GoSlash27

On airless bodies I use the reverse gravity turn technique. This allows me to land precisely where I want to be. On bodies with atmospheres, it's from experience. If you set your apoapsis at a certain altitude over a location, you'll end up landing right about there. It varies with the properties of the lander, but you get the feel for that over time. Best, -Slashy

noobs, I don't know why so many people define "spaceplanes" as vehicles capable of making the trip all the way to Laythe and back. Interplanetary trips are still feasible in 1.04 using spaceplanes, they're just not a practical application for them. No engineer worth his/ her salt would ever design an interplanetary spaceship made from a mostly empty airplane. The fact that this was rampant is why it needed to be fixed. Spaceplanes were so ridiculously overpowered that they made better rockets than actual rockets. Personally, I think they're still OP. Best, -Slashy

But if you launch a rocket right next to that flag, your exhaust doesn't drift because there's not actually any wind at all. Ergo the fluttering of the flag is simulated. Why do Kerbals create the illusion of wind? Same reason they make the illusion of daylight in the VAB in the middle of the night: To cover up the conspiracy. /illuminati

Nich, It occurred to me today at work that the scoring of this challenge is pretty badly broken. You get 2 points for transferring a Kerbal in orbit and would lose 2 points for expending $2000 in the process. The problem is that it doesn't take $2000 to orbit a Kerbal in an SSTO spaceplane. An efficient small Mk 2 design can orbit a Kerbal for under $125. This price drops under $50 if you use large Mk 3 designs. A design that orbits a huge number of Kerbals (even if it's highly oversized and inefficient) can still rack up insane points so long as it's easily flyable. You could even afford a huge R&D budget and not worry about it. I don't know what you'd do to fix that. Best, -Slashy

smjjames, You do not want the CoL in front of the CoM under any circumstances. Having them in the same place will result in a highly unstable (and thus highly maneuverable) aircraft. The farther back you move the CoL, the more stable it becomes and the less maneuverable. Eventually, it will be so far back that it's impossible to keep it from acting like a lawn dart. You want to position the fuel in such a way that it doesn't move the CoM as it drains. Having the CoL above or below the CoM will make the aircraft pitch with changes in speed. Best, -Slashy

I worked out some economic realities that I probably should've picked up on by now: 1) Shipping cost is the key to SSTOs, not payload fraction. Accordingly, nukes can save money. Even though they reduce the payload capacity, they make up for that by expending less fuel in the process. 2) Old tech > new tech so long as the old tech gets the job done. Even though I can save $50 per passenger using wet wings and Rapiers over kludgier tier 7 turbojet and dry wing designs, I will never recoup the cost of unlocking the tech to do it. Better to spend the money on unlocking stuff that allows me to do things that were impossible before. Best, -Slashy

I sidestep the problem by simply not launching really big payloads. I launch my monsters empty and/ or in sections, then assemble/ fuel/ crew them in LKO. Best, -Slashy

There's that KSP really rewards the ability to operate efficiently, especially in the early going. If you can accomplish the job using lower mass, fewer/ less advanced parts, and lower cost then starting out isn't "grindy" at all. You end up collecting science and unlocking parts faster than you can use them. It's only when you tend to overengineer that you'll get bogged down. The standard "moar boosters" mentality leaves you stranded when mass and part count limits preclude their use. I take the opposite approach: I figure out the bare minimum required to accomplish the goal and then build that with whatever safety factor I have left. If it's not quite good enough, then I look for ways to remove bloat instead of adding thrust or fuel. Best, -Slashy

Ahh, but remember that the coriolis effect is dependent on the radius of the body as well as it's rotational velocity. The Earth has tropical "doldrums" and a westward equatorial jetstream due to our large diameter. Jupiter has many such reversals, which is why it has so many bands. On a small planet like Kerbin, there's not enough room to make reversals. /Serious discussion of nonexistent winds Best, -Slashy

Oh... I see what you mean! Yeah, the math (as I understand it) wouldn't predict that. I really can't comment on that since I've never experienced it myself. Best, -Slashy

*happy dance* Lookit that thing glow! The one thing I was worried about was the lower solar panels popping from the heat, but it looks like they held. Or not... If I reissue it as 2.1 with the lower solar panels removed, should I include your mission cost in the development cost? Best, -Slashy

gargamel, Not "doppler like" per se. Just that the formula would predict an oblate spheroid boundary rather than a sphere. The gravitational attraction of the smaller body is uniformly spherical, but in the region of the smaller body, the attraction to the larger body is higher closer in than farther away. This, coupled with the fact that the larger body tends to pull you into an encounter with the smaller body when you're on the far side, but pulls you away when on the near side means that the SoI boundary would tend to be egg-shaped rather than spherical. Best, -Slashy

This is full of win! I say press on. Worst comes to worst, you can always revert. Best, -Slashy

This would make sense, since the gravity of the parent body is stronger on the downhill side. This is reflected in the math to determine the SoI. The change in SOI occurs where the moon's gravity is stronger than the planet. Best, -Slashy

