VAB Roof Horizontal Landing

[PDCWolf]

As the title implies, your goal is to land on the roof of the KSC, however, this is not your every day land on the roof challenge: Tight engineering restrictions make this a true challenge, one for the can-do-all types. You have to be good not only at engineering an aircraft that fits the rules, but also have the hands required to put it where I ask you to, in the way I ask you to.

You might post any attempt with any craft for fun, but competing runs must adhere to the following:

Procedures & Rules:
•To create a fair experience for everyone, mods are not allowed for competing runs, in any form, save for information mods like engineer. Parts, physics or skill affecting mods (such as airplane plus, FAR/NEAR or mechjeb's autopilot respectively) are definitely not allowed.

Again, for clarification: NO MODS - Even if not doing so with malicious intent or even knowledge, you might be gaining advantages over all-stock entries. With the tight regulation margins of this challenge, that's something I can't allow.

•Create an aircraft that meets the following criteria

Spoiler

 

1. Fixed wing. This means no moving wing craft of any type (auto gyros, helicopters, tilt wings, swing wings, etc)
2. No more than 2 -defined- main surfaces (nothing above biplane/tandem/delta-canard, no flat anular, circular or cylindrical wing planes, box is OK).
3. The total wing span to fuselage length ratio has to be of 4:1 or lower. (no high aspect ratio slow flyers for example)
4. No more than one set of canards (if needed). I.E. Delta wing planes can use only one set of canards at the front, but not more. This also means anything with more surfaces than a tandem wing or delta-canard config is forbidden.
5. Absolutely no part clipping beyond possibility, keep part clipping cheat off. i.e. Parts can go slightly inside others, but no wheel stacking for extra braking power or multiple stacked control surfaces/tanks etc.
6. Control surfaces can only perform the following basic aircraft functions: Pitch, yaw, roll, flaps, slats. This means airbrakes, spoilers, and other control surface trickery is banned. Elevons and any other combination (v-tails, etc) are OK as long as all other rules are also taken into account. Engine braking via flow obstruction with control surfaces is also prohibited.
7. Control surfaces can only be placed on the main wing. Wing, canard and stabilizer surfaces and cannot overlap one another or stack on top of each other via clipping. I.E. you can have as many flaps, and ailerons as you can fit on the trailing edge on your wing and/or canards if using a Delta type craft (without clipping).
8. If you use floating surfaces (using fully mobile control surfaces as main wings/canards) you cannot place any parts on them or that otherwise look like they are glued to them. I.E. using a fully floating rudder and placing a t-tail stabilizer on it, that's just not how things work.
9. All engines on the aircraft must point to the direction of flight. I.E. no VTOLs, tilt engines, braking engines or other engine trickery.
10. Landing gear configuration must fit one of these two categories: Taildragger or tricycle. No Landing Gear stacking, or landing gear trains. IF it looks realistic then it is generally ok, however if it looks like you're abusing gears for extra braking power it may void your entry
11. All landing gear wheels must point parallel to the direction of flight. This means no landing gear trickery.
12. Yes, your landing gear HAS to be made of... landing gears. No legs or other parts.
13. Absolutely -NO- staging and/or decoupling of anything, this also means no RATO or other take-off assistance methods.
14. No parachutes or anything that would drastically slow the aircraft in flight or after touchdown save for flaps/slats (remember that spoilers and airbrakes are banned). This also means NO THRUST REVERSING.
15. The entire wheelbase has to fit in the landing zone for obvious reasons.

 

•Your aircraft, once built, has to take off from the default runway without any kind of assistance (towers for example), and land at the two helipads on the KSC rooftop. The flight and landing have to meet the following criteria:

 

Spoiler

 

1. Wings (and canards if present) must always remain the main source of lift i.e. turning your aircraft into a hovercraft after takeoff is not ok.
2. No aerobatic landings: No flatspinning or fully stalling into the landing zone. The more your procedure resembles a normal approach, the better.

