British_Rover

Thanks for test flying my craft. Was out for a few days but will try to fly as many as I can before the voting time is up. I still have trouble landing that thing though so kudos for you guys for landing it with ease. My plan with it was to get a vehicle that could either single stage to most celestial bodies or single stage after a refueling and by the numbers it can. The problem is in order to get that kind efficiency you need to make a flying gas tank with minimal engines. This means the burn times are enormous. I just finished a 30 minute burn to Moho for example. Yeah it is cool but not practical really. Better to have more thrust and to be able to complete the burn in only one or two orbits.

Links for the Kord TriPower are updated and it now works with the Current version of FAR. Actually ends up with more potential delta V in LKO then the old version but only seats three kerbals now instead of five.

It is a little harder to take off but it seemed ok at least until I got up to speed. They must have changed something with the Rapier engines they don't build power as fast. I will see if I can figure something out tonight and will delete the link for now.

My Submission the Kord TriPower. Flies fairly well with FAR installed no idea if it will fly in stock so keep that in mind. I have made lots of SSTOs but I realized I never made a fully stock interplanetary one so that was the goal. She is fully stock as I removed kerbal engineer for the download link. No ion engines here. As Jeb says, "It is not a real spacecraft unless it's ass shoots fire." Need to make adjustments for FAR version changes on Rapiers. Will put up updated link once I have it figured out. OK fixed the problems but had to drop the two capsules and make a few other minor changes. Correct link. She is not particularly pretty but she will take three Kerbals to at least a flyby of any planet in the system except maybe Eeloo. Round trips to Duna and Ike are possible or Eve and Gilly just don't try to land on Eve unless you want to get stuck. Full of fuel her flight characteristics are like a fat pig but she is fairly maneuverable once mostly empty for the return landing. I currently have one going to Jool but I screwed up my transfer burn and used up nearly all my fuel. I have just enough to hopefully make a mid-course correction for a perfect aero brake. Then I will have to use the Kerbals own fuel packs to raise my periapsis to a stable orbit. I have a refuel craft on the way so I want to see if I can land on all the moons of the Jool system. Instructions as follows. 1 Toggle Nuke engine¨ ¨2 Toggle Rapiers¨ ¨3 Switches Rapier¨ ¨4 toggle VTOL engines¨ ¨5 Toggle landing legs¨ ¨7. Decrease flap angle¨ ¨8. Increase flap angle.¨ ¨0 Toggle air intakes.¨ ¨B air brakes¨ 4,000 plus delta-V calculated by kerbal engineer in the album once at a 100x100 orbit. ¨To reach LKO hit spacebar toggle off all engines but rapier She is a pig to fly full of fuel so you will need the whole runway to take off. A quick tap 4 to activate the VTOL engines will help.¨¨ Don't break off the nuke by pitching up to far if you don't wait till end of runway. Maintain 10-20 degrees up till past 10K meters. ¨¨She will get unstable at supersonic but only for a second. Keep an eye on fuel and keep it balanced. You will have to fight it at the top as you pass 20,000 meters.¨Very unstable till the rapiers switch mode just keep fighting it. Switch over to nuke as needed in upper atmo. It might be useful to toggle nukes and or rapier depending on how shallow your ascent is. Once in stable orbit there is enough fuel to land and return from Mun, Minimus or just about any low gravity moon assuming a good ejection burn and aerocapture. I haven't had any luck landing on Duna yet. ¨¨Use inline clampotron to control from for VTOL The nuke thrust is a bit below the center of mass so you will need to have stability on and maybe RCS on to keep her pointed correctly during full burns. Playing around with the fuel and removing most of it from the big rockomax tanks will help too. Here is a big 70 image album of the various versions. I was called it the mun_shuttle_pig at one point. http://imgur.com/a/M5edH Landing is a challenge with FAR. I recommend opening both docking ports to increase drag and holding down the brakes. Firing RCS in reverse helps too once you are touched down.

I see this was extended I was away for a while but have a SSTO I am 90% happy with. Are submissions still being accepted through to the end of the month?

Yeah I could do that when I get home or let me see if I can find it. I thought it was included with most FAR versions.

