G Addict

Looks like the Aerospike is even more ridiculously good than before, huh? I\'ll be building a 0.16 entry soon.

Much like my first rocket in 0.15, except mine was an inefficient and enormous beast with staging which went something like 9x tricouplered LFE with one tank each, then 15 solids, then 9 solids, then 3 LFE with 3 tanks each, then 1 LFE with two tanks, then a tiny little lander consisting of a small tank, small engine, 3 legs and a pod. Forgot the parachute, though I did just about manage to pull off a powered landing much to my surprise. I still haven\'t quite got over my obsession with stupidly huge rockets.

The preestablished base may have clipped into the ground or just been plain unstable to begin with - IIRC it\'s at about 600m that the game loads physics for other craft, so it basically just realised that the previously non explody thing had, from, its point of view, been explody all along. So it exploded.

I use the ballast tanks from Gaby\'s sub mod for putting the bigtruk underwater. Means you don\'t have to lug a clumsy weight all the way to the ocean.

Ah, sorry, the new craft\'s called the \'Wobbleboard\' for its tendency to lose control and oscillate wildly above 3000m. Gave me quite a scare when it flipped out, but recovered, stalled again then flew just fine until landing. Should\'ve got the KSC into the landing shot, but was too happy at finally getting the damn thing to not disintegrate to consider, you know, actually having proof that I was in the right place. I was, but... :

Haha! Proven that my shuttle can land while full! It\'s really sensitive though - it exploded at just 5m/s downwards velocity. Had to bring it down like a feather to avoid explodification. Now to do it after going to space and back. EDIT: Well, I just landed it on the terrain. That\'s enough for one of the pilot proficiency awards, right? I overshot KSP and went into a spin when I tried to turn, but this plane seems rather good at recovering from them. Once it was under control it flew fine. Shot 235: orbit achieved Shot 236: Oops, missed KSC Shot 237: Coming in to land Shot 238: Coming to rest while braking.

1) Spend two hours building the largest rocket possible to test all the new parts. 2) Watch it collapse on the pad. 3) Build something boring so I can see kerbals EVAing. Maybe kick one out the airlock while still suborbital and see what happens.

558) When the only thing holding your rocket upright on the pad is the launch tower.

> I hate lag. While my new plane seems a little too heavy when full to land, it should be able to get below 10 m/s vertical speed when empty of rocket fuel. However, I haven\'t been able to get the damn thing to fly properly due to lag while on (or even looking at) Kerbin. It didn\'t matter too much on the other plane because its glide characteristics were so good, but this one needs a powered landing as far as I can tell, and I can\'t fly it straight when the controls are going too far every time. At least I\'ve learned how to deorbit so that I hit (supposedly) controllable speeds while over KSC now. :

How come cargo bays haven\'t worked? Surely a box with a node for the cuttlefish decoupler on the bottom and one for a landing gear powered door would work? I suppose it\'s not that simple, if it\'s never worked before?

Minmus. I can ramp my Kiwicycle off its mountains and not have to worry too much about the impact of falling. 8)

Does it have to be a non-decaying orbit? Because if so, the smallest possible orbit is 70kmx70km. Making people work out how far into the atmosphere they can get away with could be interesting, though.

My first Mun lander in 0.15 did this by accident - I forgot to attach a parachute, and realised this at about 10000m above Kerbin\'s surface on the first launch, after landing and returning from the Mun. And proceeded to pull off my first ever powered landing. Boy was I proud of myself. :

Australian Sloth, looking at that craft, you\'d probably benefit from using a turbojet in place of the normal jet - it can take you to 10000m and above on its own, so you\'ll save some rocket fuel while in the atmosphere, for only .2t more weight - using rockets while there\'s still a lot of atmospheric drag can severely hamper your efficiency.

Spaceplane name: Cormorant Fully Reusable LKO Testship Type of plane: Orbit capable spaceplane Maximum speed: Unknown maximum orbital velocity, 600m/s atmospheric. Cruising speed: 400m/s Cruising altitude: 12000m Maximum altitude: Orbital, ~1Mm(untested) Maximum range: Orbital Maximum flight time: N/A - orbital, unknown jet endurance. Engine type: 4x Turbojet, 2x Aerospike Rocket. Engine number: see above Orbital capabilities: Kerbin Can escapie Kerbin: Untested, unlikely. Can escape the sun: no Landing capabilities: Powered and unpowered, reasonably flat terrain. Can reach the mun: Untested, unlikely. Can reach Minmus: See above Handling: Good Gliding capability: Reasonable Notes: Centre of mass is slightly above centre of thrust, so tends to nose up with rockets at full throttle. Can zoom climb to 10000m on turbojets only. Rocket and jet fuel is entirely separate, and those engines function independently. The craft is fully reusable, though testing with drop tanks and jettisonable orbit assist rockets is ongoing.

Well, I was close to that precision award. Deorbited too early again, but had a decent amount of rocket fuel left so I stayed suborbital for a while, then flew on jets for a while. Ran out of fuel at 15000m and thought I was going to crash into those mountains about 80km west of KSC, but just about cleared them. Unfortunately, it was about midnight and pitch black, so I don\'t know what I hit, just that it disintegrated my plane. I did learn something helpful though - this one is far less effective at gliding than the other, and is barely safe to do an unpowered landing (gliding level at ~50m/s with about 12m/s vertical speed) - next time, I\'ll save some fuel.

Semo, I saw that in the thread you made it for. Not a lot I can say about it other than it\'s crazy awesome and should\'ve worked because of that. cardgame, that\'s pretty damn impressive! How long did it take you to get the balloon\'s attatch point in the right place? I\'ve never got a horizontal envelope to balance, let alone with a working plane underneath it too! Suppose I should post my best attempts at this - I have two working airships, both have vertical envelopes so look more like hot air balloons than anything else. Now to go find some screenies. EDIT: Here they are! The first one is actually my first working airship, the \'Overhead\' class scout airship. Light and efficient with a relatively high operational ceiling, it can use its rotating engine pods to compensate for tilting caused by their offset from its centre of mass, enabling faster, smoother flight (50m/s at 500m) and altitude control. Its cannons, attached to those engine pods, fire together, up to eight times using 500m/s light rounds - when firing from altitude, the high velocity of larger shells is not needed to allow maximum range. To augment targeting of these cannons and provide backup weaponry once the railgun ammo is spent, each pod has an underslung Sunbeam laser. There are cameras mounted to the front of the main structure and underside of the cockpit, along with a ring of floodlights for better nighttime visibility. The torque applied by the cockpit is sufficient to steer relatively well. The second, the \'Ominous\' class warship, is my inital foray into multiple canopy airships, and as such has some oversights. The greater lift means a heavier gondola can be used, along with larger engines to compensate for the drag from the other envelope. It has a separate turret, with four instead of two cannons, which can rotate independently of the airship body - necessary for ease of targeting, as its size severely hampers manoeuvrability. A single Sunbeam is mounted under the turret again for targeting. The rotating engine pods make a return for the same reason, allowing a top speed at low altitude of 55m/s. Its dual envelopes are quite underburdened, requiring only about 63% fill in each to lift off to 500m, so there\'s quite a bit of room for modification and addition of ordnance. I suspect I can use a similar mounting method to attach another two envelopes to this hull to increase its lifting ability further.

How are your jets not using the rocket fuel and vice versa? I know that won\'t be an issue once they\'re seperate, but the only reliable way I\'ve found is to mount one of the engine sets on decouplers. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET?! : Also, that ship isn\'t ugly IMO. Stick a nosecone on the front and it\'ll look really slick. I\'ve been working on getting a more reliable craft - the one I used before isn\'t playing ball anymore and hasn\'t successfully achieved an orbit-then-return mission since, either running out of fuel or going head over heels on reentry, so I now have something I think looks cooler (picture attatched) which can climb pretty much vertically all the way to orbit, hit 100x100, then use its remaining fuel to deorbit. Only problem is the Aerospikes are slightly below the centre of mass due to the wings on the top, so it goes nose up if you put it above 75% throttle for any length of time. Unfortunately on that flight I landed it on a slope and knocked off one of the rocket engines, so it wouldn\'t have been a valid entry. Think I\'ll try for some of the pilot precision awards with this thing.

You\'ll probably need this before you read further. So, I was messing around with the Ludodyne K101 rigid airship envelope when I had visions of Mortal Engines style flying cities and massive war airships. Sadly, I suck at balancing the things and my computer can\'t handle enormous craft so I turn to you guys to satiate my desire for ridiculous contraptions. No scoring here, other than what impresses me in its ingenuity and style. The bigger the better, and the more gimmicks the better - guns, bombs, the ability to launch a plane, anything. Show me what you can do! You could also go the other way and build a submarine base using Gaby\'s POC mod (IIRC) which I haven\'t linked because last time I tried it it caused my game to malfunction severely due to submerged debris. I think there\'s already a challenge to launch a spaceplane from one of these, anyway. I\'ll list my favourites here, with page references, assuming the thread hits more than one page. EDIT: Eh, lots of views, no replies. Feel free to post what you think I should include which interests you. Cool airships, in no particular order: Pg1, post 4 - Semo, with a not-quite-an-airship-actually-a-boat built to recover stranded probes. Uses Damned Robotics in an arm. Pg1, post 5 - cardgame, with the S.S. 99 Luftbalons. Comes equipped with a pair of individually-firing and targetting railguns, plus a Bumblebee Mk1 escape plane. So heavy it barely gets off the ground!

I realise it\'s not exactly in their job description to lift 50t+ planes off the ground, but while trying to recreate Thunderbird 2, I\'ve found that the Robotics pistons tend to literally snap off when used to lift the aircraft, with the internal piston actually sliding through the shell then exploding. Any chance of them getting a durability upgrade? If that\'s not something that\'s going to happen, how do I change that property of them?

You have to rotate the accessories so the plate they\'re mounted on lies flat against the front of the Bigtrak, with the equipment in the \'up position\'. Then when you press the landing gear key they\'ll move into a usable position. Took me ages to work that out, too.

You have way too many SAS units - they\'re quite heavy, and a single Advanced SAS, which you also have, is typically enough to keep any rocket steady during its ascent if you use the AV someserialnumber steerable winglets on the lower stages.

Any of the vanilla liquid rocket engines - the standard medium engine if the lander just has the Bigtrak or Kiwicycle, and the lower stages are powerful enough to lift it, the gimballed medium engine if I have something less cooperative (Bigtrak with other bits attatched, offsetting centre of mass) and the small engine if I intend to do a lot of low altitude flying for the longer life. The lander seems purpose designed for using them. After remembering how awesome Thunderbirds was when I was four, and how much of a striking resemblance the Bigtrak with bulldozer addon has to the \'firefly\' machine from that show, I\'ve gone about making a thunderbird 2-ish carrier plane for it. Sadly not reusable as yet, and larger variants with the original\'s VTOL capabilities have proven entirely uncontrollable and way too heavy, but I can now deliver the Bigtrak to other continents in a matter of minutes, at about mach 1.6! (The attatched picture is of an older version - the new one uses only jet fuel because I think using rocket fuel in jets is silly.) The carrier takes off on gear mounted to wing connectors for the required ground clearance, which I usually eject for easier flying, but I imagine it could be kept and though it\'d look silly while flying I could land with it for something a bit closer to the way TB2 actually works. I tried using Damned Robotics pistons to lift it off the ground, but they broke off.

Hah, so cool. I might try this challenge soon, though I haven\'t even been able to make a stable submarine, let alone a plane that can launch from one. The engine explosion happens when your landing gear are too close to your engines - not necessarily that you came down too hard.