So I took an asparagus lander to EVE.

[GeorgeG]

Here is a Sea Level version of the above ship. Same layout, same procedures, 4 Kerbals, with more pairs of tanks and engines, more chutes, and some landing gear mods.

I later made an even smaller-lighter SEAV challenge ship, just over 15 tons launched from over 6 km.. Used Nova Punch Aerospikes and 20 kN verniers again.

So, I was issued a challenge to do it with stock parts. So, I did this one. The first pic on the pad is only to verify the mass, 22.53 tons. But you can also see the little rover I added to it on top, for the heck of it, which after re-entry over Eve was jettisoned a few KM up to land by chute.

After dropping the outer tanks, the core is flying with not only an LV-T45 (Perhaps LV-T30, i did all this stuff over a year ago) at the bottom, but also using a number of Rockomax 24-77 radial engines, in different stacked tanks. Fuel lines run vertically from tank to tank, so fuel is only used from the bottom tank, then it is dropped, and so on.

And here it is after making orbit.

And finally, this one. Stock, AND an actual capsule, no ladder-riding. Built to fly a 3-kerbal pod. 229.5 tons.

The Mechjeb numbers for Delta-V do not add up right, nor do the TWR values (below). They sometimes do not with very complex Asparagus-izing and "upper stage" engines that are fired simultaneously, taking fuel from lower tanks.

a "dab burn" to help cushion the landing.

The stock aerospikes do not have thrust vectoring and the ship was tricky to get to fly right. ANY tilt at all on the ground and it would tend to over-control at launch. So, I ended up adding some RCS thrusters and small RCS tanks to one of the Asparagus tank pairs, to help control it for the first few KM up, after which it was able to stay under control without RCS. In this image some of the RCS firings are visible.

From a test flight on Kerbin, two 1 meter tank/engine pairs just being jettisoned. This one did not have RCS yet, but it's a nice pic of the engines firing.

And here it is, in orbit around Eve.

- George Gassaway

Edited April 21, 2014 by GeorgeG

[NecroBones]

So my latest Eve mission appears to be a success. My primary goal was to do a less cheaty landing (using a real lander can, instead of a chair). I used a combination of just adding boosters until the lander was getting pretty heavy, to get the overall dV up as high as I could, and also landing at a high altitude.

I also decided that for this mission, I didn't want any super-long burns (boring), so I used the new KR-2L engines as interplanetary stages. Between all of these, the ship was getting huge, and my first attempt at building a lifter under it, resulted in the whole thing bending over and exploding on the pad, before even starting the engines. So instead, I build the boosters around it laterally, with just one tank+engine under it. This worked.

I used MechJeb mainly for informational displays, and to execute my maneuver nodes (saving time), and to pick a high-altitude landing spot. Both MJ and Engineer were horrifically confused about dV calculations due to all the odd staging.

In the end, I got my lander back up into a 100x160 orbit (overshot a little) and still had almost 2.5k of dV to spare. I was shocked at that. The landing site's altitude (5700m) made a huge difference.

After the rendezvous, the return ship still has about 100 m/s of dV left in that last KR-2L (plus poodles), before it needs to switch to the nuclear rockets, at which point it has plenty of excess dV to use (about 5km/s before switching to the return lander's stage). I'll do my return to Kerbin at the next window.

On pad, 2805 tons:

Approaching orbit:

Circularizing:

Awaiting window:

Mostly through escape burn, after staging to second KR-2L:

Approaching Eve:

Drogues:

Almost down:

Landed:

Those boosters really fly off quickly at first:

Low orbit:

Rendezvous:

Jeb is happy:

Edited April 21, 2014 by NecroBones

[NecroBones]

I'll do my return to Kerbin at the next window.

And we're home.

[TheExplosionist]

My God, I've never seen that before.

It's the only 2-man Eve return vehicle in existence. It also has 89 stages, over 3000 parts, takes 5mins to load and tends to explode spontaneously on the launch pad.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/eve_explorer/

[GeorgeG]

I made a ship for the current "Lightest Eve Lander" challenge, at this link:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/76153-Lightest-Eve-Lander/page3

Mass coming down on chutes is 33.418 ton.

Mass for liftoff is 31.868 ton.

A couple of pics:

- George Gassaway

[NecroBones]

Mass coming down on chutes is 33.418 ton.

Mass for liftoff is 31.868 ton.

Nice! It looks like the dV is barely enough from that altitude? How was the fuel reserve upon getting back into orbit?

[GeorgeG]

Nice! It looks like the dV is barely enough from that altitude? How was the fuel reserve upon getting back into orbit?

Thanks for the comment.

Being a challenge to do it as light as possible, the ship should have very little Delta V left, this had 52 m/s. If it had say 200 left over, there would be reason to change the tank set-up to make it even lighter (and an earlier version did have more left over so I changed the tanks). If it was an operational ship, yeah, you'd want to have a nice cushion of 200 Delta V or so (If it was a real-world Earth ship, WAY more! ).

There's lots more info on the Lightest Eve Lander challenge thread here:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/76153-Lightest-Eve-Lander/page3

Here's a copy of what I posted about the stats after reaching orbit:

Stable orbit achieved.

Data after reaching orbit:

Mass .868 Ton

Orbit 100.149 x 99.790 Km

Delta V expended 8478 m/s

Delta V remaining 52 m/s

Ship file is here: http://www./view/xh32o8z8ehk8ttj/Eve_2014_-_6.craft

Stock plus Mechjeb.

- George Gassaway