Challenge: Smooooooth rider!

[Ivan Ivanovich]

I know Jeb\'s gonna hate me for that one...

Now, with all the addons and goodies and gadgets, it has become easy to slap enough engine power behind the capsule to accelerate it to 2000m/s in a split second... but have you ever thought what stress this puts on the poor thing? And the expensive satellites? Oh, and I guess our astronauts won\'t really enjoy it either.

The goal: A stable orbit at or above 100k meters.

The challenge: Lowest G-Force stress on the payload.

[Jarnis]

I know Jeb\'s gonna hate me for that one...

Now, with all the addons and goodies and gadgets, it has become easy to slap enough engine power behind the capsule to accelerate it to 2000m/s in a split second... but have you ever thought what stress this puts on the poor thing? And the expensive satellites? Oh, and I guess our astronauts won\'t really enjoy it either.

The goal: A stable orbit at or above 100k meters.

The challenge: Lowest G-Force stress on the payload.

Sub-2G should be easy. To the VAB...!

[Ivan Ivanovich]

I got to 2.2g.

The idea arose when I noticed that the satellites I try to orbit usually break off during ascent because they, and their separators, cannot handle the stress. With less g, it worked out pretty well.

[Jarnis]

This is easy and actually demonstrates how trivial it is to reach a stable orbit 'taking it easy'. However, I think there is a problem - I got the exact same 2.2G while absolutely certain that I never went past 1.5G on the meter.

I\'m fairly certain that the 2.2G comes as a spike from the decoupler when I stage.

Off to tinker the design to be SSTO...

[Ivan Ivanovich]

You could use the 'smooth' decoupler, only drawback is that it cannot really handle a lot of stress...

[Muka]

You could use the 'smooth' decoupler, only drawback is that it cannot really handle a lot of stress...

Struts... use them

[Jarnis]

Ditched decouplers, first try without:

1.9G

SSTO rocket (dubbed 'Smooth Criminal') to a 100km circular orbit with 75% of the last trio of tanks left for orbital operations. Even has a parachute, tho I think it would\'ve snapped under the weight of the empty rocket if I tried to land...

I\'m fairly sure I can beat this with further tries, but since it is officially a new record for this challenge, here it is.

[Jarnis]

I hereby submit that the G-meter is imprecise. Here is the best I can do with the meter never visibly moving from 1G for more than 2 pixels.

SSTO to stable 100km+ orbit, all stock parts, with Most Gee Force Endured: 1.7G 8)

Overshot the 100km circular a bit, but it would be trivial to readjust it there with the fuel remaining.

[koberko]

1.4 G

Stable orbit at 102-104 km

All stock parts.

Sunrise on first orbit:

Approaching KSC:

At KSC:

Final result and max G-force:

P.S. I think I could make it with even less G\'s... I got distracted at one point, so I didn\'t decrees throttle in time, and Gforce went from 1.2 to 1.4 >

[Jarnis]

I hereby surrender on this challenge unless we get a more accurate G-metering (both on the instrumentation and at the end-of-flight screen)

Still, glad you liked my design

[koberko]

I hereby surrender on this challenge unless we get a more accurate G-metering (both on the instrumentation and at the end-of-flight screen)

Still, glad you liked my design

Yeah, I have to give you credits for design; I have tried not to make it the same, but I have find out that this one works best...

To make it a 'Smooooooth rider' craft has to be single stage, and it had to have enough fuel to reach orbit with slow acceleration.

I have tried to keep acceleration within 1m/s, but as I have mention before, at one point I forgot to decrease throttle, and got higher acceleration then intended...

And it would be nice to have some graph of Gforce over flight, or at least display of maximum Gforce an avarage.

[Herpderpsslerps]

I\'ve been screwing around with this actually without knowing about the challenge. I\'ve used a tug set up to get the satellites to orbit.

The satallite probably hits more then 2 g\'s when its payload booster lights off and the spinners spin it up.