Duna Permanent Outpost Mission Architecture Challenge

[Kelmoir]

Just for Completness: ISS recycles water. They are using Silver Ionisazion devices, And additional filters, to they can re-use the water to some degree.

Thanks for the answers, I will start to lay out a mission to Duna.

[sturmstiger]

Hi, I would like to participate, but for the actual mods sticking me to the challenge, I got 2 Questions:

The TAC life support parts (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/40667-0-22-WIP-TAC-Life-Support-0-5-17Nov) do really enforce the supply thing. But they are superior to the Vanilla tank solution.

And They can even recycle water and Oxygen, with energy input. Will that be fine for the challenge, or are they considered to be to powerful?

For the Challenge I would dismiss the recycling part, though.

If I use deadly re-entry, will any craft, that survives an re-entry/aero-brake be valid (unedited parts, of course!)? Because half shielded engines can survive an re-entry with standard parameters...

Thanks in advance .

As Weegee and borisperrons has said, stock supply & re-entry heat rules no longer apply if you simulate them using mods, so you're fine. Looking forward to see your designs!

[Armokh]

Are we restricted to only one type of launcher or can we use a family of rockets ( for example changing only size/amount of boosters)?

[Kelmoir]

Mods using: Kethane, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Deadly re-entry, TAC life support, KAS, RealChute, procedural wings (might remain unused, though), docking allignment, Techtree loader, Kerbal engineer redux (for iguring out masses of my payloads).

I managed to get the first part of the mission Launched, after sketching out the general scedule for the first time.

I do totally intend to use the first transfer window to bring the first supply and critical equipment over there.

My Launcher is reusable, since 66% of it can be recovered and land really close to KSC. Well, the final Stage does even make it's decent, What I can't quite understand, because deadly re-enrly is active(albeit mainsails are quite heat resistant)...

I'll also try to get this aligned with some decent youtube Videos.

The actual mission planning Table will be added, after I did all the missions.

Text log:

Right in the tide of the growing Space exploration, the prod Kerbals of Kerbin decided, that it is time to venture further, then just to their moons. Something with bearable gravity, somewhere with atmosphere to help the protecting from the deadly radiation of space, somewhere where they can aquire water and what they need to life, somewhere close enough.

Duna.

It was settled, then. They would go to Duna, to build an great settlement there, to learn more about their neighbour. To advance.

Since the other regular space missions wouldn't be turned down, They had somewhat limited resources.

They hat to construct a Lifter that would be partially reuse-able. They had to come up with Ideas for a stationary settlement, but still the the possibility of relocating if, if the time would say so.

They hat to ensure, all the brave Kerbals, who were happen to go there, would life to tell the tale.

They needed to provide comfort and room to life for years.

But they would never step back in their great quest, of making the Kerbals an interplanetary civilisation.

The first running design was their Lifter. The Pluto.

Simple in design and function, Lifts 22.5-23t into LKO yet 2/3s reusable.

The final stage would even de orbit itself, preventing additional hazards in the orbit.

It does shred the outer tanks right before the gravity turn, and they will land near KSC on parachutes.

Simulations were successful.

Then, they addressed the Issue of moving Parts of their future Settlement, and how the assemble them, while on Duna.

The result here was the magnificent Crane.

Remotely operated, yet providing a seat for a Kerbal, it can easily lift 200% of it's own weight, and tow it around at full speed. Yet it can do all the assembly of the base Modules, that will ever get moved to Duna.

As the First transfer Window was getting close, and They didn't wanted to waste the opportunity to send first Supplies, Kethane scanner Probes and the Crane for reconnaissance over to Duna. They decided to Launch them first.

They strapped life support for 3840 days under their Crane to get close to the payload limit.

They added 2 Kethane scanner probes in some crude way to the Crane.

And it was ensured, the crane would survive the aero braking an entry into Duna atmosphere with ease.

The Launch was done on day 10.

They reached orbit easily.

35 days later, they had refurbished and rebuild the Pluto. They could do the second launch.

