Adventures at the UKSC

[Rodyle]

Hello everyone!

I recently had to do a clean install of KSP due to some issues. Luckily, I'm a reasonably clever man, This is the introductory post of this... Well, it's basically me storytelling and interpreting the events of what I'm doing in KSP. However, since that's basically what every thread in this subforum is, let's try to make it a bit more specific.

Ever since the dawn of time, Kerbalkind has looked to the sky and yada-yada-yada. They saw the Mun, they saw Minmus and if they squinted a bit they saw a few other dots as well. Blablabla, dreaming of spaceflight, yadayadayada, to the stars and beyond, etc etc etc.

It is now twenty-six years ago that the first kerbal 'set foot' in space. Jebbediah Kerbal took his rocket, the Spirit of Curiosity, beyond the reaches of the atmosphere and swung around in zero-g (or should that be zero-k?). This amazing discovery, the notion that it was in fact possible to reach beyond the air of Kerbin lead to the astronomic revolution: each government on Kerbin is currently involved in the UKSC, the United Kerbal Space Command, whose immense budget allowed them to progress from the simple Spirit of Curiosity to much more advanced rockets and space planes, just a quarter of a century later.

This framing allows me to do a few simple things: I can really quickly set up a few basic things or hand-wave why they aren't doing other stuff by saying they've done that already, giving me time to do things which I consider somewhat more interesting to do.

Further rules for myself/promises to you guys:

- I won't be quicksaving/loading to make everything go my way. A lot of the interesting stuff is exactly when things to go wrong. Only exceptions are when KSP completely bugs out, and even then I may consider it canon.

- No part mods or fly-by-wire stuff. I'll use Kerbal Alarm clock, since I do intend for many missions to run in parallel, and maybe I'll later on add some other stuff which is basically cosmetic, but I will fly everything myself and everything will be stock.

- I will try to use interesting and/or cool looking designs as often as possible. We've all seen what you can do with ugly asparagus-staging cakes. It's fun, many of them are very impressive pieces of engineering and their builders deserve all the praise in the world, but it doesn't look good and therefore makes for bad television. Cool designs means my pictures look awesome, so I will use them whenever possible.

- I'll try to remain in-character until after the images. Any out of character ranting/remarks on what I was flying or whatever will be done in the post-mission debriefing.

- I will try to remember to include craft files. If I don't and you're interested: give me a heads up and I will change to include it.

- I don't know how often I will update this. I'll try to do so at least once a week, but since I don't know how much time my research asks of me before I actually do it, I cannot promise this.

So, yeah... If I think of anything else which needs to be said, I'll edit it in later, I guess. Hope you guys like it, give feedback, etc. etc.

Edited February 17, 2014 by Rodyle

[Rodyle]

Although most of Kerbin and its moons have been at the very least mapped, anything outside the sphere of influence of Kerbin is still a mystery to our green little friends. Is there life on Eeeloo? Can you dance on Ike? To find out UKSC decided it was time to start launching probes to the other planets, to find out what they are like. They decided on four probes, launched in the names of those who started it all those years ago: Bob, Jeb, Bill and Carl. Since the probes had to go a long way, the boffins designed a new class of probes, using the latest in ion technology.

Mission plan for these probes is simple: they are sent to a planet or moon, collect as much science as possible using the instrumentation on board and then continue to the next body. However, long-range communication technology is too heavy to fit onto these probes. They will therefore store all data on internal hard drives and to retrieve this data, the probes will have to do a close fly-by of Kerbin.

Before all of this, however, the probes need to get to space. Normally, this would've been a job for Jeb, but he was giving a master class on first principle of rocket science (impetu maiore). It was therefore decided that Bob should be the one to do it, since the probes would already been flown by Bill. The boffins attached the probes to one of Bob's old space planes, the Pidgeon. Bob was sceptic; the Pidgeon was a good machine, that was a fact, but he was unsure if it'd be capable of bringing those probes into orbit. The boffins said it was fine, so he set off in the space plane, with the four probes as payload. Bob had to agree with the boffins, however: it did just fine, and after bringing the probes in a 160 KM parking orbit, he returned to UKSC headquarters.

