UKS MASEC Mission Logs [Picture Heavy] | UPDATE: Back in business, again!

[Cashen]

Laythe Fennec Excursion

By the time everything was successfully landed on Laythe, it was slightly past local noon. However, the urge to explore is strong, and there's plenty of daylight hours left. So, Milke and Thompler will climb aboard the Fennec rover and drive northwards to a large group of lakes. Now, for the first time, the issue of naming geographic features has come up. This happened to a lesser extent on Duna, with features like the East and West Massif that bracketed the Anubis Valley. But Laythe has a lot of islands and features, and it's been decided that the large islands will be named after the various MASEC project names. The island they've landed on will therefore be called Osiris Island. The lakes they're visiting to the north are the largest inland lakes on all of Laythe, and so understandably they're being named the Great Lakes, each named after their relative positions to each other: North, West, and East Great Lake. With that taken care of, let's do some exploration!

Ellorf and Milgas have finished doing the fuel transfer with the Flying Fox, and have climbed back inside. They're going to drive it over to the LCTRV landing site, which will act as a temporary base of operations. Milke and Thompler, meanwhile, have climbed into Fennec and are about to head off. Since Laythe's most interesting feature is its large amount of surface liquid, the first point of interest they're going to visit is a small inlet in the peninsula, which is visible in the background.

Milke: Weird. It's blue but its opaque, you can't see very far through it at all.

Thompler: I'm not sure why that is. It might be mineral content, like you see in glacier fed lakes on Kerbin. Some kind of colloidal suspension or something that gives it that cloudy appearance.

Milke: The area around this inlet is extremely flat and smooth. This might be a great base location, since its close to water and would probably be easy to land aircraft in the area.

Access to the ocean is a key base location criteria, in case vehicles are brought along intended to operate on water.

The pair begin driving north, along the east side of the inlet, with the landing peninsula visible behind them. It's around noon local time, as you can see from the position of the shadows. Watch how the shadows gradually move during their excursion.

Milke: Let's stop here a bit. The view here is amazing.

Thompler: That's East Great Lake, yeah?

Milke: It is. And I can see what I think is part of North Lake just beyond that. They're separated by a narrow isthmus.

Thompler: The terrain here is much darker, and this is the first time we've seen boulders and rocks strewn about. We did not see any of these at lower elevations.

The pair arrive at East Great Lake.

Milke: How's the water?

Thompler: Well the suit seals pretty well. It's tricky not being able to see the bottom though. I'll grab a sample, maybe we can compare with the ocean water we collected earlier.

They're in radio contact with Elmon and Carson up in Laythe Station for brief periods while the station is above the horizon.

Elmon: So, what can you tell us from down there?

Milke: We're on the southern coast of East Great Lake. Looking north, we cannot see the isthmus that separates it from North Great Lake. These lakes are big, and the curvature of Laythe prevents us from seeing that far. From here you'd almost think this was a bay of the ocean.

Thompler: The temperature here is 4.67 degrees, pretty consistent with the data we got from the probes.

Thompler is referring to the IAOP and IALP probes that gathered data on Laythe's atmosphere some time ago. They revealed surface temperatures above freezing.

Elmon: Pol should be in the sky overhead. See if your camera has enough zoom to see it. We'll downlink the exact position in the sky to your computer.

Thompler: Okay, panning and zooming... Negative, can't see it. Must not be bright enough.

Elmon: Okay. Maybe we'll try at night. Try looking at Jool from there.

Thompler: Jool's a little hazy because of the angle looking through the atmosphere, but we can see a fair amount of detail on the high zoom. What about Vall and Tylo?

Elmon: Negative, Vall and Tylo are "behind" Laythe at the moment and not visible from where you are.

Elmon means on the retrograde side of Laythe. The landing was on Laythe's prograde side.

A few minutes later, Laythe Station is below the horizon again and out of contact. They are still in radio contact with the LCTRV though. Meanwhile, they're circled around the western shore of East Lake, and can see the narrow isthmus that separates East Lake (right) with North Lake (left). North Lake is the largest of the three.

This time Thompler ventures further out, and tests the suit's buoyancy and his ability to swim with it on.

Thompler: This is a lot easier than I expected. In my head I was thinking, before we got here, the pressure suit would be rigid but on Laythe there's no pressure difference, so you have total freedom of movement.

Milke: I'll have to give it a try. This lake is so large I can't see across it at some points.

It's starting to get later in the day as they venture toward West Great Lake, the smallest of the three. There's a narrow and shallow inlet on the eastern side they're going to check out.

Milke: I bet we can drive across this inlet. It looks so shallow here.

Thompler: How can you tell? You can't see the bottom.

Milke: Tell you what. I'll swim across, and if it's not too deep, you can drive through after me.

Thompler: Sounds like a deal to me.

Thompler: Hey, this thing fords across the water pretty well!

Milke: Sweet. Tell you what, you can drive it back to base. It's starting to get dark, we should head back there.

Incidentally, this is one of my favourite screenshots in the whole history of this thread.

The sun is getting low on the horizon as they head back towards the landing site, passing East Lake in the background agian.

As they come over the ridge and can see the inlet again, the sun is setting below the horizon, with only the rock outcroppings illuminated. Jool of course is very bright in the sky.

When they get back, it's absolutely dark, but the LCTRV's lights are on to light up the surrounding area. Ellorf and Milgas are already inside, and the four settle down for their first night on Laythe.

An estimation of their route, with the four stops they made to study bodies of water. Their maximum distance from base was about 55 km and they probably drove a total distance of three times that much, making this the longest single drive of a Fennec rover ever.

Milke Kerman:

Thompler Kerman:

Edited July 13, 2014 by Cashen

[Scotius]

With proper mods installed Laythe is so pretty It needs some signs of life though - some alien plants, or just patches of moss.

[r_rolo1]

Hum , nice thread. This is how science should work in the game, not just "took a measurement, no context required"

Regarding Laythe, don't forget to give a visit to one of the polar caps. If you think about it, Laythe shouldn't have them ( if you assume the temp there is basically from thermal heating from the effects of the massive tidal forces of Jool and Tylo ) , so some science is needed about their existance.

BTW, when you were forced back in the day to abort the first Jool window due to ... incidents , you probably could had made a Eve gravity assist for a Jool mission. Have you considered that option, and if you did, why have you not gone that way ?

[Cashen]

Hum , nice thread. This is how science should work in the game, not just "took a measurement, no context required"

Regarding Laythe, don't forget to give a visit to one of the polar caps. If you think about it, Laythe shouldn't have them ( if you assume the temp there is basically from thermal heating from the effects of the massive tidal forces of Jool and Tylo ) , so some science is needed about their existance.

BTW, when you were forced back in the day to abort the first Jool window due to ... incidents , you probably could had made a Eve gravity assist for a Jool mission. Have you considered that option, and if you did, why have you not gone that way ?

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! Glad you enjoy the thread. You've kind of hit on the reason why I'm still playing in sandbox mode. I'm not sold on the career mode science, because of that lack of context. So I kind of make it up as I go, but try to make it sound realistic.

