KRRAKC - Missions of a Rescue Program - Purple, With a Chance of Deep Haze and Rain

[Starhawk]

Joan: Where's that video feed, Lury?
Lury: I'm afraid it's not working.  The comms software update appears to be incompatible with the remote camera.  No video available, just the cockpit voice feed.
Joan: *sigh* Audio only, then.
-
Jeb: Getting to the hot part now.  Okay!  Here we go!
Jacia: Spin rate up to .7 rotations per second. *blaargh*
Jeb: Looks like things are getting hot.
Jacia: Overheat warnings for two of the drills.  No, three drills, now.  Rotation is compensating somewhat.
Approaching limits of thermal tolerance.
BANG
Jacia: There goes one drill.
BOOM
Jacia: And a second drill gone.  We are starting to pick up a wobble.
BANG
Jacia: That was just a solar panel.  We're still good.
BANG
BOOM
Jacia: Two more solar panels.  They're getting exposed to the plasma 'cause of the wobble.
Jeb: Trying to smooth out the shimmy.  Krap!  It's getting worse.
KA-BLAMM!  BANG!  SCREEEE-RRRIIP!
Jacia: Oh no!  We just lost landing pod 5!  Legs, 'chutes, drill, converter - all gone!
Jeb: That never happened in any of the simulations!  Engineering advice?
Jacia: Keep spinning!  *blaargh*
Jeb: Still applying max roll.
Jacia: Down to 2.3 km/sec.  Temperature stabilizing!  Wobble increasing.
BANG
KA-BOOM
BOOOM
Jacia: Lost three more drills - and a couple more panels.
Jeb: OK.  Feels like it's not fighting as much.
Jacia: Dynamic pressure decreasing.  Temperature dropping!  It looks like the rest of this thing will hold together.
Jeb: We've dropped below 1 km/s surface relative.  Altitude 43 klicks.  There goes our landing target.  I guess the rover is going to have quite a drive.
Jacia: I think we made it through shock heating.  And we still have three drills left and more than half our solar panels.
Jeb: Now we just have lots of waiting and then 'chute deployment, heat shield jettison, and touchdown.  I hope the structure isn't too compromised by the missing landing pod.
Jacia: Looks like what's left is still solid.  She should be able to land missing four legs.  One of the converters is absent, too.  That should ease the touchdown, but may create a balance problem during the rest of the descent.
Jeb: We should be good on staying upright.  And we have enough 'chutes that orientation shouldn't be a problem.  Well, lots more waiting...
...
Jeb: There's three klicks on radalt!  'Chutes deployed.
Jacia: And, there's one klick.  Full 'chutes... and jettisoning the heat shields.  There they go.  We're down to 3.9 m/s surface relative.
---
Lury: We have visual contact restored, Ma'am.
Joan: Finally!

Jeb: Annnnd contact!  We're down!
Jacia: Ship is stable.  Shutting down flight systems.

Jacia: Welcome to Eve's north polar biome.  Prepping for mining ops.

 

The adventures of KRRAKC will continue.

Happy landings!

[rlin]

What happened to the video feed?

[Mister Dilsby]

On 11/19/2016 at 3:56 PM, Starhawk said:

KA-BLAMM!  BANG!  SCREEEE-RRRIIP!
Jacia: Oh no!  We just lost landing pod 5!  Legs, 'chutes, drill, converter - all gone!
Jeb: That never happened in any of the simulations!  Engineering advice?
Jacia: Keep spinning!  *blaargh*
Jeb: Still applying max roll.
Jacia: Down to 2.3 km/sec.  Temperature stabilizing!  Wobble increasing.
BANG
KA-BOOM
BOOOM
Jacia: Lost three more drills - and a couple more panels.

Wow--an Eve landing is always impressive, even more so when the ship doing it doesn't get down in one piece but is still (hopefully?) capable of making orbit!

But really, you didn't have one spare pinky to spam F1 during all this? A shame, an understandable shame, but wow I would have loved to see some of this. Fortunately the text is so good I can imagine it all quite clearly  

[Starhawk]

Well, here's the thing.

1.2 has not been kind to this craft as I mentioned before.  I did many, many simulated landings.

