BSC: Kerbal X - We have a winner!

[Deathsoul097]

@mhoram

The landing legs are there to provide a wider, more stable stance upon minmus landing, along with a low centre of gravity, along with space between the landing legs for customisation, such as science equipment, landing lights and whatever else you might want to put on, providing it is not too large. The Clampotron Jr. was there to provide an alternative to the common thought of linear docking ports, and to demonstrate that everything can be used in many ways and many places.

[antbin]

My review spreadsheet. I didn't have time to review every craft - rockets with fancy construction, partclipping, or just plain epicly huge I skipped. I also made a pretty chart to look at the weight, part count, and ISP.

My votes (2 apiece) go to:

• breakthrough - Kerbal X Revision 1A : Lil funny looking, but low part count and improved performance while staying simple.
  
• Kasuha - Kerbal IV Light : Not exactly 'light', but super low part count and solid construction, with only essential frills.
  
• Rhomphaia - Kerbal 10b : Could have lost the fins, but otherwise a plain excellent stock upgrade.
  
• sploden - Kerbal X improved 02 : Again, could have done without the fins, and strutting not ideal, but pretty and effective.
  

As you can see, I tried to reward the simpler designs that more closely followed the stock Kerbal X.

For those who feel the same way, I should plug my rocket : lowest part count and one of the lowest mass of the contest! Still mun-surface-return capable!

[Death Engineering]

Thanks for the votes I have so far!

For my votes, the minimum criteria I established was:

1. The craft loads from original, official zip on a fresh install.
   
2. Supports direct-ascent Minmus landing
   
3. Staging works
   
4. Capable of Munar orbit
   
5. 3 crew capsule
   
6. Includes a docking port + RCS
   

Additional quarter-points were awarded for:

• Is stable to 800m stable without SAS (less than 10° from vertical)
  
• Includes action groups
  
• Is terminal velocity safe without throttling down during ascent
  
• Has a level of aesthetic appeal
  
• Gets Jebediah's Seal of Approvalâ„¢ (he grins during ascent)
  

I loaded (or attempted to load..) every craft and flew every one which met the minimum criteria on a Munar free-return flight. My voting was spread out on four craft, with each earning two points.

Thanks for managing this, Xeldrak!

[antbin]

After evaluating the crafts, I put down a comparison of the crafts (PDF).

Not to nitpick, but the Kerbals XX has a landing light and is debris free (though only on a well flown Mun mission)

Edited November 18, 2013 by antbin

[kzauner]

After evaluating the crafts, I put down a comparison of the crafts (PDF).

Thank you for the work. But nitpicking: My lander has legs. At least if you use the lander, and not the ascend/return part. And yes, it should be flyable debris-free. antbin's XX also sports legs (At least I think so, flying all these crafts make things a little bit blurry).

Seriously. 2 days is a little bit short. I don't know If I'm able to give all those crafts a try in such a short time.

[mhoram]

-D/v is in the area of 1.1 km(just final stage).

-Final stage is optional as TWR is above 1.

-How were you flying it if you left debris?

-I might add legs actually,If I'm landing with rockets I may as well do it in style.

-The brief said reach mun/minmus orbit and return,I don't think no legs can be a criticisim towards myself,Giggleplex,kzauner,or Death engineering.

I did not include the dV and TWR for ships without legs, because I assumed that they are meant for Mun-orbiting only. As stock craft for beginners in my opinion Legs are necessary for landing.

Missing legs is for me only a small indicator, since a Mun-orbiting vessel works perfectly for this challenge. (Your small dV value was the main reason, I did not vote for your ship)

Stage 2 stays in an orbit around Kerbin during the transfer to the Mun.

and a comment on your comment.

While the lander itself may have lowish D/v the space section is meant to de-orbit the lander when the lander dose the finale landing.(ie. stop vertical velocity with space section, drop it then land with the real lander) and on the sepetron placement that was one of the only places to put them because the top was taken up by a drogue chute.(both of which is part of the "escape tower") hope this clears up some stuff.

I just found the placement strange, since the sepatrons point in a different direction than the landing legs and are not symmetrical.

Putting in a good dV margin for beginners would be nice - with less than 1100 dV after landing. you would have to airobrake to get back to Kerbin, which I cosider to be a little bit to advanced.

The landing legs are there to provide a wider, more stable stance upon minmus landing, along with a low centre of gravity

Very interesting idea - i liked it.

