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Cosmonautics is an inherently dangerous endeavor. Fundamentally it is taking small and fragile creatures, encasing them in a thin aluminum can, and hurling them into the deep, black, vacuum of space atop a massive cylinder of explosives. No one within the Soviet program would ever dare categorize such a thing as “routine.” And yet, Pravda did just that in its summary of the fourth year of the new cosmic era of kerbalkind.

In only the past half of that year, a Soviet probe has landed upon the distant world of Duna, beating the Amerikanski to the red planet. Three rovers have been landed on the Mun plus seven crewed missions to the surface. Crews that had spent half a year in bases on the surfaces of the Mun and Minmus were brought home and replaced with crews to spend the next half year. The four permanent space stations in orbit had their crews similarly rotated. The Kerblikovsky Orbital Telescope has been delivering unprecedented images of deepy space. Several asteroids have been captured into Kerbin orbit and Soviet rockets have been maneuvering them into lower orbits where the will serve as the foundations of orbital industry and the expansion of space usefulness to all people.

All this without a single major incident or fatality (at least in the past year). No wonder that Pravda felt comfortable using the word “routine.” And even the Chief Designer would admit that Soviet Cosmonautics had entered something of a “middle-age” where the exploration and innovation of hits youth gave way to utilization and exploitation of adulthood. Space stations and munar bases would be expanded. Space resources would be optimized for use. New technologies would not be so much invented as perfected.

However, the next year will bring the next giant step forward. Transfer windows to every world in the solar system will open and, at the very least, probes will be sent to each of them. A crewed mission to Duna will be launched. In fact, although some of the particulars have yet to be worked out, an entire fleet of craft will be sent to Duna. Mapping satellites. Communication satellites. An orbital station. A lander with a rover.

And, in the near term, the Chief Designer has announced a New Year’s surprise.

Up until now, the munar lander concept was that of a direct return. That is, the lander ascends from the munar surface to orbit then breaks orbit and returns to Kerbin, previous versions having either a Soyuz or a VA reentry module. Both designs are heavier for having to carry things like heat shields to the munar surface and back.

The L3M is a simpler and lighter design intended to shuttle crews from the station in Munar orbit to the surface and back. Lighter and more efficient for having to only make that short trip. The early LK lander hardware was mated to a larger habitation module and attached to a descent/ascent module. This was put on a rocket for a one-way trip to the Mun. And, even better, it had been mostly constructed and ready to go when the arch sumatokha happened so it was able to launch almost immediately.

Fully automated, it arrived and docked at the Udacha Lunnaya Orbital'naya Stantsiya but then had to wait five days in orbit for the station orbit to take it over the Farside Arch.

Once landed near the arch, Comrade Engineer Andrei Yevgenyevich Kermanov immediately dropped the Control Station, breaking it. Though experienced, he was unable to repair the module. Because of that, there was a certain trepidation in allowing him to proceed with the next mission task: blowing up the arch.

Not so much “blowing it up”, but using explosives to perhaps blast away the overlying rock structure to reveal if there was an alien construction under this arch as was revealed beneath the Northwest Crater Arch.

The explosives deployed were insufficient to blast away a significant amount of stone, and thus the experiment was inconclusive.

Munakhod 9 has landed 3 km east of the East Crater Arch. Although on the far crater rim it has a good view of the arch itself and any activity the Amerikanskis might be undertaking there, nothing seems to be going on. No Amerikanski landings as yet and the arch is entirely intact.

As the Munakhod 7 was on its way to the Northwest Crater Arch, another Munakhod rover, number 8, was being fitted with a KFA-1000 high resolution camera and being prepped for launch. It’s objective would be the Farside Crater Arch. Only three hours after Munakhod 7 had taken its close-up pictures of the Arch, Munakhod 8 had launched. As the Amerikanski Mun Truck was arriving at the Northwest Crater Arch, Munakho8 was beginning its descent to landing.

Orbital observations by the Zenit 4MKM and Soyuzkarta 3M observational satellites in orbit had determined that, while the Amerikanskis had landed at the Farside Crater Arch a year before, their second generation lander craft had left nothing of consequence behind. No descent stage debris. No scientific packages. They had landed, looked around, maybe planted a flag, and left. Under the current interpretation of The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Mun, Minmus, and Other Celestial Bodies, merely having visited a site was insufficient to claim a sphere of influence. There needed to be an ongoing presence. A powered science package delivering data would accomplish this requirement. A mere flag would not.

And so, the Soviets would put a rover there to lay what claims they can.

And none of this landing kilometers away and driving closer nonsense. The Munakhod 8 landed only a few dozen meters away from the base of one leg of the arch, having to maneuver during the descent to avoid striking the arch on the way down, so precise was the terminal trajectory guidance.

The expectation is that the Amerikanskis will, in short order, begin landing rovers near the various Soviet sites to spy on them as the Soviets have been doing to them.

The Mun is like an onion. It has layers, like an onion. But, unlike an onion, those layers are different. Peel off a layer of onion and you will find another layer of onion. And, under that, more onion. All the way down. Great for making solyanka. Mmmmmm, soup. What? Oh, right. Underneath the first layer of Mun rock is, well, more rock. And under that is. . . ok. It’s more rock. But that rock is different from the rock above it. Don’t ask how, this blog is about commie spaceflight, not geology.

Anyway, because those layers are different, and gravity is a thing, they move about sometimes. And when they move, they make noise. Cosmonauts have set up several seismometers on the Mun’s surface that can hear that noise and geologists can use those noises to understand those rock layers.

