AtomicSnails

Final Frontiers Flight LLC Presents Click here to see images!!! The FF-Shockcone This truly revolutionary craft utilizes a new technology called mode switch engine bypass. By simply a press of a button (oddly shaped to look like the number 1 on a keyboard "hint hint") the Shockcone can change its subsonic twin engines into powerful supersonic monsters capable of cruising around mach 2.4 at altitudes around 16,000 meters. the Shockcone is able to carry 40 passengers in luxury, each seat is equipped with reclining seats and full access to a mini-fridge. While no employee of Final Frontiers flight division wanted to do a proper test of range (the closest was one test pilot named J. Kerman who made it for an hour before deciding to try "sick stunts") it is estimated to have a range of 4,700 kilometers. Our new karbon fiber frame allows the Shockcone to function solely on its subsonic mode, making it ideal for not only supersonic journeys, but smaller regional routes. the innovative delta+ frame of the Shockcone also allows for the amount of sonicboom, to be delivered up in a cone shape instead of down towards the ground, making high altitude supersonic flight over land possible. Of course what you care about mostly is the cost, and why shouldn't you? After all we have yet to see a profitable supersonic transportation system since the ill fated Konkorde Jet. however, we have been able to drop our costs down to a price that rivals competitors normal subsonic forms of transportation. Each of our FF Shockcone planes come with a three year guarantee* at the low low price of 30,136,000. We have decided to send you one of our Shockcone crafts (all 34 parts included) as well as a easy to use manual (a slip of paper simply saying "press 1 to go faster" ) we hope to hear back from you and hopefully see our included order form filled out Best Wishes Final Frontiers CEO A. TomicSnails *Warranty void if refueled or used for stunt purposes Stats for nerd: Mass: 18.980t Height: 5m Width: 10m Length: 19m Take off speed: 60m/s Landing speed 50m/s Ground level fuel consumption: 1.24/s Supersonic Mode .35/s subsonic mode Cruising Consumption: .25/s Actual Cruising Speed: 830-860 m/s Recommended Cruising Altitude: 13,000-16,000 Meters Fuel Weight: 1280 Units Pick up your free demo plane here: https://kerbalx.com/AtomicSnails/FF-Shockcone

Alright sounds awesome, hopefully we get my fleet in later today

While not the most unique (in terms of how it lands) I am impressed by your all in one system with refueling and everything really cool.

We have a small problem The seas off of the Kerbal Space Center is getting quite cluttered with spent stages and solid rocket motors that have splashed down into the ocean. Lately some of the higher ups in the research and development offices have had a radical idea: "What if we recovered our first stages?" After so heated arguments with the engineers who said it just can't be done, they have turned to you! The Challenge: Recover the first stage of your rocket (this means SSTO's don't count). You can do this however however you see fit, whether you want to land the first stage on a barge in the ocean, have it glide its way back onto the runway, or do something completely crazy! I want to see your ideas on how to recover a first stage, the Kerbal way. Points for this challenge are awarded as such one point: your craft is able to land its first stage safely two points: your craft is able to land the first stage near the KSC' three points: your craft is able to land the first stage on the runway/ launchpad four points: your craft is able to make the first stage land on the island runway five points: your craft is able to land the first stage on a barge/mobile landing pad you have put somwhere BONUS POINTS you will be given an extra 3 points for each of the following you are able to land your second/third/fourth ect stage/stages as well as your first you land your first stage using only SRBs you land your first stage using propellers you refuel your first stage and have it meet back up with the second stage or whatever stage is in orbit you recovered not only the first stage but any liquid/solid boosters that assisted it Hope to see some cool designs Leader Board 1: sevenperforce 11 points (two for landing near the KSC, 3 for recovering second stage, and considering how he refueled and rebuilt the ship I am giving him 6 points there) 2 3 4 5 -AtomicSnails

By All means go for it, would love to see it done.

