Yakky

Wow, just saw that this mission was anointed a ToTM for July... what an honor! Thought I'd add a few more hints to help ease some of the potential difficulties. Don't read them if you want the maximum difficulty in this challenge. Let me know if there are other challenging areas I should address, or if you encounter things that look like bugs.

Yes, I've achieved orbit several times. Do about a 70 degree gravity turn right after clearing the tower and then don't touch the controls until you need to stage. Over-fiddling with the controls always seems to do me in. Use care in staging if you are not aligned exactly prograde, since the ejected boosters may collide. If you cartwheel after staging, you can still recover and make orbit with a little quick work and careful restorative burns. The air should be thinning rapidly after a cartwheel or two, allowing the remaining rocket motors to have plenty of control authority relative to the awful aerodynamics. After all, Jeb was never afraid of a little atmospheric tumbling! There is actually plenty of fuel for a sub-optimal launch trajectory (within reason), so you can bias your ascent to be more vertical (to reduce the staging cartwheel tendency) at the expense of then having to a bigger lateral burn later on. Hope this helps. Let me know if you're still having trouble.

Felt like we needed more humorous missions, so I came up with this: Jeb's lost in space and presumed dead, so we've built a giant 300-ton statue in his memory. We just need you to take it to Duna for us. Land it upright on the special pedestal we've built at Duna's north pole for maximum points, or anywhere nearby for partial credit. The statue is waiting for you at KSC on top of a ridiculously large launch vehicle. It flies like a pig, but with the gentle touch of a skilled pilot (or perhaps the repeated touch of quicksave/quickload), it will reach low Kerbin orbit with fuel to spare. And if you don't get the launch quite right... well, who doesn't love a massive explosion with parts scattered everywhere? After you get the statue into Kerbin orbit, you'll have a million funds to build a Duna interplanetary tug and all the landing apparatus you'll need to get it safely down at Duna. (The statue was thoughtfully festooned with lots of docking ports to allow you to attach things to it easily.) Build and attach whatever you think you'll need, but be frugal to earn max bonus points. This mission will test all your Kerbal skills: piloting, spacecraft design, docking, re-entry, precision landing, and efficiency. It's a serious challenge. Building in extra performance margins to your spacecraft (extra fuel, extra maneuverability, extra solar panels, extra snacks...) will make your job easier and more fun. Ways you can fail: break the statue, land it farther than a reasonable hike from Duna's north pole, or run out of money. Mission here: https://kerbalx.com/missions/61 I have play-tested it, but it's complex with 72 nodes, so I may have missed something. Please let me know if anything is broken. I don't have a huge amount of time these days but will attempt to fix things when I can.

Setting aside all kinds of gratuitous sandbox mode mayhem, in career mode (hard settings, with perma-death) I once forced a Kerbal to abandon ship in order to make room for another Kerbal who had to be rescued as part of a contract. They attempted to hang onto an external ladder during re-entry and we attempted to keep them mostly rotated away from the worst of the flames. We still haven't been able to completely clean their charred, disembodied fingers off the hatch exterior.

I saw a tangentially related post to this bug, but it wasn't exactly the same, so I'll risk a fresh post here: Just tried Mission Builder for the first time. Had my spacecraft on the lauchpad and realized I needed to modify it, so I did the usual "Recover Vessel" from the top of the screen (i.e. I did NOT revert -- I am used to playing Hard Mode where you don't have revert option anyway). Recovery dumped me into the usual Space Center view, but -- and here is the problem -- all facilities were locked. Could not get back to the launch pad, could not enter VAB, etc. Only choice is to restart the game. This can't be right. Edit: I was playing the very first canned mission where you have to build a sounding rocket that goes to 5000m. More Edit: So eventually I selected "Restart Mission," at which point the game just hung with the usual corner loading graphic spinning endlessly on a black screen. So something's broken. Mac OS FWIW. The tangentially related post (which dealt with revert rather than recover) is this one:

Update to my earlier post. Using "-force-opengl" (with a single dash rather than double dash) did not work either. Still got a hang at "Loading Asset Bundle Definitions". However, I found a suggestion on another thread to try copying the entire KSP folder to the root level of the HDD and launch from there. That did work for me.

