Dave Kerbin

I've been waiting for something like this. Does it have any destructive reaction with atmospheric drag when inflated, the way that deployed solar arrays do?

For the Mun with return to Kerbin I would say 2. The delta-v required to return from the Mun is very, very low. I've done a low mass Apollo style Mun landing, and even with everything stripped off (the command module was little more then a fuel tank and a docking port, and I ditched RCS to just fly it straight in) I still didn't really save mass over a direct land and return. When the cost of getting proper orbit and interception for docking are added I think it may have done worse. This is helped/compounded by the fixed selection of fuel tanks - you can't carry an arbitrary amount of fuel, so you're going to have a little left over in the lander anyway.

Have you considered a hard mode - after landing on the Mun, the Kerbal must return safely to Kerbin using only what was brought to the surface.

Thanks, this helped me a lot. Getting out into solar orbit meant I could I could treat it like I would a transfer within Kerbin's own orbit (Mun/Minmus) which I do have more experience in. I was in a lower orbit (PE 8km) so it cost a lot more Delta-v to escape, but I ended up with very similar numbers and a similar picture. The only change I made was that I made my inclination change at the ascending node instead of the descending one, which meant a longer wait (almost 2 years to reach the other side) but cut about 200m/s from the cost (had I done it at the descending node the cost was about the same as you got). My final delta-v was: 247 m/s - Leave Eeloo from 30x8km orbit 550 m/s - Adjust inclination at ascending node (after 2 year wait) 517 m/s - Brake for Dres encounter (after half year wait) And then only 2 years until the Dres encounter. The mk1 lander can sure has a lot of snacks.

I'd also go the solar route. What specifically do you need RCS for at the moment, maybe we can suggest an alternative way to accomplish the same thing. You don't need to do docking to go to the Mun (in fact it seems to be a little easier to use a Mun lander that returns directly to Kerbin instead of docking Apollo style).

I don't play with any mods and after my first landing on Eeloo I've found myself in a bit of a bind. I don't have a lot of experience with interplanetary transfers and up until now what I've done is use Launch Window Planner to give me an idea of when there will be a good planetary alignment for transfer and the approximate ejection/insertion delta-v I should be expecting. Without mods the rest of the information doesn't seem to be useful to me and I just plot a maneuver freehand knowing. Sometimes I think I end up with something close to what the transfer the planner intended while other times the travel time would indicate I ended up with something else. My problem comes with me trying to get from Eeloo down to Dres. After quick saving I've warped all the way to year 5, day 29 but I can't seem to get a transfer lined up - I got one that looked sort of ok, but it used lots of delta-v and would have taken me through the surface of Eeloo. I do think I know what my problem is though - my orbit around Eeloo is backwards and I'm on an inclined orbit. Apart from mods are there any tips or tricks to plot an interplanetary transfer by hand, or alternatively even some tips or tricks to adjust my orbital inclination without a point of reference (in Kerbin orbit I can just target the Mun since it lies at 0 degrees).

Someone was suggesting a challenge for this a while ago and yes milking the Mun was the obvious solution. I started thinking of the best path to do it, which I think was doing mostly low altitude missions (very short time wise) to grab 165 science in about 30 game minutes so that you can unlock solar panels and the two basic science instruments (Basic Rocketry->Survivability->Science Tech->Electrics). Then you just start launching identical ships on a course for the Mun, switching between launches and munar insertion burns of those in orbit as needed to get a tight line of ships. Once enough are on their way you can switch back and milk a little more science from Kerbin's biomes since it will take a few hours for the congo line to reach the Mun. Once that happens they all land in different Mun biomes and beam back their data. Except for the missions to land on Kerbin biomes we don't need parachutes or any return fuel, since that would only waste time when we can just hire more kerbals. This is also why I think getting solar panels before going to the Mun is important, since we can skip the Mun return entirely making the initial transit the main time sink. So overall it could probably be done in about 7 hours and change. In that thread I did suggest the idea of a hard mode challenge which makes things a bit more interesting by banning any communications equipment (all samples must be returned). A hard-hard mode could be only using the original 3 kerbals with respawn disabled, so you can't just spam ships but really need to decide where you want to go to get the most science. Unfortunately I think it would still come down to a lot of trips to the Mun, since going elseswhere takes vastly more time then the return.

