Nice Catch challenge

[Jetski]

This is something I've been curious about for a while. Is it possible to rendezvous with a craft that is on a steep suborbital trajectory? Your mission is this:

Launch or Hyperedit a craft into orbit. This is your catcher. I suggest high twr, high dv. Extra points if it looks cool. 

Now vertically launch a manned rocket into a suborbital trajectory with a max Ap of 80000m, and then stop using engines and all control systems. Use your catcher to meet up, dock with it, transfer crew, and reorbit safely. 

Land or crash your (now unmanned) rocket safely. with chutes, still no engine or long gliding permitted. 

Your score is the distance from KSC that your rocket touches down. A lower score is better, so a more vertical trajectory (more difficult) will score better than a long gentle lob.

Bonus points if done on Eve, also a bonus for Duna or Laythe but only if entire mission is flown legit, no Hyperedit at all.  Score for other planets is distance from initial landing site, so be sure to plant a flag, required max Ap is atmo height+10k. A consolation prize of 50% score will be offered if you can't dock and have to EVA over. 

Parts mods permitted unless they give a huge advantage. This is primarily a piloting challenge, so slightly OP engines are ok, but balloons, infinite fuel, or physics hacks not so much. No debug menu or HE once you launch your manned rocket please, but all is permitted to set up your catcher. 

I'll post my attempt shortly. 

Edited July 8, 2016 by Jetski

[Firemetal]

2 hours ago, Jetski said:

This is something I've been curious about for a while. Is it possible to rendezvous with a craft that is on a steep suborbital trajectory? Your mission is this:

Launch or Hyperedit a craft into orbit. This is your catcher. I suggest high twr, high dv. Extra points if it looks cool. 

Now vertically launch a manned rocket into a suborbital trajectory with a max Ap of 80000m, and then stop using engines and all control systems. Use your catcher to meet up, dock with it, transfer crew, and reorbit safely. 

Land or crash your (now unmanned) rocket safely. with chutes, still no engine or long gliding permitted. 

Your score is the distance from KSC that your rocket touches down. A lower score is better, so a more vertical trajectory (more difficult) will score better than a long gentle lob.

Bonus points if done on Eve, also a bonus for Duna or Laythe but only if entire mission is flown legit, no Hyperedit at all.  Score for other planets is distance from initial landing site, so be sure to plant a flag, required max Ap is atmo height+10k. A consolation prize of 50% score will be offered if you can't dock and have to EVA over. 

Parts mods permitted unless they give a huge advantage. This is primarily a piloting challenge, so slightly OP engines are ok, but balloons, infinite fuel, or physics hacks not so much. No debug menu or HE once you launch your manned rocket please, but all is permitted to set up your catcher. 

I'll post my attempt shortly. 

Noice but I'm pretty dang horrible at rendezvous so I'm definitely not trying. Awesome challenge though.

[Jetski]

Here's my first attempt, most of the pics I took didn't come out.  It makes for a really frantic minute or so. First pics are the catcher I sent up, last if my first attempt for a lob taking off.  I missed by nearly 4km, and everybody burned up in the atmosphere and died horribly.  I'll try again.

 

[herbal space program]

On ‎7‎/‎8‎/‎2016 at 6:11 AM, Jetski said:

This is something I've been curious about for a while. Is it possible to rendezvous with a craft that is on a steep suborbital trajectory? Your mission is this:

Launch or Hyperedit a craft into orbit. This is your catcher. I suggest high twr, high dv. Extra points if it looks cool. 

Now vertically launch a manned rocket into a suborbital trajectory with a max Ap of 80000m, and then stop using engines and all control systems. Use your catcher to meet up, dock with it, transfer crew, and reorbit safely. 

Land or crash your (now unmanned) rocket safely. with chutes, still no engine or long gliding permitted. 

Your score is the distance from KSC that your rocket touches down. A lower score is better, so a more vertical trajectory (more difficult) will score better than a long gentle lob.

Bonus points if done on Eve, also a bonus for Duna or Laythe but only if entire mission is flown legit, no Hyperedit at all.  Score for other planets is distance from initial landing site, so be sure to plant a flag, required max Ap is atmo height+10k. A consolation prize of 50% score will be offered if you can't dock and have to EVA over. 

Parts mods permitted unless they give a huge advantage. This is primarily a piloting challenge, so slightly OP engines are ok, but balloons, infinite fuel, or physics hacks not so much. No debug menu or HE once you launch your manned rocket please, but all is permitted to set up your catcher. 

I'll post my attempt shortly. 

