An Affordable Space Program: making the reusable spacecraft pay off.

[SirJoab]

1greywind:

Nicely done!

This is a very clean operation. Looks like refueling/loading is fuss-free. Spacestation is conventional, and I'd say your mission execution is comparable to Rune's. I'll give you 1 point for style.

You score beaks down like this:

+11 for 11 Modules

+83 for 83.3mT in Orbit

+12 for Kerbals on board

-11 for refueling 11 times

+10 for completing all-stock

+1 for style

Total : 106 points.

You are now #1 on the leaderboard!

[LordFjord]

11 refuels on 11 modules?

add 1 more to 1greywind's score

@SirJoab: I'll try to add 2 more modules to my station, then it could qualify for a score. I don't know if those ions can get it anywhere, but I'll try that as well for the lulz.

Scorewise it would be on the bottom of the list ( I don't mind/care about that ). For me it was more a personal challenge that I can do it. I learned a lot when doing this, mostly about stabilizing angled wing planes with unusual CoT, docking on the ground and most importantly: have an approximate rule of thumb on how to hit the KSC from orbit.

A tip for ground-docking: when the things just don't want to connect, even when being literally perfectly matched -> switch the controlling vehicle. Each swap will re-engage the docking mechanisms. At least this helped for me.

Ah, and note to self: add ladders and bling bling lights to the Wasp Mk 6

[Rakaydos]

Alright, so I believe I have the bugs worked out of my reusable lifter (5 ton payload).

Now I just need to figure out how to reassembe it for the next launch.

[SirJoab]

11 refuels on 11 modules?

add 1 more to 1greywind's score

1greywind made 12 trips, the last one being to deliver his station's crew. Thus 11 refuels.

[LordFjord]

Ahh, my bad, apologies

[the_bT]

I came up with a working prototype of a stock crane if anyone is interested:

It's basically a rover that drives up or down a ramp, and the ramp itself can move as well. The rover lifts, the ramp moves, simple and effective.

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A bit strange to handle but you can get a good clean dock without problem.

Unfortunately it is not tall enough, but only by about 10 or 15 meters

Once I get that to work I should be ready to do this...

[Rakaydos]

Interesting. I may be interested in the craft file, as it sounds easier than the skycrane reassembily I'm currently expirimenting with.

[Jasonden]

It's basically a rover that drives up or down a ramp, and the ramp itself can move as well.

Wow, and I thought my crane was crazy. This is way crazier! Nice job!!!

[LordFjord]

Finished the last 2 modules of my station, it has 4 in total now. 4 Kerbals, lotsa electric power, some ion engines, xenon for ~3k dV and 4 external seats to enjoy the ride.

I refined the refuel truck and also the buggys to help attach the new payloads, the ground action was done a lot faster this time. Maybe 5-10 minutes in total being grounded and roughly 30-40 minutes for each ride to space.

So all in all, an awesome challenge, cheers for setting it up. To sum up the hard parts:

- build a good SSTO, which is hard enough on its own

- design a system to load the new modules

- design a refuel system

- dock the parts together in space

- point landing on KSC

After the 4 flights, one can say that the system works reliably

Imgur doesnt wanna work at the moment, I will extend my gallery later with the 44 new pics, and also a refined Wasp MK 6 (now with ladders and better lighting).

The station's mass is 18.6 tons, 6k electric power, 12 gigantor XL solar panels, place for 4 kerbals ( internal and external each).

Score:

4 Kerbals -> +4

3 refuels -> -3

4 modules -> +4

Station mass -> 18

Stock -> +-0 (unless you dont want to count Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. Its the only of the many mods I have running that had an effect of the challenge)

-> in total: 23

and a lot more invaluable knowledge for me.

Here's a link to the (stock) SSTO Wasp Mk 7: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yjhyw18qkdi9try/Wasp%20Mk%207.craft if anyone wants to check it out.

[SirJoab]

Wow! the_bT, THAT is an epic crane system. Incredible. I can't wait to see that thing in action.

LordFjord: I can't wait to see the pictures! Once they're up I can put you on the leaderboard.

[Kasuha]

After some failed attempts I built something that is probably best described as flying crane. It takes off and lands vertically, lands on landing legs, and travels on land on wheels. It has also cabins for six Kerbal passengers. In images below it is sitting on launchpad and on the runway there is its first payload/maintenance set. Payload and its support are built to have exactly the right height for magnets to start acting and then relative small kick from engines docks the two things together. After docking the ship can refuel from the tank on the right. The thing on the left is counteweight to keep the payload balanced while engines lift it up (one "hose" from each side).

