schroedinger

Ah yes, the notorious "gets on all missions, especially the almost-suicide ones first" Kerbal. I finally managed to get Jeb and his two companions Bill and Bob to keep out of trouble. Jeb was leading the first kerbal'd asteroid capture mission. After achieving elliptical orbit in a most spectacular fashion (bingo on regular and rcs propellant), the tanker that finally caught up with him only had return seats for two Kerbals, Jeb volunteered to stay behind and wait for the space station parts to arrive since he was promised a most spectacular reentry vehicle. Bill and Bob arrived with the lab and the living spaces, respectively, but since they only got supplied one open top reentry vehicle, the three of them are still up there trying to figure out who gets to ride the hot seat.

Hi Northstar, I interpreted your challenge a little bit and wanted to add realism to the whole thing - not just send up a mock payload and have the lifter return with minimum delta V to deorbit. Since anything can go wrong, I decided to put a Kerbal in the rocket as well. At least any mishap would be attributed to kerbal failure, not blamed on the design. First, let's start with the payload. This is a small satellite equipped with a little bit scientific instrumentation and independent propulsion capacity. Total weight 149kg. Due to mission characteristics, the payload will be deployed at an orbit as designated by the challenge. This is the ready to launch rocket. Making heavy use of KW Rocketry parts, it is more of a VTOL spaceplane. The outer tanks are detachable by hydraulic manifold (darn you for disallowing radial decouplers, they are significantly lighter) and are recovered by parachute. In addition to the fuel tank, the drop section contains two strong ullage motors as well as a solid rocket booster to guarantee a stable flight and fast initial ascent. The main rocket thrust for ascent is supplied by a single aerospike motor that is also responsible for decelerating the spaceship to suborbital velocities once the mission is complete. Additionally, the motor can supply thrust during the glide phase if additional course corrections are necessary. Electrical and flight control systems are located in the cockpit which also houses the "guidance system", a single Kerbal chosen for his unique abilites. Liftoff with all engines blazing accelerates the rocket up to 200 m/s. The flight profile is a little bit unique since the spaceship is quite heavy at launch. After the solid fuel rockets burn out, speed drops to 79 m/s due to drag (around 4km height) and slowly resumes acceleration. Separation of the drop tanks occurs around 11,5km. You can see the 'chute deployment here. In lieu of recovering them I have included a separate photo showing the descent. 8m/s shortly before splashdown should be more than survivable. This is the circularization burn, still using ascent guidance to guarantee meeting the mission requirements. Not that we can really trust Rodsen Kerman ..... he was chosen for his stupidity (and expendability) above all other qualifications. This is payload separation (undocking) and proof of correct orbit. Please note that the mission package has not used any of its onboard fuel yet. Slowing down to suborbital velocity requires only very little actual braking. The main advantage of a plane is the much more reasonable handling while performing a low angle reentry and less heat stress during aerobraking. A traditional capsule at 20km altitude would resemble a shooting star - watch this nifty little plane just flying instead of burning. Even the ground control is amazed (and thankful) that Rodsen Kerman is not filling the airwaves with panicked screams. This is the terminal approach above Kerbin's desert. Aerobraking fell short so Rodsen did not make it back to the KSC field and rather than firing the engine again and wasting the rest of the fuel, he decided to do a little bit aerial sightseeing and braking maneuvers above the desert. Since the air conditioning is solar powered, he should hold until Jeb can get there with a fuel truck and fly the spaceplane back. So, I'd say challenge completed or do I have to make another flight and actually video that I did not use quicksave?