Stellaris mission test to Mun

[gilflo]

Stellaris is a giant SSTO cargo plane carrying a 18T-10000DV Reckon Satellite and an AESV (autonomous vehicule for science and exploration) 41.7T-9600DV. Stellaris range once in 610km orbit is still 6600 DV which means she can far away in Kerbol space. The man gear of this SSTO is made of 20 6WHEELS gears and the front gear get 4 2Wheels directionnal gears. With thoses gears and 4 repackable chutes, she can land very shortly everywhere on rough terrain and you can try Kerbin base runway but be carefull because she as large as the runway, there's no margin.....

Here it isMark IV fuselage with Vulture cockpit and  B9 aerospace Wings, 2 giant turboramjet  J61Starwaster 4.0m and 2 Nuke engines 4.2m MRS Quad.

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View from the hold, Reckon sat on rear, AESV in front

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AESV is equipped with a lab and various science experiment stuff as Mysterious Goo or SC-9001. MK2 cockpit , 4 vertical  "Lightbulb" nuke engines from  Atomic Age, 6 mini drills, 1 Converter and 1 Ore tank. Many generatots and batteries allow sufficienr energy to drill and convert simultaneously. They are hidden in hold and aft in cockpit.

It is perfectly balanced with same dry and fueled COG. Vertical engines allow easy VTOL landing capability and local travel on low gravity planets. Its high range allow interplanetary travel.It is not protected for atmospheric re-entry and must be docked in a cargo for Kerbin return. Its Nuke engines will always overheat, but stay in limits.

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AESV rear view

Lightbulb nuke engines can be fitted with Tweakscale to whatever TWR you need to meet the TWR  requirements of any planet whose TWR is lower than Kerbin
 

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Taking off for Mun

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Climb 45 degrees

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Altitude 20kms

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Altitude 30 kms, J61 engines being overpowered, we get 56 kms apoapsis

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Coasting on nuke engines, TWR only 0.16

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Circularization at 610 kms

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Before Mun burn:: 78% fuel left and more than  6600DV
 

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For undocking, i got some troubles, AESV was fliping upside down and i found how to proceed after a few try. Space is very narrow each side of the hold and te's no margin.
1/Select "control from here" from docking port you want to decouple, to get the same control origin for both vessels
2/Switch off l Mechjeb ASS if it is on
3/Stabilize the cargo vessel, in prograde for example
4/Set SAS in hold position - Hit F
5/Deco.

Rear flip here, but that was before i found how to proceed.

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Then i undocked the satellite and try immediately to redock AESV,. As there is no margin, i use Docking port alignment indicator, the cockpit facing the rear of the SSTO.
Here is how i proceed for this "no margin" docking
1/Stabilize cargo vessel and select as Target the vessel you want to dock, then  MechJeb ASS TGT>TGT+ . It allows to the cargo to stay aligned on the other vessel while you are struggling with the docking manouver on the other vessel.
2/Select also Mechjeb ASS TGT>TGT+ on the vessel ou are going to dock
3/When you do that nearly align and less than 200m , you can let both vessel align themselves, it will work.
4/Switch on  RCS And use translation switches to align green DPAI cross on yellow circle. In this case ou also have to use flight controls to perfectly align heading of the AESV to the cargo heading as there's no margin to enter the hold.

Here it is
 

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But docking was rejected. I think it is because it was not in initial position. Here AESV cockpit is facing the rear of the SSTO, 180 degrees from initial position

so i performed a 180 and re dock and it works!

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Satellite is scanning the Mun
 

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Now we are going to land AESV on Mun, using "control from here" from docking port which is align with the engines

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.Automatic descent to see if everything is working fine. But Mechjeb is not so good, nose is going up and down to much. Next time i'll do it manually.

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Landed, not far from an anomaly where we will jump next time

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We will try local flight using TCA and also using manual control from cockpit.

l

Edited December 29, 2016 by gilflo