Race to 10km and back!

[Event_Horizon5]

Hello fellow rocketry enthusiasts! I\'ve got a challenge for you that I didn\'t see anybody post yet with these same rules. It\'s an altitude race, but with a twist: You also need to get back down, safely!

The goal is to get to an altitude of at least 10km, turn around, and get your kerbonauts safely on the ground as fast as you possibly can.

- Stock parts and configs only!

- Reach at least 10,000m

- Splash or touchdown anywhere

- All Kerbonauts must survive!

Here is my humble attempt, with a final time of 1:30.

My ship design is pretty basic and I could have probably performed better, so I want to see you guys do better! No excuses!

[jebbe]

1:14

My impression is that turning at high velocities is quite difficult, so it seems that a lot of RCS is key:

First stage gets me to 10km quickly:

Racing back down

and splashdown:

[Huojin]

First attempt 2:58. Needed more boosters. I also went a little too high.

Second attempt 2:32, but exploded on landing for no apparent reason >_>

Clearly I need to work on this...

[jebbe]

but exploded on landing for no apparent reason >_>

I had a lot of those, too. Eventually I figured that it was the expended stage hitting me from above. Got it solved by going down at a little angle, so the old stage would miss the ship.

[Iapedus]

Just tried this out with a couple of different rockets, having difficulty getting below about 1:20, good challenge!

[StelarCF]

I\'m measuring up to full parachute deployment because otherwise there\'d be just 30 seconds extra just because of slowly going down through the last 300m

Up until now my best is: 1:40

[Event_Horizon5]

I\'m measuring up to full parachute deployment because otherwise there\'d be just 30 seconds extra just because of slowly going down through the last 300m

Up until now my best is: 1:40

You\'re supposed to measure all the way to touchdown/splashdown. Part of the challenge is opening the parachute at the very last possible moment.

[StelarCF]

You\'re supposed to measure all the way to touchdown/splashdown. Part of the challenge is opening the parachute at the very last possible moment.

oh... well I kind of leave this challenge because it\'s HARD to get over other\'s results.

In the meantime I\'ve experimented with canards from the C7 Exp. Pack. Managed to get like 1km/s using JUST canards. Amazing right?

[chaz]

1:20 exactly