Haruspex

My oldest save is at Kerbin Year 65 or so. Got there by doing lots of interplanetary flights without mods, one at a time.

KSP 2 is the best bit of news this day. Awesome.

Continued from above. III. Minmus

...It is Year 61 of the Kerbal Space Age. A prototype of a new series of interplanetary ships, production index K-ET8909, is about to be launched for extensive testing in the Kerbin system. If mass built, those ships will open a new age of colonization of Duna and the moons of Jool. On day 155, The Twin Moons Expedition sails to the stars at dawn. Twin Moons Expedition (craft file) I. Kerbin

- Four kerballed missions to outer planets that either missed the target or failed to capture because of insufficient fuel, etc. Had to remotely euthanize their crews when cleaning the campaign of high part count junk. And they were very high part count junk indeed! - Multiple "suicide landers" - one way kerballed surface missions. The one on Eve eventually got a rover and some company and I now consider them a permanent colony. The one on Duna died during an unlucky EVA after more than 20 years on the planet. The one on Ike got picked up after living some 30 years in a lander can. By that time I devised a working Duna ascent vehicle and would save the poor "Dunatian" as well, but he was long dead by that point. There were at least four more. - The surface of Kerbin must be covered with irradiated craters from all the nuclear and isotope-filled stuff I casually let to slam into it at high speeds. Nearly every design I use has at least one RTG in it, just incase, because solar panels are unreliable and fragile. And if something goes farther than LKO - it usually has a set of nuclear engines on it. I love my nuclear Mun landers that double as tugs... Yeah, Mun and Minmus must be also quite irradiated by Kerbin Year 60. And i'm not even mentioning the littering, the pollution, thousands of tons of rocket fuel dumped in the ocean, the Magic Boulder full of alien goo slammed into the North Pole...

Yes, it essentially needs to be a VTOL. But even an extra couple of forward-facing thrusters bound to an action group could have probably helped in this case. Or a dozen more parachutes. Let's see how the Duna Express II fares.

...That didn't end well. The landing speed was still way over 100 m/s, so the experimental Duna Express now rests in pieces. Must add more boosters...

Too late. I dragged it to 80x80 polar orbit and mined all the ore from it, and that ore is now probably everywhere. Now the only non-contaminated colony and the last hope of Kerbalkind is a small settlement on Duna.

Caught a strange class E passing through my lawn the Kerbin SOI. It would be a common 1100-something- ton asteroid full of ore, if not for that blue... glowy... lichen? Veins of... goo? Is that the Mystery Goo?! So that's where it comes from! No wonder it feels home in deep space!

Question: are new MH parts considered as stock, modded, or separate category for this challenge?

Stock air brakes can affect yaw, roll and pitch and thus can actually be used to some degree to control the vehicle. They aren't intended for this, of course, and that's why a proper set of deployable control surfaces is a much better option. So there's really two intersecting problems here: (nearly)unusable airbrakes that explode if you try to actually use them to slow down, and lack of folding flaps or fins that could be extended as needed. Using stock airbrakes in this capacity is a cheap hack, but even this is now impossible.

Currently, the only folding set of control surfaces we have in stock are airbrakes. They would be totally fine (and they were for a while!), but some time ago they got their heat tolerance nerfed into the ground. Now deployed airbrakes do not survive Kerbin reentry. My suggestion is to either bring the airbrakes' heat tolerance to that of MK3 equipment (2400-2600 K), or, better yet, to add a set of proper grid fins into the stock tech tree. Thank you!

RFK Co. (formerly known as Roley and Ferbur's Design Emporium) presents the pinnacle of their product line: K-57F in the "supersonic" category. The Model F, equipped with two Panther engines, posesses the same unsurpassed maneuverability and ease of flight as other members of the K-57 family and can carry 40 passengers around Kerbin at hypersonic speeds with luxurious comforts of a private business jet. It costs only a bit more than your average subsonic 40 passenger plane, while the maintenance costs are practically the same. Why crawl like a winged snail somewhere below the clouds when you can soar around the globe at Mach, 3 like a thunderbird of pure glory? Purchase K-57F now - and earn a Kraken plushie and a rare Jool Expedition poster signed by Tangy Kerman herself! Craft: https://kerbalx.com/haruspex/Tern-F - Passengers: 40 - Price: 33116000 - Fuel: 1280 kallons - Takeoff speed: 60 m/s - Cruising speed: 800 m/s (Maximum speed: 925 m/s) - Cruising altitude: 20000 m - Fuel burn rate: 0.3 kal/s - Estimated range: 3400 km - 39 parts

