GoSlash27

Do kraken drives still work? I heard they had fixed that a while back... -Slashy

Unfortunately, no But if you use the TR-2V, it will drop with the expended parts. Best, -Slashy

Yakky, Congrats on reaching orbit. I'll update your mention on the leaderboard to reflect it. Do you have a name for this craft? Also, what was the final apoapsis/ periapsis? -Slashy

I concur with all of your observations, but disagree with your hypothesis about launch direction. There's no altitude advantage or disadvantage either way, but when you transition to orbital velocity it reads 349 m/sec faster. (edit) My current record flight was conducted eastbound. (/edit) That's a very respectable speed and altitude! You should submit an entry for your spot on the leaderboard. Best, -Slashy

Stable 70KM orbit achieved. We've still got plenty of xenon to spare. Let's see how high we can go... Mun...check. Minmus... no problem. And oops! just escaped Kerbin. going solar retrograde. Maybe we can reach Eve? Aaand there goes Eve! C'mon Moho! Almost out of gas... Nope. A little short of Moho. Solar periapsis of 5.914x10^6 meters, final velocity 3,425 M/sec. IONosfear1.craft

Success! I have achieved stable orbit with the IONosfear platform. The combination of fixing my drop tank attachment points, adding batteries, and launching East was enough to get me into LKO with 526 units of xenon to spare. I'm going to push my apoapsis as high as it'll go before submitting my run and craft file. -Slashy

What's "resp."? And yeah, that t/w ratio is way too low. I think tsevion did some experimenting along these lines and found that you need a minimum of .42 t/w to clear the wall and reach orbit. My findings generally agree with that. Funny, I found the opposite; about 15* up But of course... none of us have reached orbit yet. The reason I work west on the longer flights is because I haven't yet reached orbital velocity in any direction. I figure if I can hit 2Km/sec heading west, then I can slap some batteries on it and head east. Until then, not worth the headache. As it stands, my current ratio of wings/engines/fuel don't have enough fuel/engine for it to be an issue. I can launch east and run out of fuel before daylight, and I always go east when I can, since turning is inefficient. Best, -Slashy

You are part of the rebel alliance and a traitor!

Laie, That's a cool graph! That sort of datalogging would be really useful for R&D purposes... You really need to have a low enough wing loading to carry you through "the wall" in that graph to a little over 30 KM. After that, your climb rate picks back up. And you also need enough thrust to accelerate you as quickly as your terminal velocity is increasing. But you also need enough fuel to give you the time for all that to happen, and all 3 are mutually exclusive, so it's a balance thing. My best entry thus far has 8 wings, 3 engines, and 5 xenon tanks. You might want to try experimenting with that ratio and see how it goes. Anywho, 22.5* is the optimal AoA for a bare wing from a lift vs. drag standpoint, but it's not necessarily the best for an encumbered wing seeking best climb rate. 17* was pretty good for that particular craft according to empirical testing, but not necessarily a "recommendation". It's merely the profile that I used, so if you were to download my craft and verify it's results... you knew how I flew it on that submitted run. I have since altered my flight profiles, and don't fly a fixed AoA anymore. Now I look to match a percentage of terminal velocity at benchmark altitudes, dependent on the craft's t/w ratio. Best, -Slashy

Yakky, My longer duration flights, I just wait until late afternoon and take off heading west. You can get halfway around the planet before you run out of daylight. As for your entry, it will have to go in its own category, since FAR aerodynamics are so radically different from stock. Best, -Slashy

Infinite fuel would make an incredible difference. From 8:38 to 9:05. You could theoretically hit Kerbin at 15 times the speed of light!

I only have 3 SSTO variants in my hangar, and all of them are "practical" types (not optimized for this challenge). #1 the cheap career mode SSTO #2 the Tylo Rover 5.0 SS: Designed to land on the surface and act as a crawler/ transport/ assembly vehicle and also... #3 the Tylo rover 5.0 SS in RV configuration: A pair of rovers linked to a payload (such as the personnel pod shown here) to return it to orbit. I haven't bothered figuring out the residual DV in these, but it's not much. Maybe 300 m/sec or so. Best, -Slashy

That axis is "pitch". Left click and drag your mouse in the direction you wish to pitch. Best, -Slashy

You're doing it right. It seems to be a balancing act between wings, engines, and fuel. Getting the proportions closer to "ideal" gives you some gains, but not much. Best, -Slashy

TheKutKu, Don't worry, the other challenge is still open. Also... My goal is to see what can be accomplished, not promoting one way of doing it over another. If you create the first successful helicopter, it will be noted. Kashua, Opinions vary on that. The important thing is that they're legal for this challenge. Best, -Slashy

