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One thing is for sure, its not impossible! Impractical, yes. Fun? Very. Probably very hard without Aerodynamics though, the inline cockpit, NCS adapter and small nosecone have very low drag combined, and the small nosecone is a great mounting point for radial engines. Long time since I posted. I haven't been able to do T4, but T5, Aerodynamics, Landing Systems, Fuel Systems and Propulsion Systems. Well, I still need to land. I think the key is drag and thrust management, until I replaced the AV-T1 tail with a basic fin I was just shy of orbit. Blasting full thrust on rocket stage leaves me short. 4 Junos take me to Mach 1 @ 8500m, kick in the 2 Sparks and 1 terrier and lift to 15deg. Jets flame out at about 18km, mach 2.2. Keep the sparks on until TWR is about 1.65 then cut them. Keep the terrier at TWR of 1-1.2 by reducing throttle and follow prograde. Cut at about apo 67km, lift will bring it up over 70km. Might get a little better if I remove the tail fin completely. I have used interstellar fuel switch to make the size0 LF tanks hold lf/ox 45/55 each. Equal to a FL-T100. So could save a part by installing a FL-T200 instead. I don't know if you can surface attach small intakes without editor extensions either. Lets see if the picture works, can't find the preview button anymore.

Val and Bob went to Mün with Munshot 2. First Kerbal landing on Mün for 1.0. Unlocking fuel lines to upgrade Munshot 3. Jeb and Bill wants to go to the Mün too. Kerbal Engineer says Munshot 3 has ~350dV more than Munshot 2 by just adding some fuel lines and correcting staging, Nice!

Flew to another survey point 750km from KSC. This plane should have a crossrange of about 1600km. But it takes so long time on basic jets! Then I started working on my KSP1 munshot program. Got a lifter capable of lifting ~14t into orbit as an end result. Next time Val and Bob are off to the Mun, hopefully getting to test the munlander.

Val took a night flight to the far side of Kerbin, found yet another obelisk and landed on a mountain to inspect it. All in a nights work. Back at KSC before sunrise to blast off for a Mün flyby and satellite deployment. Did a very hot reentry, managed to burn almost all my ablator(1.2/40 remaining) returning only the capsule and 250p worth of science.

Finally got around to play 1.0, had to test the new atmosphere. A great improvement from .9 that's for sure but I'll probably go back to FAR soon, I miss the aero-tools in SPH.

Jeb took my survey aircraft out for its first real spin, 1000km trip, rough terrain landing. Cruises nicely at 23k, but pretty unstable there without sas. At 20k she handles well. Main problem with this aircraft is getting it down on the ground again, still flies at 20m/s. Think I need bigger and better balanced spoilers. Then I decided to try to get poor Fredrick home from Mün. His return craft only had 400d/v left, so ditched it at 10k after burning the last to get as much horizontal speed as possible. Grabbed the science on the way out and used 2/3 of the monoprop in the EVA suit to get into a stable low orbit. Where Meldas could rendezvous and pick Fredrick with the service module up just in time to burn for a suborbital trajectory getting them back home with enough fuel that it should be possible to land them close to KSC, if the chutes are stuck on good enough... Back to the drawing board on my munar lander I guess. But I think I'm gonna try and build a LKO station after Fredrick and Meldas are back at KSC.

After a lot of messing around, I finally got Bill and Bob into a rudimentary IVA. Now I know I'm not wasting my time modeling it.

I started working on my crewcabin part. Pilotseats are mostly for size comparison, I'm going to make new ones. Mostly this is for testing that I can get a working IVA ingame before making a cockpit.

And landing on the mun with my new lander. Go figures I have a little to little fuel, had to delve into the accent modules fueltanks to make it to the ground, and don't think I got the best landing location. Should be enough fuel to execute a direct rendezvous with the orbiter and EVA across with the science, which also saves me some orbital debris letting the accent module fall back down to mun. Gotta love that 2 man pod though, such a beauty!

