Project Big Pig **Complete**

[ArmchairGravy]

A spinoff of my mission to Dres was the assembly of the Big Pig. While the Dres mission jettisoned the bottom stack of grey tanks & Skippers before burning out, Big Pig will keep them as fuel tanks. This will give me 24,000 units of fuel to mess around with.

First order of business is getting the Big Pig fueled up. I was able to get the Big Pig into orbit around Minmus, and have docked a Kethane refinery to it. A Kethane miner transports 8,000 units of Kethane up to the Big Pig. This is keeping me well occupied while waiting for the window to open up so the Dres mission can return home.

Where will the Big Pig end up going? Will it ever actually get anywhere? Should I thrust-limit the Skippers and let them help dance this mess around, or stick with just the LV-N's? Why does the crew freak out when I'm transferring Kethane? What do you think?

Edited March 28, 2014 by ArmchairGravy

[Scotius]

Well, you are pumping hektolitres of (supposedly) volatile substance through the core of their ship. One leak and spark and... As for destination of this fatso - better TWR is always good. Even with limited thrust this cluster of Skippers should get you interplanetary faster than two NERVA's. So use them while you can, and drop immediately after sucking last drop of fuel out of tanks.

[ArmchairGravy]

After far more Kethane runs than anyone should do the Big Pig is fully fueled. While the calculations show that thrust-limiting the Skippers on the bottom stack to 2.5% would be ideal, the lower limit on thrust-limiting Skippers seems to be 5.5%. This will give the Skippers 47% more boost than the dual LV-N's so I will have to throttle up slowly so as not to accordion the ship.

I've decided that Val is going to be my initial target for the Big Pig. I've also assembled a Layethe-capable lander that will launch separately from the Big Pig, and since it has a robotic core module it can rendezvous with the Big Pig after the Big Pig's Val mission is complete without subjecting crew to the indignity of spending months cooped up within a lander can.

More to come as this unfolds!

Edited March 9, 2014 by ArmchairGravy

[ArmchairGravy]

Rather than subject you to a wall of text, I'll let the pictures tell the story:

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To those who say Porcine Avionics only knows how to do massive over-engineering, we would like to point out the Layethe lander re-docked with the Big Pig with only .8 units of fuel left in its tank. If that's not precision, what is?

More to come as Project Big Pig continues its exploration of the Jool system. Next stop: Val.

[ArmchairGravy]

The Big Pig finished its Jool expedition, although it wasn't as complete as I hoped. The engineer responsible for the lander assembly didn't put a docking port on, so there was no way to resume the trip and explore Bop and Pol after it separated when it landed on Val.

The craft returned to Kerbin with roughly 6k of delta-v left. All in all, this was a great test of the performance of the Big Pig!

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[Cdr_Zeta]

Hello,

Very impressive - I have yet to learn interstellar travel astrophysics - my REAL missions are kicking off hopefully later tonite LIVE...I will have quite a journey to even start this venture; and isnt it the journey that is half the fun !! Getting there and back...icing on the cake !

Cmdr Zeta