explore Eve just after exploring Minmus?

[Lechu]

What is the proper progression of contracts? I just finished exploring Minmus, and the next explore contract points me to Eve. I have thought it should be Duna.

None of my craft have left the Kerbin SOI as yet.

I have been trying to reload to just before landing the return craft from Minmus,  a dozen of times, but to no avail, it is always "Explore Eve". Sometimes it is one star contract, sometimes three-star one, but always Eve. I was also trying to warp the time without picking up contract, it will always stay "Explore Eve".

Will I get explore Duna after finishing with Eve if I keep away from Duna till then, or somehow I locked myself from storyline  Duna contracts for good?

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Eve is actually a better target than Duna for your first interplanetary missions: the transfer window is more frequent; it’s a shorter trip requiring a bit less delta-V for the transfer burn and (depending on how brave you are) a greatly reduced delta-V requirement if you aerobrake in Eve’s atmosphere; Eve stays in communication range more than Kerbin due to the shorter average distance between the planets; there’s much more sunlight so you need fewer and/or smaller solar panels than at Duna; and it’s a lot easier to land on Eve than on Duna- if you bring the heat shields to survive the heating that is! The oceans can be a nuisance for getting places especially if you drop a rover in one, but Eve is the perfect place to deploy an electric plane (using breaking ground motors and props or a mod like firespitter) and fly rather than drive around.

A potent relay around Eve can also provide communications between Duna and Kerbin depending on the planets’ positions, but the opposite is far less likely. Gilly is a tiny little moonlet that won’t get in your way, whereas Ike is perfectly positioned to interfere and could ruin your Duna missions before they even make orbit.

Once you complete some Eve-related contracts you’ll get some for Duna; alternatively just send a prove to Duna’s SOI and it should start giving you more contracts for Duna instead.

 

[bewing]

There is no such thing as "proper progression". The function of the Explore contracts is simply to give you a new target and an incentive. Once you get to Eve, your next target may be the Mun.

[Lechu]

The problem being, I have a small fleet prepared to start exploring Duna, first wave already in the Munar orbit, waiting for a get go  "Explore Duna" quest, when the return craft from Minmus arrives. And the Eve is in somewhat uncomfortable place, about 45% ahead of Kerbin.

Oh, well, I guess I'll proceed with Duna exploration as planed, and try to make a flyby on Eve as contract insists as well. I have a small scout ship on Minmus orbit, with 2500ms dv, I wonder if I can figure out some dv wasteful  trajectory for a flyby, that does not require a half a year?

Edited September 5, 2020 by Lechu

[king of nowhere]

there is no reason you can't explore the planets in a different order than what the game suggests. @jimmymcgoochie  gives some good reasons why eve is a good target for your first interplanetary missions. on the downside, eve is also rather difficult to land; i never needed a heat shield while landing on kerbin, but i definitely need one - or rocket braking - for eve. and it is, by far, the most difficult planet to get away from. not only it has a huge gravity, its dense atmosphere make rockets ineffective in it. so, while orbiting eve, and sending some disposable landers, is an easy target, bringing back something from eve surface is one of the most difficult achievements in the game. for that, you should definitely go to duna first

[Chequers]

I got the same progression, @Lechu after exhausting all of the World Record Keeping Society contracts around Kerbin, Mun and Minmus, they sent me to Eve. I too thought this was a big jump in ambition. I'd just finished learning rendezvousing around Minmus... and suddenly was going on interplanetary return missions. I was scared. I even made a thread about it.

If you're waiting for Duna, it might be a while. So far I've completed a contract to flyby Eve and return to Kerbin and am partway through a mission to return from a manned orbit of Eve. If the usual progression is to be believed, the next contract will be to attempt some form of landing on the surface, but I'll let you know.

[Reactordrone]

In my experience the contracts for Duna and Eve come up as you are approaching the first transfer windows. If you've been playing around the Mun and Minmus for a long time you might have missed the Duna window so it brings up the Eve contract first.

[Superfluous J]

On 9/5/2020 at 6:56 AM, king of nowhere said:

there is no reason you can't explore the planets in a different order than what the game suggests.

