Monty_Droppings

Sorry for the delay guys, my schedules been a bit tight. I should have some free time this weekend, I'd like to make some nicer point pictures.

Oh, however I will continue to update this leaderboard is people would like to continue submitting designs, as long as the craft was designed with the ION engine edited to the old stats.

I will create a new thread for the ION Challenge, with a revised scoring system and a few surprises. Just give me a few days to refine the scoring system. From now on, this thread is relegated to sharing neat ION designs and sharing research.

That Laythe glider just may be the neatest thing I have seen in a long time. May I have the craft file? I think you could get alot more DV out of those ANT's if you made it so the wings were jettisoned with decouplers. Neat research you got going on there donfede! I am planning to post pictures of my darkside lander shortly.

My lander design that used for the challenge involved having a revere asparagus ants that dropped off as I descend. Obviously, TW changes as I dropped the stages, i found the key to doing this was to use the MJ suicide burn countdown, and just getting a feel for when you wanted to burn.

Could I have the craft file for that? And whats the part count that looks absolutely nuts.

You are forcing yourself to carry the weight of 3 extra LV-N's, which are heavy, reducing your delta-V.

I've gotten this dark side Ion lander in the works, its only suitable for Pol and Gilly, but it incorporates 20 PB-NUKs, so it is not very efficient. I have also been doing some math about the math for a dark side lander with batteries, but this is the basic concept of the idea; you have your standard lander design, then you have what basically consists of batteries that get dropped off as you descend using asparagus staging, the idea being that after you land in the dark, you can wait until daytime to take off again.

It appears to be ions only. Good thing Ike is classified as practically impossible. May need to add an achievement for that. I proved Ike possible with math a few pages ago.

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD. <--first reaction That lander design is the one I settled on, I've been working on an alternate design where you put the micro landing struts on the pylons, It certainly allows for peace of mind, but the interplanetary burn times suffer. May I see a craft file? i'd love to try my hand at flying that beast.

Here you go, did a display for jumpyed: How to post Imgur albums:

You know... a Eeloo or Moho landing would be a first for this challenge, and given Moho's orbit velocity it wouldnt be hard use the assist to sling yourself to Jool. But slowing down to match orbital velocities with Moho is very, very hard. And the lack of solar panel efficiency at Eeloo would make life very difficult. That being said, matching the trip would still be rather impressive in my eyes.

You just blew my mind. That is the coolest thing I have ever seen in KSP (I LOVE Ions), and this is far beyond the scope of anything I would have ever come up with. Thank you for the time you spent, I can only imagine the amount of time it took for you to design this. Bravo to you good sir.

Yes, the only catch is that all parts must be docked together before you leave kerbin orbit.

Rules state neutral parts, that add no bonus, may be used, I made specific references to kethane and the mapping mod, as I feel if you spend 10+ hours on a mission not allowing people to add parts that only detract from flight proformance is a fallacy.

YAY! My first real post has been stickied! *Kerbal Fistpump*

I just did the math, Kn-Tons of thrust .5kn = ~ .05 tons of thrust, each ion engine generate .05 tons of thrust. Each Ion engine weighs .0415 tons on the mun. Each ION Requires 8 1x6 solar panels which weighs .023 tons on the mun, so you cannot use 1x6 panels, as it wouldnt allow net gain. If you used SX STAT panels, you would need 20 of them, .0166 tons. So therefore it is mathematically impossible to land on Mun with Ions. As .05 tons of thrust cannot lift the .581 tons of solar panels+ ION engine weight, and that is not even including the need for fuel. On Ike, it becomes bearly possible, as the stuff needed would only weigh .38 tons, and your net gain would be roughly .2 tons of thrust per ION engine/ solar panel combo, and a mk 1 capsule would weigh .08 tons on ike. , and each fuel tank weighs .02 tons on Ike. So if you brought absolutely NOTHING else, and somehow you fit 20 solar panels on the capsule, and mounted no landing gear, or parachute for return to kerbin, and not even a structural thing to mount stuff to, you could lift a MK 1 capsule with panels and fuel, as it would weigh .48 tons and the thing would produce .5 tons of thrust. Good luck with that though.

I can put up a modded leaderboard if you want. But honestly if you only use the panels and the xenon tanks from that pack i have no problem with it, as i just took a look and they scale with the in game weight/fuel. Using the reactor would be basically cheating, but as i said, i can throw up a modded leaderboard.

It is much harder than it sounds on paper, i tried landing with 1.05 TW before on my previous design, it is for all intents incredibly impractical, you almost need to burn as soon as you get into the SOI. More tanks=more weigh=more engines=more tanks.... Go ahead and try, I personally cant run anything with 300+ part count.

Why did you hyperedit it into the ground if you could land it? landing with 1.02 T/W means incredibly long burns to kill velocity, and you only have 1300 DV in that thing, so that would be an incredible feat of flying, and you would need to lift nearly an extra 50% to carry the capsule, and you would still have only enough to take off and land on one moon, which means the part count would be absurd as you would need a mother ship to get there. That was still the most impressive thing ive seen in a while, when i was thinking about it i was assuming 1 fuel tank for every ion engine.

See above post where i referred to this. Or TLDR: All parts must be docked together before leaving 100km kerbin orbit, mothership must still use ION power, each lander docked to the mothership must contain a MK1 capsule and Jeb needs to be EVA'd between each one if you plan to use multiple landers.

3 quick tips for you: 1) Use the 1x6 or 2x3's instead of the Gigantor, they give more electricity per mass. Gigantor gives ~51.42 EC/Ton, While the 1x6's or 2x3's give you 114EC/Ton. 2) The key to landing on the joolian moons is to make sure you save them for last, saving just enough fuel to land at both and return, as you need to have your xenon tanks at minimum weight (IE like half empty), you can also just xenon "drop tanks" like in my design, and transfer fuel to the main tank before landing on a body where you need more T/W. 3) Try messing around with the micro landing struts instead of the LT1's. I used micro's to further save weight if it comes down to it.

"What do you mean Parachutes don't work on Mun?!?!" I've come a long ways

There is a set of L100 fuel tanks with "ant" liquid engines, this is what allows you to land on stuff ions cant. Once the stage is dropped, there are still additional xenon tanks, once those get to 25%, i transfer everything to the center tank and drop the radial xenons. I like this design as it allows me to land on a "heavy object" (that ions normally cant), then i can land on several of the "ionic" bodies before returning to kerbin.

1)alt+F12= Debug menu. 2)"reload all parts" 3)Profit.