Post 1.0 - Lightest sea level* Eve ascent challenge

[KerikBalm]

Well, I'm trying to design a sled to launch astrobond's nearly SSTO... I can get it over 200 m/s on Kerbin's flats along side the runway, even managed to get the SSTO off the sled and into kerbin orbit.

Getting it to slide under the near SSTO on the mountaintop of eve, and then lift it up (by deploying large landing gear), without falling apart is enough of a challenge by itself... I highly doubt I can actually fire 3 mammoths to push the whole thing up the mountain, and get the SSTO in the air with some velocity.

then getting the sled to be re-usable.... I don't know, maybe more struts

[astrobond]

GOT IT

I post the album of my first achieved orbit in the Eve-SSTO-Limbo challenge

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/132211-Eve-SSTO-Limbo/page2

[Sirine]

Congratulations, Astobond!

You claim the 1st person in making Eve SSTO. Salute for you.

[Nich]

It is a shame I cant give you 5 rep :/ congrats

[Starhawk]

GOT IT

An epic moment in KSP history!

Congratulations and well done!

Happy landings!

[Tatonf]

I tried to replicate this craft (the champion) but I can't land it. The AIRBRAKES, followed quickly by the canards, are exploding in the atmosphere (~75 000m).

Plus, I'm losing control of the ship and I can't maintain it in a retograde position, leading to a flip which cause the explosion of the entire craft.

I managed to "land" it by hyperedit the electric charge, so the torque of the capsule can (kind of) maintain it. But without the AIRBRAKES, the parachute deployment is too brutal and the boosters detach and fall to the ground (I did not put struts between them).

I know this craft was made for 1.0.4 and that I'm now playing in 1.0.5, but it's supposed to be easier to land now than before, so I don't really understand what I'm doing wrong.

Edited November 12, 2015 by Tatonf

[Foxster]

I tried to replicate this craft (the champion) but I can't land it. The AIRBRAKES, followed quickly by the canards, are exploding in the atmosphere (~75 000m).

Plus, I'm losing control of the ship and I can't maintain it in a retograde position, leading to a flip which cause the explosion of the entire craft.

I managed to "land" it by hyperedit the electric charge, so the torque of the capsule can (kind of) maintain it. But without the AIRBRAKES, the parachute deployment is too brutal and the boosters detach and fall to the ground (I did not put struts between them).

I know this craft was made for 1.0.4 and that I'm now playing in 1.0.5, but it's supposed to be easier to land now than before, so I don't really understand what I'm doing wrong.

1.0.5 has seriously borked Eve. It's now hard to get down and even harder to get back up.

I have made craft every which way and I can't get anything into orbit without exploding due to overheating. Landing is a pig too, same problem of runaway overheating.

I really, really hope we get another tweak on the heat front. At the moment I'm put off trying anymore with Eve because the effort might be wasted when a fix happens.

If we do get a heat fix then there is a serious opportunity for some great Eve craft with the new engine and with the weight reduction of the aerospike.

Edited November 12, 2015 by Foxster

[Tatonf]

I was happy about the easier aerobreaking announced, so I wanted to make a new Eve mission, but it looks like overheating is more punishing in 1.0.5 than it was in 1.0.4.

Thanks for your answer !

[tseitsei]

IMO overheating is a good extra challenge for eve.

I like it that there is this final "boss monster" in ksp. And since I had done eve landing+ascent already in the earlier versions the new extra challenge is welcome I'm currently playing career for the first time but will play with eve sometime too

[Alarik]

So I had never gone to Eve before the 1.0.5 and I was having a little trouble coming back.

Searching good designs on the internet I came up with this thread and I thought it would make an excellent challenge.

Well, I've managed to make this craft, and I'm pretty happy with it. I thought I should share: http://imgur.com/a/CPZyC

It's a 33.265 ton lander that can do water landings if needed, and then go back to stable orbit. I'll upload the .craft file when I learn the best way to do so (this is my first post).

[astrobond]

7 hours ago, Alarik said:

So I had never gone to Eve before the 1.0.5 and I was having a little trouble coming back.

Searching good designs on the internet I came up with this thread and I thought it would make an excellent challenge.

Well, I've managed to make this craft, and I'm pretty happy with it. I thought I should share: http://imgur.com/a/CPZyC

It's a 33.265 ton lander that can do water landings if needed, and then go back to stable orbit. I'll upload the .craft file when I learn the best way to do so (this is my first post).

Just... WOW !

For a first post... that's a really good one

Congratulations @Alarik !!!

[Foxster]

13 hours ago, Alarik said:

So I had never gone to Eve before the 1.0.5 and I was having a little trouble coming back.

Searching good designs on the internet I came up with this thread and I thought it would make an excellent challenge.

Well, I've managed to make this craft, and I'm pretty happy with it. I thought I should share: http://imgur.com/a/CPZyC

It's a 33.265 ton lander that can do water landings if needed, and then go back to stable orbit. I'll upload the .craft file when I learn the best way to do so (this is my first post).

I'm just a tad dubious about this. There just doesn't look to be enough dV. I really hope it does work though. 

I look forward to the craft file.   

[Alarik]

7 hours ago, astrobond said:

Just... WOW !

For a first post... that's a really good one

Congratulations @Alarik !!!

Thank you! It took me quite a bit of trial and error.

1 hour ago, Foxster said:

I'm just a tad dubious about this. There just doesn't look to be enough dV. I really hope it does work though. 

I look forward to the craft file.   

Yeah, that Delta-v reading on the first screenshots is lower than the real thing. There is no decoupler for the heat shield so the game assumes it's still there on the ascent.

