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

[Cashen]

Project Newet Update: First Minmus Kethane Run

All the pieces are in place to get kethane flowing from Minmus. It's now time to do it. For the first landing with the Amphion KERV, the crew will be Milke and Wildon Kerman, the only veterans of Project Aten who never got to visit one of the moons until now. They were paired together during Aten IV, the first flight of the big Lupus V rocket and the first to fly and test the Aten MLRM in Kerbin orbit. Their landing spot will be the landing location of Aten VI, where Dunlie and Kennie became the first Kerbals on Minmus. Then, when they extract their batch of kethane, they'll bring it up to the station and transfer it to Zethus, where Elmon and Bartvin will transport it to Kerbin Station.

Mission Outline & Objectives

• Land the Amphion KERV at the landing site of Aten VI.
  
• Drill and extract 96,000L of kethane
  
• Return to Minmus Station, transfer kethane to Zethus KTV
  
• Zethus will go to Kerbin Station to unload, Kerbin Station will activate its converters and process the kethane in fuel.
  
• Zethus will return to Minmus Station
  
• Amphion Pilot: Milke Kerman
  
• Amphion Drill Operator: Wildon Kerman
  
• Zethus Outbound Pilot: Elmon Kerman
  
• Zethus Return Pilot: Bartvin Kerman
  

Milke and Wildon get into the Amphion KERV and undock, targeting the previous Minmus landing location.

They look to be coming down very close to the target.

Pretty close! You can see the flag Dunlie planted in the background.

Extracting 96,000L of kethane with a pair of heavy drilling units takes a while. 10L/s combined takes about 160 minutes. They landed not long after sunrise, and it's late in the day by the time they finish.

There's no ladder on Amphion but that doesn't stop them, as they can jump as high as Amphion is tall on Minmus. Plus the RCS packs help. Here they get out and explore a little, and check out the flag planted by the crew of Aten VI.

Over 260 tons of spacecraft lurches slowly off of Minmus. The engineers who designed Amphion knew what they were doing, it has just enough power to get off of Minmus again.

Bringing the load back up to Minmus station. Elmon and Bartvin are already in Zethus. The valves in the station are positioned to bypass the storage tank and route the kethane directly between the two craft through the station's piping.

Once full, Zethus undocks and backs away and...

...burns to head back to Kerbin.

They aerobrake, targeting 34km, but end up a little high and the braking only brings their orbit down to 800km at apoapsis. Here you can see them passing over KSC during the aerobrake maneuver.

The get docked, and again the station's valves bypass the storage tank. Zethus' kethane load goes directly to the converters to make fuel and oxidizer.

Here you can see the radiant coolers extended, cooling the produced fuel and oxidizer before its routed to the tank. In all, the 96,000L of kethane was able to completely fill the large spherical tank, with a small amount left over. Mac, the station's director, decided to have Zethus refuel in order to make room in the spherical tank to process the last few hundred liters of kethane. Afterwards, Zethus would depart.

Elmon piloted Zethus on the way to Kerbin, and Bartvin on the way back. One person could do it, but it's more than 2 days each way from Minmus, so they alternate and keep each other from getting too bored. The system works, though.

Milke Kerman:

Wildon Kerman:

Elmon Kerman:

Bartvin Kerman:

Edited May 1, 2014 by Cashen

[Cashen]

Isis V & VI: Duna/Ike Science Packages

We haven't heard a lot from Project Isis in a while. Not because they've been forgotten, but it's a casualty of their own success. Everything Isis needed to do in the Kerbin system is done. Kethane satellites are in orbit around all three bodies and they landed probes on both moons, plus a detailed analysis of Kerbin's atmosphere. The only thing left to do is go interplanetary.

This mission had been in the works for a while. Originally missions to Jool were planned as well, if Minmus Station had gotten online sooner. After the launch failure of the first Minmus habitat module, the Jool missions were scrubbed until the next transfer window, and the Isis team decided to go back to the same formula that made them successful in getting to Mun and Minmus. After all, it's not that much extra deltaV to get to Duna. So the vehicles will look very similar: An IKSS satellite paired with a lander in the same launch vehicle, one rocket for Duna and one for Ike.

The Duna Science Package, labeled as Isis V, being stacked together in the VAB.

Mission Outline & Objectives

• Isis V, Duna Science Package, will place an Isis Kethane Survey Satellite in polar orbit around Duna, and land an Isis Atmospheric Lander Probe on the surface to study Duna's atmosphere.
  
• Isis VI, Ike Science Package, will place an Isis Kethane Survey Satellite in polar orbit around Ike, and land an Isis Lander Probe on the surface.
  

