CriminallyVulgar

I did wonder why it wasn\'t harder to accelerate... assumed I was just overthinking it, because I redesigned the rocket each time. Consider my entries moot until I have a less cheaty (and hopefully less laggy) entry.

Don\'t worry about it. I\'m new to the forum, and might not be around 100% reliably, but I certainly wouldn\'t mind checking stuff from time to time if I\'m about. Anyway, new record! I\'ll enter it into the energy challenge too. I think I\'m kind of at the limit of my patience with this 'landing gears on a rocket' strategy. My latest iteration has 156 landing gears on it, and makes KSP run at 1fps even when I\'m down to the impact stage. I\'d really rather not use mods, but otherwise this challenge is a bit... irritating... Anyway, The final section had a mass of 83.9 tons, and impacted at 8016.3 m/s. Final momentum: well, zero, impact and all that. But fractionally before that, 83.9 * 8016.3 = 672,567 ton m/s I\'m very pleased to have broken 500 kTm/s, even if it was frame-by-frame in the end! The energy was 0.584 kT, but I\'ll keep that to the other thread for brevity\'s sake. The two challenges feel very seperate now that I\'m reaching my limits with my current strategy.

When you say 'Fastest time to Mun/Minmus,' do you mean fastest realtime or fastest mission time? I\'m guessing mission time, but there are threads for both w.r.t the Mun.

Sorry dude, but I think you\'re using the equations wrong. 0.5mv^2 means (0.5)*(m)*(v*v), not, as you seem to be saying (0.5*m*v)*(0.5*m*v). Even in the case of (p^2)/2m, because p = mv, it becomes, (m*m*v*v)/2*m, the 2nd m on the top cancels with the one on the bottom and you\'re left with the same eqn as above - linear in mass, quadratic in velocity. When I use either eqn, I still get 0.434 kT, so I\'m not sure where 0.479 comes from. And in the case of ktm/s, I was just intruducing a scaling factor, using kilotons instead of tons, it didn\'t occur to me to actually look up a shorthand notation, I just used what first came to mind ( t for tons, T makes a lot more sense now that I\'ve seen you use it) I will say, though, I competely forgot the 2nd version of the kinetic energy eqn existed, a mistake I frequently make, it\'s a much quicker way of getting the energy when you already have the momentum... I\'m sorry if there\'s a tone of assholery in any of the above, it\'s just that I use these relations on a fairly regular basis, so if I\'m interpretting them wrong, it\'s really, really bad for my degree prospects. The energy challenge looks fun though, I have a plan for it that might make for a good entry in both challenges, and maybe also another one I\'ve been looking at...

Umm, I feel like I\'m missing something here. I\'m assuming you want us to get airborne, then jettison the carrier craft, and fly the little rocket to top speed. That\'s great and all if I\'m right, but I took it up to 14,500m and got it over 1000m/s in a matter of seconds, so I\'m not sure where the challenge is in beating 309.4, if I\'m honest. You might have meant to set a lower altitude boundary? I don\'t know, but anyway, here\'s my proofy.

I would expect that using the RCS is better, just from how powerful it is in general, but it is a lot of mass you\'re trying to accelerate. The only real ways of testing it are functionally the same as just doing the crash again with and without the extra kick. Also, I\'m pretty sure you\'d have to quadruple the mass for a kiloton, 0.5mv^2 and all that. Anyway, sounds like a fun challenge, I throw my hat in with a joke lander I built today, turned out to be unnecessarily heavy at 32.2 tons w/o fuel, but that\'s exactly what this challenge needs! I got it up to 5423.7m/s with the original slightly overpowered (slightly underkerbal?) rocket that got it to minmus with fuel to spare. I\'ll probably try this again with moar power on the final stage. I bet some SRBs would do the job... Anyway, 32.2 * 5423.7 = 174,643 ton m/s In Excalibur terms, that\'s about 0.103 kilotons. Increasing the energy seems a more interesting challenge to me, but I\'m not sure how well the physics in KSP work with that goal (I\'m guessing the answer would always be to drain all your fuel for a heavy impact). It means that maltesh\'s entry, while having a momentum less than 1/3 of mine, has an energy of 0.066 kilotons, damn near 2/3 of mine, due to the high velocity. The momentum challenge does certainly seem to favour the heavier crafts. ~~~Edit~~~ I have a new PB, and it\'s a doozy. A high-velocity landing craft consisting of a pointy cockpit (fer piercin\' them Munrocks), 6 LFTs (1 too many, it turned out, I had half a tank left on impact), a liquid engine, and 104 landing wheels (for safety), with total impact mass of 58.2 tons rendezvous\'d with the Mun at a velocity of 8299 m/s. That\'s 483,001 ton m/s. Also, the energy on impact was 0.434 kilotons. It\'s unfortunate I couldn\'t use the last half tank, I reckon I\'d have cracked 500 ktm/s if I\'d started my burn before entering mun SOI, or if I hadn\'t (foolishly) used the vectoring liquid engine. I use the previous stage to line everything up, I really don\'t need the vectoring. The real key with this was the landing craft. What started as a joke ended up being a really densely weighted dart, surprisingly good for this challenge. Unfortunately, it lags the hell out of my game, and it would be utterly uncontrollable at ~1fps without mechjeb. Also, real Jeb was on board, so it couldn\'t possibly go wrong. I really need something more... single-bodied... to smash into this rock. Anyway, have fun trying to beat this mark! I know I will.

34:25 I know I can do better, but I doubt I\'ll be able to beat 30:00 with the rocket I used.