Project Archimedes- for the Duna Permanent Outpost Architectural Challenge(pic heavy)

[Patupi]

Project Archimedes

This thread is to detail my entry to the Duna Permanent Outpost Architectural Challenge.

See here for the thread for that challenge: Duna Architectural Challenge

(Edit: Update.12th August 2013- Now up to day 178 and re-organized how heatshields add onto the missions. They go between ITV and next payload then this switches around just prior to aerobraking. See page 2 of this thread for details)

(Edit: Update.15th August Now up to day 304 and after launching the last part of Gamma decided on a non-Hoffmann transfer earlier than schedule. So far so good!)

(Edit: Update.1st September OK, forgot to update the 1st page in a while. My Challenge effort is now done. No distasters! A few problems but it all worked out and the 1st Kerbal crew returned home on day 990)

I started this thread because I'm just getting into the actual missions after much design and schedule planning and don't really want to repetitively post in the challenge thread, as I've already posted quite a few of my design pics there as I went. First a brief recap on what I've planned and designed.

The primary launch vehicle to get payloads into Kerbin orbit is the Catalyst semi-reusable launch vehicle:

The outer six boosters are re-usable, landing in the sea to the east of KSC for retrieval. The central, second stage is not, but is way less than the 50% of booster mass non-reusable required by the challenge to count as a re-usable vessel. It is rated as a 28 ton lifter, able to put 28 tons in an 80 km orbit, but actually has more fuel than needed for that. This I use to rendezvous different sections together and to de-orbit the 2nd stage booster after delivering the payload. The second stage burns up on re-entry and is lost.

2nd stage booster:

I'll post the full flight schedule in a little bit but the basics are that a two payload vehicle is launched first, docks, then heads unmanned (unkerbaled?) to duna on the first launch window on day 55. This is the Scout ITV (Interplanetary Transfer Vehicle) and the DTS (Duna Transfer Station). The station is an emergency back up to hold 8 Kerbals incase of trouble and could be used as a transfer back to Kerbin with an ITV later on if needed. It also carries two Kethane scanning satellites to map Duna and Ike.

DTS-7 with it's own integral aerobraking heatshield and two Kethane probes mounted on top:

and the Scout ITV loaded with 3 mountable heatshields that are left in Kerbin orbit for later missions:

Right now I'm getting the DTS setup for it's journey to Duna. Both payloads launched well, though the DTS was a little wobbly under SAS due to the probes having their orientation reversed from everything else on the ship. However, it has more than enough dv (around 2000m/s) and the wobble is low enough that I think I can manage the trip well enough.

The Alpha assembled vehicle in orbit waiting for day 55:

Edited September 4, 2013 by Patupi

[KeithStone]

Awesome stuff! I love the idea of sending up extra heatshields in orbit!

[Patupi]

Had to make a minor course update on day 89 to get closer to Duna. PE currently at ~1500 km. I actually tried to fine tune it a little. I aimed dead on Duna, then fired retrograde to slow. I'm hoping that way I'll come up behind Duna on it's orbit and thus should end up Prograde around it. I've often had to mess with my orbit once reaching SOI of a planet before because I can't judge on which side of the planet I'm going to swing around. When your fuel is low that matters. This time I should be good. I have 800 odd dV left at present.

While that was en-route I was setting up the Beta launches. First the Odyssey Habitat Lander. It's got no engines, it relies on the ITV (and later the dedicated orbital tug) to slow it down to make re-entry. This went through quite a few changes, not least of which was adding large numbers of parachutes. Early versions made nice craters on Duna's surface, or bounced so high on landing they turned turtle.

When launching the Odyssey looks rather top heavy, but thank heavens for the Procedural Fairings mod!

The unmanned Lander sitting in orbit, waiting for the rest of the Beta mission payloads to arrive. The crew will be shipped up later.

