Wcmille

Sure; thanks. Not SSTO. One-shot lander.

I'm looking for a lightweight 3-kerbal lander for Eve with the following properties: Carries 3+ kerbals. Weighs 50 tons or less when empty. Has a docking port inline with its center of mass. (Nose port preferred) Doesn't flagrantly abuse clipping. Made of stock parts. Seismic, temperature, gravity, pressure, atmo sensors. Can achieve low Eve orbit from approximately sea level. Bonuses: Easy entrance and exit to surface. Long ladder is OK, crew transfer "elevator" preferred. Science Module & Mystery Goo containers. These don't have to return to orbit. Attached, disposable, rover Lighter is better. Cost doesn't matter. I'm aware of this thread, but challenges like these don't necessarily include decent packages, and most only handle 1 kerbal. Can assume starting at something like 120km orbit, not on surface.

Yes. Here's the link to the flight prep: http://imgur.com/a/RnPYh My original flight plan was: 136 days to Moho, 1391dV 76 days at Moho (3671dV arrival) 86 days to Kerbin, 3287 dV ejection 2162 dV Kerbin circularization. I'm leaving all my hardware at Moho, so the craft is much lighter on the way home. My arrival at Moho was about 300 dV over budget, so my return is going to involve slowing down at Kerbin Pe enough to get captured at Mun, since I don't have enough to circularize at Kerbin. Once I get to Mun, I've got only 5 days to refuel and reload the ship for the Eve launch window. I'm also out of monopropellant.

Took a crew of 6 to Moho. Here's their story on Imgur: http://imgur.com/a/jSYPC

@Snark, Takeoff TWR turns out to be an extremely important factor, as you alluded to. Some craft designs with higher TWR with LOWER dV have outperformed higher dV craft (in terms of final specific orbital energy) because they don't let the lower atmo eat off all the dV. An all aerospike design is much lighter, with much more dV, but will barely break atmo. I cannot find a vector design that outperforms the mammoth, the small difference in TWR appears to matter. My memory is that my current best design has a vacuum TWR of about 2. In an all-mammoth design (my initial design), I'd probably just remove the side tanks entirely. The problem with the mammoth after about 15km is that it's not earning it's pay very well. You must throttle back, or you burn up, so this design actually lets the mammoth burn out at the time the aerospikes hit TWR 1.0. You don't burn up, and then you get the better dV. More aerospikes lets you hit the TWR sooner, but engines that aren't firing are dead weight, so I fully believe better designs are still unknown to me. I'd like to "engineer" the correct craft, but the aerodynamics and atmo effects dominate the behavior, putting the math beyond me.

Eve, or even underwater on Kerbin, seems like the perfect place to use them. Doing much below 10km on Eve is awful.

Here is a variant of the previous lander, at apoapsis. The docking craft, in a 90km x 103.5km orbit, would need ~3700 dV to catch this craft moving at 1335 m/s. This seems hard, but doable. The wings allow for stability during the gravity turn and control once the mammoth runs out. The exact, best, gravity turn probably matters a lot. I'm also curious if I could still make this design stronger somehow and give myself and even further margin. One idea for docking that I have is to remove two of the six aerodynamic domes above the aerospike stacks and replace them with shielded docking ports. Then you'd multi-dock the lander's nose into the rear of the capture vehicle, and use the lander's engines for the final circularization burn. I have some concerns about the stability of the craft, and this might require redesign. A problem with docking ports on the side of the lander (really, anywhere) is stability under high-thrust. Once connected, the two craft will be very interested in the maximum possible thrust. I don't understand your final point about re-entry. At present, I am simply using HyperEdit to put the craft on Eve's surface to see if I can even get it off the planet. Once that works, if I can get comfortable enough to carry a little more weight, perhaps I can use wings and chutes to help.

I think OP is suggesting something that requires no clicking.

If time is not a thing, can't you just do lots of gravity assists of Kerbol?

Are you putting an engine on every stage, or just using drop tanks?

Posted 14 hours after OP!

Might look at @Rune's base-in-a-box. I think he uses the "under rover" method for his designs.

Here's where I'm at for the moment. Launched from 1000m, I can put this single kerbal craft up to 335k and 60m/s at Apogee. At that altitude, I should only need ~2600 m/s to make a 90x335 orbit. It was outside of atmo for several minutes. End of burn to apogee was 4 minutes. The craft is pretty straightforward. Its a mammoth, fuel tanks, a capsule, a big reaction wheel, and a nose cone. No way to dock yet. Just working on the launch. Can't help wondering if there are other designs that yield even more final orbital energy, or what is the ideal mix of altitude and velocity for a given energy. This craft is about 4240 dV vacuum. In 58 seconds, it's out of fuel, so I still think capture is possible. Even if these are solvable, how do I land the thing without burning up?

I don't see a stageless craft making it to orbit without assistance at Ap. The full dv for Eve orbit is probably something like 8k, which exceeds what a stageless aerospike can do (about 7k) Resorting to EVA is an emergency, but not good as a plan. If I'm willing to lose the whole craft in the beginning, I should just use stages. Suppose it's all possible, the question is at the end: is how much dV do I have to have? Can't figure out if wings help more with lift, or hurt more with drag/weight.

Yes. Suborbital, outside of atmo.

I want to calculate the dV I will need for a sea level launch from Eve for sub orbital flight to 100-120km. Roughly how much is required? How much of that dV is due to loss? My idea is to do a sub orbital rendezvous with another craft that will circularize my orbit. I do not want either craft to stage, so that both craft are fully reusable and can repeat the landing.

Allow Maneuver Node Planning in the Tracking Station Make it possible to set maneuver nodes in the tracking station. When planning routes for flotillas, it's annoying to switch from craft to craft because of the loading times. (h/t @Brikoleur) Mk0 Liquid Fuel has Wet/Dry Ratio of 9: This component currently has a wet/dry ratio of 10. All other rocket and liquid fuel tanks have 9. It should be made to be 9 for consistency. Action Group Binding for Resource Toggle: Allow action groups to turn resource consumption for a part on and off. This would allow activation of emergency battery power, or force ore or fuel resources to or away from specific components. Action Group Binding for Resource Transfer Out and Resource Transfer In: This allows players to easily transfer or refuel craft with large tanks. Never Create Missions for Debris: If a satellite is marked as debris, do not create a reposition mission. If a base or station is debris, do not create an expansion mission. Discussion. Allow Undocking From Any Mated Port: At present, if two ports are docked together, only one of them will offer an undocking option. Allow both ports to offer the undocking option. Additional Parts: Rationale: Allow sharing of craft between more players (not all players use all mods). Reduce part count. Provide outlet for science points in late game. 2.5m NERV. 1.25m RTG. Reduces part count for designs with many RTGs. 2.5m Liquid Fuel Tank in 8, 16, 32, 64. Same stats as Rocket Fuel counterparts. 0.625 "long" rocket fuel tank (could be same stats as Mk0 liquid fuel) Pilot 4: Precise Burn: Level 4 pilots (can optionally) automatically stop a burn when the dV starts to increase (h/t @steuben). In practice, this is when the dV hits 0.0. Maybe there's a toggle or similar to turn it on/off. Engineers Can Repair Broken Solar Panels and Antenna Engineers can tweak Spring & Damper settings on Landing Gear: When an Engineer opens the context menu for landing gear, allow them to set VAB-only tweakables on landing gear (possibly other parts). This also has the convenient side effect of letting you check what your gear is set to, if you forget. Alert When an On-Rails Craft is Destroyed: Using the Existing Contract System Alerts "Radio Signal" Toolbar Button, indicate when owned, non-debris craft on rails are destroyed. Discussion here. Provide Profession Type and Semi-Major Axis Length for Rescue Missions: I have a rescue mission to rescue a Kerbal from around the Sun, but I don't know what orbit that is. If the orbit is extremely far out, or extremely close to the Sun, I don't want it. I like how missions where you have to put a satellite into orbit will tell you what the orbit has to look like, so you can decide if you can achieve it before taking it. I'd also like to know what kind of Kerbal is being rescued. Never Auto-board Kerbals: Its much more time expensive to realize kerbals snuck aboard to try to launch and realize the craft is empty. Always require the user to indicate which kerbals are going. Provide a Slope/Height Gradient mode in Kerbnet: Picking a great base location is about picking somewhere flat. Would be great for KerbNet to not just show elevation, but to show slope, so you can see where the flat areas are. The color scheme probably needs to be non linear, because small angles matter a lot, but angle beyond ten degrees matter less. Contour lines might also do the trick. Show a Marker for Pointing Away from Navigation Markers: Most NavBall markers have two pairs: Prograde/Retrograde, Normal/Anti-Normal, Towards Target & Away. Navigation Markers don't have this, but it would be very useful for landing on them. Don't Show Blackout Bars Unless They are Non-zero: On the Kerbal portraits, there are bars that indicate the kerbal is getting close to losing consciousness. Don't show the empty bars when they are empty, there are just obscuring the portrait. Completed Items "Control from Here" Action Group Binding: (Added in 1.3.1) Allow control from here to be set as an action group. Rationale: This would make docking convenient, or changing the perspective from some craft helpful. Do Not Reset the NavBall: (Added in 1.3.1) When changing craft, leave the NavBall state (open/closed) as it is, instead of closing it every time. Discussion here. Tweakable Reaction Wheel: (Added in 1.2) The smallest reaction wheel (or all of them) should allow you to control how much torque it produces, since tiny probes over-torque with the smallest reaction wheel and the smallest okto (which has no torque). I think the current tweak for SAS (Pilot only/SAS only) is somewhat useful for rovers.

