Shuttle Challenge v6 - The STS thread [Stock and Mod Friendly] - ANNOUNCEMENT: v7 IS LIVE!

[s_gamer101]

Here is my entry for STS-4/STS-4R:

Full mission report can be found here: https://imgur.com/a/vKF1wV7

Mods used: Trajectories, KER, EEX, RCS Build Aid

DLC's: Both Making History and Breaking Ground

I used a robotic arm to capture the other Shuttle. I learned some usefull things about Breaking Ground hinges on this mission.

 

[sturmhauke]

@s_gamer101 Sorry for the delay, I've been a little busy with work. Let's see what you've been up to...

STS-3: Shuttle looks good, Hubble looks good, Bill and Ted's Val's Excellent Adventure looks good. Nice work!

 

STS-4/4R: I like the robotic arm, don't think anyone has used one for this mission before. Another fine job!

 

 

@QF9E Ooh, a space wedding! Let's hope the newlyweds fare better than the orbiter they started on!

Edited July 5, 2020 by sturmhauke
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[Stamp20]

My entry for STS 1a/1b.

Mod list: 

Spoiler

• ClickThroughBlocker
• ToolbarControl
• AnimatedDecouplers
• B9PartSwitch
• BasicDeltaV
• BetterBurnTime
• BetterTimeWarp
• Chatterer
• Community Category Kit
• CRP
• Craft Manager
• EVE
  • SciFi VE
• KAS
• KER
• KIS
• MechJeb
• MechJebForAll
• Mk3CrewMid IVA (2 more seats in Mk3 pod)
• ModularLaunchPads
• Near Future Construction, Electrical, Exploration, Launch Vehicles, Solar, Spacecraft
• RealPlume - Stock
• Restock
• Restock+
• SCANsat
• Soundtrack Editor Forked
• Station Parts Expansion Redux
• TextureReplacer
• Trajectories
• KAC
• TweakScale
• Universal Storage 2
• Vessel Mover
• Waypoint Manager

Mission photos in spoiler below.

Spoiler

Shuttle in the VAB featuring the fuel pod.

Liftoff

SRB separation.

ET separation.

Munar eclipse.

Payload deployment in a 297,989m x 297,964m orbit.

Deorbit maneuver.

And deorbit burn.

A safe landing...

Not quite. F9!

A safe landing.

 

[sturmhauke]

Welcome to the Shuttle Challenge, @Stamp20! Looks like a pretty solid spacecraft, despite that, uh, training accident. Congrats on your new badges!

[Stamp20]

My entry for STS-2/2b. This one was a lot harder.

Mods are the same as last time, except I installed TAc Fuel Balancer.

Launch:

Spoiler

New, much bigger orbiter design.

It tripped on the launchpad.

Attempt #2

Revert!

ET needs more power.

ET out of fuel earlier than in STS-1, but the orbiter has much more deltaV.

Going into 537x537km orbit to meet the Commander badge requirements.

I already have a sat in geostationary over the KSC, so the other three will be 90 degrees apart from each other.

Sat deployment:

Spoiler

Sat 1:

Geostationary orbit achieved.

Sat 2.

Sat 3

The full network, each sat roughly 90 degrees apart.

Getting the fuel pod and landing:

Spoiler

Fuel pod is in the top right corner.

Retracting the solar panels.

Captured. I should've added more RCS to the shuttle.

Re-entry.

Shifting fuel to stay balanced.

this is fine

Landed...

...except the fuel pod broke. F9!

Attempt #2:

Attempt #3:

Attempt #5:

Attempt #10:

Attempt #idk:

After tons of attempts, I finally landed it in one piece.

 

[sturmhauke]

On 7/16/2020 at 8:06 AM, Stamp20 said:

My entry for STS-2/2b. This one was a lot harder.

Mods are the same as last time, except I installed TAc Fuel Balancer.

Sorry for the delay, been busy around here. I've been rearranging my house a bit and getting rid of some old junk, and also negotiating peace treaties between children. Anyway, on to your missions.

Relying on non-STS program assets during the course of an STS mission is not generally allowed. However, you did launch the requisite 3 comsats to geostationary orbit, they are spaced mostly evenly, and appear to have plenty of fuel remaining for further adjustments. I'll allow it, but please don't make a habit of it. The fuel pod recovery looks good - we won't count the simulator footage of all the rapid unplanned disassembly events.

[Stamp20]

8 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

Relying on non-STS program assets during the course of an STS mission is not generally allowed.

I did launch the first sat on a shuttle, but it was before I decided to start this challenge.

