OMG, we're not worthy!

[roosterr]

I am the original poster on this. For those that are getting all flustered over the "We're not worthy" title: WOW! It was a little jest and referencing good 'ol Wayne and Garth:

Get over it. And as far as the challenge it was nothing official, but if you have any mission recorded anywhere near that caliber, mods or not, post it.

I am sure we are all worthy, given enough time, video editing skills, and a nice CPU to handle it all.

Showing your un-appreciation here for clearly excellent work was not my intended result when I posted this. So take it or leave it, but I am the first to admit I am not worthy (due to lack of time and the aforementioned items), even though I have many Duna missions and orbital rendezvous under my belt.

[Motokid600]

Although regardless of how it was done, that descent stage landing INTO the original landing vehicle is pretty damned impressive

I'm guessing he was using FAR? I was scratching my head on why he kept the farings on so late. Either way they make for a cool effect. Needless to say watching that gave me a lot of ideas.

[Richy teh space man]

Great video, I'm impressed with the planning that went into it all.

[CosmicX1]

Wow. I never thought that when I first picked up KSP I'd be watching rovers absail down cliffs! And I used to think winglets on radial decouplers were genius!

[lammatt]

crew manifest ruined it

should hv EVA instead

[TaranisElsu]

Awesome video. Very nicely done -- both the playing and the editing.

[Vanamonde]

It was a demonstration of perseverance and magnitude of free time rather than skill. There is nothing from stopping other people doing this, so we are all worthy.

It was both, and if you think it was easy, let's see your version.

If every KSP player was given the same set of mods, manipulating joints, attachment systems, custom fuel and engines, and MechJeb to fly it all, the OP's challenge to "top this" would have been beaten in the first 30 minutes by others.

That is a ridiculous thing to say. Have you not paused to think about the number of parts that went into each ship, and the testing required to make sure they'd work, not just singly, but together when they got to Duna? Then there's the matter of simply balancing ships that complex so they fly straight. No mean feat in itself.

Folks are free to like this or not, but trying to downplay the accomplishment, work, and skill involved only makes the complainers look petty and jealous.

[RazorWolf19]

My God... this is extremely impressive, I hope you know that. Congratulations on pulling off a mission of that sort. I wish I could do the same, or something similar even, but sadly my computer couldn't handle that even if I could (my specs aren't THAT bad, but I have Integrated Graphics ).

Thanks for Reading,

Happy Flying!

[KerbMav]

My current mission to Duna in 0.21 is very much inspired by this video, although it's MUCH less complex, as well as mostly stock (only one SUNBEAM laser and some quantum struts are in use). Thought I may as well give something like this a shot

Make sure to document it - although I am a big fan of watching good videos, at least take enough screenshots, if only for your own collection!

I keep forgetting to press F1 ... :/

[snark] You have access to the mods. You have 30 minutes. Go. [/snark]

Overstated subject line? That much I can agree on.

Well, as I am old enough and do not shy away from knowing about pop-culture outside my own sphere of interest, I recognized it for what it was:

I am the original poster on this. For those that are getting all flustered over the "We're not worthy" title: WOW! It was a little jest and referencing good 'ol Wayne and Garth:

if you have any mission recorded anywhere near that caliber, mods or not, post it.

Yes please! I love good gaming videos!

I am sure we are all worthy, given enough time, video editing skills, and a nice CPU to handle it all.

Showing your un-appreciation here for clearly excellent work was not my intended result when I posted this. So take it or leave it, but I am the first to admit I am not worthy (due to lack of time and the aforementioned items), even though I have many Duna missions and orbital rendezvous under my belt.

Mind game:

If the neighbour kid builds something awesome out of that new box of LEGOs - is it less awesome because you only have the standard box of five different red and blue bricks?

(And Mom and Dad would not even have to pay for KSP mods. )

Yes, he used mods - but mods are just more parts, one has to combine them in a way they work and preferably look good too.

[llamatoes]

Please... I have an amazing Eeloo colonisation mission which has more docking than a... er... docking thing.

One transfer burn is all I'm allowed.

[corpsdog]

Since he was carrying out a replication of a NASA plan, many of the part mods were necessary. How else could he build the rockets as proposed in the NASA plan, if the parts are not available in vanilla?

When I first watched it (from another link) it was like watching one of those NASA animated demonstration films. If I hadn't known it was KSP, I would have thought it was from NASA.

Use of mods and MechJeb... ಠ_ಠ

Someone didn't understand what the video was about.

[togfox]

An engineering marvel. Thanks for posting this!

[rkman]

If every KSP player was given the same set of mods...you just lack the mods to accomplish this in the first place.

