Falcon Heavy to Duna

[sevenperforce]

13 hours ago, LightBender said:

too hard separate saves it is...wait can I use drogue chutes for the booster?

As long as you're still landing propulsively, sure.

[MarvinKitFox]

On 12/27/2017 at 1:59 PM, Earthlinger said:

First test flight of the Falcon Heavy didn't go so well lol

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Sad to say, but I do believe your simulation is exactly 100% right.

I have a very horrid feeling that is exactly what is going to happen for real.

[LightBender]

Q. Can the car be a truck type vehicle as long as its a 2 seater and battery powered?

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

As long as you're still landing propulsively, sure.

thanks.

[sevenperforce]

6 hours ago, MarvinKitFox said:

Sad to say, but I do believe your simulation is exactly 100% right.

I have a very horrid feeling that is exactly what is going to happen for real.

Pretty sure THAT specific failure mode won't happen.

Still giving just 50-50 odds on a perfect flight (liftoff, first staging, second staging, all-booster recovery, etc.).

4 hours ago, LightBender said:

Q. Can the car be a truck type vehicle as long as its a 2 seater and battery powered?

Yeah, I'm not splitting hairs.

[LightBender]

20 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

 

Yeah, I'm not splitting hairs.

thanks ill submit my craft later today.

[LightBender]

So would landing the boosters on a connected continent count for insane mod? 

Edited January 4, 2018 by LightBender
I hate autocorrect.

[LightBender]

This is my entry for the challenge, the rover isn't the best looking,but still its purpose is utility. its equipment is a almost full science kit expect the ore scanner and the science Jr. But science doesn't matter I just felt like adding it. I just shoved 2 parachutes on it and prayed that the wheels wouldn't break. The boosters have 8 reliance engines for the falcon 9 part and 1 vector engine for boost back and landing. I didn't use any parachutes during this except when landing the rover. My guess for points would be 196 but I'm not sure I qualify for the Insane mode since I didn't land on the KSC area. Also just saying I forgot to turn Mechjeb off the the probe cores so just trust me that I never used it.

I definitely don't qualify for Hail Mary, double trouble, super cruise, and speed demon (my rover does 20m/s)

Edited January 5, 2018 by LightBender
I forget stuff.

[Andiron]

That's just a prototype, because it doesn't fit in my custom fairing, but at least i reached 45m/s with it

 

[vyznev]

5 hours ago, Andiron said:

That's just a prototype, because it doesn't fit in my custom fairing, but at least i reached 45m/s with it

Nice. Does it seat two, though?

I'm still struggling with landing the boosters. Actually, my boosters can barely even stand upright on their legs with empty tanks; it seems even the biggest stock landing legs are just too short and weak.  If I can't find any other solution, I may have to scale down my design.

[sevenperforce]

19 minutes ago, vyznev said:

Nice. Does it seat two, though?

I'm still struggling with landing the boosters. Actually, my boosters can barely even stand upright on their legs with empty tanks; it seems even the biggest stock landing legs are just too short and weak.  If I can't find any other solution, I may have to scale down my design.

I used doubled landing legs (two in parallel at each quadrant) which seemed to work well enough, even for a 3.5m booster.

[Piatzin]

36 minutes ago, vyznev said:

I'm still struggling with landing the boosters. Actually, my boosters can barely even stand upright on their legs with empty tanks; it seems even the biggest stock landing legs are just too short and weak.  If I can't find any other solution, I may have to scale down my design.

Make your own landing legs. With girders. They have an impact tolerance of 80 m/s

[sevenperforce]

24 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

Make your own landing legs. With girders. They have an impact tolerance of 80 m/s

But they don't fold.

[Piatzin]

Just now, sevenperforce said:

But they don't fold.

[Andiron]

2 hours ago, vyznev said:

Nice. Does it seat two, though?

Soon^TM

[vyznev]

I decided to scale down my boosters from 3.75m to 2.5m, and got something that actually looks workable.

Yes, I used DCK to repaint my fuel tanks white.  With the Mk3 cargo bay up top, it even kind of looks like the real Falcon Heavy.

I think this one should be able to pull off the full maximum score, in principle at least, although I still need more practice hitting the drone ship. With MechJeb's landing predictions I can get it down pretty close, but unless I'm coming down nearly vertically (which I don't really have the delta-v for), atmospheric drag will mess up the prediction.   I may just have to quicksave and keep tweaking the descent trajectory over and over (and over and over and...) until I manage to nail it.

