is an Eve SSTO rocket possible?

[Curveball Anders]

12 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Usually in this game I feel like the Director of NASA, deciding what flights I can afford and which mission to scrub. Other times I feel like the CEO of an aerospace company trying to design vehicles to accomplish missions. 

Lately (in this thread) feel like the CEO of an aerospace company whose competition has succeeded where we have failed.

I share almost all those feelings except the last one.

Since I farm free Kerbals that the competing companies has left stranded in space after their failed missions

[Kergarin]

10 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Usually in this game I feel like the Director of NASA, deciding what flights I can afford and which mission to scrub. Other times I feel like the CEO of an aerospace company trying to design vehicles to accomplish missions. 

Lately (in this thread) feel like the CEO of an aerospace company whose competition has succeeded where we have failed. I have tidbits of press releases, corporate espionage, some footage of a successful test of a model,and a mass number (w/ a typo). 

And then we're in the VAB trying to guess what arrangement of parts adds up to that. ("we", me and the other Kerbals) 

The most time I feel like a mad rocket scientist 

Video will hopefully come tomorrow, it's all recorded, only needs to be cut.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

45 minutes ago, Kergarin said:

Video will hopefully come tomorrow, it's all recorded, only needs to be cut.

just post a jpg of the ship!  (all I need a spy shot.)

You'll making me wait for the official press release.

 

Edited August 23, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[Kergarin]

 

Turn up volume 

Edited August 24, 2016 by Kergarin

[magnemoe]

Impressive.

[foamyesque]

That is really impressive. Looks like you had some mods going? And what's the story with the hatch in the Mammoth?

[Justicier]

As much as I love making SSTO spaceplanes... this is one project I could never bring myself to take on. So many parts... so much CPU load... so little framerate. Huge props to anybody who has successfully done an Eve SSTO, Spaceplane or otherwise.

[magnemoe]

51 minutes ago, foamyesque said:

That is really impressive. Looks like you had some mods going? And what's the story with the hatch in the Mammoth?

Looks like an clipped MK1 landing can to avoid long ladders. 
room for 3 kerbals on one side and isru and science on the other, using the short boosters for this. 

[JadeOfMaar]

O_O! It's....it's the king of landers! Such precision and efficiency!

[KerikBalm]

Its been done....

How many drills are you using? just 2 small ones? could you make it work with 1 large one, so that it can land in more places (no minimum 2.5% ore restriction)?

What is its power source? I assume you're using the small convertor... plus small drills, means very power intensive mining... doesn't seem like fuel cells would work for a net gain...

[Kergarin]

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Impressive.

Thanks 

4 hours ago, foamyesque said:

That is really impressive. Looks like you had some mods going? And what's the story with the hatch in the Mammoth?

Thanks  it's absolutely stock. @magnemoe is right, it's a mk1 lander can, clipped into the mammoth. I think this kind of clipping is ok, since it doesn't give me any other advantage than a better looking. The thing would work with long ladders too 

4 hours ago, Justicier said:

As much as I love making SSTO spaceplanes... this is one project I could never bring myself to take on. So many parts... so much CPU load... so little framerate. Huge props to anybody who has successfully done an Eve SSTO, Spaceplane or otherwise.

The lander itself has 123parts, that's actually good to handle. The problem is the interplanetary ship, which adds around 350 parts. That means 2-5 fps 

 

3 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

O_O! It's....it's the king of landers! Such precision and efficiency!

Thanks  to be honest... The landing didn't succeed in the first try... it might have been two or three or a million attempts 

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

Its been done....

How many drills are you using? just 2 small ones? could you make it work with 1 large one, so that it can land in more places (no minimum 2.5% ore restriction)?

What is its power source? I assume you're using the small convertor... plus small drills, means very power intensive mining... doesn't seem like fuel cells would work for a net gain...

Yes it has just 2 small ones. They are powered by 16 NUK generators inside the small bays. 

This lander has a payload of ~10tons - if flown correctly. So you can also put large drills on it. The only reason why I'm using the small ones, is to make look better vor the video 

Edited August 24, 2016 by Kergarin

[foamyesque]

1 hour ago, Kergarin said:

Thanks  it's absolutely stock.

Pretty sure you can't see Kerbals from the outside in stock. (1:50 in the vid)

[Kergarin]

42 minutes ago, foamyesque said:

Pretty sure you can't see Kerbals from the outside in stock. (1:50 in the vid)

I don't know since when, but this ist stock in 1.1.3 

There is a little round button left to the Kerbals "portraits"

Edited August 24, 2016 by Kergarin

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

ooookaaay.