I took Jeb for a test flight of a new high altitude survey aircraft. 1 basic jet engine and about 7t on the runway, can probably make 22km but the air is so thin above 18km that everything gets quite unstable, nothing the pod torque cant keep under control though. Now to test its landing capabilities.

So I finally got around to get Frederik and Meldas to mün. Had to do a few attempts at landing, seems I brought just enough fuel. Don't yet know if I can make orbit with whats left though. Thats for another day. Imgur seems to be down for maintanance right now, so I'll post the pics tomorrow when I get home from work.

I assembled, and launched my first manned munar mission in my .90 career. Launcher gets a 22t dummy payload into high suborbital(~200dV required for circularization) really easy, but getting my actual 21.x t lander/cm into orbit was a whole lot trickier, took about five tries until I got a high enough ap to be able to finish my docking maneuvers before circularization. Also the reason for the massive amount of tailfins, the payload test launcher did not have any. I really wanted to do something more exciting for a landing than just the usual bare bones simple single stage landers/return vehicles I usually do. Fredrick and Meldas are now waiting in a 105km orbit for their transmunar injection burn, but thats for tomorrow. First time I dock something in KSP though, even if it was just spinning 180 degrees! took about 2min while coasting to ap, heartrate was through the roof and I was sitting straight up concentrating hard. Nevertheless, I'm a happy camper. Goodnight.

I decided to send a probe to Mün, and then I sent one of the same to fullfill the explore minmus contract too, got lots of science from these two missions, especially the minmus one that hopped five biomes. So I decided I had to test the 2 kerbal pod before sending it for the first Kerballed Mün landing of this career.

I gave the runway to orbit record a go with this, using FAR but disabled KIDS for this(and ran in sandbox). Craft probably needs a bit of tuning, especially the roll control surfaces. I'm Using vens stock revamp, but the used parts should be same as stock, stats wise. 5m39s after a few tries whereof about 1½ min is coasting to ap. Weight on runway is just shy of 6t(wings at .2-.25 strength). Might get a better result with two structural intakes instead of the shock cone(replacing it it with a nosecone), but think in the end it comes down to piloting skills to get a better time with it. At least its fun to set a personal record, I usually have really slow orbit times(20+ min) for my spaceplanes.

Only had an halfhour today, still managed to slap together this and make orbit with FAR and KIDS and still have ~250dV for orbital manuvers, no payload though, first time getting a turbojet into space with FAR. Mostly though, a proof to myself that two 48-7S are enough for the final push into orbit with my mods, atleast on a very light SSTO. Before I spent to much time texturing these parts. Yeah, the design is nice looking, but not very pleasant to fly above 20km. But hey, what really counts.

I worked some on my MKI parts. Got the first four into game, got another one modeled and a second sketched and some more in doodle stage. Gonna wrap these up to a balanced working state before modeling more of them. Got the bay doors animating, but the GUI says close to open and open to close, and the bay needs new colliders. The Air intake seems to be missing something, because it wont suck air in, guess there is an empty or something telling the game exactly where the intake is, will have to dig deeper there. Found that out when I was gonna take a beauty shot at altitude, seems this aircraft wont fly in stock(have a almost mod-free install to quickly start the game when I test stuff), pretty sure it would fly in FAR though. Bay is 2m long, 1.1m high and 1.3m wide or thereabouts, so not enough for out 1.25m parts, but enough for a small probe/science equipment/monopropellant tanks etc.

I followed that thread with great interest. Using FAR and KIDS(far->stock atmo) the basic jet is good to about 10-12k without wings, then the thrust gets so low it will start toppling over, it will cut 1500dV from the launch making it a lot lighter, for a disposable launcher. But yes, they are highly exploitable(I guess AJE might fix that, but I think FAR/KIDS is enough). I dont like using jets for rockets, so mostly its for my enjoyment. Unlocking them at teir7 seems way to late(seeing as you get Aerospike and Rapier at the same time) moving them down to supersonic flight or so makes for a more fun progression, for me atleast, and I moved basic jet to start node(along with wings etc for aircraft).

