hoioh

Thanks for the tips @zolotiyeruki, I'm going to see how far I can optimize this craft to get the most out of it. Especially Tip 1 is very insightful

You are absolutely correct in your way of calculation and it's probably the more reliable method, but I'm quite certain my math is sound as well because it includes any kind of deviation the F3 menu produces: In order to determine my answer I did the following: after I made it twice around I checked the F3 menu and devided the distance mentioned by 2, that's how I got the 8500. After that it's just a matter of dividing my final distance by that number. So no matter what kind of deviation the F3 menu produces, it's already accounted for this way. I'm still curious though as to how you managed 14 times around. I can't get my speed very much over 1600m/s, I need to keep an angle of 1 to 2 degrees to level (which I think is slowing me down, but angling the front and tail wing-strakes doesn't seem to help with that) and as a result my fuel usage sticks close to .3 and eventualy drops to close to .2, but it won't drop to the 0.04 per engine you seem to manage, which is less than half my best so far. Would you care to elaborate on that achievement? Because I'm thinking I could manage similar performance, but I'm missing something you're not.

I've played modded KSP for so long I honestly didn't realize it wasn't a stock part, it looks so Squad, right? It's from the AirplanePlus mod, next to Mechjeb the only mod on this install :-) Here's the spec of the part. It can be filled with fuel, but I didn't fill it for the sattelite. Considering it was inside the cargo bay the whole flight, it's aero stat can't have had any effect being in a shielded environment, so for al intents and purposes I would just consider it mass and volume. It's too bad the part's not stock, I really like the look of it on the scope. I hope you can forgive me.

Wanted to try for the multiple circularizations, but I can't get to the speed and altitude that you do @zolotiyeruki. Also I didn't rebalance the plane after removing a fuel tank from the back to get higher and fly more efficient, so the landing was REALLY hard, like a leaf, that flies in the wind... managed to land it on the gear though after the fifth attempt or so and then drove it over to the strip to stick it. https://imgur.com/a/i2BmB 49,000+2,000 = 52,000 Km Once round I calculated was about 8500Km 52/8.5 = 6 times around in the end. I may try again, but it takes an awful long time to do this at 1x, my respect for managing to take it around 14 times! All done in version 1.3.1 BTW.

STS-3 mission report: Just had to adjust the boosters a bit, but once that was figured out it all went real nice and smooth, Jeb didn't chew on the fuel lines again, the ship did not explode, not even a little bit, retracted the solar panels in time before the athmosphere tore them off and fitting the panels was an actual breeze, though my MMU might be a bit overpowered. And look at the nice sattelite! Isn't she pretty? (oh and I managed to get all the images in the correct order this time. For some reason Imgur messes up the order when I copy paste all those images at once. Am I the only one experiencing this?)

I saw some mission reports later on that already made me doubt what I had done, if possible, you might attach an example report to the missions, where you can ofcourse, to show in great detail what the deal is? That would have been a great help in my own case. I'll try again, but proper. I did like the design of the scope in the end, so it'll be worth it!

Thanks for the badges @michal.don! Can I have the STS-2b as well based on the first attempt at STS-2? I did land the fuel tank that time. And to keep the flow going: here's my report on STS-3 https://imgur.com/a/VleMD

Hello, and welcome to the challenge! First of all, I'd like to ask you for a modlist - I see MJ installed, So I see you are not running a completely stock install. Mods are absolutely ok in this challenge, but I need to know which you have installed, to place you in a correct category. Thanks! Now, about the missions STS-1a and STS-1b look great, you certainly have a really capable shuttle. so no problem. Then I'm getting a bit confused You managed to land the fuel pod. that is ok (despite moving the fuel from the pod, but I'll let that one slide ). During the same mission, you took up the sats, but placed them in a wrong orbit. Then the next album - you managed to place the sats in a GSO, and with a spin stabilisation. But then a rescue mission of a sort goes on - possibly STS-4? Could you please explain what happened there? Did you land the shuttle after reflying STS-2a? And could you please provide a close-up screenshot of the spin-stabilisation engines placement? I'll gladly award you the badges, but I'm trying to find out precisely which ones Thanks! Hi Michal.don, Yeah I get the confusion, it all happened so fast! For some insane reason during my retry of STS-2 while launching sat nr. 2 my shuttle exploded. I figured Jeb had been gnawing on the fuel lines again, but I can't be sure ;-) It might just have been an attack of the kraken or some such, so I launched a shuttle identical to the first one in all but 1 aspect: the claw on the front and used that to resque the crew. It landed without issue, I mean these things are a bit unstable at low speed and altitude, not to mention unwieldly, but I can land em just fine once I survive re-entry (the shuttle that launched the sattelites was lost). So what happened is that I resqued the STS-2a crew using a secondary shuttle. It was a resque mission, but in no way was it anything like the originally planned mission STS-4: floating the two shuttles at a 90 x 180 degree angle and EVA transferring the crew. I simply clawed the cabin and transferred the crew directly into the new shuttle. As for mods: I got MJ installed and Airplaneplus, but I only used stock parts. So other than MJ, nothing of relevance. Here's a close-up of the sattelite spin drive:

Did a retry of STS 2a in order to make the sattelites spin on their axis while racing off towards KSO, I just angled the litte engines a bit to provide spin and off they went whithout SAS control. But Jeb had been gnawing on the fuel lines out of boredom again and while launching nr 2 the ship exploded... 1 of the remaining sattelites could be salvaged, but the fourth was unfortunately lost and the crew had to be resqued by a spare STS vessel with a claw. The mission was a succes with just 3 sattelites in equally spaced KSO orbits, the resque went well too (only the claw burned off during re-entry without damaging the cockpit) and everyone safely touched down on the KSC runway in the end.

