Mister Dilsby

Turbojet + nuke works just fine thank you See this great SSTO thread. for lots of good ideas on how to SSTO in 1.0.2.

Not this Bill in this save, no. I wonder if a programmer got the number of stars confused with skill level? i.e. a two-star engineer like Bill is level 3, but when he tries to fix the wheel it thinks "he has two stars, he must be level two." I'll give him another star in a backup save later on and see if that works... if not I will edit the main save to fix the wheels. Thanks Slam!

This is odd. I dropped a base on the Mun and broke a couple of wheels. No problem, my Bill Kerman is a two-* engineer and I need to add solar to the base anyway, so I send him along. And then... Looking at Bill in the Astronaut Complex confirms he has the "Fix Wheels" ability. A bug, or am I missing something?

As are Starhawk and Norcalplanner, I just happen to have taken the last chip out of the bag

Just one left-- HelmutK I will take yours under review and you should hear the results within a couple of days.

It was a pleasure, iLikeRovers, as it is my pleasure to tell you your entry qualifies for Level 2! Your launch vehicle was impressively Kerbal, and though it strayed ever so slightly from the VAB circle was a wonder of staging. I would not be surprised if your username were 'iLikeAsparagus' Your launch and transfer to Eve were nicely done, and I always appreciate a hands-on navigator. At first I wondered why you didn't go for a sea-level launch with such a massive ship, and then of course I realized--you are carrying four Kerbals in a hitchhiker! Very, very immpressive, and a nice landing on "Pink's Peak". Your rovers were my favorite part, great idea to glide down to the sea--I did a similar thing on my mission to get the liquid sample, but due to choice of landing site had to drive overland and it was much less interesting. Too bad two of your Kerbals glitched behind--I would have had no problem if you'd edited your save file to put them back in the lander before takeoff. Ascent was textbook and well-documented, littering decorating Eve's surface with discarded rocket motors. You had plenty of dV left for a lower altitude launch, but why take chances, especially when you've found such a nice high plateau to land on? Congratulations, and wear your badge proudly!

It's very tough to balance a point system a priori. I mean, how many more minutes of flight time should it take to carry sixteen more kerbals, all things being equal? Oh, and by the way all things are NOT equal! I'd say let the points fall where they may, you're not going to create a perfectly balanced system anyway. You might consider awarding titles or having leaderboards for "smallest", "cheapest", "fastest", etc. to encourage a variety of entries.

Nothing like starting with the obvious... just a test flight, no passengers aboard.

Hard to say without having tried it yet, there may be different and interesting effects at various altitudes so I might suggest leaving it high. If you've tried it and see exploits above 15km that you don't want in the challenge, then by all means lower the ceiling.

Ah, very good add--that should do it. I like that you made an "in-world" justification for it--there are no O2 masks in the stock Mk3 passenger cabin! With V1.0.2 aerodynamics and thermals, we are going to have to walk a fine line between speed and explodyness. I'd suggest all entries post a screenshot of the F3 window after landing, that should give details of every part that burned off as well as (IIRC) the elapsed time and max altitude reached.

Yeah, you have to be careful how many different controls are working at once, because I do NOT think they have been optimized to work together. The special problem of 1.0 and onward is that drag in atmosphere now depends somewhat on orientation of the ship. So, as one control system tries to correct it, it creates an oscillation that a second control system tries to correct, perhaps in a much more violent way. The first control system tries to respond, they feed into each other until something breaks. My advice is turn on the minimum number of control inputs to maintain heading. Think about which inputs are coarse adjustment (gimbal, big aero surfaces) and which are fine (SAS torque). And if you're not doing so already, stay away from SAS direction headings like prograde hold, those are all under-damped.

Looking at some other posts, I think Serassa isn't really objecting to my question, the problem is that he's raised questions on other challenge threads and feels he's been treated unfairly for it. This isn't the place to try and sort all that out. I propose that we end this discussion/thread hijack now, let the OP respond to questions (if he hasn't been scared off entirely) and start building ships for the challenge.

That was uncalled for. What makes you think I don't like this challenge? Tell me if I'm wrong, but I do think I raise two very valid questions: --Must the ship be a 'plane'? (and what's a plane? I would say a ship that relies on wing surfaces to get lift, but even that is a subjective definition) --May the ship leave the atmosphere? The answers to these questions would strongly influence the design of my entry. Defining and running a challenge is harder than a lot of people realize. I should know, I've run a few myself. One of the most important things to do is to express the rules clearly, so that people DO have fun with the challenge and don't just submit grief entries.

