panzerknack

Jonbon would like to visit the surface of Eve and return - reward: 120k. Jordorf wants to do a fly by of Duna and return - reward: 120k........ I so wish the contracts were scaled according to actual difficulty - Eve tourist landing payouts should be like 10x all others, with Moho landings 4x all others. Meanwhile, I spent the day cursing at the screen after trying to do a zero-fatality playthrough and losing both Jeb and Valentina on the first moon flyby mission; it feels so unfair how short of grinding 5k-reward missions on Kerbin for a day straight, you won't have the cash for the L2 tracking station patched conics, making flybys a crapshoot - I was especially careful to always pad vessels with numerous safety features, but that mission comes down to a dice roll as to if you get a suicidal approach once you enter the moon SOI. Yes, if one were so inclined, they could could calculate a precise intercept by hand, but the precision would be quickly lost to the lack of fine controls in that point of the game.

Easily enough, it'll just take awhile. I'd do it a different way than the other poster - instead of modifying your original orbit at all, just wait until your original orbit's periapsis IS where you'd want to burn anyway for an ejection into a solar orbit with an apoapsis at Kerbin's radius (it doesnt matter for now if Kerbin is in the wrong place). If you already have a 48km AP, this should take next to no fuel. Now, you're in a solar transfer orbit with the PE at eve's radius and the AP at kerbins radius - the challenge here becomes fixing the declination - if you're lucky, the ascending or descending node is near where you're intersecting kerbin, otherwise, you either have to pay for it with fuel (use the mode at a higher alt), or plan a re-intercept of eve and use the planet to bend your orbit. Finally, you should be able to gauge Kerbin's orbit relative to your own, and line up an intercept using your remaining fuel. As the other guy said, if you're not equipped to aerobrake, you might be SOL, except for maybe shooting at the moon and getting a nice speed drop ala:

I had submitted a sample review to neistridlar earlier - I thought since it happened to be of someone who was still active in this thread- they'd want to see it, please note this is NOT OFFICIAL, I am merely acting as an advisor for KEA, my suggestions imply nothing for the actual competition. Contract Test Pilot Review: @lapis's - LSP Sparrow Figures as Tested: Price: 67,392,000 Fuel: 2400 kallons Cruising speed: 235 m/s Cruising altitude: 4000m Fuel burn rate: .24 kal/s Range: 2300 km Review Notes: I was immediately intrigued by the high-lift stock concept of the Sparrow. All test pilots love danger, and the Sparrow's resemblance to a flying pancake delighted this contractor. Unfortunately, the Sparrow was oddly safe, and during several torture tests trying to achieve breakup or fatal spins, the craft stayed together. Take-off: The Sparrow feels like a rock, slowly accelerating on the runway until the manufacturer's published rotate speed of 65 m/s, then amazingly transforms into a soaring bird, leaping off the runway. Takeoffs were quite fun, with no risk of of tailstrikes. The aircraft quickly climbed to its cruising altitude of 4000m. Cruising: I was delighted by the manufacturer's inclusion of a CRUISE MODE, whereby pressing a button somehow increases engine efficiency while staying at a constant speed. Coincidentally, I noticed two of the engines had turned off. Technology. Landing: Oh boy. This is where the Sparrow becomes less like an AIM-7 and earns the honorary title "Saucijzenbroodje-plane." If this manufacturer was trying to open a shop that sold dutch rolls by the dozen, they succeeded with flying colors. The smallest roll deviation induces a slip-and-slide dance where inputting opposite controls exacerbates the problem. When lining up for Runway 09 at the KSC, the Sparrow became so errant I was soon heading over the SPH. Fortunately, the huge wheel base meant the sloppiest of landings were usually forgiven, so while the dutch roll bakery wasn't tasty, it also wasn't fatal. Overall, the Sparrow comes in at a middleground price, not cheap, but not as expensive as some peers. Maintenance is a big plus with the Sparrow, it contains 75 parts, however, given the fully-stock nature and relatively simple construction, I anticipate low maintenance costs for KEA. Fuel efficiency is quite good, I calculated the range at 40% greater than the published specs - this was after consuming fuel to climb based on the remaining fuel and speed at cruise altitude. In crew and passenger comfort, the odd Sparrow is truly outstanding. The wing-mounted Wheesley engines are spaced far from the cabins, lessening noise, while wing flex will certainly dampen much of the turbofan's vibrations. In the rare crash-landing, the pancake shape causes the wings and engines to shear off first, acting as a crumple zone for the passenger compartments. In two test crashes, all 5 cabins survived without harm. However, there is one issue of concern for comfort - whichever passenger draws the short straw of sitting in the middle compartment will get this gorgeous view: However, in this contractor's opinion, this could be leveraged as a value-added feature. 4 Cabins could have tickets sold at premium price, while the middle cabin functions as a "Gotta Get Away" ala Kalujet compartment. Can't have first class without steerage. The Verdict: As a private contractor, I can only advise the KEA board on purchase decisions and not commit to any bill of sale. The Sparrow certainly has its quirks, and the manufacturer should make a few changes before the design becomes feasible on a large scale. Having said that, I can see it being a very niche attraction in the KEA fleet, owning 1-2 of them to give passengers a near-death joyride while returning them safely to the ground. (Usually).

