SSTO to the Mun and back

[Plur303]

SSTO spaceplane to Mun and back

This contest is to see who can design and fly the best SSTO to the Mun and return it to Kerbin. The scoring takes into account the ratio of fuel remaining compared to the amount present at takeoff. Note it scores you on the ratio, not the total amount of fuel. I would like this to just be rockets and jets. No ion engines please. You will be penalized for xenon fuel being present.

Scoring:

((Liquid Fuel at mission end + Oxidizer at mission end)/(Liquid Fuel at mission start + Oxidizer at mission start ))x1000 (rounded to the nearest whole number)

- Land at KSC runway + 500 points

- Take no damage during the mission +250 points (This is to keep people from purposely breaking off parts such as empty tanks or jets in order to save weight)

- Minus 5 points for every unit of Xenon present at takeoff

Rules:

1. No Mechjeb! This is a contest about flying skill, not just building a SSTO that can complete the challenge. Mechjeb defeats the purpose of a skill challenge.

2. Ships must be 100% vanilla stock parts. No mod parts. No edited config files etc.

3. No use of the debug menu

4. No intake spam. This means no stacking intakes. You may use as many intakes as you wish but they may only be mounted on tanks, tri/bi couplers, fuselages etc. This means no mounting intakes in strange places using small cube struts. You may use tri and bi couplers to increase intake area.

5. No refueling. You may not dock with another craft and refuel

6. Ships must take off horizontally from the runway

7. Three screenshot images must be uploaded or linked. The resources tab must be open in these screenshots.

a. Your ship at takeoff with resource tab open

b. Your ship landed on the Mun with resource tab open

c. Your ship landed with the flight results box open so we can see you did indeed go to the Mun, resource tab open

8. Must be manned (as in some form of command pod with at least 1 Kerbal inside).

Good Luck!

Top 5

1. Plur303 - Nuke SSTO MK III 898 points

2. ThePsuedoMonkey -SkyHawk - 787 points (37 fuel points, 500 Landed on runway bonus points, 250 no damage bonus points)

3. Kuris - 258 points (No damage + 8 fuel points)

4.

5.

Honorable Mentions:

bsalis - for his daring mission in a very interesting ship design

Rosarium - 402 (152 fuel points, 250 no damage) DQ for using clipping

Edited May 14, 2013 by Plur303

[Plur303]

Link to my gallery of the mission

http://imgur.com/a/9dxfw

(202+190) / (1320+1320) = 0.14848

0.14848x1000= 148.48

148.48 rounded = 148

+500 for runway landing

+250 for no damage

- 0 points for xenon

= 898 points

Edited May 6, 2013 by Plur303

[tavert]

SSTO does not mean horizontal takeoff. And what's the point of bringing a whole bunch of fuel to the mun and back, which is what your scoring system encourages? This could be a "fuel delivery to munar surface by spaceplane" challenge, but at the moment you're saying you have to bring it all back too.

[Plur303]

1. I never said SSTO means horizontal takeoff. In this contest I want it to be SSTO spaceplanes. I edited my original post to say spaceplane now.

2. I'm trying to find some method of scoring that rewards the ability to bring back as much % of payload of your craft's weight as possible. But not total payload otherwise people will just make massive ships. I'm looking for elegant and efficient designs. It's about bringing back the highest % of the fuel back, not the highest total amount. A small ship might be better than a big ship. Who knows?

I'm willing to consider an alternate method of scoring if people are willing to help me come up with one.

Edited May 6, 2013 by Plur303

[bsalis]

Hmm, I have a pic series I done for the K-prize that mostly-qualifies. It's all stock. However the screenies do not show the resources tab (except one). Is that ok?

[Plur303]

Hmm, I have a pic series I done for the K-prize that mostly-qualifies. It's all stock. However the screenies do not show the resources tab (except one). Is that ok?

It will be hard to score without the final resources being shown but go ahead and post it.

[bsalis]

Ok, here it is. Pic heavy - sorry... i linked a few to cut down.

