OJT

No, since it is still a mean to generate electricity, even if a quite creative one. Determining how much EC exactly your Plane needs for the glide phase is part of the design challenge

100 EC limit is the usage limit for the prop motors. If your Plane has prop motors and 405 EC total charge, you can only use 100 units out of the total 405 to power the motors. The rest can be kept to not lose control of the probe core That is true, solar panels are forbidden. However, extendable solar panels don't generate charge when they are concealed, so the submission can still be valid "in spirit". I'm actually curious on what you're cooking up Fixed wing aircraft on Duna can be surprisingly viable. Yes atmosphere is thin, but it is not as thin as on Mars (around 10 times denser than Mars Sea Level in fact), and at the same time it is thin enough to make good use of vacuum-optimized engines. The biggest challenge from my experience is inertia: combination of thin atmosphere and lower gravity means that turns are much wider on Duna and if you are, for example, aiming for a landing, you need to make your corrections way beforehand in order to touchdown smoothly. You also need to really increase wing area if you plan to land with sensible speeds, but I think that's a given

I can't quite understand how your Plane deviates from challenge rules. You can have means to generate electricity on Launch Vehicle, and you can use these means to keep the Plane charged up until it is time for atmospheric entry. From what I understood, your craft seems to be within challenge requirements As for the charge, my ~600 km unpowered glide used up less than 100 EC, so 405 EC can potentially be a bit of an overkill. But it depends on how long you plan to fly

Also, I read through my rules again and decided to slightly adjust some of them I realized that if you make a Powered Unmanned Plane with only 100 EC, after the prop motors run out of juice you will lose control of the plane aswell, since probe core will also run out of charge. For that reason, I will allow to carry more electric charge. However, you are not allowed to use more than 100 EC during powered flight: for example, you can initially glide unpowered, then engage the motors, then after using no more than 100 EC disengage the motors and continue to glide unpowered Also, Planes are not allowed to have means to recharge the batteries altogether: this requirement is no more limited to Powered submissions only. You are still allowed to keep the Plane fully charged during interplanetary transfer, just make sure that Plane can't be recharged once it decouples from Launch Stack OP will be updated accordingly I guess it is a matter of perspective, but it is easier than you think. As soon as you figure out how to fit the Plane into the fairing bay, the rest is quite easy. The devil is in the details or, in this case, the optimizations

Okay, so I quickly threw something together to get on the board and have something that other potential contenders can compare against First off is the Plane Foldable wings, unmanned, unpowered and mass of 931 kg Here's the Launch Stack Twin-Boar first stage, Poodle second stage and 66.439 tons of mass Launch and transfer to Duna is standard, so I'm not gonna get into too much detail Unfolding the wings and deploying the Plane As soon as I hit 50km altitude, I engage Trail tracking. Turns out, it does measure the exact distance travelled, so that's a plus! I went deep into the atmosphere in order to aerobrake enough so that the Plane doesn't skip back into space. After that I just kept the Plane level and tried to carry as much speed as I could The Plane couldn't carry its glide anymore, so it hit the face of a mountain Final distance is 596.421 km. Just shy of 600 km, which is also almost 1/3 of the Duna's circumference!

