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@Jebediah Kerman Jr. had a problem on his hands when Ribfrod Kerman stepped on his return craft's antenna and put his science return mission in jeopardy. Apparently the contract to return or transmit science data from the surface of Laythe was about to expire in eight Kerbin years, and his return craft was stuck in low Laythe orbit with a critical amount of delta-v remaining. While a direct transfer from Jool to Kerbin was possible, the Kerbin re-entry speed would exceed 6 km/s and fry Ribfrod to a crisp. We weren't able to get the save file because he was on the Console edition. But I tossed together an example save file (20 KB ZIP) that I thought reproduces the problem, and kind-of echoes Criske Kerman's Minmus return problem from the stock scenarios. Jeb Jr explained this was a space plane, that it had spent much of its dV just getting to low Laythe orbit and had maybe 2 km/s remaining. The eight-year time limit causes problems for a long-term return with gravity assists. Time is of the essence! The Challenge: Get Ribfrod Home Quickly! Deliver Ribfrod and his surface data from Laythe to Kerbin before the mission timer exceeds eight Kerbin years. Stock craft, stock system, normal difficulty, no cheating. Challenge modes are: Kanada Post: Deliver the craft and Ribfrod to the surface of Kerbin in one piece within eight years. Kerolator: Deliver the craft and Ribfrod home within four years. This one's possible without cheating if the craft had another 100 m/s to spare, or if you can be patient with transfer windows. Kerbal Express: Deliver the craft and Ribfrod safely to the KSC runway within four years. This is a stock save with a modified Aeris 4A in the same style as the Aeris 4B from Criske's return mission. Add-ons or mods that don't reduce the difficulty are permitted. I can add a Stock leaderboard and a FAR leaderboard for the foolhardy. The craft should be stable in FAR or Stock aerodynamics. I have attempted this and managed to almost get the Kerolator mode done, but fell 100 m/s short. I think more patience with transfer windows and less aggressive flight planning would have overcome this. See Jeb Jr's original thread for the details.

In my latest career mode game I am planning to start a Laythe colony. I am using MKS and USI Life Support, with the lowest levels of Interstellar Extended's power and propulsion tech unlocked. In short, no transit times to Jool that would be less than two years or so, at least while carrying a reasonable (30+) number of passengers per trip. I plan to use the Cycler to only carry colonists, building more as time goes on to eventually have a voyage every year or so. Cargo deliveries can be done with traditional Hohmann Transfers. Unfortunately my math and coding skills are not up to the task of determining masses and orbital parameters for this vehicle. I am hoping you nice folks can help me figure these parts out. My questions are as follows: 1. How many ships would be needed for one to arrive at Jool every year? 2. What would be the parameters of the Cycler's initial orbit? 3. How much Delta-V would I need for course changes, ideally or worst case, per trip? Could I use the Joolian moons to reduce this? 4. Is there a more resource-efficient way of doing this cost-wise? I figure that the Cyclers will pay themselves off within two or three voyages because the fuel and construction costs to carry the supplies and crew would be far greater for a similar ship that had to decelerate at either end of the voyage. Once I unlock the more powerful fusion drives this design will be obsolete, but in the interim I have contracts to do things near Jool, and I want to simulate the rotation of specialist personnel that such a facility would experience. As for off-world infrastructure, I currently have a mining and science base on both the Mun and Minmus, a big orbital fuel processor around Minmus, Science/tourism station orbiting the Mun, a science base on Duna with a fuel plant on Ike, and a fuel depot in Geosynchronous orbit over Kerbin, with smaller tugs to carry fuel to crafts in LKO.

AIM: Make a stock ship that would be able to deliver cargo of ore to Laythe from Kerbin. RULES: The ship must be fully stock, no cheating, the cargo must survive, no abusing of the game engine, if manned: it must have some living space and crew must survive, the whole cargo must be carried by one ship PS: (empty fuel tanks may be removed, but apart from them and the cargo containers, all of the ship must survive (fuel tanks cannot make up the whole of the ship.) PPS: ("ship" starts only after it is in LKO, the lifting stage can be dumped) Challenge modes: Participation award: just get to Laythe Noob mode: take your time, land safely 10 tons of ore to Laythe. Easy mode: maximum time 5 yrs, land safely 20 tons of ore to Laythe Hard mode: max time 4 yrs, land safely 30 tons of ore to Laythe, land on land, ship must survive, must be manned Super hard mode: max time 3 yrs, land safely 60 tons of ore, land on land, ship must survive and return safely, must be manned Matt Lowne mode: impress me

Do the mobile science labs float? And if they do, how much of them sticks above the water? I'm not at my home computer and will not be able to test this for some time. If someone could drop a lab in the sea and post a screenshot, that would be great. Also, could you take a similar length of the new structural tubing of the same diameter as the lab, capped by "Rockomax Brand Adapters 02s" at both ends, that would also be great. I strongly considering sending a sea plane base out to Laythe, but I am not sure how to build a craft carrying the required (for me) two science labs. But if I can use the labs as part of the floats, might be easier. I already know I'll need to build massive wings and between 4 and 8 jet engines (depending on the model I use). So if anyone isn't doing anything (I'm ADD-ing in a lecture on the basics of MS Word), some you mind dropping some things in the water for me?

