The dawn of the Eve program

Jeb x Valentina · February 1

Hello dear kerbonauts. Recently I got a couple eve contracts and a gilly one, so I decided to launch as the window approached

Mission I (Evenera II) is an attempt to fly-by eve and return (Sadly I'ts in LKO alrdy and forgor to screenshot )

Mission II (The gilly miner) wil try to get 1k ore from the asteroid, and is the one we're discussing today

Mision III (The elipson "base") will be a ~~random arrangement of seats~~ 6 kerbal Eve base with an ISRU

Here is a view of my mission control:

However, my ship turned out to be quite heavy (as it included a survey-relay thing and 2 drills, along w 16 ore tanks), so I had to build quite a behemoth to launch it

It's this thing:

Simply nicknamed as "the behemoth" by me, it's inspired by Falcon heavy

Let's launch!

And just like that, the heavist vessel of my program using only the small parts has left the ground.

Time to get this thing to LKO

Spoiler

Cleared the pad

The ship is powered b 2 swivels (which aid in steering the massive thing) and a reliant. It also has fins to keep it from rolling once the side boosters are ataged off

Speaking of that, after having reached about 7km, It's about to do that as the side boosters have about 600 m/s remaining

Staging went quite smoothly thanks to the reliant's high TWR and those powerful hydraulic manifolds, along with a couple fins on the boosters to make them tip over to the side.

After that though, thing went horribly wrong

Spoiler

As you might have noticed already, this craft has now barely any way to steer other than a reaction wheel in the sattelite

At this point we has entered the upper atmosphere, so I decided it was time to deploy that horribly large fairing

Uhhhhhhhhhh...

For whatever reason, deploying the fairing caused me to los control ocer the rocket's attitude and made me lose the mission.

Luckily ~~I could revert flight~~ that was just a simulation

Thiis time, I added a reaction wheel to the behemoth's core so we could steer better

Time to try again!

LIFTOFF- EXCUSE ME!?

Spoiler

WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS THAT!?

Well that... was horribly scary.

Luckily, it's all good after that, other than a slightly misaligned prograde and roll.

Booster separation went as good as last time.

Watching 'em tumble away is satisfying.

Fairing deployment was no issue this time thanks to the reaction wheel.

Probe deployment was next.

After that, I coasterd until near apoapsis, and at first, wanted to use just one burn for circularizing

But ended up doing two for efficiency

After circularizing, I just let the maneuver tool calculate stuff

Apparently, we'll encounter Eve about an orbit later

Oh well. Time to wait

Thanks for reading. I'll leave the thing parked in LKO until the window occurs.

Next time, we'll launch Elipson (obviously uncrewed)

Edited February 1 by Jeb x Valentina

Vanamonde · February 10

That is a lot of transmission lines.

Jeb x Valentina · February 11

On 2/10/2024 at 12:57 PM, Vanamonde said:

That is a lot of transmission lines.

Yep. I'm aware.

Anyways, about to post chapter II, will take that into account

Jeb x Valentina · February 11

Chapter II: ~~Elipson~~ K-bait

Hello kerbonauts. Stuff has gone quite wrong with my plans for Elipson. First of all, It requires to be crewed with 3 scientists, which I don't want to doom (or potentially kill).
Next, is the base is way too heavy, even for the Behemoth to lift, and while I could use 2.5m rockets, I don't feel like wasting so many funds.

So yeah. Elipson will have to be suspended until the next Eve launch window .

Anyways, with the transfer burns for Evenera II and the miner 80 days away, I decided to just time warp and do it.

Yet again I forgot to screenshot Evenera II (at least for the escape burn, but you can imagine it ig).

However, as I switched tothe miner, the kraken decided to play with it