Let the kerbals live! project [Mission 17, 2014/10/9]

[DivisionByZero]

Hi, folks! I thought it would be fun to make mission reports on a new career game I just started. The gist is this: I'm a mediocre player and I'm going for "hard mode" without quick saves and no reverts. I'll use the following mods:

KSPI, RT2, TAC-LS, KCT, DangIt!, B9, KW, EL, KAS, MKS/OKS, FAR, DRE, CustomBiomes, FinePrint and Infernal Robotics.

There's a handful of other ones (like docking port alignment tool) that I use, but the above should be a fairly complete list of the major content elements. In some cases, I'm going to play it a little different to avoid going easy on myself. For instance, I will not be using the converter from metal to rocket parts in EL. Rather, if I can get a MKS/OKS object making things, it'll provide rocket parts. Other than that, they have to be shipped from Kerbin.

What will make it interesting? Well, I figure I'll start making images of the rocket generations I go through in the game as follows (thanks to Kronol vessel viewer):

Previous ship images.

http://i.imgur.com/JmcopWA.png

http://i.imgur.com/PqjScmO.png

http://i.imgur.com/DXiw8nN.png

I just roasted Bob on re-entry on the third mission in which led me to the title. I'll post the mission logs in the next post.

Dead Kerbals: 3 on Year 1, Day 356

Missions since last accident: 2

Current date: Year 1, day 426

Edited October 10, 2014 by DivisionByZero
Updates!

[DivisionByZero]

Mission logs

Mission 1 consisted of trying to accomplish the contracts for launching a craft and breaking the atmosphere. There's really limited options at the beginning of a career game which more fun, in my opinion. The imaginatively named "Booster 1" carried Jeb well up to about 80km and returned him to the surface without a problem. Of course, not knowing a thing about KCT, this was also a test on how long it really takes to make ships. It was something like 20 days, I think. I started pumping KCT points into VAB construction and science gain as soon as I could.

Mission 2 consisted of achieving orbit. An interesting side effect of KCT is that many contracts will expire before the craft is completed. It actually limits the types of contracts you can take pretty severely when most of them want a quick test of a part in 3 days time but building a craft to do it takes 14d! I foresee money trouble in the future. At any rate, "Booster 2" was utilized for this mission which carried Bill successfully into orbit. He achieved a 285x80km orbit and was able to make use of the mystery goo containers for ample science. Several EVAs were also accomplished further boosting the science gain on this mission. Upon landing near the crater, Bill planted the first flag on Kerbin and returned home with some souvenir dirt.

Mission 3 was where I got cocky and Bob paid the price. Having unlocked the Science Jr., I figured I could score some quick points with another orbital flight, but with a bigger payload. I would further make this a lander so that I could recoup more costs by recovering the lander. Only the Mun mission didn't have an expiration, so that was my only active contract until launch. Launch went fine, everything was great. The science was going to be epic! Unfortunately, I did 2 things weird. I figured I'd try to be clever and instead of relying on the liquid system, I'd design in a 50m/s solid-rocket system for the de-orbit burn. slick, except 50m/s is not a lot. I further made another fatal mistake: I over-estimated my battery life. After 1 too-many orbits, I completed the de-orbit burn, which was going to get me down to 30km periapsis, but then the juice ran out! Ordinarily, this would not be a problem, I think, as the shape of the capsule would result in the heat-shield facing down. With the science jr payload underneath the capsule, however, it didn't work out that way. The ship re-entered nose first on a weird spin burning up the three chutes and the goo containers. The pod survived re-entry, but would not survive splash-down. Bob tried a desperate EVA with thrusters on full in an attempt to live, but alas, he didn't make it. Poor Bob. We'll try again with more batteries, I think.

Date: Year 1, Day 100

Lost Kerbals: 1

Mission 4: Year 1, Day 112. After the sad loss of Bob Kerman, a new member of crew was hired: Rodgard Kerman. He was quickly tasked with accomplishing the mission that had ended in Bob's swan dive into the ocean. The same launcher was used with the quick addition of 2 battery packs. Unfortunately, Rodgard was a little too eager to assist gravity in the turn and the trajectory of the ship wound up being far too low to make it into orbit. The mission was quickly aborted by staging through to the chutes. This resulted in a successful recovery of boosters and the capsule. Some science was collected in flight in the Science Jr., but not nearly as much as desired. We'll try again soon!

