Fundraising

We’ve now reached a bit of a block in our exploration of the solar system. We’ve collected so much science that we’ve managed to unlock every node available in the tech tree up to this point and since we can’t unlock anything costing more than 500 science that’s where we are now stuck.

To get unstuck we need to improve the R&D facility, but this costs 1,590,000 funds. We currently have 1,279,000 funds so that’s not going to fly. We need to make some money and fast and as everyone knows the best way to accumulate is to speculate (that’s not actually true, but it works in this situation), so the first thing to do is upgrade Mission Control to allow an infinite number of concurrent contracts. It’s also only 100k funds to upgrade.

Stocking Up:

Going through the currently active contracts there are a couple that we can finish off nice fast. One is testing landing gear at the KSC. This is a landing gear bay, stuck to a probe core – ’nuff said. That brings in about 400 funds and 50 science. Hardly a huge haul, but it frees up another contract to be collected. Then there is the mission to take visual surveys at the Mun and I’ve been putting this off for a while and after much deliberation I decide to cancel it all together.This costs us 45k funds and a little reputation, but there are better missions to be had now.

Three active contracts are dealing with the mission to collect magnetic data from around the Mun (it’s still going), and for our expedition to Duna and it’s moon, Ike. We don’t want to touch those. Finally I decided to pull the Unpaid Research Program for the time being as I’m not less concerned about science increases and more bothered about getting the reputation up for the better contracts which give more funds.

So after some massaging of the available contracts (by repeatedly declining things) I’ve got a nice set of contracts which should make for three missions

1). Data from Kerbin space, data from Mun space and plant a flag on the Mun’s surface – 160k total funds

2). Place a satellite in Keosynchronous orbit of Kerbin and in an equatorial orbit of Kerbin – 305k total funds

3). Magnetic Survey of the Sun – 850k total funds

We got a bit in the way of advances so it’s time to make some rockets!

Back to the Mun:

I’m returning to the Mun with another Odin II lander, but this time I’ve increased the amount of fuel in the primary launch booster. This should hopefully give enough fuel for us to perform a fairly inefficient landing and still make it back to Kerbin.

Launch is simple, up to 500km, then take some science from the RPWS and then set a transfer to the Mun. Once the transfer burn is completed I go back to the primary rocket stage and de-orbit it for recovery. Arrival at the Mun is pretty straightforward and I decide to land near to one of the anomalies that has been detected near the equator of the Mun.

Landing within 1000m of the anomaly, the crew, Burney, Erzer and Maloly, perform all the onboard science in the Northwest Crater. Then it’s the turn of Maloly to go outside, plant a flag and then head over to the anomaly and check it out.

On arrival it’s a massive monument with the Apollo Moon Lander on the top. A fitting tribute to Neil Armstrong (1930-2012), the first human to set foot on a body other than our own.

Then it’s back to the capsule and off into space. At this point I realise that the extra fuel has counted for nothing, it was all in the orbital stage which I dump before landing. This highlights a serious design problem with the Odin I & II in that they simply do not have enough fuel to land on the Mun and return under their own power.

Time to send another fuel shot up to save the B-Team. Since we’ve done a fuel shot to save the last Odin II, we know what we are doing.

Decoupling of main booster

Leaving for the Mun

Munar arrival

Final approach near the anomaly

Maloly on an expedition

This thing is huge!

Refuelling again

Tesla II:

The new Tesla II should be able to pretty much go forever. It consists of huge solar arrays, an ion engine and a micro goo containment unit as well as an accelerometer. The science experiments can be changed easily so this should be a pretty versatile satellite.

Getting to a 200km orbit is no problem, but then things start to go decidedly wrong. Firstly I changed into the target orbit when fully in front of Kerbin, this meant that pushing out the other side of the orbit had to be done with Kerbin in the way of the sun. Powering a solar satellite with no Sun is hard work and it took 4 orbits to finally get to the desired position. Now for problem number 2 – MINI goo canisters seem to not be recognised as goo canisters for the purposes of the contract, so having spent all my time getting to the orbit, I can’t complete the first contract.

