Anime Weaboos conquer space and do SCIENCE! for the Emperor.

[Hellraiser]

Index:
1) Piercing the heavens (this post)
2) Mint flavored science desu!
3) Sailor Mun banzai.
4) Fist of the Firestar.
5) Neon Genesis EVA.
6) The fist of the Firestar returns.
7) Full Moho Panic!
8) Area 88 - KAMIKAZE Squadron
9) Autumn on Laythe.
10) Chibi-Ghiddorah VS Laythe: Finaru Desu Worzu!

No actual female kerbals are present in the game, probably because the devs have better things to do for now than add female kerbal models.

Now that you have been sufficiently traumatized by deviant art's animu fan art time for the main course. A new version of Kerbal Space Program is out, this time adding a pretty major feature which is SCIENCE! and research available in the now just added nascent career mode. That and a few less profound but still noticeable changes happened in the updates since the last abandoned KSP LP I did. A perfect opportunity for a definitely abandoned in the future LP. So without further ado:

PIERCING THE HEAVENS

Rocket ascends up,
into an empty dark void,
forever tranquil.

Kerbin lies united, the gaijin have been conquered by the fiercest samurai warriors of Kippon. They were no match for our bushido. Thanks to them the Empire of Jakan knows no borders... on Kerbin. Space is within the Rising Sun's reach but the technology to enter it is new, untested and possibly dangerous. Therefore volunteers, the most loyal and capable from the expendable conquered Gaijin population are to be sent into Space so that the Rising Sun flag can fly where there is no air or wind under an alien sky.

Spoiler

Thus KAMIKAZE is founded to send these "weaboos" into space. The Kippon Aerospace Miniaturization Investigation into Knowledge Acquisition and Zealous Engineering. The gaijin will bring glory to the Emperor or bring eternal shame for their families.

Disregard the overlay on Kerbin in the background, that was from a mod I promptly uninstalled.

Speaking of mods simple rules for this playthrough, Ironman, no mods apart from Kerbal Alarm Clock which makes juggling multiple flights easier and saves maneuver nodes, also keeps track of launch windows, functionality that should be in the stock game IMO. So the biggest problem will be designing vessels for missions without specific engineering data. Which means somebody will end up stranded on some forgotten rock, in orbit or on an escape trajectory out of the system sooner or later when it turns out there was not enough fuel to finish the mission. Hopefully it will be possible to save them if such events do occur.

The KAMIKAZE space center with all the vital facilities. The runway, launchpad, Vehicle Assembly Building, Space Plane Hangar, Research Center, Astronaut Training Complex and the Mission Control building that can't be accessed, yet. Let's take a quick look over the two most important matters of business before I send the first codexian japanophile into a rocket.

Available crew. For the moment KAMIKAZE Gaijin Resources are endless, although I did disable crew member respawning after death in the persistence file. No money in the game yet although it is likely the next update or the one after that will add them as part costs are in the game and are featured a bit more prominently than before.

Also I can't rename applicants, only hired members for some reason with the persistence file getting changed back after saving the changes in the applicant list.

Anyway KAMIKAZE's first lab rats are known codexian animu connoisseurs. Not sure if stupidity means somebody is smart if the level is low or the other way around. Either way those two stats are random and only affect kerbonaut reactions in the crew camera windows during flight.

Are you a japanophile yourself, do you enjoy your daily dose of DESU? Then sign up and I'll add you to the crew roster. For now 4 people is enough but when multiple missions will start taking place at the same time, or when bigger crew modules become available, or when somebody dies, I will need more weaboos.

KAMIKAZE's current tech. Enough to build a one stage basic suborbital rocket as we have no decouplers to do proper staging. There is a way around it though and there are people who can land with these parts on the Mun, but this is an Ironman playthrough so I'll keep things reasonable and avoid excessive risk rather than try to kill off esteemed codexians with obvious suicide missions. So I'll do this the proper way.

I need 5 science to unlock new parts, for now the progression is linear but as the next node becomes unlocked the tree will start branching. Outside of two new fuel tanks, one bigger and one smaller, it will unlock decouplers which will allow multi-stage rockets and a new science module allowing me to perform new experiments and acquire more SCIENCE! per flight. More on how experiments work in a moment.

The Rance-1 rocket, a sub-orbital design that will get me some much needed SCIENCE!

Random.org gave me a 3 so it's Vaarna's turn to fly the phallic contraption as he's third on the kerbonaut list. I'll use the codex's dice rolling to determine who flies when for future updates. If a person who just did a mission is rolled again I reroll, to give people an equal chance in having a near death experience in space.

Oh and flags can be assigned on a per flight basis. So you can plant as many different ones as you please. I'm lazy so I'll use my default KAMIKAZE space program flag for everything.

Anyway off to the launchpad!

It works! No fatalities or explosions yet. Not sure if Vaarna is terrified or ecstatic though, that expression is a bit vague.

Crew reports are basic "experiments" and thus a source of SCIENCE! The satellite dish icon allows you to transmit back the crew report data however the number below it shows how much of the data will make it back reducing science earned to that percentage (the value is arbitrary and independent of distance for now, often it is less than 60%). You can return the data manually with the craft to Kerbin for the full amount of science upon recovery. However only one experiment per experiment type can be stored in the respective data container, in this case the crew pod.

Also transmitting takes power and so far only the command pod has batteries and we have no way of generating it, apart from running liquid fuel engines (that generate power). I transmit the data anyway as Vaarna should still have enough of it for the rest of his flight. Power is also used to power the reaction wheels allowing the rocket to rotate and maneuver, parts further in the tech tree use electricity for other things such as rovers wheels, lights or ion engines.

"Virgin" experiments are the best source of science (the dracula principle I guess), that is experiments done in new conditions or in a new location even if the experiment type is not new. Repeating the same experiment in the same conditions later, after you have "cashed it in" gives far less science than the first time. Also crew reports from atmospheric flight over terrain are biome-sensitive, as are certain other experiment types. So a report from flight over shore and one from over the mountains have separate science yields. Biome maps have been done for Kerbin and the Mun so far, but will be added to other planetary bodies in the (near) future.

Traveling over Mach 3 now, still piercing the heavens although there is noticeable resistance from both atmospheric drag and gravity.

Reached slightly above 32,7km in altitude on a parabolic arc. Kippon cannot into space yet, but soon. Still rocket science is being done. Also the knowledge base with information on the vessel, crew and the parent body you are orbiting, flying above or landed on is available from orbital map view.

Lore on Kerbin. Will post lore on other places as I reach them, although all of it including data on gravity and atmosphere is available from the start in the "knowledge base".

Physical characteristics of the planet, there's actually a bit more atmospheric data as it scrolls down but that is not as important so I decided to skip it. Basically it was that surface pressure at sea level is one Bar and the temperature 20 degrees celcius.

Most notably every planet is about 11 times smaller than actual planets of our solar system while retaining similar gravity, both for technical issues and because you need to time warp less when the orbits are shorter. Engine power has been also scaled down to not make it too easy to fly around in space as compared to real life rocketry.

Back on Kerbin the Rance-1 engine aids deceleration via an explosion upon impact.

Other than that the landing went smoothly, Vaarna is now not far from the western mountain range. Before this flight is done and proclaimed a success a few more things need to be done.

The capsule is tipped over using its reaction wheels and Vaarna makes a new report during EVA.

He also gathers a soil sample which gives quite a bit of science.

Obligatory flag planting shot. The Emperor is proud!

Recovered the data. Note that vessel recovery by itself also gives you some science depending on where it returns from. The incentives for doing manned return missions are quite big.

Unlocked the first new tech node, 3 new ones are visible now. The top one is pretty dull, the engine is not that much better than the current one, large SRBs are fine but without radial decouplers I can't use too many of them. Seperatrons are useful but for bigger rockets where stage separation without extra separation force may result in collisions and disaster.

Spoiler

Stability tech gives me basic winglets (which need a new model), nose cones which now actually aid stability somehow, despite the aerodynamics system not being redone yet. Most importantly it unlocks radial decouplers which are very useful.

Next up in the middle is Survivability. Of course I care for the safety of the KAMIKAZE kerbonauts so this tech does indeed look attractive. The new small engine is very useful due to its low profile and small mass, perfect for a final stage or for some landers. Radial parachutes allow for safer landing while landing legs ensure parts don't explode upon impact as a vessel touches down.

The Rance-2 two-stage rocket is ready. Outside of being bigger and more phallic in a cock and balls configuration, it has two just unlocked "mystery goo" containers which allow you to do experiments by exposing said goo to different environments and thus learning more about those enviroments, because that's what science is all about, mostly. Let's try getting the Rance-2 into orbit.

Random.org rolls a 4, Agassi will navigate into orbit using the power of the occult and secret arcane knowledge.

Ready for launch. Note the KAMIKAZE flag on the flag pole. Also you can actually climb the pole as it has a ladder on it.

Stage separation was a success, Agassi is close to getting into space but still about 900 m/s short of orbital velocity. Does the upper stage have enough fuel for getting into orbit? We'll find out in a moment.

Well the Rance-2 got to a 151km altitude. So Jakan can into space. Still in order to get into a planned low orbit around Kerbin a maneuver adding 1043 m/s of velocity needs to be performed, that is an engine burn. Not sure if there is enough fuel to finish it.

It doesn't. Oh well at least she got into space, lets do some science before splashing down in the ocean as predicted by this trajectory.

SCIENCE! goes well. Flavor text for all experiments varies by conditions they are performed in, although some cases still use default text. This is a new system after all even if it is mostly done.

Agassi confirms she is in space now. Sends report back via radio antennas, the Emperor is pleased. Crowds of kipponese men and women celebrate in the streets by getting drunk on sake.

She goes on a space walk and notes her observations as well, this report is stored independently from the one made while inside the capsule. The text here is an example of the default text I mentioned a moment ago, but as you can see EVA spacewalks are biome-sensitive. Also the spacesuit rocketpack has limited fuel that gets replenished every time you board a capsule, it doesn't drain the vessels fuel though.

Rance-2 re-entry does indeed pierce the heavens. GYAHAHAHAHA.

I use the second canister to perform another experiment with the goo, without dumping the one in the first capsule. Low and high altitude atmospheric flight are separate experiment cases FYI so they have separate science pools.

The splashdown breaks everything but the pod and two canisters, but because they broke off the main vessel the results cannot be recovered.

The Emperor is not pleased. Engineers responsible for bad design and loss of science have committed seppuku.

Also some water samples have been collected.

Unable to have Agassi board the capsule again I recover the craft and her separately so there are two summaries:

28 science with some leftover science after Rance-1 gets KAMIKAZE 37 to spend on new snazzy rocket tech.

I get stability tech for the radial decouplers and survivability tech for the engine, radial parachutes and of course the lander legs.

The first of the new branches that opened up is seemingly fairly dull, however all of these parts are quite useful. Space Tape Struts and launch clamps let you build rockets that won't fall apart before or after launch. The tricoupler allows for some nice bigger rockets.

This one looks very good because it has the first probe core allowing the building of unmanned craft, however without batteries and/or a power source the Stayputnik mk.2 probe core won't be of much use. The space plane cockpit has better IVA visibility and looks better overall than the capsule, but it has little advantage over the capsule otherwise. The inline reaction wheel allows more responsive rotation of spacecraft so you can build bigger rockets that don't turn at a snails pace. The winglets allow for atmospheric flight control rather than just aerodynamic stability, unlike the previous ones, so they're quite useful outside of vacuum.

Science tech is , for one it adds the much needed batteries allowing for longer missions with multiple data transmissions. There's also a bigger medium-sized communications dish which I think diminishes data loss. Oh and the materials bay, a new science part that can perform experiments on, well, materials. I'll get this first since KAMIKAZE really needs all these parts ASAP.

Rance-3 has a notably improved upper stage. Featuring the just unlocked new small engine and landing legs safe return of both data and expendable gaijin is nearly guaranteed.

