Another Boring ol' Eve trip...[Pictures]

[arsmith]

Y3, D417: Mission Planning meeting

“So,†Said Werner Von Kerman, “Eve mission. Seems simple enough, do what we did at Duna. Aerocatpure, grab science off the planet, fly to the moon, wait a while, fly home. Any questions.â€Â

“One,†Replied Ronzer Kerman, recently returned from Space Station Manley. “Protractor and Kerbal Alarm Clock say the next window is Moho. In 97 Days.â€Â

“Oh.â€Â

D420 2:34: Constitution hab section launch attempt.

Jebediah: SAS on, Throttle is up, I’m punching it now.

Controller: Confirm main engine start. Confirm forward motion, we are on our way.

Lois Kerman, reporter: Is it supposed to bend like that?

Everyone: What!?

CapCom: Jeb’s not smiling!

Gene: Kill the engine! Revert to the VAB!

2:36: Launch mishap review

Gene: Well?

Bob: She was bending somewhere in the hab section.

Ronzer: We didn’t see this when the Manley station launched. That’s got basically the same design.

Werner: Maybe some part it too weak for the shock? Try not going full throttle straight out of the gate.

2:40 Constitution hab section launch attempt number two

Jebediah: SAS on, throttle half way, I’m punching it now.

Contoller: Confirm main engine start, Confirm Forward motion, we are on our way.

Lois: It’s bending again.

Controller: Definitely the monopropellant tank.

Gene: Kill the engine! Revert to the VAB!

<Gene picks up the phone>

Gene: Werner? Gene. Yeah it happened again. I think we need struts.

2:50 Constitution hab section launch, attempt number 3

Jebediah: SAS on, throttle at the firewall, I’m punching it now.

Controller: Confirm main engine start, confirm forward motion, we are on our way.

Lois: What are you all looking at me for? Shouldn’t you be watching the launch?

Jebediah: 3,000 meters, first asparagus is out of fuel, I’m punching them out, heads up.

3:10 KSS Constitution (hab section), Low Kerbin orbit.

Jebediah: Okay mission control, beginning the spacewalk now.

Bill: You sure you don’t want us to do that, Jeb?

Jebediah: Nah, I got it, I’m just glad to be flying. You did all the EVAs on Minmus and Duna, anyway.

Capcom: Copy, Jeb. Good luck.

3:12

Jebediah: Mission control, this is Jebediah. The struts aren’t coming off. And they’re blocking the docking ports.

Capcom: What do you mean, not coming off?

Jebediah: I guess the KAS struts and the ones they use in the VAB are different. These babies look welded on. Maybe I could do something with a meteorite. Also, I don’t think even I could get a ship in between these.

Capcom: Copy. Standby.

Capcom: Jeb, Flight says head for the barn, Werner thinks he’s got the strut problem licked.

Jebediah: Okay, Kerbin City. I’m headed back in and we’ll deorbit.

4:05

Jebediah: Mission Control, this is the Constitution Hab attempt number 5, we’re in orbit and stable.

The next day, after a series of equally amusing attempts, KSC finally got an engine pod up into orbit and rendezvoused with the hab section. In what has to be one of the most virtuoso docking maneuvers of all time, Jebediah whipped the Hab section around, lined her aft docking port up with the docking port at the front of the engine pod, then flew backwards 115 meters to exactly hit the docking port on the nose of the engine.

Clang.

Tried again. Then a third time. Then discovered that the Clamp-O-Tron Sr was either removed or never there in the first place. Gene decided to revert the flight and try again.

The next flight rendezvoused with the engine pod that had stayed in orbit, lined up, pushed back, and clanged again. Then Bill tried, clang. Then Bob tried. Clang. Then they tried separating the Clamp-o-tron Sr which was definitely there from the hab section. It flew off into space and had to be Kesslered.

Someone at mission control looked at the user’s manual for a Clamp-O-Tron Sr and discovered it had been installed backwards. This eventually caused a heated conversation between Deke and Werner about when you do, and when you do not, read the instructions when you unpack something.

The next flight, Jebediah whipped the hab section around, backed up to the engine pod in the dark (one time I had like five sets of docking maneuvers all on the night side of the planet). Flipped on the lights, could suddenly see, and docked on the first attempt.

Here’s Constitution in one pod mode, finally assembled and orbiting Kerbin. Bob went out and put some sruts on to brace the monopropellant tank.

