Pegasus - Grand-ish tour

[indigo_dc]

Another cool update, cheers man

[Geschosskopf]

Noticing that the lander legs were also beginning to shake -a phenomena top kerbal scientists believe occurs when the parts shake in terror as the Kraken approaches- Bill and Bob hurried back into their lander and took off, as flying on a rocket is certainly safer than staying on the ground. Curiously though the lander legs contracted into their shock absorbers and stayed there. The legs won't even retract anymore, which is likely to cause problems when docking with Pegasus.

When legs won't move, it now means they're busted. BUT, in 0.22 you can fix them on EVA like rover wheels. So do that before you try to dock.

And thanks for the tip on the no-crash and unbreakable stuff. I'll no doubt need to do that for all my KTC stuff on Duna.

[Brapness]

When legs won't move, it now means they're busted. BUT, in 0.22 you can fix them on EVA like rover wheels. So do that before you try to dock.

And thanks for the tip on the no-crash and unbreakable stuff. I'll no doubt need to do that for all my KTC stuff on Duna.

Ah thank you, that explains a great deal, although I still don't see why the lander legs couldn't lift Shackleton, must have been a bug.

[Brapness]

I'M BACK BABY!!!!

After 2 months of being unable to play KSP, I finally got round to inspecting my laptop's hardware (It being the holidays, I could afford to have it inactive for a few days). Turns out the chip that identifies the charger had exploded, leaking its guts all over my power board. Replaced it and now it runs like new! And so the voyage of Pegasus can continue!

Thanks to Geschosskopf's advice, Bob was able to repair Shackleton's broken landing legs

And Shackleton rejoined Pegasus for the trip to Bop, which is not an easy trip to make. So our brave Kerbals left Vall after what seemed like an age, but what was in fact 4 days. Tylo once again seemed determined to protect her sister moon, which delayed Pegasus's arrival by 40 days as Jeb lined up another approach. There was much trepidation among the crew as Bop finally neared, after all it is the home of the Kraken and it has already shown an interest in Pegasus.

Seanbert and Tomvin set out in Shackleton, landing without a problem and boldly planting a flag, before deciding to go on a Kraken hunt, which is where we'll leave it for today. I've got career mode to enjoy as well.

[Fail-Man 3D]

Do any of the landers have enough fuel for a Bop-->Tylo trip? If so, you could park a high-TWR lander (and a small refueling station, if the lander doing the inter-moon crew transfer needs it to get back to Bop) in Tylo orbit while you wait for the Jool-Eeloo transfer window to open.

[The Jedi Master]

That's awesome. Why do you say 'grand-ish'? This looks pretty grand to me.

[Brapness]

For any who may be interested this thread is titled 'Grand-ish' because there are no manned landers for Eve or Tylo and the ship was almost completely rebuilt in Eve orbit following the Kraken's intervention.

Speaking of the Kraken, our explorers were unable to locate it (despite me having landed an entire base on top of it in another save) so they returned to Pegasus.

Look closely and you can spot Pegasus

The crew then found the Kraken, or at least something, that chucked them into a higher orbit though still between Bop and Pol, confusing Kerbal alarm clock and my planned maneuver node, delaying the mission a further 30 days. Fortunately this far out, course corrections don't require much fuel and of course it's still 5 years until the Eeloo transfer window, though given Kerbal alarm clock's record with inclined orbits I'm now unsure about the veracity of that judgement.

And so Pegasus has become my first object in orbit of Pol. The surface of Pol and the surface of Tylo are now the only unexplored regions of the Kerbol system for me, which is naturally quite exciting. 'Til next time.

[Brapness]

Sorry for the infrequent updates, it's exam season.

When last we left our intrepid Kerbonauts they were in orbit above Pol, the one final place that in no other save to date have I orbited landed on, probe or otherwise. As it happened landing was relatively uneventful. Jim and Kirberry landed, took some holiday snaps and then blasted off again.

So a transfer was plotted to Laythe. Jebediah, tired of staying on Pegasus as mission commander, took command of the Heavy Lander with Jon Kerman as his co-pilot. What followed was a story of disaster, heroism and sacrifice.

The heavy lander was designed expressly with Laythe in mind. I wanted to have a craft able to land and reach orbit, while also minimizing weight and part count. As such the heavy lander is capable of landing on chutes, and then achieving a 90km Laythe orbit with 200 units of fuel to spare, which I think is a fair margin of error. The flight plan switches between the nuclear engines for the descent (simply to lower the periapsis). The nukes and the aerospike on the ascent to get the necessary thrust, to just nukes for the final part of the ascent and orbital insertion.

So Jeb and Jon began their descent (and here I will admit to having used a quicksave, landing on land using just chutes on Laythe is hard:(). I generally don’t like using quicksaves, except to resolve bugs. I think it adds to the tension when you need to get it right first time.

But there was one thing in my design I hadn’t accounted for, one thing that would spell disaster for the mission, one simple oversight that would have the most terrible consequences. When I designed this lander, landing legs had no shock absorbers. The result was inevitable.

Stranded! And Pegasus with no way to reach them, Shackleton had no hope of landing on Laythe let alone taking off again. Help could only come from Kerbin and that was awfully far away. But then Jeb and Jon had an idea, an idea so mad it might just work. I’ve said before I don’t really focus on the numbers, maybe with a significant enough weight reduction they could make orbit, say 2 nuclear engines? So Jon retracted a landing leg to shear off the remaining nuke and then Jeb repaired them in preparation for take-off. One quick holiday snap and they were ready.

