Sensi

I'll be back for mission 5 in a few days. I've found out that I had to rebuild the propulsion stage of my coreship to avoid its disintegration (probably because of the ring of struts). Tests show that it's stable now. Congrats for your mission 5 Finwen, but It should have been 100 points, not 800, because it's a bonus per mission, not per launch : rule "16. NASA knows best - Use NASA style launch vehicles to get all of your mission payloads into orbit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...aunch_vehicles) = +100 points per KSC HQ mission (Not included on Mission 01)". Or maybe I've misunderstood that rule, Nitro ? In this case, I'll start using NASA-like lifters too instead of SSTOs Nice to see new challengees taking part to this campaign. Good luck guys

My core ship is full stock, except a few heavy struts from KW Rocketry. The wobbling and disintegration happen 2 out of 3 times, not always. A clone of this ship launched from KSC doesn't seem to have the problem, only the one in LKO. So, I managed to hyperedit it back to KSC and replace it with a copy from the VAB. I'll see if it's really stable now...

Since last update, my core ship starts wobbling like crazy and disintegrates in less than 10 seconds. I've updated all mods but it doesn't solve the problem. Looks like I have to build a new one...

Lets crash/land it just outside the R&D building at KSC (no, not on the roof plz). It will be easier to study it...

1 converter + 1 reactor + 2 drilling units = 2.8 t

Flying in what can barely be called an atmosphere makes for a fun challenge. I take it on with my Duna K-Plane, all stock except PWings and Kethane. 19 tons, 17 Kerbals, one kethane turbine and 4x Rockomax 24-77 to slow it down to landing speed. It can fly up to 7400 m altitude before the KT flames out. Cruising at 7000 m is achieved with 5% thrust / AOA 20° / 90 m/s. Its optimal flight speed is between 85 and 95 m/s. Max speed is around 380 m/s at low altitude. I've flown it 1/4 of Duna's circumference with only 1/8 of the kethane gone. So it can circumnavigate without refueling. Fly safe. Sensi.

[TIC MODE ON] DOH ! So THAT was the problem with my design ! Thank you very much for your help, boolybooly. Next time I build a spaceplane, I'll keep the pointy end forward. [TIC MODE OFF]

Securing attachments with fuel lines is a bold engineering idea, and the fireworks over KSC to announce the return of the Duna mission made for a great Disney-like happy ending

Hi all. This is my first submission to a spaceplane challenge as I'm new to the spaceplane making industry. Let me present to you the Reinbacker, all stock. It is capable of reaching a stable LKO and land back at KSC, but it is somewhat difficult to fly. Much to my disappointment, I can't find out what's wrong with my design. Could someone please help me improve it ? Fly safe. Sensi.

A truly kerbalesque mission debut, Finwen. Good luck with your recovery operation Nitro, I would like to start mission 5 but you have to de-hibernate first and finish reviewing my mission 3 from last week. I also would like to know your opinion about my suggestion to allow players to do some "maintenance" to their coreship when necessary. S**t happens sometimes, especially during a long campaign-like challenge like this one, be it Kraken attacks damaging the ship but not destroying it (e.g. in my case : missing struts after getting out of time-warp, perhaps because of wobbly attachments when I engaged time-warp), or because of pilot errors tearing off or destroying a part in a collision, etc. You could ask for a before and after maintenance screenshot to check that the "repaired ship" is the same as the original one. I know this request doesn't exactly fit in the rule "7. Attack of the Kraken - You provide proof that the Kraken ate your ship = Free ship from Kerbin", but it would give some breathing room to players who don't like to F9 for anything else than a game crash and would add a nice little RP touch to the challenge.

Will do next time (I thought you knew the stats of the KT as you had ok'd the Kethane mod) Mission 3 option 1 completed The real difficulty of this mission was dV management. Using this Launch Window Planner made it possible to complete the mission with around 10 km/s dV worth of fuel. I had to attach 4 more jumbos to the coreship due to the payload mass and plan an aggressive return trajectory without matching planes, with a huge aerobraking at the end (4400 m/s -> 2400 m/s). And next time I go to Moho, I'll add a lot more lights on the landers. Fortunately, I had plenty of fuel to hover and pick up good landing zones. Scores Option 1 mission completion : 300 points Land a science team at both science gear location : 100 points Set up multiple actuators, one at each location : 100 points Set up actuators and science gear at both poles, the target LZ, and the opposite side of the planet relative to the target LZ, 4 actuators total : 200 points Eat your vegetables : 5 points Master of aerodynamics : 8 x 10 = 80 points I know what I need : 25 points Jet engines are for planes : 5 points Bring the Gang along for the ride : 4 x 10 = 40 points Home Sweet Home : 4 x 5 = 20 points Total : 875 points Fly safe. Sensi.

