Ultimate Steve

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Epilogue I: A New Cetidra Epilogue II: Harmony Of The Heavens Epilogue III: The Voyages' End Epilogue IV: A Space Odyssey Epilogue V: Faster Than Light Epilogue VI: Stories And Starships Epilogue VII: The Uncertainty Principle Epilogue VIII: The Hearth Tenders Epilogue IX: Hoarders Of Hope Epilogue X: Let There Be Light

Chapter 36 - May The Infinities Smile Upon You

Chapter 35 - The Meaning Of Happiness

Chapter 34 - The Battle For Kerbin

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Fantastic! Just saw your Discord message, I'll get back to you with more details when I'm less busy (University, cubesat project, KSP 2 stuff, etc). My best design had in theory gone as low as 8.8 tons, but I was never fully able to test it, and I don't think I ever managed to successfully fly the Tylo lander even if it is successful on paper. Eve vehicle got down to ~1.4 tons but had to fight instability from using the basic fin layout (interestingly enough the Cub was used on this design as bizarrely it was somehow the best engine for the job). Another Eve design has no instability but uses the slighlty heavier actual wings.

Can confirm my Mun orbits gradually decay as well.

Hmm, this is an interesting observation. I might try installing the game on my backup drive as my hard drive is always pegged at 100%.

So that's how you are all doing it! I was assuming you all were using clear input locks or something, I swear I didn't send 2 Kerbals in the grand tour just to show off, lol.

Fantastic! It is amazing that they are all finally compiled in one place! Question about this. Does "Pilot" also include up to one EVA jetpack and one EVA parachute per Kerbal? Assuming the wiki is correct, Kerbals are 45 kilograms, the jetpack is 40, and the chute is 4, totaling 89 (I think KER would be a better measure as I remember the total being 90, so we would have to check). It might be worth clarifying in case it causes trouble going forward. The 11,488kg grand tour could be counted as low as 11,358kg subtracting both Kerbals and the jetpack (I counted total liftoff mass). I think this is worth clarifying seeing as Kerbals are no longer discrete ~89kg units, but now have themselves, and optional jetpacks and parachutes. Also, Who is working on the grand tour record? I have some very interesting design optimizations that could see the record drop by potentially another couple tons, but I am far too impatient to fly the mission as pretty much all user friendliness is stripped out. I would probably be happy to collaborate with someone, pooling our ideas and patience and varied piloting skills for a co-operative mission and shared credit.

