Jeb's Spaceplane to Eve and rescue - UPDATED "Recovery of a vessel from eve surface"

[technion]

Hey guys,

This mission documents my fist ever spaceplane. Its mission - to get Jeb to Eve. He was aware this was a one way trip for the spaceplane, and stage two of this mission will feature a rescue.

This is our SSTO.

It's amazing how much work goes into a good SSTO. I've never had so many attempts at getting something into orbit.

Top jet-assisted speed was around 1600m/s.

Here we are seen firing the nuke and dropping the jets.

A spaceplane has such a different launch profile. You can see here by the time the ap hit the goal, we had almost already circularised.

Planning an intercept.

Dealing with inclination.

Edited February 12, 2014 by technion

[technion]

I can't express how long this took. The spaceplane took FOREVER to drop itself, and since landing was a complicated effort, taking three tries took half my day.

Eventually, we pulled it off after this nice aerobrake.

One of the things I love about Eve is that you can pretty much navigate it in the dark. Which is good, because landing on the lit side seemed to be an impossible intercept for some reason.

Once I got this low, and only then, the spaceplane developed an incredible desire to turn. It wasn't a weight or drag thing because the direction seemed random. It was just very hard to keep straight.

Flight engineer is invaluable for this landing - you need to see that "altitude (terrain)".

The nuke blew off on landing. This occurred twice and I gave up on the idea of trying to land intact.

Obligatory shot.

[Tw1]

Looks good!

BTW, if the is plan to strand him there from the start, you might as well call the mission that takes him home a "recovery" rather than a "rescue".

[technion]

Looks good!

BTW, if the is plan to strand him there from the start, you might as well call the mission that takes him home a "recovery" rather than a "rescue".

Thanks!

And that's true.. but I didn't want Jeb to know he had a few years sitting on a wasteland in his future

[technion]

There's a reason it took a reasonable period of time for this update - low altitude rescues from Eve are hard. For those who haven't dealt with it:

The ascent vehicle itself takes a lot of work. Every time you feel just adding one extra stage will provide the remaining 50dv it needs to orbit - you spent half an hour testing to find four tanks with aerospikes provided only 20dv. Once you get into something like a 15 stage asparagus vehicle, the outer stages don't do much.

Then, you need to make it land without exploding, which takes an absolute stack of parachutes. And after placing them all on your outer stage, then it's not capable of reorbit any longer.

Finally, and this is the crucial part, it's incredibly difficult to take that launcher and get it into orbit. But we got there. This is the final product.

[technion]

The normal ascent path just doesn't work on something this shape. It looks like I should do a gravity turn here. But if you make the slightest turn before 15km, this rocket will self-destruct.

And yes, the rocket is actually run upside down, which means the target is the 270 degree vector.

Here's the problem: If you employ the traditional "cut the engines and coast to burn time based on the manoeuvre node", the problem is that any such node will advise of a 2m45s burn time. And oh look, it's one minute to ap.

Finally, the lander itself gets in the action. Due to a lack of both gimballing and SAS, it's exceedingly difficult to keep accurate. Only the outside stages fire as refuelling the inner segments would be hugely painful.

And heres how it looks when complete. Note, the dumb pe. The ap will aerobrake to a still respectable orbit and when we circle around we can bring the pe back out. Yes this orbit is disastrous and getting this thing here has been a heavy trial.

[technion]

Decoupling in an Eve orbit.

Bringing it down.

Hitting the atmosphere.

Just once.. in my career.. I would like to land in daylight.

Touchdown. Jeb sitting not far from it.

[technion]

Yet again, this next part was quite complex, and took a long time to test out. The I had a string of ladder issues and every test on Kerbin involved putting it into orbit, docking the thing together and landing again. It was quite a trial. Here is the final product, our Eve rescue vehicle, launching.

Once in LKO, it was tempting to try and push it out there on mainsail power - there's nearly enough dv to get there still sitting in the lifter.

But no, we did it right, here's our heavy transport.

The final product docked in LKO. There's something wrong with flight engineer at this point when two rockets dock - there's way more dv than this.

[technion]

Demonstrating part count and total mass.

That large ejection burn.

Those Kerbals look excited to pick up their mate.

Dealing with the always expensive inclination.

Aerocapture over Eve.

Worst. Inclination. Ever.

We all knew the transport was over powered. But that's perfect for this mess.

Outside asparagus stage dropped.

[technion]

Gathering science from Eve orbit.

Using the science lab to clean the experiments.

