Fastest small step for a Kerbal

[noorm]

Think of the cost! How will those poor kerbal eat when all the money goes into monster rockets?

I propose an Anti-rocket protest... let's meet in front of the VAB!

[Mister Dilsby]

Think of the cost! How will those poor kerbal eat when all the money goes into monster rockets?

I propose an Anti-rocket protest... let's meet in front of the VAB!

They protested in my saveworld when I used up all the xenon in the atmosphere.

[Foxster]

Let them eat snacks.

[Starhawk]

Eve landing in 6d, 04:29:14.

New ship:

http://i.imgur.com/dxiEtkt.jpg

Beautiful entry, Foxster. I love that ship! How much delta-v did she pack? Did you use asparagus?

Happy landings!

[Foxster]

Beautiful entry, Foxster. I love that ship! How much delta-v did she pack? Did you use asparagus?

Happy landings!

40,241dV on the pad. It had a few hundred left on the lifter by a 500K orbit then 34,339dV is available from the nukes alone.

Used asparagus for the lifter and another lot on the transfer stage. I tried running all the engines, including the nukes, at liftoff but it didn't add anything. The ISP of nukes in the atmos aint great.

I think I got lucky on the planetary alignment. I've been looking for another to see if I can shave even more off as I did fall asleep (really!) during the last run. I overshot my rendezvous and spent my dV reserves correcting that. No luck finding another good alignment yet though that would let me shoot for 5 days.

[Foxster]

Here is the prettified and slightly improved 40,349dV version:

[Kelderek]

Kelderek's Speedy Evey Run:

Direct flight to Eve in 9d 4h 18m

Vessel Info:

I did not use any nuclear or ion engines, the max ISP engine I had was 390.

Mass = ~3800t

Parts = ~480

Stages = 24

Total DV = ~19.9km/s

Mods Used:

MechJeb*, KER, NavHud

* I used the autopilot on MJ for the early part of the launch, and switched it off once my ship was pointed in the right direction. I was lazy and wanted to make a sandwich and MJ bought me a couple minutes to do that. Once I was in the upper atmosphere and pointed at the sun (which is mainly where I aimed for most of the flight), I switched the autopilot off.

Notes:

* Once I had the encounter with Eve, I had to do a ton of manual steering to make sure that I kept the Eve periapsis as small as possible. At the high speed I was going it fluctuated up and down very fast and it was hard to get it to hold steady, but it was pretty close to the target marker. I burned until I had about 500 DV remaining and then time warped until I arrived at Eve's SOI. I ended up at the south pole and used a parachute to land.

* It took me a couple tries to get the right phase angle. I think I ended up around -8.8 degrees.

I hope I have enough screenshots.

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[Norcalplanner]

The Kerbal Administration for Big Overpowered Orbital Machines (KABOOM) is proud to announce their newest ship, the Joolbuster.

Jeb piloted the craft from Kerbin to a low Joolian orbit in 82 days, 2 hours, and 7 minutes!

Stock except for MechJeb. Full info is in the captions for the pictures. Enjoy.

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Edited March 31, 2015 by Norcalplanner

[Foxster]

Kelderek's Speedy Evey Run:

Direct flight to Eve in 9d 4h 18m

Vessel Info:

I did not use any nuclear or ion engines, the max ISP engine I had was 390.

Mass = ~3800t

Parts = ~480

Stages = 24

Total DV = ~19.9km/s

Mods Used:

MechJeb*, KER, NavHud

* I used the autopilot on MJ for the early part of the launch, and switched it off once my ship was pointed in the right direction. I was lazy and wanted to make a sandwich and MJ bought me a couple minutes to do that. Once I was in the upper atmosphere and pointed at the sun (which is mainly where I aimed for most of the flight), I switched the autopilot off.

Notes:

* Once I had the encounter with Eve, I had to do a ton of manual steering to make sure that I kept the Eve periapsis as small as possible. At the high speed I was going it fluctuated up and down very fast and it was hard to get it to hold steady, but it was pretty close to the target marker. I burned until I had about 500 DV remaining and then time warped until I arrived at Eve's SOI. I ended up at the south pole and used a parachute to land.

* It took me a couple tries to get the right phase angle. I think I ended up around -8.8 degrees.

Excellent rocket run, Kelderek. Nice looking ship. I make that the fastest rocket-powered Eve run so far.

- - - Updated - - -

The Kerbal Administration for Overpowered Orbital Machines (KABOOM) is proud to announce their newest ship, the Joolbuster.

