Total Ground Distance challenge

[PeriapsisPrograde]

This challenge is very simple. Get the greatest total ground distance possible. The catch: you can\'t leave Kerbin\'s SOI.

You have 1 earth year maximum game time. At T+365 days, you must begin return procedures. You have one week to land/splashdown, for a total maximum time of 372 days.

The best way I can figure is to get into a very high retrograde orbit. Provide a screen of the end-game menu for a spot on the leaderboard.

BONUS points for;

Stock parts

KSC landing

Good luck!

My entry is 214,655,382,083 meters. That\'s 214 billion meters over ground.

CURRENT LEADERBOARD (last update 13:53 1/18/12 GMT)

1. Kosmo-not (703,384,960,353) + stock parts

2. PeriapsisPrograde (214,655,382,083) + stock parts

[Kosmo-not]

By my calculations, that should easily be broken.

[DonLorenzo]

By my calculations, that should easily be broken.

well the catch is, ofcourse, that the lower the orbit means the higher the distance. Crucially though lower orbits also mean less time acceleration. I don\'t know off the top of my head but you should probably shoot for a orbit 1m outside the boundary for 1000x or 10,000x

[Kosmo-not]

well the catch is, ofcourse, that the lower the orbit means the higher the distance. Crucially though lower orbits also mean less time acceleration. I don\'t know off the top of my head but you should probably shoot for a orbit 1m outside the boundary for 1000x or 10,000x

Unfortunately, that\'s not how KSP calculates ground distance covered. You are correct on how ground distance should be calculated.

So far, I\'m 285 days in with 535 billion ground distance.

[DonLorenzo]

how does it do it?

[Kosmo-not]

how does it do it?

Heck if I know, lol.

Here\'s my result from orbiting at 80 million meters:

used stock parts, and that\'s KSC in the upper left

[Kryo]

Ground Distance should always be less than total distance, shouldn\'t it?^^

[DonLorenzo]

Ground Distance should always be less than total distance, shouldn\'t it?^^

I would say yes. Ground distance has a set frame of reference (\'the ground\') though whereas \'total distance\' is more ambiguous. I can\'t imagine a frame of reference (except something silly like \'the spacecraft itself\' where the distance would be 0 always) where total distance would be less than less than ground distance though.

[Kosmo-not]

Ok, I had an idea about how ground distance is calculated, did the calculation, and think I know how it\'s done.

It pretends that the surface of Kearth is where your spacecraft is. Thus, with my spaceship out at 80 million meters, it thinks Kearth has a radius of 80 million meters. With the Kearth rotating at 4 revolutions per day, that\'s about 2 billion meters per day.

[Kryten]

Ground Distance should always be less than total distance, shouldn\'t it?^^

Not if you\'re orbiting retrograde, because the surface is moving in the opposite direction.

[DonLorenzo]

Not if you\'re orbiting retrograde, because the surface is moving in the opposite direction.

good point, however in the case of kearth it isnt enough to \'catch\' up i think

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

What if you\'re doing a geostationary orbit?

[Kosmo-not]

A perfect geostationary orbit wont tack on any ground distance since the ground is not moving relative to you.

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

I see.

How about a ~15,000km x 15,000km orbit?

[khyron42]

That\'s an interesting bug that this found. The real 'ground speed' for a retrograde orbit should just be rotational speed of the planet (about 174.5 m/s) + your orbital speed, but instead it works like Kosmo-not said (comparing your current speed vs. how fast you would have to be going at that altitude to stand still over the ground.) This may be needed to give accurate measures if you were travelling prograde, but gives these huge numbers on distant retrograde orbits.

Flixxbeatz - I did a lot of orbit testing tonight.

Prograde:

1 day at 2868km = 194 km additional 'Ground distance covered.' No orbit\'s perfect. Switching to 'surface' indicator on the speed showed 2.7 m/s.

Retrograde:

1 day at 200km = 201,618 km - that\'s pretty close to the 196,500 km that it should be, and it should actually go downwards in any higher orbit since the orbital velocity part would go down and the planet\'s rotation is always the same.

1 day at 2000km = 167,099 km - should be 107,093 km, based on orbital speed of 1165 m/s + 174.5 m/s planet rotation * 86400 seconds/day.

1 day at 2868km = 174,170 km - displayed surface speed 2017.5, pretty much double the 1008.9 orbital speed and showing that the game uses the expected 'steady over ground' speed at a given altitude to calculate the apparent surface speed.

1 day at 50000km = 1,305,000 km

1 day at 81000km = 2,071,008 km - with 208 m/s orbital speed, this should be 33,048 km or so.

Unfortunately, my attempt to do the 1 year 81,000 km orbit and then land back at ksp with only stock parts failed - as I was preparing to start a powered reentry, my stage separation went wrong and the orbit stage broke the engine and a fuel tank off of the landing stage, leaving me stuck in a 124 x 1000 km orbit. By doing the orbit at 81,000ish, I got a little more distance - I\'ll have to try it again when I have a time to sit through another year at 10000x compression.

[Kosmo-not]

I did not know that you can switch between orbital and surface speed readouts manually. This will become quite handy for me.

Idk if I should even bother trying this again and squeezing out every last bit of 'ground distance covered.' It\'s just not a challenge to do so.

[Kryo]

Not if you\'re orbiting retrograde, because the surface is moving in the opposite direction.

ahh true, du to the rotation of the planet.. didnt think of that