Unpiloted Spaceplane Landing From Orbit

[Superfluous J]

Can I claim 7 parts and then show proof in about 2 hours? Because I know decoupler spam

I wouldn't be surprised if you could use decoupler spam to get around the spirit of this competition, but I can't think of a way. Sure, you can use it to slow yourself down a ton, but you can do that in other ways already so I'm not sure what advantage it'd get you. You'd still have to get your 7 parts down through 70km of atmosphere (and 10km of space, because you can't do your decoupling when your periapsis - and therefore your ship - is below 80km) to land safely.

[sploden]

Made this SSTO before I read the instructions; missed the low part count goal and 80km requirement. It should be capable of going to an 80km orbit, but oh well.

This was the second landing attempt.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

I think it's 22 parts, but doesn't matter anyway since it's not a legitimate entry; I started from ~71km.

[Superfluous J]

Made this SSTO before I read the instructions; missed the low part count goal and 80km requirement. It should be capable of going to an 80km orbit, but oh well.

This was the second landing attempt.

I think it's 22 parts, but doesn't matter anyway since it's not a legitimate entry; I started from ~71km.

Any successful completion of the main goal in this challenge is laudable, and that's a very nicely done ship! If you just get it a little higher before starting you'll win the horizontal landing challenge (so far)!

[Kasuha]

Sadly this does not count. You decoupled - I believe - AFTER your periapsis was under 80km. This breaks rule #6 (which I think I could have worded better)

I thought matter of this challenge is to make a design capable of unattended landing.

My fault for not reading the fine print, I guess, but I really don't see how these arbitrary rules are related to that basic idea.

I guess in my case it would increase part count by two, similarly to kujuman's design. One fuel tank, one engine. It won't change anything on the design itself. It's irrelevant to the landing mechanism, besides count of squishy parts you need to protect on landing.

Or I could make it with the same part count if I let the decoupled part to deorbit me on the rest of its fuel which is not against your rules but I think it could be qualified as bending them.

But I don't care.

[Superfluous J]

I thought matter of this challenge is to make a design capable of unattended landing.

My fault for not reading the fine print, I guess, but I really don't see how these arbitrary rules are related to that basic idea.

I guess in my case it would increase part count by two, similarly to kujuman's design. One fuel tank, one engine. It won't change anything on the design itself. It's irrelevant to the landing mechanism, besides count of squishy parts you need to protect on landing.

Or I could make it with the same part count if I let the decoupled part to deorbit me on the rest of its fuel which is not against your rules but I think it could be qualified as bending them.

But I don't care.

I understand your opinion and sympathize with it, especially because the confusion was caused by me. But the rules are there to create a consistent experience for everybody and if I make exceptions to them then they may as well not even be there.

The exact height limit of the initial orbit is arbitrary (at 10k more than the atmosphere limit) but the rule itself *is* important. I don't want you to land any old thing on the ground. I want you to land something that is capable of going from being in orbit to not being in orbit without any decoupling. If you allow late decoupling it opens loopholes that I don't want there to be. I'm not good enough to do it but I imagine some trick where 1 part ends up surviving hitting the ground due to some trick I don't know about.

Like I said, I understand and apologize that my poor wording caused the confusion that caused your entry to not count. And I'm sorry that the bad taste it left in your mouth has caused you to not care to try again.

[zorque]

5thhorseman, totally my fault. I didn't read the periapsis part.

Here's another attempt, this time keeping with the part count in mind and everything was de-coupled while still at 100KM circular orbit.

Part count: 10 (I realize I could have whittled the part count down, but I like to have fully functional planes that can take back off after landing).

-Mike

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Superfluous J]

5thhorseman, totally my fault. I didn't read the periapsis part.

Here's another attempt, this time keeping with the part count in mind and everything was de-coupled while still at 100KM circular orbit.

Part count: 10 (I realize I could have whittled the part count down, but I like to have fully functional planes that can take back off after landing).

Nicely done!

I'm afraid I've torpedoed this contests' chances of much participation so I suspect you're going to be the "glider" winner and kujuman will be the "parachute replacer" winner.

Anybody else wants to join in, of course I'll keep maintaining the list. But those are both strong entries with less parts than I thought were possible.

[sploden]

I built another SSTO with 9 parts.

Here's the mission:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited December 14, 2013 by sploden

[bsalis]

With a properly designed spaceplane, this is not that hard.

Here is my entry, a VTOL SSTO Spaceplane...

The landing is in a video on Skydrive. Clicky pic below to play. All I did was drain excess fuel to lighten the load, open the rear intake to move the CoD back, and set a notch of trim to pitch up. Oh, and I *intentionally* put it into a tumble. No SAS on this landing baby!

[Superfluous J]

I built another SSTO with 9 parts.

Wow! NOt only is this less parts than I thought you could land unattended, and less parts than I thought you could do SSTO, it's assuredly less parts than I thought you could do BOTH in the same mission! Good job getting in 1st place!

With a properly designed spaceplane, this is not that hard.

Here is my entry, a VTOL SSTO Spaceplane...

Sweet u-turn at the end! While the number of parts won't make this a winner, let me know how many it DOES have so you can be on the leaderboard!

[bsalis]

Doh - sorry. Should read more carefully. My craft is 63 parts.

Will be interesting to see if anyone else glide lands like I did without using SAS.