Kerbin's Greatest Death Defying Stunt Team needs help from our Greatest Fans!

[KaptainKevalKneival]

Hello to my Greatest Fans in the World!

I am designing and constructing ramps that will help me reach high speeds to perform my insanely dangerous, death defying and fan thrilling jumps. However, these ramps seem very easy to explode when I enter onto them at high speeds. I will keep trying. It may still be possible to reach high elevations of flight even with the ramp exploding as I am jumping it. We will see.

But the ramp constructions may prove to never work. As an alternative plan, I am seeking natural features on Kerbin that can be jumped. And as I speed across the continents exploring to find such any perfect sites for record breaking jumps, my vehicle is continuously improved to survive high speed ground travel.

Please help me to identify and find any natural locations on Kerbin that would be great for a record breaking jump. I will not use any mods in the game but I will use the available updates. Features on other planets are also interesting suggestions.

[JIMMY_the_DOG]

Welcome to the forums! To start off there is a trend going around to fly under the "bridges" in the R+D facility. For ramps, start off on the runway. Or, try and get from the ground to the top of the V.A.B.! Good luck!

[bewing]

Hmmm. The Minmus Midlands are reasonably smooth, they have interesting slopes that might make good ramps, and they are at different altitudes which might make for interesting landings. But you would have to control your speed carefully, because a few extra meters per second might well put you into orbit.

For ramps built on kerbin, pay attention to the "impact tolerance" values of the parts. Some are fairly high. If you can build your ramps out of fairings ... I believe fairings are still indestructible.

 

[Mikenike]

32 minutes ago, bewing said:

For ramps built on kerbin, pay attention to the "impact tolerance" values of the parts. Some are fairly high. If you can build your ramps out of fairings ... I believe fairings are still indestructible.

The Mk3 parts work well, high tolerance, enough mass to stay in place, and reatively smooth.

[king of nowhere]

if you are not limited to kerbin, the craters on Mun are excellent to jump. in particular the canyon oriented north-south is a wonderful racing circuit.

tylo, with high gravity and lack of atmosphere, is great for high speed. i set my land speed records on that planet (110 m/s of rover speed before braking safely. i even went faster, but i crashed afterwards). however, at that speed you have practically no control, and a crash will break even a reinforced rover.

I would not suggest minmus. the gravity is too low, you can't pick up speed.

as for kerbin, i'd look at any of the mountain ranges. they are dramatic enough, there should be plenty of good drops

Edited February 12, 2021 by king of nowhere

[KaptainKevalKneival]

These suggestions are exactly what I need to hear. Thank you guys for joining my conversation!

[KaptainKevalKneival]

There are alot more questions I am thinking about because I enjoy this idea as a way to play the game. The true life Evel Kneivel was a iconic character in his time, so I am researching him as well to maybe match his outrageousness and bigger than life style.

I wasn't even thinking to jump and land on top of the V.A.B. I was just curious what a jump would look like. I hit the lamp post in flight and that thing wrecked my vehicle in spectacular form. It was GREAT!

I believe the best way to jump is using an external command seat. This is because sometimes Kerbals are knocked out of the seats. They are projected way in front of the vehicle. Sometimes they explode on impact. Exploding Kerbals will register on my seismometers I have placed to collect science in different biomes.  That's fun, too. I think external command seats are the way to go because it is spectacular to watch the crashes happen. And maybe I can hit the bracket key in time to focus the view on the flying Kerbal.

Is there a non-mod way I can change the pilot's name to the stunt character's name?

I believe I can make my own custom flag for cosmetic attentions. That will help the obnoxious red, white and blue decorations I'd like to use. Can I have more than one flag in use at one time? Probably not. But I wonder if focusing the spotlights and selecting the colors onto the stationary flag part will create the variety of color patterns I would like to use.

The suggestion to use the runway for experimenting with ramp designs is a good one. And I am wondering what can be the Kerbin equivalent of jumping through a ring of fire with the Kerbal tools we have available for us to be used in place of the ring of fire. 

Strut connectors give us an explosion when they are broken. I will also think of finding a way to lay struts on the ground for the entire length in the runway. In theory, running over the struts will break them and cause an explosion that doesn't affect the accelerating vehicle. I want to try to use those as trip wires that are evenly spaced for audio effect that pronounce the acceleration of the vehicle from the fully rested full stop to the end of travel where the vehicle hits the ramp at top speed.

And my dumbest question. I'm using common sense to think the answer must be "No." But has anybody ever seen a design for a two wheeled vehicle that approaches being a bike or a motorcycle? I think Kaptain Keval Kneival must use a motorcycle if that is something that exists.

