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

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, lajoswinkler said:

After the celebration has subsided, Wernher von Kerman ordered preparations for the scientific investigation of Plock-Karen system. A brand new large telescope will be launched into Kerbin's geostationary orbit to measure Karen's orbital period and to roughly determine the surface composition of both bodies.

Cool :).  I managed to uipdate OPM without destroying anything currently at Sarnus.  Do you have the Sigma thing that makes Plock and Karen revolve about their mutual barycenter?

[lajoswinkler]

10 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Cool :).  I managed to uipdate OPM without destroying anything currently at Sarnus.  Do you have the Sigma thing that makes Plock and Karen revolve about their mutual barycenter?

OPM updates, so far, haven't made any problems with my installations. However, I'm always cautious with these things so I back up the installation.

I've installed Sigma Binary, but I've yet have to check the behaviour of it.

[_Augustus_]

9 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

OPM updates, so far, haven't made any problems with my installations. However, I'm always cautious with these things so I back up the installation.

I've installed Sigma Binary, but I've yet have to check the behaviour of it.

I can help design Kron 6, I also have made a logo for it:

[nsgallup]

awesome work

[lajoswinkler]

On 1/3/2016 at 10:26 PM, _Augustus_ said:

I can help design Kron 6, I also have made a logo for it:

It's a bit blurry.

I've already made the logos, but I'm not gonna do another manned mission for some time. It takes a lot of thinking and I need to goof around in KSP.

 

~ Ministry Of No Better Things To Do special report ~

Considering the newest breakthroughs in heat removal technology, scientists and engineers were given a green light for launching Ikar 3, one more mission to Ablate, the sungrazing dwarf planet. The probe will feature a single LV-N engine due to budget cuts after the latest Kron mission which depleted the money, as well as Kerbal resources.

- end of report -

Also someone, probably Mortimer Kerman, sprayed "YOU SUCK" on the VAB.

Launch of Ikar 3.

 

Second stage pushing the probe into LKO.

 

Correcting 5° inclination difference.

 

After a braking maneuver, Ikar 3 is falling into the hellish environment of Kerbol vicinity. Next report will come in shortly.

[lajoswinkler]

You can see, by the glowing of the radiators, that the probe is having a bad time. Thing is, it performed remarkably well. With timewarp at 100x, its critical parts stayed at 75% of their destruction temperature. Even the engine, running at 100% throttle, never overheated. Three large radiators were clearly enough.

 

Chasing Ablate is extremely difficult. It is virtually impossible to slow down fast enough in its 174 km wide sphere of influence if the vessel's solar orbit was anything but very similar to Ablate's. That's why you need at least some 20 km/s in your vehicle, parked in LKO.

 

Ikar 3 orbit was only 10 km higher in its apoapsis and even that minor difference almost made it fling from the SOI. Braking was finished almost at its edge.

(reminder: the probe is not insanely illuminated anymore because Planet Shine mod takes into account the body you orbit and ignores Kerbol even if it's very close)

 

Ikar 3 is in a 2x20 km orbit with around 80° of inclination. Nothing melted.

 

As Ablate's year (and day) last for 1 d, 20 h, 15 min (Earth time), this makes orbits of its satellites, in Ablate's frame of reference, rotate quite fast, so sometimes the periapsis is on the ablated side, and sometimes it's on the dark side.

The probe will use this phenomenon to scan the whole surface quite fast.

[lajoswinkler]

At first, Ikar 3 made a series of close flybys of the eroded side. Here's an interesting impact crater system.

 

And this is the area just beneath the terminator with visible layers of what used to be deep under the surface.

 

The terminator itself is very jagged. In this instance the probe orbited couple hundred metres above the terrain.

 

Ikar 3 used infrared imaging to take photos of the permanently dark side of Ablate.

As far as I know, this is the first such image ever taken, or at least reported online.

Possible remnants of ancient tectonic activity is visible just as the probe crossed the terminator.

 

There are also equally enormous, but jagged craters present on this side. Ablate looks as if it once hasn't been tidally locked to Kerbol because the craters show a degree of erosion.

 

There were few very low flybys of the dark surface showing possible future landing sites.

 

One flyby occured at less than 300 m above surface, possibly even less than 100 m away from the tallest peaks.

 

The last, but not the least, here's a global view of the dark side.

 

Ikar 3 has been pronounced a huge success on a path that will one day lead actual Kerbals to this hostile place.

Edited January 10, 2016 by lajoswinkler

[lajoswinkler]

Here is Jebediah, posing next to the proposed Ikar 4 robotic lander for Ablate.

 

The lander features more than 1 km/s of delta v which will allow at least one hop on the surface. There's also RTG power, seismometer, thermometer, gravitometer, magnetometer, x-ray diffraction, light sources and a set of cameras, some of them infrared to help land on the dark side. Communication with Kerbin will occur via the Ikar 3 relay, currently orbiting Ablate.

