Infinity Interstellar - Ultimate Steve's KSP 2 Mission Log

[Ultimate Steve]

Hello everyone!

One of my self imposed rules for my first KSP 2 save was to not make it into a mission report because I inevitably make up a story, and my willingness to make the story, post the story, and play the game get desynchronized and all three die. However, enough shenanigans have taken place, and I will only get to react to KSP 2's story for the first time once, so I thought I'd at least give this a short writeup. After all, what could go wrong?

As of time of starting to write, I have just landed on Duna. All sections will contain spoiler warnings.

 

Part 1 (Spoilers: Mun Quest):

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The ambitiously named Infinity Interstellar was not well documented in the early days as I did not intend to turn this into a mission report. The first screenshot showed one of our early rockets, possibly the first one, on a suborbital EVA mission:

These early missions were fairly cautious as I was not sure how intense re entry heating was. Based on these early experiments, it is significantly less forgiving than in KSP 1, which isn't really a bad thing given that you barely had to worry about heating at all on Kerbin in KSP 1.

A water landing allowed us to do some more tests of the new science system, and the new buoyancy system.

First ever re entry flames!

I'm fairly sure that this was too heavy. The new science experiment was likely destroyed on landing, but it appears that data is no longer part specific, so all of the data survived, although we didn't get to run the experiment on the ground.

One of the missions specified a satellite, but not what I had to do with it afterwards, so after I was done with it, I sent it into the atmosphere to see how intense the re entry heating would be from there.

It destroyed roughly half of the vessel, which is half more than it would have in KSP 1.

Water physics, as many have noted, need some work, as I was able to survive a terminal velocity impact with the water. This bug will come in useful later.

Bill Kerman on the Munsetter 1 performs the first ever Munar flyby.

And proceeds to land scraping up against a large rock.

The next mission, the Munsetter 2, aims to be the first ever landing, and ascent heating is definitely altering my ascent profile choices. The cutoff for how steep you can turn is definitely now a factor, and I anticipate that factor becoming pretty interesting when the game is stable and usable enough for mass optimization missions to begin.

Mun looking as pretty as always up close.

And, landed, right next to the partially intact braking stage!

I do believe that is Val, planting the Infinity Interstellar flag, showcasing our dominion over the Mun!

I wasn't sure how the quest would play into things, or how visible the discoverables would be, so I decided to chill out in low polar Mun orbit for about a half hour IRL and conduct a visual scan for any anomalies, or as they are known in KSP 2, discoverables. This crater is very majestic. Not sure where it is, but it looks very cool.

I ended up scanning about half of the Mun before getting too dreadfully bored to continue. This scan will not have picked up anything small. I am aware that there is at least one small ship sized discoverable on the Mun that was teased in the trailers, I think, which I was unable to locate visually.

I was able to locate at least two anomalies, screenshot record is unclear:

Normal Mun arch, at position:

Mun monument:

Position unavailable because it would just be black. I did not expect it to be so obvious on the night side, but I guess it does indeed glow!

I have seen the first two monuments in prior updates, so the reveals will not hit as hard.

After that little scouting adventure, I set out for home.

Heat shield is fortunately functional.

And, landed!

The landscapes definitely feel a lot more alive in KSP 2 than in KSP 1. Unfortunately the camera is a bit weird at Kerbal height, and I can't often look up at things without it zooming in so the Kerbal fills the screen. I haven't quite figured out how to work the offset camera controls just yet, maybe that can help with that, or maybe they will change the camera behavior in a future update.

Munsetter 3 was tasked by Kari Kerman to explore a strange signal on the Mun, which again, I had known about beforehand, but I had not known about the very cool music that played during the reveal.

I forget who it was, but they went up, the music built, and the "Ding!" when I touched down on the portal (It might not be a portal but I'm calling it the Mun portal) perfectly synchronized to the music. A long needed upgrade to the royalty free space music playlist that I would usually replace with a YouTube playlist. Come to think of it, I haven't really played KSP 2 with the music off. I haven't gotten bored of the music yet and I've passed fifty hours, that is a very high honor.

There's not much to say here, except that the monuments do have custom science definitions and decently large science bonuses. This thing was analyzed to death back when it was teased in KSP 1, I don't really have anything to add to it.

And with that, the Munsetter 3 returned to Kerbin!

Next part will cover the lead up to (and the first part of) my preparations for the Duna mission.

 

 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

Part 2 (Spoilers: Minmus Quest):

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The next mission was, of course, to visit the Minmus monument! Again, I've seen this before. You can just barely spot it in the image above, hiding in its fairly pronounced crater.

