"Start" Science Node: How High Can You Get?

[Kermunmus]

When you first got KSP, and started up a career save, you were excited to play the game and go to SPACE! Then you realized you only had a flea booster to work with, so you said "Space will have to wait," and built that same starter rocket everyone builds, didn't you? (You know what I mean)

WELL NOT ANYMORE! WHAT IF YOU COULDN'T WAIT TO WORK YOUR WAY UP THE SCIENCE TREE? YOU NEED TO GET TO SPACE!

 

This is the root of this challenge: Get the highest possible altitude with only tier 1 parts, easy right? (Here's a hint: Tier 1 has no decouplers or struts)

Parts List: MK1 Command Pod, RT-5 "Flea" SRB, Mk16 Parachute, Mystery Goo, Modular Girder Segment, Basic Fin. THAT'S IT.

How This Challenge Works:

1. Create a NEW career file, on normal difficulty, go into settings, and put funds at 500,000 (Max), and make sure starting science is 0
2. Upgrade any buildings you want to, I recommend VAB+Launchpad for larger rockets, and Astronaut Complex to allow for EVA's (Extra Points)
3. BUILD AWAY
4. Staff your rocket, more kerbals does not equal more points, however those extra crew reports are worth something
5. LAUNCH! Collect science along the way, it earns you points! (Using X-Science helps)
6. REACH NEW HEIGHTS, THEN LAND! At least ONE kerbal must walk away from landing to plant a flag (all the more reason to have more >:)

Do Nots:

1. DO NOT use modded parts that happen to be in tier 1, mods that don't use parts like X-Science and Kerbal Engineer are ok
2. DO NOT use the administration bulding, or mission control in any way to try and boost funds/science
3. DO NOT use tier 2 or above parts (no science building)
4. DO NOT use part clipping to stuff 10 flea boosters into the size of 1, mild part clipping with structural parts ok
5. YOUR FIRST FLIGHT must be the record attempt, if you fail, revert flight, DO NOT RECOVER OR TERMINATE (test run on sandbox or another file)
6. NO F12 OR HYPEREDIT (hopefully, this is a duh)
7. NO USING the EVA spam push trick once in space, I will allow ONE push retrograde using a max of 1.0 units of EVA fuel (more info in spoiler)
   Spoiler

   I will allow ONE EVA push retrograde, using a max of 1.0 units of EVA fuel to push your rocket back into the atmosphere, because realistically that's about all a real life astronaut has. You must also prove you didn't use more fuel while doing this via screenshots, one at beginning, and one at end, with the resource tab open, to compare fuel and velocities.

    

Tips + Tricks

1. You may use the runway if you wish, however there are no wheels in tier 1
2. Flea boosters blowing each other/structural parts up make good decouplers
3. The structural girders are very flimsy, although they "decouple" better than the fleas themselves (no struts)
4. The Basic Fins perform strangely on some rockets, also they add weight, sometimes it is better to go without them
5. Command Pods can be used as nose cones, even with their weight it can pay off once you are moving 500 m/s, also you get more reaction wheels
6. Remove Monoprop from the command pods, it helps at those later stages
7. Parachutes alone most likely will not stop you in time, having an alternate landing system is usually necessary
8. Launching straight up will get you the highest, unless you are going for orbit

Scoring:

Suborbital: Highest Point Reached (in meters) + # of science points x 1000 = total score (91,000 + 16x1000 = 107,000 points)

Orbital (Separate Scoring): Periapsis + Apoapsis + # of science points x 1500 = total score (71,000 + 83,000 + 18x1500 = 181,000 points)

If there is need for a higher scoring system, such as moon orbits/landings (or interplanetary :P), I will add more leaderboards, you MUST have a screenshot of your rocket during launch, your map view upon reaching your final height, and one of the space center (science points) when you return as a minimum.

Leaderboards

Suborbital:

1. @MarvinKitFox - 859,101 Points (859,101 Meters, Science Not Given)
2. @LazySoUseHyperedit - 206,138 Points (94,038 Meters, 112.1x1000 Science)
3. @Cunjo Carl - 137,951 Points (76,951 Meters, 61x1000 Science) First Besides Me To Do It Award
4. I LIKE - 0 Points (0 Meters, 0 Science)
5. PIE - 0 Points (0 Meters, 0 Science)

Orbital:

1. @Gordon Fecyk - 593,275 Points (Apoapsis 290,421 Meters, Periapsis 71,284 Meters, 154.5x1500 Science) First To Orbit Award
2. Somebody - 0 Points (Apoapsis 0 Meters, Periapsis 0 Meters, 0 Science)
3. Once - 0 Points (Apoapsis 0 Meters, Periapsis 0 Meters, 0 Science)
4. Told - 0 Points (Apoapsis 0 Meters, Periapsis 0 Meters, 0 Science)
5. Me - 0 Points (Apoapsis 0 Meters, Periapsis 0 Meters, 0 Science)

This Challenge Is Closed!

