PakledHostage

Well, I did some (gasp!) math... Starting with these assumptions: 1. That the problem can be approximated as a 2D problem. 2. That you are in Eve orbit at UT = 185 days 3. That your starting Eve Pe is 102 km 4. That your starting Eve Ap is 5065 km 5. That you have 1500 m/s delta-V available 6. That the orbital characteristics of Kerbin and Eve given on the Wiki are valid for the version of the game you're playing 7. That you have enough fuel left over after performing these burns to trim your orbit, including any plane change manoeuvres that may be required. Given assumption 3 and 4, your speed at Eve Pe should be 4230 m/s. Given assumption 2 and 6, Kerbin should be about 183 degrees ahead of Eve at your current UT If you wait 47 days in Eve orbit, Kerbin will then be 47.4 degrees ahead of Eve. Starting at that time (UT = 232 days), boost into an orbit about Kerbol having Pe = Eve's orbital radius, Ap = 18.8 million km. An object in this orbit will cross Kerbin's orbit in 20 days. If you do your burn right (i.e. such that the transfer orbit's longitude of periapsis is the same as Eve's true anomaly at the time of the burn), then your spacecraft will encounter Kerbin as it crosses Kerbin's orbit. You’re going to be going pretty quick when you encounter Kerbin and you’re crossing its orbit at a large angle, so you’re going to have to be very precise. An object in orbit about Kerbol with Pe = 9.5 million km and Ap = 18.8 million km has a speed of 12.62 km/sec at periapsis. Eve has a speed of 11.025 km/sec at the time you start your transfer. You therefore need a speed of 1.597 km/sec at Eve's SOI in the prograde direction. You'd have to be pretty lucky for the geometry to work out just right, but you might be able to fiddle the manoeuvre nodes to achieve the correct transfer orbit using the fuel you've got available if you start your burn some time on UT = 232 days. If you are lucky enough to be able to do your transfer burn at Eve Pe (i.e. 102 km), you will only need to boost from 4230 m/s to 4756 m/s to reach the required escape velocity. That's only just over 500 m/s and well within your delta-V budget. Even if you're only able to get close to burning at Eve Pe, it should be possible to trim your orbit for a Kerbin encounter/aerobraking using only the fuel you have remaining after your transfer burn if you are careful. No guarantees that any of the above will work for you because I don't know if I got the assumptions right, and I might have made a mistake somewhere in my haste to finish this on my (now extended) lunch break... It is worth a shot though. If it works, it will get your boys home in about 67 days. I am, however, pretty sure it will work out fine if the assumptions are correct. I used the same method to plan my Proof of concept Duna Cycler trajectory. Godspeed, Kermen!

Therein lays the problem with communications over the internet... You're making assumptions and getting all mad, but perhaps you’re misunderstanding the point people are trying to make? There's more to KSP's "math" than just delta-v and TWRs. Mathematics is a tool for understanding the game's physics. Like it or not, many of those who are fortunate enough to have sufficient mathematical training to investigate, learn about and do something useful with the game's physics have achieved something notable. I stand by my assertion that doing so is a greater achievement than not using math, just as designing your own spacecraft is a bigger achievement than using one of the stock craft. It is just a different kind of creativity. Perhaps this is an extreme example, but consider the work that went into developing MechJeb. Certainly that effort stands above the achievement of eyeballing a trip to Duna?

It happened before my time, but for those of you who witnessed it, what was it like? Was it "stare at the TV in silent awe", or was it "shouting at the TV in excitement"? Judging from pictures of people watching from the beach, it was a mix of emotions. But do any of you care to share your own memories? Even watching the replays sends shivers down my spine...

I just had a look at that chart. It looks promising but I think it would be better if angles were replaced with times. It assumes a circular equatorial starting orbit anyway, why not time the de-orbit burn off an overflight of KSC? That's how I do it when I use my own re-entry prediction program. For example, assuming: 1. alterbaron's calculations take Kerbin's rotation into account 2. You are orbiting prograde (i.e. in the same direction as Kerbin's rotation) 3. you are in a circular equatorial starting orbit at 100 km altitude Ésurface is the rate (in degrees per second) that your spacecraft is moving across Kerbin’s surface. The only limitation that I can foresee with using alterbaron's plot is that it doesn't account for differences in spacecraft drag. High drag spacecraft will obviously come down in less distance than low drag spacecraft, although the effect will be less significant for steeper re-entries.

Ahhh, I see you're using the oxford comma... Are you a hipster?

IchigoJam, I need your help over here! Wanna jump in?

A game that is a physics sandbox. While there are plenty of physical effects that aren't implemented realistically, it remains an analogue of reality where you can go as far down the rabbit hole as you like. At the highest levels, it is a very complicated thing.

I don't think we're talking about "6 times 7 is ...uhhh... crap, where's Deep Thought when you need it". What we're talking about would probably more correctly be described as physics. I (and I am sure many others) admire those who invest the time to plan their flights in the spirit of real-world space programs. If you choose to belittle me for that, please provide a convincing argument why doing your own math ISN'T a higher level of difficulty and a greater achievement than eyeballing it or using some mod that does the work for you.

Welcome to the community!