On this particular run things went bad early.  I counted on losing drills and solar panels but not an entire chunk of the ship!  I kind of gave up on it when that happened since I thought there was no way it could make it to the surface.  But some inner contrarian lodged deep within my brain came to the fore and I continued the simulation.

After deploying the 'chutes,I couldn't believe that the ship was still intact!  And then I realized I had no shots of the descent.  This one was the most dramatic and so I tried to recreate it.  To no avail.  I pondered a long time what I was going to do and my post above is the result.

Sorry for the lack of pics.  The next section will have more.  And a lot of them will be purple. 

Jacia's damage report will start off the next update.

Happy landings!
 

[Starhawk]

Joan stared out at the purple sphere that hung in the blackness before her.  Her momentary relief at seeing the Eve Rescuer land successfully had been quickly overwhelmed by the fear of what she might hear in Jacia's damage report.  Her head was pounding and she had almost begun to wish she wasn't the kerb in charge.  Even if the Rescuer was in perfect condition that still left so many other things that needed to happen correctly in order for everyone to return safely to orbit.  And now she was second-guessing her choice to have the Eve Surface Transport land near the anomalous readings and check them out.  It would add something like a thousand klicks to the journey.  If the rover had any difficulties, she could be dooming those kerbonauts.  'And for what?' she asked herself.  The retort sprang into her head immediately - 'For Science, of course.'  She took a deep breath and began to feel a bit better as she waited for Jacia to survey the ship down on the surface.

Jacia:  We lost some structure with that pod, but there should be no problem supporting the ship even once it's fully fuelled.  We lost one of the two ore converters, five out of eight drills, and four of the sixteen solar panel arrays.  We may take a bit longer to convert enough ore to fill the ship, but the remaining mining equipment checks out.
Most importantly of all - there is no damage to the ascent stage.  I repeat - no damage to the ascent stage!

Joan:  Oh thank Kraken!  Great news!  Excellent work, Jacia.  You may proceed with mining ops whenever you're ready.  There's no rush since the EST is going to check out those strange sensor readings before heading to pick up Milry and rendezvous with you.  You have plenty of time.
Joan to EST.  Burdorf, you are go for circularization burn.

Burdorf:  Aye aye, ma'am.  Burning now.

OK, ma'am.  Orbit circularized.  Just have to wait until we're lined up with our landing site.

Joan:  You may commence deorbit ops as soon as you are on the correct inclination.  Go and see what's down there!

...

Burdorf:  Deorbit burn complete.  Periapsis set to 65 km.  Decoupling transfer stage.

Burdorf:  And deploying the heat shield.

Burdorf:  OK.  Turning to retrograde.  Ready for atmospheric entry.
And that's 70 km - we're starting to feel some turbulence now.  Drifting off axis - it's fighting me.  This is much more severe than in the sims.Damn!  I can't hold it steady!  The nose keeps dipping into the airstream.

Burdorf:  Gilry, you're the engineer.  What can I do?

Gilry:  Exactly what you are doing!  Keep pulling the nose back in!  We're still within tolerances.

Burdorf:  Dropping below two klicks a second....
And below one klick per second...  And there's two hundred metres a second - heat shield jettisoned.  Uh, picked up a bit of a spin...  Ok, pulling out... and stabilizing.  Well, I guess we're a ways off target, but the craft is performing beautifully.  We'll glide as far as Eve's atmosphere will let us.

Burdorf:  Coming in...  and touchdown!  Jettisoning flight surfaces.  Gilry, we're sliding!  See what you can do with the traction control software, will you?

Gilry:  On it!

Burdorf:  Ok, everybody, you can breathe now.  We are down safe and stable.  Looks like we have a bit of distance to travel to find the source of those readings.

Burdorf:  Well, I guess we'd better get going.

The adventures of KRRAKC will continue.

Happy landings!

[Mister Dilsby]

Excellent! I got a bit nervous on seeing the pictures, and noting certain similarities between your second landing ship and a certain craft of mine that "dipped" a bit too far into Eve's atmosphere. Relieved to find that you intended yours to remain on the surface.  

[Starhawk]

The Eve Surface Transport has safely landed carrying Burdorf, Cambles, and Gilry.  They now have a very long journey ahead.