Mission 5: Year 1, Day 120. At last! Rodgard again took the helm of a Booster 3 space craft with the admonition to keep the nose up this time! He succeeded in achieving a high orbit, acquiring science data in the Mystery Goo containers and material's bay and then soft landed in the desert. On a side note, the fine print in the contracts was finally examined and mission control now realizes the difference between the contract expiration date and the duration time!

Mission 6: Year 1, Day 176. This mission made use of a stability mounting tower, a cockpit, fuel tank, and basic jet engine. We had a contract to test this contraption while landed so, what the heck? Jebediah bravely faced down this crazy unknown technology and, with great trepidation, gently touched the stage button to activate the death machine. The thing promptly flamed out! I bet the boys in the lab were laughing the whole time giving us this contract to test an advanced engine without giving us the air intakes to go with it! Well, they still paid us so I guess we can let it slide this time.

Mission 7: Year 1, Day 182. Another testing mission was accomplished by lead test kerbonaut: Jebediah. A set of experimental components were requested from the R&D teams at a few companies. It's true that we aim to please, even more so when there are just some comfortable rocket motors for test while landed on the pad instead of those crazy jet-engine things! With the science gains obtained, we will be able to set our researchers on the problem of making temperature measurements, which is an improvement from using a double-dog-dare on our kerbonauts to find out if they get stuck to the capsule hatch. The only draw-back to the mission was having to listen to the excitement in the break-room when those kerbals saw the 2.5m engine under development.

Mission 8: Year 1, Day 197. After mastering the correct amount of double-sided sticky-tape to use to attach the solar panels, a new set of contracts were accepted to put communication satellites in orbit about Kerbin. Our engineers made the daring plan to re-use the Booster 3 lifter system to put the KComm 1 satellite in a 1Mm circular orbit. The final satellite is completely unpowered, so it was necessary to add a special interstage section with additional Stayputnik to control the upper-stage after separating the satellite in its orbit. There was enough fuel left over to de-orbit into the ocean. Since this is the first communications satellite in orbit, several maneuvers had to be pre-programmed with the flight computer and time delay. Things are working so far! Below is an image of the KComm 1 satellite.

Mission 9-10: A few more satellite missions were sent up. One attempted to add to the 1Mm circular orbit and start up a communications set. However, mission control neglected to send up an attitude command in time and the solar panels stayed in the shade. It's dead in space until a repair mission can be sent to recharge the batteries. A second mission completed a contract for placing a near-kerbosynchronous satellite up. This mission also met with mixed success. After the final burn (sent via flight computer), the trajectory matched up the company specs just fine. They hit the wire transfer button just before we realized mission control forgot to point a long-range dish at KComm 1! Fortunately, the post-mission celebratory snack-table had been set up already and Gene was able to distract the company reps with sandwiches and cookies. Another repair mission will sort this one out as well!

Mission 11: Year 1, day 226. Time sure flies! Jebediah, Bill and Rodgard are getting really good at billiards and darts while waiting for launchpad reconditioning and vehicles to get built. Finally, however, the Booster 3 Mun flyby vessel was completed! The kerbals played rock, paper scissors to figure out who would have the honor of escaping into another SOI. This proved more complicated than expected with three players, though, so they eventually drew straws. Unfortunately, they forgot to put in a shorter straw so it was finally left up to Gene to pick the pilot. So, they sat him in his comfy chair with a blindfold on. They then spun the chair until Gene was super-dizzy. He then staggered about until he ran into Bill Kerman. The upper stage was modified for the mission by removing the extra heat-shield and placing a single FT-800 fuel tank on board. The Science Jr. and 2 goo experiments were kept and, at long last, we had the new thermometers on board. A free-return trajectory was designed to determine how much spare delta-v was retained in the rocket after the transfer burn to the mun. A small mid-course correction was made to ensure a 17km fly-by of the mun to maximize the science return. The free-return trajectory skimmed the atmosphere at 20km and provided a soft landing in the desert. All said, the mission completed a partial contract and netted 300+ science for the program! The boys in the lab began slaving away over the data almost immediately (just after the celebratory snack table was empty).

