Challenge Finesse your lunar landings.

dgatsoulis

ele2png user
Donator
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Messages
1,924
Reaction score
340
Points
98
Location
Sparta
Here is a little something to help improve your lunar landings.

After the TLI, you have just entered the lunar SOI and you are in plane with Brighton Beach. Your goal is to perform a soft landing on a pad at the base.

Don't go through the crater walls or the main building and do not touch the lunar surface anywhere outside the pads.

Here is the base
LL2_zps2f3d22ac.jpg


Don't touch any of the brown/red areas.
LL1_zpsb55d0ed2.jpg


A close-up. Land inside the green areas.
LL3_zpsf9783671.jpg


There is more than 200 m/s of extra dV for this task in your tanks.
Extract the attached zip file in your Orbiter directory, pick a ship from the Challenges\Lunar_Landing\ folder and land it.

You will find 5 different scenarios for these ships:
DG, DGIV, XR2, XR5, Shuttle-A

A lua script accompanies each scenario, checks if the goal has been met and returns you a score in m/s of used Delta V.

Post your score here, with a snapshot of the "Congratulations..." message. Don't forget to tell which ship you used. A video or a playback are always welcome.

I'll setup and maintain scoreboard for each ship at the bottom section of this post.

Have fun, safe landings.
:cheers:

NOTES: If you extract the files in an Orbiter installation that has my "So, you think you can land?" challenge, let it overwrite the 2 files in the main Orbiter directory.

The base with the crater will NOT affect any enhancements or changes you may have to your default Brighton Beach base, since the challenge is set on a custom solar system, identical to the default one.

*** Many thanks to blixel for giving me the idea and helping me test the scripts. :tiphat: ***

-----------------------------------------------------------------SCOREBOARD----------------------------------------------------------

Top |
DeltaGlider​
| Pilots
#
|
Name
|
DeltaV
#1 |
Buck Rogers​
|
2717.9​
#2 |
dgatsoulis​
|
2737.9​
#3 |
blixel​
|
2846.1​
|
Top |
DeltaGliderIV​
| Pilots
#
|
Name
|
DeltaV
#1 |
Buck Rogers​
|
2509.0​
#2 |
Koloss​
|
2599.4​
#3 |
|
|
Top |
Ravenstar​
| Pilots
#
|
Name
|
DeltaV
#1 |
downloaderfan​
|
2670.0​
#2 |
Buck Rogers​
|
2699.3​
#3 |
Max Pain​
|
2750.0​
|
Top |
Vanguard​
| Pilots
#
|
Name
|
DeltaV
#1 |
Buck Rogers​
|
2701.9​
#2 |
blixel​
|
2979.7​
#3 |
|
|
Top |
Shuttle-A​
| Pilots
#
|
Name
|
DeltaV
#1 |
Buck Rogers​
|
2826.5​
#2 |
|
#3 |
|

*



****Tail-sitter edition comming soon postponed***


--edit: patch for Shuttle-A bug attached on this post. Unzip in your Orbiter directory and let it overwrite the SH.lua file, if you intend to fly this challenge with the Shuttle-A.
Many thanks to blixel for finding this.
 

Attachments

  • Lunar_Landing.zip
    1.3 MB · Views: 117
  • Shuttle-A_Patch.zip
    4.2 KB · Views: 15
Last edited:

BruceJohnJennerLawso

Dread Lord of the Idiots
Addon Developer
Joined
Apr 14, 2012
Messages
2,585
Reaction score
0
Points
36
Here is a little something to help improve your lunar landings.

After the TLI, you have just entered the lunar SOI and you are in plane with Brighton Beach. Your goal is to perform a soft landing on a pad at the base.

Don't go through the crater walls or the main building and do not touch the lunar surface anywhere outside the pads.

Here is the base
LL2_zps2f3d22ac.jpg


Don't touch any of the brown/red areas.
LL1_zpsb55d0ed2.jpg


A close-up. Land inside the green areas.
LL3_zpsf9783671.jpg


There is more than 200 m/s of extra dV for this task in your tanks.
Extract the attached zip file in your Orbiter directory, pick a ship from the Challenges\Lunar_Landing\ folder and land it.

You will find 5 different scenarios for these ships:
DG, DGIV, XR2, XR5, Shuttle-A

A lua script accompanies each scenario, checks if the goal has been met and returns you a score in m/s of used Delta V.

