Ozelui

My crew needed to perform some durability / life support / driving tests on a new Duna mobile base... guess where they went.

Thanks for the badge! LOL nah, I won't, review the missions when you can and want. Also I figured you must have been busy going to Duna in *that* other challenge About the visual mods, I think the one you didn't recognize is KS3P, the rest are the usual suspects, EVE, SVE, scatterer, planetshine, engine light. KSP looks very beautiful with the post processing, but the default .cfg exagerates the lens dirt effect, and it's quite dark. I'm playing with the config trying to find a better setup, AFAIK the author plans to adjust it for the next version release.

I'm sure docking is allowed, since I did so when playing my STS-4R and michal.don gave me a shiny badge in return To be honest, I didn't consider the option of an EVA to reach the rescue shuttle, but after reading the mission rules I'd say it would be ok too.

A very ambitious challenge, count me in. I'm afraid I didn't have the time to figure out my launch schedule, yet I'm already theorycrafting some of the vehicles. For now, these are a pair of prototypes made for research ( i.e. learning how TACLS and other mods works ): And this is the mod list I'm currently using, please let me know if any of them is forbidden. Anyway, since 1.4.5 came out this week, I'll probably upgrade because of kopernicus. I love how Duna looks with the stock visual terrain mod, but kopernicus is a requirement and was not released for 1.4.4 (my current version).

STS Test-3 report Being my first travel to the Jool system, this has been quite challenging. The Kassini managed to visit all the moons but Pol. Even after archieving the same orbital plane, I was unable to get an encounter, and Tylo was determined to pull Kassini into the inner system. In the end I gave up to Tylo's desires, visited Vall and then Laythe, where the Huygens probe explored the depths of the ocean, and then Kassini went to meet Jool's atmosphere. I'm not too keen on the ending, the monopropellant is barely visible, and there is no trail effect at that height (192 km). I'm afraid Jool is too destructive to look good. Craft link: https://kerbalx.com/Ozelui/Atlantis-shuttle-Kassini-Huygens

Both the tank and rcs thrusters have been nothing but dead weight for 5 (Kerbin) years. Camera, action! Thanks!

One question about the Test-3: My Kassini had a 7.5 units monopropellant tank, intended for looks only for the mission ending and was unused until that moment. Would that be ok, @michal.don?

Kerbals consider that green aura you have now to be a sign of good health. JK, looks like you had an interesting holiday. - Thank you for your dedication maintaining the challenge, adding new missions and evaluating all of our reports. And congrats on the new replies record! It has been quite a journey! - I disagree, out of 20 missions total, 7, or, in other words, over a third of the challenge are your creations. I wouldn't call that meh. Keep up the good job. - Tough question, the short answer is I want a bit of everything (including the articles): Exploring new worlds keeps the challenge interesting in terms of course plotting and facing the different planet conditions. Eve is particularly interesting as pointed out by others before, because it is the only body with an atmosphere that we did not visit yet. The conditions there are also EXTREME, so it should remain as the ultimate target in my opinion. There are still several unvisited bodies, that, while not having an atmosphere, can be challenging because of the high amounts of dV needed to get there and back - Again, high end missions - . There's also an unvisited body inside the kerbin SOI. Incremental infrastructure development is an aspect of the challenge I particularly enjoy, it gives the players a sense of progress, and allows planning several missions ahead of the one you are flying. So yes, we also need to return to some of our previous landing sites to bring more equipment. However, the equipment itself has to have something special going on to justify the journey there. The Mun base missions are a great example of this. The test flights, being closely related to real missions, and therefore intended for realistic shuttles are a nice addition to the rest of the challenge. Kind of a spin off from my point of view. PM with a few mission ideas lifting off in 3...2...1...

A bold mission. Just one doughnut? I find your lack of snacks disturbing...

Thank you! About not getting out of the atmosphere, I'm not sure why that's the case. As you can see the shuttle burned all the LFO in the ascent and braking maneuvers, with just a tiny burst left that I spent just before landing ( because emergency landings and fuel are a fun mix! ). The highest altitude was 60 km, and my attempted trajectory was more vertical than the usual launch for this bird. In the ( not recorded ) test flights for the test flight , without engine failures my shuttle is able to reach a 300 by 300 km orbit, dock with the space station from STS-5 - 8, and go back to the KSC. Same fuel tanks and everything. @hoioh 's shuttle can even reach munar orbit. I can't avoid thinking there is something else at play. I guess part of the difference is the low thrust and deteriorated control after loosing the SSME, that was expected. Is KSP atmosphere higher in proportion compared to the real Earth's atmosphere? Perhaps that's the difference. Or perhaps the turn to retrograde was too quick? I'd also like to try the same setup with moar SFBs. I used a total of 6 during the video, and I'm thinking about using 10 so they fit inside the same fairings. That setup would depend a bit less on the SSMEs and could probably make the SFB's last longer. They are configured at 90% thrust currently to extend their duration a bit.

