DMagic's Mission Stockpile: Update - Sentini / Kuygens

[DMagic]

Collected here, I present all of my mission logs and records. Rather than continue to make new threads for every mission, I’ve decided to collect everything into one big thread; one-off missions, tributes, major, multi-part missions, future career mode logs, I’ll collect it all here.

Click on the pictures below for links to the respective thread/post; some of the older missions don’t have links associated with them.

KSP v0.22:

 

         

 

 

 

KSP v0.21:

         

         

KSP v0.20:

  

KSP v0.19 (some of these old missions don't have threads associated with them or they were lost at some point):

    

    

Edited August 9, 2016 by DMagic
Fix links

[DMagic]

NASA announced last week that they are declaring Deep Impact dead after being unable to regain contact. The probe originally launched and met the comet P9/Tempel, crashing an impactor into the comet’s surface and recording the results. It visited several other comets and was scheduled to pass by another asteroid. The probable cause of the probe’s death: an error related to the 32bit time keeping code…

This seems like a spacecraft well suited to being Kerbalized. Like my Curiosity tribute, this is another Stock++ mission. I use Engineer and Procedural Fairings (the first +) in addition to using several modified stock parts (the second +).

I’m also trying something new with my mission reports. I normally don’t really like .gifs, but they seem well suited to KSP. I’ve tried to keep the size down, they are all less than 750kB which is less than some of the regular images, and I’ll try not to have too many on the same page. Let me know if anyone has issues with them.

I’ll start with a pre-launch glamor shot of the probe on the pad.

The rocket has one LOX/Fuel engine and six solid rocket boosters strapped on the side. The liquid engine starts up a few seconds before launch, when all six solid boosters ignite. Initial TWR is a little, um, high, starting somewhere around 5 and only climbing from there. It reaches around 300m/s by the time the solid boosters burn out, far higher than terminal velocity, but that’s not going to stop any Kerbal probe.

After climbing out of the dense part of Kerbin’s atmosphere the fairings separate, revealing the probe inside.

The second stage orbital insertion burn puts the probe into a stable ~120km orbit where the probe can wait for the interplanetary burn window.

Not having any asteroids or comets handy to visit, the small moon of Eve, Gilly, will stand in for Deep Impact’s target. When the Eve transfer window comes around the probe's upper stage engine ignites, pushing it into an encounter with Eve.

After a few months in interplanetary space the probe approaches Eve. After scraping the top of Eve’s atmosphere the probe enters a stable, elliptical orbit around Eve.

After a final, short burn, a brief encounter with Gilly approaches. The probe can be seen in its final configuration now.

We can stop here and take a look at the probe’s instrument panel. On the back side you can see the large single solar panel, a bigger resize of the standard OX-STAT panel. At the top is the steerable high-gain antenna. At the bottom is the impactor, a sepratron boosted small hex probe with a conical impactor mass at the front. On the instrument panel is the blue medium resolution imager, the yellow high resolution imager, a low-gain antenna, the flight computer and image processor in the center, and the two star trackers used for navigating and positioning.

The probe makes its final approach over Gilly, passing about 1.5km at its closest point.

Now the fun part begins. We’ll start with the images from the, um, companion probe that just follows Deep Impact around taking pictures. You can clearly see the impactor launch, followed by a repositioning of the imagers and the impact.

Next up are the images from the medium resolution imager. Again, you can see the launch and impact.

Finally, we have close up images from the high resolution imager. These images clearly follow the spin-stabilized probe as it approaches and crashes into Gilly’s surface.

Let me know how these .gifs work out and whether or not you like them. I think they can work well with KSP.

[Geschosskopf]

Cool mission and craft design! Besides, something blew up

[Scotius]

Very nice mission. Yeah, it's a pity we don't have any asteroids and comets to explore.

[DMagic]

After a long night of reminiscing with Bill about all of the planets and moons they’d been to, Jeb went outside to squint really hard at the sky. After a few minutes he leaped up and sprinted back inside. “Bill, did you know there’s another planet up there? How come no one ever told me about this.â€Â

“It’s called Eeloo dummy; if you spent less time blowing stuff up you might have noticed it before†Bill replied.

“Well, when can we go there? I’ve got some rockets out back ready to go.â€Â

Bill paused for a moment, “slow down there, it’s kind of far away, so maybe we should reconnoiter a bit first. You know, send some probes and stuff.â€Â

“Well, if we have to. I’ve got some ideas for a new type of probe that I want to try out.â€Â

Jeb got to work the next day perfecting his new probe design. But before they could launch anything he had to come up with an answer to that age-old question, how do they get stuff out to the launch pad? This is what he came up with.

The crawler is made up of 519 parts and carries the 129 part, 270 ton ‘Discovery Eeloo’ rocket. It’s a little tricky to drive, but it gets the job done.

The launcher went off without a hitch. The rocket is a stage-and-a-half design, using four solid rocket boosters with a central liquid fueled engine to take it up to a 250km orbit.

Booster and fairing separation went as planned, releasing the interplanetary transfer stage before deorbiting the reusable central booster.

After deorbiting, the booster floats down to land near the still-intact crawler.

