Challenge: Land an object that is not designed to be able to land.

[SunJumper]

Despite not being designed to do so, the NEAR Shoemaker probe managed to land on the asteroid Eros, despite not being constructed to do so. Can you do the same? Rules:

No landing legs

No landing equipment

No engines/fuel tanks to be used at any point in the landing process. You must use only RCS.

Your craft may not have a flat bottom

Obviously, no parachutes

Bonus points will be awarded if you can land on the Mun or Kerbin

Land on minmus: X1 multiplier

Land on mun: X5

Land on Kerbin: X50

Eve: X100

Bop: X5

Charr: X500

Meander's moons: X350

The landing process is considered as having begun when your orbit intersects the other body.

Edited August 18, 2012 by SunJumper

[DEADBEEF]

At what point do you consider the 'landing process' started?

What altitude or velocity?

Would these vary depending on the body you're approaching?

[RedDwarfIV]

You know, i'd find it more fun to land the largest thing that's not supposed to land. Like a large satellite or space station. I once tried landing my Surveyor research satellite on Minmus. It almost made it, but it tipped over. And I am talking big here. This was a very large object.

[r_rolo1]

Just some questions ...

What is "landing equipment" ? It is solely stuff like the planes landing gear ?

The flat bottom it is actually hard to implement unless you go mods, because most of the stock parts have a flat bottom

P.S. The ship needs to have a crew ? Or it can go automated ( say, mechJeb ) ?

[SunJumper]

Landing equipment entails:

Landing legs

Plane landing gear

Winglets (ie in the style of 0.12 and 0.13 landers)

Anything that assists landings/gives stability

You may use mods for the nonflat bottom, but the Aerospike works well too (Just don't fire it). It can go automated, but you may not use any of Mechjeb's automated systems (You may only use it for controlling otherwise uncontrollable crafts)

[r_rolo1]

As I already seen people landing a lot of ships using RCS only on the Mun, i guess I'll try Kerbin. My experience in assist landings with aerobraking already taught me that a empty tank gets to the ground in Kerbin at +/- 107 m/s and that capsules can withstand above 16 m/s ... so enough 0.3 drag parts + capsule + RCS + RCS engines would need to slow down 100 m/s in 10s or less ... It looks doable with enough RCS linear engines ( I made a test just now and capsule + 8 engine bodies + 44 RCS linear engines + 1 RCS tank + one small Mechjeb unit ( for the real altitude ) can slow down half of that before the tank runs dry while in the low atmosphere ). Not sure if I can do it, but it seems doable

[r_rolo1]

Just a clarification ( I assume this is implicit, but as it was not explicitly stated ):

The ship you land must be the one that starts the landing process, right ? Detachments in between are allowed or not ( to jettison empty RCS tanks , for example ) ? And OFC, the ship has to be in one piece upon end of landing, right ( otherwise you just have to put enough tanks between you and the capsule ) ?

[Clouds]

Eve: X100

Bop: X5

Charr: X500

Meander's moons: X350

Um...what?

Landing equipment entails:

Anything that assists landings/gives stability

So, my 25m/s-capable fuselage+wing setup is disqualified then.

[LaydeeDem]

Do I win?

[SunJumper]

You may detach parts, and the ship must be in one piece. Nutt, you win if I can see the base of that probe...

[LaydeeDem]

You may detach parts, and the ship must be in one piece. Nutt, you win if I can see the base of that probe...

I landed NEAR Shoemaker on an asteroid sized body, what more do you want?

Seriously though I recorded the whole thing so you can see. Should be up soon.

Edited August 19, 2012 by Nutt007

[OdinYggd]

So really all I have to do here is crash land a second or third stage into something without having it explode?

Easy enough, considering that the area all around KSC is littered with craft that did exactly that- they experienced a failure right after staging that resulted in them falling back. Some of them survived, with entire third stages and orbiter/lander assemblies coming down intact.

Probably the easiest method I can think of is take one of my orbiters- which more often than not have undersized engines, and allow it to fall back. Even with the engines at full throttle, it'll still make a hard landing that usually destroys it- but not always.

[BurningSky93]

Um...what?

Those celestial bodies are being added in the 0.17 update.

[illectro]

Do you get bonus points for landing Astronauts without using a capsule?

[r_rolo1]

So really all I have to do here is crash land a second or third stage into something without having it explode?

Easy enough, considering that the area all around KSC is littered with craft that did exactly that- they experienced a failure right after staging that resulted in them falling back. Some of them survived, with entire third stages and orbiter/lander assemblies coming down intact.

Probably the easiest method I can think of is take one of my orbiters- which more often than not have undersized engines, and allow it to fall back. Even with the engines at full throttle, it'll still make a hard landing that usually destroys it- but not always.

Well, note the clarification that the ship that starts the descent must land in a whole piece, unless you consciously jettison out parts of it That makes things not as easy as that ...

Back on the beef, I've been trying to do this on Kerbin and I'm pretty sure it is doable with some luck and a computer that does not choke near Kerbin surface ( like mine ). So far my attempts all failed because of that dreaded fact of being using a 4 yr laptop to play the game :/

In fact you probably need even less RCS in Kerbin than for doing that in the Mun or Minmus, since you can use the atmosphere to skim out most of the kinetic energy of the ship. You only need to wait for the ship to attain terminal velocity ( typically something around 130-140 m/s ) and then have nerves of steel for the suicidal burn ...

[OdinYggd]

Well, note the clarification that the ship that starts the descent must land in a whole piece, unless you consciously jettison out parts of it That makes things not as easy as that ...

Yeah but if your ship is ascending, and you stage up only to discover a fatal flaw that causes the rocket to fall back, does it still count if it actually lands with everything that was on it at the point it fell back intact.

Or does the craft have to be in either level flight or orbit for it to count.

Because I have a number of in-development craft that have buggy staging which results in them falling back, mostly due to insufficient fuel in the lower staging causing it to go to a stage with insufficient thrust before it is at a high enough velocity for it to continue anyway.

Edited August 21, 2012 by OdinYggd

[r_rolo1]

I am pretty sure that the OP meant that the ship at challenge start must be in a orbit that has a periapsis above 0 ...

The landing process is considered as having begun when your orbit intersects the other body

I assume by this that if the orbit Pe is above surface , anything goes. The beef is that it is highly unlikely that a faulty ascent will happen exactly after you reached that ...

[Guest butt head]

No engines/fuel tanks to be used at any point in the landing process. You must use only RCS.

Your craft may not have a flat bottom

you cant make a no engines rule and expect any thing bigger than a few rcs tanks and 8-16 rcs thrusters to land and no flat bottom is not going to happen no one makes such unsymmetrical ships

Eve: X100

Bop: X5

Charr: X500

Meander's moons: X350

you say that like they were all ready in the game is there some thing i dont know about???

[rasheed]

Nutt. where did u get that probe. Can u plz make a link?

[Pyre]

Done. And that one lander leg doesn't count, its a highly sensitive scientific instrument(at least that's what the engineers tell me).

Here's a pic of it in the VAB, to prove it has a round(ish) bottom:

Do I get a cookie?

Edited August 22, 2012 by Pyre
Spelling

[LaydeeDem]

Nutt. where did u get that probe. Can u plz make a link?

I made it. I got boree and decided to port a model of NEAR in my game!