Science.

Not soup.

Seismometers at the Kermangrad munbase detected a munquake. Not anything special. Something that happens all the time. That munquake was detected at the LZhM 2 and LZhM 4 munbases as well. Again, not anything special. The crews at those bases didn’t even notice that anything had happened. But the scientists analyzing the data were able to triangulate those three signals and determine that the quake had happened at or near the Northwest Crater Arch. Further analysis determined that it was not simply a munquake but one punctuated with an impact.

Impacts happen all the time on the mun. It’s why there are so, so many craters. And, like munquakes, the sounds of those impacts can be used by scientists to determine the makeup of the interior of the mun. But also, they are used to monitor Amerikanski activity as, not unlike the Soviets, Amerikanski transfer stages are often discarded and crashed into the Mun before a landing. And, as there was already an Amerikanski presence at the Northwest Crater Arch, having a discarded transfer stage impact there would not be unusual.

Except that there had been no Amerikanski launch to the Mun in the days prior.

A Zenit 4MKM observational satellite was scheduled to pass over the Northwest Crater Arch in a matter of hours and, as a matter of course, would be taking images of the arch and area because that’s what spy satellites do.

Pandemonium.

From a 15 km altitude orbit it was difficult to resolve details but it was clear that the munquake had caused the Northwest Crater Arch to break at the top revealing some sort of construction underneath. Multiple light sources could be seen, indicating some sort of power source.

If the arches were ever considered natural formations, this discovery destroyed that notion.

Even before the General Secretary was informed of this new development, there were people running up and down halls. Slamming doors. Jammed shredders. And plans being put in motion. First, was tasking the Soyuzkarta 3M in Munar equatorial orbit to observe the Amerikanski Aplha Munbase at the Kvartira to see if they had set out tom investigate the arch. If they had left, they could arrive in less than a day.

Concurrent to those mission orders, a Munakhod lander that had been in storage awaiting its specific mission to come due in the flight queue was pulled back to have a KFA-1000 high resolution camera mounted on it. An LK-540 rocket, also in storage awaiting its upcoming munbase crew rotation mission was moved up to begin preparations for launch. Informing the crew at Kermangrad to have them set out in their own rover to make for the arch was also considered, though no orders were sent, not only for operational security but also because committing to such an action would require decisions at a higher level.

By this time, images had come back from the Soyuzkarta 3M indicating that the Amerikanski’s had not yet set out from their base. It was decided that the Munakhod mission could be prepared, launched, and arrive more swiftly and securely than any of the other options.

It took less that two hours after the arrival of the first images for the Munokhod to be rolled out for launch and only a day and a half for it to arrive at the Mun and land 6 km east of the arch.

In the dark.

The most recent iterations of the Munakhod rover includes a Polonium-210 isotopic thermoelectric generator to ensure the vehicle has electric power, even through the cold, dark Munar nights. It did not provide a lot of power, though, so as it slowly and carefully navigated around and through rock fields, it would regularly pause to allow some time for the generator to recharge the batteries somewhat.

It took four and a half hours for the rover to reach the crest of a hill so that it could directly observe, but by then it had violated the 3 km territorial integrity convention by 700 meters, as it had been decided that obtaining the intelligence was more important than an unwritten agreement. After all, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, upon which this agreement was based, indicates that vessels are given the right of innocent passage through any territorial sea. Should the Amerikanskis challenge the incursion through diplomatic backchannels, the Munakhod could simply drive back that 700 meters. Should the Amerikanskis issue any official challenge before international courts , they would risk revealing to the world the reason for this incursion, something that neither the Amerikanskis nor the Soviets had made public as yet.

And that revelation would be significant.

Even in the dark and at a distance of several kilometers, the KFA-1000 high resolution camerac ould very clearly see what was beneath the broken stone arch.

Scientists very quickly interpreted the lights and other markings as representing the solar system. The purple light with a circle around it and a single smaller purple light clear visible represented Eve and its moon Gilly. To its left, at the very crest of the arch and still partially obscured by stone, was a large yellow light with rays as the sun Kerbol. Between them was a line, to represent the orbit of Moho, the planet’s light on the other side of the arch still covered with stone. As would be the lights that would represent Kerbin and Dres as, on the exposed arch to the right was a another light with an orbiting companion to be Duna (inexplicably orange rather than the expected red) and Ike and the very edge of a small green light to represent one of Jool’s moons.

Composition, purpose or function could not be determined.

It was at about this point that it was observed that the Amerikanski space truck had left Alpha Munbase and was proceeding northeast towards the arch. The possibility exists that when the Amerikanskis arrive, they could use force rather than diplomacy to enforce their “territorial waters,” as is their right. To avoid that, the munakhod rover rolled back down off the hill’s crest, having already gathered its vital intelligence.

Crews have tended to like the Transportnyi Korabl’ Snabzheniia for its spaciousness. At least up to now. Though the TKS has a lot of space, with most of the fuel for operations in tanks outboard, that additional interior space is usually filled with equipment and snacks for resupplying a space station (So much borscht). Even so, there is more free space than flying in a Soyuz.

The TLKS heavy version of the ship, to have enough fuel to get out to the Mun or Minmus and back, has replaced the central core with a inboard fuel tank, the aft cargo space and docking port being access through a narrow tube.

Surrounded by fuel.