[QF9E]

Since I can no longer contain my excitement over my latest Shuttle adventure, I present to you this unique sight: My newly-developed Longrange Gemini STS variant, during rendez-vous with its support ship (an ordinary Germini Shuttle, still attached to its booster) after exploring the outer Kerbol system.

While nominally doing the JOOL STS-1 mission it has since landed on all the moons of Jool, as well as all other outer Kerbol system bodies, including Eeloo and Dres.

Back in LKO it will be equipped with an Eve lander and a nuclear Moho transfer stage (both lifted by the Support Shuttle, allowed under the rules of the JOOL STS-1 mission) before going on its way to explore the entire inner Kerbol system. The plan is for the lander to land in Eve's ocean and plant a flag on the ocean floor before going on to Moho, where I will land the Shuttle. If all goes well this will be a complete Grand Tour of the stock Kerbol system (my first!) in a Space Shuttle.

During resupply I will also replace the crew of the Longrange Shuttle, which makes this mission a valid entry for STS-4 / 4R as well. My landing on Duna means that this is also a valid DUNA STS-2 at the pilot level, and my Eve lander brings the required scientific instruments for the EVE STS-1 mission, although I plan to do a crewed landing instead of the mandated atmospheric probe.

I'll keep you posted. As you can imagine, completing and documenting this flight will take a while.

Edited July 24, 2020 by QF9E

[s_gamer101]

On 7/24/2020 at 1:29 PM, QF9E said:

The plan is for the lander to land in Eve's ocean and plant a flag on the ocean floor before going on to Moho

Please correct me if I‘m wrong, but how do you want to plant a flag on the ocean floor? You can go on EVA underwater, but as soon as you release the ladder, the Kerbal starts floating up.
 

By the way, this is a very impressive mission! Good luck!

[QF9E]

1 hour ago, s_gamer101 said:

Please correct me if I‘m wrong, but how do you want to plant a flag on the ocean floor? You can go on EVA underwater, but as soon as you release the ladder, the Kerbal starts floating up.
 

By the way, this is a very impressive mission! Good luck!

Thanks! Planting a flag on the sea floor works like this (actual mission footage! I landed on Eve just this morning):

It seems like it works as long as some object is keeping the Kerbal down. I also thought it impossible but when I searched this forum I came across this thread:

 Thanks to @dnbattley and @vyznev for the inspiration. I basically copied vyznev's design for a diving bell.

Edited July 26, 2020 by QF9E

[sturmhauke]

Well you've been busy! Can't wait to see the final reports.

[QF9E]

It is done! The inner Kerbol system turned out to be much harder than I anticipated, but I've finally managed it! At the end of a 61 year mission Longrange Gemini has safely landed on the KSC runway after visiting every planet and every moon in the stock game that you can land on.

This mission was also a real stress test for the game engine. I encountered numerous bugs, two of which required workarounds outside the game itself:

• At some point the docking ports got stuck. I managed to get them unstuck by carefully selecting "make primary docking port" before undocking
• The fuel transfer system broke down, in that sometimes fuel refused to transfer, and in other cases fuel got transferred where it should not because I had blocked fuel flow
• Apparently the collision model for Pol is broken. Every time night fell, my ISRU drill suddenly stopped making contact with the surface. The landing gear sunk into the terrain numerous times as well, toppling my shuttle. I eventually landed horizontally instead of vertically, which prevented the toppling over. And I patiently restarted the drill every time it ceased operation.
• The collision model for Moho is weird as well. Despite lifting off and reaching orbit, the situation was reported as "Landed". It moved in orbit as if over bumps, proving that the game engine really believed that the craft, with pe > 20 km and moving at orbital speed, was moving across the surface. I had to use Hyperedit to fix this.
• The MMU that was brought by the support shuttle to unload it and transfer parts of the Eve lander to the Longrange shuttle got irretrievably stuck to the Eve diving bell with its Klaw Jr.. Rather than risking an unstable Eve entry and a malfunctioning diving bell, I resorted to using the object thrower from the cheat menu to destroy the Klaw.

Report later, I'm going to celebrate first. I have hours and hours of game footage, so it will be a major task to put a report in order.

Spoiler

Longrange Gemini + Booster, as well as Support Gemini + Booster at KSC.

Two Shuttles, two boosters, two pieces of payload on Laythe as per the JOOL STS-1 mission requirements, and 14 flags, one for each Kerbol system body outside Kerbin that has a solid surface.

Continued from the previous. The list of objects from this mission is too long to fit on a single screen. There's one additional piece of hardware, not shown in this list: The highly radioactive Moho transfer stage is still in LKO. It will have to be disposed of safely at some point. But not today.

