[CLOSED] Kerbin and Beyond: a Maturing Space Program

[Northstar1989]

THIS THREAD IS CLOSED, AND A NUMBER OF THE MORE RECENT IMAGES HAVE BEEN LOST FOREVER (THANKS TO IMGUR). IT'S FINISHED. KAPUT. PLEASE SEE MY NEW THREAD, "KERBIN AND BEYOND: A NEW BEGINNING" IF YOU WISH TO CONTINUE TO FOLLOW MY MISSIONS IN KSP.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86535-Kerbin-and-Beyond-A-New-Beginning

APOLOGIES,

NORTHSTAR

Kerbals love exploring space. They love exploring it so much that they developed their first rockets before they developed wheels!

Already, brave Kerbal explorers have set foot on the Mun, Minmus, and most of Kerbal's biomes (excluding the Tundra and Badlands, if I have the second name correct, which are both harder-to-find with a low-res orbital map...) They've designed aircraft that can circumnavigate Kerbin TWICE (image below), and they've sent probes off towards Duna and Eve (neither has yet arrived, but see images below). Oh, and they also placed a fuel depot in orbit of Kerbin to facilitate heavier missions (images below)- and plan on putting another identical one high in orbit of the Mun.

EXTRA PICS in SCREENSHOTS thread (hasn't been updated in a long while though)

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57508-Kerbin-and-Beyond-a-Maturing-Space-Program

Double-Circumnavigation Jetliner (designed for the Kerbal Airliner Challenge)

DUNA Probe

EVE Probe

Fuel Depot (note the KAS winches for fuel-transfer)

Now, however, as three brave Kerbal explorers (Enrick- the pilot, Jerbo, and Neddred, from left to right) stand on yet another biome of the Mun (Highlands biome- picture below), the question arises- where to next? What should they do when they get there?

(For those who were curious- the lander only holds one Kerbal, but two more rode down on the rovers. They can get back into orbit by re-attaching the commands seats from the rovers to the lander- using KAS.)

I've developed this thread to try and solicit good/creative/interesting mission ideas. I've developed quite a bit of skill in rocketry over several months playing KSP, though I still mostly launch my payloads straight up- as I only recently developed my first spaceplane (images below).

I haven't yet actually landed on any planets outside the Kerbin system with anything more than a couple light probes on Duna and Ike in a previous save (none yet in this one- the last one was unmodded Career Mode, and I deleted it after starting my current modded Career mode save), but I could easily send a manned mission anywhere in the solar system- I've sent at least 8 or 9 orbital probes, manned orbital labs, fuel tankers, and fuel depots (tankers to refill the fuel depots, in prep for planned manned missions, in previous saves- now deleted), probably more, to the Jool, Duna, and Eve systems in previous saves- though the labs all got eaten by a couple universe-crash bugs shortly after arrival- so I never got to attempt an EVA-only landing on Pol from one of the Jool labs- which I was planning.

Updated Mods List:

Kerbal Attachment System v0.4.5 (useful for transferring fuel w/o hard docking, and in-field minor modifications to spacecraft and rovers)

B9 Aerospace R4-0c (the larger wings are indispensable)

Procedural Dynamics v0.7 (aka. Procedural Wings- the customizability and size of wings it allows is unimaginable- now I can design EXACTLY what I want/need)

Stretchy Tanks v0.2.2 (same idea- customizability and scalability- but with fuel tanks)

Firespitter Mod v6.1.1/Pre3 [REDUCED] (I love the electric propellers- extraterrestrial aircraft just became a lot more feasible!)

Novapunch 2.03a (My computer is very slow/weak- so the larger diameter tanks/engines help a LOT with reducing heavy launch platform part counts) with TEXTURE REDUCTION

Multipanels 1.0 (A tiny mod that adds scaled-up static solar panels. They are proportionally heavier and larger, but save on part count. Saves FPS mostly.)

NearFuture 0.33 (Decent mod- a little over-simplified and unbalanced compared to, say, KSP Interstellar- but still very cool/realistic- as much as KSP ever gets)

KSP Interstellar v0.10.1 (AMAZING mod- adds a ton of features, especially many focused on realistic and difficult resource extraction. Beats Kethane Mod hands-down for long-term mission sustainability- at least as far as realism and greater difficulty go...)

Krag's PlanetFactory Nov8 2013 version (first mod EVER to add new planets and moons to the game, that aren't just re-textured versions of the ones Squad made. I GREATLY look forwards to exploring them- but they are analogs for Saturn- "Sentar", big comets like Haley's Comet- "Ascension", and a few dwarf planets mostly- so they're much harder to reach than the original destinations... Off-world bases should come in handy here though...)

Kethane Pack 0.8.4 (this is a new one for me- I'll have to see how I like being able to mine methane, *cough*, Kethane all over the place- even places I shouldn't realistically find it, like the Mun... It DOES enable Extraplanetary Launchpads' ore-mining though...)

Extraplanetary Launchpads v 3.7 (it's not as easy/cheaty as you may be led to believe- at least not if you play it legit in Career Mode like I do. The tech nodes to unlock it are pretty advanced, and the infrastructure it requires is HEAVY. The rockets aren't free once you can build them either- you still have to haul every last ton of Dry Mass to the launchpad from Kerbin as the "RocketParts" resource, and ALL the fuel the new craft will require too... You can also mine "Ore", much like Kethane, which can be refined into "Metal" and then into "RocketParts")

Orbital Construction Re-Redux (shares the "RocketParts" resource with ExLchnpds, but without the need for all the heavy infrastructure for ground construction... May sound easier- but this is realistic- it's actually much easier to build large, massive things like rockets in zero-gravity environments in real life...)

Utilities:

TAC Fuel Balancer v2.1 (a simple utility- it adds the ability to launch with empty tanks, partial fills, etc.- and a better system for balancing you fuel tanks in-flight)

Ferram's Kerbal Joint Reinforcement v1.7 (ESSENTIAL until the next update stabilizes joints, and hopefully physics loads. I only added this just before establishing my mountaintop launchpad [see page 13] and I'm glad I did. Before adding this mod, I was having a lot of trouble with ships inexplicably exploding or losing parts when landed, Kerbals glitching into said ships or the ground and exploding, etc. Not nearly as often any more. Once again, an ESSENTIAL mod for KSP in its current state as of 0.23)

MechJeb v2.1.1.0 DevBuild #168 (useful if my computer is being too laggy to fly a craft properly, or if I just don't want to be bothered making that hour-long burn for an ion probe...)

MechJeb/RemoteTech for All (I'm only using the wildcard utility to add MechJeb2 to all my cockpits- the last thing I need on my laggy computer is an extra part...)

Kerbal Alarm Clock v2.7.0 (Useful when I have 6-7 ships en-route to Duna at the same time, and I don't want to miss a SOI transition!)

Active Texture Management Texture-Compressor Plugin (sort of a utility- compresses and reduces all textures in the game, including those of mods. Takes less RAM memory to compensate for reduced textures by running at full-res than to run game normally on half or quarter-res.)

I eagerly await new and exciting ideas.

SPECIAL MENTION: I feel Krag's Planet Factory is important enough it deserves a shout-out for the link. I think EVERY player should install it- even if you normally only play stock. The vanilla game is sadly poor in planets and moons to explore- and this adds more variety...

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1q008p/expansionkrags_planetfactorysentar_system/

P.S. I won't beg for reputation points- but don't forget that if you like this thread, you can "award" me reputation for it- which helps to show my dedication to this game.

Regards,

Northstar

Edited July 18, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

In a move the wisdom of which is yet to be revealed, I have added the following mods: (and backed up my savegame)

TAC Fuel Balancer (Utility)

KSP Interstellar Mod (extremely futuristic technologies- more advanced and EXPENSIVE than even the NearFuture Mod, I think of it as a sort of far-off future mod...)

I'm also toying with adding the HOME and/or Kethane mods... Oh, and MechJeb, once they work out the bugs in the current version. I'm worried about what the Kethane mod will do to my already laggy game though (for that matter, I'm worried about KSP Interstellar for the same reasons)...

Basically, I'm going for resource gathering and expansion of my interstellar reach. Especially with new, more distant locations to visit thanks to the PlanetFactory mod...

Still looking for new ideas though. Is anyone reading this???

[Specialist290]

Rest assured you've gotten the attention of at least one reader. Looks like you've put a lot of thought into this

A manned mission to Duna is a pretty simple "there and back again" interplanetary trip -- not too demanding if you've put things on the Mun, since it's only a little larger and its atmosphere isn't really thick enough to hinder an ascent. After that, other popular choices include "mini-tours" of the Jool system.

Regardless, I'll be looking forward to see what you come up with. Keep up the good work!

[Galane]

Four things you can do which will often help a lot with a slow system.

