Trebuchet-Launch

Well, I'm launching a rocket using two fairing halves on long arms to test it. It SHOULD work, but that's why we test.

Current Missions: (1) Crew replacement mission to JEBLAB-1 station Launch vehicle: OrbitStar III Mission: SUCCESS Notes: Rendezvous is always a pain. JEBLAB is in a 151 km circular orbit and has a couple Kerbals I swap in and out. I put it up prior to the docking mods, which makes it even harder. (2) Orbital test of MoaR IIb booster for future Duna missions Launch vehicle: MoaR IIb Mission: MARGINAL SUCCESS Notes: Moar IIb is the second largest (in terms of mass) booster I've ever flown, a lag-inducing beast which can put ludicrous loads in low Kerbin orbit. I messed up the ascent some and did a poor insertion; the poor orbit and accidental waste of fuel made me mark this as a marginal success. The success part is that it did in fact put the whole huge trans-Duna insertion/Duna lander stack into orbit. (3) Mun mission: Munolith search with Munskimmer. Launch Vehicle: Munhopper Mission: IN PROGRESS Notes: Munskimmers are one-man landers with sufficient fuel to do high speed, extremely low altitude zooming over the Mun. This allows me to search large areas quickly... also, it's a good test of reflexes and piloting skills. Basically, land, take off, do a burn to give yourself sideways velocity, and then put the lander in a vertical orientation to 'hop' over uneven terrain and gain altitude to avoid a crash.

Remember that once you enter Duna's SOI, your speed will be adjusted to account for its orbital motion. On a perfect minimum energy trajectory, you should have a fairly gentle re-entry. On a less than perfect re-entry (I am shooting for a free-return trajectory for various reasons) you'll have a higher speed hitting the atmosphere, but it will still be significantly slower than 9000 m/s.

Now that I know we have a stock NTR, I'm deep into planning my Duna and Eve missions. I'm currently testing a direct-throw Duna ascent vehicle; given that Duna presumably is Mars-like and has lower gravity along with a thin atmosphere, any vehicle capable of lifting off from Kerbin's surface and achieving orbit should have enough delta-v to take off from Duna, enter orbit, and make a minimum-energy transfer back to Kerbin. Eve, with its more powerful gravity and thicker atmosphere, is going to require more creativity.

I attached a shot of it on the pad. It's assembled from a mix of stock and NovaPunch parts. I'm actually fairly certain I could build something even more ludicrous. The community spacecraft exchange is going to have some real monsters, I think, for planetary missions.

I've constructed a monster booster I call the Mother Of All Rockets (MOAR) which puts about 180 tons of junk in orbit per MechJeb's stats. I'm fairly certain I can do blind idiot missions to Duna with such a beast. Of course, I plan more elegant missions, but it's nice to know brute force is an option. EDIT: And 76 tons on a solar escape orbit. Wow!

Outside of challenges which don't require it, I prefer to use it. The orbital information alone makes it worthwhile, and SmartASS is extremely useful as well.

I am going with the "boring way", except I plan to detach a backwards-firing engine from a proper orbit.

Yes, but it only works when flying from a low orbit around the primary body (in this case, Kerbin) to something orbiting it... in a circular orbit. This does accurately describe the situation with the two moons, or Earth and its moon... or the future planets to be added and THEIR moons. It's because of Kepler's 3rd law: the squares of orbital periods are equal to the cubes of the semimajor axis of their orbits. From a low orbit around Kerbin (or whatever planet), the semimajor axis of the transfer burn is always going to be roughly half of the semimajor axis of the target, meaning that the targeted moon, regardless of distance, will always make about the same angular movement during the course of the transfer. The happy part is that this brute-force-and-massive-ignorance piloting method gets you something reasonably close to a minimum energy transfer.

Hey, Nova, is Duna at around, what, 20.8 million km orbitally? I'm beginning to think it might not require a booster too ridiculously oversized to launch a dumb idiot mission that lands everything on Duna and returns with no additional ships. EDIT: My main enemy is the wimpy large decouplers. Please tell me they fixed that.

