[watsisname]

Unless it possesses some incredibly ultra-rare, ultra valuable unobtanium magical type material

the whole planet is made of LAVENDER, and it smells ****ing NICE.

[newman]

That settles it, the resources of Eve need to be harvested. After crunching a lot of numbers, the KSC fiscal department came up with a figure of 998.7 trillion kerbal credits per week for establishing a working mining colony, with possible budget overruns of some 120% in the first two months, and projected casualty rates at 99,567%. While these numbers are still within the acceptable zone, another proposal has surfaced; blowing the planet up would only cost a one-time cost of 200 trillion kerbal credits, and the exploitation of the resulting asteroid field would be much cheaper too and only result in some 72% casualty rate - which is about as safe as riding a bus on Kerbin.

[BlueFlames]

I got my Eve lander out to Munar orbit, but on the way, it developed some kind of phantom torque.  The only way to counter that was with RCS, but I hadn't anticipated needing to use it constantly, so I ran out of monopropellant.  I then tried utilizing my gimballing engines to counter the torque, while thrusting, but to gain any kind of control, I had to go right on up to full thrust.

I tried to root out the cause of the torque, but I couldn't figure it out.  The fuel load was symmetrical; there were no apparent bits missing, and I had activated engines based on symmetry and what tanks were feeding them.

Out of frustration, I dialed in full-throttle and activated all of the engines.  The phantom torque got worse, and the Mun now has a lop-sided ring.  On the slightly hilarious side, the probe core survived the thrashing, with an RCS tank, some fixed solar arrays, a big battery, and a docking port.  I may one day send out some RCS fuel to see if I can get it back to Kerbin orbit.  In the meantime, though, between this and the crap that the spacebusses' Seperatrons left behind, this mission will, at the very least, leave a legacy.

[StarSlayer]

Manged to put the drive section for the Grenadier Type Manned Intrastellar Vessel in orbit, took most of the fuel to get her there so I'll need to tank her up pronto.  Working on the command section right now.  Once they're both in orbit I'll need to figure out how to dock, but it will be the most impressive piece of machinery I've built so far when its done.  The 12 NERVAs give it some pretty good omph while only sipping fuel, there was only a little left in the tanks after the lift stage but the NERVAs got her into a stable orbit no sweat.  The Grenadier types and the Carabinier Drone ships will form the backbone of my Exploration Fleet




...and Command Section built and orbiting:

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Has anyone tried making land-based tanker trucks yet? I feel like being able to land a disposable, wheeled tanker and tank up a manned spacecraft on the ground might be useful for getting off of a place like Eve. That means you can use all the fuel you want getting to the ground, making larger landers a less dicey proposition since you don't have to parachute them down.

I think I'll take a stab at making something like that tomorrow.

[BlueFlames]

I have another Eve lander orbiting Kerbin.  This variant has more fuel in the Eve-transit stage, more fuel in the lander stage, more RCS fuel in the lander stage, and additional SAS units on the lander.  If I can't find the cause of the phantom torque, I'll just counteract it.  On top of that, I added some girder structures to get the landing legs lower, since I couldn't test if the original design had them low enough to keep all the engines from smacking into the ground, upon landing.

All of this had the effect of increasing the ship's mass, and while some SRB's added to the lift stage helped counter the added mass, I still had to pipe fuel, not just from the lander to the lift stage, but from the transit stage, into the lift stage.  All that fuel gets the whole mess into a 72km orbit, with very little left in reserve.

And here is the lander, with transit stage attached, in its critically low orbit:



The three NERVAs will carry the lander out to Eve and probably handle most of the orbital maneuvers.  The six drogue chutes and twelve standard/large chutes will aid with landing.  (My pipe dream is that the chutes will do all of the work of landing, but with a full fuel load, I'm fairly certain that even Eve's atmosphere isn't thick enough for that.)  When it's go-time, the lander has twelve LV-T30's, six LV-T45's, and a single NERVA to fight against Eve's gravity.  The canards provide some extra stability/maneuverability, whist pushing through the atmosphere.  There's a huge fuel crossfeed system, so that tanks can be dropped, four at a time from the outside and two at a time from the inside, as they're spent, during the lift, until the probe core and its NERVA make it into Eve orbit, where it can refuel and schlep on home.

