First Voyage to Gilly with Updates

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Prequel: Minmus return mission Gone wrong

After I restored the Minmus crew to the warm safety of planet Kerbin, there's nothing to prevent me from going to Gilly and break another boundary. The space program alterady reached Mün, Minmus and Duna, it's next goal is naturally Gilly. Since Eve is closer to Kerbin than Duna, it's easier to get there, but since it's insanely hard to take off, we are going to stop on it's friendly neighborhood mun instead.

Introducing: the Gilly Express!

An obnoxiously large rocket with way more ÃŽâ€V than needed, this one uses parts found rusting in an abandoned hangar not far from here bought from a company which restores outdated rocket parts back to useable conditions, amongside a spherical habitation module enough to support two Kerbals.

As you can probably see, it features the widely known Asparagus Staging format using parts from Rockomax Conglomerate, followed by three seperate rocket engines and tanks from Jebediah Kerman's Junkyard, melded together by a tricoupler thanks to O.M.B. Demolition Express. And after that we have narrow rocket towers with three radial tanks and engines, and up above we have the infamous Gilly Lander phase, packing 2,290 ÃŽâ€V, again more than needed to land on Gilly and return to Kerbin.

The kerbonauts that will ride this monstrosity are the newly-hired daredevil Anmy Kerman and infamous Archie S. Kerman, the guy who looted the old parts from the abandoned hangar founded the company that salvaged and restored abandoned spaceship parts*.

* Not actually, I just changed the parts' manufacturers and descriptions because I didn't liked them. ._.

Well, with everything done, we are ready to take off!

But.... oh dear...

Fail #1: Needs more struts

Apparently I have the tendency to think that Kerbal Joint Reinforcement elliminates the need to use struts. After a few moments of thinking, this is what I came up with:

And, thankfully, it worked. Here we see the rocket ascending straight up above Kerbin as Archie begins to get worried all the while Anmy is still confident.

Unfortunately, things happened.

Fail #2: Gravity turn fail

As you can see, I made a turn to 270° instead of 90°, and the rocket span further than I intended to. KSP believes this is inacceptable, and will soon crash the rocket. Thankfully I still am blessed with the time clock that lets me go back in time have the Revert Flight button, so that isn't much of a bother....still. >.<

Fail #3: Flying Death Trap 7

After I moved the rocket's boosters upwards following the suggestion of an IRC user, the rocket began to spin madly out of control, with Archie panicking and Anmy cluelessy playing 'Hit your chest Donkey Kong style!'.

Eventually, after many failures and a ragequit, I had the idea to recycle Duna 2, a rocket I used for my on-going Duna mission(durr) for my Gilly trip. It has no hab. module, or a space for one, but it'll have to do. Of course, since the rocket has a Mk1-2 pod, we'll need another crew member, which is Mildous Kerman.

And we have take-off!

And that's pretty much it for now. Stay tuned for the next update!

Edited December 9, 2013 by Commissioner Tadpole

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Honestly, since nobody's replying, I'm ditching this series.

[Landwalker]

If nothing else, this thread caused me to become aware that there is such a thing as "Kerbal Joint Reinforcement," and I am downloading it now.

What was the rationale behind moving the radial liquid boosters forward/upward on the rocket? I've always been operating under the impression that, when it comes to rockets, one generally wants Center of Mass and Center of Thrust to be as low as possible for any given stage, especially when you're talking about liftoff periods.

Squinting at that thing as best I can, and bearing in mind that this is the pot giving the kettle advice on how to be black (I've never landed on Gilly, either, let alone put Kerbals on it), I might also hazard that you could benefit from adding a 2.5m SAS module at the top of your central Mainsail column. I might also propose that, in Fail #2, your gravity turn may have been a bit premature. Try waiting until the neighborhood of 20km and see if you get any better results from it.

That method of strutting-up your radial upper stage using the decouplers and the "plate" parts as a foundation for the strut was pretty ingenious thinking. I may well adapt that for future designs of my own.

[Specialist290]

That seems rather sudden. Personally, I was looking forward to seeing what happens next...

[Commissioner Tadpole]

If nothing else, this thread caused me to become aware that there is such a thing as "Kerbal Joint Reinforcement," and I am downloading it now.

What was the rationale behind moving the radial liquid boosters forward/upward on the rocket? I've always been operating under the impression that, when it comes to rockets, one generally wants Center of Mass and Center of Thrust to be as low as possible for any given stage, especially when you're talking about liftoff periods.

It was mainly so I could move the rocket more easily, as before doing that I struggled. A lot. It stilll, however, refuses to make it into 90° flat, it's like there's a bubble around it that prevents me from pointing at it.

Squinting at that thing as best I can, and bearing in mind that this is the pot giving the kettle advice on how to be black (I've never landed on Gilly, either, let alone put Kerbals on it), I might also hazard that you could benefit from adding a 2.5m SAS module at the top of your central Mainsail column. I might also propose that, in Fail #2, your gravity turn may have been a bit premature. Try waiting until the neighborhood of 20km and see if you get any better results from it.

I had added 3 ASAS modules below the triple decouplers instead. ._.' And I'll try the 20km thing as well.

That method of strutting-up your radial upper stage using the decouplers and the "plate" parts as a foundation for the strut was pretty ingenious thinking. I may well adapt that for future designs of my own.

Thanks!

Replies in bold.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Alright, I decided to continue this.

[FlamedSteak]

Just remember to pack some magnetic boots, Gilly's gravity is so low jumping the wrong way can put you into orbit.

I had to burn to the surface to speed up my decent or I didn't think I was ever going to land.

[Cashen]

I can attest to this. Having just landed a probe on Gilly myself, I found I was able to just free fall from very high up and land without using the engines. I was almost temped to turn top-down and burn downward to speed things up, and then just point the engines down to slow myself to a landing.

Also don't be discouraged by people not responding. Lots of people lurk. Almost all of the posts in my thread for example are by me. I appreciate those that do reply but I do it because I enjoy it, not particularly because others do (though I appreciate it when they do!)

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Unfortunately this mission has to be delayed because I did a miscalculation on the Eve window. In other words, I completely missed it. And I cannot just time warp to the next window, because I'm alterady managing a mission on Duna.

Here's a landmark I set on Duna in honor to the failed program:

Edited December 10, 2013 by Commissioner Tadpole

[Specialist290]

Indeed, hopefully they'll make it out there at the next opportunity. Until then, hope the crew is taking a well-deserved vacation to "decompress."

[technion]

Honestly, since nobody's replying, I'm ditching this series.

Speaking for myself, I've read dozens of great mission reports, but since bumping every one of them just to say "great report" sounded silly, I didn't.

Unfortunately this mission has to be delayed because I did a miscalculation on the Eve window

If you're keen on this mission, I'd urge you to continue to go for it. On my current Eve mission, I didn't at any point make any effort to deal with launch windows. I appreciate it's not "optimal", but you said yourself your rocket have more dv than needed anyway. Speaking of optimal, I see a lot of engines, but no nukes. This will have a significant impact on your interplanetary transfer.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

I had switched rocket design to that of Duna 2, the one I used to go to Duna(durr). It's Delta-V is slightly tighter than Gilly Express - 10k, and no matter what I did, I couldn't find a good way to get an Eve intercept, both because of Mün, and because Eve was fleeing from me.