DaMichels Aerospace Adventures

[DaMichel]

The voyage of the IPV Duna Explorer I

Well i guess there are a few of those around but this is mine

The album has the complete mission already. It was done in sandbox mode over the period of a few weeks IRL. 90 % of the time was spent on the design and orbital assembly. The engine setup and naming are inspired by the ISV Venture star, my favorite space ship design.

Part count: ca. 500

Mods: B9, KWRocketry, RLA Stocklike, Porkjets Habitat Pack, Kommitz Nuclear Engines (fantastic models despite the bugged exhaust), FAR, Deadly Reentry, Raster Prop Monitor, SCANsat, my spherical tanks (see sig). Since it was sandbox mode, all the antennas and science stuff was just for style

Enjoy!

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Lessons learned:

* Using MJ for some tedious stuff might be a good idea.

* Bring more dV for the lander.

* Build a wider base for the rover.

* Add a probe core to the rover.

* Don't really need a heat shield for Duna.

Edited April 26, 2014 by DaMichel
New content

[Scotius]

Neat ship. From which mod those huge spherical tanks on the fuel tanker came?

[Geschosskopf]

Pretty nifty. Tipping the lander over and cracking it like a pistachio is my favorite way to deploy rovers. Sadly, I rarely get the chance these days.

[DaMichel]

Neat ship. From which mod those huge spherical tanks on the fuel tanker came?

See my sig

Oh, i will edit it into the mod list.

[DaMichel]

A couple of random (space) plane designs.

I like to have my stuff in one place so i'll use this thread if thats okay. Eventually i'll do a second Duna mission to visit the easter eggs. And in the far future Kerbals will visit the moons of Jool some day ...

But first:

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Mods: FAR, PWing, Firespitter (propellers and air brakes mostly), Infernal Robotics for variable geometry stuff and B9 for the big space plane parts.

[DaMichel]

Manned Eve Mission with FAR and Deadly Reentry (DREC)

Sounds harder than it actually is. I use a heavy quite aerodynamic lander, weighting about 75t i think, which due to its inertia needs a lot of braking force. I added the large inflatable heat shield from DREC which generates enormous amounts of drag ... just enough. As you will see the high dynamic pressure warning lights up during the descent. The lander has about 9km/s DV according to Engineer, which is plenty with FAR. I had more than enough, launching from 1km ASL. The inability to avoid rough terrain made me take a few landing attempts (not exactly realistic but whatever .. they are Kerbals ) and actually some of the pics are from a test where i cheated the lander into Eve orbit. Later i did the whole mission including another landing and return (you'll see different landscapes).

The rest is fairly basic. The mission was performed in a single launch. The launcher is a bit taller and more aerodynamic (read nosecones than in a pure stock game and needed big fins for stability but otherwise it is nothing special. I could have used the new SLS parts but i played on my dev. install which doesn't have these parts.

You'll notice the return trajectory to Kerbin is not exactly optimal. I was lucky i didn't run out of fuel there! Totally eyeballed it and managed to aerocapture the whole IP drive section. On a second pass i decoupled the landing capsule for the reentry and final landing. Almost messed it up since i lost 2 of 3 parachutes during the aerocapture.

Speaking about mods, the data display beside the NavBall is my Kerbal Flight Data mod. Except for DREC, FAR, KerbalEngineer and KJR i don't think i used any other mods. The reason is, i wanted to make a point about this mission being possible with FAR and actually not too hard so stock parts are the way to go. (People have successfully completed such missions before me though.)

Sorry for the lack of a background story. I guess since this mission took place in its own little parallel universe there is not much to say anyway

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Edited May 30, 2014 by DaMichel

[DaMichel]

The following album shows my entry for the Jool 5 challenge, a mission to visit all 5 moons of Jool, plant flags, collect science and return all Kerbals safely.

It is a nice mission, with interesting stuff inside. Worth showing here IMO. As usual played with FAR and DRE which only one (IIRC) other contender used for the challenge. Funny thing is, since i like planes, the space plane for Laythe was built first. It wasn't build for Laythe specifically, more as a general research vessel which would also function as exploration vehicle on Kerbin to find easter eggs and such. It has VTOL capabilities, too. So the rest of the mission was built around it ... including a massive transfer stage with way too much fuel ... Enjoy!

(WARNING: easter egg spoilers)

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[DaMichel]

Out of the category of things that should not fly but do:

Designed as jet powered racing car. Going faster and faster down the runway, i noticed that the front wheels lift off quite easily. To my surprise it remained stable and with just a little more speed it took off. Strangely enough, it flies with the spoiler stalled. Odd but it works. Also works really well as a racing car

[DaMichel]

Some planes sitting on Kerbin Island Airport. Made while testing some things

The jets use engines from AJE. I haven't yet attempted to make a space plane with AJE. Some of the planes have weapons from BahamutoDs Armory which is awesome!

I have a download link here, but beware, you need to deal with my custom landing gear rescales (.cfg included) and all the mods.

The engine of a 747 strapped on a smallish plane ...

Well i guess DRE did this.

[DaMichel]

The mission: Test flight of a ramjet powered x-plane.

The fun thing about this type of engine is that because it doesn't have a compressor you have to already move at a certain velocity for it to produce thrust. Certainly, strapping it to some sort of SRB based carrier plane is not the worst idea ...

Mods: AJE for the engine. The landing site is Area 110011 from Kerbin Side.

Disclaimer: some Kerbals were killed in preceding experiments.

[Specialist290]

That's an impressive machine there. I like the carrier-parasite layout for the craft; don't see that too often

[DaMichel]

Thanks! I didn't think it is impressive. Just entertaining

I didn't want to build

just for that, so a SRB was the logical choice. Funny, too. Canceling the torque from the misaligned thrust was a bit fiddly. I ended up reducing the thrust and adding angled surfaces to produce counter forces.

[DaMichel]

A neat mission where i put a rover on Eve in the 6.4x rescaled universe.

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[Tw1]

Nice ships. Nicely documented as well.

[DaMichel]

Well, thank you.

[DaMichel]

Built some ground vehicles and drove them over to the mountain range west of KSC. The first, which i called grasshopper was built to get flown to distant places and drive around there. But then i decided to built more ground vehicles. All of these are powered with AJE turbojets. I found that aerodynamic stability is quite handy considering the speeds i want to drive them. The "bigger bike" and the grasshopper for instance can go up to 70 m/s "relatively" safely ... in Kerbal terms, meaning that there is a chance to survive So i spent quite some time with the FAR Gui trying to get stability derivatives right. Just like with planes. You see that all of the vehicles have wing parts on them. The center wings are angled to produce a downwards force. To counteract the torques i added some stabilizer wings in the back as well. Mentioning planes, i should add that i love the parts from Retro Future Planes. The cockpits are from there, and i also used some fuselage parts.

(The image is 1800x3706. Recommending to view it in an extra window for 1:1 size.)

Now on to 0.90 beta than ever!

Edited December 17, 2014 by DaMichel

[DaMichel]

With Kerbal Space Program i teached myself how to sail

Seriously, i didn't even know that you can sail against the wind faster than the wind! Also straight wind from the back makes you slow! Its almost like magic.

No this was no crash. It drives in this attitude just fine

[DaMichel]

Last mission for this version: Using KAS, 2x scaled Kerbin and the usual suspects.

For the reference google Stratolaunch Systems. It will be the biggest plane ever built! My version is of course a little smaller

Edited April 26, 2015 by DaMichel