The Nichurn Missions

[Nich]

Day 30

Aldrick Kermin heads back from Minimus with the haul to science after exploring all the Bionomes I could find.

The JSC (Jeb Science Cruser) was colossally overbuilt and completed its mission with 90+ percent fuel remaining. This was thanks in large part to a luckly landing with 5 biomes in hopping range.

This amazing over expenditure was originally planed to go to Duna next however 2 contracts totaling close to a 1/2 million kredits requires a new ship. This will be our first planned mission.

Stages of Planning will be

1. Ike Lander (7 landings from polar orbit)

2. Duna Lander (7 Landings from polar orbit)

3. Transfer (plan to investigate Mun / Ike slingshots)

4. LKO

Requirements

1. No Kerbal deaths, every man comes home

2. This is a long trip so no crew will spend the entire trip in a command pod.

Objectives

1. Maximize Science returns

2. Level as many Kerbals as possible

3. Preform the mission in a timely fashion.

Edited June 25, 2015 by Nich

[Nich]

Stage 1 Ike lander (Nichabell)

Ike has an ASL g of .112 which is about half way between the Mun at .166 and Minimus at .05. Because of this we will recycle and rename the Mun lander while adding additional science tools unlocked from the Minimus expedition. The Nichabell at 4.5t currently has 1991 dV

however this will go down a little with the addition of additional science equiptment. With the addition of 6 missions worth of additional fuel (6*2.25) we are at 18t.

Edited June 25, 2015 by Nich

[Nich]

Stage 2 Duna Lander (Violes)

Duna is the first Planet we have visited with an atmosphere. With an atmopheric height of 50 km and a pressure of .2 atm I suspect vacuum final stage lifters should be quite acceptable for ISP even at ASL. However first we need to do some high altitude test of the LV-909.

[Nich]

In the High altitude test plane it was found that the LV-909 performed quite well at .2 atm. At 9400 m the Terrier had an ISP of 290. from the following equation we can find thrust since I forgot to start the engine.

(1.596+1.951)*5*290 *9.82 = 50.5 kN

This is already close to the upper limit of what the lifting liquid engines can do in a vacuum now it is just a question of TWR. With the ASL gravity of .3g on Duna 50.5 kN can lift 15.43t with a TWR of 1. If we increase this to 1.5 it can only lift 10.28t as a rough estimate we will assume 3.3t is payload and average ISP of 330 giving dV of 3702. This is quite an encouraging start for the LV-909. especially since the payload to mass ratio is 32% (we can always add more LV-909s and fuel)

before it is time to design a 1 LV-909 lander with 540 LF 860 OX I need to come up with an estimate for dV needed to get off Duna.

[Nich]

Using the following equations we can calculate the impossible to achieve Holman transfer dV required.

where is given in game as GM. For Duna GM = 3.014E+11 and r is 350,000

thus to orbit at asl we need 928 m/s, transfer to 60km is 36 and circulation is 34.5 giving a grand total of 998.45

As a matter of reference a Holman transfer off Kerbin is 2463 for a polar launch but 3824 is a more realistic number. Applying the same factor to our Duna launch we get 1550. With the addition of some parachutes Nichabell just might be a viable candidate for landing on Duna as well.

After realizing the need for safety I decided I need a scientist and an engineer to repack the chutes in case the vehicle is not able to reach orbit. This also adds the additional benefit of multiple command pods for storing duplicate reports. Unmaned testing showed she could enter Kerbin with no problems (no atm landings my butt tin can) Electric generation was a bit low with only 2 panels so I have to upgraded to the 2x3 panel set.

May I present the new and Improved Nichabell weighting in at 7.1t wet with 2686 dV (360 LF 440 OX) adn a TWR of just over 2. With the extended hopping capabilities on IKE I hope to reduce the landings two 4 total. Thus the new budget for IKE is wet lander 7.1t, 3 additional Ike Landings 13.5t, 8 additional Duna landings 36t, for a total of 56.6t

Edited June 25, 2015 by Nich