A Day at the Beach! Laythe Landing and Return (Pic Heavy)

[nsgallup]

Trisa Kerman wanted a nice day at the beach, but it was too crowded! The Thanatos MkIV was assembled to help her have the peaceful vacation she deserved.

Previous career mission links:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/136677-Manned-Tylo-Sample-Return-%28Pic-Heavy%29

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/136831-Space-Station-Maintenance

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/136574-Finally-Conquered-Moho-%28Pic-Heavy%29

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/136897-Val-goes-to-Vall-%28Pic-Heavy%29

Stage one detach (I don't have proper seperatrons yet so solid boosters will have to do)

This stage always explodes after I drop it

Interplanetary Burn

Staging

Capture Burn

This looks like the perfect holiday location!

Capture burn

Stage

Trisa can't wait to play in the sand

Detach!

After setting up an ideal landing trajectory Trisa drops the de-orbit stage and points the heat shield retrograde

Jool Rise

This lander is kinda tippy so it needs a relatively flat spot to touch down

Deploying chutes

Dropping the heat shield

A whole planet of beaches to herself!

Jool looks stunning from Laythe

Trisa is running low on snacks which means it's time to go home, Vall and Tylo are also quite visible

Liftoff

It seems that the most efficient way to ascend is with a very gradual gravity turn, keeping nearly vertical until at least 20km altitude

Dropping external fuel tanks

The fuel gauge seems a little lower then it should be...

It seems the engineers underestimated the high drag atmosphere and Trisa is in a suborbital trajectory short about 1km/s, there is only one thing left to do

Trisa made orbit with about half a unit of EVA propellant remaining, and after remotely piloting the KRV (Kerbin Return Vehicle) into a rendezvous she safely borded

The KRV does have a bit of extra fuel so it was decided to clean up a contract requiring a vessel to perform a flyby of Pol and return to Kerbin, Trisa can't believe KSC would ask her to work during her vacation!

I had to take a picture of this amazing transit

Trisa zooms past the surface gathering some scientific data along the way

Trisa says goodbye to the Joolian system

Somehow a Tylo encounter just before my interplanetary burn put the KRV in this ridiculous orbit, but there was enough fuel to set up a Kerbin aerocapture

Coming home

Trisa puts her wet clothes on the floor to dry them out

Vacation completed!

Edited October 16, 2015 by nsgallup

[nsgallup]

I redesigned the lander afterwords and it seems an extra set of drop tanks with additional parachutes on them, and a bigger heat-shield to cover it all solves the problem. It only weighs about an extra ton so the transit stages shouldn't have a problem moving it around.

The revamped lander coming in hot

Chutes out

All chutes out

Even with the extra chutes, this version of the lander touches down a little harder then before

More Jool beauty shots

Fuel and trajectory look good

Final stage on the lander

Orbital insertion successful, about 300m/s of Delta-V left over for rendezvous maneuvers.. oh I forgot to mention one of the landing legs broke and was not retractable, oh well

Edited October 16, 2015 by nsgallup

[Val]

Some really nice pictures, but especially the Jool Rise one and the last one. I really like those.

[nsgallup]

My favourite was the transit

[Val]

That is definitely also a great one.

[nsgallup]

I did a full mission with the new lander, the lifter rocket and transit stages were pretty much at their operating limits and the mission was barely successful. The lifter had t/w issues getting LKO, and the transit stage had abysmal t/w and was very close for delta V requirements.

The Thanatos launch system will be replaced for future laythe missions once I have better parts unlocked.