To Moho; Jeb leads another intrepid crew to the innermost planet

[DMagic]

When we last checked in on Moho Orbital the station was low on fuel, the landers were low on fuel, and the tug Pyrois was low on fuel. So I had to send out even more. I attached the second lander too, and we blasted off from Minmus. Here is an example of what I mean about using inclination changes at Minmus to alter my orbit. And you don't need to perfectly line up the Kerbin periapsis with your burn point, a little before or after works just about the same, and it means that about 40% of Minmus' orbit is suitable for the transfer burn.

And here is what I mean about setting up a rendezvous the same way you do docking. I pick the most efficient node to correct the last of the inclination change, then slightly adjust my orbit and wait for a good time to set up an encounter. After getting to the station I was able to fill up Pyrois and one of the landers, with enough fuel to send Hermes back home. Unfortunately the docking clamp on one of the station's hab modules doesn't seem to work, so I have to leave the lander on the main docking hub.

With a full fuel load the crew secures Helios and they blast off for an orbit about halfway between the sun and Moho.

Two ten minute burns are all it takes to set up this orbit. Its periapsis is around 2.5Gm and its apoapsis is 4Gm. But once I finished setting up the orbit I got zapped by the stuck docking node bug. This is the third time this has happened on this mission, but the other two times I was able to work around it and get everything undocked. For some reason, complicated docking setups like this will sometimes disable a docking node, selecting undock doesn't do anything, action groups for decouple or undock don't work either. It's a known bug, but there isn't a reliable fix yet. I'm trying out something that might get it to work, but for now I'm just leaving it in this temporary state.

After KSC's pilot (only pilot!!) threatened to mutiny I decided to come up with a better refueling solution. The Kethane mod was just updated, so I made a simple Kethane lander and launched it along with a refinery adaptor for Moho Orbital, and a small scanner probe. This is also, somehow, the first time I've ever used aerospike engines, I don't know why, they seem great for this type of lander.

After getting to Moho the orbital scanner probe was released to identify Kethane pockets on the surface. I docked the adaptor to the station, then got zapped by another dead docking clamp. The small clamp on the top of the Kethane miner doesn't seem to be working, but thankfully I have a big clamp on the bottom that I can use to dock to the other port on the docking node.

Now with a few Kethane pockets identified the lander sets off to the surface. The fuel tanks are only about half full for the landing so that I don't have to drag around too much extra mass. Once on the surface I was able to refine enough fuel to fill up the landers tanks. And with the Kethane tank full I blasted off for Moho Orbital. Refueling the lander requires about 1/3 of the Kethane I brought up, but this is still a lot easier than dragging down fuel tanks from Kerbin.

With a steady supply of fuel available Jeb and Bob set off for the surface. The lander approaches the crater and gently descends to its floor.

After a gentle touchdown the rover can be seen as a little glint in the background. Jeb and Bob climb down the ladder and take their first steps on the surface of Moho; another Kerbal first.

The rover drives over to the ground crew where it can be inspected by Jeb.

Satisfied with the location they climb back into the lander and blast off again. Soon enough they'll be back with the first of the base components and ready for construction.

After a few more fuel runs I should have the station full. Then I just need to start base construction; I haven't even really started designing it yet, I just have a basic layout so far. And hopefully I can fix Helios and get it fully deployed.

[DMagic]

After lots of tinkering around and finally sending a small docking probe to meet up with Helios in solar orbit, I finally got the ports unstuck and completed Helios. After undocking, Pyrois slid out of place. Once the hab module was re-docked to the station core all of the remaining RCS thrusters and docking modules were released.

With everything in place and the station secured the solar panels begin to unfurl, and the sunshield spreads out to shade the hab module.

With the panels fully deployed the station can now begin transmitting power back to Moho.

It's a little toasty this close. The station orbits at a distance ranging from 2.5 to 4 million km.

The complete station.

And here, just for comparison, is what Helios looks like during testing while still docked at Moho Orbital.

Pryois, meanwhile, burned the rest of its fuel to bring it down closer to the sun.

Back at Moho, the crew continues to load up on fuel using the kethane lander. Shepbro gets a few unnervingly closeup views of the lander's return.

After a few trips the station is fully fueled.

And back on Kerbin the base starts coming together. Here is the launch of the central hab module, and the utilities and rover dock module. The main components come from this station component mod. This adds a few simple parts that fit in really nicely with the stock parts. It also has two extremely useful parts, a large 6 way node that can be used with the big docking ports, and a small strut connector. This can be used in place of the small cubic truss pieces for radially attaching struts. The truss segments come from the THSS mod, the same mod that I used to build Pyrois.

