To Eve's surface (sea level) and back - with stock parts only in v1.0.2

[selfish_meme]

TWR relative to EVE in Engineer, or to Kerbin?

In KER you need a 2.0 TWR in relation to Eve to take off.

[magnemoe]

I'd like to see that overtime I try it shakes itself apart when the Kerbal enters the seat.

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Not on Eve

Tested launch with kerbal on kerbin and it worked nice, accurate position of seat seems important.

Atmospheric TWR in the pressure on Eve is far lower than on launchpad, I have TWR 5 on the booster stage.

[Astyrrean]

Congratz and very brave to go through this with such bad fps.

Is the way mechjeb is doing the ascent in your video the most efficient way? No gravity turn on eve?

I've made another video (but I still need to upload to YouTube) with a more traditional ascent profile (gravity turn at 50k or so). The bottom line is that the vertical profile is not that inefficient comparatively. I managed to save just 500 m/s vacuum DeltaV with a gravity turn, at the price of making the ascent much much harder to pilot (overheating being an even greater issue; staging high risk of collisions.)

At the end of the day, if you can pull 16g acceleration with the upper stages for long enough, accelerating to the 3,000 m/s or so of LEO velocity is so fast that the loss of speed to Gravity is minimal (in this case, roughly that 500 m mentioned above.)

[selfish_meme]

Tested launch with kerbal on kerbin and it worked nice, accurate position of seat seems important.

Is the Kerbal lying sideways in the bay, what did you connect the seat to?

[Laie]

In KER you need a 2.0 TWR in relation to Eve to take off.

Technically speaking, everything >1 would do.

I haven't done it myself yet, but from what I gather, it's worthwhile to start with a very high TWR, go supersonic, then continue the ascent with a more reasonable TWR.

[selfish_meme]

Technically speaking, everything >1 would do

It does not work that way, nothing under 2.1 in KER with body set to Eve will lift off. I have tried.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Well done and congratulations

[Signo]

Technically speaking, everything >1 would do.

I haven't done it myself yet, but from what I gather, it's worthwhile to start with a very high TWR, go supersonic, then continue the ascent with a more reasonable TWR.

Hi mate, you are right from what I've seen there so far.

BTW, has anybody found a 70%+ ore deposit on Eve? I couldn't.

[selfish_meme]

Hi mate, you are right from what I've seen there so far.

BTW, has anybody found a 70%+ ore deposit on Eve? I couldn't.

http://i.imgur.com/yNOE2fM.png

That is a flat bit of Eve, I have not found anywhere that flat yet. Is that your newest ship, she looks sleek.

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By the way how is running four drills and two ISRU's working with only two Gigantors?

[Signo]

That is a flat bit of Eve, I have not found anywhere that flat yet. Is that your newest ship, she looks sleek.

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By the way how is running four drills and two ISRU's working with only two Gigantors?

I will go on by points

The place is next to the gulf at the north pole (2 mins ride to the beach), ore concentration is up to 60% - among the highest I found around here - and just next to a few other biomes too.

That's more or less why I was asking you in your post about the landing gears of your design, Eve is mostly hilly (no such steep slopes but feels like parking in Frisco) in my experience I left megatons of scrap metal on Eve due to lack of landing devices

Gigantors are, alas, useless there. My new design is completely nuke/fuel cell powered. You apparently do not receive any light down there, so no solar energy. The readings on the panel state for an expo of 0.83 with 0.00 energy generated. Same goes for the rover, the solar powered one you can see in the pic had a short life. The ship in the pic goes on just on "half drilling power" thanks to the cells.

I discarded 2 of the drills in the new design due to the lack of power. To be honest one ISRU would be more than enough but I kept both, I just could not find a better ballast.

The ship is sleek thanks to Mesklin's efforts (ascending from Eve in less than 35 parts is, to me at least, pure art), I had all my design ready but the ascent part was too heavy until I saw his Eve for Valentine. My bit is the serial mammoth trick (tm) add on to attach the drilling system.

The bell shaped fairing helps to keep re entry heating away from the pod.

Edited June 5, 2015 by Signo
Mesklin's art

[FleshJeb]

Have we established an altitude where solar panels work yet? I'm thinking a high drag probe with OX-STATs would be a good platform for logging the Generation/Exposure (altitude) curves.

I wish I had time to do it...

[selfish_meme]

I will go on by points

The place is next to the gulf at the north pole (2 mins ride to the beach), ore concentration is up to 60% - among the highest I found around here - and just next to a few other biomes too.

That's more or less why I was asking you in your post about the landing gears of your design, Eve is mostly hilly (no such steep slopes but feels like parking in Frisco) in my experience I left megatons of scrap metal on Eve due to lack of landing devices

Gigantors are, alas, useless there. My new design is completely nuke/fuel cell powered. You apparently do not receive any light down there, so no solar energy. The readings on the panel state for an expo of 0.83 with 0.00 energy generated. Same goes for the rover, the solar powered one you can see in the pic had a short life. The ship in the pic goes on just on "half drilling power" thanks to the cells.

I discarded 2 of the drills in the new design due to the lack of power. To be honest one ISRU would be more than enough but I kept both, I just could not find a better ballast.

The ship is sleek thanks to Mesklin's efforts (ascending from Eve in less than 35 parts is, to me at least, pure art), I had all my design ready but the ascent part was too heavy until I saw his Eve for Valentine. My bit is the serial mammoth trick (tm) add on to attach the drilling system.

The bell shaped fairing helps to keep re entry heating away from the pod.

Yeah my landing gear design was very tippy, and I have found the large landing gear very...stiff, if you land a bit fast they start to break stuff on the ship they are strutted to (I can't see any struts on yours?). I had to do a lot of landings testing the design out before I found a spot flat enough to allow a landing. My pre-1.0 design was much more forgiving.

It could only get back from the top of the highest mountain though.

I found I could run one drill and the ISRU with 2 Gigantors for a while, but the rate was very slow.

I loved Melkins craft, using the same engines for launch, braking and return, its just so common sense. We know any Eve capable craft is virtually an SSTO on Kerbin anyway. All you need is fuel.

[Signo]

There are 10 exposed struts, 6 on the bottom of the landing gears, connecting to the mammoth and 4 (that you can actually see in the pic) linking 4 hidden cubics attaching on the tank to the top mainsail propelled stage. I did not download Mesklin's design, I eyeballed it from the pics and I could not attach struts in a worthy way directly to the fairing ring. There are 4 more reinforcing the "serial mammoth" connection but they are enclosed in the bell fairing and 2 connecting the mainsail stage to the terrier one that are enclosed in the cone below the pod

There are 3 wing strakes too, I could not handle the second ascending stage w/o them but Mesklin's one is wingless (apparently).

All the struts are connected bottom to top due to the aero researches I've read around here.

Edited June 6, 2015 by Signo

[Signo]

Have we established an altitude where solar panels work yet? I'm thinking a high drag probe with OX-STATs would be a good platform for logging the Generation/Exposure (altitude) curves.

I wish I had time to do it...

To begin with your data gathering I can tell you the atmo starts at around 90Km as usual, it gets consistently thicker between 67k and 65k and it gets really thick around 8/10 Km.

The most of my experiences are in the polar zone, so the atmo there could be less thick than the one you could experience in the equatorial area based on Kerbin observations only.