Farthest Distance Traveled in 10 minutes

[zarakon]

Goal: Get the highest Total Distance Traveled stat in 10 minutes Mission Time!

Rules:

• Fuel Limit: To prevent this from becoming a contest of who can build the biggest laggiest bundle of SRBs, there is a fuel limit of 50000 fuel units. This limit is on the total amount of LiquidFuel, Oxidizer, SolidFuel, MonoPropellant, and XenonGas in the rocket at time of launch.
  
• Mods:
  • MechJeb, Engineer, Dynamic Warp, Editor Tools, and any other mods that do not affect physics or the stats of rocket parts are allowed.
    
  • KSPX (http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/0-18-4-kspx-parts-expansion/) is the only parts mod that is allowed.
    

  [*] Screenshots: At least two screenshots are required:

  • One just after liftoff showing Resources Window and the F3 flight log to verify that you qualify under the fuel limit, and that you did not time warp on the launch pad to increase your distance traveled.
    
  • One at MET = 10 minutes or less showing the Total Distance Traveled stat in the flight log. Press F3 to open the flight log.
    

  [*] Do not time warp on the launch pad, as that will artificially increase your distance traveled. To verify this, the first screenshot needs to be taken just after liftoff.

  [*] The debug menu is allowed for enabling part clipping in the editor, but is not allowed during flight. No infinite fuel or gravity hack!

  [*] The command module or probe that is active at the end of the flight must be the same as was active at launch. No EVA or undocking to reset the MET!

  [*] If the majority or a significant amount of your distance is the result of a major physics glitch, it does not count.

Leaderboard:

• numerobis - 5894km
  
• tavert - 5191km
  
• Nao - 5024km
  
• metaphor - 4922km
  
• NeilC - 3525km
  
• Stochasty - 3392km
  
• Clouds - 3052km
  
• Nalin_Airheart - 2176km
  
• underthing2 - 1501km
  

Edited May 26, 2013 by zarakon

[tavert]

250 tons of fuel, eh? Or 375 of SRB's... I've got some crazy laggy bundles of various things (probably my most Kerbal rocket yet) trying to maximize total burn time, no idea whether that'll be optimal or not. Hard even for MechJeb to control, that's for sure. Can't wait to see what crazy number you got, if you're waiting to share it with us.

[tavert]

Alright, nearly 6 minutes of burn time and over 10 km/s delta-V expended (with some very fast-moving drop tanks following me, also on escape trajectories), total distance traveled 2,502,322 meters. Total liquid fuel + oxidizer + solid fuel on pad was 49997. http://imgur.com/a/u7mwx#0

I might try again with an aerosparagus design, building for this challenge is a nice way of demonstrating the relationship between Isp and burn time at a given TWR.

[Clouds]

I think you need another rule: no time warp until the mission counter starts.

[metaphor]

I used a part of the rocket for the fastest Mun crash challenge. I got to highest altitude of 3,150 km at 10:00, but forgot to use F3 so the distance traveled is a bit higher, since I did a gravity turn. It's too bad F5/F9 resets total distance traveled =/ Album here

Total fuel + oxidizer is about 45k, and final speed was 12400 m/s.

[Clouds]

Here's a legitimate attempt, no time warp shenanigans.

[Nao]

Substracting 336m of movement while on the launch pad, my result is: 3,386,863m

Final maximum speed was only 9640m/s

49200 fuel units used.

TWR>Dv on this challenge

[zarakon]

I think you need another rule: no time warp until the mission counter starts.

Damn, I did not realize that would happen..

I guess I should require a screenshot at the moment of liftoff, showing the F3 log

[metaphor]

OK another shot, this time I remembered to F3.

Total distance traveled: 4354 km

Fuel used: 49213 units, final speed 13,060 m/s

Maybe in order to prevent staying on the launch pad shenanigans, you could score the highest altitude achieved instead of total distance traveled?

I like this challenge, it requires a mix of both high delta-v and high TWR.

Edited May 10, 2013 by metaphor

[numerobis]

We had a very similar challenge before the purge, with the shortest time to hit the Mun. It made it a bit easier to verify results -- the goal was to get the least MET by the time your probe puts a new crater in the surface.

But I like the fuel restriction zarakon has added here.

[Stochasty]

I think the rest of you have the wrong idea about this. The trick is to get to the highest speed you can as quickly as possible, and coast the rest of the way. As an example, here's a quick demonstrator using only 14,289 units of fuel:

Total distance traveled: 3,391km

There's lots and lots of room for improvement on this. I'm sure I can do quite a bit better if I add one more stage and up the TWR of the top three stages.

Edited May 10, 2013 by Stochasty

[tavert]

I think the rest of you have the wrong idea about this. The trick is to get to the highest speed you can as quickly as possible, and coast the rest of the way.

I certainly did, anyway. Ah well, hazards of guessing randomly at what might work and submitting first.

[numerobis]

I decided to have fun with jets, and rather a lot fewer fuel units than the rest of the entries here. Lag prevents me from scaling this up further.

The two requisite photos: on the pad with 11,536 units of fuel:

At 10 minutes (and one second because the cat bumped my hand; we should subtract 11km from my total):

Let's call it 4416 km.

Zeroeth stage is a turbojet falls off for no reason I can discern.

First stage is 24 basic jets and 16 turbojets.

Second stage: dump the basic jets at 20km altitude.

Third stage dumps the turbojets at 30km (intakes were down to half) and turn on all my rocket motors at once: 20x T30s, 3x T45s, and 4x 24-77s.