Astronomers of the Astronomical Council of the Academy of Sciences reported that a massive asteroid was soon to be passing close to Kerbin. In fact, it was to pass within the orbit of the Mun.

Asteroids within the Kerbol system are very, very common, and many pass within the Kerbin sphere of influence. It is a common enough occurrence that Soviet cosmonautics has, at this point, rendezvoused with several and have captured three into Kerbin orbit, much to the chagrin of Amerikanski observers.

The difference was that this one was the largest yet encountered. Designated as Class-H, it’s mass would clock in between 77,000 and 347,000 tons. Gargantuan. However, the first craft available for an intercept would be one based on the Blok-D N1 upper stage. Entirely insufficient to affect a course change of much.

Nevertheless, it was launched because every little bit of delta-V helps. In this case helping the craft that was launched two days later, one based on at N1 Blok-V stage atop a new Energia launcher. Much more fuel, much more delta-V, larger engines.

On arrival, 11 days from launch for the first craft and two days after that for the second, they discovered that the scientists of the Academy were entirely incorrect. Instead of a massive asteroid of hundreds of thousands of tons, the rock was only about 43 meters across and massed 1,781 tons. Well within what would be expected for a Class-E asteroid.

With that smaller size, what was expected to be a “perhaps, given the trajectory, the asteroid can be captured into Kerbin orbit” mission, became a “well, that was easy” mission, bringing the apoapsis down to about midway between the orbits of Minmus and the Mun. Two more flights will be sufficient to circularize its orbit.

The Chief Designer was disappointed. Capturing a gigantskiy asteroid into Kerbin orbit was going to be the foundation of what was envisioned to be not just another space station but an actual colony. That will now need to wait.

With the rising need to efficiently move cosmonauts to and from stations and bases on a regular schedule, the Chief Designer initiated a project to develop a standard craft for those purposes. The Soyuz-TM has settled into the role for Kerbin orbit missions but it simply lacks the delta-V necessary for missions to the Mun or Minmus. There have been earlier versions of the Soyuz that have served that role, notably the Soyuz N1-LOK that had been the first munar orbital craft, but it was also lacking in delta-V.

Mathematically, it takes a dV of 860 m/s to eject from low Kermin orbit to the Mun and then 280 m/s to circularize in low Munar orbit. One could leave the Mun and return to Kerbin reentry with another 280 m/s but that ends up on a high velocity reentry (not concerning) to land in equatorial or temperate regions far from Soviet lands (more concerning). It is best to have enough delta-V to return to Kerbin orbit to then choose the precise area of landing. The design minimum for the return, having added a reasonable buffer, would be 1,400 m/s.

The Soyuz N1-LOK was the earlier craft going to and from the Mun consisting of an early Soyuz capsule with an extended Agregatniy Otsek with the N1’s Blok-D as a transfer stage. It did well enough but only had room for two cosmonauts. The design could be easily rebuilt with a more modern Spuskaemiy Apparat with a crew of three.

The Soyuz-TM stocks 1,049 m/s of delta-V which, would be enough to return but not to precisely choose a northern hemisphere landing area. The easiest way to resolve this is to simply add more fuel in the form of an OKB-301 Fregat module.Stripping out the modules engine rather than having it an extra stage provides the Soyuz with a delta-V of 2,216 m/s. Plenty for the return trip.

But not for the transfer from Kerbin to the Mun. For that, a Blok-D provides 1,784 m/s. It will be discarded to the munar surface either on arrival or before return.

The mission to crew the Odacha Station consisted of Cosmonaut Pilot Anatoli Vasilyevich Kermanov, Cosmonaut Engineer Andrei Yevgenyevich Kermanov, and Cosmonaut Scientist Oksana Andreevna Kermanov with the Soyuz ACTS launched atop a Proton-Light launch vehicle (four engines rather than the six of the Proton-M).

The upper stage of the Proton had so much extra delta-V that Cosmonaut Pilot Anatoli Vasilyevich decided to not dump the stage on reaching Kerbin orbit but instead used it for the Hohmann transfer to the Mun, finally discarding it mid-transit onto the Mun’s far side.

The Chief Designer was furious, though he declined borrowing one of the General Secretary’s shoes with which to pound on the desk. The mission objective was not just to deliver the crew to Munar orbit but to evaluate the performance of the Soyuz ACTS.

When he came back in six months there would be consequences.

A permanent orbital space station lifted off from Site-P bound for Minmus orbit. That brings to total number of permanent stations in orbit to four; Mir and the so called Battlestar Kermachev in Kerbin orbit, Lunnayna Orbital’naya Stantsiya Udacha in Munar orbit, and now LOS Morozhenoye in Minmus orbit. These stations are to support three permanent bases on the various moon’s surfaces; Kermangrad and LZhM-2 on the Mun, and LzhM-3 on Minmus.

That’s a lot of cosmonauts in space.

And while the presence is permanent, each individual cosmonaut cannot be there permanently. They need a chance to come home to touch grass and do propaganda tours before going back to work. To manage that, the Soviet cosmonautics program is developing a series of craft specially designed for taking crews from Kermin to the orbiting moon stations and back. Another craft will be developed for shuttling crews from the station to the surface and back.

Concurrent with the Amerikanskis building their munbase, the Soviet mission to Duna was arriving at its destination. As all are slaves to the laws of physics, it was suspected that the Amerikanskis had scheduled their construction intentionally so as to overshadow Soviet accomplishments. Live television broadcasts of landing after landing with a team of astronauts on the Mun building a permanent presence is much more dramatic than the announcements of telemetry and a curated handful of photographs of a far off planet.

