ralanboyle

Space Tourism is alive and well on Kerbin! Unfortunately for you, lots of us are vying for the green guy’s greenbacks. The bottom line: Take tourists to the surface of celestial bodies as cheaply as possible. Pricing is calculated per ticket and adjusted based on spacecraft recovery and refurbishment. The broad strokes: The market is fiercely competitive so your tickets will be sold “at cost.” KSP does not take refurbishment into consideration, but we will since that is a huge part of space travel. (Formula below) There will be separate leaderboards for each destination that people submit. I expect more people will submit missions to Mun and Minmus than Tylo and Eve. In order to reduce the grindiness of submitting several ticket prices: If your ship can obviously land at other locations which require less dV and have less gravity then you can submit the pricing based on the accomplished mission. For example: If you land on Duna, that ship could have landed on Minmus, so you can note this and count the pricing toward both Minmus and Duna. Obviously, this is not going to be the cheapest way to get to Minmus, but it is an option. dV will be based on a dV map; if you want to get fancy with gravity assists, you'll have to actually accomplish the mission. If you require refueling, your ship must have the appropriate comms/power to refuel at each location you submit. Yes, your tourists have to return home safely. The fine print: Missions need to be run in Career mode and include the starting cost and recovery earnings. Due to the in-game recovery calculation, which is based on distance from KSC, you need to run this in career mode. If you really want to use sandbox mode, I’ll allow it if you land all stages back at KSC and provide adequate documentation to support your calculations. All kerbals must travel inside cabins. No Command Seats. Your spacecraft will be piloted. The pilot is not a paying passenger so subtract 1 from the total number of seats aboard. Your tourists don’t want to fly on a probe. If you are going to refuel or repack parachutes you must take an engineer (2 seats are now filled with crew). Processed resources do not count toward recovery cost. For example, you can't mine and process 100T of Monoprop on Minmus and return it for a profit. If you mine for fuel, you have to use that fuel. Airplanes using jet engines require much less refurbishment than rockets, so you can count the full amount shown at recovery if the craft being recovered has only jet engines or electric motors. If the craft has rocket engines, nukes or ion drives (or RAPIERs in closed cycle mode) then your recovery earning is cut in half (50%) to cover the cost of refurbishing the craft. Do not exploit this by decoupling rocket engines for no reason. I am not making a specific rule about when you can or can't decouple stages because I want you to have freedom to be creative. However, the community will recognize the exploit if you fly a hybrid spacecraft, then stage off your rockets for no real reason. I'll make a rule if this gets to be a problem. No part mods or physics mods allowed. DLC is fine. Part clipping within reason is fine but don't go stacking tanks in tanks in tanks... The cost of your ticket is: The cost of the launched craft (L) minus the recovery earnings (R) divided by the number of tickets sold (T). So (L-R)/T Remember, that R needs to be divided by 2 before calculating ticket price if it uses rockets. If you are recovering stages separately then find the sum of the recovery earnings for all landed stages, then subtract it from L, then divide by T. Missions need to be well documented. At a minimum, we need to see the craft with costs in the VAB/SPH, enroute, landed, at recovery, recovery cost screen. Don't use @vyznev's silly SSTO loophole with a "base" that sits on the runway. For that matter, don't spend your time looking for loopholes, just make an awesome ship. I will make leaderboards as ticket prices are published. Come run me out of business, competition is good! -Single Destination Tickets- Mun: $414 @camacju $770 ralanboyle $3,099 @RoninFrog Minmus: $414 @camacju $770 ralanboyle Duna: $6,661 ralanboyle $7,373 @camacju Ike: $7,373 @camacju Bop: $3,571 @camacju Pol: $3,571 @camacju -Multi-Destination Tickets- (ISRU Not Allowed) Bop-Pol-Minmus: $3,571 @camacju Duna-Ike: $7,373 @camacju

@Pds314 Are you sure this is possible?

No modded parts. My wing is a pair of the small triangles attached in symmetry and slid together. One could shave some seconds off my run with my ship with a better approach and landing. There is probably also room for a higher TWR which will get you up and down faster.

Ok cool, My first try comes in at 3:53. Beat it so I have an excuse to make it better.

Ok, Here is an old one I did. 4067m/s. One can go much faster without "leaving the atmosphere" up at 69,999 meters.

Alright, I went for a hike in the mountains near KSC. I earned Purist, Solar Roller, Check yo Staging and Flawless (until I got greedy after the 3000m point.) Its a pretty standard rover if you generally use landing struts attached to electric motors.

Do it. We can share craft files for others to attempt to reenter.

