Fresh Eggs!

[herbal space program]

The last challenge I did was the awesome Retrosolar Rescue, for which my entry took 4 months of play time, over 200 years of game time, and 47 gravity assists. Needless to say, after a grind like that I'm ready to take on something quicker!  

So here goes:

Fresh Eggs!

While shoveling icy dirt on a routine surface sample collection mission in the polar regions, Jebediah  makes the find of a century: he unearths a clutch of Kraken eggs! The potential value of these to the scientists at the KSC is beyond measure, but it soon becomes evident that disturbing the eggs has harmed their health. When Jebediah calls home for advice, Bob asks around the conference room and nobody has any ideas, so he decides to just make something up: maybe those Gravioli anomalies we detect around the KSC Monolith  have the power to revive them! Taking the circle of blank faces looking back at him as a clear sign of agreement, he confidently tells Jebediah that's the plan: bring them home as fast as you can! 

So Jebediah jumps into action to prepare for emergency departure,  unfortunately in the process spilling his coffee all over the ship's navigation control panel.  After putting the fire out, he discovers that his Kerbumi Industries ignition switch is completely destroyed and he is stuck, unable to take off. He does the only thing he can in this situation: he calls Bob again and tells him the switch blew up on its own as he was trying to ignite his main engines. So now there is only one solution left:

Get a ship to Jebediah's polar landing site as fast as possible and bring those eggs back to the KSC Monolith!

Scoring will be based on one thing only: Lowest game time elapsed from rescue mission launch to Jebediah (or a rescuer who has boarded his ship) tagging the Monolith.

That is, you must first fly Jebediah to one of the landing sites below, then launch a ship from the KSC, rendezvous with him at his landing site, and take either ship back home to the KSC. "Rendezvous"  means either Jeb must board the rescue ship  (bringing the eggs with him) or the rescue ship pilot must board Jeb's vessel (bringing the replacement ignition switch), or alternately either of them could board either vessel after the two have met on EVA, transferring the eggs/switch. The clock starts when the rescue mission takes off from the KSC, and to stop it Jebediah must actually touch the KSC Monolith on EVA after the rendezvous. Any non-cheating means of getting either Jebediah to the rescue ship or a rescuing Kerbal to Jebediah's ship is allowed, with the understanding that Jebediah's ship cannot take off until a rescuing Kerbal has boarded it. It's basically a relay race, with the monolith as finish line,  in which the baton can be passed in either direction when the two runners meet.

To make it more interesting, I will start with three difficulty categories: 

Level One --   Kerpolar Express: Jebediah is stuck somewhere on either ice cap of Kerbin.

Level Two -- Munerang: Jebediah is stuck anywhere in one of the polar biomes on the Mun.

Level Three -- The Dunan: Jebediah is stuck on either ice cap of Duna.

If you want to rescue Jebediah from an even more difficult site, I will make a separate category for you, provided the rescue location is above ~50 degrees latitude on whatever body you choose. I don't want the challenge to require only equatorial orbits, because I don't want landing right next to Jebediah to be too easy.

Here are some more basic rules and clarifications:

1) Please provide sufficient screenshots to allow me to determine the exact time elapsed from rescue mission launch to Monolith contact. Screenshots for each ship in VAB/SPH, at launch, and around rendezvous are also required. A movie that shows all this is of course OK too.

2) You may pre-position one ship of any size/type with Jebediah,  equipped with whatever rovers or other resources you want, provided you fly it there yourself. Use of Hyperedit to place stuff at Jebediah's site is forbidden, however use of ISRU to refuel at the landing site is allowed. Proviso: if you just want to place a naked Jeb or non-functional vessel at the rescue site, you may certainly use HyperEdit to do that. The point is just to prevent people from placing gigantic vessels at the rescue site without having to fly them there.

3) Similarly, you may put together your rescue ship any way you want, i.e. with rovers, in orbit, etc., but you must pilot all components yourself. In any event, the clock will start with the launch of the first rescue ship component from the KSC.

4) You may not use MechJeb or any other piloting mods to fly your ships for you. Purely informational use of MechJeb and other infomational mods like KER, etc. is encouraged to facilitate evaluation of entries.

5) Balanced parts mods, i.e. those that don't greatly alter performance,  are OK, but you must use stock aerodynamics and otherwise stock physics to keep the playing field level.

6) There is in fact a Rule 6, and it is that all alt-f12 menu cheats are forbidden.

7) For levels 2 and 3, you can advance the clock to whatever relationship you want between Kerbin and the target body before you launch your rescue mission. The clock will not start until you launch.

 

Since this challenge is clearly doable in principle, I will not be submitting any of my own entries right away. I will however do it at all three levels and submit them when I'm finished. I will also make a leader board and maybe even a badge if this thing gets any takers.....

Edited September 20, 2017 by herbal space program

[icantmakemodels]

Hold.

 

My.

 

Beer.

 

Wait -- Why do I have to fly Jeb to the north pole by hand? I thought the challenge was getting back, not getting there.

Edited September 19, 2017 by icantmakemodels

[herbal space program]

6 hours ago, icantmakemodels said:

Hold.

 

My.

 

Beer.

 

Wait -- Why do I have to fly Jeb to the north pole by hand? I thought the challenge was getting back, not getting there.

I'm glad you're interested! The challenge is getting there and back again as fast as possible, from the moment you launch the rescue craft. I only require you to fly Jeb there yourself to keep the return vessel plausible. None of that is on the clock. I will also add that if you just want to Hyperedit a naked Jeb or nonfunctional vessel containing Jeb to the rescue location, that's fine with me too. What I don't want is people using Hyperedit to place a stack the size of the Empire State Building at the far end of the run for free. Having to fly it there keeps it real.  I have edited the rules to reflect this.

Edited September 20, 2017 by herbal space program

[icantmakemodels]

@herbal space program:

Can I use pilot assist to fly a plane there and back? I'm far too lazy to babysit it by myself.

Edited September 22, 2017 by icantmakemodels

[herbal space program]

1 hour ago, icantmakemodels said:

@herbal space program:

Can I use pilot assist to fly a plane there and back? I'm far too lazy to babysit it by myself.

I guess if you want to let it fly on autopilot in a straight line,  at some fixed cruising altitude, starting and ending at least 100km from either end, you can do that.  I will mention however that the plane I'm flying for my own entry makes it to Jeb in under 15 minutes, so I doubt any entry requiring autopilot to reduce tedium would be very competitive.

https://imgur.com/a/6tpKC

 

[herbal space program]

OK, so here's my own entry for the easy category: 31m, 30s from the runway to the north polar cap and back to the monolith: 

 

https://imgur.com/a/YRbhe

 

I used a modified version of my retrosolar rescue plane, with only RAPIER engines and a lot more oxidizer. I think this is a decent benchmark for this challenge, but it's still totally beatable.