Speeding Mullet

^ Very likely MJ's auto deploy solar panel option. Go to the MechJeb Settings menu and click Disable Auto-Deploy, then report back. SM

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I'm currently thinking about whether to morph this thread to include "variations on a theme" or "popular challenges in this style" as suggested but I'm as yet undecided. Partly as I'm about to drop off the map for 3 weeks (holiday) and I'll come back with fresh perspective and hopefully fresh ideas on playing KSP, but also because it would involve a fair amount of work in maintenance which is minimal at the moment as the True Heritage challenges are very stable. Probably just being really lazy, but I also don't want to dilute the thread to the point of being really listy. I'll think about it while I'm away . SM

I do like that idea! Moho and Tylo mwuhahahaha! Definitely on the cards, but well down the line. Dres needs some attention at some point but isn't top of the list of places to conquer. Eve should be hilarious when I get round to it! Request for Eeloo noted Very very nicely done indeed! Well presented mission report, and certainly passes you on commander for level 1, and pilot for level 4. As eluded to in your post I think it's in the spirit of the challenge to perform the rescue mission out of cycle when you genuinely have to rescue a shuttle. No out of cycle whoopsies to Jool though please Here are your badges! NOTE - I'm going to be off the map from about Sunday this week for approximately 3 weeks. Is there anyone that would like to admin the challenge for a few weeks from, well nowish I guess? Preference for someone that knows the challenge well and has completed the majority of the missions. PM me if you are interested. Cheers! SM

Yeah go for it - On both counts. As an extensive clipper it concerns me not, but try not to clip 50 tanks into one - Keep it at least 'semi' real SM

SEAPLANE TO ORBIT - THE 1.3.X PARTY THREAD This challenge is a revised and updated version (with permission) of @Mikki's Seaplane to Orbit 1.05 challenge. UPDATES ****CHALLENGE CREATED 03.07.2017**** RULES - PLEASE READ THESE BEFORE ATTEMPTING THE CHALLENGE The Seaplane to Orbit challenge is inclusive and I'm usually willing to have rules stretched to the nth degree, so get creative and join the party board or gatecrash: 1. Stock and Modded are permitted (Modded is defined as using modded engines, lifting parts, fuel tanks etc). 2. The craft may not lose any parts in flight (unless the award category allows it) 3. The craft run must start from water, reach orbit (PE > 70km) and land intact on water or land. It is accepted that you load your craft on the runway. 4. You may not cheat in any way - Test my leniency sure, but no classic cheating please. 5. All missions require either an album showing each stage of the flight, or a video showing all stages of the flight. 6. Once you have completed a mission, please post your proof in this thread for my review including a breakdown of your score and some basic information about your craft including mods used. AWARDS - IF YOU DO SOMETHING WORTHY I WILL ADD A NEW AWARD CATEGORY AT MY DISCRETION Use modded parts - Nonconformist Use stock only parts - Purist Decouple landing gear after launch from runway - Footloose Submerge and become an submarine - Crashdive Park your seaplane in the KSC Pool - Poolguest - blame @WhiteKnuckle Transfer from water to land after orbit - Beached Use only Liquid fuel (Rocket) engines - Sponsored by Kerbodyne Use only SRB's - Light that candle Have an Engineer inspect your vessel by swimming - Wet Have an Engineer inspect your vessel by foot - Booty Smallest seaplane by weight - Minimalist Largest seaplane by weight - Maximalist Visit another bodies orbit - Traveler PARTYBOARD MK1 SEAPLANES MK2 SEAPLANES MK3 SEAPLANES GATECRASHERS Get your badge here

Correct, SVE and Scatterer I believe. It's not my OP so I'd need to win one of the weeklies to do it again. If I did then I'd probably go for wing-suits rather than gliders. I made one once and it was some of the most fun I've had in KSP to this day. there's something beautiful about wing suiting on Kerbin: Might spin it off into a separate "challenge" if there was enough interest. SM

Sure, here's 3 examples of recent amphibious aircraft I have made: Hope that helps! SM

It was a big delay but you should see the challenge in the OP very shortly! It's a good idea - What I might do is see about grouping challenges into particular categories (for example - Apollo style, Aircraft missions etc.). Thanks for the suggestion. It won't happen immediately but I will get there in the end! Yeah I've seen some of those speedrun challenges and had a crack previously too. They look so easy, but when you try they are as you suggest, incredibly hard to do well. If you can point me to a current, active speedrun challenge I am happy to add to the OP, or if you want it as "available for re-boot" then let me know which thread I should point to. Thanks! SM

