Big Shot Challange

[Carl]

Okay just finished my first large booster in my second career, (I abandoned the first for a variety of reasons), but the truth is i'm a lot better at making rockets than flying them. can just about make orbit on my own, for anything else i really need mechjeb. Unfortunately being so early in the tree this time around i don't have anything much of it unlocked so i'm going to be stuck flying around Kerbin for a little bit longer. Even then i'm not the best at making flights so i figured i'd throw it at you lot and see what you can do with it.

Basics of the Challenge:

Get and land the Lander anywhere in the Kerbal system, show me how far you can make it go. A return isn't required though would be impressive to see.

What you can add/remove/change:

You can add and remove batteries and solar panel's, i've only got a few basics unlocked and the batteries won't get you further than high kerbin orbit as is.

You can add/remove struts and fuel connectors.

You can add/remove/change stabilising elements like fins, inertial wheel's, SAS, and if you want it Mechjeb or similar, (i left it off the design so stock only people could work with it).

You can Add/Remove/Change the parachutes on the final landing stage and the engines on the final landing stage to aid in getting down on specific worlds.

Ship Here: http://www.filedropper.com/bigshot1_1

Edited November 6, 2013 by Carl

[NeoX]

there are still no-stock parts in it, cant load it in the VAB

Part missing: mumech.MJ2.AR202

[Carl]

ugh thought i'd deleted that, let me go through and fix it

[Carl]

There, should be fixed.

[NeoX]

now it works, thanks, lets see how far i can get

[Carl]

np and yeah lets see.

[SRV Ron]

Solar panels would be a plus. Batteries will die, even with everything powered down, on interplanetary mission. Flight is reasonability stable. Lander is quite oversize.

Here is the launch;

And, in orbit.

As this career mode ship will make Eve and Duna, should do Jool with aerobraking, I suspect with what resources left with solar panels, will at least make orbit with the lander.

[Carl]

Solar panels would be a plus.

Not got them researched myself, hence why i said you could add them .

Made the lander oversize because in my first career i lost a LOT of landers to tipping. Going oversize makes sure it doesn't, plus i wasn't sure how much Dv it would need for a Munnar return. It's basically my test bed lander for figuring out the Munar and eventually Munimmas return missions. I don't expect to manage it with this specific configuration, but i should learn a lot from trying .

For now it's doing duty on Kerbin Biome missions.

If you can get mine to Jool (with panels addd duh), i'll be mighty impressed though .

[NeoX]

Ok, here is my entry. I shrink the staging a little bit, get rid of some reactionwheels and reduce the weight of batteries and also add some solar pannels. I aimed for a Jool-moon and made it to Laythe with half the fuel of the last stage left , with a little luck and slingshot-fuelsaving i maybe also get to Vall out of my current quicksave around Jool but that seems quite hard

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[SRV Ron]

With the excess reaction wheels deleted, the weight savings made a Jool mission possible.

With parachutes, your lander should easily do a Mun, Minmus landing and return.

The lander from my design in Career Mode. The booster was used to get all horizonal speed to zero by using the retrograde marker on the Navball. It was staged just prior to landing where thrusters were used to reduce touchdown speed to under 4m/sec. That is why you see it stuck in the background.

Edit, saw the parachutes.

Edited November 7, 2013 by SRV Ron

[Carl]

Just out of curiosity, which reaction wheels did you remove? I haven't really played lots since back when you needed this many of the suckers to stop the whole rocket spiralling out of control. So i would appreciate any commentary you have on excess ones.

Also overall what did you make of the booster itself, any other major flaws you'd like to point out?

[NeoX]

Ok, i removed the 3 RWs on top of the outer array and the 9 above the outer boosters and had still a easy to control vehicle. I usualy prefer less RWs to get rid of some weight. Overall this craft was quite easy to control, but the overall length made it little bit wobbly in my parkingorbit around Kerbin. You could easily do a mün landing and return. With some experience in fuelsaving and maneuvre-planning you could even land on mün, come back, swing by Kerbin an land on Minmus if the phaseangel is right an the AN/DN on the right spot.

[celem]

Dont worry so much about your 'oversized' lander. It looks very much like what I use, for the same stability of landing reasons. Just make sure you have radial seperators on those tanks that support the legs and fuel lines from said tanks to the main one. By the time you touch down on minmus/mun you likely have little left in them so you can blow them immediately you start your ascent, leaving you a lightweight fully fueled return stage.

Additionaly, if you are having trouble coming back from the moons of kerbin even with these designs, read up on 'Free Return Trajectory' to ensure your return launches are efficient. I tend to land equatorial and just launch vertically when my landing site is pointing to the moons retrograde (back along it's orbit). This drops you back into kerbin soi with a very cheap burn to aerobrake and land.

edit: Ok, thought I'd download this and see what I could do with it. Threw away almost all your inline stabs, you keep one below the probe head and one other per stage, all the stabs are on the centre of thrust, having them on your radial sections makes them work doubletime to achieve anything. Fewer stabs also draws a lot less power on the ascent so your energy worries reduce considerably. I kept sas on for the climb off kerbin then ditched it as i left the atmosphere. After this point its on only for burns and very briefly to stop momentum when realigning Major lander redesign now has the surrounding tanks on radial seperators instead of the modular girders, legs still on those tanks, symmetry has dropped to 3 here reducing payload weight considerably, i find 3 legs to be sufficiently stable when placed this wide apart. No engines on the radial tanks, new 200 fuel tank below the science bay and 1 of those little engines there instead. Ditched the parachutes on the radial tanks and installed radial chutes on the science bay itself since those radials are no longer returning to kerbin with the probe, for this reason all the batteries are on the main body along with 6 of the most basic solar cell. All in all your lander got lighter, this design does need fuel pumps ideally to push from the radials to the centre lander engine, I did manage with some manual fuel shuffling though since I dont know if you have those unlocked.

Otherwise everything below the lander is untouched, exactly as you had it and staging as you had it, there are doubtless some tweaks could be made, but this design is solid with very little alteration.

Got it into lko with a healthy transfer stage left, sent it to minmus where the transfer stage was enough to capture orbit, equatorialize, deorbit and was then thrown away not empty from a hover at 500m.

With the lander-radials not empty as expected i didnt jettison them on ascent as planned, but transfered some fuel across when i burned out the little centre tank just short of a kerbin aerobrake trajectory, this manual juggling to achieve a refueled engine and still have balanced CoM is tricky, yet as long as you are not under thrust while getting it all evened out it wont cause you any issues. there are mods to help them drain evenly, but fuel lines would fix it all. dropped em not yet empty as i re-entered kerbin, worried about parachute weight.

I suspect it will do Mun+return, and I can probably put it on Duna with some tweaks, i'll try later on.

Edited November 7, 2013 by celem

[Carl]

Cheers for the feedback.

@celem: Again the landers a prototype, i'd absolutely re-jig it with fuel lines later on if i can, but i felt i might need more than one engine in some circumstances with that much fuel and didn't realise you could move fuel without lines so i figured i'd need one engine per tank anyway. Also why no decouplers.

Also yeah i noticed the tendency for it to end with a healthy stage. After getting mechjebs manauver planner unlocked i pulled a 13000 day solar mission with a kerbal aboard for a ton of science. Just burned straight up till i hit Kerbin escape. Then used mechjeb to put me back into Kerbin space afterwards. Took a few orbits though for the transfer window to open.