First Interplantary Mission: Improvisation on Eve

[Hagen von Tronje]

Hi all, first post. Inspired to join the forum and share a recent mission that proved more adventurous than expected.

A little background:

I've played KSP for 182 hours as of this writing. I have some background in rocketry - by which I mean, I built Estes rockets as a kid, and I've maintained an active interest in astronomy and general engineering since, but I am not a professional or even a college-level physics geek. I'm currently using KIS/KAS, no other mods. I allow myself quicksaves, because I'm a terrible pilot and I don't use MechJeb.

I also have done absolutely minimal research on this game! Completely intentionally - I wanted to explore the Kerbolsystem on my own terms, so I haven't read about what might be in store on other celestial bodies. Prior to this trip, I'd fully explored the Mun and largely explored Minmus, if large is the word, mostly to use the Mun as a testbed for new ideas and to get that sweet science. I play science mode right now, so all the thrill of exploration, none of the headaches of finances. This, combined with playing blind, has led me to overengineer everything. Just in case.

I build "castle" style landers for direct ascent missions. I'm sure I'm not the first to think "I can't dock very well, and these legs barely reach past the engines...so radial mount tanks" and went from there. Eventually, I added drills, a bottom-mount rover (the reason I use KIS/KAS, I really got fed up with trying to microtune height on surface docks, only to be thwarted by variable weight from fuel), and a bunch of other stuff - then I supersized it for interplanetary missions.

I planned to visit Duna first, but after experimentation showed that launch windows for Eve were much sooner on my file, I decided "Screw it, how bad can it be?" and slapped on parachutes to my Duna-designed lander - and that's it. I had no idea what to really expect, except that I knew Eve sported an atmosphere. I seriously left planning to do a retrograde burn landing like on the Mun; I tested my lander lifting off then landing itself on Kerbin with just engines, and I assumed (haha) that, as in the real world, Kerbin's gravity would be the highest of any surface Kerbalkind can actually land on.

The trip there was shockingly stable, the lifter and midstage performed beyond expectations, by far the most stable design I'd built yet. I managed to tweak out a 200km flyby of Eve, and arrived there with rather small but significant fuel left in the midstage, allowing me to empty it closing orbit before dumping.

Which turned out to be nice, because my first attempt to penetrate the atmosphere of Eve resulted in a horrible fireball.

The second involved a whole lot more retrograde burn, and I didn't explode. I thought I would, every part of my ship trailed fire, and things blew up once in a while. Miraculously, I landed, broke half my legs, and almost kept the save, except I realized the "stuff blowing up" was all my solar panels. Thinking I could do better, I reloaded.

The third time, I jockeyed the throttle carefully, letting the atmosphere do some of the work but not letting it pull me apart.

I actually got quite a bit hotter than this, but this is the first time I felt relaxed enough to take a snapshot. While the two "full" engines are actually my rover, I did reserve a couple hundred fuel for a burn right at landing to try to cushion it a bit. You might also notice I built a lander using Kerbodyne parts. Yeah, science mode...

Parachutes successfully deployed, and all my solar panels still attached! I actually would have accepted losing 2-4 of them, I not only overengineered, I packed spares using KIS. Even with six of the double sized chutes deployed, I still fell at 15m/s, certainly not how I'm most comfortable landing in a ship this large. Did I mention I didn't even do my homework? I found out Eve has >1.6 surface gravity when I came into orbit around it and opened the info window. In truth, I'd spent the last week only in VAB, and made a backup save before launch, so I barely cared if this worked out, I just wanted to get out of the shop. I'd also been pretty sick the last week, and didn't feel up to flying.

Miraculously, a safe touchdown with no explosions! I fired the last of my main fuel tanks the second of landing, to no effect. My landing zone is on a peninsula between two seas, in a biome called the peaks. And actually, though nothing blew up, something sounded...broken. And holy smokes, look at how deep my landing struts are buried! I actually locked suspension after landing to try to lift up, which gained me a little, but this is with legs locked, so it looks like we're kinda stuck in the dirt. Whoops. This lander was designed to be a mobile refinery and exploration vessel, with the mission concept of landing on Ike, refueling there, then either proceeding to Duna or establishing base on Ike for refueling future missions to Duna. Which is actually why it's so oversized, I wanted it to be capable of either lifting off with planet-grade engines and fuel or refueling other ships that will, so they don't need mining gear. Let's get out and inspect the damage.

