Destination Interplanetary

[Kagame]

Following my recent attempt at a manned Duna landing, which went so badly it had to be HyperEdited to a landing, I realized that I've actually never practiced manned interplanetary missions, with useful things like return stages. All of my interplanetary exploration has been limited to probes that go there, collect science, and are never heard of again. I was probably being a bit overambitious by trying such a complex mission without a bit of practice.

Since I firmly believe that there ain't nothin' like overkill, I decided to try and run a manned mission on every celestial body in sandbox mode. (Save Eve and maybe Tylo, both for obvious reasons.)

Mods:

- Procedural Parts

- MechJeb (I'll probably be doing most of the actual landings by hand due to my autopilot nervousness, but let Mechanical Jebediah take care of the boring stuff)

- SpaceY because Falcon 9

- HGR

- Atomic Age

- Vanguard Astrodynamics engines

- Kerbal Alarm Clock

- TweakScale: it's virtually a dependency for both LLL, Interstellar Extended, and my styling sanity.

- EVE

- PlanetShine to see if it makes that much of a difference... e_e

- ThermalNuclear for its excellent combined-cycle nuclear engines and naming convention

And, for once, I'm not running FAR.

Part 1 (Mun Landing): Gotta Begin Somewhere

Part 2 (Gilly part 1): Unplanned Rapid Heating Event(s)

Edited July 13, 2015 by Kagame
Came up with a better title.

[Landwalker]

As an interjectory aside, if you're going to use EVE and PlanetShine, I'd also suggest picking up Distant Object Enhancer. Pretty minor add-on that really looks great.

Also, looking forward to reading more!

[Kagame]

Javascript is disabled. View full album

This has to be at least my tenth Mun landing by now.

[Kagame]

Woo-hoo! First extraplanetary landing!

Launched with a SpaceY Falcon 9 clone. Way, WAY more payload than the real Falcon 9's able to take

All ahead full for the transfer burn!

Wait, the engine's getting how hot?!

Had to back down to 45% thrust and stay there for the rest of the mission.

ATTEMPT 1 AT GETTING TO GILLY: AEROBRAKING FOR EVE ORBIT, 50KM PERIAPSIS

Note the lack of engine.

F5!

ATTEMPT 2 AT GETTING TO GILLY, LOW ORBIT AROUND EVE

Perchance, to ponder the perilously poisionous planetary peninsula presented to us, providing a prosaic purple poem silently suspended in space.^note

Shortly after this pulse-pounding poetic interlude, the ship ran entirely out of fuel.

F5!

ATTEMPT #3 AT GETTING TO GILLY: AEROBRAKING II, 75KM PERIAPSIS

How is this worse?!

F5!

ATTEMPT #4 AT GETTING TO GILLY: ASK THE MACHINE

Turns out that the good ship Gilly Ship was mere micromips away from Gilly.

On a side note, I could see myself moving on the orbit map, as the craft was moving so fast. Had to run the nuke at full throttle, no limiter, to properly circularize. Even then, it tended to leave Gilly's SOI when anything was decoupled, docked, undocked, or looked at funny.

Undocked and deorbited, the lander bug gets ready to perform an entirely un-needed braking burn. Orbital speed of Gilly is, no joke, 15 m/s. Sneeze and you're on a collision course with Eve.

Matt Kerman thinks ceilings are awesome.

Perfunctory flag shot.

Imagine some sort of music with violins playing here.

The crew of the Gilly Ship is now waiting for their transfer window home. Judging by KAC, they're going to be a while. Next: Duna or maybe Minmus.

[HoloYolo]

Good luck, you should go to Duna next.

[Kagame]

That's what I'm planning on doing, given the way the transfer windows are set up. I've done a clean-sheet design for this next one, focusing on both proper heat radiation and, most importantly, adding lightness and simplicity. As usual with my designs, this one's half the weight of its predecessor, thanks to HGR rocket parts and a much, much lighter propulsion setup!

MINI-UPDATE: Due to the way transfer windows are set up, and the fact that I'm none too confident about the ability of the lander to operate in atmosphere, this craft is currently on a trajectory to intercept Dres!

Edited July 15, 2015 by Kagame