After numerous complaints from construction workers at the Kerbal Space Centre, the Kerbal Construction Union has successfully campaigned for a total ban on Oxidiser created on Kerbin. Despite the R&D Department's best efforts to convince the strikers that their recent breathing difficulties were simply due to a bad case of "The Sniffles," the workers believe that the abundant use of oxidizer in ascent stages has caused a lower oxygen concentration in Kerbin's atmosphere. Without the ability to create oxidizer using Kerbin's oxygen, the KSP has turned to a new source: Laythe. Your challenge: Design a craft capable of landing on Laythe, mining, and returning to Kerbin without using Oxidizer. Any other engine or form of propulsion (excluding Kraken drives) are permitted. Due to Jeb's short attention span, the mission must be completed in one launch in ten years or less. This challenge must be accomplished in a stock game, though Making History and mods that do not affect gameplay (Scatterer, TextureReplacer) are permitted. Scoring: You will gain points for every ore tank you fill with ore mined from Laythe. These tanks must be empty on launch, filled on Laythe, and returned to Kerbin to be scored. +1 point for each radial tank. +4 points for each small tank. +20 points for each large tank. Bonuses +25 for not using NERVs. +25 for not using SRBs. +25 for not using parachutes. Weight Categories (on launch): Ultralight - 25 tons or less Lightweight - 50 tons or less Midweight - 100 tons or less Heavyweight - 200 tons or less Ultraheavy - 500 tons or less Behemoth - Over 500 tons

Hello, to anyone who is reading this post. I have ideas for Laythe SSTOs & I need need some help in fixing my crafts so they can live up to my expectations. Feel free to reach out to me & help me on my goals!

Previously, on “The 100”, you flew 100 colonists to Laythe to establish a bright and explorative future for all of Kerbal Kind. With the first outpost established, you will be able to explore the outer planets much easier, starting with Jools various moons. Buzz Kerbal, one of the colonists transported to the colony, had been given a special mission to build a small VAB facility on Laythe. He couldn’t build a very big one yet, but he has managed to gather enough resources to fabricate a few basic parts for you to use. Valentina and Bill are on site to aid Buzz in gathering materials for his work. Jebediah couldn’t make it because he, well, retired early. In this mission, Valentina will be your lead role. The 100 - episode 1: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iwg7XpY638dL1C1b_Bi3blRu13yXSSsY The 100 - episode 2_ Buzz's Biz: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gI4tANbX5Utv-4_QFkK06C_jpuD_V8mJ No mods required, EVER... and only bug tested without them. To install as mission packs, place only the zip files in your Missions folder. Then Open the game and Play Missions. They will be imported and grouped as a mission pack under the same category heading.

Laythe has air and water. We believe it's about time it had life too. You've been tasked with the momentous mission to put 100 Kerbals on Laythe. "The 100", as we have so named them, will all be specially trained colonists. They are not to become a part of any ship crew and to ensure this, we have designated them all tourists. There is a colony structure already in place. Just dock with it and load them in. You'll have 8 years. This is the first episode in what will probably become several (not sure how many though). There is a main mission, and several side jobs that will be thrown at you for extra points, but not to interfere with the main mission. This mission features a few artistic structures, some of which you won’t see until their respective events are triggered. Due to a bug where by you cannot set icons in mission vessels to anything but Rockets and Aircraft, it is advised once you get started you rename the Colony structures and any other ground bases when they appear to change the icon only, not the name. This will make it easier to review only your own vessels. I’ve tried to work around all the known bugs with mission builder as best I can, but some required inserting little notes within the mission to remind you. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iwg7XpY638dL1C1b_Bi3blRu13yXSSsY This is also my first Mission Pack assembly so to install it as a mission pack, just drop the zip file in your Missions folder. Don't unzip it. KSP will do that for you when you load it up and view the available missions.

I just read on the wiki that Laythe's atmosphere has a lower oxygen concentration the Kerbin's. I assume this effects the efficiency of jet engines. I have a jet powered boat en route to Laythe and another being prepared for launch. The one en route and the new one I'm working on do not have air intakes other than the engine nacelle parts, one for each engine. These provide 5 air, which is more than the engines i'm using require on Kerbin at sea level. But I doubt sea level on Laythe has the same conditions. Should I add air intakes to the boat I'm working on?

I'm building an aircraft in Mission Builder that will fly on Laythe. I'm using the Fat-455 large wings. They hold a lot of fuel, but only liquid. Is there anyway, therefore, to have other tanks be oxidizer only? I realize I can drain liquid fuel out of tanks to save weight, but that still leaves me with a lot of bulk. I'd like to get the most oxidizer in the least amount of space--approx 1200 units--to match what the wings will carry. Also, it needs to be stock, because I hope to share this mission and want to make it simple for others to use.

I lost in some kind of betting game with my friend... So I should do.... "position a satellite at the lagrange point of Laythe". Is this possible? Oh, and no other mods, debug menu, or cheats are allowed... Please, If there's anyone that can help me?

So my first laythe lander failed bigtime. 3 spark vac engines and 1 terrier 3600dV in vac , barly came up to 35000 meters. I know this is a engine issue , and i can just swap it for a reliant/swivel engine. But is the lander better to be a spaceship or just i just fumble with the rapier engine? A photo of laythe lander you use would be great. I need a simple craft for 1 person to land collect science and dock with space station in orbit.

