A Stockalike Career Playthrough with tons of pictures (We can into space!)

[nsgallup]

Since my last career was corrupted (probably because I have way too many mods), I added another mod and started a new game XD.

Anyway this thread will be used for posting notable mission reports from this new career.

Mission suggestions are welcome.

Mod list:

Active texture management

The RTG, and LANTR engines from atomic age

Astronomers Visual Pack

Crowd sourced science

Distant object enhancement

Kerbal engineer

Hyperedit (for fixing glitches, and running "simulation" tests)

Community Tech Tree

KerboKatz automatically adjusting landing legs

KSPX

MkIV SpacePlane Parts

Mechjeb

Modular Rocket Systems

Multiports

All of the near future packs

Outer Planets Mod with EVE configs

Realplume

RLA stockalike

Taurus HCV

ScanSat

Space Y and Space Y expanded

Station Parts Expansion

Trans-Keptunian

Tweak Scale (I try not to use this one too much)

Kerbal Alarm Clock

Edited May 29, 2016 by nsgallup

[KSACheese]

I'm gonna go ahead and subscribe to this. I'm looking forward to seeing the progression!

(and I don't think you can edit the title, but I'm not exactly sure.)

[Mister Dilsby]

p.s. anyone know how to edit a thread title? I want to update it every time I add a new mission.

Yes. Just edit the original post, go to "Advanced", and you will see the thread title in a text box you can edit. I do it all the time

[nsgallup]

First orbital flight completed!

Liftoff

Booster separation, I hate these first few rockets, the fuel tanks are too short which needlessly increases part count and encourages wobbling

An orbital trajectory of 73X84 is achieved! Jeb does a quick space walk to grab data from the mystery goo pods

Final stage separation, Jeb prepares for re-entry

Coming in hot

Kerbin has pointy mountains

Landed Safe a few km away from KSC

Edited October 20, 2015 by nsgallup

[nsgallup]

Yes. Just edit the original post, go to "Advanced", and you will see the thread title in a text box you can edit. I do it all the time

Thanks!

More missions to come!

[nsgallup]

Shooting for the Mun! After proving the concept of space travel with Jeb's orbital flight Werhner von Kerman was given the go ahead to begin construction of his Mun rocket. Bob drew the short straw and was selected to be the first Kerbal to set foot on another world.

Launch of the Falcon MkIII lifter

Dropping boosters

The Orbital stage kicks in to finish up circularizing

Bob is very excited to see if the Mun really is a wheel of cheese... it sure looks bigger then from Kerbin

Bob is the very first Kerbal to ever witness a Kerbin-set

Bob begins Munar maneuvering as Kerbin rises, dropping the orbital stage. The plan is to land in the large crater visible on the horizon

Dropping down to a suborbital trajectory

There seems to be a lot of hanging dust particles in this area, perhaps a recent meteorite strike kicked up some fine debris? (Is it technically correct to call a meteoroid that impacts a body other then the Earth a meteorite?) Bob hopes that doesn't happen during his visit

Distance to surface is 4m, 3, 2, 1... We have touchdown of White Dragon!

Bob can't wait to tell the world about his Munar cheese tasting adventure

After gathering "scientific" data from the surface Bob begins the ascent to Munar orbit

Jeb and Val made him promise to take a cool picture for the magazines, and now that he is it does seem kinda fun!

The sight of Kerbin coming over the horizon brings a tear to his eye

Bob gathers the data from the doomed instrumentation and places it in the command pod

Lowering the Kerbin periapses to 45km and removing some orbital speed, external tanks are emptied and dropped

Entering the atmosphere

It took a few passes through the upper atmosphere before the orbit became suborbital

The chute was just a little singed and deployed correctly

We have splashdown!

Edited October 21, 2015 by nsgallup

[nsgallup]

Next up! Bill has his eye on Minmus!

[lajoswinkler]

Great screenshots, keep it up!

[nsgallup]

Bill needed to land on another body in order to test parachute repacking in a low-g environment, and so it was decided he would be the first to step on Kerbins small moon Minmus. Although Bobs recent trip to Mun has cast some doubt on the solar food theory, it is postulated that Minmus could still be a food item even though Mun was not, therefore Bill also took a set of ice cream scoops.

The Falcon MkII was one of Werhner Von Kermans earlier designs, it couldn't quite make it to Mun, but for Minmus it should be sufficient

Booster separation

After matching orbital inclination, a regular Hohmann transfer sends Bill on his way to the icy moon

After ditching the orbital stage a small injection burn from the lander had Green Dragon in stable Minmus orbit

Coming in for a landing!

