TrooperCooper

Or did I overlook it?

Bought the game and completed all the tutorials again. I knew 99% of the content to learn from KSP 1 already, but it brought me back into the flow heh. Then created my frist own rocket in KSP 1, went to orbit with a 3-man crew in it and safely returned to Kerbin.

Its dead, Jim.

KSS Kolossus arriving at Gilly and releasing the lander... Zombie attack at the landing site... After completing Eve and Gilly, the Kolossus continued inwards in the Kerbol system... arrival at Moho... Jeb, Bill and Bob claimed that planet landing... Then the Kolossus headed outwards, skipping Kerbin and its moons for now and arriving at Duna... Beauty shot of the lander release. The girls team with Valentina, Stelmy and Tamara put their flag into the rusty sand of the red planet... As they took off, they decided to skip re-docking with the Kolossus mothership and head straight for Ike... Its almost like Mun... just a little further away... Lander arriving back at the Kolossus in low Duna orbit and the Grand Tour Team is preparing to set sail for a planet that has only been rumored to exist so far...

The lander-egg leaving the KSS Kolossus in Eve orbit, taking three of the six grand tour Kerbals on the landing attempt... It dipped into the atmosphere and soon was engulfed in flames as Jeb, Bill and Stelmy raced towards the first Grand Tour landing... They made it through the heat and after a shaking descent into the thicker parts of the atmosphere, the chutes began to pop out... Chutes fully deployed, removal of protective casing and heatshield... After a successful touch down next to a piece of the casing, the landing team put down their flag... Primary objective achieved, now it was time to get back into orbit... The heavy ascent-stage propelled the lander up... the strong aerodynamic forces kept Jeb pretty busy on the W-A-S-D-keys. At 24,000 meters the atmosphere was thin enough that the Karborundum based Torch-Drive could take over... After burning into orbit, soon the Kolossus' rotating ring structure came into view... And the landing team docked up, now preparing to make the small hop over to Gilly together with the rest of the crew...

Yummy! Escape velocity rover!

Thanks. The ship itself is actually self-lifting... with a minimum of fuel loadout it has an atmospheric TWR of 1.4something and still 15k dV. Since the engines provide no gimbal and it is very unaerodynamic, it however has to climb slowly vertically out of the atmosphere and then pull into a horizontal turn. Once periapsis is burned out it has to be filled up with about 2,000 tons of resources to become operational ready though.

Two crew lifters launched from KSC and brought the 6-Kerbal team of the Grand Tour to the KSS Kolossus. When the transfer window to Eve opened up, the interplanetary cruiser left LKO... A few month later: arrival at Eve... The crew is now preparing for the first... and probably most dangerous landing of the tour...

