Flying (off of) Eve!

[WhiteKnuckle]

Ahh Eve, so purple, so evil. Once you visit you never want to leave.

Still, all vacations must end. So now it's time to fly home.

Wait... did you say fly?!?

Yup. Fly, like with wings. Kommand has spent too much money sending giant asparagus landers to Eve only to have them crash and burn. So the boys over at the SPH are the only ones willing to risk a ship to get you home.

The Challenge: Build an aircraft that can take off horizontally from Eve's surface and get (at least) one Kerbal into a stable orbit.

Requirements:

-The craft must be able to take off from the runway and get into a stable Kerbin orbit.

-The craft must be able to land on Eve. Landing does not need to be powered, use parachutes if you want.

-Kerbal must be able to exit and get back into the craft.

-Craft must take off horizontally (no VTOLs or balloons)

-Craft must have at least one wing.

-Kerbal(s) must be in a pod, no external seats.

-The pod must end in a stable orbit of at least 100x100 (stageing is allowed, only the pod needs to make it to orbit)

Rules:

-No "cheaty" mods. Hyperedit, debug, ect. If you think a mod might be "cheaty" ask and I will clarify. (note: use of hyperedit to get from LKO to LEO is allowed if you don't want to waste time with the transfer stage, but your craft must have a docking port in a location that would allow it to be pushed/pulled by an interplanetary tug)

-You must post a screenshot of your landing elevation, and another of your final orbit.

-I can't really think of any other rules, but I reserve the right to add them at any time to preserve the spirit of the competition.

Mods: I don't think this challenge is possible to do without mods, at the very least you'll need FAR to turn Eve's atmosphere from pea soup into chicken broth, and a mod that gives you some sort of high efficiency non-O2 breathing engine. Any non "cheaty" mods are allowed, but you must list what you are using so other people can recreate your run, the use of mods will also effect your score.

Scoring:

-Default takeoff elevation is 4,000m. You get one point for every meter under 4,000m

-Default final orbit altitude is 100km. You get 5 points for every Km that you raise your periapsis over 100km.

-You get three mods free, after that each mod used on your ship will reduce your final score by 10% (note: only mods that are used on your ship and help you complete the challenge are counted for the score. Mods that make the challenge more challenging like DRE and TAC will not count against your score, but you still need to list them when submiting your entry)

-You get a 25% bonus for each additional Kerbal that you can get into orbit.

Awards: Special awards for special attempts! (note: I have no idea if any of these are possible)

Featherweight: Lightest takeoff weight.

Heavyweight: Highest takeoff weight.

On the beach: Take off from sea level (less than 50m)

Mountain climber: Land and take off from a mountaintop.

Look Ma, no mods!: No mods.

Round trip: No stageing, a SSTEO

Family Vacation: Take more than 3 Kerbals.

Die Hard: Use DRE or TAC Life Support

Die Harder: Use both DRE and TAC

Feel free to submit your own special awards.

Note: Before anyone asks, yes this can be done, and I will submit my own entry in a little bit. This is also my first challenge so please feel free to tell me what I screwed up/suggestions for how to make it better.

Good luck!

Leaderboard

1. SV-ESK: 7,375 points. (Featherweight. On the beach)

Edited April 1, 2014 by WhiteKnuckle

[SV-ESK]

What do you think about interstellar antimatter or microwave-network powered engines?

Edited March 19, 2014 by SV-ESK

[Kasuha]

Er... so is it okay if I take off horizontally, then pitch up, stage off all ballast and continue vertically?

[WhiteKnuckle]

What do you think about interstellar antimatter or microwave-network powered engines?

Well like I said, you're going to need some type of super efficient engines. The antimatter is a go (provided you're not cheating to get the antimatter). The microwave might be a little too easy, maybe make a requirement that if you're using a ground based microwave transmitter you have to fly it down as part of the craft, then you can detach it and use it to beam power to you for your accent.

I'm open to suggestions to help balance the competition.

[WhiteKnuckle]

Er... so is it okay if I take off horizontally, then pitch up, stage off all ballast and continue vertically?

