The Eve Rocks Challenge (v0.90 only)

[LABHOUSE]

Can I ask a question about the circle in VAB rule?

I am going to make a huge Blended-Wing-Body-ion-powered-Single-Stage-To-Eve-spaceplane....

Are there any size restrictions for the SPH? Or I'm not even allowed to build there due to the same size restriction rule.

I'm super sure that this is possible and I will not give up until I make this thing fly in Eve and out of it. Thanks and sorry for being persistent

That's only possible with an orinthocopter with nukes. Your best bet without orinthocopters is a nuke and two kerbodyne tanks not ions, too laggy.

[2001kraft]

Nah, whoever succeeds will be accused of infini-gliding for using a controllable aeroplane

That's why I almost always put a craft file with my entry lol

[2001kraft]

That's only possible with an orinthocopter with nukes.

"nothing is impossible."

alright, off of off-topic.

The size restriction for the SPH doesn't exist

[Laie]

I won't promise that I'll accept your entry. That rule was mostly meant to stop people from just building a bigger rocket, and it's not very good at the task. If you're not even building a rocket, it shouldn't apply. But I refuse to give a promise -- I know it when I see it and all that.

[Zamovinar]

I used to play Ksp version 0.24 escaping from Eve seems impossible to me, but now that I have the 0.25 version and all the parts at my disposal and after learning how to dock, this is easily possible with a simple solution. It really got me excited.

I'll try to get to Jebediah's Level, but I have to clear something up regarding the rules and achievements:

Levels of achievement:

Level 1, I can do this: retrieve a soil sample from Eve and return it safely back to Kerbin.

Level 2, Let's get serious: return a sample from Eve's oceans as well.

Level 3, Going all the way: land at (and launch from) an altitude of less than 500m.

Jebediah's Level: all of the above, without parachutes, wings, or control surfaces.

I have a few questions about the rules and achievements that I need to clarify:

Question 1: Level 1, I can do this: retrieve a soil sample from Eve and return it safely back to Kerbin. Is it required to bring a Science Jr, Mobile Processing Lab plus all the Science Equipment? or do I just need to return to kerbin with some samples?

Question 2: Level 3, Going all the way: land at (and launch from) an altitude of less than 500m. Could you please elaborate this? (I'm confused)

Question 3: Jebediah's Level: all of the above, without parachutes, wings, or control surfaces. I understand parachutes cannot be used during entry to Eve but can parachutes be used during re-entry to Kerbin? (assuming I came from Eve already)

Question 4: I understand wings cannot be used, can "Fins" be used? they are not control surfaces right? (because you can't directly control them, I'm confused)

Question 5: How many Kerbals are required? (I'm assuming one)

Question 6: The lander as it takes off from Kerbin may not be wider than the circle in the VAB. I get this, but is there a rocket and ship size/tonnage limit? (either in one launch or assembled in orbit, I'm assuming there's none. I'm gonna build a compact one so no worries)

Once again, I'm going to remind that I'm trying to get to Jebediah's Level: please reply this post a.s.a.p. so that I could start as soon as I can.

[bitslizer]

1, not require

2, launching from a mountain top require much less dv than launching from sea level (i.e. Although of 0) this 500m or less is consider a harder challenge

3, yes I even launched another kerbin lander to land my Jeb as I remember too late of some design flaw... Note that you don't need to land on kerbin with your eve lander, although that's an additional difficulty you can try to overcome, every ounce of weight you need to launch from eve make it all that much harder

4 why do you want fins? I think the intention is nothing to provide lift beside thrust generated

5 1 in a lander can or cockpit, can't be just a command chair

6 I'll leave this one to laie

[2001kraft]

Thanks, Laie!

Gonna get to work ASAP!

[bitslizer]

Have you considered removing one set of FT400s from the innermost stage? The higher TWR might make it worthwhile.

Getting both the node and the destination on the screen at the same time can be quite tricky. And god forbid the node should decide to close itself, then you have to move back top open it, then find your viewpoint again... the MJ node editor does away with all of that.

