Land the K-2 as many places as you can!

[Ghery88]

Behold, the K-2 (interplanetary) lander!

Your task is really simple: take this craft and land it on as many celestial bodies as you can.

As you can see, the craft is completely stock: 3-person capsule, NERVAs, landing parachutes and

other neat stuff applied.

Rules:

- You can use MechJeb or any other plugins you find handy for designing, plotting and piloting

- You can only use stock parts

- You are not allowed to change the fuel system of the craft

- You are not allowed to change the overal looks of the craft

- Post screenshots of your missions on the launchpad, in Kerbin orbit and at the landing site

- You can have as many launches as you please

- You'll collect Awards, which will give you your points - the one with the most points will win the challange

- Point value of Awards are secret and will only be revealed when a winner is named

- The challange ends on the 30th of October

Awards:

In the neighbourhood - Land the craft on the closest three celestial bodies to the launch pad

Not quite possible - Land on Moho

The thicker, the better - Land on Eve

Watch the quicksand! - Land on Gilly

Dun'd - Land on Duna

Is this Charon? - Land on Ike

I see no jellyfish - Land on Jool

Thalassan vacation - Land on Laythe

My name is not spelled with a 'W' - Land on Vall

Not Danish - Land on Tylo

Squid rock - Land on Bop

Bonus awards:

First! - Be the first to get an award

I get it - Find references above and PM me with them (each worth points)

Well documented - Post more pictures of your trip than the rules require

24 pictures a second sure says a lot more than anything else - Make a video of your trip

I got back! - Return to Kerbin (doubles the points you get for the mission)

I'm the night colour me black - Land on the darkside

Attracted to moonshine - Land on every moon in the system

Planetarium - Land on every planet

I've seen everything - Land on everywhere

Want some eggs? - Land near easter eggs (each worth points)

I'm doing this live - Do your mission while you're online on the community TeamSpeak server

Use the Force! - Do your mission without any mods (doubles the points you get for your mission)

The reward:

The winner will get +1 rep from every participant and will be regarded as someone with a lot of spare time.

Edited September 30, 2012 by Ghery88

[Ghery88]

Leaderboard and such

[Ghery88]

Almost two days passed since the announcment, the thread is considered hot and past 180 views, yet nobody applied. What's wrong with the challange fellow kerbals?

[Whatshtisthis]

Landing on Jool? Are you sure?

[MeticulousMitch]

I can't speak for everyone, but there are a few issues that turn me off:

1.) The lander can't reach space, let alone Kerbin orbit, without modification.

2.) The staging doesn't seem to make much sense if you're launching from the pad - ie the parachutes deploy before the launch clamps release.

3.) Your first post implies (perhaps unintentionally) that this craft is a 'Single Stage to Orbit' vehicle, when it's clearly not.

4.) The design has numerous inefficiencies, like excessive landing gear, redundant upside-down nose-cones and unnecessary weight in RCS tanks.

5.) Personally I prefer challenges that require me to build my own craft to solve the challenge.

Was it your intention that we build a rocket that can get this lander into orbit, or to another planet? That's a fair bit of work, and not nearly as fun as designing one's own lander and rocket from scratch.

The aesthetics of the lander are actually quite good, but I just can't see it being functional at the moment.

[EndlessWaves]

What's wrong with the challange fellow kerbals?

A challenge has to be a challenge, something that's difficult, unusual or apparently impossible. It's not clear what the challenge is here. From the pictures it doesn't look like it'll be particularly unstable, difficult to launch or difficult to land and while it looks quite good it's hardly stunning.

In short the problem is that the challenge is apparently 'do several interplanetary missions with this generic lander'. You need to elaborate more on the interesting features of the ship.

I would imagine the views because of the interesting name, perhaps people expecting one of these to land:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:K_class_blimp.jpg

[Ghery88]

Damn, I can't get used to this forum, so no real quotes.

Whatshtisthis

Landing on Jool? Are you sure?

Yes, some people already done it. I don't say you have to, it's your choice.

MeticulousMitch

I can't speak for everyone, but there are a few issues that turn me off:

1.) The lander can't reach space, let alone Kerbin orbit, without modification.

2.) The staging doesn't seem to make much sense if you're launching from the pad - ie the parachutes deploy before the launch clamps release.

3.) Your first post implies (perhaps unintentionally) that this craft is a 'Single Stage to Orbit' vehicle, when it's clearly not.

4.) The design has numerous inefficiencies, like excessive landing gear, redundant upside-down nose-cones and unnecessary weight in RCS tanks.

5.) Personally I prefer challenges that require me to build my own craft to solve the challenge.

Was it your intention that we build a rocket that can get this lander into orbit, or to another planet? That's a fair bit of work, and not nearly as fun as designing one's own lander and rocket from scratch.

The aesthetics of the lander are actually quite good, but I just can't see it being functional at the moment.

Thanks for the thorough reply! Let me address it in order.

1) This is just a lander. I thought it will be obvious that you need a launch vehicle for it, but I should've clarified. My bad. But when in doubt, ask!

2) Having a launch vehicle should solve this.

3) Again more clarification.

4) Well, it works for me. I feel a lot more comfortable having RCS and the cones are really just for looks.

The rest) Everybody has his/her own style of desgining and piloting. I wondered what others are capable with this thing. If you don't like it, that's fine, as I said, I really appreciate you took your time to give me an answer.

A challenge has to be a challenge, something that's difficult, unusual or apparently impossible. It's not clear what the challenge is here. From the pictures it doesn't look like it'll be particularly unstable, difficult to launch or difficult to land and while it looks quite good it's hardly stunning.

In short the problem is that the challenge is apparently 'do several interplanetary missions with this generic lander'. You need to elaborate more on the interesting features of the ship.

I would imagine the views because of the interesting name, perhaps people expecting one of these to land:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:K_class_blimp.jpg

Well, getting approximately 70 tons into LKO is not that easy to begin with. It's a bit heavy, so manouvering and landing could be tricky. As I said above, I'm curious what others can do with this 'generic lander' and thought it would be fun to see how differnent approaches turn out in a competitive atmosphere.

This could be used many ways:

-The experience itself would be useful for later times.

-You can make a guide with a link how (not) to design crafts.

-The (possible) videos could draw more attention to this awesome game.

-Doing anything related to this on the TeamSpeak server would strenghten the community.

-etc.

As for the wiki link, thanks, I've never heard of these.

[EndlessWaves]

I've just had a look at the lander in detail and 171 parts is rather excessive and close to the maximum total part count many slower computers will support. It's far too many for the lander alone. You definitely want to make it much simpler - under 50 parts would be good, under 30 even better.