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Veteran forumites may recall when my thread "Sights of Kidonia" was active. I managed to get a humongous mothership assembled in orbit for the Ultimate Jool-5 Challenge, filled with all manner of fun payloads and equipped with over 9000 m/s of delta-V, and then... I abandoned the project, the challenge left unmet once again. That was actually my third attempt to pull it off, the successor to "Julia" and an unnamed predecessor mothership. Each attempt had been grander than the last, and each attempt had failed (for the first, I was woefully short on delta-V; for the second, a KSP update to make the LV-N nuclear engine not consume oxidizer made the existing design unworkable; and for the third, I simply stopped playing KSP for over a year and didn't feel like trying to pick up where I left off, largely due once again to changes in the game). Only one thing to do: Try a FOURTH TIME! Officially at least. I did an undocumented minimal test run a while ago with an uncrewed ion probe just to reassure myself there was hope. And naturally I must continue the trend of making every new mothership dwarf all the previous ones... Teaser image showing the scale of the hull I designed alongside Kidonia. I'll be updating the thread as important milestones in the mission are reached.

This mission was part of the Dres Awareness challenge. The goal of the challenge was to show your love for Dres, with something BIG! Unfortunately, my PC is literally a hand-me-down, so extremely big was not an option. But there are other ways to be big. Dres Tourism Commission report: Reply to the previous report, from KSC Director Andrew Kerman: 18 months later... The sun was shining. The birds were singing. And another huge rocket was on the launchpad. Here's the launch: Trying to get a Dres encounter was pretty stressful, (small soi) so I forgot to get a picture of the transfer burn. However, as proof I didn't cheat, if you look at the D-v levels, they've gone down by 1629 m/s, which is pretty close to the 1540 my interplanetary transfer cheat sheet says. (The fuel has also gone down) However, I think I documented everything else pretty well. Transfer to Dres/ orbital insertion: Dres landing: Landed, safe and sound! I had fun doing this! I hope it's big enough for Dres! Maybe when I get a better PC I can do something bigger. (Like a hotel!) In previous attempts, I tried storing the billboard horizontally. It made the rocket flip over sometimes and even though I would revert the flight anyway, I tried recovering it using the remaining fuel. They all failed, but it made for some interesting screenshots. Bloopers: Enjoy! Try a Dres mission of your own if you haven't, it's an interesting challenge.

Send Val to vall To complete this goal, you will have to send Valentina Kerman to Vall (I got this one from the loading screen, I spend a lot of time there) Plant a pole on pol Goal is simple. send a kerbal to pol and plant a pole (flag pole) on pol! Laythe lazy Very relaxing, simply make a kerbal take a bath in laythes water. Rules: 1. You must not use cheats of any kind. 2. You must take a screenshot every time you enter and exit a sphere of influence, land on a body and when you launch/return to kerbin. 3. You must not kill any kerbals. 4. You must have fun! if you do not follow one or two of these rules, your mission will still count, but points will be deducted. Community Challenges Tylo low flyby Fly by Tylo as fast and low as you can - Superfluous J Bop on Bop This challenge has 2 parts to it. First, send a crewed lander to Bop and perform a hard landing. A hard landing is defined as anything greater than 2 m/s, but you should be aiming for as hard of a landing as possible. You know, you are trying to bop Bop (like landing a punch). The second part is to take that crew and get them on the surface and dancing around. Gotta have at least 3 Kerbals present to call this a party. - Scarecrow71

Grond's Micrometeorite Shield Mod A mod that adds medium sized to extremely large micrometeorite shields for big interplanetary or interstellar ships. Currently there are two shield sizes, 10 meter shield with a 2.5 meter attachment, and a 50 meter shield, 3.75 meter attachment, and a pretty powerful antenna. Download: SpaceDock It is also available on CKAN! Dependencies: Community Tech Tree Recommended: Near Future Construction (heavily recommend) Near Future Propulsion Near Future Electrical (this one as well) Far Future Technologies Restock Restock+ Changelog: 1.1 - Added a 50m shield that doubles as a long range antenna, also fixed the file structure so it's not horrible; 1.1.1 - Quick MM patch to make the mod "technically" work without CTT, but I wouldn't recommend it because it makes all the shields cost the same amount of science; Licensing: All code and cfgs are distributed under the MIT License All art assets (textures, models, animations) are distributed under an All Rights Reserved License.