Learning is a useful human skill. To move to the second orbit, I set the initial transfer burn at the side of Kerbin. This time Tesla II is in full view of the Sun for both burns and orbit is easily achieved. Since the accelerometer counts as an accelerometer the contract is easily completed and another 95k is in the bank.

Tesla II heading for parking orbit

Tesla II in final position

Tesla III:

Now time for the main event, something to net nearly a million in funds with one satellite.

Launch to 100km parking orbit is simple as always. Now we have to get Tesla III into solar orbit but that’s only just outside the Kerbin SOI. Setting up an insertion burn to solar orbit takes 900m/s of delta-v and 15 minutes with the puny Ion engine.

Tesla III on a course out of Kerbins SOI

Having set it on a course to solar orbit, it’s time to leave it alone while I refuel the Odin II and at least bring that crew home. After that we can come back and look at some orbital positioning around the sun.

Debriefing:

An almost unmitigated disaster on nearly all fronts. Tesla II failed in one of its missions, Odin II ran out of fuel and Tesla III is going to need a planetary slingshot to bring the speed down to a point that I’ll have enough delta-v to put it in the position I want.

About the only real success was another successful docking of a fuel shot to rescue the B-Team.

After all of that, I now have 1.617M funds and 829.7 science. We’re much richer from a science point of view after the Mun mission, but we’ve managed to make less than 400k and we still have missions to complete with the satellites.

Not a good run. I need to redesign Odin II and make a cheap satellite to fulfil that contract with the goo canister. I’ve also got to try and figure out a gravity assist.

Scientific Harvest

We’ve taken about all the science we can from orbit of the Mun as well as completed a lot of contracts, but we’re still only just starting out on the tech tree. As we progress, the unlocks of new tech requires more and more science as you would expect from any sensible progression so we need to go out and gather more science.

The Mun has the most biomes of any body in the Kerbin system (although biomes were totally overhauled for 0.90 so now other planets have more than two) and even though the multiplier is lower due to it being easy to reach we can certainly get some good science out of landing there. It will also help to build up the experience of the Kerbal crew that we will fire into space as there is a pretty decent amount of XP available for planting a flag, doing an orbit and then getting home in one piece. As long as it’s not one big, flat piece!

Valkyrie III:

This will be the final of the Valkyrie series of manned landers. From the start they have been iterations of a craft bolted together out of necessity with whatever was lying around and I can’t go on like this. Future craft will be purpose built to carry out their tasks.

So here is Valkyrie III. It’s basically Valkyrie II with a bunch of extra science strapped to it. Onboard for science collection we have:

Crew reports, EVA, surface samples
Magnetometer (space only)
Goo Canister
Materials bay
Thermometer
Surface Ablation Laser (this might fall off later) (surface only)
Multi-spectral Imaging Platform (space only)
Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (surface only)

The launch stage is from Valkyrie II as well, but has extra radial boosters in an asparagus/onion setup (it’s all the same for two boosters). This provides a total delta-v of 6659, 8055 m/s. That should get us to the Mun and back and all of the main launch stages should be recoverable, limiting space debris and returning funds.

This thing has way more delta-v than it needs to get to a 100km orbit, so we take it to 240km before circularising. This will give us a cheaper burn to the Mun, therefore saving us fuel in the orbital stage which is always a good thing.

Once we’ve discarded the primary rocket stage it’s a simple task to set course for the Mun and execute the transfer burn. Then it’s back to dealing with the primary stage but this thing has no control mechanisms, it does have some battery, a few solar panels and a drone core hidden in it. Since we separated the stage when heading pro-grade, an immediate burn will push us further out into space, but we have no way of turning around… Fortunately we don’t need to. As the booster comes around to the other side of Kerbin, since it hasn’t changed its facing, it is now pointing retrograde! At this point just fire the boosters and try to keep it orientated with the engine gimbals and it’s soon on a return trajectory for the parachutes to do their work.

Once the orbital stage of the Valkyrie III has reached the Mun, going around the back of it to improve fuel efficiency, I perform a burn to circularise the craft at around 45km above the surface. This leaves me with a measly 27m/s left to play with. At this point I’m very glad we took the first stage to 240km, any less and we’d be burning the lander’s fuel by now.

