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Minimus Tower Challenge

Kuansenhama
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Kuansenhama

Kuansenhama

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In the interest of better training the kerbals of Uuuokozetistan Space Program to better utilize their EVA packs, we are contracting you to build us the most difficult component of our Minimus EVA training facility. A tower, that Kerbals can Jet Pack to and from the top of. Why? Because it is fun!

Your mission is to build a freestanding tower in one of Minimus' Lakebeds (Where the ground is 0M) , and make it as tall as you can. Place a Kerbal on top of it, standing, with the EVA Pack off. Your score is the altitude that that kerbal is at.

You cannot:

F12, Hyperedit, Abusive ladder physics, or any other form of cheating that is usually illegal in these sorts of challenges.

Only mods that I will allow are informational or visual. (KER, and whatever visual mod is popular at the moment is alright) This means: NO Kerbal Joint Reinforcer, NO Mechjeb, NO Extraplanetary Launchpads, NO Tweakscale, and NO parts packs, and No other mods (except the ones listed above)

Increase the height of your structure whit an extended solar panel, radiator, thin part, or anything else a Kerbal could not easily stand on or could knock off. (At minimum, the end of a 1.25M stack as shown in the example.)

You can:

Use as many launches as you want and dock spacecraft.

Use existing orbital infrastructure such as your other stations or bases (assuming it was also launched/constructed without cheats or mods.)

Assemble your tower in orbit or on the surface, whatever you prefer.

Use the fuel mining equipment to your hearts' content.

Make your tower out of whatever you want. (Fuel Tanks, Structural Parts, Hitchhiker Containers, Asteroids, I don't care, so long as it is stock!)

Part count is only limited by your CPU and tolerance for slideshows.

You need to show:

I'm not asking much really. One screenshot for each of your critical launches in the VAB or during launch. (and if there's a fairing around it) tell me whats in it or give a screenshot with the fairing off.

Show me transfer burns to Minimus (or anywhere else you might go) and any docking/assembly of your tower.

Show me the tower, landed in the lakebed, with a Kerbal standing on top and the altitude meter visible. This is the most important screenshot.

Show me any funny failures you have (towers that fell over on landing, wackjob launchers exploding, etc). This is a rule.

Or make a video. I'll accept that too.

My Attempt: This is about what I'm expecting in terms of coverage of your mission in terms of screenshots and text. (So nothing super elaborate that will take you four hours to edit and post.) I'm just counting on you all to be good citizens and not cheat.

Spoiler

tJGPPnJ.png

My attempt on the pad. For simplicity's sake, I will only be using one rocket. In the fairing is a medium lander. and four girder sections with RCS on them. Once I am ready to land, I will assemble the girder sections into a straight line and land it as a tower.

iUQF3WD.png

Pushing into orbit. The Vector engine boosters have been dropped now but the fairing is still on.

u6IuGmx.png

Changing to Minimus' Inclination after making orbit. You can see the lander and tower sections now as I have dropped the fairing. I also dropped the main booster stage and went to a Kerbodyne half tank and Rhino. After that, I have a Rockomax Half tank and Poodle stage, so lots of DV to spare...

mtWX8cC.png

Right after I docked two of the tower sections to my lander. It already was pretty wobbly, so I decided to stop there. You can't see it but I'm in Minimus orbit now. (Though you could probably figure it out by my low orbital velocity and altitude.)

HcK35T5.png

Coming in for landing on one of the Flat Lakebeds. I forget which one.

SzTdYpF.png

Landed. With Jeb Standing on top, my altitude is 34 Meters. So that will be the baseline for scoring all towers.

Leaderboards: (I will make a siggy badge for this if enough people want one)

1. Nich: 288M extended his previous tower from ~150M.

2. CallisTrOn Entertainment: 202M tall tower and over an hour of video to prove it was legit.

3. totalitor 117M tower.

4. Gorjia: 85M tall tower of girders, nice video.

5. Kuansenhama: 34M tall.

Edited by Kuansenhama
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Kuansenhama

Kuansenhama

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17 minutes ago, Jhawk1099 said:

I'll do a video for you

Looking forward to seeing it already. :cool:

14 minutes ago, Nich said:

Dont need a badge but this looks like a lot of fun.  Perhaps another leader board for a KIS/KAS konstruction?

Sorry but I'm gonna keep it stock for now. Besides, for most people, the hardest part of this challenge is going to likely be landing something that's 50, 75, 100 or (who knows probably way more) Meters tall without it falling over or crashing. If you can just ship the parts to Minimus and build your tower on the surface, it would kinda ruin the fun. :wink:

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Nich

Nich

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Bah only 79m and it was VERY WOBBLY very hard to land. It appears to sway in the wind on Minimus.  SAS would tare it apart so I flew by hand first time I used veneers.  They seem very wasteful but did the job.

