xendelaar

Just wanted to let OP know that I've finished the challenge! During my last mission I visited Eeloo and Moho with an ISRU craft. It took me quite some time to get there but in the end it was worth it. The whole trip cost me less than 35,000 funds! I upgraded the last facilities and still have 245,710 funds left in the bank for candy and beer. well.. that was a great challenge! thanks again for proposing it to the world dear OP! You are awesome! now it's time for me to check all the other entries! I didn't look at them because I wanted to do this challenge without any inside information. take care y'all!

Here is the last mission report in which I tell the tale of my travels to Eeloo and Moho. For my last mission I decided to go with a single stage ISRU vessel. Mission 8: Eeloo and Moho - Expenses: 200,952 - Gains: 1,310,400 - Ship refund: 166,067 - Profit: 1,275,515 - Science: 1656 The weight of the ship was approximately 35 tonnes and had a DV budget of 5800 m/s. With delta v budget I’m not able to go from Eeloo to Moho in one go, so I had to refuel at several locations. Here is my flight plan: Kerbin-> Eeloo Eeloo -> Minmus Minus -> Gilly Gilly -> Moho Moho -> Gilly Gilly -> Kerbin Mission report: I launched the 35 tonne payload into orbit using an single stage craft, which I later recovered at 97% refund. Next, I travelled to Eeloo without any trouble. I performed a recource scan and found that most of the planet contained enough ore to refill the tanks. So I landed the craft near the equator and filled her up with fuel. When the tanks were filled, I flew towards Minmus to refuel the craft again. From there I went to Gilly to refuel again! Moho is a very expensive place to go to! And finally I was able to travel to Moho. Here I planted a flag and refuled again. I only had 500 m/s of DV left when I landed. After that, I went back to Gilly to refuel again and from there we headed towards KErbin. Here I parked the vessel in a 300 km orbit and waited to rendezvous with the parachute tug to come pick the craft up. Here you see the parachute tug hooked onto the spacecraft Here you see it landing near the KSC With Jeb back at home and all crafts retrieved, I upgraded the rest of the facilities and discovered I had enough funds to do so! I still have some money left! It was an incredible challenge I want to thank @Superfluous J for setting it up! I had a blast doing it! If I've got the time, I will make short compilations of the last three entries. Mission # Body Mission status Ship Price Budget Remaining 0 Start completed 0 713.608 1 Mun completed 17.585 696.023 2 Minmus completed 24.142 671.881 3 Gilly completed 21.077 650.804 4a Duna completed 36.066 614.738 4b Ike completed - 614.738 5 Dres completed 52.142 562.596 6 Eve completed 130.451 432.145 7 Jool 5 completed 85.671 346.474 <New Entry> 8 Eeloo Completed 34,885 311,589* <New Entry> 8 Moho Completed - 311,589 * * I notice my real remaining budget (245,710) is much lower than my calculated remaining budget... I guess I forgot to complete several achievements..

To be honest I didn't this mission quite through when I started it. I just winged a bit and thought it would be very easy to go to all planets with 700,000 funds. allong the way I found that i could have saved a lot more funds if I had a dedicated tug orbiting space. Also SSTO are a godsend for this challenge. I also made several bad upgrade decisions, if I could have gotten the tier 3 R&D upgrade before my JOOL5 mission, I could have saved a lot of funds with an IRSU refiner ship.. ah well... could have-should-have-would-have... I'm glad I'm still able to finish the challenge with my current budget. Thanks for the comment. I will think about making 3 video's : 1. the eve mission 2. the jool 5 mission 3. the Eeloo to Moho mission

Holy crap, you actually read my report haha. I am genuinely impressed! The thing sticking out of the fairing is a heatshield. I use it to keep the pointy end prograde when I’m entering the atmosphere on Eve. Well.. It keeps the craft from spinning, really. It is a bit of cheaty to let things stick out of the fairing, but I didn’t have enough science to unlock the huge fairing and flying the thing without a fairing would have been a drag (pun intended). I did film the Eve mission and the Jool-5 mission. Maybe I’ll whip up an timelapse of them if I feel like it.. It just takes sooo much time to make a videoclip and since they’re long, they generally tend to be boring for viewers. I’ll stop complaining now. I understand why you want to skip the Eve mission! It was my most expensive mission to date! If you land most of your used vessels near the KSC (for refunds) I don’t think you would need to go there. I found out too late that I should have gone with single stage to orbit lifters, right from the start. The lifters that haul the ships into orbit are in many cases the most expensive parts of the mission (>50% of the costs). But you probably already knew this. After I’ve finished the challenge I will check your entry and those from others. I really wanted step in blindly so I could make my own mistakes and discover the true nature of the challenge myself. Lol, Pol and Bop are two of a kind huh! Even though the rocks on Pol are unique on its own. My first plan was to go to Pol first, because it was closer to tylo, but I then figured out it would cost me less DV if I would go to Pol first and then visit Bop. So when I landed on Bop, I still had Pol in my mind haha. Anyway, thanks for reading this wall of text, and I can’t wait to see your second entry! PS. I do not think it’s cheating if you use a mod to get all the science from the KSC biomes. It’s completely irrelevant to the challenge and it’s literally just there, laying to be grabbed by a 100% refundable craft/car.