OK, I need to clarify... I've done testing in 0.16, but won't consider myself satisfied until I've tested it in 0.17, too. I've been thinking about more elaborate mission architectures for more efficient planetary exploration, too - posted about that in the 0.17 thread (latest). I'm considering building a bigger "Mun Bus" as well, for returns (basically, I'm planning to return multiple missions in one return craft, so that I send out four craft and return one, etc.) So, my Eve plan goes something like this: (1) Land return craft on Gilly (surface rendezvous is much easier than the orbital variety) (2) Land Eve exploration craft - an ascent vehicle (1-man capsule attached to a crewtank) (3) Land Eve sortie craft - planes and hoppers, basically, to wander around in. (4) Return Eve sortie craft to the ascent vehicle. Everyone gets in the ascent vehicle. Fly to Gilly, or, if that's too taxing on the ascent vehicle, to LEO and then fly the return craft to orbital rendezvous around Eve. (5) Burn for home. Future missions in the Eve exploration program would establish a Gilly base, put a transfer vehicle in the Eve-Gilly system for moving crew between Eve and its moon, and establish surface Eve bases.

I've been thinking about all sorts of mission profiles for these planets, but honestly I'm not sure what I plan to do first, exactly. I'm gunning for either Gilly, Bop, or Ike as a first target - probably Gilly - and then I will explore the heck out of my target planet. EDIT: Specifically, I've been doing two-ship missions to the two moons, so I want to see if my return craft has the oomph to do a return to Kerbin from one of the mini-moons. I'm almost certain it does, but, eh... gotta test. After that, it's exploration time.

I'm going to chime in with a few thoughts: (1) Cyclers! We discussed a bit before on the Kerbin/Duna cycler concept, but we can practice in Kerbin orbit. A Mün cycler would have a period of 141.175 kiloseconds (MechJeb gives orbital period data in kiloseconds) exactly - minor deviations add up. A Mün/Minmus cycler would be even better practice. Unfortunately, without docking, I don't know how useful they'd be. Still, good practice and something to try in the next version - put a space station in a cycling orbit, or even better, multiple stations in multiple orbits to different planets, and then try to rendezvous. Maybe combine with the Kethane mod parts, so you have a base for each planet, and re-use the landers, but transfer Kerbals using the cyclers? (2) Jool exploration - I plan to have a backwards firing SRB on an exploration vessel. That way, I can settle into Joolian orbit with my Kerbals, activate the SRB, and detach before it deorbits the vessel. Hit [ to switch to the detached SRB, and it should have enough juice to deorbit and fall into the atmosphere of Jool. That way I can look around without risking my crew. I might well do this the first few times on Eve, as well - perhaps detaching and landing a CrewTank instead, as a future landing target. (Further thought: drop more fuel, and simulate transferring it over into the lander's tanks via savestate editing. That may have potential...) (3) Alternative mission architecture: the existence of mini-moons around Jool and Eve makes for attractive targets for really large transfer vehicles. Rather than the two-ship approach, the better long-term plan may be: (a) Land (or put into low orbit) at Gilly/Bop a Kerbin transfer vehicle with loads of room for Kerbals. ( Put a transfer vehicle which shuttles between Eve/Jool's other moons and Gilly/Bop with enough room for 1 pilot plus a planetary crew. © Land actual exploration crews to Eve or the other Joolian moons, then fly them back to low orbit. I think over the long run, this would be the most effective way to do large-scale exploration of Eve or the Joolian moons. I already sorta kinda take this approach, minus the transfer vehicle in (, for exploring the moons now - I have a "Mun Bus" which ferries crews back, and 1- and 3-Kerbal landers which have plenty of delta-v to hop around and look at stuff. Land them near the Mun Bus and transfer crews, and I get the beginnings of a Mun/Minmus base as a bonus.

How long are their orbital periods? He's basically saying "Let's put a station in an integer resonance with Duna's synodic period, as seen from Kerbin". The math should be fairly straightforward after that, as the synodic period is going to be Sy(Ker/Dun) = (P(Ker) * P(Dun))/ |(1/(P(Ker) - P(Dun)))| where Sy(Ker/Dun) is the synodic period of the Kerbin/Duna system, P(Ker) is the orbital period of Kerbin, and P(Dun) is the orbital period of Duna. Granted, you should still have a decent stock of fuel for course corrections on the cycler, because passing by Duna and Kerbin is going to throw off the orbit a bit each time and you probably won't have a perfect pair of repeating slingshots (where the Kerbin flyby compensates for the Duna flyby and vice versa).

