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Apotheosist

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Posts posted by Apotheosist

  1. Since "jet" and "Eve" are both 3 letters long and thus unsearchable (Urgh!), does anybody know if jet engines will work in Eve's atmosphere? I seem to recall reading that they work but are less efficient, but of course I can't search for it. If nobody does know, could somebody teleport a jet plane there and try it?

    I tested jet engines there myself (both types), and although they glowed, consumed fuel and displayed up to 100% efficicency, they did not produce any thrust at all for me.

  2. I believe the challenge should remain as it is, although different categories could be implemented. I just did some tests with my Eve orbital ascent rocket, and I found that to get it up to a 10k apoapsis, took 5 of the 7 stages of my rocket. That's 100 tons out of 130. Which drasticaly reduces launch weight, and reduces the delta-v requirement from about 11500m/s to less than 8,000m/s.

  3. @ Apotheosist

    What is your TWR at liftoff? And could you also provide a save of the ship? I am pretty sure you can shave some fuel load out of that with the same performance by using smaller tanks and jetissoning them as they get empty ...

    My TWR at liftoff is 1.5 (well 1.47 but I aim for 1.5), and I'm also sure this design can be improved, I just liked that all the tanks were the same size. But of course in this case performance is more important. Here is the craft file: http://www./?vc3p64yqd62djy4, feel free to play with it and improve on it, and be sure to share any good results :)

    Also, someone has already gone to Eve and back in one single veichle, all stock except mechjeb. He landed on a 11km mountain. I did some tests with my rocket, and it took the first five stages of my rocket to reach an apoapsis of 10km. This means that if I were to start on a 10km mountain on Eve, the ascent rocket would only need to weigh 30 tons, instead of the 130 tons if I launched from sea level. I think we can safely say that launching from a high mountain on Eve helps significantly. See the guy's mission here: http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/10lfq0/return_trip_to_eve_craft_file_in_the_comments/

  4. @Excalibur, Thank you :) and I totally agree, it doesen't count. Just wanted to post it here to show people how a small part of the challenge could be achieved. Now that we have something that can get into eve orbit, we can concentrate on getting it to Eve. In my mind, it would be such a waste of time to build a big rocket to get to Eve...when you can not even get into orbit from Eve. I build rockets from the top down :)

    @LambdaCactus, I'm sure Excalibur appreciates my effort, and he was only being encouraging, by giving me a greater challenge. I thrive on tough challenges, so It's all cool :)

    @untitled, the point of my mission was to try to make as small a lander as possible that could take off from Eve. This will be easier to then take to Eve.

  5. Well until you actually run the whole mission from the launchpad to Eve orbit, I'm not too concerned. Watch out though! I'm close behind you with my Hurricane design, no cheating whatsoever.

    How heavy is your eve lander payload?

    Good luck with your design! Some competition would be great :D

    The whole lander, the rocket that is needed to get back up to Eve orbit weighs about 130 tons. The part that actually gets to eve orbit only weighs about 3 tons. That is, the last stage weighs 2.91 tons when empty. I hope that's what you meant by payload :)

  6. Approximate delta-V on what trajectory, with what approximate TWR's? On what flight path?

    For me, my craft had 7 stages, each stage had a thrust to weight at the start of about 1.5. My flightpath was straight up until first atmospheric colour change, then turn 45 degrees. Continue at this angle until the second atmospheric colour change, then turn 90 dgerees (horizontal). Keep burning until apoapsis reaches 100km, and circularize at this altitude. This is my "universal flightplan", which i use for any planet and seems to work well for crafts with TWR's between 1.5 and 2, which is the around the most efficient TWR.

  7. No one said getting to orbit from the surface of Eve was impossible.

    What is has still yet to be proven is can you build a rocket that can get to Eve, land, then return to Kerbin. I too would say it is nigh on impossible. The vehicle required would be massive. The lag would make piloting it for burns a pain at the least. Putting it down on Eve without breaking anything is another hurdle.

    Putting it down on Eve is easy, I have already tested that and it went very well. The thicker atmosphere slows you down much more :)

    I could quite easily do a mission to return a kerbal from the surface of Eve Back to Kerbin with two rockets, which I'm actually going to work on tonight. One rocket to get to Eve and up to Eve orbit, then rendezvous with a return rocket to Kerbin. Doing it all in one rocket is much more of a challenge. But you people need to have more faith! With good design you can greatly reduce mass and part number of your rockets. People see all these massive ungainly rockets and tend to form assumptions about how big rockets need to be to do certain things.

  8. I just tested a 20 tank 5 engined lander on Eve, even with a 6km altitude landing spot all it could manage was 1.5km/s at 50km altitude. My lander had 7.5km delta v, and lost 2km on drag and 4km on gravity. To put it another way, one would have to land on top of a mountain so high it eliminates all the drag in order to achieve orbit, or land a proper monster on a mountain using a perfect Kerbin escape, inclined rendezvous and aerobraking.