They send the IPES (interplanetary engine segment) up. Nothing fancy, but a lot of fuel and LV'ns to get everything over.

And They could mount it in line.

The Launch itself caused no trouble. They had to use the LV-Ns to help with the circulation, after they left the Atmosphere.

Unfortunately the Mainsail from the Pluto stuttered right before the fuel was used up.

It ripped off the back Docking Port.

But someone was smart enough to put another one in front, so they could still use it, to ferry everything over to Duna.

Some hours after the launch both vessels docked without any further trouble. Awaiting the transfer window scheduled in 10 days.

---Part2---

It was time for the first transfer over to Duna.

The Crane and everything to prepare The landing site, find precious Kethane and for just being awesome was ready.

It took only 2 acceleration runs to get on an interplanetary trajectory. Even the correction burn was really small.

The heatshields inflated just in time, and everything was ready for the aero capture.

But thanks to weired aerodynamic issues, the heatshields flipped themselves almost immediately backwards. rendering them utterly useless.

Luckily though, by that time it was slow enough to not have any issues with entry effects.

Closing in the orbit and jettison the Kethane satellites was easy as eating snacks.

The crane set of to land at some relatively deep terrain, because the landing would be parachute powered.

And once more, as soon as there were some serious aerodynamic pressure, the heatshields turned themselves into weird drag chutes...

No entry effects, though. The whole twisting ans wiggling due to the heatshields stopped as soon, as they were detached, and the parachutes opened.

Everything worked fine then, and it touched down gently with 10m/s, at 770m altitude.

The Kethane satellites went into orbit around Duna an Ike and started searching for Kethane. The crane would then move to a somewhat nearby deposit.

Meanwhile on Kerbin:

The next ship needed to get built in orbit. Engines, space habitats, ground base stuff, Rovers, Kethane truck and an the ferrying ship were lifted up.

Well, the ferrying whip (DCV) lifted itself the later half way due to some Mainsail detaching unintentionally.

On the Rovers, 6 ambitious Kerbals were aboard. In he 30 days before the transfer window, they ensured everything works, and the snack in the space habitats were tasty.

Right before the next transfer window, the next vessel construction even started. They could have made this one bigger, but even Jeb was against that. Too slow he said.

After 5 acceleration burns, they actually made it into interplanetary space. Still 2 days early, resulting in some bigger correction burn.

But they reached Duna safely. Because of the known issues with inflatable heatschields, they hat metal plated heathield with them. albeit a little small. So they went for an 15.5km aero brake.

They performed the missing parts of the capture right outside of the atmosphere.

They finally adjusted the orbits with 2 more aero brakes, and some fiddling around.

Time for the first manned landing!

Of course, Jeb would do it. But first preparations, the DCV needed fuel and snacks. Someone snatched all the snacks from the Kethane rover and from the DCV in the Transfer...

Jeb went on EVA to board the DCV. As soon as he wanted to grab the ladder, something flung him away, disassembling a retracted solar panel in the process.

Several tries later Jeb gave up on entering the DCV and manned the Kethane Rover.

The initial Plans were to skycrane it down via KAS winches. But reality didn't like that. He ended up digging the Rover front first into Duna while balancing the DCV not to flip over.

And Even the metal heatshield on the DCV turned itself quickly into some not really working drogue chute. The Landing went well (for Kerbal understanding), it just lost the backward Docking Port (note: it hit Duna with the frontal one).

After some wiggling He managed to put the rover back on it's weels, and droove the final way over to the Kethane deposits.

And he forgot to plant the flag. Gotta do it when he returns to refuel the DCV.

---Part3---

After quite some time the Kethane Fuel truck reached the Crane, and They had indeed stuck Kethane.

While Jebediah mined and refined all the precious Kethane, The DCV made a somewhat small hop towards the Truck.

After that, things were just a matter of refuelling the DCV. And some really close place was selected as the appropriate location for the outpost.