I do plan to visit both poles fairly early on in the exploration. Regarding their existence, I had a few lines written here giving a really simple explanation for why they would be there, but I decided to not spoil it. Thanks for bringing it up, though, because I wouldn't have thought of it otherwise. So you'll see that explained when they go there.

Gravity assists: I've not attempted them mostly because orbital maneuvering isn't really a part of the game that interests me all that much, and because they require longer transit times. The only time I did a gravity assist was the first time from Laythe to Pol, and that was because I needed to save fuel desperately. It's the exploration on the ground once I get there that really interests me. For example, that last rover excursion across Laythe was one of the most enjoyable missions I've done. The Duna drives were also a highlight. For manned missions I've always used high energy fast transfers to reduce transit times. I figure at this point MASEC has a budget that can allow them to get away with that, unlike NASA. The reason for the fast transfers is that I try to keep the MASEC schedule somewhat realistic, and if I have a year between a Jool departure and Jool arrival, I don't want to put everything on hold for a year, I'll do missions in between. A gravity assist would make much more sense for probe missions, but I have none planned.

Thanks for reading!

[Strayed]

I am amazed at the amount of work that has gone into this thread . This is easily one of the best mission reports that I have ever seen, and its actually inspired me to try doing one of these.

[Cashen]

I am amazed at the amount of work that has gone into this thread . This is easily one of the best mission reports that I have ever seen, and its actually inspired me to try doing one of these.

Thanks! That's pretty high praise. I started out the same way. I was heavily inspired by Brotoro's Laythe thread (which is still active on this forum with over 200,000 views!) so it's nice to see things come full circle and now I'm inspiring other people in a similar way.

Thread is a little slow right now, but it's not for lack of trying, or lack of things to do. I'm actually playing around with some more mods (RPM, KSI MFD, SpacePlanes Plus, ALCOR Lander) and planning ways to integrate them into the story, and getting them to work together and with the mods I already have. Things aren't quite working right and I've been troubleshooting, but if things drag on and I have to wait for devs to update mods, I have other things I can do in the meantime, like more Laythe stuff. I try not to do too many updates on the same thing though, I like to space things out to keep the big picture.

[Cashen]

Horus IX: A New Shuttle?

While we're about to fly some old designs on Laythe, let's take a moment to fly a brand new design on Kerbin. You may remember the Horus Space Shuttle development from earlier. Well, the Project Horus team has come up with a new design. It's tentatively just called the "Commuter". The HSS was a compromise design, a vehicle that could carry passengers and fuel as cargo. The original design was going to ferry fuel down to the surface of Laythe from orbit (effectively replacing the Unmanned Refueling Vehicle already there) as well as ferrying crews. While it's an excellent design, it's big and consumes a lot of fuel, so the Horus team have been collaborating with SpacePlanes Plus to design a smaller, more economical SSTO spaceplane specifically for crew transfers. A prototype has been constructed, and now, the veteran test pilot Jebediah Kerman will team up with rookie engineer Matgard Kerman to fly it into orbit for the first time.

Matgard climbs the ladder up to the Commuter's hatch, while Jeb waits on the runway. The forward part of the fuselage is the pressurized cabin. In the middle of this is a retractable docking port affixed to a small, cylindrical air-lock with hatches fore and aft. The front hatch from the air-lock leads to the crew cabin, and the back hatch leads to the passenger compartment. The spaceplane can carry 2 crew and 4 passengers, equaling the usual team size of 6 kerbals. The rear half of the fuselage is propellant tanks. The vehicle is powered by 4 RAPIER engines, 2 inboard and 2 outboard, in a design reminiscent of the Shuttle, only scaled down. It carries 1417.5L of liquid fuel, 1732.5L of oxidizer, and 165L of monopropellant, most of which is stored in a pair of tanks on either side of the docking airlock. It takes on the crew transfer role of the Shuttle, without the added weight of cargo fuel tanks. This is the first of four basic designs around the same fuselage structure that will be demonstrated. Plans are in the works for a smaller 2-seat SSTO to replace the Flying Fox, a jet-only 2-seater design, and a 2-seat electrically powered propeller version.

Hopes are high that this along with the smaller SSTO design can be developed in time for the second phase of Project Osirus. Another development is the upgraded computer systems and glass cockpit. While all vehicles have been retrofitted with this, no other vehicle demonstrates this concept as much as the Commuter. Here we see Jeb's view looking down the runway with KSC in the background. The displays include four integrated external cameras (three visible), an improved navigation ball, integrated map displays, as well as various configurable data readouts. The cockpit is also quite roomy, especially when compared with the Flying Fox.

The engines are powered up on air-breathing mode and Jeb and Matgard begin to head down the runway. Their mission is to get into orbit and dock with Kerbin Station, before returning. Another design philosophy change is the omission of solar panels in favor of a pair of RTGs mounted on the back of the plane to provide electrical power. One of the roles of this craft will hopefully be crew transfers on Laythe, and solar power is less reliable there both because of the greater distance and the frequent eclipses behind Jool.

Jebediah: Wow, this thing is crazy maneuverable. The canards up front really give good pitch control, almost dangerously so.

Jeb is referring to the fact that the canards have place the center of lift slight ahead of the center of mass, so the design is somewhat inherrently unstable.

Rate of pitch change has to be controlled carefully because the canards make it possible to pitch too fast and lost control. Jeb switches from air-breathing to closed-cycle mode, but some of the air intakes fail to close. Minor design issues.

They get into space. The three lower displays are showing, from left to right: Their ascent profile (altitude vs. time), their current orbital situation (this is pre-circularization, so their current orbit, in blue, intersects Kerbin, while the yellow orbit is the projected post-circularizatin orbit), and the current state of resources.

This is Matgard's first spaceflight. During the first orbit, while they wait to catch up to Kerbin Station, he performs an EVA to check out the Commuter's exterior. Here he's checking out the in-line dockng port/airlock and monopropellant tanks

Jebediah: Having fun out there?

Matgard: Absolutely! The view from here is incredible!

Jebediah: I can see you out the front window and on the forwrd camera.

Note the display that formerly shows their ascent profile has been switched to docking mode, indicating they are targeting Kerbin Station. The orbital display also shows the planned rendezvous. One of the features of the new displays is they can be customized by the crew to suit the situation.

Arrival at Kerbin Station, the inboard engines provide the velocity-matching burn.

Jebediah performs the docking. The different software handles docking differently, and so it takes him a while to get accustomed to it. He also uses substantially more RCS fuel than normal, but again, this is a different method (I had never docked purely from IVA before).

Docked successfully! They spend one complete orbit at Kerbin Station, during which the station's occupants visit the new craft and tour its crew and passenger cabins. Everyone seems quite impressed with the roomy interior!

The RCS configuration is a little different as well. It uses eight of the streamlined RCS thruster blocks, four on each of the outboard engine tanks, two top and two bottom. Unlike normal RCS quads, these blocks can thrust in five directions instead of four.

Re-entry later in the day over the mountains west of KSC. Their landing predictor kept moving about, and as a result, they slightly overshoot.

The canards become an issue again. The craft can move around so quickly that it can easily go out of control. But nevertheless, they get turned around for another go at the runway.

