GoSlash27

SciMan, That's irrelevant. *how* we get to a point where human colonies can thrive off-planet is immaterial. So long as they are not currently survivable, having humans off- planet is not an effective insurance policy against extinction. You do have a point that we have to maintain an effort to get to this point, but do we *have* to have manned spaceflight ongoing in order to achieve it? No. Not really... Best, -Slashy

ikehaiku, Good job. Your design would be considered "expendable", since it's stages were intended to be thrown away. I'll file this under "stock" and it looks to me like you've got more than 50 m/sec DV left on that sat. I could tell you for sure if I knew it's mass, but it looks safe. Best, -Slashy - - - Updated - - - Starhawk, Clearly SSTO spaceplanes are the way to go! Excellent job on all phases of the launch. I'm thinking the only way anybody can edge you out is by building a more efficient spaceplane, but that would be a tough job. Prime Contractor is yours (again). Best, -Slashy

SanderB, You should show off that video every chance you get. That's one heckuva performance! 59.52 points (bonus for reserve DV on orbit). Looks to me like you're within 5° of nominal, also. That's gonna be a hard one to beat... Best, -Slashy

It's sacrilegious to say this around here, so I'll be the bad guy: In the general scheme of things, manned spaceflight really isn't all that important. At least... not right now. There's all sorts of things that need attention and funding right here on Earth, and not enough of either to go around. I know somebody's gonna bring up the "eggs in one basket" argument, so let me preempt that: For now and the foreseeable future, all of humanity's eggs *are* in one basket regardless of how many people are temporarily off the planet. If we die they die because they cannot survive without us. sorry, -Slashy

Starhawk, I kinda picture you "droppin' the mic" After this one Very well done! Starhawk Speculative Investments is now the stock prime contractor. Best, -Slashy

SanderB, You could try temporarily orbiting the booster and deorbiting it on the back-side. You're pretty close to the DV needed. IAC I've updated the leaderboard for you. Best, -Slashy

SanderB, Golf clap and kudos on the expert piloting without any aids!! Well done. Now for the bad news: Recovery of reusable parts only counts if it's on KSC grounds. We'll have to treat this run as disposable to save your bonus, but I bet with a little tweaking to the profile you could set up a return to KSC and save a lot of loot. That places your raw score at 16.49. 20% bonus for expendable design. The bonus for arriving with plenty of DV is offset by being 5° off of station. I think we can tell by the numbers that your orbit is solid, so I'll take it as read (although if you wish to rerun it to get the full benefit of your design, please include the ground track checks so everybody's happy). That comes up to a grand total of 19.79 points and makes you the prime contractor for stock category. Congratulations! Oh... do you have a name for your aerospace firm? Best, -Slashy - - - Updated - - - ikehaiku, There's not a closing date set yet. Once it looks like this one's run it's course, we'll set up a new challenge. Best, -Slashy - - - Updated - - - Starhawk, If that's it, then I think I'll allow it. figuring out a keostationary orbit is easy. It's getting into the right point on that orbit that's tricky. Best, -Slashy

ghostbuzzer, I honestly don't know enough about KER to say whether it would give users an unfair advantage or not. I'd have to see a demonstration of it at work in this challenge. Best, -Slashy

^ exactly the way Juzeris demonstrates, except it's -10% for every broken circle (5° marks) I did it the hard way. Best, -Slashy

ikehaiku, Funny, I just did this very thing yesterday for a challenge here Because there's a challenge on, I can't just come out and tell you... I think what you're missing is that you don't need to start your transfer at KSC+transfer time, but rather the opposite. Your periapsis needs to be at where KSC's antipode will be 85 minutes after the burn. Apologies, -Slashy

Juzeris, Hahah, naay. Gotta do it the hard way Best, -Slashy

I imagine this would cause some pretty hefty lag after a while... Best, -Slashy

Sure. Landing is the easy part. Best, -Slashy

After pondering it a bit, I have decided to place entries using MechJeb and the like into a separate category. A large part of the difficulty of this challenge is figuring out how to get your satellite in the right place at the right time. As Juzeris demonstrates, this is very easy to do with MechJeb. Although my example demonstrates that it can still be done (I used a resonant parking orbit and transfer window timing), people using an all-stock installation would be placed at a severe competitive disadvantage. Best, -Slashy

nholzric, That's from the simulation adding engines to cope with increasing vehicle mass. When you add an engine, the total mass jumps. This often causes a stage using a different engine to become superior, at least temporarily. The result of this is jaggedness in the plot. Best, -Slashy

Juzeris, Neat concept; just chuck the package up there with an SRB Q1) Yes, MechJeb is legal. Q2) it would be 30%. Bonuses and penalties are additive. Q3) Scoring is simply 100,000/your mission cost. The cheaper your mission, the higher your score winds up being. Q4) The idea is to put a guidance unit on KSP grounds looking up so that you can verify that the satellite is within 5° of perfectly overhead. While you have demonstrated that your sat stays put and that KSC is below you, it could be off quite a bit and still look fine from up there. Therefore, we need something on the ground at KSC showing where the satellite is. Q5) we're verifying that the satellite is within 5° of perfectly overhead in order to prove that the satellite isn't wobbling around up there as it orbits. Your score looks very impressive, but we really need to verify it's position from the ground. If you can take a screen cap of that, the rest of the launch checks out fine and puts you atop the leaderboard as the "preferred contractor". Best, -Slashy - - - Updated - - - Juzeris, Sorry, I missed your attached pic the first time. That is more than satisfactory. Congrats! You are now the prime contractor. Best, -Slashy

http://s52.photobucket.com/user/GoSlash27/slideshow/KSP/Vendor%20challenge%201 This is our challenge entry from Mainway Aerospace. I left some room for improvement and won't be directly competing. Mission cost: $7,018 Raw score: 14.25 Bonuses: 20% for expendable design, 10% for >50m/sec DV on station (105 m/sec remaining) Penalties: None. Satellite maintains 3° azimuth error at both checks and arrived on station 1:57:25 after launch 18.53 points. Best, -Slashy

moogoob, I hope you decide to participate. I just got a lifter put together as a demonstrator and it's pretty fun. The main purpose for penalizing tardiness isn't so much to discourage ions (they are crazy-expensive anyway), but rather to push the entrants to demonstrate that they can launch their sat into the correct position rather than getting it into KSO and then walking it to where they need it to be. KASA would like to see that their contractors can get a sat into position on short notice JIC they need that ability in an emergency. Best, -Slashy

KASA would like to focus more on science and exploration and less on design and launch operations. Accordingly, they have placed a request for proposals for future launches through private contractors (i.e. "you"). In order to establish their prime contractors, they will be presenting a series of challenges and see who can best meet them. Future contracts will be awarded proportionally to those who can best satisfy the objectives of the challenges. Challenge #2: Budget Constraints Due to an economic downturn and mounting political pressure, KASA is forced to look to outside help meet their obligation to keep the KISS supplied for cheap. We can only afford $10,000 total mission budget (which includes initial vehicle cost as well as the cost of the batteries themselves). Objective: Deliver as many z-400 batteries as you can to LKO (72 km) for $10,000 or less. Mission criteria: -Stock parts only -Scoring will be the total number of batteries delivered to an orbit of 72x72 km. Ties will go to the cheaper mission. -Mission cost will *not* be reduced by recovery of parts. -Launches must leave no debris in orbit. Challenge #2 top vendors: 1)Abstract Aerodynamics (Juzeris) 16/$9,911 2)Parks Salvage & Aerospace (davidparks21) 12/ $9,955 3)Blue Whale, Inc. (Mesklin) 11/ $9,987 4)Starhawk Speculative Investments, LLC (Starhawk) 10/ $9,680 5) Challenge #1: Place a satellite into KSO economically and reliably. 1 HECS core, 1 communotron 88-88, 2 z-100 batteries, 2 ox-4l solar panel arrays. It costs $2,670, so it's cost is not included in the mission cost. Objective: Place this commsat into KSO directly overhead KSC. Do it as cheaply, rapidly, and accurately as you can. Mission criteria: -Stock parts only. -Scoring will be inversely proportional to mission cost. 100,000/mission cost. -Mission cost can be offset by any parts recovered on KSC grounds -Reusable vehicles are assumed to have a usable lifespan of 100 missions, so 1% of the reusable portion (less expendables such as fuel) should be applied to the cost of the mission. -Launches must leave no debris in orbit. -A 20% bonus will be awarded to expendable designs. This is to encourage mission-specific designs from off-the-shelf components. -A 10% bonus will be awarded to designs that leave the satellite with at least 50 m/sec DV on station. -A 10% penalty will be assessed for every 5° error in the satellite's location overhead KSC. -A 10% penalty will be assessed for every hour elapsed above 2 hours from the moment of launch until arrival on station. The satellite must not be adjusted after this time. *UPDATE* Entries using add-on guidance assistance (MechJeb, autopilot, etc) will be allowed, but will be placed in a separate leaderboard. Documentation: The launch process should be filmed or documented with pics. Accuracy will be confirmed by tracking the sat from a vertically-aligned seeker on KSC grounds. Location is to be checked 6 hours and 9 hours from satellite placement in orbit. Good luck! -Slashy Challenge #1 top vendors (stock): 1) Starhawk Speculative Investments, LLC (Starhawk) 179.78 points<-- Prime contractor 2) Blue Whale, Inc. (Mesklin) 176.88 <-- Preferred vendor 3) Eight Corners, Inc. (SanderB) 59.52 points <-- Approved vendor 4) KsyNet (ikehaiku) 39.51 points <-- Approved vendor 5) Challenge #1 top vendors (assisted): 1) Abstract Aerodynamics (Juzeris) 298.61 points <-- Prime contractor 2) 3) 4) 5)

Renegrade, Yeah, this is due to rounding errors. You can only get the consumption to so many digits, so you have to limit the results to the same resolution. If you test with something monstrous, you can get higher resolution and it does trend to the correct value. Meithan, Credit for the discovery goes to Umbral Raptor. I'm just the messenger Best, -Slashy

I use 1atm thrust and 1/2atm Isp for planning purposes for 1st stage boosters where there's 3 or more stages following. Calculating for sea level thrust and Isp hasn't proved useful for me because we climb out of the soup so rapidly now. Best, -Slashy

klesh, It's actually most valuable to players who *don't* use a lot of maths. They can now just refer to these charts to tell them which engine to use for a mission instead of having to do the math (or guess). Those of us that use a lot of maths run these calculations ourselves during mission planning and design as a matter of course. Best, -Slashy

Meithan, My testing shows that it has. Fuel consumption, thrust, and Isp now line up where g0=9.8066. For example... Also note that the mass consumption figures in the engine's popup now agree with the actual consumption in-game. Best, -Slashy

All, Since the release of KSP1.0, the g0 figure is now no longer approx. 9.82. It has been corrected back to it's proper value of 9.8066. Also, check out Meithan's excellent charts here. They replace Tavert's Julia code and are updated for KSP 1.02. Best, -Slashy

Yeah, I was able to confirm it through testing: g now equals 9.8066 m/sec^2 for DV calculations. The calcs will have to be tweaked a bit. Best, -Slashy