As we all know here, Ingenuity became the first aircraft to achieve powered flight on Mars. It also became the first rotorcraft to fly on another celestial body. NASA, however, did consider winged aircraft first. There was ARES proposal that was ultimately abandoned in favor of Mars Phoenix program. There were Earth high-altitude research drones with adorable name "Mini-Sniffers" (pictured below) that could theoretically be adapted for Mars flight. And there is also a prototype solar glider Sky-Sailor developed by ETH Zürich that could be developed into a fully fledged mission if funding is provided Thankfully, we are not limited by either budget or feasibility of such missions in KSP and, therefore, for this challenge, we will develop a Duna airplane Mission Profile: The plane will be stored inside a fairing and launched from Kerbin towards Duna. After reaching Duna, the plane will separate from main rocket and enter the planet's atmosphere and glide as far as it can before it either crashes or lands softly on the surface Construction Rules: Only Stock parts are allowed, for both Plane and the Launch Vehicle Plane must be able to fit inside a 3.75 meter fairing. Fairing can NOT be made wider than its base, which means you will need to get creative with wing shapes or robotics in order to make the Plane fit Plane must be either an unpowered glider or be powered by electric props. Depending on that, your submission will be labeled either Unpowered or Powered Plane can be either Manned or Unmanned, that is up to your preferences If the Plane is Manned, the Kerbals aboard must survive the landing. Whether you choose to bail out and pull the parachute, attempt a soft landing or use the plane as an impact absorber is up to you, as long as all kerbals survive If the Plane is Unmanned, your save file must have CommNet enabled like on Normal difficulty. Don't forget to put an antenna on the Plane and couple of relays around Duna beforehand Plane cannot have any means to recharge its batteries: no solar panels/fuel cells/RTGs and whatnot With that being said, you can keep the Plane fully charged for the transfer from Kerbin to Duna. Just make sure all recharging means are discarded before atmospheric flight phase Launch Vehicle must use 3.75 meter fairing to store the Plane Significant part clipping is only allowed for Plane fuselage optimizations. Minor part clipping of wings and control surfaces of the Plane is allowed, but don't overdo it. No part clipping for Launch Vehicles EDIT: I think the thread name already makes it pretty clear, but just in case: the Plane must have wing parts. Wingless gliders won't be accepted Specific requirements for Powered submissions: Plane can only use no more than 100 electric charge to power the props. Rest of the flight must be performed unpowered Props can NOT be offset in any way. Prop offsetting can significantly reduce energy usage to the point of actually generating electric charge, essentially making an infiniglider. So, for the purpose of fairness, props can only be placed "normally" without additional fine adjustments Challenge rules: The whole stack must be launched from KSC Only the Plane is allowed to enter Duna's atmosphere: non-essential equipment like transfer stages must be detached before atmospheric entry. You are, however, ALLOWED to do a braking burn and even enter Duna's orbit altogether if you want to, as long as you don't skim the atmosphere while doing it. As soon as you're ready for the Duna flight, all non-essential equipment must be discarded After entering the atmosphere, you are NOT allowed to escape back to space: once you're in - you're gliding through the air until the end There will be three scoring criteria: weight of the Plane, weight of the entire Launch Stack and Distance travelled. You must include a screenshot of the first two criteria from VAB/SPH with data shown, some screenshots from the mission itself and a final screenshot of the landing site. Third criteria might be tricky to measure in pure stock KSP, so I recommend Persistent Trails that can track your flight trajectory and distance : just start logging your glide as soon as you hit Duna's atmosphere and then make a screenshot of your travelled distance. Alternatively, you can try out @linuxgurugamer's edit of Persistent Trails: this one will start recording automatically as soon as you enter the atmosphere! Third option, if you prefer to play without mods, is to use KerbNet to mark your entry point and then calculate the distance by hand (check @18Watt's submissions for an example on how to do it) Speaking of mods: Mods that affect gameplay (physics changes or new parts) are not allowed. Information mods like KER and graphics mods are allowed Submissions: OJT Unpowered, Unmanned. Plane Mass - 931 kg; Launch Stack Mass - 66.439 tons; Distance - 596.421 km Unpowered, Manned (2 Kerbals). Plane Mass - 1722 kg; Launch Stack Mass - 62.794 tons; Distance - 754.295 km Unpowered, Unmanned. Plane Mass - 707 kg; Launch Stack Mass - 61.325 tons; Distance - 24478.43 km 18Watt Powered, Unmanned. Plane Mass - 804 kg; Launch Stack Mass - 125.562 tons; Distance - 1189.709 km Powered, Unmanned. Plane Mass - 804 kg; Launch Stack Mass - 125.662 tons; Distance - 1509.905 km Unpowered, Manned (1 Kerbal). Plane Mass - 1188 kg; Launch Stack Mass - 126.188 tons; Distance - 12593.132 km Powered, Manned (1 Kerbal). Plane Mass - 1435 kg; Launch Stack Mass - 66.82 tons; Distance - 1946.392 km linuxgurugamer Unpowered, Unmanned. Plane Mass - 4330 kg; Launch Stack Mass - 418.639 tons; Distance - 1808.855 km Unpowered, Unmanned. Plane Mass - 4330 kg; Launch Stack Mass - 418.639 tons; Distance - 2792.045 km kerbalboi Unpowered, Unmanned. Plane Mass - 1065 kg; Launch Stack Mass - 235.333 tons; Distance - 9148.058 km Good luck!

