It's been a while. Part III

[NewtSoup]

I am trying to limit myself to one science gathering mission per body to encourage me to visit more places as in the past I've maxed out my science tree just in Kerbin local.

I've now made it to Duna with limited science gathering so by my own rules I can't go there again except to set up a base.  I could go to Ike though.  However that's a large place with many biomes and I don't want to "Waste" it.  So what about Gilly as my second interplanetary mission?

Since the Duna mission I now have ( extra ) The Magnetometer and a Medium Scanning Arm ( neither of which I know how to use ).  I have a rough recollection of the  Survey and Suface Scanners.  I've also no real idea how to use the Seismic scanner.

I'm thinking of Gilly because:

Low gravity:  I can potentially use a lander to hop from biome to biome. I only have Rovemax S2 Wheels available.
Only 3 biomes:  I can potentially visit all 3 biomes in a rover.
It's very small:  In my head this makes it easier to hit all 3 biomes.  Though I realise Gilly can be a tricky place to land.

If anyone has any advice on using the science apparatus available to me and which body to go to next then I'd welcome it

[NewtSoup]

I've decided it's Gilly.

This piece of ridiculousness is my lander/rover combination.  It uses entirely Vernor thrusters for 6 degrees of freedom flight.  It's called the Joules Vernor.

I just need to make a mothership now that can push this thing to Gilly and ideally bombard the surface of Gilly with something so I can make use of the seismic sensors.  I've also just spotted the "Cargo"  category in the  VAB which I'd not realised was there. I may have to have a minor redesign to take some of this stuff with me.

Addendum - the Joules Vernor now includes a selection of deployable experiments in a  SEQ-9 container.  I have no idea what I'm doing.  I hope 3 stars on the scientist and engineer will be sufficient to deploy them ( apparently 3* can have 2 power modules deployed )

[Vanamonde]

Bring lots of dV. Gilly's gravity is so small it won't aid you much and so it's more like docking with a ship than landing on a moon. And you'll need heat protection if you plan to aerobrake at Eve. 

[NewtSoup]

13 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Bring lots of dV. Gilly's gravity is so small it won't aid you much and so it's more like docking with a ship than landing on a moon. And you'll need heat protection if you plan to aerobrake at Eve. 

Yay - lots of dV is my speciality.  I am not going to aerobrake at Eve. So, MOAR dV!.

 

[NewtSoup]

The plan:

During Kerbin -Eve transfer adjust PE to about 10k above the atmosphere.  Adjust capture inclination to be as close to Gilly's Orbit as possible.  At Eve PE burn retrograde to produce an elliptical orbit  to the edge of Eve's SOI. 
At AN or DN of this orbit adjust inclination to match Gilly.  Then at PE reduce AP just below Gilly's Orbit ( so I don't smack into it. ) Then wait for an encounter.

I've now got a mothership with 3.5k of dV in it AND a small rocket impactor that can be launched at the surface.  A cheat test gives me about 30 seconds before it hits so I can switch back to the ground crew and get experiments running in time.  I hope.

Knowing my luck I will actually manage to hit my ground crew.

Edited August 25, 2021 by NewtSoup

[NewtSoup]

So I made this monstrosity to put the 74 tons of Mothership and Lander into orbit.

Kind of onion staged.  It shed the ancilliary liquid fuels first and then the SRBs.  The remaining core then circularised at 100km and separated from the Mothership which is now known as "The Spirit of Nemo" .
I do now have a huge chunk of debris in orbit but thankfully I have grabbing units now so I will be launching a side mission to de-orbit that chunk of liability.

 

 

I wonder when my next transfer window to Eve is?

 

 

Oh in case anyone is wondering the little tags sticking out either side of The Spirit Of Nemo are more vernor engines.  This time on pistons coming out of a payload bay.  This is to facilitate fine tuning of orbit around Gilly without having to rotate several decatons of spaceship to burn either prograde or retrograde.

Also in the top right picture - I didn't have any seperatrons available so I simply put Mite SRB's upside down and stuck them to the sides of the twinboars to make sure the LF Boosters cleared the core completely.  A test launch previously suggested they were necessary.  Rather spectacularly I might add.  Clean separation of the Joules Vernor though.  At 12km.

[NewtSoup]

Leaving Kerbin turned out to be more trouble than expected this time.  What was supposed to be a ~1100 m/s burn to get an Eve encounter turned out to be a bit of a shock once it was complete and a few days out.  The encounter just upped and vanished!   My guess is the Mun or Minmus snuck up on the Spirit of Nemo and sandbagged it while the crew were busy watching the projected path further out.  A rather expensive ( 273m/s ) mid course correction however got another encounter.  Then a second correction was needed as something odd happened again.  This cost more dV.  However at last an encounter with a PE of  45Mm was achieved and decided to be good enough as it was fine tuned to be just outside the Orbit of Gilly.

 

The Eve capture was then converted to an eliptical orbit to the edge of Eve's  SOI.  The inclination was changed to match that of Gilly's orbit and then it was just a matter of time until an encounter with Gilly occurred.   173 m/s at Gilly PE gave the Spirit of Nemo a nice Eliptical orbit around Gilly.  I chose eliptical orbits each time to save on dV and circularising.  The Joules Vernor lander had plenty of dV on board to descend to Gilly's surface.  The image shows a planned circular orbit but I decided against it.  Once in orbit around Gilly, Remo Kerman made her debut and did a little science.   The crew then transferred to the  Joules Vernor and detached, ready to descent onto the dusty surface of Gilly.
 

 

[NewtSoup]

Just some screenies of the rest of the mission.

The lander on approach to the surface.  Then Landed.  Waited until dawn to take the mandatory group picture.  Then The crew scanned a rock.
 

The landing site was actually carefully chosen.  One that would easily allow the Joules Vernor to visit all three of Gilly's biomes.    Highlands, Midlands, Lowlands.   Basically It rolled down a hill.  Kind of a long way to go for what was basically nothing more than a tobogganing jolly but there we go.  Kerbals will be Kerbals.

After the fun was had it was time to leave and return to Duna.  Bye bye Gilly.  The Joules Vernor was docked to the side of the Spirit of Nemo.  It was left with a tiny amount of fuel in it but most was transferred to the Nemo.  The  Gilly Impactor was fired at Gilly for good measure even though it turned out that it was not needed.   The crew  had forgotten a needed piece of equipment for the ground experiments!  The antenna! But it probably would not have worked anyway as they had no connection to the Comms Net.

 

 

By sheer luck there was a transfer window back to Kerbin in around 24 days.  This gave the crew just enough time to finish their celebratory snacks and drinks.
Not going to bother with pictures of manoeuvre nodes.  Just the mandatory Kerbin approach and rentry.

 

 

4864 Science was earned going to Gilly. 
I seem to be following a 1 science gathering mission per planet style so,
Next Stop:  Dres.

Never been to Dres before so I'm probably going to brute force it with lots of dV.