Raideur Ng

As much as I will be boo'ed off stage, I prefer to clip fuel tanks into the structure of the vehicle. That could technically be considered cheating, but I prefer it to ungainly vehicles. This also helps with keeping everything behind your main surface for entry, be it a heat shield, engine, or whatnot. One question that was pointed out: Why does rolling help? That makes sense if you're changing what faces are exposes, but locked retrograde with no changing exposure STILL drastically reduces heating, to the point it's almost an exploit. You can have engines that would pop normally survive Kerbin re-entry with ease, just roll it. The above comments are right though, a heat shield will generally survive any speed you throw at it, to the point I usually only roll with half the ablator since it's so effective.

I'm sure this has been asked, but I cannot find anything that specifically answers it: Is it better to grace the edge of an SOI, and then burn down the apogee or circularize very close to the body (to presumably use a gravity assist in the process)? I've never had an ideal situation to specifically test them against each other, but the closer -seems- to work better. Thoughts?

RCS build aid flat out refuses to recognize the LH / LOX in tanks so calculating Δv is a bit of a crapshot. Are these engines, considering the tank density, actually better say, on an upper / transfer stage than stock high ISP engines? They are so viciously expensive that recovering the first stage engines is a must, since they cost nearly as much as the entire rest of the vehicle. However, a very cool mod. Here's a picture to show my appreciation. Thanks again.

Except I didn't fail. I only noticed it stated I failed after I had started the game again.

Rescue Contract: Save Andred Kerman stranded in orbit above Minmus. I grab him on a return trip, splash down and retrieve. Save and exit the game. I return and my save and last autosave both say I've failed and Andred was lost. But hes not lost, hes on my roster. I just put his green behind on another mission. What's going on here and if it IS a bug, can I edit my savefile so I dont have that unfair blemish on my record?

Lovely. I do not have a Steam version so apparently I have to wait for the official release..

Is the current version ONLY for 1.1? I am trying to run v0.024 in 1.0.5 1028 with no luck. The add-on does not begin and there is no menu. Im continuing to troubleshoot but I am sure previous versions -did- work.

Having tested pre-coolers vs shock cones, even with the SAME amount of intake area, an engine will flame out at a lower altitude than with shock cone-fed air. Two shock cones vs 3 pre-coolers SHOULD be the same intake air, but it very obviously is not. Why.... I have no idea. The pre-cooler also has "5.0" vs "2.0" air amount, whatever those numbers even mean. The drag conversation was very informative, but getting an extra few thousand feet of jet powered flight is also very critical, since you have a max speed before you simply cannot go faster, so you hit a 'wall' of sorts around about 1500 m/s that no sane vehicle can really pass. That's also with absurd TWRs. Getting more altitude may be the best bet? EDIT: Disregard. Exact weight and dimensions with 3 coolers vs 2 Rapiers gives the same peak altitude performance. Not sure if you cut the numbers in half, since you cant cut intakes in half, I will add more engines and report back. The numbers associated with "Air Amount" are still a mystery.

Recently tested. everything works as advertised and quite incredibly as well. You fixed all the bugs noted in 1.7 and reduced the poly count on most of the models (For the better, they look hot as hell now). Engines are still absurdly over-powered and under-fueled, but you've noted that's for us to tweak. Overall, a mighty slick and impressive mod. I could suggest minor little bits and pieces to add to this, but you've hit all the big nails. Good job, if I find any bugs, I'll let you know, new favorite aerospace pack. First ship went into orbit like a glove.

Without MechJeb, you cannot hope to win any of these challenges. Period.

If it's LITERALLY only jets, it's not possible with stock. With 'RCS', does that mean only monopropellant or only RCS thrusters? Either way, to get another 1400 m/s, you'll just have to spam RCS. This got into orbit easily with jet engines and RCS thrusters. There are 8 Vernor thrusters embedded in the wing. You may need to rethink your challenge.

This challenge isn't possible with stock parts and physics beyond Easy. Whiplashes have terrible falloff beyond 1400 m/s which is only half of orbital velocity. Make sure people announce the mods they're using so it's obvious how they did it. The only engine that has an acceptable power curve is the Rapier, which isn't allowed. So no one will be going into space on jets alone with stock parts and no mods, period. Guess this is only for FAR users or something mysterious that allows higher velocities.

