Real Time Apollo-Style Mun Mission

[K^2]

There have been many Apollo Mission re-enactments, but I want to do something different with this. This isn't so much about the flight as it is about the tension of doing everything in real time with limited information and emerging crises. The challenge is simple. Land on the Mun, plant the flag, and return safely to Kerbin. The catch? Everything is to be done in first person and in real time. How? By relying on the crew of flight controllers back on Kerbin, of course!

This is a team challenge. I don't know if we'd even have more than one team, but one is all we really need to make it fun. Either way, I'd like to involve as many people at different stages through this as is reasonable. At some point we will need to select the best pilot we could find. Preferably, someone who can record and stream the entire thing. We will need several flight controllers. I will volunteer as one, but I don't think it's going to be a one man job. But before any of this becomes reasonable, we need to find a rocket. So that shall be the first stage of the challenge.

Challenge Stage I: Rocket.

No mods. Three stage rocket must deliver Command Module and Mun Module to a free-return Mun Transfer Orbit. Mun Module must be a two stage lander capable of bringing two Kerbals down to the Mun from low orbit and bringing them back. Command module must be able to enter Mun orbit with MM attached and then return to Kerbin unladen.

All else being the same, smaller, simpler ship is better. Points for looking like Saturn V. Best ship to be decided by community vote once we have a few things to chose from.

I would propose submitting ships via Kerbal X, unless someone has better suggestion. Please, don't submit other people's ships. But feel free to ping them via PM if you think their ship would be perfect for this. I know I've seen some gorgeous Saturn V replicas.

One last question I'd like people to comment on is which additional restrictions we should apply to make it more realistic? The flight controllers will receive numerical data about ship's progress. It's going to be a bit more precise than Huston had on Apollo's flight, but it doesn't feel like there is a need to intentionally clobber the numbers. Speed of light delay also feels like it would be insignificant, and I don't want to bother with it. Flight controllers will use these numbers to come up with angles and burn times relayed to the pilot. Should we be limited to specific tools? I think it might be fun to limit it to slide rules, since physics is so much simpler than real world. But that can be annoying to some people. Controllers will talk to each other and the pilot via a voice chat. (Skype? Mumble? Team Speak? Can be decided when we have a team.) Again, speed of light delay seems insignificant. Pilot will only have access to instruments and gauges visible in first person. Should these be further limited? Please, suggest specific mods if so.

Short list of questions.

• Which tools can flight controllers be limited to? Slide rules? Calculators? Or anything they could find?
  
• Should there be any additional mods limiting pilot's information?
  
• Should there be any additional ship physics mods? (I'm a bit against these, but try to convince me.)
  
• Anything else I'm missing?

Oh, and for the record, the mission should last a little over 24 hours. That means it will probably take up a full weekend. I would like to do this some time early on January. If you feel like you'd make a good pilot for the mission or would like to be on the flight controller crew, shout out in this thread. If we manage to find enough people to do several runs, maybe we can make a competition of it. (Ideas for rules/scoring?) Any other ways you think you can make this better or more entertaining for everyone? Chime in!

[Kartoffelkuchen]

That's a nice idea. I wonder if we could make this on a DMP Server, and that we use kOS. So, for example, every mission controler has his own small kOS command module. Some guys are launch control, the other control speed, velocity etc with kOS. I hope you could follow me.

[K^2]

That seems unnecessary. Pilot can effect all changes to the ship that are meaningful. And the only information flight controllers need are the location and velocity. Knowing fuel reserves and/or ship mass would be useful as well, but not quite critical. Everything else will be done old school way. The ships in KSP simply aren't complex enough to require any significant data downloads, or ability to send instructions to the ship. Besides, doing it old school way is plain more fun.

That said, DMP or similar might be cool to try and have both CM and MM piloted throughout the mission. Plus, having a backup pilot can never be a bad thing. I've designed all of the above with assumption that this will run purely single player, and the only critical mod is a server that reports location of the ship. The reason for that is stability. It would suck really bad to run through half of the mission and then call it quits because CM blew up while docking with MM. But if you can convince me that DMP is stable enough, and I can grab all the necessary data from it, then I'd be happy to include it.

[John FX]

I know you say no mods but there are some mods out there that will not affect craft performance or piloting but would enhance this sort of mission. I would suggest to allow RasterPropMonitors. It gives good IVA displays (and better screenshots) but does not alter the performance of the craft in any way.

If you really want to make it like a space program with a team working to figure stuff out in time then consider telemachus. You can have instrument readouts over the net displayed on a HTML screen (AFAIK, I know you can do it over a LAN) so `ground control` could be fed a G-force graph and altitude and location on a map rather than exactly what the craft is doing.

EDIT : the displays are numerous and configurable so you could pick out exactly the ones you want your ground crew to have

Just some thoughts.

Edited December 14, 2014 by John FX

[K^2]

The no mods was strictly for the rocket itself. We'll have to run at very least a mod for tracking rocket's position, and I'm happy to consider mods for IVA enhancements. RasterPropMonitors is definitely worth considering. I'll have to take a look at how configurable it is, but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far.

I'll also take a closer look at Telemachus, but I feel like I want to have a bit more control over data flow. I was planning to, basically, write a small HTTP server that would allow any number of flight controllers, as well as anyone who just wants to see what's happening, to connect to it and get all of the relevant data on the flight. Rich does provide source code, however, so the server for the mod might be a good candidate for the actual plugin that will do the tracking.

Thank you for the pointers.

Edit: The camera placement of RasterPropMonitors is particularly useful. I was a bit worried about having pilot do first person landing with obstructed visibility and no way to get external views. Ditto docking. This would resolve these issues. And it is entirely customizable. So it's starting to sound like it will have to be on the list. I just need to play around with it to make sure it works properly and that it won't cause any stability issues. Again, thanks for this.

Edited December 14, 2014 by K^2

[Rich]

I have read your current plan with interest and I have a few words of advice to chip in. Experience has taught those of us that have developed data exporting mods for KSP, that running a web server as a game modification will not get you healthy data rates or allow for a large number of concurrent connections. In order to achieve these goals it is necessary to use a proxy, therefore I would advise basing your lightweight solution on the Go At Throttle Up project, which includes such a proxy. However, you obviously sacrifice installation and development simplicity by not having all of your code compiled as a KSP modification.

[K^2]

So a server should run on pilot's machine, with mod checking in with updates whenever it can, while server handles external requests as necessary? Sounds reasonable. The server might as well serve HTML directly, then.

[THX1138]

Has this project been cancelled? I'm not suitable for any of the roles (maybe as the pilot except I might have measles and therefore the back-up pilot has to take my place ) but it interests me nonetheless.

[jonatron5]

No idea if this is dead or not but really sounds fun email me if its alive. I will volunteer for any role I have 1000 ksp hours. So im pretty versatile.

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