Not to nitpick, but the Kerbals XX has a landing light and is debris free (though only on a well flown Mun mission)

And it is quite good hidden You are right and I updated the file.

[Andrew Hansen]

NOTE: This is not an entry.

This was a really fun challenge! I think that it is also a learning experience.

I learned quite a few interesting tricks from other competitors while doing this. Taking a look at my entry after the fact (um... well, the challenge isn't over yet, I guess!), the main thing I would have changed is the size of the lifting stage, as well as the engine and amount of fuel on the transfer stage.

Simply by swapping the Skipper engine in my transfer stage for a Poodle, I was able to remove half the fuel and retain the same amount of Delta V! With the greatly reduced payload mass, my lifting stage could be much smaller as well. Using Engineer, I designed a lifting stage that never hit terminal velocity (but stayed really close to it) and had just under 4,500 Delta V to prevent becoming debris in space. I also agreed with Antbin that silvery fuel tanks look better than orange, so I used them instead this time. I kept the lander, though, because I thought it was pretty good.

Testing out the new design, the transfer stage had about 1/3 of my fuel left after I got into orbit around the Mun.

Edited November 18, 2013 by Andrew Hansen

[Spartwo]

I learned quite a lot from this.To the VAB.

[Giggleplex777]

-wrongthread-

Edited November 18, 2013 by Giggleplex777

[Spartwo]

http://i.imgur.com/bPbZcnr.png

Wrong thread?

[Giggleplex777]

Wrong thread?

Stupid Mobile view. Though I was wondering where it went.

[Deathsoul097]

Antbin, only the lander / service module stage has a TWR < 1, and I stated the reason for the fairings:

The Kerbal Z.Z (Said Z 2) is designed with noob friendliness in mind, the engines will never overheat and it shows how certain techniques can be used to create crafts. (I have no idea if that was the right word to use there) The fairing made of panels around the LV-909 on the lander / capsule provides space for the landing legs, monopropellant and ather stuff you might want to put on. The side boosters show how liquid fuelled boosters that crossfeed into the core can be more effective and more efficient than SRBs, without destroying the laws of physics outright with an asparagus monstrosity. Struts are placed in key places that minimize wobble, and the landing legs are placed sideways to provide a wider and more stable stance on the ground, and be more discreet while flying, while still providing enough ground clearance to land safely. Oh, and it's heavily based on the Ares V and Delta rockets as well.

EDIT: Also, Xeldrak, the link you posted takes me to a blank page, whether I am going to vote or view the results. Confused to say the least.

Edited November 18, 2013 by Deathsoul097

[mhoram]

Thank you for the work. But nitpicking: My lander has legs. At least if you use the lander, and not the ascend/return part. And yes, it should be flyable debris-free.

Yes, I missed the legs.

If a craft can be flown debris-free depends sometimes on the experience of the pilot. Since the target audience is beginners, I assumed a more restrictive measure. The KerbalEX should be in the middle of the Kerbin-Moon-burn while stage 6 gets empty, so the debris stays in an orbit around Kerbin according to my estimation - except stage 6 is dropped before finalizing the LKO, but tell this to a beginner.

My review spreadsheet. I didn't have time to review every craft - rockets with fancy construction, partclipping, or just plain epicly huge I skipped. I also made a pretty chart to look at the weight, part count, and ISP.

Thanks for the review! It is always good to see other opinions and evaluation-categories.

[sploden]

After evaluating the crafts, I put down a comparison of the crafts (PDF).

I'm going to contest two of your conclusions about my craft:

1. Antenna: Located up by the parachute. It is aligned vertically to "improve aerodynamics."

2. Debris-free: Lifter and boosters crash into Kerbin, and the Kerbin circularization/Münar transfer and circularization stage crashes into the Mün after using the last bit of fuel to start the Münar deorbit burn.

Edit: I noticed you've edited your document, so...

3. Fuel ducts nearly invisible - This is a positive, but I'm guessing you wrote it because you think it's a negative...

4. "Hidden engines" - Also a positive.

5. Unfriendly file hosting site - Really? You're taking the hosting site into consideration?

6. Debris cleanup for experienced users - I disagree; I think it's quite easy to perform debris cleanup without even knowing it's happening. If you'll notice from my entry post I performed a free-return trajectory burn (which takes more fuel to perform) and still had some fuel in my transfer stage after circularizing around the Mün, definitely enough to go suborbital before decoupling.

