Laie

The only other one I could think of (and wouldn't know how to verify) is that it might relate to the celestial coordinates at game start, t=0.

If your engine is way overpowered, even a little bit of throttling up will make a huge difference. In that case, try using the tweakables to reduce your engine's power setting.

Oh boy, how do you even land? I guess I'm out. If that's what it takes... can't do.

This one works surprisingly well. Wing is way back to offset the Goliath torque (or it would flip), yet it's still controllable enough for a safe entry and return to the KSC. A soft and gentle landing at 40m/s, then a quick bounce and flip and sudden decrease in part count. I guess I'll have to invest another 100kg in either training wheels on the wing tips, or a parachute or something. The most interesting aspect is that slight shifts in CoM appears to matter *a lot*: several times I came up just a wee bit short to making orbit, then slipped in the donut tank, and on the next run I'd have twice the tank's contents left after circularization. So I guess I can make do without it, after all.

Well, designing for only for ascent certainly made it easier. @swjr-swis added trailing tanks for CoM stability, for example, while I simply ignored the issue. He deserves a place of the leaderboard, but I don't. Working on it, though. EDIT Here we go: named Cargo-IVf2 for lulz and giggles, this probably demonstrates economies of scale more than anything else. Cargo bay in the rear: The payload offsets the fuel mass, so the CoM is about in the same place going both ways. It shifts badly while the Thuds are running, but hey -- they're certainly not lacking in gimbal authority. It barely manages to make orbit, after dropping the payload (which requires some wiggling) I've got a whopping 20m/s left for the de-orbit burn. Actually less: there is a fuell cell in the cargo bay, and I take great care to leave some vapors in the tanks so I won't run out of ElectricCharge on my way down. Little detail: Tweaking the airbrakes I can hold almost any attitude. The PE was at 48km to begin with, but that kind of braking gets me back down quickly and decisively. On my way to the landing I burned most remaining liquid fuel, in the belief that I might come up short. Then found myself divebombing for the KSC and touching down on the greens at more than 100m/s. Well, all in a day's work, I guess. A time lapse video is available for the seriously curious. Mass at rollout: 130.361 - recovery: 38.571- payload: 17t So I spent 74.79t in getting it to orbit. That's about 4.4kg of propellants per kg of payload, or 1136 grams-per-unit.

Thanks for considering it, but that was not supposed to be a proper submission, nor would it be fair to treat it as one. Once the propellant is spent, it's aerodynamically unstable in any attitude... I can't possibly land it, and don't believe anyone could. Unless you're willing to consider any landing one can walk away from?

Whoa! I had no idea that Goliths can go *that* fast. Gaining altitude helps with that. 450m/s gets hot at 5km, but higher up it cools down again. Not enough data to be sure, but I think at 10km you can cruise at any speed.

You're missing the point: for each and every decision of yours, I did the opposite... yet the results are virtually the same. That wasn't the plan, of course, but it's how it came out. I think that's funny. Yes, I think that's perfectly sensible. It may be a question of sheer energy, kinetic vs. potential -- though I generally don't think it's worthwhile to push supersonic through the lower atmosphere, certainly not on rocket power. Another attempt, and this one actually goes supersonic -- why trade speed vs altitude if you can have both? 31,060kg, 17m/s left. I brought too little jet fuel, otherwise it would certainly have gone up to something like 550m/s. As it was, I had to kick in the Thuds when the Goliath had run through it's alloted amount. All things considered, I'm afraid that this may be too much wing. I'm not certain that give or take 50m/s or 1km of altitude are really worth the drag later in the flight. Next up: trying something that actually carries payload. Double Goliaths, here I come. ETA: hold on, one more... 23.8t - 50m/s in orbit - 550m/s@11km on jet power

Different philosophies, similar outcomes... this one masses 60.4t at rollout and has 227m7s left in orbit. It's not meant as a proper submission, more a data point. I gave up on going supersonic. My fastest plane managed 360m/s in level flight, but even the slightest amount of climb would ruin it. The fastest practical speed appears to be 300m/s or so -- but I noticed that I can maintain that velocity until 5km or more. With only one intake, the Goliath is starved for air until 150m/s, and it barely reaches 70m/s by the end of the runway. That's enough for takeoff, though, and the plane goes up to 290m/s@6km before I turn on the Thuds with an ISP of 295s. The I pull up and, well, essentially that's it. AoA reaches 10° at some point, and due to the low-heat wings I have to pull up harder and longer than usual, reaching 1800m/s@40km. But never mind, she makes it. I'll try shuttle wings tomorrow. And maybe more Thuds.

