Hesp

Basically because a (multistage) rocket with that delta-v and a guidance system is often recognized as a ballistic missile.

Try to investigate glycerol. It's been used as a fuel for internal combustion engines even if difficult to burn. The high % of oxygen in the molecule may reduce the oxidizer needed.

You did an outstanding job! First of all, thank you As others already said, the major issue / difficulty to overcome with all these engines is not modeled in KSP... radiation. I'm throwing here a crazy idea, not even sure it can be done without a specific mod. What about an auto-deactivation or performance limitation of all nuclear devices (engines, reactors, etc) when the ship is in close proximity to other vessels or planetary surfaces? Of course this can be tuned accordingly to the part characteristics / need of balance. Let's take the emancipator from KA for an example, I'd like to have the open-cycle-fuel disabled and throttle limited when approaching other ships or stations

CFD. OpenFoam is an open source software. Missing previous know-how, you will need some iterations to correlate between real object and simulation data. Anyway you will need to perform also modal and thermostructural analysis with other simulation software before even building a first engine prototype. EDIT: didn't read @Steel 's answer before replying.

Right now the highest grade peroxide I can order online is a 35% solution, at about 10€/liter. You make things too easy, hot peroxide vapours are explosive and that distillation lab setup, although feasible, is very far from the "amateur" concept. Especially for the quantities needed. TATP , quite popular these days. And it's doable with hair bleach grade peroxide. I bet you'll raise more than an eyebrow buying truckloads of H2O2 (any useful grade)

Just a quick note regarding HTP... Propellant-grade hydrogen peroxide is available to qualified buyers. In typical circumstances, this chemical is sold only to companies or government institutions that have the ability to properly handle and utilize the material. Maybe I missed in the discussion HOW you plan to retrieve, store and handle fuels and oxidizers, but anything good enough to fuel an hybrid rocket is equally good enough to make a bomb.

It's exactly the opposite... I haven't got numbers at hand right now, but orbital period in LMO (50km) is higher than in LKO (150km), so cosine losses are lower (and the burn is way shorter too!). Regarding the ejection angle, just zoom out the map and focus on the ejection trajectory. If the timeframe (mun position and node position in munar orbit) is right, the trajectory will follow.

Actually, it helps quite a lot in reducing the size of the transfer stage. All my interplanetary missions are leaving directly from a refuel station in Mun orbit (fuel is refined and shipped from Minmus). Of course if no refuel is planned, starting from LKO is way cheaper.

Try to multiply all them together rather than adding up Something like this: (MaxSpeed/10) * (Range/100) * (PassengerCapacity + (FlightAttendants*3)) * (1+(BonusPoints/1000))

TWR on the pad with only rapier boosters (Cutlass dual-mode engine LH2 / LH2+LOX from Nertea's Mk4) is around 0.8. I used a half filled twin-boar as a liquid booster on the free docking port. It gets ditched really soon (recovered 10km from KSC with parachutes), only to get the ship supersonic when the rapiers start to shine. I'll be able to adjust the maximum payload to LKO tuning the thrust and fuel amount in the twin-boar. Forgot to take screens during testing, maybe I'll attach some pics this evening

Hi, I found a small bug on the LH2 patch for the Cutlass engine. The intakeair request in airbreathing mode is insane, it should be about 18 times lower. (rough assumption). Probably the propellant ratio should be modified. Actually I am not able to feed it with two 2.5m shock cones and two 2.5m heavy precoolers... Added these lines to the patch, now it's working correctly @PROPELLANT[IntakeAir] { @ratio = 0.327 }

Thanks! The tanks for LF/O are in the main fuselage (the mk4 system holds the equivalent of mk1 tanks at the side of the structure) and in the tail. Some other fuel (mostly LF) is held in the wings. I'll give you the exact figures when I get home. By the way, the tanks are huge if the purpose is limited to LKO operation, I only used 30% for launch and 145km orbital insertion. The trick for this ship is lift! I could almost fly it up like a spaceplane, following a very shallow gravity turn. I'm curious to see what is its payload to LKO The Hammers are a quick and dirty solution for an easy liftoff. I feel that the first stage can still be optimized, though. Before adding them, I reached LKO with LH2 boosters alone, even with an anemic 1.1 TWR off the pad. If you look carefully, you can see a 2.5m docking port on the back of the vessel. I see it as the right place for the SRB stage. After decoupling, it would be free and ready for a rendezvous with an interplanetary transfer stage (Nuclear/ion/VASIMR engines and tanks, hab and science facilities, life support, etc). The cargo bay would still be helpful to haul smaller craft, like a lander or some probes. -- I don't think your idea would be feasible. After all, the airbreather engines are good only for the first 20-25km. If you cover the first half with solid rockets, you're bringing a lot of complication in for little returns. Anybody tried a RAPIER booster stage (like 4 rapiers with 2.5m tanks and shock cone on top)? Maybe I'll give it a try this evening, if the numbers are right. Edit: If i remember well, Nertea's mod has a 2.5m LH2 rapier engine. I'll definitely pick that one for the booster!

