The Career Mode !SCIENCE! Challenge - Max that Tech Tree!

[Ekku Zakku]

Awesome! After mine, I knew over 3000 would be possible, but ~3600 is just awesome. Bop EVA landing would really be pretty easy from a circular orbit, I was dumb and did mine from a highly elliptical orbit and did so many quick loads from running out of fuel... Add a polar Mun orbit with all the biomes and a Minmus EVA landing, and I certainly think that would have been over 4000, just a smidge more fuel and you could have done it XD

[SunJumper]

Awesome! After mine, I knew over 3000 would be possible, but ~3600 is just awesome. Bop EVA landing would really be pretty easy from a circular orbit, I was dumb and did mine from a highly elliptical orbit and did so many quick loads from running out of fuel... Add a polar Mun orbit with all the biomes and a Minmus EVA landing, and I certainly think that would have been over 4000, just a smidge more fuel and you could have done it XD

I think an EVA landing on Bop would really be pushing it... The Theoretical Surface Orbital Velocity is 196m/s, so the landing delta-v is probably very close to 250m/s accounting for gravity losses...

[Vector]

I think EVA on Bop, even if difficult, would be better. Landing the whole craft took many attempts because there are very few flat spots, and even with a flat spot to land, the lack of reaction wheels makes it exceedingly hard to keep from tipping over. I redistributed almost all the fuel to the 'legs' and even then it was very tricky. I blew a lot of fuel hovering for the absolute most gentle landing possible, because anything over about 1 m/s leads to bouncing and tipping.

I wouldn't expect a lot of gravity losses because you can get to orbital velocity quite fast, but you do have to include fuel for Rendezvous. With the ship in polar orbit like I had, I didn't think it was a good idea, b/c Bop would rotate under the orbit and lead to higher cost to rendezvous.

[ThreeMartiniLaunch]

Mission II complete!

Jool Grand Tour for over 7500 !SCIENCE!

Alas, poor Dovey. Songs will be sung of his bravery. And his contribution to !SCIENCE!

Edited October 29, 2013 by ThreeMartiniLaunch

[Sirine]

Mission II complete!

Jool Grand Tour for over 7500 !SCIENCE!

Alas, poor Dovey. Songs will be sung of his bravery. And his contribution to !SCIENCE!

Bravo! I always enjoy your video. Next, please try my posted challenge.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=after the video------0-0-0-0-0-0

Ok, it seems that you have a rescue mission on hand. Anyhow, looking forward for your next episode.

So, 3 launch to unlock all tech tree.

Edited October 29, 2013 by Sirine

[SkyRender]

Nice mission! You got quite a lot out of the Joolian system. A shame that poor Kerbal is stuck forever in Bop orbit, but !SCIENCE! comes at a price, I suppose... At least he can take a jetpack holiday down there whenever he wants, right?

[Sirine]

Nice mission! You got quite a lot out of the Joolian system. A shame that poor Kerbal is stuck forever in Bop orbit, but !SCIENCE! comes at a price, I suppose... At least he can take a jetpack holiday down there whenever he wants, right?

haha, he can play with the Kraken baby.

[ThreeMartiniLaunch]

Bravo! I always enjoy your video. Next, please try my posted challenge.

I would love to. But everyone knows that TML cannot land on the Mun to save his life. Much less, land at a pre designated location.

I don't know where the Neil Armstrong Memorial is. And even if I did, it doesn't matter. I cannot pick where I land. I totally suck at landing on the Mun.

Assuming I overcome that, fully half of the time I contact the Munar surface, it involves explosions.

I can land just about everywhere else, but I hate the Mun.

Sorry, Sirine. I hate to disappoint, but I do not like green eggs and ham. Or landing on the Mun.

TML

[ThreeMartiniLaunch]

Nice mission! You got quite a lot out of the Joolian system. A shame that poor Kerbal is stuck forever in Bop orbit, but !SCIENCE! comes at a price, I suppose... At least he can take a jetpack holiday down there whenever he wants, right?

Oooh.

Can he land, collect !SCIECE! and re-ascend to the space ship?

I'll run some "simulations".

If successful, there may be another video in my future.

TML

[SkyRender]

I would love to. But everyone knows that TML cannot land on the Mun to save his life. Much less, land at a pre designated location.

I don't know where the Neil Armstrong Memorial is. And even if I did, it doesn't matter. I cannot pick where I land. I totally suck at landing on the Mun.

Assuming I overcome that, fully half of the time I contact the Munar surface, it involves explosions.

I can land just about everywhere else, but I hate the Mun.

Sorry, Sirine. I hate to disappoint, but I do not like green eggs and ham. Or landing on the Mun.

I feel your pain; I used to be pretty sub-par at landing back in the day myself. Actually, so was Scott Manley, and I learned from him back then; it's pretty safe to say there really is some legitimate challenge to the process... Anyway, if you can overcome your Mun landing difficulties, that lonely rolling star has quite a lot of !SCIENCE! for clever biome-hoppers to suck up.

Oooh.

Can he land, collect !SCIECE! and re-ascend to the space ship?

I'll run some "simulations".

If successful, there may be another video in my future.

Absolutely! The mission is not technically over, just at an impasse. It still counts AS a mission for the purposes of this challenge just the same, since there's no stipulation that you have to return the vessel to Kerbin.

[Sirine]

I would love to. But everyone knows that TML cannot land on the Mun to save his life. Much less, land at a pre designated location.

I don't know where the Neil Armstrong Memorial is. And even if I did, it doesn't matter. I cannot pick where I land. I totally suck at landing on the Mun.

Assuming I overcome that, fully half of the time I contact the Munar surface, it involves explosions.

I can land just about everywhere else, but I hate the Mun.

Sorry, Sirine. I hate to disappoint, but I do not like green eggs and ham. Or landing on the Mun.

TML

Well, there are another challenge, land on KSC... VAB-rooftop-helipad to be exact

[Lions]

is it possible to unlock the Tech tree in 1 launch? Otherwise the is no use now cause i wanted to beat sky:sticktongue:

[Ekku Zakku]

is it possible to unlock the Tech tree in 1 launch? Otherwise the is no use now cause i wanted to beat sky:sticktongue:

Seriously doubt it, but you can always get more science in 2 launches, there are other ways to beat people at stuff XD

[SunJumper]

is it possible to unlock the Tech tree in 1 launch? Otherwise the is no use now cause i wanted to beat sky:sticktongue:

Because transmitting is highly limited in tech 0 (what with no batteries), and science can only be gained by Crew Reports, EVA Reports, and the not easy to get Surface Samples (at tech 0, it is impractical to get more than three samples - Pol, Gilly, and of course, Kerbin), you are limited to about 40 crew reports, about 40 EVA Reports, and about 2 or 3 surface samples. And of course, the recovery. Of course, this is if you are able to visit the SOI of every body, and land on two more (possibly with the EVA pack) on top of that. I don't think it is possible to get the full 10k science, with the above requirements.

However, it is still possible to get a lot of science on the first flight, regardless. Vector missed the following places:

Low Sun

High Minmus

Low Minmus

Minmus Landing (possible by EVA)

High Mun

Near Mun (X14 for the biomes)

Kerbin's biomes

Of course, it is prohibitively expensive to land on every biome at tech 0. Even more so (time wise), to walk to every biome. Thus, the ultimate career mode challenge would go thus:

"First, get the maximum amount of science possible at tech 0. Using this science, strategically unlock the best nodes possible. Second, use the unlocked parts to max out the tech tree in one launch that has the least amount of mass"

The maximum I can see for the two challenges is about 4k for the first (I think Vector is close to the upper limit here), and maybe 100t for the second. The second would probably be a probe (the probe's mass is so much less than a pod's, and the fact that the manned science is now diminished makes the probe core even better), it would be powered by ion engines, and it would probably orbit all of Jool's moons, as well as fly by Eeloo, Eve, Moho, Duna, Dres, and land on Gilly (maybe). From each body, the probe would milk science from the sensors. It may prove to be worthwile to just use the lightweight sensors, and save mass from the goo and science bays, to visit more bodies. Actually, a kerbal in a seat would probably be able to generate more science per unit mass than the goo and bays, although I don't know if EVAing kerbals can transmit data from seats (or store experiments in probe cores).

Also, the second challenge is minimising mass, as that seems to be more of an engineering/flight challenge than minimising parts (being more mathematical and eyeballing).

[Lions]

Oki going for max tech tree in 2 launches to beat dat SKY!!! lol

[Ekku Zakku]

"First, get the maximum amount of science possible at tech 0. Using this science, strategically unlock the best nodes possible. Second, use the unlocked parts to max out the tech tree in one launch that has the least amount of mass"

I really like this compared to getting as much science as possible in the second launch (although why can't we have both? ;3), since there is a maximum science that can theoretically be unlocked by doing a complete grand tour (with an added near-Kerbol orbit to get that science too). Of course, it probably wouldn't be possible without certain unlocks like the LV-N, which I didn't get after my tier-0 mission.

[SkyRender]

I've decided that a good way of acknowledging the hard work of those who have nailed so much science in their first launch is to also order ranking by science earned per mission. So if someone gets a 3-launch mastery and got 3000 science or something on launch 1, they're gonna knock me off the top spot of the leaderboard.

[allmhuran]

This Ship (tier 0):

Just finished this mission:

Kerbin > Eve > Moho > Eve > Kerbin > Duna > Ike > Kerbin > Jool > typical Jool shennanigans involving Laythe > Vall > Vall > Pol (landing) > Tylo > Kerbin > Minmus (landing) > Mun (orbit) > Kerbin (splashdown)

For this result:

That's 3676 in launch 1. 2730 returned, the remainder transmitted.

Yes, I will be doing a video. But I have a LOT of footage to sift through.

