Cirocco

Still use stock for the moment. Switched to FAR for a while and I was able to still put stuff up in space without much problems, but I still switched back to stock after a while because a) I like to do crazy airplane manouvres which would just about atomise my plane in FAR I like the added delta-V requirement to get into orbit and c) I want to conquer Eve's souposphere without FAR. I have the lander ready (had it ready since 0.23 but never used it...) but I've never run the actual mission. Once I conquer the purple tartarus by doing a manned return mission, I might switch to FAR again.

completed my Duna SSTDuna mission with horizontal landing on Duna ... sort of... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92820-SSTDuna-and-back-in-a-spaceplane-without-refueling-ever Didn't feel right though, I could do so much better

Right so I did it again and with a proper landing this time. Runway-Duna surface-runway without any refuel or staging. Mission report in the pictures not really happy with it though. With all the new knowledge I gained recently I could build a far superior spaceplane now, so doing this mission with what I now perceived as a sub-par ship felt like a chore. I'll probably either take a littl ebreak from KSP or just go on another spaceplane design binge, trying to purge the feeling of flying a bad plane by designing a better one

oooooh missed that bit. In that case I'm not sure. I estimate she'll have about 2000 m/s delta-V left after touching down, don't know how far that would get you. Don't have a clue how much you'd have with the liquid tanks fully filled. Probably in the range of 5000 m/s or so. I'll have a look at making a dedicated Duna plane for this challenge then. I do like flying at Duna. EDIT: Make that two dedicated planes. I've been thinking about making my own Duna base anyway, I could use these in my own program too. One I imagine will be a single-seater exploration plane, the second one a mass crew transport. 10 or so kerbals from one side of Duna to the other should be feasible. MORE EDIT: Had another read of the rules. Make that a two or three seater exploration plane. ANOTHER EDIT: man I wish 0.25 was here already. SP+ parts would make a large Duna plane so much easier and cooler-looking.

I know that leaving Duna isn't a requirement, but seeing as she's able to make orbit around Duna, she can fly pretty much anywhere on the planet. Just make orbit, adjust inclination if necessary, de-orbit at target and done. And refueling is possible through the nose-mounted shielded docking port, but seeing as that docking port isn't on any standard/fixed height, it might a bit difficult to do a refuel on the ground. The initial objective was runway-Duna surface-runway, but I think she doubles up as a Duna plane for this challenge. She'll just have a ton of superfluous air intakes, air breathing engines, liquid only tanks, etc... That being said I do like the challenge of flying on Duna so I might make a dedicated stock plane for this challenge. I'm thinking a long-range Duna plane capable of transporting 10 or so kerbals between bases. With that in mind I do have a question: do you object against the use of nuclear engines as propulsion method? If you're going for a transport/exploration plane then I can imagine that a radioactive exhaust might be less than desirable

While I haven't had the debris hit me, I have had a few instances where I was sweating a little. This was all in my first couple of saves when I was just getting into the game and didn't care much about debris. Because I was still new and a lot of missions failed (sometimes intentionally), I did a TON of launches, and all of them the same way: 90° and a gravity turn, circularise around 75km. I also staged like a madman in an attempt to get maximum efficiency out of my rockets. This all meant that after a while I had a ton of debris flying around in an equatorial LKO at 75km. It came to the point where in about half my launches, I would see a piece of debris flying past. Once, a piece came within 2 km of the rocket. Now, you may think 2 km isn't close at all, but when you compare that to the vast distances you're dealing with on a planetary scale and add the fact that this thing was a fuel tank zipping by at several hundred meters per second... well let's just say expletives were used on my part when I saw how close it came. It was at this point that I decided to try and limit space debris.