If the Ministry of No Better Things To Do ever approves of the budget for the new year, this thing will become the second thing the Kerbal civilization has ever landed on this vulcanoid body, after the tiny probe called Wolfram 2 back in 2014.

[lajoswinkler]

The budget has been approved after a quick meeting of the Ministry's high officials. Ikar 4 has been launched and is currently heading to Ablate.

 

Starting with 90 km low Kerbin orbit and excluding the lander probe itself, Ikar 4 spacecraft has over 23 000 m/s of delta v, which means it can successfully enter Ablate's SOI and perhaps still have LF leftovers in the ship's middle tank.

 

One LV-N engine will do all the work required to get so close to Kerbol.

Edited February 4, 2016 by lajoswinkler

[Geschosskopf]

Ablate sure looks like a nasty place.  Are you planning on mining there for the fuel to get home?

[lajoswinkler]

17 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Ablate sure looks like a nasty place.  Are you planning on mining there for the fuel to get home?

I haven't considered it because, not being into stock mining which I consider to be faulty and simplistic, I simply forgot about it. Thing is, any extra equipment on the ship causes enormous problems with the fuel. Going to Ablate requires a gargantuan supply of fuel. I even kind of abandoned the idea of using 3.75 m parts. It's that hard.

[lajoswinkler]

Ikar 4 is thrusting to bring down its periapsis to some 649 000 km (Ablate orbits at 648 000 km).

 

Losing of fuel tanks is rapid. Next report will be after the probe does few cycles of braking.

[lajoswinkler]

Circularizing this close to Kerbol is very difficult. Lots of delta v yields poor orbital changes.

 

The probe is now depleted of lateral tanks.

 

I've tweaked the orbit to have the periapsis at Ablate's orbit and apoapsis some 10 km higher. The resulting intercept was the longest I've ever had with Ablate - more than 1.5 hours in its SOI, way more than enough for being captured upon braking.

 

Funny thing, it took less than 10 m/s to get captured, which is totally different from experiences so far when Ablate would have to be chased around.

You can also see the probe's tug had 72 m/s left.

 

First orbit looks like this.

 

The tug is completely empty. Any future orbital changes will have to be done using the lander only.

[NotAgain]

On ‎12‎/‎01‎/‎2016 at 10:37 PM, lajoswinkler said:

There's also RTG power

Why not solar panels that close to Kerbol?

[lajoswinkler]

1 hour ago, NotAgain said:

Why not solar panels that close to Kerbol?

Cause it was designed to work on the night side where panels would be useless weights.

 

And now to continue with the report...

Lander has been released from the nuclear tug.

 

First image in the visible spectrum the probe made.

 

Nuclear tug, imaged by the infrared camera.

 

Landing retro burn.

 

The descent towards Ablate's hottest region, the subsolar point, begins.

[NotAgain]

4 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

Cause it was designed to work on the night side where panels would be useless weights.

Silly me. That should have been obvious.

[lajoswinkler]

I've got few good news and and a bad one.

1) Ikar 4 made a soft landing near the inner edge of one crater very close to Ablate's subsolar point.

 

This is the first image sent from the surface. I've never sent any cameras there. You're looking at the crater rim from inside the crater.

 

And this is the first infrared image, looking in the opposite direction, towards the central crater mound, after the magnetometer has been extended.

 

I've tweaked Planet Shine specifically for this occasion, by maxing out its values to get the brightest image. It was never designed for such stellar vicinities.

 

Kerbol is positively overwhelming.

 

2) All of the instruments survived and are in fine working order with exception of the thermometer which seems to ignore Kerbol and shows temperature similar to Eve's. Reason for that is probably the same as the one for Planet Shine - Kerbol is kind of being ignored when you're inside Ablate's SOI. With correct temperature measuring, Ablate is hot enough to melt salt.

Gravity on the surface is 0.34 g which is more than twice of Mün's. That does make landing considerably more difficult.

The surface measures vacuum and a huge distortion of Kerbol's magnetic field with very low absolute magnetic flux. That's in agreement with the laser ablation experiment which showed the composition is rocky (mostly metallic with silicates). Kerbol's stellar wind induces current in Ablate which then creates its own local field.

Other than that, seismometer doesn't register anything. Ablate is a shrivelled corpse, with surface baked off from volatiles.

Ikar 4 released an external seismometer probe, too. The experiment confirmed Ablate is a dense ball.

 

 

3) While landing, I saw one weird dark patch on the otherwise pristine patch of regolith. Having enough fuel left, I've decided to investigate.

 

Ablate has a mohole.

 

I'd say its diameter is around 20 m. I've tried to land the probe on its bottom, but quickly lost control after it collided with the wall.

 

Its depth is around 100 m which is considerably less than Moho's ~4.6 km, but still, it's an anomaly. It's situated at 5° 2' 58'' N, 107° 28' 14'' W.

