Sumghai attempts a Munshot

[sumghai]

Having spent the majority of my time in KSP either A) Goofing around or Developing space station modules, I figured it was time I attempted one of the most basic milestones of playing KSP - landing a manned spacecraft on the Mun and returning its crew safely to Kerbin.

Although this will be the first mission report I'll file on these forums, I haven't documented my earlier orbital manned flights / probe launches / space station construction simply because I didn't feel they were noteworthy at the time - I'll probably start from scratch once 0.21 comes out, though.

But anyways...

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KES Munar 01

Mission Outline & Objectives

- Manned landing on Munar surface

- Acquisition of geological samples

- Reestablish contact with unmanned Kerbal Munar Rover launched weeks prior and effect repairs

Background

By Joon¹KY507, the Kerbal Space Administration (KSA) had successfully achieved the following milestones in their space program, since its establishment in KY500:

- First Kerbal-made object launched into stable orbit around Kerbin (Kerbstar 1 satellite, 700 km circular equatorial orbit)

- First manned orbital spaceflight (Maj. Jebediah Kerman, Kerbal 1 one-man crew capsule, 120 km circular equatorial orbit)

- First polar spaceflight (Kerbstar 3 satellite, 650 circular polar orbit)

- First extended duration orbital spaceflight (Maj. Jebediah Kerman, Capt. Bob Kerman and Lt. Bill Kerman, KES X-01 three-man Command and Service Module, 300 km circular equatorial orbit, 3 days 11 hours and fourty-five minutes)

- First science mission (Kerbstar MapSat 1 satellite, 300 km circular polar orbit, 100% mapping coverage, planetary composition studies in progress)

- First spacecraft to orbit a celestial body other than Kerbin (Kerbal Munstar 1, 200 km circular polar orbit around the Mun)

- First unmanned spacecraft to land on a celestial body other than Kerbin (Kerbal Munar Rover, 12°29'44"N 39°12'33" on the Mun)

- First rendevous, docking and crew transfer between two spacecraft (Capt. Seangard Kerman, Lt. Jerski Kerman and Lt. Genefred Kerman, KES-02 / Maj. Jebediah Kerman, Capt. Bob Kerman and Lt. Bill Kerman, KES-03, 250 km circular equatorial orbit)

- First Kerbal Space Station component successfully launched (KSS Core, FusTek Karmony Utilities Module, 300 km circular equatorial orbit)

- KSS "Core Complete" (16 crew capacity with two science labs and refueling depot by KY506)

- Longest duration stay in space (Lt. Jerski Kerman and Lt. Kellas Kerman, KSS, 8 days, ongoing)

Key to the program's ongoing success was the development, testing and commissioning of the Kerbal Exploration System (KES) series of three-man crewed orbital spacecraft, a versatile vessel with a maximum rated launch-and-return orbit altitude of 350 km primarily designed to ferry Kerbonauts to and from the Kerbal Space Station. Additionally, ongoing observations of Lt.s Jerski Kerman and Kellas Kerman aboard the KSS confirmed no significant or pernament negative effects on the physical and psychological health of Kerbonauts on long-duration space missions, especially in a low or microgravity environment. As such, KSA was confident that the KES series would serve as the backbone of long-term Kerbal manned spaceflight in years to come.

Meanwhile, in late Joon KY507, KSA Ground Control attempted to remotely update the Kerbal Munar Rover's firmware - specifically, new software to manage the recharge cycles of its deteorating batteries. However, an incorrect function reference instead caused the remote command to accidentally erase the rover's antenna beam pointing code, resulting in a loss of contact by the next rotation of the Mun. This, coupled with scientific and political pressures to top prior achievements was the driving force behind the first KES Munar mission.

Mission Profile

Various mission architectures were considered:

- Direct Ascent: A single vessel, barring lifter stages, would be flown to and landed directly on the Mun, before being flown back to Kerbin. The crew return command pod would itself form part of the lander stage.

- Munar Orbit Rendezvous: A single vessel containing the command pod and a separate lander would be flown to the Mun, where the lander would independently land on the surface before rendezvousing with the command pod prior to the return flight to Kerbin.

- Kerbin Orbit Rendezvous: Both the lander and crewed command pod were launched separately and docked in Kerbin orbit prior to Trans-Munar Injection.

Due to budget constraints and the short notice given to execute the mission, KSA opted to save development costs by using the existing standardized Magnum-K lifter to launch either a KES spacecraft or a dedicated lander, but not both concurrently. Consequently this entailed the use of the KOR architecture.

Crew

The crew for KES Munar 01 were selected from Kerbonaut Group 1, former Air Force personnel from various Kerbal nation-states²:

Major Jebediah Kerman - Mission Commander

A former Confederate Air Force combat and later test pilot, Jeb retired from the military after the war, and had (grudgingly) been reduced to selling refurbished Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) parts to civilian hobbyists launching sounding rockets. With the establishment of the Kerbal Space Administration, the agency considered his extensive flight experience a vital asset to the fledging space program, and thus he subsequently gained the distinction of being the first Kerbonaut to go into space.

