The Hilltopper mk2 (Single launch Eve mission with Glider/Lander!)

[Jamie Logan]

Hey KSP People!!! I'M BACK!

I've always loved toying around with Eve missions, because Eve presents one of the most difficult places to send a Kerbal, and get him home safely. It's not all that difficult to build large asparagus-staged Landers that can land anywhere and get back into orbit, but with the cost of them often being REALLY large, and REALLY heavy. I thought I would try for a very lightweight vehicle, that I could land at Eve's highest peak (7,540m) where the Delta-V required to achieve orbit is about 30% less than when launching from sea level. This 30% difference makes a HUGE difference, as I'm able to cut down the size and mass of the lander by over 80%, especially when using a command seat for the kerbal instead of a lander can.

The difficulty of this mission is quite clearly actually managing to put the lander down on Eve's highest peak. I first considered using a Rover/Lander, similar to Scott Manley's "Eve or Bust" vehicle that could be landed in the vicinity of the mountian from orbit, and then driven up the mountian to the peak. I decided to rule this out, because I wanted to do something different, and perhaps more interesting. I decided to go with a glider with the lander built in, that could be dropped in from orbit, flown to the peak of the mountian, and then the lander could be dropped away to make the final landing with parachutes. This idea worked out quite well, as the initial trajectory into Eve's atmosphere could be off target by as far as 50 Km, because the Glider/Lander has sufficient range to reach the mountian by gliding alone. The only advantage to using the Rover/Lander concept is that you could land practically anywhere, but who really wants to spend an eternity driving over purple dunes...

I'm obviously using some mods, mostly visual enhancements, but the only part related mod is Kerbal Engineer, so I still consider this to be Stock.

Anyway, here is the full mission.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Woopert]

Make more stuff, please.. Everything you make is totally AWESOME! Do you have a download for this?

[vitekc45c]

Whaa..... its smaller than my mimnus lander...... DOES. NOT. COMPUTE.

[Jamie Logan]

Make more stuff, please.. Everything you make is totally AWESOME! Do you have a download for this?

I wasn't planning on it, because this was all done back in .23.5. I figure I'll make a .24 or .25 edition sometime in the future, and post that one

[Woopert]

I wasn't planning on it, because this was all done back in .23.5. I figure I'll make a .24 or .25 edition sometime in the future, and post that one

Okay, sounds good. Completely random now, but check this out. The transition between two of your pictures on Imgur looks cool

https://cdn.mediacru.sh/I3uQxBUlMmt3.png

[Nik_601]

Glyder-lander is an amazing idea! Think I should try something like that to save fuel on my Eve lander

[The14th]

I think that's the smallest Eve-lander I've seen so far - What a great design!

I figure I'll make a .24 or .25 edition sometime in the future, and post that one

If you are planning on re-doing the mission, I'm really looking forward to your Mk2!