Historical Recreation - Operation Credible Sport

[geb]

The year was 1980. 52 hostages were being held in a sports stadium and a rapid airborne rescue attempt was needed. Helicopters didn\'t have the range or the carrying capacity, so the rescue vehicle had to be a plane, but how do you land a plane in a sports stadium?

Their aircraft would have to come in high to avoid hitting the seats of the stadium, and drop incredibly rapidly, then come to a complete stop with zero runway. Takeoff would have to be equally steep, again with no runway.

They came to a very Kerbal solution: MOAR BOOSTERS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Credible_Sport

Your challenge is to rebuild this mission. Make it work. Fly it successfully. Construct a heavy cargo plane that can land using SRB retros, with downward SRBs to cushion the fall, and then take off again with more SRBs as RATO units.

Use mod parts if you like, but doing it with only stock parts gets you +10 bonus points and an official certificate of awesomeness.

[Vostok]

I reckon to make it work, an area about the size of the top of the SPH would be the target.

I propose the challenge is to land on the SPH with a plane that functions like the one you have there.

[Joshmo]

Where\'s SasquatchM when you need him?

[shhhilent1]

I would suggest LFE\'s and not SRBS. because you cannot control when the SRBS are gonna stop.

[gresrun]

Got it!

Thing flies best under SAS and has a propensity to want to roll over on landing but I managed to complete the objective!

Screenshots: (I wish I had taken more but my fingers were busy landing it!)

Coming in for landing:

Hostages on board! (Lost a wing part due to said roll tendencies):

Requires DamnedAerospace for the TurboJets and NovaPunch for the SRBs but the rest is stock.

[Phoenix Aerospace]

Great job! One thing that I find adds to the challenge is that the SRBs have a tendancy to burn for a long time.

[Markus Reese]

Took a bit to get a bit of footage I was happy with. The more I flew, the more I realized how much I disliked that spaceplane direction was based on thrust and not aero controls, With problems getting that perfect runway landing due to rudder being carp, This footage will have to do. But it works, capable of land and takeoff a nice and short distance.

Oh, and all 15.2 parts, no mods.

http://youtu.be/afmtalLGkdg

I really need some sort of analog controller hooked up to fly them proper.

[geb]

Very impressive! You\'ve earned the 10 bonus points, and I have no hesitation in signing the certificate of awesomeness.

For my own attempt at the challenge, I tried to place the boosters to resemble the real thing, resulting in a craft that looks ok, but... not so successful in the first testing flight.

Takeoff

Testing grounds reached, level flight at 200m. Begin descent.

Cushion descent... wait! That\'s not descending!

I thought you said this thing was safe!

Abort landing! Abort landing!

Oops.

I think this can be made to work if I weigh it down a bit with more fuel tanks and only fire off the vertical boosters one at a time. I will try again.

[Markus Reese]

Heh heh, thanks for the complements Too bad it had many failed flights before hand ;D

I had similar to yours earlier, trying to use aligned boosters. I tweaked the angles until it remained stable. Is important to have that breaking and the lift at the same time. By angling the thrusters, you can sort of calibrate the lift to breaking ratio and be sure to cut your engines. It took a bit of practice to get that banking pitch right. Ideally, I would prefer at launch having two front, two rear rockets. The main issue for me is simply controls. I love flight sims so the ksp plane controls not following normal physics is really throwing me off. But breaking thrusters are really awesome. On my space plane I am working on for lunar landing, I do something similar using vernier liquid rockets.

[Excalibur]

I propose the challenge is to land on the SPH with a plane that functions like the one you have there.

Challenge Accepted

http://youtu.be/DSRba4VnqeI

Spent quite a while flying the Herakles during testing so having a good handle on it\'s handling qualities made it possible to achieve the SPH landing on the first try.

And the fact I finally fixed my X360 pad controls.

Used the following mods;

Damned Aeropace (Engines)

Damned Robotics (Rotatron)

C7\'s Old Flight Pack (Wings)

Tiberion\'s Shuttle Pack (Struts)

NovaPunch (SRBs, Nosecones & Engine Mounts)

[Vostok]

Challenge Accepted

http://youtu.be/DSRba4VnqeI

Spent quite a while flying the Herakles during testing so having a good handle on it\'s handling qualities made it possible to achieve the SPH landing on the first try.

And the fact I finally fixed my X360 pad controls.

Used the following mods;

Damned Aeropace (Engines)

Damned Robotics (Rotatron)

C7\'s Old Flight Pack (Wings)

Tiberion\'s Shuttle Pack (Struts)

NovaPunch (SRBs, Nosecones & Engine Mounts)

Holy macaroni.

With parmigiana cheese on top.

My hat is not only off to you, but I last saw it in orbit somewhere.

Uh, well done. XD

[Excalibur]

Why thank you sir, thanks for the idea.

I haven\'t dared attempt it again as I\'m afraid it wasn\'t so much my piloting skill as blind luck on the first try!

In theory it should stop much faster if I fixed the staging issue (the game grouped two of the braking rockets along with the JATOs and I couldn\'t be arsed to check these things missed it in the pre-flight checklist). You can see on take-off that two braking rockets actually fire... well this is Kerbal after all. =P

I got lucky with the SRB burn times - the ones I used for braking had a thrust of 100 each and stock burn time at nine seconds was perfect.

[geb]

Challenge Accepted

Excellent recreation and a beautiful takeoff! Very much in the spirit of the original. I approve.

After a tense landing (or a long series of failed landings) it is a lot of fun to hit the takeoff booster stages and zoom up into the air with no worries. Cue triumphant music.

[Markus Reese]

Excalibur, definitely awesome! I saw you approaching the center and thought... No way, not gonna. He is? OMG! SCORE!!!!!

Then you barely got stopped, I was all, NO!

Looks fun!

[Phoenix Aerospace]

I\'m going to agree with the others. Excalibur, you truly are a master Spacecraft Engineer.