GravMax Tylo Lander

[Captain Sierra]

Yep! A 100% Tylo certified lander, capable of putting a kerbal on the surface and returning to orbit with boatloads of fuel left.

The craft is still under development, in the final tuning stages, so no craft file is ready for release yet. The best part is, the upper stage is capable of landing on any other non-atmospheric body after it dumps the lower stage and drop tanks.

I ran it through a hyperedit test where I landed on Tylo and went back to orbit. I then magically refueled the craft to simulate redocking with the Nebulon mothership, the first Sentari class tour ship ever built, which will be running a grand tour. I teleported myself to Vall, landed from a 75km orbit, and then went back up to a 200km orbit with fuel to spare. I repeated the process on Ike. After that, I can safely say this is a 'go anywhere, do anything' lander.

I did say it's in development. There is currently a glitch where the kerbal is unable to transition from the fixed ladders to the yellow ladder on the upper stage lander going down. The issue does not occur when going up. You may have to fall off and then climb back up. I'll have to be careful of this on Tylo. The craft file will be released here in the coming weeks as I run the Grand Tour as well as part of the pack of all my grand tour craft modules, which will be released upon completion of my tour.

The image does not show it well but there are Rockomax 48-7S engines on the main boosters. A change made after this image also corrected some fuel flow issues with those boosters.

For any numbers-lovers out there:

TWR of 1.5 fully fueled, all stages on Tylo

~7500m/s dV with lower stage and boosters

800 kN of thrust on lower stage minus boosters

upper stage has ~3100m/s dV, only 900 of that is from the drop tanks

2200+m/s dV on upper stage alone

Upper stage lander has 120 kN of thrust

Edited January 29, 2014 by Captain Sierra

[Rune]

Hum. Did I get you inspired?

I do manage to pack more delta-v on each stage, over 4km/s each, and my total mass is slightly smaller (54mT), and I don't use drop tanks, just two chemical stages. I also use a full science suite so... have you considered substituting some engines of that cluster for aerospikes? When you go much over 3km/s in a single stage, their high isp is really felt.

Rune. You do seem to have greater T/W, so at least there is a reason mine look slightly better in every other way, not just magic.

[Captain Sierra]

XD Yes I was basing it partially off of yours. The thing is, LV45 vac ISP is 370 and Aerospike is 390. Now, on the other side of the coin, the gimballing helps it turn with the lower stage since the meek torque from the cabin. With aerospikes, I lose that and the thing would become a hog to turn. (not that it already isn't when I cut throttle).

The high TWR (it gets to almost 4 by the time the main tank is 2/3 empty) is because of how I have a tendency to land. It also serves as a failsafe in case I need to stop quick, and that it does.

I did actually play around with yours to get some ideas, but I felt that my auxiliary tanks needed to be dropped to reduce my landing mass since I had to stick with the 45s. My Eve lander, currently in prototyping, uses and abuses aerospikes, both stock toroidal, and RLA Stockalike linear aerospikes (give more power with less efficiency; 210 thrust but for only 340 ISP sea level)

[Rune]

XD Yes I was basing it partially off of yours. The thing is, LV45 vac ISP is 370 and Aerospike is 390. Now, on the other side of the coin, the gimballing helps it turn with the lower stage since the meek torque from the cabin. With aerospikes, I lose that and the thing would become a hog to turn. (not that it already isn't when I cut throttle).

The high TWR (it gets to almost 4 by the time the main tank is 2/3 empty) is because of how I have a tendency to land. It also serves as a failsafe in case I need to stop quick, and that it does.

I did actually play around with yours to get some ideas, but I felt that my auxiliary tanks needed to be dropped to reduce my landing mass since I had to stick with the 45s. My Eve lander, currently in prototyping, uses and abuses aerospikes, both stock toroidal, and RLA Stockalike linear aerospikes (give more power with less efficiency; 210 thrust but for only 340 ISP sea level)

Oh, you could always leave a T45 in the middle to provide control, like I leave the 909 in there, and still put a few spikes around it. Also, you could place the upper stage engines with triple (or quadruple, or whatever) symmetry and attach the decoupler directly to the tank, it would still work, it's stiffer, and the ugly gap is smaller.

Rune. Glad to give ideas!