It's just super awesome villa to live on Laythe. There are supplies, rovers and VTOL in this super cool facility.

Hi I'm not quite new to the forums, but haven't been active a lot. Now I decided to share some of my epic missions with you. I'm playing this almost vanilla, just with some minor mods for precise planning, better visuals and of course, to make it more plausible: life support. An (almost) complete mod list: Distant Object Enhancement Environmental Visual Enhancements Kerbal Alarm Clock KAS KIS Persistent Rotation PlaneShine SCANSat scatterer Stock Visual Enhancements TAC Life Support MechJeb SimpleContruction Planetary Base Systems Konstruction Link to my gallery: http://richman1050.imgur.com/ The pale blue dot, circling the green giant has captivated generations of Kerbals since the beginning of astronomy. With the beginning of the space age, Kerbalkind got to taste what it could be to visit it's mysterious twin for the first time. But to find out, what it would look like to visit the beaches of this far off world, there was alot lot learn, a lot of progress to be made, and a lot of mistakes that were awaiting brave pioneers. The KSP, the Kerbal Space Program, as it was officially named had quite some successful missions: Landing a unmanned UAV on Duna: Duna Direct: The Ravenstar: The Rolling Thunder: But all these missions served only one purpose: the get to Laythe one day. Finally, KSC accumulated enough bright minds, technology and of course funds to start with this humongous undertaking. Part I: The construction of the DSV Hermes http://imgur.com/a/8QevU

~ Triton Mk-IV ~ 224 Parts, Stock, Version 1.3.1 Ever wanted to check out the seas of Laythe with a speed boat? How about some off road dune action? Perhaps an enjoyable flight past picturesque mountain peaks? Using the Triton Mk-IV, you can do all 3 with 1 launch. Establish an adventure colony on Laythe today! THE ROCKET Triton Mk-IV rocket: Designed to deliver a small 4 kerbal exploration team and 3 vehicles to Laythe (one way). Straight forward stage progression and generous delta-V values make getting to Laythe an enjoyable experience. After you drop the first stage, slowly push forward a full 90º until you are parallel with the surface. This should put your apoapsis at around 80~90k. Keep your remaining stages right on the horizon and if you do it right, your nukes will only need to use about 100dV or so to put the periapsis at 80~90k and all the prior stages will de-orbit properly. This will leave you with an orbital craft sporting just over 8,200dV, plenty for the journey to Laythe. Once there, simply de-orbit over the ocean and let the parachutes do the work. THE VEHICLES Trident: A jet boat and vehicle carrier. It's purpose is to transport the Beast from island to island, unloading and reloading it from beaches. It can achieve speeds over 42 meters per second and has reversible jets that act as brakes. It has good steering and enough fuel to reach land from nearly any landing location in the ocean. Always open and close the loading ramp slowly using the percentage slider. If you are stuck on a beach, you can reverse full thrust and use the ramp to dislodge. (packed on the Triton Mk-IV) PRESS "1" to toggle thrust direction. Beast: A mining and fuel refinement truck. The truck can be used to explore deep inland and produces fuel for the other two vehicles. It has a narrow wheel base to allow for unloading and loading on to the Trident. Always slow down below 10 meters per second for turns or steep hills. If you start to tip over, counter steering can often save you. In flatter areas, you can safely go 20~35 meters per second without tipping over. (packed on the Trident) PRESS "2" to toggle solar panels when on land. Firebolt: A very small and highly maneuverable jet weighing less than 900kg! It is capable of flying medium distances and is perfect for surveying the surrounding area. Even with a kerbal in the seat it has zero torque, allowing maximum benefit from the SAS. It is very easy to land, but care must be taken to prevent crashes. Using the brakes it can take off and land using a very small area. Keep SAS on at all times. It is the fastest of the 3, allowing for horizontal flight speeds of over 160 meters per second. (packed on the Beast) DOWNLOAD THE CRAFT FILE HERE! IMAGES OF A SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH! Design Notes: *Craft is turned 90º left on launch pad to accommodate unorthodox payload shape, just press up/forward instead of right when turning into orbit. **Once deployed, the Firebolt cannot be combined with the Trident and Beast again for sea transport. However, the Firebolt has enough range to follow the Trident most places and can be flown separately.

So spacestation and lander is on its way to laythe. How can i refuel this , looking for a good solution. I have a spacestation , refuelers , ore at pol , medium grabber 5000dV Should i land at Laythe , produce fuel the rendezvous with space station. Or refuel at pol , transfer the fuel to laythe ? Or build a huge grabber with a Kerbodyne S3-14400 Tank & Rhino / Vector ?

