Shuttle Challenge v6 - The STS thread [Stock and Mod Friendly] - ANNOUNCEMENT: v7 IS LIVE!

[Kerb24]

2 hours ago, Artienia said:

we should spice up Jool 5

An idea for a Jool V twist I have is that since the original proposal for the Space Transportation System would have been a full system of various vehicles and space stations, the twist could be that infrastructure has to be setup first (Bases, orbital tugs, stations, etc) over multiple launches.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Kerb24

[sturmhauke]

@OJT I got that commemorative badge for you, in a prompt and timely manner. 

[OJT]

On 6/13/2023 at 10:40 AM, sturmhauke said:

@OJT I got that commemorative badge for you, in a prompt and timely manner. 

I actually forgot about this! Thanks for following through anyway

[sturmhauke]

ANNOUNCEMENT

Artienia and I have been planning some big changes, including a whole bunch of new missions. We aren't ready to make them fully available to all players yet, but if you are interested in being a test pilot and giving us feedback, please message me or Artie. When we're ready to go live, we'll be retiring this thread and launching a V7! Here's a little sneak peek:

What does it all mean? Stay tuned!

[Richmountain112]

5 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

ANNOUNCEMENT

Artienia and I have been planning some big changes, including a whole bunch of new missions. We aren't ready to make them fully available to all players yet, but if you are interested in being a test pilot and giving us feedback, please message me or Artie. When we're ready to go live, we'll be retiring this thread and launching a V7! Here's a little sneak peek:

What does it all mean? Stay tuned!

Awesome!

Is a Sarnus Five (Land on All of the moons of Sarnus (Hale, Ovok, Tekto, Slate, and Eeloo) in 1 launch (or something assembled in LKO)) one of the Sarnus STS missions?

There's also Neidon Plus by @Interplanet Janet. You should check it out. A Hargaladõ landing (or even a flyby) would be incredibly tricky because of its tiny SOI. 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Richmountain112

[sturmhauke]

Sarnus? What's a Sarnus? We're still refining the stock system missions for now, we haven't done any major work on any additional planets that may or may not exist.

[Richmountain112]

1 hour ago, sturmhauke said:

Sarnus? What's a Sarnus? We're still refining the stock system missions for now, we haven't done any major work on any additional planets that may or may not exist.

Sarnus is the equivalent of Saturn. You need OPM, though.

[sturmhauke]

OPM? What's that? Ovoid Preflight Machinery? Opalescent Potato Muffin? Office of Polar Madness? Oblivious Pain Management?

As for Saturn, I haven't seen one of those on the road in a while. Anyway, this is Kerbal Space Program, not Kerbal Discontinued Cars Program.

[Richmountain112]

1 hour ago, sturmhauke said:

OPM? What's that? Ovoid Preflight Machinery? Opalescent Potato Muffin? Office of Polar Madness? Oblivious Pain Management?

As for Saturn, I haven't seen one of those on the road in a while. Anyway, this is Kerbal Space Program, not Kerbal Discontinued Cars Program.

OPM stands for Outer Planets Mod. And what I meant by Saturn is the planet.

[sturmhauke]

Planets? Sounds like science fiction.

[Artienia]

bro got done dirty

 

Anyways, Currently Almost all of "Phase 1" as we call it is complete. 
Phase one missions are the one that come after Duna-1, Mun-1 and Minmus-1. Only remaining missions are the 4th Mun. Minmus and Duna missions, and the Summer and Christmas missions. Those should be relatively easy. As sturm said, we're looking for beta testers! Especially for JO-5 and EV-6

[Richmountain112]

46 minutes ago, Artienia said:

bro got done dirty

 

Anyways, Currently Almost all of "Phase 1" as we call it is complete. 
Phase one missions are the one that come after Duna-1, Mun-1 and Minmus-1. Only remaining missions are the 4th Mun. Minmus and Duna missions, and the Summer and Christmas missions. Those should be relatively easy. As sturm said, we're looking for beta testers! Especially for JO-5 and EV-6

Cool! I wanna know what they are.

[sturmhauke]

If you want to help us beta test and give useful feedback, I'll send you some info. If you're just curious, I'm sorry but you'll have to wait.

[KSPGAMER1234]

On 6/27/2023 at 3:34 AM, sturmhauke said:

If you want to help us beta test and give useful feedback, I'll send you some info. If you're just curious, I'm sorry but you'll have to wait.

hi, i'm ready to help. To betatest

[sturmhauke]

Those plans have been temporarily put on hold. My dad died recently and I've been busy getting his affairs settled.

