Pillaging Minmus

[Geschosskopf]

For a change of pace I started a new career going all stock except for some instrumentation. And as usual, I hit the mid-game grind where it's still months before I could go to other planets and wanted to snag a few more expensive toys to do them in style. So that meant going to Mun and Minmus many times. To break the monotony of that, I did what I sometimes do and sent a Mobile Lab with a reusable lander. This time, however, I saved my points and jumped a few steps up the tech tree to make sure I had 2.5m docking ports, probe cores, and SAS before going, so I could go in style.

The ship was assembled in orbit out of 3 parts. First I designed the lander, then the returnable lab, and finally a hab/fuel/engine module to push the whole thing out there, refuel the lander, and serve as a permanent orbital station. This latter being a bit huge, I launched it first and docked the other, smaller modules to it. So behold! The A-03 Module on the pad.

The payload is the upper orange tank and the radial LFBs to be delivered to 100km orbit full of fuel. This required the rather obscene lifter consisting of 7x asparagus stacks and 2 SRBs as a finishing touch. Not having to deal with the FAR Demons sure makes a difference. This actually flew just fine the 1st time and delivered the payload as planned, except it did need to burn about 26m/s to finish circularizing. But it got up otherwise fully fueled, and here it is:

Being as it's intended to remain at Minmus as a permanent station, it has a Hitchhiker, in which the intrepid crew of Adbury, Mulvern, Hudton, and Billy-Bobrey rode up. It also has a 2.5m port on each end and 1.25m ports on the sides.

Then up went the A-02 Returnable Lab Module. This was a much more modest affair and looked like this once it was in orbit:

The central lab with the legs and chutes is what came back. It had a small orbital maneuvering stage on the back for docking with the A-03 in LKO and to return home from Minmus. Both this and the nose cone with the lander's docking port would be jettisoned during landing.

Then the A-01 Station Lander, pretty much my standard lander, minus chutes and decouplers for the engine pods because it's also never coming home. Who knows, there might be another reason to land on Minmus after this expedition. Anyway, all 3 parts were docked together and away the whole thing went towards Minmus. It was sort of serving as a practice run for a future Duna trip.

The LFBs gave the whole monstrosity about 3800 dV and a TWR > 3, so the burn only took a few seconds and it would have about 2800 dV left in the tanks on arrival.

And in due course it arrived and went into a 100km polar orbit at Minmus. Polar so that over time all remaining biomes would rotate under its orbit.

Upon arrival, the lander and the Lab's return stage were tanked up and then inventory taken. The central orange tank was empty and the LFBs had 3/4 each, and about 50% of the mono it started with (it used a fair amount maneuvering).

Anyway, with all preparations made, it was time to put Hudton and Billy-Bobrey in the lab and Adbury in the lander, and send the lander down.

At this point in the game, I'd already been to Minmus 4 times (and 3 times to Mun). That's how I got the parts to build this thing. This meant this expedition had to do 5 biomes: Lowlands, Slopes, Great Flats, Flats, and Lesser Flats. In each one, the lander exposed 4x Goos and 4x Materials, plus took seismic and temperature readings, and Adbury did his EVA and surface samples. The seismic, temperature, and surface samples were taken twice with the 1st transmitted. Upon return, therefore, the lander carried 11 data sets, which Adbury then had to download. The lander had strategically placed ladders for him to hold onto during this operation.

Then he carried them over to the Returnable Lab, after which Hudton and Billy-Bobrey used the Lab to re-arm the lander's experiments. At the end of the trip, 5x biomes times 11x data meant the Returnable Lab contained 55 data sets.

Finally, Adbury made his 5th and final landing on the Lesser Flats. He decided to commemorate the occasion.

On the 4 previous trips, Adbury had docked onto the nose of the Returnable Lab because it was a shorter trip. The last time, however, he parked the lander on one of the side docking ports of the Hab/Fuel/Engine Module so the Returnable Lab could leave.

The mission had been accomplished. Every Minmus biome had been visited and totally pillaged of Science!, at least as things stand at present.

So the data was safely stowed away, and the lander refueled and rearmed 1 last time just in case. At the end of this operation, with the Returnable Lab prepped to leave, the LFBs of the station still had 50% of their fuel and 33% mono. Thus, the 5 lander sorties had used 1/3 of the available fuel and about 1/4 of the available mono. That's either serious over-engineering or forethought in providing a useful refueling station for future work on Minmus.

This all accomplished, Adbury returned to the Hitchhiker and Hudton and Billy-Bobrey shoved off in the Returnable Lab. Adbury will remain as Seneschal of Minmus, assisted by Mulvern.

The Returnable Lab returned without incident after a voyage of about 6 days. Upon arrival, it made sure it was going to land and then shucked its 2 ends.

And down it came on its 12x radial chutes.

