Kerbal Space Program

[warpus]

Thanks to that one bit of seemingly obvious advice, I was able to successfully land both a rover and return ship on the mun with enough fuel to get home, using only 1 launch. This is a pretty big achievement for Artreides Space Program.

Spoiler :

The first design choice was making the rover look as much as a happy robot as possible in case alien life forms are encountered on the mun. This was deemed as a highly unlikely scenario by resident scientists, but in the end they concluded that "things might as well look like happy robots anyway".

The landing went extremely smooth - the vehicles ended up as close to eachother as you see in that picture.

Afterwards I went on a 10km long or so joyride around the landscape in the Duncan Idaho mark II rover

Spoiler :

I had my pedal to the metal for long periods of the munride - going as fast as I could, highest speed reached was just over 30 m/s, nothing too crazy, but at times the rover was flying this way and that. It never tipped over.. although at times it seemed to get awfully close.

Spoiler :

I returned home with basically no fuel left.. It was pretty damn close in terms of almost not making it back..

I'm going to try the same mission but to minmus and some changes next

 

[warpus]

Another day and another successful mission. The new and slightly redesigned Duncan Idaho Rover & Return System mark III worked very well, even though the landing on minmus was a bit fishy and involved one aborted landing when the ground came up on me too fast..

There was a large mountain slope where I was trying to land and I was not really ready for it.. The slope was fairly steep and I ended up smashing into the ground at over 15 m/s, moving laterally as well.. In a moment of decision and general george w. bushness I released the rover at the moment of collision and was thrown back up, spinning... the rover seemed fine, but I had no idea where it would end up..

Spoiler :

I ended up landing on a plateau 450m away from the rover, which was still moving down the mountain, away from me.. I chased after it and eventually managed to get in and brought it back to base.

Spoiler :

Then I took it on a 12km long journey to the summit of the mountain that messed up my perfect landing. This screencap is really zoomed out, but you can see where the rover is and which way it's headed. My speed slowed down to about 12 m/s for the steepest parts of the mountain, but in the end it didn't really take too long to get to the top.

Spoiler :

The elevation change was about 3,000m from where I landed to where I ended up at the top of the peak, but it didn't really help in terms of getting a better view of the area. You could see a bit more, but it wasn't anything to write home about.

So why did I want to get all the way up there? To see how fast I could go on the way down, of course! Also, to see if the rover would do any cool jumps like it did on the mun or if anything suicidal would happen. These were all risks that I was prepared to take on this historic mission.

The fastest I ended up going was 39 m/s, which isn't anything crazy either.. and there was hardly any airtime.. So the ride down back to the lander was a lot more boring than I first thought it might be. Nothing to complain about though, as the whole country was watching.

Either way, I ended up making it back to Kerbin with plenty of fuel to spare. My advisors are wondering whether to start drawing up plans for a new rover trip to Duna, given that the Duncan Idaho system is now a proven rover & return technology that has been tested in two different environments. It might require finesse and special care during landing, but that should be easier on Duna with parachutes in play.

I think every single stage of my rocket design is going to have to be upgraded for a successful Duna rover & return mission. That probably means I should give it a new name, cause Duncan Idaho systems can only really serve moons...

The new name is a bit obvious, but I won't reveal it until after I succeed.

 

[cardgame]

I think my first rover (same model as yours) on Minmus caught about 30 seconds of hangtime once. So. Freaking. Awesome.

 

[warpus]

The only time I got that much air in a rover was on minmus in an overpowered one, and that sent me flying away from the moon so much I just decided to fly the rover home.

 

[warpus]

Rover exploration of the solar system continues with the recent conclusion of a 440 day long Duna rover & return mission, inspired by and modeled after the highly successful Duncan Idaho moon missions.

A one launch solution, Muad'Dib mark II contains several improvements over the Duncan Idahos, as well as adaptations for planets with atmospheres.

Stages:

1. Largely the same; the one difference is that there is a 33% increase in engines and fuel
2. Fully redesigned into sections A and B:
2. A. Nuclear powered section containing 4 cores, used to get into Duna orbit
2. B. A Chemical powered core in the centre, used for deorbiting, deacceleration and stabilization during entry into the atmosphere. necessary to ensure an acceptable entry vector for the lander and rover, which remain attached to eachother for as long as possible, requiring extra care.
3. The rover and lander/return vehicle. The rover detaches from the lander as late as possible with its parachute deployed and lands somewhere hopefully near. The lander lands with most of its fuel reserves intact and uses 8 very small engines and 4 small fuel tanks to get back into Duna orbit. It then gets rid of those 8 engines and 4 fuel tanks and uses 1 central engine to return the remaining pod back to Kerbin, which parachutes down to the planet, where money and fame await Bill Kerbin.

