So I took an asparagus lander to EVE.

[Red Iron Crown]

On the other hand, it could be feasible to add an ion-powered Kerbin return stage to large Eve landers.

I'm mentally filing this away for future use.

[Lukaszenko]

Here's my contraption, although NOT purely stock as it has reinforced joints. Also it's built for FAR and DRE. Still should work on a stock game because that's where most of the testing took place. I finally installed reinforced joints because it took waaaay too long to test and retest (with no hyperedit) at a fraction of a frame/sec.

Anyway, it has ~12 km/s delta V and somehow had more than 3k left over when I reached orbit. I suspect FAR had something to do with it.

[Mystique]

Here's my view of Eve lander (being refuelled by biomass fuel factory on LKO for interplanetary travel). Lander can with small nuclear engine is right below central tank so that poor squeezed kerbonaut may reach Eve's surface easier (to get back in I actually use KAS winch). Didn't test it yet on Eve

[bigdad84]

This was my Eve lander with an Interplanetary Tug. Launching from over 6KM it had enough fuel to go suborbital then the kerbal had to bail out and use his RCS jetpack for the rest of the orbit.

[Majorjim!]

Wow I had forgotten about this thread.

I wonder why its suddenly resurfaced? This was my first ever Eve attempt. It was quite early in my KSP history so be nice.

MJ

[quantumpion]

There is a command seat under that probe core. The probe is just there to get the mass of a kerbal into the delta-v calculation.

[TheD007]

i had a rover one used the 48s on 2 decks of double ringed asparagus only 24t(with parachutes, ladders, wheels, and RTGs still on it) without the lifter and transfer stages. i have found that the lightest ones are really high on the part count. i had a slide show for the launch but i could fully circularize the orbit from 2500m.

[kookoo_gr]

Does anybody knows what is the optimum speed before 32Km for Eve? e.g for Kerbin you need to be under 200m/s under 10k so you won't spend fuel, for Eve what is is this speed?

[maccollo]

Does anybody knows what is the optimum speed before 32Km for Eve? e.g for Kerbin you need to be under 200m/s under 10k so you won't spend fuel, for Eve what is is this speed?

Terminal velocity

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Eve#Atmosphere

[Majorjim!]

LOOL I have totally lost my own post..

Have at it chaps, I'm out.

MJ

[The Destroyer]

Ha.

Good luck with that.

You're talking about a vehicle that weighs in the hundreds of tons.

Just getting that into orbit around Kerbin would be a massive accomplishment.

You do realize your talking to this guy

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Whackjob]

That's all old small stuff hehe. Now...

... that's more in the ballpark of where I need to be.

[doggie015]

Scott Manley managed to get FOUR kerbals into orbit from Eve. He used the external seats to reduce weight.

[doggie015]

That's all old small stuff hehe. Now...

http://i.imgur.com/DugHP0n.png

... that's more in the ballpark of where I need to be.

My computer just begged me for mercy after viewing that image!

[TheExplosionist]

Using command seats is extremely lame.

2 x Mk1 pods from sea level:

[AustralianFries]

Ha.

Good luck with that.

You're talking about a vehicle that weighs in the hundreds of tons.

Just getting that into orbit around Kerbin would be a massive accomplishment.

I'm not exactly riding the Whackjob fan-train, but Jesus Christ man, do you know who you're talking to?

[Hans Dorn]

You do realize your talking to this guy

http://imgur.com/a/rE7dJ

That's an awesome contraption.

Did you use an external tool to create it?

Cheers

Edit: @Whackjob, ofc

[AustralianFries]

That's an awesome contraption.

Did you use an external tool to create it?

Cheers

That is Whackjob's creation. You should probably ask him.

[Hans Dorn]

Just noticed. Is there a blushing Kerbal smiley?

[InfinityArch]

I'm personally very curious what the dV requirements to achieve Eve orbit are with FAR are; I know it cuts dV to LKO to around 3,200-3,600 depending on design (due to the more realistic drag calculations), though I haven't a clue what Eve ascents would look like.

Obviously, if your using FAR for an Eve landing, you should also grab deadly reentry, which more than makes up for the reduced challenge of launches.

[Redshift OTF]

This was my Eve Lander from a few versions ago.

Not very efficient and if I had to make one again I would have a frame where the parachutes and landing legs were jettison-able but it could get into orbit from sea level so I was proud of it.

[Redshift OTF]

Using command seats is extremely lame.

2 x Mk1 pods from sea level:

My God, I've never seen that before.

[godemperorzack]

I recently completed my own Eve mission, and I love everyone's large style landers! Here is my own that I designed it to take off from sea level without aerospikes or nucs, so it weighs in a little north of 300 tons. The scariest thing about taking off from Eve is just how quickly the pieces start vanishing during your ascension. For instance, I have only 3 stacks left at only 15 thousand feet! It seems incredible that it still makes it to a 100k orbit like that, but I guess that's the rocket equation for you.

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/pzUBP/embed"></iframe>

[NecroBones]

For my first attempt at manned Eve landing/return, I went ahead and did the chair thing, since it gave me another 2k of dV compared to the can. I landed at about 1500m altitude. It all worked out, getting back to orbit with a little fuel to spare, even with some mistakes in my ascent path. So now I'm trying to design something more "legit", with a real lander can. I love seeing people's designs here, but man, I'm trying really hard not to make a 300+ ton lander. But it may be hard to avoid.

[GeorgeG]

Here is a copy of a message I posted over a year ago, in the old SEAV challenge. It all got wiped out in the April 2013 forum crash. In the SEAV challenge, the objective was the lowest mass for a lander to land on Eve, then take off to make stable orbit, not to fly a full mission. The screenshot on the pad was only to document the mass as required by the challenge rules.

