Temstar

If the aim is to be able to get to any planet then Eeloo is not the worst case, Moho is worst case by a long shot and transfer costing 7km/s to Moho orbit is not uncommon.

Fun fact: a litre of RP1 in fact has more hydrogen atoms than a litre of pure liquid hydrogen.

So... How is the kerbonaut supposed to get up and into that lander?

9300m/s is more than enough to get off Eve if you land on some kind of hill. At 6.5km mountain top a return trip to Low Eve Orbit can cost as "little" as 7500m/s. You only need 12,000m/s if you plan to get back to orbit from Eve's sea level. With 9300m/s you can probably get back from 4600m altitude or higher, depending on your TWR and your Isp to atmospheric pressure curve of your rocket.

There are one man pod Eve return craft that weigh 50 tons? I don't think that's possible. All the below 50 ton crafts that I know of are open-air rockets. These 50 ton capsule'd crafts don't use the EVA jetpack with its 520m/s of delta-V as it's final orbital stage does it? But suppose there was a 50 ton lander with an one man pod, that clearly shows somewhere in your design you have inefficiency. For one using tricoupler for your final stage and including those 1.25m - 2.5m adaptors seems like a waste of weight to me. Instead of tricoupler use the cubic strut trick as you would with clustered engines. Everything on your rocket, particular that final stage should only be there if it's absolutely critical. If taking away a part of the rocket doesn't cause it to fail catastrophically then it doesn't belong on a Eve return vehicle. Every kg of weight you save at the top translates to dozens of tons by the time its effect filters down to the first stage. So for example if you switch that ASAS for that spaceplane guidance package and your rocket manages to still fly straight you save another 40kg from the top. All the record breaking crafts such as that 18 ton open air two man Eve return rocket are hand flow or with MJ so as to ditch ASAS to squeeze even more delta-V out of the rocket. One other hint - if you want to carry three guys back and you don't want to use the ladder trick for an open air rocket then using three one man pod is still lighter than using a 2.5m pod.

Any no ASAS? Soviet guidance technology was pretty good during the early days of the space race. All that money and effort going into figuring out how to accurately place nuclear warheads on American soil showed. They managed to shoot a probe around the Moon before Alan Shepard even left the ground. The other restrictions I agree with, makes for a pretty good "realistic" rocket challenge. I particularly like the "no 2.5m engine" restriction as the Soviets have always had problems making big combustion chambers and nozzles. In typical Soviet problem solving fashion Glusko just said "why go to the effort of developing big engines when we can just make MOAR of them instead?"

Well I have this: This is the payload. 110 ton space colony capable of housing 134 kerbals. Has three LV-909 engine for station keeping and that's it. To get this thing away from Kerbin: Planetary Manoeuvring Engine Colossus, a stretched version of the Planetary Manoeuvring Engine Zeus. Powered by seven LV-N and holding 9600L of bipropellant and 1100L of monopropellant onboard. The forward docking port is a heavy duty quad docking port designed specifically for large space construction work: Here we have a Zeus sending a propellant depot to the Mun. Here is the payload and engine docked in LKO waiting for refuel. When fully fuelled the combines spacecraft is 187.486 tons with 60 tons being fuel. Using Tsiolkovsky rocket equation: delta-V = Ve * ln(187.486/127.486) delta-V = 800 * 9.81 * 0.3857 delta-V = 3026.95m/s Alternatively if don't use that 12 tons of fuel out of the colony: delta-V = Ve * ln(187.486/139.486) delta-V = 800 * 9.81 * 0.2957 delta-V = 2320.97m/s So either way that should be plenty of delta-V to Laythe or Duna or Eve assuming aerobraking. So what's required of me at this stage? Screenshot of safe arrival at Laythe orbit? Craft files?

It's actually Lunar Module. NASA got rid of the "excursion" because it sounded "frivolous". Since we're landing on the Mun rather than Luna (and because I have no problem with the word excursion), in KSP I call these landers MEM.

They do swear. Alan Shepard's lasts words (to himself) before his Mercury-Redstone rocket blasted off was "don't f*** up". And then there was the Soyuz T-10-1 incident where:

What this guy? It's 258 parts vs the new one at 334 parts. Most of that increase comes from the two rovers which are made up of lots of little parts. If you want to cut down parts at launch you're better off just deleting the rovers yourself rather than reusing the old one. But if you insist you can still get it at: http://www./download.php?cad6k05b1jpca22

Awww Gilly, one of the wackiest places in the Kerbolar System:

Don't know, it just works for me: Maybe the 200L tank is special?

