PacThePhoenix

I was really looking forward to 1.1 with the increased performance, new parts, and physics, but I've thus far been quite disappointed. The frame rate seems unchanged or even slower than before. The timer is constantly yellow when I'm flying ships that I know for a fact had green timers in 1.0.5. The UI is all over the place. The text is either waay too small or the navball is waaay too big. Is there something that I'm missing? This has been very aggravating for me.

Sooooo.... stuff happened and I haven't been able to work on my SSTO for the past while. I'm really tired of it sitting in my saves doing nothing, so here it is. As I hinted before, it is a very ugly plane . My initial thought when seeing this challenge was "A single orange tank? Pfft, I'll do two", which I am so very close to achieving. The only issue I have with the craft is the lack of dV, ~400m/s short, which isn't bad, but I don't really feel like doing any work on it right now. The TWR is well above 1 so adding more fuel should be no problem. Also, it flies like a skyscraper, made of cows. Aaanyways, it is very likely that I will do a more serious attempt at this challenge sometime in the future, just fyi .

I promised I would have fun with this challenge, and have I fulfilled? Nope XD. Thus far, the build process has been gruellingly challenging, more difficult than it really needs to be. The reason for this is the nature of my design. I'm done working on it for today, but I estimate I'll be able to show it off by Wednesday (maybe). I'm going for something I'm sure you'll find amusing, but it is being kept a secret for now. My only hint (and a really terrible hint at that) is "Beluga" .

Exactly. An accurate Ares mission recreation would be quite difficult to pull off. I'll probably be able to cut down on the amount of pre-supply missions by loading up each launch (gotta love the glorious game engine we are provided with). As for the Hermes, who needs it? XD. I could probably get away with sending the crew up with the DAV if I pack enough fuel space. In the end, would it be 1:1 Martian remake? No, but it'll surely (and by that I mean hopefully) get the job done !

Gonna have fun with this challenge soon enough (evil laughter ).

My thoughts exactly . I was actually thinking of taking a 'Martian' style approach at this challenge, but that would mean an extremely high cost and almost no reusability. I might just do it for fun though .

Awesome job on your SSTO. Quite unique aesthetics and a really good starting point for more advanced designs. It's really great that you were able to get it flying as well as you did without the parachutes. I myself am not the best when it comes to re-entry with spaceplanes, so I can say that your piloting skills are on par. Best of luck with the future .

Honestly, I'm still laughing at the fact that this actually worked. It is severely overpowered for such a tiny payload, but I did it. I was goofing off with a more realistic Dragon / Falcon 9 design and I was only able to fit the 9 engines around a 3.75m tank. It looks really stupid because I never intended it to work, yet it successfully completed the mission on it's first flight. The album below shows the second flight with no design modifications (I flew it a little bit better than the first time). Side note: I will be attempting another go at this challenge as I am dissatisfied with pretty much everything about this design. It worked, yes, but I could improve a hellava lot more .

One 48-7S "Spark" liquid fuel engine with a single FL-T200 fuel tank. I took a few screenshots of the ascent but the only good one was the one you see.

Can someone explain to me in layman's terms exactly what a 'block' is? Is it just another version of a rocket or something else?

Thanks! Yea, I'll make sure to show the resource panels next time when critical information is required, I just don't really like the look of it in screenshots. I did get the satellites to roughly geostationary altitude as you can see, but I didn't show the orbital period with Kerbal Engineer which was exactly 6 hours (+-0.5 seconds). I may work on shuttles in the future as I think they're pretty cool, I just don't see myself using them a whole lot. Maybe I'll attempt STS-3...

Remind me to never do a shuttle challenge again . This was a serious pain and took me several hours to complete. Building the shuttle was pretty straight forward, a few issues here and there that I fixed, but the return was hell. Up to deploying the payload was all fine, aero-braking and landing on the other hand was not very fun. Sadly, I didn't snap any screenshots of the shuttle flipping out like a crazy-flippy-out thing and I honestly have no idea why it was so aerodynamically unstable. Nevertheless, STS Commander Rank-2: Achieved!

Awesome, thanks .

I'm actually quite proud of this. It took me about 2 hours to make, most of which was trying to keep the service module upright (The LES was used a lot), and completed the mission on the first attempt. I calculated how much dV I would need for an Apollo 11 mission and I was almost spot on. I had 1 unit of fuel to spare on the descent and .5 units extra for the ascent. 132 parts and an initial mass of 277t got me this: Tier 1 Score: 80 - 5 engines on first stage, 5 on second, 1 on third (+20) - Free-return Trajectory (+10) - Lander Behind Fairing (+10) - Descent Stage Ditched On Mun (+5) - Stock Parts Only (+20) - Functional Launch Escape System (+5) - Power Generated Only From Fuel Cells (+10)

@Charwhick, how do you post your pictures like a slideshow as you did? I've been posting mine one after another.