 

 

Lastly, to validate your entry, your aircraft must meet the following criteria after completely stopping:

Spoiler

1. It's in the same condition as it was when the flight began: No staging, nothing broken, nothing moved, kerbals still attached to seats (if seats were used). The KSC team should be able to rescue the aircraft, put it on the ground and fly it again without any repair needed and without suffering Kerbal losses, just refueling it should be enough.

As you can see there's no score system, a successful landing with a craft that follows the rules is all you need. I'll probably make a badge or something to include in your signature.

TL;DR - Short, precision landing competition for "standard" aircraft, except the runway is the two helipads on the roof of the VAB. Have fun. You can post entries that don't follow the rules as well, but of course they won't count.

My attempt, includes F3 screen to show that nothing fell off after that little slide lol: https://streamable.com/7r7mm

 

Edited May 8, 2019 by PDCWolf

[PDCWolf]

Here's another example of an entry that counts: https://streamable.com/ebbms

[zolotiyeruki]

Grrr, so close:

 

[Aeroboi]

This is very easy. I found out rotating landing gear 90 degrees with friction set to 5.0 will nearly anchor a vessel, if placed properly would not tip over but nearly immediately stop on landing.

Just wanted to let you know, I guess that's outside the scope. I guess in order for one to win is having over equipped wings and mostly gear to break once stopped.

[zolotiyeruki]

1 minute ago, Aeroboi said:

This is very easy. I found out rotating landing gear 90 degrees with friction set to 5.0 will nearly anchor a vessel, if placed properly would not tip over but nearly immediately stop on landing.

Just wanted to let you know, I guess that's outside the scope. I guess in order for one to win is having over equipped wings and mostly gear to break once stopped.

I think that would solidly break this rule: "All landing gear wheels must point parallel to the direction of flight. No Landing Gear Trickery."

Well, I managed it.  Waaaaay too much F9'ing, but I got it:

A few more screenshots:

https://imgur.com/a/Q6icxFd

 

[PDCWolf]

6 hours ago, zolotiyeruki said:

I think that would solidly break this rule: "All landing gear wheels must point parallel to the direction of flight. No Landing Gear Trickery."

Well, I managed it.  Waaaaay too much F9'ing, but I got it:

A few more screenshots:

https://imgur.com/a/Q6icxFd

 

Amazingly done, props for posting a close attempt as well!

6 hours ago, Aeroboi said:

This is very easy. I found out rotating landing gear 90 degrees with friction set to 5.0 will nearly anchor a vessel, if placed properly would not tip over but nearly immediately stop on landing.

Just wanted to let you know, I guess that's outside the scope. I guess in order for one to win is having over equipped wings and mostly gear to break once stopped.

As zolotiyeruki said, that breaks rule nº 11 - All landing gear must point parallel to the direction of flight, your second suggestion breaks rule 2 and probably rule 10. Zolotiyeruki here is taking as much as he can from rule 3 for example, but his craft is still inside the regulations.

There's a lot of rules for this challenge, but they are in place to ensure the craft presented are not trickery based crafts but actual engineered solutions within a set of constraints, whilst still allowing for some creativity. VAB roof landings may not be new, but a tight set of rules that eliminates common cop-out solutions (no disrespect to those ideas though) is

[zolotiyeruki]

FWIW, I think my plane is only slightly more than 2x as wide as it is long, so well within rule #3.

[hoioh]

Performed for another challenge, but I think within the rules:

You can clearly see I have to turn on the reversers manually in order to position the craft correctly so I can take off from the VAB again

Kerbal-x link: https://kerbalx.com/hoioh/Shorty

The flaps are part of AP+ which is the only used mod for the plane (and there's mechjeb, but it's not used for the flight useless as it may be for this purpose)

[PDCWolf]

49 minutes ago, hoioh said:

Performed for another challenge, but I think within the rules:

You can clearly see I have to turn on the reversers manually in order to position the craft correctly so I can take off from the VAB again

