fourfa

Sidebar: running KSP from Steam on a Mac, is there any way to control whether it updates on release day? I'd like to know whether I can wait some days and see what breaks, have time to manage missions as needed before updating

Thanks for the link here in my Eve thread! It's shocking how the ascent rocket scales up just from hauling 2 kerbals back to orbit, something like 8X this size.

Those are interesting ideas, thanks. Pumping fuel around from the upper stages, the 3 Mammoths of the ascent vehicle's S1/S2 would hop a fair distance. Problem is the landing zone and reasonable incline - took some testing to find one from orbit that wouldn't tip, atmospheric entry isn't that predictable, and I was originally figuring to use the rover to find a nice huge flat spot. Hopping in a ~340T skyscraper is pretty chancy. Refueling a light plane from the ISRU on the ascent vehicle - also an interesting idea I hadn't thought of. That could yield a much bigger range than the monstrosity I've been playing with. Bringing multiple ascent vehicles - no reason a brute force approach wouldn't work too. Lots of consider, thanks for all the ideas! - - - Updated - - - I'll have a look - 8 tons is roughly similar to the ISRU, drills, fuel cells, ore tanks setup but would displace the 15 tons of the Mammoth engine, or ~8T of aerospikes I've needed so far just to get in the air at 100+m/s, and get rid of the colossal sloshing tanks of LF/O.

Does a straight-down drop like that provide enough time for chutes to fully deploy on Duna?

Hello all, first post on the forums. I'm doing a big Eve mission to collect science from all the surface biomes. Mission profile is a disposable surface biome hopper, eventually calling down an ascent vehicle from orbit at a suitable LZ. 2 Kerbals - a scientist to reset the experiments, an engineer for the ISRUs and broken things, 2 cabins to recover 2 copies of all experiments (just for fun). I have the ascent vehicle finished - sea level capable, 4 stages with ISRU surface fueling, ~450T and 200 parts at Kerbin launch, ~300T and 80 parts at Eve launch. The surface of Eve in my sandbox/hyperedit testing save is hilariously littered with wreckage and dead Kerbals from the process of designing that craft, but it works every time. The only requirement is landing on no more than a moderate incline. Oh, and this is a mostly stock game with just GPOSpeedFuelPump, EditorExtensions, KER, MJ. Cost and techs are not factors. Option 1: I designed and tested a 2-Kerbal rover to drive over all the biomes, and I quickly lost interest in that method. Eve is a big place and rovers can be explodey, though it seems to work with a lot of F5/F9 and it's very simple. Maybe I just need more design work to survive 4x physics warp, and read a book? Option 2: I designed and tested a vertical-launch 2-Kerbal ISRU suborbital rocket that can fly horizontally for a bit and land on chutes. I went for as small as possible with aerospikes and ~1500m/s sea level dV. Works terrific on Kerbin, but I can't seem to make more than 6-7km per hop on Eve - very tedious. Perhaps a gigantic Mammoth based ship could get a lot more suborbital and cover more ground? Perhaps some big wings could give me more glide distance? Option 3: I've looked at low-altitude rocket planes with landing gear and a Mk3 ISRU cargo bay. It does seem like the surface is smooth enough that low-speed landing and take-off is possible. But the mass is such that I'm having trouble generating enough lift with something that could survive entry from orbit. Parts count and TWR with spikes seems marginal, craft profile with Mammoth is pretty unwieldy, maaaaybe a Mainsail could work but seems like it might have trouble taking off again at low elevations. But maybe - just maybe - I might get a plane to float around, get data from "splashed-down" biomes, and rocket back to land? Most of the info I've found on flying on Eve is very dated, based on Kethane, strictly about SSTOs, ion gliders, etc. Option 4 would seem to be wait a week for 1.0.5 and see how the mini-ISRU parts affect the economics of options 2 and 3, though I'm concerned about the reported pickiness with low ore concentrations. TL;DR: any thoughts on how best to explore the surface of Eve?

It's an Apollo 13 joke (a good one)