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Micro-challenges for all! (Continuation of Newbie Central.)

Kerbalstar
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vyznev

vyznev

Posted
Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, Kerbalstar said:

The Challenge is now closed!

@doggonemess will post the medals as soon as they are ready, and @obney kerman will post the next challenge as soon as it is ready! Thank you all for participating, and I hope you had fun! I certainly did!

Damn. I thought I'd still have until tomorrow to finish this. Oh well, here's another late entry.

I don't think anyone had done the solid-fuel-only-docking version yet, so I figured I'd give it a go.  Here's my craft, the Gemini S (craft file here):

P20H1o0.png

ihWF8U9.png

nPCcDhS.png

Like my solid-fuel-only Mun lander, its "secret sauce" consists mostly of sepratrons, sepratrons and more sepratrons. However, it also features a novel trick to allow fine control over maneuvers: boost flaps. :cool:

These simple devices consist of an elevon, placed behind an engine, that can be deployed to block or unblock the thrust of the engine. They have long been used on jet-powered rovers to work around the "turbo lag" of jet engines (and there's even a mod to automatically deploy them when the vehicle leaves the ground), but using them with SRBs might be a genuinely new invention. Or it might have been done a million times before, and I've just missed it. :/ 

Anyway, the capsule is equipped with 10 pairs of symmetrically placed sepratrons. Five of these are controlled with boost flaps bound to the R key, so that they only produce thrust when RCS is on. The other five are intended for coarser orbital boost / re-entry maneuvers, and are lumped in a single stage by default; rearranging the staging sequence as needed during the flight is very much recommended.

All sepratrons have their thrust limiter set to make them more controllable. Most have it set to 10%, giving a nice 50 second burn time well suited for node maneuvers, but two of the boost flap controlled pairs have their thrust further reduced to 3% and one (meant for fine-tuning the final docking approach) all they way down to 1%. Lowering the thrust also increases the burn time of the sepratrons: at 1% thrust they burn for over 8 minutes, giving plenty of time for maneuvering.

Boosting this contraption to LKO is done by a very simple two stage launcher consisting of a Kickback and a Thumper engine. The recommended launch path is to fly the first stage fairly steeply, aiming for an apoapsis around 95 to 100 km and a horizontal velocity at apoapsis of about 300 m/s, and let it coast out of the atmosphere before dropping the Kickback and the fairing. Firing the Thumper about 20 seconds before apoapsis should then put the capsule in a nice circular(ish) orbit, with plenty of room for fine tuning with the sepratrons if necessary.

Here's a video of the whole mission. It's unedited, and so quite long; sorry. Also, the audio seems to be missing, so you'll need to make your own whooshing rocket sounds while watching it. :sticktongue: If you're impatient, skip to around 27:30 or so for the actual rendezvous (or to 30:20 for the embarrassing part where I forget to open the boost flaps for a braking burn and wonder why it's not working :blush:).

While I launched both craft using SRBs only, I actually did the rendezvous using only the engines on the second one. Still, knowing that I had some extra maneuvering options available on the other craft was a comfort. I also went a bit beyond the challenge and returned both capsules safely to Kerbin's surface together, since I'd equipped them with parachutes for that purpose anyway. :) 

In hindsight, it would probably be better to move all the sepratrons behind the flaps -- there's still room to squeeze at least four more pairs there easily -- and have a few more 1% and 3% thrust pairs, since those are the ones I ended up actually using the most. Also, the number of sepratrons I have is way overkill for this mission, but of course it's always nice to have plenty of margin for error.

Edited by vyznev
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obney kerman

obney kerman

Posted
Posted (edited)

KSC2 Paratroopers!

aNbsk49.jpg

For this challenge, you need to bring at least one kerbal to KSC2 (Look it up if you don't know where that is) and have them parachute down to the space center. YOU MAY NOT LAND. Good luck, and fair skies.