Late evening launch of Isis V, Duna Science Package. The upper portion is essentially identical to the Mun and Minmus Science Packages, the ascent vehicle is just more powerful, including four solid rocket boosters.

Booster separation is successful.

From the bottom up: The interplanetary transfer stage, the IALP heat shield, IALP, the inter-probe separator, and IKSS. IALP has a full suite of atmospheric sensors and will study Duna's atmosphere in the same detail it did Kerbin's during Isis I.

Once Isis V was in orbit, and half-way around Kerbin, Isis VI, the Ike Science Package, is launched.

Isis VI sheds its fairing and lower stage during orbit insertion.

Isis V performing the ejection burn that will take it to Duna.

Isis VI during the start of the interplanetary coast, having left Kerbin's sphere of influence. The ILP bound for Ike has no heat shield or atmospheric sensors.

A mistake in the ejection burn required that both probes make a sigificant course correction once in solar orbit, around 350m/s or so. This leaves both coast stages with about 650m/s left. An unfortunate miscalculation on the ejection. The Duna mission will still succeed thanks to aerobreaking. The Ike mission will be very fuel limited on arrival. This is a result of trusting Protractor for the ejection burn, which seems to have messed up somehow.

Both probes will arrive in the Duna system in around 60 days. In the meantime, life for MASEC continues on Kerbin.

Stay tuned for more.

[EnhancedCookie]

Extremely captivating, you' re doing an awesome job writing this!

[Commander Zoom]

Extremely captivating, you' re doing an awesome job writing this!

Agreed. This thread is both a favorite and an inspiration for my own program.

[Cashen]

Extremely captivating, you' re doing an awesome job writing this!

Agreed. This thread is both a favorite and an inspiration for my own program.

Thanks guys! I really enjoy doing this thread. I'm in that period now where I'm kind of winging it. The first two chapters I had very much planned out ahead of time, and now I only have a vague idea of an eventual end-goal that I'm figuring out my way towards. I'm about at the limit of progress I have in the game previously so this is starting to get into new territory.

[Cashen]

Horus III

The Horus SSTO Spaceplane has proved pretty impressive so far. The biggest requirement, that it live up to its name and get to orbit, was successful with Horus I. Horus II was more of an atmospheric endurance test, something the engineers knew it could do but wanted to do anyway to see how it performed. After doing some calculations they've determined that it should be able to circumnavigate Kerbin, but that it would likely run out of fuel near the end and have to glide the rest of the way home. This is based on fuel consumption calculations from the flight to the north pole. It's already been shown that Horus glides very well, so they've decided to take the risk and attempt to fly all the way around Kerbin, and who better to try than Jebediah Kerman.

The general testing principle for Horus is to prioritize the testing based on things it must do and things that are hard. Achieving orbit was the most important. This flight isn't as important but may be more challenging and will test if the design is up to snuff, or if changes need to be made. This is also Jeb's first action since Aten VI took him to Minmus as CSM Pilot.

Mission Outline & Objectives

• Take off from KSC with a full load of fuel, but oxidizer and mono-propellant tanks empty.
  
• Circumnavigate Kerbin counterclockwise and land at KSC.
  
• Pilot: Jebediah Kerman
  

Jeb is the third test pilot to climb into the Horus prototype. Again, no hardware changes, this is the exact same plane that both Bill and Bob have flown earlier.

Knowing the importance of fuel consumption on this flight, Jeb is fairly aggressive in getting up to cruise altitude quickly. 45 degrees up from 0 to 10km, 30 degrees from 10km to 15km, 20 degrees to 20km, and then gradually pitching the nose down to hold altitude around 23km.

"KSC, I have crossed the first stretch of ocean. Everything looks good. Altitude 23,500m, velocity 1,320m/s" This is about the limit Horus can do in Kerbin's atmosphere. The pilots don't dare let their air intake gauges fall lower than 0.10.

"I can see Minmus in my targeting camera. I wonder how the guys are doing up there."

Sunset behind Horus. Obviously, half the flight would take place in darkness. Horus carries 936L of liquid fuel and the levels would be watched closely. They reached 468L, or 50%, short of the half-way point around Kerbin, but close. The first half should use slightly more fuel than the second because of take-off and ascent.

Sunrise on the other side of Kerbin, with its giant impact crater visible below and Mun above.

The view of the crater in the morning sunlight was quite nice.

"KSC, ran out of fuel crossing the mountains. Gliding from this point on." You can see the fuel level at zero here, and it happened some time before this photo was taken as his altitude has fallen to 17km and velocity to 970m/s

"The guys were right, this thing glides real well. Should be an easy landing."

Jeb touches down, having flown all the way around Kerbin. "Is there anything this plane can't do?"

Jebediah Kerman:

I think this is one of my proudest creations. I have big plans for it.

