Northstar1989

Also very cool- looks like you got max points for altitude as well... Try it again with a flag if you want- I imagine you could touch down within 4 km of a flag using that method and earn some extra points... Your score was: 30 points (altitude) + 3 points (1 Kerbal) = 33 points, by the way... Regards, Northstar

Impressive. You maxed out the accuracy AND altitude scores in one jump... And made a very cool video demonstrating it. Your score was 30 points (altitude) + 3 points (1 Kerbal) + 20 points (< 1 km accuracy) = 53 points, by the way... Regards, Northstar

After reading up on JP Aerospace's plans for an Orbital Airship... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_airship I was inspired to see what players here think of creating one in KSP... I imagine it would be particularly easy and realistic with FAR (so that you could take advantage of aerodynamic shielding to reduce drag on huge blimps, as well as the increasing ballistic coefficients of increasingly-large objects), and KSP-Interstellar (so that you didn't have to haul the solar panels for the ion engines around on the blimp- you could instead simply beam the needed power from the ground or orbit using a Microwave Beamed Power network...) KSP-Interstellar would also allow such a blimp to take advantage of Microwave-powered Thermal Turbojets, to attain much of orbital velocity in the upper atmosphere using the atmosphere as propellent instead of Xenon for ion engines... (you would switch over to ion engines at the very top of the atmosphere- perhaps relying on KSP-Interstellar's plasma thrusters for scaled-up multi-dozen megawatt ion engine power to reduce burn times if enough Microwave Beamed Power were available...) So, I would like to hear player's ideas on the feasibility of this in KSP. Perhaps even see some working examples! Regards, Northstar

@AngeLestat I think you took offense a little too easily there. I was simply pointing out an apparent oversight- that water is readily available on Venus in the form of Sulfuric Acid- so there are actually no problems obtaining Hydrogen there... I posted that before I read through some of the other threads either (which I was just doing). It looks like you discussed some of this yourself- but probably forgot that little bit about Sulfuric Acid aerosols when you said that. It only takes 1/3rd the energy to crack Sulfuric Acid as it does to electrolyze water- so it's not a very costly process energetically speaking... Anyways, the biggest obstacle on Venus would be getting back to orbit (getting cargo there is much easier- using solar sails and the Interplanetary Superhighways of gravity-assists you can easily get massive cargoes there for very little effort beyond the obstacle of getting them to LEO in the first place). But there are definitely solutions to that problem- for instance Orbital Blimps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_airship An orbital airship, much like a spaceplane, can get away with much lower TWR as it doesn't fight gravity with any of its thrust. Instead of relying on lift, though, it relies on buoyancy- and is able to get away with even lower TWR than a spaceplane as a result. Making things like ion engines perfectly reasonable to get cargo to orbit... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_airship Combine an orbital airship with Microwave Beamed Power from solar satellites in high Beta-angle orbits around Venus, and you could probably run a low-powered Thermal Turbojet working off a Microwave Thermal receiver to attain the majority of orbital velocity, only switching to high-powered ion engines (which could have large amounts of electricity available from Microwave Beamed Power, and thus could operate at multi-Megawatt power ranges) for the last little bit of the ascent- a drastic improvement over the methods relying on conventional ion engines and solar panels being pursued by JP Aerospace... Orbital Airships work, in part, because the closer your horizontal speed gets to orbital velocity, the less of an issue gravity becomes to your ballistic trajectory- allowing an airship with essentially the same buoyancy and a small amount of lift (the orbital airship designs also include small wings) to climb to higher and higher altitudes as its speed increases- eventually reaching full-on orbit. The airship itself would also have quite a high altitude ceiling based purely on its buoyancy- which would drastically reduce the amount of Delta-V to orbit that would need to be provided by active propulsion... All this gives me some interesting ideas for creating Orbital Airships (powered by ion engines) with the Hooligan Labs balloons in my next re-install of KSP... Regards, Northstar

