Torham234

Ok, here is my first stab at this. I have basically just modified my old rover to maximize stability at the expense of durability ( my old rover had much larger fuel stores). Here is the whole rocket at the pad. Skycrane landed. The "really flat" area that I looked at from orbit turned out to be hilly as hell.... figures... Rover deployed and ready for service. maximum speed with all 4 wheels on ground max speed with 3 wheels on the ground. At this speed the rover bounces like hell, but on flatter ground this should be easily achievable. If I had landed on a flatter terrain, I could have gone a bit higher, me thinks. Parts are all stock, the only mod used is the Engineer. Edit: Does anyone know a really flat patch on the Mun?

I had a stable 100 m/s rover in 18.4 version, and that was without pushing for max speed. The problem at those speeds is that the rover spends more time airborne(err vacuumborne... above ground?) than on the ground. I think I will give this one a try...

Oh sorry, I meant this basically, if the plane is heavy, rather than stack more wings, I was trying to increase the natural vector of attack on the wings. Sorry for my weird made up definitions, I have no previous experience in this area. I am a civil engineer, so I tent to think in horizontals and verticals .... I think that would be the incidence. Thanks for the info!. PS: Sorry, Captain Kalawang , I will try not to derail this thread any longer, I promise .

I Achieved 100 km orbit with 1528 DV. At the air strip, ready for take off. DV - 1908 Apoapsis 100 km reached Releasing fairings before circularization, conforming to Clean Space Act. Deploying fully functional satellite at 100 km orbit. DV left - 380 Deorbited and approaching KCS. landed safely.

Oh my an expert! I have so many questions for you, I don't know where to start. - What is the optimal position for air intake, does it have an effect if there are more below or above COM ( I was assuming that intakes below COM would make the plane pitch down) . - Is there benefit in horizontally angled wings? Recently I have been experimenting with 5° pitch on all the wing surfaces to help reduce the profile at high altitudes, but it does not work as well as I hoped... - Is there any benefit to having COL above COM? I can easily lift the COL with extra winglets on the tail, but I am not sure what that does to the flight capabilities of the plane. Just some, If you would care to share your knowledge...

That must be all the modding you do. I have not noticed anything like that. My entry was made in 0.20, and I had the top speed of over 2km/s only using 1 turbojet.

yeah, that happened to me once or twice. After that I just assumed my max height is 24 km, and I tried to fly at that to give myself a buffer of 1 km. I agree that the main skill this challenge requires is patience not to screw up your flight. Once you have a working design, its basically "can I face yet another stress filled hour of watching altimeter and air intakes". Yoystick made it easier for me, the more intuitive controls meant that I could run at warp 3 most of the way, thus reducing the attempt to something like 20 min. Kinkyferrets (huh??), that looks interesting design. I think you can ditch all the fuel lines, though, wing surfaces are fuel feed capable.

hmm... If I had to guess... I think your speed is too low. At 20 km+, with that sort of wings and weight, you should be flying at least ~ 900+ m/s. Ditch the parachutes, they do nothing on this craft (just use breaks after touch down). My plane looks very similar to yours... see how many vertical surfaces I have? PS: when linking the image, click on the IMG button, rather than DIRECT, that way they will display properly...

I did. The ASAS superseeds the avionics. when you turn on SAS control, the ASAS takes over and locks your heading. When you turn it off, it turns off the avionics as well. Therefore there is no reason to have both on one craft. Its either or. PS: Its not easy. It takes a lot of patience, trial and error, and a through understanding of the game mechanics. I simply like to make planes...

hmm, that one looks much better. Maybe try doubling the tail. My craft for this challenge had 4 vertical + 2 angled controls. That is 6 control surfaces, precisely because I crashed a couple times on the landing approach due to lose of control. Also, more info on the air intakes: - too many; some people just love to spam ram intakes. I am a firm believer that you do not need bazillion ram intakes to make anything fly. I have a working space plane with zero ram intakes, and it works fine. - too few; having only a few intakes limits your top speed at high altitude. This may be good, for example this challenge is well suited for slower, efficient craft. However having too few, you may be unable to keep the desired altitude for the craft. Unfortunately finding the correct amount of air intakes is mostly done by testing. It varies from craft to craft, and it varies in the altitude the jet is designed to operate. At the ground, at 25 km, at 35 km, they are all totally different, and require different amount of air intakes. Finally: If your jet is very unstable in the desired cruising altitude, there are usually 2 reasons. - not enough wing surface/control surfaces. The slower and higher you fly, the more wings you need. Failing this the jet will be simply unable to fly at the desired altitude and will either descend to lower altitude or spin and crash. - not enough speed. The faster you fly, the less wings you need. The other option for unstable craft is to increase your cruising speed. This may require more air intakes or more engines. Both will increase your fuel consumption as well, and that means more weight. Designing a well performing aircraft takes a long time and many, many test flights...

Ok, I managed to view that pic. 2 things: - Zero horizontal control. The two canards you are using are immobile, so your craft is unable to steer or correct course. You can only roll and pitch up/down. This may be the reason for catastrophic failure, since the ASAS you are using will assume you can steer in all directions and may kill the craft. - the air intakes are in front of COM. I am surprised you made it half way around. It must be a hell to fly. See my post about air intakes a few posts up.

I can't believe how bad-ass Jeb actually is. He is ON FIRE and LAUGHING his head off!

