Deliver ore from Eve to Gilly

[CairoJack]

Looking in the control centre I found this very interesting contract:

Searching on the internet I found that there was a challenge like that on Reddit where you need to deliver 300 ore. The best entry used more than one million founds so my question is this : is it possible to complete the contract remaining in the budget? And which is the cheapest rocket you can complete this contract with?

Leaderboards:

[Ixamus]

I have had this same contract offered but I declined it as inconvenient as I haven't returned anything from the surface of Eve. I have my suspicions that this isn't actually possible to do so that it would be profitable, but I haven't given too much taught to it. At the very least it would be quite high labor and low profit contract.

[Mephisto81]

Ore is 10kg per unit. Basically, you'll need to bring 9t payload into Eve Orbit again. And to bring it somehow to Gilly. 
Two (theoretical) ways to do this:
Go big: Build a reusable SSTO from EVE with mining capability and 9t ore payload capacitiy. When you revover the monstrosity, you are again in budget.
Go small: Small is relative, but here we need the usual asparagus staging eve lander, albeit with 9t capacity to orbit. Whole system has to be within 1.159.337 Kerbucks. That sounds rather hard.

[Ixamus]

35 minutes ago, Mephisto81 said:

Ore is 10kg per unit. Basically, you'll need to bring 9t payload into Eve Orbit again. And to bring it somehow to Gilly. 
Two (theoretical) ways to do this:
Go big: Build a reusable SSTO from EVE with mining capability and 9t ore payload capacitiy. When you revover the monstrosity, you are again in budget.
Go small: Small is relative, but here we need the usual asparagus staging eve lander, albeit with 9t capacity to orbit. Whole system has to be within 1.159.337 Kerbucks. That sounds rather hard.

It remains to be seen if SSTO from Eve is even possible in stock game with any kind of payload.

I think that the cost should be considered in the scope of entire career save and not in the scope of a single mission. If I were to do this I would try to use same infrastructure and hardware in multiple missions + science gathering. I could sen my Eve lander to LKO by ssto, where it could be refueled by Minmus based ISRU infrastructure which would be used in many other missions. Then I could fly it to Eve and it would be empty when descending. On the surface of Eve it could be refueled by ISRU facility which would again be used for multiple missions and purposes. Then I would sen the 900 units of ore to the LEO where next ship would bring more fuel or otherwise take the ore to Gilly. This ship would again be used for multiple missions. I should also try to include more missions like "plant a flag", "take measurements" etc during the flight. Now I could have price tag way bigger than 1.159.000 for all the stuff and still be profitable.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Ixamus

[4x4cheesecake]

Actually, you can 'cheat' on these contracts because it is not necessary to deliver the fresh ore...any ore will do the job. So you can send a small drill probe down to Eves surface to get the contract update on "acquire 900 units of fresh ore" and then land another vessel on gilly, having already 900 units of ore on board (brought vom Kerbin) or drill on Gilly for 900 units of ore. I guess that is "semi-intendet" so you cannot stuck on these contracts by having a surface refuel station which may get the update for acquiring the ore but will never be able to deliver it anywhere (or it is not intendet at all since you can dump ore but this will not revert the contract update). Having this feature/bug in mind, a SSTO carrying a drill probe and an ore tank can do this job easily because you don't need to land on Eve but Gilly.

But since this is considered as a challenge I'll try it as intended