The Ultimate Challange

[Superfluous J]

On 5/3/2016 at 6:16 AM, Kergarin said:

Finally here is my Ultimate Challenge 

Wow. That was SWEET. It's amazing how similar our two plans were, though yours was with this awesome SSTE(verywhere) and mine was this hacked together conglomeration of disparate little shiplets.

Have you tried your Eve lander in 1.1.2? My 1.0 lander simply does not work on Eve anymore. I can barely get 50m/s before it veers off in the soupy atmosphere. I'm trying to figure out if it's the ship or if Eve is really that much harder now. As if Eve needed to be harder.

EDIT: So once you recovered that vessel, what was your total cost on the mission? I'm talking (VAB cost) - (recovery cost).

Edited May 5, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[MarkWatney]

Wow this looks great I might have a shot at this or fail miserably in the attempt

[Kergarin]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

Wow. That was SWEET. It's amazing how similar our two plans were, though yours was with this awesome SSTE(verywhere) and mine was this hacked together conglomeration of disparate little shiplets.

Have you tried your Eve lander in 1.1.2? My 1.0 lander simply does not work on Eve anymore. I can barely get 50m/s before it veers off in the soupy atmosphere. I'm trying to figure out if it's the ship or if Eve is really that much harder now. As if Eve needed to be harder.

EDIT: So once you recovered that vessel, what was your total cost on the mission? I'm talking (VAB cost) - (recovery cost).

Thanks

Sorry, i didn't got the time to watch your videos until now, because my mission took all my time.
But yes, you are right. the are similaritys   maybe that means, that it is a good plan

 

Fortunally i have a savegame landed at eve, and i have just copyed it to 1.1.2 to test for you.
My Eve-Lander still works landed at 1528m and reaches a stable Orbit above 100km.
Only my landing legs exploded right after loading.

Maybe the intakes that you are using as nosecones don't have thier aerodynamic advantage anymore?
Or is it the resistance of the fairing? I would suggest to chek the areodynamic overlay.
Also i think my lander has less weight, and different winglets (if yours is the one i have seen while having a quick look at your videos)

Feel free to do a whole or partial rebuild of my lander

 

Total Mission cost was 176.873

 

Oh, and thanks for creating the savegame!

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2016 by Kergarin

[Superfluous J]

8 minutes ago, Kergarin said:

Maybe the intakes that you are using as nosecones don't have thier aerodynamic advantage anymore?

Or is it the resistance of the fairing? I would suggest to chek the areodynamic overlay.

Good ideas, both. I should have thought about the nosecones. I've been believing that mostly on faith.

It's almost as if the rocket is too stable and not maneuverable enough, but it's acting really weird. I launch, and because I'm not on a perfectly flat slope the prograde vector goes to the side. And the ship almost SWERVES toward that prograde vector, and after that it's dead.

It's nice to know though that Eve is still actually possible in 1.1.2.

[Kergarin]

9 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Good ideas, both. I should have thought about the nosecones. I've been believing that mostly on faith.

It's almost as if the rocket is too stable and not maneuverable enough, but it's acting really weird. I launch, and because I'm not on a perfectly flat slope the prograde vector goes to the side. And the ship almost SWERVES toward that prograde vector, and after that it's dead.

It's nice to know though that Eve is still actually possible in 1.1.2.

Would be nice to know what finally solves this problem 

My lander swerves verry much too until it has built up enough speed to get stabilized. But if I steer aggressive against that, I can usually manage to keep it going straigt up. Maybe larger control surfaces could help, I use 3 of the advanced canards.

[Superfluous J]

39 minutes ago, Kergarin said:

Would be nice to know what finally solves this problem 

My lander swerves verry much too until it has built up enough speed to get stabilized. But if I steer aggressive against that, I can usually manage to keep it going straigt up. Maybe larger control surfaces could help, I use 3 of the advanced canards.

What solved it was making sure I was aiming upward. To achieve this, I employed a combination of:

• quicksave/load until I land somewhere fairly flat , and also through a few launches.
• reaction wheels
• place all 6 landing gear on separately so I can raise just one or two of them to allow me to tilt the ship before liftoff.
• Raising the fins up a little bit - but not too much. They're still behind the COM but only just. And the COM goes up as I drop stages so it just gets more stable as it rises.
• Ditch the fairing for a single intake, just like the onioned bosters have.

