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Please see my post on the previous page and lets talk about putting our head together on a design. I am stuck at the 4.5tn cargo lift. want to hit 12-18tns, and I think we might be able to do this!

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzOU_F85Qj0YRFJBblV5Tmg1dlk/edit There's the Craft file. Also, the biggest difference is the Range. The Dipole (little black box with two wires coming out) is good to 500km. The communotron 16 is good to 2.5Mm, both are Omnidirectional antenna meaning that they will connect with everything within range. Dishes have to be pointed. Generally I use the DTS-M1 to talk to other satellites in the same orbit and the other dish to cover everything else. I would put 2 of the large dishes on, one pointing at Kerbin and the other at the Mun. The DTS-M1 one should point at the next satellite in the series, and one should point at the previous satellite. (i.e if you have 3 satellites in a triangle you should have one DTS-M1 pointed at each other satellite) You really don't need the Communotron-16 at all if you do it right. With my launch profile I circularized at 80km (Still within the range of the Dipole) and then turned one of the dishes to Kerbin and activated it. Once I got out of range of the Dipole ( >500km) it automatically switched over to using the dish, at that point I didn't need anything else. Oh poop, I need to remove a couple of things...Namely the Parachutes from Realchute and the Radiators from KSP Interstellar Totally forgot about those! Fixed! Everything there is either Stock or KW. Also, Action group 1 toggles all solar panels, and action group 2 jettisons the fairing.

It's a while ago, but when I was 15 or so years old I had a terrible French teacher. Now I wasn't a model student in her class, and I wasn't very interested in the subject and because of that I used to get rather bad grades. At one point I decided 'this French stuff can't be that hard, let's go and learn it'. So I actually open my books (I think I had to unwrap them mid-year) and start soldiering through the assignments. At some point there's this or that that I can't figure out so I walk up to the teacher and ask her to explain something to me. Now whatever it was that I'm asking clarification about I'm sure had been covered before, and wasn't too complex and I should have had the opportunity to learn it many a time over already, but still her response was IMO inexcusable. It went like this: 'So, you're asking about this now? I'm not going to answer or help you out, get some good grades first and then we'll talk' Then and there I decided that French was going to be the subject that I was going to fail (we were allowed one). I think I even threw out the book on my way back to the bench but that may be myself enhancing the memory

It's a while ago, but when I was 15 or so years old I had a terrible French teacher. Now I wasn't a model student in her class, and I wasn't very interested in the subject and because of that I used to get rather bad grades. At one point I decided 'this French stuff can't be that hard, let's go and learn it'. So I actually open my books (I think I had to unwrap them mid-year) and start soldiering through the assignments. At some point there's this or that that I can't figure out so I walk up to the teacher and ask her to explain something to me. Now whatever it was that I'm asking clarification about I'm sure had been covered before, and wasn't too complex and I should have had the opportunity to learn it many a time over already, but still her response was IMO inexcusable. It went like this: 'So, you're asking about this now? I'm not going to answer or help you out, get some good grades first and then we'll talk' Then and there I decided that French was going to be the subject that I was going to fail (we were allowed one). I think I even threw out the book on my way back to the bench but that may be myself enhancing the memory

For the sake of the argument, let's disregard all political factors in this discussion. Let's talk only about technical matters of the subject. Whenever I think about nuclear propulsion systems, two designs often came to my mind: Nuclear Thermal Rocket or Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, both having been studied as project NERVA and Orion, respectively. Later, I thought of a different design. This one would work similar to NTR systems, in which nuclear fuel is reacted to heat a different propellant(say, hydrogen). However, instead of a typical nuclear reactor, it had a simpler combustion chamber with no means to retain the fissile material. Instead, products of the nuclear reaction is ejected, being part of the exhaust, hence open-cycle. What are the possible advantages and disadvantages of such propulsion systems? How would it perform in comparison to NERVA and Orion systems? Also, what technical challenges the propulsion system might impose?

