Bobnova

Kind of asking in the wrong place if you want to know about the inner workings of KE then, aren't you? If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it probably uses the vacuum DV calculation. The one with ISP and fuel and vehicle weight.

Knowing how to count the score tells you exactly which numbers are used. If you know which numbers are used, surely you can figure out where they come from. Think, man, think.

When you're in the hanger/VAB, it shows vacuum. How hard is it to understand that you take what KE shows in the hanger/vab and subtract what KE shows in orbit?

It's in the rules: Hanger DV, orbit DV.

There's still sandbox mode. I would like a challenge like that. No revert (or maybe one revert), and penalties for failure? Yes please! I already often play where I can't use revert, it makes it a lot more interesting. Suddenly it actually matters if you mess up.

Hmm yeah, you're right. The Turbojet behaves very strangely.

It's a bug in KE. Example of another flavor of the same bug: one of these has rather of a lot more DV than the other, but they're listed the same.

More of a KE staging miscalculation, KE is assuming that there will be no fuel left for the orange motors when they become active.

Mine isn't nearly as professional as yours, but it functions decently. Scattering a few stage commands through it will make it work with other ships too, I used something very similar to get to the Mun for the other challenge. Anyway, here's the album: Starting D/V: 5247. Orbit D/V: 834. Total D/V used: 4413. For giggles I tried your program copy/pasted too, it left me with 858 D/V remaining.

OK here's my NASA style mun mission. It's entirely scripted, nothing is calculated on the fly (excluding staging). Does hit Mun SOI and get back to kerbin and land on landing legs though! Reliably, even. Sometimes it breaks half the solar panels off on launch, don't know why, there isn't anything they can hit. This is one of the runs where it did that. May have gone slightly overboard on the screenshots, I was awfully pleased with myself. It does Science, too! lock steering to UP + R(0,0,180). lock throttle to 1. wait until time > 402627060. print "launch in ten.". wait until time > 402627065. print "launch in five.". wait until time > 402627070. stage. print "wheeee! Liftoff at " + time. wait until altitude > 7500. print "7500m gravity turn.". lock steering to UP + R(0,0,180) + R(0,-50,0). when stage:liquidfuel < 1 then stage. print "Outta fuel, staging.". wait until altitude > 20000. print "more gravity turn!". lock steering to UP + R(0,0,180) + R(0,-65,0). wait until apoapsis > 75000. print "High enough. Coasting.". lock throttle to 0. lock steering to prograde. wait until eta:apoapsis < 26. lock throttle to 1. print "Making a circle-ish out of it.". wait until periapsis > 71000. lock throttle to 0. toggle AG4. print "Good enough.". lock steering to heading 270 by 0. wait 30. set warp to 2. set target to mun. wait until time > 402628400. set warp to 1. wait until time > 402628560. set warp to 0. print "Off to Mun.". lock steering to heading 90 by 0. wait until time >402628590. lock steering to heading 90 by 0. lock throttle to 1. wait 38. lock throttle to zero. wait until altitude > 1900000. wait until altitude < 800000. toggle AG3. wait until altitude < 80000. toggle AG4. lock steering to retrograde. wait until alt:radar < 8000. toggle AG1. wait until alt:radar < 450. toggle AG2. I calculate this as 2 points, as my Mun orbit wasn't exactly stable. Unless returning from a free-return Mun trip counts as returning from Mun orbit, in which case three. I'm guessing two though. This is a lot of fun

Rocket motors only, 2220 liquidfuel units. I have a couple more ideas to try though. I want to get under 2000.

KSP isn't exactly GPU intensive, no titans needed. (edit: oh, wrong titan, I was thinking titan gpu) You can tell, if dual 280m GPUs can run it with whackjob's ships. It's just that onboard graphics on that age of laptop are really, really, really bad. If you have space for a desktop you should be able to make a pretty decent, totally KSP worthy, thing for $600-700. Less if you have a valid windows disk. That song is absolutely wonderful.

I'd like release dates that don't coincide with me being on the road with only a phone for a week.

I can see both sides. On one hand real space programs precalculate pretty much everything currently as I understand it. On the other hand, this is an automated challenge, not a "write a kOS program vaguely like NASA does it in real life" challenge. Were it my challenge I'd allow making nodes by hand, but it's not, and that's fine. I got my answer (and quickly, which I appreciate!), and while it makes things more awkward for me, I'll manage. So far I've got orbit pretty well nailed down with one craft (and a script, I seriously doubt I'll be tackling the math to go deeper. I'll be going NASA style here ), and have just accidentally escaped Kerbol SOI due to an odd bug in a script simple enough that it shouldn't have bugs. What I'm aiming for is a free return trip to Mun and back. What I've got is a lot of things in orbit, some interesting splatters, and a staging test vehicle headed for another star. Progress!

Can I, with my craft in a stable orbit, create a maneuver node by hand and then run a program that uses it? Sort of like the current comet mission I think, they lobbed a craft way the hell out there and it's been sitting for years, now it's being updated with new directions from Earth, probably including a literal maneuver node Example: 1) Run kOS program that gets to stable Kerbin orbit. 2) Manually create maneuver node to get to Mun SOI. 3) Run kOS program that uses the node from 2. Alternatively, how do you create/test nodes inside the kOS program? I can't find info on that.

I played with this a bit before leaving on a business trip, I can get to orbit and back easily, I have no clue how Y'all are doing the maneuver node testing inside kOS, my eventual entry will likely be hard coded entirely. In any event, expect an entry of sorts from me next week, and thanks for having this challenge! kOS has turned out to be a lot of fun, and I'd never have checked it out workout the challenge.