This resulted in a haul of about 3000 Science!, 2000 returned in the Lab and 1000 transmitted. And rather more fun that doing that with each lander shot out individually from Kerbin.

And thus Minmus was well and truly pillaged and Kerbalkind rejoiced.

[HafCoJoe]

Cool! I didn't pillage when I completed my career and it took forever to do anything. Nice return sep. When I do career again I'll remember just how much science you can milk from Minmus .

[KingPhantom]

nice!

what do you think? is this thing also usable on mün? or is the lander "too big"?

[Geschosskopf]

Cool! I didn't pillage when I completed my career and it took forever to do anything. Nice return sep. When I do career again I'll remember just how much science you can milk from Minmus .

You can finish the stock tech tree without ever leaving the Kerbin system. Minmus all together adds up to about 5500 Science! for all 9 biomes. A Mun biome, being closer to Kerbin, pays about 3/4 what a Minmus biome is worth, but Mun has significantly more biomes so all told is worth rather more.

what do you think? is this thing also usable on mün? or is the lander "too big"?

Well, IIRC, the lander has about 3200m/s and a TWR at Mun > 5 (it's like 16 at Minmus), so yes, it will work there. In fact, the basic design was made to do Mun and has already been to Mun 3 times as a 1-shot deal in this game, and has been there countless other times in other games. And being low and wide, it can land safely on slopes too steep for Kerbals to walk on. But that's OK because except to plant a flag, the Kerbal never needs to touch the ground. When he lets go of the pod ladder, he stands on the protruding Science! parts below the hatch, and can take surface samples and EVA reports from there . There's no ladder to climb back up into the pod; he has to use his jetpack but he should be very good at EVA by now what with carrying all the data to the lab. Still, should the Kerbal fall off a cliff and be unable to get back into the lander, all is not lost thanks to the lander's probe core. You can fly the lander back up by itself and load it with the spare Kerbal in the Hitchhiker to carry on .

The main thing is, you'll probably need more fuel and mono in the station. You'll have roughly the same amount to start with because transfers to Mun and Minmus cost about the same. However, a lander sortie at Mun should take between 2000-2500m/s depending on how much inclination changes you have to do both to hit the target biome and get back to the station. That's 2-3 times what a sortie costs at Minmus. Thus, while you could probably do 12-15 sorties at Minmus with the fuel shown here, you'll probably only get 4-7 at Mun. Depending on how many biomes you have to do on Mun (or how much tech tree you have left), that might not be enough.

But that's why the Hab/Fuel/Engine module has such big engines and a docking port at the rear. So you can stick another fuel tank module on back there and still have plenty of power to get to Mun with a reasonably short burn. Just be sure to add some more mono tanks, too.

[Kulebron]

Jesus. These things can be weight-optimized.

[Geschosskopf]

Jesus. These things can be weight-optimized.

They are . The lander has enough fuel to carry all the Science! stuff down to Duna and back up again without needing chutes for landing. This means it can also do that at Moho, Gilly, Mun, Minmus, Ike, Dres, Vall, Bop, Pol, and Eeoloo. And in most of those places, it has enough fuel to mess around some to break the monotony, such as doing loops around an arch. So that weight is fixed. There's not a lot I could do to trim down the returnable lab. I suppose I could have used the low-profile adaptor which is a bit lighter than the longer one, and maybe not used the lander legs on it, although that would be risky if coming down at high elevation on Kerbin. Anyway, rather less than 1 ton to save there. So the only real place to reduce weight is in the fuel module, and the less fuel you have there, the fewer times you can use the lander and the less useful it is as a refueling station.

[juanml82]

Well, the lab and your land can both use the 2.5m docking port, so you don't need to eject the upper part of the A-02 on reentry, but that doesn't really save much. If you don't want to leave A-01 as a permanent station, it should be possible to merge A-01 and A-02, I think and only the lab makes the descend.

Maybe the lander can be trimmed down, but that would reduce it's width, making landings harder. Also, are the 48-7s better than the 909 for Minmus mission? I tend to think otherwise, but I might be wrong.

But that regarding trimming and weight. Overall, it's a very good approach - I'm tempted to start a new career game to try it

[Geschosskopf]

Maybe the lander can be trimmed down, but that would reduce it's width, making landings harder. Also, are the 48-7s better than the 909 for Minmus mission? I tend to think otherwise, but I might be wrong.

I used the 48-7Ses mostly as a result of the desire to be short and wide.. By putting the tanks outboard on the Material Bays, and the legs outboard on the tanks, I achieve these goals. All other arrangements result either in a taller lander, a narrower leg span, or both. So, I end up with 4 widely separated tanks. I suppose a single 909 underneath with fuel lines going to it from each tank would still work, but I never really trust fuel lines so preferred to use the 48-7S engines, 1 under each tank.