 

2 of the largest reaction wheels were worthless.

 

 

Edited by Nich
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Kuansenhama

Kuansenhama

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10 hours ago, Nich said:

Bah only 79m and it was VERY WOBBLY very hard to land. It appears to sway in the wind on Minimus.  SAS would tare it apart so I flew by hand first time I used veneers.  They seem very wasteful but did the job.

 

2 of the largest reaction wheels were worthless.

 

 

79M... First attempt and already double my height. Can I see just two or three screenshots more of that thing on the pad, launching or in orbit to qualify you? (If you don't have them just reload the rocket in the VAB or something.) I also want to see one of that thing in orbit before it lands on Minimus.

Edited by Kuansenhama
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Nich

Nich

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I just realized I should have made a action group for the mammoths.  My second launch for pics was not as efficient but it still had plenty of dv to get to Minmus.

 

I also have one old pic of landing.  

fOdHaT4.png

I went with fuel tanks because it seams like they had the most height/stiffness per part :/

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Enginerdy

Enginerdy

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This was a fun challenge. I'll make a submission. I do have a few mods installed and I didn't want to make a fresh install for this, but I didn't use any mod parts, and none of the mods installed change physics. Here's my album, my height was 83 meters.

 

So, you'll see in the last picture that I suffered a pretty big failure. Jeb survived, but he's trapped inside my 2nd cargo bay, so that's not good. My plan had been to separate my 2nd cargo bay and dock it onto the top of my 1st cargo bay, then separate my tower segment and dock it on top of the 2nd cargo bay. If I can pull this off my design will get a lot taller. Unfortunately I underestimated the gravity on Minums (has anyone ever said that?). I have plenty of engine power to move my two extra tower sections around, but the segments are mounted in the cargo bay upside down, and I don't have enough RCS to flip them over before they fall to the ground. Once I saw that wouldn't work I reverted to my save at landing and tried a crazy strategy of launching onto a sub orbital trajectory and trying to mount my second segment in flight, thus leading to the large explosion. My tower was 83 meters tall but very short lived.

 

I may be able to pull this off without a design change if I assemble the tower in orbit. My landing was actually really easy, I think I could pull it off with the rest of the tower assembled. Maybe I'll try that approach soon.

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CallisTrOn Entertainment

CallisTrOn Entertainment

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I'm just on 79m right now. Already very close to slideshow gameplay. But I will go 120+. So be prepared.A video will come ;-)

OK, saw the 153m entry after me and realized that my construction is much stiffer than I thought. So let's see how far I come above 150m ;-)

Edited by CallisTrOn Entertainment
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Nich

Nich

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Sweet I got to 153m but I am definitely done FPS are hurting and sway on top of the tower is getting bad cant really add anymore parts or stiffness.  Docking those pods really are a pain in the but but I am much better at docking for it now :D  To be fair I totally stole a lot of ideas, wings and landing gear.  I still think empty tanks are the way to go though.  More struts on the bottom helped stiffness and wider base helped a lot as well.  Starting TWR was 1.01 lol.  Each docked section had 1300 dv so I had plenty of fuel.  I was pretty worried when I landed on Minimus and only had 550 dv left for the entire craft.  6 reaction wheels made the craft fairly easy to fly.

 

 

 

Edited by Nich
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Kuansenhama

Kuansenhama

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Looking at this again, I've been trying to think what might yield the tallest tower, and how to counteract wobble without KJR and such.

The way to go about it is to assemble a large, heavy base in orbit, probably made out of MK3 Parts and using multiple Sr. Docking ports to attach it to reduce wobble. Drop this down, then once on the surface, conduct a docking of smaller, lighter modules to continue extending the tower upwards.

I'll try this when I get a chance.

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CallisTrOn Entertainment

CallisTrOn Entertainment

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I guess part count is anyway the only real limit on this challenge, cause minmus has such low gravity.

The solution here is definitely docking on the ground as smooth as possible. And it's kinda easy cause it's nearly the same as in space. Once your good enough at this you can stack until you can't stand the slideshow anymore ;-)

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CallisTrOn Entertainment

CallisTrOn Entertainment

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After 17 hours of uploading there is my entry in form of a video. Still very long and not that entertaining, but therefore it shows everything well detailed. Hope that one not properly docked stage won't keep me from getting accepted. To stand on top of the tower is still very safe ;-)

I put some times of interest in the video description, so you don't have to watch it completely.

 

 

Edited by CallisTrOn Entertainment
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Nich

Nich

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9 hours ago, CallisTrOn Entertainment said:

After 17 hours of uploading there is my entry in form of a video. Still very long and not that entertaining, but therefore it shows everything well detailed. Hope that one not properly docked stage won't keep me from getting accepted. To stand on top of the tower is still very safe ;-)

 

 

HA HA whoops wrong docking port lol Very nice base I started with something very similar but part count killed me.

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