Munar colony project(image heavy)

[noxcarakus]

Since the kraken decided to kill all the kerbals of my last mun colony, I decided to start over on a fresh save with updated mods especially kethane and extra planetary launch pads.

Mods I know I'm using

Kethane

Extra planetary launchpads

mechjeb 2

KW rocketry

caterpillar tracks

rollkage

FAR

deadly reentry

subassembly manager

Damned robotics

there are a few more but can't think of them at the moment. When starting this, I did enable permadeath in the settings, and to make sure it worked, two lucky kerbals got to experience being flash cooked

Now on to the mission: part 1

Drone testing of the 15 ton lifter design, after kerbal safety engineers mandated that all kerballed missions be fully abort capable due to the untimely death of Erfel and Mitster Kerman after an unfortunate accident involving high speeds and temperatures...Due to the media blackout of KNN, no one knew of their heroic attempt at space.

Launching the 15 ton payload, so far pretty steady, the engineers surprised it is flying so straight right out of the gate.

Starting the gravity turn, Kerbal command keeps expecting the rocket to begin its death ballet, flipping end over end like all the others that had went before. Jebediah Kerman, engineer of this particular lifter, sits back smugly as it turns, sluggishly but smoothly.

Finally at 45 degrees, having taken forever to get to that point, mission control sends the commands to continue turning, gaining confidence that this particular rocket may be their first successful launch of this lifter design.

At this point, all of Nox Aerospace, umbrella corporation of the entire space program, erupts in cheers and throwing of tools into the air, as the rocket reaches orbit, albeit a very elliptical one, though it did still have another stage that could have easily circularized. Seriousness kicks in, as wrenches and hammers come falling back down onto the heads of several maintenance workers, reminding them not everything can go to space. (There was still roughly 2000 d/v left, and quite a bit of rcs as well.)

As the celebration settles down, Jeb steps up to the controls, stating that since he designed it, he gets to do the most fun part, since it was pointless to leave a useless rocket in orbit. Sending the commands to point the lifter retrograde, he fires the rcs determined to deorbit it without using any more fuel.

(at this point I added a few more details to my mechjeb window to get a little better idea of what I was doing, still learning everything, if anyone is wondering why the tab is open)

And then it happened, the moment Jeb had been waiting for the entire time, as the lifter began hitting the lower atmosphere, everything started to overheat due to no shielding, and the entire rocket just exploded into glorious fireworks, lighting up the night sky(too bad there really were no explosions, it just went poof)

Kerbal command, satisfied that the rocket could make it to the mun, began designing a kerballed mission to begin the colonization efforts..

[noxcarakus]

(Just in case someone thinks to ask about how I mapped kerbin and the mun with no pics, I hyper edited a scanner into both orbits, since I had already scanned both legit in my previous save and couldn't continue on that one due to wanting updated kethane and extra planetary launch pads. Didn't feel like waiting two days just to continue my mission. Everything else is flown manually.)

What Kerbal command did not know, was that at the same time as the probe lifter was being designed and tested, Bill Kerman, second lead design engineer was working on a lander that would be capable of landing on the Mun, hoping that Jeb's design would prove to be sound so he could get his name in the books. As the order was rolling in for a two seat lander, Bill stated that he was already finished, abort system and all, and the lander was already being built, he was just waiting for the new inventions, parachutes and heat shielding to be finalized so he could slap them on, and so the Sloth was born.

Since there were no volunteers except Jeb and bill who couldn't go at this time, due to contracts with the design division, everyone played rock paper scissors to see who would be the first two kerbals in space....The two winners were Sherry and Jedwell Kerman..They were not pleased at all, and demanded more snacks as compensation.

Liftoff!

Starting the gravity turn, both seem rather concerned, since the lander is not nearly as aerodynamic as the fairings on the probe. Bill was seen talking to one of mission control, explaining that a fairing would have been pointless, then the pilot would not have known he was going up. Sherry, lucky pilot for this mission, kept his hand near the abort button the entire turn..

Separating the SRBs, the mission is going well so far, though over the radio, Jedwell can be heard muttering about home and safety, as Sherry just screams, thinking the separation is not part of the whole plan.

Beginning their circularization, Sherry begins to calm down, as he sees that a fiery death most likely is not in his future, Jedwell though harder to convince, still worried that something catastrophic will happen.

SPACE!! More cheering and throwing of things, this time paper and sheets of metal, as Sherry and Jedwell become the first kerbals to achieve orbit, though still rather elliptical and inclined, maybe more simulation training would be useful for the future pilots. Sherry looks out the window in wonder, Jedwell finally calming down, though still rather worried, now about all the empty space around him.

