The Great Kerbal Space Race

[ticalc2014]

My recovery ended up looking something like this. Not the most elegant solution, but after tipping over, and being on a tight schedule, it had to be done. I even ran out of fuel in this run because I had a bad trajectory out of the Mun SOI, but I just did it quickly to see if it was easy enough to repeat.

[EladDv]

To Mun and back under 4 days! i hope it still counts but i did it! 3 days 5 hours 50 minuets and 15 seconds

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[ticalc2014]

To Mun and back under 4 days! i hope it still counts but i did it! 3 days 5 hours 50 minuets and 15 seconds

http://imgur.com/a/TjXcY

Nice job! I was going to try once more, as my approach to the Mun came from the back side, so I had already slowed down a lot on my orbit before entering the Mun SOI. If I were to try again, I would try going West instead of East, and really pick up some speed on my approach to cut down on some time. I also need to get rid of my orbit around Kerbin to collect some critical science, and explore regions near the KSC instead. You won this round though, I'll be looking forward to a chance to catch up on the next challenge!

[EladDv]

Nice job! I was going to try once more, as my approach to the Mun came from the back side, so I had already slowed down a lot on my orbit before entering the Mun SOI. If I were to try again, I would try going West instead of East, and really pick up some speed on my approach to cut down on some time. I also need to get rid of my orbit around Kerbin to collect some critical science, and explore regions near the KSC instead. You won this round though, I'll be looking forward to a chance to catch up on the next challenge!

thank you i mean i would love if we push each others limits and try to best one another even now at getting to mun.

[ticalc2014]

thank you i mean i would love if we push each others limits and try to best one another even now at getting to mun.

Landed on the Mun on Day 1 at 5:54:20, ran out of fuel on my return, Day 2, 2:48:15 or so, the Kraken struck, and shot my EVA Jeb away from my craft! I think I'm calling it good with my Day 4 time, I think. I had gotten my periapsis inside of 1,000,000m, and think it was only 4 or 5 hours out, so I could have been looking at Day 3 1:30 or so. Oh well, such is life. I just don't know why pushing my craft in EVA mode should subsequently cause a Kerbal to "bounce" off at several hundred m/s.

Edited May 9, 2015 by ticalc2014

[ticalc2014]

Jebediah Kerman once again embarked on a mission the land on the Mun! This time, he spared no expense. The KSC provided a craft capable of pushing the known limits of rocket design, cranking out 8,500 m/s delta-V (give or take 500, or so they say). With this new high-tech craft, he was able to land on the Mun in under 1 day. An unfortunate bug was uncovered, however, rendering the command module reaction wheels useless, as turning off SAS sent the craft into an uncontrolled spin, draining power down to dangerously low levels. With his vast experience piloting unwieldy vessels, he was able to maintain control. Once landed, he set course for Kerbal firing straight towards his distant homeland. Thanks to the precise calculations by those at the Command Center, he ran out of fuel before establishing a viable return trajectory. Fear not, a few EVA flights later, and a comfortable periapsis of 28km was established, and he was on his way home!

Touchdown occurred on Day 2 at 2:12:44!

EDIT: After a little research, I've discovered that I accidentally applied some trim. Now I know not to touch the Alt key at all while flying!

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Edited May 10, 2015 by ticalc2014

[TinyPirate]

Awesome! Entries!

Well, I'm STILL smashed by the weather - current forecast is 40kts every day this week. I'm in a house on a hill and the wind WHISTLES around it making recording audio pretty much impossible. I'll get the video squared and as soon as there's a break in the wind I'll record it and put it up, but this is all taking a LOT longer than I had hoped. Sorry for keeping everyone waiting.

[EladDv]

NP TinyPirate more time for us to try and do better

[TinyPirate]

You know what's embarrassing? My own challenge BREAKING MY BALLS! I haven't lost a Kerbal yet, but I went broke trying to get a ship to the Mun within the 30-part limit I was working with. I just COULD NOT get the delta-v required to pull it off. I ended up taking a big loan so I could upgrade my VAB.

Then I realized some of the tourism contracts are REALLY EASY! Arg!

I have diverted complex airships to Duna in KSP, delivered fighters to a carrier, and the carrier to Eve, but can I get to the Mun at pace? No! And I was on track for a day-1 moon shot too. Grrrrrrr!