Edited August 11, 2013 by Patupi

[Patupi]

Thanks KeithStone. I just got so close to the mass limit on so many launches that I couldn't get the heatshields to work into the lifts! So, I cut them back as far as I could and stacked them. They're debris, but once someone docks they can undock all but one to use in that mission.

The first stack waiting at 80km:

[Patupi]

I love Mechjeb's Aerobrake nodes!

The deceleration maneuver worked well, coming in Prograde, and as you can see above the aerobrake looks good. Now I just have to worry that the torque wheels can hold the craft nose on during aerobraking! I know there is no visible signs of aerobraking at Duna at normal IP speeds so if I do tumble I won't be too worried. If it was a non-hoffmann transfer... yeah, those can get high enough dVs that you get a real strong burn!

See below example at roughly 3000m/s entry:

It was after this test that I started thinking about unmountable heatshields for all ITVs.

[Patupi]

Arrival in orbit was early, about day 118. Oribital insertion went smoothly and both K Scan Sats were sent off, one to Ike and one around Duna, both low polar orbits to minimize real time transits. With a dV of over 2000m/s on them the K-Sats can easily manage quite good maneuvering in orbit. The Scout ITV has a fair bit of fuel left at present, enough to partially refill the Destiny Lander when it arrives later on so it can head to Ike, land, mine for Kethane and refuel itself and the various ITVs in orbit around Duna. Currently it's being left docked to the Duna Transfer Station for convenience in it's 100km parking orbit.

Note I don't often get much change to play KSP during the week so it may be a little while before I update this again. Hopefully I'll get a little further tonight and get the next payloads for the Beta mission ready and launched.

Edited August 11, 2013 by Patupi

[Patupi]

Just realized I never posted my Mission Schedule up here. Here it is to compare with how I'm doing so far.

Yeah, it's a bit big and awkward. If I do something like this again I don't think I'm going to use a spreadsheet prog again. I was trying to use colors to make it easy to read.

[Patupi]

I don't have time tonight to upload more pics, but currently I've completed scanning of both Duna and Ike. I've not got a lot of Kethane on the equator on Ike, but it's not as critical with a low mass body like that. Duna, this time around anyway, has quite a few equatorial K deposits. I've got two tentative landing sites marked out in the darker 'seas' that tend to be a little flatter terrain (though not as flat as the flats on Minmus unfortunately). Time is almost due to launch the Beta 2 payload which I hope to get to tomorrow some time. Then on to day 178 for the next launch and assembly of the Beta mission in LKO. I'm likely not going to use 6 mini lander probes. I could mount them, but it's more convenient to mount 4 on the body of the Destiny Lander simply to avoid clashing with other components on the frame and keep some kind of balance. Besides, I'll likely only need two to test landing sites.

In my original plan way back when I was going to just use the K-miner rover as the 'probe' and land it, then rove around till I found a good spot to get the Habitat Landers down. Unfortunately the K-miner rover had stability issues in testing, and I eventually did away with it entirely and put the Kethane mining apparatus directly on the Destiny. I have transfer rovers that can ship fuel or oxygen between vessels on the surface, but fuel is only needed between Destiny landers and perhaps the orbital tug. The tug has the thrust to land, and I included some light landing gear just in case. I don't intend to land it except in emergencies, but it could if it has to. The Destiny Landers should be able to refuel the tugs (and everything else) in orbit. The transfer rover at present isn't needed much. It's main purpose will be to shuttle crew and oxygen around. The Hab landers don't have fuel tanks and the Destiny landers don't need fuel shipped to them as they can mine their own Kethane. If one is forced down outside a Kethane deposit then the rovers might be needed.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Patupi

[Speeding Mullet]

The heat shield solution is elegant, I like it and wish I had thought of it (along with IronGremlin's comm tower) Good luck with your missions!