Due to the glitchy nature of kerbals being able to bounce no, however if your return capsule is just some seats and a heatsheild thats fine You can use as many 1M engines as you want

No problem I never saw it that way, think I will add that rule back, I have seen what people can do with just one pod and a efficient engine want to add some challenge

Did not know that, Ok well then I will edit the rules, have fun everyone

The idea I imagined is one capsule is the lander stage, the other capsule is for the return, I wanted to add a bit of realism. And in real life you don't use your lander for re-entry I imagine the most standard configuration would be the small 1M crew capsule, and the 1M lander can, that being said if some wants to use plane cockpits or some of the crew storage pieces with a probe body, be my guest. (TLDR I don't want people to just throw a single capsule on a super efficient small lander, I want to see some creative designs)

Presenting the Private Mun challenge A.K.A. "Muncheap" So by now I am sure almost everyone has landed on the Mun (If not then welcome new kerbal player) So let's make a special challenge so we can have fun. You are tasked with creating a cheap Mun lander for private use. Due to it being a private lander some rules are in place 1. You do not have access to docking technology, you may use docking ports for staging in place of separators as long as you don't redock 2. Due to being privately funded you only have access to one meter command pods. 3. Parts that can be re-used (such as landing stages like Space X) will not help your score, however feel free to use them since they look cool. 4. due to being privately funded you are limited to only ONE, two meter engine you may use as many 1 meter engines as you like 5. You cannot user any three meter parts aside from the three meter fairing and heat shield 6. You cannot use Vector, Atomic Engines, or Rapiers 7. you must land at least one Kerbal on the Mun or planet of your choice (see categories below) 8. Your craft must have at least two command pods, one for the landing and space travel, one for the re-entry. you can use any combination of probes, chairs and piloted pieces you want. 9. If you are using the allowed mods posted be sure to mention them so I can put them into the proper category The person with the cheapest option wins in their "category" MODS ALLOWED: KW Rocketry (as long as your engines follow the rules stated) Tweakscale Firespitter HL Airships (can not use the cirrus part, real lift cirrus part is allowed) Any atheistic mods such as scatterer Mech Jeb for info ONLY Categories: Easy- Land and return from mun Medium- Land and return from mun and drop off a rover Hard- Land on the Mun, and Minmus drop off a rover on both, then return Super hard- Land and return from Duna Now you're just showing off- Land and return from Eve How did you?!?!- Land on Moho, drop off rover, then go to Eeloo, drop of rover, then return Hope to see some fun designs.

What if you were to strap the cube sats together kind of like a strutted grid? that way its not enough surface area for solar wind to really affect it yet it doesn't drift away from the other satellites. The grid would need to be larger so that you could change the message to whatever you wanted it to be. Maybe there is a pivot on the cube sats so that they can tilt certain directions depending on if they need to reflect or not.

Thats actually a really good idea, although it would be extremely expensive to send up all of those, also I would imagine that the lights would need to be really powerful. That being said, I don't have any knowledge of lights that far away, so I would need info from some of you guys. Otherwise that seems like a really good solution. The lack of giant structure would mean you won't have to worry about a solar sail issue.

Perhaps you could launch it in multiple parts, seal it together with some sort of glue? also need to consider the weight of the paint for the lettering. Also going to talk from the business standpoint for a second. here are some of the most wealthy companies (in a semi random order) Walmart Samsung Shell Apple Volkswagon According to wikipedia as of January first 2016, Walmart (the largest revenue) is 482 Billion Dollars. I wonder if that would be enough for the multiple launches and construction costs needed. Looking at all the suggestions I have seen from you guys so far, a large project ECHO does seem to be the best option, so now that we have the way it would be made, I guess now we need to figure out size, orbit, cost, etc. So that hopefully we can pull some final numbers on this.

Well considering the weight it would have to be multiple launches. the question is how many launches/what would be the most cost effective amount of launches (maybe 20 launches with falcon heavy costs more then 30 falcon 9 launches) and just in general what will be the most cost effective way to do this? We are needing to approach this from the viewpoint of a business (A deranged business who thinks this would be a good way to advertise, but still)

So in that case you would want to use the cheapest material possible. What would be the cost of it? lets assume we use either the large inflatable orb, or the thin sheets, what would the cost be before factoring in launching? Also I guess since we need a higher orbit we need to recalculate the size of the actual object. Also, we still need to figure out what companies (if any) would even be able to afford this.

