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Spaceship Endurance: The Anywhere Lander

sevenperforce
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sevenperforce

sevenperforce

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The invention of Debug Drive (pioneered by one Cheiter "Alt-F12" Kerman) has rendered the complexities of orbital mechanics virtually obsolete. Now, spaceships can simply turn on their Debug Drive and zip almost instantly from any orbit to any other celestial orbit, without consuming a single drop of propellant. Some have decried the use of this technology as "too easy", but most have embraced it with enthusiasm.

The new tech has only one limitation: it can only be used once a stable orbit has been established, as the Tunnelizer Particles used by the drive will rip the ship apart if exposed to too much gravitational imbalance. So while orbital mechanics is no longer a concern, rocket science remains alive and well.

THE CHALLENGE: Build a ship capable of deorbiting and orbiting at many worlds as possible, without refueling, staging, or docking. Your ship is only responsible for the deorbit and orbit; it does NOT have to perform transfer or capture burns. You may use the Debug Menu to "jump" from any stable orbit to any other stable orbit, but you cannot jump from the surface (or from a suborbital trajectory) to orbit. Your vehicle must be manned. At no point can any parts explode, break off, or otherwise leave your ship. Absolutely no part mods.

This challenge is about design, so you do not have to fly your ship into orbit; you start the challenge in LKO, fully-fueled. You decide what order to visit worlds in.

SCORING: You gain points each time you land and reorbit from a given world. Each world is worth a certain number of points as shown below.

  • Gilly: 6
  • Pol: 26
  • Minmus: 36
  • Bop: 46
  • Ike: 78
  • Dres: 86
  • Mun: 116
  • Eeloo: 124
  • Duna: 145
  • Vall: 172
  • Moho: 174
  • Laythe: 290
  • Tylo: 454
  • Eve: 800 (if anyone can pull it off)

Good so far? Don't get started just yet. You can earn bonuses based on vehicle design and mission parameters. Each bonus is a 10% increase to your final score, and they multiply, so two bonuses means a 21% increase, three bonuses means a 33.1% increase, and so forth. OP reserves the right to add new bonuses in the future.

  • Homeward Bound: Return to the surface of Kerbin from LKO at the end of your mission.
  • Infinity and Beyond: Your vessel consumes neither xenon nor ablator, meaning it could conceivably refuel at any ISRU station and continue its mission indefinitely.
  • In the Neighborhood: Visit each planetary system only once. In other words, you complete all landings within a given system before moving on to the next one.
  • Baby Grand: Visit every world but Eve.
  • Kerbin's Sweet Caress: Land within visual range of the KSC at the end of your mission.
  • No Surly Bonds: Your vessel is capable of SSTO from Kerbin, independent of your main mission.
  • Rocket Scientist: Be the first person to post, in this thread, an accurate explanation for how I arrived at the scoring for each world.
  • Hera, Wife of Zeus: Land on all the moons of Jool.
  • Powerhouse: Your vessel carries no solar panels.
  • Disembark: Your Kerbals can leave the vessel and plant flags on every world without needing their jetpacks.
  • Regular Ace: Fly the entire mission without relying on informational or piloting mods.
  • Pickup Artist: Your vessel is capable of EDL at Eve and re-ascent to orbit if Infinite Fuel is enabled after landing, independent of your main mission.
  • One Stop Shop: Your vessel consumes only a single type of propellant (e.g., xenon only, LF only, monoprop only, or LFO only).
  • Killing Me Smalls: Your vessel has the lowest dry mass of any submission. To qualify, you must land on either Laythe or Tylo.
  • Rule of Cool: You have a dual-thrust-axis lander, capable of vertical takeoff and landing perpendicular to your main engine thrust vector using dedicated engines.

Good luck, everyone!

Spoiler

I don't really expect anyone to be able to get Baby Grand. By my count, you need roughly 17,500 m/s to land on and return from every world other than Eve, and an infinitely large nuke-powered ship would only be able to carry about 18 km/s of dV. However, if you can use ions for a large portion of the trip...well, we'll see!

LEADERBOARD:

  1. @Wanderfound Touches down on Laythe and the Mun before coming home to Kerbin for a pinpoint KSC landing. For now, the smallest submission capable of Laythe, so 791 points!
Edited by sevenperforce
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qzgy

qzgy

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Well, already figured out the scoring system...
Still need to start a mission, so I'll just put it in a spoiler for later.

Spoiler

You sure?

