Optimal Architecture Comparison Challenge I: Mun

[Deathsoul097]

There is a difference between exploiting the rules of challenges, and using what is there that can make your design better. Do you see anyone else sharing the same viewpoint as you? Also, people arent being sore loosers when they complain that you are exploiting the challenge. If you would pay attention to anyone elses entries into those challenges, most of them did better than you, and weren't criticising the challenge. They were complaining because you were blatantly going against the spirit of challenge. (Which seems to be your goal in life, looking at the challenges which you have entered.) If anything, I'd say you were being the sore looser here, as Tavert has found a very efficient way of doing the challenge, to get the highest score possible.(You know, the goal of these challenges.)

people complain about me exploiting challenges and I can't complain about other people doing the same? It's not like I didn't consider doing 1 man missions, but I consider that to be against the spirit of the challenge because the score system is clearly designed for at least 2 to 3 man missions. Also considering the various realistic features like not using asparagus and identical launch vehicles, using unrealistic OP parts as much as you can is clearly against the spirit of the challenge.

Do you see anyone else claiming tavert is exploiting the challenge? The calculation does lean itself towards 2 to 3 kerbals, but still allows you to do one man missions. Look at my challenge entry. Do you see any of the same stuff as tavert? No. But look at my score. It is better than yours. Are you going to accuse me of going against the challenge? Or breaking the rules? Or using OP parts?

[Markus Reese]

Hiya guys. Not to be sour grapes, but there is this rule here... Says nothing about using the tiny stuff. Is called efficiency I tested Tavert's design, and worked great at 100% vanilla. I don't see how it is a glitch in physics. Only that those little engines should be .3 instead of .1 maybe for weight? Not my style of rocket, I like rockets with style! (Nosecone all the tanks!) Is there anybody that can explain the exploit part?

Stock parts only -- exceptions: informational mods that don't affect performance are okay. MechJeb and other flight-assistance is allowed: this is primarily a design challenge, not a flight challenge. Also: stretchy-tanks/stretch-SRB's are allowed to free you from the bonds of quantized fuel tanks

I mean the stock parts only is a little bit key. I could, in about one minute, make a three part rocket that weights nothing. Just make the ISP 1000000000 weight of 0.05 for capsule, tank, and engine, then I am on the moon.... Note that this can be done to "stock parts"

In fact, when I made my kerbal vid in signature, I doubled the atmo efficiency of the engines, and increased fuel capacity simply because my ol computer could not handle a bone stock eve return craft at the time.

[numerobis]

Jasonden: it's "rendezvous" (or "rendez-vous"). French for the rather brusque-sounding "get there, you". But it's polite in French even.

In KSP, the rendezvous around Kerbin isn't going to provide any benefit; you don't need a Saturn V to get to the Mun and back, but you could easily build one if you did.

I'm dubious the rendezvous around Mun will help. What it provides is that you can avoid accelerating the return fuel and the parachutes for 1500 m/s or so. But the return fuel is only 300 m/s worth, the requisite docking ports weigh as much as the parachute, and you now need to do orbital maneuvers to make the lander and return vehicle dock.

By contrast, Apollo was doing twice as big a burn to land and take off the moon, and four times more burn to return from low lunar orbit to Earth. It needed life support equipment in transit, which was a much longer transit. And it needed a heat shield for the landing. In other words, there was more stuff to leave behind on orbit and it was a bigger savings per unit mass left on orbit.

A trip to Duna or Eve is a closer analogue to the Apollo mission.

[Markus Reese]

Jasonden: it's "rendezvous" (or "rendez-vous"). French for the rather brusque-sounding "get there, you". But it's polite in French even.

In KSP, the rendezvous around Kerbin isn't going to provide any benefit; you don't need a Saturn V to get to the Mun and back, but you could easily build one if you did.

I'm dubious the rendezvous around Mun will help. What it provides is that you can avoid accelerating the return fuel and the parachutes for 1500 m/s or so. But the return fuel is only 300 m/s worth, the requisite docking ports weigh as much as the parachute, and you now need to do orbital maneuvers to make the lander and return vehicle dock.

By contrast, Apollo was doing twice as big a burn to land and take off the moon, and four times more burn to return from low lunar orbit to Earth. It needed life support equipment in transit, which was a much longer transit. And it needed a heat shield for the landing. In other words, there was more stuff to leave behind on orbit and it was a bigger savings per unit mass left on orbit.

A trip to Duna or Eve is a closer analogue to the Apollo mission.

Good point. I actually don't think I have ever done an apollo style mun mission now that I think about it. I did a single rocket back in 0.17 that went kerbin>mun>minmus>KSC2>home

[1Revenger1]

This could probably be beaten, but this is my try.

This is Mungineer, a 160,200 ton(272,958kg) rocket. It is slightly overbuilt, but I find that good. It usually has a good TWR as well.

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Edited January 11, 2014 by 1Revenger1

[MagiMaster]

Hmm... I've got a KOR+MOR design that should be able to get 3 kerbals to the Mun and back in two ~50 ton launches, but it's a bit finicky to get everything into orbit. I'll post the results once I work out all the kinks, but it's not going to beat any of the leaders.

[Markus Reese]

Just some interesting info;

You need to do the NASA figure eight slingshot which has the fail safe return to Kerban. (Ideally, the aerobraking reentry should be a 20k one, not so steep as shown in this screenshot.) This was not easy to set up. http://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/multimedia/detail.cfm?id=5317

http://i.imgur.com/O71vA71.jpg

NOVA was the proposed rocket for NASA to do a direct mission. That huge rocket never made it beyond the planning stage.

http://news.discovery.com/space/history-of-space/nasas-biggest-rocket-120624.htm

Usually I don't bump old post, but was fiddling to get this to work, and boy does it mess with my brain when I first tried. Gotta go faster to have a slower orbit. Good idea though. You know, that is something useful for new pilots! We hear lots of stories of stranded pilots, the bit of extra failsafe is nice to have, plus is great for some early science via Mun flyby if not confident for a landing with existing tech!

[panzerknoef]

Why don't we... overdo it for once! 438.945T of launch mass just to take two kerbals back and forth. Direct ascent to the mun and back, no docking involved

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Edited January 11, 2014 by panzerknoef

[Epthelyn]

Doing the Direct method:

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(100/140.17)*2*1+log(1),2 = 1.42683883855 points (1.427)

A few observations:

1) That thing weighs a lot more than I had originally intended it to, and probably doesn't even need 2 orange tanks (1.5 maybe)

2) I forgot to add parachutes, but when the lander has a Kerbin TWR of 3.04 and 1.2km/s left after a powered landing I don't think it mattered

3) I had to manually transfer fuel from the central tank of the lander because I forgot fuel lines

All in all, bad, but it worked

Edited January 11, 2014 by Epthelyn

[angeldust]

What about the super stylish fail-save magical-8-trajectory? Will that yield any extra-points?

[Tigik]

36.75 t rocket, conventional staging, LOR

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[borisperrons]

Since you asked for it...

Here we are, 5 kerbals, 4 launches MOR-KOR rendezvous mission!!!

Mission plan:

Phase one launches

Two Munar Kickers, one to return the crew capsule from the Mun, and one to bring the first there.

Phase two launches

Another Munar Kicker, and the Crew Capsule-Lander

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Ok, now all down in the mathematical hell of counting the points.

(I can hear the voice of my high school teacher, saying that one day logarithms would have been useful...)

Launch mass: [100/(99,883*3 + 103,663)]* 1.4= 0.35

Normal staging: 2

5 kerbals : 3.32

Total: 2.324

Well, I could have done worse.

Edited January 11, 2014 by borisperrons

[MagiMaster]

Ok. Finished the previously mentioned mission. That's 3 kerbals to the Mun and back with 2 launches (54.338 tons and 54.215 tons) using identical launchers with traditional staging. So (100 / (54.338 + 54.215)) * 2^0.25 * 2 * (1 + log_2(3)) = 5.664. Not too bad, but a long way from double digits.

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Edit: Oh yeah. It's a KOR+MOR entry.

Edited January 13, 2014 by MagiMaster

[Jasonden]

Jasonden: it's "rendezvous" (or "rendez-vous").

Okay, fixed. Geez, the grammarians around here . . .

A trip to Duna or Eve is a closer analogue to the Apollo mission.

Or maybe even Dres -- landing on Duna is too easy owing to the atmosphere for aerocapture and slowing down on the descent. We'll try one of those next, maybe!

[Jasonden]

This could probably be beaten, but this is my try.

This is Mungineer, a 160,200 ton(272,958kg) rocket. It is slightly overbuilt, but I find that good. It usually has a good TWR as well.

Nice -- this looks like 5 kerbals, worth 3.32. A metric tonne is 1000 kg, so your rocket is 273 tons (roughly), worth 0.3664. And you did use conventional staging, worth 2. So I get your score as 2.433. And a Direct architecture, with no rendezvous.