The DCV finally launched itself from Duna for the first time, to grab the connector parts from the IPS.

Upon preparing landing, it was clear, that the DCV had a really tight fuel budget, if it was supposed to do one round trip with a full tank.

With that in Mind, Jebediah choosed a shallow trajectory to maximize the atmospheric drag to slow down his Vessel.

It worked as intended. And the landing itself was becoming the standard Duna skycrane style - hover over terrain and undock the payload.

Obviously something broke off. But nothing important.

On exiting the DCV it suddenly became clear, that the heatshield was a grave danger to Jebediah. He got stuck in it and got shaked in the event.

Mission control even called him dead for suffering too high G forces. But Jebediah doesn't die that easily.

He manned the Kethane truck, though. He didn't liked it, obviously.

The DCV went into Orbit to fetch the first living quarter and Live Support package.

The fuel budget was so tight, that it was refuelled in orbit by a little bit.

After precice landing, once more the Payload lost an unimportant part.

While refuelling the DCV, the crane managed to assemble the first Base parts to prove that the concept was also working on Duna. Big cheers at KSC.

After the DCV launched (it remained unmanned), Jeb placed down the flag in front of the Duna base, labelling "Duna Town".

While the DCV was docked with the IPS, the precursory ship docked there, too and brought over loads of fresh supplys for the Kerbals, ready to get shipped down to Duna.

The 3rd and 4th Landing were pretty boring, tight fuel and such. Albeit on the 4th landing they tried to some advanced atmospheric manoeuvres (thrusting upwards at 10 km) to increase the slowing down by atmospheric drag before hitting the ground.

It worked, and the DCV hat enough fuel to recover from some post-undocking payload problems.

The crane then finally assembled the full Duna outpost, now just waiting for the remaining 5 Kerbals to join them.

Part 4:

All the remaining Kerbals got down on day 353 and an day 354. Jet Kelley was on day 354, and just some hours overtime.

That makes 6 Kerbals landed around day 353.

The landings itself were performed by using the rovers with their lander can command modules to hold ther Kerbals.

Ans as always, the landings were safe, and sound. Even though Jebediah wasn't happy to stay on ground. The Ground base was now functional, and The Kerbals could go and do loads of science with the help of their rovers. each featuring vast scientific equipment.

Meanwhile on Kerbin:

The R&D department tried to get an long range exploration Vessel for Duna done: the Duna Kethane jet.

It did provide great engineering obstacles.

They had to tackle the issues of no working Jet engines by using The Kethane jet engines.

The point of the plane tipping over onto its wings by using gears on the edge of the wings.

Even though it hat big winds, they were still to small. So they redid them into some biplane style.

Further testing revealed that the plane would have serious issues with breaking (not apart) during landing.

Once more, rockets came to rescue there - retro rockets with fuel to break during the critical stage of landing for 3-4 times.

But one big issue remained. If the plane would climb over 2800m altitude, the Kethane engine would simply run out of intake air, and won't be able to be turned on until it came to a full halt. Effectively rendering the plane unusable. Jeb felt like crying upon those news.

Even without the Kethane jet work continued at KSC, subsequently they launched another IPES and IPSH into Orbit.

Because the Duna orbit was getting crowded, they also decided to add some structure to Duna orbit by adding a space station to the orbit.

The groung habitaty had to endure some reworking. The life support was now directly attaced to them, and reduced in terms of storagable amount to save upon weight.

And the tacked the issue of the DCV not being able to bring any excess fuel into low Duna orbit to refuel the interplanetary ships.

They did that by constructing an DCV mk2 that can easily land on Ike's slopes, and can optionally carry an Kethane harvesting unit while doing that. Effectively using Ike as fuel source for additional interplanetary flights.

As with the first Row, the 6 crew contained with the flight were sent up, using the rovers to provide the accent vehices.

While the 3rd Interplanetary Ship is on its' several burns to break Kerbin's Orbit, this episode it over.

screens:

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Edited January 1, 2014 by Kelmoir

[meyst]

Are we restricted to only one type of launcher or can we use a family of rockets ( for example changing only size/amount of boosters)?