With the probe in a stable orbit it activates its servomotors and deploys its arms. The probe is made up of two primary parts, the lander on top, and the orbiter below that. Solar panels are out of the question because of the distance to the sun, so a few RTGs are used, one on an extendable arm, and two mini versions on the lander probe on top. A large, high-gain antenna on the orbiter is used for communications to Kerbin, there is also a low-gain backup. The MapSat dish will be used to create a surface map of the planet. The lander will use its antenna to relay information back to Kerbin through the orbiter.

Here we can see the complex orbital maneuvers necessary to plot an Eeloo intercept. Two burns are planned to intercept Jool and use its gravity to boost the probe into a higher Kerbol orbit. After the Jool flyby another burn is plotted to setup the initial Eeloo intercept. A final burn will then put the probe into a stable orbit around Eeloo. You can see how long the final intercept will take, over five years, a little bit more than one full Eeloo orbit.

After a few hundred days in interplanetary space the probe approaches Jool, passing just outside the orbit of Laythe before being flung back out to a more Eeloo-like orbit.

After making one more course correction the probe spends five long years in Kerbal orbit before catching up with Eeloo on its next orbit. It makes its initial approach from the dark side of the planet, giving us a shadowy first look at its icy surface. Approaching periapsis the probe begins its complex orbital insertion maneuver.

Since no one wanted to be responsible for an accident with the onboard nuclear reactor of the probe’s main engine a plan had to be devised to keep said engine out of Eeloo orbit. After completing the initial ~100m/s burn, the craft was in a nearly stable Eeloo orbit. The nuclear engine was then dropped so that it could escape from Eeloo’s gravitational influence and make a final burn, placing it in a stable Kerbol orbit. Before this the probe had to ignite its main engine to complete the orbital insertion burn, putting it in a 30km orbit at 60^o inclination. The small lander was then released.

Here the orbital relay makes a final burn, placing it in a 280km orbit where it can begin mapping the surface.

After the relay completes its mapping of the planet between ~+/-65^o, the lander begins preparations for its two-stage descent. The initial burn is a solid rocket powered kick providing a near-instantaneous 460m/s of delta-v (an acceleration of over 110m/s²!!).

The remainder of the descent is undertaken using two small liquid fueled engines. This allows for a nice, gradual descent and a successful landing just south of the northern mountainous region.

And that marks the end of the first Eeloo mission. Now maybe we’ll get to a manned mission, or maybe some more probes and stuff, probably a sample return mission.

The Jool gravity assist worked amazingly well for this mission. For an ideal encounter with Eeloo around 2100m/s are needed for the transfer burn and another 2100m/s for the capture burn. For me it only required about 2800m/s to get from LKO to a 30km orbit around Eeloo. About 2000m/s were for the Jool intercept, another 500m/s for the Eeloo intercept, and a final 300m/s for the capture burn. Landing took another 900m/s or so, but that was a little bit inefficient because I used the SRBs first, and basically dropped almost straight down after that.

And despite how well the crawler worked (I was literally clapping at the screen when the first launched test worked so well) I don’t think I’ll be trying that again. 550 parts makes things a bit sluggish, and I think I spent more time getting pictures for the crawler move than on anything else.

The mods used are: Engineer, Procedural Fairings, MapSat, Maneuver Node Improvement, Subassembly Manager, Infernal Robotics, and KW Rocketry (thanks for the blank fuel tank textures).

Stay tuned for more soon (or maybe not so soon, but eventually).

[TheSuperintendnt]

Well done sir! I have only been to Duna twice and even then only landed on Ike once!

[Geschosskopf]

Quite a job, both on the navigation and, ye gods, the crawler! Bravo!

So on the crawler, did you have to drive it twice, once from the pad to the VAB, then back to the pad? Or do you have a way to spawn it right outside the VAB?

[DMagic]

Well done sir! I have only been to Duna twice and even then only landed on Ike once!

Thanks. It's a bit weird, I've spent a ton of time going to some planets and almost none going to others. I've only been to Ike once for one of my ion engine landers, I hardly ever go to the Mun, I've sent maybe one orbiter to Dres, and amazingly, only one orbiter to Eve too.

Quite a job, both on the navigation and, ye gods, the crawler! Bravo!

So on the crawler, did you have to drive it twice, once from the pad to the VAB, then back to the pad? Or do you have a way to spawn it right outside the VAB?

Thanks, this is the first time I've made really good use of a gravity assist. And the crawler, I forgot to put up more pictures of that.

I only drove it once, from the pad to the VAB then I reversed the order of the pictures for the .gifs. I was going to drive it back to try and get more consistent shots, but KSP crashed just as I was driving it back onto the two raised tracks leading to the pad. I saved it when I drove to the VAB, but I discovered on loading that the weight of the rocket causes some glitch with the crawler. After loading (even after going to the space center and back) the extendable legs get shifted vertically up, which screws up trying to drive, so I had to do it all in one shot.

Here's a picture of the underside while Jeb is fixing a broken wheel (this only happened a few times when first driving down the ramp). You can also see the glitch where the extendable pistons don't match up with the truss piece (just left of the broken wheel).