MKS is a suite of mods from RoverDude with a focus on building bases and colonisation. It adds eleven resources that you can mine, along with various refineries to convert these raw materials into processed goods that can then be used for maintaining a colony. It also adds an additional level of difficulty where your kerbonauts must have large, decent accomodation and supplies so that they won't go stir-crazy. The goal here is to establish a fully sustainable surface base on Laythe - if a moon like Laythe existed in our own solar system with oxygen at reasonable pressure in the atmosphere, liquid water on the surface and 80% of earth's gravity, it would be the prime target for colonisation. However, this isn't easy - because of the atmosphere and the gravity, the landings are challenging. First the mod list: MKS - colonisation mod from RoverDude, including life support. Planetary Base Systems - effectively serves as an extension to MKS giving more part options for life support recyclers, habitation, and various other things. Extra-planetary Launchpads - Allows building of rockets on other planets given sufficient resources to do so. Easy Vessel Switcher - Allows you to Alt-left click to switch to a nearby vessel. Pretty much essential when you have a dozen craft on the ground. KIS/KAS - Inventory system and Attachment systems. Allows you to detach and reattach parts, and to join vessels together for resource transfer. MechJeb - Doesn't really help with flying the planes but setting up and executing maneuvers in space. NearFuture - gives me a few additional options regarding nuclear engines and batteries - nothing game breaking and more to save on part count than anything else. PlanetaryDomes - allows the construction of cool looking surface bases SXT - Stock extensions. Allows electric propellers, sea plane floats and additional plane parts. TacFuelBalancer - Allows dumping and equalising of fuel easily. I also have a few mods like FinalFrontier, PlanetShine, ScanSat, UnmannedBeforeManned installed that don't really impact the mission but add convenience or fun stuff. I do have HyperEdit installed too, but it wasn't used apart from simulating transfer of nuclear fuels (I can do it without hyperedit but it's such a faff - note to @RoverDude - please make this easier!!) Early Experiments The first job was really to test if I could actually get stuff to Laythe, and land it relatively accurately. For that purpose, an initial ISRU-refueller type plane was designed and landed on Laythe, called Heron One: As it's an SSTO plane, it was flown into Kerbin orbit before being docked to a shunt that could transport it to Laythe. This certainly wasn't my finest hour though - landing it is terrifying. The stall speed is around 120ms on Laythe meaning that powered landings are pretty essential, and on non-flat terrain in the dark, it's horribly difficult to land. This means that taking it back to orbit and back down again is possible, but very tricky. It simply doesn't have enough wing area to make it work as an easy to land plane. As such, after landing it twice it got redesignated as "surface fuel dump" and left there. It also scanned for resources that could be mined, and it turns out that the shores of Laythe have everything I need with the exception of Gypsum which isn't massively serious. The second experiment was to see if I could land an MKS Tundra module on the surface. These are big and bulky, but utterly essential to constructing a successful base on Laythe - I need to be able to produce material kits, machinery and specialised parts on the surface in order to build more pieces of the base - leading it to being a sustainable colony that can expand itself. The Barbet was an SSTO plane from Kerbin (just), so it was a simple matter to get it into space, dock it to a shunt for transport to Laythe. Landing wasn't exactly 100%, but the important bits survived and it's around half a kilometre from the Heron, so good enough. I also sent a cargo plane, containing essentials that would be required whilst setting up the base - some supplies to keep the crew fed, some fertiliser so that more food could be grown, along with a some small kontainers to store various goods and some inflatable habitation modules and greenhouses. This wasn't an SSTO plane from Kerbin, so getting it into space was somewhat tricky. Introducing the Egret: Backups Building the base on Laythe is not going to be easy, and naturally, things might not work out. A single plane-crash could mean that the base simply isn't going to work. So we have backups - planes that can take the crew off in an emergency, the Red Kite, and the Erne - there's two Ernes at the start though I crashed one later on: We also have backups around the Joolian system, firstly a full featured base on Vall called the Emmy Noether, that can produce all materials. Getting stuff off Vall and to Laythe is a little long-winded but in an emergency can be completed in under a week. We also have the Leonard Euler station around Laythe - shipped out in 3 parts and joined together in Laythe orbit, it has lots of habitation and is used as a storage resource as well for the difficult to produce stuff - the Vall base has sent over lots of specialised parts, machinery, supplies, fertiliser, organics and colony supplies. We can always go and get stuff from the station as required as it has all sized docking ports for everything. The Madness Begins After the initial mostly successful experiments, I started designing the crazy planes that would be required to establish a fully working base on Laythe. All of these were tested on Kerbin first - can they survive re-entry into Kerbin, can they land at around 3000 metres altitude on Kerbin on rugged terrain (Laythe's air-pressure at sea level is roughly equal to 3000 metres on Kerbin, and Laythe's terrain is really not flat!). The first vessel is Ardea - some drills for mining various resources, along with two Tundra refineries that can turn raw materials into processed goods. It even has landing legs so it can form the basis of the first occupied structure on Laythe. With this it can take all raw materials and convert them to processed goods. With the addition of the Tundra manufacturing plant that has already been landed on Laythe, it can produce finished goods of Material Kits, Machinery and Specialised Parts which can then be used to create new vessels. We also have two Zeltornis - these carry large nuclear reactors to power the various parts of the colony, plus large KIS containers that have a bunch of parts that will be handy for base construction when they get to Laythe. With the award for the second maddest vessel I sent to Laythe, we have the Runway. This allows new vessels to be constructed using material kits and specialised parts using the Extra-planetary launchpads mod. Also contender for the most draggy plane I've ever built. It's not fast, but it does actually fly and land relatively well: I did say second maddest didn't I? We also have the Triple Heron. A 3-cockpitted, twin-fuselage aircraft that really shouldn't exist, or at least, not fly as well as it does. It serves as a backup for the Zeltornis craft above and carries the same cargo, nuclear reactors and large KIS containers: We also have a couple of other utility vessels, firstly an SSTO plane called the Wigeon, that can take resources such as machinery and specialised parts from Laythe orbit to the ground base, as well as carrying a couple of crew: And two Teals designed to be converted to rovers on landing by tearing off the wings and engines - these will be used to move crew and parts from vessel to vessel. I also sent a second variant of the Heron that looks identical to the one already landed at Laythe - however, this one's cargo is some Duna-style modules to help construct the first habitation portion of the base - a PDU (nuclear reactor), a logistics centre and a pioneer base. Getting to Kerbin Orbit and beyond Naturally, getting these "planes" off Kerbin is tricky. The best way I found was to surround it with large boosters to try and keep centre of mass low enough and not have the aerodynamics of the planes interfere too much. Massively overpowered to reach Kerbin orbit, I don't really care as all I want is for them to get there. And they're either designed to dock to a shunt or do get there under their own steam (possibly after some refuelling in LKO). Here's the shunt that pushed most vessels to the destination. Uses some NearFuture engines - they're not any better than the stock nuclear engine, but it helps save on part count when I want moar power: Landing on Laythe The place chosen for landing is a small piece of land of around 250 square kilometres called Ishmael Island, it sits on the other side of Laythe to Jool on the equator, so we get to see the other moons occasionally, but the choice of location was really determined by the initial Heron and the crashed Barbet that could no longer be moved. The main plan here was to get everything down and landed all in the same place ready for assembling. That meant landing all the planes before sending a crew down. The Wigeon also went down but it stopped off first at Leonard Euler to pick up some machinery, specialised parts and two crew members. Most things landed safely, but not all. The second Heron crashed around 2.5km from the launch site (though retained all the important cargo) and one of the Zeltornis planes decided that it didn't like having wings and landing gear any more (self-destructed on physics load on the ground, though it landed ok). Building a working colony Once the crew were down from orbit (via the Ernes / Wigeon), it was time to start creating a base by joining stuff together, recycling unneeded parts like engines and wings. I crashed one of the Ernes on landing (not fatal for the crew, but it'll never fly again) meaning that I now only have one remaining Erne to take crew off planet. The first job was to sort out the Teals, tear off the wings and engines and convert them into rovers that could be used to move parts around. There's two of them (Cape Teal and Baikal Teal) and they are the true work-horses (or work-ducks) of colony building - moving parts from place to place. The second job was to take Ardea, tear all the wings and engines off, put it on landing legs, attach a reactor, add the Tundra assembly plant, and a million and one little jobs. Driving backwards and forwards with the rover to various different vessels, detaching parts, attaching them to the rovers, driving to Ardea, attaching the part there, and so on. This is all painfully slow and involves many steps but eventually I have a workable manufacturing hub. This has all the capabilities to go from mining the raw materials to processing them all the way up to producing material kits, specialised parts and machinery. Then it was time to sort out the runway, by adding a reactor, a workshop and some habitation: You can see the large a KIS Kontainer in the screenshot above - this is now all that remains of one of the Zeltornis craft - both have now been completely recycled for parts, with the exception of the KIS kontainers. Additionally, the Barbet no longer exists - once I'd taken the Tundra Manufacturing and storage container off it, it had served its purpose and was scrapped for its material kits value. The six crew are all required for moving parts around and often have to engage in team lifts to move the heaviest parts. The Teals always come in useful to ferry both kerbals and parts around. The brave pioneers are Tanris, Learigh, Maxalla, Stelya, Gersan and Madie (and technically, Jesra who's remained on Vall to build any emergency stuff that might be required). Rather than cobble together a habitation section from the parts I'd brought with me, all the scrapping of wings and engines and planes means I have plenty of material kits to play with. As I have a working runway that can build other vessels, I decided to construct a skeletal base that I could then attach the parts I'd brought with me. Unfortunately it was dark by the time it had finished, so final tweaks like attaching of parts I had brought with me had to be done in the dark. But finally, it's done - and the second crashed Heron was recycled for parts after all its useful bits had been taken for the new habitation base. All of my bases on other worlds are named after female scientists, and this one will be no different. Please give a warm welcome to Grace Hopper. At this point the base is effectively finished - it can keep up its supplies, has good habitation ratings and can produce its own vessels. Subsequently I did build other stuff - a nuclear fuel and fertiliser plant (I know, these don't really go together, but they were the two manufacturing chains I was missing) - I also built a plane do a bit of (fuel efficient) exploring. If we're going to live on a world, we want to explore! I did build a replacement habitation module that isn't fully equipped as yet - the problem is the initial one is slowly but surely slipping down the hill, gradually trying to get out of physics range where local logistics will stop working and eventually slipping into the sea. The plan is to replicate the base around 5 kilometres away where it is much much flatter, but that will take a significant amount of time to generate the material kits and machinery to build it. Finally, here's a screenshot of all the vessels I could get in a single shot. I have many more plans for the base, but for now - it's ok as it is, it can produce everything it needs to, it has long habitation ratings and plenty of supplies to keep the Kerbals fed and happy. I've had great fun doing this mission - my plane design skills have gone up many notches in the process and surface base building is always great fun. Here's the imgur gallery with some additional images as well