You know, I am just making this post to make some non-scientific assumptions, and to blow off some nerdy steam i guess. The first thing I kind of want to discuss, Light speed travel. This idea has been in our minds for a while, and I wanted to propose a few things on this subject. First off, the improbabilities of the theory. Light speed in many concepts seems possible, maybe not right now, but certainly it is possible. One of the main problems of this is that the energy required to produce this much thrust is equal to over 299,792,458 m/s. This is the minimal speed that light travels, and to achieve it would require astronomical amounts of energy, more energy than a red giant can produce in it's lifetime. So let's talk about this. Although no one really knows how much energy a red giant burns, let us imagine that it could propel us to the speed of light, unless we find some other scientific geeky way to do this. So we have the technology to harvest a red giant, and use it's energy to produce light speed. The next problem is this. Currently, even travelling over 50km/s (50000 m/s) is extremely dangerous, even a dust particle could rip microscopic holes in a spaceship doing this speed. Now multiply that by 5000 and you will get a number around 200,000,000 m/s. (Supposing that this speed is enough) At that speed, either you will break basic physics, and be able to go so fast to go through objects, or logically, atoms that are distributed throughout space would rip your spaceship apart into trillions of atoms per millisecond. That would mean that you would be ripped up almost instantly at the time you hit warp speed. So, some people may think that there are better ways to do this and there are obviously are. Such as energetic shielding. If you were to blast through space faster than light with a big energy shield around you, you would be fine right? Well not exactly. First off, the amount of energy needed to counter the particles would also be astronomical, since this is indeed an energy shield using electrified/magnetic particles to protect a vessel. Or second, you would have to have such a dense amount of energy that it would be infeasible to be able to wedge any atoms inbetween the particles and reach the hull of your spaceship. Another theory is to put a big hunk of metal on the front of your vessel as a interstellar heat shield and you might as well discard this idea immediately because it just isn't feasible and should not even be considered. (End of discussion and yes i have breathed in this writing) If you would like to leave some suggestions (or correct my math) please do so in the comments below, and I do also enjoy crazy theories and discussions/debates as these so please leave your rants on this page so that I can read them! P.S I realize that this post is using just basic knowledge that I had at the time, and a few days after writing this i did indeed watch a few videos on quantum mechanics and physics! Please do not hate for misinformation as this was just a thread to see how logical a topic was! Thanks!

Unfortunately, we're not suppose to talk about our concerns in this forum. And this thread will certainly get locked up.

This is so frustrating every time this topic comes up. Someone always tries to conflate "OP is asking for more solar systems" with "OP is asking for the ability to move between them IN THE SAME CAMPAIGN and therefore is asking for FTL". One does NOT imply the other. Shooting down all talk of second solar systems because of FTL is an invalid non-sequitor because the existence of more than one solar system to choose from does not have to imply that you move a spaceship between them. You could just pick which solar system to start playing in, and then you play that campaign in that solar system. There's plenty of precident for that sort of arrangement in a computer game. You can play Civilization on various different maps - picking which one at startup time and sticking with it for that game. You can play most space empire 4x games the same way - picking different initial setups and then that entire game takes place in that universe. The ability to pick different solar systems for KSP would not have to imply that the different solar systems interact with each other at all.

There is no analytic solution; you'll need to go for numeric approximations. Beyond that, we can talk about rules of thumb for pitching over and speed...

1) Very good idea, coming for phase II. Should have been in Phase I, I simply forgot. 2) Very good idea. Will talk to Nazari about it.

All this... It's amazing nothing went wrong. Apollo 13 was a big scare, but other then that Apollo just.. worked. Now the Russian lunar plan was scary. No docking tunnel... Something tells me that if let's say the N1 made it to orbit and sent a pair of cosmonauts to the moon.. I think something would've went wrong. Not to bad talk the Russians, but that plan was a mess. It is ashame the LOK never flew through. ( well it did.. for about a minute and then came down in the largest non-nuclear explosion the world has ever seen. )

That would be interesting. "Hello, I'm Scott Manley. Today we'll to throw a main-belt asteroid at Eeloo by crashing a Kerbal on EVA into it. Let us first derive a closed-form expression for our trajectory." I don't think asteroids are in 0.24 though, they are in the NASA thing. Interesting conclusions from the poll results: It seems Scott's not here. Could somebody draw his Manley attenion to the remaining open astrophysics question (the one about reference frames for the ER3BP)? Answering it would do too of course. The majority seems to know basic calculus, so I'll use that. I'll post a link to Feynman's Lectures on Physics for the ~40% who don't, there's a quick introduction to calculus which doesn't involve defining the derivative at a point as a linear form on a Banach space. It's really well written (I'm pretty sure that's where I first learned calculus around 2007). There are 6 people who checked neither of the bottom 2 options. Either they can do numerical integration but not elementary physics, or they didn't see that it was a multiple choice poll I think the first post I'll write will be on the integration of general ODEs with RK integrators. In later posts I'll talk about Hamiltonian mechanics, the Kepler problem and the patched conic approximation (it would be nice if people understood why SOIs make sense in their current form, but not as Lagrange point hacks or any such sort of nonsense). I'll then get to SPRK integrators, and eventually to the Saha & Tremaine stuff. I'll try to write the first post over the evenings of the coming week. There will be little modding this week because exams. I'll probably be more productive from Saturday onwards though.

awesome! i remember my first landing.. no i don't but still To talk about something else, am i the only person that play in full screen?

