hoioh

Glad you like it! Currently working on an A380: It's gonna be REALLY heavy, so I hope it'll get off the ground when it's done

YAY! It's really too bad I missed the rule about the size there, it would have been great if I did that correctly right from the get go because the initial transfer window was beautiful with aligned planes and everything Thanks for the shiny new badge!

That and a bit of Tweakscale, yeah, but I think you're too hard on the part count because that could inspire people to make silly looking things and call them whatever getting the ultimate low score. You would obviously disqualify such and entry, but still. The following plane is theoretically worth -2 points: Calculated like this: 1 part x2 = 2 pts Took me all of 5 seconds to build, so 0 pts for time It looks terrible, so +10 pts I'm claiming it's an A380-800 so -14 pts 2+10-14 = -2 pts It's not fun and totally against the spirit of the competition, but hey! It scores low! For my Dreamliner, I added a bunch of parts to the lower hull in order to get that bulging shape that the original plane has, but if I remove it I will loose 20 parts and thus 40 points on my score. It will look a little less good, but in the absolute worst case that will cost me just 21 points giving my plane a 19 point advantage while looking less like the original. And there's more I could remove to reduce part count (which is what I did for the KEA challenge version, where it doesn't matter much if it looks realistic or not). So I would recommend giving a LOT more points for looks and/or reducing the influence of part count on the final score. I checked the B9 engines, but I'm not so sure they look better: (these are the CFM56 engines, the only ones I could find that you might have meant, unless we're not running the same mods. Maybe you can look it up and send a download link?) And they perform way worse than the scaled Goliaths in all respects but fuel economy:

I didn't have B9 installed at the time, but I do now! I'll check them out and see if they work well with the weight of the plane as well

Not as good as the first transfer, This was an inferior window because of the planar difference between Jool and Kerbin at this point: But still a succesfull launch for Jool and landing on Laythe, in the sea this time around and the right side up for a change

There, how's that? https://imgur.com/a/TgoZU98 Had to make some minor adjustments to the Huygens lander (for the better of it, it will land on it's legs this time around) to make it a little bit shorter without changing the weight and it fits! Also, shorter, stubbier boosters with pretty much identical DV on the boosters and no change to the probe's DV

I'll take that deal, let me check if the probes at least fit into a MK3 bay, if I don't have to adjust them the rest should be fairly easy to perform and obviously by "Jool encounter" I mean SOI capture similar to one from the first mission

Thanks! I was rather proud of the similarity with the actual ting, but yeah, too long... So I'll need a stubbier design for the solid boosters and I'll need to see if the Huygens probe can fit on the side like that with the counterweight opposite. Other than that, in this case if I say, make a smaller booster with the same DV and manage to fit it into a MK3 cargo bay would you excuse me for not doing the whole mission again, but just the Jool encounter? (If the fuel levels on arrival are similar enough ofcourse)

Curious to see how this pans out! (I wouldn't consider myself a newby, but I'm under the rep limit right?)

HAHA! Guess I'm doing that twice! (again) https://imgur.com/a/OpWHYzV Missed a rule there: -The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft + the transfer stage must fit into the long MK3 cargo bay And I just used the shuttle I had made for these challenges, guess I'm building a new shuttle then! Anyway, it was a fun mission!

Yay! I found a proper gear! Thanks to Kerbal Foundries! https://imgur.com/a/3Tkwm4h Much more like the real thing this way: Craft on Kerbal-X has been updated accordingly

Skaled Komposites 787-10 Dreamliner I built this for a different challenge, but with a few tweaks it makes a very nice KEA plane and it actually looks like a real plane! So why not post it? Link to craft: https://kerbalx.com/hoioh/KEA-787-10-Dreamliner Stats: Price: 89,114,000 Fuel: 5440 kallons Cruising speed: 250m/s Cruising altitude: 5000 m - 8000 m Fuel burn rate: 0.47 kal/s - 0.33 kal/s Range: 3383 km Passengers: 96 KPPM: 0.0268 @neistridlar I already added it to the Google spreadsheet under Medium regional jet's where it performs slightly above average to my surprise

I've built you a Boeing 787-10 dreamliner in 2 hours: https://imgur.com/a/U2PSqLK I ran into 1 problem, I can't make a landing gear low enough... The only mod I could find that allows me to make wheels big enough and low enough is for KSP 1.0.5 and those wheels locked up on the runway so I couldn't take off without severe drifting along the runway making take-off pretty much impossible. She flies pretty well, even with full tanks and flies great when almost empty! I used 67 of the finest parts to create this beauty, some of which require mods. You can download the craft from my library on Kerbal-X in my signature, or via this direct link: https://kerbalx.com/hoioh/boeing-787-10-dreamliner Mainden voyage:

Well, that was rediculously hard to get done! I still spun out on the way down because my vertical velocity exceeds my horizontal and I can't find a flight path for this mission that allows me to obtain enough horizontal speed to not spin out (I did like 20 takes or so and whenever I had a successful path I had the spin out).