Muad'Dib landings can be very delicate procedures - but mission logs speak for themselves:

Mission 1: return vehicle landed perfectly, rover landed upside down due to ineffiient parachute placement, mission aborted
Mission 2: perfect landing on Duna, rover used for 35-45km, return vehicle blows up right before scheduled return attempt, mission aborted due to sabotage or design flaw
Mission 3: perfect landing on Duna, rover used for 25-35km, Bill returns home safely

More on the last mission, which was fully and incredibly successful:

The first stage was perfect in terms of getting everything else into orbit

Spoiler :

Muad'Dib interplanetary stage - with just enough fuel for the nuclear engines to get me into a nice orbit around Duna

Spoiler :

Stage 2B burns to give me a better entry vector. Rover is very anxious to get down and start rovin'

Spoiler :

12 km above the surface, using a bit of my "get home" fuel to try to make my entry a bit less chaotic. The rover is going to be detached soon.

Spoiler :

Here's a shot of the rover getting detached during mission 2. I am detaching it much higher than in mission 3 because I arrived in the Duna system with a bit more fuel, and ended up having enough fuel to descend almost vertically. Those solar panels are going to be torn right the hell off btw

Spoiler :

Touchdown! with the rover almost down as well, about 1km away in the distance. not so bad! (this is mission 3 again now, but all 3 missions saw both vehicles land within 1.2km or so)

Spoiler :

Postcard from Duna

Spoiler :

Time to explore

Spoiler :

I tried landing in interesting areas, but also ones which might contain the much talked about spice, which might or might not exist. On the third mission I landed in what seemed to be an extinct lakebed and what seemed to be one of the lowest elevations on the planet.

In this photo you can see the location of my landing site/base for mission 3 - I drove the rover about 15km north, a bit up the slope which eventually lead to a much higher plateau.. I didn't get that far, but it was an interesting ride. No spice was found.

Spoiler :

Missions 2 and 3 both saw me land in very similar circumstances: at the bottom of a crater/plateau, about 5-10km to the sloped edge. Mission 2 was a bit more interesting overall - I ended up gaining about 2km in elevation and climbed a fairly impressive mountain that I had to be very careful getting back down from.

The slope I climbed with the rover is on the left - my lander can be seen down below on the right.

Spoiler :

Mission 2 ended abruptly and right before I returned in the rover from a very long ride around Duna - My return vehicle just randomly blew up, as I was getting closer - I was maybe 100m from it when it just blew up and shot up into the sky. Harkonnen sabotage? Fremen suicide bomber? Who knows.. What's more likely is a design defect - the legs were just a tiny tad too short and the engine was touching the ground. That's what might have done it.

Mission 3 saw me return back to Duna orbit after I was done screwing around with the rover - using the lander's fuel and then converting it into the return vehicle. It just barely had enough fuel to smash right into Kerbin. Everything went well and Bill landed safely and in the dark.

The Muad'Dib system has been proven to be a success and a new version is already in the works. The next target has not yet been picked, but I have been flying by Ike so much lately that I might as well land on it.

 

[warpus]

Maybe someone could tell me what I'm doing wrong. I have been using this calculator to get to Duna, but it almost never seems to work right: http://ksp.olex.biz/

Here is my process. Maybe I'm messing something up:

0. Set Duna as target
1. Get into a 620km or so counterclockwise circular orbit around Kerbin
2. Timewarp until there is a 44/45 degree angle between Kerbin and Duna (exactly like in the pic)
3. Rotate the solar system until the line from Kerbol to Kerbin is fully horizontal (exactly like in the pic)
4. Zoom into the Kerbin system, and measure out 150 degrees (exactly like in the pic)
5. Set up a maneuver at that exact spot, zoom out, and pull on the prograde marker to expand orbit
6. Keep pulling until the orbits meet and I get the "closest approach" markers.

Now, the problem is that the "closest approach" markers are almost never very close, after I complete the process. You know the ones I mean - one of them is a "you'll be here at closest approach" marker and the other one is a "Your target will be here at closest approach" marker.

When they happen to be close enough (say 800,000m), it might mean that I have to play with the maneuver a bit and I might be able to get an intercept, but that almost never happens. The closest intercept is usually further away from that (1 - 2.5 mil for example). Usually they are off by quite a bit - making me question my entire process, the calculator, and my sanity.

So, what I end up having to do is to zoom in on the Kerbin system again, and to try the maneuver from a slightly different position. At this point I abandon the protractor and do it via a method of trial and error. It's incredibly tedious: I set up a maneuver using only the prograde pully thingy, write down the closest approach it gives me, then try another maneuver, from a slightly different position, and note whether that improved my encounter or not. If it did, I try yet another maneuver, a bit further away still, and usually after I repeat this process for quite a while I'll end up something that's a 600k-900k encounter, which then might mean that I can use the blue pulley things and the prograde/retrograde (on the maneuver menu) to get an encounter.