This low on fuel, the craft glides quite well, and landing isn't much of an issue at all!

They get stopped and drop the ladder at the end of a successful mission!

Improvements to be made: The canards aren't needed. The vehicle has good pitch control without them. They date from an earlier iteration that showed poor take-off rotation and pitch control, which was remedied as the design evolved, rendering the canards redundant. The action groups for closing the intakes missed the right outboard intakes, so that'll need to be fixed. Also there was a fuel line missing to the right outboard tanks which required manual transfers (via the fuel balancer mod) to maintain a balanced load. This is because I had picked up the outboard engines/wings and moved them in 2x symmetry, which broke the action groups. I had fixed this for the engine, but not the intakes. The MFDs support up to eight external cameras. The cockpit comes integrated with four, leaving four free. Since the cameras weigh almost nothing, future designs will incorporate four additional cameras for better views from inside. These improvements and issues will be fixed quickly, and a second test flight is probably not necessary to verify. Also I think the think looks beautiful!

What does this mean for the existing Horus Shuttle? Well, the compromise cargo/passenger design is no longer needed. So likely, we'll see physically different Shuttle designs - one designed purely to haul passengers (and large numbers of them, to give it something of a purpose beyond what the new, smaller design can do), and one optimized for carrying fuel as cargo, without a passenger cabin. We may also see a third design of the larger shuttle with an open-able payload bay for placing payloads, such as probes, in oribt. In the meantime, work continues on the other three derivatives of this new craft, mentioned earlier.

Matgard Kerman:

[Scotius]

Very pretty craft, indeed I can't wait for 64-bit version of KSP. I will be able to install all the cool mods then

[Cashen]

Very pretty craft, indeed I can't wait for 64-bit version of KSP. I will be able to install all the cool mods then

Yeah, I'm excited about the 0.24 update because of the 64 bit version. I don't have a lot of other mods I want to add, but it will let me use less aggressive texture compression and higher resolution clouds and environmental effects, so it'll make things look prettier. Of course it will probably break mods too, so I'll continue in 0.23.5 for a while after the update until the mods are all updated.

[Scotius]

Understandable. I will check hourly if my favourite mods are updated already Though i would love to see you tackling some contracts along the way - i'm sure you will come with very interesting mission reports detailing MASEC activities on this front All in due time i guess.

[Strayed]

I actually find that mods and memory aren't as much of an issue if one tones down their graphics settings. I am running more mods than Cashen is, with advanced texture compression and at pretty low graphic setting on my macbook pro and I get excellent performance.

[Cashen]

Understandable. I will check hourly if my favourite mods are updated already Though i would love to see you tackling some contracts along the way - i'm sure you will come with very interesting mission reports detailing MASEC activities on this front All in due time i guess.

Well I won't be doing any contracts since this is all in sandbox mode, though the new stuff coming in 0.24 is the first time I've been tempted to give career mode a try.

I actually find that mods and memory aren't as much of an issue if one tones down their graphics settings. I am running more mods than Cashen is, with advanced texture compression and at pretty low graphic setting on my macbook pro and I get excellent performance.

I'm running with the Active Texture Magament in aggressive mode, plus my environmental effects is in low resolution. So that's what keeps things running nice and stable. I was experimenting recently with texture manager in basic mode and I was getting memory-induced crashes, but it made things look nicer. So that'll be what changes when 64-bit is available.

[Cashen]

Flying Fox Laythe Flight Test

Flight on Kerbin is nothing new, and Kerbin's atmosphere is thoroughly understood. Therefore, the flight characteristics and engine performance in Kerbin's atmosphere are well known. Laythe however is an alien atmosphere. It contains oxygen but in different amounts, and contains other gases. Its pressure and temperature relationship with altitude are also different. It's not known exactly how jet engines perform in it. So, the two engineers on the surface, Milke and Ellorf, are going to flight-test the Flying Fox in Laythe's atmosphere.

Mission Outline & Objectives

• Perform a non-stop equatorial circumnavigation of Laythe using the Flying Fox.
  
• Use on-board instruments to record dynamic pressure, altitude, velocity, and fuel consumption on 1 second intervals for the first 1024 seconds of flight.
  
• During the first 1024 seconds of flight, perform a gradual ascent to at least 14km altitude.
  
• Establish maximum cruise speeds and altitudes in Laythe's atmosphere.
  
• Flying Fox Crew: Ellorf Kerman & Milke Kerman
  

Milke is climbing into the back seat of the Flying Fox, while Ellorf prepares to get into the front. The two of them are going to attempt a circumnavigation of Laythe. You may recall Jebediah Kerman performing a circumnavigation of Kerbin during Horus 3. He was able to complete the flight but ran out of fuel near KSC and had to glide the rest of the way. Laythe is smaller, so if all goes well, they'll land with some fuel left over.

Ellotf: Wheels up.

Milke: Okay, instruments online. I'm starting data recording.

They're using the Grapohtron 2000 data recorder to record atmospheric pressure, dynamic pressure, altitude from sea level, surface relative velocity, as well as the intake air quantity sensor and the fuel quantity sensor. After the mission they'll do some data processing. The recording takes measurements every second for the first 1024 seconds (just over 17 minutes).

Ellorf: There's that small lake east of the landing site we saw from orbit.

During the data recording, they perform a very slow climb. The goal is to get velocity and fuel consumption details as a function of altitude, assuming that the Flying Fox is in a state of dynamic equilibrium with the atmosphere. That is, with the engine throttle fixed at 100%, the speed they travel is the maximum speed they can go at any given altitude. If they ascend too quickly, they could rise vertically quicker than the Fox's twin turbojets can accelerate them horizontally, and it would not be valid velocity data.

Here we can see Ellorf's recently updated displays. The software update was sent to Laythe from Kerbin. It includes a HUD, an updated navball, plus Ellorf has configured the two other displays to show the topographical map of Laythe, and the status of their consumables. Out the window can be seen the eastern coastline of Osiris Island.

Out over the vast ocean, they begin to rise through the clouds with Jool looming large, dead ahead in the sky. There is a vast expanse of ocean on Laythe's retrograde side, and the timing of the flight is such that this stretch will take place at night, maximizing visibility of land during daylight.

By now they are getting shock heating effects. A large island is visible to the north. Data recording has by now stopped, at just over 14km altitude and about 1.2km/s velocity. Nevertheless, they continue a very gradual ascent to test the limits of flying on Laythe.

It's dark now, and the map shows the large stretch of open water they're flying over. Meanwhile, the fuel quantity now shows just under 50%, but they are slightly more than half way around Laythe, so they will indeed make it back with a little fuel to spare. As it turns out, a pitch of about 5.4 degrees holds a steady altitude, with a vertical rise of just 0.5 meters per second. By now they're at 15km altitude and 1.25km/s speed.

Ellorf: Hey look, I got a good shot of a crescent Tylo coming over the horizon. Rotated the camera to give a proper north-up orientation.

There's some land in the lower left of this picture as the sun rises, and the four innermost planets can be seen: From the bottom up are Moho, the Sun, Eve, Kerbin, and Duna. This puts in perspective how far away they really are from home.

