Slaying the purple beast!

[KerikBalm]

Eve sea level TWR: 1.08

First stage decouple TWR at 4km  (i seem to recal that was roughly when it happened, I forgot to take pics last night): 2.51

Vacuum dV is 7296...

Of that 1,460 comes from the first stage which loses a lot to gravity drag initially with its 1.08 TWR (but the stage ends with over 2.0 TWR as it ascends and burns fuel... maybe I should add a pair of aerospikes under this stage to get better TWR and lose less dV to grav drag)

According to KER, that 1,460 is only 1191 at 4km, and only 903 m/s at sea level...so I go through roughly 1,000 m/s of dV just getting to about 4 km, losing a lot due to gravity drag.

Basically I loaded up the side drop tanks with as much fuel as the vectors and the aerospike could lift.

Took, pictures in the vab, going to work, will upload during lunch.

The lander in re-entry configuration:

Showing the towing docking port (it burns up during re-entry, there is another heat shield under it)

In ascent configuration (well, retract the ladders.... not sure if it makes a difference)

First staging of the ascent

Second staging (aerospike core of the asparagus)

Final stage that gets to orbit with a few hundred m/s left if you do it right

Its a bit easy to flip on the ascent... I should modify the fuel lines so the top tanks drain last

Edited December 10, 2015 by KerikBalm

[Foxster]

I reckon that if you squidged things up a bit you could get everything there behind one large heatshield and save a lot of mass. 

Edited December 10, 2015 by Foxster

[pasukaru76]

22 hours ago, Foxster said:

I'm a little surprised at. The craft I posted a pic of above can aerocapture from interplanetary speed with a Pe of 65km and come into land in the same pass. Wonder what we are doing different? 

I think you might have a massive (excuse the pun) weight advantage with your design. Mine is a plain simple three stage design coming in at 120 t. From the looks of it I would expect yours to be lighter.

 

[Foxster]

1 hour ago, pasukaru76 said:

I think you might have a massive (excuse the pun) weight advantage with your design. Mine is a plain simple three stage design coming in at 120 t. From the looks of it I would expect yours to be lighter.

 

Ah, yes, that will do it. 

[KerikBalm]

5 hours ago, Foxster said:

I reckon that if you squidged things up a bit you could get everything there behind one large heatshield and save a lot of mass. 

Well... the mass is fine... what are a few tons here or there on a 95 ton lander, when I launch payloads to orbit with a SSTO that can handle ~130 tons (I think even 150 tons, but I'm not sure)..

It comes out to under 33 tons per kerbal, so that is fine with me.... and if I really had a mass problem I can send it empty, and refuel at gilly.

Making hte stack a bit narrower only increases the chances of tipping anyway... and its not going to fit in a mk3 bay, and it already fits in my SSTO bay... so its fine with me

[Tourist]

Made my first genuine attempt to get off the surface since starting this thread last night. I "simulated" the craft to the ground, in that I turned off heating (when I do it for realsies I won't do this), It appears, based on the gauges, that it may have been unnecessary. The heat got very close, but not to the end of the bar and I landed with about 150 left of the ablator. 

Alas, on the ascent it only made about 30,000 before being left with only my terrier stage.... and of course, at that stage I started going backwards. 

Also, I negotiated the issue of making sure everything fitted behind a heat-shield, by putting it all inside a fairing. This worked pretty well (I think it would have survived even if heating was not turned off). Problem was however, it would not slow down to safe parachute deployment speed until the fairing was jettisoned. But when the fairing was jettisoned, it was still travelling quite fast. As a consequence, when it jettisoned it took out one of the radial fuel tanks in the process, and did so incredibly reliably (I only got it past this obstacle by more assistance from alt-12) .

So, long story short, its back to the drawing board.  

I think going for drop tanks, with no engines attached and just relying on a Vector to lift everything was a mistake.... I think I experienced significant gravity losses, may go back to the standard asparagus setup with the drop tanks having their own engines. I also probably need more than just four FL-T800s radial tanks. Finally need to I think I need to replace the Vector for an aerospike on the core section.. It seemed pretty inefficient once the drop tanks were jettisoned.    

[KerikBalm]

Well, I thought it would fit in my main SSTO.. but it was just a tiny tiny bit too big... well the outrigger fuel tanks+science pods (that are mainly there to help stabilize it during entry and descent through eve's atmosphere... I had to tweak it a little bit... at first I focused on tweaking the landing gear of the SSTO with the offset tool... then some rotate and offset of the outriggers... but in the end... foxsters suggestion to just tighten up the stack was good... a little bit of offset on the main fuel tank stacks to get them a little tighter got the clearance I needed without screwing up the pods too much.

This was my earlier attempt at just rotating the pods...