 

Edited July 28, 2020 by QF9E

[sturmhauke]

That sounds like a truly epic undertaking. I haven't even been to Eve or Moho at all, much less done a grand tour in a shuttle.

[Jestersage]

Quick logistic question: if the challenge will only use https://kerbalx.com/sturmhauke/SAI-40t-Fuel-Pod, I am going to remove my revision. (It was made originally to account for the part-mass change due to the numerous reskins, and I needed a test for my shuttle.)

EDIT: Removed. the new one have lower part count anyway.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Jestersage

[sturmhauke]

Yeah that's fine. I won't invalidate anyone's previous missions or anything like that, but new missions should use my version. As a side note, I also balanced the mass relative to the small docking ports so that the CoM is inline with the two ports. Any craft that docks with any of the ports should have near zero thrust-induced torque, assuming its engines or fore/aft thrusters are inline with its own docking port.

[QF9E]

Grand Tour mission report, part I: Jool-5: https://imgur.com/a/f6TnF99

Some highlights:

Laythe touchdown

Bop landing

On Tylo. Note the Kerbal on a command chair next to the ISRU unit. This allowed me to plant a flag on Tylo without using any ladders

Landing on Pol. I had all kinds of trouble with Pol as it appears its collision model is broken, at least in my KSP setup.

Vall landing

(My god this is a lot of work ... I am only 1/3th of the way in)

Edited July 29, 2020 by QF9E

[QF9E]

Grand Tour Mission Report Part II: Remaining Outer Planets: https://imgur.com/a/l4kJodM

This part of the Grand Tour felt a bit anti-climactic. All these landings are very easy, and finding transfer windows and orbits isn't that hard either. It just takes a LOOOOONG time, especially going to and from Eeloo is tedious.

Again, just the landings as highlights:

Eeloo

Dres. I am doing a very aggressive suicide burn, just to stay in practice. Note that I have plenty of dv remaining, so there's no real need for aggressive suicide burns.

Duna landing burn. I performed a belly-flop maneuver, just like what SpaceX is planning for its Starship. I shed most of the craft's speed using aerobraking, flipping to retrograde at the end to do a landing burn.

A visit to Phobos station, from my previous DUNA Shuttle missions

Ike landing burn

 

[sturmhauke]

5 hours ago, QF9E said:

On Tylo. Note the Kerbal on a command chair next to the ISRU unit. This allowed me to plant a flag on Tylo without using any ladders

You are a madman and I salute you. When I did my Jool-5 run, I used a staged microlander for Tylo; the return craft was only about 7% of the total starting mass by the time it got back to the mothership.

[QF9E]

15 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

You are a madman and I salute you. When I did my Jool-5 run, I used a staged microlander for Tylo; the return craft was only about 7% of the total starting mass by the time it got back to the mothership.

I used a two-stage Tylo lander with mothership / tanker in my initial Jool-5, with the upper stage to be reused as the Vall lander. I considered using two Gemini shuttles for this run, with the second one functioning as mothership and tanker (no cargo capacity at all, dual wolfhounds - would have had VERY impressive dv). That would have made the Tylo landing considerably easier: attaining orbit from Tylo takes only about 2.2 km/s of dv, while going from Tylo to Pol in a single stint takes about 4 km/s. But in the end I got this to work, and I thought it would be more impressive (and less tedious), so that's why I did it this way. It also meant I had a shuttle to spare for a support flight - stay tuned for the inner solar system run!

As a bonus, visiting the remaining outer solar system bodies became trivial, as Jool to Eeloo, Eeloo to Dres,Dres to Duna and Duna to Kerbin each take way less than 4 km/s.

I also considered a fully nuclear Shuttle. That gave in excess of 7 km/s of delta-v but did not work out because it would need so many NERVs that the craft would have been unable to land horizontally - too much mass at the back to be aerodynamically stable. Of course, you could make a totally new design that is balanced around that, but I wanted to do this in a craft that has the same shape as my Gemini.

[sturmhauke]

Yeah, my Mun STS-1 shuttle used 16 Nervs arranged in 4 rotating VTOL pods. It looked cool when it wasn't exploding everywhere. My Mun STS 2-4 shuttle (which I'm still working on here and there) replaced the Nervs with Wolfhounds, but honestly I think the design challenges of rotating pods outweigh the benefits and cool factor, at least for the heavy cargo I tend to design around.

Mun STS-1 "Munmoth":

Spoiler

 

Mun STS 2-4 "Muninn" (not the final version), plus a still-packed Munar base:

Spoiler

 

[QF9E]

Those Shuttles look very cool! I understand about the rotating pods though - that seems to be quite complex to get right. If I may make a suggestion: why not fix them in place vertically? Orientation does not matter in a vacuum, and you aren't going to use NERVs inside an atmosphere anyway.