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Post-mission debriefing:

So, yeah. Probes in space. Not the most shiny first thing to do, I know, but I was actually really pleasantly surprised by the entire mission. The Pidgeon is one of my oldest (maybe even my first) space plane, and I was really surprised that it was able to bring this much into space. The entire craft, probes included, weighed around 13.5 tonnes fully fueled, with each probe weighing 1.07 tonnes, which means that the Pidgeon is basically able to bring its own dry weight into a 160 kilometre orbit and land back at KSC. The only issue was that it had a slight tendency to pitch pack a little due to the shifted centre of mass. However, despite this, the thing practically flew itself to orbit. And I'm not boasting here: I wrote the draft for this post while it was doing so.

The only issue was that I had to do this mission twice. A bug in the struts caused one of the connectors to be attached to the probes while at the same time being twenty meters away from it. This shifted the CoM far enough to the side to make it impossible to fly. You may still be abel to see it in some of the pictures, since I didn't take any of the second run (which is also why the nose cones protecting the probes go missing; I forgot to put those back on).

So yeah, next time: let's fly these probes and do something else, since only doing that would be quite boring.

Craft files:

full craft: http://pastebin.com/Vd1E28hB

Pidgeon only: http://pastebin.com/8RP9xUzP

Probe only: http://pastebin.com/Fzp0NKYx

[Rodyle]

Last time, the pilots sent a few ion probes into a Kerbin orbit, to be sent to the neighbouring planets. However, on their way there, two of them got some more data on their way there. Robert was sent on a trajectory which intersected with the Mun, which allowed for the on-board sensors to be aimed at that grey ball of dust. Carl did a flyby past Minmus. However, the boffins made a slight miscalculation, which resulted in a much higher Minmus periapsis than expected. This same miscalculation also resulted in instead of the Minmus flyby giving a slight speed boost, helping Carl out of the Kerbin system, it slowed the probe down, resulting not only in a bit more delta-v spent due to extra burns, but also a couple of days delay in leaving the Kerbin sphere of influence.

Eventually, however, each craft was on its way to meet one of the neighbours. The first probe to make its transfer burn was the Robert, who is planned to meet Eve. It was a quite an aggressive burn, since the best window for getting to Eve had been a few months ago. However, the boffins decided that the probe had enough delta-v to still get there and make it back, despite this.

The other probes would have to wait a month or more for their transfer burns, with Carl being planned for Dres, Bill heading to Eve and the Jebediah going to Jool.

In the mean time, however, a mission to Minmus was planned. On kerbin, the boffins were having serious discussions about the makeup of the planet. Surface samples never made it back to Kerbin before. Two missions had been sent to the surface, but two times the Kerbonauts could not resist that tasty-looking surface sample. Although relative non-toxicity could be concluded from this culinary test, it was still a major cause of arguments among the boffins, to the point where one of them was put in the naughty box for an hour, after hitting another one in the head with a clipboard after a particularly nasty discussion.

To make sure that this time the mission could not be sabotaged by a peckish Kerbonaut, the boffins came up with a new mission plan. It would require a couple of launches and in total would probably cost almost four times as much as another manned lander. However, this mission had much less direct involvement of the kerbonauts flying the spacecraft, making the mission well worth it.

The first launch was supposed to send the Kerbals in their small satellite into orbit. However a heavy miscalculation by the same boffin that calculated the Carl probe trajectory, Henburry, meant that two Kerbals were almost lost that day. It was only due to some quick thinking by Ludous Kerman and almost half the fuel that the very expensive rocket was saved.They put the Minmar satelite, nicknamed Trident due to its three-engine propulsion system, in a 125 kilometer parking orbit, where they were told to test all flight systems and celebrate life, while the second launch was on their way towards them. This launch carried four lander probes, as well as enough fuel to refuel. Since the miscalculating boffin had been put on janitorial duty, this launch went completely as planned, and soon after launch the probes were attached and the fuel was transferred. Jeb and Bill, who wanted to celebrate the two brave Kerbonauts on their skills personally gave their regards before deorbiting the refueler while Ludous and Orwig got ready to burn for Minmus.

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Post-mission briefing:

Okay, that was the boring bit. I should've probably not done this as the first mission. It takes up a lot of time, while not resulting in much to say, making for a bad start of such a series. However, what's done is done.

I never want to do so many probes one after another again. I don't really mind doing one between a few missions, but all of them required multiple burns to leave the SoI of Kerbin, with each burn taking roughly 8 minutes. It was a whole lot of time warping, burning with physical time warp and generally waiting for stuff. I wouldn't have been able to do this without Kerbal Alarm clock.

