Jestersage Posted December 16, 2016 Share Posted December 16, 2016 (edited) Your mission: Launch a ship to Kerbin orbit, completely unguided (i.e. the only interaction you have is to hit the spacebar to stage), using nothing but SRBs. Background: This challenge is inspired by Ōsumi-5, the first successful Japanese satellite, launched in 1970. It was put into orbit aboard the Lambda 4S launch vehicle: a four-stage rocket entirely powered by solid fuel, that had no guidance or control systems at all. As described here, Quote The weirdest thing about the L-4S rocket is that it doesn't have guidance, navigation and control (GNC) built in! It was because some people in Japan said that the technology like GNC could be put into missiles, which they couldn't accept. (the Japanese constitution prohibits the act of war.) And the engineers did come up with a way. The 1st and 2nd stages used the aerodynamic effects of the tail assembly. The 2nd(again) and 3rd stages used a motor to spin the rocket like a giant gyroscope, thus holding the rocket steady. The 4th stage stopped the spinning, and before it lit the engine did a little bit of maneuvering to put it steady,(and the boosters weren't firing at that time so it wasn't really GNC.) then made the rocket spin again, then finally, put it to orbit. This immediately struck me as one of the most Kerbal things I ever heard, so naturally this challenge was the first thing to spring to mind. The rules: You must put a craft into orbit around Kerbin. It must be powered solely by solid fuel. No engines that are supplied by liquid fuel or any other propellant. So, basically, just SRBs, plus Sepratrons and/or LES if you like. It must have no control input whatsoever, other than the staging action This includes not just control input like WASD, but also adjusting tweakables in flight, adjusting staging in flight, etc. No SAS turned on. No active reaction wheels at all (not that this matters, with SAS turned off and no player input...) No aerodynamic control surfaces (fixed surfaces only). (again, not that this matters, with SAS turned off and no player input...) With the exception of two specific mod parts (see below), it must be pure stock only. No modded parts at all, other than specified below. No mods that affect game physics at all. No mods that affect ship control at all (such as MechJeb, or the flight computer in RemoteTech). No modification (e.g. via ModuleManager) any of the characteristics of stock parts. You can use the stock game's built-in editor tweakables, that's it. Mods that have no physical effect on the ship at all are fine (e.g. visual F/X like PlanetShine or Scatterer, or info displays) No timer auto-mods -- if you can use those, do the other one. No time warp allowed. This one's a bit subtle... it's to avoid a sneaky back-door way for the player to get some control of the ship. Turning on time warp will instantly stop all ship rotation, which is an unfair magical "stabilization" of the ship. So, don't. Physics warp is allowed as a timesaver, if you like, as long as you're not exploiting it to cause some sort of kraken effect. Submission guidelines: Just post in this thread, with the following items included. Please share your .craft file somewhere public (e.g. dropbox, Google Drive, whatever) so people can download and try it out. (The fun part here is that the .craft file is all that's needed, since no piloting is involved. Anyone can just hit spacebar on the launch pad and see how it flies!) Include either a screenshot or a brief description of your craft on the launchpad. Provide the following information (which, of course, can be checked by anyone who downloads your .craft file): Mass on launchpad Mass after achieving orbit Periapsis altitude Apoapsis altitude Orbital eccentricity. This is calculated as: (Ap - Pe) / (Ap + Pe + 2RKerbin), where RKerbin is Kerbin's planetary radius of 600 km (or 600,000 m... be sure that all three numbers are in the same units!) Payload fraction. This is defined as orbital mass divided by launchpad mass. The winners: A few categories here. I'll update as people post results. The "Just Do It" Award: Just get to orbit, by the above rules. Any orbit is fine. There's no "rank" or "top" here, it's just a complete list of people who have done the challenge and posted their results, in the order received. I'll include myself at the top of the list, due to my example above. (no entries yet) The "Precision" Award: Get into the most circular orbit, defined as having the lowest eccentricity. Top 10: (no entries yet) The "Efficiency" Award: Get into orbit with the highest payload fraction. Top 10: (no entries yet) The "Pee Wee" Award: Get into orbit with the smallest possible launchpad mass. Top 10: (no entries yet) The "Totally Kerbal" Award: This is a completely subjective category, based on my personal opinion. It's for listing people who go above and beyond the call of duty by achieving insanely ingenious things using only the above rules. Landed on the Mun? Orbited Kerbin and then landed on the runway? Got to orbit without using any of the allowed SmartParts mentioned above? Something else that makes people go, "holy heck, how did they do that?" Here's your chance to show off! Q: isn't there another challenge that is similar? A: Not quite! This one would actually allow stock players to have the same chance! When you use the timer/auto stage, your multistage rocket can go beyond spamming Seperatrons, as well as lower TWR as needed. You also get the delta V to actually established orbit -- 32 seperatron + 1 KD-25K just barely have 3467 dv, while have 3 SRB will yield only 3.5k dv -- both just barely clear the bare minimum dv needed to establish orbit in an efficent flight path. Even spaming KD-35K will not get you to orbit. In short, you cannot do that challenge without cheats and/or mods. I am attempting to do a copy of Ariane PPH. Just need to figure out the seperatron and we are in business. Edited December 16, 2016 by Jestersage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red Iron Crown Posted December 16, 2016 Share Posted December 16, 2016 You could at least write your own OP rather than copy/pasting someone else's. I gather you are salty about needing a mod for the original challenge but this is just petulant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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