Lou

Thank you Starhawk! Also, thank you Laie for running this great challenge, and additional thanks to Kuzzter and Norcalplanner for helping Laie. I appreciate the complements from Starhawk and Kuzzter, too. This was the third or fourth time I tried to do this mission, lots of hours and explosions to finally get it right, which makes success all the sweeter! FYI, the landing gear on the rovers was to help protect the wheels when the rovers disconnect and fall from the lander, and they also keep the rover from rolling away while the Kerbals plant flags and such. I planned for the return pod to use Xenon starting from a low-Eve orbit, but the high altitude landing spot (6 km) and my paranoia from previous failures resulted in the launcher reaching not just orbit, but very nearly escape velocity! If I'd seen that coming, I would have brought a few more Kerbals! Again, thank you to everyone who makes this such a great challenge!

Cool vehicle, it reminds me of the lunar lander research vehicle:

Hi! Can someone please recommend software to capture KSP videos? Preferably free software... Thanks!

My entry... FOR SCIENCE!!! Overview: A single big launch sends two brave Kerbals to Eve. Once there, they use the three science rovers to strip-mine three biomes for their science and return the results to Kerbin -- in duplicate! The first entry made For Science! Landing Site: Altitude: 6010m Latitude: 10 deg, 46', 15" N Longitude: 17 deg, 46', 17" W Biome: Eve's Peaks Site 2: Roughly 15.1 km west of Landing Site Altitude: 2759m Latitude: 11 deg, 18', 14" N Longitude: 378 deg (or maybe 18 deg?), 52', 8" W Biome: Eve's Midlands Site 3: Roughly 13.3 km west of Landing Site Altitude: 2892m Latitude: 11 deg, 15', 9" N Longitude: 378 deg (or maybe 18 deg?), 43', 25" W Biome: Eve's Impact Ejecta Weight on the launchpad: 9574 T Part count on the launchpad: 1101 Weight awaiting liftoff on Eve: 559T Part count awaiting liftoff on Eve: 415 Approximate price tag of the mission: 4,476,451 Game version: 0.9 Mods used: No mods How I found my landing site: First I scouted potential landing sites using www.kerbalmaps.com, and decided I wanted to aim for the isthmus that has the large crater sea to the east because 1) It had high altitude terrain 2) I assumed the variation in terrain would provide multiple biomes close to one landing site 3) It was a feature I could clearly identify during navigation My first landing attempt placed me on too much of a slope, but the second attempt gave me a perfect spot! Notes: Driving downhill from my landing site to the other two biomes (Site 2 and Site 3) required a lot of saveloading because the rovers tended to get up to high speeds (> 40 m/sec) going downhill, which frequently resulted in crashes. I did survive a drive with a top speed of 94 mph (42.1 m/sec)! In retrospect, adding some small wings and control surfaces might have made the rovers into nice rover/gliders. I'm proud of the Eve launcher, which uses repeated modules. The Eve launcher module consists of a Rockomax X200-32 Fuel Tank coupled to three Toroidal Aerospike engines via a TVR-400L Stack Quad-Adapter; the fourth port on the Quad-Adapter attaches to a Structural Fuselage with two LT-2 Landing Struts via a TR-18A Stack Decoupler. Overall the rovers worked great, the Eve launcher worked great, and I'm very happy with how things went. This was a great challenge, right up there with the Jool Five challenge! Click here for all images

That looks awesome!

Here's another variation. No rush on making a decision on a badge, I'm just doing this to amuse myself in between crashes on Eve! Feel free to provide feedback, too.

Variation on idea for a badge, I won't be offended if you don't use it!

Backup option like one of those spare tires you're not supposed to drive on for more than five miles... yeah, sounds right!

If you want a good badge, then I can't help you. If you have really low standards, feel free to use this (or not):

If the entire station can land and return to orbit, that counts as a "shuttle," right?

No badge? You'll get more entries if your challenge has a badge.

Obviously I'm not an artist, but I figured what the heck...

My entry, the "LX2." 53 parts, 13.45t on the runway (including a satellite): Click here for more images demonstrating SSTO capability. ...and I vote for Overfloater's gargantuan creation. Note: This replaces my previous entry, the "LX."

I ran into the same thing (no pun intended) the first time I tried to land on Pol in my Jool-5 attempt (Ver 0.90.0.705): I crashed into phantom ground way above the apparent ground. That attempt was near a big mountain ridge, so I reloaded and tried again (successfully) further away from that ridge in a fairly flat area. My guess is the data used to render the ground and the data used to detect collisions with the ground have some sort of unintended offset at Pol... Or, you know, maybe it's ghosts.

Thanks for continuing to run this challenge, Ziv! I really enjoyed it!