Wanderfound

Okay: I've got Kerbpaint working again, and I'm about start seriously populating Minmus with an audience. Now or never: if you want your team represented in the grandstands and parking lot, let me know what your colours are.

How much time do we have for final flight testing before the votes are due?

Is there a Kerbal renaming mod? I want to send "Iceman" Kerman to Minmus...

The downsides with the KR-2L are that it's big, it's heavy, it's expensive and (excuse the blasphemy) sometimes it has too much thrust. That doesn't mean that you can't have some fun with them, though:

Due to the forum prohibition on reaction gifs, I am now heroically resisting the urge to post the appropriate scene from Top Gun​.

Yup. I'm sure that regex will drop by to scream about this shortly, but in current KSP: Thrust: how much grunt does it have? ISP: how thirsty is it? ÃŽâ€V: given how thirsty it is, how fat your spacecraft is and how much fuel you're carrying: how much total push do you have?

In thrust we trust.

Vernors rock; all of my planes use them for Mun/Minmus VTOL. Not sure that they'll cut it on Duna, though.

HYPEPLTRAIN! NO! HYPETRPLANE! This could get a bit Gulliver's Travels if it continues. Death to the big enders!

Found a good flat landing spot? With an atmosphere that thin, you're going to come down hard and fast. A few strategically placed Vernors and/or Sepratrons might not be a bad idea.

BTW: planning on a VTOL, HTOL or parachute landing when you get to Duna?

Interested in having a go at that myself, now. FAR would certainly make it easier, though; stock air eats fuel. The Longreach can do KSC runway -> Minmus surface -> KSC runway, but only just; it needs a direct-from-Minmus aerocapture to manage it. A Duna version would be a fair bit tougher, but there's plenty of slack in the Longreach; it's a high speed cargo hauler. Are you willing to drop a lander from Duna orbit, or do you want to get the whole thing down into the red dust?

Well, if you want to do it in style: SSTO spaceplane, Aerospike-driven TWR > 2, VTOL landing on Duna. Be sure to post the screenshots once you're done.

I doubt that I even have an account anymore; it was years ago. The only game I'm playing these days is Kerbal. Although Kurtjmac has me tempted by Spintires...

Not playing with Steam much these days, but when I was: Doc_Rattus

Apart from my specialist long-haul jobbies (e.g. Longreach), they'll all need an orbital refuel before going interplanetary. I'm okay with that. OTOH, for the extremely easy way of getting to Duna: stick your Duna lander in the cargo bay of the Longreach. Fly out into Kerbol orbit, release lander, fly home. You can get away with a seriously tiny lander if you can give it a several thousand ÃŽâ€V headstart. Keep in mind that stock vs Ferram aero is radically different, and all of my planes are tuned for FAR. Have a peek at the Cratermaker challenge thread (linked in .sig) for a visual demonstration of the difference it makes to the CoL markers. I'm with you on the self-imposed limitations, BTW; the Goblin was partly done as a demonstration of the pointlessness of airhogging. Runway to orbit in 3 minutes 32 seconds, and exactly one intake per engine.

Trying to get the audience (a couple of Migration's worth of spectators, plus four Porklifter's for a start/finish line) in place first. Repeated laptop crashes aren't making it any quicker.

It's a fine line between "suicidal twit" and "the true Kerbal spirit".

First up: stock aero does make it a lot harder; soupmosphere drag is a killer. It can be done in stock, but it takes forever. FAR-induced aerodynamic failures are only a problem if you fly like a suicidal twit. Secondly: see the piloting guide I posted upthread. Get to the thin air, flatten out, toggle and tweak to get the most out of your jets before you fire up the rockets. And ditch the LV-Ns. Those things are boat anchors. You can get to Minmus and back just fine with RAPIERs alone. Add some Aerospikes or LV-909's and you can go anywhere. If you want to, grab some of the designs linked in my .sig, take them into the SPH and tear them apart to see how they're built. Piloting is the primary factor, but minimising drag isn't far behind. It's not about relying on SP+, either; the Benchmark can casually hit a 70x70 orbit with tanks half full, and that thing is pure stock. It goes to orbit just as easy in stock aero as it does in FAR. Or, if you lack patience, have a play with the Goblin. It can hit orbit in well under four minutes. The major difficulty with that one is in avoiding detonating the airframe through shock heating or excessive dynamic pressure on the way up.

Real Kerbonauts just scratch up their corneas instead.

Much easier way: first, launch a refuelling station. Just lift the biggest fuel tank you can, with a probe core, battery, solar panels and docking ports on it. Then, lift your interplanetary vehicle. Rendezvous and dock with the fuel station, refuel, go. LV-N's make it easier, but not if you want short burns. An LV-909 or Poodle will do it much quicker, and has sufficient fuel efficiency if they don't have to deal with the Kerbin gravity well (i.e. orbital refuelling). It can even be done with super-high TWR sporty stuff, but that's for after you've got the basics sorted. Do it easy before you try it hard.

Cool. Got an entry for the ice racing championships?

Any progress on sorting out the "Hot Rockets trashes action groups" bug? It's causing serious issues on an assortment of challenge threads.

Mach 1 isn't very fast by spaceplane standards (virtually parked, actually), and high-altitude intakes are designed for flying at ~30,000m. The standard spaceplane ascent pattern is to crank it up to Mach 5 and 30,000m before lighting the rockets; that's what the SP+ intakes are designed for. If you just want to play around at low altitude (nothing wrong with that, plenty of fun to be had), use basic jet engines and circular intakes. At the moment, you're annoyed that your Ferrari isn't working well as a Jeep.

I want screenshots of you landing that thing on the Minmus ice flats, BTW.