BurningLegion

I'm waffling between three strategies to deal with this. Either attach a heatshield, set periapsis to 68Km and slow down on multiple orbits, first enter LKO before deorbiting, or orbit in Kerbin's SOI and send up a shuttle of some sort to bring the crew down. I'll re-read the rules, but I don't think we're required to de-orbit the actual expedition ship.

I'm consistently failing at everything that isn't a drone But I downloaded Pilot Assistant, maybe if my crappy flying isn't an issue anymore my actual designs may prove sound.

I attempted to launch a 128T lander specifically designed to land and return from any of Jool's moons in a single stage for my interpretation of the Jool-5 challenge within a procedural fairing sitting on top of a 3.75M Kerbodyne stack surrounded by six 5M booster stacks. The reaction wheel under the fairing snapped under the strain, and a whole bunch of rockets went everywhere while the launchpad exploded. Lesson learned: Either drain the lander's fuel, or use its rockets to help launch itself into orbit.

I've been trying to test the individual components of my attempt at the Jool-5 challenge. The lander is not launching well.

Yeah. I didn't see that in the rules either, which is why I was using turbojet drones. I'll update my design, and maybe land it this time.

I got all the way to 535,335 Km apoapsis with a controlled craft that had a thermometer, and that was due to Gigantor XL panels. If I oriented them so one panel had 2% surface coverage from Kerbol, they radiated heat to keep the ship at a toasty 1100 kelvin and the panels at about 930K. I've already planned some modifications to make for the S-2, but I won't go into detail on them until after I deploy it. Funny story - while making the S-1, the game crashed on me after I got it into Kerbol orbit. When I loaded it to bring the S-1 closer until it was done for, I noticed another dot labeled "S-1" in the tracking center. Turns out it's the old one - I'm going to rename that the S-X, and since it's a radically different design from the S-1 I'll bring it closer along with the new S-2 tweaking.

I know I'll be bringing my Sunskimmer closer until it blows up, taking shots and quicksaving every 15,000 km. I have no idea when Kerbol gets too hot to handle, so in the process of doing this I was coming a little closer, taking a screenshot, coming a little closer, taking a screenshot, until the result pictured. Yep. I didn't want to cook the S-1 until I got an entry . I would have to say that it definitely seems part-dependent in some respects - the highest temperature on my ship is 1150K, and though that's scary given the part's tolerance is 1200K, the temperature of the rest of my ship is significantly lower than the temperature you've recorded, to the point where my thermometer is giving incorrect readings. I honestly think you have the edge. My solar panels mean I can operate at maximum capacity until I run out of Xenon, but because I'm using Gigantor XLs their maximum temperature is only 1200K. They're conducting heat away from the main body of my probeship (Which would be good if I had some radiotope generators on that body), but if they explode then that's it for the Sunskimmer. The Z-1K cannot maintain thrust on an ion engine long enough to do anything relevant this close to Kerbol. On the one hand, your ship looks like it'll have a lot more problems shedding heat than mine, but on the other your power generation components can tolerate a lot more heat than mine. It'd be interesting to see who can get closer. EDIT: Took the S-1 in. Made it to 535,335 x 533,347 Km. Both panels exploded, and had to make the final burn on batteries. With this experience, I revise my opinion of Foxster's ship: You don't have the advantage. Without a way to rapidly vent heat, you will overheat and explode. I now believe that your Ap will be above 535,335 Km when you do so.

*Idly looks at "Sundiver 1" design. Does a double take. Takes notes.* Excuse me while I file the concept of that interplanetary stage, what with the nuke separated from a different upper stage by an I-beam, away for future use. It is a glorious day, comrades! For extremely important valid scientific reasons and certainly not because of a bet with capitalist dog space programs located in alternate universes, the glorious Kerbal Space Program has launched a probe to get as close to Kerbol as possible. Obviously, the Kerbal Space Program has succeeded easily with no complications relating to substandard materials and workers whatsoever, with a heatstroke-inducing orbit of 765,000 x 765,000 Km. This is just another victory over the capitalists, but for more victories, we need your support, my comrades. Glory to Kerbin. Flying this thing has restored my faith in my own engineering. By using TAC Fuel balancer, I was able to asparagus-stage Xenon tanks, as well as do damage control when Dang It decided to try and screw me. I have something like 5500 Delta-V left, so more can be done if I wish it. I know the thermometer says it's 930K, but it was in a service bay. The temperature of actual running parts varied between 1000K for the main body & retracted panel and 1150K for the extended solar panel. Realistically, I can't bring the Sunskimmer much closer without the panels blowing up and since I suspect they're what's radiating heat from the main body of the spacecraft, S-1 will follow after that.

