The Solid Plane

[sevenperforce]

This should be a nice simple challenge.

Build an airplane, powered only by solid rocket engines, capable of taking off from the SPH runway and landing on the island runway.

Rules:

• Solid rockets are the only propulsion allowed. No jets, no liquid rockets, no RCS, no infiniglide.
• Aerodynamic control surfaces only. If your command pod has reaction wheels, they must have torque turned off.
• Rolling takeoffs and landings; you can't use dedicated solid thrusters to lift off or anything messy like that.
• No staging, no damage. What takes off must come down in one piece.
• Kerbal it! You've gotta have a pilot; no probes.

Is there scoring? Well, sort of. All submissions must be able to take off from the SPH runway and land on the island runway (velocity = 0) but there are leaderboards for different capabilities within that set. Your plane only needs the capability; you can get the following achievements/challenges on a separate run. I'll make a rockin' awesome badge if I get enough buy-in.

Achievements/challenges:

• Speedrun. Take off, come to a full stop on the island runway, return, and come to a full stop on the SPH runway, in as short a time as possible.
• Shockwave. Reach the highest possible airspeed (below 60 km altitude). No recovery required.
• Endurance. Travel as far as possible from the SPH and make a successful rolling landing.
• Spaceballs. What's the highest altitude you can achieve? No recovery required.
• Featherweight. What's the lowest-mass solution you can manage?
• Replication. Make your solution look as close as possible to a real-life aircraft (I'll judge).

More achievements/challenges may be added based on demand.

[icantmakemodels]

Hold my beer!

[Kerbinchaser]

9 minutes ago, icantmakemodels said:

Hold my beer!

Hold my Vodka!

[cratercracker]

3 minutes ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

Hold my Vodka!

Hold my tea!

(we don't drink vodka in Russia, tea is more preferable)

[RedPandaz]

Does "No Recovery" mean that you don't have to land at the Island runway?

 

[sevenperforce]

8 minutes ago, RedPandaz said:

Does "No Recovery" mean that you don't have to land at the Island runway?

It means you don't have to land your plane at all while achieving that challenge.

For example, you build your plane, you demonstrate it can reach the island runway, and THEN you revert to launch and demonstrate that it can reach an altitude of 76.1 km. Your altitude record counts even if you do not subsequently re-enter the atmosphere and successfully land on the runway. 

Added note: I definitely advise people to use tweakables to adjust SRB thrust.

[Scarecrow]

Simple plane knocked up in a few minutes to meet the basic challenge.  Take off weight is 6.293 tons.

 

Position at engine flame out

 

On glide approach to island

 

Landed and stopped

Edited September 26, 2017 by Scarecrow

[herbal space program]

So when you say "no staging" is what you actually mean "no dropping stages"? Stopping on the runway and coming back is going to be fairly tough if you can't light up a fresh booster for the return journey

[RedPandaz]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

It means you don't have to land your plane at all while achieving that challenge.

For example, you build your plane, you demonstrate it can reach the island runway, and THEN you revert to launch and demonstrate that it can reach an altitude of 76.1 km. Your altitude record counts even if you do not subsequently re-enter the atmosphere and successfully land on the runway. 

Added note: I definitely advise people to use tweakables to adjust SRB thrust.

I think the hardest part of the challenge will be getting to the island runway because a. Timing the thrust just right? and b. Just general control? but I can definitely hit these 3 easy: 

• Shockwave. 
• Endurance..
• Spaceballs

Edited September 26, 2017 by RedPandaz

[sevenperforce]

8 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

So when you say "no staging" is what you actually mean "no dropping stages"? Stopping on the runway and coming back is going to be fairly tough if you can't light up a fresh booster for the return journey

Yeah, no dropping stages. Sorry if that was unclear. You can definitely light up as many boosters as you want, in any order, in any orientation.

2 minutes ago, RedPandaz said:

I think the hardest part of the challenge will be getting to the island runway because a. Timing the thrust just right? and b. Just general control? but I can definitely hit these 3 easy: 

• Shockwave. 
• Endurance..
• Spaceballs

If you put the SRBs on the wing, then the CoM won't shift too much and you should be able to fly it in deadstick. Flaps recommended.

[RedPandaz]

Just now, sevenperforce said:

Yeah, no dropping stages. Sorry if that was unclear. You can definitely light up as many boosters as you want, in any order, in any orientation.

If you put the SRBs on the wing, then the CoM won't shift too much and you should be able to fly it in deadstick. Flaps recommended.

Hmmm. There and back should be fairly simple, once you land on the island runway; have two boosters, one under the other- with a decent design you should be able to fire one one other on the way back. And on the speed and endurance ones you can just fire one than the other in flight. Just make sure to have adequate control surfaces. BTW, is there any actual reason why stock places the, like, swing limit or whatever of the flaps at 100 and not 150? 150 seems better to me.

[Kerbinchaser]

4 hours ago, cratercracker said:

Hold my tea!

(we don't drink vodka in Russia, tea is more preferable)

Bliiiiinnnn.

Edited September 26, 2017 by Lo Var Lachland

[Eidahlil]

There and back again in 3:42. Reached an altitude of 556.4 km, while going 1986 m/s at 60 km on the way up, and 2171 m/s at 44 km on the way down. The whole thing masses 77.88 t wet, so really not going for lightweight here.

EDIT: Also flew some amount of km for an endurance run - all the way to the other side of Kerbin, the F3 screen says 4 631 km (in the video), but that's more than the circumference of Kerbin, so I don't know. And did a scary rolling bouncing landing in the mountains during the night with no lights.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

Edited September 27, 2017 by Eidahlil

[NSEP]

18 hours ago, cratercracker said:

Hold my tea!

(we don't drink vodka in Russia, tea is more preferable)

Hold my North Sea Water!

[michal.don]

I'm not in an engineering mood, so this challenge is perfect

So, let me present the "SRBM", courtesy of SpaceY:

Yup, the little thing on the left is a Mk 1-2 command pod.

16 parts, 147 tonnes, and 90 seconds of terror, mission successful.

https://imgur.com/a/KFpcW

 

Michal.don