1. Set texture resolution to half. Vehicles still look very good but the ground textures get pretty blurred.

2. Turn off antialiasing. So what if you're flying a jagged orbit (and everything else) your FPS will go up.

3. Turn off terrain scatter. It's only eye candy you can't touch.

4. Turn off the VAB and SPH crew. These guys can walk right through a Mainsail engine. That's creepy!

[Northstar1989]

Four things you can do which will often help a lot with a slow system.

1. Set texture resolution to half. Vehicles still look very good but the ground textures get pretty blurred.

2. Turn off antialiasing. So what if you're flying a jagged orbit (and everything else) your FPS will go up.

3. Turn off terrain scatter. It's only eye candy you can't touch.

4. Turn off the VAB and SPH crew. These guys can walk right through a Mainsail engine. That's creepy!

1. Been using 1/4th resolution for a long time now. Still looks great (I don't really notice a difference unless I set it to 1/8th res)

2. I have antialiasing set down to 2x. The jagged edges really bother me, but 2x is fine for me.

3. The "Scatter Enabled" box is unchecked, and the density set down to 10%- as I sometimes still seem to encounter a little scatter regardless.

4. VAB/SPH lag is a complete non-issue for me, even when editing computer-crashing part counts that kill my FPS once they make it to the launchpad/runway. See below.

My game isn't laggy at all in the SPH or VAB. It's most laggy on the ground- and gets exponentially less so the further I get from a thick atmosphere. i.e. Duna isn't laggy at all even near "sea level", Kerbin is quite a bit so on the ground- but far less in the upper atmosphere, and not at all above about 120,000 meters; and Eve is so laggy on the ground it's nearly unplayable for me (I am *NEVER* setting up a base there anyways, given the atmospheric density and gravity, so whatever. It will only affect a couple probes and manned missions there for !SCIENCE!) I think it has something to do with the rendering of the horizon and terrain in an atmosphere- since my FPS are MUCH better if I face the camera straight up, and to a lesser degree if down into the ground...

Glad to see you've been following Specialist. I've already sent several probes, tankers, and even permanent space stations to the Jool and Duna systems in previous saves. I just never landed anywhere in the systems- partly because I tend to *VERY* carefully engineer my rockets (no 20-tank lag machines for me- I find I can often pack in way more delta V than I need anyways with a carefully designed rocket that carries no excess weight and stages in a clever manner- and maybe a little orbital refueling...), and I spend a LOT of time designing efficient lander-equipped missions when I make them...

I am currently working on an efficient design to deliver an orbital science lab (from KSP Interstellar- it generates science at a very slow rate, and only becomes available near the very end of the tech tree- it appears it should be most useful for reaching the super-expensive nodes it adds a couple tiers after the tree normally ends) to Laythe orbit. So far, I tested using the Near Future mod's plasma magnetoplasodynamic thrusters (impressed by its 24 kN thrust and ion engine-like ISP's), but found that even a single thruster burns through Rockomax-64 sized hydrogen tanks at an incredible rate, due to the *very* low density of the mod's "HydrogenGas" fuel... So unless I want to pack about 80 of the largest Hydrogen tanks into a single rocket (which many tanks would still only weigh about 0.8 tons in total- full), and probably have to refuel them all once, getting a relatively heavy payload (more than 5 tons- the Science Lab alone is 3.5) to the Jool system in a reasonable amount of time using that system is out of the question...

Edited November 11, 2013 by Northstar1989

[Specialist290]

Glad to see you've been following Specialist. I've already sent several probes, tankers, and even permanent space stations to the Jool and Duna systems in previous saves. I just never landed anywhere in the systems- partly because I tend to *VERY* carefully engineer my rockets (no 20-tank lag machines for me- I find I can often pack in way more delta V than I need anyways with a carefully designed rocket that carries no excess weight and stages in a clever manner- and maybe a little orbital refueling...), and I spend a LOT of time designing efficient lander-equipped missions when I make them...

I sympathize. People would probably be surprised to hear that I haven't yet even visited every planet myself yet from the way I sometimes talk, but I tend to take a rather measured approach to designing rockets and running missions myself.

Sounds like you have some rather ambitious plans in the works. I'll look forward to seeing how those unfold.

[Northstar1989]

I sympathize. People would probably be surprised to hear that I haven't yet even visited every planet myself yet from the way I sometimes talk, but I tend to take a rather measured approach to designing rockets and running missions myself.

Sounds like you have some rather ambitious plans in the works. I'll look forward to seeing how those unfold.

Thanks for the support! I wouldn't exactly call mine a slow and measured approach (I landed on Minmus before I even landed on the Mun- thanks to a fortuitous gravity assist that put what was supposed to just be a Munar flyby on an intersect with Minmas...), but just a carefully-engineered one. Most of my missions carry far more Delta V than they need (which I sometimes use to add on extra destinations- such as Ike on a Duna mission, or Gilly with my Eve probe), and I tend to obsessively see how little non-fuel mass and how few parts I can use in my rockets...

I've decided to add two more mods in, by the way (about to see if my save still loads up correctly with it installed)

OrbitalConstruction Re-Redux r1.1

Extraplanetary Launchpads v3.3

These mod adds the ability to construct rockets in-orbit or on other planets *AFTER YOU SEND THE NECESSARY PARTS*, which are a resource that can be transferred, like fuel or Monopropellant. For that matter, this version also requires you separately send up any necessary fuels- the RocketParts resource is only useful for the Dry Mass parameter of a rocket... (think of it as the metal and electronics and stuff that makes up the solid parts of a rocket)

This OrbitalConstruction version also has the ability to land the spacedock-marked ships on other planets, and launch rockets from them in a similar manner (although the rockets don't spawn right next to the docks- they spawn a few km up, and magically levitate down to the near the space dock, to avoid clipping/explosion issues). Useful, and non-cheaty. You still have to haul all the mass and fuel out- just you assemble it on-site. I could have just gone with OrbitalConstruction, and used its planetary launch feature- however it doesn't come with a proper launchpad.

While I can see constructing ships in-orbit with nothing but maybe a few structural trusses and a small manufacturing crew (not technically required- but I'll roleplay them in to be sure), I feel that there should be a proper (and heavy- which adds difficulty) launchpad on the ground, since it can be uneven- and to simulate the ground construction infrastructure, which would be much heavier than orbital infrastructure in real life (in-orbit construction, while not really utilized in real life, should in theory be easier and require lighter infrastructure- it's easier in many ways to build massive rockets in zero-G environments, as you don't have to hold things up, just still...) Of course, I might still just use the (much lighter) OrbtlCnstrctn docks for near-zero-G environments like Gilly, Pol, or Minmus- just not for higher-gravity environments like the Mun, Duna, or Laythe... Ahhh roleplaying.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

I present, my next major projects I've gotten off the ground so far (also, my Mun Rover is currently sitting on the steep edge of a large crater I can't safely descent into. I'm meaning to circumnavigate it to a safer degree of slope, and descend for possible Science points... So I've also got that waiting for me to get back to at the moment)

First of all, my Experimental Nuclear Science Laboratory (or Nuclear Science Lab for short).

Putting nuclear science to greater use than just propelling rocket engines, my brave Kerbals decided to strap themselves to a 2.5 meter nuclear reactor for a couple months or more and see what they could learn from the experience. Or, well, maybe see what they could discover about nuclear science in the ship's Science Lab module (from KSP Interstellar). With the new R&D system in KSP, the mod's science lab now produces science points that go towards tech nodes to upgrade the propulsion and energy systems it offers. Not quite sure how you best retrieve the Science points yet though, since the lab appears to be too large and heavy to easily land back on Kerbin. I'll have to see if I can transmit the data with the ship's antenna once I have a few science points saved up... If nothing else, I guess this will be a learning experience- though advice from anyone more experienced at playing with KSP Interstellar mod would be greatly appreciated.

In other news, my Kerbals also had a very eco-friendly idea. Instead of ruining Kerbal's environment launching rocket after rocket into orbit; only to design the launches for the boosters to fall back to the planet and be obliterated, and leave further up transfer stages littering the orbital planes until I decide to shoot them down with missiles (read "Terminate" everything I don't need anymore to save FPS/lag)- how about if we recycle the metal frames of the rockets, and reuse some of the mass to eventually build new ships in orbit?

In keeping with this idea, my green-conscious Kerbals (hey, eco-friendliness is in their skin, right? Or maybe that's just a love of all the imaginary money they'll save by doing this...) have designed and built their first "Scrapper Ship".

Equipped with a front-mounted "Large Recycling Bin" (I may have the part-name a bit off here) from the Extraplanetary Launchpads mod, and a Medium Parts Module from the Orbital Construction mod; this craft is capable of scooping up orbital debris at LOW speed (if you decide to design a ship like this, don't try it at high speed- either your recycling ship, or the debris, or both, will explode- depending on their relative mass values) and recycling them for a rather substantial portion of their Rocket Parts cost.

