Eve Mission Update: Massive lifter landed, bulk of crew lifted back to Eve Orbit

[Zosma Procyon]

About a month ago (real time) I launched a massive six vehicle mission to Eve. The mission consisted of a large mobile base, a massive lander meant to lift the crew off the planet, three tankers, and a tug to push the lifter crew capsule back home to Kerbin. And tonight  I can report that despite design flaws in 5 out of 6 craft (the tug is perfect), the mission has entered the final and easiest phase: Return.

In my last update, I reported that the mobile base (Eve Crawler) had landed and the lifter had been fueled.

Here is the Lifter docked with one of the three tankers. Each tanker made two trips to Gilly to mine and refuel themselves. It took about 50 in game days to refuel the lifter. I decided to refuel and use the massive interplanetary boosters to slow the Lifter for atmospheric insertion. This allowed a much more precise and survivable landing on Eve. Once the tankers had made their two required trips, I ditched them into Eve's atmosphere.

As mentioned above, they were flawed. The engines suck down further than the landing gear. Stupid design oversight. They still worked, but were not worth saving. Nothing of them made it to the surface of Eve.

Next it was time to deorbit the Lifter. This took ever scrap of fuel in the deorbit stage, and a lot of trial and error in my experimentation sandbox save.

After about 30 sandbox experiments, I figured out how to put the lifter down in the same general area of the mobile base. My original plan was just to drive the Crawler down from its landing site to an equatorial plateau I chose as the Lifter landing area, and I did. But I didn't drive all the way to the  equator after I found a large flat area a few degrees north of the equator that looked just perfect for a landing site.

Here is the Lifter inflating its heat shields after jettisoning the last part of the deorbit stage.

And here the heat shields are fully inflated and you can see all the deorbit boosters descending toward their fiery demise.

I was pretty accurate. The landing site ended up within 7.6 km of where I parked the Crawler.

Here the top heat shields have been jettisoned and the chutes deployed.

It was a relief when the chutes opened. On the way down I jettisoned all off the remaining heat shields and dozens of radiators.

Look at all that garbage. It would have been a problem if I didn't decide to cheat a little later.

The view from underneath shortly before touchdown.

Almost on the ground, and you can see a little problem. One of the radiators lacked the curtiousy to explode on impact, and was in the way. It did not break anything.

Touchdown! All of parachutes (nearly 200) were jettisoned. This combined with the radiator between the boosters gave me a bit to worry about. Test launches showed the lifter could survive launching with parachutes exploding all around the engines, but I didn't want to take chances with the radiator. So I deleted all of the debris from the Lifter.

Looks much cleaner. Next was the short drive from the Crawler's parking spot to the Lifter landing site.

You can see the lifter on the horizon.

The view from inside the control cabin.

Much closer.

The Crawler has a Klaw on its nose for the sole purpose of docking with the Lifter.

I thought I missed, but I docked it on the first try. The crew boarded via a the transfer crew function to the a lander can attached to the side of the lifter.

Here is Bob Kerman, one of the first two Kerbals I sent to Eve. Him and the other one, Bill, were marooned on Eve in a small two man rover for almost 3 years before they were picked up by the mobile base. Bill also boarded the lifter later. I'm proud of the bridge I built between the lander can and the "sardine can" crew capsule. Kerbals don't require life support, or space to move, so you can just stick rover chairs in a cargo container and pack them in.

I think both Bob and Bill ended up upside down. 16 of the 24 crew on the Crawler transferred to the Lifter. Six scientists (in three processing labs), a pilot and an engineer stayed behind to continue their exploration of Eve. I'm going to drive down out of the mountains and study the biomes at sea level. And I'm considering sending the eight remaining explorers a better mobile base, possibly a boat. The current Eve Crawler has too many parts, mainly solar panels, and it makes the game run slow. I have a boat base in route to Laythe, ETA 2 years.

Don't they just look cozy. They'll be packed in there like kippers for at least the next 260 days.

The remaining explorers than drove away to a safe distance of two kilometers. And parked behind a hill. Most of the lifter is ditched on the way up, and I didn't want them getting hit with a booster.

Only one thing left to do now.

36 meganewtons of thrust is more than enough to rip the Lifter off of the heavy surface of Eve, provided by six clusters of six vector engines. In fact I ended up using vectors for all of the four stages of the Lifter's ascent configuration. 36 for the first stage, 18 for the second, 8 for the third, and one for the final orbital insertion stage.

About 60 pairs of landing gear and the lander can were then jettisoned.

All of the landing gear exploded on impact.

First stage burnout.

Second stage ignition. It was here than I notice the Kerbal's parachutes, which did not exist when this mission was launched, were now staged. 

The third stage ignited above the bulk of the atmosphere, and did most of the work.

It got a little hot.

Final stage.

Gotta love Mechjeb. The circularization maneuver left the final stage of the Lifter with bingo fuel...

And a perfect-ish holding orbit around Eve. Next comes the tug. My original plan was to transfer the Kerbals to another craft for the return flight, but I decided to go after the world first achievement for returning a vehicle from Eve's surface to Kerbin's surface. And this made my job easier. When Kerbals go EVA from a sardine can they tend to explode out at ridiculous velocity. So instead I designed a tug to simply dock with the crew capsule and push it home.

The tug's time has come. Mechjeb piloted it to a rendezvous with what was left of the Lifter.

The remaining fuel in the Eve orbit parking stage was almost enough to finish the rendezvous. It had to be finished on under ion engine power.

I'm rather proud of the tug's engine. It is a cluster of nine ion engines stuck to a large xenon fuel tank. At Kerbin orbit, it only takes two of the big solar panels to power the cluster.

Beautiful isn't it. I love the blue.

At this time I realized I didn't need to have the biomes turned on anymore. That shouldn't be considered a cheat.

There the Lifter is.

And I of course had Mechjeb do the docking. My hand eye coordination is not good enough to dock manually in space. This is actually why I adopted the use of Mechjeb. And yes those are the helmets of the Kerbals sticking through the container doors. I've had this happen in the past, and it does not impact the survivability of reentry. Still annoying though. I thought I had the seats tucked far enough in to prevent that.

The Vector engine and fuel tank no longer being required, they were jettisoned. Mechjeb plotted a course to return to Kerbin in 70ish days, and a 190 day flight time. I have more than enough xenon for the trip. 

I just reclassified the lander can as debris and left it there.

When the mission returns to kerbin, in probably another month real time, I will compile and submit a final mission report.

[DAL59]

[Klapaucius]

I stand in awe!  I have a long way to go. Thanks for the inspiration.