Bobnova

Nobody is very good at KSP. Some just have more practice at being bad at it I remember being at the stage you're in. The key is, practice. Build a simple rocket along the lines of what was posted on the last page, and fly it. A lot.

Oho! Time to build the Pancake Model Rocket! Managed ~13,000m with a single stack and careful staging. Time to bulk things out a touch I like this challenge.

Episode one: A Brave Beginning: ~16 seconds (2.66 points) 308m (3.08 points) 175m/s (17.5 points) _________________ 23.24 points! Episode Two: A New Balance: 5m 24s (54.33 points) 8131m (81.31 points) 221 m/s (22.1 points) Recovered successfully (most of it, anyway. The bottom stage less so. 0pts or 10pts?) __________________ 157.74 without recovery or 167.74 with it. Only did those two launches, I'll probably do more later. Got stuff to take care of in Real Life now.

Check your orbit for mountains, I think some stick up that high. Not sure how this is a challenge (as far as the "challenges" section goes, anyway).

Can't say I saw that coming, heh. Not sure the recently ex-vice engineer is going to obey orders, not when the rocket is about done already

Ha, sure! The tourist orbiter is nearing completion. The spacetrikes are balanced, re-entry is survivable if you conserve fuel to slow your speed before the chutes snap fully open. The tourist canister explodes on landing 50% of the time, that needs some work. Almost the entire rocket comes down on chutes and is reusable to cut long term costs.

My tourist orbiter + spacetrikes operation is coming along. Balancing space trikes turns out to be difficult, as does surviving reentry on a spacetrike. RIP Dilzor Kerman.

I read "space tourism" and "kerbal" and I think "dirt cheapest way to get a kerbal in a can into space". If that's the right approach, sign me up as an engineer! I'll come up with something in a bit here.

That's my take on it. Makes sense especially given that many (most?) modern ICBMs are solid fuel.

Wheel, but yeah. When it's in the front the thing tends to get airborne quickly. I'll keep mucking with it.

412m/s Thing tips over most of the time, haven't figured out how to solve that issue yet. Tried a couple other designs as well, so far this is the best that has stayed on the ground. In route: Final screen:

Might be best to simply specify the KSC1 runway, really. And perhaps stock, then we'll see what he can do

Let's quit bitching about logical additions to the rules. Don't like how the challenge is run? Run your own.

The longer runway is a significant advantage though, the end of the stock runway is the limiting factor for a number of these designs.

382m/s No seperatrons here, just a small booster. Trick is, I burnt most of the fuel while locked down, so I just have the wild TWR bit. Getting the timing right is a bit tricky, and this thing tends to wobble wildly. On the launchpad, before burning up fuel: Running, fairly quickly: Nasty nasty wobble at high speed. Please do note the 00:00::00 MET though, it never left the ground. (I had a better one that did, sadly) Final screen: If you feel obligated to score it as 376.6 that's OK, but the 382 was while still on the runway.

My last high speed rover had both, the wheels were lined up so that the landing gear would touch when extended, but the rover wheels would touch when the landing gear was retracted. That way you can slow down, retract the gear, turn to the new heading, extend the gear, and get back up to cruise speed. Worked pretty nicely until I got too much air and planted the nose.

Here's mine, my first functional plane as it happens! I'm horrid at flying KSP planes and can land it on runways (which means lining up!). It'll make it to 20km and generally flies pretty nicely. It's flyable even without SAS enabled, though nicer with it. Only issue is that it tends to have a high speed oscillation in the ASAS roll plane at high speed low altitude. Doesn't break anything, but it looks meh. Speaking of which, the whole plane looks meh No part clipping though! Has a pair of chutes you can deploy that'll land the plane on the front wheels. Lifts off right around 40m/s, can stand on its tail and head up to 20km vertically. Don't land on the tail, though. ~200m/s at 1000 meters. ~388m/s at 7100 meters. Novaworks SlowSafeThing Mk1 in the hanger: Coming back down from 20odd km: Craft File Doubt it'll get chosen as it's far from pretty/elegant, but it's my first functional plane so I'm glad I sat down to make it anyway These challenges are fun, they make me expand!

First try here, entirely manual. I overshot the apoapsis oops. The craft:

Here we go, this has room for 12 kerbals I forgot to install (oops):

Now this looks fun! I'm off to a going away party but I'll be back later. Probably less than sober. If there's a better challenge for LTSE I don't know what it is! (Well, in this game anyway. Dwarf Fortress turns out to be pretty incredible in LTSE mode) Anyway, expect an entry from me in 4-5 hours, if I don't pass out.

That gives me an idea! Now to see if it'll work. EDIT: Nope.

Seven seconds to touchdown on the roof. No mechjeb/engineer/any mods used. (They're installed, but not attached to the rocket. It's a small SRB, one decoupler, spaceplan cockpit, two strap on chutes, and the launch tower. That's it.) It's actually easier in inside-the-vehicle view mode as you can aim for just over the roof, external view is a lot harder to aim and time right. It works maybe 80% of the time, with the remaining time destroying the cockpit when the still burning SRB is detached and the chutes open fully in one snap. Craft link for the brave. EDIT: As the entire ship consists of the cockpit and a disposable booster, I'd call this intact

Here's what I've been using. It's rather overengineered, but that's fine with me. The transfer vehicle has a fair chunk of D-V, the lander can land on Mun with an inefficient path on about half it's tank, the ascent stage has enough to lift off Mun, get to Kerbin and land safely despite no parachutes (though doing so without breaking the fuel tank is a good trick, no legs on the ascent stage). Not very pretty, though the flat bottom allows for a rather stiffer attachment to whatever gets it up there. Craft Link.

I'm slowly assembling my craft in orbit. One more tanker rendezvous and docking and it'll be time to set off. I've had to dock 'em all with the main engines so far, as the (*@&% RCS was left off one, and wouldn't change to docking mode for the second.

Here's what I've got so far. Wasn't that far from reaching orbit, with better piloting it would have been even closer. Sadly I've lost the design and have to start the R&D process over. Height: Speed: (Note: this is on the way up, no way was I waiting through ~20 minutes of 1x speed to get a slightly faster descending speed) So, 227904 combined height+speed, times 6 for using 0.073, is a score of: 1,367,424 Screenshots captured with the print-screen button pasted into Paint.NET and cropped. If you're feeling snazzy, alt+printscreen will copy only the current window. 2.EDIT: Just beat that score. Not sure how high I'll end up (and don't feel like waiting to find out right now), so I'll post that tomorrow. New design has the delta-V for orbit.