dracklen

Haha, wow, this was a while back. I'd be game for starting it back up again though if things aren't horribly un-updateable. The convention had become to give a report as formatted in the previous posts, and to post a "working on it" or something similar when you had the file, that way multiple people weren't attempting the challenge at once. Also the only mod in use way alarm clock to make sure windows weren't missed. The file is a bit of a monster, however!

I can just barely get a kerbonaut to orbit with my current design... Staging is somewhat difficult to plan, as keeping TWR when you lose so much surface area for engines can be daunting. I think I have a working model though, I just need more engines, I'll post my results when I get anywhere near the moon. Edit: Several tries and a whole lot of weird staging, and I can pull orbit and almost get to the mun... I don't think my computer can actually handle doing this challenge. The sheer number of engines that need to be firing to lift something capable of staging its way to the mun is giving me like 1 frame every few seconds at launch. I have a few more ideas about potential staging by frontloading huge numbers of engines onto ibeams or something that I'll try... But this challenge has defeated me for now x.x;.

I don't have too many ways to improve the design aside from making it more jet-based. I pretty much burn 70%+ of the jet fuel on a good ascent to get up to about 50+ km with 1800 m/s, and coast up a bit. Need the three jets to get off the ground at a decent speed, too. Not sure how the SABRE compares, but it seems like it might be losing some efficiency by not being able to drop the used jet tanks and intakes, as the orbital stage I used was using a .65t engine, and not much else. The payload was the NovaPunch Odin part of their Odin-Thor lander package. Its nice because its really compact so things weren't too wobbly when I tried to lift them, it has SAS on it, and a decoupler (plus they're fun to mess around with once you get them to orbit). Also used their Orbital Achievement device engine, which is sort of a slightly bigger lv-909, although I think I could have gotten by using the lv-909 with a perfect run on the jets. The orbital stage is pretty minimal, and has the Nova 3.6 ton fuel tank, which is maybe a little bit overkill, but I couldn't quite do an orbit on the stock 2.25 ton fuel tank. I think that someone could pull off a better designed jet stage with closer to the 10:1 intake ratio that could probably get a larger payload up and be going fast enough that it doesn't need a larger orbital stage. I can never seem to design a craft well enough to pull off the orbital speeds I've seen others do off just jets, though. Always seems to be too finicky if I use more than one central engine.

I've been playing around with Nova lately and wanted to try something like this, to try to improve my efficiency at getting the Odin into orbit. I always seem to have issues with with getting something with weight on it into orbital speeds with just jets, so I'm sure theres alot of improvements to be made, and I usually don't have the probe core on the main lifter, but seeing as how the spirit of the challenge was to have an independent lifter craft, I broke it up in the middle. I believe it fits all your rules, and I'm only using Jeb for the display information on this run: If my maths ok, thats 50-9.55 = 40.45 for the lifter and 10 ton load => 404.5 score Edit: Forgot to name it! Lets call it the minilift-o-matic 3.0

Bump! Looks like its open for someone to accept then, see the previous page for the challenge.

Hm, perhaps I need another challenge then... I'll think of one... Came up with a new one and posted!

Challenge # 93 Complete Total Kerbals lost: 2 Total Extra-Kerbin landings: 9 Got the Charon back to Shiva station, docked it back up, and got Charon fueled up for future adventures. Challenge #94 Philsy Kerman has stolen Jeb's Buggy! He's taken it on a joy ride in the middle of the night, and drove it to the top of the mountain to the west of KSC! But then he remembered something! He's afraid of heights, and it's a whole lot scarier going down than it is coming up, so he needs to be rescued. You need to either get another brave kerbal over to the buggy to drive him safely off of the mountain, or better yet, design some kind of rescue vehicle that is capable of landing in rugged terrain on top of the mountain, and taking off again to get safely back to the launch center. Then time warp 24 hours to get us closer to some of the upcoming windows! The Buggy for reference is designed to climb mountains and hit decent speeds over the flat land to get there, but its not so great at getting down them! Speeds: Powered Wheels ~ 25 m/s, Safe with jet~ 60 m/s, max on flat land ~ 125m/s Braking: Terrible! The downward facing wings and forward com make it want to flip if you hit the breaks above ~25 m/s. Action Groups: 1) Jet Engine 2) Ladders for driver, shotgun, and rear 3) Head Lights 4) Cabin Lights 5) Tail Lights Save File: here!

