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

[Kappa73]

The poofing issue is a bug that was supposedly fixed

Oh damn, I guess it has been reintroduced to the game =( poof poof images here

[pa1983]

Here's my new entry after the forum hickup. It's a SSTO plane to Laythe and back. Rear landing gears can be toggled to allow the rover wheels to touch the ground and drive the plane on electrical power, very handy when taxiing, especially on an alien world! The mission itself was pretty straightforward, get off Kerbin on jet power, switch to nuclear when out of atmosphere, circularize and shoot for Jool encounter. When in Jool SOI i lucked out and got a Laythe encounter straight away, so i took it, aerobraked and landed the plane.

When landed I EVA'd and planted a flag (of course) and then drove up the hill. When I found a nice spot for takeoff I turned the plane downhill and took off. Once out of atmosphere I played a bit with manouver nodes, and eventually I got a nice slingshot from Vall. The slingshot took me far away but that was ok, from the new apoapsis it was pretty easy to burn for Kerbin encounter. I aerobraked again at Kerbin, circularized, and burned for de-orbit for pinpoint landing at which point I was out of fuel but luckily the plane glides very well even when out of fuel so I did make it back to KSC safely.

Jeb about to embark on a great journey!

http://i.imgur.com/Bkjbhob.jpg"]

On the beach.

http://i.imgur.com/9IaJ6cp.jpg"]

Honey I'm home!

http://i.imgur.com/LSsgPGu.jpg"]

more images can be found in the imgur album here. I know it is against the rules to lose any parts during the flight, but I thought I'd submit this anyway since the parts were lost to a bug of some sort, they just went poof one by one when i was gliding towards the KSC on the final part of my flight. I did not hit ground or anything else, they just poofed. The plane went on flying so I finished the mission as planned. The landing itself was a smooth one.

The poofing happens to me to. Both a few hundred km from kerbin but most of the time when trying to land at ksc. Landed ONCE at KSC with out damadge sens 0.19 when returning from duna or laythe. I almost always hit a water pipe hitbox in the runway that seems to drift over time.

Some times I hit stuff reentering to.

Somthing fubar ever sens 0.19. 0.18.2 was the best version. My ssto's sufferd the least amount off bugs then. Every update sense have be regressions.

I have reported the water pipe issue many times, both before and after forum crash and to devs on irc. Problem is that one seems to hit hitboxes with out a name to some times and how do you report that?

Here is my thread. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25975-Hiting-Water-Pipe-on-the-runway-of-KSC-when-returning-from-Duna-or-Laythe?highlight=water+pipe

ITs game breaking bugs but it feels like the devs just dont care. I no longer land at ksc, its to dangorus. Just coming close to kerbin after a duna or laythe mission is dangorus but the closer to ksc the worse.

[tavert]

Have devs indicated whether they've been able to reproduce the issue? Both of your craft seem to exhibit heavy clipping, it may just be a coincidence but have you experienced the issue with simpler clipping-free designs?

[Kappa73]

I've always kinda made these planes with no problems. I'm in the process of making a plane now tho, with no clipping and no addons/plugins and see what happens.

[Torham234]

I've always kinda made these planes with no problems. I'm in the process of making a plane now tho, with no clipping and no addons/plugins and see what happens.

Everything is easy when you use cheats (clipping)...

[pa1983]

Worked fine before the new runway with older crafts. Wont work any more with any design old or new. Thats about it. And Im not the only one apparently. I have been told its drifting hitboxes and the longer the mission the more they drift.

I know Im not the only one running in to hitboxes from objects on kerbin in atmosphere or around KSC.

And the problem NEVER happens any where else. Just Kerbin.

[zekes]

Worked fine before the new runway with older crafts. Wont work any more with any design old or new. Thats about it. And Im not the only one apparently. I have been told its drifting hitboxes and the longer the mission the more they drift.

I know Im not the only one running in to hitboxes from objects on kerbin in atmosphere or around KSC.

And the problem NEVER happens any where else. Just Kerbin.

Ive had the same thing happen to me like every third flight...

[Torham234]

Ive had the same thing happen to me like every third flight...

Hmm, this is weird. I never encountered this issue, and I did A LOT of flying around kerbin (including circumventing the whole globe on several missions). I do occasionally see small puffs of air around my plane and they sometimes give the plane a mild shock, but I never had parts rip off from the shock. I assumed they are some shockwaves in the air generated by the plane (sonic boom?).

[pa1983]

LKO and normal flying in the past was not the problem. But over time the problem start to show it self.

Did you go to at least duna when doing this flights?

WHen I returned from one of my last duna mission the craft started to break when I was a few 1000 km from kerbin after time warping back from duna. Had to hit f9 two times before the random puffing of parts stopped.

