Low hanging fruit is gone

[James_Eh]

So I think I have done everything I can without a crash development of a new lander / drive.

Remaining targets to land, flag, and successfully return from:

Moho-ly it's hard

Eve-ntually you crash

Tylo-sucks (I've got nothing)

and Laythe (O2? Really?).

(Well, and Jool the jerk, but c'mon...)

I have even rescued the approx 15 Kerbals that I left in awful spots during my early experiments with the game. (Including one poor slob in a polar orbit around Vall... That rescue mission was the most fun I have had in the game thus far!)

I suspect I may need to ditch my self-imposed rule of not abandoning engines along the way in order to accomplish any of the above.

Am I correct in assuming that I need a whole new set of vessels to beat my four arch-nemeses mentioned above? Research on this forum would suggest yes... Gonna hate to kill off the atomic drive section that has taken me to ~15 targets... I haven't tried this yet, but can you scrub off a bit of velocity in Eve's atmosphere on the way in order to make a Moho encounter a bit less dV cumbersome?

[celem]

Slingshot on Eve yes (well, gravity brake i guess), you can reduce your braking costs by a considerable chunk with that. With good timing you can sling it again on the way back.

You really do have the rough end of the list left.

I did Moho on nuke CM and a lander able to reach kerbin orbit. I certainly drop tanks, though im happy with low twr and carried just 1 nuke, so no engine drops there. Scraped under the bar with approx 25min braking burn in a 30min SoI encounter I even brought the lander back (0.22 sci).

I dont think an eve ssto is possible using stock parts, so you will definately be shedding like crazy ascending from a flag plant, not much can be done about that.

Laythe i didnt find too bad. Its kerbin with a slightly lower aerobrake and easier climb out, i often sling off a jool intercept directly into laythe aerobrake (precisenode and conics mode 0). Its probably a good one to aim for first off that list. Along with moho. Tylo i still havent done, or eve.

Your existing vessels may well adapt to some of these. Eve ascent is a custom build though with limited options just due to the constraints of physics, thats a unique lander. moho lander isnt an issue, its just the interplanetary work thats hard.

Edited January 2, 2014 by celem

[Spatzimaus]

As we said in the other thread on this topic, Moho isn't hard to land on at all. It's the intercept that takes work, and that just means you need enough delta-V in total. You can get there with ions pretty easily, although that obviously limits the size of your vessel and you'll still need conventional rockets for the actual landing. Alternately, send a fuel depot to the outer regions of Eve's sphere of influence, i.e. Gilly, and and refuel on the way to and from Moho with whatever sort of design you use for Mun or Duna.

Laythe isn't hard to land on at all, as long as you're good enough at steering to aim for land. Taking off is easy with spaceplanes, a bit more painful with rockets, but any design that can take off from Kerbin can do the same on Laythe with ease. You just have to stop doing asparagus designs, and that probably means putting some sort of refueling depot in Laythe orbit. Personally, I use an SSTO spaceplane that can fly straight from Kerbin to Laythe using ion engines; if you don't have a plane like this then yes, you'll need a new design, but that sort of vessel is useful for many other bodies as well.

Tylo and Eve are the painful ones, and unless you're VERY good you'll need custom designs for those two. Eve's incredibly easy to land on, it's just the takeoffs that are brutal. Tylo is the reverse; the combination of high gravity and no atmosphere means most designs will burn a lot of fuel on the way down, so unless you use the Kethane mod to refuel on the surface you'll have problems taking off again, but the actual takeoff isn't difficult at all since you can go max thrust the whole way up.

[FlamedSteak]

The good thing with Laythe (and Duna for that matter) on .23 is that you can tinker with 'chutes to deploy a bit higher up. Gives you a bit more leeway on your landing target if it's looking like you're going to overshoot it and a little more time to plan the final landing decelleration burn.

[bsalis]

Laythe isn't hard to land on at all, as long as you're good enough at steering to aim for land.

With a wide lander, you can just land on the water instead. It's always flat too!

[Kasuha]

Moho is easy as long as you have the dv to brake. Launch window planner is very useful there, or the periapsis approach. I actually visited Moho before Jool system.

Eve is easy to land on, hard to get back. I have left that planet as last in my space program and I have already built a lander which can return from there but did not send the mission which would do the job of planting a flag on it yet.

Tylo is a tough nut to crack, but not as hard as Eve. Very different problems too as deorbiting and landing is the hard part, getting back to orbit is easy.

Eve and Tylo are the only two places for which I have staged landers. For everything else I use single stage lander that has enough dv to get to the surface and back, then dock with fuel reserve left in orbit and return to Kerbin.

Laythe required me to send two rescue missions because first I realized my standard lander won't get to orbit in 0.21, then I found out my Laythe Lander from 0.21 won't get to orbit in 0.22. Funny times.

Jool ... well ... I don't see much point in trying to land on it.

[Highlad]

Jool ... well ... I don't see much point in trying to land on it.

Who wouldnt want to do this?!

[Fidelacchius]

You will have fun making a new ship for this

Make your lander a small spaceplane with the new RAPIER engine. You need no fuel to land and like 1400 deltaV to get back into orbit. Normally you need 3k for landing + liftoff

[Kasuha]

Who wouldnt want to do this?!

Have you tried doing it in current version? Because I think it's not possible anymore.

[Highlad]

Have you tried doing it in current version? Because I think it's not possible anymore.

Pfft! We don't use words like 'impossible' in ksp!

Perhaps slightly ridiculous. But I think jeb has another word for that:

AWESOME