Zephram Kerman

Define orbital energy?

I haven\'t attempted this challenge (yet), but I have done a small amount of exploration hopping. What seems to work best for me is to adjust the angle based on the distance I want to go. Each hop must end with a nearly vertical approach. So I aim to overshoot the landing spot, and then clip the arc with a horizontal burn in order to descend straight down. So for example, if I want to go just over the next ridge, I\'ll ascend at about 60 degrees. But in the case of visiting other craters, I\'ll make it more like 30 degrees or lower.

Yes. I replayed the slide show and used frame advance to find the speeds close to each benchmark altitude. Then Excel is nice for quick and dirty graphs like this. After a few more fails, I\'m starting to intuitively suspect the stronger influence is going too fast early on. Later in the flight, deviations from the profile seem to matter less. Also, going a little too slow early on actually rewarded me with another 14 m! So I\'m up to 33,437 m now.

Here\'s a chart of my actual ascent profile on my best attempt. Is this data useful? Just like the thread consensus, the best performance seems to be a product of matching the profile closely during the first and last seconds. Unfortunately, that\'s also when the throttling functions are the most dynamic. Looking at it this way, I can see I need to be more aggressive throttling up just before burnout.

After many attempts, the best altitude I could reach was 33,424 m. Now I am even more impressed with the winners. Congratulations, everyone! I think my problem is probably too low thrust in the last couple of seconds before burnout. But even after several attempts with that in mind, 33,424 m was the best I could do. I made a video, but am having trouble with YouTube.

First of all, many thanks for this! I\'ve been trying to catch up reading this thread for the past three days. Now I\'m finally ready to attempt the challenge; hopefully this evening after work. It is doubtful I can beat the top performers, but I think it\'s a good idea to repeat an experiment several times for confirmation. I too have learned a lot reading this thread. In fact, I consider these things therapeutic! While some of this math admittedly goes over my head, the rest of it was once understandable. Reading threads like this helps to knock off some of the moss and rust from my brain. ??? [scribbles this on a yellow sticky, and staples it to the inside of Bill\'s visor.]

That\'s really weird. I like it!

What I did was to cluster one boost stage around the top stage, ignite the top stage engine at liftoff, and pump fuel into it until the boost stage is empty. That way, all engines are running at liftoff and none are wasted. It also has the effect of reducing weight near the top of the craft, because the stages are basically lateral instead of vertical. It sortof works, usually-ish.

Thanks Semininja, that helped a lot too. Also, it\'s kinda fun to soar over the munar terrain. I did some sightseeing before going in. (Crashed, of course. But it was on level ground this time. Yay!)

Sooooo... Roomfuls of the best and the brightest poring over hi-res stereoscopic photos made by earlier scouting missions at great expense? That\'s not Kerbal. 'If you see slope, punch it.' That\'s Kerbal!

Wow! This is a very helpful thread. Thanks to everyone for contributing. Until just now, I did not know about the RCS translate keys I J K L. I\'m sure that will be handy from now on. There\'s just one thing remaining on my mind. I don\'t see how anyone manages to pick a good spot. The big craters are said to be nice. But even in the tutorial video, as we get closer, steep slopes appear out of nowhere. Have I missed a graphics setting, or something? Alternatively, I\'ll just hover and cruise around with RCS translate. Why is the VCR flashing 1201?

Survey filled. Thank you for making this! KSP will be worth every penny; it already is!

Here\'s my entry: 1:41 It\'s all solids. Nearly 10 G\'s, and Bob is smiling for once. The lower stage kept exploding until I added the lateral decouplers. Now they just overheat to redline, but run out of fuel just before actually detonating, and that\'s good enough for Jeb.