Eve Return 1.05 - In memory of the ERC

[*MajorTom*]

Kerbin-Minmus-Eve-Kerbin spaceplane mission. stock+TAClife support+kerbalkrashsystem

(hyperedit installed in KSP, but not used = you see fuel/ore use, temper of parts and all flight manuvers)

does this count?

 

 

[Starlionblue]

8 hours ago, spacebrick3 said:

I am almost ready to begin transfer to Eve, but first I need a name for my vehicle. The mission itself is E.V.E. (Eve Vehicular Egress), and I would like a lander with the same initials. Examples would include Exploratory Vessel: Eve and Egress Vehicle: Eve.

Extremely Vexing Exoexplorer? I may have been frustrated with this challenge at some point. My starting point save is called "Prelude to Frustration". 

[Gojira1000]

12 hours ago, *MajorTom* said:

Kerbin-Minmus-Eve-Kerbin spaceplane mission. stock+TAClife support+kerbalkrashsystem

(hyperedit installed in KSP, but not used = you see fuel/ore use, temper of parts and all flight manuvers)

does this count?

 

 

Да, успех

(Yes, that counts)

I love the idea of a slowly part-shedding space-plane, too. Avoiding the extra parachute mass is clever.

[parzr]

Well, after more than a month off and on putting up with lag from so many parts, I was able to stick my landing for a proper launch. http://imgur.com/a/LqLiz

Into Eve orbit; 238Tons, including enough rocketry to get me off Tylo, a Science lab, 2 cupolas, a de/re-atachable stock Rover, and 12 Kerbals.

On to the rest of my grand tour

[DustInTheWind]

Here is my run. Mods used: KER, Transfer Window Planner, MJ, Docking port Alignment indicator, and Modular Fuel Tanks for swapping Ox for LF in some tanks.

Mods installed but not used: ALCOR, Raster Prop Monitor, Hyperedit.  

Note: I took a whole lot of screen caps showing delta-v to show that I didn't use hyperedit during this run.

Fuel tanks for the Eve Lander and GIlly Lander were disabled until needed. I ended up underestimating the amount of delta-v I would need, so the Gilly mission was aborted. The mothership stays in LKO for use in future missions, and the Mk-1 command pod will be used on other missions to fulfill existing contracts.

 

Edited March 15, 2016 by DustInTheWind
mis-typed album ID

[Gojira1000]

15 hours ago, DustInTheWind said:

Here is my run. Mods used: KER, Transfer Window Planner, MJ, Docking port Alignment indicator, and Modular Fuel Tanks for swapping Ox for LF in some tanks.

 

 

Well done and most definitely a success. Grats

[Racescort666]

An Eve return mission is something that I've wanted to do for a long time. My first attempt was back in 0.90 days and it was this huge beastly thing made from 2.5m parts that my computer could barely handle and kept breaking apart while testing it over Kerbin. Eventually, I gave up and crashed it when 1.0 came out. I also started playing on my work computer (HP zBook) which has got way more horsepower. Anyway, here is my submission. Probably in the nick of time before 1.1 comes out.

I'll have to figure out the statistics on this ship. I was a little worried that I wouldn't have enough dV to get into orbit of Eve because I landed at a pretty low elevation and the ascent vehicle only has about 7-8 km/s of dV when I was shooting for 10 km/s. I guess the dV requirement for Eve has gone down.

 

 

[Gojira1000]

6 hours ago, Racescort666 said:

An Eve return mission is something that I've wanted to do for a long time. My first attempt was back in 0.90 days and it was this huge beastly thing made from 2.5m parts that my computer could barely handle and kept breaking apart while testing it over Kerbin. Eventually, I gave up and crashed it when 1.0 came out. I also started playing on my work computer (HP zBook) which has got way more horsepower. Anyway, here is my submission. Probably in the nick of time before 1.1 comes out.

I'll have to figure out the statistics on this ship. I was a little worried that I wouldn't have enough dV to get into orbit of Eve because I landed at a pretty low elevation and the ascent vehicle only has about 7-8 km/s of dV when I was shooting for 10 km/s. I guess the dV requirement for Eve has gone down

 

You made it under the wire - I expect we'll see 1.1 pretty darn soon - loved the ship - asparagus is just more Kerbal-y, somehow. (and I think you're right, you can get back from sea level to a stable 130Km orbit with less than 9000dV - so something about ascent changed, somewhere)

[purpleivan]

I must get around to doing this before 1.1 comes along

I built a couple of single kerbal capsules and even a 4 kerbal (hitchhiker can) one that I used in successful eve return missions in 0.90 but nothing in 1.05.

