The Eve return mission is too tedious

[Ghost13]

Ok I decided to pull off the eve return mission I build the ship capable of 11300 dv, and Eve land\return flight weightiung 150 tonns (tested it via hyperedit). Got into LKO refueled, get it into eve orbit refuled it again on the eve orbit. Landied the probe on the tallest mountain range so have a glimps on terrain and provide lightbeam mark for the main lander. The whole process took me around week or real time (I played by few hours at the evenings) and then just before I decided to go for landing I noticed that two of the enines fell off without any apparent reason, and in noticed it only after i quicksaved, therefore ruining my mission. After such setback I don't want to play KSP for a while (maybe till 0.22) so my point is: The eve return mission is diffucult to the point where fun is lost. Maybe delta v requirements for eve return shuld be set lower for somewhere around 9000-9500 dv for the takeoff from Eve sea level it still be a challenge, but make things easier and allow more Eve return capable spacecraft designs to be build.

[Dedjal]

quick and dirty fix would be to launch the ship again, save, copy ship, paste over ship on eve. Tada, engines never lost.

[Temstar]

I always advice people to attempt manned Eve landing and return last because it's the ultimate challenge of the full range of KSP skills for a player. Once you know all the tricks of the game you will be able to conduct this mission in a reasonable way.

For example, the smallest possible two man Eve lander could be built to under 20 tons using a range of tricks like extensive asparagus staging (including vertical asparagus via radial engines) and using ladder/command chair instead of pod. Landing the lander on top of a mountain top also cuts down the delta-V to return from orbit from 12,000m to as low as 7,500m. Once you've cut down this most difficult part the rest of the mission would be easy.

For example here is my lander at around 30 tons:

With a lander this light I can then do my mission with style. Along for the ride I had a rover for Eve which landed separately and drove the crew around on the surface to explore Eve, including visiting the ocean:

And also a two piece Gilly lander

Here's the whole mission assembled around the mothership:

The whole thing together is probably around 150 tons assembled in LKO over 5 launches (including one for tanker).

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/30909-Two-men-Eve-landing-and-return-%28image-heavy%29

Edited September 10, 2013 by Temstar

[magnemoe]

10 ton, craft, the version with an actual seat not ladder is 16 ton and is easier to use as in mechjeb accent. the 10 ton version don't let you warp, require you to disable two engines by hotkey around 15 km and disable mechjeb and go manual on the ant and oscar upper stage. Someone managed to build one who was a bit over 6 ton but it could only do 7.5 km mountains not 6.5 ton like this and require adjusting the kerbal position during flight.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/48461-Grand-tour-4-new-attempt-at-an-below-100-ton-grand-tour?p=628658&viewfull=1#post628658

[Ghost13]

Your lander design looks exactly as my basic lander for all purposue missions exempt I use landercan and not a seat.

What do you use for the vectoring engine in the central part of the ship? I tried to go with the just seat but it brake off really easy on landing and takeoff. Can you list up the parts used in the lander? I don't need the craft file (since I want do things mysefl) but the part list from the actual working landung\return mission will be helpfull. I think I may try rework my own lander design. By the way do you use kerbonauts jet pack for final dv boost or the whole last stage gets to LEVEO? Also do you use RCS juring the the accend? Since there is no conrol surfaces the ship must be really well balanced to get to flight straign throw the thicker part of the atmosphere.

[Temstar]

For me, the centre engine is a LV-T45:

Using aerospike causes your rockets to be aerodynamically unstable due to their lower than average drag. That's why I have so many winglets on the centre stage to provide control authority to overpower the aerodynamically instability.

The top stage is powered by two R24-77. Since these little rockets are designed to be vernier engines they actually have vectored thrust, so there's plenty of steering. Even if the engines are not firing the craft is small enough that the probe core can easily turn the craft. I used ladders because seats were not yet available when I did the mission.

The landing site for my lander is just under 5km in altitude, land it higher and you can shave off even more delta-V. I don't use mechjeb and I'm not so confident on my pin point atmosphere landing precision, plus back there there wasn't any really high detailed elevation map of Eve, so I decided to overengineer the lander and wing it.

I don't use the kerbonaut's MMU packs as the final stage, if you do you can shave off another 500m/s off the lander's delta-V budget. For a two man lander it's kind of hard to do so I decided not to go for it. With two full MMU packs in orbit I decided to jet pack over to the mothership instead of attempting to do a docking without RCS:

[Plur303]

An Eve return mission is the only true challenge in the game. I think Eve should be left alone. Consider it the final boss of the game. Until you have performed an Eve return you have not conquered KSP. I have a hyperedit tested Eve return lander that actually uses a capsule but have not figured out hot to get it to Eve yet. I'm wanting to do it in a single launch, no refueling. In my opinion that is the "holy grail" mission of KSP. A manned mission to Eve and back (using a capsule and not rover seats) in a single launch from Kerbin.