Edited November 18, 2013 by sploden

[Carl]

I notice i got a vote, anyone care to say why?

@Mhoram: Couple of curious questions. 1 Why is lights or lack of on the lander relevant. Their nice from an aesthetics PoV, but i left them off on the basis that they're an unnecessary drain on the batteries and a potential source of extra confusions.

Also why the SRB monster comment? Or more to the point, it comes across as a rather negative comment when i don't really see any other way to build a purely 1.25M design to achieve the aims and avoid mass use of them. It certainly runs fine on my fairly low spec PC so performance shouldn't be an issue.

@Everyone else.

I am going to try and get around to your designs, i do promise, but it may be a day or so. I'll be starting with the 2, (or is it 3, can't tell from Mhoram's PDF), non-Asparagus designs as my shortlist. Barring major issues i'll move onto the rest afterwards, (don;t get me wrong, asparagus is great for efficiency, but for a newcomer thinking about IRL rockets it's decidedly non-logical, and that's not good for helping them build it themselves). The presence of a working Lander and Lander Stability will probably be the next consideration, with excess DV, both at Mun arrival, Mun Landing, and Kerbin Return. For non Lander deigns the latter will be major consideration.

Ties will if possible be sorted by tech level, it was going to be my primary judging rule, since it determines Career mode usability. But everyone but me seems to be using 2.5M parts so that's a bit meaningless as all the designs here require the newbie to go do all the Kerbin and most of the Mun/Munimas Science before they can build them.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I think my fav design so far is Andrew Hansen's for self-flipping leg placement. As a suggestion I think a cluster of the smaller rockomax would accomplish the same purpose with better TWR.

I notice i got a vote, anyone care to say why?

@Mhoram: Couple of curious questions. 1 Why is lights or lack of on the lander relevant. Their nice from an aesthetics PoV, but i left them off on the basis that they're an unnecessary drain on the batteries and a potential source of extra confusions.

Also why the SRB monster comment? Or more to the point, it comes across as a rather negative comment when i don't really see any other way to build a purely 1.25M design to achieve the aims and avoid mass use of them. It certainly runs fine on my fairly low spec PC so performance shouldn't be an issue.

@Everyone else.

I am going to try and get around to your designs, i do promise, but it may be a day or so. I'll be starting with the 2, (or is it 3, can't tell from Mhoram's PDF), non-Asparagus designs as my shortlist. Barring major issues i'll move onto the rest afterwards, (don;t get me wrong, asparagus is great for efficiency, but for a newcomer thinking about IRL rockets it's decidedly non-logical, and that's not good for helping them build it themselves). The presence of a working Lander and Lander Stability will probably be the next consideration, with excess DV, both at Mun arrival, Mun Landing, and Kerbin Return. For non Lander deigns the latter will be major consideration.

Ties will if possible be sorted by tech level, it was going to be my primary judging rule, since it determines Career mode usability. But everyone but me seems to be using 2.5M parts so that's a bit meaningless as all the designs here require the newbie to go do all the Kerbin and most of the Mun/Munimas Science before they can build them.

Not sure if srs on question re: why landing lights are relevant.. Your statement about asparagus staging makes little to no sense.

[Rhomphaia]

My review spreadsheet. I didn't have time to review every craft - rockets with fancy construction, partclipping, or just plain epicly huge I skipped. I also made a pretty chart to look at the weight, part count, and ISP.

My votes (2 apiece) go to:

• breakthrough - Kerbal X Revision 1A : Lil funny looking, but low part count and improved performance while staying simple.
  
• Kasuha - Kerbal IV Light : Not exactly 'light', but super low part count and solid construction, with only essential frills.
  
• Rhomphaia - Kerbal 10b : Could have lost the fins, but otherwise a plain excellent stock upgrade.
  
• sploden - Kerbal X improved 02 : Again, could have done without the fins, and strutting not ideal, but pretty and effective.
  

As you can see, I tried to reward the simpler designs that more closely followed the stock Kerbal X.

For those who feel the same way, I should plug my rocket : lowest part count and one of the lowest mass of the contest! Still mun-surface-return capable!

Thanks for the votes, I kept the fins because engine gimbals can't compensate for roll cause by booster stress. Shouldn't be too much of an issue with 1m boosters, but I still prefer to have them.