 

[Starlionblue]

30 minutes ago, purpleivan said:

I must get around to doing this before 1.1 comes along

I built a couple of single kerbal capsules and even a 4 kerbal (hitchhiker can) one that I used in successful eve return missions in 0.90 but nothing in 1.05.

 

 

It is both easier and harder than in 0.9. On the one hand it has become easier because the delta-V requirement to get to Eve orbit is far lower than before. Something like 8500 from sea level as opposed to the 13000 in 0.9. The lander can be made with half the parts, if that.

On the other hand it has become harder because of heating, both on entry and on ascent.

All in all I found it much easier once I'd figured out re-entry sans incineration. For ascent, the MechJeb Q limit feature is a godsend.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Starlionblue

[purpleivan]

Yep... Not having atmospheric heating issues when entering Eve atmosphere helped me a lot, especially with the four kerbal lander.

That thing was huge.

[Starlionblue]

27 minutes ago, purpleivan said:

That thing was huge.

 

The nightmares I had in 0.9 with the Eve thing. Took me over a month to build mine in 0.9. 5600 tons on the pad at the KSP and 650 tons on landing on Eve.

https://imgur.com/a/5vIFe#0

(How do I embed IMGUR albums?)

 

Edited March 27, 2016 by Starlionblue

[purpleivan]

6 hours ago, Starlionblue said:

The nightmares I had in 0.9 with the Eve thing. Took me over a month to build mine in 0.9. 5600 tons on the pad at the KSP and 650 tons on landing on Eve.

https://imgur.com/a/5vIFe#0

(How do I embed IMGUR albums?)

 

To add an imgur album you tap the icon of white "I" on a black square and put the album code (the part of the imgur URL after the last /) in the popup box

[Starlionblue]

On 3/27/2016 at 3:52 AM, purpleivan said:

To add an imgur album you tap the icon of white "I" on a black square and put the album code (the part of the imgur URL after the last /) in the popup box

Yay! Thanks!

For comparison then , here's the 0.9 Eve mission and below it the 1.05 Eve mission. You can see how much more massive the Eve lander needed to be. More than twice the weight, so even without the heat shielding needed in 1.05, it was a nightmare.

The new aerodynamics model also means that "wide and flat" vehicles with little streamlining aren't a good idea in atmospheres, especially a very thick atmosphere like Eve's. My 0.9 lander would have burned up on ascent from Eve's surface if I tried it in 1.05. And I think it would also have been unstable at higher speeds, leading to tumbling. There's a reason the 1.05 middle stage has rudders/fins.

In hindsight, my 1.05 vehicle could have been quite a bit smaller, as it ended up back in Eve orbit with almost 4000 delta-V left.

Eve mission 0.9

 

Eve mission 1.05

 

Edited April 6, 2016 by Starlionblue

[Iam aspaceman]

Trying to get in under the 1.1 wire...

So after stranding various pilots on Eve early in my KSP career, I started a career around Christmas with the sole purpose of heading to Eve, setting up a permanent orbital science station, landing on the surface and returning the pilot back to Kerbin (presumably w/ lots of science goodies) using life support mods (Roverdude's) and NF space station parts (just for the cool factor).  After spending an embarrassing amount of time sorting out how to land w/o burning up, taking off w/o burning up and having the Delta V to make it into orbit I was ready to go (thank goodness for Hyperedit once I discovered it)...however 1.05 wasn't and my master creations crashed the computer more times than I can count.  I had (with satellites, a mining base, and a Duna orbital station) 17 flights up at any given time and coupled with my behemoth Eve mission it just couldn't take it.  So I moved on to other things waiting for 1.1...then I saw this challenge last week.  So I copied my ships into a new sandbox save, removed NF mods and LS, simplified the mission parameters, and here is my submission:

Mission parameters:

Primary mission:  to visit the surface of Eve and return to Kerbin to tell the story.

Tertiary mission:  bring some friends along to pass the time.

