Bluejayek

I'm not sure what to think of these 40K + suborbital hops people are doing. It seems to me that my engines will flame out around 27K, should anything above 30K really count as 'flight'? Anyways, here is another entry. Took off straight from the runway this time. http://imgur.com/a/JIpT3 1.3H + 3.1W + 5.5L = -99 3.5T = -35 7 Parts = -7 5,941km travelled, +5941 Entry +100 One Kerbal = +1 Total = 5900 points Oh, and while I am nitpicking your rules... http://imgur.com/a/FRyRp I'm cool with rounding my score for this entry down to 50 billion (50,060,410,837 - 10,000 - 464 - 194 - 13 = 50,060,400,166)

Here's my entry for the spirit of the challenge... http://imgur.com/a/8Q34F I did use the launch stability assist to take off, but they are not necessary. You can take off direct from the runway without, its just a bit hit and miss so I preferred not to. Therefore: 5 parts (-5) 2.9t (-29) 1.5m height 3.6m width 5.5m length Total dimensions: 10.6m (-106) 400km travelled (+400) Entered challenge (+100) One kerbal (+1) Total score: 361 Personally I think your scoring system places too little weight on part count, but your challenge, your rules! Fun challenge I'm going to add a little bit and see if I can't circumnavigate a few times.

New improved entry: 18,694 m/s http://imgur.com/a/lB4hg#0 Just slightly modified from the previous entry. I removed the extra xenon tanks that I was not using.

I going to be claiming 16,124m/s for now. I can do better... The Kraken munched on me when I tried to activate the last stage ~10 minutes from escape, so apologies for the beautiful destruction in the second last photo. http://imgur.com/a/ltcjD#1

Can you show just 6 tanks to orbit? I don't think I could fly that up. Also, about the stack separators... I am not sure how somebody is supposed to have 5 stages WITHOUT separators. Or how you could have a six booster high stack in the middle without separators.

Here is a better album, better launch. http://imgur.com/a/MEj0P#0 No upgraded/unlocked parts, under 18 ton limit. Single stage I guess in that there are no decouplers, but sort of two stage since the liquid engine mostly fires after the SRBs. Suborbital Trajectory (out of atmosphere): +1 Part Count (less than 30 parts): +2 Orbit: +5 Mix and Match (Both SRB and Liquid Engine): +2 Safe Return: +2 SPEEEEEEEEEED! (Re-entry over 2000 m/s): +1 BadS (Land with a BOOM! a.k.a a part explodes): +1 14 points. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by re-enter over 2000m/s. Pretty much any re-entry will be over that. Screenshot I have shots 1960m/s at 35km altitude though (just missed the 2000m/s mark).

I don't think this is entirely trivial, some people may have fun with it! Only trouble is there are not many things available without any upgrades. The ships are going to be fairly similar. Here is my entry, all non-upgraded, no science/parts unlocked. http://i.imgur.com/nhkKBvt.png I don't know how to post a craft file, but its fairly obvious what it is. The launch screenshot is actually on a second launch (didn't take a picture on first). I guess I would be claiming: Orbit, Part Count, Mix and Match, Safe Return, BadS, The last two I didn't actually do in this mission... But if I'm a little smarter about fuel and don't raise apoapsis above 80K it is easy to return to ground with a long aerobrake. Parachute lowers it down safely but the engine explodes, and sometimes one of the boosters.

I am mostly stock. I have mechjeb installed, but only have used it to find my crafts launchpad mass, never acually taken off with mechjeb onboard. I also occasionally use the crew tank part, but thats about it as per mods.

1. The Oberth effect causes burns to be more effective when you have a higher orbital energy. Your orbital energy is the same at all points in a given orbit, therefore the apogee/perigee distinction is not effected. People burn at apogee for inclination changes, as you have less kinetic energy at this point to burn away to change to a different inclination. 2. Two reasons: First, you are often wasting delta V in low atmosphere when you have too high of a thrust on the initial stage. Drag scales as velocity squared, so it is often beneficial to keep velocity down while in the lower atmosphere. Second, once you are in orbit, you need only a miniscule amount of thrust applied over time to move your ship, your maximum thrust essentially doesnt matter. This makes those extra two engines simply dead weight that has to be carried. A lighter ship can achieve a higher delta V. EDIT: I misread the part about getting out of the atmosphere. Part two of my response to 2. still applies.

In relation to the moon question: Material that has been ejected in an impact of that nature would be very hot. I think it is reasonable to assume it would be molten, with some portion of it possibly vaporizing. This could cause geysers of vapor off small chunks of it that could act somewhat like rocket engines to give it the little boost into orbit. Further, most of it DID fall back down to earth; the moon is a lot smaller! Another point is, it may be more accurate to think of this not as one object that has a certain amount of matter ejected to form another, but one object that is shattered, and then coalesced to form two new objects of different masses. That way, the asteroid hits, breaks apart the earth, the bits float around in orbit around the sun and slowly are attracted together to form the earth and the moon.

Jeb refused to fly it because it did not have enough boosters

Does this count? It was back in 0.16 and I don't have the rocket anymore to take better pictures, this is from a solar escape mission. The middle part of the rocket has about 15 stages of LFE-30s on stacks of three fuel tanks, all fuel lined into the central three. They break off in pairs of three; the first burns out about 1s after ignition. I love that linear rocket though. I'm going to try somethign similar. I assume its launched off the runway

Useful things... Don't use mechjeb, it hampers the learning process. Capslock turns on precision control mode. Green circle is prograde, green circle with x is retrograde on navball. Burn at Munrise to get to the moon. Good luck!

When rockets get sufficiently big, turn off asas for the launch to orbit and do it manually. The coding that seems to exist for the ASAS is hilariously awful in the way wayfare described. It constantly overcorrects and loses control, and even when it doesnt, it initiates these constant vibrations that can easily be damped out with manual control.

KSP is definately in my list of top 5 games I have ever played.

I don't know what people are talking about with the explosions at 120km. Doing a sundive for extra velocity I went within 5km of the surface with no ill effects. You probably notice the overheating signal in the picture. That was not due to proximity to the sun, but more because the nuclear engine had been running for the past hour or so.

You have to remember that the laws of physics as they pertain to density and strength of materials in the KSP universe are clearly different. The simplest example: Kerbin has a density of 58.489 g/cm^3. By comparison, in our universe the densest element, osmium, only has a density of 22.6g/cm^3. Hence, kerbin is either some engineered construct of superdense matter, or some physical laws are different. Therefore, we can assume that the laws of physics are different enough that a 20m spaceship could weigh 5kg since the materials are strong enough! That being said, 5 tons makes more sense.

the FTL screenshots are ok since they are acually in a sane sequence. The KSP screenshots are deadly.

I like all of these that people have come up with

It depends on what you are trying to do. Sometimes you really do need all that fuel. This craft for example has 8 tanks per engine, and needs all of that fuel. It does make extreme use of SRB's though.

Binary gas giants. Also, I want to see a gas giant that has about 50 bop-like moons.

Yeah, people really arent using this system enough.

Whats the launch pad obliterator? I just went into my .craft file and added 700,000m to the height of each part. If I try to do it with multiple launch clamps the ship tends to tear itself apart though.

You mean like this?

What are the specs of the HKM engine? Further, modded struts can be very important! I know if i had stronger struts to hold my craft together I could have lofted another 10,000m/s worth of fuel onto my ship! Also, can we have a picture in the VBA or on the launchpad?