Already, by recycling an abandoned design of the Nuclear Science Lab (the one I was working on earlier- with the Plasmodynamic thruster that ate through its fuel supply way too quickly to be useful- and a bunch of then worthless super-heavy battery banks to support it) I had left in orbit- after transferring the Kerbals to the newer version pictured above by EVA of course- I was able to recover approximately 2,885 Rocket Parts from the front section of the ship (it had a 2.5 meter reactor, a Science Lab, and a ton of battery banks- don't expect these kinds of returns from your average-sized rocket payload), three of its drop tanks, and I think a used sustainment stage I found lying around in orbit. I was also able to refuel its fuel tanks just as it ran out of fuel, from leftover fuel in the decommissioned Nuclear Laboratory (I had a KSP attachment port on the ship for refueling, and couple of winches on the Scrapper- as well as a couple extra attachment ports that I could have detached from the Scrapper and re-attached to any fuel tanks lacking a KSP port if I wanted...) before I scrapped the main section of the ship- but left the completely full fuel tanks in orbit so I could drain them later, rather than scrapping them then and losing all the fuel in the process...

One other note on the Scrapper. I used TAC Fuel Balancer to launch it with an only 50% full Parts Module (5000/10000 Rocket Parts). This was absolutely essential to get it to work right. Otherwise, I would have needed a super-heavy lifter stage just to get it to orbit efficiently (a single completely full Medium Parts Module weighs *over 25 TONS*), and wouldn't have had any free space on the ship to store the ELP/OC mod Rocket Parts from the recycling operations...

My next priority, of course, is to establish an orbital Parts-Warehouse/Spacedock, at which to store my Rocket Parts and construct new ships- since I already filled my Scrapper to more than 3/4th capacity with my recycling profits and the launch load parts- and otherwise I'm just going to waste a lot of fuel just hauling all that weight around chasing the occasional orbital booster (even with a Fusion Nuclear Propulsion Engine from the Near-Future mod: which is basically just like a more compact stock nuclear engine with higher thrust and a slightly improved TWR). For a reminder, a full Medium Parts Module weighs in at a little over 25 tons- so I estimate I'm already hauling around 19 tons of scrap metal (aka Rocket Parts) around in that tiny little ship...

Edited November 12, 2013 by Northstar1989

[Specialist290]

Looks like you're making some very respectable progress. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

[Northstar1989]

My Kerbals have been very busy. After orbiting a Scrapper/Recycler ship around Kerbin, the next obvious step was to send up a Space Dock where the scrap could be turned back into ships again. Being Kerbals, though, they outdid themselves in this- and I ended up sending a rather large initial base to Kerbin orbit. Getting this huge thing off the ground in a single launch was probably one of the most difficult things I've ever successfully accomplished in KSP this far... It wouldn't have even been possible if not for emptying most of its fuel tanks before launch with TAC Fuel Balancer.

As you can see, she's a beauty. Rather large, capable of acting both as an orbital science lab for Science production and depleted Uranium Hexafluoride reprocessing (both capabilities provided by KSP Interstellar, as well as the Science Lab part itself); as a dock for orbital construction of small spacecraft using salvaged scrap ("RocketParts") collected by the Scrapper/Recycler ship; and as a substantial fuel depot for passing ships (especially the Scrapper ship- which wouldn't be able to operate for long in orbit without a nearby fuel depot and scrap repository); this spacedock is my largest and most important creation in KSP yet. Too bad I still haven't come up with a good name for her...

Given her size and capabilities, it's likely I'll send up an orbital tug (a design from before the OP which I haven't used much) and drag my older fuel depot to orbit around the Mun. Here's an image of the tug I designed for moving my earlier model of depot, by the way. Ignore the bottom part- which is just a lifter stage- the tug is the top part with the upside-down thrusters (the lander can is also constructed upside-down, so I just switch control to it after detaching from the lifter stage). She's a front-end tug- meaning she pulls cargo behind her rather than attempting to push it from behind- after a KAS winch lock is established, of course (otherwise, the cargo will go swinging widely, and the pair will become completely uncontrollable- possibly even disintegrating from the centripetal forces involved. Trust me on this, I've already been there with a fuel tanker I tried to use as a tug for an earlier Mun mission- before I knew about KAS which-locks and what would happen...)

Also, my Kerbals have been busy as ever pursuing !Science!. In pursuit of this goal, they launched another sensor satellite (I launched an earlier version to Kerbin polar orbit before the start of this Mission Report, with a gravity scanner and thermometer to obtain readings. Then I eventually de-orbited her.) to scan the magnetic fields near Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus (a scientific instrument for scanning magnetic fields, that becomes available very late in the tech tree, was added by KSP Interstellar- truly a very interesting and useful mod). The satellite hasn't made it past its initial parking orbit yet, though, so those images will be meat for another posting in the future...

Also, because I know how this forum works (it's all about the pictures), here's an image from the VAB of the launch vehicle I used to get my spacedock to orbit. Note that the whole contraption will do a flip at about 6000-8000 meters and nose-dive into the ground if the spacedock's tanks aren't drained first, and the solid rocket boosters aren't launched with only about 60% of their maximum fuel load (all with TAC Fuel Balancer. Note that the SRB's still caused the craft to begin a nose-flip towards the end of their burn time- just as they burn out and are decoupled. It must have been a very nerve-wracking experience for my Kerbals, since the nose angle briefly dipped to about level with the horizon when this happened..)

By the way, yes, that's a 5 meter stage on the bottom. From the Novapunch2 pack. Way better for my FPS and more realistic than strapping 4 Rockomax Jumbo stacks on Miansails together for an equivalent lifting power... (twice the diameter ==> 4 times the cross-sectional area)

Somewhere in between all this excitement, my Kerbals made another test-flight of my first-generation spaceplane (from the original post) Kerbals, being Kerbals, though, they decided to try for a little too high of an apoapsis- and as a result, ended up stranded in orbit. Not content to leave them to their fates though, I had them jump out and thrust to some of my other orbital craft by EVA. One made it to the Scrapper ship (which has a crew capacity of 2, but launched with just one Kerbal) and the other made it to my Nuclear Science Lab (which also had an extra crew slot- as I only filled 3 of the 4 seats on launch.) It would have made for some awesome storytelling pics, so I'm sorry I didn't think to Screenshot it. Here is the abandoned spaceplane though (my Scrapper ship will get around to recycling it for RocketParts eventually), and here are the ships they escaped to by EVA.

A brief note on the design of the Nuclear Science Lab you see here, by the way. You might have noticed those are six 2-meter long LiquidFuel only tanks (from B9 Aerospace) on the nose end, spaced by mechanical decouplers (from NovaPunch2). That's because the NSL hosts a Nuclear Thermal Rocket Nozzle- which gets higher ISP (but lower thrust) from just expelling heated LiquidFuel (which is supposed to simulate superheated, originally liquid, hydrogen being expelled out a Thermal Rocket in real life) than from expelling an LFO mix- which I take it from my dabbling knowledge of rocket science is superheated separately and THEN mixed and allowed to combust. Since the ISP is very high, I broke the staging of the empty tanks into rather small fuel "packets", as each tank represents a LOT of potential energy (the ISP is a little over 915)- so I would be wasting a lot more energy accelerating the empty tanks with fewer stages than with a lower-ISP rocket where it wouldn't be worth the extra decoupler mass.

Finally, I present my Kerbals' next project. Shown here (below) is their design for an "Atmospheric Scooper" ship, that is meant to repeatedly dip through a planet's upper atmosphere (by setting an atmospheric periapsis, but a sufficiently high apoapsis to safely return to orbit) to harvest any resources that might be there. In KSP Interstellar mod (which adds the necessary parts to do this), that means Oxidizer from the atmospheres of Kerbin and Laythe, and LiquidFuel from the atmosphere of Jool- the upper reaches of which are assumed to be essentially made out of Hydrogen, like with real-life Jupiter.

The process isn't free, of course. Not only do you need to get the proper equipment in position, you also need a sufficiently powerful source of electricity to refine and store the IntakeAtmosphere resource, as it's being taken in. Even with the smaller, 1.25 meter variant of the refiner shown here (the thing that looks like a Radial Engine Body), it takes 6 MEGAWATTS of power to run the thing at full capacity (that's 6,000 ElectricCharge a second). Obviously, the small 1.25 meter nuclear reactor on my design here can't provide that kind of power- but my intention is to dip only through the highest reaches of the atmosphere each time, where the moderate power supply of the craft might have chance of keeping up with the refining module's power demands... If testing shows it's not enough, of course, I'll have to launch one with a more powerful reactor- or perhaps make use of my recently-discovered technology for microwave power transmission to save on weight (yet another feature of KSP Interstellar- though as I understand it the transmission losses are pretty high, and for some reason only collected solar power can be transmitted, rather than, say, power from a large orbital nuclear reactor.)

