[Stock 1.0.2] Spaceplane planet hopper challenge.

[psyberduckling]

The goal is to build a space plane which can reach and land on as many of the planetary bodies in the Kerbol system as possible without the aid of other ships, and return the vessel and 100% of it's parts back to Kerbin. ISRU use is permitted (and encouraged).

Rules:

1. *The craft may not lose any parts in flight, no decoupling or explosions allowed.

2. The craft must lift off horizontally provided the body has an atmosphere.

3. The craft must land horizontally provided the body has an amospheric preassure greater than 0.4 (i.e. Eve, Kerbin, Laythe).

3. The craft must return to Kerbin and land successfully.

4. The trip must be done without the aid of other vessels (No fuel transfers from other ships or refuelling stations, no connecting up to a mothership and flying to another body).

5. Mining and refining ore is encouraged, but not required.

6. Stock parts only.

7. No you can't use the cheat menu, there's a reason it's called the cheat menu.

*Resource scanning may be accomplished separately or you may detach a probe from your vessel (which must be recovered before returning to Kerbin). The total mass left in orbit must be under 2.5t.

Craft will be scored by bodies successfully visited, 1 point for each. Honorary mentions to the lightest and heaviest entries.

My entry to follow (I have one, which successfully flew Minmus -> Laythe -> Pol -> Kerbin).

Note: this is distinct from the K-Prize in that it permits ISRU use.

Leaderboard:

pyberduckling - PythonMk2 (Minmus, Laythe, Pol)

Special mentions for impressive feats:

....

Edited June 16, 2015 by psyberduckling

[psyberduckling]

Ok, here's my entry

Mission log:

- Successful takeoff to Orbit from Kerbin.

- 3 1 minute burns at periapsis at the ascending node with Minmus.

- Wait for Minmus window, and burn for an interception orbit.

- Landed successfully on Minmus, Didn't stop to rescue the stranded kerbals from the ill fated maiden voyage (They where short about 50 m/s dV in order to land safely).

- Refuel Liquid fuel and Monopropellant.

- Successful takeoff to Minmus orbit.

- Wait for Jool window and burn for a Kerbin orbit with a periapsis around 75km, aligned correctly so that burning at Periapsis sends us off to Jool.

- Burn for Jool.

- Aerocapture at Jool.

- Adjust orbit for Laythe intercept.

- Aerocapture at Laythe (with some help from thrusters).

- Adjust orbit to a 60km circular orbit, and wait for the landing site to be in daylight (previous successful flight of the PythonMk1 already landed here but with no fuel left).

- Successful landing (show above).

- Realise there's no ore to mine at the landing site, and have to send an ore scanning probe to find Ore.

- Realise I forgot to put a communication antenna on the probe and send a second one.

- Fly a short distance to a good location for mining.

- Refuel Liquid fuel, monopropellant and oxidiser (leaving one oxidiser tank empty, same as in the initial launch configuration).

- Burn for Laythe orbit.

- Burn for Pol orbit, trying and failing to dodge all the other moons.

- Land successfully at Pol for refuelling.

- Notes about refuelling at Pol, you can't just startup the ISRU and mining equipment, and leave it running whilst timewarping at the space center, it requires baby sitting since they deactivate due to not being in contact with the ground (even though they are), something weird about the surface of Pol.

- Take off from Pol, and burn for a Periapsis around Jool of about 250km timed with the departure window for Kerbin.

- Completely miss Kerbin, and have to adjust the orbit to incept the second time around.

- Aerocapture around Kerbin coming from Jool with my orbit was impossible, burn huge amounts of fuel just to avoid being flung back out into deep space.

- Use aerocapture and remaining fuel to lower orbit to around 80x80km.

- Burn to de-orbit somewhere near KSC.

- Slightly overshoot KSC (ended up coming down by the island with the runway), and glide/fly back to KSC on remaining fuel.

- Land successfully at KSC.

All tolled it took around 25 years mostly due to mishaps (to be fair, this was the first manned mission I've flew to another planet's SOI).

Fitting an ISRU ore tank and mining gear on a spaceplane with enough dV to reach and land on Minmus turned out to be more challenging than I envisaged.

Here's the file for the ship (I'm aware it has a few problems, the LV-Ns refuse to burn fuel from some of the tanks and the action groups need some love, but this is what I flew, so I'll save improvements for the Mk3).

http://cyberiantiger.org/PythonMk2.craft

Edited June 8, 2015 by psyberduckling
Add craft file.

[n.b.z.]

Great challenge! I have been working on a design for exactly this sort of mission and shall take part if I ever get it done (working on the third iteration, trying to tame part count).

Two questions about the rules:

1.) About Rule 1, "The craft may not lose any parts in flight, no decoupling or explosions allowed".

I am planning to bring an orbital survey probe, since most of my solar system has not yet received any resource related research. This would be undocked, flown to its own polar orbit, and later retrieved. Will I be in breach of Rule 1 if I bring this probe back intact to the KSC runway after my mission, onboard and docked to my vessel, so my part count is the same as it was on takeoff?

2.) Is it allowed to have previously surveyed the resources on a body? I already have detailed data (polar orbit & surface) on Minmus resources - is it cheating to use this knowledge? I suspect that many potential participants in this challenge already have mapped various bodies, and I personally find the engineering required for this challenge to be demanding enough already without the admittedly crazy idea of dragging an orbital probe around the system.

If advance resource mapping is allowed, then I guess it should also be allowed to launch some "preparation" mission to put polar survey probes in place specifically for this challenge?

