EvermoreAlpaca

While one must always be careful in labeling things impossible, I can say with certainty that I do not see how this is possible. The TWR just isn't there.

Back in December I got to 1080 m/s at 5000 km altitude. I didn't get around to trying as many configurations as I would like. I suspect that increasing wing area slightly and trying a higher altitude would improve speed.

Has this design incorporated the 3-axis trick?

Let me start off by disqualifying myself from the official record. This plane doesn't have landing gear for one, but that isn't the real problem. I could add landing gear, but this would still be a practice in absurdity. I dug out the copiously part clipped prop plane I used for a top speed attempt, took it up to over 1 km/s, then pulled up into a climb. I lacked enough wing area to pull up with as much G force as would be optimal, but still shot to over 23 km. A novelty at least! https://imgur.com/Wg7jZQT The original video of the top speed attempt: https://youtu.be/J7oc1FLnWlY

Prop angle is absolutely critical in maximizing the thrust from props. I put together this chart using the plane featured in my video linked by pds314 above. This data was generated by flying the "river racing" prop plane featured at the end of the video as level as I could at 100 meters. The data demonstrates dramatic consequences from small changes in the angle of the propeller blade. https://imgur.com/sMl3EYZ https://youtu.be/J7oc1FLnWlY?t=689 Forward velocity reduces the angle of attack of your propellers. As a result, as your velocity increases, the optimal propeller blade angle increases (see my data above!). Below is the picture I used in my video for demonstration. https://imgur.com/sISIQWf

As noted in the video, part welding was employed for the sake of part count reduction. Gobs of part clipping. Takeoff was from a mountain with an altitude of 6.4 km, under its own power.

Very nice! Horizontal landings on Tylo are a serious challenge.

This mission was born on a notepad and pencil last summer when I was away from my rig. I made the first flight in September, but due to the error I mentioned in the video, ending up having to bail on it. I gave it a ground-up redesign in February, and finally got around to flying it starting a week ago.

Jool 5 minimalist launch: Spacechair edition

It is important to note that the level of aerodynamic trickery employed greatly impacts the level of challenge here. With full abuse of fairing occlusion, a chemical rocket single stage from sea level is more than possible. I mostly refrained from this with my propeller assisted single stage from sea level, but still used fairing occlusion for the chemical engines specifically. A craft that can do single stage from sea level without the use of ANY abusive fairing occlusion would merit a new and distinct achievement.

In theory, you should be able to reach any body in the system, or escape from Kerbol's influence entirely with enough time. The 10000 day limit may limit this =)

I'm a bit rusty, but I am a huge fan of RTS games, especially Starcraft and League of Legends. Before shifting my much of my attention to KSP I played League, and then Starcraft 2 competitively, having some minor success at the tournament scene before getting burned out. I also play and teach chess, feel free to hit me up sometime if you want to play! I also still occasionally play starcraft 2 if thats your style.

No plans at the moment. Its an idea, but there is a long backlog of missions I want to do and not enough time in a day =(

One more crack in the wall... https://youtu.be/zFEgKixiTHY

By the way, the Jool 5 mission I was almost done with and hinted at awhile back has been indefinitely postponed because I brought an old, unfinished version of one of the landers, so I need to refly the whole thing. Very frustrating due to the huge number of gravity assists... The sad thing is the working lander is actually a few kilograms lighter, so the whole thing should have worked.

Just to throw in my two cents, this is an incredible mod. I've been using this for years now, and consider it to be on a very short list of absolutely essential mods for my KSP experience. I can't over-emphasize how thankful I am for everyone involved in writing and updating this. <3

Certainly not the way to do this with the largest craft possible, but I did have fun getting this to work with a plane that wasn't optimized for low speed flight or landing. https://youtu.be/Hzm6-u0YnKU?t=631

Agreed, a larger scale ion engine with the same stats relative to size and mass would be very helpful. This would have the same performance as a cluster of the current ion engines, but would be far kinder on our PCs as a result of lower part count/engine count.

I'd love to have another go at this sometime. It'll have to wait until late December though

I did an SRB SSTO spaceplane some time ago, it was a fun challenge! https://youtu.be/OleAhs0ChoY

You don't have to dump ore, just open the utility bay door to ascend, close to descend. Should still work later!

A little bit hacky, but the easiest way to ballast a craft is to clip a bunch of radial ore tanks into a utility bay and close the door. Just open the door to ascend to the surface =)z https://youtu.be/Tk73lZTwR6c?t=382

Just throwing this out there, my most viewed video ever is a mission to Dres. Dres is already the coolest planet in KSP.

The wolfhound resulted in a ton of gained dV. I suspect it is possible without the wolfhound, but it would require one to land and takeoff from Tylo at even higher speed, and possibly further optimize the Kerbin ascent as well. One could throw in an additional Mun assist to save some ion fuel, but that is extremely minimal savings. That being said, all of these things are doable. The landing gear on this thing could probably take as much as 120 m/s on a different landing zone that was less rugged. I would say that this is most likely possible, but it would require landing at absurd speeds.

I'm not at my desktop atm, but let me note that I've tried a lot of different engine configurations on Eve, and have yet to match the performance of the Vector for the lower stage. Part of the reason is the vector is extremely compact, with minimal body drag.