Attempt No Landings There - Vall Rescue Challenge

[EpicRaisin]

The maiden voyage of the Galaksy Interplanetry Kerbal Transport Vessek has ended in disaster. Crashed on the icy surface of Vall after an emergency retrograde burn, the 15 Kerbals stuck on the moon are in need of rescue. Seems simple, right?

However, you shouldn't forget the single message left by the beings who left the monoliths: "All these worlds are yours--except Vall. Attempt no landings there." You might be able to stretch the rule and say that the crash landing wasn't attemping to land there, Vall just happened to be the closest celestial body when the KAL-5500 autopilot malfunctioned (darn you, kraken!). However, it wouldn't be a good idea to test the alien's ire. After all, they have the power to turn Jool into a star. So here is where this rescue mission gets difficult. This is the challenge you must conquer:

You must save the Kerbals from Vall, WITHOUT landing on the surface

You must send a rescue ship to Vall, and rescue as many Kerbals as possible. You don't necessarily have to save all of them, but it would nice if you did (and it would give you lots of points ). The catch is that your ship is not allowed to touch the surface of Vall at all. You are allowed to land on the crashed Galaksy, but if you wish to not anger the spooky space aliens more, it would be better not to (and, yet again, you would get more points)

Rules

• Mods
  • Mods are allowed in this challenge. If you do use mods, you can not use any that alter game physics/mechanics, e.g. gravity modifications.
  • Stock runs are allowed to use DLC, information mods (such as KER), and visual mods.
• Mission
  • Kraken drives, exploits, and the cheat menu are not allowed.
  • The rescue ship must make it back to Kerbin safely, and all Kerbals aboard (regardless of how many you save) must survive reentry.
  • This challenge is not timed, so take your time if you want to make gravity assists or other maneuvers to save delta V.
  • The mission may be manned or unmanned, no points are lost or gained for choosing either.
  • The "no landing" rule applies to everything you make, even probes. Debris hitting the surface is allowed, as long as you can confirm it exploded.
  • The Kerbals on the crashed vessel are allowed to touch the surface of Vall, but don't stray far from the crashed ship. Any Kerbals you bring with you in the rescue ship are not allowed to touch the surface.
• Proof
  • A full video recording is the preferred method. If you record the mission, do not make any cuts in the video. You are allowed to speed up the footage.
  • The exceptions to the no video cuts rule is when you load a quicksave, or when you pause. So you can cut to skip through long pauses and failed attempts where you had to quickload back. (Thanks QF9E for telling me about this)
  • Screenshots are allowed, just make sure you have enough, and that you capture the most important events in the mission.

Scoring

• +100 points for each Kerbal rescued from Vall (out of 15). 1,500 points are possible here, so make sure to rescue as many as possible.
• -50 points for each descent into Vall (so if you send 3 rescue pods, that would be -150 points). You could loose up to 750 points here, so try to keep the number of descents to a minimum.
• +200 points if you never land on the crashed ship.
• +150 points if you do the whole rescue mission in one launch (you do not need to rescue every Kerbal).
• +201 points for rescuing every Kerbal.

for a maximum of 2001 points

Leaderboard

Spoiler

1st - QF9E - 2051 points - Stock

They literally managed to bring the entire Galaksy into orbit. What. The. Heck.

• 15 Kerbals saved, +1500
• 0 Vall descents, -0
• Didn't land on Galaksy, +200
• One launch, +150
• Every Kerbal rescued, +201

If you think the rules or scoring system should be changed, please tell me, and I'll look over your suggestion.

And, as always, your bravery in this rescue operation will be rewarded with a special badge to addorn your signature with (Higher res version here if anybody wants it):

Download the save file from this link: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/717048644708073537/987024923090370590/Attempt_No_Landings_There.zip

Good luck, kerbonauts!

 

Edited June 17, 2022 by EpicRaisin
Added QF9E to the leaderboard

[QF9E]

Sounds like fun, I'm in!

Question about the "no cuts in the video" rule: If I screw up halfway into the mission and have to go back to a quicksave from, say, 30 minutes earlier, do you really want to see those 30 minutes with the failed attempt? When I make a video of a challenge mission, I usually only keep the successful bits, cutting any footage that ended in me reverting to an earlier save file. I also usually cut out bits where I go to the menu (say, to pause the game for a bathroom break). Would that level of editing be allowed?

 

[QF9E]

And another question: if I were to salvage the entire ship, would that please the aliens? I'd have to touch the ship with a Klaw, does that count as landing on it, even if no other part of my rescue vessel were to touch the ship?

Edited June 16, 2022 by QF9E

[EpicRaisin]

1 hour ago, QF9E said:

If I screw up halfway into the mission and have to go back to a quicksave from, say, 30 minutes earlier, do you really want to see those 30 minutes with the failed attempt?

...

I also usually cut out bits where I go to the menu (say, to pause the game for a bathroom break). Would that level of editing be allowed?

Good points. I'll update the recording rules to allow cuts whenever you pause/when you load a quicksave.

Also, that's a long time to go without quicksaving (i may or may not be guilty of that...)

