Shuttle Challenge v5 - The STS thread [Stock and Mod Friendly] - MAJOR CHALLENGE ANNOUNCEMENT! - 30.3.2020

[zolotiyeruki]

Woohoo!  I got the Eve mission done!  Man, hitting that atmosphere at 4.5km/s is tough.

I don't remember if that screenshot was from one of my earlier, unsuccessful attempts, or from my final success, but it's pretty representative!

Full album here: https://imgur.com/a/r5dANHG?

Edited September 25, 2018 by zolotiyeruki
imgur is borked?

[michal.don]

10 hours ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

I got a busy RL last week but now, I finally had the time to actually fly the next mission, so here is:

I know that feeling, real life cutting in my KSP time.....  

An awesome polar base you have there, sleek deployment method, and an elegant design, extra points for that  I know this mission is quite exhausting, but I hope you had fun doing that, and it wasn't too much of a chore.

Here's your badge, a well-earned one:

9 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

Here is my attempt at bringing an optionnal module to Duna's orbital space station, landing a shuttle on Duna and recover it safely. I threw this mission quickly because I wrongly understood that the rules would allow me to compress Duna 2 and Duna 3 mission. Having already landed Duna 3 I thought that it would be cool to bring a cargo inside Duna 2 instead of just rush the objective.

Sorry for the confusion about the missions, but I had to insist on them being separate ones - if I allowed excessive mission merging, someone would certainly try completing all of the Kerbin missions in one launch, and I do not want to encourage that (even if it would probably be awesome  ).

Yeah, landing in Duna's thin atmsphere is tricky, but it seems you managed quite fine. Also, an engine module on the outpost can surely come in handy

Good mission, here's your badge:

8 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

Last part of Duna's adventures

You mean "last one so far", I hope  We'll be going back to Duna sooner or later  

Interesting lander design. And by intersting, I mean LEM-kind-of-ugly, so thumbs up for NASA-ish approach  And, of course, bonus points for landing the shuttle, too! Well managed Eve visit, too, and an interesting approach by aerobraking the sats into their orbits. So, another Duna badge for you, congrats!

 

5 hours ago, zolotiyeruki said:

Woohoo!  I got the Eve mission done!  Man, hitting that atmosphere at 4.5km/s is tough.

Yup, I burned to death many, many times trying to get that one right, too  Unfortunately, the album link is not working for me. Could you please try to fix it? Thanks!

Michal.don

Edited September 25, 2018 by michal.don

[Kerbolitto]

10 minutes ago, michal.don said:

Sorry for the confusion about the missions, but I had to insist on them being separate ones - if I allowed excessive mission merging, someone would certainly try completing all of the Kerbin missions in one launch, and I do not want to encourage that (even if it would probably be awesome  ).

Yeah, landing in Duna's thin atmsphere is tricky, but it seems you managed quite fine. Also, an engine module on the outpost can surely come in handy

No problem it wasn't a big deal to launch Duna 2 and design a quick module for the station

 

11 minutes ago, michal.don said:

Interesting lander design. And by intersting, I mean LEM-kind-of-ugly, so thumbs up for NASA-ish approach  And, of course, bonus points for landing the shuttle, too! Well managed Eve visit, too, and an interesting approach by aerobraking the sats into their orbits. So, another Duna badge for you, congrats!

Yeah I tried to design something beautifull and failed miserably because this would have not fit with the comsats .. :p Only regret is a slight offset of the capsules in the 1.25 fuel tanks, I saw that too late (wasn't even needed for packaging).

 

Thanks for the badges I'm working on Laythe now, still not sure if I also can try a Jool5 ..!

[4x4cheesecake]

1 hour ago, michal.don said:

An awesome polar base you have there, sleek deployment method, and an elegant design, extra points for that  I know this mission is quite exhausting, but I hope you had fun doing that, and it wasn't too much of a chore.