Spoiler

Because more rocket is better the Rance-3 is a 4 stage rocket. 3 Solid Rocket Boosters aid launch, then two liquid fuel engines propel it up, they separate and the central main engine fires. When the main engine is done for it gets jettisoned and the upper stage fires its engine. Remembering to properly arrange staging of parts is crucial, not doing so and relying on the default staging can in the case of more complicated rockets result in failure.

That orbit will lose its virginity to the hyper weapon now. GYAHAHAHAHA.

Also WhiskeyWolf draws the short straw. Is his body ready? We'll see.

It doesn't break apart despite not having struts. No more sudoku for the engineers it seems, so far.

Repeating the Rance-2 experiment that was lost. Also the trajectory is much better now as I didn't fuck up the gravity turn so there was less delta-v (fuel basically) wasted.

A decision is made to orbit Kerbin twice and land in the desert rather than the sea. FOR SCIENCE!

A descent trajectory is planned. A Kerbin periapsis (orbit's lowest point) of 25 km is enough to be fairly deep in the atmosphere and thus de-orbit the craft. Since the atmosphere scales up to 70km the craft will experience drag way earlier than that, which means that practically, if unassisted by engine or parachute, the craft should hit the ground somewhere in the desert.

Separation while entering the upper atmosphere. Luckily there's still one small tank of fuel full, so if any trajectory adjustements are needed they can easily be performed.

WhiskeyWolf admires the view.

Also does science in the upper atmosphere.

Re-entry, also used some of the fuel to adjust the trajectory to make sure he lands in the desert. No actual heat damage in the game yet though. They need to change the aerodynamics model first, add payload fairings and heatshields so that parts can be protected from it. Since career mode is fairly underdeveloped compared to flight mechanics, the aerodynamics changes are unlikely to happen in the next update or two as the development focus is elsewhere for now.

There is still much fuel left. Too much since even with the parachute open the craft was descending at above 10 m/s, fuel is fairly heavy and as in real life is makes up the majority of a rocket's mass. It could survive the 10+ m/s descent easily though, since the upgraded the landing legs and they no have proper suspension and shock absorbers so they don't snap off as easily as they used to during touchdown. Still, I rather not risk it and it is not like I need that fuel for anything.

Overall though I think the Rance-3 could possibly be capable of a Mun flyby, possibly even entering Munar orbit and returning. I'll improve the design with the new parts and see how far it can get. It had a bit of fuel left in the main stage during separation. You need about 800 m/s of delta-v to get from low Kerbin orbit to the Mun's orbit (without entering orbit around it though, that takes an additional 300-500 m/s IIRC). I think the final stage easily had 1000+ delta-v so I think I'll try that next time.

Anyway out brave Gaijin explores the desert.

Takes some sand as a souvenir, for science!

And plants a flag because imperialism, FUCK YEAH!

Since ladders are a technological concept that still baffles KAMIKAZE engineers WhiskeyWolf could not re-enter the capsule, so I had to recover him separately from the craft, hence two summaries again. This won't be much of a problem on low gravity planetary bodies as the rocketpack has a decent ammount of thrust allowing Kerbals to fly up to the capsule in such places.

Nearly 40 science overall, decent haul. Lets unlock some tech.

To improve science point aquisition I unlocked the mentioned earlier science tech. All of that stuff is very useful after all.

The top most nod of the newly revealed ones is a very attractive node indeed. It has surface solar panels, probe-sized inline batteries and two kinds of space-worthy lights.

The panels are a must have tech, however unlike later ones these are stuck to the craft's surface. That means that you have to be careful with their placement and rotation, because if they're all on the side not facing the sun you may lose all power and any hope of rotating the craft in space, if you time warp and forget about it. However unlike the more advanced panels that deploy and rotate towards the sun by themselves these are a lot harder to break.

The lights are good for not crashing when on the night side of the Mun and other airless rocks. Atmospheres provide some illumination at night due to light refraction, so it's not as bad on planets with atmospheres but lights are still very useful in the dark.

Ladders, unfortunately these are not the deployable ones yet, but still a step in the right direction. The thermometer performs experiments in the atmosphere by measuring temperature (duh!), it also works on the surface of airless rocks. So more science for the science god.

Not a very spectacular node. The micro landing legs are from probe landers or really small manned contraptions which I will be to make with a few more high tech parts. Landing gear is necessary for landing space planes in one piece.

Well that's all for this update. Remember, I am totally accepting volunteers to fill up the crew roster with. But you must be an obvious japanophile or prove you are one so that lithuanian hitmen can get you, because larping in LPs is serious business.

Also weaboo name suggestions for new rockets, space stations, landers, rovers, space planes and other grorious jakanese devices that will go into space would be much appreciated. The Rance series of rockets can't be the only thing piercing the heavens.

Also I think I'll paste Rance's face on the KAMIKAZE flag.

 

[Kashmir Slippers]

This is pretty cool.

Sign me up if you need another Gaijin to abandon to the horrors of the Warp grorious astronaut.

 

[JoKa]

Sign me up for a walk in the desert space!

 

[Hellraiser]

Added Kashmir Slippers (5) and JoKa (6) to the kerbonaut roster. Lets do some rolling for the next few or so flights.

EDIT: Looks like Haba will be warming the bench for a while but our newest lab rats will go into space starting with JoKa, lucky him.

 

[Baron Dupek]

-Ay, did ye heard that? They send weaboo to the space!
-All of them???
-Urm, no, just few.
-Then why the fuck you bother me?!

 

[Cassidy]

Looks like you realized that labelling a thread in the Playground as ANIME will draw more attention because of the number of weeaboos around, eh Hellraiser?

But this needs space tentacle monsters too

 

[Hellraiser]

Bro, it has tentacle space monsters. The infamous deep space kraken preys upon unsuspecting vessels that seek to make the game engine shit itself, making them suddenly explode or fall apart. Ergo it tentacle rapes spacecraft that venture where man kerman should not venture, hence the animu is indeed quite appropriate.



Wonder if there is a rule 34 of kerbal on kraken action, a pity sgc_meltdown is not here to investigate as he would surely do. You read nothing.

Origin of the beast:



As you can see the origin follows true kaiju tradition by making science evil and responsible for all giant monsters, such as Gojirra*. BTW that's the materials bay part it ran into.

Spoiler

The corpse of the kraken can be found on one of the distant planetary bodies of the system.

*except for Mothra, but excessive hippie faggotry is responsible for that one.

 

[Hellraiser]

MINT FLAVORED SCIENCE DESU!

An icy lake calls,
twinkling faintly in the sky,
there I must go.

Spoiler

The Rance-4 has three improvements over the predecessor, the new Science Junior lab, a new comm dish replacing the two small antennas and 8 batteries. Also the KAMIKAZE flag has been augmented, space is now no doubt shitting its pants as tasteful rape is coming its way.

JoKa's turn to ride a large phallic object

This is the first KAMIKAZE night launch by the way. They overhauled the space center in the last update, replacing all the old placeholder building models. This update added proper lightning to everything, although I think the runway lights should be replaced as up close they look a bit odd, even if it was a necessity to make them look like that for navigation so that they would be visible from far away.

Also JoKa is enjoying his ride.

The target of this mission is the Mun. The new science module added quite a bit of mass reducing delta-v of the Rance-4 compared to the Rance-3, but it should still have enough of it for a free return trajectory flyby of the Mun. If the burn goes well the Mun's gravity should alter the Rance-4's orbit putting the periapsis inside kerbin's atmosphere. The inclination change visible is the result of not being in a perfect 0 inclination equatorial orbit, but it matters little as I just want JoKa to return safely to the parent body after the Munar encounter.

The Mun covers about a quarter of its orbit during the time it takes to reach an apoapsis at an altitude near the orbit of the Mun, from low Kerbin orbit. So that means the phase angle is 90 degrees, roughly corresponding to the Mun rising over Kerbin while in low Kerbin orbit. Delta-v cost is about 800 m/s to raise the orbit's apoapsis to the Mun's altitude.

Well the burn got a bit fucked up and JoKa is not getting a free return. I hope he brought enough fuel to lower that periapsis after the flyby is done. There's no Urabian Kethane Cartel fuel station within a few thousand kilometer radius after all

257km above the Munar surface, JoKa is either high as a kite and stones out of his mind or he actually enjoys possibly one way space travel.

The Mun got procedural craters and an art pass in the previous update, making it looks much better than it used to. For now, unless I missed anything, only it has those craters but other airless or not so airless bodies should follow whenever the next save breaking update happens. They're just holding that off because apparently people get butthurt over saves getting broken.

The capsule itself doesn't let him admire the view much. He's lucky it has a window at all, true samurai should navigate using only Zen, while blindfolded.

Time for science. Since it has no transmission loss I fired up the new antenna and beamed it back.

The new antenna is deployed, transmission didn't take that much power since it was only one small piece of data. Eight batteries turned out to be overkill. Unfortunately the illumination was a bit crappy.

Goo wants into space.

The materials bay (the sc-9001 science jr.) however reveals the secret to making glow in the dark hair.

KAWAIIIII

Also 75 science for doing that at high altitude. Researching the materials bay is definitely paying off.

Soon instead of spacewalking the KAMIKAZE's gaijin kerbonauts will be munwalking

Although it is pretty clear KAMIKAZE needs to research a bit more parts before that will be possible.

Mun lore, the most important part is that gravity is 1/6 g. Well that and the lack of atmosphere which makes landing quite fuel consuming. But there are far worse places in the system for powered descent.

Return trajectory is planned, only 94 m/s of velocity are needed for a return so JoKa will not be stranded in space.

I'm guessing the goo won't be reacting differently to vacuum above airless bodies or in high orbit. This is not the default result message though, that is a bit different as you'll see soon(tm). While the location is different the conditions otherwise don't warrant different results in this case so it makes sense to reuse it.

JoKa returns, the burns was executed flawlessly.

Looks like he likes the trail of fire. Since he's returning from high orbit the velocity of re-entry is higher and so is the intensity of the effects. This is why NASA needs to test the new Orion capsule by dropping it from high orbit before they start sending humans in those, the heatshields need to resist far greater plasma temperature than those used to get back from the ISS. Humans probably won't every fly in the Orion anyway as it is meant for Lunar and beyond flight, congress keeps cutting funding for everything related to manned flight after all and NASA will use the privately-made Dragon or Cygnus to get to LEO.

So it looks another splashdown.

Spoiler

Engineers begin commiting mass suicide. The Emperor is not pleased.

However not all is lost.

Turns out I can still recover the broken off containers, including those from the Rance-2. I just had the debris filtered out in the vessel list, derp.

However the materials bay was destroyed upon splashdown so the 75 science was lost.

Back at the R&D center I unlocked rocketry tech. Most importantly this unlocked large SRBs. Also it opened up Advanced Rocketry for research which grants the first radial engine (not that good but it has its uses) and the longest medium-diameter fuel tank.

Also I unlocked electrics so ships finally have a potentially infinite power source and also lights. A node opened up by this research can unlock probe-sized engines, decouplers and fuel tanks. Very useful tech not just for probes but also for very low-gravity landers.

Advanced Electrics gives access to four kinds of solar panels that deploy and rotate towards the Sun. Also it unlocks better but heavier radially-attached batteries. Useful tech but for now the basic panels I just unlocked will be enough for my needs.

Proper deployable ladders, this part is far more important than you think. Anything above 0,25 of an earth/kerbin g is too much for EVA rocketpacks so making sure ladders extend low enough is vital if you want to get the dolts back home after surface EVA. Oh and this node also unlocks an atmospheric pressure sensor aka a barometer. I'll need this once KAMIKAZE will want to land on other planets, both for probes due to the new sensor and for manned landings.

The Rance-5 should have improved delta-v over its predecessor the Rance-3, despite having a heavier payload due to the materials bay. All thanks to the new bigger solid rocket boosters replacing the basic small ones. Also I added two radial parachutes to the final stage, so that water landings hopefully won't murder all Kipponese Space science.

WhiskeyWolf once again steps inside the rocket. This will be his last mission for a while as it is his second flight and Haba still didn't see space. Gotta let everyone have a chance at lonely death in the void.

Despite adding more rocket and lacking space tape to hold everything together, the Rance-5 launch goes flawlessly.

