wibou7

The "Thud" has a HORRIBLE isp of 305 in vaccum. You 'd better use two Terrier (isp 345) instead, it would have the same thrust for just an additional 0.1 ton of weight. Remember, "isp" is the measure of how efficient an engine is... So that basically mean that for the same amount of fuel, the terrier will give you more delta-v (so it will get you farther). I sometime use the "thud" for VTOL aircraft as it somewhat fit in a cargo bay... out of those niche use, I don't think you should ever use it.

Another way around that sometime works is to place a manoeuver node far far away (sometime even on the "second" line) then slide it back to where you actually want it. It does not always work either.

I've seen people doing asteroid chain before. If you search the forum it should not be that hard to find. However, as Snark said, the grabber is extremely bugged... I have a low tolerance to frustrating bug so I rarely use it for anything. Expect game-crash, near-to-lightspeed instant acceleration, physic-breaking sudden stop-to-zero and orbit corruption occuring to any distant ship loaded (not just the one with the grabber). I've seen ALL THOSE myself while playing with single asteroids. I've never had the badluck of having a save file corruption, but it once removed all the active contracts I had in the career (not that bad but...). The MOST important advice is: do NOT "push" a ship on the grabber. Meant you HAVE to be in control of the ship with the grabber when grabbing something... colliding a ship with a grabber has 100% chance of crashing the universe.

Using a shallow reentry profile, it is quite possible to deorbit from LKO and get to the ground without overheating too much. It all depends on your craft drag profile and weight. I believe very large and NOT aerodynamic craft, but yet very lightweight, will usually make it to the ground. The high drag make it to lose speed quickly and the low-weight make sure it does not gain speed too much from gravity.

EAS-1 (AKA command seat) is mostly to be used in rover I believe. This is mostly fo realism, the only difference with cockpit is that your kerbal will not get a new flag and RCS refill when entering a command seat, unlike pods. That said, it is possible to EVA a kerbal from a "real" pod / cockpit prior to launch, to walk to the command seat and use it to launch. Just watch out not to overheat your poor kerbal then!

I'm looking for an answer to this question as well: the lack of "pitch control" for Kerbal on EVA is VERY frustrating. Kerbals are often catapulted away if they try to grab ladders at angle... this trashed more of my solar panels that I can account for. Big stations do not rotate easily, expecially when there is stuff docked. I often end up having to get the "board" button without grabbing ladders to protect the solar panels... It makes EVA unnecessarily frustrating to me.

10k is probably enough... But if you want a tips, the best way to make sure to make it back is to always send 2 spacecrafts on each mission : your usual transfer-lander craft AND a second craft composed of a probe core and the largest tank of fuel you can lift. A single orange tank of fuel is usually enough to get you back from any Kerbol's body (unless your return stage is too big but that's another story). Better yet, if you use that tank to dump the excess fuel on any spacecraft visiting that body, you will have an emergency refuel station in case your future missions go wrong.

Not sure what you are looking for exactly but... I usually make sure my probe get there with their fuel untouched. Since probes are usually very light-weight (Xenon is your friend), a single LV-N with one FT-800 1.25m fuel tank is usually enough to get anywhere. There is usually fuel left even after the orbit insertion burn so if something goes wrong, I can always use the probe delta-V to save the mission. As for the whole rocket... Such a simple assembly can usually be put into orbit with some SRB-25 and a single orange tank with a MainSail. The payload simply sits on top.

(Wow, interesting thread!) Soooo... Since the NERV existed (in a lab setup lost in the desert, but still), what were they trying to accomplish with it if you can't basically use it without frying out the astronauts in the ship attached to it? Since it was back in the early '60, they couldn't have realistically planned to use it for unmanned rocket?

My environmental policy only applies to debris : I try to make sure spent stages fall back. Either by staging while PE is still in the atmosphere or by adding a generous amount of separatron It's mostly to protect future launch, but we say it is to be environmentally friendly. You can get by with anything by saying it's good for the environment, even raining down melting debris back to the ground at ludicrous speed. Environment is fun!

So about 30 minutes to drive about 20 km... I don't have that patience. I always considered rovers to be near to useless, except for very specific application (i.e. you landed right at the corner of 3 biomes). Biome hoppers will do a much better job, except for 2 of the bodies in the Kerbol system (i.e. Eve and Tylo).

With your skills, I'd consider an offense anything less than a Minmus landing. Hmmm now that's thinking about it, I'm not sure which one of Minmus landing or Mun landing is harder in caveman. Mun is easier to reach / harder to land and return from, where as Minumus is harder to reach but ridiculously easy to land and return from.

The only use case is if you want to have both RCS and main engine while saving a bit on weight (since you won't need to add liquid fuel then). But the ISP efficiency of O-10 engine (or RCS for what that matter) is worst than entry line engine (i.e. Terrier) so it is probably a bad option anyways. That said, I always add a couple of O-10 engine on ship that has large amount of monoprop. This is my "last chance fuel reserve" in case everything goes wrong. It saved a least 1 mission from disaster.

So here is my submission. It was getting harder and harder to gather science. Still, on my last mission I managed to bring back science from Minmus surface Note: I couldn't find how to show the difficulty of an already created career, does anyone know how to do that? Anyway, the difficulty I used is shown in the picture (Hard difficulty, but with Fund and Reputation reward at 100%).

I know that, it's just that I didn't started a career specifically to complete this challenge. I just thought I could finally attempt it while starting my career anew... and I hate grinding for money in a real career, it just puts a limit on real fun thing. You are right, "Normal" would be fair; although it probably deserves a special mention

I'm 2-3 flight away from being done; soon I will join you all in the cavern! I'm using a custom difficulty, it is like hard mode (so 30% of science) but with 100% of the reward/reputation (because grinding for money is boooooring)... where will it fall in the score board? (Is it just my account that got slashed in the great forum upgrade of november or did it happens to everyone?)