tseitsei

Yep. That's how I would do it. One very small "ship" that just docks to different lander modules

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html Very good read. Also the second part. Recommend to everyone who is interested in what our AIs might be able to do in future

Well. That didn't take long GJ though

Ok I'll put the readouts visible for future entries. Alltough I calculated the mass of my ship and the mass of my payload part by part to get more accurate reading because the SPH readouts only give masses with one digit And let's name it Simple Is Beautiful because IMO the design is surprisingly simple to be that efficient (Getting just the right amount of fuel on board and the correct ascent profile wasn't that simple tough ) Yeah TWR is very important because you need to spend less time fighting the drag if you have high TWR... And I hope you have a loooooong night ahead

Ok here is my ship with 58s to orbit http://imgur.com/a/jTj5P Approximate flight instructions (I don't remember the exact angles): First almost straight up (maybe 70 degrees) and full throttle for 34s (whole first stage and some of the second stage) Then (still maintaining full throttle) turn almost straight down for awhile (this will lower your apoapsis and start to circularize your orbit) Then gradually turn more towards the radial direction Just before the 2nd stage runs out of fuel come out of the map view so you can activate sepratrons as soon as your 2nd stage stops. Pray that your apo gets >70km It will probably take a few (a lot) of tries to get it done but it is certainly doable

Ok SSTO series: 49.79% payload fraction 18.377t ship and 9.150t payload http://imgur.com/a/T3Zz4 EDIT: here is another picture from assembly hangar http://imgur.com/uRHi7wW

No mods, single launch doesn't mean no docking. Also one criteria from op was that one ship must land everywhere. Note that this doesn't mean that your whole ship you launch to space needs to land AND it doesn't forbid docking some extra modules to your lander for harder places (tylo eve laythe) as long as that one same ship is part of the ship that lands everywhere. At least that's how I interpret it and that's the only way I think this would be possible

I'll post pics about the craft and flight profile later when I get to ksp computer. But I can say that with a lot of thrust, heatshields while going up to not blow up and 3 stages. Now someone else please give this a try. It's quite fun and MOAR BOOSTERS! Is usually a viable method here...

58 seconds to orbit yesterday sub 1 minute was quite difficult

Nowhere in the op does he say no docking... He just says that one ship must land on every celestial body. But not necessarily the whole ship you have with you and not necessarily without docking...

Wow! You almost reached 50% with ssto. Very gj! I must see what I can do to that

Spaceplanes are most cost efficient since it only costs the price of fuel used to send something to orbit and payload fractions can also be very good in proper designs (30% is quite easy to achieve on smaller scale planes and >20%-30% is quite simple with bigger designs as well) On rockets you lose some money even if you use parachutes to recover early stages because you can't land them neatly on the runway...

You can bring isru...

How did you manage to do that? I thought rapiers have a max speed at little below 1600m/s and are pretty much useless at >23km... Those numbers dont get you near orbit height or speed. What did you do?

Yes, You can't land on Jool but besides that I think this is doable (but very hard). It's hard mostly because it needs to be single launch... The size of the lifter needed to do this terrifies me a lot. You don't need to SSTO from Eve. You can just build a stageable Eve lander and do Eve first and then use the last stage of that lander as lander for other planets and moons (you'll probably need some dockable extra "stages" for laythe and tylo). Or do Eve last and use smaller SSTO lander for other bodies and finally at Eve orbit dock it to "lower stages of Eve lander- module you have with you and you can leave those lower stages behind as you ascent from Eve... If you can just get to Eve orbit you don't need to get "somewhere it can refuel". It can be refueled from another part of your ship that is waiting on the orbit... If you can just get to Eve orbit you don't need to get to gilly. It can be refueled from another part of your ship that is waiting on the orbit... The hardest part here is to build a ship with enough fuel and Eve capable lander (it will be big) that can be lifted to LKO in single launch IMO This is still amazingly hard but not necessarily impossible (IF YOU CAN BUILD THAT LIFTER)...

Yep, I was heavily inspired by the current overall leader Nefrum's awesome Stingray Mk1 Thanks! And come at me bro! It's on...

Challenge: Get to orbit as fast as possible (Pe must be >70km) Rules: Stock only (information and visual mods allowed) Take off from launchpad or runway Fastest time to orbit wins (take a screenshot that shows periapsis >70km) Also take a screenshot of your ship on launchpad/runway Additional screenshots are recommended as well Also obviously no F12 or any other cheats (infinite fuel, kraken drive, anything other stupid...) Here is my example entry: http://imgur.com/a/x9bk9 1:14 to orbit Two stage lifter

Top entry on the SSTO division! 32.6t at launch 15.25t payload = 46.78% payload fraction http://imgur.com/a/Q07Rw 450m/s at sea level pitch up about 30degrees until at 8km level up slowly at around 14 km gather 1400m/s speed pitch up 10-15 degrees switch to rocket mode when you start decelerating circularize

What do you mean? Once your speed is slow enough you can just start flying the plane normally. You can glide down and land if you want or you can start your jet engines again and fly somewhere else if you have fuel left... Good way to bleed off any extra speed is using airbrakes and if you dont have those just pitching up and down works since you fly with big AoA and that causes a lot of drag. Just don't use too big AoAs when hypersonic. Aerodynamic forces will rip your ship apart...

Basically you want lots of weight on the front part of the plane (All remaining fuel should be pumped as far forward as possible. And if that's not enough you might need to get back to drawing board and actually move more tanks/other weight forward). You also want more drag at the rear part of the plane (Airbrakes as far back as possible). That way your plane will act like a dart (heavy tip on the front and lots of drag on the back) and should fly beautifully nose first and not spin out of control...

I think that it might work because if I understand correctly this is how ablator works: It will start burning after some temperature and it will burn with constant rate as long as temperature is above that limit. So if the limit is say 1000C and you are at 1001C for long period of time (higher reentry @ upper atmosphere) you will burn all your ablator before slowing down enough. Now if you come in steeper you will be hotter but for a shorter period of time and you will burn up less ablator. Of course you can't come in too steep or you'll blow up heat shield or not but you must find the sweet spot I believe. (I'm not sure how ablator works IRL but I think this is at least how it works in KSP. At least according to my experiences)

It's fun when there is no clear instructions on how to do everything in a game like this. Figuring it out by yourself is big part of the fun At least for me

I can't aim to KSC properly but most places are flat enough to land there quite easily...

After ~week of trial and error I made a successful Single-Stage-to-Mun-and-Back spaceplane 6 Rapiers 2 nukes and Mk3 hull parts were used. Might add some photos later...