Post your score here, with a snapshot of the "Congratulations..." message. Don't forget to tell which ship you used. A video or a playback are always welcome.

I'll setup and maintain scoreboard for each ship at the bottom section of this post.

Have fun, safe landings.
:cheers:

NOTES: If you extract the files in an Orbiter installation that has my "So, you think you can land?" challenge, let it overwrite the 2 files in the main Orbiter directory.

The base with the crater will NOT affect any enhancements or changes you may have to your default Brighton Beach base, since the challenge is set on a custom solar system, identical to the default one.

*** Many thanks to blixel for giving me the idea and helping me test the scripts. :tiphat: ***

Nice, finally something for the aerodynamically challenged among us!

I must say though, what about this?

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=30753

It certainly works well enough to do it on, although the lighting is less than optimal at the moment.
 

dgatsoulis

ele2png user
Donator
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Messages
1,924
Reaction score
340
Points
98
Location
Sparta
Nice, finally something for the aerodynamically challenged among us!

I must say though, what about this?

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=30753

It certainly works well enough to do it on, although the lighting is less than optimal at the moment.

Downloading now. I was looking for a tailsitter to add. Thought of adding the AriesIb from wo2001 but this will do nicely. I'll make the script and if there aren't any problems, I'll post it here.
 

BruceJohnJennerLawso

Dread Lord of the Idiots
Addon Developer
Joined
Apr 14, 2012
Messages
2,585
Reaction score
0
Points
36
Downloading now. I was looking for a tailsitter to add. Thought of adding the AriesIb from wo2001 but this will do nicely. I'll make the script and if there aren't any problems, I'll post it here.

:woohoo:

It may need a little bit of extra margin though, since complete single stage performance for landing and ascent makes for a very heavy, slow accelerating spacecraft.
 

dgatsoulis

ele2png user
Donator
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Messages
1,924
Reaction score
340
Points
98
Location
Sparta
While we are waiting for BJJL's ok for the Aquila lander, I thought I might get the ball rolling, with the first DG landing.

Slightly unorthodox and expensive in dV, direct landings are always fun to perform:

 

BruceJohnJennerLawso

Dread Lord of the Idiots
Addon Developer
Joined
Apr 14, 2012
Messages
2,585
Reaction score
0
Points
36
While we are waiting for BJJL's ok for the Aquila lander, I thought I might get the ball rolling, with the first DG landing.

Slightly unorthodox and expensive in dV, direct landings are always fun to perform:

Orbiter 2010 - Direct lunar landing (DeltaGlider) - YouTube

Im working on it, ended up eating lunar dust the first two times, try three may be more effective, using a different strategy. By the name of the :probe:, I will land this bucket of bolts!!!

Edit: not so much



Actually not that far from success, ran out of fuel with only 500 m/s downwards left to get rid of. I think I'm going to have to up the fuel level, probably to about 4000 m/s or so. The biggest problem is the low thrust: even if you ignore the better ISP that the DG type vessels have kilo-for-kilo, the lower acceleration from my main engine means that more fuel has to be expended against gravity drag, so even if the numbers work out on paper, I cant quite make it work in reality.

The one thing I would recommend would be to remove that failure condition whenever a new vessel gets spawned in the scenario. Its wreaking havoc with everything from UMMU to Orulex. (In theory, if the UMMU reaches the pad alive, I guess you could still call that a sucess, eh?)
 
Last edited:

dgatsoulis

ele2png user
Donator
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Messages
1,924
Reaction score
340
Points
98
Location
Sparta
Actually not that far from success, ran out of fuel with only 500 m/s downwards left to get rid of. I think I'm going to have to up the fuel level, probably to about 4000 m/s or so. The biggest problem is the low thrust: even if you ignore the better ISP that the DG type vessels have kilo-for-kilo, the lower acceleration from my main engine means that more fuel has to be expended against gravity drag, so even if the numbers work out on paper, I cant quite make it work in reality.

The numbers work out on paper and in "reality". In fact, the Aquila is much easier to land than the other ships in the challenge, because it has been set at 3000 m/s ΔV without taking into account the RCS fuel.

The ΔV on the rest of the ships has been set, so that it will make landings with an autopilot (such as LOLA) very difficult -but not impossible.
This is not the case for the Aquila.

After the LOI burn the ship has ~ 2150 m/s dV and a decelaration with a range of 0.6g at the beginning of the PDL to ~11 m/s at the end.
Tight? Yes, but not too tight. You can perform a comfortable landing with plenty of fuel left.

