KSP -- Mission Based R&D playthrough

Tinwhistler · Aug 4, 2015

Episode 1:

I downloaded a fresh install of KSP 1.0.4, and installed all of the mods required by the Mission Based R&D contract pack: Contract Configurator and Module Manager, as well as the contract pack itself.

I'm going to do things a little differently this time around: I'm going to spoiler all of the inline images, so that the thread isn't such a resource burden. I'm also not going to include the .craft files, since I'm not sure how much utility that is providing. You should be able to build similar crafts by following along.

Starting a game in Normal mode looks the same until I get to Mission Control. Sitting there is a single mission: First Launch. We have to get a rocket up to 3000m. That ought to be pretty easy.

Getting to the VAB, the initial parts loadout is different. We start with a remote control unit, and no pods for live kerbals. That's nice--it means that I won't have to kill Jeb on my first flight. There aren't any parachutes available yet.

My first rocket is pretty basic--RCU and a small solid booster. I put a nose cone and fins on it, since these things matter in the KSP 1.0X atmosphere. They shouldn't make the thing too heavy, and should actually get me higher into the atmosphere. It's a cute little rocket.

Out on the launchpad, I am gratified to find that the RCU has SAS, so I turn it on and launch the vehicle. The feisty little craft makes it to 8520m before falling back to Kerbin. Contract complete.

Kerbin didn't really rotate much while I was going up. I was terribly afraid that I'd smash some buildings on my way back down, but I only just missed them. Good thing. I can't afford to repair anything right now.

This was a short launch, so lets do the next mission: Stratospheric launch. I have to build a ship that'll get to 18km. Should be easy enough. I do better than this with my first rockets in stock KSP.

In the VAB, I see some more rocket components have shown up, like magic. Neat. An RCU, 6 fuel tanks, a Reliant engine, a nosecone and fins ought to do the trick.

Immediately after launch I pull the ship to a very slight angle, so that when I come down, it won't be so close to the KSP complex. I hit 18km long before I run out of fuel.

The ship tips over and spins like crazy at 30km, but who cares? It served it's purpose. However, that does seem to indicate that they've tweaked the atmospheric effects between 1.0.2 and 1.0.4. In 1.0.2, the atmosphere was thin enough that it was nearly impossible for drag to flip a rocket above 30km.

I escape the atmosphere with a 139km apoapsis before the thing starts coming back down. Maybe my rocket was a bit of overkill.

No matter...contract complete.

It safely crash lands into the mountains.

I have to say that my initial impressions of this set of mods is pretty positive. I like the more game-like feel of completing missions to unlock tech nodes, rather than spending science points. The new tech tree provided is a little different, and I'm interested in seeing how they handle getting to the various branches.

It occurs to me that there won't be much replay value in this mod pack. The missions will be the same every time. Once you get good at building the ships required for completing them, all of the challenge will be lost.

Tinwhistler · Aug 23, 2015

It took me a while to get to this episode. Every time I wanted to do it, I realized that the game with the R&D packs was installed on my work machine. And I've been way too busy at work to spend even an hour knocking out an episode.

So, Friday, I dropped everything into my dropbox folder when I left for the day, so it'd sync up and be available at home when the mood hit me this weekend. That was today

Episode 2:

Back at Mission Control, I'm a bit surprised. There are a number of stock tourist missions to choose from. At first, I think it might be a glitch in the R&D pack, but then I realize: If you fail a mission, you need a way to build money back up in order to try it again. So I assume the mod creator left some of the stock missions in place for exactly that purpose.

I don't need the money yet, so let's look at the two remaining missions:

Flight Test -- fly a space plane to 14km, turn around, and land on the runway. OMG! I suck at planes so bad. Luckily, there's 219 days before this expires. I'll have to just give it a skip for now until I can get some space plane practice in.

Reach outer Space! -- Fly into space and transmit some science. This is a piece of cake. My last build will easily get there. I just need to stick some science on the rocket. Getting back to the VAB, I see that they've given me bigger fuel tanks. So I'll go ahead and swap out the smaller ones. Less tanks in the stack means more stability on launch. They've also given me some better wings, and control flaps. So I add those to the ship. Maybe I won't flip over on the way up this time.

Add a thermometer, barometer and antenna, and I'm good to go.

On the way up, I find that I don't need to actually transmit the science to get the achievement. I just have to trigger the science module. I easily collect all the science from the required elevations (below 20K, above 20K and at 100K), completing the mission. And I don't flip over.

On re-entry, I burn all my electricity with SAS righting the ship, leaving me unable to fire the rockets to slow down.

My ship doesn't survive, which is expected, since I haven't unlocked parachutes yet. Surprisingly, it explodes at 14000m due to overheating, rather than crashing into the mountains. I'm using KSP 1.0.4 for this run through, and between the rockets flipping high in the atmosphere and the overheating, I'm positive that tweaked the atmosphere in 1.0.4. That'll make things more challenging, for sure.

Again, this was a quick mission, so I'll knock out another one for this episode.

In Mission Control I see two candidates: Landing Test and Satellite Launch. Both look fairly straight forward, so I'll go with Landing Test. This requires me to safely land a capsule with goo and accelerometers on it, and then do some science.

The rocket is the same as before, but I've put a separator between the engines and the RCU, giving me a tiny landing vehicle. They haven't given me landing legs yet, so I want the lander to be as light as possible. I've added the required science directly to the RCU, a parachute, and a protective shell to help the thing's aerodynamics. And they've given me batteries! I should have plenty of juice now for this mission.

I tilt a bit on the way up, because I don't want to land in the mountains if I can help it. I get rid of the protective shell before I hit 150km, point the nose up for my return trip, and then fire the rockets when I hit atmo, bringing my surface speed down to about 380m/s. Hopefully that'll let me survive re-entry long enough to get the parachutes deployed. I fire the final stage, dropping the rest of the rocket to its destruction.

No heat effects, all the way down. The fastest gravity got me was 590m/s before the atmosphere started slowing me back down. Pop the chutes around 7km, and gently drifted down to a nice safe landing in the desert.

Tilting was a pretty good idea. The last thing I wanted was to land this legless craft on a mountain, roll downhill, and blow myself up in the process.

Collected the required science, recovered the vessel (and 15K of my 23K costs), and completed another mission.

I should note that I haven't yet used mechjeb for these missions, even though I've made it available to me.

Tinwhistler · Aug 26, 2015

I have a question about the Flight Test mission. The mission parameters are to fly a spaceplane to 14000m, do a crew report, and then fly back.

This mission pack is made for v1.0.2 and I'm using v1.0.4. With the atmospheric changes, it's pretty impossible to get a spaceplane to 14km with the available parts. I spent 3 hours yesterday practicing for my run, and made about a dozen viable plane designs. But even 8 air scoops don't provide enough air to the engine to get above 9000 feet. I can get higher, but only if I add multiple engines and fly nearly straight up.

I got to 14040 meters once, but it was by strapping 5 engines to a plane, emptying all the tanks except for a token amount of fuel (for weight), deploying all my ailerons for added lift and then coasting up from 9km to 14km on lower-atmosphere thrust. Essentially a rocket. Even then I had to use the VAB part tweaking tools so that I could fit the plane into the level 1 space hangar limitations (15m wingspan, etc)

And even though I got to 14km, I didn't have enough fuel left (or stability with this monstrosity) to get back to the to the runway. I could "cheat" the system by building a rocket on the runway instead of a plane, but I don't want to do that.

This is the first spaceplane mission, and I'm certain that it wasn't intended to be this challenging. Back prior to 1.0.4, you could easily get the most basic space plane to 17km.

How would you guys feel about me tweaking the mission parameter config files so that I only had to hit 9km instead, to keep more in the spirit of how the mission progressions are supposed to work?

Bubble181 · Aug 26, 2015

Tinwhistler said:
I'm doing a walkthrough, but it's hard, so for the next step, let's talk about "how to cheat to continue"

I'm joking, I'm joking. I fully believe it's just a matter of incompatibilities between the versions of the mod and the base game. But it's still funny

Tinwhistler · Aug 26, 2015

Bubble181 said:
I'm joking, I'm joking. I fully believe it's just a matter of incompatibilities between the versions of the mod and the base game. But it's still funny

Yeah, I know how it looks, which is why I spent 3 hours trying to do it. I finally gave up, tried it in 1.0.2, and it was a piece of cake.

