Landing Solutions for Eve

[700NitroXpress]

So, in my designs to build Eve escape pod landers, I'm trying to find a better and more stable solution. The big landing legs are moving when I touchdown on Eve and so the entire craft starts sliding sideways after it lands and everything explodes. This won't work, but on Kerban this doesn't happen. I swapped out the landing gear with the smallest version of the landing legs which should be the most stable because they have less room that they can move before the girders hit the ground.

After I made this one with the landing legs I was looking at the I beams. They all have an impact tolerance of 80 and the landing gear has an impact tolerance of 10 - 20.

Is the impact of the landing breaking even the heaviest of the landing gear and causing the craft to slide around and explode?

Do you think that the I beams is a better solution compared to the landing gear on girders?

Both craft land perfectly on Kerban and the I beam version has a wider landing base so I think it would be more stable, what do you guys think?

Any suggestions on improvements?

I'm landing on fairly level terrain on Eve so it isn't landing at an angle and I touchdown at about 6.5 m/s so it's a really soft landing.

Here are the images for comparison: The landing solutions eject when the craft lifts off the ground on Eve.

Edited November 28, 2013 by 700NitroXpress

[Gamercraft_GC]

Sounds like a cool Mission. Just yesterday i was watching some youtube on my apple TV and He had this same problem. He turned out that is was the part clipping . So try spacing things out a little more and a lot more struts even though you used a ton. And Try just using The Metal Struts. The Rectangular Struts. whatever those are called. Just... I hope i could help and I'm sorry for this issue- Gamer

[Vanamonde]

The nice thing about Eve is that you can make the touchdown as gentle as you like by just adding more parachutes.

I haven't made anything that can come back yet, but I've had a fair amount of practice landing things there (which then fail to take off again ), and yes, the current landing legs are FAR too wimpy for the local gravity and size of ship needed. The next design I try might have a few legs as shock absorbers, but will rely on static beam structures otherwise. One suggestion: add some legs to the inner columns to distribute the weight and impact. (You might already have some, but it's hard to see in that pic.)

[700NitroXpress]

Alright, I'm testing the I beam one now.

[Motokid600]

Use the I beams for legs. Now.. this ship is going for an EVE ascent? Your going to want to ditch those parachutes after the landing. They are heavy and you don't want to take that back up with you. Put some decouplers and sepetrons in between the tank and chutes to jettison them away after touchdown. ( less you wanna keep a few should the craft not make it to orbit.

And on top of all this just understand that your tackling one of the hardest things to do in this game.

[700NitroXpress]

Alright, the I beams work really good, I swapped the engines out for the aerospikes and added more fuel. The parachutes now eject with the I beams so that should reduce the weight. The parachutes on top are now replaced with nose cones to reduce drag.

[Sirine]

Alright, the I beams work really good, I swapped the engines out for the aerospikes and added more fuel. The parachutes now eject with the I beams so that should reduce the weight. The parachutes on top are now replaced with nose cones to reduce drag.

Nose cones is useless. And base on your image...I doubt that have enough fuel to bring it to Lower Eve Orbit. (LEO).

[Taki117]

Nose cones is useless. And base on your image...I doubt that have enough fuel to bring it to Lower Eve Orbit. (LEO).

in .22 nosecones add flight stability, I'm still not sure if they reduce drag or not.

[Sirine]

in .22 nosecones add flight stability, I'm still not sure if they reduce drag or not.

I repeat again. in .22 nosecones....Still useless. There been discussion on the General Thread, and they have all kind of experiment, test, done...conclusion:-useless.

[700NitroXpress]

Nose cones make me feel like they're doing something so therefore they're useful.

I'm testing a different design now other than the one in the image.

[Sirine]

Nose cones make me feel like they're doing something so therefore they're useful.

I'm testing a different design now other than the one in the image.

Go ahead. If you feel they're doing something, that's good for you.

[DrMonte]

I would still use legs as they are good shock absorbers. You just need 1.7x more of them than on Kerbin. Slowing down to 3m/s near the surface would be good too.

Could suggest wings for control instead of SAS as they are much lighter and EVE atmosphere goes very high.

Oh, and adding more struts does not always help. More struts can even break your ship instead of keeping it harder.

I had plans to build an EVE sea level launcher just selected Jool first. It would be interesting to see how your craft is doing.

Edited November 29, 2013 by DrMonte

[Vanamonde]

You just need 1.7x more of them than on Kerbin.

True, but an Eve ascent vehicle is BIG, and 1.7 times the legs required to support it on Kerbin quickly gets ridiculous. The thing starts to look like a group hug of millipedes and still can sag to the point that engines get broken.

wings for control

The problem there is that the air foil geometry would have to work equally well as the ship was descending as when it ascending, which is quite a trick to arrange.

