Long-term Laythe Mission (pic heavy) - ^_^ With Part 45 ^_^

[Commissioner Tadpole]

No, I don't think I'm likely to reference something I don't know about.

Well, I understand that.

[Dacsi]

Wow, I read it all in 2 days. When the next part?

Oh, and a question: can you link me a good tutorial about going to Laythe/Jool?

[Deddly]

Well, I tried landing some planes with gear that look like yours in the water, but all I got each time was a smashed up plane. Perhaps you have some amazing landing or construction technique.

Like everyone else, I'm more interested in seeing your own solutions to your issues rather than to see my own things used in someone else's storyline, but if it gives you some inspiration for a future rescue plane, it might be worth having a quick play around with that one. Here's the basic craft: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20576590/KSP/Sea-ing%20is%20Believing%20HA.craft

All you need to know for checking it out is that action group 1 toggles the engine and just point it at the hotizon and cut the throttle to land. To take off from water, throttle up and wait for the rear to rise, then pull up and away you go. I've never had the feet rip off.

As an aside, at 1/3 throttle you can take all hands off the keyboard, with no SAS and it will bob up and down until it reaches a certain altitude, then magically level out. It will land automatically when the fuel runs out.

/Ed - Deddly Design

Edit: It goes without saying that you're welcome to use it if you really want to - I have an orbital version for transporting to Laythe.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Deddly

[Brotoro]

Long-term Laythe - Part 21

When we last saw our intrepid kerbals, they were all safely at Laythe Base when the outburst of high-energy particles from Kerbol hit the Joolian magnetosphere and lit up the skies with aurora. After staring in awe at the light show for a while, Hellou and Emilynn went back inside the base to check on Thompbles (who hadn't come outside).

Emilynn: "Hey, Thompbles! Why aren't you outside looking at the sky show with us? You aren't the kind of guy who spends the whole party in the kitchen, are you?"

Thompbles: "Oh, I'm getting a good view out my picture window here. I've been trying to get a message through to Kerbin to let everybody know you made it here safely. But the comsats keep going into safe mode from computer glitches, so I have to wake them back up and start the transmissions again."

Hellou: "Thanks, Thompbles. I guess everyone back on Kerbin is probably worried about us."

Emilynn: "Is our Vall ship OK?"

Thompbles: "It's responding to pings, but I can't give you any details on its condition because I don't have the console prefix code for your ship. Most of the other ships in orbit are in safe mode...but I'm getting nothing at all from GasStation 5."

Emilynn: "The prefix code 16309."

*Thompbles punches in the code*

Thompbles: "OK... It says Huey and Dewy are in safe mode, but Louie is responding; it says all systems are good."

Emilyn: "Not surprising...Louie is the most heavily shielded of the three computers."

Thompbles: "Hellou, do you know how long this outburst should last?"

Hellou: "Well, we don't have a lot of data. Kerbol only does these huge outburts every two or three centuries, judging from the historical records of the massive planet-wide auroras. The superflare activity lasts for less than a week...but these outburts usually occur in pairs separated by 6 to 18 months."

Emilynn: "So...we aren't going back to Kerbin in the next transfer window as planned?"

Hellou: "I doubt it very much. Looks like we're stuck on Laythe for a while."

Thompbles: "Hmm. And the replacement crew for Laythe base was supposed to head out here during the next transfer window from

Kerbin to Jool...but I suppose that's not going to happen now, either."

Emilyn: "Well then, I hope you won't mind putting us up for a while."

Thompbles: "Sure. We'll have to look at the situation with supplies. For now I can offer you accommodations in the original Laythe Base module."

Below, the view out Thompbles's window.

As dawn broke and washed the auroras from the sky (or at least made them harder to see), and the party began to wind down, Hellou asked Nelemy to take her over to to Laythe Base 1 module (located a couple kilometers west from the Laythe Base 2). They drove over and got out so that Hellou could check out her new living quarters.

Hellou: "Hm. What is this flag?"

Nelemy: "Oh, Dude...Um...that was a special flag sent as a joke by the boys at the KSC."

Hellou: "Well, you can take it back with you and plant it outside the boys' fort."

So Nelemy took down the special flag, then followed Hellou onboard the Laythe Base 1.

Nelemy: "I'll check that the life support systems are online."

Hellou: "Thanks, Nelemy. Um...what is this layer of padding on the deck?"

Nelemy: "Oh...That's, um... dirty laundry, Dude."

Hellou: "Ah. You can take all that back with you as well."

Below, Nelemy returned to Laythe Base 2 and turned the rover over to Emilynn so that she could head over to Base 1. Then Nelemy replanted the flag by the bunkhouse module. So, after a couple long and harrowing days, the boys settled down to sleep.

Thompbles: "Guys, I'm going to need some help tomorrow working out the consumables situation."

Kurt: *yawn* "No problem."

Aldner: "I told Hellou I'd take her up into the hills to study the rocks."

Thompbles: "That will have to wait a while. I want everybody down here near sea level until the radiation levels return to normal. In the meantime she can study all the samples we've collected in the lab module."

Aldner: "Aye, aye, Cap'n."

Nelemy: "Dudes... just think about it... Female kerbals, sleeping just a few kilometers away."

Kurt: "Go to sleep, Nelemy."

More Ships

When communications finally cleared up between Kerbin and the Jool system, the Mission Planners at KSC confirmed Hellou's suspicions: Because of the possibility of a follow-on outburst of flare activity, all kerballed interplanetary missions would be cancelled for a period of up to two years. So our plucky kerbals would be having an extended mission on Laythe.

