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The Hands-Free Mission Challenge

Yakky

By Yakky
in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas

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Yakky

Yakky

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This challenge was inspired by Thunderous Echo's recent "One-Button Bill" Challenge thread. This is No-Button Bill.

Poor Bill Kerman lost his arms and legs in a tragic lithobraking maneuver and now has no way to pilot his rockets anymore! But that's not about to keep him grounded.... help him reach orbit by designing a 100% hands-free spacecraft!

Design and launch a rocket (or spaceplane) into orbit that requires no control inputs at all once launched. No touching the keyboard, no mouse clicks, no autopilots or remote control. Once your rocket fires, it's on its own. Your orbital periapsis is your score.

RULES:

1. You can't touch the controls after launch (except as noted below). This means, among other things, you can't turn off engines or stage. Just unplug your keyboard, sit back, and watch.

2. No Mechjeb or other parts or mods having any kind of autopilot function. SAS is OK provided you set it before launch.

2a. No mod parts that have an unrealistically high impact speed that would make an otherwise unsurvivable impact survivable.

3. If you achieve orbit (periapsis above 70 km), you are allowed one press of the spacebar to re-enter the atmosphere and land.

4. For missions that land on other celestial bodies, you are allowed one press of the spacebar to assist in your descent the surface, and one more press to send you on your way home again. This is repeated for each successive celestial body you land on. For example, a mission that landed on the Mun and then Minmus, then went back to Kerbin, would get one spacebar press before each landing and one more for each launch.

5. Document your achievement. Describe how you set it up and provide screen pics to show what you achieved. (The Kerbal Engineer mod is helpful for showing periapsis.)

SCORING:

Your score is simply your periapsis above Kerbin once all engines have stopped firing. It's OK if the periapsis is in the atmosphere (below 70 km).

Zero score for escape trajectories out of Kerbin SOI unless you land on another planet (not likely). See this post for the scoring rules for successful interplanetary landings, which Metaphor has proven are possible!

BONUS SCORES (all multipliers are cumulative):

1.5x multiplier if you get into orbit (periapsis above 70km) and land your Kerbal crew intact using your one-spacebar return. (Must have a Kerbal crew to get bonus.)

3x multiplier if you land your Kerbal crew intact and alive on the Mun or Minmus. You get two bonuses if you do both.

2x multiplier if you get your crew home intact after landing on any other celestial body.

Landings on other planets and moons outside Kerbin's SOI are covered by special scoring rules that are designed to reward the distance and difficulty of the achievement. These scores are cumulative for multiple landings, e.g. for landing on more than one Jool moon. Rest assured that any interplanetary landing will get you a very, very high score!

STANDINGS:

1. Metaphor. 376 million for successfully landing Bill Kerbin on Eve!

2. Himynameisjake. 45,832,881 meter periapsis (about the distance to Minmus!!) x 1.5x safe return bonus for a whopping 68,749,322 points! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/94490-The-Hands-Free-Mission-Challenge?p=1436640&viewfull=1#post1436640

3. QuesoExplosivo. 3,617,654 periapsis x 1.5x safe return bonus for 5,546,481 total score. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/94490-The-Hands-Free-Mission-Challenge?p=1432732&viewfull=1#post1432732

4. Norcalplanner. Periapsis of 300,874m x 1.5x safe return bonus for 451,311 total points. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/94490-The-Hands-Free-Mission-Challenge?p=1434815&viewfull=1#post1434815

5. MisterInSayne. 149,000. Clever use of engines that cut out at slightly different times to rotate craft at key trajectory points. Description and video link here (via Goduranus): http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/94490-The-Hands-Free-Mission-Challenge?p=1433838&viewfull=1#post1433838

6. Norcalplanner. 70,476. (No 1.5x bonus since no provision was made for de-orbiting the pilot.... poor Bobby went on a one-way trip!) http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/94490-The-Hands-Free-Mission-Challenge?p=1432376&viewfull=1#post1432376

7. Yakky. 46,357. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/94490-The-Hands-Free-Mission-Challenge?p=1431331&viewfull=1#post1431331

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT: NO-ATMOSPHERE LANDINGS

Given the unique challenges of a hands-free landing on a body lacking an atmosphere, this section will recognize entrants who manage to do so (regardless of their score in the standings above).

1. (no one has succeeded at this yet!)

2.

3.

4.

Edited by Yakky
added a separate category for no-atmosphere landings
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Yakky

Yakky

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Here's my challenge kickoff entry that reached a 46 km periapsis. It takes off angled slightly to the east. SAS is off, which allows the craft to do a natural gravity turn and reach a sort-of-OK almost orbit. This mission was flown with FAR.

The craft on the launch pad. The central orange tank is actually empty. The rear tank powers the large booster motor, but quickly runs out of fuel, leaving only the two smaller sustainer motors to finish the orbital injection. The separators between fuel tanks are simply there to block fuel flow so that the fuel allocated to the front motors doesn't get consumed by the big rear motor. Notice that the throttle is set a little below full. This was the result of trial and error.

N7U0FI7.png

After injection. Periapsis 46,357m which is also my score.

lLCIUke.png

Edited by Yakky
Added comment about throttle setting
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goduranus

goduranus

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I suspect the best way to go is to use asymmetric fuel draining to steer the rocket for gravity turn and circularization, so your fuel distribution is symmetric for most part, but becomes asymmetric at the times when you needed the gravity turn or the circularization burn. It would be a lot of trial and error to find the right balance between tank size(affecting turning speed and steering time) and SAS stabilizing forces(affecting turn speed).

