Ixamus

Is this also the reason why Final Frontier seems to think that Gael is Kerbin?

It remains to be seen if SSTO from Eve is even possible in stock game with any kind of payload. I think that the cost should be considered in the scope of entire career save and not in the scope of a single mission. If I were to do this I would try to use same infrastructure and hardware in multiple missions + science gathering. I could sen my Eve lander to LKO by ssto, where it could be refueled by Minmus based ISRU infrastructure which would be used in many other missions. Then I could fly it to Eve and it would be empty when descending. On the surface of Eve it could be refueled by ISRU facility which would again be used for multiple missions and purposes. Then I would sen the 900 units of ore to the LEO where next ship would bring more fuel or otherwise take the ore to Gilly. This ship would again be used for multiple missions. I should also try to include more missions like "plant a flag", "take measurements" etc during the flight. Now I could have price tag way bigger than 1.159.000 for all the stuff and still be profitable.

I have conducted new research on atmospheric flight on Eve and designed a few career-save-ready Eve planes using Explodium breathing engines. First I determined that I have a range of requirements I need my planes to fulfill. These requirements don't need to fulfilled by one plane but in a reasonably small number of planes. I need a plane to: Land and takeoff from the Explodium sea, carry lot of kerbonauts, have a very long range, full science kit, be very fast and to be able to land and takeoff from very short runway. Many of there desires have turned out to be very difficult to fulfill. Main issues I have is the range my planes have. On Kerbin it's trivial to build a plane capable of circumnavigating the planet. On Eve I haven't been able to do it. I have fitted one of my planes with full ISRU capabilities so it can refuel itself and that's the best I could do. I could also send more surface based ISRU units to Eve. Without refueling my bigger plane can fly about 2500km and my smaller maybe 1300km (and then be stranded). This is my smaller plane. It can land and takeoff from the seas of Eve and has a full science equipment. Like most flying things on Eve, the plane is very agile and easy to land/takeoff. I believe that the optimum cruising altitude for the plane is about 15000m. The main problem with the plane is that I cant take it more than 600km from my Eve surface base, since it couldn't come back for refueling if I did. If I send this to Eve in my career save the plane will be dependent on surface bases that have ISRU. As I have pursued the goal of a long range Eve aircraft I have had two routes. The route of low speed and the route of high speed. This plane represents the low speed approach. It's a very large and tremendously heavy plane with range of 2400km and cruising velocity of 220m/s in the optimum height of 20000m. The plane can carry 20 kerbals and has a full science kit. It can also refuel it self independently (albeit it is a slow and tedious process). It unfortunately has the issue of being slow. If I were to circumnavigate Eve whit it, it would take hours of playtime even with the 4xphysics warp on flight and refueling. I have made some attempts to make a very fast plane with a long range. My problem is that planes won't accelerate to supersonic speed until they are flying on very high altitudes of about 30 - 40km. Getting to that height with engines capable of supersonic flight takes a long time and drains a huge portion of the fuel I got. I have been able to fly 1000m/s on Eve but only a very short amount of time since getting to the altitude had drained my fuel. It's was a 1000km hop and then my plane was stranded. So designing a plane that can go somewhere far away in supersonic speed, land there to do the thing I sent it for and then come back is very difficult and I have not yet managed to it in satisfying way. Meanwhile my helicopter works like a dream

I finished my circumnavigation in 4:57:03. Very quickly built plane with no other utilities but a very long range. The circumnavigation used less than half of it's fuel. The report is under this spoiler. I also tried my hypersonic cargo/crew transport ship. It flew steady 1100m/s but unfortunately it run out of fuel 400km before full circumnavigation. The 12000m limit was too low for it. It was meant to fly so that it speed up on low altitudes (like 14000 meters or so) and then climbs to 18 - 20k area to conserve that speed with minimal fuel expenditure until it slows down again and descents to lower altitude to gain more speed again. This flying style was impossible and the plane had to fly on high fuel expenditure altitude the whole time. Had the plane lasted my time would have been somewhere in the region of 1:15:00 to 1:30:00. I might make a modification to this design and make a new attempt.

More progress has been made! As you see there I haven't been driving straight as I have once again took a detour. This time to visit an anomaly. I intend to visit every biome and anomaly on Vall. This has the problem that it diverts my circumnavigation. To make my circumnavigation legitimate I'll visit both of the poles and cross the equator on points that are directly on the opposite sides of the moon. Images and description of my journey behind spoiler.

@KerbolExplorer Nope. It's just a rover. I'm conducting an elcano voyage with it on Vall. You can read more about it here:

Progress has been made! I made the decision to towards north for my circumnavigation. Also I will mark my trail with flags that will be placed about 100km from each other or if I otherwise feel like setting up a flag. Also I won't be driving perfectly straight all the way around. Instead I'll try to hit all/most biomes, anomalies or interesting sights. You can probably see that I have already made a minor detour to visit a mountaintop. (The flag placed on the top says "Mt.Elcano") Then some images! (Most of the text is also behind the spoiler)

Group photo taken from a mountaintop on the surface of Vall near (but not at) the northern polar region. In the background you can see Laythe, Tylo and Jool.

