Challenge: Trapped in the sky [1.1]

[mattihase]

Trapped in the Sky!

Disaster! The luxury SSTO space-liner Fireflash finds itself trapped in low kerbin orbit, unable to use it's landing gear without activating a bomb stowed aboard by the dastardly Hood Kerman. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to design and prove the most creative way you can think of to bring the 18 crew and passengers of the Fireflash back down to kerbin safely.

Rules:

1: don't use the Fireflash's landing gear to land.

2: don't just ditch it in the ocean, while technically the most practical solution to the problem it is also the most boring.

3: don't just send shuttles up into LKO to dock and collect the passengers, again not a whole lot interesting.

4: do pretty much anything else that you need to do. want to use modded parts? go ahead!

5: success is nobody crashing into the planet and dying.

The Ship:

The Fireflash Prototype, a Hackenbacker Class Single-Stage to Orbit luxury Space-liner with a crew of 2 and 16 VIP passengers. Current Situation: in Low Kerbin Orbit with more enough oxidizer to deorbit and plenty liquid fuel for low altitude manoeuvring/powered glide on final approach.

 

Action Groups:

1: toggle rapier engines

2: toggle engine mode (currently closed cycle)

3: open/close orbital components (solars, antenna)

4: deploy emergency radial drogue chutes

5: toggle in-line radiators between passive and active  (currently active, can and should be indefinitely sustained with RTGs)

Tips on landing the Fireflash:

The Fireflash while able to glide will drop too fast to make an unpowered landing, or at least requires maintaining power till just before touchdown. it can survive high physics warp and is mostly stable both in and out of atmosphere as well as being easy to manoeuvre at subsonic speeds. when re-entering be careful as the front section has a habit of burning up, though losing it does not fatally detract from the stability of the craft. The Fireflash has a relatively short stopping distance with just the air/breaks compared to the length of the ksc runway.

Link:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3bAkbqjp8mGY1lsdGRPR3dmRXc

contains a savefile with the Fireflash in orbit, there is also the Fireflash's craft accessible from the SPH list as a "Hackenbacker Spaceliner" in case you need a reference vessel to mess around with.

Good luck.

Edited April 10, 2016 by mattihase

[Van Disaster]

Heh, years ago there was a discussion about whether the original would actually fly ( under FAR at least, stock aero back then was... peculiar ).

Answer: yes. Landing, not so much!

Will look at this I think, looks fun.

 

[max_creative]

I have a big passenger ship up there. If I can get Jeb to it I think I've got this. Maybe.

[Foxster]

Could you post just the craft file?

[Jetski]

Might be worth noting on the OP that this challenge can't be done with 1.05, as the savegame is a 1.1 pre-release and is incompatible with 1.05

[Foxster]

It took me three tries but I got there in the end.

I went all International Rescue on it and docked first one (miserable failure) then two (nearly made it) then three craft packed with chutes. Then it was a matter of babying it to the ground by opening a few chutes at a time to stop it from tearing itself to pieces (lot of frantic F5/F9). 

But I got all the crew, passengers and the Fire Flash safely down...

This was actually plan B. I was going to try attaching some new landing gear with some small clawed craft. But I tried just flying the thing down first to see how it handles... brick-like, so I gave up on that plan.  

Edited April 9, 2016 by Foxster

[Jetski]

14 hours ago, Foxster said:

It took me three tries but I got there in the end.

I went all International Rescue on it and docked first one (miserable failure) then two (nearly made it) then three craft packed with chutes. Then it was a matter of babying it to the ground by opening a few chutes at a time to stop it from tearing itself to pieces (lot of frantic F5/F9). 

But I got all the crew, passengers and the Fire Flash safely down...

This was actually plan B. I was going to try attaching some new landing gear with some small clawed craft. But I tried just flying the thing down first to see how it handles... brick-like, so I gave up on that plan.  

You sure you packed enough chutes?

 

[mattihase]

18 hours ago, Foxster said:

It took me three tries but I got there in the end.

I went all International Rescue on it and docked first one (miserable failure) then two (nearly made it) then three craft packed with chutes. Then it was a matter of babying it to the ground by opening a few chutes at a time to stop it from tearing itself to pieces (lot of frantic F5/F9). 

But I got all the crew, passengers and the Fire Flash safely down...

This was actually plan B. I was going to try attaching some new landing gear with some small clawed craft. But I tried just flying the thing down first to see how it handles... brick-like, so I gave up on that plan.  

Pretty Clever^TM (if infuriatingly asymmetrical).

I never realized that something that size would take so many parachutes to land safely, i guess that's why we usually use runways and gliding and all that stuff.

 

[SpaceplaneAddict]

If IT can't have landing gear, I'll just put another spaceplane under it!

[Foxster]

6 hours ago, Jetski said:

You sure you packed enough chutes?

 

Umm, maybe a tad overdone :). It did take quite a long time to land once the chutes were deployed. 

[superstrijder15]

21 hours ago, Foxster said:

I went all International Rescue on it and docked first one (miserable failure) then two (nearly made it) then three craft packed with chutes

Those craft like the ones I used when I deorbited a station for a rescue contract. (the station being 2.5 orange tanks and a hitchhiker + a probe and stuff, had 5 or so in orbit  Why? Cause contracts!)