One life - how far can you get?

[CrazyJebGuy]

I tried going to Eve, and returning. But I didn't even go. Immediately upon launch my spacecraft lurched very violently left, I have no clue why. SAS also turned out to be an absolute retard, when I turned the rocket stuff worked, when it turned the rocket it failed absolutely spectacularly. (Again, I haven't a clue. My rocket was perfectly symmetrical)

But that would have been OK, except I launched at the wrong time. So I warped for a year until Eve was 60 degrees behind kerbin, as I had been told was correct. Then I spent 10 minutes fiddling with manuever nodes before realizing it was completely wrong because the wiki was wrong. It wouldn't even give me a bloody closest approach. I know my orbit was not on the correct plane also, (Thanks SAS) but that is a bit ridiculous that it wouldn't even give me a closest approach. I may reload one of the quicksaves I took and continue, even though it won't count any in this competition.

At least I orbited Kerbin, so i get.... 5 points.

Proof of my not impressive feat, is I filmed the whole thing.

Will upload video at https://youtu.be/lggYryRTtrc

Edit: Oh wait, no I won't. It's too long apparently. Stupid bloody youtube.

Edited January 3, 2018 by CrazyJebGuy

[macktruck6666]

Well, the kraken keeps striking. Got all the way from Mun, Minmus, Duna (lost some solar panels) then when I was time warping on Ike to refine fuel. the landing gear glitched in the ground and everything explodes. Anyone know how to overcome landing legs glitching into the ground. I heard airbreaks might be better "landing gear" for time warping.

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by macktruck6666

[sevenperforce]

So, I built a Grand Tour ship.

With a dedicated Eve lander.

Went to Minmus to refuel.

Ran out of fuel just before landing and bounced, but righted myself with RCS.

Flag-planting and refueling went as planned.

Then I went to Eve!

At least, I flew by.

Then to Gilly, to refuel again!

Nifty money shot on Gilly descent:

And apparently there is, like, NO gravity on Gilly. I was just sitting like this, supported by reaction wheels.

Next plan was to use the mothership to put the Eve lander into an aerobraking orbit, and let the Kerbalkind Gods take care of the rest.

Point of no return....

I picked too high an periapse, so there was a LOT of aerobraking.

But after a long time (and burning off virtually all my ablator), I was headed for Eve's surface.

See what I mean?

The first problem came when I jettisoned one of my heat shields a wee bit too early and blew up my Mainsail. Not to worry, though; the design was a tripod asparagus staged monster, so there was still a chance I could get off the ground with the three Vectors alone.

Chutes away!

Uh-oh.

The chute ripped the three upper stages off the landing stage. So...this is not good. At least Val is alive...for now.

Tried burning to arrest my descent and perhaps make it back into orbit (again, I have three-stages to work with here), but the Dart just didn't have enough umph.

So....here we are.

Val is not thrilled.

Oh well! Back to Gilly with the mothership!

Refueling, then off toward Moho!

The plan was to burn off my lowest-isp prop first, starting with monoprop, then biprop, and do the rest of the flight on the nukes alone.

Coming into the Moho injection, I realized that I was running a wee bit low on propellant.

So, just after making orbit, I drained and jettisoned my nifty reusable drop tanks.

Moho descent! My calculations said I had plenty of TWR on the nukes, so I went straight for a suicide burn.

And...suicide it was. Not because I didn't have enough thrust, actually, but because I simply ran out of fuel.

Flipping...

Ended up coming down without any fatalities, but I certainly won't be getting off Moho in this rig. So...that's a wrap.

So, let's see. Kerbol orbit, Moho orbit + landing, Eve orbit + landing, Gilly orbit + landing + ascent, Kerbin orbit, Minmus orbit + landing + ascent. 195 points.

 

[sevenperforce]

I wanted to give it another go, after my last disastrous attempt, so I decided to mix it up this time.

I've never actually built a fully-functional Shuttle clone, but I've had a lot more experience with spaceplanes now, so I'm going to give this a go. This will be tricky. Getting a Shuttle to work right and glide right, WITHOUT testing, is...challenging. Even moreso if you've never built one before.

