maltesh

Just sending large numbers of missions. But that was about a year ago. Things are a bit more...diversified now.

Actually, on average, Eeloo's transfer windows from Kerbin are about 113 days apart, more frequent than any other interplanetary destination except Moho.

I've thrown a fleet to Dres on the last three versions, because the second window to Dres after a new game is almost perfect. Dres is passing through the plane of Kerbin's orbit on arrival, so you generally don't have to make significant mid-course corrections. Of the twelve spacecraft I threw at Dres during that window on my current save, the largest mid-course correction any of them had to make was about 30 m/s. Come to think of it, of the sun orbiting worlds I've sent Kerbals to over the last three versions, Dres is probably the one I've sent the most Kerbals to. Whereas I haven't sent a manned mission to Eeloo since 0.18.2.

I almost invariably use single-stage landers. A single-stage lander means that the next mission doesn't need to bring its own lander, all it has to do is bring enough fuel to top off the the tanks on the lander the last mission left behind.

With the exception of the science lab, any item that can carry science reports can contain any number of non-duplicate reports. Earilier in my current career save, I brought back 63 reports in a single 1-man landercan from Minmus. The Science Lab is the exception: There is no duplicate report restriction on the science lab.

If it got below ~21 km over Kerbin, and you didn't have a spacecraft closer than ~2.5km, it was autodeleted, like any other spacecraft or object that gets that close to Kerbin while still on rails.

Fair enough. For what it's worth, I intended to prohibit walking. Just Jump up, use suitjets, come down, land, skid, or bounce to a stop, and plant the flag as close as you can to point where that happens. vat21s, do you have a map-screen image like the others have posted?

I have no beef with bouncing or sliding, as long as you obey the rules to stop using the suitjets, For the purposes of this challenge,I consider that a completely acceptable tactic. Heh, besides the obvious ( I disabled going to the VAB in the original scenario), you kinda landed your apparatus at the wrong Munar Arch.

Cripes, Aphobius, you really went down to the wire on Eva fuel there. How far did jeb wind up falling, approximately?

Yeah, I found it extremely difficult to judge altitudes and speeds with a flying Kerbal. I'm going to have to give this a few more tries, because both of you have done /much/ better than I managed to pull off when designing the challenge.

67.3 km is quite impressive. THat's farther than I managed to do a safe landing from in any of my previous attempts.

What if I manage to get more than 100km from the first flag? Then we’ll assume that the Mun is a perfect sphere, and use this great Circle Calculator to get an earthly Great circle distance: http://www.onlineconversion.com/map_greatcircle_distance.htm And we’ll get the Munar chord distance by plugging this formula 400 * sin (d /12756.2 ) Where d is the distance in kilometers given by the great circle calculator. The above equation assumes that your calculator is using radians, which both the Google Search Bar and Wolfram Alpha do by default. The result will be your distance score.

Spoiler warning: Jeb starts this scenario standing under a Munar Arch. If you use this scenario file, you will see what one looks like, and know where it is. It’s a simple challenge. The aim is to test your ability to fly a Kerbal for distance over the Mun, without a navball or any other mods that might give you help with altitude or speed. Jeb’s on the Mun, standing under a Munar Arch, and next to a flag. Make one Jump to get off the surface. Fly as far away from the flag as you can using suitjets. The moment Jeb touches /anything/ else, You have to stop using the suitjets. Land safely. Come to a stop. Stand up. Plant a flag. Take a screenshot showing the flag you just planted and the icon of the flag under the arch in the distance, like so. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4057920/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/v0.23.5/Screenshots/screenshot100.png Take a screenshot showing the map view, with the coordinates of Jeb and his flag displayed. Link that screenshot, and tell us the coordinates. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4057920/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/v0.23.5/Screenshots/screenshot102.png Your score is the distance between the two. Spoiler warning: Jeb starts this scenario standing under a Munar Arch. If you use this scenario file, you will see what one looks like, and know where it is. Download the Challenge Scenario File from here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4057920/KSP%20Shipshare/v0.23/Jump.sfs And place it in the /scenarios directory in your /saves folder. Leaderboard of best attempts. [table=width: 500] [tr] [td]Rank[/td] [td]User[/td] [td]Final Coordinates[/td] [td]Distance[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Aphobius[/td] [td]9*5'17"N, 59*44'50"E[/td] [td]72.0km [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]2[/td] [td]Kevin_010[/td] [td]5°28'48" N, 57°13'40" E[/td] [td]67.3km[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]3[/td] [td]vat21s[/td] [td]30° 28' 41" N, 37° 17' 55" E[/td] [td]63.7 Km[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]4[/td] [td]MarvinKitFox[/td] [td]10°38'50" N, 53°57'12" E[/td] [td]50.4 km[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]5[/td] [td]Kasuha[/td] [td]22°7'14" N, 39°26'25" E[/td] [td]31.4 km[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]6[/td] [td][/td] [td][/td] [td][/td] [/tr] [/table]

