hoioh

It's right next to it anyway. Kudo's on that little SSTO, that's quite the construction and piloting skill you got there!

About the altitude: there's two peaks and it's really hard to spot which is the higher one, so the first thing I did was bring a large rover out there using a bunch of b9 parts (which according to the OP is easy, well let me tell you: there was nothing easy about that machine, especially landing it because of it's size, anyway moving on). I moved that rover to the top then moved to the one peak and found an altitude and then moved to the other and found a slightly higher altitude which is the peak I went to when it did it for the badge. It's the peak that leans towards the east and towards the center of the mountainous area. When you stand on it and you face west you can see the other peak and it will appear higher, it's not even that far away. But it isn't higher, it's just difficult to see in KSP. - - - Updated - - - That's based on Burt Rutan's ATTT bushplane. The thing was a financial disaster so it never "took off", but the basic design I found flies really good in KSP. Normally I would connect the wings with a secondary and tertiary fuselage, but this one is too small to do that with. And while typing this I have a great idea for another plane! Got to go!

Landing on the actual mountain really takes some doing, stock gear doesn't really break well and a ship carrying any kind of rover is going to be a little bit on the heavy side, making brake power a requirement for landing on the slippery slopes of mount Keverest. Donfrod is an excellent pilot though, so he did manage, after which Bob could drive the little rover to the very top 6767meters! Driving downhill in such a small vehicle is very dangerous though, so he didn't drive back at anywhere near top speed. 5m/s is fast enough downhill if you want to keep as many pieces as possible. Here's the album: And here's the landing direction and location:

Just had to pitch in and rediscover how lovely this baby flies! Requires B9 and firespitter and flies great in stock aero, dunno about FAR: Rutan ATTT

I don't know about your oberth effect Laie, I'm just stating that dragging more mass means you need more fuel, which in turn means you will be more expensive in the end. 1 or 2 nukes should do it, otherwise you're lugging mass around you really don't need. Then again, having a really low TWR is also not much fun to fly, so the trick is to find the right balance and get as many kerbals as possible on a single nuke and a single orange tank. It should produce the lowest cost. Kulebron did it by optimizing weight on each craft individualy and so did I, start with the interstellar trip and work backwards from there. - - - Updated - - - Oh and Kulebron worked with fuel value, instead of recovered <> launched cost. This is an important detail in case you feel lazy or miss the runway with bingo fuel.

Nah, the flat green area around the KSC is MUCH larger than just the runway. If you hit the runway at those speeds you'd break into a million pieces. Just drive off the back of the runway and drive southward.

What Right said made me think of a ship made out of 2 parts: atmospheric engines and maybe some wing construction and a single nuke to prepel the intergalactic trip. The ship would look a LOT like what I used before, just a big ball of MK2 passenger compartments on their sides to reduce drag. Hang one set of atmospheric engines in orbit around Laythe. Make a direct ascent from Kerbin using the atmospheric engines as long as possible. Once out of the atmosphere undock the atmospheric engines and use an 48-7S on the atmospheric engine cluster to bring that set of engines into orbit around Kerbin so you don't have to drag all that mass along on your interstellar trip. On the laythe side dock with the set you left in orbit and descend to the surface. Then from there do the same thing you did on Kerbin and direct ascend back home, undock the engine cluster that lifted you into orbit and circularize it around laythe. Upon return dock with the set you left in Kerbin orbit and land it precisely on the KSP runway. Clearer this way? I found landing just next to the runway increased my cost per kerbal by about 100% to 200% I don't remember the exact figures, but I found it completely unacceptable, so I F9'ed a LOT to get it on that runway and collect the reward. (The recovery value was 97.something% for landing just next to the runway at the KSP center, that added such a significant amount of kost that it wasn't even interesting anymore.) Also, Pilots are inefficient, use a tiny probe core instead. that way you can carry more kerbals as passengers. Makes all the difference. You've made one monstrous contraption there though! (Just had a peak at it.) Using the hitchhiker containers is a problem, the weight per kerbal is too high. At 0.5t per Kerbal the MK2 pod is the most efficient. Another problem is that mass of Nukes, they lob on a massive amount of weight, making you use more fuel, adding even more weight, etc. Using a single nuke is all you need to get the transfer job done. But your largest problem is that you appear to have made 2 landings at KSC, both NOT on the runway. 144 kerbals is definitely the most anyone ever tried for this challenge, that's a prize in itself I'd say! I've looked at your calculation here, but I'm missing something because it really looks like you made 2 recoveries. Which is odd, because 1 is plenty. Not to mention the fuel you left in both the Laythe lander as well as the transfer vehicle that you should've subtracted from your cost total. - - - Updated - - - Since version 0.90.0 the MK3 is the most efficient at 0.40625t per kerbal. But at the time of your post that wasn't around yet.