Hi everyone sorry for the delay, as normal RL gets in your face but downloading Battlefield 1, and Day Z progressing nicely certainly hasn't helped me. Haven't done any work on my Moho mission either Anyway, let's review some stuff before it all gets too much for me. Yah, there's definitely a challenge in getting the right fuel to get there and back. When I was flying shuttles I pretty much always ran on vapors on the way home the margins were so tight. If you can run a mission like that every time then it's pretty cool, but I don't have an issue with going with way too much and dumping it for de-orbit even if it's not realistic. Station complete, and with a gigantic death ray! Nice deign actually, it's pretty unusual. Well done and have a badge! HELL YES! An epic mission to Duna! It looks like your shuttle easily handled the rigors of interplanetary travel, and I particularly liked your comsat, even if it did wormhole on you! Its a failure, but it's a brilliant failure. Become the space potato is definitely a rarely done thing. I remember someone on this forum way back in the day making an asteroid into a plane to land it, but that was before all the aero changes and re-entry heating so kudos on the effort there! Landing an asteroid is never boring, I think your re-entry displayed that haha! Here's your badge! On a roll much? LMAO at your qualification for a manned research outpost. Its the equivalent of a deckchair at the beach Definitely not lame.... Waaaa! Very nice indeed. Your designs never cease to amaze me. Can't wait to see the rest of this one... Nicely done with the Duna mission. Love the variation you introduce in your shuttles, it's very mission dependent. Here's your badge This one is hard. I haven't managed to do it yet (probably because I stopped trying) but yeah, well done on another successful trip to the "wish it looked it used to" planet. So lazy..... I see you already have your badge. Well done on a great mission! Also that space station is enormous. Constructing a station using a shuttle is very satisfying. Way harder than slamming it up there using HE or ontop of a Goliath rocket so great work! Wow, the way you play and design stuff I would have thought you'd been everywhere. What a fantastic mission report. As always love the attention to detail. The orbital outpost was particularly fantastic. Glad that this challenge has turned you on to shuttles. To be honest seeing your mission reports, it makes me want to design another shuttle and play catch up on the missions I haven't done! Here are both your badges! Bring on the fails, I'm a big fan! Hey welcome to the challenge! Nice little dream-chaser style shuttle there. Obviously for the later challenges you will need some cargo capacity, but this is a great start! 20 minutes is ideal cup of tea length video, so give me a couple of minutes to brew up and I'll be right with you... Right that does it, I'm parking my moho mission and creating a new shuttle. The Jool mission looks too good to miss out on, and I've still go to do the second Duna mission. Well played so far and looking forward to seeing the rest of this progress. Good luck with the Elcano! Nicely done, nicely done! I mostly free fly too, without really thinking of fuel requirements so it's good to know someone else out there is winging it haha! Definitely worth leaving a hangar on Laythe for future missions. Might need to bring some new planes byt he looks of their handling though As always loving the payloads and general design of your Shuttle's. Lander can as airlock is definitely a winner in making things more "real". Really nicely run mission for sure! Firstly: Secondly - There's now quite a few people finished, at or near the Laythe mission, so perhaps it's time to think up something new for you all to do! For now, I'm going to boot things up and see about a new shuttle design to test my attention span! SM

I do! Week 6: Class: Amphibious aircraft. Your mission is to design and build an amphibious aircraft capable of deploying a water craft of any description. It should be able to takeoff and land from land or water, as well as being able to transfer from water to land and vice versa. It should have a minimum crew of two and be capable of carrying four passengers in addition to the crew. Cost: Maximum 150,000 Weight limit - 100t Payload: A water craft of some description capable of un-docking and docking. Range: Just show me an interesting spot of your choice Crew: Minimum crew of two, plus 4 passengers minimum. Thanks for pinging me @MiffedStarfish and enjoy your holiday! Good luck to all entrants... SM

Hi everyone, I probably won't get an opportunity to check in here until mid week, but keep going and I will do my usual stunning bulk catch up when I'm free SM

@Vexnium joint congratulations! To be honest I loved the detail you put into your plane, the viewing platform was particularly nice! Well done! @MiffedStarfish I would have wanted to design the next "mission", but timezones (I'm in Australia) looked to have worked against me. Perhaps I'll enter again soon. Great challenge SM