[Torham234]

Fair enough, max I have done with Space Planes was LKO.

[pa1983]

Yea the info I have had from other people that had have similar experiences is that its time related. The more time passes the bigger the odds for either hit a hitbox like the water pipe that I have had problems with at KSC or just hitting boxes that seems to have no name.

Hitting F3 can some times give you a name for the hitboxe and some times it seems that what ever you hit dont have a name or it wont register at all.

[sploden]

Name: The Bumblebee

Weight: 1.58 tons

Parts: 46

Pics: Here.

[zekes]

Hmm, this is weird. I never encountered this issue, and I did A LOT of flying around kerbin (including circumventing the whole globe on several missions). I do occasionally see small puffs of air around my plane and they sometimes give the plane a mild shock, but I never had parts rip off from the shock. I assumed they are some shockwaves in the air generated by the plane (sonic boom?).

It only happens to me on high excentricity approaches (like interplanetarry)

[boolybooly]

Well I thought about Kappa73's heroic flight to and from Laythe a long time as it is a great accomplishment, but a rule is a rule and if F9 will work around the parts blowing up thing then it is technically a gate crash mission if it landed with bits missing, so I linked it on the gate crashers list but with a little description so people will know what it was about. I hope you will have another go and win the K Prize Kappa73.

Otherwise congratulations and well flown all I have updated the first post to include your missions CHR1SZ and sploden.

Edited June 14, 2013 by boolybooly

[Kappa73]

I hope you will have another go and win the K Prize Kappa73.

Yeah I'm fine with being on the gate crasher list, a rule is a rule and I get that. I am planning on going another mission, this time stock and no clipping whatsoever, but the new patch to War Thunder is seriously cutting into my space flight time heh =)

[sploden]

Aw, no minimalist commendation?

[boolybooly]

fixed sploden, sorry, I thought you had equalled it, didnt check...

[sploden]

Yay! Thanks, boolybooly. I have a suggestion... What if you were to split manned and unmanned minimalism?

Edited June 14, 2013 by sploden
suggestion

[Kappa73]

All righty, I went back to Laythe, this time with a stock plane and without clipping in the SPH. The mission was pretty much the same as the last time. Here's the results:

Ready for take two

http://i.imgur.com/7NVIIL9.jpg"]

on Laythe

http://i.imgur.com/DC6gWgG.png"]

Honey, you wont believe what I hit on the way home!

http://i.imgur.com/QVhNxNL.jpg"]

So, dunno what to say about this except that I'm pretty disappointed. I do have a F5 save right when i re-enter Kerbin SOI, I'm gonna try and reload a couple of times and see if I can get this thing down in one piece. If not I'm pretty sure my plane building is done until this bug is fixed. This time I was approaching from the sea by the way, I overshot the runway by a little. FWIW.

E: Nope, no can do, no matter which way I come in from, I always crash into something invisible in the middle of the air. Tomorrow I'm gonna bring the plane in on the small island runway and then it's mission over.

Edited June 15, 2013 by Kappa73
reload update

[tavert]

Sorry about my bogus theory then! Cool plane, nicely flown, bummer about the poofy magic drifting water pipe...

[Tiron]

Well, er, I did a couple back in 0.19 but didn't know about this thread (I Haven't taken them out in 0.20 yet, as I've been busy trying to get mods to work, messing with rovers, or trying to convince myself to start mapping everything again).

And I do have a lots of screenshots.

Early version of the Ravenspear Mk3-F 'Delta' (Derived from my Ravenspear Mk3-D 'Manta', both ultimately derived from the stock Ravenspear mk3). This was the first version to reliably reach orbit (and land again).

Later version of the -F, with a Solar Eclipse!

Ravenspear Mk3-G 'Delta' (It still looks like a delta, and at this point it's just a -F with some extra fuel...which makes it MUCH harder to fly.), after flying Single-Stage-To-Duna. It is basically completely out of fuel at this point, but hasn't stopped for gas (I'd deorbited my (empty) refueling station for lagging too much some time before). Does landing on Duna instead of Kerbin count?

Ravenspear Mk3-GR (R for 'Rover'), Single-Stage-To-Duna with a DEMV Mk3...Which is a little tricky to manage. I used KAS to carry the rover, from the winch in the pinched-in section on the fuselage. KAS right now won't let you attach things to a winch via radial connector port in the VAB/SPH, only with the inline one, so to work around it I had the DEMV attached to the back of the Port outboard fuel tank (not visible), decoupled it on the runway, drove it over to the winch and attached it...and then blew the decouplers the DEMV had been attached with off the back of the tank(before even lighting the engines off) because why carry the weight when it's just to workaround KAS's limitations?