Kerbal-x link: https://kerbalx.com/hoioh/Shorty

The flaps are part of AP+ which is the only used mod for the plane (and there's mechjeb, but it's not used for the flight useless as it may be for this purpose)

Mechjeb for information is fine, not sure about the flaps or cockpit (or any other part tbh) My reasoning is as follows: Stock has its own balance and it's something everyone can measure their creations against. I do not know how AP+, quiztech or other mods are balanced, specially airplane oriented ones, because stock KSP is spaceplane oriented so most stuff is both heavy and powerful. This means I either have to check all competing mods' performance part by part against their stock counterparts to see if they are compatible and if you aren't getting some form of advantage (even if not maliciously ofc) by using mods. Blanket banning part mods also allows me to keep regulations mostly unambiguous. So yeah, your entry is in breach of a rule, it's deemed as a non competing run, sorry!

Edited May 7, 2019 by PDCWolf

[hoioh]

20 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Mechjeb for information is fine, not sure about the flaps or cockpit (or any other part tbh) My reasoning is as follows: Stock has its own balance and it's something everyone can measure their creations against. I do not know how AP+, quiztech or other mods are balanced, specially airplane oriented ones, because stock KSP is spaceplane oriented so most stuff is both heavy and powerful. This means I either have to check all competing mods' performance part by part against their stock counterparts to see if they are compatible and if you aren't getting some form of advantage (even if not maliciously ofc) by using mods. Blanket banning part mods also allows me to keep regulations mostly unambiguous. So yeah, your entry is in breach of a rule, it's deemed as a non competing run, sorry!

Yeah, I saw the rule after posting, couldn't be bothered to do anything about it though.

It's the rule that's not on the list, that's why I missed it in the first place, maybe highlight it a bit, or make it rule 0 in the spoiler, more effective that way

Maybe I'll do it with something stock, if I can still identify the stock parts, you never know

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, hoioh said:

Yeah, I saw the rule after posting, couldn't be bothered to do anything about it though.

It's the rule that's not on the list, that's why I missed it in the first place, maybe highlight it a bit, or make it rule 0 in the spoiler, more effective that way

Maybe I'll do it with something stock, if I can still identify the stock parts, you never know

Done, it's highlighted. It was outside the first spoiler because it's not a rule specific for the aircraft itself, but for the whole game, no physics mods or part mods or anything, only those that provide information, which are already pretty useless for this challenge.

[Flying dutchman]

With this many rules i don't see much room for creativity..

[hoioh]

4 hours ago, Flying dutchman said:

With this many rules i don't see much room for creativity..

It's not that bad, just build a plane that looks like a plane using stock parts and land it on the VAB

The rules basically serve the purpose of the 'plane that looks like a plane' bit so as to attempt to create a box without holes in it

It's not that bad, just mighty specific

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

I do feel that this challenge is rather specific. I get things like no mods or no abusing part clipping but specifying a wing span to fuselage length ratio? Maybe loosen up the rules a bit to make it seem more like a fun challenge and less like a homework assignment.

[PDCWolf]

5 hours ago, Flying dutchman said:

With this many rules i don't see much room for creativity..

 

8 minutes ago, Ol’ Musky Boi said:

I do feel that this challenge is rather specific. I get things like no mods or no abusing part clipping but specifying a wing span to fuselage length ratio? Maybe loosen up the rules a bit to make it seem more like a fun challenge and less like a homework assignment.

I'm gonna follow up on what Hoioh already said: They are more specific than limiting. If you were to read over them quickly, you'd realize that they have few goals in reality: Create a craft that looks and works like a normal airplane and land it -also like a normal airplane- on the VAB roof without abusing the game and/or game engine in any way. It's a legit design and demonstrate contest that doesn't allow another "see how you can bend the rules/break the game and still count" type of situation. More specific to what you say, the 4:1 wingspan to body length ratio rule is (it also says so in the post, in nicer words) another patched hole to stop entries from abusing wing spam. It is a known fact that in KSP you can just keep slapping wings on to stuff and get better and better results with every single surface as long as you maintain balance. As I already said in the op, VAB roof landing challenges are not new, thus I added an, in my opinion, needed twist by stopping the most common ways to easily complete the challenge.

