Speeding Mullet

Indeed you did! That is a whopper shuttle, how does it do with the inigma 42t payload challenge? Looks like it would be easy money for this vehicle. Congratulations also on successfully riding a very blunt object to orbit with your second launch - totally don't need to worry about aerodynamics, just go with brute force . Soo, it gives me enormous pleasure to award you STS Commander - Rank 4. Wear your badge with pride human! SM

Banned for confusing the hell out of me

When I first saw it I thought nahh, that can't be right, but it absolutely is and well within the letter of the law too! I bet it's capable of a lot more if you really pushed up the srb numbers. So an elegant solution to the shuttle problem, and a very nicely run mission too with excellent re-entry and by the looks of it stable gliding. Credit to your re-entry for landing on the runway with no jet engines. So it is with great pleasure I award you the STS Flight Director badge. I'm @FCISuperGuy will update the leader-board with your result when he is less busy playing RL . Edit: I also open the wheels super late - it's just the Shuttle way and yes much cooler! SM

Banned for changing too much

Thanks very much indeed! Took a while to get it to the point where it was Elcano worthy, but in the end it exceeded expectations on the ground! Thanks very much, as above. I reckon it could certainly take on Mun and also Duna without much of an issue. Getting it down to Moho may take a bit of gas though! SM

Remembering how hard the Jool 5 challenge was, I can't even bear to think how massive an undertaking Joolcano would be! Anyway, take your time with "reasons" lol The thread's old but it's here. I think the albums still work. SM

Fantastic thanks very much I will wear it with pride. Nice badge! Funny thing is I've obviously cleared my head of the SSTO block and last night managed to create a single stage from water to space vehicle, so double win! I do tend to go nuts on the detail, wonder if you ever spotted my Jool 5 Kethane Expedition, now that was some ship (well maybe 30 ships in one anyway). Luckily I have the computer to handle it SM

Banned for suggestion hat Sloths have nothing at all to do with the galaxy.

Hi @Claw! I've finished my equatorial circumnavigation of Minmus in the Lancano Wayfarer. Full mission report here for your perusal! I really didn't think I'd enjoy doing this as much as I did, and indeed at least 60% of my enjoyment came form actually designing the launch vehicle and rover, but it was amazing. Minmus is nice and forgiving as far as rovers go, and the scenery it throws at you is seriously stunning. Loved it. Not sure if I want to go and do all the other ones, but at least I finally bit the bullet and did something I've been thinking about for a while. Also it distracted me nicely from trying to build an SSTO, something that still eludes me in 1.0x SM

Part four see's the crew traverse the step, a massive monolithic tabletop mountain covering a large area on Minmus. Nothing of note at the top, and so the crew powers on. At this point they've covered nearly a third of the moons surface, and the circumnavigation is going smooth as: Part five is the Downhill Runs. After the Steps, there is a massive smooth downhill with a very gently rolling surface. Perfect for pushing the Landcano Wayfarer to near maximum capability. The suspension is worked hard on this leg, soaking up the bumps at nearly 54 m/s. Quite the plaid speed for a rover! Part six - Downhill runs to Over the hill and race to the plain. Here the crew plans to investigate the hill so large that they will technically be in orbit according to their instrumentation. Another large tabletop with some promising features, and weird measurements according to some of the probes that have previously visited. I wonder what will happen?! Part seven and the crew, amazed at having discovered such a large floating rock, push onwards, keen to make progress, but also get to the next reporting stop where they can send their measurements back to KSC. In this instance they are headed slightly north from their largely equatorial route. They've spotted an opportunity to go for a totally straight line across the flats, and will be pushing the rover to it's absolute limits to try and make some decent time after the recent tough terrain. Part eight and a massive traverse of the lowlands coming up for the crew. All they really need to do is take the rover up to top speed and just relax (or timewarp and panic). Let's check in and see how they handle the boring, but hair raising stretch of this mission. Real distance and speed setting records coming up here and possibly no accidents at all so stay tuned: Part nine Just a smidge over half way through the journey now and the crew is getting rather keen to smash out the rest of the journey. It takes skill and concentration (and an awesome rover) to circumnavigate Minmus, and even at the speed that the Wayfarer is capable of the crew is beginning to slip a little. This leg of the journey see's them cover from in the shadow of the hillock at the far end of the flats, to here be fuel flats. Let's guess what we find there then! Part ten and here be fuel flats are crossed in record time, the far point being named Racing Flats. We really did race across these at top speed of 59.8 m/s!!! From Racing flats we are around 90 km from the starting point so there really is not far to go and the crew is pushing the Wayfarer to it's limits in the dash for home. Hey wait, have we even organised a lift home for the crew?! Erm.....cross that bridge I guess! Anyway, the biggest in sheer size table top mountain awaits us, and the dangers of "You shall not pass" pass are the last major obstacle on the route to The Last Step: Part eleven Is the real home stretch. The crew can shake loose, relax safe in the knowledge that they have all but made it. Or have they? Let's find out whether it's the sweet taste of success, or the bitter taste of failure at the final hurdle that awaits the crew: So that's it. I mean technically I should bring the crew home, but I'm also half inclined to leave them there. The rover is large, comfortable, capable, and full of snacks so they wouldn't suffer, but at the same time I feel slightly obliged to send up a tin can or two to bring the hero's that they are home and complete the full circle. What does everyone think?! I really enjoyed circumnavigating Minmus. It was very interesting, and I didn't give it nearly enough credit for the beautiful landscapes that it constantly puts in front of you. I could have taken so many more screenshots, but had to reign myself in slightly. Let's take a look at the final view of Minmus with all the flags planted: 10/10 would Elcano again. Maybe.... SM