I'll have to make a bit of design adjustments to meet the 2500 requirement safely (a bit more wing surface mostly) but yes, with proper adjustments I believe she'll be able to do it. As for flying halfway across the planet: she's designed to go from the runway on Kerbin to landing on Duna to coming back to the runway all without staging or refueling. So yes, she can can fly half the planet, no problem . Biggest issue you might have is the fact that you will NEVER want to try to land her on Duna with a full tank. She's designed to arrive at Duna with her tanks more than half empty (from making orbit around Kerbin and doing the transfer burn). If you try to land the 83 ton fully fueled bulk of her, I'm pretty sure there's no way to stop her from crashing and burning horribly. Oh yes, the wide landing gear base is something I learned after the umpteenth time a landing went fine until the plane bounced and the wingtip clipped the surface Now I have gear on the very wingtips I actually have the bulk of my gear near the tail to take the strain of the impact and avoid tailstrikes (I tend to land nose tilted up). My CoM is quite far at the back though, so the gear is actually relatively close to the CoM. I did add quite a bit of gear back before I realised that gear on the wingtips was actually what I needed. Maybe losing a few there is not a bad idea, thanks for the tip. And a recent video, this one was more of a stunt than the previous one, as I didn't plan going to Duna with this craft. But thanks to the crazy amount of lift it made it. Descent is at 8:30, touchdown at 9:31. http://youtu.be/9my1tuCZuC8 (These 2 crafts rely on air-hogging. But I wanted to give my 2 cents about Duna landings, and i have no idea how air-hogging helps here) I'll have a look at those when I get back home from work, thanks

Wait, the order in which you place engines and air intakes in the SPH matters?! This would explain SO much! And it would make my SSTO's about 1000% more effective! I must test this when I get home, you sir or madam, may just have solved something that has been bugging me for almost a year!

Put my SSTDuna into orbit in anticipation for the rest of the mission. It's too late at night to do the remainder right now, so the horizontal landing attempt on Duna's surface will have to wait a day. Again. On the bright side, I've made orbit with more fuel to spare than ever before. about 50-60% oxidizer and accompanying fuel, with a little to spare for when we get back. Not bad on an 83 ton plane .

Hmmmmm... Had a look at your "Flying Duna Challenge" Geschosskopf. By the looks of it, my own plane (the KSS Dauntless, 3 seater runway-Duna surface-runway SSTDABTK without refuel) meets almost all your demands: at the moment it uses I believe 7 vernor engines on the underbelly to slow vertical descent a little more (it can probably go without, but with is just a bit safer for my kerbals) and since it is full stock, it uses liquid fuel/ox mix, not kethane. Still, if I redesign a little bit more (get rid of the vernor engines, find a bit more room for even MORE wing surface) I think it would be elligible. As for the bouncing and long decelleration needed after touchdown, I have my own way of dealing with that: two forward facing aerospike engines. As soon as I hit the ground, those two are fired at full throttle in order to slow down the plane as quickly as possible.

oh wow that is a VTOL builder's dream right there. Very interesting mod, will certainly look into it. Man for someone who prefers stock I'm starting to pile up a good number of mods I either have or need to check out

Question: to which degree is RCS use allowed? Can I use RCS thruster blocks to make course corrections/adjustments? Can I use the newly added RCS-propelled engine? Is there a limit to how much RCS I am allowed to bring along?

OOOOOOOOH that's tempting. Being the spaceplane nut that I am, I might give this one a go. And being the nutter/mad scientist that I am, I am going to try to go above and beyond. Make orbit you say? Done. But you never said what you can orbit. Mun orbit on full SRB's. Seems reasonable, right? Oh God why do I keep doing this to myself?

