DonLorenzo

The thing with payload design is that it\'s purely cosmetic. You can\'t say \'design a satellite that can last x days and can measure 200-1200nm wavelength at 30arcseconds of sky\' because those functionalities don\'t exist. So I want the challenge to be designing the lifter vehicle. The only question is then, will it be <lift 3 full fuel tanks> or <lift this thing here that i made>. I think the latter is more fun, but it requires another mod download on your part.

So I\'m preparing to do the turn tonight, all is well and there will be some new missions for next turn Some of them will be about putting X in orbit, on the mun, on a place on kerbin etc. What I\'m thinking about is what X should be. I can keep it abstract and just say \'4 mass units or more\' but I\'d rather make a probe, space station, building or whatever out of some mod parts and provide some pre-built stuff as mission jump-off points. Would you guys like that? Or rather have the more abstract mass figure and not muck about with more mods (I\'d probably use something like NovaSilisko\'s probodobodyne and/or BACE kit)

powerland!

Coincidentally spent the morning designing something like this, it did make me think about the real world use of spaceplanes.. In KSP at least it feels like less of a hassle to just slap more rockets under it Anyway here goes the spaceplane: it takes off (barely!) on a set of six turbojet engine. Taking a 45 degree nose up course will get you up to about 15km on the last drops of jet fuel. Discard the engines and light the rockets. A set of parachutes will make sure that the discarded wings dont crash into the rocket. Use the rockets to get high up into the atmosphere, then ditch the top wings. Top stage is the orbiter/lander/re-entry vehicle. It has copious RCS to perform minmus maneuvers and glides to a soft landing on kerbin. It has a full tank of fuel and a lander engine for maneuvers and maybe a mun landing. Atmospheric powered flight is also possible with it (just barely with a full tank, more easily with drained tanks). I feel the second stage could perhaps use a third rocket, the desing isn\'t quite finished yet

Probably because I never use them and thus forgot about them! They are available if you want them, at $300 and 30% salvage. I would recommend using mechjeb rather than SAS modules, it doesn\'t give actual force but utilizes the available control authority with robotic precision making previously unsteerable craft quite usable.

Cool, thanks for your interest Bellaby. I\'m thinking it could be fun to operate a shared persistence file, however I\'m going to be flying all the sattelites into orbit so it will be either my job to create a viable constellation or your jobs to coordinate which inclinations/altitudes and stuff to use. I don\'t really like either solution as it creates a lot of extra work for little benefit. I\'m more inclined towards an abstract solution like stating \'three sats in kerbo-synch orbit allows full kerbin coverage\' and repeating that for each body. That way the focus will remain on craft design and the correct satellite constellation setup within the capabilites of the craft will be implied. Satellite missions are not up for another few turns, I\'ll make up my mind before then. As for what format I prefer it doesn\'t really matter, but if you keep the following pointers in mind it\'ll make things easier for me: - Include a finance overview, including your craft, tech and contract entry costs. - Include the turn number and your (forum) name in the subject line - Include flight instructions, especially if your craft requires some funky staging or flight profile - Put your mission and contract submissions in the same e-mail Good luck with your space program! Cheers

got this around 200 m/s edit: lol there\'s no runway in that screenshot. It\'s like.. 1 frame in the past

The same can be said for designing ridiculous rockets that explode. That also happened a few times IRL. Lighten up. Edit: this was in response to periapsisprograde about the humor etc. didn\'t see there was a 2nd page yet.. oops

I have that with the 60\'s. Although I\'m kinda convinced it\'s normal to dislike your own time and see better things in the past or maybe the future. In the end everyone will always have samey-kind of surprisingly similar problems, being human and all, the times and environment just fills in the details.

There\'s hardly a framework, rules or goals to play in.

Only mech jeb control modules are allowed. What do the mechjeb fuel tanks, landing legs etc. do? I\'ve not played with them yet. As a rule of thumb only the parts listed in the price list are allowed.

New ZOX parts are allowed, the side mounted tanks have the same amount/weight ratio, but have different amounts per part. So use a little care when you cost them. Ie. two of the new \'large side mounted tanks\' are equivalent in weigth, amount and cost to one of the old \'large zox tank\'. About the booster challenge, when testing it I made one that I think had 26 or 28 boosters and landed just a hair short of the icecap, with some flight profile optimization it probably could\'ve made it. Your designs made it all well into the pole, which is something I suppose You get to fly one mission and claim one \'first bonus\', not multiple. If you do a higher one than the next highest \'first\' available I may reduce the bonuses of the skipped missions for the next turn, but you won\'t be able to claim them. I think that would be a bit overpowered.

