SSTO from runway: no wings, horizontal thrusters only

[Garn]

hi there, I've been playing this game very sparsely since before this game costed money; I'm still bad at it and this is my first time at these forums

the important part is I didn't bother to lurk past the first three pages before posting

this will be the last time I change the rules unless explicitly asked to, I'll just take whatever other ways there are to cheap out the challenge and use a calculator when asked to do pencil+paper division to be a course in legal studies, and the title edit was just rewording it

anyway

this challenge challenges you to do the following:

in 0.24.x, make a manned ship in the spaceplane hangar, sandbox mode allowed, all propulsive mechanisms must be parallel or almost parallel to the runway in the ship's resting state on the runway(pre-stage 1); also, the only parts in the entire aerodynamics category that are allowed are nose cones, Engine Nacelle, Radial Engine Body, XM-G50 Radial Air Intake, Circular Intake and Ram Air Intake, and you can't use any RCS stuff either

yes, this does mean that you can't put a whole bunch of I-beams or whatever stacked up on top of eachother in the front of the ship to make the ship point diagonally in its "resting state" on the runway; I consider that to be cheaping it out and defeating the point of this whole challenge

EDIT: I also consider what MarvinKitFox did to be cheaping the challenge out as well, its like using a calculator when a teacher in second grade asks you to do manual division with pencil and paper to solve a somewhat lengthy division problem; I appreciate your creativity though, but I was asking for different creativity; it just really makes it too easy if you can safely and reliably be able to point your ship towards the sky before hitting the ignition button, unless its tiny enough to do it by just pitching rolling and adjusting the yaw

EDIT EDIT: actually, I'll take what MarvinKitFox did and allow it as long as its a condition for a different victory for what might as well be a different (sub?)-challenge; if someone wins by doing that then someone else can still win the (main?) challenge by doing something not involving gyros or making a ship that can have its propulsion systems be otherwise pointed upwards on the runway before launching, jeez this is a mess, but I view the rulechanging I did as a condensation and clarification of the rules that were already present

additionally, the following things are not allowed:

TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancer

a ship that blows up or is otherwise unusable if you don't begin the first stage in the first 20 ingame seconds after the crew becomes visible in the bottom-right corner

me, I disallow myself from winning the challenge with a qualified ship that fulfills either of the winning criteria

making the ship point upwards before stage 1(condition 1 only)

starting with the liquid fuel boosters at an extremely low% of maximum thrust then pointing the ship upwards then making the thrust strong enough to lift and/or significantly move the ship

and all mods that add and/or change parts or physics or allow part rotation during ship creation where its otherwise disallowed

previously I had disallowed some other parts in the structural category in order to try to prevent the abuse of them to make the ship point upwards on the runway after some minor adjustments before the first stage; it had also forced people to be more creative with EAS-4 Strut Connectors

again, the entire ship must be parallel or close to parallel to the runway in its resting state, or at least ~99% of it should be; you are allowed to be ~10 degrees away from being parallel to the runway in its resting state; and ships that point mostly upwards(and not horizontally) before stage 1 are not allowed

starts: now

ends: when someone wins

victory condition one: when someone posts one that get into orbit, or onto some other celestial body or its orbit; the crew does not have to survive

winner:MarvinKitFox

victory condition two(this is considered a different challenge): for a different victory condition which doesn't prevent someone else from winning by filling the other victory condition, you can ignore the no gyros rule and, if possible, find a way to adjust the pitch, yaw, or roll of the ship before launching off so that your propulsion points(at least mostly) upwards, or whatever else would make your ship point up before hitting the ignition button... of course you then still have to get into orbit or some other celestial body or its orbit, even if the crew doesn't survive

winner:MarvinKitFox

you cannot fulfill both victory conditions at the same time

I took on condition 1 myself, just to show that liftoff with no wings and only ~horizontal thrusters without the other stuff I disallowed is possible

and yes I ultimately failed but if I had more fuel I might've made it to somewhere

tragically, after filming that my computer got really (%!^ing slow and I lost the savefile for the ship somehow, don't ask

EDIT: I later made a "spaceplane" that didn't do crazy stunts and was able to get into orbital height with a single stage and get a bit past it too, with a few more rockets and some well-timed thrusts and pitches I might've been able to get into orbit, but I'm too noob to figure out how to do that

Edited July 28, 2014 by Garn

[MarvinKitFox]

"The Not-Rockomax Micronode

Rockomax Hubmax Multi-Point Connector

Octagonal Strut

Cubic Octagonal Strut

Modular Girder Adapter

Modular Girder Segment

Modular Girder Segment XL

BZ-52 Radial Attachment Point

TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancer"

So... you may not use any structural member, other than the i-beam that you yourself used.

Translation...