[vyznev]

"So what did you do tonight?"

"I flew some drone ships into the ocean."

Yes, ships, plural.  I figured it'd be easier to stick the landing if I had multiple target options to choose from, so I decided to deploy multiple drone ships across Kerbin's equator, more or less in the (pretty wide) range of longitudes where my central boosters ended up in the test flights.

Which was a great idea, except that actually flying those boats out there is incredibly tedious. The droneship I built flies like a zeppelin -- slowly and ponderously. That 100 to 150 m/s shown in the screenshots is pretty much its top cruise speed. It also steers like a zeppelin. I've never actually played Desert Bus, but I believe this probably gets pretty close to the same feeling -- complete with the ship, for some mysterious reason, having a slight but noticeable tendency to veer to the right if left unattended. 

I may just cheat the remaining ships into place. It's not like this is a Kerbin circumnavigation challenge, after all.

[Ultimate Steve]

 

@vyznev I'd be careful with using the wings as deck space, I think they might go poof a little too easy.

[vyznev]

2 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

 

@vyznev I'd be careful with using the wings as deck space, I think they might go poof a little too easy.

Nah, it's good. 

In any case, it's not like my boosters can take that much more of an impact, either...

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, vyznev said:

Nah, it's good. 

In any case, it's not like my boosters can take that much more of an impact, either...

I originally tried with regular structural panels and they went bam every time.

[astrobond]

Hi All

Here is the Part One of my attempt... I wanted to test a KSP version of SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy, so this challenge was a very good idea !!!

I know i will not make a highscore, (boosters on barges and second stage on KSC... not exactly what was asked lol), but i enjoyed playing with this craft and coding with KOS for several hours to achieve this goal... 

Thanks to @Gotbread For the video and KOS code KSP + kOS SpaceX Falcon9 automated barge landing I used a lot, and And @only_to_downvote on Reddit for the KOS FUNCTION TimeToImpact 

 

 

I will make a Part Two video with the journey to Duna and the "Tesla" Spin ASAP

And Happy New Year for all of you !!!

[vyznev]

1 hour ago, astrobond said:

Hi All

Here is the Part One of my attempt... I wanted to test a KSP version of SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy, so this challenge was a very good idea !!!

Awesome! 

Meanwhile, I finished deploying my droneships.

Ten ships is probably way overkill, but whatever. At least I'll have plenty of targets to choose from.

I did fly them all out instead of just editing the save file, but I used MechJeb's autopilot (heading and altitude hold) so I didn't actually have to manually fly them all out in real time. Given that it would've taken about 5 or 6 hours at 1x time accel, that would've been a bit too much. As it was, I just had to launch and land them, but  MechJeb handled the boring part in between at 4x physics warp while I made myself a cup of coffee, watched YouTube, etc.

I also tweaked the design a bit so that it flies more stably now, although the sideslip tendency is still there. I had to tell MechJeb to hold heading at 88.5° to make the droneships fly due east. 

And yes, they're all named after ships from Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, just like OCISLY and JRTI. If SpaceX ever needs to get more barges, maybe they'll pick some of those names for them IRL. Probably not those particular ones, though. 

[astrobond]

Hi All

Here is the Part Two of my attempt... and some pics of the Kerbin "Tesla" Spin/Speed test !

 

 

 

Speed Test on Runway...

 

Jump test...

 

Speed test downhill max speed ^^

 

Fly safe with Valentina

[sevenperforce]

23 minutes ago, astrobond said:

Hi All

Here is the Part Two of my attempt... and some pics of the Kerbin "Tesla" Spin/Speed test !

 

 

 

Speed Test on Runway...

 

Jump test...

 

Speed test downhill max speed ^^

 

Fly safe with Valentina

Ridiculously impressive!

[vyznev]

It's done!

Well, almost done. I still need to land the Tesla on Duna, but that's the easy part. In any case, all the boosters and the upper stage are safely on Kerbin. It's getting late here, though. Well, actually, more like it's getting early.  But anyway, I'll do the rest tomorrow, and hopefully post a video of it once I've edited it into something watchable.

Well, that was way harder than I thought it would be. But fun! 

[Rickert-A33]

looks good