Iota Dreams

“We’ve got to prepare a Iota Mission, so we’ve designed a lander.” At a mass below four tons, the one-man Iota lander had much from the Mun landers in the early days. Due to being wider than tall, it was able to land on much steeper slopes than conventional tall-body landing systems, but less aerodynamic. The outriggers, working as the lander engines as well as the legs, would be decoupled shortly after launch, falling back to Iota.

(will get a parachute and a heat shield though)

Final mass would be around the four ton margin they had set themselves. “Having one problem, still. We don’t have the complexity upgrades for our Rocket builder.” The Rocket builder was a giant machine almost filling the core building. Several machines around it delivered it with parts. This was the true reason they had built an underground power plant lighting the village north of the island. “I’ll do another science mission. Should be able to get everything prepared then. We’ve got those Material Bays to test. Gael II is on the way.”

Minutes later Jeb sat in his capsule again, waiting for launch. The Science Storage concept would be tested for viability. ‘One last Gael Orbit mission, and I’ll be on the way to Iota. And a bit of burning, of course. Fried Capsule!’ “Three, two, one, Lift-off!” Jeb’s Mission was just to get into a 100x350 km Orbit, get his science, and reenter.

Whilst waiting for Apoapsis to get the high-orbital science data, he watched the sunset through his capsule’s cameras. Shortly after getting his science, he burned retrograde, got the data into the Storage Unit, and waited once again. Inside the Atmosphere,the ‘Red hot Air’ phenomenon occurred. He landed, again, safely, with all the precious science contained in a small part. Craft analysis showed the true power of this part: they could store experiments even on unmanned missions. This would allow for large-scale Missions to Gauss, Nero and even a Ciro multi-planetary Mission (Maybe a Hox-Leto one in the future?).