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Don\'t I know it! I guess the ideal vertical lander would need ASAS and RCS which makes it heavy and shortens flight time. But first you need to slow it down because flying by the seat of the pants with a terrain based target is very tricky, I suppose you could gamble everything on a disposable chute connected by decoupler, use that to slow the ship right down on reentry and then you get half a minute to hover and use RCS to position the ship to land. OtherDalfite, strange, is that reproduceable? What were the conditions? Worthy of a bug report if it is.

Comradephil and DeltaBravo well done, star pilot dudes! Thanks for the screens. Grats on the first post shot One Winged Angel and thanks for the screens. You are now a cool star spud. Oouuch on the second! Too bad 'dead or alive' only works for bounties. Its pretty annoying when a long trip goes pear shaped in the final seconds, but then that is part of the game with a challenge like this. I would guess it was the 6 SAS which did it, if the screenies represent the landing stage accurately. I ran tests on the Podule 3 reentry stage in a post above to check it would land OK before going to the sun and back. I think I am becoming a Kerbal nerd... but that lands OK over land only, with an engine and empty tank crumple zone using a stock chute deployed at the opportune moment (about 1100m v125m/s, aligned to trajectory). That allowed me to cut out the SAS and final decoupler entirely but then I had to fly it manually for every burn which was a bit tricky. I must have got close to 2000m/s delta v out of the lightweight single tank reentry stage and needed every bit of it, though I am thinking it could go smaller! Good luck with your next attempt Angel, I am hoping you get the launch pad, it is embarassing as the thread author to be putting myself at the top of the ticker tape parade, makes me look like a conceited ass! 8)

Yes One Winged Angel, as far as I know noone has hit the pad yet from a sunshot. Did you hit the KSC terrain from a sunshot?

Luigi and Scruffy, howdy. Thankyou for your amusing catastrophes, better luck next time! Entered both of you on the roll call of those tragically lost in space. :\'( Ronox, what can I say? She is a beauty and a beast all rolled into one. Does she have a name?

Needs a runway made of a pile of dust and a snow plough for landing gear.

Grats to Salda007. Talking about life support... OK, my last small ship wasnt small enough. Latest mission time 627 days. Didn\'t have enough juice to make a precision landing and I had to use the empty LFT and LFE as a crumple zone, but it all worked out and I ended up on the day side, with Kerbals intact. Podule 3 lifts off, without command module separator and SAS. Sun altitude moving at speed and just enough fuel to return The podule moves a bit too fast with a chute but the lower components will break the Kerbals fall. Flight summary.

Yahaha! You say that now...!! ;P Would a friction generating collision on a tangent to the surface be sufficient to land though I wonder?

My immediate reaction to that was *cool idea* but then it struck me, what use would a runway be on a mune without an atmosphere ? 8) It would have to be VTOL, but you could use RCS as the gravity should be much lower. I want one of the from UFO.

Well played Ronox. The hub cap returns. That is a quick time and a sleek looking ship. Sorry thorfinn, just a bit of fun 8) Interesting image, is that a flying pig!? Seems somehow appropriate. I will take a look at the Nausicaa original if ever it crosses my path though I wouldn\'t go out of my way for Porco tbh. I noticed the other two, Spirited and Mononoke because of their attention to the balance between human industry and the health of the living environment. Its a thing for me being a biologist type, plus I keep a tropical aquarium and Japanese nature gardens have had a strong influence on nature aquariums through the work of Takashi Amano, which I mostly like and Mononoke especially was remarkable for its portrayal of natural scenery and the spirits within...

Perty piccys. You made good time, the hubcap is yours, when Bob\'s done with it. Sorry Ronox, maybe you can win it back ? PS Ghibli makes me think of Spirited Away & Princess Mononoke.

