The Retro Solar Rescue

[Human Person]

Big thanks to @cratercracker for making the artwork above.

 

The challenge sounds very simple:

Save Burberry Kerman, who is stranded in an orbit around the sun.

"What kind of Orbit?" you may ask ... Well, it's nothing fancy: An orbit between Kerbin and Eve, nearly circular, at 180 degrees inclination. Just sign this contract and off you go!

 

See here, how he got there:

 

Don't worry, you don't need the Goliath to get into a retrosolar orbit, you can do it the smart way with gravity assists (I highly recommend a boosted Jool-Assist), But ADDING MOAR BOOSTERS will still be required. To be precise, you should add a whole lot of moar boosters. 

I tried it myself and managed to rendezvous with him (see my attempt below), but I didn't manage to return him Edit: I did and I'm super proud of myself right now.

 

All balanced mods are allowed. Balanced means that engine configs (TWR and ISP) are stockalike as well as the dry mass - wet mass ratios of fuel tanks.

If you want to take on the cost-record, you have to do it with stock parts only.

 

Who recovers Burberry (without turning on "ignore heat" of course) will be showered with everlasting fame and glory and will get an awesome badge!

 

Get the Savefile here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0zxz3obp30lxbz/persistent.sfs?dl=0

 

Or: launch a manned (and inoperable) vessel, open the debug menu, go to set orbit and insert this:

 

Now Save and Recover Burberry!

 

As always, show what you did with pictures, videos, mission report (mission report alone doesn't count). My attempt with a basic tutorial on how to get into a retrosolar orbit the "kind of smart way" will be found in my next post.

 

The scoring system:

There are 2 types od awards to win here: Records and non-record prizes. Records can be beaten while the non-record prizes are given to those who come up first with some crazy/innovative/kerbal ideas, so once you have them, you keep them.

 

Badge:

 

 

Category I  "I tried, but something's wrong"  -   You set up a close approach with Burberry. Attempting a rendezvous, you discovered the relative velocity is about 20 km/s.

 @Aetharan, except he knew excactly what he was doing.

 

 

Category II  "Well, it didn't quite work out"  -  You managed to actually rendezvous with Burberry, but have no clue on how to get him home.

The Gamer Alchemist: He took this to the next level by doing the challenge in RSS. However, he didn't do the second orbit flip and reentered earths atmosphere at over 60 km/s (twice the orbital velocity of earth) and I don't let that count as a recovery. Still, very impressive.

"It's starting to get real!" - Award

 

@Laie built a massive LV and shared some interesting and useful tips on how to build even bigger rockets. 

Heaviest LV (46 kt)

 

Hall of Fame:

Category III  "I can't believe, I just did this!"  -  You managed to recover Burberry safely on Kerbin

 @Cpt Kerbalkrunch made the 1st entry without using any nuclear- or ion engines. To make this possible, he used Jool-assists to lower his delta-v requirements. The reentry was close to maximum reentry velocities.

He gets the Grumpy Cat prize.

 

 @ManEatingApe did it the brute-force way. using nuclear- and Ion stages, he was able to keep mission time, launch mass and cost surprisingly low. 

"Rearview mirrow" prize.

 

 @ManEatingApe made a second, completely different entry to take the cost-record. The mission took literally millennia, good thing Pilots don't get payed per working-hour.

"Who's Jesus?" prize, Longest mission Time (2.3 millennia)

 

 @Aetharan This time-optimized mission took over 50km/s of delta v packed into a 27.5 Mt monstrosity.

"Do it as the crow flies" prize*

 

@MarvinKitFox  built an ultra light ion spacecraft to get the job done. The mission took over 36 years and didn't involve any complicated gravity assists.

 

@Clancy Did it with a very lightweight and cheap rocket wich still had enough delta v for a brute-force attempt.

 

@jonny went for the lowest delta-v expenature and did quite a lot of gravity assists (around 30). The light and cheap rocket that didn't use any nuclear- or ion witchcraft had to use only a fraction of the delta-v all the other entries took so far. All these advantages came at a prize of a good century of mission time.

Black belt in gravity assists

 

@jonny wasn't satisfied with just one record on a single launch, so he decided to break 2 of them (and nearly a 3rd one, the one he set up himself). He did so by using his sick gravity assist skills as above and a combination of a capsule for reentry and a chair on a rocket to deliver Burberry back to Kerbin.

lowest launch mass (39.846 t)

 

@marcushouse completed the mission and made it into a video on his channel. Definitely check that out here! Not only did he only use low-tec parts, he also had a crew-capacity of 3 on his vessel.