Just wanted to let you know I made a lot of progress on the challenge. I posted a report in the mission report section. I'm aware that I did not make screenshots of all crafts on the surface of the planets, so this could be a hard no-go for the challenge leaderboard*. if that is the case, that's fine! I don't mind. This challenge is an absolute epic journey and I'm loving everyminute of it! So far I've been to: Mun Minmus Gilly Ike and Duna Dress Eve Jool-5 (in this exact order btw) I still have Moho and Eeloo on my to do list. according to my calculations, I should be able to manage to finish the challenge when I visit these two rocks. Edit: * I still have the overview with all World first achievements. I could posts pictures of those records? it's not really fun to read, but neither are my mission reports or movie clips in general haha.

Introduction I’m writing this mission report to take part in a very neat challenge that was posted on the forum earlier by @Superfluous J. In this challenge, I start a (normal) career game. The goal is to upgrade all the facilities without the help of any contracts. I’m only allowed to receive income from World firsts achievements. Mission Goal Upgrade all facilities in a normal career game without accepting any contracts. Additional rulez: - Normal career game - No science lab or ground experiments - ISRU are allowed - No cheating (except for testing stuff on other planets) - No strategies MODS: - Engineering Redux - Transfer window calculator - Time clock - Waypoint manager (didn’t use it, but it is installed) - Mechjeb 2 (didn’t use it, but it is installed) - Visual mods Approach I will try to visit every celestial body only ones and try to make the ships as cheap as possible. I will avoid biome hopping, except on Minmus, because it’s easy to grab science from there early on. Pre calculations According to @Cunjo Carlcalculations, there is over 7,848,608 funds available on World first achievements. Upgrading all buildings costs 7,135,000 funds This means I have a total budget of: 713,608 funds available for Ships to visit 14 celestial bodies That is 45,875 funds per planet. It aint much, but if I can get the crafts back to kerbin I should be able to get a nice refund for them. The missions: I didn't keep track of the World first achievements on and around kerbin, so I will skip that part and move on to the more interesting missions. *** Building upgrades: Launch pad LVL2: 75,000 funds*** Mission 1: Mun - Expenses: 17,585 on a simple lander and return ship - Gains: 263,000 - Ship refund: forgot to write this down - Profits: 244,615-ish - Science: 664 points Mission report: nothing interesting to report. Just got to the Mun, got as many science as I could get from one biome and got back to Kerbin. Don’t know why I got so much first world income on this mission. Perhaps I wrote it down wrong? Or it's because It was my first time in high space? Mission 2: Minmus - Expenses: 28,895 on a ship with enough delta v to visit most biomes - Gains: 103,425 - Ship refund: 4,753 (this was a very excrementsty landing (read: far away from the KSC)) - Profits: 79.283 - Science: 3412 points Mission report: just hopped most of the biomes to grab all the science so I could unlock most of the important parts to build better ships. *** Upgraded Mission control and trackingstation to LVL2: 225,000 Mission 3: Gilly - Expenses: 28,895 to build the ship - Gains: 849,725 funds for getting in orbit of the sun, eve and gilly and back - Ship refund: 7,818 - Profit: 828,648 - Science: 3343 points Mission report: I figured I do Gilly in a separate mission because landing on Eve would require a bit more advanced parts and stuff. since moving on Gilly is almost cheap as free, I visited most biomes. since you can't timewarp, it is really boring though... *** Upgraded R&D, Tracking station and VAB: 1,239,000 **** Mission 4: Duna and Ike - Expenses: 75,812 to build the ship - Gains: 799,806 - Ship refund: 39,746 - Profit: 763,740 - Science: 9287 points Mission report: This was my first mission where I realized I had to land my ships closer to the space centre if I wanted to finish this challenge. The crafts will get more expensive as we further away from home. <Mission 5: Dress - Expenses: 77,042 to build the ship - Gains: 320,317 - Ship refund: 24,900 - Profit: 268,175 - Science: 1483 points Mission report: Getting to Dress was a very pleasant experience. I hardly ever go there. *** Upgraded launch pad to lvl3: 282,000*** Mission 6: Eve - Expenses: 286,318 to build the helicopter