Since your pictures do not seem to work for me, some general pointers. - flameouts are the leading cause of high altitude spin, 9 out of 10 kerbals agree. - having good amount of control surfaces will save many a jet, the old Grampa Bill K used to say... Do not forget the vertical ones too. In the thin air of 24 km, even 2 -4 vertical flaps will be most useful. - leading scientists agree that air intakes are basically just huge breaks. Having them in the front of the plane will cause it to flip back over heels. Having them at the rear will help stabilize your craft( imagine speeding on a motorcycle and the difference of using the front and back wheel break). - flying does not mean you must absolutely have to go at max throttle. I did most of the globe with throttle set to 3 bars from zero. Happy flying

Not necessarily. It is entirely possible to fly a plane with COM and COL at the same spot, or indeed with COL in front (avionics package is your friend). It simply affects how the plane behaves at different altitudes. - Balanced COL and COM are very good for low altitude agile craft, since they respond well in any direction. Sometimes even too well, hence they may be prone to tumbling and spins, if the control surfaces are not designed well. - with COL behind the COM, you are anticipating the shift in COM due to loss of fuel. This configuration is good for planes witch expend a lot of fuel in flight, thus shifting the balance. These tend to nose down at early stages of flight, and may be hard to take off from runway. They tend to land fairly smoothly, since by the time you are landing, you have a perfectly balanced craft. It may be difficult for them to attain high altitudes, since you may not be able to pitch up far enough to overcome the weight of the nose. - COL in front: These craft are difficult to pilot at any stage, as they tend to nose up and spin out of control. Never the less, with Avionics package and trim control, they can be tamed. The advantage of this configuration is the cruise ceiling. Because they naturally tend to pitch up, they can easily fly at ultra high altitudes where ordinary craft are unable to maintain stable pitch. These are a bit of a niche craft, because the fuel expenditure will shift COM even further back for landing and they may be impossible/extremely difficult to land. non the less I do have several stratospheric designs in this config, and they are fully functional and capable of landing even with 0 fuel ( un-powered glide landing). A great help when designing this type of plane is to make it as long as possible, as to give yourself a lot of steering control. The bigger the distance of a control surface from COM, the bigger the effect.

Hehe, just what I was thinking. Congrats.

Sounds exactly like kerbal engineering to me. Don't worry, you can always send another mission .

I find the stock SSTO's a bit lacking.

I never had much luck with electric planes, mostly due to the performance limitations of my outdated PC. Anyway, I have a much better stab at this challenge. Lark VI. : All stock, no mods used ( I piloted this one by hand). Fuel used - 155 - No detachable fuel tanks Cruising altitude : 37 km Cruising speed - ~2000 m/s Total Time : 43 m 24 s There is a point at around 36 km and speed of around 2km/s where you start getting into the orbital speeds and than you are using only tiny amounts of fuel. I expect if I really wanted I could have raised my apoapsis out of the atmosphere, easily. I was too nervous to attempt an air strip landing, and since the penalty is so small, I would have probably wasted more time aligning for the air strip landing... Time: 2604s A Winnar Is You: -5s Monolithic: -11s Speed angel: -20s Total : 2568

Since I have already done the Captain Kalawang's challenge, I thought I will make a new aircraft for this one. Lark V. : - 470 fuel, no detachable fuel tanks - cruising height - 30 km - cruising speed - ~1300 m/s The only mod I have used is the lazor flight autopilot, so that I could run through the cruise on warp 3. Take off and landing done manually. All other parts are stock. I was doing a good time, but I came for landing too soon, and I had to cruise the final 80 km at low altitude that costed precious time... maybe next time.

Whenever in doubt, refer to the Planned Features List to se the future roadmap. It also handily demonstrates just how much is still left to be done over the next few years until the release.

That plane looks very elegant.

I haven't seen any major bugs so far, and the performance has been greatly increased. Also my sound stuttering problem is MUCH less prominent than before. There is still some sound stuttering, but only once a while, rather every 3 seconds as before... Edit: maybe I should mention that I am only using two mods (protractor and kerbal engineer redux) and I always start a new save when I upgrade a version ( I don't see a point in trying to do anything elaborate, since the game is still under heavy development...)

My god. So that design is actually feasible. I did have some builds very similar to that one, but I couldn't quite stretch the fuel far enough. Best I could do was nearly 3000 km on 150 fuel.

AHA!!! Fuel used : 216 units... The main problem now is that the aircraft is becoming too short to be maneuverable. I could use some lightweight girders, but that would introduce some extra weight. I do not have the starting screen because this was originally just a test run, but the design outperformed the expectations and so I took it for the whole trip... just after I used half the fuel And landed. I had fuel to spare to attempt an air strip landing, but by this stage I was too nervous to do any dangerous maneuvers, lest I crash. I just plonked it near the KSC on the grass...

Yes, it seems you are entirely right. I have just done 2 test flights with my experimental glider. This time I used the lazor flight autopilot to minimize piloting and steering error. 1: heading - 90° fuel : 150 cruise altitude - 24.500 km Surface speed - 1123 m/s distance traveled - 2990 km Ground distance traveled - 2982 km 2: heading - 270° fuel: 150 cruise altitude - 24.500 km Surface speed - 1127 m/s distance traveled - 2965 km Ground distance traveled - 2958 km