hoioh

Took me a while to figure out where exactly I had to go to, but the screenshots of others gave me a pretty good idea of where to go, so I flew over the large mountain range only to have to course-correct in order to get there. I used some B9 fuselage for style, it just looks better, hope you don't mind. (Wings and engines are stock, used the Sabre-S intakes, just the two of them, and some basic cockpit and fuselage of the B9 MK2, there's only fuel in the tail bit by the way.) It flies like a champ!

Added the 4 extra 200 tanks to the asparagus stages because they need to throttle down to stay below terminal velocity anyway, so making those last longer would add the maximum amount of speed to the system and launched it again. With an altitude just over 4mln meters and a maximum speed just under 10,000m/s achieved in 4:43, may I present to you gentle and ladiesmen, the Space Pancake 2.3!

Had to try and see how far I could get up to, so I did 4 attempts: 1. 3,820,686 2. 3,650,162 3. 3,914,758 4. 3,834,150 Showing attempt number 3, as it achieved the highest point. It's nice to note that all of these launches acumulate enough momentum to escape the pull of Kerbol and fly off into empty space. Edit: forgot to add a fuel count: Small tank = 45+55 = 100 Medium Tank = 800 5x 800 = 4000 2x 100 = 200 Total fuel = 4200 (going to upgrade the ship with and additional 800 fuel now.)

well, another loch ness monster that doesn't exist then. too bad, would've been cool if that could be done easily. There's always the MOAR SAS trick to rely on, but that'll make you heavy and then there's the option to attach a key to the outer boosters and just turn them off once they start to flame out.

yay! made it onto the scoreboard!

Just jets? Because it's all jet engines here and we're having trouble getting over 2400m/s, so your proposal sound a bit fishy. (But if you can do it I definitely want to see it! and an explanation of how you did it, because that would be 200m/s over the old record.)

Nice way of getting that done, that thing is tiny!

Day 11 Challenge in two pieces, first I wanted to test explosive decoupling. Always wanted to do that, but unfortunately that was a little bit too effective. Went right over 1.000.000 meters. Even with just 2 stages it went way too high up, so that limits the possibilities severely unless you're bringing a payload to weigh the thing down. First the outtakes: Then the final result, only 3 parts including the one shute:

It's rather silly they don't show in the actual forum, they show perfectly fine in the preview window though (using chrome here). Edit: They show on the forum without any kind of trouble as well by the way (again, using chrome to browse with).

Now that I didn't know. Sorry about that! Here's a better posting of said reports: In an attempt to catch up here's the illustrated story of me catching up these last 10 days of challenges: There wasn't anything about Mechjeb in the rules as far as I could see, so I considered that even back in the apollo days the astronauts had computers on board to arrange certain things for them. As such I don't consider it in any way a problem, so long as permadeath is still on, right? If your design is bad, it's going to go wrong anyway. Hoioh catching up day 1-3 I'm kind proud of the speed I got up to at a mere 16K altitude, that's over mach 3!Hoioh catching up day 4 Hoioh catching up day 5 & 6 Hoioh catching up day 7 Hoioh catching up day 8 Hoioh catching up day 9 Had to drive the rover without the kerbals to the 5K point because KSP glitched my kerbals back into the pool and then crashed for some reason. I couldn't be bothered to bring fresh ones to drive it since there's already a drone core in there anyway.Hoioh catching up day 10 Oh and finally: you're using some abbreviation for your suggestion about day 23, but I don't know what a DMP is supposed to be. Maybe some kerbal chucking would be fun for a 1 day challenge? fire a single kerbal off the end of the runway or something?