STS test fligh 2 A tricky abort maneuver. At least it showed me a small detail that I was doing wrong compared with the real shuttle. In my case the SSME and the OMS drain the same tanks. Quite important when you are trying to move the COM forward by burning the OMS. Even with this configuration it is doable, but it makes sense to use a monopropellant based OMS or disable the crossfed in some way so the OMS and SSME burn fuel from different tanks(for the next time).

Thank you! I decided to fly the mission again with a more realistic setup, now the shuttle is dry, and the separation from the plane doesn't involve igniting anything ( Despite Jeb's objections ): I forgot to power down the 747 engines, but without the LFO weight, the shuttle had enough lift to avoid the tail without any pilot input.

The tiny burn during touchdown is actually the product of a wrong staging while trying to deploy the parachutes, the nose goes down on it's own without requiring any thrust. Point taken, it should be quickly fixed, and the separation boosters removed. I guess you have a mod installed that is affecting the physics range, or perhaps your plane was pitching up and therefore reducing speed? I was considering installing some mod for that reason, my 747 can stay in the air without issues for a long distance, but once the shuttle has stopped in the runway, It's already out of the physics bubble. The LFO powered OMS. I left the throttle at full after launch from the 747, once on the runway I staged the OMS ( which should just activate the engines but not burn), then I hit "X" to correct it, and then another stage for the drag chutes. The video is accelerated to 2x, perhaps the speed made noticing the staging a bit more difficult.

After looking at the separation video in wikipedia I'm sure my plane should have been more powerful, in the video the Enterprise was separated in what appears to be a 0º AoA, while the 747 was clearly diving, probably with the engines off, as it did not accelerate away after separation. I went for solid fuel to avoid the tail, but similar ideas. I think I'll try it again with a dry shuttle ( It must have been dry during the real tests, right? ) I decided to do the test with full tanks to find out if the orbiter was capable of landing cargo while coming back from orbit. Without the added weight, I'd expect the host plane to reach a higher altitude, perhaps not as high as 7000-8000, but enough to start a dive.

Woot!!!! Welcome to shuttlefest 2018!!! Party!!!!! What, no? Why not?!?!?!?!? Uhmm.. Anyway.... too late!!! On the other hand, Battletech will be released tomorrow and my crew is going to be... "absent" for a while... so, this is going to be a mission against the clock... or a very looooong one

Well, it was about time for me to try a realistic shuttle... *** Top secret, do not look! *** This was quite refreshing to build, since I'm a bit stuck in my lastest shuttle project: https://imgur.com/a/hS3rl . The engines are going to take a while to be finished, I have already a couple of candidate designs to build ( I.E. sketches on paper ) but any advice on rotatory parts would be very welcome.

How in the world did Valentina get inside the cockpit???? Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/Ozelui/Trans-sonic-flying-wing-prototype

If there's still room, here is a truck for you. It was built in v 1.3.1 and worked quite well, however, I just tested it in 1.4 and it's quite easy to crash in sudden turns (did they change the suspensions?), so drive carefully! The Cargo Mate 8M and trailer were made to fit inside Mk3 cargo bays in order to send them to Duna. In the end an early version of the truck was sent and it's still doing a great job: Craft files: https://kerbalx.com/Ozelui/Cargo-mate-8M-tractor https://kerbalx.com/Ozelui/Cargo-mate-8M-Exo-Exploration-Trailer (Instructions in the description)

Thanks for the explanation, I was utterly confused by the discrepancy between the two ranges. With the range from the F3 summary being wrong ( something I did not know ), then everything makes sense.

I was not sure if my range calculation was correct, it seemed too low, so I took my plane for a spin... surprisingly the real range almost doubled the one calculated with the formula: My numbers: Fuel capacity: 490 fuel units Fuel consumption: 0.10 fuel units/second ( suggested cruise at 5.500 m, full throotle ) Cruise speed: 230 m/s Please, correct me if I'm wrong: ((490 fuel units / 0.1 fuel units per second) * 230 meters per second) / 1000 meters = 1.127 Km --> Range: 1.127 Km ( The range I already had ) Part of the difference has to be the suggested speed, that 230 m/s & 0.10 fuel/s figure is correct at full throotle just after reaching the cruise altitude, but, as the fuel burns, the aircraft becomes lighter and flies faster, reaching ~270 m/s with half the fuel, and approximately 275 m/s with ~10% of the fuel remaining ( I'm guessing that is an aerodynamic limit because of the wing angle ). Fuel consumption also went up to 0.11 units/s, and just near the end of the test flight, it went up to 0.12 units/s. Taking the speed and fuel comsumption at half fuel: ((490 fuel units / 0.11 fuel units per second) * 270 meters per second) / 1000 meters = 1.202 Km ( still 800 km below the real range ) So... what am I doing wrong? What speed should be used for the calculation? Is the formula intended to give a result different to the "real" KSP range?

