LKO Tanker

[Sean Mirrsen]

Managed to run out of fuel during maneuvering... figures. Well, the periapsis is skirting the atmosphere, so here\'s to a long and fruitful aerobraking. I\'m already down to a 45/170k orbit. After seven mission hours...

edit: Huh, a more fundamental issue. It seems that with all the wings up front, the empty craft flies like... well, even bricks fly better. Minimal deviation from course immediately causes it to spin out, and it I couldn\'t ever regain control of it with just keyboard input. Some redesign is in order, but at least I do know this base design can do a proper KSO run. Now all I need is some aerodynamics tuning.

edit2: After careful thought, the cabin\'s glide capability has been removed (not that it would be of any real use anyway), and the tail was extended with two sets of extra wings, plus control surfaces. The resulting design is much more visually consistent, and seems to handle a lot better.

Since testing a full-scale craft for landing capability proved problematic, a variation was created with no payload attached, and with rocket fuel tanks replaced by an empty fuselage tube of weight similar (even slightly greater) to empty tanks.

And as shown above, this variant, the MkIV-X10-L, was able to successfully land, albeit losing some turbojet engines in the process. It was subsequently still able to easily lift off and land elsewhere. In addition, a test was performed on the craft\'s survivability, and in the course of it, the pilot managed to successfully recover from an uncontrollable spinout (and land again), a feat deemed impossible with previous iterations of the design.

So all in all, I think with a few more minor improvements, like propping up the rear landing gear a bit, the Albatruss MkIV-KS (KerboStationary) SSTO tanker design will be completely fit to fulfill this challenge pretty soon.

[rdrdrdrd]

thats awesome, Im still having problems with mine >

[Sean Mirrsen]

Here\'s one for the mythology books:

Landed the thing WHOLE. Well, not entirely whole, lost the fuel pod\'s nose cone, two landing gear, and the left lower swept wing due to uneven terrain (and lack of braking chutes!), but still. The thing-that-flies-like-a-brick actually landed with all tanks full. Stand by for its first complete KSO delivery mission!

[Sean Mirrsen]

And, there we have it.

Skipping the whole egress/orbital insertion thing, because it\'s boring and I forgot to take screenshots for this mission. >_>

Payload released at something resembling KSO (I really should look into MechJeb)

Burn home complete:

Bit of a curiosity:

(not entirely close, but very nearby, in astronomical terms)

Returning to atmosphere:

Leaving atmosphere...

(gundamn reentry miscalculations)

Returning to atmosphere again:

Hopefully staying in the atmosphere this time:

(if reentry heat were simulated, I\'d be one big fireball right now)

Burning off rocket fuel for easier landing:

Final moments before touchdown:

Braking chutes out:

And we have landing!

Too bad the KSC is on the other side of the planet.

Complete mission, delivery of one 600FU pod to KSO and safe return. The 2x4 module is heavier, so KSO might be problematic with it, but all in all I\'d say this is pretty good.

Craft file attached, only requirement is the ExPI set for the docking port, everything else stock. Be careful with the landing, and don\'t trust the swallowtail wheels too much. And in the name of all that is kerbal, don\'t use the brakes! At least until you\'re going slow enough for them not to rip your wheels off.

[Sean Mirrsen]

This is silly:

Tried to shoot for the Mun. Got there, left package in orbit, fudged up return trajectory, nearly left Kerbin SOI, barely managed to return back. Two weeks in flight. Landing pending.

Note: the empty craft needs better balancing still, ASAS can compensate only minimal thrust.

[rdrdrdrd]

This is awesome man, I just finished my challenge myself, but i kinda cheated, space planes are a PITA for me so i built a huge rocket with a giant delta wing and a cargo bay to hold the fuel pod(smaller for this one), and it lands by getting to ~100m/s over the ocean by the KSC and poping about 15 parachutes ???

http://imgur.com/a/Shf4c

(this version did not have enough parachutes)

[Sean Mirrsen]

Ever saw the physical manifestation of the concept of a 'bad idea'?

I\'m calling it the 'Pteroducktil'. Twelve turbojets. 110 mass. The problem with taking off in it is that engines try to oversteer it, and it flies like a rocket. The problem with it in general is that the current setup for rocket fuel tanks is glitched, I\'ll need to revamp it to fix it.

[Phoenix Aerospace]

It\'s… Beautiful. I could never build something like that.

[Sean Mirrsen]

There, that\'s better. Now let\'s see if it can still do what its predecessor did.

Then we\'ll see about landing on the Mun... the 8 extra RCS tanks and a fairly large amount of linear RCS thrusters on the underside should help with that, right?