Yes Armokh, you are restricted to only the one type of launcher. Only exception being your crew to low Kerbin orbit vehicle.

[theBlind]

+++ theBlind optikal instruments and space operations +++

+++ Press release +++

+++ RE: Duna permanent dependency, phase one and two +++

+++ For public release +++

After much deliberation, our engineers have settled for a massive 44t launcher. This allows us to lift massive payloads in journey-ready configuration and is very importantly much more impressive than certain competitors puny rockets. The lifter stages are fully recoverable and reuseable.

This configuration gives us an alternating 3 and 4 launches per Kerbin -> Duna transfer window. For permanent operations, 1-2 launches per window are reserved for resupply and crew movement, the remaining launches for expansion of the Duna base. Final numbers will depend on neccesity of course, but our investors had to be reassured about the long term viability of the project.

Phase one will consist of a detatchment of probes and drones to Duna. The entire phase is unmanned. theBlind optikal is proud to announce that we were able to aquire a total of 5 NERVA engines and licenses for their useage from the local post office. These engines are, while rather expensive (our CEO had to abstain from buying a new ivory backscratcher for this quarter!) will allow us to transport cargoes and crafts in a highly efficient manner. The first of those NERVA engines will be part of the so called Duna tug, which will be part of phase one.

In detail, phase one consists of four main components:

1) The mentioned Duna tug, a small robotic craft equipped with a single nerva engine. It is meant to transfer to Duna and stay there. It will dock with crafts returning from Duna to kerbin, give them their main push and then undock before leaving Duna SOI. The craft will afterwards expend build in power to finalize the burn for kerbin as well as any mid course corrections.

2) The Duna probe host, a set of 3 orbiter and 3 lander probes. the orbiter probes carry mapsat as well as kethane scanners. Depending on available dV, they will be inserted into Duna polar orbits and maybe ike polar orbit. Two of the lander probes will land on Duna and one on Ike. The first Duna lander probe will be used as a beacon to mark the point where orbital descent should start to aim for the landing zone. The second will be backup for the first.

3) The Duna waystation and emergency habitat is a small space station that will be placed in Duna orbit that carries fuel and can provide emergency shelter. Unneeded fuel from Duna -> Kerbin flights will remain here. Additional fuel will be brought along as necessary.

4) The Duna emergency suppliy drop is a 3.5 ton module containing little else than supplies and the engines nececssary to land it on Duna in case of emergency.

Phase two consists of the remaining primary infrastructure as well as the first manned flights. This phase will see a Kerbin tug very similar to the Duna tug but equipped with 4 NERVA engines since the cargoes going from Kerbin to Duna will tend to be much heavier than the cargoes going back.

Phase two will also see two Duna orbit to surface shuttles (that will probably also serve as Duna -> Kerbin return shuttles) and the major base block, the Duna truck and mobile lab. Those two vehicles are fully mobile and provide long term living and working space for 4-6 kerbals. The vehicles will remain on Duna, the crew will rotate at a later date.

Last but not least, phase two will contain the necessary fuel for the Kerbin -> Duna transfer via tug as well as the supplies needed to last until the next arrival.

Mission plan:

+++ End press release +++

+++ © theBlind optikal instruments and space operations +++

Screenshots:

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Mods that influence flight characteristics or give me additional options: FAR, Deadly Reentry, KAS, Procedural fairings, Kerbal Join Reinforcement, Kethane, RealChute, StationScience, Ubio Welding

Mods that don't influence flight characteristics: Actions on the fly, Clouds and city lights, RAM optimizer, Crew manifest, Docking port alignment, Kerbal engineer redux, enhanced nav ball, haystack, LTech external camera, MechJeb, PreciseNode, Chatterer, SCANsat, SelectRoot, MK2 cockpit internals, TreeLoader

Achievements: (as planned)

Mission Execution: 2 (maybe 3)

Crew Mobility: 2

Base Mobility: 2

Crew Safety: 1-2 (crew carrying crafts will be designed with multiple engines but I will assume real-world level computer control in case of engine failure, not me manually switching off engines)

Mission Robustness: 1-2 (There will be non-critical launches in every windows that could take a failed launch from before. While I only plan on having one duna truck and mobile lab in phase two, I can bring more. The very first launch is critical and not recoverable within that windows but only consists of probes and nothing yet on duna depends on it. In case of critical failure I'd assume that the whole plan is simply delayed by one transfer window.)

