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Tier 1 Challenge


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Alright - now that we're all familiar with the new tech tree, I figure it's time for a simple challenge.

Objective: Travel as high up as you can (i.e. highest altitude) with a manned pod, and return to Kerbin's surface without any damage to the rocket whatsoever. No biggie, right?

The catch: You may only use Starting Tier parts - that's the Command Pod Mk1, LV-T30 Liquid Fuel Engine, RT-10 Solid Fuel Booster, FL-T200 Fuel Tank, Modular Girder Segment, Communotron 16, and Mk16 Parachute. Any rocket that includes any other part is automatically disqualified.

To enter: Submit a screenshot of your design in the VAB; if any non-Starting Tier parts are included, you earn no score (and entries may be disqualified after scoring if it can be shown a non-Tier 1 part was used). Show another screenshot of your flight log after landing, with the maximum height traveled displayed. If any damage to the rocket is indicated in the flight log, you earn no score (this includes damaged parts, structural linkage failures and explosions due to overheating). An extra 100 m of distance may be earned per point of Science collected during the flight.

No autopilots, hyper-editing or any use of the debug menu is allowed.

My entry as soon as I get done installing 0.22.

Leaders:

1. tavert -- 29,321,765,397

2. Johnno -- 38,734

3.

Edited by capi3101
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OP....

People already using Tear 0, to go to Duna, Land on Duna Mun (Ike?), back to Minmus (Land on Minmus), Orbit Mun, and Land back safely to Kerbin.

Arthor: allmhuran

Edited by Sirine
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Using this delta-V chart http://i.imgur.com/wZUXZxr.png and adding up the delta-V cost of the mission I performed, it would seem that my starting tier rocket has the delta-v available to orbit out beyond Eeloo and return.

So that would be about 80 million km above Kerbin IIRC, (+ 147 km for the science, lol)

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Yeah, but can you get it back to Kerbin and land without damaging the craft? Allmhuran's flight, impressive though it is, would be a no score - the SRBs are exploding in the early stages. That's damage.

I'll revise the wording so there's no confusion as to which Tier is involved. Also mention no debug menu.

My first attempt is a no score; blew the engines on splashdown.

Can't seem to change the name of the thread itself...

Edited by capi3101
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If any damage is indicated in the flight log, you earn no score (this includes damaged parts and structural linkage failures).

I gave this challenge an hour or two last night (lost track of time as usual), I found this specific rule to be the challenging part. I see now however that you've rewritten things a bit, so that it's max altitude, nonetheless I shall get the show started with an early entry, I'll continue trying though (and hopefully get some competition).

Just noticed I forgot to take a VAB picture of this particular ship, however I apparently thought ahead and moved my camera so that it's visible on the ground, so hopefully you'll be ok with the entry capi3101.

Score: 308,734 (no science as I was in the testing phase)

aaq2a9K.png

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Allmhuran's flight, impressive though it is, would be a no score - the SRBs are exploding in the early stages. That's damage.

Therein lies the problem. Anything available at tier 0/starting parts would then be required to be an SSTO (and beyond). Those exploding SRBs are exploding for a purpose, man.

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Therein lies the problem. Anything available at tier 0/starting parts would then be required to be an SSTO (and beyond). Those exploding SRBs are exploding for a purpose, man.

But that's the idea behind the challenge, maximum altitude with unharmed return. If you can or can't get into orbit is irrelevant, those are the rules of the challenge.

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Oh so you mean you can't stage, the whole ship has to return?

Sure you can stage, using a method I like to call "explosive destructive staging", i.e. when one stage is burnt out, let the stage above that simply destroy the empty one below with its engine flames.

Edit: Oh I see, the OP meant no damage to anything whatsoever, I inititally read it as "no damage to the capsule".

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Yeah, I'll make it explicit in the rules - no damage to the rocket whatsoever.

@Johnno: You're right, I did have it as "furthest distance" originally. I changed that when I remembered that "furthest distance" is ridiculously ambiguous; someone could just go up into orbit, circle the planet for a thousand years and come back down, earning a big score in the process.

Yes, you can get into orbit with a single stage on Starting Tier parts. But it's tricky, and then there's the matter of landing without damage. That's what happened to me; I had a beautiful flight, but my engines popped off on splashdown. No score. A suborbital flight like Johnnos will do just as well.

Speaking of which, Johnno has the first successful entry with a score of 38,374. Will update the leaderboard momentarily.

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29,321,765,397 meters, out past Duna's orbit, to a 2:1 Kerbin resonance (sort of an interplanetary free return)

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Hmm, the 9-hour liftoff time is from reloading a quicksave at some point, but it should be apparent from the numbers of engines and parachutes in the staging bar and the fuel amounts in the resources that no parts were damaged before the quickload... this was just a pig to get to orbit and I kept warping past SoI transitions.

Edited by tavert
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Wobbling wasn't the biggest issue, getting it to turn in any remotely responsive way with just the single pod's torque was the tricky part.

Anyone patient and good with gravity assists should be able to go further out by sending a similar design in towards Eve, gravity assisting past Eve and Kerbin a few times to get out to Jool, maybe using Jool to get almost out to solar escape.

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