gabyalufix

Broke down and started watching. I figured it seems so pervasive around here, I should see what all the fuss was about. i think it was the pinky-pie 'you\'re maaaad!' gif that piqued my interest. Looked fun. That was three days and 25 episodes ago. Mein gott. Why do I find watching this show so enjoyable? I\'m a twenty-goddamned-eight-year-old man. It\'s completely inconceivable. My wife thinks I\'m trolling her. At first I was laughing because I was laughing at myself. But that doesn\'t explain all observed phenomenon. I am literally unable to identify why it\'s so fun to watch. Except for a few undeniably hilarious moments, (like the ep where twitter-shy gets the deep voice, and then sings a pinky song. I fell out of my chair when that happened.) it\'s not like it\'s played constantly for laughs. It\'s . . . very . . . odd . . . Am I having a stroke?

Set Max persistent debris to unlimited. It is ON.

I actually started doing this the second I got .14, even before I saw this challenge. I copied over an old design I built months ago, for a different challenge. The launch is easy, and there is tons of spare fuel, so I can do a full to-orbit launch in a few minutes. Each launch puts 101 pieces of orbital shrapnel into kerbin orbit. The intent was to set up a complete orbital barricade. So I launched into westwards orbits, so that the more efficient eastwards orbits would be much more dangerous (since they\'d be counter-orbiting the shrapnel). Later on I plan to cover a few polar orbits as well. I always give my ship a good spin before I start releasing shrapnel, so that it spreads out better and faster. Here is the results of one launch: [img width=800 height=500] http://i.imgur.com/B5Caz.png I\'m well on my way to full orbital denial: Already, you can\'t go into equatorial orbit without always being within a few km of some shrapnel. It ain\'t a safe place to be. Unfortunately, real kessler syndrome is currently impossible, since when modules impact each other, they disappear instead of fragmenting into tiny bits of shrapnel. Edit: dang. It looks like after you put a few hundred (or maybe thousand, I\'ve lost count) bits of shrapnel up, they start disappearing. Maybe a bug that\'ll get fixed later, maybe a feature to prevent too much pileup. Hard to say. It is an experimental release, after all. The disappearances appear to happen semi-randomly, but delete all objects in a large sector of the orbital sphere when it does happen.

With the update to 0.14, project Kebylon explodes on start, no matter what you do. This is something to do with the physics rewrite, and the fact that the tower has a maxtemp of 1 (which is way below pretty much everything else). Just changing the value to something sane seems to fix this problem.

@flixxbeat: It actually did kinda break up. All the modules stayed attached, but there were odd, visible gaps in between the modules, and some of the horizontally-oriented modules were jaggedly attached. it looks like a floating point bug to me. About half the time the whole thing tore apart before I could hit spacebar. Sometimes, however, it held together, somehow. The kosmos pack has a standard breaking force / torque of 20000, so it holds together insanely well. For example, here is another version, after I\'d done some orbital maneuvering. I very nearly tied it in a goddamned knot. Note: foamy\'s instant orbit no longer works with 0.14. I\'m not sure if I\'m glad or not.

Still a work in progress. i\'m building an ISS replica using kosmos and a few other packs. I currently use foamy\'s cheat insta-orbiter, since i\'m still in early orbital handling testing. But some of the pics look pretty dandy. The design is based on the original 'complete' ISS that was initially planned, before it got heavily scaled back by budget cuts / the retirement of the shuttle.

@E_Snap: I\'ve done things that are kinda skip reentries. Basically, I set an elliptical orbit that intersects atmo, dropping down to 40-60k or so. i usually have enough speed to pop back out again at least once before final descent. It depends on the drag of the ship. I\'m not sure if that counts as a skip reentry or not. Do you have to change direction when you 'skip'? to do that, you\'d need lift. Hmm.

In defense of these scurrilous accusations, I feel the need to defend my honor as a gentlekerbin. Therefore, I post the craft file. You will need: KSP 0.13.2 KSP Silisko Edition 1.2 KW challenger pack v0.5 Project Kebylon launch tower Project firelark Novapunch v0.9 AVK landers 0.2b Gaby\'s quick and dirty miscellania (link in sig) C7 flight pack (used one aileron) Down under aerospace 0.3 Captain slug\'s lander leg v1.2 (http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=2251.0) Tested with these dependencies, so I\'m fairly sure this is it. Let me know if it doesn\'t work. It is really quite easy to fly. There is a TON of spare fuel in almost every stage, so you shouldn\'t have any trouble replicating this. You may have to do some stage shuffling in-flight, as v0.13.2 seems to occasionally randomly shuffle the stage order of some of the decouplers, for some reason. Full album of the flight can be found here, for staging reference.

