ThePsuedoMonkey

Thanks, guys They were a nice challenge to design, though I only just recently tried to find their max payloads (they were first used to launch 1,4,6,9,13, and 20 tons respectively). Their payload fraction could probably be increased if a bunch of 'chutes were replaced with fuel, but I'm not sure how much higher it can go as a DSTO. A reusable 55T launcher would be pretty sweet, Silicon014. The senior docking ports tend to break off a lot with heavier payloads though, so you may need to resort to using multiple docking points for that. Can't wait to see it!

In preparation for career mode I've been developing my space program using only fully-recoverable spacecraft, having been inspired by a certain Youtube channel. There are already threads dedicated to SSTOs and spaceplanes, but those aren't the only ways to reuse your ships! If it doesn't leave debris or lose any parts during a normal launch then it's welcome here. Lets see your lineups of recoverable lifters. These were the workforce of my program, the StarGoose rockets; each is capable of reaching a 100km periapsis with their proofing payload, and each stage is capable of landing in water if required. They are dual-stage-to-orbit, with the first stage launching straight upward and the second closing the orbit or pushing apoapsis far enough away to allow you to land the first one back at KSC before finishing the orbital insertion. After dropping the payload, the orbital stage will have enough dV to deorbit itself and land back on Kerbin. They have a bit of wiggle room for orbital maneuvers, but you may want to under-load them if you want to do some LKO rendezvous and docking procedures. Each stage has parachutes to slow down, but a powered landing from the reserve fuel tanks is advised. The flightplan makes you lose ~900 m/s over a traditional rocket launch, but deliver their payload much faster than spaceplanes. The structural plates can be replaced with procedural fairing bases if that's your thing; they're mostly there to guarantee some landing fuel reserve. Download [table=width: 600, class: outer_border, align: center] [tr] [td]StarGoose series[/td] [td]I[/td] [td]II[/td] [td]III[/td] [td]IV[/td] [td]V[/td] [td]VI[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Max Payload[/td] [td]1.75[/td] [td]4.25[/td] [td]7.5[/td] [td]13[/td] [td]26[/td] [td]44[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]payload fraction[/td] [td]7.61%[/td] [td]8.25%[/td] [td]8.34%[/td] [td]8.23%[/td] [td]8.27%[/td] [td]8.49%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Propellant to payload ratio[/td] [td]8.39[/td] [td]8.19[/td] [td]7.93[/td] [td]8.38[/td] [td]8.68[/td] [td]8.39[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]part count[/td] [td]41[/td] [td]46[/td] [td]60[/td] [td]107[/td] [td]112[/td] [td]172[/td] [/tr] [/table]

Why not use a shielded docking port?

40% off rovers while supplies last!

Based on your landing speed and number of parachutes I'm guessing that thing is about 6 tons, in which case a total of 216kN of thrust will give a TWR around 2 on Eve. Now if you just removed the engines from it, the parachutes would drop your landing speed under 3m/s anyway. As for the braking burn, terminal velocity on Eve is around 60m/s and 2000kN on a 6T ship means an acceleration of over 300, so a suicide burn would start 0.2s before crashing

Meet the HybrIon Probe Since my reasoning is to give ideas to new players on building craft without just handing out a perfect one, this little guy demonstrates clipping two big batteries inside a few octagonal struts (so that they do not obstruct solar panels) as well as the benefit of combining different engines. The sepratrons reduce the tedium of ion engines by giving an 175m/s boost to speed when it is most needed (they add ~70m/s to total dV if fired at the start, but actually reduce total dV by 750 if fired after all Xenon is used up), which eliminates one or two periapsis kicks. The gear action group toggles solar panels, the Ion, and the instruments, while the brakes group activates the antennae. The batteries give at least 51.8s of full ion burn when in Kerbin shadow at 100km, and 88.9s in Kerbin sunlight. It has room for improvement, but has a nice balance to it: there are intentionally neither RTGs (a trio of Ox-Stats prevents dying from lack of electricity) nor a launch vehicle. It sports a conservative number of solar panels, which allows for a maximum of 5.1km/s of dV while keeping the mass under 3/4T (for an acceleration of 0.67m/s2), the part count at 25, and a respectable 1/3 cruising throttle. Cheers!