rocket - Gains: 260,480 - Ship refund: 130,029 - Profit: 130,451 - Science: 1164 points Mission report: This was a very interesting mission. I built a 30 tonnes lander with helicopter blades that would land on Eve and get back into orbit using a helicopter mode to get out of the soup and the switch over to a rocket to get into orbit. It took me several reloads to get into orbit, but eventually it was a success. A profit was only feasible if I would land the returnship close to the KSC.. as I did. I had to leave a lot of equipment on Eve to make the craft more efficient. Mission 7: Jool 5 - Expenses: 243,751 - Gains: 2,920,000 - Ship refund: 158,080 - Profit: 2,834,329 - Science: I forgot to record this, I think something like 1,000 points? Mission report I really hoped I would have enough credits by now to upgrade the R&D facilities to tier 3… unfortunately, I didn’t.. I wanted to build a ISRU craft that could do all missions from here on out, including Jool-5, Eeloo and Moho.. Since I was not able to unlock the drilling equipment, I decided to just do a tier 2 level Jool 5 mission instead, which was quite a refreshing challenge! I made 3 specific landers: 1. A laythe lander (delta v budget 3500 m/s) 2. A tylo lander (delta v budget 4500 m/s) 3. A small lander for Vall, Bop and Pol (delta v budget 4000 m/s) I strapped them on to a nuke tug and send it into space with a huge one stage rocket, that I would later land near the KSC to get a ~93% refund! I slowed the craft down using Tylo’s gravitational field and went straight to Laythe. Landing a rocket on without wings and control surfaces was a bit of a challenge. I had to redo the landing several times, but I finally found a nice spot to plant a flag. After planting the flag I flew back into space to rendezvous with the nuke tug. I discarded the Laythe lander and went on to my next mark: Vall For Vall I used the smallest vessel. I landed the craft, planted a flag and got back into orbit and docked with the nuke tug. After that, I went to Tylo, where I used the dedicated lander to get to the ground. I planted a flag, took a surface sample and went back into orbit to dock with the other space craft. I transferred the last remaining drops of fuel in the nuke tug and then discarded the Tylo lander. Next stop was Bop and finally I visited Pol. Now it was time to go home.. I set course to Kerbin and realized I forgot to bring parachutes to land the craft on Kerbin. So I whipped up a dockable SSTO parachute ship that would later dock with the Nuke Tug. Docking the parachute to the nuke tug was pretty easy and even the landing went very smooth: I landed 30 km from the KSC! *** Upgraded VAB to lvl3: 845,000*** *** Upgraded Admin building to lvl3: 563,000*** *** Upgraded mission control to lvl3: 150,000*** *** Upgraded Astronaut complex to lvl3: 282,000*** *** Upgraded R&D complex to lvl3: 1,690,000*** Overview According to my calculations I can earn 7,848,608 funds from World first contracts Upgrading all buildings costs me 7,135,000 funds. This leaves me with a budget of 713,608 to get to all planets. Below you find a overview with all celestial bodies I visited, together with the expensis it took to get me there: Mission # Body Mission status Ship Price Budget Remaining 0 Start completed 0 713.608 1 Mun completed 17.585 696.023 2 Minmus completed 24.142 671.881 3 Gilly completed 21.077 650.804 4a Duna completed 36.066 614.738 4b Ike completed - 614.738 5 Dres completed 52.142 562.596 6 Eve completed 130.451 432.145 7 Jool 5 completed 85.671 346.474 8 Eeloo scheduled ? 346.474 9 Moho scheduled ? 346.474 I only have two more missions to go and have 346k funds to spend. I think I will manage If I can bring most of the parts back to the KSC in one piece!

Sandbox for testing or movie making and challenges Career for the most of the time

ah, now i see. Thanks! yeah, I love the 1.875 tanks as well, but i find the lack of adapters very frustrating..

absolutely stunning man! what are those dark things popping out of the main stack? I had a lot of drag issues with my helicopter design. I think I needed quite some extra delta v to get into orbit of Kerbin because of it. your craft looks absolutely amazing btw. Also, many thank for the explanation of the setup and testing methods.

Don't know if anybody already mentioned this bit I would really like if they added a kind of (community based) challenge section with badges and stuff? I really enjoy doing the challenges generated by this forum. It would cool if we could add them into the game... somehow..