Uploading a picture of what I mean when I said i don't have problem with losing the node when adjusting it for interplanetary transfer, node that in this case I'm actually viewing Kerbin current actual planet location, not the projected intercept location

Ok just for kick, I decide to see If I can upgrade to Jeb level unofficially....

I my revised landing craft (extra ring stage and removed the chutes)... Hyperedit the lander to EVE orbit and attempted MANUAL landing, it was successful after a few quicksave/quickload to learn the suicide burn timing/altitude.

Seems i barely use up 1.5 stage worth of fuel for the landing, meaning I had over 13000m/s dv left for ascent... granted this time it wasn't below 500m landing site as I was mainly just trying to see if i can do a powered manual landing.

For additional kick, i tried a manual ascent immediately after also (without refueling the lander). It was successful on the first try, with 1700m/s atmosphere dv or over 2000m/s vacuum dv left after circularizing, that's plenty left even if i launched from sea level as according to the KSP wiki the difference in DV require between 1600m and 0m should be less than 1000m/s DV

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as for the Improving TWR by removing some innerfuel tank, I simulated the tank removal instead of totalling removing them as the decoupler is acutally linked to the tank and all the structs and fuel lines are linked to the FT400 tank also.

seem emptying the the FT400 fuel tank of the 1 or 2 last stages produce the following EVE thrust profile at the expense of about 450m/s atmosphere DV

actual removing will improve the DV a little bit as i'm still stuck with the empty tanks here

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Edited December 10, 2014 by bitslizer

[Xannari Ferrows]

So, quick question before I prepare for the challenge. I'd prefer this to be answered by Laie.

Do you want me to start documenting pictures before I dock the two spacecrafts together, or after? I didn't notice any rulings on dockings, so I don't even know if that is allowed, but assuming it is, when do I start? I ask this because I already have the lander and propulsion docked together in orbit, but I can launch them both again if need be. In defense of the former, I do have the specs of both of them on the launchpad, including weight, delta-V, part count, and price.

In no way should I influence the decision of yours, but I wanted a little clarification before jumping the gun.

Edited December 10, 2014 by Xannari Ferrows

[Laie]

@Xannari: taking off from Eve is much easier if you start from high altitudes. "No parachutes etc" is Eve only. Winglets and fins are still wings and hence not allowed for that level. There is no absolute weight limit (not directly at any rate; this rule limits how much area you have for engines, and this in turn limits the weight you can lift). Otherwise, what bitslizer said.

And I suggest you relax a little. Eve will still be there next week.

As to pictures, I want to get a good impression of what your vessel(s) look like and how the mission plays out -- I don't know how to say it better than that. I'm one of those who are paying for bandwidth, so I don't like it too much if people just post a million pictures, but be sure to keep everything that is interesting, important, or just plain beautiful. Also try to see it with other people's eyes: what will someone else need to know and want to see? Making a good and concise mission report is hard, though, even my own isn't all that good. So don't sweat it.

@bitslizer: your earlier stages will still keep running for about three minutes. The compound effect of accelerating just a little faster, over three minutes, might be impressive. Making some assumptions and applying my limited math skills, I expect that the difference should be on the order of 8-12km. (Checks back with the gallery of your ascent) Hmm. Your original rocket barely makes 10km after 3 minutes; a slight improvement in TWR won't double this, I'm sure. So I guess my assumptions or maths are wrong.

[James_Eh]

I have finally gotten around to posting a Mission Report of my trip to Eve.

I will get this right out of the way now. I CHEATED. The mission went perfectly, and there was no need to cheat. However I got completely fooled by an odd glitch in KER (which I was using for the first time ever) and stupidly didn't question the dV report that it was giving me regarding how much oomph I had left in my return vessel. So instead of doing an aerobrake to lower its orbit, and instead of taking the rendezvous with the successfully returned lander as one vector (rather than what I did, which was to match planes, then rendezvous), I burned fuel like a madman thinking that I had enough to cruise half of the system on the way home, and then ran out of fuel on the return burn with 300 or so dV left. Only then did I go back and check the picture logs and realize what was going on. I actually HAD hit F5 early enough that I could have salvaged things (which is very out of character for me, I generally don't use them at all, but this whole trip made me nervous so I F5'd a few times)... But I did this in sandbox, which I share with my son, and he was testing a nifty SSTO design and ultimately used F5/9 at the wrong time, leaving the latest save at the point where I had to do the last burn to Kerbin with a 300 dV deficit.

