dnbattley

@mystifeid and @IncongruousGoat: your dedication and inventiveness has further advanced the achievements of 42-part craft everywhere: congratulations and thanks for sharing these two platinum submissions. I'll add these up to the leaderboard as soon as I can get to my pc (I am currently traveling). Overall, I think the hypothesis of 42-part craft being able to "go anywhere and do anything" has been comprehensively proven. I hope everyone who has submitted so far enjoyed the unique challenge the design limitations offered, and feels they have learned something new from it. For anyone who has not yet but wants to, please note that I will curate this particular thread for the foreseeable future, and once filled will be replacing designs on the leaderboard where newer, improved, or simply more interesting versions of the same concept are submitted, so please feel free to participate.

We are all people of honour here, and you sir have earned another platinum place: the first without ISRU. Congratulations! I shall update the leaderboard when next at my computer...

To all followers of this challenge: 1. Thank you . 2. Should a 42-piece Jool 5 mission be Gold or Platinum? I'm veering toward the latter, but welcome views. Yes I am pre-empting the ambition and skill of members of this forum... I'll not be attempting it myself (this week, at least... )

That was epic! And a great learning resource to boot. Adding to the leaderboard...

This could be fun...

So... in the spirit of keeping up with the neighbours, here is my submission (apologies for a quick and dirty edit job). Some details have been teased out earlier, but in summary: Jeb was still waiting in a field outside the KSC after returning from Laythe, so this one was with Val and Bill. 42 parts meant no fuel pump, requiring some... creative first stage antics. Transfer to Eve was uneventful, as was decelerating to LEO. My personal favourite moment was the detachment (somewhere around 00:50) of what KSP regards as "debris", but is in fact essential fuel for a return journey (indeed it was enough for about 3 return journeys, but I like to build in some leeway...). The low point was when Val sent Bill outside on a made-up errand, and then "detaching" the lander pod. He'll now be calling that pod home for some time to come... She got her comuppence when she missed the VAB roof by about a metre, and I refused to let her have a do-over... Craft file here: https://kerbalx.com/dnbattley/The-Impossible42 Technically the craft file above and image below are slightly off per the video as I had replaced the topmost T100 visible with a T400 for an additional source of dV for the main craft in case it was needed for reaching LEO (in the end it wasn't), but the relatively minimal effort of changing them now somehow just seems too high for me, and since it's my challenge anyway, I shall award myself a pass on doing that You sure did! Nailed it too... Congratulations! You are the inaugural Platinum winner. Leaderboard will be updated asap.

I have seen the Eve Rocks challenge before, but confess I had to refresh myself on its contents: it sadly appears to have fallen into disrepair since 1.0 (and I note your activity on the challenge from 2014: I bow to your long time experience!)... As to my experience: I've been in and around KSP (and occasionally lurking in this forum, but actively posting on the subreddit) for a few years now, and definitely consider myself in the upper quartile of players, but the funny thing is I only (very) recently got round to actually attempting to land on Eve (as evidenced by my post on the matter). Hope you get the issues sorted: looking forward to seeing your submission on here in due course

Sort of... it is indeed a Mk2 Lander, for taking 2 Kerbals into orbit: one of them gets to sit in an EVA chair for the duration of the Eve landing (having transferred in orbit). The other one... stays in the lander, on Eve, having overseen the refuelling work... Sorry Bill: there just wasn't the dV to lift a capsule off, nor the available parts to add a ladder. I promise I'll send someone back for you... at some point. Anyway... new video shot (I've done this mission so many times now I can almost do it blindfolded): just need to clean up the "outtakes" and will then post the whole thing in 10x speed or so... possibly even with some commentary to help explain things. Landed at 130m above sea level: was pushing for the "platinum" status... I fear you might have problems on Eve with that design on both landing stability, ensuring it doesn't "see-saw" in half on lift off (though auto-strut might be strong enough to cope there), and that the dV might only permit a higher altitude landing. Nice simplicity to the design: the majority of the mass of my craft was the booster section just to get itself up to 5000m, ready for the single vector mid-stage to kick in, and even then it had to cope with a few seconds of <1 TWR...

Part limit... 42 Eve capable lander cost... 154,766 Your wife leaning on your computer's power button while you were recording the mission... priceless. *sigh*

Great mission report! Thanks for the heads up - I'll investigate and update today, together with adding your impressively functional mission to the leaderboard. EDIT: I forgot to "publish" the craft. Now fixed. Meanwhile I have almost finished preparing another mission report which should be something quite special...

I'm sold on making the change, and propose Lathe surface reduced to Bronze (land)/Silver (sea), Eve surface to Silver (3000m+)/Gold (300m+)/Platinum (<300m), and will update the rules. Apologies to anyone already working towards a given award level... I'm not yet convinced about upgrading Tylo to gold as a low part lander with the necessary 5-or-so-k dV doesn't strike me as all that hard, though I can see it challenging the space plane crowd...

I will trust in your honour, good sir. Haha... thank you very much! I may be new posting in this particular forum, but believe me when I say that underneath this youthful "visage" lie some pretty gnarly KSP wrinkles...

Hmmm... I would definitely consider it borderline to design a craft that can only be flown using computer control, and so would be against using flight assist to launch, plan and execute all manoeuvres in a mission, but I won't bar use of the mod as it doesn't ultimately change the physics, and am happy for an honour system to apply.

Laythe is indeed a distinctly more reasonable destination than Eve: I may even need to downgrade it to Silver (unless it's an actual sea-landing, perhaps?). Good luck on the landing though: 4 extra parts could offer extra-sturdy landing legs perhaps?

I'm not familiar with the exact capabilities of the autopilot mod, but provided it is "assisting" and not "flying the whole mission for you", then yeah, sure.