My first batch of missions returning to KSP after 2 years - Exploring Kerbin And Its Moons

[HenryWong32]

Hi, this is my first post in this forum. I wanted to post something in "Welcome Aboard" but I don't think I'm allowed? Maybe I waited too long after creating my account.

I bought KSP in about 2020, and in my old save I was able to get as far as Eve (but not back- RIP Jeb, Bill, and Bob). I'm not sure when exactly I stopped playing but I think it was about 2 years ago. Recently I've watched a bunch of Matt Lowne and Stratenblitz's videos which have rekindled my interest in KSP, so here I am, now with one of the DLCs as well (Breaking Ground).

In my new save, I've explored Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus. Eve will be my next destination, but I'm over a year away from a transfer window and I don't want to just timewarp to it so I'll be doing a bunch more missions around Kerbin before attempting that.

I'm going to just skip the first couple missions because they're basically just a pod on SRBs.

Orbiter 1 was my first rocket to reach orbit. Ignore the colouring, I made it before installing mods so the colours are changed- originally it was all default colours except for the orange fuel tank.

An extremely janky rocket I made to do some passenger contracts. It was incredibly unstable and a nightmare to fly, but it got the job done. Again, the colouring has been changed by mods.

Then I did two moon flybys, which got me enough science to unlock the medium sized parts. I probably could have done a mun landing without them, but I decided I wanted to pace myself a bit.

My next mission, Mun 3 was a very simple direct-ascent Mun lander. I also tried to do a suborbital hop to land in a different biome (that's the middle image), but I didn't have enough delta v so I just reloaded a quicksave and went straight back to Kerbin.

Oh, also I didn't realise until planting the flag that I had mistakenly switched my flag to the ESA one.

Mun 4. I'm tempted to retroactively call this Hyacinth 1 (which is my line of Apollo-style Mun missions). This mission... didn't go great. I wanted to try the Breaking Ground surface experiments with this mission, but I didn't realise that you needed free space in your Kerbal's inventory to deploy them, so I filled up all my inventory slots and ended up being unable to deploy any of it. And then, when returning to orbit, I realised that I forgot to put a probe core on the orbiter, so I had to leave it in orbit and return in the lander (luckily I had enough extra delta-v).

I think this might actually be my first sort-of Apollo-style mission, I don't think I ever bothered with it in my old save.

At this point, I got sick of having to build a new rocket every mission so I came up with Standard Lifter 1, a reusable* rocket capable of bringing 20 tons** into LKO. It didn't turn out very well.

*Technically both the 1st and 2nd stages are recoverable, however to recover both it would require controlling both at the same time which isn't possible in KSP.

**It should have enough delta-v to do it, but I never actually tested it with that much.

I used it for the first 2 modules of my space station, as well as my next 2 Mun missions, but I soon came up with a better one.

Speaking of which, here's my next Mun mission, Hyacinth 1. This is the point where I decided to install some mods. I ended up getting a bunch of visual and QOL mods, but nothing that changes the gameplay much.

This was a direct-ascent mission, so I'm tempted to switch this with Mun 4, so that Hyacinth is my series of Apollo-style missions and Mun is my series of direct-ascent ones.

Damn KSP with mods is gorgeous.

Next up is Hyacinth 2. Unfortunately I don't have any images of the mission. It was fairly unremarkable, I landed, deployed some surface experiments, and left without any issues.

 After 4 failed attempts to recover both stages of the SL1, I decided to build a new, improved standard launch vehicle- Starlifter 2 (I wanted to keep the abbreviation SL, cause I want SL5 to be inspired by the SLS).

Starlifter 2 is a fully recoverable SSTO. It has enough delta-v to bring just over 10 tons into orbit before deorbiting itself and landing via parachutes. I guess it's kinda inbetween the Falcon 9 and Electron, in that it deorbits itself first with it's booster but the rest of the landing is (supposed to be) done with only the parachutes (I still sometimes had to use the engine to get the landing right).

It can only lift about half of what SL1 could, but I figured that wasn't an issue since if I wanted to launch anything heavier I could just add some SRBs.

My first proper launch using SL2 was a keostationary relay system. The shape of the carrier meant I needed a ridiculously big fairing, which made the rocket very unstable, so I added those side boosters for extra thrust vectoring- it doesn't actually need the extra power, SL2 by itself could have launched it into orbit, but the gimbal on the Twin Boar just wasn't enough to keep the rocket upright.

However, it turned out that the delta-v shown by the game also counted all the fuel in the satellites as well (which I needed since I wanted them to be able to deorbit themselves) so I couldn't get it into keostationary orbit. I settled instead for a 750km altitude.

The carrier in orbit

Detaching the final satellite.

Then I took a detour to build a small airplane to visit the island airfield.

Turns out you can climb the tower!

