Excalibur

I\'ve also been making small aircraft as they\'re the most aerobatic. You inspired me to go smaller though and thus I present the \'Mosquito.\' Weighs a paltry 690kg fully fuelled in flight, though in a bid to save weight it does not have any landing gear. It must use a motorcycle to assist on take-off and I wouldn\'t advise trying to land it! http://youtu.be/uoDF1sZDTGA I discovered a game bug with this and other small aircraft I\'ve made. In extreme high-G turns the vehicle will actually accelerate hard, even with no RCS thrust applied. It will reach over 400m/s at low level in a tight turn. I am guessing this is something to do with the infinite glide bug - though it may be unrelated. Uses the following mods; Probodobodyne for struts and command pod Sarkun\'s Hope Shuttle Canards NovaPunch for the Explosive Bolt decoupler and RCS Tank (I think) Bigtrak for the Motorbike

Glad to see someone notice the little homage Personally I think a lot of the Top Gear projects and challenges are pretty Kerbal in themselves! Reliant Space Shuttle anyone? That would be a great mod for someone to undertake!

I had a good go at this challenge for the Kerbal Book of Records. I found that less is actually more; after making a few behemoths with 20+ engines I decided to try low-weight, low-drag craft and these are some of the results... Here\'s my entry in the previous challenge. I\'ve yet to see someone beat this speed in absolutely level flight with 0.15\'s atmospheric engines only. Here\'s my record with only one engine... Not the prettiest looking aircraft. I found that such small vehicles can manoeuvre solely on the cockpit SAS so I removed all control surfaces to reduce drag. Hell, there aren\'t even any intakes or nosecones as all they do is increase drag. Drag is your primary enemy in this challenge, hence why the smaller craft with fewer drag-inducing parts are more efficient.

No explosions, but I\'d say this is rather a Kerbal way of achieving orbit... Known as the \'Hammerhead iThrust\' this design loves to piss delta-v into the wind. Uses Bob\'s patented right-angle ascent profile. Straight up to 150km, then a long burn 90 degrees to that placed it in ~140x180km orbit.

Awesome rocket! Just a shame my CPU would melt if I tried launching that thing. What CPU/GPU do you have out of curiosity?

Why thank you sir, thanks for the idea. I haven\'t dared attempt it again as I\'m afraid it wasn\'t so much my piloting skill as blind luck on the first try! In theory it should stop much faster if I fixed the staging issue (the game grouped two of the braking rockets along with the JATOs and I couldn\'t be arsed to check these things missed it in the pre-flight checklist). You can see on take-off that two braking rockets actually fire... well this is Kerbal after all. =P I got lucky with the SRB burn times - the ones I used for braking had a thrust of 100 each and stock burn time at nine seconds was perfect.

Challenge Accepted http://youtu.be/DSRba4VnqeI Spent quite a while flying the Herakles during testing so having a good handle on it\'s handling qualities made it possible to achieve the SPH landing on the first try. And the fact I finally fixed my X360 pad controls. Used the following mods; Damned Aeropace (Engines) Damned Robotics (Rotatron) C7\'s Old Flight Pack (Wings) Tiberion\'s Shuttle Pack (Struts) NovaPunch (SRBs, Nosecones & Engine Mounts)

Good job! Very impressive! Don\'t know if I\'ll be able to top that - but I\'ll try! I never really thought of entering a Kerbol orbit for this challenge as I knew it would take quite some time - indeed nearly 900 days MET is a fair while! Apologies for the slow update - I\'ve been in and out of hospital with a torn Achilles tendon .

Air resistance, or lack of on Minmus.

I recently completed a near-circumnavigation of Kerbin with an air-breathing aircraft. Used 9 LFTs and 2 Turbojets. Got within 100km of KSC before running out of fuel. Probably could have glided it in from there but I had to Alt-Tab and that crashed the game. Took about 3 1/2 hours too. I\'ll get some screenshots up when I get the time.

Record title: World Airspeed Record Record statistic: 967.4m/s Game version when record achieved: 0.15.2 Screenshots: Mods used: Tiberdyne Big Shuttle Wing MechJeb Craft name: Meteor Mk II Note: This challenge has really helped me optimise my ascent profile when it comes to flying aircraft. Will have to try some Pegasus-style launchers again and see what I can get into orbit with how little.