Today, I just messed around with my tech tree "mod" sorting out where the last of the stock bits go, consolidating the MKII parts into one node and moving some landing legs and rover wheels around. CTT is great! Still undecided if I want the turbojet in Aerodynamic Systems(90s) or in Supersonic Flight(160s). I also did some research into how the decouplers work, then I found that the structural pylon has a built in decoupler that is not using its anchor correctly so switched it to the radial decoupler module and it now leaves half the pylon still attached. I did take a screenshot, but it came out as my desktop thanks to windowmode. And am off work tomorrow, so gonna wrap up my cargobay and try to get the fuse and adapter models textured and modded too.

Designed a few parts in blender, then proceeded to learn how to successfully get them in game, textured and with the correct rotation/facing to align properly. Making a bunch of real MKI stuff. Now I just gotta learn how to make colliders and animations for cargo bay doors, and learn how to make the tanks switch between fuels.

I burned out my PSU last week, so I'm om hold, so I drew some mk1 aircraft parts I'll have to sketch up in blender.

So after the first sucessful payload delivery via a suborbital flight I unlocked some new parts, designed a munprobe intending to complete the exploration contract and a polar orbit contract, 3500dV ought to be enough for the transfer, getting into correct orbit and landing. Wanted to try a droptank for the jetfuel, mostly to fill the last tank with an additional fill of LFO. Came to 28.2t on the runway, the basic jet engine can barely lift it and I had to use the lip to get it airborne, dropped the L-tank at 10km and ignited the rockets(This is basicly a glorified, return capable rocket, considering the grunt of the work is done by the 2x Mark 55s). Got into a nice 75x95km orbit with about 100dV to spare, opened my payload doors and behold, the payload tanks were dry. After some dividing i kept a miniscule amount to deorbit the aircraft and pumped the rest into the payload, got 2000dV there, so the munar landing was scrubbed. Because of the very little fuel left to deorbit, I ended up overshooting KSC by two continents but just managed to turn her around and land in the dusk, very close at becoming a night landing in the hilly highlands. Then off to fly the payload into a polar orbit around mun, contract completed with 100dV to spare. Pretty hairy doing it without conics, but I got there alright. And did the entire mission without reverts/quickloads which makes me happy.

I got an actual payload into orbit and landed safely back on the runway, those huge wings make for a easy to land aircraft. Payload was, as I soon noticed, the better part of uncontrollable. I built it all symmetrical so I could use the gimbal to control it and get it into the correct orbit. However the decoupler I had it attached with was rotated 180°, causing the bulky part to stick to the sat. Will have to wait until I have SAS I think, 90 more science for a core that has it. Also discovered a few flaws in the prototype design, so moving the tailplane up, adding canards and some reaction wheels for better orbital control. I Also managed to deorbit the failed sat, just barley.

Thanks to procedural wings I finally got my first real payload to orbit onboard an SSTO. This will probably be the final version of Glada III, 24t wet on the runway, 1t payload to 75x75(probably a tad higher, had 200dv left). Still a 4% payload fraction, I'm a happy camper. 27 Parts! One basic jet engine, two mark 55 rockmax rocket engines. Still amazed how much mass I got that puny little jet engine to carry to 11km thought their max was around 11t. Going to be hairy landing, even if its a third of its weight and can probably do a very slow landing, the rear gear is so far forward. Can't wait to unlock turbojets though.

I tried to get my Glada to actually bring a payload up into orbit, not very successfully, but it now has double the battery capacity and a barometer too, but at least its a lot more stable during ascent, so safer to use at least. Now to land then, hopefully closer to KSC this time.

Got my Glada with some minor changes into orbit with 108dV to spare. Jeb and a thermometer as cargo. First time I get an SSTO up, Now to try and make it back down, no jet fuel left so glide it is, atleast I've burned off 6t of fuel. Such a beautiful game though. Edit: Landed safely, but undershot and ended up on the desert continent instead.