The K Prize - 100% reusable spaceplane to orbit and back

[boolybooly]

On 4/16/2017 at 0:18 PM, voicey99 said:

Quick question for my attempt-are fairings allowed (don't ask why I need a fairing for an SSTO)?

 

Fairings would definitely be allowed if they stay intact for the entire mission.

Technically they contribute to lift / drag reduction, so ejecting a fairing qualifies as decoupling.

If they are decoupled after lift off then it counts as a gatecrasher; and they cannot be considered payload as payload is not allowed to contribute to flight.

Hope that makes sense

 

On 4/12/2017 at 9:26 AM, proteasome said:

I'm thinking of trying this challenge, but want some clarification. 

What is the current Altitudinist record? I don't see it listed.

Also, can you achieve said altitudinist record by repeatedly refueling en-route to final orbit?

Thanks.

There isnt a currently valid altitudinalist record for this version.

Refuelling is gatecrashing, see rules page 1, provisos B & C. So no you cannot get the record that way as gatecrashers cannot qualify as record holders as they don't complete the K-Prize mission. 

Edited April 17, 2017 by boolybooly

[proteasome]

20 minutes ago, boolybooly said:

There isnt a currently valid altitudinalist record for this version.

Cool. What's the furthest it's possible to go in an SSTO Spaceplane w/out refuel I wonder? Has anyone ever made it to Eeloo?

[voicey99]

Luckily the current design entry I'm working on uses a cargobay instead-here's the wacky early prototype (NOT my entry) that needed a fairing for its rover payload (it worked better than it looks, it was within a couple of hundred m/s of being Duna-capable).

Biplanes FTW.

And @proteasome It would be pretty easy to break the record, all you would need is enough fuel to do a sling around Jool. Just be careful not to eject yourself from the system.

Edited April 17, 2017 by voicey99

[boolybooly]

Hi voicey99, understood, you can fly what you like and good luck, though I have to admit there is something old school about your prototype biplane!  dare I mention Dick Dastardly's contraptions from Stop The Pigeon ?

 

So today congratulations are in order for ...

Mjp1050 Utilitarial Commendation with Excelsior.

Something - Advanced Pilot Precision Award with Erwin.

overkill13 Advanced Pilot Precision Award 1st Class, Utilitarial Commendation with Panter II cargo SSTO.

... for completing the K-Prize mission with flying colours. Thankyou for your mission reports and welcome to the roll of honour aka  the K-Prize party guest list.

 

PS Mjp1050 you gave no landing location for Excelsior so I did not presume anything other than a safe landing from your description.

 

27 minutes ago, proteasome said:

Cool. What's the furthest it's possible to go in an SSTO Spaceplane w/out refuel I wonder? Has anyone ever made it to Eeloo?

That is the √64,000 question!

Edited April 17, 2017 by boolybooly

[voicey99]

Here is my submission, the mission album is here. I present the Yate Haugan, the first payload-to-Duna-capable SSTO (in this thread, at least) of 1.2! Unfortunately, I can't use the Haugan manned in my main game, since I use USI-LS, but it could be sent out unmanned (using the Mk2 drone core I added for additional torque for control as well).

As for the biplane, christened the Kelling K6, I gave up on the Duna goal (and went back to the drawing board, designing the Haugan for that) but managed to tease a Minmus return trip out of it, with enough fuel left to perform a runway landing to boot. I didn't take any snaps of that one, since I didn't think it would work, so you're going to have to take my word on this if you're going to accept it as an additional submission.

Kudos to anyone who gets the naming references.

Haugan .craft file

Edited October 17, 2017 by voicey99
Imgur album embedding broke.

[4d4Garrison]

21 hours ago, voicey99 said:

Here is my submission, the mission album is here. I present the Yate Haugan, the first payload-to-Duna-capable SSTO (in this thread, at least) of 1.2! Unfortunately, I can't use the Haugan manned in my main game, since I use USI-LS, but it could be sent out unmanned (using the Mk2 drone core I added for additional torque for control as well).

As for the biplane, christened the Kelling K6, I gave up on the Duna goal (and went back to the drawing board, designing the Haugan for that) but managed to tease a Minmus return trip out of it, with enough fuel left to perform a runway landing to boot. I didn't take any snaps of that one, since I didn't think it would work, so you're going to have to take my word on this if you're going to accept it as an additional submission.