Jeb piloted the craft from Kerbin to a low Joolian orbit in 82 days, 2 hours, and 7 minutes!

Stock except for MechJeb. Full info is in the captions for the pictures. Enjoy.

Epic mission, Norcalplanner! That's the fastest Jool run. Edited March 29, 2015 by Foxster

[Kelderek]

Kelderek's Speedy Duna run:

Direct flight to Duna: 16d 3h 35m

Vessel Info:

I did not use nuclear or ion engines, my highest ISP engine was 390.

Mass = 4691t

Parts = 722

Delta-V = 20km/s

Mods used:

MechJeb, KER, NavHUD

Notes:

* My phase angle was roughly +15 degrees

* I set my Duna periapsis at about 2.5km which was enough to aerobrake and apparently the path I took kept me clear of mountains

* My lander tipped over on its side, but I was able to get in and out using the EVA RCS to plant my flag.

* The first two big stages are separated by 9 stack decouplers which required some careful throttle control to keep the ship from blowing up when I staged them. I did not use asparagus for those stages to make the separation safer.

* The core of this ship was the same as my Eve entry, but I modified the bigger stages to get a little more DV. I could probably beat my Eve time if I tried this ship for that run.

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[Foxster]

Kelderek's Speedy Duna run:

Direct flight to Duna: 16d 3h 35m

Vessel Info:

I did not use nuclear or ion engines, my highest ISP engine was 390.

Mass = 4691t

Parts = 722

Delta-V = 20km/s

Mods used:

MechJeb, KER, NavHUD

Notes:

* My phase angle was roughly +15 degrees

* I set my Duna periapsis at about 2.5km which was enough to aerobrake and apparently the path I took kept me clear of mountains

* My lander tipped over on its side, but I was able to get in and out using the EVA RCS to plant my flag.

* The first two big stages are separated by 9 stack decouplers which required some careful throttle control to keep the ship from blowing up when I staged them. I did not use asparagus for those stages to make the separation safer.

* The core of this ship was the same as my Eve entry, but I modified the bigger stages to get a little more DV. I could probably beat my Eve time if I tried this ship for that run.

Nice job. That's easily the fastest rocket run to Duna.

[Foxster]

Jool in 64d, 05:04:59...

The "Hochzeitstorte 4" casting a giant shadow as it lifts off for Jool...

Starting the transfer burn with the last of the lifter...

Hoping for about 63-65 days...

Coming in really fast for aerobraking...

...and we have a lovely orbit...

After a bit of orbit tuning to get close to 200km/200km...

Frowig likes the view but wonders how the hell he will get home on 3652dV!

[PLAD]

There was a speed run to the Mun challenge long ago, I believe my entry from that meets the rules for this challenge. We had to get back, too. My time from launch to flag out on Mun: 43 minutes 33 seconds. All stock except for Mechjeb. I did it in KSP 0.22, back before you whippersnappers had these new-fangled high-TWR rockets, by gum!

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Scott Manley

in 32 minutes and there and back in 58 minutes, but he didn't EVA on Mun. Someone might be able to beat 30 minutes with the new parts?

[Foxster]

There was a speed run to the Mun challenge long ago, I believe my entry from that meets the rules for this challenge. We had to get back, too. My time from launch to flag out on Mun: 43 minutes 33 seconds. All stock except for Mechjeb. I did it in KSP 0.22, back before you whippersnappers had these new-fangled high-TWR rockets, by gum!

Just so that all is fair I think I need to ask for that to be re-done with 0.90.

Scott Manley

in 32 minutes and there and back in 58 minutes, but he didn't EVA on Mun. Someone might be able to beat 30 minutes with the new parts?

I have a feeling he used infinite fuel though. No?

[Foxster]

Uh, oh...

[Starhawk]

Uh, oh...

That's the funniest thing I've seen all day.

Happy landings!

edit: That was before I read the devnotes.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Starhawk

[Foxster]

Finally just had to give ions a go to make the run to Jool quicker...

60kdV on the pad...

Transfer stages have nukes, then ions, then a final rocket stage...

=================================================================

Boy is this tedious. Not much fun. At all. However my craft is getting close to 0.02% the speed of light!

But we are getting there...

Finished the transit burn - finally!

By luck it worked out really well. There's just 198m/s left on the ions. Then I've got a little rocket stage with decent TWR that has 2558m/s, that will be for Pe aerobraking adjustment and final orbit establishment.

Lined up for aerobraking...

