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Eve Ascension


TheBrisbyMouse

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I DID IT! AT LONG LAST, I DID IT!

I decided to take another crack at Eve, because I had nothing better to do. This time, I did careful testing of the ascent vehicle. It had to do this:

  • Launch prototype and ascend to 40km, staging as necessary.
  • Cut throttle and note remaining fuel and stages.
  • Remove expended fuel and stages in the VAB
  • Relaunch to orbit
  • Achieve escape velocity

And have this:

  • Room for one kerbal
  • Docking port
  • Heat shielding for descent
  • Parachutes for unpowered landing
  • Plenty of room for error(and boy, will there be a lot of it)

The mission was to proceed like so:

  • Orbit the Purple Heart(ascent vehicle) defueled(see below), transfer to Eve, and land safely
  • Orbit an ISRU rover, transfer to Eve, and land safely near the Purple Heart
  • Fuel up the Purple Heart
  • Ascend to orbit
  • Orbit return vehicle, transfer to Eve, rendezvous and dock with the Purple Heart orbiter
  • Return to Kerbin, re-enter, and land safely

So I began designing a prototype. It achieved and surpassed the requirements of the mission.

After the Purple Heart passed the test, I went to work building a launch vehicle for it. It looked like this:

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(please excuse the lack of in-mission pics until after phase 5, I expected this to fail horribly)

Following the lagtastic and uneventful launch, transfer, orbit, and de-orbit, I noticed I had a bit of fuel left over in the transfer stage. Since the transfer stage had the same symmetry as the Purple Heart, I pumped the fuel up into it, to give it a little more stability in atmo. Quicksaved. Reentered. Made a HUGE mistake. I staged. Heat shields fell away. Burned and died. Reloaded the quicksave. PROPERLY got rid of the transfer stage(released the Sr. docking port manually). Landed safely at ~6m/s. Quicksaved. Went to the space center.

Built the ISRU rover, which had to have:

  • Plenty of wheels, both landing gear and rover wheels
  • Suspension(wheels on structural pylons)
  • Rocket propulsion for landing gear mode
  • ISRU unit, drills, and main power source(2 gigantors)
  • Backup power source(fuel cell)
  • Klaw
  • Uncrewed, uses probe core.
  • Parachutes for unpowered landing

Wasn't too hard. Built a launch vehicle for it, eyeballing it. Overbuilt it. A lot.

screenshot250_zpsgii9mnyz.png

First stage sans SRB's got it to orbit and completed part of the transfer burn. Turned on the fuel cell. A small (100 m/s or so) plane change and I had a 100km perigee. Circularized, staged outer engines away(the whole trip their nosecones kept clipping into the fairing and getting eaten by the Heat Kraken). Small plane change to reach the high landing latitude. Quicksaved. Next orbit passed perfectly over the Purple Heart. Using the remaining delta-v in the transfer stage(>2km/s!), I pulled off my best ever precision landing, 200m away from the Purple Heart! Unfortunately and inexplicably, a rover wheel broke, despite only landing on the landing gear. It was uphill from the Purple Heart, so I took off the brakes and carefully let it roll downhill. Docked with the Purple Heart without too much hassle. Bizarrely, another rover wheel broke while I did this, despite me never raising the landing gear. Quicksaved 5 times. Extended the solar panels, and turned on the ISRU stuff. Set timewarp to maximum, saw it was going to take a while, took The Silmarillion off my shelf, and began reading.

Five or so minutes later, it was done fueling. Put the book down and went back to normal time. Almost had a heart attack when it spazzed a little when physics kicked in. Nothing bad happened. Quicksaved uncountable times. Looked at the MET clock. 7 years into the mission. Undocked the rover and moved it away. Quicksave spammed. Had a surge of confidence, and an idea.

I turned on Fraps.

Did a small test recording to see if it was working. It was. Engines were already on, ready to go. Started recording. First attempt failed horribly, poor Purple Heart fell over on launch. Reloaded the quicksave and tried again. Same result. Reloaded again. Turned on the 6 mainsail boosters' engine gimbals(don't know why I turned them off).

Tried again. The result: (I added some music and a text story thing to keep it from being boring)

For those who can't/won't watch the video, here's how it went.

I almost fell over like before, but managed to save it thanks to the added gimbal just before the first asparagus boosters ran out. Staged. Pointed straight up. Staged again at 6km. Began gravity turn at 20km and staged away the last pair of boosters.

