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

[Cydonian Monk]

Just toggle torque off (by action group or by right-click). Then set SAS on. If it keeps wanting to hold a heading and you want it to drift, turn SAS off and if it keeps not locking to desired heading, just tap F when you are aiming where you want....

I tried all of that, and even have a reserved action group for toggling reaction wheels. The old craft just seem to either have negative lift (or excess drag), or are now so sensitive they flip with the slightest touch. I have tighter tolerances on placement of Center of Mass vs Center of Lift now, so that helps somewhat.

No trouble with the wheels part of it. My two standard rover designs are largely unchanged since early in .20.

[Brotoro]

Are the birddogs giving you as much trouble as my pre-.21 aircraft are giving me? I tried to fly one of my Betas (which was previously very stable and authoritative), and couldn't get off the ground. Same for everything I built previously - unpilotable. I've had to redesign everything.

Glad to see the story continues. (Also: Where did you get the femkerbs from? Did you do the modeling work? Or did I just miss a post in the ocean of the Universe Replacer thread?)

No, the BirdDogs fly. Things are just...different. And where I was very comfortable with how the plane handled under the old avionics, I'm wary of risking Aldner's life until I get in some more practice with the new system. I'll try Captain Sierra's suggestion of turning off the cockpit's torque and see if I like the way that handles. But I won't turn off torque on my rovers (or BirdDog in rover mode) because I rely on it for keeping the rover stable when I go over bumps at high speed. I just wish that the re-mapped rover keys would be accepted by the SAS system as direction control input in regard to heading lock like the a,s,w,d are. Then I wouldn't have to keep toggling the t key or pressing the f key every time I make a heading adjustment.

I have no femkerb models. I have Photoshop. I'll modify a few images as needed...and we'll all be picturing the female astronauts in their ships with no problem.

[Cydonian Monk]

I have no femkerb models. I have Photoshop. I'll modify a few images as needed...and we'll all be picturing the female astronauts in their ships with no problem.

Nice. I kind of suspected that after taking a closer look. Convincing enough!

I just wish that the re-mapped rover keys would be accepted by the SAS system as direction control input in regard to heading lock like the a,s,w,d are.

Same here, also when piloting in physics-warp. The SAS seems to ignore all changes then. (And the last thing I want to do in phys-warp is turn without SAS.)

[RocketPilot573]

Awesome chapter! Thanks for starting this up again!

Oh, and I'll tell you about the lag...

In 0.21.1 (fresh install) a 200 part rocket lags SO MUCH. The timer was solid yellow, and the game ran at less than half speed. Now, I loaded up the same rocket in 0.18.2, I couldn't believe it. With the same settings it launched with ZERO lag! The timer never, ever turned yellow. So yea, I hope the devs do something...

Edited September 28, 2013 by RocketPilot573

[Brotoro]

Awesome chapter! Thanks for starting this up again!

Oh, and I'll tell you about the lag...

In 0.21.1 (fresh install) a 200 part rocket lags SO MUCH. The timer was solid yellow, and the game ran at less than half speed. Now, I loaded up the same rocket in 0.18.2, I couldn't believe it. With the same settings it launched with ZERO lag! The timer never, ever turned yellow. So yea, I hope the devs do something...

I'm glad to hear that. I thought it was only me that was getting so much lagginess in 0.21.1.

[Geschosskopf]

Yay! More of this wonderful story. Thanks!

[SofusRud]

awesome story. been a while

about lag, Mu said in the latest Squadcast that there's gonna be some major optimization in 0.22 . something like 30% increase in framerate or something, not entirely sure what his exact words were, but you can always find the interview. It's episode 3 i believe

[Brotoro]

A word of advice:

So long as you have kerbal alarm clock, there is no such thing as too many ships to a mission. Don't be like me, who packs everything on one to two ships because I don't use alarm clock.

Kerbal Alarm Clock certainly makes handling multiple ships much, much easier. But, if you have half a dozen ships coming into the Jool system at the same time, and you get through the Jool aerobraking with all of them, you still have to watch six ships simultaneously as they loop round and round Jool waiting for an opportunity to encounter the correct moon. And if you are busy concentrating on one ship, another May have an unexpected encounter that destroys or flings it off. And Alarm Clock can't help you there because you don't know when the encounters are coming.

So handling just two ships into the Jool system just now was much easier (lag problems not withstanding).

[Gameguru]

Your killing me! Get some kethane then have it explodinate or something when they add resources. I would make it worth it to exploar laythe and other moons of jool. Please add it!!!

[Brotoro]

Your killing me! Get some kethane then have it explodinate or something when they add resources. I would make it worth it to exploar laythe and other moons of jool. Please add it!!!

I prefer to play mostly stock (other than using mods that improve the program interface and help me play the game). I like to see what I can do within the current limitations of the stock parts.

When the devs give us kethane (or some equivalent for mining fuel), I'll us that. For now, I'll ship out fuel as needed.

[Brotoro]

Long-term Laythe - Part 15

Vall Venture - Part 2

I decided to clear out all of the ships I have transferring in Kerbol orbit...just so I can get on with things. Yes, I know that my kerbals on Laythe and elsewhere should really be doing all sorts of things in the meanwhile...but let's assume they've all discovered a cool new game called Human Space Program that they've be spending all their time playing. Or something.

So, after sending off the gigantic lag ships (the BirdDogs and the Vall Expedition on their Triple Tugs), the next thing that came up in Kerbal Alam Clock was Laythe Base 2 heading into the Jool system. I pulled it up and found... that it was stillperfectly targeted to a Jool aerocapture from the midcourse maneuver I had done many weeks ago (my time). So I just had to carefully sneak it across the Sphere of Influence boundary at 1x speed, and let it fall in toward Jool. Below we see it passing near Laythe on its way in.

Below we see the aerocapture at Jool, burning through the atmosphere at about 114 kilometers altitude. The Base does have a heatshield to protect it...and apparently the tugs are still made of some amazingly heat resistent material at this point in time, since the ship came through just fine.

I quickly got an encounter with Laythe (after a relatively small targeting maneuver) and below we see the aerocapture of the ship over the night side of Laythe.

