Transporting Cargo Off of Eve?

[DefenderX1]

Hey all,

So I have this plan to setup a colony on Eve with an orbital station/colony ship in orbit housing large quantities of materials.
I've seen how ridiculously high Eve's gravity is but Karborundum (my ships engine fuel) is best gathered on Eve. So my plan is to setup a mining operation on the surface and transport the materials back up to the ship.

Short of trying to setup something with MKS's orbital logistics (which I don't really want to do yet) are there any feasible designs for a reusable cargo lifter/ascent vehicle that can lift reasonable amounts of cargo off of Eve, get into orbit and then get back down safely? I'm quite horrible at the math & design and can't come up with anything myself that can get back up, just land safely.

Thanks!

[JadeOfMaar]

I have a mod that may help a lot with that... Although, while making this I've only considered merely being able to cruise leisurely at Eve and then SSTO from it, I haven't considered (mining and) lifting very heavy payloads from there.

 

[Zhetaan]

If you have Karborundum engines, then you also have Karbonite engines.

Also, @OhioBob made Eve Optimized Engines but do please remember that neither of these will give you SSTO capability, which you will need for reusability.

Freight Transport Technologies has electric fans that may be able to get a cargo craft high enough to light an engine capable of finishing as an SSTO.  It also includes a power plant capable of delivering the electricity that these fans need;  I don't know whether you can use the fans to build up enough momentum to escape the atmosphere entirely and then circularise with a vacuum-rated engine, but if you can, then that is probably the best way to do it.  It's not normally the most efficient trajectory to go straight up and then burn horizontally, but if the straight-up burn costs no fuel, then that approach becomes much more attractive.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Zhetaan

[DefenderX1]

Thanks for the info. I'm not so much looking for specific part info as I need coming up with an overall design.
How's an SSTO supposed to transport that load? I'd rather not have to dock w/ the mining vessel.

If the SSTO WAS the mining vessel I suppose that might work. I did make an OPT SSTO for mining other areas, wonder if I could modify that for Eve.
My main concern is that I don't really know how to get Karborundum storage on there since there's sooooooooo few storage containers for it. (unless I modded the fuel tanks in OPT).

Do you think I should go with the J-size? K-size?

And @Zhetaan I have FTT but that my was first attempt at a mining vessel and I couldn't get it off of Kerbin, let alone Eve. Also I seem to be totally inept at operating a VTOL craft. I dunno if I can't build one to save my (Kerbals) life or bad piloting though...

Edited June 30, 2018 by DefenderX1

[JadeOfMaar]

3 hours ago, DefenderX1 said:

How's an SSTO supposed to transport that load? I'd rather not have to dock w/ the mining vessel.

If the SSTO WAS the mining vessel I suppose that might work. I did make an OPT SSTO for mining other areas, wonder if I could modify that for Eve.
My main concern is that I don't really know how to get Karborundum storage on there since there's sooooooooo few storage containers for it. (unless I modded the fuel tanks in OPT).

The SSTO being the miner would be a great option. But if you already use MKS, you could take advantage of local/planetary logistics and bring extra crew to operate the mining base and activate logistics. This would save the SSTO from the weight of the mining gear and from the need to dock while landed.

If you use OPT Reconfig (a mod of mine) it will enable you to use B9 Part Switch for adding Karborundum storage to all OPT parts. You only have to add a config node in up to 5 places and avoid a hellish runaround with Firespitter configs.

If you use Thor Tech (linked earlier) or OPT Legacy, you get jet engines that will enable you to SSTO from Eve.

I can't guarantee you'll be able to lift much Karborundum at a time as, I repeat, I never thought about mining for things there.

The best pre-existing option for storage is USI Core which is just tanks and nuclear reactors. Its tanks will hold it.

Edited June 30, 2018 by JadeOfMaar

[DefenderX1]

7 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

The best pre-existing option for storage is USI Core which is just tanks and nuclear reactors. Its tanks will hold it.

That's what I was referring to before. I can't really think of a way to add the USI Karb tanks to an OPT-type SSTO.
If anyone has craft they use on eve using the FTT's parts I wouldn't mind giving that another try. Just need to figure out how to pilot the VTOL. Every time I've tried one the craft lifts off and promptly flips, crashes & blows up lol.

[Aeroboi]

@DefenderX1

You may like this 

and this

You can stack these airship parts until it can lift whatever you want. I never tried it on Eve, I assume it also works there. Getting one to Eve is a challenge, but once you manage you can lift anything mined to a high altitude and use a single stage to get decent quantities of Ore to LEO.

Edited June 30, 2018 by Aeroboi

[Zhetaan]

On 6/29/2018 at 10:21 PM, DefenderX1 said:

Thanks for the info. I'm not so much looking for specific part info as I need coming up with an overall design.
How's an SSTO supposed to transport that load? I'd rather not have to dock w/ the mining vessel.

If the SSTO WAS the mining vessel I suppose that might work. I did make an OPT SSTO for mining other areas, wonder if I could modify that for Eve.
My main concern is that I don't really know how to get Karborundum storage on there since there's sooooooooo few storage containers for it. (unless I modded the fuel tanks in OPT).

Do you think I should go with the J-size? K-size?

And @Zhetaan I have FTT but that my was first attempt at a mining vessel and I couldn't get it off of Kerbin, let alone Eve. Also I seem to be totally inept at operating a VTOL craft. I dunno if I can't build one to save my (Kerbals) life or bad piloting though...

There is a trick to VTOL craft.  The main thing is to remember that you fly VTOL craft all the time:  they're called rockets.  Design your VTOL with rocket principles in mind and you'll have an easier time.