Ellorf: I got one of the larger islands below. This one looks relatively mountainous by Laythe standards.

Milke: That's also a really big lake there. I wonder if that's an impact crater, volcanic, or just a natural lake.

Ellorf: We'll have to check it out close-up sometime.

Milke: Oh, Vall is coming over the horizon.

They capture a photograph of Vall similarly. You can see in this picture how high and fast they are now.

Jool begins to rise above the horizon again, while the first hints of the western shore of Osiris Island begin to appear in the distance. They're almost there!

Milke: Oh wow, what a view of the great lakes from here! You can see the whole area Thompler and I drove through yesterday!

They cut the engines and glide down, but overshoot slightly. You can see the nose-down attitude here, as they try to get into thicker air and slow down before turning around.

After getting turned around, they come in for a gentle landing. Most of the fuel is gone so the Fox is light, and even in Laythe's thinner air, it glides amazingly.

Successfully landed, and driving back towards the LCTRV on the electrically driven rover wheels. They have 92.9 liters of fuel left, having burned 843.1 liters to fly roughly the entire 3142km of Laythe's equatorial circumference. As a rough estimate, they flew 3.7km for every liter of fuel on average, but the post mission data processing will shed more light on that.

Thompler is outside to greet the pair as they park the Flying Fox and dismount. Mission accomplished! Now, let's see the data.

This graph shows the important raw data, as a function of time, during the first 17 or so minutes of the flight. You can clearly see the gradual and steady climb in altitude, and how it began to level off around 14km. Velocity showed a similar steady upward trend, but began a more dramatic slope upward between 600 and 700 seconds, and rising the fastest between 700 and 800 seconds. This corresponds with a spike in dynamic pressure, indicating that their acceleration may not have been in equilibrium with the rapidly thinning atmosphere at this point. Beyond 800 seconds the dynamic pressure falls off as their ascent and acceleration level off. While it's not shown, this is the point at which their intake air sensors showed a reduction in oxygen mass flow, indicating they were approaching maximum altitude. Note the fuel quantity is nearly a straight line. Fuel consumption varied only slightly with the other variables, and was effectively a constant with respect to time. It varied between 260mL and 280mL per second the entire flight.

Here we've shown velocity purely as a function of altitude. This is more or less what one would expect. The velocity rises with altitude, accelerating upward as the air gets thinner, before starting to taper off again once the engines become oxygen limited. Unfortunately the recording stopped before they reached their final cruise altitude of about 15.5km.

This graph shows fuel efficiency as a function of altitude. This graph, and the next one, required some data processing. For every pair of data points in the raw data, an average altitude and velocity was calculated (simply the average of the two data points), and the amount of fuel from the second point was subtracted from the first to give the volume of fuel consumed between each data point. Since the data points are 1 second apart, the average velocity (in meters per second) can be assumed to also be the distance traveled (in meters), and we can calculate the average meters traveled per liter of fuel, which is our measure of fuel efficiency. The graph clearly shows it's more efficient to fly at higher altitudes.

Similarly the fuel efficiency is plotted against speed. Since fuel consumption varied only with time (and throttle position), it follows intuitively that fuel efficiency increases linearly with speed.

A successful mission with some meaningful data!

Milke Kerman:

Edited July 15, 2014 by Cashen

[Cashen]

Anubis-Osiris Test Project, Part 2: Improved Mun Base

So, while drive-testing the mobile Mun base, Mac and Kirmin came to the conclusion that the base design wasn't going to work on Mun. It stalled in inclines as shallow as 10 degrees, and was prone to sideways sliding when tilted at all to one side or the other. It was stable on its wheels, but the conclusion to be drawn was that the base was too light for its footprint and could not gain much traction. An unfortunate and expensive conclusion, which means the first base iteration will have to be abandoned on Mun. However, MASEC engineers were already working on an updated design. The problem it seems is weight. The mobile base is too light, much like the original design of Fennec was on Minmus. So they've come up with a design that adds more than 10 tons of weight, and reduces the footprint from 8 large wheels to 6. Where did the extra weight come from? Well, they've solved another problem with that. The middle habitation module was deleted in favor of a pair of kethane drills, converters, and small storage tanks. This means the base will be able to refuel landers from the surface, to take advantage of Mun's supply of kethane and so that operations are less dependent on kethane and/or propellants imported from elsewhere.

So, Mac and Kirmin park the old base and use Fennec to drive back to NAMLARV, which is parked right where they left it. The new mobile base will land atop a kethane reservoir, and nowhere near here. So, their mission is rather simple: Get back into orbit and await the new base's arrival.

NAMLARV carries enough fuel to perform two landings without requiring refueling, so they get into a low orbit and wait, without heading back up to Mun Station.

The new base is prepared for launch. Because of the extra weight, a slightly modified launch vehicle is used, containing four large SRBs and a much larger upper stage. The new six wheel design can be seen clearly.

SRB jettison coming up through the clouds. In this view you can see the two side-mounted kethane drills. Also, this design takes advantage of external cameras, like we saw earlier on the new Shuttle.

The new upper stage, the L-IIB, marks the first flight of the new NovaPunch K-2X engine. In this case, five have been clustered together in a 5m package, providing an increase in thrust over The Matriarch, used on the normal L-II stage. NovaPunch also makes single K-2X engines in 3.75m and 1.25m packages, and the single 3.75m engine stands to become the new standard upper stage engine, but we'll see that in the future.

The L-IIB provides the Mun injection burn, and then the new base separates from the stage and corrects its course to miss Mun.

The original trajectory is an impact course, as can be seen here.

The L-IIB stage seen just a few seconds before it smashed into Mun at nearly 900 meters per second.

The base has a brand new descent stage design. The added weight of the kethane equipment has lessened the asymmetric center of mass, so a ballast tank is no longer needed. That being said, it's still off-center, so powerful RCS thrusters have been added. Also, the descent engines are four NovaPunch radial engines, which have up to 2 degrees of gimbal range, to further enhance attitude control. Atop the twin kethane drills are structural mounts for four large retractable solar panels. The body mounted ones are intended for use when driving, and are adequate to power the large wheels, but the bigger panels will be needed for powering the power-hungry kethane equipment.

Here's the chosen landing area. It's a reservoir of about 190,000 liters of kethane, in a fairly densely cratered area and adjacent to a massive impact basin. This should provide an interesting area as a base of operations for a while!

Another interesting feature of the descent stage is that it only has two landing legs, on one side. Because the center of mass is much more balanced with this design, this is meant to case the stack to tip over wheels-down on landing. Like the old design, the descent stage is meant to be left on the surface.

The design works flawlessly. Well, almost. There was a rear facing camera mounted on the cupola module at the back, which was destroyed on landing, but that's a really small issue.

Mac and Kirmin are going to attempt to land much closer to the new base site than previously, so they start their de-orbit sooner.

Mac: I can actually see the base from here. We're going to be about 600 meters from it when we touch down.

Kirmin: Excellent!

Mac is correct. They land 625 meters from the new Mun Base. Here Kirmin climbs down from NAMLARV as Mac gets Fennec ready to drive over.