Thank you and of course I had still fun with the mission, otherwise I wouldn't have done it

[zolotiyeruki]

2 hours ago, michal.don said:

Yup, I burned to death many, many times trying to get that one right, too  Unfortunately, the album link is not working for me. Could you please try to fix it? Thanks!

Michal.don

Hmmm, sorry about that.  Here's another attempt:

https://imgur.com/a/r5dANHG?

[michal.don]

13 minutes ago, zolotiyeruki said:

Hmmm, sorry about that.  Here's another attempt:

Yup, that one works. Looking good, I'd just like to ask for one more specific screenshot - could you please provide one (possibly from the VAB) where I can see the three science experiments? Thanks!

[zolotiyeruki]

1 hour ago, michal.don said:

Yup, that one works. Looking good, I'd just like to ask for one more specific screenshot - could you please provide one (possibly from the VAB) where I can see the three science experiments? Thanks!

One of the screenshots shows the windows for the experiments.  It's this one:

[hoioh]

On 9/25/2018 at 3:34 AM, 4x4cheesecake said:

I didn't even manage to touch the ground without crashing (but I know the bumpy grounds from SSTOs). Right now, I would say that the poor controls are the biggest issue and RCS is almost required...I was just hoping that my big wings will help me more in this situation.

Not quiet sure how I'm going to solve these issues but there are two more missions before I have to care about it and you already provided some good ideas

I had the same problem, I tried to compensate for them every which way, but in the end basically discovered that the speed with which you're coming in is just too high on Duna. The way to proceed therefore is to reduce your speed a LOT in a short period of time without dropping to the ground. My solution was to place some belly thrusters and use those to reduce horizontal and vertical speed. Another way to do it is to land on your tail on Duna, or have a couple reverse thrusters you can ignite just before or after touchdown. The belly thrusters worked best for me and they also work really good on the Mün.

[michal.don]

19 hours ago, zolotiyeruki said:

One of the screenshots shows the windows for the experiments.  It's this one:

Ah, I completely missed the small windows on the left, I'm so used to collecting science with action groups I dod not pay any attention to those.....

In that case, you're the first one to get this new badge, congratulations to you!

Michal.don

[4x4cheesecake]

3 hours ago, hoioh said:

Another way to do it is to land on your tail on Duna, or have a couple reverse thrusters you can ignite just before or after touchdown. The belly thrusters worked best for me and they also work really good on the Mün.

I already have a few vernor engines on my orbiter, IIRC there are 7 just on the belly and yes, they work fine on the Mun...If you have seen in my last mission report how I land on the Mun: I use them there to tip over the orbiter and immidiately switch the direction to slow down the falling speed so the landing gear will not be rammed through the bottom of the orbiter^^
On Duna, landing on the tail is actually the same idea I had after doing these tests...this will require probably more pitch authority than I have right now but 'moar vernors' and/or some assistance from the main engines should do the trick. If this requires more fuel than I'm able to carry with me, I'm also not ashamed to bring a second shuttle to carry some fuel in order to support the main mission. Actually, this can be really cool if add a docking port on the bottom and transfer both shuttles docked 'belly to belly' to Duna
I'll look more into this challenge after doing the third mun and first duna mission
 

[Ozelui]

STS-T4

This took a while, but finally here are the reports for the skylab missions.  

Spoiler

mod list:

Part 1:

Part 2:

 

[zolotiyeruki]

6 hours ago, michal.don said:

Ah, I completely missed the small windows on the left, I'm so used to collecting science with action groups I dod not pay any attention to those.....

Woohoo!  Yeah, I had intended to put them in an action group, but forgot about it until I was halfway to Eve.

[Kerbolitto]

I'm currently flying STS Jool, after finalizing the design of a high energy shuttle to land on Tylo. Hopefully I'll be able to land everywhere ! This will be a very first for me

 

Edited September 27, 2018 by Kerbolitto

[hoioh]

46 minutes ago, Kerbolitto said:

I'm currently flying STS Jool, after finalizing the design of a high energy shuttle to land on Tylo. Hopefully I'll be able to land everywhere ! This will be a very first for me

 

All I can say to this is simply: why?

