Merandix

If you also want to use it for roving, put the rover wheels up a little higher than the landing gear. Once you come to a stop... gear up, plane plops down on rover wheels, and off you rove! Deploy gear to raise of the rover-wheels again. Another solution is to go VTOL.

Yes... quite... I'm putting my planes through insane rigours. Nothing happens. I practice re-entry. Every thing's fine. I attempt aerobatics with a space plane... no sweat. I go to the moon and land there, no sweat. I aerobrake from 3.2 km/s to much less... easy peasy. I re-enter the atmosphere, as easy as eating a cookie. I pull a hard g-manoeuvre because I came in slightly off-course? Pffft, you must be joking right? BUT OH NOES! I fly in a straight line, a few hundred meters to a couple of dozens of meters above the ground, at low speed... and one of my wings (on three different designs thusfar) just... breaks off.... I don't hit anything, I don't pull hard G's... I fly in a strait line, preparing for a gentle touchdown (as I like them)... and variably between 800 meters in altitude and this last case at less than 50 meters above the runway, my wing spontaneously disassembles. In this design I even figured I'd bolt my wings down a bit more with struts... nope. It still goes. One moment I'm flying there all nice and serene, preparing for an uneventful landing... and the next I'm down a wing. This is annoying, because, you know... I kind of need those things... In this last one, it happened only meters above the ground, and I had a bit of the wing left, so I managed to put her down safely and on the runway anyway (by compensating like crazy). Well... safely? It looks like I crashed... And the report says I crashed into the launchpad... but it happened when I was at least 30 meters above the runway... This is a real head scratcher... is the Kraken teasing me or something? Below some pictures. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but putting wings on a plane is not exactly supposed to be hard... XD And it kinda worked before... Anyone an idea what's going on here? (playing stock btw)

Put -everything- in the lowest stage. Prior to launch, hit that stage. Everything is now active. Now turn it back off with action groups. You can also disable RCS-ports this way. It is probably a good idea to disable fuel-crossfeed too. It'll take a while to handle everything, but now your craft is pretty much inert. After that, you can launch

Use the small landing gears. Put them on a hardpoint or something to create some distance between the runway and the fuselage (needed for when you rotate). Make sure they are EXACTLY level. And you're probably going to need more than 3. Though in all honesty, a 100 tonne plane lands fine on just 3 sets of two small landing gears. The rover wheels aren't capable of dealing with the speeds required for take-off and landing.

GeorgeG... I barely manage to get the bloody thing into space, and you merrily fly to Minmus and Mun with it... <.< That Maximalist thingy sure didn't last long Congrats on an amazing plane!

Yeah, I figured out the trick based on the flameout. I did another attempt... a sloppy landing led to the amazing time of... *drumroll* 1:31... <.< Which is fairly amazing since I managed to put down the exact same flight time with different flight plans...

Wait... we're allowed to spool up our engines BEFORE the timer starts? That alone saves a few seconds probably! Also, how in the world to you get that marker out there? I waste at least a few hundred meters trying to get that crew report. edit: confirmed that just flying a circle is faster... Though that makes me wonder about the 'loop and land' bit. Though technically, it's just a horizontal loop obviously. Anyway, awesome record. I can't reproduce it with my amateur flying

I think the Fermi-paradox is one of those paradoxes that stems from a guess in the wrong direction. The age of the universe suggests that the oldest civilisations likely aren't THAT much older than us. That leaves only a fairly small period of time to discover us. And even then that civilisation would be required to have zero ethics. Any sane civilisation would stay out of pre-interstellar civilisations (us). Besides, you need to fly into a very specific 50-100 ly radius area to even DETECT our presence. My main problems with the Fermi-paradox? - assumes too much age variation in civilisations - assumes very high probability of life sustaining planets, life, and intelligent life. - assumes every interstellar capable civilisation has no research ethics.

