Spyritdragon

Right, but having ridiculous thrust doesn't mean you need to go ridiculous speeds. Whackjobery is also about launching huge constructions into space intact, which makes use of good efficiency and ridiculous amounts of fuel too.

I dunno about 500 parts. How many people here can run 500 parts manually and still have a viable amount of fps for control?

Youve got too much twr at launch . You can pack way more fiel, cause right now youre going to be fighting alot of friction at this thrust.

The wiki says 138km i thought..

Edited it. I have no idea how i could have missed that - i don't get how Jool has such low gravity though. It's always pulled me in reasonably well. Still, 15 atmo's is no easy feat, especially with the 300 part limit i have set. If you can copy this persons preformance, go ahead. There's always going to be some Scott Manley/Whackjob who can eventually conquer my challenge. If you prove to be this person, Kudos to you. As i've said before, if you manage to hit the surface and get back out, or if you manage to get devoured by the kraken while still thinking about getting out, ill change the challenge.

I didn't think my challenge would raise these kind of questions. I thought it was well thought out . You are allowed i suppose, but once again, stay fair. You're allowed to slingshot yourself in and back out, but i am going to add a limit to what speed you are allowed to enter the atmosphere. You're not really supposed to accellerate to 10km/s and catapult yourself into Jool's atmosphere How about you can slingshot yourself, but you can't be going over Jool escape velocity when you enter the atmosphere?

Yes, it does, you usually won't reach the surface with an intact spacecraft. It behaves much like the bottom sentence in my signature. But i hope to have designed the challenge that no-one gets there and back out - if someone does, ill adjust the challenge. Jool's atmosphere at the surface is a whopping 15 atm, i didn't expect anyone to get there and back out.

Hello everyone :-). This challenge is meant to be a test of wits, skill, pure rocket building skill and your Moar Boosters potential. In its essence it's a rather simple, though i find it very entertaining, challenge. Described in one sentence: Go as deep into Jool as possible and return to space on your own power. For this challenge, Jool's atmosphere is considered to begin at 138.000 metres. Since Jool's atmosphere is very dense, i don't expect anyone to get within range of the Kraken with any hopes of still getting out - if you do, ill adjust the challenge accordingly. Challenge rules: Propulsion: All propulsion on your craft must be either: Liquid fuel engines, solid rocket boosters, RCS, or ion engines (Good luck with that), or any other engine that uses either LiquidFuel, Oxidizer, SolidFuel, Monopropellant, Xenon (or in the modding class, Kethane). Engines that run purely off ElectricCharge are not allowed, nor are any warpdrive-style engines. Any other forces, such as decoupler force, control surface force and push by engine exhaust must be limited to regular use. Obvious "exploits" are strictly forbidden. Stuff that is simply based off the way KSP models physics, like asparagus staging, are not considered exploits. At least one Kerbal needs to be onboard for atmosphere entry and exit. Please take a screenshot of your craft at atmosphere entry, lowest point and exit. In the modding class, bringing stock IntakeAir with you is also forbidden. Your craft may only have 300 parts or less. (I think this is fair, since this is where many people will start lagging. If it should be more or less, let me know.) There will be three seperate categories: Stock, Limited Mods and Limited Mods: FAR. To be in the Stock category a craft must containt only unmodified stock parts from the moment it crosses the 138km border, and you must not use any assistance from systems like MechJeb. You are allowed to use Kerbal Engineer Redux or similar for delta-V calculations prior to start, but your chips must be disconnected before you enter the atmosphere. To be in the Limited mods category, your craft may contain parts from any mods with over 500 downloads, excluding the FAR mod. What i'm trying to do with this 500 is to allow people to use mods as they normally would, while keeping it a fair challenge. When i think of using mods, i think of stuff like KW rocketry, KSPX, Novapunch, Mechjeb, Kerbal Engineer, B9, and similar. In general, just adhere to the rules of fair play. Mods i'd prefer not to see are mods like KSP Interstellar which allow for warp drives, and other mods one would generally consider overpowered. Its a bit of a weird line here, so just go with what you think is fair. Limited Mods: FAR is exactly the same as Limited mods, only with FAR installed. I'm making this a seperate category because of the drastic way FAR changes aerodynamics. Points are very simple: your score is equal to the number of metres you can get below 138km, as registered on the altimeter at the top of your screen. You are allowed to enter Jool any way you wish, and you may use parachutes while descending. Use of any mods, Hyperedit, and anything else, is allowed to get your ship into a Jool orbit or near Jool, even in the Stock category. None of the rules apply untill the moment you enter Jool's atmosphere. You are NOT required to get back to orbit - all i need is that your altitude be over 138km again after you've been at your deepest point. If you fall back in afterwards thats OK by me. Good luck, and may you return safely :-) Current leader (and only entry) is Tommy99534, going down to 26547 metres and making it back to space.

I have no idea just what the optimal altitue is, or what you're doing wrong, but you are doing something wrong. I can scan the entire planet five times over with a turbojet craft in that time. Why do you need these precise calculations, to be very honest? Can't you just... put it in a polar orbit and synch it so every N orbits you advance one line of hexagons? Im not sure just how fast Kerbin rotates at the altitudes you're scanning, but if you just make an orbit that passes over the same spot after the same amount of orbits as you have lines of hexagons going from North to South, you should scan them all.