You may also have had time warp on. How quickly did you crash into Minmus? If it took less then 2 minutes to go from orbit to the surface you where definitely still in time warp and needed to slow down before you could control your ship.

Yeah, mathmatically an ion engine just can't land on Tylo, the ion engine's mass alone is far too much for it to overcome Tylo's gravity. And that's before you add the xenon tank or solar panels or any payload. Unfortunately I don't think there is a lot of room for competitive entries. There are only 2 good ways to post a new high score. The first is with a Mk.55 Radial on Dres, Eeeloo or Ike which has a very small chance of being able to break the record. The second is a landing on Tylo for which there are a handful of competitive options, though it will really be about who does the skipper (which is probably the best balance for points and reasonable weight) and then the mainsail which will have to be heavier then my Kerbin lander. Once the mainsail has been done properly on Tylo that pretty much finishes it - to post anything higher you would need to build a Gilly lander in the 2500 ton range just to inch by the Tylo score.

You'll probably burn more then 3 tons, even with my dumb luck to get the burn spot on it still went through 15 tons of fuel in the 30 second panic burn. Earlier testing where I managed a bit of a safety margin resulted in 18 tons of burned fuel. My biggest reason for doing it in an atmosphere was that it lets you determine the velocity you will be traveling when you reach a specific altitude ahead of time (not the sea level altitude but the true radar altitude above the ground). Unless you can find a really flat area with a known altitude (maybe the salt 'sea' on Minmus would work) you're faced with too many real time calculations to determine exactly when you need to start burning if both the altitude and velocity keep changing in relation to each other. In an atmosphere you hit terminal velocity and stay there, so you can simply plot your acceleration curve ahead of time and know the exact height above the ground where you need to start burning so velocity and height hit zero at about the same time.

Ok, as I mentioned back on page 1 certain engines are better simply based on the score assigned to them. From a meta-game perspective the Mainsail in particular is almost twice as good as the skipper in terms of its theoretical maximum score. The bodies are also biased but not nearly as much. Ignoring the atmosphere (which is more of a piloting and planning challenge) and going with a mathematically 'perfect' craft the two stand out bodies for best score are Tylo and Eve. Half of the remaining bodies are roughly equal and a second group (Bop, Vall, Dres, Ike, Mun) are about 10% less effective then the main group for maximum scoring, though most are relatively easy to land on. The only body that seems specifically bad for scoring is Laythe. Now unlike the engines, where the best engine was about 60 times better then the worst, Tylo is only about twice as effective as Laythe, making it a much tighter field. Anyway I wasn't going to travel far and I made some quick calculations to come up with the weight I wanted to put on a single mailsail to land on Kerbin. I didn't quite max out the weight since I'm flying without any mods and so a little margin of error was needed. I went through 3 designs and surprisingly getting a landing at the correct speed was pretty easy flying by the math (resulting in a successful orbit to ground flight on the first attempt). The hard part was building landing legs that didn't immediately tip over the ship after it touched down. Since even the large landing gear isn't big enough to reach past a mailsail I had to extend them with girders. My first design didn't bother with real lander legs at all, I just used those Modular Girder Adapters to give the girders 'feet' to rest on. This design never even left the ground as the whole structure would constantly wiggle on the launchpad. The second design replaced the feet with proper landing gear and the first few low altitude flight tests worked fairly well - the powered landing went well almost everytime (the problems came when I forgot a step) but the lander would tip over, and weighing over 100 tons, smash into the ground and explode. The third design changed the fuel tank placement in order to drastically lower the landers center of gravity. I replaced fuel tanks in the center with smaller T800 tanks attached to each of the lander leg girders. This design was fairly robust though even with 12 landing legs in total they struggled to hold up the weight of the ship and sunk into the ground. Retracting the legs while on the ground was impossible, since as soon as the weight of the craft was shifted it would break off whichever leg was unfortunate enough to be on the side it was tilted to, usually resulting in a complete collapse and lots of explosions. Getting it up into orbit was the next challenge. I build lean ships so an orbiter that weighed about 150 tons was out of my league. After a few attempts I just stuck a big booster under it and hooks up fuel lines so that the orbiters own tanks could get it up. I added a docking port to the top so that it could be refueled back to its original mass in orbit. The ship on the left is one of the refuelers, these where all deorbited before landing. The four T800 tanks that have solar panels on the lander are fuel for deorbiting, and get ejected after even though they'll still be more then half full. That's because their mass is not accounted for in the landing calculations. After fueling the tanks are locked so that only the deorbit tanks can be used. We make a little burn to line up a nice grassy landing site. We should come down somewhere between the coast on the left and those mountains after the atmosphere slows us down. The extra weight is ejected and final landing prep is made: Fuel tanks needed for the landing are unlocked (we will burn from the center tanks only), engine is locked and thrust set, alignment is made for a vertical touchdown. The next critical point in the landing will be made from the cockpit view. I have an action group to switch on the engine (at the preset throttle) and lower the landing legs when the radar altitude reachs the correct point. When the needle hits 1500m from the actual ground everything will be started. With a single continous burn we slow down. Our T/W isn't a lot more then 1 (though it goes up as we burn fuel) so the ground is still coming up very fast. We touch down with a small bounce. There was a good deal of lateral velocity but the legs held and stop wobbling in a few seconds. They are compressed to the maximum on the side we where moving into, but the mission report shows no breakage. The landing used a little less fuel then in testing - I was a fraction later in engaging the engine and that ate up my entire safety margin (in testing there was a small margin where thrust could be reduced half a second before touch down to finely set speed, in this landing we just barely made it). Final score: Kerbin 20, Mass 124.99, Engine 50 (124.99 x 20) / (50 x 1) = 49.996