The --force-opengl command trick does not work for me under OSX High Sierra on a late 2013 MacBook Pro. Cannot figure out how to attach my system log and ksp log to this forum (per Badie's request)... happy to do so if anyone can tell me how. Didn't want to bombard the forum with all the raw text.

[edit... big necro... apologies!] I don't have a screen shot, but I once I got a contract to redirect a Class E asteroid into orbit around Gilly. It was worth several million funds IIRC, on Hard Mode to boot where the payouts are all cut significantly. I accepted it because I love the challenge (and payout!) of really hard contracts... would much rather stew over how to achieve something clever then sit around grinding out a bunch of tedious cheap contracts. Anyway, I found a Class E asteroid that was incoming on a reasonably close trajectory to Kerbin, and I steered it into a double-flyby of Kerbin and the Mun that essentially reversed its direction relative to Kerbin. This caused it to slow down considerably relative to the Sun after it left the Kerbin SOI, which dropped it into an orbit near Eve. From there it was just some minor course correction work (and a few orbits waiting for a sufficiently good encounter). But the double flyby saved me several hundred delta-V, which matters a lot when you are trying to drive a Class E asteroid around. I think the total delta-V I actually spent in the form of rocket fuel was under 100. Screen grab of my double flyby reversal maneuver that made it all come together. After that contract, I had enough funds to unlock the rest of the space center upgrades and do pretty much anything, so I declared the game "won" and stopped playing for awhile.

Another interesting one. It was a mega-funds contract to get a Class E asteroid into orbit around Gilly (Eve moon). I nudged the asteroid into a two-body flyby of Kerbin and the Mun that pretty much reversed its direction relative to Kerbin, which slowed it considerably relative to the Sun and brought it very close to Eve. I probably spent an hour tweaking this maneuver node to get it just right.

Not all that crazy, but a pretty picture. This was a low-dV capture into Ike orbit that was facilitated by a double flyby.

Two highly negative dV margin situations worth noting, both in Hard career mode a year or more ago. And not surprisingly, both happened when I was playing without a dV calculator (which I sometimes do to make the gameplay more seat-of-the-pants and exciting). First situation: My Duna surface return vehicle was underpowered and didn't have enough dV to reach orbit. Jeb (we will assume it was Jeb; who else?) had to abandon ship in the upper atmosphere at sub-orbital velocity and use his EVA pack to finish getting himself into orbit. This was in the days before EVA Kerbals had the navball, so the real trick was coordinating the rendezvous with his driverless orbital vehicle that couldn't maneuver because there was no way to command it without Jeb aboard. Ultimately Jeb got there and it all worked out, but there was a lot of tedious orbiting trying to line up the rendezvous on very limited fuel and no nav ball. The other, more dramatic one was getting Valentina home from Duna, in an earlier version of KSP before heat damage (more on this later). She thought she had enough gas for a quick detour to the nail salon on Ike on the way home, but, surprise, she didn't. Fuel pooped out midway through the Duna/Ike departure burn. She had to bail out and finish the departure burn back to Kerbin with her EVA pack and then navigate interplanetary space for a year or so with only the company of her spacesuit. Worse, I had no funds to launch a lifeboat to come get her... I had burned up all my funds on her Duna mission. So she valiantly plunged directly into Kerbin's atmosphere (pre- heat damage) and then used the helmet-first landing trick to survive hitting the ground. Against all odds she got home alive, toting a fair amount of science, and earned me enough mission success funds to keep going.

Because KSP.

It was just commentary from the peanut gallery. Would love to see someone do something along these lines, though!

Nice! Added to leaderboard. But... why air inlets on an Eve lander?

The Cow that Jumped Over the Mun Some time ago, in what I consider to be one of the best KSP missions of all time, a user named Phredd Pewter sent a giant cow named Bessie to the Mun. I'm not sure if Bessie ever successfully landed there, but she certainly got close. I can't think of a more appropriate entry for this challenge. (Repost of Phredd's Imgur album below.)

