KSP 1.0.4 Fast Travel Mission to Eeloo

[xebx]

Here is a report of a recent manned mission to Eeloo, i did this with a LFO and Ion Ship 100% stock 24000 m/s deltaV, lander included.

At that time, i had completed two missions landing on Eve (isru, 7 kerbals from Kerbin to Kerbin) and i wanted something different, Eve is near Kerbin and heavy planet, where could i go ? Eeloo with Ion engines !!

I quickly designed and tested it based on previous thoughts and views, it mainly consists of : Lifter (3400 m/s) + aspargus LFO (9500 m/s poodle) + Ion stage (10000 m/s) + Small lander (1500 m/s)

I ended with : 1 year 34 days from Kerbin to Eeloo + few days for SOI operations and landing + 1 year 207 days from Eeloo to Kerbin = total 2 years 247 days

The ion stage is powered by 3 jettisonable fuel cells arrays during Eeloo orbit (capture is 90% done with LFO) and by 3 Gigantors during Kerbin slow down and capture. Batteries are enough for 50-100 m/s changes.

Small adjustments and good evaluation of burning durations and timings were very important because of high speed and possible deltaV losses.

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Installed Mods :

Kerbal Engineer Redux

MechJeb2

Kerbal Alarm Clock

Stage Recovery

Antenna Range

StockBugFixModules

SolarActionGroup

PlanetShine

EngineLight

Kerbal Joint Reinforcement

Edited October 2, 2015 by xebx

[purpleivan]

I made an 88 day fly past of Eeloo a few weeks ago... 31000m/s at maximum and skimmed the surface at about 3500m.

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[xebx]

88 days and 31000 m/s is really fast, but not manned and not to, plant a flag and return. Without the lander the lfo+ion ship is close to 27000 m/s deltaV, maybe it needs a little buff to reach 31000 m/s at Eeloo flyby. In the end i'd say same perf, you should try a complete manned travel.

Your lifter looks very big, did you have a nuke stage that add a lot of mass ?

BTW it's possible to do faster travel but burn times can become very very long and boring, the total burn duration for this travel were approximately 1h40min, still decent with 4xtime warp and 4-5 different steps (leaving kerbin, arrival at eeloo, landing, leaving eeloo, arrival kerbin), stagings and manoeuvres.

Edited October 2, 2015 by xebx

[purpleivan]

The vehicle was manned (Jeb of course) but it wasn't a lander and sure didn't have the dv to stop for a landing

I did have nukes on board and realised that they were not really efficient in terms of dv/mass. My ion burn was actually a lot longer, about 12 hours if I remember correctly as I was emptying three large xenon tanks with a single ion drive. It was so long in fact that I got up in the morning, fired up the game, stopped the flow from all but the "next tank to empty" started up the drive and went to work (it would have run the tank dry in about 4 hours). When I got back I dropped that tank, enabled flow from the other tanks and started burning again.

Sometime I plan to try and test the limits of what can be done with an ion drive in terms of carry a whole bunch of drop tanks (there will be diminishing returns of course)... just curious to see how fast it's possible to go heading out of Kerbol SOI.

Heading into skim Kerbol you can get some real speed (I had just under 90,000m/s)

- - - Updated - - -

I completely forgot that I've recently flown an ion drive flight to Eeloo (liquid fueled detachable lander though) for the Small Rocket Long Way challenge

At 4y 116 days it wasn't quick, but the rules were that no parts could be Kerbodyne or Rockomax so only small liquid fuel rockets on the launch vehicle (it used Aerospikes to get the ship into Kerbin orbit).

[xebx]

I'll probably try a Fast Travel Mission to Duna, after the Grand Tour is completed. Just curious to see how many days this type of ship will need to go, land and return. I'll need less fuelcells and nearly same lander.

Edited October 2, 2015 by xebx