More pictures to come! (I have to go to work now )

[Thegamer211]

Are there any generators, solar panels or batteries on that thing?

That rocket is so small! Do you use KER?

[nsgallup]

Batteries in the service bay, no solar on this one because i forgot to update it with new parts like the mun lander. I do have KER, I try to optimise my rockets so they have slightly more then the required t/w for their situation, and try to give them the exact amount of required fuel for a mission with each stage fulfilling a specific purpose if I can, with a cushion of about 1000 delta V.

I fine tune each rocket and payload according to the mission.

This leads to very efficient rockets

The Mun rocket actually had significantly more delta V then required.. Enough to get me somewhere else I think..

Edited October 21, 2015 by nsgallup

[KSACheese]

Screenies looking good! Just real quick, what visual pack are you using?

[nsgallup]

Astronomers interstellar, distant object enhancement, realplume... and I think that is it

Edit.. planetshine is in there

Edited October 21, 2015 by nsgallup

[nsgallup]

Preparing for touchdown

Green Dragon has landed, turns out that Minmus surface samples really do taste like ice cream! Bill wonders if he could make a Minmus frozen treats business on the side.. side effects may apply.

Liftoff of Green Dragon

Bill burns for a Kerbin return trajectory

After grabbing data from the instruments Bill detaches the pod from the lander and braces for atmospheric impact

Bill glimpses the lander burning up through his viewport

Bill decides to take his feet off the floor after his boots start melting

A mountainous, but mostly safe landing, Bill only slid 50 feet

[nsgallup]

A new age of interplanetary travel is nearly at hand! KSC flight directors decided to see if the Falcon MkIII was Ike capable, and Bill was up to the challenge.

This is pretty much exactly the same rocket and lander that was used to get to Mun

Booster separation

Up and away!

Second booster separation

Transitioning to orbital stage

Burning for Duna

The plan is to aero-capture with a periapses of 20km altitude, and then transfer to Ike.. should be a piece of cake

Uh oh... things are looking a little hot..

Trajectory is sub-orbital.. Bill is going to have to improvise

Bill deploys the chute at a speed of about 650m/s.. hopefully it holds

The chute killed horizontal velocity, and drops vertical to about 20m/s, a short burn is required before touching down

"This was the plan all along!" -Mission control

Liftoff of the now named Red Dragon lander!

Gravity turn

External fuel tanks are dropped

Burning for Kerbin

Posing for the ladies

Ike will be visited another day

Duna is one of my favourite places

This is the hottest re-entry yet! Bill thinks it's time to upgrade the insulation on the command pods

An icy mountain landing

Edited October 22, 2015 by nsgallup

[nsgallup]

A teaser for an upcoming mission

[nsgallup]

It was Vals time to shine! She had a dream about Dres having no friends and decided she wanted to take a look.

The Pegasus MkI on the Pad

Liftoff!

Higher!!

Booster separation

Val realizes that Kerbin is actually pretty small compared to the solar system, a pretty amazing thought... at least until she sees the extra snack box!

Circularization

The lifter brought us to a 85x35 orbit, the Ceres transfer stage takes us the rest of the way, a monoprop engine was selected for the transfer stage due to it's higher efficiency

Antenna deployed

Goodbye Kerbin

Dres.. A lonely place indeed concludes Val

More to Come!

Edited October 24, 2015 by nsgallup

[Sanic]

Not to offend, but...

Your rate of progression seems a bit unrealistic.

Or maybe I just suck and you used extremely accurate planetary alignment to cut down on fuel consumption.

[nsgallup]

Not to offend, but...

Your rate of progression seems a bit unrealistic.

Or maybe I just suck and you used extremely accurate planetary alignment to cut down on fuel consumption.

I've done this early part of the game a thousand times, I'm going through it as fast as I can to get to the more exciting parts.