Spoiler

Starting with the Orbiter itself. Building it in the SPH and trusting heavily in the lift and CoM markers.

Loaded it into the VAB and giving it an external tank. Giving it some nice smooth fairings to make it look more like the real thing.

Added some simple boosters, tilted the whole thing back, and played around with the angle of the Vectors until I got the center of thrust roughly underneath the center of mass.

And here's the payload. A Rockomax fuel tank, a Klaw, and a simple exoatmospheric lander with drop tanks and chutes. The idea is to send the lander out to Minmus, bring it back and aerobrake with the attached heat shield, refuel from the Klaw, go back to the Mun, drop the tanks, and come back to the Orbiter. If something goes wrong, I should be able to abort to direct entry using the heat shield and the chutes on the tanks.

And the launch!

Definitely some cosine losses here.

Surprisingly, it was relatively steady on ascent.

SRB burnout was a touch earlier than I'd hoped. Already veering a little north of where I'd like to be, heading-wise.

I turned down the thrust on one of the Vectors to try and keep the CoT behind the CoM...worked reasonably well, but my inclination is going to be whack.

Last push toward circularization.

And now for the OMS!

Almost there...

Made it!

Moving Val over.

This is the point where I realized the little lander can, strangely, had no monopropellant. Not sure how that happened. Maybe using the decoupler made the OMS engines drain it first.

Maneuvering onto the Klaw without monoprop was tough...the orbiter is not exactly nimble. I had to use the bay doors to trap it, then slide onto the Klaw.

Took care of that.

Now it's off to Minmus!

Nice a landing spot as any.

Looking low on fuel.

Flag planting!

Transferring fuel back in to the center in case I need to jettison the drop tanks later...though that would mean losing my chutes, which I don't want to do.

Heading up to Minmus orbit.

Uh oh. Somehow, I ended up with a ridiculously inclined Kerbin orbit.

Like, polar-inclined.

Aerobraking just a bit, then I'll take stock of the situation.

Turns out I was over 100 degrees off-inclination from the orbiter, since the orbiter's orbit was already pretty tilted. Not good.

At this point, I could have just gone ahead and dumped my periapsis deep into Kerbin's atmosphere and returned Val that way. But maybe there was another way.

How about an apoapse burn and a Munar assist to correct my inclination?

Correction burn during the Munar flyby...

This was enough to get me back into a roughly flat inclination, but I was still 20 degrees off from the orbiter. I would have needed 380 m/s of dV to correct my inclination. The situation for the orbiter was even worse; its lower apoapse meant I'd need 850 m/s. Neither was possible.

But if a Munar assist worked once...why not again?

If I'm going to commit to this, I'm going to commit. So I'm dropping the drop tanks with my precious parachutes to squeeze out every drop of dV.

Now I only need a few m/s of dV to fix the inclination.

Running on fumes as I lower my trajectory to aerobrake down.

After a LOT of aerobraking....

Here we are again!

Very slight inclination correction burn on the orbiter.

From there, it was a LOT of planning and warping until I got an ideal encounter.

Close rendezvous...

Here we go!

Using my last bit of bipropellant to push myself through the bay doors.

Success!

At this point, I COULD have refueled the lander, but there was no way I'd be able to make the Mun and back, and I didn't have enough OMS propellant to give the lander a periapsis kick. So, it's homeward bound.

If there's one thing I'm NOT good at, it's planning re-entry trajectories for landing a glider at the KSC.

Deorbit burn. This will also be the first time I've tried to actually fly this glider in the atmosphere, since I haven't tested it at all. We'll see how good my SPH-fu is.

They seem excited.

Here goes entry!

So far so good.

Probably not going to make it to KSC, though.

Let's see what kind of glide ratio I get...or if she is even controllable at all.

I'm just saying, they are WAY more excited than I would be, in these conditions.

Looks like we made it! And flying nearly level. Guess my control surfaces weren't too far off-base after all.