I'm not sure if that last one helped, but it did lower my mass enough to justify keeping the reaction wheels into the early launch to help maintain stability.

And a big part of landing turned out to be A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S. Those things act like fins once you get down to about 70km altitude.

I don't know if I'll have the time this weekend, but hopefully I'll start my actual Ultimate Challenge soon! I still need to figure out how to hook all this junk together in some sort of transfer stage.

Edited May 6, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[Kergarin]

2 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

What solved it was making sure I was aiming upward. To achieve this, I employed a combination of:

• quicksave/load until I land somewhere fairly flat , and also through a few launches.
• reaction wheels
• place all 6 landing gear on separately so I can raise just one or two of them to allow me to tilt the ship before liftoff.
• Raising the fins up a little bit - but not too much. They're still behind the COM but only just. And the COM goes up as I drop stages so it just gets more stable as it rises.
• Ditch the fairing for a single intake, just like the onioned bosters have.

I'm not sure if that last one helped, but it did lower my mass enough to justify keeping the reaction wheels into the early launch to help maintain stability.

And a big part of landing turned out to be A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S. Those things act like fins once you get down to about 70km altitude.

I don't know if I'll have the time this weekend, but hopefully I'll start my actual Ultimate Challenge soon! I still need to figure out how to hook all this junk together in some sort of transfer stage.

Glad to hear that 

A good launch angle is also important to my lander. Maybe more important than a few hundred meters of heigt. At what altitude did you launch?

My first lander designs had A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S., but they did always burn up in the atmosphere...

Are you going to use the new inflatable heatshield? I would have done this, if I had been on 1.1.

I can rise and lock my landing gear separately too 

Just to perform better at eve, I have choosen the command pod instead of the lander can. But I'm still not sure if the weight or air resistance gives the bigger advance. 

I'm looking forward to see your version of the Ultimate Challenge 

Watch out to have enough DV for Moho, my first run was aborted by having to less for that. The ship would have been almost half the size, if I didn't had to go to Moho.

[Superfluous J]

8 hours ago, Kergarin said:

At what altitude did you launch?

It was between 2 and 3 km. I'm hoping to land over 4km up but it's nice to have the margin

8 hours ago, Kergarin said:

My first lander designs had A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S., but they did always burn up in the atmosphere...

The brakes are almost never actually in the air stream. They're just there to peek out when the craft wobbles, catch some air, and push the craft back to having the shield in front.

8 hours ago, Kergarin said:

Are you going to use the new inflatable heatshield?

I am. My first design had 7 large heat shields splayed out to fill roughly the area the inflatable one fills now. I'm glad I don't have to use that now. I'm also glad I don't have to launch it off Kerbin now

8 hours ago, Kergarin said:

Just to perform better at eve, I have choosen the command pod instead of the lander can. But I'm still not sure if the weight or air resistance gives the bigger advance.

My mission has been designed around that Lander Can. I *could* swap it out for a Mk1 capsule but then I'd have to re-test everything else. And it performed just fine. I suspect I'm taking advantage of some simplification in the model that's there to run the game faster, but at this point I don't care. It works. Period

8 hours ago, Kergarin said:

Watch out to have enough DV for Moho

I've got 5 "ships" in my ship (not counting little robotic tugs to do the dockings)

1. The Eve ship
2. An ISRU ship that can land on Moho, fill up, and get back into orbit. It can also land on all other airless worlds but Tylo. It can also land on Duna and get back to orbit without drilling.
3. The "Tylo Lander" that will also land on Vall, and will also be an all-around long-distance tug. For instance, its got the job of fetching that lander can in low Eve orbit and bringing it back to the mothership.
4. A Laythe plane. Because going to Laythe and not bringing a plane seems... just wrong.
5. The mothership, that has enough dV fully loaded to get the whole she bang from one place to the next.

 

8 hours ago, Kergarin said:

I'm looking forward to see your version of the Ultimate Challenge

I'm looking forward to doing it!

Edited May 6, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[Jetski]

9 hours ago, Kergarin said:

 

My first lander designs had A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S., but they did always burn up in the atmosphere...

*snip*

If you clip the airbrakes way in the heating model doesn't let them cook as badly.  Alternatively, the little Type E wings are very light and have insane heat tolerances - I use them slapped sideways for maximum drag at the top of my Eve landers to slow me down and keep me pointed forward.