When I sent a SCANsat satellite to Eeloo I was afraid that I messed it up when I forgot to add any rtg's. I was wrong. Four gigantors made it to work just fine. No issues as long as the satellite stays out of shadows. Solar power seems to be useful in all areas of the Kerbol system.

I didn't even know that there is such a thing as thread of the month. Hopefully this added visibility encourages others to design and share aircrafts for non-Kerbin atmospheres.

I'll attempt this during the next few days. This kind of circumnavigation is actually something I have once started as a test for my design, but the game crashed so I never finished it. Lately all my long distance flight on Kerbin have been ultrasonic high altitude flights which break the altitude sealing of this mission. It might be time for more laid back slow speed mission. I would have more time to appreciate the scenery at least.

I have had this same contract offered but I declined it as inconvenient as I haven't returned anything from the surface of Eve. I have my suspicions that this isn't actually possible to do so that it would be profitable, but I haven't given too much taught to it. At the very least it would be quite high labor and low profit contract.

That looks like a cool plane! Seems very capable. Although I don't think I will use it on my career. Maybe I could hyperedit it to Eve and take it for a leisure flight. Primary reason is that I wont' be needing LF/O engines or tanks while in Eve atmosphere. They do help the plane to get to Eve in the first place, which is of course crucial to all atmospheric flight on Eve, but on the destination they become a burden. I'll probably make a plane that has no vacuum capabilities of it's own and attach it to a delivery vehicle that can take it to Eve. I am not yet sure about how I'll make the plane survive the re-entry. Possibly with a very shallow dive to the atmosphere and some kind of implementation to introduce lot of drag. I hope I don't need to use heatshields for this.

This thread is about my rover trip around Jool's moon Vall. This is meant to be an Elcano/Elkano attempt where I carry out a polar circumnavigation of Vall. Here I intend to provide enough screenshots to document that I actually do the complete circumnavigation and to show the beauty of Vall scenery. Also I allow my self to use f5/f9 as much as is neede. Why to circumnavigate a celestial body by land in KSP? I will have to admit that a land circumnavigation of a celestial body in KSP is very lengthy and tedious process. Nevertheless I have wanted to do so ever since I heard that the Elcano challenge exists. I have former experience from a lengthy rover science gathering mission on Mun. Despite hours of tedious driving around the gray landscape of Mun, I did find the mission quite fulfilling and rewarding. Partly just because it took a long time to get anywhere. I expect this mission to be similarly rewarding experience. Why Vall? Previously my goal was to perform a similar circumnavigation of Eve, since is Eve my favourite planet in the stock Kerbol system. My plan to perform this circumnavigation in reasonably short time and fun way, was to use the Rovemax XL3 wheels, and exploit the fact that they can accelerate the rover to extremely high velocity if you tap the keys "a" and "d" while pressing "w". Unfortunately the challenge maintainer of the Elkano challenge was adamant, that this is cheating and not allowed. After trying out a rover that obeys the rules on Eve I felt that it was frustratingly slow and couldn't climb the hills and mountains of Eve. So the circumnavigation would take a very long time and be more frustrating since I couldn't scale hills and mountains. Vall was the next best option. A lot smaller, but sill reasonably beautiful celestial body, whit low gravity to make rover faster and better at climbing mountains. Relevant mods Voyage to Vall This is the rocket at launchpad. It devotedly follows the design principle "There is no such a thing as too much deltaV!". It has several thousands extra m/s of DeltaV to make sure that Vall is actually reached without shadow of a doubt. This was my first ever manned flyby or orbit of Jool. :-) Successful landing! The land voyage may now begin. The blue flickering is from the Sci-fi visual enchancement mod. I'll soon make a new post once there is progression to show. Thank you for your time!

@JadeOfMaar Very nice planes! Both Karbonite and GPP mods are unfamiliar to me. The Galileo's Planet pack does interest me highly. Does the pack contain planets with atmospheric flight conditions significantly different than those of stock planets? Like very different atmosphere thickness vs. surface gravity combinations or something? My own project has progressed even further! I have now flown my helicopter all the way to Eve. This has lead me to a realization that the hardest engineering challenge of creating an Eve aircraft is not the design of the craft it self, but how to deliver it from Kerbin to Eve. I had similar issues when delivering my planes to Duna, but Eve is once again more difficult. Since I don't design my crafts to be SSTO's which could fly themselves to the destination, I need to design a launch vehicle to them. After lots of testing and different designs I ended up making overtly huge rocket to deliver the helicopter to Eve. It has a crapload of extre delta v to make a powered descent to Eve atmosphere, because my attempts to build sufficient shielding from heatshields and fairings proved to be difficult. My descent vehicle tended to fall wrong way down or it was pain to get the helicopter out of the shielding without destroying the chopper. So I opted for rocket powered descent. This also didn't prove to be very safe way and my descent was survivable only be the slimmest of margins. But now it has been done. It finally flies on Eve without hyperedit! Next on my list is a plane for Eve. A plane that could fly significantly faster than my helicopter and circumnavigate Eve, the purple mother of kerbals.