Ouch, hot, hot...

A pretty good first orbit...

...and with a little orbital tidying we are there in 45d 03:18:59...

I really think I'm done with Jool now. Sure, a lighter craft with multiple ion stages (how the hell do you make those work?) would be "quicker" but the burn time is just sooooooo long that as it is now I keep falling asleep and missing staging! So over to someone else with more patience than me.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Foxster

[PLAD]

Foxster, that 60kdv ship is epic! So is the whole mission. I dread to ask how much real-world time it took to use up the ions.

OK, I did a new Mun run using 0.90 and those nice new motors. A Mun run is much easier than a planet run since the ships can be smaller- a total dV of more than about 25K is pointless because you will not have time to use it up. High acceleration is more important, my 14m/s^2 (average) ship coasting 10 minutes at 9400m/s makes for the same trip time as a ship that accelerates/decelerates at 10m/s^2 all the way and reaches a peak v of 10600m/s - a savings of 2400m/s. And the aiming is much easier on a Mun run since you can see your target the whole way! I like the mission drama though. Every second counts.

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33 minutes and 51 seconds?

[Foxster]

Foxster, that 60kdv ship is epic! So is the whole mission. I dread to ask how much real-world time it took to use up the ions.

OK, I did a new Mun run using 0.90 and those nice new motors. A Mun run is much easier than a planet run since the ships can be smaller- a total dV of more than about 25K is pointless because you will not have time to use it up. High acceleration is more important, my 14m/s^2 (average) ship coasting 10 minutes at 9400m/s makes for the same trip time as a ship that accelerates/decelerates at 10m/s^2 all the way and reaches a peak v of 10600m/s - a savings of 2400m/s. And the aiming is much easier on a Mun run since you can see your target the whole way! I like the mission drama though. Every second counts.

33 minutes and 51 seconds?

Nice job! That's gotta be one of the fastest stock no-alt-f12 runs to the Mun ever. Top of the board for you.

[PLAD]

Woohoo! Now I wanted to try a planet and Moho looked good. I used my Mun ship with its relatively small 22649m/s, but a pork-chop plotter found a great path.

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10 days, 14 hours, 2 minutes, Earth time. In Kerbal time it's 42 days 2h:2m.

Funny thing, when I was about halfway through the departure burn the path crossed an Eve encounter for a couple seconds, 9 days out. One of the tanks almost hit it. Hmmm...

Edited April 4, 2015 by PLAD

[Foxster]

Good going again! Another record.

Just so I can get the leaderboard right, what was the propulsion for the transfer burn?

[PLAD]

Good going again! Another record.

Just so I can get the leaderboard right, what was the propulsion for the transfer burn?

The whole ship has 33 chemical rockets and one nuke, but it didn't use the nuke until the course correction after the transfer burn.

[PLAD]

Here's my Eve entry.

2 days 20 hours 33 minutes 11 seconds. And that's with no nukes or ions. !Earth Time!

Kerbal time it's 11 days 2:33:11.

I've found a better approach to this challenge that should allow my existing ships to beat the previous entries for all planets, including my Moho one. The key is Alex Moon's pork chop plotter. I give a brief explanation in the album. The immense ships I've seen others make should be able to crush this.

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Now it's a matter of finding the best windows, (some are significantly better than others) and making an immense burn accurately enough. And of course leaving enough to brake with at the airless worlds.

!edit! I just realized the numbers don't add up-at the speeds you were going you should have made it much quicker. Are you using 6-hour Kerbal days and I'm using 24-hour Earth days?! Doh!! I believe my planet entries have to be multiplied by 4. At least it doesn't matter for the Mun run.

Edited April 4, 2015 by PLAD

[Foxster]

I must say I thought you entries were very quick for non-nuke and non-ion rockets.

I think you are right, your clock says times like 2d, 20:33:06, as there are just 6 hours in a Kerbal's day that just doesn't make sense. That is perhaps more like 11d 2:33:06 or something.

Want to figure it out and update your times?

Oh, some of us already use some kind of porkchop plotter .

Edited April 3, 2015 by Foxster

[PLAD]

Yah, that was embarrassing. I'd translate the Moho trip but I did a better one, this time in KERBAL days. Here it is. This one got mighty exciting at the end, I cut the dv margin rather fine. Still, 33d, 3:17:08 from launch to when the rolling stopped. He lived and that's what counts, right?

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My Eve entry should be 11 Kerbal days, 2h 33m 11s. Middle of the pack.