EveMaster

I did some more experiments on the Laythe lander. I found a way to add another control axis with a Kerbal on a ladder. I added another ladder that is rotated by 90 on top of the other ladder. I also added two more solar panels. With 'a' and 'd' you can switch between the two ladders. I also added another fuel tank. I managed to get into a low Laythe orbit with no inclination and 100m/s spare delta-v. When I tried to land the craft with partial control, only the intake broke. Edit: I managed to land the craft intact. It turned out I also accidentally built my first kraken drive. When the Kerbal is facing in the direction of travel the kraken drive is switched off and the orbit is absolutely stable. When the Kerbal is facing in the normal direction the orbit changes. The effect seemed a bit randomly. The best I got was when my apoapsis was constantly rising by about 200m/s and my periapsis was rising by about 50m/s at the same time. I think placing the solar panels slightly further apart will avoid the kraken/ladder-drive. Does anyone have an idea how to bring this Laythe lander to orbit? Unfortunately the craft has 25 parts so only 5 more parts are allowed. That means that some on the ground docking will be needed. How were the docking ports connected to the orginal LIMA lander? The craft does not have any free attachment node. Maybe with some trickery in the editor the docking port can be attached the other way round, so that it does not have to be hauled down and up of Laythe. Does anyone know? Where should I upload my Laythe and my Tylo lander? To the github repo? Will there be a new repo for the reboot or will it be the same repo but a new folder? I could also upload the craft to KerbalX. I tried to open the crafts from the github-repo but could not open them with the current version. Can the craft files be converted or does everything have to be rebuilt? Now that I have build a Laythe and Tylo lander we can think about the mission profile. I think the Tylo lander can also be used for Val. The two way kerbal-powered ladder-SAS could also be used for navigation within the Jool-system. Maybe even for the ejection burn back to Kerbin but a lander can will provide more precision.

I did some tests for the ascent from the seas of Laythe with reduced probe control. I used the LIMA plane with some minor changes. I rotated the ladder by 90 degrees, added a second solar panel above the Kerbal and added another Oscar fuel tank on the upper spark engine stage. The are still several available options for control: Moving up and down with the Kerbal for pitch control. Extending and setting the angles of the elevons manually also gives pitch control. Removing the elevons from the symmetry group gives roll control. Shortly disabling SAS also gives some control. The first problem was, that without probe control the plane would not take off from the water. The torque from the Kerbal and the elevons are not enough. Canards would certainly help, but I came up with another solution. I extend the elevons in reverse and dived into the water. With the help of the Kerbal I did an underwater looping. When the desired angle was reached I reset the elevons and flew into the air from under water. The second problem was that the off-center Kerbal created a torque when flying the upper stage within the atmosphere that could not be overcome by the torque created by the Kerbal on the ladder. With the Kerbal on the top of the craft, the pitch angle got higher and higher until the craft flipped over. Therefore, I wanted to have the Kerbal below the craft for the upper stage. I tried to roll the craft by 180 degrees, but by doing so I lost too much vertical velocity so that the craft did not continue to ascent. Instead, I lauched westwards and climbed vertically after decoupling at 13km. I had to throttle down to keep the speed at around 200 - 300 m/s to avoid losing the Kerbal and to minimize drag losses. When higher up in the atmosphere the natural turn tendency matches that of the desired one. The turning can be controlled by shortly disabling SAS. I managed to reach a -11km x 55km suborbital trajectory with the craft. I circularized using the EVA propellant. The quite unusual ascent profile for Laythe (not to scale):

I managed to save two parts so I could add a docking port on a separator on the top for orbital assembly. The first part was the reaction wheel. Without it I have to use a steeper less efficient ascent profile but still have plenty of spare delta-v. The second part is the separator at the bottom of a lander. Instead of this separator I also found a very Kerbal solution: Instead I burn away the docking port with the spark engine.

Thank you for your comments. The solar panels are needed to create torque when going up or down the ladder. They are not needed for power generation during the landing. The probe core is on sleep mode so very little energy is consumed and the 10EC is enough. Maybe the probe core does not even need energy for SAS, when the focus is on the Kerbal, I'm not sure about this. And the SAS only has to work when the focus is on the Kerbal. The battery at the bottom is mostly for Kerbin ascent and to get room so that the landing legs don't interfer with other parts of the mother ship. I also added it to avoid clipping of the docking port into the fuel tank. But I think I can remove this battery and instead offset the docking port to get the same length. What is the policy about clipping and offsetting? I think I could get rid of the reaction wheel to save one part. At the top I cannot add a docking port unless I offset it to float in midair because there is also the ladder for the Kerbal.

