For the past couple of weeks I've been relentlessly trying to make a rocket that is capable of landing on eve (Venus) and then getting back to Kerbin in one launch without refuelling.
Because the gravity is almost twice that of kerbin and because its atmosphere is 5x thicker than kerbin I need a lander with at least 11,500m/s, compared to the ~4,500m/s to get into kerbin orbit. I also need something to move the lander into eve orbit and then something else to take me back. This is pretty much equivalent of needing something capable of getting into Kerbin orbit and landing again three times
Pretty much each attempt at building a rocket for the job ends up looking like this because the lander is so damned heavy and because I run out of room so I have to build outwards rather than upwards. This is the last craft I tried it in. Its surprisingly stable and the lander has enough delta-v to take off from Eve and then meet the command module, but it didn't quite make it into Kerbin orbit.
Lander and the space engines:
Click for full res
(Yes, I have no imagination when it comes to names. No, its not my 7th attempt, i've just been renumbering it as a save to get a fallback point if i balls something up and ctrl-z breaks.... again)
and the monstrosity that (is supposed to) get it into Kerbin orbit
Click for full res
The tanks at the bottom hold ~2.5 times as much as the vanilla jumbo orange tanks and beneath every single one of them is an engine that is over twice as powerful as the mainsail. The first stage of the rocket uses 20 of the 69 that are there. I would have continued building outwards, but I cant zoom the camera out far enough to put more parts on without a lot of difficulty.
I've had another redesign since that rocket and things are looking much more promising. The lander is now a hair under 200 tonnes and the space engines only add another 100 or so tonnes. The Kerbin orbit stages are starting to look similar to the picture above, but hopefully it wont end up going so wide as the one before
Also bought this in the sale, gonna give it a whirl at the weekend.
What's the learning curve like?
I understand there's a modding community aswell, what's that like?
From what I've seen of the modding community, it is really great. There's loads of really fun mods for pretty much anything you want to do.
Unlike a lot of people will tell you, i would suggest you get mechjeb straight away. However, i would use it solely for the delta-v (speed change) information for each stage of your rocket because the rest of its functions really spoil the game imo. I have never used any of its other functions and I don't plan to.
As for other mods I suggest you stick to stock parts for a while until you become familiar with them. Then gradually add mods until you become familiar with their parts as well because otherwise you will be overwhelmed with all of the parts and choosing what you like best.
Some of the more popular mods aside from mechjeb are:
- Crew manifest: Allows you to add/remove kerbals at the launchpad. brilliant for crafts with multiple pods (wont be needed for 0.21 i dont think)
- sub-assembly manager: Lets you save a group of connected parts to be loaded into the assembly building later.
- Kethane: lets you mine a fuel called kethane, which can be converted into everything else
- KW Rocketry: big selection of rockets and fuel tanks. great for heavy lifting too
- B9 aerospace pack: loads of parts for planes of various sizes
there are loads of other mods that look amazing, but i havent tried them myself yet so i cant recommend them
