Captain Vlad

I really like the little thing, the bigger fins kept interfering with where I wanted to put my boosters and were way expensive for just chucking them off the rocket when it was time to stage. And I finally have tailfins for my little mule plane...others were just too big. And I may very well steal Wanderfound's idea too.

Well. So much for catching up on Agents of SHIELD while the game loads. Damn you, SQUAD!

Bug fixes are always welcome; overall I'm having a hell of a lot of fun with this release. The addition of re-entry heat I both hate and love, but the new aero, despite me being skeptical, has been pretty dreamy. Yes, there's snags and problems. There always are in any release this big; always have been, always will be. I hope, given some of the useless whining we've seen on the forums the last few days, that the dev team realizes that most of their fans are more mature than the people making the most noise. Looking forward to 1.01.

The only think I've used a vernor thruster for so far is getting the nose of some spaceplanes off the ground quicker. I find monoprop RCS to be more useful for fine adjustments than the vernors, and since fine adjustments are what I need the things for anyway....

Hope altering a save to make a certain Kerbal female is possible/relatively easy. "Annie Kerman" has been female in my imagination since I recruited him/her.

Launch clamp? Or is it too small for that?

It's not a question of where he grips it...

I'd forgotten how much fun mine was; after I flew it to the island I took it out for another flight...never ceases to amaze me how long one of those things can stay in the air.

That is one sharp-looking plane, man. What's the music you used for the video? Wanna add it to my Shadowrun playlist.

I like it...like, Jeb's the one who's always trying to talk the engineers into strapping six more boosters onto the already ridiculous rocket...but Val's the one who's insisting they can make the new spaceplane glide way longer if they use a command seat instead of a cockpit...each thinks the other is a little nuts...

Decided to try something a little different, knowing it wouldn't win any marks for speed. Reached into the toolbox and got my ion glider. Mass: 0.9 tons. Parts: 60. Maximum speed achieved: 75 mps (and that was in a dive). Maximum altitude achieved: 139 meters. Minimum altitude achieved: 1 meter. Flight time: 9 minutes, 10 seconds. Flew her unmanned for the challenge; she's got a command seat, but its use is optional, mostly because once I got the weight balance right, I was afraid to take off the probe core I used to testing as I feared it'd screw up the weight balance. Hit one meter...found out in a test flight that she can survive 0 meters if I pull up immediately, but if I do that she loses her horizontal tail and gets difficult to control. She used up most of her fuel on the flight as I didn't really have much gliding room and used constant power. Enough to get there and back at full thrust the whole way, though. Normally I just use the ion engine for a boost up to a few thousand meters and sail around with the engine off. Landing proved to be just as difficult in the jet, though, because despite the much lower speed, this thing WANTS to stay in the air and has a surprising initial climb rate (slows down quick, though). And the flight log.

I did forget to do that, didn't I? Mass: 3.6 tons. Parts: 23.

As a guy who cut his flight sim teeth on F-19 Stealth Fighter, this challenge appeals to me. All stock (save for KER), no parachutes, maximum altitude 142 meters (on landing), maximum speed a leisurely 207 mps, minimum altitude 16 meters. Taking off and landing are really where you have to watch your altitude, seems like. Someone will now do 1 meter the whole way at Mach 1, but I had fun. 20 meters. Screenshot at 16 meters. I think I actually went lower, but in scrambling to take the picture while avoiding dropping lower, I missed the shot if I did. 16 was the lowest number I actually 'saw'. Landed on the island, no damage.

Similar situation here. Cohabitation, no marriage, happy for nearly a decade. The woman buys me comic books.

Well, she's got wings, and I assure you she flies. Completed a seismic survey mission with her last night, but didn't take any good screenshots of her at higher altitudes. I'd obviously have to retrofit a docking port onto her to qualify, but that'd really just be a matter of switching cockpits and putting a nosecone/Jr. port on the front, which I was considering doing anyway. Note: Obviously this isn't an entry post, just illustrating that I do in fact have a winged rover.

Throw the lever. Attempt to tackle the one guy on that track off the track. Try not to die.

There's an achievement for carrying a rover and deploying it...would that apply to a vehicle that IS a rover, that just flies by itself?

In my case, 'winning' means having an excuse to fly that particular jet again. I actually don't like making a new craft for every challenge and will usually pull something out of my toolbox because I really like taking favored designs and trying to wring every last bit of whatever out of them, just to have a better picture of what they can do. Going around the globe in this challenge actually surprised me...I had an inkling it could do it after I tested it in comparison to one I made for the Machingbird thing (which I need to get around and post...) and I did a similar 'just how fast can I make this plane' go test after my actual entry. I'm fond of the one I used also because I made a similar, but smaller jet that ended up being very popular with a friend's daughter, but she thought it was a little twitchy. I fixed it, but then set about making her a better plane and ended up with the Super Sparrow and it's many variants. I'm sentimental, what can I say?

I'd suggest an altitude ceiling, though that might not be as effective as I'm thinking as you can still go a rather amazing distance one one fuselage segment worth of jet fuel if your plane is small enough. One thing though is 'small' is a word open to interpretation. The plane I used feels like a giant compared to some of the others, but it's small to me because I tend to go for twin engines and enormous wings. I'm pretty sure even an ion glider I built a while back would end up in negative points starting out due to the width of it's wings, despite it weighing less than a ton without the pilot...is mass or overall size more important for being 'small'?

All righty. Used a somewhat modified version of the same plane I used for Wanderfound's island touch-and-go challenge a while back, mostly because it's my favorite in-atmosphere plane I've made and I think it looks cool. She weighs 3.8 tons. As Wanderfound guessed, I got her up to 15,000 meters and would boost up to about 40-45 K meters and repeated this until I'd circumnavigated the planet with a little distance there at the end due to missing KSC. I put her down on the large round island northeast of KSC with no fuel left. Weight (full fuel) : 3.8 tons (-38 points). Length: 7.7 meters (-77 points). Width: 6.9 points (-69 points). Height: 3.7 meters (-37 meters). Parks: 23 (-23 points). Overall penalty: -244 points. Seat for Jeb: +1. Entering Challenge: +100 points. Total distance: 4,967 km (+4,967). Overall credits: 5,068. Total: 4,824 points.

The thought had occurred! *mad scientist laugh*

Apologies if this has been asked before, but does a non-stable suborbital track that puts you into space make you 'not airborne' per the rules?

I'm certain it does, but I don't remember what it is and can't check the file on my work computer. All it does is allow you to assign air intakes to a specific engine with a button press instead of having to use the 'place all inlets for engine 1, place engine 1...place all inlets for engine 2...place engine 2' method. Complete non-issue as the plane I hit 2,300 with is single engine, but thought I'd ask.

And I did it. 2,305. Think I've figured out what kept keeping me from breaking 2,300, so hopefully doing it again for an 'official' run shouldn't be a problem. Just for clarification: Does the 'no mods' rule apply to Kerbal Engineer? It and the thing that prioritizes your inlets are the only ones I currently use and I don't see the problem with either, but figured I'd make sure.

I'm definitely more of a pilot. While obviously you have to be a little of both, mindset-wise, to play KSC, I find myself booting up the game just to thrash one of my little jets around the sky way more often than to fiddle with a design for a few minutes. I prefer to design stuff where I have to jump through relatively few hoops to accomplish what I want to do, and my biggest 'rushes' in terms of designing are usually when I manage to make something more fun/exciting to fly than I thought it was before. I've never even downloaded MechJeb as I have no desire to have something do that stuff for me.