goduranus

This!

Polar orbit approach is not good because the target area is often too small for the polar sweep. I think wunderfound's craft is the way to go until you get turbojet engines.

You're not cheating, yes it's a bug, but! You gotta know that unforseeable bad things often happen space(Space Shuttle Columbia, Apollo 1, Space Ship Two). Crewmen often don't come back even if everyone did their part. Think of the setback as extra realism, maybe your O-ring became brittle, or the thermal tiles crack, or unforeseen structural resonance occurred at supersonic speed or something.

Going for altitude, about 29220

I presume that by "manned" you mean some kind of command pod rather than a command seat inside the cargo bay? Also the "level flight" criterion is a hard one, because you can sustain stable altitude for a long time but slowly losing speed, and this usually occurs at an altitude 1-2km higher than an altitude where both speed and altitude are stable. This effect occurs at the altitude range where most of the altitude entries will be places, thus confounding the results.

Right now you can open parachutes while re entering, and they will always slow you down enough before they burn off, making re-entry heating a non factor. This should be fixed

Did you open parachutes above 20km?

The problem is the parachute. You can open them at re entry speeds, slowing you enough that you never hear up.

this challenge is too easy, I can land on any solid body with this setup:

It's definitely possible without cheating, but quite tedious This kind of craft will do it http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/88655-Stock-Gyroplane-altitude-challenge The idea is to ascend like a helicopter until an altitude where engines can be fired

I am playing on hard difficulty, it seems heat shields are never needed, because opening the parachute at high altitude always slows you down enough before the parachute can burn up?

Odd things, last month I've started taking on more western foods, and noticed myself taking on a butter/steak-like body odor. Got me thinking. If other people tried Chinese food for a month, they wouldn't need deodorants any more?

Well, real life space agencies do get an unlimited steady stream of funding, reputation, and science from transmitting data back to earth...

It looks pretty complicated. Given the same effort, I'd probably go build a model Hind and fly it in real life though.

Well, I upgraded my procedural fairing saucer with infiniglide engines and a kraken drive, now you can hover and fly around indefinitely. It's pretty slow, so still needs a rocket to go to space. File:http://www.curse.com/shareables/kerbal/224773-procedural-fairing-kraken-infiniglide-flying#t1:screenshots Engage SAS, then press 1 to start hovering. After gaining some altitude, point at horizon and mash WASD keys to accelerate. Point at sky and disengage SAS to slow down.

After the update, I can't get infinigliders to go faster than 650m/s now, back to the drawing board I recommend that there be bonuses for landing on planets and moon with low gravity or no atmosphere to encourage designs other than the kraken infiniglider

If so, then the Krussians(no offense to Russians btw) will feel it. Finally a use for those missiles and bombers people have been making.

It looks almost the same. The light in clipped inside the cockpit.

Can't take the credit. I picked up the idea from here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/88892-Infiniglide-Kraken-Drive-Infinite-Delta-V-SSTO?highlight=kraken+infiniglider

@ Slash, a 360 degrees loop in your infinigider will slow it down. @Spacepigu, I modified your ship to unblock the hatch. Also added a light to indicate whether the kraken drive is active. https://www.dropbox.com/s/fir0y3cs2r8fn4f/Infini-k%20shuttle%2C%20modified.craft?dl=0

Ha, the crafts from the krakeninfiniglider thread will win this

Retro burn? wut retro burn, go aerobrake @Spacepigu, there's one little flaw with your craft, forward landing gear is blocking the cockpit hatch.

Like with the other Jool altitude challenge, I would say that the way to go with winning this is to use a helicopter. Parachute it to zero altitude, then cut chutes and begin spinning until the atmosphere is thin enough to use nuclear engines efficiently. Then burn to orbit with a nuclear engine.

lots of good designs popping up now, exploring the Kerbol system is no longer a challenge.

Gotta raise the bar for you as I found someone else's Su 35 today:P http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/76228-Post-your-real-life-or-almost-real-life-planes-here%21?p=1094929&viewfull=1#post1094929