700NitroXpress

Yeah, you got to get that full orbit in space. 70km minimum at both ends. Very good run though.

Yeah, no hacks, but RCS and Ion engines, I'm currently experimenting with.

Cool stuff. What I'm seeing is lightweight designs tho. I wonder if this is still possible with my full sized pane. I don't need all the fuel that I have packed on there, so I can lighten the load and keep the same amount of thrust. Adding an RCS system would be lightweight enough. Ion engines I'm unsure about. Ion engines are always good for lightweight craft, but for a plane, I don't think they'll work very well without a lot of them. I won't have enough time to leave them on because I'm still in the atmosphere. RCS seems the logical way to go. So if I accomplish this, I'm going to make it a challenge in the challenges thread. It has to be a stock plane design tho. No engines other than jet engines and Ion or RCS.

Very interesting, now I have to try it. I'm wondering tho. Would it be easier to do with an RCS system or with Ion engines? Also, even if there was increased weight and increased drag. Wouldn't the amount of lift and increased thrust from more engines counteract those?

Well, you guys will see that the orbital speed is displayed in the info tab and the current readout is the surface speed. So my true orbital speed is actually 2385.4 m/s. I do plan on attempting it with the smallest amount of RCS I can squeeze on there. I should also say that I was running the engines at max power the entire time. If I were to dip down to about 25,000 meters, I get a lot more thrust and barely any drop in speed, then if I nose hard up to about a 45 degree angle or better, I can get the apoapsis over 45,000 meters. Now, at 45km I'm not going to get any air intake at all, but with the RCS system, I think it may be possible to accelerate just enough to get the peri and apoapsis equal or swap so the apoapsis grows to over 70km. As long as the apoapsis gets over 70km and I have RCS left over, I should be able to achieve orbit without additional propulsion systems. At least, that's the current plan. Even at 30km and over up to 35km I can get enough air intake to run the engines at 25%. The reason I ask and post this also, is because if it is indeed doable, I would like to make this a challenge in the challenges thread.

My Leviathan lifter can lift over 200 tons easily into orbit and still have fuel left over. 375 parts, one size fits all. I'm currently working on the new lightweight design that has 312 parts, but can lift the same payload. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57409-Leviathan-Heavy-Lifter Guys, I highly recommend changing your designs to use drop tanks and never stack the orange tanks on top of each other. Your carrying a huge amount of excess weight for long periods of time and it's slowing your craft down and making them less efficient.

Well, hauling an SSTO to Laythe isn't that hard depending on the size of the plane in question. I have a simple tug design that can haul an SSTO to Laythe and it only has 2 nuclear engines and 2 fuel tanks.

Well, I restarted my computer, which restarts Steam, and now the screenshot button is back and my screenshots are there. Although, I did get an error message from Flash Player saying that a plugin has stopped working. Maybe that was causing the problem. I don't know.

So I have a plane that can go about 2200 m/s under 30,000 meters, which is basically orbital speed. In the map view I have an orbit, but the peri and apoapsis aren't high enough yet to make an actual orbit possible. This leads me to the question: Would it be possible to build a plane that can achieve orbit without the use of liquid fuel oxidizer systems, or SRB's? Maybe using RCS, or Ion engines after a high enough altitude is achieved? All stock parts and no mods or mod parts by the way. Here's what I have so far without the use of rockets. Entirely jet propulsion, liquid fuel only.

Yeah, but when I went there either that way or from the library of games and clicked on the KSP screenshots, it shows that the screenshots exist, but when I click on it, it shows me a screen with two characters doing stuff with a camera and says that you can take screenshots easily with steam. It's basically an ad screen and none of the screenshots load in. It's like steam isn't loading all the way or something. I'm getting a page that looks like this:

So, I downloaded KSP through Steam a long time ago. I use F12 to take screenshots and I've been posting them. I go to view profile and next to the most recently played games there's a screenshots button below it. Just now today, that button isn't there. Where did it go? Also, I go to KSP on the library tab and click the view screenshot library on the bottom. It then takes me to a blank page that tells me it's easy to make screenshots on Steam. Thanks Steam, I know that. Where are they tho? I also took a new screenshot, uploaded it to the Steam cloud, clicked the View Online button, but Steam's loading wheel just goes and never takes me to the screenshot. What's going on? I restarted Steam and the same thing happens. I also verified the integrity of the KSP game cache. So KSP isn't to blame, this is a Steam issue. Any help?

