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Eve Mission Update: Crawler Landed Successully


Zosma Procyon

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In my previous report I covered the launch of my multiple craft mission to Eve. Here is an update. All the craft arrived in Eve orbit without incident. Here are a few pictures of some of the highlights.

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Here is the return tug performing its parking burn. Although it is the last craft of this mission to be used, it was the first to arrive.

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Here is one of my orbital transfer scooters parking.

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And here is the Crawler parking. This stage had just 50 m/s of Delta-V left at the completion of the burn.

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Here is one of the tankers for refueling the Eve Liftoff vehicle landed on Gilly to refuel itself.

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Gwendin Kerman was marooned in a high orbit of Eve by her previous employer. Here she is riding a scooter down to a rendezvous with the Crawler.

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Same story with Wehrmy here.

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They had to spacewalk between their scooters and the Crawler. And once they were onboard, the next step was to land the Crawler.

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The last 50 m/s in the interplanetary transfer stage didn't last long.

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The initial altitude before the deorbit burn was 264 km. Initial velocity about 3400 m/s.

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I'm kind of proud of how I rigged this booster to the crawler. Open the ramp halfway, and clipped the decoupler to the base of the ramp. Here is the booster being jettisoned.

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Next 6 vector engines and 8 orange jumbo tanks of fuel slowed the Crawler to a relative crawl. At burnout it was moving at a mere 86 m/s at an altitude of 140 km. Of course with Eve's ridiculous gravity it accelerated back up to about 1000 m/s before atmospheric interface. Still that was plenty low enough for a safe entry.

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Once the fuel was depleted the Vectors were no longer necessary. They were jettisoned and the heat shields were inflated.

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It did get a little hot during entry.

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And it wasn't very stable. Lets just say its a good thing that Kerbals don't have stomaches. But it didn't break up or explode.

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Below 20,000 m I deployed the drogue chutes. The Crawler spent most of the descent upside down.

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I deployed the main chutes almost immediately thereafter, since it was falling under 100 m/s already.

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A bit of a realism fail, but a fun shot.

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The view from inside the Crawler's cockpit.

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Eventually the drogues opened and righted the Crawler.

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And then the main chutes opened.

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Their purpose fulfilled, the heat shields were jettisoned. I learned the hard way during my Eve Lifter testing program that you generally have to wait until your craft is descending at under 20 m/s to jettison those heat shields, or they will be pushed back up and smash into your vehicle.

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Goodbye heat shields. After this was the longest and most boring phase of the descent. 5.3 m/s for 2600 m.

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Almost down!

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Touch down! I was worried it would come down on top of those heat shields, but thankfully it missed.

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The last step was to jettison the outboard tanks. Easily down. I-Breams sticking out of the inside surface ensure that when jettisoned the tank simply role away.

The landing site is 34 km from my first Eve Rover and another marooned Kerbin. Just a bit of a drive.

End of report.

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2 hours ago, Zosma Procyon said:

I learned the hard way during my Eve Lifter testing program that you generally have to wait until your craft is descending at under 20 m/s to jettison those heat shields, or they will be pushed back up and smash into your vehicle.

Bravo!  And yes, that waiting to jettison applies even to solid heatshields, as I've found to my cost :) 

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Here is an update to the update: My landing site was actually 74 km from the rendezvous site. And driving on planets in game is B-O-R-I-N-G. Especially in the Eve highlands. Once I pick up the three Kerbals previously on the surface and offload most of the Crawler crew back into orbit, I'm going to drive down to the wet side of the planet and explore there.

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