Mullet Dyne MD-82 Twin Equinox Range - 1000km+ Weight - 24.999t Wingspan - 33.6m Length - 19.6m Power plant - 2 x J-X4 Whiplash Turbo Ramjets Crew: Gilfrey Kerman (Pilot) / Burrick Kerman (Pilot) Passengers: Leabert Kerman (Scientist) / Didos Kerman (Scientist) / Steve Kerman (Engineer) / Karbus Kerman (Engineer) Science capability: 2 x Sentinel infrared stereoscopic arrays for cloud seed monitoring 1 x Atmospheric Fluid Spectro-Variometer 1 x Science Jr. MISSION REPORT: Great challenge, really enjoyed it. Hope it has legs as I will definitely return on the odd occasion! SM

Yeah fine, it irks me that you can't jet fuel off in KSP. SM

that's a cracking first post (2nd I know but they should have been merged ). Welcome to the forums! Just getting one together for this now! SM

No worries. Imgur is definitely more pleasant for viewing. I actually find its uploader not too bad, if they could just change the photo ordering system. There's probably a setting somewhere.. Haha nice story around Object Thrower Galaxy! Definitely a risk re-orbiting Kerbals on a ladder. I actually had no idea you couldn't save under those circumstances but it sort of makes sense. It's totally an invitation to the Kraken party. Great work on recovering the re-entry under pressure, and a nice mission report once again. Space station time me thinks! Look forward to seeing your shuttle, welcome to the challenge! I would be sorely disappointing if you left it out my friend! Good to see the HRO getting even more of an upgrade. I believe one is Jool bound! Hmm. It doesn't count as a second launch so in theory yes, but then again the missions are designed to be completed by 1 shuttle, as the challenge is in integrating payloads etc. If you use more than once shuttle then that opens us up to Shuttle abuse for payload capacity, so I'm going to say yes/no/maybe in this case. You could do STS 5-8 in one mission with 4 shuttles bolted to an absurd rocket, that would be against the spirit of the challenge. For example though, if you have something like a Shuttle boosting a Shuttle to orbit, then the delivery Shuttle may have wasted payload capacity, in which case why not. In summary - See what you can get away with, but be prepared to be squashed like the arbitrary-and-known-only-to-me-on-a-whim rule breaker you may or may not turn out to be . It's generally considered to be as follows - "If the shuttle and rocket is stock its stock". to expand a little: Visual mods totally fine - You can remain stock. MJ and other autopilots - Totally fine (please see rule 2 for MJ clarification) - You can remain stock. Part Mods (including stockalike) and part/planet modifying mods (including KJR and RO) will see you housed in Modded. There's exceptions of course, for example if you are using a modded part on your shuttle that allows you to place handrails, or landing lights etc then you can still be in the stock category as that's really "visual" also. It's actually way easier to not explain it in the OP and field questions (of which there aren't many), rather than endlessly iterate the rules when someone tells me about their 500 mods I have no inclination to research SM

Wow Photobucket burns my eyes. I used to use it, but it's just an absolute garden of pop ups and ads now. Shame! Anyway, everything looked great here, and while you missed off your actual landing photos, I can see from the mission report that you were screaming towards KSC in a fiery rage, and have a decent history of sticking said landings, so I'm happy to award you the badge Looking grand! Nicely done with the Launch aborts on the Klipper. It really is tiny considering you used the Mk3 cockpit! 28.9 g's though - They'd better have superb bone structure! So am I right in saying that this wasn't really part of the Jool Rank 1 mission? Only really saying that as it appears that you launched to crew your station, and you launched some comsats. So that's two launches, none of which leave your shuttle ready to fly to Duna. If it's part of a wider story then that's absolutely fine - crewing stuff is fun, and obviously it's expected you'd have a comnet in place around the destination planet, but if not then I'm afraid it's looking grim for a two launcher hehe Looking forward to seeing this progress! Looks and sounds like you had fun along the way though, and isn't that the point! button bash F5 F9 until things go right! To the mission: Ahhhh there you see! Wasn't the shuttle just designed for things like landing on airless bodies and deploying heavy ground cargo from a top opening platform?! This was a great mission report, and I was genuinely worried for a minute after watching about 12 minutes of de-orbit burn that you were going to smash into the ground, but the suicide burn was completed nicely. It made me think of @Alchemist's hilarious (sorry) Duna videos which featured heavily on the landing bloopers. Great mission, great payload and great for landing it back at KSC. Here's your badge!! I wonder which you will do next! @armegeddon nailed it. Basically the higher you go the more likely your AP etc just bounces around so much tolerances are wishful thinking which is the reason for the increase. Not sure if that's been bug fixed since 1.2.x though. Order is looking fine to me! I seriously don't know why Imgur doesn't upload in order, forcing you to rearrange hundreds of images though. Oh brilliant - You've literally gone and made a pair of space binoculars that's fantastic haha! Skunkworks for sure - Also the mission was well played out so you can have the less important mission badge Nice I'm staying up to date! I wanted to see if I could get to 1000 likes at the same time as getting to 1000 posts, but with the amount I review I doubt that's going to happen. SM

