Claw

It's not really a question of what rules to apply on the Earth Elcano challenge, but rather how to modify the rule below without making things complex or overwhelming to deal with. Off hand I see no reason to halt someone's Earth Elcano (I suppose it actually ought to be encouraged). But since I don't use any mods that add other planets, I need to figure out what the other impacts of changing this rule might be. I'd say go ahead and start your trip when you are ready. I certainly won't disqualify an entry based on it being on Earth, assuming the other rules are met. I just need to figure out wording for Rule 9.

Hey kerbonauts. As you can imagine, it's been a busy week. Technically the rules of the challenge are such that celestial bodies introduced via add-on are not permitted. However, an actual Elcano around an Earth sized sphere is certainly in the spirit of things. I'd ask that you give me a chance to think about how to classify rules for such things without making it overly complex. Also, badges...

Yay! Thanks! That was my plan for the ISRU, so I'm glad it worked out that way for your challenge as well. I angled the engines because I was originally planning on doing more aerobraking...so the engines are hidden behind the heat shields and angled for thrust clearance. Turns out that the ship is just too much mass and too little surface area to effectively aerobrake, plus the heat shields really need to be a little bigger (awaiting that new inflatable one!). And yeah, 19 crew capacity for 3 kerbals. I figured the two Elcano crew earned it after spending so much time in the rovers. Thanks for hosting this challenge!

I would say there's a good chance of it, but probably not till after the release.

Sort of, but not exactly. This is one of the misconceptions that can be hard to visualize. A lower setting (0.02) means that the game is forced to draw a graphics frame for every physics frame that it completes (because physics also runs at 0.02). So it's not that it will be smoother, it just means you will see every physics frame. In general, as the game starts to have trouble keeping up with "real-time" physics calculations, the game will start to get more slide-show like sooner. With a higher setting (0.12), you get less graphical updates only when the game starts to have a hard time keeping up with "real-time" physics calculations. In that case, you're skipping the CPU/GPU rendering of graphics, and diverting that processing power to help keep physics as fast as possible. So in that case, the game will still get a little bit of a slide show, but the physics simulation will be running at a faster rate than if it was set to 0.02. So you'll visually see maybe only every 6th physics frame, but the physics might still running real time. I'm not sure if that made it any clearer. 0.12 might feel more choppy, but it would be running at a faster graphics frame rate. It's also important to note, this is all assuming that KSP isn't keeping up with physics calculations. When it is keeping up, the ratio doesn't come into play. That's an interesting concept. Would work well for instances when KSP is capable of doing the physics faster than 0.02s (i.e. small ships).

I'm not very familiar with this mod, but a brief look at the code shows that it's going to need to be updated at the source level. It doesn't appear that the changes made in the stock side should break this after it's been updated for 1.1.

The offset away from a part is roughly doubled with the SHIFT key, but quite frankly that isn't much. More significantly, the issues with hollow parts has been addressed. Hopefully the mod is still working. I had to make a few changes, but ideally shouldn't be blocking this addon.

And turkey, but that's cannibalism for some folks.

I left for a few minutes, and this is what I came back to...Seems kinda subtle. Not sure what to make of it.

I see I was mentioned a bit ago, but not sure what all the excitement around here is about. Nothing to see here...

@Warzouz Great job, and welcome to the club!

Haha, I like the side seats. That's a neat idea! Also, I'm sort of interested about the SAS module being at the back as well. I could see it being from moving weight around, but the change from torque location I wouldn't think would be an issue. But perhaps it's acting a bit differently because it has to bend around the rear axle. Nice job!

They'll burn up if they aren't hidden behind something. In the case of my lander, the Aerospike acted as the "heat shield" during reentry. It went in aerospike first.

I take no offense from your comment, and you can hate clipping all you want. I'm just saying that I've attached them at the nodes with zero offset. So I don't know what exploit you are talking about. Also, stock KSP makes no effort to conceal parts from the aero model based on clipping. So even if clipping is done, it doesn't provide any aerodynamic exploit unless it's used to overlap things inside a cargo bay..

I'm not sure what you mean by clipping exploit. They are stacked on the nodes and attached to the bottom of the service bay. I do like the shiny gold, and it turns out the aerospike makes for great Laythe reentry protection. I do share the same SSTO definition as you, but not everyone on the forum thinks of "SSTO" the same. There are quite a few that mean "with wings," which was sort of alluded to in an earlier post.