"Given"? Really, because KSP players could not possibly download and install these mods for themselves...

the OP's challenge to "top this" would have been beaten in the first 30 minutes by others.

That's easy to say.

Given that KSP players do have access to those mods, why wasn't it topped in the first 30 minutes? Probably because the entire mission takes a lot longer than 30 miutes, and because it is a hard complicated mission to begin with.

[regex]

Someone didn't understand what the video was about.

Someone can't spot a joke from a mile away.

[BostLabs]

Someone can't spot a joke from a mile away.

I'm pretty sure it was the delivery method.

It was an awesome video. I certainly couldn't top it in 30 minutes. It isn't pizza delivery.

[HeadHunter67]

I've got to say I'm very impressed by this video - it's the sort of thing that can get space enthusiasts into this game in the first place!

Personally, I use mechjeb because the actual flying is not what interests me. What interests me in the game is coming up with a mission, designing it, building it and then getting there, but the actual flying ( controlling the ship ) doesn't really interest me so why should anyone judge me for not doing it myself?

I'm pretty much the same way. I do enjoy learning to fly in the game, but I don't want the game to just be all the repeated trial-and-error until I get to that point. I want to enjoy the rest of the game in the meantime - designing and building ships and stations, visiting other celestial bodies, etc.

I approach just about every recreational endeavor with the rather libertarian approach that one's enjoyment need not be dependent on, or justified to, those with whom one is not playing. That's the whole concept of "play", after all. We share a common game, but nothing I do in KSP really changes, harms, influences or prevents what someone else does... so what's it matter which mods I use or when I let the robot drive?

Oh I forgot to mention... I'm still looking for my flying car I was promised in THE YEAR 2000.

Well the level of computers we have now wasn't really promised like that so I guess it's all good.

Forget the flying car, where's my house on the Moon?

A lot of our childhood's technological vision of the future never came to fruition because of practicality more than actual technological limitations. They can build flying cars now - but consider all the idiots you encounter on a typical daily commute. Now take away the roads and imagine the potential for disaster! If every moron has independent flight, I'd bet flying would no longer be the statistically safest form of travel.

That said, I agree about the unexpected technical developments since the beginning of the Space Age. Computing and communications of today are stuff that seemed outrageous even in Star Trek when I was growing up (and in fact they may have been influenced by it!).

[HeadHunter67]

crew manifest ruined it

should hv EVA instead

You do know that docking ports on real spacecraft allow for the transfer of items and personnel? When astronauts arrive at the ISS, they don't EVA from the capsule (or the shuttle) to a station airlock. They go through the docking tunnel in their shirtsleeves. The Apollo astronauts didn't transfer from the CM to the LM (and back) by EVA. The only reason we need Crew Manifest for that is because the developers haven't yet given us docking ports that actually work as they should.

[regex]

-snip-

Did that really need to be said?

Edited August 2, 2013 by stupid_chris
Removed inappropriate content

[jwenting]

"Given"? Really, because KSP players could not possibly download and install these mods for themselves...

That's easy to say.

Given that KSP players do have access to those mods, why wasn't it topped in the first 30 minutes? Probably because the entire mission takes a lot longer than 30 miutes, and because it is a hard complicated mission to begin with.

especially the latter.

The planning went into it, and the execution, is way more than "just plugging some mods together"...

Of course the anti-mod crowd is already here and will probably only shout harder that "it's all easy because of mods" while utterly incapable of doing anything remotely similarly impressive even were they using those same mods.

[Kosmic Debris]

Pretty amazing - all the mission reports/videos make for interesting reading, but the planning and execution on this one was stunning.

[katateochi]

Hi Guys, Thanks for all the comments and thank you roosterr for posting this here. The overall response I've had to this vid has made me as happy as Jeb with a new booster!!

I'll try to answer some of the questions and explain why I used certain things as I did, but I'm prob not going to be able to answer everything.

@Kerbonautical - I had planned to do more with it, but the 0.21 update means I need to re do the mission first. My plan was rather than leave it as an abandoned base I will bring new crew out to it which is why I left the ascent/descent module in orbit. I'll also use the backup module from Kopernicus to shuttle some of the mined fuel back up to orbit (although that wouldn't be that efficient, it would be more just for the sake of doing it).

I do intend to use this same or similar setup on other planets. Mun is sick of the sight of those craft and my 0.20 save has many hab and cargo landers littering its surface from the testing phase, but I was planning to take it to Dres next (I'm fairly sure the landers will work there without needing modification, but I may need to change the transfer stages).

@regex - I didn't have life support mods, but that's something I will get into at some point.

@Motokid600 - it was done in 0.20 (some design was done in 0.19, but got rebuilt in 0.20)

To answer your other question, no I wasn't using FAR (I tried FAR for a while and decided that the mod was more intelligent than me so I took it out again!).