And here's a few shots of the naked crawler. There are ten central wheels and twelve outer wheels, these are pushed out using a pair of the Infernal Robotics pistons. Another set of ten pistons are used to jack up the whole thing on the launch pad. The entire rocket/crawler is perfectly stable when these pistons are extended (I can save or timewarp).

And, impressively, the entire thing survives being dropped onto the pad during the initial load. The lowest part of the craft gets pushed up so that it is level with the surface of the pad upon loading. This means that those extendable outer legs start out at the same height as the launch pad, so the whole thing, 270 ton rocket and all, just drops down a few meters upon loading. I think the jacks absorb most of the weight, so I never had any wheels or other parts break.

[spudman2]

Holy wow, man... I am VERY impressed.

[DMagic]

Thanks, stay tuned for part two of Discovery Eeloo, I'm just finishing up with the mission.

[DMagic]

“Ok Bill, now that we’ve checked out Eeloo can we get on a rocket and go there?†said an overeager Jeb.

“Not so fast, we still don’t know what’s on the surface of that planet. It could be ice, ammonia, kethane, or maybe, you know, some illicit substance; we can’t have you getting all coked up on some distant planet, now can we? First we need to collect some samples and bring them back here, we’ll get some of the recruits to snort it and see what happens.â€Â

“If we have to. So if my first rocket was 280 tons, does that mean this one will have to be 560 tons? That’s how rockets work right†sulked Jeb.

“Uh, maybe you should leave this one to Bob, he’s better at this kind of stuff; thinking, and math and so onâ€Â

After lots of dismissive and snide comments about Jeb’s terrible designs Bob agreed to help create the Eeloo sample return probe. “I’ll make your probe†Bob grumbled, “but let’s get one thing straight, the proper way to get a rocket onto the pad is not with some lumbering crawler; you gather up a kurdle of Kerbals (ED: kurdle being the proper name for a group of ten or more Kerbals) and march them out there with the rocket strapped on their backs. I guess some people didn’t pay attention in their pre-school rocket design courses.â€Â

After lots of mathing and scienceing Bob came up with a working sample return probe. Jeb immediately tried to pass of the design as his own, scribbling over Bob’s notes.

Before we get to the launch we’ll take a look at some of the launch crew and infrastructure. To capture footage of the launch we have several spotter crews surrounding the pad with cameras and lights. There are a few other light trucks and spotters monitoring the pad.

And now we have the launch from the spotter crew’s perspective.

Here we see it from the onboard camera.

This rocket is made up of about 95 parts and weighs only 40 tons on the launch pad. It delivers a 3.5 ton craft into LKO on a stage-and-a-half design (or maybe a stage-and-two-thirds) using two sets of SRBs and a liquid fueled main engine. The craft, known as the High efficiency Eeloo Return Probe (HERP) is brought to you using the RLA Stockalike part set from hoojiwana, with a few parts from Infernal Robotics, Procedural Fairings and Engineer.

Once in orbit the booster is separated and de-orbited. The probe craft prepares for a long journey by deploying its communications arrays and RTG power source. Its antennas are sufficient for short and medium length communications, but for long distance comms it will rely on the Discovery Eeloo Relay Probe (DERP) already in orbit around Eeloo from the last mission.

For the transit to Jool for a gravity assist I’ll make two burns. The mini-NERVA has very low thrust (6.5kN), so this multi-burn approach is necessary for an efficient transfer maneuver. The radial tanks provide almost enough fuel for the Jool burn; the rest will be carried out with fuel from the main tanks.

And here is the mission plan for the intercept with Eeloo. If you look carefully you can see the price to be paid for such efficiency, over ten years to an Eeloo encounter. It’s worth it though, as it saves well over 1000m/s of delta-V.

After a very long trip (as in, turn on max time-warp and go find something else to do for 20 minutes) the HERP arrives at Eeloo. Here we get our first close-up view of the sample probe as it separates from the orbiter.

This is an all RCS powered craft; on top are four mini RCS blocks providing just 0.25kN each, and on the bottom is an inline RCS engine providing 5kN for the landing. There are several vacuum-exposed sample containers connected by the yellow sluice tubes as well as some internal storage compartments. A sample drill is present on the reverse side; we’ll get a closer look at that later. The landing legs are special micro-version of the regular mini-legs. These weigh only 5kg, but break at around only 3-4m/s (compared to the bigger 15kg versions that break at 10m/s). There is no power source, only a single battery pack keeps the probe alive during the descent, sample gathering and return.

The RCS engine fires to de-orbit the probe, which comes in for a nice, soft landing.

Now we can get a close-up of my retractable Diggatron unit in action. It drills and recovers several samples to be returned to Kerbin for snorting, er, for study, that is.

With just under 40L of mono-propellant remaining the tiny return probe blasts off from the surface.

The probe prepares a rendezvous with the orbiter and approaches for docking. The battery is down to less than 25% charge, but there is still plenty of RCS fuel, which should help with the final journey home.

Holy coming in under budget Jebediah! Look at that, only 1200m/s to get back home, and in just over one year. Sure, the angle is a bit steep, but that’s nothing to worry about, I am just crashing into the surface after all.

After one last year in space the probe finally approaches home again. Here it speeds towards Kerbin at a steep angle for a landing just north of the KSC during the predawn hours.

The return probe separates from the rocket one last time in the darkness above Kerbin. As the rocket burns up, the lander sheds a considerable amount of excess velocity, approaching Kerbin at over 6000m/s.

Once the probe has safely reentered the atmosphere it deploys its parachute, allowing it to smoothly coast down to the surface.

The Mün rises overhead as the probe safely drifts to the ground, waiting to be picked up the next morning.

That marks the end of another successful mission to Eeloo. There is still much work to do, but Jeb, Bill and Bob are one step closer to a manned mission to the distant planet. Stay tuned for more.

I played through the last half of this mission with my monitor in portrait mode, which you can see in the gifs, and most of the screenshots are uncropped. It's an interesting way of playing, map mode takes some getting used to, but it still works fine. I made a thread about this in the general forum, too.

[allmappedout]

Dmagic, you're fast becoming one of my favourite forumers! First the portrait mode, then these lovely gifs and cool designs (it had never even occurred to me to use RCS as a thruster for a probe on a lower gravity body, mostly cause of the low ISP but its a sweet design!)...

[DMagic]

Dmagic, you're fast becoming one of my favourite forumers! First the portrait mode, then these lovely gifs and cool designs (it had never even occurred to me to use RCS as a thruster for a probe on a lower gravity body, mostly cause of the low ISP but its a sweet design!)...

Thanks, I too, consider myself one of my favorite forumers.

The problem with RCS is more the weight than the ISP. The stock RCS thrusters have a bit more thrust than you need for little landers like this, that's why those mod parts come in so handy. The ISP is a little deceptive too, because RCS fuel is so much lighter than the liq fuel/oxy mix it can make more sense in very compact designs.

[DMagic]

At last we come to the final part of our journey to Eeloo. With the return of surface samples from the distant planet our team readies for the last stage of the mission.

Due to a series of totally not arbitrary restrictions on mass and life support, this final phase of the mission will require two launches.

The first launch will be the Science For Eeloo rocket, which will carry a small ground research facility and a rover. This rocket will use the standard Jool gravity assist to boost its orbit into an Eeloo encounter. The second rocket will carry the crew and will make a direct transfer to Eeloo to save time; it will be able to liftoff while Science For Eeloo is still en route.

So, during year 28 (!!!) of our continuing mission to study Eeloo the Science For Eeloo rocket blasts off. It is lifted into orbit by an extended version of the stage-and-a-half design used by the original Discovery Eeloo rocket. Once in orbit the booster rocket separates and deorbits, while the probe continues on.

With the protective fairings now separated we can get a closer look at the craft’s components. On top is the science facility, which will land on the surface and serve as the base of operations during the crew’s stay. On the left is the Eeloo rover, which will serve as both a manned and un-manned research platform. The fuel on the right balances out the load and the single NERVA will carry the craft into orbit around Eeloo. With a single burn the craft is able to set up a gravity assist from Jool and, very nearly, an encounter with Eeloo (because of the long initial burn time a few ~10m/s correction burns were required). This is also a relatively short trip, requiring only about three years to catch up with Eeloo.

With Science For Eeloo on the way preparations are made for the launch of the crew vessel. Jebediah has been hard at work on this craft, one of his largest creations, and the booster to launch it into orbit. His satisfaction on observing the craft on the launch pad is evident (one guess as to who built the crew transport rover). Bill looks a little terrified, and Bob is less than thrilled about what he calls “the oversized, kraken bait.â€Â

In the 31st year of the Discovery Eeloo mission, and with the crew strapped in, the enormous boosters of the Eeloo Ultimate rocket rumble the ground as they ignite.

The first stage carries the rocket high into the atmosphere until all five engines give out. With the booster stage separated the orbital insertion motor ignites, making one continuous burn into an 85km orbit.

Now in orbit we can get a better look at the craft. It is powered by three main NERVAs which, due to Bob’s un-Kerbal-like fear of radiation, are only allowed for three burns: the initial ejection from Kerbin, the capture burn at Eeloo, and the final burn to come back home. All other burns will be carried out with the small, radial orbital maneuvering engines. For life support the vessel will require one crew container module for every year in space. This limits the craft to two crew containers and a maximum of two years in space due to mass restrictions. Through the window Bob takes one last glance at home.

With one long burn from the NERVAs and a few correctional maneuvers the craft sets off. A final, mid-course burn will set up the encounter with Eeloo after a little less than one year in transit.

After the mid-course correction Eeloo Ultimate is on course for a rendezvous with Eeloo, while Science For Eeloo begins its initial approach.

Once in a low orbit the research station is released and begins its descent. Due to the low TWR one continuous burn is required all the way down. After a rather harrowing impact (three of the legs were broken) the station deploys its antennae and lowers the ladder.

Next up the rover descends. This one went a little bit more smoothly, gently lowering the rover to the surface. The landing was off by a few kilometers, but this is a rover after-all, so it drove back to the research station and powered down to await the arrival of the crew. The stack mounted, color-adjustable lights for all of these crafts come from the Stack Inline Light mod from alexustas.

