Put a station into orbit using 1 reusable rocket

[Garrett Kerman]

I'm not sure if this has been said before, but I challenge YOU to put a station into orbit with a reusable rocket.

Min. requirements for station: 1 crew pod, 2 or more science experiments, 2 solar panels, habitation compartment, crew return lander, and a docking port. Min Kerbals: 2

That too easy for you? If it is, you're much better that me. For those who can, I present the ULTRA MEGA DELUXE CHALLENGE! 

Min. requirements: 2 crew pods, 6 or more science experiments, 8 solar panels, 2 habitation compartments, 2 crew return landers, 2 docking ports, a science processing compartment, and any lander can. Min Kerbals: 6

If you want an even bigger challenge, bring it up using a SSTO (that may be easier IDK).

Good luck! I would love to see the crazy stations you can make!

PLEASE include pictures or a video of your feat. (If you don't know how to do that, I'm not the one to ask).

*Return landers must be able to return ALL crew safely to Kerbin.*

**Mods allowed (to a reasonable extent).

(by return lander I mean a capsule that can return the crew to Kerbin)

///SCORING///

STATION

5- Meets most requirements

10- Meets all requirements 

ROCKET

10- 80-89% reusable 

15- 90-99% reusable 

20- 100% reusable (Farings and 1 decoupler permitted)

20- SSTO used 

30- Spacex landing (rocketed landing, no chutes)

50- landing on top of VAB

75- Above done Spacex style

Add 15 for precision landing near KSC. (Not for last 2)

WEIGHT

Devide tonnage of station by 1000 to get score

Current winners:

1. @Kergarin with 92 pts.

2. @Zamolxes77 with 87 pts.

3. @Adelaar with 57 pts.

4.

5.

More info needed

Tonnage: @Foxster

 

Edited August 7, 2016 by Garrett Kramme
3rd place

[InfiniteAtom]

1 hour ago, Garrett Kramme said:

I'm not sure if this has been said before, but I challenge YOU to put a station into orbit with a reusable rocket.

Min. requirements for station: 1 crew pod, 2 or more science experiments, 2 solar panels, habitation compartment, crew return lander, and a docking port. Min Kerbals: 2

That too easy for you? If it is, you're much better that me. For those who can, I present the ULTRA MEGA DELUXE CHALLENGE! 

Min. requirements: 2 crew pods, 6 or more science experiments, 8 solar panels, 2 habitation compartments, 2 crew return landers, 2 docking ports, a science processing compartment, and any lander can. Min Kerbals: 6

If you want an even bigger challenge, bring it up using a SSTO (that may be easier IDK).

Good luck! I would love to see the crazy stations you can make!

How much of the rocket has to be reusable?

1 hour ago, Garrett Kramme said:

I'm not sure if this has been said before, but I challenge YOU to put a station into orbit with a reusable rocket.

Min. requirements for station: 1 crew pod, 2 or more science experiments, 2 solar panels, habitation compartment, crew return lander, and a docking port. Min Kerbals: 2

That too easy for you? If it is, you're much better that me. For those who can, I present the ULTRA MEGA DELUXE CHALLENGE! 

Min. requirements: 2 crew pods, 6 or more science experiments, 8 solar panels, 2 habitation compartments, 2 crew return landers, 2 docking ports, a science processing compartment, and any lander can. Min Kerbals: 6

If you want an even bigger challenge, bring it up using a SSTO (that may be easier IDK).

Good luck! I would love to see the crazy stations you can make!

Crew return lander? Does it have to be a lander like one for the mun or can it be a capsule that re-enters kerbin's atmosphere and splashes down safely? Also, may we use mods to a reasonable extent?

[Garrett Kerman]

The first stage, and any other stages except the orbital stage should be reusable. By return lander I mean a capsule that can be used to return the whole crew back to Kerbin. Mods are OK.

[Adelaar]

Well, that wasn't too hard.

I've taken on the hard variant, with the link to the imgur album here.

Some screenshots of the flight:

Leaving the atmosphere:

In orbit, science station:

Orbit displayed in upper left corner, approx orbit: 125 km

Undocked:

Looking good on the descent to KSC:

Well that's going to be a tricky recovery location, but home is home...

 

 

 

[InfiniteAtom]

On 7/31/2016 at 2:50 PM, Garrett Kramme said:

The first stage, and any other stages except the orbital stage should be reusable. By return lander I mean a capsule that can be used to return the whole crew back to Kerbin. Mods are OK.

Does the orbital stage include stages used after i have went over 36km high?

[Mister Kerman]

It's got a seperator on it. I think that alone is grounds for disqualification unfortunately. Nice simple rocket though.

