Rocket Artillery! [a simple challenge]

[NavalLacrosse]

Rocket Artillery Challenge

Taking place after the events of The Fuel Crisis, tensions with the purple Kerbals has reached critical levels.

Due to the strict rationing of rocket fuel, ion engines have become increasingly popular.... all up until one fateful disaster.....

BREAKING NEWS FROM KNN: 20 Injured after ion-powered RoverTrain crash. - KSP safety officials noticed overheated Radioisotope reactor - Kerbals evacuated just in time as what appears to be an explosion of great magnitude rocked the country side - "The reactors are safe and harmless, and remain so." - said Ionic Protonic Electronic's president at press conference, receiving heat for apparent false claims on reactor stability. - Radioisotope cores now subject to investigation by KSP Engineers

Of course the KSP engineers are going to investigate, but what was left unknown to the civilian's was KSP's one key motive: The weaponization of what was previously believed to be safe Radioisotope reactors!

It is known that the purple Kerbals are developing large scale weapons of mass destruction as well. Luckily for our green Kerbals, we've stumbled across a weapon that may act as a nuclear deterrent- What remains now is to develop an intimidating delivery system!

Mission:

Launch test rocket towards ocean.

Crash Radioisotope Core into water.

Measure the ground distance traveled on impact.

RULES:

All STOCK (yeah because I don't use mods)

Cannot have control surfaces. These are medium range rocket artillery (Think V1).

Powered by ONE RT-10 Solid Fuel booster

Must contain at least one Radioisotope generator (for the spirit of the competition)

The only flight control allowed is the torque supplied by the command module

Must launch from the ground using the Launch Stabilizers

ONLY ONE STAGE- Hit the launch button.

SCORING:

Take a Screenshot of the missile on the runway/pad before take-off Include the staging HUD

Take a screenshot of the Wreckage's Flight results. Show Ground Distance covered.

LEADERBOARD:

Rank ....... Distence ......... Username

1)............149,001............occar (just the MkIII)

2)............69,406..............ameseree

3)............61,593..............Johnno(2)

4)............46,846..............palker

5)............44,982..............DesertWolf(2)

6)............43,478..............Oxytropis

7)............43,143..............Johnno

8)............40,225..............ConeShot

9)............38,881..............NavalLacrosse

10)............34,698..............Captain Sierra

11)............21,233..............pedorsf

12)............17,285..............DesertWolf

13)............14,189..............searlefm

14)

15)

HONORABLE MENTIONZ

- frizzank ---- 68,521 ------- I wish I didn't have to, but there is a rule about staging.

- Nao ------- 400,001 ------ Holy cow! if only you crashed it into the ground I would have scored you.

Please comment on the topic of suggestions, and improvements. Thanks!

My attempt

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Ignore me not posting a picture with the staging HUD visible on launch.

The More You Know for those who don't know, holding 'alt' then pressing any control will adjust the trim. I set the trims to max up because my finger was tired of holding the up button during the descent.

Edited May 10, 2014 by NavalLacrosse

[Johnno]

I gave this a few quick tries but got involved in another challenge. Here's my record so far:

[searlefm]

so after deciding this ''rocket'' needs a method of transportation*

and built one i then failed repeatedly to get past 18,584m and have decided to just submit what i have done so far

(*i would like to ensure you i did not use it in the rocket range flight)

(Amended to atchaly display the original pics now sorry abought the problem)

Edited July 22, 2013 by searlefm
fixing the pics

[Coneshot]

This was a tough one.. here's my entry:

[DesertWolf]

This was a fun one:

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75,751 meters

Edited July 18, 2013 by DesertWolf

[Captain Sierra]

Update the leaderboards. I win.

In case you don't believe it, it does say 61,235 meters.

Look at that beauty. I had some REALLY cool designs earlier but none of them actually worked right.

[Johnno]

Update the leaderboards. I win. In case you don't believe it, it does say 61,235 meters.

Actually, the challenge is for GROUND distance covered. You covered less than 35km, scoring you a 4th place.

[Johnno]

This was a fun one:

75,751 meters

Ground distance 17,285 scoring you a 5th place.

[ameseree]

This was a simple yet entertaining challenge.

Here is my entry:

Ground distance covered: 69,406 meters

After the rocket runs out it can travel far but is very slow to pull up(but possible) but it can dive bomb faster than Jeb trying to buzz the tower. It also could have gone farther but I have other challenges I wish to work on.

[Johnno]

Ground distance covered: 69,406 meters

After the rocket runs out it can travel far but is very slow to pull up(but possible)

I'd been working on a similar design (but bit smaller) and was just about to post it but refreshed first and saw yours, beat me by a bit. I might tinker more later.

[DesertWolf]

Ground distance 17,285 scoring you a 5th place.

For some dumbfounded reason, I thought we were doing vertical distance. Do I feel like an idiot now ..............Time to hit the designing boards.