I've always found the Fermi-paradox overly OPTIMISTIC in it's assumption that the universe -should- be sprawling with life. It is uncertain how large the chance is for life. I mean, if one in a million stars has a planet that is fit for developing life, and off those million planets, only one in a thousand would at some point develop life. That means the chance for life on a planet is already one in a billion. A one in a billion chance leaves just 100-400 planets in the entire Milky Way (the milky way is estimated to have between 100 and 400 billion stars). 100-400 planets that contain life... including just bacterial life, including planets with just animal life. Considering it took nearly 3,5 billion years for life to form here, and 1 billion years to go from the earliest lifeforms to using radio-waves for communication, considering the universe is only 13.8 billion years old... Those 4,5 billion years it took for our star to develop a semi-spacefaring civilisation suddenly don't look all that short. In fact, if we assume life can only form around main-sequence starts (stars like our sun).... we're suddenly with an age restriction on the stars. Because older main-sequence stars are more likely to host advanced civilisations... but the problem with that is that there's only a 2 or 3 billion year variance possible before the parent star CEASES to support life... Considering we literally have ALL possible stages of life possible in 100-400 planets... Let's say half of that develops sentient life --> 50-200 planets Let's say half of that has sentient life that's pre-radio communication --> 25-100 planets How many civilisations that are post industrial age of those 25-100 civilisations would develop interstellar travel? Maybe one? None at all? Now, the chances greatly increase for intergalactic travel... but then the thing against finding us is that there's a LOT of possible travel destinations. If you haven't been near earth (about 110 light year radius is the farthest our earliest radiosignals have traveled, that's roughly 1/1000th of the diameter of just our own Galaxy) there's simply no (known or predicted) way of knowing we're here! Why haven't we been visited on any detectable scale? Probably because the total number of travellers is too low. The problem really is with the probability, this is wild guessing, but they are educated guesses. This entire theorizing would change massively if for example we found life or traces of it on Europa or Mars. Hence why those are the focus of the 'search for life'. Also a thing to consider: If we have people thinking up ethics for first contacts for our sci-fi series, it's likely that humanity would indeed NOT visit pre-interstellar species on an ethical basis... and that the same is a likely cause for them not visiting us if they find us. And since I believe intelligent races generally have 'empathy' as a prerequisite evolutionary trait, I also sort of believe (but that's an opinion) that a truly 'evil' intelligent race cannot exist on principle. Because non-empathic species simply wouldn't survive well enough to develop said intelligence. But that's a personal belief. Anyway, that's my thoughts on the Fermi-paradox... On the natural disasters: humanity has survived multiple 'cataclysmic' natural disasters. Including several ice ages. And life has pretty much survived multiple instances of a total planet freeze, a total planet scorching, and quite a bunch of atmospheric changes... Not to mention, even nuclear mishaps don't seem to be deterring life all that thoroughly. The problem with human induced climate change on top of natural climate change is that we don't know HOW MUCH we throw the natural balance out of whack. Scientifically, as we speak, the general consensus seems to lean towards 'more than expected' rather than 'less than expected'... but natural disasters have occurred extensively in the past; and none managed to wipe out humanity (as a species, we have a few ice ages on our name already). The biggest threat seems to be in triggering a new Ice Age, which obviously won't happen instantly. Anyway, I do not believe the continued survival of the human race is decided by natural disasters. Sure, a lot of misery would happen, but as long as we are able to maintain our knowledge base and at least a part of our number, we're pretty much guaranteed to survive. The biggest concern on modern industry is that it's not sustainable and fairly inefficient. To put it in more economic terms, we can produce more by using less, so for the life of me, I don't understand the reluctance to put some effort in moving towards that goal. And I've also never for the life of me understood why large corporations are so hell bent on short-term profit opposed to long-term.

I'll try to do that. Seems tricky. @Starhawk Rapid Unplanned Disassemblies happen rather often. I only post my successful endeavours, but I think the guys at the Old Airfield control tower scream in terror when I'm lining up for the runway by now. In other news, I noticed that I didn't enter in the Stock Aero Formula One - Race 2b yet, a blasphemy that cannot be allowed to exist, so threw Bill into the cockpit and had him fly the course in the fully fuelled stock plane in 6:33. Note, I edited many previous posts to refer to the races as mentioned in the opening post. I'm missing a good description for races 2a and 2b in the starting post... maybe a good idea to put those in for people new to the topic? Saves them from reading the entire thing.