[Patupi]

Elegent maybe, but launching the Beta payloads I have a slight quandry. I may have to slightly redesign the launch sequence or build an extender. I put the heatshield on the rear of the ITV for the test phase, but that clipped over the engine nozzles. Now I've increased the mass of the ITV it can't launch with the heatshield and it has to dock in orbit... and can't clip with it. *sigh* Well, I can make an adaptor or redesign the front of the Destiny to have a senior docking port rather than a standard. That way the heatshields can dock on the front of the craft rather than the rear. The Odyssey Hab mods already have a senior on front to make them stackable, but launches with the destiny and others might be trouble. One dificulty is with an adaptor the connection may be too wobbly after connection for aerobraking. Have to test that.

The only other way to do it is to redesign the heat shield with 'holes' in it for the engine nozzles to fit through when docking in orbit.

[Patupi]

OK, after thinking on it for a few minutes I think I'm going to dock the heatshield on the top of the ITV, between it and the Odyssey Hab Lander. When I near Duna and course is fully lined up for aerobraking I'll undock the ITV+Heatshield from the rest of the vessel, flip it round, and redock. It's a pain, but the ITV has RCS so redocking before and after the aerobraking shouldn't be too much hassle and it should be much more stable than using an adaptor

[Speeding Mullet]

Sounds like a solution! I've just realised my ITV will have a senior docking port as its heat shield for the return to Kerbin. I've got plenty of Delta V to burn circles without touching the atmosphere, but aerobraking seems like the thing to do realism wise - I might have to have a think about this also.

[Patupi]

As long as you don't use a nuke engine in atmosphere at Kerbin or Duna I don't see the problem in using an engine to slow down instead of heatshields. For me I'm trying to minimize that in the early missions to Duna as I need to save fuel to refuel the Destiny enough for it to reach Ike. It's only about 250 to 300 m/s dV so it's not much, but then there's the landing to consider. Once down it can mine and refuel to reload the others and it won't be an issue. At that point there will be two ITVs, one scout and one full, parked at the DTS so there's plenty of fuel storage for what the Destiny brings back.

Most of my heatshields have a docking port on the outer side of the heat shield. Not really practical for normal use, but at Duna (at least in 0.20.2) the heat effects of aerobraking or re-entry aren't significant enough for me to worry about it. Maybe they sprayed the docking ports with extra thick layers of paint?

[ThreeMartiniLaunch]

I am very interested in this removable heatshield design, but I do not see the image in your first post.

[Patupi]

I showed three of them stacked together but here's a view of one individually.

My 1st go at the removable heatshield used a small kethane tank surrounded by 1m and 2m panels (radial symmetry of 14 if I remember right) but that was too heavy to use. This one uses one central Rockomax adapter 2, eight more of them around on the longish I beams, and some of the wide I beams to fill in the gaps.

[Patupi]

OK, after over an hour of jiggling around, undocking, docking... finally I managed to get the orbital arrangement right for the Beta mission. All that was neccessary because I'd already assembled the other two sections in orbit before I realized I'd need to put the heatshield on a different way from the plan. *sigh* Well, hopefully it won't be that hard next time. One reason it was hard this time was that only the ITV had RCS! Took a while to use it to maneuver the other vessels around for docking.

Here's the completed payload array in orbit waiting the next launch window. Now to start launching the Gamma payloads!

Just to recap for those that are interested, the ITV is on the left, then the heatshield, then the Odyssey Habitat Lander, then finally the Destiny Lander which has been drained of fuel to keep it within the mass limits of the launch booster. DV currently is over 1400m/s so I think I can make the rendezvous OK.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Patupi

[Speeding Mullet]

As long as you don't use a nuke.............Destiny brings back.

extra thick layers of paint?

The ITV will be protected on aerocapture to Duna by the heatshield of the payload it's pushing, but on the way back it won't hence I was considering firing the engines to circularise instead of going for aerocapture. I suppose the payload doesn't need the heatshield for the descent to Duna so I could undock it and have the ITV pick it up shortly after seperation, in preparation for return. I could then consider the heatshield depleted once it's completed it's second heat cycle.