The whole point of the thing is to collect more Delta V (in the form of Oxidizer- and the fuel saved needing to lift it to orbit) than it expends getting into position and accelerating back up after each pass- at least as measured by the ISP's of the highly efficient nuclear thermal rocket nozzle the design is equipped with for its movement. So, since drag is proportional to weight times the weighted drag coefficients of your parts in KSP (unlike in real life, where shape matters more), unless I were to have FAR installed, which improves the aerodynamic model substantially- I'll need to save on weight with the design as much as possible to ensure it turns a net profit.

Launching oxidizer to LKO isn't all that hard, of course- but the point of the thing is to create a design that will work well enough for the higher gravity of Jool- which will make fuel collection more challenging (higher gravity means higher orbital velocities. Since drag increases exponentially with speed, but atmosphere scoop efficiencies don't quite keep up with the drag curve in terms of output relative to speed, this means relatively much higher drag losses when scooping from Jool than at Kerbin, and lower losses from Laythe- even with adjustments to scooping altitude based on speed). I aim for the highest Delta-V margins possible, otherwise scooping won't really be worthwhile- even around Jool- so I'm really trying to save as much mass as possible on the craft.

By the way, some of you might have noticed the design has no launch vehicle. This is as I do not plan to launch it from Kerbin's surface. Instead, I intend to construct it in-orbit with spare RocketParts from my scrapping operation, at my newly launched spacedock. Given the vessel's relatively low weight, I imagine the RocektParts count of this should be reasonable enough to accomplish. The greater challenge will actually be supplying the craft with Uranium Hexafluoride (UF6 in the resources tab) for its nuclear reactor once built (in the newer version of Orbital Construction I use, craft still need to be filled with all fuel and resources once built, or supplied with it from the constructing dock's stores during construction. Sorry, no free lunches here.) Since I drained the Space Dock's nuclear reactor down to a very low level of UF6 with TAC Fuel Balancer in order to get it to orbit in one piece, I'm not sure I can spare much from the main reactor core for fueling the smaller ship's reactor. Of course, this is another reason for the smaller reactor core other than higher efficiency (lower-drag) atmospheric scooping- so that its reactor can last a reasonable while on the meager amount of UF6 I'll be able to provide it with- before needing to return to the space dock for re-enrichment/reprocessing (since the reactor heats its engines, without UF6 the scooper will be dead in the water, so to speak, no matter how much LiquidFuel and Oxidizer I have aboard. This, along with weight, low thrust, and an advanced tech node, is the price for a Thermal Rocket Nozzle's very high ISP's.)

Finally, last, but not least, a little treat for those of you who have read this far. Here is an image of the Mun mission I used to get those pic's from the OP. You might notice it is called the Mk2- the Mark 1 was a lighter version that performed a Munar Apollo-style round trip (except with EVA transfers rather than hard docking) on a tighter fuel budget, with less advanced tech nodes, and without any rovers (the technology for which hadn't yet been discovered).

Edited November 14, 2013 by Northstar1989

[Geschosskopf]

Impressive stuff there, sir. I look forward to seeing more of this. I live for huge, complex, multi-ship missions

[Northstar1989]

My SensorSat approaches the Mun

And after a capture burn, performs a burn to simultaneously cancel much of its remaining East/West momentum and move into a polar orbit at periapsis. After several orbits, and reading the magnetosphere strengths both at high and low orbit (I'm afraid neither has very strong magnetic readings around the Mun) for Science points, I capture the image seen here at the end of a very large transmission on the gravity readings (read: spam-series of gravity scans) over a crater I'd never captured high-orbit readings on before. I also capture several other readings like it over craters and biomes I'd never captured similar-altitude readings on before- loads of new scientific data for my Kerbals back home.

And then, after snapping quite a few more screenshots...

]

Head off towards Minmus...

Sorry that was a rather bland post guys and gals. I know a lot of you think of the Mun as nothing more than a barren gray rock. But personally, I still find it all exciting- after all, it's space exploration!

I'll have another post soon on my probe's visit to Minmus (shouldn't be nearly as long- there isn't much to see there. Though, I'll probably try landing the probe on Minmus since my probe has enough fuel and TWR, and the low gravity and flat "lakebeds" should make it fairly easy...) After that, I've got some ambitious plans- including the redeployment of my Nuclear Science Lab to Mun or Minmus orbit, the movement of my old fuel depot to one of these orbits as well, the construction and testing of my atmospheric scooping ship, and the establishment of electrolysis operations on the Mun (KSP Interstellar allows you to electrolyze Regolith into Aluminum and Oxidizer, which can be used for aluminum-fueled rockets, or just for the Oxidizer...)

By the way, some of you might have noticed that my sensor probe has four solar panels deployed in some pictures, but only two in others. No, that wasn't because I was smashing the action group buttons by accident or somesuch- that was intentional, and because KSP Interstellar adds a heat-management mechanism to all your rockets. Essentially, many electrical systems (especially solar panels and nuclear reactors) produce excess heat when they run (simulated by the WasteHeat resource). If too much of this heat is allowed to accumulate, it can damage the equipment (KSP Interstellar simulates this by causing parts to explode if the heat levels climb high enough). In the vacuum of space, this heat doesn't convect away from the surface of a rocket, so it just tends to accumulate- and its management is a serious challenge for any space program. KSP Interstellar's simulation of this mechanism is just one way it makes the game a little more realistic- and balances out the utility of some of its parts a little with extra challenge in other parts of the game. I'm really falling in love with that mod...

KSP Interstellar allows you to manage this heat in a variety of ways- one of them is by use of heat radiator parts specifically designed to dissipate heat. Another is to simply control and limit its generation, since spacecraft still have a certain base level of heat dissipation that occurs even without specialized equipment to manage it- which in KSP is proportional to the vessel's mass (in real life, it is proportional to exposed surface area). Unlike in real life, vessels don't seem to give off more heat as they get hotter- so there isn't a realistic self-limiting effect on the temperatures a vessel can reach. So, as my probe's solar panels generate slightly more WasteHeat than my probe can dissipate, I was closing two to three of the solar panels whenever the batteries were fully charged and the power wasn't needed for a data transmission.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

OK, so my probe's visit to Minmus (and landing on it) turned out to be a little bumpy, to say the least. I thought that, as experienced a player as I am, having sent probes to Duna, Eve, the Mun, and Minmus many times before; I had this down pat. Apparently I forgot that even on the simplest of missions, something can always go wrong...

First of all, here are some nice screenshots from my approach:

After getting in nice and close- and transmitting a bunch of data about the (lack of a) magnetosphere from high and low orbit, I proceeded to bring my probe in to a *VERY* low orbit for a final landing insertion (which was never designed for landing, but I took a risk- because what's the worst that can happen on a moon as low-gravity as Minmus?). It went fairly smoothly, and I caught some BEAUTIFUL vistas while passing through a valley in the mountains/plateaus- the screenshots don't do it justice.

Then, my probe came in on its final landing approach:

Landing on Minmus with a TWR this high is always a little tricky, because the vessel tends to overthrust and bounce up and down when trying to cancel out the last few m/s of velocity, and this landing was no different. But what really caught the cake was what happened AFTER the probe had already safely touched down on the level, with absolutely no horizontal speed. See for yourself:

Now normally, when this kind of thing happens to me on a moon like Minmus or Gilly, it's not a problem- because I always seem to have enough SAS force to tip the thing back up on its own. For that matter, I usually have enough to stop it form tipping in the first place. However, in designing this probe I was a little sloppy- and the antennae isn't perfectly centered. As a result, that tiny bit of off-center gravity seemed to completely disable my probe's ability to tip upright (trust me, I've tipped back much heavier vessels with the same probe core when they were perfectly balanced), probably thanks to the lovely quirks of the game's physics engine...

Anyways, I was still able to get plenty of transmissions on the gravity from the surface, which is what I came for (previous missions had only collected Crew Reports, EVA reports, surface samples, temperature scans, and seismic data.)

However, simulations back at Mission Control (F5/F9 runs) revealed that there was a high chance of the probe exploding into a million tiny bits if I attempted to use its engines to help it right itself- but I was out of other options, so I tried it anyways. The result was a headlong spin, and an impact with the ground before I was able to get it back under control (though maybe if I had been less busy snapping screenshots and more busy hawking the Navball I might have avoided that second impact.)

Fortunately, I WAS able to bring the probe back under control. Here it is sailing away from the mess:

As you can see, I lost a couple of the probe's solar panels, as well as one of the two magnetometers (in an uncanny bit of prescience I equipped two- for redundancy as well as to make it easier to produce symmetry.) I also burned quite a bit more fuel than I expected in the whole mess- thanks in large part to fuel wasted trying to control the spin. You can see the lower of the two stages I brought to Minmus lying there on the ground in the screenshot right after the impact flight log if you look very closely...

