Minmus Rising

Over the course of the last few missions I have been collecting contracts that are concerned with Minmus.

For this mission, the plan is to collect science from around Kerbin; collect science around Minmus; land on Minmus; plant a flag on Minmus; collect more data and get home. This should be very lucrative and pave the way with a good dose of extra science to allow us to begin running missions that don’t have an associated contract.

But that’s not all! I’m going to try something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time and that’s to launch an orbital probe along with the lander so we need one launch instead of two.

Athena Survey Probe:

With Karbonite installed, you can go mining for resources on other planets. If the planet doesn’t have an atmosphere, we can extract fuel and easily send it to other ships in orbit so that they can refuel and perform a much longer flight since they will effectively start in space, fully fuelled.

First we need to find the Karbonite though, so I have made the Athena Survey Probe which will scan the terrain altitude, biomes and also scan for Karbonite and other resources. To make all this fit into a convenient package, it’s necessary to use some Infernal Robotics powered hinges connected to some scaffolds. the parts doing the work are a RADAR Altimeter, a Multi-spectral Scanner and an orbital telescope.

The only downside is that there is only 1300 m/s of delta-v on board so the ability to reposition the satellite is limited, however this is experimental so we can make modifications before we dare to send it off to Duna.

Odin I:

I promised a re-designed lander and here it is. The brand new, still in the shrink wrap, Odin I has state of the art technology including a full collection of all currently available scientific experiments. The larger command pod Mk 2 has room for three Kerbals so we can take a bigger crew and can take advantage of the scientist and engineer specialised kerbals. This, combined with a delta-v of 1800m/s makes it a versatile lander that should see us through the exploration of Minmus and the Mun.

This Lander has the Athena Probe connected to the front and then this total payload of 13 tons is carried to space by a 2.5m diameter main stage booster supported by two sold fuel rocket boosters.

Mission:

The launch is simple with this larger rocket. The 2.5m diameter parts are a lot more stable and this time the separators have solid boosters of their own to push the radial stages away after separation. I circularise the orbit at 140km and use the remaining fuel in the primary stage to change the inclination of the orbit to 6 degrees to match Minmus’.

Then it’s time to jettison the main booster and head for Minmus using the orbital stage, which has more than enough fuel to bring us to a 450km circular orbit. Here is where I jettison the fairings which came off in a very strange way, but at least they didn’t break anything. Next comes the decoupling of the Athena Probe from the front of the command pod and then switching control. Once in control of the Athena I change the inclination to 85 degrees so that it can scan the entire surface.

Once in position, the Athena is unfolded and it begins to use all three of its scanners at once, this will soon build up the full map of the surface of Minmus. Once we have a clear picture of where there are higher concentrations of Karbonite we can start to design and build some off-world infrastructure.

Back to the Odin I and decouple from the orbital stage before descending to the surface. In the time it took to get to the surface form 450km, I’d completely missed the large flat area I was aiming for. Fortunately with a burn to cancel my lateral velocity I was able to hit the next flat area along the equator of Minmus. Once on the ground it’s time for Science! Science and more posing for photographs. The crew complete the experiments and transmit everything back to KSC that retains 100% of it’s scientific value.

On the return to orbit we complete the remaining orbital experiments before plotting a usual return to Kerbin. This time going for an aero-capture manoeuvre with the periapsis at 30km. Folding in the solar arrays the lander re-enters Kerbin’s atmosphere where nothing falls off or explodes and as we slow down it looks like a nice green flat landing area. This is not for long as another small mountain comes into view directly ahead. After deploying both parachutes the capsule floats down onto a very steep slope.

It lands and promptly falls over onto its side, causing it to roll down the side of the hill and splitting in two. Fortunately none of the science containing components are damaged, so it’s not too bad – I just have to go to the tracking station to collect all the landed parts. I really need to work on my re-entry planning, next time I’ll do some aero-braking and try and hit the KSC.

