Concentric

Bit the bullet and did the timewarp - taking FourJade to Jool, and then onward to Laythe, as depicted here. But before that, I smashed a probe into the ground after emptying its fuel tanks as a "lithobrake test". Nah, it was just a defunct, purpose-built rescue probe that needed destroying anyway, I just wanted to watch it happen. There was no expectation of its survival.

It's astounding. Time is fleeting. Madness... takes its toll Finally, after over a year and a half, the FourJade mission ship has arrived at its destination. Just as was predicted at the time of the mid-journey adjustment burn, the ship swept past Jool before heading towards a Laythe encounter. Bob calculated that with only a small retrograde burn at Jool periapse, the ship could lower its Laythe periapse sufficiently in order to aerobrake into orbit directly at Laythe. With the Laythe lander making up such a large proportion of the bulk of the ship (now that the transfer stage's tanks were emptier), this had been determined to be the best staging area for this mission. Simulations determined that a Laythe periapse of 22km would serve to put the ship into an orbit that could then be further refined. The approach. Jool, Tylo, Laythe and Vall are all visible in this image The burn, reducing the Laythe periapse Somehow, Bill's expertise and Jeb's luck cancelled each other out on the card games on the way out here - Bob had to rely on his so-called "Mission Critical work" things somehow preventing him from playing all the time to avoid losing too much to either of them, the miserable spoilsport sod. Although, that did mean that he was the one behind the simulations and calculations that lead to multiple successful aerobrake passes. Funny how that works. Perhaps, since he loves piloting this transfer stage part, he can continue to do so for the rest of the mission! That'll cheer him up, I'm sure. Mission Critical work - the only reason this aerobrake worked at all. ... and this one. Reports were taken down, and Bill made sure to change the crew-report storage while making his EVA high above Laythe. Once the Laythe apoapsis had been reduced below 200km, Bob performed a couple of small burns, raising the periapse and lowering the apoapse until FourJade was in a nice, circular 100km orbit: Additionally, some kind of interplanetary (or possibly Joolian) space-gremlin has been playing silly buggers with the docking clamps! Fuel Crossfeed keeps being turned on unnecessarily! (Wait, wasn't it supposed to be on? -Bill | NO! I made specific note, you illiterate imbecile! -Bob | Tensions can run high after being crammed into a pod for about two years straight with the same people. -Cmdr. Jebadiah Kerman, MPsych) (The previous is an excerpt from the second crew report performed in Laythe orbit. Bob had to get some space immediately afterwards, so volunteered to take the EVA report in near-Laythe orbit.) Fuel transfer? What, again? The Jool system is a marvelously cinematic place. A great many images were taken - and this before visiting the other moons! Ever notice how, in the moments before sunrise over Laythe/after sunset over Laythe, you can see Kerbol as a shining dot through Laythe's oceans? Because I did, taking some of these.

A rescue mission for Dozer, sent several times until it worked. Additionally, I'm rather certain I saw Minmus from the launchpad and in LKO: it was a dot, glinting in the sun. A little above Mun, some way to the left. Perhaps 2/5 of the way from Mun to the rocket? On the strange vertical black line, a little above a white star. Mostly dark, but with a glint of white on one side? I constructed the rescue ship so that it would land over the capsule, and then dock by retracting landing gear. It also had lots of torque and four LV-909s. I eventually decided to put an ion engine on the nose with a decent xenon supply, as in the previous launches of this mission I had run out of fuel at inconvenient times - a consequence of finishing the circularisation with the lander engine, which was, of course, a consequence of an insufficiently powerful lifter. I also decided that I would use an SRB-Turbojet lifter, with an aerospike as the central engine, and some 48-7S to boost thrust in vacuum. This seemed to work out alright, but it was far from optimal. I guess I need more practice with vertically-launched jet vehicles. I used the "transfer" stage to finish circularising, and to perform the injection. The lander was almost full on the way out to the Mun, so I determined that if I got orbit, lowered it, and deorbited all on the ion engine, I would have plenty of fuel to perform the landing and pick up Dozer. This here needs to become roughly equatorial, come down low, and deorbit a little ahead of the lander can. Performed a 10 min burn to capture, then positioned to adjust inclination. Just brought down the periapse a little further, planning the further reductions of apoapse. And deorbited. Now to disable the ion engine and switch back to our LV-909s. Landed in the dark, smashed off one of Dozer's solar panels, then settled next to it and awaited the sunrise. I ended up smashing off the other panel as I settled the rescue probe above Dozer's capsule. Just retract the legs for a moment to perform the docking I then launched to orbit and came across a bug. For some reason, I couldn't place any maneuver nodes, so I burned my escape manually. Then, I saw the next aspect of the bug: No preview of the orbit after the escape? I had no idea how low my Kerbin periapse was until I had actually escaped - turned out it was below the surface. On the way back, I separated the capsule from the probe - as the probe lacked parachutes and the capsule had only enough for itself. Dozer got a final view of the Mun before the recovery teams came to pick him up.

Design, testing, preflight and inadequate note-taking for a mapless mission, as in the challenge I've linked to in my signature. I have a big plan that I'm hoping to work up towards, that involves rover-docking on Minmus's surface to form a mission ship from five or six component ships, then launch into Minmus orbit, do a full orbit, land again, escape Kerbin, do a full orbit around the Sun and encounter Kerbin again, then aerobrake down to LKO, perform a full orbit, then go to Mun, do a full orbit, land and return to Kerbin safely. A rover component, with a Kerbin TWR of 1, being tested. It possesses a Clampotron at the front and a Clampotron Jr diagonally above it to ensure a strong docking connection. That's the plan. It'd be rather high-scoring, so hopefully I can pull it off. But first, I need to be able to reliably reach Minmus without the map. So, today I built something simpler, and performed an orbit of Kerbin, a flight to Minmus, an orbit, a landing, then a transfer down to Mun, a landing, an orbit, and a safe return to Kerbin. I took notes on the way, referring to MET, target speeds, directions, altitudes and burn times rather inconsistently. "At 1d3h, burn 45s due south", "At 800km, burn retrograde until 125m/s". This inconsistent incompleteness of my note-taking, and lack of off-hand or noted knowledge of Minmus's orbital characteristics lead to the later failure: After the flight, as I had my notes, I reverted it, and began to do it again from my notes, without using the map. My notes on the launch itself were rather incomplete, but I got into orbit anyway. I think I even managed to match inclinations rather well, following my notes - particularly due to my later showing. It was a whole orbit before I needed to fire for the injection, which happened to be one of the ones where I had noted altitude, "prograde" as direction, and target velocity. There was a little scare for a moment, as I overshot my target velocity a little, and appeared to be escaping. I timewarped to the point that my notes told me I would have a Minmus encounter. And, lo and behold, Minmus! Not an encounter, it was just within clear visible range. If I'd made note of Minmus' orbital characteristics, or thought to check the wiki for them, perhaps I could have approached this like a docking. As I didn't, I just flailed around wildly, hoping to edge close enough to catch its SoI and know where to burn. Eventually, however, I had to face the fact that it really wasn't going to happen. I reverted again, and left that save. Perhaps I'll fly it a few times with the map, and take better notes: that should help. Also, I probably want to try taking smaller steps to my target plan: perhaps try for a mapless Minmus mission first?

Did you perform any full orbits of Kerbin? Without them: Base = 8 (1 component ship, Mun landing, Mun Orbit, Kerbin Landing, Safe Recovery Bonus(Mun)) Multiplier = 2 (Kerbin, Mun) Final score = 16 points. If you performed a full Kerbin orbit with Kerbin's SOI, then that'll bump up to 18. No bonuses for performing it all within IVA, though. It was really interesting - and I'm sure considerably more difficult without the main view's altimeter and the ability to see where your shadow is. Nice job.

Hm. A bonus to base score for Kerbin return? Perhaps +6 for Eve landing, +4 for Tylo landing, +2 for each other body of over .15g, +1 for each of the little ones? I think I'll take your suggestions for multipliers for now, and we'll see how things develop. Thanks. Recalculating your mission, then: Base = 7 (1 component ship, Duna orbit, Duna landing, Ike orbit, Ike landing) Multiplier = 10 (Kerbin, Kerbol, Duna, Ike) Final = 70 points.

You can use the map view right up until the point that the first component ship goes onto the launchpad. Once the first of your component ships is on the launchpad, you can no longer consult the map view, so be sure to have gotten all your note-taking out of the way. The "Fly it twice" method as Jodo performed it is perfectly valid, though, of course, you have to be able to trust your ability to take and follow piloting instructions for the take without the map. A quick note on imgur album embedding: the following bbcode embeds your album rather cleanly in the forum in such a way that the caption and description for each image can be seen. [ imgur]Qb5W8[ /imgur] Just remove the spaces. You said you performed a full orbit of Duna and Ike, and also a landing on each, so you've lowballed the base score: a body you've landed on is worth +2 base, rather than +1 base. Okay, so: Base = 7 (1 component ship, Duna orbit, Duna landing, Ike orbit, Ike landing) Multiplier = 13 (Kerbin, Kerbol, Duna, Ike) So, final score for this is actually 91, more than double your claim. Which puts you rather comfortably on top of the leaderboard, at least until someone performs similarly but with a gravity assist, or something. (Actually, gravity assists are rather high-value here, as it's another boost to your multiplier. Without the map, though, they're probably going to be really difficult.) I suppose I was a little unclear: Other SOI's, as the rules currently stand, are worth +5 multiplier each, so a Jool mission could indeed be extremely lucrative, even if you don't perform a single landing anywhere. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure an interplanetary could be pulled off at all, but you sure showed me. If I was going to make a modification to the multipliers, do you feel that a Duna = 5 is a good baseline? Perhaps Jool would also be 5, and the moons of non-Kerbin planets be lower than the planets themselves? Perhaps places like Moho and Eeloo and Eve would have particularly high multiplier bonuses... but as I've never actually been there, I can't tell what'd be a good number. (Combined with how I was unsure whether or not mapless interplanetary could be done, I just decided to put them all as +5 multiplier and see what happened.) With scoring rules as they stand, to beat Jodo42's score of 91, you need to either go interplanetary, or use more than five component ships. With six component ships, if you do a full orbit of Kerbin, Mun, Minmus and Kerbol, and also land on Kerbin, Mun and Minmus, you can get 16b and 6m, for a total of 96. If instead you went directly to Jool and encountered all its moons with a single component ship, that's 33m, so you'd get a total of 99 by orbiting just two bodies, or performing a single landing. This is why I'm wondering if the scoring rules need changing a bit...

Basically, you can't use a component ship that starts from a location other than the launchpad - so the entire mission is performed mapless. Ah, thanks. Though perhaps... I'll permit docking anywhere but on Kerbin's surface. So, if you send a couple of component ships to, say Minmus' Flats, then dock them there, and then begin counting score, that'd be fine. Unless that's too exploitable too?

So, I'm sure that some people here remember a time when KSP didn't have a map screen. I personally don't, but it came up in a youtube video I watched. Those who obsessively follow the "What did you do in KSP today" thread will know that I recently attempted a mapless Mun mission. I managed, with minimal preparation, to safely land a Kerbal on Mun without using the map screen from launch onwards. In doing this, I realised something that KSP players who have been playing since before the map was added likely already know: the map (and its apoapsis/periapsis data) makes everything much, much easier - even just getting into orbit. The challenge, then, is as follows: How complex a mission can you do without using the map screen at all? The Rules Stock only. Particularly the instrumentation - this is Stock Only, not Stock Parts Only. From the moment your first component ship goes onto the launchpad until the moment the mission ends, you may not view the map screen, including by the tracking station. Don't involve a ship previously launched. That is, all ships involved in the mission must be "component ships", and the entire mission is mapless. You may not dock on Kerbin's surface. Space, the atmosphere and the surfaces of other celestial bodies is fine. The Scoring Final Score = Base * Multiplier Base Your Base score begins at the number of launched component ships you manage to dock together into the mission ship. For each celestial body your mission ship completes at least one full orbit around while in its SOI, add 1 to your Base score For each celestial body your mission ship lands on without destroying the command module (be that a capsule or a probe) or undocking components, add 2 to your Base Score. If your mission safely returns to Kerbin and is recovered, then add the following extra to your base score for each location at which you landed: 6 for Eve, 4 for Tylo, 2 for each non-Kerbin body with over .15g surface gravity (Moho, Mun, Duna, Vall, Laythe, Eeloo), and 1 for each other non-Kerbin body (Gilly, Minmus, Ike, Dres, Bop, Pol). Multiplier Your multiplier is the sum of the individual multipliers for the spheres of influence your mission took you to: Kerbol: 2 Moho: 15 Eve: 5 Gilly: 10 Kerbin: 1 Mun: 1 Minmus: 4 Duna: 5 Ike: 2 Dres: 7 Jool: 6 Laythe: 5 Tylo: 4 Vall: 6 Bop: 10 Pol: 10 Eeloo: 15 I seriously, seriously doubt that anyone is going to be capable of getting to another planet entirely without once using the map screen, but if someone does, we can discuss modifications to the multiplier for those spheres of influence. Well, looks like Jodo42 has proven me wrong on that count. We'll see what happens with the multiplier values of places outside of the Kerbin system. Edit: Thanks to Jodo42 for the suggested list of modifications to the multiplier values for the SOIs. And an example score based off the mission I did and linked: Base = 4 (1 component ship, full orbit around Kerbin, landing on Mun) Multiplier = 2 (Kerbin, Mun) Final score = 8 And for a hypothetical mission, in which we dock two ships that then orbit Kerbin, then Mun-assist to Minmus, orbit there and return to land at Kerbin. Base = 6 (2 component ships, full orbit around Kerbin, full orbit around Minmus, landing at Kerbin) Multiplier = 6 (Kerbin, Mun, Minmus) Final score = 36 Another hypothetical: A single component ship is sent straight to Eve, lands, takes off, orbits several times until transfer window, and returns directly to Kerbin, and is safely recovered. Base = 12 (1 component ship, Eve landing, Eve orbit, Kerbin landing, Safe Recovery Bonus (Eve)) Multiplier = 8 (Kerbin, Kerbol, Eve) Final score = 96 The Leaderboard Jodo42 - 70 points Avera9eJoe - 16 points Concentric - 8 points

