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What has been the most difficult place you've landed and returned a Kerbal?


skendzie

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I've landed kerbals everywhere and returned them, and Eve is the hardest place. Moho would probably be second, but that's because of the difficulty in getting there, not the landing and takeoff. Moho may actually take more delta-V for a round trip including landing, but Eve still felt harder because so much of the delta-V needs to be accompanied by a high TWR.

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...with the intent to return our beloved Kerbals.

You have opened a big hole there. I have successfully returned, thus far, from Duna's surface.

As far as intent goes: I landed a Kerbal on Laythe and was not fully prepared, fuelwise, for the labor of gaining orbit and returning. If I had not of landed on Laythe, I could have orbited Jool and returned. Landings and takeoffs can take a lot of DV.

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LKO.

:P

So far. I'll eventually get Kerbals out further and bring them back home. Just have lots of learning still to do before I feel confident in doing so.

Same with me. I know what moves you have to make to enter orbit, but I have just been struggling with the amount of fuel needed.

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I think it would be Dres, and I have a strict rule of not using docking for first interplanetary missions to other places, except if it is very difficult to impossible to do so.

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I've returned a Kerbal from the surface of Mun and Minmus and from Duna orbit. Currently doing unmanned probes or a Munbase so not looking to add to that figure yet. I have stranded Kerbals on Eve, Duna, and Laythe.

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How the heck does one go about getting a Kerbal off of Eve? The rocket would be absolutely massive, how do you even get it over there? Assemble it in space?

Anyway for me it would be Mun or minmus, I don't really find one harder than the other, they both have their own challenges. I've currently got some Kerbals on Duna who will hopefully be returned to Kerbin sometime soon.

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How the heck does one go about getting a Kerbal off of Eve? The rocket would be absolutely massive, how do you even get it over there? Assemble it in space?

if by "getting a Kerbal off of Eve" you mean ONE Kerbal, no, the rocket doesn't need to be so massive after all: you can check out Brotoro's signature on the first page of this thread for his Eve return mission.

I'm preparing a similar mission in this very moment. tip: use aerospikes :)

there were also a couple of interesting Eve mission reports, but sadly we lost them during the forum purge.

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How the heck does one go about getting a Kerbal off of Eve? The rocket would be absolutely massive, how do you even get it over there? Assemble it in space?

If you just want to get a Kerbal into space you don't need a massive rocket. You simply need to blow it up juuuuuuust right.

screenshot116_zpsee9a1ff9.png

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How the heck does one go about getting a Kerbal off of Eve? The rocket would be absolutely massive, how do you even get it over there? Assemble it in space?

There are a few ways to do it, and they don't require assembly in space unless you want to do it that way.

The first is the usual asparagus stack, with a lot of disposable boosters. Getting the stack to Eve takes some serious lift, but that's not really too difficult; it's just a matter of time.

The second is the rocket plane. Make a spaceplane with plenty of wing area, and it can glide down. On the way back up, the wings are doing most of the work of offsetting the gravity, as long as you can get high enough to be out of the really thick atmosphere. Before the wipe, there were some good pictures of extremely large lifting-body planes using this method to escape from Eve.

The third option is to use mods. Not "infinite fuel engine" sorts of mods, but things like:

> The Kethane mod includes a jet engine that works in Eve's atmosphere, using raw kethane instead of fuel. It's not hard to make a workable spaceplane that works on Kerbin, and then substitute one jet engine for the other. Once you're in orbit you'll need to refuel, or transfer to a space-only vessel to come home. (My own return from Eve used this sort of design.)

> There are mods adding zeppelin bodies and electric-powered propellers. Using these, you can easily get up above the thick part of the atmosphere, at which point the ascent is not much worse than doing it on Kerbin.

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How the heck does one go about getting a Kerbal off of Eve? The rocket would be absolutely massive, how do you even get it over there? Assemble it in space?

If you're willing to abuse physics glitches, getting off Eve is easy: http://imgur.com/a/01YgQ (Sadly the original thread about the FTL Egg died in the great forum derp)

Since Eve is so easy, the hardest place I've ever returned from is Moho. I've never been to Tylo.

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Mun from when getting into Mun's orbit was an achievement. I've got two on Eve that I'm not expecting to return anytime soon. I don't want to abuse a glitch to get them back. I'd like to develop my space program a bit more and do it the right way.

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Jool, 12.000 m/s dV after balloon launch, atmosphere up to 200km, 5800m/s to orbital speed, big planet so you spend a lot of time in atmosphere after gravity turn at 60km.

Think I dropped 8 unnmanned ones from the Laythe shipyards. Know now that the accent profile was wrong, I should aimed for an 300km orbit to spend less time in the atmosphere.

Edited by magnemoe
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I haven't landed Kerbals everywhere yet, but of the two bodies I've visited with manned ships outside of Kerbin, I would have to say that Duna was the trickiest, namely because, up to that point, my only experience with Duna's atmosphere was a one-way lander probe. During the descent I was doing a rather mad-scramble landing under rocket and parachute. When it came to the ascent I had no idea what I was doing, having only been able to test the lander on Kerbin, and only a vague idea that it might work due to how little fuel I had left and only the slightest understanding of what Duna's atmosphere was like. I did make orbit and rendezvous with the tug for the return home, but it was equally as tense as the landing.

Ike, on the other hand, was comparatively easy; it was just a matter of shipping one of my Mun landers out there and sending a probe down first to get some idea of the surface altitude. I intend on using the same lander and tug setup for manned landings on Dres and Gilly this summer.

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