Skyhook

[jpotter702]

Greetings fellow Kerbal enthusiasts!

I have a challenge for y'all!

Here are the parameters:

Two ships.

Ship A must be a plane of some sort which does NOT have the ability to achieve orbit. Must use air breathing engines.

Ship B is a standard, orbit capable craft with no constraints.

The challenge is in the maneuver. Fly ship A to is maximum altitude for it's air breathing engine. Aerobrake ship b, rendezvous with ship A and grab it somehow and bring it back into orbit with you. Construct some sort of SKYHOOK to grab Ship A while Ship B is on its aerobraking maneuver and bring both ships into orbit around Kerbin.

Ideas!

Purely structural type Skyhook: use some sort of strut and girder contraption as a physical hook and use your orbital momentum to get both ships into orbit.

Electromagnet Skyhook: Use KAS' electromagnet to grab the airplane and bring boths ships into orbit.

Other KAS parts

The AGU. Use the grappling arm to secure ship A.

An actual docking port. This would epic.

I'll award NO-Prizes for anyone who can successfully pull this maneuver off and provide evidence that the mission was accomplished. Extra NoPriziness for creativity.

Good Luck! I'm excited to see what people come up with

[Jovus]

This challenge is unfortunately impossible without modifying the maximum loading distance. Craft in atmosphere more than 2.5km from the one you control will cease to exist, and you can only control one craft at a time.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Welcome to the forums, and while a good and interesting challenge, a few tips for you;

1) you don't seem to have read http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/24898-Challenge-Submission-Guide

2) It is usual for a challenge host (I now refer to posters as hosts, as they have to put a lot of work in if their challnge becomes popular!) to post his own attempt to A) prove it's possible (it is in this instance, it's a popular type of challenge) and to set the bar to aim for...

3) more rules will be helpful, as you are new around here you may not have found out about the cheat menu yet, or how cheaty some mods can be, so it's a good idea to restrict use of either.

None of this meant in any offensive way whatsoever, I think with a bit of tweaking you'll have a cool challenge, it certainly sounds a bit different to ones we've had before

EDIT:

This challenge is unfortunately impossible without modifying the maximum loading distance. Craft in atmosphere more than 2.5km from the one you control will cease to exist, and you can only control one craft at a time.

Guess you've never had to do an emergency pod recovery from the edge of space on a distant planet like Laythe? I've seen evidence of plenty of spaceplanes that could get a nice high ap on airbreathers alone, the trick would be in timing it so you come close to an already orbiting ship that can dock/claw the airbreather and raise pe so they are then both orbiting...

Edited October 24, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e

[jpotter702]

Hint: you'll need to use the Burn Together mod.

[jpotter702]

Ill post my attempt at it.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Ill post my attempt at it.

Should clear up if it's possible or not... very possible with burn together, which I have heard of being used in other similar challenges...

(Oh, and there is an edit button to avoid double-posting )

[jpotter702]

To be honest I don't know. You are right I didn't the guide before posting the challenge. So I was more thinking of a cool think I'd like to see done that I'm not good enough to do on my own. And then see what really creative thjngs people come up with. So sorry if this is out of pocket.

[jpotter702]

Yeah it's not possible even with burn together. BT is more for having two or more crafts in a formation of sorts rather than two ships in completely different things. Please remove me post. Thank you !

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

I think it is still possible, but will take some extreme timing and good luck, as I said previously, I've seen people's solutions to not having quite enough dV to circularize round Laythe, and have used a waiting Tug ship to pull it the rest of the way...

No problem, you could leave this thread to dissappear into the forum history and mae a new challenge when you come up with one, or try again in future (you can either revive the thread yourself or mae anew one

(and the edit button is still there - you should use it to edit your lat post instead of posting in reply to yourself! )

[Wooks]

There's a mod that increases the maximum loading distance of a ship that could be useful (searching for it now), but I'm not sure if you can switch between vessels with an airbreathing engine running. Can you do it with that burn together mod? If so it should be added to the rules on the OP that is mandatory for challenge completion.

[DoomtrainInc]

Lazor mod allows you to change loading distance I believe.

[wasmic]

This challenge is unfortunately impossible without modifying the maximum loading distance. Craft in atmosphere more than 2.5km from the one you control will cease to exist, and you can only control one craft at a time.