It is being visited with a probe because I needed it for another contract anyway.

I am not aware of an in depth analysis for this monument, I intend to come back here with a crew and investigate it more closely another time.

The crewed mission may bring its own spotlights to help illuminate this strange monument.

I forget if Kari had me do something else before Duna, but either way, in fairly short order, the Duna mission popped up. Now, I definitely had the tech for a Duna mission at this point, but I don't want to play this save by stuffing one Kerbal in the smallest command pod and calling it a day. I wanted to have at least three crew, a decent amount of extra seats, a reusable mothership so I could build up Project Intrepid levels of lore and history, and maybe have a museum in medium Kerbin orbit.

At that point I hadn't even unlocked the hitchhiker or rover wheels or EVA seats, so this mission was going to require some minor science farming to pull off.

I also wanted to build out my infrastructure somewhat before progressing on to Duna.

Firstly, I launched Avalon Station into Low Kerbin Orbit. The first module was basically an orange tank with a docking port, as well as basic power, communications, and maneuvering capability.

Docking ports are very heat sensitive, so I had to do a few different attempts at the launch to get through the atmosphere without it burning up. Most future missions with a docking port usually have it covered up with a nose cone.

As of the time of writing, nothing else of Avalon Station has been built. I haven't even docked to it once.

Reacher Station, however, has had a slightly longer history.

There were minor Kraken issues on the launch pad.

However, the station core survived intact. New boosters were quickly strapped to it, and a second launch attempt was made.

This one was much more successful.

The target was the Mun. For accessibility, I placed it into a medium equatorial Mun orbit, but due to the fewer biome count (and spread of each biome as far as I can tell), as well as the off-equator location of most monuments and discoverables so far, I think the station meta is going to switch to polar orbit stations, which are going to make transfers much more annoying, especially when stations are interplanetary, but it is a skill I will have to learn.

At this point I had unlocked the sniffer science experiment, so I stuck it to a basic aircraft, the X-1 Shiny, and flew around for a little bit. Unfortunately, science gain was disappointingly low, but learning how the sniffer worked and how to navigate its slightly bugged experiment GUI with all of its quirks is best done with a full jet fuel tank on Kerbin instead of while plummeting to the surface in a short range rocket probe plane on Duna.

Not wanting to do another Moon landing at this point in time, I looked elsewhere for science. Seeing as I had a contract to exit Kerbin's sphere of influence, I decided to test my recently acquired ion engines and stretch their legs given that the time warp under acceleration bugs had reportedly been fixed.

During the launch of the Solar Challenger 1, I found out a few things. One, antennas (and some other parts?) still heat up when inside fairings. I may have figured this out a few launches ago, so I may be accidentally lying here, but it was especially annoying with the Solar Challenger 1.

Two, those circular solar panels with those spacing are absolutely awful for occlusion, like a quarter or more of my angles are unavailable. They don't even produce enough electricity to run the ion engine full throttle.

Three, KSP 2 drains some EC during time warp, but only sometimes, proportional to warp and load, and I had neglected to bring any batteries.

Four, just how bad ion engines are now. The 90% thrust nerf and ~30% (I think?) power usage increase over KSP 1 mean that when low mass challenges become a thing for KSP 2, the ion engine will probably not be as big of a part of the meta, as it no longer has the TWR to singlehandedly take on everything but Kerbin, Duna, Laythe, Eve, and Tylo.

These four discoveries culminated in the Solar Challenger 1 not making it higher than about the same altitude as the geostationary satellite I launched for one of the mission control missions. It remains there to this day. It is theoretically capable of reaching its destination, but not when limited by my patience.

It was replaced by the much improved Solar Challenger 2. Unfortunately, the sun has no science! I think. At least, the small version of the first science experiment does not give anything for being in Kerbol's sphere of influence. I can't conclude that there is no science to be done there, but I certainly did not get any.

Given my obnoxious amount of Delta-V, I decided to redirect it to Moho, hoping to enter a low polar orbit and seek out the Mohole from afar (there was definitely nowhere near enough TWR to land). 

However, when I entered Moho's SOI, time warp under acceleration stopped working, and scene changes, quickloads, and possibly even a game restart, I don't remember, did not fix it. Unfortunately the warp bug is still present for some orbits, and I could not capture into orbit (well, the vessel was perfectly capable of doing so, but it would have been hours of burning at 1x time warp).

As a result, I only got the transmissible science from high orbit, which I seem to recall being less than 100 science.