The Chief Designer waved off any criticism as they were at Duna while the Amerikanskis had yet to leave Kerbin’s sphere of influence, excepting a pair of infra-red telescopes built to search near-Krebin orbit for asteroids. The Soviets had several of those as well.

The Soviet mission to Duna consisted of two satellites. The first to arrive was built on a Konstruktorskoye byuro khimicheskogo mashinostroyeniya 4D bus originally designed for an Eve mission but delayed development led to having missed a launch window. The main engine was encircled by a conical instrument compartment. Above that the central section of the bus contained propellant tanks for the main propulsion unit and had solar panels and a high-gain antenna attached. Atop the bus was a spherical reentry module containing the pressurized lander.

Pravda immediately began publishing rare full page color photographs of some of the best panoramic views of the planet with the headline KRASNAYA PLANETA DUNA. Additional observations added details on craters, canyons, clouds, dust storms with lightning, and unexpected aurora. The narrative played up that the Amerikanskis were years away from such an accomplishment, much as the Soviets had beaten them in cosmonautics at nearly every turn.

The 4D-2 craft arrived a day later and was nearly identical to the first except that, instead of the lander, the upper part of the probe had radar imaging and multspectral scanners for the mapping of Duna. It entered a polar orbit at 250 km and began its observations.

Within a few days, while Duna was not completely mapped, it was documented enough that the decision was made to move forward with the probe landing. What scientists considered to be the confluence of the most likely to produce interesting science data and the least likely to destroy the lander was was called the Midland Sea. It was, of course, not a sea but a series of basins across the equatorial region that, in all likelihood, once contained a sea. The Western Midland Sea contained Duna’s lowest point at its northern edge and was chosen as the primary landing area.

As the deorbit burn point was approaching, it was seen that the 4D-2 craft, being used to ensure the relay of telemetry, would be out of position. Not wanting to risk loosing contact during the most crucial part of the mission, deorbit was delayed for one orbit.

Connected to the Western Midland Sea by a canyon lies the Northern Basin. It also had some very low elevations but in the center had somewhat of a bulge or island. This was chosen as the secondary landing area.

The 4D-1 lander lost signal just a it detached its aeroshell but as the command was given to deploy its parachute at an appropriate altitude was already given, the landing itself should have proceeded autonomously. TSentr Upravlyeniya Polyotami was tensly waiting to learn if their entire mission was a success or failure.

Then, after breathless minutes (Kerbals can hold their breaths for a long time), they began to receive telemetry indicating that the craft had successfully landed. Shortly after that, the first image from the surface of Duna was delivered.

Even though picture after picture from the orbiter was received, scientists were disappointed by the limited data received from the lander, consoling themselves with the knowledge that it was launched with the best technology available at the time. Cosmonautics had advanced considerably since then and was still advancing such that the next mission to any of the other planets would be state of the art.

That opportunity will come in a about a year and a half. But before that, there will be transfer windows available to reach all the other planets in the system. The first two being Jool and Eeloo, though the antenna technology isn’t quite up to keeping stable communications out that far into deepy space. Those missions may be delayed until then next windows after that.

The Amerikanskis are building a munbase. It doesn’t take a KGB spy or high power observation satellites to discern this as the Amerikanskis announce it all over their televisions. And while a great deal of information has been revealed about the base, including where it is to be located (at the southern rim of the Northwest Crater), no mention has been made about it being built near to the anomaly the Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye have codenamed Kvartira.

The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Mun, Minmus, and Other Celestial Bodies had both the Soviets and Amerikanskis agree that neither side could claim any celestial body as their own, but the discovery of alien artifacts changed the interpretation of that treaty. It was assumed by the Soviets that, if their cosmonauts approached too closely, the Americanski would become protective of their secrets and perhaps take retaliatory action. Conversely, the Soviets would not welcome an Amerikanski astronaut just walking up to one of their bases next to an alien monolith or crashed saucer. From that came an unspoken gentleman’s agreement.

Using the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a concept of “territorial waters” was applied to the various landing sites on the Mun, Minmus and (once that happened) other celestial bodies in which a sphere of influence 3 km in radius around each landing site or permanent construction was assumed to be generally sovereign and the other party would not enter into that sphere excepting emergencies and accidental border transits.

So, much like the Soviet (and, honestly, Amerikanski) habit of repeatedly drawing that line with border flights, fishing trawlers, and other exertions of freedom of navigation, it was decided that a permanent observation platform would be established within sight of the Kvartira but just outside the 3 km sphere of influence. This platform would be a Zenit spy satellite mounted on Munokhod wheels. . .

. . . that exploded before reaching orbit.

It was entirely a staging issue.

A second, more “stock” Munokhod rover had a new Soyuzkarta KFA-1000 high resolution digital camera mounted on an extending boom and was rolled out to the launchpad as quickly as possible to replace the lost rover but not before the Amerikanskis had begun their base construction. This launch was successful and, a day later, the rover was landed on the Mun somewhat south and west of the Amerikanski base. It rolled to the edge of a crater and took up position behind a rock approximately 3 km away from the base.

From that vantage, the Kvartira could be clearly seen; a large, slightly trapezoidal platform on which an oversized representation of a lander craft is depicted in apparently the same stone as the base. Slightly nearer was the lander module from the Amerikanski’s fist landing at the site.Beyond that, the base itself.