My ship had no shaking problems last night but when I load today on any of my 3 or 4 saves with this ship it shakes itself to pieces. Very repeatable. Nobody appears to have a solution on the forums so I guess I have to relaunch. I needed to modify the ship anyway. I used autostrut on almost everything and set it to various modes. I also used rigid assembly on a lot of the ship. The following was written before I encountered the shaking. Ion engines can be useful. I meant to build a rocket with some ion engines to fine tune navigation, but I ended up with nothing but ion engines for three quarters of the trip to Laythe. Set a course near Kerbin with the last of my big fuel engines and then found I was 800,000,000 meters off. The sun was pretty dim. I had 20 ion engines and about 12 gigantor solar that were actually getting sunlight. I could leave all the engines on for about 20 seconds and then the batteries would be totally drained. It seemed to take about ten minutes to recharge after turning the whole ship 90 degrees to get a little more light on the panels. Then I'd have to turn the ship back before the 20 second burn. That got very tiresome so I noticed that I was constantly moving closer to my target even with a little thrust in the right direction. Seemed like if I could just keep thrusting a tiny bit for a little more than an hour I'd be able to skim the atmosphere. I ran the engines at about ten percent power and got the ship on course. Dealing with this kind of problem and rationing my thrust seemed very real, very immersive. Very satisfying when my fiddling about actually got me the precision insertion that I wanted. Too bad I didn't know enough about Laythe's atmosphere. As my course got closer I shut down all but one engine in each pod of five engines, but that was still too much power. I wanted to hit at 15,000 feet because I didn't want to come back out of the atmosphere and smash into Jool which was huge and right in my path. I shutdown all but one of the ions. Oddly, as I thrusted towards my target I was moving away. The engine wasn't on the centerline of the ship so I guess it was rotating it and pushing me in the wrong direction. I activated the other engine across from it and started moving closer to 15,000. Got it to 14,986. That's what the ions are good for, setting up your encounter with the atmosphere and controlling your entry within fifty feet instead of 50,000 feet. I close the solar and communications dish and inflated the heat shield, pointed it prograde. Not very exciting in real time, even when you're between the two huge bodies. I got closer and things went very fast. The heat shield turned red and then the whole rocket turned sideways. Everything started blowing up and blowing away, but then I slowed down and popped one chute. I was heading for the ocean. The chute slowed me down enough for a water landing where I could watch the sky for a few days. Jool took up a huge part of the sky, but I only saw one, tiny moon. It appeared to be circling, but I don't think that's true. Not sure which moon it was. It popped up behind Jool, a small bead, and moved almost vertically. If I was going to do it again, I'd go for a higher orbit, maybe 25,000 meters or more, maybe even 40,000. try to slow down and get caught in orbit, but not land. Experimenting with this might have been nice but the ship shakes itself to pieces every time I reload now. I don't think it did that last night. Pretty sure I reloaded last night. Originally, what I intended to do with this rocket was control my final stage with a mixture of fuel and ion engines. I'd set the engines to different action groups and when I needed a precise atomospheric insertion, I'd turn off the liquid fueled engines and just use the ion engines. Maybe another action group to turn off all but one ion engine. I started work on that but got all confused by fuel flows and the game changing numbers that I'd tediously entered and doing things that weren't intended or making any sense.