That has to be the highest altitude I have seen Zeroiginite. It seems that HarvesteR has tweaked the max altitude, I wonder how far you can go before the game crashes? I will add a prize for furthest round trip when/if you get back! I wondered where they went! Incidentally I am adding a prize for fastest round trip and your 234 days is currently the title holder. The trophy is the hubcap of Bob Kermans Korris Kinor, engraved. You will get it when he is done with it, he is still using it to hold the bolts left over from when he cleaned the engine. Go for it brody, show us the screenies, if you can make it there and back and land on the runway with ship intact and crew alive you would definitely be one wiley star spud.

Direct burn Cannon. In all my experiments using the same rocket for both methods I always did better with a direct burn plus about 50m/s additional to the speed where the apoapsis breaks and the green line appears then disappears when you make escape velocity. You don\'t need much more than that as that will give you over 1000m/s at 1000M distance. Less for the smaller rockets so you don\'t have to decelerate as much. IMHO The faster you move away from the gravity well the more of your velocity you keep so in the end it works out more effective to just go for it, using Kerbal physics anyway. It is as well to add a small burn towards the sun on the 270° bearing just to take you off the vertical once you are on your way because there seems to be a bug where your velocity changes axis when you drop out of warp if you go vertical all the way out to the same altitude as the sun with ASAS.

Thanks nivvydaskrl. I did a kind of bunny hop over the landing pad, powering down and separating above the pad and deploying the chute when I felt lucky! These sun shots take well over an hour each. Personally I am looking forward to v12 and the Mune. Should give us something a bit closer to shoot for.

I expect it was a space dragon frogger, trying to eat the sun. Like the one which nudged me off course just now ^.^ I just missed the KSC terrain with my last shot but on the up side I am claiming the smallest stock parts ship prize (which is an I.O.U. for one packet of peanuts from Mary-Lou Kerman, barmaid at The Dog and Booster). ship going up proof positive looks like the boys will have to walk round PS I had another go and surprised myself with a larger stock parts ship. craft Capcom 1 bullseye! flight summary

Nice going Ronox, thanks for the screenies, you are indubitably a space pilot dude! (Duely accredited.) Though in case you didnt know the sun is at 13559M altitude, close enough! I like the look of your design, landing struts(?) etc looks like it gives you the potential to get on the launch pad with a little refinement. Though it puts me in a dilemma as its pretty hard to decide who had the smaller non stock craft between you and thorfinn. thorfinn used 3x4LFT plus 6x1 S+L boosters and you used 4x3 L boosters and a huge central tank & you both start out with 9 engines. Its a bit apples and oranges and I dont have experience with the mods, but I think on the whole his looks smaller though not necessarily simpler. So unless you have something to add to the decision I would guess his Ghibli 346LP craft is still the smallest non stock craft to complete the mission. Thirster, bad luck, when you say crash... do you mean kerboom! or computer crash? If the latter I feel your pain, did two shots on Saturday both ended in software crashes after many mins of flight time... my own fault for messing about with other apps at the same time, at least it generated some bug reports. GL with next.

Unsympathetic pedants! I know what you meant Deltabravo, it makes that wooshy shape when you zoom past Kerbin and swoosh on out into deep space and it looks kinda boomerangy and you might think it was slingshotty but if I understand correctly, technically you are not increasing velocity by using Kerbin\'s movement because it hasn\'t got any, so its not a 'slingshot' proper, it just looks kinda slinghot shaped. I recorded your mission as lost in space, but that can change. Props for trying One Winged Angel, ditto.

lol funny video!

Easy peasy, vectored burns, if you are on say a 270° heading but at inclination of only 5° that is sine of 5° times thrust ie only 0.08x total burn goes to lateral thrust, one twelfth. You can do micro burns that tweak PE by 4,000m at 1000M. Vector addition was one of the few things I learned from open university daytime TV in the summer hols when I was a bored teenager.

See above tip CF, given much against my own best interests in the space race, you just have to burn semi-perpendicular to flight path on one of four headings and see if the PE goes up or down until it goes down, rinse>repeat etc PS my latest round trip with drop to KSC terrain (339.01.08) was using. 1 P 1 CM 1 ASAS 30 LFT 2+4 + 12x2 13+1 LFE 12 SRB 14 DC 12 LDC 37 S It adds up to 144.55 weight if I did my sums right.