While Roley and Ferbur are on another daring mission to sample mint icecream study cryovolcanism on Minmus, the company's engineers attempted to "optimize" the Model D, mainly by hacking away all the redundant parts. The result was the Model E, which you can see here. https://kerbalx.com/haruspex/Tern-E They removed all the quality of life modules, installed during the in-house use of the prototype, such as the probe core, the solar battery, the antenna and the retractable ladder. The long segmented fuel tank that ran under the passenger cabin was also removed; instead, the rear section of the cabin was converted to one big fuel tank. The pontoons were welded to the wings instead of structural pylons, despite warnings that the engine might get flooded with water with the new configuration. All this lowered the part count to 44 (from 57), unit cost with fuel to 23571000 (from 28271000 for Model D), cruising speed rose to 250 m/s at 6000 m and estimated range effectively doubled to 1600 km with 640 kallons of fuel - at the cost of 8 passenger seats. The comfort for the 24 remaining passengers improved, though, as there's now an extra fuel tank between them and the engine. It would be probably wise to admit that the design of the Tern with its overly complex wings with advanced (and pricey) system of flaps just does not downscale well into the economy segment, where it is forced to compete with ugly, but effective duct-taped contraptions in 9-15 million price range. Model E would probably stay where it belongs - ferrying the company executives to resort islands and back, or something. (That reminds me that I should put back the ladder, at least.) ...On the other hand, perhaps, we can weld a large booster or two to it and sell it as a supersonic luxury liner.... wait! That's a good idea!

K-7210 “Condor” Commissioned: Feb. 10, 2017 for the Kerbin Circumnavigation challenge. Original presentation: A screenshot that shows the general make up of the airframe: Original Description: K-7210 “Condor” was an experimental plane built to circumnavigate Kerbin (see the forum challenge thread) and for other miscellaneous tasks the contracts might offer. Stats: - Pure Stock - 56 parts - Mass (fully laden): 52.92 t - Unit Cost: 76846 kerbucks - Crew capacity in default configuration: 1 (pilot) - Fuel Capacity: 6240 - Estimated Range: The entirety of Kerbin. Known Flaws: In the last version of KSP, the original model 7210 displays overheating problems at ~20+ minutes of continuous flight at full throtlle in the lower atmosphere. Reduce speed and/or apply other measures as necessary. Craft File: https://kerbalx.com/haruspex/Condor

Can the base be mobile and self-propelled? For example, if I fly a transport plane that has a passenger cabin, a lab in the cargo bay, some batteries and solar panels, a docking port, and carries a rover, and park that plane on the polar cap, does that count as a base for the purpose of this challenge? Edit: the OP edited their post to answer my question.

Tell that to Gilly, please.

What space baby?! Those are obviously the twin suns of Tattooine, and the Kerbal is a Sith dual-wielding red lightsabers.

A picture is worth a lot of words, so: Fig. A (Jool Expedition - 1.1) Fig. B (Eve Expedition - 1.2) Pretty much self explanatory. The mothership is assembled in orbit and consists of a nuclear lander/tug with ISRU, an orbiter part with the lab and the like and various disposable/one way stuff like relay satellites, atmospheric probes, rovers, etc.

KSP is a single player game, and thus, will "die" when the last regularly used copy of it on the last computer capable of running it, ceases to exist. For example, I plan to live for at least 40 more years, and I do enjoy to launch little green men into space from time to time. If Windows PC as a platform is still a thing 40 years from now, I'll have it in my retirement hovel with a selection of games such as: Frontier: Elite II, Civilization, Skyrim, Dwarf Fortress, Crusader Kings II, and, last, but not least, KSP on the hard drive. So, TL:DR : Nope.

So basically what you want is another Gilly in a low Jool orbit.