I will make screenshots and put them in a small mission report if you like. I don't have any screenshots from my first orbit. But I do have one of me going to the Mun! I'm also keeping a balance book to calculate the expenses, profits and science points I earn per mission! it's a lot of fun! this challenge makes you reconsider your designs!

Just want te let you guys know I love the idea of this challenge and I'm giving it a go. I don't feel like writing an elaborate mission report of the grind and stuff, so please believe me when I say I've finished it. My starting conditions: - normal game - no strategies - no overpowered science lab - I don't think if I'm going to use ground experiments DLC - DLC: breaking grounds, making history - KSP version: 1.9.2? (i think) - Mods: visuals, KER, Mechjeb (though I'm not using it), waypointmanager

I don't know if this challenge is still being updated... but here is my entry. I circumnavigated Kerbin with an atomic helicopter. Weighing less than 500 kg. It took me quite some time to complete the thing (7 hours or so.. but it was nice! I also made a small video of the mission.

sounds like a great solution. I read in several posts that you can place the rotors in a fairing to negate the drag. but in my tests, that also resulted in zero thrust.. so I don't know what I'm doing wrong. good luck with testing.

How did I miss this post! Your build looks very sleek! sounds like that challenge was frustrating and epic at the same time. thanks for sharing your tale with me. sounds to me this was a very difficult undertaking. Don't know if I have the willpower to do this though, but I will give it a go.

nice design! are you saying that you're able to get into orbit using only 3,600 m/s delta v? My vessels need 4,700 to get into orbit. How did you manage to pull this off? could you elaborate on the design? i see a lot of stuff nicely clipped behind fairings and casings. awesome! so you went for a plane design. Very interesting.. can't wait to see it in real life. How long did it take to design the craft?

yeah, Ive noticed this myself as well! In my table you'll find to experiments with R-25 fan blades which had less lift than the helicopter blades. however, the tests were performed static, so the crafts didn't move. I think that the drag of the helicopter blades is much larger than of the R25 which could result in different values when the craft is moving at high velocities. I found a nice mod (wind tunnel mod) that perhaps could speed up the research. I'll try to look into it when i've got the time.

TLDR I did some tests with various rotors to determine which yields the highest lift/weight ratio for heavy payloads on either Kerbin or Eve. In the static tests I’ve performed on the ground of Kerbin and Eve, I noticed that the large helicopter Type S blades provide the most lift per tonnes rotors+motor . In my flawed tests, 8 rotors per motor work best on Kerbin and 4 rotors per motor work best on Eve. I was also able to roughly determine the maximum mass of a craft at which it would still fly. Long story I’ve been running tests with various sizes of propellers to determine the a correlation between vertical lift and mass. I’m especially looking for optimum mass to lift ratio’s for heavy crafts and trying to find a way to calculate the amount of propellers I need to get something in the air. I’ve been trying to approach it scientifically but eventually just tried some stuff at random. Literature study None.. just felt like messing around with the propellers. There are probably a bunch of better articles describing how to calculate the amount of lift on a given planet at a certain altitude. My initiial guess is that the lift is calculated something like: Lift = Function [ rotating speed, angle of attack, air density, rotor blade type] Experimental setup I performed two experiments: 1. On Kerbin , using a rigid clamped setup with 3 heavy motors in series. I tested 3 types of rotors with 8, 4 or 2 blades per motor 2. On Eve, using a massive s4 fuel tank setup ( 1,200 tonnes) with 4 motors. Testing 2 rotors, with either 8, 6, 4 or 2 blades per motor Results The current measurements have been done under static conditions on kerbin and Eve. Below you find the results. Propeller type Amount of props on motor Total weight of props (ton) Weight Motor (ton) Max RPM optimal Angle of attack Planet Lift (kN/prop) Total lift (kN) Lift/total weight motor + rotors (kN/ton) Heli S-Type 8 1.44 2,2 440 5 Kerbin 270 2160 593 Heli S- type 4 0.72 2.2 445 8 Kerbin 335 1340 459 Heli S- type 2 0.36 2.2 450 8 Kerbin 346 692 270 Propeller S type 8 0.96 2,2 460 82 Kerbin 34 272 86 R-25 fan 8 0.96 2,2 460 84 Kerbin 37 296 94 Heli S-type 8 1.44 2,2 253 5 Eve 403 3224 886 R-25-fan 8 0.96 2,2 450 84 Eve 163 1304 413 Heli S-type 6 1.08 2,2 253 3 Eve 500 3000+ 915 Heli S-type 4 0.72 2,2 418 3 Eve 700 2800 959 Heli S-type 2 0.36 2,2 450 3 Eve 1100 2200 859 I changed the angle of attack to find the optimum angle at which most lift was created. From these short tests, I found that the Heli S-type blades performed the best when you look at lift per weight ratio. I also tested if less rotors would yield in better performance on either Kerbin or Eve. From what I’ve measured I could state that: 1. On kerbin 8 Type S Helicopter blades performed better than less blades 2. On Eve, the optimum lift/ton motor+rotors weight seems to be 4 rotos per large motor Discussion One of the things I wanted to find out If I could calculate the maximum weight a certain setup would be able to lift. From what I’ve conducted. It’s fairly easy to calculate: m = max mass (in tonnes) = F * G F = Lift (kN) G= gravitational force ( 9,81 for kerbin, and 16,5 on Eve). For a two motor helicopter with 4 large helicopter type s blades per motor, this would mean that it could carry: 2800kN / 16,5 m/s^2 * 2 motor with 4 props = ~336 tonnes I tested this and It seems to check out. I also wondered if I could translate tests on kerbin to match the results on Eve. It seems that the there is a correlation between air density, RPM and lift on Kerbin. However, the maximum amount of RPM is different on Eve, compared to kerbin, so I think I need to add torque and drag into the equation for this. I didn’t have time to work this out though. Btw, this was a very flawed study and many additional tests need to be done before any hard conclusion can be made. Several things come to mind: - Does the lift vary with different vertical velocities (anything else than 0 m/s)? - Does the optimum angle of attack vary as the density changes (it does) - What is the effect of the angle of the ship on the optimal angle of attack of the blades - Etc.. Anywho… It was a nice experiment. I’m now able to calculate how many rotors I need to carry a certain payload.

