Efil Space Program: A GPTT and 2.56x scale Kcalbeloh long campaign

[loki130]

This is a campaign I’ll be playing in the lovely Kcalbeloh planet pack at 2.56x scale and home-switched to Efil, a moon of the planet Anehta, orbiting the Aralc binary star system, which in turn has a high orbit of the Kcalbeloh black hole. This is perhaps a somewhat less interesting planet and a bit less central a location to explore the system than Suluco, but I though the Anehta system might make for a more interesting early game, and it’s actually easier to launch early interstellar flyby probes from Aralc’s high perch in the system. I also made a quick patch to bring the science value multipliers for the neighboring bodies in the Aralc system down to be more in line with the stock system (and nerf Kcalbeloh a bit). In terms of graphics mods, I’m using Parallax 2.0, EVE and scatterer with volumetric clouds using the experimental Kcalbeloh patch (which helpfully covers most of the bodies I’ll be encountering most from Efil), TUFX with blaackrack’s config, and Deferred.

One of the main goals of this campaign is to test out a custom tech tree I’m working on, the Gradual Progression Tech Tree built to give a more gradual RP-1-like early game progression while still working well with more stock gameplay and taking advantage of a number of popular modpacks. The full list of parts packs, at least to start with, includes:

• Airplane Plus
• Bluedog Design Bureau
• Coatl Aerospace Probes Plus
• CryoEngines
• DeepFreeze
• DMagic Orbital Science
• Far Future Technologies
• Heat Control
• JX2 Antennas
• Kerbal Atomics
• Kerbal Foundries
• Kerbal Planetary Base Systems
• Kerbal Reusabiity Expansion
• Mk2 Expansion
• Near Future Technologies collection
• Planetside MMSEV
• Restock and Restock Plus
• Station Parts Expansion Redux
• Sterling Systems Thermals
• Supplementary Electric Engines
• USI Malemute and Karibou
• USI Sounding Rockets

In terms of other career/difficulty mods, I’ll be playing with Bureaucracy, but with no kerbonaut retirement, no budget cap, and with a bit of reputation decay, amounting to about 8% per year (also the length of months in Bureaucracy seems to be tied to the home planet rotation, so they're about 4 times longer here than in the stock system); Kerbal Construction Time with the very slower settings, and as a personal rule I won’t get any upgrades to produce science; USI Life Support, but not the whole MKS collection; Mandatory RCS; and doubled DSN and antenna range (on top of the modifier given by sigma dimensions) to make interstellar probes a little more viable earlier on. I will be using Mechjeb, because I don’t particularly feel the need to do a hundred manual launches to prove I can, and I won’t be using any reliability or parts failure mods because I couldn’t find any that really worked well with the range of parts mods I’m using.

My general intention here is to have a complete but not intensive record of the whole campaign, including at least one shot from every mission, excepting perhaps repeated identical launches of relays or orbital refueling/resupply runs (and I may very well get a mod like KSTS to handle those at some point). But it’ll be a while before we get to anything like those; for the first few years of the game, I'll be limited largely to suborbital sounding rockets.

Part 1: Climbing the Sounding Rocket Ladder

We start off small with Pioneer 1, reaching a precocious 4,000 meters altitude above the launchpad.

Pioneer 2 rises no higher, essentially just serving as a test of the larger, faster-burning lower stage sounding rocket engine.

Pioneer 3, with 2 stages, manages to make it to 7,000 meters.

Pioneer 4 is essentially a repeat of 3 but launches our first scientific instruments, studying the rocket’s performance and the atmospheric conditions above the launch center.

Despite a rainy launch day, Pioneer 5’s 3 stages loft it to over 14 km, reaching the upper atmosphere for the first time.

Pioneer 6 launches at an angle for atmospheric studies of the nearby coast, landing a couple kilometers away.

The program’s second year is kicked off with the serene dawn launch of Pioneer 7, a low-altitude test of a heavier science package.

Meanwhile, our first candidate kerbonauts pass the time until we have any work for them exploring the nearby islands on the P-1 “Dancing Dan” trainer aircraft.

Pioneer 8 performs further upper atmosphere science, as well as testing a new upper stage solid rocket.

Pioneer 9 suffers some guidance issues on its final stage, but still manages to reach 40 km altitude.

Pioneer 10 features our first liquid-fuel rocket, massing over 8 tons, almost twice as much as any previous design.

This allows it to make the program's first suborbital spaceflight, reaching over 140 km, a good milestone to cap off 2 years of rocket tests.

Pioneer 11 is another test craft, performing some atmospheric photography.

Pioneer 12 is the second craft to reach space, ascending to over 500 km.

Pioneer 13 is another upper atmospheric test craft, taking aerial photography of the nearby sea.

With science advancing on liquid-fuel rocketry, avionics, and communications, the Efil space program is finally ready to launch its first satellite, Unity 1, on a 2-stage liquid-fuel design.

The launch is fairly uneventful, and the vehicle is actually somewhat overpowered for the mission, guidance concerns being the main reason we haven’t made any previous attempts at reaching orbit.

The design is perhaps not super original, but it’ll do. In under 3 years from the program’s start, the moon Efil has its own little submoon. That’ll do for the first part of this campaign; future portions should be a little more varied, but we all have to start somewhere, and part of my main goal with this tech tree is to make that start fill a little more important and less abrupt. Bye for now.