I second this. You will even still get money for achieving "World firsts" (though you won't get the contract money). Unless you're really hurting for cash, though, there is really no reason to force yourself to do what they ask.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

Go for Gilly first, and setup IRSU and a bit of infrastructure there.

That way when your first expeditions to the surface inevitably fail, there's always something in orbit with plenty of DV to haul a rescue craft to Kerbin (Or give it a decent kick, depends on how you want to design). Since it takes so much DV to get off the surface, this'll simplify your mission planning sigifigantly.

Oh, and pro tip. Forget proper "Landing" on Gilly, use Ze claw to make your life significantly easier. You can try to land on it "Conventionally", but i wasted more time than i care to admit trying to get something settled on it's surface. Haven't gone back since though, mostly because of the intense flashbacks of 1.6.1 legs + Gilly + me being impatient. And you can go pretty crazy mass-wise, since the gravity is so tiny that even hilariously large craft will have insane TWR with relatively small engines. For the recovery tug, it should be designed for Eve orbit, where TWR isn't nearly as forgiving. But since you'd be putting a station around Gilly anyway, you can figure that out afterwards.

indeed just getting the station there is the hard part, Eve has 3X the gravity of Kerbin. So it's SOI dominates in comparison to Gilly, and due to Gilly's orbit being so inclined and far out it rarely enters a nice configuration for you to insert yourself directly into it's orbit.

There's option #2 if you don't use FAR which is basically as good as straight up cheating.

Make an Electric Plane, use it to haul a rocket up to 20K in eve's atmosphere. Profit.

Atmospheric pressure at 20K is around 1ATM, so standard Kerbin launchers can work with a bit of finessing (You're still dealing with 3X Gravity). If you have Near Future Electric, this becomes even more insane due to the reactors. Even the most basic one can power a plane for a fraction of the mass of batteries. And it won't stop producing power until nearly 4 1/2 years assuming you're running it at full power, which is quite the loiter time.

[Grogs]

7 hours ago, Chequers said:

I got the same progression, @Lechu after exhausting all of the World Record Keeping Society contracts around Kerbin, Mun and Minmus, they sent me to Eve. I too thought this was a big jump in ambition. I'd just finished learning rendezvousing around Minmus... and suddenly was going on interplanetary return missions. I was scared. I even made a thread about it.

If you're waiting for Duna, it might be a while. So far I've completed a contract to flyby Eve and return to Kerbin and am partway through a mission to return from a manned orbit of Eve. If the usual progression is to be believed, the next contract will be to attempt some form of landing on the surface, but I'll let you know.

Yeah, I'm doing my first real career playthrough, and I was surprised Eve came up as the first interplanetary, too. @jimmymcgoochie makes good points about Eve being easier to get to, but doing a manned return there is maybe the hardest thing in the whole game. Landing a small one-way probe on the surface may not be too hard, but landing something with the 8,000 m/s dV to get back to orbit takes some serious engineering and lots of practice. It seems like up through Minmus the World Firsts do a good job of giving incrementally more difficult contracts, but that trend seems to break with Eve. Maybe if it gave you an Eve flyby/orbit, and then maybe a Gilly landing before shifting to Duna/Ike that would make more sense.

 

47 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

There's option #2 if you don't use FAR which is basically as good as straight up cheating.

Make an Electric Plane, use it to haul a rocket up to 20K in eve's atmosphere. Profit.

Atmospheric pressure at 20K is around 1ATM, so standard Kerbin launchers can work with a bit of finessing (You're still dealing with 3X Gravity). If you have Near Future Electric, this becomes even more insane due to the reactors. Even the most basic one can power a plane for a fraction of the mass of batteries. And it won't stop producing power until nearly 4 1/2 years assuming you're running it at full power, which is quite the loiter time.

I've seen enough posts from @king of nowhere to make me think this is at best extremely difficult. Admittedly, king of nowhere is trying to make a dual electric/rocket powered SSTO, but it still looks pretty daunting even for a simpler craft.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

30 minutes ago, Grogs said:

 @jimmymcgoochie

I've seen enough posts from @king of nowhere to make me think this is at best extremely difficult. Admittedly, king of nowhere is trying to make a dual electric/rocket powered SSTO, but it still looks pretty daunting even for a simpler craft.

