herbal space program

That's news to me, but then I haven't been on Eve since like 0.90.....

Solar panels don't work? On Kerbin those provided plenty of power for a copter when I tried it before. I was able to pretty high up that way IIRC.

Stock props?? I like the helicopter idea! If you mounted some wings and a bunch of reaction wheels radially on the right tank/engine combo, you might just be able to pull off an Eve SSTO that way. Surely somebody has tried this already, No?

I guess I should add that I had a different version of this SSTO before, which also had Rapiers+Nervs in a single stage, but did seem to report the correct dV in KER after Rapier shutdown. One difference between the two planes is that the second one was put together using crossfeed-enabled small hardpoints. Maybe that's confusing KER around the staging. ...FWIW, when I put all the Nerv engines in the first stage in the SPH, the dV readout was subsequently correct.

I apologize for the noob question, but I can't seem to find an answer to this scanning the threads. I'm running PC 1.3 that is stock except for KER, which was required by the issuer of a lowest SSTO deltaV to Laythe challenge, presumably for its dV readout as a scoring tool. The problem is, when I got my 5 Rapier+4 Nerv SSTO on orbit with no oxidizer left, the dV reading it gave me was way too low. KER said I had 2.2km/s, with a dry weight of 43t and abut 7,400 LF left, which per my (experience-tested) rocket equation spreadsheet gives me almost 5km/s on the Nervs. As far as I can tell, what it's using is a blended ISP between the rapiers and the Nervs, even though there's no oxidizer left. The "ISP" readout says 0 no matter what I'm doing, and shutting down engines/shuffling staging/moving fuel around my craft doesn't seem to make any difference. So, is there some way for me to get it to to ignore the Rapiers and tell me what my dV is on just the Nervs?

Have you ever tried this yourself? This takes a lot of time! I've actually got my ship built and on LKO now, which was a challenge in itself since we need to ship 12 Kerbals, but the fun has only started.....

Thanks! I can see now that he did use the famous @PLAD K-E-K-K-J route outbound, but there are definitely some inefficiencies in the Jool system segment and the return that could be improved upon, so worth it for me to try...

I'm pretty sure I can smoke this thing unless certain other old-timers show up, but I have some questions first: Are we counting the dV required to get to the ground and back into orbit at Laythe? If not, do we still need to land and go back to orbit? Is what you are asking for actually the lowest expenditure of vacuum dV from LKO back to LKO? That is, if I make LKO with say 5km/s dV based on my nukes and get back there with 2km/s, will that count as using only 3km/sec dV, or do we need to do some messy calculations with dV in air at Laythe on the Rapiers? I've never used KER, so I don't know how it calculates. If you know the dry mass of your craft and the ISP of the engines, remaining vacuum dV for a particular stage is dirt simple to calculate using the rocket equation, so that's what I've always done, but I guess I can install and use KER to do that if necessary. PS: Is there a link to Matt's video somewhere? I don't know where to find it.

I get the 32/64 bit choice only if I launch the game from inside Steam. If I click on its desktop icon, I'm not sure what it loads, but I don't get a choice about it.

I've had only one crash in about 12 hours of gameplay, which is way better than the previous release. There are still annoying little bugs though, like not being able to switch back to the flight view from the map by clicking on its icon. And I do wish they had re-worked the logic of career mode a little. The game still starts off really hard and then gets easier and easier, which has the wrong end pointing towards space if you ask me.

Thanks for the clarification. I have a craft which I'm pretty sure can do that in a single stage without refueling. Maybe I'll give that a try...

I think there's not much to be saved because the only parameter that can really be optimized here is the dV required to get captured into a Munar orbit with the Target Pe and its Ap near the edge of the SOI. Going from LKO to the edge of the Munar SOI is basically a fixed quantity, as is what it takes to drop your Ap from the edge of the SOI to target height (edit: as I see now @PLAD has just thoroughly explained). If however you were to extend the part of the mission covered by the challenge forwards or backwards, I think there would be a lot more room to get creative. Measuring total dV required from the ground instead of LKO would greatly expand the possibilities for economizing, as would extending the mission forwards to an actual landing. I understand of course if these are not the questions you're interested in, but for my part I think a surface-to-surface minimum dV challenge could be quite entertaining.