No cfg hax. With that particular ship I just used Silisko edition engines + novapunch tanks. In combination, they are massively overpowered, since they appear to use different balancing standards. (Not that there is anything even resembling 'normal' or 'fair' in terms of balancing standards, and all the packs (and sometimes even within each pack) you find wildly different baselines for balance. I go through phases of trying really hard to play 'fair', and then getting sick of the math, and just start snapping on whatever catches my eye.) Secondly, I turned off all smoke and particle effects on those big 1st stage SRB\'s, and I heavily cut down the effects on the LFE\'s. That reduces the lag by a LOT. Hmm, I suppose technically that\'s a cfg hack. But w/e. 3rd: use the kebylon launchpad. Best mod part ever made, no contest. Without it, every single damned one of my ships would explode instantly on the launch pad. For one thing, it would spawn intersecting the launch tower, which is instant death. 4th: I use my own mod parts. All my parts are purely the immediate result of me wanting to use a part that doesn\'t exist. The 7-split novapunch-style 3m tank, in particular, makes it possible to launch big rockets without quite as much lag. 5th: My computer is no slouch. Built it myself. geforce 560 Ti, 16g ram, core i7 (I forget the clock speed).

So here\'s a new one, for the Ultimate Munar Rocket Challenge. I built a rocket that: Launches: Orbits Kerbin: Transfers to mun orbit: Lands on the mun: Launches back off the mun. Transfers to kerbin orbit: Lands back on kerbin: Launches: Gets back to kerbin orbit: Descends on the mun: Lands on the mun, for the 2nd time: Launches: Transfers to a atmosphere-intersecting ballistic orbit: (you can see me missing the KSP by like, 20 km. Pretty impressive considering my last course correction was from the other side of the planet) Parachute down: Splash landing. Hello mun. I landed on you, twice. Most impressive part: it was small enough that I didn\'t glitch the altimeter. I almost never make rockets that small.

@duckunlimited: Awesome space station / whatever it is (escape rocket? colony boat? Whatever. it\'s awesome). I really like the architectural design. It\'s got that complex kinda lived-in je ne sais pas that I like so very much.

Holy crap, seriously? Before KSP this was my go-to sandbox game. I\'ve been playing since the first one came out. I now rock 1946 (I don\'t care for cliffs of dover, but haven\'t given it too much of a chance). My favorite thing to do was build massive ship battles (usually with carriers and airplanes on both sides, too). I\'d set it up so that one side always wins without intervention (just never taking off and watching it play out), then seeing if I can turn the tide on my own with one corsair. '<What are you doing? Oh noooooo!>' (in russian). Shut up, gunner. I\'ll do what I want!

Woah. I didn\'t notice the guy who landed on serpinski using SRB\'s only. Good gods, that guy is hardcore. Jebbe, I bow to a master.

Oh my god. It looked like a cartoon spaceship. I thought . . . wow . . . yikes . . . So I went on a fact-finding mission, to find out if eclipses really do happen, and if kerbin\'s shadow actually does block out the sun when you\'re on the mun. Short answer: inconclusive, but got some good pics.

@alchemist: what the what is that? I love the style.

Done. Used no cheat parts. I actually thought the mission would be much harder, so I had tons of spare fuel at every stage. I overkilled it a bit. Don\'t have time to write up what I did. Just gonna give you guys the imgur album. It\'s pretty self-explanatory. http://imgur.com/a/UD3u2 I\'ll add the craft file too, once I\'ve tested which mods you\'ll need.

Holy crap! Burn the witch! Hmm. It never occurred to me to try water landings. Meh on the high power RCS. I find a small number of high-power RCS are less laggy than tons of small RCS, and thus prefer them for that reason. Using the RCS as primary thrust wouldn\'t be particularly effective for getting into kerbin orbit except maybe for the last launch. And honestly, the last stage is such a tiny fraction of the total mass, it\'s a moot point. Ok, challenge adjusted: no water landings. Water landings are only possible because the water is so unbelievably dense compared to all KSP rocket modules. (for example: decouplers are solid metal, yet float extremely well.) You\'ll need landing legs, and a slower landing, plus you have to waste delta-V aiming for a flat landing site. I think that ramps up the difficulty a bit. Plus, the fact that jellycube weighs the same as a duck won\'t help him.

Yeah. If anyone successfully manages this with stock parts, then I\'m afraid we\'ll have to burn them. 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.'

Ok. Here is the biggest challenge I have ever conceived. I have determined that it is at the very edge of being possible, with reasonably-balanced parts. I don\'t think anyone\'s ever done this, but I could be wrong. Jellycubes is a witch. It\'s deceptively simple. Design a rocket that launches to orbit, then lands on kerbin, then launches to orbit, then lands on kerbin, then launches to orbit, then lands, at long last, on Kerbin. Edit: Apparently this has been done. So let\'s try an adjustment: No water landings. Kerbin\'s oceans are (apparently) made out of liquid mercury (or else KSP rockets are made of solid air, hard to say which.). Everything floats, and everything floats really really well. Land on land. (unless you\'re a witch, in which case you will float. Like a duck. Or very small rocks.) That\'s three launches, three landings. I\'ve successfully completed all the individual components of this mission, but I\'ve never successfully strung it all together into a single attempt without messing up at some point. I used Foamy\'s instant orbiter to successfully test my ability to go from orbit -> kerbin -> orbit -> kerbin -> orbit -> kerbin, and in a separate mission I have launched the same full rocket into orbit, but I have yet to do it all in one mission without catastrophically messing up one of the landings or launches. The first stage of the launcher consists of 19x 3-meter LFT\'s and 36 of those jumbo KW SRB\'s. The first stage, alone, weighs 5000 kerbin tons. There are no bonus points here. To even imply that any successful execution of this mission could possibly be made more awesome is sacrilege of the highest order. If you succeed, then you have won. Post lots of pictures, or a video, if possible. Only balanced parts allowed. KW, downunder, novapunch, the kerbalon launch tower (you\'ll need it), my miscellania pack, etc. Silisko edition engines are allowed only if they get all their fuel from silisko-edition tanks. No C7, except for the hardpoints and RCS. And don\'t use the ultra-RCS for thrust. Maybe use foamy\'s instant orbiter to test the lander stages, so you don\'t end up having to rebuild your launcher because you need to rebalance the lander. Good luck. You\'re going to need it. Or maybe not. I\'ll post pics of my attempts later.

I\'ve got a rocket that definitely probably has the capability, but I lack the patience to actually do this. The problem is that the 1st lander lags permanently if you at any point turn on time dilation. Still can\'t figure out why . . . The ship is actually designed to do a triple-launch-land on KERBIN. Ie. launch to orbit, land on kerbin, launch to orbit, land on kerbin, launch to orbit, land on kerbin. But it\'s a huge pain in the butt to fly.

What you\'re really do is land a structure on the moon and then immediately dig a hole and bury it. There\'s no way you\'d carry enough shielding to survive a full-on solar flare, and that far outside the earth\'s magnetosphere you\'d be totally exposed when/if one hit. (of course, we have no idea what kind of magnetosphere kerbin has). Solar flares are rare, and it was pure luck that none of the apollo missions ever got caught out during one. If you want 'laid down', does this post count? Because if so, then I totally meant to do it that way. Oh yes. Completely intentional.

What, is this not big enough to count? How about this then:

What is a one-piece mun base? You mean a single stage to mun?

Bah. Who needs persistence? The Farside Mission The Farside II Real men launch munbases in one go. Not sure if these actually beat any records, except at being awesome. Farside II might be the biggest munbase, I dunno.

I did this a while back. I actually went further, and launched to solar escape. It\'s not hard. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=5767.msg74944#msg74944 I launched 24x 2-meter habitation pods, plus 10x 1-meter habitation pods, plus 12x nerva engines (my placeholder for a nuclear reactor, before I made these). It is currently semi-impossible to enter solar orbit and then return & land. Every time you leave kerbin\'s sphere of influence, the terrain on kerbin gets all messed up. the Serpinski bug. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=5145.0 http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=6735.msg91906#msg91906