It depends on the purpose of the base. I mostly make bases for high performance mining. If that's what you are doing: Land on the equator. I find this helps with takeoff and arrival. The flats of Minmus are the most forgiving place to make your first base. Send down a team to find the exact spot you want to put the base. Planting a flag, or leaving a rover in the location makes it easier to navigate to. Build something useful with a single tower. If it's the only thing that lands, you've got something. You should have a mental picture of the exact relative height relationship of the landing gear to the docking ports, so that they all match. Where they are on the base parts doesn't matter (provided they have ground clearance). It only matters where they are relative to each other. While landing, ensure that your solar panels will be aligned to track E/W for max efficiency. Don't forget cooling for ISRUs and Engineers for the drill. These have huge efficiency impacts. Extra battery and fuelcells are useful, but can always be added later. Your two choices to connect things in stock are wheels or rockets. Recently, I use rockets. I have a short, squat, skycrane with wide-set rockets (so I don't scorch the towers underneath) with lots of RCS and reaction wheels so it can readily control the payload. Here's my Mun Base.

According to the Wiki, here's the solar multipliers for various planets: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Electric_charge Here's the electricity generation per mass (figures are Kerbin) http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Parts#Generators

I'd define the best engines as the ones that form the envelope of best TWR vs best Isp. They are (in order of best TWR/worst Isp to worst TWR/best Isp): Flea, Twinboar, Vector, Rhino, Poodle, Nerv, Dawn I believe all the other engines have worse Isp/TWR than these.

I'm suggesting "cogeneration" as the 4th way. You power the ions, whole or in part, by the alternators of your other engines. The Kerbin ejection burn from the video above illustrates what I was hoping to do. As @Snark says, the composite engine with reduce your TWR, but increase your Isp.

Latest release fixed my problem.

How many Dawns are in this craft? It looks like your ejection burn from Kerbin was perfectly timed to run out of battery at the conclusion of the burn. Very nice engineering. How are the Dawns and panels attached?

Why are ion engines bad for very large things? I only had stock parts in mind. The idea would be a craft that consumes both fuels.

Anybody tried pairing Dawns with Nervs? How'd the go? Can't tell if the boost (Nervs have alternators) is worth it in practice.