Terriers to orbit Part Two (Poodle time)

[DAL59]

Get a kerbal to orbit using only terrier poodle engines.  

Terrier

ROCKET

5. @MarvinKitFox -118

4. @Scarecrow -32

3. @Andetch -26

2. @ManEatingApe -25

1. @swjr-swis -20

SPACEPLANE:

2. @vyznev -5

1. @swjr-swis -3

0. @vyznev -1

Poodle

No entries yet

 

Edited July 30, 2018 by DAL59

[Natokerbal]

challenge accepted!

[Natokerbal]

ok I wanna see you do this because I can't seem to in stock without having over 350 parts which leads to my pc crashing

 

[DAL59]

1 hour ago, Natokerbal said:

ok I wanna see you do this because I can't seem to in stock without having over 350 parts which leads to my pc crashing

 

(Hint: try a spaceplane instead of a rocket)

[Natokerbal]

(Hint: try a spaceplane instead of a rocket)

29 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

(Hint: try a spaceplane instead of a rocket)

Hmmm good idea i'll try that

[Andetch]

Ok, I just did this - the video is just rendering. I used a conventional vertical rocket style craft, with staging.

One thing - I didn't launch from KSC, I launched from the desert airfield site. The reason being that the TWR/Engine ISP i so low at the KSC, the extra approximately 800 metres above sea level makes a huge difference. Not possible to get to LKO with this craft from KSC.  (I am not sure if it will even be possible to get there from KSC as the engine ISP is so low there) Can also get to LKO from Woomerang. 

I have KER installed, but I don't really use it much in flight. I also have Kerbinside (because I like flying aircraft and having somewhere to go to and land) - these mods didn't really affect anything. Also, I didn't use any expansion parts, just the launch site. 

Below is the video of the mission launch to landing.

 

Edited June 27, 2018 by Andetch
Add video

[swjr-swis]

23 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Get a kerbal to orbit using only terrier engines. 

You realize that this is just one special case of the 'weak engine to space' challenge, yes?

The solutions posted here will in concept be the exact same as for that challenge, just only with the terriers.

The terrier does starts awful at ASL, true, but even then it's still a 1+ TWR engine, which means it's all a question of how many engines you want to spam and how many parts your PC/patience can cope with.

[DAL59]

What about Poodles?

[ManEatingApe]

No frills 25 Terrier entry

The first stage only lifts the craft a few hundred meters but it's enough. It feels like doing an Eve ascent...only on Kerbin instead!

By 6km things are ticking over nicely

In LKO with a little fuel left over so that we can bring Jeb back.

Full album link

 

1 hour ago, swjr-swis said:

The solutions posted here will in concept be the exact same as for that challenge, just only with the terriers.

This does allow an easy way to rank the entries - the fewer Terriers the better.

[Superfluous J]

52 minutes ago, ManEatingApe said:

No frills 25 Terrier entry

Oh man this takes me back to the pre-1.0 days.

[swjr-swis]

On 6/26/2018 at 7:08 PM, DAL59 said:

Get a kerbal to orbit using only terrier engines.

12 hours ago, Andetch said:

I am not sure if it will even be possible to get there from KSC as the engine ISP is so low there

7 hours ago, ManEatingApe said:

This does allow an easy way to rank the entries - the fewer Terriers the better.

 

Ok, fine, I'll enter too. One traditional rocket type vehicle, two stages, 20 Terriers, launched from KSC. One kerbal to orbit... and back.

The booster stage uses 19 Terriers in hexagonal arrangement (some clipping, but the nozzles are kept free, I felt was an acceptable approximation of a composite engine). It just serves to get the first 160m/s and about 2km out of the way. From there, the orbital stage -a fairing cabin with command seat pushed by a single Terrier- can carry itself to orbit via a regular gravity turn.

It arrives to 80km orbit with just fumes in the tanks, but even those fumes can be used to deorbit the craft again, and with the aid of some aerobraking and the added chute, the kerbal makes it safely back to the surface.

Spoiler

20 Terriers will help us overcome their weak ASL thrust and put one kerbal in orbit. Bonus: loading pod doubles as LES.

19 Terriers and fuel expended, and we're only just reaching 160 m/s and 2km. It proves to be just (barely!) enough to make it.

At the end of the ascent, we're in a stable 81km orbit.

Since we had half a unit of LFO left in orbit, why not return too. The craft's balance and aerobraking properties help to keep the kerbal safe.

The one chute on top is sufficient for a gentle landing or splashdown. Home sweet home.

Full imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/39fzZ4n

Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/Terrier2LKO-1b

[ManEatingApe]

5 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

Since we had half a unit of LFO left in orbit,

Such extravagance! 

[swjr-swis]

51 minutes ago, ManEatingApe said:

Such extravagance! 

Hey, I hear people like a bit of margin.

