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

[Stariy_Yevrey]

STS - 3: https://imgur.com/a/F9NffX7

[Kerbolitto]

7 hours ago, Stariy_Yevrey said:

And yeah, I didn't land it on a first try. There were a lot of attempts.

What happenned during landing ?

[Stariy_Yevrey]

@Kerbolitto 

Explosions. Even with fully fueled rear tank shuttle was still nose heavy. So it was hard to land at very low vertical speed ( otherwise, the runway would blow up).

Edited May 13, 2019 by Stariy_Yevrey
mistake

[Kerbolitto]

1 minute ago, Stariy_Yevrey said:

@Kerbolitto 

Explosions. Even with fully fueld rear tank shuttle was still nose heavy. So it was hard to land at very low vertical speed ( otherwise, the runway would blow up).

If I may, I'd say that you might need more than a regular shuttle wing. Maybe your spacecraft is sinking at low speed due to insufficient l/d ratio, also did you tune your control surfaces so they don't interfere into each other ? I found out that inclined stabilators can sometimes cause troubles if they are activated by different inputs (say yaw & roll).

[Stariy_Yevrey]

@Kerbolitto

Control surfaces are ok. Stabilators work only for pitch. 

4 minutes ago, Kerbolitto said:

Maybe your spacecraft is sinking at low speed due to insufficient l/d ratio

With that mass and balance it starts to sink at 120-130 m/s. And I coldn't land with significantly greater speeds because then it would just roll out from runway ( that actually happend during second attempt. Everything was ok except that shuttle stopped only when it had dived into the water). I think that the best solution is just not try to recover 40 tons from orbit with that shuttle. 

[Kerbolitto]

14 minutes ago, Stariy_Yevrey said:

With that mass and balance it starts to sink at 120-130 m/s. And I coldn't land with significantly greater speeds because then it would just roll out from runway ( that actually happend during second attempt. Everything was ok except that shuttle stopped only when it had dived into the water). I think that the best solution is just not try to recover 40 tons from orbit with that shuttle. 

Those speeds looks ok ! You could try to put another set of heavy landing wheels at the very back of the shuttle so you don't have to land perfectly flat, and that's even more braking power.

I designed my shuttle with the main goal of landing heavy payloads and the only way to achieve that was to use large swept wings, otherwise the mass would mess up too much if I'd use a shuttle-like arrangement, and the craft would sink because it lacked maneuvrability. That's a compromise : /

[Stariy_Yevrey]

@Kerbolitto

I designed my shuttle to be cheap LKO transport (cheap relative to the "real shuttle-like" designes), other goal was to have low part count (not sacrificing aesthetics, though). I compromised with returning payload and dV ( and I'm absolutely ok with returning payload). My shuttle can't really go furher than LKO, STS-2a and even STS - 3 were kinda on it's limit. I think I won't go beyond Kerbin missions, cause it would recuire designing completely new shuttle.

Btw, there is another design:

Spoiler

But i dropped it cause there just was too much parts. And it actually had even less dV...

Edited May 13, 2019 by Stariy_Yevrey

[Kerbolitto]

2 minutes ago, Stariy_Yevrey said:

@Kerbolitto

I designed my shuttle to be cheap LKO transport (cheap relative to the "real shuttle-like" designes), other goal was to have low part count (not sacrificing aesthetics, though). I compromised with returning payload and dV ( and I'm absolutely ok with returning payload). My shuttle can't really go furher than LKO, STS-2a and even STS - 3 were kinda on it's limit. I think I won't go beyond Kerbin missions, cause it would recuire designing completely new shuttle.

Btw, the is another design:

But i dropped it cause there just was too much parts. And it actually had even less dV...

Nice wings ! And yes its hard to assemble something that would be good at everything .. I had to put 2 canards on mine, but I wanted it to be easy to fly and do every STS missions from the star, regardless of the weight of the payloads or dV requirements. I think it's almost impossible to design a long shuttle with vast cargo volume,  good dV & decent TWR, and be able to land / take off at every level of fuel & payload without using plane wings : /

[Stariy_Yevrey]

@Kerbolitto 

I think that if you want to build shuttle, that would be perfect in every way - you better go with SSTO instead 

 

[4x4cheesecake]

10 hours ago, Stariy_Yevrey said:

With that mass and balance it starts to sink at 120-130 m/s. And I coldn't land with significantly greater speeds because then it would just roll out from runway ( that actually happend during second attempt.

Well, you can use a regular chute instead of a drogue chute to prevent rolling of the runway

My "main" shuttle is designed to carry a 50t payload to the surface of the mun and back to kerbin. There is almost no fuel safety margin for such a big payload and I don't have any reason to do such a mission but it works^^ Anyway, to slow down the whole thing, it requires at least 2 drogue- and 1 regular chute.

10 hours ago, Stariy_Yevrey said:

Btw, there is another design:

Oh, that's beautiful Really sad you had to drop it...how many parts did you use?

10 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

I think it's almost impossible to design a long shuttle with vast cargo volume,  good dV & decent TWR, and be able to land / take off at every level of fuel & payload without using plane wings : /

What are plane wings by your definition? I consider every wing part which got a heat tolerance >2000 to be a spaceplane/shuttle wing since these are capable to survice a reentry.

 

12 hours ago, Stariy_Yevrey said:

STS - 3: https://imgur.com/a/F9NffX7

This is a well designed telescope and some really cool looking MMUs, like big jetpacks Looks just as easy as the previous missions, even the landing from an inclined orbit...have you done this before?