Mac: Oh, this looks much better for sure. Much more practical with the kethane equipment. We won't be so dependent on Minmus now.

This design is critical for use at Jool as well, as it'll allow MASEC to utilize the kethane on Vall and Tylo, which would otherwise be impractical to exploit. This applies equally for Duna, of course.

This time Kirmin is in the front seat of the base's front command pod. There were originally five external cameras: Forward, backward, right, left, and one aimed at the ladder from atop the left kethane drill, which is shown here with Mac visible climbing the ladder. The rear camera was smashed on landing, unfortunately.

It's not that big a deal though, because there's a nice, big glass cupola at the back, and here Mac looks at the discarded descent stage, while on his displays are: A display of the base showing the status of all parts, the view from the forward-facing camera, and a topographic map of Mun showing their location.

Kirmin extends the solar panels, lowers the drills into the ground and activates the kethane converters. Everything works beautifully!

They drive up the hill towards NAMLARV. The base makes the lander look quite small, actually.

The most important thing? It handles much, much better! Here it's shown ascending a 15 degree slops with no issues maintaining heading or speed! It definitely looks like a design that works and can be genuinely useful!

This marks a shift in MASEC's exploration of Mun: From orbital to surface. With the success of UKS Mun Base, the go-ahead has been given to relocate the remaining Mun Station crew to the mobile surface base, and Mun Station will be decommissioned, to be replaced with a small orbital outpost servicing as a way-station for crew transfers. But we'll see more on that in the next installment!

[Cashen]

Anubis-Osiris Test Project, Part 3: New Mun Lander & Decommissioning Mun Station

Today is the 45th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, and so it's fitting that this (rather large) update take place on Mun. In the last update, we saw the resounding success of the new Mun base. It drives around about as well as you could ask for something of that size. So now, MASEC has the go-ahead to transfer the orbiting crew down to the surface. It's a fundamental shift in Mun exploration, that will consist of the mobile base, a small unmanned orbital outpost/fuel depot, and a new lander for crew rotations. It's also a tad risky: No longer will escape be a moment's notice away. If there are problems on Mun, help has to come from Kerbin. Also, the crew on the ground will not have the ability to leave. Someone would have to come and land first. But given the relative closeness of Kerbin, this is considered an acceptable risk.

What will happen to Mun Station, you ask? Well for now it will remain in Mun orbit, unmanned and unused. The habitation module however will be detached and brought back, eventually, to be re-purposed as a future space station at Duna. This will save MASEC from having to construct a new habitation module. It'll be paired with a different service module, though, and the current Mun Station service module will probably be left as a piece of orbiting debris at Mun. Let's get started!

This is what will become UKS Mun Outpost. It has a small habitable space where Kerbals can stay temporarily at the top, followed by a four-way docking node, and then a large orange propellant tank. This is intended to orbit Mun at around 50 km up, and will act as a transfer point between space-based craft and landing craft during crew movements to and from Mun Base. This design is part of the test project, since outposts like this are planned for Ike, Vall, Tylo, Bop and Pol in the future.

The launch vehicle for this is designated as Lupus III, owing to the 3.75m diameter and the triple Bearcat engines in the core stage (the L-III stage). The core stage has a poor thrust-to-weight ratio so was assisted by the two large SRBs. The upper stage is your standard L-IVB, this time sporting the brand new NovaPunch K-2X engine.

With the solar panels out, the L-IVB stage sends the outpost towards Mun. Okay, now that that's taken care of...

This is the new lander. It's called ALCOR, or Advanced Landing Capsule for Orbital Rendezvous, and it's been designed and built by ASET Industries (link to thread), intended to replace the current 2.5m lander can. All new landing craft will be designed around this, with different tank/engine configurations for different roles. It's small, light, and flexible, and in addition it carries three kerbals instead of two. It also uses a small chemical rocket from AIES Aerospace, which marks a return to chemical rockets for landing craft, a new MASEC policy. Nuclear engines are now only to be used for orbital craft, not landers. This means there will be no more NAMLARV vehicles produced.

Mission Outline & Objectives

• First flight of the ALCOR Mun Lander
  
• Launch unmanned and rendezvous with Kerbin Station.
  
• Desbree and Neweny Kerman will board and fly ALCOR to Mun Station.
  
• Ferry the remaining four crew members at Mun Station down to the base, in two landings (one piloted by Debsree and one by Neweny)
  
• Dock ALCOR to the new Mun Outpost.
  
• Return to Kerbin Station using Mun Station's Aten COV, which they no longer need.
  

The ALCOR is encapsulated and launched at night, atop a single 2.5m ascent stage.

The lander's own engine is used to complete the orbit, and then rendezvous with Kerbin Station.

Desbree gets a look at the interior. The displays are set up as three different "stations", depending on what the pilot is doing. On the left is the landing station, which has a large screen for the downward looking landing camera, and the leftmost navball for orientation info. The center station is your basic data readouts, including the navball, resource status and orbital info. The righthand station is the navigation station, showing a map with their position on it. The top station, just below the upper rendezvous window, is the docking station, with another navball and the docking camera display. They're still docked to Kerbin Station, which can be seen out the forward looking window.

Desbree and Neweny then make their escape to Mun to begin the mission. Notice the KAS port on the front of the core propellant tank. This is to allow surface refueling of the lander by the base.

The outpost, having a head start, gets to Mun first and begins to brake into orbit. It's hoped to place it in a 50km orbit, about 10km higher up than the current Mun Station (I did this so I could use the 1000x timewarp if I wanted to).

Once in proper orbit, the L-IVB separates and de-orbits itself into Mun. The force of decoupling boosted the outpost into a 50x57km orbit instead of the planned 50km circular orbit. So in the future, outposts will be placed by undocking rather than decoupling.

Desbree: I love this instrument layout! So many screens! I don't think docking has ever been this easy!

Debsree is docking to Mun Station, which can be seen out the rendezvous window, as well as clearly on the docking camera. They don't stay docked for too long. The Aten COV docked to Mun Station soon joins them, with the four remaining Kerbals stationed there: Wehrrigh, Milmon, Adwise, and Obcan Kerman. Since there are six of them, and someone has to fly the lander back up, they'll do this in two landings, and Desbree and Neweny will each get a shot at landing.

Of note is that of the six Kerbals on board, none of them have actually set foot on Mun before (Mun Station's crew is relatively inexperienced as most of the original crew were reassigned elsewhere), though Wehrrigh has walked on Ike.

Desbree: Tell you what. We should make a wager. Whoever lands further away from the base, has to dock the lander to the outpost at the end of all this, and then EVA back to the capsule.

Neweny: Haha! You have a deal.

Desbree: Oh man, these displays make landing super easy, too!

The landing display, in addition to showing a downward view, also displays both horizontal and vertical velocity, plus radar altitude. The navball on the center console is placed on the left side to make it easily visible while doing IVA landings. Here, Desbree has the autopilot in "Surface Velocity Retrograde" mode, holding proper attitude (automated pitchover), while working the throttle manually. I do all of my landings like this, since I generally do not trust MechJeb's landing autopilot, and I enjoy the challenge.