Here's a desktop which PassMark puts its CPU at about 3x better than my laptop (and comparable to that ProBook) for $400: 3.2GHz A8-5500, 4GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, Radeon HD7560D, USB keyboard/mouse, Win8 - $370 after rebate ...and the most reasonable HDMI monitor I found 22", 1080p, 5ms - $138, which seems like a ripoff considering I paid less than that for my old 22" monitor five years ago. I tried building one from components, but it came up to $370 before I picked a mainboard/CPU/GPU combo and I'm not sure that leaves enough wiggle room . Honestly, I'd recommend that HP ProBook from TigerDirect if you can get it for $500.

I'd have to agree with bsalis since the stock craft didn't really help me out while I was learning the game a few months ago. I did find the Albatross entertaining to fly the first time, but not being able to land the thing brings that feeling to a halt fairly quickly. By the time I got around to trying out the stock craft I had already learned enough to know that I didn't like many of them, so I ended up deleting them all from my computer once I had tried a few. I can understand not wanting them to be 100% perfect, but I think having a little less room for improvement would be much more beneficial to new players.

The Chimera I and the Chimera II refueler/shuttlecraft by ThePsuedoMonkey Both models have five seats, RTG power, computer backup, roving capability, a 1m tank of monopropellant, standard and junior docking ports, the mass-less landing gear, two large 1m tanks of fuel and a single LVN, which gives them a maximum of 5 landing/takeoff cycles. The Chimera I: 13.58T, 31 parts, an initial TWR of 2.71, and a total dV of 6970 unloaded and 6700 with the four external seats occupied. HTOL design allows you to save a bit of fuel during landing by not killing all horizontal velocity, and during takeoff by accelerating with the rover wheels. An RTG is embedded inside the RCS tank, and a linear RCS port is attached to the command pod to make takeoff easier. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6828vVl_-ZodGxhWVhZTlFnYUk/edit?usp=sharing The Chimera II: 13.79T, 39 parts, an initial TWR of 2.67 and a total dV of 6800 unloaded and 6530 with the four external seats occupied. VTOL design simplifies landings, gives more docking ports, and makes roving in IVA mode feel awesome. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6828vVl_-ZoM3VYMmRZUUdUU2M/edit?usp=sharing

A pair of the rectangular wing connectors gives a nice wide surface that's very lightweight.

Challenge #94 Complete Total Kerbals lost: 2 Total Extra-Kerbin landings: 9 Next Event:Act Corp Station Transfer in 6 days First order of business; the Iron Sparrow rescued the endangered kerbal and returned him to the staging grounds west of KSC. We've also balanced the payloads on the Valkyrie via fuel transfer (make sure to shut off fuel crossflow for the starboard one if you need to fire the engines). Bill and Jeb managed to run over some kind of animal, but they are maintaining their adventure. We've also launched two orange tanks into orbit, which are ready for transfer to the Valkyrie. These two tanks will take her dV from 3500 to 5000+, so she has ~50T of space up for grabs. Sir Kenrims ship has been updated in the alarm clock as well. The next challenge will be fairly easy; launch the Sampson orbital-assembly vehicle into low orbit. Action groups 1-5 are used, which toggle engines and RCS groups. Optional objective: dock with the TwinTank, which is in a low orbit. The launch vehicle of the Sampson only has 4300dV, so you'll need to fire the nukes. 1=toggle rear engines, 2=toggle forward engines, 3=toggle all engines, 4=toggle 1m RCS group, 5=toggle 2m RCS group. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6828vVl_-ZoRHlPeG96VUlKb1E/edit?usp=sharing

I've added a few sources to the "reception" section. Criticism is appreciated

RCS thrusters can also add up quickly on stations, so I try to restrict them to the main structural module of the station. If a station module is too heavy to launch without struts, you can use a pair of docking ports to create a cowling to reinforce it instead, though its mass will eat into your dV and you will want to make sure the parts connect properly. You can also setup an action group to eject the cowling once you no longer need it. As for docking, it can be much less frustrating to do in steps (zero relative velocity at ~200m, align ports, move to ~100m, zero velocity, align ports, etc.) especially when your RCS ports aren't balanced around your ships CoM. I tend to use that method a lot when using an RCS tug to assemble stations.