[KSPGAMER1234]

On 7/28/2023 at 8:19 PM, sturmhauke said:

Those plans have been temporarily put on hold. My dad died recently and I've been busy getting his affairs settled.

Oy excrements...

[Alchemist]

Well, I haven't flown these in quite a while, so might as well start with basics, given how much flight testing such vessels require.

 

Pilots, Engineers and scientists, I present you... Heavy Recovery Orbiter!

Wait a second, isn't this the good old HRO just with new paintjob? Yup, it totally is. And it's such a pain in the S to make it not fall apart with this new VAB.

Spoiler

A better view on ascent

Booster separation

Eh... let's pretend they didn't fly apart and hit the wings. Wings didn't mind. So much for trying to make a "slightly lighter" launch configuration.

And you know what comes off next. At least this time the technicians didn't manage to install fuel lines backwards

Gently and efficiently accelerating...

Target altitude reached. And we almost ran out of fuel. Fuel margins were perfectly adjusted for the mission.

Here you go, 43 tons of orange juice as ordered.

Now for the other payload... Fire all the... spin-stabilized satellites!

Deorbit and a slight bounce off the atmosphere

Target in sight. Commence S-turns.

Landing configuration (actually, flaps are a total overkill when landing empty. Underweight landings are a bit tricky with such huge airframe even without flaps).

And a very gentle touchdown

 

To be completely fair, I'm not exactly satisfied with VAB in KSP2, especially with what it takes to get symmetry working properly. 

But HRO flies again.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Alchemist

[Alchemist]

Preface:

it was a huge mess this time. Starting with planning to swing by another orbit and grabbing a certain thing to bring down - but the preliminary testing showed that that fuel tank is impossible to secure by a docking port alone. (Might still investigate a bit different payload design design. HRO is perfectly landable with a heavy payload.) Ending with being unable to land the ship due to a weird structural failure, to the point of redoing half the mission and filing a bug report

Spoiler

Adjusting azimuth is a pain with non-gimballed boosters, even with the huge width of HRO allowing a good roll authority for the main engines.

I thought I fixed the damn SRBs falling apart on separation! The VAB crew forgot half the struts again!!!

In any case, the semi-light launch configuration proved sufficient for the mission profile. Tank separation, continuing on internal fuel.

By the way, the top jet engine has been replaced with another OMS thruster.  4 jets are a bit of overkill, besides, the high-mounted engine produces the most pitch-down momentum, which reduces it actual effectiveness. On the other hand, OMS proved to produce more pitch-up momentum than their gimbals could handle (the KSP1 version had off-set plateless engines for OMS), so an extra thruster makes it nicely balanced (and it can be further throttled if further balancing is needed).

The most efficient (to not waste energy fighting gravity, and given different efficiency of ascent and OMS engines) insertion profile for mid orbits seems to be going about the same profile as for low orbit and just continuing horizontal acceleration to get the apoapsis up there.

And circularizing at 600 km

The payload revealed

Spoiler

And this is where timeline shenanigans begin

Originally the deployment was to go as follows:

First, releasing the telescope

Redock the MMUs to solar panel assemblies

and then dock the panels to the telescope

And then get the MMUs back into the shuttle and fly home.

And it wasn't even docking port kraken-drive that messed it all up (although the shuttle had to chase the telescope after every operation).

 

Unfortunately, the moment the MMUs were redocked to the panel assemblies in the payload bay (it can even be seen on the screenshot), ALL STRUTS BROKE LOOSE!!!
And the effect proved so consistent, I even wrote a bug report.

Long story short, this orbiter without struts can't get onto the runway from the VAB, let alone from space (I still got it to the runway couple times, but it kept disintegrating on touchdown or on any g-force).

 

 

Anyway, what turned out to be working is releasing the panels from the bay and them chasing them with the MMUs. Then the assembly was more or less the same

Spoiler

the MMUs even could be recovered. if they are docked to their original place.

(attempt to dock them to the bottom of the payload bay resulted in the same mes with the struts. Or more like without the struts)

 

Unfortunately, it looks like the screenshot of the initial deorbit trajectory got lost, but but it was going in east-north-east.  But here's what HRO can do with it, if properly angled. Yup, bounced straight towards KSC.

Gliding range? Yes

(still needed some S-turns in the end)

 

And then there also was another bug with the inner landing gear. had to not deploy it so it doesn't wreck the ship randomly before touching down. It's another mess that keeps falling off and doing weird things.

