goduranus

Now the only thing left is to build that thing out of Kerbodyne tanks

What if your place changed, but the direction and magnitude of your velocity stay the same. What's happened to your orbit?

My entry, a perhaps not too convincing a demonstration. But you can try this yourself. I hyperedited myself into a perfectly circular 75656 meter orbit, which does not change height regardless of how many revolutions it go through. By transferring fuel from the lower to the higher tank, my center of mass shifted higher and my orbit height is now 75711.

You're thinking in of real world terms, KSP is different.

The ship velocity does not change, you can check it on the velocity readings. It happens because of a bug with KSP center of mass calculations. Where the center of mass moves relatives to frame of reference coordinates when you transfer fuel.

To beat this challenge involves no engines, decouplers, explosion, or GOTP maneuvers. I saw this at Scott Manley's btw Start your ship with a probe core, connect several long girders in front and several long girders in the back to make it as long as possible. Then connect a fully loaded fuel tank in front, and an empty fuel tank in the back. Add some reaction wheels for turning and struts to keep it together. E----------C----------F (E=Empty Tank, C= Core, F= Full Tank, - = girders) Now hyper edit it into kerbin orbit. At apoapsis, point the full tank towards Kerbin, and transfer fuel into empty tank. Notice your apoapsis has changed. Now turn 180 degrees and do it again, apoapsis has changes again. Repeat until escape trajectory.

You can change your orbit without changing your velocity! Just trying it, go 3000m/s in the direction of prograde horizon at 70km altitude, and maintain that 3000m/s, see what happens to your orbit. Hell, I know how to complete this challenge, it can be done.

Chengong deliberately put wings on to let me take the first place for a bit? Well, as promised, here is the runway attempt. 15.68 tons, no wing, runway landing. Score= 78.4 tons This score could be increased infinitely by expanding the "wing" to the left and right, as my computer can handle about 300 parts, I guess the score I can get is around 400 tons.

Either explosions or decouplers. But hey, there is a way to move around without delta V, by exploiting center of mass issues during fuel transfers.

You get the highest score by having the highest surface area to mass ratio without using proper wings. The surface area of the tanks are fixed, the only way to increase that ratio is by having them empty. Also, the nosecone will help you maintain speed in the low atmosphere, otherwise you won't be able to do a flare up maneuver. Here's my trial of such a craft. 7.5tons, no wings. I didn't aim to land it, but you can tell that it will work because the flare up maneuver reduced the vertical velocity to zero. Given it's maneuverability, should be pretty easy to land it on the runway as well. Edit: Can I get a score for this as a regular landing? I didn't have time for a proper flight during lunch break, but given its maneuverability I'm pretty confident that if I aimed for land I would have made it. I'll do a runway landing attempt this evening.

I would rather think that the way to win this challenge is to use parts that have the lowest mass to surface area ratio, and connect them side by side so the aerodynamic forces on most of your ship's major components are the same, so nothing rips off. Basically a wing made out of fuel tanks. I imagine about five empty FL-400 tanks arranged side by side, each with two advanced reaction wheels for steering and a landing gear front and back, then a nosecone in front. Plus plenty of struts for structural integrity. You launch this thing a rocket in the back of each tank, then detach the rockets to save weight before you enter atmo. I don't have FAR, but can someone try this out?

No, he meant you must start in Low Kerbin Orbit, infiniglider wing does not work there.

Here's my no-wing submission. Basically "found most robust part and dropped from orbit" approach. But hey, it has a capsule! So conforms with the rules. Craft is made up of a capsule, a claw and an asteroid Score:845 tons(no wings)

So all stock parts are allowed(even kraken drive) as long as you dump it before you hit atmosphere? I will try this challenge when I get home. How about going in with a ballistic capsule with no wings but use high-tolerance pieces to absorb the impact?

Nice! One thing I worry about those multi-man ships in Star Citizen is how to the ships operating optimally when players are logging on and off? They probably need several friends to be online all at once for 2-3 hours to do anything useful. Which I imagine would be pretty hard without a dedicated clan or something. The bigger and cooler the ship, the harder it will be to keep it running as well.

Curse is good enough though, the only problem I have with it is my prejudice toward the fantasy game audience that website was deigned to serve. Which I admit is unfounded.

Yesterday I took to playing Planet Explorers a bit, a minecraft-like game, and I played until 2 AM. Now with KSP I usually won't play past 9 PM, and so you might have concluded from that I feel the KSP is less fun. This though, couldn't be further from the truth. I spent this morning thinking about it, and really, most of the time that people spend while playing minecraft, space engineers, or other games of that type are spent on menial activities like grinding ore or flattening terrain. Sure there's creative mode, but you still need to flatten the terrain to build your houses. It's almost like they are "manual labor simulators." KSP, on the other hand, is "played" in a few short minutes, usually a dozen building the craft, then a few more at launch, timewarp, burn, timewarp.But most of the KSP gameplay doesn't happen at the computer. Most of how I play KSP is spend my coffee break planning missions. It's a wholly learning and creative process, with timewarp, and possibly mechjeb taking away the menial, boring part.

Try it with more symmetry, sometimes forces from opposite sides will cancel out.

That "space propeller" analogy for pushing quantum fluctuations is interesting

For some unknown reason, most kraken drives only work after you get the craft speed above 800m/s, does it work for you then?

Wut? Speed of Light? Craft File NOW!

Hmm, did you get the ship's speed above 800m/s? Then use Action Group 6 to toggle the drive.

How would you score this challenge?

My kraken drive is designed after 0.235, it's also very reliable and generates very little unwanted torque. Here's it on Curse http://kerbal.curseforge.com/shareables/223310-stock-reactionless-drive-craft-event-horizon/images Edit: Drive toggle is bound to Action Group 6(to avoid mixing up with landing gears), and needs speed greater than 800m/s to activate

Kraken drives are usually considered cheating, but I posit that it's an effort to challenge our current understanding of kerbal physics, mirroring real world attempts to do the same. With real-world reactionless drive getting more and more coverage by the day, I propose we change our opinion about the kraken drive, and see it as a legitimate propulsion technology in the game. On real reactionless drives: Forum Post discussion real-world reactionless engines On KSP reactionless drives: Forum Post containing some pre-0.235 kraken drive crafts, some are broken by the recent patchs I reverse engineered ComradeJenkins' ship and made a version that works with patch 0.24