But in the meantime, the KSC crew started making modifications to the ships that were being finished off for the next armada to Laythe. The flight of the interplanetary crew transport ship that would have brought the replacement crew out to Laythe was cancelled, but the new SCIENCE Base and other equipment would be sent out unkerballed to Laythe for use by the current crew.

NOTE: A recent thread on the KSP forums showed how much lag increases when you have lots of other ships, flags, and debris in your save file (even when it is outside the rendering range of the active ship)... and it was a surprising amount. I have a LOT of old ships and 'debris' (parts of ships that I've deliberately left as markers on planets or in orbit...I often delete actual debris) in my save file (with about 145 'flights' on the list). This would explain why I was getting so much lag with ships that I really didn't think were all that big. So, anyway, I decided that in order to reduce lag, I would do all the construction and interplanetary transfers of the next ships in an alternate save file that was time-synced to my main game file. Then after the ships were moved to Laythe, I would paste them into my main save file at the appropriate game time. And indeed, things went much smoother this way.

You'll notice in the pictures below that I also installed the "Visual Enhancements: Clouds & City Lights" mod. I generally like to play with vanilla parts, but I don't mind mods that make things look cool without changing the game play. The clouds & city lights mod hasn't given me any problems while playing the game (other than making it a little harder to target landings through the cloud layers).

So... on to the ships! Below are four launches of Reusable Rockets to assemble Ship #1 in Kerbin orbit: Nuclear tug; extra fuel tanks; Nuclear tug; and an SSTO spaceplane plus a marine operations rescue vehicle.

Below is a better view of the payload carrying the spaceplane and marine rescue unit into orbit. The spaceplane can carry two kerbals, and it's powered by a single turbojet (two ram intakes) and four of the small Rockomax 48-7S rocket engines. There is one Mk1 Fuselage for jet fuel, plus an FL-T400 and two FL-T200 tanks for liquid fuel/oxidizer. The craft is a biplane to give it extra lift -- unlike typical spaceplanes that take off from Kerbin full of fuel and land back on Kerbin mostly empty, this spaceplane has to be able to land with almost a full fuel load (since its fuel is kept in orbit).

Under the spaceplane is the NAMOR 20 (New Automated Marine Operations Rescue) vehicle. For a long time I've been concerned that I had no way to rescue kerbals from the oceans of Laythe (unless they happened to crash land between DogFish and Dansen Island). I was never able to get the hang of reliably landing and launching a VTOL aircraft from the surface of the ocean, so I designed the NAMOR instead. It is a 'hopper' powered by two jet engines, and can carry two kerbals a considerable distance (enough to get them to an island for rescue by BirdDog, if not all the way home to Dansen Island). It lands on the ocean using parachutes (once you've used the jet engines to hover over to the correct location). It has two Rockomax 24-77 engines (with two FL-T100 tanks) to deorbit the NAMOR to the rescue site. It has two FL-T200 tanks to fuel the jet engines -- and I decided to implement "tweakables" a little early by manually editing these tanks to hold only liquid fuel and no oxidizer. Even before this tweak (so still carrying around a lot of oxidizer as deadweight), versions tested on Kerbin were able to takeoff from the KSC, land in the ocean offshore to perform a "rescue," and then fly across the ocean to the big peninsula (which I call "BigKorea" because of its shape), and land safely. So I think the range will be sufficient for rescuing kerbals from any spot on Laythe... although one hopes that there will never be a need to use this vehicle.

Below, Ship #1 is fully assembled in Kerbin orbit, and the four extra fuel pods (brought along to top off the tanks) have been jettisoned. So this ship is a double-tug arranged in a 'train' configuration.

Below we see the start of assembly for Ship #2 with the launch of a Nuclear Tug and extra fuel tanks (the purpose is to bring lots of fuel out to Laythe, since the boys at KSC still haven't developed the hoped-for equipment for mining fuel on other planets). The extra fuel tanks were docked to the rear of the Tug, and then the Refueler Topper was used to refuel the Tug (which had to use some of its fuel load to get into orbit) before being jettisoned and returned to land west of KSC.

Another Reusable Rocket sent a second Nuclear Tug up to become part of Ship #2. The new Tug first docked to the rear of the stack, then separated its lower fuel tank. The stack was then rotated so the new Tug could be docked to the front of the stack (rolled 90 degrees so the nuclear engines of the Tugs don't interfere with each other). The main payload will go on the front of the train, and fuel tanks can be dropped from the end of the train when empty.

Below, the main payload, a new SCIENCE Base, was sent up on a Reusable Rocket and docked to the front of the train. This SCIENCE Base has two Hitchhiker modules stacked in the center to represent the new Large Science Lab module that is expected in version 0.23, as well as a Science Junior and Mystery Goo container. There are also modules for retrofitting BirdDogs for SCIENCE. Yes, yes, I know that the game will refuse to play SCIENCE with me in sandbox mode, but that won't stop me from having fun with SCIENCE parts. The two side Hitchhiker modules were, of course, filled with more equipment and consumables for our intrepid explorers on Laythe. There is also a small service rover attached to the side of the Base that will be used on Laythe. In the rightmost part of the image, the Refueler Topper was jettisoned and the completed Ship #2 was ready to send to Jool...once the transfer window arrives.

Field Trip

Back on Laythe a couple weeks later, Aldner and Hellou prepare for a short expedition into the hills so Hellou can break some rocks. The radiation levels have fallen faster than expected -- Hellou surmises that this may be due to the thin gas torus that Laythe creates around its orbit from molecules that escape its atmosphere. Because of the low escape velocity of planets and moons in the diminutive Kerbol system, this gas torus would be thicker than expected in a similar situation in our own solar system. And collisions with the molecules in the gas torus would help clear out the high energy particles from Jool's radiation belts at the radius of Laythe's orbit. Below, Aldner and Hellou head uphill in the Fido.

