BadSpecs

This ugly thing can get into orbit in under 25 minutes using multiple stages for a high average t/w. The best I've managed so far is 23:10 approximately. Here is a much simpler and slower ion ship, but it's an ssto, and it is still capable of reaching orbit in under 30 minutes.

Thanks! You are welcome to it, I sort of borrowed the shape from the Horten brothers as best I could. With some tweaking to fuel capacity and the addition of a 48-7S or two, some solar panels, docking port, etc, it might be a good ssto.

Here is a second entry, this time with a capsule and a whole lot fewer octagonal struts. It uses a drop tank located on the COM for the climbout and initial acceleration. TWR seems to be most important in order to get high speed at 20k, even more important than reducing drag by reducing parts count. I decided to turn north for this speed run because heading into the sunset was starting to lose it's interest. Jeb seems happy enough with the landing, though I would call it 'disastrous.' I used my desktop this time since my laptop isn't quite capable of running this game even at the lowest detail settings and with low parts numbers on the vessels. 1964 m/s

This was a successful attempt to get around Kerbin using a relatively small craft with one jet. The 'Lazy Rabbit' uses capsule torque and thrust vectoring for control, so there are no active or inactive control surfaces on it. It flies quite nicely, with good response and predictable handling. Circumnavigation took a while, but it was a short jaunt compared to most any orbital flight plan. Here's the gallery, hopefully I've finally figure out how to use the correct bb code tags.

Hi everyone, this is my first attempt at participating in a challenge, and my first post on this forum. The entry is an air-breathing twin jet using stock parts and no mods. I used copious octagonal struts to get a set of control surfaces well behind the COM due to the bizarre placement of the turbojet's mass. It's fast, twitchy, unpleasant to fly, highly unstable, and very fun.