The Branson Challenge

[BrainiacBlue]

Own attempt coming soon. Unsuprisingly space exploration is difficult.

Most of us on the forums will probably know about Richard Branson and his desire to make a craft capable of taking people to space without the mind numbing price tag. People with far more knowledge of how space works than us have been trying to make a craft that does a number of things to achieve this, which will be our criteria for the challenge:

1. Two craft, a mothership which carries the spaceship

2. The mothership must carry the spaceship to some altitude (>25,000m) and drop it

3. The spaceship uses SOLID FUEL, so SRB powered spacecraft only here

4. The spaceship must get into space and then land at a runway, any runway will do

5. The mothership must be manned but does not have to land (because KSP reasons)

6. The spacecraft must have space for 12 passangers and have at least 1 pilot

7. No mods apart from KAC, FAR, and any non-part/aerodynamics/mechjeb mods

8. The mothership must be capable of a landing from >25,000m to show it can land

Required screenshots:

1.The craft (spacecraft attatched) in flight

2.The spacecraft being dropped (both mothership and spaceship in shot but detatched)

3.The spacecraft in space

4.The mothership, landed, with flight results

5.The spacecraft, landed, with flight results

If you do all that then you win the Branson Challenge!

If someone could create a fancy badge to put in signatures that would be great.

Two catagories of winner:

Stock winners - Kerbal Pilots

FAR winners - Galactic Kerbal Pilots

Any better names at all would be appreciated.

Edited November 16, 2014 by BrainiacBlue

[GoSlash27]

BrainiacBlue,

The problem I see with this challenge is the mothership will become debris in the atmosphere once you get far enough away from it and KSP will eliminate it.

Best,

-Slashy

[Jovus]

This challenge is easily salvageable by removing the mothership landing requirements. Considering it's just going to be a 'regular plane' we could assume pilots are capable of landing those.

Or, if you're looking for proof that it's aerodynamically handle-able without the attached spaceship, just have part of the challenge be taking the mothership up without it and landing again.

[BrainiacBlue]

The challenge has been modified, a landing of the mothership and spacecraft in the same mission is no longer required. However the mothership must be capable of landing without payload from >25,000m to show the craft would work if KSP let it.

Just from my attempts so far the difficulty is not the spacecraft, but the mothership being capable of getting it to 25,000m. The highest I have gotten before releasing the spacecraft is 12,000m. This may be because designs are taken from a working SSTO bolted beneath a modified Albertross stock aircraft. This challenge is tricky.

Edited November 16, 2014 by BrainiacBlue

[GoSlash27]

12 passengers is a lot, but I think do- able.

I'll tinker with it for a bit.

-Slashy

[GoSlash27]

I've got it sorted out.

The sub-orbital package gets to the right altitude under power and handles nicely during landing.

The mothership handles like crap, but well enough for the mission.

The trick from my end is to figure out where to set up the launch so both parts end up back at KSP and to document both parts of the flight.

*edit* Dammit! I'm not ready. I TLDR'd the rules and the mothership isn't manned. Looks like I've got a lot of rework in my future.

Best,

-Slashy

Edited November 17, 2014 by GoSlash27

[GoSlash27]

Actually... not that bad. Better to be lucky than good.

This is the mission as witnessed by the mothership:

http://s52.photobucket.com/user/GoSlash27/slideshow/KSP/Branson

I'll do the sub-orbital vehicle tomorrow.

Best,

-Slashy

[Fengist]

Ok, I've been thinking of doing this challenge ever since the 'accident' with Branson's craft. Even thought of making this challenge myself.

However, after doing this with liquid fuel I re-read the rules and had to scratch my head. Getting the orbital ship up there with solid fuel won't be a problem. But, getting into some sort of stable orbit AND then getting back DOWN with just SRB's is asking a bit much.

I'm pretty sure SpaceShipOne had a throttle even though it was using solid fuel.

[GoSlash27]

Fengist,

It really just requires that you get into space, which is easy enough. What I found to be the tricky part is finding a ballistic trajectory that drops the glider in range of KSC.

And yes, SS1 has a throttle. Solid fuel, but liquid O2.

Best,

-Slashy

[Fengist]

Wellll... I think I'll pass then Slashy. It took me 4 tries to hit the KSC runway even with LF and RCS engines. Having to go ballistic and then time that to land back at KSC... I don't have that kind of physics in me. BUT, I did make a mothership/spaceship combo that I could land in the same mission (quicksave before detachment then reload, land the other one.)

[Mesklin]

Here is my entry - simply vertical ascend/descent, but horizontal takeoff and landing. Both ships were saved in mission, no quick loads.