Also useful on the landing display is the predicted touchdown velocity (shown as current impact speed), which is the touchdown speed with the current throttle setting. Here it shows zero, which means they'll likely stop and start going back up, so Desbree is about to reduce throttle. The slope indication can also be really helpful; here it's just 4 degrees.

Desbree: We're here on Mun!

Obcan and Wehrrigh are the first two passengers. They get some time to wander around and explore the local area, while Mac and Kirmin begin driving the base over to where they are.

Mac: We'll be there in a few minutes.

The base handles comfortably at about 6 meters per second, so it takes about 12 and a half minutes to travel the distance. During that time, they traverse the edge of a crater, and the base handles a slope of 20 degrees! Not too shabby!

Mac: Okay, we just crested a hill and I can see you guys off in the distance now. That lander looks tiny!

That's because the lander is pretty tiny. Or the base is really big. One or the other. Anyway, there's a cable at the back end of the base, and they're using it to refuel ALCOR. The lander is designed with enough fuel capacity to comfortably land on and then take off from Mun. Normally landers are refueled in orbit, and begin the descent with full tanks. Here the procedure will be to refuel on the surface, and ascend with full tanks. This way, the lander can use fuel derived from Mun kethane, rather than kethane imported from Minmus, as had been the case before.

After spending a while on the surface, Desbree launches back into Mun orbit, to rendezvous with Neweny and the remaining two kerbals.

Desbree: Okay, see if you can beat 4.5km.

Neweny: Alright, I'll give it a shot!

Now it's Neweny's turn, this time carrying Milmon and Adwise Kerman down to the surface.

By this time I've gotten the hang of landing from IVA. I (or rather, Neweny) have the throttle set to a good touchdown velocity form 100 meters up, and so I can just relax and keep it right there until it touches down.

Neweny! Yeah, 2.8 km from the base! Eat that, Desbree!

Meanwhile Adwise stands on the lander's roof, admiring the view of Kerbin, while Milmon is just climbing down the ladder.

Here's a closer view of the refueling. ALCOR went up and then came back down on the last refueling, validating the concept. The base holds 495L of oxidizer and 405L of fuel in its own fuel tank, while ALCOR's capacity is just 306L and 254L respectively, meaning that on paper the base can refuel ALCOR about 1.6 times, though given typical fuel consumption, this is in reality 2-3 times. This doesn't consider the base's internal storage of 2000L of kethane, which can be turned into even more fuel. Long story short, the base can carry enough fuel and kethane with it to support a few crew changes even while away from a kethane reservoir.

Mission complete! All six Mun-based kerbals are now in the surface base! It's time for Neweny to head back up and wrap things up before going back to Kerbin.

An interesting photo: Neweny was able to capture the base descent stage laying on the ground as he passed overhead while heading up into orbit.

Their mission complete, all that's left to do is park the ALCOR at the new outpost, where it will live.

Desbree, having lost the bet, gets to do this part of the job himself. Here he's undocked and backing away from Aten, getting ready to dock with the outpost.

Once completed, he then has to EVA himself back to the capsule for the return home.

Here they are arriving back at Kerbin. This brings a successful conclusion to the Anubis-Osiris Test Project. The mobile base design is good to go on Duna, Vall, Tylo, and anywhere else MASEC thinks it might be useful!

I'm really happy and excited about this mobile base.

Desbree Kerman:

Neweny Kerman:

Adwise Kerman:

Obcan Kerman:

Milmon Kerman:

Wehrrigh Kerman:

[macdjord]

If you want to avoid decoupler forces messing your orbit up, you can just align yourself normal before you decouple. That way, the kick will be to your inclination instead of your semi-major axis - and since plane changes take so much delta-v, the effect will be relatively small.

[Cashen]

If you want to avoid decoupler forces messing your orbit up, you can just align yourself normal before you decouple. That way, the kick will be to your inclination instead of your semi-major axis - and since plane changes take so much delta-v, the effect will be relatively small.

I'd thought of that after the fact, but decided it was more important to have minimum inclination versus minimum eccentricity. Plus, undocking prevents both issues.

[Cashen]

Laythe Kethane Expedition: Part 1

The primary objective of the Laythe surface stay, at least during Phase 1, is to scout for good base locations, or at least spots where it might be good to drop a kethane production well for surface based fuel production. It's not strictly necessary that the base itself be located on a kethane source, but close proximity to one would be nice. Here's a list of criteria in roughly descending order of importance for a base location:

1. Must be on the Jool-facing side of Laythe.
   
2. Must be on flat terrain for easy take-off and landing of multiple types of aircraft.
   
3. Should be as close to the equator as possible to reduce SSTO spaceplane fuel requirements getting into equatorial orbit (otherwise they would fly by jet power to the equator and then ascend).
   
4. If possible, on a large island to make local exploration interesting.
   
5. If possible, located on or near a kethane reservoir.
   

There are a total of four sites with kethane availability on reasonably large islands on the side of Laythe facing Jool. The four islands have been given names, and an order in which MASEC plans to explore them. Due to Flying Fox range limitations, only two will be explored at a time, so this will be split into two parts. Here's the map, showing the general flight plan for this, the first mission.

The four islands are named after four of the MASEC space exploration projects, keeping the theme with Osiris Island. The first mission will explore two large kethane reservoirs (in excess of 200,000 liters) that are in high northern latitudes. Probably not good base locations for that reason, but the amount of kethane available may make them useful as production sites nevertheless. The green dots are two other kethane sites on smaller islands, and thus lower priority. In the case of the one north of Aten Island, it's actually the same reservoir as accessible from location 3. Also of note, Isis Island was specifically named because that's where the Isis probe landed.

Milke and Thompler Kerman will perform the first mission. Because the two sites are a substantial distance east, they prepare early in the morning while it's still dark where they are. They first drive the Fox down to the refueling vehicle and fill the tanks, which were nearly empty after the circumnavigation. The refueling vehicle carries enough jet fuel to fill the plane's tanks about four times.

And they're off. Sunrise will be coming shortly, as can be seen by the phase of Jool on the horizon. They begin heading northeast, to the first kethane site on Geb Island.

They cruise at high speed and altitude to save fuel. While the lines drawn on the map earlier are straight lines, the actual routes flown are great circles.

Milke: Okay, we're coming in low over the north shore of Geb Island.

Thompler: I'm not seeing any real flat spots in this area.

Milke: Me either. The kethane reservoir covers the whole northern half of this island though, so we'll check the eastern side.

Thompler: Still looks kind of steep here too.

Milke: I think I saw a not bad spot further back there.

Thompler: See, now it doesn't look so bad. I think it's hard to tell from up in the air how smooth the terrain is.

Milke: Has a lot to do with sun angles and stuff. There was a flat spot on the northern shore.

Sure enough there's a smooth spot about mid-way along the north shore of the island, and they're able to set down pretty easily.

The map view in Milke's seat shows their landing location, and the flight path they took to get there. Geb Island isn't particularly large, but it is rather mountainous, with an interesting central valley. They're pretty far north here, too: 50 degrees.

Whenever they find a good spot for landing, they plant a flag as a marker, to make it easier for anyone who comes along later.