"I was stuffing around on ksp, and i managed something weird! Lets make a challenge to the community to duplicate this weirdness. Now, what can we make the rules that will allow my ship, and nothing else?"

Sorry, but this does not a Challenge make.

Still, the challenge has been laid, here is my best attempt to violate fulfill it within your rules:

1*aerospike.

2* big, 2* small fuel tank

1* small capsule

2* large gyro

1*octo.

some batteries.

some fuel lines

a boatload of attitude.

Take your two big tanks.

Add mickey mouse ears(small tanks)

festoon with batteries.

put capsule on tank, then rotate 180 so it stick out the other side, to make a nice mickey mouse nose.

Attach the aerospike to the nose.

attach the octo to the left ear, so it can pilot. (mickey cannot pilot worth a dang)

drape liberally with fuellines, just to be silly.

Launch.

use gyros to slightly optimise launch angle.

Throttle to 100%, follow sensible trajectory to orbit.

snicker at OP.

Note: this abomination was made using stock .24, in the SPH, with generous use of natural clipping. no debug menu. MJ briefly attached to verify delta-v, then removed.

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note that I don't bother going anywhere further with this, it's just to be silly.

Edited July 26, 2014 by MarvinKitFox

[Garn]

http://imgur.com/a/Lg4Ur

okay so apparently the language I used wasn't...legalese enough, and I also hadn't been able to find all the options for making a ship point in a different direction during stage 0, so I edited the OP

also theres plenty of ways to get up to orbital height if you take off horizontally

for example you can have a ship with a bunch of lined up thrusters with wheels on all sides of it and you can use the wheels to "bounce" off of the runway to get a boost upwards and go from there

you could use the small height depression just after the runway to pitch the ship so the boosters point towards the ground, before hitting the ground/water; I've done this before and the youtube was one of the times I messed up so badly that it would've been good if I could've steered right, and no, you don't have to duplicate what I made

if physics works in such a way that enables this...you could have liquid fuel on one side of the rocket and solid boosters on the other side and go at a high velocity off of the runway and abuse the liquid thrusters to get an upward lift

like you could have a ship shaped like this textual character "]" with solid rocket booster(s) on top and a very relatively powerful liquid fuel booster on the bottom; I'm guessing with the liquid thrust setting at 0% the ship would turn towards the ground and with it at 100% it would point up, but I'd imagine the difference between the max power of the liquid fuel boosters at the bottom and the SRBs at the top would need to be a pretty big difference, and it would need to be a pretty tall and horizontally short bracket; this of course is now only allowed since I removed the structural category restrictions

and now that I know how to clarify how I only want ships taking off horizontally, I can take off the structural category restrictions; just don't make the ship point up between when you push the launch button and when you hit the ignition with the thrusters actually activated; if you put the thrusters really low on purpose so you can move the ship around with gyros or whatever else is available to make it point up at an almost resting state it'll be disqualified

[Red Iron Crown]

You can fix the title yourself by editing the OP, then clicking "Go Advanced".

I'm not really clear what was wrong with MarvinKitFox's entry. If he put wheels on it and lit the engine before pivoting vertical would it be ok?

[MarvinKitFox]

And, here is the expected changing-of-the-rules-to-disqualify-the-entrant.

tsk, tsk, tsk!

[Damaske]

I was going to try this, made a craft, then spotted the "AND ALL MODS" then went to post this.

Sorry I am NOT going to spend days trying to put my modded files back in order. Nor do I have the space to make another install just for a single challenge.

Also I wish to note the mods I use are simple mods that improve how I play KSP, NOT how my craft fly with the exceptions of certain part mods witch I understand can be ruled out of a challenge as with physic mods like FAR and NEAR for example.

Nice challange but its just not for me.

[Garn]

thanks Red Iron Crown

I think I've figured out a way to only allow mods that don't change construction/physics or add parts, but I wouldn't be surprised if that can easily take away from the challenge

I also changed the rules(again) because I felt bad for MarvinKitFox's creativity going to waste even though it wrecks the whole challenge for everyone else going for the victory condition i intended, not because he thought of it (first?), but because I really wanted the thrusters to move at a potentially ship-destroying velocity while the ship was facing horizontally in the first ingame quarter-second after the ship was launched, so I made a second victory condition that'll probably get fulfilled sooner

its kinda like theres 2 different challenges now, and I hope someone has fun trying to win

this is the last time I'll change the rules

[cyberklad]

Garn please read the challenge subition guidelines.

If you are not allowed wings or controll surfaces it's not a plane. Then it's just a SSTO. And it makes no sence what so ever for a SSTO rocket to start vertically. It's inefficient in every way possible.

Unless you launch it with a launch system that is not part of the rocket and has a ramp at the end to convert a lot of the forward motion into upwards motion.

