Norcalplanner

Just put in the code [imgur]mUbjC[ / imgur], but remove the spaces on either side of the slash.

Here's my entry. Periapsis was just barely out of the atmosphere at 70,476 m. A few notes: MechJeb is on the craft, but is being used only in an informational manner. There's a screenshot showing that all the guidance is off, and if you look at the pitch, you'll see that it increases slowly over time, consistent with a craft that has ASAS set prior to launch. This spaceplane relies on two 24-77s set at an angle in line with the CoM. They're on the whole time, thrust limited to 35% power, but are overshadowed by the power of the turbojet as long as the craft is in the atmosphere. Once the jet flames out, the 24-77s push the craft at the correct angle to (barely) achieve orbit. There's no provision for deorbiting the craft. Poor Bob is stuck for the moment. Enjoy.

Question - does it have to be a rocket? I had an idea for a spaceplane that I think will work.

You might want to check out the Jool-5 challenge thread. Lots of people have already brought multiple kerbals to the various moons of Jool.

Vall, then Ike, then Pol. Vall has a good combination of easy and difficult terrain, plus great sky views. Ike is similar and easier to get to, but doesn't have Vall's cool Easter egg. Pol is my favorite for low gravity silliness.

I bought a 32 GB memory card 2 days after I got the phone, put it in, and I now have 48GB of on-board storage. The card cost me $25. When compared to the price differential for various flavors of iPhones, it seems like a heck of a bargain.

GalaxY it came down to one thing - you can remove the back of the Galaxy S4 and put in a memory card and a new battery. You can't do that with the iPhone.

After giving it some thought, I think we need a second large unit of measurement - the White Tank Equivalent (WTE), pronounced "wheat". I think these two units should cover most scenarios for medium to large sized craft, at least for rocket fuel. I still haven't come up with a good unit for jet fuel.

Here's my entry - the Robo-tanker. All stock except for MechJeb. 1.5 OTEs (orange tank equivalents) delivered to a station in a 100 km orbit for a cost of 5,514.54. Using the formula, my score is 16,713. I don't know how to do the log math for gchristopher's alternate scoring system, but I suspect it will do pretty well.

I built most of my stations mainly for fun, and before I got the hang of SSTOs. I'll agree that their utility greatly reduces once you have the SSTO thing settled, but for standard disposable rocket ascents (where the cost per ton into orbit is much higher) then stations make a bit more sense. I will say that one of my proudest accomplishments as a relatively new player was an 800-ton station in orbit around the Mun, with enough fuel and monoprop to support dozens of deep space exploration missions. It had multiple landers, including some which could drop off rovers, to fully explore all parts of the Mun. It included a science lab and accommodations for 19 kerbals. It was launched in four major pieces, some of which were broken apart and reconfigured into wings with small tugs once they were in place. I think I used it maybe a half dozen times for munar excursions, and refueled exactly one interplanetary craft. Then 0.24 came out, I started a new career save, and haven't gone back to that station in months. :-\

Here's my entry, the Orbital SSTO Taxi 2 - or as I like to call it, "Mom's Taxi". Not fancy, but it gets the job done for bringing passengers to orbit. All stock except for MechJeb.

I've been trying to get into the #3 camp, and now with correctly placed intakes and engines, I'm there. Engines will stay on at full power north of 30 km, and will stay on at decreasing power levels all the way to 50 km. Many thanks to Laie for showing me how to do it correctly - now my apoapsis is over 80 km on jets alone, and circularization burns are less than 100 m/s with an LV-N.

My spaceplane designs are finally working well now that I fully understand the importance of the order of engine and intake placement. Works in progress are shown below: I do have a question. Without starting a flame war, is there any particular ratio of intakes that is considered abusive airhogging? Or is it just a subjective preference? Both of these designs have 5 ram air intakes per engine, which has finally allowed my spaceplanes to get their apoapsis out of the atmosphere on jet power alone.

Hard core ISTJ. Last time I took the test it was 7/3 I, 18/2 S, 19/1 T and 20/0 J.

Think Donkey Kong. It's similar to the avatar he has.

Last discussion on this so the thread doesn't go too sideways. I'm very aware of the asymmetrical flame out issue, but only learned recently that the radial intakes aren't worth it for high altitude flight (which is why the SSTO has them and the tanker only has the ram intakes). I'm also somewhat embarrassed to say that I now use mechjeb to manage my intakes and also prevent flame outs - I set it with a 15 percent safety margin instead of the stock 5 percent, and haven't had a flame out induced spin for some time. I'd like to angle the intakes so they're perpendicular to the airflow, but the tanker design uses 10x radial symmetry.