As I have already said, you, sir,  are a steely eyed missile-man.

now I'm going to need some numbers:

1. what does that thing COST? (16 PBNuks? that alone is half my budget) I'll assume you're not in career,

2. total fuel capacity? wet mass? dry mass?

3. are you burning all the fuel on landing?

4. is that the only way to keep it from burning up? could it be landed on chutes alone fully fueled?

5. How long did that refuel take? (is that 3 and half YEARS?) 

wow,

that is indeed a wow.

 

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Impressive.

I hear that in Darth Vader's voice

 

Edit: And I can save you 350 parts right now: Why does the tug have engines? With all the engines on the lander, the tug just needs to be what I call an Autonomous Drop Tank. Just enough FUEL (and O2) for the lander to get itself back and forth from Gilly to LEO.  Once you do that the rest of the solar system is yours.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[magnemoe]

20 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

I hear that in Darth Vader's voice

 

Edit: And I can save you 350 parts right now: Why does the tug have engines? With all the engines on the lander, the tug just needs to be what I call an Autonomous Drop Tank. Just enough FUEL (and O2) for the lander to get itself back and forth from Gilly to LEO.  Once you do that the rest of the solar system is yours.

Problem is that you have to pull that with an standard docking port. 
On the other hand I would probably sent that ship from Minmus to Eve with its own engines, refuel it on Gilly, having an LV-N based tanker who also refiled on Gilly and refiled lander in low Eve orbit. 
It looks like many parts is used to make the tug wider something who is not needed if it don't pull the lander. 

[KerikBalm]

Wow... 3 year refeuling time.... yea... if I were to use something like this in career, I'd havae a surface base refeuler that just claws to it to refeul it.

Swapping for a full sizedd ISRU gets 5x the fuel per unit of ore drilled -> down to less than a year. I forget how much faster the large drills mine, but with a surface station, you could slap on as many as you want, and use gigantor solar (I think solar works ok at that altitude on eve... it doesn't work so well at sea level).

That margin was razor thin though... I don't use mechjeb, and I wouldn't be comfortable in the margins for getting it to space. I think I'd almost prefer the sub-orbital rendevous concept.

Can you get ot the chutes to repack them on the surface? or must you EVA in space to repack them? If you can repack the chutes while on the surface, then that could be turned into a biome hopper (assuming you find ore in each biome), as long as it returns to the highest peak - but a faster ISRU solution would be desirable otherwise that could take decades

[Kergarin]

6 hours ago, Justicier said:

As much as I love making SSTO spaceplanes... this is one project I could never bring myself to take on. So many parts... so much CPU load... so little framerate. Huge props to anybody who has successfully done an Eve SSTO, Spaceplane or otherwise.

It was more than a hundred hours of really hard work just to build this one working lander, plus several hundred hours of experience in building SSTOs.

But the result is worth the pain I think 

59 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

ooookaaay.

As I have already said, you, sir,  are a steely eyed missile-man.

now I'm going to need some numbers:

1. what does that thing COST? (16 PBNuks? that alone is half my budget) I'll assume you're not in career,

2. total fuel capacity? wet mass? dry mass?

3. are you burning all the fuel on landing?

4. is that the only way to keep it from burning up? could it be landed on chutes alone fully fueled?

5. How long did that refuel take? (is that 3 and half YEARS?) 

wow,

that is indeed a wow.

 

I hear that in Darth Vader's voice

 

Edit: And I can save you 350 parts right now: Why does the tug have engines? With all the engines on the lander, the tug just needs to be what I call an Autonomous Drop Tank. Just enough FUEL (and O2) for the lander to get itself back and forth from Gilly to LEO.  Once you do that the rest of the solar system is yours.

I'm at work right now and will have to answer this later. What I can say: 

3. Yes almost all

4. Yes. You would need to add (disposable?) heatshields. 

No. Drop rate is around 35m/s on chutes only.

5. Ahm... Yes... But you can change this to the large drills to speed it up.

 

34 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Problem is that you have to pull that with an standard docking port. 
On the other hand I would probably sent that ship from Minmus to Eve with its own engines, refuel it on Gilly, having an LV-N based tanker who also refiled on Gilly and refiled lander in low Eve orbit. 
It looks like many parts is used to make the tug wider something who is not needed if it don't pull the lander. 

The tug was just a quick build to have something cool looking for the video, since it is mainly about the SSTO.  It will change if I really use it for a grand tour.