Water in stock KSP is basically flat: you can go really nuts with boat designs. I've seen some videos of people hitting over 200 m/s with a boat (basically the cruise speed of some small airliners). Although most of there boats usually took off or got obliterated shortly after achieving those speeds, you can still reliably cruise at 150 m/s if you build the boat right and pack enough fuel. Scatterer adds waves, which makes boat design significantly harder in terms of pure achievable speed, so if you just want to be done with it quickly, I recommend doing the naval Elcano without Scatterer

This would basically require the Orbiter to be an Eve SSTO, and I've only seen like six people build functional Eve SSTOs, of which two used game exploits, and one was not even a "plane" shape. With that being said, I did test some designs, and I couldn't even make it suborbital . However, building the Drone for this mission did bring in some more ideas on how I could potentially execute the Orbiter landing and return, but even then, IF it works, the Orbiter will only be able to make it to low orbit and require a refuel to get back to Kerbin. Some STS missions do allow support launches, but I still need to get an Orbiter working first before thinking about support packages. We'll see

@sturmhauke So, here's the mission I've been working on. I am not quite sure where it would slot in STS Challenges, but the closest thing I could describe it as is the Eve STS-2 Proposal In Eve STS-1, you must deliver a drone that will enter Eve's atmosphere, conduct three experiments, return to orbit and be recovered by Orbiter, and then Orbiter must return to Kerbin My mission is pretty much the same... except the drone must land on Eve and then return to orbit. It took me a lot of experimentation and planning, and I sadly had to abandon the Mk.2 chassis in favor of Mk.3, hence the reason I post this directly here and not in my Mk.2 Shuttles thread. But I did manage to make it work in the end First of all, we need to launch the Orbiter. Launcher has enough fuel to deliver the Orbiter all the way into Kerbin low orbit, I only used a tiny bit of Orbiter's reserves to get away from boosters after separation, leaving the entire Orbit pretty much fully fueled We set up the maneuver to Eve afterwards and do multiple burns (due to very low TWR of 0.1ish) to efficiently escape Kerbin. I took screenshots of first and last burn After several months, we arrive at Eve Conforming to Commander requirements of Eve STS-1, I did a VERY toasty aerobrake (peak critical part heating of 99.6%). It wasn't enough to capture however, so I did a retrograde burn straight afterwards After that I corrected my inclination and did multiple more, less toasty aerobrakes to finally enter equatorial low Eve orbit Time to reveal our Landing Drone! It has engines to independently lower its periapsis, huge heatshield, fins at the back for stabilizing and parachutes Descending into Eve. Drone was controlled from a relay satellite that I delivered to Eve a while ago on a separate, non-related mission. Whole reentry went relatively smoothly As I came closer to the surface, I realized that I wasn't actually coming to a surface: I happened to be descending pretty much in a middle of the Crater Lake, with no landmass in close vicinity. I didn't test splashdowns during development, but I didn't want to do the entire reentry sequence from scratch, so I decided to go ahead and see what will happen Turns out, Drone does float without flipping, so the splashdown was a success! Unfortunately, it did mean that I couldn't conduct seismic experiment, but thankfully I had thermometer, barometer and Gravioli detector, thus fulfilling the "3 experiments" requirement Now the hardest part of the whole mission: Eve ascent. The drone first ascends with electric props, shedding the heatshield, fins and landing legs (didn't need them at the end). After reaching 14km, props separate and aerospike engines engage to raise the altitude. Last stage has a Spark and 4 Ant engines and goes the rest of the way to orbit I did make things a bit easier for myself by using props for first part of ascent, but there's still a HUGE emphasis on "a bit": the whole ascent is built on very small margins. I had to repeat ascent lots of times before finally making it all the way to orbit, and even then I barely succeeded: Drone at the end had only 68 m/s of deltaV left Time to recover the Drone. Rendezvous was a little tricky due to Orbiter not having any RCS capability and the Drone having limited control due to relay sat being on the other side of the planet, but I managed to grab the Drone with Grabbing Arm and stow it inside the cargo bay After recovering the Drone, we await the transfer window and burn to Kerbin, splitting one burn into multiple (one burn was captured on screenshot) After reaching orbit, we do one aerobrake to capture, adjust inclination... ... and slow down with second aerobrake KSC Runway was too far away for me to reach, so I glided towards Desert Runway This was the first time I ever landed on Desert Runway, so it facing perpendicular to equator was a bit of a surprise, but the Orbiter is designed to be a very good glider, so it wasn't much of a issue to correct course Mission completed! And with every Commander rank requirement from Eve STS-1 satisfied, this would theoretically qualify as Eve STS-2 Commander submission. Let me know what you think about this

