No Liquids Diet!

[featherwinglove]

The challenge in a nutshell: See what you can do with just RT-10s, BACCs, and Sepratrons. Can you get into orbit... around the Mun? Can you get into a proper Kerbisynchronous Equatorial or Kerbistationary orbit? ...and back to Kerbin?

My latest game is called "New Techno Hardcore"... I started a "Techno Hardcore" game with the general idea of releasing the vanilla parts one or two at a time, with the exception of really simple ones that would be available immediately (most of the structural parts that aren't movable or separating.) The first part that I released in the original game was the RT-10... and shortly after the LV-1 and Oscar-B (not much choice but to release them together.) Then I discovered that the Sepratron could perform a useful maneuver for a small craft and started over with "New Techno Hardcore". The progression went like this:

Original set included:

All structural parts that were not movable or separating (from Cubic Octagonal Strut to the Rockomax HubMax, very few of which I've actually flown)

TT-18A Launch Stabilizer (which I didn't need until 0.21.1 started gluing my rockets to the pad.)

TR-2V tiny stack decoupler

Probodobodyne OCTO command pod

Vanguard Stayputnik Mk. 2 command pod

All parachutes (note: this is somewhat unrealistic because irl parachutes are actually a pain to develop, often literally: before the 1960s, over 90% of parachute developers died testing their inventions. When going to Mars, the only parachute known to work is the one on Viking, and JPL is quite reluctant to test their luck as others have and have used rescaled copies on all missions since... Oh, and one of the relatively ordinary parachutes on Ares 1-A shredded.)

Sepratron

I managed to get to 20km with that...

RT-10 SRM

I couldn't quite get to orbit with that kit (but I did launch a couple of 300km high shots and a range shots into Australocean.) The problem wasn't a lack of torque (I haven't noticed much difference between RW and RotForce actually, but 0.21.1 does seem to have more aberrant torques reacting on the craft.) So... the next part was...

Z-100 Battery

With that, the command pod could now last long enough to make orbit, and soon did. This produced a craft that consisted of an OCTO, Mk16, two Z-100s and six Sepratrons, and could perform three maneuvers. Because the craft shuts down completely when it is unloaded, limited batteries restrict not how long the craft can fly, but how long you can command it. While I could get to low energy orbit with this set, the maximum size of the first stage being 9 RT-10 motors fired in four maneuvers in a 4/2/2/1 arrangement, I couldn't take the craft anywhere useful, even with three Sepratron/octagonal truss stages (a total of 30 Sepratrons including the six on the spacecraft.) So, the next part was the cruddiest separator that could be used with the RT-10

Hydraulic Detachment Manifold (HDM)

Now I was going places, growing the RT-10 stage to include 9 motors again, but in a cruciform rather than a Falcon-like square (Falcon being the SpaceX trademark by the way.) In 0.20.2, the RT-10 motors were burned and staged serially in a 2/2/2/2/1 arrangement, the goal being to get the core (which pegs the accelerometer at 15g shortly before burning out) to at least 25km altitude, having turned only to a 45deg angle even in an ideal, on-heading ascent (which is nearly impossible.) This was the HDM-5 in 0.20.2. 0.21.2 broke it in two ways. The first was that it glued it to the pad, requiring the TT-18A to hold it up, leading to the still unsuccessful HDM-5b. The 5b failed because a sea breeze kept blowing it west (and thus I discovered that you need at least two 500drag parachutes to land a loaded RT-10 without breaking it.) The HDM-5c simply arranged the motor staging in a four maneuver 4/2/2/1 plan and most of the original HDM-5 performance was restored.

What can you do with it?

Essentially, the final RT-10 will burn out with your craft on a ballpark 3000km apoapsis if you fly it well, and your craft has three maneuvers from there, with delta-v's fixed at 201.9m/s, 254.0m/s, and 343.7m/s. Dispersions seem to be about 1% of these values per sigma. It doesn't hold a candle to even a basic LV-1 Oscar-B, but it is a heck of a lot more than I expected, and so far, I have accomplished:

- KEO satellite inclined 0.0deg to the Mun in a 2653.8 by 3074.3km orbit with a period of 5 hours, 59 minutes, and 37 seconds.

- Munar flyby and return (the theory being that radio comms and video cameras are crap and they have to return film.)

- Munar orbiter in 104.5 by 446.7km orbit (I could have made it more circular, but the sort of charged particle/magnetic field type of mission it would be would prefer a more eccentric orbit.)

