The HoneyMun Limo Challenge

[gabyalufix]

Ok, so totally by accident, I thought up a new challenge. Was fiddling with my plane for the last challenge, and something Tim said stuck with me. To paraphrase: epic moon bases and planes don\'t mix.

Well why the heck not?

Here\'s the challenge. You operate a Space-Limo service for recently-married literalism enthusiasts. These very, very wealthy Kerbins want the real deal--a honeymun on the actual goddamned mun.

Load a space plane carrying a detachable lunar lander as a payload. Launch the plane, deposit the lander safe, upright, and intact, on the munar surface (landing yourself is OPTIONAL), then come home and land.

Use whatever parts you feel like, and we\'ll all judge them as they come.

Bonus points for:

--using only recoverable (parachuted) boosters

--Single-stage, no boosters at all.

--Larger and more luxurious honeymun suites.

--Styyyyle: remember, you\'re a limo. Sell it!

A few shots of my (failed) attempt:

Here\'s my honeymun suite. Small, simple, but it\'s on the Mun, so don\'t be so picky.

Have a good time, Mr. and Mrs. Kerman!

Edit: I didn\'t have landing struts. I dropped the capsule from an almost-hover at 1-5 meters or so. It was . . . tense . . .

A problem: My limo is a seaplane. It needs sea. And that sure is a big continent . . . .

Dropped off my big heavy engines (now out of fuel). They each have 4 chutes to keep them nice and cost-effective.

A lake! We\'re saved! It totally looks big enough to land in, right?

Ok, so the answer is 'sorta'. Technically it\'s a landing, but our insurance company is never gonna SPEAK to us again . . .

I\'d call that a failure.

I mean, for one thing: with the limo wrecked, our first customers are probably gonna suffocate up there when their air runs out . . . (but hilariously fun. Seriously, you guys, you don\'t even know. I\'m still shaking from adrenaline. When I saw that lake . . . oh man . . . )

I know you folks can do better! Show me!

[N3X15]

Dear god, I hope you have enough wings.

[Tosh]

holy cow! ???

...and enough pontoons

[gabyalufix]

IT IS NEVER ENOUGH! MORE WINGS!!!

Doesn\'t fly so well, though. Haven\'t managed to land it yet. Maybe if I run it out of fuel first? This was my closest 'success'.

[RedDwarfIV]

Bump.

Here\'s the escape shuttle for my work-in-progress Cormorant limo.

At the moment it can\'t actually properly land [on land] without just breaking up. And I\'m having some sort of glitch in the VAB, so construction is on hold.

====================

EDIT

====================

The glitch sorted itself out.

Realised that I needed landing gear on the escape shuttle. Added it. It now has the vague hope [if not going inanely fast] of landing safely if the orbiter/transfer/reentry vehicle section does break up in the atmosphere. Inanely powerful gimballing engines used to get the stack inanely high so the orbiter section [with its 1-meter gimballed engine] so can power itself into orbit easier. These liquid boosters are dropped, and are fitted with spaceplane-grade parachutes. Though I doubt much of them would survive the ground impact.

Also realised that I already had a Cormorant-type, so I renamed it Seagull-type.

The entire stack on the launch pad.

This is it in Munar orbit.

This is it after returning from Munar orbit, in reentry.

[RedDwarfIV]

Lost a wing at 2X warp. Still have formidable gliding though.

Realised I was coming in too fast. Jettisoned the orbiter, and made an emergency landing on the shuttle.

Flight results. No recognition of the liquid boost towers being destroyed. The orbiter however, was registered destroyed.

From this I can deduce that I do in fact have enough fuel to make a touchdown. However, I will need to fit the honeymoon suite to be jettisoned. Need to add skids too, for water landings. And a lot more RCS, both for slowing down and for Munar touchdown, if that works better.

[Goddess Bhavani]

@RedDwarf\'s entry from VETO aerospace looks slick and streamlined.

Not that the earlier entries aren\'t awesome. They\'re epic... reminds me of some sort of Da Vinci sci fi craft with all the multi-plane configurations and all.

[RedDwarfIV]

Thanks, Pandora.

I added spaceplane grade and Mk16 parachutes to the orbiter section. Also replaced the orbiter\'s gimbaled engine with an LVT-30 thruster, as the LVT-45 wasn\'t powerful enough for everything I had upgraded, and the gimballing was upsetting its balance anyway.

The orbiter section after jettison, heading for ocean.

