gm537

I have finally finished my entry for this! 'Burning' on Ions takes forever... The entry is a level 2 entry, but I went a little above because I brought 4 kerbals and 3 probes. I've got pictures linked below but the important stuff is that the weight of my ship was 2,268 tons on the launch pad. And cost 1.92 million funds. I only used KER and some Xenon tanks from Near Future Propulsion to reduce part count. (the mass fraction on these tanks is just a bit worse than a stock Xenon pancake) http://imgur.com/a/GnDGQ As you can see from the pictures the lowest Ap I got before detaching probes was 374,000 km. After probes detached I went down to 294,000 km (and the probes all had fuel to go even lower than that). You can decide which to count.

Indeed the difficulty of the mission is fairly dependent on the Apoapsis parameter. In fact it might have been a decent challenge to simply say: Lowest Apoapsis from which you return to Kerbin wins; and stick probably with requirements like bring a Kerbal and leave a probe. As for 64km/s being "very close to impossible" that depends on perspective. With ions it really isn't that bad challenging yes, but not excruciatingly difficult... the time required to actually 'burn' the 64km/s now that would be difficult. Haha

For the probes there is no requirement they stay in the initial orbit they are released in correct? I was going to deploy 3 (you know better coverage and stuff) but was going to put them into an even lower orbit. Is that fine?

It depends on how you look at it. I am doing this challenge before the Eve rocks one. I have tried Eve rocks a couple times and been pretty bad at it. This challenge is easier than that one, imo, because it requires lower thrust. You can easily make an ion based rocket to get somewhere on the order 30km/s of dV but only at thrusts of maybe .1-.2 g's.

Yep that's exactly how I understood your comment. I was saying that I had forgotten the circle thing was a rule would have inadvertently violated it; which would have stunk to enter what I believed was a fully compliant rocket only to get caught out by I rule I missed, completely my fault for sure, but frustrating all the same. So I was just glad for the reminder before it got to that.

Thanks for the reminder about this rule. I was definitely going to break it (cause I had missed it... pays to read). Well I guess I will need to make a compact launcher. How heavy is your lander btw? That is a heck of a rocket that is needed to lift it.

This challenge... Whew it is quite the challenge... I thought I had it, but no... Tested the launcher that I thought would be adequate given that it had 11.6km/s dV but nope when the wiki says 11.2 it means ATMOSPHERE or it must since my 10.2 ended up roughly a 1000m/s short of orbit.

For me clicking the 0.25 download link is simply not working... It goes to a screen with various error messages and doesn't download... Has anyone else had this problem?

I've been trying to do something very similar to this challenge myself for quite a while. A Sea Level Eve launch vehicle is notably difficult. I recently built one with a lot of KW rocketry parts but after landing at 250m altitude it couldn't do the deed (was probably about 150m/s of high thrust dV short, I had a nuke stage for return that ended up falling back down to Eve with 3+km/s dV; not a perfect design...) Given that my game seems to have developed a bug in .24.2 I will give this a go just as soon as .25 is released. EDIT: A question for Jeb's Level with no wings/ parachutes/ control surfaces does this mean for use at Kerbin too? Or only in Eve's SOI? (All the other level are by definition only within EVE's SOI so I just am not sure)

Thanks for the rules clarification and encouragement. I've definitely gotten far enough to say "I think it's possible" but also that "It's freakishly hard and quite possibly up to a bit of luck"... Probably gonna let it go for today but will keep trying tomorrow after work.

Hey I have question for landing on Mun how is Kerbin Periapsis counted? I am trying a mission which just lands on the Mun but pointing and thrusting. But once you land of course your periapsis is effectively the Mun's. Is that how the scoring would work?

Yeah man no worries I understand your view point I was just giving some feedback since you had asked. haha All in all a pretty good challenge man. Maybe once this one has played out do one for another body?

Also as far as challenge balance recommendations you may want to put divide by 4 on manned missions rule or something like that so that we can see some of those. Also the "stable Orbit around Duna" is pretty easy, you can just aerobrake and then raise Periapsis, it takes at most 100 m/s of d-V so that bonus probably should only be like 2,500 points or something. Have you thought about adding bonuses for Ike orbits though?

Here is my challenge entry. It was kinda improvised because when I first planned the mission I was just gonna land but then I saw Mesklin's score and decided to go a bit further. Note that on the last picture I am literally dead out of fuel... talk about tight margins. Haha My final score is: 12348/4 (return to Kerbin) - 5,000 (No Xenon) - 10,000 (No solid fuel) - 10,000 (Stable Duna orbit) - 7,500 (No parachutes) = -29,413. http://imgur.com/a/4FRcV#0 (Also I am apparently terrible at the internet because I cannot for the life of me remember how to put an imgur album so you actually see it in the post... grr...)

Hey so seems like a lot of folks are mentioning video. There's no requirement of that right? I'm just doing good old screen shots. I'm also doing a stock run (except for KER because... security blanket haha) cause it seemed like fun!

So for the "5,000 funds per 1km from KSC" are we allowed to construct our own recovery vehicles? Aka if I land an asteroid say 100km from the space center but I think I can bring it back for less then the 5,000 per km can I count that in my score? (I would say no 'bonus' for getting it all the way back, just no penalty either.) Given that you say multiple launches are allowed it seems reasonable to assume so.

What about KER? Or other information mods? I am pretty big fan of it and would want to use it.

This looks like a very enjoyable challenge! I shall give it a go!

Haha yep missed that requirement. And indeed that is FAR-less. (how do you make the link not say the unpleasant looking link name?) https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzw1y5VWJ9wVWGJSM0VGTE9pdFk/edit?usp=sharing

Here is my entry the "Timmy Tiny". VAB KER shot says mass of 0.798 and since KER doesn't count physics-less panel that gives a launch mass of 0.803 tons.

Yeah design optimizing is definitely fun. I feel like this challenge is genuinely teaching me things about KSP that I didn't know before, that in trying to build a cost effective lifter I am really learning / discovering how to do it alongside others. Often challenges seem to end up being: Who already knows how to do thing xyz the best?

I think that would actually limit designs and creativity in this challenge. My rocket for example works with a pretty specific payload size as will most people's especially in the Ultralight category since the score is sensitive to mass change of payload and the engines don't come in scaleable sizes (or costs). So far no one has spammed / abused the whole 'torque in payload' thing so if it stays that way I say leave it open to creative designs, but that's my opinion and obviously I am not the challenge creator so we'll leave it for him to decide.

First of all NOTHING in that Scott Manley video has anything to do with "oxidizer", it's all about monopropellant. Second: In order for this to be a challenge I think there need to be a few more rules. Like what defines 'far'? Is escaping the solar system 'further' than landing and return from Duna? Am I allowed to use infinite fuel like Manley does in much of that video? I think you get the drift. Otherwise it is a cool challenge.

Okay I now have a lifter for thw Heavy category. Nothing too crazy yet. 357666.1 for the lifter and 70066.0 for the launcher (where does that .1 come from???) with a final payload mass of 180.47 tons. Gives a Kr/ton of 1593. Note even though the final stage has engines no resources have been used in getting to orbit.

So I made some alterations to my ultra-light lifter shown earlier. And here is what I got. I show some images flying so you can get an idea of the ascent path. This give a lifter cost of 5,006 and a payload of 5.67. aka 882.9 Kr/ton to orbit. There you go sub 1,000 and sub 900 in the same craft.