Except it's not. Since they pinned it to the sidereal rotation period instead of the solar day, the time of sunrise creeps back every day. Start a new game. Put something on the pad. Fast forward until sunrise. Note the time. Fast forward until Kerbin's gone a quarter of the way around its orbit. Wait for the sun to rise. Note that the sun is now rising about 90 minutes later in what is called a Kerbin "Day." Fast forward until Kerbin's gone halfway around the sun. Wait for the sun to rise. It's now rising three hours later in the "Day" than it was when you started the game. 3/4 of the way around, the sun is rising 4 hours, 50 minutes late. After one orbit, the MET clock's Kerbin days are a full day ahead of the rotation of the planet. If that's what you want, fine. For me, if the clock can't consistently tell me how long it's going to be to sunrise or sunset on the surface of Kerbin because of its year-round slippage, I'll stick with the regular units of time.

You can do the burn at from your parking orbit, you just need to time your burn differently than if you were doing a true Hohmann. For instance, in Kerbal Space program, if you do a Hohmann from LKO to the distance of the Mun, it will take you about 7 1/2 hours to go from LKO to the 11,400 km altitude of the Mun's orbit. If instead, you burn a little harder (about 80 m/s) to put your apoapse at the distance of Minmus, your spacecraft will cross the Mun's orbit about 3 1/2 hours after the LKO burn. The higher orbital energy of the larger orbit means that the time-of-flight from the common periapse to any altitude the two orbits share is shorter for the larger orbit.

You're using orbital altitude instead of radial distance from the center of the earth for r_1. WHich makes the hohmann trip a little longer, actually. That said, Apollo didn't do a true Hohmann to the Moon. They burned harder to get to the distance of the Moon faster, which both cut down the trip time and lowered life support requirements, and put them in the free-return trajectory for safety.

Easiest way? Throw down a maneuver node on or a little bit before the point where your orbit crosses the midnight line, and pull it for awhile. Adjust it and slide it backwards to keep your direction of departure along Kerbin's direction of travel. As I recall, the delta-V required to put yourself on a trajectory that escapes the sun from LKO is somewhere between 2500 and 3000 m/s. I /want/ to say it's about 2800.

If the game prevents me from putting a node on the conic patch I want to (because the future conic patch is in the way), I typically use Mechjeb's Maneuver Node Editor to push the node back through time far enough that it winds up on the patch I want it to. The Precise Maneuver Node mod can allow you to do the same thing, but I find it easier to push a node back 112 days 11 hours 13 minutes with Mechjeb than to edit it by 9717180 seconds in Precise Maneuver Node.

Also, the game will not show you closest-approach markers when your target or your spacecraft is on a hyperbolic trajectory, which adds an extra layer of annoyance to doing this sort of thing stock. Since the original poster is using Mechjeb, that can be somewhat alleviated by the Rendezvous Information window.

If you leave aside the mid-course plane change, the costs of coasting to the edge of the SOI, then doing the transfer burn in interplanetary space are about 75% higher for nearby destinations like Eve and Duna, and about 100% higher for distant destinations like Moho or Eeloo over a direct burn from LKO. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/61387-Kerbin-SOI-versus-Sun-SOI?p=834183&viewfull=1#post834183

I circumnavigated the Mun with the old BigTrak cart-based Rover, and drove to all three Dunar Easter Eggs in the DEMV-4 RAT. On stock wheels, my longest drive was probably about 60 km on Duna before I got bored and sent a lander to pick up the passengers.

Don't worry, Moho's transfer windows come around every 35 days or so. When you decide you're ready for the beast that is Moho, there'll be a window within five weeks.

You're forgetting one thing: More engines give you more dry mass, which lowers your mass ratio, and thus your delta-V. All other things the same, a spacecraft with five engines of a particular type will have lower delta-V capability than a spacecraft with one engine of that same type. How much lower is going to depend on what fraction of spacecraft mass the engine is.

Personally, I've filled out the tree with Minmus, Moon, Kerbin, and one mission that spent 12 hours outside the Kerbin SOI. . And to put it bluntly, the Gravscanner is possibly the most useful science instrument that you don't appear to have yet. The Gravscanner gets science from The surface of [biome], In Space Near [biome], and High Above [biome]. There are more individual report-capable locations in the Kerbin SOI for the gravscanner than for any other scientific instrument. Grab Electronics, get the Seismometer, and start throwing that places. Use the science from those experiments to get the Gravscanner, (Advanced Science Tech) and you'll have pretty much have everything you need to fill out the rest of the tree. But if, as you say, you have scraped the interior of the Kerbin SOI clean with the experiments you have available, yeah, you're going to have to start doing some interplanetary science to crack things open.

Do note that, if you use this method, you're spending at about 75% more total delta-V going from LKO to your destination for Eve or Duna, and the differences climb to about 100% more for Moho or Eeloo, versus burning directly from LKO during the appropriate window. If you've built your spacecraft so that you can afford those losses. and still do what you want to do, that's fine.