Hellou: "Ooo, there's a beauty! Drive back over to that big boulder."

Aldner: "Right-o. What do you expect to learn from these rocks, anyway?"

Hellou: "I want to test some theories about how the islands on Laythe formed."

Aldner: "Aren't they all just volcanic? We certainly get enough of the almost constant tremors indicating lots of internal activity from the tidal heating."

Hellou: "Well, well.. you DID actually listen during those geology classes I taught. But, in fact, the main arrangement of islands on Laythe may not be due to volcanic formation. The huge circle of islands on the opposite side of Laythe is clearly an impact feature. The big grouping of islands on this side of Laythe could have formed here as a result of the shock waves from that giant impact being focussed to the far side of the moon. The volcanic deposits may have come along later. Here...hold this sample bag."

Next, Aldner drove further up the ridge to the landing site of Hellou's emergency escape capsule.

Hellou: "Hey, look! It's my capsule."

Aldner: "Yeah. Thompbles told me to stop at the capsules and bring back all of the food supplies from them."

Hellou: "Are we low on food?"

Aldner: "We think we'll have enough. But we are low on certain kinds. Nelemy only likes to eat yellow mush, so we are a bit short of that."

Hellou: "Umm... Nelemy only eats the yellow mush?"

Aldner: "Yeah, he's picky. You seemed concerned about that...why?"

Hellou: "Well... You know I was on the science advisory committees at KSC..."

Aldner: "Yeah. So?"

Hellou: "Well... So I was there for the medical sessions as well. And, well...the doctors all approved the recommendation that s*x drive inhibitors be added to the mush for deep space missions."

Aldner: "What??"

Hellou: "Umm...yeah. They figured it would keep you guys happier. But there was a problem adding it to the yellow mush because it changed the color. So it's only in the other mush. If Nelemy has been eating only yellow mush he hasn't been getting his dosage."

Aldner: "That's kind of unethical, isn't it? Adding that without telling us?"

Hellou: "Well, in your case, the dosage probably just dials you back to a 'normal' level anyway."

Aldner: "Huh. Speaking of which, you wouldn't be interested in a little.."

Hellou: "No, sorry. I've been eating my mush like a good astronaut."

Aldner: "Damn."

Aldner drove around for a while trying to find Feather, the floating rock he discovered on his first BirdDog roving trip into the Lake Joysina valley area...but he wasn't able to locate it. But he did find a different floating rock for Hellou to examine.

Aldner: "Here's a present for you: a mysterious floating rock!"

Hellou: "Awww, how sweet. And I didn't get you anything. Hmm. Yes. I'll take a sample."

Aldner: "You don't seem very excited about it."

Hellou: "Well, we've studied similar rocks back on Kerbin. We've never found out anything unusual about the rocks themselves... they are composed of normal minerals."

Aldner: "So why do they float?"

Hellou: "We're not sure. It's apparently something special about the spots where they're located. Some scientists have theories about there being mysterious force fields inside the planets and moons, and these rocks are located at spots where tiny side lobes of the fields poke out."

Aldner: "So...just a boring rock?"

Hellou: "No, no... it's a pretty sample. Any rock looks great to me after all that ice on Vall."

Below, an even bigger floating boulder.

After spending the day driving around in the hills (keeping below 1,700 meters to keep Thompbles happy) and Joysina Valley, Aldner drove the rover back to Laythe Base 2 and dropped off the supplies from the emergency capsules...and did a little rearranging of the food stores. Then he took took Hellou and some selected food supplies down to the Laythe Base 1 area.

Aldner: "Had enough rocks? Want me to take you back to your base?"

Hellou: "No, there's still some daylight. Drop me off at the shore by the old Fido Pup probe. I'll walk back to the base from there and survey the ground along the way."

That evening at Laythe Base 2, the boys sat down for supper..."

Kurt: "How was your expedition, Aldner? I trust you got Hellou safely back to her own base?"

Aldner: "The trip was great. But when I last saw Hellou she was lying on the beach."

Nelemy: "Whoa, Dude! I'd like to have seen that!"

Aldner: "Cool your jets, Little Buddy. She wasn't lying out in a swimsuit...she was face down examining the sand particles with a magnifying glass."

Nelemy: "Well... still. Hey, where is the yellow mush?"

Aldner: "I think we may be out of the yellow. Try some red or green mush."

Nelemy: "Aw, Dude. I hate the green mush. I think it's made from Kerbals."

Aldner: "Then have some red. It's good for you. Full of tasty vitamins."

*Thompbles eyes Aldner suspiciously, but says nothing.*

Nelemy: "Aw...OK, I'll have the red, Dude. Maybe the girls took all the yellow mush. I'll ask them later. Just think... Female kerbals having supper just a few kilometers away."

Kurt: "You need to quit thinking about female kerbals so much."

Nelemy: "But, Dude... A dude's not a real dude if he never exercises his paternal prerogative."

Kurt: "You can exercise it all you want, but you won't find any use for it on Laythe."

Aldner: "Here, Nelemy...have an extra helping of red mush. And for dessert, I found some of your favorite Sticky Cakes on the emergency landing capsules."

Nelemy: "Whoa, thanks, Dude!"

Transfer Windows

Time to send ships between planets! The outbound trajectory from Kerbin to Jool is shown below (with Kerbal Alarm Clock and Improved Maneuver Node windows showing, in case you're wonder what those are).