Blasting off the fairings results in more explosions as things collide (we really do have to sort that out) but fortunately it’s nothing too serious. After gathering his nerves, Jeb decouples form the orbital manoeuvring stage and takes readings form the magnetometer and multi-spectral scanner before pulling up the biome map of the Mun that was so nicely made by Occulus IV (which is still floating about).

Looking at the map, there are several anomalies to go hunting for but we don’t have the fuel for that today so we pick a landing site in a sensible crater close to the equator to, once again, minimise fuel use. This actually turned out to be one of my better landings and Jeb gets down to the surface with only small amounts of fat-fingering of the controls.

Once he’s there it’s time to do all the science that he can, get out, wander around (making some great use of his selfie-stick) and then get back into the capsule with all the science and transmit what he can to KSC mission control. Thanking him for his data, they order that he must leave his selfie-stick on the Mun as it’s far too annoying to be returned to Kerbin and would likely interfere with re-entry.

The return to Kerbin it text book stuff until re-entry forces hit the craft and under high dynamic pressure the Surface Ablation Laser pings off the side of the capsule in a shower of sparks. Un-fazed by this turn of events all the parachutes are deployed and Jeb catches a brief glimpse of the Surface Laser flying overhead as he falls down to a gentle landing.

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Debriefing:

After that mission we have finally broken the 1 million funds mark and there is 730.4 science available to spend.

With so much science it’s time to tidy up the tech tree a bit so I get Landing, Aerodynamics, Specialised Control, Supersonic Flight and Actuators. That should keep us going for a bit!

Tune in next time for more liquid fuel based shenanigans.

One Giant Faceplant for Kerbalkind

The time has come to finally send a living Kerbal to the Mun. With any luck, he’ll still be living by time he gets back to Kerbin.

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That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

Neil Armstrong

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So, it’s time to build Valkyrie II, with all the latest technology and head out to the Mun. I’ve got three contracts lined up that will net a total of 400k funds if I can pull them all off, if I can do that with one rocket launch it will really help with funding our future Mun missions. So I have to collect scientific data from around the Mun, place a flag on the surface and take some readings above certain locations and then get some surface EVA reports.

As can be seen from the image, the two locations for orbital observations run in Northerly before making a pretty sharp right turn and descend to get the EVA reports. On the way science can be collected from anywhere in orbit and the flag can be planted at one of the EVA sites along with any other surface science we can strap to the lander.

Valkyrie II:

The first thing we need is a crew capsule and since we’re going to the Mun I want to strap as many experiments to it as possible. With a Goo Canister, Materials Bay, Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons and the crew’s ability to make reports and take surface samples we should get a good haul of science from our first trip to the Munar surface. To back this up we need some batteries and some solar panels, an antenna and an upper and lower landing stage. In order to reduce mass for the return journey the lower stage of the lander also has the landing gear and this will all be left on the Mun. The end result of this feat of duct-tape engineering is not so much pretty as functional:

After a lot of thinking about radial boosters and solid fuel, I decided to go for a monolithic rocket with a single core and a massive engine. I say “massive” but these are still only 2.5m diameter parts, but that has more than enough grunt to ping Jeb and his chariot into the sky, packing a total of over 8km/s of delta-v. The total delta-v of the first stage is enough to carry the whole rocket into a parking orbit, as long as my launch trajectory isn’t too terrible. At least this time I can work with Jeb at the controls and he can provide some useful input by holding prograde or retrograde as needed. This isn’t so important for normal manoeuvres but is very handy for landing!

With a build time of 13 days it’s day 81 before the Valkyrie II is ready and on the pad.

We shall go to space today!

Mission:

With the new, larger launch vehicle getting to orbit is reasonably stress free, although the rocket does like to twist a little in flight due to an intial low TWR and probably a bit of bad design on my part. After reaching a parking orbit of 90km, I turn the whole rocket retrograde before decoupling. A small burn from the orbital stage moves it out of the path of the first stage which is then de-orbited and allowed to return to the surface where its parachutes allow recover for 15k funds.

