sevenperforce

Beautiful!! Launch clamps are absolutely allowed!

In order to perform well in the widely-varying aerodynamic situations of ascent, entry, approach, and landing (covering literally all possible velocity envelopes), the Shuttle had a very tricky re-entry profile. It had to keep its nose between 37 degrees and 43 degrees in order to maintain both adequate TPS coverage and adequate aerodynamic control; outside that narrow window, it would either have plasma impingement on unprotected areas (leading to burnup) or stall of its control surfaces. But the Shuttle had to have a very good subsonic lift-to-drag ratio in order to make an unpowered glide-in landing. Even though its hypersonic lift-to-drag ratio was much lower, the lift at hypersonic entry was enough to reverse the descent completely while it was still bleeding off velocity. If you've ever flown a plane in KSP, you know that pitching your nose up to 40 degrees at speed will almost immediately result in a climb. Capsules don't have this problem, since they invariably have L/D ratios far lower than 1, but the Shuttle did. And therein was the problem; the Shuttle couldn't afford to stall during entry or it would lose aerodynamic control authority. Control authority is a function of lift, and lift is inversely proportional to both airspeed and air density; if the orbiter started climbing while losing velocity, lift over its control surfaces would melt away and it would stall and tumble out of control. Since banking points the lift vector away from the radial direction, controlled banking allowed the orbiter to maintain a steady descent angle (to avoid stalling) while still keeping the nose at 40 degrees. The rolling back-and-forth was used to maintain heading, though depending on initial orbital inclination it used longer curves in one direction or the other to produce changes in heading. EDIT: All that to say, because the entry and glide angle windows were so narrow, the deorbit burn had to pretty much be in the exact same place every time (for a given inclination) in order to come down at KSC.

Reminds me of this.

Well actually there are wing strakes barely visible between the body and the engines. But the body did provide the majority of the lift.

What new technologies would enable/demand runaway demand for SHLVs? Note that I'm not talking about new technologies for launch vehicles themselves, but rather new technologies which would make launching payloads into LEO (or beyond) more profitable. Like my earlier example of quantum supercomputers that only work in microgravity.

Perhaps not, but comparisons between the flight profiles of the Falcon 9 and the New Glenn seem spectacularly on-point.

@Benjamin Kerman Well, let's see here. After about a million quicksaves, I made it...barely! Gear down for the island landing. Used reversible thrust on an action group to slow down, though I spun at the end like you. Barely made the takeoff... Highest speed coming back. Making the approach...believe it or not, this is where I had to put gear down in order to slow enough. Reversible thrust, spinning out of control for a while (this is NOT stable at low speeds), but made it to the desired 0.0m/s with 12 seconds to spare.

VTOL is certainly allowed, if you can pull it off. I did 13 kerbals intentionally, to make sure that it was a substantial amount of plane to build.

Haha, good catch. Thanks! Fixed it. I have a dual-Goliath-powered bird that can make the run to the island in 1:25 (top speed of 602 m/s) but I have thus far been unable to stick the landing.

As long as your plane hasn't moved from the 2:17 mark.

Love the design! However, I think you might have missed the "and back" part of it all.

If it takes you 20 minutes to get to the island runway and back, I think you may be using an underpowered design. (Kidding, kidding. Looking forward to your entry!)

Using only pure-turbofan engines (that is, the Juno, the Wheesley, or the Goliath), transport at least 13 Kerbals from the KSC runway to the island runway and back, as fast as possible. You must land on the island runway and come to a full stop before taking off for the return trip. You may not stage; no part of your craft may be broken. There is no multiplier for additional Kerbals. Lowest round-trip time wins. Leaderboard: @Rosvall with four Goliaths and 2:59! @sevenperforce with two Goliaths and 4:28! @Benjamin Kerman with three Wheesleys, coming in at 4:40!

Presenting the Empress Dart, a top-of-the-line choice for airlines with deep pockets and picky passengers! This sleek aircraft boasts a luxurious first class adjoining the flight deck, completely separate from the two coach cabins. Official publications suggest that the canards on the nose decrease drag and improve awesomeness factor, but this is disputed. Passengers can enjoy zipping along at low-altitude cruise. With a range of well over 2,500 km, it's fast and efficient. At a top speed of just under Mach 1, it's a great choice for high-profile express routes. The pricetag of $126,770,000 may seem steep, but this bird is powerful and stately. With lift flaps, it can take off and land at under 80 m/s with no problems at all! Craft file here. EDIT: I just realized that the rules say a Mk2 Passenger Cabin counts as 8 passengers. Uh...oops!

So, let's see...if I stack eight 16-kerbal pods on end, slap a short XL tank and a Mammoth on the tail, and drop it onto the island runway, I get...1795 points? Hold my beer.

My personal fantasy would be a parallel-staged two-Raptor-Vac SHLV with 2-4 Falcon Heavy side boosters, with methalox gas thrusters for landing. It could lift an extra-large crew capsule, cargo, or an aux refueling tank, depending on its mission. Think mini-ITS with the nose cut off.

