wibou7

What were you expecti... ooooh riiiiiiight. I'd like to call a vote... Anyone in favor of banning @Majorjim! from posting ANY picture on this thread post, please stand.

Probably for the same reason you don't want to? You do realize you could (or anyone) create an account and fix the page, right?

Soooo, I've been trying to make up a plane that could stay up without the need for an engineer but no dice so far. I've chosen the ultra-light path so I can keep in the air with minimal airspeed (around 60 m/s on this one). I can keep this baby up with a level 1 engineer or better. Still, with a pilot I don't split even (yet).

Level 5 engineer make it quite easy... What about reworking the challenge a little? Just add a special difficulty "I ain't no engineer" ?

We want pictures!

It's just impossible to answer that without at least some details: - What's a "girandola"? Is it a pre-made part from a mod, if so which mod? Otherwise how much does it weight? Is it a fairing or not? Do you have any other payload? - To lift where? 1m from the ground? In orbit? The mun? Elsewere? - Do you have any other mission (antenna, power, ...) that we should know of? More importantly, what did you try so far? Do you have any picture of your failed tries? Unclear question always lead to unclear answer...

Soooo something that can withstand a collision of a couple thousand m/s? Sorry, it is just impossible unless you count cheat and cheaty modding.

Interesting! I will definitely try that! Have some reps.

Ah right, I never thought about gravity assist. Assist from the moon is so weak I never use it, at least coming from interplanetary. But I guess it can be enough for asteroids coming in, it probably explains it!

Free fuel for you! I wonder if there is something other than floating point errors that cause asteroid to get captured naturally. I mean, KSP only consider the gravity of one body at a time, so it's impossible to get naturally captured unless you aerobrake... Riiiight? But somehow, naturally captured asteroid are somewhat common. Puzzled!

Hmm... right the drag is going to slow you quite a lot, I didn't think about that. Then it's true that a perfectly timed suicide burn could do it, ideally over the ocean (water forgive more than grass). But the margin are going to be so tight there won't have any room for error, you litterally need the perfect suicide burn there. I guess it is doable but it will most likely be a one-short thing, hardly something you will be able to reproduce.

aaaaand you lost me there. 5470 m/s to reach orbit is enough, but no way you will have enough fuel left to land by rocket propulsion alone.

DISCLAIMER: Side effect of BULK KERBAL DELIVERY ESCAPE POD© may include, but are not limited to : - Be quantum teleported outside pod walls possibly, but not limited to, into start-hot plasma - Be catapulted at superluminal speed out of kerbol system - Be spagetti-teared while alive before being turned back to normal (turning back is indicative only, not guaranteed by pod system) - Be unpleasantly eaten by space Kraken - Break physic as we know it forcing solar system to a complete stop - Cause universe to segfault in protest This pod is as Kerbal as it can be! A++++ would buy again

I find hilarious that you did the challenge on what would be considered "super hard" difficulty without even reading the whole thing Nice design btw... How come you have a TWR < 1.0 in Mechjeb for stage 2? Isn't that a problem, on Eve of all place?

Kind of interesting, but: - I had to read half the thing just to figure out what this challenge was even about... A short description of what need to be accomplished might be useful - There is a huge difference in difficulty if your ring is 2km or 20m in diameter. Maybe you should provide a standard ring craft file for everyone to use? Of of that.. The challenge is pretty hard, going through a ring around the moon from Kerbin orbit without propulsion past Kerbin is barely possible atmo, you'd need a lot of math a near perfect timing... I doubt anyone could manage to do it for a ring in orbit of another body. Did you actually manage to do it, even for the Mun? Can we see your succesful attempt?

It's one of your mod acting weird. It's either corrupted or it is not compatible with your current KSP version. What mods are you running?

Sound to me it is near impossible... Could the OP post his successful attempt?

It is possible if you cheat. Or if you use some "future tech" mods. But speed of light (or even a fraction of it) is out of reach in stock. Just like is in real life, actually

Speed at PE would be highly dependent on difference between PE and AP. In any case the MAXIMUM possible speed you would have at PE would be 94,672.01 m/s, which is the escape velocity for Kerbol. Let's see, ~35,000 + ~95,000 = 130,000 m/s. You are still 99,870,000 m/s DV short.

The speed of light is ~300,000,000 m/s. Onethird if that is 100,000,000 m/s. The upper limit of DV achievable with ion is about ~35,000 m/s if I remember right (mathematically proven and all, search the forum). Soooo even with the perfect Ion spacecraft (implies no payload at all, whick is rather unrealistic), you would be about 99,965,000 m/s DV short. Feel free to try...

Could we see your attempt at this? Especially the "get to fraction of the speed of light" part, which is downright impossible without any mod or cheat.

I don't think it would be possible without heavily modded parts and a good amount of cheating. Orbital velocity is ~2200m/s for Kerbin. So if you don't account for drag, your cannon has to accelerate you to that speed. I never seen a KSP cannon that powerful. And even if it existed, I don't think any pieces could take the heat, they would probably burn up. Now if you DO account for drag, you need way more than just 2200m/s. How to know for sure but it would probably be double... So you need an even more powerful cannon AND you need to be even more heat resistant. Maybe it would be somewhat less impossible that if the cannon shoot straight up and let the payload do the circularization burn by itself. Not quite sure how much velocity you would need in that case, probably still in the order of ~2000m/s with drag... But then you need to carry a lot of fuel with you, so definitely not an easy challenge.

<picky> I guess you meant 100m/s^2 ? </picky>

I don't quite understand why this is not ON by default. I activated the feature (at 1.00 ratio) and so far it had zero impact. I only got close ONCE of getting a kerbal to fall unconscious. And that was after a very botched reentry that went spinning. On nominal operation it changes nothing, it is far too forgiving. I'm thinking about using 0.5 multiplier instead but I'm worried the only impact might be during interplanetary landing that are already quit challenging (Eve??)

Personally, I like the Puff as a "last chance" engine. Most (if not all) of my spacecraft have monoprop for docking, usually way too much of it (a 60 units tank is more than enough but a single one break symmetry, you see). Two Puff are light enough to barely show on DV but if worst come to worst, burning monoprop will give you a couple more Dv. I once (barely) saved a Moho ascent stage using that trick. Puff is your friend