Lowest Tech Level

 

 @marcushouse did it a second time too! Because his second try was a completely new approach and not just am improvement of his first one, he also appears twice on the leaderboard. This time around he chose to do a brute-force-attempt with a lot of nuclear stages and even an ion stage. 

 

@linuxgurugamer took his time with a very well planned and executed mission. He burdened himself by using USI Life support, resulting in a very massive ship that required orbital assembly. He did the mission a second time to take the time record.

Are You Still Alive?, First orbital assembly

1st entry: Highest crew capacity** (7 (4 with long term life support))

2nd entry: Time Record (99d 2h 6m 17s)

 

@herbal space program appears to be one of those guys who think everything can be done with a single stage spaceplane, so he proved it by actually pulling this crazy mission off! While people like me are struggling to get a SSTO spaceplane to LKO, he flies it all the way to Burberry and back. Doing that, he also beat the delta v and the cost record.

SSTB (Single Stage To Burberry), Lowest delta v expenditure (4149 m/s from LKO), Cost record (8971 funds)

 

Have Fun and don't be shy to also share your failed attempts.

 

* I'm sure crows would fly like that, If they could fly in space with tens of thousands of m/s of Delta v

 

** The challenge is about rescuing just 1 Kerbal, but let's just imagine there are more.

Edited September 16, 2017 by Physics Student

[MythicalHeFF]

I'll go out on a limb here and say that ion engines will be 100% required...

[Human Person]

Some imgur links in his post went missing, here’s the ful album with all the images: https://imgur.com/a/YY39z

My Ship: One Mammoth Core and 4 Mammoth boosters (All feeding the core as well) push a ship into Orbit, that has 19 Nuclear Boosters, wich detach in pairs asparagus-style.

- Launch Mass: 1330 t

- Parts: 249

- Cost: 667,686

Spoiler

Meet Goliath 2!

Delta V: 21.500 m/s

The Spacecraft:

And Jeb snuck inside.

 

I chose the Jool-Transfer to be a bit late so I arrive at Jool with quite some extra velocity. I'm not entirly sure if that's the best way to do it but It gave me an encounter to dream about. Here are more details hidden:

 

Spoiler

I chose a transfer with a short travel time and around 3000 m/s. with another 200 m/s inclination change, I got an Encounter that would directly slingshot me into a retrosolar orbit.

And this is what my Craft looks like at the moment:

 

Now I got my encounter set. At Jool Periapsis, I burn another 500 m/s to raise my (clockwise) perihelion to touch Eve's orbit.

Spoiler

Here with the focus on Jool:

Note That none of Jools moons are involved here.

Another shot of my trajectories

 

Now we're leaving Jools SOI again, preparing to "correct" our relative inclination with our next Target, Eve, to exactly 180 degrees. We're going to do multiple flybys of Eve, burning as close as possible to its high mass to lower our aphelion. 

You know what, let's forget about EVE. It's too much fiddeling around for me (made a Quicksafe if this doesn't work out), we'll try to do a rendevous with Burberry right away. Note: It's weird being in a retrosolar orbit.

Spoiler

I swear, I'll keep the boring map-view-shots down. Have a beauty-shot of the vessel with Laythe and Thylo posing in the background. We ditched another pair of boosters during the Jool-PE-burn.

Now for the rendevous with Burberry, you know how a rendevouz works.

Yet another beautiful booster separation:

 

Finally, the rendevous with Burberry Kerman. We still have 10.500 m/s of delta-v left at this point. Just look how happy he is:

Spoiler

 

Having done what I have done, I think I might be able to get him back after all. First, I'll head back to Jool.

Spoiler

It weirds me out doing such a transfer to Jool. Setting up the node was pretty easy.

This Time, The Jool assist was supposed to get us back into a counter clockwise solar orbit. Instead, it's going to send us crashing right into kerbol!

What a beautiful picture!

 

The gravity Jool-assist that was supposed to bring us back into a counter-clockwise orbit did'nt work out as well as planned. I mean: we could get back ... in about 2000 Years.

Spoiler

I Have to find a way to make this better. All hopes on Thylo! Thylo isn't gonna help either.

Screw the Jool-Assist, I have 7000 m/s left. Why not spent 5000 of them to turn our orbit aroud? (my Orbital velocity right before entering Jool's SOI is around 2500 m/s. The last pair of nuclear boosters were unintentionally droped right into Kerbol! Great!