It will require swapping out the decoupler for a senior docking port though, so I'm tempted to go with extra thick layers of paint....

[Patupi]

OK, I'm on my tablet tonight. We've got thunderstorms here and power outages. I doubt I'll get anything done tonight. At least the router is still working (I purposely didn't go for a tablet with 3G etc. WiFi is fine for me)

I wish I could run KSP on my Android tablet! I think it has the power, but I really don't want to install Linux just for that! Note, it's a transformer prime with built in keyboard so it certainly can handle the key commands.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Patupi

[Patupi]

Beta mission is successfully launched on it's way to Duna, though the frame rate is a bit low! The three payload (+1 mountable heatshield) is over 500 parts! It's slugging things down a little, and the less said about how slow it was when I docked the crew transfer vehicle to it the better!

Speaking of the Crew transfer vehicle, I did a redesign on that as the existing one I had, though totally re-usable, was a bit tight on the fuel requirements and could only lift or land 4 Kerbals at a time. I did a partially reusable one that the second of three stages is lost, and this one can transport 8 kerbals to orbit. launch and docking went smoothly... after a few teething troubles with the design (more docking collar trouble. Forgot to add one! EEK!).

Now, the Gamma mission is finally in orbit on day 304... and given that the Beta mission seemed to be 'early' going by how the rendezvous seemed on the Maneuver node I might give a go at a transfer now rather than wait for day 511. The launch was fine, but the Rover payload went wonky. It had two robot arms courtesy of Damned Robotics and I curled them enroute... and when I saved and came back they were funky, bent at odd angles but the hinges weren't. I've read about this before but I don't think it's happened to me before that I remember. Hopefully when I get back onto 0.21 I'll try Infernal Robotics and maybe these bugs will be fixed. In any event I felt justified in hyperediting a new rover assembly up to dock to replace the distorted one. I really should have got a pic of those distorted arms, but didn't think of it. Here's a pic of the final vessel assembled, but as yet uncrewed.

[Patupi]

Well, the burn went well and it seems the 8 Kerbals on the Gamma ship will arrive on day 381, rather than 511 as in the Flight Plan. I promise, this wasn't Jeb's doing! He wasn't anywhere near the controls at the time, honest!

This is teaching me that the Hoffmann transfers aren't as picky as I thought. I needed nearly 200 extra dV compared to the Beta flight, but it's still doable. The Beta mission is currently on schedule for arrival at Duna on day 347, dead on schedule (Darn! Thought I'd gain a couple of days like for the scout )

[Patupi]

OK, the Duna encounter for the Beta mission went well. It rendezvoused with the DTS and the Hab Lander has been transferred there for now to make use of the extended living accommodation. Meanwhile the ITV and the Destiny Lander used the last of the fuel to de-orbit Destiny using the nuke engines, separate and then re-orbit the ITV. Destiny landed fine and mined to it's heart's content. Got back to orbit and now I think I have enough fuel to get to Ike and land. Landing on Duna is fairly easy as long as you have enough chutes, but take off costs roughly 1600 dV. Not gonna ship much fuel up that way! So the ITV+Destiny will be heading for Ike and see if they can fill the ITV's tanks and most of the Destiny's, then return to the DTS. Once that is complete (all on automatic, no Kerbals aboard) then there is a reserve fuel for a return flight to Kerbin if necessary and mission control should OK the Odyssey Hab Lander heading down to the surface.

I was a little focussed so I haven't got many pics of the Destiny landing and taking off from Duna, and I don't have time to upload them right now. I'll add in what I have later.

[Patupi]

OK, after a lot of messing around with Filezilla (I think my server is dying! So many error messages ) I got some pics uploaded.