So obviously this is a Mod challenge as it requires FAR to work and with FAR you should get the Retrokerbal craft. The Retrokerbal is exactly like it sounds a craft that has very basic parts. It has no batteries and no solar panels plus no RCS. Be careful with your maneuvers or you will run out of power. You are not allowed to modify the Retrokerbal craft in anyway. You have to use the craft as it comes packaged with FAR. This challenge is all about pilot precision and accuracy. Mod plugins like Fuel balance or whatever else are allowed but no obvious cheats like hyperedit. The challenge is to take off and land on both Minimus and the Mun then return to Kerbin using a powered landing. Powered landing means using the parachute on the capsule is not allowed. The scoring is very simple but is in two parts. Part one total amount of fuel left after the powered landing. So if you have 26 Fuel and 30 oxidizer your fuel score it 56. Higher score the better. Part two distance in KM from the old pod memorial by the VAB. Place a flag near the pod memorial by the VAB to measure the distance. Lower score the better obviously. Your overall score will be your fuel remaining minus the distance landed from the VAB. So just for example if you had 56 total fuel left and landed 45 km from the VAB then your score is 11. The higher your score the better and negative scores are possible. Leader board will be in three parts. 1. Fuel left 2. Distance from memorial 3. Overall score DNFs will result if you land in the water or if any part of the retrokerbal explodes on landing. If the craft lands and bounces off the landing legs then that is ok as long as nothing explodes. Screenshots required will include 1. On the pad 2. In orbit around kerbin 3. Landed on Mun and Minimus with flag planted 4. Transfer to Mun or Minimus showing encounter 5. Transfer back to Kerbin 6. Landed on Kerbin showing how much fuel is left and how far away from flag planted at memorial 6. Picture of flag planted at memorial. Here is my entry and I realized after I finished that I never got a picture on the pad. I did this challenge by going to Minimus first then the Mun as I thought that would use less fuel but I will try it the other way around. My overall score was 6.9. I landed 51.9 km from the VAB and had a total of 58.8 LFO left in the tank. Nothing exploded on landing though I did have a small bounce that sent me sideways. Leader Board Fuel remaining 1. British_Rover 26.46 and 32.34 total 58.8 Distance from VAB 1. British_Rover 51.9 km Overall score 1. British_Rover 6.9

Saving for when I get home

Its a bug happened to me on Duna a few times.

I agree that it would be more of a challenge but realistically, well as realistic as you can get in a game, the idea is that the KSC will be lost after 24 hours so you need to get as much in orbit as possible. As long as you have a station core in orbit after 24 hours then it can act as a KSC to coordinate the docking of all other modules. Maybe an amendment to the rule that all docking must be done in 24 hour unless the station core has mission control capability? Not sure how you define MC capability though maybe a lab module and X number of kerbals with comm gear?

You can make as many launches as possible in one game day. Once that single game day has ended though you can make no more launches. Just launching a single station core with a bunch of probes docked to it then redocking them over and over seems to violate the spirit of the challenge even if the rules are not clear. The idea seems to be to launch a variety of individual modules and dock them to a core. The challenge being how many can you design and launch in one game day. Once a module is in orbit I would go back and launch another before docking. The docking and rendezvous parts will take the longest so best to launch as many modules as possible in one day then dock them all after your 24 hours have expired.

Strutting the gear bays to the fuselage or wing also help. Use the invisible B9 struts.

nah don't count that. kind of hard to be reusable with plane parts scattered across the runway. that was more for nikkyd's benefit. testing my can vs me cockpit. will use this to develop my new Laythe lander. won't be for a while though as I have a new not quite 24 hour old daughter as of yesterday.

First two shots are just glamor shots. That is 105 units of fuel and 129 units of oxidizer. I also used all three RCS packs from my crew. Maybe I could get a little bit more fuel left if I used the RCS packs in a more efficient manner.

Here is the one I built earlier. It is 3.96 tons on the pad and can be much lighter. Only need about half as much oxidizer. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/58968-SSTO-Without-Rockets-Challenge?p=809383#post809383 That craft had the minimist record for no rocket SSTO for a while. What exactly are you trying to do make the lightest manned SSTO? Refining it now.

Eh I built a similar craft but with more fuel and I got it into the air with a lot less then five units of fuel. I used the rectangular wings though so I had more lift at the start. Those delta delux wings kind of suck.

Mass matters more then drag. It looked to me like you are trying to build the lightest manned vanilla SSTO possible and that means using the Mk1 can not the MK2 cockpit. Atmo drag falls of at an exponential rate with altitude so if you climb very quickly past 5,000 meters then you won't have much extra drag to deal with. The 400 extra KG of the MK2 cockpit matters a lot more at higher altitude then the drag. The higher drag will probably help with landing as well.

You can use Space guidance to hold a heading and altitude yes but even just SAS should be able to do that for a while. I have never used it in exactly that way but I have used it to Autoland at my base while I switch to a rover in mid flight. I started moving the rover to it well before the autoland program was done.

I would think Mechjeb could do that without much difficulty. KOS might be useful for the refueling drogue to keep it steady if it is bumped without docking

My Photoshop skills are non-existent but I did technical drawing in HS and college. I started sketching something out then had the same thought as you. Just not worth the effort.

Use the Mk 1 landing can instead of the MK2 cockpit and cubic octagonal struts have no mass once the craft loads.

I wanted to try this a couple of times with KAS when I first got it but never tried it. My idea was to have a kerbal on a Command chair attached to the refueling probe. I think this would be both easier and harder then doing it with docking ports Easier in that the Kerbal has some reach so he can connect the port if it isn't exactly lined up. Harder in that you have to switch around more and designing a refueling probe that doesn't flop round with a Kerbal attached will be a challenge.

I would give it a try with B9 parts and FAR but not with just stock aircraft parts.

Random question. If I am not using FAR does it matter what which of the B9 intakes I use for a large cargo carrying SSTO? I can't seem to notice a difference between any of them right now. I will probably start using FAR once B9 is updated for .23 but as of right now I am not still.

I realized I hadn't done this for .22 yet so here is my second to last mission before I upgrade to .23. The mission is launch a weather/communication satellite, dock with my SSTO station and do a crew Swap. Jeb is ready to go home and there are no capsules up there for him to return in.