Tell a minor accomplishment you're disproportionately proud of.

[FinalFan]

Thread was inspired by the following story. 

I am a new-ish player on my first career mode.  I haven't gotten serious about setting up relay satellites in Kerbin system.  I have a bunch of rescue/salvage contracts around Minmus that I am scooping up with a pod of Klaw-equipped probes, but I cheaped out on the probe modules and they don't have "aim at/away from target" or "aim at maneuver node" (OKTO II).  I also apparently forgot to equip them with antennas, so they are out of range of direct Kerbin control. 

I thought I had a relay satellite in position to help with controlling these probes for at least part of their orbit, but apparently I was wrong.  So I'm stuck moving in the six cardinal directions in 100% throttle blasts with no maneuver nodes.  Getting an intercept and a rendezvous was relatively easy, but this is a salvage mission so I needed to actually snag the thing with the Klaw.  So I need to not only make physical contact, but I also have to make the Klaw actually point towards the object while the probe intercepts it ... without actually being able to tell the probe to point at the object. 

After several over-corrections (by slipping a keystroke and burning longer than intended) and a lot of tweaking, I finally get myself to a point where I'm drifting slowly into a position about 12 meters radially out from the object.  Point radial in, give it one last short blast, and ... contact!  Perfect catch!  I felt like a god. 

[Luc1fer]

3 hours ago, FinalFan said:

Thread was inspired by the following story. 

I am a new-ish player on my first career mode.  I haven't gotten serious about setting up relay satellites in Kerbin system.  I have a bunch of rescue/salvage contracts around Minmus that I am scooping up with a pod of Klaw-equipped probes, but I cheaped out on the probe modules and they don't have "aim at/away from target" or "aim at maneuver node" (OKTO II).  I also apparently forgot to equip them with antennas, so they are out of range of direct Kerbin control. 

I thought I had a relay satellite in position to help with controlling these probes for at least part of their orbit, but apparently I was wrong.  So I'm stuck moving in the six cardinal directions in 100% throttle blasts with no maneuver nodes.  Getting an intercept and a rendezvous was relatively easy, but this is a salvage mission so I needed to actually snag the thing with the Klaw.  So I need to not only make physical contact, but I also have to make the Klaw actually point towards the object while the probe intercepts it ... without actually being able to tell the probe to point at the object. 

After several over-corrections (by slipping a keystroke and burning longer than intended) and a lot of tweaking, I finally get myself to a point where I'm drifting slowly into a position about 12 meters radially out from the object.  Point radial in, give it one last short blast, and ... contact!  Perfect catch!  I felt like a god. 

Landing on the moon, now i laugh at myself being so proud of it while I keep making my 150 piece station 

[Atkara]

I don't think there's anything minor to whatever one does in KSP. Every single bit matters because without it, you wouldn't be doing what you do today.

[Idgo]

I was really proud of my first orbital docking maneuver. It was also my first space station launch. I had made a Skylab replica (all Vanilla, mind you) and for the sake of realism wanted to launch it with no crew and have a second launch to put a crew on. On my first attempt, I got the station into an orbit (I decoupled the engine before realizing I hadn't circularized the orbit so it was really weird and I always forget to quicksave so I was stuck with that lol). Then, I launched up my CSM replica and brought it to orbit, matched, and docked with the station. I was so proud that not only had I finally docked 2 ships outside of a tutorial, it was in a weird orbit as well! I was able to use the CSM engine to circularize my orbit as well, and I still had enough fuel to decouple and deorbit, bringing my 3 brave Kerbonauts back home.

[cubinator]

Learning how to calculate a Hohmann transfer by hand because I accidentally couldn't upgrade the tracking station.

[Gargamel]

12 hours ago, Atkara said:

I don't think there's anything minor to whatever one does in KSP. Every single bit matters because without it, you wouldn't be doing what you do today.

I think this is right on.  Everything you do is a stepping stone to bigger and better things.  And given how most of us are striving for efficiency in our flights, anything we do during a flight is probably mission critical in some form or another.   We wouldn't do that little side task if wasn't necessary later on.    The first time we do anything in this game, it's usually difficult to get it right, and we feel very proud of ourselves upon accomplishing it.   But later on, that docking maneuver that you were stressing over, with practice, it becomes second nature.    Everything we succeed at is worth being proud of, and none of them are minor at the time, but only in hindsight. 

[Mahnarch]

I was able to install a patch a few versions ago that didn't crash my entire game!

[Ultimate Steve]

My first big-ish Mun base. Munbase Python. At this point it was 3? modules plus a little klaw adapter thingy with RCS. And a science hopper. So I was flying Degrid Kerman, Scientist, back from a polar biome and I either ran out of fuel or began the braking burn too late, or both. I bailed out and she hit the Mun hard, 30km from the base, and presumably she would have all sorts of broken bones, but she survived, so I flew the klaw thing over to her, klawed her, flew her back to the base, ran out of fuel again, crashed, but she survived again and got into the base.

Until the Project Intrepid era, Degrid was the fifth most important Kerbal in my head after the default 4.

[ARS]

First aircraft landing using landing gear instead of airbraking and deploying parachutes all over the fuselage

[Superfluous J]

A different take on this (because I can't think of anything in-game) but when All Y'All not only compiled but actually WORKED I was not just proud. I was a bit shocked and amazed.

[Sharpy]

Orbital station encounter directly from launch from Minmus surface. At another time, I had set a rover parked by my base as target for landing for arriving craft. Had to abort landing, and retry again because I'd land right on top of that rover.

[Sharpy]

6 hours ago, ARS said:

First aircraft landing using landing gear instead of airbraking and deploying parachutes all over the fuselage

oh, yes... SST,NFO. My SSTO plane that arrived at the orbital station just fine, returned missing about 30% of parts that it lost on reentry and landing, but landed successfully at KSC.

[Randazzo]

Completing "take a such-and-such reading at this altitude on kerbin" with a plane.

I had been launching rockets at the area like missiles, hoping to cross the area at the right altitude.

[TheProtagonists]

It was about a year ago when I first started playing with almost no mods, I was able to successfully launch 3 communication satellites and put all of them on geostationary orbit 120 degrees apart in one go without quicksaves.

Granted that rocket had way too much dV for that mission, but that's still way more exciting than waiting 15 minutes for the game to load just to realise you made a typo in your config so the solar system wouldn't load...

[FinalFan]

8 hours ago, Randazzo said:

Completing "take a such-and-such reading at this altitude on kerbin" with a plane.

I had been launching rockets at the area like missiles, hoping to cross the area at the right altitude.

Oh man, I was addicted to that.  I kept doing survey rockets until they started giving me ones far enough away that I could no longer do suborbital hops to them with my Thumper + Terrier setup. 

[purpleivan]

I had a vehicle returning from Jool and once again had misjudged the amount of fuel to get it back to Kerbin. It had enough to pass by at a few hundred km, but enough to get into orbit, or skim the atmosphere to brake into one. So it was going to rush by at about 2.5km/s too high a speed for orbit and head out into the empty blackness.

Luckily I had a large fuel tank with engines sitting at a mining station on Minmus that I was using to move the product of a mining base on the surface, to a fuel station in orbit. So I waited for the Jool ship to come rushing by, then eyeball my departure from Minmus orbit in hot pursuit.

Once I was chasing after the Jool ship, I started dropping maneuver nodes on my trajectory, to tweak my rescue ship's approach to it's target. FInally, just within Kerbin's SOI, I cought up with it, docked and transferred the remaining fuel to the Jool ship. This gave it enough to hit the brakes and swing back into orbit of Kerbin, to have it's crew picked up later by a ship sent from a station in lower orbit.

The rescue ship.

