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Flags and footprints on Venus

maccollo

By maccollo
in KSP Fan Works

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maccollo

maccollo

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So this was my mission to return a surface sample from Venus. Management insisted that it was impossible for a robot to pick up a rock, so a Kerbal had to go down there to pick it up. Took me a long time to build up enough motivation to stop procrastinating and just get it done with XD.

Some quick facts about the whole thing:

Gross liftoff mass was 52 000 tonnes.

IMLEO mass was 1350 tonnes, with the Venus ascent vehicle massing roughly 280 tonnes.

Total mission deltaV was 32 km/s. Jebediah had pause for concern during Venus EDL.

No actual flag was planted because Kerbals can't turn on Venus for some reason. So the flag planting part was faked back on Earth in a fake Venus studio.

Edited by maccollo
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Overfloater

Overfloater

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Been waiting for this too, I was afraid you have quit!

Took me a long time to build up enough motivation to stop procrastinating and just get it done with XD.

I feel you! x-]

And as for Kerbals that don't turn... you sure you didn't press "Alt" accidentally? o -o

I've been bothered by it for a quite a while until i figured it out - press Alt to walk like in "jetpack mode", press Alt again to walk normally.

Edited by Overfloater
Huh?
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maccollo

maccollo

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Been waiting for this too, I was afraid you have quit!

I feel you! x-]

And as for Kerbals that don't turn... you sure you didn't press "Alt" accidentally? o -o

I've been bothered by it for a quite a while until i figured it out - press Alt to walk like in "jetpack mode", press Alt again to walk normally.

It was all of that orbital assembly. KSP has taught me to hate orbital assembly XD

I used the jetpack mode cuz that give me the ability to walk in all directions without turning. If I didn't use that I could only walk forward, and if I tried to plant a flag the Kerbal would just start dancing forever =P

And I always wanted to ask you: Are you calculating everything? Or you're just building and testing to figure out what you can do with that?

Mostly testing with precursor missions. This is how I figured out that I could save about 1.5 km/s on the return leg by ejecting myself at roughly a 24 degree angle to the celestial plane (Conveniently from an equatorial orbit in RSS), instead of launching prograde and doing the inclination change at apoapsis. The rest is Kerbal engineer and guesstimating.

In this case I cheated a bit by using hyper-edit for the lander testing, cuz I didn't want to actually launch multiple 600 tonne payloads to Venus. I was only willing to go trough this madness once O_o.

Edited by maccollo
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von Ziegendorf

von Ziegendorf

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Mostly testing with precursor missions. ... The rest is Kerbal engineer and guesstimating.

Yeah. I had such a feeling after analysing your old launch vehicle (this one for 80t, before SLS parts).

But what do I say... WOW!! I begin every mission in Excell sheet and rely completely on math and it's still a lot of work. So you've put even more effort in doing such a mission without it. Keep on flying! :)

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