Mike the Mechanic

Technically, you could exploit the infiniglide bug to land on laythe (or any body with an atmosphere for that matter), the rules don't seem to forbid that A Laythe plane is a cool idea to save fuel, maybe you'd need more wings to get more lift?

I may be mistaken, but that sounds terribly inefficient. 4 nukes and 4 aerospikes amount to alomost 17 tons, which is half my mission weight! Maybe you go at the problem the wrong way: Instead of using 4 nukes, how about just using one or two - because you have to consider the following: every engine is deadweight in the rocket equation. Therefore, you need more fuel, in order to bring that empty/full ratio further down, which in turn gives you more fuel to carry around. (which ruins the thrust to weight ratio you wanted to increase in the first place, and makes the ship formidable kraken bait). This is especially important when landing on Tylo: Nukes are no good there, since they have a terrible thrust to weight ratio, which requires additional engines and again, fuel tanks. If you are to land 10 tons, maybe consider a cluster of the 48S engines - they are not as efficient as the LV-N, but their weight is a fraction of the LV-N, which, given the nature of the Ln-function, results in better delta-v yield. I post this because I see a lot of space ships that, I admit, look cool with all 20 LV-Ns running, but also a lot of people posting problems with ship sizes and fuel requirements. Of course, if you have to haul 10 tons of equipment around Jool, you may want to have more thrust to execute the maneuvers on time, however, quick burns come at a terrible price, which brings us to the beginning of the post

Here is my entry to the Jeb-level subchallenge (?) - the lowest mass on pad to all Joolian moons. It is 31.355 tons on the pad (the imgur album has an incorrect title, apologies). I hope this is in accordance with all the rules, I had to jetpack one moon, and the lander was basically a tank with a lawnchair. Edit: I used flight engineer, and I had tac lifesupport installed, but it was not active in the save. On launch, I had certain tanks empty (one by mistake, but it turned out just fine), to save weight (thanks to the tweakables). It would be possible to save another ton in the ascent stage, since I had some fuel left over there before I dumped it in Kerbins atmosphere.

Even starts with K ...

Mixed Ion/Liquid vehicles have low delta v because you calculate the delta v for the time the ants and the ions both fire. The rest of the time, you have the ants and fuel tanks as deadweight and only the ions firing, which of course kills your delta v further. I was thinking of a mixed lander, but the ants would have to fire at the end of the descent, which of course would be the same as a suicide burn - and therefore extremely difficult to execute.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/63311-EXTREME-ION-ing-because-it-s-not-covalent-or-very-punny Get inspiration here

I don't wanna brag, but Ions are pretty useful as far as I am concerned - just check out this challenge http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/63311-EXTREME-ION-ing-because-it-s-not-covalent-or-very-punny Ion engines, as they are now, add an additional dimension in building your spacecraft and allow further customization of your spacecraft into certain tasks that require high delta v or a lightweight craft (and other scopes I did not mention now). Imagine going into close solar orbit with liquid fuel engines only(you have to take a bunch of orange tanks with you and burn them using one LVN). For me, it boils down to is this: the fact that they cannot push a huge interstellar dreadnought out of kerbins orbit in 3 minutes does not make ion engines less useful in SOI's of smaller bodies (On Gilly, Pol and Minmus you get a nice TWR for main propulsion). What should be done though is to add a bigger (scaled) engine, bigger (scaled) tanks and an appropriately scaled big solar panel - the Gigantor is very inefficient when compared with the OX - because of the part count. Someone mentioned that in KSP you wait most of the time - yeah, it's a (simplified) simulation of real space travel, and in real space travel, waiting is part of the experience

I'd like to see that :0 that would be awesome!