First thread was closed, second wasn't really on this topic (and would be inappropriate to hijack), I wasn't aware of the existence of the third thread- which is more general than just focusing on Venus, as it also applies to aerostats on the gas giants... If you're referring to simulating and solving challenges in-game, it's rather difficult to do that because of the problem with unloaded vessels disappearing in-atmosphere outside of 2.3 km. IF you were to go into the appropriate INI file, and increase physics loading range to something like 120% the diameter of Venus (and play on Real Solar Systems) however, it could certainly be simulated... That might have SERIOUS lag issues though- and you'd need to limit the only vessels in that save to those in/around Venus probably... You'd want to install Extraplanetary Launchpads for the ability to construct things on Venus (something we'd easily be able to do in the larger aerostats with existing manufacturing processes- you wouldn't even have to adapt them to microgravity, as gravity would be 90% that on Earth), Firespitter and KSP-Interstellar for some of the realistic propulsive technologies (such as electric propellers and Thermal Turbojets) that don't rely on refueling- so you could build VTOL's to fly between different aerostats, and Kethane for the Ore-mining ability it adds to Extraplanetary Launchpads- so you could simulate surface-mining... You'd probably also want Kerbal Attachment System to make it easier to refuel rockets/spaceplanes meant to provide transport Kerbals and equipment from the aerostats to orbit, and with a little modding of winch length to create 50 km cables to haul things up from or lower things down to the surface... We can already build aerostats on Eve or Venus (in RSS), easy. Just install Hooligan Labs, change the buoyancy scale factor to 1 (to provide realistic buoyancy for the size of the balloons), and you're golden. The main issue with that is that it wouldn't simulate that Oxygen:Nitrogen mix at 1 atm pressure is buoyant relative to the ambient atmosphere at 50 km on Venus- so you'd have to get all your buoyancy from balloons holding much lighter gasses- which would make building large floating habitats considerably more difficult... I'm not so sure about THAT (Mars is and always will be a lot easier to mine than Venus), but it certainly could be another location for floating cities and self-sustaining research stations... Not an issue at all- the atmosphere is rich in Sulfuric Acid droplets (did you read my original post?) which contain large amounts of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Oxygen is also readily available at that altitude in the form of CO2. It's actually a lot easier than utilizing the atmosphere on Mars (which we're already looking at doing) due to the Earth-like pressures... Did you actually read the article I linked? Any habitat filled with breathable air is naturally buoyant at that altitude- as the breathable air would be less dense than the surrounding atmosphere. A single cubic meter of Oxygen:Nitrogen atmosphere would have 60% the lifting power of a single cubic meter of Helium on Earth... If you floated the aerostats at a *slightly* lower altitude (say where the ambient pressure was 1.4 atmospheres instead of 1.0 atmospheres) at slightly lower internal pressures of breathable air (say 0.8 atmospheres, with a higher proportion of Oxygen so breathing would not become difficult) the lifting pressure of the breathable air would increase even further. In reality, any habitat would be built with some safety margins, and would rise or sink slightly in the atmosphere due to changes in loading or buoyancy. It's pretty difficult. But it can be done with appropriate engineering- for instance replacing circuit boards with vacuum tubes, as the solder on circuit boards melts at the relevant temperatures. You would probably also want to make your robots insulated, and equip them with powerful heat-exchangers (basically really OP'd air-conditioners, but without moving parts) so that you could make use of some materials in the internals that might be slightly marginal (soft, but not melted) at the relevant temperatures... Regards, Northstar P.S. I know some people aren't going to like the double-post, but it's the only way to reply to two very different posts by very different people on the same topic without merging them into one incoherent mega-post...

Glad you're intrigued. You'd want to carry out a lot of recycling of metals and other solids (aside from plastics, which could be produced from the atmosphere- and simply thrown overboard when you were done with them if recycling were too much effort- the lower atmosphere would quickly digest the plastic) to minimize the amount of surface-mining. But surface mining is indeed perfectly possible- and could be carried out by specially-designed robots on the surface (it *IS* possible to design robots capable of extended operation there, using both heat exchangers and heat-resistant materials: it just hasn't been done before...) and could be used to replace some consumed materials, and even acquire new materials to build additional habitats... From 50 km, heat-resistant tethers are also perfectly possible- to get mined materials up to the aerostats, you just have to haul them up a cable... The problem with wood is that it's not acid-resistant, and not airtight. You'd most likely build the aerostats out of *very thin* layers of aluminum foil basically (since the winds at that altitude are constant and you'd move with them, and atmospheric pressure would be the same as at sea level on Earth, it would simply be a tear-stop to keep in the breathable air and also meant to keep out the sulfuric acid aerosol droplets... With Cathodic Protection against acid corrosion...) Regards, Northstar