Anyway, after 2 days of fighting bugs, here we go:

 

TLDR - a fancy telescope and a full hive of bugs

[Alchemist]

And finally, after so much stumbling into bugs I feel like an entomologist, the fuel pod recovery mission was finally authorized.

 

But first, we had to deploy a new fuel pod, because the old one was impossible to secure. (Attaching it by the end resulted in in swinging through the cargo bay, attaching by 1 meter port in the middle just couldn't hold the weight, and multi-docking is apparently not a thing in this version. Also, the old one got non-retractable panels by mistake, but that's a dumb mistake.)

Incidentally, the 2.5 m docking port in the middle (perpendicular to the force acting on it!) is enough to hold 43 ton payload during ascent. No struts between shuttle and payload.

Deploying to the same 350 km orbit as last time. And... it loses struts on deployment. Will have to be gentle to not shake it apart.

Alright, now to launch the actual mission.

 

Spoiler

You know the drill. And apparently, it got launched from another pad, because someone forgot to take care of the clamps left from last launch.

This time flipped up before even dropping the tank.

Low orbit

Rendezvous

And something along these lines

Except I had to redo the docking a bunch of times, flipping the damn pod in all the acceptable orientations, before it agreed to dock without breaking the shuttle's struts.

I know it early access and whatnot, but damn it! Can't you get struts working properly?

Anyway, payload back in the bay.

Spoiler

Deorbiting. In hindsight, don't forget the planet rotates significantly.

 

Adjusting trajectory aerodynamically

And I might have overbraked a bit... Well, that's why HRO has jets

It ended with a slow crawl home across half the continent.

By the way, another important feature of HRO design is ballast pumping. In other words, if you're can't keep nose prograde - pump the fuel forward; if you struggle to keep nose up - pump fuel backward.

Now let's be gentle...

Control the vertical speed...

And touchdown

Full tank in the bay

Payload recovered

[Alchemist]

Now we have a modified configuration to test out. HRO-M03 is equipped with cargo ramp to deploy payloads on planetary surface. Of course, that also means a serious overhaul of the engine section.

Also, equipped with a slightly heavier launcher configuration - that would be needed for longer-distance missions

Spoiler

Wait a second! Who mishandled the paperwork, mixing documents for the two variants?! Why is there a crew of 8 on a shuttle that hasn't been fully reentry-tested? They were scheduled to fly on the other HRO shuttle! Now add another crew cabin and send it after this one (meanwhile, let the crew preform the full-scale in-orbit tests).

Spoiler

Who lost control?! Spent boosters? come on!

In this configuration the tank lasts halfway to orbital speed. Some long-range application would require more, but for mid-orbit recovery that's more than enough.

And... what's with orbit navigation??? Why is it labeled as "landed"? Seriously? (Is there a problem with "hydrazine"?)

Ha-ha... Had to open the save file and change "Landed" for "Orbiting".  That's the only thing that helped.

OK, orbit established, misaimed by 5 degrees. Proceeding with rende... what do you spell that?! English is already my third language - I'm definitely not learning French!

Navigating to target.

Target in sight!

In the light of the issiues uncovered on previous 2 missions, docking was not attempted, opting for EVA transfer instead.

 

Spoiler

Go home, P.a.i.g.e, you're glitched.

Anyway, the crew jumps the gap and transfers to the other shuttle.

Why is there antenna in the bay? While there are some safety concerns, we are going to land the prototype. Remotely. So to ensure uninterrupted signal and give Jeb the front seat at guiding it, here's the antenna that would stay right above the prototype shuttle during reentry.

And... here we found that 3 of 4 rudders jammed the moment bays were closed and locked. In other words, no rudder brakes and barely any rudder authority. Oops.

Still, let's try to guide the bird home...

 

Look, Gene - no airbrakes!

And the jets also refused to ignite - something jammed in all the damn intakes (seriously, they decided they're occluded - and refused to work even if the bays are opened). Just how many weird failures in one test flight?!

There still was enough juice for the rocket thrusters to guide the craft through the loop when too much speed got shed.

Still, going in a bit too fast for no airbrakes...

But as the speed slowly dropped, yaw control with a quarter of rudder authority became the problem... first, got swept beyond the left taxiway, then finally turned right, but a bit too much...

And finally touched down on the right runway.

 

 

Well, one craft down, one to go.

That was a bit too much braking action, so a small OMS boost was used on the upswing, bringing trajectory straight to KSC.

That's about the perfect gliding approach

And then another issue surfaced. in fact, it has been noted back on the pad, that the second shuttle was missing several struts no matter how many times it was sent to the VAB.