Launch 1-3: The kerbals will be changing the nomenclature a little bit from here on out. Probe ships will be referred to "launches" whereas the trips with kerbals will be called "missions". Apparently, Werner participates in a betting pool on each kerbonaut that goes up (no word on "for" or "against") and didn't realize that much of the activity consisted of satellite contracts. He therefore requested some sort of signal to let him know when to care about the activities on the Launchpad instead of whatever he's working on in the lab. Launches 1-3 lifted additional KComm satellites into keosynchronous or other orbits. While the contractors usually ask for about 10s of data, the KComm upper stage often has enough fuel to reposition the satellite into a KSO orbit. In this way, a 3-satellite KSO constellation has been achieved with the KComm units. At last, Jebediah can listen to his radio program while orbiting the planet without the annoying breaks in reception on the far-side! He can't wait to try it next time he goes up. Of course, there were a few snags along the way. About 3 satellites are without power or lost contact. We're getting better though!

Launch 4: Year 1, day 275(?): Rockomax had a strange request for Werner and boy did the KSP deliver on its promises! The boys at Rockomax requested we test two experimental engine types but asked that they be tested on an escape trajectory from Kerbin! After much speculation around the coffee machine, the Kerbals concluded this must be the greatest PR stunt ever imagined. Whatever the real reason, a new vessel was required as the new Poodle engine was up for test and the Kerbals had never launched such a large part. At the end of the design period, though, behold: the K-Escape 1! This awesome beauty is really getting the boys in the kerbonaut pool excited, especially with the new "Skipper" engine. Too bad it had to be specially put together for this silly probe launch. Even though it was clearly unnecessary, mission control even accomplished a nifty gravity-assist off of the Mun and achieved escape velocity with something like an 800m/s burn at Kerbin! Unfortunately, following escape from the Kerbin SOI, communications was lost. The boys in the communications lab argued up and down that nothing could possibly get more than 90Mm away from Kerbin and it was only after giving them a look in the telescope at the tiny speck that they conceded the point. Later, the speck was cleaned, but at least we got them to start imagining what to do about the antenna range! In the end, the engine tests were conducted and Rockomax seemed pretty happy about it. I think I saw their new ads out just the other day...

Mission 12 & 13: Year 1, Day 300(?): Utter madness! We finally found out the purpose of the "jet engine" contraptions. These people wanted us to believe that people could fly through the air like a bird, except without moving wings at all and boy we were skeptical. In fact, no one in the current kerbal roster wanted to give it a shot. Looking at the applicant pool, however, we found a very brave (and not too bright) Kerbal for the job: Ering Kerbal. The boys in the lab wheeled out this "airplane" from the hangar for us to take a look at while Ering got into his flight suit. I took a picture from nearby:

It wasn't much to look at and we kept wondering when they'd point it upward but they never did. Well, Ering hopped in and we all started making bets on how far down the runway he'd get before flipping over. I won with about half-way.

I guess the designers were expecting something like this to happen. Ering was telling us that they had installed a giant red button labeled "abort" in the cockpit and said to hit it if anything started making him nervous. Well, I could recognize the nice rocket decoupler and parachutes on the airplane and sure enough, when the wings ripped away, that's where the front end detached and some chutes appeared. Ering was pretty excited about it all, said it seemed like a fun ride and wanted to know how long until he could have another go!

The curiosity must have reached Gene because he gave a short speech to the kerbonauts and mission control on why there was so much work on these things. Reaction Systems Ltd. was out requesting fly-overs at several nearby locations and were paying out quite a bit of kfunds for completion. I ran into one of our lab boys and he was super-excited about the missions as Reaction was lending our group some of their folks to make sense of the data and share the results.

Well, Ering got his second chance about 19 days later. This time, he made it well off the run-way and out over the first three observation points. After hitting the third waypoint, though, he said he pulled back on the stick too hard and the wings fell off. This happens, I guess, when they used the sticky-tape too much in the hangar. Well, he used the red button again and lived to tell the tale. There's a few more spots to check out, though, so sooner or later, someone will have to get back in the thing.

Launch 4: Year 1, Day 331. The KComm 8 satellite was launched into a 25 degree inclined, 4Mx10M orbit. Systems performed well. the satellite network managed to maintain contact almost continuously throughout the mission. The satellite contracts are turning into a real cash-cow for the program. With only two long-range antennas on each satellite, however, this network is fairly limited usefulness. An upgraded system might be developed soon if our boys in the R&D department can come up with some interesting designs.