Well perhaps there is some more more rigid material we can use? Inflatable sounds good, but as you said it is fragile. Maybe you could have sort of an RCS device to move it out of the way of major space trash? Or maybe there is some magical orbit I don't know of where space trash is less common. However a higher orbit would of course increase the size. I am also trying to think of ways that this could be done with current/close future tech. Also I am thinking what companies could afford the cost of building a megastructure like this. What do you guys think?

This idea has been in my mind the past few days, and as someone who is not the best at math, I decided to see if my fellow forum members could help me out. I know that you can see the ISS if the time is right, although I realize what you are really seeing is more of the reflection of the sun. So my question is: let's say some company wanted to put a giant billboard into a safe stable orbit (that orbit hopefully you guys can help me figure out) how big would this billboard need to be so that someone standing on earth could see it and feasibly read what is being advertised? The second part of this question. How would one go about making this? What kind of materials would most likely be used? Would it be more reasonable to snap it together over the course of years? Or would you launch up a giant banner and unravel it? How would you maintain that the advert is facing towards the earth? And how would you eventually get rid of the giant billboard? So far from what I can figure out. I would think some sort of lightweight canvas would be the best way to go. Perhaps multiple launches of somehow stitching these giant pieces together. However, in terms of size, cost, safety, and so on. I have no clue. Would love to hear some feedback. Interested to see what you guys can come up with. - AtomicSnails

Was working with annuler wing designs and came up with this. http://imgur.com/Nrgf41B <--- here is link if image ever messes up

Recently I have fallen in love with the KAX (Kerbal Aircraft Expansion) Mod. Being able to make good looking propeller planes has filled a void in my KSP creations. Sadly, I'm running out of ideas to build, so I decided to turn to you guys. Go ahead, post your KAX creations. Whether its a realistic WWII fighter plane, or some crazy heavy lifting helicopter, go ahead and share what you have made.

I'll Probably open up leaderboards once I have more people do the challenge (or if a week has passed and your the only one) - - - Updated - - - MERTI can you upload your images to a Imgur album? They won't load for me when you embedded them. Thanks

Well This is pretty impressive, well done

Understandable, However it still can be done, Radial Intakes are a wonderful thing.

Just decided to give this thread a quick bump. Thats all and hope to see some amazing builds

A long long time ago. back even before beta. I posted a challenge, to build a supersonic seaplane (WARNING OLD POST INCOMING) So I was looking at some old plane concepts when i came across the Convair F2Y Sea Dart was a supersonic sea plane and to my knowledge it was the only one of its kind. Due to the introduction of larger aircraft carriers there was no need for them. So lets see what you can do. Your goal is to re-create this innovative machine. you can use any mods needed (I recommend B9, and Firespitter) as long as you list the mods you used. also the plane must be able to reach mach 1 (approximately 300 m/s) and be able to land and take off on water. I hope to see your creative ways of getting around the water landing. unlike my previous Re-creation challenge I posted, the F2Y has a lot of data on it and as such you should easily be able to search any pictures and specifications needed to help you. NOW THE CHALLENGE!!!! once this craft is made your goal is to push this craft to its limits include pictures of the following: (buzzing the tower) (flying low to the water/ground) (landing on water with great speed) depending on the distance/speed/height from these pictures scores will be combined with the crafts overall resemblance to the actual plane and its ability to meet the speed and water landing requirements. the best of luck and happy building -AtomicSnails (THIS ENDS OLD POST) as you can see, this is outdated, however, I want to bring the challenge back again. For far to long, I have been attempting to do this challenge, and each time I fail, or can't recreate it in the next update. Now that we have a 1.0, now we can try it all again. So here is the challenge 1. Recreate the Sea dart as close as possible to the actual plane 2. Prove it can land AND take off from the water 3. Show that it can reach mach 1 (around 320 m/s) 4. Go for bonus points (Buzz the tower, land hard on the water, maybe even make a spaceplane variation) Main judging is on realism and accuracy to detail, However don't forget the bonus points. these could make a huge difference depending on what you do. Most of all, be creative and have fun. The best of luck and hope to see some great builds -AtomicSnails Top 10 scores 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. (Note: please list mods used and what they were used for "I used XXX Pack for the XXX parts")

check out the update you will see part two