tedious fact

Formerly nonfiction, mostly vaugely space-related content from tedious empire

[tediousfact]

Building Out Kerbol 39: Wait... what day is it?

Gene: There's no reason to have two survey probes at Minmus, right? It'll be a while before the other one arrives, you're sure you don't want to keep this one around?

Bill: There's no need. The lab is going to be busy enough with the other data from here until the ion probe makes it here.

Irgan: I just set off for that Satellite upgrade. It feels a little weird leaving the Clubhaus after all this time...

Irgan: Huh, look at that. We must be right at our ascending node with Moho...

Gene: EVERYONE SCRAMBLE! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!

Irgan: What's the big deal? It's not like it's a transfer window.

Bob: Moho doesn't have transfer windows, not really. Between the inclination and the eccentricity there's only one good place in its orbit to meet it, right where a ship would hit its orbit if we launched right now. We either launch in the next day or so, or hold off for a year.

A few minutes later:

Gene: Bill I hope your design was final because it is now!

Bill: I mean... It should theoretically be able to get there. And have a strong signal. I hope...

Soon after:

Gene: Next up!

Bill: I did have time to revise the survey sat a bit. So long as that solar array can get it through the big burn here, we should be good.

Gene: The relays are locked in for a burn tomorrow.

Gene: And the surveyor. Sure hope your probe can handle an 18 minute burn, Bill.

Irgan: So that's a relay network and a science probe for Moho, right? What are we looking at for the other planets?

Bill: Just link your console back to the Clubhaus and pop open the maneuver tool. It should be able to spit out some basic launch window estimates.

Irgan: Huh, how did I never know it could do that?

Gene: It isn't exactly perfect, but for everywhere but Moho it should be close enough for figuring out our schedule. This year is all about Moho and Duna. Next year is Eve, Jool, and Eeloo.

Irgan: And then Dres after that?

Gene: Where?

(Editor's note: Yeah, I'm going to have to double check those transfer windows. And I don't know why the trip duration to Dres is 0, but it's funny. Considering that Dres isn't real. And it better not be, because a trip of 0hrs implies it's coming to us.

Transfer windows are one of the things I really like about how space travel works, and one I wish more science fiction leaned into. Because it really is a different world if our cities and countries and towns are minutes away from each other by phone, weeks or months away by ship, and in places where the path to reach them only opens once every three years.

Imagine being a dock worker on Phobos and having to deal with 780 days worth of traffic from Earth over the course of maybe two weeks... Imagine the party afterwards!)

[tediousfact]

Building out Kerbol 38: The difference between a station and a ship

Bob: We're sticking to 15% throttle to keep the unbalanced load from spinning us, but we're off to the edge of the SOI.

Sangan: We survived the big burn, looks like it'll be much easier switching planes.

Bill: We have some time to kill, so let's work on clearing out some contracts.

Gene: We're about to lose those fins.

Bill: Doesn't matter, we're above the soup and we weren't recovering the booster anyway.

Gene: So what is it?

Bill: Our first ion probe.

Bill: These engines take a ton of charge to run, so we're playing around to see how long of a burn we can manage between our panels and batteries. Looks like 2 minutes drained about a quarter of our charge even in the dark.

Bill: Here's our biggest burn so far. And one contract down.

Bill: And now to move on to the next contract.

Bob: And we are now polar and ready to properly service the surface exploration.

(Editor's note: The difference between a ship and a station is all in your mind. A ship is about the trip, a station is for the destination.

Munholme's new orbit lets it pass over essentially everywhere on the Mun's surface twice a munar day. The hope is that with my current rover's fuel reserves it should be doable to hop to anywhere on the surface from the mining rig and recover at the station if needed without doing any major plane changes, which is what made the last surface mission so iffy.

I just eyeballed it but the station should spend about half its orbit in a high orbit and half in low orbit with the transition over the poles. So, in theory, I can grab readings from both high and low orbit over every bit of Mun's surface from that orbit.

I've basically come to feel that there are two kinds of stations: Up stations and Down stations.

Up Stations are for missions going up and out of the gravity well. You want those to be equatorial so they'll have plenty of launch windows for travelling to distant destinations, which should mostly be on or near the equatorial plane. Staging a bunch of modules for an interplanetary ship? Until you light the engines that's an Up station.

Down stations are for exploring the world beneath them. Those should be polar so that they can be accessed relatively cheaply from any latitude and so that they pass over every part of the surface below. Sending Jeb up to park in orbit until he gets crew readings over every biome? Until his recovery burn he's in a Down station.

And if you have both Up and Down stations in equatorial and polar orbits, it makes sense to have your mining operations be on the equator. That way both kinds of station can easily reach or be reached by your mining and refueling systems.)