Now for the Rance-5 mission plan. Since the Rance-5 definitely has more delta-v than the Rance-4 and possibly more than the Rance-3, I'll do a Minmus flyby at the minimum. Minmus is a more distant but also a far smaller than the Mun natural satellite of Kerbin, a captured comet or planetoid probably. Depending on how much fuel the Rance-5 final stage will have a landing attempt will be made.

Well the main stage of the Rance-5 went dry about 30% into the transfer burn. Prospects for landing look grim as the rest of the about 900 m/s burn needs to be finished by the final return stage. It definitely has enough but I'm not sure if it can do more than a flyby at this point. Still considering how much science a mun flyby gave me this should be worth it as well.

Also Minmus is on an inclined orbit so I had to match orbital plane inclination with it first, that costed me an additional 100 m/s of delta-v.

After the burn was done about 60% of the fuel in the final Rance-5 stage was spent. This is definitely not landing on Minmus, but it may get into low orbit around Minmus.

Good news! It got into orbit although it has about 20% fuel left. Luckily since the rocket equation's formula for delta-v has an exponential mass component 20% fuel is a lot more than 20% of total delta-v, depending how much of the vessel's total mass was just fuel.

Also Minmus lore. Yes, you can see it from Kerbin's surface it looks a bit like a satellite does from Earth's surface, although one visible in daylight.

In order not to spend too much fuel only the periapsis is lowered for close study of the surface. It should be enough. Goo behaves as expected.

The materials kept inside the lab module do as well. Also 100 science.

WhiskeyWolf observes the sun during EVA, luckily his eyes are protected from the much more powerful than on Kerbin's surface glare by advanced Jakanese technorogy.

Spoiler

Science done, time to go home. WhiskeyWolf looks back at the icy lakes and hills. Minmus gets a lot of flak for being unrealistic. It's not that unrealistic really, although bodies like it are unlikely to last long in orbit around a planet in a star's habitable zone. The main problem is that a probably captured icy comet like it would have to be a recent capture as all the ice should evaporate from it's surface. So if the game engine allowed it, Minmus should have a long comet-like tail of water vapor escaping from its side lit by the sun. Those gases should also make it a bitch to land on it. Would be nice if they added that one day but out of visual fluff I rather see rings first.

Oh yeah, the mod here keeps track of whatever time points I assign to it, either maneuver nodes, launch windows or SoI changes. It automatically drops out of timewarp before them, restoring saved maneuver nodes, thus preventing you from time warping past nodes by accident which does happen often. Also it saves planned maneuver nodes, which the game does not do, yet. So you lose nodes not just if you exit the game and have to do them again, but also if you switch vessels, very annoying. That is why this is the only mod used in this playthrough, it's a handy plugin.

The entire Kerbin-Mun-Minmus system in one picture, WhiskeyWolf is far from home. However soon(tm) KAMIKAZE will send Gaijin volunteers even further away into the void.

Oh man good thing I was being a scrooge with that fuel here and not circularizing that Minmus orbit. Only 3% of it is left after burning into a return trajectory, just fumes in the tank basically.

A giant flaming missile penetrating Mother Earth's Kerbin's protective atmospheric layer

Another water landing! Curse you ocean world!

With no fuel and two more parachutes the Rance capsule finally survives a splashdown intact! No seppuku! Engineers rejoice by drinking sake and buying used women's underwear from vending machines.

WTF japan indeed.

212 science gained. The materials bay contributed to nearly half of that with 100 science.

Well I need bigger rockets if I want to land anywhere or if I want to send probes beyond Kerbin. So first I get the node with bigger tanks and radial engines, this unlocked the Fuel Systems node a very important one. Why very important? Outside of unlocking RCS parts which will allow ships to rendezvous perform the ancient Finnish art of telakoituminen safely and more easily, it unlocks fuel pumps. More on those in a moment but I researched this node as KAMIKAZE and Jakan need it.

Heavy Rocketry unlocks the first large diameter engine and a matching fuel tank, which is the second smallest of the large diameter tanks. Not all that useful now but that node leads to the most powerful engines and the biggest of fuel tanks. So I will have to get it sooner or later.

This node unlocks structural parts for large diameter rockets. An adapter, a large decoupler, a large radial decoupler (stronger and has much more separation force), and an empty spaceplane fuselage section often used as a space station section.

Basic plane parts. You can't build reusable spaceplanes with just those though. Not very useful for getting science, at least not until stock electric propellers get added into the game. Although I could build robotic rocket planes. Still I'll skip getting these for a (long) while.

Now let's use this new tech I just unlocked.

This is no longer just a new Rance rocket. This is the HYPER WEAPON.

Fuel pumps will allow me to build asparagus staging rockets, a concept that hasn't been used yet IRL AFAIK but SpaceX want to use it in the Falcon Heavy as it is the most efficient way of staging (within certain limits). The Basic idea is the central stage engines sucks fuel from the three outer stages, so you have all engines active at the same time but when you stage the middle fuel tanks are still (mostly) full. There are engineering problems with using it in actual rockets but Kerbal Space Program fuel lines are 100% reliable and don't add much mass. Also since the (placeholder) aerodynamic drag model sucks it doesn't matter how wide a rocket is, so really large aspargus staging configurations are more efficient than in real life where wider rockets experience more drag.

Agassi's turn to fly into space, again.

Something is wrong, it doesn't have enough thrust at maximum throttle? it should have. Wait, why are only three engines running when all six should be?

I placed the rocket too low and the main engines hit the ground which caused them to break off upon loading the vessel and physics. Now the Hyperweapon is out of control and will definitely crash.



Time for emergency procedures!

I need to stage this shit as fast as possible to detach the final stage before it crashes into the ground. For safety reasons I should turn off all engines, but if I do that Agassi will hit the ground sooner. Also because the final stage engine firing at full thrust ASAP should help get away from the dangerous liquid fuel boosters fast enough. Here's hoping she knows some black magic rituals to help her with this predicament.

It worked!

Also you can see the liquid fuel boosters flying off into random directions. Call it victoly filewolks

That victoly is actually in that game, quite possibly the most (in)famous example of engrish in gaming.

I think that's the first booster exploding there, the thing that crashed on the earlier image were the main stage fuel tanks.

Spoiler

The other two boosters flew away into the distance but Agassi is safe. Also it looks like the pod is in the air but that's because I rotate the camera and ended up below the KSC surface mesh which is separate from Kerbin's actual procedural terrain. It is safely on the ground.

I think I'll bind the abort hotkey to something and set up an emergency escape stage, similar to how the Apollo escape towers worked.

Agassi is recovered, the Hyperweapon which seemingly cannot be tamed has been slightly modified and is hopefully docile this time around.

An aborted flight is not a full flight so Agassi goes once again into the breach. The mission can end only when all possible objectives are done or with death, the Empire of the Rising Sun demands no less.

BTW forgot to add. Outside of being a bigger rocket and using asparagus staging there are some minor improvements to the whole thing. I unlocked struts and launch clamps obviously, so space tape is holding the rocket together. Without it every rocket of this size and bigger would end up falling apart. Also lights have been added to the final lander stage, otherwise it is nearly identical with the Rance-5 one.

Hyperweapon-1a launches. In hindsight could have added more fuel on the first stage. That change will make it into the 1b or the Hyperweapon-2 I guess. Oh and the target is Minmus again, bit this time KAMIKAZE will plant a flag there. Unless I fucked up and despite being bigger and more efficient the Hyperweapon-1a still lacks delta-v for a landing and return.

Mission is going pretty damn good, the first two stages nearly got Agassi into circular orbit just 69 m/s of velocity short of the target. That leaves her with nearly an entire full stage third stage for doing the transfer and insertion into Minmus orbit.

The minmus transfer burn is done and the third stage has half of its fuel left, so definitely the majority of its delta-v. The odds for successfull landing are good.

After a 5 m/s correction burn the Hyperweapon-1a is cruising towards Minmus.

Less than 20% of the remaining fuel has been used to enter not just a circular orbit but also a descent trajectory.

Still over 109,9 m/s of delta-v are required to safely land rather than crash. The target is a frozen lake, these are the easiest place to land as they are flat and at exactly 0m altitude, so the ground doesn't suddenly murder you with impact as you know when you will hit it. The game needs a radar altimeter outside of IVA view (only some command pods have the radar altimeter in IVA). Although you can use lights or the shadow to estimate distance to the ground visually.

The landing site is getting close. Turn on appropriate weaboo animu music to enhance the experience, desu:



Which is also jazz and not J-pop.

Overdid it a bit and Agassi is now falling towards the slope rather than the lake, need to correct that but I have fuel to spare. Also this mission is already over 2 days long, luckily there is time warp in this game.

500 meters to the surface, while it still has a decent amount of fuel remaining the third stage needs to be jettisoned for safety. It has no landing legs after all. The final stage has 1000+ m/s of delta-v so even if I use a tenth on it on finishing this landing (it will be far less) there is plenty of it left for a return to Kerbin.

38 meters to surface, descending at 3m/s and about 10% engine power. You can see that parts of the third stage survived impact, luckily though they are at a safe distance and not obstructing the site just below Agassi's capsule. Also you can see how steep the nearby hills are, Minmus is rather jagged hence why I didn't try a landing outside of a lake. Agassi would most certainly end up on a slope, the craft would probably tip over and damage some vital part.

Also an important detail. There are three modes of displaying vessel velocity. Surface mode shows craft velocity relative to the surface of the body you are orbiting, as the surface does rotate, which also makes it easier to get into orbit if you launch in the direction it is rotating in, just like in real life. That mode is best used for landing as well, as the retrograde vector marker changes its position on the navball to tell you where you need to point to slow down your fall and kill your horizontal velocity to fall straight down.

Orbital velocity disregards how fast the surface is rotating, but it is the value you need to know if you are moving fast enough to stay in orbit or not. Target mode shows velocity relative to your target, usually used during pre-docking rendezvous when the target is orbiting the same parent body as you and you need to match orbits with it.

Jakan lands on another celestial body!

Also earns a fuckton of science thanks to the materials bay, even if Agassi focused on craving for mint desserts rather than on the data. Oh well, eggheads back on Kerbin will look at this.

This is the default goo result message. I wonder if they would accept player suggestions for cases like these. I'd submit something like: "It appears ice crystals evaporating from the icy surface are getting trapped in the goo. They make it sparkle beautifully in the sunlight".

Actually the gravity on Minmus is so low you can fly into orbit around it using the spacesuit's rocketpack. Although that's not an option for returning to a craft in orbit since the Navball is not shown in EVA and without that instrument rendezvous is very, very hard.

Also while the material's bay gave me a lot of science the surface sample definitely takes the cake. 150 science

Planting the KAMIKAZE flag on an alien world for the first time. Also left behind a memorial plaque. A bit disappointed the light is comming from the wrong direction and only the back of the flag is lit.

Agassi inspects the third stage debris. The impact from the 500 meter fall destroyed the engines and the long fuel tank bot not the smaller one and the decoupler with the engine fairing.

Also does a crew report from inside the craft at night. Default message unfortunately. I have to wait over a Minmus night for the launch window, I'll explain why in a moment.

Spoiler

Kerbin begins to set in the west behind the hill. It is time to go back home, as the lander pointing straight up is now also pointing at Minmus' retrograde. This mean that if I burn and fly straight up...

...I'll end up on a return trajectory.

Normally it is better to get into orbit first and then do an escape burn because of gravity drag. But since Minmus is laughably small (3rd or 4th smallest body in the game IIRC) and its gravity is equally laughable I can afford to burn straight up as the fuel loss, is negligible compared to going into orbit first before doing an escape burn. Either way I had fuel to spare, 2/3 left and Agassi is already on a return trajectory.

Wouldn't try landing with this on the Mun though, you need about 600 m/s for a one way trip down from orbit or up to orbit from its surface. Another 300 m/s to escape its sphere of influence or get into low orbit. Will need a much bigger lander for that one if I want to get all the science back.

If re-entry heat was in the game this return would end up as badly as Columbia's final one. Very bad orientation prior to entering the atmosphere.

Got a last goo sample since the Hyperweapon had two goo containers after all.

Over 400 science, talk about a geometrical rate of growth. Vessel recovery from Minmus (not shown) was worth 37,5 science BTW.

Since more rocket=better rocket I researched heavy rocketry opening up even Heavier Rocketry for research.

This node is nice, the second largest fuel tank in the game and the second most powerful engine, I found it very useful for hauling the biggest tanks into orbit when assembling really large ships in orbit. I'll get it soon I think.

This one is great as well. A 3-kerman command pod to fit the large radius tanks/engines, a landing "can" capsule for a single Kerbonaut, also good for surface rovers. Oh and a reaction wheel part plus parachute to match the large 3-kerman command pod. This is also something that I will need to get soon, would be great to get it for a Mun landing but I think I can do it without those parts.

Advanced MetalWorks is a node revealed by one I researched and forgot to screenshot. The earlier node unlocked some structural parts and most importantly docking ports. Since a pre-required node for that one unlocked RCS parts KAMIKAZE can now engage in telakoituminen, that is dock like finns in a sauna, only with spacecraft in orbit, no homo.

This node on the image unlocks smaller docking ports, a truss part, stack separators (good for launching multiple craft on one lifter rocket) and a quadcoupler. Not a priority, although a four-fold symmetry hyperweapon would be obviously more powerful. Just not worth the science cost for now.

I also unlocked the new cockpit mk.I, the stayputnik (KAMIKAZE's first probe core), and reaction wheels via the Flight Control node. This in turn revealed advanced flight control which is more of the same, only with a better probe core (easier to attach stuff to it and fit it into craft designs), a cockpit with 2 "stack" or inline attachement nodes rather than one (can be used as one kerbonaut a middle of the rocket crew compartment), oh and a delta winglet (useful as a stabilizer for larger rockets).

Well, I guess Kashmir Slippers will be going to the Mun in the next update. Although he might have a co-pilot, I'll know after I design the next explosive deathtrap rocket.

That's it for now. I think the next update will cover just one mission, maybe two if there are not too many images, as these are getting fairly large. Don't want to go over 60 screenshots per update. It makes photobucket account bandwidth cry.

Also applications for weaboo kerbonauts are still open. You too ca have a chance to die trying to fly a dangerous kippon rocketu desu.

I am also still accepting suggestions for weaboo spaceship names.

 

[Ashery]

Signing up

I've been wondering how the career part would turn out. Looks good so far.

 

[Tzaero]

Signing up

 

[Hellraiser]

We have Haba (1), Ashery (2) and Tzaero (3) as space virgins for now. I'll roll twice to determine the order in which they go into space. If the number of a chosen japanophile repeats itself I roll again obviously until a different second choice is made.

 

[Absalom]

Sign me up plox

Also nice landing on Minmus before Mun you munchkin

 

[Hellraiser]

Hey, it is easier to land there first, if you know how to get an encounter with Minmus that is, which requires more knowledge of orbital mechanics than in the case of the Mun. And especially considering the insane Mun rocket I just finished doing. If that shit doesn't explode half way into orbit it's already going to be a spectacular success.

 

[Hellraiser]

SAILOR MUN BANZAI

A battered land,
so seemingly serene,
in the silver glow.

Spoiler

First order of business is coercing hiring the newest Kerbonauts.

Going to the Mun is far, far more risky than Minmus. So first thing I do is test a prototype lander aptly named the Usagi, since as Kipponese tradition states kerbin rabbits (kerbabits? kerbbits?) live on the Mun. Well either them or prosperoids such as the turd golem. The only thing in which this differs from what will (hopefully) help one gaijin land on the Mun is that it has a probe core on top instead of a third parachute. Gaijin are expendable but it turns out not many of them understand Jakanese, at least so far. That makes kerbonaut training difficult.

This unmanned test was done to test two things really, if the thrust is sufficient as I am using recently unlocked smaller engines here. Those are the most powerful probe-sized engines but they have only 20 kilonnewtons of thrust less than the smallest medium-diameter engine I used to land on Minmus (which was overkill for that task but whatever). Anyway they worked.

The other thing was to test the parachutes just to be sure, although due to a different configuration this return capsule is lighter than what the Hyperweapon or the Rance rockets had. It landed at about 4,5 m/s and suffered no damage, despite landing upside down. I can definitely send weaboos in this.

The Usagi spacecraft is supposed to be an apollo style orbiter+lander configuration. Well almost, key differences are that it has a crew of two, only the command module has RCS thrusters and monopropellant for docking, and since I do not have bigger crew modules yet both capsules need to return to Kerbin.

So the lander actually detaches everything but the science parts and the parachute just before docking, the command module will then maneuver with RCS and telakoituminen as the finns say, with the engine-less lander capsule and drag both back to Kerbin using it's engines. Then the science payload and lander capsule will detach while on a return trajectory, while the command module will raise its orbit and wait for the science pod to return to kerbin first before it deorbits itself.

Yes I know, too fucking complicated but I can't control two craft during re-entry and landing at the same time. There's no guarantee they would stay within the 2,5km range beyond which atmospheric debris gets automatically deleted. And making the whole thing capable of landing as one piece is too risky.

Speaking of risky I also checked using a static fire test if the fact that the lander is stuck on the orbiter's ass, won't mean that the capsule will get melted into red-hot metallic goo. Luckily it seems the engines are far enough apart (and from the capsule) for the heat not to accumulate too much.

Launch clamps can actually resist any amount of force so you can use them for static firing tests like above, or to burn off some fuel before you try to lift off if your TWR with full tanks is just below 1 and you want to avoid disaster.

The crew is picked. Kashmir Slippers was supposed to be the one to actually land on the Mun but I messed up and assigned them to the wrong command pods. Oh well, at least he is guaranteed not to be stuck in space where as the lander may run out of fuel.

IVA view visibility in the cockpit is far superior. The Mun is just above the KSC as the Usagi rocket is about to launch. Engage weaboo music that perfectly matches space, mostly:

Oh I forgot to mention that the lifter rocket for the Usagi is ridiculous. 4 large SRBs and 4 doubletank liquid engine combos (connected using asparagus stages in a 3 to 1 tank ratio), all firing at the same time. This could fall apart or explode if staging goes wrong, or if one of the jetissoned stages hits the rocket a split second after getting discarded.

However it actually goes smoothly, except for the final lifter stage spending half of its fuel and still being over 1000 m/s short of orbital velocity. But at least the KAMIKAZE craft is nearly out of the atmosphere, drag at 60km is almost non-existent.

Since I want to use minimum fuel the plan is to get an as close to the Mun as possible flyby trajectory. Both due to the oberth effect as the Mun's gravity will sligshot the craft (hence the predicted kerbin escape large as fuck orbital trajectory change) and because closer the the Mun the orbital velocity is higher so that means that I should have to decelerate less. Of course I may be wrong and this is not how rocket science works, because the gravity of the Mun may add too much velocity overshadowing the gains from all this ,but in that case a close flyby is simply more convenient for insertion as I need a low orbit for the lander to descend from. Also the oberth effect may not work for deceleration but just for acceleration.

By the way the orbiter has less than half fuel left because it had to finish the initial insertion into LKO and I haven't even begun the transfer burn yet. KAMIKAZE odds for success don't look good.

Even better! A minor error in the burn length resulted in a collision trajectory rather than one just 20km above Munar surface.



Luckily I just need to do a radial-out burn worth 9 m/s of delta-v to fix this. If I did this correction burn after the slightly too long burn this would just be a 0,2 or 0,3 m/s burn, as it would accumulate over the about 6 hour travel time to the Mun into the several kilometer difference in trajectory. This is very important to know if you want to do real efficient interplanetary transfers using aerobraking which you will hopefully see in this LP in the next update.

Kashmir Slippers gazes at the silver globe from his cockpit, hoping that collision has indeed been averted. The following event happening would be a problem:

Also the orbiter is really low on fuel and it still needs to decelerate by 270 m/s in order to get into a stable low Munar orbit. Shit, not sure if the Usagi can make the landing. I think I'll have to abort the mission.

Fuck, the Usagi orbiter has just fumes left now after entering low Munar orbit. I think it can get back into Kerbin orbit but not much else. Still the crew does some science, to at least gain something from this failed mission

Crew reports are beamed back to Kerbin, in case the crew is lost and never returns.

Although worst case scenario I could scrounge up a rescue ship and rendezvous, this is just Munar orbit not a few other places that are a bitch to reach in KSP.

You know what, fuck this defeatist attitude. It is not what makes Kippon strong and superior to baka gaijin! Drain some of the lander's descent stage fuel to fill up the orbiter. Attempt a landing for the Rising Sun!

BANZAI!!!!!!

Ashery doesn't seem to be regretting this, yet. Still I think I actually have too much fuel in the lander. The ascent stage has definitely enough delta-v, but the descent one has twice as big fuel tanks as are needed from what I know. The problem is though I am comparing it with a small Mun lander I did with a different 1-kerman pod and lacking science parts. Although that one had RCS capability so maybe the mass evens out, and this one does indeed have too much fuel even with 25% of it drained.

Spoiler

Ashery did a 90 m/s burn to begin descent, the target is a big crater which should be its own biome. Still another far more costly burn will be needed to actually not crash at over 1400 km/h into the surface.

42 seconds and nearly 480 delta-v needed to decelerate to a safe free-fall velocity. About 30 seconds left until the last safe point to start the burn is reached. The field of craters resembles a battlefield of an ancient war, perhaps the Jakanese Kami themselves, waged war here in the heavens.

Planning a near full deceleration maneuver is a good habit to pick up when landing on (nearly) airless bodies in KSP. That way you know how long the deceleration will take with the thrust you have, so you can start a burn with enough head-start. So you don't end up panicking as you burn for 30 seconds only to realize the ground is 50 meters below and you're still traveling at 120 m/s towards it with no way to kill that velocity in time.

I don't remember if there is a radar altimeter within the IVA of this capsule, there's definitely one in the lander "can" command pods which I do not have yet. Luckily there are visual cues to guess how high above I am, one of them is the small shadow of the vessel that just appeared to the left of the craft next to the rock.

It used to appears at a far lower altitude just before ground, often prompting an "oh shit!" or similar reaction. However they increased it by a few hundred meters to make things easier.

The other way to judge distance without a radar altimeter is to simply used high-powered lights that have a very long range, the smaller and brighter the lit area gets the closer you are. Which also has the advantage of working at night. 600 meters lower than on the previous picture the lander is nearly on the ground.

Success!

I did overdid it with the fuel in the lander. Should have used the twice smaller tanks for the descent stage. The materials bay is just 200 kg with the two goo canisters 100 kg each, not really warranting such overkill compared to the last one-kerman Mun lander I did in the previous version of KSP (or 2 versions ago?). Especially when I used lighter engines to save on even more mass.

A bit more serious than the Minmus report, IIRC it wasn't just one developer doing these but the whole team submitting them and the lead dev screening them for major derp and too much silliness. The community manager being a marketing graduate had most of his suggestions shot down because of that.

Oh and this crater I landed in is a separate biome called the farside crater. Somebody did a list and there's between 7 and 10 of these on the Mun actually, not just the big craters but some other large terrain features as well (easter eggs don't count for these, which is the way it should be). I may revisit it with a better lander design and better rocket to land in some other interesting region. I could actually check the sciencedef.cfg file for the full list of those, but it also contains spoilers on experiment results and what not since those are stored there, along with total science pool values.

A generic default report here. Crew reports from pods lack the most flavor text so far. Don't worry though, other experiments especially for those distant bodies do have results written.

Somebody should tell Ashery that the Mun is tidally locked and since he's on the farside he'll never see Kerbin from here.

This surface sample report is 100% pure science for once. Shit is getting real.

Ashery seems to like the Mun, I am wondering if he got lucky and has the BadS flag set to true in his crew member stat file. Proper crew member stats and skills which can be trained (like hopefully geology, mechanics etc.) are something that is on the agenda to be added to the game. Not sure when they're going to add that though, probably after more Space Program mechanics like missions, prestige or a budget get added.

