Skyhawk

And here's my day 8. Box standard moon mission on a time budget. See you all tomorrow!

Alright, here's my Day 7 on hard mode:

Alright, finished my day 6 test, just barely in time. In the spirit of orion, I basically put the lander on a mock Delta IV and sent it up. The thing was way OP for the experiment, but I may just use it for the moon, just because it works. I missed the entry and came down on the land west of KSC, as drag during re-entry turned a last minute burn against me. I lost the engines again, due to a loss of parachutes during powered landing. Still, that's just bad piloting, and I'll fix that when I fly, instead of trying to fly via IVA.

Alright, I've begun work on the new program. I'd like to present my new lander to you all: Well, that looks a little problematic. Fortunately, that was after a re-entry/high-speed parachute no guidance 4x physics crash test. Still, engines aren't cheap. With hardmode and permadeath enabled, with the exception of revert to VAB/SPH, because I have too many bugs sometimes (I swear I won't cheat with it), this looks like it will be an interesting program. Ill design a lifter 5 minutes before launch tomorrow. 'Tis the procrastinator's way. I would like to thank Treldon for his flag, which I plan on taking with me to the moon and elsewhere. Hat tip to you, sir! I will see you all tomorrow for the great launch in for the moon. Good luck, and may your vessels be free of kraken/cthulhu/space octopi/etc.

Just barely finished day 4 challenge in time, but here's my album. I did my best approximation of a comm system, though it's not my forte, so I just kind op hoped. One of my 8 satellites disappeared on me, so we have dasher and dancer and vixen. And them the game bugged out, so no other ones have names. Merry Christmas, I guess... Enjoy the yellow spacecraft.

After my questionably built craft for challenge 2, I thought I'd lighten things up a bit for day 3. Though not the fastest, at 2020 m/s, I think Luney Kerman's vehicle was fun to fly.

Man day 3 up already? I feel behind... Anyway, completed challenge 2. Said we didn't have to use just one launch, so I sent a few of my little green kerbals off to different parts of the space center.

Completed, though I'm not sure how Jeb's getting down. Also, whats up with the semi-transparent/opaque dishes?

Yeah, it's great to see you're designs and such, by again, no hope of ever getting on a leaderboard (I tried months ago), and some mode might just decide to lock this thread at some point. I'm just saying it's probably time to let old birds rest, and move on to something else. I'm awful with names to but I'll try to think of something creative. in the meantime, just keep on pushing, you'll break the record eventually, even if no one sees it on the board.

You know guys, as much as I loved the machingbird challenge and participated in it (Pushing the bounds of infiniglide since .22!), I do believe it's about time to let this post die. It's run its course, and at 48 pages and a year in length, its pretty much done. There is no hope of getting back on the leaderboard, as the OP doesn't touch it anymore, so I think its time we say goodbye to the machingbird challenge for good. R.I.P., we knew ye well... This is not to say, however, that we need to give up on speed records. I believe it's ripe for a new challenge, a back to basics challenge about pushing our aircraft to higher and higher points. Its been multiple updates, rebalances, and new parts added, so I believe to keep up with the times we need to start a new post. I can do that, or someone else can, but machingbird has run its course; we need a new name. So I propose that we come up with a new name for the system, and start a new thread, so we don't have to necro long-dead giants. I'd like it if anyone left could help come up with a name, so we can stop beating a dead crow and get this thread on track.

I've tried to land and put a base on K2. It's very frustrating because I like to try to use planes to get there, but it's effectively impossible to land with wheels, and its hard to go slow enough for parachutes if you use small wings. Takeoff is also hard, and there's not much distance to takeoff in. I've lost many aircraft on landing and takeoff there.

This challenge generally goes unmaintained for a while, until the creator looks at it.

Here's a picture of one of my infinigliders heading into solar orbit... Infiniglide can be exploited a long way.

It's effectively a probe core with a solar panel on the front and a ton of small control surfaces on the back. By spamming the up and do buttons it flaps it's way to ridiculous velocities. After a few of these were created for the last leaderboard, we were given the 'Stock Unmanned Exploitational' category.

Alright, I guess I'll bring back the Stock Unmanned Exploitational Category. I present to you my newest creation, the Hawk. It's very prone to accidental suborbital hops, and even escaping Kerbin's SOI. The highest speed overland while in Kerbin's SOI was 8,401 m/s. The highest solar orbit speed I achieved was 190,735 m/s, or somewhere in the realm of mach 560. I imagine that we should probably judge by speeds on Kerbin, as the solar orbit speed was actually the result of what on Kerbin would have been a slower flight than the other Mach 24 flight. It's your choice, but I feel that the solar orbit speeds are not truly indicative of the actual speed of the craft, and instead luck of the draw when flying out of Kerbin's SOI. I'd like to then enter my Mach 24 8,401 m/s speed of the Hawk into the Stock unmanned exploitational category.