Ready to go

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8417/8714200462_9cdcc054dc_c.jpg

Ascent

Orbit (shows resources tab)

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8133/8713115759_029afc7cb4_c.jpg

To the Mun

Heck - lets go the south pole for a change

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8267/8713082791_68c978293c_c.jpg

Descent

Landed

To orbit again

In Mun orbit again

Return navigation... messy

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8266/8714210928_0c019615d0_c.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8554/8714211498_a203ca64ed_c.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8547/8714212528_9fa8dc6644_c.jpg

Re-entry

Final

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8272/8713092165_df1d4f7715_c.jpg

Landed

Edited May 6, 2013 by bsalis

[tavert]

I might try this, despite how much I dislike spaceplanes. Trying to do it on just one jet so I can nurse it almost all the way to orbit. 4 reasonably-placed intakes wasn't quite enough for that, I'll have to try again with 6.

On rule 8, I assume you mean manned via capsule/cockpit, no ladder silliness right? Can we put a probe on the plane in addition to a capsule?

[Plur303]

I might try this, despite how much I dislike spaceplanes. Trying to do it on just one jet so I can nurse it almost all the way to orbit. 4 reasonably-placed intakes wasn't quite enough for that, I'll have to try again with 6.

On rule 8, I assume you mean manned via capsule/cockpit, no ladder silliness right? Can we put a probe on the plane in addition to a capsule?

"Must be manned. No probes."

How is that unclear?

[tavert]

Kerbal on a ladder is manned, sort of. It gets a Kerbal to wherever you're going.

No probes meaning you can't have any probe cores on the craft at all, or your craft can't exclusively be controlled by a probe? Big difference, and most people would assume you mean the latter since it's much more significant.

All I'd want to do with a probe is use it for "control from here" to turn the navball around, but I think I can do the same thing with a docking port.

[Plur303]

Kerbal on a ladder is manned, sort of. It gets a Kerbal to wherever you're going.

No probes meaning you can't have any probe cores on the craft at all, or your craft can't exclusively be controlled by a probe? Big difference, and most people would assume you mean the latter since it's much more significant.

All I'd want to do with a probe is use it for "control from here" to turn the navball around, but I think I can do the same thing with a docking port.

I think it is perfectly clear what I mean. The craft needs to be controlled by a Kerbal. I guess you can put a probe on there too if you wish, but there needs to be a cockpit with a Kerbal inside.

I updated the rules once again to clarify.

[pinolallo]

I do love challenges, but

Is think that is a bad habit posting a challenge "tailored" on personal successful flight. eg I do the flight then I will post my "mission" and get the score: this is only understandable reason for the many "no sense" requirements for this challenge.

[Plur303]

I do love challenges, but

Is think that is a bad habit posting a challenge "tailored" on personal successful flight. eg I do the flight then I will post my "mission" and get the score: this is only understandable reason for the many "no sense" requirements for this challenge.

I didn't tailor this for my ship by any means. I have been thinking about this challenge for quite a while and built my ship according to the rules I thought up in advance. I see a lot of challenges that people just think up on a whim and post and they can't even complete it themselves. I completed my challenge before posting to prove that I can do it and to get the challenge rolling with an example. I plan on redoing it because I can think of several places in the flight where I messed up and wasted some fuel.

Getting to orbit using the intake spam exploit is simply that, an exploit.

Using ion engines is incredibly boring and pointless for a mission to the closest celestial body to Kerbin. I want my challenge to be quick and fun to participate in. Not several hours of slow burns to and from the Mun trying to obsessively save every unit of fuel possible.

I like manned missions because it gives us a reason to bring them home.

I like SSTOs because they are reusable and add a layer of difficulty to the game. Any idiot can just slap more mainsails and tanks on a rocket until it reaches orbit.

And I dislike mechjeb because it removes the skill involved for a mission like this. I want this to be as much about the piloting involved as the ship.

Edited May 7, 2013 by Plur303

[lump]

Plur, i think this is a great challenge, at first i thought it was another generic SSTO rocket challenge but this is finally a good SSTO space-plane challenge, i would enter but i don't do space-planes.