The transfer to the Mun is textbook and I circularise the orbit at 900km. Unfortunately, after playing with the manoeuvre node I can’t find a way to get to the needed inclination to hit all of the required points for the Mun survey contract. Instead I decide to aim for the large crater on the far side of the Mun that is currently in sunlight. Anywhere flat will do at the moment for a landing site. After de-orbiting I manage to make a complete bollocks of the descent and come down on the ridge between two smaller craters within the East Farside Crater. This leaves the lander at a very precarious angle but SAS can hold it in position. The only good thing is that I collected a crew report on the way down to the surface and transmit it back to mission control to complete one of the contracts.

The next thing to do is grab all the science I can from the surface and plant a flag. Getting out of the command pod, Jeb loses his grip on the ladder, bangs his head on the side of the pod and falls face first into the surface. Kerbal space suits seem to be made of sterner stuff though and Jeb gets up, wipes down his visor and jams a flag into the surface, marking forever his first steps off-world.

I then realise that I haven’t got the ability to take surface samples as I haven’t upgraded the R&D facility. A quick return to KSC fixes that, but not without costing 255k funds! At least now I can unlock tech that requires more than 100 science. The surface sample also gets us 120 science if we return it to Kerbin.

Then I get Jeb back to the command pod after pulling the science out of the Mystery Goo Container and Materials Bay for safe keeping and transmit any data that will return full science. It’s better off sent back in case something goes badly wrong with re-entry – Science in the hand and all that! Sitting in the command pod and looking at the map, Jeb decides that taking off at a heading of 300 degrees will bring the pod over one of the visual survey locations and after some rather erratic manoeuvres the pod is circularised (ish) and heading over the desired location.

A few minutes later Jeb gets the crew report and completes one section of the survey contract. Then it’s time to plan the burn for home. It’s not too hard if you just select one side of the planet and burn prograde, this sets up an escape from the Mun and a bit of radial burning brings the Kerbin Apoapsis down to 35km. This is well inside the atmosphere and will result in aero-capture to save fuel, we certainly don’t have the delta-v to slow down using the engines.

Return is then simple and after entering the atmosphere the pod slows down without anything snapping or falling off under the pressure of belting through the atmosphere at 3.5km/s. All is well until I notice that, once again, I’m headed straight for the side of a mountain. It seems I’m starting to make a habit of this but the parachute slows things down to a rather hard landing at 10m/s. A few things break on landing impact but the science is safe and Jeb walks away.

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Debrief:

Most of what we set out to do has been accomplished. We got the science data from around the Mun, planted a flag and even managed to get one of the visual surveys done even after the problems of insufficient delta-v. Every time we go to the Mun we can do a little more of that and maybe even get it all now there are only two points to intersect with.

The mission has left us with 353k funds in the bank, 446 science and an upgraded R&D building. The science is spent on three technologies: Space Exploration for more scientific experiment parts; Advanced Exploration for even more experiments and more advances ScanSat scanners that can show biomes and even anomolous signals from the surface and Advanced Electrics to finally get the folding solar panels that make life so much easier in the black.

Jeb also gets 2 experience points which push him nearly to level 2. Stupidly I missed out on some XP by not completing an orbit or the Mun. A stupid mistake to make in my eagerness to get things done, but live and learn.

At least we lived.

Satellite Television

The next two missions on the docket are pretty much for making more funds, with a total return of nearly 200k funds, this should be well worth it. Two satellites need placing in orbit, one around Kerbin and the other around the Mun. For this we will be starting the Occulus Program to seed orbital satellites into the solar system. To begin with these will be simple satellites but as technology progresses they will take on several functions for missions, science gathering and terrain and resource scanning.

To get the program started I have designed one satellite – Occulus I. This is going to complete both missions. Firstly one satellite will be positioned about 2Mkm from Kerbin on an inclination of 1 degree. The second will be positioned around the Mun in an equatorial orbit at about 220km from the surface. Both should be attainable by Occulus I.

So here is it. A simple satellite with a couple of solar panels and Goo Canisters loaded onto an engine and some batteries.