So far I have three modules in orbit, I hope I'll finish it and post the result tomorrow.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Kasuha

[Rakaydos]

I'm having a problem "landing" my skycrane without breaking one or both of the mating docking ports. I use mechjeb transltron to stabilize me while I line up the dock, but I cant slowly lower power to dock- turning off "maintain height" drops the throttle to zero instantly.

[LordFjord]

imgur works again!

I added the new pics to the album, here is the whole thing:

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edit:

@Kasuha: interesting lifter and reload concept I love those stock "fuel lines", great idea!

Edited February 24, 2014 by LordFjord

[Kasuha]

I originally planned three more launches, add two more orange tanks and some other module, perhaps antenna dishes but I don't have that much time to play during the week and probably wouldn't finish before weekend. And I think this is enough anyway.

All stock (+10), 8 launches (+8), 7 refuels (-7), 141.76 tons in orbit (+141), capacity for 70 Kerbals, inhabited by 40 (+40).

That should be 192 points.

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[LordFjord]

Very nice mission! Im surprised that your lifter could get that orange tank into orbit.

Got a few questions if you dont mind:

Those engine blocks consist of each 5 turbojets and 2 nukes, right?

How do you fly that thing into orbit? I have no experience with wingless jet-powered designs yet. More rocket-like ascent path or like a plane, trying to get as fast and as high as possible, then pull up and engage rocket engines.

I always struggled to use nukes for SSTOs that only have the orbit as target as they are heavy and barely had enough power to get me out of the atmosphere.

Rapiers or a mix of nukes/aerospikes was the way to go for me. Nukes mostly for the travel to mun or minmus, but not for orbit.

Anyway, cheers for pulling this off! Well done!

[Kasuha]

Yes, engine blocks are 5 turbojets, 15 intakes and one nuke each. Four turbojets would do the work too, I used five mostly for symmetry reasons.

The ascent looks like a standard rocket gravity turn initially but instead of circularizing at 70 km I am aiming for ~36 km orbit. At that altitude the ship can fly horizontally at full throttle and gain orbital speed, i.e. make another apoapsis at ~110 km on the other side of planet. Then I let it follow that orbit, decreasing the throttle from full at 36 km gradually to off at about 50 km. Then coast to the apoapsis, switch to nukes, pull periapsis out of the atmosphere and rendezvous with the station.

[SirJoab]

Very impressive Kasuha! This is definitely a whole new scale. I like how your SSTO is half rover. It looks like you could put a big fuel tank on it as a payload and take it to Duna, rove around a bit and come back! Very impressive lifting capability.

Here's your score:

+8 for 8 Modules

+141 for 141.74 Tons

-7 for 7 refuels

+40 for 40 Kerbals

+10 for all-Stock

+1 for style.

Total: 193 points.

You are now on the top of the leaderboard!

[Rune]

Ok, I must confess, I had a bit of an issue with the scoring on my previous run. See, I have nothing to object to Kasuha's win by landslide in points (he clearly proves how scoring is mostly a function of mass to orbit, and his SSTO is a wonderful beast), but the crew requirement has been applied to scores in a very irregular way. I got fewer points than I could have (the broadsword flies perfectly fine under computer control, so even without putting kerbals on the cargo I could have maxed out my capacity), but then other people without crew capabilities on their SSTO's got the full crew compliment points by putting their kerbals on the payloads.

Then again, saying that without saying anything else sounded a bit like crying like a little baby because someone had unseated me from my position. So I took care of that too by doing a brand new entry:

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107mT on orbit, 16 modules, 18 kerbals on board, assembled over 9 runs with KTS Endeavour, and the only crafts spawned in between were 8 Broadsword support crawlers. That should net me (107+16+18-8+10=143), just enough points to get me back to a firm second place for a while, and I can rest now with my case sufficiently argued IMHO than my previous run was placed on the leaderboard in the wrong place.

Oh, also note how I found a weird glitch with fuel lines and struts: after repeated dockings and undockings, they get shifted around, and while they function perfectly fine, their models seem to be horribly out of place in the end. I moved the lines a bit so the effect won't be so noticeable, but it's mostly and aesthetic issue.