I have the following in flight and hope to have them finished shortly

- Mun orbit and return

- Minmus flyby and return

- Minmus orbit and return

Others I think could be accomplished with this vehicle but consider not being of interest given the unmodeled technology assumptions (i.e. poor communications, cameras, and lack of transmitting power over long periods - I haven't released OX-STAT)

- Mun impact

- Minmus impact

- Eve/Gilly flyby

- Duna/Ike flyby

This are ones I think are impossible, but might just be possible:

- Eve landing (if you can hit the disk of Eve, you're there)

- Duna landing (I don't think it's possible with the HDM-5c as is, but with tweaks to the parachute system, it might be possible.)

It looks like this...

"download" the craft here:

http://pastebin.com/gMRajpeg

If you think it's a little too hardcore to be flying without SAS or ASAS reaction wheels or avionics, go ahead. You can also use the BACC. Flying kerbals is not recommended because the hardware starts to get a bit too heavy for Sepratrons to do much good, but it might be interesting to launch some sort of dasterdly arrangement of RT-10s with a kerbed spacecraft; you might need a proper liquid booster to get it into LKO.

Score Board

metaphor: Dropping Jebediah into the Sun without cremating him first

Ninety-Three: Dropping Jebediah into the Sun without cremating him first (I'm guessing you didn't need the RCS for that...)

Stochasty: Dropping a Vanguard into the Sun

SketchyGalor: Dropping a Vanguard into the Sun

Ninety-Three: Landing a kerbal on Duna and returning him safely to Kerbin (where he'll freeze his tush off! Note: RCS used for trim corrections, CMIIR.)

illectro:

(with MechJeb's help, but no maneuver nodes.) Edited August 3, 2013 by featherwinglove
Updated Score Board

[Mach56]

You should really add that you can use the BACC to the top of the post.

[Stochasty]

How about a Kerbolar impact?

Edit: Hrmm; rereading your challenge post, I'm confused. Is the challenge to build a craft using solid rockets and see how much you can do with it, or is the challenge to see what you can do with the specific craft file you posted?

Edited July 29, 2013 by Stochasty

[Grand Lander]

That is a interesting challenge.

[featherwinglove]

You should really add that you can use the BACC to the top of the post.

Done.

How about a Kerbolar impact?

Edit: Hrmm; rereading your challenge post, I'm confused. Is the challenge to build a craft using solid rockets and see how much you can do with it, or is the challenge to see what you can do with the specific craft file you posted?

Either. Both. After trying hard with the design I posted, I was unable to get to Minmus orbit and back because targeting the encounter maneuver from low energy space (i.e. under 300km altitude) was too difficult. One maneuver node I set up gave me a bull's eye impact, I fired it, had just 1.9m/s residual, and missed Minmus by 5000km. After that, I released the BACC and replaced the four outboard motors (the first stage) with them... shot the core stage out of Kerbin orbit entirely, but fired the probe's Sepratron's retrograde to prevent generating a second piece of interplanetary debris. Adding a second Sepratron stage slowed it down enough to hold it to about 3000-5000km ascent apoapsis and increased the number of maneuvers to seven. Next, I'm going to release the TR-18A that'll allow larger and more practical orbital payloads.

One thing I've learned is critical is that maneuvers, especially in low energy space, require split-second timing. Another trick I've learned (but not mastered) is that lower tick rates (adjustable in settings and can be modulated in game by reducing your frame rate... easily accomplished on a six year old laptop, lol) produce less drag loss during ascent. This can be used to control ascent performance, so your apoapsis is appropriate for KEO insertions, and higher for Munar/Minmus or interplanetary work. In practice, it means that if I want to go to a lower energy destination, I rotate the camera under the vehicle so I see easy-to-render sky. If I want to go higher, I put it above the vehicle so that I see hard-to-render Lonch and Arcifa terrain.

As for the Kerbol impact idea? Go for it! The tricky part there is probably that the Isp of the RT-10 and BACC are a bit more than half that of liquid propellants, making it harder to get the necessary delta-v. I did fire off a golden record mission in the original Techno Hardcore game with a vehicle quite similar to the HDM-5 (golden record = escape Kerbol gravity, named after Voyager's message for ETs.)

[Scorpi15]

Somebody managed to do a duna landing using only solids. Forgot who though

[Stochasty]

As for the Kerbol impact idea? Go for it! The tricky part there is probably that the Isp of the RT-10 and BACC are a bit more than half that of liquid propellants, making it harder to get the necessary delta-v. I did fire off a golden record mission in the original Techno Hardcore game with a vehicle quite similar to the HDM-5 (golden record = escape Kerbol gravity, named after Voyager's message for ETs.)