The new version is 2.125 tons not counting the separator, the docking port and the battery that can be decoupled before descent or 40kg more if you count that too.

I haven't thought of the fact that you cannot exit a pod and therefore not refill the EVA propellant. Thanks for reminding me. I added two more fuel tanks, rearranged the fuel tanks for the lander to be shorter and added landing legs. Without landing legs I could not land it consistently. I think a shorter lander is good both for the interplanetary transfer and the landing. I also designed a lifter for it. I was able to put it in a 80x80km orbit with 800m/s spare. I was not able to add a maneuvering unit for docking because of the part limit. But I think somehow we should manage to get it docked to the main ship.

I finally managed to land. It really helped to reconfigure the button for vessel switch to a mouse button. The lander weights 1.615t without Kerbal. On the ascent I had to use 0.5 EVA propellant. I'm not sure if it is possible without. With a 94kg dummy payload KER lists 4200m/s of delta-v. Maybe it would be a good idea to add more fuel to save the EVA propellant for other parts of the mission. If a command pod is part of the mission it would not matter though.

It gets even more ridiculos: To get another axis of control I shortly disable a fuel tank to get an asymetrical fuel distribution. Then I disable SAS to rotate and reenable SAS when the craft has rotated in the desired position. Without that I found that the velocity in normal direction is too high prior to landing due to small inaccuracies. I haven't managed to land intact yet. Getting back to orbit is easy though.

I'm not sure about Laythe. In the original mission the Laythe plane and the Kerbal descended seperately. Was that to avoid overheating of the Kerbal? Maybe @dvader who flew the Laythe lander can tell. An option might be to land the Laythe lander with a parachute and the Kerbal with its own parachute. The Laythe lander must definitely be aerodynamically stable in the roll and raw axis for this to work. I'll try if I can get the Tylo lander to work.

I have not participated in this challenge, but I read it with great interest. It was a great achievement! For the Tylo lander without Commnet on I have an idea how to save weight. You could use an octo probe core and a Kerbal on a ladder. The probe core can only hold position and you can only use full trottle because of partial control. To rotate the lander and adjust the radial component you can switch to the Kerbal and climb up or down the ladder. I tested this concept and managed to crash-land a Kerbal on Tylo on the first try. The Kerbal survived but the craft was destroyed. I think with some practice this concept could work unless you decide to disable partial control when there is no connection to the KSC in the options.

Your spreadsheet and my calculation says a total of 295. I'm so fair to notify you, even if that means I get less points. Another suggestion for future rounds: In my opinion it would make the scoring easier when leaving out points for parts that are essential for the mission and are the same for every submission such as reaching orbit in round 1 or landing on a moon in round 2.

Thank you very much for this patch. I included it in my sigature. Could you explain the following parts of my score please? How did you get a destination score of 160 for my submission? What about the 10 points for flew to Moon and Biome hop? I visited 4 moons. I could not undestand my scoring when looking at rules in the opening post. For future rounds, I suggest to be as precise as possible. For example: Is a specific bonus once per submission or once per landed body. Which bonuses can be combined? Is decoupling or staging allowed when landed, on the surface, on a suborbital trajectory during ascent or descent?

@Dirkidirk You can set your antenna to partial transmission. That way you can transmit data even when you don't have enough batteries. You only need a power generation surplus. Time warp if the power generation is slow. My submission for round 2 is the Sarnus Explorer: It landed on the following moons of Sarnus from the outer planets mod: Hale, Ovok, Eeloo (at its new location) and Tekto. It has two science parts: Thermometer and Barometer. The highest scoring location is Tekto with an orbital speed of 707m/s and an atmosphere height of 95,000 km. Destination scoring: distance: 40 points, size: 20 points, atmosphere: 30 points, total 90 points. Size: small: 15 points Cost: 49,994 funds Lander type: No biome bonus, because all visited moons are below 790m/s. Engine and probe core does not touch ground, no landing stage, single stage for all landings. Aesthetic lander (I would think so. I used real landing legs instead of cubic struts for aesthetic reasons). Goes on multiple celestial bodies. Does this entry qualify for flagship class? Mission report: https://imgur.com/gallery/g4qQF7Z Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/EveMaster/Sarnus-Explorer