Milke: It's a pretty good spot. Lots of kethane here. Too far north for a base though, I think.

Thompler: Agreed. Interesting island, though. Definitely worth exploring.

They're off again. You can see the smooth shoreline they chose to land on behind them.

They continue up through the clouds, headed even further north to the second site on Anubis Island. Here you can see the Sun, Jool, and Tylo, as the ecliptic plane meets the horizon at a lower and lower angle.

Milke: Okay this reservoir is weird. It's only accessible from the bottom part of this peninsula, and then further north on most of the island.

Thompler: Doesn't look too bad down there, does it.

Milke: No, looks pretty good. Going to head north and see if there's a better spot.

Thompler: Pretty rugged up here, doesn't look that friendly.

Milke: Along the shore, yeah, but I bet we could land on that plateau we just flew over without much issue.

That's exactly what they do. They land at a spot at about 1400 meters elevation. From here they'll drive south towards the shore to see if there are good spots close to water.

Again, their approach to the island, passing over the southern peninsula and then heading north to scout the nearby bay, before finding a spot to put down. Note how far north they are.

The Fox handles extremely well as a rover. Going down hills is often more challenging than going up, but here it handles pretty fine!

There's a reasonably flat spot, though not very big, near the shore, and they set down another flag to mark the location.

Milke: We're running low on fuel, but I think we can still visit the peninsula we saw earlier.

Back into the air, they cross the bay to the peninsula they overflew on the way here. It looked pretty flat.

Sure enough, it's quite flat indeed. Fairly easy to land on. By now, though, the sun has disappeared behind Jool, and so the solar panels no longer work. While driving around, they exhaust the batteries. Oops!

You can see the light is off on the plane now. They get another flag down. This flag is LKS 3, though technically it's on the same reservoir as LKS 2, it's just accessible from land in two separate areas and is otherwise mostly under water.

Milke: This reservoir is pretty huge.

Thompler: Yeah, but again, way too far north. Imagine how much extra fuel you'd need to get from here to the equator, and THEN try to climb to orbit?

Milke: I don't know if I'd even want to try that, at least not until we've flown to orbit to see how much fuel that takes by itself.

They use some emergency power to get the engines started again, and from there the engines begin to recharge the batteries during flight. They only have about 38% fuel left, and so here they plot a high speed, high altitude great circle route all the way back to base.

On the way back, Bop comes over the horizon, and they're able to zoom in on it with their on-board camera and snap this photo. Also, it might be hard to see, but the white pixel in the sky in the background (between the camera view and the plane) is Pol.

Home at last! Turns out there's more than enough fuel, though they did consume quite a bit. All that low altitude flying burns the fuel up pretty good.

The refueler is visible as they come in for landing. The lander is further off in the background to the left. When they land, they have 156 liters of fuel remaining, having burned 780 liters during the trip.

Next time, Ellorf and Milgas will scout locations 3 and 4 on the map shown earlier.

[Cashen]

So, the 0.24 update is upon us at last. Since the UKS MASEC thread originally started in 0.21, and has continued through 0.22, 0.23, and 0.23.5, there's no reason it'll stop for 0.24 (even though I am, for the first time, tempted to give career mode a try). I haven't updated my copy of KSP yet though, and will continue to do missions in 0.23.5 until I can be sure the 64 bit version of 0.24 is stable and all of my installed mods are compatible with it. Stay tuned!

[Cashen]

Laythe Kethane Expedition: Part 2

Last time, Milke and Thompler Kerman scouted two islands with two large kethane reservoirs under them as possible base or refueling locations. Both were way into the northern hemisphere and thus probably too far away from the equator to be practical as a base location. This time, Ellorf and Milgas Kerman will take the Flying Fox out for the second expedition to scout for base locations. The current location on Osiris Island is also a good potential base location, except for it lacking kethane.

The map from the previous mission, updated. The green flightpath is the previous mission's planned route. The red route is the one Ellorf and Milgas are scheduled to run. Site 3 is the most promising as it is only 5 or 6 degrees north of the equator. The white box is the site of the Isis lander probe, and they're going to pay it a visit along the way. They'll be making more stops, but their total flight distance will be shorter, so fuel won't be an issue.

It's late morning when they leave. Since they won't be traveling so far east, they don't have to leave super early like Milke and Thompler did.

The longest leg is the first one, and while doing it, they set a Laythe altitude and speed record, flying at 17,490 meters and around 1280 meters per second. In general this mission would learn from previous ones about fuel efficient flying. The first and most promising site is visible below them, on Aten Island. Up ahead near the horizon is the promising location, a flat spot on the northern shoreline.

The Flying Fox has turned out to be an incredibly reliable design in many ways, and a great deal of that is owed to the amount of testing and development that went into refining its design. It does have limitations however. In the last mission, we realized that the small solar panels aren't adequate this far from the sun for charging the rover wheels during surface driving, and that the sun disappears behind Jool for part of every day, making solar unreliable. The other issue is something common to any aircraft flying this kind of flight pattern. When coming down from cruise altitude, it requires a fairly long glide slope to bleed off enough speed to make a safe landing. This was never a problem at KSC with the long runway and ample approach space, but on Laythe, suitable flat landing spots can be small and spotted just before landing. The Fox lacks a reliable way to quickly shed air speed. So, air brakes would be nice to have on any future design.

Ellorf: This looks like a pretty good spot. The shoreline itself has a fair bit of slope, but there's kind of a plateau right here that would be a great spot to set up a base.

They get the flag planted and spend a moment surveying the area.

Ellorf: It's not a terribly large kethane spot, though.

Milgas: Still, 170,000 liters should last a good while, given efficient use of it.

Ellorf: True enough. This isn't a very large island either, though.

Milgas: That's also true, but I don't know how important that is really when most of the exploration is going to be aircraft based.

One thing they (and really, me) are getting good at is getting up to altitude quickly, and then leveling off at cruise altitude quickly without overshooting. This is an attempt to spend as little time as possible flying low and slow and burning gas. Getting up over 1 km/s takes less than a minute or so, and the hop over to the next island takes just a few minutes more.

The next trip is nearly due south to a smaller island which is unnamed. This is considered a low priority target given the island's small size and distance from the equator, but the reservoir is large enough to warrant a visit anyway.

Like most reservoirs, it only overlaps partially, and along a specific part of the shoreline. They land rather easily north of that location on a fairly flat spot, and drive the rover the rest of the way. Battery charge issues would mean they've have to stop and let the batteries recharge a bit at one point.

Milgas: You know, this is actually a really good location. Too far from the equator I think, but it's actually much smoother than the topographic data would suggest!

Ellorf: Yeah, I'm starting to realize that the map is only useful for large areas, but you gotta visit specific spots to know for sure if it's good or not. I could see this being a secondary reservoir to the one on Aten island, if that one were to run out eventually.

Ellorf is thinking ahead. If they set up a base at the first location they visited, eventually it would run out, and they've have to import kethane anyway. This is a large site and very close-by, potentially reducing the costs of transporting fuel.

As they leave and head westward, we get a good look at the island. They planted the flag on the tiny peninsula on the south coast.