So, I have a science mode. I'm wrapping up the last 2 nodes with a munar space station. I've gone to Gilly and Duna, and crave adventure! I want to go to Vall, Laythe or Moho, and as a kinda new player i'm wondering if some of them are out of my skill level. I THINK I can do gravity assists, and know I can aerobrake/aerocapture. If I can have input from more experienced people on what missions I need more experience for, or how to carry out one of my planned missions that would be wonderful! Just to think 2 months ago, I saw an achievement for doing a mission to Bop and thought, how could ANYONE return? You'd have to be mad!

The Arrow Queen, an Interplanetary VTOL SSTO (Breaking Ground required) The Arrow Queen is a Mk2 style spaceplane, designed for VTOL and delivers 6 kerbals and up to 2020m/s delta-V in orbit. This is enough to land on Mun (with a suicide burn, but margins are maximum 100m/s), Duna (no parachutes necessary, just aerobrake and use retrograde nuclear thrust, margins around 500m/s) or Minmus before continuing into the rest of the universe. It also includes an ISRU unit for some (slow) refuelling. For VTOL, it features 6 rotating hover engines that are stowed away into mk2 cargobays for horizontal flight. It was a lot of work balancing CoM, CoL, CoT together into a functional spaceplane. But I think the result is quite well balanced. Download The craft was the result of an experiment with a VTOL SSTO, and through many iterations it reached the current status. Feel free to improve its design anytime! Its deltawing shape means it's highly aerodynamic: As nuclear engines provide all of the delta-V from 30km+, reaching orbit is not easy. Here's a screenshot during a 3 minute burn to Mun (acceleration of around 4m/s, so patience is required): As delta-V for Mun is marginal, I recommend flying straight into Mun and doing a suicide burn (THANK YOU, MECHJEB). Don't start the landing burn too late: Once you have landed, it's ISRU time! (Take enough food for 60 days at least) Landing on Duna seen from the cockpit (after some serious aerobraking, retrograde nuclear thrust is the easiest, like on the Mun): https://imgur.com/1UrtT Also check out it's lighter, and easier (non-nuclear) sister for LKO operation, The Arrowmaker: Download Arrowmaker

The Sword of Jebediah can support 139 Kerbals in living habitats and science modules. This can be upgraded if you attach more to docking ports for drop ships, rovers etc. Has back docking port for docking boosters or habitat modules to use as a space station. Has around a 2800+ m/s depending on ore/lq/ox on hand 1,440 kN Thrust with working gravity ring. Refuel capable. Would recommend smaller landers or even ore runners to supply for fuel. Action Groups (AG) AG0: Turn on Gravity Ring AG9: Lock Gravity Ring AG8: Turn on Converter and open doors AG7: Toggle Docking Port Doors AG6: Toggle Drill AG5:Toggle Surface Harvester Gear: Toggle MK2 Ring Cargo Shields STEAM: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2245297985 KERBALX: https://kerbalx.com/InterstellarKev/Sword-of-Jebediah