What I also found out is that there's not really a good reason for probes with such low thrust to try to get a gravity assist from either the Mun or Minmus. The differences in fuel were small enough that it was in no way really worth the extra time it took. However, it made for pretty pictures, and it was fun to at least try uit.

Some of you may say that I wasted a lot of fuel by burning for interplanetary space first to begin with, and that is completely true. However, I do not want to deal with trying to get a good launch window from Kerbin orbit and than finding out I have to do my burns in Kerbin's shade. This way may cost a lot of extra fuel, but it saves me those headaches. Furthermore, these probes have about 6.6km/s, so they should be just fine even with these wasteful burns.

The Trident's near-reentry was a really stupid miscalculation on my part. I like to do at least some calculations of whether a ship is going to make it to orbit, just so that I have to do slightly less extensive testing of machines. However, in the case of the Trident, I forgot to subtract the Trident's own supply of fuel from the fuel budget for getting into space. It was a really stupid mistake, and I hope I do not make it again any time soon. The second launch went much better, with me getting a quite good intercept right from the start. I'm not really all that concerned about anything going wrong on this mission from now on. The only problem is that I forgot to strut the engines to the main satellite. This may cause some annoying forces while time-warp burning, but we'll see.

[Rodyle]

Today, the third and last craft needed for the mission was sent to space at the moment we had a direct launch window for Minmus. It was a probe containing a highly sensitive camera, capable of seeing far into both the UV and IR spectrum using newfound technology. Since Henburry was not involved in the planning of this mission, it went off without a hitch, and the CamSat 1 was soon in orbit around Minmus, allowing the boffins to do some calibrations and finetuning on the extensive SAS, which will keep the camera on-target during long exposure pictures.

After the CamSat completed its burn for Minmus, it was time for the Trident to do the same. There was some slight engine wobble, but not enough for our heroes Ludous and Orwig to abort the mission. There were no further problems, apart from a design decision which caused the return vehicle's tanks to be drained. However, if the two remembered to transfer fuel back in before setting off, there shouldn't be a problem.

After reaching a stable orbit and some general checks were completed, mission control sent the request they'd release the probes and spread them around on the equator of Minmus. The first two probes went exellently. However, the third appeared to have a slightly defective radar altimeter, causing it to hit the surface at a speed of 40 metres per second. however, the probe survived miraculously due to a sturdy design, the landing legs absorbing the brunt of the blow and due to the particular landing site of this probe. If it had hit the rock-hard surface of the lowlands, it would certainly have shattered on impact, but instead it came down on one of the gravely mountains, which further cushioned the impact. A quick diagnostics assured that that while the probe lost all of its landing legs, the instruments on board were still mostly functioning.

After the fourth probe had been set down, the probes tightly secured themselves to the surface and drilled into it with the two seismic probes equiped on each.

After making sure everything was in place, Mission Control gave Ludous and Orwig permission to pop the caps on the thee boxes attached to the engine segments. They were told that they were not allowed to know what those boxes contained up untill now, because the boffins thought they'd become too enthousiastic and would start playing with them way too soon.

Ludous and Orwig looked out of the windows of their satelite and were disapointed when they saw they contained very basic probes. "So, mission control... What's so special about that?" Orwig asked. His eyes started to sparkle when he head the response: "We want them to fly you into the surface of Minmus as fast as possible".

They weren't listening anymore during the explanation, but it went along these lines. They could learn a lot about the chemical components of the surface this way. The probes were weighed about 150 kilos when emptied of their fuel, and should be travelling at roughly 2 kilometres per second minimally on impact. This means that these probes are hitting the surface with the energy of roughly 150 tonnes of TNT, with all of the energy focussed on quite a small surface area. This immense force is enough to evaporate small chunk of the surface, and by taking a looking at the spectral data of this cloud of evaporating material, they could learn the chemical components. Furthermore: by looking at the data from the seismographs on the four probes, they could learn about the inner structure of Minmus as well.

Orwig and Ludous were laughing as they'd never done before, sending the three probes down to the surface of Minmus at speeds with which they usually orbit Kerbin. The probes impacted on three locations chosen by the boffins, but the kerbonauts did not care at all.

After all three probes were launched, Ludous and Orwig pumped fuel back into their return vehicle and burned for kerbin, where they landed safely and went to UKSC headquarters to tell their immensely jealous colleagues how much fun they'd had.

As for the trident? It'll stay in its orbit over Minmus. Who knows, perhaps we'll need a satelite there in the future.

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