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The Eve Rocks Challenge (v0.90 only)

Laie

By Laie
in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas

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Meithan

Meithan

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Perhaps not all Eve landers can do that, though: some may not fly well without dropping stages. My lander could get away with almost anything in 0.90 due to the riduculous thrust of my Kerbodyne core stage. :)

Yes, you're quite right, I hadn't thought that you can't stage it during Kerbin ascent, not even rewire fuel lines. My lander would probably go below TWR of 1 after enough of the outer asparagus stages are emptied and thus shut down and become dead weight. Doubly good thinking there, then!

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Laie

Laie

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I found that pretty much every Eve Lifter could easily be turned into a working Kerbin SSTO: just add a few drop tanks. With a Kerbin-TWR of 3+ it can well afford the extra weight. Of course, after SSTO'ing you have to top off the tanks in orbit -- most entrants preferred the giantic single launch.

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sephirotic

sephirotic

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No reason to believe anything was not 100% genuine but I do wish we'd seen the resource window or KER readout both after Eve de-orbit and right before ascent.

Some people indeed complained about this back in the day, I never really tought about that, i figured just showing the fuel gauges being drained was enough, there were some older cheaty videos on YT of older attempts hiding the fuel gauge that clearly were cheatty, I forgot to turn the resources on in the beginning and I only noticed it on the video after I had already overwritten the save file. I tought about making a second video of another ascent with the same vessel just to prove it was possible but then again, anyone who had experience leaving Eve would see my design had more than enough D/V for that. Now that 0.21 is totally obsolete I'll share the craft file anyway. The nice thing about this video is that is the first video ever on youtube or foruns to be released showing an Eve ascent from a low altittude with the nerfed aerospikes! Unfortunately it has become completely obsolete now, but the pioneer merit still comes to me :cool:

Also note that he's runnign v21! I didn't fully realize this myself until I was looking in the KER window on circularization and saw that his little Rockomax motor was only making 20kN.

I got pretty angry when they boosted the already overpowered the 48s to 30kn in a following update, I could have saved over 20 tons by having a larger final stage and less aerospike boosters with that extra thrust! Well, it is nerfed again down to 18kn so I'm less pissed. :rolleyes:

Qualitative comments--I liked the orbital assembly very much, it's much more (here's that word again) elegant IMO to build a "hat rack" style ship in orbit than to abuse the drag model by launching everything in one go with huge ring of Kerbodynes. Also props for carrying monopropellant to do all the maneuvers, rather than abuse gyros the way we v0.90 players tend to do!

Thanks, I don´t really like the overengineering "Lolsokerbal" approach some users have, I prefer more intelligent and efficient designs. Gyros are less weight efficient than a proper optimized monoprop vessel with conservative fuel-use, it ends up being heavier!

Thanks for the feedback, sorry for the delayed answer!

Congratulations, sephirotic! You have completed the Eve Rocks challenge with a level 1 entry!

Thank you very much!

There were a few minor niggles (such as no confirmation that you actually scored some dirt from Eve and brought it back to Kerbin)

There was no career mode back on 0.21!!! But I'd sure have brought it back if I could!
Well done for doing this in stock back in 2013. I only came on board when 23.5 hit steam, so I never got to enjoy the old jittery SAS except in the demo.

I'm a old KSP player, been playing since 0.16!! God, we have come a long way!

Kudos for doing all the docking manually - I've done it a few times, but now I'm just too lazy and let MechJeb do it. Definitely some F5/F9 usage going on, but nothing to be ashamed of for a manually piloted entry.

Mechjeb wastes LOTS of fuel and monoprop when docking, is just not efficient enough, I like docking a lot, having a Xbox controller makes it a piece of cake, sure got a LOT of experience back in 0.17 when we didn´t had dock nor maneuver nodes, it was so damn hard that the pratic I got from it making doing it with Maneuver nodes a piece of cake! But playing a long mission manually without MJ and WITHOUT Quickload is just damn impossible! I had to quickload a dozen of times to find a flat landing spot for my Eve vessel whereas MJ can easily calculate the aerobraking for you

And thanks for the great music! I detected a bit of a Russian theme - Meadowlands, Mussorgsky, and did I hear some Stravinsky? Took me back to my high school and college band days.

Ow, good job identifying the last composer as a modern Russian, you came close but it's not Stravinsky, that is actually Shostakovich! I'm a classical lover too! The piano play was a piece called "Celestial Letters" from a Modern Brazillian composer called Almeida Prado, a beautifull piece with a very fitting theme to the video!

I'll be adding the rep to you guys, thanks a lot!