A few months later Eeloo Ultimate approaches the planet. Bob gets his first look at the ice-ball outside of his window. After a successful capture burn the crew gets a much closer view of the surface.

Oh dear, I think I broke it. To prepare for landing and to save weight for the return journey several components have to be separated then re-docked. One of the crew containers and the shroud are left in orbit while the rest of the ship re-assembles.

With the ship put back together Bill and Jeb EVA over to the descent module, which Jeb has christened the Terror Lander.

Bill is surprisingly calm as the Terror Lander transitions into initial-descent mode, Jeb on the other hand, is thrilled.

With its absurdly high initial TWR of around 18, the Terror Lander has no problem stopping on a dime to come in for a precision landing.

With the engines still cooling Bill and Jeb prepare for their first footsteps under the eerie red glow of the landing lights.

The crew are thrilled to be back on solid ground after a year cramped up in the ship.

The next day they set out on the rover for the highlands surrounding their landing site. Jeb is a little over-eager to get moving, taking advantage of the low surface gravity to pull some stunts.

Once they reach some of the white, powder coated ground they stop to take some samples with the rover’s Diggatron. After a long day of rovering around they return to the research station.

This newly improved model of the Diggatron also functions as an Injectotron, pumping surface samples into the research station’s sample port for further study.

When Jeb learned about the Injectotron he had his suit modified to allow direct injection of the surface samples into his nostrils (little known fact about Kerbals: their nostrils are actually right inside of their eyeballs, accessible through their giant pupils). He remained in a catatonic state for hours afterwards, but declared the experiment “totally worth it.â€Â

After a few more weeks on the surface the crew begin their preparations for liftoff. Eeloo Ultimate passes just in front of them after they attain orbit.

Unfortunately they came up a little short on fuel, so they have to take turns getting out and pushing to make the final encounter. Bob spots the approaching Terror Lander as the crew EVAs back over to the ship.

With the crew back onboard and the launch window approaching, the NERVAs are powered up one last time and the ship blast off for the return trip to Kerbin.

After another year in space the ship approaches home. A harrowing aerobraking maneuver puts them into a stable orbit around Kerbin.

After adjusting their orbit, the crew prepare for splashdown near the KSC. The engines separate to burn up in the atmosphere, while the crew capsule sails just over the KSC.

As the capsule splashes down near the island airfield the crew anxiously climb out to await a pickup.

And with that they have officially beaten Eeloo. Sending four rockets to the distant planet, two of which returned, and landing five crafts on the surface, and it only took 33 years.

Edited September 4, 2014 by DMagic
can't tolerate 10 month old typos

[thiosk]

Nicely done and with style. Great to see functional designs in action for an eeloo trip-- my own next target! I will probably spend some time on rover and lander design first... a recent lander of mine was a complete disaster!

Enjoyed the animated gifs immensely

[TheAwer]

Wow. All of these missions are jawdropping and 110% astounding. Your computer must be a monster. You used a ton of mods too.

How long did it take you to do the To Moho mission (IRL)? And you must have spent a lot of time posting it too.

+Rep for pure awesomeness (when I can tomorrow).

[DMagic]

Wow. All of these missions are jawdropping and 110% astounding. Your computer must be a monster. You used a ton of mods too.

How long did it take you to do the To Moho mission (IRL)? And you must have spent a lot of time posting it too.

+Rep for pure awesomeness (when I can tomorrow).

Thanks, I try pretty hard to keep part counts down so that things don't get too slow. Those stations in my Moho mission, for instance, were both around 100 parts. I mostly try to stay under 300 or so parts for all the crafts I have onscreen at once, or for launch. Sometimes I totally blow by that number though.

I've been trying recently to use fewer mods, usually just two or three parts mods per mission and then a few plugin mods (engineer, fairings, maneuver node improver). I'm also careful about deleting parts that I don't use, when I install KW or Kosmos I usually end up removing more than half the parts, that really helps keep load times and RAM usage down. And for the most part I always start new saves for different missions, I don't care about having persistent flags, or a bunch of useless probes littering planet surfaces and orbits. This also lets me clear out any old mods that I don't want to use anymore.

I don't like to think about it, but that Moho mission took somewhere around 200 hours to complete over the course of about five or six weeks. I didn't play KSP for about two months after that... I think my newer missions take much longer to post though. I'm much more careful about setting up pictures, and making those gifs can take a long time, especially when they need to be cropped or the image needs to be adjusted.

Nicely done and with style. Great to see functional designs in action for an eeloo trip-- my own next target! I will probably spend some time on rover and lander design first... a recent lander of mine was a complete disaster!

Enjoyed the animated gifs immensely

Thanks, these kinds of mission reports seem perfectly suited to gifs, even though I generally don't like them. I try to keep their size down and only post about 10 or so per page.

I sacrifice some efficiency to get things to look the way that I want, but I think it's worth it. Asparagus launcher designs tend to look kind of ugly, and I think they add a lot of unneeded complexity, too. Getting all of those stages to behave right and not cause instability or crash into something when they decouple can be a lot of trouble. That manned Eeloo craft for instance, 60 tons isn't exactly gigantic, but it's pretty big and by using asparagus staging I would have ended up with a really long, wobbly rocket during part of the launch. My design got around that though, and just dropped the entire booster stage all at the same time so it was never really unstable.