GasBandit · Aug 26, 2015

Eh, tweaking the config seems reasonable to me.

Thread Necromancer · Aug 27, 2015

agreed in this case, tweak the config. Since you've done everything reasonable to attempt to do it as it was meant to do on an updated client where it wasn't meant for, tweak away.

Tinwhistler · Aug 27, 2015

Episode 3:

Mission control has some tourist missions, Flight Test (which I'll get to in the next episode after I tweak the configs), temp scans of Kerbin (stock), and Satellite Launch. I go ahead and take Flight Test, since it has no expiration.

Satellite Launch is another rocket-centric R&D mission. I have to get a satellite into orbit with an antenna. That should be pretty easy with the parts we've already unlocked, considering I've been getting my non-optimized ships to 150K going straight up. So I grab the mission. (and forgot to take a screenshot of the mission control)

Using the last ship as a base, I swap out for bigger tanks and add some radial boosters (set at 63% thrust for 1.5 TWR), because they've given me a radial decoupler. I remove everything else that has weight, because this ship isn't coming back. And some more fins for the upper stage, since 1.0.4's amosphere is thicker up there than I'm used to.

What do ya know? The ship is too heavy for the launch pad. So I upgrade the pad and launch. Things get screaming near the upper atmo, so I throttle down to 30%, and make my apoapsis with 2000 dv left, which is plenty to orbit. I put mechjeb on this ship, but I don't have an upgraded tracking station so I have to actually orbit by hand anyway.

I hit Z when I approach my apoapsis. With a TWR over 6, I overshoot the mark in the blink of an eye, but I don't care. Mission complete.

Back to Mission Control, and I have a Reentry Test mission. Gah...if I had known about it, I could have set up the last ship for it and killed two birds with one stone. Now I have to spend more cash to put another, nearly identical ship, up there. At least I can take the "Science data from space around Kerbin" stock mission, which should fully fund the launch.

Reentry Test should be a piece of cake, since we've already done this exact same thing with Landing Test, only I have to fully orbit first.

Back to the VAB, I reload my orbiter, add a decoupler, XL parachute and required science modules. Basically, all I want to do is bring down the RCU unit, like I did with the Landing Test mission. Because of the 30-part limit I have until I upgrade the VAB, I can only put one mystery goo container on the ship, which leaves it unbalanced. I hope that it still flies fine.

The off center mass definitely has an effect at launch, but nothing my wings can't compensate for. I cheat and collect the science while I'm "flying low" on my way up, but it'd have been just as easy to do on the way down.

Transmit a temperature scan to complete the stock mission, and then orient myself for landing. Burning a couple of hundred DV at retrograde puts me back on a suborbital trajectory.

Start seeing heat effects at 48k (another indication that 1.0.4's atmosphere is different than 1.0.2) so I start slowing, with enough fuel to bring my speed down to 1015m/s. Let's hope that's enough without a heat shield.

Heat effects kick back in at 30km, so I keep the lower stage intact hoping the engine (with its higher heat tolerance) will act as a heat shield long enough for me to slow to parachute speeds.

I start slowing back down at 20km, and I drop the lower stage at 8km... By the time I'm at 4.8km, I am moving slow enough to pop the chutes. I hit the water at 2.5m/s, and complete the mission.

note: Imgur wiped out my episode 1 images. You're supposed to be able to "hide" images from your imgur account to free up clutter, but they're supposed to stay active. I guess Imgur decided to wipe them out after a few days. I'm now hosting all images on my personal domain. I'll get episode 1 images re-linked in a few days.

Tinwhistler · Aug 30, 2015

Episode 4:

For this episode, I've modified the contracts.cfg (as previously mentioned) to change the height that I need to reach to be 9000m.

Looking in Mission Control, I see another rocket mission: Orbital Manouever Test. Yes, that's how they spelled it, which I guess is the British spelling. For this one, I need to place an unmanned satellite into 2 different circular Kerbin orbits: Standard equatorial (no inclination), and at 15 degree inclination, with an "orbital period" of about 33 mintues--that's a 100km orbit.. I'll grab it.

On to Flight Test. Building a simple plane is fairly straightforward: A nose-cone, liquid fuel engine, two wings, two sets of flaps, a Basic Jet Engine, some wheels, a couple of air intakes, and a battery. What do ya know? It flies!

It's a little choppy in the air until I turn on SAS, then it's smooth sailing to 9000 meters. Flying in 1.0.X is much easier than it used to be, that's for sure!

I collect my crew report, level off at 7000m, and turn around. Now all I have to do is land. I should have let myself go a little further out before turning around. I'm coming in pretty high, so I cut my engines to practically nothing and deploy my flaps for added lift and to help reduce speed.

(You deploy the flaps by right-clicking a control surface and clicking the "state" button. I'm not sure when this got put into KSP, but it sure makes takeoff and landing a bit easier.)

I still come in too high and overshoot the runway just a tad, so I have to pull back on the stick to quickly bleed off speed. Normally, I'd just land in the grass, but the mission requires me to land on the runway.

I hit hard, and fast, bounce a few times, and actually think I might make it. That is, before the plane pitches over, shears a wing off, and tumbles.

Sorry for the crappy screen shot. I forgot to zoom in before taking it. What you're seeing is: The nosecone broken off the plane, and the bit of the plane body that survived sitting a few meters away.

But Jeb lives, and I'm technically still on runway ground when everything comes to a halt. So mission complete

It probably didn't help that I was trying to screen shot this mess while landing, and I am still not very good at planes.

Thread Necromancer · Aug 30, 2015

any landing you can walk away from....

Tinwhistler · Aug 31, 2015

Episode 5:

I start the Orbital Manouever Test and immediately get the "Failed mission" icon. WTF? If you look at the screen shot from when I first took the mission, I had a time limit of 10 seconds (00:00:10) to complete the entire mission. There's no way that's even possible.

So, for science's sake, I load up a normal game of KSP and test a quick launch to 100km with an immediate maneuver to 15 degrees as soon as the orbit is circularized. With a fast vehicle skirting the edge of overheating through the atmosphere, it takes 5.25 minutes to get to a 100km orbit and another 45 seconds to turn the ship and change inclination.

I'm assuming that they intended to mean 10 minutes and not 10 seconds, which seems reasonable. Either that, or they were trying to add a "maintain stability for 10 seconds" parameter like most stock orbital missions--but if that's what they intended, they used the wrong mission parameters in the config file. Either way, it's time to edit the config file. Again.

I don't think I can complete these missions without upgrading my tracking station for maneuver nodes. I can afford that, so I do it now. I'd also like to upgrade the VAB to get past the 30-part limit. Orbital maneuvers at 100km can take a fair amount of delta-v, and I'm already running into problems fitting ships into that limitation.

So, checking out Mission Control, I see a Reach the Mun! mission, where I send an unmanned probe to the Mun's SoI for a total reward of 240k kerbucks. I should be able to do that in 30 parts, since I don't have to come back alive. And completing it will give me enough cash to upgrade the VAB.

So I make a teeny tiny probe. It's got 2800dv, and a TWR of 3.39.

I could almost reach orbit with just this thing and no launch vehicle. But not quite, so I build a simple launch vehicle beneath it.

I get into orbit with 3500dv remaining, and I see it's only 582dv to change my inclination. So I'll go for the orbital maneuvers mission now. My equatorial orbit at 100km already completes the first two requirements, so I perform the maneuver to put me at 15 degrees inclination, and complete the mission.

After I return to the equatorial orbit, I have almost 2000dv left. Plenty to fly by the Mun. I set up the maneuver node to bring me to the Mun. As always, MechJeb assumes I want to go straight through the center, but a slight adjustment brings me to a 100km fly-by.

The little probe performs admirably, with tons of delta-v at its disposal.

The mission is complete as soon as I hit the Mun's SoI.

