BSC Redux - Stearwing D45 - We have a winner!

[vosechu]

Thanks for putting this together! I hope that Squad will take these ideas and actually put them in the game. These are major improvements!

[Xeldrak]

ah, well - I don't think they will. They didn't to it the last 11 times I did this competition with other stock craft

[vosechu]

Well, while I have literally no pull with them, I'll ask anyways and see if one more voice will convince them.

[Xeldrak]

I'll post my own test-notes, for you to see. Please consider that I'm trying to find things to improve, so there might be more negative points than positives. I still think that every plane build specifically for this challenge is great and I'm happy for every participant.

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mrmcp1

+ A very nice design, I like the dropable engine-pods and the low-wing design

- Tailstrike danger

- Rather heavy part clipping

- plane is prone to explode when timewarping

- double horizontal stabilizer?

~ I didn't get it into orbit. But I suck a flying spaceplanes.

All in all a wonderful design, that would have needed a little more polishing.

Batz_10k

+ Nice design, great Idea.

- Not exactly useful to new players.

- Orbiter basically unchanged

+ I got the plane into orbit

A awesome proof-of-concept craft. A little more polishing, maybe a custom made orbiter?

Jodo42

+ I like the new design, the wing seem to be quite sturdy.

- The plane lost its ability to dock with station or other craft in LKO

- Also no ladder to the cockpit or the passenger section

+ Lots of fuel

~ I didn't get into space. But that doesn't mean a thing....

I really like it, although I miss the docking capabilities. Besides that, a real improvement!

Kweller

+ Original design

- Did you try landing it with this wheel placement? The forward wheel could be much nearer to the front.

~ You should separate the airbreathing and non-airbreathing engines in the staging-menu. I always press space to start a

plane/rocket

- Also no docking capabilities

- V tail has no control-surfaces.

All in all a good design, that would need some more polishing. However, the wheel-placement makes it basically unlandable and rather unstable on the ground.

Rhompahia

- Tailstrike danger; liftoff in general is a little problematic with the four strap on boosters.

+ I did get it into space! Once it's in the air, it's really easy to get into orbit.

+ Got rid of the cluttered cargo room, kept docking capability.

Not exactly aesthetically pleasing but a great plane once it's airborne.

t3hJimmer

+ Ladder for the pilots!

+ Extensive desciption text.

+ No tailstrike danger. (Saw what you did there!)

~ Maybe additional air intakes? Rapiers switched to closed circle at a rather low altitude.

Basically a really good spaceplane, but I do miss some kind of wackiness that was asked for.

Edited July 13, 2015 by Xeldrak

[Feradose]

I have tried landing once, it was wobbly, but I guess I got lucky, thanks a lot for the tip!

[Jodo42]

A ladder! Of all the things to forget... I'd have to move the canards to make it work, though.

I'm rather surprised you weren't even able to get it to space. I tried to keep the profile as simple as possible, and I can pretty much always get it to LKO with >100 units LF following it.

Despite the build phase being over I believe it'd be pretty simple to add docking capabilities to the vehicle. I opted to remove that feature as docking with spaceplanes can be rather tricky due to port placement, and I'm not sure new players would get much use out of it.

[Batz_10K]

Here's my impressions -

Jodo42 - Stearwing D45 v2

+ Nice and stable on ascent

+ Easy to fly

+ easy takeoff

+ easy to make orbit

+ I like the design of the intakes with nosecone fuel pods

- I (personally) don't like the wing design. (the gaps don't work for me)

~ Reentry slightly tricky, can't adjust trajectory easily

- Stuff in the cargo bay gets HOT (actually had a few science instruments explode during re-entry)

+ Handles well in lower atmosphere, but doesn't glide well

- Likes to roll when pitching up and turning, could use more pitch authority

Kweller - GniwRaets

~ Unusual design.

+ 800ms dV on-orbit. (unladen) - should be plenty of excess to fly a small satellite

- Jets and rockets on the same action group, without any indication that you're supposed to toggle the rockets with "2".

-- Interestingly enough it's possible to make orbit (without much fuel remaining) running both jets and rockets and climbing at about a 40-45 degree angle.

- Nosewheel very far back, unstable under brakes.

- No rudders, and all control surfaces active for all axes, tends to drift off 90 degrees during climb.

+ Re-entry ok, nice and stable.

~ wasn't sure about fuel distribution for landing, fuel + oxy in forward tanks seemed to work ok

+ Ran out of power at 60km. stable enough without power.