First I sent off Ship #2 with the SCIENCE Base. The train has twice as many nuclear engines that a single Tug payload, but it also has twice the mass with all that extra fuel, so the Jool-transfer burns were like normal (about 1,940 m/s delta-V, and I broke the 20-minute long burn into two burns of about 10 minutes each. The first half of the burn used up the fuel in the bottommost tank (fuel was not simply draining from that tank, so I waited until after the burn and transferred fuel around, then dropped the empty tank). You can see the pretty clouds and city lights on Kerbin in the picture showing the dropping of the tank.

Similarly, once Ship #2 was out near apoapsis, I sent off Ship #1 for its first burn. This ship was wobblier, so it would not tolerate physics warp as well as the other ship.

When the ships each returned to periapsis, the second 10 minutes of burning sent them off to Jool:

The descending node of the transfer orbit was quite close to Kerbin, so it wasn't long before it was time for the plane change maneuver (about 260 m/s delta-V). The next fuel tanks ran dry during the plane shift burn and were dropped in inteplanetary space. Then I did a little tweaking of the trajectories (using good old conic draw mode 0). At the end of maneuvering, the remaining drop tanks were about 81% full on each ship (and the rest of the Tug tanks completely full), so a lot of fuel would be delivered to the Jool system.

Soon after the Kerbin-to-Jool window closed, the Jool-to-Kerbin transfer window opened. Instead of sending Hellou and Emilynn back as originally planned, I just sent back Tugs for re-use. Below, a double set of the most recent Tugs (docked so I could transfer them as a single ship) were first sent off into an orbit with an apoapsis between Vall and Tylo (then circularized). From there, the Double-Tug boosted for Kerbin, which required about 1,400 m/s of delta-V. The fuel for these maneuvers came from the small side tanks (the main tanks were mostly empty before the return maneuvers started).

You can also see in the map view image above that there were still two other older-model Tugs waiting in orbits between Laythe and Vall. These two Tugs were also sent off back to Kerbin. For simplicity, I built the plane change maneuver into these burns, since Jool was fairly close to a Jool-Kerbin node.

Once free from Jool's sphere of influence, I did some fine targeting (using conic draw mode 0) of the trajectories to approximately aerocapture altitude at far-away Kerbin (as seen below). All of these transfer maneuvers were done by cutting these ships' data from the main save file and pasting them into the alternate save file that I was using to do the transfers without living in Lag City.

After all the transfer burns and targeting, I had the orbits shown below. The two outbound ships are at about Duna's orbit, and the three inbound ships (two of those trajectories are nearly identical in the plot) have just left Jool's SOI. A fine day's work doing transfer burns.

Fredoly Base

Back on Laythe, Thompbles decided to transfer Emilynn and Hellou over to Laythe Base 3 on Fredoly island, both to take some strain off of the resources at the main base, and to give Hellou a change to survey another island. Below, Emilynn heads off in BirdDog 3.

Thompbles decided that when the new spaceplane arrives, Emilynn and Aldner will be the ones to test it. In preparation for that, Emilynn wanted to get some additional upper atmosphere data. So, below, we see Emi reaching 9,000 meters where one typically levels off the BirdDog...but she's still climbing under full throttle. Oh...and see the pretty clouds for Laythe as well..

Emilynn: "Yee Ha! Flameout at 16.7k. Moving at 600 m/s. These BirdDogs aren't too bad."

Kurt: "I copy, Hawk. Let us know when you hit peak altitude."

Emilynn: "Roger, Jaymak. It's great to fly again!"

Nelemy: "What the heck is a jaymak, anyway, Dude?"

Kurt: "It's a kind of bird. You hear them singing all the time around KSC, but you don't normally see them."

Hellou: "What's your call sign, Nelemy?"

Nelemy: "Umm...I don't have one. I wasn't in the KAF like Kurt and Aldner and Emi-dude. I was a civilian test pilot."

Kurt: "Nelemy worked for his Uncle Martin and Uncle Lockheed."

Hellou: "Aww...we can give him a call sign, right? Does Thombples have one?"

Thompbles: "No. I was in Army Air Support. We just learned to fly in low and blow stuff up. We didn't mess will silly names like the KAF."

Emilynn: "I've reached peak altitude, Jaymak. Nineteen four, speed 530. The VanAllen meter is reading 300...but I won't be here too long."

Kurt: "Roger, Hawk."

Emilynn arced back down to an altitude where she could restart the jet engine, then worked her way back up to an approximate cruise at 16,000 meters going 544 m/s before having to cut off the exercise because she was over the Fredoly Base area. I guess I've been being a bit more conservative than necessary in keeping the BirdDogs down below 13,000...but you do need to fly at a very high pitch angle to maintain lift at these altitudes, and the BirdDog is not the most pitch-stable plane under those conditions.

Emilynn brought the BirdDog down in a big spiral and landed in the basin of the Laythe Base 3 area on Fredoly Island.

Emilynn: "I've landed and stopped, Jaymak. You can send over my Chickadee."

Hellou was a bit leery of flying over in BirdDog 4, but these planes can be controlled remotely, and Aldner was monitoring the flight, ready to take over remote control if needed.

Hellou: "Wow, those mountainsides on the east shore of Fredoly really ARE steep. They look to be steeper than 60 degrees in places. Was Kurt really driving around on that?"

Kurt: "Only near the top. Not so steep there. But I don't recommend it as a vacation spot."

Aldner: "You're veering a little left, Chickadee. More flying, less geology right now."

Hellou: "Silly boy. Important geology can be done from planes. Besides, this thing is easy to fly."

Aldner: "OK, Hawk, I'm handing over remote control to you."

Emilynn: "Roger, Buzz. I have you now, Chickadee. You're coming in fine. Want me to land it for you?"

Hellou: "No, Emi. Just monitor, please. I want to use those skills you taught me."

Emilynn: "Roger, Chickadee. Bring her in smooth and easy. You have a big area to land in."

Hellou put the BirdDog down about 260 meters from the Fredoly Base, with only a bit of excitement as she bumped over the ridge line the base sits on before stopping. Her more conservative flight path took 36 units of fuel compared to the 43 that Emi used in her more adventurous leap through the upper atmosphere.

Below, Emilynn greeted Hellou after she parked the BirdDog by their new home for the next several months. The base is located at 910 meters elevation, which still provides plenty of protection from the high energy particles in Jool's magnetosphere after it settled back down to its normal values. In case of another superflare outburst on Kerbol, they would easily have time to return to the main base before it hits the Jool system (it actually only takes about 15 minutes to fly between Dansen and Fredoly islands).

As we wait for several months for the next ships to arrive at Laythe, Hellou and Emilynn have plenty of time to explore the more interesting features of Fredoly Island with the base's Compact Fido rover (which is only slightly more compact than the regular Fido rover). One of their expeditions is shown below. They started off heading south (with Vall on the horizon).

Their first stop can be seen the image below: the 135m-elevation depression off in the distance (Fredoly has a dearth of inland low areas). You can tell that Emi is driving since they caught some air passing over the top of the ridge.

Aldner visited this same depression during his first BirdDog survey of Fredoly, but whereas Aldner headed south and turned right down the main bulk of the island, Hellou and Emilynn went south and turned left (see overview below) to skirt the big mountain there (which happens to be the highest peak on Laythe) and head down the southeast arm of the island.

Below is a map view of Fredoly Island (in case you are not as familiar with the lay of the land on Laythe as I am... the main Laythe Base area is in the upper right on Dansen Island). On Fredoly Island, the Base is near the top (showing up with rover icons because of the BirdDogs parked there), and our heroines are in the center driving around the mountain.

As our heroines round the mountain, they see the large south bay and they catch a sight of Jool's upper limb above the haze of the atmosphere.

In the next image of our travelogue, the Compact Fido is now on the southeast arm of the island and heading toward the deep valley. On various maps and aerial views, I was never able to tell for sure whether or not there was a lake in the valley, so I was keen to find out (it would be the only interior lake on Fredoly if it was there).

As our explorers topped the rise, they found that there was indeed a small lake in the bottom of the picturesque valley. The descent was somewhat steep on this end of the valley, but the Fido handled it easily.

Hellou: "What a beautiful little lake! I'm going to name this place Rivendell."

Emilynn: "Rivendell?"

Hellou: "Yes! You remember the books I told you about with the elves..."

Emilynn: "Wait... is this that story with non-bug-eyed monsters with pointy ears?"

Hellou: "They aren't monsters."

Emilynn: "I don't know...I saw the pictures. They look pretty weird to me."

Hellou got out for a little swim in Rivendell Lake. They spent the night camped here (Thompbles asked them to camp close to sea level whenever possible).

The next day our fellowship left Rivendell and headed to the southeast tip of the island, which Hellou named Southwest Reach. The shore was moderately steep, with nothing that looked like good base sites along the way. They did get to see some more of Jool. After collecting samples, they worked their way back north and spent another night in Rivendell.

The following morning, our heroines drove the Fido up the tallest mountain on Laythe. This involved a long drive north from Rivendell heading upward at a shallow angle along the contour of the landscape. By adjusting the upslope angle, they could make a fairly steady vertical speed of 2 to 3 meters per second as they traveled at about 10 m/s horizontally. On the steeper slopes, it was necessary to stop a few times to allow the Fido's batteries to recharge from the photovoltaic panels and RTGs.

Below: The view from 4500 meters up the mountainside, back towards Rivendell.

Emilynn: "Hawk to Laythe Base. How are you pudknockers doing?"

Kurt: "I read you, Hawk. What's up?"

Emilynn: "We are! Greetings from the summit of Mt. Laythe. 6,058 meters! That's higher than the maps said we should get."

Kurt: "Mt. Laythe? Hellou didn't want to give it some girly-goddess name?

Hellou: "I could still change it."

Kurt: "Oops, too late...I wrote it down."

Hellou: "I thought it was an appropriate name for the tallest peak on Laythe."

Kurt: "What is the VanAllen meter reading?"

Emilynn: "About 200. It's like we're back on Vall. Hellou is happily collecting samples. Maybe she'll let me drive back downhill this time."

Hellou: "No."

Emilynn: "Pretty please? I'll be good."

Hellou: "Well...OK. But if you blow any tires, I'm taking over."

After driving less than 400 vertical meters down the north face of Mt. Laythe, Emilynn managed to fly the rover over a bump at 46m/s and blew two tires upon landing. Hellou drove the rest of the way down the mountain...although she also managed to catch some air a few times and blew another tire.

Below, our heroines safely return to Fredoly Base.

Next time: New toys arrive at Laythe (I hope).

Edited July 4, 2020 by Brotoro

[Exovian]

Well, smashing f5 finally paid off! I love the new installment; good job!

[Commissioner Tadpole]

part 21 is best part

Also, I'm a bit disappointed that none of the Kerbals commented about the sudden appearance of clouds(and city lights).

[SuperWeegee4000]

The Two Tires. Calling it now.