Wasn't necessary in the end: I managed to downsize the mission payload and it fits into Mk.3 bay now. Doing the mission right now, will post here later in the evening if all goes well

Assuming this challenge continues into KSP2, I can imagine how brutal circumnavigation of Ovin is going to be. Noticeably bigger than Kerbin and 4 g gravity. From reading some of the submissions here, Eve Elcano is already a pain in the bottom Earth by comparison is essentially a supersized Kerbin. With a fast boat and no Scatterer (so that oceans have no wave physics), it could probably be done within a month. It is more a matter of patience than matter of pain

Progress update: covered 60km today. I crossed the mountainous region and descended to Midlands. Landscape still has a lot of hills, but the transitions are smoother, which allows to carry more speed. Crashed once when I went over a hill too fast and a rock formation emerged, but I didn't lose much progress, so I reloaded and tried again Screenshots are dimmer than previous ones: switched the TUFX profile Oh hell nah

Don't get too gassed about it. I'm doing the Duna run and then I peace out . I'll leave the Grand Master badges to other crazy lot

@sturmhauke I am working on a little something that might potentially qualify for STS Challenge, but I still want to clarify one thing Can Orbiters have deployable fairings? Or the entire Orbiter must be intact from start to finish? I have a certain payload that can make the mission interesting, but it doesn't fit into Mk.3 loading bay despite my best efforts to minimize it. However, it will easily fit into a fairing and my initial plan was to make two cargo bays: one deployable and one Mk.3 bay to recover the payload after it completes its mission

Progress update: covered 40 km. I happened to land my rover in very mountainous region: hills seemingly get only higher and higher and it is a bit hard to maintain consistent speed: on open flat areas I can safely push to 25 m/s while on uphill rocky hillsides I have to slow down to basically walking speeds. Rock colliders being noticeably glitchier on hillsides doesn't help either, but hey, we move First fail of the run: rover randomly split in half after seemingly trivial attempt to scale the hill. I wasn't traveling fast, there were no big rocks to crash into, but the Kraken still decided to rip off the entire right axle. Lost 10 km of progress and had to reload to previous save. Thank God the save/reloads are allowed

I did experiment with half-tracks, but they've proven to be a bit too janky for Parallax colliders: they don't travel as smoothly through rubble as I expected and sometimes outright bump into even small rocks, stopping the rover (and risking flipping it). Wheels have more room to travel and wider range of suspension adjustments As for clearance, lower CoG easily outweighs the ability to go over rocks: less risk of rolling, more stability and soft suspension doesn't have as much of a penalty. And some of the rocks are way too big to scale anyway, so I might as well drive around the rubble that the rover can bottom out on

So, I caved in and decided to actually do an Elcano run, even though I despise rovers in KSP (as challenge host 18Watt probably knows about from other threads ). But I decided to do it with a couple of twists (read: mods) First, we need to deliver the rover to our destination: Duna Kerbin ascent and departure Duna arrival First reentry to slow down Shedding off the fairing and entering a low Duna orbit Staging the transfer stage and descending Separating the descent stage Yes, your eyes do not deceive you: I am doing the run with Parallax 2.0 with colliders enabled. I did however make things more tolerable by using modded wheels from KerbalFoundries2 mod, because stock wheel physics are absolute abomination and should be burned with fire Driving a bit downhill to more flat area to plant the starter flag Rover went through multiple design iterations before the final build. Lots of wheels, wide track, very soft suspension for better bump absorption, deployable solar panels for EC generation and A LOT of repair kits, just in case KerbalFoundries2 is pretty dope: adds wheels, aircraft landing gear, landing legs and half-tracks. Wheels still feel a bit wonky sometimes: they can suddenly get a lot of grip and flip the rover during sharp turning at moderate speeds, but they are still a huge improvement over stock wheels. 100% recommend for rover-builders Parallax 2.0 is a blast as well. Rocks have decent variety to them: flats have noticeably different boulders compared to mountains and it encourages you to plan your route (or landing spots) more carefully. Colliders however have been kind of inconsistent. It does say in the manual that colliders are still in "beta" and turned off by default, and that colliders are only generated for medium-and-above-sized rocks. But some rocks that seemingly qualify to these requirements don't have colliders, while once I managed to bump into a rock that didn't have visual texture (almost flipped the rover doing it, but I managed to save it) So far I've driven 20 kilometers from the start. From my approximates, the whole journey should take me around 30-35 hours. Let's see how it goes P.S. This might be the first Elcano attempt with Parallax 2.0 posted. Correct me if I'm wrong @18Watt Bonus: glitchy colliders

Some eye-candy for the thread

How's that special badge coming along?

