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In Progress Let's Play Kerbal Space Program with Real Sol
- Thread starter Cassidy
- Start date
Cassidy
Arcane
I can't switch to 1.1 in this without losing all the progress here and I'd rather try Realistic Progression Zero with the the new 64 bits version of the game because the vanilla Career mode and tech tree really suck with the Real Solar System.
It still have one more update ready, by the way.
=========================
Dawn of Lunacorp
Theme
There was one final chance for the third moon landing under the management of Morgan Interstellar to not go wrong, a risky move.
It was either it or certain death. Using the doors from the service bay to lift it up was the only option now.
IT WORKED!
Now, to return to Earth in another triumphant lunar mission.
But there was another huge problem... they were running out of life support. They had to return to Earth, and quick.
Will this troublesome mission end in disaster now that it is so close to the end? Fortunately the emergency supplies of oxygen, food and water should last a few more hours, hopefully long enough for a successful reentry, because the deceleration towards it will require more than one orbit due to the low thrust to weight ratio of the Xu-4 final nuclear engine.
The life support recycler and crew bunks were ejected from the reentry module. They were still hanging on emergency life support as the reentry began.
No big problems happened so far. Almost there.
Hellraiser, Alienman and Suicidal Meat Slapper will live! Hooray!
While the financial rewards from this mission were dubious at best, the scientific ones were not. With the new discoveries gathered from the Xu-4, soon there will be a new important step towards the dream of making outer space into a new and highly profitable frontier, a dream which will soon become real.
First, of course, no longer being able to operate experimental nuclear engines, Morgan Interstellar had to develop their own atomic propulsion, and their extreme efficiency would be essential for all the heavy cargo transportation building refineries and colonies on the Moon would require. Meanwhile, the transfer window to Mercury was about to happen, and an already orbiting vessel over Earth would start its long burn towards the closest planet to the Sun.
Reaching Mercury is very expensive and complicated. Unless the Mercurial Prospector finds extremely rich veins of materials that are extremely rare on Earth, its economic usefulness will be zero. Planets closer to the Sun should have wealthier mineral deposits, right?
It will take several months before the Prospector reaches its destination.
Meanwhile a new, supposedly safer vessel for space tourism is developed. Its track record however ends disappointingly dangerous despite no actual tragedies happening to the point that space tourism takes a backseat until a safer design can be made.
But there was a problem, a really big problem.
The game glitched some orbits under time warp so that encounter with Mercury was lost.
PS: I will never use HyperEdit to cheat, I had to use it here because I lost the previous encounter with Mercury due to a game bug.
This Mercurial Prospector was designed to do a lot more than just a flyby. It has enough Delta-V to orbit and perhaps even land on Mercury, the latter being particularly tricky due to the massive signal lag.
Then the very long burns using increasingly smaller low thrust and high efficiency nuclear engines ended in a very, very big problem: The Mercurial Prospector is a on crash course! With a lag of over 11 minutes, this could be the end of this mission, mapping only a fraction of the planet.
Phew, that was a close one, and just in time because soon Mercury would stay between the probe and Earth, causing a signal loss. Sadly, landing is not an option at this point. Too risky. Instead, the Prospector will maneuver towards a polar orbit, optimal for mapping the entire planet.
Now it's only a matter of waiting. This was more than just a mission, however. The Mercurial Prospector is the First Satellite to Orbit Mercury in the entire human history of space exploration(ridiculous revisionism like "WE WUZ KANGZ AND SHEEEIT" notwithstanding)
Funnily they wanted it done again. More money is always good.