Generally, you want to launch when the space station is a little behind the KSC by like 5 degrees or so. By the time you get into orbital altitude the station will have caught up to you and you still have to do your inclination burn and get your nodes even with the orbit of the station. Your apoapsis should be matching the orbit of the station and the peri should be under the stations orbit. This way you'll catch up to it. Usually, you can plan one maneuver node and get a good intercept within 1km, which is all you need, then just do the visual approach.

If you attach another docking port to a docking port, then you want Undock Node. If you attach something without a docking port to a docking port, then you want Decouple Node. These action groups are most useful with Undock node. I use it mainly as an action group for anything that has more than one docking port docked at one time that needs to be undocked together. Mainly for ships with two docking ports that need to undock at the same time. Decouple turns into undock when you have it in space and you right click on the docking port. You can undock something that doesn't have a docking port.

It's a solar powered station that mainly runs on 48 (or something like that) ion engines. It can be equipped to attach a heavy payload on the bottom center and then have additional engines attached on the 12 attachment points on the outer ring. Extremely long range and extremely efficient station.

Yeah, that would not count. You have to have the wheels touch the runway and use the breaks to land. If it sets down anywhere else, then it's void of the points.

That is correct. If you do bring one up with it, then that lander must remain with the core craft at all times and can't be deorbited or otherwise removed permanently. It can be used for landings, but must always redock with the core ship and travel with it.

Yeah, that's cool. The distance you glide depends on how much lift your craft has. If you have something with a lot of lift, you can glide all the way to a nice landing with no engine power. A craft with low lift will fall like a brick.

Yeah, you should just go with the game's natural autosave. The island runway wouldn't count, you would have to land at the regular KSC runway.

Yeah, you will also have to complete the shakedown run to the Mun and back to Kerban for the core craft to be approved. Then your good to go for the first mission. Mission 1 will still be up till Friday. For shuttle missions, you have to post screenshots of the shuttle prelaunch with the payload. Once the payload is in orbit, I need a screenshot that shows the payload mass to prove that it's 15 tons or greater. Then you have to successfully land your shuttle on the KSC runway. If you miss the runway, then it doesn't count. No reverting flight, would mean no starting over from the time of launch. For quicksaving, that's up to you. There's no way to see if someone quicksaved or not. It's more challenging if you go without quicksaves.

Anyone can join the challenge at any time. If you start with mission 2, then you can if you want to. However, to get a competitive score, you would need to complete mission 1 also. Mission 1 will also be available after mission 2 comes out, I'll have all of the details archived.

Another good thing to do is put some single direction RCS ports on the top of the rover. Also have RCS fuel. Then when the rover is on a planet with low gravity, push the translation control buttons, it should be I,K,H,N see which one makes the RCS fire. This will push the rover into the ground. You're essentially creating down-force on the tires. You could also get the same result with Ion engines although it may not work as well. When you push the wheels into the ground, you won't bounce as much and the tires will get better traction for turning, stopping, and going. Since Minmus gravity is so low, you could also get the rover back into orbit with vertical take off engines and refuel it once it runs out of RCS.

If you downloaded the game through Steam, go to your library, right click on Kerbal Space Program, click properties on the bottom, click the local files tab, the click verify integrity of game cache. See if this fixes it.

Ok, so looking at your mission, you didn't detach any components other than the mission critical ones, so that's +25 points there. And I didn't see any use of jet engines so that's +5 points. If we take the mission at it's core, it's 3 parts. 1. Deploy 2 satellites 2. Land on each moon 3. Return to Kerban after the mission without ever refueling. So of these 3 mission critical tasks, you were only able to complete 2 of them. Although we can look at the mishap as a bug and not entirely your fault. So of the 150 points, I can only award 100 points for 2 of 3 tasks completed. So, 150/3 = 50 2*50 = 100 100 + 25 + 5 = 130 Total for mission 01 = 130

As in, collect and deorbit the debris that's already there? If so, yeah, just show a screenshot of all of the debris being deorbited.

Exactly, use the single directional red ones and they only separate from one joint, that way the decoupler doesn't become debris.