Edited January 21, 2018 by LazySoUseHyperedit

[Human Person]

Nice, but I've seen this somewhere before ...

Anyhow, a FLEA booster makes a fine decoulper, I tend to call it Solid Rocket Hotstaging.

here goes my first (failed) attempt

Here's my new decoupling idea to be able to decouple the pod for reentry. fins have less heat tolerance, so they should explode more quickly.

I'll have to go to the university now, i'll continue this tomorrow.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Physics Student

[The Flying Kerbal]

Sounds to me like this is gonna lead to a lot of very dead Kerbals...

[sevenperforce]

Yeah, I did a challenge almost identical to this a while back, but I believe I specified an 18-tonne pad limit. I'll see what I can do.

[Kermunmus]

Sorry for any similarities, I hope the challenge is still fun

@Physics Student, flipping upside down is pretty common it seems, then you speed towards the ground too fast for normal parachutes. That's why I said most likely you will need a landing booster, which makes the challenge a bit harder

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, LazySoUseHyperedit said:

Sorry for any similarities, I hope the challenge is still fun

Yeah, upgrading the pad is definitely an improvement!

[Brent Kerman]

Scott Manley landed on Minmus (and returned) with starting tech, I tried his rocket and only managed to hit the mun.

[Human Person]

3 hours ago, LazySoUseHyperedit said:

Sorry for any similarities, I hope the challenge is still fun

@Physics Student, flipping upside down is pretty common it seems, then you speed towards the ground too fast for normal parachutes. That's why I said most likely you will need a landing booster, which makes the challenge a bit harder

Have you seen my decoupler? I think it's a better solution than a landing booster.

[Kermunmus]

5 hours ago, Physics Student said:

Have you seen my decoupler? I think it's a better solution than a landing booster.

Yeah, I guess it would save weight over a full landing booster, if you only fill it enough to blast the pod off

7 hours ago, Brent Kerman said:

Scott Manley landed on Minmus (and returned) with starting tech, I tried his rocket and only managed to hit the mun.

I havn't seen this video yet, and I can't seem to find it anywhere. Did it have a strange title or something?

Edited May 11, 2017 by LazySoUseHyperedit

[CairoJack]

Safe reentry !!!

This is only a design test!

[Kermunmus]

@CairoJack Nice run, let me know when you do it for real! I have my run now, posting a video and pictures of it soon!

Edit: Here they are!

Video Version:

 

Picture Version:

Spoiler

Rocket In Vab

Takeoff!

Midway Through Launch

Final Moments Of Burn

Map View of Apoapsis

Eva At The Top

Re-Entry

Flipping Over, It does this by itself so I put the landing booster on backwards

Starting The Landing Booster

Landing Booster End/Parachutes Deploy

Parachutes Fully Deploy

Landing Safely!

Planting A Flag

Final Science Points

My Final Score is 206,138 with the height and science combined

Edited January 21, 2018 by LazySoUseHyperedit

[joshudson]

I got into orbit. Is the EVA return from orbit still possible? The ship can't make it down. I tried to EVA re-enter and failed.

[Wadusher0]

1 hour ago, joshudson said:

I got into orbit. Is the EVA return from orbit still possible? The ship can't make it down. I tried to EVA re-enter and failed.

Did you get into a low enough orbit that the kerbal can push the craft to the edge of the atmosphere? Because at that point that's your only option given that the kerbals have a very low temperature tolerance. 

Well, that and adding moar boosters of course.  

Edited May 13, 2017 by Wadusher0

[joshudson]

35 minutes ago, Wadusher0 said:

Did you get into a low enough orbit that the kerbal can push the craft to the edge of the atmosphere? Because at that point that's your only option given that the kerbals have a very low temperature tolerance. 

Well, that and adding moar boosters of course.  

A craft with only one flea left hits the water over 900km/h. With no decouplers there doesn't seem to be any re-entry profile for any craft.

[Wadusher0]

30 minutes ago, joshudson said:

A craft with only one flea left hits the water over 900km/h. With no decouplers there doesn't seem to be any re-entry profile for any craft.

I see... Well, looks like the mk16 chute is much too weak. I placed loads of them on my craft and couldn't slow down at all. You could try EVAing some time before you hit the ground - the weird physics of EVA kerbals sometimes stops them from exploding. 

[Cunjo Carl]

Nice presentation, @LazySoUseHyperedit! I love the challenge rules/setup, and figured I'd post in a previous mission as an entry to the challenge. It has the additional stipulation of no facilities upgrade and normal career starting cash only.

I had been having problems with decelerating the rocket on return from space, so I put a couple basic fins on the reentry stage and turned it into a glider! It was surprisingly stable and fun to fly, and may be able to gather a couple biomes worth of data if reentered in the right place. It gathered 61 science (including world's firsts, vehicle recovery, etc.) and made it loftily to space, but the picture shows 77km, so let's go with that. Points: 138,000!