This one doesn't count, but I came so close I want to post it. I threw together a little plane and threw it into the sky. I don't like flying with Kerbals at all, so I threw together a probe plane to circumnavigate Kerbin, powered by the J-33 alternator. All went well, flew around the world, keeping the engine in continuous operation for four straight hours, and approached the runway from the West with a little over 110 fuel left. I disengaged the engine to descend for an unpowered landing. You should see the problem now. The batteries gave out right before setdown, but to my engineering credit, this little beauty basically flies itself and landed no issue. The problem? I didn't engage the brakes before the core stopped responding. So my circumnavigator landed, rolled onto the runway, rolled straight off the other end and splashed itself with no recoverable components. Heading: 90 Degrees Time: 4:10 K-1 Circumnavigator Parts list: 1x Shock Cone Intake 3x Mk.1 Liquid Fuel Fuselage 2x Advanced Inline Stabilizer 2x Big-S Wing Strake 4x Advanced Canard 2x Elevon 2 2x Delta Deluxe Winglet 3x Small Landing Gear 1x Engine Pre-cooler 1x J-33 Wheesley Jet Engine 1x RC-001S Remote Guidance Unit EDIT: Tried again with the K-2K, a variant with a Z-1K battery and a turbojet instead of a J-33. Surprisingly, got a lot better fuel efficiency, circumnavigated the world only to encounter the biggest problem with the K series: The wheels are positioned in a way that even the slightest imbalance in landing terrain causes it to flip and explode on landing. Not going to bother uploading those images, took about an hour and a half for that circumnavigation.

On the plus side, the sun provides enough power to run high-efficiency ion engines to do that. Were I to do this, I would envision the smallest possible probe, equipped with a set of ion engines, solar panels, and xenon tanks to circularize near the sun. At a guess, I think we'd be looking at the 70k delta-V range. Might explain why this is a challenge, and also explains why I'm not participating Because I'd treat it as "Lowest orbit that can be circularized near the sun".

I'm planning for the two-Kerbonaut level (Cause it'd be just unfair to send one Kerbonaut on a five-year mission, and going straight to the five-Kerbonaut level would require 20 tons of life support), and I haven't run into any fuel problems on the planning stage. A lot of that is probably because I will be abusing LV-Ns and Ion Engines for the trip to, back, and tooling around the Jool system, with chemical rockets only being fired when their thrust advantage is necessary (IE, landing). But now that I think about it, I only tested the feasibility of mining on Tylo, not on the low-grav moons, Bop and Pol. Also, one thing I'm debating - Ion Engines versus LV-Ns. My current design incorporates 16 LV-Ns and 24 Ion Engines in different stages. I'm suspecting I'll need to do a lot of math for this, so my question is: Does the fuel/power consumption of LV-Ns and Ion Engines scale directly to the amount of thrust? I'm considering the advantages of using a nuclear stage at all. During the exit from Kerbin, we'll be close enough to Kerbol to rely on the sun's power, and at Jool unless my math is messed up it'd cost less in mass to run Ion Engines on radiotope generators and fuel cells than it'd cost to run LV-Ns on LFO. Generally, smaller payloads are easier to get into orbit and more stable when attached via docking connectors. Additionally, it's easier to distribute Ion Engines across the entire payload to provide generally even thrust. I'm proud of my work in constructing a 16 LV-N stage that can fire literally indefinitely if supplied with LF, and that would be a huge asset at Jool, but Ion Engines may just be a better choice. I saw Shadowzone do a one-person lander on Jeb's level. It means each moon is visited by a different Kerbonaut, but not that every Kerbonaut visits every moon.

Awesome, thanks for taking a look at them. In particular, I'll be rethinking my interplanetary stage now that there's a better chance I could physically operate the nukes long enough to transfer.