For future iterations, the LV-T30's may get replaced with aerospikes, if there's an efficiency problem, when lifting from Eve.  Aside from that, if this design works out, it will become the template for a manned Eve lander.  We'll find out soon-ish, since this will be skipping the Munar test landing and going straight to Eve, after refueling.  I say "soon-ish" because the added fuel capacity and dumping the Eve-transit fuel into the lift stage, means that I'm going to need to send about seven or eight refueling ships.  I'll be launching several oilers, in rapid succession to try to get that job done, before the window for Eve transit closes.

In other news, the Eve station fleet has performed some small navigation burns, still about thirty days out from their SOI-transition.  All the ships are now set up for an approach of 500-1,000km and will more finely tune their approach, ten days out from Eve.

[newman]

Has anyone tried making land-based tanker trucks yet? I feel like being able to land a disposable, wheeled tanker and tank up a manned spacecraft on the ground might be useful for getting off of a place like Eve. That means you can use all the fuel you want getting to the ground, making larger landers a less dicey proposition since you don't have to parachute them down.

I think I'll take a stab at making something like that tomorrow.

That's not a very practical proposal, for the following reasons;

- there is no reason to burn fuel on Eve descent. It has very thick atmo and not utilizing chutes and legs is a sin here, it's free delta-v.
- ground based refueling is possible - tested it on the Mun - but rather fiddly even on the Mun. In an environment like Eve it would be a hair-pulling experience. But again, this isn't necessary since the thick atmo means you can parachute down a fully fueled up lander.
- Eve has a surface bug when craft load with legs a bit below the ground; there's a high chance your eve refueling truck would fall into pieces first time you tried to load it up.

Again, not burning fuel during descent isn't the issue. Having the correct thrust to weight ration with enough power and fuel to overcome the gravity and atmo drag is. That all being said, though, this is KSP, and you set your own goals - if being practical isn't one of them, that's ok too

[BlueFlames]

Regarding space program funding:  I just sent seven refueling ships into orbit over the span of ninety in-game minutes.  Clearly Kerbin lacks urban development, which means that they must have one hell of an agrarian economy to support my bull**** antics unchecked ambition scientific endeavors.

Seriously, though, I'm bound and determined to get this lander fueled and off to Eve, before the current opportunity passes.  I refuse to let SCIENCE! be hampered by silly things like phase angles!

[newman]

Yea I haven't given up on Eve either. I tried to, but it bothered me. After 17 prototypes and crunching a lot of numbers, I have the selected design in Kerbin orbit. It is designed to land a single Kerbonaut on Eve, then return him to orbit in 4 stages, ditched in a concentric pattern. It's essentially a rocket powered disc-shaped platform that gets a small rocket high enough in two stages, then the small two-stage design does the rest. I've played with various other approaches, and this is the only one I came up with that I feel has a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. Of course, selecting the right landing site will be critical, but that's what probes are for.

Right now, I have the Discovery (my manned interplanetary ship) in orbit of Duna, with 6 Kerbonauts down on the surface doing science stuff and prospecting a site for a possible future colony. A few months will pass before Duna is in the correct position for a return - at that point the Discovery's crew will return to the ship, do a short visit to Ike as long as they're in town, and blast off for home. In the mean time, my main space station / orbital shipyard in a 300km orbit the Discovery departed from lags too badly so I've been constructing a separate space dock / refueling base in a geostationary orbit of Kerbin. This is where the Discovery will dock and refuel before taking off for Eve to support the surface mission. But first I need to finish that space dock, called "Waypoint station".

[BlueFlames]

13,140 units of liquid fuel ready to transit to Eve, at last.  Time to set out in chase of the refueling station fleet.

[edit] After completing five passes, the unmanned Eve lander is now on an escape trajectory from Kerbin and has a very coarse encounter set up for Eve, about twenty-eight days out. [/edit]

[newman]

This may be of interest to people who follow this thread: there's a game called Lunar Flight, basically an Apollo-style lander sim, which is currently on sale at Steam so you can grab it at -66%. I haven't had time to actually play it yet, but I did grab it as 3.4€ seemed like a minimal risk.