If you're building a more 'traditional' jump-jet-style VTOL (for some dubious value of the word traditional), then yes, they are some of the most difficult craft to fly, especially out of the atmosphere and into space.  That is because these craft are built around the flat-pancake principle of rocket design and then further complicate matters by trying to respect horizontal aeroplane principles, as well.  That's a problem because getting the most out of in-atmosphere horizontal flight depends greatly on having lifting surfaces, but as the vessel flies upwards, those same lifting surfaces are great flat plates that produce nothing but drag--drag that, given that the vehicle is flat, is close to the 'nose' of the vessel, thus encouraging instability and loss of control.  The same problem occurs with the engines because they are at the same height as the centre of mass, so maintaining vertical flight becomes a Sisyphean task.  Almost everything in a VTOL suffers from positive feedback (especially at low velocities), which in terms of engineering is a Very Bad Thing and generally requires a computer to have even a hope of stable flight.

On the other hand, if you build it after the same fashion as a rocket, then imbalance issues, though not instantly solved, are at least familiar.

That being said, don't expect to haul hundreds of tonnes of karborundum to space on a reusable cargo lifter from the surface of Eve.  That sort of thing is better suited to the two other places you can obtain it.  My preferred method is to mine hundreds of tonnes and put it all on a single-use cargo lifter, then send another when I need more (or go to one of the aforementioned other places if sustainability is my chief concern).  It's also possible to have a partially-reusable cargo lifter, though that requires creative use of docking ports and other such nonsense.

On 6/30/2018 at 9:17 AM, Aeroboi said:

You can stack [Hooligan Labs/Heisenberg] airship parts until it can lift whatever you want. I never tried it on Eve, I assume it also works there. Getting one to Eve is a challenge, but once you manage you can lift anything mined to a high altitude and use a single stage to get decent quantities of Ore to LEO.

Airships will work on Eve--or, at least, they did in earlier versions.  I don't know whether the current version takes atmospheric density into account, but if it does, then Eve is actually one of the best places to use airships.  It's certainly the best place with a solid surface.  However, one item of caution is that I do not know how the airships work with drag--I assume not well--so getting said airship out of the atmosphere may be the greater challenge.  Of course, jettisoning the balloon is always an option, but if you want something reusable, remember that the jettisoned part counts as an aircraft in flight and will be deleted by the game when you go out of range unless you perform some very creative aerobatics.

[Aeroboi]

29 minutes ago, Zhetaan said:

Airships will work on Eve--or, at least, they did in earlier versions.  I don't know whether the current version takes atmospheric density into account, but if it does, then Eve is actually one of the best places to use airships.  It's certainly the best place with a solid surface.  However, one item of caution is that I do not know how the airships work with drag--I assume not well--so getting said airship out of the atmosphere may be the greater challenge.  Of course, jettisoning the balloon is always an option, but if you want something reusable, remember that the jettisoned part counts as an aircraft in flight and will be deleted by the game when you go out of range unless you perform some very creative aerobatics.

My idea is to use FMRS with it.

This creates save states for 2 seperate vessels, the airship in this case and the stage you launch from high altitude into orbit. You then revert back in time using FMRS to lower the airship back to the surface and lift up another shipment of ore with another rocket.
For full reuseability the rocket getting the ore into orbit also has to get back down again to the right spot. So some wings are in order, think about a shuttle type craft.

The only downside is  that you will have to sink the airship back to the surface after every shipment which can take a while.

[Zhetaan]

3 hours ago, Aeroboi said:

The only downside is  that you will have to sink the airship back to the surface after every shipment which can take a while.

FMRS certainly solves the reusability issue, then.  To your most recent point, because Eve has an extremely thick atmosphere, you can get the most out of an airship's lifting capacity there.  Since your cargo hauler is only limited by how much tonnage you can SSTO from whatever altitude the air bladder's service ceiling happens to be, the higher the ceiling, the better off you are, and Eve's atmosphere gives you the highest potential service ceiling.  Of course, there is a law of diminishing returns:  more mass will reduce the ceiling, but more bladders will raise it, so you'll have to perform tests to see what the optimum is.  You may end up lifting less than you'd prefer in order to have the rocket capability you need, but you'll probably be able to reduce the number of shipments by quite a lot if you have enough performance testing.  If need be, getting to the high atmosphere will let you use K+ engines to get to orbit, which is perhaps parasitic, but if it works, it works.

Good luck.

[BigShiper]

I use a rocket tipe semiSSTO. The key here is lifting the ship with traditional engines just enought to make the biggest karborundum engines have al TWR biger than 1, so I made a ship consisting in a central ship with the command, reaction wheels, EC, and all the needs for the vaccum inB9- HX structures with a HX docking port in the bottom; with 6 karborundum engines separated in 2 groups of 3 with the water needed for run, distanced from the center via tructural parts. And a ''service module'' withe de LOX tanks and their engines, the parachutes in high position (to land straight), the resource gatherers for refueling the ship, and the inflatable heat shiel maked huge via TweakScale. So you land with the service module, deatach the heat shield, deploy the chutes, then refuel and liftof with all the engines and when the LOX engines runs out deatach and reach orbit with bonfire engines and dock with the Eve Station and reatach another ''service module''. I know its huge and its not fully reusable but with the amount of karborundum you can take to orbit you will be served of karborundum for a very long time. 

Sorry for the orthografi the spanish corrector mess it all. Any cuestions just write.

[BigShiper]

Recently I have discover a new mode that called "B9 HX Reconfig " thats increase the performance of various HX parts and ads two  more bir motors with the same apearence of the big one but one running on Karborundum whit an incredible performance ASL on Eve.

That mod will save your Karborundum mining on eve.