The Versatility Marathon Challenge

[700NitroXpress]

Lots of moddy thingies there Darkona, but it looks good to go for missions, core ship approved.

plymouth45 for posting imgur albums use: ([)imgur(])code([)/imgur(]) use the brackets [] and no () the "code" is BdlgG for yours. As you can see from this http://imgur.com/a/BdlgG/embed.

Your core ship looks good to go as well, so core ship approved for missions. Good luck to you both and have fun!

Example: here's yours

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Edited April 29, 2014 by 700NitroXpress

[Sensi]

Mission 5 completed

This was an easy going mission. All went as planned. The only tense moment was when landing the coreship, as it's as maneuvrable as a respectable class D asteroid. Fuel was not a problem as I barely had to fire the mainsails to land and get back in orbit as the TWR of the coreship was > 1 on nukes only.

No "monstrous" SSTO were used anymore to get the payloads in orbit : all launches were done with a NASA Delta IV Heavy-like rocket (2 stages, no asparagus) capable of putting 100 tons in a 100 km orbit.

Scores

Mission completion : 500 points

Land a rover and a rover garage : 200 points

Land 2 rovers : 100 points

Land a science module of at least 6 tons : 50 points

Eat your vegetables : 5 points

I know what I need : 25 points

Jet engines are for planes : 5 points

Bring the gang along for the ride : 2 x 10 = 20 points

Home Sweet Home : 2 x 5 = 10 points

NASA knows best : 100 points

Total : 1015 points

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Fly safe.

Sensi.

Edited April 30, 2014 by Sensi

[700NitroXpress]

Nice mission Sensi, those were some enjoyable screenshots. Huge fairings that you're using there on the Delta IV rockets, looks cool, I hope these become stock at some point.

[gchristopher]

What Goes Up, LLC.

A lot of people might say "we don't have a semblance of a plan," but here at What Goes Up LLC, we call that "Versatility!"

We offer both our sincere apologies in advance, and as usual, completely disclaim any liability for our newest multifunctional ship:

Square Peg

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Statistics:

All stock parts, plus MechJeb.

Mass: 19.09t / 10.65t dry

112 parts

TWR: 0.64

dV without attachments: 1173 m/s atmo, 4267 m/s vacuum

RCS dV: 59.5 m/s

Crew: 4

Fore and aft 5-port (1 sr, 4 regular) docking structures.

[700NitroXpress]

gchristopher your core ship looks good to go for missions.

[plymoth45]

Well, unfortunately while I was conducting a flight test of the shuttle I was designing for launching some of my modules, I tried to load the quicksave I had saved (Or rather thought I had saved) a few minutes before, and wound up getting the quicksave I had created while I was still designing the Asteria. Thus, the finalized version of my core ship isn't in space anymore. I'll be relaunching it and running the shakedown again with no changes to the design. On the bright side, I've now finished my shuttle. Capable of launching a 30 ton payload without too much trouble to a 100km Orbit. Once the Asteria is back in orbit, I'll be fitting it out for Mission 1 Album to come! And thanks Nitro, wasn't sure what the tags were. Haven't used a board like this in a while.

[Finwen]

Its time to build some more for mission 6 after some vacation and Diablo III playing....

I did build a heavy 30t+ VTOL plane.

Slow vertical liftoff.

Docked at KSS. Several components for LAythe is also docked like a driv module and a fuel module.

I can lift of vertically on Kerbin. Dock to my spacestation and then land safe again on Kerbin. Hopefully i will work on Laythe too....

I need to construct a heatshield for the plane and lift up a rover or 2. I have not decided yet id i should go for double rover/plane mission yet.

[Finwen]

I am ready to launch my mission to Laythe now.

Just need to fill up the fuel.

600+ ton ship ready to launch....

Hopefully it will work as planned....

[700NitroXpress]

I see a lot of wobbling and flexing in your future Finwen, better take it slow.

[Finwen]

Yes its wobbling allot but i am going slowly forward now....

And i have learned to control it now. quit stable with very gently control... But arrival at Jool might be interesting....

Edited May 12, 2014 by Finwen

[700NitroXpress]

Yeah, do a double aerobrake. Use Jool for the first aerobrake to bring your AP to within Laythe's orbit, then use Laythe for a second aerobrake to achieve orbit. That way you don't have to do hardly any burns and you can save a bunch of fuel.