The probe is still fully functional minus a balanced Center of Mass (thanks to the loss of the two solar panels and magnetometer on the side of the impact), but on its final stage of fuel. I'm really not sure what to do with the thing at this point- though I guess I might try aerocapture on Kerbin to see if I can get any Science from the recovered probe core (for "vessel recovered from the surface of Minmus"- since I don't think I've exhausted that one yet...) I'll update this post once I know how that goes...

[Northstar1989]

With a little luck in my Minmus escape, my probe landed on a trajectory that slingshots it around Kerbin, into another slingshot with the Mun where it picks up more speed, and then on an escape trajectory out of the Kerbin system.

So rather than trying to recover it on Kerbin with a powered descent- which seems unlikely to succeed at best, and was never really part of the original plan for the probe (it was equipped with no parachutes- and was intended to eventually be left deactivated in an out-of-the way orbit somewhere or on an extra-atmospheric moon's surface- probably eventually to see its recycling as scrap through use of a Scrap Ship like the one I presented earlier- or by a rover variant if on a moon surface), I decided to leave it on its current trajectory. It still has quite a bit of its final-stage fuel left (25.72/36.00 to be exact), and given its very low mass that equates to quite a bit of Delta-V: though probably not nearly enough to reach even Duna or Eve. Plus, I don't have magnetospheric data on a high Kerbol orbit yet (what I should get once exiting Kerbin's SOI)- so its one-way trip out of the Kerbin system won't be in vain.

Since I know this forum is all about pictures, here's one last cool pic of the probe I'm leaving you guys with to remember it by. Damaged and limping out of the Kerbin system- but immensely scientifically useful while it lasted- that's one tough little probe my Kerbals will probably be adding to their history books.

[Geschosskopf]

Nice job getting the probe back off the ground despite the imbalance.

FWIW, I notice in your pics that you didn't have SAS turned on during that landing. If you had, I bet the probe would have stayed rightside up. On Minmus, SAS is way stronger than gravity. I've had manned landers come down on 45^ hillsides so that only 1 of the landing legs touched the ground and the other 3 were still about 2 Kerbal-heights off the ground. However, because SAS was on, the lander stayed pointing straight up, slowly swinging back and forth around its 1 point of support like a tethered balloon. I could then use Q and E to rotate the lander so 2 legs were against the hillside, turn SAS off, let the lander pivot downhill until all legs were touching, then turn SAS back on. This glued the lander to the hillside despite the angle, without any fear of falling over.

[Northstar1989]

Nice job getting the probe back off the ground despite the imbalance.

FWIW, I notice in your pics that you didn't have SAS turned on during that landing. If you had, I bet the probe would have stayed rightside up. On Minmus, SAS is way stronger than gravity. I've had manned landers come down on 45^ hillsides so that only 1 of the landing legs touched the ground and the other 3 were still about 2 Kerbal-heights off the ground. However, because SAS was on, the lander stayed pointing straight up, slowly swinging back and forth around its 1 point of support like a tethered balloon. I could then use Q and E to rotate the lander so 2 legs were against the hillside, turn SAS off, let the lander pivot downhill until all legs were touching, then turn SAS back on. This glued the lander to the hillside despite the angle, without any fear of falling over.

I kept the SAS off during descent, as I found it locked my heading too strongly while still above the surface. I actually turned it on just a few seconds before touching down to attempt to lock my heading ("nose" straight up)- it just apparently wasn't strong enough to prevent a flop from the tiny weight-imbalance.

[Northstar1989]

Now that I have a substantial spacedock in orbit, and two spacecraft capable of running purely on LiquidFuel (my Nuclear Science Lab and the engine of my Orbital Spacedock- though the latter probably isn't going to be leaving Low Kerbin Orbit anytime soon- at least not until I construct a better LKO Spacedock entirely in orbit, not constrained by the need to make orbit from the Launchpad, and far less rationed in terms of vessel mass as a result... *THEN* I might send the existing spacedock somewhere I don't need as much fuel storage or construction capacity- like in orbit of the Mun or Minmus) and hopefully a functional Atmospheric Scooping Ship design that will allow me to stretch that LiquidFuel even further (a Thermal Rocket obtains twice the thrust, but only 75% the ISP, from using LFO mix instead of pure LiquidFuel. However given the more than doubling of overall fuel mass- LFO mix burns in a 9:11 ration of LiquidFuel to Oxidizer- you get over 50% more overall Delta-V if you collect Oxidizer in the field, and use LFO instead) I decided it was time to develop a new line of fuel tankers, designed to haul pure LiquidFuel to orbit without all that heavy Oxidizer...

My previous "heavy" fuel tanker design was outdated, anyways- having been developed when the largest tanks I had available for its launch vehicle were half-height 3.75 meter tanks, and was only marginally upgraded since its development- to carry one full-length 3.75 meter tank instead of two half-length 3.75 meter tanks on the launch vehicle, after I developed the appropriate technology for full-length 3.75 meter tanks... I now had all the way up to Novapunch2's full-length 5 meter tanks available for my launch vehicles- so it was time to upgrade my heavy fuel tankers to versions with heavier payload stages, so I could carry more fuel to orbit in one launch, Oxidizer or not...

These were the two main designs I tried for my new model of heavy fuel tanker. A key design criteria for any heavy tanker line I develop is the ability to carry its fuel a very long-range and perform efficient capture burns around other planets if necessary: so I utilized nuclear engines for the upper stages.

One design featured 4 stock LV-N nuclear engines to carry the payload stage. It was designed to shed two of these once their fuel tanks were depleted- such as after a long capture burn from which no return trip was necessary:

The other design featured two of Near Future Mod's twin-fusion nuclear engines- which feature slightly better thrust (75 instead of 60 kN), a smaller profile, and a better TWR- though they are heavier than LV-N's. It had lower overall thrust- but I decided I didn't really need 240 kN of thrust for a vessel of that size: 150 kN would do, and would save weight (and extend range) in the process... It still had four radial 1.25 meter LFO tanks- just two of them were drop tanks with no engines attached.

Both designs made orbit, though the LV-N design did have a bit of trouble with the engines extending too close to the ascent stage decoupler in earlier versions- leading to a pair of the engines detaching prematurely (before circularization) in one of the final test flights. LV-N's also have the annoying tendency for the engines to overheat- and if allowed to run full-thrust in the upper atmosphere for too long, all four of them would explode simultaneously- leaving my tanker without thrust. This exact problem doomed one of my earlier test flights of the tanker design. As a side-note, LV-N's tend to be able to run indefinitely in vacuum, if there are a couple parts nearby to act as heat-sinks. Their overheating only a truly dangerous issue in the atmosphere, since the game simulates friction heat to a limited degree- but does nothing to simulate convective cooling.

I settled on the twin-fusion design because of its reduced engine weight and thus superior efficiency, and the slightly reduced (though still very dangerous) tendency of the engines to overheat.

I also considered creating an even lower-thrust design with just two LV-N's, for reasons of efficiency: but abandoned that line of designs because of how efficiently it required my ascent to be in order for the two LV-N's to still be able to reach a stable orbit (if I started my gravity turn a little too late, or too early, I could easily find myself unable to reach orbit. The twin-fusion design also could experience this issue- but with 25% more upper-stage thrust, it required a significantly more inefficient ascent.)

I performed one successful launch of the final version of each design before making my decision. So now, I have two rather large LiquidFuel tankers in low Kerbin orbit. They're not the largest designs I could build, mind you (if lag were less of an issue for me, I might utilize four much taller 5-meter stacks tied to the "root" stack with XL girders and struts. I used to launch rockets like these with 2.5 meter stacks, back before I discovered the Novapunch2 pack: now I just use one 5-meter stack; which has the same effective cross-sectional area, less drag, and less lag) not even with a single 5-meter stack (the wonders of radial boosters for raising center of thrust: they allow much taller rockets). But the twin-fusion design I settled on is a very utilitarian and efficient design, with a VERY reasonable part-count once it dumps its boosters and ascent stage.

In my typical efficiency-minded fashion, though, I did try one trick during the circularization of my twin-fusion design that cost me rather severely... I noticed during my test launches that my fuel tankers were reaching their circularization burns with a little bit of fuel still left in the ascent stage (though not enough to bring it to orbit as well). So, rather than leaving the fusion engines idle while coasting to my circularization burn, and simply burning the ascent stage dry and decoupling it, I tried to run the fusion engines on a *LOW* power level (running the upper-stage engines, even though they were radial, tended to very quickly overheat and explode the lower stage's 5 to 3.75 meter adapter- something I noticed during one of my early test flights of the design). However, after noticing that I could safely run the engines at about 20-25% thrust without any parts exploding, I decided to step it up to 35% thrust or so... This turned out to be a huge mistake:

I ended up overheating the large fuel tank of the 5 meter stage by doing this- and the resultant explosion cost me the approximately 830 LiquidFuel (and corresponding amount of Oxidizer) still left in the tank... Since the last bit of fuel in a stage always is worth the most Delta-V, I was a little bit peeved with this (conversely, the first bit is worth the least- so I would end up burning a lot more impulse in upper-stage fuel to make up for the loss). Nonetheless, the tanker still reached a stable orbit easily enough, and should still be able to deliver its LiquidFuel payload to the Orbital Spacedock with plenty of LFO mix to spare (which I intend to drain into the Orbital Spacedock's LFO tanks- and recycle the tanker with my Scrapper Ship- having no more use for it at the moment.)

