The great machine

With KSC facilities running at peak production on Kerbin itself it was time to build out the infrastructure in space. Create “a great machine” as Gene called it, that could facilitate larger and a greater number of vessels. Especially in light of the revelation that the Navy was looking at spacecraft a larger infrastructure to support “the fleet” would be needed.

But first, some obstacles would need to be removed.

Power problems

The first one being the power problems on the ShadowMage. The teams at KSC2 had built a test setup and used infrared cameras to look at dissipation. Their conclusion was that the large radiators were broken and even a single cooling panel on the reactor was enough to prevent overloads. They also looked at a propellium powered reactor, it would need more than that to reach critical mass though. “Why not use gravity waves?”, Arlan suggested. An idea worth further exploring.

Reusable booster stages

Galahad 12 had a triple mission: first, it would deliver cargo to the UKSS space station in low Kerbin orbit, facilitating its conversion to an orbital shipyard. Second it would run another test at heavy booster recovery and third it would return the Phoenix with all its data home.

It took 10 attempts for KOS to create a reusable heavy booster, but finally, they had succeeded. That, combined with the reusable Galahad spaceship reduced expenses for round trips to Minmus and theoretically Duna to almost nothing. Again, the private sector would overtake mundane and regular flights with KSC focussing on exploration.

Reconfiguring UKSS

Melly Kerman would spend the next days unloading the truss structures that would make up the orbital construction shipyard in LKO. “I thought they had moved ship refit to Wolf shipyard,” Melly asked. “Yeah, that makes sense. The refueling and refitting of the Beale’s shaved 600 m/s of their Duna burn.” Jebediah replied. “So, why built one in LKO then?” Melly was confused. “Bill, here from KSC.” crackled her radio. “Couldn’t help to listen in on your conversation, but I can answer that for a bit.”

Bill, Korolev, and Arlan were the new crew that was supposed to go up in a few days. “Wolf is designed for refuel and refit, but up here we will construct a craft that can only be sent up in pieces. Remember that the pieces of the Beale are autonomous ships rather than a set of parts.” Indeed, the old way was more closer to actually sending two ships up that combined to a larger vessel.

Shortly after the arrival of the new crew, Charon 08 took off and carried the now obsolete cryo lab with them to burn up in the atmosphere. Something about the part count. They messed up their landing trajectory though and made a rough sea landing, but as Jeb said: “Any landing you can walk away from..”

The return of the Phoenix

Then the Phoenix, minus the command module (which would serve as an inspection pod for the new shipyard) was loaded in the Galahad. This was quite the fiddling with the robotic arms, but in the end, it got mounted. Then the descent started. It was paramount to recover the graviolum since they had only spent 2% of this incredibly expensive material, and the data on the Phoenix computers was so classified that they did not want to transmit it. Galahad had never landed with so much cargo on Kerbin though.

Minutes before touchdown the gravitic engine came to life and tried to hover the spacecraft while the landing computer tried to correct cause. Engineers triggered the remote shut down but now the craft was in a horizontal position and the engines were firing sideways, rather than retrograde. The result was a loud crash and little of the Galahad survived. Fortunately, the part that did survive was the cargo bay, with its precious payload intact.

Two crash landings in two days…