So, I was just thinking about the film "Gravity" for some reason, and how horribly unrealistic it is... Start off by reading this article- which gently hints at just a few of the inaccuracies: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/mark-kelly-gives-an-astronauts-view-of-gravity/2013/10/11/2b4e5e6c-3286-11e3-9c68-1cf643210300_story.html?tid=sm_fb My biggest qualm is, beyond a doubt, the shrapnel field- so I would like to just focus discussion on that. Namely, that if you have an object at the same orbital orbit but in a different phase of the orbit that blow up, it's NOT magically going to start moving independent of its orbital resonance with other objects in the same phase, and strike them every 90 minutes (like in the film gravity), Instead, the shrapnel spread out is going to enter a number of slightly-different orbits that would take days, months, or even years to phase into position with another object in the same orbit- such as the ISS- giving astronauts there plenty of time to escape before any debris would reach them... The easiest thought-example is to imagine two objects in KSP in circular 100 km x 100 km orbits, on *opposite* sides of Kerbin from each other at all times. What happens if you blow one up? It doesn't magically start moving around that orbital altitude at twice the speed- instead it would take a LONG time for any of the resulting elliptical or inclined debris orbits to phase into position with and hit the object on the other side of the orbit from the first... Regards, Northstar

There is a *third* option of sorts- if you can get a plane (a rocket-plane on Eve perhaps, or one powered by Thermal Turbojets with KSP-Interstellar) into a circular trajectory in the upper atmosphere where its peripasis is always above the altitude at which unloaded craft are deleted, then you can unload it and it won't disappear even though it never leaves the atmosphere... I say a plane because planes expend a lot less fuel maintaining a given altitude, and are much more "floaty"- meaning when you send up your craft to rendezvous with it, it will be much easier to dock with. I suggest, on Eve, using a large plane with enormous wings (for high endurance) in level flight and a circular "orbit" for the mothership (power it with a single NERVA or Thermal Turbojets). Provide it with an ascent vehicle capable of reaching orbit, or make it capable of reaching orbit itself. From the mothership, deploy a much smaller/faster plane to descend to the surface. Start out with it attached to the belly of the mothership via docking port or decoupler, for easy deployment, and have it dive down to the surface in a steep dive immediately after being detached... (you can actually use lift to INCREASE your rate of descent if you dive with a winged craft from orbital velocity) Land as quickly as possible, grab samples, and fly back up to the mothership. Transferring your Kerbal over is the hardest part- it's probably easiest if you either (a) Make the mothership capable of reaching orbit, so you don't have to bother in-atmosphere (simply dock to the mothership and then scramble up to orbit) or ( Use a mod that allows crew transfers between docked craft without EVA. If you opt for an all-stock approach, probably the easiest solution is to give the smaller plane a "Klaw" radially mounted to face upwards, and simply have it fly into the belly of the larger mothership (preferably close to its Center of Mass). If you use mods, another possibly is to simply create a really enormous mothership using B9 Aerospace with a cargo bay large enough for the lander-plane to simply fly into- at which point you can ditch the Kerbal on EVA and have him grab onto conveniently-placed stock Pegasus ladders or command pod doors to have him stabilize with the mothership- while the lander can simply be allowed to roll/slide out of the rear of the cargo bay with a little well-planned pitching on the part of the mothership... If you wait too long on rendezvousing with the mothership, though, you'll have issues with its heading relative to the horizon (and thus the Angle of Attack of its wings) changing while it was unloaded- since heading in KSP is maintained relative to the galactic plane (a vessel pointed prograde on one side of a planet will be pointed retrograde if loaded back up when it has orbited to the other side- and don't even get me started on the complexities if you leave a craft unloaded for a significant portion of that planet's revolution around the sun...) So you still need to get back up to the mothership as quickly as possible, unless you want to risk loading up the mothership where it is in an Angle of Attack where it will instantly enter into an unrecoverable spin... An afterthought: KMP or a similar multiplayer mod would simplify the mothership tactic IMMENSELY (simply having a pilot to keep the mothership's angle of attack constant while another player pilots a smaller plane to the surface would prove invaluable...) In single player, ANY airdocking strategy is enormously complex, and hardly worth it except maybe for awesomeness-factor or a challenge... Regards, Northstar