[DMagic]

Today I give you the Mun Arch Kethane Refinery and Fuel Depot. While I have always liked my Minmus Kethane base, I also feel that it had a number of flaws and could be greatly improved upon. Not wanting to simply recreate a different version of that base, I decided to locate my new base on the Mun and I figured that near one of the anomalies was a good place to put it. You don’t get those perfectly flat lakes as you do on Minmus, and it’s a bit tougher to land on the Mun, but it worked out ok in the end.

The mods used here are primarily Kosmos for the structural base components (those Balka crew tunnels are one of my favorite mod parts), the solar panel, and the cylindrical fuel tanks. udk_lethal_d0se’s large structural components for the habitation modules and spherical fuel tanks. And the Kethane parts, obviously.

There are also a number of mods used for other parts. KW is used for some structural parts and the boosters. Alexustas’ stack inline lights are used in a number of places. The SCANsat parts are used on a number of crafts for mapping. Engineer was used for all of my craft/flight info needs. Infernal Robotics was extremely helpful for making a system to dock the components together on the ground. And a few more for parts and plugins here and there.

Here’s a few more shots of the base in action and a breakdown of the components.

I have some pictures from the base planning and construction as well.

Here are some of the surveyor probes used to determine the best landing spot. The first is my ultra-low altitude scanner, circling the Mun at about 7.5km in an 85^o orbit. I used a lander to scout out a few of the anomalies but was ultimately stymied by the rough terrain around one of the Mun arches.

For the last arch I used a small rover to get a closer look at the surrounding area and find a suitable base site. The area just west of this arch is pretty flat and has enough space for a base before dropping off steeply into the nearby crater.

And now we have the launch for all of the base components. There were eight launches in all, ranging from the totally-reasonable, about 30 tons to LKO for the science and comms stations,

to the, “are you sure these boosters don’t need any struts?†launch of the habitation, kethane drills, and kethane depot modules at about 100 tons to LKO,

and finally to the “oh god, just get it into space†launch of the core module at about 230 tons to LKO and the “I don’t care how heavy it is, just keep strapping on boosters†launch of the two identical fuel depots.

Here are a few shots of the base construction. The core module was the first to launch, as it lacked any movement system on the ground. The kethane drill segment came next, using my top-mounted landing and extendable wheels system for putting it into place and docking. The landing system was then separated and blasted off to crash into the surface some distance away.

After a few more segments the base starts to look interesting. If you look really closely you can see that the decouplers are still attached to the top of the kethane drills on the left. Because I was stupid and did very little testing I managed to put those on upside down. Not wanting to be left with the blight of unnecessary parts I undertook the painful process of deleting those parts from the persistence file. This requires renumbering every part that comes after the decouplers and ensuring that every part has the correct connection references. It was not fun, test things first people.

The final two components are put into place. I got really good at precision landing with bulky, low TWR crafts doing all of this. I’m not very efficient about it, but at least I can do it now.

With the base complete I sent out the crew transport vehicle with a rover strapped onto the bottom. Once they arrive, Jeb, Bill, Bob and some other guy set off to study the Mun arch.

In answer to everyone’s question, yes the Mun arch does have kethane in it.

Jeb takes the opportunity to jet up to the top of the arch and claim it as his own. Unfortunately a tragic accident took the life of the four Kerbals. They got a little carried away and flipped their rover, smashing all four of them and sending the rover on an improbable, ballistic trajectory into a nearby crater. They will be mourned.

Here are a few detail shots of the completed base.

But wait, dear readers, we aren’t done yet. Don’t think I would frontload this post with all of the good stuff. For what use is a base full of fuel if it’s stuck on the ground? We need something to get all that stuff back into orbit. For that I present the Nostromo (ok, I know the Nostromo was just the tug, and this thing doesn’t really look like that or the big refinery ship it was pulling, but that’s somehow what I had in mind when I came up with this).

Coming in on the launchpad at just over 2900 tons it was powered by five of the largest, Griffon KW engines (there is a fifth booster hidden behind all of the flames in the center), sixteen of the low thrust, long duration Globe X5 SRBs and four of the high thrust, low duration Globe X5s for a total of around 900 parts. This was a take-a-break, find-something-else-to-do kind of launch, running at around 3 or 4 FPS.

After some tricky separations maneuvers (those internal SRBs are a little scary when they come off and bump into each other) the four remaining engines push the tanker most of the way into orbit and drain it down to about 12000L of fuel. The main orbital engines push it the rest of the way, eventually getting into a stable, 300km orbit around Kerbin.

Here are some detail shots, showing some of the six NERVAs used as orbital engines, and one of the four main landing engines. A network of forty RCS blocks provide control authority during flight, and help correct for any mass imbalance.

Here the command tower is visible in the center. The six large spherical tanks are flanked by seventy-six of the cylindrical tanks of various sizes and twenty RCS tanks. The tanker holds a total of 77328L of fuel and 11020L of mono-propellant. Two of the docking and guidance towers are also visible here, cutoff on the bottom left and in the distance near the center.