[Kergarin]

8 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Wow... 3 year refeuling time.... yea... if I were to use something like this in career, I'd havae a surface base refeuler that just claws to it to refeul it.

Swapping for a full sizedd ISRU gets 5x the fuel per unit of ore drilled -> down to less than a year. I forget how much faster the large drills mine, but with a surface station, you could slap on as many as you want, and use gigantor solar (I think solar works ok at that altitude on eve... it doesn't work so well at sea level).

That margin was razor thin though... I don't use mechjeb, and I wouldn't be comfortable in the margins for getting it to space. I think I'd almost prefer the sub-orbital rendevous concept.

Can you get ot the chutes to repack them on the surface? or must you EVA in space to repack them? If you can repack the chutes while on the surface, then that could be turned into a biome hopper (assuming you find ore in each biome), as long as it returns to the highest peak - but a faster ISRU solution would be desirable otherwise that could take decades

For sure there are many ways to make this more efficient. 

My goal was just to make it deorbit and orbit autonomusly at all costs.

The margins are not as bad as they seem. I'm flying manually on keyboard. You just need to start the gravity turn at the right time.

The chutes have to be packed in space unless you add ladders. But you can also use it as biome hopper by landing without chutes. 

[magnemoe]

22 minutes ago, Kergarin said:

It was more than a hundred hours of really hard work just to build this one working lander, plus several hundred hours of experience in building SSTOs.

But the result is worth the pain I think 

I'm at work right now and will have to answer this later. What I can say: 

3. Yes almost all

4. Yes. You would need to add (disposable?) heatshields. 

No. Drop rate is around 35m/s on chutes only.

5. Ahm... Yes... But you can change this to the large drills to speed it up.

The tug was just a quick build to have something cool looking for the video, since it is mainly about the SSTO.  It will change if I really use it for a grand tour.

Over 3 year refueling
If you use two large drills it will use 1/5 of the time, also depend on how much ore its on the mountain top. 

One tips if you use this on an grand tour is to dock an large ISRU on top docking port then you are not on Eve as it will convert 10 times as much fuel. 
For an grand tour I think I would used an smaller tug, Outside of Eve you could use the lander as fuel tank for the tug. 

[Sharpy]

2 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

5. How long did that refuel take? (is that 3 and half YEARS?) 

That will vary from gameplay to gameplay. And this SSTO may not be capable of working if you have poor luck of the draw.

Ore-richness is randomized, varies from playthrough to playthrough. Meanwhile, there's only one mountain this tall on Eve.

If you're lucky and have a good engineer, you'll get all the ore you need in no time. If you're unlucky, the ore concentration will be below 2.5% and your drills won't work at all.

[KerikBalm]

I've generally found that the ore on a body is either biased to the heigh points, or the low points. I got unlucky with duna, and all the low areas have no ore.

I just checked my modded world "Rald" ... and only the low points have ore. On Mun in my game, only the high places have ore.

Minmus seems to be the outlier from what I've seen, with ore in both high and low places... I can't quite figure out what the rules are. Still, I'd estimate that 50% of the time there will be ore on that mountain... either high levels, or none at all.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Let's not thread-jack about ore, guys.
 

I think we all agree that Eve ISRU is (at least somewhat) problematic, and Gilly is a better bet.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[KerikBalm]

Well, I think ISRU is the only way this worked as a reusable SSTO. He used up a lot of fuel on the way down to prevent overheating. He used fuel to adjust his trajectory to land at the right place...

Nobody had made a SSTO from eve that could actually de-orbit and land before.

This one deorbits and lands, but it needs refueling on the surface. That requires ISRU on the surface.

Now you could seperate the ISRU from the craft, and have some Eve ISRU hopper that could ferry fuel to the mountaintop if the mountaintop has no ISRU... provided there is a suitable source of ore close enough that a rocket powered hopper could bring fuel to the mountaintop... or provided that you have extreme patience and can drive it up there with electric wheels.

Otherwise, you send down lots of disposable fuel tanks to the surface to refuel the SSTO

[foamyesque]

11 hours ago, Kergarin said:

I don't know since when, but this ist stock in 1.1.3 

There is a little round button left to the Kerbals "portraits"

 

Oh wow that's awesome. Never noticed that!

EDIT:

@Kergarin: What were your fully-fueled vac deltaV/TWR numbers? I'd like to know roughly what I need to shoot for while I work on this sucker:

 

Edited August 24, 2016 by foamyesque

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

You must have been up late, dude.

Did you know that ship is named "MONOLTIH 1"