The discoveries on Mercury and the learning from the mistakes of the Xu-4 in life support management paved the way for the development of a truly closed cycle life support system, capable of supporting long term habitation of any celestial body with some water and mineral substrate available to be extracted, and that includes the Moon and many asteroids, although asteroids are more far away. With this final breakthrough, now everything is in place for commencing the colonization of Luna. Therefore, a new branch of Morgan Industries is about to be created:
Lunacorp. Their headquarters will actually be orbiting the Moon, and will also serve as the heart of an orbital station that will serve as a logistical center for the manned colonization of the Moon, necessary because there is no way to automate the very profitable business of uranium enrichment without annoying UN inspectors or governments to meddle with corporate affairs that are totally not about building weapons of mass destruction in outer space.
Of course, this won't be cheap at all. Sending modules for a Lunar Space Station will have a high price, but the potentially astronomical Return on Investment is there and it will happen once this expensive project is finally concluded. Without nuclear technology, such a rocket would be even more heavy and massive, or several, more expensive separate launches would be needed instead of sending the entire core of the Lunacorp Station in a single mission.
For very heavy payloads, solid rockets are more cost effective than liquid fuel engines with enough thrust to lift them off the ground.
The inflatable(and totally safe, really) amenity area with "artificial gravity" is set at the edges of Earth atmosphere. Beneath it lies a very spacious and lightweight inflatable supply depot, and there is a docking port just beneath such depot for supplying missions to dock with and resupply the Lunacorp HQ until it can become more self-sufficient and require only shipments of raw substrate and water from the surface of the Moon, which will can be sent to orbit using much more lightweight and cheaper vessels. For the future, there are plans of adding a module capable of constructing spacecrafts in the orbit of the Moon connected with Lunacorp HQ, receiving metals mined from the Moon for such production, something that will revolutionize and expand the frontiers of human space travel forever, but that is still a long way to go.
Trans-lunar injection succeeds. The currently unmanned station will be put in a circular and equatorial lunar orbit around 200 kilometers of altitude. If necessary it will be a higher orbit to prevent orbital decay caused by the uneven distribution of gravity on the Moon(it's not necessary because KSP doesn't simulate that).
With plenty of fuel left, maneuvers to get the orbit as close to the lunar equator as possible are made.
Lunacorp HQ is ready. The cupola is facing the surface of the Moon from where, once it is manned, its crew can observe it. The upper docking port is conveniently positioned to receive future supplies, while in the middle of it there are four docking ports on each direction to link with new modules and expand the station, including more reliable and larger solar panels. For now, developing infrastructure on the surface of the Moon will be a higher priority. This is also another first ever for Morgan Interstellar: the first lunar space station of mankind.
Sadly Mercury proves to be disappointingly resource-poor. Poorer than the Moon in fact, which means there won't be economical pursuits in such planet, only an eventual manned mission for prestige and science.
Wheels and a ridiculous SAS module. Why not? Furthermore:
The first step towards the colonization of the Moon, towards making Lunacorp a real corporation under the umbrella of Morgan Industries, is to locate the optimal location for its capital. Preferably close to the equator where the Lunacorp HQ will be more easily reached, and somewhere with all the resources necessary for a self-sufficient lunar colony with Uranium mining and enrichment as its primary economic activity and not too far away from metal ores that could be used to construct spacecraft that don't need to deal with the gravity well of Earth: somewhere close to water, substrate, uraninite, ore and metallic ores. Analysis of survey data has indicated a few interesting candidates. A rover with more accurate land surveying tools will be sent to one of them. But it will be more than a simple unmanned rover: it will be a manned logistical tender(AKA Big Moon Truck) with everything to allow an engineer to drive it around the Moon, transport important supplies and resources between bases when needed and perform all kinds of maintenance and construction works once the Lunar colony has its first inhabitants.
It's a big truck being sent towards the surface of the Moon. Predictably it requires a really big rocket.
A big truck strapped to a really big rocket. Not as cool and cheap as strapping a Reliant Robin to a Rocket, but definitively cheaper than putting the big truck inside a container, and when cost saving measures are branded cool it's good for PR.
The optimal LZ for the big truck is there. It is near all the important resources for lunar colonization. The landing procedure is... clever.