[sturmhauke]

6 minutes ago, QF9E said:

Those Shuttles look very cool! I understand about the rotating pods though - that seems to be quite complex to get right. If I may make a suggestion: why not fix them in place vertically? Orientation does not matter in a vacuum, and you aren't going to use NERVs inside an atmosphere anyway.

Thanks! If I do another VTOL design, that's the plan. High thrust at right angles to a servo generates an insane amount of torque. I played around with struts, autostruts, locking, etc., and it still blows up sometimes. Or even just gets out of alignment, and then the shuttle starts spinning.

 

[QF9E]

Grand Tour Mission Report Part III: Kerbin Interlude: https://imgur.com/a/xUgYxBX

This part of the mission took place inside the Kerbin system. First I landed on the Mun and Minmus, before parking my Longrange Shuttle in Minmus orbit. Then I launched my support mission, a standard Gemini, with the Eve lander and Moho transfer stage on board. I then rendez-voused the two in LKO before transferring the lander, transfer stage and a new crew to Longrange Shuttle. I completed the supply operation by landing the supply shuttle and its booster on the KSC runway.

While in itself not a difficult operation, it turned out rather stressful, as I had 3 very large and relatively clumsy spacecraft in close proximity.

Some highlights:

Mun landing

Minmus landing

The space ballet that was the resupply mission. Here you see Longrange Gemini docked to the support shuttle's booster for refueling, with support shuttle in the background. Meanwhile an MMU is moving the Eve diving bell, which did not fit inside a cargo bay and was therefore lifted as external cargo on top of the booster stack towards the Eve lander, still inside support shuttle's cargo bay.

Longrange Gemini, fully kitted out for the inner Kerbol system

Support Shuttle landing

[QF9E]

Grand Tour Mission Report Part IV: Eve: https://imgur.com/a/veDvhlY

The big one. In this part of the mission I went from Kerbin to Eve with my Longrange Gemini shuttle, with the Eve lander and Moho transfer stage in tow. I left these in Gilly orbit before landing on Gilly with the shuttle to refuel. I then went back to the lander / transfer stage to transfer fuel to them. Afterwards I landed on Gilly a second time to refuel the shuttle itself. And as I had forgotten to bring back extra ore as ballast for the Eve diving bell, I then landed a 3rd time, just to get some ore. Oh well... we all make mistakes, right?

After refueling it was time for the main event. I left the transfer stage in Gilly orbit, while putting the shuttle + Eve lander in a highly elliptical Eve orbit. I then decoupled the lander, which entered Eve's atmosphere to land in the ocean under parachutes. I then deployed the diving bell to get Bealan Kerman, the lander's sole Kerbal, to Eve's ocean floor, where she planted a flag and conducted some experiments. By jettisoning the diving bell's ballast she went back to the surface, where she entered the ascent vehicle. The ascent vehicle then lifted off from Eve to get to orbit. Which almost succeeded: I was about 150 m/s short. So Bealan exited the capsule and attained Eve orbit with the help of her EMU. I then picked her up from low Eve orbit with my shuttle, which lowered its orbit by a series of aerobraking maneuvers.

This was easily the most difficult landing of the entire Grand Tour. I am very proud that I succeeded in planting a flag on Eve during a shuttle mission, and on its ocean floor, no less!

Some highlights:

Gilly docking landing

Deploying the lander. I had to give it a couple of gentle nudges with my shuttle after deployment to get a good splashdown point. This lander cannot do any orbital maneuvering of its own.

Diving bell deployment, right after splashdown. I used an airbrake as a ramp, to get the diving bell over the edge of the heat shield.You've all seen a picture of the diving bell on the ocean floor so I won't repeat that one here.

Liftoff! I have found that the large inflatable heat shield makes an excellent launch platform when launching from the ocean. Note various discarded bits and bobs of the lander: since Eve ascent is so hard, it is a good idea to jettison everything that you possibly can.

Back in orbit after using the EMU for a bit. I prefer not to have to rely on the EMU, but I did not want to scrub this mission. The lander turned out to be just a little bit underpowered.

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by QF9E

[Jestersage]

Question: May I ask why the Cassini-Huygen challenge have the restrain of "a single R-12 "Doughnut" (left) for the Cassini probe and a single "Oskar-B" (right) fuel tank for the Huygens lander"?

Specifically:

1) Why the fuel limitation?

2) Why there's even fuel on the Huygen? To my understanding, Regardless of Galileo atmospheric probe or the Huygen, the lander does not have thrusters for deorbit landing, but instead realy on Cassini for trajectory, and use parachutes?