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Wish me luck.


rdwulfe

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I'm still on .24.2 for this, but wish me luck, folks:

screenshot72.png

I'm about to attempt landing a spaceplane on Eve, take samples, and return to space. I hope my calculations are good enough. I'm using KSP Interstellar Lite on this, so I don't exactly have to worry about fuel to fly around, thankfully... however, I still need enough fuel to switch into closed mode and get back into space, so we shall see! This, by the way, is my first Kerbal-ed trip to Eve, with a return planned.

Edited by rdwulfe
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Wulfe here, reporting in from 50Km above Eve. The atmosphere burns around me. Ademone and Billy-Bobdorf both seem calm and relaxed. Things are going singingly. Keep your limbs crossed for me that the landing is uneventful. I'm snagging photos as I go.

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Landing was .. interesting. It was like swimming through molassas. My wings have so much lift here, I had to point 35 degrees down and power on my engines, or I more or less floated along serenely, going about 35-40 m/s. The ground portion of the tests was simple, though poor Kerbals could barely jump here. Liftoff was simple, too. I took off around 30m/s, and am now ascending above 6km above the surface, steadily climbing out of the thick stew of the atmosphere.

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We are now at 35km above the surface, speeding along at 1200m/s - with a similar orbital speed. Engines are now slowly heating, and the thrust is slowly dropping.. It topped out at 205kN of thrust (410 total due to 2 engines). Things are looking good, if I can push it a little while longer, and get a bit more altitude and speed. Going to hug the climb rate closley.

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... As the arc of suborbital flight begins to descend back towards the purple planet below, Ademone and Billy-Bobdorf seem esctatic. Do they not realize their fate is to be lost upon this planet indefinitely? Perhaps they are content, knowing their contract is complete... However, they may never return home. They will attempt to find a high altitude landing site, in hopes of a future mission to save them.

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KSPI engine, yes. Sadly, I was not carrying enough fuel to attain orbit. I missed it by 400m/s.

As the sun sets in a beautiful white arc on the horizon, the sky luminesces along the horizon in a vibrant purple fading to black, Ademone and Kerman sit stoically aboard their spacecraft. They are glad that the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and not something reactive and carcinogenic. For now, this will be their home.

Pics incomming.

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I recomend sending out a craft with some spare fuel tanks that you can drop into the atmo. Make part of it a rover so it can join up to that docking port on the back of the plane. If you set it up so the part of the rover that actual attaches to the plane is a 1.5m tank with landing gear thats detachable from the refueling tanks you can use that small tank as a droptank during accent and should hopefuly be able to eek out the extra dV you need. You might also make sure your RCS tanks are toped off as they can sometimes be enough if your just short of circularizing. you could also send along a spare crew pod incase jetpacking to orbit is required.

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Heh. The problem, Merendel, is that the craft was full. I used very little fuel on descent, only enough to de-orbit. I think I'm going to need a different design. Makes me sad, considering that's my 1st true SSTO. But then, I've learned a lot from it. I may have to design something a bit more compact that carries a touch more fuel/ delta-V capability.

I also discovered a few 'bugs' in the craft... IE, the ladder doesn't work quite right.

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Likely, and it'll probably become my goal to figure it out. I tend to go do the thing I have the biggest problems with. I find spaceplanes to be HARD. Like frustratingly so... But a good frustration. So I think my current design will work on Laythe, btw, so I may send it there next when I feel like playing .24.2 again (or when I get my .25 up to that level). I'm VERY tempted to hack in some science for myself, I admit, just to get back to where I was before.

EDIT:

But yes, I'll do a rescue mission at some point. Can't leave a Kerbal behind, dangit.

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Heh. The problem, Merendel, is that the craft was full. I used very little fuel on descent, only enough to de-orbit. I think I'm going to need a different design. Makes me sad, considering that's my 1st true SSTO. But then, I've learned a lot from it. I may have to design something a bit more compact that carries a touch more fuel/ delta-V capability.

A hackjob redesign to add more dV was part of what i was discribing. Basicly step 1 refuel the ship so your back in the situation you were in before. Step 2 have a spare tank, a FL-t400 or 800 that is also full left docked to the ship when you takeoff. Add some landing gear to that tank so you can take off without draging it on the ground. This will throw off your COL/COM a bit makeing the plane a bit more unstable to fly but hopefuly not enough to make it uncontrolable (test on kerbin first) If you fly up on turbojet mode like before and then drain and drop that spare tank first when you swap over to internal fuel the extra fewhundred units of fuel might be just enough to get you into orbit where it faild before.

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