[Dragon]

I've played it, it's quit fun. Not as absorbing as KSP though.
Also, my Eve mission in on a hiatus till I finish playing with KOSMOS parts. Putting stations together has never been so much fun.

[BlueFlames]

Catching up a bit:

The Eve Lander finished refueling and began its series of burns away from Kerbin.



...and after five burns, Kerbin began to recede into the distance.



With several in-game weeks, before any of the Eve-targetted vessels arrive, there is plenty of time for side-projects.  Soooo....



Spaceplane!

This design takes off into a sixty-degree climb, leveling off between 12,000m and 15,000m to build speed, before gradually continuing its climb to 20,000m.  At that point, the aerospike gets activated, and the craft basically flies level, while gaining altitude (at 20,000m and 1.4km/s, orbital mechanics are starting to take over).  Before 22,000m, the turbojets get deactivated and the intakes get closed.  The craft has to pull up a bit, but from here, it's a fairly traditional rocket-propelled orbital insertion.

An early launch flew into a rapid-succession Munrise sunrise, during that climb from 15,000m to 20,000m.



Around the time the last screenshot in that sequence was taken, it was time to flip the switch on the rocket motor, which was where I ran into a recurring problem that plagued this and previous designs.  As soon as the rocket turns on (still well before the turbojets reach their flameout threshold), it wants to go into a flat spin.  This was the launch where I figured out what was going on.  The fuel crossfeed system is horrendously confused by this design, and fuel is fed to the rocket asymetrically.  The left tank feeds fuel and oxydizer, the center tank feeds fuel (duh), and the right tank feeds just oxydizer.  I'll try fiddling with the fuel lines to see if I can prevent this malfunction in the future, but I'm worried that it's a game bug.

I haven't posted screenshots of the dramatic crash, though.





It's not my fault that gravity is so weak and pathetic.

And of course, looking at the relative position of Kerbin, the Mun, and the sun, during the launch, it's no surprise that after circularizing the plane's orbit, an eclipse was soon to follow.



Oh, yeah, and there's plenty of space for an oiler to connect with that inline docking port, without even having to retract the spaceplane's solar panels.



I think it was audacious of me to name this the "Laythe Liner," since I don't think that the aerospike is efficient enough to get to Laythe with enough fuel left over to push it back into orbit, after whatever atmospheric faffing about I should want to do with the craft.  Still, Jool is far enough out-of-phase that I could get another station-building fleet prepared to aid such a mission.  Then, I just need to see if there's enough delta-V in that ship to get into Jool or Laythe orbit.

[Nuke]

i got bored playing around in space so i decided to play kerbal space truckers instead.

[Dragon]

How did that get up there?

The story is actually pretty funny. It has to do with a previous iteration of my Proton launcher:

So, the previous Proton had a little design flaw. It's payload decoupler didn't like docking ports for some reason, and tore them off. First, I launcher a TKS using it and found that it has no docking port. Blaming my forgetfulness, I flew a few orbits, tested it's other systems and deorbited it. Later, I tried to use the same design to launch the Salyut. Then, the docking port exploded. Figuring something's wrong, I decided to deorbit the station and take a close look at the LV. Swapping out the payload decoupler did the trick. I launched a Salyut, a TKS and forgot about the issue. The Proton also gained a ring of retrorockets around the 2nd stage during the redesign, and now is an absolute wonder of an LV.

Soon after, I was browsing through the debris to check what kind of junk my missions are leaving. During that run I finally deorbited the old FGB (which was left form the previous TKS launch, turns out I wasn't quite through enough in deorbiting it) and found this little port floating around in space.

[newman]

Nuke, that's pretty cool. Wouldn't mind seeing some larger shots of that truck

Meanwhile, in between big interplanetary missions, some terrestrial fun; I made myself a large passenger shuttle (crew:3; passengers: 8) so I can bring down more people at once, allowing me to bring home the entire crew of the Discovery in one flight. Then I thought it would be nice if I could also bring up the entire crew in one flight. The solution: mobile ramp tower!