[Sensi]

Mission 6 completed

This mission went as planned... most of the time. There were some things I didn't expect, like

- Playing darts with Laythe after being lied to by a maneuver node : a 37 km Pe becoming a frontal collision trajectory after time warping to Laythe's SOI. Fortunately, I had 10 mins to maneuver and miss the dartboard.

- Tumbling down uncontrollably in Laythe's atmosphere with a heat shield still attached to the 1st spaceplane, whose docking port I forgot to assign a 'decouple' action group. Manual detaching and recovery happened at 1 km altitude.

- Spending all RCS fuel of the circumnavigating spaceplane because I forgot to swith RCS off after takeoff and didn't notice until the tank was empty. Fortunately, there was some RCS fuel left in the rovers.

- Designing the rovers with a flat body acting like a wing, and the COL not precisely aligned with the COM, making the rovers difficult to maneuver.

- Restarting KSP made the KAS struts between the rovers and the coreship disappear, although the struts ends were still attached to them. Some flexing ensued.

Anyway, Jebediah and his crew managed to get all things under control every time they went south, without any loss of lives, hardware or pride

The VTOL tailsitter design I used for my spaceplanes comes from the Lockheed XFV “Salmonâ€Â. It was flying nicely, very maneuvrable, fast (1400 m/s @ 19 km altitude) and fuel thrifty.

Scores

Mission Completion: 1000 points

Multi-drop: Deploy two rovers and two planes to complete the mission: 400 points

VTOL Master: Use VTOL aircraft designs for your air craft: 250 points

Circumnavigator: circumnavigate Laythe along the equator with your aircraft before heading back to orbit, 28,000 meter altitude limit: 250 points

Eat your vegetables : 5 points

I know what I need : 25 points

Jet engines are for planes : 5 points

Bring the gang along for the ride : 4 x 10 = 40 points

Home Sweet Home : 4 x 5 = 20 points

NASA knows best : 100 points

Total : 2095 points

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Fly safe.

Sensi.

Edited May 13, 2014 by Sensi

[Finwen]

Mice mission report Sensi. I jusr reach Laythe orbit myself.

[700NitroXpress]

Excellent mission Sensi, I love these ship designs that you guys come up with!

Looking forward to your mission too Finwen!

New mission will be posted Monday.

Edited May 15, 2014 by 700NitroXpress

[Finwen]

I have landed 2 rovers now and i am currently flying plane one from other side of the moon to rovers now. It will take some time i guess

Update: Landed with both planes

Edited May 17, 2014 by Finwen

[Quiana]

I had a minor accident with some mods and ended up having my core craft wiped out. I'm currently lifting it back up (I recreated it identical to the original, though I have new textures on the TAC life support cans) and hopefully can complete mission one today. It's just taking eons to get it all up there.

[Finwen]

I am finnished with mission 6. Report and images later today.

[Quiana]

Okay, got the replaced core vessel into space. It matches the original part for part and is prepared to complete Mission One tomorrow. Please ignore that the kerbal inside the lander is named differently in screenshots for mission one's beginning compared to the departure phases (the original was lost when the mod kraken ate him).

Edited May 21, 2014 by Quiana
Forgot to say which mission doh!

[700NitroXpress]

Mission 7 is now up.

[Quiana]

Welp, I'm having to redo my plans on Mission one. The satelites can't be deployed. Why you may ask?

Because the decouplers weren't staged. They were left out so I could manually decouple them.... and now I can't select them.

[700NitroXpress]

Because the decouplers weren't staged. They were left out so I could manually decouple them.... and now I can't select them.

I don't even know how you managed to do that.

[Quiana]

I don't even know how you managed to do that.

To remove from staging selection? Tweakable Everything. VERY handy mod, allows you to set a few things and also to deploy solar panels/comms etc in the VAB. That way you can preview how it'll look rather than guessing. In this case, it also allows you to remove decouplers from staging so you don't have to have your staging bar filled with extras that are manually undocked. In this case, KSP gave me the saddest thing ever. It just decided that the engine had priority on mouse-over and won't target the decouplers.

EDIT: I think I'll end up just either flushing their engines to the engine pods entirely or perhaps docking ports instead of decouplers. It's probably the girder that is preventing them from being targetable.

