Nefrums

The name of my entry was "Small boat", and I am missing my second entry from the score board. (If that entry was OK, a few parts broke on impact... I mean landing)

It is posible. You can get from LKO to jool in half a year with a 7km/s exit burn.

So here is the Mk2: 2050 / 2144 kg "Landed" mostly intact... http://imgur.com/a/bxuiZ

it was a powered landing. I had plenty of fuel left.

I gave this a quick try, 2264 kg with the kerbal. Mods used: Take command and KER. Edit: what is up with imgur?!? Here is the link to the album as the forum plugin does not appear to be working with this new imgur thing.. http://imgur.com/a/ui3ao

I'm trying a slightly different approach. Looks like it should reach 70-80 Mm.

I assume that we can discard the second stage engine and fuel tank before reentry? like the real Falcon 9 does.

This is just about maximizing thrust/drag. The thrust from rapiers drops of with speed and is close to 0 at mach 5.8. Best I could do was mach 5.79...

Here is my entry for category 3. (It might also qualify for category 1 and 5). I mostly looked at the trajectories on http://www.asteroidmission.org/mission/#cruise and tried to mimic those in the Kerbol System. Total dV used was 4854 m/s. Please tell me if you want more images, I have hundreds of screenshots from the mission.

The .cfg files for both stock and RSS are in the same zip. They are config files used by Kopernicus mod.

Getting an intercept with Bennu was really hard as ksp for some reason don't give you the intercept distance unless you get your trajectory within SoI of the target bodies trajectory, in this case it is less than 2km. I did finally manage to get an intercept when I was about 1000km from Bennu. The method I used was to hyperedit a dummy craft to a 1680m orbit of Bennu. This caused the dummy craft to exit Bennus SoI, and I could target the dummy craft. This is a very inaccurate method as I am targeting something that moves away from Bennu and setting up an intercept with that years after it left Bennu. I had to repeat the process several times to get more accuracy.

It sure does, but I enjoy the building part of this game more than I do the flying part. So I rather spend the time improving my designs than trying to get a good ascent. So I like the predictability and reproducibility of using smart A S S. And it is true as you say that it is hard to compete with out using it. In the same way as it is hard to compete with smart A S S vs someone using kos scripts.

Smart A S S is not really an auto pilot. It is just a better sas where you can specify the exact angle it should try to hold.

This is a fun and very difficult challenge. I'm build something that roughly resembles OSIRIS-REx using only stock parts, I will use this to recreate the mission in KSP universe. Wet mass is spot on, but dry it is 30 kg to heavy. It even has a sampler arm that hopefully will poke the asteroid a bit. (Sample transfer will be left to the imagination) It will be sent to space by a rocket with the right stages but a reduced dV of 4080 m/s that I think is close to the analog of the real one in KSP universe. Here is a teaser pic of the craft leaving Kerbin.

It is a bit hard to do a model using stock parts, and still get a wet/dry mass resembling the real thing. Structural panels are just to heavy to be of any use. But I'll give it a try!

I improved the stingray design to comply with all the rules. Adding another two engines made it a bit better. It does 0 to Mach 5 in 2min 6s. 5770 LF, 1980 OX and 8 mp -> 4982p

Try to hit mach 1 in under 1 min and mach 4 after 2 min.

About 3 rows of tiny tanks. There are plenty of room at the bottom if you offset the big tanks up a bit.

Attaching wheels to bigS wing parts is asking for trouble. Better to attach them to the side of the fuselage. Another thing that sometimes helps is lowering the friction setting on the front wheel. I often use similar wheel placement to real planes. That is a pair of big wheels very close to CoM to take most of the wight, and then one smaller wheel far from CoM for balance and stearing.

I'm getting a lot of issues with drag from parts inside cargo bays. Very annoying. Sometimes I get drag from one tank in the middle of a stack that is inside the cargo bay, but no drag from the parts before and after it in the stack. I think it somehow has something to do with stacking several cargo bay parts. The parts that generate drag are always overlapping the area where the cargo bay parts connect.

2 shock cones is enough, as long as you wait until ~10m/s to throttle up to full power.

Here you go! First time i used the cargo ram for anything :-) 7374 LS and 2563 OX used -> 6361p Flight profile is simple. Accelerate to Mach 1.25 at sea level Then 9 degree climb to 23km and 1630 m/s, Lock prograde, light up the nervs and engage Closed cycle to get to 31km and 2060 m/s Let the nervs burn until AP reaches 300km.

I try to keep a fairly constant climb rate 8-12 degrees depending on the twr of the ship. Ideally you what to reach 1650 m/s in air breathing mode, but anything above 1600 is ok. I use smart A.S.S. from mech Jeb as this lets me type in the exact angle that the sas should try to hold. I've been trying to build a ship that does not look like s-it and still is resonable efficient. It is hard to get the balance right when using cargo bays.

Fully understandable, the ship was not designed for this challenge, just adapted a bit.

It actually has a fully functional rcs system inside the service bay. It is visible in the pic where it drops of the tanks. no fuel for it thou.. But I think it might disqualify itself by having a nosecone of the orange tanks and hence dropping of more parts then the two tanks.