59 minutes ago, QF9E said:

And another question: if I were to salvage the entire ship, would that please the aliens? I'd have to touch the ship with a Klaw, does that count as landing on it, even if no other part of my rescue vessel were to touch the ship?

I think the spooky space aliens would be very happy if you removed evidence of a crash from the planet. I'm not entirely sure if grabbing the ship would count as landing (you don't technically land, but then the ships join, but are still kinda separate... does it count as landing if you become part of the landed vessel? I have no clue). I think I would say yes, it does count as landing, unfortunately for you. However, if you can actually manage to bring the ship back with you, I think you'd definitely deserve getting those lost points back (and it would coincide with 2010: Oddysey Two, if you've ever read it).

[QF9E]

I think I may have beaten your challenge:

• I've got all Kerbals off the surface of Vall (+1500)
• With ZERO descents (-0)
• Without landing on the ship (+200)
• One rescue launch (provisionally). All they need is more fuel so that they can go back to Kerbin on their own. (+150)
• Rescued every Kerbal (+201)

For a grand total of 2051.

You may be wondering how I did it. Well, there's a couple of Engineer Kerbals on the ship, so I made heavy use of EVA construction.

I noticed that the ship has plenty of fuel and a working propulsion system, indicating to me that it, in principle, should be able to lift off of the Vallian surface. However, there's three major problems:

1. It does not have any means of control, as its cockpit has broken off;
2. Its TWR is way lower than 1, so it cannot take off under rocket power.
3. It has no way to raise itself to a vertical position.

I solved the control problem by breaking down the tiny lander into parts and attaching its lander can to the front of the Galaksy. I then mounted the lander engine to the Galaksy, pointing upwards and burned off most of its fuel, in order to reach an acceptable TWR of about 1.3. This took a while: I needed to lose about 13000 units of oxidizer and a corresponding amount of fuel, and I only had a single Terrier engine to do it. In all it took about 25 minutes of game time to burn off all the necessary fuel and oxidizer. To raise the ship into a vertical position, I then removed the Terrier engine from its temporary mount and refitted it to the nose of the ship, pointing downwards.

Liftoff was by no means easy, mainly due to the fact that most of the struts holding the rear of the ship together had gone, so the ship has a tendency to sag at the back. But in the end I managed to reach low Vall orbit, as indicated by the screenshot above.

I'll post a video later. This was an epic challenge, and it left me thoroughly exhausted.

Edited June 17, 2022 by QF9E

[EpicRaisin]

I... bro, that's epic.

Welp, I must admit, you did beat it. And you managed to beat what I thought was the highest possible score. Bravo. You deserve that badge.

It was actually due to a glitch that the lander was there in the first place. When I was setting up the Galaksy to make it look destroyed, I had an engineer outside just moving stuff in EVA construction. But then, that weird glitch happened where you wouldn't fall when you jumped. So I went to the tracking station and then back to the ship to see if it would reset, but the Kerbal just died. So I had to make a small lander, make it look broken, then teleport it to the ship, to make it seem like a exploration lander that was broken off the main ship, all of that just to make sure it was still 15 Kerbals. So really, if the kraken never attacked that engineer Kerbal, it's possible that you wouldn't have gotten it into orbit. Darn you, kraken?

Also, the struts are in one of the Hitchhikers, in case you were looking for them

EDIT: I'd assume you'd launch a refueling craft, since you said there wasn't enough fuel?

Edited June 17, 2022 by EpicRaisin

[QF9E]

53 minutes ago, EpicRaisin said:

Bravo. You deserve that badge.

Thanks, I'll wear it with pride!

53 minutes ago, EpicRaisin said:

It was actually due to a glitch that the lander was there in the first place [...] The Kerbal just died. So I had to make a small lander

Wouldn't it have been possible to spawn a capsule with a Kerbal inside on the launchpad, have the Kerbal go on EVA and then use the cheat menu to place just the Kerbal on Vall? I think you can also terminate the lander in the Tracking window.

53 minutes ago, EpicRaisin said:

So really, if the kraken never attacked that engineer Kerbal, it's possible that you wouldn't have gotten it into orbit.

I don't see how it would be possible to orbit the ship without the parts provided by the lander. I may even do the challenge a second time without that tiny lander. I've got a few other ideas to get the Kerbals off the surface without landing.

53 minutes ago, EpicRaisin said:

Also, the struts are in one of the Hitchhikers, in case you were looking for them

Yup, I did find them. But it turns out to be virtually impossible to strut the ship back together on the ground in a more or less symmetric shape, as the unstrutted parts are sagging so much.

53 minutes ago, EpicRaisin said:

I'd assume you'd launch a refueling craft, since you said there wasn't enough fuel?

Yes, I still have to launch a fueler from Kerbin to get the ship home. That said, I do not expect any major problems with that phase of the mission. I've flown to the Jool system numerous times.

Edited June 17, 2022 by QF9E

[QF9E]

Video of my entire mission. I left in some bits that I would ordinarily edit out to comply with the "minimal editing" rule for this challenge.

 

[camacju]

Very nicely done!

This seems like it was more of a puzzle than anything else - figuring out what to do with the limited parts and resources.

