Bluejayek

Other obvious comment: A second ASAS on a ship does absolutely nothing, you can remove it and save weight.

Yes. It will purple. Now, I could go to the extreme in abusing the lack of rules in this challenge, set a launch clamp tower at geosynchronous height, and then jump into a SRB plume and attain orbit that way, but it seems a bit like cheating.

I do agree that this is perhaps not the most obvious way to get there. A download link on the main page that asks for you to login would be much more obvious and easier for people to find.

Like so... Unfortunately my SRB exploded this time. Will post back when I get it. Note that this definately needed CFG edits, for strength. EDIT: Even from 70km I can only get a few 100m/s off the SRB, nowhere near enough for orbit.

This isn't possible. First, you cant get something in orbit by shooting it from the surface, you need a burn once your at altitude to get the horizontal velocity needed (The lowest point of your orbit will be where you started your burn, so here ground level.. That doesn't work so well. Second, if you have ever tried it, jumping a kerbal into an SRB exhaust, you can get about 1km altitude and 3km distance, and not much more. Far short of reaching orbit. The problem here is mainly air resistance, not thrust; if you were to do the same where the SRB was sitting in orbit, you would have a very large velocity imparted to the unfortunate kerbal. I suppose in principle you could build a 70km high tower off the launch pad with your SRB on top...

It could simply be weight imbalances from the way your fuel tanks are draining. e.g., if you have a side mounted tank that drains out by 18,000m this could cause you to roll away from it once you don't have that weight anymore.

What you really want to look at is the delta-V delivered to a given payload. You could have a rocket that has 9000m/s delta-V, but the final stage that gets that speed is only a 0.8mass pod. Or you could have a rocket that also has 9000m/s delta-V but the final stage that gets that speed is 10 LFT-3200s with a mass of lots. Delta-V and payload mass are not the same thing. What governs this is the rocket equation: Delta V = ISP * g * ln (m0/m1) Where delta V is your delta V delivered to final stage/payload, ISP is the specific impulse in time units, g is standard gravity 9.8m/s, m0 is the initial mass of the rocket, and m1 is the final(payload) mass. This equation governs a single stage rocket, and the final mass would include the mass of the engine and the dry mass of the tank. Multistage rockets are more complicated, so lets stick with this idea. As stated above, that equation says that the more starting (payload + fuel) mass you have, the higher your delta-V. However, this is a logarithmic relation, so after a certain point you hit serious diminishing returns. Below it is shown graphically what this looks like for an ISP of 400s, and a payload mass of 5. You can see that from 25 to 50 you get about an increase of 50% delta-V, but from 50 to 100 its closer to 25%. This is why you cant just continue building arbitrarily large rockets and get insanely far, there is a point where you start getting so little gain its not worth it. Another way to look at the rocket equation is to re-arrange it for the payload mass, and assume delta-V is fixed. m1 = m0 * e^-[delta-V/(g*ISP)] This equation is LINEAR in m0. This means that if you want to launch a payload that is twice as big at the same delta-V, you only need a rocket that is twice as big on the launchpad. This is in contrast to getting a delta-V that is twice as large for a given payload, which can require much more then twice the fuel, as illustrated above. I hope this helped clear some of the confusion for you. Note again that this does not apply exactly to multistage rockets: For them you have to apply the rocket equation from start to end of each stage in sequence. Oh, and what Altair said is also quite true. When you look at launching from a planet, as opposed to just in empty space (which the above applies directly to), you have to take into account air resistance and gravity drag. This is why ion engines, despite being MUCH more efficient (read higher ISP) then chemical rockets, are not used off the launc pad: They do not have enough thrust to lift themselves or any payload off the launchpad. They are however very efficient once you get into orbit, and numerous space missions and sattelite utilize these thrusters for this purpose.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/15254-Forum-Rules This thread is rather close to that line. Don't be surprised if its locked/deleted. That being said, I keep checking the dev forums for an update on the 0.17 patch notes and it hasnt been changed for over two week! This must mean they are too hard at work on the update to spare time telling us about it

The debris field I show here isnt actually that thick. While you do see a lot of gray target boxes in view at all times, the chances of actually hitting anything are fairly slim. It may also seem less impressive once I tell you that 99% of that debris are radial decouplers; I attached hundreds to a craft and repetadly launched and decoupled them. I gave up when the number of peices of debris was causing the physics engine to crap out with even with simple rockets on the launchpad. Here is the persistence file.. But be warned, it will lag... http://www./file/yylihb9an8udaeu/persistent_Debris.sfs

Try going back to the 5.2 but remove the ramjet intakes, and the nosecone. These parts do nothing currently and simply add weight/drag that will slow you down. Also, replace the LE-45 with an aerospike, it is more efficient and so will help you get up higher in altitude. I'm not sure if these minor improvements will get you there, as it is not clear how close you have gotten (What was your horizontal velocity at 60km?), but they will help.