Do some challenges. I'm a big fan of Ziv's Jool-5 challenges. And if you're running out of funds, then work on making more efficient spacecraft. When I started career in 0.24, I originally just built the same kind of rockets I had built previously, which ended up being a very inefficient way of doing things. Now I have a ship with a tiny lander and a tug to move it around that can go almost anywhere in the system (only Tylo and Eve are off limits) for less than 200K funds. See how many S1 SRBs you can use, since they're really cheap for what you get. And try to make an SSTO tanker so you can refuel your orbital fuel depots for barely more than the cost of fuel. Don't have any orbital depots? Put some up. Try putting one around the mun or minmus and filling it with kethane-sourced fuel.

In ye olde english system of measuring distance, there were many different units. If the OTE is the equivalent of the rod (16.5 feet, or 5.5 yards), then the field is wide open for the equivalent of the inch, foot, yard, chain, furlong, and mile. Propose something!

Tiny space probes can already use Doughnuts as a unit of measurement. :-)

I would venture that OTEmeal is what's left after a rapid unplanned disassembly.

In discussing rockets and trying to describe them, I've found that I keep coming back to using the orange tank as a point of reference. The yardstick, if you will, for measuring fuel amounts. To that end, I hereby propose a new unit of measurement - the Orange Tank Equivalent, or OTE. Pronounce it the same way you would "oat". And yes, I'm inspired by the BED or banana equivalent dose used as a quasi-humorous reference point for describing exposure to ionizing radiation. All of a sudden you can describe your rocket's fuel capacity in simple, quick terms. "It's got three OTEs on the launchpad." "I only had half an OTE left after the transfer burn." "I grabbed two OTES from the fuel depot before leaving orbit." Please forgive me if anyone else has brought this up before, but it makes a lot of sense to my overly bureaucratic mind that spends its entire day working with obscure acronyms. The OTE. Use it. Live it. Love it. Now I have to go leave and tweak my 1.5 OTE SSTO tanker in the VAB.

I'm fully open to the possibility that it's suboptimal, along with many other of my piloting skills :-) The idea was to minimize the amount of oxidizer used in closed cycle mode, not necessarily to use the least amount of fuel. That said, I'll do some comparison runs with different profiles and see which one is the best for these craft. Update: Ran a bunch of different ascent profiles using the SSTO tanker I created for this challenge, getting up to a 75 x 75 km orbit. For this craft, which is very unbalanced in terms of air operation vs. vacuum operation (air TWR of around 3.8 and vacuum TWR around 0.27) the double apoapsis ascent has the most vacuum delta V remaining after circularizing (600 m/s). There are four other profiles which result in more than 500 m/s vacuum delta V remaining, so the margin isn't that big, but it's there. Now the question in my mind is whether a change in engine or intake configuration will improve things, or whether reducing the amount of jet fuel prior to liftoff will have any significant effect.

[carnival barker mode on] Step right up and take the journey of a lifetime on the Royal KABOOMian Laythe Liner! Fully-enclosed passenger accommodations for all phases of the trip! No struggling to remain strapped in while a Mach 3 slipstream tries to rip you out of your seat! Convenient ladder boarding! Dine with Captain Bill! Only unpack once! Stay in the same cabin your entire trip! All cabins have porthole views! Everyone is sitting fully upright for landing and takeoff! No need to strap yourself to a seat on the wall or ceiling! Enjoy classic kerbal styling with our big orange tank and other stock parts! No hyperedited stations or other infrastructure! All craft involved in the journey are the result of genuine launches from KSC! 100% reusable spacecraft! No part of any ship was discarded or otherwise harmed during the course of this voyage! All yours for the low, low price of 589 funds per kerbal! Call your travel agent today! [carnival barker mode off] Seriously, here's my entry. The entire story is in the descriptions for the photos. Enjoy.

The Royal KABOOMian Laythe Liner completed her inaugural run last night. Ticket cost for 16 kerbals plus a pilot was 589 funds per paying passenger. Pictures and writeup should be posted this evening.

Flight testing continues to go well over at team KABOOM (the Kerbal Administration for Big Overpowered Orbital Machines). Preliminary estimate is around 500 funds per ticket, based on what it costs to get the passenger craft and tanker to and from orbit. Both are SSTO designs with 100% cost recovery, except for fuel. Hopefully KABOOM's engineers can make a few refinements to bring down the cost by the time the launch window to Jool opens.