Thanks for the new badge @michal.don and the fact that I can keep it although my procedure was not completely "proper" The reason it ended up like this is because I wanted to have the failure at about t30 (as specified in the mission parameters), but at that point I have not ascended enough to fully make it to orbit with an engine less. If the failure would occur, say 20 seconds later I think I would make it to orbit for a "proper" high altitude RTLS abort. I tried with a more Energia kind of setup, but that resulted in my overshooting the runway on the way back each and every time, so this got me thinking that this kind of procedure would only be applicable with a Shuttle style launcher and would not be a feasable abort for an Energia setup for which an Abort Once Around would make a lot more sense due to the reduced loss of thrust, percentage-wise at least. But we've also seen @53miner53's procedure which looked quite succesful, so there's that to consider too. I'm going to see if it's properly doable with my current shuttle setup with a short period in space, fingers crossed!

Ok, so it goes to orbit on a regular engine setup just fine, good to know: Mun orbit with payload even, once it's in space it behaves great!

It's a bit hard to see in the screenshots because of the nighttime launch, but the main difference is the engines you have on the stack, like the energia rocket. that makes your vehicle a lot more stable after the engine shutdown. On top of that I didn't shut down a center engine, but one on the side forcing me to shut down another engine. The TWR of the shuttle on launch without the boosters is 0.65 or something, so after the shutdown I'm also short on power upon separation of the boosters. I'll need to see how easily I can actualy get this thing into orbit (which I didn't test prior to the failure test, but it should be possible). I didn't even get out of the atmosphere without the proper propulsion...

Well, the RTLS abort session is a LOT harder than the 747 launch! Just controlling the shuttle without enough thrust is hard, but flipping it in the atmosphere is a different beast altogether. Had a lot of trouble controlling the shuttle in the first place because of the wing position, center of thrust, the works. I bet a Buran - Energia combo is a lot easier to control, especially in the scenario. The shuttle: The mission:

Not as hard as I thought it would be, but using KSP 1.3.1 pure stock I can't do it without blatantly ripping off @Zeiss Ikon's design. So I went and got some Tweakscale to pitch in a bit, but that made it almost easy. I present: Tiny Tim 2: And an un-cut video of it's performance:

Thank you @boolybooly for the apt naming of my shuttle, I think I will christen the other one the "By_The_Back_of_a_Beer_Coaster" for the sake of completionism I will proudly wear the Gatecrasher badge alongside the official one

Now that the gate has been crashed it is time to make an entrance

@boolybooly I would be happy to join the party as a gatecrasher as the submission was obviously intended to crash a couple of gates! I was not under any impression that this submission conformed to just about any of the rules of the challenge other than taking off from the runway and landing right back onto it just for fun and to show how simple an SSTO can be when built properly. I did lose the airbrake (this was my third attempt and I could be less stressed for not losing any significant part, like a wing or some such) and apart from the airbrake and maybe the landing gear just about all of the parts are non-stock or modified in some way by means of tweakscale annd the like. In the interest of fairness I will be submitting a proper "by the books" SSTO for your (re)viewing pleasure just for the sake of it in the 'near future'

Rebuilt one of my STS shuttles to function as an SSTO, just to bump the thread

I've been spending a lot of time in KEA thread, that lifted my atmospheric flight designs a LOT. If people have trouble designing aerodynamic stuff, I recommend downloading a bunch of planes from that thread that get good reviews and dissect them in the SPH. teaches you a lot about how KSP handles atmospheric flight

Well that was fun! releasing the shuttle from the plane proved to be a spectacular succes! And turned out to be real easy too, I'm totally surprised! First time, right off the bat, release shuttle, shuttle flies up and away from the plane and remains perfectly level. Same for every subsequent attempt (to land the bloody massive boeing... and I was recording, so I had to do the whole flight again multiple times untill I managed to land it proper(ish)) So without further ado, here's the STS 1-T mission flown on the back of massive 747 lookalike including landing of both craft and a pretty kraken strike right at the end for good measure (no Kerbals were harmed in the making of this video):