That's not correct... As I showed, it's easier to reach 2000m/s than carrying 400 kerbals. IMHO, I think that all the challenge parameters should be multiplied and not added, i.e.: Speed X Distance X (Kerbals+Staff) X Bonuses It's the only way to make all the entries consider every design aspect

Actually, I like the idea of including suborbital spaceplanes. The only requirement needed for a fair challenge would be to have ONLY airbreather engines to avoid entries like mine

Some tips based on my FAR experience: - Weight is everything, if your landing is at the end of the mission, dump everything (fuel, supplies, monoprop, unwanted kerbals, etc) when you know you'll hit the runway. - Same weight concern applies during craft build: Set the strength/mass slider for wings and ailerons at around 0.4 (depending on how many g you want to pull, 0.4 is good for 7-8g). Don't overdesign the plane, add lightness. I was pleasantly surprised at the first landing with this plane, it just wanted to keep flying!

How can I calculate a score for my plane? Speed: orbital speed (2300+ m/s) Should I include any dV left? Distance: anywhere on Kerbin + Mun/Minmus orbit (47000km?) Passengers: 4 (20 pts)

Here's my entry: Lots of mods involved, including @Nertea's full set, FAR, StageRecovery and Procedural Wings. The ship has a MkIV main body, bimodal engines and LF/O RCS system, no monoprop needed. HydroLOX boosters augmented with SRBs allow a decent TWR at launch (1.6, without SRB is 1.1) LES is guaranteed by ejection seats supplied by the appropriate mod Full test mission report here: http://imgur.com/a/iIdAt

Today I had to perform a proper gravity turn lifting off from Minmus with the first ore payload... 6000 units for the orbital refinery. With Bill onboard, the mining process took about 15 hours. Damn, that thing was heavy! On the other side of the moon, the "development" rover (can I call it like that after 100+ days of surface operations?) reached a green monolith, granting a welcome reward for the KSC engineers

Hi, as I was saying in the NFT thread, I think there are some MkIV parts that would benefit from a repositioning in the Community Tech Tree and/or a stats check. I'll try to make a list: - AE-4 Valkyrie turboramjet can be found a node earlier than its 1.25m brother whiplash, makes sense to move it at least to hypersonic flight - The Arcadia-593 turbofan has the same ISP of the AE-4 and a double set of engine stats, one of which is a AE-4 duplicate: machLimit = 2.8 machHeatMult = 6.0 velCurve { key = 0 1 0 0 key = 0.2 0.98 0 0 key = 0.72 1.716 2.433527 2.433527 key = 1.36 3.2 1.986082 1.986082 key = 2.15 4.9 1.452677 1.452677 key = 3 5.8 0.0005786046 0.0005786046 key = 4.5 3 -4.279616 -4.279616 key = 5.5 0 -0.02420209 0 - Regarding other parts, it seems a bit weird to unlock Mk3 and MkIV fuselage parts with the same node, but it doesn't affect the gameplay.

Ok, I'll post there! Thought you wanted to collect all the rebalance suggestions in a single thread

At the moment the only things that may need a tweak are the MkIV spaceplane parts and engines positions in the tech tree (i.e. the AE-4 turboramjet is available a node earlier than the whiplash).

Today I upgraded the Arrow-04 spaceplane tackling the issues of the first flight: added proper airbrakes and increased aerospike size from 0.75 to 0.8m. The increased thrust leads to a more efficient orbital insertion burn. Now the plane is available also in Kerbal-rated version for space station crew rotation and early tourism missions. Upcoming missions (vessels under construction right now): - Mun rover field test @ KSC - Minmus mining rig and orbital refinery launch There is also a Dres transfer window upcoming in 70 days... Maybe I'll plan something

Spaceplane time! Engineers at KSC designed the first career plane to bring small payloads and life support to the LKO station. Test pilot for the maiden flight: Jeb, of course. The plane is a basic Mk2 design with 2 tweakscaled aerospikes as boosters (0.75m, 50kN each) and procedural wings Variable geometry wingtips improve stability over Mach 3 The orbital insertion burn lasts about 5 mins at a constant altitude of 40km Payload check while waiting for the rendezvous with the station. The cargo mass is about 4 tons (20% of takeoff weight) Launch timing was clearly wrong, as I had to wait the station in a higher orbit instead than chasing from below.. dV budget was really tight Reentry was mostly as expected. The plane is really stable through all the descent, starting from 80° pitch at atmospheric interface to 30° at 30km. Note: badly overshot KSC, I still need to familiarize with these flights... The optimistic use of rudder surfaces as airbrakes led to a complete detachment just during the runway approach... Jeb performed a 360° hard turn to bleed off some speed and saved the plane as usual. Better add proper airbrakes in the next revision!

The tug is really a nice solution! Anyway I think I'll throw down a rover and some supplies to explore the biomes off the equator, relying on the existing lander to bring the guys (and the science!) up to the station.

Bill asked to test a Munar lander with less than 1400m/s in the tanks... Mission profile was oriented to maximum fuel economy, with the CM ready to rescue the lander potentially stranded in a super-low orbit. Landing was conducted at dusk in a rather flat area. Mandatory photo during surface operations Just before docking with the orbital station, with the luxury of 10 m/s of deltaV still available. There was also the RCS system as emergency backup, but I feel the lander needs at least 100m/s extra to deal with sub-optimal landings and take off...