Weekly Challenge #29 Traversing a Starfield

[Nerdy_Mike]

 

Weekly Challenge #29 Traversing a Starfield:

Primary: Build a Starfield-inspired VTOL spaceship that can take off and land vertically, but fly horizontally. Show us how close of a match your Kerbals' ship is to your Starfield ship.

Secondary: Successfully test your VTOL by landing it on the parking garage or VAB roof.

Jeb: Land your VTOL on the Mun like it's 1999. Use main engines to cancel horizontal velocity, then ventral thrusters to soft land.

Val: Use your VTOL to deploy cargo to the Munar surface (saddle trusses and cargo bays recommended!), then return to orbit. If your VTOL is a spaceplane equipped for re-entry, return it to Kerbin.

[NexusHelium]

Oh this is perfect. I really like basing my ships off of movies and video games.

[Mikki]

OMG... let the dV carnage show begin!

[PyroSA]

There's very few sci-fi ships that can pull off realistic-like dV figures.

So there's just no way I'll build a ship that can do actual ground-to-orbit-to-the-mun-with-cargo-to-drop-and-back without unlimited fuel... or will I?

[NexusHelium]

And now to see if this unholy (Though rather nice looking, I might add,) contraption can make it to the Mun (I'm pretty sure that link works)

Picture

[KerbalTheFrog]

Now do this on decouples 

[NexusHelium]

wish me luck...

hoo boy

[NexusHelium]

Low mun orbit

sooooo laggggyyy

[NexusHelium]

Anddddd... last one... landed... "That's three seconds of boredom followed by seven seconds of sheer terror." - Jim Lovell (Or Tom Hanks)

Landed

Oh and here's the cargo. It's a simple Munar Probe that was shot out of the cargo bay you can see in the landed picture. The reason it has antennas for legs is because the normal landing legs would keep saying "Blocked" whenever I would try to extend them even though they weren't so I just opted out to this design.

Cargo

Speaking honestly... This was a nightmare.

[Heretic391]

6 hours ago, NexusHelium said:

Anddddd... last one... landed... "That's three seconds of boredom followed by seven seconds of sheer terror." - Jim Lovell (Or Tom Hanks)

Landed

Oh and here's the cargo. It's a simple Munar Probe that was shot out of the cargo bay you can see in the landed picture. The reason it has antennas for legs is because the normal landing legs would keep saying "Blocked" whenever I would try to extend them even though they weren't so I just opted out to this design.

Cargo

Speaking honestly... This was a nightmare.

Cool build!

[Yang366]

Well done !

On my side, I'm still blocked by legs that detach themselves on landing.

 

[NexusHelium]

Yeah. My ship for the first... 20 tries had what I like to call "Rapid dissasemblyitis," or, "The Angry Kraken disease"

The hardest part for me was probably getting the center of mass perfectly aligned for the vertical engines. It kept going to one side or the others and I could barely use the horizontal thrusters because of how I placed them. I eventually figured it out though,

[Socraticat]

This vessel is horrid. I love it. I call it "The Flying Pancake":

Spoiler

I haven't played Starfield, so I have no reference other than some screenshots (I shamefully admit I didn'teven watch any videos). What always stands out is the boosters on or near the legs, and this Bulldog Pod somewhere on the hull. Other than that, they all look kinda like flying pancakes to me, so I aimed for that aesthetic. Oh, and I rooted it to a cargo bay- with no cargo.

It can reach about 25k on Kerbin. It reached the surface of the Mun and back to Munar orbit from LKO where it was boosted by a super-heavy looking booster assembly.

It can land from its 25k altitude, although I wouldn't say it makes precise landings. I would call it fairly stable, but not at all maneuverable.

It's absolutely better than the first few attempts I made, and even better than some subsequent redesigns.

 

[Mikki]

Genovis: "You know, i was told this ship is very important for our Space Program..."

Bob: "..."

Genovis: "We allready wasted half of the fuel, and we don`t have any payload attached..."

Bob: "...kay..."

Genovis: "I heard rumors Jebediah went AWOL..."

Bob: "...I don`t care."

Genovis. "...Aaaaaaand... touchdown... ...If we had infinite fuel..."

Bob: "We don`t."  

[NexusHelium]

19 hours ago, Mikki said:

Genovis: "We allready wasted half of the fuel, and we don`t have any payload attached..."

Bob: "...kay..."

My KSP life in a nutshell.