I intended the fuel in those side tanks to be used for final landing targeting and final braking just before touchdown-and they could be discarded just after liftoff from Eve (or even before if they have no fuel left.the lander can stand on its four remaining legs if it is on a fairly level surface). The side pod (and another on the opposite side) is where all the parachutes are mounted, and one set of landing gear. The picture below is another test prototype. More practically, in KSP the aerospikes have lower drag than other engines. But if you want an engine that can perform well from pressures of five atmospheres to vacuum, the aerospike is a natural choice. I had not used aerospikes much before because I only started playing KSP after the Great Nerfing Of The Aerospikes. It is a stock ship (other than a little MechJeb controller on board), many asparagus stages, and uses mainly aerospike engines. My basic lander design is shown below (after one of many suborbital test flights over the KSC). But I did use the concept of a massively-asparagused rocket. So I wanted to build a vehicle that could ascend from low elevations.but I also wanted to keep it to a reasonable size (say 100 tons or so) to make it manageable to launch and fly to Eve. And, anyway, Desdin and all those seas full of valuable blutonium are at sea level. But his ship depended on launching from a high elevation, and the 10,000-meter plateau he used no longer exists. I've seen Scott Manley's video where he flew a vehicle that landed on Eve and returned to orbit. But KSC officials ARE convinced about the blutonium resource, so the mission to build an Eve ascent vehicle was approved. Kerbal scientists are still hotly debating Desdin's claims that the purple chemical staining the surface of Eve is an organic compound that he says must have been deposited as tiny particles excreted from microbes inhabiting an upper region of Eve's atmosphere. ![]() Not everyone is convinced by Desdin's reports, of course. ![]() Below we see Desdin, our happy colonist on Eve, with the base habitat that was dropped to him in an earlier mission. Apparently, simple chemical extraction processes can separate the blutonium from the sea "water." Happily, the seas are also rich in cadmiumium and boronate (known neutron absorbers), so there is no danger of the seas becoming natural nuclear bombs. And when the Press ran articles suggesting that KSC planners and engineers are simply incapable of building a ship that could escape from Eve, they shrugged those off as well.īut what DID get the KSC mission planners' attention were some measurements by Desdin that showed that the thick soup in Eve's seas is unusually rich in the fissile element blutonium, which is necessary for making nuclear rocket engines. Although the Kerbal Press occasionally runs stories abou the "poor astronaut left stranded on an alien world," the KSC administrators just roll out one of the interviews where Desdin explains that he is quite happy living the life of an interplanetary hermit, especially on a planet free of nosy reporters. This Eve landing/return mission is dedicated to George Gassaway, a fine rocketeer, for his assistance and encouragement.Įxiting Eve? So are the Kerbal Space Center mission planners finally going to retrieve Desdin from the surface of Eve? Well.no. ![]() The March 2015 UPDATE POST can be found by clicking THIS LINK. ![]() This thread was originally made in April 2013 to replace an older version of the thread that had been lost in the Great Forum Disaster.
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