Making it easier is just moving goalposts and detracts from the accomplishment of achieving an Eve return. Eve is supposed to mimic Venus. Venus has an atmospheric density approximately 92X that of Earth's. Eve's super thick atmosphere is appropriate and actually not even thick enough to represent Venus.

[Monger]

I think, at some point you have to accept that not all things are possible in KSP, as they aren't in real life. For example, landing on Mars and returning in just one mission with considerable payload is, at least with the current technology, nearly impossible. It is actually difficult enough to land anything heavy in this thin atmosphere.

I guess once KSP allows vehicle construction on other locations than the KSC, missions like this will get a lot easier. Until then, I think it's perfectly okay that only very few people can pull off such a manoeuvre in KSP. Not everything in KSP has to be easily achievable.

[magnemoe]

An Eve return mission is the only true challenge in the game. I think Eve should be left alone. Consider it the final boss of the game. Until you have performed an Eve return you have not conquered KSP. I have a hyperedit tested Eve return lander that actually uses a capsule but have not figured out hot to get it to Eve yet. I'm wanting to do it in a single launch, no refueling. In my opinion that is the "holy grail" mission of KSP. A manned mission to Eve and back (using a capsule and not rover seats) in a single launch from Kerbin.

Making it easier is just moving goalposts and detracts from the accomplishment of achieving an Eve return. Eve is supposed to mimic Venus. Venus has an atmospheric density approximately 92X that of Earth's. Eve's super thick atmosphere is appropriate and actually not even thick enough to represent Venus.

Using capsule will simply increase the ship weight out of proportions. It was done in 017 and with some huge multi hundred ton landers. Then somebody came up with the ladder tricks dropping weight below 50 ton at once, Ladders are still the best way to make the lightest landers, seats however made it easier and the new 48-7S engine and 45 liter fuel tanks made landers in the 6-20 ton weight class possible.

Simply an combination of more parts and the accumulated player skillbase makes this possible.

Now if you want an serious chalenge try to go below 0 meter attitude on Jool and back with stock.

Yes somebody did it with an 1500 ton lander.

[Merinsan]

Making it easier is just moving goalposts and detracts from the accomplishment of achieving an Eve return. Eve is supposed to mimic Venus. Venus has an atmospheric density approximately 92X that of Earth's. Eve's super thick atmosphere is appropriate and actually not even thick enough to represent Venus.

True, but Eves gravity is higher than Venus', so I guess they balance out.

I once attempted an Eve return, just before 0.20 came out. I got everything in place, almost ready to land, and then 0.20 came out, and I started a new save and scrapped everything.

I'll get around to it again some day.

[Hannu]

Eve is good because it is hard but possible. If you increased pressure from 5 to 100 bars, it would make ascent from planet impossible and therefore lose interest to that planet. There is already one impossible planet, Jool, and will be more if they add other large gas planets. In my opinion Eve should be kept as an ultimate challenge instead of just blindly ape properties of the our solar system's planets. Now it is very good because it is possible to ascent from mountains but near the limits of possibility to ascent from sea level (I do not know has anyone made it).

[Burninate]

Ok I decided to pull off the eve return mission I build the ship capable of 11300 dv, and Eve land\return flight weightiung 150 tonns (tested it via hyperedit). Got into LKO refueled, get it into eve orbit refuled it again on the eve orbit. Landied the probe on the tallest mountain range so have a glimps on terrain and provide lightbeam mark for the main lander. The whole process took me around week or real time (I played by few hours at the evenings) and then just before I decided to go for landing I noticed that two of the enines fell off without any apparent reason, and in noticed it only after i quicksaved, therefore ruining my mission. After such setback I don't want to play KSP for a while (maybe till 0.22) so my point is: The eve return mission is diffucult to the point where fun is lost. Maybe delta v requirements for eve return shuld be set lower for somewhere around 9000-9500 dv for the takeoff from Eve sea level it still be a challenge, but make things easier and allow more Eve return capable spacecraft designs to be build.

The 'ultimate challenge' mission *should* be something at least on the borderline of possible. You're not owed a completion. I would go so far as to argue that there should be a number of bodies significantly more challenging than Eve, *just because*. To give us something to strive for. Things we can't do without some effort, some ingenuity, some work.

KSP isn't a rails shooter - this isn't the a boss mob that is standing in the way of the rest of the story - it's a challenge.

[Hannu]

There is Jool. You can not land on it but you can descend to zero level and try to ascend again. But there are limits with stock parts and physics engine and any significantly more challenging place than Eve's sea level is beyond that limit. And on the other hand, with mods you can do anything so it is useless to try to add many overimpossible planets just to be there.

[Sirine]

Checked in.

Eve Mk2 (Sea Level Lifter) All in 1 craft.

Edited September 10, 2013 by Sirine

[KerbMav]

I agree, if someone wants to land on a planet with an atmosphere and be able to return easily there is Duna - or Laythe.