I have almost 2 hours before I have to burn into a Munar orbit, so I make a quick stop back at Mission Control and pick up a couple more stock missions: Docking Test and Explore Duna. I look for an "orbit the Mun" mission by declining VIP trips, but don't find it. That's OK. With my already-completed contracts and the mission advances from the stock missions, I have over 700K kerbucks. I can upgrade my VAB and also upgrade Mission Control to take on more missions at once.

Lessons learned: You don't always have to build big over-engineered probes. The tiny probe I built with only about 30 units of fuel in the little donut tank and the Spark engine had more than enough DV to complete all sorts of probe-based missions. And the smaller payload meant a cheaper and easier to build launch vehicle. I'll be using that design philosophy in all of my future play-throughs.

I've never used the little donut tank for anything before--and if I hadn't been using the R&D missions pack, I probably never would have given it a second look. The little probe I built has enough TWR to allow for a second donut on it, which should give me even more on the one probe. That's nice.

Observations: While I can understand having to edit missions to account for the atmospheric differences, I don't know how the orbital mission ever made it out of the testing phase as it's written. It leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth for using this pack. I don't want to have to go back and continually fix stuff the developer should have run into with even cursory testing. Someone with less computer savvy wouldn't have been able to complete them at all.

Tinwhistler · Aug 31, 2015

All screenshots now rehosted on my own domain.

Here's a screenshot of my tech tree progress so far.

Tinwhistler · Sep 3, 2015

Episode 6:

There are three R&D missions sitting in Mission Control when I start the game: Heavy Lifting Test Launch, Land a Probe on the Mun, and Supersonic Flight Test. I can tell already that I'm going to rue these space plane missions. But, after all the hours I've put into this game, it really is high time that I learned how to build and fly them. So I'm glad that the R&D missions give me a reason to do it.

I take all of them. It seems like (at least so far) no R&D mission has a deadline, so there's no reason not to grab them when they appear.

It looks like the Mun landing will give me the most bang for my buck with a 400K kerbuck reward. I have to land a probe on the Mun and collect some temperature, seismic, and pressure scans. Piece of cake.

I take my probe ship, add some legs, the required science modules (binding them to an action group, of course) , and a second donut fuel tank (just to make sure I have enough DV to land)

I'm enjoying these small form-factor rockets. It seems silly that after all this time in the game, I'm still learning new methods of doing things. But that's also one of the reasons I love this game.

I fear that the extended landing legs may affect my launch, but I don't have any problems. That little diamond labeled "3.1km" in the screen shot represents my space plane debris from episode 4.

My launch vehicle circularizes with 739dv left in the tanks, which is almost enough to get to the Mun before I release the probe.

I set up the Mun transfer, and only have to eat into 90dv worth of my probe's fuel to complete the maneuver. I have 2978 left over to circularize (approx 250dv) and land (approx 900dv) once I get there. This rocket design even has enough fuel to come home. That's good to know for the future.

She's a cute little bugger.

Once I've established orbit at the Mun, I set up a landing in Farside Crater. Even though I'm using the low-powered Spark engine, my ship is light enough to give me a thrust-to-weight ratio of nearly 14 to 1, so I don't anticipate any problems. The landing is smooth, and after a quick tap of the B key, the mission is complete.

Tinwhistler · Sep 3, 2015

Episode 7:

There are no new R&D missions to look at yet, so I decide to go ahead with the Supersonic Flight Test. My rocket portion of the tech tree is outstripping what appears to be the plane side. It looks like I'll need successes on both sides to get some of the more advanced research, so I might as well bite the bullet.

All I have to do is get a plane to 600m/s, do a crew report, and then turn it around and land it. I already know my first plane won't do the trick. The fastest I ever got with the Basic Jet Engine was about 300m/s. Luckily, they've given me the J-X4 Whiplash jet engine, which has a max thrust of about 6 times that of the basic engine.

So I add the new engine, and make some other modifications--adding another set of control surfaces, and swapping out the cockpit so that I can put on a new nosecone/air scoop, sweeping the wings upward just ever so slightly to raise the center of lift.

See how the blue ball (center of lift) is behind and slightly above the yellow ball (center of mass)? Everything I've read about KSP space planes says that's the way to go for flight stability.

Takeoff is a breeze. This thing screams. Getting to 600m/s was easy. Keeping it below the speed of sound was more difficult. Look--it's a Phoenix!

Look at those stats! 8.8G's at max acceleration. 1154m/s airspeed--nearly double what the mission called for. And that's not because I couldn't go faster. I just didn't want to explode from overheating. 30Km altitude. This new engine is so much better than the previous one. I actually flew up so high that the engines had flame-out because the atmosphere was so thin.

I may have to adjust my wing parameters a bit. The plane was very stable, but also very hard to turn as a result. It took me forever to get turned around. But once I did, I came in low and slow so that I didn't overshoot the runway again.

Look at how pretty I'm lined up here. And here's where I hit f5 to quicksave.

I had to try landing 5 times before finally getting it right. And even then I actually landed to the left of the runway, though I came to a halt right in the middle.

Contract complete.

Tinwhistler · Sep 4, 2015

Episode 8:

Here's my tech tree so far:

This run through is definitely going to take longer than a standard game, since each mission only seems to unlock one node of the tree. It looks like there's about 20 more missions to run through before I max out the tree. In a standard game, I can max it out in a handful of flights.

Since I've earned some dollars, I go ahead and upgrade my runway and space plane hangar. I have a feeling I'm going to need it soon. I upgrade the launchpad, too. There's no point in ever upgrading the research complex, unless some future mission has me doing EVAs for surface samples.

Mission Control has another spaceplane mission: High Altitude Flight Test, and I take it. But this episode, I think I'm going to knock out the Heavy Lifting and Docking test missions.

Heavy Lifting requires me to put 10 tons into orbit, which isn't really that hard. I can put a clamp-o-tron on that payload, and then send up a smaller and cheaper craft to dock with it to knock out the other mission. So that's the plan. Neither vessel has to be manned, which makes things simpler.

I come up with this over-engineered vessel for 40K. It's a total of 62 tons. Unfortunately, I don't know if this vessel will count, or if I have to have 10 tons in orbit. I suppose we'll find out.

Weird. I win this mission as soon as I fire the launch rockets. I'm not sure why. But I need to get it up into orbit anyhow, to complete the docking mission. I don't feel like I've cheated in any way, since the total mass I got into orbit was 14.73 tons according to the vessel info screen. But it's one more thing that sours me on this mod. I drop all the lower stages and push the 3 ton docking station to 200km (for a decent phase differential) before returning to the space center.

I don't want to spend another 40K sending up a docking vehicle, so I revisit my Tiny Probe ship, and add a clamp-o-tron and some other parts for under 19K. It's a little heavier than the probe I based it on, so it doesn't have as much dv, but it should have enough for the job.

I get to a 75km orbit with only a spit's worth of fuel left in the lower stage. I spin my ship as fast as I can, and fling the lower lifter out of my way, leaving just the little docking probe. Ain't she a beaut?

Then I set up a Hohmann transfer to the orbiting docking base, speeding up to match speeds once I get there. Once I'm close, and at approximately the same speed/orbit, I begin my docking maneuvers. I dock aaaaaand....nothing happens. I don't complete the mission. I don't understand why. For some reason, the contract says I have to dock with the "tiny lander" that's sitting on the Mun. So, I go back to the Tracking Station, destroy the "tiny lander" ship, rename the untitled ship "tiny lander" and try re-docking:

Nothing. So I go back to the tracking station and destroy all of my active vessels, except for the docking base. Still no dice. I notice that the mission now says "Ship: TBD". Launching a new ship doesn't change it.

I don't want to edit the config files yet again, so I cancel the contract, and go back into mission control, declining offers until it shows back up, and accept it. Then I put one of my "Tiny Docker" ships into space, and the contract correctly links to that ship.

So--I'm guessing that if you have a contract where the ship is "TBD" in the mission text, it's going to latch onto to the very first ship that meets the criteria: In this case, I took this mission a few episodes ago, and my Tiny Lander got to a 70km orbit, and linked to this mission. The only way to match it to a different ship was to cancel the mission and start it over. What a pain. That also means I can't take R&D missions in advance any longer, unless I make sure that they're not going to link up to a specific ship.