I decided to do some real science and see how close to the sun I could get (time warp burning started working again when I exited Moho's SOI).

I progressively lowered my orbit, and this is the closest recorded distance:

After timewarping to get closer, I very suddenly overheated and exploded, it happened fast enough that I can't reliably tell where it occurred or what the thermal gradient was like, but my dreams of reaching the photosphere were tarnished. Maybe one day I will try to go closer with heat shields and service bays. Or maybe thermal exploits will be discovered allowing deeper exploration.

I bit the bullet and went back to Minmus with the Munsetter 4 to get even more science.

Unsure how many biomes I got, I may have suffered an ascent failure severely limiting my range, I do not remember.

After that, I went back.

Another picturesque landing site!

Kerbin is so beautiful now.

Now, back to the station business. This is the Explorer N series, a 3 person taxi also capable of delivering some cargo to Kerbin's moons.

Explorer N1 was tasked with carrying a docking node to Reacher Station around the Mun. By now I had unlocked the hitchhiker (I was worried I would have to complete the mission with a lander can instead for a while there), but I still needed a bit more science for the EVA chair.

The mission proceeded without incident.

Next up was Explorer N2, tasked with delivering a reusable lander called "Phoenix" to Reacher Station.

However, I forgot the thermally protective nose cap, and the docking port burned off, leading to logistical difficulties.

Fortunately, the fuel in the transfer stage was enough to propel both ships to the Mun without needing a docking, but the crew of Explorer N2 had to return home without docking to Reacher Station for obvious reasons.

Ah, a peaceful return... Do you notice anything wrong with this image?

Yup, I realized, at about 5 kilometers into the atmosphere, that I had forgotten parachutes.

After a very panic filled couple minutes, I managed to get the ship out of the atmosphere, and into a very inclined, very elliptical Kerbin orbit. I had some fuel left to correct it, but during aerobraking, the engine burnt off without me noticing, so I raised the periapsis out of the atmosphere with RCS and decided to just send a rescue mission.

Explorer N3, now with parachutes, and launched on a smaller rocket as it didn't need to carry cargo or reach the Moons, was launched without crew on board, and the crew of Explorer N1 EVA'd over to the rescue ship.

Their return was so uneventful I didn't even take any screenshots.

Next up, the Infinity Space Vessel (ISV) 01 Infinity was launched. I have learned a lesson from Project Intrepid and have dialed the number of digits back from 3 to 2. I hope I reach 99 some day and need to add a third, but that day is far off if it ever comes. Unfortunately, no screenshots after this point, but this is the Duna mothership. While I have the nuclear engine unlocked (Wait, I have to specify which one now, neat, the NERV), the tanks I have unlocked for it are so tiny, and liquid hydrogen is so undense, that I decided to go for a Poodle chemical setup instead. I added a central docking port to carry the heavy lander, two side docking ports for additional hardware, and four more docking ports for drop tanks.

I did not, however, end up including drop tanks, as the core stage of the booster made it to orbit with a decent amount of fuel, and it filled up to about a third on subsequent launches which had extra fuel left over, so in my infinite wisdom I decided that I totally completely had enough fuel to complete the mission.

But that's a story for another time...

I still very much wanted to unlock the EVA seat, and I was short on science, so I took the Phoenix out for a test drive.

I accidentally cloned a few Kerbals in the process (see top right) but they went away upon reloading a save (or the game, I forget which, I was reloading the game a lot due to trajectory line disappearance).

I reached two equatorial biomes, but I think I had already been to one (maybe? I don't even have any surface screenshots to go off of) before returning to orbit. I didn't have enough transmissible science to unlock the EVA chair, but I did have enough samples to do so, so I decided to come home.

As you will recall, however, the Explorer N2 also doesn't have parachutes.

As you will also recall, you can run into Kerbin's oceans at terminal velocity and survive!

Unfortunately, the only screenshot I have is of a failed attempt where I came in over land:

But after a few attempts, they did indeed hit the water, coming home safely! Their spines may be slightly less safe, but they are indeed alive and were immediately ready to go again!

 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

Part 3 (Spoilers: Kerbin Sightseeing Quest Part 1 and Duna Quest):

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Behold:

THE SCIENCE CHAIR!

