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KSP Challenge: The Mun Arch Speed Challenge!

Darth Badie

By Darth Badie
in KSP1 The Daily Kerbal

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MiniMatt

MiniMatt

Posted
Posted

That feeling when you're quite chuffed about your page 2 entry and by page 4 people are beating it by an order of magnitude :)

(that feeling, btw, is awesome - because these challenges are all about seeing what fantastic contraptions people come up with)

Besides, I thought I had the "Cute as a Button" award all wrapped up until @Just Jim's Doodlebug :)

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Skystorm

Skystorm

Posted
Posted

@Dark Lion Thanks for the questions.  I hope this information helps.

 

"How do you time it out and how do you know you're on target so long before you can even see the target indicator?"

I place a maneuver node at the point where I intend to start my burn.  If you watch my videos you will see that I start the burn exactly at the maneuver node (T - 0) each time for consistency.  Save the game about 2 - 3 minutes before you reach the maneuver node so that you can try, try again once you see the outcome.

Just like sighting in a rifle, if your shot goes high you aim lower, and if your shot goes right you aim more to the left.  Load your saved game, make some adjustments your maneuver node, then take another shot.  Rinse and repeat until you sight in your trajectory.

For better precision, try a mod like Precise Node where you can accurately control your prograde, normal, and radial deltaV contributions and make precise adjustments to those after each attempt.

 

"I don't think I'd have the reaction time to beat that..."

If you watch my videos again, I think what you will find is that you don't need to.  I'm not doing any aiming of any kind.  The ship is following the maneuver target the entire time.  From the time I start the burn to the time the video ends I'm only really doing two things:

  1. Switching to Stability Assist once I only have 100 m/s of fuel left and, and
  2. Shutting off the video recording.

Switching to Stability Assist prevents the ship from continuing to follow maneuver target as it starts drifting off-target just as I reach the end of the deltaV for the burn.

 

"I'm more interested in knowing how to set up the burn from such an eccentric orbit and still maintaining that pinpoint accuracy of yours."

I actually started out in a relatively circular polar orbit.  I had to wait about 3 days for the Mun to rotate the arch into position.  A couple of burns at the northern and southern poles made my orbit eccentric, and a radial in burn near the southern pole rotated the orbit so that long side of the now elliptical trajectory grazed over the arch location.

The orbit itself was only meant to give my ship more energy and reduce the amount of normal/radial necessary to alter my trajectory during the speed run (burn) so that the majority of it was pure forward speed and not keeping the ship on the desired course.

For the second video, my orbital trajectory was made hyperbolic by simply burning longer near the southern pole prior to the starting point of the speed run.  I did that to give me a longer, flatter trajectory leading up to the arch so that I could get a longer run at it.

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Dark Lion

Dark Lion

Posted
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3 hours ago, Skystorm said:

Load your saved game, make some adjustments your maneuver node, then take another shot.  Rinse and repeat until you sight in your trajectory.

 

:0.0:

BY THE K R A K E N!!! I've been grossly misusing the quicksave feature this whole time!! Been playing this game since 1.0.5 and only just learned you can quicksave a (spaghettified, krakenized, and in-no-way-any-fault-of-my-own-ignorance) maneuver node! Just give me the badge please, Badie. I'm dying here LOL! :P
@Skystorm, may the Kraken turn a blind eye to your ingenuity! I do humbly thank you for the much-needed intel... even though I'm pretty sure you only did so to encourage me to try it again and go for Plaid Speed for real, you devil! (Which might've worked if I'm swift enough. :wink:)

**Rage-quits KSP for an astounding 6 minutes before going back to the game I never closed, grumbling about hating Mun, math and my laurels...**

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Skystorm

Skystorm

Posted
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Ok, so not to be outdone by a coupler cannon, I clearly needed to step up my game a bit and step up my game I have.  This time I came at the arch from the opposite direction (over the north pole) with big 3.75m, 134 ton monster with two victims, uh, crew aboard!

The three (3) minute run starts so far away that you can just about see the entire Mun!  What you won't see though is the crater or the target marker for about the first 2.5 minutes of the video.

Jebediah really has a lot of moxy to be planting a flag and standing right under the arch like that doesn't he?  Shame the wake from passing through the arch that fast doesn't knock him on his keester.

So I'm thinking this may be my final run, this time passing through the arch at 5,252.3 m/s.  I figure YouTube is probably starting to hate me by now with nearly 2GB of uploads in the past couple days.

Then again... there is still that Mammoth engine I could use...

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StrandedonEarth

StrandedonEarth

Posted
Posted (edited)

Wow, there are some crazy speeds in here, and those cannons are insane. I guess I should have had a cannon category, or ground and space-launched categories. Oh well, too late now.

