Kerbal Morghulis - All Kerbals must... be left behind

[Two]

The challenge: Start a new career then never return any Kerbal that was launched ever.

Details:

1. Start a new Career mode at least at normal difficulty.

2. You can do whatever you want, except that any Kerbal that leaves Kerbin may never set foot back on that planet.

3. In addition any Kerbal that ever lands on any planet may never again leave that planet.

4. All spacecrafts must be manned at all times, unless you abandon/destroy it right away.

Some hints:

- It is ok to have an orbital space station where you house your Kerbals temporarily (i.E. for recover type missions).

- You are allowed to suicide-burn a vessel, then exit mid-flight (for example to land on Minmus) with just the Kerbal, but only if that vessel gets destroyed in the process.

- Keeping a vessel in orbit and leaving it alone to return at a later point is not allowed by rule #4. You however can leave on Kerbal in the orbital vessel while another one is doing whatever you have planned.

- A Kerbal that has not yet launches is considered to not yet have left the planet (even if he is already in a rocket). So you are allowed to gather the ground science on Kerbin. You can build a rover to get the ones far away, but as soon as you lift off with anything (even a plane) the Kerbal and vehicle may not touch the ground again (at least not alive).

Score (if you want):

1 Point for each planet visited.

10% bonus for each planet that contains a "house" for the landed (living) Kerbal (house = any accessible crew cabin + working power generation + working antenna). If you kill that Kerbal at a later time, those 10% are lost retroactively.

2x score if you play on hard difficulty.

Make sure to take pictures!

Edited October 23, 2015 by Two

[Robet.G]

How is this a challenge? seems to be easier than just playing normally?

[Fluburtur]

Agreed, it must be nic to have a rule like having to report science or stuff like that, something that actually makes this hard

[Two]

You start with 4 Kerbals, that means you have 4 launches left before you run out of Kerbals.

Those guys actually become a resource with this challenge that you need to manage. That is: incoming money vs. buying new Kerbals. Also doing rescue missions won't really help, because you are not allowed to get them back to Kerbin for your next launch nor launch an unmanned rocket to pick them up on the way.

So already your first rocket needs to have an antenna and batteries to get the science back down to earth, as it will either reach orbit and stay there (with the Kerbal) or crash into the ground and gets destroyed (probably with the Kerbal). In both cases you loose the rocket, and the Kerbal in question will not launch a second rocket ever again, because he is either dead or drifting in orbit.

You also cannot easily do missions, because you need to spend a Kerbal for each one of them. Simple refuel? Costs 1 Kerbal. Satellite positioning mission? Costs 1 Kerbal. And so on. At some point you face the issue that buying another Kerbal will cost more than the entire mission nets you, leaving you with the only option to sacrifice one Kerbal (and loose the 10% point bonus) so you can buy a new one (hence Kerbal Morghulis).

It is not as easy as it sounds!

Edited October 23, 2015 by Two

[killakrust]

So, surely a sub-orbital flight wouldn't count as "leaving Kerbin"? So I could send a bunch of missions to the local biomes without breaking the rules?

[RocketPropelledGiraffe]

As far as I understand any take off would be considered leaving Kerbin. That basically means no aeroplanes unless they crash-land?

Maybe I will give this a try as an evening activity on my next business trip, let's see how far we can go on hard difficulty...

[Two]

As RocketPropelledGiraffe said: any lift-off is considered "leaving Kerbin" and the Kerbal is not allowed to return. And yes space-planes are kinda useless in this challenge except for maybe saving some dV as they are not allowed to fly without a Kerbal on board, and the Kerbal is not allowed to land.

You could in theory have the plane fly really low and then have a new Kerbal somehow hop aboard mid-flight. Not sure though if that is of any use.