Dumpling range challenge

[mystifeid]

No rovers?

Maybe I'm cheating unintentionally but they seem more effective.

Start with zero electricity.

Used Mechjeb to keep a minimum 10m/s speed only. Didn't touch the direction keys once clear of KSC and climbed to over 800m.

After using 10% of my fuel I have covered more than 53km.

Stopping because it's easily possible to make a lighter rover.

[zolotiyeruki]

That's an interesting approach.  Could you use the electricity to get up on a hill and then glide a long way without using any charge?

[mystifeid]

2 hours ago, zolotiyeruki said:

That's an interesting approach.  Could you use the electricity to get up on a hill and then glide a long way without using any charge?

It seemed like about 90% of the fuel I used was consumed while climbing uphill. So maybe driving to a high takeoff point might not be worth it.

[Aeroboi]

9 hours ago, mystifeid said:

No rovers?

Even without electricity in the battery banks (partially stored by a fuel cell) you use stored electric charge as it fills up, so completely cancelling the battery containers to fill up should workaround that problem.

Besides that, in fact your using a second energy source "electric charge" next to the LF/O the dumpling offers, so in a way it isn't dumpling only since a secondary part provides the EC.

Using stored electric charge would be cheating since you will loose speed with depleted electric charge and you'll have less momentum going down a hill, therefore less speed and distance covered over a average time span. Because in a way, the battery capacity is the capacitor for when the fuel cells can't provide enough power.
So instead, use enough fuel cells to sustain uphill climb, and fairly so since fuel cells aren't empty weight.
In a sense of relation a fuel cell rover with battery banks would be a hybrid car. Hybrid being driven through 2 methods in this case energy storage next to using the dumpling only.

I guess it depends where the philosphy lies in the eyes of the OP.

[mystifeid]

10 hours ago, Aeroboi said:

I guess it depends where the philosphy lies in the eyes of the OP.

Huh? See Rule 3 in the OP - fuel cells are ok. If you look at the screenshots you may notice the absence of batteries. Electricity is stored by three things on the rover - the fuel cell, the rovemate probe core and mechjeb but just the fuel cell itself would be perfectly adequate to act as a capacitor as the energy draw from the wheels did not seem to trouble the output of the fuel cell.

I'm sort of surprised that no-one has pointed out the obvious (besides the warning by @zolotiyeruki) - 40 minutes driving in a straight line at an average of 10m/s should give me around 24km distance and not 53km as suggested by the F3 Flight Results.

[Klapaucius]

I decided to stick a Dumpling on my Tiny Aircraft Challenge plane.  Since the original fuel tank was the root part, I just drained it and left it there.  So here it is.

 

It says I went 83 KM, but seeing as the waypoint manager says I am only 23.4 km from the airfield, either something is really wonky or I flew mostly in circles.  Either way, not the best score, but I did take off and (almost) land on proper gear.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Klapaucius

[mystifeid]

1 hour ago, Klapaucius said:

but seeing as the waypoint manager says I am only 234 km from the airfield

Typo? 23.4km instead of 234km? I'd tend to believe the waypoint manager.

[Klapaucius]

7 minutes ago, mystifeid said:

Typo? 23.4km instead of 234km? I'd tend to believe the waypoint manager.

Typo. Fixed.

[RedSun Rocketry]

I'll have a rover entry in a few days

[Loskene]

4 hours ago, mystifeid said:

I'm sort of surprised that no-one has pointed out the obvious (besides the warning by @zolotiyeruki) - 40 minutes driving in a straight line at an average of 10m/s should give me around 24km distance and not 53km as suggested by the F3 Flight Results.

So it sounds like the F3 menu is calculating distance travel from the point at which the craft spawned in space, and is not taking the rotation of Kerbin into account, just wherever your net distance lies after factoring the rotational displacement and ground covered by the craft itself. Meaning to get accurate results you'll have to subtract or add the appropriate ground distance coverage (depending on whether you drive/fly east or west) proportional to the mission elapsed time, since that determines how much Kerbin has moved since you began. Sounds like a bit of a pain to get everyone to work out, so a simpler universal method of determining distance like start/end co-ordinates or flags should be used instead to eliminate Kerbin's spin as a variable and give consistent results. Doesn't matter if they're not exact representations of path taken, so long as they let you tell who got further.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Loskene

[RedSun Rocketry]

what if your vessel isn't manned, so you can't plant flags

[Loskene]

43 minutes ago, RedSun Rocketry said:

what if your vessel isn't manned, so you can't plant flags

Longitude and Latitude, you can calculate the distance travelled in a straight or curved line between 2 points on a 600km radius sphere that way. Bit more roundabout than flags but just as accurate.

