8

I can now successfully land on Eve using a nuclear engine and several parachutes on my lander. I had originally tested taking off at Kerbin by equipping a pair of solid fuel boosters, but of course having more than twice the gravity at Eve meant this was more or less useless.

I've been looking around for an estimate of the amount of thrust/weight needed escape Eve's atmosphere but haven't found it yet. How could I go about calculating what to add to my lander given a certain weight of the lander?

Improve this question
4
  • Scott Manley's Eve or Bust. Suffice it to say, taking off from Eve is difficult at best.
    – MBraedley
    Mar 17, 2014 at 15:45
  • Also, Eve doesn't have twice the gravity that Kerbin has, but because of the combination of greater atmospheric density and higher gravity, the delta-V to orbit required is significantly higher (about 2.5 times as much).
    – MBraedley
    Mar 17, 2014 at 16:08
  • Yeah I could tell that it was gonna be hard as soon as I tried my first time :P What would be a good approach? I'm thinking taking large pieces and connecting them in Eve's orbit then try to land it but that probably wont be very easy. There's gotta be a way...
    – ZekeDroid
    Mar 17, 2014 at 16:18
  • Regarding Manley's Eve or Bust series: Episode 13 shows the return vehicle in action. Keep in mind that you only need to get into orbit. When you managed to get so far, you can send a 2nd ship to pick them up.
    – Philipp
    Mar 18, 2014 at 13:22

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
9

Eve has an atmosphere ranging all the way up to around 100,000m with surface pressure being about five times as high as on Kerbin, and almost twice as much gravity (with 16.7m/s2 gravitational pull).

Depending on the height from which you're launching, you will need between ~8,000m/s and ~11,500m/s of Δv to achieve orbital velocity around Eve, which should give an orbital velocity of ~3,500m/s.

Eve's escape velocity is ~5,000m/s, so in order to return from a 100km Eve orbit to Kerbin, another ~1,500m/s Δv is required.

Improve this answer
10
  • 1
    This, of course, largely marks ideal scenarios. If you miss your ascent, or don't get the transfer burns quite right you will obviously need even more fuel to correct those errors.
    – user98085
    Mar 17, 2014 at 16:14
  • Wow awesome :D guess I'll start practicing and putting refueling stations in orbit. I play in career mode so there're many things I don't quite have yet but I'm gonna give it a shot.
    – ZekeDroid
    Mar 17, 2014 at 16:17
  • 2
    You might need even more than 11.5km/s. A delta-V map I looked at listed over 12km/s, and that's ideal (albeit from sea level).
    – MBraedley
    Mar 17, 2014 at 16:26
  • 1
    @MBraedley The exact value should be only 11,282m/s. And as far as I recall it, there haven't been any changes to Eve's size or atmospheric parameters.
    – user98085
    Mar 17, 2014 at 16:29
  • Lol kind of trivial at this stage but thanks for the details.
    – ZekeDroid
    Mar 17, 2014 at 16:32

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .