sevenperforce

Pretty sure THAT specific failure mode won't happen. Still giving just 50-50 odds on a perfect flight (liftoff, first staging, second staging, all-booster recovery, etc.). Yeah, I'm not splitting hairs.

You ALMOST got me.

Coming here to post this. This confirms general understanding that while the static fire itself tests ignition and vehicle health, the loading test and everything else is based on ensuring pad readiness. LC40 has only had a single flight since the rebuild, and Zuma was previously static fired on LC39, so a fit check and propellant load test was necessary but vehicle health should be unchanged.

As long as you're still landing propulsively, sure.

The trouble is that this comes down to simple math at some point. By physics, the slowest transfer is the lowest-energy transfer, and the fastest transfer is the highest-energy transfer. So to say "fastest there and back with the lowest amount of fuel" is a little like saying "how quickly can you drive to the store while driving as slowly as possible?" Sure, you can select an optimal route, but beyond that you have to choose one or the other -- slower driving, or faster arrival. Picking something like "total time divided by fuel use" gives an optimization function, but then you just end up solving a system of differential equations and figuring out exactly what combination of fuel amounts and transfer times produces the ideal result. Which isn't quite as much fun. Fuel cost vs isp is not perfectly balanced, either, so the multivariable equation space would end up never crossing between fuel types. So you'd end up with only one possible fuel type being able to be competitive, which again is rather boring. One option would be to put a launch mass limit into play. For example, you can get to Minmus and back however you desire, but your launch mass must be no more than 150 tonnes, and you cannot use jet engines. That would make optimization a little more interesting.

Hmm. You said "with the smallest amount of fuel" but I see nothing constraining fuel amounts. This is going to come down to who is willing to pack the biggest number of boosters on a ginormous asparagus-staged monstrosity for an LV-N brachistochrone.

Might I suggest a 2x multiplier for having no Kerbals killed or stranded OR a 1.5x multiplier for having no Kerbals killed? Ought to be a difference between merely stranding them and lithobraking them to death.

If you look very closely, you can see that it is a telescoping arm.

The doodleybop just above the flag is the retaining attachment for the upper horizontal struts. The struts fold from horizontal up to vertical using pneumatic pistons: The pistons pull up on the center of the strut, rotating them in toward the booster, where they latch into the doodleybop you identified.

My ISRU ship has made it to Minmus and Gilly, carting along a disposable lander/ascent vehicle for Eve. Currently trying to (slowly) aerobrake down to a gentle entry on Eve with the lander...though if I don't make it, or if I land but screw up my ascent, the mothership can still hit every other world. Had a slight panic during the Minmus landing and ended up doing a flip and landing on RCS only, but nothing broke. Also, this was my first time to Gilly, and even though I landed on a sheer cliffside I was still able to right myself with nothing but reaction wheels. Wow. My mothership has some nifty reusable-asparagus-stages with probe cores and Klaws so I will get to try them out for Tylo. Will also be my first time landing on Tylo.

Well, I said I would allow it...but as I showed, it IS possible to do it in one go. Quicksaves and quickloads are great for suicide burns by hand, if you don't mind spending a little time on it. Quicksave, deploy your airbrakes/drogues, then watch carefully until the accelerometer hits 1 gee (which represents terminal velocity). Make a mental note of altitude, then smash Z. If you hit the ground before reaching zero velocity, then quickload, add about 500 meters to the altitude from before, and smash Z , then repeat. If you hit zero velocity at a substantial height above the ground, then subtract THAT height from the altitude from before, and repeat.

@Nirmal -- this is not a bad idea. Quite the opposite; it's a very good idea. However, it's not a new idea, not in physics. Other individuals have already proposed this sort of idea, numerous times, and so there's a broad body of research and investigation as to whether this might actually be the case (and, if so, what we would expect to see). So don't take it personally; this is just stuff that I've already looked at pretty intensely. That's a common misconception when people are just starting to learn about dark matter. Although dark matter does not emit light of its own, dark matter CAN be mapped using gravitational lensing, just like we can chart the bottom of a lake using sonar even though we can't see it. And because galaxies are dynamic, not static, we can use that mapping to see how dark matter behaves...how it moves, how it interacts with the galaxies it is in. What we know about dark matter from these observations pretty neatly rules out baryonic matter. Baryonic matter interacts electromagnetically. Dark matter does not. If something doesn't walk like a duck, or look like a duck, or quack like a duck...well, it's probably not any kind of duck we've ever found before. Black holes are not found floating naked through the galaxy. They form during core-collapse supernovae and end up surrounded by dust clouds and accretion disks. They may be "black" in the sense that the object itself does not emit visible light (other than Hawking radiation), but they stick out like a sore thumb wherever they are found. No problem with the underlying physics. The lensing observations of dark matter perfectly fit the required distribution of gravity in galaxies. And observations of the Bullet Cluster prove beyond reasonable doubt that the dark matter is actual stuff, not just some trick of spacetime. Au contraire; a black hole is nonbaryonic by its outward appearance, but it is baryonic in origin, so we classify it with baryonic matter.

I'll come back and beat Kulebron soon enough, then tackle the other planets. You should reformat the leaderboard so it has 1, 2, and 3 spots (at least) for each planet.

Now THAT might be tricky.

Here's my entry. I think I can get lower still, but 14,857 meters is nothing to sneeze at. Full album: At first I thought this would be about heat management, but it's not. It gets hot, of course, but the big issue is energy management -- maintaining enough momentum to make it up and out of the atmosphere. You can do that by getting a lot of speed (a hyperbolic flyby), or by having a LOT of mass at somewhat lower speeds. Adding speed makes for more heat; adding mass does not. So, I used a very very long, very very heavy vehicle with a moderately eccentric low Kerbin orbit -- apoapse up around 300 km, periapse at 17 km. Spent a lot longer in the atmosphere than with a hyperbolic flyby, but the way KSP handles heat, it was definitely better than the alternative. I have a capsule, some reaction wheels, and some batteries inside the fairing. I cheated the craft into orbit and used infinite fuel to put the orbit where I wanted it, but everything else was set to normal during the actual passthrough.

If SWIM wants to start over from scratch with a new design, is that permitted?

Just hit 17K without much trouble after I realized it is an energy management challenge, not a heat management challenge.

So what if you build a 2 kiloton, 300-part monstrosity, and it blows up on loading?

Hmmmm, very interesting.

KOS is okay if for nothing other than the droneship targeting.

If you can write your own script for it, why not just fly it yourself? You get all the quicksaves and quickloads you want, after all.

MY HYPE IS MAXIMUM

You and me both YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Amusingly, my initial plan, back in college, was to double major in physics and journalism so I could become a super-credentialed science writer. Reality slapped me in the face pretty quick and I dropped the journalism major, but it was always an idea in the back of my head.

This calls for Ridiculous Overengineering.