IVA Challenge

[ruiluth]

This challenge is rather simple: before you launch, switch to IVA and never switch back. You can go into map view or switch between kerbals on a multi-pilot pod. The only exception: you can put the camera outside the ship if you have a kerbal EVA outside it. No design limitations except that you must use a manned pod.

EDIT: you may use maneuver nodes, but all burns must be performed from the cockpit.

Acheivments:

Cheater (0): use mechjeb to autopilot your ship

Old School (50): don't use mechjeb to autopilot your ship

Circumventing the rules (10): use external cameras from a mod

One Small Step (50): reach a stable orbit around Kerbin

A Couple More Small Steps (25): reach the SoI of the Mun or Minmus

One Giant Leap (25): reach the SoI of another planet

Another Giant Leap (50): return to kerbin

Touchdown (100): Land on another planet using parachutes

Flying the Eagle (150): Perform powered landing on a planet or moon other than Kerbin

Making Friends (200): Rendevous with another ship

Now You're Just Showing Off (250): dock with another, separately launched ship

List what mods you used.

Edited May 1, 2013 by ruiluth
Add a rule

[bulletrhli]

I think this is something that people should do live or record. I'm sure if people say they did it, they would tell the truth that's not a problem, its just better when we can see it! I want to do this and I want to see what everyone thinks first.

[M5000]

Okay, so we're allowed to do map view... Can we use maneuvers? Cause... This whole thing could be... Aww yeeeah.

[BlackStealthz]

Im not going to do this but one thing is docking cam aloud?

[andrew32198]

I'm in, this sounds easier than what Scott Manley did, he did the entire Mun landing without map view.

[Merinsan]

This sounds cool, but scares me. I'd want to do the docking part, and I am sure it would end badly.

[Jason Patterson]

There was a similar challenge a couple of months ago, and I made a trip from Kerbin to Duna and back in IVA only. The only times I was out of IVA mode were when I set my targets (on the launchpad at KSC and on the surface of Duna.) I also EVAed on the surface of Duna to repack a parachute.

I used the Tuna Can lander for my cockpit because it has almost no instrumentation - only a navball, vertical velocity meter, and radar altimeter. It has no proper velocity meter (awful) and no altimeter above 3km (also awful.) I used extensive flight planning to make it happen and adjusted my ship's trajectory based on the navball.

Here's the video, for anyone interested.

This was all stock.

I think I'll give this another try using a better cockpit and see what foolishness I can get up to. Maybe a Tylo return mission...

Edited May 2, 2013 by Jason Patterson
commas, how do they work?

[flux.faraday]

I like this one. I sometimes have issues with the magic external camera and would like a mode where you can only look through a crew member's or ground controller's perspective. Let the "map" view be an instrument in the cockpit or on the ground, etc. This is a way I hadn't thought of.

Fun stuff

[Jason Patterson]

My Tylo return mission is off to a rough start. I launched a refueling station into orbit (using IVA only) and am attempting to get my primary vehicle up there so that I can rendezvous and refuel before leaving the system. Unfortunately my ship keeps coming apart. It's odd though, because it was huge, I launched the ship in normal view to make sure that it would stay together and so I could see where any failures were happening. After a couple of improvements all was well and I was ready for my attempt, but when I try to reach orbit in IVA mode the thing comes apart. It's frustrating to say the least.

My plan is to do everything in the mission using IVA and math, rather than the flight planning approach I took to get to Duna (ex: Wait until 20:02 into the mission and make a 43 second burn at 84 degrees heading, 5 degrees pitch.) I'm using cockpits with better instrumentation, so it ought to be doable. All of the vessels involved in the mission, including the main Tylo return vehicle and any refueling vessels, are going to be flown IVA only, again, without using flight planning in any way. I'm really really hoping that I don't have to send an IVA rescue mission to Jool...

[bulletrhli]

Jason, what kind of math would you say is involved in during out your position and such. The flight planning way, using time, is realistic as most launches are pre planned.

[Andellmere]

Quick question: Do we still get cheater if we use mechjeb to set up our maneuver nodes? I hate doing this manually, so...

[Jason Patterson]

Jason, what kind of math would you say is involved in during out your position and such. The flight planning way, using time, is realistic as most launches are pre planned.

Right, but they're essentially running a simulation of the mission ahead of time to plan it. I don't want to run the mission in normal mode then switch to IVA and repeat it.

The math I'm doing is fairly simple stuff, things like figuring out the right speed to get into a circular orbit at a given altitude or what have you. I'll use the phase angle calculator to figure out when to launch and how, but I want to limit my in flight maneuvering to controlling my altitude and velocity and watching the navball to get the encounters I'm after.

I finally got my Tylo lander into orbit and made rendezvous with a refueling vessel. I'm at rest about 500m from it right now since I didn't have time to do finish the job earlier. It's going to take two or three refueling trips before the ship is ready to go though.

ETA: The other thing I plan on doing is using mission time (maybe through the debug console, so I can see UT, not sure what I'll do once the MET clock gets filled up with days) to figure my ship's angle for burns. If I know my orbital period I can figure the angle pretty darned accurately based on the time since I pass the terminator, so making an ejection burn at the right spot shouldn't be particularly difficult.