I used the Tug to raise the periapsis a couple times, allowing for two aerobraking passes to lower the ship's orbit from the initial eccentric orbit. Once in its final Laythe orbit of 80 to 90 kilometers, the Tug's main tank was over 63% full. Later, I'll take that fuel and drop most of it off at Laythe Space Station. I separated the Tug and targeted Base 2 into the Fido Bay area of Dansen Island, a few kilometers north of the current Laythe base site. Deorbiting was done by four 24-77 engines fed by two FL-T200 tanks mounted on top of the heat shield.

Base 2 comes burning in towards Fido Bay...

The heat shield is dropped, and then it was just a matter of waiting for the right moment to pop the chutes. First came the two drogue chutes. The landing gear were also deployed at this time. The landing gear are needed because otherwise the heavy weight of the base would blow the tires upon landing (I suppose that would not really matter here because I have kerbals on site to fix the wheels).

After the drogue chutes fully open, the eight main chutes are popped out in reefed condition. After the mains open fully at 500 meters AGL, the Base descends at about 7 m/s and touches down safely.

Kurt and Nelemy hop in the Fido over at Laythe Base 1 and drive over to check out the new Base. As you can see, the Base has three 4-kerbal Hitchhiker pods, one to serve as bunkhouse, one in the center to serve as the dayroom work area, and the other with more laboratory and improved life-support equipment. On top is a 2-kerbal control pod as the operations center. The modules are connected with "tunnels" that I envision allowing the kerbals to access the different modules without having to suit up. You'll notice that there are eight roundified RCS tanks on the base, but no RCS quads... those represent tanks for various consumables. The base has eight RTGs for power, but also has some solar panels that can be delpoyed if they are running experiments or recycling equipment that requires more power during the daytime. Currently, a lot of the empty space in the modules is filled with boxes of supplies, of course.

Nelemy: "Dude! They have kinds of snacks I've never seen before!"

Kurt: "Is that always the first thing you check? But it's nice to know that the big brains back on Kerbin continue to advance snack technology. Just don't eat any right now...we have to move the base."

Nelemy: "Mmmpfh?"

A couple kilometers off the the east, much of the heat shield has crashed down intact. I'll let the boys build something out of those parts later...I'll assuming they have some cutting/welding torches. (Well...*I'll* see what I can build out of those parts in the VAB and teleport it over to them.)

Kurt got into the control cabin and retracted the landing gear, and started driving Base 2 around (no doubt with helpful guidance information from Nelemy following in the Fido). I didn't really mean for Base 2 to be a fully-mobile exploration base... I only included the wheels so it could lumber along and be moved slowly to new positions if needed. But it turned out that it could easily travel along at up to 20 m/s on the relatively smooth terrain of the Laythe Base area. Thompbles originally wanted the new base to be located north of the current base, but there was a low ridge separating that location from the current base, so he had Kurt drive the base southeast to see how it looked over there. They wanted the new base to be located at least 2.3 km from the current base to prevent lag...er, I mean, to be sure it was located on higher ground in case of any future tsunamis. But the land to the east seemed a bit steep, so Thompbles had Kurt drive it over to the south to see if it looked good there. But the elevations there were not great, so Thompbles had Kurt move it back to the east.

Kurt: "Will you make up your mind?! You're like a little old lady having me drag her couch all around the room looking for the perfect spot."

Thompbles: "It's almost perfect now. Just a bit further east and there's a small shelf in the hillside so it can sit more level. Does the tilt of the base look good to you, Nelemy?"

Nelemy: "Mmmpfh?"

Thompbles: "I'll see if I can drag Aldner away from playing HSP, and we'll both come over in the wobbly rover to help you unload supplies."

Below is the final location for the Laythe Base 2 module, overlooking the current base site closer to the bay, and located over 150 meters above sea level. The base was oriented so that the operations center window has a nice view of Jool on the eastern horizon, and the landing legs were extended for extra stability.

After this, Alarm Clock reminded me that I needed to take care of the plane shift maneuvers for the BirdDogs and, one day later, the Vall Expedition. These burns required 135 m/s and 142 m/s of delta-V. I was able to target the BirdDogs in toward a 114 km periapsis at Jool, but the targeting of the Vall ship was encountering Tylo, so I had to settle for an apoapsis further out for now (I'll fix that closer in). After these maneuvers, the Triple Tugs of the BirdDogs had 7% of the fuel left in their rear tanks (the tanks of the triple tug adapter were dry...and I had to move fuel back into the central tanks of the GasStations where it had been sucked out -- I really wish ships would remember when you've set parts of them to NOT crossfeed fuel). The Triple Tugs of the Vall Expedition had only 2% of the fuel left in their rear tanks. This was fine -- these tanks are often used up in the boost out of Kerbin orbit... but the ships did start out with the additional fuel in the tanks of the triple tug adapters.

The next thing to take care of was the Secondary Base + Fido payload that was also heading in toward the Jool system. This payload consists of another Laythe base that is like the original, along with a slightly more compact version of the Fido rover. The intention is to drop this somewhere on Laythe as an alternate base that kerbals can explore from.

The Secondary Base's trajectory to Jool was such that the descending node of the trajectory relative to Jool's orbit occured immediately before entering into Jool's SOI. Back when I launched this, this arrangement seemed like a good thing because it meant that the plane shift burn could be done as far from the sun as possible. But, it turned out not to be as good as I'd hoped, since this also delayed my fine targeting burn until the ship was quite close to Jool, so that took much more fuel than normal. Ah, well, the Tug had plenty of fuel. Below, we see me targeting the incoming ship using Conic Draw Mode 0 (which is easily set on the fly using the Improved Maneuver Nodes mod that I love). This lets me tweak the maneuver node (off in the distance there) while I'm focused in close on the Jool system to see exactly what the trajectory looks like close to Jool. The only problem I have with the process is that shifting the focus to Jool is not easy when you have the Jool system full of dozens of ships and probes -- trying to double-click on Jool to focus on it often leads to selecting a spacecraft instead. It would be nice if the little pop-up menu that appears when you click on Jool ALSO had the choice "Focus on Jool". And, while we are mentioning dirt-simple fixes to the KSP interface, how about adding a "Go to Tracking Station" button to the menu that comes up when you press ESC? It's annoying to have to "Go toSpace Center" and wait a long time for that view to load just so I can click on the Tracking Station. AND, while we are at it, it would be nice if they changed the direction the planets rotate around in the "wait" icon in the bottom-right... it looks like it hould go the other way. What? Quit complaining and get on with it? OK, OK.