Creativity is not a finite resource, nor is it limited to certain applications either, so I don't think we can say that the rules kill creativity. Same thing for fun, it's not limited to a single concept or way to do things, those two things are personal and subjective.

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

5 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

 

I'm gonna follow up on what Hoioh already said: They are more specific than limiting. If you were to read over them quickly, you'd realize that they have few goals in reality: Create a craft that looks and works like a normal airplane and land it -also like a normal airplane- on the VAB roof without abusing the game and/or game engine in any way. It's a legit design and demonstrate contest that doesn't allow another "see how you can bend the rules/break the game and still count" type of situation. More specific to what you say, the 4:1 wingspan to body length ratio rule is (it also says so in the post, in nicer words) another patched hole to stop entries from abusing wing spam. It is a known fact that in KSP you can just keep slapping wings on to stuff and get better and better results with every single surface as long as you maintain balance. As I already said in the op, VAB roof landing challenges are not new, thus I added an, in my opinion, needed twist by stopping the most common ways to easily complete the challenge.

Creativity is not a finite resource, nor is it limited to certain applications either, so I don't think we can say that the rules kill creativity. Same thing for fun, it's not limited to a single concept or way to do things, those two things are personal and subjective.

I understand that, I did read the rules. But they could summed up as just that, "Create a craft that looks and works like a normal airplane and land it -also like a normal airplane- on the VAB roof without abusing the game and/or game engine in any way", people are smart enough to infer the rest. The approximately 500 word long rule list might seem quite intimidating to some and might put people off attempting the challenge. Just my opinion.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

15 hours ago, Ol’ Musky Boi said:

might put people off attempting the challenge.

Agreed.

With a rule list that specific about how the plane has to be built, flown, and landed; he may as well have given us a pre-built craft file we have to use to land.

Edited May 10, 2019 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Loskene]

I think some of you are overstating the specificity of the rules. It really just is "fly and land a realistic plane" and the rules are just there to nip in the bud common edge cases and physics quirks that allow circumventing the spirit of the challenge. When looked at as a whole they're really not that limiting or stifling creativity. You may argue it's actually a little too easy even with these rules.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

14 minutes ago, Loskene said:

I think some of you are overstating the specificity of the rules. It really just is "fly and land a realistic plane" and the rules are just there to nip in the bud common edge cases and physics quirks that allow circumventing the spirit of the challenge. When looked at as a whole they're really not that limiting or stifling creativity. You may argue it's actually a little too easy even with these rules.

Exactly, it's super easy and, no offense to OP; super boring.

We've had this challenge in the past, with looser rules, and it was much more interesting, with some very creative designs.

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Loskene]

1 hour ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Exactly, it's super easy and, no offense to OP; super boring.

We've had this challenge in the past, with looser rules, and it was much more interesting, with some very creative designs.

Yeah I don't really have a horse in this race, I just thought the hyperfocus on the rules was misdirected.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

4 minutes ago, Loskene said:

Yeah I don't really have a horse in this race, I just thought the hyperfocus on the rules was misdirected.

Fair enough, I'm certainly not here to derail or ruin the challenge for others, just saying it's not for me.

[xavierfire]

ı did it with stock Aeris 3A plane in 1.4.5 in stock size real solar system.
Did this yesternight, before reading your post, but since it's stock plane file, and no cheats used, i'm pretty sure it complies with any rules.
Used arch gliding and pinpointing the freefall location exactly where VAB Helipad is. Plane should catch proper landing angle at about 25m/s; rest is up to brakes at 200% work.
 Only modification is that i put RAPIER engine. which could be easier with lighter juno engine, but hell why, I'm a veteran and this is a because i can matter.

Happy forums folks
-XavierFire (unregistered user)