Asking to make Eve less tedious is like asking to make the Mun have lesser gravity for easier landings.

Random question: Does FAR do anything to Eve and its "difficulty level"?

[Michael232]

What makes you fly to Eve, choose something else if it's too much.

This thread have kind of sparked my interest, I should try Eve return mission tonight.

[csanders]

I choose to go to Eve tonight, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

[tavert]

With a command pod, you can do Eve ascent in under 40 tons: http://imgur.com/a/piTkF#0

And this was before they increased the tallest mountain height from 6.4 km to 7.5 km, and added the very useful 48-7S engine to the stock game. If you don't want to use a seat or ladder, it's doable without too crazy of a craft if you launch from a high altitude. Build your lander on a rover-mobile launch platform and you don't even have to be as careful about your landing site.

My ladder-based Eve ascent vehicle is the lightest I've seen, at around 5 tons (just over if you include the rover wheels and parachutes on the landing platform, just under without). I'm working on a single-launch round-trip version at around 12 tons from the launchpad on Kerbin, it's just so many parts that it'll take forever to fly without MechJeb (for purposes of the Reddit challenge). Using ion engines for the interplanetary transfer can get even lighter, but at the cost of sanity.

[magnemoe]

With a command pod, you can do Eve ascent in under 40 tons: http://imgur.com/a/piTkF#0

And this was before they increased the tallest mountain height from 6.4 km to 7.5 km, and added the very useful 48-7S engine to the stock game. If you don't want to use a seat or ladder, it's doable without too crazy of a craft if you launch from a high altitude. Build your lander on a rover-mobile launch platform and you don't even have to be as careful about your landing site.

My ladder-based Eve ascent vehicle is the lightest I've seen, at around 5 tons (just over if you include the rover wheels and parachutes on the landing platform, just under without). I'm working on a single-launch round-trip version at around 12 tons from the launchpad on Kerbin, it's just so many parts that it'll take forever to fly without MechJeb (for purposes of the Reddit challenge). Using ion engines for the interplanetary transfer can get even lighter, but at the cost of sanity.

I used your 5 ton lander as template for my own, however I was unable to get it to work with less than 8 ton as I used the 6.5 km plateau. Doing to large plane changes would fast eat up the benefit.

Using an vertical ladder jumped the weight up past 10, with an seat I managed 15 ton however this is rock solid. I would probably save some on doing an powered landing, however my TWR is very close to 1 with the legs.

How do you get the 5 ton version stable? I had serious issues with the kerbal unbalancing it? It worked for me once, but not after the first time even with an copy of the lander.

[Javster]

The 'ultimate challenge' mission *should* be something at least on the borderline of possible. You're not owed a completion. I would go so far as to argue that there should be a number of bodies significantly more challenging than Eve, *just because*. To give us something to strive for. Things we can't do without some effort, some ingenuity, some work.

KSP isn't a rails shooter - this isn't the a boss mob that is standing in the way of the rest of the story - it's a challenge.

Easy for you to say! I can't get a probe to Duna.

[Javster]

I choose to go to Eve tonight, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

That's what I said when I tried to get to Duna with a probe.

[PotatoOverdose]

Eve really isn't that tedious. You can do a complete round trip for around 300 tons in a single launch without refueling once. You could probably do it for less if you use ladders, but I find that too buggy for my tastes.

Here's a picture of my 308 ton rocket that does the round trip, and an album where I show my latest trip for the reddit challenge.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1m25k2/challenge_eve_and_back_308_tons_370_parts/

The trick is to get a lightweight eve ascent stage. Mine was around 27 tons, as an example.

Edited September 10, 2013 by PotatoOverdose

[Chrisd857]

This isn't mine, but I think it is proof that an Eve return is the endgame challenge for mere mortals, but the true challenge is stock Jool ascent.

Note: This was hyperedited to Jool, so no one has yet learned how to get it there from Kerbin stock.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Michael232]

Jool is more like secret boss. I mean, there is no even surface! Well, there is a "sea level", but still... One should be an ascent maniac to grasp the meaning of "ascent from the gas giant surface".

[Ghost13]

Ok, guys your comments returned my appetite to the game. I build up much stable and easy to control >50 tonn Eve return lander with seat with 11000 dv I guess as long as get at least some elevation I can get to orbit or just use the jetpack of kerbonaut for the remaning dv the lander is fully ladder capapble so I'm going for the flag. All unnesesary stuff is jettisoned upon engine burn to for assend. I know it's far more than many of you did here like 8 tonn lander to Eve is still beyong me. But I think I will run this mission with this one. It's already in the kerbin orbit wating for the nuclear booster stage to arrive. I also going to reuse the poor remains of my old lander that get damaged by kraken and stuck at Eve orbit. Since it still have quite a lot of fuel and working docking port I'm goint to use at as refuel station and do the resque mission for the brave Bob Kerbin.