With slightly compromised structural integrity it still proved landable (unlike complete strut failure), but required an ultra-gentle touchdown. (Fortunately, if you need an ultra-soft airliner-type landing, HRO airframe can do that. Because that's the specification for dealing with tricky payloads.)

And mission complete!

Spoiler

All 12 crew of both flights returned together

Ok, I think that's enough strut failures.

Until this mess gets a bit improved, no more dockings or multi-shuttle flights. Will need to see which missions are less RUD-prone.

[Alchemist]

Alright. The next mission of what looks doable at the current condition of KSP2 is... something I actually haven't done in KSP1, but quite a logical stepping stone before long-range operations. Also this is already approaching the limit of the particular launch configuration (because I deliberately went for lighter launch assemblies for shorter range missions - the full-scale option would be reaching the LKO with nearly full internal tanks).

Today, we are going to the Mun, but not with the entire shuttle.

Spoiler

Launch is about the same as last time, only equatorial

And once we reach the orbit... let's plan the free-return!

To think of it, using mains (and taking full advantage of Oberth effect) would probably be more efficient than 5 minutes long OMS burn ending at such angle to velocity.

All set for Munar fly-by

And now it's time to release the payload

 

Spoiler

Alright, lower the periapsis,

and it looks like we already see an interesting landing site

Orbit insertion

Separation

It's a two-stage Apollo-style lander (also, timewarping with legs deployed summons a certain mythical creature - so let's retract them for now).

Target in sight - commencing descent

Eh? It's not supposed to sit on the engine! Ah, whatever - that's just the descent stage.

Commander Valentina Kerman steps upon the dusty munar soil. "No ladder? Who needs it if you can jump this high even without the jetpack!"

The lander looks like a pebble from up here...

 

We'll leave Val and Bill to check out the Mun. Meanwhile, Jeb has a reentry to aim.

Spoiler

OK, this slingshot might have given us a bit too much inclination to aim anywhere, let's fix it.

Is this a bit too far from KSC? No, this is perfect range to deal with this speed.

Commence braking! Now it's inverse-flying at 30 km

And that's how you aim at KSC from 1/3 round the planet.

Flying home into the sunrise

Well, this might be a bit too fast, but if we have runways this long...

 

Spoiler

This may still be over twice the regular landing speed for this much wing area. But if we're gentle, the shuttle won't mind. Also, most of landing gear got stuck again.

And we're home.

One craft home, one to go.

 

Meanwhile on the Mun...

Spoiler

And then the orbital navigation failed again. But since the ascent stage had double the required delta v, might as well navigate to the CSM the most straightforward way (that is 150 m/s relative velocity straight to the target).

And it didn't take too long to get there.

Alright, transfer the crew, discard the lander and plot the... oh scrap! The trajectory planner fails to recognize the engine after it retracted the nozzle on its own. Eyeball the return trajectory then! And don't forget we're in retrograde orbit.

So, are we even getting close to KSC?

Nope, off by a continent. A capsule is too good at aerobraking.

And this concludes the STS-5T mission.

Although, to be fair, if we're bringing the shuttle that far, might as well go into orbit and skip the CSM part altogether. Reentry-capable reusable craft going to munar orbit and then handling the crew recovery from there would likely be a more optimal approach at this point.

[OJT]

Hello fellas

As was announced previously by @sturmhauke and @Artienia, the V7 is in development and will be coming soon. However, due to IRL stuff, busy schedules and other factors that I will not delve into, both of them (at least temporarily) won't be actively participating in the moderation and coordination of STS Shuttle Challenge for the foreseeable future. Sturm in particular has kindly asked me to take over the reigns, and I accepted

To say that it would be an honour to moderate one of the longest running (if not THE longest running) challenge thread on this forum would be an understatement. Amd I'm also glad to report that V7 is in its final stages of planning and will go live in the coming weeks. In the meanwhile I will go through the backlog and see whether there were any submissions that were missed and, if they're okay, give out the badges. When the V7 is a go, it will be announced here!
 

Have a nice one lads

[OJT]

At last I have time to review the submissions. I profusely apologize for taking so long @Alchemist, but I promised that I would review the non-graded reports, and I am a man of my word

Your submissions look great! Nice design, plenty of screenshots, and clean runway landings. And a STS-5T Test Pilot mission to boot! Here are your badges

[OJT]

And also, one small thing...
STS v7 IS NOW LIVE IN KSP2!

It has been an incredible journey, and I would like to thank all participants and contributors of v6. Without you this thread wouldn't be what it is

See you around