Excalibur

Here\'s my entry... Used MechJeb but no Rincomp. Mainly KW mods, nothing overpowered. Actually found it quite easy to get an intercept under 500m. It\'s recording the distance that\'s caused me the most trouble. I actually think the closest approach was way closer than this, but unable to prove it so. http://youtu.be/7yrDOZ01DZ8 EDIT: Getting closer; I\'d say that\'s gotta be around 50 metres clearance And my new official figure...

I\'ve found the easiest way to find the Munoliths with this plugin is simply with a stopwatch. Once my orbital recon had pinned down the approximate locations of the three Munoliths I would send down a stable, high mass fraction/high TWR lander equipped with the short range Muon Detector. I stipulate high mass fraction/highTWR as you\'ll likely want a good few minutes of loiter time hovering over the Munar surface. At around 100-500m above the surface I\'d then zero out my vertical speed and head out in a random horizontal direction at constant horizontal velocity (100m/s or so). Using the stopwatch (I used the one on my phone) I would time the interval between beeps using the Lap function. Although it\'s very difficult to accurately time the beep interval using human reflexes, the results are close enough to show the increase/decrease in interval trend. After perhaps 20 beep intervals you\'ll soon be able to perceive whether you\'re moving towards or away from your target. If the beep interval increases, then reverse horizontal direction until beep interval decreases again. Take a note of this heading (it will denote your baseline once established). Eventually you\'ll reach a \'peak\' where the time between beeps is at a minimum. This is the point of closest distance to target. Kill any horizontal velocity and pick a normal course (that is, perpendicular to your baseline - why you noted your heading earlier). The time between beeps will either increase or decrease again. Once you find out in which perpendicular direction the beep interval decreases, simply keep heading in that direction until your detector goes nuts. You should pass within a hundred metres of a Munolith if you\'ve been reasonably careful with your timings and headings. No messing around with drawing plots et cetera, takes only a few minutes! Probably sounds more complicated than it really is though... as I\'m hungover. :

I used the Muon Detector plugin. Follow the beeeps and you\'re home and dry

I\'m glad you enjoyed it It\'s been a little ambition of mine to one day create a video with that as the soundtrack Those little fins are the canards from sarkun\'s Hope shuttle. I love them, small & compact and they look great on almost any vehicle. Added them to the base of the skids after realising without I had no control whatsoever on the water!

Excalibur Exoatmospheric Proudly Presents: EE Moar Lander Mk I Originally drawn in 1:48 scale by Bob in his childhood, Jeb fell in love with the Moar design and promptly built this prototype. However a decades old coffee stain turned 1:48 into 1:480 and the behemoth was born. Despite its mass, the Moar Lander handles like a pussycat once in Munar space; MechJeb has no trouble performing a pinpoint landing with this vehicle. [li]Built around KW 3x12m LFT Core[/li] [li]Eight inflatable BACE modules[/li] [li]Launch Mass: approx. 1400 tonnes[/li] [li]Fueled Lander Mass: 217 tonnes[/li] [li]Munar Landing Mass: approx. 150 tonnes[/li] Warning: Some of the pictures that follow may contain clues as to the location of Munoliths. Proceed with caution! EDIT: Oh how I facepalmed when I re-read your challenge and realised I\'d neglected to include an ascent pod ???. Serves me right for playing in the early hours! I guess I could go back and put a motor beneath that space elevator...

Just the look I was going for thanks . Been thinking that my creations have been nowhere near Kerbal enough (I\'m a realism nut), so I\'m hoping this is the first step in the right direction!

Nice work Maikie_G! I think your vehicle looks a bit better engineered than mine

Hello Axel, I\'ve sent you an email - I\'m quite interested in this.

Challenge accepted! This was fun I\'m sure it could reach 15km from shore if I had the patience to try... I apologise for my lame video editing skills... EDIT: Neglected to say that the standard of driving seen in the video is entirely down to the fact that Jeb had just seen the Top Gear Polar Special, and got rather excited when he found out that it\'s entirely legal to drink and drive in international waters. It\'s just a shame he opened the bottle of gin before he got behind the wheel... P.S. Not that I condone drink driving in any way - it just seems fittingly Kerbal

I tried launching this beast, but I was getting less than 1 fps and couldn\'t do anything meaningful with it. I know you allow Gravtisapa etc. but I just can\'t bring myself to use those... Nearly 2500 tons launch mass, as you can see it burnt through approx 200 tons of propellant in the first 30 seconds of flight Rover masses nearly 300 tons and has 48 wheels... so i figure it should be capable of supporting itself on the Munar surface. Now only if the nice chaps down at the LHC would allow me to borrow some of their processing time to see if this thing holds together!