[Garrett Kerman]

On August 1, 2016 at 4:01 PM, InfiniteAtom said:

Does the orbital stage include stages used after i have went over 36km high?

No, it means the stage that pushes the station into it's final orbit. I recommend trying to reuse all stages if possible.

 

4 hours ago, Mister Kerman said:

It's got a seperator on it. I think that alone is grounds for disqualification unfortunately. Nice simple rocket though.

I think the seperator is OK. I would understand ditching a few parts along the way. If you can reuse it all, moar points to you.

[Kerbinchaser]

I'll try this. 

[MarvinKitFox]

7 hours ago, Mister Kerman said:

It's got a seperator on it. I think that alone is grounds for disqualification unfortunately. Nice simple rocket though.

If you are going to complain about the seperator, then you will want to ban the use of fairings too, eh? After all, they cannot be re-used, the fairing bits fall off.

[Foxster]

I need some clarification please...

ULTRA MEGA DELUXE CHALLENGE!  Min. requirements:

2 crew pods - what parts count as a crew pod?

6 or more science experiments - OK

8 solar panels - OK

2 habitation compartments - what parts count as a habitation compartment?

2 crew return landers - OK, think I've got this one, 2 small craft capable of getting all the crew home 

2 docking ports - OK

a science processing compartment - What is this, an MPL?

any lander can - what parts count as a lander can (and why is this included anyway)?

Min Kerbals: 6 - OK

There seems to be some overlap possible between "any lander can", "2 crew pods", and "2 crew return landers". Do these all have to be separate?

Edited August 3, 2016 by Foxster

[Mister Kerman]

 

6 hours ago, MarvinKitFox said:

If you are going to complain about the seperator, then you will want to ban the use of fairings too, eh? After all, they cannot be re-used, the fairing bits fall off.

I'd appreciate it if you weren't so defensive. I liked his rocket. I just feel in a challenge to build a 100 percent reusable rocket, he could have maybe used a decoupler instead.

[Foxster]

Here's my SSTO attempt...

(Craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sk7x4t17gj8b67c/Space station delivery 8.craft?dl=0)

Edited August 3, 2016 by Foxster

[Mister Kerman]

Aw dude nice SSTO. Having trouble wrapping my head around the eacape pods though.

[Foxster]

38 minutes ago, Mister Kerman said:

Aw dude nice SSTO. Having trouble wrapping my head around the eacape pods though.

Does this help?...

 

The 6 crew transfer to the cabins and capsules at the rear, they undock, de-orbit and land. 

Edited August 3, 2016 by Foxster

[Mister Kerman]

Yes. Very much lol. I thought the habs were escape pods as well.

[Adelaar]

Everything can be an escapepod if you look through a kerbal's eyes 

[Bev7787]

Mind if I actually reuse the rocket? Like, don't recover to VAB kind

[Garrett Kerman]

Not at all! That would be a cool challenge.

[Zamolxes77]

What exactly do you count as "one reusable rocket" ? Main stage to be reusable ? One rocket engine for main stage? One main stage with 50 engines, will that still count, cause that's super easy. LOL I'm building all my rockets like this: main stage reusable, flies all way to orbit, detaches then lands at KSC, while the rest of the thing is payload. But a little earlier you disqualified a guy for using a staging ring ? So how you separate the space station from return stage, has to be through docking ports?

[luizopiloto]

Does it need to be done in one launch? Because I assemble stations in orbit using SSTOs for a long time...

Edited August 4, 2016 by luizopiloto

[Mister Kerman]

3 hours ago, Zamolxes77 said:

What exactly do you count as "one reusable rocket" ? Main stage to be reusable ? One rocket engine for main stage? One main stage with 50 engines, will that still count, cause that's super easy. LOL I'm building all my rockets like this: main stage reusable, flies all way to orbit, detaches then lands at KSC, while the rest of the thing is payload. But a little earlier you disqualified a guy for using a staging ring ? So how you separate the space station from return stage, has to be through docking ports?

No one was disqualified; in fact the creator of the thread said rockets that aren't 100 percent reusable are totally fine. I was being presumptuous given the nature of the usual strict guidelines for challenge threads in KSP.

If you wanted to seperate the station through staging and want to keep the reusable stage in one piece, I would suggest a normal decoupler. (I've always hated space debris and actually never really grasped the purpose of a seperator, unless going for a seperation of a rover or something where you would like to shear the detached part off a larger craft and not leave any indication anything was ever attached in the first place.)

[Garrett Kerman]

5 hours ago, luizopiloto said:

Does it need to be done in one launch? Because I assemble stations in orbit using SSTOs for a long time...