Good guess, it is very likely the mod requirement. You could change it to running down the length is the KSP area, that piece of grassland is pretty flat and I'd say quite big enough.

That would result in a system whereby you make a direct ascent and then decouple just out of the atmosphere from the atmospheric engines and fly them back into circular orbit on a tiny engine. They would use a little bit of fuel to circularize, but because of the reduced weight that might be less as the savings that come with the direct ascent. Using the gravity boosts, as you did, can then further reduce the cost of the trip, but that only works on the way back. On the way to all you can do is a little mun flyby and perhaps also Minmus, though that would create only the most minute of differences for the trouble it would take to perform. So far the best way I've found is to maximise the number of Kerbals you're bringing to the point of rediculous amounts so as to spread the cost thin across a large crowd and minimize the kerbal/engine weight ratio.

I ditched the external seats, because I'll be damned if I'm going to transfer 60 kerbals by hand 5 times over the span of one mission. That would be a little too much to ask really. I even used crewmanifest to transfer them more easily from the one vessel ot the other, but yeah, it would likely be cheaper to put them on external seats.

My inspiration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_VariEze And the result: As for scoring: 1 Kerbal, completed the challenge, flew a very long way = 100 + 1 + 2466 = 2567 Mass, width, height, length, complexity = -1*(28 + 33 + 154 + 85 + 33) = -333 Total score: 2234 points And all that on just 1 little tank of 100 units of fuel and a single prop without leaving the athmosphere. It takes off at 20m/s or so, it doesn't even reach the first pedestrian crossing on the runway (the stripes, I've no idea what else to call them) because it can take off before that, practically instant. Wanna take it out for a spin? Craft file (requires B9, Firespitter and mechjeb, cuz I'm too lazy to go take it off and re-save it)

Nicely done, Right! It looks stock except for Mechjeb, Right? Also good to see that the general tacktic hasn't changed yet. For the moment this appears to be the way to do it. Direct ascent could make for a slightly more efficient system, but it doesn't make a mayor lot of difference.

The point is to, as cheaply as possible, bring kerbals on a round trip. So you divide your total cost by the number of kerbals you brought to and from Laythe to get a ticket price. Would be an interesting challenge if returning Kerbals was NOT a requirement But you're always free to bring some extra to fill up a base (but I'd make it a crew-swap mission, because that way you can return with the same number of Kerbals as you went with).

herer's what mr. yogurt wrote in the rules: " Missions with mods will compete for a separate leaderboard than the missions without mods. However, mods that do not affect how rockets fly or add parts can be used in the stock leaderboard. (unless I deem the mod OP)" So basically, to be listed stock requires any mod does not influence how the rocket flies, info mods, mechjeb, etc. Any other mods are fine for the mod leader board so long as they're not rediculopusly overpowered or some such. imho this means realchutes, deadly reentry etc are fine for the mod leader board and even KAS would be fine is used responsibly and not glitch your way over to layth with a rediculous slingshot or something.

I normally use Mechjeb for building purposes and then remove the control module prior to launch, it's never been an issue. It's about not flying on autopilot and using even more powerful parts to complete the challenge. I don't know what "the thing that prioritizes your inlets" is and what it does. does it come with a name?

In a chase I'd find that to be a lot more important as well, but this is more like the landspeed record and that requires dealing in absolute, rather than relative speed. It also makes it an honest to god actualy hard to do challenge. Give it another go!