In an attempt to catch up here's the illustrated story of me catching up these last 10 days of challenges: There wasn't anything about Mechjeb in the rules as far as I could see, so I considered that even back in the apollo days the astronauts had computers on board to arrange certain things for them. As such I don't consider it in any way a problem, so long as permadeath is still on, right? If your design is bad, it's going to go wrong anyway. I'm kind proud of the speed I got up to at a mere 16K altitude, that's over mach 3! Had to drive the rover without the kerbals to the 5K point because KSP glitched my kerbals back into the pool and then crashed for some reason. I couldn't be bothered to bring fresh ones to drive it since there's already a drone core in there anyway. Oh and finally: you're using some abbreviation for your suggestion about day 23, but I don't know what a DMP is supposed to be. Maybe some kerbal chucking would be fun for a 1 day challenge? fire a single kerbal off the end of the runway or something?

Yeah, scratch is good! I basically start from scratch 10 times or so before I'm satisfied.

Hey Animepug, you spelled my nick wrong. It's hoioh, not hoiho.

Well, if Nicky's entries are legit, then yours definitely is. He uses a stock technique to place 8 Ram intakes on a single octagonal strut by clipping 2 cubic struts into it WITHOUT using the F12 console. He then stacks these in rows on either side of the "plane" to get as much as possible intake to weight ratio, which he then carries to altitude with a couple wings so the it can actualy get up there. Then he ditches the wings and accelerates to infinity and beyond, or he gives it a good try at least, he's a lot faster than I am that's for certain. Anyway, the first part of that story is where he clips the intakes into the strut and as far as I can tell previous entries that have been legalized used this or similar techniques. I vote legal. (I am a sinner though, my own entry took too much time to legally clip those intakes into the wings and stuff, so I just used the console for a bit in order to actualy get somewhere. I tried the strut clipping technique using a guide with images and all, but my machine just doesn't like it and at some point will refuse to place certain intakes, while the rest is just fine. From my own point of view I'm doing something far closer to real possibilities as Nicky because it's completely rediculous to have 8 objects in the same place, while having intakes attached or even part of a hull is the most normal thing in the world.) I like the plane design by the way, looks good! won't go quite up to 2300 though without the rockets.

Building that catapult system would be an interesting challenge though. Just use one of the stock craft and make the challenge about assisting it to get to absurd speed before the end of the runway. highest achieved speed wins, or quickest ascent to 20K, or shortest time to mach 1 at sea level. take your pick or make them all achievements on top of another challenge.

Yeah, there's been some previous entries that did just that. The rule was enforced as: No seats allowed on the interplanetary flight. That's it, nothing about going into space flying by the seat of you pants in that rule. Good luck loading 64 kerbals in command seats twice

Yeah, I did that, it works fine for me and I know it's case-sensitive. Bit odd that it doesn't work for you.

I'll re-place my previous entry: Top speed: 2342m/s stock manned, true machingbird

It's just a part, you'll find it in the structural tab. It looks like a steel wireframe cube.

If you're having balance issue: add SAS rings, the more the merrier. Ofcourse keeping in mind that you don't want to weigh it down any more than you have to, so enough it enough. Normally about 2 of the smaller rings balanced around the center of mass should do it.

And done! Made it all the way back with just enough fuel to put it down on the runway. So, that takes the total cost down to $39.15 hooray! I used B9 and MechJeb to do it though, but it proves there's room for improvement in the stock category also, simply by taking on more Kerbals. Loading 64 Kerbals back into the craft was fun

With this one it's actualy not that hard to balance the exhaust, because you have an engine in the center. Just map the outer two engines to any key so you can turn them off once you're up high enough. What's with the two backwards facing intakes though?

It's happening! I got my return trajectory right and spent a little over a 1000dv to get back to kerbin. Screenshots and final cost calculation to follow shortly.

At high altitude the system tries to balance the incoming air against maximum power output, the result is that one engine is firing much more effectively as the other for max output. If you want to prevent this get the 'Kerbal Flight Data' mod, it shows your intake levels so you can balance your throttle against the incoming air and balance the engines by throttling down at the right time to prevent spinning. I know of no other mods that show the level of intake air against thrust in a more clear way.

not really, no, but getting 64 Kerbals out of a craft and crawl them back in is a bit of a chore