Eve Mission Launched

[Zosma Procyon]

Today after about a month and a half of preparation and experimentation, most of that on spent on one of six types of craft involved, I launched my most complicated mission to date to the purple planet, Eve. This mission has four primary goals.

(1) Land a large mobile base on the surface of Eve.

(2) Rescue three new Kerbals from Eve for contracts.

(3) Rescue Bob and Bill who have been marooned on Eve in my first tiny rover for over three in game years.

(4) Get 16 of the Kerbals off Eve and back to Kerbin. This has proven to be the most difficult step to prepare for. Most of my prototype liftoff craft either could not make it to the surface of Eve in one, or even 10, pieces, or could not make it back into orbit. The rocket I eventually developed is massive, and will have required 4 large tankers to refuel it for different stages of its part in the mission.

Here are the vehicles that will perform this mission.

First my mobile base, technical designation "Base Crawler Type 4-B", current designation "Eve Crawler". When it arrives on Eve's surface, probably near the shores of one of the equatorial bodies of "water", it will be given a name in line my with in game convention, which is naming bases and stations after the proper names of naked eye stars visible from Earth. It is designated the Type 4-B because a smaller version, the Type 4, is already on a mission to Tylo. Ironically the 4-B will arrive at its designation before its older sibling. 

Here the Base Crawler Type 4-B GT (Ground Test) is just sitting on the launch pad.

And here is is with the bay doors open, and all of the various types of panels and the drills deployed.

And a top view clearly showing the three on board science labs and the ISRU converter (covered in radiators).

And the rear view. The Type 4 and 4-B are actually the first time I've ever used the cargo ramp as a ramp. Normally I just use it as a mouth to collect marooned pods that contracts require me to retrieve. In both Base Crawler models, the ramps are used because the vehicles' destinations have too high gravity to use the jet packs to boost up to a hatch, and it's of course cool to have a back door. You'll notice the entry way to the craft here is in fact a Hitchhiker pod recessed into a fuel tank bulkhead head. It works, and it looks cool.

Here is the 4-BGT next to the GT model of my first Eve Rover. The Eve rover currently on the purple planet has traveled over 1000 km, across 4 different biomes, and collected a metric f*ckton of data, which is stored in those new(ish) lunch boxes. This data, and Bill and Bod who have been stuck in the thing for years,  will be transfered to the Eve Crawler when they eventually rendezvous.

And here is why I have Klaws mounted on the front. This is also how I will transfer crew from the Crawler to the Liftoff vehicle.

Here you see the Eve Crawler mounted on its obscenely powerful and expensive (8-10 million credits) launch vehicle. I used a combination of autostructing, rigid joints, and structs, so I didn't even have to use cheats to get it to hold together during launch. Interestingly this is actually a much older design compared to the other launch vehicles used in this mission. I settled on it before spending a solid month trying to get a liftoff vehicle to work, and in that time discovered the wondrous technique of tightly clustering Vector engines, which the other large launch vehicles built for this mission use. But the Eve Crawler launcher wasn't broken, and didn't need fixing. Needless to say the massive part count slowed the launch to about 1 fps, so it took over a half hour to actually get into a holding orbit around Kerbin. It also had far more Delta-V than was required for an Eve landing. I found the best way to get this thing down was too burn about 2500 m/s of Delta-V before atmospheric insertion, and use four inflatable heat shields  (two fore and two aft), and essentially let is gently waft down through Eve's annoyingly thick atmosphere until it falls to around 10 km and then deploy parachutes. I also discovered in testing that this design is not a good boat.

Here the Eve Crawler is in its holding orbit.

And a front view.

And a dorsal view during the transfer burn to Eve. Notice the small radially mounted ore containers. The base contract this mission is meant to satisfy requires 2500 ore be onboard. The Eve Crawler has a capacity of 3500.

I just took this picture because I thought it was a cool image.

Second, the rocket that took me a month to "perfect", the Liftoff vehicle, or Eve Lifter. This will land the hot and dirty way on Eve, to conserve fuel. I eventually got a design that I not only liked, but survived Eve atmospheric entry almost 75% of the time. In vacuum, it has about 8300 m/s of Delta-V. This gives it more than enough speed and power to reach a low orbit around Eve if launched from anywhere above 1.3 km ASL. My target area in the equatorial highlands averages around 3 km ASL.

Here it is during launch. The actually Lifter lander launched with empty tanks, and will not be fueled until it arrives in Eve orbit. I do realize that I could land it empty and use the ISRU converter and klaw on the Eve Crawler to fuel it before launch from Eve's surface, but I don't want to do it that way. Because I don't, that's why!

