Need a good landing spot on Eve. Not this again!!!

[RedeyePete]

OK I know this question has done the rounds before, but all the threads were a few years old and might not be valid for 1.4

So: What is a good landing spot on Eve?

Close to the equator would be nice, and of course high up.

I did see a vid where someone landed on a nice plateau, is that spot still any good?

My aim is to first land a mining/refueling rover, then a small SSTO to ferry crew, a small plane with aerospikes to move around the planet, and maybe eventually a sub and floating base.

Coordinates?

[Ultimate Steve]

Equator and High... well, the highest mountain on Eve is 7526m above sea level and is at  -25.0159 : -158.4558, which is unfortunately further from the equator than ideal, but doable, you'll just have to incline the orbit of your station by at least 25 degrees.

There are maps of all the planets and moons here: http://ksp.deringenieur.net/

Unfortunately, the site is a backup copy of the original which was abandoned years ago, and the elevation, slope, and biome features are broken. The ScanSat mod adds a way to map planets and get that information if you're into mods.

 

Now, I hate to burst your bubble, but I'm pretty sure you're underestimating Eve. It is the third hardest body to return from, after Jool and the Sun. And unless you're crazy you don't try to return from Jool or the Sun.

For a long time, Eve SSTO vehicles were thought to be impossible, until someone made one, which involved a mammoth engine, at least 3 of the large fuel tanks, and taking off from Eve's tallest mountain. He barely made it into orbit, and was pretty much completely out of fuel by the time he did so. It also carried one Kerbal, and would have been pretty much impossible to re-land on Eve, even with refueling, due to the lack of control surfaces.

Since then, the community has managed better, especially with the update that nerfed drag. One guy managed to drag a set of ISRU equipment to orbit. Then, someone managed an SSTO from Kerbin to Eve and back using ISRU as well as dragging an asteroid to Low Eve Orbit. Two more designs come to mind, while not SSTO's, they were fully reusable. The first is one that launched to a suborbital trajectory and then was caught by a ship already in orbit, but that requires insane rendezvous skills, as well as precision ascent. The second was a stratolaunch type design, with the first stage being a plane powered by stock propellers that took a crew rocket up above the lower atmosphere, and it could SSTO from there, but he needed a stage recovery mod to get the plane back.

The most practical design would probably be something like this, but scaled up (longer, maybe 3.75m) to carry 3 Kerbals:

Bottom line, Eve SSTO's are hard.

Scratch that, Eve Ascent Vehicles in general are hard. It's generally regarded that once you return from Eve, you're an expert at the game, and are in the top 0.1% of players. So in general, I'd suggest that you start with disposable vehicles, they can be tricky enough, especially landing in one piece.

I'm not sure how experienced with the game you are. If this is going to be your first interplanetary mission, I'd suggest going to Duna first instead, it's harder to land on, but 50x easier to return from. SSTOs there are no problem. Plus, it has a conveniently placed (annoyingly placed if you're coming in from a transfer) moon similar in gravity to the Mun.

Looking at your profile, you seem dead set on sending a submarine to another world. If you're not already focused entirely on Eve, might I suggest going to Laythe instead? It is much more similar to Kerbin, and is in the most interesting place in the whole system IMO, right next to four other moons. If this will be your first Jool trip, don't worry, just pack a lot of extra Delta-V, install a transfer mod, and realize that Jool's SOI is a lot bigger than it seems initially.

Your other objectives, a refueling rover, base, and transportation plane, are much simpler although anything on other planets is tricky. A refueling rover will be straightforward, as will the base. Good call on the aerospikes on the exploration plane, they are one of the few engines that produce any thrust at Eve's sea level, although if I were you I'd use a Vector (maybe limit the gimbal) and add more fuel tanks.

 

Good luck!

[mystifeid]

It might also be an idea to put a satellite with a resource survey scanner in polar orbit first - to make sure you don't land somewhere with 0% surface ore. You might find that driving rovers around on Eve isn't trivial either.

[RedeyePete]

Hi Steve,

Thank you for you detailed post.

"Dzien Dobry" - ok its Polish but I think you should be able to understand.

My accomplishments so far have been to put a rover or satellite on or around every planet and moon.

The mission objectives I described are very similar to what I have already done on Lathe. I took a sub design by Castille7 and modded it to land on Lathe. You can have a look at the thread below which shows the highlights of the mission. Sorry about the lack of my prowess in copying the link properly.

• Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
• How to Submarine

An Eve SSTO I thought might work is this one I found:

Straight up to reduce atmospheric drag then circularize (hopefully). Then I could refuel in orbit and repack parachutes for the journey back.

I assume that you can repack chutes in orbit with an engineer. I haven't tried that yet.

I know Eve is going to be hard, but I want to try. I will either succeed or hurl the keyboard across the room in frustration. Not really ;o)

PS: Mystified - yes I did put a scanner in orbit the other day. I may also put a refueller on Gilly.