    In other words, return from Eve is nigh on impossible.

    Finally, there is no such thing as a universal lander, because a lander can either be designed to return on its own, or for rendezvous returns, because I don't believe that Llaythe, Tylo, Eve or Moho can be directly returned from. Moho is also unique because of the overheating meaning landers must be small. Therefore I would have to choose 3 different craft for all possible return missions, and a transport in addition.

    Sorry to rain on your parade buddy :)

    Nothing is nigh on impossible. Earlier today I reached orbit from the surface of Eve with stock parts: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/21748-First-ever-ascent-to-orbit-from-Eve-using-stock-parts

    Sorry to rain on your parade buddy :D

  9. That is a LOT of dV to be dragging around through space!

    Gonna be interesting to see how you get it to Eve orbit!

    Oh, extra 'cool points' for taking off from the middle off the ocean!

    It certainly is! The lander weighs about 130 tons. I've seen other people's ships with landers weighing about this much. I have also managed to fly some of the smaller previous versions to Eve, for this one it should be just a little more difficult to build the launch rocket.

    Taking off from the middle of the ocean is easier as you don't need landing legs :D it also kinda proved that I did it from sea level, without using any high mountains to help me.

  10. Fantastic job! Now we *know* this can be done. How many tries did it take you to come up with a design that could do this? Did you warp it to Eve or did you land it there legitimately? Also, awesome mod.... downloading that now, it will come in handy!

    It took me 11 tries :D haha. The ship's name is "Eve 11". Yes, I have 10 other designs named Eve 1 to Eve 10.

    I basically teleported it to Eve by changing the persisitence file. Under the vessel I changed things like "Landed= True", "REF=5", "Splashed= True", "Alt=0" and things until I had it floating nicely in the sea. I have landed some of the previous versions from orbit to test parachutes and such things, those tests went well, so I didn't feel there was need to repeat that part.

  11. Is this the first stock parts orbital ascent from Eve? If you have already done this or know someone who has, please let me know. Until then I will bask in the partial glory of being the first to acheive orbit from Eve using stock parts. I did use the engineer mod, but that doesen't help with the ascent to orbit, it just displays information, which is handy for showing things such as orbital altitude in the screenshots.

    Yes, I only got to orbit, I didn't do the whole round trip back to kerbin. In fact I didn't even go from kerbin to Eve. I changed the persistence file to put this craft on the surface of Eve. One step at a time. Now I'm going to work on a rocket to take this lander out to Eve. Then the third step will be to transfer the crew to a seperate ship to do the whole round trip from Kerbin to Eve and back to Kerbin :D

    I did fly this same rocket last night, but I didn't want to burn all the way into orbit because I wanted to do the whole mission without "cheating". However tonight I couldn't wait and took it to orbit, and thought you guys would like to know.

    I have learnt from this mission that it takes about 11,500m/s of delta-v to reach orbit from the surface. Well that's how much it takes me.

    Pictures: http://imgur.com/a/9yaTU

  12. I have taken both types of jet engines to Eve, fired them in the atmosphere, right clicked on them and they showed their efficiency, going up to 100% depending on altitude. The craft had four jet engines and had a theoretical thrust-to weight on Eve of more than 3. However, even though they were working at good efficiency and they were glowing and using up fuel, they did not produce any discernible thrust. I detached two outer tanks on my way down through the atmosphere, then turned on the jet engines, but the detatched tanks fell alongside the jet powered craft at the same velocity. Eventually I crashed into the surface.

    Can you confirm that, although the jet engines appear to be working, they actually produce any thrust?

  13. I have been working on this, it's one of my main goals. So far I've managed to land on Eve with a rocket capable of reaching 95km vertically, almost out of the atmosphere. However to give it the extra delta-v needed to reach orbit makes the lander significantly larger, and makes the whole launch vehicle much much larger. I've never been good at handling very large rockets, and neither is my laptop :( I considered setting up a similar challenge to this, but only to reach Eve orbit. Another ship would then rendevous to pick up the crew and go home. That would be enough of a challenge on it's own.

    Maybe the challenge should be "highest eve ascent" or "closest to eve orbit from surface". This will gradually come to meet the original challenge of the complete mission, but will allow more collaboration and sharing (or stealing, whatever you want to call it) of ideas along the way. Having more collaboration can be a great help with difficult challenges, and with more people working together, we might see an Eve-return rocket sooner than if we all worked independently.

    Anyway, despite what I just said about working together on this, I'm still gonna go work on my rocket to try to beat everyone to it. Muahahaha!

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