Duke MelTdoWn

Most of us here use imgur.com. You can make a free account and upload the pictures there. After you published the post on imgur, go to "Images" in top right menu where your account name is, click on the image you want, copy the content of the "BBCode" line and just paste it into your post. And we are interested in seeing a work in progress, even if it is not polished yet.

Will you go for the Mun speed run after you are done with the circumnavigation? Times below a day seem possible!

I did a speed run to the Mun for my ore delivery challenge. Acquired 1 ore from the Mun and delivered it to LKO in 1 day 46 minutes 45 seconds. I used a rocket with high TWR of 3 - 5. Went straight up, out of the atmosphere in 3 minutes. Direct collision course with the Mun. Landing burn was over 1000 m/s because I did not enter orbit. Only took 13 seconds to perform with TWR 100. Mining the 1 unit of ore only took 20 seconds. Then straight back to Kerbin overhead.

'MunExpress AB' Category: Speed Run Ore delivered: 10 kg (1) Mods: stock parts; only visual mods Launch Mass: 433 tons Price: 211,811 Mission time: 1 day 46 minutes 45 seconds from launch to 179x80 km LKO More pics: https://imgur.com/gallery/ore-delivery-speedrun-munexpress-ab-djkTXN6 Mission profile: MunExpress has good TWR of 3-5 on Kerbin and about 100 on the Mun. Wait until Mun is in Zenith straight overhead and go straight up. No time to waste with entering any orbits, but I had to do an 800 m/s correction burn to crash straight into the Mun. Do 1000 m/s suicide burn staring at 25 km above the Mun. Acquire 1 ore (took 20 seconds with 5* engineer in Sandbox). Fly straight back to Kerbin overhead. Enter LKO with 950 m/s burn.

Good point on the cross section to thrust ratio of the Dart. And I might look into a two stage solution like you suggested. Some tests of props in service bays vs. other placements also seem in order. Wanted to add that there is a non-standard construction technique (some might call it an exploit) to reduce drag of rocket engines (and Rapiers). You can cap the backside of the engine with a nose cone, then rotate the nose cone 180° forward and translate it. This causes the game engine to think that the backside of the engine is completely covered (as if it were in the middle of the stack), reducing the overall drag. You are trading the drag created by the blunt backside with the drag of the nose cone. On a Rapier, this cuts overall drag approximately in half.

I think Speedrun will call for completely different designs and strategies than the other categories. I also added a new category to deliver Mun ore to Mun orbit, these designs will be the most useful in career mode.

Entries in each category will be ranked based on the amount of ore delivered. 10 kg of whatever purple stuff Eve is made out of is pretty valuable back at Kerbin. (I heard it tastes like grapes.) __________ An example entry out of competition (I stacked the cards against you because I spent months designing mining systems). And this would not count anyways because I used a second rover from a different launch to fill up the Ore Freighter faster. 'Gargantua' Mining System Category: I'm too young to die (ore acquired on Mun) Ore delivered: 180 tons (18,000) Mods: Breaking Ground parts; only visual mods Launch Mass: 1179 tons Price: 988,233 Mission time: 6 days 1 hour 6 minutes from launch to docking with Refinery in LKO Craft file: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3380142778 More pics: https://imgur.com/gallery/ore-delivery-challenge-example-gargantua-h2m5ueQ From left to right: VeHeReLau, Behemoth Orbital Refinery, A/D Stage, 2x Ore Freighter, Gargantua Mining Rover Mission profile: Mining Rover stays on the Mun surface to drill continuously. Ascent/Descent Stage is used to land Ore Freighters. Rover(s) dock with Freighter and fill it up with ore and fuel. 4x Dart on A/D Stage used to bring the heavy Freighter back to Mun orbit. Freighter undocks and uses 4x Nerva to head back to Kerbin. Needs 5 or 6 aerobrake passes at Kerbin to enter low orbit. Ore delivered to Behemoth Orbital Refinery. Picture proof: This example picture is suboptimal because the freighter is already docked with the refinery. The challenge is who can deliver the most ore, not who can design the heaviest launcher Please show resources tab and orbital parameters. With no other entries so far, this would place me 1st in "I'm too young to die" with 180 tons. I hope this challenge motivates you to expand your orbital refueling infrastructure!