Good idea Deadly. Tip, returning to Kerbin. If its a tip you want then I can tell you what I do, which is to drop out of warp about 5000M-1000M out or so and then check periapsis value and try a very short retro burn, as short as I can make it, with the ship oriented with a 5° bias* to one of the major axese ie 0°-180°,90°-270°, and see if the PE figure increases or decreases. If it decreases I carry on giving short burns until it starts increasing and then stop, if it increases I switch to the opposite direction on the same axis. Then when it is at its minimum I switch to the perpendular axis and try again. When the PE disappears you are heading for Kerbin so then you pick your preferred orbit axis, usually 90° for me and make a short burn to bring the PE figure back, which should be below 100,000m. Then go to timewarp until you see a green line at Kerbin and slow down again to make burns on the 0°-180° axese with a larger bias, to flatten that green line so it is on the ecliptic as you see it in map view. That way you will pass over KSC in orbit, though since the KSC is on the sunward side of Kerbin 24/7 at the moment (tidally locked?), frankly any return orbit will take you over it. Aerobraking. Use the above technique* to get the PE figure down to something between 35,500m and 40,500m and you will be set for aerobraking. With aerobraking the deeper you go the lower and faster the resulting eccentric AP, so the more you have to burn to hit KSC. If you aerobrake too high though you wont make orbit unless you can do a retro burn... EDIT Another tip about escape velocity. Another thing I have been figuring out is limiting outward bound velocity so I don\'t have to use too much fuel on the turnaround. Its easy to over burn on the way out. I have been using a velocities table to check escape velocity per altitude and made a few experiments and found I don\'t need to be much more than 100-200 m/s over escape at 500km to be travelling at 600-700m/s by 1000M and keep that all the way out. I am guessing that its not directly proportional either. The amount of velocity you lose leaving Kerbin should decrease the faster you go, as you take less time to travel out of the gravity well. So if you give it more welly you can end up going a bit quicker than you bargained for... ;D

Dudes I made it... I tried a hybrid of direct drop and aerobraking. One aero braking pass to take the speed off the ship and then tweak apogee to just drop straight down onto the KSC terrain. Not exactly easy but getting better. Went about 1000m/s both directions. Out there... Aerobraking pass... Apoapsis adjustment... Kerplunk... The ship was a bit simpler than the behemoth I was using. Still needed lots of struts and boosters though. It was 2+4+4 LF stages with a booster section of 12x (SRB+2LFT+LFE) (double 6x radial symmetry) and a bunch of SRBs under it to give it a kick. Also T8 winglets on the lowest LFT. I fired up the two rings of 6xSRB independantly. Went for the vertical burn. Beat that!

nivvydaskrl what can I say, so close and yet so far?! Definitely a worthy landing and good shot to boot. Might have to consider that technique myself. Props to thirster for being insane enough to even think about orbiting Kermin at that range, tell your PC it owes you one fat lady singing! Jebediah Kerman, good job your ship is not made of wax is all I can say! Excellent stellar screenies. Let the world know when you make touchdown.

Too bad DeadlyPear, getting back is trixy, nice screenies and log of doom though . Say when you do it and I will make a metagame of it and move your name up to the roll call of star pilot dudes ! Grats Salda007. At first I used the orbit technique thorfinn but then I tried the straight burn and found that used less! But my orbit skills leave a little to be desired, pointing the apogee the right way takes a little finesse. Will have to experiment, I made a couple of attempts with 11x5 today and missed the space center by a few hundred meters each time : reentry angle is so trixy.

CarolRawley, did you get back to Kerbin OK?

Jeepers, its going to get tricky, we could do with a moonbase making fuel for low G refuelling. At the moment the sun of Kerbin is just a shiney bauble. I am travelling to a point behind the sun as I write, hoping to get a screeney of the ship facing the sun with nav ball centered on the down side. EDIT That was close, it crashed just after this screeny. 82M from the sun