I was doing a test run to see if it was even possible, and accidentally (because of overshooting grossly and then hitting the wrong button while on the fastest warp) left Kerbin's SOI entirely, went into Kerbol orbit, dropped my perapsis to roughly Eve orbit levels (I assume, I don't know exactly where the orbit will be), and managed to re-intercept Kerbin. I now really wish I had taken shots - maybe you need a prize for that sort of overkill too! I will probably take an official shot at the prize tomorrow if I remember with this rocket - it does a good job. EDIT: I didn't bounce back out. On the other hand, the whole exercise was an excellent practice run for an interplanetary mission with a fairly gentle re-entry, for whenever that gets added to the simulation.

The latter. I put a few winged decouplers into the dirt before trying a fair amount of dihedral. Despite people bringing up the infinite glide glitch, adding a bunch of canards won't miraculously create an infinite glider; I had one with more than two that would reliably angle down and dive into the ground like a bunker buster.

Put enough wings in the right places and you can do it w/o canards, too. I did it last night with the delta wings (still attached to the SRB). EDIT: The interesting thing about using just wings is that you can do this with gliding (I made one that did endless barrel rolls around 2000m or so) but the traditional "turbine" doesn't seem to work on the launch pad. The glitch is more complicated than I thought. I originally thought it came from SAS/control surface interplay.

Has nothing to do with the canards. I made a "magic turbine" out of normal wings attached to the booster. Wings generally seem to be glitched. That being said, it seems pretty obvious when someone's gunning for it.

That glitch requires a capsule and/or SAS and comes from the interplay of forces. Here, the control surfaces are inert. I am pretty sure the bug doesn't work under those circumstances; certainly all the gliders I've been firing seem to work normally, except one very specific version of the Angel. I'm fairly certain that the apparently infinitely gliding version of the Angel is glitched because the physics engine is rounding something to zero - it only works at extremely low speeds (like... 3 m/s and below). EDIT: I've taken to turning the booster backwards and using it as a cannon to fire the Angel (the normal version) into the air. Much simpler, and kinda fun. EDIT: Testing the Infinite Glide Glitch at the launch pad. It does work without a capsule or SAS, but results in a comically hovering object. I now have space junk hovering over my launch pad. EDIT: You also need a *lot* of canards without SAS. It didn't work until I put way more control surfaces on the thing than any sane person would. EDIT: Unmanned Infinite Glide glitching seems to have some pretty stable properties: they never really lose altitude, period, and they fly at their extremely slow speed. I'm guessing it really is some sort of zero in the system. My normal Angel doesn't act like that; it slows down and loses altitude. EDIT: Oh, man, you CAN create some sort of Inverse Space Kraken! I put 48 canards on a single decoupler and blasted it with the big booster, and the whole screen is shaking. The behavior is BIZZARE. EDIT: 96 canards creates an unholy monster that shakes crazily and accelerates skywards. Hmm. EDIT: It's definitely some sort of Kraken-like floating point glitch. The 96 canard version just shook itself into structural damage and is shedding canards like a dandelion. EDIT: It looks like a giant version of those stupid spinner hubcaps. The inner ring of canards looks like it's somehow spinning faster. EDIT: Has anyone else fired off unmanned magic turbines of this size before? This is some crazy stuff. EDIT: I suspect the unmanned versions of these are ultimately unstable. The twitching mass of canards I have is slowly tilting over, anyways. EDIT: Yup, it's losing altitude. So, unmanned, those who live by magic turbines die by magic turbines. EDIT: Many people are going to beat the magic turbine. It's drifted into a dive.

Flight ended. Statistics: Highest Altitude Achieved: 812m Ground Distance Covered: 207,628 There were many, many things that could have gone better here: a higher release, and one that didn't tumble the glider (killing almost all its speed, and meaning it crawled forward at slow speed) would have crushed all previous records. Still, this puts me in the 200km+ club. And the 7 hour and 14 minute flight itself is remarkable. I think I need one of those Imgur accounts for screenshots. Blurry shots won't cut it. EDIT: After seven hours, I forget how I got the stupid thing to reliably detach at any reasonable height at all. EDIT: It is, indeed, possible to build a glider which, by all appearances, has zero drag and never descends. At the moment this modified version of the Angel is drifting at an insanely slow speed (because of extremely poor separation at low altitude causing it to flutter and kill almost all its speed) but has not come down a single meter in over an hour. EDIT: I discovered a reliable way to get the Angel just above 1km in height, but that's not enough for 1000km.