The thing is so light we can strap it to the simplest of launch vehicles. A primary stage will do most of the lift to orbit before the secondary stage pushes the satellite into a parking orbit. After that the satellite should have enough fuel onboard to make any necessary orbital corrections around Kerbin but alos have enough delta-v to insert the second satellite to Munar orbit. If I was being super efficient I could build the first satelite to be a lot lighter with less fuel, but the temptation of clicking build twice was much more tempting and to be honest, it won’t save that much in funds.

Launch 1:

The first launch was very straight forward. The small launch vehicle has a good TWR and it’s east to get above the atmosphere before separating the first stage. The orbital manoeuvring stage is actually a little low on delta-v and doesn’t manage to get the payload fully into a stable orbit. The Occulus I satellite does have about 2500 delta-v of it’s own to make any necessary course corrections and a little bit of this was used to achieve final orbit.

After that it was a simple task of changing the orbit to match the request of the contract. First push the apoapsis out to match and then, at that new apoapsis, bring the periapsis to the desired point. Then leave the satellite alone for 10 seconds and the contract is completed.

While we’re up here, for a cheeky bonus there is a contract to collect science from Kerbin space. Since the satellite is already here this si free money and by running a mystery goo experiment and broadcasting it back we get an extra 30k funds. We also get one science – we could almost retire on that! Still, it’s better than nothing (see last mission to the Mun).

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Launch 2:

The thing to remember for this mission is that the final inclination of the orbit around the Mun must be 0 degrees. This means that we have to make sure that we got around the correct side of the Mun or we’ll end up with an orbit going the wrong way around. A correction burn for that will require more delta-v that we actually have. To sort this out we need to fly in front of the Mun as we approach.

Once that’s done it’s a very easy manoeuvre to slow the satellite down to orbital velocity. We came in at a very slight angle so after the circularisation of the orbit we’re at about 2 degrees inclination. This seems to be acceptable though as the mission is completed 10 seconds after stabilising the satellite. There’s no science to be had from the goo canisters as this data has already been collected from previous missions and while returning more data will give some science, transmitting the data will give no science. Completing the contract gives us 90k funds and a nice 50 science.

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Debriefing:

After two satellite launches there is 450k funds available in the bank and a total of 96.5 science.

The science gets spent on Heavy Rocketry, this means bigger rockets and more importantly something we can mount a 2.5m payload on. This is going to be needed to launch equipment for space stations and also off-world bases.

We’ve almost got enough money now that we can start doing missions that aren’t contract driven. Sadly the funds will get eaten up by prototyping the parts from the new technologies.

Duct Tape, Hope, Nausea

I’m not going to bore you with a detailed review of how I got back into orbit. Suffice to say it involved being quite careful with a lot of launches form a rocket consisting of a command pod and a solid rocket booster. No, I know that’s not safe, but it is cheap! Initially the best thing to do is to achieve each altitude record individually rather than strapping on all the boosters and going straight to space. The altitude records I completed we 5km, 11km, 22km, 33km and 56km before completing “Escape the Atmosphere” and “Orbit Kerbin!”. We’ve upgraded the launch pad, tracking station, astronaut complex and mission control to level 2 to make getting to the Mun a lot easier with maneuver nodes and patched conics so we’ll know when we have an intercept. Also being able to use a more then 18 ton rocket will make getting further out a lot easier, getting to the Mun in a model rocket isn’t easy!

Science collected and spent so far has yielded the improvements shown on the tech tree below:

The next node will be Electrics so that we can have some basic solar panels. Without those we won’t be going very far since covering the ship in AAA batteries really isn’t a sustainable option. Batteries are a perfectly reasonable option when going for a sightseeing trip to the Mun, however, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do. There’s more science to be had by experimentation as well as the contract for exploring the Mun which gives science as well as funds in decent amounts.

Off to the Mun (again):

This time I’m planning a mission with a little more reward. We’ll launch and do the usual gravity turn as we approach 10km, best to get out of the thicker atmosphere as soon as possible. A parking orbit of somewhere between 80km and 150km, depending on my flying, will then lead to the transfer burn the the Mun. We’re still messing about with maneuver nodes so there will be a degree of guesswork, but a lot less than before maneuver nodes and patched conics were available at all!