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[BrainiacBlue]

I am impressed by your entry, I almost gave up after the mothership kept snapping after I sent the spaceship on its way. I am now inclined to give it another go. More struts! All of the struts are needed!

[hoioh]

I actualy rebuilt white knight I before the 0.90.0 release, but used a lot of B9 parts and mechjeb, so not suitable for this challenge. I'll do it again stock after christmas.

Nice challenge!

Some inspiration for other builders perhaps White Knight by Burt Rutan the builder of some of the most fantastical aircraft ever to be flown.

[GeorgeG]

I'm working on this one.

The space plane works very well by itself. The Carrier plane has had…. "issues" with take-off.

Finally have it taking off well, and resolved some flight control problems of the carrier when climbing with the space plane. But have not quite gotten it all together yet for a flight that carries the space plane up and drops it reliably.

I should say I'm using pure jet power for the carrier plane, not rockets, so that is why it takes a long time to get to drop altitude.

The most frustrating part about this is not being able to do a quicksave in mid-flight. If the attempt fails, it's necessary to start the flight all over again on the runway. And the combined craft have a lot of parts, so there is lag, and warping does not work well. So….it's a lot of long boring boring climbs and then a VERY intense minute or so…. if it survives the first few seconds after the drop.

Hope to get a flight to work out well tonight. If soon enough I''ll post images tonight, otherwise Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, here is a real tease.

- GeorgeG

[hoioh]

Nice, I got the opposite problem, the spaceplane is hard to control on the way back but the carrier flies easily even without it's load. Here's some progress including the landing of the carrier.

I've severely clipped the rocket into the spaceship using the new tools available in 0.90.0 hope you don't mind, it makes it look a lot better at the same time. (I just realized I'm doing it with 18 Kerbals (including 2 pilots for the space ship)

Here's a progress report:

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[GeorgeG]

This challenge rule:

"7. No mods apart from KAC, FAR, and any non-part/aerodynamics/mechjeb mods"

It is not clear to me whether Mechjeb is OK or not, since it does seem to clearly allow KAC, and FAR, then gets murky in the rest of the sentence.

If Mechjeb is not allowed for active flight control, what about using it for information?

UPDATE - I finally succeeded. Did it without use of Mechjeb. Will post a write-up and pics later tonight (Monday)

- GeorgeG

Edited December 29, 2014 by GeorgeG

[hoioh]

I managed to land it! woo! The big one is absolutely no problem to fly with or without the spaceship so I didn't change anything about it since my last fail post, I just altered my flight plan to allow for a point of return close to the KSP. First I flew it all the way over to the ocean on the other side (heading 270) and then turned it around to fly back and drop the spacesip over the high mountains before the KSP. Then tweaking my point of re-entry and flight height by trusting against the direction until it's in the right place and then keeping it there while rising to almost 200Km. After that it only took 5 or 6 attempts to properly land it. And only then I found out I needed to change my landing gear when I change the wing positions...........epic fail.......... So I had to do it all over again and here it is:

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PS. I expect my previous landing of the mothership to be sufficient to show it's flyable and landable from above 25K. I can even present the craft file for you to experience how easily she flies by yourself (don't warp her though! Disintegration hazard!).

(Oh and brainiac, I had the snapping problem too, moar struts! Is definitely the answer to you problems. MOAR (stategically placed) STRUTS!

[GeorgeG]

Action Space Enterprises presents the ULTIMATE ROCKET RIDE INTO SPACE! Our Space Shuttle will get you on your way!

Why fly into space inside of a capsule or small cabin? Peering out of little portholes that might as well be little TV screens?

When you can enjoy the ROCKET RIDE AND VIEW OF A LIFETIME (however long (or short) that may be).

We proudly present our Phoenix Space Flight System. The carrier plane takes off from a runway, like a big cargo plane, and flies well above 25 km before YOUR ULTIMATE ROCKET RIDE begins!

The Flight of the Phoenix Space Plane will shoot up into space HIGHER than some spacecraft ever go in orbit. And hey, orbit is over-rated anyway.

You can almost feel the wind in your hair as you fly..... and certainly would if you were not wearing a REAL SPACESUIT. You will have the ultimate view of flying into space, and re-entry, from the comfort of your seat, flying on the OUTSIDE of our Phoenix space plane (just like those aliens in that funny science fiction movie "Flight of the Phoenix", but they didn't have seats or spacesuits)

The Phoenix Space Plane is unique! No mass is wasted with "frills" like cockpits and cabins that would destroy the view and reduce the thrill of rocketing into space like you will on the Phoenix. And nobody else in the suborbital space ride business offers the option of doing a REAL spacewalk! The unique "K" wing design, scaled up from one of Dorfmann Kerman's model rocket plane designs, helps to provide additonal wing lift and roll stability to help make the extremely difficult and dangero.... uh, "simple" landing back on the runway even easier.

