Eve SSTO: any possible ways?

[Reusables]

Hello!

I'm designing a mission to eve, and it'd be great if I have a SSTO for this.

I know that there were several SSTOs, but I want one which doesn't need any precision manuever and fuel mining time. It'd be better to have long range for science purpose. Is there ANY way to do that?

EDIT: I mean, completely stock SSTO without debug-cheating in flight. Other than that anything is okay.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Reusables
More explanations.

[rkarmark]

NO if you want an eve ssto there are no way around landing on a mouintain top and refuling

@Kergarin is expert he also made a few videos:

and

 

[MinimalMinmus]

Bradley Whistance has done this by capturing an asteroid, then leaving it in orbit.

This way, he was able to go to Eve, land, ISRU, orbit Eve, and then back to Kerbin with no extra fuel from the KSC.

[Reusables]

1 hour ago, rkarmark said:

NO if you want an eve ssto there are no way around landing on a mouintain top and refuling

@Kergarin is expert he also made a few videos:

and

 

Thanks, so is there no way in stock without debug screen cheating? Is there no briliant idea to work around the thick atmosphere?

27 minutes ago, MinimalMinmus said:

Bradley Whistance has done this by capturing an asteroid, then leaving it in orbit.

This way, he was able to go to Eve, land, ISRU, orbit Eve, and then back to Kerbin with no extra fuel from the KSC.

Though it needs mining, it's still interesting! What vehicle did he use to escape Eve and get to orbit?

 

Also, ANY cheatless way in stock can be okay if it's SSTO. (By cheat I mean the cheats in debug screen)

[GoSlash27]

Abastro,

 That *was* the vehicle he used to escape Eve and achieve orbit.

 There is currently (as of 1.1.2) no way to SSTO from Eve sea level. There are only a few engines that will produce useful thrust down there and none of them are efficient enough to SSTO. Back in the day I had a severely cheaty contraption that could do it by exploiting infiniglide and kraken drive, but those bugs have long been fixed.

Best,
-Slashy

Edited January 8, 2017 by GoSlash27

[Reusables]

12 minutes ago, GoSlash27 said:

Abastro,

 That *was* the vehicle he used to escape Eve and achieve orbit.

 There is currently (as of 1.1.2) no way to SSTO from Eve sea level. There are only a few engines that will produce useful thrust down there and none of them are efficient enough to SSTO. Back in the day I had a severely cheaty contraption that could do it by exploiting infiniglide and kraken drive, but those bugs have long been fixed.

Best,
-Slashy

Hm, I'm thinking about props in my mind, are they too draggy to haul them from the stratosphere? Or does it require too much delta-v?

[GoSlash27]

Abastro,

 Sorry, I wouldn't know. I only play stock myself.

Best,
-Slashy

[Reusables]

1 minute ago, GoSlash27 said:

Abastro,

 Sorry, I wouldn't know. I only play stock myself.

Best,
-Slashy

Well I meant the stock propellers, not those from mods.

[GoSlash27]

Abastro,

 Ah. I see... I haven't played around with those. Most of the props I've seen have been operated by jet exhaust and of course that won't work on Eve. I don't imagine that putting another step in between your rockets and propelling the aircraft is going to do you any favors in the Isp department, but I'll leave that up to someone who's familiar with those.

 Best,
-Slashy

[fourfa]

There are stock electric props, which work even better low on Eve than on Kerbin due to the thick atmosphere. I think a stock prop plane that can make space on rockets should be possible. 

[Foxster]

Why do you want to use an SSTO for Eve?

[MinimalMinmus]

6 hours ago, Abastro said:

Though it needs mining, it's still interesting! What vehicle did he use to escape Eve and get to orbit?

He used the SSTO itself, minus the asteroid he left in orbit, and the SSTO was whole when it landed on Kerbin, making it a very near miss for a K-challenge of Eve.

However, because of the aforementionned issue with pressure, Bradley landed on Eve's highest point (7500 m high, in which the pressure is still 1.5 bar neverthenless.

[Der Anfang]

It's incredible you can SSTO on Eve at all. Even so, it's also quite fascinating at how much of a difference you get in ISP for every 1000 metres on Eve. Right on Sea level, it's a damn pain in the ass to deal with and only very few engines actually work at that level. I have also considered in the long future trying to land on a mountain top, but it would require expert piloting skills and a lot of practice. Also you gotta be sure not to tip your craft if you land on an incline... which makes mountain landings especially difficult.

[GoSlash27]

2 hours ago, Der Anfang said:

It's incredible you can SSTO on Eve at all. Even so, it's also quite fascinating at how much of a difference you get in ISP for every 1000 metres on Eve. Right on Sea level, it's a damn pain in the ass to deal with and only very few engines actually work at that level. I have also considered in the long future trying to land on a mountain top, but it would require expert piloting skills and a lot of practice. Also you gotta be sure not to tip your craft if you land on an incline... which makes mountain landings especially difficult.

Der Anfang,

 More to the point, if your craft can only land in one place, there's not much point in making it SSTO.

Best,
-Slashy

[Reusables]

How much dv will be needed from the stratosphere of Eve? Is it still too big?

[hendrack]

Try those if you don't consider that mod cheating.

[Reusables]

5 minutes ago, hendrack said:

Try those if you don't consider that mod cheating.

Take a look at the OP. mods are invalid here.

[TopHeavy11]

Mammoths are your way out here...or a space elevator...either one is good.

[Mister Dilsby]

17 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

 More to the point, if your craft can only land in one place, there's not much point in making it SSTO.