Sure does. Just in case: Can you put two intakes in the same place and double the air brought in in real life?

It suddenly occurred to me this evening that while I'd landed probes in a lot of places, and Kerbals on some, Duna was largely untouched. I landed a Kerbal there in 0.20, but it was a one-way trip. It was time to fix that. A rocket was built, untested, Science was installed, and it was launched. Bill Kerman became the pilot, as I forgot to un-draft him. Jeb's in a space station with no return ship (oops), so we won't be seeing him for a while. Here's the ship: Lot's of Science to bring home. The tech tree is maxed, but Science is fun anyway. Nice stable lander, lots of parachutes. One thing worth noting: I've never lifted anything off Duna. KE says I have the TWR, so onward we go! The launch window turned out to be perfect (random luck), I didn't take and screenshots as I hadn't planned on writing this up, and yet another launch (that works) isn't that exciting. Arriving at Duna SOI I found I was aimed straight into the planet, not for the ~15000m aerobrake the map screen said. I blame Bill, personally. While fixing that it occurred to me that I was going rather fast and my transfer stage, while long on DV, was not long on TWR. Aerobrake time! Plus I like aerobraking. Here Bill is lining up for aerobraking, we're going deep: Aimed for ~9,000m to clear the big stuff, promptly found that Aerobraking alone wasn't looking good, things were starting to look distinctly Mars Climate Orbiterish and had Bill light the nuke. Bill looked less than pleased with matters. And released the six Duna parachutes. That did the trick, and down bill went at a stately 11m/s. The transfer stage was jettisoned as it had done its duty. The landing shocks didn't appreciate the jolt much, but they held. Bill's untested ship made it! Bill was psyched. Even more so when he stepped out to look around. Rocks were collected, Science was done. I had Atmosphere and Science Bay testing at high altitude, low altitude and surface, goo at low and surface, the other sensors at surface, almost all of it brand new data. I elected to bring it home for the Greater Glory. Taking off and heading for orbit, I almost caused the End of All Things, when it tried to treat Duna like Mun/Minmus/Dres and burnt at a low angle. Here I've spent a couple minutes going straight up again to try to get headed in the right direction and am finally able to gravity turn. After this point, it all went well. Then came a long, boring, wait at 100000x for Kerbin to line up correctly, as I was down to ~1100DV remaining. Finally the window arrived, and I got Bill aimed for home. No pics, cause meh. During this time Bill EVA'd to repack the Duna chutes, just in case. Upon entering Kerbin SOI I again found myself aimed right at the dirt. While that may work in-game, I like to pretend otherwise. Plus Mountains. I aimed Bill for a ~30,000m aerobrake and deployed three of the Duna parachutes manually, for reasons unknown at this time. Aerobrake begins, fairly violently: As aerobraking continued, I was feeling nervous for some reason. Maybe because at 24,000m Bill was still going a bit fast. Suddenly: My face and Bill's face likely looked identical (other than color, anyway). It was enough of a shock that I missed the screenshot until that point, sadly. The entire bottom half of the craft fragmented, all the carefully saved science? Gone. This is exactly why I use spaceplane cockpits and put some parachutes on the cockpit itself. Bill touched down fine. Thankfully Bill had kept his Duna rocks in his pocket, so we still got some Science. All told I enjoyed it immensely, KSP is an amazing game that way. The moment it starts getting boring something happens. Had I been less shocked I'd have hit F3 to see if the parachutes deployed and tore the ship apart. It seems both unlikely, as I've deployed very similar chutes a lot of times in similar situations, and like the most likely explanation giving the current aero model. Great fun, in any even!

Edited my entry to my new entry. I like this one a lot better, I feel like it fits the Kerbal X quite well. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/58037-BSC-Kerbal-X-Start-building!?p=777305&viewfull=1#post777305

Hey I perfected (more or less) my entry, should I edit my previous entry post, make a new one, or both? It can now make Munar orbit and return to Kerbin easily, OR land on Mun and return to Munar orbit (barely, I had a pretty efficient route there/down/up and I have <50m/s of DV left), perfect! Minmus should be easy enough.

I'm working on refining mine to better match the lack of Mun land+return capabilities. I think I'm getting close, it's very Delta IV Heavy-ish.

Here's my revised entry. Kerbal X4.1 (X2 was too complicated, it was a full on Apollo style lander. X3 had too much DV, it could land on Mun and return to Kerbin). The stages are set up so you can hit 100% throttle and leave it there without hitting terminal velocity. I took the Engineer part off after testing, it's 100% stock. I left it on for the flight so I could check telemetry and so that y'all could see D-V numbers. It can make Kerbin orbit easily, make Mun orbit easily, land on Mun easily, and just barely get back into Mun orbit if you were fairly efficient about getting there and landing. Forget going back to Kerbin after landing on Mun. Minmus you probably can make it just fine. No special flying considerations to speak of. Craft file. EDIT: As a note, it can make it to Minmus, land, and return to Kerbin with >600m/s to spare. (Just tested) Also teaches the value/possibility of using four LV30s in place of a single Skipper (though I do it cause it looks cool, most of the time), plus asparagus staging, less disposable capsules, radial parachutes, docking ports (particularly useful when you land on Mun and have to refuel in orbit to come home).

Not sure if leaving the runway to stop counts or not, categorize as you see fit. It can stop though! Step1: T, full throttle, spacebar. Step2: wait for burnout. Step3: pull up, dump speed. Step4: parachutes. Step5: party. 400.6m/s

This is a fun mod. I'm enjoying it a lot! Managed to land on Inaccessible. That was a pain! The good kind, though.

I have absolutely no problem with saves being broken by updates. I start a new game every update anyway.