Let's follow a typical passenger flight.... well, typical successful passenger flight.

You and 11 other perfecly sane, not crazy at all, passengers will get onboard of our SPACE SHUTTLE!. Which will drive you more than an entire kilometer to the waiting Phoenix Space Plane and its carrier plane.

You each climb aboard, get strapped into your seat, and wait for takeoff.

You've never experienced an airplane takeoff like this, and this is NOTHING compared to what happens later.

With the jet engines nearing flameout, the engines are shut down first. Shortly after, 27.5 km up, the Phoenix Space Plane is released and small separation rockets push it away.

Then the pilot ignites the big solid engine and there is no going back, that baby can't be shut down, you are on the THE MOST EXCITING RIDE OF WHATEVER IS LEFT OF YOUR LIFE!

If the pilot does not screw it up, most of the boost will be vertical, so it can fall back down as close as possible to the Space Center, ideally a bit past one of the ends of the runway.

By eyeball and reviewing the a helmet visor-projected computer plot of the ballistic flight path, the pilot steers the ship in the desired directions and fires several of the small rockets in pairs to adjust the ballistic path to come closer to the Space Center.

This flight coasted to nearly 95 km up, then began falling down. The passengers had a great view of the planet and out into space. Sometimes a passenger does a "spacewalk", unbuckling from their seat and using their backpack for a few minutes. However only those who have undergone and passed extensive EVA suit training are allowed to do that.... as well as paying a "Leaving your seat" fee (Passengers who do not pay the fee in advance and try to spacewalk for free will find their seatbelts will not re-buckle, which will be a major problem during re-entry!).

The space ship really starts to begin to feel the effects of the atmosphere around 32 km up. The ship begins to nose down from the rapidly thickening air, and re-entry heating from about 22 km thru 12 km.

It gets pretty HOT, but don't worry, those suits are WELL TESTED. We might have had to go though a number of flights using other suits (grumble...stupid rubberized cotton suits...) before we found some that let the wearers survive re-entry. But hey, we've got that all solved NOW..

The pilot begins the pull-up, as the ship falls thru thicker air that can provide enough lift to the wings to transition into a glide.

The pilot got it into the ballpark with the earlier sepratron burns, now on the "downwind leg" before turning to the crosswind leg, then the final approach.

The pilot brings the Phoenix Space Plane in for a landing.

The Shuttle Bus comes in to pick up the passengers after they de-board.

Official Flight stats, flew nearly 95 KM up.

A few minutes later, the carrier plane comes in to land.

The carrier plane stopped next to the SpacePlane and Shuttle bus.

Flight data from the carrier plane. it coasted up above 40 km.

The employees celebrated another SAFE flight, so they still are still alive...., uh so they still have jobs to return to next week!

-----------------------

OK, switching from fictional Action Space Enterprises to me, GeorgeG. I tackled this from building a capable space plane first, then built the kind of carrier plane needed to lift it that high.

I was VERY tempted to just build a crazy-overpowere carrier "plane", that would use at least some rocket power, that would be pointing sharply upwards at a high speed when releasing the space plane. So, the space plane could be a lot smaller. Those were two loopholes in the rules, not requiring the carrier plane to be purely jet powered, no rockets, and taking off horizontally. And not requiring either a horizontal "drop", or only a shallow climb when the carrier plane drops the space plane.

I could have used a smaller SRB for the space plane. But once I saw how well the big SRB flew.... I had to use it. Even though that meant the carrier plane would have to be pretty big.

Actually I ended up needing to change the big SRB to one with a lot less power, more on that later.

The carrier plane a PITA. A number of control issues. And structural issues too, before it was finally stiff enough to be able to fly without "dancing". The original plane's fuselage was based on girder trusses.

Boy was that a mistake. I changed to 1.25 meter 800 liter tanks (empty) for most of the fuselage, which were a lot better but still needed to add some struts to brace the tailboom from swaying side to side (part of the take-off problems).

