Exothermos

Wow, man. Fantastic! You really nailed all the lines, even the subtle dishing on the bottom. That header image says it all.

A Cupcake video featuring a Cake song? Too much cake? ... nah!

um...wow.

In Thrust We Trust!

I've been playing with trying to recreate Boeing's proposed Hypersonic demonstrator. It's kind of a odd looking thing, like the world's fastest zeppelin. Mach 5 is the number they propose to reach, thats 3800 mph or so 1600+ m/s! In KSP we cant really get there on air breathing engines, but 1400 m/s is doable. It's not a lot of fun to fly right now as the shape isn't exactly stable in KSP. I'll keep tweaking...

This was an early build of this model (it's just a good pic) and no it wasn't quite enough. I added one more spike per engine pod. Notice the Precooler part there: They add a lot of air without adding much drag to the assembly. The result is the equivalent of around 2 rapiers for every intake. This is more than enough if you are going to get to at least 600m/s at sea level before starting the ascent. 1.3.1 changed things up a little though. The compressor spike intake is very low drag now, so there isn't much disadvantage to using it for the front of every engine (except a little weight). If I were to rebuild the blimp shaped SSTO I would definitely tack on the spike intake for the drag advantage alone. It wasn't an especially great design though, very draggy with essentially two giant fairings (one fore, one aft). There are better solutions.

Even out-sized payloads need to be encased in a fairing. Creating a payload bay out of other parts will not work (at least as far as the aerodynamic model is concerned-it may LOOK cool.) So the two methods I've seen are a center mounted payload, like Thor's Pteradactyl above and my Fusilid Extreme design: Or a payload mounted either above or below the craft like my Stratomaran. These ideas can be taken to some silly extremes.

OK, I demand a sequel to featuring their jailbreak!

OMG that video had me dying.

LOTS of clever stuff in this video. I really like that cheeky cut from the above ground section of payload bay tunnel to the "underground" section. Also, that "tunnel" craft must have been enormous. And the railgun / accelerator launch at the end? Super fun.

Yup. In the current build drop tanks really aren't needed. Just make sure all your nodes are aerodynamically "satisfied", do not surface attach things that can go in bays, slap some rapiers and an intake on it. Build speed above 400m/s at low altitude then gently climb at 10 degrees. BAM! space.

Thanks @Raptor9 Yeah, I was kind of motivated to get this out before everyone forgets about the real mission proposal. Like most mars missions, I very much doubt it will proceed beyond the conceptual stage. As far as the lander goes, it experienced a lot of iterations to get to the relatively small size of the current lander. It's still a bit over-scale (or is the rest of the pack under-scale), but further shrinkage would mean dropping payload capacity significantly, and that is something I wasn't willing to budge on. There would be much more room for creative solutions if you aren't trying to adhere to the specific form-factor of Lockheed's design. In the case of this release, that form-factor was a high priority. Some things must take a back seat to practicality, however. My swing-arm deploying "round" Solar Panel design had a date with the chopping block, even though I was quite proud of it. Ultimately I didn't think the fidelity was worth the huge parts count and performance hit. Especially considering all the docking that must take place. From a practical point of view it offered nothing, and besides, it is something that can be quickly replaced by a suitable mod part if someone is so inclined.

I'd better release these before the mission fades into SciFi obscurity... A somewhat simplified replica of Lockheed Martin's proposed Martian mission: This endeavor started when I thought it would be fun to replicate Lockheed Martin's Mars lander from their new proposal for a mars mission. Surprisingly much of the complicated mission profile of this lander worked fine in KSP. After tinkering with that for a while i decided to build the rest of the mission assets. "Should be easy," I thought "It's basically just a space station..." Famous last words; This pack ballooned into 5 separate craft files. Even then, much of the mission profile has been simplified just to keep it from being an outrageous burden. Lockheed's proposal is extremely complicated: It involves at least 15 launches assembling assets in Earth, Lunar, and Martian orbit. I don't recommend this. This pack should allow for roughly 7 launches; most assembly can be done in Low Kerbin orbit with minimal construction at Duna. Other options include a very minimal approach that could see a lander and simple station at Duna in 4 launches. Basically you can scale this mission to your attention span. Mine is quite short. Here are the included parts: The Lander with simple surface payload The Lab and Center Docking Node The Habitat Node The Fuel Nodes The Orion Tenders All nodes come with appropriate Launch Vehicles Dropbox HERE. KerbalX Below: Lander Docking Node Hab Node Fuel Node Orion Tender

I think it was the fix for fairings. 1.3 had a bug where complex stuff inside of fairings exploded. Obviously this craft has a lot stuff going on inside of (and clipping through) those fairing parts.