GAAH! I shall not be bested! Development cost $2,068. http://wikisend.com/download/520888/PBtwopointO.craft Controls: 1) toggle intakes Space) Stage NERV Launch (failure to follow these instructions may force an abort): Space to stage the RAPIERS at 1/2 throttle Rotate at 80m/sec Gear up, full throttle Pitch to 40° Maintain 40° pitch until 13km altitude At 13km altitude, follow prograde vector to 5° pitch Maintain 5° pitch When ship stops accelerating, hit space to stage the NERV. Gently pull to 20° pitch (try to avoid flaring) When RAPIERS flameout, hit 1 to close intakes Once apoapsis is 45 seconds out... Reduce pitch gradually to maintain apoapsis at 45sec ahead until prograde Accelerate prograde to establish orbital apoapsis Circularize normally. Deorbit: Standard deorbit procedure. It flies like anything else. CAUTION: This aircraft has no means to generate electricity during landing other than the solar panels. Try to deorbit and land in daylight to avoid draining the battery and losing control. CAUTION: The lower solar panels are susceptible to overheating due to their location. Take care to avoid undue thermal stress during reentry. This should be able to deliver 5 kerbals to a station in LKO for total mission cost of .7 points, so theoretical max of 9.37.2 points is possible. (forgot to subtract development cost) Good luck! -Slashy

My ascent profile varies with the engine type and t/w ratio. For a very low powered RAPIER, I tend to stairstep it. Once at 10k to get supersonic and once at 17k to max out the top end. For a very low power jet, I shallow the climb around 10k to get supersonic and hang around at 16k to max out the top end. For a high power SSTO, I usually go ludicrous speed down low and zoom climb to orbital apoapsis. Best, -Slashy

Dispatcher, Same here.... Sorta. I break my missions into legs and have vehicles optimized to their part of the mission. I use ssto spaceplanes to interface between KSC and LKO, then hand the job off to interplanetary ferries. I use specialized landers to interface between the ferry and the surface at the other end. While I personally wouldn't use an SSTO to get from Kerbin to Laythe surface and back*, I won't discourage anyone else from doing it. They may come up with improvements that I might find helpful. Best, -Slashy *did it once in .25 just to prove a point. I used this highly-cheaty SSTO to visit Eve, Laythe, and Duna all in the same trip. Long live infigliders and Kraken drives!

Nope. Best, -Slashy

Littoral winds generally go out to sea in the daytime and inland at night. Has to do with the relative temperatures of the land and water. *edit* Or do I have that backwards?? My memory ain't what it used to be... IAC this may or may not be technically accurate depending on your POV, but it *definitely* isn't worth getting into a flamewar over. Best, -Slashy

panzer1b, Please check the correction on my earlier post. I screwed up the math and the DV estimate was way wrong. It was based on the erroneous assumption that jet fuel weighs twice as much as it actually does. As for how it handles reentry heating at interplanetary speeds, I wouldn't know. I'd imagine pretty poorly. Best, -Slashy

This vertical lifter weighs under 15t on the pad and has over 6200 m/sec DV in LKO; more than enough to do the deed including a launch to orbit at Laythe and return to Kerbin. <-- forgot to carry the one O_o Ignore that. This one has 2500 m/sec in LKO, so probably still not enough. Just a proof of concept. It has no chutes, solar panels, or batteries. Best, -Slashy - - - Updated - - - Selfish_meme, They were over the weight limit of 15t and Plad used a probe. As you point out, they all used extreme slingshotting. The question is if it can be done with a Kerbal in a cockpit, Hohmann both ways, and under 15t. I say yes, but it'll have to be a vertical design or resort to extreme clipping. Best, -Slashy

It might be barely possible if you don't mind extreme clipping (I consider that cheating). Otherwise, my back- of- the- envelope sez it ain't gonna happen. At least... not with a hohmann transfer and a kerbal in a cockpit. A decent SSTO spaceplane will have a payload fraction of around 20% to LKO in small scale. 15 tonnes of spaceplane on the ramp will give you 3 tonnes in orbit, which includes the cockpit. Not enough to carry a nuke and not enough fuel to feed the RAPIER for all that DV. Ions could do the job (probably), but you're going to have issues with the solar panels at Laythe and you'll need lots of batteries (hence the clipping). A vertical lift RAPIER design is liable to improve your payload fraction to orbit, and would therefore open up interesting possibilities. *edit* yeah. A vertical lift RAPIER design could get you over 30% payload fraction in small scale. That would make nukes do-able. Good luck! -Slashy

Wanderfound, If you take a look one post up, that design doesn't use gimbals and follows a normal gravity turn on launch. Best, -Slashy

http://s52.photobucket.com/user/GoSlash27/slideshow/KSP/onesec I got 1,757m. Best, -Slashy

I was able to do a simple LKO orbit and return to the runway like this: It was mostly a matter of countering the lift of the wings with lift in the tail and keeping a low t/w ratio. The main LF booster had way more fuel than it actually needed, so it could've been tidied up a bit. It's an unfinished design (no solar panels, airbrakes, or RCS thrusters) but if you want a copy of the craft file just give me a holler. Best, -Slashy