We're not conducting war in space. Within the atmosphere, you get a lot of attenuation of the laser. There are some lasers mounted on Humvees the military has been experimenting with. Some of them to temporarily / permanently blind enemy soldiers on a battlefield. I do recall some talk of using a directed energy weapon on the Airforce version of the F-35 some years ago - as it had a lot of extra horsepower, since it doesn't sport the vertical lift fan required in the Marine version, or the heavy structure of the Naval version (for carrier landings). But I figure the reason we don't field laser weapons is because we don't have to. They're expensive to develop, pretty big and bulky for regular infantry use, and unnecessary for the type of wars America is fighting now (urban, not on the plains of Europe, and definitely not space based).

I built a rocket: What are these 'stock parts' you talk about? It was originally designed as a stylish LKO-lifter, but it can put a 3-man pod on a munar fly-by.

Please, read the first posts The point of much of his talk is that by using better, research grade code, you can be as fast or faster than KSP is today even with all the added n-body complexity. Also, Lagrange points (one capital, the guy came from Italy, not Chicago ) aren't all they're cracked up to be, it wouldn't be worth it to make an exception case just for them and hacky solutions are.... horribly hacky, no other way to put it. By the way: "That's pretty arrogant... I like that in a pilot" (cit.) Do you have an idea of how that would work?

Many Worlds relies on superposition principle, making it impossible to travel between worlds. To put it simply, from perspective of any world, all physics is equivalent to that one and only one world existing. Of course, if the underlying field theory isn't actually linear, and superposition is just an approximation, things could be different, but then, strictly speaking Many Worlds doesn't hold either. We'd need a different many-histories theory to explain all of it. As for allowing for travel, you'd effectively be back to dealing with geometry of space-time, so you might as well cut out the middle man and talk about warp drives and wormholes to begin with.

Hi Guys. For starters, I have already overcome collision issues at high speeds. So I will be tuning the guns relatively close to the real world counterpart... even though it's KSP and there is no humanity for god's sake! Most guns fall between 750 - 900 m/s, I think the fastest firing gun I have right now would be the phalanx which fires somewhere around 1100 m/s - with nearly 100% of rounds colliding. I have a timer on all rounds, realistically I have to keep the overhead down with the rate of fire being high but not as high as in real life. I think the timer on the phalanx as well as all smaller rounds is about 4 seconds. Which after velocity falloff due to drag will give the round an outer range of 3 - 3.5 km. Penetration power is reduced as it slows down of course, so effective range (depending on the target) is likely under 2km. The larger rounds/shells have more duration on the timer. due to their extended range. As I mentioned in another post I was able to lay some smack-down on another battleship about 7.2km away. Really with those shells even when at reduced velocity they put down the hurt. I've added some fire/smoke fx to the ground where Incendiary shells land, and explosive force within a short radius of where HE shells hit the ground. This allows for some inaccurate splash type damage to be dealt. The final step to that will be spawning shrapnel at the explosion site, each particle then deal out damage as a low powered round would, this would be bad for weak targets like aircraft or other small parts that are not armour. Heat is one thing I've put some control on lately. When something burns it will heat to about 90% of that parts max temp... at that time it will randomly be determined if the part should outright explode or just burn-out and be fixable later. Parts containing fuel will check for an explosion around 60% of it's rated max heat. Engines that overheat will be treated the same way. Damage will take each part into consideration, wings lose lift, seize at a given position, or lose range of deflection. Engines shut down, turrets can't turn or fire... and so on. I haven't covered off everything but I'll try to cover the primary part types. Torpedoes are back in! I have them skimming just under the waterline at about 20 - 25 m/s, they have a base range of about 2km, though that can be changed. They don't seek or anything... they track the line you drop them at, they will have an fx trail so they are slightly easier to see from the air. Good discussion, there is a lot to cover in something as broad as this! On a side note: I'm picking some weapons/ordinance that I think would be neat to model and implement. I plan on adding an 88mm flak gun as I needed something in that range. My torpedo is modeled and set up to act like a ww2 Japanese type91, I just made a 30mm DEFA internal cannon. The tank turret has a 127mm smooth-bore gun and is loosely modeled after the turret off the Leopard 2 A6? MBT. The real tank has a 120mm... so this is slightly bigger... I was originally making a 5" naval gun, but decided a tank turret would be better.. so I kept the round parameters and made a tank turret model instead. Release 2 candidates so far are: 88mm Flak artillery, capable of use as regular artillery or AT. Small portable mortar (maybe). Acoustic homing torpedoes (slightly better than nothing!). I'm thinking of heat-seeking air-air missiles like a sidewinder... I'm only pondering it right now, and if so... there will be flares. I'd likely allow the flares to have an automatic discharge setting, or chime a note when the missile is 1 - 2 seconds from your plane to 'remind' you to deploy the flares. Anyhow... too much to talk about and too little time! Later guys

Better than me. I talk to computer generated graphics formed by lines of code and imagine they have personalities. I'm a bit weird.

Right. I will have to talk to MetalMouth and Defcon before saying anything on this, but no doubt they will want to see what you can produce. I will send them a message, and see what they think. Please do keep in mind though, that we are constantly working on this, and our texture artist (MetalMouth) will probably be working on everything a little as time goes on. I think he wouldnt mind the help though. 0.o What would give you the impression that we didnt care? We have even talked about scrapping hyperium at one poin, because of the amount of hate it got in another thread. Everyone only does mods because they feel like it (It's not like we get paid or anything.) but we do care about what people think. If we didn't what would be the point?

Hi everyone: I'd like to announce the (pre-)release of KSPTOT v0.12. This is a pre-release edition. The application may be unstable, features will be missing, and no source code is included. The principle new feature in KSPTOT 0.12 is Mission Architect, which I've been showing off for a while now. The download link for this pre-release is here: KSPTOT v0.12 Pre-Release 1 I would encourage everyone interested in testing the new software to please go ahead and do so. All I ask is that if you find bugs or have feature requests, you please let me know in this thread so I can handle them. Mission Architect is accessible from the main KSPTOT GUI by going to Tools -> Mission Planning -> Mission Architect. Okay, enough of the serious talk: go at it, everyone, and let me know what you think! Also, to everyone who posted above, I will get to responding to you shortly.

Chapter 1: Milzer Kerman It was good to be back in the Astronaut Center. I turned up the speed on the treadmill for a brief sprint. These past six months have given me a renewed sense of purpose, but how much longer can I stay here? This past week of waiting for the decision had been stressful, not enough direction in my days and too much downtime. The physical and health tests were no problem, I'm sure I've passed those. Maths and science were never my strong subjects, but I still should be good enough for the corps. I'm fairly old to be re-accepted as a kerbonaut, yeah, but there are older kerbals in active service. The Psych test. That was it really. Bill's death had hit me harder than the others, I don't know why. The question was, had I convinced the agency doctors that I'd recovered from it? In the wall-length mirror in front of me I saw Bill enter the gym. Bob, not Bill. Of course it was Bob. I shuddered and shook it off. I guess Bill's spectre still haunts me occasionally. Bob spotted me running and began to walk over. Bob had been amazing after the accident, representing kerbonaut interests during the investigation. It was hardly a surprise he was appointed to the directorship to replace the ousted Gene Kerman. It had changed us all of course, the accident. I'd lost it, overwhelmed with anxiety I'd quit the corps. I wasn't the only one of course, but perhaps mine was the most dramatic exit. Bob instead had become more focussed, determined to see the culture which allowed the accident crushed. He had sullened too, no longer the jovial kerbal the corps had loved so much. His face now permanently wore the grief from the loss of his friend. Bob stopped beside me and smiled. He was looked pleased, sure, but it was a calculated happiness, no longer the spontaneous warmth of his younger self back when we were training together. "Congratulations Milzer, there's no point keeping you in suspense any longer. You've been cleared for active duty." A wave of relief washed over me. I guess I hadn't realized just how much weight I'd been carrying for that decision. It felt as if the last two years were being lifted off my shoulders. "Thanks Bob... I... it's an honour to be serving in the corps again." "That's not all, we want you to be commander of our next great project." Bob leaned forward. "We've finally restored funding to send a crewed mission to Duna." I slowed the treadmill to a walk. "Are you serious? That's... I don't know what to say..." "You've done excellently these past few months, Milzer. I know Bill's death shook you more than most, but you've shown us all how committed you are to the program. You've the experience we want, and the level-headedness needed in a commander. I don't believe there's a better choice for this mission." I tried to absorb what Bob was telling me. A command position? It was what I had always dreamed of before the accident, but afterwards I hadn't considered that it might be an option. "There's one more thing..." Bob fidgeted uncomfortably. "We've recommissioned the Aegean for this program." I stumbled and nearly fell over. Stopping the treadmill I stepped off and tried to compose myself next to Bob. I tried to slow my breathing. "The truth is the Aegean is still one of the most advanced craft we've ever built," he continued. "It's far cheaper and more versatile than a traditional stack; it built most of Magellan Station after all. And our engineers have gone over and refined the design countless times, we've learned from the mistakes of Project Ocean." Bob leaned forward, looked me in the eyes and intoned "I made sure of that." I sat down on a workout bench and rubbed my forehead. He was right of course, from an technically standpoint Project Ocean was brilliant. But we'd all been squeezed by the bureaucracy, the engineers especially. Mission turnarounds were too quick and kerbonaut feedback went unheeded as the engineers scrambled to refit the ships in time. All so the program would remain in the public limelight and funding would keep rolling in. All of us had at some level known that an accident was just around the corner, but with seeming success after success no one was brave enough to speak up. Still, if I were to trust anyone to make the right changes, it would be Bill's closest friend. Besides, it wasn't the Aegean which crashed. I stood up. "...I'm not sure if I could command another orbiter... I mean, I know it wasn't an Aegean model at fault, but..." "I understand," Bob replied. "After what happened I don't think I could face another trip to space either. That's why I accepted the directorship. But you were always more at home up there than me." He paused for a while. "If you turn down the command and the Aegean, you're still part of the corps. But the truth is I don't think we'll be sending up another stack for quite a while, certainly not manned. We'll respect your decision if you don't want to fly in an orbiter, but if that's the case I really don't think you'll get another flight. I mean this as a friend Milzer, I'm not trying to pressure you into anything, I just want you to know the facts." "No, I get that. Thanks Bob." "Think it over. Talk about it with Trudy over the weekend, I know how much she's encouraged you through the re-enlistment. I've arranged a meeting with you at 1000 on Monday, you can let me know your decision then." He smiled as he shook my hand, and I caught a glimpse of the old Bob. "Oh, and Milzer? It's great to have you back." As he turned and walked out of the gym I thought of how excited the kids would be to hear that their father was a kerbonaut again, and later how happy Trudy would be to share in my news. Even with my anxieties over the Aegean, I had already begun to realise that there was really only one decision I could make. I swallowed and began to collect my things as I headed back to the changing rooms. I guess I'm going to Duna.

Rubbish OIn this thread we are talking some simple gameplay enhancemnets that would be so simple to add that they where the first mods. Wouldnt be much of a development hassel in the case of entry reheat and a dv calc. The other things you talk of are a diffrent topic.

I extend my apologies to Sochin, he meant good, and as I told him in a PM, it's you guy's feedback that keeps me going (good or bad) and I appreciate it, in the end we'll all have a better toy to play with. The Gemini cockpit is not a good example in this discussion, because as you know, the panels are very different. Could I have designed an open cockpit with large window views like this? Certainly. But as you've seen from exterior views and in general that isn't the form factor of this vehicle. In that example, we could calibrate a HUD to a kerbal very simply. But the KSO's exterior doesn't have large bay windows to make that easy. Its control panel was already cut down further than originally designed as the measurements for a kerbal are very strange. In other words, a glass cockpit as seen in the KSO or an airliner is not as easy as doing something like the Gemini in terms of getting the views to be useful. The second problem when designing something like this is the angle or field of view. If the opening was large and directly in front of the Kerbal, that wouldn't be a problem. Otherwise if you have a panel in front of them, it would have to be incredibly short. Kerbals have a very short body compared to their large head. We've tested the actual Kerbal view lined up with the cockpit glass. His head would hit the top panel and his seat would have to be about where the top of the throttles are. So not only would the IVA had to have been redesigned but also the front fascia of the cockpit window arrangement. We'd end up with a helicopter cockpit pretty much, something closer to an Mi-8. Which is kind of funny because after I redesigned the panel the first thing I told Nazari was that it was now a Blackhawk control panel (which I worked on while in the military). So to wrap things up, moving forward: I appreciate everyone's feedback good or bad. However if it's an issue that has already been covered many times or is a design issue from the start in which I can't go back on at this point, I can't pay attention to that person's PM, or post, and they will feel they are getting ignored. It is impossible to answer everyone's concern, or account for everyone's suggestions when I'm swamped with pms, bug reports, plus spending more time working on more bits and pieces to this thing. And we do listen to folks feedback and I act on it right away. In fact, the KSO's art work got slightly modified today since Nazari worked out some of the RCS gyrating issues (although it may not be possible to fully zero out the roll without adjusting CoM for now). I'm redesigning the docking mounts as I personally find them useless (yes all the artwork you saw me post earlier I'm scrapping minus the lights). In the end, it wasn't my intention to come off hostile towards him. I really appreciate his and everyone's enthusiasm and maybe we can fit some of those features into the KSO Super 25 which I don't want to talk about right now...