Having a bit of weight with the lander in the front probably helped, too.

Definitely not going to make the KSC.

Airbrakes out on the tailfin.

Unfortunately, I missed getting a good shot of the landing itself, but here you go!

All back safe!

By my count, that's 60 points with a 2x multiplier, so 120 points.

Edited January 4, 2018 by sevenperforce

[LightBender]

I've done this challenge before but in a older version I'll try again!

[Piatzin]

So my plan was originally to make a large rocket with three lander craft on it - two small ones for Minmus and the Mun, and a larger one with mining/refueling capabilities, which would head off to Duna and then Ike, and head back to Kerbin from Ike orbit.

I ended up deciding to only do Minmus and the Mun though. The Duna lander was too risky, and what with Duna's considerable D-V requirements, I didn't want to risk losing a Kerbal or leaving him/her stranded.

Spoiler

The Minmus/Mun landers:

Two on the rocket, which, looking back now, was overkill for a payload of only ~11 tons.

The rocket loaded in fine (I neglected to add fairings for fear that it would glitch. I've had it happen too many times with rovers )

6400 D-V is a bit lower than what I expected.....(cough cough foreshadowing)

Launch went fine. TWR was a bit low, but sokay

Booster separation #1 went well

Then I noticed a bit of a problem...

Stage 5 is missing

I paused the game several times to try and inspect the fuel lines, and everything seemed to be okay....

Sadly, I got too absorbed with the inspection of the fuel lines while in flight, and messed up the ascent profile

Booster separation #2 went not so well.

Luckily, nothing on the main rocket blew up. But by this point, the missing stage/messed up fuel lines became glaringly obvious:

I still don't know what I messed up. Oh well...the Rhino had enough D-V to make orbit.......

.....an orbit which ended up looking more decent than I thought it would

The plan from here is to get into Mun orbit, and detach a lander. Then the Rhino stage will head off to Minmus, spending it's fuel in the process, and detach the second lander.

Mun maneuvers:

Expensive, and inefficient, but eh..

My orbit ended up all tilted though, so I made some corrections...

Ended up with a nice, OCD pleasing orbit:

Beauty shot:

Detaching the Mun lander:

I added a massive antenna. Although, in hindsight, it was just extra weight because I forgot to add extra batteries lol, and the lander can only has 50 units of EC.

It was here that I noticed how absurdly happy Dunbles Kerman had been for the entirety of the trip....

Oh well. De-orbiting from such a high altitude wasn't the best idea, but I had enough D-V.

I had a brief moment of panic when I accidentally staged and activated the parachutes. Then I remembered I was in a vacuum

Slowly decelerating (above) and then hitting Z when I started to see the craft's shadow (below) (and yes I know I ignored the suicide burn stats):

Touchdown:

Honestly, this was one of the Mun landings I'm most proud of. It wasn't hard, but the 'no quick-saving' rule really make things nerve-wracking

Dunbles Kerman seemed very happy

Flag Planting:

^ We definitely had enough D-V but there wasn't much margin for error...

Speaking of errors, I kinda messed up the ascent  profile (again, lol)

Orbited Kerbin with a periapsis of ~54,000 in order to aerobrake.

Had a slight moment of panic during the first pass, since the RTG apparently jutted out of the heat shield, and was dangerously overheating:

With no other form of producing electricity......

Luckily, it survived all three passes.

Ended up landing in a nice little spot:

Right next to the shore:

Dunbles has decided to stay indefinitely. I don't really blame him

I'm only including the Mun landing in this post, since I haven't done the Minmus one yet (time restrictions and also picture spam, heh)

At the moment, the Mun lander is safely splashed, and the Minmus transfer stage (the Rhino) is in high orbit around the Mun with the lander still safely attached. No casualties thus far, which would, for now, give me 120 points.

I will upload the Minmus part of the mission when I get the time....soon.

But don't put my score up because I'm not done

 

Edited January 5, 2018 by Earthlinger

[JacobJHC]

I'll have to give this a try...