[Kerbolitto]

1 minute ago, hoioh said:

All I can say to this is simply: why?

Because it's a good opportunity to try Jool 5 challenge at the same time, also because I never landed on anything else than Vall despite having around 2000h ingame :p

[4x4cheesecake]

1 hour ago, Kerbolitto said:

I'm currently flying STS Jool, after finalizing the design of a high energy shuttle to land on Tylo.

You want to land the whole orbiter on tylo? This will require to carry around some drills and an ISRU the whole time Why not a separate lander?

[Kerbolitto]

1 minute ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

You want to land the whole orbiter on tylo? This will require to carry around some drills and an ISRU the whole time Why not a separate lander?

As you can see I sent 2 shuttles, the small one is the standard design but converted as a SSTO to complete STS Jool. It has a long cargo bay holding the crew habitat and the required airplane to explore Laythe.

The other one is a longer version which carry 4 Nukes and 4 Darts to get a high TWR, more fuel storage, but with smaller cargo capacity. Its bay hold the ISRU which I'll use to refuel in Jool's system when needed.

The plan is to explore small moons with the SSTO and the big ones with the HE shuttle, to use its TWR and refuelling capacity . Once its done I'll redock the surface habitat together and deorbit everything on Laythe.

[4x4cheesecake]

1 minute ago, Kerbolitto said:

As you can see I sent 2 shuttles, the small one is the standard design but converted as a SSTO to complete STS Jool. It has a long cargo bay holding the crew habitat and the required airplane to explore Laythe.

The other one is a longer version which carry 4 Nukes and 4 Darts to get a high TWR, more fuel storage, but with smaller cargo capacity. Its bay hold the ISRU which I'll use to refuel in Jool's system when needed.

The plan is to explore small moons with the SSTO and the big ones with the HE shuttle, to use its TWR and refuelling capacity . Once its done I'll redock the surface habitat together and deorbit everything on Laythe.

Sounds interesting. Good luck

[hoioh]

4 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

Because it's a good opportunity to try Jool 5 challenge at the same time, also because I never landed on anything else than Vall despite having around 2000h ingame :p

It was more meant as a question as to why you would build a reverse shuttle? It's just not efficient...

[Kerbolitto]

16 hours ago, hoioh said:

It was more meant as a question as to why you would build a reverse shuttle? It's just not efficient...

Oh this is not a reverse shuttle at all

The Jool5 challenge require only 1 launch to Jool so I docked the 2 shuttles together. The first one on the screenshot is the HighEnergy and it's double Nervas pods are docked this way just to complete the primary injection. Once there both nukes are meant to be docked at the aft of the ship, or inside its cargobay during re-entry, or simply left in orbit while the shuttle land somewhere !

Edited September 28, 2018 by Kerbolitto

[Petrovich]

Just found this challenge, but I love the idea of it!

I was inspired by this Grumman concept using S-IC stage variants: http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=13574

STS-1:

 https://imgur.com/a/6rolcAu

Mods used:

Cormorant Aeronology

Bluedog Design Bureau 

 

[Kerbolitto]

STS Jool / Jool 5

 

I've finally managed to complete my attempt at Jool STS Mission, which I combined with Jool5 Challenge ! This was a first to me because I've only landed on Vall once (one week ago :o) and I'm quite proud of my Artisan shuttle design which proved itself to be very sturdy and adaptative Jool is an amazing system and there's so many possibilities with all those moons ... I'll be back for sure

I decided to launch 2 shuttles to fly this mission.

STS Artisan ST : almost standard DropCargo (with its bay facing the ground) converted as an SSTO. It's probably one of my best design so far, this thing is easy to fly with or without payload and at all fuel levels <3.

STS Artisan HE : modified Artisan, turned into a rocket machine with Lf/Ox fuel tanks, more dV, 0.7TWR, smaller cargo bay. I tried to keep modifications at the minimum so I re-used the wings arrangement and the back end of the original design.