From a programmatic standpoint, this criteria should be: "Whatever ship is flying now, if it docks with another ship above 70km, win mission" and not "Hey, whichever ship gets above 70km first, latch onto that ship, and now you're forced to dock with it, whether or not it even has docking ports or if it was a ship you planned to do this mission with." The first set of criteria is simpler to program and will always provide a win condition under the proper circumstances. The second set is overly engineered, trying to keep track of whether you launched a ship above 70km, and then storing that ship's id until you dock with it. It only produces a win condition if you launch ships in a specific order immediately after taking the mission.

So, with all that straightened out, I launched a second Tiny Docker, and put the two together. And spent a lot more than I intended to. But: Mission complete. Finally.

Final tech tree:

So far, dealing with all of the mod weirdness is making this less fun than it really should be. Though I really can't blame the mod creator for the 1.0.4 atmosphere changes, there are still enough little problems with this mod that should have easily been ironed with one thorough and complete play through.

PatrThom · Sep 4, 2015

Tinwhistler said:
there are still enough little problems with this mod that should have easily been ironed with one thorough and complete play through.

Come on, Tin. Everyone knows that code is best when it's released fresh and untested into the world.

--Patrick

Tinwhistler · Sep 18, 2015

Episode 9:

So, I have to apologize for the long delay. With all of the bugs and quirks in this mission pack, I just haven't been really motivated to play missions. But, I guess it's time to get back on the horse.

In this episode, we're going to do the Heavier Lifting Test. That's a mission to get a 50 ton mass into orbit. The lifting part will be relatively straightforward. The challenge will be building something that heavy with the parts available to me.

I needn't have worried. They've given me the Rockomax X200-32 Fuel Tank, which 18 tons when full. I slap together a relatively simple ship, but using the huge tanks.

This craft is 126 tons, but only about 40 once the outer tanks are released. It's only 60K kerbucks, though, so I'll experiment to see if the mission means 50 tons once you get to orbit, or 50 tons at launch. If they mean "50 tons in orbit," I'll slap another 10 tons of fuel on the central core. The rocket has enough TWR to handle the additional load.

I have concerns because in the mission criteria, the "reach orbit" box is already checked--probably because my "tiny docker" ships are still up there.

So, I launch. As this screen shot shows, I completed the mission just as soon as I hit the launch pad. The mission parameters have 2 criteria: Reach orbit--which I met immediately because I already have a ship in orbit. And "50 tons" which I met as soon as I hit the launchpad.

Yet another one of those annoying bugs. They didn't set the mission criteria to mean "current ship" for either part, so I was able to game the system (albeit by accident). Regardless, I don't want to feel like I'm cheating, so I went ahead and launched.

Easily reached orbit with a bunch of fuel to spare.

This was a super-fast mission. So, lets see what else I have on the agenda.

Ah, a "Very Heavy Lifting" mission, which is a repeat of the previous mission, but with a 120 ton ship. So, I load the last ship (which was 126 tons), and expect to immediately win the mission again at the launchpad. I don't. This one is configured correctly--it wants my current ship to be in orbit. So, if the developer knew how to do it right, why wasn't the last one correct? Freaking laziness.

There's nothing left to do but get that ship in orbit too. No problem. Shortly after launching, my weight drops to below 120 tons as I expend fuel. And that part of the mission criteria is no longer met. So I have my answer. They expect the final weight of the vehicle to be 120 tons once in orbit. I revert to the VAB.

Normally, I wouldn't revert--but I don't feel it is unfair, since the mission criteria were ambiguous.

Since my vehicle is 126 tons in total, I just need to put enough engines below it to get the whole thing into orbit without expending any of its fuel. Which means I need to add about 3400dv to the lower stages. 4 orange tanks with mainsail engines only gives me about 1700dv, which is not nearly enough. Looks like I'm going to have to go old school and build an asparagus-staged rocket since they haven't given me anything bigger to work with.

For those who never saw my post a couple years ago about asparagus stages, they work like this: You cluster your engines in a circle like a bunch of asparagus stacked together. You lay out fuel lines so that each engine feeds into the one next to it, and have the "last" set of tanks feeding into the central core. Then, at launch, you drop off empty tanks in pairs, shedding weight as you ascend. It's slightly more fuel efficient than if you were to use the same engine configuration but without the asparagus staging, because you're constantly shedding weight. This picture shows the basic design theory.

The ksp wiki describes asparagus staging thusly: "The result is that the rocket always flies with the minimum number of tanks required to transport the fuel it has left while also constantly using all engines it has on board. "

I end up with this bad boy. It *might* make it to orbit. Mechjeb has historically been notoriously bad about calculating proper dv on asparagus stages. It calculates 3285 in-atmo dv. But as we climb higher into the atmosphere, that value will improve. The in-vacuum dv is 3553. I'll end up with something between those two numbers--if I can trust mechjeb's calculations. Hopefully, the sheer number of big lift generating wings I put on the thing will work in my favor once the ship makes its gravity turn, and I'll get a bit more altitude for the dv I spend.

Nothing to do for it but give it a launch and see if we can get to 71km. The design is sound, and the tanks shed cleanly without bumping into my ship.

When my apoapsis reaches 50K, I decide that I have enough fuel to get to 80km. And I do--just barely.

Mission complete with 230 dv to spare and with a 400K kerbuck profit after the advance (the ship cost nearly 250K).

Tinwhistler · Sep 27, 2015

Episode 10:

So, let's start this episode by showing my current tech tree. As you can see, I've got a long way to go. I have about 16 missions left, by my count, so I'm only half-way done.

So, let's do another flying test. I have "high altitude flight", which consists of getting up to 50km, doing a crew report, turning around and landing. I have much bigger plane parts to work with now, as well as more powerful intake air. Hopefully, I can get up about 30km, where I'll flame out, but hopefully have enough speed to put me in a ballistic arc that will reach 50km.

It's a nice dream. But no dice. I try for about 3 hours to build a design that will get to 50km. But I always flame out at 24km without enough momentum to quite get there. The highest I could get was 41km. I don't have the R.A.P.I.E.R. engine yet, so I can't switch to liquid O2 once I hit thin atmosphere. There's only thing for it: rocket assist!

Here's the plane I ended up with. Mechjeb can't even begin to figure out how much dv I have on this plane, which is hilarious. But it should be enough. Without the rocket assist, the main engine has 20K dv, so I should be able to fly for a long time with this plane.

I launch straight up, but immediately push the plane over so that I'm flying east. I don't want to hit 50km, and then have to drop straight down to land. That's a rocket launch, not a plane flight, in my book. The rocket boosters get me all the way to 70km+, but she flies like a beast when they're firing. On the way up, I collect the required science, and then spend a very brief moment in space, where I jettison the solid boosters.

I hit atmo at screaming speeds, and only by deploying flaps and seriously fighting the craft do I keep it out of a spin while the atmosphere bleeds off the excess velocity. See that T-00:05:50 up there in the top left of the picture? that's how long I've been on this mission. Take note of that.

The engine kicks back on at 24km, and I stabilize at about 16km, whereupon I immediately start turning around. This takes nearly 5 minutes, because my plane is unweildy. If I turn too fast, it wants to nose-down and spin. The runway's about 300km from here, so I have a lot of flying to do to get home.

22 minutes later, and I start seeing mountains. I'm almost there! Another 13 minutes, and I'm flying by the Island Runway. 2 more minutes, and I'm all lined up to land. Then again, I did use mechjeb's "spaceplane guidance" to put a tick on the navball showing where the runway was, and I just pointed my nose in that direction. That helped a lot.

See how pretty that approach is? It's so perfect! First try and everything. I really thought I was going to do it this time.

Nope. Hit the runway just a little too fast, bounced once, and everything blew apart. But guess what? The cockpit survived (as well as a piece of landing gear). That's all that matters, and I have a successful mission.

I swear I'm going to actually do a real, proper landing one of these days.

Tinwhistler · Oct 1, 2015

Episode 11:

So, since I'm stuck at the office for hours with nothing to do while I wait for a download...

