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For 2019's update, skip to this post. This thread documents the development of a space capable ladder-force engine. For a while it was known as Attempting to voyage through space- the Kerbal-ladder engine. An experiment/adventure. It's time for another edition of attempting to go to space! Where my bored rocket scientists try unconventional, yet maybe-possibly useful ways to put kerbals into space. Kraken drives are all well and good, but today I tested a potentially unlimited source of delta-V. A Kerbal, and a humble ladder. A while back, I attempted a the "Kerbal powered aircraft" challenge, where the only source of thrust your plane could have was a kerbal, pushing against something while climbing on a ladder. Apparently Newton's third law has some limitations. Though a plane is nice and stable, with wings and all that, all that extra weight is using up precious thrust. To get to space, I decided to go smaller. There, that aught to do it. Now, just got to get a kerbal up there, and away we go. . Excellent, we are gaining altitude. And it's such a nice day at the space centre Hang on, that trajectory is not ideal. Oh dear. Clearly, this design had some problems. The most obvious was the imbalanced thrust from the kerbal. Adding more control systems would just weigh it down. Instead, a more refined design was necessary. To counter the unbalanced COM, some changes were necessary. I first tried moving the RTG. However, this was not enough. Extending the structure using cubic struts tended to leave some imprecision, and this thing needs to be precise. My next test used the rockomax micronode- a part I don't think I've used before. While testing on the pad, everything looked good. Halzor's head seemed to be pushing more or less where the COM was. However, there was just one small problem. Balance. Without thrust from a kerbal, this structure tipped over at the moment of release. Not intended functioning. Perhaps if I didn't have the delay between firing the decoupler, and switching to the kerbal, things would work out. I tried using KAS plugin's grab function to pull out one one the struts, so there would be no need to switch back to the ship. But this did not work well either. Perhaps a different approach is needed. If the structure keeps tipping over, why not make some launch stabilisers? Added one. Did not have desired effect. Added three. Vessel and kerbal were trapped. So, supports aren't the way to go either. I contemplated using the proper stability enhancers, or mounting the structure on a radial decoupler, but as it is so light, these would probably send it flying. A third solution came to me later, at dinner. Stabilising legs! However, this tended to explode after decoupling. Having not had much luck with vertical take off, I went back to my plane. The problem that prevented it from going to space had been a lack of control authority when in the upper atmosphere, so I added a few extra probe cores to give me more control. I also gave it the ability to drop its wings when they become dead weight, rather than giving me useful lift. Landing can be thought about later. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that this version of the "One Kerbaglider" was not going anywhere fast. It was too heavy and slow, and kept pitching down when I switched to Halzor to provide thrust. When wingless, it was even worse. You will not go to space today. However, these experiments showed me enough to come up with a much better design. That's for next time.