doggonemess

Delighted by the prospect of government military spending and unlimited cost overrun, Lev Aerospace is proud to present our entry to the burgeoning Kerbal Space Navy. For your consideration, the Kerman-Class Korvette, KV-1002. (Don't ask what happened to KV-1000 and KV-1001. It wasn't pretty.) The KV-1002 features an armored crew section with an escape pod, fuel-cell augmented reactor power plant, VTOL capabilities, Close-In-Defense Cannons (CIDC), two hull-mounted mass drivers, and six guided anti-ship torpedoes. It carries enough fuel to reach LKO or out past the orbit of Duna (but not both, you'll need a refueling station, which we're happy to throw in at lots of extra fees). Excessive maneuvering thrusters mean that it can turn 180 degrees on any axis in less than five seconds. Four Vector engines provide enough acceleration to launch the ship from the ground straight up or out of the way of incoming weapons in space. Crew quarters can accommodate two pilots and a complete engineering team or up to sixteen Marines. Ventral view - orange fairing contains the escape pod. Note the armor plating around crew module and drive section. The four VTOL engines are also visible. Reactor bay - also contains fuel converter for refueling from raw ore. Anti-ship torpedoes - side mounted launchers open to release weapons, close to keep in the explosive goodness. Escape pod - can be launched in a moments notice, in case of catastrophic failure (or stupidity). Escape pod - crew safely blasts away from the dying ship (well, three of them anyway; sorry Marines - you always get the short stick).

In case anyone is still collecting data on this, here's my computer info and results. Not great. FPS on the Launchpad: 20 fps FPS at 10-15km: 11 fps FPS at 70-100km: 23 fps looking at Kerbin, 30 fps looking at space FPS in 70-100km (after load): 23 fps looking at Kerbin, 30 fps looking at space CPU: Intel Xeon CPU E5-1620 v2 @ 3.7 GHz, 8 cores GPU: NVIDIA Quadro K2200 4096 MB GDDR5 RAM: 32 GB DDR3 1333 MHz DIMM Storage: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB OS: Windows 10 Home 64-bits In case anyone is wondering, my screen resolution is 1920 x 1080. Screen resolution doesn't really seem to affect the game performance for me, low or high, it's about the same.

Oh wait, it's free?

For our one participant, I'm happy to present the badge for the Asparagus Staging Challenge!

New challenge! ASPARAGUS TO THE MUN What could possibly go wrong? (Image from the KSP wiki) Your challenge is to send an Apollo-style mission to the Mun using asparagus staging! Primary objective: Land on the Mun and return safely! Optional objective: Make the trip without using a landing module, i.e., the entire craft lands on the Mun and returns to Kerbin. For those of you who are not familiar with asparagus staging, it is the process of carrying many smaller liquid fuel boosters that all feed fuel inwards via fuel lines and then dropping them in pairs as the outermost tank runs dry. The name comes from the appearance of such rockets, like a bundle of asparagus. Each booster has its own small engine, optimized for the ISP in which it will be used. For most rockets, this means that most of the booster engines will be efficient in the atmosphere, while the main engine will be optimized for vacuum. All the boosters are ignited at launch (and the main engine, unless it's a vacuum engine). (Image from the KSP wiki) The idea is that you can carry an enormous amount of fuel and a high thrust-to-weight ratio but efficiently drop the empty tanks and unneeded engines as you go, thereby keeping the TWR high while at the same time carrying only the required amount of weight to make it happen. This method was proposed (but not implemented) on the Falcon Heavy, but with only two boosters feeding fuel into the main tank. Of course, when we do it, we have to Kerbal the heck out of it. While asparagus staging used to be more effective, due to the aerodynamics model in KSP, recent updates have made it much less so. To get the most out of this technique, speed should be kept subsonic until you reach the thinner parts of the atmosphere, beyond 15,000 meters or so. Once the air thins out, you can throttle up to 100% and continue into orbit. See the KSP article here for more info: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Asparagus_staging The most important thing to remember is to check your staging carefully. You need to drop the boosters starting from the outside and working in. It's also wise to use Sepratrons to get the tanks clear after staging, as there isn't much room with this design. Happy explosions!

The challenge is now closed! Great work for those who tried it, I'll have the badges up soon. And, sorry to have missed the question about altitude - it doesn't really matter, the main thing was getting the craft to a starting point that worked well and could be replicated. Standard badge: True Belter badge:

I salute you, sir. I have been looking for a way to do this for years. Only just now have I discovered Module Manager and figured someone would want the flags off by default.

500 Kerbals?! Good god, man. That's insanity! I've gotta try this.

Your sig is the space at the bottom where you can put anything you'd like to show off. It's accessed by clicking your username in the top right, then clicking on "account settings". On the account page, click on "Signature" on the left and you can paste the URL for the badge image there. Be sure to resize it if needed so it's no more 100px tall. You can do that by holding CTRL (or the Mac equivalent) and right-clicking. An option for "Edit image" appears, and you can specify the height and width in pixels.

