Duna Permanent Outpost Mission Architecture Challenge

[Patupi]

Or, you could refuel via Kethane and rocket up to the highlands after landing in the lowlands nearby.

[Donziboy2]

This is what happens when your IPT meets your Kethane lander at 2Kms...

Its 79.27T fully fueled, I missed the monoprop in this shot.

I may dump the top tank or merge it with the emergency supply from my second launch section.

Edited August 20, 2013 by Donziboy2

[ThreeMartiniLaunch]

Episode Seven is up.

In this update, I launch another pusher vehicle, and some supplies for the upcoming ejection window.

Day 500 comes and goes without a single Kerbal in the Duna system. It looks as though I will not have any Kerbals on Duna by day 1000.

I am not discouraged. This challenge has been a blast, and I've also had a great time doing the videos.

My approach was rather light hearted, but I think I am going to do this challenge again. This time, I'll actually plan in advance. Those launch windows come and go before you know it if you don't have a plan.

[Donziboy2]

I am trying the planning approach and so far after over a week...... Im still planning the first 55 days.....

[alacrity]

Ok so my mission profile (it was half done when I converted to 21 and I lost all my work.... grrrrrrrrrrrr)

using mods

Kethane (for something to do at Dune)

extraplanetary launcher (Ore Mining/ not using it to build anything for the Duna mission all craft are kerbin launched but since i am doing all this work I wanted them out there for later use)

MechJeb (for getting the weights of my ships and for the orbital - surface flight data on )

THSS (the triangular girder/struts... because they look cool)

HOME (hate using hitchikers for habs)

TT Modular wheels (better wheels)

NUKEMod (smaller parts for a better rover scale)

infernal/damned robotics (I like the crane)

KAS (really can't do kethane/extraplanetary without it, also easy way to flip rovers back onto their wheels)

Mission Concept.

i am creating a manned outpost on duna for continuous use and eventual development into a manned extra-planetary KSP. Putting in the ground work for self sustaining construction/fuel gathering and bio synthesis (Food and breathable air). Planned launches to get all parts in route before finally lifting off the manned missions (Olympus, Omphalos 1)

Addressed concerns

Weather monitoring - doubling up the replenishment missions as weather stations

Inflight feedings - using the drop tanks as converted storage (requires eva's inflight but free's up space for habitation and allows for dropping the weight once the cans are empty.

return vehikle survivability - prelaunching extended food supplies as well as having the crew replenishment ships be reuable as a return vehikle in case Omphalos fails to land. Launching additional Omphalos as back up.

Rules concerns

extraplanetary - Only using this as a mission goal, not an active ship building device. kind of like the 3d printer they are sending into space now but larger scale. all ships wil come from kerbin.

moving building - decided that i really didn't feel this was in my mission frame, using KAS instead (along with hopefully accurate landings)

Primary Habitation 'OLYMPUS'. Limited Kethane conversion capable, two onboard rovers each with room for two.

Hab space for 3(6)

Resources for 3 on a 160d mission flight. (only two to fly out with it, Third traveling seperately.)

Fully kitted for science, includes crane and Kethane converter as well as on board fuel conversion

Crew replanishment vehikle 'CHARIOT'.

Crew compliment of 3

External storage of food stuffs and consumable for releasing during flight and lghitening load on Duna Approach.

Acts as emergency lift vehikle from surface to Dune orbital station

Kerbin Return Vehikle 'OMPHALOS'. Crew Kerbin return vehikle.

Crew compliment 3(6)

440 units of Consumable

Acts as secondary housing in case of need

Uses Jr connector so EVA transfer only

First OMPHALOS will carry third member of the initial Duna Group, subsuquent missions will go unmanned as Chariot will be the full time replenishment vehikle

Consumable replenishment probes 'CORNUCOPIA'

Self guided probe mission two individual probes taken together

Each carries 240 units of goods

Each carries weather monitor package (Thermo, Barometer) to act as early warning stations to be landed at least 5 km for central area.

