chanic

Were those requests? If so, knock yourselves out. Just be warned, this thing is so big it may cause immense lag and/or melt your computer.

Er well, it does roll in order to make it to the water, but just getting it off the runway without it snapping in half is rather difficult. It\'s much less likely to break once it\'s on the water.

I made a barge. I guess I could try to land VTOLs on it, assuming they could survive the deadly lag zone that surrounds it.

You\'re the scorekeeper Tinned, so however you want to do it is fine. I\'ve just been including the runway distance to subtract because it seemed unfair to include a few kilometers I traveled before the MET even started counting (it only begins when you leave the ground), especially when half of that distance is spent casually rolling at 20 m/s on a perfectly flat surface.

But... there are no mountains north of KSC, only water. If you mean the mountains to the west, there\'s already a similar challenge going on here: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=12832.0

Double-posting because I have a new best time. I wasn\'t really happy with my time before, as it was really just my old buggy with ASAS and canards tacked on. Also, I was really impressed with Kosmo-not\'s amazing downforce fire-and-forget rover, but I decided it finished the run with far too much fuel left. So now, I have a new buggy that borrows a little from Kosmo-not (wings are the best structural material ever! How do they weigh so little?!), but is also faster, and less safe. It\'s also really optimized for a 40 km run (look at how much fuel I have left). Without further ado, my new best time is 3:27, and I\'m sure that\'s legit this time. My stats aren\'t glitched and I took Kosmo-not\'s suggestion of putting a command module out to use as a finish marker. Once again, subtract 3,700 m for rolling start runway driving. I think this is the best I am going to do. I have tried a lot of designs and everything else has either been slower or too fragile to survive the trip. Once again, I\'ll attach the craft file if anyone wants to play with it.

Ok, I\'m back with an official time. I did around 41.4 km in 3:51 I figured it would be close to Kosmo-not\'s because my rover\'s performance seemed close to the speed values he listed for his, but that is way closer than I thought it would be. Anyways, pics in spoiler. Oh, and I\'m listing my distance as 41.4k because I subtracted 3,900 m for rolling start runway antics.

I think my 3:25 record time is invalid After tweaking my design a little (another engine, more RCS, less wheels) I just retraced the steps of my run hoping to set a better time. I did, but the result screen showed a distance traveled of a little under 36,900 m. It looks like the maximum speed is correct this time too. Meaning, whatever glitch I encountered before that made my max speed read as 1.8 km/s+ also had the effect of inflating my distance traveled by an absurd amount. So I\'ll try to do a valid 40k run with my rover, until then I\'m off the leaderboard.

Aha, I was wondering if someone would notice the travel distance. I doubt I did, I made a beeline for the nearest mountain. I shall now share the secret of my time and distance so Kosmo-not can proceed to obliterate my time with his superior rover. A rolling start, to be exact. Taxiing down the runway. Starting my RCS-powered U-turn at the far end of the runway My RCS is pretty minimal, so I didn\'t make it. Now I\'m backing up to make my U-turn a 3-point turn. Pointed back down the runway. Time to kick the tires and light the fires! And the payoff. Almost 160 m/s and already pointed at the mountains at T=0. Huh, so I redid these maneuvers but ended the flight right as I left the runway to test how much of my distance was before the clock started. I got a result of approximately 3,900 m. Not nearly as much as I was expecting. I guess that means I\'m still in the 40km+ category. Also, I\'ll upload my craft file if anyone wants to play with it. I think it\'s a bit different because it uses no downforce aerodynamics whatsoever, only some RCS to push the nose back down when it catches a bad bump. It makes for a very entertaining ride, as cresting hills results in some pretty spectacular jumps, and thankfully no flight like with my attempts at rovers using wings of any kind.

First of all, great challenge! I had a lot of fun with it, and it is indeed challenging. I\'ve spent about two days now coming up with my current design. My Time: 3:25 Almost there! Keeping my fingers crossed! Stopped! Without exploding first! Hooray! Flight Results. I have no idea why it says I hit a speed of 1,848 m/s. My craft tops out at around 170. The 5.1 Gs is kinda suspect too. Maybe weird readings do to landing gear compressing during bumps? (It was definitely a bumpy trip.) I crashed a lot during this challenge. Sometimes slamming into the ground, sometimes rolling over, sometimes a spectacular disintegrating cartwheel resulting in multiple components flying past 2.5 km away without showing any signs of coming down (and me laughing hysterically). But this only happened once: My craft hit a rather large bump and bounced into the air nose-up. I applied RCS to bring the nose down, and it kind of worked. It landed on its wheels, and didn\'t break up, but it hit hard enough that the nose rebounded into the air again. I applied RCS again desperately trying to keep it under control, but when it came down this time, it broke the fuselage in half. This wasn\'t all that strange, but what happened after was... The front half survived and kept rolling. I was so certain that the result was catastrophic failure that I moved the mouse to go click on the 'restart flight' button, only to be surprised it wasn\'t there. It took me a moment to realize my intrepid kerbonauts were still happily coasting along.

Haha yeah, it isn\'t terribly smooth. It\'s actually pretty agressive for how controllable it is. I think after one flight it said I had pulled 9.8 Gs in it.

That would make it too easy! Where\'s the fun in doing it the non-Kerbal way? Also, I\'m a stock purist, and I figured other stock purists might find it fun to mess with too.

Now that the runway at Kerbal Space Center is officially open, Jeb has pulled his vintage biplane out of storage so that he has something to terrify his co-workers (or any unsuspecting bystanders) with during his off hours. I started designing this aircraft simply because of how much the Radial Engine Body resembles the cowl of old radial piston engines. It became an interesting challenge due to weight distribution. Trying to make something resembling an old biplane while having almost nothing up front and the weight of a jet engine in the tail was tricky to say the least. Flight Notes: Before takeoff apply some pitch up trim (ALT+S) as it is nose-heavy at full load to account for the eventual CG shift as fuel is used. It is a tail-dragger, but takeoff isn\'t too difficult. At the speed the gear starts to get squirrely (80 m/s or so) you can lift off if you haven\'t already. Important: It starts to get unstable after about a third of the fuel tank is gone (Jeb loves this part). At this point and beyond you should only apply small pitch inputs. If you give it a strong pitch down input you may not live to regret it. Anyways, enjoy!

Give this one a whirl. It\'s been my aerodynamics testing 'control group' in which I tried to keep everything as simple as possible to eliminate any glitchiness. After playing with fuel loading and wing placement to mess with the CG I found it to be quite hard to lose control of unless you actively try to do so. My only recommendation for ease of flying is to set some pitch up trim (ALT+S) before takeoff to account for it being nose-heavy at full load. As it drains its fuel tanks just trim it back toward neutral little by little to keep it flying level.