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


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1 hour ago, Noir said:

Been looking at this challenge for a few days now and I just wanted to confirm a few things about it.

Firstly, FAR is allowed? Because I don't think I've seen anyone use FAR for any of their missions.

Second, while the Orbiter has to have crew capacity, is it required to be piloted by a Kerbal, or can the piloting be done remotely/via probe core, with the Kerbals acting solely as passengers? I've seen -maybe- only one other person forgo a dedicated traditional cockpit.

I can answer that, yes and yes you need a pilot

Any mods that don't make the game unneccisarily easy are allowed

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19 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

Building a shuttle is hard enough with stock aero. Attempting one in FAR does not sound remotely fun to me. Maybe once I figure it out more.

Slap some wings on a brick and you're pretty much done. My BAD-T IV entry was influenced by my shuttle design.

16 minutes ago, hoioh said:

I can answer that, yes and yes you need a pilot

Thank you!

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11 hours ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

Am I allowed to perform a flyby of Eve before I actually perform the aerobreak and still qualify for the commander badge?

As long as you aerobrake on the second pass of Eve, yes.

 

2 hours ago, Noir said:

Firstly, FAR is allowed? Because I don't think I've seen anyone use FAR for any of their missions.

Second, while the Orbiter has to have crew capacity, is it required to be piloted by a Kerbal, or can the piloting be done remotely/via probe core, with the Kerbals acting solely as passengers? I've seen -maybe- only one other person forgo a dedicated traditional cockpit.

Welcome to the challenge!

Yes, FAR is allowed, if you want to make your life hard, you can go for it :D

And no - the shuttle doesn't have to be piloted by a kerbal, but from my experience, I would strongly reccomend it to be able to be controlled localy - signal blackouts can complicate your life a lot :) 

 

Michal.don

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1 minute ago, michal.don said:

Yes, FAR is allowed, if you want to make your life hard, you can go for it :D

And no - the shuttle doesn't have to be piloted by a kerbal, but from my experience, I would strongly reccomend it to be able to be controlled localy - signal blackouts can complicate your life a lot :) 

Thank you! Does that mean CommNet needs to be enabled?

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Just now, Noir said:

Thank you! Does that mean CommNet needs to be enabled?

Oh, now that you asked, I realised that there are no specific rules about CommNet :) So you might do just fine without local control after all ;) 

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3 hours ago, Laie said:

Just out of curiosity, how did you put the planes there?

2 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

Probably Vessel Mover or Hyperedit.

Nope.
I just spawned the orbiter on the runway and drove down to the SPH using the main engines or the OMS. RCS to drive backwards and do the fine adjustments. Then I spawned the next orbiter and proceeded as before ;) All three orbiter got a steerable frontwheel, so it wasn't too hard.
Took me ~20min to setup everything.

1 hour ago, michal.don said:

As long as you aerobrake on the second pass of Eve, yes. 

Funny thing: When I tried this maneuver, I accidentally found the perfect altitude and angle for the aerobreak and I was able to do it on the first encounter as well.
On my way back to Kerbin, I almost got the chance to do something similar and I got the chance to set up an maneuver to get captured by the Mun which also would put me in a almost perfectly equatorial orbit around Kerbin. Unfortunately, the trajectory would not cross Kerbins atmosphere and the remaining and I there is not enough dV remaining to perform a second burn and actually land.

Got a new problem though...since I record all my flights so I can create screenshots after the mission is done: It looks like the file got corrupted this time and I got a 27GB video which cannot be played :/

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16 minutes ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

Got a new problem though...since I record all my flights so I can create screenshots after the mission is done: It looks like the file got corrupted this time and I got a 27GB video which cannot be played

Wow. That sucks, big time... So you lost all the recordings and screenshot material from the whole mission?

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41 minutes ago, michal.don said:

Wow. That sucks, big time... So you lost all the recordings and screenshot material from the whole mission?

Everything from arriving at Eve to the aerobreak back at Kerbin, so yeah, basically the whole mission :o
I'll try to repair it but since it is such a huge file, re-doing the mission is probably faster (and I have a savegame just after entering the SOI of Eve).

I'm playing in window mode and after the transfer to Eve, I've recognized that I'm recording the whole screen and not just the game, so I stopped it, changed the settings and started the recording again. I guess, something went wrong there....

edit: The repaired video misses a lot of frames so the whole video shrunk down from ~3h to 48min. It doesn't even contain the part where my probe flew below 60km.

Well, back to the command seat....

