Duban

Thanks Thobe. As for the world journy... Well, close enough. I missed taking a picture of the bomb drop though, sorry.

I\'m going for a long range run carrying a full CB payload. I just hit the halfway mark on my fuel supply and i\'m already nearing the polar ice. Considering i lost a ton of weight in spent fuel I think I can hit the exact opposite side of kerbin if I keep going. I\'ll update when I run out out of fuel or make it to the equator, dropping the payload. Image is attached. Edit: Just hit the 2/3 mark of my fuel supply and i\'m a little under 2/3 around the world. That said the craft is now traveling 400m/s. It\'s significantly faster than the 230-240m/s of when I started, but i\'m using the same amount of fuel.

It entered service just after WWII. It didn\'t see service until Korea, where its dogfights against the Russian MiG-15s are well known.

I just fixed the broken image links. Sorry about that.

So I went on a weapon making binge this weekend so I\'ll post my best creations here along with a link to some old spy plane research The B3 Payloader: The B3 Payloader is Kylia Inc\'s ultra-heavy strategic bomber. Unlike Many other so called 'bombers' the ordinance for the B3 holds no fuel. It\'s pure dead weight ensuring maximum destruction of the target area. Here is a short range demonstration made carrying a 'Big One' bomb. Takeoff. Here you can see the 'Big One' bomb carried underneath the B3. Random flight pics. The next continent appears over the horizon. Bombs away. As you can see the B3 Payloader carried an absolutely massive bomb across the ocean, and it only used about 1600KG of its 6425KG fuel supply to do so. As it loses fuel it flies higher and faster making that the least fuel efficient part of its flight. It almost certainly could travel 1/3rd of the way around Kerbin. It could possibly hit any point on the planet. Here\'s a pic of the craft with its top removed so you can see the internal bomb bay. There\'s two variants of the craft. There is the 'Big One' BO seen above and the modified heavy 'Carpet Bomber' CB variant. The B3 Payloader CB carries 20 independent bombs and uses only slightly more fuel than the BO does. See below The KICBM-1: The KICBM is Kylia Inc\'s mobile long range missile platform. The platform uses RCS to turn and aim the rocket while the cheap missile '3 tanks of fuel' can hit any location on Kerbin. It has a travel time of less than 1 hour which is perfect for those 'first strike' attacks, or as a deterrent. Missile launch On the rotating platform Reaching peak velocity The debris on the opposite side of Kerbin is the KSC Here\'s a link to our research on high altitude spy aircraft. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=13018.msg200561#msg200561 All .craft files are attached, but you need to log in to download them.

I try not to badmouth other people\'s ships, but 29 fuel tanks isn\'t very efficient at all. My best unmodded ship made the journy on 7 tanks of fuel. See attached .craft.

Here are my 2 attempts at ultra-light munlandings. All journies were done in 1 sitting without the use quick-save or quick-load. C4 Tinycraft Fuel tanks: 11 Mass: Less than 42 Log(with pictures): http://imgur.com/a/vnjWu Status: Could have made the return trip but an unfortunate tipping accident has left the craft stranded on the Mun. Attempts to right the craft have only disabled it further. C5 Microlander Fuel tanks: 9.5 Mass: ~38 Log(with pictures): http://imgur.com/a/zRHPj Status: Sucessfully landed at the mun-crater 'thetis'. The munlander then returned for a safe touchdown just across the ocean from the KSC

