700NitroXpress

Check this little guy out for inspiration. It has landing legs, vertical take off engines, seats 4 Kerbals, has an RCS system, dual rear engines for long term movement control and boost for getting up steep incline hills.

Well, if you're using an air lifter design, it's better to go with the basic jet engine and not the afterburners. Aerospikes are different, they don't use air intake, they're liquid fuel oxidizer. I've used air lifters on a lot of small designs but the best option is asparagus, either regular or with drop tanks. Here's an air lifter that shows you what it takes to lifter something else. This is a extremely light payload with an orbital engine/transfer stage in the middle. Take this as a reference on how many jet engines you need to lift a payload. Also, you're using way too much fuel for the max height of the engines. The maximum fuel you'll need is in the small fuel tank that has 45 liquid fuel oxidizer. Here's what it takes to lift a heavy payload, note that these are the different jet engines and there's a lot of them. Payload weight is 66 tons.

Interesting, you may have a corrupt file in the game files itself. A good way to check is, if you downloaded the game through Steam. Go to your library, right click on Kerbal Space Program, then click properties at the bottom, then click the local files tab on the top, then click Verify Integrity of Game Cache. See if that solves your problem. If it doesn't fix it, try uninstalling the game and reinstalling it. Copy your saved game with your ships to a folder and then just add that folder when it's done installing the new game. If neither of these solutions work, then you have a hardware or software issue on your computer, either in the operating system, or part of the processor, RAM, or graphics card. A system or graphics driver could also be to blame. This shouldn't happen with low part number craft.

Before you go launching stuff to Eve, make sure you build manned landers with enough power to get back into orbit. Eve is a whole different ball game compared to what get's off the ground on Kerban. The terrain is rough and difficult to land tall and thin vehicles on. You want to make sure you have a wide landing base so your craft doesn't flip over when it lands. Also, parachutes deploy at different altitudes and can rip the ship apart due to the thicker atmosphere's sudden deceleration. The best way, is to use landing engines to decelerate your lander or other craft to a safe 40 m/s or less before you deploy the parachutes so you don't risk structural failure to the craft. Also for rovers, the wheels will break easier from impact with the ground just by the craft hitting bumpy terrain at medium speed of 10 m/s or faster depending on the weight of the rover. So be careful if you haven't been to the surface of Eve yet.

I've flown planes on EVE and Duna. The first thing you need to know is that the atmosphere on Eve and Duna doesn't support air intake engines because the atmosphere isn't oxygen. However, you can make planes that fly on Eve and Duna as long as they're rocket powered. Landing is kind of difficult, you have to pick a good landing zone that's smooth enough. Here's my current design that I'm using on Duna as a Duna SSTO, this plane was designed to fly and land on Duna, doesn't have Jet Engines and can be refueled in orbit. It also has retrograde rockets to help it stop quickly. If you have a vertical take off plane design or one that can land vertically, then landing zone problems are more easily solved.

Yeah, your computer doesn't have enough RAM to handle some ship builds. It starts getting noticeable once you exceed 800 parts, really noticeable in the 1000 part range. As far as what it's loading, I'm not entirely sure, but I guess it has to retrieve the info on all of your parts that you have on the ship and what those parts can do in action groups. Other than that, the amount of parts in your current ship build is being saved to memory. I notice this too and I'm running an Intel quad core i7 4.0 ghz 32gb RAM and an EVGA GTX 690 4gb. When I'm building ships I'm using 8gb of my RAM from my PC stats readout. Also, polygon models take up a lot of memory depending on how many polys you have to render on screen at one time.

I added the NASA style payload launch vehicles to the points list and downgraded some of the other points based on feedback. If you use a NASA launch vehicle in the list that's posted, just name the launch vehicle you use and post a screenshot of it. Like the one above this post.

Here is my satellite payload module, it carries 4 satellites and I can put 2 of these on my core craft easily, so 8 satellites total in my payload. Each satellite is 1.25 tons. Here is the satellite on board the NASA Delta IV launch vehicle.

You need 2 satellites to complete the challenge, 1 in orbit around both moons. However, if you want extra points, you need one satellite to orbit the planet horizontally and one satellite to orbit vertically. So two satellites orbit the moon, one orbits along the equator and one orbits perpendicular to the first one. Like this: There are two satellites, but one is a polar orbit and one is an equatorial orbit.

You can easily attach the satellites to your craft. You only need 2 satellites to complete the mission, one for Minmus and one for Mun. This is the first mission, but you now have to launch the payload into orbit and connect it to your craft. You'll need engines with enough fuel to get the job done, a lander, and a module to carry the equipment. I'll post a picture of mine once I put my mission module together. You can't relaunch your core craft into orbit, it's there to stay. This challenge tests engineering skill and docking skill.

It's for the spirit of the challenge. It's about how long you can maintain the same well designed craft under the limitations. You leave it in orbit to refuel it later and the landing missions are to be done with a separate lander, unless it states that you can land the entire vessel. As for using an SSTO, shuttle, and non asparagus staging, it's mainly to see if you can use different methods to achieve the same result. Building an SSTO or shuttle to carry payloads up would be more difficult depending on the payload weight and how easily it can attach to the craft carrying it. Non-asparagus staging to get things into orbit is simple enough, but it's a lower point value. A lot of the challenges that award different points is to separate more skilled engineers from new players, but I would still like people of all skill levels to be able to compete in the challenge. Your craft has to be versatile, but maybe versatile isn't the best word to describe the challenge as a whole. It's a marathon challenge with new missions every two weeks, you have to keep and maintain the same craft you start with at the beginning, adapt it to the mission parameters, and get everything back to Kerban in the end. I guess it's in a way, simulating the cost constraints and missions that aren't officially made apart of the game yet. If you can think of a better name for the challenge then let me know, if it helps describe the challenge better I'll change the name so it makes more sense.

Yeah, now everyone can use Mech Jeb if they wish. Do you mean that their should be a bonus in points for non-jeb users?

No, the command seat doesn't change your craft drastically enough to require that.

Alright sounds good for the altitude limit, but at that altitude the drag by the atmosphere is extremely low, you're basically in space. If you attach jet engines to a rocket fuel tank, they'll still work, they just use the liquid fuel instead of the oxidizer. I used this method when I airlifted my Duna Command Center into orbit with jet engines. Shown below. This base could travel to the other end of Kerban and land without achieving orbit using only jet propulsion.

If you're going to make any more changes to your core craft, do it now before the first mission. Command seat is fine.

Rodger that, the first mission will be posted in 1 hour and 15 minutes from now.

What you need is a starting craft that can go to an orbit of Mun at 50,000 meters, no landing, get back to LKO at 75,000 meters. You don't have to land at any time. It's only to show that the starting craft can move a short distance under it's own propulsion and seat 2 Kerbals with no additional docked components to it. The DX-1 looks like a great craft, but it's a bunch of parts that are docked together already. Your core craft can't have two parts that are docked to start with. You start with one piece. You will eventually have to carry payloads to other planets. So if you design a core craft and then add attachments to it later, that's fine, you're planning ahead. For your first screenshot submission you must have: 1. One craft with nothing docked to it, unless it's like my example where I have an engine on the bottom with no docking port. 2. Must seat 2 Kerbals 3. Must be capable of the Mun and back to LKO test run. 4. Must be capable of adding parts and carrying payloads through the use of docking ports As long as the main command pod of your DX-1 can go to the Mun and back to Kerban without the other attachments docked to it, then you're good to go.

Well for the first part, the engines can't be reattached, the main engines are the 24-77's. The entire core craft can perform the test run with or without the nuclear engines. Other than the engines being stuck on the bottom, the rest of the craft is all one piece and can't be separated. Nothing else is docked to another docking port. If you feel that strongly about the use of Mech Jeb and no one feels that Mech Jeb shouldn't be used, then I'll allow the use of Mech Jeb.

Yes, as long as it can perform that short test run, then this craft is good to go as your core craft. I like the look with the two aircraft cockpits on it, nice and compact core craft.

Well, your starting out with a craft that can go to the Mun and back to Kerban just as a core requirement test run. If you add additional modules to it to be able to go to other planets and come back, then that's good because eventually there will be missions that will require you to do that.

Yeah, it's also a station for your crew. So it has to carry the payloads, landers, and crew, as well as enough fuel to refuel a lander if multiple landings are required. So although it can act as a tug, it's better to think of it as a mobile command center.

I need a picture of the craft without any additions to it. Your craft submission can't have any docked pieces to it and it has to be capable of preforming the Mun test run to low mun orbit and back to LKO without the aid of any attachments. However the craft that you have things docked to is fine to use as long as the main command part can do the Mun run and back on it's own. You can launch a duplicate to prove this without taking you craft apart if you wish. I believe your core craft is the top section with the four engines.

For the first question: Your core craft cannot be separated, the core craft has to be one complete piece and not made of multiple docked sections. Once you launch it into orbit, you can then dock more sections to it if you wish. The core craft submission screenshot has to preform the test run to the Low Mun Orbit and back to LKO on it's own without any additional parts. After that, you may add attachments and rearrange them as much as you want. The example that I posted has lots of docking ports so I can add stuff to the craft, but that craft that's in the screenshot is all one piece and can't be separated, except for the engines on the bottom. For the second question: I guess that does contradict. You can extend the core with core attachments, for example, you need to add a hitchhiker storage piece, on the top and bottom of that piece there will be docking ports. If you add a long engine and on that engine there are two more docking ports, then you added docking ports for more gear to be docked. Both situations are fine. I guess what I was trying to say is more along the lines of, you cannot stack gear with other gear. So you can't stack one satellite on the top of another satellite that's connected to a docking port on the ship. You have to equip your ship with enough ports to store all of the gear separately and not on top of itself. For the third question: No, and I'll add that to the rules now that you've mentioned it. The Kerbals each have to be in their own command pod or in a hitchhiker bay. The only use of external command seats may be on landers or rovers. Limit of 2 for a lander and limit of 6 for a rover.

Yeah, I just saw that when I looked at the part. I'm making a bigger vessel now tho that doesn't have any. Over 1.2 kilotons! The Goliath Fuel Depot 1281.62 ton payload! and it can currently gets off the ground so that's a start.

I think you need to specifically define what suborbital to orbital hops means in terms of maximum altitude your allowed to go. For instance, I build a plane that can operate at 50,000 meters and use very little fuel to maintain that altitude. That would be much easier to do instead of an altitude limit like in the Kerban circumnavigation, in which you're forbidden from exceeding 25,000 meters. Also, you don't say that the vehicle has to be a plane or rocket. So if I fly a spacestation at suborbital altitude and it weights over 60 tons and I land it anywhere on Kerban, is that full points?