The lander was sent with no fuel and added mining / refining equipment to save on weight during landing.  Which at this point I will point out that using a pilot to mine and fuel the lander takes forever...  It was performed with one launch, 373 parts, and 1553 tons.  After a few floppy launches, some structural I'm a spambot, report me. <<<(LMAO was supposed to be the trade name for the little blue pill but the forums swapped it out to say this) was added to stiffen everything up.  Taking off from Eve was surprisingly easy - it only took 2 tries (of course not counting the 6,543 attempts before this) - first with MechJeb Ascent which started performing acrobatics at around 22km and came crashing down, the second (successful) launch done manually - with little regard to gravity turns...lol.  Straight up till around 50km then started the turns.  Made it to orbit with around 1800 dV remaining.  I was maybe a little too concerned with weight and left out some RCS controls and additional battery on the lander vehicle - but tbh, they weren't missed too much...though one of my solar panels burned up on landing so a battery would have been nice during the ascent.  I was going to have the mining equipment powered by PB-NUK Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators to keep things as stock as possible, but it would always show insufficient power and shut everything down as soon as I sped up time (did I say that it takes forever to mine ore with a pilot?), so I switched to using Roverdude's nuclear generators - (2) of the .625 sized. I added the Lithobrake landing legs to get added ground clearance (just to be safe) and used a few of the FASA decouplers (they are a little lighter, and while the lander assembly wasn't all stock, it could easily be and still work fine.

 

A final note - I was going to use MechJeb for the transfer planning to/from Eve but when it would be time for the transfer, I would start up MJ and it would tell me that the transfer would be in another 1-2 years or it would start the burn and I would see that the trajectory was nowhere near Eve...so not sure if it was me doing something wrong or a bug w/ MJ but I ended up doing everything myself...so it probably wasn't as efficient as it could have been.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2016 by Iam aspaceman

[Starlionblue]

9 hours ago, Iam aspaceman said:

A final note - I was going to use MechJeb for the transfer planning to/from Eve but when it would be time for the transfer, I would start up MJ and it would tell me that the transfer would be in another 1-2 years or it would start the burn and I would see that the trajectory was nowhere near Eve...so not sure if it was me doing something wrong or a bug w/ MJ but I ended up doing everything myself...so it probably wasn't as efficient as it could have been.

 

I get the impression that MechJeb struggles with orbital transfers with large vehicles, especially if they're not very stiff. If the vehicle starts to wobble even a bit during a Kerbin departure burn, this can lead to major errors in the transfer orbit over interplanetary distances.

Another problem is long departure burns which takes up a large slice of the orbit. The "perfect" burn would be instantaneous at the node, and the longer the burn the more thrust is applied at suboptimal times away from the node. In most cases given the timescales and distances involved it is no big deal, but if a burn take, say 10 minutes of a 70 minute orbit, MechJeb calculations can be off by quite a bit. The solution is to split the departure burn up into shorter burns over multiple orbits, gradually making the orbit more elliptical until the final departure with what are sometimes called "periapsis kicks".. Incidentally, this also saves fuel.

[Iam aspaceman]

So you break the burn up into a few orbits?  Burn for a bit at the correct trajectory angle, stop the burn then complete an orbit and start to burn again, wash rinse repeat until you have completed the burn?   Hmmm, I will have to play with this.  After I added the structural supports on the sides, the craft was actually pretty rigid...no noodling to speak of, so the actual burns went pretty smoothly after I turned off MJ.  I was curious how good they would work since they were attached using decouplers so I could eject them before separating everything (lander from return ship, etc.) - apparently it didn't affect anything adversely.

On a general note, I had Hyperedit installed, but never used it for the mission.  I DID however use it a lot to test the parts and pieces this past weekend before attempting the entire mission Monday evening.  Oddly, the mining portion was the only thing I didn't test using Jeb and was surprised how long it took to fill the tanks.  I used the same strategy on Duna with an engineer and it only took a week or so to fill up larger tanks.  Obviously I might have landed in a rich area on Duna and a sparse one on Eve...I hadn't scanned the planet in this save to know the ore density...I just crossed my fingers and started mining.   

Also I noticed I have the habit of moving my KER window down and out of the way quite a bit while performing maneuvers, etc.  If I need to post shots of any of the vessel information, I can break it out into the various parts for anyone's viewing pleasure.  TBH, I might try it again with a 2 kerbal lander just to see what that does to the lander requirements.