And here they are docked to Talaria in Minmus orbit. I used an extra fuel tank to balance the load, bringing to the total up to about 10 tons for each module, or 20 tons together. This is about half of what I was pushing along when constructing the stations. So these base construction missions should be a bit easier to handle.

After re-positioning the payloads, docking the cap, and strutting everything together, Talaria is ready to go.

Hermes will be used next to bring down the reusable skycrane, the construction rover, and more base components. Then we'll get busy bringing everything down to the surface and putting it all together.

[DMagic]

When we last left off the first two components of my Moho base were ready to go in Minmus orbit. So now I need to launch the support craft. First up is my reusable skycrane system built with parts from the THSS set and launched on my 30 ton lifter. This is a really simple craft, just two docking ports, four engines mounted around a central core, a bunch of fuel, and four big RCS pods.

Next up is another Kethane refinery, this one is meant for making short hops along the surface of the planet to get from a kethane deposit to the base. It can also get back to Moho Orbital, but it would have to refine fuel on the way or come up with less than a full load. And next is the construction rover, just a big docking port on a low rover meant to move parts around on the surface of Moho. Once in Minmus orbit they were docked to the Hermes tug and secured in place.

Now that everything is ready to go we blast off for Moho.

The Talaria tug with the base components is the first to arrive. Its engines ignite for Moho capture just above the future landing site at the bottom of the crater. And next it can be seen approaching Moho Orbital where it will await the Hermes tug.

As Talaria approaches, one of the lander ferries departs. It will descend to the base site and the crew will supervise construction from there. Once the remaining kethane has been refined that lander departs and heads for a low holding orbit.

Next up Hermes arrives in orbit. The tug separates from the other crafts to quickly refuel and depart for a higher holding orbit, awaiting a window to return to Kerbin.

Now everything is docked and ready to go, and I finally have something with a working small docking port.

The first order of business is to rearrange some of the components, allowing the kethane lander to depart. Once on the surface, the refinery fills up on fuel and kethane before making the short hop to the crater. Neweny Kerman can be seen here inspecting the refinery next to his lander ferry.

Now at last the first component can be prepared. Here the utilities and garage module can be seen docking to the skycrane. The rover will be carried below the garage, which also carries another, small, docking port to allow refueling on the surface.

The descent was a little tricky because the module is so imbalanced; nearly 700 units of RCS fuel had to be used to keep everything level. But everything made it down in one piece and the rover successfully detached from the garage.

This is when the fun times began. First, the rover has a tendency to freak out when docking or undocking from anything, it will occasionally bounce up taking out anything above it. And then, once I reloaded, the docking port no longer worked, it wouldn't dock to anything, and nothing could dock to it. So, without really trying to figure out what happened I decided to launch another rover. I also added some small, KSPX, radial engines, to alleviate any problems with the rover not being high enough to dock (something I was concerned about, despite extensive Kerbin-based testing).

Here is the launch of the second rover. After getting to Moho it briefly met up with the station for refueling before setting down near the base.

And after all of that I realized that I didn't really need to refuel the skycrane (I'll still need it later though). It had just enough to get back into orbit and rendezvous with Moho Orbital. It arrived running on fumes, but it got there.

With the skycrane back and refueled it was time to land the central habitation module of the base. This one wasn't as unbalanced as the other module so it was a bit easier to land. It did come down a little further away from the base than I wanted, though.

Now we can see the rover in action. And of course, this one had the same, dying docking port issue as the first one. I managed to fix this though, through some persistence file editing. There is an open thread on this issue over in the support section if anyone is interested.

Rather than try to drive the extremely top-heavy, unstable hab module and skycrane, I brough the other components over. The rover docked underneath the garage module and brought it over to dock with the hab section.

With that in place I drove the kethane refinery over. Using the small, secondary port, I docked to the garage and refueled the skycrane before sending it back into orbit to await the other components.

Here are the first two sections, fully deployed.

The first, and for now only permanent crew member, Thompcott Kerman, steps to the surface for the first time to admire the view. The little exploration rover on the left drove over to join him.

Now all that remains are a few more base components. We'll get to those in the next post.

[DMagic]

We left off with the first components of the base assembled on the surface of Moho. Now we'll take a look at the next components. Below is the cargo and fuel bay, launched on my 40 ton lifter, and the science facility, launched on my 30 ton lifter. Once in orbit around Minmus they met up with the Hermes tug and prepared for the burn to Moho.

After a quick trip down to Moho the tug docked with Moho Orbital and preparations were made for landing.

First down was the cargo bay, carried by my skycrane. It came down for an easy landing, then was carried into place by one of my constructor rovers. The docked kethane refinery still had enough resources to fill up the cargo bay's tanks.