In Other News

MASEC has expanded its ranks once again. In anticipation of eventually having a space station at Mun to crew, four additional Kerbals have passed Kerbonaut training and are ready for flight. Two engineers, Ludzer and Ellorf, plus one geologist, Wehrrigh, and one scientist, Nelgard.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Cashen

[astropapi1]

KW Rocketry can start producing parts again! (Or at least some engines, pleez)

[Cashen]

KW Rocketry can start producing parts again! (Or at least some engines, pleez)

Oh nice, I'll have to check that out and see if my game is stable with it added on.

Just an FYI to everyone though, there won't be updates for about five or so days as I'm moving and won't have time for KSP until I get settled in again.

[astropapi1]

Cashen pls.

Me needs.

[Cashen]

Hey guys,

I'm on vacation until September 9th with limited time for video games and limited access to my gaming computer. Don't worry, the thread and the program is still very much alive and I've no plans to abandon it, but we'll likely be on hiatus for a couple more weeks.

[Zerois]

Wow, what an amazing writing style! I just read every single page

[Thordan Ssoa]

Hey guys,

I'm on vacation until September 9th with limited time for video games and limited access to my gaming computer. Don't worry, the thread and the program is still very much alive and I've no plans to abandon it, but we'll likely be on hiatus for a couple more weeks.

This is sad news indeed, but it's good to hear you're not done yet. I've thoroughly enjoyed reading your updates

[Cashen]

Good news, everyone. Well, for fans of my work anyway. My vacation is over and I'm settled into my new apartment. I'll need to brainstorm a bit to get my head around where I want to take this next and then start doing it, so expect the first update in a couple of days, and then I should be in a regular rhythm from then on.

[bwheatley]

Just spent the better part of 3 days reading this. please get back to work. It actually helped me change what i was planning to do as well to follow in your footsteps. Funny to see you learned the same lesson i did about trying to dock with super heavy loads. I also learned the...use linear RCS ports since it's 1000x easier to control.

[Cashen]

Project Newet, Phase V: UKS Mun Station

My first post back from vacation. It took me longer than I expected because it's a big update, took a long time to do, and involved a lot of glitches that delayed things even more.

MASEC's next objective in Kerbin space is to place a space station, identical to the others, in orbit around Mun. This will effectively complete the development of the Kerbin system infrastructure (with a few small additions to come later as we'll see in a future update). Mun station will attempt to learn from the mistakes in the assembly of Minmus station. A new heavy nuclear tug, the Herclues Mk2, will be used instead, and two of them will transport Mun Station in two partly-assembled sections, which will be fitted together in situ.

Mission Outline & Objectives

• First flight of the Herclues HNT MkII
  
• Pre-assemble Mun Station in two large components in Kerbin Orbit
  
• Utilize two HNTs to transport the two sections to a 40km, circular, equatorial Mun orbit, and complete assembly.
  
• The HNTs will return to Kerbin and be parked for future use.
  

The first order of business is, as always, putting the habitat module into orbit. Here we see the launch of the first component of Mun Station.

Mun Station's habitat module makes it successfully into a 115km orbit. The ascent stage remains attached for the moment.

Next comes the air-lock module with its much smaller rocket. Note this time there's no cover on the air-lock since we won't be attaching modules to the end of it this time.

Once attached, the air-lock ascent stage transfers fuel to the larger rocket stage before decoupling and deorbiting.

Now its time for Hercules MkII. This one uses the larger 240kN engines instead of the medium sized 90kN ones, giving it a lot more power. It's also quite a bit smaller than the MkI that assembled Minmus Station.

Just after launch. Note the shadow in the background. Hercules MkII lacks the docking ports on the front of the engine pods, and it has some other nifty features that we will see later. The tug itself is launched with empty fuel tanks to conserve weight.

Once the ascent stage reaches the proper apoapsis, fuel is tranferred into the tug and the upper stage decoupled. Hercules uses its own engines to complete the orbit, once above the atmosphere.

The tug then docks itself to the station. We have one more piece to add.

The structural truss is the final piece in the first half of Mun Station.

It attaches to the back end of the tug. It's narrow enough to not be damaged by the engine exhaust. Placing it here increases the stability of the whole stack, rather than placing the truss in the middle (as it would be in final assembly), but it means we'll have to do some maneuvering when we get to Mun. Also note that the spent upper stages likewise transferred fuel to the tug before deorbiting.

The tug burns for Mun. The burn is quick with less weight and more powerful engines.

While the first half is on its way, we begin the second half, here starting with a second Hercules MkII. Here's one of its interesting features. Like the detachable nosecone from the MkI, this version has detachable pods at both the front and back, but this time the pods can be moved around autonomously. This allows them to affix to the docking ports on the side of the tug, exposing the large docking ports for use.