Edited by 4x4cheesecake
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So, after basically doing this mission twice, here is:

EVE STS - 1

xC0qwcz.png

This mission is brutal :o My first try on this was back in november but today, I finally finished it. It was the first mission for my new shuttle and it performed very well. There are still some flaws I've noticed during the flight, but they are  easy to fix ;) Not quiet sure though why the shock cones during reentry looks so strange...
@FleshJeb I promised to ping you as soon as I've done this mission because you helped me out with a great idea to solve the heat problem during the aerobreak but unfortunately, it didn't work well enough. I've tried it many times and the selfmade radiator allowed me to fly at a lower altitude though the atmosphere of Eve but I wasn't able to get captured. I want to thank you (again) anyway and I hope you enjoy my mission report, even though it is a totally different shuttle which does not utilize a radiator^^
Everyone who doesn't know about the selfmade radiator yet, take a look here ;)

Spoiler

Lift-off!
Lngo6Ae.jpg

Booster separation
1MwAsGa.jpg

Forgot some separatrons on the ET....
nf4j3nY.jpg

Had to split the transfer burn into three smaller burns
rwBkkeC.jpg

See you soon Kerbin
5uYo8Kp.jpg

Trajectory to Eve after the mid-course correction:
rufJ3GA.jpg

Hello Eve
ewBeeAv.jpg

Aerobreaking into orbit
Jhs4NB5.jpg

I hasd to perform a bunch of aerobreaks to lower my Ap, but heating is no longer an issue as soon as you got captured, so I'll skip through this and continue with the circularization maneuver:
lgY5Qbq.jpg

Deploying the probe
1RL8pse.jpg

The engine will fire during the flight through the atmosphere to keep the Ap stable. Also, these are the three experiments on board
VZW4wEL.jpg

A spoiler in a spoiler just to show the experiments running below 60km altitude:
 

Spoiler

pOLlyjW.jpg

iJshrt8.jpg

TY37eze.jpg

Trensfering the results to a science container
T6D1blJ.jpg

After leaving the atmosphere again, we can remove the protective shell of the probe
JfLBumG.jpg

The core of the probe is very light so a little bit of monoprop and a few RCS thrusters are fine to rendevouz the orbiter
3RWRzOW.jpg

Docked back to the orbiter
fnd3l4n.jpg

Had to split the transfer burn again, this is the second and final maneuver
3j0Vw13.jpg

Performing the burn
xiFYbUE.jpg

Trajectory back to Kerbin after a mid-course correction
vp2fsaE.jpg

I call it a 'drifting aerobreak' :D Trying to reduce the inclination a bit
4b9pELe.jpg

After two more flights through the atmosphere, the inclination is still bad but the timing looks fine...
1ggVDx8.jpg

Overshot the KSC on purpose so we can glide to the runway
asRcYGn.jpg

aligning the orbiter
kO5XB3Y.jpg

Save back at the KSC :)
OOzK4Vb.jpg

 

A small bonus from my first, messed up landing which resulted in a few nice shots ;)

Spoiler

c9aMcmH.png

lnS9m26.png

mYb8aU7.png

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/cUrk9Y4

I totally forgot about my additional, not required payload (not shown above but in the album)...the CommSats will not stay in the high elliptical orbit but I have to adjust them tomorrow^^

Edited by 4x4cheesecake
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Been a while since I used FAR, but I don't think it would make a shuttle that much more difficult. I made a hybrid shuttle/SSTO in FAR a while back, but it did vertical landings so not eligible here. I reckon landing speed for a rolling landing will be the major nuisance with FAR, but then the real Space Shuttle landed fast too.

Now SSTOs, those I find a complete pig in FAR, because the lift shifts around with Mach number messing up your plane's balance. In real life Concorde countered this by pumping fuel around.

Edited by cantab
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STS-4/4R completed, in a two-part mission.

STS-4 was last week, and appropriately enough, suffered a mishap during the launch (fairing took out the vertical tail fin), so it was unable to return.  I used the engines to maneuver into a high orbit (>350 km), inclined at slightly less thank 20 degrees (19.570).  I was then haunted by the extremely bad placement and balancing of the RCS thrusters on the rescue vessel, to the point that I stopped and continued last night (a week later).

STS-4R went off last night, after rebalancing the RCS on the shuttle.  The shuttles have an extendable docking port in the bay, and my intention was to dock them together.  If I had only wanted to do an EVA rescue, I could have done that last week (actually started to do that, but stopped for various reasons)

STS-4R got off to a rocky start, some game issues forced a restart, as well as my fat fingers messing up on the keyboard.  But the final mission wasn't too bad, although the docking isn't anything to write home about, it did work.

My reentry and landings are getting better.  I only needed the engines because I misjudged my altitude and needed a boost of speed for about 10 seconds just before landing (so I wouldn't stall out).