Diana 1 was my first Minmus mission. It just did a quick flyby of minmus, sent some data back, then burnt up in Kerbin's atmosphere. I wanted to make it asymmetrical, since I liked how it looked, but it made the center of mass not line up with the engine which meant I couldn't put the throttle over about 25% or it would flip. Oh well, it got the contract done which was my main goal with it anyways.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a screenshot of Diana 2, which as a very simple crewed flyby of Minmus. Here's Diana 3, which was a simple lander probe. I realised with Diana 1 that using SL2 for such a small probe was insane overkill so I wanted to see if I could launch Diana 3 with just a single Thoroughbred SRB. I could, but the gravity turn was pretty awful- I massively underestimated just how far I needed to tilt.

Diana 3 Landed.

Diana 3 was followed by Diana 4, a simple crewed landing on Minmus. You can see a storage container on the lander there but I didn't actually bring any surface experiments

Around this point, I unlocked airbrakes, so I updated Starlifter 2, adding airbrakes and making some minor tweaks. The first launch with the new SL2B was this communications module for my space station.

The assembled station. I also used SL2B to launch a small probe to recover the Mun 4 orbiter I abandoned in Mun orbit- gotta save the solar bears.

Then I launched a little probe into interplanetary space just for some contracts. I flew it back to Kerbin where it burned up to avoid leaving debris in space.

Next up is Hyacinth 5, which was a bit of a disaster. First, as you can see, the rear wheels of the rover broke, and I didn't pack any repair kits so the rover was bascially useless. I also was unable to find any surface features and landed in a biome I'd already been to, so I got basically no science from the mission.

To make things worse, I ran out of delta-v just before making it back to Kerbin (My apoapsis was at like 150km, just a tiny bit of fuel more and I could have made it), which meant I had to send a rescue mission.

So I threw together a little recovery probe to drag it back.

I initially thought that the wheels broke when I landed, so I updated my design to have the landing legs on small struts to make sure the rover doesn't hit the ground first. I also got some contracts for Minmus, so I modified the design and sent it there instead as Diana 5.

Unfortunately, as you can see here, the wheels actually broke before it even left LKO, so I'm not sure what actually broke it. At least I brought repair kits this time so it wasn't too much of an issue.

Landed on Minmus. I deployed some surface experiments (including the seismic one which I launched the rover into the ground to trigger) and went looking for surface features. Unfortunately I was unable to find any olivine formations, but I got some green sandstone at least.

[James Kerman]

Welcome to the forum @HenryWong32! 

Great designs and great missions, and it's never too late to post in welcome aboard.

[HenryWong32]

@James KermanI can't post there, when I go to "create topic" the option is greyed out, and I don't get the "Start New Topic" button either.

[James Kerman]

1 minute ago, HenryWong32 said:

@James KermanI can't post there, when I go to "create topic" the option is greyed out, and I don't get the "Start New Topic" button either.

Sorry about that, it sounds like there is something wrong with the forum software and we are looking into it.

[Vanamonde]

That is a big batch of missions. 

[HenryWong32]

@Vanamonde Yes indeed. It's 16 missions (up to 20 depending on how you count them). I was playing for quite a while before I thought of posting my missions here, so I just put everything I'd done up to this point into one big post.

[Vanamonde]

I hope you enjoyed them and thanks for sharing.

[Tony Swallow]

Really cool! Thanks for sharing

[HenryWong32]

I couldn't find any Olivine formations with my previous Minmus mission, so I built a new, very similar mission with a rover capable of longer suborbital hops and sent it to the Midlands (where I already knew there were Olivine formations since I found them with my first lander probe, Diana 3). Introducing Diana 6.

Nothing notable about the launch or transfer to Minmus (I just used another Starlifter 2), so I'm skipping straight to the landing. This time, the rover didn't have any wheels break, and I have no idea why.

I landed in the Midlands, pretty close to my unmanned lander, but I couldn't see any Olivine formations nearby. Eventually after some searching I gave up and decided to just hop over to where the probe was since I could be sure there were Olivine formations there.

I used the cheat menu since with Parallax and Surface Scatters actually spotting the surface features was basically impossible.

I scanned the formation, and planted a flag on it. Also in the 3rd image you can see the unmanned probe in the background.

I flew one of the Kerbals over just cause why not. Maybe they had to wipe down the solar panels or something.

Then I flew the rover back and set another seismic experiment. Turns out the previous one didn't have enough power.

When returning to the mothership I got this cool shot of Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus all in a line.

And again from the mothership.

I deorbited the lander to set off the seismic experiment, unfortunately it wasn't quite enough to complete the contract I had for it, so I'll have to do another mission in the future.

The return to Kerbin was uneventful, though I did manage to splash down pretty close to the KSC, which was neat.

[RitherKerbol]

What mods are you using for this? (it seems stockish)

[HenryWong32]

@RitherKerbol I'm only using visual and QOL mods. I think my current modlist is: Parallax, Scatterer, EVE, Restock, Simple Repaint, Waterfall, Planetshine, Distant Objects, Chatterer, KER, and one that adds more options to VAB (I can't remember its name).