Thanks for the great feedback - I'm still trying to understand what you're saying here - are you saying this is a temporary solution to a bigger problem? It faces the same direction regardless of rotation, but the 'wrong' direction heh ; just so I'm sure im communicating it sufficiently - its an issue of chirality. Initial attach cursor for sidegear, note direction backwards relative to cockpit (root part), chirality is left-handed After one press of q to rotate 90, chirality is now right-handed After another press of q to rotate 180 in total, Correct right-handed chirality, but 180 degrees from intended position - pressing rotate twice again causes it to return to the first image. I hope this makes sense - if you were saying before you're aware of all this, disregard this post, I misunderstood your response.

You mind if I show lapis my post with the disclaimer that it's 100% NON OFFICIAL and in no way represents the interests or decisions of competition? Surprised to see the name come up again.

This was my second mod ever, I love so many parts in it- clearly blackheart612 put a lot of time into it! I can always tell which parts are his vs say legacy kax things included based on the extremely Kerbalesque descriptions By far my favorite thing and IMO most powerful tool in the mod are the new FAT wing sections which blend seemlessly and new angled connectors, clearly a mod built by someone who loves building aircraft as much as I do and had the same frustrations with stock. I've only found a few small bugs - but the most significant is with the F16 landing gear (name = sidegear) - it forces attachment in a backwards configuration, no matter how much you try and manually rotate, it reverts. Also when spawning with this gear- craft has a tendency to kraken flip right on runway. On the rotation, could I just disable matchRotation in the part file to fix it? Or would that do something else? - e.g. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

i was looking at a similar thing myself- trying to understand your column notation - so each column is normalized for that amount of passengers for a row category?

Ok sounds reasonable. Also I read earlier in the thread (or perhaps prior thread) there was discussion of revision to passenger compartments - has any more been discussed on this? It seems to my unqualified opinion this is the biggest "Waffle-factor" as the mk1 is so disproportionately priced and sized- so we end up seeing loads of MK1 cabins in a tile-configuration. I'd think it'd benefit competitiveness to have different cabins offering different advantages - i.e. mk3 is most expensive but maybe densest, mk2 is considered the most comfortable inside, etc etc. As it is right now, mk1 is superior in the two things that matter most - cost/passenger# and volumetric density/passenger#. This also seems to go against conventional realism, since for a given fuselage diameter, increasing it scales the circumference and thus materials by the same diameter factor, while the walls can remain more or less the same thickness-however you get much more interior room from the squared area function. The main reason I'd suggest this is it'd change the core design constraint from cabins to engines. As I look at more craft to be reviewed, cabin config is the biggest difference. As I understand in the real world, the engines are most of the cost, both upfront and recurring - how do we accomplish our design with the fewest and most efficient engines? Also with Airplane plus/KAX there's so many engines with price points and performance envelopes this could make things much more diverse and interesting- right now engines are an afterthought to cabin design - its mostly "how can I best tile mk1s or Size2s in a way that won't get kraken'd?" Just my 24 cents. UNRELATED: The reviews of @Bombstar10's craft are probably the hardest I've ever laughed reading something about KSP, my hats off to you guys.

Jumbo success! Assuming the distance between the KSC and the Korean-shaped peninsula is at least 300km, this baby can do 4000km+ with 160 passengers! Only 67M! (note distance covered is in absolute space, this is taken after one complete global flight or roughly 3700 km, leaving 300 more. I'll formally post it down the road when reviews are caught up - one issue I noted with the 4000km ER aircraft is the Capacity/rate*speed/1000 becomes less accurate with extreme distances and fuel loads - as the weight reduction actually becomes non-negligible like a rocket via Tsiolkovsky's equation - meaning at initial cruise range was maybe predicted at 3500km, but I flew the whole thing and it ended up being a fair bit more.

I had been following this thread for awhile, cool stuff - hadn't posted before though. I have a bunch of High Quality Non Death Trap designs to show off, but I also see the reviews are quite backlogged - which makes me ask first; could I send a sample review to one of the existing test pilots? I'm quite experienced at crashing things into the ground and waxing poetic about the Long Way Down, and perhaps having more people reviewing existing models could help the KEA team plow through the queue faster?

