Kerbal Space Program Competition 1

Mod Description:

This competition is now closed.

The winner was Burning Bridges with the winning flight of 416.556m. Burning Bridges left some great advice in the comments section so be sure to check it out.

So the first Kerbal Space Program.NET Competition has been set. This one is for Internet pride only, or maybe an Internet cookie if you are lucky!

All you have to do is fly as high as you can go within 4 minutes… Sound simple right? Well it’s harder than you think. You’ll need to find the right balance between weight and power.

How To Enter

1. You need to take a screenshot and/or video of your flight. It must show your altitude at 4 minutes (I will accept screenshots that are a couple seconds out).

2. Use a picture hosting service to upload your photo such as Flickr or Photobucket or if you record a video of your attempt, use a video hosting service such as Youtube to upload your video.

3. Post your picture, or a link to your picture/video in the comments section below.

4. Redesign and go back to step 1.

Rules

For more of a challenge – you must use the standard parts provided in Kerbal Space Program.

Competition closes 2 weeks today (1st August) so you have plenty of time to perfect your spacecrafts.

Get building!!

Download

27 comments on “CLOSED – Comp 1 – How High (in 4 minutes)?”

Mike on July 18, 2011 at 23:46 said:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike_newbery/5951900559/in/photostream

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andycambo on July 19, 2011 at 18:33 said:

Here’s my first attempt.

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- Schmeeky on July 19, 2011 at 22:49 said:
  
  How do you post the picture, rather than just the link?
  
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  - andycambo on July 20, 2011 at 07:51 said:
    
    You need to allow sharing on your Flickr account. That should then allow you to link directly to the picture (rather than the picture’s profile). Once you have that link I’m sure Flickr gives you some code that you can just copy and paste into the comments section.
    
    If not use the below code by right clicking on the picture you want to use and copy the image URL (I’ve edited your post for you):
    
    < @img src="http://www.puttheurlhere.com" /> – Just remove the @ between the < and i at the beginning.
    
    Nice attempt btw!
    
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    - Schmeeky on July 21, 2011 at 00:26 said:
      
      Thanks Andy, appreciate that. I’m familiar with PH formatting, but not this, so cheers for edumacating me!
      
      I should have had plenty more attempts, but v0.8.5 is either a bug-fest, or my tired old PC just ain’t man enough to run it properly, and it’s proving to be extremely frustrating, running really slow and crashing lots…
      
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      - andycambo on July 21, 2011 at 16:19 said:
        
        I’m having a few troubles as well. Hopefully the next release will be a little more stable.
Schmeeky on July 19, 2011 at 22:48 said:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike_newbery/5955376063/in/photostream/lightbox/

Should have used my PH name for the first one! Anyhows, my best attempt yet, and that was with a few malfunctions i.e. unwanted explosions! lol

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BeatRoot on July 29, 2011 at 16:22 said:

First attempt!

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- Burning Bridges on July 30, 2011 at 03:19 said:
  
  294.965 m
  
  If you are thinking about entering the competition, don’t be scared by the numbers or break off your attempt before the full 4 minutes are over. Most of the height/speed is picked up in the last 60 seconds. It is normal that after 1-2 minutes the number will be pathetic.
  
  This is of course because the spacecraft is constantly picking up speed, at an increased rate as its weight is decreasing. So when you go for maximum speed/height the last tank is always the most important. As a rule of thumb I can almost double my speed with the last tank. You pick up so much speed bevause the ships weight is approaching zero.
  
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BeatRoot on July 29, 2011 at 16:35 said:

Slightly better

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BeatRoot on July 29, 2011 at 17:50 said:

sorry but got to my best, time to call it quits on this challenge

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Burning Bridges on July 30, 2011 at 03:20 said:

294.965 m

If you are thinking about entering the competition, don’t be scared by the numbers or break off your attempt before the full 4 minutes are over. Most of the height/speed is picked up in the last 60 seconds. It is normal that after 1-2 minutes the number will be pathetic.

This is of course because the spacecraft is constantly picking up speed, at an increased rate as its weight is decreasing. So when you go for maximum speed/height the last tank is always the most important. As a rule of thumb I can almost double my speed with the last tank. You pick up so much speed bevause the ships weight is approaching zero.