As I was targeting the aerocapture at Jool, Laythe kept getting in the way. OK, have it your own way... I'll send the ship in for a direct aerocapture at Laythe. Normally I avoid doing a direct-to-Laythe aerocapture because it seems more unrealistic to try to burn off all that interplanetary speed screeching to a halt in a short span of Laythe's atmosphere. I expect that when reentry heat and damge are added, even doing the Jool/Laythe two-step my be too hot to handle. We'll probably have to do some engine breaking, then skim high up through Jool's atmosphere, slowing down just enough to get captured in a huge orbit...then perform a couple more aerobrakings through Jool's atmosphere to lower our orbit. What a pain. Is that how you Dangerous Reentry guys have to get to Jool? Below: Plotting the small burn needed to ensure a prograde near-equatorial orbit for the secondary base...with wonderful conic draw mode 0, of course.

Below, the ship plunges headlong toward Laythe. The planets almost look like a Mastercard logo. "Don't carry cash to the Jool system... take Mastercard! Much more mass-efficient."

I forgot to note the entry speed, but here we are part-way through the aerocapture flames. The ship is tearing through the atmosphere 20 clicks directly over Laythe Base. There must have been a hell of a sonic boom and light show for the boys to watch.

Safe in an elliptical Laythe orbit! Also on board this ship are two more comsats, nestled under the front and rear of the rover. Below, we see the first of the comsats being popped out.

Then the other comsat was popped out, and the antennas and solar panels were deployed. The secondary base will remain in the high elliptical orbit for now until I decide where to drop it (so that any plane-shift needed will be cheaper). The comsats were manueuvered up into approximately 10000 km cicular orbits. Hopefully now it's less likely that all of them won't all be bunched up on the same side of the planet when we need them. Yes, yes, I could try to tweak them all into perfect orbits that will keep them nicely spaced...but that's not my particular idea of fun. So I'll just throw more satellites at the problem.

Next up, Kerbal Alarm Clock started nagging me about Laythe Tug 6 that was returning to Kerbin. My burn sending this tug out of the Jool system had been sub-optimal, but a relatively small midcourse burn set it up nicely for a Kerbin intercept, and I did some final targeting to do an aerocapture pass at 29.5 km.

Below, the white-hot goodness of compressed palsma provides a light show over Kerbin. The aerocapture resulted in an elliptical orbit with an apoapsis of 552 km. I then rasied the periapsis a bit, did an aerobraking pass, and raised the periapsis again, and made a final aerobraking pass, then raised the periapsis out of the atmosphere with the Tug in moderatly low orbit, ready for refueling and re-use. But the design became obsolete in the time it took the Tug to travel to Jool and back. All those probe cores were there to provide extra torque...but now the old SAS unit provides plenty of torque, and all those probe cores are just a huge drain on electricity. Maybe I'll just deorbit some of these old tugs (ones that have parachutes on the nukes, anyway), and use the parts for upgraded tugs.

And now for the main event: The Vall Expedition and replacement BirdDogs are heading into the Jool system. Even though the BirdDogs were boosted away from Kerbin first, the Vall Expedition is the first to arrive at Jool's sphere of influence, four days ahead of the BirdDogs. The small high gain antennas on the ships are designed to communicate with the huge high-transmission-power, high-reception-sensitivity antennas at KSC, but once the ships get close enough together, they can start communicating with each other.

Hellou: "*static*...calling Laythe Base. Vall Expedition calling Laythe Base."

Kurt: "This is Laythe Base. I read you Vall Expedition. This is Kurt Kerman speaking."

Hellou: "Vall ex... Oh! Hello, Kurt! You're coming in fine, too. We have crossed into the Jool system."

Kurt: "Oh, wow. It's great to talk to somebody without a couple minutes of light-speed delay. Welcome to Jool, the best little outpost this side of Duna."

Hellou: "Thank you. Hold on, and I'll get Emilynn.. *crackle* Emi...I've got Kurt Kerman on the line."

Emilynn: "Hey there, Jaymak! How are all you pudknockers on Laythe doing?"

Kurt: "Now, Hawk, I told you before that it's impolite to call your fellow pilots 'pudknockers'."

Emilynn: "Hey, I know pudknockers when I see pudknockers. Is your Grand Poobah available?"

Kurt: "Hang on, Hawk. I'll get him."

Emilynn: "Thankie, Jaymak."

Thombles: "Commander Emilynn, this is Thompbles. Welcome to the Jool system. Is there anything we can do for you?"

Emilynn: "No, sir....just checking in as required. All is well here. I had to jink a bit wide of Tylo on the way in, so I need to do a burn now to fine tune my periapsis at Jool."

Thompbles: "OK, commander, I'll leave you to it. If you want to send your parameters to Kurt, we can do some orbital sims here to double check the trajectories."

Emilynn: "Thankie. Always good to have backup. Put him back on the line."

In the plot below, we see Laythe in the lower right, Vall in the center, and Tylo on the left. The things orbiting between Laythe and Vall are Tugs L7 and L8 in parking orbits around Jool waiting to be sent back to Kerbin.

Below, the Vall Expedition ship falls in toward Jool. Laggy as ever.

Below, the aerodynamic heating affects begin to appear. I mentioned that the flimsy connections between the triple tugs were sufficient because the forces were the same on all three parts under thrust. But, during aerocapture, the different forces acting on the separate parts made them wiggle around a fair amount...and wobble around a LOT if I tried to use physical time warp. So, the laggy ride through Jool's atmosphere had to be done at 1x and took a loooooong time.

Hellou: "Em-Emi? Is the ship-p sup-posed to sh-ake so much?"

Emilynn: "Not a problem, Chickadee! It's only a problem if it suddenly quits shaking, because that would be when it breaks apart!"

Hellou: "Oh, gr-reat. I fell much bet-ter now."

The Vall Ex. ship camee through at a periapsis of 116.9 km, and that left its apoapsis right on Vall's orbit. A tiny bit higher periapsis might have been better, giving a apoapsis a little ways out beyond Vall so the ship could loiter around for an encounter longer out there.

Aldner: "Laythe Base calling Vall Expedition. Aldner Kerman calling Vall Expedition."

Emilynn: "Hey! Buzz! How they hangin'?"

Aldner: "At point 8 gee, not so low. Welcome to our neck of the woods, Hawk. I have the trajectory data following your apo-burn. We confirm that you will have no moon encounters until after the BirdDogs do their aero capture, unless you want to burn fuel."