The lander itself stands over 90m tall on Kerbin. It's probably not quite as tall on Eve, but it's not too much shorter, which is an encouraging sign. Also reassuring is that I tested the ladders on the landing pad, since I'm guessing letting go and falling to the surface from atop this small skyscraper is less fun here than on Minmus. At this point I was thinking about how I might repack those parachutes so I can move the base somewhere more scenic in the future. Reality has yet to sink in.

First Kerbal to set foot on Eve! Or any planet or moon other than Kerbin and its satellites, for that matter. Also, six flat tires. That explains some of the banging around I heard on landing. On the bright side, that's about the nicest thing to have break, so thank you rover, for possibly being the only reason this didn't end in fiery death. The first Kerbal sent down is an engineer, specifically in case anything is broken, as I didn't even realize what all I'd lost my first attempt until inspecting. Hopefully no legs gave out; I did bring two spare landing struts but instability would not be nice.

I named this site "The Desert of Temptation." It seemed appropriate, because Eve, and because it was my own impatient temptation to explore that got me here. The desert part...well, look around. It's a purple Sahara. Quite a pleasant surprise, I had managed to avoid even looking at pictures of Eve until getting here, and a lot more inspiring than Mun voyage #20. My landing site isn't terrible, not perfectly level like you'd like for a base, but good enough considering I did a zero-fuel-remaining entry. Let's check out the rover, I really hope it isn't too broken. I've tested it on Kerbin but never on another celestial body. I was going to take it to the Mun, but I was burned out on that place after testing ultralight rovers with no downforce (slow going to say the least) and wanted to see the sights elsewhere.

Besides the flat tires, everything is intact. Here you can get a view of my rover. It's a six-wheel crawler with a pretty generous fuel tank, enough for small scale fuel hauling, backup solar panels (both retractable and OX-STAT for safety in case I run out of battery with fuel cells off like an idiot), and toolboxes. You'll also notice it sports downthrusters, which is maybe not what I would have picked out had I known about Eve's gravity, but oh well. They can be removed if need be. It can carry two Kerbals, or drive unmanned, and on Kerbin it hit top speeds of 25m/s with the rear four wheels in drive. As you can see, it mounts to the bottom, and I actually calibrated it to fit perfectly on Kerbin with full tanks, again thinking no planet had greater gravity than Kerbin, so using hooks with KAS (the whole reason I got KAS in fact) would allow me to pull into docked mode reliably and easily under any lesser gravity or mass than that, as the dock would be slightly above me, but never too tight. This would allow the rover to be taken with me wherever I go, besides refueling.

Plainly, Eve has thrown a wrench in that plan. The intense gravity has compressed the rover under the lander, and it struggles to get out from under the dock - and then one of the hooks gets stuck. Fortunately, the engineer removes the hook, the winch is retracted, and the rover manages to pull free, creating a scenario that arose from glitchy clipping from the compression but is a surprisingly realistic analog to getting something like that snarled up in a rough landing. I'm certainly not getting it back under there, at least not without some modifications.

In spite of everything, the base is fully operational. Drills are finding ore, and quite a bit of it in fact. This is a relief, since I also didn't bother to send a scanning satellite up front. Sometimes you just gotta trust that things will work out. However, the double stacked solar panels, which work pretty well at making sure I get plenty of coverage no matter which way I'm facing in space, aren't doing so great here. Six drills, an ore converter, and a mobile lab all running at once is drawing more power than I'm producing, and it looks like the lower panels are being blocked. Well, I'm sure we can do something about that, but first, let's stretch our legs, shall we? After the obligatory science collection, my brave engineer meets up with the captain.

Let's go to the beach! We didn't sit on top of a tower of explosions to launch some unfathomable distance across the Kerbolsystem so we could sit around mining rocks! We can mine rocks right on the launch pad if that's what we feel like doing. You know what we can't do on the launch pad? Set our eyes across an alien sea. And you know what else? I bet you anything mission control can't do a thing about it.

Aye, aye, captain!

