Home on a wing and a prayer

[dire]

Contract: Place a station in solar orbit. The station must be a new station and have an antenna, a docking clamp, and room for 5 Kerbals. The station must have a viewing cupola. (Incomplete) Notes: Next run.

Contract: Ferry a tourist to solar orbit. (Incomplete). Notes: Next run.

Contract: Land a tourist on Minmus (Complete). Bring them home safe (Incomplete).

Contract: Land a tourist on Minmus (Complete). Bring them home safe (Incomplete).

Contract: Put a tourist in Minmus orbit (Complete). Bring them home safe (Incomplete).

Contract: Plant a flag on Minmus (Complete).

Contract: Transmit or recover science data from around Minmus. (Complete)

This is a single-stage-to-everywhere craft I recently developed on its maiden run, bringing a pilot, 2 scientists and 4 tourists to Minmus. I would have liked to swing by solar orbit on the way home, but even with a Munar assist on the way to Minmus I was running on fumes. This will be a dead stick re-entry.

[dire]

In high atmosphere I foolishly tried to steer this juggernaut with ideas floating around in my head about "angle of attack" and "bleeding off speed," and I paid for those ideas with all 4 of my LV-N engines that popped right around the 40km mark. Sure that this was the end, I turned off SAS and the craft began to tumble freely. Much to my surprise, almost as soon as I let it start tumbling the heating effects all went away; from 32km it fluttered to the sea as gently as a leaf in the wind, to land on the opposite side of Kerbol from KSC at 20% recovery rates for 40k+ credits. Clearly, this craft has great potential if I can only figure out how to fly it properly.

Edited July 18, 2016 by dire

[Geschosskopf]

 Wow.  Getting that off the ground must have been an epic battle, too

 

[dire]

Wasn't too bad once I discovered elevons. I was honestly more worried about getting it off the ground at Minmus than I was at KSC, because it turns out one SAS does not do anything much for this beast.

The other epic battle was getting it to go from 1200 m/s at 30km to orbit. I packed enough rocket fuel to get me to 55km and 1600 m/s and from there it was all nuclear engines pushing about 100 tons at 240 kN thrust.

Next round I'd like to streamline it a little, maybe drop a pair of Rapiers and a pair of intakes and increase the wing surface a little to compensate. If I can get it going 1400 or 1500 m/s before I have to light the rockets it will be much easier to get to orbit.

Edited July 18, 2016 by dire

[dire]

Contract: Create a new space station with a docking bay, antenna, space for 5 Kerbals and the ability to generate power, and put it into orbit around Kerbin: Complete.

Contract: Create a new space station with a docking bay, antenna, space for 5 Kerbals, a research lab, and the ability to generate power, and put it into orbit around the Mun: Complete.

Contract: Put 2 tourists in Minmal orbit, then land them on Minmus, then ferry them home: Pending.

Mk II of this bad boy is still shuttling from Solar orbit to Minmus, but Mk III just completed a munar tankage run. Delivered what amounted to a full orange can of LFO and 750 monoprop to high munar orbit. This new beastie edges on to the runway at over 400 tons, makes LKO with 7500 DV -- according to mechjeb, anyway -- plus an orange can or so of cargo to spare, Mk III will detach its nose with two tourists, who will land on Minmus and return with about 2300 dv in the nose while the main craft re-enters and attempts to land as close to KSC as possible. I'm excited because this marks the first ever craft I've deployed with a 10m heatshield (actually it has two!). I really want this re-entry to go well because this is the most expensive single craft I've put in orbit, hitting the bank for about 450k credits -- it's about twice as expensive as its predecessors, and they cost about twice as much as a traditional asparagus rocket for the same capability.

The next version is probably going to be an interplanetary vessel now that I've shown it has enough fuel for it (with a resupply waiting in munar orbit, no less). I'd like to get the part count and tonnage down; even at less than 250 parts it's still pretty laggy on my laptop.

 

Over 200 of the 284 tons of Mun Command in this picture is all Tanker 1; it's larger than the entire rest of the station combined and weighs about 2-3 times as much as all 4 of those craft put together.

The biggest flaw that Tanker 1 had for this mission so far was the complete absence of any attitude control over about 30km altitude; I thought 6 SAS modules plus a cockpit would be enough to control it but between the lag and the mass it's very unresponsive.

I think Mechjeb was calculating the primary stage at 3200 ISP for that 7500 dv figure. It made it to the Mun, dumped a whole bunch of fuel into Mun Command -- I filled up every tank on Mun Command and was wishing I had another one to dump fuel into, actually -- and made it home, but only just barely. My de-orbit burn from sub-Munar orbit to 39k PE Kerbin left me with 870 / 32595 liquid fuel left in the tanks. If you are thinking that's a lot, for a craft that is 150 tons DRY weight, no, that is not a lot. Mechjeb says I still have 546 DV left in the tanks after my final burn. I actually wound up shutting down half my atomic engines just because it was easier to shuffle fuel to 4 tanks than it was to shuffle fuel to 8 tanks.

Edit: Turned out that was the -second- to last burn, as I foolishly got re-captured by the moon, which redirected my orbit from 39k PE to about -200 PE (or in other words, plough directly into the surface). 50m/s later I'd only spent about 100 of my remaining fuel reserve to correct course, so I guess maybe Mechjeb isn't lying to me. I just downloaded it the other day, it's still new to me.

Edited July 24, 2016 by dire