MajorThomas

This is a very interesting challenge. I was looking for a challenge along the lines of "send a Kerbal to the Mun and back with fewest parts" but this one is "lightest ship." Would a challenge involving lowest part count be significantly different from this challenge to be worth doing it? Or has it been done already?

I think Kasuha's return to Munar orbit may well be the furthest anyone can go in this challenge. The return to Kerbin just takes too much fuel. (I tried this challenge myself, but didn't write down the particulars. After landing I cheated, adding about 1/2 fuel tank's worth of extra fuel to the lander, and was able to just barely make it back to Kerbin. But my parachute broke off during the rough, horizontal takeoff from the Mun, so the Kerbal perished.)

Damn, hydrofoils work in KSP? Gotta try that!

Lovely...no takers yet?

Clearly it doesn't end, but you may "graduate" to add-on developer, or doing challenges, etc. etc.

My first two rovers went kind of like that. Nobody told me to set the parking brake first! Rover 1: Dropped to the surface of the Mun, from the lander. It started to roll away, surprisingly fast. Jeb popped out of the lander to catch the damn thing. He quickly fired up his jetpack and took off in hot pursuit. The rover, meanwhile, kept finding even steeper hills to head down. After about a minute of furious flying, never quite catching up, Jeb watched in disbelief as the rover just blew up and spread debris all over the dark downward slope. Rover 2: Similar deal, this time after the rover had "thrown" the Kerbal who had been riding it, then somehow righted itself. Of course, you don't remember to set the parking brakes just before you are thrown. "Hey, come back here!" The rover started its predictable roll down toward oblivion. When it was 500 m away from the pursuing Kerbal, it exploded. Or so I thought. After I flew the Kerbal home, a routine check at the tracking station revealed...hey, the rover is fine, wheels intact, hardly moving at all, at the basin of a crater. But no Kerbal to control it. How can that be? Apparently the distant explosion I had witnessed was just a headlight going off, not the entire rover. EDIT (tongue-in-cheek) China's moon rover has experienced technical difficulties recently...wonder if it has to do with setting the parking brakes.

Heck, to me even the $27 was an incredible bargain. Squad has captured something powerful enough to put some wind back into NASA's sails!!

Well, you need to survey your target planet or moon for Kethane from orbit. Once found, go to a hex containing Kethane, drill for it, store it, and convert it to fuel, oxidizer, monopropellant, etc. You can practice on Kerbin. I setup a lander with storage tanks, a drill and a converter. Then made a rover to carry the fuel to ships that had landed nearby. All you need to transfer resources is a docking port set at the right height, for your rover to drive up to. Then I decided that next time I'll put the tanks, drill and everything else on the rover. No sense in having two vehicles when one will do.

Good idea. I sense the numbers will be close, but perhaps the most variation will come from the type of engines used. Powerful engines that get you up there quickly may perform better against gravity than the weaker, longer-burning engines.

Just cause I always wanted to try it*, I took off from KSC when it was "pointed" 45 degrees ahead of the Mun. Went straight up, no turning. Up and up until Apoapsis was near the Mun. Sure enough, encountered the Mun as though I had departed from Kerbin orbit. But at no point during the flight from Kerbin did I have a Periapsis above ground. *I call this "comic book spaceflight." Never mind orbiting.

Yes, tell Bob to stop it!

Hilarious!

Hi all, I've been searching for a booklist on this forum of this type. Is there such a thread already? I've built up a bit of a library of books on space exploration and history and would share this with you. (So far: found a thread on orbital mechanics textbooks, and one on books about the Apollo program. I'm aiming for a more general space book thread, nonfiction) If there isn't such a thread already I'll start building this one up, and please join in with your lists!

You've got to read this one: Apollo by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox. It's all about the engineers, their stories. The cast of characters includes the famous folks (Flight Directors, managers), Designers (Max Faget et. al.), Engine developers (the F1 stability story is particularly memorable...they had to set a bomb off within the thrust chamber and have the flow/vibrations stabilize within milliseconds), mission control guys, back room experts, and so on. This one book gives perhaps the best cross section of the engineering effort involved in developing the entire program that I've ever read. The Astronauts are mentioned but they're not the stars of the show here. I can't recommend the book highly enough. It's not just informative and technical, but it reads very easily, just the right tone. (I am easily turned off by overly-academic, dull technical writing. Also, on the other hand, by overly sentimental works on the space program. I can't stand bad writing.)

