Fastest Drop Pod from Orbit to Landing

[Zack]

Quick! Deorbit and land as fast as possible!

Standard parachute escape pods are too mainstream, and slow!

We need to get Jeb home as fast as possible! Because he needs surgery, or is being dropped into battle, or something!

Objective:

Make a drop pod that can go from a stable orbit to a safe(ish) landing as fast as possible.

Rules:

1. 100% Stock

2. You can use hyper edit or a similar mod to get the craft into orbit. (But no mods after that)

3. The orbit has to be stable before you start your time. (Not in-atmosphere at periapsis or escape trajectory)

4. Minimum crew of 1. (No droids)

5. Cannot be in EVA at landing. (Rover seats are OK)

6. Taking advantage of aerodynamic bugs is frowned upon. (No magical canard turbines)

It's OK

7. The kerbal has to be able to get out (EVA) after he lands.

8. You can't land in water

9. You must land no more than 200m above sea level

Bonus Score:

Land at KSC

Land at high speed and survive

Actually thrust downwards to increase speed before slowing down.

Repack Parachutes mid-fall

Explosive decoupling door (Like in the Halo series)

Practical size (You could have multiple of them docked to a space station)

Use docking ports

Deploy it from a station

Remember, your time starts when your periapsis is in atmosphere and ends when you hit the ground.

Leader-boards (Time Only)

1. DesertWolf 1:50

2. BahamutoD 2:07

3.

4.

5.

Leader-boards (Time+Bonus Points+Coolness) <-- This is subjective obviously but I might assign actual time reduction to the bonus points once I get an idea of how people score.

1. DesertWolf 1:50 (Explosive decoupling door was awesome )

2. BahamutoD 2:07 (Landed at KSC) (Awesome Explosive Landing)

3.

4.

If you could include a nice list of your drop pods features and a download it would be appreciated.

Bonus Points for IVA view!

Edited July 23, 2013 by Zack

[BahamutoD]

This seems fun and no one is posting, so I put a quick attempt to at least set a baseline to beat. I'll do a better one after this.

Time: 2:12

Bonuses.. thrust downward.

Video here when it finishes uploading:

[Captain Sierra]

Hmmmmm. I guess I'm not allowed to use MechJeb. That can put me at the doorstep of KSC. Oh well. Challenge accepted. I should have something in a day or two.

[jbaltus123]

i do! please wait a few days

[Cranium]

Dang, I was going to make this on my own, now I guess I'm doing it as a challenge.

[soranno]

Update this challenge to include deadly reentry, and then try challenge the fastest drop pod! That`s a real test

[Captain Sierra]

Update this challenge to include deadly reentry, and then try challenge the fastest drop pod! That`s a real test

No please!!!!! I've used that before and it is unbelievably difficult.

[Sigma117]

No please!!!!! I've used that before and it is unbelievably difficult.

I'd guess layered heatshields would help

[DesertWolf]

A few hours, and countless expendable brave Kerbals later I choose to stick with this Drop Ship design:

Pod and delivery vehicle.

Pod.

Sepratrons to neutralize decent speed

.

Pod covers (explosive decoupler doors).

Explosionssss.

More Explostions

Test subjects grateful to have lived..........for now.

Video of Orbital Drop Ship:

Sorry for quality, my first upload.

http://youtu.be/8cQsz4eRuL8

Deorbit burn start 0:10, touchdown 2:01.

Bonus Score:

*not sure if landing was considered at KSC

Land at high speed and survive (60m/s)

Actually thrust downwards to increase speed before slowing down

Explosive decoupling door

Edited July 18, 2013 by DesertWolf
Bad Links

[Zack]

Wow thanks for the great attempts guys I will do my own soon I think

[TheLongRun]

im so trying this

[Amphiprion]

I'm still ironing out the kinks with this , but I'm going for the speed record..

experiencing stack decoupler failure from excessive g-forces.

[DesertWolf]

I'm still ironing out the kinks with this , but I'm going for the speed record..

experiencing stack decoupler failure from excessive g-forces.

Are you landing a pod, or deorbiting a planet

[catmando]

that definitely is a job for Jeb

[BahamutoD]

Ok, no speed record here, but I landed my first design at KSC in 2:07, and a newer more sophisticated design (explosive doors, 3 passengers, less hardware assisted lithrobraking) at KSC in 2:25.

