Who is ready to face the challenge of Eve?

[LazerEagle1]

Well, as many of you probably know, Eve is the easiest planet to land on. It is a similar size to Kerbin, so the gravity is roughly the same. However, due to it's atmosphere being composed of different gases than Kerbin's, it has a much denser and larger atmosphere, which makes it very easy to land on, as there is a very significant amount of air resistance, however, it also makes it excruciatingly difficult to take off from, as the atmosphere is 5 times as dense as Kerbin's which means it takes 5 times the fuel to lift off of Eve as it does to lift off of Kerbin. So, my question is, can anybody make a ship (without mods) that can go orbit around Kerbin a few times, then leave for Eve, land on Eve, and get into orbit around Eve, only to return back to and land on Kerbin? If yes, please post pics here, because it would be amazing to see. So yeah! If anybody's up to the challenge, then post here and attempt it.

[Nukesnipe]

Mate... Eve has 80% more gravity than Kerbin, not only do you have to push past the atmosphere with less-efficient rockets, you have a much lower TWR.

Eve is easily the second hardest planet to "land" on, as it's "possible" to land on Jool, and Moho will melt your craft.

[Thobewill10]

This guy on reddit did it.

[LazerEagle1]

This guy on reddit did it.

I am literally speechless.

[LazerEagle1]

Mate... Eve has 80% more gravity than Kerbin, not only do you have to push past the atmosphere with less-efficient rockets, you have a much lower TWR.

Eve is easily the second hardest planet to "land" on, as it's "possible" to land on Jool, and Moho will melt your craft.

The atmospheric density provides a bunch of friction to slow it down, so Parachutes work really well.

[maltesh]

Heck, terminal velocity on Eve is so low because of the thick atmosphere, Kerbals can often survive falls from space

.

[SpaceGibsy]

This guy on reddit did it.

and i did it with an rocket almost half that size ;-)

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/23491-EVE_M-%28madness%29-the-first-cpu-friendly-eve-return-design!-%28-howto-fly%29

[foamyesque]

I'm aiming to do it with a 3-man. Not sure I'm going to be successful; this is as far as I've gotten:

[Qumefox]

Yay, people got to eve and back letting someone else drive.. Now someone needs to man up and accomplish it WITHOUT mechjeb.

[foamyesque]

Yay, people got to eve and back letting someone else drive.. Now someone needs to man up and accomplish it WITHOUT mechjeb.

You try manual flight on 1 FPS, champ.

[SpaceGibsy]

Yay, people got to eve and back letting someone else drive.. Now someone needs to man up and accomplish it WITHOUT mechjeb.

My eve-return rocket is an easy thing to fly.. i dont need mechjeb for 8 engines.. transfers are still not good enugh in mechjeb.. so there is no challenging thing mechjeb takes from me. its just saving time ..

[angeldust]

The atmospheric density provides a bunch of friction to slow it down, so Parachutes work really well.

wait until heat is modelled properly and cry your eyes out

[r_rolo1]

Yay, people got to eve and back letting someone else drive.. Now someone needs to man up and accomplish it WITHOUT mechjeb.

For some reason NASA and all the space agencies in the world already dropped full manual piloting since ... well, they never did it , to be honest And to add, if anyone here was making it a full auto mission, they would not do it, simply because Mechjeb does not work for interplanetary trips ( italiziced for emphasis ).

[EndlessWaves]

I'm aiming to do it with a 3-man. Not sure I'm going to be successful; this is as far as I've gotten

If you're asking whether it'll be successful then...

I think it's unlikely.

The LV-Ns don't have the thrust. At 60 thrust they'll only lift 3.5 tons each from eve sea level and 2.25t of that is the weight of the engine itself. It looks like you've got around 25 LV-Ns so you can expect them to take off if the rest of the rocket weighs 31.25 tons or less.

For eve you need both fuel efficiency and a high engine thrust to weight ratio to carry a lot of fuel.

Does mechjeb's eve transfer even work? Last time I tried it in 1.9.3 it didn't. Not that it makes much difference, the challenge here is efficiency not control.

[Markus Reese]

Well, in terms of efficiency, I think the main starting point for returning from eve is a single or double nuke engine, just enough thrust and fuel for the return trip. Getting up into space, SRBs are probably the key. Have that trust to make your initial punch. The nukes in atmo are the worst for efficiency so must be avoided at all costs. Probably the best return module would be the single nuka on a large tank with lander. I wonder if that has the fuel to get a pod home. It should, anyways, that final stage should just capture kerbin. And since kerbin has that nice gravity well, once in there hopefully the difference in velocities isn't too bad for high apo braking.

The biggest issue with eve of course is the failure of jet engines to work. On kerbin I made a pretty decent jet that got to the 16km and then used srbs and shed wings to get an easy orbit leaving only a small jet plane, was awesome to work. While these jets don't work, has anybody tried seeing what horizontal can be generated using the small liquid fuels on Eve? Nice and efficient, if they can at least get you a bit into a higher atmosphere, one can finish off with an SRB boosted punch. Will try that this evening me thinks.

[melaus]

On my 3 kerbal mission to eve and back I used a nuke engine from eve to kerbin on the second largest tank. as long as you get high enough out of the atmosphere before you make it to your last stage you should be fine with that. but you only want 1 nuke, any more is just a waste of valuable weight which hurts a lot when you're on eve. and congrats on getting a 2000+ ton ship off kerbin, thats the hardest part.

[foamyesque]

Endless Wave: The nuclear engines you're looking at are (mostly) intended for the Kerbin -> Eve transfer, over the course of which I will eject 18 of them. The other 7 are intended for final orbital insertion on Eve ascent and the Eve -> Kerbin transfer.

Eve liftoff is done by 7 aerospikes and a pair of Poodles for TVC.

At least, that's the plan.

[EndlessWaves]

Ah, you're an impatient interplanetary traveller

7 aerospikes and 2 poodles is 2190 thrust, which will lift 131.3 tons from eve sea level so you might make it off the ground, especially if you're doing a mountaintop landing.

[melaus]

I wouldn't use the word lift.. with a thrust/weight ratio of 1 its more like hover. Ideally I think you'd want 1.5-2.0 thrust to weight ratio. but this is eve we're talking about so 1.3 or higher is probably a more realistic goal. any lower than that and you'd be spending almost all your energy fighting gravity and not moving. between the two nukes and the 3 man pod, you're gonna be hurting on thrust/weight ratio and hence... fuel.

[EndlessWaves]

I don't see the point of starting with a higher thrust to weight ratio. You may as well add the extra fuel as it results in identical ships when you drop the tanks but the initially heavier one is now a kilometre off the ground.

[Resender]

I haven't even managed to get a craft to get into Eve's sphere of influence

[henryrasia]

BAM!

[SpaceGibsy]

Nice video man... but that thing is still 3 times heavier than my ship.. As its at least 3 times bigger than neccesary but there are only a few design flaws - did you try putting a big capsule on top? it might still work!