It should work, but the trick really is that you should slow the heck down. But you should be able to pull it off at 400 plus entry speed in the first gap. Secret is that you START the turn BEFORE you enter the gap! And I usually fly most of that manoeuvre without power! Just as I line up for the second gap I hit the gas again. Just as in racing, some corners have a maximum speed Formula 1 drivers don't take the winding bits of the circuit at top speed either. It's not so much that the course doesn't work, it's more that if you want to make it, you HAVE to slow down. And that's where the piloting test comes in; getting in at the highest speed possible, as well as getting out... but 'the highest speed possible' isn't necessarily 'as fast as you can go'. Also, you -need- a manoeuvrable aircraft with a tight turning radius. And even then you need to judge a safe speed. Once you've got the hang of it, you'll rarely crash into that mountainside again. But to help you a bit: - start your turn a few moments BEFORE you pass the first gap. - Make sure you don't go too fast - As you go through, cut power (Yes, I'm crazy) - keep turning - As you are nearly lined up with the second gap; hit the gas! If you do it right, you might notice that your turn is actually TOO tight, that means you can go in faster! As I said, the more I've flown it, the more I'm convinced that Wanderfound's race should be Race 2... and mine perhaps a B option for when you like a bit of extra challenge. But I can promise you that the first time you make it, you'll feel awesome. BTW @Wanderfound. Hitting those VAB helicopter pads is REALLY hard. Never pulled it off in my own craft. This may be a bit too much for 'advanced pilot training'.

When I read Volcanix' awesome attempt on my previous record in Stock Aero Open - Race 1 I couldn't let this slide obviously. It's becoming seriously hard to capture that touch and go now. Also... I thought going supersonic was scary... seeing the ground get closer at way over half a km per second is even scarier O.o Anyway, completed the course in 3:19... But AGAIN, this is SERIOUSLY scary flying. I honestly thought I was joking with those sub 3 minute times, but they do seem possible... Maybe not by me, but I'm sure someone will break the 3 minute mark now! Obviously, Touch & Go - Stock Aero Open - Race 2A (Wanderfound edition) couldn't be left untouched either. I discovered a new issue I ran into... going TOO fast I could easily accelerate past 1200 m/s... but stopping at 1000 or 1100 is far more sensible... At 1200 I regularly overshoot the runway for the touch and go... Time: 5:09... in such a quick aircraft, that race is not only fun, but also surprisingly scenic!

Hey, thanks for making such an awesome challenge! Now to figure out how to get my signature to show up... I'd like to wear that awesome badge - edit - Ah, there it is...

NICE! And Volcanix, awesome attempt! @Wanderfound, making the leaderboard look like an Asterix & Obelix comic? Awesome! Also, yeah, I kind of forgot I was flying your Formula One craft for those attempts I now have one that's significantly faster. And even your original flight plan may be quite fun with this one. Maybe it's a better idea to rename them to Race 2A and Race 2B (hard mode). Because yes, the one I came up with is in fact quite newbie unfriendly, though incredibly fun when you DO succeed. At that, it is definitely a good exercise at piloting. Anyway, an attempt at Race 2a (my variant/extra challenge), final time 5:07

If you can count the number of wheels you get on the ground when you do this I'm seriously impressed. It's literally 'touch and go'. You touch the ground, and go. Problem is, since it's a time run, you will be wanting to touch the ground at a VERY high rate of speed, while making sure the touch won't prevent the go (aka, crash). @ValCab33... if you can manage that time while almost standing still at landing at the old airfield, you can do MUCH better... Most of us do the touch at 250+ m/s, that's over 3,5 times as fast as you, and you STILL have a good 4 minute time! @Wanderfound I also just realised that I'm doing a stock Aero Formula one attempt and you aren't... so another try at this! With the fully fuelled stock Formula One craft! My new time: 6:48

Maybe rename it to 'hard mode' or something? I've yet to try an official speedrun myself. edit: 5:41??? yikes... 7:20 here Not even worth posting...

I made some pictures for clarity on where to go and how to fly both tracks. - I edited this post past this point - The images were for a different concept, but the routes still apply. Wherever it reads 'FAR/NEAR' you should read 'Race 2a'. Wherever it says 'Stock' you should read 'Race 2b'. The route-information is still correct!