[arsmith]

Y3 D 421

After relatively few false starts, the first of the side engine pods finally launched. The pods themselves are exactly the same as the inline engine pods, but I had to build them from scratch since my saved subasemmbly for some reason would only attach to the side of a command pod to the side, and I didn’t feel like dinking around with all that amusment the side-mount cyborg generated when I launched the first engine. I figured I’d just stck a pod with a Kerbin on it and go. Ronzer took the first mount up, here’s Ronzer just after docking:

Oreny took up the next pod on D421 and he’s either not as good or not as lucky as Ronzer is. For starters, while separating the drive sections one of them got flung straight at the Constitution. Fortunately Jebediah is unflappable and simply got out of the way:

Oreny also slightly misaligned one of the docking ports, which probably wouldn't have made too much of a difference but got fixed later on a redock anyway.

Desbas seems to have been luckier, with a good dock on the first try. Detaching the maneuver pods used to lift the engine pod up to rendezvous is still a problem, though: This time we solved it by simply not aiming a pod at the Constitution.

Here’s a shot of Desbas strutting down the third engine pod, he waited for daytime so he could do this in natural light.

[arsmith]

One of the hard parts of assembling Constitution is how low the orbit is. 90 km is good for the Oberth effect and interplanetary trajectories, but doesn’t give you a lot of vertical space for rendezvous orbits. Pod three flew at about 73 km and it took about 5 or 6 orbits to line up. I should time my launches better.

Pod 4 went in without a hitch. Here’s the completed Constistution:

87 Days until the Moho Launch window.

Ronzer tested a Moho lander on the Mun, on the reasoning that if it takes twice as much delta v to land on moho as the Mun, if you can land and take off twice you should be okay. Here's what the Moho lander looks like, the lower tank is detachable so less has to be hauled back into Moho orbit.

Y4, D3, Moho lander test overview.

Ronzer: So, that went beautifully. She landed, took off, landed again, took off again, and docked. We can easily use this lander to ferry science up and down from the surface.

Deke: You do realize that this is exactly what project Manley was supposed to do?

Ronzer: I really do.

Gene: Moving Manley Station to an equatorial orbit was the correct call. We should move it lower for Project Armstrong. Those inclination changes were too much.

Deke: Make sure we remember that lesson at Moho. The landers are approved for Moho flight. Get them up to Constitution.

Werner: We’ve also unlocked the larger KAS bins.

Deke: we’ll put together a refit mission.

The Moho landers flew up without incident, except for my shock at how large they are:

The refit mission was a simple octo probe, the new bays, and some holder clamps to allow swapping out. Bob did an epic EVA (which he seemed to enjoy) and both strutted down the landers and installed the new B type containers.

[arsmith]

Y4 D1

The Navigation and Mission Planning team discovered Alex Moon’s “Pork Chop plot†website and after some playing around, discovered something interesting: An off season trip to Eve was actually cheaper than an on-season trip to Moho. So the mission was redesigned. Constitution would go to Eve along with two pathfinder probes, the landers would land on Gilly instead of Moho (they had more than enough DV for that) and the expedition would return data from two bodies not just one. Meanwhile, pathfinder probes would go to each of the systems as windows opened up to serve as navigational experiments and fuel depots when they got there.

For the record, the Constitution crew consists of:

Jebediah Kerman: Commander

Bill Kerman: Navigator

Bob Kerman: Systems engineer

Ronzer Keman: Mission specialist, mobile Lab crew and lander pilot

Desbas Kerman: Mission specialist, mobile lab crew and lander pilot.

Pathfinder 2 left on Y4, d35 and got a fairly standard departure and a close approach that would have to be refined later.

Pathfinder 3 left on Y4, D41 and wound up with a much later closest approach that while tighter than Pathfinder 2’s, still needed refinement to become an encounter.

Y4, D45, T-24 minutes until maneuver node, Constitution maneuver node refinement

Bill: a little bit back annnnd…there.

Jeb and Bob: …

Bob: That’s an encounter with an off plane other planet in one maneuver.

Bill: It sure is.

Jeb: That’s fantastic!

Bob: Be hard to hit. Should we download MechJeb and let it pilot for us.

Jeb: No, I want to do it. Hitting another planet on the first shot would be something to tell your kids about.

Bob: not like we can’t refine anyway.

Jeb: Absolutely. I’m going to line us up now.

T-10 minutes.

Bill: Okay, simulation says 10 minute, 48 second burn.

Bob: Pathfinder 3 noticed a periapsis dip on just a 7 minute burn. She scraped the upper edge of the atmosphere. Do we want to go a little late?