Alright, mod time. I'd like to use (That isn't on the approved list): Kerbal Inventory System, Dang It!, Throttle Controlled Avionics, Fuel Tanks Plus, Heat Management, Jettison Fuel, Trajectories, and the aforementioned Kerbal Attachment System. Kerbal Inventory system is relevant because it adds the ability for Kerbals to attach small parts to exterior of already launched vessels, or move said parts around, such as parachutes, struts, and batteries. I absolutely would use it to stabilize a multicomponent ship enough to survive physics warp and thus a 20-minute burn or so in a reasonable timeframe, or detach now-useless components from a lander to keep the remains of its fuel tank, all cards being on the table. But I'd pay a price in weight and complexity for that benefit. Dang It essentially causes things to fail randomly. Command pods can carry a limited supply of spare parts, but it's essentially a tax on over-complex designs. Throttle Controlled Avionics manipulates engine thrust levels individually to maintain stability on asymmetric designs, especially in atmosphere. It'd be useful for the initial launching of things like Ion Rings. Fuel Tanks Plus offers an assortment of stock-balanced fuel tanks approximately 1.5x the length of said stock tanks. It'd essentially be a way to reduce part count and this increase the portion of the mission I can actually fly. For instance, my Laythe lander could lose three parts with no difference in delta-V, thrust, weight, or CoM with this mod. Heat Management adds a set of purpose-built radiators and heat sinks. It's essentially a more intentional way of achieving the same result as attaching an LV-N to an orange tank with 8 Big-S Delta Wings radiating from it. Jettison Fuel adds the ore tank's jettison function to regular fuel tanks. It does nothing but allow dumping fuel into space. Trajectories is a useful mod I've recently located that calculates a landing point on planet surface while factoring in atmospheric drag and planet rotation. It's only functions would be to prevent splashdown on Laythe and drop my return stage directly on to the KSC. Kerbal Attachment System allows things to winch in other things, drag them around, or lay fuel pipes and such between two pre-built points. My use for it would primarily be to simplify docking or potentially right a fallen lander. On Mechjeb... Some of my components' launch vehicles are turning out to be big enough that I can't control them during initial ascent in Kerbin's atmosphere. Is it all right to use the autopilot in that instance?

This is really against my better judgment given my limited experience with KSP, but I'll enter. I'll draw up a list of mods I'll use/choose not to use any, start up a sandbox game, get something that I think will mostly work, then figure out how to record my gameplay and post it to youtube. On the topic of mods, I see KAS is listed as approved. Is that still true since it now requires KIS? I have visions of making one lander and carrying small parts like parachutes and airbrakes to attach to it since I'm not sure what order I'd be visiting the moons.

Based on the tools that I know exist, I have a few ideas. If I were designing a ship to do this, I'd make a probe ship with an ISRU, two drills, a small ore tank, a 2.5m reaction wheel, three XL Solar panels spaced evenly, an orange tank, 8 delta wings radiating from the tank's rear, an LV-N, as many struts as it takes to make a stable ship, RCS, and whatever launch vehicle is necessary to get it to the class E. Once contact with the class E is achieved, I'd move it into solar orbit, orient prograde to the sun, and start burning while mining more LF. The sun's power, combined with atomic energy, will keep the ISRU and drills working even as far out as Eeloo while the delta wings radiate enough heat to allow for as long a burn as necessary under maximum thrust and the struts allow the use of physics warp to have to stare at it for only a fourth of the time. That said, I'm definitely a brute force person in KSP and I've never intercepted an asteroid before. A gravity assist from Jool, or even sundiving to slingshot toward interstellar space may be more preferable (Especially since solar panels work a lot better closer to the sun).

Somehow, one of the fuel lines on my 10k/s DeltaV interplanetary rover launch vehicle stopped being connected. Because it was asparagus staged, everything burned unevenly, resulting in this: On the plus side, I got to test the parachute deployment system, subsequent decouplers that kill the chutes, and perform a 20-minute rover test in Kerbin's highlands. All of that worked perfectly, and illustrated a solar panel issue I needed to address.

I successfully deployed one of my Rovers, intended to be used on atmospheric planets only, on the Mun! Fortunately, the decoupler force was enough to clear the Mk. V Auto-Interplanetary Rover from the wreckage of its own heatshield and parachute ring. Yes that is an LV-N it landed on - the transfer stage was always intended to be ditched when suborbital trajectory was achieved, and atmospheric braking would be used to land the rover. It transmitted four nice pieces of data, and we set off on a jaunt to investigate one of the craters! Of course nothing can be perfect - so this is the exact time one of the motors decided to burn out. No worries, the wheel can still steer, and we've got three more. We always knew the rover wouldn't last forever. One problem, though: By Kerbin weight, this rover weighs less than 1.5t. On the Mun, it's apparently a paper airplane. We actually bounced once - the wheels resisted the impact. When it landed on its back, not so much for the rover body. Oddly, most of the surviving debris is scientific equipment and batteries. I've already progressed to the Mk. 6 Interplanetary Auto-Rover (Ditch the parachute ring, attach radial parachutes to rover body via decouplers), but Mk. 7 will incorporate a reaction wheel to control attitude on low-grav exoplanets. This rover might have survived if it could have kept bouncing on its tires. And in the future, when one motor burns out, I will manually disable its counterpart to control steering better. And I will set the brake torque as high as possible in case we need to stop at some point. All in all, the 323 seconds this rover managed to do its job has been most educational.

Orbital circularization - bringing the Pe up above 70km - on three LV-N engines in a rocket that weighs 200 tons, and due to instability, couldn't manage a gravity turn. I needed 400 m/s delta V from engines never designed to provide thrust, just efficiency. It didn't work.

KSP: Owned the game since 1.0 hit. 166 hours playtime. Fallout New Vegas: Owned since 2011. 1084 hours playtime. KSP is not addictive at all. The fact that my KSP hours have incremented faster than almost any other game I've ever played is irrelevant (XCOM: Enemy Unknown incremented faster, but its total is only 169 hours), as is the fact that I play most games for less than 20 hours total, including spending 29 hours total on Saints Row IV. The datapoints are irrelevant. KSP is entirely non-addictive, and is safe for small children, and the elderly. Now I must finish launching atmospheric rovers to Duna & Laythe.

Based on the suggestion of a commenter here, I did some rover iterations and testing! Moved the short I-beams to the corners into an "X" shape, added some lights, some more batteries, and more solar panels. It was necessary to completely redesign the launch vehicle, but that was pulled off. The interplanetary stage incorporated some...unique...staging I wasn't all that sure of, so I did a burn test individually to see just how the game would react to what I did. Turns out that the game drew from the lower ring of LF tanks first evenly when they were separated from the upper ring by decouplers, so I organized the staging as: Ring of 6 100LF tanks, asparagus staging of 6 100LF tanks, central tank. Totals about 7K Delta V. There are some purpose-built radiators and heat sinks as well, and the descent stage features a ring of four parachutes, a reaction wheel, and a heat shield. I organized the launch vehicle as two rings of six LVT-45 boosters surrounding a central KR-2L booster. Mounted above the KR-2L is a Skipper with a Rockomax X-16. There was a snafu with the launch clamps that resulted in burning up two LVT-45 boosters before we actually got moving. We also had 12 R8 winglet control surfaces, which also marvelously conducted heat away from the KR-2L. The circularization burn had to be finished on the LV-N. There is one serious issue, though, that keeps me from sending this launch on to Duna or Eve or Moho or Laythe. The navball is reversed. When the rocket is burning prograde, the navball reads retrograde. I'm assuming something is wrong with the orientation of parts on my ship. I suspect it's because the rover body (Which I'm using to control the rocket) isn't considered to be aligned correctly with the rocket's axis of thrust. Flipping the rover would be a lot of work at this point, so I'm probably going to attach a different probe core to command with and manually set it to be controlled from there. When I get the navball issue sorted out, I'll send one probe apiece to each exo-planet I think has an atmosphere - this particular launch is going to serve to test my re-entry systems again and make sure I can disentangle the rover from the parachute ring.

That's an interesting idea. This is literally the second ever powered wheel vehicle I've ever constructed, so that's an experiment I'll do. I will say that I like the current I-200P configuration. The reason they're there is because I noticed the rover had a tendency to flip forward if it braked suddenly from 30m/s with no ability to right itself. I toyed with some solutions - landing legs, sepratrons - but I decided that they weren't in-character for my space program, but a giant metal rod that physically arrests the rover would be. It's incidental that they also serve as convenient mounting points for Mk16XL chutes, with the ability to detach them after landing. As well as generally playing nicely with building my staging sequence around them (My space program does not accept the existence of fairings. We're fairtheists). EDIT: Thanks for your input! I wound up mounting the I-200s on the corners, and the wheels on those. Gave me room for more batteries, solar panels, and actual lights (Which is probably a very good idea). It reduced maximum speed by about 33%, but also completely eliminated the tipping problem. I'll have to rework the launch vehicle, but I can get over that. And extended testing gave me enough science for a new technology.

I made and tested a rover! The concept was to create a small, idiotproof universal rover I could drop on any exoplanet with an atmosphere, and then set up intercepts to do that. The rover works like a charm, and so does the descent stage - heat shield, four parachutes, and the system to discard the parachutes afterwards. What absolutely did not work was the launch vehicle. How bad? This wasn't supposed to be a test. This was supposed to go to Duna. I think I'm going to have to take out all of the launch vehicle below the interplanetary stage and start from scratch.

I practiced landing probes! Got a little extra science, conclusively irritated my engineering staff, and the experience of landing probes all over Kerbin's biomes should be beneficial when the Eve probe I launched earlier arrives. Lol Wait. How are they testing jet engines when I don't use the SPH for anything?

Ouch. That's a difference of philosophy, I think. As a scrub, my philosophy is: *Overengineering is always better, right?

Have you considered putting thrust limiters on your Twin Boars to keep TWR from rising too high? I find the sweet spot is about 1.38. It keeps you from losing speed due to air resistance, and slows overheating due to engine heat. You can also place wings to help radiate heat before it gets to the decoupler. Delta Wings work the closest to best.