Lower ISP just means more stages. 17 of them, to be exact; total delta-v for that rocket was in the neighborhood of 14km/s, weighing in at 508 tons of RT-10 goodness.

Hmmm... 14km/s, and I know that I was a bit inefficient with the staging since I built her by trial and error without diagnostics. I could probably manage a redesign and squeeze out another few km/s; that'd put her in the right range for an Eve return trip.

[featherwinglove]

Since I haven't released any working control surfaces or reaction wheel modules, I'm stuck with probe pods for torque at the moment, which leaves out consideration of anything on that scale... for the moment (Actually, my six year old T61 laptop probably rules out anything on that scale even with all control devices available.) It might be interesting to see what else it can do... a return trip to Eeloo orbit? I can see it growing many a Sepratron for small correction maneuvers, lol.

Lower ISP just means more stages. 17 of them, to be exact; total delta-v for that rocket was in the neighborhood of 14km/s, weighing in at 508 tons of RT-10 goodness.

Hmmm... 14km/s, and I know that I was a bit inefficient with the staging since I built her by trial and error without diagnostics. I could probably manage a redesign and squeeze out another few km/s; that'd put her in the right range for an Eve return trip.

It doesn't "just" mean more stages, it means more mass. I made a story of my pre-KSP Flashdog game, which was a pen, paper, and Sharp DAL EL-520W game in which the government was inexplicably regulating lower and lower Isp in rocket propellants... required ascent delta-v was 1000sec (9810m/s) like Earth, but I dreamed up a couple of special first stages which lowered it slightly to 950sec (5g liftoff stage) and 850sec (air-breathing first stage). The last booster, using 128sec propellant, weighed 100 tonnes on the pad, had eight stages, and orbited a 20kg satellite (approx., I don't have the paperwork and the April crash deleted the post.)

Edited July 31, 2013 by featherwinglove
answered Stochasty

[metaphor]

I also made one that goes into the Sun, using only 84 RT-10s, decouplers, struts, and a command pod.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

. It's incredibly difficult to land using solids since you can't stop them burning so you have to time the burn exactly right.

[Captain Sierra]

If you launch Jeb into the sun, KSP will instantly crach your computer as punishment for killing Jebidiah. XP

[Ninety-Three]

Somebody managed to do a duna landing using only solids. Forgot who though

That would be me! I sent an SRB ship to Duna, and back with only solids (plus RCS for course correction). It doesn't technically qualify for this challenge, but for those interested, here's the mission report.

[featherwinglove]

As for my latest...

The selected ship has one 343.7m/s Sepratron maneuver left to bring back its film capsule from orbit around the Mun. There are five craft aimed at Minmus, three of older HDM-5 and HDM-5c vintage (the former being 0.20.2 and latter 0.21.1 compatible versions of the same craft) and have no hope of getting into orbit around Minmus. The other two are of newer BACC-2 design and have five maneuvers each remaining.

Note: Sepra 2b is one of the first craft, a Sepratron-only sounding rocket that topped 17km. I could get them up to about 30km before they started overflexing and dismantling themselves on lift-off. In the original Techno Hardcore, I attempted, without success, an RT-10-only SSTO booster (calculations show a maximum delta-v of the RT-10 at 4742m/s, which means it is just barely impossible... I did get it to 300km altitude on the best shot.)

This is the new TR-18A-19 vehicle, the Film Scan Probe (FSP); now that KSP has upgraded their original communication gear, they have a hope of getting a close-up picture of Duna back with this craft. With this craft (at least on my system), a right yaw must be commanded immediately on lift-off, or it will head into the Pan (mountains west of Lonch.) This vehicle hates life in all its forms, a bit like this one, and so must be handled very carefully.

In retrospect, I should have released the AV-R8 first, since of the 19 TR-18A vehicles that I tested, only three actually worked, and one of them (low energy orbit) was less economical than its HDM equivalent. Very likely, a major part of the problem is that the pitch and yaw MOIs of in-line boosters are much higher than the shorter parallel designs associated with HDM and non-separating RT-10 motors... combined with the fact that the OCTO is the only device I have released that offers any means of controlling an errant vehicle (fins actually make things worse by over-stabilizing the vehicle so that the OCTO can't turn it at all... and the █ ██████ ███ ████ thing turns on its own anyway, even with the fins!! Fortunately, without the fins, it turns in a consistent direction, you just need to floor it in the other direction before it has a chance to get away. Also, TR-18As are thrice as expensive as HDMs.