Manufactoria for the base 'VOLCANUS'

Sent unmanned

Used to create parts and small ships (Replacement parts for rovers, food tanks for the Ompahlos)

Processing storage for VOLCANUS 'MYTHRIL'

Storage and ore conversion for parts building

Ore mining vehikle 'HYPHAESTUS'

Mobile mining platform limited storage but descent range and speed

KAS system linking for using rovers for additional power to feed to auger's

Duna Orbital station 'AMBROSIA'

refueling station for Duna Low Orbit

also communication link from ground when ARES OCULI is out of alignment

set up as future kethane reproscessor with 9000 units of kethane storage

Primary duna system station, orbiting Ike 'ARGO'

kethane reproscessor

crew capacity of 12, set for future long term liveable science station

Home module for yeast culture food source as well as limited green life foodstuff and oxy replenishment

using Ike for easier burnout for manned Jool Missions

(Not Pictured) Polar orbital scanning communication sat 'ARES OCULI'

simple comsat with kethane and ISAMapping

i am still missing a kethane rover I know, but other than that anyone else see and glaring ommisions in my fleet? I will be posting my time table soonest

alacrity

Edited August 20, 2013 by alacrity

[KeithStone]

After an absolutely ridiculous amount of building, testing, and more testing, I'm nearly ready to actually start FLYING this mission! I hope to be able to start tomorrow, if RL doesn't get in the way. I'll document large portions of the more interesting bits via video, but more importantly, I've decided to.....

TERRAFORM DUNA!

Or at least a small portion of it. I decided that this needed to be more than just a science expedition. After all, I wasnt going for a high score, or an efficient score, just running this mission by the rules is hard enough! Ok ok, so I decided that after getting bogged down doing a ton of building and testing of some boring bits that I needed a break, and that break ended up being just more designing, which led to some pretty neat uses for some parts that I dont all too often use. I have to get back to finishing up my first 500 day mission report, then the long haul of getting these birds in the air begins!

[Patupi]

OK, I'm intrigued. How are you planning on representing terraforming in KSP? Planning on doming areas? I've seen that idea for terraforming the moon, ie just keep expanding a domed enclosure until the whole surface is enclosed, then expand the atmosphere upwards, then get rid of the domes. Mind you, terraforming the moon is a little off. It wouldn't last too long, and it's easier to just throw comets at it to build an atmosphere. Of course if you go that route it'll be uninhabitable during the terraforming process, where-as dome expansion would allow colonization during it.

[KeithStone]

You could call it a dome

[Patupi]

Or you could call the Church Police. Sorry, hopeless Monty Python addict here.

[Reavermyst]

I was going to try and do this challenge, but right now the game is far too slow for my patience to handle. I can understand longer loading times with mods, but when it takes 30 seconds just to change a tab in the VAB, that's ridiculous.

[bluemartian]

.21 is so much worse that .20 I wanna land on duna but NOWHERE is there a 50 meter by 50 meter FLAT LEVEL surface for which to make my base on. I've like scoured the WHOLE f*cking planet. .21 sucks.

[KeithStone]

I do kinda wish we had bulldozers...lol

[bluemartian]

Yep I wanna play this game but squad broke duna and that's the only planet I liked.

[bluemartian]

Oh look at that I went to go use .20 so I can use duna back when it was cool. And guess what? There's no kethane mod that works with .20. Are you f*cking kidding me? Are you TRYING to make it so I can't do the things I want in the game? Everyone else gets to do their stuff but when I wanna do something no they'll change an entire planet's surface or not provide computability to the mods that take an otherwise dry game and make it more fun. Are you TRYING to make me dislike the game and have a poor play experience? because that's what's happening here.

[bluemartian]

Game sucks. Gonna play assassins creed. At least I smile and laugh when I'm playing it because it lets me do the crazy things I want to do.

[Raptor831]

Just finished up with my latest addition to my flight thread. Gotten through over a quarter of the mission so far.

Phase 1

Phase 2, Part 1

No flatland for me at my base either. But hey, who said landing on other planets would be easy.

[Patupi]

Bluemartian, you might ask Majiir for an older version of Kethane on his thread, one that works with 0.20.2. I agree there are some serious down sides to 0.21.1, but I don't think screaming is going to help much unfortunately. But it is cathartic... so I'm told anyway.

[astropapi1]

Game sucks. Gonna play assassins creed. At least I smile and laugh when I'm playing it because it lets me do the crazy things I want to do.

Well, just ask Majiir for a 0.20 copy. SQUAD did their work and worked on Duna's surface.

[KeithStone]

So, slight snag, I forgot that my second transfer of crew arrived BEFORE my first crew left, and that leaves me with double the kerbals on duna and not enough supplies....this is gonna take a bit to work out since it totally throws off my second set of launches...DOH

[Patupi]

Remember there is a 10 day lee way. It's only considered 'long term habitation' when it's longer than 10 days. Though might be tricky on the other crew who have been there longer than 10 days. Hmmm....

