Norcurion

First off: Sounds like a great challenge! May I also proof the costs by a dry/wet cost comparison in the hangar /VHB assuming i'd proof a landing of the SSTO back at the KSC runway? Seems easier to me, and i would't have to freak out out on the demo flight to save the last bit of fuel and bring it back to Kerbin to save another fund or two I'd limit the challenge to no external Seats/Laddering etc. (Rule: As soon as an engine is lit, the Passengers have to be on IVA (Otherwise we would only have ion-powered microgliders/ships with one kerbal sitting awkwardly on a ladder or a chair for months (Or at least make two different leaderboards) Open the savegames folder, then the folder of the save you want to change (eg: /saves/mycareersavename), there is a persistend.doc, serch for the entrys with sci and funds, change the variables, save the .doc and reload the savegame in KSP EDIT: Thinking about it: +1 for the pilot idea, would favour higher passenger counts per flight

My first try of a Payload SSTO: The Gryphon MK I Payload to Orbit (with acceptable safety margin, 75x75 km) is 2.25, Fuel Cost 800 Funds ---> 356 Funds per Mass Unit I do use Mechjeb rest of the pictures are in the imgur album with descriptions

I was just testing a new SSTO concept as the program stated that a solar array (on top of the craft, not the foldable one) is blocked by the mun while the craft was on the KSC Runway. Thinking this could mean only one thing i looked up... Is that a more common event in KSP than in real life (due to the scale of the solar system and the strict orbits?) Or was i just incredibly lucky? It happened in Year 8 , Day 29, 0h, 0m, 40s

I'm speechless ZIV. The lander with those 3 slightly diverted solar panels on each side is the single most well thought and beautiful thing i've ever seen in KSP. It looks alien.

Simply rightclick the SRB in the VAB , set the throttle to half and the Fuel (the BACC for example costs only 190, the Fuel makes up the rest of the 510 Funds)

There are 3 forces working on the ship: Gravity and Drag vs Engine fighting drag: in the first few kilometers, don't start to speedy because the drag force has speed to the power of 2 in it - massive problem for the stucture Gravity : start slow. (~ in my opinion not more than 20 m/s acceleration) before the gravity turn Engine: There is a point with super heavy lifters when you are in the 3rd stage and still using a mainsail when the full power of it sometimes rippes the rocket apart. Should you encounter structural problems when you are ~30-40 kilometer high and speeding up into orbit, try lower the engine output. Some design thoughts: A: Unfortunatly the weight (from drag + weight) that is countered by the engine is set in series: The green decoupler only has to carry the Capsule. The red has to carry the capsule + the 3rd stage The green has to carry the capsule and the 3 stage and the second stage and so on. So the sturdyness of the decoupler (as the weakest link) limit the overall weight of the launch system. B/C: To take the force out of the decoupler you may (as you certantly know) struts on the cone beneath(very sturdy) and connect them to the stage above (so you take some force from the decoupler to the struts) When having more boosters aside the main booster, also connect them directly to the stage above. D: There will be a critical shipmass where even the struts won't help because the decouplers collapse because of shearing forces or simply the fuel tank above will snatch. You may add more boost.. uhhm struts. But adding struts has also a critical point where to many of em start to destabilize the structure. But there is a sollution. If your Payload is REALLY hugh (like some 4 orange tanks and some nervas), just build the boosters to the side, like in D: for every single booster (n) the payload will have 1/n the weight.

I'm entertaining the thought to build a landing factory already for a while . The cruel and remorseless rocket equation will leave that factory with 95% Tanks and about 10 tonns of kethane equipment unless i'd use some ultra powerful super mod engines from future, what i don't want to do. So i need something else to make it look cool and thats the assymetric rocket mounts. I don't know if this will work ultimately but i't fun to try (And the Kethane Jool Thing is just perfect for it. Go hard or go home ) regarding the ASAS: I'm using lots of torque, but in this stage of development i still need lots of RCS to keep it stable. (300 tonns are hard to turn with ASAS only) regarding the nukes: I want to land that thing on tylo. the whole thing. Questions left :-p ? (It'll still have some nukes for orbital maneuvering regarding the kethane stuff: It's basically a tylo SSTO on oxidizer rocket motors... i'm afraid i'll have to use the small kethane stuff (~10 tonns alltogether) to get the paiload as small as possibe Maybe i'm just crazy...