Captain Bob Kerman - Command and Service Module (CSM) Pilot

Once mentored by Jeb in the later years of the war, Bob clocked an impressive number of flight hours in his KF-47 Ravenspear Interceptor, despite never seeing any action. He was quickly snapped up by the unified Kerbal Federation Air Force after the war to help evaluate various hardware previously used by the various absorbed former Kerbal nation-states, but was quickly relieved of his duties due to excessive snack consumption resulting in aircraft undercarriages collapsing under his weight. Initially recruited by the KSA as a stand-in whilst they searched for Jeb, the agency decided to keep him anyway after the infamous "Photocopier incident".

Lieutenant Bill Kerman - Munar Lander Pilot / Flight Engineer

The oddly quiet and mysterious of the trio. All that is known about Bill's past was that he was one of the junior engineers under Wernher von Kerman when the latter convinced the Confederacy during the war to mass-produce his surface-to-surface missile designs - they very precursors to the ICBMs that ultimately cost Jeb his job as a pilot. Has a penchant for repeatedly reseating fuses in electrical distribution panels whenever no-one's looking.

Mission Highlights

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Outcomes

- Successful manned landing on Munar surface 2.4 km east of planned landing site

- Munar EVA duration: ~6 hours

- Munar sample mass total: ~12 kg

- Longest distance traversed by foot on Mun: 2.3 km by Bill Kerman

- Highest unpowered jump from surface of Mun, ~3 m by Jebediah Kerman

- Kerbal Munar Rover repaired and recommissioned

- Successful crew and Munar sample return to Kerbin

Recommedations for Future Missions

- It was noted that the Magnum-K upper stage hastily reworked as the Trans-Munar Injection stage was not able to be fully-refueled while in Kerbin orbit. While the KES spacecraft and the docked lander were successfully boosted into a stable lunar orbit, the injection stage quickly ran out of fuel before the orbit could be properly circularized. It has been suggested that a dedicated third stage with a LV-N Atomic Rocket Engine be added to the stack for use in the actual Trans-Munar Injection, or the Magnum-K upper stage's Rockomax LV-909 "Poodle" Liquid Fuel Engine be retrofitted with said atomic engine. In general, highly efficient engines would be a vital part of transfer stages for Trans-Munar or Interplanetary flights.

- Perhaps the greatest deficiency was in the Munar Lander, which was found to lack the neccessary fuel reserves to fully circularize its ascent orbit, even with the added external LFO tanks, neccessitating an emergency rendezvous by the KES spacecraft as well as burning all the Lander's RCS reserves to extend the duration of the latter's own suborbital trajectory. An upgraded Munar lander would be required to be able to land from, re-ascend and circularize to an altitude of at least 200 km above the Munar surface, with at least 20~30% fuel reserves for rendevousing with any KES in Munar orbit.

- Remedying the fuel and thrust deficiencies with the Injection and Lander stages should leave the standard KES spacecraft's fuel reserves untouched unless in dire emergencies.

- A further possibility would be to convert Munar resources into rocket fuel to top-up the Lander's own reserves. Days after the return of KES Munar 01, the Extraplanetary Sciences working group³ have announced the discovery of a liquid substance contained within the subsurface of the Mun, tentatively dubbed "Kethane", through the reconfiguration of Kerbal Munstar 1's Gavitational Distortion Meter. Laboratory experiments have confirmed that the compound, which naturally occurs on Kerbin in very rare quantities, can be satisfactorily converted into LFO. Extraplanetary Sciences have, in conjunction with the Exploration Gateway working group³, proposed the construction of remote surface facilities to extract and convert Kethane into LFO, as well as a small orbital outpost in the Mun's SOI to receive and store the produced rocket fuel from unmanned tankers for refueling landers. The outpost could additionally act as an orbital staging area for crew leaving or returning from the Munar surface, and as a quarantine facility.

¹Equivalent to June in the Human Gregorian Calendar System.

²Kerbal unification occurred in mid-KY497, following a decade-long global war between major factions led by the Confederacy, Krussian People's Republic and the Honko Hegemony that ended in mutual devastation.

³Subdivision(s) of KSA, much like JPL is to NASA

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Mods Used

- SQUAD Panopticon Cupola modified to house three Kerbals (in lieu of an as-yet hypothetical proper replacement FusTek mod part )

- MechJeb: Primary guidance computer for all stages of flight

- KSPX: LFO fuel tanks for Lander, Z-1K Battery for Magnum-K unmanned payload lifter variant, Escape tower for KES

- KW Rocketry: Aerodynamic fairings

- B9 Aerospace: Fuselage adapters, lights, Atlas low profile engine for Lander

- Lionhead Aerospace: Circular Solar Panels

- Supernovy's Advanced Service Module

- DeadlyReentry: Heat shields only for visual accuracy; the actual heat damage plugin was not used