purpleivan

Wondered what you meant for a moment. Parachutes... absolutely essential for a Munar landing because of... er... erm... physics.

For me it was the flight of the Eve Party Boat, a four kerbal return mission to the surface of Eve, back in the ancient days of my KSP experience (September 2014) about 7 weeks after starting to play the game. For me it was more than a mission, it became an obsession. No matter how impractical it was (or how ludicrous my solution) I had to do it and in the end came up with this. Launch the lander about 1/3 fueled into Kerbin orbit... check. Make a silly number (must have been about 6) of launches to fuel the thing... check. Attach a pair of huge tugs to get the thing to Eve... check. Float down on an insane number of parachutes to a 6000m landing site I'd scouted out with rovers... check Land perilously close to the scout rover that I used as a marker for landing... check. Take snapshot of the brave crew and their.... er... fine ship. Get everyone back on board again... check. Liftoff safely... check. Make it to orbit... check. Trash the landing site... double check. Rendezvous with one of the tugs to bring the guys back home... check. Get the guys back home and wait for ticker tape parade... check. Some time later I took the same design for a local hop to the Mun, as the entry for my Mun Rocked challenge.

For some reason this thread has me thinking of a song, something along the lines of "la, la, laa, la, la, laa... James Kermaron"

I'd forgotten all about the multiplayer mod that did the rounds some time ago. I have to admit the idea intrigued me, but I never got around to checking it out.

Eve return missions are always satisfying, I've done a few of them myself. One of my early ones was with this monstrosity (the Eve Party Boat) that took four kerbals in a hitchhiker can to Eve and back. A single launch to put the lander (about 1/4 fueled) in Kerbin orbit, two more for the pusher vehicles that got it to Eve and another five to get the lander filled with fuel. That mission neither quick nor cheap

The latest post to my "The truth can now be told" thread.

Hi peeps. The guy with the truth catching antenna gived me more pics. He said that these are from the past but he put the data for em together today, ... sumfin about using a special filter that adds the missing bits. He said that's why he painted his umbrella antenna green, to catch all the natural truthiness from the pictures. He also said sumfin about it using special harmonic crystals that looked a bit like marbles... but he can't find em now, so it might be a while till he gets some more pics. Well that's all the news from Truth Headquarters (my room in mom's basement). Jumping jacks Anyone order pizza with a side of science?

I've done something similar, although at not as high a velocity, with a vehicle returning from Jool. In it's case I just didn't have sufficient fuel on the vehicle to get it closer than a few thousand km away from Kerbin as a return orbit, leaving it zooming past at about 4.5km/s. The fix I chose was to launch a fuel transfer vehicle I had at my Minmus fuel mining base towards the incoming vehicle, dock with it and transfer what fuel was left on the rescue vehicle and then adjust my Jool vehicle's incoming trajectory. So a similar problem, just not as extreme as the OP, although my rescue vehicle wasn't designed for the purpose and could have been a much more efficient deliverer of fuel.

Already done (although not as many pics). The Tinfoil Times.

But will it happen again

A couple of pics from this weekends work in my Career Evolution Contract Pack game. This time its fueling up a station for transfer into Kerbol orbit. The contract called for 6000 units of fuel for the station to qualify for the contract, hence the need for a refueling ship.

Following pressure for more information on the presence of another species on the Moon during the Apollo program, a senior press officer released the following image and accompanying section of mission debriefing of one of the astronauts. "We'd already encountered these things on EVA 1 when they appeared to copy our flag raising. Although it was a weird experience, they didn't seem to be dangerous. Ah... we'd just placed the last of the thumpers for the Seismic Profiling Experiment and were heading back to the LEM when this rover like vehicle shot past us headed right for the it, I mean it was really moving. Our rover was as aerodynamic as a barn but that thing of theirs looked more like a dragster, 'specially with a rocket blasting out the back of it. For a moment it looked like our ticket home was going to end up in a thousand pieces on the surface, but at the last moment that rocket jockey pulled the nose up towards space and shot over the top of the LEM... missed the S-Band by the length of my arm. I'd like to tell you what I thought about that but don't think I should use that kinda language in an official report."

Further pics from my Career Evolution Contract Pack game. Tomsey Kerman excitedly plants the flag for a few of those all important funds, although with the unnerving feeling of having the entirety of Kerbalkind behind him and wondering what they're up to. Is the guy in the science lab happy to be here... he seems unsure. After a moment's deliberation he decides yes he is... very much so. Meanwhile back in Kerbin orbit a pair who have been on a long duration stay of 180 days on the fabulously named "Station 1" received a visitor in the form of an unmanned return vehicle, sent up to bring them home.

communication

Typically my first stages burn out at 10-20km, generally high enough for the atmospheric pressure sensitive engines to be working fairly efficiently. But if I'm launching some massively asparagus staged beast then all bets are off... it could be as low as around 300m.