I\'ll keep a look at this, posting to allow me to do just that Good luck fleshing out your campaign!

I got the following question from fireblade via PM The plane does not need to land safely on wheels, but kerbonauts do need to survive (if they don\'t, profit is docked according to OP). Whether you do that via a parachute-splashdown, decoupling of the pod or a safely landable plane is up to you. The zox system is required, in the future you can hold to the rule of thumb that it\'s always required except when expressly stated it isn\'t. Cheers!

The information on the previous turns are just there for posterity & reference. So you have access to the turn 3 stuff and not the turn 1 & 2 stuff. This means that some mission bonuses are no longer available or reduced, but also that some technologies will be cheaper. Some turns in I might mark some missions \'starters only\' or something, but I don\'t think that\'s needed for now. I hope the cheaper tech and contracts will allow later players to somewhat catch up, without the first day players feeling shafted. We\'ll see how that goes

Turn 2 Results! Most of our corporations elected to prioritize the normal missions, researching technologies that would make them profitable and a sure bet over the semi-uncertain payout of the contract. Sjwt was the only one that played the contract, and therefor automatically won it too. He did so with 34 rocket boosters. Here\'s the financial summary for turn 2 Player: Awaras Mission Completed: 50km Tech purchased: Booster Tech Spent: $10850 Income: $11500 New Balance: $11900 Player: sal_vager Mission Completed: 50km Tech purchased: Salvage Tech I Spent: $11050 Income: $11600 New Balance: $11800 Player: sjwt Mission Completed: 25km + contract Tech purchased: none Spent: $7250 Income: $13500 New Balance: $13500 Player: Fireblade Mission Completed: 25km Tech purchased: none Spent: $8750 Income: $10500 New Balance: $10750 Sadly I did\'nt receive a submission or word from Saaur, Imnotcanadian, CrowZone or ThobeWill. You\'re still welcome to come back in and resume your space program, but there won\'t be delayed turns for you again. Now on to turn 3! Announcements -Salvage Tech IIb (announced last turn) now available for research -New contract: Airplane speed challenge -Salvage Tech I has now been purchased 4 times, price reduced to $800 (another 10% off base value) See the OP for the updated technology tree, missions and the new contract for turn 3 Cheers! Edit: Deadline for turn 3 will be 30-05-2012 23:59 (GMT+2), or as soon as all players have submitted.

Wow that deceleration is impressive. And the man, ofcourse

Cool, good luck with those!

I think it\'s referring to a munar free return trajectory. It\'s where you launch out to the mun, get caught by it and \'flung back\' into a kerbin orbit with a PE of <70km. The \'free\' bit implies that all this will happen after the initial TMI burn without any other inputs to the craft, ie no course corrections. AFAIK it\'s a trajectory the apollo missions were on and they would only perform a lunar orbit insertion burn if everything looked good, if not, they could return home without any main engine burns. If I were to bet I\'d bet it\'s not going to be done on HC mode. Not without some real good burn timing and lots of practice runs

yup, I found through about 20 zox-mun-missions all launched with no regard of the sun, only one got in trouble while carrying 1 big tank. That ratio was deemed sufficient to outweigh any eye-damage from observing the sun too much

Nice, I put kerbonaut safety first and included a large zox tank for some life support buffer. I think the final design had a fuel tank less than the one shown in the picture, I had to make ends meet and they got there with about 200 bucks to spare edit: the final one had a whole extra fuel-tank-rocket stack.. oh well it\'s only for the press anyway!

You can\'t really do without them I suppose. Adding \'no warp\' to the list might make it a bit too hardcore

Nice. Thanks for your efforts tog

These guys did it too. They were very happy about it, untill their landing computer decided they had touched down safely and shut down engines... about 300 meters above the ground. The lander was sadly lost in the resulting fireball. Fortunately the parachute sufficed to at least save the pod.

Yeah it\'s nice weather here too, and with the .15 release I understand if our players haven\'t found the time. As I said, let\'s give it this week and see what happens. Also new players are more than welcome, since we\'re only just on turn two it\'s still very possible to join the game. EDIT: also, I just noticed I forgot to reduce Booster and salvage tech prices, since they were purchased twice on turn 1. I\'ll add that in the turn update and OP, you guys that purchased them on turn 2 will have a couple hundred more bucks. If you want to revise your turn based on this info, you can since I overlooked it at first.