My 3-man-can from Eve sea level attempt.

[csanders]

Currently this is in hyper-edit testing

I was curious what it would take to land a 3 kerbal canister from sea level from Eve. It's surprisingly hard to find the right google search terms to see what others did to accomplish this - so I started building things, and testing them in hyper edit. Here are the results. (Just successfully did this tonight, so I'm giddy).

I did onion staging, since it's easy to copy/paste, but I imagine if someone wanted to use real asparagus, they would get better results.

It has one major thing going for it: It's SSTO, meaning I can get it into Kerbin orbit in one piece, so it's just a matter of refilling it, flying it to Eve, and refilling it again (that is NOT going to be fun). Technically that's easily do-able, it's just oh so tedious. So tedious. Oh so tedious. There aren't sentences to describe how tedious that will be. Technically, that's just a matter of rendezvous and docking, which of done hundreds of times in KSP and Orbiter. I figure this might double that figure.

But it does the important stuff, unreliably. It can survive landing on Eve, sometimes, (on very level surfaces) and returns to orbit from 120m off of Eve.

I still want to get the landing struts more robust. And I have to add ladders... so many ladders. At this point it might be easier having a landing craft docked on top that the Kerbals will fly to the surface and use to return to the top of the craft. I'm joking of course. I hope. Jesus I hope I'm joking.

I think I will dub thee "Spider Web" (the struts look more like a spider web in full resolution)

139 Meters, and most of the legs survived!

If you've never been to Eve, and wondered what the fuss about altitude is about, here it is.

The craft only needs to be this big to take off from 2700

This big at 3500

Close to the size it needs to be at Eve's highest peak. Big even for an Eve lander. This is why people use seats and ladders instead of a 4 ton capsule.

Almost there!

Great success!

Running on fumes on that last pic.

And this is what happens when it's not reliable. (Herman seems distraught, rightfully so)

Edited November 6, 2013 by csanders

[Specialist290]

Impressive work I always like seeing other people's Eve ascent attempts. Let me know when you've worked out a full mission profile for that craft, including the launch from Kerbin and landing attempt; I'm sure that would be interesting to follow as well

[csanders]

Impressive work I always like seeing other people's Eve ascent attempts. Let me know when you've worked out a full mission profile for that craft, including the launch from Kerbin and landing attempt; I'm sure that would be interesting to follow as well

Thanks!

FYI, this was my first attempt at this. COMPLETELY inadequate.

Also, protip, two orange tanks stacked on top each other, pushed by a mainsail, barely has over 1.0 TWR on Eve (when it has a payload anyway). I don't have a pic of that failed design. It doesn't matter how wide you make it, it's not getting off Eve.

Edited November 6, 2013 by csanders

[Geschosskopf]

Egad. Brilliant! Bravo! Are you related to Whackjob?

I tinker with Eve for a few days every month, trying out new crazy ideas the Voices have whispered to me. So far, none of them have quite panned out but a few have come close. And that's with just a 1-man can, although I'm attempting to make it an SSTO to avoid having to build replacement boosters on Eve. But no luck at all. So, for the time being, Eve is a penal colony, a place of permanent exile.