Yup. As long as you take off horizontally, have at least one wing on takeoff, and were able to muscle the thing into a Kerbin orbit in the first place, you're good to go.

[WhiteKnuckle]

Ok so here's my entry, the Eveagle Mk1:

This all started as a rescue mission to save a poor Kerbal who aerobraked a little too deep into Eve's atmo and forgot to quicksave. I tried my hand at building "traditional" Eve return vehicles, but they ether broke on landing, didn't have enough D/V to make orbit, or (once I added FAR) were uncontrollable. I have been on a spaceplane kick recently, so I decided to see if it was possible.

Most of the aircraft was stolen from a basic spaceplane I made for mucking around on Kerbin. I replaced the jet engines on the wing pylons with aerospikes, and the nuke engine in the center got swapped for a Kethane tank and a pair of Kethane Zero-bypass turbine engines. On the front is a Mk1 command pod, fuel tank, and a pair of radial engines.

Getting this thing into orbit around Kerbin without stageing was actually harder than getting into Eve orbit. The Kethane turbines are finicky to say the least. Once in orbit it was easy enough to dock to a nuke powered tug and fly it to Eve.

Landing was actually pretty easy. Glided down most of the way and only had to fire the engines for a few seconds right before the flare to keep from stalling. Landing speed was around 60-70m/s.

Taking off was similarly nondramatic, just hit a small hill and pulled up. Again the Kethane engines are a pain in the butt. They can barely keep above stall speed at low altitude without overheating.

It's a long slow climb up to 20km where I had to kick on the aerospikes (the Kethane engines will continue to run past 20km but they don't make enough power to avoid a stall/plummet to a horrible death) Once the aerospikes are on I pitched nearly vertical and jettisoned the Kethane assembly. At this point it ceases to be an airplane and is now just a really ugly rocket.

Around 50km the aerospikes run out of fuel and the main body of the aircraft gets jettisoned. Despite only having 180 units of liquid fuel the final stage had more than enough D/V to get into a 180km orbit.

One of my previous rescue missions had left a ship in orbit with an empty command pod. I used that to meet up with my poor Kerbal and take him home... I think he spent something like 12 years on Eve. Poor guy was all out of snacks.

So my score would be:

4000m - 1327m = 2,673

183km -100km = 83 x 5 = 415

2,673 + 415 = 3,088 total points

[SV-ESK]

Done! Kethane only. No FAR. Because I can not yet build a far-compatible aircrafts.

8740Kg at Eve surface. 5m landing elevation(gears come off the surface at altitude 5m).

Final orbit 780x776 Km.

Thus, 3995+676*5 = 7375 points.

30KN small engines much better than aerospikes, despite its lesser ISP. At least for small ships.

I flied off Eve vertically, till 30Km altitude, then began turn.

Kethane and wings jettisoned on 41Km, when KintakeAir deprived.

Maybe I needed to jettison the wings immediately after taking off from Eve

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Edited March 20, 2014 by SV-ESK

[John Crichton]

Question:

I build a small Antimatter SSTO using thermal jets. As you know, that means I need antimatter as fuel, which I can only really get in Kerbin orbit. So I have to launch the SSTO with a conventional rocket before I fill my antimatter tank in orbit using my antimatter collectors.

Can I do this...take off using a conventional rocket and then land on Kerbin after packing the antimatter and then start the challenge from that point on? Technically it can't lift off Kerbin before loading up on antimatter in orbit first, and I don't want to cheat by manually editing some Antimatter into my tanks.

Alternatively I could of course ship some antimatter down to the runway, but I don't really see the difference.

Once refueled, I can make the entire Kerbin KSC > EVE > Kerbin KSC round trip in one go using only my SSTO. However, I will send my Antimatter collector craft behind it so I can set up a permanent antimatter refueling station around Jool (long overdue)...and because that way I can do every single sub-challenge in one go. Might even do a bonus trip to Tylo

[Kasuha]

Since you're allowed to get the craft to Eve orbit any way you wish (including Hyperedit) I think there is no problem with it.

I made an attempt to do it in stock but did not succeed yet.

[John Crichton]

I made an attempt to do it in stock but did not succeed yet.