After planting the flag for Kippon Ashery prepares to head back into orbit and meet with the orbiter with Kashmir Slippers on board, who is no doubt bored as fuck from watching animu all by himself in a cramped cockpit. Or from staring at craters all day from orbit.

Easter egg within the material's bay BTW:

Spoiler

Damn it HAL! Good thing Ashery is not called Dave and that there isn't a Munolith nearby

Spoiler

The plan was to use the descent stage to land, leave it on the surface as it would no doubt be empty and get back using just the ascent stage. Of course it turns out there is still a shitload of fuel left in the lander. Could have pumped more into the orbiter since I cannot dock with the fuel tanks, they need to be jettisoned so that the docking port is accessible. Thus pumping fuel around was only possible before I decoupled the lander and orbiter.

Also Ashery performs another goo experiment since I haven't done one in space close to the Mun. 361 m/s of velocity are needed for the craft to get into a proper munar low orbit.

Kerbin rises above the horizon as the Usagi lander prepares to circularize its orbit. I'll need to match inclination with the orbiter and hope that after telakoituminen the orbiter and lander will be able to leave back for Kerbin.

You know what fuck that, this shit has enough fuel on its own. Why add mass to the orbiter when I can't add fuel to it and when this can get back to Kerbin on its own? BANZAI!!!!

Ho lee fook! The descent stage, despite being drained by a third prior to going anywhere on the Mun, had enough delta-v to land this shit, get it back into munar orbit and return?

Indeed it did, r00fles! Superior Kippon Engineeringu I guess.

Spoiler

Anyway since I don't want to lose any craft I set up nodes so that the Alarm Clock can warn me when they're about to enter atmosphere. Turns out I underestimated the fuel in the orbiter as well. Asparagus staging fuel meters on the staging bar are somewhat inaccurate, since they treat the whole tank the engine is draining from as max fuel rather than half of it if two are draining from one tank.

Ashery's return is first, 3 hours before Kashmir Slippers gets back. Kerbin beckons him, lots of scandily clad in seifuku but still adult Jakanese women are waiting to meet the hero of Jakan in person.

The parachutes ensure Ashery does survive to meet them.

His capsule makes a safe splashdown in one piece.

372 science. Not show on the list due to scrolling are 30 science points for recovering a vessel from the Mun's surface, Minmus was better in that regard which is somewhat absurd from a difficulty standpoint. Then again stellar radiation would be stronger on distant Minmus than on the Mun so there's that. But overall science yield was better for the Minmus mission, there's more total science to be gained from the Mun due to biomes though.

Meanwhile the nearly forgotten Kashmir Slippers sets his eyes upon Kerbin. ETA to re-entry is about 56 minutes.

He witnesses re-entry effects, which don't look that spectacular from the inside of the craft.

But in reality there is a raging fireball of plasma engulfing his vessel.

Landing goes well, the Emperor does not forget and awards Kashmir Slippers with a fief in what was once known as Oklahomo in Kamerica, he is the first gaijin to become Jakanese nobility.

As he dons his samurai armor for the first time many concubines seek out the new lord allowing him to establish a personal harem.

Which he may not use much since he's going to be sent into space on even more risky missions soon enough .

Back at the R&D center Heavier Rocketry is unlocked. This really increases my options and should result in safer lifters with fewer parts. There are two nodes revealed by it but not yet unlocked for research. One is probably Even Heavier Rocketry (or similar in name) unlocking mainsail engines, the biggest and most powerful ones in the game.

The nucular trefoil is the LV-N atomic motor, a Nuclear Thermal Rocket engine, which is the best engine for interplanetary manned travel as it is twice as efficient as other liquid fuel engines, while still having reasonable thrust. Possibly it also unlocks RTGs for power generation. The end nodes of the tree are slowly appearing but I'm not anywhere near unlocking them, yet. Costs are 600 science per endgame node I believe, or more. I got nearly 400 from landing on the Mun so you can see the problem. Luckily more distant targets will be more lucrative.

Naturally in the future, probably when resource mining gets added, more nodes especially endgame ones will be added. But no sooner than after they do more of career mode since this part of the game has been neglected for about two years.

I unlock Precision Engineering which means I can now start building decent probes as I have something like 70% of the probe-sized parts unlocked including nearly all engines and fuel tanks. Jakan can into robotics. Also Unmanned tech gets revealed, just two new probe core variants, a hexagonal one (because 3-fold symmetry is more futuristic) and a "slim" miniature variant (good for rovers or saving mass).

The new grayed-out node is probably Ion Engine Technology. Extremely efficient, very light, but has the disadvantage of using a lot of power and the thrust being ass. In the game it's actually overpowered compared to real life, because it has 500 newtons of thrust which is a hundred times more than what the most powerful ion engine in real life is projected to have. Which is because if it had realistic thrust nobody would use them when acceleration takes fucking weeks and you can only time warp by a factor 4 with engines running (which is risky). It still takes between 5-15 minutes for deep space burns with them and physics-enabled time warping.

Still these engines have a few uses, from really low gravity landers, solar powered aerial drones to being used for docking maneuvers and of course in small light deep space probes.

Lastly I unlocked deployable ladders and the pressure sensor. Mostly because I have no small science parts for probes, probes could use cameras but it is likely that and telescopes are on the new experiment part to do list. So they may appear in a future update of the game.

Newly revealed node is Field Science. With it come four rover parts, although two can be used for other purposes. Wheels are self-explanatory, they use electricity to drive around and this node unlocks medium and small rover wheels. I could land a rover on the edge of two Munar biomes and do science in both for example, although these would be more useful for distant targets which don't have biomes yet, sadly.

The command seat is the smallest manned "pod" although it has some unique quirks, like the fact a Kerbal can fly out of it if you impact something. Also it can be used for really fucking small landers and spacecraft, since it is very light (just 100 kg or maybe even 50 kg) you can even use it for manned ion engine powered vessels. The last part is a rover body, it's basically a big block that it's easy to attach small wheels and science sensors to. It can be used for other types of contraptions as well like probe landers and similar.

Alright, plan for next update is going to another planet. Not sure what the exact mission profile will be or where I will go, could use the 3-kerman command pod first. Either way it could be a manned flyby, orbiting a planet and return or it could be a landing and return attempt, depends if I can cobble-together the parts I have into a functional lander+orbiter combo. The risk of getting stranded in space or dying will be greatly increased as the kids gloves will definitely be off and rescue missions become far harder. Either way it is likely the crew will be bigger than 2 kerbals.

That's it for now. I'll add anyone who hasn't been added yet to the suicide by space crew-member volunteer list before I get working on the next large phallic death trap ~desu!

Also the latest Horikata Maki bout of "'k" enhances this LP greatly, good timing there

 

[Kashmir Slippers]

Kashmir Slippers was supposed to be the one to actually land on the Mun but I messed up and assigned them to the wrong command pods. Oh well, at least he is guaranteed not to be stuck in space where as the lander may run out of fuel.

B-baka!

I-it's not like I wanted to walk on the moon in the first place!

 

[Ashery]

Somebody should tell Ashery that the Mun is tidally locked and since he's on the farside he'll never see Kerbin from here.

You think I realize that with those stats?

 

[Hellraiser]

Watch me roll a d6 while you have no idea why I need to roll it

 

[Hellraiser]

FIST OF THE FIRESTAR
A red blazing star,
shining bright in the night sky,
burns life away.

Spoiler

Haba is sent to fly a new lander prototype, launched on a parabolic arc reaching 200km it landed safely using parachutes. Afterwards he checked how much "oomph" the lander's engines and fuel tanks have.

"Oomph" is deemed insufficient, also Haba kind of forgets to throttle enough to do a soft powered landing. Still he survived and design flaws have been identified.

Superior Kippon engineering work organization allowed a new lander to be assembled swiftly and sent Haba on another test flight. After all Haba will be the one flying this thing during the next mission into space. Key flaws of the last one, outside of lacking delta-v, was the fact that parachutes were below the Center of Mass and the whole thing flipped upside-down. Haba managed to flip it back up using reaction wheel torque and RCS thrusters but during the planned mission such a flip could prove disastrous.

Either way the improved version works as predicted. My delta-v estimates for the lander is 1600+ m/s based on 120 second of fighting 10 m/s worth of gravity's pull each second (1200 m/s) while flying straight up, 255 m/s of velocity left as surplus due to TWR>1 and the remaining delta-v difference being on account of the amount wasted on atmospheric drag. Possibly a lot more was wasting on fighting atmo but I am definitely sure it is at least 200 m/s. Better safe than sorry with landers.

Also the new sensor was tested and some virgin science was collected. Although not much.

Wikipedia tells me that Mars was literary called the fire star in japanese, chinese and korean before the european name was adopted. That's IMO a good name for a KAMIKAZE ship to the Kerbal Space Program analogue of Mars, Duna. A crew of three will board the Firestar-1, Haba as the flag-planting japanophile risking his life for the glory of the Empire, Absalom and Tzaero as the people who will transmit the news of his demise while monitoring it safely from orbit, if the lander fails (it shouldn't unless the parachutes break off some vital parts).

I like to call this asparagus staging configuration the Sumo, since this is a fat as fuck rocket. Absalom seems to be the negative nancy of this mission, he should take some jakanese happy pills.

The Firestar-1 uses large liquid fuel boosters made using the newly unlocked rockomax-32 tanks and the skipper engine. These pack a lot of thrust and a lot of delta-v, hopefully.

You can see that launched this about 10 hours before the transfer window. The exact point when the window happens is just the optimal one, delta-v loss from doing a transfer a few hours earlier or later is minimal. No more than 50 m/s really, you just have to know how to shape your trajectory right to actually end up with an encounter.

I'm about 800 m/s short of getting into LKO. It appears that I overestimated the delta-v output of SRBs+Skipper boosters. The stage now active is supposed to last during the rest of the entire mission. Here's hoping it has enough delta-v.

Those three engines should have been just boosters that I would jettison, they added too much drymass. I was afraid the Firestar-1 may not have enough thrust to lift the lander into orbit (it is a bit heavy) hence why I added them. Six engines is too much for a craft of this mass that's supposed to go interplanetary.

Oh and yeah, the orbiter part of the Firestar is the crew cabin module called the Hitchhiker Storage. Unfortunately it is just a habitation module, it has no means to control a craft by itself. Hence all steering is done by Haba's lander pod. Unlike the Usagi lander this one does have a docking port on it's descent/ascent stage so if it returns with too much fuel it can be drained.

To get to Duna from LKO I need about 1100 m/s of delta-v. Out of that 900 goes into just escaping Kerbin's SoI, 200 is needed to raise solar orbit apoapsis to Duna's orbital altitude around the Sun. So most of the delta-v budget will be spent on getting to Duna from LKO, as returning to Kerbin will be far easier. The 200 m/s for lowering periapsis to Kerbin's orbit plus about 300 m/s to escape Duna's SoI as it is both smaller and has weaker gravity.

Anyway I planned a burn out of Low Kerbin Orbit straight to Duna. For maximum efficiency the burn should be done in low orbit to use the oberth's effect. This is the hard way of doing things, since you need to know when the launch window is (hence why I use the Alarm Clock) when phase angles are right. The easier way of doing things is to get into a solar orbit first and plane a transfer manuver from there, since you can launch into a solar orbit whenever you please. However that is not very efficient.

Fun fact, before the oberth effect was discovered by Oberth estimates for interplanetary rocket travel made it seem impossible to get to other planets.

The Firestar-1 left Kerbin's SoI. Slightly over half of the remaining total fuel was left. However that total fuel includes what the lander has, the budget is tight but the Orbiter needs just the earlier mentioned 600 m/s of delta-v plus some to enter a circular low Duna orbit. Oh and of course up to about 80 m/s for adjusting aerobraking trajectory and course correction burns.

Which I did here about 2/3 on my way to Duna, current interception course will take the Firestar to 60 kilometers above the "sea" level (in reality the altitude of the lowest point on Duna) level. That's about 10 km above the atmosphere, or 15, or 20, I forgot how much exactly but it's not as tall as on Kerbin.

Happy pills must be working, how else would you survive weeks of boredom in space and still be smiling? Sure they have board games as visible on one of the storage compartments, but have you ever tried playing board games in 0 gravity? Unless they have magnetic pieces, boards and dice. I guess it is possible with those.

