Null Cycles - Epilogue - Updated 2014-04-13 (Image Heavy)

[Werwolf]

Bravo! Excellent read!

[Cydonian Monk]

Bravo! Excellent read!

Thanks! Hoping to have the last couple bits of this up in the next few days. Wrap up the Jool missions then an epilogue looking at some of the older relics floating around in the save.

[Cydonian Monk]

This is the End

The Jool Expedition

With all the noise at Eve I forgot to do the mid-course correction burns for the five ships bound for Jool. As a result they all arrived at a bit of an odd angle and had to waste some precious fuel for plane changes to hit their targets.

The first to cross Jool's SOI was the communications satellite, which I just left in a highly inclined, hundreds of days long orbit. That would be close enough to reach everything in the system should I turn my stock-only tweak of Remote Tech back on, which I've opted not to do. I apparently took no screenshots of this.

Next up came the three Joolian Moon probes and their landers... except the Tylo lander, which was left behind in the VAB. I managed to line up their aerocaptures almost perfectly, excluding the Vall lander who ended up a bit too far out.

I was able to get encounters for Laythe and Tylo quickly, while the Vall lander took a few orbits to meet its target. All were in place a dozen or so days before the Jool Jester and its crew were due to arrive.

As the probe landings were to be remote controlled from the Jester, I decided to wait until they were in the system. First to go was the Laythe probe, which was the more difficult of the two for targeting the landing. My intent was to put down on the equatorial island Brotoro uses as his base (since it has a nice view of Jool), so I burned directly opposite to lower the periapsis to 31km directly over the island. A total guess that turned out right.

Getting this down with power left over for holding it upright at landing was a bit tricky, and I had to stop transmitting while descending, discarding some of the upper atmosphere data.

In the end a near-perfect landing at an iconic Kerbal vacation spot.

Next up was the Vall lander. This one was easy - just point backwards and land somewhere. Vall in general just doesn't interest me much. Not sure if it's the odd color of blue or the general oddness of the moon, but it just screams "meh" to me. I suppose I could have tried to land near the henge, but that can wait for a future crew.

--

With the two probe landings complete it was time to set up the Jool Jester's orbital profile. The original plan for them was to flyby every moon, orbit some of them, and land on Pol and possibly Bop if fuel allows. Turns out fuel wouldn't have allowed it after the plane change (that I forgot to do a year ago), so I nixed the orbits, skipped Vall and Bop, and only landed on Pol.

The Jool aerocapture was set up to place the Jester into a Laythe intercept orbit. Using astrodynamics from Laythe I would then kick the orbit out to Tylo, from where I would get another boost out to Pol's orbit. Pol would represent the only landing site for this abbreviated mission. But first we had to do the aerocapture.

(Holy ablation, battman!)

Dipping behind the dark side of Jool was the first time the crew had been out of the sun in about 3 years. They completed the rest of their plane change maneuver and got set up for their first encounter with Laythe... which as it happens would have also shot them out of the system, and required another correction burn once at Laythe. The crew took plenty of good photos of the many storms on Laythe. They weren't lucky enough to catch any of the usually active volcanoes (as I was fighting with getting my volcano layers working with the new volumetric clouds), but saw plenty of large hurricanes.

After a short burn to bleed off some of the gelocity gained from their Laythe flyby, the Jester was set up for a Tylo encounter in just an orbit. I opted not to get too close to Tylo, as the Jester would have also been thrown out of the Jool system instead of just out to Pol, as intended. I'll need to come back some other time and visit this most improbable of moons.

The Pol encounter required a short burn at Apoapsis to set up the encounter and capture.

Once there and in orbit, Maclie transferred over to the lander and made his descent. This was just a tiny little lander, with a large part of the mass taken up by the (mostly) unnecessary twin docking ports on each end.

The landing site was, once again, no where terribly special. (Is there anywhere special on Pol? Or is it just one large blob of pollen?) I opted to land this one on IVA.

Maclie was certainly giddy to get out of the cramped spaceship and stretch his legs. Unfortunately he didn't get to stay on the surface for as long as he would have liked, and had to head up to the Jester on its next orbit. (The Jester was in a polar orbit, so waiting for more than one orbit would mean waiting for half a rotation of the planet.)

Once back in orbit Maclie said his goodbyes to the little lander, EVA'd over to the Jester, and got everyone ready to make the burn back home.... In several weeks. The plan for returning to Kerbin was to aerobrake and burn and to rendezvous with Kelgee station, just like the Eve Gambit. I opted for a 30km pass into Kerbin's atmosphere - just enough to bleed of a couple thousand m/s, but still shallow enough to both require a burn and stay out of the atmosphere.