Yeah I think I might have misled you with the "it's basically cheating" line. A three stage to orbit rocket will be much easier to construct and get to the surface intact in most cases.

The hybrid plane is a much more advanced construction, but can do more once you're there. Also I wasn't thinking an SSTO, those wings are dead weight too much past 20km. Basically I was saying that a plane could potentially do in two stages what a conventional rocket could in 3 on Eve.

SSTO from Eve with planes is still difficult, if not borderline. So definitely not recommended as your first ascent vehicle.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Just to clarify what I said earlier- Eve is better to go to than Duna for probes. NOT for crewed missions! Probes are generally one way trips so returning doesn’t matter, but generally speaking you should bring Kerbals back home from their missions.

Duna is moderately difficult to land on because its atmosphere is so thin, but that along with its low gravity also makes it fairly easy to leave and with Ike so close nearby it’s easy to refuel too. Landing on Eve is a bit more challenging due to the high gravity and thick atmosphere giving really high re-entry speeds and temperatures, but the thicker air means parachutes are much more effective than on other planets so you need fewer and smaller parachutes to land safely. Getting off Eve again, on the other hand, is pretty spectacularly difficult without some very clever designs and/or mildly cheaty mods (Eve optimised engines, explodium breathing engines, the fireflash and project Eeloo engines from NF aeronautics, etc.) and should only be attempted once you really know what you’re doing.

(And if you think Eve is bad- Venus has an atmosphere that’s 90 times thicker than Earth’s (or Kerbin’s), it’s hot enough to melt lead and it rains pure sulphuric acid near the surface!)

[king of nowhere]

11 hours ago, Grogs said:

I've seen enough posts from @king of nowhere to make me think this is at best extremely difficult. Admittedly, king of nowhere is trying to make a dual electric/rocket powered SSTO, but it still looks pretty daunting even for a simpler craft.

making an electric plane or helicopter that can fly on eve is not too difficult. it took me several weeks to manage one, but mostly because i had no experience with atmospheric flight.

reaching orbit as ssto, though, is extremely difficult. turns out, just because i can reach 20 km of height with propellers and have 3500 m/s of rocket fuel, that's still a far cry from getting to orbit. atmosphere is still dense enough to give problems up to 50 km, and the propellers are now causing huge aerodinamic problems. and 3.5 km/s are not enough to reach orbit. and of course i can't load more fuel without needing more propellers, which would be heavier, negating the advantage of more fuel.

the worst thing, though, is that now i'm facing a lot of problems i'm sure are glitches. i'm sure of that because previous models, which i tested many times and had good atmospheric flight, are also suddenly giving problems.

i've seen a youtube video of a guy who made it with a plane, it got to 15 km with propellers, then it had 3.5 km/s with rockets, and it finished circularizing with nuclear engines. still, he had almost no payload (it's one of the first result if you search "ksp eve ssto").

on the other hand, if you don't need to make an ssto, then using propeller power is a good alternative to a first stage. in fact, it's probably cheaper and lighter to lift up to 15-20 km that way than with a rocket, then detach that first stage and have two more rocket stages. Still not easy, but if one has good knowledge on how to make an helicopter in this game, it's not too complicated either.

also, making a small helicopter as rover for eve is not difficult. i managed one within a week, while it took me three weeks to make my big rocket fly with helicopter propellers, and one more week to accept that the design would never get close to reaching orbital speed.

finally, a little precisation, atmospheric pressure on eve at 20 km is a bit less than 0.5 atmospheres. 1 atmosphere is a bit above 14 km. still, as i said, the atmosphere is dense enough to give problems all the way to 50 km.

[Spricigo]

18 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Getting off Eve again, on the other hand, is pretty spectacularly difficult without some very clever designs and/or mildly cheaty mods (Eve optimised engines, explodium breathing engines, the fireflash and project Eeloo engines from NF aeronautics, etc.) and should only be attempted once you really know what you’re doing.