Some suggestions: First of all, carry out the refueling at high-altitude, in level flight. That way, small changes in throttle will more gradually alter your velocity- making it easier to get in position. There's a reason they don't refuel near sea-level in the real world... Second, use KAS winches with docking ports on the end of them to achieve docking. That way, you can trail the winch behind the refueling tanker aircraft (the winch end and docking port will be subject to drag independent of the rest of the craft- so it will trail behind, being pulled by the tension in the cable), and pull it in closer or let out more slack to more easily dock two aircraft It will also allow you to switch to "undock" mode as necessary to make trim adjustments, etc., and then back to docked mode to actually transfer over the fuel. Third, use MechJeb. The ASAS function along will help IMMENSELY with making very small adjustments to trim, and keeping the tanker in level-stable flight while you pull up the other plane behind/below it... I also hear the Translatron could be useful- though personally I've never used that feature for *anything* Regards, Northstar

The lower reaches of Venus' atmosphere are hell, basically. With the extreme pressures and temperatures, it would take very advanced technology (none of which we've yet managed to finish R&D on) to survive down there. And manned exploration? Forget about it. The middle atmosphere, however, is quite pleasant. At about 50 km up, above the sulfur-clouds, you find abundant sunlight (the clouds block sunlight from reaching the surface), atmospheric pressures of around 1 Earth atmosphere, and a useful mix of Nitrogen, CO2, and aerosol droplets of Sulfuric Acid- which can serve as an easy source of hydrogen for water and rocket propellant... Well-known processes exist for preventing acid-corrosion of metals (relying on Cathodic Protection, for instance), and already see regular use here on Earth. Further, in Venus' middle atmosphere, Nitrogen-Oxygen gas mixture is lighter than the surrounding air (which still contains large amounts of CO2, for instance), and thus acts as a lifting gas- allowing easy development of floating cities that use their breathable air to keep equivalent density with the surrounding atmosphere (for greater density, smaller supplementary balloons of less dense gasses could also be deployed). This has lead a NASA researcher (Geoffrey A. Landis) to propose deployment of "aerostat" habitats to Venus' middle atmosphere, and long-term colonization of the middle atmosphere with floating cities: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030022668.pdf Getting to orbit from these floating cities is somewhat easier than on Earth- at this altitude (50 km) gravity is only 90% of Earth's at sea-level (even at ground-level, Venus' gravity is less than Earth's- real life isn't KSP) ; and the atmosphere, though falling off less sharply due to nearly twice the Scale Height of Earth's atmosphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_height#Planetary_examples) can also be seen as an asset- being extremely useful for spaceplane ascents relying on thermal turbojets (which could be powered either by onboard nuclear reactors, or by beamed microwaves from solar power satellites in orbit around Venus- as there is nearly twice the solar energy flux available at this closer distance to the Sun) or even for winged rockets... Thermal Turbojets have the interesting property of not requiring any external fuel much like an electric propeller or a reflective (rather than desorptive) solar sail- meaning that you could ascend through much of the atmosphere without expending fuel before switching over to an internal-propellent based propulsive system, such as a thermal rocket (which could share the same reactor/ thermal receiver and possibly even exhaust nozzle with a thermal turbojet- much like the "hybrid turbojets" in KSP-Interstelalr mod). This, combined with Venus' much greater scale-height, and the much greater availability of energy for solar beamed-power, means you could ascend much of the distance to orbit from 50 km aerostats without requiring any actual internal propellent... Venus' atmosphere at 50 km has many of the elements necessary for life in macro-scale quantities: Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Sulfur, and Carbon- as well as abundant solar energy (not only is a great deal of energy available from above- the cloud layer is so reflective a nearly equal amount of sunlight can be obtained by aiming solar panels *down* at the clouds below... (this also opens the way for potential use of two-sided solar farms) All of these factors (minus the bit about Thermal Turbojets and ascending back to orbit) added together led to the idea of such a set of floating cities in Venus' upper-atmosphere being nicknamed "Landis Land"... It's a rather interesting idea- and the closest we'll probably ever come in real life to the "Cloud City" of Bespin in Star Wars... Except instead of Tibanna Gas refineries, we might have asteroid-refineries (it actually takes LESS Delta-V and time to reach the asteroid belt on a minimum-energy transfer from Venus than from Earth, due to Venus' higher orbital velocity around the Sun and the Oberth Effect) and mining of surface deposits with advanced robotics technology (conventional circuit boards melt at those temperatures, so one approach being looked at is micro vacuum-tube designs for computers...) /EDIT: I'm going to point everyone at this blog post as well, because it's very high-quality and has a lot of useful links. It even thinks of some solutions that never occurred to me- like using high-altitude airships to get back to orbit... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_airship) http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/will_we_build_colonies_that_float_over_venus_like_buckminster_fullers_cloud_nine-127573 Regards, Northstar