Edited July 19, 2013 by DesertWolf

[DesertWolf]

Rocket Artillery MKII

With my first entry I achieved my goal.... the wrong goal. Thank you Johnno for noticing my mistake:

Ground distance 17,285 scoring you a 5th place.

For some dumbfounded reason, I thought we were doing vertical distance. Do I feel like an idiot now ..............Time to hit the designing boards.

With this new design I hope I can make my way up the leaderboards.

Ground distance traveled: 44,982 meters

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Edited July 19, 2013 by DesertWolf

[pedorsf]

my entrie here

21.233m

[occar]

Does it have to actually hit the water? I launched mine to the water, and did a flip and am gliding towards land. I can redo it the other direction if water is required. Please let me know.

edit: got around 55km traveled and hit the mountains, so I flipped it and we're going to see how long it glides the other way.

Also, is there some sort of bonus for the ship surviving the landing?

Edited July 21, 2013 by occar

[occar]

This was a fun one, and I was never able to balance anything for final glide that didn't have to be launched the opposite direction because there just isn't enough torque to counteract the lift while the SRB is burning. So, the way this one works is it does a mostly uncontrolled Immelmann turn (and takes a few rotations to slow down and stabilize its attitude actually). At the end of this flight (last 100ft of altitude), I had a glide ratio of 16.54:1, which, I think is probably pretty good. It went 1654m in the last 100m of altitude. It could likely be piloted better than I did. I left it either full up, or alone for most of the flight. Sadly, you said think V-1 bomb, but I only got around 1/3 of the range of that, and went with glide instead of pure thrust.

Here is the Rong Flyer (bad pun on Wright Flyer)

Take off shot

Here's a gratuitous few mid flight shots (time warp indicator on the first shot is due to f3 checking of the stats making it show up, no warp was ever used on this flight. All 25 boring minutes of it)

And here is the mission ending. Even with that great glide ratio, the horizontal speed made a catastrophic failure. Doh!

Edited July 21, 2013 by occar

[occar]

Made a Rong Flyer mk2

There's quite a bit more potential distance in there if I could just figure out how to get rid of the thrust wasting Immelmann launch.

[occar]

Ok, last time (we're up to over 1 hour flight time and I just don't want to spend more time on this, even though I just stabilize it and then let it free-glide until it crashes). I didn't do an in flight shot this time (forgot, but it isn't required per the instructions anyway). Note that even with only 20.2 m/s speed (~ 0.7 m/s vertical speed from calculations I did of the last 10 m) it still breaks. Still doing an Immelmann launch, so it could get more efficient. (Also, why doesn't it show my liftoff time in the f3 shot here? Does anyone know?). Anyway, this is almost exactly a 50% improvement over the last flight, either from the design change, or a slightly better launch. I don't know where the improvement came from. Note that somehow I managed a perfect 180 degree turn this time too with an almost perfect 90 degree heading.

I present Rong Flyer mk3 (only changes from mk2 are slight angle adjustments to the tail fins that are semi-winglets on the end of the wings)

Edited July 21, 2013 by occar

[sytaline]

Cool, I like the pun on the name!

[occar]

Ok, letting it do one last run. Literally just pressing space to launch, and providing no inputs after that just to see what it does by itself. If it gets a decent distance without inputs of any sort, I'll post the craft file as proof.

edit:

It does 144.7km with no inputs.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/rong-flyer-mk3/

Just let physics kick in and let it stabilize on the clamps, then press space, come back in an hour and it's gone that far. You can get a little more out of it if you counteract some of the less optimal action on the launch, but it will eventually stabilize on its own and glide for nearly an hour.

I know the tail fins on the wings seem like they're floating, that's just where the builder makes them connect for some reason.

Edited July 21, 2013 by occar

[frizzank]

77,375m

The way it works is for the thrust part the fins in the front cancel out the lift from the back, otherwise it would just loop at launch.

After it starts to pitch down I decouple the front fins and it glides at about 32m/s and takes about 19 min to hit the ground.

[occar]

I considered some balance with a droppable part, but the challenge is explicit in only being allowed a single stage, so I did not.

[Oxytropis]

43,478 gdc

Stock "Using no control surfaces"

http://youtu.be/y8bShD2HRlg

could've gone further but the island flyover was to tempting

Edited July 23, 2013 by Oxytropis

[NavalLacrosse]

Thanks everyone for your submissions! I've been a bit busy with classes, but tomorrow i'll get on updating the leaderboards.

[Nao]

Uhm are we allowed to control our craft during flight? Because if yes, then I have this:

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The last screen at 400km is at around half max range... it even has double the power with two RTG's. And below we see other country with purple kerbals

Edited July 24, 2013 by Nao

[occar]

No offense intended, but please post that craft, because to get that kind of distance, it appears that there is some funny business going on. I can tell it looks like you've potentially turned off clipping and stacked wings for one, but that design by itself isn't going to perform like that without triggering some of the physics bugs.