It all started with an idea to make the fastest and highest flying air breathing spy plane possible. The first aircraft was a clumsy twin engine aircraft that couldn\'t escape the runway, never mind Kerbin. It required you to bounce around on the ground until the drop before the ocean just to take off. Starting with my initial failure I used what I learned until I made a successful spy aircraft, the scout v2. From then on I built, and rebuilt a series of successful high altitude spy aircraft until i reached my ultimate goal of 20+km flight. Here are the aircraft. Scout Alias: The early scout prototype Peak Velocity: 650m/s Maximum Altitude: 16.6KM Range: 400km Description: Primitive compared to later models, most of the aircraft\'s weight is just air inlets. It was the beginning that set the basis for what was to come. Scout V3 Alias: The light ray Peak Velocity: 710m/s Maximum Altitude: 18.6KM Range: 600km Description: At this point I had very little idea what a high altitude spyplane in KSP should look like. I realized the engines could stand on their own with the fuel in the fuselage to cut down on the extra weight, a recurring theme. Ultimately it was an extremely high velocity aircraft for only 7 engines. Later models could only hope to match the light ray\'s speed with many more engines. Scout V4 Failure Description: The V4 broke on the launch pad. After dozens of redesigns it became little more than a mosh pit of structural connecters but no matter how hard I tried it always broke. Alas, We will never know your potential scout V4. Scout V5 Alias: The bi-jet Peak Velocity: 620m/s Maximum Altitude: 19.4KM Range: 600km Description: The twin wing design gave the aircraft a very unique flight pattern. The aircraft had incredible lift that brought it to previously unmatched altitudes with the lowest maximum velocity. It\'s flight was also uniquely level with very little difference between the peak and minimum altitudes/velocities. It was also the most stable of the scouts at high altitudes. Scout V6 Underperformer Description: A modified V5, the V6 was outperformed by its predecessor in every way. At least the V4 might have been a good craft if it worked. This one was Grade-A certified terrible. Scout V7 Alias: Big Dog Success: >20km flight achieved. Peak Velocity: 730m/s Maximum Altitude: 20.4km Range: 1,200km Description: Jettison-able fuel tanks define this aircraft\'s performance. It has twice the range of any previous aircraft, about 1/3 the diameter of Kerbin but its performance is weak in early flight. The extra fuel means it\'s only traveling about 630m/s at 14km at the beginning of the flight and steadily climbs to its maximum velocity by the end of its journey. At the very last 100km or so of its flight it also becomes very back-heavy, sending it into an uncontrollable climb. I hope you enjoyed my scout series of aircraft. The sucessful aircraft mentioned above are attached. Please tell me what you think .

That doesn\'t seem quite right. Kerbin\'s orbit velocity around Kerbol alone is 9km/s. I don\'t know what the escape velocity is exactly but I do know it\'s less than 20km/s at Kerbin\'s orbit distance. I\'ve done that with a stock craft before and the space center said it was on an escape trajectory.

Yes, this way of staging is very common although it is not the end all be all of KSP either.

Good point. When i think about it the torque a pendulum gives changes changes based on the angle of the string while a rocket engine\'s torque does not change. Still, it\'s an interesting design concept that has some advantages.

Your standard rocket is an inverse pendulum with the thrust coming from the bottom of the rocket and gravity pulling it down. This makes the design unstable at high thrust-weight ratios and prone to tipping over uncontrollably. Here is my experiment to make a design with more of the thrust at the top for stability. I had to work around two main challenges. 1) The fuel of the craft drains from the top down. This means stages have to be jettisoned from the top down. 2) Dropped stages from above tend to crash into the stages below them. This makes the vessel somewhat complicated to pilot. Stages need to be dropped 1 fuel tank after they stop working. Also, the third stage in needs to be dropped at about 60% thrust or the entire thing will explode. You also might need to activate RCSs about 3 stages in as the late stages are unstable, the balancing thrusters have been jettisoned. The ship itself isn\'t remarkable, but it\'s an interesting design concept.

I\'ve only broken a landing leg once, and it was to a combination of a high slope and personal error. The fact that it\'s soo heavy for 1 engine gives the craft very fine control and makes for more precise landings than smaller craft. Also, here is my hexalauncher that I just completed. It uses the same lander design only with 6 legs. The new launcher has more fuel for landings and the extra weight means I can manage landings of less than 1 m/s. The six sided design with tri-couplers can even land on sloped surfaces. It\'s excellent. Picture album. http://imgur.com/a/oKzxW Craft itself. http://www./file/13ghi0v9dn0u8s9/Hexalauncher.craft

I added the ship as an attachment. I recommend decellerating slightly once you reach 1000m/s to maintain stability. I usually take that decelleration as an opportunity to enter orbit. Also, If there\'s one thing I learned from this it\'s 'always land on the light side of the Mun'. You\'re guarenteed to crash if you can\'t see what\'s below you.

I present to you the Behemoth Munlander, built using the default kit. Yes, I winced when i put 3x the necessary decouplers below the tri-stack coupler too. The tri-stack is just too useful for stable landings. See pics. The next thing you might notice is what the ship does not have, RCS. The balanced design and solid structure means there is virtually no instability in the craft. The command pod alone is enough to maneuver the entire ship, albeit slowly. The Behemoth launch system, initial stage, has 24 LV-T30s and 100 fuel tanks. It\'s almost capable of leaving kerbin on a straight trajectory, without orbiting, on its own. The munlander can leave a sizable structure on the Mun while the deorbiter can make a safe return to Kerbin. Munlander on the moon: Return to Kerbin: Leaving the munlander Escaping Mun Decellerating Safe landing