Tsevion

Yeah... mostly the asteroids themselves are near indestructible... and then I'll just try applying lithobraking techniques to slow down enough for the claw to work... should be interesting.

Hah... great response ... but if what I did wasn't flying, then helicopters don't fly.

I decided to try a different method. I think the pure jet booster people had it right, jet power can lift higher than wing power. The tricky part was achieving "level flight"... since we don't have a hard definition, I figured what someone suggested of 5 seconds between -5 and 5 vertical speed sounded reasonable... so I provided proof of that. Clearly no infiniglide, as no control surfaces were used... there was however, serious air intake abuse... but that's legit in this challenge. It could definitely be better (command chair abuse, carrying less fuel, adding even more intakes)... although I'm not sure exactly how much higher it could get... So here we have the Maximus IV Altitude: 49026 m Speed: 444 m/s Achievements: Maching Fly, Gnat (3.99t), "Budget Cuts" Definitely not Budget Cuts though... it costs over 100k... those intakes are expensive.

You know, this challenge is stupid enough I just might try it. Just double checking two things, otherwise doing this stock is just an exercise in frustration: 1) Does the claw count as a docking port? Seeing as it docks the ships... 2) Can I use an asteroid as part of one of my craft?

You forgot "no Kraken Drive", one could probably use a conventional rocket to get up to Kraken speeds and SSTO with that.

For the Jooldive is there any requirement to get back out again? Otherwise it's gonna be the same for everyone... the best altimeter reading will be 0, because it starts ticking up again when it goes negative (no minus sign seems to exist). At -60m or so everything explodes.

I dunno, I think it was a pretty fun challenge. Challenges that you can do things like this are enjoyable. Much better than the usual challenges involving provided crafts or save files, which are usually: "Fly my poorly designed plane around Kerbin twice". This actually was a challenge.

I decided to do this MacGyver style using only what you already had available... so it's FREE I noticed your "fuel depot" had engines, and all the Cylon 2 needs is fuel... so why not bring the fuel to it? So I fired it up, flew to the Mun, prayed it had enough TWR, and landed next to the Cylon 2... in the dark... that may have been poor planning on my part. Then after waiting for day, I Quicksaved (very important step) and started trying to dock... needless to say, it took a few tries. I eventually got it though, fully refueled the Cylon, then flew her home. After a few aero-braking passes, I landed it right at KSC. Points: (15000 - 0) * (1 (brought them home) + 1.5 (in the Cylon 2) + 0.25 (didn't touch the Jool probe)) = 41250

Well, without putting much effort in, this is I make it to 348,800m. I say not much effort because literally all I did was take my in atmosphere speed-runner (2336m/s under 40km), point it straight up, max the throttle and hit space. As several people have mentioned, theoretical max top speed in atmo is 2400m/s, and getting over 2300m/s is tricky. After that it's just fine tuning, but that won't make it a whole lot higher than this... I'm guessing around 500km is the cap... so don't expect any jet powered Mun runs. This old Reddit challenge may also be enlightening. With a little more effort (and a lot more air intakes), I was able to do this: That is 415,700m... as I said, I'm guessing around 500km is the ceiling.

I dunno... massless parts are still kinda a glitch exploit... and I used the heck out of those.

Thanks Now I crawl back into hiding until 0.9 hits, with a new drag model it'll be a whole new competition. Maybe they'll also fix massless parts (maybe have them just add mass to whatever base part they're attached to... should keep the perf gains, yet keep physics less insane).

Yeah... if it wasn't trying to be an SSTO you could definitely use some drop tanks to make it more efficient. You could easily carry a bit more Xenon at launch, when lift is abundant and ditch the tanks later.

Ahahahahahahahaa... Finally... after many many hours... Success! The Ionic Symphony XI, delivers a Kerbal to a 70km x 77km orbit with enough spare fuel to de-orbit as well. 6 engines, 12.5 tanks (12x700 and 1x400), 46 wing strakes. The real pain was finding the right flight profile... thank Squad for in-flight quick-save, although there is a finicky bit where you lose 5-10m/s of vertical velocity on quick-load... which hurts... but still useful for comparing flight profiles at different points as opposed to having to redo the whole run each time. My final flight profile was approximately: 14° up to 10km 18° up to 20km 24° until I hit about 1700 m/s at around 40km 15° until desired periapsis is hit. Craft File I wanted to land at KSC, but it lost control around 25km and plunged to near the ground, I was only able to right it around 1500m up... so I just hand to land there.