Rune. Oh, and the Broadsword thread is about to be updated with how to go about doing this yourself, and the crawler file. Enjoy!

Edited March 3, 2014 by Rune

[SirJoab]

Rune, may I remind you that you were the first exception to the crew rule? I made one exception for you, I made one for each of them.

And you're on the scoreboard again! I must say, I'm very impressed with the performance of the Broadsword. 107 tons in 9 runs means that Broadsword can haul a payload of over 10 tons! From what I've seen, that's a lot for a spaceplane. I'm also giving you 1 style point for another clean operation, and another style point for doing the challenge a second time.

Your score is now:

+16 for 16 Modules

+107 for 107.00 Tons

-8 for 8 refuels

+18 for 18 Kerbals

+10 for all-Stock

+2 for style.

Total: 145 points.

Another beautiful job!

[Andrew Hansen]

According to the rules in the OP, this doesn't qualify (I used HyperEdit for refueling), but I landed in the vicinity of KSC each time... so it's up to you guys to decide if this counts or not.

I docked the upper stage to the lower stage, launched them to orbit, returned to KSC (where they were refueled), then launched them again (and recovered them of course). I was trying to copy the Falcon 9 rocket.

This video was actually created because Rakaydos posted it on my challenge submission thread. Thus, I didn't make it strictly for this challenge, but thought I'd share it anyway.

Edited March 12, 2014 by Andrew Hansen

[Rakaydos]

...because I couldnt figure out how to re-dock my own, payload carrying design, I challanged Andrew to do it for me.

Unfortunately, he doesnt leave anything in orbit, but the basic concept is comparable.

[SirJoab]

Very cool. I can't call it an entry, but this is the first two-stage completely reusable system I've seen here. Very impressive.

Edited March 12, 2014 by SirJoab
Edit: Well, not completely reusable since it was refueled via Hyperedit...

[Rakaydos]

Arg. My existing two stage cargo design ran afoul of my installing FAR for a different save. I'm having to go back to the drawing board.

[kola2DONO]

I tried this... and failed miserably.

My SSTO ran out of fuel at 75.000m and feel back to kerbin.

Jebediah did survive, however the payload did not :/

(I had to detach it so jebediah could survive)

The SSTO i used was a work in progress so it was not near done.

I'll be trying this mission again later.

[gchristopher]

Hi, I'm new to KSP, and thought I'd try a challenge. Boy, either this one is hard, or I suck, or both!

But I think I'm extremely close to a working system, so I thought I'd post progress.

I have a few additional personal requirements in addition to the challenge rules:

- It has to be fun, or I won't keep at it.

- A payload restriction under 20t isn't very fun; too limiting.

- After the first several times, maneuvers are boring. Try to use as much autopilot as possible.

- I tried to minimize internet research to avoid copying people. This is pretty much me experimenting.

So, here's what I came up with: launch a rocket that can just barely get the payload to 75x75 LKO, then deploy the payload with the rocket running on fumes. Then launch a space plane to rendezvous with the rocket and bring it back to KSC. The theory is that if the space plane burns about as much fuel as the dry weight of the rocket, then with careful center of gravity management, it'll weigh about the same on landing as when it took off and have similar flight characteristics.

Here's the fleet from the last test run:

"Up Chuck Mark XX" Medium Lift SSTO Rocket Jet: ~65.5t launch weight, ~25t dry weight, 20t design payload to 75x75 LKO, tested up to 22.5 tons.

"Unladen Swallow Mark XI" SSTO Space Plane retrieval vehicle: Also about 65t.

"Oops Sat 1" Orbital fuel depot. (I'll probably end up needing it.)

The last test had:

Successful:

- Launch and deployment of the payload to LKO

- Launch of the retrieval spaceplane

- Docking the spaceplane to the rocket. (2/3 clamps, which seems good enough)

- Reentry and adequate flight to the runway

Failure:

- Structural failure on the payload, which only has one landing gear. It flexed enough to clip the runway and got torn off the back of the plane.

- Then I over-braked in frustration and also crashed the plane. Not worried about that part.

Pictures:

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Anyway, I think it's very likely I can resolve the landing issue by adding another landing gear or two and some structural reinforcement to the rocket. (Argh, that weight comes directly out of payload capacity, though.)

If it works, it'll get 20 tons to orbit per refueling cycle without ever having a vehicle over 90 tons in flight at once. That should be cool.

Edited March 18, 2014 by gchristopher