[tediousfact]

genuinely loving the series it's gotten me back into ksp and has me thinking differently about the game in a big way

question - how do you keep motivated with your many-plate-spinning playstyle? especially for interstellar travel when transfer window and travel times outweigh your elapsed time by an order of magnitude? during my last ksp phase i was playing in a similar style, and i always struggled staying motivated with the close-to-home stuff while waiting for transfer windows or travel time

A few different ways.

Assuming you mean interplanetary instead of interstellar, since I don't use mods. Although the answer there would probably be about the same.

First, it's still a game. If I look at a contract being offered and it just doesn't look like fun I just don't do it. If I was playing on harder difficulty I might feel more forced to do everything.

Second, just because I have a contract accepted doesn't mean I have to do it right now. At the moment, I think I have a satellite upgrade contract, a rover repair, and three new satellite launch contracts that I'm just sitting on. I don't like sitting around waiting or only having my Kerbals doing one thing, but I play it by ear how much I want to squeeze into the time I have between big maneuvers.

Third, if there's something I actually want to do and have time for I don't wait for a contract. None of that flying around for the last post got me any rewards other than the little discovery and world's first rewards. I just wanted to clear all the anomaly markers off the map and get access to some new launch sites. Similarly I'm probably going to send a mission to Mun sooner or later with a satellite that can find anomalies at a 100% rate because it's going to just get more annoying to me thinking that I haven't found everything there yet. And I really enjoy coming up with space station and base concepts, so if I have time and an idea...

Fourth, I probably will start doing more time warping once I feel like I'm done or done for the moment locally around Kerbin. But by the time that happens, transfer windows to the other planets should be showing up. I basically want to be doing at least three missions to everywhere: survey, explore, and tourism. Even if I'm only doing interplanetary stuff, just with the way transfer times and the calendar work I'm going to essentially always have several missions in the works at any given time.

Fifth, finalth, and maybe most importanth: I am doing the series. It's always easy for me to lose motivation if what I'm doing doesn't have any feedback or schedule or constraints. And then once I stop, it's hard to get back into the habit or the rhythm. For a game like Kerbal it's very easy for me to feel the pressure to start over from the beginning the second I think of a better way I could have done something. The series keeps me honest and motivated. This blog's only picked up something like four new followers and even my most popular posts mostly get a handful of reactions, but I'm doing this in public, sort of.

If I stopped I'd be letting you down Anon. And we can't have that.

[tediousfact]

Building Out Kerbol 37: Racing the Sun

Verming: Huh, looks like that anomaly to the southwest was an entire, fully staffed launch site. Why didn't we just have it on the map? This thing was a pain to find in the dark!

Gene: But you made it down safe, right? The new jet's flying well?

Verming: ...sure.

Richbert: Sun's coming up over the horizon, I'm actually glad it's still dark though, the runway lights are making this spot much easier to find.

Verming: Wait, so you got a map marker and runway lights? No fair!

Richbert: Ooooh, looks like that extra anomaly we detected wasn't a glitch after all!

Tebart: Maybe another launch site? I see something shining anyway.

Tebart: Aww, this one's mothballed. I can't even refuel. Another monolith though, these things are everywhere! I have plenty of fuel though, so I'll keep heading north.

Tebart: Shouldn't our ground relays have map markers? At least I was able to just follow the signal to pinpoint it.

Tebart: It's getting kind of toasty in the cockpit. Jet's probably a little too fast for our atmosphere. Wonder if that's what got the aliens? Maybe they had to drop the monoliths to save weight.

Tebart: Oh thank Kerb! Bathrooms!

Tebart: Wake up! Where's the toilet!

Jedlin: Aww, I only get a short hop? Tebart gets all the fun.

Jedlin: Fill er up!

Verming: Behold! The wisdom of the ancients revealed! Fuel tanks can be bigger!

Verming: I hope there's a place to land coming up, otherwise I'm going to need to start watching the throttle so I don't blow up!

Verming: Yay! Two beaches in one relay!

Verming: Glad I packed my bikini!

Tebart: Made it across the ocean. Our first anomaly is a ground station. That's fine. There's several other anomalies we picked up, and it isn't like they'd have all the launch sites and airfields in one hemisphere, right?

Tebart: I'm going to be 100% honest. The core says there's something here, but I don't see shit. So much for my mountain resort.

Tebart: Another ground station...

Tebart: yay. a monolith.

Tebart: An entire continent with no launch sites?!?! What the hell Gene?

Gene: I don't know what to tell you, I just stamp the papers.

Tebart: I'm about to outrun the sun. Still got a bit to fly before I reach Mahi Mahi. I throttled down to cool off, but now things are getting kind of shaky. How well did you look at the balance in this thing with empty tanks?

Gus: We didn't...