 

Note that the entire lander can be enclosed in a fairing... but my SSTO isn't quite big enough for the maximum size fairings... I do have one that had Big-S delta wings at the front instead of the standard delta wings... thus the payload bay was wider... and instead of orange tanks, it used the mk3 long tanks... making it just a little taller...

But the fairing interface is so hard ot use that I just construct the fairing first, and then put my payload inside it... so far the bits that stick out haven't caused me any problems... but maybe I should again look into an SSTO that can handle eve bigger fairing enclosed payloads (that are still massive... I have some VTOL SSTOs that just have the payload mounted on the top like a rocket payload.... but their payload fraction is poor)

Also, I found that putting another pair of aerospikes on the drop tanks is a good idea.

sea level TWR went up to 1.24 from 1.08

First stage 0.0 atmosphere dV went down from 903 m/s to 893 m/s... but that is less than 1 second's worth of gravity drag, so I'm pretty sure its worth it. Also it puts more weight near the heat shields, improving reentry stability. Lastly, re-routing the fuel lines really improves the ascent stability... top tanks drain last is win.

[Deadpangod3]

16 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Well, I thought it would fit in my main SSTO.. but it was just a tiny tiny bit too big... well the outrigger fuel tanks+science pods (that are mainly there to help stabilize it during entry and descent through eve's atmosphere... I had to tweak it a little bit... at first I focused on tweaking the landing gear of the SSTO with the offset tool... then some rotate and offset of the outriggers... but in the end... foxsters suggestion to just tighten up the stack was good... a little bit of offset on the main fuel tank stacks to get them a little tighter got the clearance I needed without screwing up the pods too much.

This was my earlier attempt at just rotating the pods...

 

Note that the entire lander can be enclosed in a fairing... but my SSTO isn't quite big enough for the maximum size fairings... I do have one that had Big-S delta wings at the front instead of the standard delta wings... thus the payload bay was wider... and instead of orange tanks, it used the mk3 long tanks... making it just a little taller...

But the fairing interface is so hard ot use that I just construct the fairing first, and then put my payload inside it... so far the bits that stick out haven't caused me any problems... but maybe I should again look into an SSTO that can handle eve bigger fairing enclosed payloads (that are still massive... I have some VTOL SSTOs that just have the payload mounted on the top like a rocket payload.... but their payload fraction is poor)

Also, I found that putting another pair of aerospikes on the drop tanks is a good idea.

sea level TWR went up to 1.24 from 1.08

First stage 0.0 atmosphere dV went down from 903 m/s to 893 m/s... but that is less than 1 second's worth of gravity drag, so I'm pretty sure its worth it. Also it puts more weight near the heat shields, improving reentry stability. Lastly, re-routing the fuel lines really improves the ascent stability... top tanks drain last is win.

Am i the only one who notices the concerning amount of thrusters and size of that SSTO? 

[Foxster]

37 minutes ago, Deadpangod3 said:

Am i the only one who notices the concerning amount of thrusters and size of that SSTO? 

No, no, that's fine. No sign of over-engineering or any other problems. 

[KerikBalm]

its a game, not real life... The real life "one size fits all" shuttle launcher was a dismal failure... for reasons I need not contend with.

So... I went ahead and developed a SSTO that could take pretty much any reasonable payload to orbit.

I've been using it since 1.02...

but in 1.02... I was able to use the FAT-455 wings... I had to get rid of those now.

Overengineered? maybe...

Fun? Definitely...

Makes me get lazy on payload optimization? probably... but I don't think that 3 kerbal eve lander + science package is so over engineered...

This moho mission...

Ok... yea... the mk1-2 pod is very heavy for what it does... I just like to bring extra mass in crew compartments on interplanetary journeys... because I'm not willing to instal TAC, but I'm not willing to just have them go to another planet in tiny tin cans.

.. and putting a station in orbit of moho? ambition more than overengineering?

... 3 landings with the lander on moho? ambition again?

Fully reusable/recoverable to moho (With no use of ISRU or even fuel depots at Mun/Minmus)? Well... then don't expect it to be small.

It still manages ~35% payload fractions... and I've yet to see any other SSTO spaceplane with that lift capacity... so for its "cargo class" I've got nothing to compare it to to say if its over engineered or not.

 

[pasukaru76]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

So... I went ahead and developed a SSTO that could take pretty much any reasonable payload to orbit.

That I do believe. I bet it also deals with most of the unreasonable ones.

 

[SR]

The trick is landing at the highest point possible.

DV to orbit decreases 800 with every km you are higher up.

[pasukaru76]

2 hours ago, SR said:

The trick is landing at the highest point possible.

DV to orbit decreases 800 with every km you are higher up.