As the name might give away, there was a 1a version before this, which had the luxury of an additional 3rd stage of 6x radial boosters (half-filled FL-T200 with Terrier on radial decoupler). They were empty and dropped at barely 10m/s and 120m up, and yet it allowed the orbital stage to reach 100km orbit with about a quarter Oscar-B tank left. The boosters were even capped and had chutes - totally useless in this scenario but it looked good.

Spoiler

The 1b resulted from stripping these radial boosters off of the 1a.

The boosters made quite a difference.

That felt positively wasteful, so I decided to make it a bit more frugal and stripped off the radial boosters...

Besides, I needed to use less engines than you. You practically dared me.

Edited June 28, 2018 by swjr-swis
imgur, why dost thou hate me

[Andetch]

So it is possible from KSC - again I just get locked into a single track mindset (as per Cavetech SSTO Spaceplanes, thanks @ManEatingApe for yet again showing me a different line of thinking)...... So I guess mine is a bit cheaty as I launched from the desert gaining around 800 metres on KSC launches. Back to drawing board to make a KSC launched version! 

On 6/27/2018 at 7:13 AM, DAL59 said:

(Hint: try a spaceplane instead of a rocket)

Oh and no spaceplane type entries yet! I wonder.....

[ManEatingApe]

1 hour ago, swjr-swis said:

Besides, I needed to use less engines than you. You practically dared me.

Nothing like a bit of competitive provocation! 

23 minutes ago, Andetch said:

Oh and no spaceplane type entries yet! I wonder.....

@swjr-swis's rocket entry is going to be hard to beat, but the field is wide open for a spaceplane entry.

Edited June 28, 2018 by ManEatingApe

[The Minmus Derp]

Hmmm. I’ll try this on Sunday,

[vyznev]

3 hours ago, Andetch said:

Oh and no spaceplane type entries yet! I wonder.....

Well, here's mine.

I actually flew this mission yesterday, but I had some Internet connection issues that prevented me from uploading the screenshots. It uses five Terrier engines on three stages (plus the lander can, which stays on the runway). My earlier three-engine version (basically the same craft minus the first stage) could almost make it to orbit, but I was always a few hundred m/s of delta-v short, so I finally just decided to slap an extra stage on it. With this version I managed to reach LKO with over 500 m/s of delta-v left, so there's certainly room left for further optimization and margin shaving.

The whole thing is kind of ugly and unwieldy, but it does the job. Basically, the winged side boosters' job is to haul the core stage up to 10 km or so (where the Terriers work at nearly full efficiency) and give it a bit of an initial velocity boost. Once the booster tanks are dry, the wings get ditched along with the boosters and the core stage (consisting of a single Terrier, an FL-T400 fuel tank and a "capsule" made up of a command seat and a reaction wheel inside a fairing) flies the rest of the way to orbit. Above 10 km, the core stage alone has over 3 km/s of delta-v, more than enough to reach LKO.

There are no real provisions for safe re-entry using this craft, especially since I flew this mission on KSP 1.3.1 where kerbals don't have parachutes. However, the challenge was just to put a kerbal into orbit; it says nothing about getting them back down again.  If you want to do that, I suggest launching a separate rescue mission. Then again, this design has enough spare delta-v that simply replacing the command seat with a real capsule might also be an option.

Here's the .craft file, if anyone else wants to give it a try. And here are the rest of the screenshots:

Spoiler

On the runway, preparing to transfer Val into the command seat.

Ready to board. To enter the command seat, you have to clip the camera inside the fairing so that you can right-click the seat and select "Board". Once you manage that, the Kerbal you're controlling magically teleports into the seat. 

Sitting in the command seat, ready to launch. (Note: This screenshot is from an earlier version of the craft with fewer boosters. Please ignore the KER readouts.)

Lander can detached.

Starting takeoff with all five Terriers running at full ground-level thrust, giving a whopping TWR of 0.3.

It's flying! It's even flying upwards!

Almost ready to drop the outermost boosters (and the lower pair of wings).

First stage separation complete. Now it's a monoplane.

Gradually pitching up as the TWR improves. The craft has pretty high drag and the goal is to reach 10 km above sea level ASAP, so trading velocity for altitude is good. As long as the surface velocity indicator doesn't start going down, we're good.

 

Pitching up even more, now almost at TWR 1. Did I mention that this thing has pretty lousy steering? I tried to keep the nose pointing roughly east, but there really wasn't much in the way of fine yaw control. Still, close is good enough.

Close to 8 km and going up fast. Almost time to drop the second booster pair.

Bye bye, wings! It was nice working with you.

Now that I'm over 10 km and no longer desperate for altitude, I started a pretty aggressive gravity turn to minimize fuel use. I also made a quicksave, in case I judged the ascent path wrong.  

Altitude 40 km, apoapsis 97.5 km. Shutting down the engine and coasting the rest of the way to space. The heat effects look scary, but actual drag at this altitude is pretty negligible.

While coasting, I set up a quick maneuver node for circularization. At this point I could tell I'd made it, since I had almost twice the required delta-v left.  