So did I a few weeks ago...but I quickly abandoned that because my ship was a giant monster that wasn't fun to fly

Will post my entry towards the end of this weekend...

[SV-ESK]

I need antimatter as fuel, which I can only really get in Kerbin orbit.

Produce it in the lab. Jettison or undock(KAS winch refueller) lab before launch.

[WhiteKnuckle]

SV-ESK, that is one great little ship. Less than 1/3 the weight of mine and you got a lot more range out of it. It also completely proved me wrong about needing FAR. But thinking back on it most of my problems were with stalling/control issues, not power, so maybe FAR is actually a deterrent. We'll see after we get some more entries, but I may make a separate leaderboard for FAR users.

John, as long as you don't edit the antimatter into your tanks you're good to go. The craft doesn't have to be a SSTO so you can put a rocket assist on it to get into orbit and then ditch it after you've collected your antimatter, or you can ship it down to the surface with a ship and fuel-up on the runway (which is what I did with Kethane). As long as the final ship you're landing on Eve is capable of taking off from the runway and getting to orbit it's legal, anything you do before starting your run is fine.

[John Crichton]

SV-ESK, that is one great little ship. Less than 1/3 the weight of mine and you got a lot more range out of it. It also completely proved me wrong about needing FAR. But thinking back on it most of my problems were with stalling/control issues, not power, so maybe FAR is actually a deterrent. We'll see after we get some more entries, but I may make a separate leaderboard for FAR users.

John, as long as you don't edit the antimatter into your tanks you're good to go. The craft doesn't have to be a SSTO so you can put a rocket assist on it to get into orbit and then ditch it after you've collected your antimatter, or you can ship it down to the surface with a ship and fuel-up on the runway (which is what I did with Kethane). As long as the final ship you're landing on Eve is capable of taking off from the runway and getting to orbit it's legal, anything you do before starting your run is fine.

Thanks for confirming.

And yup, I could just set up a lab and produce fuel at the runway...but I kind of want an antimatter collector closer to EVE anyway, so shipping it at the same time as the SSTO. Using the Kethane plus mod to mine water for fuel...so that combo will allow me to have a pretty small "go anywhere" setup.

[John Crichton]

First prototype made it to Eve.

Ignore the atmospheric deltaV stats...I'm using thermal jets, so the figure is inaccurate.

I think this SSTO might make a Kerbin KSC > Eve landing > KSC round trip if refueled on the ground. I still want my antimatter/water refueler in Eve orbit as a safety.

The SSTO has wheels and landing legs...so can land however I want.

Fun fact: If you accidentally switch to intake air mode instead of atmospheric mode...well...stuff blows up

Edited March 21, 2014 by John Crichton

[John Crichton]

Tougher than I thought. Antimatter's nice, but to set everything up is quite a bit of work.

Still testing stuff, but here's what I've done so far:

1) Launched my SSTO with a conventional rocket and tugger.

2) Launched my antimatter collector pod and spare water/monopropellant.

3) Docked both in Kerbin orbit.

4) Launched a lab and reactors to produce enough antimatter to make it to Jool.

5) Made it to Jool & enjoyed the free 500mg+ of antimatter per day.

So right now I'm relaxing in Jool orbit. Plenty of antimatter and water left to go to Eve. Might still spin by Kerbin and fuel up with a bit more water. Got plenty of antimatter now, so that's not the bottleneck.

6x Water tanks (Interstellar mod)

1.25 antimatter reactor

1.25 electric generator

0.625 fission reactor (to power the antimatter tanks)

0.625 electric generator

4x UF4 tanks

1.25 thermal turbojet

2x 1.25 antimatter tanks

FL-R1 Monopropellant tank

4x Stratus-V Monopropellant tanks (SSTO)

Landing legs & wheels (can flip over onto wheels)

25% chance I won't crash when trying to land on Eve

Someone please tell me how to "mine" water so I can be 100% self-sufficient.

The thermal turbojets are pretty cool. As long as there's an atmosphere, you can cruise around without using water. And in a vacuum they're quite efficient using water. Plenty of TWR for the SSTO, but the burn to Jool with the collector pod docked took a good 4min. Keep in mind, that was using a single thermal turbojet.