Soviet cosmonautics are built on their sides and then raised into position for launch. As such, the general concept of station and base modules are also cylinders set on their sides, with the local “floor” being one side of the cylinder’s curve. So, when Kermangrad was built, the modules are vertical when in flight but then are laid over on their sides and, with their own wheels under power, roll into place to connect to other modules.

The Amerikanskis build their rockets in their massive Vehicle Assembly Building. Their stations and base modules are cylinders set on end and so their “floor” is one of the flat ends of the cylinder. Their munbase modules are landed that way with a propultion module connected to the top. Once landed, the propulsion module is detached and flies off to crash somewhere. A pair of utility rovers roll up to the module, attach themselves to either side, and roll the new module into place to connect to other modules.

Construction happened quickly with one module rolling out to the Amerikanski launchpad even as the previous module was being attached to the rest of the base on the Mun. A solar panel array was the third module placed and it was set between the base and the Soviet observation munokhod, apparently to block the view.

The solar panels were also placed in such a way as to block the view between the Amerikanski base and the Kvartira. As news of the alien artifact hadn’t reached public media yet, the Amerikanskis were obviously doing the same thing the Soviets were doing in making sure that their own cameras might not inadvertently reveal the presence of those artifacts while, at the same time, allowing “normal” operations in and around respective bases to seem, well, normal.

Even so, the Amerikanskis knew the munokhod was there. The Soviets knew that the Amerikanskis knew the munokhod was there. What might be hidden behind solar panels on the regolith can be seen by the various observation satellites in orbit.

The question on everyone’s mind was who would reveal the secrets first. Would the Amerikanskis come right out and say “We have alien stuff”? Would they point to the Soviets and say “They have alien stuff?” Would some third party announce “They have alien stuff?” And then, once the reveals start happening, what then? Respond with “No, we don’t?” Respond with “But they have stuff, too?” Respond with “Oh, yea. We knew all about that. No big deal?”

Until someone blinks or spills beans, the dance of secrecy continues.

I dig giant airships. You dig giant airships. Chicks dig giant airships. And because the General Secretary digs giant airships, the project to build giant airships gets funding and giant airships get built.

There was, of course, a period of time when giant airships were not being built because using easily manufactureable and inexpensive hydrogen as a lifting gas was a bit too explody. However, Institute 22 of the Russkiy Academy of Sciences has had some success in researching the various anomalous discoveries (specifically the floating rocks found on the Mun) and have come up with a solution.

Buoyancy. Airships are able to float because their large size and low density. If the area enveloped by a balloon plus the weight of the balloon itself is less than the weight of an equal volume of air, the balloon will float. Air has a density of 1.205 kg/m³. Helium has a density of 0.1664 kg/m³. Floats well. Hydrogen has a density of 0.0899 kg/m³. Floats even better. An average kerbal weighs a touch over 50 kg. To have a balloon lift that kerbal, it would need to have 45 m³ of hydrogen (plus some more to account for the weight of the balloon itself.

The scientists at Institute 22 produced their first balloon capable of lifting a kerbal. It was only half the conventional size and, even at that size, would have been capable of lifting a second kerbal as well.

How was such a thing possible?

That information is labeled Osoboy vazhnosti; of particular importance. The colloquial translation of which is “we will send you to the gulag just for asking.”

How then, to build and use giant airships, something that would be absolutely impossible to conceal, while keeping the secret secret. The solution is to use the basic designs used during the thrilling days of yesteryear while not utilizing them to their theoretical limits. If one of these new airships could carry 100 tons of cargo, perhaps only load it up with 25 tons of cargo. If the buoyancy could provide an operational ceiling of 20,000 meters, never fly above 6,000 meters. If engines could drive the machine easily over 360 km/hr, run them at reduced throttle to move at a majestic yet still impressive 100 km/hr.

All while being not explody.

And so, engineers rolled out the Airship Kerbina. 35.6 meters in length and 14 meters abeam. Five thousand cubic meters of hydrogen would have been able to lift 4 tons and the craft weighed. . . . 12 tons? It was a third of the size that conventional physics said it would be! And it would be capable of carrying nearly ten times that in addition!

How would anyone keep such a thing secret without just dismantling it altogether and pretending it never happened?

There was absolute chaos in the halls of the Kremlin. People running up and down halls. Slamming doors. Jammed shredders. Shoes pounding on desks.

Too late, it was decided. Outside the science, engineering, and construction crews that had worked on it, hundreds of cosmonautics workers at Scientific Research Test Range No. 5 had already seen it as well. The proletariat of nearby Tyuratam had seen it. Surely some Amerikanski spy had seen it. A number of scientists declared that if there was no way to actually use these discoveries, what good were they in the first place. Even the GRU concluded that the Amerikanskis would surely have already discerned their own knowledge from the anomalies already discovered withing their own sphere of influence. There would be no going back.

But, moving forward, aside from the secret of the negative buoyancy gas and its origins, everything else would be treated as absolutely common and normal.

And, as would be absolutely common and normal, the Airship Kerbina set of on a short test flight around the Cosmodrome. It first made a circuit of the cosmodrome itself, then proceeded north and climbing above a spur of the surrounding Kolyma Mountains.

