sweetpezak

Yeah it really depends on a bunch of different factors, the number of intakes/number of jet engines ratio, the mass of the ship/how much rocket fuel you're bringing, the number of rockets and the TWR, but for some of the simpler SSTO's where you aren't spamming massive amounts of intakes you likely aren't going to get over 25-30km in height; what i generally do is go 45 degrees from take-off to 10km (can go steeper but depending on your craft you might lose too much speed/intake air)... then at 9-10km pitch down to 20-25 degrees (again depends on intake air/speed you have if you can pitch higher/lower than this), then at 18-20km pitch down again to 10 degrees or less to gain enough speed above 20km to start the rockets, keeping the jets on as long as possible until right before the jet engines can burnout. Then after starting the rockets and gaining a good amount of speed begin to pitch back up to 45 degrees or a little steeper if you can to climb through the rest of the atmosphere quickly. Finally just get into orbit as you normally would... Meant to be just a general guideline, if you are passing your apoapsis and dropping height then you will have to pitch up more to keep it in front of you, but if you pitch up too high, your intake air will drop fast and you won't be gaining speed at the rate you need to... So it is a balancing act and will vary with every SSTO you make; having something like flight engineer redux to see your time to apoapsis info helps a bunch in flying these as you can adjust your pitch in pretty much real-time to keep the apoapsis in front of you.

Built this lifter for bringing large amounts of fuel into LKO, will put a 303 ton payload into anywhere from 70-120km orbit depending on the efficiency of the pilot, has 730 parts including the payload part, the lifter itself is probably around 600 or so parts... link: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/7-up-mk-vi-303-ton-lifter/

It was a bug, had a Kerbal fall off the flagpole at 4x time warp, with over 40 Kerbals standing below... when the Kerbal hit the ground the game crashed, and when I reloaded the game there were 40+ Kerbals on a collision course trajectory with the sun lol...

Support your local KADD group, please don't drink and Kerbal!

Just tried this city pack out and I am totally blown away by how awesome this project is! Kudos to both you Nothke and Razchek for making these amazing add-ons! Can't wait to see what you guys and the community can come up with for future updates .... So I flew all around the area and didn't have any real collision issues to speak of, could fly under the freeways and through all the buildings and between the bridge segments, but it was weird I had this 5-engine jet where one of the engines would randomly burn out when I flew close/in between the 2 skyscrapers next to the Bobcat Industries buildings, it happened twice in a row and I'm pretty sure my intake levels were full, and I was flying perfectly level, so I'm not sure what the issue was, might have just been an issue with my plane...

So hopefully this counts as a free-standing stack, they aren't touching the flagpole, 7 Kerbals on Kerbin lol... my original plan didn't work out so well, at about 4 or 5 Kerbals the bottom ones begin rotating and doing weird things: Getting the gang together for failed attempt:

can you post a pic of the launch vehicle? And are you using jr. docking ports, regular, or senior for the connection between the modules? Not sure if that makes a difference in stability but maybe a larger docking port would help, idk...

So with taking off horizontally, does that mean not putting any SRBs at an angle at all? even if its only 5 degrees to do a gradual horizontal take-off?

Wow, these are some great landings guys! Tried this and it took me around 10 minutes to land first try, and had a couple tries getting there in way less time but going 200 m/s into the surface didn't help much lol, I may try this one again later when I don't have work, nice challenge Yar

Well, since there is 10 top spots for this challenge I might be able to make the bottom half for a day or so lol... My new and improved JATO car weighing in at 88 tons (with the boosters), that can reach a whopping 1200 meters of height, so 120 pts. + 10 for getting airborne, and 5 for large boosters = 135 pts? I didn't get any screens it was during a live stream, got vid, I would put on youtube but don't really upload to youtube with all the copyright bs on there: http://www.twitch.tv/sweetpezak/c/2806702

Thought I could maybe attach some boosters to the rover I use to put rings around the SPH to fly planes through, pretty funny results so far... I am hoping to improve the placement of the SRB's to avoid flipping out of control, but for now there are no wings... The top-heavy ring tilts backwards when the lower SRBs are fired and the 2nd set of SRBs on top of the ring allow for take-off, but the thing goes all over after that... Max height - 377m ... This thing is a beast at 95 tons lol, I will try and record video/do improvements to it tomorrow... *edit: any extra credit for not popping any tires on take-off?

Love this thread, lots of cool landers here! Here are a few of my own: Eve lander w/ rover: Duna lander w/ rover: (that top part with the atomic rocket wasn't supposed to come down also lol) Tiny Dres lander: Checkin' out the SPH: 3-rover delivery lander: (landing legs are underneath but don't need to extend)

They are from the modular multi-wheels/omniwheels mod... http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/modular-multiwheels-and-omniwheels-v0-6-tt-plugin-for-ksp-0-20-and-0-19/

Some rovers I have worked on in the past: Tri-Rover moon lander: Tri-rover delivery rover: Other random rovers: And with a couple mods lol:

It's almost Friday, here's Jeb leaving work for the weekend BBQ at Jeb's mountain home:

Put the parachute into its own stage (plus button in vab, drag parachute into created new stage) and make sure it is the last/top stage to go (click on the orange part of the stage w parachute and drag it to the top/stage 0), and also, buy this game! You will not regret it, the learning curve is a little steep but once you get the hang of it there are so many things you can do, pretty much only being limited by your imagination, and occasionaly, physics

Bowing out of this challenge, seems silly to not count oxidizer as fuel at launch and in orbit since it has mass and i presume the point of this was to see who could create the most fuel (and mass) efficient craft with no fuel lines/jets.... dumping oxidizer pre-launch or only launching jet fuel is pretty pointless from a practicality standpoint. In "practical/useful" craft like the original submissions, counting oxidizer as fuel will yes, bring your percentage up a little, however in the "stoop to low levels" craft counting oxidizer will cripple your score, and yet counting it is more realistic from a total mass/payload to orbit standpoint, which I believe was intended more to be in the spirit of the challenge...

Stole my next idea Hejnfelt , but yeah if you're allowed to take only liquid(jet) fuel as your payload you will crush anyone who attempts to bring regular fuel/oxidizer tanks with them... so maybe this needs to be re-worked to include oxidizer or do separate totals for people just sending jet fuel and people sending liquid/oxidizer tanks... idk

So why not just use all jet fuel for the payload then? Doesnt seem right to not count the oxidizer as fuel also...

* update: omg i am sorry i am terrible at getting these rules, not counting oxidizer too, so its ok to use just jet fuel as our payload then? i guess with just liquid fuel I'm only at 13.2%/13.9% couting leftover fuel in orbital stage, it's late though, giving up for tonight, will try again tomorrow Bothersome you can delete my other post, here is my new submission with 15.26% efficiency and no fuel lines, flown by me (no mechjeb) and you might notice i have tacc fuel line mod but i'm not using it here: Fuel: 24,840(L)+30,360(O)+7,698(SRB)= 62,898 (total @ launch) Fuel in orbit: 4,320(L)+5,280(O)= 9,600 (total in orbit) 9,600/62,898= 15.26% efficiency (not counting fuel left over from the orbital stage - payload only) At launch: In orbit: Leftover fuel:

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I feel like the heavier the SSTO is to begin with the easier it will be to land back on Kerbin, if you have a lighter craft that is almost completely out of fuel it is more likely to flip out of control during re-entry, but with the heavier crafts as long as your center of mass isn't too messed up you should be able to glide right in no problem...

A few of the SSTO's I've gotten into low Kerbin orbit:

Nice looking parts Adie! I like the way the docking 'spikes' line up