[Gojira1000]

On 2016-04-05 at 10:22 AM, Iam aspaceman said:

Trying to get in under the 1.1 wire...

So after stranding various pilots on Eve early in my KSP career, I started a career around Christmas with the sole purpose of heading to Eve, setting up a permanent orbital science station, landing on the surface and returning the pilot back to Kerbin (presumably w/ lots of science goodies) using life support mods (Roverdude's) and NF space station parts (just for the cool factor).  After spending an embarrassing amount of time sorting out how to land w/o burning up, taking off w/o burning up and having the Delta V to make it into orbit I was ready to go (thank goodness for Hyperedit once I discovered it)...however 1.05 wasn't and my master creations crashed the computer more times than I can count.  I had (with satellites, a mining base, and a Duna orbital station) 17 flights up at any given time and coupled with my behemoth Eve mission it just couldn't take it.  So I moved on to other things waiting for 1.1...then I saw this challenge last week.  So I copied my ships into a new sandbox save, removed NF mods and LS, simplified the mission parameters, and here is my submission:

A final note - I was going to use MechJeb for the transfer planning to/from Eve but when it would be time for the transfer, I would start up MJ and it would tell me that the transfer would be in another 1-2 years or it would start the burn and I would see that the trajectory was nowhere near Eve...so not sure if it was me doing something wrong or a bug w/ MJ but I ended up doing everything myself...so it probably wasn't as efficient as it could have been.

 

 

Bravo @Iam aspaceman and just sneaking in under the wire. I have to admit landing an empty ship with ISRU never entered my mind and is a brilliant idea I will now wholeheartedly swipe.

[Typrax]

Hello there!

i also thought i would try to do this before 1.1 hits. made it in time!

this mission went a lot more smoothly than i thought it would. i didnt even need to reload once. i figured Jeb would get bored all alone, so i sent Bob and Bill with him. the landing he had to do alone though, because he didnt want to share the glory....ehr, i mean he didnt want to endanger the life of his friends. 

so, i sent the Crusader I into space with mammoths and rhinos. . the travel to eve was done with Nerv rockets and lots of fuel and patience. turns out i made a construction mistake though: i forgot the fuel lines. fuel could be pumped manually to the correct tanks, but that meant i could only spend like 500 delta-v at one time before i had to refill again. this mostly meant that i needed to split the circularization burn at eve into several burns. as a lander i used an asparagus staged aerospike ship, with a terrier as top-stage. worked better than i imagined, even though my landing spot was 2km lower than what i aimed for. i ditched the used parachutes with decouplers to save mass, and thus found out that if you step on parachutes lying on the ground, they explode. great idea for a minefield if you ask me. the ascend also worked really well, i used up my remaining delta-v exactly. i had 22 left, and that was exactly enough to deorbit the landing module once Jeb was back on the Crusader I. on the way back home i realized that the only mechjeb module was on the lander...but since i plan my maneuvers myself most of the time anyway, that wasnt really a problem. it WAS slightly annoying though that the crew cabin was mounted backwards on the Crusader I, so i had to always point in the "wrong" direction. maneuvers arent that easy to fly if you have to point AWAY from the node. back on Kerbin, i basically just shot into the atmosphere, and didnt aim for where i would land, fully expecting to land in water. i landed on a mountain though, that literally never happened to me before. the chutes were powerful enough though, even in the thinner athmosphere.

and here are the pics!

 

[Gojira1000]

Majestic, @Typrax - also parachute minefelds - I have to figure out how to use that, somehow

[EvermoreAlpaca]

 

After a bit of a break from the game, the Eve passenger spaceplane is complete!

[Der Anfang]

May I give this challenge a try? Unfortunately, a lot of my pictures are broken up over the mission course so I don't have many actual "launch from Kerbin" pictures. However, if you want them, I could give you the .craft files with their launch vehicles. Primarily what is going on is that I have been conducting an Eve mission in career over several months, and the first phase was a space station meant for gilly mining operations. I am conducting my second phase right now, delivering the Eve lander. I do have plenty of maneouvering pictures and such, however. And more will come once I put my lander in eve orbit and refuel at my space station.