Scenario Mars Orbit Exercise

[dgatsoulis]

3653.5 !? Dang! That is a sweet score!. :thumbup:

Here is the video of my 3660.3 score with a manual ascent. The DG has negative AoA when pitching down at that ascent profile, so I thought to go inverted and try to keep the AoA at 0.0 for a big portion of the flight. I had read somewhere (in O-F) that AoA = 0 means the spacecraft has the least amount of drag.

I think I may have to go Lua AP on this.

Excellent challen...hmmm...exercise blixel!:thumbup:

 

[downloaderfan]

Alright,judging from that diagram i guess what i thought what right?Any vessel would have a -ve AOA while pitching down during ascent right? Thanks for that diagram ripley.


To dgatsoulis
Wow,great flight man,i use an altogether different technique for my ascent.Just one tip though,the best time to hit AB would be when ur PeT is half ur burn time,although it wont make much difference in such small burns.

IMFD's just awesome,makes things quite simple.Although i find its not able generate dv solutions as low as that of transX for interplanetary trips,its map program is just,too awesome.

---------- Post added at 03:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:04 AM ----------

It won't be long before the battle for top score is decided by 0.x m/s

I figured out that the lower limit for this challenge is somewhere around 3640,so as soon as someone gets that score,then its gonna be a very tight battle.

 

[vsfx]

Improved score here...

Scrapped using the hover engines completely after watching the DG video from dgatsoulis.
I was trying to be realistic avoiding the rocks and boulders... :shrug:

Previously I had hover at full thrust for about 5 seconds with full main at wheels up with the hovers gimballed slightly to pitch me up to 20 degrees in that time. I guess this cost me the extra 40 m/s of dV. Also IMFD orbit circ. program is better than BurnTimeCalc.

 

[blixel]

Improved score here...

Thanks. I updated the scoreboard.

Scrapped using the hover engines completely after watching the DG video from dgatsoulis. I was trying to be realistic avoiding the rocks and boulders...

I suspected you were using the hover based on the trouble you were having early on. Hovering up off the pad is more realistic for the reasons you pointed out, but as you've now experienced first hand, it's not the most efficient way to get to orbit when there's an atmosphere (even a thin one.)

Maybe an alternate version of this exercise could have a failure condition that happens if the wheels of the XR2/DG touch the ground outside of the landing pad and if the main engines are engaged any earlier than some particular altitude. That way you're forced to use hover to get clear of the landing site.