kHurtiZ

Correct.

One question: I can\'t get my laser drills to work at the pad, even after I have pressed the space bar. They slide all the way down after I press \'V\', but there\'s no sign of laser beams. Do the drills need to be in contact with the ground in order to work? Do they need an extra power source? (I already have a battery).

Hey, I see you made quite a few changes to the Achievements ... bah. Anyway so I went back to working on my uncontrollable monster, and I managed to get it at least semi-stable. Still spins quite a bit, but I think she\'ll hold. I\'ve done a lot of test launches and a lot of tweaking today; but now I need to get some sleep, so the actual deed will have to be tomorrow! Changed all of the engines to thrust-vectoring NERVAs (wasn\'t using enough of them); redesigned the rover deployment mechanism (old one caused massive spin). Removed redundant solar panels. Introduced a return stage. Moved struts around. Basically, rebuilt this thing from scratch. Here she is, the Outrageous IIId :

Here\'s the uncontrollable machine that I was going to use: I was hoping this would get me: -Environment-friendly -Mass Matters -No, Speed Matters -Home-on-Muon -Pack-a-Puch -My Precious Parts -Straightforward -Perma-Base -Mr. Fahrenheit -Next-Generation Jeb -Dooms Day Machine -Biological Jeb ... but sadly, this isn\'t going to happen! I\'ll let you know once I\'ve given it my best crack.

OK, so I had a bash at this last night. Seems I was waaay overoptimistic on the number of points I could score. Many of those achievements are totally achievable, but trying to do them all together on the same mission is really difficult, if not impossible. The ship I build specifically for this mission turned out to be uncontrollable ... will post a pic of it tonight anyway, because it just looks so cool! Anyway, decided to try to do this with my heavy \'tanker\' lifter. I failed twice because it\'s such a slow lumbering beast (~350T landed mass) it\'s pretty hard to control. The first time I tried it, I simply didn\'t start decelerating soon enough, and crashed into the crater at about 150 m/sec I\'ll give it another crack later.

Yeah I\'ll bite -- I reckon I can get > 2500 points.

If KSP worked properly, this would be pretty easy. However, the Kraken bug means that it\'s nearly impossible to keep control of your ship at the 30,000 m/sec++ velocities at that orbital altitude. Come on Squad -- please fix the Kraken!

I had a stab at this the other day. It works out that the sun\'s surface gravity is about 27g. That\'s a lot. Plus you have to spend about 150,000 m/sec delta vee. So you\'ll need to do some hectic .cfg editing. The altimeter is wrong -- the sun\'s surface is approximately 4700 km above where the game says it is. So, if you want to land on the sun you need an engine that is powerful enough to counteract 27g. And you need thrust vectoring if you want to stay upright; however, thrust vectoring at this insane thrust level tends to tip you over pretty fast. SAS can\'t cope. MechJeb does its best, but unfortunately this environment is just too tough for it. I gave up. Might still be possible, but it\'s really really hard. BTW, the sun does not burn you. This should be possible if you have a lot of patience. To mitigate the thrust vectoring falling-over issue, I\'d suggest that you have a lot of mass. Which means more thrust, but that\'s ok because we\'re editing .cfg files for this, right?

Wow. Just wow. I managed four complete grand tours, and to put the icing on the cake I had enough fuel left to make orbit one last time. Had _just_ enough fuel to deorbit, but not enough to control where I landed. So I overflew KSC by a long way and my capsule splashed down in the ocean. Here\'s the beast: While the craft does lift off from the pad without the SRBs, it\'s very slow so I added them to conserve fuel and get me to orbit a little quicker. But, it\'s still heavy on gas on the first lift-off; the first pair of asparagus tanks were empty just before I reached orbital velocity. I managed to do one complete grand tour; on approach to KSC for the first time, the second pair of asparagus tanks were empty, and I jettisoned them before landing. The last pair of asparagus tanks got me to orbit and allowed me to do my second grand tour and land at KSC again. But there wasn\'t much left in them after that, so I dropped them during my 3rd ascent to orbit. The central, inner stage with 2 long tanks and 8 NERVA engines lasted me for two complete grand tours. I also dropped a pair of the engines, because I didn\'t need so much thrust once the external tanks were gone. I used NovaPunch \'stock\' parts, but modified the nerva engines to give a little thrust vectoring. Only used 2 of those, though. The modified NP NERVA engine: CB_1mNERVAengine.zip My .craft file: Invincible 6LSB

MechJeb is allowed. You can land just the pod at KSC with a parachute ... but good luck doing the next grand tour if you don\'t have any propulsion! A soft, powered landing at KSC is preferred, for this reason. Yes, that\'s a landing at all 3. Orbital flyby is far too easy.