So.. while the calculator helps, it seems like most of the process is trial and error. What am I doing wrong? Does anything stick out as "no no, you don't do that" or am I maybe missing a step? The H. orbit insertion process, or whatever it's called, I have done as well, but it is more tedious, especially with nuclear engines, as it's a matter of continously correcting the orbit and attempting to make it match up that of the planet. I've done it twice before and it worked, but it took a lot of time. I would prefer to master the calculator method, as it seems like it could be a lot simpler.

I am not using mechjeb for this (nor have I used it for anything). Maybe I should start?

 

[cardgame]

Solution: don't maths, just burn.

—» seriously though «—

Set it as a docking target, and pretend you're going to dock with a space station or something. Notice how much of a distance you're closing with each 'nearest intercept', plot your orbital path accordingly. If you're going to pass Duna, burn prograde and get there before you do so. Possibly go beyond its orbit and catch it on the return if you need to (did that for Jool once, saved me about 2000m/s dv at the cost of another 1.5 year travel time compared to a Hohmann)

 

[warpus]

Solution: don't maths, just burn.

I've done that a couple times and never got an intercept - had to reload. At least with the maneuver thing you are able to keep trying to get one without reloading.

One thing I learned today - you can MOVE that maneuver thing along your orbit.. I had no idea.

That is really going to help me, but I still don't know what I'm doing wrong with the calculator. I bought a protractor today too, so maybe that will help. The angles seemed really bang on though.

Set it as a docking target, and pretend you're going to dock with a space station or something. Notice how much of a distance you're closing with each 'nearest intercept', plot your orbital path accordingly. If you're going to pass Duna, burn prograde and get there before you do so. Possibly go beyond its orbit and catch it on the return if you need to (did that for Jool once, saved me about 2000m/s dv at the cost of another 1.5 year travel time compared to a Hohmann)

Oh, I have not docked with anything yet, nor have I tried, so that analogy isn't going to help me.. yet

I am really not comfortable burning until I see that intercept show up on the map. Otherwise I could be burning for 5 minutes (using nuclear engines) for no reason.. that or I could be trying to figure out how to get an intercept from where I end up - and I'd rather screw around trying to do that back in orbit around Kerbin. I might be misunderstanding what you mean though

 

[cardgame]

Well then. Practice docking in LKO and interplanetaries become MUCH easier.

 

[warpus]

Isn't docking a bit more like H. orbit insertion, or whatever it's called?

I *have* been putting off figuring out docking though. Somebody a couple pages back wrote up a step by step tutorial - maybe I'll read that over again and try to put up a small space station next.

Good idea, either way.

 

[cardgame]

Scott Manley has a video as a preview of .18 that explained everything about docking pretty well and damned simply. Watched it once and docked on my first attempt.

 

[warpus]

I looked up that guy, he's got a lot of good videos. Seems to be some sort of a kerbal ubernerd/god

I modified my Muad'Dib system slightly and returned to the Duna system, this time without parachutes. I modified the rover deployment system but didn't bother to test it - there's enough room to drop the rover once you land now - you don't need to take off again and land elsewhere anymore - I don't even know why I had that design in the first place, it seems stupid now - but once the rover's wheels are extended, it ends up smashing into the lander. That's what I get for not testing, but I was able to wiggle the rover out from underneath my lander and return vehicle easily enough..

Spoiler :

I think Ike has so far been my favourite thing to drive a rover on - mostly because of Duna hanging like that on the horizon. That, and the fact that it was kind of greyish, dark, and the sun was shining at me from an interesting angle - it made everything oddly appropriate somehow and more immersive than usual. And this time there's no atmosphere, so no chance for me to mess up the landing and lose the solar panels on my rover - meaning I can turn on the light on the rover for as long as I want.

Spoiler :

Wheee

Spoiler :

I really messed up getting there and used up way more fuel than necessary... but I ended up just barely making it back home again.. so success! And not nearly as exciting as the last mission, but.. I guess putting a rover on Dres is next.

Once there's a rover on every planetary body except Eve, I'm going to get OCD-like twitches I'm sure. A far more complicated mission is going to have to be designed a new skils are going to have to be learned to put a rover there and return back home all in one go. I will probably have to construct something in orbit for that.

 

[warpus]

So.. have you guys all stopped playing this game for a while? Eagerly awaiting the next version?

I made it to Dres for the first time and landed a rover on it (of course), but I wasn't able to return all the way home, even though I had way more fuel left than when I was returning from Ike or Duna. I think my issue was a crazy intercept.

