Most difficult CB to land on with Kerbals and bringing them back to Kerbin?

[VoidSquid]

Just curious, which CB was for you the most difficult one (surprises included) to land on with Kerbals and bringing them back to Kerbin?

For me, it was Tylo, massively underestimated its gravity pull, took me several tries to make a good vessel capable of. I found Eve substantially easier to do.

Edited September 1, 2019 by VoidSquid

[AHHans]

Eve!

Tylo is just enough delta-V and TWR. Eve is massive delta-V and TWR, inside a *bleeping* soup.

[VoidSquid]

Maybe it's because I had been "warned" about Eve? Tylo not so, lol

[Cleperli]

I think Eve is the most difficult CB to land on and return, even though I have only landed probes there.

[Xurkitree]

Tylo is hard to land on, but easy to return. 

Eve is extremely easy to land on, but hard to return.

[VoidSquid]

Very true!  

3 hours ago, AHHans said:

TWR

That, yes, oh yes! 

[The Aziz]

Eve: A ship that can survive reentry, has 8k d-v, is aerodynamic, stable, probably one time use if you have multiple stages...

Tylo: Whatever can land can also take off if you have ISRU on board.

I am indeed going to land on Tylo BEFORE I go for Eve, cuz I know I'm not gonna return from there.

[LekkoBot]

Other, I'd say either jool or kerbol

[fulgur]

Definitely Kerbol. Kerbol burns you up before you can set down on the 'surface'. Also, propellors work on Jool.

[Superfluous J]

I voted Eve even though I don't know what a CB is off the top of my head. I mean, I know it's a Citizen Band radio, but I don't think that's what you mean.

Laythe was hard the first time. Tylo was hard the first time. Heck even Minmus was hard the first time. Eve, also, was hard the first time.

But Eve was also hard the second time, and the time after that. And every other time up to and including the most recent time.

[Klapaucius]

In some ways Gilly.  It is hard to land and stay landed.

[magnemoe]

Voted Eve but would say Tylo actually. 
Tylo is the only body I have never landed manually on and ended up with something who can take off again. 

Eve is an build challenge, you can download an craft file and read an short instruction about how to handle the aerobrake and landing then the takeoff profile. 

Tylo is an piloting challenge, things happens very fast at the end. 

[KerikBalm]

Tylo, eve, and moho are what I consider to be the hardest.

[MechBFP]

On 9/2/2019 at 2:39 AM, 5thHorseman said:

I voted Eve even though I don't know what a CB is off the top of my head.

Celestial Body

[Superfluous J]

12 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Celestial Body

Ah. I just call them "worlds"

[panzer1b]

Honestly for me it was Eve, followed by moho probably (everything else is either super easy, or just requires dV which is something one can create with a fat enough rocket or orbital assembly/IRSU abuse).  I know a few mentioned tylo, but given that i made a tylo capable SSTO with room for 1 kerbin a while back which was actually a repurposed escape pod that i made which had to be capable of landing on any planet in jool system if the mothership was too heavily damaged by hostile pirates (yes even my more peaceful minded missions often include ibeams with sepatrons on them being shot at the ships).

As for hard, Eve is kinda obvious, getting there and landing is easy (just get a heatshield and dont be too agressive on the initial aerobrake), leaving is the truly hard part, since it requires both a aerodynamic vessel, stupid amounts of dV, and worst of all the vast majority of engines ISP is terrible in the lower atmo (its not too hard to do it from the top of a mountain, but from sea level is not easy whatsoever).  Even with the propellers it is still hard to do (albeit props have 1 major benefit, infinite dV while in the atmo so even if you raise the launch vehicle by 2km its still a huge benefit).

