bayesian_acolyte

I think you aren't factoring in that you are only using 2 RTGs for the deceleration. I got about 30 hours using the numbers in your screenshot, ignoring that the last part is under full power so it would be a bit less time. I'm curious, how much does that ship way?

@TimberWolffe How do rocket engines work with the 120 seconds of fuel time remaining? Is it 120 seconds of extra fuel for every engine, just enough engines to power the plane, or something else? EDIT: what about closed cycle on RAPIERs?

I was messing around in the editor and built an 11 ton ship capable of Moho ascent and Eeloo descent with full electric power for every stage. Every part is at most 3 away from the root and it only has 38 parts total for time warp stability purposes. The crazy part, at least to someone who has never used ion engines and command chairs... it has 53,000 dV and over 29 hours of burn time. At 100 times speed that would be about 18 minutes, but if you include time to split burns, separate stages, the ascent and decent, and figuring out burn timings and locations, it's still a pretty big task as you'd have to spend a lot of time below 100x speed. Maybe I'll get it down below 10 tons and try it out but currently I'm leaning away from it, at least until there are other entrants to compete against. Let's say you have a 50 ton craft, why not add a 50 ton first stage for some free dV. Or you have a 5000 ton craft, why not add a 5000 ton first stage for more free dV. There are diminishing returns but if two designs are close that extra stage will likely make the difference. Especially if one person stops at 100 tons and another stops at 10,000 tons. You can add a massive amount of dV from 100 tons to 10,000 tons, even if that final 100 tons is most of the total dV.

What about with a heavier craft? It seems that roughly half your dV would need to be used on the initial leg, and since there is no size limit that might mean using ion engines on a pretty huge craft. I've never used an ion engine, done a race challenge, or even used a command chair, so this would be some fun firsts for me. But it seems that designing, launching, and flying a multi-kiloton craft using lots of ion engines would take a ludicrous amount of time. If better time warp could really reduce that by a few orders of magnitude I might give it a go, but if it was only one order of magnitude (due to kraken) then it still might be too much of a time commitment. Of course there is always the option of just not trying to min-max in order to save time, but that's never been my style. I wish there was a weight limit.

I didn't use HyperEdit in this challenge attempt. Having a mod loaded and using it are not the same thing. Cheats are always present in every stock game via the debug menu, but they only disqualify an attempt if they are used during that attempt. I have never seen a challenge that did not allow the use of HyperEdit for the testing of designs, which is why it was loaded (but not used on the actual attempt). If it was my intent to cheat this challenge it would have been trivial to hide Hyperedit or to just use the debug menu cheats. It seems you are using this as a technicality because you forgot to outlaw clipping. It's not a big deal though. I did this for the fun of the challenge, not the leader board.

I've completed this challenge with a ship costing 26,593 funds. Here's an imgur album with a trip report: https://imgur.com/a/CjBjhuc Here's the craft file: https://kerbalx.com/Bayesian_Acolyte/Operation-ScubaGoo-v18 Although it is an SSTO, I made it for the general category without knowing there was a separate re-use category (apparently I suck at reading and somehow missed that part of jinnantonix's reply to me). I did the run in sandbox mode so I technically didn't get any money back on return. The parts returning cost 24,951 including a 406 cost popped fairing, so I'm not sure what the total returned value would be, but I mostly just care about the general leader board. This craft made liberal use of clipping which was a first for me (including overlapping NERV and Whiplash engines, a weird fairing, 4 fuel tanks on top of each other, and a few other instances). I'm still pretty new to this challenge thing but there was no mention in the OP about clipping, and I've seen lots of clipping on some other challenges that don't explicitly outlaw it. The other challenges I've done banned clipping in the OP. I'm confident I could have built a similar craft without clipping, although it would have cost at least slightly more. I hope this isn't a problem.

Thanks for clarifying the rules, I'm in.

Establishing some type of time table would also be useful. People need to have an idea of how quickly they are expected to make a submission in order to know if they have time to participate. And some amount of flaking is usually inevitable, so it is good to have a set amount of time to wait before moving on in that scenario. Also I'm personally not a fan of subjective criteria in a head to head competition. If you are going to have a "most impressive" competition, I hope there is a set points system before hand so it isn't just up to someone's whims. Lastly if Kerbol-time speed is the main goal, I hope there is some type of weight limit. Otherwise there is a big incentive to build into the tens of kilotons which is time consuming and punishes competitors with weaker computers. All that being said this sounds like a cool idea, and I'll probably join if it's fleshed out a bit more.

Wouldn't SSTOs qualify for this? I built one for the Jool 5 including a Minmus landing that had no decouplers or separators. It also didn't have a docking port, but that doesn't seem to be required by the OP, and would be easy to add anyways.

This looks fun, I'm thinking about giving it a go when I have some time. I take it that money recovered post-mission doesn't factor in?

After a number of retries I've completed this challenge in 2 launches with 2399.6 extra science. I redid the first mission with a slightly modified version of the above ship (more tail fins, goo canisters on the top command pod) and got 160 science. After a bunch of time revising the 2nd ship, I got to Kerbin orbit with about 8400 dv. I did a Mun flyby and landed on every Minmus biome, after which I had about 5700 dv. Next I did an aerocapture at Eve and hit up every Gilly biome, which left me with 4150 dv. After that I moseyed over to Ike with a Duna aerocapture, and was able to land in 4 Ike biomes before heading back. I ended up with 550 unused dv. Below are the ship and science report screenshots: Here's the craft file for the 2nd ship: https://kerbalx.com/Bayesian_Acolyte/2nd-launch-v27 Edit: Here's an album with a trip report: https://imgur.com/a/NM96ghf

This challenge from a few years ago might be useful for anyone unsure what to do on the first launch: Inspired by some of those submissions, I was able to get into high space with this unoptimized monstrosity: I had fun on the first mission but I'm not sure how universal the appeal will be. If anyone wants to do this challenge but re-creating something like the above doesn't seem fun, feel free to just use my craft file. EDIT: I just tried to launch it again a few times and it was ripping itself apart, so disregard. Not sure what happened as it was working before. Here's the link anyways. https://kerbalx.com/Bayesian_Acolyte/1st-launch-v12 I just returned from my 2nd launch and completing this within 3 launches is definitely in reach. But I've got some ideas and how to re-do the 2nd launch with better returns, and I'm torn between starting over on the 2nd launch or doing the 3rd.