Disaster strikes. The boosters collide with the inner engine, and it's destroyed. I gawk in horror for 5 seconds before staging again. I was pretty confident that I could make it to orbit without that stage. Turns out I was right. Got a suborbital trajectory with the next stage and(somewhat) circularized with the last, with plenty of fuel to spare. Ended up with a 207x106 orbit.

That's where I'm at so far. Construction of the return vehicle will commence after I post this. I'll be sure to post screenshots of this final stretch!

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All right, now that I've had my coffee, here's the rest of the mission. A LOT of stuff went wrong.

First off, the Eve Return Vehicle. It was quickly cobbled together, which will come and bite me in the engine bell later.

screenshot254_zps9dzozjjd.png

Flipped it once, boosters ate my engines once, then got to orbit.

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Got an encounter with eve on the transfer burn, but I should've waited about a kerbal week for a better phase angle.

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Correction Burn, quicksaved.

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Tried Aerobraking.

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Nope. Going way too fast to not need a heat shield. Reloaded. Tried a higher periapsis, 70km. Still burned up. Reloaded, and decided to do a braking burn instead.

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That's one doozy of a plane change...

Wait, the Purple Heart still has fuel, right?

screenshot281_zpsp8klmq5b.png

Yep, plenty! I'll have it change planes to match the Eve Return Vehicle.

screenshot304_zpszom3hacp.png

Done, with a few m/s left in the tanks.

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6-7 orbits, a tiny RCS burn, and a "kill relative velocity" burn later:

screenshot309_zpslrgbidyc.png

Docking is easy now that I know how to do it properly.

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Now to wait for a transfer window back to kerbin.

Went to the space center, timewarped ahead.

The time is nigh. Time to say farewell to the Purple Heart.

screenshot317_zpsud9yfszb.png

Setting up the maneuver node:

screenshot318_zpsgcbqr0hi.png

There we go. Nice, efficient burn. I'll have enough fuel to do a braking burn too!

But first, course correction.

screenshot320_zpsxowh4hn8.png

Now the braking burn.

screenshot323_zps0twdmazq.png

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Excellent! Now I can deorbit, re-enter the atmosphere with my heat shield, then activate my parachutes for an unpowered la-

screenshot326_zpsxviy5e2k.png

...

*vigorous headdesking*

*horrendous unspellable verbal utterances*

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Transfer the fuel and crew, and undock.

Just for kicks, I make sure to get them as close to KSC as I can. I do a plane change and deorbit.

screenshot343_zps0rqsnffb.png

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Stage away the service module and start to get hot.

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Making sure I don't screw it up at the last second. You can see KSC in the background.

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'Schutes open safely.

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Fully deploy

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Landed safely!

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Now to list EVERYTHING that went wrong.

  • A couple failed launches of the Purple Heart
  • Highly inclined orbit at Eve
  • Some failed aerobraking at Eve
  • Staging fail while aerobraking at eve
  • Failed launches of the Eve Miner
  • Nosecones of the Eve Miner transfer stage get eaten by the Heat Kraken
  • Poorly designed, inadequate suspension
  • Rover is VERY unstable
  • Barely enough power for the Eve Miner due to high latitude
  • Only one kerbal, no engineers to speed up the ISRU or fix the broken rover wheels
  • No means to return the Eve Miner
  • Eve ate the mainsail
  • Inclined orbit of the Purple Heart
  • FORGOT PARACHUTES ON THE EVE RETURN VEHICLE
  • Inefficient transfer of Eve Return Vehicle to Eve
  • 2 failed aerobraking attempts at Eve
  • Overbuilt You idiot you forgot parachutes
  • Failed Precision landing at Kerbin

If anyone notices anything else, please let me know so I can add it to my wall of shame :sticktongue:

Very nice, and I love the name of the ship!

Why, did you get the reference?:D

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Why, did you get the reference?:D

Yes, just one of the many decorations your crew deserves for finishing the mission despite that long and impressive list of things that went wrong. I am always more impressed with successful missions that went wrong than those that went right. Yarely done, bravo!

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Missions like this make me think about going to Eve and back again, but then I remember the hassle and I sigh. Eve should be easier to leave nowdays, right? :blush:

Yes, i just did it recently and it was FUN. I like it better now than it was in 0.90; the ship design problem is less about packing/staging for extreme dV than it is about making a ship with reasonably high dV robust enough to survive atmospheric entry and landing.

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