I contest this. Not level flight and high vertical descent rate. Above the working height for air-breathing engines. I think we need the OP to clarify the rules for the World Airspeed Record a little. I suggest level flight with zero vertical velocity (plus or minus 5m/s say) and air-breathing engines only considering the context. Ensures no power dives from space that way.

Record title: World Airspeed Record Record statistic: 767.4m/s Game version when record achieved: 0.15.2 Screenshots: Mods used: Tiberdyne Big Shuttle Wing Tiberdyne Big Canard Jellycubes Forward Swept Wing MechJeb Craft name: Strato-Streak Mk I

What a good do. I\'m on it like sonic!

No assholery detected at all! I do actually enjoy being proven wrong, because when I am, it means I\'ve learnt something. I must apologise for my earlier post - you\'re obviously an intelligent fellow and I must have come across as more than a little condescending. Thanks for being patient and polite. I think I was half right in saying doubling either mass or velocity would quadruple the energy as velocity is indeed quadratic. But as you say mass is linear so doesn\'t apply there and that was my mistake. Looking back at my earlier recalculations it looks like I was indeed squaring the product of mass and velocity. :-[ (I hope I understand it now..?) It\'s been a while since I did any physics classes and my maths has always been a bit wobbly (probably why I didn\'t pursue a degree in physics - I knew I wouldn\'t be able to hack the mathematics). Thanks for pointing out where I went wrong, though there is one caveat... would you terribly mind me messaging you in the future to check my maths before I go shouting my mouth off in the forums? Once bitten twice shy as they say.

Good point. I plan on using HSTW Laser but I won\'t use the auto-targeting feature. Bit too easy with that I\'d say. I\'ll put it up in a video at some point once I\'ve done it.

You\'re right, typo there. Got it right in earlier posts! Thanks for pointing it out! Typical that I make an amateur mistake with my units whilst telling someone to watch their units!

I like the look of this. I think my Advanced Jet Trainer will be ideally suited for this with a big frikkin\' laser attached. I\'ll give it a go sometime this weekend when I have time. Great challenge mate!

That might just be due to those SRBs falling below a certain altitude - causing them to disappear. I\'d try detaching a camera whilst in orbit and then see how long it lasts...

Absolute nectar my friend, this will take fan videos to a whole new level! Can\'t wait to try it out! EDIT: What is the range of camera functionality? In other words if I\'ve placed a camera on Minmus, can I view that camera if I\'m flying in Kerbin\'s atmosphere say? Or do you have to be within a certain range to swap cameras?

I\'m working on raising KSP\'s profile along with Axel via the Xenolith Alpha site. Hoping to get some more guides up soon. I also sent the following e-mail to Eurogamer, one of my favourite gaming websites in the hope that they\'ll pick up the story. First and foremost - I\'ve been a long time reader of your excellent site. There have been quite a few games that have been featured on your site (particularly from the indie genre) that I\'ve been subsequently drawn into because of your coverage. So I\'d like to return the favour and introduce you to the gem that is Kerbal Space Program or KSP. As gaming is your bread and butter you may very well have come across it already. I\'m writing to you just in case you haven\'t. What awaits you is probably the most addictive sandbox game I\'ve ever played and it\'s still in alpha development. Without going into great detail the basic premise for the game as it stands is to build space shuttles and rockets from a set parts bin. The game is built on the Unity engine and uses PhysX to calculate forces on each individual part. Just snap them together in the hangar, be they wings, jet engines, rocket engines, parachutes et cetera and away you go. Hit the \'Launch\' button and you\'re taken to either the runway or launch pad for the start of your \'mission\'. I\'ve never seen such scale in a video game. The planet you launch from is 600km in radius, it\'s moon orbits 11,400km away and the whole lot orbits a star 13million km distant. And it\'s all accessible to you and your creations - provided you can build a stable ship and have a basic understanding of how orbits work. The game\'s developers (some guys from Mexico called Squad) have tried to make the game as accessible as possible to the masses. Despite the underlying orbital mechanics involved the dev\'s goal is to provide the player with the visual aids necessary to reach space without any complex maths. I\'ve been following it\'s development for nearly a year now and since then feature after feature after feature has been added, with more on the way. Due to my passion for the game, and my hopes of seeing its community grow I implore you to at least take a look at this incredible game and possibly even do a review or feature on it. It needs to be in the spotlight! I would like to point out that I am in no way affiliated with Squad or any of it\'s developmental team so I don\'t really stand to gain anything from your coverage. I\'m just a huge fan and would like to see some hard working indie developers garner some well-deserved attention for what is a brilliant creation. You can find the game at it\'s site here: www.kerbalspaceprogram.com It\'s a long shot I know, but if anyone wants to forward this message (or any versions of it) on to any other third parties be my guest!