And since lifting bodies doesn't work in stock KSP and We are not allwed to use torque wheels to change it's altitude either there is no way left to get the thing to point upwards except to manually do some throttle balancing with tweakables.

The challenge is allso written in such a messy way, witch makes it very hard to understand what you are asking for.

All of this combined pretty much makes this challenge just horribly bad.

Edited July 28, 2014 by cyberklad

[MarvinKitFox]

Well, lets see if we can please the challenge in a ...... different way.

Meet the Good Grief mk. IV.

A Gravity-powered, structural-member-elasticity-using flexional launch apparatus, launching a rather conventional ssto rocket.

Basically, Billy here exits the hitchhiker capsule, spider-walks across tot he command chair, and straps in.

Then releases the tower holding his side of the see-saw.

The heavy fuel tank bends it down, and the fuel tank (but nothing else) splatters on the ground.

The now much lighter arm of the see-saw jolts up with considerable enthusiasm.

Just before it reached its apex, the radial clamp is disconnected, setting the bird free on a 235-m high arc.

It throttles up, and uses engine gymbal to orient for a normal rocket ascent.

Sorry no picture during latter part of launch, but I'm a teensy bit occupied by the launch assembly undergoing RUD while my rocket cartwheels off to who-knows-where.

This design puts me in orbit, with 101m/s to spare.

But that is boring. How about a true wingless plane.

At first I thought of using a RAMP to launch it skyward, but that is not Kerbal enough.

So i took some turbojets, for efficient air travel.

Added a nuke for efficient vacuum travel.

Put the wheels ***at*** the Centre of mass, so that it would naturally tip back as the jets burn fuel on the runway.

Put some training wheels at the rear, to avoid the nuke needing a nosejob.

and Voila.

Meet the AndHowAboutThis, Mk II

This puts me in orbit with 1233m/s to spare.

((disclaimer. Not all pictures are in sequence, of the same launch or even allways of the same design. I note I mixed up runway image of a Mk I with a takeoff image of a Mk II. ))

Edited July 28, 2014 by MarvinKitFox

[Garn]

now THATS the type of creativity I wanted to see MarvinKitFox!

I'm gonna have to give you condition 1 and 2 wins because you made two different contraptions

I'd really like to see how else people can make the ship go up after starting out horizontally... without using a really really safe and reliable means to do it such as the first thing you posted

if I do make a new challenge next time, I'll be sure to make it alot harder than this and to look into the game mechanics(past 0.13.x which I'm more fluent in) to prevent particular means of victory

I've learned alot from this thread; and this was a great learning experience, I relearned how to word stuff better and I didn't even know you could make a ramp on the launchpad and fly it over the the runway, abandon the flight, then start another flight on the runway that uses the ramp to take off... unless of course you did something completely different to make that ramp

oh man I've gotta try that now just so I can kill 6 crew members at once... then revert the flight

I'll also reword the title thanks for the clarification cyberklad

[impyre]

Well, I'm using NEAR aerodynamics. I wasn't sure if that would disqualify me or not... and since the contest already had a winner I won't bother with the stats screen and runway shots, etc. I just thought this might be more challenging with aerodynamics installed, and i think i was right. In any case, I managed to (very carefully) get this beast into 120km circular orbit with a few hundred dV remaining. Completely horizontal rolling takeoff, no seesaw gimmicks, just through manipulation of center of thrust. I tied the bottom row of thrusters and top row of thrusters to action group toggles. Once I got apoapsis more than 1 minute or so away, I pumped all remaining fuel into the central tank to balance it out and then established orbit.

[Red Iron Crown]

I know others have completed this, but I had a go, too. The only tricky part is getting off the runway, once airborne it's just a regular SSTO. I went the jet/rocket hybrid route, ran off the end of the runway and pitched up and all was good. Got to orbit easily, enough fuel left for a Mun flyby if desired (not quite enough for a landing, maybe I'll add some fuel and try again).

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Edit: Imgur albums don't work in spoilers anymore?

Edited July 29, 2014 by Red Iron Crown
Fixed album embedding.

[MarvinKitFox]

I didn't even know you could make a ramp on the launchpad and fly it over the the runway, abandon the flight, then start another flight on the runway that uses the ramp to take off... unless of course you did something completely different to make that ramp

That ramp is a very self-mobile thing.

Cannot leave it *on* the runway, but I drive it just off, then park it and go back to the hangar.

Launch my to-be-ramped plane, but engines off & parked.

Switch back to ramp, drive to correct position on runway.

Switch back to plane, and GO!

The tricky part is having a strong enough plane to handle hitting that slop at 100+ m/s, and not fall apart/break the nosegear off.

It can be done, but is ugly.