Go for it! I look forward to your entry! Regards, Northstar

That's.... impossible without some kind of source of lift. The best ascents anyone has ever managed were 4450 m/s to orbit! The best I can figure is that we might have underestimated your total Delta-V... More screenshots of the launch and ascent would have been helpful for that... Anyways, I'll stick you on the Successful Missions List, but I've definitely got my reservations about it- like I said, your payload mass and fuel fraction figures seem a little iffy... Do you have any information on your TWR at liftoff, by the way? Was your lifter manned? (I didn't see a command pod) And did you quicksave? I'm trying to figure out what distinctions you qualified for besides "Motherland Lifter" Regards, Northstar

The KSS Nyrmidon made its landing/recovery at Kerbin, as planned, for the Kerbal Shuttle Challenge. This is quite a few albums, but I think fully worth it: I ran out of fuel just shy of the runway, but managed to coast the rest of the way (it was mostly downhill) on land as you can see... Go give the the challenge a try if you haven't already, and as always, I hope you enjoyed the screenshots! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79273-Kerbal-Shuttle-Challenge Regards, Northstar

Thanks- she's quite charming, that's for sure. It was interesting to hear her say something to me in French (knowing I'd have no idea what it meant at the time) as goodbye, that translated as "until next time"... Cool! Since I make a policy of carrying out all Challenges in my main Career game to pass the time (as well as find ways to make the payloads useful to my actual mission), it looks like I'm going to have to launch an *even heavier* payload to orbit (on an even bigger shuttle- I'm scrapping the Nyrmidon due to that yawing bug) to try and get a higher score! I'm thinking a huge rocket to launch a Solar (Kerbol) Power Microwave Beamed Power Transmitter to low Kerbol orbit... (that way I won't have to time-warp to complet the challenge, even if the actual payload takes months in-game to reach its destination) What's the rule on using payload engines during ascent again? With a payload that heavy, I'm going to want to find some way to use the rather large engines on the rocket for ascent from Kerbin rather than just having them sit there idle... Or, maybe I could just launch some RocketParts as payload and build that ship with Orbital Construction mod- I already have enough fuel in orbit to launch such a satellite from Munar orbit many times over... Regards, Northstar

I tried those patches before (they were the ones I was referring to) but while they fixed *some* of the bugs (such as enabling opening/closing of the cargo hatches in the SPH), it didn't fix the landing gear wobble or the SABRE engines for me- the two issues I was most troubled by... Regards, Northstar