Put a new heavy launcher into service... It can lift 500 tons into Kerbin orbit and is fully recoverable. With the help of this new lifter, more gear was launched to be installed at the mining base on Eeeloo. Fleet assembling in LKO... Then the tugs pulled the mining and transport equipment to Eeloo / Sarnus. Karborundum and Uraninite mining installation descending on the base... A general Karbonite / Ore mining rig with all kinds of converters was also deployed... Removing the travel gear with controled explosions... The mining base was now ready and started digging Karborundum... Then the Karborundum Freighter landed next to the base, still propelled by regular engines... Once it touched down on the ground, the standard engines and tanks were blown off... It then was completly loaded up with the new powerful fuel resource... First Karborundum driven ship taking off and heading straight to Kerbin, to bring a first tank load of it back home... After arrival in LKO, a fraction of its cargo went into a return-vessel... The Karbo Returner then brought 20,000 units of it down to the surface, solving all of the space programs financial problems and providing enough energy for Kerbins socitity for the next 200 years. Now, at the dawn of the Karborundum age, a new class of heavy interplanetary tug was lifted into orbit... The Megathron class, successor of the Pegasus class, is powered by 16 Karborundum fusion drives and will push... anything... to anywhere. It was loaded up with the remaining Karborundum from the Freighter still in orbit... In order to bring large ammounts of the powerful fuel from Eeloo, a large depot module was launched empty by the 500 ton lifter... It then was put on the Megathron... On top of it came a new Karborundum lifter as well as a karborundum-driven landing craft. The Megathron pulled the package over to Eeloo... And the Karbo Lifter began hauling Karborundum from the surface at once... Filling up the large Karborundum depot, still attached to the Megathron... Once the depot was full with a large load, it was decided that the mining team (Jeb, Bill and Bob) would return back to Kerbin for further assignments. So the Prometheus, interplanetary travel module, that was still in Eeloo orbit was readied up... And put on top of the Megathron,... on top of the loaded Karborundum Depot... Jeb, Bill and Bob then shut down the mining base for now and headed into orbit with the new lander... Getting back on board of their travel ship... Then the Megathron pushed the three Kerbalnauts and their precious cargo back towards Kerbin... A few years later, when the A-team arrived in LKO, an empty standard MOC3-crew launcher headed up from KSC... Jeb, Bill and Bob moved over into the MOC3 and returned to the surface from a mission that had lasted several decades.. After detaching from the Megathron, the Karborundum depot was visited by a new and bigger Karborundum return vessel. It brought just a fraction of the depots cargo down to Kerbin, but even that turned into 640 million Kredits on the space programs bank account... In the meantime, while Jeb, Bill and Bob went onto vacation for half a year, a new super heavy lifter was developed... With a part count of 226 (of wich about 90 are just engines), it weights 13,000 tons including cargo. This massive behemoth is able to lift 2,000 tons into Kerbins orbit and features automatic boostback- and recover-capabilities. With all the new gear available to the space program, a new adventure for the Kerbal crew is taking shape: a Karborundum driven Grand Tour of all celestial bodies (with outer planets mod) with landings. The Torch-drive based KSS Colossus (it should be renamed to "Kolossus", now that I type this ) will be the backbone of this undertaking, with sufficient life support and habitation equipment allowing six Kerbals to operate in space for more than 160 years and providing a delta-V of more than 200,000 m/s. At the front end of the vessel sits a landing craft inside a protective fairing that can land and take off from any celestial body,... though from Eve only once.

42

Stage Recovery mod is probably the easiest and most straight forward mod in that regard:

Continued with my Karborundum mining operation on Sarnus / Eeloo. After the Exploration team with its rover had found a good spot to to start mining, back on Kerbin three new interplanetary tugs of the Pegasus class were launched... Shortly afterwards, three key modules for the upcoming Eeeloo surface base with skycrane landing equipment were launched: the habitat and control tower, able to keep the mining team entertained for hundreds of years Live support systems to keep the Kerbals alive for a similar time span... and a massive nuclear reactor with reprocessing capability to power the habitat and life support as well as the future mining and industrial equipment. All three modules were strapped to their tugs... And then made the long transfer to the Sarnus system... Once they reached Eeeloo, the modules with their landing equipment were released one by one in a low orbit. The habitation and control tower was the first to descent on the resource spot, marked by the exploration team on the ground... After landing and removal of the skycrane, the Eeloo Exploration Rover with the A-Team moved up to the tower and connected to it. Next up, the reactor core was landed... The automatic removal system of the reactors landing equipment failed and thus Bill had to get out and start tearing it down manually... POOF Timber.... Two of three... one to go... Then the life support system hovered in... Automatic lander removal on that one worked flawlessly (TAC Self Destruct FTW! ) The core of the mining base is now ready and Jeb, Bill and Bob are waiting for the mining equipment to be shipped in next... Unfortunately I have hit the RAM limit of my computer (16 Gigabyes) several times over the last few days. Game keeps crashing on me. Ordered another 16 gig today. Untill thats installed, KSP career is pretty much on hold...