Here it is in the holding orbit. To save credits (a bit), but mostly to allow the launch to progress at above 1 FPS, I decided to refuel the orbit acquisition boosters (the stacks of the black and white tanks) in orbit and use them for the Eve transfer burn and for stopping in Eve orbit. The weird hat thing with the giant airlock sticking our of the top is for refueling. 

Here it is about to dock with the third craft used in this mission, my Kerbin Orbit Tanker. There was nothing really special about it, just a bunch of the biggest fuel tanks launched using a crazy amount of fuel and vector engines. Launching it cost about 8 million credits. Thankfully I built up a massive reserve of credits through contracts and selling science. Once the Lifter was refueled for its transfer and eventual parking burns, I dropped the tanker into the atmosphere and let it burn up. It was built to be expendable.

This is was taken use a few moments before it started to explode. I have the more spectacular reentry effects turned off to take some of the load off my laptop's graphics card.

And here the Lifter Lander is during its transfer burn.

Now, when the lifter lander arrives at an Eve holding orbit, it needs to be fueled. For that I built the forth craft involved in this mission. My Eve Tanker.

Here one of the three I dispatched to Eve is boosting out of Kerbin Orbit. Unlike any previous tanker I've ever built, these are designed to land on a body, Gilly in this case, and refuel themselves after arriving at their destination. It should only take two of these tankers to fuel the lifter, but you never know: math is hard.

The fifth craft is a scooter intended to pick up some new Kerbals currently stranded in Eve Orbit, and bring them to the Eve Crawler before it descends through hell to the surface. Why shouldn't they get to see the planet their previous employers sent them to see?

Two of these scooters have been dispatched. Their delivery vehicles are run of the mill rockets using older stock parts, and I didn't really see the point in showcasing them. This picture was taken during the Kerbin orbit test flight. I wanted to use those new(ish) RCS fueled engines, and four looked the best. So I ended up with a scooter that pulls acceleration of over 50 m/s/s and turns on a penny. Obviously I had to test it to make sure that a Kerbal would not be ejected by the acceleration.

This is Joroly Kerman, my test dummy. Despite being one of the first Kerbals I ever rescued he somehow got knocked down to a one star pilot. Rather than let him regain his lost ranks, I frequently kill him during tests. He was not ejected by the acceleration of this scooter.

The sixth and final type of craft for this mission is the tug that will return the crew capsule of the Eve Lifter to Kerbin. I'm not going to go into much detail on the operation of the Lifter, but it starts on Eve's surface as a 1186 ton, 116 m tall behemoth, but ends in orbit as this.

Using my "sardine packing" method of Kerbal storage, that container can transport 16 Kerbals. And since in the stock game they don't require life support, they can stay in there for the entire return journey to Kerbin.

This is the tug sitting in its holding orbit. It's inside the cowl.

The small space probe at the front is the tug. Propelled  by a cluster of 9 ion engines, it will dock with the shielded airlock on top of the crew container, and gently push them back home.

The mission craft will begin arriving in Eve orbit in 160 in game days, over a period of about 30 days. I will submit another report after the Eve Crawler has landed on the surface, maybe, if I feel like it.

End of report.

 

[Seshins]

I would very much like to see the outcome of this. Those vehicles are impressive to say the least.

[Clipperride]

Congratulations on getting this monster into space!

[Geschosskopf]

7 hours ago, Zosma Procyon said:

I also discovered in testing that this design is not a good boat.

Holy frijole!  The only thing more insane than that crawler is the lifter it needed    I hope you can get it down near, but not in, the ocean....

I'm sure you've tested this already so have enough solar panels to run all the ISRU.  Thus, you can remind me how much Eve's atmosphere reduces solar panel effectiveness.  I forget the amount...

 

7 hours ago, Zosma Procyon said:

Why shouldn't they get to see the planet their previous employers sent them to see?

Hehehe, why not?  Congrats, guys, you're saved from being marooned in orbit.  Now we're sending you to the surface  

 

7 hours ago, Zosma Procyon said:

Using my "sardine packing" method of Kerbal storage, that container can transport 16 Kerbals. And since in the stock game they don't require life support, they can stay in there for the entire return journey to Kerbin.

Definitely.  Kerbals, being space aliens with totally non-human biology, can go into suspended animation indefinitely with no ill effects.

[DAL59]

This is going to be... interesting

[Wallygator]

OMG. Epic metal thrown skyward...