I always liked the originals, but I'm usually biased towards unique and themed art styles at the potential cost of visual fidelity. I think it's cool that in stock, the FAT wings look like atmospheric components vs the spacey Big-s; and even without knowing more information, I could assume the spacey-looking ones have higher heat tolerance. In my opinion good design should do both- have a unique style, and a reasonable person could infer some information from the appearance (COUGH LOOKING AT YOU MK2 DRAG). The custom-color schemes are a nice addition though - I'd love more of this in stock! I've seen this same kind of debate come up in all different areas-people get quite polarized - when they removed colors from the android status bar 2 years ago in favor of a sleeker design, ofc not instantly seeing the battery indicator colors i hated it . To me, the junkyard aesthetic is central to KSP, captured not just in part appearance but in the flavor text on parts, the emotions (lol) of Jeb, etc. I respect not everyone wants that, I just hope those that do like it represent a majority of the players

Most angry time? Anytime a lander gets tipped off its feet on Duna - they all end up producing rage at the control scheme/planet flat surface interfaces. That and anytime a death was caused by the dev-troll-move to have adjusting time warp while already in a navigational warp increment by 2 factors, not one.

I would do a plane-like landing nearby the target object, then motor-wheel over to on top of the object where you could use a stratenblitz-like winch system in a cargo bay (a Klaw connected to a flat surface which aerobrakes lift up or down - storing it in the 'top' position to a clamp-o-tron)

What I like to do in those cases where you have an aircraft where 2/3 of its flight profile is great - but then say on re-entry, excessive stability causes nose-prograde lock and overheating- It can be a huge advantage to have fuel tanks staggered both in the extreme fore and aft ends of your aircraft. It's harder to design around than near-CoM fuel setups, but it gives you a powerful tool to dynamically alter CoM on re-entry, which you can fine-tune to get your desired re-entry AoA.

My Hats off to Brikoleur, as a fellow VTOL/general spaceplane [stock] enthusiast, your tips were easy to read and right on the money! You're one of the few I've read that recognized the potential of Junos in vtol vs the more popular panthers or using rotating clamp-o-tron assemblies - bigger engines have the huge design downside of shifting COM above fuselage longitudinal axis, which makes rocket placement difficult for SSTOs. The juno 8-pack in a mk2 bay is my go-to, plus, a single Engine nacelle will provide enough air for them all and fuel is self-contained, making the design easy to scale for larger craft. One challenge I've run into for myself with more elegant VTOL SSTOs is low-speed-hover controllability; beyond using brute-force RCS or SAS. I can make a design that's quite good at hovering, landing, and maneuvering around a site like a helicopter, but it'll be crap as an actual aerodynamic plane- as the control surfaces and wing setup are designed for forward flight - and for hovering I want something that has no forward-bias (ever started sliding backwards in a vtol craft designed for otherwise normal forward flight? Things get ugly!!). Any insights? Absolutely! I have a simple Vtol SSTO that can take off with junos, hit LKO with rapiers, maybe with 100 m/s left on the rocket side, then return to spaceport and have sufficient liquid fuel for vertical landing. Junos, Panthers, and Wheesleys are all fairly efficient at low altitude and low speed - when you said 'guzzle' i screwed up my face because when I think guzzle I think rapiers and whiplash's putting out 300 kN and just gorging on fuel. Ill link it if interested.

Well, rarely do missions go as planned, it's usually "crap i angled solar panels wrong now drone is dead" or "what the VAB reverted my stages to wrong order", but this went beautifully - I landed a rover with a klaw-docking port adapter to make things line up, and everything went swimmingly Lander/adapter combo: Pay no attention to the debris from other failed attempts heh. Thanks again for the suggestions here, from now on my career passenger transports will definitely include docking ports as a safety precaution!

Thank you all for the input! I completely forgot about what Spricigo suggested; that you can transfer passengers through the Klaw. I'll try doing just that. I've continued to test exhaust-heating mechanics, imagining if you could reliably explode specific nearby parts it has great potential for cheap stage separation and more compact rocketship buids. It's quite difficult to test on the surface of celestials, since the exhaust reaction will either push the target or you away-I try stabilizing with landing struts and counter-torque engines, etc. What is Mr Headshot referring to when he says "cheat the contract"? I thought the tourists must be returned to Kerbin for completion.

I've searched for information on engine heating, finding only results regarding atmospheric and speed heat effects. I'm trying to figure out if the exhaust heat from engines is simply a linear function of thrust, or if there are other things going on? Why do I want to know? I have a career-mode spaceplane full of tourists that crashed on the mun, destroying the engines but leaving the mk2 passenger module intact. It doesn't have docking ports, so I plan to land a space-crane of sorts next to it, grab it via Klaw and return the kerbal denziens home. I don't want to bring the entire shipwreck though, so I want to use rockets to burn off the other sections of the wrecked plane. Thus, whats the most space-arc-welding power per mass?