Spoiler

this super inefficient boostback seemed to be the best option. See here, how the last two booster stages are falling into Kerbol

We're left with 2400 m/s of delta-v and we're going to need that to slow down before reentry. we dont want to reenter at way above 6 km/s.

I don't have a good feeling about this. Burberry just entered Kerbins SOI at 6400 m/s.

the last bit of fuel slowed him down to just under 5 km/s. That's a safe velocity for reentry.

And yes, he briefly began to rise out of the atmosphere again: Pe: 32km - Ap: 39km - final descent, so it was a skip-reentry.

PE:

AP:

And finally back home (I time-warped to the next morning):

"Returned a vessel from a suborbital flight on the sun."

Success!

- Mission Time: 10Y 35d

 

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by Physics Student

[Spricigo]

 

How long until the contract expires?

[Human Person]

22 minutes ago, Spricigo said:

How long until the contract expires?

It doesn't. but mission duration might be a factor when determining the overall winner!

Your signature shows roughly what I'm doing right now.

Edited April 27, 2017 by Physics Student

[Spricigo]

3 minutes ago, Physics Student said:

It doesn't. but mission duration might be a factor when determining the overall winner! Your signature shows roughly what I'm doing right now.

Fast response is fast!

Personally I'll attempt just for the bragging rights. However others can be further encouraged if you define a scoring system. Mission time and mission cost seems to be good metrics.

 

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

Love it. Count me in.

One problem, though. I despise nukes and will not suffer an Ion engine on one of my vessels. Think that'll make it tough? 

[Human Person]

8 hours ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

One problem, though. I despise nukes and will not suffer an Ion engine on one of my vessels. Think that'll make it tough? 

That would be even more impressive. Would it be possible? Sure, but only with a rediculusly large rocket. It took me all of my 21.500 m/s of delta-v to get it done.

Edited April 28, 2017 by Physics Student

[Human Person]

4 hours ago, Spricigo said:

Personally I'll attempt just for the bragging rights. However others can be further encouraged if you define a scoring system. Mission time and mission cost seems to be good metrics.

I thought about it for a while. The problem is: This challenge is so extremely hard, i don't want to create further limitations with my scoring system.

A possibly bad score might lead to good ideas being not even arttempted.

I'll work on the badge as motivation.

[marcushouse]

Hey Hey!
This looks fun!

[TheKorbinjer]

Upon watching your video, that reentry tells me that your Kerbal became a liquid in the seat. Was cool to watch that though.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

Failure.

Flipped my orbit.

Picked up Burbarry.

Returned to Kerbin.

At about 16,000 m/s. Was running out of fuel and tried to go the cheap route. Worked about as well as you'd expect.

Back to the VAB.

Ration your snacks, Burbarry. I'm comin'.

[Hodari]

Might be a few days before I have time, but I'll definitely have to attempt this one at some point.

[Human Person]

8 hours ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

Failure.

Flipped my orbit.

Picked up Burbarry.

Returned to Kerbin.

At about 16,000 m/s. Was running out of fuel and tried to go the cheap route. Worked about as well as you'd expect.

Back to the VAB.

Ration your snacks, Burbarry. I'm comin'.

That's way better than my first attempt 

[Hodari]

18 hours ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

Failure.

Flipped my orbit.

Picked up Burbarry.

Returned to Kerbin.

At about 16,000 m/s. Was running out of fuel and tried to go the cheap route. Worked about as well as you'd expect.

Back to the VAB.

Ration your snacks, Burbarry. I'm comin'.

Yeah, looks like that is going to be an issue with my first idea for this as well.  Going to have to rethink my plan.  Probably have to plan on going back out and flipping my orbit a second time after doing the rescue, then heading back to Kerbin from there so we're at least going in the same direction again. 

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

18 minutes ago, Hodari said:

Yeah, looks like that is going to be an issue with my first idea for this as well.  Going to have to rethink my plan.  Probably have to plan on going back out and flipping my orbit a second time after doing the rescue, then heading back to Kerbin from there so we're at least going in the same direction again. 

Exactly. Workin' on it now. My ship has gotten... rather large. Times like these I think the Nerv users have it right.

But no. When you know you're right you don't let evidence get in the way. I shall prevail.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Success at last! Mr @Physics Student, you are a sly one, but I finally caught up to you. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how you were able to use an encounter with Jool to flip you directly into a retro-solar orbit. I was honestly beginning to think it was some sort of magic trick. Spent all of Sunday around Jool (avoiding all family commitments, trying to) find a way to bounce off of Tylo or Laythe. Never happened. Then, just before work this morning, I had an epiphany. I knew how you did it, and I had about half an hour to try it. I set up the burn and, sure enough, like magic I was now flying clockwise. I was ecstatic, but I had to work. Been stewin' on it all day, and finally got back a few hours ago. Just finished the mission a few minutes ago and, man, what a ride. But I'll  never do it again. Probably.