--

From their launch to their return to Kerbin, the crew of the Jool Jester had been in space for 676 days. They lost contact with Kerbin about a week out from home, just as Albro and the Jebediahs had warned Maclie might happen. Kening had spent much of the trip making physical backups of orbital data by copying them to paper, in case of just such an event. The radio and much of the computer equipment were (mostly) dead, having had all their software erased in the strange glitch.

Kening: "So we knew this might be an issue, but there really isn't uch to worry about at this point. We're set up for our aerocapture, and should only need a short burn to put us into a 130km orbit to meet up with Kelgee Station."

Maclie: "Right. And the plane change can be done at the same time?"

Kening: "That's the plan."

Bilski: "Wait. Wait. Wait. What are the two of you going on about? You knew the computer would die? How?!?"

Maclie: "Jebediah told us."

Sonvan: "The crazy junkman that lives on that island off the coast of KSC?"

Maclie: "One of them, yes."

Sonvan (confused): "There's more than one crazy person on the island?"

Kening: "More than one Jebediah. Anyway, these..." Kening shoved a notepad towards Maclie, letting it float across the cabin until it hit Maclie in the face.

Maclie: "Ow!"

Kening: "Uhm, those are the latest orbital numbers for us and Kelgee Station. We still have manual control over the engines and attitude control systems, so all we need to do is follow the plan and we should have a perfect rendezvous. I doubt the radios will work from here on out, so we're basically flying in the blind."

Bilski: "What's wrong with the radio? It works physically, so all we need to do is switch over to manual tuning and we should be good."

Maclie: "Assuming there's anybody on the other end to talk to." Maclie spent a few second leafing through Kening's flight plan. "Ok, this'll work."

--

Aerocapture and the following plane change burn placed them into a nice intercept orbit with Kelgee Station. (One of these days I'll remember to do the plane changes out in interplanetary space where they're more efficient....) As they came up underneath the station they could clearly see it was still occupied. Someone inside flashed a message to them on the exterior lights, but nobody onboard had ever bothered to learn Morse Code. given the size of the ship (and the fact the Eve Gambit was still docked), Maclie decided to south moor of the station would be their best bet.

Kening: "That really is a sight to behold after all those years we've been away."

Maclie: "Seems like yesterday to me."

Kening: "Yeah, well at least you got to go play around on Bop for awhile."

Maclie: "And we're docked! Thank everyone for flying Jester Airways. Please be sure to tip your captain and flight attendants on the way off the plane."

Lars was the first to open the other side of the docking port and welcome the wayward six back home.

Lars: "Hurry! You guys are going to miss it!"

Kening: "Miss what?"

Lars: "Jeb's first launch!"

Sonvan (still confused): "The crazy junkman? From the island?"

Maclie: "One and the same, kid. One and the same. C'mon, let go check this out."

Maclie followed Lars into the station and up to the cupola module, where Jonrigh had rigged three of the cameras to be used as telescopes so they could watch the launch while Calbin was fighting with the radio to pick up the radio broadcast.

Maclie: "So, Lars, I take it Albro told you about this cycle nonsense?"

Lars: "Yeah, but he didn't need to. Remember that Mun mission I made back, what was it, a couple years now?"

Maclie: "Maybe."

Lars: "Well, I found all this junk at the landing site. An old lander, some car of some sort, and a bunch of flags. One left by this Jebediah guy. So when I bumped into an old guy named Jeb sometime later at KSC I asked him about it."

Sonvan (completely lost): "I give up. Too many Jebs."

Lars: "What's the deal with this guy? Anyway, turns out it wasn't the same Jeb. So he introduced me to the one that actually rescued that Hudwin character. And then they introduced me to another, and another, and, well, you've been there."

Jonrigh: "OK kerbs, we're about to pass over KSC."

Calbin: "Hey! There it is!"

So here, orbiting 130km above Kerbin, the most decorated and veteran crews of one cycle watched the first launch of the next.

--

And with that I leave this old save and its ten-second-long autosaves behind. The cycles for these poor kerbals will undoubtedly continue until the full version of KSP is released, and I'll probably continue to copy the craft from my new save into the old Null Cycles file from time to time. For now, though, I'm putting this weird, hard to explain, metaphysical manifestation of my insomnia behind and moving on to something a bit more normal. I'm planning to come back sometime over the weekend to do a "final tour" of all the craft from early in this save, such as things I launched during the demo and first few days of playing KSP. After that it's on to my next series of mission and engineering reports.

Thanks for reading!