First Light: The Journey of the Phthanophaneron It turns out I've never actually done a mission to Moho. Shocking! I call myself a veteran, with well over 1000 hours (though I don't have records of this, I'm fairly sure) of play over the years since version 0.20.2, but I still haven't managed to actually "complete" the game as far as actually visiting all the objects available. Thus, since the transfer window to Moho is the first to occur in my new Career (after spending the first 110 days or so completing the tech tree by thoroughly scrubbing Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus for Science), I'm taking the opportunity to document the adventure as a sort of refresher course for myself before taking on the Ultimate Jool-5 Challenge once more (since it's been literal years since I last put down the game). For this expedition, I had been made aware that trips to Moho and back often take far more delta-V than one would expect, especially eschewing a gravity assist from Eve and the extra mission time that would entail, so I set my goal at 10 km/s and a maximum acceleration of at least 0.20 gees to avoid excessively long maneuver burns. I prepared what I considered the necessary payload and, based on its total mass, set about drafting some hull designs in the VAB, whereupon I discovered that the ship could certainly meet my needs, but it would be very, very large. Some of you may remember my "Sights of Kidonia" thread from a few years ago wherein I built a grand mothership to tackle the Jool-5 Challenge. While I eventually finished orbital assembly and performed the ejection burn from Kerbin, while it was en route real life got in my way, followed by several updates to the game that altered part geometry and made some of the mission components unusable. The final fatal obstacle was that, once I picked up KSP again a few weeks ago, I discovered whilst doing a test run in a simple ion probe that Kidonia probably never would have been able to complete the full mission for lack of delta-V. It had been designed with just over 9 km/s in total, but that only meets the requirements of a Jool-5 Challenge mission nominally, i.e. in real life one is unlikely to pull off the mission with that much delta-V with extreme luck, extremely meticulous planning, or a lot of gravity assists and thus a very long mission time. In any case, this thing is... comparable in size and has less than half the payload mass. On the one hand, I'm pleased that this gives me an excuse to build an even huger ship for next time, but on the other, increased sophistication in KSP's code base appears to have made the game less performant when operating ships with enormous part counts, so it might be a taller order than I can handle. But enough about Jool. This is a Moho mission! In this thread I'll be documenting the progress of the mission from start to finish and sharing my thoughts.

Hey Y'all! I hope everyone is enjoying their time in quarantine, as well as staying safe and sanitary. It's certainly given me more time to muck around in KSP, so I've got something new to show. The Verdon S4 (named in honor of the late Verdon Kerman) is an interplanetary transfer vehicle that can be used to drive large and otherwise massive payloads around the Kerbol system. The design was put together to maximize the final TWR and delta-V when reaching LKO without needing a part count that drives your (or at least my) framerate into a slideshow. I've included a secondary vessel; a crew habitation module which will act as our payload for demonstration purposes. With room for 28 Kerbals, it also has six docking ports; one large port for docking with the S4, one standard forward port, and four lateral ports to allow for extra vessels to dock (landers, probes, visiting crew ships, etc.). S4 LKO Vac. delta-V and TWR for various payload masses: payload mass (t) delta-V (m/s) TWR 0.000 6951 0.44 25.000 6288 0.43 50.000 5654 0.41 64.323** 5428 0.40 100.000 4816 0.38 200.000 3760 0.33 400.000 2651 0.27 800.000 1688 0.19 **crew hab. module mass Craft Statistics: Verdon S4 (interplanetary vehicle only) Parts 27 Wet mass 603.235t Thrust (vac) 2,625.0kN Height 5.5m Width 5.4m Length 55.2m Verdon S4 (interplanetary vehicle + launch vehicle) Parts 142 Wet mass 7,342.700t Thrust (vac) 84,000.0kN Height 96.6m Width 13.5m Length 13.5m Verdon Crew Habitation Module (interplanetary vehicle only) Parts 97 Wet mass 64.323t Thrust (vac) 120.0kN Height 7.4m Width 5.0m Length 49.6m Verdon Crew Habitation Module (interplanetary vehicle + launch vehicle) Parts 188 Wet mass 4,890.064t Thrust (vac) 64,000.0kN Height 92.1m Width 9.7m Length 9.7m Verdon S4 on the pad Verdon Crew Habitation Module on the pad At Eeloo! To see this craft in action as part of a larger mission, check this out: KerbalX hangar: https://kerbalx.com/hangars/97494

Ok So I am new to KSP (only about 100 hours or so) and I’ve spent the last few building a orbital refueling base around minmus and gong back and fourth from the surface of minmus to my orbital refueler/ore processor. It has all of its fuel tank full and are ready to begin exploration of the Kerbol system. BUT HOLD UP!. I was just about to burn my first ship from an LKO to minmus and refuel there but then a thought came to my head andI paused my game and I was thinking the very thing that you are about to read: Would it be better/more efficient to just straight up burn from and LKO to Duna (my version of an LKO being 100,000km) or from what I think burn to minmus, refuel, and then escape Kerbin’s SOI from there because Kerbin's SOI is pretty weak all the way out at minmus, therefore taking less Delta-v to escape Kerbin’s SOI all the way out there and plus have extra fuel because you just completely refueled your tanks at the orbital minmus refueling station? please somebody get back to me with a correct awnser and thank you for reading this I AM CONFUSED

I saw the KSP 2 announcement and I thought, "Colonies? That's so cool!" Then I read into it a bit more and discovered, you need to launch components to actually construct these habitats. Now, my interplanetary skills are a bit rusty, so I thought it might be a good idea to practice with the original KSP. Then it occurred to me that the developers might alter the mechanics and control schemes, to make the original techniques much more difficult. Can anybody tell me if these changes might occur, and that I might need to re-learn the controls and methods? It would be much appreciated.

Despite having owned KSP for two years, and having played 1320 hours of KSP. Before today I had never been to another planet, and the only two missions I've ever done are a Mun mission and Minmus+Mun mission. The main problem is that KSP terrain isn't very interesting, so it never seemed worth the (with hindsight minimal) effort to go to another planet. This changed with KSP version 1.8, not only did they add the terrain shaders, they updated to a newer version of Unity, which runs significantly better on my potato computer. Due to the apparent easiness, I went to Duna with a small Nerva powered ship and started taking screenshots after entering the Duna system. The clouds are from a modified version of Astronomer's Visual Pack, all dependents except scatterer (Which doesn't work anywhere near correctly in 1.8) Oh how very kerbal... There is a dog in a collar and a shirt on this rock. Dust storm. No one told me Ike was shiny! The AVP dust clouds are quite possibly my favorite thing I've ever seen in any KSP image. Some nice pictures of Kerbin that doesn't have anything to do with 1.8 terrain shaders.

Hello fellow Kerbals... I just wanted to ask if there's a mod for better interplanetary encounters ( 1.7 ) because mine are often pretty terrible...

My first forray into the world of plugins is this pack of 15 contracts. Players will be rewarded for traveling to the most extreme elevations (both high and low) of the various bodies in the Kerbol system and planting flags. The contracts for celestial bodies with unique, non-sea-bed base elevations (Eve, Kerbin, Minmus, Laythe, and Tylo) only require the player to summit the body's highest mountain. *** Please note: As this is my first attempt at writing a plugin, I expect there to be hiccups here and there. I encourage reporting of those issues here, and will do my best to address them. Credit: Coordinates of maximum and minimum elevations obtained from kerbalmaps.com (temporarily located here) Installation Changes/Updates Known Issues Pack distributed under the MIT License.

I've searched a long while in this forum for a "dst style" ship but I dindt find anything. So I decided to build it. This is not a copy of dst but this is the same idear: simple long range reusable ship. He can carry 6 kerbals (up to 12 but not in confort) to duna and back. Imgur Album : https://imgur.com/a/Jm6Ja2u Ship Specifications: Crew capacity : 6 Electric propulsion (lithium) high efficiency Fusion Reactor 32 000 EC Battery Set of 4 solar panels RCS Thrusters and reactions wheels Remotable docking ports for crew and refueling The idea is that this ship is not a finality but a work base that can be updated for different types of missions. Made in 1.6.1 with squad expansion. Ship Guide : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hl40hceGGqqlPpkVNcI1UKI8QTj4m9u1/view?usp=sharing DOWNLOAD: https://kerbalx.com/FrKerbonaut/Deep-Space-Transport Mods: thanks for giving me your opinion and advices !

