sirscott

Indeed. Ive managed successful landings from orbit with a good combination of chutes and landing motor See attached ship. My Proton lander has 8 chutes and lands at about 7-8 M/s. All the landing gear is attached to one of Sunday punches long radials , allowing for easy jettison when the craft returns to orbit.

My guess is that they dont have one. Seriously , its the only way jeb survives most of his missions.

I promised more information , so here I am with screenies of tonights practice runs. Now , first off I should tell you about the craft at the core of this design , the Proton. It utilises a number of mods from Sunday Punches wobbly rockets and Novasiliskos doughnut R&SD , but none that I think are unrealistic. When first pondering this challenge I came to the conclusion that the best way to approach it would be in a number of stages , working backward: 1. The development of a super-lightweight orbiter and Launcher combo 2. Production of Additional stages to configure the Launcher-Orbiter into a lander 3. Construction of a primary booster to launch the completed lander into its initial orbit The result of stages 1 & 2 was the Proton lander As you can see , its a mess of struts and legs , but it goes together like a dream. The main stack is simply a double length tank from Nova's pack that powers a moderate engine. Attached to the top is the orbiter , a lightweight tank and small engine with some bolt on verniers for stability (And which are in fact the only SAS equipment on the entire craft). Completing the Launcher are the two small SRBs fitted to radial mounts. For landing there are four of novas long Radial decouplers , each of which bears two parachutes and a landing leg. At the base of the lander is a small tank of fuel and a second engine , used for deceleration during landing In the Practice sequences ive been conduction , the lander has been boosted to Approx ~ 5000m by a selection of large SRBs latched onto the bottom. Once loosed from this chariot , the chutes on the lander immediately deploy and slow the fall to about 70 m/s. At this speed the chutes would be ripped from their mountings so the Liquid engine at the bottom of the stack is throttled up to the hilt at about 1250m. After full chute deployment , speed drops to around 8 m/s and falls to 7.8 by the time the lander touches the ground. So far I have had most success with water landings , as uneven land surfaces tend to put the full pressure of landing onto only one leg , shearing it off. The vehicle is too heavy for the landing motor to lift on its own , so the lander comes to rest pretty quickly once the chutes have been released. The Landing motor is then throttled back and discarded by releasing the decoupler that connects it to the bottom of the stack. The legs have been precisely positioned to allow this to occur. The next stage contains the Proton Launcher , and the decouplers containing the legs and defunct chute stanchions are triggered at the same time as the main engine and SRBs. The SRBs give out at about 3500m , but the ship is very light , allowing the double tank to carry the orbiter up to LEO altitude , if not speed. The Orbiter then boosts to the correct velocity , leaving enougth gas for a re-entry burn. So far I have made three successful landings and re-ignitions out of 5 attempts. I am now working on stage three of the plan to produce a launcher capable of carrying the Proton lander into orbit.

Bump with a potential soloution. Ive been working on a lander with some mod parts (Sunday punch , silskos etc) and ive managed to produce a craft that can succesfully land and then attain orbit. Now I just have to put together a mega-booster that wont detonate trying to put the child-craft into orbit.

Johnson! Whats that on the radar screen , judging by the return echo , it looks like a gargantuan...

Sunday_Punchs_KSP_parts_v1_04.zip Glorious Work! No Indev game becomes great without OC from its fans. I salute you sir