The harsh realities of engineering - Home Sweet Home Mk2 - To Duna and back

[Monkeh]

The goal I had for this mission was to get to Duna and back with a manned vessel. I added the stipulation that I could only use fuel tanks from the round and toroidal pack. The design for the ship took me a while to get right, but I felt I had the right selection of stages to make the attempt. I also think the ship looks mighty cool ::

On the launchpad.

Nice and steady on the ascent.

We made orbit and the remaining stages seem to have the right delta V requirements to at least get me to Duna, getting back is still on the cards I think but I haven't looked at any charts of tables so it's a bit of guesswork as to how much I will need. Only one way to find out of course...

Drop the last of the lifter stages and burn to Duna.

Slowing down at Duna, you can see both Duna and Ike in this shot.

Set up a nice circular orbit and pick a landing spot.

Use the last couple of hundred metres per second delta V in the interplanetary stage to begin killing the horizontal velocity.

Drop that stage and prepare for the lander module to make touch down.

Pop out the parachutes and burn like mad to reduce speed.

With the last drops of fuel in the insertion stage we managed to get below a speed that would have caused total destruction. A couple of the landing legs decided to take a long vacation from actually being landing legs and blew up a little bit, but the lander module made it down to the Dunan surface and we could get Bill and Jeb onto the planet for a wander with the rovers and just to sit and chill and enjoy the view in the command chair verandas, beautiful.

Obligatory photo of the heroes planting the flag and roving like bosses.

Jeb thought he was too far away in the first shot and demanded a retake!

Popping the fairings whilst on the command chair veranda wasn't advised by mission control, but the guys just thought, YOLO, and sat and popped. The fairings killed nobody and exploded harmlessly, well away from the lander module, rovers and other delicate equipment...more or less.

So my bright idea was to have this module separate from the lander, get the little return home vessel into orbit, transfer the guys over and head for home in the little 2 man can. I felt reasonably confident we had the delta V requirements and felt supremely confident after the rest of the mission going so well.

This is where disaster struck. A tiny little detail, not spotted in the VAB, is about to ruin these brave Kerbal's attempts at getting home. Have a look at this screenshot and see if you can work out what went wrong.

The decoupler removes the lowest landing stage, the rest soars to the heavens. Have you spotted the oh-so not deliberate mistake? Look at the girder that connects the two stages. Now look at the toroidal tanks just above the little engines. Can you see the problem?

The width of the toroidal tanks means as the top stage tries to pull away the tanks grab the thickest part of the girder and try to lift the entire landing stage up instead of dropping all that dead weight. They had absolutely no chance of going anywhere with all that tagging along.

So after re loading from the quick save and trying again a couple of times before I realised what was going on, this was the end result.

The lesson here, I suppose, is to check and re-check everything before embarking on a mission that will take a good couple of hours of real time. My emotions at that time can only be described as, 'very sad', but it hasn't deterred me, I shall make a visit to the VAB, fix the design and send another set of brave explorers out there, hopefully this time, to come back. Wish me luck and make sure something like this never happens to you.

[Geschosskopf]

Oh man, that sucks! Such a beautiful ship, making me want to grab that mod.... Were there any survivors?

[Monkeh]

Thanks, I am kinda proud of it, my little baby...

Yeah they're both still there. I think I may have rage quit so the game very nicely put them back to my last quicksave, just before take off I think.

A rescue mission is in the works. Just got to check that damn girder...

Oh yeah, and the mod is great, really nice tanks and stuff.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Monkeh

[Galane]

Could probably install KAS then send a supply ship with some sepratrons. Have the guys remount the seps to fire at that girder to destroy it. Be throttled up and ready on the space bar soon as it blows.

Of course building a test fixture at KSC to see if sepratron exhaust will destroy one of those girder adapters would be a good idea before spending the time to send some to Duna, only to find out they won't work.

[Monkeh]

So I decided to just throw another craft at the first one, slightly modified to rectify the last problem.

Got a nice slingshot around Ike to improve the orbit.

This time the girder dropped off as designed and we managed the ascent.

The delta v readout from the engineer redux doesn't take into account the last stage as it's on top of the root part. This seems to confuse it. I still don't know if I have enough fuel to get home.

No idea how, but one of the fairing panels decided to fall off before the staging, but time to unveil the return vehicle and EVA over.

Cute little thing

Whoops, flight engineer chip not on this stage...still no idea if I can make it home.

Ran out of fuel a few hundred m/s away from a perfect mission, then I tried to use the RCS to get the last little bit of deceleration at the apoap to start an aerobrake at the periap...alas, to no avail.

Edited January 8, 2014 by Monkeh

[federicoaa]

Hi, could you tell me what mods you used for this rocket?

Ntw, nice design

[Monkeh]

Let me try to remember all the different bits. The main mod on show here is the Spherical and Toroidal Tank pack. It has some lights from both B9 Aerospace and some from Aviation Lights. The engines on the lifter stage are from either NovaPunch or KW Rocketry, not sure which one sorry. It also uses the invisible struts from the B9 pack as well to keep it all looking nice. The 'command chair verandas' are using some structural stuff from the Spherical and Toroidal tanks pack, which are really nice and useful. The top is encased using the 'Interstage adapter' part from the Procedural Fairings mod.

If you'd like the .craft file and the parts required to make it, then let me know and I'll sort out a little pack with them both in for you to download.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Monkeh

[federicoaa]

Thanks for the answer and for the links! The procedural fairings is what I was looking for, thanks again