But she was still too heavy for take-off so they burnt off a fifth of their fuel and finally left the ground. It was a slow ascent, and both Kerbals nervously eyed their fuel gauge.

come-on you big metal bird get up there!

But it soon became apparent; orbit was a pipe-dream. As their apoapsis left the atmosphere the last of the fuel burned away. With the upper atmosphere clawing at their heels, Jeb exercised his status as mission commander and ordered Jon to bail out and try to reach orbit using his EVA pack. Jeb would stay with his ship.

â€ÂJeb, Nooooooooo!!!!â€Â

But there wasn’t time to watch as Jeb tumbled down into the atmosphere, Jon kicked his jetpack into gear and powered forward, achieving a low orbit with little fuel to spare. Finally he could mourn his friend who had long before vanished into the oceans of Laythe.

Jim set out in Shackleton to recover Jon but despite their attempts, they heard nor saw any sign of Jeb.

Rest in peace you magnificent b*****d

Edited January 17, 2014 by Brapness

[Brapness]

The end of my exams, a touch of insomnia and a challenge from a flatmate to watch all 8 harry potter films back to back has given me a plethora of time to play KSP, so our voyage continues and may conclude very soon. The first task of the day was to refuel and replace the lost lander. Mission control decided to replace the heavy lander with a spare fuel tank designed to match the weight of Shackleton. And refueling was done by a secondary fuel tank. I considered adding the additional tank, but I really didn't want to have to refuel that too.

As I mentioned earlier, the Jool-Eeloo transfer window is several years away. So our Kerbals were left to mourn Jeb for a while. It seems however I was right to distrust kerbal alarm clock, as a year and 12 days prior to the calculated window I managed to plot a decent transfer, catching Eeloo at its ascending node. This also meant that after breaking free of Jool's SOI (no small feat) only an additional 230m/s of delta-v was required to intercept Eeloo. This meant it still took 64 days to leave Jool's SOI.

As the journey to Eeloo continued, I began to sympathize with all those who say x100000 time warp isn't fast enough, but eventually Pegasus reached Eeloo, the farthest reaches of the Kerbol system, the farthest any of my Kerbals had ever been from home. I had a sense of trepidation as I entered orbit. My epic voyage was coming to an end, just here and then home. On mission day 4279, or 4115 days after departing Kerbin, our explorers landed on Eeloo.

Naturally the flag would have to commemorate those Kerbals lost, like Scott and Kurt ... and Jeb.

Some of you may have noticed the two probes that have sat attached to Pegasus for some time. Now it has finally come to the time to release the first. Firing prograde, she entered an escape trajectory from Kerbal. The other shall do the opposite after Pegasus burns for home and will dive into the sun.

Coming next, the final chapter...

[Tw1]

Poor Jeb. A captain who went down with his ship.

I like the design of Pegasus, it's a nice looking ship.

Well done with the mission, (hope the exams when well too.), Good luck with the return!

[Brapness]

Big post today.

So our Kerbals, having made it to their final destination, turned their attention to finally returning home. There would be no waiting for refueling, instead they would hope what as left in their tanks was enough. With the aid of an aerocapture around Kerbin it should be. The transfer window was refreshingly close and so 80 days after arriving at Eeloo, Pegasus departed for home. The decision was made to leave Shackleton (and the reserve fuel tank) in orbit around Eeloo, a permanent marker of the expedition.

As it happens I may have underestimated the amount that the probe I ejected (now called Daedalus) contributed to the ship's balance as this became an increasingly annoying problem as the fuel was burned up, causing the Bill to reduce to only half throttle. Once the burn was over, the second probe - Icarus - was ejected (further messing up the balance) and it burned retrograde, reducing its velocity about the sun to zero

He would be going 114,000m/s when he reached the sun.

and then...

%$£@$%!!!!!! But through the mighty power of quicksave, all was restored and the Kraken quieted. After some time watching the sun grow larger, our explorers finally spotted a glimpse of a world none of them had seen in 12 years.

They then got a little to close a look when Bill slightly overestimated how far into the atmosphere they would have to go

Fortunately a few puffs from the engines was enough to push them into a stable orbit. And so 4644 days into the mission and 4480 since its last sight of Kerbin, Pegasus returned into orbit around its homeworld. There was much jubilation amongst the crew, as well as a somber moment remembering that not everyone got to come home.

The crew shuttle Delphi, piloted by Billy-Bobbles (who had not even joined the space program when Pegasus left Kerbin) was dispatched to collect the crew.

Naturally the first Kerbal on was the last one off, and so Chief engineer Kirberry said goodbye to his girl.

Finally the crew were on home ground. Bill, Bob, Tomvin, Seanbert, Jon, Jim and Kirberry, all heroes.

And so our story ends.

Or does it??? Meanwhile on the surface of Laythe...

[Ithicatic]

Jebediah never dies. He's always just Missing In Action.

[Brapness]

Jebediah never dies. He's always just Missing In Action.

That which is Jeb may never die

[Kekkie]

DUN DUN DUUUUN!!!!!! WHAT HAPPENED TO JEB????? FIND OUT IN PEGASUS 2...