EDIT: Rules, for those who asked:

1. Land at least one kerbal via EVA parachute at or near KSC2

2. Landing your vessel is not allowed

3. You may not leave the atmosphere (because I just know someone's gonna try it)

4. You must plant a flag at KSC2 once you have landed.

Edited by obney kerman
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UnfortuneLess

UnfortuneLess

Posted
Posted (edited)
38 minutes ago, obney kerman said:

KSC2 Paratroopers!

aNbsk49.jpg

For this challenge, you need to bring at least one kerbal to KSC2 (Look it up if you don't know where that is) and have them parachute down to the space center. YOU MAY NOT LAND. Good luck, and fair skies.

EDIT: Rules, for those who asked:

1. Land at least one kerbal via EVA parachute at or near KSC2

2. Landing your vessel is not allowed

3. You may not leave the atmosphere (because I just know someone's gonna try it)

4. You must plant a flag at KSC2 once you have landed.

Ah I'm gonna be forced to pass this one unfortunetly since I run KSP version 1.3.1, where parachutes weren't added yet.

Edited by UnfortuneLess
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vyznev

vyznev

Posted
Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, obney kerman said:

For this challenge, you need to bring at least one kerbal to KSC2 (Look it up if you don't know where that is) and have them parachute down to the space center.

I'm again not 100% sure if this counts as a valid entry or not, but... since you didn't explicitly say where the flight had to start, I chose to start it at the top of that nice tall cliff you can see about 10 km away from KSC2. Or actually some distance down that cliff, if you want to be pedantic. :D 

Engines? Wings? Pfft! Who needs them when you've got gravity, a parachute and a big tall mountain? :cool:

(Hmm... this time I got sound working, but for some reason the video quality is only 480p. I think I really need to get better screen recording software. :/ )

Edited by vyznev
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doggonemess

doggonemess

Posted
Posted
On 11/5/2018 at 1:14 PM, UnfortuneLess said:

Huh. Well if that IS allowed then I don't see why I can't try.

It's definitely do-able. I have an awesome spy car with ejection seats. Works almost every time now!

https://kerbalx.com/LevAerospace/M8-SpyRover-II-ORV

Just for fun, I think I'll incorporate this into an aircraft and try it out.

 

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UnfortuneLess

UnfortuneLess

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, doggonemess said:

It's definitely do-able. I have an awesome spy car with ejection seats. Works almost every time now!

https://kerbalx.com/LevAerospace/M8-SpyRover-II-ORV

Just for fun, I think I'll incorporate this into an aircraft and try it out.

 

Yeah that's pretty much what I thought doing myself (I'll do it tommorrow). Basicaly it would be a 3 seat drop pod launched from an airplane, but with a twist:wink:.

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UnfortuneLess

UnfortuneLess

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, PrvDancer85 said:

I've stolen the ejectionseat idea.

i65pgVb.jpg

j4wQmk7.jpg

eUxswtV.jpg

It was a pretty hard landing, about 15m/s, the decoupler exploded but jeb is fine.

Amazing, but isn't the seat considered a vessel? I mean I know it's nitpicky, but my idea was to let a Kerbal out of the seat, and then launch the seat to it's exploding doom (remember, crashing isn't landing).

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PrvDancer85

PrvDancer85

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, UnfortuneLess said:

Amazing, but isn't the seat considered a vessel? I mean I know it's nitpicky, but my idea was to let a Kerbal out of the seat, and then launch the seat to it's exploding doom (remember, crashing isn't landing).

It was just the console try to this challenge, it has no controll at all so it's probably more on the crashingside as a personal parachute

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vyznev

vyznev

Posted
Posted

While waiting for the next challenge, here's a quick challenge suggestion: Build a flyable autogyro and fly it <somewhere, to be specified>.

It's surprisingly fun to build (and fly!), although it does require knowing how to build stock bearings. Here's a screenshot of one I made some time ago:

bvBY9A8.png

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PrvDancer85

PrvDancer85

Posted
Posted
36 minutes ago, vyznev said:

although it does require knowing how to build stock bearings.

May i ask what you are using as bearing? I've tried the stock prob thing for myself but i wasnt able build a bearing that would work. I've tried the thermometers, structural parts, fairings and the small unbreakable first landinggear. Maybe i'm just to bad at building

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