The wrong way up, and missing an engine. But nevertheless, a lot of reusable equipment that would otherwise have seriously put a dent in our insurer\'s confidence. Though since this is a prototype being tested to destruction, it has no insurance.

And this one came in the right way up.

[RedDwarfIV]

Ok, abandoned the Seagull work. Instead, using something similar but taking a leaf from Gaby\'s book.

And then, admittedly, using it as toilet paper. Because Gaby\'s are obviosly better. However, I hope to get something a little bigger to the Mun with it.

[RedDwarfIV]

I saved three fuel tanks and two 2 metre engines from my liquid boosters with parachutes.

That\'s out of four boosters, one of which managed to explode halfway down [it started raining parachutes after that.]

So I get bonus points for recoverable boosters, though they have to be refurbished first.

Also, here\'s the new rig.

[gabyalufix]

Nice!

[RedDwarfIV]

Nice!

Thanks. Though I\'ve yet to get anything with larger wings than the Ibis to make a Munar landing, and the handling tests I\'ve done so far haven\'t been promising. Neither is the fuel consumption.

[RedDwarfIV]

Added lateral and dorsal RCS thrusters, as well as stock ones. These will keep it level and on course in exoatmospheric conditions. Also some radial liquid engines.

Here\'s an unusual occurence: all four liquid boosters surviving mostly intact. They came down in water with no apparent damage to parachutes.

[gabyalufix]

How did you get these pics? Is there a free-camera mode that I am not aware of? Or is the capsule hidden by the water somewhere?

[RedDwarfIV]

How did you get these pics? Is there a free-camera mode that I am not aware of? Or is the capsule hidden by the water somewhere?

I was testing the liquid boosters\' parachutes, not the orbiter. I let it crash, and used \'close\' on the mission report screen to watch the boosters come down.

Also, I realised that the boosters just didn\'t get the orbiter high enough for its low-thrust/high efficiency engines to do their job. After toying with some radial boosters and deciding they wouldn\'t help, I rebuilt the boosters larger and heavier. I do not know if they can be parachuted down, and I don\'t have time tonight to test it.

However, with quite a lot of fuel left, I have a good [if eccentric] Kerbin orbit with exoatmospheric periapsis. I realised that it gains speed much faster with RCS and SAS off, but couldn\'t afford to use this because it slews around to the left if uncontrolled. It is a lot better balanced with the payload on board though.

A few shots of it in orbit. Could make one an advert.

In that last one, I released the lander in Kerbin orbit for lulz. Had nothing else to do.

[RedDwarfIV]

Mission patch.

[gabyalufix]

awesome.

I like the lander.

I love Nerva engines, but whenever I try and mount them on a plane, the weight distribution causes the plane to handle like an improperly-weighted brick. Did you have trouble with this?

[RedDwarfIV]

It does swerve to the left without RCS.

Here, I have put down the lander. The limo was destroyed, but only because I tried to land that too.

[gabyalufix]

Exact thing happened to me, first time I tried to drop.

[RedDwarfIV]

Exact thing happened to me, first time I tried to drop.

So you tried landing your limo then?

And just to clarify, its a Skybax isn\'t it?

My next attempt.

##Far above the Mun... floating in a tin can...##

Successful landing.

Fail. Tried to make the ship fall over gently. It snagged on the habitation module and crashed. Still, at least the Kerbins have a place to stay until a rescue ship arrives.

Going to be cramped in there.

[gabyalufix]

Nah. it was an early predecessor to the skybax. Smaller, weaker, and much, much harder to fly in atmo (especially before I made those fuel dump valves). I think the problem was the weight distribution or the wing arrangement, it would tend to stall out, flip over, and insist on flying backwards.

It also had very little room for error in the burns, so I would sometimes run out trying to get back to kerbin. I eventually got frustrated with the design and started over from scratch, which is when I made the skybax.

Landing without proper landing legs on a big craft is very tricky, and the legs just messed up my weight distribution even more. That\'s why I started dropping my honeymun suites from around 1 meter or so.

[RedDwarfIV]

If I can make a Kerbin return, then I\'ll have won.

So long as it can survive the landing when I still haven\'t gotten round to putting those two pontoons back on.

=EDIT=

Added those pontoons.

The Inca never left the atmosphere for this flight. It was solely a test of the landing gear.

And here\'s the water landing results for the liquid boosters.

Recoverable boosters: Confirmed.