WarWyvern

I was hoping someone would make this challenge, as this was my first thought on seeing that screenshot. My entry is the appropriately-named "Hopeful". She got into a stable orbit of just over 100 kilometers and returned the pilot safely to the waters just off of KSC's eastern coast (well, halfway to the next continent, but close enough, right?). It's not as small or cheap to build as UmbralRaptor's model (nice flying, by the way!), but with the boosters and explosive staging, it may be a bit more idiot-proof, which I find to be the best proof in a rocket. I believe my total was 50 points. I only launched and returned one kerbal and destroyed most of my rocket to do that much. PS: If you don't see any images, please wait a moment for me to sort it out. First time posting an entire album. Edit: Nope. Just going with pictures then. Too late right now to deal with the album thing. Night all.

Is life support even documented as a planned feature? If so, then yeah, I guess that's the one I'm worried about, unless I can assign automated recurring missions and set up the logistics, or something. Otherwise, it's probably deadly reentry. This is mainly due to my inability to make a functional aircraft that cannot turn itself into an aerodynamic fireball. I already have one ceiling to worry about as it is, and it gets higher the faster I go.

Not just KSP videos for me. I've found that if I've been playing a new game all day and am now tired, I'll briefly look at something in my kitchen and half-expect a tooltip to inform me that the milk is a week past its expiration date.

So during the renovation, the construction crew demolished the buildings, but forgot to uninstall the shadows? Good job sticking to protocol guys. Now people are going to think the space center is haunted.

I'm not all that concerned. After all, you can just prototype vehicles all you want in a sandbox game, make your mistakes there, and transfer the craft file(s) over to career once you're happy with it. That's essentially how I build farms and complicated redstone stuff in Minecraft. A bit "cheaty" to some, I'm sure, but I'll just call it a simulation that's used in lieu of a team of skilled engineers telling me everything I did wrong before physics gets the chance.

Fantastic! An exemplary example of how only the most talented artists sign their age next to their name.

Well, not yet anyway. Also, I don't see the problem here; that landing was textbook!

I'm planning on making a series of interplanetary missions to test designs for a possible grand tour of the Kerbol system and found myself with a slight dilemma: my proposed transfer vehicle can't mount a small lander inline, so I'll need to bring two. That's fine, except the nuclear landers that I've always built (based off of those frequently employed by Scott Manley in his videos) weigh in at a mighty 17 tons, whereas a smaller design I've been playing around with is a much more reasonable 7.28 tons, but lacks high-efficiency nukes in favor of the Rockomax 24-77 radial engines. So, I decided to test the two with a Mun landing exercise. The mission was to use a transfer vehicle to tug the landers to low munar orbit (about 15 km), pick a landmark and deploy one lander over it. Once the first lander touched down, the second would be deployed over the same landmark on the next orbit and touch down in the same general location as the first. Fuel would be compared between the two before they lift off into an orbit matching that of the transfer vehicle, where fuel is compared again. Note that I only rendezvoused with the orbiter after the experiment was concluded, in an effort to eliminate what variables I could. What I found was that the larger craft used 128 units of liquid fuel (36%) for its landing, while the smaller craft used 152 (42%) with a bit of inefficient pogoing due to an unskilled pilot. However, the larger lander achieved orbit consuming 112 (totaling 67%) fuel and the smaller a mere 94 (68%). Since they both used the "tuna can" with 360 units of liquid fuel and neither emptied it, that is what I used to compare fuel percentages, even though the larger lander had a pair of side tanks to mount the engines onto (90 liquid fuel each). These results make the difference in fuel efficiency of the engines seem negligible, but the lighter lander design would have an advantage in not driving up the mass of its carrier, making it easier to fly. Because I checked and didn't see any topics like this and have found myself falling into a pattern of building the same lander design over and over, I thought I'd submit this experiment to the community to see what you all think and maybe help out those who haven't experimented with different landers (also to double-check my math). Is it a better choice to pick raw fuel efficiency over a lighter design? If so, how do you offset the additional mass that more robust vehicle brings? Thanks for reading.

If I'm understanding this correctly, it sounds like the center structure is slightly longer than the side tanks that you're trying to dock. This is causing it to flex and compress on the side the first tank docks, leaving the second tank with a bit too much of a gap. I'm not sure how you would go about fixing it, but if you could maybe find a way of compressing the structure towards the second tanks (perhaps with lightweight radial thrusters?), you might be able to secure it. Hope this helps.

Hmm. Now that you mention it, I too am curious how much spare change you could pick up off the road using magnets.

Thanks for the replies! So it does rely on throwing a portion of the radiation of the explosion and mass of the bomb back against the pusher plate to propel the craft. I don't know if I'm entirely sold on the idea, as it still seems a bit ridiculous (now more from an engineering viewpoint than a physical one), but it's at least a fun idea for a mod. Edit: And thanks for all the replies after this post. I even got a documentary out of it that almost makes the Orion Project look practical. I'll have to remember to ask more physics-related questions here in the future.

Technically I use more probe bodies than actual command pods, since I can throw them onto almost any design without much concern and maintain control of the ship/launch stage when the crew aren't present. In terms of command pods with life support though, I tend to use the new single seat lander can a fair amount (for landers, obviously), but I probably use the mk-1 cockpit and cupola pod far more due to their high visibility in IVA. The latter especially, since I keep trying to find excuses for throwing one on.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an astrophysicist, but I'm still not entirely clear on how this engine is supposed to function with such incredible returns. From what I can tell, it relies on the concussive pressure of the explosion against the plate, but I also understand that space is a vacuum that shouldn't carry any concussion (such as sound). I guess that a small portion of the energy released, along with some pieces of the bomb itself, might return to impact the plate and help push the craft along, but it still seems a bit inefficient. If anyone has some insight on this, I would like to learn about how this (incredibly Kerbal contraption) could work.

I frequently spin my craft on launch, but never on purpose.

It's actually part of the ground scatter? The only place I've seen it is on the menu screen (the one on the Mun, of course). I figured it was just an easter egg that only appeared there. I must go find more of these castles forthwith!