Here we see the second tug with both pods repositioned. The big spherical tanks in the final two components are too wide to fit on the back end, as the engine exhaust would impinge directly on them, so technically the back pod didn't have to move, but for weight balance considerations it was still necessary. The engine clearance issue at the back wasn't initially thought of by the designers (There will be other issues with the tug, as we'll see).

Next we launch the refinery module with its fuel tank and kethane converters.

Both the kethane and fuel modules now use large docking ports at both ends, allowing them to be stacked directly together.

Last but not least, the kethane module itself.

Now, the second half of Mun Station is ready for transport.

While the first segment is about half way to Mun, the second segment begins its journey.

The first half of Mun Station arrives and begins to circularize its orbit around Mun at the desired 40km altitude.

The structural truss is fitted backwards on the back of the HNT, which means it needs only to undock, back up a short distance, and turn around 180 degrees to dock with the station.

Just like that. However, this would be the first of three instances of the "Undock button doesn't work" bug, as the HNT couldn't undock from the truss afterwards. This required me to go into the persistence file and make some manual fixes, which was rather time-consuming.

A short while later, the second half arrives and begins to circularize at a much higher orbit (125km), before transferring down at the next opportunity.

The Kethane module is put in place. This would be the second instance of the Undock bug, as I had to edit the persistance file again to allow the two modules to separate before attempting to dock the fuel module to the other side of the truss. Also note the first tug is missing. Originally it was docked to the habitat module with plans to dock the two tugs together for the return to Kerbin. I discovered that the framerate was far too low to do anything with everything present. I also discovered that things docked together creates more lag, as simply undocking the first tug improved the framerate, without reducing the number of parts rendered. To improve performance further, the first tug was ejected back to Kerbin early, on its own.

Once that was sorted out, the tug translated down and then across the bottom of the truss to the other side, where it would turn around to dock the final piece. Note the retracted solar panel to give it clearance.

Finally, at long last, the final module is in place. After docking the first time, the Undock bug appeared again, but the fix took several attempts in the persistance file, undocking to make sure I was editing the right docking port, then realizing I had just 35L of monoprop to re-dock with. This last part alone took most of tonight to do successfully, and it did require many many quickloads, which I justify because they were due to the bug. All in all an extremely frustrating but still successful mission.

Key Learnings

• The Undock bug is incredably annoying and nearly resulted in me failing to complete the mission. I was close to just giving up on the final module and sending a new one on a dedicated transfer stage.
  
• The new HNT is an improvement but has issues, one of which is that I negledted to add reaction wheels, making it very slow and difficult to rotate into alignment.
  
• It also lacks a mechjeb controller on the back pod, only the front one. While I use MechJeb for the "PAR-" docking attitude control while otherwise docking manually, this isn't a huge deal since the pod only has to move a short distance to redock and doing this without assistance was simple.
  
• The small rectangular lights are useless as docking lights.
  
• The back docking port is too close to the engines to be useful.
  
• Ignoring the Undock bug, assembling the station in two pieces was much easier than trying to do it all in one piece. Kerbal Alarm Clock is extremely useful when trying to manage more than one vessel at the same time.
  

I may make some slight modifications to a MkIII, but that won't be necessary for some time, if at all. All three nuclear tugs remain in elliptical parking orbits around Kerbin, awaiting future missions.

Next, we'll put some Kerbals in it, and give them something to explore Mun with.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Cashen

[Scotius]

Good to see you back Cashen. Your AAr is simply fascinating, with excellent role-playing.

[Cashen]

Project Newet Update: Hardware Testing

The next logical step in MASEC's game-plan for the Kerbin system is to get Mun Station crewed up and online. However, there have been some delays in supporting hardware, most importantly a reusable lander. The rover to be paired with it however is almost finished testing. Without a lander, however, there would be nothing much to do in Mun orbit, since, unlike Minmus, there's no Kethane mining operation planned there.

The two new engineers who haven't flown yet, Ludzer and Ellorf, have been nevertheless busy, working on the design and testing of a two man rover. Here they drive it over the hills west of KSC, seeing how it handles slopes.

Project Newet is far more ambitions than any previous manned project, just by the number of different vehicles the original project outlines demanded. While work on a reusable lander that can carry the rover around poses challenges and delays, one other vehicle is ready for a test flight. A semi-reusable crew transport, called the Aten CTV (Crew Transport Vehicle).

The Aten CTV on the launch pad. It has a crew capacity of 3 plus 4 passengers. The main vehicle has four of the 2.5m Aerospike engines from NovaPunch to provide good efficiency both in space and in an atmosphere. The only expendable part of the entire craft are four relatively inexpensive solid rocket boosters. It contains three regular parachutes on the capsule, two big parachutes in the large orange nosecones, and two drogue parachutes on the other two radial tanks. Then goal is to use the parachutes as much as possible during descent, rather than engines.