You can't compare an air breathing engine and a rocket engine. Their TWR and ISP are quite different. The KT weighs 1.75 t for 20 t of thrust and has an ISP of 2300 ASL.

Nicely done Nitro. That's one cleverly built Eve lifter. You should update your score on the leaderboard. Finwen, looking forward to your mission 4 submission. Size doesn't matter That said... Mission 2 (option 3) completed One thing's sure : I won't miss Eve's deep gravity well and thick soup of an atmosphere. Getting the science station crew back to the coreship was one of the most difficult things I've done so far. Using Kethane turbines helped a lot getting above most of Eve's atmosphere. The only problem with these engines is that they flame out if you go supersonic. So, all went to plan except that - I couldn't store the science experiments retrieved from science station into the rescue ship. - Two struts on the coreship have broken due to a minor Kraken attack. The ship is still space worthy, but it would be nice if we might land our coreship back at KSC to do some maintenance, from time to time. Scores Mission completed option 3 : 400 points Send down a 4 Kerbals science team and retrieve them : 100 points Land your rescue pod within 1 km of the science package's landing : 50 points Eat your vegetables : 5 points Master of aerodynamics : 3 x 10 = 30 points I know what I need : 25 points Bring the Gang along for the ride : 4 x 10 = 40 points Home Sweet Home : 4 x 5 = 20 points Total : 670 points

Mission 4 completed This mission was alot of fun and went as planned, with a few exceptions though : - Arriving at Duna on the wrong side of the planet. Had to do a U turn at the apoapsis of a highly eccentric orbit to get it counter-clockwise. - Not test-landing the rover on Duna before mission start. Had too few parachutes and the results were four bent axles and two flat tyres. Could not repair axles. The rover was difficult to drive after that. - Forgetting to unlink the KAS struts before undocking the skycrane from coreship. Had to send Bob on EVA to retrieve them as they had detached under strain. - Finally, forgetting that a docking port was used instead of a decoupler on the heat shield for Kerbin reentry. When I understood why the reentry engine and tank wouldn’t decouple, the rover was at 130m AGL and it was too late to undock them. And there were not enough chutes for the added weight. Fortunately, the reentry engine and tank cushioned the impact. The rover broke in half but all Kerbals and science gear did survive. The science team at R&D could get a hold of all science gathered on Duna. Mods used The usual ones plus KAS, Kethane and Infernal Robotics. Scores Mission completion : 250 points Drive your rover to all anomalies on Duna : 400 points Rover landed right outside of the science facility at KSC : 100 points (I’d understand if you disagree as it was more a controlled crash than a landing ). Eat your vegetables : 5 points Master of aerodynamics : (1 rover + 1 heat shield) x 10 = 20 points I know what I need : 25 points Jet engines are for planes : 5 points Bring the Gang along for the ride : 4 x 10 = 40 points Home Sweet Home : 4 x 5 = 20 points Total : 865 points (maybe) Fly safe. Sensi.

Here is my entry : 698 parts (75% struts), 4666 tons, min TWR 0.02, 34522 m/s dV. Once in 100+ km orbit, still has 1400+ m/s dV with a TWR > 2 on the 2nd ascent stage available for the burn to get out of LKO. --> Craft file <-- Fly safe. Sensi.

Overkill ? Wernher von Kerman disagrees. As he always says : "etehoc ed ednarg odaisamed anu omoc adan yah on" My next mission will be mission 4: "Stranded Rover", to catch up with all fine Kerbonauts who have already completed mission 2 and 3. I'll do those missions later, as time permits. A few questions : - You wrote "Drive your rover to all anomaly locations on Duna: 400 points". Did you really mean driving the rover on the surface of Duna, several hundred kms at 10 m/s ? Or can we use a skycrane to get the rover near the anomalies ? - The Kethane mod was used by somebody for mission 3. Is it still ok to use it for mission 4 ? - Does the heat shield need to be of the shoebox/garage type, or can we build something else, like this:

Mission 1 completed This was a nice warmup for the following missions Mods used : Infernal Robotics, on the SSTO. Not really needed but always fun to use. Scores : Mission complete with two satellites deployed and one landing per moon without refuelling : +150 points One satellite deployed on both equatorial and polar orbit for Minmus : +10 points One satellite deployed on both equatorial and polar orbit for Mün : +10 points More than two satellites deployed at either location : 4 x 5 = +20 points More than one Kerbal lands on a moon : 4 x 5 = +20 points Landing on both poles and the equator : +10 p... OH WAIT! DOH! I forgot to land at the south poles... Deploy a ground communications unit attached to a rover body : 2 x 10 = +20 points Deploy communications satellites that weight 10 tons each : +5 points Eat your vegetables : +5 points Master of aerodynamics : (8 satellites + 1 lander) x 10 = +90 points I know what I need : +25 points Jet engines are for planes : +5 points Bring the Gang along for the ride : 4 x 10 = +40 points Home Sweet Home : 4 x 5 = +20 points Total : 420 points (if I didn't make any mistakes or thought I complied with some rules but actually didn't). Fly safe. Sensi.

My bad, I thought the rule was one ASAS module "per 50 tons", not "per 50 tons payload". Anyway, this ship is well balanced and all engines are gimbaling ones, so here comes the Twisted Candle Mk II, now without any ASAS module. Same mass, same payload fraction. And for the giggles, I want an "under-torqued" notification for this entry ! Craft file --> here <-- Fly safe. Sensi.

Thanks Jasonden. Btw I did hack gravity for the first two screenshots so I had enough time to take them : this strutless ship is highly unstable and goes down in a few seconds. That's why the TWR of every stage equals its actual value x100.

Here is my entry for the medium category. I was visiting a friend yesterday when I saw this in his living room: A twisted candle ! It gave me an idea on how to build a ship whose stages I could shed one by one. This would be more efficient than the two by two method, for sure. And after one hour of building and testing, I was proved right. Stock parts, no FAR, 21 stages. Fully mechjeb compliant. Standard MJ ascent path 7/70/0/40. Total mass : 143.995 t Payload mass : 29.725 t Payload fraction : 20.64% I lacked time to improve it, so no fine tuning was done, neither on the propelant stages (I suspect 2 aerospikes should replace 12x 48-7S somewhere in the upper stages), nor on the ascent path parameters. Feel free to fiddle with it and try to break through The Mythical 21% Barrier Craft file --> here <-- Fly safe. Sensi.

Nitro, If you don't mind, I would like to modify my coreship by adding 4 docking ports before taking part to my first mission.

Hi all. I'm playing in career mode and I've just unlocked the mainsail, LV-N and jumbo tank. It's now time for me to go beyond Minmus' orbit with manned missions and take part to serious (and fun) challenges like this one. Here is my coreship, the Kore XL. I started building something small, with one jumbo, one nuke and an ascent stage. Then I made the ship as versatile as I could imagine and ended up with this 837 tons SSTO spacetruck Stock parts except heavy struts from KW Rocketry to (try to) keep part count low, and a KAS winch. Fly safe. Sensi.

Well done mhoram. I thought nukes were not suitable to get over 18% for payloads > 100 tons because of their poor TWR, but you prove me wrong Here is my entry for the heavy category. Gotta love those puny but overpowered 48-7S. Stock parts, no FAR, 16 stages. Fully mechjeb compliant. Ascent path 9/75/0/40. Total mass : 611.24 t Payload mass : 111.64 t Payload fraction : 18.26% Craft file --> here <-- Fly safe Sensi.

Yes you're right. I didn't uninstall mechjeb (or hide it somewhere inside the lander), nor did I uninstall other mods like city lights & clouds, enhanced navball, texturecompressor, Kethane, ... because when I did, almost all my other spacecrafts and flights were deleted from the save file when I reloaded my session Plus a few screenshots shown here were taken when testing the vessel (looking at dV stats, mass, ...) because they are better than others. Anyway, I didn't use it and I manually piloted this vessel. I must say it was more challenging than to build it. But as I said in my previous post, I will have to use mechjeb's autopilot for something bigger because I won't be able to fly it myself

I take care of the 400 monster Here comes the Hotel Munaire Revisited, now with rooms for 410 Kerbals. I think I've reached my limits as my PC melted (900+ parts) and manually piloting this vessel with a huge moment of inertia at 3-5 fps is very difficult (<-- understatement spotted). For something bigger, I'll have to use the welding mod and mechjeb's autopilot... Fly safe. Sensi.