234 Tonns wet, 75 tonns dry(15 tonns payload, 11 tonns living and cockpit), dV ~4000... it's just a techdemo. I'm able to drain the tanks to about 15% before it starts flipping. And the mass of the engines lets the COM drop a little bit when those tanks are near empty, stupid to use nukes on a ship with a shifting COM... and it needs trimming tanks and i fear that ill have to build it even bigger with the kethane stuff + nukes + other fancy space equipment on board. And reduce the living space... (2 hitchhiker : cool, 7 tonns of payload more: not good) I'm thinking of implementing infernal robotics and make the engine mounts rotate backwards in space solving the CoM-problem... But this will take a while

I'm trying a assymetric kethane lander, but i've got a tonn of problems to solve. First concept (with about 15 tonns of ballast simulating the kethane equipment.)

Some hints with the plane: Center of lift about the length of a roundyfied RCS tank behind the center of mass and the rear wheels shortly behind the CoM and your good to go... Gives you a pretty stable plane that is forgiving Put a little engine on it so you can get a stable height about 200 meters a short way even befor the runway and keep that height. When your finally over the runway just switch the engine of. And don't use toooo much wings or take B9 airbrakes with you;) When you start Rockets with aircrafts at the top, don't forget to add even mooooaaar wings at the bottom of the first stage or otherwise you'll have no fun

I'd plan about 500 dV at least for a sound SOI exit + plane change to Tylo + course corrections from any body. ( But nevertheless it should be better to launch from the smallest moon possible and take the greater homann dV costs, beating gravity is costly When you do 75% of the 3000 DV of the tylo landing on AS and 25 on nukes means you have burned about 2250 delta V of the 3600 that you have on Aerospikes with the 75% landing. the remaining ~1000 deltaV translated into Nuke deltaV should give you 2000 dV , from which 750 is reserved for the 25% of the tylo landing. Would give you 1250 room. 300 dV reserved for the start + SOI exit of bop+ 200 for the rest of the homan (with gravity assists?) would be left 750 for the tylo capture. When you do 60% of the landing on aerospikes you'd have 1800 dV of your 3600 Aerospike dV burned with the AS, giving you 1800 x~2= 3600 dV for the nukes. You burn 1200 on the tylo landing, giving you 2400 dV spare for pol start + soi exit, hohmann and capture. It's only a question of the Fraction of AS use Knowing you're good i bet you can make it... scarcly and on the last drops of fuel, but youll do it When you're already on your way go for it, when you're still planning you might add a little safety margin, i'd be worried and would recalculate the aproach a thousand times if i had to pull off a landing that close

Thank you, it's a byproduct of my approach to beat the railgun challenge... (basically with control surfaces)

Won't go slower than 4,7 m/s without flatspinning Mods: B9 No FAR!

Just boldly go on with the mission, refueling is no shame if you need to in the end! (Happened to all of us!)

I see some scoring problems: -You can't compare hitting orbiting objects with ground /sea/air objects: Orbital ones are absolutly easy to hit (its basically just a bad docking try...) -Your scoring with "parts not destroyed: Then i'll always target a single full orange fuel tank: its big and disintegrates fully It would be much more difficult thou when the final stage of the missile is SRB/liquid engine at full throttle only

would be awesome, but i have my midterm finals at the end of the month (March 18 - 27th), so to be able to compete we will have to wait. I think ill put up the savegame as a challenge, so everbody can give it a shot then. It's about those 3 Items, the Science Pods' don't have a probe core, the flyer has one but is out of fuel. All have jr. docking ports, so it'll be hard but possible (The save will contain the items as subassemblys for training purpose)

Could post the savegame... Maybe even as a own challenge... hmm o0

Perfectly clear;) I did understand that i only have to land the lab, but i wanted to misunderstand you for the sake of the challenge

Yay finally ! thank you , i nearly had an cardiac arrest as i saw that the rules now state that the lab has to land oO after i saw zeppelinmage's impressiv solution to do so o0 It was an honour Sir! bringing back: -the core science stuff : No problem:, The lander is in Kerbin orbit and has fuel for a rocket touchdown on Kerbin -the Orbital science stuff : hmm, should be possible with some chutes docked to the tug -the lab: It's on a ecliptical orbit between Duna and Kerbin: piece of cake -the atmospheric probes and the science stuff on the glider, all swimming in the laythee ocean: Well that will be an interesting undertaking o0 challenge accepted! (but it will take some time;)

Thank you! Aww -.- there will be many language bugs But that specific one was more of a typo... I changed it

