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The challenge is simple, fly an aircraft of your own design through the R&D tunnel without damaging your aircraft. You can prove your feat of engineering and piloting finess through either a video or a series of screenshots, before during and after. The tunnel is around 10 meters wide and 7 meters tall, it would be recommended construct your aircraft accordingly. The leaderboards will be split into the speed of the aircraft through the tunnel and the length of the aircraft passing through the tunnel. This Tunnel. Rules; Your aircraft has to enter and exit the tunnel unscathed No parts mod DLC allowed Non Parts mods are allowed, e.g Kerbal engineer Leaderboard (Speed) @swjr-swis 168.3m/s @QF9E 97.4m/s @Socraticat 92.5m/s Leaderboard (Length) @swjr-swis 3.2 @QF9E 2.9m TBA

How do you make a hypersonic jet, like an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft), fly level at high altitude and speed? Whether it’s flying with SAS on or off (only control surfaces, no RCS or torque), when its pitch is level it wants to keep climbing until the engines flame out from lack of air, and speed drops.

There are many good tutorials on how to build a plane. This tutorial is about piloting the plane. I shall use my LKA-1A https://kerbalx.com/TheFlyingKerman/How-to-fly-a-plane-in-KSP for demonstration. I recommend the reader to download the plane for practice. It helps to have a plane that is easy to handle at low speed. I am not going into details about how is plane is constructed but note that its COL is just behind the COM and has wing incident. Get Jeb (or other pilot) into the plane and launch. 0.1 Before taking off, get off and plant a flag just off the west end of the runway. Then get back to the plane, or just recover the pilot and plane and launch again. Taking off 1.1 Turn on SAS (T). Deploy flaps AG2 1.2 Turn to full throttle and stage (space) to start engine. 1.3 When speed reaches 40m/s, pull up lightly (S). 1.4 Retract flaps after the main gear leave the ground. Maneuvering 2.1 Climbing and descending is easy, just press S or W to pitch up/down. 2.2 To make a large turn left, first roll anti-clockwise (Q), then pitch up (S). When the plane is heading the desired direction, level the plane. Vice versa for right turns. 2.3 To make a small turn left, roll a few degrees anti-clockwise (Q), then yaw left (A). Level the plane when done. 2.4 For practice, climb to 7000m, fly to the mountain range west of KSC, do a crew report and then fly back to KSC. Landing We will land right back to the KSC runway, from the west. This the hardest part of the tutorial. It is know the runway runs from west to east, and is 70m above sea level. Imagine the runway extends east and west, and you should be flying along the runway. 3.1 Begin the approach from about 30km away. Descend to 1000m ASL, and throttle way down to slow down to 55-70m/s. 3.2 Set the flag you planted as target. Note the navball. In this case the target is at your north-east, at about 070. So fly north-east at greater derivation (say 045). 3.3 Now the target marker is at 090. We are roughly aligned. However note the runway is still centered within the triangle bracket marking the flag. Do some fine tuning with the method described in 2.3. 3.4 Looking ahead, the front gear, the runway, and the flag is aligned. The heading is 090. We are running true. Lower flaps (AG2). 3.5 Aim at flying 300m ASL, descending at 5-10m/s while entering the KSC airspace. The final approach begins. For this plane the recommended landing speed is 45-55m/s. 3.6 We are over the runway. Check that the course is still 090. 1-2 degrees off is OK. 3.7 The landing gear is a bit weak. Pull up a little to slow the rate of descend while a few meters above the runway. Aim at <3m/s vertical speed when touching down. 3.8 Hit brake when the main gear touches the ground. When the plane fully stops, mission accomplished. Otherwise just turn around and try again. If everything fails there is still the parachute, so our little green pilot will live and fly another day.