I think that the idea of Eve optimized engines makes sense (not talking about the balance), but that is a different rabbit hole. In any case, mods bring another variable (or several) to the "difficult level" of EVE missions. Alas, for the discussion about propeller going on, stock vs stock+. 

Back to the original topic, Eve is excellent target for any way mission. And while one "should" bring the Kerbal back it may be "delayed for a while" if one don't have the means to do it yet. 

 

 

[king of nowhere]

22 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

(And if you think Eve is bad- Venus has an atmosphere that’s 90 times thicker than Earth’s (or Kerbin’s), it’s hot enough to melt lead and it rains pure sulphuric acid near the surface!)

a common misconception. sulfuric acid does not get anywhere close to the surface, because it has a boiling point somewhere above 300 °C, which is well below the surface temperature. there is some sulfuric acid rain in the high atmosphere, but any droplet evaporates again much before reaching the surface. that means there's still sulfuric acid vapors all along, though.

still, in the list of reasons venus is awfully hard to explore, sulfuric acid rain doesn't come near the top ten.

[Spricigo]

2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

a common misconception.

In any case, not planing to make my picnic there. 

Anyways, you missed the point. While Eve is regarded as "The Final Boss" for stock KSP, there are people playing with mods to make things even more  challenging. Real Solar System replaces the 'toy solar system' of Stock KSP for, well, exactly what it say in the tin. Realism Overhaul bring to the game life support, part failure and a bunch of other things that a stock player may not even know are a bunch of things (e.g. Ullage).

I'd say whatever float your boat (or boost your rocket, maybe?! ). Personally I accept that no mater how challenging something is in KSP 1) some Caveman probably did it already* and 2)it is still kid play compared with the accomplishments of real space agencies and people. So, I don't play KSP to compete with others or to be frustrated with "ultra difficult" tasks, rather I play to do tasks with some degree of competence and find ways to improve it along the way. 

*and possible in a Caveman style

 

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by Spricigo

[FleshJeb]

(Sorry to jump on OP's thread)

22 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

the propellers are now causing huge aerodinamic problems

In this case, I'd build the props with the blade edge facing forward in the UNdeployed position, and an action group to toggle it. As soon as you light the rocket, hit the AG and they're in the minimal drag configuration.

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, Spricigo said:

In any case, not planing to make my picnic there. 

Anyways, you missed the point. While Eve is regarded as "The Final Boss" for stock KSP, there are people playing with mods to make things even more  challenging. Real Solar System replaces the 'toy solar system' of Stock KSP for, well, exactly what it say in the tin. Realism Overhaul bring to the game life support, part failure and a bunch of other things that a stock player may not even know are a bunch of things (e.g. Ullage).

2)it is still kid play compared with the accomplishments of real space agencies and people.

 

yeah, i'm going to install those mods as soon as i finish squeezing what few objectives i miss. and even with those, it's still easy compared to reality. personally, it makes me appreciate more how difficult is space exploration.

2 minutes ago, FleshJeb said:

(Sorry to jump on OP's thread)

In this case, I'd build the props with the blade edge facing forward in the UNdeployed position, and an action group to toggle it. As soon as you light the rocket, hit the AG and they're in the minimal drag configuration.

i did. still, they create lots of problems. i never cared much for aerodinamics, until i tried to make things fly on eve.

[Spricigo]

3 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

i'm going to install those mods as soon as i finish squeezing what few objectives i miss.

I recommend to take a look at Challenges & mission ideas to find out how many objectives you may still be far from reaching within the stock/light modded game. On the other hand, no reason to not dive directly into RSS+RO if that is what you are looking for. Your game, your objectives to pick.

Keep in mind that you mau also need to deal with issues of heavy modded games like conflicts between mods,  update delays and more frequent bugs and glitches (no way around it, there are more things to fail). And you may also want to learn some "messing with configs" (a.k.a. MM patches) because solving some of the issues yourself is often faster than waiting for the mod author/maintainer to have time to spare from his actual job(/other interests)  or because, lets face it, may not be an issue for anyone else in some cases.

30 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

i did.

And I just give the same advice in another thread. *shrugs*