[ticalc2014]

You know what's embarrassing? My own challenge BREAKING MY BALLS! I haven't lost a Kerbal yet, but I went broke trying to get a ship to the Mun within the 30-part limit I was working with. I just COULD NOT get the delta-v required to pull it off. I ended up taking a big loan so I could upgrade my VAB.

Then I realized some of the tourism contracts are REALLY EASY! Arg!

I have diverted complex airships to Duna in KSP, delivered fighters to a carrier, and the carrier to Eve, but can I get to the Mun at pace? No! And I was on track for a day-1 moon shot too. Grrrrrrr!

I didn't do any of the tourism contracts in my attempts, either. I was all about getting ready to go to the Mun as quickly as possible, so spending those precious few minutes to get to space was not in my gameplan. By the time all of the initial launch, speed, distance, altitude, orbit missions are done, and the return from orbit contract, you wind up with something like 450k, before any part unlocks/building upgrades. Make sure the FIRST thing you do is accept the "Recover science from Kerbin" contract, as that pays about 85k, just for going to the launch pad and doing a crew report. Personally, I've been doing science at the launchpad with the mystery goo, crew report, and EVA. Then I unlock the science jr, and put two on a pod along with mystery goo. Include a "Flea" SRB and lower the fuel and thrust so that it will just get off the ground, and a parachute just to be safe. Take your launchpad reading on the bottom materials bay in case it explodes on landing. As soon as you lift off, take your crew report, mystery goo, and second science jr readings. If done correctly, you can unlock everything before the 45-science tier at that point, and stability for an escape/orbit rocket won't be an issue.

From there, it's up to you. Complete parts tests (or accept contracts to unlock parts for your Munar Lander to avoid the need for more science ), quickly achieve and return from orbit (make sure to grab the "Return from orbit of Kerbin" contract), or try to land on the Mun without a tracking station upgrade to save a few precious moments completing contracts. I've been going with the parts tests myself to get any additional funds I need for an upgrade, or easy to achieve missions while in transit to the Mun, so I can upgrade the tracking station on my way. Everybody will have a different approach, and even if we started with all of the same nodes unlocked, the same craft design, etc, our times will vary greatly depending on how aggressive we are with our approach and return trajectories. Best of luck to you, I know somebody out there can beat my time!

[Zaccos]

Tiny Pirate do you the Dark Multiplayer mod?

Because what I thinkt was that you could make a online Space Race which should be very fun for everybody!

[TinyPirate]

Zaccos - that would be very good - but tough for me to organise because I am in New Zealand and timezones are a pain!

ANYWAY! WE HAVE EPISODE 2! Thanks for all the entries, and I apologize for taking so long to get this out - the weather isn't something I can control, unfortunately. The vid explores challenge 1. And text below explains challenge 2 in more detail.

This might take a few minutes to update and be playable if you've got here just after I posted this

Challenge 2

You must build a high-speed craft and show its speed across two screenshots spaced one minute apart - I want to see that your vessel can sustain very high velocities and isn't just coming back from orbit. I don't mind how you get up to your high speeds - you can use jet engines, rocket engines, whatever you fancy, but you just need to be flying lower than 20k up and you must give me two screenshots (here or by email - peter (at) tinypirate.com). I will average the two speeds in the screenshots to determine your max speed.

You don't NEED to complete this challenge in career mode, but if you pull off a high speed early in a career save I'll be well impressed and probably think about giving you some bonus points.

You have until Midnight, Saturday the 23rd PST to complete this challenge. GOOD LUCK!

Scores

You can view the score sheet here.

Edited May 14, 2015 by TinyPirate

[TinyPirate]

Accidently killed Jeb last night trying to do the plane challenge - forgot chutes and had no landing gear! Pretty tragic really!

[EladDv]

I think that you should stick to career challanges like minmus or duna

[Zaccos]

But Pirate I cant see the problem with that because the server can be on all the time!

But if you cabt have the computer on all the time then you can have like 2 times a day to have the server on for example 5 houres!