By the way, to anyone who might be interested:

I SUCESSFULLY DEVELOPED A 110 ton 1-man Eve ascent Vessel compatible with 1.0.2 that reaches orbit from as low as 2km! I solved the problem of the TWR by using a single mainsall! It has 8.8kms of d/v

I'll make another video of it after the next update when I hope Squad will re-balance the drag once again! Too bad the challenge is over but I'll post here nevertheless and find a new place to report the mission!

Cheers to everyone.

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Mister Dilsby

Mister Dilsby

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iLikeRovers, just wanted to let you know I have started reviewing your submission for Level 2. Everything looks good so far, the only thing I may object to is the boosters spilling out of the VAB circle and over the launchpad. But hey, I can be reasonable :) Unfortunately I am at work and our firewall blocks your video site, so I can't see the most critical part--the launch from Eve surface--until I get home.

To embed imgur albums, just type (replacing i with j of course) [jmgur]ALBUM[/jmgur] where ALBUM is the five-character code you see when you are on the album page. I tried to do that for one of your albums, but for some reason I can't find the 5-char code. I wonder if you may have published your albums in imgur a different way. For example if I view my Eve Surface Ops album from in my account the URL is http://imgur.com/a/BqSsq#0, so to post pics I enter [jmgur]BqSsq[/jmgur]

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Meithan

Meithan

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Congratulations, sephirotic, for completing the challenge!

I found that pretty much every Eve Lifter could easily be turned into a working Kerbin SSTO: just add a few drop tanks. With a Kerbin-TWR of 3+ it can well afford the extra weight. Of course, after SSTO'ing you have to top off the tanks in orbit -- most entrants preferred the giantic single launch.

Ah yes, good idea. It wouldn't strictly be SSTO, i.e. reach Kerbin orbit completely on its own, but it would certainly be a much lighter solution than launching it on an independent vehicle -- the LV I used to launch my 80-tonnes Eve lander was over 450 tonnes.

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Starhawk

Starhawk

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Congratulations Meithan, you have completed the Eve Rocks challenge!

This was a very comprehensive mission report and a beautiful mission plan. It was nice to see the separate launches and orbital rendezvous for the Eve lander and the transfer stage.

I have to say, I was mightily taken aback for a moment when I saw the pink exhaust from the Nervas! Which mod does that?

The phenomenon of an asymmetric kick when dropping the stages during Eve ascent is something I experienced as well in 0.90. Maybe that will have disappeared with the decoupler fix in 1.0.

I enjoyed the detail of both your mission plan and your report. Once again, congratulations, and wear your badge with pride.

Happy landings!

Edited by Starhawk
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Starhawk

Starhawk

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ShadowZone, thanks for your submission. That is some amazing engineering! The scale of your craft was staggering.

Unfortunately, as you guessed, the transgressions of the rules invalidate your submission. Perhaps you aren't aware of the circle rule? I'm afraid your craft most decidedly does not comply! :D

Thanks in any case for an enjoyable mission report.

Happy landings!

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Meithan

Meithan

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Congratulations Meithan, you have completed the Eve Rocks challenge!

This was a very comprehensive mission report and a beautiful mission plan. It was nice to see the separate launches and orbital rendezvous for the Eve lander and the transfer stage.

Woo!! :D:cool:

Thanks a lot for your comments!

I have to say, I was mightily taken aback for a moment when I saw the pink exhaust from the Nervas! Which mod does that?

That's the HotRockets mod, which improves the particle effects of the exhausts of all engines. I specially liked the LV-N's exhaust since it makes it look exotic compared to most other engines (and it is), and the flame is much smaller than the stock version, which better reflects that this big, heavy engine has relatively little thrust. The ion engine effects are also fantastic.

The phenomenon of an asymmetric kick when dropping the stages during Eve ascent is something I experienced as well in 0.90. Maybe that will have disappeared with the decoupler fix in 1.0.

I've thought it could be a consequence of the large-ish part count. Since the game has to check a lot of part interactions, one of the two decouplers might get decoupled a split second later than the first.

I enjoyed the detail of both your mission plan and your report. Once again, congratulations, and wear your badge with pride.

Happy landings!

I will! I greatly appreciate your reviewing effort. Thanks!

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Redshift OTF

Redshift OTF

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I SUCESSFULLY DEVELOPED A 110 ton 1-man Eve ascent Vessel compatible with 1.0.2 that reaches orbit from as low as 2km! I solved the problem of the TWR by using a single mainsall! It has 8.8kms of d/v

I'll make another video of it after the next update when I hope Squad will re-balance the drag once again! Too bad the challenge is over but I'll post here nevertheless and find a new place to report the mission!