I read a KSP mission report in which a probe is sent to Eve on a free return trajectory back to Kerbin. How can I get the same thing done?How do I plan it?

Hello everyone, after a few months I have recently started playing KSP again and for the first time I have now decided to deal with interplanetary spaceflight that goes beyond Eve and Duna. For that I now first used the Nerv engines as they are so efficient. I have built a few in my opinion quite nice spacecrafts after watching many videos on youtube and I successfully landed on Dres and even Moho already (without returning though). However during these missions and also my current mission to Moho with a new or modified spacecraft I ran into a problem that didn't seem to occur in the videos I've seen. I don't know if it's somehow caused by the Nerv engines or whatever but whenever I set a maneuver, no matter how big it is, the curved Delta v bar to the right of the navball is completely or half red and the estimated burn time is completely wrong aswell. When I start my burns at about half the time to the maneuver as the estimated burn time so that the burn splits into 2 equal sections before and after the maneuver node, my resulting orbit is quickly WAY off the planned one. I didn't find out how to add screenshots but my burn is about 600 delta v and I have about 7000 with my current spacecraft. Does anyone know what's the reason for this .... bug? This way I can't go to Moho or at least it's never as efficient as in the videos I've watched.... annoying

Hello to all, I have failed miserably as you can see by the title... I left the solar system and crashed an ISSBM into the sun but, cannot fly to Duna without smashing my poor F5 and F9 keys... Can someone give me a step by step guide on how to move to other planets? (Interplanetary transfers and their angles and times. I am an idiot, you see...) Please Help me and, Thanks (I HAVE NO FRIENDS)

So I have sent some probes to Jool and Duna, but I was wondering if anybody has some tips on getting Kerbals back from Duna, which I am going to try first. Whenever I get there, I never seem to have enough fuel to get back to Kerbin. I sent a probe Rover to Duna that I successfully landed, but there was no hope of getting back with the fuel and dV I had left. Any tips on making ships more efficient? Thanks!

Hi I'm not quite new to the forums, but haven't been active a lot. Now I decided to share some of my epic missions with you. I'm playing this almost vanilla, just with some minor mods for precise planning, better visuals and of course, to make it more plausible: life support. An (almost) complete mod list: Distant Object Enhancement Environmental Visual Enhancements Kerbal Alarm Clock KAS KIS Persistent Rotation PlaneShine SCANSat scatterer Stock Visual Enhancements TAC Life Support MechJeb SimpleContruction Planetary Base Systems Konstruction Link to my gallery: http://richman1050.imgur.com/ The pale blue dot, circling the green giant has captivated generations of Kerbals since the beginning of astronomy. With the beginning of the space age, Kerbalkind got to taste what it could be to visit it's mysterious twin for the first time. But to find out, what it would look like to visit the beaches of this far off world, there was alot lot learn, a lot of progress to be made, and a lot of mistakes that were awaiting brave pioneers. The KSP, the Kerbal Space Program, as it was officially named had quite some successful missions: Landing a unmanned UAV on Duna: Duna Direct: The Ravenstar: The Rolling Thunder: But all these missions served only one purpose: the get to Laythe one day. Finally, KSC accumulated enough bright minds, technology and of course funds to start with this humongous undertaking. Part I: The construction of the DSV Hermes http://imgur.com/a/8QevU

