What is your favorite "I did it!" Moment?

[Rocketscience101]

When I first landed on Duna. I suck at interplanetary manouvers so getting into orbit around duna was a huge deal for me. I brought it with a small apollo style lander, that went down to the surface. All of this was in career mode before currency was enabled. I gathered a huge load of science, and went back into orbit to transfer the crew to the return vehicle and head home. I made it back to Kerbin and splashed down in the ocean. I realized something was wrong when I got into Kerbins SOI though. I had forgotten to transfer the science to the return vehicle. All the surface science was on lander still in orbit around Duna. So to collect it I sent my asteroid recovery craft to grab it and bring it into orbit around kerbin. I never did achieve that, an update came a while later. but just getting to and returning from duna was an achievement I will always remember.

[klesh]

Roving a mini probe to the Mohole and detaching it to fly to and land at the bottom:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=457288885

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=457289090

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=457290062

[Josh Harris]

Multiple planet flyby (Duna, then Eve.)

Mun landing in 13.3 demo "look ma, no legs!" sorry no pics of that one.

[Turbo pumped]

Finally getting out of Eves atmosphere and back to Kerbin !

[windows_x_seven]

Orbit, Mun landing, rendezvous and docking, and interplanetary trips.

I've yet to build a functional SSTO, that would be my largest achievement so far.

[kiwi1960]

Managed to fly a plane at over 2200m/s in 1.0.4. without burning up...

Mind you, I had to use the heat resistant parts and scram-jets ... the only thing that went boom was the battery on the side of the plane.

and yes.... it was an escape velocity. I fixed it by pointing the nose straight down, to slow down, and went full power to get it back on track.

[Dispatcher]

Made a piloted non-plane Laythe lander which can return to Kerbin. Oh yeah, a piloted rover remains behind. I would de-orbit, separate the two, take control of the rover so I could pop the chutes, take control of the lander and pop its chutes. I would avoid using the engines for landing, if possible. Oh, the rover is a boat as well. The image is during some Kerbin testing of the lander/ rover assembly. Not sure how well these would work with the new aerodynamics and physics tweaks.

Edited July 12, 2015 by Dispatcher

[samstarman5]

On my first rescue mission for my 1.0.3-4 career, I forgot to put a heat shield on the craft. This I did not notice until after I popped off the control stage, leaving just the command(with the rescued kerbal inside), and no heat shield. That was the longest re-entry I had endured thus far, waiting for that tell-tale change in sound, telling you that you just survived the heat part of re-entry. All that stood between the little kerbal and plasma was the butt-end of a Mk1 inline cockpit, and a hope and a prayer.

It just does not seem like that should have been possible.

[joekidd1992]

When I first landed on Duna. I suck at interplanetary manouvers so getting into orbit around duna was a huge deal for me. I brought it with a small apollo style lander, that went down to the surface. All of this was in career mode before currency was enabled. I gathered a huge load of science, and went back into orbit to transfer the crew to the return vehicle and head home. I made it back to Kerbin and splashed down in the ocean. I realized something was wrong when I got into Kerbins SOI though. I had forgotten to transfer the science to the return vehicle. All the surface science was on lander still in orbit around Duna. So to collect it I sent my asteroid recovery craft to grab it and bring it into orbit around kerbin. I never did achieve that, an update came a while later. but just getting to and returning from duna was an achievement I will always remember.

This is EXACTLY what happened to me yesterday!! My big moment was flying a manned mission to Ike, landed, planted a flag, made it back up, and then docked, transferred my remaining lander fuel to my interplanetary vehicle. Moved Jebediah to main vehicle and undocked and left lander in orbit around Ike. AND LEFT 300 SCIENCE!!

Oh, as I mentioned - my big moment was flying to Ike, landing, and flying back .... without Mechjeb planning the interplanetary transfers.

Edited July 13, 2015 by joekidd1992
Corrected spelling

[Theoderich]

I can't decide. I got two big moments, both rescue missions inside Kerbin's SOI:

The first was back in .22 I think: Bob did have plenty of life support, but not enough fuel and was just barely able to get into orbit from the mun using all fuel and but a few drops of RCS. Not having realized that I could simply stick two capsules together, I pondered how I could save the poor guy, and finally send a rocket up with Jeb at the helm and a IR custom build claw on top. It was my first rendezvous ever, with a 60° inclined orbit around mun going the wrong direction. And somehow I made it and send them both back to Kerbin, separating again halfway so that they enter atmo with half an h distance.

The other was in .25: I had parked a prototype of an interplanetary ship around mun for testing and science gathering. The lander was stranded on the surface after a rather inefficient landing, so I send the automated miner after it. so far so good, but then the munar night came, and being bad at precision landings I had not enough fuel to get them both back up without doing some mining first, but no sun, no mining By the time I realized this about 4h of electric charge were left.

So I send a slightly overpowered ship to the rescue. Basically just a capsule a few LS packs and a 2.5m fission reactor with thermal engine courtesy of KSP Interstellar. And I made it in time. After a ridiculously inefficient but fast burn for the mun, a minor course correction after the SOI change and a 1min 20sec suicide burn with a TWR around 6 or so I managed to get there on time and link the two craft with a KAS pipe. It was in itself not the most complicated maneuver, but trying to land close to the target while the mun zooms at you at a quite alarming rate was quite a thrill.

- - - Updated - - -

[...] I forgot to put a heat shield on the craft. This I did not notice until after I popped off the control stage, leaving just the command(with the rescued kerbal inside), and no heat shield. That was the longest re-entry I had endured thus far[...]

I once had something like this back in.24 or .25, FAR+DRE, and for me it was was a science lab and the big command pot. I went in ultra cautious, bringing my orbit down to 71 by 72 km before even starting reentry.