[Jasonden]

Why don't we... overdo it for once! 438.945T of launch mass just to take two kerbals back and forth. Direct ascent to the mun and back, no docking involved

Lots of Direct Ascents here This looks like a conventional launch (2), with a mass score of 1/438.945=0.554, and 2 Kerbals give you a score of 2 there, leading to 2.217 final.

[Jasonden]

Just to seed the field, here's a KOR entry. 2 launches: 3-crewed vehicle with no fuel, 65.6t. Fuel truck: 66.8t, same launch vehicle = * 1.19, yields 0.899, times 2 for conventional staging, times 1+log_2(3) gives 2.85 .

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[Jasonden]

What about the super stylish fail-save magical-8-trajectory? Will that yield any extra-points?

No, not on this challenge. The point here is to evaluate the strategic values of each architecture, not maneuver node production skill. Cool as free-return trajectories are, the real Apollo only used them on Apollos 8, 10, and 11. Okay, and then 13 once everything went to hell

[borisperrons]

[*] borisperrons -- 2.324; 2-launch KOR+MOR

Err, not to be Mr. Picky McPick, but it should be 4-launches...

[donfede]

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Score:

Launch Mass (LM): 100 / 30.08 = 3.324

Staging (S): conventional = 2

Kerbals (K): 1 + log_2(2) = 2

Total score: LM * S * K = 3.324 * 2 * 2 = 13.298

Mods used: TriggerTech's Kerbal Alarm Clock

Craft are stock; designed and mission on v0.23

koptaD2u-KMk2 craft

Credit (and thanks) to talvert and his 12.6t craft, which inspired this (and the following) missions. I saw his post, and initially 'thought' I could best it, by 'using the mass graphs' I saw online recently... n00b me, had not realized that talvert was the author of those graphs (it's great to see the KSP community learning together).

thanks for the challenge,

kdonfede

--

"Adding K to every word..."

[donfede]

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Score:

Launch Mass (LM): (100 / (LM-i + LM-ii)) * 4rth_root(2) = (100 / (14.66 + 17)) * 1.189 = 3.756

Staging (S): conventional = 2

Kerbals (K): 1 + log_2(2) = 2

Total score: LM * S * K = 3.756 * 2 * 2 = 15.025

Mods used: TriggerTech's Kerbal Alarm Clock

Craft are stock; designed and mission on v0.23

koptaKOR2u-i craft

koptaKOR2u-ii craft

Took me several tries to get both mission halves into LKO efficiently (and deciding how to distribute mass between the missions).

thanks for the challenge,

kdonfede

--

"Adding K to every word..."

Edited January 26, 2014 by donfede
corrected math for LM

[donfede]

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Score:

Launch Mass (LM): 100 / 40.57 = 2.465

Staging (S): conventional = 2

Kerbals (K): 1 + log_2(2) = 2

Total score: LM * S * K = 3.756 * 2 * 2 = 9.860

Mods used: TriggerTech's Kerbal Alarm Clock

Craft are stock; designed and mission on v0.23

koptaMOR2u craft

Clearly this was the heaviest mission, as it required an additional 1.3t of mass for the return craft. It would be interesting to see talvert's 1 kerbal craft morphed into KOR and MOR, and/or to see how a 3 kerbal craft can fare.

thanks for the challenge,

kdonfede

--

"Adding K to every word..."

[metaphor]

Since the stock Mun requires so little delta-v to land on and return from, Mun orbit rendezvous is probably never going to be more efficient. I think a closer analogue in terms of delta-v would be a Kerbin-Tylo mission, for which a Tylo orbit rendezvous might make more sense (a mission launching from Eve going to Tylo would be even better).

I tried it with the Real Solar System mod. Only a direct mission so far, which needs about 18500 m/s of delta-v.

About 980 tons on the pad, 1 kerbal, no fuel lines.

[SirJoab]

I'd like to participate, but I'm lost without NovaPunch. Can that mod be allowed?

[chlue]

Hello this is my (barely) two digit entry for the direct approach method:

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Expected score:

launch mass: 100t / 39.675t --> 2.52

staging: conventional --> 2

Kerbals: 2 --> 1 + log2(2) --> 2

--> 10.08

The mission was flown nearly completely on autopilot. I guess this kind of challenges would be more interesting if the tiny overpowered engine would be banned from challenges or somewhat rebalanced by squad (yes my lander had one trough ).

Btw, I fear the entry from Deathsoul097 was calculated wrongly. I see only one Kerbal.