JOOL MOON SLINGSHOT RUN Oye, beltalowda! This week's challenge is inspired by "The Expanse". If you haven't seen the show, stop what you're doing and plan to do nothing else for the next two days while you binge watch it. It's that good. Back to the challenge! Your mission is to make a slingshot run around the moons of Jool. To pull this off, you have to start from a circular Jool orbit at 248,000 km. From there, plot a maneuver that takes you past as many moons as possible without using any thrust after the initial burn. My example below has my Kerbal flying by the three inner moons, with no control input after the starting burn. Now, I didn't get really close to any of them, and didn't get to the outer moons, but I'm positive it can be done much better! For instance, I could adjust my trajectory using RCS thrusters to get closer to the moons, using the gravity to do most of the work to get me back out to the moons I missed. There's no scoring, but I'll be designing different badges for the basic goals, one for elite skills, and one for the true Belters out there. It breaks down like this: Basic: Slingshot past at least three moons. You can make mid-flight adjustments to steer your craft between the moons, but no engines may be used after the first burn - only RCS thrusters. Elite: Slingshot past all the moons using multiple maneuvers and RCS. True Belter: Visit all the moons using one burn and NO additional maneuvers - guided only by your initial trajectory. I swear, it CAN be done. Your craft can be whatever you want to build. I went with something that looks cobbled together from junk, like the one featured in the show, but you can make it however you like! As such - any and all mods can be used, as long as they don't change the physics. If you want to check out the awesome design of the show's racer, check out the designer's website: https://gautamsingh.artstation.com/projects/LnQdw. You can also get your ship to the orbit any way you like. I just used the cheats menu to put the ship at 250,000,000, which is how I came up with the weird 248,000 km orbit number. That part is firm, everybody needs to start at the same point. You can, however, advance time to get the moons into a different alignment if you like. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with! Happy explosions!

Sorry for the delays everyone! I'll have the new challenge up within an hour. Thanks!

Well, you see, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of minute liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body. Air can become saturated as a result of being cooled to its dew point or by having moisture added from an adjacent source. Clouds form as a result of this process. I know I'm seven months late making this joke. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Really!? I didn't know that. That's very helpful, as it seems to come up sometimes when the control surfaces are in weird places. Thanks!

And here is the SRB to orbit badge for our lucky completionists:

It's definitely do-able. I have an awesome spy car with ejection seats. Works almost every time now! https://kerbalx.com/LevAerospace/M8-SpyRover-II-ORV Just for fun, I think I'll incorporate this into an aircraft and try it out.

I was inspired to make a Kilrathi fighter from Wing Commander. I came up with a random cat-name and built this: It's fairly stable and can do Mach 4.72. It's even got a single dumb-fire missile. Fun! It also has to be flown with SAS off, as the vertical surfaces ended up reversed, so up is down. Also fun!

Flattery will get you everywhere. It's funny, I really didn't think I did a great job on that one. I'll talk to the gang and see what they think. I'm not the biggest fan of "closing" challenges anyway.

Badges for the Chute-less Challenge are done! If you didn't use airbags (inflating heat shield) or retrorockets you can optionally use the "crater" badge.

Thanks for closing it! I'll have the medals up shortly, hopefully today.

There may be some issue with the latest KSP update not working with this mod. The author hasn't posted a message in a while, so he may not be checking the board right now. Remove the mod, and then if you can't get KSP to start you may want to reinstall the game. To take a modded game back to stock manually, you just need to remove all the folders from GameData except for the Squad and SquadExpansion(?) folders.

I am intrigued! I'll add this to my gigantic pile of Kerbal stuff I want to do.

I'd like to share one I made a while back. It doesn't meet the requirements for the challenge - I just wanted to show off. https://kerbalx.com/LevAerospace/Koffer-DR3

I built one a while back that used a similar method, and was hoping someone would go that route! Yours is very interesting as it's an open design - mine had structural panels and was covered in landing struts. I love the open design you made.

I'm thinking I didn't think that through enough. I do have to give you credit for thinking of something I didn't think of. Maybe I should have specified no heat shield, but since I didn't, bravo guys!

New Challenge! Lithobrake capsule return! Due to a shortage of materials (partially due to the Great Nylon Glut of '06) parachutes have become more expensive than antimatter. With the desire to still reach (and return) from the stars, our mission is to send a Kerbal to space and return them home using the most efficient, fastest method without parachutes. While this could be achieved using an SSTO, landing a winged craft takes a large amount of skill. We need a drop craft that brings the crew home rapidly and without any complicated methods, so our scientists with no hand-eye coordination can still get things done. We would prefer to collect the craft on land rather than a water landing to further reduce cost and complexity. To meet this challenge, the craft must: Design a craft with one or more crew and no part mods (except for Squad expansion parts). Reach orbit and deorbit (you can cheat the craft to orbit to save time, since it's not part of the challenge). Reenter the atmosphere above 1600 m/s. Ballistic descent through atmosphere (no gliding, but aero parts to induce drag are fine). Land on the same continent as the Space Center. Part loss on 'landing' should be minimal to save money. While challenges are usually unranked, a special badge will be awarded to engineers who can manage the landing without using engines. Happy landings! (hopefully)