Lt_Duckweed

Metallic hydrogen would "decompress" the same way c4 would "decompress", by violently exploding. Metallic hydrogen is not a gas, it would be a liquid/solid, and it is in a metastable state, meaning when it decomposes into a gas it releases a LOT of energy.

That section of the guide hasn't been true for nearly 5 years now, but has never been updated. Things in a fairing or cargo bay do not produce any drag. Things not in a bay create drag based on the shape of the part, but if node attached to other parts, the surface area that is attached will no longer be counted.

Right about 134 tons when totally full. And yeah it took a lot of time to get the design refined, and we even ran the mission all the way up to the laythe landing before realizing the design didn't work for the water takeoff and had to adjust the design and start the mission over.

We used the largest fan blades, 48 of them in fact! As for part clipping... there are 200 of the little mk0 liquid fuel tanks crammed under the fairing along with plenty of other goodies!

So a while back @Stratzenblitz75 and I did a collab project where we flew a 2 Kerbal part clipped monster of an SSTO from Kerbin to Jool "surface" and back via refuel pitstops at Pol and Laythe. Looking through the challenge rules I think it qualifies. I wouldn't consider this an entry though, just want to show that it is possible (or at least was, props got nerfed in 1.9 so this craft would need a serious redesign)

@fourfa the reason you are seeing weird results is drag is not calculated off of nodes, but off of the surface area of a parts drag cube. When you node attach parts, the surface area of both parts that is in contact is subtracted from the drag cube. The important thing here is that the surface area does not necessarily match the node size. In the case of the rtg, it's node size is .625m, but the surface area associated with the node is less than a .625m cylinder, so when you attach it to a .625m fuel tank, the rtg end is covered completely, but the fuel tank end is NOT fully covered. An opposite example is the 1.25m reaction wheel. It has a 1.25m node, but it has a surface area that is larger than a 1.25m cylinder, so when placed inline with 1.25m fuel tanks, the fuel tank ends will be fully covered, but the larger surface area of the reaction wheel will NOT be fully covered.

I think my greatest regret with that video is that we went down to -249.6m instead of -249.9m lol.

This was definitely the most fun I've had in KSP so far!

If I didn't want people to use my craft I wouldn't have uploaded it . I've never personally downloaded any craft, but that's mostly because I get the most joy in the game out of building new crafts, so if I've got Kerbal open, I'm probably tinkering with a new design.

At hypersonic velocities, wings produce the optimum ratio of lift to drag with a positive angle of incidence of 5°. Any more or less than this will give you a worse lift to drag ratio. Your goal when flying an SSTO is to always have the fuselage as close to 0 angle of attack as possible, and have the wings as close to 5° as possible. This is an example of a drag optimized SSTO, and thanks to the 5° wing incidence it can get to orbit with no oxidizer. https://www.imgur.com/gallery/fTWS13F

As a matter of fact, I have used props in Jool's atmosphere! As far as I am aware, SSTO from Jool 0 altitude is currently one of the most exclusive clubs in the game, having been done by only 2 or 3 people.

Last post of the night, I promise. 1 juno pushing 4.249 tons to 539.4 m/s giving a score of 2291.9 points.

No bay shenanigans this time, what you see is what you get. And what you get is a fixed wing craft with 1 juno pushing 3.180 tons of craft to 632.2 m/s for a score of 2010 points.

I would like to submit my entry for supersonic fixed wing. 1 engine pushing 2.481 tons at 628.1m/s which gives it a score of 1558 points. If the fact that Jeb's head is peeking out a bit and the battery is overlapping with the rtg a tad are an issue, I can redo with slightly different placement.

Mun vtol ssto's aren't too difficult once you get in the swing of it, I actually made one with rotating nerv pods before breaking ground was even a thing. They can get, off the top of my head, about 35% payload fraction delivered to the Munar surface.