"The Mission"

Stage 0: Design, Assembly and Shakedown

Unfortunately, pictures from this phase are extremely limited. But here are shots of each completed vehicle and it's associated launch package. These are the final products, so the numbers you see are accurate for the ships on the mission itself. More info about these ships can be found on the "The Spacecraft" page.

The Creep herself was launched in 2 pieces. An upper section with the station, comm sats, map sats and the Kingfisher. And a lower section, made of the 2 rocket packages for departure and arrival. These were assembled in space at an altitude of 100km. Once complete, the Nightingale and the Sandpiper were flown up and docked by Chazz, Kal and Darcy Kerman.

Then began a 130 day refueling and shakedown flight for the Creep, testing each of it's systems for basic functionality. Four refueling flights were launched from KSP to fully fuel the ship. The final maneuver was a full burn of the Creep's engines, which transferred the ship from its assembly orbit to it's launch orbit (Altitude: 750km). Then a final fueling ship was rendezvoused to top her off and bring the rest of the crew aboard.

Stage Itinerary:

• 1. Launch spacecraft components and assemble - Complete

  2. Pre-flight testing - Complete

Notes from Kal: This was months of trial and error, as well as testing and redesign. I chucked a probe out there to test solar panel functionality and learned that I needed generators. I figured out that the inner moons were so light on gravity that I needed a custom ship to land on em. The 1st entire design for the Creep was scrapped after almost 40 hours of design. Etc, etc...

The engineering and design work is my favorite part of KSP. I try to build ships that are balanced and well refined, and this was an excuse to take that too far (or just far enough?).