After an engine has been activated through staging (space), is it possible to right click and shutdown the engine, and then somehow get it setup in staging again so that when space is pressed it will be active again? I've tried just by creating new staging steps and dragging the engine into them, but it doesn't seem to work. Action groups might provide a work around though I'm wondering if it is possible to do with staging.

Since there has been no word on solid boosters (which could allow a divide by zero score) here is a basic run of the third option for high scoring landing. After some low altitude testing to see that the design worked I put on a big booster (and it wasn't enough to get into stable orbit, so I attached some solid boosters for the second attempt) and managed a landing on the first attempt. 3 Kerbals Landing on Kerbin starting from 70km x 70km orbit No solid boosters on lander No aerodynamic parts No parachutes Landed mass 3.5t One Place-Anywhere 7 Linear RCS Port Ship is launched into 70km orbit, last launch stage is ejected and the main lander engine is fired up. About 7 minutes of burn time is required to line up the landing path. Lots of space to ensure a landing on relatively flat terrain, no chance of a water landing. Getting orientation correct Landing systems activated And that is how a kerbal lands

I've come back to find my Apollo style lander was a field of debris. I also have a vessel tip over and explode, but that was because I engaged 2x warp to help a kerbal walk faster and apparently the lander didn't like that. Here though is the best one. My sample return system was able to return my science stuff safely after orbit. My kerbal had gotten out of his pod and was recovered after collecting a soil sample. I then used the observatory to go back to the remaining inert vessels at the landing site (I wasn't sure at that time if clicking recover from the observatory would get you the science). And this happened.

Is the mass 35 tons after landing or while still in orbit? Does the mean it scores (35 x 6) / (4 x 15) = 3.5 points