Which is exactly what my math looked like. Actually, my calculation was a little more generous with ISP, and calculated out to 4600-4700 Delta-V. 4500 Delta-V is known to be the bare minimum Delta-V to get a rocket to obit from Kerbin without making use of aerodynamic surfaces, and assumes a 100% efficient fuel-optimal ascent. So a rocket with 4555 or 4600 Delta-V wouldn't have left you with enough fuel to de-orbit and land with 50 Delta-V to spare... Is there something I'm missing here? The STS parts are known to have exceptionally have ISP for their thrust and weight, but you would have needed an average ISP of roughly 374 (giving a Delta-V of 4800) to get the kind of performance you claimed here, and you said yourself your ISP maxed out at 380 and was only 307 on the launchpad... EDIT: I see you relied heavily on parachutes during your descent, which helps a lot with Delta-V expenditures. But it looks like you made a targeted landing near the KSC, which takes a LOT more than the 24 Delta-V you are claiming to have spent getting down from orbit (your screenshot shows you had 74 Delta-V in orbit, and you yourself said you had 50 for touchdown- was that atmospheric or vacuum?). Just going from your screenshots alone, I'm not seeing how it was even possible for you to touchdown there without extreme luck or a *LOT* of F5/F9... Edit #2: OK, never mind about the descent. I see you had 143 Delta-V after detachment of the payload- which would have been enough for de-orbiting (that assumes you spent approx. 93 Delta-V on de-orbit, which is rather precise but certainly possible). How did you get to orbit though? The numbers don't add up- you would have had to spend only 4481 Delta-V to get to a 100x100 km orbit, and the BEST ascents are known to cost 4500 m/s to get to a 70x70 km orbit. The only way I can see it even being possible is with a super-precise autopilot... According to the Wiki: "Doing so with a fuel-optimal ascent requires a delta-v of ≈4500 m/s" Regards, Northstar

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jltsiren/ksp/ssto_lifter_4.jpeg http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jltsiren/ksp/ssto_lifter_5.jpeg http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jltsiren/ksp/ssto_lifter_6.jpeg http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jltsiren/ksp/ssto_lifter_7.jpeg http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jltsiren/ksp/ssto_lifter_8.jpeg http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jltsiren/ksp/ssto_lifter_9.jpeg Landing was a quite difficult, because the LFBs were a bit higher than the central KR-2L engine. I also had only about 50 m/s left for the landing, so the timing of the final burn had to be exact. 100 tons to orbit on a 800-ton SSTO rocket? Something sounds a little fishy there... The math doesn't figure- even with the exceptionally powerful STS parts... Did you use FAR by any chance? That's the only way I can figure that thing would be able to make orbit... Regards, Northstar

That's a nice shuttle! And an even cooler video! Where did you get the music for it? How did you record? One other question though- how did you get the SABRE Engines to work? I remember I was SO excited when I unlocked those, only to learn that it doesn't work in the current version of B9 Aerospace- even after I installed the fixes for B9 on the forum as directed... Regards, Northstar

2.5 tons almost exactly on each (2.500 and 2.505 tons, to be precise). I'll also edit that into the previous post presenting the shuttle. Sorry for forgetting that O:o Thanks for allowing my entry, I was worried you wouldn't allow it- today is shaping up to be a better and better day. First, I go on an great first date with an amazing girl, and now this news... Regards, Northstar

There ought to be nitrogen tanks though... @FractalUK Ok, so maybe for whatever reason you don't want to even respond to a suggestion to add air-augmented chemical rockets- but could you at least consider adding nitrogen as a collectible resource with the Atmospheric Scoop? There's so much potential with this part, yet so few resources it can currently collect... Carbon Dioxide would be a good resource to add as well... Regards, Northstar