The ground base was split in half to fit into regular cargo bay and let some room to install the exploration plane (WhishPlorer !). The shuttles also hold a relay network which proved to be ineffective. As there was very little room available, I used a probe with 3 88-88 and 2 Ra-2 but the signal from the 88-88 could not be relayed to the RA-2.... =_="

 

I tried not to post tons of pics, don't hesitate to ask if some details are missing. Here's what happenned during those 40 years (almost).

 

Part 1 : Take off, Docking in LKO, Jool injection

 

As you can see, STS HE has 2 double Nervas pods which can be placed front or aft of the shuttle.

 

Spoiler

Jool maneuver : the shuttles were loaded with Lf only to lower weight. Injection was split in 2 burns, the first one (6 minutes) put Ap as high as Mun's orbit.

Second burn :

 

Part 2 : Capturing around Jool, encounter with Pol

 

 

I made a mistake while refuelling at Bop : every tanks were filled up and an excess of Oxidizer almost put an end to the mission during the later developpement.

Because of this, take off was hard to achieve : 2 Nervas were unusable due to the alignement of the shuttles. TWR dropped to 0.105 and weight balloonned up to 234t. !

Spoiler

After a few deep space maneuvers, I managed to get this : the shuttle will capture inside Jool system by flying above Laythe, to get down on Bop. This is not a perfect encounter but dV was still quite high.

Last seconds before landing on Bop to refuel : both ships were docked on the same plane to avoid touchdown on wings

Artisan HE maneuver to Vall : change of plane is around Ap which greatly helped !

Artisan ST maneuver to Pol : same as the other, I tried to change of plane as far as possible from Jool to avoid wasting fuel.

 

Part 3 : Artisan ST flies to Pol !

 

 

It was very cool to visit a new place, I've only saw those spikes on video and the surface looks great

Spoiler

Landing : quite easy on Pol despite the weight of the ship ! (TWR 0.144)

Getting down on Vall after Tylo flyby :

 

Part 4 : Vall fuel-pump

 

 

Many things happenned around Vall. Both shuttles met in low orbit to transfer fuel, then Artisan HE landed using its Darts combined to Nervas. Once topping its tanks, it encountered STS ST again before landing a second time. At this point, STS ST still had tons of useless Ox inside. Once those maneuvers were completed, the two ships departed to Tylo.

Spoiler

STS HE encounter, some LF was needed before attempting to land :

STS HE a few meters above the surface :

STS HE maneuver to Tylo : this was after the 2 refuelling ops

STS ST maneuver to Tylo : it will act as a tanker in elliptical orbit after one Tylo flyby

 

Part 5 : FEAR TYLO

 

Believe it or not but this low pass occured at 1950 m/s. Absolutely not planned

 

Tylo... Tylo took me some time First step was to dock the shuttles using as less dV as possible. Then the landing was hard because of low TWR (0.73). Then rolling take off was harder, took me lots of trials to find a perfect spot to pitch the ship. Then redocking to STS ST was impossible due to very high inclination. Only option after this landing was to re-unite around Laythe using its atmosphere to circularize both Artisans ! In the end I'm happy how things turned out, this was my very first touchdown on Tylo's surface and I learned a lot ! I built STS HE around Tylo's dV / TWR requirements but I somehow forgot that circularizing both ships would cost me a ton...

Spoiler

Capturing Tylo into highly elliptical orbit : I burned many times 2 minutes at Pe to circularize as far as possible.

Finally getting an encounter with STS ST to refuel ! Things would have been easier if I had dock this two around Vall ....

Deorbiting with low TWR :

Final seconds before touchdow, : I litteraly used all the fuel before bouncing on the engines

Take off : took me dozens of trials to get the perfect ramp. Right after lift I pitched the ship at 80° +/-

Due to the ramp location, the shuttle was very inclined .. ! Encounter with STS ST was impossible : /

STS ST maneuver to Laythe : I later added change of planes node. At this point the ship had 610 m/s left

STS HE maneuver to Laythe : 1060 m/s left, that is more than enough *cough*

 

Part 6 : Laythe, at last !