Orbital rendezvous are horribly annoying to achieve, so I decided to save that for a later post (coming very soon)- but here's an image of my twin-fusion engine heavy fuel tanker in circular LKO:

My plans for the future involve landing a KSP-Interstellar Science Lab on the Mun's surface to electrolyze Regolith (mainly for the oxidizer to mix with my liquid fuel- which it produces in a 4:1 ratio with aluminum- which also happens to be the ratio the mod's aluminum-oxidizer engines burn it at.) I'm not quite sure yet if I'll need to land an aluminum-oxide rocket or two on the surface to store the aluminum that is produces, or if I'll be able to run the electrolysis without anywhere to store the aluminum and just throw it out. Aluminum-Oxidizer engines are decent, and they perform better than other SolidFuel rockets- perhaps because they're a solid-liquid hybrid design- but they're still not nearly as efficient (ISP-wise) as liquid-fueled rockets (especially if I pump the LFO mix into one of my Nuclear Thermal Rocket Nozzles). What's more- and the main reason I don't wish to use them too much if I can avoid it- they only come in one, huge, unwieldy size (which I have a hard time fitting into the upper stages of my rockets). The mod hasn't even given them their own texture yet- their texture is basically just an upsized version of the ugly Route-10 boosters you start the game off with...

So, while I *CAN* haul a few (empty) Aluminum-Oxidizer engines out to the Mun from Kerbin's surface- or more likely due to their high dry-mass weight will just make a couple empty ones out of recycled scrap metal in low Kerbin orbit (which is probably a lot more realistic than, say, making a huge solar array out of recycled used rockets that were mostly metal and only had a few small solar panels on them...) I probably won't. If I do, the only reason will probably be that it turns out I need aluminum storage space for my elecrolysis operations on the Mun to work- and even then I'll probably just periodically dump the aluminum with TAC Fuel Balancer (if it allows me to), and divert the oxidizer to LFO rockets...

I also am going to test out that Atmospheric Scooping Ship pretty soon- some time after I refuel my Orbital Spacedock with enough LiquidFuel to fuel it, and deliver my Scrap Ship's load of RocketParts to it so I have something to build it out of... (And possibly, I might also send some additional Uranium Hexafluoride in a small throwaway reactor, since this is the only way to transport it. It turns out the Science Lab uses an "always active" flag to produce its gradual trickle of Science Points when set to research-mode, even when it is not the "Focus". However this also means it consumes UF6 to fuel its reactor even when not actively loaded as well. I've already had to reprocess the spacedock's UF6 supply once- since thanks to time-warping with my SensorSat from a couple posts back, it's been nearly two in-game months since I launched the thing with a less than 5% uranium load. Luckily, it appears the reprocessing is close to 100% efficient or actually is 100% efficient, because I didn't notice any significant reduction in my total UF6 levels compared to launch after the reprocessing was complete...)

Last, but not least, here are a couple nice pictures of my Mun Rover and my Eve Probe (when landed on Gilly) viewing their respective sunsets I took a while back and uploaded on one of my other threads. I'd like to leave you guys with something nice to look at...

Edited November 15, 2013 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

Not much to report here, but some great images of my refueling mission to my Orbital Spacedock and Orbital Fuel Depot here.

First of all, the approach:

A great lengthwise view of my spacedock while trying to remember where I left the KAS winches on the thing:

An EVA to connect the tanker to the Orbital Spacedock:

The two vessels finally docked:

One last pic, shortly after topping off the spacedock and retracting the winch:

And then the tanker headed off to rendezvous with my Orbital Fuel Depot:

Arriving at the fuel depot:

After running the fuel line to the tanker:

And finally, the two craft pulled closer together, as I left them after finding the fuel tanker had a tiny bit of fuel left- but not enough to make itself useful (I'll probably come and scrap it with my Scrapper Ship when the two vessels are in position for the Scrapper to make a rendzvous burn- the Scrapper Ship needs to make a refueling stop by the depot anyways...)

Sorry it's not too much of interest today- I've mostly been working on a SSTDABK (Single Stage to Duna and Back to Kerbin) spaceplane design that's still not ready yet, for the 'Flying Duna' challenge. Really cool stuff there- you'll get to see me put B9 Aerospace's giant wings, NearFuture mod's VASMIR Plasma Thrusters, and KSP Interstellar mod's Thermal Turbojets and Microwave Relay System all to good use- with the end result being a craft that can fly to Duna and back on its own (given a bit of refueling), and is capable of an unlimited service life on Duna (as long as it is provided with a KSP Interstellar mod Science Lab to reprocess its Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride at regular intervals).

Here's a teaser- an image of an earlier version of the plane nearly making it to orbit during a test flight (it has a VERY slow climb rate out of the atmosphere- but it remains steady and slowly increases as it gains altitude. It made it to about 32,000 meters before it ran out of electricity on that attempt.)

Edited November 16, 2013 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

OK, so it's not been long since the last one- but I've already got another update.

First of all, remember that Nuclear Science Lab I put in orbit earlier? I certainly do. Well it turns out it has a fuel routing problem- apparently one of the pieces in the stack between the liquid fuel tanks (the two that AREN'T separated by decouplers from the rest of the ship) and the 3.75 meter Thermal Rocket Nozzle (the HUGE engine at the bottom) isn't fuel-crossfeed capable. So, after going through all the effort to launch that thing into orbit over Kerbin, it looks like my plans of sending it to Jool are at an end. Of course, I only discovered this AFTER I started a burn towards the Mun for a gravity assist towards Jool, and had burned out and decoupled what was left of the ascent stage.

So, I F5/F9's (I mean, if this was for real, somebody would have noticed something like that the engineers forgot to run fuel pipes to the main engine, right?), and instead docked the Scrapper Ship- which was running low on fuel by the time it got to that orbit (which had a lot of other debris floating it it anyways) with it and drained msot of the remaining LFO mix to fill all its fuel tanks. Here it is docked with the Nuclear Science Lab via KAS winch (hard to see the fuel/winch line against the dark of space, sorry about that)

Then I burned out what was left of the ascent stage to bring the Nuclear Science Lab to a little bit of a higher orbit (it produced more Science the further it is away from Kerbin- and I get also get a lot less lag at higher orbits), decoupled it, and then recycled that stage with my Scrapper Ship- completely filling what was left of its storage space for RocketParts, and probably wasting a good bit of of the value of the ascent stage as well.

Anyways, it looks like maybe I should have built a Scrapper Ship with more storage capacity for rocket parts- currently it can only hold 25 tons of them, and it takes so much fuel to bring it back to the Orbital Spacedock that I still haven't gotten around to it yet... I'll probably be upgrading the Orbital Spacedock to a bigger, better version with a lower part count anyways (and no giant Thermal Rocket Nozzle- which I built to help get it to orbit making use of the reactor/generator I already had included, thinking the Science Lab would only run on a Nuclear Reactor. Turns out I was wrong about that- it can at the very least run on a Microwave Beamed Power Receiver as well, if the resource it consumes is Megajoules, and maybe even just on a huge solar array if it is capable of running on enough ElectricCharge- it needs 5 Megajoules a second to run research at its full trickle- which equates to 5,000 ElectricCharge per second.) and so maybe I could haul the existing Orbital Spacedock to a higher, less laggy orbit after the new one is constructed (or, just recycle the thing- I don't need too many flights in progress lagging down my computer). Right now, with its current part count, current low orbit, and my weak computer, the lag when the thing is being refueled (and both ships are loaded) is absolutely crippling...

In the meantime, I also sent a heavy tanker I designed to carry RocketParts to the Orbital Spacedock.

Here is what I *think* was a screenshot of the Rocketparts Tanker during its ascent:

Here is an image of what is definitely the tanker in-orbit:

And here it is on final approach and docking with the Orbital Spacedock

After getting that heavy load of RocketParts to the Orbital Spacedock (nearly 100 TONS of RocketParts- enough to build several very large rockets in-orbit, since that equates to Dry Mass for the rocket- if only I had enough fuel in the spacdock to fill said rockets up...), I immediately put some of the solar panels in the parts shipment to good use (OK I'm roleplaying- the game doesn't distinguish solar panels from metal to build giant fuel tanks- they all cost RocketParts) building a large Microwave Power Transmission Station in-orbit:

Now, some of you might be asking- what is that thing, and what is it good for? Well for those of you who didn't play SimCity2000 and 3000 when you were a kid until your face turned blue, a Microwave Power system is one that collects solar energy in-orbit with a gigantic solar array, like the one I built there (makes sense so far, right?) and then beams the power to a target in the form of a phased beam of microwave energy- where it is converted back into electrical energy

For those of you wondering what that had to do with SimCity, in the 2000/3000 versions of the game, Microwave Power was one of the more advanced options for powering your city- featuring a lack of any pollution production, and much higher energy density than conventional solar power on the ground- but also a MUCH higher financial cost...