I'm determined to learn better how to make and fly space planes. So today: Hypersonic Flight Test . The goal is to get a plane to 1100m/s, do a crew report at that speed, and then come home.

I'm tempted to use the plane from my last mission. I know it will go that fast, but I really don't need rocket assist for this, and it feels cheesy to use it. Since thin air is not an issue, I should be able to build a proper plane that will go that speed. So I come up with this cute fella:

It's a fairly standard plane, but with one important addition: Airbrakes. These pop open to provide a ton of drag and rapidly slow a plane. I'm hoping I'll be able to deploy them at landing for a much slower and softer touchdown.

Take off is easy. I never seem to have much trouble with this part

I'm already doing close to 300m/s when I clear the beach. In less than 2 minutes, I'm going nearly 1200m/s, and everything is overheating. I quickly gather my crew report, and then hit the airbrakes. In only a few seconds, I'm down to 900m/s and slowing rapidly.

I quickly turn around, and line up my approach. Just as I cross over land, I open the airbrakes, slow down to 72m/s and gently touch my wheels to the runway. I roll for a good fifty yards before the plane jack-knifes on the runway, bouncing and blowing apart into pieces.

Once again, the cockpit and a wheel survives. Mission accomplished. It's only now that I realize that the new cockpit I'm using (because it's shape allows me to put a shock cone air intake on the nose) has two occupants. I coulda killed both Jeb and Bill!

After this latest fiasco, I did some reading up on KSP landings. I'm coming down slow enough, straight enough, and gently enough. But holding down the "b" key is evidently a big no-no. It will cause your plane to spin out, which is exactly what happened. The proper technique is evidently to tap the b key until you're below 40m/s before applying the hard brakes. I'll try that next time.

I was *going* to try it this time, but I accidentally hit the "auto-save" key after crashing instead of "auto-load", wiping out my "on approach" save.

Tinwhistler · Oct 4, 2015

Episode 12:

Looks like I've exhausted my plane-based missions for the time being. Today's episode: Put a Kerbal in Orbit. Seriously? This is later in the tech tree than "put 120 tons into orbit?"

Ah well. Super simple. My ship is a bit over-engineered, but still only cost 42K. I start with a 2.21 thrust-to-weight ratio, and was up to 6.04 by the time I got to orbit. Which means everything was glowing hot by the time I got up there and deployed the procedural fairings and circularized.

Realistically, radiant cooling takes a lot more time than convection cooling, so it takes four or five orbits (and nearly 2 hours of game time, though warp made that go by so much faster) around kerbin before my heat indicators go away. After they do, it's time to set up my landing maneuver.

I burn more fuel than necessary to bring my orbit off-axis from the equator, to ensure that I'll land in water. And whoops! Almost forgot the crew report!

I burn the last of my lower stage rockets at the maneuver node, and then separate my landing stage. I have about 100 seconds of fuel, and mechjeb tells me I have about 130 seconds before I hit the water, so I just fire the rockets all the way down. I never even see heat effects from the atmosphere. And you've seen me do this kind of landing a bunch by now.

Landing was completely uneventful.

Mission complete.

Tinwhistler · Oct 6, 2015

Episode 13:

Looks like we're slated to do a bunch of missions over again, only this time with a Kerbonaut in the cockpit instead of a remote control unit. This time, we're doing "Put a kerbal in orbit around the Mun."

I load up my previous ship, add an extra fuel tank on the top stage for a few more dv, as well as a gravioli detector for the mission, and launch. I circularize and immediately plot a course for a Mun flyby without waiting for things to cool down. I'll have hours in space between Kerbin and the Mun for the ship to come back to a more normal temperature. Take note of the screen shot's projected periapsis--16km. This mission requires me to perform some science in low orbit. If I recall, anything below 20km is considered "low" for the Mun.

So, rather than making an orbit, and then spending fuel to change the altitude to an appropriate amount, I'm aiming to just come in low enough right off the bat, and save me a few dv worth of maneuvers.

The launch stage has enough fuel to get me half-way there, but I have to leave it behind to complete the journey. I arrive with a slightly closer approach than I projected, but still within safe limits. The KSP wiki says the Mun's highest point is around 7km, and that's at the pole.

I circularize the orbit when I get there, but boy does that look close!

Once done, I collect the necessary science, and make preparations to return home. I have 2816 dv worth of fuel, so I don't intend on aerobraking, and plan to just use my fuel stores to slow me on arrival. I come in with a nice, clean, and barely inclined orbit, and I'm at an ideal place to land as soon as I reach the periapsis, so I don't even bother circularizing. I just fire the jets at retrograde until mechjeb tells me I'll land in the water.

Because I didn't over-engineer this ship, and because I didn't aerobrake, I don't have enough fuel to slow my descent all the way down. So, instead, you get to see me do a rare heat-shield landing.

I don't slow down to under 200m/s until I'm close to 500m from the surface. This is important, because if you deploy the parachutes at much above 200m/s, they just rip right off--which is why I hate doing landings this way. It's a close call, but I get my parachute deployed around 400m above the ground.

Mission complete.

Tinwhistler · Oct 14, 2015

Episode 14:

My theory from the last episode appears to be bearing out--this episode, I need to put four kerbals in orbit for a week . That's not any more difficult than putting them in orbit for a minute.

So, since I have the dough, I upgrade the astronaut complex, to make sure I have plenty of kerbals on hand. And while I could have re-used an earlier ship and just added some command modules to hold all four kerbals, I decided to build an entirely new craft around the requirements.

I am using the newly-acquired (from spaceplane missions) Mk2 parts. The nosecone and body actually generate lift from that shape, so the theory is that I'll fly up into orbit, hang out for a week, and then glide back into the atmosphere until I slow enough to land. Thus eliminating the need for extra fuel to fire retrograde and slow me down. Since this is a completely untested theory, I populate the craft with four brand-new kerbals. I have a soft spot for Jeb, Bill, Bob and Valentina, and I'd hate to kill them unnecessarily.

None of the new recruits seem as excited at launch as Jeb would be. With this kind of ship, it's easy for the center of mass to get behind the center of lift generated by those big wings, which causes the craft to flip over when the orange tank empties. So,I upgrade the R&D facility, too, to make resource transfer available. Then I manually transfer fuel back up to the orange tank as I ascend, keeping the craft balanced.

I put myself in a 240K orbit to allow for a time warp of greater than 50X (at my standard 100k orbit), so I won't be waiting too long for a week to go by. It took the last of my lower stage fuel to get it done, and some of my landing stage's fuel. But I'm pinning my hopes on that gliding landing theory. Gotta hand it to the new recruits--they might not have liked lift-off, but they sure are happy to be in space.

After a week, I complete the mission. Now, I just have to get my new recruits home safely. This isn't technically a requirement. I could kill them all. But I'm not that heartless. So, I use a little fuel to bring me into the atmosphere. After a few dips into the air, I slow sufficiently for the gravity to catch me completely.

Time to glide. I come in slightly nose up, to generate maximum drag and lift. My solar panels don't last much longer after this picture was taken. I successfully glide while bleeding off about 1500m/s in speed, but that's as good as I can do. At about 15K up, the craft flips around and points its butt toward the earth. So I burn my remaining fuel, and hope for the best.

I slow enough to deploy my 8 radial chutes at around 1500 meters. That provides about the same braking as 4 normal chutes, so at this point, I know I'm going to be fine. Perfectly normal landing just off of a beach. All kerbals returned home, safe and sound.

Tinwhistler · Oct 20, 2015

Episode 15:

Land Kerbals on the Mun!

Pretty easy mission, if you've been following along. I consider landing on the Mun much easier than, say, putting a 120 ton payload into orbit. Especially since I have the benefit of the bigger rockets that the 120-ton mission earned me.

So, on with the show. This mission requires me to plant a flag and grab surface samples. Remember how I said there was no reason to upgrade the R&D center unless I ran into a surface sample mission? Well, here it is, so I upgrade the R&D center. I check to make sure my astronaut complex is upgraded, too, so I can place the flag. I build a pretty simple Munar rocket, using some boosters, big tanks, and a tiny lander encased in fairings. So far, all of my rockets have been in the 50K (or cheaper) range, so I haven't had to worry about money.

KSP version 1.x's atmosphere physics mean that my rocket shapes have evolved to be considerably more aerodynamic than they used to be. I used to prefer wide squat rocket for landing stability, but that's a recipe for disaster with more realistic atmosphere physics. I reach orbit with enough DV left over to easily get me to the mun before I have to rely on my lander's fuel stores.

As usual, I tweak my orbital insertion to put me in a good position for orbit without having to adjust things once I get there. I even have enough fuel in the lower stages to completely circularize before beginning my landing run.

I've landed in East Farside crater enough to know that the northwest side of the crater is the safest (ie: flattest) place for avoiding steep slopes or micro-craters that will spoil my landing. I burn the remaining lower-stage fuel to set up this landing, and then drop it off to explode harmlessly on the munar surface, rather than cluttering up space with debris.

Landing is uneventful, but I don't recognize those textures for the munar surface. I don't know if this is a change after 1.02, or if it's a bug (there's no mention in the changelog). But it looks neat, like glacial scraping.

Once on the surface, I collect my crew report, surface sample, and plant my flag (forgetting to take screen shots of those), before heading back into space. Now all I have to do is safely recover my vessel to complete the mission. I only have 1700 dv once I plot my return trajectory, so I will be aerobraking to conserve fuel. I come in hot after a few aerobraking passes, but have enough fuel to slow the ship without the need of a heatshield. Plenty of parachutes mean even the realtively weak lander-can module comes down on the surface without damage.

Sorry about the dark pictures at landing. Aerobraking means I can't easily choose when the ship will come down. Usually I plot landings on the sun-side of the planet for better screen shots. After navigating through the recovery screens, mission complete dialog lights up.

Here's where we're at on the tech tree at the end of the mission:

10 missions to go.

Tinwhistler · Oct 23, 2015

Episode 16:

In this episode, we finally leave Kerbin's Sphere of Influence (SoI). We need to put a satellite in orbit of the sun, and take some gravity and temperature readings.

What this means, in effect, is that I just have to get a satellite just outside of Kerbin's SoI and immediately perform science. I don't actually have to get a nice circular orbit or prevent it from coming back into the SoI of any other planet. Pretty easy stuff, and the perfect case for my new micro satellite theory that I developed a few episodes back.

So, this is my basic satellite. It's got all the science I need, but I still need to add solar panels and batteries (both of which weigh negligible amounts). The vessel comes in just over 1 ton in weight, and has over 4000dv worth of fuel. With a TWR of 1.55, I could actually take this to orbit from the launchpad, and might even have enough fuel left over to leave Kerbin's SoI. But I'm not going to risk it. After adding batteries and solar panels, the dv drops to 3700, so that idea is a bust anyway.

I end up putting a single orange tank and mainsail rocket beneath the payload, along with all of the regular niceties: wings, fairings, and a SAS module. My total DV is over 7000 in vacuum, and just under 7000 in atmo, so I have plenty of juice to get me where I'm going.

Launch is standard, and with a single orange tank, I don't have to push fuel around to keep my center of mass in the right place. I pop the fairings and open the solar panels once I reach space. Then it's just a matter of immediately creating a maneuver node with enough prograde thrust to escape Kerbin's SoI. I could have probably done it for under the 1100dv I spent, but I had more than enough fuel to spare, so I did it quick and sloppy rather than taking my time to be precise.

My launch vehicle gets me most of the way there, but at some point, I run out of fuel and have to pop off the satellite to continue the journey on its own. I really do like the looks of those little micro satellites.

After about 3 days of travel (a Kerbin day is only 6 hours), I leave Kerbin's Soi for the first time in this play through. I perform the science and complete the mission. Seems like such an easy mission to pay out 1.2 million kerbucks (especially after only spending 38K to build the rocket).

Bubble181 · Oct 23, 2015

I do think the missions are based more on "real" space progress than on in-game difficulty. Still neat to follow, btw.

Tinwhistler · Oct 23, 2015

Glad you're liking it

I give it a 7.5 out of 10 so far. The missions are fun, but the need to continually go in and fix the developer's screw ups puts a damper on things.

Tinwhistler · Oct 24, 2015

Episode 17:

Another interesting episode. On this mission, we're going to send a science lab into orbit, and perform some materials science. Then we're going to time warp for a week and do it again. This has all of the hallmarks of a very short episode.

The rocket is minimal, though it does contain everything I need for the science missions. And while I don't think the boosters are strictly necessary, it's cutting it close without them.

Obligatory lift-off shot. Almost lost some solar panels due to heating as I neared the atmospheric edge. Separated the final stage from the launch vehicle before circularizing. Once up there, I gather some materials science and complete the first half of the mission (as you can see by the little green check marks in the upper right of the screen shot).

And while it wasn't strictly necessary, I get one of my scientists out and reset the materials lab. You can also do this just by right-clicking the space lab module. But this mission was flying by pretty quickly, and I wanted to add a bit of extra challenge, minimal though it was.

Now, I want you to study this screen shot carefully, paying close attention to the mission parameters.

Notice that the mission requirements are in a very specific order--parts that are "related" need to be under the same sub-heading. That "orbit above 70Km" is in the wrong spot--I didn't notice it at the time. It should be under the "collect science" heading.

So, a week goes by, and I dutifully collect my science and...nothing happens. Because that "above 70km" was in the wrong place, this sub-mission only has the "destination kerbin" tag, but not the orbit tag. Which means the only way to win this mission is to collect the 2nd materials report on the ground. Normally, I wouldn't care about such a small bug, but I'm already annoyed at all of the other bugs I've run into in this mission pack. And--since the mission text clearly said that both reports would be taken in space, I have no parachutes or other way to get this ship on the ground safely.

So, I'm editing a config file again. God damnit. Once I get the orbit marker in the correct location in the file, I return to my ship, do my science and complete the mission.

Tinwhistler · Oct 25, 2015

Episode 18:

So, even though the last mission annoyed me at the end, it was still short. So here's another.

Reach another planet and perform a temperature scan. Yay!

My mini probe from episode 16 should be able to get me there without any other changes. But that's not how I roll. I swap out the orange tank and mainsail rocket for a twin boar rocket that carries its own fuel--just for fun. I actually lose about 300 dv making the switch, because the twin boar is not as efficient. But I'll still have plenty for the job, and it's about 2000 kerbucks cheaper.

If I fly to Duna, hopefully I can complete the "Explore Duna" non-R&D mission I picked up a while back. So, I keep that in mind as a side goal of the mission.

Obligatory launch shot. I'm aiming for an apoapsis of 1250km, so that I can engage in maximum warp while I wait for duna and kerbin's angles to align. One of the reasons I chose the twin boar engine, even though it's less efficient, is because it's got much more thrust. Since I'm going to be spending more time in atmo burning at the gravity turn to hit that 1250km mark, I wanted something that could punch through quickly--and at a 9twr at only 28km, this rocket is doing the job.

It barely has enough fuel to reach 1250km, and I have to use 350dv from my satellite's fuel stores to circularize. But that's ok--I have more than enough to complete the mission. It'll only take 750dv to reach Duna when everything's lined up.

So, I totally use mechjeb to calculate the launch window for me. There's just no convenient tips or tricks to do it in stock KSP. I can do it by eyeballing phase angles in the solar system view, but what a pain in the ass. So, after a 200 day wait under maximum warp, I'm on my way. Even using MechJeb, you almost never get an actual encounter. It usually just gets you close, requiring a bit of fine tuning to actually reach the target's SoI.

After warping 150 days or so, I make another tiny adjustment to bring me closer to Duna. It's so much cheaper in fuel costs to make adjustments far away. But it's also more difficult to get good accuracy. So I often will make a couple before I hit the target--one far away, and another once I get closer. I hit Duna's SoI with a 92km closest approach, which is perfect. I'm at a bit of an inclined orbit, but really, it's not worth worrying about.

I take my temperature readings and complete the mission. But we're not done yet! I have 2500dv worth of fuel. Time to see if we can complete that side mission. To do that, I have to actually transmit that data (which is usually not a requirement for R&D missions), slow to orbit, land, and take some more science.