On 7/27/2017 at 8:04 PM, StahnAileron said:

Probably clichéd as hell, but any thoughts on the Top Gun theme as an intro leading into Danger Zone? First thing that came to mind. There may be something else more appropriate, though...

I though I had already answered this, but I must have forgot to hit post. That's exactly what I was thinking. And when I finally made my own successful run and put the song in, it happened to fit perfectly with no tweaking. Of course, a final video would be more clipped up. But seeing all the other entries in here makes me think there are people with better editing skills and software than I have, so if anyone else wants to take a crack at making a "Danger Zone" compilation video just let me know.

I'm actually doing this in the middle of my 1.3 career, with 300pt-tier parts and Jeb only a Level 2 pilot! I think the two launches of a spotter and Jeb's Toy took about 300k out of my R&D upgrade savings fund.

Here's my ground-based run. I had to tweak the 6 Vectors down to 95% thrust to keep Jeb from passing out. This was good for 1850m/s through the Arch, and Jeb has already braked back into Munar orbit and will be recoverable.

I should have time to to an orbital run, since I'm on holidays and there's another week left yet!

 

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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Red Shirt

Red Shirt

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:
14 hours ago, steuben said:

I'm surrendering on this one. Going through the arch from orbit is like hitting the small exhaust port right below the main one. It's impossible even for a computer.

Maybe ride a Womp Rat through it?

Use the Force Luke. Oops, mixing franchises... uhmmm.... I'm giving her all shes got Captain... Live long and prosper.... He's dead Jim. 

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StrandedonEarth

StrandedonEarth

Posted
Posted (edited)

On my first attempt to set up an orbit through an Arch, it seems I chose the worst approach vector possible (from the north), requiring me to snake over a hill. After many attempts and realizing just how futile that was, I set Jeb up on a southern approach, and with a little tweaking, was able to set up (and save!) a perfect un-powered orbit through the Arch and over the ridge, infinitely repeatable from 50 seconds out from the Arch. Now all I have to do is manage to dump about 4km/s into the remaining ~40km before the Arch while holding the line....

22 hours ago, Just Jim said:

OK, something I'm noticing on all these videos (with manned ships) is the horrified looks on the Kerbals faces as they pass under the arch!  Too funny!!! :0.0:

Well, Jeb has his usual grin on, while passing under the arch at a sedate 734m/s...

Edit: Well, I only seemed to have enough room to pump it up to 2250ms or so. I guess I need to back it up and find a way to burn it all. I noticed Jeb is all business on the approach, gets concerned when he thinks he's gonna crash, then goes all smiles as he powers up through the Arch

Edit 2: My next best save spot lets me pump the speed to between 3700-4400m/s, but I haven't hit the keyhole at that speed yet... But I've abused F9 enough to make the game crash after Jeb's last crash!

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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Red Shirt

Red Shirt

Posted
Posted

Important Safety Tip! I've been trying again this morning to thread the arch from orbit when I had one of those D'oh! moments: Choosing an arch that does not sit at the bottom of a crater would be a really good idea (D'oh! See I told you). I would post pictures to explain why, but the repeated incident was too horrific. 

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StrandedonEarth

StrandedonEarth

Posted
Posted
11 minutes ago, Red Shirt said:

Important Safety Tip! I've been trying again this morning to thread the arch from orbit when I had one of those D'oh! moments: Choosing an arch that does not sit at the bottom of a crater would be a really good idea (D'oh! See I told you). I would post pictures to explain why, but the repeated incident was too horrific. 

Yeah, that's good to know. That's what the redshirts are for, to discover that sort of hazardous thing. The equatorial Mun Arch is pretty good; you can orbit through it from the south cleanly with no adjustments (once you find the right track) since it's right on a big crater rim

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Just Jim

Just Jim

Posted
Posted
23 minutes ago, Red Shirt said:

Important Safety Tip! I've been trying again this morning to thread the arch from orbit when I had one of those D'oh! moments: Choosing an arch that does not sit at the bottom of a crater would be a really good idea (D'oh! See I told you). I would post pictures to explain why, but the repeated incident was too horrific. 

I'm sorry... I'm trying so hard not to laugh, but failing miserably!!!  :D

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DarkOwl57

DarkOwl57

Posted
Posted
22 hours ago, Red Shirt said:

Use the Force Luke. Oops, mixing franchises... uhmmm.... I'm giving her all shes got Captain... Live long and prosper.... He's dead Jim. 

hahahahahahahahaha. All I know of Star Trek is "KAAAAAHHHHHNNNNN!!" (Yeah, I've only watched one movie... sowwy :()

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