Jeb: Hmmm. No we’ll go on time. Here’s how we’ll break it up. I’ll steer. Bill, you keep an eye on our trajectory and make sure it matches what we need, then sing out when we’ve got closest approach. Bob, you watch periapsis and if it gets below 70,000 meters let me know. Also, get the solar panels in.

Bob: retracting them now.

T-6 minutes

Bill: Closing the Kerbal Alarm Clock reminder

Bob: Saving the game

Jeb: Refining attitude.

T-5:28

Jeb: Main engine start.

T-3:20

Bob: Periapsis 70,000 meters. Maybe we should abort

Jeb: Isn’t the edge of the atmosphere 65,000 meters? Let me know if we hit that.

Bob: Dangit, Jeb!

T-2:28

Bob: 67,205 Meters and….we’re going up. Periapsis. Wave goodbye to Paula, Bill.

Bill: Bye, Paula. <Waves>

T-0:00

Jeb: That seemed like it took longer than five and a half minutes. How’s our line Bill?

Bill: So far so good. We’re actually lining up pretty well. We’ll be offset of course but inclination and azimuth are aligning pretty well.

T+1:35

Bob: I’m going to set that as my desktop background.

T+6:00

Bill: Annnnd… encounter!

Jeb: Engine shutdown.

Bill: Setting Kerbal Alarm Clock for the SOI change. Estimate arrival Y4, D155.

Unlike a classical prograde or retrograde burn, the departure vector looked like this, prograde is towards the bottom of the image:

I think that’s Pathfinder 3 in the background. Anyway, we were way down one of the lobes of the pork chop plot, which seems to be really good at finding relatively cheap travel deals in the off season.

[arsmith]

Y4 D 62:

Desbas: What are you reading?

Ronzer: “Space Jockey,†a short story by Heinlein Kerman.

Desbas: What’s it about?

Ronzer: mostly about a three stage trip to the Mun. The idea being that sending one ship to the Mun is like making the same vehicle be a subway car, a ferry boat, and an express elevator. There’s too much stuff you only use once.

Desbas: Yeah, they just launched the Munar tug Bruce Campbell back home. What, don’t you read the Astronaut Chronicle? Besides, he Mun 5 project pretty much proved that you could get there and back on one vehicle.

Y4 D86:

Ronzer: What are you reading?

Desbas: The Astronaut Chronicle. They launched Pathfinder 4, 5, 6 and 7 to Moho yesterday, half an hour apart.

Ronzer: Kerbal Alarm Clock saves the day?

Desbas: Evidently. Anyway, they’re all headed out of the system. Here’s a picture:

I call this the Moho Conga Line.

Y4 D112

Desbas: What are you reading?

Ronzer: The Journey to the East. It’s the most widely exported of the Pseudochina folktales, about a Buddhist monk who went to Pseudoindia to get the Mahayana scriptures. They made a wildly popular anime about it that went off story pretty much immediately. Honestly it’s better that way. Anyway, I have some theories about the big three up in the command pod.

Desbas: oh?

Ronzer: Yeah, I think Jeb is Monkey, the restless one who will try anything and needs to be held back, but when unleashed can do whatever he wants, Bob is Tripitika, the anxious everyman who serves to allow Monkey to exposit how cool he is, and Bill is Sandy. Sandy is an old old character who is very important to the story but no one’s sure why.

Desbas: what about us two?

Ronzer: I’m Pigsy, the loutish braggart one who gets all the girls. You’re the horse.

Desbas: Nay.

Y4, D155 Entering Eve SOI

Bill: Annnnd… SOI change.

Jeb: Welcome to Eve, gentlemen. Bill, plot us a burn to make Periapsis 72,500 Meters.

Bill: in simulations we didn’t capture.

Jeb: But I got it off the Wiki.

Bill: I don’t know what to tell you, we’re on a nonstandard trajectory. Alterbaron’s Aerobraking Calculator says 58,000 Meters.

Jeb: okay.

Bob: Bruce Campbell and Linnea Quigley both ran into lower than expected apoapses after using those figures. What? Don’t you guys read the Astronaut Chronicle?

Jeb: they had a lot of docking ports, though.

Bob: So do we.

Jeb: Good point. We’ve got lots of space, let’s work in a fudge factor, 59 to 60,000 meters, Bill.

Bill: You got it.

Y4, D 156:

Ronzer: MOAR Science!

Desbas: I’m sciencing as fast as I can!

[arsmith]

Bah, the edit didn't work. Alterbaron's Aerobraking calculator can be found here

[arsmith]

Y4 D160:

Bill: So, I think I’ve got the Gilly problem licked.

Bob: You mean how it has such a small SOI we’d have to hit the eye of a needle from across the room?