 

Ikar 4 lost its radiators, its temperature is rising and will now slowly bake to death. Perhaps one day a Kerbal will visit it. It's not likely, given that Kerbals overheat there in a bit over half a minute, but there's still a chance.

[DMSP]

Nice!

Congratulations, nice anomaly!

[_Augustus_]

If you're going to do a manned mission to Plock, why not do an Oberth maneuver and flyby Ablate while you're at it?

[lajoswinkler]

I've done some experiments. Going to Ablate and coming home (reentry braking) requires something like 38 000 m/s. 24 000 to get there, the rest to pull the ship out of the gravity well of Kerbol.

For a Kron-type ship, this is virtually impossible on my computer. It would be possible with a massive propulsion unit and six or eight LV-NB (KSPX) engines (starting with like 0.05 TWR) but I'd need a much stronger machine cause I can't go below 5 fps. That's like the limit of my tolerance and I experience it every time a huge ship starts its voyage.

 

So, what do to? I need a new approach, a new propulsion. Realistic, please. No antimatter or warp field fairytales. I'm considering VASIMR.

Also, probably 2.5 m parts, maybe even a combination of 2.5 m and 1.25 m.

Edited February 8, 2016 by lajoswinkler

[NotAgain]

On ‎10‎/‎01‎/‎2016 at 10:45 PM, lajoswinkler said:

Ikar 3 used infrared imaging to take photos of the permanently dark side of Ablate.

What mod do you use for the cameras?

 

On ‎07‎/‎02‎/‎2016 at 2:12 PM, lajoswinkler said:

Ikar 4 released an external seismometer probe, too.

Can we see the probe in better detail?

[lajoswinkler]

19 minutes ago, NotAgain said:

What mod do you use for the cameras?

 

Can we see the probe in better detail?

HullCameraVDS is the mod. The probe looks like a white sandwitch, I'll see if I can grab a screenshot of it.

[Geschosskopf]

21 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

So, what do to? I need a new approach, a new propulsion. Realistic, please. No antimatter or warp field fairytales. I'm considering VASIMR.

I don't know if VASIMR engines will solve your problems.  In my experience, compared to nuke engines, the only advantage of VASIMR is better Isp.  By the time you build just the infrastructure needed to run the engine in the first place, plus give it the necessary dV, you've got a monstrous, heavy, high-partcount thing before you even start looking at the mission payload, and it'll have a minuscule TWR.  The main drawback is having to carry an inconveniently large nuclear reactor and all its supporting hardware just to make the massive amount of electricity the VASIMR needs to run.

Near Future has capacitor banks so you can store a burn's EC in advance and refill them between burns at a lower rate than the engine consumes EC, so you don't need as big a reactor.  But unless your burn time can be reduced to something reasonable, you end up needing insane amounts of capacitors (both mass and high part count), which might take longer to recharge than the time before the next burn (like when maneuvering between moons).  The only way to reduce burn time is to increase TWR, and the only way to do that, given the more or less fixed mass of the propulsion system, is to cut the payload down to rather less than you typically have on a KRON mission.  You can't just add another engine because that adds all the mass and parts required to run it.

In my world, the "Nuclear Lightbulb" engine from the Atomic Age mod has become my interplanetary workhorse.  It has both good Isp and TWR, and doesn't need a lot of parts.  Just the engine, 2 large retractable radiators, and whatever fuel tanks you need.  It's therefore no big deal to use several of them on a heavy payload to increase TWR without needing much more fuel than using just 1 of them.  I find this engine so useful that it's probably in the "magic" category, although I understand the underlying theory is actually plausible.

[_Augustus_]

Use VASIMR and nuclear!

I have a Kron 6 mission plan laid out. Here it is:

1. Kron 6 launches, using VASIMR powered by solar panels. Jool or Eve gravity assist to throw the spacecraft into the sun towards Ablate.

2. Ablate flyby and VASIMR burn to use Oberth effect to get to Plock. Timing is key here. Do that burn and get the heck out of there! Maybe drop down an advanced unmanned lander?

3. VASIMR and solar jettison. Since you can't power them well beyond Jool without a huge reactor, they need to be ditched. Now use standard NERVA or a nuclear lightbulb.

4. Plock and Karen phase begins. Do whatever.

5. Get home.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 10, 2016 by _Augustus_

[Matuchkin]

On 07/02/2016 at 9:12 AM, lajoswinkler said:

Perhaps one day a Kerbal will visit it. It's not likely, given that Kerbals overheat there in a bit over half a minute, but there's still a chance.

That will be an episode filled with amazing, dangerous, fast-paced scenes. You better start making a very Dv-capable lander for this, so as to explore the whole planet. I love this thread.

I'm using this to give you rep, as I can't click the "like this" button fast enough. 

Edited February 10, 2016 by Matuchkin