I've been planning to establish a long-term colonization on Laythe for a while now, considering so far the only non-Kerbin planet I ever sent Kerbals to was Duna, with a very lackluster base. Because of it being long-term, I plan to have a space station orbiting Laythe with two landers on standby, which must be almost completely reusable and be able to ferry at minimum six Kerbals from the station to the base(s), with maximum efficiency. With those restrictions in mind, and considering that I plan to keep the space station at an altitude of 150-175km(to make the rendezvous easier for me), I managed to design a hefty lander packing 3.8 m/s of dV, space for seven Kerbals, and a jumbo docking port on the bottom, which also counts on being refueled when landing on Laythe by virtue of the base(s) being equipped with fuel refineries and rovers able to ferry the fuel: As you can see, the reason for the unusual placement of the docking port(below instead of on top) is in favour of a RealChute parachute, designed to work flawlessy(mostly) on Laythe - which is why the lander is not completely coated in 'chutes. Unfortunately, RealChute has a hardcoded limit of 10 uses per parachute part, after which it will no longer work; as it will have to be replaced by a new parachute part through KIS, this is why the lander is only 95% reusable - and not using parachutes at all is a terrible idea as the lander completely loses control when entering Laythe's atmosphere - being the very first craft I've seen that prefers to fly face-first when I intend it to fly butt-first, while it's normally the other way around. (Re-entry heating is disabled in my save file because I have barely mastered proper drag-friendly crafts, let alone drag-friendly heat-freindly crafts) Nevertheless, using HyperEdit, I did multiple simulation flights with Laythe and, despite those shortcomings, de-orbiting and landing in Laythe is something the lander can do(with some trouble regarding loss of control; it can end up flying sideways and therefore gliding far away from its intended destination). The true problem is taking off again and reaching orbit: It just doesn't have enough fuel. Sure, it can attain an apoapsis that's above the atmosphere(thanks to a planet pack, the atmo height is raised to 66km instead of 50km; pressure and grav are unchanged), but it will be left with just 900-800m/s of dV left, when over 1100m/s are needed to complete the circularization. And this is without accounting the fact that the lander would still need to rendezvous with the soon-to-be space station at 150-175km of altitude... Either the lander is fuel-inefficient, or I am doing a wrong ascent profile. And I did check a guide for ascent profiles, but when I tried that, it just resulted in the lander deciding to fly into the ground. (Considering that guide was aimed toward large Kerbin crafts, it's possible its advice just doesn't apply for this situation) Thus, I'm wondering if anyone is able to help me with either/both problems. I'm looking to try and optimize its fuel consumption as much as I can(the aerospikes are the most efficient engines available: the Terrier is too weak, and everything else is either too powerful/inefficient, or has a mismatching size) to be useful in case of an emergency, and find out a more efficient way to get the lander up into Laythe orbit. As well as possibly find out what's causing the lander to completely lose control when braking into Laythe, as that will definitely end up causing problems later on regarding landing precision and the time spent ferrying Kerbals and fuel. And yes, the Center of Mass is above the Center of Lift, which is above the Center of Thrust. And here is the lander's .craft file, in case you need it or just want it.