Edited February 12, 2021 by KaptainKevalKneival

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, KaptainKevalKneival said:

And my dumbest question. I'm using common sense to think the answer must be "No." But has anybody ever seen a design for a two wheeled vehicle that approaches being a bike or a motorcycle? I think Kaptain Keval Kneival must use a motorcycle if that is something that exists.

your common sense is wrong. common sense would be, if you can conceive it, then it's very likely someone made it.

go to kerbalx.com and search for bike. it gives 70 results. a handful of them are true motorbikes.

[KaptainKevalKneival]

On 2/12/2021 at 2:31 PM, king of nowhere said:

your common sense is wrong. common sense would be, if you can conceive it, then it's very likely someone made it.

go to kerbalx.com and search for bike. it gives 70 results. a handful of them are true motorbikes.

Thank you. Very good. I will do that.

 

There are ramps to try on that site!

And holy smokes. There is a ring of fire.

Edited February 14, 2021 by KaptainKevalKneival

[KaptainKevalKneival]

On 2/12/2021 at 11:47 AM, king of nowhere said:

 

I would not suggest minmus. the gravity is too low, you can't pick up speed.

 

That is too bad. It seems like high gravity and no atmosphere are good for the speed goals. But when you said this it made me think. Wow. What if I could jump from Minmus to Kerbin? That would be a record, and if the gravity is low enough then maybe I could escape orbit and simply fall to Kerbin.

I think I'd need to make a spiral or helical spring shaped ramp or make a circular hamster wheel style ramp that can somehow eject me at a high speed. Something like a subatomic particle accelerator for smashing atoms.

But if I'm going to build something like that then it would not have to be on Minmus. I could build it in space orbiting the Sun. And it might be able to launch me to any planet I was aiming to hit. I don't know. It is fun to think about. I bet I need to build it on Minmus to hold the ramp and so the bike doesn't move the ramp.

Edited February 14, 2021 by KaptainKevalKneival

[king of nowhere]

20 minutes ago, KaptainKevalKneival said:

That is too bad. It seems like high gravity and no atmosphere are good for the speed goals. But when you said this it made me think. Wow. What if I could jump from Minmus to Kerbin? That would be a record, and if the gravity is low enough then maybe I could escape orbit and simply fall to Kerbin.

I think I'd need to make a spiral spring shaped ramp or make a circular hamster wheel style ramp that can somehow eject me at a high speed. Something like a subatomic particle accelerator for smashing atoms.

But if I'm going to build something like that then it would not have to be on Minmus. I could build it in space orbiting the Sun. And it might be able to launch me to any planet I was aiming to hit. I don't know. It is fun to think about. I bet I need to build it on Minmus to hold the ramp and so the bike doesn't move the ramp.

there is a trick to go fast in low gravity worlds, which is to point rockets downward to simulate a kind of artificial gravity. of course, you are limited by your fuel supply. and it makes the whole rover much heavier.

you'd need some 300 m/s to get from minmus surface to kerbin. good luck with that.

as for a spiral ramp in solar orbit, there are some kraken drives using similar principles. somebody made a whole interplanetary mission by having a kerbal go up and down on a ladder. and there is a challenge to make a rotating ship spin fast and then cut it in two to get propelled to other targets.

[Snark]

On 2/12/2021 at 12:36 PM, KaptainKevalKneival said:

Exploding Kerbals will register on my seismometers I have placed to collect science in different biomes.  That's fun, too.

<waits to stop giggling helplessly>

Okay, I just gotta say that this is possibly the "most Kerbal" remark I've ever seen on the forums, anywhere, ever.  This is wonderful.  Thank you. 

That's it, you have achieved peak Kerbal.  You win KSP.  We're all done here, folks.  +1

 

<ahem>

If you're looking for miscellaneous jump sites, Dres has a pretty amazing canyon on it that may be worth a gander.

[Snark]

On 2/12/2021 at 12:36 PM, KaptainKevalKneival said:

Is there a non-mod way I can change the pilot's name to the stunt character's name?

Not really.  But the .sfs file is just text, so if you wanted to, you could open it up in Notepad or something and do a global search-and-replace of that pilot's name with whatever name you want to give it.  (One caution, though:  any time you ever go in to manually edit a game file, I'd strongly recommend keeping an un-edited backup copy, just in case you accidentally mess something up and corrupt the file.)

On 2/12/2021 at 12:36 PM, KaptainKevalKneival said:

Can I have more than one flag in use at one time

Depends what you mean by "in use".  You can have only one "default" flag for your savegame... but it's also possible in the vehicle editor to override that and pick a flag to use for just that vehicle.  So if you have a bunch of separate craft parked around that have flags on them, each of them could have a different flag.

On 2/12/2021 at 12:36 PM, KaptainKevalKneival said:

And my dumbest question. I'm using common sense to think the answer must be "No." But has anybody ever seen a design for a two wheeled vehicle that approaches being a bike or a motorcycle?

Not dumb at all!  Heck, you could even build a unicycle.