Deploying the fairing at 70 km to shave a little more delta-v, and to give Val a better view.  

Circularizing. This is exactly what every proper Kerbal upper stage should look like.  

Circularization complete. Enjoy the ride, Val! We'll get you down... someday.

 

Edited June 28, 2018 by vyznev

[Andetch]

2 hours ago, vyznev said:

There are no real provisions for safe re-entry using this craft, especially since I flew this mission on KSP 1.3.1 where kerbals don't have parachutes. However, the challenge was just to put a kerbal into orbit; it says nothing about getting them back down again.  If you want to do that, I suggest launching a separate rescue mission. Then again, this design has enough spare delta-v that simply replacing the command seat with a real capsule might also be an option.

I perfected saving a Kerbal on re-entry that had been up in one of my suicidal designs in v1.3 (ADX-WMP - got a massive engine on the back so flips easily) and I think I can talk Val down..... 

It needs to have a decent amount of electricity to power the reaction wheel. I would guess there is enough left. 

1. Commence a de-orbit burn, make sure the trajectory will spend the last 50% over water - at least. (You must be heading over water for this to work).
2. Keep the craft locked retrograde - let the engine and fuel tank act as a heat shield (or you could have kept the fairing). This is where the reaction wheel comes in handy!
3. Let the air resistance slow you down, try and get subsonic - this should happen as you hit the soup below 8KM. Bailing out at supersonic speeds is risky!
4. Jump out - enable the EVA RCS. 
5. As you get near the water, use the EVA RCS to slow down. 
6. Kerbals have a very high tolerance for water landings. 50 - 100 m/s should be okay. It needs to be deep water though, because if the Kerbal hits the seabed it can be fatal. They also bounce quite well off their heads - so if you're not over water, try and hit the ground head first.  
7. Tell us all if Val was able to survive. 

Congratulations of the horizontal launch there!

Edited June 28, 2018 by Andetch

[Scarecrow]

I started off trying the spaceplane approach, but quickly realised that because the Terrier is so bad at sea level, it actually takes ages to get to an altitude where they start being really useful, by which time most of the fuel had gone.  My final solution was a rocket that used quite a few Terriers initially, just to get that gain in altitude, but progressively jettisoning them to save weight and improve the rate of acceleration.

 

[swjr-swis]

On 6/28/2018 at 11:45 AM, ManEatingApe said:

the field is wide open for a spaceplane entry.

On 6/28/2018 at 3:08 PM, vyznev said:

My earlier three-engine version (basically the same craft minus the first stage) could almost make it to orbit, but I was always a few hundred m/s of delta-v short

 

I had a nagging suspicion that it should be possible to do a very lean horizontal take-off - all I needed was to get the orbital stage of my rocket entry up to 120 m/s and 1km high, or better. So I stripped the rocket booster stage, rotated it to horizontal, and made it into a spaceplane. It ends up being a similar staging concept to that of @vyznev, except I'm a bit more ruthless in staging off stuff I no longer need. This allowed me to stick with just three Terriers, needing a lot less wing too.

The end result is the Terrier2LKO-2b, a 10.1t 3-Terrier craft that starts as a spaceplane and takes off from the runway, and then sheds parts while transforming into a rocket in a gravity turn. 100+km LKO can be reached, and the orbital stage can safely bring the kerbal back to the surface again.

Spoiler

The same core orbital stage as my rocket version, now transformed into a quasi-spaceplane.

Take off like a plane off the KSC runway. The craft needs no steering, just retract gear, stage, and man the throttle.

"Weengs? We dun need no steenkeen' weengs." At least not once we're vertical.

Stable 102km LKO reached, with plenty of fuel for activities and to return to the surface again.

Full imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/UfQAM3W

Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/Terrier2LKO-2b

 

Btw @DAL59, are you going to update the leaderboard with everyone's entries?

Edited July 11, 2018 by swjr-swis
leaderboard? where's the rest of the entries?

[sevenperforce]

I've got an 11-Terrier traditional rocket that reaches orbit with plenty of margin from the KSC. Trying to get a 9-Terrier solution to work.

[sevenperforce]

....and yep, a 9-Terrier solution will work!

Spoiler

 

 

Of course there's nothing under there but a probe core, but oh well.

I think an 8-Terrier orbital solution (VTO, KSC) is possible, but it would be razor-thin.

[swjr-swis]

23 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Of course there's nothing under there but a probe core, but oh well.

The challenge objective is to get a Kerbal to orbit though.

You still have 5 units of LFO left in orbit - that might be just enough to get the job done.

 

[sevenperforce]

6 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

The challenge objective is to get a Kerbal to orbit though.

You still have 5 units of LFO left in orbit - that might be just enough to get the job done.

Wait, how did I miss that?

Okay, back to the drawing board then.

[swjr-swis]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Okay, back to the drawing board then.

Don't change too much, it's already almost there. Maybe just drain some of that excess LFO from the last tank; that should be pretty close to the extra mass of command seat and kerbal.