[antbin]

engine gimbals can't compensate for roll cause by booster stress

Ah, they're ungimbaled T30s on the outside boosters? Cause if they're gimbaled T45s, a properly strutted booster should be able to exert roll.

Testing out the new design, the transfer stage had about 1/3 of my fuel left after I got into orbit around the Mun.

Looks much tidier, and more compact! Nice stuff. Why do you have multiple 3m ASAS units though?

[Andrew Hansen]

Looks much tidier, and more compact! Nice stuff. Why do you have multiple 3m ASAS units though?

Thanks for the compliments! The command pod doesn't have enough torque to turn all that weight around in a timely manner, so with two ASAS units, it's faster (still not really fast, but fast enough). I noticed a big improvement in torque after removing that extra fuel tank.

[Andrew Hansen]

I think my fav design so far is Andrew Hansen's for self-flipping leg placement. As a suggestion I think a cluster of the smaller rockomax would accomplish the same purpose with better TWR.

Thanks! I don't know if you saw it, but on a previous page I have a post with an image of a few changes I made in the VAB.

The smaller rockomax engines are really nice when used with 1.25 meter parts. However, after flying sploden's craft (which used them on the lander), it seemed to me like you'd need a lot of them to get the same TWR that I had with those two radial engines. I like them, but they seem to be best for 1.25 m parts.

Also, my lander had over 2,000 m/s Delta V, so that was pretty decent in my opinion.

EDIT: I just did some math, and you're definitely right. Since each radial engine has 120 kN thrust, two of them have 240 thrust. 240 divided by 20 (the thrust of one tiny rockomax) = 12. So I'd need 12 tiny rockomax engines to make two radial engines. The total mass of 12 rockomax engines is 1.2, while the total mass of two radial engines is 1.8. And that's not it. The efficiency of the tiny rockomax engines is 350 in vacuum, while the larger ones are only 320 in vacuum.

So you're definitely right.

Edited November 18, 2013 by Andrew Hansen

[vetrox]

Ok so I have started testing. Im trying to do it as thorough as possible. However each test is taking roughly 30mins each. Thats 19hours i have to get through!

I will do as many as i can in the alloted time.

My test involves taking off, orbit, ransfer, land and take off (if applicable) but i wont do the return. I will do a quick test of any reurn gear to make sure chutes deploy etc but i cba with the extra 5 mins of take off and return.

If i havent completed everyonees and the deadline is near. I will post my reports and place voted about 3 or 4 hours before end of voting.

[BlazeFallow]

After evaluating the crafts, I put down a comparison of the crafts (PDF).

My votes go to:

Andrew Hansen: "Kerbal X Revised"

Blaster: "Reynard Apex Munar Ship"

BlazeFallow: "Kerbal XD"

breakthrough: "Kerbal X Revision 1A"

Giggleplex777: "Kerbal G"

I_Killed_Jeb: "Meercurio Alpha"

Kasuha: "Kerbal IV Light"

Xeldrak: "CROME"

Again there is lots of interesting stuff to be found, although this time I can not single out the one or two best crafts - they all fit major parts of my imagination of the ideal Kerbal X replacement.

Thanks for the vote. My Kerbal XD flew like a dream and might even be one of the best rockets I've designed to date (probably because it was so simple). Some very good competition out there, looking forward to seeing who pulls ahead.

[Xeldrak]

EDIT: Also, Xeldrak, the link you posted takes me to a blank page, whether I am going to vote or view the results. Confused to say the least.

Well, try again now or in a diffrent browser - it works fine over here and 38 people have allready voted. So I'm not the only one

[Nao]

Hehe i find it funny that people label my craft as "not asparagus" even thou it actually is. It even has drop tanks, but all in the lander (contrary to popular belief asparagus really isn't that useful in Kerbin ascent). I guess i should have advertised my craft in the description.

Anyways here are my votes, with some comments:

Giggaplex77	2 	(escape tower, simple, also I like the TWR)
NeilC		1 	(overall well done, nice lander)
kookoo_gr	1 	(one man pod done right, good asparagus, science!)
sgt_flyer	1 	(escape tower, good setup and nice looks)
Xeldrak		1	(balanced design, just like it)
mpink		1 	(crazy, but instructions worked so its k lol)
kzauner		1 	(shield could be around 909 too)

Edited November 18, 2013 by Nao

[sgt_flyer]

@Nao i'm not 'Flaying' anyone ^^ but thanks for the point