To the Mun! A Kerbal thread

[B4UTRUST]

To the Mun! is proudly brought to you by Krest toothpaste, the official toothpaste of Kerbalnauts and KFK - Kerbin Fried Kritter, KASA's favorite fried food.

[Dark Silver]

You know....it really is something to see you all taking your first steps into being a KASA Pioneer.....

it brings a bit of moistness to the old Occular Implants...

[Josh]

Yeah, I'll probably warm up the old rockets again this weekend.

Going to test Munar refueling options soon. I learned the hard way that if you just eject a full tank of full in orbit (covered with docking modules) that it doesn't, well, become a fuel dump. So instead I'll boost one to the Mun and keep the command module attached so that my lander stage can use the extra fuel for the go-home trip and I don't have to leave an astronaut orbiting for forty days and forty nights on a decaying orbit just to get him home.

(Made it with an extra half second of fuel, that still boggles my mind.)

[White Haven]

Do you have any of the automated command modules unlocked? If so, that can be a nice third option so you don't have to leave a kerbal on-station. MAKE SURE it has enough solar panels and batteries, though, because if you run out of power, well...yeah, don't.

Also, don't forget to EXTEND those solar panels. Not that I've ever made that mistake before. Nope. Never.

[Josh]

I've had such shitty luck with the automated modules that I felt more confident putting Bill on duty.

Also I tacked a science lab on there and it's topped by a three-man command module. Plan is to send Bob (who just made a textbook landing) bouncing back and forth from the surface with a Munar Module, using the tanker to reset the goo modules and the science module on the lander. When the tanker runs dry I ditch the munar module and the tanker section and send the 3 man command module home with Bill and Bob.

Speaking of, I found an easy way to determine ranging when you're landing on the Mun- the Munar Module primary stage had enough fuel to facilitate most of the landing, and at about one-fifty meters up I went ahead and cut it loose. It plummeted down, gave me a good eyeball reading of where I was coming in.

It also exploded the remaining fuel in the tank, which I like to think gave me a nice level landing surface.

[White Haven]

Put spotlights on your lander, aimed down. It's surprisingly helpful for eyeballing the surface, ESPECIALLY in night landings.

[Josh]

Yeah, the fucking lights are what I always forget.

Also to stick rechargeable batteries on so that when I wander off and leave Bob standing proudly next to his flag I can come back and still have juice in the SAS to right the damned lander.

So.

Yeah.

Bob's a little stuck now.

Fuck it, he's happy and I'll pick him up later.

[SirNitram]

Tried to do some KSP again. Still can't do it. I suck and they're too cute and lovable. :( They're so trusting until the last moments of their descent into the ground/discovering they're trapped in space. I feel sorry for the Kerbals.

[White Haven]

Yeah, emergency lithobraking can be a bitch.

[Josh]

That's what it's all about.

And it was very nearly a botched landing, too.

[Josh]

And so now Jeb and Bill are endlessly orbiting the Mun while I play with finally getting unmanned probes to work.

The first Deep Solar Explorer ended up stranded in roughly the orbital band of Moho (the Mercury analogue). The second actually made a 500k pass over Moho as it ran out of fuel before being able to make enough retro to fall into orbit. However, it gave me enough data to afford to upgrade to retractable solar panels.

Retractable solar panels are indeed the tits. No more festooning my command module with fixed panels and having to pivot the entire assembly to get sweet, sweet sunshine.

DSE-3 is going to attempt to make Eve (Venus analogue) orbit, but I won't find out the results until I get back from work. I'm hoping I can proof of concept enough with this one to work an unmanned Eve lander. Then I can work up to crawlers and start planting my spies throughout the entire system.

For the greater glory of the Kerbal Empire!

[B4UTRUST]

So I managed to prove that no, one cannot get too close to the sun even in this game. I somehow in the process of trying to shoot for the Mun ended up in a decaying orbit of the sun which after a few years devolved into my poor Kerbalnaut frantically clawing at the windows for sweet sweet escape moments before turning into so much radioactive ash. It was slightly amusing.

[Josh]

Did he at least transmit useful data before his demise?

That's my ballpark for meaningful Kerbal fatalities.

[frigidmagi]

Does no one mount rescue missions?

[Josh]

I, ah, haven't gotten around to watching the docking tutorials.

Besides, in this beta the Kerbals all resurrect after you kill them off. That and copious amounts of tequila and heroin allow me to sleep peacefully at night.

DSE-3 met Eve.





Interesting factoids derived from this mission:

Eve has oceans, which means that dropping a probe may be tricky.

