6 Minutes to Critical

[Cunjo Carl]

6 Minutes to Critical

5:59 ... 5:58 ... ...

 

KSC interns thought they could turn the pool into a spa by collecting all the RTGs and tossing them in. This bad situation will get a lot worse in 6 minutes when the water finishes evaporating. Build a car and get out of there! The farther the better.

Time ticks down while you build (use a stopwatch or similar). Then when you launch, you can use the ingame timer to continue tracking the time while you drive maniacally away. At/Before the 6 minute mark, come to a complete stop and use F3 to find the distance with which you escaped. 10km should be a safe distance, but why not go for better? I'll write a 1-liner for each entry for the Hall of Fame, and order them by distance escaped. Good luck!

Playing KSP on a toaster? No problem. If you want, apply these multipliers to your building time based on your system's memory (proxy for power):

16+GB       1.0x        8GB       0.8x        4GB       0.7x        2GB       0.6x       Literally a toaster 0.5x

Nitty Gritty:  

Spoiler

Save/Reload:
   You must do everything all in one go, starting from a blank design every time. That said, you don't need to do it all at once (you can pause if you need to). It may sound laborious, but building only takes a couple minutes and makes things a lot more intense while trying to go very fast and not crash.

Tracking Time:
   A convenient way to track time is to have a countdown timer set to 6 minutes, have it count down while you build. When you're done, the time it shows will be the ingame time you'll need to finish driving at for everything to add up to 6 minutes. Magic!

Version:
   Any version is ok, but 1.2.x gives you autostruts

Car rules:
   Build anywhere, but must launch from the spaceplane hanger.
   Mostly stay on the ground. Jumping's cool, but flying's not. The cutoff is when the jumps are the easy part, not the scary part. Jumps should be scary! Also, no amphibious vehicles, please.
   Car must be Kerballed. The car doesn't need to survive, but your Kerbal does.
   May be staged, though each stage must be a car.

Mods/Cheats:
   No cheats. Mods are ok, but will put you in a separate category if they effect the challenge.

Proof:
   Eh? No thanks, just have fun with it and share the stories of brilliance, success and defeat... Pictures and videos happen to be nice for this

Lawn Chairs:
   I think command chairs will have a good aesthetic for the challenge. Any time you spend putting your Kerbal into the command chair is off the books. All design time is still included.

Rule 0:
    Interesting is better than good. If you want to impose additional silly constraints on yourself for the sake of fun, do it! I'll make a mention of it in the Hall of Fame.

Sample Entry 

My sample entry. I was timing by the music, and may have found the challenge enhanced through Splashdown's rocking bass.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hall of Fame

61.2 km  @xendelaar brought it back to basics and blasted by the competition with a manueverable whiplash one-seater. The craft wanted to do a surprising amount of flying given it had I-beams for "wings", but Xendelaar kept it firmly planted when not blasting off the backsides of moguls. The experience kept Jeb in "cackle maniacally" mode the entire trip, a good sign it went well.

51.5 km @Ragingdonut shot forward with an exquisitely pared down tricycle design which managed stability, to my amazement, at up to 175m/s with only a single rudder and pair of reaction wheels!

26.2 km   @Darren9 rescued the interns, the purchasing department, and even the entire KSC Accidents Investigation Board with a panther powered rocket bus. This party bus did surprisingly little rocking as it eased its way through the foothills, a testament to its solid I-beam construction, enormous wheels and careful aerodynamic balance.

24.6 km _w/mods@Tidus Klein proved once and for all that fasty pone is best pone with a zippy fire gouting behemoth, which rescued the entire KSC staff by combining the passenger carrying ability of a 747 with the ground covering ability of a rocket powered monster truck. When asked by reporters how they came up with the brilliant design that saved all KSC from the eminent disaster, Jeb and Bob reportedly looked at each other and asked "what disaster?"

23.5 km @tsgaerospace wore sunglasses at night with a solar powered night-time run utilizing the challenge's first active motorized wheels to give an extra kick to the Juno engine. The low-slung car is especially impressive with its concept and design work occurring _during the 6 minute challenge_! That's style.

XX.X km  Cunjo Carl escaped by flexing the muscles of Untitled Space Craft's mighty Juno engine and only lost a few little bits along the way. (How far did it go? It's a total secret . Wow us with your design!)

 

Amphibeous Kerbals
(They were having so much fun, nobody had the heart to tell them they were going the wrong way)

73.3 km     With a devilishly simple design, @Numerlor dashed to the open waters and made wakes with Kerbals Safety Nightmare's twin whiplash powerhouse. The moment of contact was a tour-de-force of Kerbal engineering mastery, combining staging, emergency braking and pyrotechnic display into a single moment.