What battery weight? The radial mount batteries are massless parts right now... if I get it working I may try to do a battery-less run. But currently, other than the point bonus, batteries just make it easier... and I'm very lazy. Honestly, if the solar panels weren't also massless, this whole endeavor would be impossible. But as it stands the entire power system is essentially free. We'll see if that changes in 0.9.

Well, still not quite to orbit, but now I've gotten to both orbital heights and orbital speeds... just not quite at the same time. At this point I think I'm like 50 delta-V off. I ran multiple variations of the second half of the flight, setting new records for speed and height (on separate runs). I also made the first full circle of the globe and landed back at the space center after some tumbling... and on that run I had technically an orbit... 68km x 2km... not quite a real orbit though. The Ionic Symphony IX Max Speed: 2124 m/s Max Altitude: 70,459 m 6 engines, 12 tanks, 44 wing strakes. So... darn... close... I can taste it. Adding more wing is weird... it makes the climb to 15km slower and less efficient, and past about 35km and 1600 m/s, wings aren't doing much, they're just drag and mass... but for the 20-35km climb, more wings makes it much easier, making up for the losses. I may experiment with even more, but I think I'm reaching the point where the extra mass and drag stops being made up for.

Gah... pushing it even closer with the Ionic Symphony VIII: 53,271@ 2,000 using 6 engines, 12 tanks, 42 wings... pretty much the exact same craft with two more wings stuck on... http://i.imgur.com/Ih9JP6p.png I gotta get to bed though, it's 6 am here and these runs take a while.

Ohh.... hahahahaha... oh god no. That was attempt 17... The first attempt was technically a success... but woulda been about 1.8 pts... as I was 9.5km away. After that it was dialing in the exact target point.

I'm back in in action... and I've alllllmooostt made the manned to orbit... and while I didn't quite, I think this is a new top manned record. About 150 m/s more dV and I'd be there. Here's the Ionic Symphony VI Max Altitude: 48,386m Max Speed: 1976 m/s 6 engines 12 tanks 40 wings many batteries to handle both the early morning and the night... so no bonus.

For most of my best runs I had a static angle of attack of 15%... and Slashy and I ended up with similar results... so I'm guessing the difference is fairly negligible in any case.

So here we go... Launch Weight: 11.54t Landed: 748m away Below is a real-time video of the whole mission... all 3 and a half minutes it too If I'm doing the Math correctly: (100 + 100 + 10) / 11.54 = 18.198 pts.

You could perhaps use a fixed mass (say 100t), and figure out how many engines to add to get to a specific TWR (0.5?, 1.0?, 2.0?). The score is then the weight of those engines. This is a direct calculation from TWR, so effectively ignores the other factors, while still giving a number that is more linearly representative of capability. The problem is very low TWR engines can't make the minimum goal (Nuclear has trouble making 2.0, the ship needs to be 80% engine... Ion struggles to make 0.5). Of course, if rating engines for launch capability this makes sense... nukes ARE terrible launch engines, an ions simply can't launch at all. On the flip-side, both are really handy in space. Another thing to consider is you probably want to normalize the price to something like price per kN of thrust... otherwise smaller engines are getting a bit of an unfair advantage.

I'm a bit of a builder/planner/astrophysicist and purist... I run stock or close to stock (Stock parts and physics) I use informational and quality of life mods. Mostly though, I'm a Mad Scientist... I like to push at the very edge of what is possible. How light (<2t), or few parts (3), or cheap (5k) can I get to Mun? Can you fly with no fuel whatsoever without abusing infiniglide (2 different ways)? Can you build a non-cheating Eve SSTO (no )? How badly CAN you abuse infiniglide (Zeppelin, Eve SSTO)? Can you do a "surface" return mission to Jool (yes)? Whether it's challenges posed here, or on Reddit, or if it's just ideas most people would discard out of hand... I like to try.

That's orbital velocity... while the OP hasn't really mentioned it... the leaderboard is all SURFACE velocity. So that puts you at about 2200 m/s, pretty quick... but definitely not the fastest.

Sorry to be that guy... but the simple fact is Kerbals are too sturdy... it makes the challenge actually kinda trivial I couldn't figure out if more or fewer parts was better for scoring, but one of these 2 (possibly both?) should be worth 100. Also, I'll point out, this is 100% consistent.

I'm a bit confused by the Parts used part of scoring... are you getting points for more parts or fewer?