(Help) Tylo Lander?

[Llama1017]

I'm planning to land on every celestial body in the solar system. So far, I've made it to the Mun, Minmus, Duna, and Ike. I'm kind of planning ahead here, but does anyone have a good Tylo lander? Preferably not a giant lander, too. Something that can be taken to Tylo with a transfer stage, undock, land, then go back into orbit and dock.

[Jouni]

One way to build a Tylo lander is to take any rocket that can reach orbit from Kerbin, and reduce the payload to 1/3 of the original. Add some landing struts, and you may have a Tylo lander. Replacing tall 1.25 m fuel tanks with wide 2.5 m fuel tanks of the same size obviously helps with balance.

[Llama1017]

One way to build a Tylo lander is to take any rocket that can reach orbit from Kerbin, and reduce the payload to 1/3 of the original. Add some landing struts, and you may have a Tylo lander. Replacing tall 1.25 m fuel tanks with wide 2.5 m fuel tanks of the same size obviously helps with balance.

Thanks, I will try it out.

[Rune]

I'm planning to land on every celestial body in the solar system. So far, I've made it to the Mun, Minmus, Duna, and Ike. I'm kind of planning ahead here, but does anyone have a good Tylo lander? Preferably not a giant lander, too. Something that can be taken to Tylo with a transfer stage, undock, land, then go back into orbit and dock.

There's one with chemical propulsion, lots of margin, crew cabin, and science equipment, on my thread (link in my sig). Look up for the file under the "Grand Tour Architecture" section. It can self-launch to LKO if you sip some fuel from the upper stage instead of staging, then refuel and launch itself to Tylo, then refuel and do the landing. Or be pushed there, since it is equipped for docking ("a bit" light on RCS though, only 15 units so thread carefully). I also think it looks kinda cool for such a functional ship, this is it attaining orbit:

Note both upper and lower stages have landing gear, so you can make the landing on the lower stage, or if you waste delta-v going down, you can ditch it and still have enough oomph to get back to orbit. About 4km/s on each stage!

Rune. A ship for every occasion!

[Scarecrow88]

This was my Tylo lander from a previous version. As you can see in the 2nd image, it dumps the external tanks and landing legs on it's return from the surface. Image on the surface isn't particularly good for showing off the complete design, but it should give you an idea.

[Llama1017]

This was my Tylo lander from a previous version. As you can see in the 2nd image, it dumps the external tanks and landing legs on it's return from the surface. Image on the surface isn't particularly good for showing off the complete design, but it should give you an idea.

http://www.88qv.com/KSP/Tylo1.jpg

http://www.88qv.com/KSP/Tylo3.jpg

Is that an LV-T30 or an LV-T45?

[Scarecrow88]

I can't remember. I will have a look through my old saves and see if I can find it.

[meve12]

Looks like a LV-T30.

[Immashift]

Note both upper and lower stages have landing gear, so you can make the landing on the lower stage, or if you waste delta-v going down, you can ditch it and still have enough oomph to get back to orbit. About 4km/s on each stage!

Rune. A ship for every occasion!

4k seems slightly large for a Tylo landing or return. I'm actually doing my grand tour ATM, just reached 20km Tylo orbit. I'm flying across the surface at about 2.1km/s. Doing a nice efficient low and fast (as the terrain allows) descent I can't see it needing more than 2.5-3k one way. Taking off is even easier. You just need to pitch over the second you lift off and clear the highest terrain in your orbit.

I'd be careful though... I had Tylo eat a station back in like .19. It cleared everything... At its lowest point it was about 150m from the surface. I came back after a few years worth of orbits, and it was just gone, and that thing had like .000001 inclination, so I doubt it just lazily drifted into a mountain... So quick save and back it up if your altitude and fuel budgets are tight. Lot of fun that low and fast though, you constantly think you're gonna crash.

I'm doing my grand tour with kraag's planet factory. Currently worried about how much DV I need for Thud... 3.8x Kerbin's gravity and no atmosphere. I think I under built my lander lol. It barely makes Kerbin orbit with no staging.

Here's what I'm taking on my Grand Tour. It's so far done everything out to Dres. I really love this lander Forget the kethane gear if you don't use mods, this thing will go down and up from Tylo without needing it.