Thanks @B-STRK for the comprehensive answer

I meant STS3, but you're right I didn't perform STS2a up to spec either. What is meant by "no spin stabilization" for the commsats? otherwise I think I get it and all I have to do now is move my sattelites to a higher orbit. (may still be salvageable).

Figured I'd give this a try. Below Missions 1 and 2 including lugging the 40t tank around. Mission 1: Mission 2: (I moved the fuel out of the tank in case I needed it on descent, but better piloting ultimately meant I didn't need it. It's still there, just not in the right tank.)

Nice Challenge Mjp1050! I like me some airplanes! For the first submission by Skaled Komposites I would like to present the SkiKull: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ddq7f9wj6t51dv6/SkiKull.zip?dl=0 (link contains more screenshots and craft file) The SkiKull, the latest and probably last aircraft design by the legendary Kurt Kutan can easily touchdown on land or water. Simply deploy the flaps, drop to an altitude of about 100m above the surface and level out until the speed drops below 50m/s, drop the landing gear, activate the brakes and gently touchdown on whatever flat surface you like. Comfortably seats 16 Kerbals en route to any destination up to about 1500km from take-off. Flies with and without SAS activated and, for safety reasons, has a light tendency to pitch up, at high speeds and low altitudes it rises even when flown perfectly level, though this may be less fuel efficient. Whether full or emtpy, the SkiKull flies exactly the same way and does not suffer from deteriorated handling when either full, empty or anywhere in between. and on top of that, it's a bargain. With 59 parts and just the one engine maintenance is not going to break the bank either. For all your water landing needs, the SkiKull is the go to aircraft to transport small crews at short ranges. Specs: Production cost: $31,191,000 Seats 16 Kerbals + 2 Pilots Takes off from land or water at just under 40m/s Cruises at about 120 m/s at an altitude of 8000m Contains up to 660 Kallons of fuel Fuel consumption below 0.06 Kallons/sec at cruising altitude. Powered by a single K76 Predator Turboprop engine it has excellent fuel economy and has a range of at least 1500km

It's for those spectacular failures. Just click a couple of the entrants.

Even very recently this has become a useful way of commercial space exploration with SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo, each towed by their mother plane WhiteKnight I/II, though not inside a cargo bay, it's definitely a useful and feasable method to cheaply launch space vehicles. Slightly less recently, but Nasa habitualy uses 747's and Antonovs to launch test vehicles with RAM jets and the like, so it never really stopped being a good way to do things.

Infernal Robotics would be a great asset making this thing rotate and counterrotate, doing that with stock parts means you have to make your rotations using small motors or monoprop and putting it on an axle made with a bunch of wheels on a (couple of) tank(s). Whereas with IR you can use the free moving docking washers with a motor or just use a rotating hub that responds to a button press. Then make the second cylinder with the buttons reversed so they always counter-spin. Anyway, since it's big and requires these unpredictable stock axes, it's going to bug out and break a lot. I'm only doing it with IR allowed, otherwise it's just messy.

I present MinIon, the first flying, greenpower Unicycle. Tried to do it without the added reaction wheel, but coudn't keep it upright. Scoring: Speed 59.3m/s = 55 points Time 13:33 = 25 points Mass 1.7t = 13 points Xenon master: 3 points Greenpower Elite: 10 points +anything you want to award for the Unicycle achievement. Total: 106 points

It's not a lot of trouble, outside of all the mods that is. The ships pick up in 0.90.0 without much troubles once you get all your mods back in place, you just have to open them in the SPH/VAB before you can launch them in order to update the size info. Other than that, you won't even notice.

In KSP 0.90.0 there's a little "i" button in the right hand lower corner of the VAB/SPH where you can click on and it will show you length, width, height and weight as well as number of parts used. Nice looking plane by the way.

maximise drag, it will slow you down to a velocity that makes the drop survivable. so find the parts with the highest drag to weight ratio and make your ship from lots of that. in ksp stock atmosphere only the values matter, not the shape, so you can make this ship and surround it in cube struts, or balance it to fall onto a landing gear of a fashion to make it bounce more than crash. should be doable.

Stats, well, mods used: IR, FAR & B9 Top speed before freaking out completely: 541.6m/s Width: 32 Length: 32.3 Height: 8.1 Parts: 62 Weight: 23.1t (Includes 990 units of fuel) Dry mass: 18.2t

Well, let's just say it works better in FAR, but not exactly like the real thing, unfortunately. In the VAB I noticed the Center of lift moves in an even stranger way than with stock earo, it takes on a sort of water-drop shape path, starting with the spherical end, then outwards sideways only to return a little ways on and then stay in the center of the fuselage a little ways backward from where it started. Not nice, but manageable. It only handles in any way pleasant at high speeds, low speeds just suck no matter what you do with the wing. Vidoe upload takes a while, I set it to publish as soon as it's done. And here's the craft if you're interested in trying, required Infernal robotics, B9, and FAR mods to work. Craft file

There's always that option. With something resembling a plane that would even be fairly easy. Wings add drag though and so do wheels, so the most eficient option would be to just land it where it ought to, but wheels are still better than missing the runway by about 20 meters....

I'll second wanderfound on that one, the difference on my Laythe entry was 200% when I landed right next to the runway at the KSC, versus just on the runway. Recovery cost can really push your ticket price.