[ticalc2014]

I think that you should stick to career challanges like minmus or duna

I somewhat agree, but I initially took it to be a continuation of the first Mun Landing challenge, and have worked on completing contracts and science gathering, trying to unlock the necessary tech for supersonic air travel. I wasted a bit more time, time-warping, than I would have liked sending missions to Minmus, and out of the Kerbin SOI for science, but have the "Whiplash" engine available, finally, after like 42 days. Had a few issues when sending a Kerbal out on EVA away from a dead ship, and taking the science with me, didn't store the experiments in the rendezvous craft, so I had to run the experiments, EVA reports, etc, again. All in all, trying to do this in career has at least kept my interest whereas going to sandbox, would not. Even though it doesn't NEED to be in career, and you're at a huge disadvantage having to unlock the tech for your aircraft, it may at least make it more interesting for you.

[ticalc2014]

As we were never told it had to be a manned flight, here's my current best effort in the continuation of my Mun Landing career. Only got 1122.1 and 1215.6 for an average of ~1169 m/s, but it's a start. Parts tend to heat up, quickly. I had it going along around 1200 m/s and tried to speed up for my 2nd reading. Instead, I had to lay off the throttle for a bit, because I was about to explode after hitting 1300 m/s.

Edited May 20, 2015 by ticalc2014

[TinyPirate]

Unmanned! GENIUS! Why didn't I think of that? And that is damn fast. Kemp got pretty close, I'm sure he'll be angling to beat you though!

Next challenge we'll look at another career task of a more mainstream nature.

Edited May 20, 2015 by TinyPirate

[Kemp_J]

Unmanned! GENIUS! Why didn't I think of that? And that is damn fast. Kemp got pretty close, I'm sure he'll be angling to beat you though!

I'm definitely going to have a go at topping that speed I have a plan to make my intakes survive for longer, and I'll target 1 minute at 20km rather than the harder requirements I accidentally targeted in the video.

[ticalc2014]

Decided to give it another go with a new design. Maxed it out on my way to my second speed, so things started to burn up on me. 1268.8 m/s + 1300.8 m/s = 1284.8 m/s average. This speed can definitely be beaten, but my OKTO core keeps burning up on me if I'm not careful.

EDIT: New speeds: 1301.0 + 1312.2 = 1306.6 m/s average. I hope the 2nd speed is acceptable on the changeover to 20,000m, I deleted my screenshot from a few seconds earlier on both, before realizing that it was going over 20km.

Edited May 20, 2015 by ticalc2014
New speed

[TinyPirate]

Looks pretty awesome. You two are setting the bar very high (and fast)!

[Kemp_J]

New video, new speed 1375 km/s and sooo close to managing 1380 but I lost speed a little too quickly at the end.

https://youtu.be/PrI9KYNCwfo

[ticalc2014]

New video, new speed 1375 km/s and sooo close to managing 1380 but I lost speed a little too quickly at the edictated nd.

https://youtu.be/PrI9KYNCwfo

Nice job, you've definitely given me some work to do. I'm just curious, what difficulty and re-entry heating settings are you playing on? I know somebody could just turn re-entry heating off and put together some ridiculous contraption, giving themselves a huge advantage. That's the hard part with something like this, as difficulty isn't dictated in the challenge (although people wouldn't necessarily follow it anyway), people could just use the easiest settings to try to gain an advantage. None of this applies to you, of course, just more of a general statement. Great job once again, now I need to figure out how to beat you! I think I've got a couple of ideas that may work.

[Kemp_J]

Nice job, you've definitely given me some work to do. I'm just curious, what difficulty and re-entry heating settings are you playing on? I know somebody could just turn re-entry heating off and put together some ridiculous contraption, giving themselves a huge advantage. That's the hard part with something like this, as difficulty isn't dictated in the challenge (although people wouldn't necessarily follow it anyway), people could just use the easiest settings to try to gain an advantage. None of this applies to you, of course, just more of a general statement. Great job once again, now I need to figure out how to beat you! I think I've got a couple of ideas that may work.

To be honest, you're beating me anyway (morally if not in points) because I'm on sandbox and you're on career. The settings were all default, so heating is at 100%. I don't think I can push the craft any faster because I'm right on the edge of melting all my intakes at that speed. Maybe other types of intake (or engines that don't need intakes) will survive better, but I'm too fond of my design to change it now

[Kemp_J]

I should remember to plant a flag with my results on once the standings are announced