Sean Mirrsen

Well, one good thing out of the resurrection is that I have another excuse to post this thing.

I wouldn\'t mind a new thread being created, tbh. Keeping the old list in addition to the new one would likely be redundant. I\'m probably not too reliable to start it myself though.

So, with the balance changes, do we get a new challenge or merely reset the current one? Some of the more efficient designs will probably still work, but a lot might not. Fuel volume per tank was cut 20%, though at least all fuel tanks now carry proportionately the same amount/weight of fuel - every 200 fuel is 1 mass unit, the only difference between tanks is drag and dry mass. In any case, my entry for the 0.16 part of this challenge, the Radiant 2. Ascent was uneventful, if somewhat long because I had fuel to burn and wanted to squeeze as much advantage out of the air-breathers as I could. Final orbit is an almost circular ~201x~203km. The craft has those little radial-mounted engines for maneuvering when the main stack runs out of fuel. I didn\'t want to use them on this flight, because it feels a little like cheating to be burning kerosene in space, but I severely miscalculated the re-entry path and had to try to alter my course to land closer to the KSC. Well, it didn\'t presicely work, but I had enough fuel left to glide to the same shore that KSC is on, just quite a ways up north. Also found another reason why the little thrusters should only be considered an emergency measure - you can\'t turn them off once they\'ve fired, so your time in the air once you reenter is severely shortened. Regardless, I did manage quite a safe touchdown. The craft refused to stay horizontal while standing still, so I had to take the second shot while rolling forward. Didn\'t even make it to KSC terrain, but otherwise quite nice.

No idea. I\'m trying to see if replacing the single large engine with an array of smaller, higher-efficiency ones will work better.

So, did anyone else notice that 0.16 kinda... nerfed the rockets? Less fuel in tanks, more fuel expenditure... ..and this thing I built fails to reach orbit.

You can do a tail stand on deceleration, then gently flip over into RCS hover mode and plop down onto wheels. At the reduced gravity of the moon, the maneuver shouldn\'t be excessively dangerous even with a large craft. Doing this without RCS necessitates strong landing gear and low overall mass of the craft, and you basically have to almost touch down vertically, then pitch over onto your rear gear as gently as possible, and try not to snap your fuselage in half when the nose gear touches down. My design would have a swallowtail for this purpose, so that it can touch down onto wheels, and tip over without risking the engines touching the ground. Of course, the design is still theoretical. I\'ve yet to make a new SSTO that can reach the moon, let alone land on it... I gotta devote more time to this.

Well, if you\'re wondering if it\'s possible, then the K Prize challenge has an entrant that does all of the everything here - it takes off horizontally, lands on the Mun (horizontally), takes off from the Mun, lands on Minmus, takes off from Minmus, takes a stroll through interplanetary space and returns back to the KSC. All in one piece, as befits an SSTO craft. It\'s called the Sawfish.

So wait, technically you can do this with no parts at all. Just take a Mk2 cockpit and roll... sure it\'ll take forever, but still.

Successful touchdown on Mun, in excitement, forgot to get approach image A nice and safe stop Liftoff! Uh oh, out of fuel! Won\'t make the coastline, Prepare for emergency water landing! They all survive. Fortunately the isolatable cockpit break away system worked. Trial and error for this one, Well actually I did have a bit of practice with two other challenges. First, most of this rocket is based off my bioman challenge which was very interesting to get done, to say the least. I have done numerous horizontally configured vertical landers for Mun, this time it was to combine them. Get the horizontal path in, and use the thrusters to keep drop from too much. I have had other failures, getting launch path and balance on the lander right, but not interesting enough to screenshot, etc. Mostly I would just abort and re-land. I have built x-prize style aircraft before. and with clever work, I could make one to work for this, but the size can get annoying, I like to stock parts challenge. Maybe later :3 This is quite neat, but sadly not compliant with the challenge as outlined. Point 3 of the rules says that all thrusters must be perpendicular to the craft\'s 'landing' direction. (although I think the phrasing there is wrong, it needs to say 'parallel to the landing plane' or 'perpendicular to the ground plane', but not 'perpendicular to the landing plane', as that\'s how rockets land, so there seems to be no point in this challenge besides using a spaceplane)So, you can\'t VTOL to Mun surface with anything except RCS - which, with a little ingenuity, isn\'t all that impossible. It\'s actually what I am planning to do. Drop like usual, arrest descent with thrusters, flip over topside-up and manage touchdown with RCS. Well, I have to get my new craft up into Mun orbit first. My old ones are too heavy for this.

How about extra challenge: All Stock? I don\'t really like using mods for challenges like this.

Remember what I said about finding a better way for my craft to take off? Well, this way isn\'t better, but it\'s prettier. Meet the Voldeghurt. I have a knack for terrible names, don\'t I? For expedience purposes, only the minimal required orbit was established. Fuel available at that point (~four tanks) allows for much further expeditions. The craft returns to atmosphere without serious issue. It has to be constantly kept pointed forward during descent though, until the atmosphere is thick enough for control surfaces to properly maneuver, otherwise the craft flips out. A little more... a little more... Touchdown! Er, unfortunately some smart guy planted a mountain range right in the craft\'s landing path, so ultimately the whole thing was lost in its entirety due to a sudden road bump. Landing parachutes would\'ve really helped there. When will I start remembering to add them? T-T

After four more failed attempts at landing, I have no choice but to admit that, while good enough for takeoff, the landing gear arrangement of the Turboloid is utterly inadequate for landing. (I really should give it a better name... given its shape and its landing capability, I think 'Crashamaran' sounds just about right ) Maybe I\'ll find a better way for it to take off while I\'m at it.

Have I mentioned that I hate landing in poor lighting conditions yet? Because I do. Thankfully, I got a quicksave on entry. Let\'s see if a more careful approach will be more successful. But really, I think I\'ll need to further reinforce the landing gear.

Ah, darn. Yes, it uses a docking port from the ExPI station parts set, because that was part of the flavor for the LKO Tanker challenge. Here, same thing without it. Should be completely stock now.

Sure. Be advised though, this thing flies like a slightly drunk brick.Its turbojets are enough to lift it off the runway, surprisingly enough, and theoretically they can push it upwards as well (though the Mass/Thrust ratio is very close to 1), but it\'s nearly impossible to actually get the craft to point upwards without firing the rockets. Get as high and fast as you can before firing the rockets. The craft has a load of RCS thrusters on the bottom, for a presumed Mun landing, but as you can imagine I never quite got there. There are also no landing chutes, but that\'s an easy fix.

It saddens me a little that while this challenge prospers (relatively), the tanker challenge is somewhere on the third page... Anyway, I am continuing my efforts in expanding my SSTO fleet. The design of the Pteroducktil SSTO was modified with greater resiliency in mind, and the result was the oddly named Turboloid SSTO. It wasn\'t made for this specific challenge, therefore it still performs its duties as an orbital cargo delivery craft. Sadly, a combination of design deficiencies and piloting errors had caused the prototype to be lost at the end of its first mission, when it crashed into a shoreline slope that could not be seen in nighttime lighting conditions. (even if it did land then, it\'d have exactly zero fuel left) More on this design as more missions are made.

You did see the screenshot he attached right? He only used a half-tank.The real challenge is to do this without cheating any more than the BFE-5000 itself already does.

Having zero decouplers is kind of a massive boost there. I got a design with, lessee, four tanks, two 909s, one turbojet, six wings, two canards, and three landing gear, capable of SSTOing to a 70x70 orbit and back to pad with a good pilot. Which puts me at 15 points, and I\'m very bad at conservative design. The current simplest craft in the K Prize challenge is just a pod, three half-tanks, two 909s, two wings, two small CFs and three landing gear. Which puts it at -2 points. A vertically launching rocket that can do a powered landing (especially if the first chute is free) is going to be far less than that, far into the negatives. (and I\'ve been ninja\'d on that, it seems)

A decoupler under the command pod isn\'t a convenience, it\'s a safety feature. When I build my spaceplanes, the larger ones, I always make sure to include some way for the nose section to decouple and deorbit on its own, plus a way for it to land on its own. Sure, it\'s extra mass that\'s never supposed to be used, but it does add an extra layer of difficulty as well as a layer of epicness when you are able to save the crew after a mishap somewhere on a long mission. Plus, the Mk2 cockpit allows for some truly ridiculous parachuteless landing solutions. Other pods can do it too, but not quite as effectively.

It also has .25 less mass than the Mk1 cockpit, which is more important than the .04 less drag. (actually, .02 less drag) It is, in general, quite a bit more useful than the Mk1 cockpit, and slightly more useful than the Mk3 cockpit and the standard pod. It also has the best shape of the four standard command pods.And really, the only thing you need to save any detached command pod is a parachute. But a pair of swept wings on a Mk2 cockpit will allow you to do much more than a parachute will, especially if it\'s the only thing that\'s left of your spacecraft, and you don\'t want to have your crew stranded in the ocean.

It\'s actually possible to make planetfall with the inline cockpit and no chutes, you just need to have a pair of the large swept wings mounted to it. The mass/lift ratio of the whole thing becomes such that you can actually glide quite a ways, and make a sliding landing if you\'re careful enough. You can at least go slow enough to safely splash down, if you can\'t reach land.

A no-chutes landing in atmosphere usually involves wings. It can be done with a good spaceplane design. Without chutes or wings, my Spaceboom rocket series had a pretty good lander thing that could make a powered return and landing, but to my memory, none of the landings were actually successful without deploying the chute. It\'s definitely possible though.

Not stupidest, just most ridiculous. Yes, I made a mockup mecha and put it on a Mun orbit. And this was before we had the part rotation feature.

I don\'t use mechjeb or rovers, so my list is fairly simple. [list type=decimal] [li]Lift off - H[/li] [li]Leave atmo - H[/li] [li]Achieve Kerbin orbit - H[/li] [li]Return to Kerbin - H[/li] [li]Return to Kerbin (without crashing) - H[/li] [li]Reach the Mun - H[/li] [li]Orbit the Mun - H[/li] [li]Land on the Mun - N[/li] [li]Land a rover on the Mun - NC (never used rovers)[/li] [li]Return from the Mun - N[/li] [li]Reach Minimus - NC[/li] [li]Orbit the Minimus - NC[/li] [li]Land on the Minimus - NC[/li] [li]Land a rover on the Minimus - NC[/li] [li]Return from the Minimus - NC[/li] [li]Reach the Sun - H[/li] [li]Orbit the Sun - H[/li] [li]Return from the Sun - NC[/li] I\'d suggest adding achievements or level of achievement for single-stage flight, i.e. without decoupling anything during flight or otherwise losing mass other than expended fuel. Naturally, this will usually only count for 'return' objectives.

Update on that attempt to fly the Albatruss MkIV without leaving the pod anywhere (well, one of the attempts): Discoveries made: 1) Aircraft need fuel to fly. 2) They also don\'t like swimming.