That would be this: None that I'm aware of. However, in first approximation you can get to your destination by pointing. Hold on, this reminds me of something... 0.01g is plenty acceleration for moving between the planets. Going to Duna should take something like 50 - 100 hours, perhaps? Just a guess, but I fully expect it to be in that ballpark. So, just point for where you expect Duna to be in a few days' time and go for it. Nevermind if you're not exactly on target, you can fix it by the time you get there. Question is, do you have enough propellant to run the engines for a few days? The other problem is leaving Kerbin in the first place. The easy method is to have a more powerful booster to get you on your way; the more complicated method is the one pictured above. Sufficiently educated people could probably solve it by maths alone, but I had to resort to brute force: I wrote a kRPC script to plot lots and lots of maneuver nodes. That's easy and fast at first, but gets progressively worse with the number of nodes. I got the first 100 nodes in five seconds, 50 seconds for the next hundred, 3 minutes for another hundred nodes. kOS may be faster, though I doubt it. That spiral represents a constant 0.4m/s² acceleration, by the way. With your vessel being even slower, it may be no longer worthwhile to time the start of the burn. Just get into a sufficiently high orbit around Kerbin, with a period of ten days or so, and then... point.

Well, autopilot... though really, I've only got five seconds or so to get clear of them bombs, which isn't much time in my opinion. From that angle, dropping the bombs from far away is necessary when coming in as fast as I do. But that I can do that and still hit is totally due to autopiloting. Incidentally, the bombs barely drop -- it looks as if the decoupler is acting as a lifting surface or something, I'm not quite sure what happens there. Whoa, highscore! Thank you!

I'm not very familiar with kOS, but perhaps target:body:position will give the position in the same reference frame as ship:body:position?

Thanks! I assure you that this is not a coincidence. If you want a name for the leaderboard, I'd suggest a flying bomb: not "The" and no capital letters, simply "Laie, 1150 with a flying bomb" And here comes another familiar sight, let's call it the "Wunderwaffe", delivering two Hammers to the Hangars: Again, click for flick. Going supersonic isn't quite period, but if it gets the job done faster... well, I won't complain. The first version had a Mk1 fuselage and two Junos, but normal-sized SRBs looked totally out of place next to small engine nacelles, so I cranked up the scale a bit. Proportions still don't quite work out, but at least it's not wholly ridiculous. You'll have to carefully inspect the video frame by frame in order to see where the bombs end up and that I do indeed strike both hangars. Sorry about that... I don't know how I could make the camera follow the bombs. As for technicalities, that's 750 solid fuel in two bombs, one for each hangar, in a little under 2 minutes. Rolls out for 16,900 funds, and recovers for 13,700 (give or take). Thanks for the challenge! I'm having a blast, if you forgive me for saying so.

Yup, but zero facility upgrades -- you only get as much tech as can be bought with a the tier-1 R&D. You'll also be restricetd to 30 parts, 18t and size limits as determined by level-1 facilities.

(click for video) Oldschool you said? Can do. I couldn't build a working ramp, though, much less one long enough within the part count limit, so I had to go for a rocket sled. The long booster would somersault with the drone on top, so I had to add another one to keep it on the ground. Well, it works in Kerbal Space Program, as they say... Due to whatever, only one SRB explodes against the Tower whenever I have the screen capture software running. The other half of the vessel happened to hit the runway, though, so I won't complain. Before/after comparison of cash at hand shows a cost of 4997 funds, so barely within the limits. I managed to hit tower and runway with 300u each, in a bumbling 4 minutes. Those two hits plus "Doodlebug" should be 1550 points, if I'm not mistaken.

On the off chance that it didn't come over: I was asking if you would rewrite the backstory so that we're supposed to wreck the KSC. Just so we can target destructible facilities. Oh, I wasn't aware of that.

