Hehehe. Just did better.
There and back again: The Kerbals' Tale of their journey to the Sun.
So, figured I would use a modified version of that station's tail for a mission to de-orbit the sun and get as close as possible. I succeeded beyond my best hopes.
So it started with a craft; the Death Mk 3.Science; a sensible name for any mission to the sun.
While the craft does need optimizing, as its T:W ratio is around 1:1 for most of the ascent, it did serve its purpose admirably. It launched such that it could de-orbit the sun without making any course corrections (simply a launch at dusk). The details are rather dull; typical solar de-orbiting. 8 stage rocket, all told; spend 1 through 6 on the de-orbit, with a little under half of 7 and all of 8 remaining as it fell inwards. The remaining craft at this point is shown in image 1 (see bottom of post for the imgur album).
It lined up the descent such that it would graze just above the surface of the Sun. As a side note, you can apparently get near sun science at 880 million meters, possibly higher. So anyway, they got increasingly closer to the sun; and as they did, I notice the mesh of the sun itself was well below the surface, in a rather large way. So, I dropped the orbit such that they would try and go below the surface. To serve as an early warning system for the exploration, it fired off 2 of the 6 engines in the stage 7 assembly. They go straight as an arrow, and end up quite out in front of the craft; or in this case, below. As the surface approached, I watched as the two engines descended below the craft; one to around 90km, the other to 25km. At 90km from the surface, the first vanished; it had clearly impacted. The surface of the sun apparatently is the surface. I immediately turned the craft around, thrusting straight up at full thrust to avoid the fate of the first engine. At 25km from the surface, the second engine hit. The altitude meter continued spinning downwards as the craft ran for its life from the approaching surface. It leveled out at a mere 15km, with the craft travelling at around 90km/s relative to the surface. The resulting craft is in the second image.
This burn had used about 1/3 of the fuel remaining in stage 7 and thrown off the transfer orbit a bit. I had never intended to get this craft back; it didn't even have landing gear or parachutes! And yet, I arranged a transfer orbit back to Kerbin after only a year. I reduced the periapsis to 37.5km; intending to do a hard aerocapture maneuver. If the craft went too low, it was mission over; this thing couldn't survive a landing. Too high, and it would escape from Kerbin's gravity and never been seen again. Unfortunately, the entire thing was off the cuff; I had never done such an aerocapture on Kerbin, and so wasn't sure what altitude would give me 6000m/s of dv. Turns out, 37.5km was way too high. It burned off a mere 1000m/s; and after burning every drop of fuel remaining, was heading out at 2000m/s. 13 hours to escape the gravity well. I needed an interceptor.
And so, the Deadalus R3, a modified version of the head of the station, was created. This variation had much more fuel at launch, and enough dv to catch up to and retrieve the Kerbals from their sun mission. After an hour or so of course corrections and various maneuverings, the craft intercepted the pod of the Death Mk 3.Science, retrieving its 3 Kerbals. A Hohmann Transfer was then made, and the rescue R3 docked at the station.
Pics:
http://imgur.com/a/yXm2c
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Topic: Kerbal Space Program: Now Hiring Optimistic Astronauts for Dangerous Munission (Read 1490631 times)