Tebart: FFFFFFFFuuuuuuuuuu....

Tebart: I just had to take over for Verming at the cove. What was I thinking? I should have let Richbert fly this leg of the mission. That water looks so cold...

(Editor's note: The crash at the end wasn't staged. I really did just suddenly lose all control and fall into an unrecoverable tailspin. Dropped all the way from 10k to 1k meters fighting for control the whole way down before I decided to have her bail out.

There's a single anomaly I have mapped that I couldn't find. I don't know if there's anything actually there though, I was putting up those markers even if the anomaly was right on the horizon from the probe. So it's possible that I was way off on location and I marked that for the last monolith or the second to last ground station.

The jet was really great for this tour. Plenty of fuel, a top speed over 500 m/s, reasonable enough to land, and stable enough to point the thing, crank up to 4x warp, and walk away to get a drink or use the restroom while it flew and worst case come back to the thing being a couple thousand meters higher than I wanted. But I did check after the fact, and with empty tanks the center of mass was definitely behind the center of lift. Oops.

For the record, I was only listening to Daft Punk's Around the World for at most a quarter of the time I was flying this.)

[tediousfact]

Building out Kerbol 36: Making an Impact

Jeb: Looks like that new Mining shack is here. And its floodlights work...

Jeb: Coming in hot, see you on the ground in a few.

Tefurt: Welcome! Let's get all linked up so I can get this thing running at full capacity!

Jowig: Let's wait for sunrise before Jeb and I head out on our next hop.

Tefurt: Sounds good. I think I've got everything dialed in here if you two want to call it a night.

Gene: You know the timing on this is a little mean, right?

Bob: Why would you say that?

Gene: And we're sure it won't hit them?

Val: Relax, we can make adjustments if we need to.

Val: Beginning terminal burn...

Val: And that's flameout. Project Alarm Clock is due to hit in 5... 4...

Jeb: WHAT WAS THAT!?!?!

Jowig: Really Gene? Couldn't wait for morning?

(Editor's note: No cheating this time. Although I should admit that I did cheat the Mineshack into orbit a few posts ago. But it's the second Mineshack and the new hose connections have less mass than the spare batteries I took off, so I can't imagine it would have been difficult to launch. That was still probably a mistake, because just loading onto the launchpad fully fueled shredded three of its four tires and I had to blow through three repair kits once it landed to let it drive over.

I did have Tefurt drop the airlock on the Mineshack a bit so the science rover could dock with it. but the actual docking was easy. Drive over to line up the docks, and then switch to the landing legs to lift the rover and trust the magnets to keep everything lined up while the vehicle shifts around and make the connection.

I probably should have used the subassembly feature to make sure the things lined up back at the VAB, but where's the fun in that?

There's about a week of game time left before I get three ships arriving at Minmus and it's time for my asteroid rig to set off for its encounter. Knowing me I'm going to squeeze three or four other things in before then, because God forbid I time warp more than a couple hours...)

[tediousfact]

Building out Kerbol 35: Mun Roving

Jowig: And we're off to tour the Mun!

Jeb: We're about to set you two down. You'll have control of the wheels once you're on the ground. Go easy on the acceleration, you're a little top-heavy.

Jowig: I spotted our first surface feature on the way down. Let's go check it out!

Tefurt: Bill, it looks like our next version needs the wheels reworked. The scanning arm doesn't like any motion at all and we just don't have the grip with the wheels to keep perfectly still even on a gentle slope. The good news is that we found a rock to scan too and the arm can reach the ground even with the landing pads deployed.

Bill: Good to know. We'll have to see if it's a weight issue when the other one gets here at Minmus.

Jowig: That's all our experiments live and running.

Tefurt: The panels are live. Looks like we were right, with me tuning them we didn't need all five.

Tefurt: Done refueling for our first long distance hop. Shame I can't stay to keep the rig running on high, but we don't have the fuel cells for the power draw and we're going to run out of battery soon.

Gene: Don't stress it. You've got a version of Bill's mineshack on the way. It might be waiting for you by the time you get back.

Jeb: Jowig, Tefurt, make sure you're strapped in. You're coming up on your landing burn for that site where we need the gravity readings.

A little later:

(Editor's note: I cheated the fuel to let them visit the monolith on the same trip. But I was able to get them back to the mining rig from there on the ~1k delta-v they had left after landing at the other site. That was very close though. I ran out of fuel about ten feet above the ground but still landed safely.

Looks like for Mun I either need to get better at planning hops or I need a couple hundred extra m/s safety margin to be doing round trips to the poles from the equator. On the other hand, I do have a mostly full tanker in orbit, and 1000 m/s is plenty to get into munar orbit from the surface. Don't know if it's enough for the plane change. I'd want to put my apoapsis all the way up at the edge of the Munar SOI to even try it on that budget.

