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

[JAD_Interplanetary]

...so Pepe quickly assembled some using broken refrigerators he found at the KSC.

This made me laugh. Nice touch.

[Kosmonaut]

What mods do you use?

[lajoswinkler]

This made me laugh. Nice touch.

That was my intention.

What mods do you use?

For the most part, the list is similar to the one in the original post for Kron 1, but here's an update:

shield, tanks, adapters - Procedural Parts

engines - lander has KOSMOS ones, main nuclear is LV-NB from KSPX, rest is stock; I tent to go stock with engines

capsules/pods - ALCOR, Taurus HCV, Deep Freeze

life support and energy management - TAC, Realistic RTG, Near Future

instruments - DMagic Orbital Science, ORIGAMI, KAS

Visual and gameplay stuff is Planetshine, Texture Replacer for skybox (Oinker's), Deadly Reentry, Real Chute, Distant Object Enhacement, FAR, Kerbal Engineer, and of course Outer Planets.

So yeah, I like realism.

[lajoswinkler]

Kron 3 has begun burning its engines to get away from the dominant influence of Kerbin.

Third stage, which was still on the vessel, gave less than 70 m/s.

I must admit, there were some issues. While burning this stage, I had to go with 1/15th of the total thrust, otherwise the structure would start to sag.

After jetissoning, status of the ship is as follows:

333 parts, 477.47 tonnes, 9993 m/s delta v in current configuration.

Here's one more blueprinty image, with highlighted habitable modules.

I had to burn on the night side, so there's not much to see.

At 100% thrust, ship experiences 0.06 G and does not bend. Naturally, several burns will have to be performed and, if possible, I'll use Mun to slingshot the vessel out.

[lajoswinkler]

The ship is on its way to be thrown out of the Kerbin system by Mun.

Only one set of tanks was spent.

During all these burns at the periapsis, I was trying to account for one full Kerbin month so that Mun will get in the same position as it was in when the burns started. The last burn took 54 m/s and placed the ship in this trajectory.

So this is the closest Kron 3 will be to home in a very long time.

[lajoswinkler]

Slingshot maneuver went fine. Bill talked to Kerty (onboard computer) to pass the time.

After leaving Kerbin's sphere of influence, Bill had to make sure there was no damage to the ship. There was - two of the struts that hold the shield in place broke for some odd reason.

Additional inspection showed no further structural damage.

After checking everything and carefully avoiding ship's stern where hot fission reactors are, Bill climbed on the cryonics module and gave one last look at his home.

Kron 3 is now a ship carrying bodies, commanded by Kerty the computer.

Change of inclination to match Sarnus' orbit took some 346 m/s. One more set of tanks has been jettisoned. Still more than 9 km/s are left for this configuration.

Next maneuver is raising solar apoapsis to touch Sarnus. Jool was available for a slingshot but it would be a useless move as the savings in raising apoapsis would definitively be ruined by the need to adjust the disrupted inclination, so the idea was abandoned.

[Elowiny]

What mod did you use to freeze the kerbals in a cryogenic module ?

Also, do you use the life support mod ?

[Sampa]

I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, it is the cryo mod that Angel-125 is maintaining

[Elowiny]

Can I get a link ? I can't find it.

[Sampa]

Can I get a link ? I can't find it.

Sure, let me find it!

- - - Updated - - -

Here it is, and my bad, different author:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92806-WIP-25-PaladinLabs-Dev-Thread-DeepFreeze-cryonic-crew-storage-v-14

[lajoswinkler]

What mod did you use to freeze the kerbals in a cryogenic module ?

Also, do you use the life support mod ?

Deep Freeze and yes, TAC.

- - - Updated - - -

Well this was probably the longest burn in real time. More than 4 hours at an average 0.5 m*s^-2, which was thrusting at some 60%. At least I could do some other stuff, but every now and then I'd check if it was time for tank jettisoning.

This is how the ship looks now.

And this is the established trajectory. Corrections will obviously be necessary.

Ship's systems are offline, engines are shut down and now this becomes a long voyage in dead silence of vacuum.

1 year and 219 days, Earth time, to arrival.

Edited March 9, 2015 by lajoswinkler

[Nicholander]

Interesting, I like it! Though, I was expecting you to do a Jool flyby, like in the 2001: A Space Odyssey novel (Which I'm currently reading, BTW), but I guess whatever's more efficent is better.

[Tommygun]

Wow, four hours of burn. Squads needs to find a way to do long burns in time warp.

That's the reason I've mostly stopped doing ion engines.

