dreadmullet

It's harder than it looks. There's a rotating wheel space station in Orbiter that you can dock with. It took me about 50 tries to dock with it the first time. I can only imagine what it must be like with collision between ships. I imagine it results in lots of Fun.

I shall be the first one to construct a rotating wheel space station. Docking is going to be hard.

By placing a bunch of bricks in the exact same spot and pressing launch, it creates a spectacular explosion. Take that, physics!

This just goes to show that Kerbalkind can achieve any task if they set their minds to it. Next challenge: get a sperm whale into orbit.

You're all doing it wrong. It would be much more efficient to build a space elevator and transport the block that way. No rockets are needed, just years and years of manual labor. Ladies and gentlekerbos, I present to you, the first ever space elevator!

Geeky. (made with Celestia)

The first thing I thought when I saw this was: 'I wonder what the rest of the rocket looks like...'

8487.5 m/s. http://i.imgur.com/Qgey6.jpg The ship: http://i.imgur.com/Vcji3.jpg Can we call this a tie?

I managed to beat the original velocity: http://i.imgur.com/e8hVN.jpg The best way to go seems to be to follow a standard orbit insertion, but just keep the engines going. I just need one more tank of fuel. But that means I'll go slower... :S rocket science is hard. I don't think there should be any trajectory limits. Trying to go straight up doesn't make sense, because if you're 5 degrees off thats an advantage. I think this should be based on piloting skills, as well as ship design.

I came close... Burning perpendicular along the ground instead of straight up gave me an extra 700 m/s. I don't know what I would have gained if I had burned at the next periapsis. Heres what it looks like at launch: link I think I need about eleventy more engines.

This is my best rocket yet. 13 liquid engines fire at launch and half the time it breaks up mid-flight. The abort sequence consists of activating the first 6 solids and releasing them, miraculously destroying everything but the command module. However, if it makes it past the first stage, I can get into orbit with plenty of fuel to spare.