It was then east to the summit of Mt. Elbrus (7th highest mountain on Kerbin at 6,119m), south past the Medvezh’ya Gora Scientific Measurement Station, over Mt. Dykh-Tau (10th highest on Kerbin at 6,008m), to finally return to the cosmodrome. It was a short flight as the Airship Kerbina only carried about a half an hour’s worth of fuel for it’s top speed of about 45 m/s (though that “top” speed was at only 30% of engine power). There were to be additional flights but these were only in preparation of the construction of a much larger airship with significant capabilities. Long distance exploration. Sustained operations. Heavy cargo lifting. Ultimately, it would likely be airships rather than naval vessels supporting operations in Kerbin’s southern hemisphere.

The Kermangrad munbase has received a new rover, but it almost did not.

In building the munbase, the mechanism was to have a lander with a ramp that tilted down, off of which the base modules would roll into place. Delivering a rover was done similarly. However, the variation on module masses also led to a variation in lander performance. Some landed quite hard as the descent profile was changed. The rover, being heavier than other modules, suffered the same issue and, on the descent, it became clear that the craft would land at too high a velocity.

Seeing this in advance, though, ground controllers at the Tsentr upravlyeniya polyotami were able to quickly upload a contingency program to the munokhod so that, if it survived the impact, it would realign itself so that it would be upright, with the wheels taking the bulk of the impact and thus allowing the rover to survive.

And that is what happened. The lander hit the munar regolith at over 30 meters per second. The lander was, of course, in no way designed to survive this impact, the tanks ruptured on impact and the remaining fuel and oxidizer mixed and exploded, throwing the rest of the craft, consisting of the rover and most of the ramp, back up. The contingency program initiated and the gyrodynes reoriented the craft so that when it came back down to the munar surface it landed upright on its wheels, sustaining no additional damage.

The rover was able to disconnect from the ramp and roll towards the base where Cosmonaut Engineer Konstantin Petrovich Kermanov was waiting to inspect it.

It was not broken, but was still wrong.

The original munokhod rover had eight flexible wire mesh wheels that, while light and fast, were not terribly sturdy. They had a tendency to allow the vehicle to slide or drift while traversing the munar regolith.

The new rover had only four wheels but those wheels were larger, heavier, and, though slower, should be able to provide better grip and braking power. The wider wheel base would also make the rover more stable on inclined terrain.

However, when the wheels were fitted onto a chassis essentially identical to the previous rover, the more sturdy suspension was not fully accounted for. The rover had a slightly higher clearance and, because of that, the docking port on the rear of the rover would not line up with the docking ports on the base modules.

“And this is why,” the Chief Designer said, deflecting from the design flaw, “crewed cosmonautics is so vitally important.” Cosmonaut Engineer Konstantin Petrovich was able to torch the docking port off its mountings and weld it back in place in the proper alignment.

The anomaly discovered deep in a crater near the Mun’s south pole is a challenging site to explore. Not only is the deep sided crater a challenging landing zone but, once there, there is no sunlight available to power solar panels. One could use fuel cells to generate power but the limit is then the amount of fuel remaining in the rover.

Two rover missions have been sent, the first landed high on the crater rim where it could, at least, continue to operate on solar power. This was considered a marginal success as its presence, even 2 kilometers above the anomaly, would deter the Amerikanskis from landing their own probe or rover to claim the anomaly within its sphere of influence.

The lander of the second rover ran out of fuel on the descent and ended up in a 3 kilometer deep hole. While it survived the landing, it lacked the electrical power to navigate to the anomaly and report back before running out of battery power.

Experimental Design Bureau 301 has upgraded their Munokhod rover design to include four cameras (two binocular television and two panoramic telephotometers), a RIFMA X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, and a TL laser retroreflector. Most importantly to the specifics of the south polar monolith mission, they had now added a Polonium-210 isotopic thermoelectric generator.

As the small but highly radioactive plug slowly decays, it generates heat that can be used to not only keep delicate electronic warm in the munar shadows, it can provide a small amount of electricity. Nowhere near as much as would be provided by a solar panel but OKB-301 says it will generate that little bit of energy for years.

OKB-301 also slapped on a spotlight to work in the dark.

Munokhod 15, the third rover to be sent to the south polar anomaly, successfully touched down deep in the crater and only 215 meters from the anomaly itself. From there it was able to traverse the distance and determine that it was, as assumed, another monolith.

The Academy of Sciences, while glad that additional scientific instruments had been brought to bear on this new discovery, were also disappointed that those instruments had added essentially nothing to the corpus of knowledge concerning the monoliths, either to their composition, origin, or purpose.

The 3.5 meter refracting telescope at the Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences at Pulkovo is the largest telescope in the Soviet Union, and one of the largest in the world. It is also a piece of crap. It’s first mirror was cast so poorly that it was scrapped before installation. The second was actually much better but, even then, as it was used, inclusions and cracks in the glass were found. As those were painted over to remove those defects from the light gathered, more and more were then discovered to the point where it was gathering light at only 60% of its theoretical limit.

Additionally, telescopes benefit from being high atop mountains so as to avoid atmospheric disturbances and be far away from urban lights. The Pulkovo Observatory sits only 75 meters above sea level and just south of the capital city, the absolute worst place to have such a facility.

The eggheads, err. . . comrade scientists at the Soviet Academy of Sciences had been petitioning the Chief Designer to build them a space telescope. It was not that the Chief Designer had anything against such a project, he would explain, but that in the early days of space exploration resources were allocated with different priorities. For example, with craft going to the Mun or Minmus, any one on the ground can look up and see them there. Don’t need orbiting telescopes for that.