No, go on ahead! All that really matters is that you get the station core into orbit with the requirements. Then you can add all you like. If those are reusable, then more points to you!

[Kergarin]

Interesting challenge. 

 

I did something like this a while ago.
Using the shown SSTO to bring up this station in one Piece.

http://imgur.com/a/RhetN

100% reusable, 100% stock. Even the station is made to be recoverable.
 

What do I have to change to make it fit?
-2 return landers
-what do you mean @Garrett Kramme by "2 crew pods" and "any lander can"?

 

 

 

Here's something else I did a while ago. What if the station itself is the reusable rocket? 

http://m.imgur.com/a/AH5Z7

Edited August 5, 2016 by Kergarin

[Zamolxes77]

Ok, as I mentioned before, I build these kind of rockets from the start. In every KSP career, if you manage to recover all your stages, without using mods, well you waste very little cash and advance faster, as you take less and less contracts, game becomes a bit LESS grindy. Only cash you actually spend is on fuel itself gets wasted.

My stages are build in classes, each one is rated for certain lift capacity. As I unlock technology in the tree, these models get updated with better engines, pods, reaction control, batteries, etc. The early technology classes are very creative, with multiple engines and in all cases I prefer to add SRB's to any design, since they're very cheap and effective. Anyway, with minimum redesign, they can be made to be 100% reusable, by ditching the SRB's and adding some extra fuel. The resulting vehicles are a bit less nimble and weigh a bit more, smaller TWR but not by much. 

As the technology advances, I add more and more classes, depending the lift capacity I need. The latest I built I think is rated at 28 tons lift capacity, sadly is buried between the multiple .craft saves I have in my regular stock play and would not qualify for your challenge, as it sheds 4 SRB's and 2 orange tanks during ascent. The design could be modified off course, but it becomes too inefficient in my opinion. The extra fuel you would burn to put in orbit the additional mass of empty tanks, is greater than the value of shed SRB's and tanks, so you end up losing MORE money than dumping those assemblies !

Each of the following designs are autonomous, they take the specified load to a 75/75 LKO and have sufficient fuel to land back at KSC, in water, or on the ground. The quantity of parachutes is tailored for each craft, to give it less than 6 m/s of descent, when fully deployed.

<note> I just realized my Engineer was set for values on the Mun, not atmospheric Kerbin when taking the screenshots, that's why the values for TWR and dV might seem a bit too high, so please ignore the KerEngineer window, values are not correct.

Here's class 1, a lifter rated at 3 tons:

Class two, a 12 ton lifter:

This class I use the most, and is borderline in efficiency, is one of the classes I prefer to replace the additional tanks with SRB's, as the launch becomes cheaper for actually wasting tanks ! Here it is in my favorite form:

Class 3, a 22 ton lifter. At this stage, is way cheaper to ditch the tanks and SRB's, than paying in price in fuel to get everything to LKO, so I didn't even bothered to redesign it. I believe at about this stage, it becomes more profitable to either dump some mass, or recreate the lift body into an SSTO. Its all about staying profitable, as little cash wasted as possible !

While Engineer lists only 2,692 dV for Kerbin atmospheric flight, its wrong, the mod is notoriously faulty when dealing with stages that shed mass. The mass in the fairing, a nuclear TUG, weighs 16 tons dry mass, and this lifter is being able to put it into 80/80 LKO while having around 500 m/s dV remaining in tanks, for landing AND boosting the payload on higher orbit.

<update>

Here's class 4, a 40 ton Lifter, built with the rules of this challenge in mind. The Nuclear Tug on top is filled with fuel, and has a wet mass of 35 tons. As you can see it has more than enough dV to make LKO and circularize. I also use a trick: normally, I would build the rocket with all tanks filled, but when it comes to launch, I take out payload's fuel and cut the Monoprop mass in half, to get a better TWR. Once in orbit, payload's tanks get filled to the brim, the rest gets brought down, or used to boost it to a higher orbit. This vehicle only needs about 300 units of fuel + corresponding oxidizer to land from a 75/75 orbit.

Six Vector engines, one mainsail, 78 radial parachutes, 6 XL chutes and 24 drogues ensure this baby has a smooth sailing up and light as a feather on the return.

Edited August 5, 2016 by Zamolxes77

[Garrett Kerman]

3 hours ago, Zamolxes77 said:

 

Class 3, a 22 ton lifter. At this stage, is way cheaper to ditch the tanks and SRB's, than paying in price in fuel to get everything to LKO, so I didn't even bothered to redesign it.

Great ships! I really like the fact that you have different lifters for different masses. One question though, can you recover the SRBs? You're in first place otherwise!

Edited August 5, 2016 by Garrett Kramme