cakepie

That's a cute trick that surprised me a bit, but ultimately to be consistent I'll have to take the result for the regular takeoff run, since I did specify:

Did you unpack it exactly as-is into the GameData folder? You should have <ksp_root>/GameData/CakePie/HawkspeedAirstairs/Parts/2mAirstair/ Do not move or rename to a different location; this will break things because the mod relies on the textures to be in a specific location.

v0.6 is now released! V 0.6 released 2014-09-04 Minor model and texture tweaks. Added the ability to switch between multiple textures. Added alternate texture for use with Firespitter bomber cockpit and fuselages. Upgraded Firespitter.dll to 6.3.5.

I just realized I messed up my math with my stock demo flight. It's actually 111.8km, not 20km >_< I'll just use Wolfram Alpha from now on rather than try to calculate by hand. XD Thanks for your proof-of-concept input on the viability of stock attempts! I'd have to agree that if you leverage all the weird quirks of stock aero you could most definitely do much better than my demo flight. You should totally do an actual official attempt -- just put the craft in SAS glide on timewarp, set an alarm with Kerbal alarm clock, and leave it in the background while you work, or something. No SP+ please -- it is not stock yet, and there are likely going to be quite some differences from what it is now when it does come out in 0.25. Please work with the stock parts in the game at this time. Of course, if this is still running when 0.25 comes out, then the new parts would be fair game since everyone will have them. As for Stock Drag Fix, I have no experience playing with that but I think it would behave sufficiently differently from all of stock, FAR and NEAR that it wouldn't be fair to rank them together. You're welcome to make an attempt, regardless, and I will track that separately if there is enough interest. Nice! Shame about that slight damage =(

Nope, no launch towers please. It's all about the aero design of your craft, not just hurling it from as high a starting point as possible. Edit: also, that would break the rule re: not allowed to lose or discard any part of the craft on the way -- if you build a launch tower, well, that gets discarded and left behind. So that's a no-go.

No, please launch starting from the spaceplane spawn point, and take off from the runway. Everyone needs to start from the same location in order for the results to be meaningfully ranked. After all, this is a challenge about designing and flying a rocket plane, not a challenge about finding a high place to launch from. Therefore no driving anywhere before launch and after landing (please minimize length of landing roll out).

The (il)logical next step: (It's really only good for giggles around KSC)

I suppose this depends on how you achieved the pitch up turning. Xeldrak said (emphasis mine): Which I'd interpret to mean that the pitch up turning maneuver should be accomplished using wings and control surfaces -- your SRBs should all be pointing toward the back of the craft and contribute purely forward velocity, and not angled to help you get the front to lift up.

"You're joking, right?" Nope, I kid you not. This thing can really glide... 18+ minutes of flight... and splashes down intact ~ ~ ~ And if you have FAR installed, it will actually make it to the island runway: (with Thrust limiter set to minimum of 5.5 to avoid tearing the wings to bits.)

I intended for rocket-powered planes rather than rocket-boosted gliders (flavor-wise imagine that you could refuel and reuse the craft rather than replace a significant chunk of it) -- so I'd say no to that. Rules clarified. I've also made it clearer that FAR/NEAR are pretty much needed if you want to pull off anything like a circumnavigation like I did -- you wouldn't get very far on stock aerodynamics only -- although if people want to try that, I can maintain a separate leaderboard for that as well.

Done! Once you've figured out a general ascent profile and understand the delta-V involved to get out of the atmosphere, the rest is down to trying to find the right combination of maneuvers using seperatrons to fine tune as best as you can. Earlier (when I mistakenly used my non-stock copy of KSP) I mentioned this was a tough obstacle -- and it still is. A little delta-V goes a long way up there, so it can be fairly tricky especially if you've cultivated a habit of doing beautifully optimal transfer burns. For this, there is a lot of "find the suboptimal burn of exactly so many m/s that will increase Ap/Pe without escaping Kerbin". Oh, and don't arrange seperatrons blocking one another. Silly me. =/

Done! tl;dr: 82,290km / 79,963km; orbit attained, all boosters running at full power. Theoretically should have been able to return Kerbal home, but I messed up, so didn't get that bonus. (One booster only partially filled, though, because I realized in earlier attempts it had too much delta-V and I wasn't going to rearrange the whole damn craft just to replace that with something lighter.) Score: (82290 + 79963) * 1.5 = 162253 * 1.5 = 243,379.5 Okay, here's the behemoth Jeb's flying today: Business end: Takeoff... First stage separation -- it barely takes us to 3500+m. Now second stage... This second stage separation is a thing of beauty, somehow I managed to choreograph it such that none of the wings collide. Third stage is 3x RT-10 Then 2x BACC, then just one Finagling with the interface to plan a maneuver for exactly the delta-V that the RT-10 wll provide... Let's not forget to separate that spent stage. Burn. Nice. Ditched the RT10, making some adjustments to seperatron staging for as fine control as possible. (For some definition of "fine", lol) Something like this, maybe? Burn. This next. Done. At this point, I have 18 separatrons left and Engineer reports 487m/s delta-V, but it turns out I made a mistake in arranging them in line with one another. Out of the 24 separatrons in total I have on the cockpit, only the first 8 are effective -- the rest just shoot ineffectually at the next separatron below. Consequently, Jebediah Kerman, lost in space. In another alternate universe where I did not make this dumb mistake, landing and recovery would have been fairly trivial -- plenty of delta-V to spare, in fact. Oh well.