 

Sunday Drivers
(They were heading out for a drive anyways. What's all this fuss about? Crafts built off the clock)

17.1 km  @aerodis enjoyed the classiest ride of all, making the mad dash away from KSC as part of a leisurely morning sprint in an enviable Jaguar mkIV. The attractive automobile jaunted at a realistic 30m/s, but managed the escape all in good time! Good show for Degrid Kerman and her outing of 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2017 by Cunjo Carl

[SpaceplaneAddict]

This is a really interesting concept. I'll have a go

[DoctorDavinci]

12 hours ago, Cunjo Carl said:

Playing KSP on a toaster?

 

Totally Kerbal .... 

I may have to have a go at this

[Numerlor]

I don't know if this counts as car (I made it and after that I remembered it is supposed to be 100% car I thought it is just supposed to be car like and stay on ground for most of the time) But I had fun doing it and saved 3 most important guys over there, it isn't perfetly timed as well but here it is 

 

[Cunjo Carl]

6 hours ago, Numerlor said:

I don't know if this counts as car (I made it and after that I remembered it is supposed to be 100% car I thought it is just supposed to be car like and stay on ground for most of the time) But I had fun doing it and saved 3 most important guys over there, it isn't perfetly timed as well but here it is.

   I like it! That moment at 2:10 where you were careening toward the water gave me one of these moments: . I made you a sub category for your swimming Kerbals. Glad you had fun!

[Darren9]

I had a go and escaped to 26km with 17 Kerbals, should be enough to rebuild the space program. Stock and TakeCommand which allows to populate command seats in the VAB/SPH. I do have 6GB just of ram in my PC but I started a timer and ran without any bonus. As usual there's a difference in distance in the game and on the F3 screen, I was 13km from a marker at the runway and 26km in the F3 screen - I chose the higher

 

 

[Cunjo Carl]

@Darren9 Goodness gravy you made a stable craft given how many draggy kerbals were sitting on it! Also, the airplane landing gear was going over the moguls like nothing, good pick. Super solid run!

I couldn't help but notice your marker was *ahem* Jeb. Well, I'm sure he'll be fine- Given he survived my first career mode, he's been through much worse.

I had forgotten how much the F3 distance differed from reality. I based the balance of the challenge on the F3 values, so let's stick with it despite the silliness. Plus, as you say, it's numbers are a lot more flattering.

Do you have a preference for craft name? Otherwise, I'll word around it.

[Darren9]

1 hour ago, Cunjo Carl said:

@Darren9 Goodness gravy you made a stable craft given how many draggy kerbals were sitting on it! Also, the airplane landing gear was going over the moguls like nothing, good pick. Super solid run!

I couldn't help but notice your marker was *ahem* Jeb. Well, I'm sure he'll be fine- Given he survived my first career mode, he's been through much worse.

I had forgotten how much the F3 distance differed from reality. I based the balance of the challenge on the F3 values, so let's stick with it despite the silliness. Plus, as you say, it's numbers are a lot more flattering.

Do you have a preference for craft name? Otherwise, I'll word around it.

It broke apart at over 150m/s with empty chairs when I was completing the emergency evacuation training, those Kerbals limit the speed by 1/3. And poor Jeb was already stood there before I started, I didn't have time to leave a spot and load him on, or choose a name and type it in the SPH, it's just another untitled craft I must admit I haven't played much recently but that was fun - Thanks.

[Ryu Gemini]

Water is actually a pretty good protector against doom. 

Maybe there should be a subcategory for seeing how DEEP you can go. 

 

[xendelaar]

very interesting challenge.  Sign me up. ill start working on it later this week.

[Tidus Klein]

HAHA I got to try this...I'm going to save the whole stinking space center staff...wonder how many I could load up lets shoot for 60

 

https://m.imgur.com/a/1hQ1N

ha I forgot how to imbed imgur albums any who, that's 68 kerbals saved from sure death....I think I got them all save for that janitor that spilled his lunch on me

Edited May 17, 2017 by Tidus Klein

[Tetragon213]

I'll give this a try

Edited May 17, 2017 by Tetragon213
Error with spelling

[Cunjo Carl]

HAHAHA! Awesome run, @Tidus Klein- That airplane looks sick with the monster truck wheels and the panther fire rays shooting out the back. I'll get you on the leader board this evening.

Best of luck, @Tetragon213 and @xendelaar!

Edited May 17, 2017 by Cunjo Carl

[MiffedStarfish]

This looks like a great challenge, I'll have to give it a go!

[Tidus Klein]

8 hours ago, Cunjo Carl said:

HAHAHA! Awesome run, @Tidus Klein- That airplane looks sick with the monster truck wheels and the panther fire rays shooting out the back. I'll get you on the leader board this evening.

