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In all fairness, I'm not sure how it flies so well, it all worked first time It has 2 sets of large wings at the back with the BigS wings ahead of that and further forward for lift, with the FAT-455 tail as a canard at the front, and how that provides enough lift is beyond me. Surprisingly, 12 Turboramjets don't do all that much for raw power - the 'takeoff' from the island runway involved some weird semi touchdown on the hill just past the runway - I thought it was going to be a reload, but it seemed to use it like the ramp on an aircraft carrier.

He used FAR, doesn't he say? So He did get that leaderboard right? Anyway, I've made a bigger craft, Provisional name "Me, I'm Counting": 183.94 tons at landing back at KSC - after only 7 minutes (Game time). Capacity is 320 passengers, if only I had remembered to load them/had patience to hire them all. Whoops.

Well, this was what I tried, unfortunately on the newly updated leaderboard it doesn't come close, in either way - 127 tons at takeoff, 144 Kerbal Capacity: Landing on the island runway was probably the hardest thing I've done in this game, it took maybe 20-30 tries. Original design had more engines but used a spaceY 3.75m to 7 x 1.25m adapter, so had to be changed. Top speed achieved was something like 400m/s on the return trip. It could probably get faster but then the airbrakes explode. No mod parts in the final design, just using NavHud and Engineer for flight data. Glideslope is absolutely terrible. Honestly a shuttle clone would probably glide better than this thing.

Just looked it up in a book: 'Mountaineering; The Freedom of The Hills': It states that for every 5 C drop in water boiling temperature, cooking time doubles. It lists heights up to 7km, and says at that altitude time to cook something is about 13 times longer than at Sea level.

Found my old saves on a backup disc, thought I'd lost .23.0 etc. This was my 'Sopwith CamelRocket' so called due to the number of struts, and I see I was very much taken with early KSP's Moar Boosters Design Philosophy. I just tried it, I do not miss the souposphere. It took 5050 or so dV to get the top of that rocket to orbit. I also tried to make that even bigger and lift more, though I think it didn't load properly, a lot of the struts were missing: Launch and the first 20 seconds of ascent went well, the next stage.... Oh so very Kerbal.

If the question were launcher only it would be a Falcon 9, but spacecraft? The LEM, but specifically the Aquarius It did serve to support 3 people rather than the two it was designed for (with some improvisation), amongst other things that meant Apollo 13 survived. Now fictionally - the ship Nostalgia for Infinity from Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space. If we're going for more ridiculous levels of Sci-fi - A Xeelee Nightfighter.

"Fly a Vessel Anywhere Near the Sun" Sounds a bit vague.... and easy, probably doable with a single stage. But that just wouldn't be kerbal enough! I Hope this has enough Delta-V [img]http://i.imgur.com/SOsxUya.png[/img] Yep! [img]http://i.imgur.com/1z2JPiy.png[/img] Contact lost with the probe, I hope it got close enough: [img]http://i.imgur.com/KkzId7F.png[/img]

Mach 1400? Not if FAR and the heating model have anything to say about it.... [img]http://i.imgur.com/OfY1gMa.png[/img] And I'd only just taken off as well.

I think the problem lies in the medium being used, more than any other issue. Most 'Space Opera' or Sci-fi in general in TV/Film doesn't seem to be overly concerned with the impracticality of what it portrays or how unrealistic it is - the strange way the main character of Gravity gradually deorbits being a good example. The problem really being how you explain how something happens in the setting - no one wants to really have it shown to them how something actually flies in space - such as the space shuttle depiction in Armageddon, to take a terrible example. Of course some shows might state they are in orbit but they never really expand on it, any Star Trek episode would be a good example of that, or Star Wars' "Orbiting the planet at maximum velocity" of the Death Star - because somehow they picked the exact opposite side of a gas giant to drop out of hyperspace on. Compare such things to Literature Space Opera such as 'Ringworld', where the protagonists ship gouges out an enormous chasm as it decelerates from orbital speed by crashing into it, or 'Revelation Space' where ships with near infinite Delta-v take months to reach .99c cruises. Even more unrealistic settings such as that of the 'Culture' still seem to understand how utterly huge space is. Also, while I am yet to catch up on all of this seasons Doctor Who, I am amused by the fact that the OP is nitpicking about Spaceflight in a setting where the main character teleports around in a time travelling, sentient spaceship that is disguised as a 1960's Police Box. That can also be used to rewrite causality.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/28428-Orion-aka-Ol-Boom-boom Unfortunately it isn't compatible with 1.x, apparently.

I've just thoroughly confused the game. Maybe this should be a bug report, but the overlaid cockpits was quite funny. "Say, Bob, does it look like my head is static to you?" "And weren't we in a Command Pod? Or was it a cockpit?

I put unrealistic due to the scale/planet mass issues. That said, It could be in a universe where G is larger, to my knowledge that would give the higher gravities needed for the planet sizes. Admittedly I'm not a physicist, and this opinion is mainly from my having read Raft by Stephen Baxter (wherein the protagonists are in a Universe where G is so high people have noticeable gravity on each other). Of course, I realise that in such a world the smaller size of a star would likely prevent the evolution of intelligent life unless it's a dwarf...

One presumes, in terms of spaceX last week, that this happened shortly after the booster underwent 'HydroBraking'.

Which could even then be not used on certain worlds, to simulate ones that have no magnetic field. Unless you're proposing some sort of fancy Gyro Compass....

I had a similar problem earlier, all my craft kept flying to the left as if my A key was stuck. On close inspection, the small indicator in the bottom left corner that displays pitch, roll and yaw had a very small (like, one pixel) offset on the offending axis. Using trim controls - shift and 'D' in this case - fixed it back to normal. For me though, it fixed itself when I restarted the game.

And in reality, this can give a 'deep stall' when stalled air from the main wing is all that is flowing around that T-Tail. Rare, but can be an unrecoverable situation (tends to occur if there is a T-tail and the main wings are on the bottom of the fuselage). That said, unless you want to use FAR, that won't be a problem in KSP.

Nice. I couldn't bear to use the lightspeed scroll past Earth, though. Far too long. KSP is roughly 1AU across isn't it?

This is a very useful trick. In fact, I think I got a Stayputnik to Mun and possibly back by doing this when I forgot solar panels. It was a pain, but when it's a no reverts career mission, it's worth it.

Well, both of my fails that are worthy did get to space. One seemed to get eaten: The other was weird. It started during re-entry, so technically it went back to space today.... Well, my calculator tells me that is 4.3 million c..... not bad for an unassisted engineer chip!