Suborbital Russian Doll, LKO Laythe

[Cunjo Carl]

Base Challenge: Suborbital Laythe Aerocapture

Space planes are hard! Ready to learn? Now, with SSTO as tricky as ever, the suborbital milestone is a critical step in the path to building space planes. Unfortunately, it’s also a boring one :). This challenge gives it some zest, enough to realize that you (yes you!) can build a space plane good enough to go somewhere. By putting Laythe into LKO, you can fly into a suborbital trajectory and aerocapture into 'orbit' simply by flying to and landing on the big pretty gem in the sky.

Rules:
1. Take off from Kerbin.
2. After takeoff, fly up to 14km using only air breathers
3. Lift your Apogee a bit beyond 85km.
4. Aerocapture in to Laythe and land on it. Parachutes are OK!

Hang on, that sounds easy! Well, the devil’s in the details, and it’s those details this gives you an excuse to learn. Good luck!

 

Tricky Challenge: Suborbital Russian Doll

If you’re already an old-hat at space planes, we’ll add a twist: Use space planes to launch smaller space planes, and see how deep you can make the Russian doll go.

Rules:
1. Take off from Kerbin.
2. Fly up to 14km using only air breathers
3. Fly beyond 70km, and separate your payload plane
** For the first plane only, Quicksave, Land the launcher back on Kerbin, then reload your quicksave to switch back to the payload plane.
4. Bring the payload plane under 20km on Laythe.
5. Fly the payload plane back to Kerbin and land.
Using your payload plane as the new launcher, Repeat. You don’t need to launch from where you landed, you can start a new one from the air strip, but please make sure to remove any fuel used during the return trip.

    You can connect the launcher plane and payload plane(s) in any way you like- they can even share a fuselage. However, both must be able to land back on Kerbin (parachutes OK!), and none of the payload’s engines can be used until after is separates. Also, there must be a Kerbal somewhere within the payload plane(s), but that Kerbal doesn't necessarily need to be the pilot. Good luck!

Other Rules
      Mods are OK, but please make a note of which part/physics mods you use so I can put them next to your entry. For posting, anything goes- text, pics or video. Tell us how it goes!

How to use Hyperedit
      To put Laythe into Kerbin’s orbit, you can use Hyperedit. The mod is free and very useful for testing ships (like Eve landers) before launching them. Download Hyperedit from this link http://www.kerbaltek.com/hyperedit, unzip it, open the "GameData" folder inside, and drag "Kerbaltek" into the "GameData" folder in KSP.  You’ll probably find KSP's game data folder in C:\Steam Library\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData. After that, Simply launch KSP, and press Alt+H to access Hyperedit at any point.
      On the title screen, press Alt+H and select Orbit Editor. Select Laythe and then Kerbin as the reference body. Set the orbit distance to 660000, and press apply. Now click the planet editor button, set the gravity to 0.2 and press apply . You may also turn off tidal locking, and set the rotation to -17000 to make Laythe spin backwards. I like it, but it's not necessary for the challenge. Finally, click "Save planet to config file."
      As a note, Hyperedit will edit Laythe for all of your save files, but it can reset the default values at the click of a button. Since Laythe will gobble up any uncontrolled ships that enters its SOI, it’s best to not load your main save file. Instead, make a new sandbox for this challenge or load this save file, which has convenient satellites marking the SOI and atmosphere boundaries.   https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4VfTCvq4M80eDdyRll4NGpEX1E/view?usp=sharing
      Also, if you’d rather not risk altering KSP, you can actually copy-paste the entire KSP folder and run this challenge from your copied KSP instead.

Badges

           

 

Silly Introductory Video

 

 

Leader Board

Base Challenge:

1 Payload:

2 Payloads (?):

3 Payloads (??):

4 Payloads (???):

 

 

Edited May 24, 2016 by Cunjo Carl
Things were not as clear as they could have been :)

[AeroGav]

I'm a little confused about the rules, but i have a payload plane that I am pretty sure will reach Laythe and can return to Kerbin.   

It's a man rated version of the Astrojet Sapphire I used in the Economy challenge , with two massive underwing drop tanks

Spoiler

 

 

The launcher unfortunately was not my finest hour.     

Sorry. I didn't read the bit in the rules about not using any engines on the upper stage aircraft.   The upper stage has no oxidizer, so once we get above 29km only the lower engines work, causing a massive pitch up tendency which the thin air is unable to stop.  I managed to get to orbit by running only the middle engine closed cycle, wasn't fun though.

Spoiler

 

With a 90 km apoapsis, i separate and start circularizing on the upper stage plane.  At this point I discover the massive drop tanks are also causing our CG to be well underneath the engine, causing a pitch moment if i run the nuke at more than 30% throttle.  One nuke on 30Tons of plane and drop tank, it was hardly a muscle car to begin with.   We eventually circularize , but in the meantime the launcher has fallen to 40km and gets its nose cone burnt off before i can pull out.  Fortunately,  the service bay behind it survives and we are able to make an easy offroad landing.

Next week i'll try taking this to Jool.  Tons of fuel onboard that upper stage plane, should be easy, but lets not be careless. A fool and his delta V are soon parted.

[Cunjo Carl]

23 hours ago, AeroGav said:

I'm a little confused about the rules, but i have a payload plane that I am pretty sure will reach Laythe and can return to Kerbin.   

The launcher unfortunately was not my finest hour.     

 the launcher has fallen to 40km and gets its nose cone burnt off before i can pull out.  Fortunately,  the service bay behind it survives and we are able to make an easy offroad landing.

Next week i'll try taking this to Jool.  Tons of fuel onboard that upper stage plane, should be easy, but lets not be careless. A fool and his delta V are soon parted.

That is a sweet looking silhouette in the hidden comments section. It reminds me of a Vellos dart from EV Nova if you happen to have played it.

In regards to losing the nose cone but saving the mission, service bays make better pods than pods do, right?

If you're set to head out to Jool, your craft is probably way beyond what's necessary for this challenge. This challenge is predicated on putting Laythe into LKO using Hyperedit, so (once done) your craft is probably on its doorstep already . For the challenge, you don't even need to make orbit with your launcher to make it out to Laythe. It just serves as a nice big target for folks (like myself) still learning their way around SSTO. Now given that making it out to Laythe legit is 10 times harder, I will totally toss your name on the leaderboard for the base challenge with a star next to it if you manage! I should probably put LKO Laythe in the challenge title, come to mention it... Sorry about that. After that, the Russian Doll part is just taking a rocket design rule of having payloads upon payloads (mine are normally 6-9 stages) and imposing it on SSTOs in the hopes of humor and intrigue.

Whichever way you decide to take your mission, to LKO Laythe or to Jool, good luck!