Kudos to anyone who gets the naming references.

Really nice looking SSTO with what seems to be a high TWR. You could probably remove most of those ugly struts BTW if you used the auto-strut feature in KSP 1.2.1.

[voicey99]

58 minutes ago, 4d4Garrison said:

Really nice looking SSTO with what seems to be a high TWR. You could probably remove most of those ugly struts BTW if you used the auto-strut feature in KSP 1.2.1.

Not quite sure what the jet TWR is, but it can sustain a climb angle of ~15 degrees while ramping the thrust exponentially (it can fly steeper than that, but the engines don't get it fast enough). I believe the nukes have a TWR of ~0.5 on Kerbin, which (accounting for fuel use) equated to ~1.9 on Duna. I kept a bit of emergency spare oxidiser as ballast and to allow me to activate the rapiers on rocket mode to give the craft a bit of extra oomph when needed (this happened to be after the jets had flared out on the ascent, and when taking off on Duna. With the rocket rapiers, it had a Duna TWR of ~7.5). As for the struts, I did use autostruts but even they weren't strong enough to stop the wings from shearing off far too easily for my liking. Also, strangely, removing them causes it to slide around in the air, doing aerial donuts until it crashes into the ground (likely something to do with the fact that both of the side sections are attached to just the fuel tank with the solar panel on, meaning they wobble around a lot, resulting in uneven lift/drag).

Edited April 18, 2017 by voicey99

[4d4Garrison]

On ‎4‎/‎18‎/‎2017 at 1:16 PM, voicey99 said:

Not quite sure what the jet TWR is, but it can sustain a climb angle of ~15 degrees while ramping the thrust exponentially (it can fly steeper than that, but the engines don't get it fast enough). I believe the nukes have a TWR of ~0.5 on Kerbin, which (accounting for fuel use) equated to ~1.9 on Duna. I kept a bit of emergency spare oxidiser as ballast and to allow me to activate the rapiers on rocket mode to give the craft a bit of extra oomph when needed (this happened to be after the jets had flared out on the ascent, and when taking off on Duna. With the rocket rapiers, it had a Duna TWR of ~7.5). As for the struts, I did use autostruts but even they weren't strong enough to stop the wings from shearing off far too easily for my liking. Also, strangely, removing them causes it to slide around in the air, doing aerial donuts until it crashes into the ground (likely something to do with the fact that both of the side sections are attached to just the fuel tank with the solar panel on, meaning they wobble around a lot, resulting in uneven lift/drag).

The wobbling and instability is probably because it can flex and wobble creating body lift in weird directions and usually body lift, once started, amplifies the wobble, amplifying the body lifts in a cycle that caused things to go wildly out of control quickly.

[voicey99]

4 hours ago, 4d4Garrison said:

The wobbling and instability is probably because it can flex and wobble creating body lift in weird directions and usually body lift, once started, amplifies the wobble, amplifying the body lifts in a cycle that caused things to go wildly out of control quickly.

When in the air, it doesn't even wobble that much. That's only when pulling manouvers, but on takeoff it always starts to turn left or right and slide horizontally through the air like it's drifting.

[something]

Do you have any form of yaw control? At least I can't see any yaw control on the image. That might help reducing the 'drift'. Also when coming in with a heading slightly off 090 or 270 you might want to yaw back to the correct heading in the very last moment before touchdown. (Roll usually is not an option in that phase of flight as your wing would strike the runway)

[voicey99]

6 hours ago, something said:

Do you have any form of yaw control? At least I can't see any yaw control on the image. That might help reducing the 'drift'. Also when coming in with a heading slightly off 090 or 270 you might want to yaw back to the correct heading in the very last moment before touchdown. (Roll usually is not an option in that phase of flight as your wing would strike the runway)

I have an R8 winglet on the top and bottom where the middle stack splits for yaw control, but my main method of turning was rolling and pitching. I didn't design it with much yaw control in mind, as you don't need it for ascent and Duna has too little atmosphere to fly in with that craft. I also parachuted down on Kerbin (I didn't have enough fuel left after the Duna trip for precision deorbiting and landing), so it didn't need to actually fly beyond ascent. The R8s were added when the craft was shorter and the CoM was further forward so they are now sitting right on top of the CoM (I left the cubic strut on top of the upper R8 as a marker for the CoL when shifting fuel around) and that probably makes them largely ineffective, but what puzzles me is why it yaws so sharply after takeoff for no apparent reason. The thrust, lift and mass are balanced enough not to do that, and it functioned perfectly well in the K-flight.

