinity followed in short order. Both ships abused Laythe's atmosphere and the lack of re entry heating to enter into Laythe orbit with minimal fuel expenditure.

The hydrohopper was undocked and sent down to the surface.

De orbiting it in the right spot to reach Bob and the nearest shore with the rather limited amount of fuel on board took several attempts. This thing does not fly very efficiently.

I bet Bob was very happy to see this after bobbing up and down in the Laythean ocean for several years!

An interesting (but inconsequential and not worth it) feature would be ocean currents that work under time warp, if you get stranded at sea, after a few months or years you might wash up somewhere. I don't advocate for this being added, as it would be complicated and more of a hinderance than a help in most cases, but it is interesting to think about.

Bob, very glad to see a ship, swam over to it.

The HydroHopper took off into the sunrise towards the nearest patch of land, which fortunately was flat enough to land the Skydancer at (not very hard, KSP 2's terrain seems to be a lot less vertically exaggerated than in KSP 1, AKA I miss the ridiculously steep peaks to the west of KSC).

With plenty of fuel remaining after a pretty spot on earlier landing (again after several attempts), Bob set the HydroHopper down near the shoreline.

And at long last, the first Kerbal set foot on Laythe.

 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

Hopefully finishing up the old 0.1.3/maybe 0.1.4 stuff with part 3! The more I think about it, the more I think this was all in 0.1.3 though.

This phase of the mission, if I remember right, was having severe issues with, well, not orbital decay, but probably the same bug. My orbit kept on rising from a low circular orbit to an elliptical orbit that impacted Laythe. I took this opportunity to get a launch assist for the Jool probe, and returned the mothership to a stable orbit.

Part of me wishes I had waited to do this until after 0.1.5, because of Blackrack's new cloud revamps, but that just means I get to do a before/after comparison if I ever do this again.

Although tbh, this is already miles better than KSP 1.

Entry was a bit anticlimactic due to the current lack of re entry effects and heating. I wonder how forgiving the new system will be. There's a fine balance here, too forgiving vs too intense, I wonder what we will end up getting.

Even at nose down, it still took a long time, as it did in KSP 1.

Sun so small out here.

Descending below the cloud layers.

Interestingly, the sun does not seem to be affected by the clouds.

A weird repeating pattern happens when the clouds are too dense, which kinda looks like a sandstorm filter on old films.

Deep inside the clouds, what is that... Is that a surface?

Indeed! And the atmosphere is so thick, we can just land with no landing gear fully intact. This isn't news to anyone who has been paying attention, but I managed to get this far without knowing. Granted, this was five months ago, we were still new to the game.

I kind of hope it stays this way. Not realistic, but it means that Jool bases and Jool ascent vehicles can be a thing that happen now. Jool might become the new Eve in terms of challenge. I remember back in KSP 1, everything seemed a lot harder in the old days. We had less tools to work with and also less knowledge of how to use them, and changes to the aero model and stuff generally meant the game got easier over time. Eve SSTOs used to be impossible, until we figured them out. Now Eve is just another place. A hard place, but just another place. Maybe Jool can take up the torch that Eve once held now that it is possible to land on it.

After that little scientific detour and inspirational musing, it is finally time to go (title drop) Bring. Bob. Back!

Entry was, well, a bit iffy.

My quote about the skydancer from five months ago, something like "She cartwheels through the sky without a care in the world" was seen as a positive then, but with Laythe's less dense atmosphere, this is no longer really a positive. The prograde vector not caring about which direction you are pointing is a positive for acrobatics, not so much landing.

I kept felling into stalls that I could not recover from, that were perfectly recoverable from on Kerbin.

But eventually I got back to prograde.

Any sharp maneuver near the surface, however, would disturb this, leading to a stall and a rapid crash.

So this landing took many, many attempts. Better landing gear placement and more wing area in general will be a priority going forward, if not resorting to parachutes for landing.

Here is one such failed landing.

 

Here is the Skydancer assuming the Starship belly flop position.

I managed to set it down here, and was braking, when all of a sudden - 

Also it is just now occurring to me that the "Came in a little hot" flight status message might be customized or randomized, I will pay closer attention to that going forward, as in KSP 1 there wasn't much reason to look at that menu, so I wasn't really paying attention to this one.

Remembering how well this thing handled water landing, I set it down gently on the very edge of the shore (or accidentally overran the beach and ended up in the water, I don't remember) and finally landed intact!

The engine was then lit to push the Skydancer over to the HydroHopper.

And Bob Kerman is greeted, of course, by Bill yawning. "I could do that in my sleep!" he said.

The two exchanged hugs, laughs, and jokes, before entering the Skydancer and preparing for takeoff once more.

Another side note, wow. That cockpit is incredibly detailed, I guess as futureproofing for when IVA gets added. That's going to be so cool to sit in there when it is added. I wonder when someone's gonna get a VR mod up and running. Not that I own a headset, but I will borrow someone's at the earliest opportunity to experience that.

