sphere

Hi, I love this (and your other) mod, thanks! Just a hint for other players who are sick of breaking the solar panels because of tip-overs while driving on Minmus: Use "Little Bigfoot"-legs from Nils277's "Planetary Base System"-Mod to on the edges of the roof to protect them. They have an impact-tolerance of 30m/s. I even have the legs in my abort-action so that they retract on backspace in case of losing control. Yes, its ugly as hell but "it works" @Nils277: Maybe add a dedicated part for this purpose? Currently its very frustrating that the panels are breaking on every tip-over. Maybe something like an crash-airbag or tip-over-struct? Also, not sure if you can do it: It would be VERY nice if Engineers could fix the solar-panels. Currently I need to have a few spare solar-panels inside the KIS-Kanister just for this purpose.

Hi, are there any plans on considering fuelcells in "Other Power"? Apart from that, great mod!

Fully agree, great idea! Seems like I can rescue some Kerbals (Maybe they call themselves now "Evals"...) in my career

I just want to tell how much I like this mod - especially in combination with Dmagic orbital science. Well done and thanks!

I am also using this mod since the beginning. Its really great!

+1 for the dramatic video

Hi, Yes, using the airplane wings was the biggest challenge, my learning/rule-of-thumb is: If you do NOT use rapiers you automatically will NOT burn the wings on the ascent. For the descent you need a lot airbrakes (I needed six!) and pitch control-surface to limit the vertical speed to 50m/s or less, then its pretty safe (I did not exceed 75% max heat) - you need a half Kerbin orbit (or 10-15 minutes real time) tough... Yes " wet serious watered stranded" was my target - I forgot to do the inspection by foot tough Regarding "ultimate" - correct, I did not try and the craft is not designed for reaching other bodies SOIs - but I am sure it can be filled with more fuel(tanks) and therefore dv. Problematic will be the airbreaking after mun or minmus visit (or even laythe...) - this design can do a few things very good - airbreaking is NOT any of them Btw, did you already do a flight with the Hammertime? regards, sphere

Hi, tl;dr MK3, 58 parts, 4 Kerbal, cargobay, dockingport, RCS, no clipping, no lost parts, runway, splashdown, swim-inspection, takeoff, 140k orbit (500m/s spare), deorbit, runway-land, takeoff, coast-water-splashdown, moved-to-coast-using-jets Full Story I created multiple crafts for this challenge but found it hardest using MK3 parts (And I wanted to be the first on this challenge using MK3 ;)) so here is my participation, its called HAMMERTIME, just because... I dont know - it kind of hammers to orbit My design goal was to make it easy and enjoyable to fly. It took my about 5 hours to design and tune - it could easily be tuned for better lift performance or efficiency but then it would not make so much fun to fly. The only mod in use was Flight Engineer. Some Facts: Mass: ~87t (~52t fuel) = 35185 kg dry Crew: 4 Engines: 4 Whiplash, 1 Vector 4 Airplane Wings (MOAR LIFT!!!) Flight log/profile for this challenge: Throttle full, SAS on, Turbos on (using 1-key) Take of between 70 (yes, really) and 100 m/s Level out at 100m height to reach water Turn off engines, enable brakes Touch down on water (undeploy brakes before splashdown!) under 70m/s (it even is possible to land leveled out with under 50m/s) Do the Vessel inspection (I could not resist doing a group photo of all 4 Kerbals ) Takeoff, engines full throttle, at 70m/s pull up to leave water (easy with so much control surfaces and lift) Ascent is also easy, this was the part I tuned the most: Just ascent between 10° and 15° and you will reach a height of 20km at about 1000m/s (This craft is more a plane than a spaceship so going faster earlier would burn it) At a height of 20k enable vector engine (using 2-key) - just let the jets flame out (or disable using 1-key), increase ascent to about 20° until your apoapsis goes to the desired height (I did 85k) Circularize the orbit. At this point I f**ed up (happy little accident) and did a 144k/140k orbit At this point I had about 500m/s delta-v still in the tanks - plus LF for the jets. If you are at 75/75 you have 650m/s, so no mun or minmus without refueling. But you can also put 15t of cargo to 85/85k. The descent is the only tricky part, but it can be archived (with Air-Brakes deployed) following one rule: Keep the vertical speed below 50m/s (at heights between 38.000 and 25.000k meters) using an AOA between 10° and 40° - archiving this can be easier if you pump some fuel to the front. You won't exceed 75% heat (of the 1200K airplane wings, they are the week-point). If you want to reach KSC from 140k height you need to burn retrograde to an PA at 0m exactly at the opposite to the KSC (From 75/75km burn 50m/s retrograde at the crater). The challenge says you need to land on KSC runway OR water-land at any coast. I decided to do both - first land (unpowered!) at KSC runway and lift of again to water-land at the coast next to the KSC. I am quite happy with this universal-easy-to-fly-spaceplane (just KEEP THE VERTICAL SPEED BELOW 50m/s AT DESCENT ), in atmosphere it flies like a big fighter) - I will use it as my new default cargo SSTO. Album URL: http://imgur.com/a/1eIdg Craft File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6w6PHP0FfB2bTIxNFBDd2x1U0E/view?usp=sharing Have fun, sphere