DunaRocketeer

As you can see, it is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary progression, but it still required an awful lot of testing to iron out all the bugs associated with controlling large vehicles in varied flight regimes. The mission architecture owes a lot to the rumour mill surrounding SpaceX's Mars plans: several of the two stage vehicles are launched and refueled in Kerbin orbit by a tanker variant of the DCT, whilst the lower booster stage returns to launch site. For this opening salvo of flights, I've stuck to four DCT's: Two hab modules, and ISRU trailer that can be towed to the various DCT landing sites, and the Engineering Support craft, which contains the Engineer Kerbonaut's Mk1 Lander-Can plus life support, ramps for offloading cargo from the DCT's and a compact tractor-rover derived from my Munar surveying missions. A steep ascent trajectory is a compromise between putting the upper stage on a good sub-orbital arc, and not going so far downrange so as to make booster recovery impossible: Getting this barge of a vehicle on the ground is an interesting flying challenge. It also doesn't come to a halt on the runway easily.

I usually post images in the 'what did you do in ksp today' thread, but I'm coming to the end of the tech tree in this current play-through of the game, and I thought I'd share some pics of the vehicles that got me there. But mainly I want to share pics of the ongoing mission that will round out the tech tree, and keep me very occupied after it's done. Derivatives of the vehicle shown below did the lion's share of the work. It got tweaked a bit as I unlocked better components, but essentially it is a way of recovering launch hardware to the KSC runway. It can put a small shuttle into orbit or a bare-bones manned Minmus flight: Needing greater lifting capacity, but not wanting to change the booster, I decide to hitch two of them to a central disposable core. To keep costs down the core doesn't possess probe cores, SAS, RCS, batteries or anything really beyond a fairing, tanks and a couple of Swivels. This launcher enabled a far more comprehensive exploration of the Kerbin-Mun-Minmus system. It could put a departure stage plus lander/rover surveyor into Munar orbit, or a space lab around Kerbin. The next logical step was out into interplanetary space, and the Duna window was closest. I could've managed with the launcher I already had, but it would have been a pain to assemble a craft in orbit. It also wouldn't have been a particularly ambitious design, and since I had just unlocked all these 3.75m/mk3 parts, I thought I'd cook up something new....

That's just fantastic!

Haha, just been going through my image archive, and I've found my very first (successful) Mun mission, all the way back in 2013! What a dog that rocket was! Nevertheless, this is what started it all off for me, even if it was just the Demo, it was enough to begin the obsession. http://imgur.com/a/aLucw

Wow, there's some extensive infrastructure you people have in place, I'd love to see some pics I'm not nearly as frugal. My Mun and Minmus flights feature spacecraft that are displosable. The transfer stage gets destroyed through impact on the Mun/Minmus. The rover (if applicable) is left behind on the surface. The lander, with all its expensive equipment, gets destroyed on Kerbin re-entry. The only thing that gets recovered is the capsule/heatshield/parachute. Very Apollo, very wasteful . My one saving grace is the launcher, which is partially reusable: The disposable upper stage is made to be as basic and cheap as possible.

I've sent Jeb on exploratory missions to the Mun and Minmus, but really Val is the explorer of my astronaut corps with extensive surface survey experience. Jeb is my blue-collar hauler spaceplane pilot, shuttling crews and satellites into LKO. Not yesterday, though. He assumed test pilot duties for my first interplanetary vessel (for this playthrough).

Last night I finished the testing of my Duna cargo transport system. I launched two of them (one manned, the other a tanker variant) and successfully docked them in LKO. The tanker offloaded its propellant and returned to Kerbin. The crewed DCT then executed a burn all the way to the edge of Kerbins SOI to simulate aerobraking from interplanetary velocities. The vehicle remained stable throughout, and after the second aerobreaking pass it retroburned to a landing near KSC. Now to fill out the cargo bays with all the various equipment. I've already fitted out the engineers ship with a mk1 pod, life support cans, KIS tools, ramps, and my Mun rover which has been repurposed to be a tractor by tweakscaling a grabber to the front. There's three other ships to fill out, too. All the ground based equipment will be tested on Kerbin before it gets hauled into space, but I'm hoping that won't take too long. So that's it, after all the wonky re-entries, fuel depletion, exploding decouplers, broken landing legs and wobbly landing gear, I think it's ready. Whilst it's small potatoes compared to other vehicles I see on here, if it works it'll be the largest thing I've ever landed on another world.

Long range camera captures the Duna Cargo Transporter on ascent during a recent flight test:

Congratulations on that next step, I tend to keep my kerbals limited to the Kerbin/Eve/Duna system too, with probes doing the rest. I look forward to seeing your pictures, it's always interesting to see how other people design spacecraft.