*Vietnam flashbacks* It was a fun challenge to be fair Regarding this challenge: I know the challenge specifically requires electric propulsion, but hydrogen fuel cells are a thing and they produce basically no harmful emissions. Canonically, KSP's Liquid Fuel is closest to RP-1 Kerosene, but I think allowing fuel cells that use hydrogen (there might be mods for it) can give an interesting spin on the challenge With that being said, here's my 100 EC circumnavigator that I built for 18Watt's challenge. Since it is all electric, it is eligible for this thread. Although, with flight time of 17 hours and 13 minutes, it will probably be the slowest submission in this thread

Counterpoint: in science rollers, Kerbals are strapped into their seats and are secure. When walking outside they can accidentally sprain their ankle, which is against kerbinian OSHA regulations

Second day was kind of uneventful, but there were still some milestones achieved I've built a plane that I used to complete Kerbin contracts I did three Minmus landings. Also first soft landings on other celestial body I've built a recoverable booster. Contracts pay very well and I wouldn't save much money from recovering boosters in the first place, but I liked the challenge And I also had to redo the Mun orbit mission. I tried to get science from space high above Mun, but during reentry the Science Jr. exploded, even though it was protected by the heatshield and previous reentries with said capsule went without issues. I modified the reentry capsule to transfer the Science Jr. data into Experiment Storage Unit and eject the Science Jr. before reentry, and second attempt was successful But most importantly: I fully upgraded my tracking station and I unlocked more powerful antennas, which means that I can commence first interplanetary missions during next session. Things will get more interesting from there KSC and Tech Tree progress

I decided to have a crack at this as well. Why not, I haven't played KSP in quite a while, might aswell shed off some rust with this. Playing on Normal difficulty with CommNet on First: gathering science to unlock the steaming pile of junk Stayputnik. I did three roller cruises: one with Mystery Goo from Launchpad across the grass (which counted as Shores biome) to Runway. Then I unlocked the Thermometer and Barometer and did the same route again and then did the Runway-to-SPH-to-VAB route to gather the last piece of science I needed to unlock first probe core. I actually gathered a bit more science points than I would need, so I took the liberty to unlock some extra stuff for future endeavors First attempt at suborbital: failed. Stayputnik, turns out, has no reaction wheels and its shape proved to be more blunt than I anticipated and the rocket flipped. Thankfully, I saved it with parachutes and did some in-flight science while descending Second attempt at suborbital: partial failure. I addressed the issues of first rocket with some of newly unlocked parts. I did reach space and I did conduct science there, but in the efforts of trying to make the whole rocket recoverable I kinda forgot that passive aerodynamic stability works both ways and the rocket plummeted into the ocean at Mach 2 Third time's the charm: I decided to shelve reusability for now and simply made the science capsule detach before reentry. Mission successful and LKO science recovered I unlocked a better probe core and attempted to reach orbit to get contract money and I also accepted the contract to test Terrier engine to unlock it early First attempt failed: SRB burned off too early and second stage flipped due to aero instability. Saved it with parachutes Second attempt (with liquid fuel 1st stage) was successful, albeit with thinner margins than I planned After unlocking first reaction wheel and better winglets I built the Mun rocket. It simply made a fly-by of the Mun and returned to Kerbin on free return trajectory. Gained some science from space near Mun, but most importantly I earned good money from it which I could utilize for KSC upgrades After that I mostly spent my time doing contracts (Haul Part X to Y, Test Part Z and so on) Most successful launch of the day was this satellite: it did two satellite contracts, Mun Orbit contract and Minmus Temperature Survey contracts all in a single launch, earning lots of moolah for the "Probe Go Brrr" Space Program Here's my KSC and Tech Tree after yesterday's shenanigans. Let's see how it goes today

Not OP, but I'd argue that is even more dangerous for Kerbals if they have no means of controlling the vessel . So I assume that tourist contracts are also off table

Yea, I'll figure something out. It's more about doing these challenges while still conforming to self-imposed Mk.2 rules, but that one is on me