I launched during the day. I flew all through the Kerbal night. And now, at dawn, the lil' bastard is still flying. EDIT: It has lost a grand total of 0.4 m/s of forward speed. The Angel has ludicrously low drag. EDIT: 6.5 hours. STILL FLYING. EDIT: 7 hours. It's still up. EDIT: Kerbol is setting on this thing for the second time. EDIT: The Angel has bizzare properties in the water. I don't think the game knows what to make of it. It randomly speeds up in the water. EDIT: I'm ending flight, as this bizzare Motorboat Angel bug isn't really 'gliding'.

It's a great day! Get off work early, and I have some new ideas to try. In the same spirit of creative thinking that brought you bounce-launching, I had a thought. The booster is a liability once it's burned out, heavy and draggy. And, there's nothing in the rules which says we <i>can't</i> stage the rockets! Now, you're thinking, but Treb, we can't stage an uncontrolled rocket! Gentlemen, that's where the creativity comes in. Design the rocket so you stage it <i>before</i> you release the booster, but it's held together by parts. That way it will boost up, and the draggy booster, once it isn't thrusting you, will fall away. Which is all simpler in theory than in practice, but I've managed to semi-reliably do it, now. EndlessWaves's rocket has an amazing lift/drag ratio, but my "Angel" superglider shames it. It has a vertical component of approximately .03 m/s, meaning it takes somewhat more than 30s of gliding to lose a single meter of height. This means the current flight is going to break 200 km despite being prematurely released really, really low. EDIT: The relationship between lift, drag, and speed for this thing means that it definitely could reach 1000 km if I could only get the bastard up to the proper height. Also, no italics? Nuts. EDIT: The sheer time-wasting aspect of an unmanned glider makes it difficult for someone to participate in your other challenge and this one at the same time. EDIT: I almost wonder if you could, if the stars were right, invoke an Inverse Space Kraken and design something so low drag that the physics engine would round it to zero. EDIT: 3 hours. 17 minutes. I have dropped 380m or so since I started.

I am testing a new version of the SilberJeb. Having worked out the dynamic soaring, bounce-off-the-atmosphere trick, I'm now working on better gliding and a more vigorous "air bounce". Or to put it another way: yes, if you can get that thing into the upper atmosphere and keep it stable on re-entry, you could top me. The thing is, it's the lobbing and re-entering that's the trick! EDIT: It's really hard to improve on 271 km, though. Also, a goof-up with a bounce-launch made the fastest ground vehicle I've ever seen. EDIT: Also while fooling around, I realized, hey, since they're unmanned, you can do multiple simultaneous launches! Attach a bunch of fuselage sections, put multiple copies of your rocket on it, and let loose! Check the attachments. EDIT: I made one that fires ten at once. It's awesome!

Flight finished. Final stats of this flight of the SilberJeb: Highest Altitude Attained: 59,421 m Ground Distance Covered: 271,062 m Highest Speed Achieved: 1,555 m/s 729 km short of 1000 km. Heh. EDIT: I shall return later... hopefully with some method of squeezing out more distance.

Believe me, I am the master of "tricky stuff to get it to point up". I invented bounce-launching, remember. As far as lack of wings goes, I'm trying to stay minimal for drag reasons. The concept of the SilberJeb is to fling it out of the atmosphere and have it skip like a stone a few times over the dense air, then glide. Depending on how well it goes here, I'll see about fiddling with more wing. EDIT: I would guesstimate that I've already passed my previous best. We'll see when it inevitably hits a mountain. EDIT: This is a reply to taekwondeal - I can't believe I had overlooked your post previously! First off, I don't know the hotkey for video capture (is there one? Or is everyone using some other capture method for video?) but if I did I would record a bounce after this current flight crashes. As far as the canards go, there is a picture of my bounce-launcher on page 4 of this thread, although it's a bit small. The front set of wings is NOT angled. The back set is very slightly angled down. There are two pairs of landing gear wheels. You want a rocket that turns very little. It basically flies sideways, drops a bit before it picks up speed/lift, and the impact with the ground ricochets it up. EDIT: 227 km. Nuts. Into a mountain again, obviously. EDIT: Current flight has been airborne for an hour now.