[pinolallo]

Getting to orbit using the intake spam exploit is simply that, an exploit.

The Air intake System was introduced in 18.0 10 months ago: In one main release and four minor KSP release developing team does not change it. Facts are telling that is not exploit but just an reductional point of view.

Do you know that most efficient bicycle are the recumbent ones, unbeatable by traditional ones. The reason why but you don't see around recumbent bicycles is because some retarded/reductional rules excluded them from competitions by law. The main goal of a challenge is to find new ideas and solutions giving chance to develop. But this can't happen if people just tails challenges on personal successfull flights and way of play/opinions.

Edited May 7, 2013 by pinolallo

[Plur303]

The Air intake System was introduced in 18.0 10 months ago: In one main release and four minor KSP release developing team does not change it. Facts are telling that is not exploit but just an reductional point of view.

Do you know that most efficient bicycle are the recumbent ones, unbeatable by traditional ones. The reason why but you don't see around recumbent bicycles is because some retarded/reductional rules excluded them from competitions by law. The main goal of a challenge is to find new ideas and solutions giving chance to develop. But this can't happen if people just tails challenges on personal successfull flights and way of play/opinions.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but this challenge is about SSTO space planes, not bicycles... That is a great red herring argument though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring

Putting 50 intakes on a plane so that it can fly to the very edge of space or even achieve a apoapsis above 70,000 meters and reach orbital velocities on turbojets alone is an exploit. I stand firmly by that decision. If they add ramjets to the game later I will change my mind. But the idea that a turbojet can operate at those altitudes is just silly. I'm sorry that I don't allow blatant exploiting of a glitched intake air resource bug... Wait a minute, I'm not sorry at all.

I consider intake spamming to be equivalent to the RCS bugs of 0.18.1 that allowed people to travel to every single planet in the system on less than 1 tank of RCS fuel. RCS was never intended to be a primary source of propulsion and I'm pretty sure the devs never intended people to be cramming as much intakes as physically possible on to the ship.

If I was a Dev I would force intakes to be located in line with the jet engine and not even allow fuel tanks between the intake and the jet. There would have to be an actual path for the air to follow from the intake to the jet engine.

[bsalis]

The Air intake System was introduced in 18.0 10 months ago: In one main release and four minor KSP release developing team does not change it.

Hope that this thread does not derail. But just wanted to point out that there is a rewrite of the aerodynamics coming up. I doubt Squad will tweak how intakes work, only for it all to be thrown out in the rewrite.

[longcat]

The main goal of a challenge is to find new ideas and solutions giving chance to develop. But this can't happen if people just tails challenges on personal successfull flights and way of play/opinions.

"New ideas," like finding efficiency through something other than intake spamming? I think you're arguing against yourself now.

[whatisthisidonteven]

Stacking intakes is an exploit, pure and simple. If you have to stack intakes to complete the challenge, then perhaps you should look into alternative designs or just realise that you're not so good at constructing spaceplanes.

Edited May 7, 2013 by whatisthisidonteven

[tavert]

Stacking intakes is an exploit, pure and simple. If you have to stack intakes to complete the challenge, then perhaps you should look into alternative designs or just realise that you're not so good at constructing spaceplanes.

A little harsh. Intake spamming is cheap, but it's also the most efficient way to do things right now. I'd rather put more intakes on than more fuel. This challenge allows stacking intakes via bicouplers, so at least there's more of a mass penalty to having lots of them. Based on stuff of his I've seen, I think it's fair to say pinolallo is better at making spaceplanes than most people, intake stacking or not. If you can get a spaceplane to orbit with fewer intakes per engine it's probably fair to say that plane stands a better chance of still working in future KSP versions when the aerodynamic model (and hopefully intake and jet mechanics) get rewritten, but that's all speculation and in all likelihood we'll all have to figure it out all over again. It's not just the intakes that are messed up right now, even with only one intake per engine a fast plane can get to nearly 2000 m/s surface speed, which is very nearly orbital if you're flying east.