I've just upgraded and overhauled to 1.3, so I've been picking through the components and making sure they all still work. Quite a few of my heavily clipped craft do not, but luckily these are not so heavy on the clipping so appears to have gone well with the move to 1.3. I will still be going back and iterating a few of the craft though as I've spotted an error with the comsats not having the correct dishes etc. Thinking is at the moment that the payload section of the rocket will be in a couple of parts. The first one is this. quite a neat package all things considered. a 3.5 fairing base allows for complete enclosure: The second, as yet undesigned will be the Kerbin return and re-entry vehicle. It's likely to be OP compared to my last one, as I had to get out and push in my first attempt!! For sure I'm running a very high end PC that I built a year or so ago. It's water cooled, with about 8 assisting case fans, plus air cooling on the graphics card etc etc. It's likely to melt still, but patience in terms of running a flip book launch isn't likely to happen, which I'm very happy about. I'm at 399 parts and 71.289t at this stage, so I'm thinking the final rocket will be in the region of 1000-1500 parts all told . Launching in one piece should be...interesting! SM

Ha look at that Kerbal about to explode in the last photo! Neat little landing markers you have there also. Well done on returning the fuel pod, it's definitely a challenge! Ah there's various ways to do it, but basically the spin has to be imparted as or before the comsat separates. Easiest way I found to do it was a decoupler arrangement with sepatrons. This one is more of a "If you've made a decent attempt to impart spin you cover it" thing. Seriously, Bravo! I mean, if NASA was serious about doing an Asteroid Redirect Mission then they'd better get serious about following this thread . Very enjoyable video to watch on a lazy Sunday morning with coffee and croissant in tow! Genuinely pleased to be able to award you the gateway to interplanetary missions: Oh yeah - If you can land the potato, then you will find the Mun a little easier! Well done! Mini announcement - I'm aware that 1.3 is out, and I totally don't have an issue with people using 1.3 to compete in this challenge, so I'm going to totally remove the KSP version number from the thread title. I'm doing a massive mission to Moho at the moment which is taking ages because I have no time, but once that is complete then I am likely to temporarily close this thread while I give it a major overhaul. Don't worry though - That could be weeks or months away, and I will give plenty of warning. It will also not affect anything that is in existence already so keep doing those missions! SM

It's implicit that the fuel in the pod is not used at any point in the flight. Having said that taking 2 and filling the fuel pod before you un-dock it is fine in a way really as you are taking the fuel up there regardless. As long as the tanks on the pod are full when it's deployed then I guess I don't have an issue. Remember the fuel is contaminated though Pleasure! Look forward to seeing the next missions.... Nice work! The first shuttle I agree looks much cooler, but this one is clearly capable Have a badge! SM

Yeah absolutely SM

Lol you know where to get the badge from. Why don't you do some of the later missions? Welcome to the challenge thread for Shuttles! Can't wait to see what you come up with. As others have mentioned I check in here and award the relevant badge with varying levels of frequency and wit. ITCH SCRATCHED! You know where the badges are legend Nice Buran! Oof that's a lot of boosters!!! Uh oh, another RSS whiz-kid. Welcome back Go get me a rescue crew! HA! Well it certainly qualifies for STS-1 if you can get it to orbit and back! No amount of tea will get me through 5 hours of watching someone else play KSP, so this one is definitely on the honor system. Commander right? Holy Kraken!!! We are not worthy. Have a badge for sure, and I'll allow the STS5 mission Yeah this is totally acceptable! The rocket itself might be an SSTO, but the main tank separates leaving a shuttle (even if it's just a trashcan with a couple of aero bits) that can operate under it's own power. Well done on this tiny little thing! Welcome to the challenge! Very nice initial offering in this shuttle. I'm sure some small improvements will have you rocketing through the challenges soon! As previously mentioned, this one is fine as it's not an SSTO. Well the rocket get's it to orbit in one go obviously, but the Shuttle does and can operate under it's own power As previously mentioned (again ) your first design was totally acceptable. Still, have another badge Good to be caught up again! SM