Is that worded correctly? If solid boosters are not factored in then it seems they can provide a lot of thrust for 'free' without reducing your final score. Yes it is very difficult to land with only solid fuel boosters (though it has been done), but it is not nearly as difficult to land using mostly solid boosters - perform all but the final braking using a series of solid boosters. Should solid boosters be disallowed unless a specific value can be determined? There was also the question about "course of your landing". Maybe you should clarify that you begin from a stable orbit (any transit stages can be ejected here without cost) and then you begin your landing with whatever engines are attached to the ship at that time. So the score is Final Craft Mass times World Score divided by Orbital Engine Score. As far as game theory goes could someone do a sanity check on my assumption: Since the weight of the engine (if we don't eject it) is counted as payload for scoring we can use its raw thrust as a linear measurement of how much total payload it could theoretically land (in order to slow down it must be able to overcome the acceleration due to gravity, so T/W must be greater then 1 at some point during the process). With that number we can work out a point per ton value for each engine, with higher values being worse (since our final payload score will be divide by it). The best engine by far seems to be the Mainsail which can score 60 times more then the two worst (LV-1 and PB-Ion). Anyway, I'll see if I can find a third option for a high scoring lander that doesn't need to exploit the engine score table.

Interesting. Have you considered a 'Hard Mode' for the minimum time without using transmissions (Communotron 16, Communotron 88-88 and Comms DTS-M1 parts are banned).

I wondering in which locations time continues to pass (the simulation is running). Obviously when you are focused on a spacecraft time can pass from 0x (pause menu displayed) to 100000x depending on user input. Time also passes at 1x when you are in the tracking station which is made obvious by the clock. However I've recently encountered some evidence that suggests time is passing when you are in either the VAB or the R&D building, which means the simulation of all the ships in space is still moving forward. I had been under the impression that time was frozen while you designed spaceships. Can anyone confirm if the simulation is meant to keep running while you are in the VAB/SPH/R&D/Astronaut buildings?

Well technically any rover has to make it to the surface somehow, so by definition it is a lander too. And a lander isn't defined by its legs, it can just as easily land on girders or fuel tanks or even the engine if it's really gentle. Personally I would consider it to have been a rover the entire time, or alternatively it is a rover at the time the score is actually being tallied. However that does raise another question. If a piece seperates from a lander, and that piece matches the SMART requirements too, does it count? Some specifics scenarios I can think of are: 1. A Pathfinder like craft deploys a SMART rover after landing, but the lander still retains all the parts needed to count as SMART lander. (Sojourner +5, Carl Sagan Memorial Station +5) 2. A manned lander leaves behind a SMART rover or lander. For example the Apollo missions left behind a SMART lander in the form of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package. A kerbal might go a step farther and put it on wheels. 3. A larger SMART lander deploys multiple smaller SMART landers, either after touching down (perhaps using some ballistic cannon like a decoupler to fling them) or spreading them during final descent. In my opinion #3 opens a lot of difficulty. I would clarify the rules for SMART rovers and landers to add this: A SMART rover/lander is only scored if it has moved at least 2.5km away from any other SMART rover/lander. So in scenario #1 the rover could drive far enough away from the base station to count, in #2 it immediately counts, and in #3 the only way to make them count is if it lands and then flings the sub-landers more then 2.5km one at a time. Optionally the distance could be increased up to 9km without interfering with the other rules, though it would be more work to drive rovers that far.

Is there any limit to the number of point scoring SMART rovers/landers, the way there is for satellites?

I don't even know because I've never hit a part count that gave me any trouble on the launchpad. Then again I specifically don't do giant single launch pancake ships. I raise up big ships/stations in parts and assemble them in orbit.

I've been considering posting some ideas on science, but I think you may have partially beaten me to the punch with the announcement of a 'large' science lab in .23 My only question/suggestion is, will this be like the other science parts, which seems to work all by itself, or will this be a part that requires a kerbal to run (either a kerbal gets inside, or a kerbal activates it in a simular way to how kerbals can fix wheels by right clicking while EVA). Personally I'd really like to see some science that requires real kerbals to be present beyond the basic EVA/sample reports you get at the very beginning of the game. A big, heavy science lab that must be 'deployed' (think about those NASA station and mars base designs that use inflatable or rubber connected expanding sections). Once deployed science can be done but like solar panels it is too fragile to go through the atmosphere in a deployed state. For extra kick it could be like the antenna used to be, deploy once and no retraction. If it could only be deployed once I think it would help make a case for space stations and permanent surface bases - you deploy a space station with a big heavy lab in Jool orbit, then bring up samples from its moons to be examined and the data transmitted back to Kerbin.