Note 1) my PC is rather old and I experience significant delays and time stretching so it may take some time for me to muster the patience to actually fly the missions.

Note 2) I managed to start my first mission on day 1 instead of day 10. since it took me 10 minutes to get the launch to orbit, I did not revert and redo it on day 10, this will be visible in the screenshots of the first launch. I will only launch my second lifter on day 76.

[Weegee]

Good to see more people trying the challenge! I've been busy, so you can check out my report at the link in my signature.

Keep up the good work guys!

[sal_vager]

Congrats on making Challenge forum thread of the month of December sturmstiger

[Kelmoir]

I added the 2nd Part to my post. I'll keep everything in there, and just bump things.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/31510-Duna-Permanent-Outpost-Mission-Architecture-Challenge?p=809014#post809014

[theBlind]

+++ theBlind optikal instruments and space operations +++

+++ Press release +++

+++ RE: Duna permanent dependency, delay in operations +++

+++ For public release +++

After seeing one of our esteemed competitors reveal their new line of blimps, our most esteemed CEO was seen wandering the hallways of corporate HQ muttering about Zeppelin airbases on Duna. Phase two launches have been put on hold while the Duna truck and mobile lab Vehicles are redesigned.

Our most esteemed CEO has since claimed his office (he calls it his workshop) and soft mutters can be heard through the door: "leather... aluminum... bones, yes..."

In unrelated news, the position of head of corporate law section is once again open for all qualified applicants. Applications welcome.

+++ End press release +++

+++ © theBlind optikal instruments and space operations +++

Edited December 4, 2013 by theBlind

[kookoo_gr]

FINISHED!!! The last Kerbal landed on Kerbin at day 1045. Will update my entry post with lots and lots of photos in the following days. Man that was some challenge with a lot of docking and precise landings.

[Kelmoir]

Congrats, kookoo_gr for finishing!

I just finished part 3 of the challenge. Not single Kerbin launch included, but lots of other necessary stuff.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/...014#post809014

Btw.: Please get theBlind that weird stuff he is asking for. Moody, unsatisfied Kerbals can become very dangerous.

[kookoo_gr]

As promised the report of the mission with lots of images, the images are all in one album. I will come back when i calculate the score. I'm open for comments

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/46342-Kapricorn-One?highlight=kapricorn

[KeithStone]

I'm surprised this didnt make challenge of the month a long time ago! I'm about to head for vacation, but I'll have to give this one another try when i get back, I have some new ideas

[Syhrus]

Wow this challenge is still going? Kudos to you guys!

I've been inspired to start a "Hard Mode" attempt at this using TAC Life Support, Deadly Reentry, FAR and RemoteTech. Hopefully I'll get my mission up in a few days

[borisperrons]

So, it looks like my challenge save got corrupted. Damn.

But it's not a great loss for me: flying the missions turned out to be a nightmare, and i started to fear the moment I had to turn on KSP and play the missions.

So I think I'll reboot my space program, starting again with DUMAS Project Mk2: more sensible, more efficient, less explosive!!! Now with 29% more snacks!!!

Stay tuned.

[Weegee]

(Copied from my thread)

*Facedesk*

My computer just got upgraded to Windows 8, and my save file got lost. I'm really into this challenge, so I'm going to make another go. At the very least, I still have my launch vehicle (it was backed-up elsewhere) which is great cause it took a few hours of perfecting. But just like the last time I had to restart, I think I can do better. My crafts weren't that imaginative (which I can only try to help) and I could have used my launches more effectively. I also noticed I didn't have the best options to get my kerbals home either, so that was going to be an issue.