So is someone currently attempting this challenge? If not I'll back to back and take it on, as there seems to be a bit of a lull.

Ah, I think I figured out what it was, I mixed up a SAS module for the quantum core I installed to run someone elses save a while back... I think I've got it all removed now, if that still doesn't work, I'll just come up with a different ship this afternoon, sorry guys! Give this one a try: link

Weird, I'm not sure why that happened. I'll try to fix it when I get back home! Tried to reupload it, does let me know if it works this time! Here

Total Completed Challenges: 90 Total Kerbals lost: 2 Total Extra-Kerbin landings: 9 Mission to set up an intersect with Moho begun! Kerbal alarm clock set to about 15 days from now when the angle needs to be changed, but the approach looks really good. Not much else to show here! Mission 91: Get the interplanetary fuel depo to orbit and make the burn for Moho while the window is still open! The staging is a big weird, so fair warning, and credit to the Zenith rocket family for the main stage. (mine were having some pretty serious exploding issues) Once we get to orbit, we'll need to deorbit the propellant stage and leave the RCS stage with the various docking ports in a reasonable orbit of Moho. (Be careful not to time warp too far, there are other missions which will need to occur before this guy can reach Moho!) Save File: Here

Apologies for the delay! My internet decided to die on my halfway through! Total Completed Challenges: 85 Total Kerbals lost: 2 Total Extra-Kerbin landings: 8 The probe launched without much incident, but once we hit orbit and deorbited the launch stage, the probe managed to miss the station several times. Fortunately the ion engines are pretty good for this sort of thing, and a few minutes later, the probe was safely docked in its assigned location. Challenge 86: Get the Minmus Observatory to Minmus, preferably with the experimental rover intact. Ideal landing spots would be near the equator on a hill to maximize field of vision. The launch system is a bit weird, but assuming it doesn't blow up, it should be enough to get our brave astronomy team into orbit, and the nuclears can do the rest! 1 Controls the 4 nuclears on the lander, and 2 controls the ladders which should allow for each kerbal to exit. Don't forget to plant a flag! Save File (D'oh, knew I was forgettign something): Here!

Challenge Accepted! Made orbit just fine. Deorbited booster stage. Trying to line this bad boy up...

I think I need a completely new redesign to make this beast go any faster, as if I try to add anything more to the length or the sides, the joints start tearing themselves apart near 200 m/s. But heres my record: 245.2 m/s (I've broken 250 but unfortunately couldn't break before the whole thing flipped over and exploded). I'm really interested to see what other designs come out, as I've tried several others but they all seem to have either too little or too much downward force to achieve high speeds. Slight improvements made and redesigned base yielded 287.2 m/s ... It seems the most troublesome thing so far is to provide as stable as possible a base, as even a tiny shift of the wings above 250 usually spells disaster

Challenge #83 Completed Total Kerbals lost: 2 Total Extra-Kerbin landings: 8 First step was to get a couple of extra Kerbals into our space ship! After several iterations, a quick-and-dirty crew transport ship was made. While the turning radius on this beast is nothing to boast about, our two new explorers, Fredsby Kerman and Aldbus Kerman were quickly boarded. A few minutes later they were seventy five thousand meters closer to their destiny! The trip took slightly more fuel due to a few careless piloting errors, but there should be plenty left for their future docking with the Valkyrie for their final journey. Also accomplished was a quick refueling mission to the "Slinkie" to give it some RCS in case it ever needs to see action. Challenge 84: Charon is Currently in orbit and needs to get back to the Shiva station, which is currently becoming rather crowded! Get Charon back to the station and refueled. Optional Challenge: We still need another module to counter-balance the (16.24T) Tranquility lounger for when the Valkyrie transports her to Lathe. Save File: Here!