Had to move the elevators though, because the engine exhaust was meddling with them. It works. Sort of. It can land vertically. Once. (the engines will snap off) It can make a vertical takeoff, but these are frequently followed by a backflip and a corkscrew which leads to either an explosion or horizontal flight. For the rest she handles like a regular plane, as long as you point the engines slightly down to compensate for her lack of lift. My advice on flying this: Don\'t. Quality, to me it looks just like the old Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer (Google it). Love the flying advice too lol. Could you please post the .craft file? I want to ignore your advice

Finally!! http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=11022.0

Excalibur Exoatmospheric Proudly Presents: EE Vulture Mk I Stable VTOL Capable of conventional/unpowered landings Craft file attached. Requires: [li]Mechjeb[/li] [li]C7[/li] [li]CBBP (for struts)[/li] [li]Tiberdyne[/li] [li]Damned Robotics[/li] After extensive testing of the VTOL concept it became starkly obvious that vectored thrust in contact with any part of the aircraft is very bad news. Hence the vulture-like high wing.

Thanks. I know exactly where you\'re coming from about the big air... I did a little bit of testing around the KSC and it was wicked to see the car ride out the bumps. At one point I was doing around 200m/s and I swear it left the ground for what felt like at least a mile, had me reminded of the fabled \'JATO Rocket Car\' Myth... in fact I may find a mountain and try recreating that one hehe.

I can make one that takes off vertically and hovers. However I\'m finding it damned difficult to actually make one that can transition to forward flight, back to vertical and make a landing. I\'m using the Damned rotatrons to rotate engines/thrust but it\'s SO unstable. Seems I can either make a design hover, or fly conventionally, but not both! I\'d love to see if anyone can make this kind of design work!

This isn\'t the fastest by any means, but I thought I\'d share my first Land Speed Mission with a few pictures. The delivery aircraft was an absolute pig to fly below 8km or so, I\'m guessing due to the strange drag effects of the rover mounted at such a Kerbal angle. No .cfg edits, just standard mods such as C7. I do think the poles are the best alternative to a dry lake bed, 100% smooth and level, not a single bump. It\'s just getting the rover there Now time to design my Advanced Land Speed Record machine and associated polar delivery vehicle and see if I can trump 300m/s! I\'ve found that small canards mounted in pairs above each wheel, and on Damned\'s rotatrons allows you to control the downforce on each axle individually - helps massively with stability!

I can see why I missed it, I should have been searching for \'variable geometry\' rather than \'swing wing!\' Feel a bit of a berk now... :-[ Nice craft there Groundhog, I did try a forward sweeping wing and found it had some rather interesting flight characteristics. I wonder if could you please tell me, is there a way with the Damned Robotics plugin to change the rotational direction of the rotators individually? The \'rotate\' button on the plugin panel only seems to rotate the model... though again correct me if I\'m wrong. EDIT: Seems to be working now, strange!

Searched the forums for this and was surprised no one appears to have tried this... though correct me if I\'m wrong. Was the first thing I thought of when I saw Damned\'s new robotics plugin. Unfortunately due to the way the game calculates drag and lift (I assume) you don\'t get any drag reduction with sweep-back. However the mechanism is great for trimming the vertical speed of the vehicle. EDIT: Also I tried rotational parts at the wing root to enable me to change angle of attack on the fly, like the Vought Cosair (I think), but the plugin would not let me synchronise the rotations. As a result instead of the wings changing angle of attack together, one goes up and one down. Results in some rather Kerbal flight characteristics!

Bravo sir! A marvelous contraption!

Thanks for the praise, glad to know my hours with KSP haven\'t been wasted. Below is a picture of the launcher I used to get the Comm. Tower to the South Pole Base. As you can see I prefer to go for the more realistic looking vehicles! Only just got the damned thing there... think there\'s maybe ten seconds worth of fuel left, mainly because I was hovering for a while looking for a level enough landing site. The tower itself uses the Damned Robotics plugin, several hydraulic cylinders to extend to full height, and a rotational/hinge combination so I\'ve got full rotational and azimuth control over the dish. In true Kerbal fashion I just pointed it roughly at Kerbin and started trying to fly rovers. Regarding the crater shown in my previous slides, all I can say is it\'s near the South Pole, as there\'s something rather mysterious at the bottom.

Just a few pictures of the recent mission to launch my South Pole Command Centre. Going aloft on an as usual untested 3m rocket. Note the two rovers slung beneath the lander for Munar deployment Next plan is to try getting a nice video of the rover going over the edge of the pit full tilt á la Groundhog Day. Managed to land it once in one piece. Fraps doesn\'t seem to like KSP/my PC though :-[ P.S. Hats off to all of the many developers and modders who\'ve helped me have so much fun with this game... you fellas never cease to amaze me

That\'s exactly what I\'m in the middle of doing, though I\'ve just found another Munolith in a deep pit so thinking about a new, more Kerbal base there

There\'s a nice almost perfectly level area around the \'first\' Munolith. Find that and you\'ve found flat ground

I was pretty sure it was Kerbin\'s shadow (as Kerbin was directly overhead and the shadow was round), but I\'m not so sure now! Even if it was, from what Kryten has said it\'s going to be very difficult to replicate. You\'ll have to guess where the shadow will be, then head for that point at low altitude and see if it \'appears\'. Ah well, in any case I don\'t really think the challenge was Kerbal enough, sure it was high difficulty but not enough opportunity for wayward rockets and big explosions. I\'ll have to think of something else

Nicely done Socket7! Think I\'ll have to try that myself! Anyway here\'s my entry... http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=5588.0