Eve ascent Idea

[musicpenguin]

Maybe since Eve has a thick atmosphere, we could use a Spaceplane and take off like you're on Kerbin. Thick atmosphere=Lot's o' lift!

Edited October 25, 2015 by musicpenguin

[StainX]

you still need tons of fuel... it would me more fuel efficient to ascent a rocket, i guess..

[Echostatic]

Are you talking about a plane using jet engines and stuff? If so, Eve's atmosphere has no oxygen, so they won't produce thrust.

[Tw1]

Have you tried hooligan's airships mod?....

Though my first thought was a plane too. Rocket powered, using aerospikes.

[Temstar]

Here's my plan:

That's right, a two man rocket without any pod! By saving some 800kg per passenger I could really boost the delta-V of that rocket. From Eve's surface it has somewhere in the area of 9000m/s of delta-V, which I've tested to be enough from 4.5km altitude and upwards.

So the plan is I will first land the lander unmanned onto Eve:

Save/load as necessary to make sure it lands on 5000m altitude or above and on relative flat ground to ensure safe return. Then the landing crew will be landed on a rover:

The crew will drive to the ocean, take a sample, drive up hill to the rocket. Climb onto it and boost back into orbit to the waiting mothership.

Here is the whole package assembled in LKO waiting for Eve transfer window.. The nuclear tug and the little RCS lander is for Gilly. The craft on the bottom docking port is a tanker rocket.

[llamatoes]

My plan was a magic glider eve descent vehicle, that used eveyone's favorite glitch to get up height and speed.

[magnemoe]

Have you tried hooligan's airships mod?....

Though my first thought was a plane too. Rocket powered, using aerospikes.

I use the airship mod, makes things far easier, even let you get out from Jool atmosphere.

Main problem is that an rocket plane combine the worst side of rockets and planes, jet engines has an isp 10 times ion engines as they mostly heat air using a lite fuel to do so. This compensate for the drag, an rocket plane would face both the drag and the poor isp from the rocket engine.

Now a plane using an mix of normal rockets and ions might work, use rocket a second for takeoff, use ions to raise as far as the wings can lift you, use rocket for gravity turn and ion to circulate. Main problem is the low trust of ions.

Electrical propels from another mod would work better, they should be able to take you from ground to an decent attitude. now switch to rocket.

This would work pretty much like balloon launch. You gain attitude but not much speed.

[Richy teh space man]

I have been working on a combined rocket/balloon ship without luck so far, with the intention of making a reusable Eve lander. A plane combination has so far proved unworkable due to balancing issues.

I still plan to make one and get it working, as with resources coming in 0.20 (hopefully) there is a need to be able to get resources from the surface of Eve to orbit.

Maybe some of the pros on here have already made one, if so I'd love to see it.

[EndlessWaves]

Maybe sense Eve has a thick atmosphere we could use a plane with aerospike things and take off. It will get lots of lift because of the atmosphere. Ideas? Anyone try this before?

Wings are currently less efficient than taking off vertically, at the moment you mostly want to use then for descents.

They do allow you to get into the air on less thrust even if they do burn more fuel so about the only plausible approach is to build an ion powered aircraft, but it's pretty marginal as to whether you can make it climb high enough to pay off.

[Brotoro]

A balloon-lifted rocket seems to be the obvious best way to leave Eve.

Or a nuclear-powered jet engine (which were developed on Earth but never put into production).

[Promii]

the only plausible approach is to build an ion powered aircraft, but it's pretty marginal as to whether you can make it climb high enough to pay off.

Has anyone tried this? I am considering where to send an interplanetary colony expedition and if ascent from Eve via airship or ion driven aircraft is feasible, it would be a neat place for a colony. I just don't want to send my colonists somewhere they are doomed to remain.

[John FX]

I`ve been pondering how well a balloon lifting a rocket then being `staged` and the rocket carrying on would work. How much can you lift with an airship?

[Richy teh space man]

I`ve been pondering how well a balloon lifting a rocket then being `staged` and the rocket carrying on would work. How much can you lift with an airship?

Depends on how much weight your lifting and how many balloons you've attached. My Eve lander would use one of the single large balloons to get to around 10k in height iirc. More balloons would raise it higher, but it's attaching them to your lander and keeping them attached while getting to Eves surface that makes it a challenge.

[Westo454]

A nuke rocket might be the best way to use aerodynamics to leave eve, high ISP for a rocket, generally decent thrust.

[Fractal_UK]

A nuke rocket might be the best way to use aerodynamics to leave eve, high ISP for a rocket, generally decent thrust.

