ralanboyle

@Goddchen, looks good. Thanks for the shout out.

I decided I needed to go big, I ended up with something that I imagine as a military cargo float plane... It is fairly hard to fly due to adverse pitch while commanding roll, but she stalls super slow so spot landings are fun!

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. You worded better...

Here is my more conventional Sea Plane, I imagine it being what Icon Aircraft would make if they made a twin jet. It is not useful but its fun and easy to fly. @Goddchen A note on what you are calling Dippedidip. This move you are doing is giving your wing a positive angle of attack. When you take off from a runway, your elevator causes the tail to go down, which creates a positive angle of attack on your main wing. Since these planes are in the water, the tail cannot go down so you have to go underwater and then pitch up in order to get the tail down. In real life, sea planes use flaps to overcome this, but since flaps aren't available in KSP, you can just angle the whole wing up a little bit. I could nerd out for awhile talking about how various shapes create lift but I'll leave it at this for now.

Yep, stall speed is directly connected to wing loading. So if you want to be able to fly slower, increase your wing area relative to total weight.

Alrighty, after fighting several glitches I got my Float SSTO working. Now that Val is out of the way I'll try something a little more traditional.

Two Questions: 1. In order to simplify the circumnavigation, Can we do the equator instead of the monument? Keeping a straight line will be tough on that inclination. 2. You say we can use a hopper as long at it stays below 100m... how big can these hops be? Let's say each hop is half an orbit, is this acceptable as long as I can fly below 100m? If the answer to these questions is "yes," I will probably give this a go but I don't really want to spend hours driving in arced lines chasing the monument.

Welp, I decided to try knocking out the Bridge and VAB helipad landings with a single glider. It was harder than I expected it to be!

Let's see it.

As I was looking at old challenges to combine for the new one, I came across this. I noticed that the longest distance was 29km and thought it might be worth having another go now that KSP2 is more stable. The Island runway is 39Km away so that was my goal. If anybody wants to get into a distance competition, I'd be down to see how much further we can go.

I shot a 2.3T then realized that I could do the last couple hundred m/s with the jetpack so I dropped a fuel tank which lowered it to 2.17T and winged the landing. Worked out no problem.

And for many of us (like me) you have to change the key binding every time you load the game even though it shows the new binding… it forgets.

Excellent, I was hoping to wake up to a couple entries and you did not disappoint! @astrobond Yours looks remarkably similar to what I've been playing with although I'm not as optimized yet, up around 3T right now. Also, you might be winning for time played on KSP2... that's a lot for this point in early access. I also have a few hours in KSP... @Goddchen Nice rocket. Your upper stage is well optimized and I bet you can chop your lower stage in half with a smaller engine. You have a better understanding of the game than I did at 350 hours!

Jeb has committed Mutiny and must be marooned on the Mun! Your mission is to take off from KSC carrying Jeb (or any other Kerbal) and place him on the Mun. No return trip is scheduled! The agency wants to spend as little money as possible so weight is the driving factor; the lower the better. The Specifics: Record your weight in the VAB. Take off from KSC carrying a Kerbal (single launch) Place your Kerbal (alive) on the surface of Mun. Include a record of all staging events showing Dv. Videos are more fun for everyone but pics will do. Since one way trips to the Mun are one of the earlier achievements for most players, I am hoping that this challenge will help a few newer players learn how to optimize their ships. You don't need a big ship to go a long way! Let us know how many hours you've been playing (Combined KSP and KSP2) so that we can congratulate your achievement!

Welp, I think you've found the floor. I can match the 0.64 but I can't do it at .63. You've got me beat! This was fun though, and I'm glad to see the competition! Given the glitches, I like challenges that push the limits of simplicity, rather than enormous, complicated ships. I'm thinking about a similar challenge to the Mun...

I like the Grand Tour idea. I’m not sure if I can get it done with the current glitches but it does seem like a reasonable next step.

Guys, I posted this challenge and then immediately went on vacation. I’m thrilled to come back to see you two battling it out! While looking at your ships I also had the thought about other tanks but obviously I haven’t built anything yet. I’ll have to see what I can do!

This on is simple: Put this lightest ship you can into orbit without shedding parts. No need to land. Weight is shown in the VAB including fuel. Orbit is PE above 70km. You can use the stage button to trigger events but you cannot detach any parts. Super simple but not super easy!

Thanks!

Moving onto the Panther. I got 104km high and fell at 1139m/s with my single engine design. I found that multi engines had a lot of trouble with consistent airflow at high altitude. I think maybe bigger is not better with the panther.

Ah yes, that certainly is glitch exploitation! While it would be good to explicitly outlaw it, I think its generally assumed. Alright. I repeated the numbers without engine clipping.

Alright, here is my Whiplash run. Using 10 engines she got up to 1618m/s in a dive and up to 158km high. I'm sure she can go faster but not sure about higher.

I have not found the number of engines to be the biggest factor in jet top speed. I might be wrong but I doubt the winning ships will be enormous.

Game on... I haven't made videos yet because there will be a lot of iterative improvement but so far I'm getting about 150km and 1450m/s with the Whiplash. So there is a starting point for that one. I'd love to get a good competition going on this one.

I can't tell if landing at Dawn helped or not but I got it done. I had to persevere through a pretty big range of glitches, but in the end I believe I got every biome on Laythe. This mission was fun aside from the glitches, so maybe I'll run it again somewhere else. Myabe... Poles, Hills, Shores, Shallows, Ocean, Mealoficious Rex.