I do want a shorter, more stable, rover design. Preferably something with good enough wheels and traction to actually safely climb out of a crater. This thing took a ton of reloading trying to get gravity readings from three surface sites with two inside a crater.

So more fuel, wider base, bigger wheels, or maybe use docking to split the hopper and the rover and use robotics to pick it up and set it down.

Good thing the save file has a good long time before the Duna transfer window opens up, I guess.)

[tediousfact]

Building Out Kerbol 34: What do you mean another Minmus Station?

Sudon: All systems green. About to light it up.

Gene: Will someone explain to me why we keep getting contracts to build brand new versions of things we already have in place or on the way? So, I'm guessing this is the core? Rest comes up later?

Bill: Not exactly. This launch should fulfill at least two contracts for us all by itself.

Gene: Still don't quite have room for 19 kerbals, but the inflatable airlocks weren't a bad choice.

Sudon: Did you think I rode up here for the fun of it? Just watch.

Sudon: The RCS thrusters worked just fine for this. Barely used any monoprop.

Sudon: And here's the second arm.

Sudon: On my way to Minmus! It's like having a cruise ship all to myself!

Gene: Looks like our second part retrieval mission is almost over. Time to see if it can survive a reentry from Munar orbit.

Gene: Nice work! Now it's just the Minmus retrieval left.

Liszor: Anyone order a Munar lander? Got a spare Scientist I can grab before I take it for refueling?

Tefurt: Looks like we're about to get busy here at Mun.

(Editor's note: Obviously I'm still playing with inflatable space station concepts. I do have a bit of a plan for the second Minmus station, but it's more something I came up with after the fact.

Spoiler alert, I think I'm going to use it as a mobile academy to level up essentially all my kerbonauts. But given that it has a week of flying before it can even get to Minmus, it doesn't have any passengers, and I'm about to land a science rover on Mun, that probably won't be for a few more episodes.

I keep seeing people on the various forums complaining about super long burn times on ships that use nuclear engines. And... um... why though? The things aren't perfect, of course, they're pretty heavy and have a relatively low thrust. But you can use more than one. And even using three like I did above I was able to shave about ten tons off of the ship vs what I would have needed to get the same thrust to weight ratio and total delta-v with the standard engines I have access to. Yes, I could have used a single engine and squeezed out an extra 1000 m/s, on a ship that already got nearly 4k. But that would have been a ship that took over 7 minutes to burn to Minmus from LKO instead of less than 3. And it might have struggled just getting into LKO in the first place.

20 minute burns are a choice. And they're one I've never made. And with nuclear engines a 20 minute burn is usually a burn that would have been flat out impossible for a chemical rocket.)

[tediousfact]

KSP Inflatable Station 2

Have more filler. This is the starting point, and it is launchable - hence the struts. I just don't want to bother with that.

Agadun, from my sandbox testing save, has to pop off the struts once it's teleported into orbit.

Hinges bend, cylinders extend, and the thing starts to take shape.

Inflatable airlocks inflate, and solar arrays unfold.

The lights come on, and the station orients itself edge on to the sun before spinning up to 5 rpm for gravity's sake.

Being a single ring, I don't have to worry about rotating joints, vibrations and a bunch of other annoying problems with multi-ring stations, which is nice even if those things don't matter in KSP. But one of the big things I like about this is that irl you should be able to fuse these clusters of four airlocks into a single, spacious, much more rectangular interior by reinforcing the seams and maybe adding a lightweight internal structure.

The whole thing is modular, with each of the six segments of the ring having the space and the power generation and storage to support a single kerbal and the hydroponics they'd need to keep them alive. It should be doable to dock the ring together without the central hub, and I have tested docking three segments together using a specialized tug but haven't done a full ring yet.

The trouble I'm running into is that for some reason if I make the segments into sub-assemblies and then strap them to a booster one or both of the hinges holding the ports likes to randomly decide to detach from the craft when launched. Or to stay attached through being launched and orbited and then just pop off when the segment is docked. It seems to be something about the way I added the bottom battery that bothers it. Maybe.

Once I get it more reliable, probably with moar struts, it should be possible to scale it up to larger rings pretty easily by simply adjusting the angle of the alligator hinges and including more segments. But, of course, at a certain point I'll start running into part count issues.

[tediousfact]

Building Out Kerbol 33: Oh fine, I'll complete a couple contracts. I guess.

Gene: That looks a little nostalgic. We don't often send up small rockets anymore. What is it?

Jeb: It's successfully reaching orbit is what it is.

Gene:...good, but not what I asked.

Bill: I call it the Hellwasp!

Gene: No. No you don't.

Bill: Shame we had to use fins for the launch. Silly things just don't like reentry.