Emilynn: "Thankie, Buzz. No, I'll hang tight and let you guys handle your incoming load first. I appreciate the co-piloting from afar. Hey, let me put Hellou on for you."

Hellou: "Hi, Aldner. Long time, no see. You never told me your call sign was 'Buzz'."

Aldner: "That's right, 'Chickadee.'

Hellou: "Hey, don't blame that one on me...Emi gave me the name. So why 'Buzz'...are you some kind of insect?"

Aldner: "No. Back in the early days I had a habit of buzzing the control center. I grew out of it, but the nickname stuck with the other pilots."

Hellou: "Oh, you'd love the new control tower they built at KSC."

Emilynn: "Hey, Buzz. We still got some stuff to clean up from the shaking we got, and then we're going to get some shut eye. I'll let you keep my girl up late talking some other night."

Aldner: "Roger, Hawk. Talk to you later. Night, Hellou."

Next in came the BirdDogs with their multiple GasStations...laggy, but not as laggy as the Vall Ex. ship. Again, I had to sit through the looong laggy aerocapture at 1x to minimize the shaking of the ship. The aerocapture altitude was 114.5 km, which placed the apoapsis a little way out beyond Laythe's orbit.

Below are the orbits after the aerocaptures and apoapsis kicks of the two ships. Then I took a break. I did ponder what would be the most efficient way to get to Vall... My default method (based on what I did in my early Visiting Vall mission), was just to wait in the post-aerocapture orbit for a handy encounter with Vall. If Jool does have a powerful radiation belt, it would probably be important not to hang around in this zone any longer than necessary, even if burning extra fuel was required. And, while I hang around like this for a Laythe capture, so that Laythe's atmosphere can provide all the delta-V for speeding the ship up to Laythe's orbital velocity...in the case of going to Vall, my ships's engines are going to provide the delta-V to speed up to Vall's orbital velocity. So maybe it's all the same if I burn out at apoapsis right away to speed up to Vall's orbital speed, and then arrange a capture out there at a slower relative velocity. Or would that be losing me so gravity-assist that I get from coming at Vall from further in? BUT...I think maybe the most efficient way might be to get an aerocapture by Laythe (or an almost-aerocapture) and then proceed on to Vall from there. Has anybody done the calculations comparing these options? I was originally planning on using a save game to repeat the mission trying different methods...but this laggy beast is such a pain to work with, that ain't happening.

The first ship to get an encounter was the BirdDogs. I planned a small burn to adjust the encounter and got the plot below, which may look funny until you recall that I'm using conic draw mode zero, so the encounter path is down near Laythe, and the seemingly disconnected ellipse is where the ship would end up if it shot past the Laythe encounter.

I did the maneuver to encounter Laythe and tweaked the aerocapture altitude at Laythe to 24.36 km. This emptied the fuel in the rear drop tanks of the three Tugs, so I separated those as the ship headed in toward Laythe. These empty tanks should then do aerocapture and then multiple aerobrakings until they enter Laythe's atmosphere...but that wouldn't happen unless I actually focus on the tanks and follow them around. I'll probably just terminate their flights later.

Some reentry heating...a little plane shift with Jool as a backdrop after Laythe aerocapture...some further aerobraking and orbital maneuvers... and the BirdDogs and GasStations are safe in Laythe equatorial orbit, ready to be brought down under remote control on another day.

The main fuel tanks of the three Tugs are almost 90% full... plenty of fuel to bring to Laythe Space Station....... except... hmmm... ...there's no way to dock those Tugs at Laythe Station because they all have Senior docking ports, and the Station has no Senior docking ports...having been built back before Senior docking ports were developed. Bugger. I guess I should have kept one of those rear drop tanks attached, since they had standard ports on their bottoms. I COULD blow the Senior port off of the center Tug to uncover the standard port underneath...but then that Tug becomes useless for re-use pushing Senior-port payloads from Kerbin. Bugger. Ah... there is a standard port on the top of the Double GasStation in the center...so once I dump off the BirdDogs and the two side GasStations, I could use that to dock to the station...maybe it would be toooo laggy. Ah! The Tug that brought in the Secondary Base + Fido is one of the upgraded old Tugs that has a standard from port, but also has a Senior port on its butt for docking on the drop tank. So I can dock THAT to the station, then bring these other tugs in individually to dock there and offload fuel in a less laggy manner. Yeah...I like that. Maybe it would have been better to plan ahead properly...but getting the job done with the tools at hand is satisfying in its own way.

Almost immediately after the the BirdDogs got settled down in Laythe orbit, an encounter came up for the Vall Ex. ship.....at Laythe. Should I? But while fiddling with a maneuver to either dodge Laythe (the ship had earlier dodged past Laythe, getting a little pump-up to a slightly higher orbit) or maybe try for a Laythe/Vall two-step... I saw that I could get a direct Vall encounter. So I just went with the original plan and took that.

Below is the maneuver setting up the close pass by Vall (about 163 km). I dropped the three rear tanks, now empty, partway through the burn for this maneuver, to fly happily around Jool forever...or until an eventual Laythe or Vall encounter scatters them hither and yon. Actually, I terminated their flights...but now I wish I had left them there to see where they would have ended up.

And here's the orbital insertion burn to put the Vall Ex. ship into a 163 x 1500 elliptical orbit around Vall. This is what I used.

Below: The Vall Expedition ship safely in orbit around Vall. While it was still in the high eccentric equatorial orbit, the four comsats were popped off of the lander and deployed. I'll give them kicks at apoapsis to put them into circular 1500 km orbits... later.

The Vall Ex. lagfest ship was maneuvered into a 163 x 165 orbit. Good enough. Man, I can't wait to start breaking this ship apart and getting the lag down. In this final orbit, the three Tugs had 47% fuel left in their main tanks. One of those Tugs will be used for returning the Vall crew to Kerbin later.

Emilynn: "Vall Station calling Laythe. Are you boys awake?"

Nelemy: "Yo, this is Nelemy speaking."

Emilynn: "Hey Nelemy. This is Emilynn. Nice to meet ya'! Looks like we're going to be neighbors for a while. Please tell the others that we are safely in our operational orbit around Vall, and thanks for the trajectory help. I surely appreciated it."

Nelemy: "Sure thing, Emilynn."