Here we can see the orbital pilot station and another of the guidance towers at the front of the tanker. The front-mounted fuel tanks are used to offset the mass of the NERVAs in the back. These use standard tri-couplers which don’t allow fuel crossfeed from the bottom, while all of the other tri-couplers have been modified to allow fuel flow.

I tried to make the struts come out decent and symmetrical (I couldn’t use actual symmetry placement most of the time) to avoid that strut-spammed look. And most of the utilities parts are hidden away in the middle; there are around thirty or so reaction wheels, several batteries and RTGs, and some foldable landing legs made out of the standard, mid-sized truss pieces and Infernal Robotics hinges.

After a three-burn transfer from Kerbin to the Mun the Nostromo begins its descent to the surface. By carefully coordinating the orbital engines, the main vertical thrust engines, and the RCS thrusters the tanker homes in on the Kethane refinery. Raycott Kerman gets a close view of the Mun arch from his perch at the rear guidance tower.

The Nostromo comes in for a very gentle landing, fine tuning its position with RCS thrust, and running out of fuel less than one meter above the surface; talk about a close call. The landing blocks performed admirably though, absorbing the impact of the now 190 ton tanker at a little under 1m/s.

With the tanker connected to the base through KAS pipes the refinery cranks up and begins producing fuel. The base is, unfortunately, not stable with a full load of fuel and kethane. It tends to develop a case of the death rattle and shakes itself apart after a minute or so. That’s no matter though, I can just start up everything and finish the fuel production and transfer during time-warp. TAC Fuel Balancer is supremely useful here, considering that I have seventy-six tanks to fill up.

Now that the tanker is fully fueled the crew begins preparations for liftoff. After Seebin Kerman detaches the fuel pipe he watches as the lumbering tanker, now over 1000 tons, begins to slowly rise.

Using a combination of the lift and orbital engines the tanker blasts off into a 50km orbit around the Mun. Around 25000L of fuel and 2000L of mono-propellant were used during liftoff, but there is still another 50000L of fuel remaining in the tanks, and around 9000L of mono.

With the Nostromo in orbit I’ll end with one final shot of the Mun Arch Kethane Refinery, taken just as the sun is setting on the horizon.

Edited December 3, 2013 by DMagic
Typos

[emfolkerts]

That’s probably the best base I have ever seen!

[DMagic]

That’s probably the best base I have ever seen!

Thanks, it's definitely my favorite construction. I could probably do without the overly complex, and performance killing, fuel tanker, but I like the base a lot.

[DMagic]

Have you ever wondered what happens to Kerbal prisoners? They don't seem to have any prisons, or buildings of any sort on the surface. Naturally they have come up with an appropriately Kerbal solution to the problem: the launchable Kerbal prisoner unit.

Offenders are loaded into capsules, placed on the launchpad, then pushed out onto a chute leading to the prison cells. The capsules are then blasted away, and the cap is lowered into place.

One rather sneaky convict, Lennie Kerman, managed to get onto the top of the prison unit. He won't escape punishment though. While he held on longer than expected, gravity eventually won, ending his poorly thought out escape plan and serving as a reminder to the others about what happens to those who don’t follow the rules.

Once in orbit the prisoners are sufficiently terrified.

After a few months in interplanetary space they arrive at the prison planet Eve. The high gravity and toxic atmosphere make this a natural choice for where to house undesirables.

Eve's dense atmosphere and the prison's high orbital velocity combine to provide a rather interesting atmospheric entry. Remarkably none of the prisoners were incinerated.

The final descent was comparatively calm. This also marks, somehow, my first ever landing on the surface of Eve, I think only Dres remains untouched by Kerbal feet.

The future looks bleak for these lost souls.

Bright lights and a barren landscape crush any thoughts of an escape.

Edited August 9, 2016 by DMagic

[DMagic]

It’s time for one last 0.22 mission.

Celebrating the awesomeness of KSP, the awesomeness of new planets, and the awesomeness of the Cassini mission to Saturn I made a tribute craft.

I used Krag’s Planet Factory, rbray89’s cloud and city lights plugin, damny’s Scansat with some of Milkshakefiend’s parts, Engineer, and procedural fairings. Pretty much all of the parts used are either stock, or modified versions of stock parts.

Now to get on with the mission. Here she is on the Launchpad (I love the light on the water tower), with the KSP version of the Titan IVB. I used some beefed up SRBs and a central liquid fueled engine with an upper stage for orbital insertion and ejection.

It was smooth sailing all the way into orbit. After fairing separation and orbital insertion the hi-gain antenna and three radio/plasma wave antennas were extended. You can also see the undeployed magnetometer boom near the hi-gain. The second stage still has about 1200m/s of Delta-V remaining which should be enough for the first burn.

Now the fun part begins. You can see below an overview of the mission plan; I’ll be relying heavily on gravity assists to push my orbit out to the distant planet Sentar.

First off is the ejection to Eve orbit. A burn at an Eve periapsis of about 130km will provide a boost to reach Jool orbit. Another slingshot there will throw the craft out to Sentar’s orbit. The inclination is unfavorable at this point, so another large burn will be necessary to change that and set up an orbital rendezvous the next time around. After all of that one final burn is necessary for orbital insertion at Sentar.

Here is a close up view of the first part of the journey. After an ejection burn from LKO of around 1100m/s and another 50m/s from correction burns (this transfer isn’t quite ideal because the positions of Eve and Jool need to lineup for these multiple gravity assists to work) the craft will approach Eve. A burn of about 800m/s will boost the craft into a Jool intercept.

With the second stage spent, the transfer stage burns over Eve to boost Sentini out to Jool’s orbit.

The red dashed line shows the path from Eve to Jool. Once there the craft will pass close to the orbits of Vall and Laythe. From there it will follow the yellow dashed line out to Sentar.

Getting a close view of Jool’s swirling clouds the probe continues its long journey. No burns necessary here.

The purple maneuver node below will expend about 1000m/s of Delta-V, match Sentar’s inclination, and put the craft on a path to rendezvous with the planet. After another six years in orbit, one final burn of about 500m/s will establish a stable orbit; no aerobraking is possible for the fragile Sentini probe.

After its long journey the probe approaches Sentar, the blue, ringed planet never before explored by Kerbals. The transfer stage makes its last burn before separating and flying back out into solar orbit. The final few m/s are provided by the probes onboard engines.

The Delta-V breakdown is as follows:

- ~1200m/s for the Eve transfer and corrections

- ~850m/s for the Jool transfer and corrections

- ~1000m/s for the final inclination change

- ~500m/s for the final insertion burn

- A total of around 3600m/s.

I have no idea what the Delta-V requirements are for a direct transfer to Sentar, but Eeloo requires around 4000m/s, so that number looks pretty good to me; the Eve to Jool slingshot didn’t really help me at all though.

Our first objective is a close up trip around the outermost moon, Thud. The moon’s gravity assist and a small burn will then put the probe on a course for Erin. With all of its sensors extended the probe tests out all of its systems on this first flyby.

Now Sentini approaches its primary target, the atmospheric moon Erin, which also appears to have stable liquid on its surface.

An initial course is plotted for the probe to pass through the moon’s lower atmosphere. The unpowered Kuygens probe is released to follow this trajectory, while Sentini readjusts its orbit to pass safely over the atmosphere.

Now is a good time to take a closer look at Sentini’s systems and sensors. In the first image you can see the probe’s main engines on the bottom. Around the bottom there are three RTGs to provide power, the three main reaction wheels are used to orient the craft, and four RCS thrusters provide power for orientation and minor course corrections.

The primary sensor board contains several telescopes and scanners. These are used to image the planet and its moons in a variety of spectra.

In the second image you can get a better look at the radio/plasma wave antenna (unfortunately I couldn’t think of a way to make a really long, narrow antenna like the real ones). The hi-gain antenna and magnetometer boom can be seen coming off of the left side of the image. There is another reaction wheel here, acting as a backup for the three primary wheels. The container on the right will be used to study the effects of Sentar's radiation and electromagnetic fields on the goo inside.

Another set of sensors is visible on the right. These are used to study Sentar’s magnetosphere, its ionosphere, and to measure charged particles from the atmosphere of the planet and some of its moons. The mono-propellant tank for the RCS thrusters is visible here too.

While Kuygens plummets through the atmosphere, Sentini conducts some mapping experiments. Many such close up flybys will be required to collect a more complete surface map for all of the moons.

Kuygens’ heatshield protects the vulnerable probe during its fiery descent to the surface. The lakes visible on the surface are most likely liquid kethane, kept stable by the moon’s thick atmosphere and its low temperatures. This has interesting implications for future mining missions.

Sentar hangs in the sky as the probe plunges further into Erin’s atmosphere.

Once the probe has passed through the upper atmosphere and shed some of its excess velocity the heatshield can be released and the parachute deployed.

Kuygens makes a soft landing, safely touching down on the surface. The ground appears to be made up of some loose, possibly viscous material, allowing the probe to sink slightly below the surface.

With Kuygens released Sentini carries on with its mission to study all of Sentar’s moons. Its next target is the small, ringed planet Ringle. Flying within the rings Sentini gets a very close view of the surface, passing just 5km above the rocky ground.

Next up is the moon Skelton. This moon circles Sentar in a highly inclined, retrograde orbit, indicating that it was most likely a rogue planet captured by Sentar’s high gravity.

The moon’s most striking feature is an enormous mountain, most likely the result of volcanic activity. Sentini passes over this peak, but the moon’s dense atmosphere prevents the probe from getting a closer look.

And finally, we take a closer look at Sentar itself. The blue-green gas giant has a dense ring system, warranting much further study.

After visiting all of the objects in Sentar’s system Sentini still has around 500m/s of Delta-V remaining, plenty to make repeat visits in the months and years to come.

Thanks for reading folks. Really though, everyone should at least read the Wikipedia article about Cassini linked to above. That thing is amazing. It was launched 16 years ago, it has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004 and it’s still going strong, and should continue to do so until at least 2017.

[Tw1]

I remember reading about Cassini's arrival. I was about ten or so.

Some very cool missions here.