Here is the beast on the launch pad.

1,700 parts and 6,800 tons. Absurdly large? Sure. But not a single Nerv or Ion engine, as promised.

Spoiler

 

Makes a bit of a smoke plume.

 

Spoiler

Staging boosters. They're exploding all around.

 

Spoiler

 

Dumping the Mammoths.

 

Spoiler

Burning the Mainsails.

 

Spoiler

 

After dumping the Mainsail stage, I found out that I forgot to strut the Skipper stage, I built this ship three different times, so I must've overlooked looked it this time. I don't use autostrut, but I figured I would this time. Accept the ship started shaking and blew up when I engaged it. I turned it off and just dealt with it. I'm sure I lost some delta-v to the resulting engine flopping.

 

Spoiler

 

This is my "aha" encounter. You can see Jool flipped my orbit without needing a burn inside it's SOI. I was incredibly excited. It pained me to go to work.

 

Spoiler

 

Dumping the Dart stage. In retrospect, this stage was definitely under-powered. I felt I would need high efficiency at this point, so I wanted to take advantage of the Dart's high Isp.

 

Spoiler

 

Encounter is set.

 

Spoiler

 

This is the face of a guy who's been eating his own shoe leather.

 

Spoiler

 

Burbarry is aboard. Halfway home.

This upper-stage is made up of 24 Sparks (the first 8 have already been staged), Again, I was trying to stretch my delta-v as far as I could. And since I don't use mods, this was pretty much all guesswork. So far, so good.

 

Spoiler

 

Heading back to Jool now. That's a long burn. I was starting to get worried.

 

Spoiler

 

Staging.

 

Spoiler

 

Got my encounter set.

 

Spoiler

 

With this maneuver, I flipped my orbit again. You can see how insanely high my Ap is. Luckily, I'm now moving counter-clockwise again, so it's less then a year to Pe.

 

Spoiler

 

These shots may end up out of sequence. I knew after I flipped at Jool that I could make it, but it was incredibly difficult. I needed every last drop of fuel, so it had to be done just right. Did a lot of reloading and retrying. More than I want to think about.

This pic wasn't part of the final success, but I couldn't resist throwing it in. I had never been so close to the sun before. In retrospect, burning so close to the sun (and stopping for a photo op) was a really bad idea. Not long after this I realized all my ablator burned off. Had to reload after I already had a Kerbin encounter. I was not amused.

 

Spoiler

 

Had to float around the sun for a few years to get a survivable encounter. Swinging around so close to the sun had me moving incredibly fast. You can see my orbit path is as absolutely straight line. This was gonna be tough.

 

Spoiler

 

Here is my final approach with my final stage. Just a single Spark with an FL-T200. Sorta threw this on as an afterthought. Very glad I did. Never would've made it home without it.

For the approach, I set my Pe at 35km. Started my final burn at 300km to slow myself down enough to survive re-entry. This is my standard move when returning from Jool. I think of it as a "semi" free return. Was never coming in this fast before, though.

 

Spoiler

 

Just managed to ditch my final stage here before hitting the atmosphere. I'm comin' in hot.

 

Spoiler

 

Right here it gave me the little shimmy you usual get right before your ship blows up from coming in to steep. I thought for sure it was over. But no. Instead, it just dropped speed incredibly fast and I knew I was home.

 

Spoiler

 

Of course I landed in the dark. Couldn't resist getting a shot of the chute, though. I was overjoyed.

 

Spoiler

 

And a water "landing" as well. Had to warp to 'til sunup to get a good pic of the Retro-Kerbal himself.

 

Spoiler

 

Those boys at mission control sure do love understatement.

 

Spoiler

 

Survived a flight? Seriously?

At least the World's First people were a bit more polite.

 

Spoiler

 

Because of the direct orbital flip at Jool, I didn't get credit for "Suborbital flight on the Sun" or whatever. Oh well. Some deeds go unsung.

 

So in closing, what's a Kerbal's life worth?

 

Spoiler

 

Evidently, 2,000,000 bucks, 13 years of game time, and an entire weekend of my life.

 

It was worth it.

[Spricigo]

57 minutes ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

Evidently, 2,000,000 bucks, 13 years of game time, and an entire weekend of my life.