I would like to point out that I could easily have arranged the images in this post to gloss over this error, but I didn't. Instead I throw myself on the mercy of the court, and the challenge adjudicator (hey, Laie, bud, want to go for a fancy dinner?) because I want the fancy purple ribbon darnit, think I've earned it, but can't bring myself to claim it outright. I could have done the "Get Out and Push" routine as well I suppose, but in the name of "been there, done that" I decided to turn on infinite fuel for the burn to take me from solar orbit (near Eve) to the Kerbin intercept.

With that out of the way:

I have never used the Nasa parts for anything much. Nor have I ever tried to launch a 3000T ship. I didn't really want to do either of these things, but once I had settled on the basic lander design I found that it was lagging enough that I didn't want to endure the pain of trying to dock with it, so I completely changed my plans and decided to build one giant launcher to get the lander, return ship, and drive section up to orbit. This mission was supposed to be a test flight, but it kept succeeding so we just headed out.

The worst part of the mission occurred when I got to Eve. I wanted to aerobrake very carefully, and 5 or 6 passes through the atmosphere at 70-something km left me in a good spot. I had detached the return ship after the first braking, all was good there. I wanted to try for one more gentle aerobrake to circularize as much as possible, but I misjudged and wound up scrubbing off too much orbital speed and was essentially committed to the landing. I used the remains of the drive section to accelerate the deorbit and miss the purple depths of the ocean.

All else went perfectly. As expected, many many landing legs were broken during the touchdown, but they were not needed for anything else. The teleport system worked perfectly and the ascent also went flawlessly, despite my poor piloting which had me ascending at something like 2X terminal velocity.

Oh, a note on the "teleport system" - we did have a version of this craft that had a pile of parts added to it (negligible weight) that allowed the intrepid Kerbonaught to clamber all the way to the surface. But at this point, lag was really getting to be an issue, so I installed the teleport pods and wiped off the 80+ parts that constituted the ladder assembly.

I humbly beg for the purple ribbon.

Edited December 11, 2014 by James_Eh

[gm537]

@bitslizer: your earlier stages will still keep running for about three minutes. The compound effect of accelerating just a little faster, over three minutes, might be impressive. Making some assumptions and applying my limited math skills, I expect that the difference should be on the order of 8-12km. (Checks back with the gallery of your ascent) Hmm. Your original rocket barely makes 10km after 3 minutes; a slight improvement in TWR won't double this, I'm sure. So I guess my assumptions or maths are wrong.

It's the air resistance in all likelihood that you are forgetting about. I won't go into the gorry details but basically greatly increased thrust only results in moderately increased velocity and very similar acceleration because you approach 'terminal velocity' either way. (But that velocity is faster with more thrust) The real savings in that slightly higher speed is from reduced gravity losses, which on Eve are almost as terrible as the atmosphere. Haha

[Laie]

I have finally gotten around to posting a Mission Report of my trip to Eve.

First off, this is a very enjoyable report.

I'm a torn about the cheating at the end. I commend you on being straightforward about it. Pro: it's not as if things were tight due to bad planning. Con: not wondering why your display shows such an incredible amount of dv *is* a piloting error. Pro: I'd be willing to accept entries where someone shows me a vessel with enough fuel, then fast-forwards to capture at Kerbin. Con: so this means the challenge is completed if you have enough fuel at Eve? It reminds me of the shipwrecked guy who surived for years, then stumbles on his doorstep and drowns in a puddle.

I love your teleporter turbolift design to comfortably reach the surface. That idea is so stolen... however, how do you take the soil samples with you? To the best of my knowledge, they'd remain in the pod you entered. This, too, is a point where I can't really make up my mind: laddering up a vessel is definitely challenging, but for all the wrong reasons (still, 80 parts? What were you doing?). I it really necessary to return the samples or will it suffice to have a kerbal standing on the ground / and or splashing in the ocean at some time during the mission?

