Ultimate Steve

I believe I have broken the altitude and speed records! This is the Ion Plane XIII C, or 13C. The main changes from the 12D is the switch from structural fuselages to a fairing, the inclusion of two vertical stabilizers, an increase of angle of incidence from 5 to 10 degrees, and 25% more fuel (on the same amount of engines). Interestingly enough, one of the hardest parts of the mission is taking off without clipping the wings. The landing gear really like to bounce in a positive feedback loop. For this mission, I drove off the mountain and fell for a bit, before pulling up. This is the moment I knew I was actually in the air instead of bouncing. My strategy for flying this thing was to keep the plane accelerating at the lowest possible angle where I was still climbing at a decent rate. If my velocity started dropping, I'd nose down. This allowed me to gain a significant amount of velocity down low, which translated into, at one point, a 25m/s constant vertical climb while still maintaining horizontal velocity. After 8km it gets vastly more forgiving to fly. I continued the pitch down method for a while until the air became thin enough. Then I had to start pitching upwards. On previous high altitude craft, the limitation was how far I could pitch. I'd have fuel left and not be able to go higher because I couldn't pull up. This is the highest speed I have proof of, 250.5m/s. At this point I think I had adjusted all of the authority limiters to 150 and was gradually increasing the pitch trim. Unfortunately, at this point I should have nosed down a bit to pick up speed while maintaining altitude so I could effectively climb. I think. But looking at fuel levels, I decided that would have taken too much time and pulled up all the way at just over 18 kilometers. And it worked! I still had a little fuel left, but not much. Altitude record is now 19453m. The limiter for this craft is now the speed it can reach at high altitudes. More fuel could allow more time to pick up speed. Unfortunately, take-off mass is already approaching a limit. I could get away with a bit more, though. I think the next step is optimizing drag and dry mass a bit more. I think I'll make one more attempt with the fully reusable manned version with a goal of 20-21km and then move on to using other tricks to push the record. "Now, where are the recovery crews?" -Valentina

Chapter Seventeen - The Final Ring

Backstory (please read at least once, but it will get cluttery after a while): Welcome to the Ion Plane Development Challenge! This thread will be a place to work towards many diverse ion plane related goals using a variety of different methods. As such, it's not a challenge with one set goal, it's a collection of challenges with loose guidelines, and hopefully an encouraging atmosphere, as opposed to Kerbin's atmosphere... Development towards challenges not listed here is encouraged. This thread is about branching out now that we know Ion planes are possible. General rules: Ion engines are the only form of propulsion allowed. No propellers, no K-drives, no rockets, jets, RCS, ladder-drive, on purpose decoupler propulsion, etc. Only ions. The electrical power for the ions can come from anywhere, be it solar panels, RTG's, fuel cells, jets pointed in opposite directions to make use of alternators... Stock parts, stock performance. Do not use any modded parts on your crafts (they can be installed but not used), and do not use any mods that modify physics. Visual and informational mods are fine. Autopilots are also okay, as this challenge is mostly about design, but it will be noted on your submission. Launching from a mountain is allowed, but it will be noted in your submission. Be sure to mark down how high you took off from! Except in categories that forbid it, you can use a launch cart with rover wheels, or a catapult, or similar mechanism to launch your craft. However, this will be marked in your submission. Any method of getting to the launch site is fine. Use of HyperEdit and VesselMover are encouraged in this case. Manned or unmanned is fine, but it will be marked in your submission. For some categories, air launching is okay, most notably the low altitude category. Any KSP version from 1.0 onward is allowed, mostly to facilitate those who haven't updated to 1.5 yet, like me. However a recent version is encouraged. Part clipping is allowed, but it will be noted in your submission. Generally be sensible, don't cheat. Have fun! Main Challenge Categories In some categories, the current known first and second place record holders are shown for comparison purposes. These challenges have been chosen to push development on all fronts, you may suggest a category if you feel that one is missing. Ion Plane Altitude Record - Absolute altitude record, using any tricks. @Ultimate Steve, 194453m in the Ion Plane 13C (Single Stage, Reusable, Fuel Cell, Manned, Part Clipping, Mountain) @EvermoreAlpaca, 19193m, not sure about the name (not from this thread, multistage, solar, launch cart, unmanned, Launch from the mountain west of KSC) @Ultimate Steve, 18048m in the Ion Plane 9P (not from this thread, launch cart, fuel cell, manned, part clipping, Launch from the highest mountain on Kerbin) @Ultimate Steve, 11822m in the Ion Plane 12D (Single Stage, Reusable, Fuel Cell, Manned, Part Clipping, launch from the highest mountain on Kerbin) Ion Plane Speed Record - Must be attained while in level flight, and not after a dive. @Ultimate Steve, 250.5m/s in the Ion Plane 13C (Single Stage, Reusable, Fuel Cell, Manned, Part Clipping, Mountain) @Ultimate Steve, 222m/s in the Ion Plane 9P (not from this thread, launch cart, fuel cell, manned, part clipping, Launch from the highest mountain on Kerbin) @EvermoreAlpaca, 114.7m/s, not sure about the name (not from this thread, multistage, solar, launch cart, unmanned, Launch from the mountain West of KSC) Ion Plane Range Record - Self explanatory. Leave a marker at your starting place and measure distance. If you manage more than 100 kilometers, then use the F3 display, although if you quicksave/quickload during your flight it will reset, so be careful! No recorded attempts. Ion Plane Low Altitude Record - Isp decreases as the altitude decreases. This is for the lowest altitude where you can demonstrate acceleration while maintaining or gaining altitude. @Draconiator, 3480m, name unknown (not from this thread, unmanned, solar, launch unknown) Ion Plane Cargo Challenge - Measured by tons of ore carried. Must fly at least 10 kilometers from the starting point without falling below the altitude at which you start gaining altitude. You must also start gaining altitude very soon after the starting point. No recorded attempts. Ion Plane Airliner Challenge - Measured by number of Kerbals carried. Score is distance traveled in kilometers multiplied by the number of passengers. Must carry a minimum of three Kerbals and travel a minimum of 10 kilometers to qualify. The moment you fall below your launch altitude, the challenge is over, as otherwise you could just launch really high and glide really far. The craft must be single staged and fully reusable. No recorded attempts. Other Cool Stuff - Experimental planes that may break the rules, but are impressive nonetheless. Additional Challenges World firsts, as far as I know, that may or may not be possible, but would be interesting to try. Also some minor leaderboards. Runway Challenge - The holy grail. Make an ion plane that can take off from the KSC runway under its own power and maintain altitude and velocity. Laythe Challenge - Make an ion plane that can take off and fly around under its own power from within 100 meters of sea level on Laythe. If this is done it will turn into an altitude scoreboard. Duna Challenge - Make an ion plane that can fly on Duna. @Xurkitree with his Surya 3, relying on mostly battery power! The design is capable of reaching above 10 kilometers and is recovered with chutes. It's also fully reusable and manned. Space Challenge - Get into space, starting on Kerbin, only under ion power. Battery Challenge - Fly the highest, farthest, or fastest without any power generation devices. Will be a leaderboard if enough interest is gathered. Tips and Tricks Ion engine thrust is not occluded by anything. You can stack them one in front of the other, and put them inside cargo bays. They will still function as normal. Kerbin's tallest mountain is near 61.6N 46.4E. An angle of incidence helps here. Make sure to properly autostrut long strings of ion engines, and long wings! Enjoy! My new attempt, for this challenge specifically:

I remember the big scramble to make an ion plane work after 1.0. That was fun! It was a collection of designs competing to just demonstrate that temporarily sustained flight was possible. Early on the consensus was probably not, but eventually, utilizing rover wheels to get to takeoff speed, using fuel cells for power, and launching from Kerbin's highest mountain, I was the first person to demonstrate that an ion plane that could gain altitude and velocity at the same time time in the new aero. Not to toot my own horn or anything. Although you can make a case for it not being a "true" ion plane because of the rover wheels. Excuse the cringe video quality, this was years ago. After that, there were several more designs. It was mathematically determined that it was just past the edge of possibility to launch one from runway altitude, although people got really close. If you catapulted to a higher altitude, maybe. Eventually, I refined the design and it got to 18 kilometers and posted screenshots. I vaguely remember getting to 22km but I never posted the video, or screenshots. I probably still have it somewhere, but it would be on the old computer. Link to the thread if interested:

A bunch of old floppy disks have been found on the ISS. https://www.cnet.com/news/iss-astronaut-finds-nasa-floppy-disks-in-space/ Even more entertaining, IMO, is this twitter thread: Read the whole thing, it goes through how this guy found out what they were for, when they were from, and how some station computers run Windows 95.

*launches TurkeySat on Thanksgiving*

Chapter 19 - Another Discovery

Well, make Diddmun an on-rails body. Then, make a subsubsubmoon called Diddmunmun, maybe 5 meters in diameter with a 15 meter SOI. Then give it a subsubsubsubmoon called Diddmunmunmun, 1 meter in diameter with a 2 meter SOI. Then add a contract to put a satellite in orbit of Diddmunmunmun so I can put a small probe called Diddmunmunmunmun in orbit of Diddmunmunmun. And then I'll stick a kerbal in a command chair of this probe and name him Diddmunmunmunmunmun Kerman and spin the craft so Diddmunmunmunmunmun is orbiting Diddmunmunmunmun is orbiting Diddmunmunmun is orbiting Diddmunmun is orbiting Diddmun is orbiting Didd is orbiting Manonam is orbiting Valyr is orbiting Kaywell. 8 layers of satellites! Joking aside... I rather liked the idea of Fasteroid, making a body you could only attempt to travel to once in a save. I've never seen anyone make an object on an escape trajectory from the sun. A moon of Shol would be interesting, maybe with very little solid land, to give a reason to go there.

*goes alt+f5 to make a named quicksave* *accidentally presses alt-f4*

Chapter 18 - Discovery

I wonder when they are planning the first orbital test.

Alright, these should keep you going for a while! KerbalX link to all 10: https://kerbalx.com/hangars/46033 Backstories I wrote mostly for fun, you can reference them if you want as long as we don't get too roleplay-y. Here are 10 payloads. They are all stock. Enjoy! Edit: Higher profile payloads should be later in the manifest, IRL something like an experimental space telescope wouldn't fly on the second flight of a vehicle.

Ditto on the rule against roleplay. Be careful! I'd love to see something like this work out, just historically it rarely has. I wish you the best of luck! I don't have anything recently made, but there was a similar idea for a challenge a while back. I built 10 payloads for it as a payload provider, none of which ever flew. Most of them are hideously oversized for what you want, but here's the links, I guess. Link to post where I post the 10 craft: If you want to, you can fly US-06, a tiny CubeSat, as a rideshare. US-01 seems to be within your margin, although it does go to an elliptical orbit and looks too large for the fairing. US-07 is really light but goes to Minmus orbit. US-08 is an inflight abort test of a capsule, which is too heavy to get to orbit, but should work as a test. Stay tuned, though, I'll get you some real payloads. If you can't wait, then you can do some of the four above, but those shouldn't be taken as actual submissions unless you really want to get started. Also, @Kerbiter I'm assuming the payloads need to be stock, is that right?

Chapter 17 - Reander and Company

So it's radical, but keeps the same tooling. I'm going to assume it's not for the booster as that's been mostly the same since the first announcement, so it will probably be on the BFS... A new landing leg arrangement? A new fin arrangement? Something with gliding? I'd say "NUCLEAR PROPULSION!" really loudly but there's no way SpaceX would be allowed to do that right off the bat with an untested spacecraft with no abort system. ...An abort system, maybe? Wishful thinking...

I wonder, how many more changes are they going to do...

Okay, thanks! I was only there for about 10 seconds so I was unsure if that was the new one or the old one...

Question - what did old Jifgif look like? Looking forward to it!

Except ice.

I'm only in Spanish III, I don't know that many space words, only espacio (space) and coheta (rocket) because I looked them up. The closest thing I could come to the original question was "Puedo mirar el cohete despegar al espacio en quince minutos?" which roughly translates to "Can I watch the rocket take off to space in 15 minutes?" Trying to talk about the abort in Spanish would be a nightmare...

And if you're in my situation and YT is blocked: http://online.roscosmos.ru/ https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#public Now, if I ask my Spanish teacher in spanish if I can watch it, will he let me?

Don't give anyone else ideas! There are 5 Mars landers scheduled for the 2020 window, they can easily beat SpaceX! Mars 2020, ExoMars 2020, a Chinese mission, MOM-2, and a very small Japanese one that will probably end up piggybacking on something else.

How was the video of the landing? Choppy as usual, or better?

1 minute! Keep me posted!

Slim chance, it's nearly always no, and you're probably tired of hearing this, but any non Youtube streams?