Mission 14: Year 1, Day 340. Disaster struck the program once more and we say farewell to our intrepid pilot: Ering Kerman. The U2 can Fly! plane was being put through another fly-over mission to fulfill two different contracts. One required fly-overs above 16.7km and the other below 2040m (how on earth anyone can see anything at 16.7km is beyond me, but whatever). Of course, we at the KSP make your satisfaction our reward, unless you'll only be satisfied by flying into a mountain. That's right! The last navpoint of the fly-over mission was a few hundred meters below the ground of the mountains just west of the KSC. Ering, successfully flew above 20km in the U2 can Fly! plane, even reaching mach 1.9 despite using such a basic engine. Unfortunately, he didn't believe anyone when we started to tell him that the last nav point would be impossible to reach. Well... he figured it out in the end. All that remains of the vessel are a few scraps from the landing gear. A memorial service will be held next Tuesday.

Mission 15: Year 1, Day 356. Again, the brave kerbals have attempted to conquer powered horizontal flight! A new recruit, Nellorf Kerman, was chosen to pick up the operation of the U2 can Fly! aircraft system after the untimely demise of Ering. This time, we carefully explained the difference between the radar altimeter and the altitude gauges! Nellorf took to the controls quite readily and managed a flawless flight past 3 waypoints East of KSC. A moment of panic swept through the control tower when it was reported that the main engine suffered a gimbal failure in the middle of the flight. However, the flight was continued as the control surfaces provided more than enough control of the plane. The flight was almost completed when disaster again struck. Nellorf was not able to reduce his airspeed sufficiently for the landing on the runway. Instead, he bounced a few times and attempted to apply the brakes at 150m/s or so. The plane did not take well to this and decided to flip over. All that was left of Nellorf was his Goddard Kerman bobble-head souvenir.

Lost Kerbals: 3

Mission 16: Year 1, Day 375. Morale was flagging in the face of the disastrous aircraft program so a "victory" was deemed to be helpful. Jebediah is our go-to kerbal in such situations so he was chosen to pilot a Mun orbiter mission. This solo mission would include a mapping survey of the Mun prior to recovery and demonstrate our ability to hit the power button on the altimeter control box. The mission lasted some 4-5 days before Jebediah returned to a graceful re-entry and landing. There was much celebrating that day!

Launch 5&6: Year 1, Days 385&405. Back to the space-plane hangar for a new experiment. Sure, the boys in the lab only have given us basic jet engines to date, but why should stop us from trying to develop the very best launch system for all these satellite missions (definition of best = cheapest)? Our group therefore put together a two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) craft for carrying an experimental satellite into orbit for mapping and surveying of our beloved Kerbin. Our construction crew have given us use of the simulator for a small donation of kfunds and the initial testing of the craft there, on an equatorial profile, was successful in the simulation. In actual usage, however, there were some slight "issues".

The flight plan is pretty simple: the payload rides piggy-back on the first-stage of the craft. This craft flies up to about 9500m and attains a maximum speed approaching Mach 2. The craft then makes an upward ascent at about 45 degrees to the horizon until engine flame-out. The payload is jettisoned and continues the ascent on the 909 engine until in orbit. The first stage has sufficient parachutes to be recovered upon landing providing a decent amount of funds. It's so simple, yet the two attempts have both failed!

In the first case, two things conspired against success. First, there was asymmetric engine flame-out during the ascent and the craft began tilting away into a significant angle-of-attack. When the payload was released, this large AoA resulted in a flat spin and there was insufficient control to maintain thrust in the prograde vector. The first stage was recovered, but the payload didn't make it.

In the second case, additional controls were installed to disable the outer engines during the ascent and avoid an asymmetric flame-out. This had the added benefit of shunting more intake air to the single engine and increased the maximum altitude of the craft from the original separation altitude of about 22km to over 30km. Unfortunately, the timing with the nearest communication satellite was not properly accounted for and communications were lost about 30% into the burn. This had the unfortunate effect of killing the engine and the satellite returned to the ground.

It may take a manned flight to make the TSTO concept work. At least the first simulation worked and no kerbals were injured (though I heard Werner hurt his big toe pretty badly when he kicked the communications control rack trying to regain control of the probe).

Mission 17: year 1, day 410. A very complex mission was accomplished in order to bolster morale yet again. In this case, we have sent the brave Rodgard Kerman all the way to Minmus and back! I say complex as a slingshot maneuver was utilized to reduce the delta-v requirements of the mission. The Mun Orbiter craft was again used in this mission. This craft has more than enough delta-v for direct transfer to Minmus, but it was thought that practice with gravity assists would be helpful data for future missions. After launch, the main vessel was left in a somewhat strange 1.2Mx40km equatorial orbit around Kerbin. An alarm clock was set for the Mun-Minmus transfer time with an additional day to spare to account for the need to travel from Kerbin to Mun. An 804m/s burn was used to approach Mun and the resulting slingshot was able to intercept Minmus without any problem. Two minor course corrections (one in Mun SOI and one on the transfer after the gravity assist) were used at 15 and 6m/s respectively. Circularization at Minmus only required 95m/s. This all seems like a bargain compared to the cheat-sheet of delta-v's on Werner's office wall! In this way, Rodgard became the first Kerbal in Minmus' SOI. While there, he accomplished a detailed mapping mission and some science experiments before returning to Kerbin and safely landing in the Badlands.

If only all the missions could be so successful.

Edited October 10, 2014 by DivisionByZero

[HMS Sophia]

Enjoying this. Waiting for more

[DivisionByZero]

Thanks, HMS Sophia. I'm going to edit the thread title so it's easier to keep track of when I update. Let me know if it works.

Also, does anyone know how to edit the save file so a kerbal is dead again? I forgot to disable respawn and Bob came back from the dead.

Edited October 2, 2014 by DivisionByZero

[HMS Sophia]

There's a respawn option in one of the configs which I think is True/False but I forget exactly what and where it is...

It's probably in the savegame .sfs file.

Questions:

1) What was your mun flyby mission time? How did you find it with Tac?

2) Is the trajectory mod pretty accurate?

3) What does KSPI add apart from a shedload of parts. I have RAM issues with parts, am I missing much?

Thanks

[DivisionByZero]

I turned the respawn off in TAC-LS right after I saw Bob re-appear. I'm just wondering how to kill him in the save-file.

For your questions:

1) I don't remember exactly - I'll try to re-recreate at some point. I don't think I really needed the life-support part, that was insurance incase something went horribly wrong and I had to leave the ship in orbit around Mun while mounting a rescue of some sort. The pod is 3 days, I think and the pod+small container is 34d.

*edit* looking at the time-stamps in my screen shots it looks like it took me 1d 5h total mission time.

2) So the trajectory mod doesn't seem so far off. My using a capsule is a little tricky since you have to work off of 180 degrees (I think!) to actually represent the situation of re-entering on the ablator. It also doesn't have options for lateral rotation, only pitching perpendicular to the horizon. Even so, I like it.

3) KSPI is one of my favorite mods as it adds a lot of cool game-play. For instance, the revised impactor experiment can only be maximized with 6 landers spread over the planet which forces additional mission planning. It's really cool to pull down 800 science with a single impact on the Mun, though. I really appreciate the depth in the mod representing the advanced technologies and the new resource infrastructure required. It's kind of like RT2 in that it forces you to plan a bit more, which I enjoy. Same with MKS/OKS + TAC-LS. More planning = fun in my book. Certainly in this game it feels more important to get it right since I've eliminated quicksave usage.

I use the Active Texture Management which takes care of RAM for my game, though things aren't as pretty with it on. It's worth it.

Cheers,

Edited October 3, 2014 by DivisionByZero
noticed mission time.

[Cydonian Monk]

Very nice so far. Keep it up.

To answer your "How do I kill Kerbals" question - In the persistent.sfs, scroll all the way to the bottom. Find the KERBAL { } entry for Bob. One of the name/value pairs is "state". Change "state = Available" (or whatever it reads) to "state = Dead". Congrats, you've now rekilled the zombie Bob.

[DivisionByZero]

Thanks, Cydonian. That did the trick.

[DivisionByZero]

Updated to mission 14 wherein we lose another brave kerbal.

[DivisionByZero]

Wow... so 0.25 is out now and a few of the problematic mods have already updated. I'm wondering if I should restart this project with the new strategy system and "hard" in the actual game settings. It'd be nice to have something to do with the prestige points...

What do people think?

[DivisionByZero]

Updated to mission 17. Now up to 3 dead Kerbals. Planes are dangerous.