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On the way to Eve. more pics here https://imgur.com/a/YbdaH Usually i would have finished that mission in 2 hours, but i had to revert the flight 3 times, each after 1 hour of playing.. man i was LAME yesterady...

Unfortunately 2 of my Kerbonauts are left around Eve, and i planned a mission to get them back both. So here is the main part of the ship, and Eve taxi One kerbonaut is on 100km orbit above Eve, and that is too close to Eve, i dont know if i will have enough fuel to go so low with the whole ship, thats why i am taking the Eve taxi with 2600 m/s to pick him up Second kerbonaut is on orbit of Gilli, should not be a problem to pick him up More footage here https://imgur.com/a/qfYg3

I kinda finished long range ship. It has around 8000 deltaV. And it is supposed to Start at Kerbin, go to Jool, aerobreake with one of those attachable shields (Laaythe). Then land on Bop. Then go back to Eve, use aerobreaking and land lander on Gilli. All without refuelling. Is it enough delta v? https://imgur.com/a/6gcId

So after i had everything prepared for manned landing on Eve, i finally wanted to do that mission today. And eventhough i tested everything so many times and everything went well, in real mission it was so hard - with so many unexpected game errors and tons of reloads - that i can hardly say after all that i really enjoyed it. To be honest, i dont want to hear about Eve for several weeks. It took me 5 hours to get to Eve and back to orbit... pheeew So what can go wrong? 1) Problems with refuelling main rocket at Kerbin 2) not enough fuel at Eve to slow down into a circular orbit at Eve 3) that means no chance to choose landing site 4) any site lower than 1500m means that i dont get it back to orbit, because not enough fuel to fight thick atmosphere. OK after many times i landed on highlands !! Pure luck! 5) ladders suddenly dont work, eventhough they worked on kerbin launchpad !!! 6) slopes on Eve cause your ship still move, and never stop still, so i couldnt plant a flag properly, because the landing construction did not allow the kerbal to leave the area.. see screen with flag 7) Ship still moving - thats why ladders were not working.. when ship moves the ladders dont allow you to cross more of them - so after two hours of swearing i got the kerbal somehow back to ship. I really though i can start the whole mission again 8) ok, lets go away - stage sequence went well, but ship started to turn backwards at height around 20000m. Eventhough it never did while testing. whyyyY? 9) figured out i must go under 250m/s to prevent ship from turning backwards (probably aerodynamic issue) 10) that means i had too low speed at upper stage. Many times i needed 5 more seconds of fuel, but there was none.. 11) but after 50 tries i made it to orbit, and saved the game I was so annoyed that i forgot to take some important screens in the course of mission. Finished. Halelluyah ! https://imgur.com/a/D4Xvx i used some screens from testing, and not actual mission. but what the hell. i forgot to make them on the run

i deorbit from 100.000km. At speed 3100 m/s i cannot go any slowlier. The ship connects together after i deploy shutes. And The ship perfectly survives, so it is only bug in the game.

anyone knows why the upper parts of the ship are so... hmm.. separated when aerobreaking? https://imgur.com/a/Yo4xZ

Hey Guys, my CKAN seem to be stuck on opening. See screen, i waited like an hour to see if it gets connected but didnt work https://imgur.com/a/IYHf6

So finally I have a carrier for my Eve lander. And because it is a 350 tons monster, it was not that easy. But it seem OK after two days of many bad tries. So I call this OCTOPUS https://imgur.com/a/UE0Ya It is surprisingly stable on ascent, all previous models collapsed on ascent. I cant wait to get back to my gaming PC to do that Eve landing mission. Been trying that since december. Man, it became too much personal..

mine looked very similar, untill I run KSPx64 version on DX11, which solved problem with low memory. If you have similar issues try it How to force DX11 If you have crashes dou to mods, i solved this by CKAN mod installer Never had a crash since that. Oh and also upgrade of PC helped a lot, but mainly with graphic performance and overall faster performance. But Stable it was before upgrade

Why not career mode? it still gives the most logic progress in the game. Take contracts, gain science by doing them, gain money by doing them, get more money and more advanced equipment to be able to go for harder and harder mission.. Right now i have Minimus Ultimate 6 mission, with one ship land on Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Bop, Gilli. Pretty nice mission I kind of need that challenge from the game. i cannot make it up by myself

BTW can you advice a challenging game mode ? i did career mode twice, fully opened tech tree twicce. Starting for the third time is not really funny. Especialy the early stages are a bit boring. What you guys did instead ?

yea i am planning hard mode too. Very good idea for launches with no possibility of quickload or revert. True Must have What kind of engines are used in the service bays? Are they in later tech tree discoveries?

