Prime Junta
Guest
Preparing a grand Jool mission. It has three parts, with a fourth under consideration, all following my general "don't build for missions, build for the capability to do missions" philosophy:
(1) The Base. This includes a station, two high-power relays, an ISRU with surveyor, prospector, and tanker, and a lander that's capable of hitting Vall, Bop, and Pol. Everything reusable. I sent a prototype to Minmus to test it, and while I did make a few refinements it's working fine.
(2) The Perfectly Safe Tylo Landing System. This is the most stripped-down reusable kerbaled lander I've been able to come up with, including only the core four science experiments (temperature, pressure, gravioli, seismic). It's powered by a single Dart, and has Jeb sitting in an external command chair. I have a Skipper-powered orbiter module which will give an assist: it will shave about 500 m/s off the orbital velocity before powering back to orbit to wait for pickup. The lander itself has about 5300 m/s. I tried this in Kerbin orbit -- go to 100 km, then brake to 0 surface velocity at 70 km, then "launch" back to 100 km. This design worked. My previous one was even lighter -- Terrier-powered -- but it didn't have the TWR to do it; it only stopped at around 20 km altitude. It's 100% recoverable. It burns a massive amount of fuel but that's what the ISRU is for.
(3) Plane to Laythe. Already did that once in a previous lifetime, so should be easy-peasy.
(4) Under consideration: Rover to Tylo. This would be an un-kerbaled, one-way mission. Rovers ought to work really well there and even though I won't be able to recover it, I should be able to radio back massive amounts of Science. And I should have enough relays around Jool that it's controllable most of the time.
With the Sci brought back from the latest Duna missions I was able to buy Experimental Electrics, so I replaced some fuel cells with RTGs where appropriate. Placed them close to the crew compartments so my kerbals can stay nice and warm!
Here's my new heavy lifter, the Rukh, lifting the prototype Base all in one go. That's a funny plane by the way -- I appear to have made it passively safe on re-entry. When it enters the atmosphere it settles into a steep 60-degree AoA and won't budge whatever I do; when it's around 20k altitude it'll transition to normal flight, which means a steep dive as it'll only be going at about 200 m/s, but no problem at all to recover from. So to re-enter I basically set Pe to 55k, point it at the sky, go have a drink, and take the controls when it's flying normally again. I have no idea why it's doing that. It's a pretty nice plane otherwise too, only problem is that thrust torque gets annoying to control towards the end of the burn. And those Jumbo parts overheat easily; it could hit 1500 m/s under airbreathing power easily but the tailfin explodes around 1400 so I have to hold back a little. Even so it lifts heavy loads to orbit nicely, that one was maybe 140 tons.
(1) The Base. This includes a station, two high-power relays, an ISRU with surveyor, prospector, and tanker, and a lander that's capable of hitting Vall, Bop, and Pol. Everything reusable. I sent a prototype to Minmus to test it, and while I did make a few refinements it's working fine.
(2) The Perfectly Safe Tylo Landing System. This is the most stripped-down reusable kerbaled lander I've been able to come up with, including only the core four science experiments (temperature, pressure, gravioli, seismic). It's powered by a single Dart, and has Jeb sitting in an external command chair. I have a Skipper-powered orbiter module which will give an assist: it will shave about 500 m/s off the orbital velocity before powering back to orbit to wait for pickup. The lander itself has about 5300 m/s. I tried this in Kerbin orbit -- go to 100 km, then brake to 0 surface velocity at 70 km, then "launch" back to 100 km. This design worked. My previous one was even lighter -- Terrier-powered -- but it didn't have the TWR to do it; it only stopped at around 20 km altitude. It's 100% recoverable. It burns a massive amount of fuel but that's what the ISRU is for.
(3) Plane to Laythe. Already did that once in a previous lifetime, so should be easy-peasy.
(4) Under consideration: Rover to Tylo. This would be an un-kerbaled, one-way mission. Rovers ought to work really well there and even though I won't be able to recover it, I should be able to radio back massive amounts of Science. And I should have enough relays around Jool that it's controllable most of the time.
With the Sci brought back from the latest Duna missions I was able to buy Experimental Electrics, so I replaced some fuel cells with RTGs where appropriate. Placed them close to the crew compartments so my kerbals can stay nice and warm!
Here's my new heavy lifter, the Rukh, lifting the prototype Base all in one go. That's a funny plane by the way -- I appear to have made it passively safe on re-entry. When it enters the atmosphere it settles into a steep 60-degree AoA and won't budge whatever I do; when it's around 20k altitude it'll transition to normal flight, which means a steep dive as it'll only be going at about 200 m/s, but no problem at all to recover from. So to re-enter I basically set Pe to 55k, point it at the sky, go have a drink, and take the controls when it's flying normally again. I have no idea why it's doing that. It's a pretty nice plane otherwise too, only problem is that thrust torque gets annoying to control towards the end of the burn. And those Jumbo parts overheat easily; it could hit 1500 m/s under airbreathing power easily but the tailfin explodes around 1400 so I have to hold back a little. Even so it lifts heavy loads to orbit nicely, that one was maybe 140 tons.