[camacju]

6 hours ago, QF9E said:

One rescue launch (provisionally). All they need is more fuel so that they can go back to Kerbin on their own. (+150)

With proper application of gravity assists, you might actually be able to reach Kerbin without the need for a refueling mission. You're orbiting Vall at ~800 m/s in a circular orbit so escape velocity is approximately 1130 m/s, so you need 330 m/s to escape. (The true number will be a good amount less than this because Vall has a sphere of influence, so you don't actually need to be on a hyperbolic trajectory to escape Vall). 

KER says you have 417 m/s so this is pretty reasonable.

Edit: I put a test craft into Vall orbit and got a pretty nice Laythe encounter for only 270 m/s. From there I can encounter Tylo and then simply chain gravity assists until I'm home.

Edited June 17, 2022 by camacju

[QF9E]

Just now, camacju said:

With proper application of gravity assists, you might actually be able to reach Kerbin without the need for a refueling mission. You're orbiting Vall at ~800 m/s in a circular orbit so escape velocity is approximately 1130 m/s, so you need 330 m/s to escape. (The true number will be a good amount less than this because Vall has a sphere of influence, so you don't actually need to be on a hyperbolic trajectory to escape Vall). 

KER says you have 417 m/s so this is pretty reasonable.

Interesting, thanks for the tip! Gravity assists are not my strong suit, but I might give it a go.

There is also a way to get more dv: using EVA construction it is possible to move fuel from one ship to another: first attach an empty  fuel tank to one ship, pump fuel into it, attach it to the other ship, pump the fuel out, repeat. In this fashion you can make use of the fuel still in the forward part of the ship that has broken off.

I did not bother with that as I thought I would not have enough dv anyway and it is a bit of a hassle, but your post makes me reconsider.

[QF9E]

19 hours ago, camacju said:

and then simply chain gravity assists until I'm home

Well, I gave it a try, but no luck. Any help is appreciated. I got a similar trajectory to yours, with a Laythe assist followed by a Tylo encounter:

(BTW: I have more dv to spend in low Vall orbit because i re-did the mission. This time I took the fuel in the cockpit section with me. I also fixed the broken dv indicator at lower left: it seems that the game gets confused when the active craft is formally classified as debris)

Which led to a collision course with Tylo. Which I could avoid with a course correction, which had the added effect that Tylo gave me an assist to a much higher orbit, still inside the Jool SOI:

A second Tylo assist got me into an even wider orbit, halfway to the edge of the Jool SOI:

A third Tylo assist ejected me from the Jool system:

You'd say I'm on the right path but I ended up in an orbit halfway between Duna and Dres:

And I'm stumped as to how to get from there to the inner solar system and gravity assists with Kerbin and / or Eve. The only option I see is to try to get a Jool assist, which would be 10s if not 100s of years in the future. But by this point I was thoroughly frustrated with my apparent lack of progress. This took me a couple of hours of game time and 12 years of mission time, both of which seem excessive to me.

I've tried many, many times before, and it is always the same - lack of progress, frustration and very, very long game sessions with little to show for it. I think something about gravity assists simply does not click with me, Any help or tips are greatly appreciated, as I've been wrestling with this for years.

[camacju]

6 hours ago, QF9E said:

which had the added effect that Tylo gave me an assist to a much higher orbit, still inside the Jool SOI

I think you might want to try using Tylo to reduce your speed, which will set up a better Laythe assist. It's like using Kerbin and Eve to get to Jool - you need to go inward first.

If you use Tylo to reduce speed and Laythe to increase speed, you'll end up winding up your Laythe relative velocity until you can escape direct to Kerbin.

[QF9E]

With a bit of help from @camacju and the extra dv that my second attempt had gained me, I have been able to bring back the Galaksy to Low Kerbin Orbit without having to launch a refueling mission.

In the end I decided to limit the number of gravity assists, as I still don't have a lot of confidence in doing them. So I gave my ship a bigger boost to get a favourable encounter with Laythe immediately, which ejected my ship from the Joolian system with a PE near that of Kerbin. Two gravity assists from Kerbin lowered my AP to within Duna's orbit, and a final Eve gravity assist lowered AP to Kerbin's orbit. I then aerocaptured at Kerbin, which almost succeeded: I was about 50 m/s short and one landing strut burned off. Fortunately I had enough dv left for a 50 m/s capture burn. I then did numerous aerobraking passes to reach Low Kerbin Orbit.

And finally, here's the hero of this story, Chief Engineer Hanbrett Kerman, back on Kerbin. I recently learned that it is possible to land a Kerbal on their own from low Kerbin orbit. I put Hanbrett on EVA, lowered his PE to 68 km and waited for his temperature to rise enough for a temperature bar to show. I then performed a re-entry burn by burning all remaining EVA fuel retrograde. This brought his speed down to about 1300 m/s, low enough that heating isn't an issue anymore. I then landed Hanbrett using his personal parachute.

In conclusion: I did the entire challenge without launching a rescue mission from Kerbin. I won't say it was easy (it very much was not) but I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you, @EpicRaisin for posting this unique challenge!

Edited June 19, 2022 by QF9E