Slowing to orbit only takes a little over 600dv worth of fuel, leaving me nearly 2000 in the tank. Duna is much lighter than Kerbin, and has a bit of atmosphere to boot. 1900 dv should be plenty to land with, even without parachutes--so I pick a crater as my landing site and let mechjeb handle it. You guys have seen me do manual landings before, so I don't mind letting the automation take over.

I lose my solar panels about 1000km from the surface, but I've got a 200 unit battery. I have enough to keep me functioning for the 30 seconds it's going to take to land, with enough left over to transmit a report.

One note: mechjeb actually uses a trickle of electricity as it runs. Normally you only burn electricity when using the reaction wheels to make turns, or when transmitting science. But if you're using mechjeb, you have to be sure to have enough electricity on hand in the form of batteries, solar panels or RTGs, or you'll quickly find your ship is a lifeless husk floating in space.

Explore Duna complete.

Tinwhistler · Oct 25, 2015

I've been playing a few episodes ahead, to get a buffer.

Fair warning: The game breaks in episode 22 and leaves my play through in an unrecoverable state, so that's where the playthrough ends. Fortunately, I only had something like 3 missions to go at that point.

If you want a spoiler to where things start to go horribly wrong in that mission, check this out:

What is this madness? Multiple clones of Jeb? Could Jeb be duplicating himself every time I climb out of the capsule and then hit "b" to board? Yes, yes he is. Something has gone seriously wrong.

I thought I could just ignore the cloned Jebs and continue on with my mission...but, this was only the beginning of my troubles.

Bubble181 · Oct 26, 2015

Will you do at least one mission to the comet Lovejoy?

Tinwhistler · Oct 26, 2015

I did get a comet mission in before everything broke down..but it's not this one

Episode 19:

300 tons into orbit? That's insane!

So, I make sure that my VAB is upgraded. I'm going to need lots of parts to get this done.

Here's my payload. It's 348 tons. I can use a little bit of the fuel on board and still complete the mission. But not much. I gotta pretty much get 95% of the way with the lower stages. I tried a half-dozen or so different designs, and took a few screen shots. None of them really had the DV to get into orbit without eating too much into the payload's fuel stores, even using asparagus staging.

Finally, I decided to complete the mission in the most Kerbal of ways: moar boosters.

I'm surprised the launch pad didn't explode at lift-off. I was equally surprised when all of those boosters came off cleanly. Probably because I delayed my gravity turn until after I ejected them. If I had been flying at an angle, they probably would have crashed into the stack of twin boar engines and blown the whole thing up. The twin boars get me up to an apoapsis of 54K...almost there!

Finally, the Rhinos get me to 71K, but there's not quite enough fuel in them to circularize. I'm hoping that 63dv worth of fuel in the payload stage weighs less than 48 tons, or this mission is scrapped.

I'm lucky. It's only 25 tons worth of fuel to finish circularizing.

Mission complete.

Bonus shot of me ejecting 250 tons of fuel tanks into space and wasting them.

This seems like a short episode, but I probably spent 2-3 hours designing various rockets trying to get 3400 dv under my payload.

Tinwhistler · Oct 27, 2015

Episode 20:

6 missions left, counting this one. And this one's going to be a doozy--something you've never seen me do before: Rendezvous with an asteroid and collect science. Why is this such a big deal? Because you can't mechjeb it at all. You can't match planes with mechjeb (because you're in a different SoI), you can't Hohmann transfer (because mechjeb screws it all up and you don't meet the asteroid anyway). You can't use the rendezvous autopilot. All you can really do is set up your maneuver nodes by hand, and let mechjeb handle the engine firing for them.

So, this will be a long episode. I took over 50 screen shots, and pared them down to just under 40.

If you want to track asteroids, you need to make sure your tracking station is maxed out. Without "unowned object tracking," you don't stand a chance. Then, I go into the tracking station and destroy all of my current unmanned ships that are still in space. I'm going to be tracking a lot of asteroids looking for one with a good profile for rendezvous, and I don't want the distractions.

To track an asteroid, click on it in the tracking station, and click the "track" button in the lower left. I am looking for asteroids that come in to Kerbin's SoI, not too far out, and hopefully on a close-to-equatorial trajectory. Unfortunately, nothing in the tracking station fits the requirements, so I have to pick one of the crappier choices. I lower the bar to "at least it's not far from Minmus, and will stay in Kerbin's SoI for 2-3 weeks".

I choose a likely candidate and begin building my rocket.

It's not super complicated. But I did want a decent amount of dv, so that I could get to the asteroid, grab my science, and return home safely (all required mission parameters). Obligatory lift-off shot. All of the stages break off cleanly, and it looks like I'm gonna have a couple thousand dv after reaching an orbit of 1250km. I pick up a couple hundred more when I shed the weight of the procedural fairings.

Once I'm in orbit, I switch to map view. When you're tracking an object in the tracking station, and have it targeted by the ship, you can see it's orbit here. It's just got a really crappy profile..nearly polar orbit, which means a big dv change to match planes. So, since I'm going to have to burn fuel to get out to the asteroid anyway, I decide to increase my orbit radius so that the inclination change will be cheaper.

I push my orbit out as close to the Mun as I can without getting sucked into its SoI. You can see from the screen shot that the asteroid is going to come in at 31 million meters, between the Mun (12 million meters) and Minmus (47 million meters). That's great. It means I won't have to spend much fuel to get to it.

So, in this screen shot, you can see a little triangle on my orbit labeled "AN" with a line connecting it to the asteroid's orbit. That's the ascending node of the asteroid--where the asteroid's orbit crosses the plane of my own orbit. That's where I'll manually drop a maneuver node to make my rocket's inclination match the asteroid's. I manually drag the Radial and Normal node handles around until the planes match as closely as I can get them with my eyeball. Dragging around, it's going to cost me over 1100dv to match the plane. No good. So I pick another asteroid with a better angle. This one actually comes even closer to Kerbin at 21 million meters, so it'll cost less fuel to reach it, too. Once I get the plane change right, I use mechjeb's node editor to reign in the speed, so that I remain at a fairly circular orbit. This, naturally, changes the angle, so I fiddle with both the prograde and normal numbers until I am satisfied with both my orbit and my angle.

Even this far away from Kerbin, it's going to cost me nearly 600dv to make the change.

Once it's done, I'm happy with the result. now I have to wait the 127 days for the asteroid to actually come into Kerbin's SoI. I have about two weeks before the asteroid reaches its periapsis, but my own orbit takes a bit of time this far out, so I only have one shot at this. I set up a maneuver node on the opposite orbital node from the asteroids periapsis, and begin dragging around the prograde handle until I get the "intersection" triangles that tell me I'm going to come close to the asteroid. Then I get out the node editor again (because those handles are so imprecise) and fiddle with the numbers (including shifting the time around a minute at a time) until I get the intersection just as close as I possibly can.

Once I've completed that maneuver, I set up a new node at the intersection point, setting to fire prograde until the orbits match. I get within 9.4km of the asteroid on my first approach. That's the little yellow diamond in the screen shot. At this distance, you can put your nose on the "target marker" on the navball, and give some thrust, and you'll meet up with your target. Just be sure you set up a maneuver node to match speeds again before you hit the dang thing. Or you could eyeball it and fire while pointing away from the target, and hope you have good timing.

Once the speeds are relatively similar (within 1ms or less), Jeb hops out for a closer look and collects a surface sample.

Feel the majesty of the moment, Jeb.

Once Jeb returns to the ship, getting home is routine. Fire rockets retrograde until my orbit returns to within Kerbin's SoI. Spend a couple hundred dv to turn to an equatorial orbit. This gives me a much better chance of hitting water when I come back down. Fire retrograde at the apoapsis, to put me at about 35km, so I can aerobrake back to Kerbin.

Here's where I hit a snag. The mun is in the way. So I do a partial burn, and then finish the job once I'm at apoapsis again. I come in on the night side of the planet, but the glow of re-entry lights up this shot for you. At about 25km, I turn retrograde and begin firing rockets, jettisoning the lower stages at around 20km.

The sun is just starting to come up when I pop my chute at 5km. I don't land in the water, but I still make a safe landing (since I added landing legs--just in case), recover the ship, and complete the contract.

