Automatic Rocket to Orbit (no button pressing allowed!)

[Heretic391]

Automatic Rocket to Orbit aka The Lazy Rocketeer Challange 

Create a rocket designed to take you to orbit around Kerbin with no button pressing aside from launch button of course.

Possible way this could work:

1. Perhaps the rocket can have more mass on one side so that it steadily adjusts itself.

2. Trickery around where fuel is used on the craft could help.

3. Maybe a small slow burning rocket on one side of the craft can slowly give you the dv to create an orbit? Maybe an ion engine in the side....damn this seems easy now with ions. 

 

Rules:

1. You can press spacebar only once to launch!

2. You're not allowed to control your craft! 

3. Have fun!

4. Refer to rule 3.

 

I intend to try this myself once I get a chance for YouTube If time allows!

Edited March 26, 2023 by Heretic391

[AdamKSP]

Alright, I couldn't let this one go and it was driving me nuts.  I'm not proud of the amount of hours I put into this...so many trial and errors and getting SOOOOO close, but not close enough.  I gave up and then went back to the drawing board later and came up with a more 'staged' approach where smaller and smaller engines funnel fuel out of the larger ones.  The thought process was based on the fact that I could easily get the apoapsis more than high enough, but never got the periapsis high enough.  By staging the rockets TWR, it allowed me to 'coast' farther out so I could stop pushing the AP and start pushing the PE...

 

Anyway, here's my attempt/success.  I had a little too much fuel in the final section and didn't want to cheat the challenge by time warping to stop the rotation, so it's a fairly long video with a few points getting close to throwing the orbit off, but in the end I got a nice stable orbit.

 

Oh also, the end of the video has most of the important parts of the build shown incase anyone wants to mess with it...weirdly enough, after it worked 1 time, I started recording it, and it failed, then the 3rd attempt it worked again...not sure what was different, but could just be some randomnesses being tossed in...

 

Sweet challenge, thanks for the idea!!

 

 

Edited March 28, 2023 by AdamKSP

[burn n crash]

Impressive!

[QF9E]

16 hours ago, AdamKSP said:

By staging the rockets TWR, it allowed me to 'coast' farther out so I could stop pushing the AP and start pushing the PE...

 

I did the same a while ago for KSP1, and my thought process was identical to yours:

I never succeeded in getting a more or less circular orbit, I'm impressed that your mission has PE and AP so close together.

[BeakyBuzz]

On 3/28/2023 at 4:47 PM, AdamKSP said:

Alright, I couldn't let this one go and it was driving me nuts.  I'm not proud of the amount of hours I put into this...so many trial and errors and getting SOOOOO close, but not close enough.  I gave up and then went back to the drawing board later and came up with a more 'staged' approach where smaller and smaller engines funnel fuel out of the larger ones.  The thought process was based on the fact that I could easily get the apoapsis more than high enough, but never got the periapsis high enough.  By staging the rockets TWR, it allowed me to 'coast' farther out so I could stop pushing the AP and start pushing the PE...

 

Anyway, here's my attempt/success.  I had a little too much fuel in the final section and didn't want to cheat the challenge by time warping to stop the rotation, so it's a fairly long video with a few points getting close to throwing the orbit off, but in the end I got a nice stable orbit.

 

Oh also, the end of the video has most of the important parts of the build shown incase anyone wants to mess with it...weirdly enough, after it worked 1 time, I started recording it, and it failed, then the 3rd attempt it worked again...not sure what was different, but could just be some randomnesses being tossed in...

 

Sweet challenge, thanks for the idea!!

 

 

Congrats! Nicely done! 

[AdamKSP]

On 3/29/2023 at 2:51 AM, QF9E said:

I did the same a while ago for KSP1, and my thought process was identical to yours:

I never succeeded in getting a more or less circular orbit, I'm impressed that your mission has PE and AP so close together.

Wow that's a much simpler rocket than my mess haha...nicely done.  I was originally going that route with trying to aim it with the launch clamps but wasn't having much luck, but all my early attempts had a muccccchhhh higher AP than PE.  Ended up getting sort of lucky getting them closer together.  Nicely done!!