Himynameisjake

Hey Cupcake, As always love the toys you keep putting out. I've been kind of inspired to start shrinking as well, and I have hit quite the wall with this little bugger and would love some input. I've been trying to make a very small two man Eve Ascent Vehicle, and I've got the basics of the pod down, but can't seem to come up with a configuration that works to get it up and down. To save fuel, I've been working with the idea of deorbiting with a tug and then landing with just chutes, brakes, and an inflatable heatsheild, but I cant seem to come up with a design that works. Here's the pod: Any help would be great!

Hi all! I've been slowly chugging along for a while now on trying to figure out how to get two kerbals off the surface in the smallest lander possible that can still dock at the end of it's journey to orbit for recovery. I don't want to be burdened by the requirement of a pilot, so I also included a probe core and some batteries and solar panels, and this is the end result. The problem is, I can't for the life of me come up with something I can send on a landing trajectory with a tug, and then return to orbit. If it has the brass to ascend, it burns up during the landing phase. If it can survive landing, it doesn't have the oomph to reach orbit. I would happily take any advice or help on trying to get this little guy to orbit. Attached below the service bay in the craft file, you will find a Mass Simulator with the equivalent mass of one kerbal (you'll need two if you want to simulate a full bay), something I've found necessary for accurate design. Manipulate it from the octagonal strut, that's the base piece. Craft file here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2nQsVJsiEkNVTJJX2dBTTF0dGM/view?usp=sharing

Hi all! I've been slowly chugging along for a while now on trying to figure out how to get two kerbals off the surface in the smallest lander possible that can still dock at the end of it's journey to orbit for recovery. I don't want to be burdened by the requirement of a pilot, so I also included a probe core and some batteries and solar panels, and this is the end result. The problem is, I can't for the life of me come up with something I can send on a landing trajectory with a tug, and then return to orbit. If it has the brass to ascend, it burns up during the landing phase, if it can survive landing, it doesn't have the oomph to reach orbit. I would happily take any advice or help on trying to get this little guy to orbit. Attached below the service bay in the craft file, you will find a Mass Simulator with the equivalent mass of a kerbal, something I've found necessary for accurate design. Manipulate it from the octagonal strut, that's the base piece. Craft file here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2nQsVJsiEkNVTJJX2dBTTF0dGM/view?usp=sharing

That is an absolutely gorgeous Soyuz, brilliant use of fairings.

Can't wait for this to come out for 1.1

Love your stuff as always. Have you figured out a configuration to fit the EAS chair into the 2.5m service bay without having the kerbal pop out of the ship when leaving the chair? I've been stumped with this and really hope you've got an answer.

[quote name='selfish_meme']OK this is my first successful test version, the launcher lands separately, bonus large mannish object looks [url]http://i.imgur.com/kP6h93m.png[/url][/QUOTE] looks pretty slick. how many kerbals can you take along?

This is looking really nice. Interested to see how you handle the part count (It'll be in the thousands if you keep this level of detail), and the truss assemblies/solar panels. It's a pain to maintain rigidity and if you don't things go BOOM quick with that many parts.

Make up your mind on the intakes! lol

love the tylo capable isru

I think you should try your challenge.

aww, at least someone remembered me! - - - Updated - - - only mod I used was mechjeb. - - - Updated - - - This mission is totally doable, I've done it in the wimpy days before ARM parts. SSTO eve is impossible, it's been tried forever. But that's not needed to complete baseline in this challenge. My ship would have been an easy single launch in 1.04, and every lander needs a bit more fuel for lifting a heat resistant capsule rather than lander can.

From the guidelines for the challenge subforum: I'm not saying a grand tour is impossible *obviously* I'm just saying it's nice to see people try their own challenge first. Not to mention you've clearly not taken a ride near kerbol any time lately. 100km is INSTANT total destruction via heat. Even at 100Mm, 1000x your specified altitude of 100km, Kerbol will cook even a heat shielded craft in under 6 minutes even with radiators and a well planned rotating flight path (to dissipate heat). I tried. Best I could do, with ANY craft at 100Mm was 5:02.

Yeah, having completed a grand tour once, I wouldn't let it come down to 180LF determining whether or not I made it home. That's not an acceptable margin in my mind. The only other bit of clipping that you might take issue with is putting the ISRU converter inside of the Kerbodyne ADTP-2-3 adapter (near the front). I have to be honest, I kind of love the idea of hiding away the ugly ISRU, it's got a face only a mother could love. I'd like to do the same if at all possible. I don't want to put it inside a fairing because of the needless risk of accidentally staging the craft mid-flight, and I have to go from size 2-3 parts at some point anyways. Thoughts?

Before I get too attached to my ship, I wanted to see how firm the rule of no part clipping was in this new challenge. In the old challenge, Ziv was OK with clipping for the sake of aesthetics if it did not change the functional nature or capabilities of the ship (eg, a lot of the parts on my last grand tour http://imgur.com/a/kGzDF#0). I was wondering if that would hold true for the new challenge as well. I have come up with a craft that is currently quite functional, but not much prettier than my last Grand Tour ship. I don't want to give away the design just yet, but it is similar in nature to Mesklin's (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/125184-Rolling-Stone-science-SSTO-with-unlimited-range). So, is clipping for the sake of aesthetics acceptable, or are we going with a hard "no clipping rule" this time around?

I loved this challenge, and upped it to a new level back in beta, so I can't tell you how excited I am to see it back in the post 1.0 era! I'm in the late stages of planning to do the same for this new challenge, and bring the first ISRU + Grand Tour + Jeb level entry. Apart from asteroids (still trying to figure that possibility out, I'll be completely tapping out the science of the Kerbol system. Stay tuned.

I must be doing something wrong, because this thing happily cooks itself with nukes on a transfer burn. Then again, I haven't mastered Kerbin ascent without noticeable heat damage as well.

Ack, you beat me to it. Though I am still trying to figure out Tylo, because, self loathing?

I was able to bump to 500 spare ore on my second build, it's looking very doable to hit reasonable numbers. Now I need to figure out how to modify this guy for duna.

This was awesome, just tried it out and it worked great! The best part is, if you bring enough panels with you and launch in the daylight, you can refine as you go, to make sure you don't run out of gas! My first attempt at building with this design lead to a net profit of 148 ore, not incredibly remarkable considering that it took almost a year to mine at one of the higher density locations, but it is a proof of concept that the idea works!

This has been an awesome discussion in theory, I'll try to put it to use tonight and see what I can come up with for a real design!

That doesn't sound like returning more to orbit than used to get down and back up.

I haven't, I figured that would be less efficient due to the added weight of docking ports and extra engines. I'd like to return all ship parts to orbit.

I've really been struggling with this, trying to get more ore to orbit than I use in fuel/monoprop to dock to an orbiting refinery. I've come within about 5% of break even, but I can't even get to 1:1, much less profit. Any suggestions would be very helpful! I've been using a single poodle engine and experimenting with different tank combinations for ore and LF/O, because nukes overheat right now no matter how I build them.

This has been a pet project of mine for a while now, to create a single-launch ship to complete a grand tour that collects all possible science, mining fuel along the way. Perhaps some collaboration is in order.