Eve Mission Program

[The Jedi Master]

I am beginning the EVE Program, which will be my first real interplanetary mission. The order of events will go like this:

1. Probe in orbit around Eve
   
2. Unnmanned lander on Eve
   
3. Unmanned lander on Gilly
   
4. Manned lander on Gilly
   
5. 
   

I will post my progress here as I go along.

Tips?

[DMagic]

Go light with the probes. For 2 or 3 ton payloads you don't need much to get to Eve. And ion engines work great for orbital probes around Eve because the solar panels are so much more efficient (I think around 5/sec instead of 2/sec that you get around Kerbin).

[Richy teh space man]

5 Unmanned rovers on Eve

6 Unmanned balloons on Eve

[Dictator Dan]

Aerobraking. A lot of it. With a minor course correction when you enter Eves sphere of influence, you can burn off a lot of excess velocity for very, very little fuel. Also, Gilly is very hilly, so make sure to land on the light side, or have some downward facing lights.

[Richy teh space man]

I'll add parachutes for landing on Eve but don't open them too early; let the atmosphere do the work of slowing you down to under 200 m/s otherwise they may just get ripped off

[Octobomb]

Dangnabbit, that's my idea! I WAS trying to keep the part count low... But somehow ended up with two satellites and a lander. I need MJ just to make it point forwards... And missed the transfer too.

Edited May 19, 2013 by Octobomb

[Francesco]

merge 1 and 2: once you're orbiting Eve, you may as well land on it. or crash on it by turning the probe/lander into an impactor

with something small like a FL-T200 + LV-909 configuration, you may as well ditch the parachute and do a powered landing.

[Daze]

merge 1 and 2: once you're orbiting Eve, you may as well land on it. or crash on it by turning the probe/lander into an impactor

with something small like a FL-T200 + LV-909 configuration, you may as well ditch the parachute and do a powered landing.

Or if you want to have two probes launch them togheter then use stack separator