That's the technique I used on lightweight VTOL's, but it seemed it would lead to kind of silly designs when going huge and seemed to become less reliable in bigger designs. Maybe that was just inexperience on my part though... Whelp, I know the next challenge I'm setting myself: something VTOL related! Also, what is RCS build aid/how does it work exactly?

vertical verlocity is okay, even without addition of vertical thrust. If the landing spot is low enough, the plane provides enough lift, even in Duna's thin atmosphere. That being said, I do use a couple of vernor engines to reduce vertical velocity just a bit more, just to be safe. Yup, horizontal landing only. A small amount of thrust to slow descent is fine, but this is not a VTOL challenge, it's a HTOL one. As for the landing gear: it doesn't break if you put enough of them on the same line so they all touch down at the same time and share the load. The biggest problem in the later stages of testing was the fact that you come in so fast and the gravity is so low that you're almost guaranteed to bounce and likely clip the surface with a wingtip. And once that happens, you're guaranteed to spin out of control and die horribly. This was solved by putting additional landing gear on the wingtips to ensure they don't crash into the ground and using forward-firing aerospikes to slow down as quickly as possible and minimise the bounce.

Interesting. Which techniques do you use to keep the CoM from shifting then? Simple symmetry doesn't cut it anymore when going huge, you need to make sure that the wieght distribution is even on opposite sides of the CoM. How do you ensure that?

oh I know how to do VTOL. I just didn't want to in this instance and designing so that the CoM doesn't move is great for lightweight VTOL, but can be quite problematic for large ships.

It worked. The test worked. Successful landing under simulated conditions using hyperedit.... and I forgot to take screenshots up until the very last moment. There are no words. well here's the two that I DID remember anyway. Full mission to be flown tomorrow. P.S.: Yes, those are two aerospikes firing to slow down as quickly as possible.

Made a new thread cause I felt like we were hijacking this one: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92618-Landing-a-spaceplane-on-Duna-horizontal-landing-no-chutes

Update: after some significant adjusting of the design and doing some research on easy-to-achieve landing sites, the KSS Dauntless is now capable of slowing down to under 100 m/s in a glide when landing. That should be enough for the landing gear to get through the impact. Will run the mission tomorrow, now all I need is some luck with the terrain. Really, it's the terrain that's the killer, not the atmosphere. I can take measures for the atmosphere. I can't do much about the terrain other than pray. And I'm not a religious person Proof of concept: http://imgur.com/xkPyFtv 63m/s horizontal, 6.1 m/s vertical. Under 100 m/s and 5 m/s respectively is the sweet zone where you can safely land. It. can. work. I know it can. I'll show you tomorrow. I'll show YOU ALL!!! *cue maniacal laughter*

Right so I know there were a few people waiting to see pictures/ video of me pulling this one off. Sadly, the mission has been postponed at least one day since it seems that a few design changes which I though were insignificant between the test version and the one I wanted to use now are in fact a huge deal (wheel positioning being one of them). So I'll have to adjust design, add some improvements and I'll probably try the landing again tomorrow. In the meantime: any additional tips are more than welcome. The rules I want to abide by are: a) stock parts only, stock atmo as well. no VTOL. This spaceplane is supposed to land like a regular old plane. Some retro-rockets or a limited amount of vernor engines is fine, already using that. c) no parachutes to land. I may use one to slow down. Maybe. d) no clipping to increase performance. That includes airhogging and clipping wing surfaces to increase lift ratio (which it appears I need more of...) so yeah, mission postponed, any advice is welcome. I started a new thread because I felt we were kinda hijacking the RAPIER one...

I have no idea how to do video I'm afraid :s I'll take a ton of screenshots though!

majestic! It's so beautiful!!!

Parachutes? Where we're going, we won't need... Parachutes. Seriously though: using Hyperedit I already tested my plane on Duna under worst-case conditions (with a lot more fuel than it will actually have left, at high altitude and hilly terrain) and I can set her down in a conventional manner (sort of) without any parachutes at all. The reason why I don't use parachutes/VTOL is because the plane is pretty massive (83 tons on runway) and its CoM shifts a little in flight. I don't know where it will end up exactly so using parachutes/VTOL engines is likely to result with thrust acting on the CoM in a non-vertical manner. Which means plane flips ahoy. And again, I kinda like the challenge: it's plane so we damn well land it like one.

"Is this your idea of "fun", Mav?"