The lander legs only exist to ensure the truck will land with its wheels on the ground. Here goes nothing.
First landing of a big truck on the Moon deserves a place in the records, supposing this doesn't go wrong.
It worked out, mostly. One of the wheels didn't survive the landing because of bad luck, but it is still working, sort of. Its current location is still far from the actual designated area for the future base, however. Driving a RC truck on the Moon, one second lag, low gravity, slopes, should be FUN.
Minerals will be essential for building space stuff in space. This isn't the optimal location, but the chosen LZ is located near multiple different biomes, relatively close to every useful resource, including of course water and substrate.
There couldn't be a better place for establishing a lunar colony. Every resource can be extracted relatively close to it. Driving on the Moon however, specially with a truck that big, requires caution, because any mistake could make it flip, crash or worse.
Having some Ore will be important for the core of the lunar colony because Ore can be converted into rocket fuel, and being able to refuel spacecraft from Earth on the Moon will be a very important first step towards expanding the distances that can be reached with modern space technology and reducing costs for long distance space travel through the solar system. The Logistics Rover mission isn't over, in fact it's only beginning. It will be used for a lot more than surveying the optimal location for the future colony, as hinted by the winches, storage areas and fuel lines it has. Meanwhile, there is a contract to put a space station on Earth's orbit, which could be useful too.
The MCSS will be eventually become much more grandiose and impressive than the ISS. Using a similar core to the Lunacorp HQ, it is being considered for Space Tourism mostly. There are plans to, in the future, send modules with Novelty Zero-G Luxury Casinos, Shopping Centers, Hotels and Resorts in Earth's Orbit, a Heaven for the wealthy and influential of Africa, Europe, America, Asia and Oceania.
But for now the Lunar Project will take priority. This is how Lunacorp was born, "small" steps first. The site for the first Human colony on the Moon is already chosen, but there will be many more space flights to be done before the corporate mission of Morgan Lunacorp can start to become a reality, and the massive wealth of the cosmos can be tapped to make people like CEO Nwabudike Morgan even more astronomically rich than they already were.
TO BE CONTINUED
It still have one more update ready, by the way.
=========================
Dawn of Lunacorp
Theme
There was one final chance for the third moon landing under the management of Morgan Interstellar to not go wrong, a risky move.
It was either it or certain death. Using the doors from the service bay to lift it up was the only option now.
IT WORKED!
Now, to return to Earth in another triumphant lunar mission.
But there was another huge problem... they were running out of life support. They had to return to Earth, and quick.
Will this troublesome mission end in disaster now that it is so close to the end? Fortunately the emergency supplies of oxygen, food and water should last a few more hours, hopefully long enough for a successful reentry, because the deceleration towards it will require more than one orbit due to the low thrust to weight ratio of the Xu-4 final nuclear engine.
The life support recycler and crew bunks were ejected from the reentry module. They were still hanging on emergency life support as the reentry began.
No big problems happened so far. Almost there.
Hellraiser, Alienman and Suicidal Meat Slapper will live! Hooray!
While the financial rewards from this mission were dubious at best, the scientific ones were not. With the new discoveries gathered from the Xu-4, soon there will be a new important step towards the dream of making outer space into a new and highly profitable frontier, a dream which will soon become real.
First, of course, no longer being able to operate experimental nuclear engines, Morgan Interstellar had to develop their own atomic propulsion, and their extreme efficiency would be essential for all the heavy cargo transportation building refineries and colonies on the Moon would require. Meanwhile, the transfer window to Mercury was about to happen, and an already orbiting vessel over Earth would start its long burn towards the closest planet to the Sun.
Reaching Mercury is very expensive and complicated. Unless the Mercurial Prospector finds extremely rich veins of materials that are extremely rare on Earth, its economic usefulness will be zero. Planets closer to the Sun should have wealthier mineral deposits, right?