Mission 15 - Phase 2 Eve Unmanned Exploration Phase 2 of the Eve mission has actually been played out inbetween parts of mission 19 and the prep work for mission 20, due to the time sensitivity of all 3 missions. In phase 2 the Eve probe is on approach where we revisit it briefly on day 31 of its mission. What we need to do at this point is alter its course ever so slightly so that instead of crashing straight into Eve we skim the atmosphere at about 60km to help slow down. With a tiny nudge - 1.1m/s - we adjust the approach and get a PE of 59km. We'll be back in a week when it reaches Eve. 7 days later we arrive at Eve's SOI. Eve is easily spotted due to its unique purple color but despite Gilly being close by the tiny moon proves difficult to spot. After 4 hours we are as close as we're going to get to Gilly before the landing probe and we go hunting for it again. Finally Gilly is spotted, a tiny point of sparkling light reflected as the oddly shaped rock tumbles through space. As we approach we observe that Eve appears to have suffered extension damage from past impacts. On the right an impact crater even larger then Kerbin's great gulf crater can be seen. Eve Explorer 1 brakes for everything it is worth. We've never done this maneuver before and need to get it right or there won't be enough fuel left to correct. At the same time we want to ensure we don't cut into the fuel that will be needed for the Gilly probe. Finally we get an orbit around Eve which quickly shrinks as the atmosphere continues to slow us down. Smaller and smaller it gets - if the AP drops below a certain point it will create a feedback loop where the probe will never leave the upper atmosphere, it will just keep tugging down the AP ahead of it until it crashes. The probe finally emerges from the atmosphere with an AP just under 4000km, a 2.5 hour orbit. Excluding the Gilly probe's tank we have 38L of fuel left. Another 3L of fuel are burned at the AP to raise the PE above the atmosphere, stablizing the probes orbit. We take some scientific readings and then prepare the first descent probe for launch. The solid boosters should give the probe about a 100m/s kick, so a maneuver node of that magnitude is used to try and measure out the approximate launch point. Without much data on Eve's atmosphere, and frankly poor predictions even on Kerbin, it's hard to plan the exact landing zone. Our orbit means our best insertion point is aimed right at Eve's dawn terminator, with the planets current orientation favoring a water landing. As we come up on the release point that huge crater is once again visible. And it is away with 30 seconds to the burn point. The descent probe begins autonomous function and corrects its oriention before igniting the 2 tiny solid boosters that will take it to Eve. As we descend key readings are stored, to be transmitted once we have landed and can use the solar cells to recharge. I hope we haven't damaged the Science Jr by taking a reading up here.... The chute opens and we descend into the dawn - our backwards orbit means we go from day to dawn, and upon landing the planet will carry us right back into day. That atmosphere really is thick down here. Not the most dignified landing but we are safely floating in one of Eve's ocean. The solar design is working as it was intended to, so that even in the sideways position at least one solar panel will have a period of several hours each day to recharge the battery. In this case we got lucky and landed it almost 90 degrees to the path of the sun, allowing us to recharge throughout the day (one panel faces the sun in the morning and one in the afternoon). Since it has no wheels or thusters, but can take readings at any time and transmit during the day, the probe is designated the first base on Eve. At this point mission control spends some time back at Kerbin, landing the gravity probe and working on the Duna prep. When we return several hours later Eve has rotated giving us access to a new landing zone which looks to be a sizable continent. As the orbiting mothership approachs the drop point it rolls over so that the decoupler fires toward rather then away from Eve (ideally it would actually align to push the probe retrograde, but due to the timing I would prefer to keep the probe roughly aligned the way it will need to be for the deorbit burn. The descent starts out looking good, but as we start to see through the thick atmosphere some big trouble appears - an inland sea! As we pass over the sea the heavy drag kicks in, threatening to shorten our approach and send us into the sea. We start taking readings and just hope for the best. Fortunately things do turn out ok - at 30km the worst of the drag is over and we are passing safely over the far shore toward what looks to be land. As before we descend into the dawn but this time we've actually shot a little farther - at 10km the batteries stop charging as we pass into the pre-dawn side of the terminator, the sun obscured by the horizon. You can see how we are straddling the line in this panorama. We land safely in a purple desert where the probe will patiently wait for dawn so it can transmit its findings back to Kerbin. And this is the end of phase 2. Phase 3 of the Eve exploration will begin once the Duna mission is assembled and launched. It will consist of the ship remaining in orbit setting up a transfer to Gilly and then abandoning the interplantery drive module to land. If there is enough fuel, and if it can land upright, it will be able to make 1 or more short hops to study other areas of Gilly.