Spoiler

Its 1/10th the delta-v needed to get into/land from orbit with a 2x multiplier if the body DOES NOT have an atmosphere. Presumably because this is making the assumption that on the descent for the bodies with an atmosphere, no delta-v is spent for deorbiting and landing, so its just really 1/10th the estimated delta-v for descent and reorbit.

 

Edited by qzgy
Sorry, mistype
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Wanderfound

Wanderfound

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Posted

The scoring is a little vague regarding repeat visits; do you need to hit as many different moons as possible, or can you just hop down and back from Munar orbit twenty times in a row?

Is ISRU allowed or not? An ISRU-equipped SSTO can do most of this, but mining is a PITA at the moment thanks to the bouncing bug.

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sevenperforce

sevenperforce

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8 hours ago, Wanderfound said:

The scoring is a little vague regarding repeat visits; do you need to hit as many different moons as possible, or can you just hop down and back from Munar orbit twenty times in a row?

Is ISRU allowed or not? An ISRU-equipped SSTO can do most of this, but mining is a PITA at the moment thanks to the bouncing bug.

One visit per celestial body; no one wants to see a ship land on Gilly 400 times. And no, ISRU would be refueling; no refueling allowed.

Doing it without refueling is the really challenging part, here; how do you budget, and what order do you travel in? If you're using bipropellant auxiliary engines for extra thrust at Tylo, for example, you'd want to visit Tylo first so as not to lug that heavy oxidizer all around to all the other worlds...yet if you visit the other worlds first, your Tylo vehicle will be lower-mass and so you don't need to have as much dry mass.

18 minutes ago, ShadowGoat said:

When you say you doubt anyone can land on eve, you have never met me. I’ll land alright. Maybe not in one piece, but all parts of the ship will touch down.

I don't doubt people can land on Eve. I doubt people can leave in an SSTO.

4 hours ago, Earthlinger said:

@sevenperforce There should probably be some sort of bonus for low part count craft, or low tonnage, etc

Added new bonuses!

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SG Aero

SG Aero

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Ohhhh..... Well who says it has to be single staged? If I make a eve take-off vehicle with an over complicated landing module then I could probably do it. Oh and even if the rules say I can’t have multiple stages I can just bend them to my will and explode off unwanted parts.

Edited by ShadowGoat
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sevenperforce

sevenperforce

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7 minutes ago, ShadowGoat said:

Ohhhh..... Well who says it has to be single staged? If I make a eve take-off vehicle with an over complicated landing module then I could probably do it. Oh and even if the rules say I can’t have multiple stages I can just bend them to my will and explode off unwanted parts.

Then you should re-read the OP: "At no point can any parts explode, break off, or otherwise leave your ship."

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sevenperforce

sevenperforce

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11 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

The  part which landed got back into orbit by itself, therefore it was an ssto.  I was only referring to your comment that an ssto couldn't get into orbit on Eve.

The part which landed got into a suborbital spaceflight by itself, but it was not a single-stage-to-orbit. As it turns out, @Kergarin HAS demonstrated an Eve SSTO, albeit made possible only by ISRU and pinpoint landing on the very highest peak of Eve. But that required spending a tremendous amount of fuel just to slow down and land.

I would be truly, ridiculously shocked and flabbergasted if someone managed to go from Eve orbit to the surface, and back, without staging, docking, or ISRU. Let alone having enough fuel to land anywhere else. But hey, if you can do it....

 

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IncongruousGoat

IncongruousGoat

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Clarification question: For the "In the Neighborhood" bonus, do we have to do Mun/Minmus right off the bat, since we start in LKO, or can we put off the Kerbin system landings until later, so long as they're done consecutively?

Edited by IncongruousGoat
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sevenperforce

sevenperforce

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2 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Clarification question: For the "In the Neighborhood" bonus, do we have to do Mun/Minmus right off the bat, since we start in LKO, or can we put off the Kerbin system landings until later, so long as they're done consecutively?

Mun/Minmus can be done at the end, or anywhere in between, if you like.

19 minutes ago, icantmakemodels said:

MJ, KER?

Sorry; by part mods I mean mods that affect flight. Modded engines, modded tanks, modded structures, etc.

Parts that merely enable informational/piloting mods are fine.

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Piatzin

Piatzin

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If I use F12 to set my orbit around Laythe, it'll be the first time I even touch the Jool system. (And yes, you read that right, I have never visited the Jool system properly. I'm no veteran like some of you guys. I bought the game barely a year ago, and only have 160 hours on it. Half of which is plane building. Which is my specialty :D)

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