Re-entry is tough, especially when it's at high speed with a very large craft. This is a challenge to see how large and fast of a spacecraft you can successfully navigate through the terrors of atmospheric re-entry to a successful landing! It's also a challenge designed to encourage big spectacular explosions and cool orange glows. The total kinetic energy of a moving object is proportional to m * v^2. Your score in this challenge is your peak re-entry speed in km/sec, squared, times the mass of your craft in tons (or biggest single piece of your craft) after it comes to a stop on the ground. That's it. The Fine Print: 1. Passive braking systems only. No engines after you enter the atmosphere. Heat shields, air brakes, parachutes, winged gliders, and lithobraking are all OK. Using engines (or Hyperedit, or any other technique) to accelerate your craft up to speed in space is also just fine, but everything gets switched off before hitting the atmosphere. 2. Stock parts only. We will have separate divisions for stock physics and FAR. 3. Any (stock) planetary body with atmosphere and a landable surface is fine. 4. Pics or it doesn't count. Failure pics are also encouraged if they are spectacular or entertaining. 5. KSP version 1.0.5. 6. Multi-orbit aerobraking doesn't count if it uses engines between atmospheric passes. Or put differently, your score is measured from the highest speed after you've shut down your engines for the final time. Standings: Stock: 1. Foxster: 1042.4 (50.953 tons, 4.523 km/sec) 2. 3. FAR: 1. Yakky: 223.715. (22.194 tons, 3.1749 km/sec) 2. 3. My sample entry (and the inspiration for this challenge): I landed a pretty heavy lander on Eve the other day. Peak re-entry speed was 3.1749 km/sec (might have been higher but that is what I captured in a screen grab), and mass after landing was 22.194 tons. Total score = [mass] * [speed] * [speed] = 223.715. Re-entry screenshot: After landing:

Nice job, can I suggest a couple tweaks that might get you even better in stock? (1) Launch with all three engines and then cut the center one at around 350 m/s. You want to get up to speed off the pad as quickly as possible. (2) Aim for an even lower initial apoapsis, maybe 65km like I did (in FAR). Air drag is so negligible at 65km that you will more than make up for it with the added Oberth Effect benefit. I'd be curious to see if those would allow you to do even better...

I hand-flew the craft in FAR to a 180x182km orbit with 145 LF remaining. The basic strategy was to do a shallow ascent to 65k apoapsis at nearly orbital speed (to get maximum Oberth Effect contribution). I temporarily cut the main engine when the dynamic pressure got too high and then restarted it later. After reaching 65km apoapsis, I pushed apoapsis to 181.5km (to allow a little extra for drag losses since 65km is still within the atmosphere), then circularized. Imgur album below shows progress and describes the ascent profile in more detail.

I successfully completed a million-dollar (OK, million-fund) contract to land a large wheeled base on Eve, playing career mode on Hard difficulty settings with FAR (no quicksaves). Contract requirements were to have room for 8 Kerbals, be staffed by three scientists, have a science lab, have 1500 units of monopropellant, and be supported on wheels. It was one of the most complex vehicles I've ever built: very asymmetric, launched vertically but entering Eve's atmosphere sideways to present a larger cross-section for aerobraking. It used nine heat shields and a large number of thermal radiators to deal with the heat of entering Eve's atmosphere. Might have been a bit over-designed, but I'd never sent a vehicle into Eve's atmosphere in 1.0.5 so didn't really know what to expect in terms of heating or braking. I didn't beta-test it or anything, just designed it very robustly and went for it. And it worked! Love it when that happens. Anyway, pics below.

In case Aethon's post was not clear enough... are you orbiting in the right direction? You could be 180 degrees off and still "polar"...