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Debriefing:

After the huge cost of the parts I used, both in the entry costs for new technology and the science equipment we still only have 1.08M funds. The good news is that we have 1398 science. This is used to buy Advanced Landing, Electronics, Ion Propulsion, Field Science and Unmanned Tech. I think it might be time to have a look at some of those Munar anomalies.

The crew have all leveled up and Bill and Jeb are now level 2, with Bob level 1. Since the Science strategy is turning out to be quite effective in raking in science from all contracts I decide to give a 40% Fundraising Campaign strategy a go along side it. We’ll see how that plays out.

As a bonus I grab an extra 166 science by testing a solid rocket booster landed at the launchpad.

Now to go see if there are any interesting contracts or if next mission we’re going freestyle.

The Search Begins

After several hours of banging my head against the desk trying to figure a way to get a Mun lander that would actually work, I gave up. I just can’t get enough delta-v into it with the current technology. The only way around this is to get some more science and unlock some new tech. While it’s possible to just send off a probe to the Mun again, that’s a little dull and won’t make any funds without an associated contract mission.

Fortunately, Kerbin has a second natural satellite, Minmus. There is a convenient mission to position a satellite around Minmus available to be started and that can be combined with the contract to explore Minmus, so we can do both of these with the new Occulus II. This satellite is a slight improvement in that it has an extra photovoltaic truss set-up as well as science in the form of a Mystery Goo Canister and a Materials Bay, but the most useful thing is a ScanSat Altimeter. This will begin to build up a map as the Occulus II orbits Minmus.

We can use this information to figure out the slopes of Minmus and it is the first step on our mission to colonise the solar system. We’ll be using further scanners to expose the underlying Kethane on other orbital bodies to mine and refuel ships before they press on to the outer solar system. More on this later though, one bridge at a time.

Mission to Minmus:

The launch is a simple thing by now. The launch stage doesn’t really have the grunt to get everything into orbit but the satellite can carry itself the final 200m/s into a reasonably circular orbit.

Since Minumus is not on the equatorial plane of Kerbin there has to be an inclination change to 6 degrees. This is done by targeting Minmus and planning a burn at either the ascending or descending node to burn either normal or anti-normal (depending on which node you use). Since our current orbit is circular, either will do, if it’s not circular you will get greater efficiency by burning at the node that is furthest from the body you are orbiting.

Once the inclination change is complete it’s time for a Hoffman Transfer to Minmus, coming around the back of the moon to set us up for the required inclination. Once circularised it’s not too hard of a job to use the manoeuvre nodes to set up a burn to match the inclination, another burn pulls the periapsis down to roughly where it is required.

For the final burn, Occulus II orbits to the periapsis we just set and then a burn both retrograde and anti-radial is used to pull down the apoapsis and also effectively “rotate” the orbit so that it matches what is required to complete the contract. After ten seconds of holding position with SAS on the contract is completed.

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Now it’s time to open up the science kit and take some readings. Mystery Goo and Materials Bays don’t return great science when transmitted, but the main reason for this mission is the science associated with the contract as well as the ScanSat altimeter radar. When sitting in orbit with the ScanSat active it will gradually produce a map of the surface, showing different things depending on the scanner. In this case we’ll only get the altitude of the terrain, but it’s a start, and the higher the inclination the more map will be revealed.

The first data returned about the surface of Minmus. This will fill itself in as we do other things.

Debriefing:

Another contract down and we’re up to 566k funds and 140 science. This new science is just what we need to get a sensible lander onto the Mun. The important thing is that we can buy “Fuel Systems” which unlock fuel lines. These will pump fuel around the spacecraft automatically while in flight, meaning we can come up with some much more efficient designs, and we’re all about efficiency!

Bonus:

So we also have a contract to test an XL parachute in flight over Kerbin. I’m pretty sure that you’re supposed to test these while re-entering the atmosphere but flying a probe with a parachute upwards seems to work just fine.

All that’s needed is to pop the chute between 5300m and 14200m while going 250-450 m/s. That’s trivial and the probe floats down on the chute to land next to the launchpad. The easiest 48 science so far and this gives enough to buy “Advanced Construction” which will make the satellites we build a lot easier to look at, among other things.