The reason I kept the fairings on was to be more like the Constellation craft in the NASA animations. I've also decided that I won't aerobrake craft anymore unless they have protection from the atmo, that's why the decent modules kept their fairings and why Kopernicus did powered captures of its orbits.

@NeoMorph - yes it was the Crew Manifest mod. I forgot to include it in the list as it's not actually part of the craft.

@lammatt - I used crew manifest rather than EVA because I wanted to be closer to the RL process and I find EVA transfers a bit boring and time consuming. The docking port on Kopernicus connects directly to two adjacent crew sections and the joining truss that links to the third crew section is actually crewable with a single kerbal (its a part from the KOSMOS pack). So the design was as if crew could move between crew sections without unrealistically being transferred across fuel tanks so I felt using CM wasn't stretching reason too far.

The design of these craft did take me a very long time, I've been tinkering with the ideas for the hab and cargo landers since about half way through 0.19! But they were very different back then and at that stage I'd not thought about doing it Constellation style. I'm sure others could do it faster, but I don't have that much free time (as someone suggested), but I am an insomniac, I'm persistent and KSP has become a hobby I like to take my time over, I'm not in a rush and I do a bit each night. I ran the whole mission fully once before the one I filmed and before that each craft was tested many many times on Mun and I also did several test runs of individual parts to Duna. Some aspects took ages to get them working just as I wanted (the rover's docking and the in-hab landing process each took a week to get right/master).

I know there is some, shall we say dislike, of mods here so I'll try to explain these parts a bit.

The mods I use for tanks and engines are balanced along the same lines as the stock parts, the reason for using them is largely aesthetics and a reduction of part count. For example the Hab lander uses a couple of tanks from KW (the big grey ones, which are slightly larger than their stock analogy but have the same fuel/weight ratio) simply because I preferred the look of them, the other tanks are from KSPX and those parts are now part of stock (the small tanks and long radial RCS tank). The engines it uses are a weak low profile engine from NovaP, they have a high isp in a vacuum but that was not important as those landers had much more fuel than they actually needed (as several tanks had been added just to get the right balance). Again it was a case of choosing looks first, I could have used the stock equivalent and had enough thrust, but the stock engines are slightly longer and I wanted more clearance under the engines. The structure of the cradle where the ascent module sits is stock with the exception of the small fuselage tanks which the ascent module rests on (I initially used stock struts for those but changed because I preferred the look of the small tanks).

The cargo lander obviously has more mod parts with its kethane modules and the KAS/DR rover, its tanks and engines are the same KW, KSPX and NP parts as the hab. But why did I even have the kethane mod? To mine more fuel to make the mission possible? Nope, I had an excess of fuel on that mission, enough to refuel the ascent module 4 times, the kethane modules where there just to have something to do! More a role playing element than a functional necessity and it was an excuse to design and use them as isolated co-dependent modules that the rover could move about and then later have them joined together with the KAS. In this case I was using mods specifically to create a design challenge that didn't exist with stock parts.

Mods like DamnedRobotics and KAS bring extra functionality and almost add a mini sub game into KSP. They make for more possibilities, more craziness, but they do not make things easier!!

For example getting the docking process for the assembly rover so both DamnedRobotics and docking ports could work together (for those who don't use DR; docking breaks the DR hinges). That took me well over a week just experimenting with different approaches until I finally realised that I could use the KAS and its docked/undocked modes to separate the docking port from the hinges while still having them physically connected. A stock solution would have been much simpler, just a static arm with a docking port, I did that at one point, but it was boring to use, simple to make and not what I wanted, so I continued to do battle with the mod parts.

The one part that I feel was 'cheaty' was the Bobcat boosters used on the launch vehicles, they are very powerful. Before I discovered them I used a much more kerbal looking LV with two drop tanks around the main tank and a shed load of boosters and it worked just fine (just laggy). That's what I used during my testing of the modules, the reason I switched to the bobcat boosters in the final version was to make the LV's look more like the AresV and to reduce part count.

And then there is MechJeb....

Yes I use MJ, but I only ever use the SmartASS and its info readouts, I NEVER use the autopilot functions.

The SmartASS (for those who don't know) simply orientates the craft to either a manually defined heading and pitch (SURF) or to pre set positions which line it up with markers that already exist on the NavBall (with the exception of PAR+/-). It's doesn't think for you, prompt you or control your engines, it just does the tedious process of turning a craft round under your direction, but you still need to know which direction you need to be facing. It doesn't take any skill to turn a craft around and align it with a marker, so I don't see that using MJ to do that detracts from enjoyment, the skill is knowing what the markers mean and which one to turn to. I've served my time turning craft manually with WASD keys (and actually suffered RSI from it) so I use MJ to do that for me now.