The one thing I would recommend would be to remove that failure condition whenever a new vessel gets spawned in the scenario. Its wreaking havoc with everything from UMMU to Orulex.

The new vessel condition is there so people don't EVA (to lighten the ship and gain ΔV). Not many people use Orulex, that's why I provided the crater mesh and a very basic collision detection (without reaction).

(In theory, if the UMMU reaches the pad alive, I guess you could still call that a sucess, eh?)

No.

:lol: How would you get a UMMU on the pad, without landing the spacecraft? I did not notice any turbopacks in the Aquila. Anyway, the challenge is to land the spacecraft, with the UMMUs (that may exist) inside it at all times.
 
Last edited:

blixel

Donator
Donator
Joined
Jun 29, 2010
Messages
647
Reaction score
0
Points
16
I tried this challenge using the lunar lander that comes with

Thanks dgatsoulis for configuring your script to work with this lander. I think you should include it in the main zip file.

Recorded with Open Broadcaster: Free, open source software for live streaming and recording.
 
Last edited:

dgatsoulis

ele2png user
Donator
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Messages
1,924
Reaction score
340
Points
98
Location
Sparta
That was CLOSE!. Great job blixel, that was fun to watch.
I think I'll make a second "tailsitter edition" with another 5 ships.

-Aquila (BJJL's) -FCFS
-AriesIb (wo2001)
-DeepStar Lander (Deepstar 2.1)
-LEM (AMSO)
-???? Spider Lunar Lander (Hlynkacg)

Any suggestions for the fifth tailsitter?

Got it, Hlynkacg's Spider LL is perfect.
 
Last edited:

asbjos

tuanibrO
Addon Developer
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
696
Reaction score
259
Points
78
Location
This place called "home".
Great scenario!

I tried it with the XR2 and nearly got it, running out of fuel 100-150 meters above the landing pad.

Luckily I crashed just inside Lpad 1, so I "achieved it", but of course crashing into the ground at 22 m/s... Though the XR2 told me that my crew "only" got moderate injuries, but your script cleverly told me that it was a hard surface impact.

13.05.11%2016-46-43%20XR2-LL.jpg

When I took this picture, I was only 0.1 m/s of delta v from 2pi. Cool! (it wasn't intentional)

13.05.11%2016-50-02%20XR2-LL.jpg

Ouch. I guess they felt that in their pants!

13.05.11%2016-52-47%20XR2-LL.jpg

Still inside! (after loading up the scenario again the script told me that I had completed the landing, so it still considered me inside.)
 
Last edited:

dgatsoulis

ele2png user
Donator
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Messages
1,924
Reaction score
340
Points
98
Location
Sparta
13.05.11%2016-52-47%20XR2-LL.jpg

Still inside! (after loading up the scenario again the script told me that I had completed the landing, so it still considered me inside.)

Huh? That was not supposed to happen and I wasn't able to reproduce it. Would you mind PMing me the scenario? Normally, if the vessel is touching the surface and is more than 25 meters away from the center of the pad, you should get a failure note.
I have measured it so that the whole vessel needs to be inside the red circle.

Untitled-1-7_zps816a5845.jpg


EDIT: False alarm, I didn't read this correctly the first time. You started the script with the vessel already landed.
 
Last edited:

BruceJohnJennerLawso

Dread Lord of the Idiots
Addon Developer
Joined
Apr 14, 2012
Messages
2,585
Reaction score
0
Points
36
The numbers work out on paper and in "reality". In fact, the Aquila is much easier to land than the other ships in the challenge, because it has been set at 3000 m/s ΔV without taking into account the RCS fuel.

The ΔV on the rest of the ships has been set, so that it will make landings with an autopilot (such as LOLA) very difficult -but not impossible.
This is not the case for the Aquila.

After the LOI burn the ship has ~ 2150 m/s dV and a decelaration with a range of 0.6g at the beginning of the PDL to ~11 m/s at the end.
Tight? Yes, but not too tight. You can perform a comfortable landing with plenty of fuel left.

I hadnt considered doing a complete LOI, but 2150 m/s would almost be doable. The real question is how to do it without an autopilot, since I abhor leaving landings up to a computer. Maybe if I kick the ApA over Brighton up to something like 40 km, the extra vertical speed will allow me to decelerate from orbital velocity without falling too fast. I'll give it another try.

The new vessel condition is there so people don't EVA (to lighten the ship and gain ΔV). Not many people use Orulex, that's why I provided the crater mesh and a very basic collision detection (without reaction).