[Ultimate Steve]

Okay, I've found time to update the scoreboard! Congrats to all of you!

[qzgy]

2 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Okay, I've found time to update the scoreboard! Congrats to all of you!

Yup, you are correct with scoring assumption for me. Did make both munar and kerbin orbit.

Definiteyl gonna have to do this again. Don;t know if more ambitious or less....

I'm thinking around the same level - Grand Tour 1 life...

[Wanderfound]

Just a quick hop to Moho and back; 400 points.

 

No nukes, all conventional rocketry:

 

All liquid fuelled, no SRB nastiness:

 

Normal asparagus design:

 

Plenty of gimbal, plenty of TWR, minimal drag:

 

Transfer burn on the Rhino:

 

Run through the drop tanks during the capture burn:

 

Easy down.

 

Forgot the ladders, but fortunately they weren't necessary:

 

Dump the lateral tanks at the start of the return transfer:

 

12G worth of aerobraking deceleration:

 

Safely home:

Edited January 7, 2018 by Wanderfound

[Piatzin]

Right, so part 1 of my mission ended with Dunbles Kerman relaxing near a shore on Kerbin, after having safely landed with the Mun Lander.

Part 2: Bill Kerman takes a trip to Minmus and back.

Safely.

Spoiler

This was the situation from last time: the Minmus lander still attached to the Rhino stage, in orbit around the Mun

Heading to Minmus:

Starting the burn for orbit...

The lander is decoupled from the rhino stage, which had a bunch of fuel left over:

De-orbit burn:

Ended up targeting a 4500 m mountain:

Random screenshot with Kerbin/the Mun in the background:

Moment of panic as I noticed for the first time that the navball was in orbit mode. (The retrogade marker was on the opposite side)

Managed to right myself though. Phew

Flag planting:

Heading back up:

Not sure what happened here:

Random maneuvers:

I had planned on landing in the desert, but ended up undershooting a bit...

Kinda dark, but that's me decoupling the lander ^

Oh and the RTG exploded this time around. I was going faster than the Mun craft, and I only did the one aerobrake, so the speed was a bit higher...

Landed with no issues.

Some recovered science:

And Bill:

I also 'sent' a naval frigate to recover Dunbles near that shore he landed by

Proof of recovery:

@Ultimate Steve

Kerbin - 5/NA/NA/5

Mun - 10/20/10/10

Minmus - 10/20/10/10

I managed to do all of them, which would be.....220, with the multiplier for not having casualties.

Or 210, since that last 5 for Kerbin might not count...

 

Edited January 6, 2018 by Earthlinger

[sevenperforce]

Simply getting to Eve's surface and back, successfully, would earn...let's see...1520 points.

[Piatzin]

52 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Simply getting to Eve's surface and back, successfully, would earn...let's see...1520 points.

1520 points, yeah.....and an equal amount of parts...

Edited January 6, 2018 by Earthlinger

[sevenperforce]

52 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

1520 points, yeah.....and an equal amount of parts...

Hardly. Heck, just for that, I'll do it in under 100 parts.

[Piatzin]

7 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Hardly. Heck, just for that, I'll do it in under 100 parts.

I meant at launch...

Is that possible? An Eve ascent rocket that weighs in at 100 parts when on the pad?

[sevenperforce]

14 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

I meant at launch...

Is that possible? An Eve ascent rocket that weighs in at 100 parts when on the pad?

Right, I meant at launch too. Under 100 parts. Eve, flag, back.

[rocketbuilder]

Does Kerbal Engineer count as a part mod?

EDIT : I guess you said imformational mods are allowed so I'm gonna take it that I can?

Edited January 6, 2018 by rocketbuilder

[Piatzin]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Right, I meant at launch too. Under 100 parts. Eve, flag, back.

I kind doubt this, but feel free to prove me wrong

1 hour ago, rocketbuilder said:

EDIT : I guess you said imformational mods are allowed so I'm gonna take it that I can?

Yes it's allowed. Unless the OP changes something....