And so the pilot and the engineer set out under the glare of the late morning sun, the stifling Even...Evian...Eval.....atmosphere of Eve requiring the suits stay on, however much "purple desert" says this is a shirts-optional affair. I suppose taking a scientist or even second engineer would have been more optimal than the pilot, but hey, she got us here in one piece, she gets to see the beach.

The rover may not have been designed for Eve, but it might as well have been. Aside from never needing the downthrusters, it drove like it was made for the place; in fact, never needing downthrusters meant I could run fuel cells guilt-free, and even with 4-wheel drive and pedal to the metal, fuel was consumed so slowly I thought it was glitched at first. I did 22-25m/s on average, more downhill, topping out at an amazing (to me) 38m/s on one downslope, and never once did it even feel like it might roll over. Whereas going uphill on the Mun is preferable, on Eve I found myself grateful for having six wheels just to muscle up some hills (though it pushed right up like a champ, rarely dropping below 18m/s uphill) but practically flying downhill. I could even turn while going full speed, so in that regard, driving on Eve is actually even better than driving on Kerbin. It's certainly easier than driving on Minmus.

My first glimpse of the sea through the hills! Eve is bigger than I realized, a distance that looked rather close turned out to be dozens of km away. I shouldn't be surprised because I know this by now, but it still hasn't fully sunk in. After a cautious save, I learn that while at x3 and x4 physics warp random stuff explodes, at x2 I can safely cruise control across the surface, gas floored, and make not totally unreasonable progress. I'm actually quite excited to see the ocean! It crosses my mind that this place, while probably not dangerous as long as you weren't utterly lost somehow, would look eerie at night, and also might have a very long night. There are some things I'd like to do at the base before nightfall, and I haven't bothered to look up Eve's sidereal period, so assuming this is just like Venus might be a mistake. Indeed, the sun does seem a bit higher as I approach the sea.

My pilot plants a flag at the first shore I encounter. I name it the Bay of Medusa, in a blatant ripoff of Venus's naming of features after mythological females. But that doesn't look like water to me, chief. It doesn't look like something I want to swim in, and while I've tried avoiding spoilers, I've heard whispers of some Kraken something or other. Well, if I had to guess where to find a Kraken, this isn't a bad place to look. Yet swim in it I do, because I want a sample. Unfortunately, even after swimming out way further than I thought you could, so far it gives me the heebie jeebies, I still get Midlands samples. I return to shore, not sure this day at the beach was what I expected, and resolved to find a real sample. I already got peaks and midlands, so I know there are real biomes here, and I know you did not cover so much surface with liquid to give me no sample, Squad. Let's drive further along the shore, this is after all a bay, and to the west there's a shore on the open ocean.

The weird shores of the alien sea. I did get a sample here - the Explodium Sea? tvtropes references, in my space program? It's more likely than you think. How about nobody light a match, and if a Kraken lives in there, I'm outta here before he dines on Kerbal soup.

The trip back was largely uneventful, but for the final proof that the rover, at least, has proven highly successful, I used only 20 units of fuel out of 180 in the tank, and had most of my battery left to boot. Maybe we'll take the thrusters off when we get home, if we feel like another drive later. But man, Eve is really big. Lunar biomes are close enough together to get some variety in samples with rover trips, but it seems like it will be quite a journey here.

When I get home, I park the car, let the pilot take a nap, and call out a second engineer to give a hand. We've got some work to do, so we unload some basic construction equipment and containers. The long drive to the beach gave me plenty of time to think, and what I think this base needs is pretty straightforward - it needs a better solar plant. Half my panels are blocked in the noonday sun, and at morning and evening, another half lose light. That won't do when I'm running under full power, and I'll want my batteries full for nightfall.

So let's build a solar farm. This is the first time I've used KIS/KAS off the launch pad, but I don't see why I couldn't lay down some pylons and plant my panels on those, with a pipe acting as a conduit. I brought two spare solar panels in my storage, but we'll want to take some of the lower panels down off my refinery and move them out here. That will require climbing, and EVA propellant does nothing useful here. Fortunately, I also brought 20 units of the static ladder, and a telescoping ladder in case one of mine broke, so we can probably build a temporary access ladder to get the down.