UPDATE: I finally made it down after about an hour of attempts. You really can't cut out the throttle once you start your final descent burn though cause you just start dropping... My lander had 3600m/s in the tanks when I detached from my drive unit, and 404 sitting here on Tylo, so it took about 3200m/s to land. That wasn't the most efficient landing ever either. I had to clear a small mountain (cleared it by 20m going 1500 horizontal lol), and ended up thrusting vertically the last 1700m or so. You can probably do better than I if you really try.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Immashift

[Rune]

4k seems slightly large for a Tylo landing or return. I'm actually doing my grand tour ATM, just reached 20km Tylo orbit. I'm flying across the surface at about 2.1km/s. Doing a nice efficient low and fast (as the terrain allows) descent I can't see it needing more than 2.5-3k one way. Taking off is even easier. You just need to pitch over the second you lift off and clear the highest terrain in your orbit.

I'd be careful though... I had Tylo eat a station back in like .19. It cleared everything... At its lowest point it was about 150m from the surface. I came back after a few years worth of orbits, and it was just gone, and that thing had like .000001 inclination, so I doubt it just lazily drifted into a mountain... So quick save and back it up if your altitude and fuel budgets are tight. Lot of fun that low and fast though, you constantly think you're gonna crash.

I'm doing my grand tour with kraag's planet factory. Currently worried about how much DV I need for Thud... 3.8x Kerbin's gravity and no atmosphere. I think I under built my lander lol. It barely makes Kerbin orbit with no staging.

Here's what I'm taking on my Grand Tour. It's so far done everything out to Dres. I really love this lander Forget the kethane gear if you don't use mods, this thing will go down and up from Tylo without needing it.

http://i.imgur.com/zekpgLX.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/7AdxKrN.jpg

UPDATE: I finally made it down after about an hour of attempts. You really can't cut out the throttle once you start your final descent burn though cause you just start dropping... My lander had 3600m/s in the tanks when I detached from my drive unit, and 404 sitting here on Tylo, so it took about 3200m/s to land. That wasn't the most efficient landing ever either. I had to clear a small mountain (cleared it by 20m going 1500 horizontal lol), and ended up thrusting vertically the last 1700m or so. You can probably do better than I if you really try.

Well, I've been told so repeatedly... yes, it's hugely oversized. But it's still quite transportable, and that margin means you don't have to start the descent form an extremely low Tylo orbit, or can screw up royally the descent and still make it. Bringing the mothership deep inside Tylo's well costs you, too, and with only 6.5-7km/s really needed you could use the other ~1.5km/s to brake the lander into orbit during a gravity assist of the mothership and later return to it somewhere else (i.e: aerobraking it into Laythe, but I would have to check how much a Tylo-Laythe transfer costs). We shall see what I can milk out of it in any case. Plus, the upper stage can afterwards be used as a single stage lander on pretty much every other body but Eve, that's nice.

But the true reason it's so overbuilt is, since I don't timewarp unless I don't have anything else to test/build/try out, outer solar system missions are terra incognita for me, so I wanted to play it extremely safe with the first landing out there. (I know, two years playing this game and still haven't gone to the big green ball, but I guess I'm pacing myself for release ^^').

Rune. What is a 1.15 safety margin among friends?

Edited May 30, 2014 by Rune

[Immashift]

Snippy snip.

Rune. What is a 1.15 safety margin among friends?

The thing about my drive stage is it has 38,000m/s DV fully loaded. I came into Tylo's SOI with 25k left cause I didn't bother refueling from Dres (refueled on Gilly). The thing needs that much DV because Krag's planetfactory has some really tough stuff to get to. Ablate took about 20k lol. It makes Moho look like a trip to the Mun. And there's still ascension after everything else... yay.

Yeah.

I've always been an advocate of a large DV margin, cause it means you can do quite a lot and don't really have to care about your landing altitude, rotation, etc. Then again I way overbuild things too. Most of my landers can claw themselves to LKO without staging or whatever.

I'm not sure if being in a really low orbit or high makes that much of a difference how much DV you need to get down. Like, at a low orbit you're whizzing around the planet real fast and have to kill a lot of horizontal, but high up you have the opposite problem and have to kill a ton of vertical without much horizontal. I guess because of how gravity works though it's better to kill horizontal than fighting vertical drop while slowing down.

I actually came down to Tylo's surface from 100km up. I was @ 20, but had to move out and adjust my inclination to land somewhere specific. I was way too tired to spend another half hour working my orbit down to 20 again. Probably why it took me 3.2k m/s to get down.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Immashift