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

[colmo]

A manoevurable looking spaceplane there colmo and congratulations on bringing her back in one piece, consider yourself on the official guest list and thanks for all the screenies linked.

Cheers - the plane is the Colmo-Korp Aeronautics Kotal SP Stock MkI. The link leads to the craft file, and to the mod version which IMHO is much superior!

[UmbralRaptor]

I would like to request a minimalist award -- MechJeb nominal takeoff weight of the 'new' Ultramin4D is 7.4 tonnes. I\'m fairly sure that landing 17.4 km from the KSC runway isn\'t anything noteworthy as a pilot, though. Ascents must be performed carefully due to limited ?V, but are very possible.

An example flight:

I landed near KSC, but it\'s not anything special. Closer would probably be doable with practice.

Weight and distance from runway:

It suffered from a prolonged development phase, and I\'m still unhappy with it in some ways. Initial versions had substantial phantom force issues, which have not been 100% resolved. The final version has no vertical stabilizer due to off-center thrust and pitch-up issues during the final parts of ascent/circularizing orbit. This results in increased sideslip and roll issues during the later parts of descent, though. While safe landings are possible, precision gliding is more difficult.

With or without a vertical stabilizer, it seems to have good maneuverability and stability. Spins appear to be easily recoverable, and landing on any large flat patch of land is easy and safe. However, the poor glide ratio (~4.5-5, comparable to the actual Space Shuttle!) and lack of air-breathing engines limits cross-range. Time your deorbit burns carefully.

I would like to thank this thread for the idea of running 2 sets of LV-909 engines instead of a single Aerospike or LV-T30/45.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Update on that attempt to fly the Albatruss MkIV without leaving the pod anywhere (well, one of the attempts):

Discoveries made: 1) Aircraft need fuel to fly. 2) They also don\'t like swimming.

[Salda007]

Success! Kerbodyne Launch Systems is proud to present the Flying Pig-3!

It admittedly isn\'t really capable of doing much more than hauling itself a short ways out of the atmosphere and then re-entering, but, *shrug* we all start somewhere. As a legacy of it\'s difficult development program, should a conventional landing be infeasible due to emergency or a water landing, it retains a redundant crew-recovery system that can detach the pod and recover it separately via parachute.

Some flight photos:

On the runway

Liftoff!

Climbout to ~13km on the jet engines, then transition to the aerospike engine to get to orbit

Space!

After a victory lap, the deorbit burn was performed at apokee (to minimize the dV required), and the craft re-entered

Unfortunately, this burn caused the craft to set down in suboptimal terrain, resulting in the loss of the aerospike engine just before touchdown. In more suitable terrain, the craft should be capable of landing without damage.

The brakes were applied, bringing the ship to a stop without requiring use of the drag chutes. The mission was declared 'more-or-less' a success.

Also, regarding the stranded crew mentioned in my previous post, Kerbodyne Launch Systems is pleased to report that a rescue flight was able to bring them into an aerobraking orbit, allowing them to splash down successfully, 8 days into their three-hour mission. In a classic case of Serendipity, the recovery efforts led to the development of the 'Toybox'(*) series, Kerbodyne Launch System\'s new line of orbital utility vehicles. Please visit Kerbodyne Launch Systems\' main showroom for more information; the glossy sales brochure should be available soon.

(*-Yes, it\'s a Planetes reference)

[boolybooly]

OK thanks for the name update there colmo.

UmbralRaptor, that is a teeny tiny bird, I see how you used the lighter wings to good effect and definitely deserve the Minimalist record title, sorry Oggula! Thanks for the screenies, which show the craft did land close to KSC but did not make it to KSC terrain, but well piloted anyway, just landing is an achievement with such a minimal craft.

Good luck with the Albatruss trials Sean Mirrsen. Thanks for the interim report & screenies.

Congratulations Salda 007 on your success with Flying Pig-3 and challenge report, mission accomplished. Also thanks for telling the story of your crew recovery, duly noted as a special citation on the guest list in recognition of services to Kerbalkind.

[OstermanA]

SSTO Mission Report

20 parts total SSTO to 246,456.5 +/- 9.5m and back again. Advanced Precision Award earned.

[boolybooly]

Duely ratified, thanks for your report and congratulations on your advanced pilot precision award Osterman A, enjoy the party.

[Shazi]

Ok, this is somewhat improvised as this was actually the first flight with Exodus II. I did not anticipate success at the first run so I took no pictures of the liftoff and also the touchdown was... well, less graceful than i would have wanted it (plus I hardly think the touchdown qualifies as a good landing, but hey, the Kerbins were towed into the nearest harbor and are now ready for the second Exodus liftoff! ).