I still haven't made an Eve-return ship that works, but I'm becoming an expert on what doesn't work.

[Col_Jessep]

The girders worked fine on my Eve lander but it weights only 32 tons:

[DrMonte]

still can sag to the point that engines get broken.

That's just a design issue

The problem there is that the air foil geometry would have to work equally well as the ship was descending as when it ascending, which is quite a trick to arrange.

I think all landing on EVE should be handled by parachutes. They should be enough to keep the right end down. Landing on EVE is the least thing I would worry.

[numerobis]

Make a plane! Or at least use airplane landing gear; they're massless, and work very well.

Control surfaces won't cause you trouble on landing; parachutes completely dominate them. So ditch the SAS units indeed; the capsule gyros will be sufficient by the time you're too high for the winglets.

Nose cones are completely deleterious, except for looks. They have mass, so you have to fight more gravity on both landing and takeoff. They have drag, so you're fighting more air resistance on the way up. Drag is your friend on the way down -- but nose cones have lower drag than average, so you'll be falling faster than with other parts of equal mass. Knock yourself out with aesthetics, knowing you're making your design job harder.

Edited November 29, 2013 by numerobis

[700NitroXpress]

The nose cones are replacing the parachutes that I had mounted on top so it already has a significant mass reduction. I think nose cones help so they're staying. As for landing legs... there's no room, this thing is compact and low to the ground. The I beams actually worked perfectly well in testing on the Eve landings, they even landed at an angle and the craft was able to take off again. Now I just need more fuel and external command seats instead of the pod, then I'll have a small rocket on top that will take them the rest of the way into orbit. What I have right now made it to 45 km from a sea level launch so I thought that was a good test. I'm going to redesign it and then post a new screenshot.

[Moar Boosters]

These are my custom landing legs.

A decoupler on the craft...... a girder attached to that, and then several plates to create the foot.

The idea behind the design is to use the properties of the flat panels. When you connect them together end-to-end, the bond they create is both extremely strong, but also very flexible. Each leg had 3-4 of these connections which are carefully angled so the weight lands on the plate furthest from the girder. Those 3-4 connections will flex when you land but won't break, which effectively gives your lander suspension.

They turned out to be very effective. This is a 150+ ton lander, and I testing it on kerbin, it was able to slam into the surface at +10m/s without structural damage. I orginally built this craft with regular legs, and couldn't put it down on eve without the engines touching the floor and breaking off. First attempt with custom legs, and everything went perfectly. As you can see from the final screenshot, I ended up landing on a not-inconsiderable slope, but it was no problem for my big ugly landing legs.

[ExplodingRocketShips]

I'm not really the one that makes crafts for escape.

However, I did make a craft designed for colonizing. When you want to populate an area, you just activate the release, which separates four hitchhiker pods and a capsule. They land via parachute and then you can bring in any modular builds to the landing site.

[700NitroXpress]

Here's my new design using the I beam configurations. I have 4 shock absorbers for the center section and a large structural plate on the bottom of the lower decoupler. The parachutes should work just fine and the nose cones look good and make me feel better about the craft's chances. I took out the center pod and replaced it with a Skipper engine and a 1440 fuel tank. I'm taking this out to Eve now for testing with 4 Red Shirt Kerbals for testing.

[Hannu]

I have not yet landed on Eve in 0.22 but that 6.5 m/s landing speed is far from soft landing. In earth gravity you get that speed if you drop something from height of 2.15 m. It is hard shock to heavy spacecraft. I land about 1 m/s on Eve and not more than 2 m/s with any lander. Despite of that I often lose couple of descent engines, but ascent stages remains OK condition.

[700NitroXpress]

Landing failure, all Red Shirts are dead. Any landing legs just won't survive the landing, once they break, they jiggle around and cause the rest of the craft to explode. I'm going to try it with all I beams. Nose cones are back to being parachutes.

[nhnifong]

Giant rockets may not be the only way to get out of Eve. This is still under development, but as you can see, I have a prototype that flies on kerbin. On eve, there is more solar power available and more atmosphere, so I'll be able to lift more weight with the same amount of wing. It all comes down to how light I can make the rocket ascent stage in the center.

[700NitroXpress]

Here is my new Eve lander, the landing legs finally work even if it lands at an angle. It also hit the ground at 9 m/s and nothing essential broke.

[Sirine]

Giant rockets may not be the only way to get out of Eve. This is still under development, but as you can see, I have a prototype that flies on kerbin. On eve, there is more solar power available and more atmosphere, so I'll be able to lift more weight with the same amount of wing. It all comes down to how light I can make the rocket ascent stage in the center.

I would love to see this work. But

this simply wont work.