A noob exploring in career mode

[Nefrums]

Nice! Will have to look into that, when i get home from work! How much was the mass lowered?

[Jodo42]

Current mass is 1.0 tons. That gives it a TWR of around 7 at sea level on Eve. KER is giving an ISP of 230 instead of 186 as well, so maybe the ISP has changed too.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Jodo42

[Nefrums]

Yes i noted that to. Will ahve to go back and check the other engines as well. But it appears that the Arospike is the way to go on Eve now.

I built a ~100t lander (still 2x lander cans) with mainly aerospikes that could take of from Eve sea-level.

[Nefrums]

The Eve mission have now started.

The mission will include a swim in the sea on Eve for Jeb and Bob.

The eve lander:

150t. 9 stages, powered by 24 aerospikes.

The complete ship launching from Kerbin:

Apart from the lander the ship also have a rover and ion powered return craft. The nuclear powered interplanetary stage has close 4,5k dV. It is lifted to kerbin orbit by the same booster package that I used for the Jool mission.

It was a bit hard to keep the ship from loosing control during launch. so the assent path was far from optimal

Eve burn started:

Eve intercept ploted:

After some arobraking and a lot of retro burning the ship is in a low Eve orbit:

The interplanetary stage has about 1.3k dV left, That will be a lot more without the lander and the rover. Adding the return crafts 4k dV, return will not be a problem and I will not need to wait for a good transfer window.

I will probably do the landings and post an update later today.

[Mister Dilsby]

Excellent! So I take it you were conservative in the aerobrake altitude and therefore had to spend a lot of fuel to capture; can you give some details?

[Nefrums]

Parts of the ship got really hot fast in the atmosphere. Even above 85km. There where no flames around the ship, but many parts started to glow and the solar panels exploded, even when retracted. And the ship did not lose a significant amount of speed only ~ 30 m/s, when going as far into the atmosphere as i could without damage.

This might be due to that i choose to not wait for a optimal transfer window. Instead i just used 4 long mk3 liquid fuel tanks for the Nervs, So i had the dV to do the retro burn.

As i already had a booster package to take 500t into kerbin orbit, I designed the ship with that in mind. So I had plenty of room to add liquid fuel tanks. The ship wights about 450t.

[Boomshockpow]

Wow! 14k science! That is an obscene amount. I'm happy to just get 100 for a Mun fly-by or something. I'm not great at building yet.

[Mister Dilsby]

Parts of the ship got really hot fast in the atmosphere. Even above 85km. There where no flames around the ship, but many parts started to glow and the solar panels exploded, even when retracted. And the ship did not lose a significant amount of speed only ~ 30 m/s, when going as far into the atmosphere as i could without damage.

That's ridiculous--I may have to nerf turbulence in my save, there should always be a window in which a reasonably designed craft can slow down by a few km/s and not explode.

[Nefrums]

Yes, there seams to be a flaw in the reentry mechanics.. Aerocapture is practically impossible in 1.0.4

The mission is now finished!

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Lander worked like a charm. :-)

[Geschosskopf]

That's ridiculous--I may have to nerf turbulence in my save, there should always be a window in which a reasonably designed craft can slow down by a few km/s and not explode.

Yes, there seams to be a flaw in the reentry mechanics.. Aerocapture is practically impossible in 1.0.4

Agreed. All the folks whining that reentry from LKO wasn't hot enough have, as predicted, largely ruined the game for folks interested in going elsewhere. So in my new 1.0.4 game, I turned reentry heat down to just 10% and even that's problematic.

The mission is now finished!

Lander worked like a charm. :-)

Congrats! Awesome job there. I've never tried doing this stock myself. I instead find some totally OP mod that lets me make Eve SSTOs, which is the only viable way to have a long-term prison---er, I mean colony there .

BTW, I just noticed that the Mk2 Expansion mod now includes a nuclear thermal jet engine (like from the old Interstellar mod) that uses no fuel and runs only on atmospheric gas of any type, which looks good for flying around on Eve. It's got way too little thrust to make an SSTO but would work for exploration and hopping around between different bases.

Anyway, outstanding job(s) with all you've done so far .

[Mister Dilsby]

I knew you could do it! And a version thing you brought enough fuel to not need aerocapture. Well now what, 'n00b'?

[Nefrums]

Thanks!

I don't know if the aerocapture problems where due the the version i had installed. I had the GOG 1.0.2 version + a 1.0.3 patch i found on... "the internet"...

Yesterday the GOG 1.0.3/4 finally became available, so i had that installed when doing the landings.

What to do next... Well i will be away on vacation and not able to play for a week, but after that i am thinking of trying out the Realism overhaul mods.