We see VAB landings by VTOLs or with parachutes regularly. But a real challenge would be a conventional landing. So here's a challenge for that Score will be based on the horizontal flight capabilities of the craft used in the attempt, rewarding craft size and speed. A speed requirement is set to prevent excess wing spam, and also a no-detachment rule is set so that the configuration used to clock max speed is the same as the configuration used for landing. Scoring: Score = (Mass of craft in tons after landing) * (Maximum clocked speed of the craft in atmosphere in km/s) The whole craft must land intact on top the the VAB Please provide a screenshot of the F3 menu after clocking speed, and also a screenshot of the craft landed on VAB plus some description of how you've managed the feat Rules: Stock Parts only for simplicity All engines point straight to the back Landing attempt done at no more than 45 degree pitch up from the horizon Only jet engines No parachutes No reaction wheels except those built into cockpits or probe cores, max of 1 cockpit and 1 probe core Limit of 100 parts, so better PCs won't be at an advantage No parts should be detached after takeoff No editing the craft file with text editor or mods to squeeze out extra performance. No altering of Kerbin's properties with Alt-F12 menu to reduce gravity or increase drag etc. Some tips The challenge gets much easier if you put something small on top of the VAB and target it during your approach, so your know exactly where the VAB roof is by looking at the Navball, and can keep your velocity vector lined up with it. Eyeballing this landing is almost impossible. It's probably a good idea to set each landing gear's braking force to max or you won't stop in time, and also make sure to use a landing gear that has brakes, as some of them don't. I think the trick to accomplishing this is to get up to about 2km high and 5-6 km away from the KSC, then throttle down to about 1/4 and pitch up until you get to a comfortably low speed and your velocity vector on the Navball is pointed right at the target you placed on the VAB, then control your descent rate with throttle, and engage brakes right as you touch down. My attempt: Sorry no screenshot, I pitched up too much during the approach, engines hit the helipad, causing the plane to bounce, which then settled on the roof beneath the helipad after also losing a nosecone. Someone had done it on YouTube, but with a wing-spamming plane dropping almost straight down onto the VAB with no VTOL engines or parachutes, but wingspam is unrealistic so I put in top speed as a part of the score, Leaderboard: @AeroGav 49.16 points (34.62tons*1.42km/s https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/164298-vab-horizontal-landing-challenge/&tab=comments#comment-3170162) @zolotiyeruki 31.03 points (19.794 tons *1.568km/s https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/164298-vab-horizontal-landing-challenge/&do=findComment&comment=3172691) @qzgy 20.625 points (16.5 tons*1.25km/s http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/164298-vab-horizontal-landing-challenge/&do=findComment&comment=3145933) @Eidahlil 13.01 points (13.69 t x 0.95 km/s, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/164298-vab-horizontal-landing-challenge/&do=findComment&comment=3145668) @Eidahlil 8.46 points ( 8.46 t x 1.00 km/s) Unsuccessful attempts goduranus 10.53 points (8.56 ton craft at top speed of 1.23 km/s, lost an engine and a nosecone)

This challenge is simple. We all start with the exact same rocket, patterned after a Delta IV Heavy (I'll explain why in a moment). We all have the same payload: three large ore holding tanks and a probe core. The challenge is to fill the ore tanks as full as you can and still make orbit with a periapsis over 85 km. Here's the rocket (you can build it yourself in a few moments): Three orange tanks with Skipper engines, large nose cones on the side tanks, Rockomax and TT-70 decouplers, a Poodle upper stage engine, an X200-16 upper stage tank, and the smallest probe core. I suggest autostrutting everything. Since we all have the same rocket, this challenge will come down to piloting and nothing else. I chose the Delta IV Heavy design because it introduces a range of variables associated with throttling down the core engine or transferring fuel in order to maximize effective dV. The amount of ore you choose to attempt will greatly affect TWR, which will change your gravity turn accordingly. I chose 85x85 (or greater) to add an additional variable as far as lofted trajectories are concerned. Obviously, no MechJeb or other piloting mods. Good luck!

I've managed to work out a fairly decent technique for making precision landings on airless bodies in KSP so I thought I'd make a video explaining how I do it. Hopefully this will be of some help to people having trouble with this part of the game. This is my first time making a gameplay video of anything and I stumble over my words in a few places but I think that overall it turned out okay. Using vid.me since YouTube's been doing some pretty crappy things lately and I figured it would be best to just stay away from that platform. I'm not sure if this will embed, but if it doesn't just click the link. https://vid.me/6st7