[sevenperforce]

58 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

...at launch[.] Under 100 parts. Eve, flag, back.

I kind doubt this, but feel free to prove me wrong

Working on it. Currently in Eve orbit, entry and landing vehicle intact, with a LOT more dV in my transfer vehicle than I had expected.

[Piatzin]

5 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Working on it. Currently in Eve orbit, entry and landing vehicle intact, with a LOT more dV in my transfer vehicle than I had expected.

This sounds like borderline sorcery

[sevenperforce]

36 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

This sounds like borderline sorcery

Well, the launch vehicle itself was only 15 parts. Transfer vehicle is 3 parts. Entry, landing, and ascent vehicle is 73 parts; return vehicle is 7 parts.

[MarvinKitFox]

Well, here is WAS my try.

Progress so far: Kerbin,Mun,Minmus, ike, duna-stranded.

Rules: Single design, single launch. No retries, no loading saved designs.

I *am* saving quite often, and reloading ***only when my ksp has crashed***. My ksp install dies every 30 minutes or so, so this is unavoidable.

I do not reload because i crashed my spaceship, forgot to do something, or did anything silly. Only for computer program crashes.

And for sleep, as this challenge is looking to take many hours!

 

My basic design is an interplanetary caddy running a nice efficient Nuke,

and a VERY overbuilt lander than can handle absolutely any surface landing and relaunch except Kerbin and Eve.

It uses ISRU to refuel itself and its interplanetary caddy.

 

The Album of my quest, will be updated to current progress as often as I can.

Current progress: Launched, Mun, Minmus, Ike, Duna. stranded on Duna.

Unfortunately, my Dana landing site had no resourced to harvest. Nor did the relocation 69 km away.

What a sad ending, all for lack of a resource scanner.

Album a/x3kO4 will appear when post is submitted

https://imgur.com/a/x3kO4

Mods used: KER, Alarm Clock. Waypoint finder is also in there, but irrelevant.

 

 

P.S.

I have tested my ship afterwards, it is quite capable of all moons and planets including Eeloo and Moho except for Eve (and of course Jool).

Moho has to be the *last* stop though, as I need to dump the lander after vampyring all its fuel, to get out of that nasty gravity well back to Kerbin.

If only I had a resource scanner!

 

 

Errors I made in my quest:

try1: did not strut the modules under the Payload fairing. *fiiine* while fairing is on, but thrusting through a docking port, with a Mammoth at your rear, is like pushing Spaghetti. Lost Jeb and Bill(or was it Bob) here.

try2: the entry above:

   * no resource scanner.

   * refuelling takes ~ 1.5 years, due to very weak production. Next time, 2-man the lander and take the engineer along, not just to orbit to repack 'chutes.

   * Serious heat issues with ISRU unit so close to landing control pod. Even after switchoff, its heat bleeds through and tries to blowup. Relocate or better heatsink.

   * Lander should have a Fuel-only tank, to be used to resupply the tugboat. Making fuel+oxy, then only passing the fuel to tug, leaves landed with unusable Oxy!!!!

 

 

Edited January 7, 2018 by MarvinKitFox

[sevenperforce]

20 hours ago, Earthlinger said:

This sounds like borderline sorcery

Update: off Eve, down to six parts, and only 9,020 m/s of dV left in the tanks.

Where shall I go from here?

[Piatzin]

12 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Update: off Eve, down to six parts, and only 9,020 m/s of dV left in the tanks.

ONLY??

I withdraw the 'borderline' part of my previous comment

12 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Where shall I go from here?

Moho? Jool's a bit far...not sure if you'd be able to make the most of it's points...

EDIT: Moho might result in overheating problems

Edited January 7, 2018 by Earthlinger

[sevenperforce]

13 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

ONLY??

I withdraw the 'borderline' part of my previous comment

Moho? Jool's a bit far...not sure if you'd be able to make the most of it's points...

Gilly should be easy enough. I'd like to pick up Moho, Ike, Minmus, and the Mun. Not sure whether Dres is possible.