Scarecrow88

I think the two moons around Kerbin serve a useful purpose for players that are new to the game. Mun is easy to get to and helps players develop landing techniques on an airless body with unforgiving gravity. The skills learnt landing successfully on Mun are useful when visiting other bodies in the system where chutes can't be used to get you safely on the ground. I believe Minmus is more useful for learning how to make adjustments to your flight trajectory in order to make a successful intercept with your target, due to it's inclined orbit and smaller SOI. Again, these are useful skills to have when going interplanetary for the first time as it's rare to get a perfect intercept when making your transfer burn leaving Kerbin.

I liked the look of this challenge and thought I would have a go. Kalpond Kerman reports that the plane was very nice to fly, with no vices and gave him no problems on his test flight with Jebediah. He's very thankful for that, as he is more than aware of Jebediah's reputation, and he didn't want to screw up in his presence. A stable orbit of 100x100km was achieved with enough fuel on board to make a higher orbit had they so wished, but Jeb pointed out that the view didn't get that much better by going higher. Orbital inclination was 0.6 degrees, measured against the orbit of Mun. Re-entry was straight forward, with no overheating issues, and with a slight cough from the back seat as to when he should make his burn, they came in nicely over KSC and were able to land on the runway dead stick. Jebediah and Kalpond are selected for the mission Final checks on the runway before setting off 100x100km orbit established Admiring the view Final stages of re-entry with KSC in sight Lined up on the runway Parachutes were useful, but not entirely essential Back in time for breakfast. Jeb reckons you could fry your eggs on the still glowing wings

My comment was aimed at using a single Weasly as the lift engine as that's not really viable any more. I still build VTOLs using 2 or more Weasleys so I know they can still be used if preferred but it can be more difficult to balance the lift of multiple engines or find the space to fit them in a compact design.

In previous versions of KSP the Weasley was usually the engine of choice for vertical lift. Unfortunately in 1.0.4 it no longer has the power to lift anything other than the smallest of designs, which means you now generally have to us the turbojet. This isn't a problem as such, but it is a bit longer than the Weasly, which makes it a bit more difficult to attach without having half of it hang out the bottom of your craft, and with the new graphics you now have a large flame effect below your craft when you use it. For switching from vertical engines to horizontal engines when in flight, it's best to set them up on action group keys so that you can toggle them as necessary.

Just in case anyone is still looking at this challenge, I've come up with another craft. Designed to deliver Kerbals to space, I present Deliverance. 5 flights were used to develop the craft for a total cost of 8758. It's capable of rotating 6 crew to a space station at 100k orbit, or taking 4 space tourists to an 85k orbit. Why the difference in orbit height? The craft is tight on fuel and needs to be flown efficiently. If relying on the fuel load it starts with to return to the surface, I would suggest an orbit no higher than 85k - perfect for tourist flights. It can rendezvous and dock with stations in a 100k orbit to rotate crew, but you will need to take on a bit of fuel to be sure for the de-orbit burn. Pilot notes: Pre-take off checks. Reduce throttle to 0, stage to fire engines and then press 2 to shutdown the rocket engines. Engage SAS and throttle up for take off run. Take off can be achieved at about 80 m/s Initial climb out can be done at 20 degrees nose up, but in later stages of the climb, you will need to drop this to keep the speed from dropping. At 10,000m you will need to reduce the nose up attitude to 10 degrees to build up speed. Small adjustments may be necessary to keep the nose close to the prograde vector. When the acceleration on jets stops, switch to rockets but maintain the 10 degrees attitude When apoapsis hits 85-90k, shutdown engines, coast to apo and then do a circularisation burn. Action group keys: 1: Toggle jet engines 2: Toggle rocket engines 3: Extend airbrakes Deliverance craft file

Yep I looked at it, but just found it too confusing/time consuming trying to read through all the stages/craft/requirements and just gave up reading the initial post after the first few paragraphs.

Had another go with ProBuilder1.0 as I don't like to be beaten, especially by a design that no one else seems to be having problems with. My 3rd attempt presented the same problem - the craft flipped out shortly after igniting the rocket engines, and with absolutely no control input from myself. One second it was flying fine, the next the nose pitched up and all semblance of control was temporarily lost. At that point the prograde vector was about 10 degrees and the nose of the craft was a few degrees higher, lined up with the top of the prograde circle. I also noted prior to this point that the craft would deviate from an easterly heading, but reading a post above, enabling the yaw control on the tail fin resolved this problem. My 4th flight was finally successful. I'm not sure what I did differently, other than perhaps gaining most of the speed slightly lower than previously and making sure that any attitude corrections were done very gently. Orbit achieved was 82km x 81km and 6 Kerbals were delivered. Return from orbit was to the runway at KSC with no breakages and a thimble full of fuel left, so total flight cost was just fuel. On a separate note, where are you guys getting the recovered costs from, as I can't see them anywhere. I'm flying in Sandbox mode if that makes a difference.

Ok, I'll give it another go, as I had just fired the rockets when I lost it.

I have used one modded part, the Alcor lander capsule, simply because it looks so much better than the stock 2-man lander can. Hope that's ok, as everything else is completely stock. On the pad, ready to go 1st stage separation Extracting the LEM LEM separates from the CSM in Munar orbit Paying respects on the surface Time to leave Lander module back with the CSM Just before splashdown at dusk

Best I remember I was at about 22000m and somewhere between 1000 - 1200 m/s. I think the nose up angle was about 15 degrees. I think the issue was caused by the shifting CoM as after I had transferred the remaining fuel forward I didn't have any more problems.

I thought I'd try for the Propilot award and flew GoSlash27's Probuilder craft. All I can say is that I must be a crap pilot as it flipped out on me at about 22,000m. I managed to get it under control and tried to continue the flight but it flipped out on me again. I transferred all remaining fuel to the forward tank, and decided to abort the flight to orbit and return to KSC as by that time I had lost too much speed to make an orbital flight viable. Landed back at KSC without any further drama. I will try again with another design.

That's good feedback, thanks Nefrums. Having not flown it to orbit myself, I completely forgot about airbrakes. I'll have a look at re-balancing the fuel too. ETA: I've just looked at the design again with a view to making the changes and for some reason the fuel load in the wings was only 50%. That wasn't intentional and would go some way to explaining the imbalance of fuel.

I've found that by using parachutes, most of my Mun landers can be used on Duna, as virtually all of the fuel you would use just for landing on Mun is available for the ascent on Duna.

All landings were on the KSC runway with no breakages. Target orbit is 100km, but it may be able to go higher - anyone able to get it to orbit may be able to confirm based on what fuel is still available. If I was continuing the test flights myself, I would probably aim for an initial orbit around 85km to allow a margin of safety/error. The payload fitted in the provided craft file is 730 kg and there is room in the cargo bay for 2 of those, so round that up and say payload capacity of 1500kg should be about right. The first few test flights I did were to tweak the aerodynamics to get it to fly reasonably well and were kept local to the KSC. The penultimate flight was to test high altitude speed gain and transition from atmospheric to rocket engines. That's when I decided to change to Rapiers, and the final test flight was a repeat of the previous one to make the same checks using the Rapiers. I have just done another flight like this last one, which lasted 25 mins to a maximum altitude of 31000m and returned to KSC, and represents the flight that would have had the highest costs due to the amount of fuel used. The cost of that flight was 3100. I'm happy if you want to apply that cost to all 6 flights, or to apply your own average based on that cost.

This sounds like fun, though I'm not sure how to work out my development costs. I present Vamanos. I originally tried with 2xWhiplash Ramjet engines plus 2xLV-T45 Swivels, but swapped those out for 4xRapier. Test flights didn't go to orbit and all landed back at KSC, so the parts I chose to swap out were all returned for re-use. The only consumable used was fuel for half a dozen test flights. Cost of the final craft, excluding the payload, is 71,426. If this makes it to orbit and back the only bits not returning will be the fuel used and the payload, if deployed. Pilot notes : Take off can be achieved at 90 m/s. Initial climb out seems best at about 30 degrees nose up. Any steeper and the speed starts to bleed off. Above 10,000m flatten out to build speed and when the Rapiers peter out in air breathing mode, press 1 to toggle to rocket mode and simultaneously close the air intakes. Keep your fingers crossed you have enough fuel to reach orbit. Action group keys : 1. Toggle engine mode and air intakes 2. Extend airbrakes 3. Extend antenna on satellite if deployed 5. Toggle cargo bay doors 6. Deploy payload Vamanos is designed for LKO. If successful, it can carry and return 2 Kerbals. It can also be used to deploy small payloads to LKO, and comes fitted with a small communications satellite. Vamanos craft file

Personally I gave up using LV-Ns some time ago, as the weak thrust made the burns take too long. The nearby planets - Eve, Duna and Jool - are all easily reached without having to resort to using the LV-N, and I find that executing the interplanetary burn is a lot easier with the shorter burns that other engines give you.

I've just done the tutorial to see what it expects you to do. First thing I noticed was that it asks you to correct the orbital alignment at the descending node, when it's the ascending node that is closest to your ship. I also didn't reduce my closing speed to 0 m/s, and as a result of that the tutorial was of no further use as it was stuck on that bit with no opportunity to get it to progress to the next step. However, I did notice the placement of the decoupler on the rescue craft and decided to quit the tutorial before performing a de-orbit burn. All I can say to the OP is that the rescue craft has enough fuel to complete the mission, and that at no point did I encounter a required burn of 700 m/s so I can only assume that you are doing something wrong somewhere along the way.

Best way home from Mun is to burn prograde when Kerbin is just above the horizon. If you burn until your periapsis at Kerbin is about 35000 - 37000m this should be enough to guarantee aerocapture in to Kerbin orbit. You only need a relatively small amount of dV to do that, and you look as if you have enough fuel left for such a burn.

I've never used Mechjeb so have no idea how it executes a landing procedure, but your lander looks like it should be able to land without problem.

A lot of the info on the web for KSP is out of date as the aerodynamics model changed significantly a couple of patches ago. In 0.90 and previously, the atmosphere was affectionately known as the souposphere as it was so thick, and it was beneficial to go straight up for a large portion of the initial launch to escape the worst affects. This is no longer the case in the latest release.

Only today I was checking some of my old SSTO designs and discovered that none of them work with the new aerodynamics, so I set about designing a new one. Ended up with a simple ship that uses 2 turbo jets and a single LT-45, and it gets to orbit quite happily. I would suggest to the OP to try and keep it as simple as possible, keep the weight down, and learn what sort of ascent profile is required for a successful SSTO mission.

Sounds like your plane is the problem rather than your flying abilities.

I've had situations where trying to rendezvous things just won't go as they should no matter what manoeuvres I do and I don't have a problem with rendezvous and docking. The only way I have found to resolve the problem when stuck in that situation is to quit out to the Space Centre and then reload. It's almost as if it's resetting the physics or something.

3 things stand out for me. My first ever successful Mun landing, mastering how to rendezvous and dock and, having been everywhere else in the Kerbin system, finally managing to do a manned mission to Eve and successfully returning the pilot to Kerbin.

I would suggest building on what you have already achieved. You've been to Duna but not returned. Maybe the goal for your next mission would be to get back as well. Expanding on your successful visits to Mun, have you tried landing 2 ships in close proximity there? If you want to build a Mun base, or a base anywhere else for that matter, if it's going to be of any appreciable size you will need to master targeted landing.