Pyranz

Will the new tanker be the first craft to use the Kerbodyne parts?

And here was me, convinced it was already gone. It is the exam time of year, so I can understand your position if that's the case

^Ditto. Can you make it more obvious in your sig that the codex is an index of all your works? Reading through I noticed a lot of people didn't realise, myself included. They are such fantastic stories.

Great story! But I get the feeling that I'm missing a previous installation(s) in this series, would that be correct? And if so, can you please link me so I can catch up?

You can place landing wheels next to the r.wheels to take the weight, whilst still having traction.

Firstly, wow. The life of this ship, its crew, and its sister ships has been so entertaining. The excellent role play storytelling has certainly added significantly to my enjoyment, and the back and forth between you two gives an excellent insight into what's actually going on that wouldn't be present otherwise, without having the clutter and crossed conversations that happens so easily on forum threads. Secondly, about your fuel tank problems; I believe there is a procedural tank mod that lets you create any size and shape tanks for any resource. I can't remember the name of it, (possibly just "procedural tanks") but it could help you create very large craft that are more aesthetically shaped and, maybe more importantly, with lower part count. Again, thanks for the good read, I look forward to your future antics together!

I totally agree with this idea, it's so annoying when people say they can use cheats and bugs because it's not stated that they can't, despite how obvious it is. Bugs and debug options are not intended as part of the gameplay, and mods are for changing the gameplay, so it makes far more sense to have all these things banned by default, rather than the poster having to remember to state every thing every time. It's also better for players who are new to the forums and may not be aware of all the things that can be abused, and have their challenge ruined by nitpicking.

But where you can drive to is limited without compromising the design.

That's a bit too harsh in my opinion. It's very easy to get a landing spot on Eve over 1000m in elevation.

Wow, that's amazing... Well, looks like rockets are out of the running now, because I doubt you could get one lighter than that beauty.

I have a just under 18 tonne lander, but for some reason it just keeps bugging out when it hits the surface, or falls through the surface and explodes inside the planet. If I ever get around to actually test it I'll post it. Because even if I need to add more fuel it's still way more part efficient + compact than the other best ones here.

I think I've got a <19 tonne craft. I'm about 80% certain it can get off Eve, I just need to get the damn thing there! It can get into a 120km orbit from kerbin without even using a couple of stages. I hope it does as well on the purple planet! Can I use infinite fuel to get there? Just into orbit. It does still have a docking port for transport, but launch windows are a pain to wait for on a slow computer.

I knew a pancake style was going to come eventually, I'm making one with an aerospike, but I'm trying to pare off as much mass as possible.

Ah. I was not aware just how harsh the drag system was. Thank you.

Can ions be used as well if you want to do it stock? Because I've been trying to develop an eve ssto that goes along the lines of electric-nuke combo that takes advantage of the atmosphere, but I'm terrible at building planes.

Yeah, I plan in remedying that tonight, seeing as I've been away.

You do not need a twr greater than 1 using a glider. You do not need to use a nerva near the surface to use it at all, the option to turn engines off has been in the game a while now.

The idea of using an ion glider of sorts is to take advantage of Eve's thick atmosphere. One the air has become too thin to glide effectively then you're already past the hardest part of leaving eve, and if you've used ions to get there then the fuel use is tiny, so activate your nerva now that it's not stunted by atmosphere. And as for ions being unrealistic... Seriously? The hardest part of this challenge is getting through an atmosphere of mashed peas.

The "smart math guys" can only work out the dv of something they already know the figures of. The most common way to get off eve is with aerospikes, because of their atmospheric efficiency. Nerva engines tend to get written off because of the low ttw and isp asl. If you use a lightweight engine to get your initial speed up, use ions to sustain a gliding climb, and then nervas when you can't go higher, meaning you'll be largely out of the atmosphere and they'll have most of their max efficiency, and hopefully then continue to orbit.

I assume that by this you mean ssto from Eve's surface? It sounds very hard but I wouldn't write it off immediately... You'd certainly have to do some clever ion plane - nerva combo, but maybe... Getting high lift is quite easy on Eve, and the setback of carrying a rocket engine would be offset by the fact that you have a rocket engine (hopefully).

Looking at some of these makes me wonder how much of a factor Kerbin's sharp curvature contributes to horizontal speed being tranfered to upward speed. Could launch height have a major impact on how easy it is to get there? Also, can we use the thrust given by decouplers?

Getting massive payloads to orbit without staging is easy. Landing those launchers in ksc I easy once you know how, even more so now that parachutes can deploy one at a time. The new NASA update make stable crafts really easy with the bigger parts and the magical number "7" being changed. A wide skycrane with enough jets can lift any payload (provided it's not too fragile) and place it carefully on the landed launcher. A docking port on the side of the craft allows any wheeled rover to attach if you get the docking port positioned well for refueling. There are so many genius ideas on this thread that score lowly because the result is the same as the person who made the unstaged Saturn rocket with parachutes. The scoring is based too much on the final product, not the creation method. A space station costs the same on the ground no matter what. It's getting it into space that you're trying to reduce. There should be categories for best efficiency, easiest turnaround, versatility, etc. Not best station in orbit. @ Rune Do the new broadsword! The last one was amazing and I know I'd love to see how it got even better.

I know any scoring system is going to be entirely speculative, but the issue is that currently it's based off of the total mass of what you have left in orbit. It doesn't encourage efficiency, which is ultimately the spirit of the challenge. And yes, managing to complete this is a major achievment, but everyone who has got a score has made this achievement, so that's why it's there, to compare the elite few who did it. As for the fuel only being 5% of the total cost of a mission: that 5% is still a huge cost. And if you're using 10 tonnes of fuel for each tonne in orbit, you're still spending a lot of money.

I really like the time limit on this. Launching everything so close together should be quite a logistical challenge. Just a couple of things are bugging me about this challenge. Firstly, there isn't really much of a scoring system to encourage you to do the objectives beyond LKO. Kerbals should be worth more points if they're further from the blast (based on the SOI/planet they are in/on). Secondly, you haven't put much detail into what the requirements are for all the different objectives. What do you need for a useable lifeboat/generation ship? What makes space-station or a base self sustaining?

I'm in the same postition as PyroDesu (I swear we don't know each other, the name similarity and situation is a weird conincidence). I was wondering if you could add a new category that expands on the cost effectiveness them a bit. Seeing as the cost of building the spacecraft is no longer an issue for those on the leaderboard (and it is just a challenge of persistance and computer ability), the focus should be shifted to reducing the massive amounts still spent on fuel. In the new category people can be judged on how much they get into orbit for every mass of fuel used. To work this out you simply add up fuel mass (in the launcher) on launch, and take away what you have when the refuel rover docks. You then divide the score (according to the current system) by the mass of the total fuel used and viola, you have a new scoring system which favours the efficient. You should be allowed to take away fuel that is left in the space station, because any spare fuel you don't use and leave there hasn't been actually used, and is sort of a payload even if it wasn't intended. TL;DR: a new, parallel scoring system could work by the equation: [score on current sytem] / ( [total fuel mass used refueling] - [total fuel mass on station NOT delivered inside a payload] ) You could also have another one again, but it just measures average payload mass. I don't want to sound bossy, it's just an idea that occured to me when I was reading this thread. I thought it might tackle the issue raised earlier about how any old reusable spacecraft can get huge scores by simply doing enough trips.