which visual mods are you using? very cool pics you have

LANDED AND ORBITED EVE So finally i have a ship capable of landing and going back to orbit of Eve. Some notes for others who plan this mission these days. 1) use two heat shileds, the upper serving as umbrella is very important. it dramatically increases drag 2) dont use landing struts as they explode even at small landing speeds. Instead I used structure from I beams. They are perfect, I landed at speed 6m per second and it survived easily 3) Land in highlands, as starting from 2000 meters above sea, rather than from sealevel, gives you important advantage when going up.. 4) i have even 40 seconds of fuel left, when i made it to orbit. See screens, they are from my notebook, as i am on journey and do only testing on this slow PC. So very bad quality https://imgur.com/a/bPYG9

realized terrible mistake in building Eve liftoff rocket. Today i found strange button on my kerbal engineer panel in building Hangar. There is ATMOSPHERE button. So far, most of my ships showed enough TWR in Hangar, but they were not able to lift from the ground. But after pressing this button, i realized in atmosphere flight they had too little TWR. After some corrections i finally managed to orbit from Eve, in cheat mode ofcourse, was only testing the rocket. But now building a manned Eve rocket shouldnt be a problem. Oh that button, why i didnt see it earlier BTW how could i be playing without Engineer Redux before anyway.. not a chance without it.

Lol i used to over-engineer my ships too. usually took 10x more monopropellant than i needed, took 10x more battery, 10x more powerful engine (especiallY for landers), 10x more solar panels etc. Now i find beauty in minimalistic designs. I dont even take monopropellant tanks on landers, what i have in cabin is just enough (10-15 units) I take as little as possible, and keep the designs clean (hide batteries, probe controlls). For example this lander with little engine can land/get to orbit pretty much anywhere without atmosphere, and even on Duna. It can also do seismic measures missions, has enough delta V for flying around little bit. https://imgur.com/a/5Fa3J Gravity and aerobreak at Laythe yesterday https://imgur.com/a/bAwQU

I saw lot of people using inflatable 10m heat shileds, fixed to ship from start, but if you want to use them on both sides of hte ship, it might obstruct your docking ports or limit your other staging. So i came up with attachable heat shileds, each having docikng port and probe control. This design is not that good lookin, but very practical https://imgur.com/a/oB1GO you just attach heat shield only for that part of flight when you need it, then throw it away (or park back to docking place). It does allow all the staging and docking that you usually need on most of the ships without shields causing conflics

on 64 bit computer it could be larger than 256 kilometers

EVE landing: i was trying to land with spaceshuttle and get back to orbit of EVE. Landing is very easy !!! spaceshuttle is very controllable and has high temperature resistency, at least with MK3 parts. As for ascent - There is atmosphere on Eve, i thought of using lift of wings for ascent. That could be very efficient to gain some altitude using more wings lift rather than engine power. However, there is no oxygen on Eve, sou you cannot bring engines that use air-in-takes. I think it is pretty potencial idea, but i am not that experienced with flying spaceshuttles, so i didnt manage to get back into orbit.

Try to rotate the ship using E or Q button. This way you will keep the shiled facing where you want. Unless you have main mass of ship on the opposite side of the shiled. Then it really works more like parachute, and not shield.

my lander has around 2300 M/s and its completely fine for landing, using some parachutes. see screens https://imgur.com/a/64UrD what do you mean how far you can get ???

could you share your manned Eve ship with me? at least basic engine and fuel tanks settings. I cannot find proper construction for ascent. Most of youtube videos are outdated if i take enough fuel, the ship is too heavy, unstable on descent, and usualy explodes. taking more inflatable shields doesnt work (like on Matt Lowne videos - they explode and your whole ship too, when you undock them) if i take less fuel, i have perfectly stable ship, land easily, but cannot get high enough to make orbit quite tough mission..

since i upgraded PC, i am using lots of visual enhancment mods, and i must say. i would never play KSP without these mods again. Its so addictive, so real lookin, so special... and by the way i play KSP from september 2017 - several hours a day, i unlocked the whole tech tree in career mode TWICE. And still i want tp play more. So much more to discover and enjoy For example, i had two ships on the same orbit trajectory around mun. but one ship was 10 km behind the first ship (effect of undocking force.. and long time waiting) I wanted to dock them again, and i was searching for maneuver with the second ship to catch up the first one. And it was a major discovery for me, that i have to burn BACKWARDS from the ship which is in front of me, to catch her one full orbital flight later... with retrograde burn i went into lower orbit, and going faster that way. It seems unlogical, usually you want to burn FORWARDS to go faster

thats good to read, but does stock game allow this? i was really playing with this whole evening, and couldnt make it work. It was maybe on older version of game, and since that i didnt try it. so maybe thats the reason. thanks