 

 

Finally touching Laythe ! Aerocapture After slowly aerobraking ~15 times the shuttles were able to reunite in low orbit.

Spoiler

Encounter after multiple aerobrakings :

Shuttles stats : not much fuel left

 

Part 7 : Outpost assembly, landing, refuelling ops

 

 

First landing on Laythe I was surprised at how easy it is to fly and get back into orbit from here. Such a beautifull planet.. I deorbited the outpost before the plane so I could finally refill them ! Because the cargo bay is facing downward, I did not want to deploy the radiator through it, so I docked the shuttle to it using the bay doors as landing gears  

Spoiler

Ground base assembly :

Flare before landing :

Outpost operationnal :

 

Part 8 : Take off, deploying WhishPlorer, refuelling again !

 

 

Once STS Artisan ST was available, I took it back into orbit to start the refuelling maneuvers with STS HE 3 successives times. WhishPlorer was deployed during second landing, its not very good at exploring because it will melt if flying for too long, but it's usefull for flyby at mach 4 . I finally managed to get rid of the excessive Oxidizer from Bop after flying 2 times around the base using Rapiers closedcycle, which is very effective.

Spoiler

STS ST ascent profile : absolutely no problem here !

Plane docked to the outpost :

Shuttles docked again after 3rd refuelling : I have many more screenshots on beautifull Laythe but this might be too much ...! This contraption has 2915dV, which is enough.

 

Part 9 : Ending a 40 years mission on Kerbin's surface

 

 

I used a Tylo flyby to eject from Jool, then two Kerbin flyby before finally entering its atmosphere. Getting to Jool and flying all the moons took +/- 4 years. Coming down at Kerbin took 35 !

Spoiler

First maneuver :

Third encounter and aerocapture : final altitude was set at 42 km.

Re-entry speed : as you can see, I'm using STS HE as a tail and throwing it left and right to lower speed. This was so effective that final Ap after aerocapture was at 747km only

STS HE flare : Should have been KSC but the shuttle had an unexpected drag, don't know what happenned oO

STS ST flare next to STS HE :

 

Jool5 flags :

 

edit : this post being quite long and picture heavy, should I make a mission report on a new thread?

Edited September 30, 2018 by Kerbolitto

[sturmhauke]

I've decided to take a crack at this series of challenges. Lots of good stuff already. I'm working on a Buran/Energia style system, with only OMS and jets on the orbiter and all the lift engines on the external boosters. It's not a replica or anything though. I'm using a bunch of mods, notably the entire Near Future suite.

I'm pretty happy with the orbiter so far - I HyperEdited it into orbit to test the OMS, reentry, and landing capabilities, and was able to land on the runway consistently. Anyone have any design tips for the launch vehicle? I mean I know to angle the engines through the CoM, but that changes a lot as the launch progresses. Maybe mount the side booster engines at a different angle from the core engines?

[michal.don]

Sorry for a slight delay in reviewing guys, I should be able to get to your entries tomorrow. I just had a quick look, and it looks there are a few very interesting missions...

Thanks for your patience,

Michal.don

[Kerbolitto]

On 9/30/2018 at 7:12 PM, sturmhauke said:

Anyone have any design tips for the launch vehicle? I mean I know to angle the engines through the CoM, but that changes a lot as the launch progresses. Maybe mount the side booster engines at a different angle from the core engines?

A few quick ideas :

Use control surfaces to minimize the change of attitude of the assembly during first phase of the flight.

Detach more tanks & engines which may allow you to keep CoT in line : it is possible to angle differently each engines of the ascent stage so that each time you stage, everything stay put.

Attach more little tanks (instead of a big S4) one above the other with various priorities of fuel flow.

Edited October 1, 2018 by Kerbolitto