Duna lore, accidentally deleted the screen with physical characteristics (sorry about that), but gravity is 25% of Kerbin's, pressure at 0m is about 0.1 Kerbin atmospheric pressure. Last correction burn puts the aerobraking altitude at 9km, hopefully that is enough to slow down below Duna escape velocity and save on delta-v for orbital insertion. Duna's atmosphere is the thinnest in the game for now, aerobraking this low elsewhere is a one way trip but the Firestar-1 should pop out of the thin layer of gas and back up fast as there is little atmospheric drag on Duna.

Prepare for atmospheric entry, engage animu music for Duna aerobraking:

After dipping to 16,5 km the craft lost just 20 m/s of velocity. Like I said, barely any gas to slow me down hence the need to go lower.

At 11 km re-entry effects kick in, they're a rare sight on Duna but the Firestar is going in fast and fairly low.

Effects intensify. Odd, they're not this strong usually, not sure if I'm going too fast. Still dropping by 100m in altitude with each second, but I'm nearly at periapsis, descent rate should slow down to between 10 and 50 meters by now.

Predicted trajectory looks good, I still have velocity greater than orbital but the orbit's apoapsis is getting lower and lower.

Spoiler

9 km was too deep! The Firestar is falling like a rock!

The crew remains oblivious to the death that is approaching at about 80 meters per second, it seems only Absalom's happy pills stopped working and only he realizes the impending doom that is approaching.

Haba, though, has a plan.

BANZAI HE YELLS AS THE SIX KIPPONESE ENGINES ROAR BACK TO LIFE.

He pushes the reaction wheels to their limits rotating the craft upwards, keeping it steady in the thin but still present atmosphere, despite lacking any winglets, fins or other means of atmospheric control (I need to add those for future craft that aerobrake, just in case).

Between 60 and 70 percent of the remaining fuel has been burned. As it turns out since the lander was connected via a docking port, and since I forgot to disable fuel crossfeed on the docking port, all fuel was drained from its central tank.

Holy fuck playing this game with no quicksaves is damn exciting. Aerobraking wouldn't even be an issue if I used those, I'd just reload and change the periapsis to a higher one.

Oh and yes, I do science while still in the (upper) atmosphere. Looks like the reports for experiment cases in upper atmo are still left undone.

Atmo data has 60% transmission rate, makes sense since you'd use probes to get it and it is just numbers. Fun fact, the resolution of the baromether in KSP is too low to measure atmosphere thinner than 0,001 bars, so it will give you an "in vacuum" message in upper atmo, even if there are still 20km of gas left above you.

Anyway the Firestar-1 is back in space. Nobody committed seppuku yet but the emperor is not pleased. Remaining fuel from the lander is pumped into the Orbiter. The crew needs to add 200 m/s of velocity to raise the low periapsis above Duna's atmosphere.

Success! The crew is no safely stranded in space, as opposed to being dead from impact. Except for Haba, he'd just undock his lander and grin while showing the middle finger to his doomed compatriots, as his parachutes would slow him down for a comfy soft landing.

BTW Duna has a single large moon, Ike. In fact the moon is so close to Duna and so big that it de facto forms a binary system. Anyway with panic averted KAMIKAZE engineers start thinking on how to proceed from here. A decision is made to ditch surplus dry mass, as a landing is definitely out of the question at this point.

Haba flies his lander away using RCS thrusters and monopropellant, jettisons all parachutes, engines and fuel tanks away from the Orbiter. Like the Usagi lander, the Firestar one is supposed to dock back after returning from the surface with just the bare minimum of dry mass like science parts. The difference is that if there is liquid fuel or oxidizer left. it can dock while still with the fuel tanks attached. Also it and not the orbiter is capable of doing docking maneuvers. With the Usagi it was the orbiter that had monopropellant and RCS thrusters for docking.

The crew, well Haba mostly, do science.

Duna's ice caps are mentioned. They're pretty big and they'll definitely be their own biome for experiments in the near future. Duna looks a bit dull after the last art pass in 0.21, probably because they got rid off some surface features that they want to replace with better looking procedural ones, like craters and maybe even procedural sand dunes. Other than the craters, most notably the black "maria" are missing from earlier versions where theyr were Duna's lowlands.

Haba goes on EVA, decent science yield. This mission while a fuck up still gets KAMIKAZE moving forward up the tech tree, once that science gets back to Kerbin since I didn't install an antenna on this.



I was pondering what to do next, in the end I decided not to attempt to return with just the few fuel still left in the tanks. Too little of it and rescuing a crew from solar orbit would be a bitch. A new ship is needed to salvage this mission.

Vaarna draws the short straw, that was what I needed the d6 roll for since I needed a pilot.

Engage animu music as a theme for the rescue mission attempt by the gaijin from fimmland:

The Firestar-2 lacks a lander but improves some flaws of the first one, not just the delta-v issue. Most notably I forgot to ensure crew members other than Haba had a way to return back to Kerbin. I would have fixed it by leaving them in LKO and making a recovery space taxi, hopefully with the parts unlocked by the science Haba got back to Kerbin. The Firestar-2 solves this by making the hitchhiker hab module into a lander, also it has some spare science parts it can return with.

Oh and this is a total asparagus staging monstrosity. Fuel lines go like this big tank>2 doubletank liquid fuel boosters>outer boosters>Orbiter. However I fucked up the fuel lines at some point, and it drained the left or right tanks of the pair first, instead of draining them equally, which you can see on the image here.

Unlike the earlier Firestar this one has just 3 engines and thus less drymass on the final orbiter stage. Now that I think about it I shouldn't have ditched the propulsion and parachutes on the lander, could have salvaged that one and still lander and returned from the surface.

The last boosters go dry about 40% into the LKO to Duna transfer burn, pretty fucking good.

Well the majority of my delta-v expenditure is behind me and I still have 2/3 of fuel left. Smooth sailing from here.

By the way interplanetary space just outside of Kerbin's SoI is a solar high orbit as far as experiments are concerned. 275 science, just think what you can get from low solar orbit! Good luck getting there though, delta-v requirements are massive then again I may send a solar probe there, I have an idea on how to save on delta-v for such a mission.

Goo result is also predictable but I get lots of science from it nevertheless. This may be a rescue mission but it will still advance SCIENCE!

Spoiler

No more fuck ups, a 12,3 km altitude aerobraking should be good. Worst case scenario I decelerate and burn off all that excess fuel, got delta-v to spare.

Vaarna gazes upon the red planet. Prepare for atmospheric entry!

Orbital velocity is around 900 m/s for low Duna orbit, but I shouldn't decelerate below that. Vaarna is skeptical but calm like a true samurai.

Good news! Aerobraking was a success, that 230 km apopasis will be lowered soon but first the periapsis needs to be raised above atmo. However there is another problem which has arisen, one which I must explain using an image:

Both Firestars entered the atmosphere for aerobraking from different sides of Duna, one from inside Duna's orbital radius and one from outside of it. This is a major oversight on my part. Ideally you want to enter at the Radial-out side to orbit east-wards, matching the planet's surface rotation since that makes returning from the surface for orbital rendezvous easier. Having two vessels move on orbits in opposite directions (east vs west) means their relative velocity is ridiculous high. And I need to (nearly) match it to dock, which means I need to reverse one of the orbits, nullifying all current orbital velocity and adding enough to stay in orbit. Which requires spending at least twice as much delta-v as is my current orbital velocity.

So basically in tl;dr fashion:

The good news is the Firestar-2 has a lot of fuel. Well that and it turned out I only need 1400 m/s to both reverse orbit and raise my periapsis above atmo. Hopefully there will be enough delta-v left to get the Firestar-2 back to kerbin after this. Good thing I didn't bring a new lander though, hauling it would negatively affect my delta-v.

Doing this in low Kerbin orbit would suck even more than bioware's writing in ME3.

Two thirds of the fuel that was left after getting to Duna are gone. I still need to match orbital inclination to rendevous. It is a big, about 100 m/s expenditure so I decide to have the Firestar one match inclination with the 2 rather than the other way around. It has fuel I can't pump anyway, since neither fire star can maneuver for docking and there is nothing around I could use as a tanker. Might as well use it.

After Haba matched inclination he prepares to rendezvous with Vaarna and the Firestar-2. The predicted trajectory will take both ships within 400 meters of each other. Then Haba will kill relative velocity and match orbits.

Due to factors such as burn length, timing and my reaction times the trajectory is a bit off so the rendezvous is not as close. But 1800 meters is still acceptable, Haba will just have to maneuver closer once he kills relative velocity and match orbits *again* after that. But it will take much less fuel to do that since approach will be far slower as far as relative velocity is concerned.

As you can see I now switched the velocity meter to "target" mode, it shows my velocity relative to the other Firestar which I set as the target (duh!). The idea is simple, if my relative velocity is exactly zero our orbits are the same and we will remain at relatively the same distance, mostly. In practice there is always some drift but it accumulates very slowly if you kill all but 0,3 or less m/s of relative velocity. Anyway I burn at the retrograde marker shown in this mode to slow down to the other ship's velocity.

After slowing down I burned again towards the other ships prograde (pink marker), so my prograde matched its (which will eventually come apart again due to drift from our orbital trajectory shapes) until my relative velocity was about 10 m/s. When I got close enough I killed all relative velocity again to "park" the ship on a nearly matched orbit close to the target at about 250 meters away.

Tzaero eagerly ditches the first Firestar, the crew will board the other ship using their EVA packs. In real life those have just a tenth of the fuel as the Kerbal ones, so that's one of the reasons why you never see NASA pulling such stunts. Besides having crew members float so far being risky as hell, especially with no safety line.

He makes a report on his way.

Safely reaches the ladder. One saved, three to go.

Vaarna detaches the cockpit from the docking port. Temporarily there is no way to control the Firestar-2, but Haba will dock with his science pod in a moment and rectify this situation.

I sent Absalom and Vaarna back to the crew compartment of the second Firestar. Just Haba and his little kawaii capsule are left.

Docking tip from ancient Finnish sauna gurus: if you want to dock with a port that is not in the front of the ship, you can click on the docking port and select "control from here". That will swap the retrograde/prograde markers and controls around relative to the ports orientation, makes docking side to side far easier as you don't keep guessing which way you will go when you press a button. Also learn to use docking mode controls rather than using RCS controls from staging mode, far easier. Oh and if you need to rotate to change your orientation you can switch between translation and rotation controls while still in docking mode by pressing space. Also saves you the head ache of accidentally staging if you switched between docking and staging mode to rotate around.

Everything is ready for departure, so long Duna!

Or not, transfer window back to Kerbin is in 143 days.



To the time (warp) machine!

After many weeks worth of grueling play sessions of Shogi, Go, along with Seifuku&Samurai, the crew can finally burn to return home. If they have enough fuel.

Spoiler

It took between 70 and 80 percent of what was left but the course is set, the brave gaijin will return home all safe and sound. If they don't kill each other in a disagreement with the S&S GM.

Oh and there was still a goo container left unused so I did an experiment in high Duna orbit.

Months later correction burns put the aerobraking trajectory at 24 kilometers. Even if that is too much to get captured in an unstable low orbit, the Kerbonauts can make it down safely by emergency return capsule seperation. Well maybe some science gets lost, hopefully nothing bad will happen.

Two hours to re-entry, it seems Vaarna didn't get the last of the happy pills before his comrades did.

This is the first time I see those snow-covered mountains, must have been added in the previous updates' terrain overhaul.

Going into atmo like a fist of the firestar.

Well it is not getting back into orbit it seems. However it will fall into the ocean. Again.

Apparently one of the parachutes on the lander was set to deploy. Luckily the only atmosphere on the way back is the one on kerbin. I prematurely detached the return stage and turned it around before aerodynamic forces would force it to flip violently, probably splitting it in half.

More parachutes open. I think *something* broke as the camera oddly shook for a second, as if a piece of the craft broke off or as if it split in half but it appears to be intact. Also this reminds me of a seaquest episode where they recovered a returning Mars landing crew who's capsule got trapped under the sea (where else? It was called seaquest for a reason). Putting aside the fact that anything that doesn't float on water probably exploded on contact with it in KSP, Kippon has superior submarines to the Seaquest:

Turns out the delay between the top-most parachute deploying fully at 500 meters and the ones in the bottom, caused severe stress between the lower docking port and the rest of the capsule. The lower half rapidly decelerated from the now fully open parachutes, while the upper was still moving a few hundred kilometer faster for a brief moment. That is what broke off the port and what I saw earlier. Nothing serious, but I believe they should make parachute opening be gradual rather than sudden. The sudden deceleration can rip off parachutes or worse, which in particular is a problem on Duna.

Recovery time, 400 science ~desu!

And 596 science! Nearly 1000 now!

Tech tree time. I grab the snazzy 3-kerman capsule, the 1-kerman landing can, along with bigger parachutes, large reaction wheels and some RCS parts I don't really need.

Also researched the node unlocked by the previous one. 2-kerman landercan and the cupola (aka the tie fighter cockpit pod) for more futuristic ships with even better IVA visibility. The large RCS tank is meh IMO, you only need that much RCS for refueling stations or kethane refineries, but the latter won't be part of this LP as it is modded part-free playthrough.

I spent some of the spare change on the first spaceplane node revealing the second one. I won't be using much of them in this LP apart from the wings probably.

New node, Meta-Materials, as much of a meaningless buzzword here as rogue-like is becoming in the gaming industry.



Unlocks some large to (multiple) medium diameter adapters, but most importantly it unlocks inline docking ports and large radius docking ports. The latter are very useful as they're strong, practically a necessity for assembling large modular ships in orbit.

Very heavy rocketry. The largest fuel tank and the most powerful engine, because more rocket=better rocket indeed. Still it costs 550 science, too much to get it now but soon, hopefully.

The trefoil is nuclear thermal rocket engine as mentioned earlier, no RTG unfortunately. Also no reactors, but those will be in the game eventually, probably when they add mining as blutonium is supposed to be one of the resources (which also powers RTGs).

Ion Engines, also as predicted. The engines itself and two types of xenon... I mean xenonium tanks. Or hexagen tanks? I forgot what they changed the xenon to exactly in one of the previous updates after they started brainstorming chemistry for resource collection, which they then pushed back until the future. Lots of butthurt after that move.

Oh I unlocked proper rotating solar panels and better (read: bigger) radially-attached batteries. This revealed a node with the large diameter inline battery (useful) and the Gigantor XL solar panels, the most majestic space craft part in the game. Honestly, it simply doesn't look like a proper futuristic spaceship without those extended wide like space sails.

Last node revealed after the Duna shenanigans, electronics. Unlocks the old accelerometer which now also works as a seismometer, which I think is a very good update to an otherwise underwhelming part. Also unlocks a remade communotron antenna, it also looks quite majestic now, even if antenna size doesn't seem to give much benefit for now.

Next mission will be another interplanetary expedition, but I got a few ideas on how to use some of the parts unlocked both now and earlier. Flag planting is on the agenda so weaboo lives will definitely be endangered again in the name of Cosmic Imperialism. However there will be a twist as to the mission profile ~desu.

Space still remains largely untouched by japanophile feet, any more volunteers for possibly one way trips into the unknown?

 

[Hellraiser]

Well there are 9 people on the crew roster with everybody getting a flight so far, sometimes even two. Time to roll for the future.

 

[Hellraiser]

Oh fuck, I'm going to prematurely say that the next update will be around 100 images. I have no idea how that image number creep keeps happening all the time, personally I blame minorities for that one. The one after that will be shorter though due to the mission profile I have in mind, well hopefully shorter.

Anyway bump this shit please bros, because apparently images still load through spoiler tags, so I don't want people to load so many fucking pictures when they open this and I rather not open another image hosting account.

 

[Kashmir Slippers]

Bump!

 

[Ashery]

Aww...but I just wanted to quietly brofist...

 

[JoKa]

Bump!

 

[Ashery]

To the second page!

 

[Hellraiser]

NEON GENESIS EVA

The purple dawn star,
a distant sister world,
or disguised hell?

Spoiler

The dice have spoken, a crew of three has been assembled. The target is best described as Jigoku, hell itself, also known as Eve.

Engage an animu theme of diving into hell ~desu:

This is a fairly complicated payload which I will explain in a moment. Also it uses a new central lifter design I totally stole after I saw it on the KSP forums.

Tall rockets, especially with a thin top, are prone to instability caused by wobbling. This is because when the large and far more massive lifter rockets move just slightly using their thrust vectoring, as they keep their course stable, the relatively little force they use for corrections compared to their mass translates to a lot of force compared to the top. At the same time there is less surface area pushing the thin top. To counter that I reinforced it with struts going around the whole structure.

The lifter core uses four radial engines to give more thrust to it. Very good with asparagus staging as the radial engines are small enough to fit between four large diameter tanks. Asparagus staging here was 2 large liquid boosters>2 large liquid boosters>asparagus core. Simple but efficient and reliable.

With the asparagus lifter core spent both it and the reinforcement get ditched as they are of no use to me anymore. Only about 100 m/s short of LKO. Pretty good, lots of fuel left for the rest of the mission.

Now to explain the Jigoku-1, it is actually three spacecraft in one. The orbiter uses a just unlocked 3-kerman capsule plus an array of five light and low power engines to save on drymass. It also has the potetomassha (seriously that's how the japanese call it) lander which will be used to land on that same space potato that killed two of my probes in the last LP. Since the said potato known as Gilly is orbiting Eve, I will also drop the last spacecraft into it's atmosphere. Why not a manned landing on Eve? Well I'll show you and explain as the probe will land, hopefully.

Anyway I need 1000 m/s of delta-v to do a transfer burn to Eve from LKO. Because the engines are low thrust this will take over 3 minutes.

And I fucked up the burn. Didn't pay attention and since the burn was fairly long and the orbit low the trajectory got fucked up as the ship covered a large part of its orbit during those 3 minutes. I should have looked at the changing predicted trajectory in orbital map view rather than the proper game screen. Lots of delta-v wasted on lowering solar orbit too much, 335 m/s will be needed to correct this error.

With less than half of its fuel left the Jigoku is now on a good trajectory for aerobraking at Eve. It will need some adjustement as you should never aerobrake at lower than 70 km on Eve when comming from Kerbin. I forgot what the exact best altitude is but it's 70-something. Unlike with Duna though a few kilometer error in aerobraking altitude is less severe on Eve.

Eve lore. Nice reference to the whole Venus is a sister planet thing

Eve's atmosphere is 90 kilometers tall, the lore already spoiled the most important implication of that fact, the ridiculous atmospheric pressure. Also the 1,7 gees of gravity at sea level, speaking of seas Eve has those. According to what the devs said of resource mining-related chemistry, Eve's oceans are a wonderful slurry of the Kerbal equivalent of Hydrocarbons (Petronium? Forgot the name) mixed with equally lovely radioactive Blutonium which heats them up via radioactive decay.

The initial trajectory entered from the radial-in side of Eve's orbit, which was bad since I want to land on Gilly which orbits east-wards like all celestial bodies in the game. Luckily I noticed this in time and spent around 200 m/s of delta-v on changing my trajectory. Much better than reversing it in low orbit. Eve's low orbit velocity is just around 4000 m/s, so that's 8 km/s for a full reverse.

Anyway 78 km seems to be enough, possibly too little but at least not too much. Sure the crew would survive the emergency landing unlike on Duna with the Firestar-1, but they would pretty much be forced to establish a permanent Kipponese colony there.

Engage dramatic animu aerobraking music:

Just 50 kilometers above the atmosphere, entry will happen any second now.

Aerobraking periapsis reached, no re-entry effects so far which means that the Jigoku is definitely not at risk of crashing down. Also in hindsight I know I should have named the ship Evengerion, but that pun came to me after the mission was already in progress. Major derp on my part.

Hooray for forgetting to do screenshots. Here's what happened, the dip into atmo was too shallow, as a result I turned the ship around and burned off about 70 liters of fuel (assuming the fuel unit given is in liters). End result is a very unusual orbit with a high as fuck apoapsis but the import thing is not a whole lot of fuel was used for the emergency burn and that the ship didn't crash into Eve.

The probe is dispatched, it will continue along its current orbit doing aerobraking passes at 78km until it deorbits itself over some solid land. Don't want to land precious Jakanese electronics in a radioactive rocket fuel soup.

The orbiter and lander will raise their periapsis not to dip into atmo again.

From there the Gaijin kerbonauts will work on a Gilly interception trajectory. Simple enough however the aerobraking left the ship at a fucked up inclination so at least 480 m/s of delta-v will go into matching orbital planes with Gilly and getting a rendezvous.

The probe is close to completing its second aerobraking pass, including the one it did when it was still connected to the Jigoku.

Judging by the maneuver node the trajectory changed by around 100 m/s of velocity during the pass.

Still considering how high the apoapsis of that orbit was the change is rather significant cutting orbital path length by two.

Before the probe swings around for a next aerobraking pass and possibly a landing attempt, the Jigoku orbiter finishes final orbital alignment corrections and establishes a clear Gilly interception trajectory. Turns out that I had to spend less than 500 m/s of delta-v on getting to Gilly.

Still Gilly is on a very high orbit around Eve close to where its SoI ends. which means that it will take another 4 days for the crew to reach the space potato or rather poteto as the people of Jakan call it.

Spoiler

Probe will pass just above some major land mass on this pass. Flight control gives the go for descent, probe will lower its periapsis to 50 kilometers which will hopefully put it on a sub-orbital trajectory landing somewhere away from the toxic silver seas.

KAMIKAZE officials eagerly await the results of the maneuver.

Final trajectory periapsis is 5 km lower, it is deemed acceptable by KAMIKAZE flight control.

Engage de-orbiting music:

At 65 km re-entry plasma accumulates.

21 seconds later the plasma nearly completely envelopes the robotic craft.

Trajectory lowering rapidly, atmospheric drag greater than predicted, new landing site is predicted to be in the alien sea. Emergency retrograde burn begun.

The good news is that velocity is now just 2000 m/s, the bad new is that unless the probe loses a lot of velocity fast it will probably still fall into the ocean.

At least it's not any of the japanophile bros that will take a bath in the glow-in-the-dark sludge. They should seriously make that sea glow in the dark slightly.

23 second later the probe deploys its parachute, while there is still plasma in front of it. Thankfully these are asbestos parachutes.



Half of the fuel is gone, velocity is down to 800 m/s.

Success! Predicted impact site is now on the shore, it will move further inland as the parachutes and atmosphere slow down the probe.

Doing some science in atmo before the probe lands.

Default message here as well for the thermometer. Notice that the temperature at 20km altitude is above 20 degrees Celsius.

Surprise, the baromether does have a unique report text here! Also decent amount of science which only has a 40% data loss rate.

It appears Eve's atmosphere can be used as a cleaning or polishing solution. Fascinating.

Closer to the surface the true face of Eve reveals itself, 3,4 bars of pressure at 2,6km above sea level. Not Venus' 90-something bars but still a fucking lot. With strong gravity and ridiculous amounts of gas generating atmospheric drag Eve is nearly impossible to return from after landing on its surface.

Nearly because ridiculous amounts of asparagus staging (so much that the first stage gets drained in about 4 seconds!), min-maxing, meta-gaming and optimization can produce a craft capable of doing it, if you land on a 4 km tall or higher mountain, and only send a single kerbal in a command seat up (a pod is after all a few hundred kg heavier). With a pod my closest to orbit Eve return lander had a mass of 100 tons and required a 1000 ton lifter to get it just to LKO. And that still was like 100 m/s of delta-v short of Eve orbit when launched from its surface. Needless to say I have given up on doing Eve return landers months ago, maybe once they add balloons as those would make it much easier while still difficult.

Well at least frostbite is not a threat on Eve.

The single large parachute (a newly unlocked part) is enough to slow down the probe's fall to 3,6 m/s. Landing on Eve is the easy part as even despite the gravity the large amount of gas makes parachutes very effective.