The goal of this challenge: Earn enough science to research every technology in as few launches as possible. Participants should create a new science mode game on normal difficulty, or a normal base difficulty with the Comm Network turned off or modified. Weight limit: All launches must be below 250 tons. Tie breaker: Total science gathered is the tie breaker if multiple submissions use the same number of launches. All science around one pod: At the start of each launch, designate a main command pod (or probe core if unmanned). All science gathering activities (experiments run, samples gathered, etc.) for that launch need to happen in the exact same biome as that main pod. For the purpose of this challenge, the launch pad and other KSC buildings are not the same biome, nor is being in a different vertical area of the same nominal biome (i.e no science when landed on the Greater Flats if your main pod is in low orbit above the Greater Flats). The only exception is that doing an EVA report above the surface (by jumping etc.) in the immediate vicinity of a landed command pod is permitted. Command seats are not command pods for the purpose of this challenge. No clipping (mostly): Only clipping of structural parts, wings, and heat shields is allowed. Clipping of anything else is not permitted, except in very minor circumstances such as ~5% of a part overlapping with another. What's a launch? A launch is any time something is put on the runway or launch pad (and isn't reverted). Even if it doesn't leave the ground, it's still a launch. Assembling a ship in orbit from multiple launches counts as multiple launches. Banned parts: No ISRU (drills/refiners) - Obtaining pretty much all the science in the game is possible with a single ISRU launch, which would be quite tedious. No Mobile Processing Lab - Unlimited science breaks this challenge. No Ion Propulsion - Their crazy DV can be a big advantage in a weight and launch limited challenge, and I don't want anyone feeling like they are missing out if they don't wish to endure ultra long burn times. No EVA pushing: Eva pushing is not allowed. Mods: Using any non-stock parts, changing parts, changing physics, or anything similar is not permitted. Informational mods, piloting mods, and automatic science mods are fine, as long as they aren't allowing you to accomplish something that wouldn't normally be possible. Showing biome locations using the debug menu is allowed. Submission guidelines: Challengees should submit screenshots or video showing the vessels used for each launch, the exact science obtained when the launch mission is complete, and a brief summary of where most of the science was obtained. More detailed information such as craft files and mission reports are encouraged but not mandatory. Happy sciencing! Leaderboard: 1. 2 launches, 19317.6 science - bayesian_acolyte

I appreciate the offer but I think I'm just going to redesign it. After reading some of your recent battle reports, one fatal flaw in my craft has become very clear: it has little damage mitigation, with multiple vital 100hp exposed parts, and I think this will require a re-design to change as much as I want. I do have a question though, sort of a followup of some of the discussion earlier. Any chance the Saturn engine is worth it? This is what my previous fighter was designed around, and I think I will be ditching it on version 2, but I'd like to sound out some reasoning first. Compared to the f5 engine (aka j-85 tiger) the Saturn has significantly better TWR and fuel efficiency. If we assume that drag scales with the square of the cross section, it should also have better drag to thrust ratio. The reason I would want to switch to the f5 are that it will be easier to be a smaller target and add more damage mitigation with the smaller cross section. Also not really sure about drag scaling with the square of the cross section, this probably only applies at pure prograde. Lastly it seems to have less IR detectability despite identical listed heat production in the cfg files? I'd like confirmation on this last part especially, but any thoughts are appreciated.

This is a really cool competition! Also really tough. I spent a while developing a craft that compared to the Zircon (just cause it's the current leader) has less weight, more wing area, more control surface area, half the radar cross section, the same armaments but more of them, and a better TWR. But it still rarely wins the 3v3 battles I've set up to test the craft against each other. I've tweaked the AI a lot, not sure if the problem is there or if a redesign is needed. But either way I plan to produce an entrant before too long. Also in case anyone is curious (like I was) I set up three very unofficial 3v3 battles with the Zircon against the PEGAsys and the losses were something like 8-4 in favor of the PEGAsys. I hope nobody minds me reporting on that.

I've just completed this challenge with a 31 part, 27.1 ton single-stager costing 40,967. No mods were used. Here is an imgur album and trip report: https://imgur.com/a/elxzmuQ Here is the craft file: https://kerbalx.com/Bayesian_Acolyte/Single-Stage-Jool-5-v2 It should be possible to do this with less parts. The nose cone could probably be eliminated as this craft had no difficulty in atmospheres (and probably swap battery to a radial version). You could probably get away without a ladder as well if the capsule was rotated facing the ground and some landing gear or standing-on-flag tricks were used. It also might be possible (but annoying) to axe the solar panel. And lastly you could probably swap the 6 wing strakes for 2 big S delta wings (for an extra 0.4 tons, which would make Tylo really tough but I think doable). So probably 24 parts is possible.

EDIT: Nevermind. (I had originally asked a question about whether we could clip fairings for this challenge but after further testing it won't help my design.)