[Scotius]

Yay, new chapter Some exploration, some news (yellow mush? O.o), some backstory (wait, you don't imply Thompbles fough in an actual war - right?). So, do you have any plans ready for RAPIER driven SSTO for Laythe Expedition? Because i can't wait to play with this engine Maybe i'll finally be able to build my own, working SSTO spaceplane. Not having to carry deadweight of extra engines should help immensely with that.

[AppleDavidJeans]

Finally! Thank you Brotoro!

[Logan.Darklighter]

Awesome stuff! (And useful too. Didn't know about that total ships/parts thing before. I'll have to be extra careful to keep the Kessler syndrome down to a minimum in my games.)

[The Error]

Awesome. Also, more yellow mush.

[bsalis]

Again, awesome work. Oh, and *finally* an SSTO Spaceplane with a turbojet no less!

Do you have any way of refilling it with fuel and oxidiser on the surface?

[Captain_Party]

Brotoro, now resources has been officially cancelled, are you going to get Kethane? Because I know you were waiting for official resources...

[Brotoro]

Again, awesome work. Oh, and *finally* an SSTO Spaceplane with a turbojet no less!

Do you have any way of refilling it with fuel and oxidiser on the surface?

No refueling on the surface. The spaceplane is supposed to leave the space station with enough fuel to land and return to orbit. We'll see.

I'll probably send out a RAPIER spaceplane in the next launch window (but I'm not waiting until 0.23 to continue at this time...today I finished the transfers to the Jool system, even though those arrivals wouldn't occur until after the next (two) launch windows. But since I did the recent transfers in an alternate save file, I'll do the same with the RAPIER spaceplane and drop it into the main save file at the correct point in time.

[Commander Zoom]

(redacted - I shouldn't bring that argument here)

Edited December 16, 2013 by Commander Zoom

[The Error]

Let me guess - Nelemy's callsign will be something along the lines of... "Dude".

And Thompbles? Erm... "Lordship"? "Captain"? Hrm.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Is it coincidence that I saw Thompbles Kerman as an applicant today?

[macdjord]

Is it coincidence that I saw Thompbles Kerman as an applicant today?

No. Brotoro remotely cracked your machine to insert his character in your game for his own nefarious purposes.

[Scotius]

Is it coincidence that I saw Thompbles Kerman as an applicant today?

Lucky Closest i got was Thompel. I would love to have a Thompbles as a mission commander somewhere - 'cuz he's my favourite No, i'm not going to edit one of my Kerbals - that would feel a bit too cheaty.

[Geschosskopf]

Another great installment. Thanks!

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

Nice to see this hasn't been abandond

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Do you think .23's optimization will help you with the Lag Town issue? Well...maybe not really, because it actually takes off the slideshow effect with a smoother but slower game performance. Still, it's better than watching a slideshow of KSP.

[Brotoro]

Long-term Laythe - Part 22

Hmmm... I can't seem to connect to the KSP Store to download version 0.23 (the server is swamped), so rather than keep hammering on the site, I guess I'll write up this episode instead.

Today it's like Christmas on Laythe, with new presents dropping out of the sky. As the two ships approached the Jool system I did some fine targeting. Both of the ships were coming in on trajectories that allowed direct-to-Laythe aerocaptures, so I did things the easy way and brought them straight to Laythe. First in was the train carrying the new SCIENCE Base on a trajectory that swooped around Jool and encountered Laythe.

The ship came in to Laythe for aerocapture over the BAIF Ocean targeted at an altitude of 20.2 km. The aerocapture resulted in an orbit with an apoapsis of 709 km. On the way out to apoapsis I did a plane chance burn of less than 100 m/s to correct inclination to 0 degrees (where Laythe Space Station lives at 80 km), and at apoapsis I did a burn to raise the periapsis partway out of the atmosphere. Then an aerobraking pass lowered the apoapsis to 90 km, where I did a circularization burn.

Next the ship with the Spaceplane/NAMOR payloads came in. It's trajectory encountered Laythe on the way in (before reaching Jool). Below is the plot where I needed to adjust the aerocapture altitude...otherwise you can see that the purple (or blue?) line shows that the ship would skirt Laythe an plummet into Jool.

Below is the "MasterCard logo" shot of the ship approaching Laythe.

The aerocapture was targeted to an altitude of 20.07 km which resulted in an apoapsis of a hundred-something kilometers. Below we see the ship burning through the skies over Dansen Island. It would be cool to be able to watch this event from Laythe Base (is there a mod for that?).

After a little orbital adjusting, the ship was also in a 90 x 91 km equatorial orbit. This orbit allowed the Laythe Space Station to slowly overtake the new ships, and when they got close together the orbit could be adjusted for rendezvous.

Down on Laythe, it was time to bring Hellou and Emilynn back to the main Laythe Base area after they'd spent several months living in Laythe Base 3 exploring Fredoly Island via rover. Hellou was the first to take off (so that there would be a pilot on the ground at either end to help fly by remote control if needed). Her flight back was at a little higher altitude than her flight over, so it used only 31 units of fuel.

Hellou landed safely and drove the BirdDog over to GasStation 2. Aldner drove the Fido rover down to pick up Hellou (actually he gave the Fido to Hellou, then he took over the BirdDog to do the refueling). Then they drove both vehicles back to the main Laythe Base 2 module.

Emilynn took off from Fredoly and flew her BirdDog up to try cruising over at 15,000 meters. It's tricky, but possible to do this, and you get a speed of around 475 m/s at the standard 1/3 throttle setting...but it requires pitching the nose of the BirdDog up to 45 degrees to get enough lift at that altitude and throttle setting. Emilynn made the trip using 32 units of fuel, so it was not an improvement over Hellou's more standard flight profile (at least over that distance).