Edited Monday at 05:18 PM by loki130

[Kevin_kerman]

wow

[loki130]

Part 2: A Time of Firsts

As year 3 of the Efil Space Program comes to a close, the mission planners and scientific advisors gather to consider their next moves. Though they’ve demonstrated the ability to place objects in orbit, Unity 1 was little more than a technical exercise; the immediate priority should be followup missions with more equipment to study the environment in space around Efil and test the technology for larger and more reliable launches. But in the longer term, two clear goals emerge: first, the study of Efil’s parent planet Anehta and its sister moons Enots, Eulb, and Elad, long the subject of observation and admiration from the ground; and second, developing the technical groundwork and confidence for crewed exploration of space.

 

Year 4 starts small with the launch of Pioneer 14, another suborbital research flight taking some photography as well as testing a new solid fuel booster.

The program’s second satellite, Unity 2, launches on our first production launch vehicle, the Ballista 1.

The satellite itself carries a small science package, returning data on Efil’s orbital environment.

Pioneer 15 is another uneventful suborbital research flight, collecting similar data that needs to be recovered for proper study.

Down on the surface, pilot training continues with the P-2 “Waltzing Wally”; the team wants its kerbonauts fit and ready when the time comes for them to climb aboard a rocket.

Unity 3 launches on the somewhat beefier Ballista 2 launch vehicle.

This is our first orbital return mission, taking detailed pictures of Efil from space and then using a small solid kick motor to return a science package to the surface.

It’s a somewhat toasty reentry, and taking film from the imaging unit doesn’t work quite as well as intended (I can't quite figure out how film recovery from the big BDB cameras is supposed to work but I did put a smaller camera on the capsule), but the reentry capsule survives landing.

Unity 4 is our first polar-orbiting satellite, studying environmental conditions over a broader range of Efil’s biomes. It's also tiny, smaller even than Unity 1.

Pioneer 16 is a small atmospheric test flight of some new biological monitoring instruments, preparing for eventual crewed spaceflight.

Pioneer 17 follows up with a suborbital flight.

Unity 5 continues this line of study by carrying a biological experimentation package and a variety of other instruments in high orbit of Efil, returning detailed data on the rigors of spaceflight.

In parallel, research on the performance of crew at high speed is performed with the J-1 “Jumping Jessy”, a small test aircraft with both jet engines for sustained flight and a large rocket stage for boosts of speed.

The test flight is successful, peaking at about Mach 1.8 while maintaining good control.

Pioneer 18 performs further suborbital biological studies.

Based on the Unity 5 design, we now launch the first flight of the Pathfinder program, intended to start exploration of Efil’s parent planet and its 3 neighboring moons.

Pathfinder 1 performs well, returning data even as it reaches distances orders of magnitude greater than any previous missions.

The final flight of the Pioneer program, Pioneer 19, is a modest low-altitude research flight, launching just before dawn. Though there may be more suborbital test flights in the future, it's simply more convenient for most research to be done with orbital platforms

Jumping Jessy flies again, this time using its rocket stage to climb into the upper atmosphere.

The aircraft rises to over 25 km, and Valentina reports no control or health issues in the pressurized cockpit.

Unfortunately, though Val manages jet flameouts and the supersonic descent well enough, she experiences a sudden roll and crash on landing. But Val is safe and the aircraft has completed its critical research. It's a moment of both relief and warning for the program, but the J-1 has demonstrated the potential for crewed rocket craft.

Unity 6 launches into a high, inclined orbit, and carries our first magnetometer for studying the complex interactions of Efil and Anehta’s magnetic fields. This marks the end of the Unity program, 3 and a half years after its first flight: with plentiful data now collected on Efil’s orbital environment, attention now turns to the Pathfinder program and preparations for crewed spaceflight.

Pathfinder 2 launches on a Ballista 3, with the increased delta-v necessary to reach the orbits of Anehta’s other moons.

This mission, however, is focused on Anehta itself, carrying an enlarged version of the Pathfinder spacecraft into a low trajectory dipping below the planet’s rings.

By pure luck, Pathfinder 2’s trajectory brings it straight back to Efil after 2 orbits, and it burns up on reentry, neatly clearing up a potential bit of space debris (I didn’t notice for a little bit that Historian doesn’t properly hide Alternate Resource Panel, so that may turn up in a couple shots).

Pathfinder 3 performs the first flyby of Efil’s sister moon Eulb. It’s a high trajectory, and even covered with batteries the probe struggles to transmit all its scientific data home, but it’s a watershed moment for the program.

After all the preparations, we’re finally ready for crewed exploration of space. Not long after the 4th anniversary of the launch of Unity 1, Valentina climbs about the Victory 1, mounted atop a simple single-stage rocket, and blasts off.

It’s a short flight, bringing Val less than 30 km over the top of the atmosphere, but an auspicious achievement nonetheless.

Less than 15 minutes after launch, Victory 1 touches back down on Efil and Valentina climbs out to pose with her capsule. That’s a pretty good place to leave off for today; the Victory and Pathfinder programs will continue in part 3.

Edited yesterday at 02:46 PM by loki130

[Spikemaster]

noice