THE UNCATCHABLE SWIFT "Like the NTR did for Duna Exploration, the Uncatchable Swift does for Interplanetary Transportation" Powered by an Inertial Confinement Fusion rocket, the Uncatchable Swift can reach Duna in 10 days, and Jool in as little as 55. Packed with 175 km/s of delta-V, no longer are you restricted by Hohmann transfer windows—just point towards the target and burn! As a holiday gift to all kerbals, now available for download! This ship was created as part of the Imagining a Kerbal Future series, in the two chapters where I designed a futuristic spacecraft. The first part can be found here, the second here. Purpose While mass drivers have taken over the role of launching unkerballed cargo, a much more comfortable ride is needed for a Kerbal. Therefore, this vessel is intended to give kerbals the comfortable trip they deserve. Not only is this an incredibly quick ship, it can operate inside planetary systems without the use of tugs, a fate that befell many low-thrust fusion drives before this one. Though in-game you can't load a thousand kerbals on board, I derived numbers from the Kerbalism mod to create a space and mass required for that number of kerbals, so you probably could load a thousand kerbals onboard. Features The Uncatchable Swift is equipped with two large centrifugal arms that if spun up (if Infernal Robotics parts are added to the ship) should create artificial gravity for the occupants. I tried to make this a realistic design, so I added tapered radiators and fuel tanks to fit inside a "radiation shadow" created by a shield, and that is also why a huge truss segment was built, so the arms could fit inside the cone. The powerful engine is built so that the Isp can be sacrificed for thrust, and vice-versa. Warnings As the ship is based in a futuristic setting, it assumes that the whole ship was not lifted from Kerbin, and was instead built with parts built in space. Therefore, you will need to place the ship into orbit with the cheat menu or Hyperedit. I personally pick Kerbostationary, since I would assume many space stations would be located there, since space elevators could be built there. A bug I noticed with this ship also means that an amount of Deuterium, Tritium, and Hydrogen much higher than there is supposed to be sometimes gets loaded onto the ship. To fix that, either do so in the VAB or with Hyperedit menu where the level of resources can be edited. Once complete, this ship should be ready for operation. Mods Civilian Population Interstellar Fuel Switch KSP Interstellar Extended Near Future Construction Near Future Spacecraft Planetary Domes TweakScale DOWNLOAD Gallery The Uncatchable Swift flying near full-scale O'Neill Cylinders, 27.5 kilometers away. The Uncatchable Swift as it enters Duna Orbit. Though older ships could never enter Tylo orbit as they entered the Joolian system, the Uncatchable Swift can. Thanks for Reading!

I've started to work with probes, and I can't figure out a good design for a comunications satalite that can talk to probes on interplanetary missions (thank god for kerbal alarm clock). Specificaly, where they should go, and the antenna I should use. Any advice?

Heres how I do interplanetary in Vanilla career. Lets say I'm going to Eve. 1. Get into LKO 2. Just barely escape Kerbin 3. Circularize my orbit around Kerbol. 4. Match Eves inclination. 5. do a A Hohmann Transfer to Eve. I do it this way because of KSPs interface. When I'm orbiting around Kerbol, and not Kerbin, I can setup a maneuver node with a burn that will give me a perfect Hohmann transfer just kissing Eves orbit, and then slide the node back and forth around my orbit around Kerbol in order to get the best phase. I find that getting the phase right makes a huge difference in efficiency (I will have much less relative velocity to my target when I arrive) but because of the games interface I cant get the phase perfect from orbit around Kerbin. If I was in orbit around Kerbin,I can only change the phase by waiting, so I cant go backwards, also the interface gets fiddly (ie. when you pass a node you've setup it goes dead) and the process is awkward. ie. wait - setup node, check if its ok, if not wait some more - repeat. Is there a better way?

Hello everyone, and welcome to my first mission report, which happens to be of my first interplanetary mission. This mission is a manned Eve flyby, under the title Odysseus. It was named after the legendary Kreek Hero of this title. The crew: https://imgur.com/TbtUuHI The crew stands before their launch vehicle in a PR photo shoot, just days before their departure. Mission scientist Madler Kerman (level 2). She has completed a mun orbital mission and a minmus landing. Mission commander and scientist Bill Kerman (level 2). He is a veteran of several mun landings and a minmus orbiter mission. Mission pilot Jenzon Kerman (level 2). He has gone on both mun and minmus orbiter missions. He also completed a tour aboard Prosperity Space Station, in LKO. Part 1: Crew Launch, docking, and departure https://imgur.com/a/7JmR9