The nuclear rocket has abysmal I_sp in atmosphere, the aerospike will perform better up to at least 15,000m on Eve, possibly more like 20,000. It could work on a staged plane though, if you stage away some fuel tanks and the aerospikes once you get out of the worst of the atmosphere.

[Promii]

Problem with the nuke is the sea level ISP is pretty terrible and it's heavy. I guess all these idea would be easy to test on Kerbin before taking them out to Eve. Might try to see what I can do with ions tonight.

[Flixxbeatz]

Is it possible to make a non-overkill Eve ascent vehicle? Because every EAV I saw are ranges from borderline huge to insanely massive.

[Zephram Kerman]

Maybe sense Eve has a thick atmosphere we could use a plane with aerospike things and take off. It will get lots of lift because of the atmosphere. Ideas? Anyone try this before?

Plenty of naysayers and tangents in this thread. @musicpenguin, I think your aerospike idea could work. Give it a try! Keep the plane very light weight, fly slowly to avoid drag, and take off from a high plateau. It would help to look up the terminal velocities for various altitudes, and treat those as speed limits.

I hope you do give it a try. If you do, please post the results. Good luck!

[Rage097]

I would probably land on eve smoothly then strand th-I mean establish a permanent base there. 0_0'

[Akalaël]

Maybe sense Eve has a thick atmosphere we could use a plane with aerospike things and take off. It will get lots of lift because of the atmosphere. Ideas? Anyone try this before?

Actually Stochasty did it : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/29389-Eve-lifter-question

But it was with FAR as I recall

[Spatzimaus]

Maybe sense Eve has a thick atmosphere we could use a plane with aerospike things and take off. It will get lots of lift because of the atmosphere. Ideas? Anyone try this before?

I didn't try exactly this, but people HAVE done the "rocket plane" design to do an SSTO ascent from Eve using only stock parts. I've done my own Eve ascent using Kethane-burning turbines, which act like turbojets but use any atmosphere (including Eve's). The thick atmosphere does make your terminal velocity extremely low for quite a ways up, though, so you want to be very careful with your throttle; that same thickness that gives you plenty of lift ALSO gives you so much drag that you'll be wasting a lot of fuel offsetting it unless you're careful to take things slow. The big advantage of a winged design is that you don't need a high TWR; very few planes have thrust-to-weight ratios above 1.0, whereas every rocket needs to be well above that line. So you can get away with using weaker but more efficient rockets on your ascent, at least until you reach the upper atmosphere where ballistics takes over, which'll save you quite a bit of fuel in the long run.

[Horn Brain]

With the way drag works in the game, I think you're better off just using rockets. Spaceplanes actually use more dV to get to orbit than rockets, I think. The reason they're more efficient is because they can use jet engines which have a much higher effective Isp, so you get more dV for less fuel in the atmosphere. You can't use jets on Eve so you're out of luck. The only option left to you is ion engines, but those have trouble getting things off the ground on Kerbin, let alone Eve.

Balloon ascent is the way to go with the current drag model, but after that, rockets. I made a 60-something ton lander that could return from about 4.5km altitude (which gave you some alternative landing sites away from the one tallest mountatin). I never liked the idea of making kerbals hold onto ladders while doing supersonic ascent, but maybe now that we have actual seats you could build them a little windscreen. Cutting the pod obviously saves huge amounts of mass on the lander.

[Promii]

The new lander can is also 25% lighter than the 1-kerbal capsule, if you don't want to use seats.

[tavert]

people HAVE done the "rocket plane" design to do an SSTO ascent from Eve using only stock parts

Can you back that up? I don't think that's true, as far as I am aware.

[Spatzimaus]

Can you back that up?

It wasn't mine, so I don't have the craft file, and the screenshots someone else posted were of course lost in the Great Wipe. The plane in question wasn't stock, as it used Kethane drills to refuel on the ground, but that's not actually relevant to this discussion; descending to Eve's surface can be done completely unpowered (I've done that), so there's no problem having full tanks on the surface if you refueled in low orbit. The key was, the plane was HUGE, one of those big "sandwich everything between two large wing sections" sorts of things, with a couple dozen 1.25m engines. The sheer amount of lift you get from that sort of design, in the current aerodynamic model, makes initial ascents easy, and once you're out of the thick part of the atmosphere you just go vertical like any other rocket.

I'm sure someone has either the craft file or some screenshots. Me, I prefer smaller designs for the most part, so I had no interest in reproducing the exact design.