Emilynn: "All right. We'll be off the air for a while. You sleep tight tonight too, Nelemy."

And so ends this installment, as the boys on Laythe have a fine supper in their new bigger Base.

Nelemy: "Wow, dudes. Just think of it: Female kerbals, just 16,000 km away."

Kurt: "What? Listen to what you just said."

Nelemy: "Well...OK...16,000 kilometers..."

Thompbles: "...More like 40,000 at the moment..."

Nelemy: "...OK, sure. But in the same moon system, dudes! And that Emilynn seemed pretty nice."

Kurt: "Cool your jets, kid. Emilynn doesn't...how shall we say...fancy boy kerbals."

Nelemy: "Whoah, dude! You mean she's..."

Kurt: "Yup."

Nelemy: "Oh. ...Not that there's anything wrong with that."

Kurt: "Not at all."

Thompbles: "Hey...the KSC has an official "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. How would you even know that?"

Kurt: "Oh, Hawk's not shy about it. And let's just say that she 'shot down' our flyboy here in more way than one."

Aldner: "How about let's just say we don't discuss it at all?"

Thompbles: "OK, guys, it's time we got some sleep. We have a lot of work ahead of us, getting BirdDogs and GasStations and alternate bases landed, and Tugs docked to the station and fuel transfered. They'll be plenty to occupy your minds."

[Tangle]

Now this is awesome. I find Emilynn and Hellou strangely adorable. Also, now I want to skip all of my missions in my "planned space missions" save and build a bunch of Laythe fliers... But I won't do that. Maybe in another save.

And I was thinking about Human Space Program... what kind of download times do you get with Kerbal Technology, a package the size of KSP(I think?), and the sheer distance to Laythe? Also, I'm hoping HSP is sandbox, like KSP, and that you can in fact do beyond the Moon with a manned mission...

Edited October 2, 2013 by Tangle

[Scotius]

*stares wistfully into the distance* Yeah. It would be cool to do manned Mars mission in HSP. Dang - even another manned landing on the Moon would be nice for a change. Developers really should speed up the work.

Anyways, you've been busy juggling multiple ships again Good thing everything went well. Your Jool system is becoming a beehive of activity.

[Geschosskopf]

@ Brotoro:

Excellent! I read with great interest being as I've got a 5-ship flotilla getting close to a Jool encounter. I hope to return the favor by posting some empirical data on the question you asked about the most efficient way to do Jool aerocaptures to reach particular moons. What I'm going to try is to adjust my Jool Pe to give me an Ap out in the general vicinity of the moon each ship wants to go to, then circularize at the Ap. Then it becomes just a matter of orbiting Jool like a moon until the ship and target moon come to the desired phase angle, and I can leave the ships there however long without worrying about them crossing paths with any moons while dealing with other ships.. At least that's the plan.

[KatzOhki]

What mod adds the female Kerbals? They're pretty cute

[Scotius]

That's no mod - that's Photoshop

[KatzOhki]

Oh you sure? If that's true I nominate brotoro as character designer!

[Gameguru]

Aye! I know you don't use mods, but i think you might want to make an exception for this one.http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/kerbolquest-jetpacks/

it adds some sick jetpacks, the jet engine ones should work on laythe. it would be a more fuel efficent way of traveling, you could also put it on your sky-dogs as a way to get back to base without having to use an expensive deorbit and reorbit.

[DaveofDefeat]

Real men transfer directly to laythe.

[Brotoro]

Long-term Laythe - Part 16

Vall Venture - Part 3

Time to get all the new equipment landed on Vall and Laythe, or otherwise positioned where it's needed.

I've been looking forward to breaking apart the lag-beast at Vall, so let's start there. The three Tugs have a little under 47% propellant remaining in their main tanks, so almost all of that propellant was removed from the right Tug (in the picture below) and moved it to the Tug of the main Vall ship (on the left). The right-Tug retained enough fuel to return to Kerbin. A little extra fuel from the middle-Tug, and the main ship was 100% full.

The double Fido rover payload was separated, and then the middle Tug was separated. Emilynn Kerman then moved the main ship off to the side, and then the separated middle-Tug docked to the rovers. The rovers were then sent off into a slightly lower orbit (by about 3 km) to get them out of Lag City. Happily, things got much nicer after that -- those rovers seem to be the major cause of the lag with this ship.

The next step, below, was to move the unoccupied Lander over to dock to the top of the main Vall ship (which is now on the right side, just to confuse the innocent). You know...I really love Romfarer's Lazor docking camera mod.

After the Lander was docked to the top of the main ship, the main ship and its fully-fueled Tug were separated from the triple-tug adapter, and the remaining Tug attached to the adapter dragged it off tot he side. Then the main Vall ship was docked back to its Tug. Most of this docking ballet was easy because the ship parts were just kept aligned to North, and it was very easy to slide parts back together.

Below, Jool comes over the horizon to greet the completed Vall Station. It has the Tug that will eventually return Emilynn and Hellou back to Kerbin. It also has the main Habitat, which will serve as living quarters for the return to Kerbin, but also is a fully capable emergency lander that could go down to Vall and back if needed -- or it could even land on Laythe, since it has some parachutes attached -- and it also has two single capsules with retro packs that could be used to land on Laythe (I love having lots of options in case of emergencies). And on top is the Vall Lander. This Lander doesn't drop any tanks, so it can be used to go down to Vall and back multiple times if it's refueled. That is, in fact, the plan: Emilynn and Hellou will explore from two different widely-spaced locations on Vall as part of their mission; and that's also why they brought two rovers.

The last Tug attached to the triple-tug adapter was shifted to the middle docking port so that it could push the adapter into a higher orbit where it will be left behind. I don't plan to use it, but I decided to keep it where it might be handy if needed. Its three tanks are empty.

I also took the time to put the remaining three comsats into high circular orbits where they could join the first one that was already there. These were still in the elliptical orbit that the Vall ship first came in on, and I just waited until one of the comsats reached apopasis at a time when the already-placed consats were not nearby, then did a circularization burn for that comsat.

Time to start the Vall surface exploration mission! Vall Fido 1 with its lander stage on top was popped off of the stack, ready to make its descent to the surface. The other rover will stay with the Tug, which has a fair amount of fuel, so it could potentially be used to do a large plane-shift maneuver and drop the second Fido anywhere on Vall if Emilynn and Hellou crash their first rover and need an emergency replacement. But the second rover will hopefully not be needed for this...in which case it will be used later for a second exploration location on Vall.

