XolotlLoki

Totally not suited to this challenge, but I was intrigued by the idea of building a VTOL, so I tested yours. The design looks awesome; I had to tear it apart to figure out what it was made of. The multiple engines inside each other was a little much for my taste. And the addition of the RAPIER engine soley to allow exploiting a turbojet/RAPIER bug seems a bit too much like cheating, which makes it less fun for me. But flying it was very fun as long as the tanks were full. Landing was difficult; I wish it had weighed a lot less, like without the LV-N and RAPIER. I tried to land on top of the VAB, but once engines 1 and 6 got to 1/2 full the CoM shifted and I was unable to maintain control. So I built my own VTOL, and got it to the top of the VAB: Craft file here.

I tried to do this a couple of times, but the game wouldn't let me launch a plane with a Kerbal next to the runway. It kept giving me the choice to recover the Kerbal, or abort the launch. I tried from both within the SPH and the Space Center runway itself, the latter of which also gave me the option of controlling the Kerbal. Maybe a Kerbal on a rover? EDIT: by launching your plane from SPH, then a crewed rover from VAB, I was able to get a Kerbal to your ship. But I was completely unable to get him on the ship. There was no ladder, so I tried going from the front via the intake, and from the side via the gear bay, but no luck either way. How exactly did you test your plane?

I didn't realize that you had actually posted a craft, but then I saw that the example entry had a working link. So I downloaded RAPIER SSTO and put it through my test plan. Your plane was extremely pleasant to fly. Takeoff used very little runway, due to the massive amount of lift. I was able to land with full fuel tanks with zero throttle. No other plane came close to this. The plane was very controllable. However, once I ran the closed cycle to drain the oxidizer and most of the fuel, the plane became somewhat difficult to fly. High AoA caused the plane to fly backwards, probably due to the CoM shifting behind the CoL. I was able to recover, and even landed on the runway, but there were a couple of close calls while manuevering back for landing. I then did an SSTO run using my normal SSTO flight plan, and made it to 72km circular orbit in only 6:28, with 27 fuel and 38 oxidizer remaining. I will try to get back to KSC with the remaining fuel. EDIT: I misjudged the amount of drag, and didn't make it back to KSC. But once I got to the lower atmosphere, I was able to glide a good long while. Your large wing and 3-engine design worked very well, modulo the CoM issues with low fuel.

Continuing my reviews of the leaderboard, I flew Mesklin's Omega and ABalazs' XR-5SB. Omega was an interesting design. The large delta wing and widely spaced gear made takeoff and powered landing relatively easy, and there wasn't too much runway AoA (maybe 3*). However, the lack of a tailfin (and hence yaw control) made unpowered landing difficult, and I was unable to do the last second corrections necessary to land on the runway. XR-5SB was actually very pleasant to fly. The only real problem was the wide wings and narrowly spaced gear, which caused several wing strikes during powered landing. It used the same V-tail as my Fly, which provides a good balance of low part count and aerodynamic control. It did have a somewhat large runway AoA (like 8*), but this didn't interfere with takeoff or landing; it allowed takeoff rotation before the end of the runway, which is not common. Next I tried to download Slugywug's Minimal SSTO, but the link 404'd. Darren9's gRape'r downloaded, but it didn't include a cockpit or a remote pod, so no way to control it. I skipped Col_Jessep's second entry, and went on to Xeldrak's CRAP. CRAP was a very good mini-wing design. The X-tail was a nice touch, and gave a surprising amount of lift, which most mini-wing designs lack utterly. This allowed full-tank powered landing with only 1/3 throttle, which no other mini-wing could do. However, the X-tail had one major drawback; the lower two fins were dangerously close to the ground, and broke off in almost all of my landing attempts. This was made worse by the excellent roll control they provided, which made it difficult to stay exactly roll-neutral during landing approach. And when I did manage a perfect touchdown (after 5 tries), applying the brakes made the plane front-flip and crash. Still not sure why that happened. I skipped ABalazs' second plane, and SkyRender's RCS-free plane. I did test Hodo's X-152A and Liowen's Tadpole MK1R. X-152A was in many respects a nice plane. However, the large canard caused unstable pitch control which frequently made the plane fly backwards. This was somewhat mitigated by the CoM/CoL, which allowed a relatively easy switch back to prograde. But it rendered my flight plan untenable, and I was forced to actually turn around to get to the runway, not use some kind of cuban-8. Though the powered yaw control was excellent, I still crashed trying to get on the runway. Tadpole was a very large plane for this challenge. It flew very well with tanks full; I managed a clean powered landing with both 1/2 and 1/3 throttle. However, with tanks empty the CoM had shifted behind the CoL, and I crashed badly on landing.