WOOOT IT"S THE FREAKIN' WEEKEND! No tea as I've destroyed it already, but let me review some of these bad boys so I can play 6 infuriating hours of Day Z tomorrow and wonder what the hell I am doing before switching to Farming Simulator 2017, and literally turning into a potato at my keyboard. Very nicely done indeed my friend! Great mission report and a really nicely produced station,, with some added secret tech by the looks of it! Look again at that dot. That's here. That's Kerbin. That's us. On it every rocket you love, every Kerbal you know, every rocket company you ever heard of, every Kerbal who ever was, crashed out their Mk1 pod. The aggregate of our boosters and vectors, thousands of confident Jebs, Val's, and play doctrines, every Engineer and Scientist, every periapsis and apoapsis, every creator and destroyer of the VAB, every decoupler and separator, every young Val in love, every sepatron and kickback, hopeful Patcan, inventor and explorer, every teacher of rocketry, every corrupt save file, every "docking port," every "Ballistic Trajectory," every anomaly and re-entry in the history of our version lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Excellent mission report as usual and a job thoroughly well done. Welcome to interplanetary! Nice thanks very much for providing the detail! I've built some stuff in that sort of style before using mods, I just wanted to see what sort of things were possible in stock. Particularly like the lander can as entrance part! That is quite the beast! @overkill13 is correct, you've got some brick parts in there aerodynamically! Look forward to seeing refined designs! Oh cool a Laythe mission. Been a while since the green badge was awarded. Let me take a look! WOW! Totally love the way you made way for that Cargo on Laythe. I think that's the first time I've seen it done that way and it appears to be a really good option! You totally deserve the badge with this one, and thanks for visiting Minmus on your way home. That reminds me - a Minmus mission. Hmmmmm. Well done! SM

You certainly can suggest it, and I would be very happy to update the OP - It's a cracking challenge. Probably won't happen until Sat or Sun this week though sorry! SM

Since Speeding Mullet is no longer reviewing overkill13's posts . Seriously though work has been super busy, so apologies for not checking in here that regularly! YASSSS!!! Let me review the mission a second.....Firstly - Excellent mission report as always, the level of detail you put into missions is fantastic to see. Secondly - Yup it's a mare of a mission for sure. I had no idea it was even possible until my shuttle was on the ground, and even my attempt was at pilot level. Thirdly - Ahhhh Brave Samford . Check out his smile when he's landed. Relief, or he wanted to go and do it again! Firstly - Brilliant work landing the potato to commander standards - Secondly - Amazing work landing Samford in one piece. Wins the Patcan Kerman bravery award for sure, and also this little thing - (again ) Very nicely done indeed! Commentary is not so important as long as I can tell what is going on. You provided the information required so I will provide you the badge required! Cool! not sure if you were shooting for a mission badge here, but obviously I can't award based on the gallery linked there. Good to see the shuttle developing though! Hello there! Thanks for entering the challenge! For flying the above mission with someone else's shuttle I am pleased to award you the very rarely awarded Astronaut badge! If you want more badges you will have to design your own shuttle and use it to fly missions, but this should definitely get you started! You are nearly not wrong there, it's taken a while to catch up! A pleasure it has been though So very satisfying flying this mission I find. I know I say the same thing every time, but I really never get bored of looking at two shuttles in close orbit far above Kerbin. Excellent work! Very nicely done indeed! Here's your badges! I hadn't considered the rescue mission also rescuing the telescope with updated parts, but that's truly in the spirit of the challenge, and the actual Hubble, so I'm very happy with this! Easier than the potato mission right?! Still, heck of a payload you delivered to the Mun - Your shuttle will easily be capable of the Duna missions, and possibly Laythe also with minimal support! Really interested in some more pictures of that Munar module if you wouldn't mind - really nice design work there! Very nice work - Seeing some of the smaller shuttles is also cool, even if they can only compete in the basic mission. Thanks for sharing! That wouldn't count as a supply package. If you launch something as part of an earlier mission then you can use that separate to your allowed supply launch. Just don't loft 5 orange tanks to orbit hanging off your space station, as that's not really in the spirit of the challenge. Thanks for tuning in everyone - great entries!!! SM