Mission Pics inside

Spoiler

The Fancy First Flier Pictures: 1. "Thanks, I've got it." 2. (VAB) Carefully balanced thrust 3. Burst off the launch pad! 4. Toodle out of the soup 5. Single rockets push us to space! 6. Woh, space is high 7. Basic fins for decelerating 8. Basic fins for flying 9. Enjoying gliding 10. Empty SRB provides 'crumple zone' 11. Success! 12. +61 Science, +170k funds

 

On 5/10/2017 at 11:12 PM, LazySoUseHyperedit said:

DO NOT use tier 2 or above parts (no science building)

By this do you mean no science above the very first node (only use the starting parts), or no science from the nodes that require the tier2 R&D complex? From your pictures I'm assuming the prior?

Edit: Just reread the title of challenge, which kinda answered this one

 

Edited May 13, 2017 by Cunjo Carl

[Kermunmus]

@Cunjo Carl Interesting using the winglets to glide back down, nice design!

Edited May 13, 2017 by LazySoUseHyperedit

[Kermunmus]

18 hours ago, joshudson said:

I got into orbit. Is the EVA return from orbit still possible? The ship can't make it down. I tried to EVA re-enter and failed.

Well looks like I'll have to update the rules, once you're in orbit it is possible to spam this to raise or lower your orbit indefinitely, with enough time. Sorry about that. I will allow ONE EVA push retrograde, using a max of 1.0 units of EVA fuel to push your rocket back into the atmosphere, because realistically that's about all a real life astronaut has. You must also prove you didn't use more fuel while doing this via screenshots, one at beginning, and one at end, with the resource tab open, to compare fuel and velocities.

[Nefrums]

Getting to orbit is not that hard:

Geting down however that is a-bit tricky..

It would probably work to do an eva landing if you jump out of the pod after the worst of the reentry heat has passed.

[Kermunmus]

@Nefrums If you use your 1.0 units of EVA fuel to push your rocket back into the atmosphere (I don't know how far you would get), you could use the winglets to control your re-entry (as shown by @Cunjo Carl) to slow down enough to use parachutes. I don't have access to KSP right now but these are great ideas!

[Nefrums]

i tried to get back down but 1.0 Eva fuel was not enough...   I could retry the launch to get a lower PE

[Gordon Fecyk]

Holy [censored] is this hard. Managed to get to orbit in this thing, and then after an extreme amount of aerobraking patience managed to get back. Also took several tries to get the de-orbit 'burn' right.

Final stats were: AP 290 km, PE 71 km. Earned 174 Science. Managed to de-orbit with only 0.96 U EVA propellant, and took over five Kerbin days to finally return. Couldn't plant a flag in the ocean, but managed to return with Jeb, one booster, three 'chutes and four Goo canisters. Tier 2 Launch Pad, Vehicle Assembly Building and Astronaut Complex.

There's a good likelihood of this thing being disqualified for me having gone to Mission Control first; that's just for the recognition and I could have done this without needing to take those two contracts. In the video you'll see I had an excess of funds prior to launch.

Here's a video of the attempt.

Spoiler

 

For scoring purposes, subtract 20 Science and 140 800 Funds total from contracts. Subtract 40 000 advance funds from the visible 174 428 for a pre-launch balance of 134 428 Funds; more than enough to pay for the craft.

This leaves 154 Science: 231 000 points, plus AP 290 241 plus PE 71 284, should total 592 525 points.

Edited May 18, 2017 by Gordon Fecyk
Added video, subtracted contract values, calculated score

[Gordon Fecyk]

On ‎5‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 1:01 PM, LazySoUseHyperedit said:

I havn't seen this video yet, and I can't seem to find it anywhere. Did it have a strange title or something

Found it:

Spoiler

 

This isn't even remotely fair. Tier 1 in KSP 0.2.2 had one liquid fuel engine and the Hammer SRB.

[Brent Kerman]

4 minutes ago, Gordon Fecyk said:

Found it:

  Hide contents

 

This isn't even remotely fair. Tier 1 in KSP 0.2.2 had one liquid fuel engine and the Hammer SRB.

Ok, oops. I didn't remember it was that old. I just remembered that he used explosive decoupling to go to Minmus. I keep forgetting about the part change because I mostly play sandbox, and up until very recently I played 0.25.

[Kermunmus]

@Brent Kerman and @Gordon Fecyk Yeah, I asked because even I couldn't imagine how Scott Manley managed to get to Minmus on Flea boosters alone, which seemed impossible. He seems to do impossible things sometimes but I don't see how he could manage to pull it off, seeing as how it is even a struggle to get into a LKO with Fleas

Putting @Gordon Fecyk on orbital leaderboard

Edited May 18, 2017 by LazySoUseHyperedit