Tinwhistler · Oct 28, 2015

Episode 21:

Send a probe to Eeloo. This isn't really that complicated, except for the need for a lot of dv to get there. Since we already put 300 tons of payload into orbit in a previous episode, we already know how to generate a lot of thrust. Since this is an unmanned mission, it's a good candidate for my 1-ton probe. Making a rocket with enough fuel will be a snap.

The 1 ton probe has a simple launch vehicle: 3 twin boar engines/tank combos clustered around a single orange tank with a mainsail engine. I added an SAS module for maneuverability and some solar panels, wings, and that's about it. Since the payload is so small, I end up with over 9000 usable delta-v. We're gonna need it. It takes a lot to get to Eeloo.

Obligatory launch shot at an artsy-fartsy angle. Things get super hot by the time I jettison the twin-boar engines, but I ain't skeered. By the time I blow the fairings and circularize, I have about 6500 dv left to do my thing. That's enough to get to just about any planet in the system.

Of course, we're not staying at a 100km orbit, since you can't time warp at maximum that close to Kerbin. So I make nodes to circularize out at my standard 1250km orbit for maximum warp, leaving me 5700dv.

Mechjeb calculates a 2087dv fuel cost at the optimal transfer window. Yikes! But really, it could have been much worse. It calculated a window at one of Eeloo's close approaches (when it nears Jool's orbit). It could have calculated one at Eeloo's furthest point, and we might've been closer to 4K dv to make that trip.

The initial window actually has me impacting on Eeloo's surface, but I don't worry about it. I know this will change once I pass Kerbin's SoI--and even if it didn't, and I did nothing, this is an unmanned probe that doesn't have to make it back. So I don't bother futzing with the node editor.

It takes all of my remaining orange tank fuel to accelerate for the trip, leaving me nearly 3700 in the probe to make any adjustments I need along the way. Massive overkill, really. Nothing to do now but warp the few hundred days until we get there. I do make a very tiny adjustment about 80% of the way there. I want to do it now, just to conserve fuel, because I'm hoping to have enough to circularize when I get there (even though it's not a requirement). Then, more warping.

As soon as we cross the threshold of Eeloo's SOI, I do the required science and complete the mission. But we're not done!

I spend 1600 dv to circularize. That leaves me right at 2000 in the probe. Which would be plenty to land with--with a thrust-to-weight ratio of 15:1, it won't take much to slow the probe down to safe landing speeds. So, we know that this particular set-up could easily complete an "explore Eeloo" mission, which requires orbiting and landing.

Free shot of the planet after I complete my orbital maneuver:

Tinwhistler · Oct 29, 2015

Episode 22:

Last one. Would've had 3 more to go after this one, if things hadn't gone south: 500 ton launch (insane!), Single Stage to Orbit space plane, and capture an asteroid.

Before I took any of those, I figured I'd knock out this simple "Take a kerbal to a planet, do science, and return." Sure, the mission says "unmanned" in the text, but it's full of shit. You can't do an eva report with an unmanned vessel. I assume the creator just copy-pasted the unmanned mission parameters, and modified them. That would explain some of the problems I run into (though not all of them!) in the course of the mission.

So, the rocket is pretty simple. It's a simple lander with just enough fuel to get to the surface of Duna and back. But I'm making the launch vehicle with a massive overkill of fuel, and adding docking ports. The theory is: the orange tank and lander make it to Duna, the lander does its job, re-orbits and docks with the orange tank for a fresh fill-up of go juice, bringing it back up to 2500dv, and enough to get to Kerbin. So, to make that work, I put an RCU and batteries and stuff on the launch vehicle, so that both halves act like complete ships once I separate them in Duna's orbit.

Lift-off. And probably my artsiest-fartsiest screen shot yet. I circularize at 1250km with over 6000dv worth of fuel once the maneuver is complete. Plenty to get there and fuel the return trip. So far, so good--only 774dv to get to Duna, though that nearly 3 year wait time is a killer. Looks like I'll even get there with fuel in the big rhino tanks. I won't even need to aerobrake to circularize to conserve fuel.

As is standard, I adjust my trajectory about half-way there, because doing it now costs 4dv worth of fuel instead of a hundred or more. After that, there's nothing to do but warp to Duna's SoI. Everything has been pretty standard kerbaling, so far.

Circularizing is gonna take a little over 600dv, but I have most of that in my original rhino tanks. I'll only eat into the orange tank a little bit. Once I'm in a stable orbit, I pop the lander free and begin my descent. About now, I realize I'm in a near-polar orbit, which means it's gonna cost plenty of fuel to meet up the two halves of the ship later, but I'm estimating that I have enough. I use a little fuel to slow me down on the way in, but honestly, I don't want to use too much. I need it to get me back into orbit later, and I'm not 100% sure how much I'll need, because I didn't do any research ahead of time.

So, that's why I brought parachutes. But Duna's atmosphere is hella thin, and radial chutes are half as good as regular chutes, so I do have to tap the gas a couple of times to keep things under 10m/s. Landing is uneventful, though, and once I'm on the surface, I begin collecting all of my science. Once that's done, I get out to do the EVA report and Surface sample. Uh oh. The mod maker has screwed up again. It looks like he's got it set up so that my ship has to do these bits of science, which is impossible.

Ah well, I resign to get myself back to Kerbin before I start editing the mod file again. And that's when it happens. I climb into the ship, and my point-of-view camera shifts to ship view. But there's still a kerbal standing on the ladder. So I click "eva", and there are two kerbals on the ladder. I was so stunned, I forgot to get a screen shot. So, I get back in, and now there are two kerbals on the ladder and one in the ship. Jeb is cloning himself every time he gets back into the ship. I hit the square bracket keys to switch to these other kerbals, and they're all named Jeb. This is just too weird, and I don't know if it was a game bug or a problem with the mod pack. They even show up in the tracking station.

So I jump them all off of the ladder and finally realize I need to make a screen shot. At this point, there's nothing I can do with the neo-Jebs but leave them behind as I bring my lander back into orbit. I only have half the fuel I would need back on Kerbin, but I'm hoping that the lower gravity and thinner atmosphere will mean the difference between success and failure. It does...barely. I end up with about 280dv worth of fuel by the time I circularize.

That's not enough to get me to the big orange rocket. But no sweat--I can bring the big orange rocket to me. I push its orbit higher so that inclination changes will be cheaper, and Hohmann transfers will line up faster. Once that's done, I spend 1000dv worth of fuel (ouch!) matching planes with the lander, and another couple hundred rendezvousing. All of that goes off without a hitch.

It's docking (sorry, on the night side) that turns into the next problem. Luckily, I obsessively hit f5 while playing this game. So, I go to dock, like I've done hundreds of times before, and as soon as the docking ports touch, the orange ship flies away spinning. For a few meters. Then it becomes frozen in space relative to my active ship--as if they were docked and one unit (with space between them) but without actually being docked or allowing a resource transfer.

So, I close KSP, restart it, load up my last quick save and try again. Same result. So I close it again, restart it, load the quicksave, and start up Bandicam, and set MechJeb to auto-dock, so you guys can see exactly what's happening.

What the fuck? So now I'm stranded--I don't have enough fuel to get home, and bugs are preventing me from docking to get any more fuel. At this point, I'm just raging, because of all of the problems I've already run into in this mission, coupled with all the problems I've had through the entire run-through. So, I say "fuck it", and install HyperEdit, reload everything again, and force my lander into Kerbin's orbit. When I pull up the contract in the Research Lab, to check which nodes I have to edit to complete the mission, every mission is gone. Except the current one, that is, and that one is completely blanked. Looking in the persistent.sfs save file, there's a ton of corruption around the ships and missions. There's no way for me to clean it all up by hand.

Mission Failed.

And, so we come to a sad, sad end to a fun, but annoyingly bugged set of missons.

Thread Necromancer · Oct 31, 2015

That's rough. I had some really high hopes for the R&D playthrough but ya, the whole time you've had to work major bugs which have turned me off from trying out that add on and just sticking to the regular game.
Been a good run through and entertaining read though TW and thanks for entertaining us with it.