May I recommend that the difference between apoapsis and periapsis be subtracted from the scores? since ideally you'd want a circular orbit, and it would be more challenging.

Edited by goduranus
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Yakky

Yakky

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@Monthar: I wasn't planning separate stock and non-stock categories. I don't see that non-stock or FAR necessarily give people an advantage one way or another... this is more about balance and optimization. What are your thoughts here? I'm open to suggestion if you have a good reason for creating separate categories.

@Goduranus: I thought about that. But I decided it wasn't worth the complexity to subtract the difference between apoapsis and periapsis. Getting the periapsis high is 95% of the difficulty in my (small amount of) experience, so I opted to just keep the scoring mechanism brutally simple.

BTW I think your asymmetric fuel strategy may have merit. You could do quite a bit of optimization with yellow fuel lines that cause different offsetting motors to cut out at different points. One other possible strategy which I haven't yet explored is to have a deliberately small amount of battery that runs out after an optimized amount of time. This could be used to deactivate SAS or ion engines after some period of time... although I don't know if that's useful.

@Norcalplanner: Rockets or spaceplanes are OK. In fact I expect some of the best entries will take off as planes and climb out very gradually.

Edited by Yakky
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Yakky

Yakky

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http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/91636-WIP-Auto-Orbiter-%28space-space-T-to-orbit%29

This was as close as I got, though i need 3 times on the button. It does follow a perfect gravity turn:)

Not bad, not bad.... headed in the right direction (so to speak) although doesn't quite meet the requirements for this challenge.

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Norcalplanner

Norcalplanner

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Here's my entry. Periapsis was just barely out of the atmosphere at 70,476 m.

A few notes:

MechJeb is on the craft, but is being used only in an informational manner. There's a screenshot showing that all the guidance is off, and if you look at the pitch, you'll see that it increases slowly over time, consistent with a craft that has ASAS set prior to launch.

This spaceplane relies on two 24-77s set at an angle in line with the CoM. They're on the whole time, thrust limited to 35% power, but are overshadowed by the power of the turbojet as long as the craft is in the atmosphere. Once the jet flames out, the 24-77s push the craft at the correct angle to (barely) achieve orbit.

There's no provision for deorbiting the craft. Poor Bob is stuck for the moment.

Enjoy.

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Yakky

Yakky

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Man, I'm really surprised nobody has thought of my great idea: a Mun gravity assist!

My mission is almost done; I'm just trying to time it perfectly to get the highest possible periapsis without escaping. Pictures will follow soon.

I can't wait to see how this pans out... brilliant concept!

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Yakky

Yakky

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Best Pe so far: 3,617,654

Bill was returned to Kerbin, so my score is 5426481

http://imgur.com/a/Jdrvb

Nicely done, sir! A new record by a considerable margin! Now, for the icing on the cake, can you do a Mun/Minmus double gravity assist to circularize out by Minmus somewhere? :-)

Edit: And you even had Billy at the controls.

Edited by Yakky
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Himynameisjake

Himynameisjake

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Best Pe so far: 3,617,654

Bill was returned to Kerbin, so my score is 5426481

http://imgur.com/a/Jdrvb

As I said, Mun gravity assist is lazy, but nice result all the same. Going to have to consider your style of a lander if I want to go much higher than I'm going right now (currently deorbiting with a few seperatrons pointed anti-grade right now. May I ask how you managed to get set up for a near perfect deorbit shot?

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Yakky

Yakky

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May I ask how you managed to get set up for a near perfect deorbit shot?

My guess is he just waited until he happened to be pointed more or less retrograde. A de-orbital burn doesn't have to be all that precise. All it has to do is get you slowed down so that you fall into the atmosphere somewhere.

Much harder would be a de-orbital burn that lands you safely on the Mun. There's no air resistance, so it would have to be a pinpoint-accurate powered descent. For that reason it might even be easier to get a safe landing on Duna or Eve (since they have atmospheres) than to actually stick a safe landing on the Mun.

Edited by Yakky
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Yakky

Yakky

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Aha, good point. But what about waiting for a launch window that would put you there as Minmus passed through its ascending or descending node? (Admittedly you might be waiting a long time for KSP, Mun, and Minmus to all line up just right.)

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Himynameisjake

Himynameisjake

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Here's my entry. Periapsis was just barely out of the atmosphere at 70,476 m.

A few notes:

MechJeb is on the craft, but is being used only in an informational manner. There's a screenshot showing that all the guidance is off, and if you look at the pitch, you'll see that it increases slowly over time, consistent with a craft that has ASAS set prior to launch.

This spaceplane relies on two 24-77s set at an angle in line with the CoM. They're on the whole time, thrust limited to 35% power, but are overshadowed by the power of the turbojet as long as the craft is in the atmosphere. Once the jet flames out, the 24-77s push the craft at the correct angle to (barely) achieve orbit.

There's no provision for deorbiting the craft. Poor Bob is stuck for the moment.

Enjoy.

http://imgur.com/a/3Z3MR

And I struggle to build decent spaceplanes, you build one that can be flown with a spacebar. lol

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