The Eve Rocks Challenge (v0.90 only)

[Norcalplanner]

Just to clarify - would Kerbal Joint Reinforcement be considered non-stock physics? No worries either way - I just want to know how many struts I should plan on using.

[Laie]

Just to clarify - would Kerbal Joint Reinforcement be considered non-stock physics?

In principle: yes.

In practice, well, will it give you a huge benefit over a stock player? If you come up with something that would be impossible to do in stock, I will have objections. But if it only reduces the part count through saved struts, i see no problem.

[Ziv]

Be careful how you decide on this and on the non-stock extra strong struts because in my opinion one of the hardest aspect of this challenge is to keep the lander in one piece during launch and touchdown. Allowing them will make it easier.

[Norcalplanner]

I'll just do this in a save that doesn't have KJR installed to avoid any controversy. I've only started using it recently, so no biggie.

[Laie]

Be careful how you decide on this and on the non-stock extra strong struts because in my opinion one of the hardest aspect of this challenge is to keep the lander in one piece during launch and touchdown. Allowing them will make it easier.

Yes, I know how easy it is to break off an engine. And yes, I haven't thought of that. Thanks for the reminder.

Problem is, it's one of the invisible mods. How am I supposed to police this, short of trying every lander to see if it still holds in my stock installation?

[LABHOUSE]

I'm still going to do this just unlocking some more parts.

[Signo]

Hi all, I did it. It is not classy nor flashy but it worked very well all the way and I even had a good margin. The lander can not do it from the sea level, but I landed @ around 4500m.

The ship is completely stock. I run just a few visual or technical improvement mods (MJ, KAC, EVE).

I would like to apologise in advance cause I completely forgot about the resource panel stuff. I still have all the quicksave files for the most meaningful moments so I can just have small remakes if needed. Version is 0.25.

The pricetag of the mission is 1,371,958

Part count is 627 on ramp (133 struts, 3 MJs) Weight - 2299.458t

On lift off at Eve: 225 parts (36 struts, 1 MJ) Weight - 123.616t (around 20t being legs and chutes jettisoned soon after take off)

The mission profile was quite simple: take off, transfer, a small correction to have the right aerobraking, the aerobrake itself.

The trickiest part was maybe the "landing injection". The descent module was the only really disappointing part of the thing cause it is too small and not really suited for what it needs to do. Next time I think I will design a bigger one that will include the legs and the chutes too. This time, to overcome the problem I made a large part of the deorbit burn with the mothership engines (that was still plenty of fuel and that eventually I left in LKO with some fuel left), then I dropped the lander on the correct way.

Landing was easy to be honest. Just a few legs went OOO and their job was done anyway.

The ascent was easier than I thought. I had a very good TWR all the way and I had some fuel left to RV with the mothership.

A small EVA to get back to the return ship. At this point the mothership was supposed to be spent and left here. The module I brought has got around 4700 D/v so it should be enough to get back home by itself, but the mothership still had fuel, so I decided to bring it back home with me.

It was not really intended to do it so I simply left it in LKO after the aerobrake.

After undocking the reentry module I simply made my deorbit burn and I missed KSC by a few miles.

The ship concept is a little bit on the "recycled" side: the lander was formerly a low tech Mun rocket and the mothership was made for a Jool 5 mission (that's why it is so full of useless crap).

Now let's go with the pics. If you have any question feel free to ask and thank you for reading.

ship data

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take off (yes, I know, too many)

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transfer, aerobrake

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Landing

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take off from Eve

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way back and Landing

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[fenderzilla]

I take it that the stock only rule bans tweakscale? the're still stock parts, but i don't think you could run the craft without the mod installed.

[Laie]

Hi all, I did it. It is not classy nor flashy but it worked very well all the way and I even had a good margin. The lander can not do it from the sea level, but I landed @ around 4500m.

The ship is completely stock. I run just a few visual or technical improvement mods (MJ, KAC, EVE).

I would like to apologise in advance cause I completely forgot about the resource panel stuff.

You've had enough MJ panels open to make sense of it, so that's still alright(-ish). I'm a bit more concerned with your huge launcher; I suspect it is quite a bit wider than it's supposed to be. Then again, it's quite spacious -- I guess you could take exactly the same hardware and squeeze it into the VAB circle without much difficulties. So... well... I guess someday I'll have to fault someone for this rule, but in this case I'll give you a pass.

Congratulations, you have completed the Eve Rocks Challenge on Level 1!

[Laie]

I take it that the stock only rule bans tweakscale? the're still stock parts, but i don't think you could run the craft without the mod installed.

I know little about tweakscale, other than that it exists. So I'll stick to my default rule: if you feel the need to ask, it's probably not OK.

But I want to remind you that not the entire mission has to be stock-only. This is only about the Lifter(s). I won't be holier-than-thou about support vessels; and anything that comes along as payload may be whatever you like. This probably won't help you if you're planning a single launch, though.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm a bit more concerned with your huge launcher; I suspect it is quite a bit wider than it's supposed to be. Then again, it's quite spacious -- I guess you could take exactly the same hardware and squeeze it into the VAB circle without much difficulties. So... well... I guess someday I'll have to fault someone for this rule, but in this case I'll give you a pass.

The launcher is five 3.75m stacks wide, should easily fit within the circle. Seven 3.75m stacks will fit without decouplers (not sure about with decouplers, it will be close with the slim ones).