The wing design evolved. Originally it had less span. Then it grew, and grew. And went from 4 jets to 6. It was a bear to get to successfully take off, and handled slightly better than a garbage scow. However, it flies better now, and is not hard to land. I also learned to use "tweakable" options on the control surfaces to disable unwanted functions such as yaw response on the wings when I only wanted roll (aileron) response. The plane started handling a lot better after that. Of course if the wings had been straight (flat), there would not have been any yaw interaction. But I liked the look of it, with the dihedral. Although I am not so sure that KSP aerodynamics recognizes the dihedral for roll stability.

The Space Plane handling and glide are very nice. It can get at least as slow as 23 m/s before stalling, so that helps to stretch out the glide path if the pull-up was not really close to the Space Center.

But after I finally got the carrier plane worked out, and could fly to above 25 km to do a horizontal drop, the velocity at that height was 500-600 m/s. When the ship was dropped, it did not want to pitch up much. I tried tricks like a pair of separatrons in the nose and tail thrusting in opposite directions to force a pitch-up, which helped but not enough. It took so long to pitch up, that by the time it could finally get vertical, it had tremendous horizontal velocity and was almost impossible to try to get thrust the other way to fall back in range of KSC.

So, I gave up on horizontal drops. The carrier plane went thru more changes, reduced the span back ot an earlier version, added more jet engines, so that after a horizontal takeoff it could climb vertically and release the space plan vertically. Though there were also more tweaks needed to be able to fly vertically under thrust, originally the thrust wanted to pitch it nose-down when it was pointed vertically and got to thinner air Finally got that worked out. And after working out some more bugs..... finally got a great launch. Well, being separated vertically, coasting up already, the SRB power took it crazy high. Over 2000 kilometers! The space plane's projected landing spot was about 1/3 around the planet, taking about 90 minutes of duration to fall back. So, the SRB Space Plane was overkill. But I liked the design a lot. So I replaced the big long SRB (KD25K) with the original RT-10 solid fuel booster in KSP, and added two long 800 liter rocket fuel tanks to it to match the length of the big SRB (the tanks were tweaked to be empty, no fuel, no oxidizer, the Space Plane using only solids for thrust). That version therefore only flew for 94.5 km, plenty high above the atmosphere but not as high as I was hoping for. Below is a pic showing both, the final version on the left, and the original with the big KD25K SRB on the right.

Given the carrier plane is now perfected, I could make up a totally different space plane that could fly higher. But from the start I wanted to do a space plane that was "outside of the box", with the passengers riding on the outside. Still, it could be made smaller and carry 12+1 on the outside anyway. Also from the start I figured out the usefulness of having pairs of separatrons to nudge the ballistic path (in map view) to bring it closer to where the runway should be due to rotation of the planet.

Oh, the "K" wing flies nicely. I wanted to give the plane more wing area without giving it more span, and something unique looking. In my main hobby of Model Rocketry, I came up with a rocket boosted glider with a "K" type wing (and tail) in 1975. It was even a kit briefly by an old obscure model rocket company. It's not aerodynamically efficient in the real world, no biplane is, and the "K" wing is even worse for a biplane, but in KSP it seems OK.

http://plans.rocketshoppe.com/pubs/ASC/1976/ASC_1976_catalog.pdf

- GeorgeG

Edited December 30, 2014 by GeorgeG

[hoioh]

Nice story George, but could you put it in spoiler tags please? you're making the page hard to load and excessively long at the same time. just type

and the same, with a / before the word spoiler and without the title, in front and behind every image in your post. it will make it a lot more readable like this:

Or go to imgur.com and use the [imgur] tags with the number of your album.

[GeorgeG]

Made another Space Plane, and modified the carrier plane a bit.

This one, not as totally outside of the box as the "K" wing with everyone riding the outside. This one is an "X" Wing (no, not THAT kind), that "opens the box".

It uses a short cargo bay to hold 12 seats. With the Mk2 cockpit, it carried 14 Kerbals.

Group photo of all the passengers, including the 13th who flew in the co-pilot seat (they do not call him the 13th passenger, he is an honorary co-pilot). The 14th person, standing on top of the cockpit, is Jeb of course

Everyone, and all craft, back safe.

Some earlier attempts had… issues.

I finally solved it by using Hyperedit to gently "land" the vehicle back onto the runway from 20 feet up (this was the only use of Hyperedit, to "rescue the save" before beginning takeoff). It slowly settled down, wheels on top of the runway surface. It was very important to be able to use that save, rather than start over, because the save had the 12 passengers in the cargo bay for an official attempt. It would have been a PITA to load each one of them all over again (I had to do that three times with my earlier "K" wing, as I found fatal flaws requiring a trip back to the SPH to fix a problem).

- GeorgeG

Edited January 2, 2015 by GeorgeG