Kinda lost my patience with this one, sorry... The swing around the mountains has the craft decelerating to below 250 m/s in the standard souposphere, so it misses a bit of excitement... The majority of my attempts were spent in that little short flight section behind the mountains. I'm sure it's much more exciting when at supersonic speed, but I fear in stock, we're simply flying too low for that. I did find a solution to that in the second narrow pass you have us flying through. So here's an alternative variant. Dunno if it's possible in FAR/NEAR, but it's sure as hell exciting in stock: If you fly straight for the tallest spire in the mountains you see, after a while, you start seeing more detail, and you see this pass (first picture below). Immediately after, you have to make a VERY sharp turn, and swing straight around the mountain, through the second pass you had us fly through. This turn is VERY tight, but I got it on my second try, and it DOES give that feeling of 'BOOYAH I just did that!'. If you're too fast, or turn too wide... boom into mountain side. Then you return back to KSC, do a touch and go, and as soon as you reach the water (crew report needed). Basically exactly the same as yours, just the bit in the mountains changed.

Sounds nice, I like how you sort of include your other race at the end of this one. I'm just afraid that I'll get lost when behind the mountains lol... I'm notorious for getting lost in games. Thank the heavens for the navball. Should we just turn around at the end of the runway? Or go past the shores and include a crew report? edit: also, rep for thinking up fun challenges

Video is private?

Just post that as a separate challenge, I'm sure there's more people who'd like that. If you want to make a race series, make a dedicated topic for that, and perhaps have times for each individual leg as well? Would keep this purely for touch and go challenges... A touch and go at the helicopter landing pads on top of the VAB sounds challenging too Nice tight spot to touch the wheels on. So much potential for just touch and goes in this topic, and you could just post them as different legs to a competition. Perhaps adding all the best times of individual races together for an all-round championship touch & go? edit: though I would still keep the classes seperate

Ok, this can be done waaaay better... but I basically have insufficient hands. This is also the reason why I do NOT have any screenshots other than pre take-off and post landing. I do have the report to prove that I've been over the water, but I'm really unable to make a nice screenshot of the actual aerobatics, as the moment I make that crew report, I kind of have my left hand over the 0 button on the keyboard, then I need it for my flight controls, because THAT INSTANT I have to turn around. Which is a fairly involved manoeuvre when it comes to my left hand. I also cannot spam the crew report with the mouse nor can I dismiss a crew report with the keyboard, so I need both hands for the crew report. Likely this time would be faster if the craft had the crew report mapped to 2 or three, so my left hand can reach that button without leaving the flight controls. To describe what I'm doing, I basically use an Aerobatic Immelmann turn (half loop + half roll at the top) from an altitude of about 100-200 meters, and as tight as possible to turn around, then land, trying to find a balance between as much and as little speed as I can manage (more speed means I'll be at the runway quicker, but take longer to stop, less speed means I'll stop faster, but reach the runway slower). Final time: 1:31 edit: in stock that is

Ok, about your plane, MAYBE I should've done the Formula One first, and the open class afterwards. Because yes, it will feel like you're flying an airliner compared to the likely performance of crafts of the open class. I fully agree with you on a level playing field though. Therefore I kind of feel like tweaking fuel (and thus take-off mass) is one step too far. I think it SHOULD be allowed to tweak anything you can tweak as a pilot, but she's fuelled up in the SPH... so that's mechanics work in my mind. Also I feel like allowing fuel to be tweaked is a bit more (Sorry hoioh, not that I want to disagree so much, but I honestly believe this is a more straightforward ruling). I'm still out on the parachutes. They do add mass and drag. But especially in the single engine category, they do make a significant difference in getting the plane to stop. Because again, that little plane really REALLY liked to fly, and didn't want to stop

Lol, we seem to be 'clashing' a lot today... @Captain Sierra You could probably manage with 75 fuel, depending on the weight of your craft. Also, I think going higher would be beneficial for you... I suspect your craft is easily capable of more speed at higher altitudes. Also, FAR uses more realistic aerodynamics. And aerodynamics go weird in reality when going supersonic. FAR likely models this. So yeah, a bit more thought should probably go in... Though, supersonic flight in stock also reduces control... In particular hypersonic speeds... I frequently need half a continent to make a 'minimum' radius turn when going 1700+ m/s lol

hoioh, you should scroll down a bit more First IMGUR batch is the 4:11 run (the screenie you're referring to actually shows me still going 68 m/s), the next one in that particular batch of images is the 4:11 one Second Imgur = 3:58 Third batch = 3:55 Anyway, I'm off, maybe I'll check back again later tonight I expect to see a sub 3:00 by tomorrow lol.