This was done using version 18.

This launched from a mountain plateau at 6.4 km ASL. I also did one that took off from Sea Level, same design using more tank/engine pairs asparagus staged.

It flew 4 Kerbals, because it could.....

------------------------------------------------

I've been wanting to post an official SEAV claim here for some time. 32.81 ton, 100% rocket powered.

For a recent mission to Eve, I made an ascent vehicle that was landed at about 4 km ASL.

For this SEAV challenge, I reworked it to optimize it more, to launch at a site over 6.4 km ASL

There is one big key to the design. I won't spoil it here, but it won't take many people long to notice it. And a few may have seen my Eve-Gilly mission report already.

Vehicle on pad. 32.81 tons.

Descending from orbit, into atmosphere, mass still 32.81 as on the pad

Two drogues deployed, two mains reefed. Later when the two mains deploy and slow the ship, the rest of the main chutes were deployed by action groups.

The crew on the ground at Eve after landing.

Later, the crew climbed back aboard.

There is a short 1-meter tank (80 liters) on top of each side booster. It is a "top-off" tank that replaces fuel used for the "dab" burn at landing. The top-off tank is mounted to a decoupler. The Top-off tank has all the chutes mounted to it, plus two ladders. So, when the top-off tanks are jettisoned, so is the dead mass of the chute canisters and two ladders on each.

Jettisoning the top-off tanks. A sepratron pushes each off. I forgot to retract the ladders in this shot.

Pre-launch image with info, including coordinates. Mass is now just under 30 tons. Note that the Delta-Vee calculations are different (accurate), now that the top-off tanks have been jettisoned.

Climbout at about 2.4 km true altitude. The lander legs were jettisoned at liftoff, as soon as it left the ground.

An uncluttered view of the vehicle, before the outer boosters are separated.

After outer boosters were separated, the six Nova Punch 20 kN radial Verniers ignited to provide additional thrust to improve the TWR. The four verniers of the final stage get their fuel from the lower stage.

Not long after staging, the upper stage begain a gravity turn at 30 km ASL

An uncluttered climb image. Sometimes a Kerbal is angled, looking like they might off, but none ever fell off during an ascent (Any "hard" landing that might knock off a Kerbal , would also have damaged the ship or fallen over)

After the engines shut down to coast to apoapsis, I shut down two of the four engines to reduce the G Loads. Again, none ever fell off, but it was a precaution. And on a "real" (OMG) version of this, that would definitely be the thing to do (some BELTS would help too....). When it did reach apoapsis, then two engines fired to complete the orbit.

Stable orbit, 101 x 99.6 km. 241 ms of Delta-V left. Mass of 1.09 ton

The four Kerbals, safely in orbit, waiting for.....

END

OK, so, the key is not to use command pods, which weigh so much. A 8/10 ton pod requires a lot of dV to get it into orbit. The entire final stage of this weighs only 1.09 ton in orbit.

Vehicle mass of 32.81 tons, divided by four Kerbals, that comes to 8.2025 tons of ship mass per Kerbal. OK, I know, not an official statistic.

Onboard a rocket, a Kerbal weighs...... nothing (Some of the test flights seemed to have a little less dV left after making orbit when Kerbals were onboard). And that is not just for this ladder method, try launching a 3-Kerbal pod with only enough fuel to get to about 2 km or so. You will get the same altitude whether it has 3 Kerbals or one Kerbal inside.

So, for this, an enclosed official command pod is replaced by the "Spooler Pod", which is an open-air structure that the Kerbals climb onto and ride. The mass of the "Spooler Pod" used on this vehicle is .13 ton. In the VAB it indicated .19. I made a copy of the ship the deleted everything under the BOMP control pod (the part directly under it was a fuel tank), then sent what was left onto the pad, which read .13 ton on the pad.

The Kerbals hang on to ladder rungs for dear life, out in the open. For my Eve mission, I explained away the aerodynamics not blowing the Kerbals off, by saying the decoupler in front created a unique Kerbaldynamic phenonmena that caused the airflow directly underneath to be quite low (Eye of the Hurricane kind of thing).

Kerbals slide on ladders too easily. Under thrust, they can slide down and off the bottom end. After engine shutdown, they can slide off the front (top). Also in zero G they tend to slide "up". So to keep them on, they stand on the top of the tank, to keep from sliding down under thrust. To keep from sldiing off the front, that is what the 1 meter decoupler at the top is really for.

And if two can climb on, then why not four? So, for the SEAV challenge, I added a bit more length (and rungs) to the Spooler Pod, and I flew four. Nobody's done more than one yet, right? Now in theory, a longer Spooler pod could carry 10 Kerbals. Or 20. Or if I took all day to transport that many to climb onboard it, 100 (actually, the small cubic struts used for the backbone of the spool would bend or wobble to much once assembled beyond a really long length). Also at some point, Kerbals might start falling off there was any significant force of Kerbal on top of Kerbal on top of Kerbal (and so on), sliding on the ladder.

So, I settled on "just" four.

Engines were Nova Punch Aerospikes, and 20 kN radial verniers. The final two stages were stacked on top of each other, but the final stage provided thrust through most of the ascent. For the minimum vehicle, they ignite when the two side tanks separate. A fuel line carries fuel from the lower stage to the final stage.

The lander used a B.O.M.P. control pod (.625 meter) for control, plus Mechjeb (Jeb-9000).

- George Gassaway

Edited April 18, 2014 by GeorgeG