However, the lack of good pictures from the ascent is a serious problem. One right at the launch, one when you've basically made it, and exactly one picture in-between -- that's just not enough. If KER is to be believed (heh), the stats of your vessel look alright, so you probably made it. It's not necessary to really cross all your t's and dot all your i's for this challenge, but not really taking samples, not really flying home, not really showing your ascent... I'd be willing to give a pass to one or another, and have already done so. But them all together in a single mission is just too much.

I'm sorry, but I won't accept your submission.

[bitslizer]

I'd be willing to accept entries where someone shows me a vessel with enough fuel, then fast-forwards to capture at Kerbin. Con: so this means the challenge is completed if you have enough fuel at Eve?

Time to create the "Legendary/Hardcore Jeb" level, do the entire mission without quick save/load.... not sure how to go about proofing/verifying that though.... ....

Maybe entire mission must be recorded in video format in 1 go from beginning to end with no edits?

Edited December 11, 2014 by bitslizer

[SkyRex94]

Mission Report:

The flight of the "insert fancy craft name here":

Mission Data:

- weight and part count of the vessel on the launchpad

Launch 1: 692,5t , 393 Parts ; Launch 2: 532 t ; 84 Parts

- weight and part count awaiting liftoff on Eve

107,5 t ; 249 Parts

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

Launch 1 : 510,207 Funds , Launch 2: 360,304 Funds = 870,511 Funds total.

- game version

0.25

- mods used

KER, NavBallDockingAlignementIndicator, Chatterer, EVE

- tell me how you found your landing site. "I tried until I got lucky" is perfectly alright, but inquiring minds want to know.

"I tried until I got lucky"

- if there's anything that your are especially proud of, be sure to point it out (provide a direct link to a picture if applicable).

under 110t Lander for an under 100m above Sea Level landing.

- please also mention the things that didn't work out so well / required a lot of saveloading / you would do different next time.

The landing site was trial and error until I got one that was under 500m.

The launch from Eve had to be reloaded, because the first inline Stage, so after decoupling the last radial stage, was kinda flip happy as soon as a slight movement. So i was cleverer next try and started to roll-stabilize the Launcher in the Last radial stage , so it stabilized itself while the flip-happy-stage burned. can be seen in the Log.

Here are some pictures of the Craft and Landing:

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some more for Laie and Video-less authentification of the mission:

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The Lander was actually a highly engineered piece of state of the art technology, (ELV2 = Eve Landing/Launch Vehicle 2, the first design didn't even reached out of the VAB) and was very well designed.

The Transfer and return craft on the other hand, was just slapped together using some parts, and also the actual flying wasn't as efficient as it could have been. But I just wanted to get this Challenge before 0.90 and didn't really bothered with high level Node-editing and efficient interplanetary flying, just eyballed everything to bring the Lander there fast

Two Kerbals on the Mission, Jeb in the Lander and Bill in the Command Module.

Collected a Surface Sample from Eve and an Ocean Sample from Eve's Oceans.

Landing Height was 91m above Sea Level, 500m from the Coast.

So this should qualify as Level 3 if i'm not mistaken.

I couldn't go for Jebs Level, because not using the Atmosphere at a place where soo much Atmo is available was simply against the Engineer in me, especially which such a high gravity it would've been inefficient to do a powered landing.

For the First time i've made a Video as a Main Mission Log and not a big album as in my Jool-5 and Solar Flare Challenge Logs. Don't worry it's speeded up into 11 minutes and not the hole time of the mission:

Cheers

P.S: If needed i can also give you the Craft file of the Lander.

Edited December 12, 2014 by SkyRex94

[James_Eh]

First off, this is a very enjoyable report.

I'm a torn about the cheating at the end. I commend you on being straightforward about it. Pro: it's not as if things were tight due to bad planning. Con: not wondering why your display shows such an incredible amount of dv *is* a piloting error. Pro: I'd be willing to accept entries where someone shows me a vessel with enough fuel, then fast-forwards to capture at Kerbin. Con: so this means the challenge is completed if you have enough fuel at Eve? It reminds me of the shipwrecked guy who surived for years, then stumbles on his doorstep and drowns in a puddle.

