Evanitis

I'm pretty sure it's intended. Or at least it's this way for a while. I visited the place in 1.0.4 (almost stock, nothing installed that had anything to with terrain), and it was submerged too. KSC2 was totally fine. EDIT: Ahh, it's -this- thread. Since I posted, I'll be on-topic too for a bit. The kerbals I envision always sacrifice their lives gladly for the betterment of Kerbalkind, so I rarely get emotionally invested. Guess it also matters that I'm not hardcore enough to restrict my quicksave use. But there was a time where I landed a small, low-tech plane on a peak (after many tries) for a contract. It flipped a tiny bit. No damage was done, but Val struggled -really desperately- for like an hour to somehow nudge the plane into a takeoff position - without pushing it off from the cliff. ^no matter how good it looks, that solution didn't work. A less spectacular one much later did.

Well, I saw pictures of the Shuttle on a Boeing-747, and I thought it's a totally awesome way of getting it to orbit. Later on this forum my attention was called to the fact that it's only used for transporting the spacecraft to the launch-site. Bummer. Not long ago I've been also told on this site that there is a precedent. In the Moonraker (James Bond movie from '79) Hugo Drax hijacked the shuttle of the same name from the top of a plane in flight. I'm yet to watch the film to find out if he took it directly to his lunar base, or if he landed it first in his secret hideout in South-America. Guess I should watch it at this point. Don't apologize, you are doing a fine job already by maintaining the STS Challenge. If anything, you are too lenient. Letting me land it empty? Too easy. Though it's a tricky question, as the mission description in the OP is a bit controversial - The note at the badge says it's awarded for taking the pod to orbit, while the flavour text states that it should get to orbit and back. I prefer the harder options, and anyhow it's far from the silliest and most pointless task my kerbals has been contracted to do. I was totally prepared to redo parts or the whole mission for this challenge. Actually, the craft was built for fun, and it was half finished when I noticed that it -could- fit in the description outlined by Mr. SuperGuy. So I slapped on some OPM engines, and made it ~30% longer (and like a hundred tons heavier) so I could take the pod. I kinda' knew that the landing was too hairy, but I wasn't sure if the jet-engines were 'radial' enough, so I decided to wait for confirmation. Anyways, empty splash-landing isn't too challenging. The initial speed and altitude doesn't matter in this case, the trick is to slow down enough on the last 100m before it stalls and falls like a brick. That's -much- easier to do if the craft is lighter by 42t. I'll try it a few times with the original quicksave, it -might- just work. If I fail, I'll just redo the whole mission with added gears and do a proper runway landing. EDIT: checked my screens... I managed to get 54 m/s on 8 meters? Dang I don't think I can do any better. Guess gears will be needed. xD

Umm... That's what I meant. Math never was my strong side.

Showing off is life. I'm sooooo tempted to show off and point to the pinky logo in my sig. But I'm strong, and I resist the urge. The craft doesn't qualify anyways, as it's the lowest possible tech, so it has a decoupler instead of docking ports.

That looks nice. While all those aerodynamic stuff indeed wasn't strictly needed, I'm pretty sure it increases the pilots' survival margin greatly. I'm the kind of silly that built submarines (and subsstos by that matter) before even attempting the first VTOL, so I'm not greatly experienced in that matter. Though I'm having the feeling that I'll resort to wings too by the time I attempt to actually take cargo on such craft.

Giant twin-liner of course. The spaceplane enthusiast in me instantly started to wonder how should I take something like this to orbit. Though probably not with 200 kerbals. I was more impressed with the 180° flip of the heliplane without gaining height, than the actual design. Most likely that's because I see some stock helicopters that's actually lifted by rotors. Those are the silliest contraptions of ever. I'm also a layman in aeronautics, so I never thought it's an actual replica. Though I wonder what wacky stunts could be pulled off with that down-facing engine.

Lovely designs, wacky acrobatics! Though you might want to remove the albums from the spoiler-stuff. Mozilla dislikes it (up until now I thought everything dislikes it, but just checked gf's laptop). But pretty pictures please the eye anyways.