The view from space. Flying between two points away from the equator is tricky. I normally use the Smart ASS function in MechJeb to hold a specific heading and pitch angle that maintains a direction and altitude (the spaceplane guidance function, last time I tried, didn't work at altitude holding very well). But the shortest path between two points on a sphere is not a line of constant heading, but a great circle, which is trickier. So what I end up doing is using the landing guidance to set a target on a spot, aim in that direction, and then use ASAS rather than SmartASS, so the plane is always pointing towards the target regardless of the wandering heading. This makes altitude control a tad trickier since I have to manually adjust pitch, but it works pretty well!

They touch down on what appears like an old lake-bed, given the light coloration in the depression relative to surrounding terrain, and they're about 3km from the IALP probe, which they drive the rest of the way to.

Milgas: It's always kind of fascinating to come and see these things after they've been here a while.

Ellorf: They're always larger in person than I imagine.

Milgas: Yep. This was the first thing that came down on land here. We owe a lot of knowledge about Laythe's atmosphere and surface characteristics to this thing.

Back into the air. The Fox is pretty nimble in the thicker parts of the atmosphere. It's also EXTREMELY stable when driving as a rover. Arguably even more stable than the Fennec. It can do between 15 and 30 meters per second no problem on Laythe, and can turn left and right full force at speed without much issue.

Isis Island is a long and narrow, snake-like shape, and there is a tiny spot at the extreme southern tip that overlaps the largest land-accessible kethane reservoir on the Jool-facing side of Laythe.

The terrain is a little rough though, and while I was just raving about how good the Flying Fox is as a rover, it's not perfect. Here Ellorf has to get out and repair a blown rear tire. Having extended the landing gear raises the tire up and makes it easy to work on (and prevents it from blowing itself again, as otherwise vehicles tend to bounce when tires re-inflate, and sometimes keep breaking).

Another flag, once they find a good, flat spot. YOu can see, this site has access to a large amount of kethane!

This area is however the most rugged and difficult of any of the ones visited so far. The slopes down to the tiny area of overlap aren't particularly easy to land on.

The next site is a tiny little island nearly due south of Osiris Island. It's also a fairly large site, but is a lower priority, and more a target of opportunity since they have enough fuel to spare. This is a pretty good shot of Jool and Vall in the sky, showing the tilt of the ecliptic with how far into the southern hemisphere they are. Jool's south pole is at the top right.

A similar view of Jool, from the ground, just visible over the horizon. After planting the flag, Ellorf and Milgas take a moment to just admire this beautiful and exotic sight.

Ellorf: This island is way too small.

Milgas: It does have a really high mountain on it, though. I'd be curious to see what the view is like from the top!

I'm limiting the amount of exploration in these missions to save things to do for when the base is set up.

Time to return home! One other thing the Fox can do is a short takeoff. By holding the brakes down and letting the engines spool up before releasing, they can get into the air in a pretty short distance.

Osiris Island, approached from the south. They spot another inlet, visible to the right. That might be an interesting area to explore! Meanwhile the main inlet is visible ahead of them.

They buzz the LCTRV on the way back. Milke and Thompler are still outside at the time.

MASEC has gathered enough information to now contemplate in more detail what Phase 2 of Project Osiris will look like. Where will they set up a base? What kind of support vehicles will they bring along? These are things I'll have to contemplate soon. In the meantime, this will probably be the last mission report before I update to version 0.24. I think KAS is the only mod I'm still waiting on for 64 bit compatibility. I plan to add some more visual enhancements as well. We'll see!

Edited July 19, 2014 by Cashen

[r_rolo1]

Hum, decisions, decisions ... I guess you need to decide if you want to have your main base on top of Kethane or if you are tolerant of the idea of moving it out ...and if you want to move it, if you do it via air or sea. The Aten spot is the best compromise if you don't want to juggle kethane from side to side, but it doesn't look too friendly in terms of acess both by air and sea, added to the fact there isn't that much much of kethane there , so you'll get to square zero again ...

TBH I would keep the main base where it is and explore #4 kethane, ferrying via sea tanker or at worse plane tanker ( IIRC you have electric propellers, right? They would be useful ... ). But anyway, you would still need to transport all the necessary components for that operation from Kerbin, so you'll most likely spend a couple of Kerbin years living off the Pol and Bop Kethane ....

[Scotius]

Sorry Cashen, but Isis Island will not stand. It's Dracoduck Island - now and forever (Or at least until devs'll give Laythe's surface improved graphics )

[Cashen]

Hum, decisions, decisions ... I guess you need to decide if you want to have your main base on top of Kethane or if you are tolerant of the idea of moving it out ...and if you want to move it, if you do it via air or sea. The Aten spot is the best compromise if you don't want to juggle kethane from side to side, but it doesn't look too friendly in terms of acess both by air and sea, added to the fact there isn't that much much of kethane there , so you'll get to square zero again ...

TBH I would keep the main base where it is and explore #4 kethane, ferrying via sea tanker or at worse plane tanker ( IIRC you have electric propellers, right? They would be useful ... ). But anyway, you would still need to transport all the necessary components for that operation from Kerbin, so you'll most likely spend a couple of Kerbin years living off the Pol and Bop Kethane ....

I've never considered using a sea tanker to move fuel around. I'm not sure how efficient that would be compared to a fast air tanker (which I have designed, more or less, based on the Horus Shuttle). I do have one water-based vehicle that can manage about 100 m/s, I'd have to see if I could scale it up and if it could handle physics warp, otherwise I think sea travel would be too slow. I do have electric propellers but I also find them pretty slow and under-powered, plus solar power out at Laythe is pretty weak. But yeah, decisions. I'm torn on either of those two locations right now. Fortunately I have some time to consider it. 170,000L of kethane is still reasonable. I don't know offhand how quickly I'd consume it.

Sorry Cashen, but Isis Island will not stand. It's Dracoduck Island - now and forever (Or at least until devs'll give Laythe's surface improved graphics )

Hah! I had to go look at the map to get what you meant, but now I see it. That's funny.

On an unrelated note: I just spent a couple hours trying to make something with B9 parts or Spaceplanes Plus parts that could fill the role of the Flying Fox but look nicer, and I've been totally unable to do so. I'm not a big fan of how the Fox looks anymore with all these pretty spaceplane parts mods, but damn does it ever do a good job at just about everything.

[gmbigg]

{Missions and stuff}

MASEC has gathered enough information to now contemplate in more detail what Phase 2 of Project Osiris will look like. Where will they set up a base? What kind of support vehicles will they bring along? These are things I'll have to contemplate soon. In the meantime, this will probably be the last mission report before I update to version 0.24. I think KAS is the only mod I'm still waiting on for 64 bit compatibility. I plan to add some more visual enhancements as well. We'll see!

Well, I think it's time for the mandatory "Still alive, Cashen?"

But seriously, I just wanted to let you know that KospY has released a new, 24.2-compatible update for KAS. It's currently available here.

Though I've just posted now, I'd like to say now that I've really enjoyed this series so far, and from what I can tell by reading previous posts, many other people have too.

Hopefully we'll be seeing more of Project Osiris soon.

[FishInferno]

Are you stil there cashen?