Eve return testing (how?)

[PGTART]

Based upon future tech and robotic an airbag and prakasa  mod, i made this Eve return lander ship:  

Its an interesting ship first let me describe it:

It contains 3 kerbals, science instruments, a rover, a drill and processing unit, and even shields and a docking bay on top, and an nuclear engine for eve return.
For launching of from kerbin (i aim at around 90km orbits) no stage separation is required !!
Despite at launch the outer rockets are only fueled for ~60%! 
( Notice it wont work with those tanks 100% loaded becomes to heavy then).
( Notice also  that i use Prakasa tanks here they have better weight ratios ).
But those outer rockets i think would only be required for Kerbin take off
As for eve take off the ship is a lot lighter leaving a rover and ore processing unit, and heat shields)
Another ship will have to pull it to eve (our ship has a docking bay for that).

At around 19km nuclear air-breathing rocket is manually switched (by pressing "1" key), to fuel loop based propulsion.
Gravity turning at around 46km aiming 90deg at (or before) 70 km.  preferably manual instead of mechjeb).

Rover landing is spectacular  as well :
After heat-shield (which should get unfolded by robotics) is dropped, press "2" on the keyboard
When pressing "2" the following things happen

• fires the rovers downwards separation rockets, and the forward "ant" rockets (so it wont land at the same place as the mother ship).
• 4 Parachutes from rover get deployed
• its wheels unfold
• a siren light and frontal lights turn on (so a kerbin can find it).
• the rover airbags unfold so the parachute nose down diving will not damage the rover.
• oh and i guess the rovers command pot becomes active as the solar panels start charging the battery

My Question
So far i only was able to test this ship on kerbin.
But i think it needs more tweaking, in regard to heat-shields, and parachute settings, and separation of heat-shield and lander.
I am not able to tweak and test that on kerbin, i did a lot of testing but cannot test it all on kerbin.
Is there a a way to quickly test things out, (taking-of and landing) on other planets ?.

i think it might be a good ship for eve, since those nuclear engines carry a long way on atmospheric as their only fuel source (19 km on kerbin).
Eventually for taking of kerbin it has 8 nuclear turbo engines, and the common stock nuclear engine (i wonder maybe it can even fly back to kerbin?).

Here is my ship if you want to test it out what needs to be tuned to make it all work on eve.
Ship as ship file https://www.dropbox.com/s/fji9m7ocozyz73v/EVE-RETURN.craft?dl=0 note upon kerbin takeoff deflate the 2 airbags (front and below seat).

 

Edited September 25, 2016 by PGTART
typo

[foamyesque]

What you want is called HyperEdit; it is a mod that allows you to teleport into any orbit around any body, or land on them, or adjust your speed without spending fuel. It's very, very useful for testing interplanetary landers without needing to fly the whole damn transfer every time.

[Snark]

2 hours ago, foamyesque said:

What you want is called HyperEdit; it is a mod that allows you to teleport into any orbit around any body, or land on them, or adjust your speed without spending fuel. It's very, very useful for testing interplanetary landers without needing to fly the whole damn transfer every time.

Also, note that in KSP 1.2, they've added a new functionality to the Alt+F12 cheat menu that lets you put your ship directly into orbit where you want it-- basically, a "HyperEdit Lite", but in stock. 

 

[PGTART]

hmm hyper edit doesnt seam to work, not sure think its not up to date.

[Snark]

56 minutes ago, PGTART said:

hmm hyper edit doesnt seam to work, not sure think its not up to date.

What version of KSP are you running?

[PGTART]

i'm running 1.1.3.1289
i bought it on steam so i assume KSP is kept up to date.

meanwhile i found heat shield doesnt unfold properly and explodes.., but thats still kerbin testing.

Edited September 25, 2016 by PGTART

[Foxster]

It's hard to comment on a heavily modded craft but a couple of tips...

If it's not already there then you will want one of the big inflatable heatsields on the bottom for entry to Eve. 

The above will make the craft flip, so you will need a load of disposable airbrakes on the top of the craft

As well as the above, you will want a lot of disposable 'chutes for the landing.  

All what you are doing can be done in stock. It almost feels cheaty to do it with lots of mods as anything can be done with mods and it's an interesting challenge to do this type of mission with stock. 

[PGTART]

Well the new heat shield does indeed flip over the ship thats not ideal.
I was inspired by an eve landing who dropped their large heatshield to reduce gravity pull
I did not want to create an unrealistic huge kerbin launcher kraft, but i prefer using technical solutions, so yes robotics, an airbags.
(only the rover lander has airbags currently, and their not the holly grail either).
I was thinking to do a Elon musk like active rocketry braking (at some point in decent).
Since the ship is able to refuel itself (with stock parts), such things are also planed for the Mars mission.

As for stock parts, yes its nice the game but i think you miss out a lot of fun without robotics to see the lander craft unfolt, and the (non) working heat shield solution, well i like such things, the extra parts like in karbonite are fun too, but not used here and likely give more advantage.

As for taking near future tech nuclear engines, its still not too easy, but i'm realy not sure if it is possible that this craft can get itself into eve orbit again after landing. In real life nuclear planes have been considered around 1960 or so, and i think KSP should contain every possible rocket engine, its an engineers game after-all. The most gain i might get from the tanks, they're not that extreme though, i can imagine that fuel could be pressurized (ea liquid H2 and seperated liquid O2 ) take less volume then H2o, so to some extends such things are possible, i wont be much supriced if normal tanks could do the job as well (they're now filled for 60%), and main tanks have ~10% left when in orbit.

i have to rethink the heat shield system, maybe create a shield drone : [ heatshield + docking and probe and RCS control ],
So i can mount it later on top (then it will flip in correct position to.. hm well that could work.

the craft has a lot of parachutes (on the smaller ring of nuclear engines, there are 2 rockets with a lot of parachutes).
the idea is that those 2 will be staged first in ascend even thus reducing all weights of parachutes.