Whoever delivers the most ore in a single flight to Low Kerbin Orbit wins! This is a pure design challenge and can be played in Sandbox. Please indicate if you use any part mods. No cheat menu! The goal is to design a single launch that can mine and move ore. The launch can consist of multiple modules that can rendezvous and dock as they please. The ore must be mined and can not be already loaded in VAB/SPH. It can not be mined from Runway or Launchpad. If you have a Mining SSTO, Mobile Launcher Platform etc. you are allowed to move your craft to Shores and mine and launch from there. The ore to be counted must be delivered with a single return flight to a stable Kerbin orbit between 70x70 km and 200x200 km. Entries in each category will be ranked based on the amount of ore delivered. Mission elapsed time will be used as tiebreaker. Categories Can I play, Daddy?: deliver Mun ore to stable Mun orbit above 50x50 km instead of LKO. I'm too young to die: acquire the ore from Kerbin, Mun or Minmus and deliver to LKO. Hey, not too rough: acquire the ore from Duna. Hurt me plenty: acquire the ore from a fresh asteroid. Ultra-Violence: acquire the ore from Moho. Nightmare: acquire the ore from Tylo or Eve. Speed Run: deliver ore from the Mun to LKO in 3 days or less. Ranked based on in game mission timer from launch to stable LKO of delivery vehicle. ______________________________________________________________________________ Leaderboard Speed Run 1) Meltdown on 'MunExpress AB': 1 day 0 hours 46 minutes 45 seconds

"If it looks right, it flies right." Well done Thor!

With the drag optimized version 'Airspeed Challenger HE' I could reach 2017 m/s before melting the wings off, a new personal best. The trick is to use very little wing, this is basically a Rapier with elevons strapped to it. Tune the angle of attack of the elevons so you can fly prograde without gaining too much altitude. This maximizes the thrust of the Rapier. At the same time, flying prograde reduces drag and heat load. Before I had problems with the Rapier melting. This uses some fishy construction techniques. Root is a service bay, the airstream fairing is attached to the inside of the service bay. This reduces the drag of the service bay to zero. Fuel tanks are in the airstream fairing. Rapier is attached to the back of service bay. Shock Cone is attached to back of Rapier and rotated. This reduces the drag of the Rapier and heat load on the Shock Cone. This whole plane only produces ~ 55 kN of drag at Mach 6 and 4000 meters. TWR at Mach 3 is 13.5 because it only weights 3.6 tons. No passengers.

Nice challenge! I built a record plane about a year ago for this challenge: forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/219217-air-speed-record-challenge. This time around I reached 1938 m/s before melting (the crew is fine). I am only running visual mods, no parts or gameplay changes. Airspeed Challenger BH on Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3041717110 This uses no weird construction techniques except for the heatshields translated to the front. I think I can go faster if I am allowed to exploit the stock aerodynamic system? (Fairing occlusion abuse to make the plane essentially drag less, heatshield lift, cap rear of Rapiers with rotated and translated nosecone, ...)

One thing to watch out for is that you have the correct inclination. Some contracts want you to put the sat into retrograde orbit, with an inclination of ~180°. Looks almost the same on the map. You can check your inclination on page 2 of the orbit parameters (violet button at bottom left). On the map, the ascending/descending nodes of your orbit relative to the target orbit should be near zero.

I prototyped such an Eve SSRT with propellers. It still needs to get a lot bigger to work for Eve and I have not tested it there yet. Some considerations I had along the way: - Put the propellers inside service bays. Close them when you switch to rocket motor to reduce drag. - Use counterrotating propellers to cancel torque. - Use fuel cells (inside forward service bay) to energize the propellers. This causes less drag than using e.g. OXSTAT solar panels. - Use some super efficient engines like Vector or Dart. Some open questions I have: - How fast can you fly on Eve before aerodynamic forces tear up deployable solar panels? - How high can you fly on propellers in Eves atmosphere?

Well the contract design of the vanilla game does not dissuade you from the idea. I accepted this contract straight away on day 7 in my new career save. How hard could this be, anyway? So lets say, hypothetically speaking, I wanted to aerobrake a 130 ton monstrosity to enter Eve orbit, what would be a good periapsis altitude to aim for? PS: I love that cartoon.

Controversial opinion: docking is fun! Especially if you did not plan ahead and have three incoming craft at the same station inside a 15 minute window.