It will take several months before the Prospector reaches its destination.
Meanwhile a new, supposedly safer vessel for space tourism is developed. Its track record however ends disappointingly dangerous despite no actual tragedies happening to the point that space tourism takes a backseat until a safer design can be made.
But there was a problem, a really big problem.
The game glitched some orbits under time warp so that encounter with Mercury was lost.
PS: I will never use HyperEdit to cheat, I had to use it here because I lost the previous encounter with Mercury due to a game bug.
This Mercurial Prospector was designed to do a lot more than just a flyby. It has enough Delta-V to orbit and perhaps even land on Mercury, the latter being particularly tricky due to the massive signal lag.
Then the very long burns using increasingly smaller low thrust and high efficiency nuclear engines ended in a very, very big problem: The Mercurial Prospector is a on crash course! With a lag of over 11 minutes, this could be the end of this mission, mapping only a fraction of the planet.
Phew, that was a close one, and just in time because soon Mercury would stay between the probe and Earth, causing a signal loss. Sadly, landing is not an option at this point. Too risky. Instead, the Prospector will maneuver towards a polar orbit, optimal for mapping the entire planet.
Now it's only a matter of waiting. This was more than just a mission, however. The Mercurial Prospector is the First Satellite to Orbit Mercury in the entire human history of space exploration(ridiculous revisionism like "WE WUZ KANGZ AND SHEEEIT" notwithstanding)
Funnily they wanted it done again. More money is always good.
The discoveries on Mercury and the learning from the mistakes of the Xu-4 in life support management paved the way for the development of a truly closed cycle life support system, capable of supporting long term habitation of any celestial body with some water and mineral substrate available to be extracted, and that includes the Moon and many asteroids, although asteroids are more far away. With this final breakthrough, now everything is in place for commencing the colonization of Luna. Therefore, a new branch of Morgan Industries is about to be created:
Lunacorp. Their headquarters will actually be orbiting the Moon, and will also serve as the heart of an orbital station that will serve as a logistical center for the manned colonization of the Moon, necessary because there is no way to automate the very profitable business of uranium enrichment without annoying UN inspectors or governments to meddle with corporate affairs that are totally not about building weapons of mass destruction in outer space.
Of course, this won't be cheap at all. Sending modules for a Lunar Space Station will have a high price, but the potentially astronomical Return on Investment is there and it will happen once this expensive project is finally concluded. Without nuclear technology, such a rocket would be even more heavy and massive, or several, more expensive separate launches would be needed instead of sending the entire core of the Lunacorp Station in a single mission.
For very heavy payloads, solid rockets are more cost effective than liquid fuel engines with enough thrust to lift them off the ground.
The inflatable(and totally safe, really) amenity area with "artificial gravity" is set at the edges of Earth atmosphere. Beneath it lies a very spacious and lightweight inflatable supply depot, and there is a docking port just beneath such depot for supplying missions to dock with and resupply the Lunacorp HQ until it can become more self-sufficient and require only shipments of raw substrate and water from the surface of the Moon, which will can be sent to orbit using much more lightweight and cheaper vessels. For the future, there are plans of adding a module capable of constructing spacecrafts in the orbit of the Moon connected with Lunacorp HQ, receiving metals mined from the Moon for such production, something that will revolutionize and expand the frontiers of human space travel forever, but that is still a long way to go.
Trans-lunar injection succeeds. The currently unmanned station will be put in a circular and equatorial lunar orbit around 200 kilometers of altitude. If necessary it will be a higher orbit to prevent orbital decay caused by the uneven distribution of gravity on the Moon(it's not necessary because KSP doesn't simulate that).
With plenty of fuel left, maneuvers to get the orbit as close to the lunar equator as possible are made.