That SRB double lander.. is amazing...

How exactly would a 2D version work..? Space is inherently 3D, and it seems to me it would be garbage and way to arcadey if it were 2D.

Make a debris field so thick that you have a 50% chance of colliding with it when you try to enter a 70x70 90 degree orbit.

Nice job! I liked the beach landing

Because you can.

Go ahead and use orbital construction if you wish to. I find it too difficult to sift through mods and say "oh, this ones ok, that one isnt" so I just consider them to all be in one class. You will probably be more satisfied if you do it without though As per flushing one: The 1 person pod is lighter, and thus you need less of a monstrous rocket to get it to jeb. It may be easier this way to rendezvous with that, and leave its hapless pilot floating in jebs place.

Dwarf, that spoiler tag isnt working

Minor comments. First, there have already been two stock helicopter challenges (eg http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/19427-Igor-Sikorsky-Prize-Stock-Helicopter-Challenge). Your presentation of the challenge is actually much better though. Second, nothing in your rules says it has to rotate or anything; almost all planes would be permissible under your rules. You might want to fix that. Not trying to scare you away, just people generally like to not see the same challenge reposted once a month! Welcome to the forums!

ASAS has a tendency to be absolutely terrible at controlling your craft. When I was testing aircraft recently, on one of them the ASAS was consistently sticking my heading 10-20 degrees above what a set at, despite it being easy to manually hold it at the setting. Also, even if your craft is stable the ASAS will tend to do small oscillations, that can cause unnecessarry stress on your craft.

As a result of one of his frequent mishaps, Jebediah is alone in a spacesuit on an escape course from Kerbin. Despite, or perhaps because of, his many failings, Jebediah is very popular amongst the general population of Kerbin, if not with us here at the space agency. Because of this, it is likely that if Jebediah were lost the space program would lose significant funding and be set back many years. You are therefore tasked with retrieving Jebediah and returning him safely to Kerbin. While we do not believe that the public would be able to tell the difference if we replaced Jebediah's brain with that of a monkey, it would be preferable for you to retrieve him within 24 hours, as the EVA suit systems will start to fail at this point and permanent brain damage will set in. However, if you are unable to retrieve him in this time frame we will go ahead with the brain transplant operation. Oh, and one final note. The public doesn't much care about any of the other kerbonauts. Therefore, they are to be seen as expendable. If you need to flush one out the hatch in order to save Jebediah, do not hesitate. Challenge rules: There will be a stock and modded leaderboard. Stock craft are to use ONLY stock parts, and particularly no mechjeb. Modded craft builders can do whatever they like. Ranking will be based on elapsed time at successful rendezvous with Jeb. To be ranked on the leaderboard you must submit the following screenshots: Launchpad. Jeb with the mission timer visible immediatly before entering the rescue craft. Rescue craft successfully landed back on Kerbin. Multi-craft rescues are allowed (eg, one craft to grab jeb and bring him into kerbin orbit, another to rendezvous and bring him to the surface). Persistence file required: http://www./?qjnq23ul48ifd6s Please back up your old persistence file if you wish to keep it. Then, delete it, and put this one in its place. Persistence saves can be found in the folder KSP > saves > defaults > persistent.sfs Good luck! Stock Leaderboard: 1) Nao with the Mercury Hammer 1:10:01 2) nhnifong 2:03:57 3) Modded Leaderboard: 1) maltesh 3:55:56 2) 3)

Actually you could max, for the same reason that footprints appear. Regolith on the moon has irregular jagged shapes that can be locked in place by pressure. On earth, sand is worn into smooth shapes that cant be locked in, hence the need for water to hold sand castles together. This was actually addressed by the mythbusters when they busted the myth that there is a giant conspiracy that is making us believe the moon landings happened. EDIT: Woops. I didn't see the posts on second page.

There doesn't seem to be anything that says this has to be reusable.. So I can just launch a normal rocket to 69000m, and then decouple the pod and parachute down.

Having those extra SRB's would unbalance your craft even more. Better off with a small projectile like an ASAS module mounted in front, as anything works to destroy this thing.

I'm going to go to that unheard of step in internet discussions and reference an actual peer-reviewd scientific journal. From this phase diagram, at any appreciable temperature (even below 0 celsius) hydrogen is going to be liquid at anything approaching the pressures at jupiters core. Even below these pressures, at intermediate depths, I believe the temperature of jupiter is too high to allow for solid hydrogen. Hence, any HYDROGEN will be liquid. Other materials such as carbon or irons coalescing at the core to form a solid core is another matter. Nature Materials 10, 904–905 (2011)

how do you make them spin independantly?