[Amphiprion]

Are you landing a pod, or deorbiting a planet

Lol, Its a bit overkill, specially since my accelerated deorbit is negated by the mortal G-force deceleration of hitting lower atmo tearing the craft apart.. hmmm, need to make an aerodynamic spike like pod.

[searlefm]

wow BahamutoD that is an awesome video and some cool builds

well i best launch my vanilla copy as i think i could do something cool like that expect to see it soonisn from me

also Amphiprion that is insane.

eddit:

after a few hours of useing a cluster of 33 mainsails to De-orbit my self and then disintegrating with out deadly reentry from the 100G's of force experienced

Edited July 22, 2013 by searlefm

[1D-1()T]

Am I allowed to lithobrake?

[Coneshot]

Ok, no speed record here, but I landed my first design at KSC in 2:07, and a newer more sophisticated design (explosive doors, 3 passengers, less hardware assisted lithrobraking) at KSC in 2:25.

I always wanted to do something like that with the seperatrons, but could never get it dialed in right.. awesome video (the music is killer too!)

[BahamutoD]

Thanks, guys! Coneshot, yeah it takes a few tries to get the number of seperatrons right, and the timing on when to hit them. The first one had a bigger room for error since it had all the SAS units to break the fall if u stage too late or too early. The second one took like 10 takes to get a safe landing haha

[Fendleton]

Hmm. An interesting challenge. it occurs to me that with some unusual designing, it might be possible to stay at a higher speed longer by using stack separators for the final slow-down. I might try that later.

[henque19]

This was a great challenge I must say. I had a lot of fun building and repeatedly crashing various pods.

I finally managed to get one onto firm ground in 1:22.

Proof is here:

Deorbit burn started at 0:45, smashdown at 2:07, total time 1:22

Bonus Score:

Landed at KSC

Didn't land at high speed perhaps (~15 m/s), but a part broke at least...

Thrusted downwards

Maybe not practical size, but could fit a few to a station

Deployed from station

[Peewee]

Wow, that was an impressive time.

I had a much simpler, smaller design, but only managed 1:40 (Fired rocket at 42:47, impacted at 44:27).

VIDEO MIRROR

Disclaimer: I had Kerbal Alarm Clock (not a performance-enhancer, just to keep track of the time in-game) and Kethane installed, though the ship itself was all stock parts. I also used the debug menu to make getting into orbit trivial.

Bonus:

Land at high speed and survive (40 m/s)

Actually thrust downwards to increase speed before slowing down. (Ok technically I didn't thrust straight down because I swung it around the wrong way by accident, but I did the spirit of this one)

Practical size (You could have multiple of them docked to a space station)

Technically an IVA view for the final 20 seconds of landing.

Edit: I just saw the part of the OP about the .craft file. It's really quite simple and I can't be bothered to upload it, so here's how it's built and how to land it:

Start with the pod seen in the video (has impact tolerance of 50 m/s).

Add 4 backwards-facing sepratrons on the wide side of the pod.

Add a decoupler.

Add a SRB (Might experiment with the big one, but the smaller one is fine for LKO insertions).

Correct the staging because it's terrible. SRB fires first, then the decoupler, then the sepratrons.

Flight instructions:

1. If you need to go down RIGHT NOW, aim more down than retrograde (poorly demonstrated in the video), otherwise just aim retrograde to deorbit normally.

2. Fire the SRB at the lowest point of your orbit.

3. The craft will face the correct direction on its own, that's why you put the sepratrons in the back.

4. Watch the RADAR altimeter in IVA view: fire when it's between 200m and 300m. You have ~0.7 seconds to fire the landing motors or else you will hit the ground too fast., so pay attention.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Peewee
added instructions

[flowen8]

This was a great challenge I must say. I had a lot of fun building and repeatedly crashing various pods.

I finally managed to get one onto firm ground in 1:22.

Proof is here:

Deorbit burn started at 0:45, smashdown at 2:07, total time 1:22

Bonus Score:

Landed at KSC

Didn't land at high speed perhaps (~15 m/s), but a part broke at least...

Thrusted downwards

Maybe not practical size, but could fit a few to a station

Deployed from station

What mod are you using to have the map view open in an overlay?

[henque19]

Wow, that was an impressive time.

Thanks! I'd like to go under a minute, but that might be tricky...

What mod are you using to have the map view open in an overlay?

That's no mod, that is my screen capture program bugging out