Certainly true. In my single Eve landing and return so far, I landed at 1200m above sea level and burned through the equivalent of an orange fuel tank before even getting to 2000m altitude. Fortunately I allowed for a large margin of error in my fuel supply and made orbit with 77 m/s to spare. So from true sea level I would have been borked, most likely.

[LordKael]

On 12/8/2015 at 2:26 AM, Hannu2 said:

Atmosphere of Eve has changed from previous versions. Now ascent is easy and descent is nightmare. I am in same phase as you, developing manned Eve lander. However, I do not want to see how others have solved the problem.  This kind of technical difficulties are best what KSP can give.

I have tried couple of shapes of an ascent device. All of them achieve easily orbit, even from low altitude, if I hyperedit them to the surface. But all of them flips during reentry. It seems difficult to find a good weight distribution for both, ascent and descent.

Both times I've landed a Kerbal on the surface of Eve, they went down in a glider, and came back up in a separate Ascent Vehicle.

[Nich]

On 12/8/2015 at 11:38 PM, Laythe Dweller said:

It was a ragtop. Much better than a convertible.

 

Off topic: If KSP ever gets life support, the resource should be called Potatoes. Because Watney. Yes.

Clearly Kerbal food is snacks no idea where potatoes comes from

[luizopiloto]

Eve is not  beast... it`s a beauty, lovely and temperamental purple fairy... and I know how to use her magic...
I have gone there and returned many times... and believe me... install KAX and make an electric glider... it`s the best place to fly in the system...

 

Edited January 27, 2016 by luizopiloto

[Windspren]

22 hours ago, Nich said:

Clearly Kerbal food is snacks no idea where potatoes comes from

Have you even watched The Martian?

[Francois424]

On ‎2015‎-‎12‎-‎08 at 11:38 PM, Laythe Dweller said:

It was a ragtop. Much better than a convertible.

 

Off topic: If KSP ever gets life support, the resource should be called Potatoes. Because Watney. Yes.

Then we need another Kerbal job : Botanist...

Whatcha mean what do they do ?  They increase duration of Life Support the more stars they have, of course !

[Jhawk1099]

On 12/8/2015 at 2:18 PM, fourfa said:

Just recall for those of us in career/science mode that if you use crew transfer, you cannot transfer science.

I'm relatively sure that you can (with scientist) take data from one capsule to another but perhaps I'm crazy

[fourfa]

Yep, you are.  Take two minutes to try it on the launch pad.  

[Mitchz95]

You can transfer science by going on EVA and manually bringing it over, but not going directly between capsules without going outside.

[FlyingPete]

I went to Eve as a one-way colonisation mission back in 0.25. I figured it would be far simpler to have them become permanent residents. I gave the 'Eve Seven' a base to live in, and rovers and planes to go exploring their new home with.

Now that Eve is apparently harder to get to due to the aero overhaul, it's probably more worthwhile bringing them home again- send a bare-bones ship that can get back into space (even if you have to abandon ship and complete the launch by jetpack!) rather than trying to land large chunks of equipment on the surface.

My current Eve mission isn't going to put anyone on the surface at all. They gained some upper atmosphere science on the way in, then headed straight for Gilly to explore there instead. A plane along the lines of Kuzzter's "Atmospherikdipperkraft" might be a worthwhile option to gain 'Flying above...' science. Or it might end in near-disaster and strand the pilots on the surface.

[xendelaar]

On 8-12-2015 at 10:11 PM, pasukaru76 said:

I just today completed most of my 1.0.5 mission to the surface of Eve. I still need to get my Kerbal back home, but she made it back to Eve orbit (from 1100 meters above Eve sea level) and the return vessel is currently being refueled at Gilly. The mining operation on Gilly was very important for my mission, as my Eve lander needed to be refueled in order to safely land on Eve. Then it had to be refueled again by a mining rover on the surface of Eve. Here's a couple of pictures:

The "lander" has a ring of 6 Vector engines on the bottom with a lander can in the middle, so I didn't need a ladder to get out onto the surface. I used the crew transfer feature to get my Kerbal into the capsule on top of the rocket before launching from Eve.

 

Very Sleek design! Seeing this thread makes me want to visit Eve again. Perhaps when 1.1 hits the shelves...

[Xyphos]

On 12/7/2015 at 10:05 PM, Tourist said:

* Ok, I haven't landed and returned from Moho yet either.

Getting to Moho is easy, I think it's about +/- 1200 dV to eject, simple enough for LV-N engines, but you'll need 4000+ dV for the insertion burn, which isn't so nice, you'll want to use multiple stages for that, the lander and ascender could be made simular to the Apollo/Munar missions

[kiwi1960]

Eve is gorgeous.... so.... purple.....

Must ....fight...temptation to .....visit....Eve.... I (damn you Tourist).... Must......not----.....suspect trap.... set....by Kraken....