My craft: 90.455 tons in the launch pad, 15 tons to LKO, payload fraction 16.583%, booster rocket weight 75.455 tons Built all stock except KER, flown all by hand + ASAS Rocket on the launch pad First asparagus booster pair jettison Second asparagus booster pair jettison Climbing to orbit against the morning sun Last asparagus booster pair jettison 70.086km x 70.069km orbit achieved, 33m/s of delta-V left Payload release Booster after payload release If you are interested in slightly more practical (eg self-deorbit capability) rockets that are still highly efficient check out these: Zenith Rocket Family

Check out that delta-V

No no, if you're going to do this you need to think bigger. You can't just aim a few mainsails together to a point. For some real muzzle velocity you need to build a multi-chamber cannon like the V-3:

There is actually a way for these kind of situations: send someone out and push the crew compartment retrograde with their backpack. Go back inside and then come out again repeatedly when you need to refill your backpack.

Those packs are pretty boss, in real life the Manned Manoeuvring Unit had a total delta-V of 24.4m/s. The smaller SAFER that they use on the ISS has only a measly 3m/s in the tank. A cannon / mass relay would definitely give a Kerbal enough of a kick for them to then use their pack to achieve Munar orbit from the surface. That 520m/s is also very useful if you consider that as the last stage of an Eve surface-to-orbit return craft.

Not enough delta-V, the packs have about 520m/s delta-V and you need around 640m/s to land on the Mun.

No I'm pretty sure 7.5km/s is enough. I could get off with a bit over 9km/s from as low as an altitude of 4.7km.

The trick is no command pod - the Kerbals ride the rocket back to orbit while clinging onto ladders. If my memory was correct the smallest stock SERV was somewhere around 17 tons and could return two crew back if landed on a 6.5km mountain top. It used combined normal asparagus staging and an ingenious "vertical asparagus staging" method where the core of the rocket itself was 4 stages but used the small orange radial engine and so was capable of firing all four stage engines at the same time. Each stage in the core was a 200L tank and had a fuel line that pumped fuel to the stage above it around the stack decoupler. It had around 7500m/s of delta-V.

Probe core

Well that's a shame, since Mikhail Tikhonravov came up with it first in 1947, he even designed a R-3 derived launch vehicle using the idea: Too bad everyone except Korolev thought he was crazy. Korolev took on his idea of "packet rocket" (but not the cross feeding) and hence the now familiar shape of the R-7 / Soyuz rocket family's first stage.

As with any mission, the best way to get more delta-V is to reduce weight from the top down. To start with if you're not leaving an Eve-Kerbin return vehicle in Low Eve Orbit you better go make one, it makes a huge difference in delta-V having to carry that return vehicle down to Eve's surface and then back up. Then once you have a return vehicle waiting for you in orbit, there's always the option of not using a command pod at all and just get Kerbals to hang onto ladders back to Eve orbit. If done this way it's actually possible to land and return two Kerbal to Eve (using the 6.5km mountain top) with a vehicle under 30 tons. Here for example is my Eve lander, capable of returning two man back to LEO if landed at 4.7km altitude or higher. The crew lands separately on a rover and is currently at the beach collection ocean "water" sample. When they're done they will drive to the rocket to get back up.

I once docked a spaceplane with an inline, upwards pointing docking port to the under side of a space station ...using the main engines after running out of RCS fuel ...when I docked, the main engines where out of fuel too, the last puff of thrust to send me upwards used up the very last drop of fuel ...I was moving on all three axis in relation to the station, I just happened to bump into it when the two docking ports brushed against each other It was 20% skill and 80% pure unadulterated dumb luck, I hope I never have to do that again.

The lower the better because you generally fuel up if you want go to somewhere far afterwards, and going far is best done while starting out in very low orbits due to Oberth effect. When you dock the orbital velocity of the spacecraft makes no difference, it's only the relative velocity between the spacecrafts that matter. I personally use a 75km orbit. 100km is another popular LKO orbit altitude.