PakledHostage

We'll have to agree to disagree then. I don't regard robotics to be a gimmick. I have no particular affinity or aversion to Kerbals, but building out and colonizing the Kerbolar system isn't what turns my crank. No bother though. You do you and I'll do me.

Nice. Now go have yourself a donut. Edit: I should add that I agree wholeheartedly with @regex. I stopped playing KSP1 back in about 2014 because I lost interest in it. KSP2 has me back playing and I enjoy it, warts and all.

Speak for yourself. I'd rather fly robotic missions than crewed ones.

What about breaking wind parts?

Yes, this is important. And if what's written above about the countdown only being correct when full throttle and it not taking into account throttle reductions is repeatable, then that needs to be fixed too. I haven't used the manoeuvre nodes very much yet, but they have seemed inaccurate when I have. That'd explain why.

I don't think that's a fair generalization. I haven't played KSP since about 2014. Not one single hour. But I am back playing KSP2 now that KSP2 is out. Sure it's a bit frustrating to have to deal with some bugs, but I'm not going to throw my toys out of the pram. My kids and I will work around the bugs and have some fun while we wait for patches. So some of us here who are advocating to just "make lemonade" out of KSP2' s lemons weren't among the cohort you mention.

Are you talking about KSP2 or MSFS2020? I'll admit that I'm in the "everything will be fine" camp on KSP2, but I suspect I have lower expectations than a lot of people here. I play it maybe an hour a week with my 4 and 8 year old kids. I am also hosting a challenge over in the Challenges sub forum. I hope the game succeeds, and I am not too fussed about the $50 I risked on it (I've spent a lot more than that on MSFS2020). Sure it is disappointing in its current state, but how is much of what's written on these forums going to help in that regard?

There's other fun stuff that can be done now while we wait for the next patch (or series of patches)... If I might make a shameless plug for my challenge over in the Challenges subforum: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/213524-minimum-delta-v-to-lko/

Excellent. Thanks for submitting entries @Klapaucius and @Lt_Duckweed! I will update the leader-board. Edit: I should add that I am really impressed by the precision of some of the flying that I am seeing in these entries. Especially @Draradech's nailing 70.2 km x 70.7 km in a burn worthy of an IRL orbital insertion.

I suspect what's happening is that we're taking advantage of the LV-T45 "Swivel" engine's higher ISP at higher altitudes by lobbing it up, then coasting and then burning a second time to circularize. And in light of how quickly the delta-V remaining numbers are going up, I expect that there's a bit of room yet for improvement...

Good job @Speeding Mullet! I will add you to the leader-board. And to your point about more being possible, I tried about 10 times (revert to launch is one's friend on a challenge like this...) using a hybrid of your technique and @Draradech's technique and I was able to pull off orbit with 710 m/s remaining. I never would have thought it possible this time yesterday, but there's still room for improvement because my orbit was higher and more elliptical than it needed to be: and

Awesome! Thank you. I will try that myself later.

Congratulations @Draradech! That's going to be pretty tough to beat! I will add you to the leader-board. (Can you maybe film a video showing your technique? That's better than I've ever seen anyone do.) Edit: I should add that there may yet be some room for improvement over Draradech's result. This challenge is a variation of the Goddard problem, so variation in thrust profile during the ascent may yield a few m/s improvement.

This is a challenge that I enjoyed hosting years ago in the early days of KSP1 and I figured I'd dust it off now again because it's something we can do while we wait for the first round of bug fixes in KSP2: Build the following rocket and launch it into a stable orbit around Krerbin (i.e. PE above 70 km) using the minimum delta-V possible. The rocket contains: MK1 Tin Can capsule MK16 Chute TD12 Decoupler between the tin can and fuel tanks FL-T800 fuel tanks (qty 2) LV-T45 Swivel engine Launch the rocket into orbit and capture a screenshot showing the PE, AP and delta-V remaining. Don't forget to include the chute and decoupler in your build, because it makes a big difference to the delta-V remaining (and your kerbal's chances of getting home). Attempts must be hand-flown and cannot use MechJeb or other means of assistance and/or automation. I will try and maintain a leader-board on here once a day. Here's my entry - 384 m/s remaining (it should be easy to beat because my AP is too high): Note: You can get PE and AP to display at the same time by right clicking on them. Leader-Board =========== 1. Bingmao (70.1 km x 70.2 km, 792 m/s remaining) 2. Lt_duckweed (70.3 km x 70.9 km, 781 m/s remaining) 3. AdamKSP (70.5 km x 71.9 km, 739 m/s remaining) 4. pakledhostage (71.2 km x 73.7 km, 710 m/s remaining) 5. speeding mullet (70.1 km x 81.4 km, 642 remaining) 6. draradech (70.2 km x 70.7 km, 527 m/s remaining) 7. Little 908 (70.0 km x 74.3 km, 431 m/s remaining) 8. klapaucius (79.0 km x 80.2 km, 402 m/s remaining)