One minor quibble with the rules. 

Spoiler

I read and verified that they didn't say anything about not transferring fuel from one shuttle to the other, but @4x4cheesecake told me during the stream that you would object to that (I was transferring Monoprop), so I reverted to before the transfer.  If you don't want to allow fuel transfer, then please update the rules to say so, if for a specific mission, then update that mission's rules.

On to the show.

Complete video of both missions here: 

Spoiler

 

STS-4 Launch

Spoiler

4FPUhk2.png

JUbREom.png

aI3zFfA.png

 

The accident:

Spoiler

1xztkqg.png

0M0wrrf.png

 

 

The rescue mission, STS-4R

Spoiler

huijFWL.png

8dKYiFX.png

TG7jsm4.png

 

 

Orbital Maneuvers

Spoiler

x6bT09K.png

2dKiRHE.png

d9LNVFt.png

 

 

The two docked shuttles

Spoiler

qQhMcvM.png

Reentry & landing

Spoiler

gDFsujr.png

cVUR5dZ.png

uM8K2OL.png

 

Post-mission Portraits

Spoiler

u4nqthc.png

mnBllMS.png

 

Edited by linuxgurugamer
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On 1/20/2019 at 7:29 PM, 4x4cheesecake said:

EVE STS - 1

Yes, the mission is difficult. And it's supposed to be :) But despite the video issues, you tackled it succesfully - good job! So another badge for you, congratulations:

quBO1GE.png?2

 

21 hours ago, JacobTheFoxx said:

Man I've missed it here. I've simply not had enough time to be playing KSP recently, but hopefully I should be able to do STS-3 by this week, if not then next week.

Yes, real life has a tendency of interfering with KSP, that's the way it unfortunately is... :) Welcome back!

 

20 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

STS-4/4R completed, in a two-part mission.

Nice rescue mission!

Your reentries are indeed getting very precise, I think that once you manage to hit the KSC from inclined obit, you pretty much don't need the jets anymore, because you can land the thing from wherever it might be, so very good job on your part! About the resource transfer in this mission - to be honest, I did not specify that in the rules, because I did not think anybody would need it - once you have docked the shuttles, you only need a bit of fuel for a short deorbit burn, but I'll mention it in the OP, thanks for your observation.

Anyway, very well flown mission on your part, so another badge for you:

F2x1Z9Q.jpg?1

And I'm already curious about the space station ;)

 

Michal.don

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51 minutes ago, michal.don said:

So another badge for you, congratulations:

Thank you :)

Now the last one to go is Jool/Laythe....most of the preparations are already done for weeks but I'm still not quiet sure if I want build something really, really big for the transfers or go with with a more elegant solution^^

Also, I may want to leave a little extra payload to mark the last mission of the challenge ;)

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17 minutes ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

Also, I may want to leave a little extra payload to mark the last mission of the challenge ;)

Last mission so far ;)  I know I don't produce the new missions as fast as some of you would like, but some new missions are definitely coming... :) 

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5 hours ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

Now the last one to go is Jool/Laythe....most of the preparations are already done for weeks but I'm still not quiet sure if I want build something really, really big for the transfers or go with with a more elegant solution^^

As you may remember on my attempt, I had to put a lot of solid boosters because I went a bit overboard with the probe .. It's hard to get 2k m/s from those things ! :/

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26 minutes ago, Kerbolitto said:

As you may remember on my attempt, I had to put a lot of solid boosters because I went a bit overboard with the probe .. It's hard to get 2k m/s from those things ! :/

Are you talking about the Cassini-Huygens probe? This one is done already ;)

It is the Jool STS - 1 which is missing. The atmospheric exploration vehicle and the ore mining outpost are build and packed into the cargo bay and I could send a second shuttle to carry some fuel or a rover so I can dock the 'main' orbiter to the mining outpost to refuel...but I want to do something special to honor this great challenge which maybe even end up beeing harder than the actual mission xD

Have to try some stuff :)

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12 hours ago, michal.don said:

Wow, looking great! Which mod does that, and what is all added to KSC grounds?

KSC Extended/Tundra Space Center adding more VAB's, helipads, launch centers based on real ones, and other buildings.

Oh and SpaceX landing pads. (And trees causing the weird shadows).

Full credit to @damonvv for the mod. 

Also, I got my missions done!

Mission 5 https://imgur.com/a/R8l97VP

Mission 6 https://imgur.com/a/Ajs7dVH

Mission 7 https://imgur.com/a/aY4epaW

Mission 8 https://imgur.com/a/qYZcNfP

Will be going on hiatus for a while for school. Will probably do a Jool 5 Next so I will see you guys later..

Soon TM .......

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