Whats your Kapy Rock Mission Strategy?

[Meecrob]

On 2/14/2024 at 3:42 PM, Urus28 said:

Stargaze was a quite challenging place to land.

Lol, how many tries? Too many? I've totally been there. Not trying to land a plane there though, so I imagine its got a pretty beefy STOL kit?

[The Aziz]

What you need is a plane with enough lift to be able to go VERY slow without stalling. And decent brakes. I made in on 2nd try (I crashed into a mountain on first, miscalculated the trajectory).

[Meecrob]

2 hours ago, The Aziz said:

What you need is a plane with enough lift to be able to go VERY slow without stalling. And decent brakes. I made in on 2nd try (I crashed into a mountain on first, miscalculated the trajectory).

 That is one strategy. I tried out a few. Here is a failed one trying out lobbing the lander at the target. I'm still editing the final bit, I dont wanna give away my solution just yet.

 

[pandaman]

I built a plane with the lander can as a 'cockpit' and flew there.  Added chutes to avoid needing a flat runway area.  Not at all pretty, but functional, and a lot easier than trying to hit it from orbit, and no reentry heat to worry about either.

[Meecrob]

8 hours ago, pandaman said:

reentry heat

I'll drop a hint: minimize frontal area and toss some airbrakes on. The game is a little unrealistic now. I can drop in from orbit at 0 degrees AoA and I need engine power at the bottom to climb out.

Edit: I might have exaggerated a bit...Depending on how low I want to pull out of the dive, it is possible for me to bleed off enough speed to require engines. If I am  more aggressive, I can carry 600m/s + through the maneuver

Edited February 16 by Meecrob

[KincaidFrankMF]

19 hours ago, pandaman said:

I built a plane with the lander can as a 'cockpit' and flew there.  Added chutes to avoid needing a flat runway area.

That's what I did for Stargazer Point - ejected my "cockpit" directly over the Point and landed on the summit.

Re. long flight times for Kapy and/or Stargazer, the key is to build a spaceplane rather than the regular kind. Attach some boosters and go suborbital. You only need to come down somewhere vaguely near the target because you can fly the rest of the way.

[Urus28]

23 hours ago, Meecrob said:

Lol, how many tries? Too many? I've totally been there. Not trying to land a plane there though, so I imagine its got a pretty beefy STOL kit?

Not so many times, actually, but I circle a lot around it to spot a good place to land. Yes the design was STOL, subsonic, large wingspan, flaps, airbrakes and large landing gear =)

[MirageNL]

I figured flying a plane would take me way too long, so I built a rocket for a ballistic approach. It took a few reloads to get the trajectory and landing near Kapy Rock, but because my DeltaV was a little limited, a precise landing proved challenging. In the end I settled for a few km of walking at 4x speed, which was still certainly faster than flying all the way.

I took on Stargazer Point with the same approach, but after walking the last bit, I found out I actually had to land on top. So I went back to the VAB to build a more maneuverable lander. After countless reloads to fine-tune my re-entry, I finally managed to land on top! Then I realised I used a command pod instead of a lander can, so it didn't count.  Again back to the VAB and do it all over again. I almost had the right re-entry again, but fine-tuning the landing proved more difficult than before. My thruster exhausts were apparently hitting the heat shield, causing the lander to flip in all directions and preventing burns longer than 1s. I stubbornly refused to go back to the VAB again, so I kept trying anyway. I finally succeeded and learned some valuable lessons, but flying a plane might have been faster in retrospect.

[magnemoe]

On 2/16/2024 at 2:47 PM, Meecrob said:

 That is one strategy. I tried out a few. Here is a failed one trying out lobbing the lander at the target. I'm still editing the final bit, I dont wanna give away my solution just yet.

 

Nice plane  Now I would just put small rover wheels and parachutes on the drop pod. Perhaps coming in slower, add reaction wheels so rover can get back to its wheels if falling over. Then drive 400 meters. 
The target zone is very small,  the structure and perhaps 10 meters around

[Meecrob]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Nice plane  Now I would just put small rover wheels and parachutes on the drop pod. Perhaps coming in slower, add reaction wheels so rover can get back to its wheels if falling over. Then drive 400 meters. 
The target zone is very small,  the structure and perhaps 10 meters around

Thanks!