Soviet space exploration had reached its late beginning or perhaps the early middle period and projects such as an orbiting telescope were now becoming relevant, so the Chief Designer directed the OKB-301 to build a new optical platform. What they came up with was the Spektr 1F.

“Wait. Don’t we already have a Spektr module on the Mir space station?”

“That’s a module, this is a satellite. Completely different.”

Well, at least it wasn’t one of OKB-52s acronym projekts.

Set in a 200 km orbit, the Spektr 1F’s 720 mm primary mirror would provide a 1,400x magnification, without having its clarity degraded with atmospheric distortions or cloudy days. Launched atop a Feniks rocket, as soon as it was in orbit, excited scientists began turning it’s lens on everything they could, starting with Duna because the Duna 2MV probe would be arriving soon.

The Pulkovo telescope, even for its many failings, still had three times the magnification, but the astronomers no longer had to contend with atmospheric distortions, scattered urban lights. Instead of a small, reddish blur, Duna was now a small, reddish, less blur. A significant and very welcome improvement.

The Chief Designer has promised the astronomers a larger space telescope.

The General Secretary loves plans. Economic plans. Floor plans. Dinner plans. He has a drawer full of plans, right underneath the drawer he has full of extra shoes he uses to pound on his desk to emphasis. But if there is one plan he loves more than all the others it is Five Year Plans™. Five Year Plans have in their nature a goal that, in the short term, seems absolutely attainable while, at the same time, being far enough out in the future that, if they are not achieved, can be blamed on outside extraneous factors and not to any deficiency in The Plan itself.

The Chief Designer knowing this, rather than letting the General Secretary come up with his own plan for advancing the great socialist revolution into space, provided the General Secretary with a Five Year Plan of his own making, based on the best available expertise on space programming (namely, the Chief Designer himself) and a realistic expectation of what could be achieved in that time frame, all written in marker on a brown paper grocery bag.

As the Soviet Union had just recently launched its first interplanetary mission in the form of two automated probes to Duna, the Chief Designer declared that, within the five year time frame, missions would be sent to all the major planetary systems in the Kerbol system. An Eeloo launch window was coming up before the end of the coming year and would even arrive at Eeloo before the end of the five year plan. All the other planets, being closer, could also be visited within that time.

With that first interplanetary mission to Duna, and intelligence that the Amerikanskis were considering that their first mission to Duna be crewed, the General Secretary wanted a crewed mission to beat the Amerikanskis there. The Chief Designer attempted to explain that, given the nature of orbital mechanics, the next launch window would be available for both the Soviets and the Amerikanskis at the same time and so too arrival would be at the same time. The General Secretary, while not an ignorant or simple man, could not understand the math involved, and so settled for the Chief Designer writing into the Plan in all capital letters and using an extra-thick marker “GET TO DUNA TO LAUGH AT AMERIKANSKIS!” That seemed to satisfy the General Secretary while, in private, the Chief Designer was formulating multiple missions to Duna. A veritable fleet of craft.

The Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti also reported that the Amerikanskis were working on building a permanent base on the Mun at the anomaly codenamed Kvartira to the north of the Soviet Zvezda munbase. The Amerikanskis had the Kvartira and the three munar arches on the mun, plus at least one monolith on Kerbin within their sphere of influence while the Soviets had four monoliths and two crashed saucers within theirs. “We must not allow an anomaly gap!” yelled the General Secretary, while pounding on his desk with a shoe. The Chief Designer assured him that the LOS-2 Udacha mun orbital station had powerful surveillance telescopes on board for just that purpose and the Leningradskoye Optiko-Mekhanicheskoye Obyedinenie was working on advanced optics for even more capability. There would be new satellites to not only look over the Amerikanski’s shoulders, but to seek out additional anomalies.

Asteroids. The General Secretary wanted something done with asteroids. He didn’t know what, but he wanted something. And aircraft. More aircraft. And boats. And submarines. And. And.

The Chief Designer recognized that the meeting was getting late in the afternoon, approaching supper time, and the General Secretary was probably getting hangry, and so he made some broad, vague promises and handed over his plan, assuring the General Secretary that he would get right on all of these things. And more.

The plan immediately went into the desk drawer.

The Skies Are Red Again

I haven’t played Kerbal Space Program for almost a year (since the death of KSP2) and I hadn’t played with the Tantares mod and its Russian space systems for almost five years. I was missing it.

And so, I return. Maybe. Sort of. I don’t know. We’ll see if I can maintain this.

The author of Tantares is still doing updates and some of his updates still break earlier versions. In my previous playthrough this lead to the destruction of my Mun orbital station and the loss of its crew. I was able to write it into the Red Skies narrative and space is, after all, dangerous, but I still didn’t like having to rebuild a lot of things for the sake of improved graphics. I get it. He is modding and giving it away for free, we can’t demand things of him, but I still don’t like starting over.

And I did have to start over. The old Red Skies file save wouldn’t load any of the craft I had built. I’ve just started over from scratch and have built back up to where I can pick up the narrative where I left off.

When we last left out intrepid socialist adventurers:

A small asteroid had been captured and put into Kerbin orbit (link)

The LOS-2 Udacha (“Luck”) station, a replasement for the Salyut station destroyed under mysterious circumstances, had been inserted into Munar orbit. (link)

A probe mission had been launched to Duna. (link)

The Zvezda Munbase, known to its crew as “Kermangrad”, had been quickly established. (link)

The entire run of Red Skies is available at this link.