I am sorry you were offended by my comments, but please show me where I said that I choose to take on the additional challenge of doing the math myself? I do a bit of math, but I mostly just use the nodes.

So you did a bodge job... How long would it have taken to get to Eve if you'd done a direct transfer? The way I see it, you can let someone else do the math for you (MechJeb, Protractor, etc), you can quasi-randomly drift around until you bump into something solid, or you can do the math yourself. Whether a player chooses to accept the challenge or not is their choice, but doing the math yourself is a higher level of difficulty and represents a greater achievement when you pull it off.

Care to elaborate? In my experience with this sub-forum, people tend to take you more seriously if you provide a reference when making extraordinary or controversial claims...

I don't want to pick nits, but I thought I should point out that you're out by an order of magnitude. 1% of the speed of light is almost 3000 km/second.

Sorry. Possibly too obscure a pop culture reference for our international audience...

They fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia"...

No data? What about the mass? Compare the black hole that K^2 referenced to Cygnus X-1. How do we know that Sagittarius-A* is about 300 000 times as massive as Cygnus X-1? Both are very good black hole candidates. We have a good idea of how much mass is within each of their respective event horizons. That is data about what is inside, isn't it? How did it get out?

Again not an über-technical book, but Michael Collins' Carrying the Fire is a very good read.

Something to be aware of is that civilian GPS is restricted to certain altitudes and speeds, depending on the standard that the hardware was designed to. The hardware will be designed to either COCOM export restriction requirements or to the Waasenaar Arrangement requirements. The COCOM export restrictions have been replaced by the Waasenaar Arrangement. Waasenaar imposes different limitations than COCOM. Under the COCOM rules, you won't get any GPS fixes above 18 000 m if you're travelling faster than 515 m/s. You also won't get any fixes above 100 000 m no matter how fast you're moving. Under the Waasenaar rules, the altitude restriction has been dropped but velocity is still restricted to 600 m/s, no matter what the altitude.

Using the crash site coordinates given in the article that Kryten linked to (46° 3.633' N, 62° 59.717' E), I plotted the crash location and some other info in Google Earth. Helps put things into perspective:

While I agree that KSP's aero model is badly broken, it is well understood by the KSP community. Have a look at the Mini-challenge: max altitude with this supplied spacecraft thread that I mentioned above. The aerodynamic drag was determined by Closette, Kosmo-not, et al in that thread as follows: In-game aerodynamic drag equation: where: m is the instantaneous total spacecraft mass Cd is the 'mass-weighted average of all the parts maximum_drag factors' The 'mass-weighted average of all the parts maximum_drag factors' is defined as: where: n is the number of individual components in the stack mj are the individual masses of each of the spacecraft components (from the VAB) Cdj are the individual drag coefficients of the spacecraft components (from the VAB) Kerbin\'s atmospheric density (rho in the drag equation above) can be approximated as: where: Altitude is in metres.

I made another attempt myself this morning. Clearly I still have some work to do to be competitive, but this result should move me up a couple of places in the rankings: I appreciate the effort you are making, Tarmenius, to host this challenge. It is shaping up to be a good one. If tavert is able to complete his calculations, this challenge could stand alongside Closette's Mini-challenge: max altitude with this supplied spacecraft challenge as one of the best ever. Also, I agree with Gigaplex777 that it would be nice to have some indication in the results about who used MechJeb's autopilot, MechJeb's information panels and who flew vanilla. Not because the results should be segregated for any reason, but because it would result in an "at a glance" summary of the relative performance of MechJeb vs. hand flying. Clearly, MechJeb's autopilot has improved a lot since a year ago when I hosted the "Optimal Ascent Profile for this spacecraft" challenge. That alone is notable.

Does LEO count as not "on Earth"? Here's the ISS going over downtown Vancouver one evening while Chris Hadfield was still aboard as commander. It would have been a better picture if there was water in the pool, but you take what you can get: Edit: Here's another one that I took a week or so ago. The full moon on the evening of June 22nd, 2013 taken with a 300 mm lens. It is probably a bit underexposed (1/125 sec, f/8, ISO 100), but I am still learning. I also tried to get out to photograph Comet Panstarrs this past spring, but we didn't have any clear nights during the few days that I was visible in my part of the world. Hopefully I'll have better luck with Comet Ison this coming autumn.

That's not how I interpret it. Maybe it does need clarification? Tarmenius' post reads: To me that says you only need a Pe above 74 km. It says nothing about minimum Ap. All it says is that you may have an Ap greater than 75 km. Obviously Ap must be greater than Pe which, as previously stated, must be greater than 74 km. It doesn't say it is mandatory to have an Ap greater than 75 km, however.

Thanks, KhaosCorp, as always! It also works without modifying the part.cfg file if you just place the "FigaroReceiver" directory into the KSP\Parts directory and the "KerbalGPS.dll" plugin into the KSP\Plugins directory. This is how I did it when I tested the mod for compatibility with v0.20 of the game. I will be updating the installation instructions, part.cfg file and plugin when v0.21 is released. No sense doing it now, because v0.21 will probably be out within a couple of weeks.

Had another go at it this evening. Here are the screenshots: