occar

I guess the OP has now figured out that there are people really good at this game and that MechJeb, while useful, is far from efficient.

This doesn't appear to be a challenge of any sort. Please read the guidelines before submitting one.

Maybe this will keep the infiniglide nonsense out of every other atmospheric challenge. We can only hope.

This is a request and not a challenge. Requests go: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forumdisplay.php/52-Rocket-Builders

Have you considered making the rules standardized for power for a more even playing field? Something like: you can use 1 RT-10 (actually, that was recently a challenge) (gives 30 seconds of un throttleable burn, then nothing). Or 1 tiny fuel tank and a rocket (specify which) Right now, your rules are so vague that people will end up stacking separatrons on really light things. I think your challenge is looking for glider capability, and so standard power would give you a good measure. *also* you're going to end up with infiniglide exploiters (even if by accident). Also, please read the guidelines. You need some sort of quantitative scoring design to designate a winner. You also should give us an example of your own creation, and score that as an example for how scoring works.

Use the SpacePort. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/ It's free to upload.

And now we have confirmation that it's possible. Did you have to turn off clipping to stack the wings?

The craft will show. With a legit craft, there would be no reason to accelerate time before launch (making a total travel distance of over 1M), no reason to hide the makeup of the ship (not letting it crash), no reason to speed up physics, and no reason to not provide what is required for a valid submission (an entire flight).

Sometimes people cheat on these things. It's a fact. It's why the standard response is a request for the craft. It makes it obvious. Either they edit the craft and it performs nothing like what they claim, or they post the real craft, and everyone sees it's a fake. It's also part of the reason, when mine was going twice as far as the closest competition, I put the craft up to show there was nothing out of sorts with it. The nice thing is, except on the piloting challenges, it's trivial to just check out a craft. If people withhold the craft, they're hiding something, if people post it, it proves if it's legit or not really fast.

He's also accelerated time before launch and other funny business as evidenced by total distance traveled in here. Physics warping which is also in use here, leads to oddities as well. No wreckage shot which would show part counts out of the norm, etc. After playing for a long time, it's pretty easy to tell when people pull shenanigans on these things. an RT10, with 4 swept wings (there are more than 4 clipped in there from the looks of it though), and no funny business is not going to produce what he has without manipulation of some sort. If it's legit, the .craft file will show it, hence the request.

No offense intended, but please post that craft, because to get that kind of distance, it appears that there is some funny business going on. I can tell it looks like you've potentially turned off clipping and stacked wings for one, but that design by itself isn't going to perform like that without triggering some of the physics bugs.

This is one that will be won with jet engines, I am sure.

When I replied, it said "make a ship from halo" with no attempt, and no scoring or other way to determine a victor, or anything else.

No, I don't accept because this isn't a challenge, it is a please make this ship I want type request. Did you read the challenge guidelines? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24898-Challenge-Submission-Guidelines

I considered some balance with a droppable part, but the challenge is explicit in only being allowed a single stage, so I did not.

Ok, letting it do one last run. Literally just pressing space to launch, and providing no inputs after that just to see what it does by itself. If it gets a decent distance without inputs of any sort, I'll post the craft file as proof. edit: It does 144.7km with no inputs. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/rong-flyer-mk3/ Just let physics kick in and let it stabilize on the clamps, then press space, come back in an hour and it's gone that far. You can get a little more out of it if you counteract some of the less optimal action on the launch, but it will eventually stabilize on its own and glide for nearly an hour. I know the tail fins on the wings seem like they're floating, that's just where the builder makes them connect for some reason.

By the way, there's no need to decouple something for distance, the f3 screen at 5 minutes will tell you ground distance traveled.

Ok, last time (we're up to over 1 hour flight time and I just don't want to spend more time on this, even though I just stabilize it and then let it free-glide until it crashes). I didn't do an in flight shot this time (forgot, but it isn't required per the instructions anyway). Note that even with only 20.2 m/s speed (~ 0.7 m/s vertical speed from calculations I did of the last 10 m) it still breaks. Still doing an Immelmann launch, so it could get more efficient. (Also, why doesn't it show my liftoff time in the f3 shot here? Does anyone know?). Anyway, this is almost exactly a 50% improvement over the last flight, either from the design change, or a slightly better launch. I don't know where the improvement came from. Note that somehow I managed a perfect 180 degree turn this time too with an almost perfect 90 degree heading. I present Rong Flyer mk3 (only changes from mk2 are slight angle adjustments to the tail fins that are semi-winglets on the end of the wings)

Made a Rong Flyer mk2 There's quite a bit more potential distance in there if I could just figure out how to get rid of the thrust wasting Immelmann launch.

This was a fun one, and I was never able to balance anything for final glide that didn't have to be launched the opposite direction because there just isn't enough torque to counteract the lift while the SRB is burning. So, the way this one works is it does a mostly uncontrolled Immelmann turn (and takes a few rotations to slow down and stabilize its attitude actually). At the end of this flight (last 100ft of altitude), I had a glide ratio of 16.54:1, which, I think is probably pretty good. It went 1654m in the last 100m of altitude. It could likely be piloted better than I did. I left it either full up, or alone for most of the flight. Sadly, you said think V-1 bomb, but I only got around 1/3 of the range of that, and went with glide instead of pure thrust. Here is the Rong Flyer (bad pun on Wright Flyer) Take off shot Here's a gratuitous few mid flight shots (time warp indicator on the first shot is due to f3 checking of the stats making it show up, no warp was ever used on this flight. All 25 boring minutes of it) And here is the mission ending. Even with that great glide ratio, the horizontal speed made a catastrophic failure. Doh!

Does it have to actually hit the water? I launched mine to the water, and did a flip and am gliding towards land. I can redo it the other direction if water is required. Please let me know. edit: got around 55km traveled and hit the mountains, so I flipped it and we're going to see how long it glides the other way. Also, is there some sort of bonus for the ship surviving the landing?

Sorry, yes, this was with the lightest 1 man pod. I should have specified.

Am I correct in my assumption that the non-RCS upper limit for delta-v with a single aerospike seems to be somewhere around 7,000 m/s? I've been able to asparagus in to the mid-6900's with the first stage actually starting with a TWR of only .98.

Sleds are easier to go straight in my experience and are more tolerant of front to back balance issues. It's not like wheels actually provide less friction than sleds anyway.

It has to take off horizontally....