KerbalX

Details

• Type: SPH
• Class: spaceplane
• Part Count: 231
• Mods: 2

Mods

• Ferram Aerospace Research
• Squad (stock)

Description

A mod aircraft called Eve Express 7. Built with 231 of the finest parts, its root part is dockingPortLarge.

It is the first craft ever I post on the forums ! Full stock !

The vessel is a large and carefully optimised SSTA : the only SOI she can’t leave is Eve’s. She was built with FAR (I also just tested it with stock aerodynamics, just on Kerbin, and it remained very easy to fly). But I’m missing the point :

She was built with a purpose : to be able to clamp horizontally to, and then lift my other stock SSTO Aurora (or another vessel) high enough for the latest to leave Eve, in a fully reusable fashion. The plane-shape, horizontal docking and take-off features thus eliminating the need of infrastructure on an alien world.

She is -very- heat resistant. After extensive searching at the Kerbal Patents Office, it seems that I even (may) have invented an use of wheels and rover that no one ever registered before ! :0.0:

I present you… The Eve Lifter !

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I have spent quite some time on this vessel, so to present a real finished product ^{^} She is very stable and agile both full and empty. Her center of mass is inside of it’s cargo bay. Vernier thrusters are also very well balanced using RCS Build Aid. It shouldn’t be too diffucult to make a VTOL out of this SSTO if you are willing to.

She flies and land like a plane in both Kerbin (or Laythe or Tylo) and Eve’s atmosphere (it should be able to make a rocket landing on lower gravity planets like Duna or smaller celestial bodies, but I was so focused on Eve that I forgot to test).
She doesn’t have enough wing area for a sea landing on Kerbin, but on Eve she is capable of it. However, as needing to refuel the empty beast in the middle of a lake is a daunting task : I wouldn’t recommend to do it !

With her Rover attached, she is capable of science and refueling (and taxi on electric wheels). More on that in the following user’s guide ^{^}

The vessel have a DV of 5700 with 25 t in the cargo bay, and 6100 without cargo.

Fuelled only with LfOx, without the Rover and the Atomic engine, it has a max DV of 5100 inside Eve’s atmosphere (it will diminish the closer to sea level).

When my Aurora SSTO used her as the first stage to leave Eve, it could reach stable orbit from an altitude of 1000 m (tested) and had spare dv, it must be able to do so from 0 m (yet to be tested).

Between two duties, she remains a nice plane and moving base for refuelling, science and exploring on Eve.

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Cargo bay :

Inside there is a Rover with a science lab and a big Convert'Otron with 4 mining drills.
When the cargo bay doors are closed, the Rover and the wheels are perfetly protected from reentry heat, from any angle.

With the rover still attached to the vessel (by clampOtron senior so it can be re-attached), the cargo bay can be opened and the landing gears retracted, allowing the whole vessel to roll on electric power and maneuver with great precision, which is handy to clamp to the Aurora SSTO (or another vessel if the height is right) on the ground.

The non-patented trick I was talking about was to use sideway rotated mk3 parts and a mk3 cargo bay facing downward to have the electric wheels touching the ground (where the mk3 parts are flat), yet still be protected from heat when the cargo bay is closed. Having them detachable from the vessel as a mining rover is also a bonus ^{^} My first attempts used a vessel flying on its back during reentry to protect the heat sensitive wheels located under it, which was quite elegant in most atmospheres but too delicate for Eve reentry, where the vessel needs to move too much to spread the heat on different parts…

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When attempting to leave Eve, the Rover should be detached and rolled away to gain a lot of precious weight and DV.

Advice 1 : It is recommended to assign specific keys to the forward and turn movements while on electric wheels propulsion so the vessel won’t also try to pitch/yaw at the same time.

Advice 2 : The craft is balanced on its cargo bay, and so it can sit balanced on the opened cargo bay doors. Then the opening limit of the cargo bay doors can be used to adjust precisely the height of the whole vessel (and the Clamp'O Trons) for ground docking.

Advice 3 : Before attempting to land on Eve, the atomic engine should be detached to gain precious weight. It is staged on the last stage before the fairing (the fairing should never be staged), or maybe attached by a clampOtron depending on the version of the craft I’ll be uploading, not sure for this one… It won’t be needed anymore as the Lifter will only run on LfOx inside Eve’s atmosphere from now on.

Advice 4 : When aerobraking inside Eve’s hot atmosphere, you should be able to resist the heat by pointing radial with rcs on until you have blown enough speed for flying her normally. Given you have well chosen your course and (almost) emptied the fuel tanks before attempting the last and final capture of your reentry.

Advice 5 : If you’re not flying her with FAR, you’d have to assign yourself the control surface’s deployment to the braking action group for prograde slowing down in atmosphere (with a balance between normal direction and reverse, otherwise you’ll pitch too much when braking. Althrough a -little- pitching up when braking is not too bad of a thing). The flaps settings for FAR should already be tuned. The only wings I had to reinforce with FAR were the small ones attached at the very back of the main wings, where the stress could be -sometimes- too important when pitching up in the lowest layers of Eve’s atmosphere.

Advice 6 : Bring an Engineer !! Sometimes an electric wheel can pop off under the weight of the vessel, and you WANT to be able to repair it. While the vessel can be unmanned, you will also not depend on communication relays to control it, nor have reduced options during the burning Eve’s aerobraking plasma blackout.

Controls :

[6] : activate/deactivate the Aerospike

[7] : activate/deactivate Vector engines

Rover :
[8] : Activate/deactivate Antenna and Solar pannels

[9] : activate/deactivate Scanner and stability landing gears (as the Rover have enough electric wheels to move the whole vessel, full, on its own it will accelerate quite fast to 50 m/s, turning should only be attempted under 30 m/s and be gentle, otherwise it may start bouncing. Even then however it should be able to recover most of the time, the weak spot to avoid seeming to be landing on the clampOtron sr from ~ 45° angle)

[0] : Activate/desactivate Mining drills, LfOx Converter and Ladders

Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.5.1.