Pegasus pushed the Eeloo Exploration Rover and its skycrane into a Kerbin - Sarnus transfer orbit Several years later: arrival at Sarnus the vessel moved on to Eeeloo... Deployment of the skycrane / Rover setup in a low orbit above the moon The skycrane began its descend by burning off all its horizontal speed right above a potential resource hotspot identified by an orbital scanner several years ago. Vertical descend... Coming down at the edge of a crater... Touching down gently. Shortly afterwards the Rover was released and rolled out of the skycrane. It then went into hybernation mode, waiting for its crew. In the meantime, in anticipation of the upcoming crewed missions, the Eeeloo Lander moved over to the orbital station and docked up there. Pegasus interplanetary tug headed back home after another successful delivery... When it arrived back at Kerbin, it was refueled with unmanned tankers and Bill went on board for a short visit to do some maintenance work on the reactor core... Then the Prometheus interplanetary travel module moved up on the Pegasus and docked on its main connector port. Prometheus and Pegasus combined turned into a fully fledged interplanetary cruiser. When the next transfer window came up, Jeb, Bill and Bob went up into space, using a standardized MOC3 crew lifter. Since its a fun craft to fly, the ascend was done manually. The A-Team met up with the Pegasus/Prometheus and went on board. A couple days later they began their longest journey thus far... Six years later: arrival at Eeloo After a low equatorial orbit was achieved, the crew moved into the PTV (Prometheus Transfer Vehicle) at the top end of the travel setup. The light PTV allows for independent crew operations arround the destination without the need to cope with the enormous Pegasus/Prometheus at the same time. After undocking from its mothership, the PTV perfomed a couple of brief burns... Then it arrived at Eeeloo Station. The crew went on board and started up all on-board systems of the station. Unfortunately they realized they would need additional materials to inflate the large habitation modules. It wouldnt cause a severe problem however, since they would travel down to the surface soon anyway... After they had checked and undocked the Eeeloo Lander... All three Kerbalnauts began their descend when the Rover landing site came into view... Final approach... And putting her down... Jeb had the honour to place the first flag. Then he inspected the pre-positioned Exploration Rover. Shortly afterwards the three Kerbals went on board of the large vehicle and began their resource exploration journey while looking for a spot to build a mining base in the future...

Put a very aerodynamic payload on top of a lifter. Eeloo Exploration Rover going into space... Ascend was slightly suboptimal and thus some of the skycranes hydrogen fuel, which was actually ment to power the descend on Eeloo, had to be used to make the final orbital circularization and and catch up to the setups taxi... Coming in to dock with the Pegasus interplanetary tug. After docking up, a standard tanker was brought up to replenish the spent fuel... It docked up at the Pegasus' secondary docking ports and transfered its cargo... Pegasus with Eeloo Exploration Rover is now ready and waiting for the Sarnus transfer window opening up...

Launched another piece of equipment for my Eeloo operation... The Prometheus is a crew module for interplanetary flights, able to keep a crew of 4 Kerbals alive and happy for ten years of transit time. Like most of the gear put into service at the moment, it was designed to also be pushed by the Pegasus interplanetary tug. Meeting up with the puller just as the last hydrogen tanker finnished fueling it up and heading for de-orbit... Prometheus leaving its lifter stage... Then the ship went to dock up with the Pegasus. Unfortunately, once docking was achieved, the external tanks of the tug were set into resonant swinging motion and ripped the ship into pieces. While the Prometheus module survived and remains in orbit, it became clear that the heavy puller had to be re-designed. It seems like KJR + auto strut + rigid attachement gives no wiggle room for the joints and they will break to easily. So I came up with this: the Pegasus 3 (the Pegasus 2 only existed on the drawing board and didnt make it into service - lets not talk about that ). Pegasus 3 has no radial tanks to avoid resonant motions. Instead one single oversized hydrogen tank was used. The reaction wheels at the bottom are upscaled to 5 meters width. A few other minor improvements here and there from lessons learned with the predecessor... including a more powerfull reactor, increaed RCS abilities and removal of the large nuclear fuel drum (since I need an engineer on board to move nuclear fuel anyway and thus cant do it remotely). All in all it became slightly more powerfull and weights about 50 tons more... while part count was reduced. Now... how do we get that into space? Well... lets empty the tank, strap it on top of a rocket and see if it flies. And well, yes... it does. After arrival in orbit, a fleet of about 10 hydrogen tankers were sent to fuel it up. Thanks to routine mission manager, that was done within about one real hour. Prometheus transfer was pushed further back and instead a 260 tons supply package for the Eeloo station was launched... Docking it up to the new Pegasus... Then it made its way to Sarnus / Eeloo... three big balls in line. While the Pegasus returned to Kerbin, the Eeloo station, still uncrewed, was supplied with goods and it is now ready for the first team of Kerbals to arrive... According to plan, two more interplanetary transfer flights to Eeloo and Stage One of Project Dreamland will be complete. Then surface operations will begin.