Mission Outline & Objectives

• First flight of the Aten CTV
  
• Unmanned test flight
  
• Launch and attain a 100km circular orbit, determine how much delta-V remains.
  
• Deorbit and attempt a precision landing at KSC
  

The four liquid and four solid engines fire to lift the CTV off the pad. The throttle on the liquids would dial back to around 65% to keep the ascent at terminal velocity until at a higher altitude.

SRB separation is good.

The proper orbit is achieved and the vehicle is checked out by controllers on the ground. Around 400m/s of delta-V remains, more than enough to get to the space station and back.

After a few orbits, they decide to bring it back home. A de-orbit burn is made on the other side of Kerbin from KSC to lower the periapsis to a pre-calculated altitude for landing. Here, the vehicle uses some of its remaining fuel for a gentle braking burn as it approaches the mountains west of KSC

All the chutes deploy perfectly.

The drogue chutes open and slow the descent, which will limit the stress on the vehicle when the main chutes open. Better to have two smaller jolts than one big one.

The engines weren't needed at all for the actual landing, which is good because the braking burn depleted all the fuel. Empty, it touched down at about 8m/s, a little faster than ideal but no problem.

It looks like we have a good vehicle here.

[suzin.felipe]

This tread delivers.

Looking forward for your arrival at Duna.

[Cashen]

Good to see you back Cashen. Your AAr is simply fascinating, with excellent role-playing.

Thanks! I appreciate that.

This tread delivers.

Looking forward for your arrival at Duna.

Thanks for the compliment. I'm really looking forward to those probes getting to Duna as well. It's tempting to just time accelerate but I'm trying to be realistic in that I can use the transit time to do other things as well. We'll get there soon enough.

[Cashen]

Project Newet, Phase VI: The New Moon Lander

The design of a new moon landing vehicle is complete. Based on the Aten-era MLRM, the new craft, dubbed NAMLARV (Non-Atmospheric Moon Land And Return Vehicle), it's designed to work on moons without an atmosphere, and to carry around the rover, which has been given the name Fennec. We'll see it a little later.

There are other things going on as well. First of all, the staff of Mun Station has been announced. It will be composed mostly of Kerbals already working at Kerbin Station, this assignment acting as promotions for many of them.

[TABLE=class: grid, width: 30%, align: left]

[TR]

[TD]Kerbal

[/TD]

[TD]Position

[/TD]

[TD]Current Assignment

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Dunlie Kerman

[/TD]

[TD]Director of Mun Operations

[/TD]

[TD]UKS Kerbin Station, Chief Engineer

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Richbur Kerman

[/TD]

[TD]Chief Engineer

[/TD]

[TD]UKS Kerbin Station, Engineer

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Chief Scientist

[/TD]

[TD]Wildon Kerman

[/TD]

[TD]UKS Minmus Station, Geologist

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Jonbart Kerman

[/TD]

[TD]Geologist

[/TD]

[TD]UKS Kerbin Station, Geologist

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Kirmin Kerman

[/TD]

[TD]Engineer

[/TD]

[TD]UKS Kerbin Station, Engineer

[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Notable in that bunch is Wildon Kerman, who will be promoted from Minmus Station, making him the only Kerbal thus far that will have served on all three space stations. He was the only remaining project Aten veteran (aside from the test pilots) not in a management role yet. His transfer will take place at a later time. It's also worth noting that the station only has a crew of five, since there is no kethane operations there. The sole purpose of the station is exploration.

First, the other four staff members will get to Mun, and the four kerbonauts on the ground at KSC are slated to take their place on Kerbin Station.

Part 1: Mission Outline & Objectives

• Launch an Aten Crew Operations Vehicle and dock with UKS Kerbin Station
  
• Crew at Launch: Nelgard Kerman (Pilot) & Wehrrigh Kerman
  
• Crew change at Kerbin Station: Nelgard and Wehrrigh will assume positions at Kerbin Station, while Richbur, Jonbart, and Kennie will board.
  
• Transfer to Mun Station and bring it online.
  

The third launch of the Aten COV carries just two passengers, Nelgard and Wehrrigh, who are making their first spaceflight. Bound for their assignments on Kerbin Station.

They rendezvous with the station and disembark.

Then, the three Kerbals bound to start up Mun Station; Richbur, Jonbart and Kennie, climb aboart and undock.

They burn to head to Mun.

