Makki Posted November 17, 2015 Share Posted November 17, 2015 So I've been trying to land on and return from Eve since May this year. It's been pretty challenging so far, and I've had to try many different designs, but none of them has worked. The biggest problem with this mission hasn't been the ascent, but rather the descent to Eve's surface. It just seems impossible to design a craft that can both decent to the surface without burning up, while also being big enough to ascent from it's thick atmosphere and strong gravity. Note: I play with Re-entry heating at 100% Note: I play stock KSP 1.05 (no mods added) Note: How do I spoiler-tag images? They take a lot of space. Keep in mind you are more than welcome to tell me about improvements I could make to my design. I don't mind being educated on this topic. This is the lander I've been using. The design was copied from another thread somewhere on this forum. As far as I've heard it should be big enough to ascent from Eve, but I haven't tried it yet. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/BeP01Cn.png[/IMG] The lander weighs a total of 138 tonnes with parachutes, landing gear and heatshields. I also added some A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S to further slow down my craft as it descent into the atmosphere: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/4WnwPfF.png[/IMG] This is a picture of the transfer stage I managed to get in orbit around Kerbin (phew that wasn't easy). It weighs a total of 967 tonnes. It also has a total delta-v of 4632 m/s , which is more than enough to get from Kerbin to Eve, and circularise the orbit. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/lsuxGW8.png[/IMG] When I arrived at Eve and circularised my orbit, I dropped my apoapsis down to 95 km and my periapsis to 60 km. This was done to minimize the thermal heating from the atmosphere. And thus began my descent. Here is a picture of my ship at an altitude of 74 km: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/9oYPzHB.png[/IMG] Already my ship is burning hot. In fact I'm surprised it hasn't exploded yet... Aside from that my ship also started tilting to one side, and I tried preventing that by using SAS to keep it pointed away from the heat. Sadly without success as you can see. Here's a picture of my ship at an altitude of 71.4 km: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/UYSS2Kb.png[/IMG] At this point my Airbrakes have already exploded due to overheating, even though their job was to prevent it... And why doesn't the heat shield work... Like seriously. Also on the left notice how my 4 main engines are overheating? They are positioned directly behind the heat shield so that shouldn't even be physically possible?! [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/zY2nCTC.png[/IMG] And finally the inevitable happened. My ship didn't even get below an altitude of 70 km before it exploded. I just don't see any way for this to have been possible. It's the most frustrating challenge I've faced since I started playing KSP. And I thought Squad had fixed this issue with their recent update with the so called "Thermal Improvement" . Clearly it hasn't improved at all. And yes I could just reduce the heating from re-entry, but I consider that cheating... Might aswel remove it entirely then. KSP is such a fun game, but this problem is just too big for me to ignore. I doubt I will be playing this game for much longer if they don't find a way to fix this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deadpangod3 Posted November 17, 2015 Share Posted November 17, 2015 (edited) what... didnt this thread have posts before? forum, go home, your drunk! edit: oh, different thread. Edited November 17, 2015 by Deadpangod3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sal_vager Posted November 17, 2015 Share Posted November 17, 2015 Ahh Makki posted twice due to the moderation queue, I better close this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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