Bill: Yes, that.

Jeb: We did that on the trip out here, how is this a problem?

Bill: Basically, I decided I wanted to get to Gilly near both its and our apoapses so the relative velocities will be small, we won’t have much time in the Gilly SOI and need all the time we can get to establish orbit. So I agonized for a while about how long that would take, and then it occurred to me to just try to get an encounter now.

Bob: And?

Bill: I got one; we leave in half an hour.

Jeb: Best navigator ever.

Y4 D166 Gilly SOI (I’m not entirely sure “orbit†is the right word)

Desbas Took the first Gilly lander (named Cupid) down to the surface and planted a flag on Gilly at the first place Kerbal had set foot outside the Kerbin system. (He made it a point to brag that it was he, and not Jebediah, that got to do this) Unfortunately, I didn’t snag a picture.

An orbit later (30 Km orbits around Gilly take about 3 hours, by the way) Ronzer undocked the second Gilly lander (named Eros) and landed. He tried to find the perfect pyramid on Gilly’s highest point, but gave up after a couple of hops. Navigating at Gilly is surprisingly hard. As Ronzer reported, it’s “sort of like flying through syrup.†I also forgot to snag a picture.

Y4 D167

Jeb: So, Bob, I guess you’re wondering why we didn’t detach engine pods 2 and 3 when we burned enough fuel?

Bob: Not really.

Jeb: It’s because I wanted the extra footprint, we’re going to land on Gilly!

Bob: I figured.

Bill hiccupped retrograde and Constitution began a slow, stately descent to the surface of Gilly. Landing was a different matter. Flat spots on Gilly are hard to come by (particularly if, like me, you’re taking pot luck) so, the first landing attempt went excitingly wrong when the ship pitched over. Jeb started an abort to orbit but decided to heck with it, he’d come this far anyway and, after a couple more attempts (I’m convinced the monoprop tank bent again, even with the struts) Constitution was finally down and stopped. Here’s a picture:

Here’s one with Jebediah Kerman for scale:

Jeb planted flag commemorating one of those times someone was stupid enough to try to land a 150 ton vessel without any landing legs.

After that, there was nothing to do but return to orbit, rendezvous, and dock everyone back together. Ronzer had a little adventure in Eros when he forgot he wasn’t flying in the deep gravity well of something like Minmus and got a trajectory that wasn’t so much “hyperbolic escape†as “beeline for the nearest exit.†He was able to reverse course, though, and actually rendezvoused with Constitution while still technically suborbital.

After everyone was docked together (Cupid and Eros at the forward lateral docking ports, the clamp-o-tron Srs that held the Moho landers to the engine pods had been discarded and Kesslered with the large engine tanks before they landed on Gilly) Desbas got out and strutted down the landers, then went back in and Ronzer got out and unstrutted engine pods 2 and 3.

Constitution class engine pods are detachable. The whole idea is a variation on the asparagus/staging concept: once you’ve burned enough fuel, ditch the engines you don’t want to feed and proceed with the lighter ship. Pods 2 and 3 were docked to each other and left in Gilly orbit, while the rest of the ship would return to Eve to wait in a parking orbit for the launch window home. Meanwhile, Constitution went from 5 Km/s back up to 6.7 Km/s. I call it the “manual asapagus,†mostly because that’s really fun to say.

Oh, and while all this was going on Pathfinder 2 made it to eve. Here’s a picture of aerocapture:

Y4 D173 Constitution bridge, preparing for the Eve return

Bill: Okay, periapsis 70,000 meters. Course laid in.

Jeb: So, guys. I’ve been looking at pork chops.

Bob and Bill: …

Bill: Whatever floats your boat, I suppose. I use my bandwidth allocation to download mods for Human Space Program. Bob looks at funny pictures of cats.

Jeb: Pork chop plots. I hit Alex Moon’s website and I discovered something. The transfer window back to Kerbin isn’t until the middle of year 5, but the window to Duna is on D335 of this year. In fact, we can go to Duna, fly around there for a while, and be back at Kerbin only 59 days later and for only 2.8 K delta V!

Bob: and that buys us what? We’ve been to Duna and Ike.

Jeb: But we never landed there. With the landers we can land on Ike. Bob, transfer fuel and monoprop to the landers and see how much delta v we have left.

Bob: about 6k on the nose. I’m moving the fluids back to our C.O.T.

Jeb: Fantastic, then we can transmit more science and finish off the stock tech tree. We only transmitted crew reports and EVA reports from eve and Gilly and we need to get R.A.P.I.E.R. engines unlocked before we get home.