Finally, i know its maybee just me, but ive found moho to be the 2nd hardest thing to get to and return, the dV (especially to circularize) is much higher then i initially expected it to be, and the braking burn needs some TWR, not to mention the heat there makes it actually hard to blast a cluster of nukes at full power (i guess if you are using 1.7.3 stock it wouldnt be an issue, but i use the thermal properties of the nuke's 1.0 cfg, as i loved how hot they got just to make nukes nolonger the do everything engine and actual downside).  Pretty much, i either need to stick to pure LFO, or spam radiators like crazy to not explode my ship using nukes, and regardless of what i choose it takes a ship quite a bit larger then most that i design (unless again, IRSU, but ive yet to launch a IRSU ship to moho so cant say how much lighter itd be if i did it that way).

[ExtremeSquared]

One of the most difficult things about Eve is that you need to change strategies every few KSP versions if you play with 100% atmospheric heating difficulty. The margins for success are very low. Once you've gone to the trouble of making a working Eve land+return craft, if a KSP update breaks it, it's tempting to just give up.

And the trick to Moho is to never attempt direct Hohmann transfers.  It's not that hard to incorporate most of the plane change into your initial launch if you launch at AN/DN. Just launch towards the NE/SE from KSC and aim to already have an Eve transfer by the time you hit 60km altitude. Just got finished sending a whole ~900 ton mining colony and refueling station to Moho low orbit and surface.

Edited September 3, 2019 by ExtremeSquared

[VoidSquid]

Hey fellow Kerbalists,

just wanted to say thank you to all who contributed so far, that was interesting  

[Pecan]

Eve.

Tylo does tend to trick people but if you're paying attention and designing by numbers, as I do, then you'll see it coming (hint:  it's the big round thing approaching really quite quickly).

I've still hardly ever been to Eve because it used to be impossible to make a reusable lander and I don't have sufficient incentive to go again now everything's easier.

[cantab]

I've never attempted an Eve return. As far as stock worlds go, I think I'll actually have to give it to Duna of all places. I've landed and returned Kerbals from everywhere except Duna and Eve. If I remember rightly every Kerballed Duna mission I've done has gone horribly wrong. I've had craft disintegrating on parachute opening, impacts into the ground, and rover crashes.

Eve, Tylo, and perhaps Moho might be "objectively" more difficult but they are widely known by reputation. Duna's problem is being harder than I expected. Much like Mars, it's got enough atmosphere to cause trouble but not enough for an easy chutes-only landing. Partly it's been influenced by whether or not I allowed reverts in the save (and indeed whether I go to Duna at all), but Duna is my nemesis.

EDIT PS: Laythe I didn't find particularly hard, but I did send a boat. If your lander needs to come down on land rather than water I can imagine it taking trial and error. As for Moho, I just take ion engines, loads of xenon, and a TV show on the second monitor

Edited September 4, 2019 by cantab

[sturmhauke]

I'm gonna say Eve because I have actually never been there, not counting cheats. Tylo took a few tries but it's not so bad.

[Ruedii]

Jool.

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, Ruedii said:

Jool.

Bug report:

I can’t land on Jool.

Devs pls fix.

 

[Guest]

I had the most trouble by far with Eve. 

My first crewed Tylo mission was actually a fully recoverable, non-ISRU one. It wasn't quite a single stage to surface and back because I shaved a few hundred m/s off the requirement with a little trick: I had an orbiter module with a very big engine. The mission started by the orbiter module killing off several hundred m/s of of speed, then undocking and rapidly accelerating back to orbit; then I switched to the lander module and landed the usual way, planted a flag, then flew back to orbit.

Laythe was super easy because I flew a plane there.

[sturmhauke]

Land on Tylo with this one weird trick! Wernher Von Kerman hates it!

4 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

I had the most trouble by far with Eve. 

My first crewed Tylo mission was actually a fully recoverable, non-ISRU one. It wasn't quite a single stage to surface and back because I shaved a few hundred m/s off the requirement with a little trick: I had an orbiter module with a very big engine. The mission started by the orbiter module killing off several hundred m/s of of speed, then undocking and rapidly accelerating back to orbit; then I switched to the lander module and landed the usual way, planted a flag, then flew back to orbit.

Laythe was super easy because I flew a plane there.