Part one of the mission see's our crew travel from the starting point to Mint Bowl Massif. I've just realised that none of the screenshots of the names or descriptions of the flags came out for some reason. Obviously F1 doesn't work if you are naming a flag and try and screen it. Anyway the segment was uneventful, with a top speed on the rover of somewhere around 30m/s in a straight line. Part two of the mission is the drive from Mint Bowl Massif to Challenger flats and is again largely uneventful. That is unless you consider nearly trashing the mission at an early stage uneventful. There were also some beautiful views and challenging terrain changes to negotiate: Part three and the crew are well into the mission by now. Turns out this circumnavigation thing is fine, and the flats on Minmus provide an ideal opportunity to for a spot of easy driving before the next set of hills. An ISRU stop is required soon, but the crew believes that the big flat plateau of "the step" will hold a decent concentration of ore. Let's just hope they are right otherwise it's going to be a dangerous drop off the top: Part four will come soon enough, and will see the crew break some records for their circumnavigation effort to date. Look forward to the update! SM

I've made a decision to stick to stock (apart from mechjeb specifically for rover controls) for 1.05. apart from mechjeb for rovers, I'm totally handballing. I've had heavily modded installs many times in the past, but this close to 1.1 and with everything going on at the moment I'm just going to sit it out until the mods I want are updated post 1.1, so no tweakscale etc for me at this point. Reducing part count isn't top of my list of things to achieve really unless I am publishing a craft file for general download, in which case I will go for a balance of part count and detail. I have a rather powerful computer so I can run the part count up very high without getting significant lag which is a nice luxury to have! SM

I have finally, after much nail biting and pondering whether my patience levels will take it, entered into an Elcano circumnavigation of Minmus! My ability to build good shuttles, but immense frustration over the last week at whole-heartedly failing to build a good SSTO led me to play around with rovers a little and then I thought, well fudge I can do this. I mean it could be interesting! Here's the start of my challenge entry, and where I will posting the rest of the mission as it unfolds / I upload it. Good luck to all other challengers! SM