Piecing together the newly researched D-Magic Orbital Science wedges onto the top of a rather long and wobbly rocket almost had enough delta-V to get to the Mun and perform a free return flyby, but by the virtue of attaching MOAR BOOSTERS to the sides of the main rocket core I’ve managed to get the delta-V up to 5100-5800. Once again there are parachutes to get funds back from the expensive liquid fueled engine and also to protect the science and Jeb when they return to Kerbin. So the Valkyrie I is ready for launch and will take just over 12 days (and 25,000 funds!) for the Kerbal engineers to flatten out enough Quality Street wrappers to build it.

Before Launch I head to mission control and pick up the “Science data from space around Kerbin” mission that will add a nice 30k funds to the pot for doing something that I’ll have to do anyway. Finally, some free money.

The rocket is a bit of a fight to get into orbit, the solid boosters are throttle limited to a meagre 5% to give Jeb some chance of holding things on course. After first stage separation things get a lot more sensible and an apoapsis of roughly 90km is achieved. Then, mainly thanks to my flying the circularised orbit comes up very un-circular but at least we have orbit and plenty of fuel left in the orbiter.

Munar insertion is a fairly simple thing, involving setting a maneuver node u to change my apoapsis on to the Mun’s path and then sliding it around my current orbit until I get an encounter. Once that is trimmed out a bit the transfer to the Mun will take us with 85km of the surface, not a bad shot. Once at the Mun, it’s a simple job to circularise the orbit and do the scientific experiments on board. Jeb aslo gets a crew report and goes out for an EVA, stupidly forgetting that since he’s the only pilot there will be no SAS. As he releases the ladder the ship starts to spin and Jeb spends the next 5 minutes bouncing off the hatch door as he tries to get back in. Memo to self – add probe cores.

The return to Kerbin is simple an uneventful, with Jeb collecting a further crew report and magnetometer readings to please the boys at mission control and net that extra 30k funds for the next rocket. Re-entry is done by just allowing the ship to drop far enough into the atmosphere that it won’t be able to get back out and then firing the parachutes. A small hitch related to a mountainside was handled by burning some of the remaining fuel just before touchdown. It didn’t save the Mechjeb module when the orbiter fell over, but nothing else broke so I’m calling that a win.

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Debriefing:

After vehicle recovery there are now 75K funds available and 192.5 science. The science is used to buy General Construction so now we can use struts to hold radial boosters in place and Advanced Flight Control so that we can send an unmanned probe to the Mun to finish off this mission. The great thing about unmanned probes is that they are cheap, light and we can leave them places you wouldn’t want to leave a Kerbal for fear of upsetting the HR department!

To the Mun!

Now we’ve made orbit it’s time to set our sights on the Science held captive on the Mun. First though, it’s time to let you know that the upgrade to 0.25 has happened with all the mods I wanted to use. 0.25 seems to be a lot more stable for some reason (possibly some stability fixes went in), so I’ve also added a few more mods. One of my new favourites is “Fine Print” which adds a bucket load of contracts to the game that will make the whole game a lot more easily driven by the contracts without getting stale.

The main changes for 0.25 are:

1). Strategies:- These are global strategies that effectively allow you to swap some of the Funds/Science/Reputation you get from mission rewards into Funds/Science/Reputation so you can drive the space program in a way you want. It also gives us something to spend the reputation we’ve earned in 0.24 on.

2). Everything has a price:- Now, not only do you need to research the technology you want using Science, but you also have to buy the prototype parts at a much higher price than the part itself. Buying everything at the start of the space program will soon leave you with no Funds at all, so I’ve found the best way is to buy the prototype parts if you find you need the part. If you have a lot of mods installed, especially rocket part mods, you won’t want to buy everything anyway.

3). New Explosions:- New explosion graphics are now in game for when things go wrong, or you get crazy with an asteroid. Leading on to…

4). Destructible Buildings:- If you crash enough stuff, or an asteroid, into the space centre you’ll destroy the buildings. These are, by all accounts, very expensive to repair so it’s not something I’ll be trying to do any time soon. Apart from maybe a test or two.