Gene: Oh. That's what it's for. We're calling it the 'Helping Hand'.

Bill: Boo!

Gene: Well, whatever we call it, it did its job just fine.

Meanwhile:

Bill: Tell accounting I just got to 6k liquid fuel units and we can send out the invoice for the Minmus base.

Gene: What are you going to do now that the tanks are pretty much full? There's still over a week until the farm and lab show up.

Bill: Sleep? Maybe try bringing back that rover that's over the ridge?

Just above the Munar Surface:

Jeb: Looks like our new tanker is landing in good shape near the drill rig.

Tefurt: The new linking arm did its job just fine. Nothing seems to have jumped or exploded. The drill is up and running. I'll head down later to optimize things. Do we want the science rover to meet me there? Just in case I need to adjust its docking ports for surface use?

Gene: Sounds like a decent idea. But one for tomorrow, after it docks with the ring station.

Gene: These Helping Hands are great! All the way to Munar orbit, and it still has the juice to come home.

Bill: Speaking of tomorrow's problems, I guess we'll find out soon if it can survive a munar reentry...

(Editor's note: Realized there's an easier and safer way to eyeball a landing burn in stock:

1 - Get into an orbit that passes over your target and then hits the ground close by.

2 - Make a maneuver node on the ground to figure out how long your burn will take to get rid of your velocity.

3 - Move that maneuver node to be directly above the target.

4 - Burn retrograde when you're half your burn time from the maneuver node.

I'd been doing 1, 2, and basically 4. Trying to get a burn that would stop me just above the ground, as near to the target as possible. And then I'd reload to adjust where I was intersecting the ground and when to start my burn to not die. Adding in 3 makes it much easier and more forgiving, although it does add some hovering time so it's slightly less fuel efficient.

The docking arm thing is fine. I think I want to simplify it though. After playing with it, I'm pretty sure I could get the same effect more easily with four hinges and a single telescoping cylinder. Two hinges at the base to point the thing at the target port, two at the top to align the arm's port with the target, the telescoping cylinder to just extend once its pointed in the right direction.)

[tediousfact]

KSP Inflatable Station

Have a filler station.

This one launches collapsed into a fairing, and then self assembles in orbit using hinges, servos, and telescoping hydraulic cylinders plus inflatable airlocks to join the segments together once they're in place and provide the bulk of the actual living space in the interior.

The two rings are rotating in opposite directions at 5 rpm, giving an average of about 0.16g at their outer floors, or slightly less than Munar gravity.

A couple more pics below the cut.

Here it is collapsed. I had to strut it together for stability during the launch, but that's fair I think. Didn't actually do any clipping unless you count the inflatable airlocks, and you shouldn't. Sending an engineer along to pop out and take off the struts isn't hard. Certainly easier than trying to get all the angles in this silly thing right while eyeballing them in EVA construction.

And the launcher isn't anything special. Although this is only just barely enough to get it into orbit. That said, this is a very easy-to-fly rocket. Straight up to 55 m/s, start the gravity turn, hit the prograde button, and then play with the throttle to keep apoapsis about 1 - 1.5 minutes away. The circularization stage is just a single medium 1.25 m fuel tank and a terrier, and had about half its fuel left when I was done parking the thing at a 75k circular orbit. A little bit more work and I could make it all recoverable, I'm sure.

I haven't decided if I'm going to use this in the series yet. I like the expanding rings. Those are great. But I don't like these multi-ring counter rotating stations conceptually, or really anything that tries to join rotating and non-rotating pressurized sections of a craft in space. It just seems to me like a recipe for bleeding out air over time. And the air is also a small but nasty source of friction in the joint.

You could have the joint be depressurized, and do a maglev thing or something, but then people need to suit up and spend hours cycling through airlocks to go between sections unless you have some sort of internal docking and undocking mechanism I suppose.

And then there's the thing where the torque from the two wheels needs to be perfectly balanced or the whole station starts rotating unstably. In KSP it just works if you set the rotors to have identical torques. In real life... just seems like a way to be constantly bleeding off monoprop to control your orientation to avoid wobbling to death.

So it's pretty, but I kind of hate it.

[tediousfact]

Building Out Kerbol 32 (actual): Stuff goes up. Less stuff comes down.

Gene: Is that another tanker I see? Don't we already have one for both Mun and Minmus?

Bill: Need more. Ideally we want to always have a tanker filling on the surface, one in orbit near it, and one in LKO so we can start launching with just enough fuel to reach orbit. Plus and extra one or two to serve as a reserve and make sure there's less downtime. Plus we're still testing attachments.

Bill: This one uses hinges and pistons. The idea is that you line it up with the target port and then extend the final piston for a precise contact.

Gene: That's what, ten points of articulation? Seems annoying. Have fun with it.