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- andycambo on July 30, 2011 at 21:40 said:
  
  Great advice. Very nice effort as well!
  
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Burning Bridges on July 30, 2011 at 20:42 said:

378.375m

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- BeatRoot on July 31, 2011 at 00:29 said:
  
  Great work, my flicker links didn’t work my highest is just over 300,000. I need to get the sequence a little more work
  
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- Mista Braun on July 31, 2011 at 06:06 said:
  
  NOOOOO!!
  Just got to 287.501m, checked the current mark – face->desk
  
  but for a 4 stage rocket with unmodded basic parts only, not bad, huh?
  
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  - Burning Bridges on July 31, 2011 at 17:23 said:
    
    Well this is indeed not bad, because you have to consider how heavy a 4-stage vehicle probably is.
    
    But why do you need four stages? Don’t you think that 3 is already optimal?
    
    It is actually worthwile reading this wiki article:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multistage_rocket
    a lot of those principles can be applied to the game.
    
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    - Mista Braun on July 31, 2011 at 21:42 said:
      
      can’t really apply the principles I want, I tried to copy the actual apollo 11 vehicle and realized the parts are not in scale, in other words not enough thrust for their weight and the rocket keeps turning upside down when not using sassies.
      
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      - Burning Bridges on July 31, 2011 at 22:38 said:
        
        it’s great fun to design our rockets after real ones but is the Saturn V really a good choice? Keep in mind it was designed as a heavy lifting vehicle, are you sure this is what you need?
Burning Bridges on July 31, 2011 at 17:28 said:

406.527m

only basic unmodded parts. otherwise it would be no fun.

http://www.global-explorer.de/20110731/406527m.jpg

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Burning Bridges on August 1, 2011 at 00:14 said:

416.556 m

http://www.global-explorer.de/20110801/416556m.jpg

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- BeatRoot on August 1, 2011 at 10:20 said:
  
  That’s an impressive score, congrats.
  
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Burning Bridges on August 1, 2011 at 21:01 said:

It seems you are having problems to close to the 400km mark, and I have tips why you might have not been able to get a substantial height.

I am sure most of us began to build the most powerful rocket possible and see how high this would get. But surprisingly heights over 400km can be achieved with very simple rockets designed for maximum acceleration.

According to physics, distance is the integral of velocity. In other words, if you draw a graph of the momentary speed along the time axis, the absolute covered distance is the area under that graph.

From this follows that highest flying rocket is not necessarily the one with the absolute highest speed at 4:00, but one that hits a high enough speed as early as possible. You therefore need to maximize acceleration, not top speed.

Here is a simple rocket that is able to reach 400-410 km in 4 minutes.

http://www.global-explorer.de/20110801/RH400.craft

http://www.global-explorer.de/20110801/1.jpg

Basically this is a two-stage rocket with boosters. It was inspired by a russian design (the R7 Semyorka), in which the second stage burns from the start. The main advantage is that because all engines (except one in the last stage) are used, a third stage is not necessary, and weight is minimized.

It reaches burnout at 3.450 m/s at well under 3:00. From then on it just coasts for another minute.

I have tried other designs that hit over 4000 m/s at 3:30 to 4:00 but they did not make enough distance.

Try it out, it is a very nice high flyer.

http://www.global-explorer.de/20110801/2.jpg

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- BeatRoot on August 2, 2011 at 13:17 said:
  
  very nice ship, my design was along a very similar principle.
  
  Well Done
  
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  - Burning Bridges on August 2, 2011 at 14:38 said:
    
    Thanks, I would like to try your ship.
    
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andycambo on August 2, 2011 at 08:50 said:

Well the competition is now closed.

Congratulations to Burning Bridges for the winning flight of 416.556m.

I’ll be setting a new challenge sometime today so be sure to check back!

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Burning Bridges on August 2, 2011 at 14:37 said:

Finally here is the best rocket I could build for this competition.

The highest I reached with it is 423 km.

It is the same design but with winglets. The winglets allowed me to add even more boosters while the rocket stays flyable.

http://www.global-explorer.de/20110802/RH423.craft

http://www.global-explorer.de/20110802/1.jpg

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