And here you go, mission concluded! Not bad for my first time to Jool. Scoring: Build an SLS Block 1B +25 Fly-bye! +16 Ore scanner! +5 Photographer +15 Power-crazy +10 Science!!! +20 Probe Extravaganza! +100 Early Concepts +50 LaytheDIRECT! +15 By my count, that's 256 points! And I didn't even need to use the Trajectories mod.

And here's the second leg! Waited for a good launch window and set up the node. Good enough for a first pass. EUS restart, and... Full throttle! Injection burn complete. Shut down two EUS engines; using residuals to make trajectory adjustments. Close enough! EUS jettison. First shot of Laythe Clipper flying free! Coast period nearly complete...coming in to the Jool SOI. Setting up my node. Decided not to aerocapture. Burning to insertion. Very eccentric orbit, but I'm in! My plan is to use very small burns at the high Jool apoapsis to get some assists. Setting up the first Laythe encounter/assist. Approaching first Laythe encounter! Correction to obtain Laythe assist. First Laythe encounter! That's encounter 1! Orbit is still very eccentric so I'll get another assist to bring me down into the plane. There's my Tylo assist! Swinging around Tylo. Couldn't resist picking up some science. The Skipper is still awfully heavy at this point...lots of sub-sats to deploy. The Tylo assist put me on a Val encounter for co-Laythe orbit insertion. Mid-course correction burn at Val. Note the four RCS clusters, as well as the Laythe lander on the near side and the Laythe Orbiter on the far side. Second encounter: First cubesat away! Once-around again for another encounter. Cubesat 2 deployed: Another loop around Jool. Gonna go ahead and deploy the orbiter. Just after deployment. All systems engaged! Firing up the engines for the orbital insertion. Glamour shot. Orbit achieved! Gonna drop another cubesat. What a surprise, right? I'll drop another one -- the one with the atmospheric sampler -- and put this one in orbit. Start of the orbital ion insertion burn. At this angle it looks like Laythe is being illuminated by the glow of the Dawn. Pretty neat, huh? Halfway through my xenon; should have no trouble making a few passes to get atmospheric samples later on. Now with all the cubesats away, you can see the different orbits. Lined up for the fifth encounter: With some course corrections, I managed to get a double encounter. Sixth encounter! With such a close periapsis, I'll use this to deploy my lander. My lander has no engines of its own so I'll need to put it on an aerobraking trajectory using the engines on the main probe, then release it, then burn in the opposite direction to keep from aerobraking the Laythe Skipper itself. Deployed! Brought my periapsis back up out of the atmosphere. This will be my final encounter for now. Probe approaching Laythe. No control and no engines...let's hope I have good passive aerodynamic stability in this design! Love seeing Jool on the left... Blazing fast. Looks like the entry heating is starting to decrease. Is my trajectory good? Dropped the heat shield. Having this battery on the bottom really helped keep the COM forward. Tumbling with Joolrise on the horizon. Chutes away! Or chute, in this case. Doing a little science on the slow descent. Nearing the surface. I tested this lander on Kerbin but you never know if the gravity and atmosphere are going to work out properly. Moment of truth... Success! I only have battery power on this probe, so I'll have to get things done quickly. Surface scanning... Temperature scan... Seismic scan... Pressure scan, and that's it! So, that does it! I decided to go ahead and put the Clipper in a Joolgrazing parking orbit in case I want to squeeze out a few more encounters. Until then, sayonara! (Note Laythe peeking out in the background.)

Looking to be listing just slightly...

Good on you for wanting to improve it. What are you looking for, exactly? Risky suicide burns? Landings without engines or landing gear? Something else entirely? It's something to consider. If you're looking for risky suicide burns, you can make it a God-and-Heinlein challenge. "Build a VTOL SSTO capable of taking at least one Kerbal to orbit and returning to land on its tail, intact." I'd recommend disallowing jet engines, though; I have a RAPIER-and-nuke VTOL SSTO that can do Duna. Your score could be the weight of the LV divided by the number of Kerbals it can take to orbit.

So...the challenge is to send a Kerbal to an apoapsis greater than or equal to 100 km, then land without chutes and without breaking any parts? Are you scoring it in any way? What's the challenge in that, exactly? There are dozens of ways to do this. Most people can land a liquid rocket on its tail easily enough, or you can slaps wings and landing gear on it. Heck, you can ditch in the water without landing gear pretty easily.

I have it on fairly good authority that SpaceX will never consider plumbing a pad for both methalox and kerolox, but I don't see why they wouldn't. A Raptor upper stage on a F9 or FH booster would be badass.

Yep.

Yeah, this is the part I'm wondering about. Seems like plasma impingement on the engine bells would be problematic.

LOL, no, that's not what I meant either. A nominal Falcon 9 first stage ASDS landing uses two burns: an entry burn and a landing burn. Reportedly, the New Glenn will only need a landing burn.