Two LV-909 engines will take care of the deorbiting and landing of the Fido 1 rover. It is being targeted a couple degrees south of the equator to the northern edge of a large basin.

Below, the Vall Fido 1 descends to the airless surface of Vall.

The landing location of the rover was on a long 12° slope, which was more of an incline than desired for setting up base operations, so the Fido drove down the slope, keeping its speed to less than 10 m/s because it was still carrying its lander stage on top. It eventually found a less-steep location to the south, and parked there to act as landing target for the Vall Lander with our intrepid crew on board.

Below, Emilynn transfers over to the lander via EVA. Really, with all these hatches on all these docking ports and other parts, why hasn't Squad implemented internal transfer between docked modules yet? OK...Emilynn would probably use the transfer as an excuse to do an EVA, anyway...but I'm sure Hellou would prefer the docking tunnels.

With Emilynn in the lander can, and Hellou in the (Hitchhiker) habitat module, the Vall Lander separated from Vall Station and headed for the surface. The lander has six of the small Rockomax 48-7S engines on the bottom of its six FL-T400 tanks. This should be plenty of fuel to land on Vall and return to the station in equatorial orbit later. In the right half of the picture, we see the lander with antennas and landing legs deployed, dropping toward the surface.

Hellou: "Vall Lander calling Laythe Base."

Kurt: "This is Laythe Base. Kurt here. I read you loud and clear."

Hellou: "Hi, Kurt. We are descending to Vall. Retro burn went as planned."

Kurt: "OK. We're monitoring. Is all going well?"

Emilynn: "Oh, hell yes, Jaymak! The ship is handling like a dream. It might be nice if it had some more powerful motors than these little 7S toys, but I'll avoid trying to do any last-second kamikaze burns."

Kurt: "Roger, Hawk. Put her down gently."

Emilynn: "No worries! Time for the big braking burn. Talk to you later!"

Below, the Lander slows using the very efficient, if not overly powerful, 48-7S engines...

...and touches down gently 2.3 kilometers from the Fido rover.

Emilynn: "And we are DOWN! Attitude stable. Engine Arm circuit OFF. Fuel level at 44.8%. Greetings from Eve Basin, boys! Kerbals have returned to Vall!"

Kurt: "Roger, Hawk. We copy you down. Eve Basin?"

Hellou: "Yes. We are naming this basin after Eve, the goddess of love, the color purple, and telling male kerbals they are wrong."

Kurt: "I'm sure the boys at KSC will love the name."

Emilynn: "You're probably wrong about that, Jaymak. OK, I'm going to take care of wrangling that Fido over here, then maybe we'll go out for a little walk later. Can you check the video relay links back to KSC for me, Hellou?"

Hellou: "Already on it, Emi. We want to look good for the primetime news."

Below, the landing site of the Vall Lander, seen in the center of the picture, at 2° 23.7' South, 141° 20.5' East, at an elevation of 749 meters. The probe icon off to the right is the science package left behind where Bill Kerman landed the Vall Lewis Lander to become the first kerbal on Vall almost 12 years earlier. The probe icon near the bottom-left is where Bob Kerman left a science package by Vallhenge on that same expedition. Emilynn and Hellou's landing location was chosen because they intend to do an epic rover journey to Vallhenge, and it looks like there is a navigable route to get there.

Emilynn remotely guided the Fido rover over to the Vall Lander, then separated the lander stage from the top of the Fido and hopped it to a landing a short distance away.

Then Emilynn fired the two little decouplers, and the two engine pods separated from the lander stage. You may have noticed the command seats on top of those engine pods. During my "engineering simulations" when designing the Vall Fido lander stage, I always had those engine pod tanks end up over half full of fuel (because it's always nice to have a little extra fuel). So I figured with the added command seats and the decoupler mechanism, I now have two emergency return-to-orbit pods that give our intrepid explorers another option for getting off Vall in case something went wrong with their Lander (perhaps during landing). Anyway...waste not, want not. Be prepared. And other clichés.

Somewhat disconcertingly, when I switched away to some other location (taking care of a different ship) and returned my focus to the landing site, the collection of empty fuel tanks exploded a little ways into the sky and fell back. But nothing important was damaged.

In time for the primetime news hour back at KSC, our heroines disembark for their first EVA on Vall. Below we see Emilynn about to step onto the surface.

Emilynn: "Greetings to everyone back home on Kerbin! That was a heck of a fun landing! Wish you all were here!"

Hellou: "Nice words, Emi. Thanks for using 'heck'."

Emilynn: "Hey, I said you could be first out if the words were important. Come on out, Chickadee... the water's fine. Hard as a rock, in fact."

Hellou: "OK, I'm opening the hatch now."

You'll notice in the image above that there are two lights angled inward on either side of the hatch to the lander can. This is because I found out during engineering testing that a single light located above the hatch (which seemed like a good idea) causes the kerbals to bump their heads upon exiting the hatch and getting rather violently thrown to the ground. Which never looks good on world-wide television. Unfortunately for the boys on Laythe, their new Base 2 has exactly that kind of arrangement. Very embarrassing. And I believe I've had this happen in the past on a ship in orbit around Kerbin...and the kick from the bumping the light caused the kerbals to go sailing off a considerable distance from the ship when they went out for EVA. So heed well my warning.

Below, Hellou joins Emilynn on the surface.

Hellou: "I'm on the surface. Hello to everybody on Kerbin! The view is beautiful! I'm going to take some contingency samples of the surface material now."

Emilynn: "Looks like dirty ice to me."

Hellou: "Yes, Emi. I'll handle the geological reports."

Below, with the video transmission back to Kerbin completed, Emilynn and Hellou watch Kerbol set behind the mountains.

Aldner: "Laythe Base calling Vall Lander. Aldner Kerman calling Vall Lander."

Emilynn: "Hi there, Buzz! What's up?"

Aldner: "We watched your show. Great work. I notice you didn't plant a flag."

Emilynn: "Ah, you noticed that, did you? Planting flags is under Hellou's department. I handle the piloting, half the rover driving, and the repair of equipment and wheels. Hellou handles flags, the other half of the rover driving, science, and explosives."

Hellou: "Umm...I forgot to bring out the flag."

