Fastest small step for a Kerbal

[Foxster]

Good job on Moho, PLAD. Top scorer for Moho goes to you.

Gives me something to aim for

[PLAD]

Gives you something to aim for? Uh-oh. I'm gonna need a bigger ship.

I'm working my way up, here's my new 30kdv ship for the Dres run. Definitely nuclear class.

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103 Kerbal days, 0:19:41 to Dres.

(25 Earth days, 18:19:41.)

[Laie]

Now thank you very much for this challenge. I've spent the past week devising the biggest craft I ever built. Which probably isn't all that big by other people's standards -- I've seen single launch Eve missions that were at least just as big. But anyhoo, for me it's huge.

As I write this, the mission clock says 1h22m and I'm moving at 6500m/s away from Kerbin. It will be another 1h40 to leave Kerbin SOI, and a good ten hours until I will finally shut down the engines. Due to the vessel's size, physics warp is out of the question, so I'll probably just leave it running overnight and while I'm away.

Turns out that once you're moving in a nearly straight line, even 30-minute maneuvers will be executed with insane precision.

Apart from the obvious problems (like spending 30 hours of development time and several kilograms of CO2 emmissions), there's also the minor issue that I used the kOS autopilot in order to instantly plot ~30 maneuver nodes.

If that would disqualify my entry, please let me know.

[Starhawk]

Looking forward to seeing this^. Where is it headed?

Happy landings!

[Laie]

No you don't. It's just a case of me being trapped by the strangely attractive force of KSP in general, and a silly-but-intriguing engineering challenge in particular.

Mission plan: two stages (1000m/s@TWR=1, 600m/s@TWR=0.5) to get me away from Kerbin and moving in a relatively straight line;chasing Oberth with asparagus nukes for a burn time of ~4 hours, then another seven hours worth of stacked xenon tanks. After twenty minutes, every maneuver node equals one stage; there's gaps of about one or two minutes between the nodes/stages, and between them I'm adjusting the maneuvers. Adjustments have been very small small, a few m/s for the first few, and after leaving Kerbin I'm doing adjustments of less then 1m/s for maneuvers that last one hour and have several km/s of delta-v.

Destination is Laythe. Last year, there was a challenge of "maximum impact velocity" and it turned out that the soupmosphere will stop nearly anything. I approached Kerbin with ~30km/s and hit the ground at like 4km/s. Plotting the shortest possible path through the atmosphere was important. So this time, I'm plotting a glancing blow and hope that it will allow for a parachute landing. I now realize that I haven't tried this before launching the mission; as I write this, I'm halfway through my "transfer" burn. It will be another six hours before I find out if my great plan can even work.

Sunny day outside; I'll leave this to mechjeb and will tell KAC to pause the game when I still have a couple km/s left.

[purpleivan]

I took a crack at this challenge in the form of a landing on Mun and I'm submitting my time of 37:24 minutes.

All burns of the vehicle were manual (i.e. no Mechjeb) which made life "interesting". The large acceleration part of the vehicle was based on my "Stock Kerbin Space Speed Record" challenge entry.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/114312-Stock-Kerbin-Space-Speed-Record%21?p=1843868&viewfull=1#post1843868

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The only plugins used were aesthetic ones (e.g. HotRockets and Planetshine)

[nightingale]

Decided I wanted to take another shot at Eeloo without doing a facelanding. Here's a little preview of my design so far:

[Foxster]

I took a crack at this challenge in the form of a landing on Mun and I'm submitting my time of 37:24 minutes.

All burns of the vehicle were manual (i.e. no Mechjeb) which made life "interesting". The large acceleration part of the vehicle was based on my "Stock Kerbin Space Speed Record" challenge entry.

The only plugins used were aesthetic ones (e.g. HotRockets and Planetshine)

Nice one! That puts you at no.2 on the Mun board.

[purpleivan]

Nice one! That puts you at no.2 on the Mun board.

I've just done a trip to Eve in 9 days and 2 hours. I'll get all the relevant pics up soon, but here's the money shot on Eve for now.

I should have used a variant of my nuclear vehicle from the "Stock Kerbin Space Speed Record" challenge (which has just been knocked of the top slot ) but it has some issues that need fixing first. With that I'd have about 50% more dV:D, but much longer burns:(.

[Kelderek]

^ Did your vessel use ions or nuclear engines at all? The OP seems to be annotating the leaderboard by showing whether you used any of those or just rocket engines.

[purpleivan]

^ Did your vessel use ions or nuclear engines at all? The OP seems to be annotating the leaderboard by showing whether you used any of those or just rocket engines.

The vehicle wasn't nuclear or ion. The flight time was 9 days, 2 hours, 2 minutes and 58 seconds.

Speed at the end of outward burns was 20512m/s.

The departure time for Eve was a bit of trial error guesswork (I left a little later than optimal), resulting in a longer trip distance than necessary. With a properly timed launch, I could probably have shave a day or so off the time.

Here's the pics of the flight.

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Hmmm... where next.

[purpleivan]

Hmmm... where next.

To Duna that's where... in a time of 16 days, 1 hour and 12 minutes.

Vehicle was an all rocket design (the same as my Eve ship) but with a couple of radial chutes added to it for the descent.

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[Foxster]

The vehicle wasn't nuclear or ion. The flight time was 9 days, 2 hours, 2 minutes and 58 seconds.

Speed at the end of outward burns was 20512m/s.

The departure time for Eve was a bit of trial error guesswork (I left a little later than optimal), resulting in a longer trip distance than necessary. With a properly timed launch, I could probably have shave a day or so off the time.

Hmmm... where next.

Nice job on a rocket-only craft. One more go and I think you can make the top of the board

- - - Updated - - -

To Duna that's where... in a time of 16 days, 1 hour and 12 minutes.

Vehicle was an all rocket design (the same as my Eve ship) but with a couple of radial chutes added to it for the descent.

http://imgur.com/a/aUofo

Another excellent run there. You're getting the hang of this alright.

[purpleivan]

Nice job on a rocket-only craft. One more go and I think you can make the top of the board

- - - Updated - - -

Another excellent run there. You're getting the hang of this alright.

I'm currently flying a combined rocket and ion drive vehicle to Eve and I seem to be on target for a sub 5 day trip time.

[purpleivan]

I'm currently flying a combined rocket and ion drive vehicle to Eve and I seem to be on target for a sub 5 day trip time.

I had to go with ion drive for the last part of the trip, but I've made a landing on Eve in a time of 5 days 1 hour and 25 minutes. Not quite the sub 5 days time I had expected, but made some errors when I changed my plan for the burns.

Here's the pics.

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[purpleivan]

Now closed until after 1.0.

Arrrgh... but I made the 5 day Eve trip before 1.0