Lunacorp HQ is ready. The cupola is facing the surface of the Moon from where, once it is manned, its crew can observe it. The upper docking port is conveniently positioned to receive future supplies, while in the middle of it there are four docking ports on each direction to link with new modules and expand the station, including more reliable and larger solar panels. For now, developing infrastructure on the surface of the Moon will be a higher priority. This is also another first ever for Morgan Interstellar: the first lunar space station of mankind.
Sadly Mercury proves to be disappointingly resource-poor. Poorer than the Moon in fact, which means there won't be economical pursuits in such planet, only an eventual manned mission for prestige and science.
Wheels and a ridiculous SAS module. Why not? Furthermore:
The first step towards the colonization of the Moon, towards making Lunacorp a real corporation under the umbrella of Morgan Industries, is to locate the optimal location for its capital. Preferably close to the equator where the Lunacorp HQ will be more easily reached, and somewhere with all the resources necessary for a self-sufficient lunar colony with Uranium mining and enrichment as its primary economic activity and not too far away from metal ores that could be used to construct spacecraft that don't need to deal with the gravity well of Earth: somewhere close to water, substrate, uraninite, ore and metallic ores. Analysis of survey data has indicated a few interesting candidates. A rover with more accurate land surveying tools will be sent to one of them. But it will be more than a simple unmanned rover: it will be a manned logistical tender(AKA Big Moon Truck) with everything to allow an engineer to drive it around the Moon, transport important supplies and resources between bases when needed and perform all kinds of maintenance and construction works once the Lunar colony has its first inhabitants.
It's a big truck being sent towards the surface of the Moon. Predictably it requires a really big rocket.
A big truck strapped to a really big rocket. Not as cool and cheap as strapping a Reliant Robin to a Rocket, but definitively cheaper than putting the big truck inside a container, and when cost saving measures are branded cool it's good for PR.
The optimal LZ for the big truck is there. It is near all the important resources for lunar colonization. The landing procedure is... clever.
The lander legs only exist to ensure the truck will land with its wheels on the ground. Here goes nothing.
First landing of a big truck on the Moon deserves a place in the records, supposing this doesn't go wrong.
It worked out, mostly. One of the wheels didn't survive the landing because of bad luck, but it is still working, sort of. Its current location is still far from the actual designated area for the future base, however. Driving a RC truck on the Moon, one second lag, low gravity, slopes, should be FUN.
Minerals will be essential for building space stuff in space. This isn't the optimal location, but the chosen LZ is located near multiple different biomes, relatively close to every useful resource, including of course water and substrate.
There couldn't be a better place for establishing a lunar colony. Every resource can be extracted relatively close to it. Driving on the Moon however, specially with a truck that big, requires caution, because any mistake could make it flip, crash or worse.
Having some Ore will be important for the core of the lunar colony because Ore can be converted into rocket fuel, and being able to refuel spacecraft from Earth on the Moon will be a very important first step towards expanding the distances that can be reached with modern space technology and reducing costs for long distance space travel through the solar system. The Logistics Rover mission isn't over, in fact it's only beginning. It will be used for a lot more than surveying the optimal location for the future colony, as hinted by the winches, storage areas and fuel lines it has. Meanwhile, there is a contract to put a space station on Earth's orbit, which could be useful too.
The MCSS will be eventually become much more grandiose and impressive than the ISS. Using a similar core to the Lunacorp HQ, it is being considered for Space Tourism mostly. There are plans to, in the future, send modules with Novelty Zero-G Luxury Casinos, Shopping Centers, Hotels and Resorts in Earth's Orbit, a Heaven for the wealthy and influential of Africa, Europe, America, Asia and Oceania.
But for now the Lunar Project will take priority. This is how Lunacorp was born, "small" steps first. The site for the first Human colony on the Moon is already chosen, but there will be many more space flights to be done before the corporate mission of Morgan Lunacorp can start to become a reality, and the massive wealth of the cosmos can be tapped to make people like CEO Nwabudike Morgan even more astronomically rich than they already were.
TO BE CONTINUED
Last edited:
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