Eve has a much, much thicker atmosphere than Kerman. Reentry burning started at somewhere north of 70k and sustained until a bit over 30k. By comparison, Kerman's burn zone is around 40k and down to high 30k, short and sharp.

The thickness of the atmosphere aerobrakes like a motherfucker. My DSE was too topheavy to right, I was actually going to try to put it straight up and soft-land it, which even with the dregs in the tank I might've been able to do. I was only dropping at around 60 m/s on impact, and all through the descent my velocity was steadily dropping without any outside action on my part. I'm not a physicist, but that don't seem entirely kosher.

I really, really need to practice my orbital insertions. I wasted a metric fuckton of fuel getting DSE-3 into orbit. Maybe time to watch some more tutorials.

Still, the machine spirit harvested some useful data on the way in. Also, it was funny to watch the solar panels and the comm antennas tear away on the way down. Fortunately all data was transmitted properly.

[White Haven]

Scott Manley has wonderful KSP videos on Youtube, fun as well as tutoriesque. I need to find time to SCIENCE a bit more so I can try my radical redesign for Thingdragger 5. I want to try to mount a set of landing engines pointed towards the ventral surface, along with landing gear and something to counterbalance to keep the center of mass aligned with the tow rig. I WILL set it down on its side on the Mun!

[Josh]

Yeah, Manley is the one who got me my Minmus landing. I needed it after so many Mun failures.

Now I'm going to watch his video about getting to Eve so I can save enough fuel to drop a proper landing probe. Good god a'mighty, with that dense-ass Venusian atmosphere a parachute probe's going to take forever to hit the surface.

[Josh]

Eve is a very purple planet.







Chutes tore off when they went to inflate, but that thick cushiony atmosphere still gave me a soft enough landing to actually survive the impact with the equipment intact enough to sample and transmit.

Ironically I understand that going to Duna (the Mars equivalent) is actually easier than hitting Eve. That's the next objective.

[Josh]

What was that thing Haven said?

Oh well, fuck it. What the fuck does Haven know anyway?





...




OH YEAHHHHH. Solar panels. Extend them in a timely fashion.

Fuck it, that was a power-down demo on the Deep Solar Explorer Mark III.

Piece of shit wasn't going to make it to Duna anyway.

[Josh]

Some may think it cheating, but damn is Mechjeb a handy mod. All the fussing about setting up orbits and intercepts is not what I'm in this for. I'll do it a time or two for the challenge, but fuck perpetually having to fuss around with it every time I want to take a trip to the Mun. I want to build big cool space shit and explore stuff.

[Josh]

Jed is a fucking moron.

Latest snatch and grab sample mission to the Mun, I manage to land on the side of a huge fucking crater on the dark.

(Superior piloting, if I do say so myself.)

Send Jed out to grab some dirt. He promptly falls like a fucking klick downslope into the crater, because he can't brake himself even in 1/8 gee. Pick him up, dust him off, run him back up the hill. I'm hearing the Rocky music in my head as he jogs and jogs and jogs back to the lander.

Now, because I don't have good ladder tech yet, return to the capsule involves a low-gee jump onto the sideslung auxiliary fuel tank, then from there jump to the command module and grab the ladder.

I get him on the fuel tank and he backs up a skooch to make the jump to the ladder... and falls off the fuel tank and right back into the crater.

If he wasn't sitting on scads of juicy research data I'd just leave his ass down there.

[B4UTRUST]

Sometimes, I sacrifice a Kerbal or two into the sun or crash them into a planet or something, just to remind them that they're utterly disposable and I can decant more of those little buggers any time I want. I like to think that doing this reinforces the idea that they should always do their best. Or that they'll die. You know. For science.

[Josh]

Today's lesson: a Kerbal under full suit propellant can smash the living shit out of your solar array.

Fortunately this wasn't an issue because it was just a munar lander with plenty of juice and another solar panel on the other side.

Got the kethane add-on so soon I'm going to start putting infrastructure on the mun and drill baby drill.

[B4UTRUST]

Question: How do you get mechjeb to work? I googled it and downloaded/extracted the file, but never got the popup to utilize it in game. Did I miss something?

[Josh]

I had to find out the hard way: you have to go back through the tech tree, and every tech you've already researched that has a superscript number, you go in and click on the item in the tech and choose to buy it (it's free.)

That opens up the firmware for the actual Mechjeb itself. However, there are techs that need to be acquired for various things to be automated. When I started with my progress in the tech tree it would only do orbital navigation stuff- match inclinations, automate plotted burns and stuff. Then I got the ascent firmware (which is what I really, really wanted because I was bored of nursing every one of my rattletraps into orbit.)

Also there's a KSP toolbar that I got, it allows you to choose which features you want available, which then show up as buttons in map view.