Regarding my design - yes, I stripped that lander to the bare essentials: No RCS, no landing gear, no parachutes, and no reaction wheels. The torque of the capsule is strong enough to turn the lander pretty fast, since it weighs only 6 tons. In order to avoid having to a) do maneuvers with the capsule and to have two additional docking ports to carry around, I bolted the capsule on the lander. This however made it necessary to have a second capsule on the service module, with a parachute attached. The service module itself has a small probe core, and with the reaction wheels of the capsule, it is easily maneuverable (the only thing the service module did was essentially to store Xenon and turn towards the lander when it approached, and get rendezvous with the laythe lander capsule). The Laythe lander had its own capsule, because I could just leave it behind in orbit, without having to worry where I would attach it - also, I did not have to carry unnecessary weight (Parachutes, docking ports) back into Laythe orbit. I did not do calculations regarding batteries - it might very well be that they are a better alternative to solar panels, in that they provide the same amount of charge in a fixed period of time with less weight (doubtful though) - if so, this opens a ton of new landing spots, such as moho or the mün. I can explain the struts: The more parts you have, the more a craft wobbles - except if you strut stuff together. In my case, the lander had almost 200 parts, which makes it pretty decent kraken bait, except for the struts. I added the fuel lines with the drop tank literally minutes before launch, so imagine my surprise in pol orbit, when I realized the fuel lines were useless. Anyway, the fuel lines don't add weight (according to some threads in the forum and reddit), so there was no loss (except in part count). About docking without RCS: It is possible, especially with very small crafts. I visited every celestial body back in .21, and it involved a lot of orbital construction, orbital rendezvous and fuel transfers. After a while, I started to rely mostly on the Navball instead of RCS - and now I dock without RCS, which saves weight and parts, though it does not look as cool as with rcs-thrusters If your CPU cannot manage high part counts, I recommend the following mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/38577-0-22-UbioZur-Welding-Ltd-2-0-Playtest-5-Now-In-Game-Tool?highlight=part+welder It creates a new part out of a selection of parts (works best with fuel tanks and struts) and gives the new part the same significant values (weight, drag etc.) as the selection you welded (it's not a cheat mod) and can reduce your part count significantly. I don't use it, because my CPU can handle crafts up to 500 (with a moderate lag), but I imagine it would make lives easier, especially given the nature of this challenge.

Yes, it is ions only - I used up all the delta v for Laythe. Dres would be possible too I guess, but you have to be a hellishly good pilot - which I am not ... I stopped counting at a point where it was well beyond 24 - I reopened the file and came to 88 ants. The key was to drop as much unnecessary weight before takeoff and to do orbital maneuvers with ion engines - which I will never do again, it uses up too much time, even with 4X acceleration. Also, no RCS, and it involved considerable manouvering of the Service Module and some Jetpacking. BTW. I copied your solar panel arrangement intitally, but then I realized that I did not have enough engines - so I used triple symmetry and replaced the innermost panels with a 2x3 panel - that way I got the most coverage. I left out the horizonzal panels, because they would not provide any electricity when the sun was above the capsule and I badly needed all the electricity I could get, since the craft should have gone to Dres

Sure - https://www.dropbox.com/s/9zvyufa3d0x7jd8/Dres%20Challenger.craft I hope it works and that it is the right craft Ike is possible with it, but you have to be extremly careful: First, use 1 to toggle the engines and 2 to fold solar panels. Second, start in a low orbit. 13 kilometers are the lowest you can do on Ike, with a slightly inclined orbit. Third, start when your prograde marker and the sunbeams form a 45 to 60 degree angle. Kill as much horizonzal velocity as possible. DO NOT LET YOUR VERTICAL VELOCITY GO OVER 20 m/s! - the lander reacts like a whale. Fourth - there is a drop-tank. Disable fuel flow from the two integrated fuel tanks, leave the droptank and one of the integrated tanks for drainage. When you have used 350 units of xenon in each tank (700 total), transfer the fuel in the integrated tank and activate the decoupler manually. Fifth and last: If you break one solar panel, you break all solar panels. This is why you have to hover approximately 2-3 meters above ground and press 2. Leave the engines running, it buys the solar panels time to fold up. I have left 3 solar panels that are not affected by the action group, these never break. You have enough delta v, so do not worry if you pass some unionized gas I had to try a couple of times, after a while it worked. Takeoff is also pretty hard, you first have to get to a certain altitude before you can burn horizontally - maximum TWR is 1.1! EDIT: MOVE THE ENGINES OUTWARDS!!!!! I forgot to do that before launch and I regretted it the whole week I spent flying this thing

KSS Findalot?

Hello, can I still put an entry into the challenge? I did Laythe, Pol, Bop, Gilly, Minmus, Ike If I calculated correctly, it amounts to 12000 points.

What I would like is to be able to leave the SOI of Kerbol. Now what could be done is to let Kerbol orbit a 'black hole' - similar to our galaxy - which would allow to do something similar to the voyager missions and implementation of stars and stuff. This sounds simple, but given the problems with code (kerbol is the centre of the game engine, right?), floating point calculations (dock two ships in solar orbit, i dare you) and focus on other, more pressing issues, this should not be a focus of development right now

I like those songs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAaAraTMTTE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhBG1ilB3ao The obligatory Star Trek Theme: And of course a song for Wernher von Kerman The last song probably shouldn't be part of the game though, especially the introduction