EDITx2: It APPEARS that Ion engines cause a rather hideous and evil effect I'm simply calling 'bad hitbox'. No matter how I organize the decouplers/docking ports, the ion engines appear to cause a band around them that will prevent selecting anything within one part of them. This is not noticeable in VAB, I've been having to put vessels on the pad to find this out. I just have to action group the dang things at this rate.

Edited May 22, 2014 by Quiana
Stuff x2

[Finwen]

Mission 6 completed

This mission went almost as planned...

I had problem with flexing. After my mission to Moho i said that i never should build a such long ship again... I Guess i forgot that part...

It flexed allot while turning but was almost stable during the long burns... (Transfer to Jool burn took like 3 hours...)

I was afraid of the aerobrake at Jool but it went without problem and was really stable then.

I landed the first rover on the island without problem but the second one i did overshot the target and almost missed the island. Landed like 10 meters from the east shore of the island....

Drove the rover to a flatter area and after that i drove the first rover to the same spot. (a long 26 km drive)

Deployed the first M55 spaceplane on other side of Laythe. After i dropped the heatshield i had a superstall and lost control. tumbled down toward the ocean and only got control of it at around 500m altitude... After a long flight i arrived to the rovers and after pumping fuel forward i could land vertical.

I also had problem with second M55 but a stall but i could get out to stable flight faster.

I did some science and then the Kerbal from the rover should board the second seat on M55 i discovered a problem. The ladder was below the canard so he could climb to the cockpit... But after moving the small rover he could climb in from that....

Circumnavigation Laythe failed due to low fuel left in M55. The first one had very little fuel and barely made it to orbit. But my Big ship could move to M55.

Second one had no problem to dock by itself.

I had only planed to take the core ship back to Kerbin but i forgot to remove Kerbals before departure so i had no room for the 3 Kerbals from Laythe on the core ship. But the whole ship had plenty of fuel left so i decided to take everything with me home...

Return journey went fine and after i disabled the reaction wheels on the M55 planes it didn't flex so much either.

I could land with both M55 planes a KSC without problem. Each with 2 Kerbals on board. Leaving 3 in orbit.

Scores

Mission Completion: 1000 points

Multi-drop: Deploy two rovers and two planes to complete the mission: 400 points

VTOL Master: Use VTOL aircraft designs for your air craft: 250 points

Eat your vegetables : 5 points

I know what I need : 25 points (unplanned...)

Jet engines are for planes : 5 points

Bring the gang along for the ride : 3 x 10 = 30 points

Home Sweet Home : 4 x 5 = 20 points

NASA knows best : 100 points

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[Darnok]

Core Craft Basic Requirements:

Your core craft must seat at least 2 kerbals, have it's own RCS system, have it's own fuel supply and starting engines, must be capable of recharging it's power supply, must be capable of going to Mun and orbiting at 50,000 meters and return to LKO at 75,000 meters for the first test run. The core craft will never touch a planet unless otherwise specified in the missions. You have to have a separate lander that you attach to your core craft for missions that require landings. If you lift another kerbal up to your core craft, you cannot leave that kerbal in the lander module, he has to join the rest of the crew in the core craft. Or the lander has to have an unmanned module when you dock it to your core craft. Think of your core craft as a small station of sorts. To add more crew, you have to add more to the craft. To go further, you have to add more fuel and different engines.

Your core craft will need to attach different things to it: Fuel, engines, core pieces for more crew or more attachment points, landers, SSTO's, satellites, probes, rovers.

Sometimes the attachment craft will be made for you and you have to attach them and use them for the different missions.

Interpretation please

Does that means that my core craft can be Orion or SpaceX Dragon without any additions just crew and propulsion/service modules?

And when I am starting new mission I can send to orbit all things I will need for that mission and dock with core craft?

[Quiana]

Interpretation please

Does that means that my core craft can be Orion or SpaceX Dragon without any additions just crew and propulsion/service modules?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Orion_with_ATV_SM.jpg/250px-Orion_with_ATV_SM.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/COTS2Dragon.6.jpg/250px-COTS2Dragon.6.jpg

And when I am starting new mission I can send to orbit all things I will need for that mission and dock with core craft?

It also has to be capable of moving from LKO to the mun and return as its maiden vessel flight.