“On April 16th, Take-Two announced a cost reduction program to identify efficiencies across its business and to enhance the Company’s margin profile, while still investing for growth. As part of these efforts, the Company is rationalizing its pipeline and eliminating several projects in development and streamlining its organizational structure, which will eliminate headcount and reduce future hiring needs.”

Gods, I despise corporate speak. It always comes across like the worst bully in elementary school just discovered what a thesaurus is and they want to couch everything in such a way as to deflect responsibility. Damn, I can use myself some big words and archaic word structure but these assholes have elevated word salad to a master craft.

To translate, though, they fired a bunch of people to save money.

As is always the case, isn’t it?

What does that mean to me? Well, there’s not a whole lot of incentive to continue playing KSP2 is there? Sure, at this point I am half way through the base progression and have a bunch more stuff I can do, but once I am done with that, there will be nothing more. No updates (though they claim they will continue updates, there’s no reason to believe them) no new features such as colonies and interstellar, and, with the code locked away and likely shit canned as a tax write off, no new mods to save what’s left.

What does that mean to you (and by “you” I mean the perhaps hand-full of people that read my blog), there doesn’t seem much point in continuing. This blog was produced to share my joy of the game and perhaps encourage people to join me in in Kerbal space. I’m certainly not going to encourage anyone to throw good money after bad.

KSP1 is still out there. It;’s a complete game and a number of mods have made it as good if not better than the current state of KSP2. I still encourage people to play that. It is totally worth it.

Will I go back? Will I blog about KSP1? Maybe. If you look back on what I have blogged already, I’ve said most of what I want to say already. I may do more, close out some loose ends in KSP2 while I still have game progression to complete, but honestly it doesn’t look promising, at least from a blogging perspective.

It all very disappointing.

Well, not all. I still encourage people to get KSP1 and a stack of mods.

My communication and Orbital Survey craft has arrived at Eve. I had almost missed it because of a glitch with the Alarm Clock mod.

After a mid-course correction, I had set an alarm to alert me when the craft arrived at Eve’s sphere of influence but, apparently, when I deleted some other alarm, this one got deleted as well. If that happens, and you don’t notice it, when the craft arrives at the SOI, you will get a popup message saying that has happened but by the time to stop or slow time acceleration, it’s too late. So, always keep track of your alarms, at least until KSP2 gets Alarm Clock integrated with the base game.

After three days of falling from the edge of the SOI to periapsis, there is a 984 m/s orbital insertion burn. The two antennas performing the Visual and Region scans have different ranges of altitude they can operate at. The Visual scan operates from 500 to 1,100 km and the Region scan operates from 1,000 to 2,000 km, leaving the overlap where both can operate at 1,050 km. It might be more efficient to start at the ideal altitude for the one and then, when that scan is complete, change altitudes for the other, but that sort of efficiency isn’t that important as I would not be able to do anything with that information until the next launch window.

1,050 km it is.

Having set into orbit, actually, in entering the SOI, I completed a directive from Mission Control and earned 3,000 science points. That allowed me to purchase two Tech Level 3 nodes with the important “Gigantor” solar panels and the Radiation Science module. I don’t have quite enough for a third node but having the new science module will allow me to get some additional science.

New missions have shown up as well.

3,000 points being offered to investigate an “oblique impact” on Eve’s moon Gilly. 3,000 points to land at the Mohole. And a whopping 8,000 points to land 10 Kerbals on Eve and return them safely to Kerbin. That last one is the tough one. I have over 6,000 hours of play on KSP1 and I have never landed a Kerbal on Eve, let alone returned one. Ten is asking a lot.

Not long after, the second craft arrived at Eve to begin an Orbital Survey of Gilly. Using Eve’s significant gravity well, it’s easy to get into orbit but getting an encounter with Gilly is a little more difficult. With apoapsis at the same altitude as Gilly requires waiting for the moon to swing around again.

I was finally able to add a maneuver node at the orbit’s descending node to get an encounter, but the burn overshot the target. I set up another node and turned down the engine thrust to 1%, necessary to fine tune the trajectory to hit so small a target as Gilly’s sphere of influence.

And then, as the satellite reaches the new apoapsis and begins swinging back down, another adjustment to get a flyby of Gilly at 8 km.

Gilly’s sphere of influence is only 126 km, which is below the ideal altitudes of both the Visual and Region Orbital Scans, so I start with a 100 x 8 km orbit. Low altitude science is below 6 km so I need to wait to get back to Gilly apoapsis to lower the periapsis below that. And then wait as the probe gets there, moving slow because of the low gravity.

And then, after gathering and transmitting that science, the long wait to climb back top apoapsis to finally circularize the orbit.

The Orbital Survey of Duna’s Regions has completed. Unlike Kerbin, the North and South Poles are separate regions. They also have Polar Desert regions at their margins. The rest is a patchwork of Lowlands, Midlands, and Highlands.

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Capt Kordite

July 2025

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The Sky Calls

A Kerbal Space Program Blog

Recent Entries

Routine Space

I see a stargate and I want to blow it up

Nothing to see here

An Arch of Our Own

Onion Rings at the Golden Arches

Thick Transport

Massive but not

Prospective Piloted Transport System

Morozhenoye Station

Red Planet Duna

Spying on the neighbors

Chicks Dig Giant Airships

Red rover, red rover

Polonium. Not just for tea any more

Telescope

Five Year Plan

The Skies Are Red Again

Death of Inception Games

ScanSat arrival at Eve and Gilly

Duna Region Orbital Survey