My entry for simplest clock: Go outside and use the VAB as a sundial. Define 1:00 to be when the shadow extends all the way to the western mountains (sunrise). When the shadow extends to the Mk 1 Pod Memorial on the west side, it's approximately 2:00. When it extends to the closest VAB tank on the east side of the VAB, it's approximately 3:00. And when it extends all the way to the water (sunset), it's approximately 4:00. (You can add a constant offset to get the time zone of your choice. I leave it as an exercise to calculate the proper offset to match official KSC time.) This clock has zero parts and is guaranteed to never speed up or slow down. Because it has no parts, I have no assembly photos or craft files to submit. A similar but slightly flawed zero-part clock can also be built using the flagpole. Use the horizons and the outer edges of the paving circle around it as the hour markers, although at times near sunrise the VAB shadow will consume the flagpole shadow.

The responses above about not hauling a bunch of dead mass are basically right. However, in the spirit of trying to answer your question the way you intended it, here are the things I would try. Not sure if they will be able to get you 1k dV but they should at least be good for a few hundred. 1. You've chosen a very heavy cockpit, which is basically dead weight. Do you need a 4-seater? Try replacing the cockpit with some fuel and a smaller cockpit. That will get your mass fraction up a little. 2. Can you delete the 5th engine entirely and still have enough atmospheric performance? More eliminated mass = slightly higher mass fraction. 3. Don't go with auto-switching to closed cycle on your Rapier engines. Use manual switching in order to milk every last m/s out of the air breathing side of the engines. Play with your ascent profiles to try to hit at least 1400 m/s, ideally more, before you switch to closed cycle. 4. Carefully optimize how much liquid fuel vs. oxidizer you have so that you aren't lugging excess liquid fuel after you get out of the atmosphere. 5. Use small landing gear. That will save you more than half a ton of dead mass. 6. Drain the monopropellant out of your cockpit since it doesn't look like it's needed. 7. Failing all else, consider ion engines to boost to Minmus encounter after you reach orbit. Tedious, but very high dV. Bring along a good book to read, and save a little rocket fuel for the Minmus landing. Hope these help. Other than ion engines, I doubt they will get you a full 1 km/sec, however.

Well, maybe not the "only way", but definitely the most efficient way. It is always most efficient to do your burn as low as possible in the gravity well when you are moving fastest. This is the Oberth Effect. Consequently, short repeated burns near periapsis are the way to go when using low-TWR craft. The price you pay is that it's that more tedious to complete a multi-lap burn than a single high-thrust burn. Roughly speaking, I think your estimate of 1:30 burn time per lap is a reasonable one, although other people will have their own views. Your burn efficiency is a function of orbital velocity, so one way to judge how far out to extend your burns is to note how your speed changes (when coasting) as you approach periapsis, and decide for yourself how much inefficiency you can tolerate. To a first approximation, the Oberth Effect says that if you are traveling only 90% as fast (for example) as at periapsis, burning at that point is only 90% as efficient as would be a burn at periapsis. But there's another inefficiency as well: assuming you are using maneuver nodes and pointing at them during your entire burn, your maneuver noed won't always be aligned with your prograde marker. This means you have to add in the cosine losses from burning in a direction that is not totally aligned with your prograde direction all the time. This obviously gets more severe the farther away you get from periapsis. If you want to use repeated short periapsis burns for a Mun/Minmus encounter, you need to plan how many orbital laps this process is going to take you, and orient your apoapsis to take that into account. This adds to the complexity and tedium, but it isn't difficult as long as you don't mind a little math.

I landed on Vall yesterday with 0.1 units of fuel remaining. It was a bumpy, skidding kind of landing but nothing broke. Career mode, Hard difficulty settings. While still in orbit debating whether to go for it, Kerbal Engineer had told me I had 43 seconds of fuel remaining vs. 39 needed for a pure suicide burn. And the thrust-to-weight ratio for the lander wasn't all that great. That's the most BadS thing I've attempted in a while.

I don't believe there's a Nerv engine limitation. See if either of the following help: (1) Are you sure you connected the ducts in the right sequence and not backward? First click is source tank, second click is destination. (2) I've occasionally had weird bugs with fuel ducts in unusual symmetry situations, such as one tank feeding many that feed back into one, etc. Sometimes, but not always, these appear to be fixable by detaching and reattaching the fuel tanks (not just the ducts). Might give that a shot to see if it helps you. Good luck. Wow... severely ninja'ed. Got distracted by something else for awhile and bam!