SA_Drone

Yesterday I started a new game for the first time in a few patches, and I'm really liking the addition of money/reputation (though I have no clue what reputation is for, really). My first Mun mission was ambitious and ended up stranding Jeb out there for a month while I organized a rescue mission. The rescue mission (probe body-piloted, empty capsule) then got marooned too for lack of fuel. And the next one. In the end I put a space station into orbit of the Mun, then sent out an unmanned probe to ferry Jeb up to it. I figure it's more hospital orbiting in a tin can than in a tiny failed Munar lander.

Launched what should have been an orbital probe toward Eve. Unfortunately my angle was just slightly off and I didn't have nearly enough fuel to get into an orbit, so it was really more of a flyby. Grabbed all the science I could while within Eve's gravitational influence, though. Then spent a bit designing my very first station core, a lifter that could move that much mass, and getting it into an orbit of about 185km above Kerbin. Swiped the name for the station from some old post I saw here on the KSP forums, hope whoever it was doesn't mind xD. I'm sticking with vanilla unmodded components for now. The core of Lohengramm Station, soon to be a refueling depot (when I learn how to do rendezvous maneuvers):

It was pretty nail-biting. I ran out of rocket fuel with only like 100 m/s to go before making a stable, if ugly, orbit of Duna. Had to use RCS to stabilize it and then bring it down to circular parking orbit at around 1,000km above the surface. Very exciting

I got my first probe into orbit of another planet (specifically, Duna). I used what I learned about rocket design from Scott Manley's intro videos (especially the Minmus lander one) and built a modified version of his rocket around an unmanned probe. Strapped a Science Jr. and some goo containers on it, and managed to make a pretty tight transit. Unfortunately I ran out of fuel just as I was about to enter a stable, if highly eccentric, orbit of Duna and had to use RCS to circularize myself. After that I just spent the rest of my RCS fuel slowly decreasing the size of my orbit to about 1,000km. Got myself a couple hundred units of science out of it, now I'm going to start an Eve probe of similar design, and then work on building my first space station in Kerbin orbit.

It's not much, but I'm pretty excited about it: just got my first probe into orbit around another planet. :3

Hey all. I played Kerbal years ago when it was first released as (I think?) a pre-alpha tech demo, back when pretty much all you could do was get in orbit of Kerbin with some basic rocket parts. I've just now come back to it after buying it outright on Steam, and WOW has the game ever progressed. It's been consuming my life over the past few days.

No cool screenshots to show off what I've been doing, but in short order in the last day or two I've: -Bought the game -Got a weather satellite deployed in a polar orbit over Kerbin -Got three geosynchronous communications satellites over Kerbin -Made a munar flyby -Stranded a Kerbal in munar orbit with no power or fuel -Crashed three attempted landers on the Mun -Made two successful Minmus landings and returns Right now I need one more good science mission before I have enough science to unlock huge rockets to help me build a space station, so I'm working on hopefully getting a probe in a flyby or orbit of Duna.