At some point during all of the landing and docking shenanigans, Seeing Kerman got a little bored and tried to execute a backflip in his lander. The result was this, an upside down ferry and a broken docking port. With no ability to refuel, Neweny Kerman trotted over to the base, while Seeing, taking advantage of the low gravity and the lander can's high torque, flipped the ferry over and brought it back into orbit.

Seeing made a quick EVA back to the station. The lander, without enough fuel to land again, was recommissioned as a suicide probe and sent to study the polar anomaly. A course was set for the north pole, where it was confirmed that there is indeed a very deep hole.

Back to the base now. The skycrane next brought down the science module. And of course, after docking to the base, both the rover and the skycrane got stuck to their docking ports. This time I decided to figure out what was wrong in the persistence file. Using the information in this thread I was able to get both ports working again and undock the rover and skycrane.

The skycrane departed and now the base is nearly complete.

I'll end today with the launch of the last two base components. The microwave receiver and the rocket powered rover Big Boy. After assembly in Minmus orbit they are ready for the trip to Moho.

We'll finish the base in the next post and send the rest of the crew down as well.

[DMagic]

With the last payloads ready to go the tug blasts off from orbit around Minmus before firing near Kerbin for ejection to Moho.

The components arrive at Moho and dock with Moho Orbital.

First to land is the microwave receiver array. Because of how this part is setup I decided to make a lander design specifically for it. The initial approach went well enough, but the final landing was a little rough, breaking off a few engines and RCS blocks.

The main component suffered no damage though, so the construction rover docked and drove it into place. The main base is now complete, with all five sections docked together.

Next up is the last segment to be landed. Here Jeb, Bill and Bob EVA to the rover's chairs. If you look closely at the docking mechanism for the rover and the skycrane you can see a weakness. The two are only really connected by a single cubic octagonal strut, making for a very wobbly connection. Because of this Mechjeb is of no use for landing this setup. It is a little too heavy handed with overcorrections and RCS use, so I have to land this one manually. Coming in for a landing I only overshot the base by about 1.5 km, which isn't too bad considering how difficult this thing is to control.

I picked up a little bit more horizontal velocity than I wanted, but this is a rover, so I managed a safe landing and eventually came to a stop not too far away from the base.

After driving over to the base I docked at the small port on the garage module (the kethane refinery left a little earlier). The skycrane was then refueled and blasted off back into orbit. As it lifts off, the skycrane lights up the base nicely.

Back at Kerbin we have the bittersweet, final liftoff of the mission. This is the crew ferry, which will carry the remaining members of the station and base crew. After liftoff the ferry makes a quick stopoff at Minmus Orbital to refuel and transfer crew from the station to the ferry, which holds a total of 11 Kerbals.

The ferry ignites its engines over Kerbin for the transfer to Moho.

With Minmus orbital drained of all its fuel, and the rest of the crew departed to Moho, Seeing Kerman goes a bit insane. Left with nothing better to do, he uses the station's vast reserve of RCS fuel to bring the craft crashing down to the surface. He seemed to be attempting to crash into the ground base on Minmus, but overshot by a few km's. Little was left of the station after impacting on the surface.

After arriving near Moho, the main engine is dropped to impact on the surface. The ferry then burns for orbital insertion when it gets a little closer to Moho.

Polar orbit around Moho is getting a little crowded. The ferry comes in for a docking at Moho Orbital.

With the rest of the crew arriving at Moho Orbital, a few trips are made to the surface and back using the lander ferry. After each landing the Moho base crew grows a little bit bigger.

With the crew on the surface, Jeb and Bob take the front seats on Big Boy and set off to explore the area. Bill gets the jumpseat in the back.

They drive off to the hills just north of the base, overlooking the crater.

For a real challenge they attempt to drive up the mountain ridge running along the side of the crater. With a lot of help from the rocket engines on the back they manage to make it to the top of the ridge, they even avoided high centering on the sharp edge of the top.

Spotting a good location to place a monument, Jeb climbs off the rover and sets off on foot. Being something of a daredevil, Jeb ignores the warnings from Bob and carelessly runs out towards the overlook location. He immediately, of course, loses his footing and tumbles off the side of the ridge.

Jeb manages some impressive acrobatics while falling 800 meters or so to the bottom of the ridge. But he's tough, so he'll just wait for rescue from the rover.

Bob makes a more careful approach to the overlook site where he plants the flag, memorializing the location of the first Kerbal outpost on Moho. He also took advantage of the situation to rename the site "Bob Crater".