It's designed so it can drive around in two directions (as it's turning radius is.. large). So I have custom actions set up to toggle gears for each direction. Having them all down basically acts as a handbrake, which is nice because using the in-game brakes on this thing has a tendency to topple it over. It's nice and stable using all wheels down, though - as long as speed is below 1 m/s. It has a small docking port allowing me to replenish it's monopropellant with a tanker truck. Biggest pain was actually driving it down the ramp without it toppling over. Once that was done, the rest went surprisingly smooth.



"Join the astronaut corps, they said. It'll be fun, they said. Your fear of heights won't be a problem inside the craft..."










That's one scary step for a Kerbal..




Finally, made it over! Safety tip: there's no railings so try not to fall. Also, leaving ASAS on before going out on the ramp can have bad results; as the Kerbal walks further along the ramp, it's mass has more of an impact on the craft and ASAS starts trying to compensate, introducing shaking that will shake the unfortunate kerbonaut off the ramp. Happened to me once before I learned my lesson - somehow the kerbonaut survived the fall from this altitude. Curious, I've seen them die from lesser falls. Must be a bug.

[Ace]

First attempt at Duna landing. Managed to get a perfect gravity assist that let me plop down in the northern hemisphere. I forgot to retract my solar panels... and they tore apart during re-entry.

This was then followed by making a new puller interplanetary ship and getting a successful landing on Laythe. The timing was tricky since after an aerobrake I only had 8 minutes to knock out 500m/s of speed to get into orbit and then land.

[attachment deleted by a basterd]

[BlueFlames]

The Eve fleet is now about a week under way, and I'm still faffing about with spaceplanes.

First, I fixed my first spaceplane design.  Turns out, it was just the front set of fuel lines that were mucking up the crossfeed.  When I got rid of those, fuel fed symetrically, and I got it into orbit again pretty easily.



Once that was in orbit, it was time to engage in some bigger-is-betterism and make a SSTO plane that could have some hope of doing some interplanetary missions.



I only launched one.  Incidentally, the beach, east of KSC is off limits.  Any pilots with questions shall be immediately sacked.



...

Now, I've got two spaceplanes in Kerbin orbit, with no intended destination, and despite the last screenshot, the Mun is probably a bit of a stretch.  Let's gas one of them up to buy some time to think about destination.



Ah ha!  If something can be soft-landed, it can be soft-landed on Minmus.  It might not have an atmosphere to make use of the plane aspect of the spaceplane, but its easier on an untested landing vehicle than the Mun, and the only other option readily available is Kerbin, so off to Minmus we go!



Oh, I see you lurking there, Mun, with your dastardly plans to screw up my ascent.  Piss off!



Before any punches could be thrown at celestial bodies, the sunrise got me distracted.



After passing the Mun, it was about two days to Kerbin apoapsis, where the plane just hung in space, until Minmus caught up.



Incidentally, I set up a maneuver node for my capture burn, immediately after entering Minmus' SOI.  I then switched to cockpit view for a different perspective on the approaching moon and noticed that a feature that has been bemoaned as being missing isn't actually missing.  Specifically, there's a retrograde vector for maneuver nodes on the navball, but like the radar altimeter, it's only available in the cockpit view.



Back to business, then.  Capture and circularize!



I did a couple of survey orbits, first at 40km and one at 10km, before landing.



Kerbin came out, on the last survey run.



And then it was time to land.



Yes, I extended the landing gear.  Hope springs eternal, after all.

Really, the plan was to kill my horizontal velocity with the aerospike and control my rate of descent with RCS.  I found quite quickly that I didn't have enough downward-facing RCS thrusters, so it became a more traditional descent to Minmus, using the rocket to manage horizontal and vertical velocity, except that I had to level the craft immediately before touchdown, so that the wheels would be what made contact with the surface.  How'd that go?



Well, that's four wheels on the ground, but touchdown felt a little...



...rough.

At least the aerospike is still intact, so the spaceplane can get back to Kerbin, but a powered landing there will eat up a lot more fuel, without the jets available.  So, now we wait for the refueling ship to arrive over Minmus.

[Scourge of Ages]

Nice landing! Ever think about sending that plane to Eve? Lots of atmosphere there, yeh?

[newman]

Nice landing! Ever think about sending that plane to Eve? Lots of atmosphere there, yeh?

Lots of atmosphere but no oxygen, so jet engines would be only good as very expensive weights there.