[Raptor831]

So, slight snag, I forgot that my second transfer of crew arrived BEFORE my first crew left, and that leaves me with double the kerbals on duna and not enough supplies....this is gonna take a bit to work out since it totally throws off my second set of launches...DOH

I just threw my whole mission's worth of supplies up at once. That's the first thing landed, and will last almost the whole time for all crews in the 1000-days. I also built supplies into my habs to give me extra.

Planning this can give you fits!

[TheBobWiley]

Ok I need to know, who here is using Ioncross and how much "supplies" of it are you taking/how many kerbals are you supporting with it? My main problem with making progress on my plan is that I am currently carrying over half of my payload weight in ioncross O2 just to keep 4-8 kerbals alive for the 65 day trip to duna + 163 days until D->K hoemann window + 65 days to get back to Kerbin..... I have not fully run a mission yet to determine if I am way over doing it since ioncross has the recyclers, but I also need enough for emergencies. If anyone could post up how many units of ioncross they are using and how many kerbals it is keeping alive and for how many days, I would appreciate it.

Also, are we allowed to use the air intake for ioncross on duna? I am planning on building a stationary base with lots of hab room and such, so carrying the huge amount of o2 I would need for any sizeable long term kerbal team is nearly impossible without sacrificing other things.

Aside from all that I have about 2/3 of my vehicles built and tested on kerbin and will begin flying missions to duna to test DV needs and all that soon, but unfortunately college just started back up so I may be pretty busy :\ Even if I never get around to finishing this challenge it has been fun, insightful, and has actually made me think (overthink) how I build ships and missions in Kerbal.

[KeithStone]

AND SO IT BEGINS!

Duna Base Calamity!

Write-up can be found HERE

First official flights have yet to be flown, but everything is prepped 'an ready! Unfortunately, terraforming wont begin until at the very least the second transfer, but maybe not even until the 3rd. I'm trying to flesh everything out so that once I'm running I'll have a rather robust Duna program running. I also will need to take a break soon to work on some art, which may also include me finally getting around to making my sig and a flag...

Also, I haven't calculated score yet. It's a little late for me.

[Patupi]

Air intake, yes apparently as I've stated several times I'm using it and Sturmstiger hasn't said anything (That I remember). Bear in mind that the Oxygen recyclers in Ioncross seem to mess up at high time warps. I was carrying over 10,000 oxygen for 8 Kerbals and couldn't get them to survive the trip to Duna quite, but then I went down to 10,000 warp only and they made it fine, so warp gauging is rather necessary. Unfortunately things are messed up with more than one ship en-route as you can't keep both active so I'm still trying to keep track of who needs resupply at any given point rather than letting the computer handle it.

There is another system out there, the WIP Tac Supply mod by Thunder that keeps track of oxygen food and water when a ship is not active, but there is no recycling yet and I did briefly check it out only to find I couldn't keep enough resources aboard my ship for the trip. It's just too heavy! Plus he has no air intake system so you'd have to cannibalize something between Ioncross and Tac supply mod. I'm hoping he adds recycling and air intakes soon to that mod because I'd definitely like to try it.

(EDIT: just checked, and my Odyssey Hab Landers have an oxygen capacity of 14500 oxygen with 8 kerbals and make the Duna trip fine on 10,000 warp, ie the one tick short of max warp. Note it uses one of the large scale oxygen recyclers that is rated for 10 kerbals so it can keep things going)

(EDIT: Keithstone... you named your base 'Calamity'? Ooooh, talk about tempting fate! Cool setup though. How did you balance your rover set at an angle like that?)

Edited August 21, 2013 by Patupi

[Donziboy2]

For the O2 recyclers take their efficiency and multiply that with your supply. Say 7500 x 0.5 for small supply = 3750. Then multiply the number you got with 0.5 again. 3750 x 0.5 = 1875 then again

1875 x 0.5 = 937.5 then

937.5 x 0.5 = 468.75 then

468.75 x 0.5 = 234.375 again

234.375 x 0.5 = 117.1875 again...

117.1875 x 0.5 = 58.59375 ...... as you can see it goes on but you get over 15K O2 just from that, this is how much O2 you should get.

I found that in order to actually increase your O2 supply on Duna you need 3 small recyclers and the intake for 4 Kerbals. A large recycler can support 9 Kerbals and produce some extra O2. All bets are off under High Timewarp.

I also looked at TAC Life Support but it seems a little to young for large projects.

Edited August 21, 2013 by Donziboy2