I wanted to you all to share my joy though and hopefully I will soon have a better documented (and more calculated) orbital flight with the Exodus

EDIT: Yeah, sorry guys, but the Kerbins did not survive the second flight, they crashed horribly into a mountainside after the Exodus started spinning uncontrollably during Kerbin reentry, it was flames and guts all over the place... horrible really...

But hey, we\'re all in it togeather, for sience!

By the way, anyone have a clue on... you know... making your spaceplane NOT spin uncontrollably during reentry? The numbers of astronauts are dwindling, and the next Exodus team refuses to set foot on the plane until the issue has been resolved... cowards...

[khyron42]

I went back and redid this finally, and have a successful run! I was trying to future-proof it, so the rockets only burn rocket fuel, the jets only burn jet fuel, and the jets have air intakes.

Shortly after takeoff. Due to the sticky terrain issue, the Ugly Duckling only takes off when the runway ends.

Climb at 45 degrees until 10 km altitude, then light the rockets and pitch up to 60 degrees. Disable the jets at 15-18 km or when they\'ve about used up their first fuel tank, whichever comes first.

Burn at 60 degrees up until your Ap is about 50 km, then tip over to 0 degrees and burn until your Ap is about 80 km. Then coast until you\'re almost at Ap and do the orbital insertion burn.

Orbit established!

After a partial orbit, de-orbit burning and using up all remaining rocket fuel.

Once that\'s done, I flip back over to be nose-first, cut the throttle, and re-enable the jet engines anytime before I drop to 40 km. I use a very low throttle setting once I start seeing significant strain on the ASAS compensation, but overall this is a more stable craft than my previous attempt.

Once I\'m pretty low I can cut the throttle again and just glide to a landing, using the natural pitch-up tendencies to keep the nose up and descent rate down.

Landed! No where near either KSP, though.

Full 20-image gallery.

[G Addict]

How are your jets not using the rocket fuel and vice versa? I know that won\'t be an issue once they\'re seperate, but the only reliable way I\'ve found is to mount one of the engine sets on decouplers. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET?! :

Also, that ship isn\'t ugly IMO. Stick a nosecone on the front and it\'ll look really slick.

I\'ve been working on getting a more reliable craft - the one I used before isn\'t playing ball anymore and hasn\'t successfully achieved an orbit-then-return mission since, either running out of fuel or going head over heels on reentry, so I now have something I think looks cooler (picture attatched) which can climb pretty much vertically all the way to orbit, hit 100x100, then use its remaining fuel to deorbit. Only problem is the Aerospikes are slightly below the centre of mass due to the wings on the top, so it goes nose up if you put it above 75% throttle for any length of time. Unfortunately on that flight I landed it on a slope and knocked off one of the rocket engines, so it wouldn\'t have been a valid entry. Think I\'ll try for some of the pilot precision awards with this thing.

[geb]

By the way, anyone have a clue on... you know... making your spaceplane NOT spin uncontrollably during reentry? The numbers of astronauts are dwindling, and the next Exodus team refuses to set foot on the plane until the issue has been resolved... cowards...

Almost all spaceplane designs end up being a huge heavy cluster of engines at the back, and a huge empty drag-causing cluster of fuel tanks at the front. It\'s like trying to fire an arrow backwards.

ASAS plus canards plus very careful flight will get you down, as long as you never stray too far away from keeping the nose pointed along your velocity vector. Alternatively, try to add more wing at the back, or move engines further forward. Neither of those are easy.

Bonus fun fact: this is why HOTOL got cancelled and why Britain doesn\'t currently have a space station of its own.

[Salda007]

Depending on your design, it can also help is to disable flow on your forward-most fuel tank(s), and let the other tanks drain first. It won\'t help once you\'re completley This keeps more weight up front longer, which should help with stability. I have seen some odd behavior with disabling flow and fuel lines, though, so keep an eye out for that.

[G Addict]

Well, I was close to that precision award. Deorbited too early again, but had a decent amount of rocket fuel left so I stayed suborbital for a while, then flew on jets for a while. Ran out of fuel at 15000m and thought I was going to crash into those mountains about 80km west of KSC, but just about cleared them. Unfortunately, it was about midnight and pitch black, so I don\'t know what I hit, just that it disintegrated my plane. I did learn something helpful though - this one is far less effective at gliding than the other, and is barely safe to do an unpowered landing (gliding level at ~50m/s with about 12m/s vertical speed) - next time, I\'ll save some fuel.