I've been naming a decent amount of stuff in this saves after previous KSP 1 and KSP 2 saves (Explorer N, ISV Infinity, Avalon Station), but this one is a real throwback. The "Science Chair" name goes waaaayyyy back to my first ever KSP videos. Two and a half or possibly three extremely poor quality episodes of my very own adventures of Special Agent Kirrim, obviously completely ripped off of Danny2462. At one point, one of the main characters uses a rocket powered science chair to either escape a swarm of nanobots, or get to a meeting faster, I cannot remember. I think a derivative may have been used to catch up to a rocket launch at one point.

This short lived series featured recording by me videotaping the screen (in episode 1, without even a tripod) with my camcorder, while simultaneously voice acting and also flying whatever ship happened to be on the screen. This series is, in retrospect, an incredibly important piece of my KSP history, but also incredibly embarrassing, and will probably never see the light of day, at least not for a while.

Anyway.

The Duna monument had thankfully remained unspoiled for me (although I thought it had partially been spoiled at the time). Thus, I didn't know what to expect. However, I knew three things:

1. My precision landing skills aren't great on the best of days, let alone with limited fuel in an entirely new aerodynamics system.

2. Rovers are still reportedly buggy in KSP 2. I have only seen post titles about this and not videos, and I have not experienced it myself, but I thought it would be a good idea to steer clear of rovers for the time being.

3. The two monuments I Had encountered so far were both very tall.

Thus, I thought I should bring a jetpack style rocket hopper instead of a traditional rover.

The first test flight of the Science Chair ended in disaster after the probe core was found to be backwards too late. From now on, the chair is controlled from the Kerbal's sideways control point because I couldn't be bothered to fix the probe core with how deeply it was buried inside the craft.

The second test flight was much better. Jebediah was able to fly the science chair from launch pad 1 (I think it was pad 1 at least) to the top of the air traffic control tower, to the top of the VAB, to just outside the astronaut complex, all on one tank of gas. Since Duna has significantly less gravity, the fact that three precision-ish landings were accomplished in Kerbin's gravity meant that the design likely had enough range to hop from the landing site to the Duna monument, hop around a bit and loiter for a sufficient amount of screenshots and sightseeing, and then fly back to the landing site with plenty of margin.

He then tested ingress and egress, and approved the basic design. The only change requested was the addition of solar panels.

Earlier, we had wheeled out a really stupid command pod with four radially placed wheels to complete the rover contract with something that couldn't even rove, and it got made into a Lightyear tires commercial, and they didn't know any better!

This unlocked the first Kerbin sightseeing mission, which required I fly a lander can to Kapy rock. I decided that this would be a good opportunity to test the use of the Science Chair in the field.

The X-2 Sightseer was constructed to house the lander can and science chair inside a cargo bay, packed with enough fuel to make it there on jet power alone.

This was a huge mistake.

For some reason, when I do physics warp, it tanks my framerate, but only takes my actual time acceleration up to about 1.5-2x when I have 4x selected, like it is not willing to sacrifice enough timestep for my sanity.

I should have reverted and stuck it on a rocket when I was still in visual range of the space center, but I stuck it through, and spent somewhere between one and two hours coaxing this thing slowly to the other side of the planet.

With the combination of thrust reversers and brakes, this thing has an impressively short landing distance, and I had impressively good aim. This is where it landed. I didn't taxi after this, this is exactly where I stopped after landing, not even coasting, reversers and brakes were on from touchdown until now.

I got close enough to the rock to complete the contract with the lander can, and transferred Jeb into the Science Chair. Bob had launched inside it and was transferred to the lander can, I guess he wanted to get a chance to fly the chair, but not today, Bob, Jeb is the one who has trained on it.

Jeb completed several hops up the rock with the jetpack, and climbed up some of its layers manually as well, testing its ability to land in small areas precisely, and testing its ability to handle rough terrain.

This photo was taken, the coolest one of the mission, probably, and Jeb intended to fly back to the X-2 after this, and possibly hand it off to Bob so he could fly it around some with whatever fuel remained.

However, upon liftoff, I forgot to turn SAS on and unceremoniously crashed the Science Chair into the desert floor.

This destroyed some of the science, but there was a duplicate experiment on the X-2, so any science we missed was down to me forgetting to redo it.

Jeb ran back over to the aircraft and told Bob the bad news: He couldn't fly the Science Chair today.

It is only now that I realize that the desert kind of looks like Duna, so this was a more accurate Duna training mission than I had intended!

Back at base, the second part of the Kerbin sightseeing contract became available, but there is NO WAY on Kerbin I am flying that far again without proper time warp, and I was not in the mood to design a shuttle-like device to drop the X-2 near the marked location, so I decided to press on with the Duna mission instead.