I have, what i call, KSP relapses from time to time. During these periods, I'm totally hooked again on KSP and there is no room for other games. Most of the time I get a new idea which I have to complete.. after that, my addiction subsides and i switch over to another game. been doing this for +4000 hours now (since 2013). When the addiction is gone (slumbering) I still lurk the forums to get updates and look for inspiration for new missions to sink my teeth in.

holy crap that's an impressive design! Man that must have taken a lot of time to build...and fly!?! What is the mass of that baby?

TLDR: I made a chopper with a adjustable centre of lift so that I can adjust it when the fuel tanks get empty. It works pretty well! Long story Maybe this is nothing spectacular, but I made a SSTO Helicopter that's has the ability to fly on kerbin and Duna. On Duna the fuel tanks need to be empty in order to fly. There is just too little lift to carry a 130 tonne craft into the air. The problem I had was that the centre of gravity of the vessel was different when the craft is empty. This made flying really unpractical! So I managed to make the the centre of lift adjustable using a piston! I actually made this vessel for another challenge. I also made a clip of the mission ((5:00) if anybody is interested)...

This is perhaps a bit of an oddball for this challenge, but here's my entry: A helicopterrocket SSTDuna. I actually made this for another challenge, but I think this vessel is also a valid candidate for this one as well? If not... then well... my bad Specs Name: Honey bee Weight: 127t (wet)/ 37t (dry) Delta-v: 4900 m/s TWR rockets: 1.7 fully loaded; 0.15 for interplanetary transfers ISRU: yes (perhaps a deal breaker for this challenge?) Helicopter range of flight: pretty much infinite on Duna and Kerbin DLC Braking ground Making history KSP Version 1.9.2 (I think) Mods Scatterer, texture unlimited, mechjeb 2 (for SAS assist), Kerbalengineering redux, If anybody is interested... I made 5 minute movie of the mission. It was an epic challenge to design the craft, which took me over a week to build and test. holy crap, that's a nice craft! which mod adds that beautiful background to the game?! Stunning design mister!

i tried this, but alas... it didn't work... however, when I put the craft in the plane building, the Center of lift is displayed properly! So that's a quick workaround

Well.. maybe this is an odd ball considering the challenge, but my kerbal friend Rosford has got a holiday retreat cottage near the surface of the planet... It floats around 10km above the surface... so it wont win this contest im afraid.. I only made a clip of her getting back home, but getting the house and the ascend vehicle there was a great challenge indeed. Does it count as an entry?

After a week of designing and testing I finally came up with a working for a SSTD! I made Single stage to Duna vessel with ISRU capabilities. Here are its specs: - Weight: 127 tonnes (wet) / 37 tonnes (dry) - Delta v budget: 4900 m/s - Rocket engines: 2 vectors, 1 nuke - Helicopter: 2 large shift-able motors with 8 propellers each. I had a blast designing the craft. I'm not a SSTO kind of guy, which made this mission extra challenging. I also made a small video of the mission: