Salda007

Aerobraking certainly exists after the atmosphere change. I dropped my apokee from about 4.7Mm down to 2.3Mm (perikee was ~42000m) last night while working on the 'How low can you go' challenge. And I\'ve certainly dropped a ship out of orbit through repeated passes through the atmosphere before. The problem is that you can\'t get a stable orbit using just aerobraking; you will need at least one burn to lift your perikee out of the atmosphere, otherwise you will just aerobrake yourself all the way to the ground. Of course, under the terms of the challenge, you just need to get into a roughly circular orbit using aerobraking, not a stable one. So it should be possible for at least one orbit, but I wouldn\'t put money on much more than that, unless you\'re just skimming through the topmost edges.

You can make an upward-facing 5-1 adapter, however, it will not allow you to reconnect multiple branches from farther up. As in, you can\'t go pod, 1-5 adapter, 5 tanks, 5-1 adapter, engine, and have the engine pull from all five tanks; it will only connect to and pull from one. However, if you have the parent part (the part closest to the command pod) connecting to the 1 side of the adapter, you could put five 'suspicious-looking objects' on top. TL;DR - Yes, you can, but it would only work the way you expect if it\'s mounted above the command pod. Which should be fine, really...

Heh, for what it\'s worth, the same layout but using the silly C7 tank broke 1950m/s. 8)

Okay, I freely admit to using the now-depreciated absurdly-dense C7 wing tanks in my previous build. In the spirit of fair competition, this number was fairly reached without the use of that tank (the flat, black, 750-fuel-for-.3-mass one): 1775.3 m/s What, you thought it would be lower??? Hah!

There are three chutes at takeoff. The top one is a standard mk16 parachute. Underneath it are two of NovaSilisko's stackable mk3 parachutes, with one of his a nano-decouplers in between. So it lands the first time under the mk16 and mk3, detaches those, and then lands the second time under the second mk3.

Yeah, pretty much! I saw Napaeozapus's post, faster than mine, straight up, with stock parts, and went, 'Okay, I HAVE to try this.' I forsee a lot of challenge times dropping in the next few days

Noooooooooo! They're like the one cheat part I allow myself! Just paint the things bright red and slap 'Highly Experimental! Use at your own risk!' on them or something...

They really are; I don't usually use them. But I'd already spent several days banging my head against the previous incarnation of this challenge with full-scale designs, and didn't feel like trying to do it again.

And for those of us flying in the expanded parts, level flight class, here's the 0.10.1 mark to beat: 1677.1 m/s Happy flying! Update: 'scuse me, I meant to say 1745.9 m/s Ta! 8)

*Salda stands at a podium next to a slide projector, looking nervous. Bob and Bill are seated in the front row; Jeb is nowhere to be seen. Salda coughs, checks a small pile of notes, then gives a strained grin.* Welcome everyone! I must confess, I feel somewhat of a cheat submitting this entry. C7's super-dense fuel tank is absolutely absurd in this sort of mission profile. I wasn't going to post it, but after two hours trapped in a capsule with Jeb, getting spun around near-uncontrollably, and suffering through two launches and deorbits, Bill and Bob here have persuaded me to share it with you all by gaving me a long, rather detailed list of unpleasant things they would do to me if I didn't. *Bill and Bob glare at Salda. One of them twirls a popsicle stick idly; Salda flinches* Err, yes! Right! I mean, uhh... I... I present to you all, the Firefly-2! *He pushes the slide-projector button, bringing up the first shot.* Launch was nominal, with only a brief burn needed at apogee to circularize the orbit at roughly 88km to 91km up. With apogee over the terminator, the reentry burn was fired in roughly the middle of the downward leg, to bring the Firefly down on the dark side of Kerbin. Reentry was nominal, both parachutes deployed correctly and the crew made a successful parachute-assisted powered landing. There was a brief pause while Bob brought his breathing back under control-- *Bob glares at Salda, while Bill stifles a chuckle* --and then the crew lifted off for the second leg of the trip. The second launch also went well, and the orbit was stabilized between 130km and 144 km. The re-entry burn was unfortunately fired a bit early--*Bob swats a sheepish-looking Bill on the arm*--threatening to drop the Firefly back into the atmosphere well short of KSC Here I must commend Jeb, who, with a level head, and over the protestations of his crewmembers, performed a rather unorthodox burn just above the atmosphere to cover some of the shortfall before making a braking burn to ensure reentry. Still short of the space center, Jeb piloted the FireFly in a spaceplane-like fashion towards the center. We directed him to aim for the large plain west of the launch pad for main stage separation and parachute recovery. Bob released the main stage a bit early, but in his defense, Jeb had mentioned doing another powered landing 'for the practice'. *Bob shudders, Bill puts an arm around him consolingly.* In any case, touchdown was in the hills just short of that plain. Flight Data Recorder information shown in the last slide. Thank you all for coming! Please enjoy the coffee and cookies, provided for us by Ma Kerman. *The lights come back up. Salda turns to Bill and Bob.* Are we done here? Can I go now? *Bill nods.* And you'll leave my house alone? *Bob nods.* And you'll call off Jeb? *Both nod.* Err, where is he, anyway? I was expecting to see him here-- *The doors suddenly burst open, and Jeb staggers in with a sombrero and Hawaiian shirt on, balancing a stack of slide trays. He totters up to the podium, sets his slides down next to the projector, and hands Salda a note.* Oh! Umm... *reads note* Anyone who wants to see Jeb's 'EPIK VAKASHUN SLIDESHOW', please feel free to remain in your seats. *Salda swaps looks with Bill and Bob. The three of them flee.*

975m/s, using SIDR, Wobbly Rockets, and C7

That happens because the connection between the adapter and the tank above it is breaking. Put a 4-6 struts around the edge from the adapter to the tank above it, and that should keep things in place for you.

Any questions? ... I'm gonna need more boosters...

26,461,328m, stock parts. Top speed 8,341.4 m/s. Had a nice slideshow going until the final stage, so I'm not sure how much further I'm going to try to push this design.

23,463 km, stock parts only. Got up to 7700m/s before final stage burnout. And this was just a concept tester; I'm certain I can push the design farther. Edit: Realized that I was looking at 'Total Distance Traveled', not 'Highest Altitude Achieved'. Whups. Fixed, but only have the altimeter to go by. Beat this on my next flight, but going to tweak some more and will post the highest.

*patpat* There, there, it's not so bad! You can still make stock rockets even if you have mod parts available! This just gives you more options beyond that! There's nothing wrong with that!

Hmm... Hey, Nova, ran into an amusing issue with your small-scale decoupler. It's, umm, rather flexible. Had one of your probes and a payload assist module on the front of my rocket, stacked on top of a nano-decoupler and a stackable parachute. On launch, the satellite and PAM both 'sagged' over at the decoupler, pulling the rocket sideways and off course. Any way of correcting this beyond duck tape struts? Oh, also, can you adjust the 1.75-2m adapter to flow fuel?

I'm definitely in favor of this idea as well. The only thing with this is that as a prefix, you can very easily sort the parts out alphabetically and have it fall into packs. Not so much if the pack is appended as a suffix.

Heh, the e-mail I got on the 15th says 24 hours, but I'm in no rush! Take your time and keep doing the awesome things you're doing!

Wheeee! Love the update! Love the whole package, really! (Well, aside from the increased 3m tank masses, but you can't win them all!) I did notice a couple bugs, though; not sure if they'd be directed at you or at HarvestR, though. The 3m->7x and 3m->5x couplers seem to want to force 2x symmetry, going to opposite sides of the coupler. This may be an engine bug, but it's really something of a PITA, not being able to go to 6x or 3x symmetry on the former or 4x on the latter. *shrug* The parachute->1M nosecone (great idea, btw!) and the 1->2x coupler both 'wiggle' in flight. I can't really describe it and I don't have any way of taking a video of it, but they bobble around like a kid's playground toy. I don't think it's affecting performance much, but TBH the rockets I've run them on have had so many other problems, I couldn't say for certain. Looks bizarre, though... Keep up the ridiculously awesome work! 8)

Ihuh - If you really want Moar Speed, swap out the 3m engine clusters for 5x or 7x stock engines (just watch the heat!), or a single 2m Large Bertha. The 3m engines are really inefficient. Ditto on the second stage; unless you need the thrust because of weight issues, I would swap out the M-50s for stock LFEs. The M-50s are almost as inefficient as the 3m cluster. sirmonkey - I think the scariest thing about that rocket is that, just sitting on the pad, the upper stages are visibly leaning to the right.

Don't make me break out my A-game now... Well played, sir, well played! If I wasn't currently working on another challenge right now, I'd be strapping together Jebian quantities of SRBs right now. 8)

Challenge accepted! 1:53! BAM! (I 8) struts...)

After a substantial redesign along similar principles, dropped it to 2:00 flat with stock parts. (Didn't get top speed on this run, unfortunately.) Update: 1:59!!! :w00t:

~100682 in 2:02, stock parts only. Max speed 2348.1 m/s 8) Edit: tweaked a few things and shaved off a second - ~100437 in 2:01, stock only. Max speed 2346.7 m/s