How do you do your suborbital tourist contracts?

[Trenchfoot]

This was pretty good, with practice I completed 4 at once. Probably about 20 reverts er simulations.

[HoloYolo]

I stick on the required pods for the tourists and launch straight up. Easier and better.

[Gaarst]

Take the number of pods needed, add SRBs, launch.

If AP not high enough, add moar SRBs.

[Slam_Jones]

Made a "plane" that uses rocket fuel, launch straight up, glide down and land back on runway.

[fjarandag]

I use a reusable rocket

#payload: okto probecore, 2 mk1 pods, parachutes

#engine: LT-45, 6 tons of fuel, 2 parachutes, 3 tail fins

#Optional: Nose cone, science if you plan to visit new places

#Parachutes: adjust to 0.5 atm and 350m, if you dont want to be admiring landscapes forever.

#Just burn straight up until getting 75 km apoapsis. I burn the remaining fuel on reentry at 40 km and separate the engine off the vector.

#When pods land, switch vessel and make sure the engine touches down safely

[legoclone09]

What I do is I take the Mk1 at top, put two radial chutes on the sides and one Mk16 chute on the top, put the inline cockpit on, decoupler, two FL-T200s or a FL-T400, an LV-T30, four radial decouplers, four RT-10 SRBs, and four Aerdynamic nosecones on top. Gets to about a 90km Ap burning straight up, 100% throttle on everything.

[Zamolxes77]

I only had to make a dedicated sub-orbital passenger rocket once, in the very beginning. Since all subsequent contracts require a 2nd condition, besides the suborbital flight and since sub-orbital condition gets completed when doing something else, this design is dead, at least for me. I use a 9 ton passenger orbiter, which lifts a full hitchhiker container into orbit and the main stage gets recovered. The blasted thing costs 50k, but you get 22k back for landing the engine stage close to KSC and a further 20k for recovering the orbiter, so I only lose around 10k per mission. Just for fun, I tried building an asparagus stage Lifter that hauls same module into orbit. It costs 10k less, but you can't recover the stages, except the last engine and the orbiter itself.

My 9 ton orbiter:

and its very fuel efficient (but not economic without a stage recovery mod) brother:

[Trenchfoot]

just fyi, your posting the incorrect link for your pic to show on the forum...

[g.koster]

Mine is an rb5 connected to 3 LT45 with 11 smallest tanks and 6 rb10 on those all topped up with an mk1 pod (10 in total) and 13 parachutes (3 on extra structural elements). good for getting them suborbital. good for 9 turist in one go. And it’s completely retrievable.

ANd you only need the first three siences for it.

Edited May 8, 2015 by g.koster