To Eve and Back (to Orbit, Anyway)

[Aegolius13]

Hi folks, 

I thought I'd share a report from my first successful mission to plant a flag on Eve and get back to orbit (I skipped out on the Kerbin return part since this was a shakedown test for career mode).  

I didn't start with any particular objectives or constraints - just make a ship that can survive Eve without cherry-picking a mountaintop landing.  But my design grew around the idea of using those heavy, expensive, efficient Eve ascent-engines for the entire trip.  This lead to a somewhat ridiculous, heavily asparagus-staged launch vehicle, but it all worked quite well once I worked the bugs out.  (Which admittedly took a while).  

Here's a link to the album with pics and narrative:

http://imgur.com/a/tqh5M

 

And here's a sample pic of the ship in action on Eve reentry:

 

(Full disclosure: after doing the entire mission, I went back and stitched these screenshots together from my various save files.  So everything might not flow together exactly.  But it s a generally accurate account of how everything went down).  

 

 

 

[Kertech]

Well done! Eve is a right pain, but those vectors have made it much for friendly to get off (my first time for it was in 1.0.2 with linear aero spikes, was a nightmare to control!) 

now to repeat it all for science...

 

[Magzimum]

Excellent job! Surprising that the stupid heat shield still survived, even after a tumble. Good that you caught it on camera, littering Eve in the distance. 

[Aegolius13]

5 hours ago, Magzimum said:

Excellent job! Surprising that the stupid heat shield still survived, even after a tumble. Good that you caught it on camera, littering Eve in the distance. 

That heat shield cannot be destroyed by any force known to man (or Kerbal).  It is of the Kraken.  It is eternal.  

[gilflo]

Very good job, you didn't even need vernors to control Eve atmospheric descent......

Well done!!!

Welcome to Eve lander club, I guess we are not so many to achieve Eve landing under 1000m and take off to orbit!!