The Eve Rocks Challenge (v0.90 only)

[Laie]

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".

Yeah, I know how it happens. If I look at my own slideshows, they're not what I'd like them to be. As said a few pages back, making a good mission report is an art. 400 pics for Jool-5 is way over the top btw, but with a gallery it's a lot easier to skip some and closely inspect others.

[Foxster]

Here's a pretty good lander+orbiter I made if anyone is struggling to make one: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gl4boigw8qivilw/Eve%20lifter%201a%20with%20lander.craft?dl=0

It will get you down from orbit, using Mechjeb if you like. Shutes while slow you to 10m/s and a blast on the engines before touchdown will give a soft landing.

Raise the legs before launch. Check the main tanks are full - top up from the landing tanks (the ones with the legs on) if needed. Fire up the engines. Stage it to blow off the landing tanks and legs. Then you can use Mechjeb to orbit with the turn at 24Km and a 60° turn shape.

It will get you from sea level to 100Km with 1000+ Dv to spare.

Design your own lifter to get it to Eve orbit.

Edited December 14, 2014 by Foxster

[gm537]

Here's a pretty good lander+orbiter I made if anyone is struggling to make one

Definitely cool but I feel like the point of a challenge is to design your own thing and figure out what works well for you. Additionally that lander has just a command chair for the Kerbal and this challenge requires an actual capsule. Again cool for sure it just seems out of place...

[bitslizer]

Need a lander can/pod for this challenge, not seat only

[Foxster]

Oh, OK. Should have read the rules a little better. I'm 9/10s of the way there - might as well finish it now

[xNovax]

One Spaceplane, 2 kerbals, a ton of fuel, one space station, and one aweosome landing

.

[Xannari Ferrows]

Alright. I'm assuming I never actually completed the challenge because I had to show the lifting separately. I understand.

This was fun though! I actually learned about precise Eve launch window phase angles from this, so maybe I can make a challenge of my own regarding it in the future.

Just as an announcement, I will be taking the Jool-5 challenge when Ziv gets back from vacation. Be sure to look for my submission there if you have the time.

[Whirligig Girl]

Stock aerodynamics... ugh. Well, I did it with a probe, no reason I can't do it with a Kerbal. Though maybe you could make a FAR/NEAR aerodynamics subchallenge, as they actually make many aspects of EVE landing (not ascent, landing) quite difficult.

Maybe FAR/NEAR should only be allowed if you also use Deadly Re-entry.

[Whirligig Girl]

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.

Tweakscale? More like Cheatscale. No one should ever use tweakscale unless they're playing in fully-blown realism overhaul. It removes the lego-like feel of building.

[Laie]

Alright. I'm assuming I never actually completed the challenge because I had to show the lifting separately. I understand.

Huh? Oh, you updated your submission -- Sorry, I didn't notice (PM would have helped).

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

This is a great mission of could-have-beens; landing at barely above 500m, a good-looking science rover that almost worked... I ought to complain about the lack of pictures from the Eve ascent as well; but this vessel is obviously capable of returning from Eve when landing at high altitudes, and seeing as you didn't go below 500m anyway, I won't bother you with details.

[kahlzun]

Ok, completed Level 1.

Going to take me a while to collate all the pictures, and calculate the Funds spent

EDIT:

Ok, There And Back Again, Level 1.

Total cost 339082 funds.

Eve_Lander_5:

Initial Cost: 508,577

Stage 2: 290,272 (refund) (4x 72568)

Stage 3: 38,709 (refund) (3x 12903)

Lander: 19,714 (refund)

Total cost: 159,882

EL IP Stage:

Cost: 84,224

(Probably could have got this back from Eve, but decided not to bother)

Refuel:

Initial Cost: 119,584

Stage 2: 95,840 (refund)

Total cost: 23,744

(Payload ~2000L fuel/~2444 ox) x4 launches

Total cost: 94,976

---------------

Combined cost: 339,082 (after refund)

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Javascript is disabled. View full album

- weight and part count of the vessel on the launchpad

880.45T

380 parts.