I can post a round-trip K-Prize flightlog tomorrow (it's so late it's early right now) for either or both of them, but given my Druthers I'd do with the -F because the -G is so heavy it's a beast to fly (Mechjeb's spaceplane guidance is less than ideal even on the -F but it invariably ends up spinning the -G. It takes about 10 minutes to get either of them up to full altitude and airspeed before lighting the rockets off, so I tend to use it just so I can pay less attention for most of those 10 minutes. Neener.)

Edit: I *have* landed The -F on the runway (yes, ON the runway, I will get a screenshot tomorrow), not the -G, which has only ever Landed on Duna (due to unsuccess in getting it and the kethane drilling/refining rig in the same place...before 0.20.0 wiped it out of my save when several of the KAS Parts no longer worked).

Edited June 16, 2013 by Tiron

[tavert]

Name: The Bumblebee

Weight: 1.58 tons

Parts: 46

Pics: Here.

I stand corrected. For some reason I had thought the small control surfaces were 0.02 tons, guess not.

Nice to have some competition for minimalist, but as I said, room for improvement. Here's MinLKO 8b, @ 1.51 tons: http://imgur.com/a/8TYIo#0

Took a bunch of aerobraking passes to get back down since I only had 4 m/s left once in orbit. Could've improved the flight profile a bit, this was the first flight of 8b. 8a only had 2 intakes, which I couldn't get to work on just 2 oscar-B's worth of fuel. Don't see how I can get rid of anything (besides some struts) to make this any lighter, without going to a full-on infiniglider.

[tavert]

So here's what a silly obviously-illegitimate infiniglide entry looks like. MinLKO 9d was 0.31 tons, didn't even need a jet engine: http://imgur.com/a/5EsQF#0

I'm surprised there haven't been any infiniglide entries yet (as far as I've seen anyway, I didn't check every post in here...). Guess it's slightly more challenging to also bring a payload of enough fuel to get into a stable orbit than it is to just get a probe and a bunch of control surfaces to crazy speeds, but it's doable.

[pa1983]

All righty, I went back to Laythe, this time with a stock plane and without clipping in the SPH. The mission was pretty much the same as the last time. Here's the results:

So, dunno what to say about this except that I'm pretty disappointed. I do have a F5 save right when i re-enter Kerbin SOI, I'm gonna try and reload a couple of times and see if I can get this thing down in one piece. If not I'm pretty sure my plane building is done until this bug is fixed. This time I was approaching from the sea by the way, I overshot the runway by a little. FWIW.

E: Nope, no can do, no matter which way I come in from, I always crash into something invisible in the middle of the air. Tomorrow I'm gonna bring the plane in on the small island runway and then it's mission over.

You should write it in my bug report here so it gets some attention. Was this in 0.20.2?

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25975-Hiting-Water-Pipe-on-the-runway-of-KSC-when-returning-from-Duna-or-Laythe?highlight=water+pipe

[Tiron]

Alright, I'm up and Starting my flight now.

Ravenspear Mk3-F:

Weight(Including Fuel): 36.83 tons

Mods Used: Mechjeb2, Kerbal Attachment System

So, Here it is sitting in the VAB. Uhhh...yeah. You can see the KAS Connector port that substitutes for a docking port on the nose. You'll note it's also acquired the -G's doubled wings (which were the feature that originally earned the -G a different letter, along with extra fuel), after preliminary testing showed it flew MUCH better that way. There's a Mechjeb 2 unit well hidden on it.

Here we are, ready for takeoff. Sorry for the angle, but I'm trying to hide my flag markers...

Just after takeoff. No, It can't climb like that for Long!

And then a break for awhile, because it takes like 10 minutes to get up to altitude, get the speed up, and burn off the extra jet fuel. In all honesty I'm letting Mechjeb handle the climb while I sit here and work on the first part of the post. ;P

Nearly there now...never mind the fire.

Outer Jets off, Rockets on, and climb. BAM!

All jets off, Rockets only...hrm, my action groups are messed up or something... That was trickier than it's supposed to be.

Okay, on orbit. Took some adjustment because the initial periapsis was only 69,500m or so (still out of the atmosphere, just not above 70000). Lots of Delta-V left (which is what prompted the creation of the SSTD -G version).

After reserving some liquidfuel for landing, here I am dumping some oxidizer (Funfact: Engines will still 'burn' one fuel type if the second type they need isn't available, giving a stock way to dump fuel) and trying to plot how much I can raise the orbit and still have enough fuel to land.

I eventually settled on 500km. Maybe a bit conservative, but I didn't want to miss the landing!

...Aaaand it turned out to be completely unconservative, there wasn't enough fuel left to get it to land at KSC...and trying to load the last save...sigh...put it back on the runway, so I'll be relaunching and trying this again...which I'll post about in a bit.

Edited June 16, 2013 by Tiron