This post brought to you by my slight panic at having my lander built before noticing the maximum width rule.

Pictured tanks are touching the VAB floor.

Edited November 2, 2014 by Red Iron Crown

[Laie]

TThis post brought to you by my slight panic at having my lander built before noticing the maximum width rule.

I lol'd.

Gismos launcher looks as if it wouldn't quite fit on the pad even when discounting the the stability enhancers (btw, you can stack them behind each other? I'd never even have thought of trying...).

But yeah, this is becoming a problem. Not the rule itself, but I have the impression that people fail to notice at first, and only become aware of it while preparing their submission, or as part of their pre-flight checklist. Is there a (blink) tag or something?

Edited November 2, 2014 by Laie

[Signo]

I lol'd.

Gismos launcher looks as if it wouldn't quite fit on the pad even when discounting the the stability enhancers (btw, you can stack them behind each other? I'd never even have thought of trying...).

We need MOAR pad.

[Red Iron Crown]

But yeah, this is becoming a problem. Not the rule itself, but I have the impression that people fail to notice at first, and only become aware of it while preparing their submission, or as part of their pre-flight checklist. Is there a (blink) tag or something?

Just bold it and maybe change the color? Btw, the link for your reasons for this rule in the OP is not parsing correctly, I think it opens with a ( instead of a [.

[fenderzilla]

I know little about tweakscale, other than that it exists.

Tweakscale lets you make parts bigger or smaller, so you could have a 1.25m mainsail, or even a 3.75 or 5m one. like i said, the game probably won't be able to load the craft without the mod, which is one of the criteria.

[Gravaar]

MISSION PROFILE

1. Take off

2. DO NOT EXPLODE

3.get rid of useless junk on way to orbit

4.locate Eve and head in that direction

5. leave a way to get home in Eve orbit

6.Land on Eve

7. do science stuff with the dirt and ?water?

8.leave Eve

9.head back to Kerbin

10. try not to crash

................................................................

MISSION REPORT

1.Been there done that

END REPORT

................................................................

- weight and part count of the vessel on the Launchpad :- 10187.403 tons and 671 parts

- weight and part count awaiting liftoff on Eve :- 681.73 tons and 189 parts

- the approximate price tag of your entire mission, if at all possible 4,510,492

- game version :- 0.25

- mods used :- Mechjeb for info and dull piloting (it doesn't handle this ship all that well) Landings required manual control until the last touch down (MJ by itself stuffs it up and wastes to much fuel)

- if there's anything that your are especially proud of :- Altering my return plan to use the waste fuel and allow me to do a rocket only landing on Kerbin as well as Eve

- Things that went wrong :- Landing on engines only requires VERY flat ground, and trying to drive home with the offset load required at LOT of engine tweaking and that caused a LOT of stuffed up orbit intercepts

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Almost at sea level but I don't think anyone will complain about 26 meters

Sorry about the delay in posting this up I got caught up in fiddling about with spaceplanes and yes this is the same rocket I quizzed you on size with

Edited November 4, 2014 by Gravaar

[Gravaar]

Not at all. You can make as many launches as you like, and don't need to send everything to Eve in one piece, either.

LOL now I find out

[Laie]

LOL now I find out

When you asked about size, you explicitly said that you loathe multiple launches and docking -- otherwise, I'd have pointed this out to you.

Your mission will probably go down as the most expensive single-Kerbal lander ever. I won't even try to fathom why you took KR-2Ls to the bottom of a thick amosphere. Just for staging, all in the name of the single launch?

MISSION REPORT

1.Been there done that

END REPORT

Exactly. Sit down, relax, have a cookie. Put on that badge, you earned it.

(edit to add: and on Jebediah's level, no less -- congratulations!)

Edited November 3, 2014 by Laie

[Redshift OTF]

8.leave Eve

This bit needs to be in font size 48.

[Gravaar]

I won't even try to fathom why you took KR-2Ls to the bottom of a thick amosphere. Just for staging, all in the name of the single launch?

Initial design was a standard aerospike pancake and then I thought "What happens if I just bolt on BIGGER boosters" so I had to try it (Jeb made me do it)

Summary :- BIGGER boosters are Heavier , staging went from 16 to 6 (not counting the descent stage fuel tanks), drag was way less even when exceeding terminal velocity (Thrust to weight trumps all contenders)

TLDR :- Science experiment gone insane

[Gravaar]

This bit needs to be in font size 48.

Fixed it (can only go to font size 7)

[Norcurion]

First Try: Landed to hard, need way more TWR in the upper stages... Back to VAB!

EDIT:

Well.... i was wrong, the Lander got back into space today

I'll do a rerun, take pictures, get the numbers right and make an entry later.

Edited November 5, 2014 by Norcurion

[Laie]

I'll do a rerun, take pictures, get the numbers right and make an entry later.

Please include the tale of what was wrong with the landing gear. I'm curious

[Norcalplanner]

Design is almost finalized, and the Eve Rocks expedition should occur by the end of the weekend. To give you a tiny sneak peek, I offer one word - Skippers. Yes, Skippers. And no, I haven't lost my marbles. :-)

[Ziv]

Yes, I had the same conclusion that skippers are the best for the lower stages, but my ship become too big on part count and I want to bring a whole base with many buildings, and a plane, rover, etc... so I had to change it to some bigger rocket engines. Its bottom looks similar to your one on the previus picture!