It is the eve of KSP 2! Let's all show off our KSP 1 ribbons! For the uninitiated, they can be generated at https://www.kerbaltek.com/ribbons. They are a good way of summing up most KSP 1 achievements in a small image and have been around for many years. I remember the first batch of ribbons I generated, I probably hadn't even landed on the Mun yet, if so, just barely. Maybe Minmus too. I was so proud that I tried to make them in real life out of cardboard, markers, paper, and glue. I plan on doing something similar, but more professional, for KSP 2's achievements. My final (at least before KSP 2 comes out) KSP 1 achievements: (Some Kerbals lost and saved not included - all of the ones present are just the notable ones because I have forgotten. My memory is shoddy so it may not be 100% accurate) Each symbol here was not necessarily chosen as the most impressive thing I have done, but the most memorable. Sun: Station to honor Icarus station from my YouTube series Solar Station, which exists in Low Polar Kerbol Orbit at what I think is the lowest altitude a solar station has ever been built at. It will contain craft to go lower when I get around to finishing it. Asteroid: I had an old 1.3.1 no reverts save where I constructed a giant refueling station in low Kerbin orbit and I have fond memories from that station. This old 1.3.1 save is technically from my old report Project Timberwind/Bob and Sily but that should never have gotten a story TBH, it fared much better as a private save. Moho: Never got around to a base, but chose Lander because I landed a massive mothership there in Project Intrepid. I also contributed a lot of stuff to the Project Upsilon Moho phase, including a docking standard which went on to play some part of the rest of the project, and a space fighter for the Moho series. Eve: Did create a massive base but also landed a massive skyscraper so was really considering going with monument on this one. Both of these were part of my YouTube series Eve and Back. Also did an SRB only ascent, in my short lived SRB grand tour series (I only ended up getting halfway to Moho before the SRB "refuelings" became too much - this was back when the Kickback was the largest SRB). Gilly: No permanent presence, so chose multi part ship to honor my first major Eve expedition, which was basically a copycat of Kuzzter's mission. The rover was a very cool thing that used reaction wheels to roll around. Anomaly due to my investigations of the Gilly rift, one of the few times I felt I did actual science in the game. Kerbin: Space station to honor Space Station Epic V, which I never finished, and is several years old at this point. There have been many stations, though, and this can honor all of them. Kerbal lost to honor the 6 Kerbals who perished in an SSTO accident (stupid runway lights lol) in a no reverts save, and one pilot who died in a plane crash in that same save. Mun: Base to honor my largest Mun base in an old 1.3.1 save, and also for my SRB only Mun base I made many years ago and probably never posted. Kerbal lost to honor the numerous Kerbals I've crashed into the Mun, Kerbal saved to honor one specific Kerbal who jumped from a fuel depleted lander in that 1.3.1 no reverts save, just barely making it to safety. Minmus: Base to honor my largest Minmus base in that same old 1.3.1 save, and also the (very much edited in) Minmus Shipyard from Project Intrepid. Duna: Base to honor my two Duna bases, one in that no reverts 1.3.1 save, and one small one from Project Intrepid. Ike: Base to honor my Project Intrepid Ike base. Dres: Torn between armada and rover (base?) to honor the Project Intrepid Dres activities, chose Armada because of the mega cool moment I had where one giant mothership was out of fuel screaming by Dres, and the second ship refueled, rendezvoused with it, transferred fuel, and there was this amazing few minutes where both ships were burning together in formation to enter Dres orbit. Jool: Was a very very close decision between armada honoring Jool Expedition 1, my first no holds barred armada mission, way back in the pre-Intrepid days, or multi part ship honoring Voyage: The Final Warning. I ended up choosing multi part ship, but both missions are very important and meaningful to me. If I had flown the Project Intrepid JAVELIN Jool Ascent Vehicle before abandoning that save, I would have also appended the atmospheric bar. Laythe: Base to honor two bases, one from a private save which involved the short lived attempt to colonize Laythe, and the other for my contributions to a community save back in the day, can't remember what it was called, which involved a massive, probably 50 Kerbal monolithic Laythe base. Kerbal to honor (Voyage: The Final Warning Spoilers). Come to think of it, I should add Kerbal saved. Vall: There is no good symbol for "MY LANDER WON'T WORK SO I WILL BRING THE MOTHERSHIP DOWN AND HOVER IT JUST ABOVE THE SURFACE WHILE I JUMP OUT, PLANT A FLAG, AND HOP BACK IN!!!" so I chose base instead (I did not ever make a base there). That was one of my most memorable KSP 1 moments ever. Tylo: Rover, but well, base, but a very minor base consisting of a small collection of vehicles from the Project Intrepid days. I chose rover to be conservative because I do not fully remember how in depth it was, but it could house at least one Kerbal internally, maybe a few more externally, and could refuel visiting landers. Bop: Extreme EVA to honor two extreme EVAs (one of which might have occurred on Pol, I don't recall at the moment). Ethan's monumental extreme EVA in Voyage: The Final Warning, and Jebediah's battle with the Deep Space Kraken in Nightmares/Project Intrepid. Pol: Landing to honor various Pol landings. I never did a lot of cool stuff at Pol, I always meant to send a base because its a cool looking little moon. Eeloo: Multi part ship to honor my first Eeloo expedition, waaaay back in the windows movie maker era of my YouTube presence. I forget the ship's name, but it was I think just under 10 launches and had a lot of cool stuff. Fond memories from being out that far for the very first time. Grand Tour: I could have chosen Project Odyssey, my first grand tour, with a really really cool ship, but I ended up choosing my 11.5 ton single launch grand tour to put on this ribbon, what I consider to be my greatest KSP 1 achievement, and my sendoff to the game. It is represented by the aircraft symbol. What do your ribbons look like, what are the stories behind their missions, and which ones are you the most proud of?

I don't remember how far away the GU stars are, but I've been using NFT to go to the Other Worlds star system just fine, although I am using better time warp and the trip does take 150 years. There's hoops to jump through, yes, but it isn't physically impossible assuming the stars are at a similar distance. Having a 19,000s isp ion engine solves a lot of problems.

Hmm, I wonder what it stands for. Personal Artificial Intelligence Guidance Expert?

This seems like a really awesome thing to do. I don't have that much time left (University, work, cubesat stuff, and enough free time to stay sane), but I'd love to do something for this... One problem, though. How do I top this? I got done with this a bit too early for me to consider it a true sendoff mission, but I guess it is a sendoff in spirit... I mean I suppose I could try to finish Voyage. That would be a decent sendoff, probably ~5 years of storytelling coming to an end. I probably don't have the time to do a more impressive mission than what is above. Worth noting that I have a mostly finished design that can theoretically complete a grand tour in under 9 tons, but I got there by stripping all user friendliness out of the above design. You would have to pay me to fly it, lol, but it would top that. Any ideas on what I can do that I haven't done before, with a very tight schedule? Actually come to think of it I've never done Jool ascent... I built a craft that could do it waaaaay back in the Project Intrepid days but Project Intrepid died before it arrived at Jool... That's one option.