I think that would be very interesting for part 2. It completely changes the optimizations, and without the extreme need to lower part count we should get much more creative designs.

Thank you Sirine, it's a pleasure to take part in your challenge. The numerical scoring gives a very different experience from the BSC challenges; it's easier to optimize for the win, though at the risk of losing the intangible attributes. That's why I'm focusing on simple takeoff/manuever/landing tests. Basically, I takeoff, do some form of cuban-8 to get back to the runway, then land. Then I do it again, but run the engine in rocket mode to drain the oxidizer and most of the fuel before landing. I do the full tank landing with full throttle, but try to do the empty tank landing with no throttle. This simulates both a launch abort and also a return from orbit, which are the only real use cases for SSTO landing. With the fixed link, I was able to test the current #1, goobd0g's StarFighter. Though similar to The Gnat in basic structure, it was a much more pleasant plane to fly. The front gear height differential was very modest, only giving about 3* up attitude on the runway. This allowed a normal takeoff, though the front placement of the rear gear allowed over-rotation and tailstrike if you are careless. I even managed a powered landing with full fuel tanks, in spite of the 15* up attitude necessary to maintain level flight. I was unable, however, to land unpowered with empty tanks. There just isn't enough lift in the wings. Overall, StarFighter is an excellent implemetation of the mini-wing design, and well deserves its first place.

Now that I've posted my entry, I'm starting to review the others, beginning with the leaders. The link for the #1 entry does not work, so I cannot test that: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4z...it?usp=sharing (probably a copypasta problem with the ...). The link for #2 did work, and I was able to open the .craft file. However, the entry did not contain a docking port, so I believe it should be disqualified. I will also try to fly it, but given the lack of lift I fear the landing will be brutal EDIT: landing was indeed brutal as expected; I never managed a single landing in almost a dozen tries. Even at full throttle I needed almost 20* AoA to maintain level flight at 150 m/s, which basically makes it impossible to land. With less then full throttle the plane drops out of the sky. But even takeoff was non-trivial with the Gnat. The front landing gear was so much higher than the rear that the plane was at 10* AoA while taxiing. This caused serious instability as the plane accelerated, which lead to a roll over crash every time. The only way to manage takeoff was to constantly pitch up, which provided an even down force that somehow stabilized the plane until it got to the end of the runway. I'll update this post as I test more planes.

Introducing the Fly, a minimal SSTO using the new Rapier engine. It places 3rd according to the current leaderboard: Craft Name: Fly Part Count: 14 ((150 - 14) * 10 = 1360) Time to LKO: 7:29 MET ((10 - (7 + 29/60)) * 5 = 12.58) Fuel Remain: ((29.6 / 10) * 3 = 8.88) Total score: 1381.5 Craft file: here. I also noticed that the current #1 and #2 are not calculated correctly, since 9:16 is not the same as 9.16. The actual scores should be: ((150 - 13) * 10) + ((10 - (9 + 16/60)) * 5) + ((127 / 10) * 3) = 1411.76 and ((150 - 12) * 10) + ((10 - (7 + 39/60)) * 5) + ((20 / 10) * 3) = 1397.75 The error was small enough that the relative positions did not change.

Loki is fine, and you are of course correct about One Way Ticket's extra feature set. Which is why I voted for antbin as well. And sploden, I've updated my test matrix to include your rover. I actually liked it as much as Deathsoutl097's, which was the only other really good small wheeled rover.

Fixed. Updated. I had added the meaning to my original post linking the spreadsheet, but not the spreadsheel itself. Done now. EDIT: Doing so now.

Was your skycrane separately controllable? If so, then a docking port would be reasonable. Usually when I land a rover with a skycrane, I ramp the throttle just before detaching, then let the skycrane fly off on its own. But there's no way I'd be able to click a docking port while doing this. Only stage separation (or an action group) is fast enough.

I updated the spreadsheet to explain, but basically it means whether that column was valid for that test on that planet. So for the "roll damage" test, K means your rover was damaged when rolled on Kerbin, !K means it wasn't damaged, and ?K means I couldn't make it roll so I have no idea. Same with M for Mun.

I drove it at night with lights on at full speed, and watched to see if there was any battery drain. Almost all the small rovers had some drain, probably hard to fit enough RTGs.

Fixed. In my case, I think my brain saw a Kerbalization of the name Joshua. Out of curiosity, what's the (ethnic?) origin of that name?

Not sure, I'll load your rover on Kerbin and check. EDIT: I loaded your rover on Kerbin at night, then turned the lights on. Here's what I see: No visible lights. Where are they supposed to be?