Category Archive: News

What's going on at the Kerbal Space Agency

Jul 25 2022

To Be Continued…?

This was supposed to be an update to continue the KSA plot but that was when I was considering returning to this project later this year. Now I don’t think I am.

The original plan last year was to take a few months off. Then a few months turned into a year. I moved twice in that time before finally ending up homeless just last month. This wasn’t an unforeseen development however so I’ve been able to pack all my things away into a 10×15′ storage unit that I now live out of. I can’t sleep there though so I have a tent pitched in my friend’s backyard and have been sleeping there the past month. I have recently acquired a conversion van from another friend who built it into a live-in vehicle.

This all sounds pretty depressing but what I’m actually doing is by choice to save money since I refuse to participate in this bonkers housing and rental market. Despite having good credit and no debt, I’m currently not making enough to afford $800-1000 (at least) in rent or even more for a mortgage when I factor in food, gas, monthly subscriptions, etc.

I could work more I guess, but I’m far from bored. I’ve got countless TV shows and movies to catch up on, 2-3 years of magazine back-issues across 12 subscriptions, an entire library of Star Wars books to read (never read some of them and never read all of them straight through in order) – the one and only thing I cannot do is setup my desktop computer. And I don’t feel like getting a third job (the other two I have are both part-time) to make enough money for a house to just use my desktop. Plus I have two more big 30+ day road trips to save up for and execute as well.

So the KSA remains in limbo for the foreseeable future. Good news is that I spent the months following the operations pause doing a full review of the entire KSA history – I made sure I know what major plot points are still open, took note of any plot holes I managed to introduce (not too many, all things considered *pats self on back*), technical/factual mistakes, went through the Ops Tracker and made a lot of fixes to mission details and consistent presentation and compiled a full timeline of how the Monolith has affected things for the KSA. I’ve also done a full review of every post and page on the website to ensure that all formatting is consistent and to find and fix any plot flaws/typos. So the entire project up to the pause in Feb 2021 is in pristine shape to serve as a historic reference for anything that happened to the KSA during that time (I am really annoyed about the lack of future support for embedded timelines tho).

I also know what happened to cause the KSA to pause operations and what’s been going on in the time since. I’ve already made plans for plots to introduce the new planetary terrain and scatter system as well as the volumetric clouds that are being worked on for KSP1. I even know what to do for a transition from KSP1 to KSP2. Arrowstar is still working on improving and expanding his launch and mission planning tool, there’s finally good support for rocket sounds and plumes and let’s not forget about that weather modeling system. Plenty of cool things for me to come back to – eventually!

Of course, plans can continue to change but I feel it’s finally time to post something for an update. Hopefully in time I will have the opportunity to resume this project where I left off. Thanks to everyone who has followed along over the years.

Oh and if anyone is annoyed that I left my Patreon active this entire time know that I made $0 from it – all proceeds went to LinuxGuruGamer to ensure all the mods I relied on remained updated.

Feb 12 2021

Operations Summary – Weeks of 2/1 & 2/8/21

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Jan 29 2021

Operations Summary – Weeks of 1/18 & 1/25/21

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Jan 28 2021

Progeny Mk6 Block II Flight 4 Analysis

The Block II was brought back into service after what was thought to be its final flight back in 2019 in order to carry up some payloads for the Kerbal Sounding Project. While 4 Mk6 Block I rockets handled the launch of KSP instruments in 2019, this past year’s program wanted to give the student builders the opportunity to send their designs higher than before aboard the Block II. Despite the buyout of USI enough surplus parts remained to construct the rocket and the new owner Luciole was able to produce more on demand if needed – which was good because it was needed when during wet dress rehearsal an equipment malfunction on the fuel truck caused an explosion that damaged the rocket.

The mission was pushed into this year while new solid rocket motors were manufactured to replace the ones that were damaged by shrapnel. Thankfully the final stage was high enough to escape harm as that would have been more costly and time-consuming to replace. Once repaired it was rolled out again, WDR this time went without a hitch and favorable weather on launch day posed no further delays.

The Flight

It was a beautiful night to again see this rocket soar up into the sky with a huge tail of flame shooting out from the 5 solid rocket motors that had ignited to push it off the pad with 135kN of thrust at 6Gs, keeping the nose high. The 4 radial boosters burned out after only 6s and fell away cleanly as the core booster continued to burn and accelerate the rocket through Mach 1 less than 10s into the flight. The sonic boom rippled across the grounds at KSC.

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Jan 22 2021

Kerbin II Mission Analysis

In the months following our first orbital mission, which came very close to failing, lots of work was done on the Ascension Mk2 to make it more capable of reaching orbit. The result was a success on our second attempt, which placed the Kerbin II satellite into a stable and nearly circular orbit 191x228km@26° above Kerbin. Now that the hardest part of the mission was done, it was time to begin our first long-term operation of a spacecraft on orbit.

The Mission

The main goals of the mission in addition to telecom testing was just to see how the spacecraft fared over several weeks in space, in regards to things such as wear on its equipment to the stability of its orbit. It was equipped with two main antennas that each by themselves could get a strong signal to the ground for the transmission of science & telecom data and a tertiary backup antenna which could get enough of a signal to send & receive commands. This meant that potential loss of the satellite due to communications issues was unlikely. The probe core was constructed better than that of Kerbin I so although it remained a single point of failure it was at least robust. Whether the science instruments would last several weeks of space radiation exposure was also a question. Finally, scientists were still unsure if the 70km boundary to the atmosphere was “hard” or “fuzzy” – could an orbit remain stable or was there enough drag to gradually bring a spacecraft back down into the more well-defined atmosphere?

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Jan 15 2021

Operations Summary – Weeks of 1/4 & 1/11/21

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Dec 18 2020

Operations Summary – Weeks of 12/7 & 12/14/20

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Dec 04 2020

Operations Summary – Weeks of 11/23 & 11/30/20

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Nov 20 2020

Operations Summary – Weeks of 11/9 & 11/16/20

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Nov 19 2020

Progeny Mk7-B Flight 4 Analysis

With all three previous missions failing for different reasons, the fourth and final planned mission for the Mk7-B received new objectives in the hope that this mission would be successful at last. The first change was to swap out the new booster for one that had been refurbished from a previous flight, which necessitated a launch delay that pushed the date back from 10/20 to 10/29. This booster was from the second Mk7-B flight back in late August and would be the first time we attempt to re-fly an engine. On the opposite end of the rocket we swapped out the parachute nose cone for a payload fairing that encapsulated a new Luciole smallsat prototype. This would be deployed onto the sub-orbital trajectory to test its systems and reaction wheels. Recovery would be of only the first stage booster and RTG casing from the payload, which did not contain any radioactive material for this mission. Other than the delay for booster integration, no problems occurred in the lead-up to launch.

The Flight

After good retraction of the support arms at T-5s the Boostertron II solid rocket motor successfully ignited for an on-time launch at 13:45 local, pushing the rocket upwards off the pad with an initial force of 3.3Gs while the fins actuated to begin rolling the rocket from 90° towards 34°. Less than 2 seconds after launch it had spun enough to allow pitch-over to begin as well, with the flight computer guiding it along a gradual and constant change rate throughout the ascent. By L+10s the rocket had locked onto its heading and thrust from the SRB had already begun to taper off from its max 74kN to reduce loads on the rocket as it approached Mach 1.

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