EDIT: I checked, and they turned out to be in front of both the CoL and CoM. That probably confuses SAS/MJ quite a lot.

EDIT 2: I moved them back behind the CoM, and it now flies great .

Edited April 20, 2017 by voicey99

[something]

Nice to hear you found the bug. Didn't realize the central node was a winglet in fact..

Edited April 20, 2017 by something

[voicey99]

5 minutes ago, something said:

Nice to hear you found the bug. Didn't realize the central node was a winglet in fact..

The struts aren't attached to the winglet, they are actually attached to a cubic strut I offset into the winglet to act as a CoL marker (so I knew where the CoM should be when shifting fuel around), and instead found it made a good anchor point for the attached wings and fuel tanks.

[Mr. Me]

Here is my submission for the Freebird SSTO

Link to the one in chronological order: http://imgur.com/a/nuTov

Edited April 20, 2017 by Mr. Me

[voicey99]

15 minutes ago, Mr. Me said:

Here is my submission for the Freebird SSTO

*It's backwards because imgur hates me.

<schnip>

Nice, but what's the monoprop for? The flywheel in the cockpit and ample contol surfaces should be sufficient for control in space and the atmo, and I don't see a docking port.

Edited April 20, 2017 by voicey99

[Mr. Me]

1 minute ago, voicey99 said:

Nice, but what's the monoprop for? The flywheel in the cockpit and ample contol surfaces should be sufficient for control in space and the atmo, and I don't see a docking port.

The docking port is behind the monopropellant tank. This spacecraft was originally designed for transportation of tourists to a space hotel.

[voicey99]

Just now, Mr. Me said:

The docking port is behind the monopropellant tank. This spacecraft was originally designed for transportation of tourists to a space hotel.

Derp. I only looked at the first screenshot. And where the the buildings around the KSC from? KSC++ hasn't been updated for ages.

[4d4Garrison]

18 hours ago, voicey99 said:

When in the air, it doesn't even wobble that much. That's only when pulling manouvers, but on takeoff it always starts to turn left or right and slide horizontally through the air like it's drifting.

Yes if you hit F12 or FN F12 on a laptop you will see light blue arrows appear when maneuvering, it is body lift. It causes things to freak out in maneuvers and honestly body lift is too powerful IMHO - squad pls fix.

[Mr. Me]

20 hours ago, voicey99 said:

 where the the buildings around the KSC from?

Kerbinside

[ForScience6686]

Here's my newest submission.  With removable wings for further travels.  Does this count as single stage to mun or minmus?

http://m.imgur.com/a/L2gPR

Craft file

https://kerbalx.com/ForScience6686/MSS

[steve_v]

1 hour ago, ForScience6686 said:

Here's my newest submission.  With removable wings for further travels.

Damn, that's pretty cool. I've been meaning to build something like that for ages.

[ForScience6686]

4 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Damn, that's pretty cool. I've been meaning to build something like that for ages.

It took a lot of testing.  But thank goodness for auto strut.

[voicey99]

2 hours ago, ForScience6686 said:

Here's my newest submission.  With removable wings for further travels.  Does this count as single stage to mun or minmus?

As long as everything that goes up comes back down again intact, it should be ok. However, you won't get the credit for the Minmus trip because in order for that the entire vessel has to go there and back.

Edited April 23, 2017 by voicey99

[ForScience6686]

37 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

As long as everything that goes up comes back down again intact, it should be ok. However, you won't get the credit for the Minmus trip because in order for that the entire vessel has to go there and back.

Oh well I guess.  So is there an actual term for this kind of craft?

[voicey99]

6 minutes ago, ForScience6686 said:

Oh well I guess.  So is there an actual term for this kind of craft?

If you insist on credit for the Minmus trip, a gatecrasher  (don't worry it's not really)

I guess it's a space-launched spaceplane?

Edited April 23, 2017 by voicey99