OK, I originally going to put this into my previous post, but there were enough pictures and text that it would be a bit overwhelming... Anyways, so I brought in the KSS Nyrmidon to Kerbin, first making an aerobrake pass that lowered my apoapsis: Then, I went in for the landing... I used several F5/F9 attempts- but I just couldn't seem to fine-tune the periapsis to the right location or height- every time I either overshot the KSC or didn't have enough fuel/speed/altitude to make it over the mountains west of the KSC... Eventually though, through quicksaves, I ended up locking in a route that looked good: Unfortunately, though, the game was being its usual buggy/whiny self. The Nyrmidon is a completely symmetrical design (both top/bottom and left/right- the only parts that even deviate from top/bottom symmetry are massless, and thus shouldn't affect its flight *AT ALL*), yet it insisted on contniuously yawing to the left as if there was something there. I've heard of this bug before, so I know it has something to do with parts that failed to place during symmetry mode in the SPH still being there as "ghosts" that affect the physics simulations- even though no actual parts are there. But I'm not aware of any way to fix it once a craft was deployed, so I had to live with it the whole flight (maybe if I had paid more attention to the slight yawing during ascent from Kerbin initially, I could have reverted and rebuilt the craft from scratch exactly the same to fix the bug...) Unfortunately, the result was a bad spin-out from yaw over the mountains west of the KSC (despite having the nose indicator *precisely* on the prograde vector and having no angular momentum whatsoever before it started), which killed most all of my forward velocity and required a large proportion of my remaining fuel to pull out. But pull out I did- here is the Nyrmidon after (just barely) recovering from this near-fatal spin (I ended up with the Nyrmidon spinning like a corkscrew about its long axis at one point in the spin, unresponsive to anti-roll Q/E controls- so I hit full throttle on the engine until my heading matched my prograde vector, and then I was able to pull out of it... I HATE the horrible stock aerodynamics model now more than ever...) As you can see, the Nyrmidon didn't have much speed, altitude, or fuel left; and the runway was still a bit away. I did my best to reach it however- but ran out of fuel a bit short... Gliding didn't quite get me the rest of the way- but what it DID do was bring me to the base of the final mini-hill just before the runway... So I attempted to simply coast along the ground the rest of the way to make it those last couple hundred meters onto the end of the runway... And made it all the way to the KSC runway, but didn't *quite* make it up that final mini-incline of the last few meters right before the end of the runway, as you can see. It's up to the thread author what he wants to do with this entry, but I would ask that he qualify it because (a) The Nyrmidon only failed to make it to the KSC Runway after a well set-up approach due to a bug (ghost images of parts from the SPH receiving physics simulation- this is the first time I've encountered this in a long time, but I hear reports of it on the forums every now and then from other players as well) that caused an unrealistic and baseless spin-out while pointed directly on the prograde vector (when pointed in precisely the direction of movement, there should be NO yaw forces on a symmetrical plane- and *certainly* none strong enough to overcome canted control surfaces AND reaction wheels...) ( The Nyrmidon made it to the runway, basically. It didn't actually land on the runway, but after a VERY short period of time on the ground (only 6 minutes), it managed to roll the rest of the way there from momentum leftover from its touchdown © The Nyrmidon was easily capable of making a safe landing on the runway. It did it, after all, on the much less forgiving and bumpy terrain of hilly non-KSC grounds to the west... (d) The Nyrmidon did all this without a single refueling- in fact after *donating* a portion of its fuel to one of my fuel depots. It could have made the runway if I kept all its original fuel... Anyways, as always, up to the challenge's author. But I hope he'll be forgiving here of a couple hundred meters distance from the runway, especially in light of the known bug I was facing... (I *might* have to re-install KSP soon, as I am encountering more and more bugs- but I'm trying to hold out until the 0.24 update, whenever that comes around, and preferably also until some of the mods I use have updated for it as well...) EDIT: By the way, each payload weighted almost exactly 2.5 tons (2.500 and 2.505 metric tons, to be precise) Regards, Northstar

I got impatient with waiting for aerobrakes on the cargo ship (oh wouldn't it be nice if those could happen unloaded?) so I decided to perform some burns and move it into a low circular orbit to phase with the Heavy Spacedock myself... (I actually originally intended to stabilize into a higher elliptical orbit with an appropriate Semi-Major Axis for phasing, but I lost power to the thermal receiver when I needed it for a large maneuver. Note to self- deploy more relay satellites...) I also attempted to deploy a tiny satellite made of nothing but a Cubic Octagonal Strut and 4 OX-STAT solar panels so as to move the panels to my skycrane via KAS (and perhaps the cubic strut as well- to avoid free-floating debris), but I discovered that deploying such a craft caused Kraken attacks on my Munar Spacedock (the camera would freak out and I would see the spacedock flying off into space at what appeared to be escape velocity). So I had to abandon that plan altogether- and will be simply ripping a few extra OX-STAT panels off my Reusable Crew Launch Vehicle on its next crew rotation to the Munar Spacedock- which is coming up soon... Also, I created a new challenge- The Kerbal Skydiving Challenge- and performed a recent example mission of it that some of you might think rather cool... 3 albums of images here, so bear with me: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/81682-The-Reusable-Launch-Platform-Challenge Check out that challenge, as well as my Reusable Launch Platform Challenge, over in the Challenges section! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/81682-The-Reusable-Launch-Platform-Challenge Regards, Northstar