You should try it regardless, with or without KAX!

Here's the challenge: Build a stock-only spaceplane using a single BACC booster as the only source of propulsion, and see how far you can fly it. Take off from the KSC runway, and come to a safe conventional aircraft landing (that means no parachutes!) anywhere on Kerbin of your own choosing. Rules: stock parts only, except Engineer, VOID, or similar information mod for determining coordinates of end location. No autopilots. Ferram Aerospace Research and/or Neophyte's Elementary Aerodynamics Replacement are pretty much required to make the challenge aerodynamically interesting. However I will track results for stock aerodynamics separately if people are interested in giving that a shot. Edit: Stock aero attempts seem to be devolving into achieving infliniglide -- this is permitted, since I do not wish to get into the business of judging entries based on whether infiniglide is factor. If you don't care for infiniglide, feel free to disregard stock aero section and make your attempt with FAR/NEAR. [*] must be a plane, horizontal takeoff and landing; must land safely (i.e. intact). no parachutes! take off from the runway, eastbound, starting from the spawn location. please come to a prompt and safe stop once landed -- rolling on the ground is not "flying" and should not count. (Please be honest.) landing intact in water: allowed -- props to you if you can pull it off. [*] propulsion to consist of one (1) BACC solid rocket booster only. you may tweak the thrust limiter. (you probably should.) Nothing else. No liquid fuel, oxidizer, monoprop, xenon, etc. allowed at all. No rover wheels. No driving on the ground allowed please. Only time you should be moving on the ground are takeoff, which must be on the runway, and landing, for which you should minimize the length of the rollout. [*] you may not lose or discard any part of the craft on the way -- build a rocket-powered plane, not a rocket-boosted glider. This includes: no leaving parts behind during launch. [*] both manned craft and drones are permitted (separate leaderboards will be maintained to account for payload mass difference) [*] you may launch at a time of your choosing (due to: affects electrical power considerations for unmanned craft) Scoring: to submit your attempt, state your general direction traveled (N/E/S/W) and lat long coordinates of final landing place, accompanied at minimum by screenshots of : map view at some point approximately mid-flight, showing craft location; including navball, showing flight direction (usually: east) for each time you make a full circle around Kerbin, make a separate screenshot to prove when you pass over KSC. craft intact after safe landing, with coordinates of final landing place. more thorough mission reports are of course welcome. [*] please indicate if you are using Stock, Ferram Aerospace Research or Neophyte's Elementary Aerodynamics Replacement aerodynamics. [*] results will ranked by distance as determined using great circle distance from the runway starting position at (0.0486°S, 74.7244°W). Exact formula will depend on how many half-revolutions traveled, but will be of the form: N x Kerbin circumference +/- GCD [*] you may go to space, i.e. suborbital flight, but must eventually land somewhere on Kerbin for your attempt to count. achieved stable orbit? (tbh I'm not completely sure that's even possible) That's nice, now you're stuck without propulsion. if you manage to get into a very slowly decaying orbit, I guess you win an internet. Tips: The key to doing well is managing an optimal suborbital ascent, combined with designing a craft with excellent glide characteristics. Unmanned entries will need to consider electrical power management, as well as contend with the lack of torque if you only bring a probe core. Set the thrust limiter wisely -- it's the only throttle control you'll have. Use SAS to hold a long, steady glide. After a couple of test flights to get a good idea of the range you have, plan ahead and decide on viable landing zones for your actual attempt. You might find Kerbal Maps helpful for this. But is it even possible? With FAR installed, and using an unmanned craft built to the above rules, I've just pulled off a circumnavigation of Kerbin, overshot the island runway by a chunk, and then turned around and landed back at KSC with plenty of energy (i.e. altitude) to spare. So yes, you can get surprisingly FAR with just one BACC booster! With stock aerodynamics: basically devolved into a test in infinigliding; see comments about above in "Rules" section. Just to set reasonable expectations of what's viable with stock aerodynamics: I did a quick and simple attempt and reached a distance of about 100+ km flying NE along the coast. Leaderboard Manned FAR/NEAR tbd Manned Stock Monthar (Triple Eastward circumnavigation) 11310km cantab (North to 9.6586°N,74.6574°W) 101.2km Unmanned FAR/NEAR cake>pie (Eastward circumnavigation) 3770km [FAR] Unmanned Stock cantab (Northwest to 23.0686°N,94.813°W) 316.3km (mild damage sustained on landing) cake>pie (Northeast to 8.209548°N, 67.897527°W) 111.8km

