KSC Christmas Challenge!

[Aquaticfantastic]

Tis Christmas eve and Santa AKA Nicholas Kerman has Crashed his sleigh into the Northern Ice shelf after his elf's forgot to feed the reindeers.

Out of desperation Santa has requested the help of the KSC to save Christmas!

Your mission, If you choose to accept, is as follows:

Rescue Santa and his reindeers and return them to the north pole for 'regeneration', then complete his Christmas deliveries. 

Santa Rescue: Due to his robust size Santa cannot fly on non magical craft so you must deliver a  rover to collect Santa and his 8 reindeers and drop them at the north pole. Santa requires the space of 6 kerbals (too many mince pies) and cannot fit inside parts less than 2.5m in diameter, his reindeers require the space of 2 Kerbals each and cannot share a part with Santa.

Christmas Delivery: Santa cannot complete his Christmas deliveries due to the crash and has requested the help of the KSC! Unfortunately, as a result of the impact, all the presents are buried deep in the ice shelf, to recover them you must drill into the ice and collect all 750 presents (ore) once recovered the gifts must be delivered to each runway (island, dessert and KSC runway, 250 ore each) Santa's failure must not be made public therefore this part of the mission is to be carried out covertly, to avoid radar detectors a maximum altitude of 1500m above sea level is permissible,  you must avoid any land mass that will force you above this height. Sonic booms will alert the media therefore a maximum speed of 300m/s over land is allowed during the deliveries. There is no speed limit over water. You have six hours to collect the presents and make all deliveries.

Rules:

1) Mods are allowed unless they give an unfair advantage.

2) The presents must be delivered using one craft, refuelling is allowed but the 'present' ore cannot be used for this.

3)Santa and all reindeer must be recovered to the north pole using one rover.

4) Santa can be collected anywhere within the northern ice shelf biome and the rover can be delivered with any craft you wish, plant a flag as close to the centre of the ice cap as  (exact coordinate are not necessary.

5)Mission reports including screenshots or video's of important milestones shown.

6) Extra Kudos for using 'christmasy' craft!

 

 

 

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by Aquaticfantastic
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[Kerbalstar]

Looks like fun...

[Aquaticfantastic]

Thanks @Kerbalstar! I keep missing the boat on the micro-challenges, any reason they have a cut-off? Still testing mine out right now, I've been planting flags at the airfields to help me navigate to them, I have a plane that I think can do it without refuelling. Will be testing out the rover aspect tonight, the hard part is transporting it to the ice shelf, I'm going to try a suborbital hop to get me there and parachute down failing that it'll have to be a cargo plane. All looks good so far though, the only bit I'm unsure of is the six hour time limit.

As this is my first time trying to create a challenge I'm not expecting it to be hugely popular but will be nice to see if I'm on the right track!

I may have left it a little late though as Christmas is coming up fast!

[Kerbalstar]

Sounds good, @Aquaticfantastic! As for the time-limit, it’s to incentivize people to actually do it, and to make it easier for us to keep track of stuff. Also adds an extra level of difficulty, so if you got that badge, you know you reallly earned it! 

[Klapaucius]

9 hours ago, Aquaticfantastic said:

I may have left it a little late though as Christmas is coming up fast!

Just go by the old Julian calendar like the Eastern Orthodox do. That gives you until the 7th of January 

Edited December 16, 2018 by Klapaucius

[jinnantonix]

This is similar to the Sputnik Challenge, so I should have a craft that just needs a few tweaks.

[Aquaticfantastic]

Ok we're looking good, Testing is all done, will post a mission report as soon as I've uploaded it all, probably tomorrow as I'm at work all day today. Timing seems OK although the drilling is the time consuming part, I suppose loads of drill will help there though. I chose to avoid land as much as possible and zip about over the ocean (lack of concentration and the low altitude caused me to crash into the ocean a couple of times though). The rover part was fun too! I did a suborbital hop and  a power assisted parachute landing on the ice shelf (took a couple of attempts to hit the mark) The drive was pretty standard, glad I had an engineer on board to repair wheels, apparently 40/ms across ice is not kind to wheels (I slowed down after my second bust wheel) I'll start a leaderboard for best time once I've got my report in front of me. My time was quite leisurely and should be easily beatable, cant remember exactly but it was about 5 hours, it will show in my report (my navigation wasn't great either).

So I'm happy to declare this challenge live!

[IMLL1]

Very clever! I love this! In fact, you could probably turn this into a mission using Making History!

[jinnantonix]

On 12/18/2018 at 9:34 PM, Aquaticfantastic said:

So I'm happy to declare this challenge live!

Happy Holidays, all.  Here is my entry:  Flight time was 2 hours: 54 minutes : 30 seconds

Christmas Rover

The rover (aka Thunderbird 2) has 22 seats, 16 for the reindeer and 6 for Santa (aka Jeb Kerman), who has his own Mk3 Cargo Bay CRG-25.  The rover, piloted by engineer Bill Kerman, is attached to expendable Mammoth boosters and launches from the KSC, executes a suborbital hop to near where Santa has crashed his sleigh, lands using chutes, and travels over the ice Northern Ice Shelf at up to 100m/s .   The LY-10 Landing Gear is is very robust and never breaks on the ice.  Santa and his reindeer board the rover (10 minutes) and ore is mined (25 minutes) filling tanks in the cargo bay,.  The heavy drill rig is then decoupled.  The rover then speeds the ore and occupants  at up to 250m/s (faster after dropping drill rig) to the North pole to rendezvous with the delivery craft.  After transferring the ore, the rover, Santa and reindeer are recovered  (regenerated) to the KSC.

Christmas Present Delivery

The delivery craft launches from the KSC, piloted by Val Kerman, and travels to the North Pole, close to latitude = 0.  The craft includes J-404 Panther Afterburner engines which run dry mode over land at 300m/s and wet mode over sea at 700 -750 m/s  At the North Pole, the rover docks using the port at the rear of the craft and transfers the ore.  The craft then returns with Val and Bill aboard, to the KSC, Island Airport and finally Dessert Runway delivering the presents (ore).  The outer tanks are dropped during the flight to save on fuel.

Navigation

A flight path was used to stay over the sea as much as possible to maintain high speeds, and remain in daylight.  It felt a bit wrong to fly SW from KSC, but necessary to avoid the highlands to the west and north and stay under 1500m altitude.

The craft are built from stock parts.  Mechjeb, Atmosphere Pilot and Kerbal Alarm Clock were used to assist piloting.  Craft files available on request.  I have some video footage of the flight which I will process shortly.

I am sure it is possible to beat this flight time: loading Santa and reindeer could have been more efficient and LOx engines added to improve thrust/acceleration.

Edited December 28, 2018 by jinnantonix

[jinnantonix]

Here is my Christmas Challenge video, starring Jeb Kerman as Santa.