So no, there was no use of AI in this mission but there was power-assisted steering! I don't even know how to transfer or rendezvous with MJ, I've never tried it out, but I've been playing KSP since 0.15 when rendezvous and transfers had to be done by eye, so M-nodes are enough 'automation' for me. tbh I think that M-nodes took a lot of the challenge out of the game as now you don't have to learn about relative orbits in the same way, but they do allow for more optimal transfers and rendezvous so I'm happy they are there. I still sometimes do by eye rendezvous just for the challenge of it thou.

PAR- is the only function that doesn't correlate to a marker on the navball, it aligns your craft with a target craft so they are facing in the opposite direction, I do use this for docking because I feel the lack of a target craft orientation marker on the navball is a lack in the game (one I hope we will see someday). I don't think that in RL the astronauts are looking out the windows and shouting "no Jeb, left a bit"! You can get the same effect as using PAR- by switching to the target craft and aligning its crosshairs to the pink target marker and then switching back and doing the same with the inbound craft. I don't look at the craft while docking, I use the navball and the distance to target readout from MJ (as I can place that near the navball), which makes it possible to dock in the pitch black without lights (which I so often forget!).

Do I use the landing autopilot? Hell no, I love landing, I think its my favourite aspect of flying craft in KSP and I've always done that manually. Nothing in KSP gives me a bigger kick than a well executed manual landing (well, except the bigger kick from a terribly messed up landing!). The only use I have for the landing autoP is using it to tell me co-ordinates by mousing over a planet. On my trial missions I'd worked out the exact point to set my deorbit path to so I'd arrive on target, but I did use MJ to aid in the descent of the landers onto Duna, just keeping the craft facing retrograde and at the last minute I used the SURF to get the craft exactly level by setting a pitch of 90. That was particularly needed in the landing of the ascent module back into the hab, I needed it perfectly level and at the same time I also had to select the habs docking port during descent (which was a fraught few moments), maintain a hover, cut chutes and start thrusting towards it. I'm not an octopus, there was a limit to what I could control and limited time to do it!

MJ can't be trusted to keep a craft level, especially when it's unmanned and has remote-tech on board (signal delay causes MJ corrections to be delayed so it wobbles, badly). As soon as MJ got it level I locked it off with the SAS (if you have remote-tech then SAS will override MJ, very very useful). The rest of that landing was manual and done by looking at the navball markers, not the craft. It took me a lot of practicing so I could do it reliably; I spent nearly a week practicing on Mun and adjusting the craft design and then further training was done in a test run on Duna (using quicksaves to run repeat 'simulations').

I made a mistake in my training for that which was during training I had crew in the craft during the descent which made it more responsive, as I started the landing in the actual mission I realised that I now had a very small signal delay to deal with and even thou it was just a few ms it was enough to make it harder, my heart rate was definitely raised after that landing!

Aside from DR and KAS my fav mod is RemoteTech, I love the challenge it adds and all my unmanned craft have remote tech onboard. That meant that before I could do this mission I had to setup a satellite network so I could control the craft. One thing I regret cutting from the vid was the course corrections I had to make on the final approach to Duna as that was done with over 2mins signal delay. I did chicken out of attempting to land the cargo lander under that level of signal delay and I put a remote tech command station around Duna so the delay was only a few milliseconds. Next time I'm going to attempt that landing with the signal delay (I expect I'll make a new crater), the other unmanned landings would be the same as Kopernicus is also a remote tech control station.

If you want the craft they are here and now updated to work in 21.1 with the updated mods (I've not tested them fully in 21.1 as I've not re-done the mission yet, but the modules functioned as they should in Kerbin tests).

Thanks to everyone for your comments on this, I did the mission for the love of KSP but the community response has made it even more rewarding. I'm kinda at a loss as to what to do next, but I've started my space program from scratch after 0.21 so I'm currently deploying satellite networks and kethane probes everywhere.

[Eric S]

Well, as I am old enough and do not shy away from knowing about pop-culture outside my own sphere of interest, I recognized it for what it was:

I took it that way myself, just didn't feel like getting into that since the movie is older than a lot of the players here, and at least some of the humor of the movie was references to even older stuff, and the main point was that the video was a lot more impressive than that poster was giving it credit for.

[rkman]

especially the latter.

Of course the anti-mod crowd is already here

Yeah, they must hate Squad for deliberately making KSP easily modable...

[Tripzter]

I love the robotics, only wish they were available stock.

[Talonsin]

I am not worthy! Seriously awesome video mate. Makes me want to leave work and start planing my mission to Duna. I can not imagine how much time that entire mission plus video editing must have taken you. Great work.