WafflesToo

I smell a challenge here. Someone want to post this to the challenge board?

Such a shame I missed out on this. I shall follow along with great interest How often will this be going for?

Too full of win!

It's... BEAUTIFULS!!!

On Ohhh so many occasions... XD

Engineer is awesome, and frankly I almost never fly without it. But I think I've got a tiny bug with TWR. It's calculating a TWR of less than 1 on Minmus for a vehicle massing 6 tons powered by 3.5 MN of thrust. By my math that should yield an acceleration rate of ~0.583 m/s^2 and I just finished shooting a probe with a gravity detector on it to Minmus and confirmed its surface gravity to be 0.491 m/s^2. The correct TWR should be roughly 1.19, not the reported 0.89. Not a huge bug, but I thought you might be interested at looking into it at some point, or at least pointing out where I made my mistake. Thanks.

Finally got the video of my first attempt uploaded. Was having some tech issues but got them sorted.

Well, oddly enough my first landing went off without a hitch... but the poor Kerman died during an EVA mishap. My SECOND attempt tipped the lander over. Luckily, the lander from the first attempt was only about 9k away. So naturally, I pointed Bill in the right direction, weighted down the'W' key, and left to make a sandwich.

Hahahaha! Just checked out the new scoring system. I have a feeling I'm going to be kept quite occupied with ion engined craft for a long while.

4k can fail if you're sloppy enough I'm just saying I don't feel it's significant compared to dealing with the dreadful TWR of ion engines.

Oh I knew that, but I personally don't feel that dV budgeting is such a big deal for this. My lawn-chair lander has over 2k of dV on board. I probably could have left the CSM in Kerbin orbit and successfully flown the mission (hmmm, maybe I'll try that XD)

Honestly, I usually only glance at the Challenge forum once a week to see if there's anything interesting. I'm usually too busy for much else. I'm only sitting still this long because I'm stuck in the repair shop waiting for them to finish servicing my car XD

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! Why couldn't I have seen this challenge sooner! My lander from the "Apollo-style challenge" would have been perfect with a little modification. I won't even have access to a computer until after 2p pacific time. Best luck to all entrants. How often do you hold these design challenges?

I don't think the altitude thing matters for Minmus so much (not like Eve!) I'd say adding rovers, science package stuff and the "lander fits inside a fairing" clauses would do a lot to add to the challenge. Especially the fairing bit XD Doubly so if you score off of the radius of the fairing Also, scoring for the number of Kerbals landed... That's all I can think of right now. I really am enjoying this challenge so far. It's the kind of challenge that encourages play different from what you normally would do (I really hadn't played with the ion engine much except on paper before this).

Just landed back on Kerbin. Sure enough, third time was the charm Flying a lander with such a poor TWR was a bigger challenge than I thought it'd be (mostly having to relearn/rethink the relationship between vertical velocity and altitude, actually had to solve the problem using maths!) Still haven't edited the video yet (about an hour-and-a-half uncut) but I did manage to get some screenshots. http://imgur.com/a/JktBw Lander mass 1.385 tons = 10 pts 2 engines at full power = 10 pts Giving my attempt a whopping 20 points XD I was wondering, is KOR (Kerbin Orbital Rendezvous) allowed? Meaning, if I left a kerbin lander in orbit around Kerbin, flew the ion lander to Minmus, performed the mission, then flew it back to Kerbin, rendezvoused in orbit with the Kerbin lander and rode it back to the surface would it count for No return stage, use of electric engines on transfer/capture stage, and Use of electric engines on kerbin ejection stage?

In that case my last attempt was flawless since both pilots survived (although the ship was in no shape to get them back into orbit XD)

All stock 2 kerbal lander massing just over a ton. Made one attempt this morning that resulted in a new crater on minmus due to pilot error. Oh well, recruit more Kerbals and try again

This actually sounds like a fun engineering challenge. Let's see... Minmus gravity at sea-level is 0.491 m/s^2 The theoretical maximum acceleration for ion engines (assuming one can of fuel per engine) is right around 1 m/s^2 You are quite correct, very doable (though it will require a different piloting technique from what most of us are used to with landers I'm quite sure). Gonna start on my shot and see where I get. @Ninety-Three - Normally I'd agree with you; however, given the PATHETIC thrust-to-weight ratio of ion engines and coupled with the engineering challenge of powering more than a handful at a time I think Captain Sierra is correct to give more points to delivering larger payload in this case. I'm actually terrified to consider some of the hermaphroditic monstrosities that will come out of this XD

I'd like to submit my Mun Shot mission for doing it "Apollo Style" Part one Part two I *believe* I got a score of 140 points... but there is a point or two that might be contestable XD -Everything has to be started with a single rocket (no building ships in orbit or refueling in orbit) -You have to fly a LOR mission (you need a Command Module [CM] and a specialized Münar Module [MM]) -No mods! All stock, no Mechjeb. (Did Neil and Buzz land by auto pilot?) -BYOR (Bring your own rocket) - The rocket must be your own design Just for fullfilling theese criteria you will get thirty points. (+30) Goals - 3-man Mission +10 - 2-man Lander +10 - 2-stage Lander (leave the decent-engine on the mün) +20 - Lander stored behind the CM during ascent +20 - Flawless landing (no parts broke off, Neil Armstrong is watching you!) +10 - Got a Munar Roving Vehicle (MRV) on board? +15 - After succesfull Mün landing docked CM and MM in Orbit (no swapping ships without docking them first) +10 - MM disposed by crashing it into the Mün (remove Kerbal first!) +5 - Plant flag on the Mün (no cumulative, i.e. two flags don't get you 6 points) +3 - Spashing down on Kerbin (land on water) +5 I was roving on the Moon one day... (not cumulative) - Test drive - drive beyond 100 meters of you lander +2 Points

I usually go with two ram air intakes for every turbojet on-board. Even at that you really need to be cooking by the time you hit 20k (1.1kps at least). Even then I find it helps to throttle back to 70% or so to reduce the strain on the intakes. You've got to keep an eye on your intake air and listen to your engines. If they start to spool-down on thier own with intake air below 0.1 shut them down, throttle back up, and finish the insertion on the rocket motors. Flying these is as much about technique as it is design. Scott Manley has some good videos on youtube on it and I know there's some others as well. Go check them out for some basics. Good luck!

Hey, is it too late to jump onto this ship? Aurora Aurora (vanilla except for Kerbal Engineer, mostly for instrumentation on Apo, Per, and TtA) (sorry, bad audio) Piper Piper (Ferram Aerospace Mod installed) (runners up, now being served with extra fail XD) Aurora = General compilation of flights = (sorry for the double post... had problems with the video embedding :/ Can we just delete the broken post?)

Hey, how do IRL jets deal w external loads? The probe I'm trying to lift doesn't seem unreasonably heavy but i lose control out the aircraft at about 12k at mach 1.2. It just noses over and heads into the ground. Slinging it on top is even worse, it just flips end-over-end right at the sound barrier. Honestly I'm flumoxxed and about to quit the mod just because it isn't fun anymore so if someone can steer me right again I'd appreciate it.

@OP I do feel your pain, but it says more about how bad the aerodynamic modeling is in vanilla rather than how it broke your rocket (or my beloved spaceplanes for that matter). It looks like you're on the right track now (it took me about a week's worth of rage-quits before I started to get it).