Shoot for the sun!

[thorfinn]

PS Ghibli makes me think of Spirited Away & Princess Mononoke.

EXACTLY.

And since you too know Miyazaki and play KSP, you should really, really watch Kurenai no Buta ('Porco Rosso') and read Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

(That plane\'s engine has 'Ghibli' stamped on it )

[Ronox]

Haha damnit, I won an award and lost it before i knew i had it. I might try to retake it

[Ronox]

Mission #2: Successful

Elapsed Time: 162 Days

Craft: Sunring mk2

Landed just outside of the KSP center.

8) :

[boolybooly]

Well played Ronox. The hub cap returns.

That is a quick time and a sleek looking ship.

Sorry thorfinn, just a bit of fun 8)

Interesting image, is that a flying pig!? Seems somehow appropriate. I will take a look at the Nausicaa original if ever it crosses my path though I wouldn\'t go out of my way for Porco tbh. I noticed the other two, Spirited and Mononoke because of their attention to the balance between human industry and the health of the living environment. Its a thing for me being a biologist type, plus I keep a tropical aquarium and Japanese nature gardens have had a strong influence on nature aquariums through the work of Takashi Amano, which I mostly like and Mononoke especially was remarkable for its portrayal of natural scenery and the spirits within...

[thorfinn]

Interesting image, is that a flying pig!? Seems somehow appropriate. I will take a look at the Nausicaa original if ever it crosses my path though I wouldn\'t go out of my way for Porco tbh.

Well, time is little and we all have lots of things to read/watch/do, but I\'ll tell you why a KSP player should probably like Porco.... Miyazaki\'s father owned a small factory that built aircraft components (they made tailplanes for the A6M Zero, IIRC) and he grew up totally in love with flight. This shows up in many of his movies (Mononoke and Sen to Chihiro are the least influenced, actually) like Kiki\'s Delivery Service, Nausicaa (the fusion-powered hang glider ) and Laputa... but nowhere as much as in Kurenai no Buta. The 'flying pig' turns out to be an Italian WWI fighter pilot who quit the Air Force after Mussolini came to power And now lives as a privateer in Italian-ruled Dalmatia skirmishing with the Beagle Boys mostly harmless seaplane pirates

[Salda007]

(Okay, life happened and delayed things, but here are the shots of the flight, as promised, only a week late.)

Ladies, Gentlemen, and member of the Press, Bill, Bob, and Jebediah Kerman are happy to report the success of their solar-approach-and-return mission. To start, their craft:

The ThreexThree-1. (it made sense to the designers...)

Flight profile was a direct ascent, out-and-back trip. Closest approach was, well, not very close; we pretty much said 'eh, good enough' when MECO left us heading towards the sun, and didn\'t want to risk mid-course corrections that might burn our return fuel. (Bob was VERY adamant about that...)

There were some issues with the camera at launch; the crew finally got telemetry going on day 12. (I forgot to take screenshots before then.)

These next few shots show the steady approach to the sun. The camera\'s orientation has been adjusted between shots, rotated to keep the sun into the frame. It otherwise would have been well to the 'left' of the shot by closest approach.

Closest solar approach was on day 139...

...As was turnaround.

Bill asked me to log the telemetry as they crossed the 1 KU altitude mark.

Closest approach was estimated at <1Mm, give or take...

Mission achieved, the crew set a brisk return pace...

...that would leave them blowing past the planet at 343Mm.

A 'get it in the neighborhood' deceleration burn at perikee set a new perikee of 153Mm.

From there, a more controlled burn brought the ship back into Kerbin orbit, albeit a rather high one: 155Mm apokee, 1,779km perikee. All three of our kerbonauts were happy to finally be back in the gravitational embrace of their mother planet.

Kerbin at last!

At the new perikee, the crew exhausted their remaining fuel to bring their ship out of orbit, then separated from their maneuvering stage to prepare for reentry.

Neither Bob nor Bill were overly concerned with setting down in proximity to KSP. Bob\'s exact words when it was suggested are unfortunately unprintable. Bill\'s were 'JUST GET US DOWN FROM HERE SWEET MOTHER OF KERBIN!!!'

Reentry and touchdown were nominal, with the crew landing 21 minutes into day 310.

Some final statistics on the flight:

Thank you all for coming! Enjoy Ma Kerman\'s cookies and brownies, they\'re wonderful.

[CarolRawley]

Must be some nice life support on that rocket.

[boolybooly]

Grats to Salda007.

Talking about life support... OK, my last small ship wasnt small enough. Latest mission time 627 days. Didn\'t have enough juice to make a precision landing and I had to use the empty LFT and LFE as a crumple zone, but it all worked out and I ended up on the day side, with Kerbals intact.

Podule 3 lifts off, without command module separator and SAS.

Sun altitude moving at speed and just enough fuel to return

The podule moves a bit too fast with a chute but the lower components will break the Kerbals fall.

Flight summary.

[Luigibro606]

1,800 M. I\'m attempting to get to the sun. Only the momentum is carrying me now D:

EDIT: Pic shows me at 3,000. Sun is near. :3

EDIT, EDIT: Second pic shows where Kerbin is in comparrison to the Sun. Might be a little hard to see though.