It turned out to be trickier than I thought. I had to climb the girders because Rhinos are huge, and because Kerbals evidently can pull themselves up just fine if you jump to a ledge but not from a ladder leading right up to that ledge, I had to stack boxes and make a ladder that ran up, diagonal, then sideways, in true Kerbal fashion, to get close enough to detach the panels. I also had to bring up a container and mount to drop them in, then go back down, taking the ladder back down with me as I went, then finally deliver the panels for repositioning on the ground plant.

It might as well be noted that while that sounds smooth, I managed to blow stuff up over and over and over, sometimes falling to my death as well. Oh yeah, I learned not to leave stuff hooked up to your ship with KAS. That leads to more explosions. I quicksaved often to avoid that mess, life here is hard enough without glitches or brainfarts dooming the entire mission. Some of it was of course my fault...how many times can I really forget to hold 'x' while attaching?

Construction does eventually proceed, albeit at a snail's pace. Not helping is my obsessive love of straight lines and symmetry, and without the VAB's tools, this is painstaking, to say nothing of how many times I, again, blew things up, usually by leaving things connected that I should have left alone for a while. The two engineers work well as a team, really cutting back on trips around the legs and even handing each other things just out of reach. Just that little touch of realism, somehow, at least as much as you can expect when you control one at a time.

The solar plant is complete and operational! And it works! Now will all systems running, I still produce surplus energy. I just have to make sure to unlink the pipe leading directly into the ship before saving or going back to KSC, since the ship "jumps" every time you load in, jolting the solar assemblies and pretty much destroying everything. Disappointing but not unexpected and it probably can't be helped with my suspension so compressed and my legs buried in the sand, given that KSP seems to do that "loading bounce" on any landed vessel, just not usually with such dramatic results. Perhaps a future project will be taking the landing struts and even engines off and putting this on the ground, because after generating a bit of fuel to test things out, I made a quicksave and tried firing all engines at full, just to see what happens.

Nothing happens. I don't get 0.1m/s of upward velocity. My legs don't compress as hard, but several stay buried. I don't know whether it's because Eve's gravity is so incredible that six Rhinos can't lift this thing even with empty tanks, or if the landing struts are literally stuck in the ground; when I tried retracting gear, several struts would not retract and stayed stuck in the ground. I guess I might let an engineer try removing those legs to see if that liberates me, but I have the strong suspicion that Eve is this crew's new home. Even if I could get out of the atmosphere, what am I going to do, mine Gilly then fly back to Kerbin? Most likely, exit would require an orbital fuel station around Eve with a refinery on Gilly (if you can mine Gilly - there's no way it's economical even in science mode to haul fuel from Kerbin or lift it from Eve) and a purpose-built shuttle to get from Eve to orbit.

But that's alright, because Eve turns out to not be such a bad place to live. I didn't drink Kerbin water either, and I imagine this ship must have amazing air conditioning, so my Kerbals ought to be pretty happy with things. After all, this ship design's original purpose was to act as a major fuel refinery to pave the way for future missions, even if it wasn't meant to do that here on Eve. I brought everything I could think of with the expectation that it would be a one-way mission in all likelihood, since I doubt I will want to abandon Eve altogether at any point, so the only question is really getting the full science reports home for the fun of it (I hardly need science, I still have some tech to unlock but I could datamine the Mun for that if I feel pressured to). But that's a mission for another day.

The engineers congratulate each other on a job well done, having powered their new home. There's still more to do - the rover could use modifications, we might as well take down the docking assembly and maybe relocate it, and who knows, maybe we're going to take this thing off legs and engines and make it into a building someday. No idea how well or if that will work, but putting this on solid ground pylons might stop this infernal bouncing on load, and just generally make me feel better about life at high gravity. Do I dare dream that with a well-chosen orbital supply drop, it could even be conceivable to strap some of these parts together to make a sky taxi?

Time will tell, and it would appear that I have time and fuel in great supply, if nothing else.

If you read all this, thanks for sharing the journey, and I hope you enjoyed!

[Major999]

Eve is difficult...

The lander may have had the TWR in a vacuum, but most engines lose a lot of thrust deep in the Evian atmosphere.

Nice solar farm, I look forward to other stuff that you do, as you explore the system by the seat of your pants!

[Mister Dilsby]

Outstanding work! Not bad at all for a first post Really enjoyed reading this,+5 for you, and welcome to the forums!

And yeah, your crew is not getting off Eve with that ship. But I have no doubt you will rescue them if you put your mind to it!