[khyron42]

How are your jets not using the rocket fuel and vice versa? I know that won\'t be an issue once they\'re seperate, but the only reliable way I\'ve found is to mount one of the engine sets on decouplers. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET?! :

Here\'s the tricks:

• 
  [li]Fuel tanks and jet engines can be turned off.[/li]
  [li]Engines will pull from fuel tanks attached to them and those stacked on top of those before looking for fuel elsewhere.[/li]
  [li]Engines can\'t draw from fuel that\'s 'outwards' from them on the ship.[/li]
  

So - I launch on jets only. They can draw from the central rocket tanks, but prefer the jet tanks stacked directly above them and would only switch to the rocket tanks if those are empty.

I light the rockets at some point. Because the jet tanks are outwards from them, they cannot draw from the jet tanks - only the rocket ones.

I disable the jets well before the jet fuel tanks would run out.

I burn all of the rocket fuel before re-engaging the jets, so there\'s no longer any rocket fuel for them to draw from. Even if there was, in this flight, they never empty the jet tanks, so still wouldn\'t hit them.

If I wanted to leave some rocket fuel, I can disable the rocket tanks by right-clicking, making them unavailable to the jet engines.

You can only do this if your rockets (non-disable-able engines) are at the center; if you tried to put the jets in the middle and the rockets at the edge, you\'d have to disable all the jet tanks by hand to keep the rockets from drawing on them. With this design and flight plan, the only enable/disable I have to do is the jet engines themselves.

[Australian Sloth]

Here\'s mine:

The lynx Mk 2 Rocket pod

It got the name because it was my srb boostah test airframe. I replaced the boostahs with lfe\'s and tanks, did some creative staging and voila!

It has very favourable low speed handling and two drouge chutes for emergencies or landing on the vab.

[boolybooly]

Thanks for the mission report khyron42, congratulations on your success, naturally Kay Kool now wants to meet you and has rescinded that order she gave to the bouncers, said it was all a misunderstanding, knew you could do it all along.

When shown reports of G Addicts experimental vehicle she inquired if it could land safely.

Whereas Australian Sloth\'s Lynx MkII Rocket Pod elicited the promise of a donation to the local hospital\'s A&E department.

What a star!

[Australian Sloth]

Just letting everyone know with the fuel dilemma, After I take off I usually cruise to about 5k\'s then light the rockets. I turn off the jet engine about 10k\'s up and it stays off for the rest of the mission. I find I like to glide back in for landing and the design has excellent low speed characteristics meaning It is capable of touching down in the ocean if needed. I tend to run a fine line with fuel.

[G Addict]

Australian Sloth, looking at that craft, you\'d probably benefit from using a turbojet in place of the normal jet - it can take you to 10000m and above on its own, so you\'ll save some rocket fuel while in the atmosphere, for only .2t more weight - using rockets while there\'s still a lot of atmospheric drag can severely hamper your efficiency.

[Australian Sloth]

I thought about that, most of my other plane sthat are like this use the turbo fan.

[Maxed-Rockets]

I finally did it!

Quite capable and easy to land, I took it up to geo-sync and landed with fuel to spare.

More pictures: http://imgur.com/a/qfQfd#0

All stock. I recommend putting the aerospike on a decoupler for landing.

[rustymcclintock]

I finally did it!

Quite capable and easy to land, I took it up to geo-sync and landed with fuel to spare.

More pictures: http://imgur.com/a/qfQfd#0

All stock. I recommend putting the aerospike on a decoupler for landing.

craft file?

[Maxed-Rockets]

craft file?

Sorry forgot. I don\'t have it on this computer, but it is here,

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=15520.0

Transplanted it to my previous post.

[Maxed-Rockets]

Re-did the Fun-1C mission and snagged myself a couple awards this time.

I did use mechjeb, just to save pilot strain.

Going up.

Final altitude should nab me the altitudinalist record from the sawfish at 83,324,638.

This will be interesting.

Nothing too bad.

Aero-braking.

Final descent.

Looking good.

Very good.

A little off.

Looking good.

Nearly there.

And landed!

That should qualify me for the Altitudinalist record, the Kosmokerbal Commendation, and the Advanced Pilot Precision Award.

[Sean Mirrsen]

It saddens me a little that while this challenge prospers (relatively), the tanker challenge is somewhere on the third page...

Anyway, I am continuing my efforts in expanding my SSTO fleet. The design of the Pteroducktil SSTO was modified with greater resiliency in mind, and the result was the oddly named Turboloid SSTO.

It wasn\'t made for this specific challenge, therefore it still performs its duties as an orbital cargo delivery craft.

Sadly, a combination of design deficiencies and piloting errors had caused the prototype to be lost at the end of its first mission, when it crashed into a shoreline slope that could not be seen in nighttime lighting conditions.

(even if it did land then, it\'d have exactly zero fuel left)

More on this design as more missions are made.

[rustymcclintock]

Hey sean can I get that craft file?