I managed to build a stock Tylo hanging science base and bring it to Tylo without cheats. The crane just fits into the largest fairing. I had to offset the fairing from the center of mass because otherwise it would not fit. Once the fairing is off the craft is perfectly balanced so that the center of mass does not shift when fuel is used. Orbit is reached with 19 Vector engines in the center and 24 aspargus stages mammoth engines. The transfer stage has 7 Wolfhound engines in the center and 8 Wolfhound engines aspargus staged. The lander stage has 4 Vector engines. The delta-V is more than sufficient for a direct transfer. About 1000 m/s are surplus and allow for a less than optimal descent. The craft has also full mining equipment so that it can fly to the correct position after landing first on the ground. The science base is stored horizontally. Telescopic pistons support the science base during deployment. The rope is made up of small cube elements connected by small joints. Small docking ports secure the folded up cube elements during deployment, because the small joints are not strong enough to support the weigth alone. When fully deployed the height difference between the top platform and the hanging science base is 184m. The deployment process: Link to craft file: https://kerbalx.com/EveMaster/Tylo-Cave-Hanging-Base

I think to use that glitch you have to Place a (temporary) part in 6 fold symmetry Right click and remove one part from the symmetry Hover with the part you want in 5 fold symmetry over one of the parts and place it. Remove the temporary parts

I think my main mistake was to use SRBs instead of vector engines. Without checking I thought they provided more TWR at the cost of a worse ISP. But both the TWR and the ISP is better for the vector when the vector and the fuel that matches the weight of the SRB. So the only advantage of the SRB is that it is 25% denser and that it costs less.

Impressive! I did not know that a fairing could be part of your payload. But even if I did and if I counted my spare fuel as a payload I might have reached 10.3%, still quite some difference to your submission. What ascent profile and inclination correction maneuvers did you use?

I optimized my launcher and managed to achieve a payload fraction of just above 10.00%. Total mass: 519.485 tons. Payload: 51.950 tons. No turning inside the atmosphere this time, but multiple mun assists. The mun assists were necessary, otherwise about 200m/s would have been missing. Engines used are one mammoth engine, a poodle engine and 4 long, sleek SRBS. Gallery with mission decription: https://imgur.com/gallery/1DFwaAi

Is it allowed to temporarily go above 150km? I tried to to into a low polar orbit, then raise the apoapsis to 10000km turn the orbit by 90 degrees and lower the apoapsis back to 150km using rocket thrust (no aerobraking). Using this maneuver left me with 12tons of spare fuel. So it was much more efficient than the approach I posted with turning within the atmosphere.

I managed to get a payload fraction of 3.36%. Total launch mass 570.626tons, payload 19.2t. My craft has just one Mammoth engine and 4 SRB for increased TWR at takeoff. I stay in the atmosphere until close to the equator and then use aerodynamical lift to turn 90 degrees. My flying was far from perfect. I slowed down considerably when doing the turn. But I had just enough fuel left to speed up again and reach a low equatorial orbit.

Apollo 15 did land on its engine bell: See: http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/001189.html

To the round 2 rules: I like the idea of two landers. The scoring seems to be balanced for me. I don't know the planet extension packs. If some of them have a high inclination that also has to be accounted for in the scoring. For the destination points you showed a picture of Tylo as an example for high orbital velocity. But Tylo has an orbital velocity of 2131 which is less than 2300 so it would be medium accordin to the text. https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/List_of_orbital_velocities_for_low_orbit For the lander design I would like to have more flexibility regarding relais. Especially for bodies with athmosphere where you cannot extend fragile antennas during landing. A relais plus a short range antenna weights more than just a long range antenna without relais functionality but has the advantage of a smaller lander. So I would allow both types without differences in points. I would argue that decoupling a relais that has no propulsion in a direct ascent mission would still make this mission a direct ascent. Of course only parts lauched with the one initial lauch can be used for communication. Will there be the same requirement to transmit data back from the surface as in part 1? I suggest you drop the requirement of having something to stop the craft from touching the ground for round 2. It feels unnatural having to add something that makes the lander larger just for the sake of it. I attached the last decoupler in my submission upside down so that the decoupler stops the craft from touching the ground. If you take it literally, you cannot fulfill this rule anyways because the struts, landing legs, etc. you land on, are part of your lander. Thanks for this challennge. I'm also going to take part in the next round.

Are staging or drop tanks allowed? Is the Kerbal parachute allowed? If so, does a part of the craft have to land with the Kerbal on the last landing?

I noticed that you added an image of my mission to the first post of this thread. I assumed only one submission can earn the 30 points for the best image. Maybe I'm wrong. Are my extra 30 points for the best image or is for the reason I wrote in my last post? Here are some scenic images of my mission without UI:

I guess the additional points come from "interplanetary lander" and "easter egg"(As the Tylo cave is an easter egg). I did not know that these count in addition and not only the highest. Is that correct? If you you need some screenshots without GUI you can ask me to create them, I have plenty of saves.