Smallest Craft to Various Milestones

[SRV Ron]

While the pictures show this in Kerban orbit, there was more then enough fuel to make low Mun orbit. It would probably orbit Minmus as well.

[ihtoit]

drop half the solar panels (maybe even go down to 2, on opposite sides of the barrel), you'll chop a chunk of weight.

[numerobis]

Eve return should be possible in just shy of 10 tonnes using a tweak of tavert's spacecraft, in version 0.22. It'll take a while for me to build and fly it, but:

1. You can reduce the number of engines now that the 48-7S is 50% stronger than before.

2. The cube-on-an-engine exploit lets you reduce stage more conveniently (and have fewer decouplers).

Staging for the ascent can be: 3 tanks and 2 engines, then 1 tank and 1 engine, then 1 tank, and the final stage as tavert has it -- a total of 4 engines, 6 tanks, 3 decouplers (as opposed to 7 engines, 7 tanks, and 6 decouplers). That gets you more deltaV in 0.22 than tavert got with his spacecraft, but the same or better TWR except in the second-to-last stage. And it saves nearly a tonne.

A couple smaller hacks:

3. You can use a single powered wheel rather than 4, and use the unpowered wheels to complete a tripod. Powered wheels have mass; unpowered wheels don't. Saves you 150 kg.

4. You can use wings instead of parachutes for the landing. Saves you 80 kg if you use 6 Delta-deluxe wings on the Eve lander rather than two small parachutes. Even just 4 might be sufficient on Eve?

Now that you've saved more than a tonne from the Eve lander, you don't need as much fuel to leave Kerbin orbit. Now you've got a relatively light spacecraft with wings -- you can ditch the extra jet engine and jet fuel, do a horizontal liftoff, and climb ever more steeply as your speed builds up.

My guess: 9.86t is a working manned Eve return mission. [edit: 9.86 for a manned Eve return with only chemical engines. An ion stage would shave another couple tonnes.]

Edited October 26, 2013 by numerobis