After a celebratory dinner that couldn't be beat, our kerbals retired for the night.

Aldner: "It sure is nice having the girls back with us."

Kurt: "Yes, indeed."

Nelemy: "Just think, Dudes...new ships, orbiting just 90 km overhead."

Aldner: "Hey, Nelemy, I found some more cases of yellow mush in the back of the storage shed if you want some tomorrow."

Nelemy: "Oh, hey... cool, Dude. But I've really gotten to like the red mush."

Thompbles: "OK, guys. Get some sleep. There's lots to do tomorrow landing the new SCIENCE Base and spaceplane."

Kurt: "Why do you keep pronouncing 'science' like it's in all capital letters?"

Thompbles: "That's just the way the KSC boys do it."

The next day, Kurt and Thompbles handled the remote landing of the SCIENCE Base. Below, the Base separated from the Tugs, then the four 24-77 engines fired for the retro burn.

The incoming trajectory was targeted a little northeast of Mariliza Island. It was nice that the area is clear of those pretty clouds.

The entry heating was tame compared to the earlier aerocapture. After the entry plasma dissipated, the drogue chutes were deployed and the heat shield was dropped.

Below, the drogue chutes have opened fully, then the six main chutes were deployed and the landing legs were extended. At 500 meters AGL the main chutes unreefed and the base came in for a landing at about 7.6 m/s.

Aldner and Emilynn hopped in the Fido and headed on over to the SCIENCE Base's landing location. Along the way they found the heat shield impact site. It appears to have hit upside-down and exploded its fuel tanks, but most of the structural panels survived. So I'll let them do a little cutting and bending later to build another shed. Also, it's sitting in the area often used as a landing strip, so they'll want to drag it out of there in any case. (And its landing location was between the two groups of ships that I have separated by 2.5 km to reduce lag...so that it was a real bother switching between ships later on because I would end up jumping to this debris and jumping to the group of ships.)

When Aldner and Emilynn reached the base, they found that the two wheels on the downhill side had blown out on landing despite having the landing legs to take up the shock. As long as the base was tilted in an advantageous direction, they dropped off the little Runabout rover from the side of the base. (After that, they fixed the wheels of the base.)

Below, Emilynn drove the Runabout over to Laythe Base 1 (where she and Hellou were living). The Runabout will be handy for driving back and forth between the Base 1 and Base 2 sites. Aldner then carefully drove the SCIENCE Base over. The wheels on this base are NOT intended for it to be used as an exploration vehicle -- they are meant for repositioning the base after landing (but the base handles very well on the relatively flat terrain near Fido Bay).

The new SCIENCE Base (a.k.a. Laythe Base 4) was parked near the original Laythe Base 1. That's GasStation 2 in the near background behind the SCIENCE Base. Note that the two Hitchhiker modules in the center were to represent one of the new big SCIENCE Lab modules (I don't know yet if they are of similar mass). The two side Hitchhikers include a living module (I assume Hellou and Emilynn will move in there to get away from the smell of old socks in the Laythe Base 1 module), and a module with lots more equipment, supplies, and consumables.

So...what about that stuff hanging off the side booms? That's SCIENCE to retrofit the BirdDogs. Nelemy drove BirdDog 3 down from the other base area and carefully lined it up under the right boom (the landing leg on that side had to be folded up beforehand so the plane could come in straight). Then the double Mystery Goo package was dropped from the boom onto the docking port of the BirdDog, which then backed away. BUT WAIT, you may say... How are they going to be able to refuel the BirdDog with that Goo package on top? Fear not: The BirdDog can drive back under the boom, then extend its nose gear, and the Goo package will dock back in place on the boom. Then the plane can be separated to refuel and return to grab the Goo again. And since I have a Big Lab Module (or so the center Hitchhikers represent), the Goo can be refreshed as needed. Yes, yes... as before, I know the game won't actually let me have SCIENCE fun in sandbox mode, but that won't stop me from having fun.

Kurt drove down in BirdDog 4 and lined it up under the other boom...and received a SCIENCE Junior materials exposure bay. It looks rather ungainly sitting on top of the BirdDog, but tests back at KSC showed that the plane can still fly in this configuration.

Of course, now I need to figure out what the different biomes are on Laythe. There's the lower and upper atmosphere layers to check. The poles. The water. The shores, lowlands, midlands, and highlands. Would those areas on each of the large islands be the same, or would different islands or island groups be in different biomes?

The SCIENCE Base itself also has a SCIENCE Junior and Mystery Goo container strapped to its sides for long-term monitoring at the Fido Bay base area. Hellou got onboard the Big SCIENCE module while Aldner watched the SCIENCE Junior as she activated it.

Hellou: "Activating now."

Aldner: "It opened. Whoa...something is burning inside...you may want to power down!"

Hellou: "Is it the little sample in the upper left?"

Aldner: "Yeah. Still smoking."

Hellou: "That's the oxygen detection sample. Anything else changing?"

Aldner: "Um...second column, third down. Half of that sample seems to be getting darker. Hmm...same thing in column three, sample four."

Hellou: "That first one is for sulphur compounds, I think. The other one may be ammonia. I need the look it up once I get everything powered up in here."

On the opposite side of the ship, Nelemy climbed up the ladder to look at the Mystery Goo container

Nelemy: "Hello there, little Mystery Goo-dude. You aren't too cold, are you?"

Hellou: "What does it look like, Nelemy?"

Nelemy: "It's just sitting there. Maybe vibrating a little. Maybe its cold, Dude."

Hellou: "That stuff can survive exposure to vacuum in space, Nelemy, it's not going to be too cold."