Mission 19 Gravity Survey This is the final mission before the Duna mission. It also intercuts a bit with the Eve mission, I had to switch back and forth a few times to ensure some time critical maneuvers where done. In this mission Kerbal scientists want to get some real world data for the last two pieces of technology fitted on the Eve mission that have not received any field testing - the nuclear engines and the brand new GRAVMAX Negative Gravioli Detector that was fitted to the science pods at the last minute. So I designed a simple nuclear powered orbital probe outfitted with 16 GRAVMAX instruments to collect data about Kerbin and nearby objects and return it to KSC. The ship is a simple design, over engineered a bit on fuel (>3000dv). Because it is light it is sent up on the Mun launcher platform. I've shortened the launchers orbiter stage and added deorbiting boosters to it, it really just needs to get the probe into a stable orbit above the atmosphere so the nuclear engine can be safely lit up. The probe core is chosen specifically because of its abundance of space for mounting GRAVMAX sensors. The launch is at night into a polar orbit. The data starts coming in even before a stable orbit is achieved, with information on the Kerbin Highlands, Mountains, Shore, Water and Ice Caps. Over the north pole we get ready to stabilize orbit and eject the last launch stage so we can fire up our nuclear engine. We eject the last booster stage and send it back into a suborbital trajectory and then after a few system tests, including gravity scans of Kerbin's Tundra, we pop off the lead shielding from the nuclear engine. As we come down the other side of Kerbin we record data on the gravity over Kerbin's grasslands before plotting a new course. Neither the Mun or Minmus are lined up for a straight intercept so we're going to push far out from Kerbin to just beyond its SOI where we can take some measurements of Kerbin's gravity in relation to the sun. It will take 2 days of travel. After measurements we make a burn to get back into Kerbin's SOI, which will take a day and a half. After getting back another burn is used to help flatten us out and prepare for the next course change. Our next target is the Mun where we enter orbit and take gravity readings over a number of craters. The number of sensors with storage left is rapidly decreasing so the Mun charting is cut short, we still want to take 1 or 2 readings from Minmus. The approach from deep space to the Mun has taken over 4 days, putting mission time at 8 days so far. We exit the Mun's orbit into a wide Kerbin orbit where we can adjust our inclination to match Minmus and set a course for it. It will take 15 hours to reach our burn point and another 4 days to reach Minmus from the wide sweeping path we are taking. On approach we make some minor course adjustments to lower our PE to just 24km and flatten our ejection angle for when we pass back out of Minmus SOI. 13 days into the mission and we are passing very close to Bob's Minmus landing site, very convient as we will be able to match our gravity readings to his missions earlier observations. After passing back out of Minmus SOI we begin planning our return to Kerbin. It will be 5 days before our return burn and other 4 before we reach Kerbin itself. In the mean time mission control switches over to the Eve probe for a final course correction to set its PE for aerobraking. The probe will reach Eve's SOI in 7 days. With that in mind we set our 5 day burn to take the gravity probe to just 70km over Kerbin - this way it is still in stable orbit should we be unable to return to it, but only a small push will be needed to get into a descent. After getting things sorted on Eve we return with 2 days left before the probes 70km pass. A small burn is all that is needed to lower it into a landing vector. The probe detaches from the service stage, dropping the nuclear engine deep in the ocean north of the crater gulf while the probe safely parachutes for a recovery. Total science returned is 804.

No, you can't split a transmission between antennas. However if you have more then one science item and enough power then 2 antennas can be used to transmit 2 different experiments at the same time (or 3 and so on).