Aldner: "Wait...explosives? Why explosives? Is this some geology thing?"

Hellou: "No. Well, I have some small charges for that as well. But the explosives are mainly for blasting a shelter into the ice if we need to hide from any radiation storms. I can blast us a nice bunker in 20 minutes flat...but I can do a much better job if I have longer. You see, we aren't lucky like you boys on Laythe with your nice atmosphere to hide under. If there's a kerbol-flare and Jool's radiation belts act up, all we have around us is vacuum."

Aldner: "I thought Jools magnetic field would protect us from any kerbol-flares."

Hellou: "Sure, it will deflect a lot of it. You wouldn't get blasted directly like you would if your ship was out between the planets. But a lot of those high energy particles will work their way in to add to Jool's radiation belts. And if the kerbol-flare is accompanied by a strong coronal mass ejection, it would compress Jool's magnetic field and the radiation belt intensity could spike by a few orders of magnitude. Best to be under several meters of ice if that happens."

Emilynn: "My little Chickadee sure does that geek-speak real well. And it was a lot of fun watching her blast holes in the ice cap back on Kerbin for practice! Listen, Buzz, we're going to pack it in for the night. We have to check out the rover tomorrow and get ready for our big drive. We'll talk to you later."

And so our heroines retired for the night in their comfy habitat module...where the bunks are located down low so the fuel remaining in the surrounding tanks acts as additional radiation shielding.

Emilynn's Dream

NOTE: The sequence below DID NOT HAPPEN. This is only one of Emilynn's dreams. Below, we see the Emilynn dreaming that she's out inspecting one of the engine pods from the Fido's lander stage.

It only makes sense to check out the command seat to see if it's comfortable. Yes. Very comfy. Hmmm... the fuel tank is over half full.

"Yeeeeeee-HA! Now that's a ship with decent thrust!"

"And enough fuel to make it all the way to rendezvous with Vall Station! Hahahahahaha! That's fine! Fine! F-nine!"

Hellou: "Umm...Emi?"

Emilynn: "Zzz..Huh? Wassup?"

Hellou: "Are you OK? You were making funny noises in your sleep."

Emilynn: "Oh, sorry. Just having a little dream. Hmmm...I wonder how far I could fly one and land back on the surface?"

Hellou: "What?"

Emilyn: "Huh? Oh, nothing. Go back to sleep."

Meanwhile, back at Laythe...

Orbiting Laythe, the big triple-tug BirdDog transport was ready to be disassembled. It was still in its eccentric orbit, and I decided to leave it there until after disassembly in order to save fuel (rather than drop the ship to a low circulr orbit first -- the BirdDogs and GasStations would come in a little hotter this way, but they each had enough fuel to deorbit from there). First off was the BirdDog 3, which would be remotely piloted down by Nelemy.

Below, the BirdDog fires its retro pack. I have a probe core between the retro pack tanks and the top docking port to give me a handy place to control the ship from during retro burn. The standard entry profile for landing at Fido Bay on Dansen island is shown: a small plane shift is required, and the trajectory is targeted to halfway between Dansen island and the tiny Mariliza island.

Nelemy orients the BirdDog 3 for entry and the entry plasma flames begin to appear.

Aldner: "Yo, Little Buddy...you still have the retro pack attached."

Nelemy: "Huh? Oh! Yeah...hold on, Dude... OK...it's decoupled now!"

Kurt: (at the hatch) "Wow...Great entry flames. Hey, you got nice Mach effects there for a couple seconds.

Aldner: "It's through entry. Remember to jettison the wheel heat shields."

Because of the lift, the BirdDog overshot the Fido Bay area, and Nelemy circled it back around, managing to pitch up violently a couple times...but the plane recovered quickly. But that did place the plane lower than expected. Rather than burn lots of jet fuel, Nelemy set the plane down about 5 km east of the base on steeper terrain than usual.

Then Nelemy raised the nose gear to drop the rover wheels to the ground, and drove the plane over to the new base.

Nelemy: "Allright, Dudes! Down and safe."

Thompbles: "Try not to run it into the base or rover when you park it."

Nelemy: "No problemo, Captain Thombples, Dude. Wheels stopped. OK, I'll go unload all the supply boxes from the cockpit!"

Kurt: "Just don't eat all the new snacks, OK?"

Then it was Kurt's turn at the remote-control panel. BirdDog 4 was separated from the big ship and Kurt fired the retros for a standard entry. Below, the retro pack drifts away from the BirdDog... and then the intense entry flames of the steep entry, and then Kurt popped off the wheel heat shields over Fido Bay. I've never seen these shields survive imapact... maybe they despawn first.

Kurt made a more liesurely turn to bring the BirdDog back around to the base area, then landed it gently on the flats a little over a kilometer from the old base. Then he remotely drove it over to the new base in rover mode.

Kurt: "BirdDog 4 is parked and powered down. I'll go unload the supplies from the cockpit."

Thompbles: "It looks like Nelemy is alreay over there pulling out the boxes."

Aldner: "Guys, we have quite a nice little air wing here."

Kurt: "The famous Laythe Air Force!"

Thompbles: "And now that we have several operational planes with lots of rescue options, you guys can finish off the island surveys."

Next to be deorbited was the Double GasStation. This was separated from the big ship, and its twelve 24-77 engines were fired to send the station on its way down to the Fido Bay area.

Below: the entry flames. Then it was a matter of waiting for the right moment to deploy the twelve parachutes.

I was trying to land it by the previous GasStations, but it went a little long and actually ended up touching down closer to the new base (which you can see off in the distance wih the Laythe Air Force.

The Big Question, of course, was "will the BirdDogs be able to dock to either of the two refueling booms on this ship?" ...since it would be annoying to have all that jet fuel unavailable. So Aldner drove his BirdDog on over and tried it out. The boom port looked to be a bit high... but with careful placement of the BirdDog, the ports clicked together after the nose gear was lowered to raise the front of the plane. Excellent!

Up in orbit, GasStation 4 was separated from the increasingly-inappropriayely-named Big Ship. The gas station was targeted to Aldner Island to serve as a refuling base for the exploration of the remaining islands in the southeast section of the Big Ass Impact Feature on the far side of Laythe. Below, we see the six 24-77 engines deorbiting the station, and then see it passing over Bsalis Island on its way to the southeast corner of Aldner Island.