- weight and part count awaiting liftoff on Eve

85.22T

236 parts

(Note that a significant number of these parts are landing gear, parachutes etc. Immediatly after staging for launch, without any fuel spent, this changes to: 79.18T, 122 parts)

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

339082 vF

- game version

0.25

- mods used

Only pertinent ones are Mechjeb & Kerbal Alarm Clock. RCS BuildAid was used to help place the Vernier thrusters.

- tell me how you found your landing site.

looked it up here:

- 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).

Initial craft is stable enough to survive Kerbin launch under 4x physics with no glitches.

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

The final stage of the lander started behaving oddly on launch. Simulations ran smoothly enough, but the 'real thing' kept exploding the central tank. Ended up having to briefly kill the main engine when performing that stage. (Note: In new set of pictures, launch worked flawlessly first go. Weird.)

Docking the three ports for the EL IP stage & the lander was difficult, stage wobbled a lot.

Edited December 19, 2014 by kahlzun

[Xannari Ferrows]

Huh? Oh, you updated your submission -- Sorry, I didn't notice (PM would have helped).

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

This is a great mission of could-have-beens; landing at barely above 500m, a good-looking science rover that almost worked... I ought to complain about the lack of pictures from the Eve ascent as well; but this vessel is obviously capable of returning from Eve when landing at high altitudes, and seeing as you didn't go below 500m anyway, I won't bother you with details.

...Oh, what's that? I actually did it!? For once in my life I didn't screw something up!

Er, yes. The science rover does do good on it's own I found out, but kerbals beware...

I really should have taken more pictures from the Eve ascent, I'll give you. I guess I was just concentrating.

Anyway, thank you for approving my submission, and be sure to watch out for my Jool-5 attempt in the near future!

[James_Eh]

Well. It turns out it's a bit harder to build an Eve 200T pontoon lander than I had first figured. But on the upside, test #5 produced my first Kerbal survival and 80% of the ship still intact. (Tests number 1 thru 4 were fun too, watching the pontoons and girders bounce away into the distance...)

[Laie]

(laugh)

Pontoons, eh? I had reasonable success with wrapping them around my lander, so the CoM would be just below the flotation devices. Needs a powered landing, though, and the deeper you settle into the water the more careful you have to be with the throttle. I eventually decided that landing on the dry will still be easier, after all.

By the way: whatever I try I always come back to LFBs for a landing gear. Tall, rigid, resilient, these things are awesome.

[James_Eh]

I'm slowly losing my mind. Something like test #9 (maybe 10) left me floating, with the upside of the ship pointing towards the correct hemisphere. (Dead level was a bit too much to ask for.) Followup tests duplicated the results.

And now the exit from the capsule is, I dunno, 3m underwater?

First I was too high. Way too high might I add. Now, I'm underwater. Off to bed. Overnight I'll think of a plan.

[redsh]

Hi, this is my entry. Just completed my second Eve mission with 2 kerbals on surface.

I'm running 0.25, mods I've used: MJ, Alarm Clock and Docking Port Alignment Indicator.

Link to gallery on imgur.

This is craft file for rocket. The whole thing costs about $1.8M and part count is 1966. Mass at liftoff: 3000 tons (i've used my most powerful lifter that carries up to 400 tons to 1000 km Kerbin orbit, which is little overpowered in this case).

and craft file for lander only. Mass of lander is 192t (171t without landing equipment), delta-v amount is 8616/10355. Part count: 606. It uses vertical asparagus staging with 14 stages (plus two backup O-10 burners to utilize capsule RCS storage).

Edited December 18, 2014 by redsh
updated imgur link

[kahlzun]

Way too high might I add. Now, I'm underwater. Off to bed. Overnight I'll think of a plan.

Ladders are pretty light, you'd be surprised how easy it is to build a path down even a large rocket

[Laie]

Ladders are pretty light, you'd be surprised how easy it is to build a path down even a large rocket

It's not about weight, it's about making them work, which can be a mind-boggling task if the path isn't straight. Laddering up my own lander took up like 20-30% of the entire development time: put the vessel on the pad, test the ladders, revert to VAB, ad nauseam. On top of that, ladders can add quite a few parts to a vessel. My own inconspiciuos setup was like 5% of all parts.

