RoninFrog

The idea is that you'll use BG robotics parts. Fuel cells, solar panels, or RTG's should ideally be good for power generation for sustained flight.

Construct an ornithopter capable of sustained flight. Rules: No lifting surfaces can make a full rotation on any axis. No engines (engine thrust) allowed. Breaking Ground is probably really helpful but pure stock is allowed as well. Mod submissions (if any) will get their own category File-edited or overclocked submissions (if any) will get their own category No Alt+F12 Submissions: No submissions I haven't actually created a working ornithopter but I've been trying. If I get a working prototype I'll post it here.

Went biking. No reaction wheels, steers like an actual bike. It also weighs 278 kilograms and consumes only 0.05 EC/s.

Could be because I used green monoliths to unlock nuclear engines and then I sent Jeb to Eeloo and Dres. but that's a stock feature I dunno

Same I had no idea. When I heard of "alternate launch sites" I always assumed it referred to desert launch site or island airfield. Then one day I was looking for green monoliths and was like HUHHH??? I love easter eggs

The speed loss could also be because you seem to be driving west (orbital direction) on an equatorial route (about 30° N) at a high altitude (orbital navball). As you speed up, you negate more of your orbital speed so the NavBall reads a lower value. Just click it to switch to surface speed.

Tank in Stock KSP. (+breaking ground) It is incredibly accurate, destroying targets while moving up to 600 meters away. In theory it can hit targets even further away but I didn't really care to test it. The main issue I run into is the fact that the bullets move too fast for the collision detection to sometimes register, although on bigger targets it's not really a problem. The iron sights also work decently well for targets where target tracking isn't available. I could consistently snipe the R&D dome right in the middle from the runway. The setup should also in theory be able to hold a perfect target lock even if the rover itself is bouncing around on rough terrain. While I'm driving the rover in the video I'm making minuscule adjustments to the command chair angle based on where the bullet goes, so that they are all almost perfectly dead in the middle of the target.

Similar to @Lisias I also made a potential solution plane for the reddit guy making SRB planes, although I scrapped his design completely. I made what is basically an early-career C-172. It only costs 65 total science to unlock the required nodes. It is also marvelously easy to fly. I haven't crashed (this version) once, and its descent profile allows for pretty significant course corrections for precise landings. I tried to make the aerodynamics and "flight feel" match as closely to an IRL Cessna as I could, although the switch from a prop to a jet definitely increased the cruising speed. I've flown Cessna's in real life so that's what I based it off of. 30m/s takeoff/landing speed 90m/s cruising speed 30° ascent angle 5°-15° descent angle ~900 km range (?) One important difference is the lack of throttle input during the descent. The Juno engine has a much slower throttle response time than a Cessna propellor, so I decided to just eliminate throttle and control angle of descent with flaps only. Here's a video of me flying to the Island Airfield. Landed perfectly first try, didn't even make a quicksave that's how well this plane flies. Descent begins around 5:50, landing at 9:40.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx7suGlOr3s Well I put an emoji in the video title so the forums dont display it and I don't care enough to reupload.

Here's the latest and greatest: Completed stock Orion Drive: Fast mech (latest generation):

IIRC you'll also need to uninstall the DLC's. My run got marked as DLC even though I didn't use any parts or mechanics from them. Edit: Actually, other people completed the challenge with DLC installed and didn't get marekd. IDK why mine got the little green star lol

So today I woke up with the crazy idea to try a Jool-5 in a Caveman Career (no upgrades). I don't know if its possible but I'm sure gonna try. Launches: With this "Caveman Career" thing done, tomorrow I'll start looking for green monoliths on Kerbin, Minmus, Mun, and Gilly.

My name is Dunrick Kerman. If anyone should find this file, I just want you to know that I tried. At this point, I've given up any hope of rescue. It's been eight years since I've received any form of transmission from the KSC. It's only a matter of time before something happens. My fuel cells could go out. The algae tanks could freeze over. I could miss a rung on a ladder. I could spend the next hundred thousand years living in this base as Laythe's orbit slowly decays until Jool's radiation belts melt the poles and I drown in the ocean. It's no longer a matter of how long I'll be here until rescue comes. It's a matter of how long I'll be here until I die. I am the only one on this planet. It is only me, the uncaring cold, and the faceless green light of Jool. I haven't received any communication from another person for nearly three thousand five hundred days. I can feel my mind changing, slowly numbing to the loneliness, becoming a scheduled machine. My only solace is this writing, hoping that maybe in milennia to come by pure chance someone will land here and find this hard drive buried in the permafrost and the wreckage of my eroded base. That maybe someone will know I existed. I've come to accept that no one will take me back to Kerbin, back home. I can't accept that mission control has forgotten me. My mission was successful. The ISRU is working. I am ready to refuel spaceplanes. But no spaceplanes come to be refueled. I've been given no further instructions from mission control. They haven't even checked to see that I am still alive. My antenna isn't powerful enough to reach Kerbin, but KSC should be able to reach me with theirs. Are they punishing me for something I've done? There have been seven transfer windows since the base was established. They've spent years and millions to establish this base. Even if they throw me away, could they really throw all that away? I have an entire planet to myself, but the only thoughts in this whole world are my own. Some days I pretend I've died. Some of those days pretend stretches into belief. I'm trapped in an eternal twilit purgatory. I drink the same thick algae soup every day and check the same air filtration and drilling systems, watched the same unsetting green sphere in the southern sky. There is nothing I wouldn't give to see a real sunrise. To hear music, to see someone smile. I try to smile at myself in the silver reflections of the air ducts, but I've almost forgotten how. My facial muscles have atrophied. Why am I even writing this? No one's going to find it. It would be fantasy to think that someone would find this hard drive intact if at all. It would be fantasy to imagine writing this isn't a waste of time. The icy Laythe atmosphere will find it first. No one will ever know about me; for all purposes I am already dead. My time is already wasted. The fantasy world is the only world I can live in, the only world with hope. There is no hope in the real one anymore.