Is there any chance for turning this around? Last time I was a bit disappointed when the Island Tower just wouldn't blow up... the Island Airfield installations are indestructible, it seems. I'd rather start at the Island Airfield and bomb the KSC, just for the BOOM.

It's probably beyond the scope of anything anyone has ever considered, but.. Do you guys know Dwarf Fortress? I think I'd like Kerbals going their ways, doing whatever needs to be done and / or strikes their fancy. Just to make the place look busy, really. I don't think they need to do much (or anything) of consequence like actually operating the workshops, or becoming skilled at hydroponics or metallurgy or whatever -- that would be an entirely different game, after all. But Kerbals being individual agents with a sleep / work / play cycle, actively seeking out a place according to their desires? That might work rather well, provided that there are enough outdoor activities. Otherwise we won't ever see them.

what?

Recently I had a good long look at Near Future Propulsion, and this is just the right challenge to put it to good use. Sorry, I'm not much of a storyteller, so this will be brief. Nothing unusual here, except perhaps my method of getting to the sun: I couldn't do orbital maths to save my life, but I can use a script to plot dozens of maneuver nodes in order to simulate a long burn. 5 Minutes later? Ok looks better. Now move all nodes 20sec back... fine. All that only to figure out when to start the burn. Then I put SAS to hold prograde, opened the throttle, and ran both electric stages to depletion. After the burn. These seems to be a sub-challenge to get as close to the Sun as possible, that's why I dressed up my vessel with radiators and put a heat shield in front. But truth be told, that's all nothing compared to selecting the right level of timewarp: 100x seems to work best.

Depends on TWR. Well no, actually it doesn't -- the ideal landing works like a gravity turn, but in reverse. That is difficult to plan and execute, though. With lots of thrust, a suicide burn is virtually indistinguishable from a reverse gravity turn -- if you can pull it off. Braking too early may lead to you effectively hovering for tens of seconds, and braking too late is, well, suicidal. With a local TWR > 3, your timing and steering errors will have more of an effect than the theoretical difference between suicide burn and an ideal landing. With TWR <2 you want to get into a low orbit first, and try something like a constant-altitude landing, as demonstrated by @Kosmo-not in this classic: That video is very old, the Mun was much flatter then. He also has a very low TWR, so as to better be able and demonstrate the technique. You can usually do better, dV-wise, by doing more of a "controlled descent rate" landing rather than "constant-altitude". The beauty of that method is that it can be flown seat-of-your-pants style, with little regards to planning or split-second timing, and with some experience and educated guesses, the controlled descent approach can come very close to the reverse gravity burn.

Well, I was about to offer that I might provide a pull request if you gave me some guidance re: target values, but... ...well yes, there's that.

Hold on, I'm checking the Squad .cfg files, on the off chance that one of my favorite mods may have been patching the parts for years without me knowing it.... ...nope. MM cache and Squad files show the same numbers: part mass maxEnergyTransfer (cfg) CoreHeatxFer (in-game, kW) Core kW/mass radPanelSm 0.02 2500 50 2500 radPanelEdge 0.03 7500 150 5000 radPanelLg 0.05 10000 200 4000 foldingRadSmall 0.05 2500 50 1000 foldingRadMed 0.25 12500 250 1000 foldingRadLarge 1 50000 1000 1000 The first three columns are lifted directly from the cfg. "Core Heat xFer" as reported in the game seems to be the configured "maxEnergyTransfer" divided by 50. The "Max Cooling" number as reported in the game appears to be something entirely different... could it perhaps be calculated from the actual surface area and max. part temp? I don't know, but looks like it. Anyway, your 280kg for the large radiator panel are off: it's only 50kg.

I hope you forgive me for saying so, but I'm a little underwhelmed in that regard. When it comes to core heat, the radiators from this pack are about three times as massive as stock items. I find myself trading off vessel performance (dry mass) against game performance (part count) and more often than not, vessel performance wins: sticking lots of stock static radiators to the reactor itelf is by far the most mass-efficient solution.

I will "boycot" KSP2 if it won't run on my machine. Everything else is wait and see.