Ultimate Steve

@ZooNamedGames, I appear to have given you the final point Only about 650 to go for me...

My hardcore career mode. I had just spent millions of funds on a crew transfer architecture for my Mun and Minmus bases. Long story short, as the crew SSTO was returning to Kerbin after picking up crew that had been on the Mun for a few years, it crashed into the runway light, killing all 6.

This is a bit of an old challenge. It used to be really active, but it sort of cooled off after awhile. There hasn't been a new module in over a month. However, there wasn't anything that says you still can't continue it. Also, the 5 part limit if 5 parts+2 docking ports, so 7 total. It is there so the station doesn't get too laggy.

Try flipping the docking port upside-down.

Now, that is an EVE MISSION. I've yet to do Eve. Hats off to you!

Standby, another one of my asteroid math posts incoming... Asteroids/Dresteroids/Dres get bigger by 4.5x per class. A class 72 (I don't remember the letter) is hundreds of light years across, but that is not relevant. Dres is 321913220000000000 metric tons. 18 digits. *after lots of math* Dres is on the heavy side of a class V. The heaviest a class V asteroid can be is 480346214000000000 tons. Yay!

Okay. Thank you very much, @zolotiyeruki! I added the FAT wings, and some more xenon/lfo, and a few landing gear iterations later, The Ion Plane IXd (9d) reached... 13722m! Yeah! YEAH! It also reached 129m/s in level flight (actualy upward flight) but I don't have a picture. I should do a speed run sometime. I could also carry a bit more fuel without adding any more engines or wings. A few issues: It doesn't have much authority over sideslip, and the front canards are really wobbly (I should move those reaction wheels). So, my goal: 1. Reach 10,000m. DONE! By a lot. I might increase it to 15 or 20km. 2. Do it with a Kerbal: Not yet, but it should be soon. 3: Recover both the plane and the Kerbal safely on Kerbin. Again, no Kerbal, and no landing gear, and the outer wings sheared off again. I also ran out of EC. BUT, for science purposes, I ended up HyperEditing some electricity in (I promise I didn't use it in the actual flight. Only for getting the plane to the mountain) so I could control the plane to try my hand at landing. And what do you know - A no damage water landing! (Apart from the outer wings shearing off, but that was in the air) As a side note, at 13km the ion engines have 1.8kn of thrust and 3700 isp.

3 reasons. Nobody has done it before, it looks nice, and it completely eliminates the drag from the ion engines and fuel cells. Hmm, they do have the same lift-mass ratio. I did not know that. I'll be trying this later. Thanks! (Although some wing flex helps the plane remain stable, but I agree my wings were flexing a lot) Thanks!

Okay. So, a while ago, I began a quest to see if I could carry one of the huge xenon tanks as fuel. Eventually, after trying to store it on its side, I ended up trying to make an ion plane in a MK2 cross section, so I could properly store the tank. It kept getting bigger, because I used the mk2-1.25m adapter to store fuel, so I added another xenon tank to balance it. I realized I would need two of those to maintain aerodynamic efficiency. I left the other one mostly empty, so I wouldn't need 4 of the huge xenon tanks. A month or so later, after coming back to this, I decided to do some numbers off of my successful ion plane (see above post). I came up with these: 1. For an Ion Plane above 6km, every one lift will lift 0.446 tons of craft. You can go lower, but these are my approximations. 2. For an Ion Plane above 6km, every 2 ion engines and one fuel cell (0.74 tons, I call them "Propulsion Units") will provide enough thrust for 1.2 tons of plane. Again, you can use a few less Propulsion Units, but this is my approximation. 2a. Subtracting the mass of the Propulsion unit, each propulsion unit will give you enough leeway for 0.35-0.45 tons of other stuff, like wings, fuel, struts, reaction wheels, etc. 3. For every 1 liquid fuel you burn in the fuel cells (plus oxidizer) you burn about 50 xenon. 4. For Ion planes above 6km, your craft will most likely (in terms of mass) be 65% ion engines and fuel cells, 20% wings (10:1 lift/mass ratio wings) and 15% fuel, structure, and other important stuff. Okay, the math rage is over. So, I applied these "rules" to my mk2 ion plane. That mk2 bay is heavy, and that falls into the 15% category. That means I need... 72 ion engines and 36 fuel cells. So, how far did it fly? Yay! New altitude record! (I launched from 6600 meters, but lets ignore that for now) However, I still can't land it. It is really uncontrollable at lower altitudes, the wings shear off, and I don't have any landing gear anyway. But we may see a Kerballed flight soon! Takeoff: A closer picture: Yay! Science! EDIT: It may be worth mentioning that my ultimate goal is to launch up to 10km with a kerbal and return him safely to Kerbin. EDIT EDIT: The plane is now the Ion Plane IXA (9A).

I've never seen that before. Did restarting the game or quicksaving then quickloading fix it? (Am I the only one who thinks the mun looks REALLY funny in that picture?)

Basically my Moho mission in a nutshell.

*looks around* Hello? Anyone there? Part 24:

Well, I had a ship that I was using for my mission report, but there was a part on the hatch. I EVA'd the Kerbal, and she shot off at the speed of light (and spaghettified). I don't know if that counts or not.

Thanks for making this mod! I've been doing a normal mode career slightly realistically and have been having tons of fun! Some accomplishments: 2 probe Mun landings Manned Mun flyby And mainly a 3-5 module space station (depending on what you count as a module). I'm currently working on either a Mun rover, more station modules, or a Manned Mun Landing.

Ahh... I'm just going to hide behind a tree now because I am very tired and miss a lot of stuff.

@pap1723 I have installed and re-installed both the game and your mod and I cannot get it to work at all. It's saying that (I can't remember the whole thing right now) etc/modulemanager/tech tree does not exist. Every time I open the game the stock tree always appears.

Hey, it's the guy from the rate-the-sig thread! I think his name is LogoCone007!

6/10 Okay mods, and a hilarious image (even though I've never played that game).

9/10 yep. You're famous.

Hmm. Try not using the launcher - just click the game icon instead. If that fails, try redownloading the game (if you got it from the store) or verifying the game integrity if you bought it on steam. I am neither a Steam nor a Mac expert, so... Hope I helped!

Yay! Also, I got up to 7903 or so, but I can't upload pics right now. The wheel physics are driving me crazy!

Okay. This may be a bit of a Nerco, but @Deddly has done such a good job setting up this challenge and all of the information is in this thread. And technically it has only been 2.5 months... Anyway, the point: I have refined my ion plane (It is now Ion Plane 7B) and have found a slightly better launch location, and have actual landing gear installed. I have set a new altitude record: Unfortunately, Even with gear, it is really hard to land: #ReviveThisThread!

10/10. Let's go to the Lunch pad. *5 minutes later* AAAHHH THATS NOT WHAT I MEANT!!!

Step one: Reduce Earth's Gravity Step two: Bring every planet closer to the sun Step three: Lower the heat of the sun Step four: Make Donald Trump donate 90% of his fortune to SpaceX Step five: Humanity moves to Mars. Step six: Make sure I own Jupiter. Step seven: Delete the sport of running. (I HATE running, but I have to do it) Step eight: Boost my writing skills so that my mission report will finally get (some) attention Step nine: Make the Far Lands in Minecraft closer by 8 million blocks so KurtJMac finally gets there Step ten: Shoot a Michael Bay movie in another solar system Woah, I got really carried away there. Step eleven: Make the SQUAD devs turn into superrobots for ten minutes and have KSP v6.87.92 up and running.

Hmm... Hardcore-ish career mode: Crew transfer SSTO hitting a light on the runway. 6 Kerbals killed. Most Kerbals killed in a mission: see above. Largest explosion: Titania I (don't ask). But that was on purpose. (Titania II landed 3 huge fuel tanks on the Mun) Largest explosion of a rocket meant to work: Read my mission report. There are several. Farthest from home: My Moho landing. It is currently orbiting Moho, out of fuel. Also in my mission report. I sent a rescue mission, but that might be out of fuel as well. Earliest notable failure that I can remember: 0.19. I attached one booster to the rocket and forgot to use symmetry. RIP Bill. (Or was it Jeb?) Now, an honorable mention: my Eve fleet. Nothing exploded (mostly) but it was plagued with technical challenges. The main thing being that going back home I jettisoned the Gilly miner. It still had two Kerbals in it. I didn't notice until I had completed the Kerbin burn. Miraculously, I managed to rendezvous the two craft together in Solar Orbit and ended up getting home (albeit a few years late). Most rage inducing: In my mission report I was docking a cluster of 3 Tylo landers (Because. Why have one when you can have six total!) that I had tried to launch three times previously. I was finally at the ship I was docking it to. Wrong size docking port. I had even built a model of the fully constructed ship in the SPH and missed the docking port sizes. AAAAARRRGHH!