This is an interesting idea, but I think the rules still need a little work. First off, do we need to land the rocket safely or not? Are you saying that it can crash land but that nothing can explode on re-entry? The way you worded that is a bit ambiguous. Also, when you say distance from the KSC, do you mean just that, or do you mean total horizontal distance traveled after launch? If it really is the former, then outlawing "long gliding" does not rule out the most trivial solution possible, which would be to launch your rocket into a barely sub-orbital trajectory with Ap on the opposite side of the planet and Pe a few hundred Km short of the KSC after one go-round. Your catcher could then have a very low-speed rendezvous with the rocket near its Ap, and then have plenty of time to re-orbit while the other rocket re-enters and lands right back at the KSC doorstep. If what you really mean though is total horizontal distance, then both that solution and trying to fly back to the KSC with a plane automatically does more harm than good, but measurement becomes  considerably more tricky. You might resolve this difficulty by keeping the rule as distance from KSC but state as an additional  ground rule that no rocket may travel horizontally further than half way around Kerbin or whatever other body you do this on.

I would also make one more comment abut the bonuses for other bodies. While stetting up your mission on Duna might be a bit more of a hassle than using HyperEdit on Kerbin, it's clear to me right off the bat that pulling this off there would be far, far easier. Between the much lower orbital velocity at 80km on Duna, the 3-fold longer hang time at Ap,  and the much higher margin of error wrt the atmosphere, I would say like ten times easier to be honest. In fact, I wouldn't even consider trying to do this on Kerbin if I could get  a better score for the same distance doing it on Duna. If you want to bring other bodies into it, I would therefore suggest giving penalties rather than bonuses for bodies with less atmo/lower gravity than Kerbin, because those things will really make it a lot easier. Anyway, I think with a few small tweaks this could turn out to be pretty fun.

Edited July 10, 2016 by herbal space program

[Jetski]

7 hours ago, herbal space program said:

This is an interesting idea, but I think the rules still need a little work. First off, do we need to land the rocket safely or not? Are you saying that it can crash land but that nothing can explode on re-entry? The way you worded that is a bit ambiguous. Also, when you say distance from the KSC, do you mean just that, or do you mean total horizontal distance traveled after launch? If it really is the former, then outlawing "long gliding" does not rule out the most trivial solution possible, which would be to launch your rocket into a barely sub-orbital trajectory with Ap on the opposite side of the planet and Pe a few hundred Km short of the KSC after one go-round. Your catcher could then have a very low-speed rendezvous with the rocket near its Ap, and then have plenty of time to re-orbit while the other rocket re-enters and lands right back at the KSC doorstep. If what you really mean though is total horizontal distance, then both that solution and trying to fly back to the KSC with a plane automatically does more harm than good, but measurement becomes  considerably more tricky. You might resolve this difficulty by keeping the rule as distance from KSC but state as an additional  ground rule that no rocket may travel horizontally further than half way around Kerbin or whatever other body you do this on.

I would also make one more comment abut the bonuses for other bodies. While stetting up your mission on Duna might be a bit more of a hassle than using HyperEdit on Kerbin, it's clear to me right off the bat that pulling this off there would be far, far easier. Between the much lower orbital velocity at 80km on Duna, the 3-fold longer hang time at Ap,  and the much higher margin of error wrt the atmosphere, I would say like ten times easier to be honest. In fact, I wouldn't even consider trying to do this on Kerbin if I could get  a better score for the same distance doing it on Duna. If you want to bring other bodies into it, I would therefore suggest giving penalties rather than bonuses for bodies with less atmo/lower gravity than Kerbin, because those things will really make it a lot easier. Anyway, I think with a few small tweaks this could turn out to be pretty fun.

Quite a wall of text there   The OP actually already addresses both these issues.

Concerning your Duna attempt (you are actually going to attempt this, right?) The OP states "Score for other planets ... required max Ap is atmo height+10k", so your height is 60k at Duna not 80k, yes? I also feel that having to fly the mission including a very high TWR catcher as well as a manned lander will make other planets sufficiently more difficult.  If this proves too easy than I'll edit the rules, but certainly not before any attempts are made, and I won't invalidate any attempts made under existing rules.

Also from the OP, "a more vertical trajectory (more difficult) will score better than a long gentle lob.", which I felt pretty much covered the around the world gliding attempt. Honestly though, I would be interested to see how that worked out, given that control input is forbidden once the vertical trajectory has been set. Maybe a really good designer could make a glider that circumnavigates and comes in close to ksc completely unpiloted, I certainly can't. Would be cool to see.

If it's still unclear from OP and my posted attempt, the challenge is to catch and dock with a ship on an uncontrolled ballistic trajectory before it falls and burns up.

I don't care what happens to the ship after the crew has been saved, but you have to somehow show how far from KSC it landed, either with debris or an intact ship or an F3 screen showing farthest ground distance flown if it's accurate.

TL,DR: Try it.  If the rules don't work for you, show me why and I'll make changes.