Zenith Darksea

I like to think of myself as a pretty seasoned KSP player - I've previously been to Duna, Laythe, Moho, Gilly, and even landed on and returned from Eve. So I thought that I should just dive right into 0.90 on hard difficulty, as anything less would just be beneath me. I'm starting to have second thoughts though! Hard difficulty is really hard! I'm actually having to think quite a lot about what I build into my rocket and how. Lack of funds is a constant problem, and certainly the main problem - the basic facilities don't allow you to do much at all. The launch pad only allows small rockets, the tracking station doesn't really give you any useful info, and I haven't invented batteries yet... I managed to rescue a Kerman who inexplicably got stuck in orbit, and this took real skill (even if I say so myself). I had to invent a probe core and put it on top of an empty command pod, which I then launched into orbit after waiting for Ronfrey Kerman to drift into the right place. Luckily I launched at just the right time, and managed to circularise my orbit so that I was more or less parallel with him. Problem 1: the basic tracking station doesn't give you time to apoapsis/periapsis, time to intercept target, point of closest approach, etc. etc... You have to eyeball the whole thing. I actually managed to guesstimate my orbit with the spacecraft until I got close to him, then switched over and had to use the EVA jetpack to fly to the spacecraft, again eyeballing it the whole way. Whew! This gave me the money to upgrade my launchpad, so I got cocky and decided to try to orbit the Mun and return. Well, I got to orbit the Mun alright, but then I simply ran out of electric charge - I hadn't invented batteries yet! Now Jebediah is stuck in an eccentric orbit around Kerbin, having failed to make it all the way back (wasted too much fuel trying to charge the batteries) and I don't have the money or the technical capability to rescue him! Aargh! Maybe I should try it on normal difficulty now. Is it just me, or is 0.90 really, really hard?

Thanks for the welcoming comments, guys. What surprised me was how similar the performance of my Skylon-alike (with FAR) was to the proposed performance of huge real Skylon. It hit Mach 5 at about 26km, just like Skylon is supposed to, although unlike Skylon I could push mine up to about 31km before I had to switch over to rocket mode and close the intakes. I found it especially interesting that I could do it with such small wings. Playing with Vanilla KSP I had got used to plastering absurd numbers of aero-surfaces all over the place; it turns out however that sleekness is much more important with FAR. I was still surprised though at the enormous distance my SSTO could cover during reentry, as it took absolutely forever to slow down from hypersonic to supersonic flight.

Hello, first post here! Long-time KSP player and lurker, first-time poster. Somebody call Reaction Engines Limited - I just built a stock clone of Skylon, their proposed SSTO powered by SABRE engines (I'm probably not the first to do this). I can say that it flew beautifully in Kerbal Space Program, so I think that the future looks bright for it in real life. That's how these things work, right? Seriously, after fiddling around with complicated SSTOs with lots of aero-surfaces but not much flying prowess, some of which worked better than others, I decided to do something a bit simpler and crafted this unmanned SSTO, which I call the Javelin. Javelin model I is a cargo-carrying craft, while Javelin model II can carry passengers into orbit. It flew so well; I've never been this proud of a vehicle that I created in KSP, and so I had to share it with people. In essence, all it consists of is a drone core with a cargo bay, docking adapter, some finely balanced fuel tanks, and a couple of SABRE engines (I mean RAPIER, sorry) mounted on small, stubby wings. It took a while for me to learn the proper ascent and de-orbit profiles, but I've figured it out and it works really well. I also think it happens to look quite beautiful. [Note that the craft itself is entirely stock; however, I flew it with Ferram Aerospace Research, which obviously changes the aerodynamics quite a lot. I don't know how well this would work with vanilla KSP aerodynamics] Javelin I: http://www.filedropper.com/javelini Javelin II: http://www.filedropper.com/javelinii Now for some glamour shots. I forgot to take any on the way out of the atmosphere, for which you have my apologies (I was concentrating so hard on flying it correctly, which is tricky in FAR). I appear to have screwed up posting my album properly (because forum newbie), but it has kindly been posted just below by someone else. Let me just say that slowing down from Mach 5.5 in FAR is really, really hard.