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

[Dman Revolution]

On 4/1/2019 at 12:37 PM, Dman Revolution said:

Hey all,

I've been working on a new srb design. It has an outer shell and then a cluster of srbs as the "core". The core srbs are all configured to essentially go through thrust tail off through the launch. They were built separately then the core was placed in the shell. This is what I have so far:

 

It no longer shakes itself to pieces from all the clipping, but its horribly aerodynamically unstable. My previous variant had a bunch of control surfaces at the base of the srb moving the Center of pressure down keeping it stable. Due to the fairings and their crazy body lift even if I add a reasonable amount of control surfaces it still doesn't help.

 

(Those ants are to simulate lox venting and are surface attached to the vectors)

 

 

Does anyone have any ideas on how to stabilize this new design more? The fairings are the only difference between this version and the older one.

Hey all!

I got this exact version working after giving up about a week ago. I lined the underside and the top of the skirts with elevons and it worked perfect. Heck it works better and more realisticly than my old one!

[Kerbolitto]

9 hours ago, Dman Revolution said:

Hey all!

I got this exact version working after giving up about a week ago. I lined the underside and the top of the skirts with elevons and it worked perfect. Heck it works better and more realisticly than my old one!

So you basically plated all the shuttle's belly with surface controls ? xD

[Dman Revolution]

 

1 hour ago, Kerbolitto said:

So you basically plated all the shuttle's belly with surface controls ? xD

No, just the SRB skirts.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Dman Revolution

[Jim123]

i'm working on a shuttle for this challage ill let you know when its ready and ill make a video and show the mods i use.

[Dman Revolution]

Hey everyone,

So i thought, "my shuttle is already a slideshow, I can spare a few extra parts!" Well 600 parts later we have this:

[sturmhauke]

That's some nice work!

[Jim123]

heres my shuttle its 100 percent reusable can be flown unmanned and has jet engines 

[4x4cheesecake]

@Dman Revolution Your shuttle looks amazing and you even build a launch tower? That's very cool! Looking forward to see your shuttle in the first mission

@Jim123 Welcome to the challenge

You've designed a very nice and highly capable shuttle there. Good job on recovering the ET, had to giggle when all the chutes opened, that looked hilarious The reentry was a bit messy though (looks like your CoL and CoM are a bit too close together) but you managed to land safely at the KSC anyway.

So here is your first badge and I'm looking forward to see more of your shuttle

[Jim123]

thank you:)

[hoioh]

@Dman Revolution that is impressively beautiful!

[Jim123]

I plan on doing more of the shuttle challenges also how do i use my bage sorry if this is a dumb question.

[4x4cheesecake]

1 hour ago, Jim123 said:

I plan on doing more of the shuttle challenges

Good to hear

1 hour ago, Jim123 said:

how do i use my bage

Click on your account name in the top right corner -> Account Settings -> Signature. Copy and paste the link from the badge there and apply the changes

[Jim123]

Thank you:)

[Raythain]

This is a pretty cool challenge. Finally got my first entry together, and started with a glide test. Fully stock vehicle, have KER, KAC and Bon Voyage as my only mods.

Here's my entry for STS 1-T

You'll have to forgive the names, apparently the KSC engineers believe that KSP should stand for Kerbal Space Puns.

[4x4cheesecake]

3 hours ago, Raythain said:

This is a pretty cool challenge. Finally got my first entry together, and started with a glide test. Fully stock vehicle, have KER, KAC and Bon Voyage as my only mods.

Here's my entry for STS 1-T

You'll have to forgive the names, apparently the KSC engineers believe that KSP should stand for Kerbal Space Puns.

Welcome to the forum and the challenge

Good job on your first mission and I love the little story you wrote about it. Not quiet sure if someone else already did this mission by putting the carrier craft on top of the shuttle. The landing was a bit off though but hey, it's still at the KSC

Congratulation to your first badge and I hope we'll see more of your shuttle

[Raythain]

3 hours ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

Welcome to the forum and the challenge

Good job on your first mission and I love the little story you wrote about it. Not quiet sure if someone else already did this mission by putting the carrier craft on top of the shuttle. The landing was a bit off though but hey, it's still at the KSC

Congratulation to your first badge and I hope we'll see more of your shuttle

Thanks. It's only the second time I've put something down back at KSC, so crooked or not I'm excited.

Someone did this with the carrier on top, I need to go back and find out who did it to thank them. When I was piggybacking the orbiter, the jet carrying it handled like a bigger brick than the orbiter. Of course that version also had wings so stubby that it would get into a flat spin at subsonic speeds. Kinda a problem when the transport didn't go supersonic.

I found it easier to follow other submissions when the author put some sort of story to it, so I figured I'd do the same.