(As an aside: I was inspired to work on this type of craft by this Wanderfound design, which I believe was made for FAR.)

[psyberduckling]

Great challenge! I have been working on a design for exactly this sort of mission and shall take part if I ever get it done (working on the third iteration, trying to tame part count).

Two questions about the rules:

1.) About Rule 1, "The craft may not lose any parts in flight, no decoupling or explosions allowed".

I am planning to bring an orbital survey probe, since most of my solar system has not yet received any resource related research. This would be undocked, flown to its own polar orbit, and later retrieved. Will I be in breach of Rule 1 if I bring this probe back intact to the KSC runway after my mission, onboard and docked to my vessel, so my part count is the same as it was on takeoff?

2.) Is it allowed to have previously surveyed the resources on a body? I already have detailed data (polar orbit & surface) on Minmus resources - is it cheating to use this knowledge? I suspect that many potential participants in this challenge already have mapped various bodies, and I personally find the engineering required for this challenge to be demanding enough already without the admittedly crazy idea of dragging an orbital probe around the system.

If advance resource mapping is allowed, then I guess it should also be allowed to launch some "preparation" mission to put polar survey probes in place specifically for this challenge?

(As an aside: I was inspired to work on this type of craft by this Wanderfound design, which I believe was made for FAR.)

I did it with separate survey probes, if you want to include survey probes in your payload and detach them (nice idea, I might include that on my next design), you must bring them back with you to Kerbin. It's within the spirit of the challenge. Mostly the rule was to prevent detaching a small lander and leaving the main craft in orbit.

Edit: updated the rules, added a restriction that mass left in orbit must be under 2.5t (which should be more than enough for a medium sized probe). Shame we can't mine Xenon.

Edited June 9, 2015 by psyberduckling

[n.b.z.]

Fitting an ISRU ore tank and mining gear on a spaceplane with enough dV to reach and land on Minmus turned out to be more challenging than I envisaged.

I have now finished building the contraption for this challenge, and after conducting various simulations, I now understand the above much better.

One more question, from some simulations on Duna: chutes are surely prohibited as a means of descent, but what about aircraft-style brake chutes that are deployed on touch down? I will horizontally land on wheels after an approach flown on wings... but the terrain on Duna tends to be too rough for my vehicle without the use of chutes. I will send an advance robot mission to scout not only resources but also suitable landing sites on Duna, hopefully I can find a place both smooth and rich of resources.

This is a threat : if we're allowed brake chutes, I'll do Duna, and if not, I'll still try, and five Kerbals will likely die a fiery death.

Other than that, I have again failed in the part count department (I always do), and had to drop one of my original goals. Tylo is an utterly miserable place and should officially be declared a nuclear waste dump.

[psyberduckling]

I have now finished building the contraption for this challenge, and after conducting various simulations, I now understand the above much better.

One more question, from some simulations on Duna: chutes are surely prohibited as a means of descent, but what about aircraft-style brake chutes that are deployed on touch down? I will horizontally land on wheels after an approach flown on wings... but the terrain on Duna tends to be too rough for my vehicle without the use of chutes. I will send an advance robot mission to scout not only resources but also suitable landing sites on Duna, hopefully I can find a place both smooth and rich of resources.

This is a threat : if we're allowed brake chutes, I'll do Duna, and if not, I'll still try, and five Kerbals will likely die a fiery death.

Other than that, I have again failed in the part count department (I always do), and had to drop one of my original goals. Tylo is an utterly miserable place and should officially be declared a nuclear waste dump.

I'll do some testing on Duna, maybe the no parachute requirement is not sensible since the atmosphere is so thin.

Tylo (and Eve) are the two most difficult bodies to reach and successfully return from, to the point where I'm not sure either is possible, the only possible way I can think of managing Eve would be to build a space plane which does not use air breathing engines at all, which would have to be huge because of the increased amount of fuel needed.

Edit: Yeh, ok, landing on Duna either horizontally or without chutes is unrealistic, I'll edit the rules for it, I can get down to about 50 m/s a second horizontal, but seem to always crash into the side of a hill or the ground, nevermind the issues with slowing down after getting the wheels on the ground.

Edited June 16, 2015 by psyberduckling

[n.b.z.]

Thanks!

Because of real life stuff, the planned length of the mission, and the horrible part count that will inflict a slideshow upon me, I expect to require some time for this. However, it's the only KSP thing I'm working on, and I shall hopefully from now on contribute more pretty pictures than annoying questions.

I am confused as to why we aren't seeing more interest for this challenge. I am hoping that "everyone" is secretly working on their missions and we will see nice things soon.

I shall reveal that I am jealous of your vehicle. Twice the number of nukes than my ship, for about half the part count. Also, for public entertainment, I will admit that I had a design iteration, still with Tylo in mind, that carried two Mainsails - this turned out to be just as idiotic as it sounds.

[psyberduckling]

I just removed the horizontal landing requirement for Duna, and the parachutes requirement totally. It was an unnecessary restriction to an already quite difficult challenge. Parachutes didn't really fit my idea of reusable, but I guess KSP lets you repack them (rather unrealistically, they'd be shredded in most of my landings).

Re. challenge popularity, i guess I need to make some badges.

I'm trying to builder a bigger version of my reusable vehicle, and using your idea of a deployable resource scanner probe, but I'm having some issues with spontaneous disintegration either on the runway or during reentry. 300t spaceplanes are hard to get right.

Edited June 16, 2015 by psyberduckling