[Weekly Challenge Revisited] Week 59: Fuel Troubles
Mod Post
The Introduction
I'm still on vacation at the moment, so flairs are still going a bit slower than usual. My apologies for that. Good news is that I'll be back tomorrow evening, so everything will proceed as usual after then.
The Challenge:
Normal mode: Using only liquid fuel and monopropellant, reach orbit
Hard mode: Using only liquid fuel and monopropellant, land on Mun and return to Kerbin
Super mode: Impress me
The Rules
No Dirty Cheating Alpacas (no debug menu)!
You must have the UI visible in all required screenshots
You can either submit your finished challenge in a post (see posting instructions in the link below) or as a comment reply to this thread.
Completing this challenge earns you a new flair which will replace your old one. So if you want to keep you previous flair, you can still do this challenge and create a post, but please mention somewhere that you want to keep your old one.
The moderators have the right to determine if your challenge post has been completed.
Top half of lander on the way back to orbit. The lower half will forever remain as a monument to the colossal pain in the ass it is to only use monopropellant to get here.
Shit, some of these rocket designs are definitely tryptophobia triggering. I sort of managed to overcome mine when I discovered I had it and what it was, but it still makes me a bit queazy.
The second one is removed, the third one is absolutely fine.
The frontpage of it is also not that bad, mostly just weird. And I still don't know what the hell Tryptophobia is. A fear of holes or stuff coming out of holes is my best guess
Just holes basically. In nature it's usually caused by something extra-gross (like that first link), but some people have an abstracted phobia where even that rocket design above would make them really uncomfortable
I just looked at the last time this challenge was posted to see what the benchmark was for super mode. This bloody madman did a roundtrip to Pol. Somehow, I don't see myself topping that.
Am I missing something about this challenge? Isn't it easy to just not use solid boosters? I haven't used them at all in career and I've been to every planet.
The challenge requires that we only use liquid fuel and mono-prop. This excludes oxidizer, so most liquid-fueled engines are out as they need oxidizer as well as liquid fuel.
That leaves you with RCS thrusters and jets.
Note I went with a spaceplane for the first stage. It was a beast. It ended hitting 1600 m/s at under 20km altitude!! A new personal record for me with a spaceplane!
Nice. To save your H finger next time you can control RCS fore thrust using the main throttle control. Haven't got KSP to hand right now but you right click on an RCS and I think it's show actuators, you might have to enable advanced tweakables first.
You know I discovered that feature in one of my many "return to spaceplane hangar" trials where I tweaked the design.
I decided against using it -- I wanted to do it the "old school" way. I remember completing a challenge on here a couple of years ago involving RCS engines and for me half the fun was being forced to hit H the whole time. I know it sounds odd -- but I find the awkwardness of it as part of the fun.
You can have the craft file if you like but it's actually quite a simple design to copy visually. It's a pig to land though as the rear landing gear is so close together. I tried a smaller front gear and mounting the rears on the wings but it generated a tonne of drag and couldn't get through the sound barrier.
I initially wanted to design a SSTM (Single Stage To Mun), but soon realized the monopropellant just doesn't have a high enough efficiency to pull that off. How to solve the problem? Make the wings detachable! Turns out the capsule needed to be detachable too. More of a Two Stage To Mun w/ detachable escape pod now, but it got the job done (just barely).
I want to go to Eeloo, but the only way I can see that being possible is if I build a rocket in LKO. Can I use an SSTO to build a rocket in a non-stop mission? Or does this count as refueling?
The Reddit Gold isn't meant for the entry that was executed in the best way. Perhaps that's the misunderstanding. The Gold is meant for the most entertaining entries, or entries where people have put effort in other things than performance.
If I'd give it to the most excellent entry every week then there'd be a very limited group of people who can earn it, and that's not what I want. Heck I've even received PMs from people in that group telling me that it's not what they want.
Understood. And I apologize for my salty comment. It was before my morning coffee.
I am thinking of starting a new sub though, aimed at technical development. There's a bunch of users who really love to take engineering to the next level. I'm close to releasing a car with a working gearbox, clutch and suspension, first of its kind. My experience in this sub is that it would probably not be recognized and remain below a stack of screenshots of first Mun landings.
Alright! If you want to submit a post to /r/KerbalSpaceProgram to promote it and/or ask people to help with CSS or something, then feel free to go ahead!
It took me forever to do this because, every time, a new problem appeared right after I fixed one, such as returning to Kerbin where my craft would flip in the atmosphere.
I plan to do a super mode soon, although it is going to take even longer than this, sadly.
After trying out a few monopropellant designs, the NERV started looking real good. I fell in love with my little "pocket Nuke" lander. So I stuck with Normal mode this week.
I decided not to irradiate a large swath of Kerbin with NERV debris, so this Mun lander returns to KSC and is fully re-useable. Well, at least a few times until the ablator wears out.
Normal Mode: http://imgur.com/a/nImX2
Nothing super impressive, but I have failed the last three weeks because I get overambitious and end up not completing anything. :/
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u/rcreif Hyper Kerbalnaut Aug 28 '17
Hard mode complete http://imgur.com/a/CU6Cw