I saw you re-designed the DH-1 to only use a single jet engine for landing. In its re-designed state, it would qualify for this challenge, so why not submit it? Regards, Northstar

Go for it! I always enjoy seeing new entries on my challenges! (while you're at it, you might attempt my Reusable Launch Platform Challenge if you're interested...) Let me stick your previous entry up on the Scoreboard now, by the way- I forgot about that before... Regards, Northstar

@FractalUK I came across a thread suggesting the addition of Air-Augmented rockets to stock KSP, and while I doubt that will happen, I couldn't help but feel it would be a perfect addition to the repertoire of KSP-Interstellar technologies (and much lower tech than any of the other technologies in the mod- the base tech has been around since the 1950's...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-augmented_rocket Basically, it's a lot like a thermal turbojet- it uses atmosphere for additional reaction mass and thus thrust/effective ISP- except it relies on a standard chemical rocket for the source of thermal energy, and it of course operates in parallel with a chemical reaction; meaning that unlike with a TTJ, the expelled atmosphere is not the only source of propellent... IN COMPARISON TO: Thermal Turbojets- Similarly relies on IntakeAtm instead of IntakeAir, but combines IntakeAtm with LFO-mix. Relies on a chemical reaction for the thermal power. Higher thrust than early fission-powered TTJ's and works in thinner atmosphere (due to ability to operate in the absence of *any* IntakeAtm if necessary). Standard Jets- The closest parallel, as it performs a chemical reaction and mixes it with atmosphere for additional thrust- but does still carries all its Oxidizer with it, so less efficient than turbofan engines. Unlike jet engines, incapable of flaming-out, as it has no actual reliance on external air, and simply exploits it for additional thrust. LFO Chemical Rockets- Higher thrust and ISP (consumes the same amount of fuel, but produces more thrust) than an engine of similar size/mass, but requires the extra mass and drag of air-intakes to obtain this additional "free" thrust. Behaves identically, except for the extra mass of the intakes, in vacuum- and transitions to more and more similar thrust values as less IntakeAtm is available. Solid Rocket Boosters- Perhaps the most interesting thing about this technology, it can also be applied to SRB's (in fact, this has been its main application in the real world). Basically, you would have a unique SRB part with built-in air-augmentation. Although such an SRB would be heavier in dry mass than a standard SRB, its base-thrust and atmosphere ISP curves would be adjusted such that it produces much more thrust for the same fuel-flow in the atmosphere, but equates out to having the same ISP/thrust (and a heavier dry mass to lug around) in vacuum conditions. Basically a higher-thrust, more expensive SRB that is only more useful in-atmosphere... This technology has seen real-life application in solid-fuel ballistic missiles (in fact, this is the ONLY significant application it has yet seen- although NASA is trying to design the LFO-rocket propulsion systems of some up-and-coming spaceplanes around it...) It could see use in KSP as an improved, but more expensive (once Budgets comes out) set of SRB's that players could consider using as throw-away boosters, or as reusable boosters with parachutes (assuming recovering a spent SRB gave players back some money with Budgets), when payload mass REALLY mattered for a given launch for some reason... Regards, Northstar P.S. FracalUK, feel free to PM me to let me know if you're seeing any of my suggestions here lately... I've really been doing my research on new features that I think might be useful in KSP Interstellar, but so far except for the inclusion of the Haber process (which you said you had already planned on including) I haven't really seen any indication if you've been liking/appreciating, or even reading, any of my ideas...