technion

Thanks - now I get it. You still won't need to get into that orbit though. Unless you have deadly re-entry installed, just plough into Kerbin directly. You could run out of fuel a third of the way around the sun and, if you had a close enough encounter with Kerbin, still land on it.

I think it's more that plenty of people read but don't want to be the one to write a reply just to say "good mission".

Let's just be clear.. did you actually land on Jool? it's a gas planet and there's no escaping from its surface.

I've started to use TAC in career mode and - I can't possibly see how to progress. The tier 0 pod doesn't have enough electricity to sustain a trip to the Mun and back, and hitting Kerbin's biomes for 10 and 12 science points is pretty far from unlocking the solar panels to get this fixed. What's everyone else doing here?

I've had quite a few runs at sea level Eve ascents and vehicles, and whilst I often put 48-7S's in upper stages, that's the only place I've been able to use them. The ascent requires enough fuel that those FL200 and similarly small tanks just don't push enough dv no matter what they are outfitted with. You can asparagus stage a certain number of these, but you reach a point where your outside stage is good for all of about one second and pushes negligible dv. To address that, you migrate to larger tanks. You can put those little radials around but at an FL800 in size, the TWR just gets frustratingly low and you fall back on Aerospikes.

Once in Eve orbit, I just expanded the Ap to graze the closest end of the Gilly orbit. That didn't work - every intercept came in way too fast. I don't know the numbers but the trick was to get to that AP, and push the PE out from very low to a much larger number. It meant coming in much more horizontally to Gilly.

Reasonable aerocapture at Kerbin. By disconnecting the decoupler, we've effectively given a bonus two parachutes to the Eve ascent rocket. Which is good, because it's about to come down. Rocket assisted descent - otherwise they fall out of chairs when the chutes expand. Coming in nice and slow. Touchdown! NOTE THE BOTTOM ONE!@!!!!

First mission: repair several of the struts. Some of them immediately broke again, which was annoying. Launch. Working through the asparagus stages. This launch is exceedingly difficult. You have to have a perfect flight path, and when the atmospheric efficiency exceeds 100%.... throttle down perfectly. Losing most of the stages. It continually amazes me how much of a rocket it takes to hit 19km... when the goal is 100km. Gravity turn in this tiny vessel. This stage does the entire circularise on its own. And literally just manages. The pe is 99km. The recovery vessel has a frustratingly large inclination change to deal with. Coming in for rendezvous. The magnetic attachment sends kerbals flying when the dock connects. Both need an EVA back to a seat. Now the large rocket is poised to help the Eve ascender travel the way to Kerbin.

I wonder how this plays into the question of "when does hauling a nuclear engine off Eve's surface justify its efficiency vs its weight" ? It's a heck of a lot to bring, say, 10km into the air, but if it becomes worthwhile at that point, it may just be altogether a good move.

Which realism mods are you referring to? I'm interested in trying some of these.

Both Kerbals pack up and leave for their ascent vehicle. Cruising. An unforseen issue - a lake in between us and our target. It's not all bad. It's another biome to gather from! And finally we rendezvous at the ascent vehicle.

Jeb recovered. We're actually heading first, to the science lab. Ohai! Odd bug: Clicking "leave seat" suddenly puts a kerbal here. Here, you finally see the reason for the science lab, and the odd Kerbal movements. Mission 1: Collect atmospheric testing. Jeb is also afflicted by the bug. Mission 2: Get both kerbals into the lab. Using the lab to reset all the science modules. Do "ground level" science, using the same parts! Taking all the science! Grabbing the Kerbal-based science.

Mission 1: Recover Jeb. It's a long lonely ride. JEB!

Took a lot of tries, but I plotted a good landing. Entry. Science. This time, "flying over Eve". Detaching the rover. A separatron pushes it forward so it doesn't land under me Rover landing. The science lab landing. The science lab, with what was a Gilly lander docked, is now established as a permanent space station.

Lift off from Gilly. Coming into rendezvous. Decouple the top component ( the return section ). It only shows one kerbal because one is in the science lab. Very careful separation. The Gilly unit comes in to dock with the transport/science lab. Now need to EVA from the lander to the lab to activate it. This loses control of the rocket by the way. Now we can clean those experiments, and make usable the materials bay and goo canister we collected from on Gilly. One Kerbal EVAs back to the lander. The other has to make his way to the return craft.

So this is what it looks like to intercept Gilly and immediately setup a capture node using ion engines.. Nooooooooooo And now we're coming down. That slow ascent. Putting it down. Something I found: It doesn't matter what speed you hit Gilly at. You will explode those gigantors if you don't put them away. This means timing the last of your engines. Touchdown! Look at the angle SAS just keeps this rocket on. Gathering all the science. Moar science. Picked it all up and ready to head back.

Gathering science from Eve orbit. Using the science lab to clean the experiments. EVA back out of the lab so the rocket is controllable again. Gilly probe detaching.

Demonstrating part count and total mass. That large ejection burn. Those Kerbals look excited to pick up their mate. Dealing with the always expensive inclination. Aerocapture over Eve. Worst. Inclination. Ever. We all knew the transport was over powered. But that's perfect for this mess. Outside asparagus stage dropped.

Yet again, this next part was quite complex, and took a long time to test out. The I had a string of ladder issues and every test on Kerbin involved putting it into orbit, docking the thing together and landing again. It was quite a trial. Here is the final product, our Eve rescue vehicle, launching. Once in LKO, it was tempting to try and push it out there on mainsail power - there's nearly enough dv to get there still sitting in the lifter. But no, we did it right, here's our heavy transport. The final product docked in LKO. There's something wrong with flight engineer at this point when two rockets dock - there's way more dv than this.

Getting that much science there makes it that much harder. Great work.. once you've pulled this off, the system is yours.

I'd highly recommend reordering to hit Laythe first. Whatever you plan on landing there will by far be the heaviest part of your mission, and since you can aerobrake directly at Laythe, your largest capture burn is avoided. The rest can then be done without that extra weight.

I feel morally obligated to make a mod that does nothing but crash the game if you hack a craft to go faster than light.

It's being dropped from a lander that's parachuting down vertically. The rover has two separatrons to push it forward so I don't then land on it. Without brakes, it lands and drives off. With them, it doesn't flip. But it does explode.

Hi, Just trying to work out if this is my imagination/fluke/etc. I'm testing the deployment of a rover on kerbin. It seems if I drop it from ~50m, it can survive the drop UNLESS THE BRAKES ARE ON, which cause it to explode.

Yep, that's an awful lot when the total circularise is usually around the 1500dv mark.