My inelegant Eve mission...

[netbumbler]

Jebediah Kerman...

Hero of the early days of space flight. 33 years into the program, after being sidelined repeatedly in favor of younger and more female dominated crews, old Jeb decided to call in all his favors to regain glory for the old guard, the patriarchy of Kerbin, with one last, epic mission! Not that he resented the young breed or the girls...they were essential to the continuation of Kerbin-kind across the solar system (and Valentina smells way better than Bill and Bob)...but he yearned for one last bit of validation for the pioneers. And what better way to do that than ravaging the Purple Goddess: the hardest proposed mission in all of Kerbal history. He'd been kicking it around in his head for years but the technology just wasn't up to speed.

Old Weiner, er Wernher, assumed the solution to Eve would be in some fancy new drive system or exploitation of aerodynamics or automated flight. Old Jeb thought he knew better. They were both right...

Jebediah knew the plump purple princess would only be conquered with brute force. Getting there, getting back, didn't matter much to the old pilot. He was focused on the lander. Efficient design plus raw power would be the way out of her long arms. Hope she likes asparagus...

But ultimately, Wernher and Linus were part of the pioneers too: it wasn't all about guts and kestosterone levels. A good pilot was essential, but without the design and science team, old Jeb wouldn't even be able to leave Kerbin.

So they set about their tasks in isolation: only coming together briefly to compare weight, aerodynamic and delta V parameters. Jebediah promised a 300 ton lander that would fit inside a standard 3.5 Airstream. Wernher would design the lifter and return vehicle, while Linus would take their designs and run simulations through the new H.E. 1.4.1 Super Komputer...

Some early Jeb designs:

Not enough TWR

This design was a novel way of keeping the vehicle oriented tail-down during descent. Fins on both ends: jettison the top ones before ascent.

OVERKILL! [one of my designs will legit make it back to 100km orbit from floating just under the surface of the Explodium sea...and in 1.0.2 to boot]

Jeb was drunk...

Wernher was working hard trying to keep up with Jeb's constantly changing designs. A couple of his early lifter constructions:

After a few squabbles, old Jeb and the aging but still competent Wernher were finally getting some workable designs.

Enter Linus "Buzzkill" Kerman. "Those designs are pretty and elegant...you know...for landing on the Mun! The TWR is off and the delta V marginal. You can't assume you will land on the highest peak on Eve, Jebediah. You're a great pilot...the greatest...but there are little Krakens aplenty in the chastity belt that is Eve's atmosphere and gravity well..." Jeb mentioned something about shoving Linus' head through the H.E. 1.4.1 Super Komputer monitor, but Wernher interceded and put them at ease.

"Back to the drawing board, boys..."

So they went back to blank slates. New parameters informed by Linus' meticulous simulation allowed them to approach the problem in a more realistic and forgiving manner. As much as Jeb hated to admit it, and confident as he was in his piloting skills, the very experience that gave him that trust in his talent also reminded him that things never go as planned out in the soup...

Many months and hundreds of designs and simulations later Jeb hands up the final lander configuration:

Wernher complained mightily as it was at least 200 tons overweight and an Airstream large enough to conceal the beast didn't exist! The interplanet transfer and final positioning stages would weight around 700 tons total added to the over 500 ton lander and you need a lifter of KOLOSSAL dimensions! Maybe half the new 1200 ton requirement had been put into orbit before. But twice that? Let us review a couple of the many evolutions of Wernher's misery:

Multiple launch concept. This was the lander with final positioning stage and Jumbo Docking port:

Ion-powered return vehicle consistent with the very sane prospect that at least two Kerbals would be needed to complete this mission:

Transfer vehicle on top of lifter with 2-man Ion return vehicle attached and balanced:

Meanwhile Jeb was aggressively testing the lander for every possible contingency. Here's what aggression gets ya:

In Part II we will see if the team can get the beastly lander and its essential transfer and return stages into orbit and out of Kerbin's SOI. Coming soon...

[Nahim]

Good Luck, Eve is a authentic endgame!