Fourth stage is the same after dumping 18x T30s.

Fifth stage dumps 2 of the T45s, so we're left with 2x T30s, one T45, and the 4x 24-77s.

Dump the two T30s.

Dump the T45, last stage is a small tank and 4x 24-77s. I breach 10 km/s with that.

The concept is basically to use jets to boost me at about 3g through the lower atmosphere, and keep using the turbojets until we can't anymore. Then switch to rockets with a TWR starting above 5 -- my first rocket stage ended at 15.5g.

I was sloppy with the jet fuel; I only burn half of it, which implies I could shave 3 tonnes off the launch mass. But that's less than 3%. Better would have been to increase the number of jets, to punch through the lower atmosphere faster. Probably basic jets, since they have superior TWR at low speed.

By the way, MechJeb was pitched way below the horizon trying to get my flight path along its hoped-for gravity turn. That seems suboptimal; shouldn't it pitch no lower than the horizon?

Edited May 11, 2013 by numerobis

[tavert]

By the way, MechJeb was pitched way below the horizon trying to get my flight path along its hoped-for gravity turn. That seems suboptimal; shouldn't it pitch no lower than the horizon?

Try turning off Corrective steering, and I don't think it will anymore. I'd have to go look at the code to see exactly how corrective steering works, but roughly speaking it seems to compensate with higher pitch when your TWR is low and lower pitch when you're above the gravity turn trajectory you told it, to bring your periapsis up faster than your apoapsis.

[metaphor]

OK since you made me do it, here's 4921 km.

Can anyone break 5000?

[NeilC]

My entry:

Central core with 9x T45s, 8 liquid boosters with T30s in a 4-stage asparagus, 16 SRBs in the outer ring as well as enough fuel to run the liquids during SRB burndown. "Payload" is a T45 core with 4 T30 boosters in a 2-stage asparagus.

The results: 3,086km

[numerobis]

You have room in your budget to add a small tank and 24-77s on top (just barely). That will boost you a couple km/s faster.

[zarakon]

Nice, I am liking the variety in the solutions here

[NeilC]

metaphor, can you post a screenshot of the rocket you used? Those beautifully centered F3 panes block out everything except 4 mainsails and mechjeb, and I'd really like to see what you did!

[numerobis]

Here's an improvement, approximately 5187 km with 14854 fuel units. I have trouble getting a snapshot exactly at 10 minutes, and it takes a *long* time to start up given the part count, so I'm rounding my speed up to 11.5km/s and subtracting five seconds.

There are three main improvements:

1. Nearly double the number of jet engines (and slightly increase the number of intakes per engine), from 40 to 73.

2. Now that my TWR is so high, I don't spend enough time at low speed, so I switched from a mix of basic and turbojets to all turbojets.

3. I added 8 SRBs to get me started while the jets spin up. The SRBs cover the force of gravity; the jets push against aerodynamics and inertia.

Minor tweaks: I replaced the T30 cluster with a mainsail, I don't carry unspent fuel in the jet stage, I have 4-way symmetry rather than 8-way for intakes, and I reduced my physics timestep by half (those last two allow MechJeb to reduce drag by closing more intakes at lower altitudes).

Result: I clear the lower atmosphere at twice the terminal velocity, and ditch the engines while going about 500 m/s faster. My last rocket flames out 37s earlier than before, and I'm coasting at 800m/s faster when it does.

Result of going so fast: a wonderful light show:

Edited May 11, 2013 by numerobis

[metaphor]

metaphor, can you post a screenshot of the rocket you used? Those beautifully centered F3 panes block out everything except 4 mainsails and mechjeb, and I'd really like to see what you did!

Sure, this is what I used, every stage has around 5 TWR

Also tried a mainsail asparagus with each stage having around 10 TWR, but it didn't work as well.

[Nao]

Damn Numerobis, that jet stage looks glorious

I only managed 5023km on conventional rockets, same top speed thou .

ps: Tried again with mechjeb this time... and its another rocket 1.9 MJ can't handle ... is MJ 2.0 better at controlling rockets? For my last 5-8 rockets none are flyable with old MJ but quite easy to fly by hand so it's not really a problem :/.

[numerobis]

MechJeb has trouble with rolling rockets: it ends up confused which way is down.

[Nao]

Ahh ok. So no need for me to switch to 2.0 yet (not that i use it anyway)

Btw i found an old chart and felt would be perfect for this challenge.

And commit this:

49995 solid fuel at launch.

The effect was not that good barley 4000km, but still such nostalgia

[tavert]

Now that I'm not just randomly guessing, here's a competitive entry: http://imgur.com/a/RaTMQ#0

13780 fuel units, 5190 km traveled in 10 minutes (may want to subtract the 1275 meters from Kerbin's rotation in the time it took physics to load). Barely outperforming numerobis' 5-second adjusted number (though did you mean 5177 km and rounding up to 11.4 km/s?). With 733 parts (sorry the sky is so washed out in the VAB screenshot, my vehicle info window is totally readable in game) it's a complete slideshow until I drop the jet stage and it falls out of physics range. I could use a bit less jet fuel and more intakes, and may look into using the radial engine body part to mount the jets, trade increased mass for lower part count.

Re: Nao on MechJeb control, version 2.0.7 had some tweaks to alleviate the "death spiral," earlier versions (including maybe 1.9.x) could sometimes maintain control better if you held Q or E.

Edited May 12, 2013 by tavert