Almost a colony

A workshop on the Mun

L201A Base 02 took off on the latest contraption of the Kerbin Design Bureau. It could put 40-tons in LKO and a serious payload to the Mun. The two large solid rocket boosters added quite a punch and damaged the launch pad upon launch.

The payload was a workshop and a resource convertor. It included a drill and enough cooling capacity. The landing was nearly perfect, well it was after two hops with a bit of Kerbal interaction the parts should be able to connect.

Sojourner

Based on the excursions of Falcon 7 mission control came up with an idea to get longer trips. The Sojourner was created to facilitate that, but since there was an additional requirement for later deployment to Duna, they came up with a non-disposable fairing.

R102B Sojourner 01 would hold on to its fairing and use it for landing, creating a small shelter in the process. It would overshoot the base though and drive for 35 km before it could sync up with Outpost Angel.

Falcon 08

The next crew would be Pilot Kateny, engineer Sampond, and scientist Camdous. They took the Falcon 08 which carried spare parts and resources to the base.

They managed to land within 20 meters of the base, with lots of fuel to spare.

Sampond had a busy nice night installing a relay antenna on the base and transferring the supplies. She also installed a resource converter that allowed the Papa 03 platform to finally restore the ability to create fuel out of ore.

Falcon 09

Next up would be Falcon 09 carrying Samus, Katsuki, and Finni to the Mun for a two-month mission to simulate Duna excursion and learn about more biomes.

The team brought another rover and some new docking ports as well as mechanical components to tie the bases together. At least that is what the KAS manual told them. Katsuki had a busy time, connecting everything together, transferred the resource containers and converted Spirit 02 in a cargo rover.

After having strip-mined the descent stage of Falcon 05 it was sent off to create a science impact experiment, after that, it was time for refueling the Spirit’s tanks and get some sleep.

The long trek

The Falcon 08 and 09 mission was to test some major technologies that would be needed for long term habitation of the Mun. The first would be to create spare parts and material kits. Both engineers worked hard and were able to actually make this happen.

After fuel generation was restored the next big thing would be large scale exploration. Finni and Samus boarded the Sojourner and detached it from the workshop. Samus then filled up the fuel tanks, not because they needed it, but since the ballast would ground the craft better and in case the reactor failed the fuel cells would keep them alive.

As they traversed the canyons they came up to many interesting craters, but all were formed by a regular meteor impact. They were still hunting for more gravioli rich soil. After two days they left the canyons and headed to the low lands.

The Sojourner was a very comfortable craft. With a roomy command module that was directly taken from spare Eagle capsules and a living/science module that was derived from a passenger plane. Finni enjoyed the elaborate science instruments that were mounted on the sides and learned a lot.

“Break, break, break!” Finni shouted as Samus almost drove off a cliff. “I did not see that one coming,” he replied. They had been following a strain of particles that looked hope-giving when it came to gravioli density.

Finni was too stubborn to let go and since the Sojourner would not be able to descent on this slope, he tied the winch connector to his suit and descended down the crater as far as he could.

The soil sample and Eva reports would be the same, however, but the 50-meter drop was an exciting adventure. And.. he was glad that he would be reeled back in too.

Two days later they came up at their great find. Another Mun arch, both performed several evas, to mark the terrain, examine the composition and luckily they could find a rock made of similar material to take back home. It seemed the ancients or the Kraken had created these arches as part of some larger construction that had left the surface but to where?

In total, they would spend 8 days on their trip before returning home and share all that data with an exciting crew. Camdous put in a request to remain on the Mun to keep studying this phenomena and KSC was looking at the schedule what this would mean.

Falcon 10

Falcon 10 brought Wehrdard and Thompwin back to the Mun. Thompwins mission would be short, but his skills were very handy because the craft landed 100m from the base and in two small hops he fixed that and landed literally on the doorstep of outpost Angel.

Camdous was not fit to stay any longer, but Wehrdard and Katsuki were charged with a long duration test of one year on the surface of the base. Falcon 10 brought the supplies to make that happen and a near landing made resource transfer really easy. With 8 Kerbals the base was burning through its resources fast though.

The return

Falcon 08 and Falcon 09 would take off roughly an hour after each other, this time taking the descent stages with them and use them as impacter probes.

Both crafts had an standard re-entry and landed safely, though far away from the recovery crews. Katsuki and Wehrdard were looking forwards to their experiments and hoped they would not get lonely.