I would like to try gravity sling shots sometime, but I need to understand them better before I try.

Well here are those ship pictures of mine:

I think this is from KSP version 0.16?

Drop tanks fall off when empty and lander docks and refuels multiple times on Jool mission to it's moons.

Probe ship to Stella with several probes and communication satellites. Note Nuclear light Bulb engine.

Dumping tanks.

Crew ship with Vesta engine

At Stella. Third ship is a cargo ship with crew lander and colony landers. (No pictures of it yet)

[lajoswinkler]

Tommygun, that's a good design. Also, when the fuel is proper, there are way less problems.

[lajoswinkler]

After initial aerobraking, Kron 3 has been captured into highly eccentrical orbit. Success.

I had to do it 4 times. Braking using periapsis of 302 km took away only 10 m/s. 295 km took away 50 m/s, 288 km 140 m/s, and finally, a bit over 280 km took over 310 m/s.

Approaching the ring system. All instruments folded. Shield positioned prograde.

Slate and Eeloo peeking behind the rings.

Inclination set at 1.9° made it avoid direct ring contact.

Impact at more than 5700 m/s instantly enveloped the shield into plasma.

This almost turned into a disaster when the decceleration started exceeding 0.1 G. The ship can tolerate up to 0.06 G indefinitively, and 0.1 for a short amount of time before it starts bending. As you can see here, maximum load was 0.277 G which was enough to expose the fuel tanks. Luckily, the heat transfer was not enough to cause explosions, but it was very close.

Procedural Parts' shield system doesn't work perfectly. Plenty of heat bleeds over to the connected parts. Nevertheless, without the shield, resistance would be much weaker and heat transmission would cause rapid and total destruction.

Remember, this is FAR and DRE on hard mode.

At least the ship has been captured. Several more aerobrakings will have to be done to lower the eccentricity of the orbit.

Total eclipse of Kerbol by Sarnus.

Kerty will soon wake up the crew.

[Tommygun]

Aerobraking with DRE at 5700 m/s can't be easy.

Do you think tail fins on the back would help keep the ship straighter and more stable during aerobraking?

Even without DRE, I tried aerobraking after a very low orbital sun mission in Kerbin's atmosphere.

I came in at 7900 m/s and my debris field escaped the Kerbin system traveling at 4200 m/s.......

[lajoswinkler]

Indeed, 7900 m/s is probably too much for DRE with any normal vessel configuration. You were lucky your entire ship content hasn't evaporated.

I don't think fins would help in my case. This is outermost part of the atmosphere where lift forces are way too small. Also, the fins would have to be inside shield shadow, and with FAR this means that they probably wouldn't interact with the atmosphere well. I can't tell for sure.

Edited March 11, 2015 by lajoswinkler

[lajoswinkler]

One more aerobraking without changing apoapsis at 280.5 km resulted in this orbit.

As Slate was my primary target, this was very convenient. Series of burns circularized the orbit.

From now on it was very easy to get captured into Slate's orbit. At the edge of its SOI, inclination was changed to 39.5° to cover the latitude where Kron 3D lander is.

Again, after series of burns, the ship was parked in a circular 100 km high orbit.

Now is the proper time for Kerbals to wake up. RTG units are a bit over 50% and large battery banks are 100% full. There's science to be done above and on Slate.

[meve12]

How are you going to attach the centrifuge habitats? On the side, and spin it on its long axis? Or on the end, like a flying pigeon?

[lajoswinkler]

Sideways. The service module is 3.75 m wide (Taurus HCV) and has doors which reveal docking ports.

[lajoswinkler]

Kerbals have been awaken from their cryo-sleep, centrifuge has been assembled and first data started pouring in.

First thing to do was to detach the ship into pieces and dock each arm, which are an autonomous RCS-powered vehicles, to the service module.

The trio found this to be very amusing.

Final assembling and positioning the radiators perpendicular to one another, to minimize influence.

After a hard work, the team went for a spacewalk and restrutting.

Tomorrow Bill starts the centrifuge.

[Randazzo]

The kerbals floating in space made me gasp, then lol.

I expected an explosive decompression event.

Edited March 13, 2015 by Randazzo

[Tommygun]

Oh god! Someone get the giant butterfly net!

[Zaddy23]

It must be hard having all those kerbals out at once, I can hardly handle 2 at once.

[lajoswinkler]

I did have a disaster while doing the burns, when I collided with one jettisoned tank which was kilometres away. It was a spectacular sight indeed. Thank Squad for F9...