I had a couple of oddities with the Beta mission. One, after reloading for the burn at Duna I found the mountable heatshield won't disconnect from the ITV. Luckily it was on the right way round, and does disconnect from the Odyssey Hab Lander. I don't know why, but it's wasted some dV burning round the Duna system. I might switch over to the Scout ITV. Lower thrust so longer burns, plus it has less fuel storage, but might be more efficient *shrugs*

Beta ITV docking to DTS after disconnecting from the Destiny+Odyssey. Love manual docking! (EDIT: I just realised this sounds sarcastic. It's not. I do like manual docking! Haven't used Mechjebs docking at all since it got that. Tried One or two other dock mods but not used them much)

After that I found that the fuel from the Scout ITV and Beta ITV combined wasn't enough to get to Ike and land. Nearly, but I was maybe a 100dv short. So I did a landing on Duna at a Kethane patch to refill enough to get to Ike. Burning off the surface would use up a lot of it, but it would leave enough for Ike I thought... then spotted something weird on the way down to the landing site.

Luckily that wasn't where I was landing exactly or I might have kept on going down! Well, who knows with Kerbal physics?

Anyway, Duna and Ike refueling has worked well. It's day 348 and I'm going to do one more landing on Ike to top up the Destiny's own tanks (it's already filled the Beta ITV) and then head back to Duna. Then it's the grand landing. 1st Kerbals on Duna!

Oh, I also noticed earlier that the heatshields I've got are a little smaller than I planned. They cover most of my hardware, but I think a little of the Odyssey Hab Landers sticks out, mostly the wheels! Do they coat the rubber in asbestos? Well, I checked carefully during aerobrake and there were no visual flares so I think we're good.

Planning on using the ITV to slow the Odyssey down for landing before disconnecting and boosting the ITV back to orbit. That should slow it down to make sure there are no visual re-entry effects on landing. So landing without a heatshield should be good. I'm hoping to get it below 1000m/s before disconnecting the ITV. We'll see how that goes.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Patupi

[Patupi]

OK, I'm officially stupid. Orbital velocity at 100km around Duna is already below 1000m/s! I think I must have been thinking the velocities during aerobraking. Ah well.

Anyway, touch down was successful and now 8 Kerbals live on Duna. Scott Kerman planted the flag at 4:40 on day 350... and Jeb managed to pull a prank on him even from back at mission control. He switched Scott's scripts for the first words. Probably not silly enough but it got Scott miffed. Thus the flag plaque now reads: "Tis a far far better thing I do now than... hey, this is the wrong script!"

Well, after the rest of the crew made fun of Scott they all had a party out in the Duna dunes.

[Speeding Mullet]

I've got "extra thick paint" on my ITV's front end, so I'm sure you can have asbestos tires!

I tested an ike base yesterday which forms part of my mission, and it landed at a safe 180 m/s, so back to the drawing board on that one. Great update congratulations on first boot!

[Patupi]

Yup, though I did attempt to send a probe down first... it almost made it. Ran out of fuel at 100m, crashed down hard enough to blow up the battery, engine and bury itself underground somehow. Fiddling with the landing legs at least got it to the surface... then found the area wasn't really suitable after all. Sucks basically. Still, got three left to test a few other landing sites with... and I just said 'to hell with it' and landed the Odyssey at somewhere that looked good.

So, worked out pretty well

Headed North West to test out base mobility and the Odyssey seems to handle very well on the road on Duna... not that Duna has roads yet. Anyway, stable, turns well, can reach 28m/s easily and doesn't flip when hard braking. That last has spelled many a rover failure for me. I'm in one of the depressions and headed towards a darker spot to set up base to... just because. It's dark stuff! Maybe dark matter? Or just something that matters? Science! That's the answer to anything!

Oh, here's a quick shot of Anwig Kerman repacking all the parachutes on the Destiny lander. He gets stuck with all the grunt work! (Needless to say this was BEFORE landing the Odyssey! I actually thought of that in time! It's a miracle!)

Edited August 17, 2013 by Patupi