A rover on Dres was cool - I landed right beside a giant crater, that at first I tried driving the rover to the top of the edge to, but I made it about halfway before deciding to turn back.

I tried out a protractor mod cause the protractor I bought is see-through and I can never see a goddamn thing - plus I keep touching my (brand new) monitor, so.. screw that.. the protractor plugin wasn't very helpful to me - it was showing values I wasn't used to .. yet.. I also tried out mechjeb for the first time and used it to get into orbit. Interesting how it did that. Turns out my getting into orbit procedure is pretty efficient, mechjeb was able to get into orbit with a bit more fuel, but not a huge amount more.

The other thing I used mechjeb for (aside from all the interesting readouts and information) was it telling me the phase angle values for each planet. That made it way less annoying than holding up a protractor to the screen

I'm not sure if I'm going to try to get to Dres with a rover and back.. I kind of want to, I think I'd learn a lot about getting into other orbits, but at the same time I'd have to beef up my return vehicle a bit I think and that might mean changing more things with my delivery system. I also now see that any mission to Jool will require a significantly different mothership design than Muad'Dib and designing something like that kind of excites me now that I have a decent handle on the game.

There was one thing that this mission was set to test - my redesign of the lander to make it so that I can land everything at once.. and that worked out great

Spoiler :

just barely

One potential problem is that a part of the rocket falls down after the rover drives away and explodes.. this time my lander was fine - I'm not sure if that's always going to be the case.

The other goal was to see what sort of capabilities Muad'Dib II has in terms of being an interplanetary vehicle. Gives me a better idea of what I'll need for Jool.

 

[Antilogic]

I have taken some screenshots, but they are on a different computer and I haven't transferred them over yet. It's been pretty busy on my end since the winter vacation (although before it was family/social, now it's all work).

Long story short: I found a Mun arch, built a rocket-sled rover with base game parts, and have expanded my space station. I want to get the escape module installed before I post the pic, though.

 

[warpus]

Nice, I can't wait to see that rocket-sled rover. I just feel silly sometimes posting so many updates in a sea of.. emptiness

 

[Joecoolyo]

So.. have you guys all stopped playing this game for a while? Eagerly awaiting the next version?

I got annoyed and angry after failing to land on the Mün again, so I put it down for a while. I might come back to it in a bit though, and continue to fail in actually doing anything.

 

[warpus]

I got annoyed and angry after failing to land on the Mün again, so I put it down for a while. I might come back to it in a bit though, and continue to fail in actually doing anything.

I know the feeling, I had such a depressing and frustrating time trying to build a rocket late last year that I almost vowed never to play the game again.

I took a short break - seemed to do me a bit of good in that I was able to sit down again with a clear head and start from scratch without going insane.

I also think I might have figured out a way to get to any planet without using any angles or the h. orbit transfer. It might only work for planets with higher orbits, but I'm not sure.. It might also be inefficient for planets with weird orbits. Am testing my theories this weekend

 

[Luckymoose]

I can't play until they fix whatever problems keep causing it to crash for me.

 

[cardgame]

I installed the Kethane mod and finally got a stupid mining craft to the Mün, but it takes more fuel to get to orbit and land again than what it can hold. So it's always spending more energy than supplying. The whole project is a waste.

 

[warpus]

I just finished my first mission to Eve, using a 1 launch mark III Muad'Dib delivery system with a rover and 2 landers, one of which later turns into a return vehicle.

Spoiler :

The mothership arrived in orbit around Eve with sweet amounts of fuel left - it then detached an unmanned Jamis science lander destined for Eve.

Spoiler :

The landing went smooth although the landing vector had to be altered drastically at the last second due to the presence of several large bodies of water.

Spoiler :

The probe's electricity ran out before I was able to deploy the solar panels - There wasn't a battery on board, so while the probe landed successfully, it wasn't able to do much science.

Spoiler :

No problem, the main part of the mission was supposed to be a rover ride on Gilly anyway and the landing on Eve was very interesting.

The closer I got to Gilly, the more I realized how very little gravitational influence it had.

Spoiler :

Landing was a huge pain, but eventually I "landed". My navball still said "orbit" but I was more or less down. Mind you it said "orbit" when I was driving around in the rover too

Spoiler :

I got out and rode the rover around a bit, but not too much because it was so incredibly hard to do anything with so little gravity.. The rover deployment maneuver was very tricky for example..

Spoiler :

I returned back home with enough fuel to put myself in a comfortable circular orbit around Kerbin and a lazy descent into the atmosphere.

Taking off from Eve and getting into orbit - and then getting back to Kerbin has got to be very challenging. I wonder if you could use the Kethane mod? Or is just too inefficient like you're saying?

I guess my next mission might as well be Moho and after that Jool, which should be fun to explore.