Good to see you, Hawk harleyro, if you finished the rendezvous and zeroed their relative velocity go ahead and upload it; they don't strictly need to be docked just yet.

Challenge # 91 Complete Total Kerbals lost: 2 Total Extra-Kerbin landings: 9 Next event: last chance for the Moho window. For some reason, the planes did a lot of exploding the first time I loaded it. I quickloaded and moved them out of physics range of the launch facilities so that doesn't happen again (probably the same reason it happened to the last motel). I also planted a flag at the end of the runway to help guide things back to KSC in the future. The Interplanetary Fuel Depot has received its transfer burn, though the intercept isn't that great at the moment (~2Gm), so I also scheduled a course correction for when it reaches the Moho descending node. The booster module from the observatory has also been deorbited. The next challenge... The Charon has departed Shiva Station with the Crazy Ivan tug, and docked with the Tranquility lounger. Your objective is to rendezvous with the Valkyrie and dock to one of the junior ports on the size-1 cargo arms. Finally, time warp through the remainder of the Moho window so that we can finish preparations for the Duna and Jool windows. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6828vVl_-ZoYTFaeHBLU240RzQ/edit?usp=sharing

Hmm, it won't load for me. Can you make sure there aren't any mod parts on it?

The best part of small vessels are the realtime flights I've been downsizing all of my ships recently since they are much more fun to use, though I really wish there was a smaller monopropellant tank in the stock catalogue.

We did have one back around page 10, but then it randomly exploded on someone. I had made it pretty crappy though, so it wasn't much of a loss. My guess is that it was too close to the VAB or something. :/

Challenge #86 Completed Total rescue missions: 4 Next event: Moho transfer window in 10 days The short rescue trip was deftly handled by the Dionysus mk2. Bill didn't seem to appreciate it as much as Jeb though. Those metal rover seats are probably uncomfortable for long-term use, so your challenge is to design and deploy a mobile habitation module for as many kerbals as possible using 50 parts, and load all our off-duty kerbals near KSC into it. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6828vVl_-ZoTFFLUzA3Q2h0X2M/edit?usp=sharing Cheers, brave challengers!

No worries with the Tranquility, it can dock to the shielded size-1 ports on the dorsal/ventral position of the Valkyrie.

Yeah, I forgot to deploy the ladders (action group #4), but they will let you load the kerbals into the hitchhiker module. I've not used Crew Manifest, but it sounds like It'd work equally well.

Ah, if I knew someone else was already working on it I would've waited I'll hurry up and finish then, so that you can do the next one Challenge #82 Completed Total Kerbals lost: 2 Total Extra-Kerbin landings: 8 The Star Destroyer has reached orbit. It was a little difficult to dock with the temporary fuel depot, but the Garbage Truck mk2 served as an excellent attachment point: For this challenge, the Tranquility lounger is ready to launch. Board two more kerbals on her, send her into orbit, and circularize on the Rockmax 24-77's (careful not to drop them), then time-warp 24hrs or so. Optional objective: design a module to counter-balance the (16.24T) Tranquility lounger for when the Valkyrie transports her to Lathe. The launch vehicle feeds off the FLT-800's until the SRB's drop, and has enough dV to reach orbit. The radial thrusters are meant to de-orbit the module on Laythe, and she should have enough parachutes to land alone. There is only one docking port and no RCS though. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6828vVl_-ZoUml0SkRySHJWN28/edit?usp=sharing

ETA: 2hrs LKO orbit achieved... Preparing to dock... Refueling... Uploading save...

Running Baryon sweep... Activating the Omega-13... Prolonging Wowbagger... Chastising Icarus... "Recycling" debris...

Poor Herory, at least he went doing what he loved... lithobraking that is. I think the rotation was caused by the landing gear somehow, since extending them seemed to stop it when I was landing the thing. Ah well, bugs happen. The ship looks good, but it seems like it has a quantum strut core instead of ASAS somewhere, so that might be why no one has claimed it yet.