Nefrums

When empty is is quite close. So close that I have been trying to move the CoL further back to gain increased stability. The Mk4 fuselage parts generate quite a bit of lift and CoM is very far back when empty. The size3 vecor is like 70t. Not really sure how tweakscale scales it but i think it keeps twr constant. And as the stock vector is like 5 times more powerful than other size 1 engines, it retains some of that when scaled up, It has more thrust (and mass) than 4 mammoths. I don't use FAR. And I try limiting the mods to ones that are reasonably stock balanced.

STS4

While trying to land my improved shuttle I discovered a sight design flaw: Front landning gear is not there.

So... If I build a small ssto, fly it to orbit and leave it there for a year before landing it. That would be worth around 2 million points? Would that be considered "bending" the rules?

STS3 I'll do some improvements to the shuttle before doing STS4, It has some heat problems that make reentry harder then it should be.

So I really liked the look of the mk4 parts, So I made a mk4 shuttle: It uses a lot of mods, mk4 system, SpaceY, TweakScale etc. I followed the reusable space shuttle concept that only discards a pair of SRBs and a fuel tank, no of the expensive engines are lost. It is powered by one Vector engine (3.75m), two secondary Aerospikes (2,5m), and two SRBs. It weighs 2,4kt and has a payload capacity of about 550 t to LKO. STS1a album Edit: Second mission: STS2 album

That should be possible as a almost empty first stage has lots of twr, Doing it with any kind of accuracy will be very hard thou.

There are two factors to consider you can only switch to a object (outside of physics range) if the current craft is above the atmosphere. A craft will dissiperar if it goes below ~35-40km? without being in focus. So the flight plan is like this: Drop first stage when AP is outside of 70km and more than a minute away. Boost the second stage for that minute. Try to keep AP more then a minute ahead. Switch to the first stage and preform the boost-back. Aim about 30km short of KSC to compensate for Kerbal rotation. Before reentering atmosphere switch back to second stage. Complete the circulation burn of the second stage and switch back to the first stage before it disappears.

Doing the boost-back is a bit hard as both first and second stage needs to be above the atmosphere in order to switch back and forth between them. It took a couple of attempts to find a ascent path that left the first stage with a AP >70km, and at the same time the shuttle had to have enough time to do most of the circulation burn before the first stage dropped back down. The dV cost for doing a boost-back was way less then I expected.

I have been wanting to try to do a spaceX style boostback thing. So here is a fully reusable first stage with a equally reusable shuttle on top. Not the cheapest possible but a fun way of doing it :) comes in at about 395 /t http://imgur.com/a/5UDFF

Here is a quick try: 11:17 http://imgur.com/a/EXLct

Was there any rule about what planet you had to fly on?

http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/spacex-concludes-accident-investigation-targets-return-to-flight-on-sunday/ Return to flight on Sunday.

I wonder if Evil Mort approves of spending all those kerbulan funds on fake rescue contracts.

At least we now know why the evil spy boss wanted the kraken chewed pod retrieved.

I like this mod! It makes it poasible to make realistic looking rockets that can lift big ships to orbit. One thing that might be a bug or just me doing something wrong. The 10m thrust plates are nice for making second stage engine clusters, but even thou it looks like all engins are hidden beneath the shroud, the engins still generate alot of drag. Is this a bug or am I missing something. Also a tank attached below the 10m decoupler have more drag then if it was below any other 10m part.

Probes sent, time to start Building the first base. http://www.imgur.com/gallery/OpI6B

While getting to orbit is easier on Laythe than it is on Kerbin, landing (and taking off) is harder. The lower gravity does not fully compensate for the lower pressure, hence you need more wings on Laythe. Otherwise you will be going very fast when you land or/and at a very high angle of attack. The later is fine if you have a pair of wheels just behind CoM, but if the wheels are to far form CoM it will lead to the plane slamming the nose gear into the ground and flipping. I have done the mistake of not testing properly and have sometimes been able to pull off high speed landings with an high angle off attack by pitching down just before touchdown. Edit: Water landings are alot easier, but takeoff is harder. You could land in the water close to the coast and then roll up on land to take off.

I've wanted to learn how to build a usi self sufficient base for a while, so I've started an entry for this challenge. To limit the drain on life support I'll send stuff every transfer window. To practice that I sent a ship with 46 probes the first transfer window on a 375d path to Jool. I'm hooping I can get all probes in position before the second transfer window. Will start a thread in the mission reports section when I'm done getting the probes into position.

use ckan

Tekto is a strange moon, The low gravity and very thick atmosphere means that you have more drag losses then you have gravity losses during ascent, a lot more. It is a bit strange that the isp of the engines are not affected more than they are, like on Eve. I tried to make the Laythe lander reusable by adding a radial docking port, but the increased drag on Tekto cost a lot more, And the mass saving for reusing the last stage of the Laythe lander was not that big, I would hav to bring the fuel anyway (to refuel the lander) and the Tekto lander is only ~400kg apart from the fuel tank.

I like the cost restriction, It is what makes this challenge different. There does not have to be rules for everything, let people use what the want to. I flew this challenge in a stock ship, and I followed all reules from the challenge that was the inspiration for this one, as I think those rules are good and make for an interesting (design) challenge with out adding needles complexities that I don't like, like flying without precise node, building without KER etc. my ship ship cost 100k and I had way to much fuel, I ditched the entire last stage of my mothership with its 5k dV before reentry at Kerbin. I used a lifter design that I developed for the The Cheap and Cheerful Rocket Payload Challenge based on kickbacks, twinboar and poddle. It can get stuff to orbit for about 600/t The mothership is powered by a single nerv, and have dedicated landers for Laythe and Tekto, and one lander for the rest. Album: http://imgur.com/a/Jvocc

I used extra fueltanks (with docking port on) to get the landes to low orbit and back on Tylo and Slate. Use most of the fuel in the extra tanks to get the lander down to low orbit and then leave the tanks there to be able to refuel the lander after the landing. For other moons I used Landes with enough dV to get back to high orbit. Direct transfer from Pol to Sarnus was only about 500dV + 150 dV plane change. Slate works just like Tylo to get a free capture at Sarnus. I brought way more LF for the mother ship than needed. Could probably done it with half. 3 small moons to go...

That is not a problem, as long as the kerbal is not clipping the edges of the service bay it works. I found that sparks make for a cheaper Laythe lander then using airbreathing engines. I have flags planted on Laythe and Tylo so far, 8 moons to go. I have no idea how much dV is needed for getting around the Saturnus system and back to Kerbin, But my mothership went up to over 9km/s dV after having used the tylo and Laythe landers so I think it should be enough.

initial designs point to that this challenge is definitely possible, probably possible to do it in half the cost. I like the funds restriction because it is different from other challenges and forces you to build something different. It feels like trying to do a bigger low mass jool 5 without ions and rapiers. Surprisingly Laythe is the hardest moon to build a cheap lander for. The Saturnus moons are straight forward apart from Tektu, that is like you put Eves atmosphere on mun, low gravity and crazy drag.