I've tried a few ways. Lots of ways work some of the time with some reverting, but I think I found one way that works most of the time. I'm just fiddling with it a bit.

[cubinator]

It flies, but barely.

Ditch the wings when flying slow over the drop zone.

[Meecrob]

On 2/19/2024 at 12:06 PM, magnemoe said:

The target zone is very small,  the structure and perhaps 10 meters around

I'll use that as an excuse as to why I fell over

Edit: l'll do the video when I can.  I gotta do like groceries and stuff lol.

Edited February 23 by Meecrob

[Meecrob]

On 2/21/2024 at 4:32 PM, cubinator said:

Ditch the wings when flying slow over the drop zone.

Nah, fly it, aim it as long as you can.

When you ditch the wings, you become uncontrolled.

You are accurate enough you can get as close as you did. Try for a few more hours, refine your approach, and I bet you can land it better than me.

It will click after a few hours.

Edited February 23 by Meecrob

[Aiurwarrior1]

I built a suborbital hopper with a lander stage equipped with jets to hover my way over to the target. Worked well for both Kapy Rock and Stargazer Point!

The tricky part was keeping the quad-jet stable. I managed it for Kapy Rock manually, but when I went to Stargazer I used the K2D2 mod to manage the hovering stability for me.

[Kianykin]

I built a two seater aircraft. One of the seats was the lander can. I flew there and parachuted the plane into the nearby lake,  and then drove it to the site.

[CaptKordite]

I turned the Capsule into a rover and used a suborbital hop. After that, though, I realized that you do not need to get the lander can TO Kapy Rock to complete the mission. The lander can needs to be launched but your crew member is the only one that needs to get to the rock. You could land your lander can anywhere and walk the rest of the way.
https://the-sky-calls.dreamwidth.org/127000.html

 

[Meecrob]

2 hours ago, CaptKordite said:

The lander can needs to be launched but your crew member is the only one that needs to get to the rock. You could land your lander can anywhere and walk the rest of the way.

Thats no fun though, lol.

https://ibb.co/D7PkDQw

Edited March 19 by Meecrob

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, CaptKordite said:

I turned the Capsule into a rover and used a suborbital hop. After that, though, I realized that you do not need to get the lander can TO Kapy Rock to complete the mission. The lander can needs to be launched but your crew member is the only one that needs to get to the rock. You could land your lander can anywhere and walk the rest of the way.
https://the-sky-calls.dreamwidth.org/127000.html

 

Walking is slow, best to bring an rover. but not having to bring the landing can and rover can be much smaller and safer. 

[CFTeague2]

Made a plane with a lot of fuel, using what KSP1 would have called "Wheezlie" engines.   Flew on x4 timewarp for about 30 minutes of real time.    kind of dull.

Landing (with help of some parachutes) ~5km away, and used the jet engines to slowly roll (~5 m/s) until I got close enough for it to count.

 

Along the way, flipped the jet a few times, on the slope-ey terrain, and went too fast at least once, so there were a few reloads

Also, didnt remember to put a ladder on the plane, so Bob could not get back in, once i had him outside to plant a flag.   had to recover him seperately frmo the plane itself

 

[Meecrob]

Okay, I finally got enough free time in a solid chunk over Easter to finish my video.

So how far from Kapy Rock did everyone get to? I'm at 67m with walking, 81 without. Flight time ~16 minutes.

 

Edited April 4 by Meecrob

[Superfluous J]

On 3/18/2024 at 7:32 PM, CaptKordite said:

The lander can needs to be launched but your crew member is the only one that needs to get to the rock. You could land your lander can anywhere and walk the rest of the way.

Does that include the launch pad?

Like, I can put a ship on the launch pad with a lander can attached to the bottom of the rocket, and on launch disconnect it and then fly to Kapy Rock, and it still counts?