Best of luck, @Tetragon213 and @xendelaar!

XD I have AJE and Far installed so there not the panthers.....I don't know there name (something with A and a bunch of numbers in it) but they got the job done

and the monster wheels I used because....come on anyone can throw the large plane wheels on and make it easy

[xendelaar]

Here's my entry:

I didn't give the craft a name, but I would call it the Slug, I guess.

Top speed: 139 m/ s
Distance travelled: 61,228 m
RAM: 16 Gb

It was a great challenge. The fact that the clock was ticking made everything so much more exciting.

Here's my video. I didn't edit it, so sorry for the long post.

 

Some remarks on the video:

• I don't know why the rover hopped on the landing strip. It just happened
• With a TWR > 1, the rover wanted to get airborne after every jump, I tried to land as fast as possible.
• No kerbals were harmed during the making of this video

Edited May 18, 2017 by xendelaar

[Cunjo Carl]

@xendelaar Great run! I like the 'jump for joy' the rover gave on launch. I get those sometimes too when there's lots of rotated parts for some reason. All of the longer 'jumps' were when the ground was rapidly dropping away from you on the backsides of bumps and hills. Especially in situations like this (without aero control and like you were saying for TWR>1)  the difference between driving and flying is entirely driving style, and you kept it nicely grounded (and dangerous) through the whole run. Any fun crashes?

Edited May 19, 2017 by Cunjo Carl

[Ultimate Steve]

Hold my beer snacks. I got this!

EDIT: I got this tomorrow! (How is it 11:30 already?)

 

Edited May 19, 2017 by Ultimate Steve

[Cunjo Carl]

Good luck, @Ultimate Steve!

*nibbles snacks*

[xendelaar]

On Fri May 19 2017 at 6:23 AM, Cunjo Carl said:

@xendelaar Great run! I like the 'jump for joy' the rover gave on launch. I get those sometimes too when there's lots of rotated parts for some reason. All of the longer 'jumps' were when the ground was rapidly dropping away from you on the backsides of bumps and hills. Especially in situations like this (without aero control and like you were saying for TWR>1)  the difference between driving and flying is entirely driving style, and you kept it nicely grounded (and dangerous) through the whole run. Any fun crashes?

my first design was way different( and much cooler/ exotic) than the one I've posted for this challenge. i called it Shai Hulud  ( named after the sand worms of Dune*), but that thing was very crash happy:

i finally got frustrated and made the uninspiring thing i posted earlier... which was actually very robust! with it, i didn't even crash a single time! i believe that the large landing gears have a realy high stress tolerance! i wasn't aware of that until now.  

some control surfaces would have been a nice addition for the craft indeed. 

 

i really enjoyed this challenge. was the idea born from your current speed run

*

Spoiler

the sleeper must awaken

 

 

 

 

Edited May 20, 2017 by xendelaar
added a gif of my first epic craft; all hail shai hulud, the bringer of spice

[Ultimate Steve]

This is NOT my final entry. This is just testing.

Here I present the "Tumbleweed" MK1:

Here it is at the end of its first second fifth? test run. This is just testing, as it violates the "No reverts or quickloads" rule. I managed to build this in 1:45, leaving 4:15 for driving. Yes, the MET is 4:16, but technically I didn't start moving until 0:04.

The design philosophy behind this is "Make something that can survive all crashes." A few wheels (and half of the fins) were broken in the making of this. The Vectors on the front are for either stopping or continuing on if the rear engine explodes. This plan was made null by the fact that it is insanely hard to control going backwards... I'll probably reduce it to one for stopping.

I got 29KM, but it doesn't count.

Also, it needs more fuel. I'm going to try a smaller Jet design like many people have posted above.

[Cunjo Carl]

@Ultimate Steve If you want to keep going in vein with the rocket designs, you can always stage or see how _fast_ you can make it to the 10km mark?

[Tidus Klein]

20 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

 

The design philosophy behind this is "Make something that can survive all crashes."

The idea is not to survive crashes but to prevent them. What helps is a wide wheel base, lots of suspension travel, soft springs and a way to soften your landings..it also helps to turn the wheels friction down to .5 or even .2 to help avoid the KSP wheel physics jitters.....think of your craft as more of a land plane then a jet rover

[tsgaerospace]

i made this

 

https://youtu.be/0cx-QqT4xcM

currently it´s uploading

it spun out 3 times...

[aerodis]

Hi everyone! 

Here's my creation. I made it a long time ago and I decided to modify it just for this 6 minutes challenge.

It's a "reproduction" (it's not 100% accurate) of the Jaguar mk5.

It's top speed is 33 m/s and I manadged to get 17 km away from the KSC. It's maybe not the fastest, but the style is clearly there.

Here's the proof: