Eve Manned Return Mission

[RocketBlam]

Well, I just finished it, and it was by far the most difficult mission I've ever flown. The primary challenge was something that could be lifted into orbit in the first place, followed by getting it to Eve, which was a trial. Then of course landing safely, and returning.

The landing vehicle has somewhere around 8,700 Delta-V and weighs about 125 tons at landing, about 118 at Eve liftoff (I put all the parachutes and landing gear on decouplers so I wouldn't have to lift them back into Eve orbit).

This is the Imgur album:

http://imgur.com/a/2C0fb#0

A few highlights:

Liftoff

Eve landing. I used Mechjeb to land at the location, and sadly it did such a great job that it landed right on top of the rover I was using as a target (I had sent it ahead to find a good landing spot.) The fact that it survived the landing shocked me. The landing gear actually wasn't supposed to hold up the whole craft, it was just supposed to cushion the impact on the girder landing struts. As it turned out, the rover was holding up much of the weight.

I almost couldn't get back on the ladder because the rover was interfering.

Liftoff from Eve. The carnage created by the parachutes hitting the ground was impressive.

Orbit achieved with 300+ Delta-V left. I had to use MechJeb ascent guidance just to keep the thing pointed right, and even then I had to manually correct it during launch. It just got into wild oscillations and went out of control otherwise, even with MechJeb.

Redocked with transfer stage for the return home. Actually this was the transfer stage from an earlier, failed mission.

Landing on Kerbin

Delicious, delicious science

[Giacomo]

Nice! Can i have the craft file? :)

[JedTech]

[quote name='Giacomo']Nice! Can i have the craft file? :)[/QUOTE]

Giacomo, I've noticed that you like to download crafts. Take a look at this website: [URL]http://kerbalx.com/[/URL]

Enjoy :)

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Congrats on the Eve return mission RocketBlam!! I've been telling myself I need to do that for a year or so now. Maybe I should do it next!

[Foxster]

You know this mission was done in 2014 and that craft wouldn't stand a chance in 1.0.5?

[Red Dwarf]

Does it seem like there's been a lot of necro'd posts lately? Two of my old threads were brought back from the grave, and I've seen more than ten that were more than 3 years old. I wonder what's going on with that...