For your reference, here\'s a spreadsheet listing some fuel tank stats (see attachment) [[ Attachment updated ]]

How far can you travel with ONE spacecraft? The route is: KSP -> Minmus -> Mun -> KSP. (or you can swap Min and Mun if you so wish.) How many laps can you do? With a highly optimized rocket and enough fuel you should be able to do this at least once using stock parts, and using mods you should be able to do much more than that. No cfg edits that affect engine power / fuel efficiency or fuel tank mass / capcity! Mods allowed. Tell us how many laps (or part of a lap) you managed to do. You must land at each destination! When returning to Kerbin, you must land at KSC! May the asparagus be with you.

Oops, 15.2. Don\'t know why I said 15.4!

I have one: most mass to orbit!

Record title: Fastest time to the mun Record Statistic: 00:29:24 Game version when record achieved: 15.4 Screenshots: Mods used: NovaPunch, MechJeb (modded the nerva from NovaPunch to give me thrust vectoring -- only used 2 of the vectored engines, though.) OK so I realised that you could get to the moon far quicker than the 2 hour record listed. The trick is to punch straight for the moon, no getting into orbit first. So I used time warp to get the moon directly overhead KSC, then punched it. I burned all the fuel in the external tanks, which took me to about 4 megametres; coasted to 6.5 megametres, then flipped over and retro-burned. Timed it pretty well, so I didn\'t have much coasting during mun approach -- I wanted to come in as fast as possible. Here\'s the load-out: - 7 SRBs (the big ones); (also lit up 8 of my nervas for takeoff) - 16 nervas on the external jettisonable struts - Another 10 nervas on the main craft Didn\'t bother with legs, just landed on my engines. Not visible in the screenshots, but my maximum velocity was around 16,000 m/s. I think this is just about the fastest time achievable without cfg edits. Might be able to shave a few minutes off.

Ho hum ... I managed to get 1.831E12 joules. (1.8 Terajoules) Mass at impact was 319.2 tons, velocity 3387.1 metres per second. Using Novapunch parts [cfg edit on the nerva engine to give thrust vectoring, otherwise stock] and also my 2 metre nuclear waste part [attached] -- four of those, at 50 tons each plus miscellaneous hardware. Compare with nuclear weapons: (all figures in Terajoules) - Little Boy: 50 - 63 - Fat Man: 84 - 92 ... - Tsar Bonba: 210,000 (most powerful nuke of all time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba) Pic from just before impact attached. To do this, I raised my apoapsis to 11,400km, i.e. intersecting Mun\'s orbit, then I reversed direction and circularized my retrograde orbit. Once I got close enough to mun and trimmed my vector to ensure a direct hit, I stepped on the gas and accelerated straight into Mun.

Ah ok great. But I assume it then has atmospheric resistance? If not, it should! (HarvesteR: nudge nudge!)

Apologies for the necro bump -- but I think this challenge is awesome, so I\'m not actually that sorry. Does Sol actually have a radius?? I\'ve got pretty close to it before, but never managed to crash into it. So, the challenge I\'ve set myself is to a) allow the standard mod packs (personal opinion is that the stock parts suck -- sorry!) get 3 of these to either crash into Sol or put them on a sol escape trajectory. I\'ve got 0.14 yesterday, so I\'ll give the MechJeb plugin a try. Can\'t wait to get home and give this a shot kHurtiZ

Annoyed I can\'t do this. My final stage is stuffed with RCS and SAS modules. Don\'t understand why I can\'t control it!! Any ideas?