Hey guys, looking for advice. I have a 197 ton vessel coming from a Jool aerobrake(not orbit) into a Laythe aerobrake and I need an aerocapture. It has the stock 10m inflatable at the front,fins at the back(attached to an Orion drive that wasn't originally invited to the party, but hey) and my COM is just slightly back from centre, I have about 4 large sas wheels in the mix but only 63 units of mono. Due to the absurd amount of time it takes to turn this thing around I really need to aerocapture on first pass. Any recommendations on altitude? https://imgur.com/KJqpsGW Also if anyone knows the formulae for this kinda thing

In a feat of Kerbal engineering, the boys at the SPH have devised a way to make fully stock hinges and pivots! Using this breakthrough, the technology has been incorporated into the design of a new SSTO to give it VTOL capabilities, as well as enough fuel to go to Laythe and back without refueling or need for mining! In order to rotate the wings, the tilt-wing section un-docks to become a separate craft that can move independently of the main ship. It's held in place by two rings of cubic octagonal struts around some of those Oscar-B fuel tanks as a sort of axle. Torque wheels are used to rotate the wing and lock it into position using the 'radial out' marker on the navball. Finally, 4 small docking ports lock the section back in place- rejoining it with the rest of the craft fairly securely in a quadruple seal! As a lot of you have found out, in order to get the craft working as intended the nuclear and RAPIER engines had to be modified by altering their config files. Here's the video I made that I have had in the works for a while now. A lot of time and effort went into making this but I am really happy with it so I hope you enjoy watching it!

https://goo.gl/images/8Wt5ey Laythe

HRO shuttles, originally designed for some advanced levels of STS challenge, now join together for even more daring mission than before Launch sequence First is HRO-M03 with all the deployable vehicles. Including the Elcanoplan 2 strapped on its back Barely enough thrust for takeoff (and that's with payloads having the tanks practically dry). I even activated the main engine of the Elcanoplan, but that didn't seem to make much difference either. Those boosters barely miss the tail wings (just don't forget to set SAS to prograde) Also waited a bit after the tank ran dry before separating it - to wait for the ship to get a bit more balanced (orbiter's tanks are set to drain from the tail first) 55 km? Eh, this isn't Laythe yet! Also forgot to ignite OMS OMS + upper pair of main engines = the best balanced solution with this payload. One ship in orbit OK, now to the second launch... What the Kraken?!! OK, After a tweak to the clamps... let's pretend that didn't happen HRO-M takes off a bit easier, despite having full payload bay as well Looks like we launched a bit too early Well, raise the apoapsis a bit higher and let's meet in one orbit Let's align... and wait for some sunlight Despite the size, HRO is quite good at docking. If you don't rush. (Hey, it's called Heavy Recovery Orbiter - what else could you expect?) This position will provide the best balancing And in couple passes we get the transfer to... somewhere green But this is... Anyway, let's get into polar orbit. By the way, HRO-M also has the scanner antenna in the bay Going down This modification of HRO-M has got some landing upgrades from the latest version of HRO-M03 And a full mining rig in the bay Minmus means "mine me", doesn't it? And a few days later... And in the meantime HROM-03 changed to equatorial orbit - so here's the direct intercept with it There's enough to fully fill all LFO and ore tanks of the craft in orbit So let's make another run down - this time at the equator And after refuel... Who needs atmosphere for horizontal takeoff? And back together - with plenty of fuel Transfer And over 300 days later... (yeah, completely missed the window) What's the best way for Minmus-Jool transfer? Oberth effect! Say goodbye to Kerbin! And a couple years later... Let's just capture into Laythe-Pol transfer orbit What a view! And then, since there seems to be enough fuel to reach the destinations independently, let's separate the ships Oh, hey there! Has anybody checked for running into Vall? Now to pass by Tylo - barely missing its SOI (turned to get better solution than with slingshots) and we are getting to the destination Let's capture with rocket engines, and then release the mapsat - it will change plane at apoapsis Now, to lower the orbit... the shuttle way Strangely enough, the moment you get in, it feels about as much (if not more) drag as on the same altitude on Kerbin. Just don't forget to stabilize the orbit Low Laythe orbit achieved! Next phase - going down there