[KingPhantom]

what do you think, geschosskopf. is it possible to the the ship-files for every part? so i can try to visit minimus and mun with that?

[Geschosskopf]

what do you think, geschosskopf. is it possible to the the ship-files for every part? so i can try to visit minimus and mun with that?

Your wish is my command.

Dropbox Link

I took MJ, the only non-stock part, off all 3 ships, in case you don't use that. Otherwise, all stock but you have to unlock the necessary nodes before you can use them.

EDIT:

I should have mentioned the action groups:

1 = Toggle solar panels

2 = Toggle ladders (don't think these ships actually have deployable ladders, though)

3 = "Science Bomb". Fires crew report, observes all the goos and materials, and logs the temperature and seismic all at once.

Edited May 21, 2014 by Geschosskopf

[KingPhantom]

great! thank you!

i dont use any mods. i will try it otherwise i will install what i need. but i normally play complete "vanilla" (without mods). there are some good stock-rockets out there.

[HAMsmith]

Very nicely done! Way back when your four modules around the girder concept revolutionized my science collection and this time the returnable lab looks to do the same for my hop missions. Thanks for the good work!

[Geschosskopf]

great! thank you!

i dont use any mods. i will try it otherwise i will install what i need. but i normally play complete "vanilla" (without mods). there are some good stock-rockets out there.

No problem. Hope it works for you. NOTE: I design most of my lifters to use RCS to turn during the ascent. Look at the top of the ascent stage for RCS tanks and at the bottom for RCS jets. If present, turn RCS on immediately upon launch and only turn it off once the payloads are in space. The big lifter especially needs RCS to get lined up for the circularization burn. Once you drop the last lifter stages, however, turn RCS off. The payloads have enough torque to spin without it and you need to save the RCS fuel for docking.

Speaking of docking, I carefully arranged the parts on all 3 modules so their CoMs won't move as they burn fuel (thanks to RCS Build Aid). So they don't rotate at all when translating to dock.

Very nicely done! Way back when your four modules around the girder concept revolutionized my science collection and this time the returnable lab looks to do the same for my hop missions. Thanks for the good work!

Thanks for the props .

[Frattypatty]

What kind of vessel do you use to refill the Hab-Fuel Module? (I'm assuming you reuse the equipment for other voyages)

[Geschosskopf]

What kind of vessel do you use to refill the Hab-Fuel Module? (I'm assuming you reuse the equipment for other voyages)

Well, a simple but expensive way to doing it would be to just send out another Fuel/Hab. If you can get 1 of them to the target while pushing all the extra stuff like the Mobile Lab and the lander, you can get another out there just by itself, given it has the engines. Then you just dock it on the back end of the first one. But a more elegant method would be to send just 1 orange tank, without the Hitchhiker, with no more engines that it needs by itself, and big docking ports on each end.

[bitslizer]

Forgive me for necroing, i got a few newbie questions

1) Why land the lab? why not just land the command pod that was on top of the lab? seem will be useful to leave in orbit and less weight to shoot up in the future

2) how to get the map with all the flag showing? will be useful to see which BIOME i have not visited yet.

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

Forgive me for necroing, i got a few newbie questions

2) how to get the map with all the flag showing? will be useful to see which BIOME i have not visited yet.

In the map view or tracking station, if you mouse up to the top of the screen, you'll see a bar appear with different vessel types (probe, pod, lander, debris, etc.). You can show or hide various categories of flying objects that way, including flags.

[Geschosskopf]

1) Why land the lab? why not just land the command pod that was on top of the lab? seem will be useful to leave in orbit and less weight to shoot up in the future

There was no command pod atop the lab. That was just a 1.25m-to-2.5m adaptor that bears a strong family resemblance to the 3-seat pod .

But even if there'd been a command pod, I would still have landed the lab. A command pod can only store 1 copy of an experiment from the same biome. IOW, only 1 Goo per biome. I was using 4 to be sure to get every single drop of available science.

2) how to get the map with all the flag showing? will be useful to see which BIOME i have not visited yet.

As Kerbas_ad_astra says, you can toggle the map display of any type of thing in the game. Mouse over the top center edge of the map screen to see the list of icons. You can both left- and right-click on them to turn them on and off individually or collectively. Experiment .

[Kerba Fett]

Your setup is quite similar to how I harvest the Mun and Minmus. The main thing I do differently is to not land the lab.

I use a small courier to come and pick up the data when I have enough to make the trip worthwhile. Once I'm done with Minmus I refuel the mothership and move the entire operation to the Mun or Duna.

I normally make multiple trips with the courier so being limited to one copy of each data per trip wasn't a problem. (I don't have the patience to wait till I've got it all)

I've also tried a lander that had the lab built in and a pair of goo canisters and material bays. I'd land, take 2 samples of each data then use the lab to transmit one and keep the other for return.