No.

:lol: How would you get a UMMU on the pad, without landing the spacecraft? I did not notice any turbopacks in the Aquila. Anyway, the challenge is to land the spacecraft, with the UMMUs (that may exist) inside it at all times.

I guess you can leave it in, but it will probably cause a lot of headaches anyways, especially when a LEM stages (I presume thats still a valid way of doing it... any landing you can walk away from is a good one)

I still think it would be hilarious if you could somehow survive a bad landing by jumping though. If the Aquila runs out of RCS right before the pad, it might be your best option, even if its rather silly in reality.

:hailprobe:
 

dgatsoulis

ele2png user
Donator
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Messages
1,924
Reaction score
340
Points
98
Location
Sparta
I hadnt considered doing a complete LOI, but 2150 m/s would almost be doable. The real question is how to do it without an autopilot, since I abhor leaving landings up to a computer. Maybe if I kick the ApA over Brighton up to something like 40 km, the extra vertical speed will allow me to decelerate from orbital velocity without falling too fast. I'll give it another try.

For the original 5 ships, autopilots are an acceptable choice. I have tuned the dV requirements so that it is difficult to use them, but not impossible. In the video I posted of the direct landing, I used LOLA up to the point it was going to fail (it can't land vessels like that) and then continued manually. Direct landings are a poor choice for this challenge because they waste fuel. I have a much better score with a standard normal manual landing.

The tail sitters are a different story. With 3000 m/s in the main tank and the ΔV going up every time you use the RCS (because the weight decreases), allowing autopilots is a dilemma.
Not allowing will ruin the uniformity of the challenge but allowing them will make it easy.
I'll probably have to tune down the dV a little bit or let the scoreboard distinguish the efficient pilots from the rest.

Anyway, I'll finish the scripts for all the tailsitters I picked and I'll tune them during the testing.


I guess you can leave it in, but it will probably cause a lot of headaches anyways, especially when a LEM stages (I presume thats still a valid way of doing it... any landing you can walk away from is a good one)

I still think it would be hilarious if you could somehow survive a bad landing by jumping though. If the Aquila runs out of RCS right before the pad, it might be your best option, even if its rather silly in reality.
:hailprobe:

I get what you say and I appreciate a hilarious landing as much as the next guy, but the purpose of this challenge is exactly what the title says. Land with finesse.
Ejecting one stage and jumping off the ship is not my definition of finesse.
That's why I left the "vessel added" condition in the script.

It is not a terribly difficult challenge, where you need hours of fiddling around with a navigational tool to find an impossible trajectory. Neither is it so extremely tight in dV that if you make a 5 m/s mistake you will crash. You can land all the ships with >200 m/s left.

It is meant more as a tool to help people improve their lunar landings.
:hailprobe:
 

Max Pain

Member
Joined
Sep 2, 2008
Messages
99
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Hello,

thank you for this nice challenge. I had to disable Avira Antivir however, for the lua script to work.

I used the XR2 and got a Highscore of 2877.1. Maybe I try again later because I overshoot my target :facepalm: and had to fly back a little bit.

Unfortunately, after the excitement of landing I had to catch my breath first and didn't take the screenshot fast enough. The challenge accomplished message should be longer visible. Therefore I post a screenshot of the Highscore as an evidence:

 

dgatsoulis

ele2png user
Donator
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Messages
1,924
Reaction score
340
Points
98
Location
Sparta
@GhostRider

You can download other attachments in the forum but not this one? That's strange.

Try this dropbox link

@Max Pain

Glad you enjoyed the challenge. Not sure what exactly the deal is with Avira, but I'm guessing it's because of the dlls. ProAudioRT and lua51 (additionally to lua 5.1) are used to play the .ogg sound files in the script, without any dependency on OrbiterSound.

Great job! No worries about the screenshot. If you say you did it, it's fine by me. Playback and/or videos are preferable (but not obligatory) because others can learn from you.


I think it's time to setup the scoreboard. I'll have time to do that a little bit later today.

BTW, you can improve that score if you want and post it here. The scoreboard will be updated every couple of days.

EDIT: Scoreboard added on post #1. Tail sitter edition comming soon
 
Last edited:

blixel

Donator
Donator
Joined
Jun 29, 2010
Messages
647
Reaction score
0
Points
16
Would have been a little better if not for a small mistake at the end.

picture.php
 
Top