[Kergarin]

On Freitag, 6. Mai 2016 at 9:40 PM, 5thHorseman said:

The brakes are almost never actually in the air stream. They're just there to peek out when the craft wobbles, catch some air, and push the craft back to having the shield in front.

 

On Freitag, 6. Mai 2016 at 11:25 PM, Jetski said:

If you clip the airbrakes way in the heating model doesn't let them cook as badly.  Alternatively, the little Type E wings are very light and have insane heat tolerances - I use them slapped sideways for maximum drag at the top of my Eve landers to slow me down and keep me pointed forward.

 

Good to know, that makes reentry a bit easier. Thanks

 

On Donnerstag, 5. Mai 2016 at 10:36 PM, 5thHorseman said:

Have you tried your Eve lander in 1.1.2? My 1.0 lander simply does not work on Eve anymore. I can barely get 50m/s before it veers off in the soupy atmosphere. I'm trying to figure out if it's the ship or if Eve is really that much harder now. As if Eve needed to be harder.

But something else changed in 1.1.2... my SSTO does not reach takeoff-speed until the end of the runway anymore
Also it is not able to gain altitude, if i got it airborne somehow...

 

 

Just a crazy thought: i would like to do the Ultimate Challenge again + all bodys from Outer Plantes Mod  but i sadly won't find the time for that

 

 

[Superfluous J]

I'm going to be streaming this on Twitch starting in a few minutes, and ending probably only after several hours and (hopefully) a successful completion of the Eve portion of the journey. Stop by and say "hi" and watch me flailing.

https://www.twitch.tv/5fhhorseman

[max_creative]

Wait... Does it have to be one ship? One ship is just for the contact. I could probably strap together a hundred thousand ton mother ship with hanger extender, but I don't feel like that right now, and plus it would need a huge main bay and lots of boosters.

However, if I launched, Mun and Minmus for refuel, go to Eve, land and return, irsu with the main ship on Gilly, went to Moho from there, then back to Kerbin and pick up stuff for Duna and Ike. Go to Duna and Ike, then head to Dres. Use a lander (not main ship) and land on Dres, then get the Jool and Eeloo equipment from a Dres space station. Then do Jool and Eeloo and return home.

Basicly, by picking up more equipment at Kerbin and Dres, it would make it a lot easier. Well, except that the ship would still be taller than the vab. But most of my motherships are. 

[herbal space program]

On ‎1‎/‎27‎/‎2016 at 4:01 PM, 5thHorseman said:

I though am pretty sure the game isn't going to care how much of the ship landed and returned from the surfaces so long as a single - and the same - command pod did.

If that's all that's required and refueling from some sort of orbital support vessel is allowed, then it's totally doable. You could actually have a lot of fun creating landers for different bodies by docking some sort of basic command module to different propulsion modules that are attached to the mother ship. That would be like an interesting, expanded variant of Jool5, with many possible solutions. Creating rankings based on lowest total mass leaving LKO or shortest game time to completion could make it more competitive and motivate the production of more efficient designs. If OTOH  these sorts of re-configurations don't count as the same ship but you are still allowed to drop stages along the way, it would still be doable but I think the design solutions and order of bodies  would be much more constrained.

 

....Hmm. I didn't notice how old the OP was. Is anybody still working on this?

Edited June 29, 2016 by herbal space program

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, herbal space program said:

If that's all that's required and refueling from some sort of orbital support vessel is allowed, then it's totally doable. You could actually have a lot of fun creating landers for different bodies by docking some sort of basic command module to different propulsion modules that are attached to the mother ship. That would be like an interesting, expanded variant of Jool5, with many possible solutions. Creating rankings based on lowest total mass leaving LKO or shortest game time to completion could make it more competitive and motivate the production of more efficient designs. If OTOH  these sorts of re-configurations don't count as the same ship but you are still allowed to drop stages along the way, it would still be doable but I think the design solutions and order of bodies  would be much more constrained.

 

....Hmm. I didn't notice how old the OP was. Is anybody still working on this?