It could actually get to orbit from sea level more efficiently if a FL-T100 Fuel Tank was added to the first stage and then some fuel was removed from the first stages, along with a single parachute (saving about a metric ton of weight total). But then the center of mass would be too high to do a water landing. I think it's a good compromise; even if you don't plan to do a water landing it's an overall more elegant design.

Here is the .craft file anyway: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-BWbT_6FSq1eGFMVENBd0VxSGs&usp=sharing

I mean, it should work unless I've messed up some drag settings. That would be embarrassing.

 

[Foxster]

I've given it a go and I couldn't quite make orbit. It was about 240dV short. There may be an optimum ascent profile that it works better with?

There's a few issues:

• No power generation onboard, so a landing and return isn't really practical. 
• No way to detach the heatshield. 
• No way to de-orbit the craft. 
• The engines and fuel tanks stick out beyond the heatshield. They overheated and exploded on re-entry. 
• The craft has more drag at the heatshield end than the capsule end so it couldn't maintain prograde during re-entry, meaning it turned and burnt up. 
• The three chutes didn't slow it down enough to prevent two engines from being destroyed on landing at a 1500m landing site. 

All these things could perhaps be fixed but a little more work is still needed before I'd risk a live crew . 

Edited January 28, 2016 by Foxster

[Foxster]

Here's a pretty similar craft I made a while ago that makes orbit a bit more reliably and only weighs a little more...

Craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uqde706wop6jpze/Eve%20again%2023.craft?dl=0

Edited January 28, 2016 by Foxster

[Alarik]

Thanks for the insight! 

Some of those points you make are really good and, in fact, i'm continuing to evolve the design to solve those flaws. That said, i wouldn't consider all of them too problematic. I'll analyse your observations in order:

• I tried tenths of ascent paths and for some reason that one gave me the best results. It really does work, but you risk overheating and really have to be careful. Proof it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-MMMswoYCU
• The engines can generate electric charge on the ascent, and I don't think power is too important during descent.
• The heat shield can be detached consistently by turning on the engines for an instant. It uses about 3 fuel units but saves the weight of a decoupler.
• This craft was meant to meet the requirements for this challenge and weight the least possible. That means stuff like the above and being able to orbit wasn't a priority. That said, I'm working on a much more usable version right now.
• True, and this is specially a problem at higher speeds/lower altitudes. It worked for me being extremely gentle and even then it wobbled. Part of the reason that is a thing is that I'm kind of obsessed with elegant designs and didn't want to move the radial decouplers inside the main tank. Again, the new design is more utilitarian.
• I don't get the parachute thing . The non-water-landing version I had planned worked with two parachutes (albeit at low altitudes), and this one craft was able to land on those 7500m mountains that Eve has where the terminal velocity is about 15m/s with the parachutes deployed.

Again, thanks for the observations!

[Alarik]

I just finished the evolution of my previous ship and I think this might be my ideal eve lander. It weights about 2t more than the previous one (35t total, including deorbit stage) but that also means most of its flaws are solved. And of course, it can still land on the ocean:

Now it can deorbit from up to 120km and is way less likely to burn up in the atmosphere thanks to 3 hidden airbrakes and 6 small reaction wheels feeded by 3 RTGs. Upon landing, the heat shield can be detached along with other unnecessary parts.

The only compromise I can see is perhaps the overly aggressive ascent path (although the added fuel on the extended version of the craft kind of solves this issue).

In the end though, I'm pretty happy with its low weight and apparent reliability. It's uploaded on my crafts folder.

[Superfluous J]

I just wanted to step in here and thank pretty much this entire thread, but in particular @astrobond whose ship (I think it was 104-10) finally got me into Eve orbit from the surface. I've got a ways to go but working with a ship I *knew* could do it, gave me the fortitude to try launch after launch until I got the ascent path right.

Now I can apply what I've learned to my own ship!

[Alarik]

Hey, just leaving this info here. You guys will probably know it already, but some of the few changes involving physics are buoyancy and Eve's upper atmosphere.

If any craft has been affected by the update, it must be an Eve lander/plane (specially if a water landing is performed). From my limited testing it appears that heat is much more manageable now and overheating isn't as "aggressive".

Edited April 2, 2016 by Alarik

[Foxster]

I'd agree with this.

I took my light lander for a spin from orbit and back. It performed pretty much as before except that it didn't get quite as warm on the way to orbit and I was able to start the gravity turn a little earlier (26km rather than 30km) without overheating. 

[max_creative]

@hazard-ish automatically wins in my opinion. Launch underwater, land on eve, launch from eve underwater, go to Gilly, go to Minmus, and return. How many points does he get? 

[Alarik]

1 hour ago, max_creative said:

@hazard-ish automatically wins in my opinion. Launch underwater, land on eve, launch from eve underwater, go to Gilly, go to Minmus, and return. How many points does he get? 

I've checked his mission. It sure is spectacular (as always), but definitely lacks efficiency.

This is all about minimizing resources, and most of the crafts here have an order of magnitude less mass than his.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention that my lander now disintegrates doing water landings. Had to change the design.

Edited April 3, 2016 by Alarik

[Psycopyro]

My entry:

I optimized my vessel from my previous mission.

60.210 tons just before launch

 

Version 1.1.2.

[nuclear_turkey]

launch height 220m
launch weight 16 tons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaN57qtyDXw 

[Foxster]

53 minutes ago, nuclear_turkey said:

launch height 220m
launch weight 16 tons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaN57qtyDXw 

Very cool. Shame there was no Kerbal in a cabin as per the challenge rules. In fact you forgot to put one in the command seat. 

But still very cool.