I played it and I enjoyed it. I flew my minimal Delta-V design (8.6 tonne, 3328 m/s two stage rocket) and reached a 80 km ,x 110 km LKO with 200 m/s to spare. Seems I can still fly after years away from KSP. My kids and I will bring my Kerbal "John Glenn" home to Kerbin tomorrow some time.

I started playing KSP1 in 2011. It was free then. It didn't have Kerbol or a moon or Minmus or any other planets. (As I recall, even Minmus was a development tool that was left in accidentally for one release and then it stuck.) Some time later, they started selling licenses for $6. I bought 3 of them because I thought the game was worth more than 6 bucks. I bought KSP2 today. I'm underwhelmed, but I didn't buy it for me. I bought it for my kids. They will enjoy it, I can play it with them, and maybe over the years it will be improved as my kids abilities to undertake its challenges grow along with it. Who knows? I thought it was worth the risk.

I too worry that KSP2 won't be much more than KSP1 with a bit of eye candy thrown in to encourage people to buy it, but I don't care. I will buy it. I started playing KSP at version 0.9 in 2011 and I stuck with it until the addition of manoeuvre nodes in about version 0.16 several years later took the challenge out of it for me. I had a lot of fun with it during that time, even though it was far from "finished". Now I've got kids and I look forward to playing KSP2 with them. They will enjoy it, even if it's just KSP1 with a bit of eye candy thrown on top.

I think my brother-in-law may be a ChatGPT instance?

Level horizon, nice use of negative space ahead of the vehicle, reasonably steady hand, etc. Good job! Be sure to thank her for us. Also really interesting to see how much down range velocity has to be cancelled out in the boost back burn. Screech to a halt then lob them up and back for the ultimate 3 point shot... Awesome!

I found this in an Ars Technica article:

That never gets old. I watched it with my four year old son. He's like "meh". I'm like "dude!?"

What happens if you take into account that the moon's orbit is elliptical? It's angular velocity isn't constant throughout the month, how significant is the effect on the results?

Atmospheric refraction does significantly affect celestial navigation, particularly when the object being sighted is close to the horizon. It sounds like K2's observations, at the very least, were close to the horizon? I don't know how much that would affect these results though, because both objects are outside the atmosphere (as opposed to measuring angles of objects from the horizon)? But maybe atmospheric refraction does need to be considered in some way? (I tried something similar to this real world experiment in KSP some years ago, by observing a transit of Eve across Kerbol from near Kerbin's north and south poles, but I couldn't get the numbers to work out. My explanation to myself was that the error was because of how the telescope mod "magnified" the view, by moving the point of view closer rather than actually magnifying the view. That explanation was easier on my ego than that my math skills suck... :-))

Forgive me, but was that not all a bit underwhelming? I was totally subscribed to the hype beforehand and I stayed up to watch it launch live ast night, but now as I reflect on it in the sober light of day, I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't be better to spend the money on a robotic mission elsewhere in the solar system? That rocket could easily send a large payload to Uranus and/or Neptune or a lander to a Jovian or Saturnian moon. Instead of groundbreaking planetary science (and amazing photos of places we've only seen from Voyager 2 as it whipped by), we get some grainy images of the inside of a capsule and over-exposed images of a gibbous Earth. So many robotic missions to the moon have provided much better photos. I mean sure, if this is the first step towards actually returning to the moon to stay for longer periods of time, then it is probably worthwhile... But the sceptic in me expects the program to be cancelled before we get that far. What we're probably going to get out of all of this is an extended Apollo 8 type mission with some (in the words of Chuck Yeager) "spam in a can" along for the ride. In the face of limited budgets, I'd love to see these awesome rockets do some truly awesome science instead.

Three is enough. Extra signals allow for an estimate of the error (by comparing solutions from the different sets of three), and also allow for fine tuning of the GPS receiver's internal clock (by tweaking the time to minimize the error). The computation of position using three distances from three known points is called trilateration. It is how my old Kerbal GPS mod (Figaro) does it. In that mod, just like in the real GPS system, extra combinations of three are used to estimate the error. (A relevant link for anyone who's interested: https://gisgeography.com/trilateration-triangulation-gps/)