From here you can see the base down below in the crater. The two construction rovers were driven out of physics range and can be seen a bit further away. Way off on the other side you can see the original probe lander. And poor, dumb Jeb can be seen on the bottom left, sitting around waiting for a rescue.

With Bob and Bill at the controls, the rover slowly creeps down the side of the ridge to rescue Jeb. The front mounted braking engine helps to keep the rover's speed under control during the descent.

Jeb uses his jetpack to get back onto the rover, relegated now to the backseat. From the floor of the crater you can see the overlook site.

They drive back to the base, and after a few trips back up to Moho Orbital, set off for the return to Kerbin.

After the transit back to Kerbin (actually my first manned return flight) the ferry dips into the atmosphere for orbital capture.

After getting back into a stable equatorial orbit the ferry makes one last burn for a landing at the KSC. And on the right you can see the final approach.

The ferry gently descends to the surface, coming down fairly close to the launchpad.

Back on the surface now, the crew come down from the lander, home at last after a 15 year mission to Moho.

And that's that. I believe the final tally is 16 trips down to Moho, most from Minmus orbit, and 10 return trips to Kerbin. I built two orbital stations, one ground base, and made numerous other support crafts and rovers. Except for a few specialized landers and one tug, everything was reused many times.

Fun times. And now I think I'll take a break and wait for 0.23 or 0.24 to come out and hopefully start out a new save in career mode.

[sytaline]

Your PLMO is no where near as crowded as my ELKO1

[suzin.felipe]

You Sir should be awarded with some internets for this mission. Awesome job mate.

[Geschosskopf]

Amazing project! Thanks for sharing.

[Commander Zoom]

*has no words, but simply applauds, loud and long*

[ProjectGO]

What mod pack has the microwave transmitters? Those look really useful.

[DMagic]

Ha, that's not functional. I just stuck a bunch of 2X2 structural panels together (I think the transmitter and receiver both have 33 of them) and called it a microwave transmitter.

I mostly just wanted an excuse to put a station in solar orbit. And when I saw the icarus mod I knew that I had to find a use for it. I put the receiver on the base just to be a completionist.

That would be neat though, if we had some use for a lot of power.

Edit: I added a list of all the parts and plugin mods I used to the first post. Most of the uncommon, or newer, mods were also mentioned in the posts in which they were used. I think I got them all, but I might have a missed a few. And I don't use all the parts from most of those mods, I just delete the unused ones to keep memory usage down and the startup time reasonable.

Edited June 25, 2013 by DMagic

[mellojoe]

Absolutely, freakin' briliant.

I'm in awe. I've barely managed to get satellites around Eve, using a returnning interplanetary stage. My Duna mission was nearly a catastrophic failure, requiring 4 redesigns and 3 trips to rescue two pilots. And that one barely can be called a success, if only because the two pilots survived. There were parts scattered everywhere. And I've only just now made a craft I'm happy with that can launch reasonable amounts of fuel into LKO.

This is brilliant. And the solar power generator is beautiful. I stared at it for like an hour. Very well done.

[Rhyunix]

Absolutley awsome! One thing....

Logistical.Nightmere

[Odo]

That ground base is epic

[bonzarius]

First of all, nice work and a good storyline.

Congratulation!!

I have a question: where did you get that asymmetric adapter from the science module?

[DMagic]

First of all, nice work and a good storyline.

Congratulation!!

I have a question: where did you get that asymmetric adapter from the science module?

Thanks. I haven't gotten a chance to look back at this thread for a while.

I believe the adaptor is from the Multiwheels mod found in this thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/29661-TouhouTorpedo-s-Mod-Releases-Thread-%28ROVER-ASAS-released%21%29?highlight=modular+multiwheels.

If it's not in that you might have to look in older versions of the mod that can be found on the same page. It's really useful for these kinds of things and I'm surprised that it's not a more commonly used part. As far as a I know that's the only part I used from that mod pack, that's probably why I didn't list it in the first post.

[bonzarius]

Thanks. I am looking now.

[M4ck]

Incredible project, plus a lot of great pictures and descriptions. It was a real pleasure to read it all, shame it has already been completed and ended and I've thought my Mun base was something to be proud of... thanks to you I hope to change the way I plan my future projects to make them more enjoyable to both the readers and myself. It must be great to have the ground base assembled at last or to watch the panels on the solar station unfold simultaneously

[DMagic]

Thanks. The ground base was more an exercise in frustration than anything else. There were so many docking bugs and spontaneous disassembles that I was just glad to be done with it. The stations were awesome though. Except for one stuck docking port everything worked great. And because the Kosmos panels are so slow I was able to get a good look at the solar station deploying.