Film Rework (Do not merge yet)

[zephyrspace]

A rework to the way film science is done to make it less of a pain to run + make it better reflect the reality of early satellite technology.

• Photo-0 (incomplete):

  • An experiment in the style of the ones run on V2s and Aerobees, granting science equivalent to 1.5 biomes of the current photo-1, but not biome specific, for 12 minutes of total runtime
  • The part would be a suborbital 35mm film camera, reinforced to withstand impacts as hard as 100m/s, and would have a runtime measured in the 30 second mark, this would mean you could run a single camera on an aerobee for a possible 24 launches with the intent that you get less science total, than if you run a ring of 8 of them in the historic V2 config.

• Photo-1 (Complete):

  • A KH-1 style experiement in satellite era science, very similar to current photo 1, but only operable in space low. biome specific to soft incentivise polar orbits, with 4 science per biome and an operating run time of 2hrs per biome leading to needing 20hrs of orbital lifetime total.
  • The KH-1 part would have 20kgs of onboard film which would complete photo 1 in 4 launches, as ~10 science per launch fits way better with the expected return on early sats than the current 40, making them less lucrative than lunar impactors but also for less funding requirements.
  • EC requirement should drain agena b (70000 units of ec but nondeepspace for game balance) in a day
  • Exact run time numbers will need to be changed based on minimum biome size and how much of a pain it is to hit the smallest ones

• Photo-2 (KH-4 and Zenit Complete, no KH-4a/b yet):

  • A KH-4 style experiment in early human spaceflight era science, that follows on from photo-1 in that it stays biome specific, but extends the time needed in each biome to 4 days and the science per biome to 16. For a total of 40 days of on orbit lifetime and 160 science over the course of the experiment
  • The KH-4 part would carry 1/8th the sample at 40kg, needing 8 launches total for 20 science per launch and would drain the (deep space) agena of ec in 5 days.
  • We could then add the KH-4A in a close follow on node (like how improved avionics is set up), and it and zenit can could carry 1/4th (at 80kg) the sample to cut down on the launches and reflect the longer on orbit lifetime.
  • Also unless i'm missing something there's no way to limit sample capacity by mass is there, otherwise we could put a limit on the amount of film carried by the return capsule

[arrowmaster]

• Photo-0 (incomplete):

  • An experiment in the style of the ones run on V2s and Aerobees, granting science equivalent to 1.5 biomes of the current photo-1, but not biome specific, for 12 minutes of total runtime
  • The part would be a suborbital 35mm film camera, reinforced to withstand impacts as hard as 100m/s, and would have a runtime measured in the 30 second mark, this would mean you could run a single camera on an aerobee for a possible 24 launches with the intent that you get less science total, than if you run a ring of 8 of them in the historic V2 config.

Some notes from Discord. Due to Kerbalism limitations, attaching multiple of the same experiment is a bad idea so a 1x and 8x part is likely a better solution. While not as realistic, having the 8x part run for 8x longer instead of 8x as fast sounds better from a gameplay perspective. If these parts are modeled as just cameras and not cylindrical inline shapes then I bring back my suggetion of allowing the early SR photo experiment to run when inside of fairings so we can pretend there are cutouts in the fairing as was done historically instead of needing to jetison a fairing.

Also from discord there was talk of making all early experiments not biome specific for flying science to counter the over optimization desire of using multiple launch sites. If this was done then Earth 'biomes' could be changed from their current climate based borders to geographic borders that could provide an improvement for early satellite contracts.

[NathanKell]

@zephyrspace please reopen when you're able to work on this again.