I am working on a fuselage part that has deployable airstairs; how would I go about setting it up to behave properly in FAR? i.e. I would like there to be an increase in drag on the side where the airstair is if someone were kerbal enough to deploy it in flight. In my current testing there doesn't seem to be any perceptible impact although FAR should be recalculating aerodynamics when the part animates. Currently the part has a bunch of colliders defining the cylindrical fuselage with the entryway section hollowed out, and there are colliders for the stair steps and railings which animate together with the stairs. edit: in high speed tests my test craft are generally falling apart due to dynamic pressures before any perceptible yaw or roll is induced by the extended stairs. If I leave a nicely trimmed craft in level flight, there is sometimes just the merest yaw to the left after awhile, that I can't be completely sure it's reliably due to the stairs. =/

I made a fuselage section with deployable airstairs, animated using Firespitter. Thanks Snjo for the plugin!

v0.5 is now released for testing! Coming soon: Stock-alike and Firespitter bomber like texture options. As an aside, poll is obsolete. Does anyone know if/how to remove it?

Hooray! Thanks for much needed (official) update!

Spotted a parts cost balance issue: Bomber Fuselage: Cost: 3000 Kerbucks when full; 2600 Kerbucks when emptied using tweakables Bomber Fuselage (Empty): Cost: 1000 Kerbucks when filled using tweakables; 600 Kerbucks when emptied KSP 0.24.2, FS 6.3.4. I guess this is probably due to changes in how KSP handles costs, because I could have sworn I checked those numbers before a few months ago and they made sense. (Edit: yes, likely be the new procedural cost in 0.24.1+) Actually at this point I figure you could just deprecate the empty fuselage since the stock game has tweakables now.

Notice I mentioned: "seamlessly traverse a sharp increase in height of whatever terrain or object they are standing upon by walking or running -- no jumping or RCS." Of course gravity matters if you allow jumping. The point of the experiment is, you don't climb stairs in real life by jumping with both legs together (at least, not unless you're doing that deliberately as a form of exercise or something). I wanted to see what height a Kerbal could cross if you simply use WASD only.

Hawkspeed Airstairs * Shown together with Firespitter and Kerbal Aircraft Expansion parts Intricately animated airstairs, crafted with care and pride Any old ladder or ramp will get you on board, but why settle for that? Hawkspeed airstairs are: Beautifully textured and animated: perfect for screenshots and videos! Physically plausible, mechanically sound design: based on real world examples whenever possible. Great RP value: treat your passengers and crew well! Action Shots No pics, no clicks, etc. Parts List Note: back in development after a long hiatus. Due to changes in stock landing gear and suspension since Airstairs v. 0.7 (KSP 0.25), all part models require substantial rework. New stair height -> model changes -> retexturing -> lots of work. Please be patient! 2.5m aircraft fuselage Matches LY-10 Small Landing Gear height; LY-35 Medium Landing Gear will also work if carefully placed. Pick from different textures in the editor (SPH or VAB) to match the style of other parts used in your craft: Stock-alike Aircraft KAX <- WIP Firespitter Bomber Stock-alike Capsule used to be available, but is currently pending rework. All normal maps are unavailable pending rework. Mk2 spaceplane fuselage Work in progress. Mk3 spaceplane fuselage Planned future development. Usage Notes You can simply walk or run up the stairs in most situations, there is usually no need to use the "[F]: Climb" command. If the bottom of the stair is slightly higher than ground level, you can use "Climb" to get onto the bottom step. Tapping "Climb" helps in low gravity situations (e.g. Minmus) where kerbals behave a bit "floaty" and lack traction on the stairs. Safety first! There's a good chance of your kerbal falling over when running down the stairs. Walk, don't run! Keep clear of moving parts, kerbals may be crushed to death, I kid you not! Airstair parts have crew capacity for one (1) kerbal; however, these parts are not generally intended for use as a crew compartment. For now, you will need to transfer crew between the airstair part and other parts of your craft, using stock KSP crew transfer functionality, or one of the available crew transfer mods. I am working on a better solution that will eliminate this mindless chore. Testers wanted, please visit that thread! FAQ Download DOWNLOAD v. 0.8.1 Version: 0.8.1 released 2017-06-05 KSP compatibility: 1.3.x / 1.4.x Packaged with Firespitter.dll (Firespitter v.7.6.0) for animation and texture swapping. There is a patch here if you use KSP 1.4+ and want to get rid of the Firespitter.dll dependency. DOWNLOAD v. 0.8.0 Version: 0.8.0 released 2017-05-11 KSP compatibility: 1.2.x Packaged with Firespitter.dll (Firespitter v.7.5.1) for animation and texture swapping. License You may make and distribute screenshots and gameplay videos showing this mod's parts and functionality. You may monetize gameplay videos in which you utilize this mod. You may modify configuration files for private use. You may NOT modify or redistribute models and textures without express permission. All other rights reserved. Please refer here for Firespitter license. Installing Delete existing installation if you have an older version. Extract included folders into your Gamedata folder. CKAN is not supported. Acknowledgements Big thanks go out to: Snjo for the Firespitter mod & plugin, and also for permission to reuse the Firespitter bomber fuselage textures. keptin for the Kerbal Aircraft Expansion mod which inspired the creation of the first airstair part, and permission to reuse KAX fuselage textures. Changelog v 0.8.1 released 2017-06-05 Update for KSP 1.3 Update bundled Firespitter to 7.6.0 Replaced flag with agency config Added localization support v 0.8.0 released 2017-05-11 2.5m Airstair model reworked - New stock-alike aircraft texture - KAX texture reworked (WIP) - Firespitter Bomber texture reworked - Stock-alike capsule texture removed, pending rework - normal maps removed, pending rework - IVA Overlay mask added to placeholder IVA - part cfg updates for new KSP features v 0.7 released 2014-11-01 Reduced 2.5m Airstair mass. Added stock-alike texture; this is now the default. Reduced texture filesizes slightly (removed alpha channel). Added placeholder empty IVA to avoid bugs related to IVA-less parts. Added Hawkspeed Sonora flag. V 0.6.5 released 2014-09-15 Added normal maps to textures. V 0.6 released 2014-09-04 Minor model and texture tweaks. Added the ability to switch between multiple textures. Added alternate texture for use with Firespitter bomber cockpit and fuselages. Upgraded Firespitter.dll to 6.3.5. V 0.5 released 2014-08-31 Initial public testing release. ~ ~ ~ Original Post

I built a fugly-looking (untextured) part in order to do some trial-and-error tests on the ability of Kerbals to climb stairs -- by which I mean the ability to seamlessly traverse a sharp increase in height of whatever terrain or object they are standing upon by walking or running -- no jumping or RCS. a note about dimensions: I made the part in blender using metric dimensions, preserving the scale when imported to Unity. Standard KSP rescaleFactor = 1.25 is applied in the part.cfg file. Here is a screenshot of the test rig I built in KSP: The step heights (in blender) are: Left side: 7.5cm, 8cm, 8.5cm, 9cm, 9.5cm, 10cm Right side: 10cm, 10.5cm, 11cm, 11.5cm, 12cm Note: Each step has its own separate box collider. If you create a single convex collider for the entire part, you'll get the physics behavior of a ramp instead! Testing was done on the KSC launchpad. I don't think gravity is a factor so the results should apply on any planet/moon, but I may be wrong about that. Here are the results: When walking, Kerbals will seamlessly traverse heights up to 7.5cm. Heights up to 10cm can be climbed with some effort -- while walking against the step with "W", quickly tap "A" and "D" alternately to wiggle the Kerbal will allow the step to be climbed. This can also be done by wiggling the camera (hold right-click and wiggle mouse) while walking against the step. Kerbals will seamlessly run up steps of up to 10cm height. Depending on the run-up distance before hitting the step, Kerbals will generally climb 10.5cm steps; and in rare instances, 11cm steps. I imagine this information might be useful (yeah, right) to anyone aiming to create base-building parts or static buildings (e.g. for Kerbtown) that have hi-fi staircases (instead of just ramps) so I'll just leave this here. Although I imagine most of the time people will just use ramps or simulate stairs with ramps (e.g. the staircases on the outside of KSC buildings) in order to keep triscount in check.

Yes, that fixes the problem, so you probably did forget to include the change in release. =) Many thanks!

Swiveling helicopter gear is doing some really strange things when FAR is installed. The gear appears normal in the editor, and also initially when loaded up upon entering flight mode, but becomes visually borked just before the craft is released to fall to the surface. The problem appears to be purely cosmetic, thankfully. Rolling on the surface, the hub remains stationary and the tire portion visually clips through the ground, but otherwise physically behaves as if it were circular. Here's an example wit the example apache craft: This is with latest Firespitter (6.4.3) and FAR (0.14.1.1) on KSP 0.24.2 on Windows, 32bit. Reproduced this problem on a clean KSP install with no other mods (besides ModuleManager included with FAR) Removing FAR resolves the issue, so it's definitely the interaction between the two. Log (from start of flight mode) http://pastebin.com/6ENW0LBX

(nuke)