Gene: Huh, there's something I don't recognize in the tracking map.

Gene: Looks like our first asteroid visit. Any plans for it?

Liszor: The baby rock can wait. I've got a science gathering truck to deliver to Mun.

Liszor: Gear is tested and deployed. I'm on my way with all those instruments everyone wanted.

Gene: While we're waiting on the asteroid plan, let's wrap up a couple contracts.

Marney: Fresh air! Thank Kerb! It's been getting ripe in here.

Richbert: I suppose you want me to EVA my way over. So demanding.

Gene: Everyone say hi to your new coworkers.

Everykerbal: Welcome!

Gene: Marney, hate to do this to you, but we're tight on engineers so we need to rush you through onboarding and get you out and working. Richbert, take your time. Maybe visit your family for a week or so.

Jeb: Don't worry too much Rich. We have plans that'll get everyone flying.

Gene: That's another heavy booster I see coming down. What did we launch?

Irgan: That is our very own asteroid miner/recovery probe/docking hub.

Gene: Since when do we have nuclear engines?

Irgan: Since we got a contract to test someone else's and I sweet talked them into passing along some spares.

Gene: Nice! I didn't think we'd be doing our visit this soon.

Irgan: ...check the schedule...

Irgan: The transfer window to meet it at its descending node is 14 days away. So it's just parked for now.

Jeb: That's enough time for a Minmus trip. Got any requests, Bill?

Bill: We still need a farm and a lab here. But doesn't our first lab have a Poodle engine for some reason? Why don't we test it out as a tug and have it push itself and our first farm from LKO to here. And then we can build one each of a new lab, farm, and hotel for LKO and make them shiny and fancy.

Bob: You just want to be using well-tested equipment out there, don't you?

Bill: Can you blame me? Oh, and send a rover my way too. Got to give the scientists something to do once they're here.

Sigald: Better send plenty of fuel with that rover. We've got plenty of thrust here but don't quite have the juice to make the trip.

Lupont: Switching control point to the inflatable airlock and activating RCS...

Sig: Still not enough. I can rework the hallways of the farm to store some extra fuel, but we'll need a delivery.

Sig: That did it. We'll hit Minmus with plenty of fuel to get into orbit and still have the lander ready to go meet Bill.

Gene: That seems like a good place to call it a day. We'll pick things up again once the Mun deliveries are parked.

(Editor's note: I finally gave in and used RCS. Yuck. But seriously, for most things reaction wheels are more than enough to keep control of the vehicle. RCS helps with translation movements though, particularly if your docking port isn't in line with your engines. And for realism, you should essentially always have RCS, if nothing else so you can unload your reaction wheels periodically.)

[tediousfact]

Building Out Kerbol 32: Explosive Filler

Gillong: Everything is up and running and I have the instruments calibrated. We probably wouldn't need half this many panels if all our engineers weren't off-world though.

Gene: Good work. When can we expect to start getting readings?

Gillong: The Go-ob is running already. That data will trickle in slowly over the next two or three months.

Gene: Hmmn, ok. Slower than I hoped. What about the others?

Gill: The ionographer won't ever get us any useful data so long as we have an atmosphere, which we hopefully will for the foreseeable future.

Gene: ...agreed...

Gill: And the Seismometer just needs a big enough impact nearby to get a reading.

Gene: Define "Big Enough" and "Nearby". And depending on what you tell me, maybe explain why you set it up where I can see it from my office window.

Gillong: Our target distance should be about halfway to the mountains.

Gillong: Oooh! Data! Not much, but still...

Gillong: We just need to do that seventy-six more times and we'll have all the seismic data we can gather here on Kerbin!

Gene: And how big of a boom are we talking about to finish this contract?

Gill: I think... Let me check my notes... Mun is about one fiftieth the mass of Kerbin, so... Actually wait! If we did that same impact on Mun at the right distance from the probe, it ought to finish the contract in one go!

(Editor's note: As far as time spent goes, I think this filler didn't actually take too much less time than some of my actual posts in the series. But it was lazier time, so whatever.

I'm slightly busier than usual for the next couple weeks, so don't be surprised if I post a little shorter or less often than I have been.)

[tediousfact]

Building Out Kerbol 31: Contractual Revenge

Val: I'm deorbiting the station prototype. Are you sure about this?

Jeb: The nerds say it'll survive reentry easily. You just need to bail out once you have enough air for your chute.

Gene: I'm not thrilled about any of this, but we do need to test our emergency bail-out capability.

Val: In station configuration now, burning off the last of the fuel now that I'm in a suborbital trajectory.

Val: Temps and pressures are falling again looks like I'm not dying in a fireball today.

Jeb: But what a way to go...

Val: Letting go of the ladder in 3, 2, 1, and a half...