[ElJugador]

Wow. I only have two questions - so this thread will no longer be updated? and - volumetric clouds? How? Rbray's plugin??

[Cydonian Monk]

Wow. I only have two questions - so this thread will no longer be updated?

Yep. I'm moving on to a completely fresh save and a fresh look on things, and juggling 130+ kerbals was getting... a bit odd. Just felt better to start absolutely fresh.

and - volumetric clouds? How? Rbray's plugin??

You got it! (Though not in the shot above. That's just form the regular 4k Blue Marble cloud pack.)

Edited April 11, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[ElJugador]

Yep. I'm moving on to a completely fresh save and a fresh look on things, and juggling 130+ kerbals was getting... a bit odd. Just felt better to start absolutely fresh.

Okay. *sob**sob*

[Tangle]

Is it a new save as in just one save, or are you doing another cycles?

[Cydonian Monk]

Nope. Working in a completely fresh save. Whether it's a new cycle or not is up for debate. Though I don't intend to connect it to this universe, so....

One of the biggest things about that save is it takes nearly 500MBs of RAM once loaded. Anything weird goes wrong and I hit the 4GB cap (which wasn't lifted for OS-X depute the new version of Unity.) I'm not sure if it's because of all the bits and bobs things like ModuleManager and TAC added that are still in the file (had to delete all the DeadlyReentry modules as they were causing crashes), or if it's just because the thing is so old. And there are quite a few "broken" landing legs and antennas from the 0.21 / 0.22 conversions.

So a fresh start will be good in a number of ways.

[Tangle]

For a new cycle, I meant "will it be its own set of cycles?"

[Cydonian Monk]

That's not my intent, but depending upon how things progress with the game I might reset the tech tree every now and then.

[Cydonian Monk]

Epilogue - A Tour of the Debris Field

Let7s take a quick tour of the "debris field" before I move on to my new series of mission reports. Aside form a handful of saves from 0.20.2 that I lost, nearly everything that I've launched in KSP since playing the demo is in this persistence file. At any give tim eI can just load it up and take a look back at how far things have come and how my skills have changed and improved over the last year of gameplay. Unfortunately the first craft which I landed on the Mun and Minmus were part of the lost 0.20.2 saves, and are not included here.

Let's start with the "First Kerbal to Survive" from the demo: Thomlock Kerman. Thomlock launched aboard the Hawk 3-2 on May 12th of 2013. Not only was he the first Kerbal to survive launch, and to achieve orbit (sorta), he was also the first Kerbal to achieve escape velocity. Somewhat later, after I had move on from the 0.18.3 Demo, Thomlock also became the first Kerbal to achieve escape velocity from Kerbol. Apparently back in the demo he had achieved sufficient escape velocity form Kerbin to fly-by Eve, and gravity-whipped his way to Alpha Centauri. At the time I designed the Hawk 3-2, I had no idea if kerbals had tethers, jetpacks, or what, and felt the need to blanket the capsule in grabs. So, as someone commented once, "At least he won't fall off."

Moving on to 0.20.0 we find the first probe I successfully placed into orbit. For all of the Demo (obviously) and all of 0.19 I had only launched crewed spacecraft. Then I discovered probe cores and the real fun started. Those of you that are very new to KSP will not recall a time when probes didn't have built-in torque. Everything we launched needed RCS to maneuver (which is as it should be anyway). That is reflected in the designs of my Orb series of craft (of which there are 7 or 8). Seen here is the first successful of the series, Orb 1, in orbit around Kerbin. Thanks to 0.22 and the antenna change, those transmitters are locked open until I try to transmit something.

Here's an odd thing I discovered orbiting the Mun: Phantom 0. Those of you that have read the entire thread are familiar with my "forgotten" Ion probes, namely the Phantom 1, Nomad 1, and Wayward 1. Well, apparently I really did forget about another of them - the Phantom 0. I didn't bother trying to send this one out into the void, and will let it sit here as a monument to optimism. Besides, ion drives are a bit of an overpowered joke now.

And speaking of things forgotten in orbit around the Mun: A Kerbal! And a Jebediah at that! Jebediah from the Third cycle was launched aboard the Kestrel 3 on May 30th of 2013, and promptly forgotten. For some reason I had him marked as "unable to return: insufficient fuel." As you can see, not only does he have enough fuel to return, but he would probably make it out to Duna. No clue why I thought he was stuck. Perhaps one of the many conversions between 0.20 and 0.23 added some fuel? Maybe I'll fly him out to the Mun KARTE station sometime. (He's in a prograde orbit after all, just like the station.)