The first Munar encounter, surprisingly it isn't a collision course like what had been bet on, Bob Kerman lost his life savings on that one at 30:1. Though not very pretty, it was getting the kerbalnauts generally where they were trying to get to.

Goodbye Kerbin, and hello Mun, no turning back now as Sherry begins plotting for the capture burn, not really sure what to do but doing something anyway.

Being that they had so much rcs left, and did not want to waste fuel to make sure they could land, after the capture all circularization and lowering of orbit was performed strictly on rcs fuel. It took much longer, but in the end helped reduce weight and they really did not need as much as though originally anyway.

A rather large kethane deposit had been found during a previous satellite mapping project by a different space agency, who were kind enough to share their information with Nox Aerospace, and that is where Sherry plotted his landing, the map had shown that it was relatively flat so shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Thinking he was overshooting such a large deposit, Sherry begins the braking burn way too soon, and begins cursing as he sees what has happened, but too late now, they are commited to a landing and must land off target by a bit.

(shows my bad landing skills, was trying to hit the huge kethane deposit to the east of the actual landing, anyone that knows how far ahead to lead on a munar landing feel free to share . and yes, I tried hopping the lander multiple times, to end in fiery deaths..thank you quickload)

Too late to cry over spilt milk, Sherry and Jedwell commence deploying the base for operations. Planting the flag, Sherry decides for posterity to make it seem that he had wanted to go all along, instead of cowering in the storage lockers while names were called...

After successful deployment and planting of flags, Sherry and Jedwell get down to the serious business of science, collecting rocks nearby and trying to find out if the Mun really is made of fossilized dryer lint. Meanwhile back at mission control, design orders get sent to begin building rovers that can drive the munar surface, to extend the distance the two kerbalnauts can go...

[noxcarakus]

After days of testing around KSC, a rover that seemed to be reliable enough to drive the Munar surface was designed and built, thanks to Bob kerman, lead of the ground design division. Since it was decided by kerbal command that Sherry and Jedwell were to be the only colonists for a long duration to test how kerbals respond to low gravity environments, a probe controlled skycrane was designed to take the payload of two rovers to the Mun for delivery. As it was rather much heavier than the lander and original probe, a 30 ton lifter was built to take the rovers to their destination.

As it was a probe and did not need to see, fairings were added to improve aerodynamics to hopefully cut down on fuel consumption, at least until a proper refinery was set up on the Mun, though it did add a little weight. Liftoff went smoothly, as there were no kerbals on board, the payload itself was the debugging test.

As always, the gravity turn was exceedingly long to prevent spin outs, though not as efficient as some other launch profiles, it seemed to work for the other launches so it was continued on this as well

Separation of the stages and fairings, showing for the first time the Armadillo rovers, waiting for trans lunar injection.

The second Munar encounter was slightly better, though the periapsis was a bit higher than originally intended, it was still workable.

Due to the testing nature of the sky crane, images of it's braking burn were considered by kerbal command to be classified, and blacked out of any news reports, as it was rather buggy and the higher ups thought it would be bad publicity to show a bad design. Though hovering it was rather stable once the proper thrust settings were achieved.

(yes I used the translatron to keep it from crashing to the ground, I tried hovering it myself and found that much more practice is needed for me to do it manually. and a much better sky crane design)

Other issues were found with the sky crane design, as deploying the rovers cause them to just fall onto each other, and create a big mess. Jeb at mission control was already thinking of a different design that would potentially hold the payloads horizontally rather than vertically.

Since overall the sky crane was deemed a failure, and not meant to be landed, it was flown to a safer location and crashed into the surface, with major refinements already in the works for a reusable one.

Sherry and Jedwell watched as the fireworks went off, enjoying them thoroughly. Though unfortunately, the rovers were nowhere near as stable on the Mun as they were on Kerbin, constantly trying to flip over and knock the kerbalnauts out of their seats, nearly crushing Sherry multiple times. So he radioed back to mission control and reported the failure, saying there were no headlights, no gps, and the wheel base was way too narrow. The self destruct was set, and during a media blackout, a second rover deployment mission took place...Again, kerbal command did not want a poor design to escape to the news and tarnish their "good name". As such the rovers were sent with no communications but the probe commands, and tested before releasing the new "improved rovers that were meant to be sent as backups, and somehow the original rovers automatically just self destructed, must have been a short in the wiring, good thing we already planned on sending more" as the news reported Jeb saying in an interview.

As the rovers were tested and found to be very stable, exploration missions were in the works to search for the anomalous readings that the satellite had picked up, quite a distance from the landing site...