Edited October 30, 2013 by allmhuran

[SunJumper]

This Ship (tier 0):

Just finished this mission:

Kerbin > Eve > Moho > Eve > Kerbin > Duna > Ike > Kerbin > Jool > typical Jool shennanigans involving Laythe > Vall > Vall > Pol (landing) > Tylo > Kerbin > Minmus (landing) > Mun (orbit) > Kerbin (splashdown)

For this result:

That's 3676 in launch 1. 2730 returned, the remainder transmitted.

Yes, I will be doing a video. But I have a LOT of footage to sift through.

That's 47 science more than Vector. We may be coming upon a limit here. I'd like to see what Whackjob can do.

[allmhuran]

I'd like to see more burns. I intend to show all of mine. I went up with much more delta-v than anything else here, and most of my transfers are gravity assisted (free or nearly free), so I am very suspicious about some of these results.

[SunJumper]

Also, according to my calculations, the maximum delta-v possible from a non-staging ship powered only by LV-T30s is just under 8km/s. Possibly useless trivia.

Additionally, it might just be possible to "stage" by hitting the bottom-most tanks a little too hard and causing them to blow up. However, they'd have to explode symmetrically. Also, it might require more precision than a perfect landing.

[allmhuran]

I think it's possible to get up to around 4500 or so. As I will describe in the video, I make a couple of inclination corrections for Moho that were pretty expensive and probably unnecessary, I just didn't have the patience to sit in solar orbit waiting for a cheaper intercept. That cost quite a lot of dV. That might... MIGHT.. be enough to get an extra landing somewhere like Bop. I initially wanted to land on both Pol and Bop but getting back down from Bop to Tylo in order to get a Tylo slingshot home is very costly.

Since I was carrying two command pods, that would net an extra 500- 600 science (two surface samples, 2 surface EVA, 1 surface crew report).

Indeed, early on in the mission when I had bucketloads of fuel I was, in general, not as conservative as possible. Again, basically, not wanting to sit and watch the screen for hours waiting for perfect intercepts. So who knows, maybe there's enough in there for an Eeloo flyby.

I also forgot to grab EVA data at low Moho altitude, there's another 80-odd.

Finally, when I got back to Kerbin I was really tight on fuel and couldn't afford to put myself into a highly inclined orbit around the Mun, so I only got about half of the Mun's biomes. Each EVA is worth 24. Not sure what the diminishing returns on those are, but let's say each is worth 30 with two pods, and say you could get 6 more for 180.

All together (ignoring the possibility of Eeloo) that would be pushing 4500.

Edit: PS, if anyone can demonstrate any way of starting on Pol's surface, then getting a landing on Bop, and then getting back to Kerbin, for less than many hundreds of m/s I would be extremely interested in seeing it. This is the claim I believe the least.

Edited October 30, 2013 by allmhuran

[SunJumper]

-wordsnip-

Edit: PS, if anyone can demonstrate any way of starting on Pol's surface, then getting a landing on Bop, and then getting back to Kerbin, for less than many hundreds of m/s I would be extremely interested in seeing it. This is the claim I believe the least.

You would probably have to chain a ridiculous amount of gravity assists. If you can luck out and get a Tylo AND a Laythe encounter to escape, this might give enough of a boost to get mostly back to Kerbin. If lucky, this MIGHT take about 500m/s. If you could at all EVA down to Bop and back to orbit, you would of course have massive delta-v savings.

Also, you would probably start from Pol orbit. Doing an EVA landing on Pol probably saves enough delta-v to skip the surface crew report.

Finally, it might be worthwhile, if necessary, to get out and push. The engine nozzle appears to keep kerbals stable.

Edited October 30, 2013 by SunJumper

[allmhuran]

You would probably have to chain a ridiculous amount of gravity assists.

The thing is that there's basically nothing to use out there. Remember that if you have landed on Bop, then when you take off again your ap and pe are both going to be pretty much at Bop, and won't be intersecting anything else in the system. Tylo is a hell of a long way down from there.

You've got Bop and Pol both tiny objects with inclined orbits (Bop is just absolutely bonkers). So you take off from Bop and... what? There's nothing to use to get back down other than the engine. And if you take off in such a way as to try to level out your inclination, then you'll also be taking off in a way that gives you a higher periapsis that you will need to push down with a retrograde burn.

Also, you won't save much dV by landing on EVA jets. The cost to get from Pol or Bop orbit down to the surface and back up is tiny because they have such low gravity. The expense comes with getting into orbit in the first place (you can't leave your ship hyperbolic, you're going to need to circularise if you ever intend to get back into it) and then getting back down to the other bodies.

Edited October 30, 2013 by allmhuran

[boolybooly]

Well its not much to brag about any more but I managed to get 1452 out of this by doing kerbin polar orbit EVAs over all the biomes and Mun polar over 14 of them with Minmus EVA landing and an Ike landing and assorted high low EVA and also several transmitted crew reports.

Unlocks a fair bit of stuff though, just enough to unlock all sensors. This is the ZIP for the craft "Bridge 4.craft".

Edited November 3, 2013 by boolybooly