Also speaking of the Mun, let's take a quick tour of the litter that's strewn around at the Armstrong Monument. (The place I call Monument Valley.) Here's an overview map (facing north) showing the landing sites I can remember. (There were a few others from my Apollo 11 reenactment that aren't noted.)

First up is the "Cuairt 1" descent section debris. Jeb landed here in June of 2013 on the first "official" Mun landing. Of course by this time Hudwin, Ronton, Bill and Lobree had already landed on the Mun in my test "SkunkWorks" save. (And Lobree had already died shortly after leaving the surface when he hit the side of a crater on the far side of the Mun.) This descent stage was part of my 1-kerbal Mun lander, and landed during Cycle 8.

Here's one of the Eagle descent stages from my Apollo 44 reenactment.

This is a strange little probe, either from the Eighth or Ninth cycles. There were a couple of these here at one point, but save-game rust has claimed the rest. Actually, probes and debris falling through the surface of the Mun has been a huge issue with this save. At one time everything here was lost and I had to go back and restore most of it from an earlier copy of the save.

Yet another Cuairt 1 lander, this time from Cycle 9. Once again landed by Jebediah, this time on September 7th, 2013.

And the most recent addition to the debris field: The Mun Visitor descent stage, turned "monument Valley Science Station." At one time this had a camera that looked towards the Armstrong Monument, but I had to jettison that to make this save 100% stock.

I've covered the three other most visited sites on my Mun in posts above, so lets move on to some craft that I've not talked about. First up is the Capall ULV, the first of my Mun rovers. I'm not actually sure when I landed this, but I suspect it was sometime around Cycle 8. This little guy is down the crater from the Mun Arch north of the East Crater, and is permanently stuck there as it doesn't have enough traction to make it back up the hill. Thanks, 0.21 meteor swarm!

Another victim of the 0.21 Meteor Swarm is Hudwin's first Rothar. Back in my test game I landed Ronton and Hudwin within 8kms of each other, so I decided to send a few rovers up for them to ride around on. The larger of the two was taken back to his landing site by Hudwin after Ronton went back to orbit, but the older one was left behind. This are was once flat, but has since been completely upheaved by space rocks and procedurally-generated craters. Hudwin's base is just over the top of the hill on the top right, while the remains of Ronton's descent stage are down the hill to the left.

The remains of Ronton's lander. It skidded down the hill for several minus, breaking pieces off in violent fashion before mostly coming to a stop.

There's quite the museum piece out in Minmus Orbit - a complete and working MEM-203 series two-kerbal lander. This is Cuairt 4, as used by Obble and Al to land on Minmus way back in Cycle 9 (0.21.2) on September 22nd, 2013. Immediately after "Bob and Kirk Crash the Mun Party," in fact, and last used during the construction of Camp Mint. Given that several other things have flung themselves out of Minmus orbit over the last several versions, I'm surprised to see this little guy is still there.

So where do I put the crews from the previous cycles? At the Giddy Goo Krashing Klub, of course! This glorified RV park is on the beach just over the hill to the south of KSC. Every kerbal from older cycles that isn't trapped in space or otherwise occupied is located here.

You've already seen the inside of the Goo above, but here's a shot of the entire bar structure. I'll probably be using constructs such as this for bases in the future, as it proved fairly easy to fly over and land.

And that brings us to the end of our path. There are quite a few other things floating around in the Null Cycles universe, but I'm going to leave the tour here. As of the end of the game there are 56 pieces of debris, 110 probes, 6 rovers, 3 landers, 7 ships, 5 stations, 15 bases, and 76 flags still active. No idea on the total launch count, but I could probably add that up at a later date. As a parting gift, here is a screenshot of every planet I've landed on or placed a craft into orbit around, starting with Kerbol.

Kerbol

Moho

Eve

Gilly

Kerbin

Mun

Minmus

Duna

Dres

Jool

Laythe

Vall

Tylo

Pol

Finally, thanks to all of you that have commented and provided reputation over the course of these cycles. Also a huge thanks to all for reading, and I hope you enjoy what I've got lined up next. That's all or now!

[Andem]

I suddenly have a lot more insight into forgotten space program now... reading all of you're old mission reports, @Cydonian Monk, and they are phenomenal!

[Cydonian Monk]

15 hours ago, Andem said:

I suddenly have a lot more insight into forgotten space program now... reading all of you're old mission reports, @Cydonian Monk, and they are phenomenal!

Thank  you.  

I'm still amazed most of the craft I launched in these old saves still work. Sure, the landers have had their legs broken and the aircraft their wings clipped, and now the flags are all being knocked down, but this game has some serious backwards compatibility. I can't load the saves for some other games that I started last week, let alone two years back.