Long have I pondered whether to do an Elcano challenge. the other week, when I was thoroughly hacked off at being able to make a very good shuttle but being useless at making an SSTO I had a little play around with rovers and went a little overboard. The Landcano was born: Let's have a look at some specifics: 1 panoramic cupola pilot center, and 4 berth driver cabin pod. Room for 32 passengers. 2 Juno engines for enhanced breaking, and 2 Wheesley Engines for straight line speed. Many, many wheels. While stylish and clearly very capable at mountain climbing, it was largely useless in the turns....and at lasting 5 seconds without blowing up the runway apparently: So now I'd caught the bug. I'd designed a capable (if explosive) rover, and just needed a little adjustment to get it over the line as something that I'd be happy to spend hours in front of my computer holding W with. It gives me great pleasure to present the smaller (but no less awesome) Landcano Wayfarer: Well technically that's the launch vehicle, but let's cover that off first anyway as it's a bit of a beast and rather nicely made. The mighty S3 KS-25x4 Mammoth provides thrust for the main stack, and 4 LFB KR-1x2 Twin-Boar liquid boosters are strapped to the main stack to get the thing off the ground, and perform a beautiful Korolev's cross separation when spent. 412 parts and 785.9t on the launch pad mean this is no small part count, but the whole vehicle is very detail orientated, and the rover particularly so. I'm not going to pretend that I got to this design with out some trial and a lot of error. For example the launch vehicle started out with only 2 strap-ons, and no struts holding the rover in place. Let's take a look at some of those glorious moments where everything went, well, not to plan: Has the suspense got the best of you yet? Are you now dying to see what the rover in final form and fine fettle looks like? Let's finally get around to a review of the rover itself: Let's talk stats again: 290 parts and 65.2t including the landing module. The Landcano Wayfarer is powered by 20 ruggedized rover wheels, and has 8 wheel steering (front and back). In addition the jet engines have been replaced by liquid duel engines. The Wayfarer features the same front end as the original Landcano, with the addition of some quality of life parts (ladders etc) but also a fully functional IRSU system. The middle module (only contained fuel) has been entirely removed, and the passenger section and living quarters have shrunk from 32 capacity down to 16. You've probably guessed by now that this vehicle is not made for a Kerbin Elcano. A decision was made not to tackle Kerbin (yet!) and instead go for an airless body. The Mun was mooted, but in the end Minmus won out due in part to it's being much smaller, but also slightly less challenging from a terrain point of view. With crew selected: Aldin - Pilot Melfal - Co-Pilot Gerfrod - Scientist Dildred - Engineer Largerlotte - Scientist Mirilian - Engineer Thompoly - Engineer The only thing to do was strap in, turn on and boost up. Queue stage 1 of the mission - Getting to Minmus: What a vehicle! The crew drives a very short distance to a photogenic and convenient starting point and the starting flag is placed: In the coming posts as I upload the mission report segments we can follow the journey of the legendary 7 and the Landcano Wayfarer. Will it make it? Do the crew survive? Does anything function as intended? Let's take a deep breath and find out whether a successful Elcano Challenge entry can be seen out! SM

Banned for optimism.

Banned for still being on Mars

I don't usually hack gravity.... SM

Shuttles are indeed a funny thing, and very often prone to the flippy out thing. One way to overcome this is to build in a double skin wing, it seems to give more stability, especially on re-entry. The alternative is to totally rort the system with control authority haha! I'm not going to remind you not to do a shuttle again as it looks like you're 90% of the way to having a really decent one. Little more work in solving your de-orbit and I think you should be good. Besides, now you've poured all that energy into designing your shuttle it would be shame not to see you use it to do some of the other challenges available here! One tip for the future, I like your screenshots, but it would be really useful to be able to see the resource panels. I know it doesn't look as good, but for judging success or failure of a challenge entry it's a really big help to be able to see all of the information. Also try and include more proof of Pe/Ap in your screenshots, as the one's you have provided don't really say "the satellite is in a perfectly geostationary orbit." With that all said you've conducted an excellent mission here, and I can see with the proof you have provided that there is zero point in only claiming that you have completed the mission, and so I am happy to declare you STS Commander - Rank 2 and you can wear your badge with much pride as a successful shuttle designer! Well done! SM

I think that's the issue. It will re-enter absolutely fine until about 20km, then it's just tumble time! SM

Great SCF! Wow that laythe base, and the STS-Pegasus. I really need to stop messing around in LKO and get out a bit once again! Congrats to all featured! SM

I'm so close to having a working stock Rockwell C-1057 Breadbox shuttle, but also so far. There's many many functional and cosmetic issues to iron out. It can de-orbit from a couple of hundred K, but it's when you enter the lower atmosphere the problems tend to start. Mainly total loss of control lol. I'll get there eventually, but this one is going to remain WIP for the considerable future as I bit off a little more than I could chew with this shuttle SM

Banned for editing reply

Have a T-bone! Seriously though the only way to eat steak is like a lion. Roar! SM

Nice payload set - so that's an "Apollo" that is taken up by the Buran then? Not sure what the two sides would have said about that back in the day, but the glorious KSP knows no boundaries so what the hey! I spent a while reading the Mission 4 rescue plan and came to the conclusion that the shuttles do not actually dock together, rather they fly very very close to each other and the rescue is performed via EVA, but I did still develop a docking module for my Buran and it's a useful thing to have if your Buran is in regular rotation to space stations! Good luck with mission 4 - It's amazing seeing two shuttles in orbit feet from each other, even if it is only a game! SM

Wow thanks for the mention, my second in SCF and I'm honoured! If you do re-entry right it works perfectly every time, but it is very particular indeed about what is "right". The abort function see's regular use in the WIP currently Congrats to all other mentions!! SM