Now I just have to figure out how to get a balance launch vehicle - right now it rolls over about 50 m into the air because I'm trying to not put an engine on the ET... 

[4x4cheesecake]

1 hour ago, Raythain said:

Now I just have to figure out how to get a balance launch vehicle - right now it rolls over about 50 m into the air because I'm trying to not put an engine on the ET... 

You may want to take a look at RCS Build Aid. It provides a readout and a visible indicator for the togue of your craft and adds a CoM marker for empty or half-fueled tanks so you will always know how the CoM shifts during the flight.

Getting the balancing right is one of the toughest part of flying a shuttle but it will become easier after you got the hang of it I would suggest to focus on the 3 important phases of the flight: Launch, booster separation and ET separation/almost empty ET. You may want to do it "backwards", so start to balance the shuttle without the boosters. If you can manage to rotate the main engines in a way, that the thrust vectors points to the CoM while the ET is half fueled, you'll have roughly the same amount of torgue on the fully fueled and empty ET which can be compensated by the gimbal range of the vectors in most cases. As soon as you got this stage balanced, don't touch it anymore. Just add the boosters and try to balanced the whole craft for the launch by moving the boosters up and down and/or playing around with the thrust limiter (but keep an eye on your TWR ).

I'm using this method for all of my shuttles and so far, it works pretty well

[Raythain]

Well, got it to space! No mission report yet, because during a pre-deorbit inspection, Bill noticed that something was wrong with the orbiter...

Spoiler

Modified the engine pods by rotating them, and forgot to rotate the landing gear or solar panels that were on them.  

No solar panels are a minor inconvenience, but a unicycle landing? 

But holy cow, figuring out the CoM and thrust vector issues made me appreciate the details of the actual STS flight plan. Finally had to give up on SRBs for now - using the thrust limiter to balance the thrust vector but keep a good TWR for the 40t payload was too tedious. So I cheated and used some LF boosters with gimballed engines, now I just have to get the hang of the flight profile, and set the priority correctly on the ET tanks so I don't have to pump fuel around mid flight.

[Willer Kerman]

Hello, here's my entry for the STS Pilot Rank 1 challenge. I hope you enjoy.

 

 

Is my first space shuttle, so it's not very good and was released without load. I'm really not very good at it, but it was a fun challenge.

Spoiler

Launch: 

SRB's deploy:

Orbit:

Inside view:

De-orbiting:

Atmosphere:

reentry:

Missed the runway:

Using the atmosphere engines to gain velocity: 

Approach:

Landed:

 

The craft has bem powered by two fuel cells in the interior of vehicle.

 

Craftfile: Flying Ranger II

Edited April 18, 2019 by Willer Kerman

[4x4cheesecake]

Welcome to the challenge @Willer Kerman

47 minutes ago, Willer Kerman said:

Is my first space shuttle, so it's not very good and was released without load.

Getting into an orbit and back to Kerbin with a shuttle requires some serious engineering and piloting skills, so many people fail or don't even try it. In other words: you actually build a very good shuttle and perfectly accomplished the mission
It's a but unfortunate that you missed the runway though, which brings up the question: What about the jet engines? Do they not provide enough thrust to turn the orbiter around so you could fly back to the KSC?

A little formality is left to do before I can rewared you with the appropriate badge: I need a list of the mods you've used (screenshot of the GameData folder would be fine as well)

[Willer Kerman]

4 minutes ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

Welcome to the challenge @Willer Kerman

Getting into an orbit and back to Kerbin with a shuttle requires some serious engineering and piloting skills, so many people fail or don't even try it. In other words: you actually build a very good shuttle and perfectly accomplished the mission
It's a but unfortunate that you missed the runway though, which brings up the question: What about the jet engines? Do they not provide enough thrust to turn the orbiter around so you could fly back to the KSC?

A little formality is left to do before I can rewared you with the appropriate badge: I need a list of the mods you've used (screenshot of the GameData folder would be fine as well)

Thanks.

 

All the designs (See that this is the Flying Ranger II, the first did not work and was also based on several other previous attempts.) I've tried have a problem of spinning uncontrollably when I try to turn them around, even doing it naturally, even during re-entry. The engines appear to be too weak to restore the horizontal speed before reaching the ground, and also have a low TWR (about 0.40 as seen in the first image). But I will try to fix the problem this week yet.

 

About the mods, below is a list and photos of gamedata (it's kind of messy because I use the CKAN and constantly change the mods).