The Duna lander (I forgot its name sadly) was docked to the ISV Infinity using the lazy docking method in order to transfer over the large amount of fuel remaining in the core stage of the lander's launch vehicle. I did not test this lander (I regretted this), assuming I knew what I was doing.

After this, the Science Chair was launched (no screenshots, sad). I realized that, although the engine gimbal could probably compensate for the relatively light Science Chair hanging off of one side, for aesthetic reasons, another payload was desired to visually balance the mothership.

Thus, the Duna Glider was designed. The current manned lander can only reach one biome on a good day, and its landing site is geographically constrained. The Duna Glider is designed to boost the science gain from the mission. It will be dropped off in orbit and glide above and to at least 1 biome, hopefully two, carrying the sniffer and the normal science experiment, so loiter time is desired.

If possible, it is desired for the craft to fly back to the crewed landing site if it has the fuel, to allow the samples to be launched back to orbit too, although I don't even know if you can grab samples on EVA like you can in KSP 1, so this might be impossible. This is also not likely to happen in the first place due to the relatively small amount of fuel on board.

The first iteration of this design had WAY too much dihedral, and was virtually uncontrollable at any negative pitch angle as a result, so I reduced it to what you see above, and added a fourth fuel tank as its range was a bit lacking. It is enough to reach the island airfield and loiter above it for at least three minutes, and I got the science from Kerbin's mountains, which I had not gotten yet. Unfortunately, the airfield itself does not appear to be its own biome (or maybe I didn't get close enough, I landed basically on the very edge of the runway so it might not have counted) so I did not get additional science.

Either way, the design was satisfactory. If I could redo this, I would have used symmetry and strapped three or four of these things to the mothership for enhanced flexibility, but I bounce between being very enthusiastic about KSP 2 and very fed up with it, and I was a bit fed up at the time, so I just sent one up.

And off I went to Duna! The phase angle was eyeballed, and I had to burn about 200-300m/s extra versus a normal transfer unfortunately.

You will notice I didn't launch crew. I was originally going to launch the crew on Explorer N4, or a larger vehicle for a larger crew, but crew seem to sneak in very easily in KSP 2. Over three separate launches, I had accumulated three separate crew on board the Infinity... And I guess Bob really wanted to fly the Science Chair, because he stowed away inside it!

So I decided a crew of three was just fine and sent it on its way to Duna without launching additional crew or any drop tanks.

Two minor course corrections later, the crew arrived at Duna, but the fuel situation was looking a little grim. I'm not going to say it's hopeless until I see the Delta-V without all the equipment attached, but there are a few factors that alarm me. Due to the latitude of the Duna signal, a polar orbit was entered, which would severely constrain or increase the fuel consumption of the return leg. We have to get into Kerbin orbit due to the lack of a re entry capsule, so we can't just blaze in at Mach 87 like we usually do. Ideally I'd like to reuse or preserve the Infinity. Lastly, I had kind of hoped to also go to Ike as an afterthought, but there is definitely not enough fuel for that now.

And thus, the ISV-01 Infinity entered Low Polar Duna Orbit. Landing and initial surface operations will be covered in part 4.

 

 

[Watermel00n]

  On 12/27/2023 at 6:12 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

THE SCIENCE CHAIR!

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Ah yes. I remember you also had one "Science Chair" on the Punk Rockerr from Conquering Whirligig! But that was more a seat for collecting science experiments and not a jetpack...

Edited December 28, 2023 by Watermel00n
grammer

[Sp1f]

  On 12/27/2023 at 6:12 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

This short lived series featured recording by me videotaping the screen (in episode 1, without even a tripod) with my camcorder, while simultaneously voice acting and also flying whatever ship happened to be on the screen. This series is, in retrospect, an incredibly important piece of my KSP history, but also incredibly embarrassing, and will probably never see the light of day, at least not for a while.

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Oh come on, you can’t tease us like this and not share the video. Give us the link! 

[kerbalyeeter40]

Hey can i have the craft file for space chair dooyhickey?

(btw the files are located in the interstellar games part of appdata/locallow

[Ultimate Steve]

  On 1/7/2024 at 5:44 AM, kerbalyeeter40 said:

Hey can i have the craft file for space chair dooyhickey?

(btw the files are located in the interstellar games part of appdata/locallow

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https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/3n441r6qea7ik41ncokov/h?rlkey=oep8frmrfyukl9hu8gxip8uc2&dl=0

I don't really like how workspaces are implemented and end up overwriting a lot of stuff accidentally, but some version of it should be in one of those two workspaces.