We're a group of students who, inspired by KSP, undertook a huge design challenge!

[LoughboroughVIPER]

Hello everyone, thanks for taking the time to read this. We are a group of 14 students from Loughborough University, studying Aeronautical Engineering. As part of our final year, we were given a design project which required us to design a new, cost effective way to transport scientific cargo and astronauts to the Moon and back.

Our blog (http://ltvgrouplborouni.wordpress.com/) has lots of information and cool pictures of our solution to the design task.

Why are we here?

As part of this project, we've been tasked with spreading awareness of the sort of work we do on this type of degree and the skills it teaches. As playing KSP was a reason many of us chose this particular design challenge, we thought it would be great to make a KSP mission of our solution! You can download the mission here( http://www.sendspace.com/file/v5nnv1) (it comes in the form of a game save), it does require the B9 aerospace mod pack though, We have a blog which we've been keeping updated with our progress on the designs, as well as a twitter feed (@VIPER_LTV).

What was our design challenge?

We were given a project brief which tasked us with designing a low cost system to transport people and cargo to the Moon and back, to come into service 2035. In our scenario, there was already a small Moon base, which was able to turn water on the surface into fuel which we could use. We developed a two part solution. We proposed a spaceplane to take cargo from Earth to LEO, where it would rendezvous with a lunar transport vehicle (LTV). The LTV would only ever go between LEO and the surface of the Moon, where it would refuel at the Moon base.

What is the mission?

On the runway at the KSC is a spaceplane, codename Horizon, carrying vital supplies (in this case, fuel) for the moon in the cargo bay. At the same time, on the Moon, is our lunar transport vehicle, codename Envoy. It is your mission to safely pilot Horizon into orbit and orchestrate a safe rendezvous with Envoy. The cargo must be transferred over to Envoy, which needs to deliver it safely to the Moon base! The cargo module is fully pilotable with RCS thrusters, so Horizon and Envoy can be kept a safe distance apart during the orbital transfer.

What are we hoping to achieve?

We would really like to inspire the next generation of budding Rocket Scientists! We're hoping to give some ideas to anyone who enjoys playing KSP and would like to make it a career about what they need to look into. Also, anyone at school trying to decide what to do next, we hope to give some direction.

Thanks for looking!

We appreciate you taking the time to read this post, we'd be really happy if a few people would try the mission, read the blog or even follow us on Twitter! We're happy to answer as many questions as we can.

[Mipe]

Neat challenge. I take it the Horizon is a fully reusable spaceplane?

What parts are you going to use for this? Exclusively stock or will you be using specific mods? I'll wager the answer is a yes to the latter, seeing how you have a water-producing Moon base.

Also, what about a space station? It would make sense to include at least one in Earth orbit to provide storage and habitation. Neither vessels would have to wait for the other, plus the space station could solve a few safety concerns (in case one of vessels experiences technical issues, the passengers and crew could retreat to the station and wait there for rescue).

[tntristan12]

This sounds very interesting! I'd be glad to help out any way I can. In the mean time, if you're interested I wrote a short paper that looks into fuel transportation (I wrote it to help me optimize my Kethane transport system in the game), and derives some nifty equations for designing an Earth-to-Luna fuel cargo tanker. Link here!

[Horan]

Really nice project!!!

And in about 2 years I want to do a space and plane design study in the netherlands...