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Hi! I decided to do this challenge because I lost Val in an eve rover accident a day ago (don't worry, just Missing in action, but Jeb, her husband doesn't know that she is missing yet ) so, I decided to challenge you to return from Eve in the smallest spaceraft as possible. The rules are the next: The spacecraft must arrive to Eve without cheat menu (else, you're not allowed to compete) 1.1. You must record a video of ur whole mission, from the VAB to Eve, and then back to Kerbin to prove you got this criteria Your spacecraft must not only be the smallest possible, but also the lightest possible. The spacecraft must be Manned (but with kerbals, not with humans) You must get back to kerbin with a singe launch! (Don't rescue your Kerbal(s) or else u will get unqualified) You must LAND on Eve, else you will be unqualified You get 4 extra points by landing on Gilly before/after landing on Eve Mods and expansion DLC are forbidden If there's a tie, I'll judge by number of parts of your ship

Intrepid Kerbals are in distress! Flash: During Valentina's 78th attempt to land her Mk3 capsule-based Eve 3000 Challenge lifter from orbit, engineer copilot Bill finally fell asleep and spilled his coffee all over the console! The resulting short circuit caused every action group to go off simultaneously, instantly jettisoning all but their uppermost stage! Legendary pilot that she is, Valentina was able to safely re-enter her historically significant, record-setting command/service module "Jeb" under power, but it required every resource she had, and left her and the now wide awake Bill bobbing in the Drink, totally helpless, and miles from shore. In light of this emergency, your mission, fellow Kerbonauts, is to Rescue Valentina, Bill, and Their Historic Ship from the Eve Ocean and return them to Kerbin! The debate in Mission Control on how to accomplish this was lively, and unfortunately no consensus on the best approach was reached. Some argued that getting the rescue accomplished ASAP was the highest priority, while others reasoned that Valentina and Bill still had plenty of snacks according to the ship manifest, and moreover that since they had just blown the most incredible amount of funds jettisoning their massive Eve lifter, their rescue should cost as little as possible. In the end, Werner couldn't really make up his mind either, so he decided to fund both projects... So! While your mission in either case is to return both ship and occupants to Kerbin, there are two ways to play: You can get it done either as quickly or as cheaply as possible. For the "quickly" challenge, money/mass is no object and you just need to do it in the shortest time possible, from launch to recovery on Kerbin. For the "cheaply" challenge, there are two three sub-categories: lowest launch cost, lowest total cost, and lowest launch weight. The rules: What is required: You must return both the stranded Kerbals (alive), as well as their ship (in one piece, without staging, burning, or breaking anything off) from some location at least 10km offshore in any of the major seas of Eve to the ground on Kerbin. The ship to be rescued must include a MK3 capsule and two Large Ore Holding Tanks, and have a dry weight of at least 10 tons and a total weight at the time of rescue of not more than 20 tons. The cost of this vessel will not be charged against your overall mission cost. Pretty much anything within those constraints is allowed, with the proviso that it must not have any resources on board that are consumables for control or locomotion, nor can it have the intrinsic capability to create those without docking to another craft. That means all on-board fuel/RCS tanks must be empty, and all reaction wheels must be either deactivated or without power. You may furthermore not have any solar panels, RTGs, or ore converters on board the vessel to be rescued. Having said that, you may place ore in the tanks of the vessel to be rescued, but any ore that you actually convert after docking to the rescue craft cannot be counted as part of the "dry" weight of the craft to be rescued. The point here is that the rescue craft must actually bring the capability with it to create these resources, and that no matter what you start with, you must lift to orbit and deliver to Kerbin a craft that weighs at least 10 tons during all phases of this process. As long as you obey that rule, you may actually use unconverted ore purely as ballast. What is not allowed: For me, the goal of this challenge is to elicit the broadest variety of competitive solutions possible, so the rules are pretty loose. However, having said that please don't cheat. I define cheating as anything that violates the intended physics of Stock KSP. This obviously includes exploiting any and all clear bugs in the vein of Infiniglide, Ladder Drive, Kraken Drive, etc. This also includes non-Stock parts that violate the basic Stock parameters in terms of mass, TWR, ISP, etc, as well as any part clipping into non-hollow structures that significantly cheats the drag model. That is, you can clip batteries, reaction wheels, etc. into hollow adapters and nosecones, so long as they are not clipped into each other, but not into fuel tanks or other non-hollow parts, nor can you clip non-hollow parts into each other. If you want to clip backwards intakes into engines to reduce back-end drag, I guess that's OK with me. As to Alt-F12/Hyperedit, that is totally OK for testing, but for submission I expect all key phases to be fully flown and/or driven by the submitter and duly documented. That means that using MechJeb, etc. to fly the hard parts for you is expressly forbidden. Having said that, if your mission depends on some repetitive resource extraction/conversion/refueling process that would take an eternity to execute by hand, you may demonstrate just the first cycle of that explicitly and then refuel your craft fully using Hyperedit, etc. Lastly, ore extraction/processing can only be carried out by any particular launch package after it reaches LKO. What is allowed: You can place the vessel to be rescued any way you want, so long as it is floating at least 10 km offshore. Any and all purely informational mods such as KER are also fine. You may use any strategy within the constraints spelled out above to get the mission accomplished. This includes all sorts of detachable rovers/ships, reaction wheel-powered copters/ships, etc. Any way you can transport the vessel to be rescued back to Kerbin in one piece is OK, provided it does not violate Stock physics. You may use whatever engines/tanks/wheels/etc are present on your rescued module to get back home, provided that all the consumables required are brought/created by the rescue craft. The Categories: At this point, I am scoring four categories: Lowest Launch Cost: The lowest cost on the VAB indicator right before you launch, combined for all the separate modules you may launch. Lowest Total Cost: the lowest total net expenditure of funds, meaning that whatever parts and/or resources you may recover on Kerbin at the end can be deducted from your total launch cost as defined in the previous section. Lowest Launch Weight: Smallest combined mass of all modules launched from Kerbin, at the time of launch. Fastest Rescue: The shortest time elapsed from the first Kerbin launch to touchdown of the rescued craft on Kerbin, regardless of any other parameter. Note that the vehicle to be rescued itself does not count towards any of these measures. My submission: Since AFAICT this challenge is clearly possible given past challenges, I will not be submitting my own entry immediately. I will instead work on my entry in parallel with (hopefully) those of the other contestants. If there is any clear objection about feasibility based on the posted rules, please post it to this thread and I will address it as warranted. Leader boards will be created as appropriate when submission are received.... One more thing: Given that this contest will (in most cases) require at least three major design exercises, please feel free to post any intermediate steps that you're willing to share!