[mystifeid]

I'm a sucker for long rover trips so I thought about trying to finish this challenge so here is:

Part 1 (with no guarantee of Part 2)

The Dessert was chosen as a start point because it requires considerably less twisting and turning to avoid hilly terrain. Going up an incline of more than about 4 degrees chews power quickly and coasting down the other side doesn't really compensate.

I make no apologies for using Mechjeb - I've already been around Kerbin twice without using it or any other mods for that matter. And it appears that this is a trip that may take longer than either of my circumnavigations. Mechjeb also uses power and although 0.3/minute may not seem like much, over the nine hours spent driving today, Mechjeb has consumed 162 units of EC. This requires the fuel cell to use roughly 0.25 LF to generate and which is sufficient to power the wheels for approximately 25km.

Driving as fast as possible would have been great but in early testing I got the impression that 10m/s was quite a bit more economical than even 15m/s. Oh my ...

There were a few false starts. Originally I tried driving WSW but 10km out, I was swallowed by the landscape and spat back out with parts exploding as I cartwheeled over the desert. Tried driving due West - same thing happened.

Tried driving North and 20km out the flag I was using as a start marker simply disappeared but this might have had something to do with how many times I'd had to reload before I could get Jeb back into the rover without tipping it over. Both Jeb and the rover had been vibrating uncharacteristically so I was not unhappy about starting again.

The rover was modified to allow stable ingress and egress to the command seat and this time a capsule was placed on the launch pad to use as a marker. The rover was launched from the airstrip and after starting up the fuel cell, Jeb drove over to the launch pad to begin his journey right next to the capsule.

Unfortunately KSP's target marker is only visible within a 100km radius. However, Mechjeb's "Distance to target" was a very nice match and it was used almost exclusively after the first 100km but confirmation can be gained from the number of degrees of latitude traveled so far. (Remember that I'm trying my best to head due North)

Anyway, with more than two thirds of my fuel remaining, so far I've covered 350km and about 33.75 degrees of latitude. (From memory I think my F3 Flight Results were showing something like 750km)

Given the unlikely scenario that:

- there are no objective hazards ahead (there are)
- no big detours will have to be made (they will)
- I can stomach another 18 hours of this (I won't)

then I can see no reason why 1100km cannot be attained with Jeb pushing onto the Northern Ice Shelf and maybe even the North Pole.

 

The rover. Fuel weight is 110kg or 25% of the rover mass. Expect better economy as the trip progresses.

Every little bit helps, right? Jeb empties his EVA Propellant.

Begin with zero electricity.

Start beside capsule marker

The Mun and Minmus rise together at sunset.

At 99.9km, with the inbuilt target marker about to disappear.

At 200km.

At 300km

At 350km - more than enough for one day.

Edited May 12, 2019 by mystifeid

[vyznev]

10 minutes ago, mystifeid said:

Every little bit helps, right? Jeb empties his EVA Propellant.

Does it, actually? I was always under the impression that EVA propellant was effectively massless. Huh...

[mystifeid]

1 minute ago, vyznev said:

Does it, actually? I was always under the impression that EVA propellant was effectively massless. Huh...

No idea - it didn't look like it made any difference - but better safe than sorry. Jeb had a pee too...

[zolotiyeruki]

I have an entry!  Measured using longitude difference.  Started at 74 2/3 degrees west, hit the ocean at 17 1/3 degrees east, for a total of 92 degrees.

(92 degrees/360) * (2 * pi * 600km) = 963 km

I coulda made it just a bit further if I hadn't run out of electric charge (for maneuvering) and fuel (to recharge the batteries).

Full album here: https://imgur.com/a/kkLcKaH

This makes me really curious--I think there's a *very* good chance I could make it all the way around with an oscar-b (a bit more fuel and a lot less drag).

