The "Duna Extended Research Program (DERP)"

[Death Engineering]

On 2/1/2016 at 11:32 PM, Jasonden said:

Just saw these from the changelog:

- Increased KCT points from 8 to 10
- Changed challenge end date to Year 8, Day 200

Crud; I think that I missed the boat on the extra 2 KCT points in my current playthrough.  The extra time though will make a big difference, extending the program to a new window.  That's a big difference.

Drat. Sorry you missed that change.   I was hoping I got it in there before anyone started rolling. I'll try and think of a way to balance your scoring, but you can add them mid-game and try to catch up. Ironically, I only added the extra 2 points to encourage splitting between VAB and SPH build threads; the challenge is actually balanced for 8.

Happy launching!

edit:

There won't be any further challenge rule changes unless there is a mod/balance problem.

edit 2:

Got the leaderboard up. 

Edited February 3, 2016 by Death Engineering
no more taxes er changes

[Death Engineering]

Ten launches. Ten Kerbals into Duna orbit

This entry was played with KCT setup with two VAB build threads (80/20), with the "primary" build thread working on the complex and diverse payloads and the "secondary" thread adding on the lifter to the completed payload. The lifters were built on a 3.75m stage powered by the Mammoth 4-engine cluster, which is the common primary stage for all lifters. Two variants of the lifter were used, one which added 4 chute-recovered SRBs to the main core booster and another which strapped on two of the primary liquid boosters (each powered instead by a single Rhino engine and recovered propulsively). By the end of the challenge, adding the booster to the payload was only 131 days for the smallest lifter and 165 days for the largest booster capable of lifting 85t to LKO.

First Landing

Having an insight to how the first part of challenge can be played, I tried to fly an initial landing mission profile that was different than ones I had done in developing the challenge. It was a risky mission, launching a single monolithic Duna landing rocket without a way for the crew to safely get back to Kerbin already in place. However, we got the point for getting a Duna STATION into orbit before the 'Prestige' deadline. The crew return vehicle was sent later, on a separate mission.

DERP - Launches

Two KERBAL HABS were landed on both Duna and Ike. The design of the HABs were nearly identical, with the only difference being chutes on the Duna lander. Both included basic nuke-powered rovers which took the crew to the SHUTTLEs.

Duna Landings

The 'Prestige' point for placing a flag on Duna >7000m was well-earned in that the terrain prevented the SHUTTLE from landing close to the HAB. This required the crew to drive almost 20km over intense terrain to circumnavigate a deep ravine with steep drops to get to the SHUTTLE. Earning the Ike point for high-point flag planting presented spectacular views, thanks largely to the KSPRC mod.

Ike Landings

It would have been easy to use the last launch window to maximize the challenge points, but I'll take what I got. Missed out on getting 3 Duna surface samples, but managed to get it with Ike. Should have had an atmosphere scooper on the Duna SHUTTLE, too. In total, earned 70 points, detailed here:

Spoiler

 

Prestige
+2 At least two Kerbals are landed on Duna before Year 2, day 40
+3 All Kerbals landed on Ike and Duna before Year 2, day 40 are returned safely to Kerbin before Year 4, day 80
+2 Orbiting SCIENCE LAB around Duna before Year 2, day 170
(2) +2 for each KERBAL HAB on Duna *must be in unique Biomes max 5*
(2) +2 for each KERBAL HAB on Ike *must be in unique Biomes max 5*
+1 Plant a flag on Duna anywhere > 7000m
+1 Plant a flag on Ike anywhere > 10000m

Science
+2 Return any surface sample from Duna
+5 Return surface samples from 3 of Ike's Biomes

Survivability
(10) +1 For every Kerbal who enters Duna orbit
(6) +3 For every Kerbal who lands on Duna
(4) +3 For every Kerbal who lands on Ike
+3 Have a SHUTTLE orbiting Duna
+3 Have a SHUTTLE orbiting Ike

 

 

 

 

Total cost of the space program was 2206688.13 funds. Using the calculation this renders 5424.7 points. Scoring less than @Jasonden but pretty sure that if I'd used the third launch window to maximize all points I could have closed in on 2000 points. 

Life support mod used: USI-LS 0.3.4 (the one just before Kerbs take massively more supplies, has the better UI/performance but with the bizarre inability to disable LS supply tanks).

Good luck to anyone else who attempts this challenge!

Edited February 5, 2016 by Death Engineering

[Jasonden]

13 hours ago, Death Engineering said:

Duna Landings

The 'Prestige' point for placing a flag on Duna >7000m was well-earned in that the terrain prevented the SHUTTLE from landing close to the HAB. This required the crew to drive almost 20km over intense terrain to circumnavigate a deep ravine with steep drops to get to the SHUTTLE. Earning the Ike point for high-point flag planting presented spectacular views, thanks largely to the KSPRC mod.