Does such a mod exist?

To avoid further potential conflict, here's the full list of old parts I could find through filters: Mk2 Lander can Twitch engine Illuminator Mk1 and Mk2 (no color settings) Twin boar (no flag) Probodobodyne HECS HG-5 Antenna (rotated) I don't believe there are any other old parts still included in the VAB/SPH. I also tried loading an old version of the Mk1-3 pod I downloaded off an old KerbalX craft and all the old parts that still loaded reverted to new versions.

While the Mk 1-2 Command Pod isn't in the parts list, the old Mk2 Lander can actually is. Wild stuff

I'm playing stock KSP. I filtered by tech level 6 and saw this weird looking twitch engine in the parts list. It's got almost exactly the same stats except slightly more mass and slightly worse atmospheric efficiency. What's up with that??

Practiced my landing precision. My goal was to land at the KSC from Duna through an Ike assist. It's pretty to calculate Kerbin's rotational position given that one Kerbin day is, well, one day in the T- clock. I lined up a 15km Ike assist to an exact 36km reentry (by using timewarp for fine adjustments). Now to see how I did. I also had an "incident" with my lander while I was at Duna:

< Me when I keep adding asparagus oscars to my 1100 ton Eve ascent vehicle

Tiny Perseverance and Ingenuity replica sent to Eve. Saw a Matt Lowne video where he made a sort of replica and I wanted to make my own. IIRC he said something about how the Perseverance would have to be "biblically massive" to have the Ingenuity deploy from the undercarriage. The only parts that were unrecovered/unused were two donut tanks and a spark engine (+heatshield and decouplers). Flight: Deployment:

I finished a working Orion drive in Stock KSP (+breaking ground). It doesn't require any cheats, but the craft file for the engine is pretty heavily edited. The shock absorbing system is ironically almost identical to shocks on a car. The spiraling struts are essentially a giant spring, and the double-rotor configuration in the middle serves as a shock dampener and keeps the engine straight. It isn't strictly required for some crafts, but just slapping the firework "nuke" canister straight to a craft hull causes significantly higher G-forces as well as distorting/detatching parts. This exact engine is rated for a 100 ton vessel, so the G-forces could be lower. 25 G's is technically survivable, but it is comparable to a moderate car crash according to my online research. At the 100 ton vessel limit, the craft only experiences 7.8 G's, which IMO is very feasible for a manned mission. The craft itself has 27 8-"nuke" canisters, and since each detonation gives the craft about 100 m/s of dV, then this craft has about 20,000 dV with about 400 m/s of chemical propellant for fine-tuning trajectories. Plenty of dV for an interstellar journey. The Orion drive tests start at 2:05:

Reworked the drive with the rotor technique I mentioned earlier to get 50,000 ISP (I think). I got around 1300 m/s of dV from one canister. I've got 12 more in the container modules for a total of nearly 17,000 dV for this craft.

Here's another application of squishy hinge tech: Stock Orion Drives. The design here is just a prototype. I've been thinking up a new design involving spiraled struts around a single motor head instead of having an individual hinge for each strut. This should reduce part count and complexity as well as largely eliminate the wiggling motion after a detonation. The current design has 8 (reloadable) charges, and has been tested statically to have an estimated ISP of close to 30,000. It doesn't require any cheats or mods to use, but the craft file is pretty heavily edited.

Eve is the hardest stock planet to return from, and so any full-scale (manned) Eve mission is going to involve some sort of either gigantic or glitchy lander design. Sending a gigantic lander through interplanetary space in turn requires an even bigger launch system. I've found it can get out of hand really fast, often surpassing the stock part diameters tank sizes into gigantic tangles of asparagus staging. I'm just wondering what y'all's launch systems look like for Eve. Do you go for aesthetics? Over-engineered dV budgets? Low mass? SSTO? I personally tried to go for an aesthetically pleasing rocket: What are y'all's designs?