Alright, i'm on it :-). I'll first send the Minmus shuttle up and back down on Minmus. Then theres two options: i was originally going with the first but i just came up with the second: First one was i'll be taking a fuel tug (a seperate ship) by the fuel station for docking, then send it off to Minmus too to dock with the station in orbit there. It will then go back and forth between the Kerbin station and Minmus station when needed to shuttle additional fuel. Second option is i make a slightly cooler shuttle, or maybe have two so we can have one standby at station and one standby at ground level, and leave out the fuel shuttle. We could then shuttle fuel with disposable fuel tanks, topping up the orbital station and impacting the tug on Minmus when its gotten its fuel out.

Aight, my turn then?

Everything actually managed to get sorted out on my part, so next time ill actually have... you know... a video . Also, i was thinking. Its a bit premature, but once we leave the Kerbin system, might we not be better off launching our modules at the same time so we don't have to go warping around years and years to hit that transfer window each time?

Ooh yay thanks. I was busy compiling this for piano myself but this is better.

Oh my god this is so useful. I was always like 'maneuver node at Mun periapsis... dangit i don't want to focus the Mun. - double click craft - "focus Kerbin". No i don't want to focus Kerbin gimme my rocket back!'

Turn your SAS off once your docking magnets kick in, and let the magnets pull it into the right orientation, guided by a little manual compensation. This allows the docking ports to allign nicely and give a straight, parralel/normal dock rather than SAS keeping it stuck in a slightly-off orientation and putting the axis of whatever you're docking at an angle to the normal of your docking port. Also - when you arrive in orbit with fuel left in your launchstage, you decide to keep it attached, and you find that your craft turns very slowly because of the heavy launch stage attached, move all the fuel you have as close to the centre of your craft as possible - usually this means pumping fuel from the bottom of your launchstage to the top. This reduces the lever arm of your fuel and thus reduces your rotational inertia, making it easier to turn your craft without having to integrate reaction wheels into your launchstage. Also.... science tier 0 has a decoupler... and stability controls! xD I replaced it with four engines later, but the four (three in this picture) small engines at the bottom are bound to control groups 1 through 4, which i can fire seperately. Since i rely mostly on solid boosters early-on, i can fire these at a reasonably low thrust and use them to correct my crafts. pitch. The three engines pointing towards the centre of the rocket burn the bottom stage off xD. The LV-30 refused to burn it off, because the solid booster was obstructing it.

Generally just a decoupler and chutes, with possibly any canards attached to the cockpit. This works for most of my designs when working together with control surfaces, and it has saved my pilots pretty much on any occasion where control was lost more than 30 metres above ground. I have yet to invent an escape system for runway failures.

I have, but luckily i noticed in Kerin orbit rather than when trying to land on Duna Havent killed anyone forgetting them yet though.

First one, and currently the largest one, was solar panels. After that, probably the skipper engine. For some reason, LV-45 or LV-30 clusters don't give me enough trust at all - skippers were a major breakthrough in allowing me to use full 2m asparagus, and currently it does all my lifting much much easier than before. NERVA was fun, but Duna was very, very dissapointing in science readings. I got thrice as much on the Mun.

My suggestion would be to take your heavy-lifter subassembly, then add about a dozen decouplers (or as many as the highest amount of stages your rockets usually have) in a stack somewhere random on it where they wont get in the way for attaching it. Put these decouplers in stages 0-11, one in each stage. Then organise your normal staging under that in stages 12 and up, then save your subassembly. You can now attach this heavy lifter to whatever you want, and the stages for the payload will go in slots 0-11 along with the decouplers, leaving your payload and lifter stages nicely organised. Now you just pick up the decoupler which attaches the decoupler stack to your rocket, and throw away the 11 decou leaving them out of the staging system, but keeping the stages organised as you want them. You should be left with nicely staged rocket :-).

Haven't had very much spare time on my computer, but i'll get there hopefully. Its a really simple script to type, although it might not be very efficient: load your craft file (might need conversion to a .txt, but that can be done manually), search for "sym=", remove everything after untill you reach the end of the line, and go on.

100 metres above ground, flip your Kerbal upside down. Their helmets are famously hard.

Pulling off gravity slingshots to do anything. ^-^

I love 1m parts, because they have much, much, much less tendency to wobble apart in any way whatsoever. I barely even have to strut them. Also, if you use 1m or 0.5m probes, you can launch three or four at the same time using tri/quadcouplers which can then each go their own way.

True, but if you put your files into any video editor you can easily compress them 50x while still maintaining at least 480p. I generally use Fraps too. I've trialled camtasia, but it seems to take alot of RAM for me, lagging much more quickly than Fraps does. Fraps does come with huge filesizes, going for a gigabyte every few minutes, which you'll have to compress later.

Aha! This is really useful. Now i can write a Javascript that'll remove all symmetry from a specific craft. If it works i might even upload it. All i hope is that nobody makes a mod part that has 'sym' in it .