It is year 57, day 355 of the Kerbal Space Age, and the Sixth Interplanetary Expedition prepares to land on Eve! ----- Previously: - The Sixth leaves Kerbin - The Sixth is hit by a Kraken - The Sixth arrives at Eve, Seeald gets a Rover - The Sixth rescues the Second - The Sixth refuels at Gilly ----- The mothership is in the low (150x150 km) Eve orbit. Hilne and Gilrie Kerman say their last farewells to the Kerbals they rescued - the crew of four remaining from the Second Interplanetary, Megalla the contract victim and Jananne the scientist (who, in the end, decided that she is not yet ready to spend the remainder of her life on Eve). Kerbal Spaceship Sanly Kerman - our lab shuttle - undocks and begins the deorbit burn. Target: the peninsula where Seeald Kerman is. ...Oh dear. What can i say. Eve in 1.3.1 is brutal. Trying to land an old (1.2) MK3 shuttle on it with 100% heating is an exercise in futility. Fireworks in the atmosphere start at 75 km, but at 50-55 km there's a layer that hits you like a brick in the face. Enter it at a wrong angle, or with a wrong speed, and you're toast in seconds. I mean, as in 2600K-proof MK3 parts overheating and exploding in seconds. So, what was the solution two brave Kerbettes devised? A rather counterintuitive one. Plunging into the 50-km layer directly prograde means death sentence. So I pitched the shuttle up 50-60 degreees and, when the heat spiked, started to frantically turn side to side, attempting to do barrel rolls and the like to expose other side of the craft to the airstream and bleed off speed. ...THIS. IS. KERBIN!!! ...Some stuff still exploded, but the airframe remained intact. They made it through. Meawhile, down at the surface Seeald is awake at night, anticipating the first meeting with another living kerbal after more than 50 years he spent here at Eve. At the dawn, he sets towards the shuttle which landed 58 km away from him near the coast. A couple of long days later, it happens. Oh, the joy, the sadeness, the SCIENCE! Seeald, Hilne and Gilrie are united. Their mission is to establish the first permanent Kerbal colony on Eve. As for the Sixth Interplanetary? Well, it's heading back to Kerbin. To say that the rescued crew who spent half a century orbiting Eve are fed up with this purple ball would be... an understatement.

Xyphos is right, but even if Gilly is there to serve as a refueling stop, one must remember that - Gilly is really glitchy. Anything landed on the surface that is left there during exit to the space center/tracking station, or experiences timewarp, has a good chance to explode through "collision with the surface", because the game might decide that your ship isn't actually landed. I had lander legs explode and mining drills explode on "Easing Physics" phase on Gilly for no apparent reason, and had a lander just disappear and a kerbal listed for dead on exit to the tracking station as well. Miniscule gravity and non-spherical, rotating, shape are the culprits. So, yes, it's a good place to refuel, but an actual mining outpost there likely won't last long. Get in, mine ore, get out without switching ships, and be prepared to quickload.

Any crash a Kerbal can walk away from... ...Can still be turned into a mission success!

- Moho: Ion probe in orbit. - Eve: Two one-way landings. Kerbal with a rover on the surface, multiple probes and an old derelict mothership in orbit. - Gilly: It's a refueling spot. Enough said. Currently a 100-ton mothership with eight kerbals onboard in orbit. - Duna: Surface - several landers, one flag, one dead kerbal. Orbit - an old mothership, several contract probes. - Ike: An old lander on the surface (a kerbal spent 30 years in it before I rescued him) and an ore survey probe in orbit. - Dres: Ion probe in orbit. - Jool: Old ion probe in orbit. Burned another one in the atmosphere Cassini style. Multiple visits and flybys from bigger expedition ships. - Pol: A massive expedition once was here. Refueling stop for Jool missions. Three flags on the surface, survey probe in orbit. - Bop: An expedition was here. Flag on the surface, survey probe in orbit. - Vall: Аn expedition was here. Flag on the surface, survey probe in orbit. - Tylo: Expedition flyby only. A survey probe in orbit. - Laythe: Expedition flyby. An atmospheric probe full of science is splashed down in the Sagan Sea. - Eeloo: Ion probe in orbit. That pretty much sums it down, except Mun and Minmus (too much activity on and around those to list here).