Excalibur Exoatmospheric Proudly Hosts: The Kerbal Kinetic Bombardment Challenge After many failures during orbital operations that resulted in lithobraking at orbital velocities, the folks at EE have decided to give those poor Kerbal impactors a purpose. So that their efforts were not in vain we hereby launch a variation of Trekkin\'s Absurdly Energetic Impact Challenge; The Kerbal Kinetic Bombardment Challenge! Two major categories are present, one for stock craft, the other is an unlimited class where any mods (but no .cfg edits) can be used. There is one rule. Your ship must have a MechJeb (even for the stock challenge) on board so the screenshot taken in your final moments will display the important mass and velocity readings. Simply pick a moon of your choice and hit it with as much kinetic energy a possible. We will assume that this energy will be converted to heat in the impact and produce a rather large boom. The first Kerbal to impact with an energy of over one kiloton (4.184x10^12 Joules) will be posthumously awarded a one megaton thermonuclear device to place on their mantelpiece. To help you calculate your energy here is the relevant equation; Ek = Kinetic energy in joules m = Mass in kilograms v = Velocity in metres per second Once you\'ve got your energy in joules divide your answer by 4,184,000,000,000 to get your final figure in kilotons of TNT equivalent. As this is a fresh challenge entries from previous challenges will NOT be accepted. This unfortunately includes some of my own. Anyway good luck chaps and happy smashing! Leaderboards Stock 1st place: N2maniac. Energy on impact ~1.071ktTNT (Your one megaton device is winging it\'s way to you - minimum safe distance ~ 16km) Unlimited TBC EDIT: Credit should be given where credit is due. Trekkin has previously posted The Absurdly Energetic Munar Impact Challenge which inspired this folly. His challenge asks for momentum on impact which though related to energy is a slightly different goal to reach. I prefer the idea of comparing our impact to nuclear detonations as I believe it\'s a little more in the Kerbal spirit! EDIT 2: I\'ll make an attempt to set a benchmark sometime this weekend when I\'ve the time.

Nice work mate! Someone finally beat my score! Looks like ITS ON! Nope, to attain four times the energy you only need to double either the mass or velocity since the whole lot is squared. Example: 0.5*10*10^2=2500 0.5*20*10^2=10000 (or four times the energy) Be careful with your units, I noticed you mentioned ktm/s - I\'m sure you mean tonsms-1. Lifted from wikipedia are two relevant equations; Where Ek is the kinetic energy in joules, m is mass in kilograms, v is velocity in metres per second and p is your momentum in kgms-1. In our case when inputting our momentum into the second equation remember to convert from tons/ms-1 to kgms-1. When giving my kiloton figures for impact energy I make the assumption that all kinetic energy is converted to thermal energy in the impact. I had a look over your calculations and the energy of your impact was actually a bit higher than you found at 0.47902 kT (taking 1kT as 4.184x10^12J). Good job, getting closer to the magical 1kT mark there! Even though you beat my momentum by a hair, you smashed my energy on impact (0.26kT); as you pointed out the momentum and energy challenges are in fact two different, but inter-related goals. In light of this I\'m going to start a new challenge thread I think... Hope to see you there! EDIT: Here\'s the new challenge thread: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=14037.0

Shame you don\'t count the first post as my submission, but as it\'s old I\'ll let you off. I have to point out though that the second run did reach 462m/s before falling over (look carefully in the HD video) and would probably be better to class it as KSC grasslands. Otherwise I look forward to seeing more attempts from other people!

Personally one of my favourite tracks to have on while causing mayhem is \'Megadeth - Train of Consequences\'.