The big, gridiron-looking thing on the top of the image here is the Microwave Beamed Power Transmitter- it's what allows that solar energy to get wherever I need it (with some not-insignificant transmission losses, of course). The smaller looking thing on the bottom is just a Yawmaster Service Module (it's the lightest enclosed way to hold a single Kerbal in-orbit, in terms of Dry Mass; and it also features a bit of room for LFO mix, Monopropellant, and ElectircCharge storage)- and is mostly just for the electrical storage and roleplaying purposes.

Now why would I go through all the trouble of building such a thing out of my hard-earned (or rather, hauled) RocketParts, you might ask? Well, remember that spaceplane I showed you a teaser of before:

Those four blue-colored engines at the back are VASMIR Plasma Thrusters. They take ArgonGas, and a lot of ElectricCharge, and combine them for a very high ISP (over 6400) and modest thrust of 9.6 kN each. I designed my spaceplane (which I am *still* simply calling "Advanced Spaceplane"- somebody propose a better name for it before I just name it after another type of bird; like I did the Eagle, the Egret, and in a previous stock-only save the "Falcon's Nest" and "Rooster's Nest"- which were just glamorized fuel depots with a bit of roleplaying as space stations.) to use four of them (at 38.4 kN of thrust) to escape Kerbin's atmosphere.

Normally, I'd use something more powerful for a spaceplane- like LFO mix or at least LiquidFuel on a Thermal Rocket Nozzle- but this one is designed to fly on Duna, and so needs to be as light as possible to minimize wingload. An ArgonGas propellant system was one of the lightest-weight options: due mostly to the very high ISP ratings of VASMIR Plasma Thrusters, and the very low Dry Mass of ArgonGas fuel tanks (actually several times lighter than a 2.5 meter fuselage when empty, and only marginally heavier by length when full of ArgonGas). The thrusters were kind of heavy, of course- weighing in at a solid 1 ton each- but it was worth it considering the weight I saved vs. hauling around at least 2 or 3 tons of LFO mix. The total increase in the mass of the plane, vs. using structural fuselages (the thermal turbojet engines, while they require rather heavy reactors, use no fuel) was about 5.4 tons. Not bad for a system that not only gets the plane to orbit, but carries enough impulse to bring it all the way to Duna without a single refueling! (if I wanted to cut down weight further, I could use a partial load of ArgonGas- and reduce the mass increase to only about 4.4-4.2 tons while still having enough to make orbit, the full-load weight of ArgonGas being a little over 2.09 tons. The plane uses half its ArgonGas just getting to orbit.) One of the other advantages of the system was the extremely low cost of refueling- since ArgonGas gets such high ISP's, I wouldn't need to haul nearly as much of it out to Duna for a refueling trip if, say, I was to use the plane for repeated trips to Ike and back to support a colony there...

Unfortunately, the Advanced Spaceplane doesn't have quite enough electrical generation capacity and storage to make orbit as was (1 ton of the 5.4 tons extra mass, besides the 2 tons of Argon and 4 tons of thrusters, minus about 1.6 tons of weight saved in fuselages; was the inclusion of two 0.5 ton electric generators on the plane- which produce power from the nuclear reactors when they're not being fully used to power the thermal turbojets, and when "spun-up" on the runway before liftoff, can store an immense amount of electricity in the form of stored mechanical energy.) So, I decided rather than carrying a bunch of heavy solar panels on the plane, or a huge weight in batteries, or switching to a heavier LFO-based propulsion system; I'd put the extra needed electrical generation capacity in orbit and just beam it down to the spaceplane as it attempts to escape the atmosphere (it still needs a receiver dish for this though). This should also have immense utility with any other craft I build that relies even partially on electric power systems- ranging from electric propeller aircraft (these I have conventionally had to power by making them carry their own solar panels- greatly increasing their wingload and reducing their already low TWR, lowering their altitude ceiling as a result) to VASMIR-lifted light rockets (VASMIR plasma thrusters till get a decent ISP in-atmosphere). In fact, the possibilities for use of the technology are nearly endless!

(An aside for those who are curious: thermal generators usually store such mechanical energy in "flywheels"- disc's that spin rapidly in a vacuum chambe, often on magnetic ultra-low-friction bearings- and the kinds of energy storage density you can achieve with this technology immensely exceed batteries- leading one company in my home state of Massachusetts to pioneer their use as energy storage for "smoothing" the electrical grid at a much lower cost than any existing methods. The company is called "Beacon Power", and I highly recommend looking it up...)

Anyways... Writing about all this has given me an idea on how I might save even more weight on my spaceplane (the NearFuture mod also introduces a couple other types of argon-propellant thrusters besides the VASMIR ones. One of them achieves a slightly greater thrust than the VASMIR of 9.7 kN, and weighs less than half as much- though at the cost of a huge reduction in ISP, and increased electrical power requirements.) So, if this design doesn't work, I'm going to have to try something like that- though, while the spaceplane is currently capable of escaping Duna's atmosphere without the assistance of a Microwave Power Station in orbit nearby (its generators store enough energy to escape the lesser gravity and shorter atmosphere), it wouldn't be able to if I used a more power-hungry design: so I'd have to think carefully about that or whether I should just try and go with LFO mix after all...

Regards,

Northstar

Edited November 17, 2013 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

I've been working some more on my SSTDABK spaceplane. So far, it's not ready- but this is what I've developed so far:

As you can see, I got rid of the VASMIR thrusters- opting instead for Pulsed Inductive XL Thrusters, which are lighter and produced slightly higher thrust (9.7 kN each) at the expense of ISP. I also stretched the fuselage quite a bit longer with more argon tanks, added a lot more wing area, and reduced the crew capacity from 7 to 5. The idea is to minimize weight, maximize lift relative to mass, and give the thing a decent enough range to hopefully make it require fewer refueling stops... I'm having some stability problems with the longer variants, though (they like to tip nose-up if my angle of attack goes too high)- so I haven't managed to get one to orbit yet... I might have to reduce the crew capacity again (to 3) if I'm going to have any chance of getting the thing out of the atmosphere on Kerbin... (the current design is more than capable of a Duna escape)

I also attempted to set up a Microwave Relay Station to extend the coverage area of the Microwave Power Station... Unfortunately, the system seemed to either be bugged, or have a very short range- it refused to pick up the transmitted power from the power station when it was more than a very short distance away... Here it is moving into a higher orbit from the vicinity of the Orbital Spacedock though:

The Microwave Relay's probe core is now about to run out of power- I didn't think to charge it before leaving the Spacedock (it has a massive energy storage capacity integrated into the large deployable Microwave Receiver), as I figured it would be able to pick up power in its higher orbit. Unfortunately, this didn't happen- so I couldn't even circularize the orbit, and it's now stuck in an elliptical orbit with a high chance of eventually colliding with the Spacedock, waiting to be scrapped...

Once I get the spaceplane to orbit, or a couple of my smaller Duna planes (I've developed a whole fleet of thermal turbojets), I'm going to be sending up a bunch of additional components for my eventual Duna colony- as the transfer window is approaching. Plans include a deployable runway for Duna, a Science Lab to electrolyze Regolith on Ike, and a bunch of RocketParts and a Rocket Workshop to construct more stuff on Duna's surface (including a surface fuel depot near the runway, a fuel-carrying rover, and perhaps some Kerbal "housing" in the form of Hitchhiker Storage Modules)

Edited November 19, 2013 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

The spaceplane wasn't coming along as I like, so I focused on developing one of my lighter models of plane I can carry to orbit on a rocket. I present, the final version of the Eagle Mk2, as seen in one of my latest test-flights with a full cargo load:

I outfitted this version to carry up to 3 tons of cargo and 4 passengers, and was designed to meet the "Flying Duna" challenge requirements as well.

Unlike my spaceplane, this plane is light enough to strap to a rocket. So expect images of one riding to orbit and then Duna that way very soon.

Here's the intended initial landing zone, assuming the challenge allows me to land at a lower altitude first:

Regards,

Northstar

[Specialist290]

Well, you've certainly been busy lately Hope we can safely say "The Eagle has landed" in the near future.

[Northstar1989]

Well, you've certainly been busy lately Hope we can safely say "The Eagle has landed" in the near future.

It won't be long now. Since my last post, I launched two copies of the Eagle on a gigantic rocket (most laggy thing I've ever done)

One of them snapped in half in the upper atmosphere (structural integrity was one of the prices I paid for an ultra-low weight design), sending two brave Kerbals plummeting who I can only assume fell to their deaths:

(Or not, as the case may be- my "MIA" Kerbals seem to have an odd ability to reappear in the Astronaut complex after a couple more launches- and actually, the one who was in a cockpit theoretically should have been able to steer to a safe landing- as he had two wings and two winglets attached. I'd seen one survive precisely the same structural failure in an earlier launch attempt.)