Now comes the really interesting part. The new NAMLARV and the Fennec rover bound for Mun as well need to be assembled. There was no way to launch them as a complete pair, so the only option is to have them be assembled in orbit. This task will be performed by Ludzer Kerman, one of the two engineers stationed on the ground who worked on the design of the lander and rover. He will then dock the coupled spacecraft/rover to Kerbin station to begin his assignment, while Dunlie Kerman will then pilot the lander over to Mun Station, where he's been assigned as the Director.

Part 2: Mission Outline & Objectives

• First flight of the NAMLARV and the Fennec Rover
  
• Encapsulate a Fennec rover in a launch vehicle and place it in orbit around Kerbin.
  
• Launch the NAMLARV, have it rendezvous with the Fennec in orbit, and attach the rover to the underside of the lander.
  
• Rendezvous with UKS Kerbin Station, change crew, and continue to Mun Station
  
• Crew: Ludzer Kerman (first half), Dunlie Kerman (second half)
  

Fennec is encapsulated in a large fairing and placed atop a fairly small, inexpensive launch vehicle, consisting of a solid ascent stage and a liquid orbital stage.

The payload fairing is ejected prior to final orbit insertion. Once in orbit, Fennec would wait for the lander to arrive.

Ludzer's first spaceflight is the first flight of the NAMLARV. It has heavy-duty non-retractable landing struts with an extremely wide base, and twin Fatman NTR40s mounted off to the sides. This will give it excellent efficiency since it's only intended to work in a vaccuum, plus it leaves the base clear for the rover to fit underneath. It's being launched by the Aten Launch System (ALS) rocket, the same rocket that launches the Aten COV.

Here we get a good look at the lander while still affixed to the upper liquid stage.

The lander uses its own engines to complete the orbit. With those nuke engines, it can get to Mun all by itself without needing to refuel. You can also see the cable and winch system that will be used to hold the rover in place.

Before the first rendezvous with the rover, the Aten COV bound for Mun reaches its destination and burns to capture into orbit, before waiting for the next opportunity to transfer down to the station.

Ludzer rendezvous with the rover in orbit, and carefully positions the lander directly above it. This is not a traditional docking, so there's no docking camera assistance. Probably the most challenging docking to date.

In theory the procedure is simple. Hover directly over the lander as motionless as possible. Then, Ludzer goes on EVA, and manually pulls out the tow line and attaches it to the attachment port on Fennec.

Ludzer gets back inside the lander and retracts the line, and it locks Fennec into place beneath the lander. Perfect!

Meanwhile, the Aten COV docks with Mun Station, and the three crew members disembark and go about bringing the station's systems online for habitation.

Ludzer docks with Kerbin Station and gets out, his job complete for now, and he takes up his assignment on the station.

Dunlie climbs aboard and has the distinction to fly the lander to Mun Station, where it will be used to explore the moon's surface in ways the Aten MLRM never could.

Reaching Mun, Dunlie burns for orbital insertion.

Docked. Mun Station is complete and online. The only thing it needs now is fuel for its propellant tanks and they can begin exploring anywhere on Mun they like. The lander has an abundance of delta-V to enable it to change orbital inclination, so it can explore any part of Mun's surface, even away from the equator.

Dunlie:

Richbur:

Jonbart:

Kirmin:

Nelgard:

Ludzer:

Wehrrigh:

In Other News: The guys at Minmus Station have been hard at work. Here, they perform the second kethane run, landing over the same reservoir as last time. This batch will be for use at Minmus Station itself, and will be the last full load from this reservoir (with around 56,000L left after this run, it will be effectively depleted). This run is being carried out by Desbree and Luski Kerman (the crews will tend to rotate to give everyone experience).

De-orbit burn over the same plateau that's been visited twice before.

They land just after local sunrise, giving them the whole day to extract 96,000L of kethane. Their landing spot was about 750m away from Dunlie's flag (They did not get out however. I tried but the game kept glitching out and doing the error where the screen goes black with the altimeter spinning wildly).

Again, Amphion lurches off the surface of Minmus, weighted down by a huge load of kethane.

On the way up, they pass directly over another large equatorial deposit, on these hills. Over 400,000L. They get a good look, checking for flat terrain that might be suitable to land on.

Once back, the 96,000L of kethane would be converted to fill up monoprop tanks and fuel/oxidizer tanks, leaving about 23,000L to spare. This should be good for Minmus Station for a while. The next batch will be delivered to Mun.

Desbree:

Luski:

The next goal will be to send another NAMLARV/Fennec combination to Minmus Station, carrying a Kerbal to replace Wildon, who will be sent to Mun station aboard the next Zethus KTV mission.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Cashen

[Cashen]

Project Isis Update: Arrival at Duna

While project Newet is in full swing and the two moon bases are almost fully operational, all eyes are on Duna for a little while. The two months have passed since the launch of Isis V and VI, and the probes have finally reached their destination.