Who doesn't love a good old fashioned Jump-Jet?! To my knowledge there has not yet been a race between a F35B and a Hawker Harrier, correct me if I am mistaken... I digress! The Challenge: Make a fast VTOL Airplane that is also capable of HTOL. The Course: 1. Take off from the runway at KSC. 2. Fly over to the Island Runway- Land and Stop. 3. Return to the KSC Runway- Land and Stop. There are 2 Take Offs and 2 Landings. One of each must be VTOL and the others must be HTOL. Do them in whatever order you want. The Rules: No Parts/Physics mods (DLC is fine) Judging each TO and Landing as either HTOL vs VTOL might get tricky (some of you will blur the line.) I am open to ideas but for now I'll let it be open to community judgment. There will be two leaderboards. One Jet Class, the other Unlimited Class. The Unlimited Class is available for those with a very loose definition of "Airplane," or "Jump-Jet," or "Gravity." Jet Class will only use jets as propulsion. I understand that not everyone can make videos... but you better provide sufficient photos... I'm gonna need a bunch of photos... I've provided a slow and steady run to start us out. Jet Class: @camacju 3:50 RAlanBoyle 5:38 xxx Unlimited Class: xxx xxx xxx

If you are interested in sharing the craft file, then I'm interested in trying to landing it. I haven't seen an SSTO yet that can't be brought back down without overheating.

...?...

Okay, If wheels are allowed then one could just make a racecar, but I went for more of what I think you want. No rockets or jets or wheels, just a roller/crawler. crosses in 44 seconds.

Okay, I made a few assumptions and took a stab at the spirit of this challenge. I made a traditional VTOL rocket, which carries a payload on top. It achieves orbit without staging and delivers it's payload in LKO. Then it returns to KSC and lands propulsivly. There are much more efficient ways to get payloads to orbit but I think this is what @SynX intended. I've included the fueled/unfueled and views w/wo payload at the end of the video but here is the math. Weight WO Payload -105825 With Payload -179475 Payload Weight - 73650 Cost Fueled - 306690 Unfueled - 259688 Cost of Fuel - 47002 Fuel is the only cost of flight (beside payload). So the fractional cost: 1.6kg/$ or $638/T to LKO

Okay, I've redon the Laythe Ocean mission with a Mk1 Command Pod. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nEqN7_adWnBbskO-qhbwj-C8kgRhRIDc/view?usp=sharing

oh crap...

@SynX May I suggest, rather than setting a limit to the funds spent; this could have a leaderboard based on being the most efficient cost per ton placed in orbit while requiring all stages land within a certain distance from KSC. Also, If you are focused on booster landing then you might add "no wheels."

@Pds314 I loaded your file and it shows as a career mode save called "Wimp 2" day one with nothing seen in the tracking station. I haven't done this before so what am I doing wrong? And here is mine: Who's up for a Laythe Ocean rescue? Here is the save file.

Oakie dokie, Smokey! This is a great idea, and I'm on a work trip with nothing to do in my off-time for a month! Let's do this. I hope others make submissions. I'll strand one for you. I'm actually not sure how to share mission files, can you fill me in?

Thanks to the law of, "Whatever he can do, I can do better." I have seen @Klapaucius's 1048m and gone 1092. I also made it unmanned which is worth an extra 5 points. I made sure to empty fuel until it came in just under the 10 ton limit. I did not do the math, but I assume that is 110 points.

Yeah, its just under 5T. Here is the craft file. You are right, my math was bad... 36.

Okay, I didn't pay attention to the scoring. You said the timer starts at gate 1... I could have saved the crazy entry! Oh well, this looks like a 33 second run to me.

Okay, I made a new plane and took another run at the building landings with saves. I chose to define a rooftop based on it's "level" because of @Klapaucius's definition concerning the two levels of the VAB. Basically, I needed more buildings so if it's a different level roof, I counted it as a different building... Let me know if there is some other way to get a lot of points... I landed 16 times and took off 15. I plan to add more landings but I lost track of which ones I hit and needed to stop. 93 points, I think. Here ya go!

@jimmymcgoochie- First, Good job. Second, I'd love to see some video of that thing flying. I'd like to know its stall speed and how you got it out of a few of those spots. Can we haz video? If not, can we haz craft file?

Alright, alright, alright, alright, I'll do it. I saved while on each rooftop so I could crash a lot and still do it all in 1 flight. My count is 41 points with this 10T bird. Also, I made a special effort to "Take a bow," as mentioned in the rules.

Yeah, count me out on that. It would bee too grindy to have to start over after each crash and I don't want to go up to 1000m to save. I'll just focus on being the biggest.

@Klapaucius, do the landings on several buildings all have to be done in the same flight, or can I crash a lot between each one?