I use transfer tools and just time warp to the most efficient tranfer burns, which is always better then eyeballing it

Edited October 26, 2015 by nsgallup

[nsgallup]

Bad news.. it seems there was a miscalculation in the fuel requirements for the mission, Val makes the decision to abort. She was short about 1000 Delta V

Val adjusts the trajectory to make for an easier return to Kerbin

The lander was ejected, though it did return some orbital data via radio

A frustrating defeat.. Val is approaching Kerbin

Val wonders if Kerbin will ever get another crater like that one, sure scary to think about

The transfer stage burns up in the atmosphere

Mission concluded with a splash, Kerbal kind vows to return to Dres

[nsgallup]

Val decides try her hand at a simpler mission, this time she will heading to the low gravity playground of Gilly

The Pegasus/Ceres combo should be more then sufficient to get her there, this time with a fairing and better energy management

I actually am really happy with the sleek look of this launch system

Booster separation

The lifter stage is nearly a SSTO, only needing the solid boosters for a T/W boost at the beginning of the launch

Confetti!! I want to install a mod that has nicer looking fairing.. but I have way too many already

Lifter separation

Burning for Eve

Orbital adjustments as Val approaches Eve

Val asks KSC if she can land on Eve instead, but they say no

Capture burn, Val records some data about Eve, most notable is that choosing a landing site for future missions will be difficult because of poor surface visability... Perhaps radar?

Gilly possesses a eccentric and inclined orbit making it annoying to get an encounter just right, I could've had a more efficient transfer, but I didn't want to wait as long and the Ceres has fuel to spare

Val moves to the Grasshopper module

Grasshopper detached, the Ceres is in a parking orbit of 100km with an extremely low orbital speed, the grasshopper should have plenty of fuel as it was designed for a Dres landing

Moving around in Gilly orbit is agonizingly slow

Eve really is nice to look at

Looks like we found a flatish landing spot.. although it really is difficult to decipher up from down here

Hmm.. not as flat as it looked, the gravity is extremely weak here though and reaction wheels will have no problem holding it up

After taking data Val gets back in the grasshopper and flies a few kilometers northwards to the next landing site

With some altitude Eve rises over the horizon

Val hopes Jeb is impressed!

Val kills horizontal velocity and begins the second landing, the third landing will take place in the large depression after the next ridge

Landing site IB

Another bouncing trajectory over to the final landing site, I actually was getting so impatient with the slow movement that I burned directly down before landing

A big boulder

Landing site IC

After gathering data and having fun in the low G environment Val returns to the pod and plans the rendezvous with Ceres

As Kerbol sets, Eve rises

The grasshopper ditches the landing assembly and begins orbital insertion

Val turns completely horizontal as soon as she clears the ridge line

The three landing sites were along this slope

Orbital maneuvers, even with just RCS propulsion it is difficult to not overdo the burns

Ceres is silhouetted

Val begins lining everything up

Docking

Val transfers surface data from the lander to the command pod, she doesn't ditch the lander though, as both modules have plenty of fuel and she has another mission in mind for it

After dropping the periapses down to about 100km Vall ejects the grasshopper module

The grasshopper lowers it's periapses to 85km, just inside the Evian atmosphere

The module tumbles through the upper atmosphere gathering data on composition and drag properties

After about 3 orbits through the upper atmosphere, the periapses is lowered to 75km

Miraculously the module survives re-entry mostly intact, I was actually expecting it to explode from the heat

Grasshopper radios some final data from the lower atmosphere before a hard splashdown destroys the module

Ceres begins its Kerbin transfer burn

The return trajectory

Kerbin and Mun are visible

Kerbin

Ceres actually had just enough fuel to circularize in Kerbin orbit rather then a direct aerocapture

Val separates from Ceres in preparation for re-entry

Val screams past KSC

Mission successful!

Nuclear Thermal engines are now researched, enabling more efficient transfer stages

Edited January 9, 2016 by nsgallup

[Sanic]

I wish I could progress this fast.

Sanic fast.

I'm stuck grinding at the Mun.

GL on your next mission!

[nsgallup]

Don't take this thread as an example of how quickly you should be progressing unless you've already been to Duna/Mun/Minmus hundreds of times, KSP has a very slow learning curve and there are tons of little things that you learn the longer you play that make things easier. For example, I never thought of using an RCS only lander for low gravity bodies until I saw someone else do it, but now that I know that I can it cuts down payload weight considerably which means a smaller transfer stage and a more efficient rocket over all.

There are elements of the game I am not yet comfortable with, like rover deployment, or SSTO space planes, XD so annoying to get it right.

Got any pics of your Mun missions?

A Teaser for the next mission, a simple probe launched on a Pegasus derivative

Edited October 25, 2015 by nsgallup

[Sanic]

I've given out too much rep today.

I have a feeling this one is going to my favorite planet, Dres.

I'm still pretty skeptical of you playing legit, though...

Edited October 25, 2015 by Sanic

[nsgallup]

What do you mean by legit?