If by "still working" you mean "Jeb's orbiting Laythe in a broken game and only has 3 more places to land if I can ever get his docking port fixed, so meh I'll just play Factorio" then yes. I'm still working on it

[herbal space program]

1 minute ago, 5thHorseman said:

If by "still working" you mean "Jeb's orbiting Laythe in a broken game and only has 3 more places to land if I can ever get his docking port fixed, so meh I'll just play Factorio" then yes. I'm still working on it

Wow, sounds like you got close! So you managed both Tylo and Eve? That must have been quite a ship! I tried looking at your Twitch feed, but somehow it wouldn't load for me.

[Superfluous J]

39 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

Wow, sounds like you got close! So you managed both Tylo and Eve? That must have been quite a ship! I tried looking at your Twitch feed, but somehow it wouldn't load for me.

Not Tylo (though I've got a lander up there that can handle it easily, if it wasn't for the fact that I can't dock to it) but yes, Eve was stop #1. The 3 worlds I didn't land on are Laythe (which is supposed to be next), Vall (which I can SSTSABTO* with the Tylo lander), and Tylo itself. And then of course Kerbin.

*Single Stage To Surface And Back To Orbit.

[Kergarin]

53 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

If by "still working" you mean "Jeb's orbiting Laythe in a broken game and only has 3 more places to land if I can ever get his docking port fixed, so meh I'll just play Factorio" then yes. I'm still working on it

Hope you can fix this, I can't wait to see other attempts 

3 hours ago, herbal space program said:

... Creating rankings based on lowest total mass leaving LKO or shortest game time to completion could make it more competitive and motivate the production of more efficient designs. ...

 You have to beat: 

Returned at: year 19 day 337 hour ~5

Total takeoff weight: 224.8 tons (on runway, single launch) 

Total mission cost: 176.873

Total parts: 349

(Manned mission in 1.0.5) 

 

It needed every minute of my free time for 3 month to finish this challenge  But it was totally worth it 

[herbal space program]

14 minutes ago, Kergarin said:

It needed every minute of my free time for 3 month to finish this challenge  But it was totally worth it 

Wow, what a tour! It looks like you took the modular approach I described above, docking the command module to different landers, so I guess that's cricket. It's tempting to try to take this on, but I'm currently working on something else that Raging Sandwich posted a few days ago, which is to build a plane that can circumnavigate Jool inside its atmosphere, then  land and re-orbit on both Laythe and Duna before returning to Kerbin. I've got a ways to go, but I just solved what I'm pretty sure is the most difficult part, which is making a plane that can land as such on Duna and take off again horizontally. If I slapped lander legs on the back of that, it could probably serve as a lander for every body besides Eve and Tylo, so maybe when I'm done with that one I'll revisit this....

[Kergarin]

9 hours ago, herbal space program said:

Wow, what a tour! It looks like you took the modular approach I described above, docking the command module to different landers, so I guess that's cricket. It's tempting to try to take this on, but I'm currently working on something else that Raging Sandwich posted a few days ago, which is to build a plane that can circumnavigate Jool inside its atmosphere, then  land and re-orbit on both Laythe and Duna before returning to Kerbin. I've got a ways to go, but I just solved what I'm pretty sure is the most difficult part, which is making a plane that can land as such on Duna and take off again horizontally. If I slapped lander legs on the back of that, it could probably serve as a lander for every body besides Eve and Tylo, so maybe when I'm done with that one I'll revisit this....

That's exactly what I did  I did this using a SSTO that can land everywhere but Eve and Tylo, while it carries the needed landers for both with it.

Since it would need extremely large wings or insane high landing speed to land on Duna, I'm landing there vertically, assisted by a parachute, using additional landing legs at the back like you mentioned 

If you go back one page, you will find this video of my tour: 

http://youtu.be/zoD9ieXHlsE

 

Edited June 30, 2016 by Kergarin

[herbal space program]

18 hours ago, Kergarin said:

Since it would need extremely large wings or insane high landing speed to land on Duna, I'm landing there vertically, assisted by a parachute, using additional landing legs at the back like you mentioned 

If you go back one page, you will find this video of my tour: 

http://youtu.be/zoD9ieXHlsE

Yes I watched it before my last post. Your initial submission was a bit understated considering the magnitude of the achievement, so I guess I overlooked it on my first pass through the thread, but then after you posted your stats I found it. As I said above, it was quite a tour. Anyway, for what it's worth, this is my Duna plane:

As you can see, it does have a whole lot of wings, but it can still make orbit quite quickly, with just under 4km/s of dV left on LKO. It carries 6 Kerbals, in compliance with the rules for the hardest version of the other challenge. As to its landing speed, it's not really so bad. If you find a nice, low, flat spot to land, it has a stall speed near the ground of  right around 60m/s. The main trick to landing it consistently was piling on control authority and adding all those drogue chutes. Without those, 3 reaction wheel modules on top of the cockpit, all those canards, and 2 sets of elevators, the plane simply wouldn't hold its attitude after touchdown and almost always took a majestically slow, high, tumbling bounce that ended badly. Sometimes gravity is your friend!  I'm sure this plane would have no trouble at all landing on Laythe, and its TWR on just the nukes would be good enough for landing on every body except Tylo and Eve, provided I put legs on it. Unfortunately, I think scaling it up to the point where it can ship ISRU and extra landers is unlikely, but I'll bet I could patch something together that would work if I don't need the mining capability on the all bodies lander itself.. Either way I think I'll post this on the K prize thread. I was going to post a Laythe-and-back ship, but I think this is probably a little less commonplace.

Edited July 1, 2016 by herbal space program

[Kergarin]

19 hours ago, herbal space program said:

... I'm sure this plane would have no trouble at all landing on Laythe, and its TWR on just the nukes would be good enough for landing on every body except Tylo and Eve, provided I put legs on it. Unfortunately, I think scaling it up to the point where it can ship ISRU and extra landers is unlikely, but I'll bet I could patch something together that would work if I don't need the mining capability on the all bodies lander itself. ...

That's a nice design, too  does it have enough DV left, to do the rest of the other challenge?

What made landing and starting on Laythe hard to me, was the bumpy surface, but I think you should have no problem, since your landing speed at Laythe should be extremely low. 

Yes, I think you would have to scale it up a little.  

My first design was half the size of the one in the video. It already had ISRU and landers for Eve and Tylo (even larger versions than in the video). This design was able to go everywhere... Except Moho! 

I couldn't get there with enough DV to land there, even not when starting at Gilly.

I never noticed before, how hard it is to get to Moho. I had to scale down my landers, and put on twice as much fuel tanks, just to get to Moho. 

And even with all that optimization... I finally touched down hard, with 0 oxidizer left. 

Don't underestimate moho! (if you want to go there in a SSTO that's large enough to bring two heavy landers to orbit ) 

[Jetski]

Take a look for a thread "lowest dv to moho", there are a few tricks to getting there more easily. Use Oberth leaving Kerbin (burn close) of course, but also leave SOI at an angle to save the huge inclination burn. Also an eve flyby can adjust your inclination and match velocity better. I've done kerbin-moho low orbit for under 5k, and some of the guys in the thread were way under that. If you can refuel at gilly, then use Oberth at Eve it should be doable in anything that can SSTO kerbin in theory.  Best of luck, I didn't have isru but I used a refueler in Eve orbit on my attempt

Edit: also take a glance at Nefrums Tylo lander in the Jool 5 challenge thread for inspiration. Something like 3 tons I think lol

Edited July 1, 2016 by Jetski

[John FX]

So by `single craft` the contract means to reuse a single command pod. Is there anything stopping someone from launching a pod to orbit, sending many craft to all the bodies which have a lander and enough fuel to take the command pod to the next body where it meets up with another craft already in orbit?

[Jetski]

4 minutes ago, John FX said:

So by `single craft` the contract means to reuse a single command pod. Is there anything stopping someone from launching a pod to orbit, sending many craft to all the bodies which have a lander and enough fuel to take the command pod to the next body where it meets up with another craft already in orbit?

I did something like that on my completion, one ship did everything but eve, then met with an eve lander in low gilly orbit for eve/moho.  Technically could do a separate ship body for every planet as long as the same pod travels and docks for the landing everywhere. Much cooler to do it the way @Kergarin did though  back in .90 someone did it using a tiny probe core that swapped lander bases even.

Edited July 1, 2016 by Jetski

[Just Jim]

4 minutes ago, John FX said:

So by `single craft` the contract means to reuse a single command pod. Is there anything stopping someone from launching a pod to orbit, sending many craft to all the bodies which have a lander and enough fuel to take the command pod to the next body where it meets up with another craft already in orbit?

As far as the contract goes, I don't think so.  It appears the command pod is the key element.