Agreed--I think it would be an interesting challenge to develop a stock reusable system that allows (theoretically) infinite trips from Eve surface to orbit. Example: an SSTO-capable craft that lands somewhere near the high point, is hauled to the top by an electrically-driven crawler, is refueled by mining assets on the surface, and re-launched. Essentially, one would have to build the equivalent of Kerbin's vehicle recovery and refueling infrastructure using ISRU, claws/surface docking, etc. 

[regex]

Are you talking about a spaceplane or an SSTO? Because they're different things; not all SSTOs are spaceplanes.

I don't imagine wings would be all that helpful when doing a return from Eve because you want to get out of the atmosphere as fast as possible rather than wallow in it. Spaceplanes with air-breathing engines work great on Kerbin despite spending so much time fighting drag because those engines have very high isps (and that is why a majority of SSTOs take spaceplane form) but you can't use air-breathing engines on Eve so your wings offer zero advantages on return to orbit (might be useful for descent though).

As far as an SSTO (of any form), I don't know if it's possible from Eve's surface. You need, what, 7km/s nowadays to get to orbit from sea level? Even if you launch from a higher altitude you're still fighting reduced thrust and isp from the denser atmosphere. Do the mass fractions of KSP's ultra-dense parts even allow this? It sounds like a losing proposition...

[Reusables]

5 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Agreed--I think it would be an interesting challenge to develop a stock reusable system that allows (theoretically) infinite trips from Eve surface to orbit. Example: an SSTO-capable craft that lands somewhere near the high point, is hauled to the top by an electrically-driven crawler, is refueled by mining assets on the surface, and re-launched. Essentially, one would have to build the equivalent of Kerbin's vehicle recovery and refueling infrastructure using ISRU, claws/surface docking, etc. 

I know that this is definitely possible, there's a video about it. It used a propeller plane to launch the rocket.

(Propeller planes can go high up to stratosphere, so this is problem of bigger planes; Just use more engines then)

What I'm aiming at is SSTO, in single vessel.

59 minutes ago, regex said:

Are you talking about a spaceplane or an SSTO? Because they're different things; not all SSTOs are spaceplanes.

I don't imagine wings would be all that helpful when doing a return from Eve because you want to get out of the atmosphere as fast as possible rather than wallow in it. Spaceplanes with air-breathing engines work great on Kerbin despite spending so much time fighting drag because those engines have very high isps (and that is why a majority of SSTOs take spaceplane form) but you can't use air-breathing engines on Eve so your wings offer zero advantages on return to orbit (might be useful for descent though).

As far as an SSTO (of any form), I don't know if it's possible from Eve's surface. You need, what, 7km/s nowadays to get to orbit from sea level? Even if you launch from a higher altitude you're still fighting reduced thrust and isp from the denser atmosphere. Do the mass fractions of KSP's ultra-dense parts even allow this? It sounds like a losing proposition...

I'm talking about any SSTO.

I agree that it's nearly impossible with traditional rockets/spaceplane, but there's an infinite-range vehicles for atmospheric planets: propeller planes. I think there could be other ways too. So, my question here was this: are they unpractical to get to orbit?

[regex]

11 minutes ago, Abastro said:

I agree that it's nearly impossible with traditional rockets/spaceplane, but there's an infinite-range vehicles for atmospheric planets: propeller planes. I think there could be other ways too. So, my question here was this: are they unpractical to get to orbit?

Propeller planes, huh? If you have an "infinite-range" propeller plane for a bone-stock install that doesn't rely on cheats (or an earlier version of KSP), I'd love to see it. If you can build one it can probably manage Eve just fine.

As for getting it to orbit, it's possible to get pretty much anything to orbit, just depends on how hard you want to work at it.

Edited January 9, 2017 by regex

[Rune]

18 minutes ago, Abastro said:

So, my question here was this: are they unpractical to get to orbit?

In the extreme. The examples you didn't like were the best way some very inventive people tried to get close to a practical way of reusing stuff to go to Eve's surface and back. Turns out, it just isn't. The closest thing to 'practical' would be a ridiculously big rocketplane (because nobody can precision-land a rocket reliably), a boopload of ground support including ISRU, and maybe some space-based support fed off of Gilly. If you go modless, that is.

And if you go looking into stock propellers, they do work... barely. Good luck strapping km/s of dV on top, or in fact any meaningful payload.

 

Rune. Turns out the answer was rather simple. Now, if you don't like it, I'm afraid you will have to reject this reality and substitute your own.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Rune

[Majorjim!]

15 hours ago, regex said:

Propeller planes, huh? If you have an "infinite-range" propeller plane for a bone-stock install that doesn't rely on cheats (or an earlier version of KSP), I'd love to see it.

These are possible to build Regex, just check out the elec prop thread here. Electric stock props can be made to never run out of electricity making them, in atmosphere, infinite range. A lot of them use no offsets build mods but there are some that don't.

 There's no way they could ever break into orbit though so they are stuck in atmosphere.

[Xyphos]

While I've only attempted 2 Eve landings, and only returned from 1, I have no desire to return to that hellish place.

However, if you want to attempt an SSTO, I'd imagine doing it with a large propeller plane to carry you up to an altitude where the atmosphere is thin enough to consider switching to rocket propulsion. With enough lift from the wings, you won't even need a TWR of 1.2, I'd recommend somewhere around 0.5 so you won't over-accelerate and cause heating problems. I haven't done this myself, but I'm interested in seeing what you come up with.

Happy Landings!

Edited January 10, 2017 by Xyphos