[mystifeid]

Hard to sleep (cough) last night thinking about it so here is

Part 2

I'd been wondering what the grasslands would be like compared to the desert and after 250km I had a pretty good idea. They were up and down like a bride's nightie requiring constant attention while shooting my economy to hell. Just as bad were the deviations to avoid the great river and it's tributaries as I made my way toward the northern-most bend in the river where one of the few places to cross it is found.

The river crossing itself preyed on my mind the whole time. Would I crash? Would I even have enough power to climb up the other side? I knew there would be a cost and it turned out that the price to climb the 30° 600m high slope on the other side was the fuel for 40km.

My projected range shrank and I despaired. One or two big climbs would mean that I wouldn't make the ice shelf, let alone the pole. But as if to console me, the grasslands now evened out and up-slopes which had consistently been 6-8° were now 4-6° and I could see my economy improving.

At 700km distance to start, I have covered 71.3° of latitude giving an actual distance of around 746km with approximately 28% of my energy remaining.

When I zoom out I can see the ice shelf in the distance, beckoning. The rover uses very little power on the flat and the ice shelf is perfectly flat. It would be great to use the last of my energy here.

Edited May 12, 2019 by mystifeid

[purpleivan]

On 5/7/2019 at 2:33 AM, Klapaucius said:

I decided to stick a Dumpling on my Tiny Aircraft Challenge plane.  Since the original fuel tank was the root part, I just drained it and left it there.  So here it is.

 

It says I went 83 KM, but seeing as the waypoint manager says I am only 23.4 km from the airfield, either something is really wonky or I flew mostly in circles.  Either way, not the best score, but I did take off and (almost) land on proper gear.

 

 

 

 

 

Nice... and it carries two kerbals.

My little plane only carried one, plus it made use of gravity for the takeoff, by dropping it from a launch tower and using the fall to pickup enough speed to get takeoff lift. So mine feels a little cheaty.

[RedSun Rocketry]

it's still pretty good

[mystifeid]

Wow, what an epic. Pretty happy to see the last of that fuel go. Total distance driven - 1057km. (at 10m/s - work it out).

Part 3. (Corks popped and the champagne flowed at the 1000km Dumpling Explorer Club while across town at the rival but slightly more exclusive Hundred Degree Dumpling Club, similar celebrations ensued)

After contending with two more serious (600m +) height gains and losses, first in the grasslands and then in the tundra, Jeb finally made it onto the ice shelf. And some time later arrived at the north pole. Total distance traveled thus far - 96.5° (or around 1010km). But there was fuel remaining - enough for more than nearly another 4.5° of travel before Jeb ground to a halt, exhausted.

Start Latitude - 6° 33' 36" S
Finish Latitude - 85° 36' 29" N

Total degrees (after passing through the North Pole) - 100° 57' 7" - or 100.95°

Total distance - 1057km

Jeb making some hay in the tundra

Jeb at the North Pole

Finished at last

Edited May 12, 2019 by mystifeid

[RedSun Rocketry]

that must have been hell to drive to  the NORTH POLE

5 hours ago, mystifeid said:

Jeb at the North Pole

 

[zolotiyeruki]

Yeesh, now I have to see if I can add a battery to my entry so I can stretch my flight out even further.

<much iterating and testing later...>

Well, I've optimized the wing area, speed, and altitude, and I'm pretty sure I can get another 10% of range out of it.  I still have to tune the ascent profile, though.

Edited May 10, 2019 by zolotiyeruki

[mystifeid]

2 hours ago, zolotiyeruki said:

Yeesh, now I have to see if I can add a battery to my entry so I can stretch my flight out even further.

That's fine as long the battery starts with zero electricity but as the Juno has an alternator this should not present a problem.

I believe that I too can achieve an additional 10% range. Mechjeb looks to have cost the equivalent of 60km and by eliminating the river crossing (adds another 40km) I think that I might be able to do an extra 100km.

Not sure that I'd like to do it though.

Edited May 10, 2019 by mystifeid

[doggonemess]

I'm interested in this, but I have a question. What is the problem with electrical storage at the start? Since there's no electric powered engines for atmospheric flight, I don't see what the issue is. I must be missing something.

[Lapis]

1 hour ago, doggonemess said:

I'm interested in this, but I have a question. What is the problem with electrical storage at the start? Since there's no electric powered engines for atmospheric flight, I don't see what the issue is. I must be missing something. 

I think the point is that the only fuel/energy source is the dumpling.