That driving traverse through the topography in that teeny rover was totally epic!

Interesting that you've got several modified lifters.  I've gone to a single lifter (new 1st stage), and am painstakingly assembling in LKO  Very efficient in terms of KCT, but also a little tedious.  Doing the full challenge, including the last window, will definitely take more time.  I'm still thinking of how best to use the last window -- but of course I've got some ideas!

[Death Engineering]

3 hours ago, Jasonden said:

That driving traverse through the topography in that teeny rover was totally epic!

Interesting that you've got several modified lifters.  I've gone to a single lifter (new 1st stage), and am painstakingly assembling in LKO  Very efficient in terms of KCT, but also a little tedious.  Doing the full challenge, including the last window, will definitely take more time.  I'm still thinking of how best to use the last window -- but of course I've got some ideas!

Thanks!  I really enjoyed the drive, too. The rover wasn't a loopy as it looked as there were two RTG's clipped into the Rovermate to keep the CoM low. Thinking I might try an Elcano attempt (with LS of course) around Duna's poles. Been cooking up a route past the anomalies - should take awhile.

Looking forward to seeing what you have in mind for your next run!

These are the lifters up-close:

Spoiler

 

 

[Nich]

 Just food for thought but most of my calculations with tac life-support  show that expedited transfers reduce the mass of the ship by quite a bit although they require more D V the supply savings are very significant if you can take a three-year round-trip and turn it into a six-month round-trip. I am interested in this challenge but I have to play around with some of the additional mods to see how they work and then wrap my head around the scoring which is incredibly complex

[Death Engineering]

2 hours ago, Nich said:

 Just food for thought but most of my calculations with tac life-support  show that expedited transfers reduce the mass of the ship by quite a bit although they require more D V the supply savings are very significant if you can take a three-year round-trip and turn it into a six-month round-trip. I am interested in this challenge but I have to play around with some of the additional mods to see how they work and then wrap my head around the scoring which is incredibly complex

Oh yeah.. there are definitely mass savings to be had by running on the fat sides of the pork chop, but the cost of the fuel and the lifter to get it into LKO will factor in as well. There is also the extra mass for heat shielding or propulsive orbital insertion when at Duna. Using reasonably close Hohmann transfers I did not need to worry about shielding for my aerobraking at Duna.. but things definitely got toasty. Any faster would not have been possible without proper heat shielding. 

Good luck and lmk if you have any questions.  

Edited February 8, 2016 by Death Engineering

[Nich]

Just a quick clarification is it possible to make a Kerbal habitat that is also a shuttle? All it needs is six kerbals  A science lab and the ability to orbit Duna Ike land on Duna Ike and takeoff?  And on that note can you move the same  habitat to the five areas and get credit or do they have to be five different habitats 

[Death Engineering]

14 hours ago, Nich said:

Just a quick clarification is it possible to make a Kerbal habitat that is also a shuttle? All it needs is six kerbals  A science lab and the ability to orbit Duna Ike land on Duna Ike and takeoff?  And on that note can you move the same  habitat to the five areas and get credit or do they have to be five different habitats 

Your SHUTTLE can be also a KERBAL HAB but it will only get credit for its first landing/Biome. To get points for all five possible KERBAL HAB Biomes will take five KERBAL HABs (per body.. so 10 total to get Ike as well). To get SHUTTLE points for Ike and Duna will also take two SHUTTLEs.

On a side note, how are the build times with TAC-LS equipped missions?

[Jasonden]

22 hours ago, Death Engineering said:

Oh yeah.. there are definitely mass savings to be had by running on the fat sides of the pork chop, but the cost of the fuel and the lifter to get it into LKO will factor in as well. There is also the extra mass for heat shielding or propulsive orbital insertion when at Duna. Using reasonably close Hohmann transfers I did not need to worry about shielding for my aerobraking at Duna.. but things definitely got toasty. Any faster would not have been possible without proper heat shielding. 

Yah, this.  When I ran my second mission above, which left ~150d after the launch window, the arrival velocity was big enough that I had to burn 600m/s dV and use my heat shield to ensure a safe arrival.  So while you can get there faster, you may find that just carrying extra supplies ends up being the less massive option.

HOWEVER, it occurs to me . . .  Supplies are so ridiculously expensive, your approach may end up CHEAPER and therefore could score better.  I look forward to seeing how it comes out!

[The solid fuel chemist]

Spoiler

I'm new to the forums and This is my first challenge so when I saw it I figured "ah what the heck" Will try.

