Weekly Challenge #7 - Land on Eve

[vianna77]

2 hours ago, SoulCandy said:

unruly lol. 

I will add some parachutes to my newer version of that structure.

The newer version can take a 22ton to Dres and still have 6k dV after releasing it.

Maybe I can make a ship that will return to kerbin to attach to it.

[Racescort666]

I humbly submit my mission for stretch goal with my own made up tier: Steely Eyed Missile Man, aka, SRB only mission to Eve. 

The full album can be found here: https://imgur.com/gallery/rw3Mvfq

Some highlights

After a few shakedown flights I flew an almost perfect gravity turn. Very proud of how that turned out.

Also near perfect amount of DV for an Eve intercept.

Have I mentioned how amazing KSP2 looks?

This will probably survive after thermal is added so I feel like I'm definitely on stretch tier however, precision is... challenging with only SRBs.

[SoulCandy]

YUGE breakthrough yesterday. Have been crashtesting Val-Level (manned flight, land on Eve, return home). The "Return" part has been - unsurprisingly - the bane of my existence. I've played plenty of KSP1, but I actually never bothered to try a return-trip to Eve, so this experience has been humbling to say the least - and that's even without thermodynamics. 

--- anywho ---

I managed to land/take off from Eve and achieve a circular orbit. I've yet to save enough fuel to return home, but I'll get there. The process of trial/error, filing bug reports, and min-maxing every step in the journey has been exhausting, but (alas) - we're one step closer to success. The absolute best, best part though, has been the visual experience of leaving Eve at all times of day.  I've "escaped" from Eve 5-6 times tonight using a quicksave file just to soak up the visual splendor and pray my SAS holds while I snap screenshots.

Forgive me mods - I forgot my favorite photo (minus the "paused" icon). Very "NASA" esque

[IbanLoL]

Here is my attempt to the Val Challenge. Weight is key so as you can see the returned mass to kerbin is as little as can be ! Just a rover seat, a couple of tanks, reaction wheel and an engine. I thought I'd have enough dV left to propulsively land on Kerbin so I didn't even bother setting up chutes on the lander. They're all too big anyways.

I'm not sure it would survive Eve's reentry but I setup the inflatable shields and will hope for the best when re-entry will be added. I managed to get back to Eve's orbit with about 4-5k dV left, so I went for a little trip to gilly before going back to Kerbin (forgot to take the flag screenshot...). I took a video of the Eve's launch, if anyone wants to see I'll post it to youtube.

Back in ksp 1 I made an SSTO plane-like rocket with big wings. It could barely reach orbit starting from 7k+ altitude locations. I wanted to do the same there but I couldn't manage to get aerodynamics right so that it would fly straight... Can't know why but I assume there are strangely strong drag forces coming from fuel tanks...

Bug notes: I wanted to do lighter launchers from Kerbin, one for the Eve lander and one for the hydrogen ship, but I've had too many issues with undocking not working. Also, I'm surprised I could do the mission entirely as I still have lots of bugs when reloading saves (disappearing ships, ships going through the ground, ships exploding...). When those get fixed, we'll be able to do so much more challenging things...

 

[Racescort666]

On 4/15/2023 at 10:37 AM, IbanLoL said:

Can't know why but I assume there are strangely strong drag forces coming from fuel tanks...

I think there's a problem with aerodynamic occlusion still. I guess you could call this a bug but for the time being, it is a manageable problem even if it doesn't represent reality the way we'd like.

Also, Eve return is an impressive feat. Well done.

[Heretic391]

Well managed to at least land in Eve. The ascent part was a failure. Will come back to this once re-entry heat returns.

 

 

[Soda Popinski]

I'm a bit late on this.

I've never been to Eve, even in KSP1, but I think I made the Stretch goal.  I got an SSTO to Eve...sort of.  In hindsight, I should have gone for Jeb level.  I may reload and try it again.
 

Watch the video to see how  I accomplished this apparently amazing feat!  (though, it's pretty obvious)
 

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by Soda Popinski

[18Watt]

Here's my Jeb Level entry, was shooting for high elevations if possible.  I didn't find any high terrain.  Highest I found was 1568 m.

Launch

Spoiler

Here's the launch vehicle in the VAB.  I struggled with a lot of bugs in this challenge.  One frustrating one is the fact that after wings are enclosed in a fairing, they no longer function properly.  So I'll need to launch without actually building the fairing.

On the pad.  She may not be pretty, but she sure is ugly.  A fairing would have helped greatly.

Launch.

LKO.  Hard top see, but I had to strut the wings to the fuselage of each plane.  The wings kept falling off when I dropped out of time warp in orbit.  Grr.

Transfer stage in orbit of Eve.

Lots of bugs encountered trying to undock.  After undocking if I time warped at all, the ship I wasn't focused on either self-destructed, or it's orbit changed dramatically.  If I flew the whole thing under zero time warp, and then switched back to the other ship, the other ship would self-destruct.  Took me forever trying to work around those issues.

 

Landings:

Spoiler

First drone de-orbiting.

847 m, not terribly high.

Second drone found terrain at 1262 m.  A little better.

Third drone looks like it's flying into a thunderstorm.  The clouds are neat.

Third drone landed at 1486 m, but there's some higher terrain nearby.  Time to put the rover wheels to use.

Hmm, this doesn't look good.

Found 1568 m after a brief (and frustrating) rover drive.  It looks like the terrain might be a little higher a few km away.  But I don't have the patience for dealing with rover quirks right now.

 

 

[MegaRouge]

I still can't post images here so this is my gallery of my Val level Eve landing and return mission.

https://imgur.com/a/3A9bgXo

I launched the transfer ship and lander in one shot with huge boosters on either side. Had lots of DV in the transfer vehicle so no worries about getting there and back, as long as I could get back from the surface. The inflatable heat shield should allow this to work when entry heating is added. I landed in a decent spot at a good elevation, planted a flag and took off. It was SLOW going at first, and the ship took off at a 45 degree angle from the small slope I was on so I was fighting to keep it straight early on. The vector engine in the middle of my stack saved me there. Once I got out of the thick lower atmosphere, asparagus staging kept my center core full and I rose quickly through the upper atmosphere. My top stage had 3000+ DV and I was still not sure I would make it, but ended up in an ugly Eve orbit with over 1000 DV left. Docked with the transfer vehicle and came back home. That was a serious challenge and something I have not done since many years ago in KSP 1.

[Socraticat]

I'm late to the party, but I brought a fancy "OneOscar" with me!

This one is a "OneOscar" FG5WM Spider, AKA "Titan"- It's not that big, but it has big dreams, which makes it worthy of the title "Titan" in our hearts...

And a couple of screenshots to round off the submission. Primary goal achieved. With some modifications this could potentially survive an entry. I'm excited to try again when we get thermal!

Above: Find Full Res in "Cool Screenshots" Thread

Below: Still dancing despite the excessive gravity.

 

Be excellent! Onward, to the next...

Edited May 25, 2023 by Socraticat
a word