I love your teleporter turbolift design to comfortably reach the surface. That idea is so stolen... however, how do you take the soil samples with you? To the best of my knowledge, they'd remain in the pod you entered. This, too, is a point where I can't really make up my mind: laddering up a vessel is definitely challenging, but for all the wrong reasons (still, 80 parts? What were you doing?). I it really necessary to return the samples or will it suffice to have a kerbal standing on the ground / and or splashing in the ocean at some time during the mission?

However, the lack of good pictures from the ascent is a serious problem. One right at the launch, one when you've basically made it, and exactly one picture in-between -- that's just not enough. If KER is to be believed (heh), the stats of your vessel look alright, so you probably made it. It's not necessary to really cross all your t's and dot all your i's for this challenge, but not really taking samples, not really flying home, not really showing your ascent... I'd be willing to give a pass to one or another, and have already done so. But them all together in a single mission is just too much.

I'm sorry, but I won't accept your submission.

Sigh. Well at least I can't complain that you didn't give it serious consideration. (I should have gone for diamond cufflinks, not just a fancy dinner...)

It never occurred to me that the lack of pix from the Eve ascent would be an issue, largely because KER was showing more than enough dV (although now that I consider it and you point out, since I and KER seem to not be on the same page, that's not the best excuse ever...). I'm not too sure why I didn't screen shot a couple of other points in the launch. One thing is for sure - I almost botched everything because I had gotten so used to the horrific lag while driving the big ship, I was very unprepared for the sudden speedup when I got far enough away from the entire gridwork structure on Eve's surface. I actually flew for a number of seconds with the first two orange tanks depleted before I blew them off because it was all suddenly happening at real time...

I didn't even think of where the soil sample data would stay. That's a very good point. Regarding the 80+ part ladder, I could have done something far more austere, but it would have required rearranging the parachutes on the grid structure, and by then I was having big big problems with lag in the VAB.

I am currently considering whether to resubmit. If I do, I will likely ditch the teleporters and knuckle down and get a smaller ladder built, maybe drop some struts to keep parts down, but the ascent vehicle will remain the same. Is it OK if I just start the pix from the surface of Eve for the report addendum? (PS - I don't have HyperEdit, KER is the only mod I have...)

Ah, well, even if my possibly salvageable save file had not been overwritten, I would likely not have used it. I stopped using F5/9 a while ago, only reverted to hitting F5 here and there on this mission because I wasn't sure that I could handle the lagfest for a second time, and am proud that I never used F9 (mainly because the only time I wanted to it was broken...)

[Xannari Ferrows]

Alright. From what I gather, there is no requirement to start from the launch judging from the statement:

I want to get a good impression of what your vessel(s) look like and how the mission plays out

To which I say: Sweet. Let's go for it!

NOTICE: I am not entirely sure if you meant what I said above. If you didn't, please make it a priority to state that before critiquing the mission report.

Anyway, the mission report can be found here:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/102665-The-not-entirely-without-bugs-Ever-rocks-challenge-entry%21?p=1592976#post1592976

Enjoy!

[Laie]

Alright. From what I gather, there is no requirement to start from the launch judging from the statement:

You must be kidding. How the vessel gets up from Kerbin and how it is assembled in orbit is pretty much part of the mission; and if refueling is required, I want to see that as well (see OP about that). Please also take the time to fill out the questionnaire. Other than that, you submission is alright.

I really like that tiny science rover -- too bad it doesn't work. Maybe if you place the command seat outside, or on top of the Science Jr.? And including a LV-N in your lifter is daring... I tried and failed.

[totalitor]

SkyRex94 - nice ascent vehicle! I like it. Something different.

[Xannari Ferrows]

You must be kidding. How the vessel gets up from Kerbin and how it is assembled in orbit is pretty much part of the mission; and if refueling is required, I want to see that as well (see OP about that). Please also take the time to fill out the questionnaire. Other than that, you submission is alright.