After the preceding challenges, I think it's safe to say that an Eve SSTO is impossible without cheating. In the quest for a reusable Eve shuttle, I will now open up the rules a little and see what we can do. The mission is to create a stock Eve SSTO. That is; all parts used to place the vehicle in orbit must remain attached to the vehicle throughout the flight. You are free to use infinigliding and gyrocopters, and otherwise take advantage of loopholes in the physics engine. You may *NOT*, however, use any cheats available in the debugging menu (infinite fuel, disabling gravity, etc), nor may you resort to non-stock parts or physics. The idea is to make a 100% reusable vehicle (other than fuel) that can successfully shuttle between Eve surface and low orbit. Entries will be ranked by orbital velocity achieved, and vehicles created through violations of the rules will receive honorable mentions. Update: Since ladder drives are essentially perpetual motion machines and I don't want an arms race to see who can climb the longest, I won't be accepting any more entries of this type. Update: I have split the results into 2 classes; exhibition and practical. Lightweight would include unmanned probes, craft that do not have enclosed capsules/cockpits, and craft that do not have docking ports. Heavyweight entries must have an enclosed cockpit and docking port for the purpose of refueling. Best of luck! -Slashy Exhibition Division #1 TW1 "LadderLifter" 2,916 M/sec, 237 KM Ladder lifter<--- First submission to orbit #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Practical Division #1 Tsevion "Krakenor VI" 1125x128 km orbit achieved! Kraken drive infiniglider <--First submission to orbit! #2 GoSlash27 "Krakelicious Mk. 2" 119x125 orbit achieved! Kraken drive infiniglider #3 GoSlash27 "EveExpress II" 935 M/sec, 54.1 KM Ion drive infiniglider #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10

Negative. An orbit is just "falling around" a body, so the most efficient orbit is just off the body's surface unless it has an atmosphere to slow you down. Any orbit above that requires more energy to attain. In this case, the shortest distance (and hence most efficient path) between you and orbit is to go that-a-way, not up there and hang a left. Best, -Slashy

The way it worked was if you were in a certain place you would hear an audio signal in your speakers. If you fed that signal into an SSTV decoder, it would spit out that image. You didn't need any specialized equipment in-game to receive it or decode it, it was just there. You had to do some google-fu to find a stand-alone SSTV decoder and patch it in IRL. Best, -Slashy

There's not, and I doubt there ever will be. There are simply too many interdependent variables at work. You can, however, come up with very good empirical launch profiles simply through simulation or trial and error. They won't be ideal, but they'll be close enough that you won't miss the difference. When you get to the point where minor variations in your launch profile cost you less than the granularity of the parts themselves,... well, your profile might not be perfect, but you can rest assured that the imperfection is small enough to be negligible. Best, -Slashy

Certainly couldn't hurt. How about max DV at LKO in an SSTO, any way you can do it (without cheating)? *edit* and without jet engines, of course... -Slashy

Entry#2: IONosfear 2.0. Same exact craft with a couple more drop tanks. 44,630M @ 2,035M/sec. I ran some numbers on it today, and it turns out that staging the drop tanks instead of keeping them nets me an additional 660 M/sec, but that understates the gains. Dropping the weight keeps you from running into the equillibrium problem with gliders where they can't climb and accelerate any more. Since my second stage dumps me out at 32KM @ 1,350, I'm probably okay to dump off the wings at that stage, which is worth about 1,200 more m/sec DV. Dumping the 2 additional engines would yield a *huge* gain in DV (over 6,000), but would limit my acceleration to .5G which is pretty marginal. -Slashy

I wouldn't be able to tell without a craft file or at least a pic. Are you sure you have enough electricity? Maybe one of your add-ons has broken your ION drive? I'm running KSP 24 stock and just posted an ion glider in another challenge that made over 2 km/sec like 15 minutes ago, so I know they still work. Best, -Slashy

Also be aware that placing wings on top and/ or bottom without any separation between the wings means that they will no longer self-stabilize with dihedral. Best, -Slashy

Absolutely. The xenon tanks are notoriously piggy and they comprise a large percentage of your total mass. Nearly half of a xenon tank is just tank, so it's in your best interest to drop the empties. AFA dropping wings... I haven't played with that enough to know for sure. Definitely worth dropping wings once you're above 30KM since they don't do anything up there but add weight and definitely worth keeping below 20KM, but I don't know where exactly the transition occurs. I imagine it depends on the wing loading of your craft. Best, -Slashy

Ion gliders definitely still work. Now whether they will get you to orbit without infinigliding... has yet to be seen. Best, -Slashy