Spoiler

Background Resources (BackgroundResources v0.13.12.0)
BetterTimeWarpContinued (BetterTimeWarpCont 2.3.11.3)
Champagne Bottle Redux (ChampagneBottleRedux 0.3.9.1)
ClickThrough Blocker (ClickThroughBlocker 0.1.7.1)
CommNet Constellation (CommNetConstellation 1.3.2)
Community Category Kit (CommunityCategoryKit 4.1.0.0)
Community Resource Pack (CommunityResourcePack 1.1.0.0)
Community Tech Tree (CommunityTechTree 1:3.3.7)
Custom Barn Kit (CustomBarnKit 1.1.19.0)
Distant Object Enhancement (DistantObject v1.9.1.1)
Distant Object Enhancement default config (DistantObject-default v1.9.1.1)
DMagic Orbital Science (DMagicOrbitalScience 1.4.2)
Hide Empty Tech Tree Nodes (HideEmptyTechNodes 1.1.0)
Kerbal Alarm Clock (KerbalAlarmClock v3.10.0.0)
Kerbal Changelog (KerbalChangelog v1.1.4)
KSP Craft Organizer (VAB/SPH tags + craft searching) (KspCraftOrganizer 1.5.5)
KW Rocketry Rebalanced (KWRocketryRebalanced 3.2.6.1)
MagiCore (MagiCore 1.3.1.5)
MechJeb 2 (MechJeb2 2.8.3.0)
ModularFlightIntegrator (ModularFlightIntegrator 1.2.6.0)
Module Manager (ModuleManager 4.0.2)
Near Future Solar (NearFutureSolar 0.8.15)
Near Future Solar Core (NearFutureSolar-Core 0.8.15)
Procedural Fairings (ProceduralFairings 1:1.5.0.5)
Procedural Parts - MainSailor's Procedural Textures - Complete Texture Pack (MainSailorTextures-Complete 2.0.0.0.1)
Procedural Parts - MainSailor's Procedural Textures - Essential Textures and Flag (MainSailorTextures-Essentials 2.0.0.0.1)
REPOSoftTech-Agencies (REPOSoftTech-Agencies V1.5.4.0)
ReStock (ReStock 0.1.3)
ReStock+ (ReStockPlus 0.1.3)
StageRecovery (StageRecovery 1.9.1)
Surface Mounted Lights (surfacelights 1.12)
TAC Life Support (TACLS) (TACLS v0.13.12.0)
Toolbar Controller (ToolbarController 1:0.1.6.20)
Tracking Station Evolved (TrackingStationEvolved 4.1)
Transfer Window Planner (TransferWindowPlanner v1.6.3.0)
TriggerAu Flags (TriggerAu-Flags v2.9.3.0)
TweakScale - Rescale Everything! (TweakScale v2.4.1.0)
 

 

[4x4cheesecake]

43 minutes ago, Willer Kerman said:

I've tried have a problem of spinning uncontrollably when I try to turn them around, even doing it naturally, even during re-entry. The engines appear to be too weak to restore the horizontal speed before reaching the ground, and also have a low TWR (about 0.40 as seen in the first image).

I've done a little test flight and if you don't mind, I would suggest to remove the winglets and turn every reaction wheel (the two in the cargo bay, probe core and cock pit) to "SAS Only" at least during reentry and after getting below ~15 - 20km. Fortunately, this can be done via action group
The reaction wheels apply way too much torgue so everytime you try to change the direction, the orbiter will be forced to move there by the reaction wheels and not by the aerodynamics. This creates a lot of drag and results in a unstable flight.
Without any Monoprop left in the tanks, CoL and CoM are almost in the same position which makes everything even worse. By removing the winglets, the CoL will be a fair amount behind the CoM and in combination with the deactivated reaction wheels, the orbiter flies a lot better  

Anyway, your mod list looks fine (and I was able to load the craft in a stock game eventhough KSP had a few complains about a few missing part modules but nothing important) so I can finally award you with your first badge. Congratulations

[Willer Kerman]

@4x4cheesecake Thanks for the tips, I'll make the modifications tomorrow and try to increase the range too.

 

25 minutes ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

(and I was able to load the craft in a stock game eventhough KSP had a few complains about a few missing part modules but nothing important)

This happens because I use the mods to make replicas, I hate how the stock game forces me to do offset in almost everything, but since that vehicle is not a replica I left it well stock (disregarding the Restock mod).

[Jim123]

anyone know what the delta v you need to get to laythe land and back to kerbin?

Also is realism Overhaul and RSS allowed?

Edited April 19, 2019 by Jim123
forget to add something

[sturmhauke]

3 hours ago, Jim123 said:

anyone know what the delta v you need to get to laythe land and back to kerbin?

Also is realism Overhaul and RSS allowed?

Some resources for you:

This delta-v map is still valid for the stock solar system.

This transfer window planner tool helps you plan interplanetary trips.

https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/

Also comes in a mod form.

https://spacedock.info/mod/713/Transfer Window Planner

As for RSS/RO, I think those are out of scope for this challenge series. Also harder.