[whatisthisidonteven]

A little harsh. Intake spamming is cheap, but it's also the most efficient way to do things right now. I'd rather put more intakes on than more fuel. This challenge allows stacking intakes via bicouplers, so at least there's more of a mass penalty to having lots of them. Based on stuff of his I've seen, I think it's fair to say pinolallo is better at making spaceplanes than most people, intake stacking or not. If you can get a spaceplane to orbit with fewer intakes per engine it's probably fair to say that plane stands a better chance of still working in future KSP versions when the aerodynamic model (and hopefully intake and jet mechanics) get rewritten, but that's all speculation and in all likelihood we'll all have to figure it out all over again. It's not just the intakes that are messed up right now, even with only one intake per engine a fast plane can get to nearly 2000 m/s surface speed, which is very nearly orbital if you're flying east.

You're exploiting a broken game mechanic, it is by definition an exploit.

[tavert]

You're exploiting a broken game mechanic, it is by definition an exploit.

Okay fine, then don't play the game until it's finished. You can't honestly say 4 intakes per engine is fine and 10 is broken. If you want to not exploit the broken intake mechanics, either impose an artificial limit or don't use the jets. Rocket-only SSTO to the Mun and back is more fun and less finicky IMO.

I am actually working on a design for this challenge, but it needs either more intakes on bicouplers or more jet fuel which would just ruin the whole design layout. And I don't think the OP will like it much, since I resolved my engine difficulties by using cubic struts to clip an LV-N into the jet.

[Plur303]

This challenge allows stacking intakes via bicouplers, so at least there's more of a mass penalty to having lots of them.

That is exactly my logic.

Okay fine, then don't play the game until it's finished. You can't honestly say 4 intakes per engine is fine and 10 is broken

If you read my rules I do not limit the number of intakes. You can have 10 per engine, you are just going to have to get a little more creative in your design and there might be a weight penalty (a challenge, shock!!!!)

If you want to not exploit the broken intake mechanics, either impose an artificial limit

Ummmmm, I thought that is what I did... Are you arguing against yourself? Um, Thanks?

I am actually working on a design for this challenge, but it needs either more intakes on bicouplers or more jet fuel which would just ruin the whole design layout. And I don't think the OP will like it much, since I resolved my engine difficulties by using cubic struts to clip an LV-N into the jet.

Mounting intakes with bi or tri couplers or even quad (3X bicouplers) is fine, there is a weight penalty. Mounting rockets with cubic struts is OK. Rockets are heavy and clipping 20 of them on to your rocket is not an advantage. I mounted the 2 jets on the back of my fuselage using struts. Having more jets is not an advantage, they are heavy.

[tavert]

If you read my rules I do not limit the number of intakes. You can have 10 per engine, you are just going to have to get a little more creative in your design and there might be a weight penalty (a challenge, shock!!!!)

Ummmmm, I thought that is what I did... Are you arguing against yourself? Um, Thanks?

I did read your rules, as evidenced by me asking for clarification on several of them. I'm not arguing against you, you don't have an absolute limit of a specific number of intakes per engine, you said you can put as many as you want as long as they're attached in a reasonable manner. I was arguing against whatisthisidonteven, who was being much more absolutist about intakes being broken so stacking them is an exploit and indicative of a lack of skill.

[Plur303]

First of all, I would like to thank everybody for completely derailing my challenge...

I was arguing against whatisthisidonteven, who was being much more absolutist about intakes being broken so stacking them is an exploit and indicative of a lack of skill.

I agree with him 100% on this point. In my opinion stacking intakes is a blatant exploit of a broken game mechanic and is clearly cheating.

Honestly I wish the devs would just increase the weight of ram and circular intakes so they are similar to the radial scoop intakes. They weigh about 1/10th as much as a radial scoop. The aerodynamic drag model calculates drag from part mass. So increasing the mass will not only increase drag but also the amount of delta V required to haul them around in space as well as making more lift required to carry them.

Edited May 7, 2013 by Plur303