Looking at what @5thHorseman just posted, it seems like the idea is you're not supposed to actually orbit any of the parent bodies in this tour, although I do not see this stated in the rules.. Is that correct? That rule would make this challenge quite difficult in terms of navigation. If OTOH you are allowed to orbit Duna, Eve, and Kerbin, then it's a pretty straightforward exercise, which would be more appealing to less experienced players. I have no preference one way or the other myself, but I think this could be made clearer.

Oops, I thought I was responding to the OP here. I'm not criticizing them for posting this or failing to find the other challenge, but it's similar enough that I thought they should know. It is after all a really big thing to do, and takers will be limited. Of course smaller things will also get on the board here, so maybe it will get more takers than the other one. For example, for me to make my Ultimate Challenge submission, I'll have to visit every body with ISRU planetary scanner probes, so that would actually satisfy the first level. That's in part why I suggested advertising it over there. Anyway, I guess I'll submit whatever I do for that challenge to this one as well.

I only know about it because it bubbled up to the top a couple of weeks ago and got a number of customers, including me, but I thought you should know about it as well, since you are at least somewhat competing for the same takers. You may actually wish to advertise your challenge on that thread, since anybody who completes that challenge will have completed some version of this one as well. I would also make one small comment about your scoring system, which is that mixing stacked categorical achievements with different quantitative measures like that doesn't really make any sense to me. How do you intend to combine both science and fuel usage into one score at the top levels? I think you should at least post some sort of a formula for that if you intend to go that route, so that people know how to maximize their scores, although IMO you'd be better off just not mixing apples and oranges like that at all. My suggestion would be to rank all successful completions within a given category by one parameter, like launch weight, fuel consumption, etc. Your challenge will be plenty complicated enough with just that.

This is going on currently, with multiple people participating.

Fair enough, the last category will not work with sepratrons. The previous challenge, which I think was won by @tewpie at something north of 1100m.s 1200m/s, actually only had the first category of this one, but I think the sepratrons will find use in all of the first three categories. When all you've got to work with is the runway, their insane TWR just seems to trump everything else. Anyway, we'll see what people come up with.. Edit: I went and found it: Anyway, this challenge has got significantly more depth than that one so will no doubt yield some different solutions, but folks might find it worthwhile to see what they can learn there.

There was a challenge to do this back in 1.0.5, although not with so many categories. Remembering back to it, I've got one word for you all: Sepratrons.

Oy, things sure have changed since I went to bed last night. Don't you people ever sleep? . Anyway, when I went to bed last night this ship, the MiniKerman Mk2 Hybrid Eco-orbiter, was winning the "manned recoverable" contest by a hair, with 3.696t uncrewed, 3.789 with Kerbal, but that was so long ago: This rig made orbit very easily, getting to a 110km Ap on this (not particularly optimal) run with fuel to spare. Re-entry was also a cinch, and it can land just about anywhere in one piece . Anyway, I'm sure I could make this significantly lighter by dropping more fuel and optimizing my ascent profile, but I doubt I could get it below ~3.4t without losing either the Rapier or re-configuring the upper stage. Rather than do that in a futile attempt to try to beat you or @foamyesque, I will leave it at this and move on to other challenges, because I think my little lander is CUTE! .

Thanks! Glad to hear it. I think we can still shave a bitt off of what we have now so long as we have some latitude about how we get the Kerbal aboard. I had gotten down to ~3.9t using a Rapier and my previous upper stage, but it seems that's not quite good enough anymore .....

Dang. Looks like you went to school on my command pod before I could go to school on your launcher. OK, So what if we put the disposable pod off to side of the pad and walk the Kerbal up to the ship, using a ladder to climb aboard? If that pod counts too, then you're basically irrevocably making all the existing command seat-based designs non-competitive. I understand it's your challenge, but I just wanted to make sure you were aware of that possible consequence of this rule. Nevermind, OP said it was a typo.

D'ohh! I knew I should have revisited the jet engines once I got above 4 tons. Two can play at that game....

Thanks for the responses. I can see how for most purposes the heat shield would be the best thing, but for me as it turns out the service bay is better, because it only weigh 0.1t vs. 0.3t for the heat shield.

Well it looks like the "unmanned" category is pretty well plastered, so I'll stick my toe into the "manned and recoverable" category with this, the Mini Kerman Personal Orbiter: It weighs 6.261t uncrewed and 6.354t with Kerbal aboard. As you can see from the album, it can de-orbit without roasting its pilot and land on the ground on its itty bitty feet..

I didn't try the heat shield, but it seems the service bay works significantly better. Oddly, it seemed that the pilot was still heating up when going up, but was now insulated when going back down.