It's the difference between your actual speed over land and the actual speed through the air. You're not flying exactly parallel to the ground, you see?

You're not the first and you won't be the last to make that mistake, it's alright. Like I said: it's an easy mistake to make.

Are you talking about orbital speed, or speed over surface? In your album there's no image of the F3 flight log that shows your actual highest speed over land, which is what we measure here. Orbital speed is higher, this mistake has been made before as it is an easy one to make.

Not to be nitpicky with the improvement of my score, but I think it's missing a number, I'm not that good

That in itself is an achievent! Well done Batz!

I promised a video of a succesful rover drop to prove the problem was with KSP crashing and not the rover crashing, so here it is: - - - Updated - - - And then there's the matter of scoring: Chellenge completed: 500 points Cargo drops: 19 x 250 = 4750 points Weight of cargo: (62.317 - 54.472 = 7.845) x 5 = 39 points (rounded down) Kerbal airdrops: 18 x 25 = 450 points Kerbals killed: 0 Parts damaged during drop: 0 (all the splosions are decouplers) Video's provided: 200 points Landing safely at KSC: 500 points Didn't go anywhere but Kerbin atmosphere. Total: 6439 points The only way I could improve on that is by going larger and/or not dropping the rover and going 100% kerbal dropping, but that would be abusing the system to get the highest score out of it and I would likely summen the lag kraken every other minute and spend more time with the boot-screen as with the actual game. Let me tell you: this thing is having issues with my heavy, half a year old, high end rig. It likely wouldn't even load on my previous machine.

So I thought it might be a good idea to go light, but that was a mistake. So here is a not so very competitive entry which is ultra light (below 3 tonnes). Used Mechjeb, but when using jets the ascent guidance isn't worth a penny, so no full autopilot ascent. Payload mass: 0.065 tons (this is where the high cost/ton comes from) Total vessel cost: 29.273 Kerbuck$ Payload cost: 17.770 Kerbuck$ Vessel cost: 11503 Kerbuck$ Recovered funds: 11430 Kerbuck$ Sum total cost of mission: 73 Kerbuck$ 73/0.065 = 1123 Kerbuck$/ton So, not so very competitive due to the super low mass.

Here goes attempt number 2, 5 part video: Seated the 18 Kerbals first, that's a lot of work. Here's takoff! Dropping the Rover and crashing KSP just before it touches down... In this video you can see that there is such a thing as too slow. Luckily I could correct that on the second attempt after a quickload and a little extra throttle. Fly back for a soft landing: Counting my Kerbals on the site, all 18 accounted for! I'll add a video tomorrow with the separate rover survival drop, to show that the landing is just fine and it was KSP that crashed, not the rover! (As usual by now: It may take a while for youtube to catch up with the post.)

It's a tiny decoupler with a command seat on it and some Cubic struts to form a "Fall Cage ®" which is built out of three pillars, strutted together at the top. The rearmost pillar has a side-mounted chute attached to it near the top. On the sides there is a decoupling booster left and right, the really tiny booster dunno the name and KSP is starting up in the background after my 100th crash today. I left only 1000 or even just 500 fuel units in the booster, but left the thrust at 100%, it's just enough to kick it out of the cabin. I set the chute to deploy at 50 meters only, that way it doesn't drag the kerbals into the tail of the plane when flying at very low altitudes (everything above 50 is fine, below 50 is BOOM!) Anyway, that's it, nothing more, nothing less. I placed 18 in my new creation, but had some rover trouble earlier. Rebooting again to decend and drop a rover and the 18 Kerbals at a site about 600km away from KSP with plenty fuel to spare for the return trip. - - - Updated - - - Uploading a video right now to better show off the Fall Cage ® - - - Updated - - - Uploading full video for the Second attempt now. I have 18/18 of my Kerbals survive, but lost my Rover due to a KSP crash... It never made it back in after the break... I'll show a separate shot of the rover touchdown which is not from the same flight just to prove that it does in fact remain in one piece.