Permanent Munar Base - An exam procrastination

[kanojo]

I've recently wanted to do something more serious than just fooling around and exploding things. So I started this mission report. The goal is to establish a permanent base on the Mun, build a lander/transfer vehicle used for transfer from LKO to Mun and a refuel/cargo transfer-station in LKO.

Since I want to learn more about space engineering I also decided to plan out my missions in more detail using lots of math, doing some easier calculations first and slowly building it up. The mention of math made me think this was also a good time to practise LaTeX writing. I have probably decided to do to much...

Enough of boring pretalk!

The plan

I want to plan out each mission beforehand, what to send, energy requirements and ÃŽâ€v budgets. The detailed plan for each mission will be presented in a single PDF created using LaTeX. I'll add new content to the PDF as I move on to plan more missions. The plan only contains minimum requirements for a craft, not the craft design itself. It will be lots of text, math and almost no images.

The nerdy misson plan document

When the craft has been designed and launched I will post an update here with the final craft, some nerdy data and some form of mission report (success or failure). Those who only want to follow the goodies should be able to.

Parallel I'll also post updates to my website, where I will be hosting all files:

Spaced thoughts :: Permanent Munar Base

As always, comments and suggestions appreciated

[kanojo]

I started with a shorter mission to try out the concept of "careful" planning. I like it, but it takes a lot of time

I only calculated the orbit darkness time for this mission (I already knew the approximate ÃŽâ€v to get in orbit and to the mun).

The Mirage is the name of our brand new mapping probe! The purpose of it is to map the Munar surface and find interesting places for our upcoming Munar base. The probe is capable of 1500 ÃŽâ€v and can survive over 20 minutes without solar power (apparently planetary bodies blocks out sunlight).

During development we realized a rocket was needed to reach orbit. In response the Squid was developed, a very small rocket that unfortunately lacks boosters. It is however cheap and "reliable" in lifting smaller satellites.

During some initial testing using another probe called KMAP (Kerbin MApping Project) we discovered that a equatorial orbit was not very good for making maps...

We finally got to launch our probe, and headed for a polar Mun orbit. The node system really saves us some mathematical operations (for now).

Video of the launch availible for online watch on my website: Spaced thoughts :: Permanent Munar Base

You can also download the video as mp4 or ogv

The final maps sent back from the probe:

- Verner von Kerman -

[gtrusler]

Awesome! I did this a while back and had a lot of fun with getting everything where it needed to be and using a few stations, I would suggest putting a station in orbit around the mün as well, maybe 25x25 kilometer? It helps with refueling before a craft makes its final descent.