Edited February 10, 2016 by The solid fuel chemist

[sdj64]

I'm going to attempt this challenge but since it will be my first time using life support I have a few questions.

I first downloaded IFI Life Support because it seemed like the simplest mechanic and I will be using Planetary Base Systems to provide, among other things, greenhouses.  The larger greenhouse weighs 6 times the small one, but is missing its resource converter, is it okay if I edit it in with 6x the rate of the small one (or more, there should be an efficiency bonus according to the part's description)?

Another difficulty with IFI: no shipboard recycling.  The greenhouses turn ore into LifeSupport at a whopping 4.5% mass efficiency, which is a fine price to pay for a self-sufficient base with enough drills, but for a ship it means taking more LS instead.  It would be okay if it wasn't made of hydrogen, a 6 Kerbal crew needs almost an orange tank's volume but only 7.5 tons for the trip (one way).  Other entrants, I'm curious to hear what size and weight your life support needs are?

Edited February 10, 2016 by sdj64

[DBowman]

19 hours ago, Death Engineering said:

Your SHUTTLE can be also a KERBAL HAB but it will only get credit for its first landing/Biome. To get points for all five possible KERBAL HAB Biomes will take five KERBAL HABs (per body.. so 10 total to get Ike as well). To get SHUTTLE points for Ike and Duna will also take two SHUTTLEs.

Can you shuttle/rove crew from in situ HAB to in situ HAB  - getting 5 biomes with one crew?

[Death Engineering]

16 hours ago, The solid fuel chemist said:

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm new to the forums and This is my first challenge so when I saw it I figured "ah what the heck" Will try.

Look forward to it.  

14 hours ago, sdj64 said:

I'm going to attempt this challenge but since it will be my first time using life support I have a few questions.

I first downloaded IFI Life Support because it seemed like the simplest mechanic and I will be using Planetary Base Systems to provide, among other things, greenhouses.  The larger greenhouse weighs 6 times the small one, but is missing its resource converter, is it okay if I edit it in with 6x the rate of the small one (or more, there should be an efficiency bonus according to the part's description)?

Another difficulty with IFI: no shipboard recycling.  The greenhouses turn ore into LifeSupport at a whopping 4.5% mass efficiency, which is a fine price to pay for a self-sufficient base with enough drills, but for a ship it means taking more LS instead.  It would be okay if it wasn't made of hydrogen, a 6 Kerbal crew needs almost an orange tank's volume but only 7.5 tons for the trip (one way).  Other entrants, I'm curious to hear what size and weight your life support needs are?

I will have a look at the mod.  If the changes you are proposing are balanced, shouldn't be a problem. It would also be great to post what you did/how you did it to change the mod so others considering this LS can also use your updates.

 

7 hours ago, DBowman said:

Can you shuttle/rove crew from in situ HAB to in situ HAB  - getting 5 biomes with one crew?

Yep.

edit:

@sdj64 my total mass and cost for LS (including the Nom-O-Matic 5000 recyclers):

Cost: 276400

Mass: 35.4

edit to the edit:

Looking back at what's at Duna, I left A LOT of supplies up there!  

Edited February 10, 2016 by Death Engineering

[DBowman]

How do you feel about using Soylent? A TAC-LS add on that provides algae based 'greenhouses' (in my Sig). You need a Gigantor sized Algal Array per Kerbal when in 24 hour full sunlight => add resource buffer & more arrays for day/night/eclipses.

It's intended to be mid-future realistic/reasonable, but it has some weaknesses in the context of this challenge:

1. I never really looked at cost, I believe KCT uses cost as the primary input to construction time - so those might need to be tweaked.
2. The day/night/eclipse is on 'the honours system' due to the simple way KSP simulates things 'on rails'.
3. I wanted to add a 'food processor' box/generator but the way resources feed through generators mean you need big buffers between stages or to be able to provide some 'over mod' that sets the processing order. So it just got too hard and I left them eating 'raw gloop' (think meals on Nebuchadnezzar from The Matrix).

Edited February 12, 2016 by DBowman
oops it's in my sig

[Nich]

How do you use multiple VABs?  I think I created 2 VABs but I can only get 1 vehicle to build at a time

 

Never mind I had multiple SPHs

Edited February 12, 2016 by Nich

[Death Engineering]

12 hours ago, DBowman said:

How do you feel about using Soylent? A TAC-LS add on that provides algae based 'greenhouses' (in my Sig). You need a Gigantor sized Algal Array per Kerbal when in 24 hour full sunlight => add resource buffer & more arrays for day/night/eclipses.

