Heavy Metal Aircraft Challenge

[Blasty McBlastblast]

Mortimer Kerman plans to strike it rich by mining metals on Kerbin! Gus Kerman has supplied all the drills and sifters, and Walt Kerman swears he has a customer lined up, now it is up to you to design the transport.

The goal of this challenge to build and demonstrate an ultra-heavy cargo plane to haul metals using Roverdude's excellent Kontainers. To achieve this you must:

1. Take off from the runway at the KSC
2. Fly over the island airfield to demonstrate airworthiness
3. Land intact back at KSC to deliver your metals (you may use the grass for this bit!)

Only two mods are mandatory for this challenge:

• USI Core by @RoverDude for the metals containers (be sure to try out his other stuff too)
• FAR by @ferram4 because after a hard day's work big aircraft deserve the gentle comfort of voxel-model based aerodynamics! 

Kerbal Joint Reinforcement is also highly recommended. All other stock-alike mods are fine, and use as many visual or information mods as you like. Unfortunately however I have to say no to tweakscale or any unrealistically overpowered mods (refer to rule 1 below) as it might make this challenge too easy.

 

Scoring:

1. You get a basic point for every unit of metals delivered intact back to the KSC
2. For bonus points, complete extra flybys or landings at Kerbin’s Easter egg locations during your demonstration flight.  Add the appropriate multipliers and then multiply basic points by this sum. (note: landing somewhere obviously also includes flyby, so add both)

   	Flyby	Landing
   Island Airfield	nil	5
   Desert Temple	2	3
   Old Space Centre	2	2
   UFO Crash Site	5	1
   All 5 Kerbin Monoliths	10	50

3. Total score is the sum of basic points and bonus points.

4. If you have broken your plane returning to the KSC then you get a total score of zero! That’s right, Mortimer isn’t interested in craft that are not reusable.
   • Minor, repairable damage is fine.
   • Drop tanks and boosters (if used) are not required to be attached to the aircraft when you finally deliver your metals.
   • Mid-journey refuelling from another vessel is not allowed.
   • Mid-journey refuelling with ISRU built into your aircraft is fine (but all the metals must be loaded at the start of the journey, no top ups!)

Example scoring scenario:
2,500 metals delivered after completing island flyover airworthiness test, flying to and landing at the Desert Temple, and returning intact to the grass at the KSC:
total score = 2,500 + 2,500 x (2 + 3) = 15,000

Rules: 

1. No cheating… if it feels like cheating it probably is! So no F12 cheats, config edits, hyper edits, or obscene part clipping. Kraken drives are fine, if ye can slay thy beast...
2. Quicksaving is fine, but only while you are landed. This means no endless retries at landing until eventually one works, Mortimer doesn’t want craft that only work occasionally!
3. Calculate your score and submit a brief flight report with an imgur album showing at least:
   • take off from runway
   • airworthiness island fly over
   • any bonus flybys or landings (landed aircraft within view of easter egg)
   • landed craft intact at the KSC
   • final flight results (F3) screen with metals qty observable
4. That’s it! Everything else goes design wise, so enjoy.
    

 

[Blasty McBlastblast]

the flight of the "heavy metal 7"  

I won't talk about the first 6 except to say that many lessons were learned 

 

Val took the helm for this one, while Jeb is still in recovery... The flight lifted off from KSC runway, flew past the Island Airfield, and returned to touch down safely. 20,000 metal units delivered! no bonus destinations.

total score: 20,000 points 

 

[Blasty McBlastblast]

the flight of "heavy metal 12"

responding to promises of "moar snacks", designers have developed an aircraft capable of hauling twice the cargo of any previous plane, and over much greater distances

 

Val, Bill, and Bob lifted off with over 317 tonnes of metals (40,000 units) and sundry cargo, and flew all the way to the desert temple and back (40,000 x 3 = 120,000 bonus points!) before landing safely in the grass at KSC.
total score: 160,000 points

The flight had some hiccups, but overall went well. The sensation of weight while cruising with all engines screaming was oddly enjoyable!   Hiccups included:

• time warping caused wobbly-wings and forced 1x speed for the entire 90min flight (and yes, the no-quicksaves possibility of botching the landing had me sweating bullets!)
• fuel levels became critical, only careful nursing of reserves saw the flight safely home with barely minutes of flight time left
• a design flaw saw the inboard engines thrusting onto parts of the fuselage almost resulting in a catastrophic overheating failure, fortunately 6 engines were enough to remain aloft (and saved a little fuel too!)
• poor timing saw the sun set on the flight, making navigation difficult and resulting in a night time landing (sorry for the dark pics!) 

Many parts for this craft came from Stock Extension by @Lack