Bob: Why?

Jeb: …. Reasons.

Bob: Whatever. I can go to Duna if you want to. Bill.

Bill: Okay, but you owe me two months extra Paula time.

Y4 D 176:

Aerobreaking at Eve:

Y4 D207:

Bob, Bill, Desbas and Ronzer gathered in the Hitchiker pod to watch the World Cup and to watch the Moho probes (Pathfinder 4, 5, 6 and 7) go through the SOI change and retro burn for Moho capture. Which I forgot to get screenshots of.

Meanwhile, Jeb up on the bridge was perusing his copy of the Astronaut Chronicle and reading the science reports that came out of the Johnson Project.

Howard Johnson Base was landed on Minmus during the waiting and travelling to Gilly and back. It’s basically a surface version of the Minmus orbiter + lander concept, the idea being that two suborbital hops is probably cheaper than a landing, reorbit, and two inclination changes. The Harriet Johnson lander would go to all the remaining biomes of Minmus, suck up all the science, then bring it back to the Howard Johnson module for processing. People would stay in the Dr. Samuel Johnson Module during downtime and Minmus night.

It was mostly intended as a testbed for a similar project for the Mun off of Armstrong Base, but it proved to be so fantastically successful that in one stroke Duster, Jorfrey, Kenny and Jim Kerman cleared off the rest of the stock tech tree and unlocked R.A.P.I.E.R. engines, Ion engines, and everything else.

Incedentaly, pro tip: The Mobile Science lab does not work unless there’s someone in a command pod. Or at least it didn’t on this station. Bring at least three Kerbals, not two.

Jebediah pondered this for a moment, then went to the pork chop calculator website and ran some simulations. Then he grinned to himself and started to compose an email.

To: [email protected]: Deke Kerman, KASA administrator

From: [email protected]: Jebediah Kerman, KSS Constitution

Deke,

I read about the success of the Johnson project and can only say I’m green with envy at not getting to be a part of such a wonderful achievement. However, this causes me to want to reevaluate our plans out here at Eve, most especially in light of what we want to happen to Bob and Bill.

I ran some plots and we can make a 2.4km/s return to Kerbin early in year 5, returning about midyear and decently well before the next two events in y5 D340 and y5 D360 or so. We have plenty of delta v on the ship but I was intending to top off of Pathfinder 3 when it gets here. What do you think?

Jeb.

Y4 D 209

To: [email protected]: Jebediah Kerman, KSS Constitution

From: [email protected]: Deke Kerman, KASA administrator

Change approved. Keep the reason a secret from Bob and Bill.

Also, Change your email address to the approved format.

Deke.

Y4 D210

Bill: (singing and playing the 12 string guitar)

Oh we pray for one last landing

On the globe that gave us brithin’

Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies

And the cool green hills of Kerbin!

Jeb: (over the intercom from the command pod) Hey guys, how’s the party over there?

Bob: Desbas made a cake out of snacks!

Desbas: Ice cream flavored ice cream is harder than you might think.

Jeb: I can imagine. So anyway, I’ve got some news. I looked at some more pork chops.

Ronzer: Whatever you want to use for entertainment I guess. I like to watch “Brows Held High.†Desbas reads people’s texting mistakes.

Jeb: Pork Chop plots. Since the Johnson expedition came back with enough science to unlock the rest of the stock tree, we don’t need to go to Ike and land there. So I found us a 2.4 k ticket home that gets us back a year early.

Bill: That’s great! In celebration I’m going to belt out a special edition of “A captain is a father to his crew.†(begins to play)

Y4 D228:

Pathfinder 3 crossed SOI into the eve zone.

Y4 D 229:

Pathfinder 3 Aerocaptures at Eve and within 4 orbits docks with Constitution, donating the rest of its fuel to the larger ship. The plan was to then send Pathfinder 3 to Gilly to dock with the abandoned fuel pods but after donating fuel and monopropellant there was no way it would get there, so Pathfinder 2 went instead. It took a couple of days to get the orbits to line up right but the transfer went without any adventures, capture went pretty well, and after a starlight docking (it was on the night side. Pathfinder probes don’t have lights on them and while fuel pods do, they had neither electrical storage or a command module to turn them on.) the abandoned fuel pods were renamed the Gilly Fuel Station. Someday I’ll fly out some kethane equipment and refill those fuel pods. The transport costs must be phenomenally low.

Y4 D 233

Jebediah takes some time off the bridge and swaps out with Bob, who mans the command pod while Jeb goes back to the hitchhiker module.

Edited July 2, 2014 by arsmith