I really like that tiny science rover -- too bad it doesn't work. Maybe if you place the command seat outside, or on top of the Science Jr.? And including a LV-N in your lifter is daring... I tried and failed.

Well I guess this is all on me then. I genuinely didn't see anything stating you had to start from the launches, but I guess I'll go do that now.

And to be honest, I thought twice about using an Advanced LV-N in the lander. But... ya gotta love'em either way.

And about the rover, I found out about the glitch. Mariyate tells me it is a problem with the scales of the part models and collision meshes, and that Bill got squeezed until his button commands stopped working, so I'm assuming that's the problem.

Well, enough of my ranting. Onto the lifting bodies!

[bitslizer]

SkyRex94 - nice ascent vehicle! I like it. Something different.

Yes, the radially mounted 48-7s is innovative solution to overcome the limitation of the ability to mount muliple small engines on narrow body FT800 tanks or engines being blocked by centrally mounted vertical staging.

Now I'm wondering why I did not considered it during my own mission.

My guess is that I must have subconsciously ruled it out as I was so obsessed about reducing unnecessary weight and part counts from the eve lander, which the radially mount pylon and girder would have been adding weight and parts count to my already lagging designs. I'll definitely have to keep this in mind in the future

Edited December 12, 2014 by bitslizer

[Xannari Ferrows]

I've updated my entry thread to include a separate album of the launches as well as answers to the required data.

I've already dug a deep hole for myself, so I'll let you do the talking.

[Laie]

The flight of the "insert fancy craft name here":

I suggest "Christmas Tree" -- it's a very seasonal lifter.

(sigh). No resource panel, not even delta-V readouts (well, alright, there is delta-v but that alone is pointless -- I've long since learned to look more at TWR and burn time, but your display lacks the one and shows zeroes for the other). Not enough pictures for anything. I eventually gave in and downloaded the video. The bandicam blocks the altimeter. So what's a boy to do? I don't want to fault a probably well-done mission for technical reasons, but this is getting out of hand. James Eh was bad enough, but he at least had a story to tell and apologized. You just dump me a lot of stuff and leave it to me to make sense of it. I spent more time reviewing your mission than all others combined. It all seems legit, though. And now that I've done it, I may as well give you the green light. So yes, congratulations, you've completed the challenge.

@Everybody: don't do this.

[SkyRex94]

I suggest "Christmas Tree" -- it's a very seasonal lifter.

(sigh). No resource panel, not even delta-V readouts (well, alright, there is delta-v but that alone is pointless -- I've long since learned to look more at TWR and burn time, but your display lacks the one and shows zeroes for the other). Not enough pictures for anything. I eventually gave in and downloaded the video. The bandicam blocks the altimeter. So what's a boy to do? I don't want to fault a probably well-done mission for technical reasons, but this is getting out of hand. James Eh was bad enough, but he at least had a story to tell and apologized. You just dump me a lot of stuff and leave it to me to make sense of it. I spent more time reviewing your mission than all others combined. It all seems legit, though. And now that I've done it, I may as well give you the green light. So yes, congratulations, you've completed the challenge.

@Everybody: don't do this.

Yeah okay I admit it is not optimal documented. As a maybe little excuse: It was my first mission log made as a Video and not as a slideshow, so i kinda forgot to hit F1 as often as i may have done in lets say my Jool 5 Log (over 400 pics), because i simply thought "Yeah why pictures, all can be seen in the video at the end". Additionally i never gave a thought about that the watermark of bandicam may block some important readouts... (But you can actually read the Apoapsis, so while landed equals the altitude, in the KER window) .

I discovered all these issues AFTER i've put the video together. So the mission was already done, and I couldn't go back to take more pictures...

Thanks for approving the mission anyways. Otherwise I'd have to the mission again to take all the pictures (Not that big of an issue, since I know everthing worked, but it would be doubled time and the trial and error again for hitting an under 500m landing spot)

What I've learned from this:

With my next mission log for anything I will probably return to just taking a lot of pictures.

[Zamovinar]

I have done my construction and testing, but alas I will decline this challenge after knowing that Eve does not support air breathing engines.