Edited August 28, 2018 by purpleivan

[Sharpy]

6 hours ago, purpleivan said:

I had a vehicle returning from Jool and once again had misjudged the amount of fuel to get it back to Kerbin. It had enough to pass by at a few hundred km, but enough to get into orbit, or skim the atmosphere to brake into one. So it was going to rush by at about 2.5km/s too high a speed for orbit and head out into the empty blackness.

Luckily I had a large fuel tank with engines sitting at a mining station on Minmus that I was using to move the product of a mining base on the surface, to a fuel station in orbit. So I waited for the Jool ship to come rushing by, then eyeball my departure from Minmus orbit in hot pursuit.

Once I was chasing after the Jool ship, I started dropping maneuver nodes on my trajectory, to tweak my rescue ship's approach to it's target. FInally, just within Kerbin's SOI, I cought up with it, docked and transferred the remaining fuel to the Jool ship. This gave it enough to hit the brakes and swing back into orbit of Kerbin, to have it's crew picked up later by a ship sent from a station in lower orbit.The rescue ship.

Spoiler

 

Saved the rescue ship or dropped it after transferring the fuel?

[purpleivan]

8 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Saved the rescue ship or dropped it after transferring the fuel?

Unfortunately it had to be sacrificed and left to head into a Kerbol orbit. It was a lot larger than the crewed vehicle, so there wasn't sufficient fuel to bring back both.

[DJWyre]

On 8/27/2018 at 3:29 AM, Gargamel said:

I think this is right on.  Everything you do is a stepping stone to bigger and better things.  And given how most of us are striving for efficiency in our flights, anything we do during a flight is probably mission critical in some form or another.   We wouldn't do that little side task if wasn't necessary later on.    The first time we do anything in this game, it's usually difficult to get it right, and we feel very proud of ourselves upon accomplishing it.   But later on, that docking maneuver that you were stressing over, with practice, it becomes second nature.    Everything we succeed at is worth being proud of, and none of them are minor at the time, but only in hindsight. 

I still remember literally jumping out of my seat and dancing for a while when I got my first Kerbin orbit - now the crafts I launch to KLO are less than half the size.
My heart pounded in my chest during my first Minmus landing, near panic as I came in for touchdown - now Mun landings are almost boring affairs.

On topic though, oddly, sending a rover around the KSC to gather science, launching a new station with a research lab, then launching a mobility-enhanced rocket to deliver said science (221 reports) to mull over on their way to Duna, was strangely satisfying.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

My first asteroid capture.

Despite being quite confident with rendezvousing, I found the entire concept a bit daunting; especially after a few initial failed attempts.

I reached out for advice from the community here at the forums, and found it in abundance. When that Klaw kissed that Asteroid oh so gently at 1 m/s and the camera "jumped" it was more satisfying then beating all the DarkSouls games combined. Thanks again to everyone who offered me help in that thread. "Ronin1" still sits in a loose Kerbin orbit with it's Asteroid to this day. A monument to years of playing KSP and still finding new, challenging, and rewarding experiences!

Edited August 28, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Kernel Kraken]

Orbiting without falling into Kerbol. Or crashing. Or orbiting Kerbol itself. It took my two hundred ten hours (give or take) to figure it out.

[Kerbinchaser]

Buttering toast without making large goops of butter.

 

Oh, this is about KSP? My bad. 

Making the perfect orbit. 

[Zeiss Ikon]

Two things -- first Mun landing and return (after deleting my first Science game due to ALL MY PILOTS being stranded in Munar orbit).

And building a launch vehicle capable of Lunar missions using ethanol fuel in RSS/RO/RP-1.  Who needs all that smelly kerosene?

[Triop]

One of the first thing I did in KSP was landing a MiG-15 on the Mun, still proud of that.

 

[Geonovast]

The very first time I de-orbited a shuttle without it flipping on me.

 

It was incredible.  I felt like I finally knew what I was doing.  (Although I'm still not sure how to get one into orbit without it wobbling all over the place.)

 

Pic isn't that time, but it's gotten addictive.  I never thought I'd build shuttles, but now it seems to be all I focus on.

Edited September 7, 2018 by Geonovast