Val: Wow that's dropping fast now!

Gene: Welcome back to land Val. We can't leave that flag there though.

Walt: Darn right we can't!

Gene: The client has signed off on everything but the final orbit. Ink's still wet, but you can light the torch.

Val: Fairing is deployed, airbrakes are set on the booster, and I'm going to switch to station configuration for the detachment until we're clear.

Gene: Looks like a clean detachment. As long as all systems are green you're clear to proceed.

Val: Back in burn config, lighting for our circularization.

Val: And we are in orbit. Looks like we have just enough fuel left to get us where we're going.

Gene: Good. Refueling shouldn't have any effect on the contract, but with this client...

Gene: We have visual on the booster. It's in the atmosphere, and the airbrakes are just starting to flip it around.

Irgan: We're through the worst of the reentry. Now to see if I got the parachute's right.

Irgan...

Gene: Look at it this way, the engine should be safe, and that's the expensive part.

Bill: Trust me Irgan, it happens to everyone.

Val: Getting ready to do my transfer burn

Gene: Cutting it a little close with our delta-v budget. How are the hinges looking?

Val: The board is all green anyway. Tefurt can do a thorough inspection once we're in place.

Gene: If this goes well, it'll be much easier to sell clients on interplanetary trips if we can offer munar gravity for the trip.

Thomplan: And there it is. How long are we staying here anyway?

Jowig: Indefinitely, I'd guess. Between this and the other station with the orbital farm and lab, and the mining rig on the surface I'm betting we don't go home until Mun is good and thoroughly explored.

Gene: And there's our first proper ring station. Contract is fulfilled! Could have been more profitable if we didn't have to scrap the prototype, but good work everyone!

Later:

Gene: And there's one more contract finished!

Walt: That ore did not get here from Minmus, did it?

Mortimer: *snort* you didn't hear this, but I rode shotgun on the water truck that brought it in from the shore just past the runway.

Walt: Water? Really?

Wernher: And what else would ore be? What else do you know of that is plentiful and can easily be turned to rocket fuel and oxidizer with just a little filtering and electrolysis?

Gene: The contract says we needed to collect fresh ore on Minmus. And we did. And it says we needed to land ore on Kerbin. And we did. All proper and above board. Witnesses, receipts, everything.

If the client that had us waste a nearly 100k launch on a space station because Irgan tacked on some solar panels wants documentation that the ore we landed on Kerbin was ore that was collected Minmus, they can submit a new contract that says exactly that.

Until then, this was a mission to prove that we have the capacity to land ore on kerbin.

(Editor's note: My original plan was to revert to a save from before I launched last time's prototype and just handwave that the original launch never happened.

I did in fact revert. And I made a newer, better, prototype. And then when I was checking out the booster recovery I found that I couldn't revert, and that except for the quick save with last time's prototype in orbit I didn't have any saves to go back to that wouldn't have taken me back several episodes.

Honestly, I think this worked better anyway. And yay! A whole episode with no cheating!)

[tediousfact]

Building out Kerbol 30: The day that never was

Valentina: Made it to orbit! It's not aerodynamic, but made it up anyway!

Irgan: Hi Val! I'm going to hop over, do a few checks, move a couple parts, and make sure you're ready for the flight to Mun.

Val: The hinges worked fine. We are now in station configuration and ready for rotation.

Irgan: Please don't spin it up while I'm out there.

Irgan: Your engines are in place, and so are your panels! You should have just enough fuel to get into your Munar orbit.

Gene: That's sounding like a great plan girls, except for one thing.

Val and Irgan: What?

Gene: The client called back. Fully assembled when launched means no welding in space at all. Back to the drawing board.

Irgan: Aww...

(Editor's note: Last minute false start for today. Weirdly tired for the last few days. I don't feel sick though, so who knows what it is. Next time I'll see about making the silly thing fully self-assembling. Maybe even complete the ring.)

[tediousfact]

Building Out Kerbol 29: Minmus Base Assemble!

Gene: Another tanker? What's with all the hinges?

Bill: It's a bit of an experiment. With that setup we should be able to move and rotate the docking port fairly freely within a small volume. Should make docking easier, but also I'm thinking that if after docking, we disable the hinge motors and allow free movement, the link will act more like a hose and we'll have a little less risk of breakage if something bumps the tanker or the drill rig.

Bill: And there's our rig for the Minmus base.

Bill: The Crew Quarters

Bill: And me!

Bill: All the pieces are in motion. It'll be a week until I get to Minmus. Actually, maybe I should have rode the minibus...

Gene: Seems like the sort of thing I'd have brought up. If you actually showed me any plans. Ever.

Bill: Everything's safe and parked in orbit. Time to start dropping modules.

Val: Drill's down. It'll be our target for the others.