Congratulation to your new badge

[Stariy_Yevrey]

@4x4cheesecake

7 hours ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

how many parts did you use?

Not really that much. Orbiter had around 200 parts, but It already was a significant hit to performance. Especially when I was assembling space station.

7 hours ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

even the landing from an inclined orbit...have you done this before?

Not sure about landings from incilnations close to 30, but I did previously land from polar orbit.

Spoiler

I launched 2 heavy coommunicational sattelites to a polar orbit between STS - 2b and STS-3.

 

[Kerbolitto]

11 hours ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

What are plane wings by your definition? I consider every wing part which got a heat tolerance >2000 to be a spaceplane/shuttle wing since these are capable to survice a reentry.

I meant a conventionnal wing arrangement such as airliners, with center of mass / lift near the middle of the fuselage, so the flight characteristics don't vary too much due to the payload of fuel quantities.

Edited May 14, 2019 by Kerbolitto

[Stariy_Yevrey]

STS - 4/4R: https://imgur.com/a/szHGT2r

[4x4cheesecake]

2 hours ago, Stariy_Yevrey said:

STS - 4/4R: https://imgur.com/a/szHGT2r

Nice mission and a perfectly messed up booster separation
Separatrons on the wrong side is actually something which can happen fairly easy by accident^^

Quote

By the way, can someone suggest a good name for my shuttle? Cause it is weird that I have already flown 8 missions with shuttle, named by random taps on keyboard...

I call my shuttles still "The first one", "The big one" and "The boxwinged one"...so yeah...I'm not very creative when it comes to names but probably one of the other shuttle pilots got an idea

Anyway, conratulations to your new badge

[sturmhauke]

I tend to use bird names for my shuttles and spaceplanes.

[Kerbolitto]

Wilbur ? Orville ? xD

[Stariy_Yevrey]

@Kerbolitto

Wilbur souds cool.

[Rover 6428]

Sounds cool. Can I participate? If yes, than I am going to build a fully reusable, two stage Buran/Shuttle system.

[4x4cheesecake]

38 minutes ago, Rover 6428 said:

Sounds cool. Can I participate? If yes, than I am going to build a fully reusable, two stage Buran/Shuttle system.

Of course, everyone is allowed to participate

[Rover 6428]

1 minute ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

Of course, everyone is allowed to participate

Ok, I will start building in a weeks time (when I will get back)

[sturmhauke]

If you get stuck on your Buran design, we've talked about it at some length in this thread. You can do a search if you're interested.

[linuxgurugamer]

The intrepid kerbals at the KSP have done it again.  Using their newest design, the Beluga, they have completed the next series of missions, MUN-STS-5-7.

My shuttle designs are getting better.  All three missions were done using almost identical shuttles;  the first one didn't have any solar panels or  extra batteries, so it had a bit of a time returning.  Of course, after adding those to the second and third shuttles, it wasn't needed.

Anyway, on to the news report:

Mun-STS-5 went off without any significant issues.  It ran out of power on the way home, had to nurse the engines to generate enough power to maneuver.  Other than that, a very smooth flight and landing

Spoiler

 

 

Mun-STS-6 was a very smooth flight.  Rendezvous was not difficult (other than going in the wrong direction initally), and maneuvering the module to dock with the first one went very smoothly.  We had to deorbit the external tank around the Mun before returning home to clean up after ourselves (no space junk)

Spoiler

Continued in next video

Spoiler

Mun-STS-7 was a bit trickier, due to the tight packing of the cargo bay, and the pilot forgetting to enable the RCS thrusters in the MMU.  But it was eventually captured and docked, but not without a little damage, 4 solar panels were broken during one of the capture attempts

The second module went much easier, and the station was finished and fully active.

Return home was smooth, a perfect landing at the KSC and a nice picture of all three shuttles lined up in front of the hanger

The following video shows the end of Mun-STS-6 and the complete Mun-STS-7

 

The three shuttles at the end of the mission:

 

The Space Station LOP-G:

Edited May 20, 2019 by linuxgurugamer

[4x4cheesecake]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

The intrepid kerbals at the KSP have done it again.  Using their newest design, the Beluga, they have completed the next series of missions, MUN-STS-5-7

Well done, lgg

Indeed, your shuttle designs are improving overtime, same applies to your docking skills. Just look back at the first space station, build during (Kerbin) STS - 5-8. You ran out of mono prop a few times and docking a huge station module with a small tug was almost impossible but this time, everything went almost perfect

Also, the beluga parts are really cool.
I said it earlier already but I'm still laughing about the fact, that you added some new parts to a mod to build a beluga shuttle... definitly a proper approach to the challenge by our "modfather"

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

(no space junk) 

Except for a few decoupled engines

Anyway, congratulations to your new badge and I'm looking forward to the Duna missions

[linuxgurugamer]

1 hour ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

Except for a few decoupled engines

Those don't  count (you weren't supposed to be watching. )

There is a lot of R&D involved for the Duna missions.  I'll  probably start off with a test reentry with the same shuttle, and a Tweakscaled version of the same thing.  Larger shuttles should end up with more lift proportionally.

R&D starts next week

[4x4cheesecake]

12 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Those don't  count

Ok...

How about this stack separator? After splitting the external tank, it was still in front of the lower tank and got pushed into orbit as well
(Mun STS - 5, 5:53 - 7:10)

Spoiler

Sorry for actually watching your stream and videos, I've heard a rumor this is required before rewarding badges

Edited May 20, 2019 by 4x4cheesecake