Mission Outline & Objectives

• Place a Isis kethane Survey Satellites in polar orbits around both Duna and Ike
  
• Verify the presence of kethane on both bodies.
  
• Land an Isis Lander Probe in the surface of Ike.
  
• Land an Isis Atmospheric Lander Probe on the surface of Duna, and take detailed measurements of its atmosphere's properties.
  

This mission was extremely challenging due to managing four probes simultaneously, constantly switching back and forth. The photographs shown here are loosely in chronological order but some are not.

In spite of being launched second, Isis VI, the Ike Science Package, reaches the Duna system 12 hours ahead of the Duna Science Package. This will give it a head start in getting set up.

Preparing to aerobrake to be captured into the Duna system. Remember, due to an error in the ejection burn, both probes spent extra fuel making corrections to get here, so fuel is at a premium.

Solar panels retracted as the Ike Science Package passes through a periapsis of 11.5km, captured into an orbit with an apoapsis of around 1000km.

Once through the atmosphere, the probes separate. Both will boost their periapsis out of the atmosphere and do a slight inclination adjustment to align with Ike's orbit. The two separator pieces remain in an orbit with a periapsis well inside the atmosphere and will decay on the next pass.

On the next pass, the Ike ILP boosted its apoapsis out to Ike's orbit, though Ike wasn't there. It will remain in an elliptical Duna orbit until Ike is in the right spot. The IKSS did not boost apoapsis until the next orbit, and got lucky, getting an intercept with Ike right away. I had originally planned to boost both probes apoapsis together, but they aligned so closely I couldn't do both at the same time. It worked out in the end.

IKSS makes another inclination adjustment and then prepares to inject into a polar orbit around Ike.

What luck. Instantly upon scanner activation, kethane is found! The question if wheather or not kethane is unique to the Kerbin system now has an answer!

With IKSS Ike in its destination orbit, and ILP Ike safely into a holding orbit around Duna, the Duna Science Package arrives.

It aerobrakes similarly, but mission controllers realize they have a problem. By not separating the two probes before arrival, they now have to try to place the IKSS into a polar orbit, starting from a fairly flat orbit. They decide to use the larger engine in the transfer stage, which has extra fuel, to make part of the inclination adjustment for IKSS, at the expense of having IALP in a highly inclined orbit for landing.

The probes separate far from Duna on an inclined orbit. IKSS will complete its inclination adjustment. Again, the separation pieces are in orbits that will decay.

IKSS circularizes its orbit at Duna's south pole. Scanners activate but kethane is not found right away

IIALP de-orbits aiming for a large canyon, and prepares its sensors to gather data.

Without enough fuel to properly de-orbit into the canyon, IALP ejects its heat shield and performs a hard braking burn, attempting to slow down. The attempt would be unsuccessful.

The chute deploys, IALP has overshot the canyon, but will still make a successful landing nevertheless.

IALP successfully on the surface.

ILP eventually gets an encounter with Ike, and here we see it in the vertical stage of its decent to the surface.

The landing is a success. Mission planners intentionally chose a landing site with Duna visible, so they could photograph it, like shown here.

Similarly, IALP returns photographs from the surface of Duna. Note the surface analysis arm on the right, and a dish on the left to communicate with IKSS when it passes over. ILP has similar hardware, which were additions to the design and not featured on the probes on Mun and Minmus.

IKSS eventually does discover kethane on Duna. It seems that kethane is present throughout the solar system.

Analysis of Duna's Atmosphere

The data collected at Duna was not quite as extensive as hoped. Due to the braking burn IALP made trying to land in the canyon, the probe heated up and rendered the temperature readings useless. It was unable to plot Duna's atmospheric temperature as a function of altitude. That will have to wait for a future mission. Pressure and gravitational acceleration were not affected by this. Pressure is considered a more important piece of data to have. IALP was, however, able to measure the temperature at its landing site, around -31.98C.

Descent velocity and dynamic pressure as a function of altitude. The large braking burn is clearly evident.

Atmospheric pressure on Duna. The landing site was at approximately 3500m altitude from the zero-point reference. Pressure at the landing site was approximately 6.3kPa. However, by exponential extrapolation, MASEC is able to model the remaining 3500m of altitude, knowing the exponential nature of atmospheric pressure from their work on Kerbin. The "pseudo-sea-level" pressure on Duna is calculated to be 20.456kPa, roughly 20% the pressure on Kerbin.

The strength of gravity is similarly extrapolated, linearly this time, showing a surface gravity on Duna of 2.925m/s2. The step-wise increase in the real data points is due to limitations in the resolution of the sensor.

