[Stock 0.17] Evolution - Eval Exploration Vehicle

[QuantumFlux]

Evolution - Eval Exploration Vehicle

It unfortunately can't take off Eve so far, so don't waste your time trying to accomplish that

Many a kerbal have dreamt of seeing the violet mountains and quicksilver sea of Eve, but so far, no one has had the ways to bring a kerbal there and back alive to report of Her beauty.

Thus, I present you Evolution, a vehicle specifically engineered to cope with the hardships of landing on and returning from Eve.

Unfortunately though, our engineers, lacking mathematical

and pilotical

ability, have not yet managed to fully verify it's functionality.

So let's make this work The Rocket is composed of a basic heavy lifter stage that is also capable of setting up a full orbit. Once that is used up, it switches to two nuclear-thermal engines that have enough fuel to make it to Eve. Having arrived there, it is designed to perform an aerobraking maneuver and deploy it's parachutes to land softly, however the one time I did actually manage to get that far, the drag ripped them clean off, so maybe I deployed them to early. It has a set of two aerospikes to bring it back up to a low orbit, however now that I realize how crazy the atmosphere and gravity of Eve actually is, I doubt that that would work properly. The aerospikes can be dropped once depleted which leaves the capsule with one RCS tank and thrusters to perform a rendezvous with a rescue mission.

I have tried for days now to construct an Eval lander that is able to at least bring my kerbal back out the atmosphere to make a rescue feasible, but I seem to be totally unable. This is my best result so far, so I thought someone else who is struggling as much as I am might find this helpful.

Edited September 24, 2012 by QuantumFlux

[Joshmo]

If we had docking, we could place fuel pods around the other planets to be gathered up as needed. But alas...

[QuantumFlux]

If we had docking, we could place fuel pods around the other planets to be gathered up as needed. But alas...

Yea, I know. But sending a second craft to rescue the kerbonaut afterwards is essentially the same as putting a few fuel tanks into orbit, so I'm okay with that.

EDIT: Success (so far):

Deploying the parachutes at about 90 m/s seems to work flawlessly. There was a staging error in the original .craft File, which I now corrected. Enjoy

Edited September 24, 2012 by QuantumFlux