Yeah. It's not apparent in that picture, but the nose was the landing parachute stack (jettisoned before takeoff). I originally was also going to jettison the landing legs, but turns out it was better to keep them for aero stability on this little craft. The blunt nose ended up being more of an issue than I expected (hence the "lighter on fuel").

Well, depends on your concept of an SSTO. Some people inherently thing "spaceplane" when they say SSTO, so I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for. But since Fellow314 posted something similar above, here's my most recent Laythe SSTO (which I used in my Jool5 submission). It's a bit tighter on fuel than I intended. There are a lot of options available for cargo bay sized SSTOs if you aren't meaning "with wings" (which you said in a previous post). Even with wings, you can still get away with small designs, but you sometimes have to work hard to drive down the size.

Yeah. Tylo has the same radius as Kerbin. And the terrain wasn't nearly as exciting (to me anyway). Plus all the explodium someone left laying around...

Shh, we're not allowed to reveal his mild mannered identity.

Yes indeed. This is taken care of in 1.1. If you're interested in the bug fixes, the one you'll need specifically is SymmetryActionFix (Plus the StockBugFixPlusController). The symmetry action fix is actually one of the oldest ones up there.

I don't want to sour people on Tylo because it is supposed to be a challenge after all. But I would not at all recommend it to anyone who isn't truly serious about Elcano. And I think that's saying a lot, considering how much of a challenge Elcano is to begin with. I've never felt so relieved as when the crew finally made it back to the Tylo start flag, until maybe when they made it back to the mothership and the JoolCano was nearly complete (and I knew I finally finished Tylo).

@damerell Less efficient as in it consumes 5 times as much ore as the big one and only outputs half the fuel. So it takes 10x the ore to make the same amount of fuel, and consumes the same amount of electricity to do it. It also requires just about as much cooling because of the lower max heat (it looses efficiency faster), and it heats up faster. Also, the mini drill requires a higher concentration of ore to work. Because it generates less fuel, it wasn't putting out enough to feed the fuel cell to provide additional power without breaking even. It is lighter (1.25t vs. 4.5t) and it's smaller. But considering the size of my mothership (2300t) I probably could have afforded the extra 3t and saved myself nearly two years of timewarping.

So here's my entry into the Jool-5 bunch. It actually started out as an extension of the Elcano Challenge, but I thought I'd aim for everything and see what happens. This is all done in 1.0.5 (and just in time too!). No mods were used for the mission, it was done all stock. I did use alexmoon's web based transfer window planner. I sent three kerbals on the mission, though one was mostly for show (Marissa). She was the science officer and stayed behind on the Mothership (called the Iron Narcissus) in case the crew needed a safety pilot. The main crew members were Julella (pilot) and Obemy (engineer), who have been my intrepid Elcano crew on all the missions. Julella and Obemy landed on all the moons (2 Kerbals). The entire mission itself was launched in one giant ship (pictured above). It weighed about 2300 tons at launch, was a bit over 500 parts, and cost about 1.5M Funds (which includes all the Elcano vehicles). I didn't use any refueling for the Jool-5 portions of the mission, but I did use the miniISRU parts for refueling my Laythe circumnavigation vehicle. Pol, Bop, and Vall all used a small lander tug (named Tin Poppy) to deliver rovers to the surface and return the crew to the Mothership. For Laythe, the crew landed in the boat (which is capable of driving on land) and returned via an ascent vehicle which was delivered later by probe. Tylo was also a special case, where one crew member (Obemy) brought the rover down, and Julella brought down the crew return vehicle. Both vehicles on Tylo unintentionally used some lithobraking to land, but managed to complete their mission otherwise. I didn't track all the dV, but I did keep the alexmoon plots for the ejections. I've posted some of the progress earlier in this thread, but since it's all scattered and I broke the album up into several parts, I figure it's probably easier for me to post an index here, rather than filling up a post with a bunch of separate albums. "Mission Start" is where the actual mission begins. The links before that are some design musings. Jool System: Combined Elcano and Jool-5 Challenge - Complete Initial Analysis Boat Redesign Mothership Failure Mothership Redesign and Shakedown Mission Start (Launch to Laythe Orbit) Pol - Equatorial Bop - Equatorial Vall - Polar Laythe - Polar Tylo - Equatorial Return Home Thanks for the challenge. It was certainly a new depth with the Jool-5 on top of the Elcano missions! Cheers, ~Claw