Evacuate the Planet! Apocalypse challenge mission reports (mods)

[celem]

Jebadiah Kerman was bored. The Kerbals were not interested in space flight in the slightest and the fledgling KSP had a paltry budget.

But then one day everything changed for Jeb. In fact, everything changed for every Kerbal, but Jeb would be the first to feel the effects.

A small group of amateur Kerbal astronomers had identified an asteroid the size of Duna barreling through space out past Eeloo orbit; whatever had taken a swipe at this giant had sent it hurtling through the inner system, and even the most pessimistic of those with the ability to do the math acknowledged the inevitability of a catastrophic Kerbin intercept some 5 and a half years hence.

And so the Kerbals did what you would expect of such heroic little green buggers. They panicked, looted and generally wasted the first 6 months of the time remaining to them before the authorities finally regained some semblance of control and announced the bootstrapping of the Kerbal Space Program to ensure the survival of the species. (whether this is a good thing from the universe's perspective is your call)

Cue Jeb and co...

---------------------------------------

This is going to be a series of mission reports with screenshots illustrating my latest game of KSP 0.23

I am running the Apocalypse challenge (link). Basically I have to get as many Kerbals off Kerbin within 5 years.

Emphasis is on some kind of infrastructure and sustainability for the species at the 5 yr mark. Hence mods include:

KSP Interstellar (no warp, i suck with it anyway)

Kerbal Attachment System

Porkworks Orbital Habitats - living space for groups of kerbals longterm

KW Rocketry

Novapunch2 - 5m gear only

Im also using for various immersive/difficulty reasons

DRE, FAR, RT2, SCANSat, KJR, KIDS, RealChutes, PresciseNode, PDynamics+Fairings, Alarmclock, Engineer and MechJeb.

Im starting it out as a career game, since the Kerbals havent been interested in spaceflight upto now. The assumption is that the vast majority of the stock tech is available on Kerbin but needs to be adapted, repurposed and generally obtained for the program. Mod tech and the new KSPI techtree nodes represent companies and groups on Kerbin backing the evacuation plan, rather than some crazy scheme like huge underground bunkers or giant frikkin lazors to shoot the rock down. They therefore accelerate their research to help KSP out. Completing generally impressive tasks and showing proof of concept will also win backing and investors. In this way the science collected to unlock the parts for this scheme is better imagined as public relations and exposure. If it looks like the plan might work they might work faster!

(a bit of basic tech was moved to start node to avoid a series of sub-orbital spam)

Kethane is installed at the moment as I may at some point add ExoplanetaryLaunchpads which I recall being dependant.

I dont intend to actually mine Kethane since KSPI adds plenty of options, though I do like using the scanners to balance out against RT dishes so that may happen.

I did start a run at this challenge once before, but got interrupted and then discovered KSPI, hence the reboot, and this time I took loads of pictures to share.

Edited February 13, 2014 by celem

[celem]

Jeb was so excited he could hardly sit still. The big day was finally here and he was going to space.

The ship had been delivered the week before and sat now on the pad being fueled.

Here was his chance at last to show the world that space was the answer. Jeb didn't much care what the question was, space was always the answer...

3..2..1..Lift-off!

Javascript is disabled. View full album

All in all a successful venture. Jeb proved to Kerbin that a Kerbal could make it outside the atmosphere, and survive. The press went wild.

On his way around the planet he took plenty of photos with his cellphone and spammed a bunch of forums with them on his return, raising awareness even further.

Several contractors promised delivery of new parts, picked personally from a range of possibilities by Jeb.

In particular was a memo to the manufacturer of the marvelous explosive rings regarding a radial version to avoid a repeat of the mid-stage of this maiden flight...

------

Standard flight to orbit for science collection. Grabbed crew reports on the climb and started transmitting around 40km, then did some biome eva spam. Grabbed a couple of basic nodes and then chased down experiments as usual. Key unlocks are Science Tech and Electrics along with Stability, General Rocketry, Survivability and Flight Control. This gives the newly born KSP some tools to work with.

Edited February 13, 2014 by celem