Seems like the easiest way to do this would be to orbit. Remember, it would be quite possible to, say, launch a rocket with a MK3 passenger compartment vertically from the runway, turn east, orbit once and come screaming down to the runway behind a heatshield or three and loads of parachutes. As far as I can tell from your rules this would be a perfectly valid entry. Are you requiring that the ship stay in atmosphere, or even be a 'plane'?

iLikeRovers, just wanted to let you know I have started reviewing your submission for Level 2. Everything looks good so far, the only thing I may object to is the boosters spilling out of the VAB circle and over the launchpad. But hey, I can be reasonable Unfortunately I am at work and our firewall blocks your video site, so I can't see the most critical part--the launch from Eve surface--until I get home. To embed imgur albums, just type (replacing i with j of course) [jmgur]ALBUM[/jmgur] where ALBUM is the five-character code you see when you are on the album page. I tried to do that for one of your albums, but for some reason I can't find the 5-char code. I wonder if you may have published your albums in imgur a different way. For example if I view my Eve Surface Ops album from in my account the URL is http://imgur.com/a/BqSsq#0, so to post pics I enter [jmgur]BqSsq[/jmgur]

Very nice! I had not thought of using RAPIERs in jet-only mode, as I understand it they have a big advantage at high speed/altitude. Hm.... - - - Updated - - - Could not agree more with this statement. What's missing in 1.0.2 is the ability to fly an air-breathing craft at mach 6+ at 50km altitude without melting compressor blades and everything behind them. That never should have been possible. This thread proves that we can indeed get to LKO with fuel to spare in 1.0.2.... AND we don't even need to carry oxidant anymore

Happy to share! What I've learned so far is that there appears to be a "tipping point" of getting enough velocity for the ramjets to develop ludicrous thrust. For my designs to date, I find I need to keep it under about 9.5 tons per jet engine and about 14 tons per nuke. The 28t craft shown above works great on 3 jets and 2 nukes; at 30t is doesn't make it. Ascent profile for the Nooxie 6: --Start on full throttle jet engines 1 and 2. --Fly off end of runway, retract gear. --Start jet engine 3 and pull up to 25-30 degrees --Keep full throttle all three engines. Velocity should rise steadily as thrust compounds, beginning to spike around 10km --At 18-20km you should see your velocity approaching 1200 m/s, climb rate 400 m/s or better, and jet thrust decreasing. --Start the LV-Ns when you begin losing velocity. You may have to start early, around 18km, if TWR is low. --When jets flame out, close your intakes. --Depending on your TWR you will need to climb at 30-45 degrees. Watch your time to apoapsis; nose up to always keep it >30 seconds out as your apoapsis increases and your periapsis becomes less negative --As you approach orbital velocity you can nose down to prograde, and circularize. Good luck! There may certainly be room for improvement in the above and I would love to hear how you make out. - - - Updated - - - You know, that's not a bad idea. I did use vernors on a similar design in 0.90, for Duna. - - - Updated - - - Thank you!

The exception of course is to Slashy's wise wisdom is if you just don't want to carry oxidant anymore, then LV-Ns and turbojets are the only way to fly I did add the 727-style third jet and here we are in LKO with 1900 dV to spare! ~28t at liftoff, no O2. Have not tested cargo carrying yet but am confident I could bring at least a few tons in that Mk2 bay abaft the cockpit. ETA: I do generally fly pure stock, but if I were to mod one part it would be to make that bicouple liquid fuel-only.

Right, I'm in the camp that really never expected single stage to go anywhere outside the Kerbin system. I do like to use my plane fleet to serve stations around Mun an Minmus, so will be tweaking my designs to achieve that. I don't necessarily expect the ship's make a round trip back to Kerbin on one tank, as I will be able to refuel the stations locally with mining. So, Kerbfleet's designs are converging on a liquid fuel only, ~28t, two seater with modest cargo capability and ~1500 dV remaining in LKO. That serves my needs and my vision of a realistic space transport infrastructure.

...and it gets in orbit with 1400m/s to spare now, with a more optimal ascent profile Like you I am also getting lots of ideas on this thread! I do think I have room to get heavier on 2x LV-N, I am at 0.74 TWR now and could easily add a few tons. However the 2x jet engines are having trouble pushing anything above 24t beyond mach 2, so I will experiment with adding a third engine "727-style" as Wanderfound did.

Noted. But hey, at least this brought some of those very cool designs to the forum where we all can see 'em!

Doing a bit better in the no-O2 category: this 20.3t craft built around Mk2 got up with 900dV to spare. Still not where Rune is. Could do better swapping cargo bay for more LH2.

It's what they run on in stock. v0.90 nukes consumed H2 and O2, post V1 they consume only LH2.

iVG, my ship is a proof-of-concept to demonstrate LH2-only SSTO in the new version. It was never meant to demonstrate cargo capability. Looking at Rune's ship I think it is possible to carry a couple of tons with a two-nuke, two-jet craft. I'll work on that next. Once I get there, then maybe we can all whip out our orange tanks and compare how full they are, OK?

Well, if someone had to beat me I'm glad it was you Rune! Sorry I missed yours, the forum is very crowded these days Single nuke works in my craft because it's so light, of course. I am at <0.7 TWR when I shut off the jets (1200 m/s, 24km) and it just makes it with careful flying. I'll look into scaling up around the Mk2 airframe and see if I can get more dV in orbit. - - - Updated - - - Easy to miss, and about as useful as the boot on a Maserati. 1.25m bay immediately abaft the cockpit.