"Men, you're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it."

I dislike part-mods and feel that KJR is chea I mean inappropriate. But this one is soooo tempting... Must resist...

Welcome to Jool SoI, the breeding ground surprise slingshots and silly trajectories. I tend to get like two of these in every burn:

Pilots? Pilots? What do they do that a cheap, low-tech OCTO core can't do? I tend to send them to interplanetary duty for a few decades, in case someone wants a new flag planted somewhere.

Hey, that's not a half-bad game. Ok, maybe a quarter-bad. While we are at it: http://www.mywebdownload.com/

Yay! That's the one I keep re-reading for the longest of time.

Rockets are quick and easy to design and fly. Using them is practical, realistic and time efficient. They might have higher cost, but it only matters in just one game-mode's harder settings (where it takes -much- grind before one can make a proper cargo SSTO plane), otherwise the profit overshadows that costs most of the time. Spaceplanes are hard to build, and much harder to perfect. It takes practice to reach orbit, and much practice to take a noteworthy amount of cargo. It's silly to use them farther than LKO because of the dead-weight. Using them to assemble rockets on orbit is tedious, and has no other benefit than some cost efficiency - not to mention that you end up with a rocket at this point anyways. Ahh, almost forgot - SSTO-planes are unrealistic, and can only exist in Kerbin with our sci-fi jet engines. So it's not even a real question. Spaceplanes all the way. (we got 6 votes already? Thought there's only 5 of us..)

I liked the Foundation series better.

As far as I know, drag got tougher, so it's not nearly as viable in the atmo as it was before. It of course saves the same amount of dV in vacuum.

Alt + F12, toggle infinite fuel? If you want unlimited resources out of thin air (well, thin vacuum), you might as well use the simple stock solution.

Darn, that must have been painful. Though you know, ignorance is bliss. Also for you if you ignore the ignorance. ...wait for it... Ignoranception. badum-tsss

That sounds my kinda of thing. I like both authors, and I eat a lot of sprouts.

While I feel with the op, I can't agree. The T1 runway is indeed the bumpiest surface in the whole universe. The T2 is totally manageable, while the last one is as flat as any grassy surface if not more. Anything else is just sloppy design.

Rule No.1. of spaceplanes - never argue about semantics, as unless you are -really- precise, the words will mean something entirely different to everyone. In my book anything that has wings and goes to space is a spaceplane. Dun' let the purists say otherwise.

I never did programming, besides some really basic flash-stuff if that counts. But I skimmed trough the kOS documentation, and it looks -really- simple, even for a mortal like me. And it looks interesting for me to translate my SSTO-plane orbiting procedure to simple commands. Like "if speed > 100, raise AoA to 30°", "if height > 10.000, set AoA to 10°" "if acceleration = 0 STAGE". The language isn't much more complicated than that. I'm pretty sure I could write one for a specific plane in 1-2 hours. Maybe in a few days, I could come up with something that could orbit most of my crafts. I'm pretty sure I could just google for a script that does that, but that looks like an interesting, irregular challenge for me to do it myslef. One day.

Good day to you Mr Chappell! Stick around, chime in, and post the stuff you do and / or build. Don't be shy, KSP is like... umm.. pudding! When it's good it's good, but when it's bad it's still good.

Fantasy: I recently finished the last volume of 'The Malazan Book of the Fallen' by Steven Erikson. It's the most epic, and most underrated fantasy series out there. The guy does an awesome job of making the lives of the common everymen, gods and various powerful entities, even countries and empires interesting and relevant. It's 10 big and heavy books. If Michael Bay ever finds it, it'll occupy him for a decade. Sci-fi: Ever read Phillip K. Dick? Though it's not 'classic' science fiction, kinda' anything you could pick from him will be awesome.

It totally does. You can just copy-paste your KSP folder, and put different mods in the second one. You don't even need Steam to run for playing.