"Fundamentals of Astrodynamics" by Bate, Mueller & White is the only text I've got on the subject...it was the only one (IIRC) recommended for my orbital mechanics course in grad school. It's a Dover book, considered a classic, but to me it always seemed a bit light on the fundamentals, it assumes you know a bit about what you're doing before you dive in. Got a lot of good stuff in it but doesn't all feel connected together, unlike a good undergrad textbook.

I enjoyed the recent flick "Moon."

Yes, docking is quite easy, and use RCS only at terminal phase for fine tuning / braking. I see people with RCS all over their ships, probably 3 to 10 times the amount they really need. If you shuck the excess RCS tanks and monopropellant you can save lots of weight, that will increase the capabilities of your mission, an upward spiral. (It's a case of flying skills removing the need for overbuilding your ships. I could say the same thing about launch vehicles too...)

Great post Captain! I believe the files you're referring to, in case anyone doesn't know, are located at: C:\<KSP install directory>\GameData\Squad\Parts\Utility (see "sensors") or Science directories. I have always thought like you, that sensors ought to be transmitted for full value. Sensors should only have data that's transmitted and not brought home, full stop. That is usually how real space probes behave, they don't return. However I'm not quite ready to alter my config files yet, since the game balance is probably very heavily dependent on those scalars being less than one. I like to imagine scenarios that explain why Squad set things up the way they did: - It is possible to imagine a pen and paper plot having more and better data that somehow can't be transmitted. Maybe that's what's up with these sensor scalars; they're trying to tell you that while your science tree isn't filled up, your technology level is years behind where it could be and hence transmitting a small subset of the data is all you're able to do. That if you actually managed to run a probe or manned mission where you could return the instrumentation, you'd get more science value. - Meanwhile, it totally makes sense for materials studies and surface samples to be something you return home. I'm not sure what "transmit" represents in the case of these physical samples... regardless, whatever you transmit should pale in comparison with having access to the real samples.

Welcome! That's one large and ambitious aircraft, kudos to you if you built it yourself. I find aircraft far more difficult than rockets/spacecraft. I wonder what would happen if Bill went into one of those intakes...I know for sure the Kerbal dies if he puts his head into the exhaust side of an engine.

But yes, once you manage to clear the area around your hatch, be in a stable orbit over 70 km, and turn off all engines, then when you hit the EVA button your Kerbal should be safely perched right outside the door. Then, without having to do any jetpack flying whatsoever, just right click the Kerbal and select "EVA Report," save it, then hit F to re-enter the spacecraft.

This will be easy. Whoops...CRASH

Howdy, welcome! a) The fuel tanks do increase in size 2x, 4x, etc. The larger tanks are stronger than two attached together in series. During the stress of launches, often rockets will break at the attachment points. Having fewer attachment points (larger tanks) helps. Also, as so many say, you can use struts to hold the parts together, but struts aren't available early on in the career mode science tree. I would make my first stage large, second stage smaller (say, 1/2) and the payload as small as possible. Adding more boosters also adds weight, and it does take some finesse and testing to get a good booster/payload combo. 2) Yes, you can do EVA reports while "flying" over Kerbin. But, if it is "windy" (moving through the atmosphere at 100s of meters per second) the Kerbal will blow away. So I don't usually do that. 3) Are you able to Orbit? Because you can do your EVA reports ABOVE the atmosphere and get lots of science. Also, try to follow the science tree to get solar panels as quickly as you can. Doing so will allow you to build probes and other long-distance ships. Batteries without solar panels just don't last very long. I built a probe positively stuffed with batteries for my first Mun probe. I had to turn off most of the batteries and turn them on one by one, and let each run out. I barely made it to the Mun before I was out of Juice. EDIT: And, if you turn off all your batteries you have a dead ship, can't turn it on again because there is no power. Be careful!

I have not had any trouble with landing legs on the outside of girders. It does make the lander more stable. I would try to limit my landing speed to less than 5 m/s regardless, doing so will very likely not harm the girders/legs. I would, however, use appropriate landing legs. For example, if you have a small lander, there's no reason to have 4 large landing legs (unless you really like how they look and fold up). Use as few legs, and the lightest legs possible. If going to the Mun and you are able to land at a low speed, then use medium or small legs. The weight savings will really pay off in higher TWR and delta-V.

Wait, you can launch from KSC 2?