Here's my Kerbin antimatter collector setup before being moved to a better orbit.

Yes...it's a slow process...

Water reserve and science lab added. A large reactor with a tugger will then move it to a slightly better orbit. Still takes ages to produce antimatter around Kerbin. Not sure if I can move this thing to Jool.

Edited March 23, 2014 by John Crichton

[WhiteKnuckle]

I really need to get around to downloading KSP interstellar, that **** looks insane.

[John Crichton]

I really need to get around to downloading KSP interstellar, that **** looks insane.

Edited March 25, 2014 by John Crichton

[John Crichton]

My Eve refueller's all ready to go. Plenty of spare monopropellant and water for 3 SSTOs. I'll bring 3 SSTOs to Eve to attempt this...maybe one will survive. Happy about this challenge cause it forced me to look into that interstellar mod a bit more. It's really fun and quite well balanced. Getting the powerful stuff takes quite a bit of effort.

I really like that large SSTO antimatter collector ship. If I can figure out how to get water on planets/moons, it could last ages and serve as a pretty convenient tugger or small mobile station. Would probably replace the extra water tanks in front with a science lab if I used it as a permanent station.

Those small fission generators allow me to power the antimatter tanks and the rest of the ship. I got plenty of UF4 fuel for them and a refinery to recycle a ton of it. So I really only online the antimatter reactor if I need the turbojet or to charge the Alcubierre drive. The rest of the time I don't tap into my antimatter tanks. The 2 collectors take a lot of time to fill up tanks unless you are around Jool...but that's the tradeoff. Either way, antimatter's not the bottleneck, water is.

In my arguably crappy orbit around Kerbin, it would take around 200 days to fill a single large antimatter tank using my 2 collectors. During that time, you need to keep those tanks charged or you blow up. Doing so with antimatter would almost completely wipe out your daily gains...which is why I power mine with other non-antimatter generators.

I'm actually not sure I need all this extra water and monopropellant. It's just in case I mess up trying to land on Eve.

EDIT: Just accelerated at full speed for the first time...and yeah, the extra fuel stays back in KLO. A regular docking port can't deal with the weight under acceleration, it starts spinning like crazy.

Edited March 25, 2014 by John Crichton

[John Crichton]

Handy alcubierre tugger...by the weekend I should have a half a dozen SSTOs around Eve to try (and probably fail a few times).

[WhiteKnuckle]

Get any of your birds to fly John?

[me3]

The upgraded thermal turbojet from Interstellar makes this a piece of cake, and I'm saying this as someone who has a three-crew shuttle using it that can fly to any atmospheric body and back. However, it requires antimatter power and has to use a strange landing gear design to give clearance under the Alcubierre drive. That being said, would it be "cheaty"?

[Raven.]

The upgraded thermal turbojet from Interstellar makes this a piece of cake, and I'm saying this as someone who has a three-crew shuttle using it that can fly to any atmospheric body and back. However, it requires antimatter power and has to use a strange landing gear design to give clearance under the Alcubierre drive. That being said, would it be "cheaty"?

Interstellar should always be considered a unique category in my own opinion. And oh, the thermojets do not require antimatter, my thermojet SSTOs use fusion reactors as opposed to antimatter reactors on them to provide power. Typically I can get about 6,000 m/s dV with fusion powered thermojets.

[WhiteKnuckle]

Yeah I may do separate leaderboards for the different types of propulsion, but antimatter is fair game as long as you're not just editing it into your tanks.

[me3]

Yeah I may do separate leaderboards for the different types of propulsion, but antimatter is fair game as long as you're not just editing it into your tanks.

No, I have this complex system that ships antimatter from my collection station in low-Jool orbit to the runway where it is loaded onto the tank in my spaceplane using KAS pipe connectors.

[John Crichton]

No, I have this complex system that ships antimatter from my collection station in low-Jool orbit to the runway where it is loaded onto the tank in my spaceplane using KAS pipe connectors.

Same here. Antimatter's cool once you have it, but getting it requires quite a bit of work if you're not willing to quick-edit your tanks (aka cheat).