tseitsei89

I dont think messing with fuel priorities would help much since I already pumped all the remaining fuel to the front tanks but it wasnt enough since nukes on the back are very heavy. Maybe moving nukes a lot forward might help though

Here is BA-NA-NA-NA-NAAAAA!! 2 nukes + 1 rapier design. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcmayBEyU4A There is a little cut/jump at around 7:28 in the video because my first landing attempt was unsuccessful so I had to quickload. The reentry in the video is not pretty but it works It will flip but if you have pumped all the remaining fuel to the front tanks it will also straighten up once the speed drops. Once it is under control again it is actually quite pleasant to fly. The craft is LF only and it has TWR(surface) of 0.70 and 3282m/s dv remaining once in 152km x 150km orbit. As can be seen at around 6:20 in the video. That means the score of ln(1+0.70)*3282 = 1741.52 points in the Banana team

I kind of disagree here. Some parts are (and IMO should be) designed to be used in vacuum and some parts in the vacuum. IMO there should be even more of that in game. I mean like having some parts that are designed to vacuum use only (like hitchhiker) and they would break up by heat/aerodynamic forces if used in atmospheric flight. You would need to protect them with fairings/cargobays on the way up through the atmosphere. And make reentry hotter and make it so that only parts that are designed for reentry can survive it. Now you can just pretty much throw any parts (well there are few exceptions but mostly true) in to the atmosphere from LKO and they will be fine. If you want to reenter something more delicate you need to put it in a cargobay/servicebay and protect it with heatshield. But yeah we all have our own opinions about what this game should be like so I understand that you might want something totally different and it's ok

RSS is a mod(s) in itself.... So obviously it cant be done stock since if you have rss installed it is no longer stock but a different game completely. You have some weird logic here

That might be because hitchhikers are not meant to be used as plane parts but rather as habitation modules in spacestations or planetary bases. That is also why they are really quite draggy. They are not designed to be used in atmospheric flight

Ok here goes: My craft named FruitsAreHealthy is using 2x rapier and 1x skipper. Pictures of the ascent and reentry: http://imgur.com/a/zr4DG And a video of the landing since I didn't have enough hands/concentration to keep pressing F1 while simultaneously landing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZT7U80Jcpg&feature=youtu.be Not my cleanest and nicest landing but didn't break anything so it should be fine So the score: TWR(surface) is 3.00 with rapiers in rocket mode and skipper activated and I have 1880m/s dv left as can be seen in this picture So that means ln(1+3.00)*1880 = 2606.23 points in Rasberry category if I didn't miscalculate

I dont want to imply anything. I just want to know which engines are allowed for which category. No offense meant or anything. I just want to know so I can plan my craft accordingly... Peace

@Signo: Is there any particular reason why this entry by @Eidahlil is not on the top of the leaderboard? It obeys all rules as far as I can tell. 1. 3 or less engines. Check 2. Horizontal takeoff. Check 3. SSTO. Check 4. Capable of landing safely. Check That is pretty much all the rules I can find from the OP. (Besides the obvious no mods + no cheating). I think it should either be accepted or we need more precise rules on which engines are allowed and which are not... I'm planning on an entry myself and would like to know what is allowed and what is not

Nonono. Please don't do this. It would be so irritating that when you are competing for some challenge (that constantly requires you to quickly test your craft) to put the freaking kerbal in the pod seperately every time If you don't want that to happen you should start building a new vessel with some part that doesn't have crew in it since currently the game only auto-boards Kerbals if the crewed part is also a root part of the craft. Which is good because if you want them to auto-board you can use the crew part as the root part and if you don't want auto-board you can just use another part as root part. Other than that I think these ideas are mostly good/neutral to me. I think we desperately need 2.5m LF only tanks though! Also my new suggestion would be to make command chairs boardable in VAB/SPH. (Just look at TakeCommand mod and make it stock. It does just that.) EDIT: Oh @CombatWombat9402 just said that above I only read the OP

Oh yes sorry forgot the numbers. But my point was that if you set the planets so that the SOI change happens in vacuum you won't have that "sudden pressure change" @GregroxMun was talking about and it is still very much possible to reach that altitude with only jet engines. EDIT: math was wrong. Will be back soon... EDIT2: turns out that SOI sizes work a little differently from what I thought they would so I'm not sure what is the best way to approach this right now Sorry I'm stupid... EDIT3: Okay so weird things would happen.... Let's assume that we put Laythe to a circular orbit around Kerbin that has let's say 2600km semi-major axis (that means that from surface to surface the distance is 200km). http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Sphere_of_influence From that wiki page I got the equation that says that the radius of a body's SOI orbiting another body is R(SOI) = a*(mass(orbiting body) / mass(central body))^(2/5) where a is semi-major axis. So for our orbit Laythe's R(SOI) would be 2600km*(2.94/5.29)^(2/5) = 2056km. So, Laythe is orbiting 2600km / 2 = 1300km from kerbin (measured from center to center) and it's SOI radius is 2056km. That means that if we launch our craft wen Laythe is above us we should already be in it's SOI and we would just "drop" directly to its surface since we are in Laythe's SOI Kerbin's gravity shouldn't affect us anymore Now I don't know if the game models Kerbin's atmosphere if we are not in its SOI but it's not a problem. If the game doesn't model it we are just in freefall until we arrive at Laythe's SOI (so that would be 1300km - radius(kerbin) - radius(laythe) - atmospheric height(laythe) = 1300 - 600 - 500 - 50 = 150km of freefall). And if the game still models Kerbin's atmosphere that would just slow down our speed once we are in it but we would still "fall" to Laythe... And there shouldn't even be any SOI changes along the way and we never enter 2 atmospheres simultaneously so we shouldn't have these "pressure difference" problems either. This way it would be possible to "travel" to Laythe without any engines at all Only chutes and maybe some airbrakes needed... Now I don't know if this would actually work in game since putting two planets so close to each other might break it badly but that is how it should work if that wiki page for SOI gives me a correct equation...

Yes in the challenge for "Highest altitude achieved with jet engines only" we have already achieved 140+km apoapsis so as long as the SOI change happens before that altitude the flight is doable. Too lazy to calculate distance needed for this right now since I'm on my phone right now. But tje calculation is very simple.

Probably showing current TWR. SInce you are already quite high above Kerbin gravity here is weaker than on the surface --> weight of your craft is smaller here --> TWR(lfor local gravity) is higher than it would be in the surface gravity of Kerbin. KER also has an option of showing surface TWR somewhere in there...

There are equations directly in the Roche limit wikipedia article.... Just throw the numbers in there and you'll get the answer very easily. No need to understand where those equations come from. Although I found it quite interesting to read and actually see how you get those equations Physics and maths student from Finland here

Yeah this all comes down to what mass we want to measure. And yes it is a clever strategy but very much gamey IMO too...

How about assembling a rocket on the surface of mun and then traveling to duna (or somewhere even further) with it?

I know it is not specified in the rules but IMO that is the mass we should measure since that is the mass of your craft once you actually launch it. Just like we dont count the mass of commandpod and support structures that are seperated before the actual launch

How much is the weight with tanks full and without the mining gear?

That would be quite easy since reaching duna only takes a few hundred m/s more dv than reaching mun. Plus you can aerocapture and land with (at least almost) zero dv so round trip to surface could actually be cheaper in terms of dv than mun landing...

Ah ok. My bad. I thought you were using ln(twr) instead of ln(twr+1) but I was wrong

Or should it be ln(twr+1)*dv ? Since now every entry that has a twr of 1 gets 0 points. If we only want entries with >1 twr then that is fine but if we use ln(twr+1) crafts with low twr can still compete but are penalized accordingly...

I just downloaded the mod and am currently learning how to make a self-sustaining colony (just testing on kerbin and getting the theory down for now). My question is about the logistics part and more precisely about "planetary storages". If I have a mining craft that is far away from my base that is mining lets say 5 different resources, and I have one big 3.75m Kontainer (that part should have an access to planetary storage right?) that can contain only one resource. Then in addition I have smaller Kontainers to store other resources that I mine on the same mining craft. My question is can my base access only the resource in the big 3.75m Kontainer or can it access all other resources stored in the smaller Kontainers too? Also what part do I need in my base so that it can access this "planetary storage" too?

I just downloaded the mod and am currently learning how to make a self-sustaining colony (just testing on kerbin and getting the theory down for now). My question is about the logistics part and more precisely about "planetary storages". If I have a mining craft that is far away from my base that is mining lets say 5 different resources, and I have one big 3.75m Kontainer (that part should have an access to planetary storage right?) that can contain only one resource. Then in addition I have smaller Kontainers to store other resources that I mine on the same mining craft. My question is can my base access only the resource in the big 3.75m Kontainer or can it access all other resources stored in the smaller Kontainers too? Also what part do I need in my base so that it can access this "planetary storage" too?

Nice, you actually did what I first thought when I saw this challenge And yes I agree that it kind of breaks the scoring system but whatever At least we could get some...interesting looking crafts with this scoring even if they are not that useful

Yeah. Why not just make all the tweakables you can change during the flight usable through action groups?

I'm not op but IMO it would make sense to count it like this: For example for a craft like yours with rapiers + ions/ lfox + xenon you would count: dv(with lf/ox)*twr(with lf/ox) + dv(with xenon)*twr(with xenon) So you calculate dv*twr seperately for different fuels and then sum these up for the final score