I have finally completed my Jool-5 Challenge with aim for Jeb-Level It seems anachronistic with all those minimal weight trys, but i wanted to max out the use of the Lab. I have collected 24849 Science Points (17.898 from returned Samples from the Jool System, 5846 from Kerbol Orbit, Duna Ike and Minimus returns and 1105 from Crew Reports) The main figures of the Mission: - Stock + Mechjeb - 8 Kerbals in 2 Hitchhickers (5 Lander Pilots, two Science Lab Crew, one for Coffee) - landed on Tylo, Laythe, Vall, Bop, Pool, Duna, Ike and Minimus - Assembled with 4 Lauches + one Crew Launch - 3000 Tonns combined on pad, 300 in Parking orbit (~605x605) - No Refuel Mission - Reusable, refittable Lander Construction: Mission Design: 1) Gravity Assist direct into Laythe atmosphere, orbit around Laythe. 2) Lander+Tug --> Tylo, landing 3) Lander+Tug --> Laythe 4) Lander Refit, landing 5) Mothership ---> Orbit between Bop and Pol 6) Lander+Tug ---> Val, landing 7) Lander+Tug ---> Mothership 8) 6+7 Repeated for Bop + Pol 9) Whole Ship ---> Burn out of Jool SOI 10) Whole Ship ---> SOI Duna 11) Landing on Ike, Duna 12) Lab jettison 13) Whole Ship ---> SOI Kerbin 14) Landing on Minimus 15) Return to Kerbin, Low Orbit 16) Landing of Return ship, Lander to be recovered later Science Design: 2 sets on the tug, 1 set on the lander and two aditional sets on two atmo probes. The lander and the tug sets to be recycled by the lab after every moon Jool and every Moon: Goo, Sc. Junior, and Gravity Scan in High Orbit with Tug Goo, Sc. Junior, Temperature, Gravity Scan in Low Orbit with Tug On the Surfaces: All potential scans+samples with Lander Aditional: Laythe in high and Low Atmosphere: Scan with Noseprobe, Goo, Science Jr, Temp, Atmo and Grav with atmospheric Science Pod's ---> >100 Science Items Mission Screenshots (aaaaalot pictures... only about 1/8 of the Screenshots i made. I spare you some details, especially of docking procedures and countless Science windows, as it repeats 1000 times over. If you want to see something, ask) Some of them are with the HUD turned off... That is not to hide Mechjeb use or cheats but for the beauty of the shot - i use mechjeb a lot and do not hide it ) Hope i met all criteria for jeb level and thank you for this awesome challenge Ziv! (and excuse my english, im not native speaking and this was to much text divided in too many parts to proofread it with openoffice)

It's just clicking the button twice and rethrotteling , it's easy enough without action groups...

The car had no problems driving at flats. The engines ar not running at 100% ... i can throttle up if the wheels need more juice Ill try out ramps I did't have the time to drive the tank empty;) this was a mere tech demo. But i think it will have about 100-200 km range at least. (the first one drove 30 kilometers and had over 80% fuel left) EDIT: 504/560 Fuel left ~ 10% used, 18 km --> an estimate 180 km range (update as soon as the tanks are driven empty (the seperation event in the picture is from the kerbal supporting capsule, its jettisoned befor starting the drive) EDIT2: crashed the car with a jump, but know now that the wheels drain the same amount of energy no matter how steep the hill is, the speed is just slower... the car can go uphill, just in the case the wheels dont have enough power i have to activate the motors in the other two wheels and double the thrust of the jet engines

no batterys exept for the engine... and it works... tadaaa....

That thing crashed over a hilltop while i was afk, so i can't give you any precice numbers, but i can provide you some rough numbers... Two jet engines running with two radial intakes and about 40% Trust had enough power for 4 tr-2L Ruggedized wheels The amount of speed gained is IMO not linear with the number of wheels powered, so i think to max out the range it is best to use just two powerd wheels and switch off the motor on the other wheels Probably the amount of energy provided is only depending on the thrust lever, not on the amount of air take in... after a short test i think it's better to have only one air intake with the least drag. I'm not in town the next 4 days, but after that i'll give it a real try In this config, the two wheels powered (aft) need only a little under 1/3 engine thrust, and the speed is only 3 m/s slower than with two intakes and all wheels powered It is possible, because the jet engines double as batteries and store minimal amounts (see pic, it has only the battery in the cockpit, and this battery is offline) But nevertheless i think you are right... Every command pod has a battery. Are we allowed to use it or do we need to switch it off ? I think a little engergy reserve is ok, because it helps you to store the bits of power that are produced over the need of the wheels, increasing the range Maybe batts ar okay, but they all have to be empty at start?