As a followup to this mission report and satisfaction of Mission III in this challenge, I submit: Laythe Clipper! Phase 1: Design, Construction, and Launch The trickiest thing, other than packing all the correct components onto the spacecraft, was getting it all to fit inside the 3.5-meter fairing. But I managed! Exploration Upper Stage, powered by four LV-T45s and using two separate tanks inside a fairing to match the design of the EUS. A peek under the hood at Europa Clipper itself. Looks pretty cluttered, I know. It has its own propulsion and RCS, two survey scanners, a large relay antenna, assorted instruments, tweakscaled solar panels, four RTGs, heat management, four ion-powered cubesat probes, a large bipropellant-powered atmosphere-skimming probe, and a lander. Yes, I know the current Europa Skipper does not include plans for a lander, but I went with one of the earlier plans. Majestic on the pad. SSME ignition. Liftoff! Nice shot under the engines. Not the most efficient ascent, but I have fuel for days. Europa Clipper and the EUS, though large, are small enough that I could get into orbit on the boosters+core alone. At least it's nice to have a ton of control authority on the engines. Booster separation! Way steeper an ascent than I'd like, so I'm going to nose over quickly and then jettison my fairing. Fairing away! Second star to the right, and straight on till morning. MECO while my periapsis is still low enough for booster disposal. Safe periapsis for disposal! Separation and firing up the EUS. Orbit achieved! That was easy. Honestly I probably could have done this with the ICPS. Shot of the core post-separation -- note the support column for the EUS. Silhouettes are always nice. Back on the daylit side, verifying systems. Closeup of the EUS; note the octagonal thrust structure. All systems go, ready for Jool departure!

Yeah I'm back in stock KSP. I enjoyed RO a lot but my it slows my computer down to the speed of an Ion engine which subtracts a lot of the fun from it. So my first mission back in stock was a Mun SSTO. I built this because 1, SSTOs are very fun to build and fly, and 2, I heard rumors about some parts' heat resistance was buffed and I wanted to test that. Here are some pictures. So once I'd landed, (This took multiple tries, darn you small landing legs!) I decided that I'm not going to recover reusable things. I'm just going to leave them at the space center and refuel them when I want to use them again. If they don't land at the space center, then I'll bring them to the space center. So onto the mission. I have attempted this many times before. But I always ran short of DV and couldn't enter Kerbin's atmosphere without burning within seconds after reaching 70km. So I eventually quit and went on to things like Jool V and Eve landing and returning. (Which I did both) Anyway. I decided to try it again. I made a similar space plane to the one that I took to the Mun, only bigger, better cockpit, quadrupled the batteries, doubled the power generation and added reaction wheels. (I'll add the craft files for both SSTOs if anyone wants me to) So it was a simple ascent. Getting off the runway was tough because this thing really wanted to swerve to the left so in the end I just let it and went off the runway before taking off but luckily I wasn't damaged at 80 m/s and was able to take off soon after. I probably should have added more oxidizer and wasted fuel when I passed the apoapsis and started falling again. I made it up to around 2000 m/s so I was able to accelerate to the point at which the plane was going so fast, it starts ascending again, even with a low TWR. So I decided to use the Eve-Kerbin-Kerbin-Jool gravity assist method and this went well. I got a Jool encounter right after the 2nd Kerbin assist and was able to use Laythe to get into a nice low Jool orbit. This is where things went south. I thought I was going slow enough to aero-break at Laythe but I wasn't. There is a thin line between too fast and too slow for some reason and I was just passed too fast. I then spent 400 m/s to get a better encounter in which I was going way slower than before. About two or three passes and I was ready to land. Landing was smooth and on the first try. Better than when I tried to land my Jool V Laythe Spaceplane on Laythe. That was a disaster! Jeb got out and stretched his legs, planted a flag and then got into the plane again and took off. Since no oxidizer is needed at all on Laythe, getting into orbit was nothing compared to Kerbin. Now here I decided to try and do what all the cool kids do and try a Tylo gravity assist back to Kerbin. This didn't go very well and I ended up in a high orbit around Kerbol. Thank Kraken for F9! So I ended up using my 1000 m/s direct return to Kerbin technique which worked out way better than the Tylo assist. Now comes the part where previous missions have failed. Return to Kerbin. Here you have to reverse the gravity assists going to Jool to bring you down to a low enough speed to enter Kerbin's atmosphere. I had 1000 m/s of DV left from the 6200 m/s I had left in LKO at the start. So I got a Kerbin assist for 200 m/s.and then after that, an Eve assist for pretty much the same cost. This brought my Apoapsis to just touching Kerbin's orbit and my Periapsis to just under Eve's orbit. This wasn't ideal but it worked. Things got to about 70-80% critical heat, but nothing exploded and after a small burn to capture, we were back in LKO... with about 350 m/s left. I was literally running on fumes. After that, I did another pass and had about a 150 m/s plane change and then I had only one more pass to do... Only I misjudged it and... ended up dropping my periapsis into the ocean west of the KSC. Luckily, it was just off the coast of the desert west of KSC and I managed to change my course stalling only 3 times and came down for a bumpy, 1st try landing, in the desert. Jeb got out and was recovered but I'm sticking to that rule. That plane stays in the desert until I find a way to get it back to the KSC. So anyways, I conquered the one thing I was never able to do, and then landed in the desert. Now Jeb is sitting comfortably in the astronaut complex and his plane is sitting out in the desert awaiting rescue... To be continued I think... But that's all for now. Fire