First I send the atmospheric data back. Transmission rates aren't too good but they beat going back with the experiments to Kerbin.

Goo text needs more love.

Materials bay hogs it all for itself. One thing I would like to see on Eve is fog or very thick clouds, those are somewhere on the to implement list along with weather effects in general, but I'm not sure when they will work on adding those. In such an extreme place you could have outright metal weather, with constant thunderstorms while radioactive rocket fuel rain falls from clouds.

Nearly 4,1 bars at about 1400 meters above sea level. This is about similar to atmospheric pressure on Titan actually. Would be cool to have a moon like Titan in the game, low gravity with lots of atmosphere, you could get halfway into orbit using propellers. Once they hopefully add those.

Spoiler

Not sure how Eve has supposedly such extremes in temperature, especially at the equator. It makes sense on airless bodies but an atmosphere should flatten temperature amplitude.

I send the data back. I actually repeat the goo and materials bay experiments and send them back again after that as well. The way transmission loss works at the moment, is that you can still drain the total science pool for an experiment case using it, and still gain the same amount as for doing all returns. So this probe could drain every bit of science for all experiments it can do at its location.

It's just that it involves a shitload of clicking due to both diminishing returns and transmission loss accumulating. And also you can't do it enough while falling through atmo and under similar time constraints. Hopefully they will split the pool for some experiments into one just for transmitting data and one for recovering it so that experiment return is better, because it makes no sense for some experiments to give you all the science they can by just sending back data through the antenna.

That is the biggest issue with the science system at the moment, although not the only one. Still this is a WIP and both the system and the tree will be modified over time, with some of the changes and tweaks coming soon as they're already being worked on. The system overall is not bad for a first iteration.

BTW this is how the landing site look at noon, as the previous images were taken during either sunrise or sunset. Looks like it landed on some kind of sand or something, regular rocky terrain on Eve is darker. This one though...

IS FABULOUS!

Meanwhile the Jigoku reached Gilly, time to begin an orbital dance with the space potato and land the potetomassha. Cue ballroom music:

Gilly is so small that the orbital velocity after getting into orbit around it is about 38 km/h. The genetically engineered felines known as the cheetah could easily orbit it if they started sprinting, not sure about Usain Bolt.

Based on the stats I decide that the most courageous member of the crew will go down in the lander. Which was kind of a derp moment as he already landed on the Mun. It's called dumb luck for a reason I guess.

Ashery gets into the lander and begins maneuvering to prepare for descent. This thing is as small and light as possible and uses a pair of the second weakest engines in the game. Well third weakest if you count the ion engine, with which you can actually land and take off from Gilly. Gravity here is just 0,005 gees at the surface.

Only 9 m/s needed to slow down for descent. With Gilly you need to be careful, it has a highly irregular shape and rotates fairly fast, so suddenly you may smack into a 6 kilometer high mountain. Hence it is best to land on the day side and do so by falling straight down from about 20 km, rather than a more gentle descent from a lower altitude. Delta-v costs are negligible here anyway, so the efficiency of the descent trajectory is not so important in this case, unlike on the Mun where you want to go in shallow and burn nearly at the last moment possible.

Not sure if the water is boiling, the oxygen is leaking, Ashery is farting or if the engines are running. Whatever it is Ashery seems to like it.

Predicted landing site is in the middle of the day side, looks good so far.

As I said the space potato is quite irregular in its shape, it is deceptively dangerous if you forget about the fact that it does rotate around. Gilly is the smallest celestial body currently in the game, outside of Minmus there are two other such small rocks you can visit. Similar to Gilly those are probably captured asteroids.

Surface rocks become visible so it seems the lander is close to the surface. Important tip, usually the velocity display changes to surface mode when you're close to the surface of a body automatically, it doesn't do that on Gilly. So you have to change it manually or else it displays your orbital velocity and you notice you somehow are not falling straight down when you should.

IVA view, according to the instruments Ashery is losing about 10 meters of altitude each second and the surface is slightly over a kilometer below him.

Grabbing some goo science before landing.

The surface is pretty close. Slowing down below 2 m/s.

Radar altimeter shows 120 meters to surface.

Just a few more meters now.

Success!

Spoiler

Not surprising considering the negligible effect of gravity here. Still quite a bit of science!

Default message.

Duh, no atmosphere.

Crew reports need more love.

EVA ones don't at least not in the case of surface EVA ones, also there's a typo here. Grappling hooks would be a nice thing to have, I think they used those for one of the asteroid probe landing missions. You need to be careful since the gravity is so low you may bounce a bit and tip over or in extreme cases if your descent speed is too much even bounce back into orbit.

270 science! Also Ashery should have just used a lid to cover that container.

I think he tried to plant that flag a bit too forcefully.

It appears that for no apparent reason the lander started tipping over, very slowly.

Dramatic music as the tragedy unfolds in seemingly slow motion:

Ashery tries to fly underneath the lander to push it up before it falls. BTW 9 seconds have passed since the last image, that's how slow it tips over in 0,005 g.

Of course he derped and overshot, before he could decelerate he hit the surface and rolled bouncing off it for a while. Clearly Ashery was the right man for the job!

Still he eventually reached the lander and it didn't suffer any damage, it was a 0,005 g at least twelve seconds long fall after all. Worst thing that could have happened would be the lander falling on the side where the door is. I'm not sure how I would push it back up if that happened. Well you could pick it up since it weighs like 16 kg in this gravity, but such functionality is not in the game.

Rotating it back up was no problem once Ashery go in, the pod has a lot of torque and I activated RCS thrusters to help as well. Enough of poteto mashingu for today.

After establishing a low orbit a rendezvous is planned so that Ashery can dock all this juicy science with the Jigoku. 400 meters is a very acceptable distance, the burn will take a laughable 2,7 m/s from the landers delta-v budget.

So long space potato!

I fucked up a burn and it went horribly right, the erroneous trajectory takes me 200 meters closer to the Jigoku than the planned one.

A whopping 2 m/s of relative velocity, even an obese kwan gaijin could walk this fast!

:patriot:

I get the lander closer.

To make things easier the Jigoku rotates to face the lander with its docking port. The lander itself is parked about 30 meters away.

Also forgot to get crew reports from the Jigoku, should have done these around Eve but whatever. Yes, you can land on Gilly using the EVA rocketpack and get back into orbit, you can also do that on Minmus. But I needed to take the science parts there somehow so that was out of the question. Also as I said before rendezvous with a Kerbal in EVA is hard because you don't see the navball nor can you plan manuevers.

JoKa goes on a stroll in space.

Spoiler

It turned out I put the RCS thruster incorrectly on the lander and had trouble docking.

The result was that I had no lateral motion control in one of the three axes with RCS in docking mode, but the important thing was I had it in the one corresponding to the front of the docking port. Basically I couldn't move up/down at the same time as left/right, so I had to rotate by 90 degrees around my front-back axis.

Yes I know, movement in 3D space is teh hard.

After about two minutes of derping I finally dock, it appears that I have yet much to learn if I am to reach finnish sauna guru docking skill level. Lots of fuel left in the lander about 80%, so I pump it back into the orbiter.

Ashery undocks the lander and throws away the now empty tank along with the rest of the propulsion and landing section.

Docking back with all the vital and still useful parts took a lot less time. 324 liters of fuel to finish this mission and get back home. I remain optimistic and decide not to send an emergency fuel tank. Hopefully that won't be needed.

The Jigoku has left Gilly orbit and entered a high Eve orbit. Orbital period is about 4 days and 20 hours, this is an important detail as it means I need to time warp to a few days before the transfer window to plan the maneuver. If I overshoot the warp I may end up in a situation where I can't do a transfer burn until 3 or 4 days after the optimal time to do so, which will result in a bigger delta-v cost for a return to Kerbin.

I warp to 2 days 21 hours before the transfer window, which meant I overshot it as I was supposed to warp to 5 days before it. However I realised it went horribly right, as with a nearly 5 day orbital period 2 days and 21 hours is about half the orbits duration. So basically I did not miss the point of my orbit when I will have the proper ejection angle. Ejection angle is important, a fucked up ejection angle is why I had to do that 300 m/s correction burn after doing the LKO burn.

About 55% of the fuel got burned but the 500 m/s burn is done and the craft is going back to Kerbin. Note that the delta-v cost to get from Eve's orbital altitude to Kerbin's is about 80 m/s, that 420 is the cost of escaping Eve despite already being on a rather high orbit. Eve is a clingy bitch with its high gravity, huge size and all that.

A correction burn puts me on a 29 km aerobraking altitude trajectory.

Not sure if I raised it or some error accumulated due to time warp. The latter happens sometimes, but predicting trajectories as accurately as in KSP doesn't happen in real life due to various inaccuracies, so treat it not as a bug but as a feature.

Less than 1000 kilometers from the surface. Overall this mission was 170 days long.

Re-entry begins.

It intensifies. I forgot about adding those winglets but in the end it seems like I didn't need them.

31 kilometers was too deep to get into orbit around Kerbin first. Oh well, hopefully it won't land in the sea, again.

Turned the ship around and detached the return capsules from all the junk that can safely crash into some gaijin cows.

Dark as hell but I can see a lake and some mountains in the distance, so I guess the crew is falling away from the sea for a change.

Perfect landing amongst some Kerbin trees, everything is intact. Time to cash in the science.

Spoiler

The Eve probe got me about 500 science, not bad considering transmission data loss although I did redo some of the experiments on the surface. Apparently getting an Eve surface sample and returning it is the single biggest science gain in the game at the moment.

90 science from returning the craft that landed on Gilly isn't bad, nearly 1600 total now let's get some new parts.

I unlocked the landing gear and probe legs, after which I unlocked this new one granting drogue parachutes and heavy landing legs. Both are very useful for landing really heavy landers, the next mission will most certainly use at least the parachutes.

Got the final tech in building bigger rockets, they ain't gonna get bigger now. Obviously these will be used to lift even bigger Kipponese ships into orbit.

Unlocked a new antenna and the seismometer. It revealed a node which I think grants RTGs. Those are an infinite source of power that works all the time, doesn;t have a whole lot of power output though so panels and batteries are better for power hungry things. Although in real life RTG power output decays over time, decades to be precise. The Voyager probe for example is saving power usage but its RTG will decay too much in another 15 years IIRC. Still they're very good in the outer system.

The other revealed node unlocks two endgame science sensors. An atmospheric analysis sampler thing which used to be the old avionics package, and the gravioli sensor which measures gravity strength. The latter can be used in space and its results are biome-sensitive so its a very good sensor, but at this point the science from it wouldn't be of much use although I will get it for fluff probably. Maybe in the future surplus science could be converted into prestige or something.

I unlock the LV-N aka the NERVA or atomic engine. It is pretty much mandatory if I want to go beyond Duna or Eve and get back. It's fairly heavy, but considering it cuts down fuel consumption in vacuum by half for the delta-v it produces interplanetary ships using it end up being smaller.

I unlock more spaceplane parts since I have spare change. They should really add electric propellers, there is really no point in researching plane parts as far as getting science is concerned, apart from one instance.

Some wing parts, small nose cones and adapters. IMO they should just replace wing section parts with procedural wings, there's a mod that does those fairly well, although it has some issues which I think the devs could fix if they made their own version.

A structural pylon, ramscoop air intake and the better of the two jet engines in the game. I may end up getting these eventually, but not yet since I'm all out of science.

I think that overall, depending of course how the next missions go, I can unlock the rest of the tree in 4-6 missions. It is possible to do it in less but the focus will be on planting some new flags and showing you more of the system at the same time. Also I don't want to abuse the obvious exploits, more fun this way.

Also Gilly lore, yes I forgot about it earlier so I did a shot after the missions from the tracking station.

Quite small as you can see, it has a 13 km radius.

Next mission is pretty obvious, it will be the Firestar-3 as Duna can't get away with shaming the land of the blossoming cherry, rising sun and tentacle rape. Flag planting imperialism is coming its way. I could go elsewhere but its easier to land on Duna first KAMIKAZE honor demands Duna gets flagged.

The next mission will definitely not use so many damn images.