EDIT, EDIT, AGAIN: 17,000 M. Sun isn\'t anywhere near me. :I

FINAL EDIT: 25,000 M. Sun is nowhere. Giving up search, proclaim the Kerbal\'s M.I.A.

[ScruffyMcDuffy]

Gave it a shot with a fairly simple stock parts craft.

At about 9,000M: 'Alright guys who forgot to pack the parachute?!?'

At 17,000M something had gone terribly wrong.

Jeb: 'See I told you guys we wouldn\'t need the chute!'

[Ronox]

While everyone is shooting small, I\'m going big and fast ;D

I also might add, that this is the third consecutive sun mission without fail

143 Days

[boolybooly]

Luigi and Scruffy, howdy. Thankyou for your amusing catastrophes, better luck next time!

Entered both of you on the roll call of those tragically lost in space. :\'(

Ronox, what can I say? She is a beauty and a beast all rolled into one. Does she have a name?

[Ronox]

Haha, just named it the Sunring mk3, even though it shares no similarities with the first models

[Luigibro606]

Amusing >.>

I didn\'t even intend to go to the Sun until half way through the journey. Then I wasted my de-orbit engine for a stupid reason. Mission was a fail.

[One Winged Angel]

I\'m getting disturbingly good at hitting the KSP terrain, the bullseye not so much; it\'s very hard to land a rocket tail first. One of these days...

I think I might just do a low speed flyby over the launchpad, decouple from my main engine and hit the chute at the same time. Not as cool as a tail first engine, but I would be the first to land on the pad, right?

[boolybooly]

Yes One Winged Angel, as far as I know noone has hit the pad yet from a sunshot.

Did you hit the KSC terrain from a sunshot?

[comradephil]

My ship

Kept forgetting to take pics of correctional burns and such, also got acircular orbit on the way back from the sun , using a retroburn to deorbit. The ship flies better than you would think. Exclusively built using Nova\'s edition.

Didn\'t even go for a launchpad landing, even though I could\'ve with my remaining fuel, since I forgot that was part of the challenge..

[DeltaBravo]

Right, so one hard drive failure later, the Tethys gets there and back after a total of 388 days in space.

Edit: And yes, stock parts only.

[One Winged Angel]

Yes One Winged Angel, as far as I know noone has hit the pad yet from a sunshot.

Did you hit the KSC terrain from a sunshot?

Yep, lemme get the screenies.

[One Winged Angel]

Inner ring, what what! I just need to put a decoupler under my command pod and I\'ll bring them back alive (the tank+engine+pod combo is too heavy for the stock chute)!!

[boolybooly]

Comradephil and DeltaBravo well done, star pilot dudes! Thanks for the screens.

Grats on the first post shot One Winged Angel and thanks for the screens. You are now a cool star spud.

Oouuch on the second! Too bad 'dead or alive' only works for bounties.

Its pretty annoying when a long trip goes pear shaped in the final seconds, but then that is part of the game with a challenge like this. I would guess it was the 6 SAS which did it, if the screenies represent the landing stage accurately.

I ran tests on the Podule 3 reentry stage in a post above to check it would land OK before going to the sun and back. I think I am becoming a Kerbal nerd... but that lands OK over land only, with an engine and empty tank crumple zone using a stock chute deployed at the opportune moment (about 1100m v125m/s, aligned to trajectory). That allowed me to cut out the SAS and final decoupler entirely but then I had to fly it manually for every burn which was a bit tricky. I must have got close to 2000m/s delta v out of the lightweight single tank reentry stage and needed every bit of it, though I am thinking it could go smaller!

Good luck with your next attempt Angel, I am hoping you get the launch pad, it is embarassing as the thread author to be putting myself at the top of the ticker tape parade, makes me look like a conceited ass! 8)

[One Winged Angel]

It wasn\'t the SAS\'s that killed me (they\'re the nano-SAS things, I think they\'re from Nova\'s pack; they just keep me pointed where I steer) I think it was the horizontal velocity when I hit the ground. So when the engine hit the stage pivoted over and the pod hit the ground.

My ship is stupid simple, 5x of the 3m, 5000 capacity tanks, 7x M50 engines for the first stage with 6x C7 Delta Wing + 6x heavy control surface to keep it stable in atmo, 1m-3m decoupler shroud, and then Chute+Pod+Yawmaster+6x Nano-SAS+1m 1000 fuel tank+ NERVA engine for stage 2. I burn 4 of the 5 tanks in Stage 1 to get out of the gravity well (TIME COMPRESSION FTW) then use the last tank to stop my vertical velocity and start heading towards home. I light the NERVA till I get to 1500m/s (TIME COMPRESSION FTW) then at 1 Mm I do a downwards facing correction burn, then at around 200-300Km I do a upwards facing correction burn. Then upwards correction burns as necessary till I get to ~1000m where I deploy the chute and do constant minimum throttle flight. It\'s very easy to overshoot the pad...

[OtherDalfite]

Dear god, I went so fast it spun Kerbin around. 8) Now the KSC is on the dark side.

[semininja]

Dear god, I went so fast it spun Kerbin around. 8) Now the KSC is on the dark side.

...

...

...

...

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!

[Zeroignite]

What indeed.