Roger that, installing near future stuff now. I was totally ready to try to cram everything needed into 2 ton packages though!

May I ask what you recommend as far as interstellar transportation goes? It seems like it is supposed to be done with the lasers. In order to have reasonable travel times as I found with the sprites, you have to be going really fast (multiple tens of kilometers per second). This brings the problem of slowing down at the other end, as you would need stacks of xenon to be able to slow down from those velocities. The solution I thought was obvious was to bring a laser to the Cercani system. I did some LKO testing, and wow, the laser power drops off very quickly, like halfway to the Mun and I wasn't getting any reasonable acceleration from my space based laser. No biggie, I thought, I just need to be extremely accurate when approaching Cercani, basically getting a really close approach with my deceleration laser. As for how to get the laser there in the first place, I had the idea that I would drop off a sacrificial laser in front of me to slow me down. This is the setup, it is about 40 tons, and only manages 0.2-0.5g or so using the KSC's lasers, which is not enough. I spent several minutes accelerating using the Kerbin lasers, and by the time the acceleration dwindled down to nothing due to distance, I was still 500m/s short of Kerbol escape (and I had to sit there for several minutes spam buying time on the KSC laser, if I was in career it would have been several tens of millions of funds if not more). Is there a way to upgrade the lasers? I notice my space based lasers say 0.5 gen next to them. Is there a way to upgrade them that I missed? I have not been to Cercani yet except with a very inaccurate sprite flyby. Even when I get there I doubt my ship lasers will do much to slow me down, as I was only getting 0.003g from my orbiting laser out of this thing. Am I completely missing the intended method to get places? Or are the travel times supposed to be measured in centuries? Basically, what am I missing?

Update: I teleported the laser to orbit and it works, it might have something to do with the fact that the laser was landed.

Here you go: https://www.dropbox.com/s/743vovgrwwry6mn/KSP.log?dl=0 It cuts off saying it is searching for vessels with a generator (there is definitely one on the runway, and it showed up in the GUI). Also here is the save link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/0z2x48whndmrfomqtprt1/h?dl=0&rlkey=yec1b389csvzwoyeotphrs6wy

Hello! I am attempting to get this to work, but I am having some issues - TLDR, trying to power a craft with a ground based laser is crashing the game.

I remember designing a Jool ascent vehicle with stock bearings, oh boy what a pain that was. So glad I don't have to do that again. Come to think of it, I think that craft is still sitting en route in an old 1.4 save... Man, I feel old now.

I've been wanting something like this for a good long while. Unfortunately time is very hard to come by as of late, but I will hopefully be able to dig into this on Sunday. With the name and the music it can't be a coincidence that I'm picking up Outer Wilds vibes. In the event that I turn my playthrough into a video series, is it ok if I open with the trailer?

I was aware that you could do up to Vall/Moho on ions. I was not aware you could do Duna. In testing I was unable to find a power storage/generation solution that was light enough. I could take off but I couldn't take off with enough power to reach orbit. What's the trick for that? Or would it involve staging?

Magic heat shield propellers and dragless fairings would probably allow this challenge to be completed. If propellers and aerodynamic exploits are not allowed, then I would say this challenge is probably impossible with a conventional craft. It is possible to do an ion powered Kerbin ascent without aero exploits (Stratz or Bradley or someone did it I believe) but that relies on a high mountain increasing the isp of the ion engines. The tallest mountain on Eve likely wouldn't boost the isp enough to allow the ion engine to produce much, if any thrust. Even then you still have to get a giant fragile frankenglider through Eve's atmosphere and off of Kerbin, which would require thousands if not tens of thousands of parts.

I might give this a go. I have some scoring questions, though. The 1E9 comes from the 1 billion, the 1E8 comes from the days and funds. 1+1+0.5+0.33 is from Jeb and his 3 friends. I am confused as to why it is getting multiplied by 3, and I'm confused as to why there are 2 +1s in there instead of 3. Shouldn't that be a +4 total? Jeb reached Jool, 1 point for a landing, 1 point for Laythe, and 1 point for a KSC landing. And wouldn't that multiply stuff by 2 instead of 3? From what I'm getting, the score for the example should be: 1E9*(1+1+1+1+(2*(1+1+0.5+0.33)))/1E8 Very interesting challenge idea, just slightly confused on the scoring.