First, they will travel to the anomaly which was detected from orbit.
Then, they will visit the original Eve Landing Site where Val, Bill, and Bob became the first Kerbals to ever walk on Eve's surface.  This stop is mostly because it's right on the way.
Third, after a long, long drive they will arrive at the location of Milry and her wreckage.
Fourth and finally they will proceed almost all the way to the North pole to arrive at the Eve Rescuer.

Joan:  Eve Surface Transport, report.
Burdorf:  Burdorf here Ma'am.  The EST is performing well and we've covered over eighty klicks already.  No tire issues whatsoever - looks like Gilry will have a boring ride.
The craft is somewhat underpowered, however.  It won't climb any slope that's more than ten degrees.  That means we will be unable to get data from the Impact Ejecta or Peaks biomes.
Perhaps more significantly, this trip will be a lot like the one in 'The Dunation'.  We will have to stop regularly to recharge the batteries.  More often earlier and later in the day when the sun is lower.  This will continue to become more significant as we move away from the equatorial region.

Joan:  Thank you, Burdorf.  The entire science division is extremely excited to learn about the source of the unusual sensor readings.  Hopefully that will make up for their disappointment at missing out on that data.
I know we've already discussed this, but use caution.  Do not take any risks with that rover or you will have a very long walk.

Burdorf:  No problem.  None of us wants to cover that distance on foot in EVA suits!
 

...many purple rolling hills pass underneath the rover...
 

Burdorf:  All right science fans.  We are closing in on the source of the anomalous sensor data.

Burdorf:  We should have visual contact in just a minute or two.

Joan:  Good work, EST team!  Every scientist in the system is watching this feed.

Burdorf:  OK, just have to crest this rise and...

Barbart and Samby (science team in Whoopstooshort's lab): ...

Cambles (scientist aboard EST): ...

Joan:  What?!
 

...several minutes later...

Wernher: ...

Linus: ...

Cambles:  The object appears to be identical to the one on the KSC grounds.  All sensor readings confirm.  I don't believe it.  We've come hundreds of kilometres out of our way to see something we can study in comfort back home near all the labs.  What a disappointment!
I really had hoped we would find something new and exciting.  Sorry folks, I guess it's back to your microscopes, telescopes, and test tubes.

Joan:  It figures.  I knew I should have focused on the rescue.  Well, at least you'll pass through more biomes on the way.  Carry on.  Make best speed to Milry and her wreckage.

So the rover is enormously underpowered.  Not enough panels to run the wheels and the craft is fairly heavy with that Mk2 cockpit which means the thing can't climb any significant slope.  At least not with any combination of the advanced tweakables for the wheels that I could find.  The wheels don't seem to pop anymore.  Not a single wheel repair has been required.  And here I thought I was being all clever putting a small retractable landing gear under the nose to protect the rover wheels from shocks.  It has turned out to be completely redundant with the new wheel physics.

And I was disappointed to set myself up to drive a rover all that way only to see another obelisk.  C'est la vie.

The adventures of KRRAKC will continue.

Happy landings!

[Mister Dilsby]

Well... maybe it's exactly the same as the Kerbin monolith, and maybe it's not. Has the team thoroughly searched it for strange surface patterns, convenient serial ports, or any other evidence of author handwaving? 

[Starhawk]

On 12/17/2016 at 7:13 AM, Starhawk said:

The adventures of KRRAKC will continue.

I know this seemed like a lie because I was gone from the forum for such a long time.

I always intended to continue this mission report.

The adventures of KRRAKC will continue soon.

 

On 11/21/2016 at 7:46 AM, Kuzzter said:

But really, you didn't have one spare pinky to spam F1 during all this? A shame, an understandable shame, but wow I would have loved to see some of this

I will, however, drop in a couple of shots from the descent of the Eve Rescuer during one of the many simulations.

 

So, imagine that thing spinning as fast as I could get it going during all this.  Yeah...

 

On 12/17/2016 at 7:13 AM, Starhawk said:

So the rover is enormously underpowered.  Not enough panels to run the wheels

As far as this part goes, there was an enormous nerf to the wheels between versions and they ended up using way more power than when I planned the mission.

 

Happy landings!