Cheers to everyone.

I would like to see some screenshots of that!

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iLikeRovers

iLikeRovers

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Hi Kuzzter. Thank you very much for taking the time to review my submission :)

I've always seemed to have problems with imgur albums; I can upload a batch of individual photos, but the website breaks when I try to create an album, either before and after I've uploaded. Hopefully its not too inconvenient!

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Mister Dilsby

Mister Dilsby

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It was a pleasure, iLikeRovers, as it is my pleasure to tell you your entry qualifies for Level 2!

Your launch vehicle was impressively Kerbal, and though it strayed ever so slightly from the VAB circle was a wonder of staging. I would not be surprised if your username were 'iLikeAsparagus' :) Your launch and transfer to Eve were nicely done, and I always appreciate a hands-on navigator. At first I wondered why you didn't go for a sea-level launch with such a massive ship, and then of course I realized--you are carrying four Kerbals in a hitchhiker! Very, very immpressive, and a nice landing on "Pink's Peak".

Your rovers were my favorite part, great idea to glide down to the sea--I did a similar thing on my mission to get the liquid sample, but due to choice of landing site had to drive overland and it was much less interesting. Too bad two of your Kerbals glitched behind--I would have had no problem if you'd edited your save file to put them back in the lander before takeoff.

Ascent was textbook and well-documented, littering decorating Eve's surface with discarded rocket motors. You had plenty of dV left for a lower altitude launch, but why take chances, especially when you've found such a nice high plateau to land on?

Congratulations, and wear your badge proudly!

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iLikeRovers

iLikeRovers

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Thanks Kuzzter! Glad you enjoyed the glide to sea; that landing was scary! :)

I'll avoid packing kerbals that close together in the future, I think when one of the Kerbals got out of the seat it glitched the other two into a catatonic state and out of the save game state.

I'd say Astrobound inspired the high altitude landing and glider. I should visit that mountain one day...

I don't know how optimal my launch was, I'd have to memorise the terminal velocities through the atmosphere and the best gravity turn profile! I did manage to do a practice launch at ~ 5000m when I was trying to land on that damn plateu.

(polishes badge)

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Mister Dilsby

Mister Dilsby

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HelmutK, if you're out there I sent a PM a couple of days ago--the video is beautiful but I can't see your resource window! Please make your Eve lander .craft file available if you would like me to review your Challenge entry.

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Starhawk

Starhawk

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Before the final challenge ruling and the closing of this thread, I would like thank Laie for the dedication and hard work necessary to keep this challenge at the high level of quality that it maintained.

It's been a huge amount of fun to read and participate in. I learned more about engineering in KSP from this challenge than all my other missions combined.

Once again, Thank You Laie!

Happy landings!

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HelmutK

HelmutK

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@Kuzzter

Thank's for reviewing my mission and sorry, the last days i don't logged me in.

The resource window is open in the most of the critical moments. Only at launcherstart (but it's open before the first staging) and the fly from eve surface to orbit (I just forgot to open it :blush:. I remembered only near the orbit).

I thought it would be seen as the fueltanks goes empty.

But no problem, here is the Phoenix-IX.craft file.

http://filehorst.de/d/bazAqnej

By the way, the launcher comes in 1.0 easier in kerbin orbit then in 0.9 (4000! units Liquidfuel more left in orbit)...provided you have a powerful computer..too many parts for 1.0, it's difficult to handle with 3 frames.

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Mister Dilsby

Mister Dilsby

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HelmutK, it is my pleasure to inform you that you have qualified for Level 3 of the Eve Rocks challenge with a near sea-level launch!

Your video was a treat to watch with some very nice style touches, like having your pilot get to the capsule in a monopropellant-fueled hover seat. I simply LOVED the spiral ladders to get from capsule to surface and back. Also a bonus for completing all the requirements of Level 2 by retrieving a sample of explodium.

Having tested your craft I can really appreciate the complexity of the ship you made--over 1100 parts, it nearly broke my computer when I loaded it into the VAB! Truly a marvel of Kerbal engineering and a job well done. Wear your badge with pride!

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ShadowZone

ShadowZone

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ShadowZone, thanks for your submission. That is some amazing engineering! The scale of your craft was staggering.

Unfortunately, as you guessed, the transgressions of the rules invalidate your submission. Perhaps you aren't aware of the circle rule? I'm afraid your craft most decidedly does not comply! :D

Thanks in any case for an enjoyable mission report.

Happy landings!

Ah well... I tried ;)

Glad you liked the mission!

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