[Scotius]

Gah, i hate aerobraking around Duna Its atmo is like a thin, watery soup. I'm always afraid to go deep, because "deep" is so frikking close to the surface. And anything higher barely works. Congratulations for handling two/four probes at once

[Cashen]

Ugh.

Having some problems with the Kethane mod.

Earlier when I had to reload the game while on Minmus due to the screen disappearing bug, when I quickloaded to before I had drilled out the 96,000L of kethane, the mod apparently didn't account for the quickload and that 96,000L was gone from the deposit, even though my tanks were empty since I had loaded to before I mined it out. I had to find where the deposit into was stored and manually add it back in.

Now, I've updated to the latest version of the mod, but it's completely wiped out the deposit information and is starting from scratch again, which really hurts my suspension of disbelief since I can't revert that.

[Cashen]

Project Newet Completion

The last part of Project Newet is underway. Only a few tasks remain before everything is up and running as planned.

Mission Outline & Objectives

• Assemble another NAMLARV/Fennec combination in Kerbin Orbit (Ellorf Kerman)
  
• Dock with Kerbin Station. Ellorf will begin his assignment there, Ludbrett will take the lander to Minmus to begin his assignment as Wildon's replacement.
  
• Extract another batch of kethane from Minmus with Amphion (Milgas and Bartvin Kerman)
  
• Ship this batch of kethane to Mun station for them to process (Wildon and Elmon Kerman). Wildon will stay at Mun station as per his assignment.
  

This will conclude Project Newet and Chapter 3 of MASEC's story.

Another Fennec rover is encapsulated and launched, this one bound for Minmus.

Shedding its fairing.

A good look at the rover as it waits in orbit. It has a full suite of scientific equipment, a Lazor camera, enough RTGs to run consistently at full power, and seats two Kerbals.

Ellorf Kerman waits on the launch pad, to perform the same mission Ludzer did earlier.

"Okay, I'm stopped directly above the rover. Going to suit up now."

"I'm coming down the ladder." Ellorf performs an EVA to connect the tow line to the attachment port on Fennec.

"Took a couple tries with the winch, but I'm happy to report I have Fennec firmly attached and decoupled from its ascent stage, which has de-orbited itself."

Ellorf docks at Kerbin Station, where he joins Ludzer in their assignment as station engineers, learning how to live in space. With Dunlie departed, Neweny Kerman is promoted to Chief Engineer, being the senior engineer on the station.

With Wildon being promoted to Mun Station, Ludbrett is transferred to Minmus to be his replacement, and gets to go there by flying the lander himself.

Meanwhile, Milgas and Bartvin make the third kethane run, shown here performing the powered descent on a new reservoir, with the last one having been depleted.

As per standard procedure, they land just after local sunrise and spend most of the day extracting 96,000L of kethane.

The two of them get out afterwards and do a little exploring on foot. Milgas, in so doing, becomes the first Kerbal to set food on both Mun and Minmus, having set foot on Mun previously along with Mac on Aten V.

MOn the coast to apoapsis, they skim across the top of some highlands, with the shadow visible beneath them. "Only 800 meters above the surface!"

Bartvin pilots Amphion back to Minmus Station, here killing relative velocity with the station before docking.

Wildon and Elmon climb aboard Zethus, after Amphion transfers its kethane to it, and undock, preparing to make a transfer to Mun.

Performing a transfer from Minmus to Mun and back will be good practice for interplanetary transfers later on.

Just after they leave, Ludbrett arrives with Minmus Station's shiny new lander and rover!

The guys on board are pretty excited to get to play with this new toy!

Wildon fires up the engines to rendezvous with Mun Station.

This is Wildon's first real time docking by himself. "Those guys at B9 really designed a nice cockpit here. Makes docking super simple."

The kethane would be delivered to Mun station and processed into fuels. Mun Station is now completely operational, as well as Minmus Station. Wildon EVA's up to the station airlock and comes aboard to begin his new job. Elmon undocks and returns to Minmus.

Elmon makes the long solo journey back to Minmus and Project Newet comes to an end.

Ellorf:

Ludbrett:

Bartvin:

Milgas:

Wildon:

Elmon:

Project Newet was essentially a giant construction project, and with the construction completed, MASEC now has operational bases at both of Kerbin's moons with the equipment it needs to explore anywhere and everywhere it likes. Also, these bases have and will continue to serve as a model for bases further out in the solar system that are yet to come.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Cashen

[suzin.felipe]

Your arrival at Duna didn't disappoint. :-)

Are you considering a land base in there? I'm curious to see your designs for that. I don't know if you agree with me that when it comes to bases, stock and mods parts are sorely lacking at this moment. I'm using H.O.M.E. parts for that and although they look really cool, you can't get much variety from them.

Anyway, awesome tread, keep on the good work.