Eeloo return

[Kersplattle]

Feeling pretty please as I managed to get a lander onto Eeloo and return to a soft landing on Kerbin, admittedly not at the space port. This was a significant challenge in terms of fuel capacity as I like to run stock and sans Mechjeb; so it's all hand crafted piloting with the "add manoeuvre" flight planner.

I hope to post some pics when I'm back on the gaming machine.

So much fuel use to burn into orbit when I arrived out there, and over 3000 dV to get back into Kerbin orbit. I really must plan my intercepts better. The design uses my heavy lifter asparagus core which is only 4 x symmetry and discards all 4 in a layer at a time, so it's not super efficient, and has bulk SFB's to get it started, plus an interplanetary stage docked to a smaller lander. It was only when lifting off from Eeloo and trying to make rendezvous with the interplanetary stage to refuel that I discovered a design flaw, no SAS on that stage so sooo hard to get it stable enough to dock back onto. Judicious use of 5 x warp to stop it spinning was the solution and eventually we docked, with 0.5 units of mono propellant left in the probe controlled stage.

Then fuel transfer to suck it nearly dry, discard most of fuel tanks (just keeping the central one with the last of its fuel, and home using the lander engines, throwing off the last tank half through the deceleration burn to intersect with Kerbin.

This does take a refuelling in LKO of the remaining core of the asparagus lifter to give me enough fuel to get into solar orbit before pushing out to Eeloo, but it sure is a long mission.