Extra-planetary shipbuilding

[Ruinsage]

First of all, let me admit that I am posting this challenge because I am stuck. I have finally made a mining base on the Mun using extraplanetary launchpads and kethane, and now I am ready to build a space ship capable of interplanetary travel and landing. There is just one problem.

When you build a ship capable of landing "belly first", it tips over because using fuel moves the center of mass. Balancing the fuel doesn't really help, because the engines weigh too much. I have yet to make a ship that has overcome this problem, however I do have a few ideas.

So here is my challenge:

1:

Make a mining/launching operation on the Mun.

2:

Use it to launch a spaceship capable of landing on the side.

3:

Use said spaceship to launch probes into orbit of all the planets of the kerbin solarsystem, and mining/launching operations on every moon. (you might want to get kethane + extraplanetary launchpads for this)

Any and all mods are okay, with the sole exception of hyperedit, and everything of the like.

For a hardcore challenge, use only kethane and extraplanetary launchpads.

Please post the ships you build for all to see, I will when I successfully get the "belly landing" to work.

[Van Disaster]

If you want to vertically launch off your EL pad, use launch clamps; you can recycle them after departure. I'm not actually quite sure what your problem is with horizontal ships

[Ruinsage]

My problem is not the takeoff, its the landing. As you use fuel, your center of mass moves towards the heavier part of your ship, either towards the front or the back. This means that your center of lift does not line up with your center of mass, which results in rotation.

[Johnno]

What exactly do you mean by "belly landing" though? Are you referring to a VTOL that's built around a horizontal stack rather than a vertical stack? Then it's all about where you keep your fuel and your engines and balancing them.

I built this kethane rover simply by building the rover first then placing its landing tanks radially onto the CoM and balancing engines onto the ends of those tanks.

[Ruinsage]

Yes, attaching fueltanks to the side of the craft at the center of mass is the easy way to do it on the small scale. But when you want to build something interplanetary, and still want it to look sleek, it becomes quite a bit more complicated. Right now, I'm building a craft by first finding the center of mass of the fuel tanks, and then designing everything so that the fuel center of mass is right on top of the combined center of mass. This is annoying, as the engines are rather bulky, meaning i have to make it rather asymmetrical.

Another design idea i'm tinkering with, is to detach the engines when the craft is in orbit. This, however, is quite a lot more.. fiddly. This is why i created this challenge. I wanted to see how others could overcome this problem.

If i were a modder, I would create a mod to balance the thrust of engines in such a way that the center of thrust is on top of the center of mass. Alas, I am not, so I will have to design my rockets around the problem. Perhaps I should create a mod request on this forum, I can imagine this could be beneficial in other cases as well.

[Johnno]

Going interplanetary is just about assembling stuff in orbit if it's too heavy for direct launch. And looks are down to taste.

But looking through your challenge participating would be a huge undertaking. And to that end you haven't made a scoring system, no requirements list, and the goals, especially #3 aren't really something you'd expect from a challenge. They're goals someone would spend ages to accomplish and not just to compete with someone.

Also the belly landing requirement seems unnecessary or counter-intuitive at best, I understand your reasoning for this challenge but you'd be better off just asking for advice and perhaps browsing the spacecraft exchange for anything inspirational.

Best of luck to you, and your challenge, I just think it's too much of an undertaking to try and compete with.

[YarTheBug]

Another design idea i'm tinkering with, is to detach the engines when the craft is in orbit. This, however, is quite a lot more.. fiddly.

I can't remember the last time I drug my interplanetary drive section down to the surface and back.

Give this thread a look. There's a spaceplane somewhere in there that makes it to Eeloo and back with 'belly-landing'