The Floating Gardens of Eve

[M4ck]

The Floating Gardens of Eve

Harmful Environments Research Program, project 3.

Projects completed so far:

• The Hanging Gardens of Mun
  
• The Soaring Gardens of Laythe
  

After developing, launching and completing two projects successfully and providing invaluable scientific knowledge about the kerbalkind, the Harmful Environments Research Program division of the International Kerbal Space Agency was green-lighted on all their crazy, future experiments testing kerbals' resistance to various forms of stress, both physical and mental. Unfortunately, "after much deep and profound brain things inside their heads", nobody working there had any idea what to do next. Could such a successful project simply die due to lack of things to do?

No, not yet. Thanks to the brilliant suggestion of the staff janitor: "guys, relax, chill out, go outside, go to the beach and swim a little - maybe that'll help ya", another challenging mission was quickly planned and four victims brave explorers were chosen to conduct it. Destination: Eve. But there still remained the question: should they be playing in sand or the deadly not-water water? Two teeth and a nose were harmed during the argument, but the designers somehow managed to reach consensus: the operation's main goal will be to establish a semi-self-sustaining, permanent oceanic base, with a secondary, back-up base on the shore not too far away in case something goes wrong.

So, another great operation begins...

Mission log:

• First objective: design, send to LKO, assemble and transfer to Eve everything needed to construct the base according to the blueprints
  

By the way, I've decided to post smaller pictures here, like I did in my first project, and link an album with the full sized ones at the bottom of each post.

Edited September 17, 2013 by M4ck

[M4ck]

The Floating Gardens of Eve, phase one: getting there

In an amazing example of cooperation between two rivaling design fractions, it has been decided that the first thing to land on Eve should be a land base, as it's more difficult to mess up than water landing. Kerbals cannot spend all their lives in the lander can after all. But first, the best landing spot possible had to be chosen. That's why the Seeds were designed.

They are tiny, unmanned probes, that will serve only one purpose: collect as much info on their way down as possible and transmit it to the Mission Control, where the data will be used to create 3D models of each landing site. This way it will be possible to select the most suitable(or the prettiest) of them for the base and fine-tune the descent profile for the mission. After all, this will be the first landing there, no other missions had ever reached Eve before. First, a single Seed has been tested to see if it can actually land safe and sound. After riding about 1km up, the engines were shut down and detached, then the chute was opened. After reaching 500m it deployed fully and slowed the descent to just a little bit over 3m/s. The Seed landed intact.

Now, some method of transport had to be created. A jumbo tank with four LV-N engines was perfect for the Job. Somebody tried to argue that we would only need about three probes, as most of the needed data can be gathered while still in orbit, but... We applied MOAR BOOSTERS Seeds - twelve of them will do. The mothership was lifted along with its load by a simple 1+4 set of 3,75m tanks with medium thrust engines underneath. All fuel lines pointing to the middle, no asparagus was needed. Also, this was the time I came up with quite a clever way of reinforcing the connection between the lifter and the payload without leaving anything unnecessary attached to the payload. Lifter/[strut]/separator/payload. It hasn't failed me even once so far.

Now, another thing we will be landing. This time it's even more important for it to stay intact. We have 12 Seeds, but only four kerbonauts. And only two of them will actually be landing there. Another test and another success. Terminal speed on Kerbin is less than 6m/s, The crew is safe.

But why only two of them will be landing if the capsule can take all four of them to the surface? Well, the smarter two will remain in this:

That's the orbital fuel storage, as well as an orbital construction yard. It was a real pain to get into orbit until somebody created an even more elaborate strutting system.

And the system that actually works really well:

The station got to LKO safe and sound, but it had absolutely no fuel remaining after that. And, as you can see, the living quarters were redesigned a bit to minimize the risk of getting the operators crushed while docking something huge.

It will be used with this miner, for a while, until a proper mining station is established on Gilly. Again, the engines are probably a bit overkill, but nobody knows what to expect there(I do, but my kerbals are still developing their skills and technology; they have an interesting project already designed for when they conquer all of the strange-but-not-insane areas. They want to be sure the miner works no mater what). Before docking, the miner was reoriented relative to the lifter(it still had some fuel left) in order to keep the mass of the assembled tug close to the middle.

After pumping all the fuel to the orange tank, the white one was detached. Now the last module had to be sent: the crew cabin. Everything went fine all the way to just before docking. The vessels got hidden in shadow. The only way to proceed now was to turn the lights of the Seeds on. Let's say I was surprised the core didn't melt from all the light... Unfortunately the target dock was still hidden in the dark.

Right after docking and waiting for the ship to get to the light again, the on-board computer detected some strange oscillations, which kept growing stronger and stronger. An emergency decoupling was ordered and a decision to launch the mission as four separate ships instead of just two was made as well. Three launches later the fleet was ready to go. What you can see on the right side of the first picture was an attempt at creating a heatshield for the crew tank, but it seemed to attract the Kraken when attached to everything else. It will be constructed again while in Eve orbit and attached to the bottom of the lander, like intended.

The docking of the fuel storage was even more fun, as NONE of the vessels had any RCS... You can see it here.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Now, after 86 days waiting for the perfect transfer, the time has come. The armada was launched one orbit apart(around 45 minutes between each ship). The burns were about 950m/s, no more that 5 minutes each. Two ships had the remains of lifter stages attached, so these were used first - no fuel got wasted today.

Now, almost 50 days to go... Three of the ships will require a little fine-tuning on the way there, but one is in a perfect trajectory.

And the album can be found here.

[Captain Sierra]

Oohh, new series! Cannot wait to see the actual base plans!

[Sylandro]

Wishing you alot of luck, man!

[Cashen]

I want to see a floating colony on Jool next, I think that would be both amazing and ridiculously challenging.

[Shalashalska]

Is this dead or just distracted by .22?

Edit: I think it's dead, no news for two months now.

Edited November 19, 2013 by Shalashalska

[19spacepug]

I have been waiting for the gardens of eve ever sence you had finished the last log. Can't wait for part 2.

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