Exercises in lightness with the 1-man lander can: Mun trip under 16 t, Eve under 40 t

[tavert]

I've been playing around with the 1-man lander can, downsizing some previous designs to see how light I can go. Both of these could be made even lighter by putting a Kerbal on a seat, but that wasn't the goal here. Also these fuel margins are tight and this was a building exercise not a piloting one so MechJeb is flying these. Complain about that elsewhere.

First I have a Mun round trip, no jets or ion engines, with a launch-pad mass of 15.65 tons: http://imgur.com/a/SedzD#0

The landing gear placement is a little cheaty, and I'm taking advantage of the aircraft gear being massless (so yeah, spaceplane folks, you can only trust your SPH CoM indicator before you put the wheels on!). Several aerobrake passes to land back at KSC without spending too much fuel.

Next we have a mountaintop Eve ascent vehicle at 39.53 tons (flight numbers are more reliable than VAB numbers, MechJeb/Engineer don't know which components are massless until you're in flight): http://imgur.com/a/piTkF#0

I persistence-edited this guy to Eve orbit (lifter and transfer stage left as exercise for reader) and turned on infinite fuel for MechJeb's land-at-target deorbit burn, but as soon as I entered the atmosphere I switched it back off. Those tanks sitting on the ground that the parachutes were mounted to had plenty of fuel for landing. This design is derived off of Nao's best entry to the Smallest Eve Ascent Vehicle challenge from before the forum wipe, just minus the central aerospike stage and with a bit less liquid fuel mounted in the initial SRB stage. By the old SEAV rules I should have replaced the final decoupler (for the front-mounted drop tank that feeds the LV-909) with a small docking port, so returning to Kerbin wouldn't need an EVA.

Anyway, hope you enjoy these. Comments, questions, etc are welcome.

Edited May 28, 2013 by tavert