My recent Minmus-science-extravengaza allowed me to begin a new test campaign in my career game. It's my biggest launcher for quite a while and is hopefully going to be a rugged, reuseable way of getting cargo to Duna. I'll be sending several of these up every transfer window, initially to get infrastructure up and running. Ore mining is especially important, or else they won't be coming back again! I'll also need to send parts than can create a ramp that can be used to offload cargo once on the surface: I think one of the flights will need to be full up with KIS containers to aid all the construction. It can get to Duna without refuelling in Kerbin orbit, but I think the margins will be slim for landing so making tanker versions will probably be necessary. The following images aren't of the final 'production vehicle', but test articles that are helping me to refine the design, there are still performance gains to be eked out of the basic design. One of the more unexpected changes I've had to make was ditching the fins on the upper stage as they were causing uncontrollable roll motion during the final stages of descent back down to Kerbin. To compensate, I've finally started using the vernier engines - and I love them! Such a useful part to have in the inventory. Here it is sitting pretty on the pad. Unsurprisingly it's a beast to pitch over, fortunately I'm favouring a steep trajectory on this vehicle. Seperation of the stages after the suborbital boost phase ...And a simple circularisation burn gets it into orbit with plenty of propellant reserve. ...Whilst the booster flies back to the runway in much the same fashion as my previous fly-back boosters (although this one's a good deal larger...) Also drawn up some preliminary mission plans: Transfer Window 1 1.) MkI lander can, rover tug, basic ramp 2.) full ramp 3.) hab/life support/rtg 4.) drill, ore tank, refinery, solar farm, driveable, high mounted grapple 5.) resource scanner (light cargo launcher) Transfer Window 2 6.) hab/life support/rtg 7.) hab/life support/rtg 8.) hab equipment 9.) KIS pods

These days it's largely to do with landing badly on rough terrain. I've mostly done away with that due to my VTOL, but that comes with its own risks...

I tweaked my standard Mun lander to be more suited to Minmus: The low gravity made the rover useless, so the rover bay was retasked to carry a complete suite of science instruments. That, plus the surface samples and reports yeilded of 6000 science in one mission.

I'm continuing to plan a new exploration architecture based on my current method of flying boosters back to KSC, I know that I mention it a lot on here, but I'm just happy that I've found a new way of making launches difficult again . First create a winged flyback booster, this time based on the 3m rocket parts, which will be big enough to put a Mk3 based payload on a suborbital trajectory before flying back under jet power. The Mk3 upperstage will continue into orbit before going on to Duna, where it will refuel, drop its cargo and fly back to Kerbin. No parachutes to make descent easier, just relying on my landing ability . I've tested in Sandbox mode a basic version of the upper stage on Kerbin - it doesn't yet have enough delta-v, and there are roll control issues, but I'm working on improving it. I just need more science to build it in my main game!

I can't get both my flyback boosters to land on the runway relably using Burn Together (been using the grass asjacent to KSC up til now). But I figured a way last night - disengage burn together just before final descent on the runway, land one, then switch back to the other in flight, turn it around and land that one too. It's a small improvement but it's nice to return them onto KSC grounds.

^ We're still over a year away, but I'm going to remain optimistic: the fact that they've got a good showrunner and are going straight-to-series are positive indications that they are serious about this.

If a Kerbal dies I try not to press F9, but I still do sometimes. Every rocket I create that carries Kerbals has to have escape thrusters - this is especially true since I have the launch failure mod running, plus life support to worry about. I'm also sticking to tried and tested rockets/spacecraft that I know how to fly well.

Dude, spoiler code!

Source: http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/red-mars-spike-series-order-1201656112/ I'm more than a little happy to see this happening, and to be written and produced by JMS as well! In my opinion, Robinson made writing Mars fiction 10 times more difficult for subsequent authors because he did it so darned well and in such detail. This, if done with respect for the original material (whilst not necessarily being beholden to it), could be an astonishing bit of television. Roll on January 2017!

I'm flattered! Mine wasn't balanced initially, but some slight tilting of the lift engines helped in that regard, hope that helps Edit - love your flight of the Navigator avatar - one of my favourite films!

This is kinda cheesy, but still epic. Which suits KSP IMHO. https://youtu.be/sv2s0RCYs2c

It's mostly been about Munar exploration lately so I can get enough Science for the 3 meter rocket and spaceplane parts Which included a treacherous entry into a crater to get to a contract location: ...And perfected my VTOL:

I had a bunch of survey contracts on Kerbin. They were located too far away for my bushplane to reach, so my spaceplane had to do it. Several dodgy landings later resulted in me deciding to do a long range VTOL. I'm so glad I did because it's a hoot to fly. The other thing I got up to was a fun little engineering mission: I forgot some sensors on my Mun vehicle, which was already in orbit of Kerbin, so I used KIS to add them later in a follow on flight.

I've looked at it, it looks incredible, but I'm going to wait for some of the bugs to be dealt with before I give it a go. I'm just wondering if this more minor sounding adjustment is possible.

When you're in a low orbit around Kerbin, the ground/water is the same colour whether you're looking straight down or looking up to the horizon. The higher you go, a gradient of blue is gradually introduced that tints things increasingly towards the horizon. This simulates the effect of atmosphere. It's a simple effect that adds greatly to the visual beauty of the planet - my question is, why do you have to go so high to see it? It should be very apparent when at low altitude because of the viewing angles at that height. Is there a way of editing when that blue gradient gets introduced?

To each there own, personally those long exposure photos turned into skyboxes look awful to me - space should be black.