+ Yay! has jets so it's possible to make the runway

- Is HARD to land safely, no rudders makes it hard to line up on the runway,

- Can't use brakes very much as nose gear is too far back and brake torque is equal to rear wheels

mrmcp1 - Stearwig D48

~ Nice design.

+ Easy to orbit. Handy instructions in the notes dropdown.

+ Wing design is nice

- control surfaces active for all axes

+ Good collection of science instruments

+ Excellent control on re-entry, and glides really well. Was able to land on northeast island after overshooting the KSC,

+ It's actually possible to circle the landing area while gliding - controllable without (electric) power... awesome

Romphaia - Stearwing D47b

+ Close to the original Stearwing, designed for 1.04, repurposed as a crew transport as opposed to the original's mix of science and crew transport features.

+ Fixed RCS thrusters

+ Very powerful. Slightly tricky takeoff - not much clearance for lower set of engines

+ Plenty of fuel on-orbit (866ms dV)

+ Monoprop moved to built-in tanks in the docking port, reducing drag

+ Excellent re-entry handling. Stable even after the (electric) power had run out

+ Able to tune glidepath and glides reasonably well

+ heavy duty landing gear handles rough landings with ease

- not enough brake torque to stop on the runway after landing at ~120ms

t3hJimmer - Stearwing XL

- Changes from a crew transport to a research satellite transport

- very large wings and tail surfaces

- replaces original jet/rocket combo with rapiers

- Reasonably easy to fly to orbit. Small tail surfaces means a tendency to drift off course (like the GniwRaets) during climb.

- More intakes may mean you can run the rapiers in air-breathing mode longer, changeover altitude/speed seems quite low, but sufficient fuel to reach orbit is available.

+ Re-entry good,

+ nice and stable, doesn't run out of power

+ very noob friendly, can adjust speed/deceleration rate very easily with AoA

+ excellent flying qualities, plus rapiers can be used to make it to the runway.

- More brake torque please! hard to stop on the runway, likes to bounce at landing (at least you can go-around with the rapiers)

Xeldrak - CROBAR

- Changes from a crew design to a mixed crew/satellite transport.

- Unusual design with SRBs inside the wings. Reminds me of an old-school .90 design

- A little twitchy and unstable on climbout - mainly Dutch-roll oscillation (the D50 suffers from the same problem)

- Plenty of fuel to get to orbit. Possibly the LV909s aren't required while the SRBs are firing.

- No way of dropping the SRBs after burnout. (or intakes for that matter, once the jets are gone)

+ Re-entry ok. heavy and takes a long time to slow down, difficult to control speed/deceleration with AoA

- Not much pitch authority, barely made an emergency landing on the island runway after overshooting the KSC

- Small landing gear for such a big/heavy aircraft

+ Yay airbrakes (boo didn't notice them until halfway down)

+ Plenty of brake torque (yay!)

A few random pictures from my testing

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[Xeldrak]

Thanks for the review

I haven't played very much KSP in the last few month, so the fact that there are now bigger landing gears hasn't really sinked in yet. Bigger landing gear might be a good idea for the CRoBAR.

[mrmcp1]

Thanks for the reviews, I always forget about the control surfaces.

[Xeldrak]

The primary vote is done, you can check the result

over here.

The three winners will now compete in the final vote! The vote will run for three days.

Please note, that the final vote is not anonymous!

>>Get all .craft files in one .zip!<<

Edited July 14, 2015 by Xeldrak

[Jodo42]

How does the final vote work? Will we be receiving another email?

[Rhomphaia]

How does the final vote work? Will we be receiving another email?

The final vote is the poll in this thread.

[Xeldrak]

Well, that was a hard vote. I did another testflight with the remaining candidates. And I have to say, I really like booth designs. While I think they are allmost equally good, my vote went to Jodo. Mostly because mrmcp1's design tends to explode during timewarps.

[Xeldrak]

We have a winner! Congratulations to Jodo for winning the first BSC Redux challenge with his Stearwing D45 v2

[vosechu]

Xeldrak, you were right. I got word back from Kasper that one of the design goals for the actual stock craft was to make them slightly crappy so that people could see the problems and fix them. That wasn't obvious to me as a new player of course, it just looked sloppy to me, but I'm not everyone. Anyways, you were right that Squad is unlikely to include BSC craft, because (reading between the lines in a way that pleases me) they're just much too nice.

Anyways, thank you for putting these challenges on regardless! I learn a lot every single time!