Edited May 4, 2013 by Jason Patterson

[Jason Patterson]

My Tylo lander is now orbiting Jool. I had to guess quite a bit at the ejection velocity to get it there since it wasn't instantaneous, and I wound up guessing quite well. I knew that I was getting close to the right altitude to encounter Jool and so I tried finding it in the sky. I've heard that it's visible from Kerbin if you know where to look, and I definitely could find it from ~20 days out. I was prepared to make some ridiculous burns to force an encounter, but I bumped right into the thing. I managed to get captured, which took rather more delta-v than I had hoped since aerobraking isn't really an option. Right now I'm lowering my periapsis little by little until I wind up crossing paths with Tylo. I might also try a Laythe aerobrake if I get the opportunity.

I really don't want to have to kill 3km/s of excess velocity just to get captured by Tylo.

I've been filming the entire thing, including the original launch and 5 or 6 docking missions I sent in order to get it fully fueled and to add some supplemental tanks prior to leaving Kerbin, so when I'm done I'll edit and post what I've got.

Thus far I have used map view only to set targets, and the normal camera only where IVA has no option to do the activity that I needed to get done (things like fuel transfers and undocking ports.) All of the actual movement of the ship has been done while in IVA mode.

[SkyRender]

On a whim, I tried doing IVA docking after this was posted. And this might shock you, but... it's easier than non-IVA docking. Way easier. For one thing, you don't have to worry about chase cam since by default in-cockpit is effectively chase cam. As long as you don't put the docking port somewhere weird, it's downright simplistic to do. Of course, you could just chalk that up to me having an insanely good sense of direction even in an environment like space...

[Jason Patterson]

Yeah, if the docking port is on the front of the ship it's pretty darned straightforward. This assumes a good view for the command module, of course, which excludes most of the vessels. It's also entirely possible to dock in IVA without any exterior view, as long as you know the orientation of the two vehicle's docking ports (north-south, for instance.) Line up the pink thingy with the yellow thingy while pointing in the right direction and you're golden.

[Tada]

I hope someday the stock game will have cockpits like B9 aerospace with multi-function displays, then it will be very easy to flight IVA+map anywhere

[Jason Patterson]

Ug. After an awful lot of work, I managed to get my vessel to Tylo in IVA and put it into a low orbit, ready for landing. I was trying to figure out where I wanted to land (it's hard to figure out where you're at when the world under you is spinning and you're headed around it backward.) After a quicksave/quickload, the brief bit of external view of the ship showed that my vessel simply fell apart - some sort of random game bug. I tried reloading an earlier version of the game and got the same thing, the ship is basically sliced in half. It's incredibly frustrating to have this happen after putting so much time into it. I was amazed at how well I had done with regard to my proposed delta-v budget.

I had only exceeded my planned usage by about 500 m/s by that point, and I had built in 3-4km/s of excess. I don't have it in me to give this another attempt, sorry.

[ruiluth]

Ug. After an awful lot of work, I managed to get my vessel to Tylo in IVA and put it into a low orbit, ready for landing. I was trying to figure out where I wanted to land (it's hard to figure out where you're at when the world under you is spinning and you're headed around it backward.) After a quicksave/quickload, the brief bit of external view of the ship showed that my vessel simply fell apart - some sort of random game bug. I tried reloading an earlier version of the game and got the same thing, the ship is basically sliced in half. It's incredibly frustrating to have this happen after putting so much time into it. I was amazed at how well I had done with regard to my proposed delta-v budget.

I had only exceeded my planned usage by about 500 m/s by that point, and I had built in 3-4km/s of excess. I don't have it in me to give this another attempt, sorry.

That sucks, I'm sorry that happened. Computers can be so stupid sometimes

[Reavermyst]

Cheater (0): use mechjeb to autopilot your ship

Old School (50): don't use mechjeb to autopilot your ship

So to those using Mechjeb for information and planning, put on your poker faces!

[rhoark]

Recently started playing with B9 and RemoteTech, using IVA exclusively when the ship has Kerbals. No map view or manuever nodes (with or without Kerbals.)

Album of commsat deployment

[Noticeably FAT]

Well, I got:

Old School (50): don't use mechjeb to autopilot your ship

One Small Step (50): reach a stable orbit around Kerbin

Another Giant Leap (50): return to kerbin

Making Friends (200): Rendevous with another ship

and maybe

Now You're Just Showing Off (250): dock with another, separately launched ship

The ship I docked with was launched from IVA in the end (final test of the timing), but I didn't record that. So, 350 or 600.

[xendelaar]

Sorry for nectoing this challenge but I just did a All iva mission to the mun without timewarp and thought it would be nice addition to the "hall of fame"..

I actually went to the Mun with my new VR set (Rift S). To enhance the immersion, I decided to forbid timewarping. I wanted to get there fast, so I built this over powered rocket (12 km/s DV)! I used the drawing of an 8 year old ( the son of u/toddsiegrist) to help me set out my mission trajectory.
I used raster prop monitor and kerbal VR mod for this mission.

The mission was a lot of fun and the VR experience was very immersive (although a bit buggy, from time to time).

 

[Guest]

We could possibly reboot it.

in fact I would be interested in rebooting it!

[Lewie]

32 minutes ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

We could possibly reboot it.

in fact I would be interested in rebooting it!

I could help with that if you’d like.

Heck, I’ll give this challenge a whirl! Sounds fun, really...

But with a Saturn V, we shall reach the Mün!

Edited September 18, 2020 by Lewie

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, Lewie said:

I could help with that if you’d like.

Heck, I’ll give this challenge a whirl! Sounds fun, really...

But with a Saturn V, we shall reach the Mün!

let's slide into the DMs

and anyone can join too just ask me