But the other plane made it to orbit unharmed:

I circularized the orbit, and put the ship in a nice low parking orbit:

And I rendezvoused with my Orbital Fuel Depot (though, as I decided to trust MechJeb to make the intercept, it blew nearly 3k Delta V getting there- leaving me with just over 2400 for the transfer to Duna and capture if I don't perform another refueling before departure)

And then placed the transfer stage in a much higher (and thus less laggy) parking orbit- probably to await a fuel tanker just to be on the safe side...

For those wondering what happened to the other plane, I dumped it in LKO just after circularizing- the Kerbals will be rescued by a future mission.

Unfortunately, though, I have some long-neglected real-life issues to attend to; and I also need to clean up my Kerbin orbits a little before I do anything else- as you can see, it's become quite crowded with ships, and it's certainly not helping my FPS in LKO:

(The ship in focus is a nearly-empty fuel tanker, by the way- my Eagle Transfer stage still has simply thousands of units of fuel onboard, and two stock NERVA engines to best utilize it.)

I'm sure my Eagle landing won't be all too far off now though. In the meantime, I have a little consolidation and reorganization to do. High on my priority list are scrapping my obsolete (and now empty) Orbital Fuel Depot, and building a lower part-count Orbital Spacedock in a higher orbit (and then scrapping the old one). I also have a couple LiquidFuel tankers in orbit waiting to be used to fill the planned larger tanks on my new spacedock- and then I need to recycle those ships as well. I also need to get that atmospheric scooping ship working... (the last model had WAY too much SAS, making it uncontrollable- so I pulled the 2.5m ASAS module from the design in the VAB, added another LFO tank (so it could carry more oxidizer), and need to get around to building it once my orbits are cleaned up a little. I have enough LiquidFuel in orbit to send large ships to Jool several times over- if I can just consolidate it and get some orbital Oxidizer production (from atmospheric scooping or Mun electrolysis of regolith) going...

Edited November 20, 2013 by Northstar1989

[BlazeKerba]

Wait, you experience lag to after what, so many parts on a ship? I ended up reinstalling KSP because at first, my 199 part rocket with Space Station flew up like a breeze, but when I slapped the very same rocket to launch my Rover to the Mun, it just lagged to beat heck. I mostly blame KMP, I know its in alpha stages but ever since I tried that in a server, it just wasn't the same, even in Singleplayer...it just wasn't normal anymore but we'll see... All I know is, I have to start all over

But on the side note, that is a very cool design you got there O_O

Edit: Deleted my saves also, noticed my saves were still there (woot woot) but I was afraid that since I transferred the rocket designs from the KMP to one of my saves, I figured...I might as well get rid of the whole saves and start over, I just need to start fresh in case those rocket vehicle designs from KMP were corrupted because I swear, I never had such bad lag until then and its been bugging me none stop.

Edited November 19, 2013 by BlazeKerba

[Northstar1989]

Wait, you experience lag to after what, so many parts on a ship? I ended up reinstalling KSP because at first, my 199 part rocket with Space Station flew up like a breeze, but when I slapped the very same rocket to launch my Rover to the Mun, it just lagged to beat heck. I mostly blame KMP, I know its in alpha stages but ever since I tried that in a server, it just wasn't the same, even in Singleplayer...it just wasn't normal anymore but we'll see... All I know is, I have to start all over

But on the side note, that is a very cool design you got there O_O

Edit: Deleted my saves also, noticed my saves were still there (woot woot) but I was afraid that since I transferred the rocket designs from the KMP to one of my saves, I figured...I might as well get rid of the whole saves and start over, I just need to start fresh in case those rocket vehicle designs from KMP were corrupted because I swear, I never had such bad lag until then and its been bugging me none stop.

I've never played on a multiplayer server, and until now, I wasn't even aware it was possible to play KSP multiplayer... My computer has lagged KSP since the very start (my very first rockets were over-engineered, and launched at like 2 FPS)- if anything, it's gotten better over time- though that may have to do with my figuring out many tricks to cut down on extraneous CPU usage. This is unlike, say, Minecraft- where I found my computer just kept getting slower and slower at it the more I played it...

Anyways, I do have one additional short report.

I got to giving my atmospheric scooping ship a try... (I can easily run it in the background while I got and do other things)

Here was the model I introduced earlier, minus the 2.5 meter ASAS, and with an OKTO2 probe core just below the atmo scoop for the root part- since it's the lowest-mass (and thus most fuel-efficient) way to control a rocket...

It had several major issues though. First of all, it was gathering WasteHeat at an obscene rate, even when the Atmospheric Scoop wasn't running (and faster when it was)... After one or two atmosphere passes, I figured if I did this for too long, the whole thing would probably end up exploding or the reactor going into emergency shutdown (leaving the ship dead in the water, and possibly without control in an unstable orbit). Second, while the Atmosphere Scoop consumed electrical power at a breathtaking rate- therefore confirming that it was definitely working (and apparently, power consumption was unrelated to rate of Oxidizer production)- it produced Oxidizer at an amazingly slow rate. After two passes at 64000 meters, I has just barely accumulated .03 Oxidizer, and lost more Delta-V than that in terms of lost Apoapsis height due to atmospheric drag...

So it became clear to me, I was going to have to let the thing drag down to lower passes through the atmosphere (where speed would be lower, reducing the exponential effects of drag, and air pressure would be higher...) The atmosphere scoop also showed no signs of saturation (I was accumulating no excess IntakeAtm)- so I knew it could keep up with lower atmospheric passes...

Anyways, I reverted, and redesigned the thing to take the lessons learned and its new, lower-dipping operational profile into account... I added several more winglets (using my personal favorites- Heavy Control Winglets form B9 Aerospace- as they offer both control authority and the best lift:mass ratio of any aerodynamic surface in the [modded] game). I also switched the tiny radial radiator for a bigger inline one (since the largest amount of heat is produced while in-atmosphere- which is where they work best, and where the deployable sort will snap off if drag becomes too high). Here is the new, redesigned Atmospheric Scooping Ship, exiting an initial pass (it takes less Delta-V to set periapsis to just inside the atmosphere and let drag do the rest of the work in gradually lowering both Periapsis and Apoapsis, than to perform burns going deeper in)

Hopefully, this thing can turn a profit. I calculated it took about 4 liquid fuel and 5 oxidizer to get into position with its highly efficient Thermal Rocket Nozzle engine- so it needs to produce at least 13 oxidizer just to make that up before it's so low it needs a burn to keep it from crashing...

If this doesn't work (can't turn a substantial Delta-V profit), then the only real use for atmo scoops may be for ships that are intended to touch down eventually on Laythe, possibly for collecting Liquidfuel from Jool's atmosphere due to its higher value; and most of all, for bases on the surface of Laythe (stationary atmo scoops still work...) or for ships that require no fuel to maintain altitude (such as balloon-airships, for which I don't have a mod installed; for electric planes or helicopters; and most of all, for thermal turbojets- provided their intakes can still reasonably take in enough atmosphere to run both the atmo scoop and their engines without super intake-spamming...)

EDIT:

Nope. Thorough testing revealed that by the time the thing had even made up the Delta- needed to send it to 54,000 meters into the atmosphere (after a quicksave-load, I sent it a bit lower- since last time the reactor shut down due to overheating long before the thing could get anywhere near low enough to convect away heat at the rate it was generating it), it was already at under 20,000 meters in altitude (drag pulled the thing deeper and deeper in). Therefore, there's absolutely no way this technology is going to be viable except on electric propeller, balloon, and thermal turbojet aircraft; and ground installations- and only really useful on Laythe and possibly Jool... Or on a constructed launchpad to complement hauled LiquidFuel (using Extraplanetary Launchpads' deployable launchpads) on top of one of Kerbin's highest mountains...

I did discover by flipping through the atmosphere scoop's settings, however, that it also has the ability to collect Argon (KSP Interstellar's Argon- not NearFuture mod's ArgonGas) at an insanely slow rate (0.1% of atmospheric composition on Kerbin) and maybe also deuterium (which showed up as 0.0% on Kerbin- but might be more elsewhere) and Hydrogen (i.e. LiquidFuel- also 0.0% on Kerbin) in atmospheres other than Kerbin. Prudence would direct testing on ground installations on Laythe and Eve- but really, I have no desire to go to Eve (it lags my computer terribly)- so I'll only eventually be testing it on the ground on Laythe and *maybe* with escape-capable (read: fusion engine-carrying) electric propeller aircraft on Jool...

Looks like I'll be going to the Mun for oxidizer... (and, for that matter, aluminum)

Edited November 20, 2013 by Northstar1989