The southeast corner of Aldner Island has a long, sloping landing area located at Laythe's equator, so it's a nice place for a reconnaissance base. GasStation 4 ended up at a 6° tilt.

GasStation 5 is being left in the eccentric orbit so that it can be landed at some future time at a place where it will be needed. By keeping it in the high eccentric orbit, it will be easier to easily land it at a high latitude, if desired. Below, the GasStation and Tug are separated from the triple-adapter, which the other tugs pull out of the way, and then the Tug docks to the GasStation. The main tanks of these tugs all all still pretty full.

As you may recall, a secondary Base + Fido rover payload came into the Jool system and was parked in Laythe orbit waiting for a decision about where to put it. I was originally thinking of putting it on Aldner Island, but the payload includes a rover, and Aldner Island (although nicely placed at the equator for a fine base location) is really not a very large island, and I thought the rover could be put to better use exploring a bigger island. So I decided to put this Base/rover combo onto the high basin area on Fredoly Island (the large island to the southwest of Dansen Island). It has a nice wide basin, easy for landing planes, and is located far from the oceans, so no danger of tsunamis. But it is located at over 13 degrees South latitude, so first I had to use the Tug (the recycled/upgraded Tug L5) to shift the orbital plane to reach 12 degrees South...and the Base's engines could handle it from there.

Then it was just a matter of waiting for the right time when Fredoly Island would be lining up under the orbit, and the payload was separated from the Tug and deorbited with its four 24-77 engines. Below, we see the retro burn and then we see the payload heading in toward Fredoly.

The payload came in from a relatively high elliptical orbit (I left it there so the plane change maneuver would take less fuel), so the entry flames were strong (they are just getting started below), and I popped out the drogue chutes as soon as possible after the plasma dissippated to slow down the ship fast. The heat shield was separated after the drogues deployed.

I also got the main chutes out in reefed condition right after dropping the heat shield. Below we see the base/rover stack descending vertically under the fully-opened drogue chutes and the reefed main chutes. The landing legs of the base have also been deployed. Since the base was all set to land, I separated the rover at a couple thousand feet and let it freefall a bit to get it clear of the base (this whole operation has been controlled from the probe core on the top of the Fido rover), and then deployed the six parachutes on the Fido. You can see the Fido hanging from its fully-deployed parachutes with the base high above under its fully deployed chutes.

Below, the Fido toucheed down, and I immediately ran it off to the side to get out from under the base, which we see descending from the Fido's viewpoint. The base landed on a slight slope, bounced a bit, and did a heart-stopping partial pirouette around on one leg before settling into place. Whew.

The base landed a couple kilometers short of my intended target in the flat bottom of the sandy basin, but it's not tilted too badly. Now the base (Laythe Base 3) and Fido will sit and wait for me to assign a kerbal or two to use it as an exploration camp.

Last came the drudgery of handling the Tugs. A thankless job, but one that had to be done. So Thompbles probably had to take care of it. There was stll a lot of fuel left in the Tugs from the BirdDog ship, but those Tugs only had Senior docking ports, and Laythe Space Station has no Senior docking ports (having been sent out before they were invented). BUT, the Tug L5 that just dropped off Base 3 has a standard port on the front, and has a Senior port on the rear that it acqired during its refurbishment back at Kerbin before it was sent back to Laythe again with the Base/Fido payload. So, Tug L5 was docked to the Space Station first, then the two Tugs from the BirdDog ship were docked (after coming down from their higher orbit and dropping off the triple-tug-adapter in a slightly higher circular orbit in case I have some use for it in the future. The fuel from all of these Tugs, except what they would need to return to Kerbin, was transferred to the tanks on Laythe Space Station.

After the fuel transfer, I separated Tug L5 (WITHOUT its upgrade module that had added the Senior docking port and a bunch of probe cores that were for extra torque...but which are not needed now that the Tug's ASAS unit mysteriously started generating torque). Tug L5 scooted out of the way, and then the remaining Tugs re-docked the upgrade adapter to the Space Station...where it will serve as a Senior docking port for any future operations needing one. The two Tugs then backed off and moved to a higher orbit to await being sent back to Kerbin. I have them docked to each other, rotated at 90 degrees, just so I'll be able to send them back as one ship (much less bother that way).

So that's all the new assets at Laythe. The high orbits have the four comsats wandering around; the ellipticl orbit is the Tug with GasStation 5 waiting to be placed somewhere in the future; then comes the ancient Clark lander from the original Laythe expedition; then comes the orbit of the possibly useless triple-tug-adapter; then the low circular orbits close together of the Laythe Space Station and the recently released Tugs awaiting return to Kerbin. And then all the goodies on the surface. It makes me happy to look at all my goodies in place at Laythe.

And so ends this installment. Oh, OK... here's a last look at our girls on Laythe readying their rover for their Big Trip. The rover is my tried-and-true eight-wheel design that has done so well for me in the past, but this one has a control cockpit (good visibility, and very high impact tolerance) for the driver, and a single-kerbal lander can that has been refurbished into a living quarters module so that the off-duty kerbal can stretch out, wash up, and ride in comfort. There is also a "Granny Clampett" chair on top of the module that a kerbal could ride on to get a good view of the surrounding terrain as the rover travels along. The Fido has RCS for those unexpected moments when the rover might become airborne over a bump (but I expect the cockpit torque will be sufficient to keep the rover steady in such a case), a couple RTGs for power, and lots of bateries.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Brotoro

[RocketPilot573]

Whew! That's quite a chapter! Awesome as always!

[Scotius]

Excellent read I liked the part with Emilynn's dream. Looks like you have a female incarnation of Jebediah on your hand. And an idea: move one of triple-tug adapters over to Laythe Space Station, and dock it to Clampy Sr. there. You will have a lot more docking options to pick. And more space for fuel storage (which is always good).

[Javster]

Wow! You're great at the game and this thread is really fun to read.

[Brotoro]

...And an idea: move one of triple-tug adapters over to Laythe Space Station, and dock it to Clampy Sr. there. You will have a lot more docking options to pick. And more space for fuel storage (which is always good).

I thought about that, but I rejected the idea because it would make the station unbalanced and get in the way of other things out there. But your comment made me think about it again... and, if I put the triple-adapter on the BOTTOM of the station (using the upgrade adapter), it would be symmetrical and out of the way. So I will take your suggestion, thanks.

[Scotius]

Glad to be of assistance *bows*