1,402 m/s - MACH 4.134 - B9 and Procedural fairings with FAR Equivalent of 5,047 km/h or 3,136 mph Well... First the proof: Top speed @ 1:05 Landing @ 10:30 Now for some comments. Flying the craft You may find it odd that I chose to fly the aircraft from the angle shown in the video. This is however fully conscious as flying it from a chase perspective gave me very little visual input regarding the position of the plane - i.e. the direction of thrust - in relation to its prograde vector. This is crucial since deviating outside or even close to the edges of the prograde vector on the nav-ball at >mach 3 speeds, will end in catastrophic failure. Observing the plane from a backwards facing fisheye perspective allowed me to use the conic fairings as a very precise indicator of the planes positional direction in relation to the prograde vector in combination with the navball. Craft design Initial design credit goes to user Sevant. This craft design is very suited for fast flights. Engines More engines means more thrust. But it also requires more air. I tried several designs featuring 2 radial intakes on the sides of the craft, but they generated so much drag that achieving +1200 m/s was a challenge. The centered radial intake in the front took many tries to perfect. Just a few steps up or down in the SPH and the intake would generate drag either pulling the plane towards the ground or towards the sky, making it impossible to fly above 500 m/s. There has been talk about engines in this thread and the fact is that the stock TurboJet is the best for > 1000 m/s flight. The B9 engines all cut out between 1100 - 1430 m/s meaning at 1000 m/s they are at 1 thrust multiplier and at 1430 they are at 0. The stock Turbojets however 0 out at 2400 m/s and achieve multiplier 1 at 1000 m/s. This means that when the B9 engines cut out, the TurboJet still enjoys around 75% of its thrust capacity. If you wanna go fast you must use the stock TurboJet. Anyone who wants to know more should check out the followign imgur album by user Tarvert. http://imgur.com/a/hyuPE#0 Tarvert is a source of amazing information and if you like looking at graphs like the one for the atmospheric engines, you will enjoy some of his other work submitted to Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/search?q=tavert&restrict_sr=on Stability Stability is another issue. As explained in my flight note, simply deviating outside the green prograde vector on the navball at speed will end in complete disintegration due to drag forces applied to the craft parts. Some parts even explode due to the impact with the air. My design features control surfaces for the purpose of stabilizing the craft at speed. These also help move the center of lift back slightly which helps tremendously in landing the craft and flying it at slower speeds. Stability is even more of an issue on the return flight as this design is very rear heavy. This is also why I drop the engines - or at least tried to with the reduced weight, it is easier to fly and land. You may think putting rudder(s) on your craft will achieve stability and you'd be right, but it puts unnecessary drag on your craft and your top speed will likely be < 1300 m/s. Craft shape I have tried long thin and circular designs and none of them match up to the wide and flat design initially shown by Sevant. I have also experimented with different fairing shapes and while the length of the procedural fairings do not seem to matter for speed, the longer fairings can help move the center of mass forward. The conic fairings work best for visual clues about the direction angle of the plane when looking back on it during flight. Landing You want to switch off braking on your front landing gear. If you find yourself landing at 100 m/s, braking on the front wheel can - more like will - be catastrophic. Also make sure your rear landing gear is somewhat spread out. With a think shaped plane you'll want to place your landing gear farther out on the tip of the delta wings than I have. Due to the wide footprint of my craft I put them closer to the body of the craft to decrease drag in flight and decrease flex upon landing or the belly of the craft may have impacted the ground. Conclusion and suggestions for other competitors Use TurboJets. Consider fuel necessary. Make sure you have some control surfaces for stability at max speed. Use the COM and COL indicators in the SPH during construction. Be extra careful during slowdown or this happens Failure @ 1:10