This is only true below 23 kilometers. It's possible to build planes that can fly up to 50 kilometers or higher.

[Vigelius]

This is only true below 23 kilometers. It's possible to build planes that can fly up to 50 kilometers or higher.

True, but as soon as they pass out of the loading distance they lose aerodynamics and will fly like a rock, literally.

I refer anyone attempting this challenge to this thread from a while back. Aerial rendezvous is proven to be possible, provided you have insane skills beyond the likes of me!

[MarvinKitFox]

Your challenge:

Ship A must be a plane of some sort which does NOT have the ability to achieve orbit. Must use air breathing engines.

Check. 8 * turbojet, 100 units of fuel, no other propellant or engines

http://i.imgur.com/8Ve4ZDm.png

Ship B is a standard, orbit capable craft with no constraints.

Yep.

The challenge is in the maneuver. Fly ship A to is maximum altitude

Ok, my Whoosh MkIII is now on an 14 x 150km flightpath

http://i.imgur.com/RbiFyfO.png

Aerobrake ship b, not needed

rendezvous with ship A trivial, exacly like a normal stranded-kerbal-rescue, only I an limited to 9/10 of an orbit's time. about 18 minutes.

and grab it somehow and bring it back into orbit with you That's what the docking port is for. Adding 45m/s at apogee will give me orbit.

You might want to think about rephrasing your challenge.

No, this is not an entry.

Yes, i know those imgur links are links, not embedded images. didn't want to clutter up with a showy non-entry post.

P.s.

If you want to be uptight about the ship-must-be-in-atmo thing, that same basic design with a bit more fuel is quite good for a 65x69km atmospheric "non-orbit", that decays by less than 150m per cycle.

Edited November 2, 2014 by MarvinKitFox

[salkovic]

 

[James Kerman]

Welcome to the forum @salkovic.

This is a really old challenge so if you would like to reboot it you could start a new one. 

[salkovic]

10 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

Welcome to the forum @salkovic.

This is a really old challenge so if you would like to reboot it you could start a new one. 

hey James, I just saw that and I was like : it would be great to see in KSP!

[James Kerman]

8 minutes ago, salkovic said:

it would be great to see in KSP!

It is certainly a very difficult challenge (I'm not going to say impossible because some players have done things that were previously thought to be impossible) and anyone who did it would have instant thread of the month material right there. You are free to create a new challenge but please remember that the challenger must at least attempt to do it as well. Even failed attempts would be interesting to see.

[salkovic]

4 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

challenger must at least attempt to do it as well.

well, that would be problem I love KSP, but I am just watching others to play. I watch Scott Manley playing and some others, I really enjoy that, I am huge fan of KSP world but personally I don't play. So I guess I won't open challenge in order to respect local house rules

[Fraston]

Well, PRE (Physics Range Extender, required dependency for BDarmory for some reason) Is a key part if it needs to be similar in length. The kickback SRB’s (empty, of course) are sturdy, very long structural elements. This can save on part count, but even though KSP is 10-16 times smaller than the real world, a scale model for Kurzgesat’s idea would still be almost 100 km long! Unless you have the most supercomputer of a rig,  then loading the vessel would likely cause your computer to fly out a nearby window propelled solely by the speed of its fan belt.

But worry not! Because KAS could save this! AFAIK, the configs can be edited for the cables, so, (Kraken willing) it might be possible to chain kilometer-long cables together with a docking port/claw at the end to a large probe with a sizable array of solar power, reaction wheels and RCS... wait! The rotation! It has to be rotating through time warp and vessel switch... Persistent Rotati-

Nevermind, this is getting too silly with mods.
I’m sorry.

Edited November 19, 2019 by Fraston

[Lapis]

On 11/19/2019 at 9:18 AM, Fraston said:

Well, PRE (Physics Range Extender, required dependency for BDarmory for some reason)

I always thought that was for the missiles and other planes. For example if you want to have a battle where the two sides are far apart from each other

 

Anyways  welcome to the forums @salkovic!

Edited November 22, 2019 by lapis

[jimmymcgoochie]

I read this and immediately thought of Zero-X from Thunderbirds/Captain Scarlet, but that's pretty much the opposite of the challenge and would require a rendezvous between a spaceship and a plane (well, two planes if you're doing it properly) in atmosphere followed by landing the whole thing intact. If you ever watched the Zero-X film you'll know that idea didn't end too well...