But anyway, I'll be trying again. Hopefully it will go a lot better, and I'll probably be using a different backstory and different characters. Once I get that going, I'll post a link here and it'll be in my sig.

[Death Engineering]

So, it looks like my challenge save got corrupted.

Stay tuned.

Wow that's a drag. Do you think updating to 0.23 did it?

But anyway, I'll be trying again. Hopefully it will go a lot better, and I'll probably be using a different backstory and different characters. Once I get that going, I'll post a link here and it'll be in my sig.

Looking forward to it.. are you doing it "For Science!"?

[borisperrons]

Wow that's a drag. Do you think updating to 0.23 did it?

I don't think so, the save turned out to be corrupted the day before 0.23 came out.

It basically decided to stop working.

Edited December 18, 2013 by borisperrons

[Weegee]

Slowly but surely I'm planning out my next attempt. I'm making new designs for my crafts except the launch vehicle. I spent hours perfecting it and feel it has a nice balance between payload size and the delay between launches, so I will continue to use it.

The main difference is that I decided that I will not be writing up my next attempt. I didn't feel like I was doing a great job with writing and I found developing characters difficult, so this time it will be about me doing the challenge and not the kerbals. But not writing doesn't mean I'll just post pictures. I will be making a *video* attempt! (ooh, aah...)

I've been wanting to make videos (especially gaming) for a while, and I decided that I would start with this. I'm now officially on winter break (until early January) so hopefully I will be able to crank out an episode or two. So stay tuned for that, and if there's any advice you can give me feel free!

As always, stay tuned.

[BlazingAngel665]

Are KAS struts allowed? One of the rules prohibited Quantum struts, but KAS struts are *less* cheaty, they have mass and need to be installed.

[kerb20]

Wow sturmstiger!

I wish all the challenges were this well thought out/laid out! I look forward to seeing the entries!

[Weegee]

Are KAS struts allowed? One of the rules prohibited Quantum struts, but KAS struts are *less* cheaty, they have mass and need to be installed.

Ehh, I wouldn't use them but I don't think they're unbalanced, since like you said they have mass and need to be installed, and need to also be fairly small. That being said, I'm sure you'd get more internet respect for not using them

I never had that much of an issue with docked things in my previous attempts, but I either made them fairly short or didn't make that big of a craft (mostly for part issues). If you need to improve docked stability though, I'd try dual docking ports (ports on a bi-coupler). They're harder to dock, but the connection is more secure.

[Patupi]

Hmm, I've had issues with that though. Admittedly it was with two tri-couplers with standard docking ports. When I used action groups to de-couple no matter how I organized it two of the docking ports ripped off the structure. I tried a variety of different methods but nothing worked. I didn't try bi-couplers so maybe there's an issue with three way symmetry?

Oh, this was on the Mun, not in orbit. Not sure if that makes much difference. It'll be evident when I get to that point in my AAR for the Munbase.

[rileym65]

I have been looking at this challenge and am starting to formulate my plan for doing this. I do have a question about the launch delays for booster construction/preparation. If I were to plan my first transfer to Duna for the 2nd launch window instead of the one at day 55, can I have my rockets built and therefore plan launches closer together. For example, if my launch vehicle can launch 20 tons, normally requiring 40 days between launches, but I will be heading to Duna on the 2nd hohman transfer window, in theory several rockets would have been built and therefore not need as much time between the launches. I can understand it takes time to assemble the final rocket pieces and move them to the launch pad so still can understand some time between the launches. Thoughts on this?

My main reason for this approach is to not have too much hardware sitting in lko way before the departure window for Duna. My initial thoughts on the mission plan were to send a single vehicle to Duna for each mission which would contain the habitat, landers/ascent vehicles, supplies, etc, but will need multiple launches to assemble the final mission vehicle prior to departure.