Bob, not really missing Laythe, and Bill began the takeoff procedures and began the takeoff eastwards.

Triumphantly, the Skydancer lifted off, but all was not well!

No matter what Bill did, the Skydancer just wouldn't climb! They considered aborting and attempting a landing before they hit the high dunes in the distance, or even attempting a dangerous slow turn towards the ocean for another water landing, before finding the root cause of the problem:

The RAPIER's thrust limiter was still set to 44%! I don't remember exactly why I set it to that, but my best guess is that it has been set like that all the way since the initial Kerbin ascent, where I would have messed with thrust limiters to keep the shuttle-like asymmetric launch vehicle balanced.

After the thrust limiter was corrected, the Skydancer soared like a rocket into the sky.

Ascent from that point proceeded without issue, although top speed was a bit lower than expected due to a combination of different performance expectations held over from KSP 1 rules of thumb, and my not great ascent profile.

Jool rose over the horizon.

And orbit was entered.

Unfortunately, the game may have also glitched here, I think this is similar to the KSP 1 bug where the craft still thinks it is landed. I don't remember the details as it has been five months, but I think I was prevented from time warping. Either the velocity would drop to zero when I tried, or it wouldn't let me, so the rest of the rendezvous had to be performed with the jetpacks.

More lovely EVA boots goodness.

The docking adapter for the HydroHopper was detached, and the ISS Infinity was all by itself now.

I don't remember if I transferred both Kerbals, I will have to check before flying home. The ISS Infinity still sits in Laythe orbit ready for whenever I have the time to fly it home. This is, however, where the 0.1.3 sceenshots end.

A quick comparison:

0.1.3 clouds

0.1.5 clouds (Not exactly a fair comparison as one is much further away but the point still stands). Blackrack is a wizard.

KSP 2 seems... A lot more emotional so far than KSP 1. Mood music, more stunning and emotional visuals, more expressive Kerbals, and that EVA magnetic boots thing I still can't figure out why it makes me so emotional...

Having done a decent amount of software dev work for a college project, I understand a fraction of what the devs are going through with squashing all these bugs with interacting systems. I can't deny that the launch and a good chunk of the PR surrounding the launch was quite suboptimal, putting it lightly, and the fixes took longer than I expected, but most of the bugs I encountered so far on this mission are either fixed or imminently being fixed. In that time, graphics and performance have both improved somewhat for me. There's still a long way to go, but I think that, as long as they don't get rug pulled by the publisher, this game is going to be just fine.

 

[Ultimate Steve]

It's finale time!

Now in 0.1.5, I plotted a return trajectory. It was not very efficient, but I got a trajectory, and working without KSP 1's precise node editor was making me angry, so I stuck with the awful transfer I came up with.

 

This maneuver of course used most of my fuel, meaning there's little left to circularize at Kerbin, but as long as I make it back before 0.2 drops, aerobraking will be a viable option.

Goodbye, Jool!

Several years and corrections later, the Kerbin aerocapture pass is set up.

The ISS Infinity was captured into an elliptical Kerbin orbit, and WOW is that picture gorgeous.

On the next aerobraking pass I went way too low, and got to see for the first time how the music gets really intense when you are about to crash.

A quick quickload later, and we successfully aerobrake after a few attempts, and enter a roughly 220km Kerbin orbit.

I threw together a quick mission to bring all of the crew back to Kerbin.

Docking was a bit annoying. I feel like RCS is weaker in KSP 2 than in KSP 1, but it might just be my sense of scale failing me. This is a 3.75m ship using just normal sized RCS, after all.

The ISS Infinity is looking kind of small from here actually. It seemed so huge and mighty but next to a proper return vehicle, the scale just kinda feels goofy.

A screenshot of the crew for posterity. The new Kerbal expressions will make it much easier to tell Kerbals apart in screenshots, and gives them a little personality. It will be much easier to keep track of and get attached to them, which will hopefully have huge benefits on user generated lore.

Having lots of fuel left, the return spacecraft executes an attempt at a precision landing, burning most of the remaining fuel.

Deep inside the atmosphere, the service module is jettisoned.

The landing site was undershot a little, but the parachutes deployed just fine!

The crew reporting in, glad to be almost home!

And ladies and gentlemen and everyone else, Bob Kerman is back on Kerbin!

Taking a big stretch and planting a flag for the occasion. My second major KSP 2 interplanetary mission has been completed! (first one was an ill fated Duna mission, I think the lander was too draggy to make it back to orbit)

Thank you for reading!

[TwoCalories]

After years in Laythe's oceans, Bob is back!

[Mikki]

Thank you for the fun read and all the interesting crafts shown here... i am allways spying for laythe landers and aircrafts feasible up there... Very nice colour scheme btw 

Cheers for  Bob!