It's intended to be mid-future realistic/reasonable, but it has some weaknesses in the context of this challenge:

1. I never really looked at cost, I believe KCT uses cost as the primary input to construction time - so those might need to be tweaked.
2. The day/night/eclipse is on 'the honours system' due to the simple way KSP simulates things 'on rails'.
3. I wanted to add a 'food processor' box/generator but the way resources feed through generators mean you need big buffers between stages or to be able to provide some 'over mod' that sets the processing order. So it just got too hard and I left them eating 'raw gloop' (think meals on Nebuchadnezzar from The Matrix).

1. Actually I'm not sure how KCT determines its Build Points. Will look into it.
2. Yeah a lot of LS/electrical in mods is on the honour system. I'm OK with that.
3. It makes sense. But, here is where my quandary lives in how I designed the challenge....

When I designed this challenge, I really wanted to incorporate cost as part of the scoring by taking advantage of the elegance KCT and SR handle the costs of building/recovering rockets. My hope was that the cost of LS and points for landings would balance and encourage large missions with many kerbals landing on Duna. But this way, pretty much all LS entries have to be scored with like-mod entries so that is a factor. 

I thought of putting in a rule to "Use just this LS mod and nothing else" but eventually went with 'any LS mod'.

I think I'll keep the challenge as 'any LS' but entries will be scored with like LS entries, making competition between non-similar LS mods not really feasible. Please post any changes you make to TAC or Soylent so others can use them.

 

16 minutes ago, Nich said:

How do you use multiple VABs?  I think I created 2 VABs but I can only get 1 vehicle to build at a time

You can allocate the KCT points to multiple threads in both the VAB and SPH. I didn't get many points, so splitting between more than two is going to make building very slow.  I recommend a major and a minor VAB thread or one VAB and one SPH thread....but other ways could work out better.

[Nich]

So apparently I suck at KCT.  The only thing I can make in the SPH before the first launch window is this.  unfortunately 10 days in not enough to get to minmus and refuel.

How did you guys make such massive rockets before the first window? MIne is 57t 40 parts and cost 93,000ish

[DBowman]

3 hours ago, Death Engineering said:

all LS entries have to be scored with like-mod entries so that is a factor

Yep LS and ISRU choices can make a huge difference.

3 hours ago, Death Engineering said:

Please post any changes you make to TAC or Soylent so others can use them.

I like TAC because it hits the 'big three' (O₂, H₂O, & food) and has tried to make the consumption rates etc realistic - so I don't have any plan to fiddle with TAC. I'd either post tweaks or update Soylent if the costs were out of wack. I'm still getting to grips with KCT for now.

[Jasonden]

1 hour ago, Nich said:

How did you guys make such massive rockets before the first window? MIne is 57t 40 parts and cost 93,000ish

Dunno -- mine's fairly big, but perhaps simpler in some ways than the spaceplane that you've got.  Even then it was finished right about at the first window.

By 'simpler', I mean that KCT shows a preference for using many of the same parts over many different parts.  My launch vehicles use this to their advantage (I'll post first half of my new quest in a day or two).  While yours is, admittedly, totally sweet, it does have lots of different, expensive parts which might (?) be affecting the build time.

If you're just 10 days after the window, there's still plenty of transfer options to Duna, so you might as well try for one!

 

Edited February 12, 2016 by Jasonden

[Death Engineering]

2 hours ago, Nich said:

So apparently I suck at KCT.  The only thing I can make in the SPH before the first launch window is this.  unfortunately 10 days in not enough to get to minmus and refuel.

How did you guys make such massive rockets before the first window? MIne is 57t 40 parts and cost 93,000ish

 

I only built basic stock planes while testing the challenge, but your plane doesn't look overly massive. How many points did you put into the SPH build thread?

My initial launch which included a SCIENCE LAB, two crew and their Duna lander was 220 days to build. I had two VAB build threads weighted to 0.5 and 0.2.  But as @Jasonden notes, 10 days is still in the transfer window, especially if you're already almost outside of Kerbin's SOI at Minmus.

Edited February 12, 2016 by Death Engineering
speeling

[Nich]

Ah crap I keep thinking day 140 is the transfer window  well excrements this just got easy lol

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[Jasonden]

2 hours ago, Nich said:

 

Wow, what is that, dude  Is it a porkchop plot converted to ASCII?

[Nich]

ASCI Picard facepalming because I am an idiot  :/

[Jasonden]

1 hour ago, Nich said:

ASCI Picard facepalming because I am an idiot  :/

I only now saw it when I stepped way back from the screen

[Nich]

So I noticed that there is the option to increase production rate 10% for kredits.  Is this legal to use as long as we track the cost?