There’s a whole host of other features and little tweaks and fixes that should make things more enjoyable. This is also going to be the last Alpha release, so next we wait for KSP 0.90. The save has also worked across the update (albeit with a bit of tweaking to the difficulty in the save file), so now we have the full functionality of v0.25. It seems that KSP 0.25 is a bit more stable than 0.24.2 and so I’m able to run some more mods without everything breaking, a full list is now on the page “Mods List”.

Veg in Space

So back to the mission to the Mun. Using the science from the previous mission I’ve decided to develop Advanced Rocketry and General Construction. This will give us some larger fuel tanks for our 1.25m rockets as well as struts to hold everything together and even a fancy tri-coupler that we’ll probably never use!

Before we head off to the Mun, some rather simple contracts have popped up which will enable us to grab enough extra science to invest in a further technology before we head out. This could mean the difference between orbiting the Mun or landing on the first attempt. We’re going to test 2 different liquid engines, one solid booster and the launch clamps, all at the same time. Clipboards at the ready!

 
At the end of the rocket test, we’re left with 112 Science which is plenty to give us the next technology. This is a bit of a head-scratcher as to the choice as both larger parts and fuel lines are tempting. In the end I went for fuel lines so that we can make our existing rockets a lot more fuel efficient by using Asparagus and Onion staging.

These two types of staging setups feed fuel towards the final stage of a rocket while it’s in flight. This means that you can drop extra weight as soon as possible while maintaining a high TWR. This means you get a better Delta-V for the same rocket. While the idea of using fuel transfer during launch has been around for a while, it’s taken until Space-X to really make a go of it with the Falcon Heavy (There is a KSP mod for it that I might use again at some point).

Explore the Mun

It’ll be fun, they said. You’ll meet new people, they said. The Explore the Mun contract is in two distinct parts. The first part is to achieve orbit and collect some data from near the Mun (you can do this without achieving Munar orbit), the second is to land on the Mun and collect scientific data. Since I don’t want to make a ship right now that can land on the Mun and return I’m going to try and be clever. The payload of this mission will have a small probe on the top of the orbiter which we will detach in Munar orbit and then land that on the surface without having to worry about bringing it back.

The chances are though, that something will go wrong. Remote Tech alone will ruin my day if I’m not very careful as I’ll need a connection to the main crew ship as well as bouncing that signal off to the probe that will land on the surface. With no communication satellites in orbit around Kerbin, I will have to wait for the space centre to be facing the Mun. We then have the time it takes the KSC to go over the horizon to make the landing maneuver, if we run out of time we run out of control.

Abandoning that idea as far too dangerous I constructed a rocket that will send a crew to orbit the Mun and then make a prompt return trip. So we have the “Mun Explorer”, equipped with the latest space engineering technology. The Primary stage consists of a central core and four radial boosters that are set up for asparagus staging. Once the fuel in the first two radial tanks is exhausted, these will be dropped and the craft will continue, fully fuelled, with the best TWR possible. We then drop the second set of radial boosters before continuing with the main booster core. The command module is equipped with a full range of scientific experiments to perform in Munar orbit as well as collecting a couple of crew reports on the way.

Return to Kerbin will be performed primarily by the four radial parachutes on the side of the command module’s fuel tank. This should reduce our descent velocity to a manageable number so that the whole thing doesn’t fall apart when we land, even though there are no landing legs attached.

Fortunately the most expensive part of this new rocket is the sceince package and the crew module with batteries and the other bits that are needed for successful flight control, so this will be returned in part when/if we safely return the ship to Kerbin.

 

So after a very perfunctory trip to the Mun and back we’ve generated some more funds (140K in the bank) and we generated 135 science from our jaunt, taking us to 188. That’s enough for two new technologies, specifically Advanced Flight Control and Electrics (some solar panels will be needed to make this all realistic).

While we were up we completed the contract requesting Kerbin orbital science data and we also completed half of the mission to explore the Mun. Since we’re going directly back to the Mun for a landing and further scientific work I’ve taken two complimentary contracts as well, planting a flag on the Mun and collecting science form orbit and the surface.

So next time we will return with a slightly larger rocket that will send a crew to land on the Mun and return the first samples of our closest celestial neighbour.