As to your submission: could you please beef up the Eve Launch a bit? That's totally not enough pictures, and a lack of resource/info stuff to boot. I've updated the OP because all recent submission have been wanting in that regard.

[Laie]

Hi, this is my entry. Just completed my second Eve mission with 2 kerbals on surface.

A two-man pod is certainly a rare sight. I also like your rover, it has style. And there's lots of sweet details like that necklace of debris. I only wonder why you flipped your rover at the end? Or was it generally flippy and this time you didn't reload?

Either way, you made it. Congratulations, you completed the Eve Rocks Challenge on Level 3!

Before I update the OP, you you please provide weight, part count and so on? I could cull them from the craft files, but would prefer to just copypaste.

Also, do you use any special settings on Imgur? That gallery pumps out all pictures as high-res PNGs, no matter what. Everyone who's just viewing this page on the forums, with your gallery linked, will receive a ~100MB download. Other Imgur galleries don't do that.

[redsh]

I only wonder why you flipped your rover at the end? Or was it generally flippy and this time you didn't reload?

All my imgur descriptions disappear! I have no idea why this happens. Will try to restore them; for now added some details to my post. Jeb has flipped rover because (due to poor rover testing) can't recover data from instruments another way.

Also, do you use any special settings on Imgur? That gallery pumps out all pictures as high-res PNGs, no matter what.

Have no idea too

Congratulations, you completed the Eve Rocks Challenge on Level 3!

Thanks! btw my design won't take off from low elevation so it's should be level 2.

Edited December 18, 2014 by redsh

[kahlzun]

As to your submission: could you please beef up the Eve Launch a bit? That's totally not enough pictures, and a lack of resource/info stuff to boot. I've updated the OP because all recent submission have been wanting in that regard.

Alright, I'll see if I can get more pictures. Have needed to do another launch though, so keep in mind MET does not line up.

Stay tuned for requested, additional launch pictures.

EDIT:

Requested pictures are now added to initial application page. Seperate album made as was different launch.

Note that as I used a disposable IP stage, which did not return from Eve, I used it as most of my descent stage.

Being as the fuel in the descent is immaterial, i hyperedit'd the craft to a 200km eve orbit and landed from there.

Initial application shows how I got it there legitimately.

Edited December 19, 2014 by kahlzun

[hazard-ish]

Hello! I posted a lot here a while ago detailing my mission plan but I have been so busy recently I have not had the time to perform it. Recently, however, I managed to spent the time to go through it. And go through it and go through it... roughly 8 times until I finally carried out the mission without quicksaves. Don't ask - I just don't like them I guess

Anyway, I should be posting my entry here soon. I assume an imgur album is okay?

[Xannari Ferrows]

Hello! I posted a lot here a while ago detailing my mission plan but I have been so busy recently I have not had the time to perform it. Recently, however, I managed to spent the time to go through it. And go through it and go through it... roughly 8 times until I finally carried out the mission without quicksaves. Don't ask - I just don't like them I guess

Anyway, I should be posting my entry here soon. I assume an imgur album is okay?

Wow... no quicksaves? I mean, sure I never had to use them, but I'd go mad before doing this 8 times. You've got dedication!

Anyway, imgur albums are the primary way to submit things here, so it's perfect for entering the competition.

[Laie]

Ok, completed Level 1.

Thanks for the update on the Eve launch, that will do.

Congratulations, you complete Eve Rocks on Level 1!

Going with a a plain old LV-T30 as the last engine is a good idea, that engine is much better than it's rep. Though I have to admit that the bit I like best is how you recover your lifter stages on Kerbin.

[2001kraft]

Laie, am I allowed to refuel on ground?

E.G. I have a base and a craft with docking/refueling capabilities and enough fuel in the base.

Is it allowed or not?