Andetch

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This thread is for me to post my STS mission reports onto and avoid clogging up the main thread even more. " Starts with STS-2a/b Now the sats are placed, let's bring that faulty fuel pod back down to Kerbin On the way back, it was noticed that the wings were not symmetrical and needed to be refitted. As Jeb is so helpful, he removed them on landing. But everything was returned to Kerbin, including the tug.

Question for the admins.... I have managed to deploy 4 wobbling sats in GKO, capture the fuel pod and return it to kerbin. However, despite being able to land this beast perfectly during testing, I am encountering some stability issues after touch down after a real mission descent. Some of my descent profiles have been really steep, pulling some crazy maneuvering to get the speed down enough to hit the runway, hence it is different from development flights. I am working on some solutions. But the question is - you said that destroying fuselage is not okay, as per my no landing gear touchdown before but wing damage is okay. So... are any of these two landings permissible?

Okay, I will try again...

STS-2 Mission Report I managed to place 3 sats into a GKO thanks to some help from other pilots (you know who you are). Took screen grabs from the video I made, as it turned into a 2hour+ mission I am not posting the video. Sloh-Rye-Dah took x4 sats and a small tug on this mission. 3 sats were placed in GKO with a 4th placed into a highly eccentric near polar orbit to allow for better communication with a deep space network. There is also a 5th model of this probe in space heading out to a trans-eeloo orbit that I sent there in an earlier attempt to put in into GKO (I forgot to lock the monoprop tank on that mission and found there was no way I could maneuver it delicately enough so just pointed it prograde and burned all the fuel). Due to an oversight, the tug didn't have enough TWR to move the fuel pod easily and we gave up trying to put it back into the orbiter. On touchdown at the KSC we came in too hard and destroyed the main landing gear. (I forgot to do a quicksave before the landing approach) So we made an emergency "pancake" landing on the Island Airfield in an attempt to save the crew. (Sadly the video stopped recording because it reached the 2 hour limit and I forgot to restart it, but that would have made a really great video!) The pancake landing was a success, all the crew were able to exit the orbiter safely with only minor cuts and bruises. Bill also suffered some minor whiplash. It should be noted that I touched down on the runway on the island airfield. But due to the effects of landing without the gear it rolled off onto it's side. We feel that this demonstrates the safety of our shuttle, as it can also touch down without killing everyone with wing damage - one time during testing the side booster destroyed 50% of the RH wing on stage separation, yet we still landed the orbiter safely. See below for mission proofs. GKO Proof GKO Insertion Parking Orbit Deployment of Sat Effects of "Pancake" landing with no main landing gear

Cool Shuttles - I am inspired to make some Mk2 ones myself!

Just getting them perfectly aligned and geostationary orbit.... I am trying to manual fly them in and I always get it a few m/s out or a few metres of altitude out and it doesn't work... maybe because I am not at perfect equatorial orbit? I don't know... I even equipped the probes with RCS for prograde and retro adjustments and turned the thrust down to 0.5% to try and adjust it but still... can't get that perfect GKO Then of course, using a shuttle that can take 45T into LKO with 3k m/s dv means I carry 4 probes and a tug up to an orbit with a pp of +350km easily just seems to make things harder.... even putting the shuttle to have an ap of the require height for GEO doesn't help so much, although I can see how this will help deploy them (but I think maybe putting the probes onto a separate vehicle for this is best, the shuttle can have a circular orbit of 350km) It just seems to be so fiddly to get the orbit exactly at the height required for perfect GKO Could it be that the shuttle gives a bumpy ride into LKO and isn't always a perfect equatorial orbit is making it harder? I'll be honest, this breed of shuttle really requires some flying to get to LKO and LKO takes about 20 mins real time... could this be an issue? Should I go back to the smaller shuttle that is quicker and easier to get to LKO? My original hump back shuttle, Slo-Kly-Mah was so perfectly balanced, but with such a low TWR that it crawled into orbit... like when you triggered the launch it hovered for a while slowly gaining speed, and it took about 35 - 40 mins to get to LKO with a lot of bouncing about adjusting the thrust of the engines to keep it balanced... (yes, this is a massive hint to go and try flying Slo-Kly -Mah and Slo-Rye-Dah yourself...)

I think I will stick to hump backed designs... I have the experience now and don't think there are any other examples of this... You guys keep your rotating VTOL nacelles. I probably won't get that far for a long time! (I am having issues with the geostationary orbits again, so sod VTOL, I might skip this as I did do it in a previous mission with my type-c chuttle) I already know I can land on places like the mun with RCS to to the final VTOL maneuver. And I'll land like a brick back on Kerbin! (perhaps a challenge admin/mod can confirm me passing STS-2 is recorded and I can just move on.... even using mechjeb to place the sats into GKO is failing - also, major kudos to the person who did it with only SRB)

Is there any reason why you went west, instead of east? Doesn't that use a lot more DV? Very cool craft. Also, I learned developing my hump back shuttle that also has main engines on the fuel pod that reducing the thrust on the fuel pod engine as fuel drains makes it a lot easier to handle. I initially did this by using the thrust limiter toggle (shown when you right click the part) to reduce the thrust from that engine in flight, therefore bringing the CoT closer to align with the CoM. Maybe this information will help you get over that issue?

Very biased here because I want to show off my proudest KSP design... Take this craft, https://kerbalx.com/Andetch/Sloh-Rye-Dah-Evlandia fly it to Duna and land the crewed lander in the payload there. Then return the crew that landed to the shuttle. Then refuel the shuttle by either landing it on Duna or Ike, then return to Kerbin. It took me a while to achieve this! If you want to get a really difficult task, try and land on Laythe with it. Feel free to send the payload lander component somewhere else, with crew. The payload uses command seats, so you need to sit them in there at launch otherwise it is a pain to get them seated.

STS-1 Sloh-Rye-Dah I did earn STS-1 Completion with an early design shuttle years ago, but testing my new bird, new ksp install ec., etc., decided to start again at STS-1 with Sloh-Rye-Dah. This is a 6 seater, hump backed shuttle, that also carries mining equipment. The vehicle is totally overkill for this mission. As in I designed this bird to take a 45T cargo to other planets. It can get into LKO with over 3k delta V at your disposal. This actually meant returning from LKO had to be done differently to what I would usually do. The usual landing would be similar to a Nasa shuttle, in that you fall out of the sky deadstick flying the exact same way a brick doesn't, keeping the speed supersonic until you pull up at the last moment (about 3km), lose the speed then flop onto the runway. But this time I had to take a more shallow approach and burn off fuel to make it light enough for landing. I did make a video of the landing. But forgot to start the camera recording until I was deploying the pod! (Also, I forgot how to put the images into one of those drop down things, so sorry for using so much scrolling space. If someone wants to remind me how, that'll be cool and I can edit the post) Standard Craft File: https://kerbalx.com/Andetch/Sloh-Rye-Dah-Evlandia Hangar View Launch Pad Deploying Fuel Pod Setting Up Landing Landing Video

Okay, so the rules officially change for scoring...

I would welcome someone who is better at maths to come up with a better way of scoring I found that adding any extra part, even really light stuff like fins drastically affected my total altitude which is why I went the way I did. But your formula seems fairer. Nice effort!

That's very good going! I guess I should stop with my ballistic re-entry trajectories!