Sudon: Tanker's in place.

Bill: Touching down now with the last little bit of daylight.

Val: Crew module is on the ground and in place. All up to you now Bill.

Bill: Well, those linking arms did the trick. Sort of. The connection is good, but I think I'm going to need to repack them manually when it's time to split up. But the base is assembled, and now it's just waiting on the fuel tanks to fill back up.

Gene: Congrats on the mining camp. Have fun reading gauges for the next week I guess.

(Editor's note: Yeah... I'm not sure what did it exactly, but linking up Bill's mining shack actually whipped the tanker ten feet into the air somehow. And you can tell by looking that the hinges are sort of... disassembled? A bit? Maybe next time I'll try leaving them locked but just turn the damping down.

My kingdom for a hose with a quick connect. And no, I'm not going to install that mod.)

[tediousfact]

Building Out Kerbol Part 28: Munar Suprise

Verming: And we're about to make our final descent to the Munar surface for our very first premium Munar Experience flight and...

Tebart: Hey what's that off to the north?

Verming: Change of plans everyone!

Tebart: We are going to get such a bonus for this flight!

Verming: Think of the tips!

Gene: Welcome back you two! Drinks are on me. You've managed to fund us for the next year at least!

Editor's note: Had a surprise weekend visit from a bunch of friends I served with in the Peace Corps and haven't seen in over a decade. Great time catching up, meeting kids, roasting goat, and eating lots of home cooked and very nostalgic food from Kenya. Including a regional dish that was new to me. Plus drinking a bit more and sleeping a bit less than I should. So have a very short update.

I cheated quite a bit on this one. And I feel no remorse. Basically, my attitude is now that I have a legitimate way to generate fuel on Mun and I've proved I can get that fuel into Munar orbit in a reasonable amount of time, I'm justified in using infinite fuel cheats as long as each leg of the flight has enough delta-v to get me to the orbit where I've parked the fuel tanker.

Actually getting to the arch from where I spotted it was just straight up cheating though. I would have been able to do it, but I almost certainly would have had to send a refueler down to the surface to get back to orbit. Which is possible, but I haven't done it yet. So I guess that's on the agenda: Build and demonstrate an emergency surface refueler.

Or whatever. I could also have just aborted the landing, refueled, and come in on target on the next orbit.

[tediousfact]

Building Out Kerbol 27: Muning Touring

Sudon: Good Morning and welcome to our very first Munar tourist flight. I know that aside from our premium passenger Linuki in my copilot's seat you have some questions about which way your chairs and walls are pointed, but I'd like you to trust the process and hold on to those questions until we are out of the atmosphere. (when it will be too late to change your mind)

Linuki: What was that?

Sudon: I said LET'S HAVE A GREAT FLIGHT!

Sudon: Our fairing is deployed. Enjoy the view, but stay in those seats. We aren't done moving yet and we're only a few minutes away from another big burn.

Sudon: And now you're all locked into the correct orientation for the remainder of the flight. We'll give a bit of spin soon so no one misses anything, but the locks on your seatbelts are still engaged for good reason.

Sudon: Everyone wave goodby to our booster! It's on its way back to the big recycler! That's right, this flight was sponsored by Strutco's Recycling landfills on 23rd and 7th!

Sudon: And on your monitors you can see all that beautiful scrap metal safely floating down to Kerbin. Just think, that'll be us in a few days!

Sudon: Congratulations new Kerbonauts! We are officially in orbit! Feel free to take off those seatbelts and move around the cabins.

Sudon: And to round out our sights for our first close orbit of Mun, below us you can catch a glimpse of the arch that our very own Kerbonauts led by our founder and pilot Jebediah Kerman discovered while testing the prototype to this very vessel! You didn't pay for a landing, but if you had, just think! You could be going down there soon to see Mun so close you could even touch it! Imagine what slightly quirky geography you might discover! And some of your friends, siblings, and spouses will be doing just that in our very next flight!

Sudon: And our final stop on our Munar tour is Munholme station, where our scientists, engineers, and our founding pilot Jeb are hard at work unlocking the mysteries of our world's closer, greyer, and slightly less mysterious moon!

We'll be staying a couple nights here as we refuel and double check our systems to get approval for a direct return to Kerbin. Enjoy the extra space and proper microgravity toilets everyone!

Sudon: And here we are safe back on Kerbin, just out of sight from the KSC. Your offroad tour bus should be here shortly to take everyone back to our admin building where you can book your next flight!

(Editor's note: Might have a bit of a delay for the next one. Also holy wow this was a profitable flight. Only finished two actual contracts, but nine passengers got me around 2 million funds. The flight with landings should blow that away. Makes me feel better about losing the engine on the recoverable booster. But seriously, come on parachutes, you had one job!)