EVA back out of the lab so the rocket is controllable again.

Gilly probe detaching.

[technion]

So this is what it looks like to intercept Gilly and immediately setup a capture node using ion engines..

Nooooooooooo

And now we're coming down.

That slow ascent.

Putting it down.

Something I found: It doesn't matter what speed you hit Gilly at. You will explode those gigantors if you don't put them away. This means timing the last of your engines.

Touchdown! Look at the angle SAS just keeps this rocket on.

Gathering all the science.

Moar science.

Picked it all up and ready to head back.

[technion]

Lift off from Gilly.

Coming into rendezvous.

Decouple the top component ( the return section ). It only shows one kerbal because one is in the science lab.

Very careful separation.

The Gilly unit comes in to dock with the transport/science lab.

Now need to EVA from the lander to the lab to activate it. This loses control of the rocket by the way.

Now we can clean those experiments, and make usable the materials bay and goo canister we collected from on Gilly.

One Kerbal EVAs back to the lander.

The other has to make his way to the return craft.

[technion]

Took a lot of tries, but I plotted a good landing.

Entry.

Science. This time, "flying over Eve".

Detaching the rover. A separatron pushes it forward so it doesn't land under me

Rover landing.

The science lab landing.

The science lab, with what was a Gilly lander docked, is now established as a permanent space station.

[technion]

Mission 1: Recover Jeb.

It's a long lonely ride.

JEB!

[technion]

Jeb recovered.

We're actually heading first, to the science lab.

Ohai!

Odd bug: Clicking "leave seat" suddenly puts a kerbal here.

Here, you finally see the reason for the science lab, and the odd Kerbal movements. Mission 1: Collect atmospheric testing.

Jeb is also afflicted by the bug.

Mission 2: Get both kerbals into the lab.

Using the lab to reset all the science modules.

Do "ground level" science, using the same parts!

Taking all the science!

Grabbing the Kerbal-based science.

[technion]

Both Kerbals pack up and leave for their ascent vehicle.

Cruising.

An unforseen issue - a lake in between us and our target.

It's not all bad. It's another biome to gather from!

And finally we rendezvous at the ascent vehicle.

[technion]

First mission: repair several of the struts. Some of them immediately broke again, which was annoying.

Launch.

Working through the asparagus stages.

This launch is exceedingly difficult. You have to have a perfect flight path, and when the atmospheric efficiency exceeds 100%.... throttle down perfectly.

Losing most of the stages.

It continually amazes me how much of a rocket it takes to hit 19km... when the goal is 100km.

Gravity turn in this tiny vessel.

This stage does the entire circularise on its own.

And literally just manages. The pe is 99km.

The recovery vessel has a frustratingly large inclination change to deal with.

Coming in for rendezvous.

The magnetic attachment sends kerbals flying when the dock connects. Both need an EVA back to a seat.

Now the large rocket is poised to help the Eve ascender travel the way to Kerbin.

[technion]

Reasonable aerocapture at Kerbin.

By disconnecting the decoupler, we've effectively given a bonus two parachutes to the Eve ascent rocket. Which is good, because it's about to come down.

Rocket assisted descent - otherwise they fall out of chairs when the chutes expand.

Coming in nice and slow.

Touchdown!

NOTE THE BOTTOM ONE!@!!!!

[TheFactory]

Good work! What your pictures don't show is the hours of gameplay this must of taken! Great stuff though!

[mellojoe]

*applauds*

Very well done! I have not yet landed and recovered a Kerbal from Eve. My landers on Eve have all been one-way-trips. In fact, I used Eve as my OWT One-Way-Trip permanent prison outpost for life sentenced criminals. I think building a suitable Eve lifter is marvelous work. Very good job all around!

[Tw1]

Ooh, an ion probe to Gilly! I've done that. What type of trajectory did you use to get there?

At first, it looked like your kerbal was underwater while taking that sample.

Anyway well done on the completed rescue! That will teach Jeb to go galavanting of in experimental space planes.... not.

[technion]

Ooh, an ion probe to Gilly! I've done that. What type of trajectory did you use to get there?

Once in Eve orbit, I just expanded the Ap to graze the closest end of the Gilly orbit. That didn't work - every intercept came in way too fast. I don't know the numbers but the trick was to get to that AP, and push the PE out from very low to a much larger number. It meant coming in much more horizontally to Gilly.

[Geschosskopf]

(waits for applause to subside). Edad, lad! Ça c'est bon, ça!