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ozelui, and I'm the CEO of the Ozelui Aerospace Ltd. company. During the last years we've been involved in the space shuttle development but only recently our company has started working in the commercial aircraft business, so you probably didn't hear from us until now. I come to you today to share our new series of passenger aircrafts with you, we hope you enjoy the presentation: Small regional jet submission: O.A. Model 221 "Bronco" What a better aircraft to start this new adventure than this one? The Bronco is a small regional jet, designed to be an every-day workhorse. Sure, it's not as oppulent as other models, but it gets the job done, no matter what. Ill maintained runways? The Bronco can cope with it. No runway? No problem, just be sure to take the cows away from the landing field. The Bronco will take you where you want to go. Despite being a spartan design, we did not forget about comfort. Recent surveys point at the noise as the main cause of discomfort on modern planes. With this in mind, our engineers decided to take the lousy engine away from the fusselages where the passengers are located. Another of our focuses was security. With two pilots we ensure the plane is in control even if one of them is incapacitated. The shape of the aircraft, while antiquated to our modern eyes, enables the Bronco to glide safely in the case of an engine failure or running out of fuel. Specifications: Crew: 2 Passengers: 48 Weight: 14.676 t (dry: 12.226 t ) Lenght: 14.5 m, Width: 13.3 m, Height: 3.8 m Fuel capacity: 490 l Fuel consumption: 0.10 l/s ( suggested cruise at 5.500 m, full throotle ) Cruise speed: 230+ m/s Range: 1.127 Km Cost: 17.482.000 Parts: 32 Engines: One J-33 "Wheesley" turbofan Take off speed: According to our test pilots, it can take off at 62 m/s, probably less if taking off from a bumpy runway. Aditional notes: The Bronco doesn't have any aerobrake, it uses instead the wheesley's reverse thrust mode to brake both in ground or air (action group 1). Ladders! (action group 2) The forward landing gears can be unlocked to improve the ground turn rate (action group 3). The test pilots recommended climbing softly with an AoA around ~10 degrees, and once near the cruise altitude reduce it gradually to ~2 degrees for level flight.

@Artienia I'll try to explain: The missions have two "difficulty settings", pilot is easier, while the commander requisites are harder. Also, some of the missions have a "bonus" objective, like the STS-1B, where the bonus would be to lift the fuel pod. Deciding the difficulty is up to you , the only difference is which badge you will get for completing it (and, arguably, your personal satisfaction for completing a more challenging mission). An example of a qualifying pilot (easy) level for the STS-2A would be to launch the shuttle and reach an orbit of 200 km, release two self propulsed satellites that then fly to the geostationary orbit (2.863 km or 0 m/s relative to Kerbin's surface), deorbit the shuttle from the 200 km orbit and land her anywhere on Kerbin.

@funk lol, great minds think alike! It's a very attractive spot for a Mun base, not only it's beyond the 60º latitude for the second mission requeriment, but also you can play the UFO card for the story. I'd say the only downsides are the uneven terrain and lack of solar power. Looking forward to watch your awesome report! @Artienia I misunderstood then, sorry, it was a bit too late yesterday. If you are loosing control of the shuttle during reentry with the asteroid and it flies well without it, then I think the potato drag is the issue too. In my potato catching flight, powering down two of my four aerobrakes was enough to keep the shuttle flying straigth. Perhaps the potato could be simulated with... idk, the deployable heat shield maybe? to test atmospheric flight. @hoioh Something similar used to happen to me with big space stations in 1.2.2, I assumed it was fixed in 1.3.0. With KSP you never know when the kraken is coming for you.

Hello again! Before submitting my last mission, there is a resource I would like to share with you. This site contains information about shuttle designs that never came into existence and has been a great source of inspiration for me, I'm hoping it will be for others too: http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld001.htm http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld025.htm It's so sexy, I must try to build this one! Ok, now here's the Mun STS mission 1: The plan was to build the small research outpost in this flight and expand it in the second one, I hope that is not against any of the challenge rules. In this mission a comm network has been deployed around Mun and Minmus, and also the old comm sats from the STS-2 mission have been replaced with proper long range ones that can reach the Duna outpost and beyond reliably. The old quad boosters have been replaced with a 100% reusable system, a hybrid between the Energia and the Falcon heavy, and while it is going to need more work, it did the job of pushing the ship into orbit and go back to the ground in one - well, in three, as planned - pieces. Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/Ozelui/Aurora-shuttle-mk-3-Do-I-have-Mun-quakes

Yep, it is working now. Welcome! By the way, it's not necessary to summon michal.don into the forums, he checks the challenge quite regularly, but I don't think it's a problem if you do so. About the potato catcher, I'd say the ammount of parts between the main structure and the claw do not matter at all as long as you secure them with a few struts to hold in position. I had no idea about the docking ports, do they really make the ship explode?? Wow!