 

It was worth it.

congratulations.

BTW 44year and counting

[Human Person]

@Cpt Kerbalkrunch I can't even express how impressed I am! 

When you said, you'll do it without using Nervs or Ions, I thought by myself "He'll realize soon that he's gonna need them", but you did it!

And the reentry: I didn't know a reentry was possible at that kind of velocities! Your mission report was fun to read, you must be so proud of yourself, you deserve It! 

Quote

With this maneuver, I flipped my orbit again. You can see how insanely high my Ap is. Luckily, I'm now moving counter-clockwise again, so it's less then a year to Pe.

I tumbled over this maneuver as well. The second flip of your orbit seems to be even harder then the first one.

Now I'm sorry for not having the badge yet, stay tuned, I'll finish and upload it asap.

 

Edited May 2, 2017 by Physics Student

[ihtoit]

I did something similar a while back as a storyline challenge, managed to not only rescue all the kerbals from a runaway station on a death dive into the sun, I also managed to use a Munar gravity assist to return to Kerbin - without using heatshields.

 

 

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

8 hours ago, Physics Student said:

@Cpt Kerbalkrunch I can't even express how impressed I am! 

When you said, you'll do it without using Nervs or Ions, I thought by myself "He'll realize soon that he's gonna need them", but you did it!

And the reentry: I didn't know a reentry was possible at that kind of velocities! Your mission report was fun to read, you must be so proud of yourself, you deserve It! 

I tumbled over this maneuver as well. The second flip of your orbit seems to be even harder then the first one.

Now I'm sorry for not having the badge yet, stay tuned, I'll finish and upload it asap.

 

I'm actually absurdly pleased with myself. I said I would do it, so I couldn't give up, but there were times when I wanted to. As usual when something's tough, I'm glad I stuck it out.

You're dead-on about that second flip. Though it was the first orbital that had me stumped all weekend, once I figured it out, it was sort of a head-slapper. It was a great move, and it took me a while to figure out how you did it. But once I knew, it seemed like I should've known the whole time.

Flipping back to counter-clockwise, though, I couldn't really find a magic formula for. Had to burn twice in Jool's SOI to get a decent orbit. Then the fun of slowing down and trying to get a survivable encounter with Kerbin.

I have to admit, I came so close to giving in that I had an idea of what I would do with a Nerv stage. Very proud I stuck to my guns. (No nukes! No nukes!) 

I wasn't sure about that reentry, either. While inbound, I was looking through old forum threads to find out the maximum survivable reentry. This was definitely my highest speed ever survived. It was a near thing, though.

Overall, fantastic challenge. I've been walkin' on air all morning. This game has a hold on me that's indescribable. You can bet I'll wear my badge with pride.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

10 hours ago, Spricigo said:

congratulations.

BTW 44year and counting

Thanks for the congrats. I swear I felt like I could float around out there for centuries waiting for things to line up right. I was pushing it to try to beat the 10 year benchmark. Was back in 8 years, but I could only manage a bad encounter. Hit Kerbin's SOI at 12,000 m/s. I didn't need to see how it worked out. I already knew. Had to forgo the speed prize and take solace in having fulfilled my pledge not to use nukes. I never had a chance at the low-cost prize. 

[Spricigo]

1 hour ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

You're dead-on about that second flip. Though it was the first orbital that had me stumped all weekend, once I figured it out, it was sort of a head-slapper. It was a great move, and it took me a while to figure out how you did it. But once I knew, it seemed like I should've known the whole time.

Flipping back to counter-clockwise, though, I couldn't really find a magic formula for. Had to burn twice in Jool's SOI to get a decent orbit. Then the fun of slowing down and trying to get a survivable encounter with Kerbin.

The problem with the 2nd reversal its that you are travelling in the opposite direction of the planet, so the tendency its to have a bigger relative velocity and expend less time in the planet's SOI. Its not the case that you cant get a good encounter, but getting a bad encounter is much easier.

27 minutes ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

 Had to forgo the speed prize and take solace in having fulfilled my pledge not to use nukes. I never had a chance at the low-cost prize. 

well, for me its the speed one that was out of question from start, my rescue ship is not very expensive (while cutting some cost may be possible). But after 50year I still need to lower my orbit to rendezvous with Burbarry Valentina

 

[Human Person]

@Cpt Kerbalkrunch

The badge is now available. I hope you like it.

[jonny]

That challenge sound great. I think I will go the long route and use minimum deltaV. Hopefully I will get some good gravity assists.