Kron series (Kron 6 end of mission) - temporary halt of program

[lajoswinkler]

Wow, I had no idea this was four years old. Time flies so fast. Thanks, folks.

 

Kron 6 has fired its engine. The crew decided it's best to leave the Plockian system with barely enough speed, to avoid making large changes of the final orbit around Kerbol. 45 m/s was used and a bit more than hundred days later, the ship emerged from Plock's SOI.

 

Crew had a nice view of the system before they went to cryosleep and Gerty took over. Beros, Kyx, Karen and Plock in an isosceles triangle.

[Geschosskopf]

 

52 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

Wow, I had no idea this was four years old. Time flies so fast. Thanks, folks.

Thank you for 4 years of inspiring me far above my own imagination's capabilities.  You never use many words or even pictures, yet you still speak volumes.  I just wish you'd post a bit more often  

 

53 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

Crew had a nice view of the system before they went to cryosleep and Gerty took over. Beros, Kyx, Karen and Plock in an isosceles triangle.

To cryosleep, perchance to dream.  And in that sleep of frozen near-death, what dreams may come?  Good night, sweet Kron crew, and flights of angels sing thee back to Kerbin!

[lajoswinkler]

Falling from Plock takes more than a decade and the onboard supply of uranium is dwindling so Gerty plotted a course that would take little over seven years to reach Kerbin, although at a cost - considerably higher speed of impact.

 

Increased speed also shows as higher aphelion.

After the main burn, all but the very tiniest reactor output has been shut down. Again, the ship is a plummeting missile, but this time thrown instead of dropped.

 

Almost six years have been spent to get from Neidon's to Urlum's orbital distance. Trajectory correction will be done once the ship passes Jool's orbit.

[Geschosskopf]

Happy landings!

[lajoswinkler]

Inclination correction at Jool's orbit distance, while it's still cheap fuelwise. The crew is still sleeping.

Kerty reports 2/3 radiators breaking down, as well as engine itself failing and overheating at full thrust.

[roboslacker]

Is there going to be a Kron 7?

[DAL59]

Try going to the kelnis system(7 planets!)(Kerbal Star Systems)

[KAL 9000]

Roger, happy landings!

[lajoswinkler]

On 12/28/2017 at 1:50 PM, roboslacker said:

Is there going to be a Kron 7?

I don't know yet. Possible targets include Ablate, Ascension and Inaccessable. I don't really care for other places because they're mostly either boring, offering nothing, or artistically unrealistic and goofy beyond anything. But as I say, I don't know. I've got other things to do and this is time consuming. In order for such deep space missions in KSP to work out without major problems, planning is tedious, not to mention the eyecandy screenshots and story, something I tend to keep short as possible because, let's be serious, seldom anyone has the time and the will to read walls of text.

 

Kron 6 has reached the periapsis which dipped very close to the orbit of Eve.

 

Orbital speed was 14.7756 km/s at that point which is enormous.

[Geschosskopf]

10 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

Orbital speed was 14.7756 km/s at that point which is enormous.

Yup.  But I assume you've planned for that?

[DAL59]

Are you doing the reentry sped guessing again?  

[lajoswinkler]

22 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Yup.  But I assume you've planned for that?

Yeah... no. Some things I just eyeball.

 

2 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Are you doing the reentry sped guessing again?  

Indeed I will.

[DAL59]

6.2 km/s.

[roboslacker]

I'll say... 5978.3 m/s

[Geschosskopf]

6000 even.

[insert_name]

7000m/s

[Kosmonaut]

8300m/s

[NotAgain]

I'm going with 5,600m/s.

[DAL59]

What was it?  

[DAL59]

@lajoswinkler?

[Ho Lam Kerman]

Hi, I'm new. Can I guess?

I'm guessing 4000 m/s, because it's swinging up from Kerbol instead of down.

E: @lajoswinkler?

Edited June 11, 2018 by Ho Lam Kerman

[DAL59]

So what was the reentry speed?

[lajoswinkler]

I totally forgot about this, sorry. 

I finished the mission in last December, but I rarely visit the forum anymore, so I forgot to put the screenshots.

 

Last amounts of fuel was spent on slowing down as much as possible, which is not something I haven't done before. If there's fuel, I'll try to brake.

 

At one moment, the main engine failed which is not surprising, given that the ship was in space after more than a decade. It could operate at lowest thrust for a short while before it would overheat. Failing radiators did not help.

 

As Kerbalism's color code shows, the ship really isn't in a great condition, despite having high quality parts.

 

Kron 6 impacted the atmosphere at 5831.6 m/s which makes @roboslacker the winner of the competition.

 

Almost immediately, the jettisoned ship started to disintegrate in a spectacular set of explosions and shower of sparks larger than any previous Kron mission, spreading two fission reactors worth of fission products into the atmosphere. Also, life support gobbled up all electricity, so the crew was basically dying on the way down.

Those are the engine radiators evaporating above the capsule.

 

Ablative shield was very damaged, but it kept the capsule intact. Kerty deployed the parachutes and the crew splashed down.

 

Sadly, I forgot to take a photo of the crew, probably because they landed in the sea. They all survived. 

 

It took 1.5 years to finish Kron 6, and little over 2 years to officially end it. It started in early summer of 2016 and could've/should've ended by its end, but you know, life gets in the way.

End of this mission marks the end of the Kron ships exploring the Outer Planets Mod in its current form, and a halt of the Kron missions.

There are no active, working plans for the next mission, but Ascension and Ablate were always being considered, even though I honestly don't see how could my computer pull out the latter one. It's probably impossible to even achieve using a Kron-type ship (3.75 m infrastructure pushed by LV-NB engines) as the Δv requirements just to get there are around 25 km/s. Ascension is a much easier target, even though its extremely eccentric orbit poses serious logistic problems.

 

Thank you all for being a nice audience.

[DAL59]

On 8/3/2018 at 7:56 AM, lajoswinkler said:

t's probably impossible to even achieve using a Kron-type ship (3.75 m infrastructure pushed by LV-NB engines) as the Δv requirements just to get there are around 25 km/s.

What if you used a smaller ship, and ion engines?  Plenty of solar power.

[lajoswinkler]

4 hours ago, DAL59 said:

What if you used a smaller ship, and ion engines?  Plenty of solar power.

I am considering it, but there isn't much hope because this deep in Kerbol's gravity well, both Δv and TWR need to be high, otherwise it's an unbearably long cat and mice chase.

I will do some experiments, first.