Nelemy: "Whoa...it's vibrating a lot now! Maybe we should close its container until the sun shines on this side of the base."

Hellou: "No, it's fine."

*About a minute later, the base site experiences one of its many-times-a-day magnitude 4 tremors*

Nelemy: "Hey, Dude... it stopped vibrating now. Do you suppose it knows when quakes are coming?"

Hellou: "Hmmm..."

It took longer than expected to get the SCIENCE Base set up, so the crew waited until the next day to bring down the spaceplane. Aldner and Emilynn would be the ones to test the spaceplane, and they flipped a coin to determine who would get to fly it down by remote control...and Aldner lost, so he got to fly it down. Lost? Yes...because that meant Emilynn would get to pilot the spaceplane on its first test flight to orbit. When the spaceplane separated from the Tugs, it took the supporting structure with it to clear it away from the top of the NAMOR marine rescue vehicle.

Below is the retro burn (sorry...it's not a great image). The four Rockomax 48-7S engines fire backward between the upper and lower wings. Once the plane was on an entry trajectory, the support structure that had held it to the ship was jettisoned so that it would be destroyed on entry.

The spaceplane went through the entry flames as it approached Dansen island (no radio control was possible when it was enveloped in plasma...it was on autopilot for that stretch). After the entry plasma dissipated, the plane was passing over the Fido Bay area at over 11 km, so Aldner banked into some turns to bleed off speed and then come back around. The thing does not handle as well as a BirdDog...maybe because it is heavier, or maybe because of the different CoM/CoL relationship.

The turn around lost more altitude than expected, so Aldner fired up the turbojet to bring it closer to base, but cut the engine as soon as possible to save fuel. He landed the plane safely about 5 km away, higher up the slope than they normally land.

Aldner and Emilynn hopped on the Runabout and drove out to the spaceplane's landing site.

Aldner: "You'll be the first to pilot it, Hawk, so you get to name it. What are you going to call it?"

Emilynn: "I always let Hellou handle naming things, so I had her pick out a name."

Aldner: "Ah. Some girly-goddess name?"

Emilynn: "Nope. She named it Ladyhawk. I'm really looking forward to flying her."

After they arrived at the Ladyhawk and gave the spaceplane a quick checkover, Aldner backed the Runabout under the nose of the plane and Emilynn raised the nose gear to dock the two vehicles. I really like being able to drive my BirdDogs all over the place with their rover wheels, but I didn't want to add the weight and dragf of rover wheels to a spaceplane. I also didn't want to have to burn up precious jet fuel to drive the plane around on the ground (even with the easier steering that the steerable landing gear will allow in version 0.23), so I designed the Runabout to drag the spaceplane around.

Below, Aldner and Emilynn brought the Ladyhawk to a stop next to Laythe Base 1 (between Laythe Base 1 and the SCIENCE Base). When the nose wheel of the plane was lowered, it lifted the Runabout up off the ground a little ways...then the ships were separated and the Runabout dropped to the ground and was driven off.

Now that they were back at the base, Aldner and Emilynn gave the Ladyhawk a complete check of all of its systems (after dragging out all the boxes of supplies that were stuffed into the cabins, of course). Below you can see Emilynn and Aldner climbing on board. It takes a jump to reach the bottom of the ladder to the cockpit.

The game thinks Aldner is sitting horizontally in the lander can, but of course I contend that the interior has been rearranged so that he is sitting upright. The picture below shows his re-oriented view out the side window (with the canard visible).

Emilynn and Aldner will test the Ladyhawk later. It used a bit more propellant that I expected during retro burn, but I think there is enough to return to orbit. We'll see. I had a method for adding more fuel for the deorbit process, but I didn't think I'd need it so I didn't include it (but I am sending it along with the next ships to Laythe). Below, the results of my labors so far: new SCIENCE Base, new SCIENCE on BirdDogs, new SSTO spaceplane, and the little Runabout.

Meanwhile, Thompbles was juggling some things in orbit. The NAMOR-20 was left with one fully fueled Tug (so it could be shifted around as needed and dropped anywhere on Laythe). The X200-8 fuel tank under the NAMOR is empty -- it was there mainly as a place to mount the four refuler pods that got dropped back in Kerbin orbit, and to carry extra fuel for the trip. The other Tug was separated and will be kept in orbit as a fuel reserve for now (and sent to the Laythe Space Station eventually).

The two-Tug-train that dropped off the SCIENCE Base was rendezvoused with the Space Station and docked to the center Senior port on the bottom. Most of the fuel from these Tugs was transferred to the tanks on the Station (except for enough fuel for the double-Tugs to return to Kerbin later). After these recent deliveries, the tanks on the Station are nearly full, so there is a good amount of fuel in orbit for multiple Ladyhawk test flights, a possible return to Vall, and other future projects.

For now, the double-Tug will remain attached to the Space Station (which is getting pretty laggy). While doing the rendezvous for the new Tugs, I decided to attach the old Laythe Tug 5 to the Station so that it could be used for any mission in orbit requiring a standard docking port (originally I had separated it in favor of keeping the Tug you see docked on the left side that had lots of extra probe bodies added for extra torque...but now that the old ASAS module of Tug 5 creates torque, it's a lighter, better tug.

OK...so I've been writing this instead of playing with version 0.23 (I did get a download of 0.23 started in the meantime), so I'll end this here and go play with the new version.

[Brotoro]

Nice to see this hasn't been abandond

People gave me lots of reputation and feedback after Part 20, so I had to keep writing more.

[Geschosskopf]

You are an inspiration to us all