70 degrees is an insane flight profile. Most SSTOs are between 5 to 15 degrees. You should be gathering as much velocity during your air breathing part of your ascent as possible before they flame out around 18-23 km.

Pointy McGoFast: 3,054 m/s Zero loss of vehicle parts or Kerbals and no flight control mods.

Welp, I guess we all have to use autopilots if we want the top score. Theres no way to stay below 30 km without constant inputs to not break that rule. Hard to take a snapshot while you're fighting not to be in orbit. Edit: And not losing objects during flight. I've managed 2943 m/s without losing any parts, but just barely. Not ready to post a submission. Honestly, if we're allowed to explode ourselves away, its less of a challenge.

May I make an overall suggestion to this challenge? "Pilots must SURVIVE and land safety at conclusion." Making a plane that shreds itself and then measuring its speed right before it detonates like a bomb is too easy. Having is survive would be MUCH more challenging in terms of managing drag, picking the correct parts, and correct me if I'm wrong, but no one ever figured suicide missions into records. That being said, lets see what can be done..

I just delivered 60T to a 100 orbit with a TWR of 0.61 - 210/118 Wet/Dry. The AoA is still too much for my likings so trying to scale it further will be problematic. No Jettison spaceplane is the -only- way I deliver anything to orbit and beyond in KSP because it seems to be hard / fun mode. I don't think reducing AoA is a lift issue, or a matter of balance, but just TWR. Anything under 0.5 TWR can barely clear the ocean and it drags the tail horrid during the entire flight. That HAS to be avoided otherwise its wasted fuel. I also prefer 1.0 TWR smaller rescue vehicles that are far more forgiving on ascent / descent. What is your opinion on practicality (one control input doesn't end you during climb / re-entry) vs efficiency? Having the vehicle not fight me the entire way is a good feature for vehicles, which requires decent thrust.

I already have. The issue is finding the sweet spot between having enough thrust that you can climb with zero body AoA and not too much that you overhead, which seems to be between .75-1.0 TWR. Also, massively huge vehicles Val has created are not practical at all. One !@#$ up during a manual ascent and the entire fuselage will come apart. Can a stock super heavy lifter be built that doesnt naturally want to tear itself apart during any control inputs? Sorry to pick your brains but trial and mid air explodely painful errors later, I can only gather so much information.

Diabolical. One further question is if your ship is underpowered and you fly at more than a few degrees AoA, that basically invalidates everything concerning your saved drag, does it not?

By that logic, with it entirely occluded, you can stack precoolers and rack up just as much intake with no drag penalty besides what is stacked forward of it. If so, why wouldnt EVERYONE use stacked precoolers in occluded areas like just behind engines and have highly aerodynamic cones instead of shock cones, besides having heat resistance, which you can get just as much from the aerodynamic nose or the shielded docking port. There has to be some kind of catch... Additionally, two questions for Val, why would you ever use normal wings when you can use ones that add fuel and why are the engines not all lined up and your CoM adjusted so the torque is nearly zero?

I know this question has been asked time and again, but I have dug deep and yet to find a clear cut answer to the question: Are pre-coolers capped with an aerodynamic nose (advanced nose or tail connector) less draggy than the same amount of shock cones per intake area? That seems to be the two greatest issues is intake area vs drag on any high speed vehicle. Testing the same vehicle with the same weight, does intake area even count towards drag on the pre-coolers that are streamlined? I guess what I'm asking is how the heck drag is calculated, especially if you can't directly tell from the debug part menu? This is the single most difficult issue preventing an SSTO to the outer planets is the drag on Kerbin.

A C-5 nose would be quite nice. Usually, the back is precious real estate for engine mounts. Being able to lift the nose is a better drive off method that forcing engines on to pylons that cause extra drag.

Control and stability. Having incredibly efficient payloads to orbit and insane lifting is great and all, but if one false move results in RUD, then it's not a functional system. An SSTO that is highly forgiving of mistakes and still allows easy access to orbit (and if no mistakes were made, a very high orbit) is preferable for me. This little guy doesn't have great lift capacity, nor can it travel the solar system, and it can probably be carried in some of these monster machines, but it is an absolute joy to fly from start to finish, it never tries to !@#$ you at any point during the entire profile, including re-entry, which is more than I can say for most other SSTOs... That was the HARDEST thing to design, reliability. http://www.filedropper.com/showdownload.php/lightlifter