Ah. Thanks, Razor. I'll look for it a few other times with the assistance of the Map until I think I've got it narrowed down - it should be handy for if I ever make the mad decision to try a Mapless Minmus Mission. After the trouble I had getting to the Mun without the map, that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

Something rather silly. I decided on a whim that as I'd proven to myself that I didn't need maneuver nodes to do basic Mun/Minmus missions, I should try to do a Mun mission without using the map screen at all. A quick note before I get further into this - this is the first time I've done a launch without using the map screen. You can already tell that this isn't going to go ideally. First, I needed a little information. I looked at one of my flight-planner probes in 100km circular Kerbin orbit and made note of its orbital velocity and the dV of a maneuver to Mun encounter. I also made note of the travel time to the encounter so I'd know what was too long timewarping. Then, I threw together a lander that I thought should be able to do the landing and return portions of the mission, and still have fuel to spare. However, I didn't know this for certain, as it was entirely untested. I didn't even check the mass, not that I've made note of how much my Light Lifter subassembly can get to LKO. And so, bright-eyed and optimistic, I timewarped on the launch pad until morning for the launch, remembering not to look at the map screen. The lander sat atop the Light Lifter and launched. I started to turn at 10km, but with the benefit of hindsight, I think I turned too sharply. At around the point you can see in the image above, I was beginning to get a little worried about the lifter. I also realised about then that I'd never even tried to get to orbit without using the map screen, and in fact, I was very heavily reliant on data about the apoapse to get to orbit. Even with my burning, I reached apoapse below 35km - so I definitely turned too early/sharply. So, I burned up, desperately trying to at least get orbit without the map on this attempted Mapless Mun Mission. Lifter fuel ran out, and in my boundless optimism, I had not attached a transfer stage to the rocket. As such, I was forced to burn lander fuel in atmosphere. Getting orbit without the map screen (and without planning, or testing, or... you get the idea) is difficult. How did people do it, back in those old premap versions? Eventually, I got out of the atmosphere and started to circularise. I waited until I began to fall before firing that burn, which was probably a mistake. I consulted my notes: an orbital velocity of 2250m/s should work, and sure enough, it did. The orbit wasn't wonderfully circular, of course - I could tell by looking at the changing altitude meter roughly where my apoapse and periapse were (I think it was about 115 over 78?). I saw something that I think was Minmus, but without checking the map screen, I can't be sure. On the right, in line with the top of the lander, the bright blue thing. Now, despite having used a good chunk of my lander fuel just getting into orbit, I wasn't about to give up on this here. I timewarped to Munrise, consulted my notes, and fired. By adding the orbital velocity and maneuver dV of the planner probe from earlier, I worked out a TransMunar Injection velocity of roughly 3100m/s. So, I burned until I got it, then started to timewarp. According to my noted time, it should be a little over a day until the encounter. It turned out to be shorter, but that's fine too. As I was coming in over the light side and had no way of knowing my Munar periapse, I decided to burn to land immediately when I began to rise away again. So, I burned until my surface velocity's retrograde marker was pointing straight up, and kept timewarping and firing retrograde as I got closer. Eventually, fuel ran out on the descent stage, so I activated the ascent stage. I didn't immediately drop the descent stage because a) I could fire the ascent stage without dropping it, and it had the landing legs on it. This may have turned out to be a mistake, as as I got closer, it looked more and more like this was going to be a crash, not a landing. The fuel in the ascent stage was running out fast, and the ground was fast approaching. I dared not take a screenshot, and dropped the descent stage anyway. Perhaps I could land on the engine? Fuel was down at the wire as I began to see my shadow on the Mun... and then, it ran out and I began to fall. Then, a miracle. A lithobraking miracle. The ascent stage's engine and fuel tank's destructive impact was enough to set the capsule down on its decoupler, safe and sound. Hardly able to believe it, I quicksaved - almost fearing that physics would suddenly decide "No, that can't have happened" and destroy the lander after the fact. Then, with the safety of a quicksave to come back to, I decided to try something really stupid. I'd previously determined that with six sepratrons and the right ejection angle, you could return a Mk1 capsule from Mun orbit safely. Lander cans are lighter, so maybe, just maybe, I could use the monopropellant and the same number of separatrons to do the same from the Mun's surface? No. Don't be silly, that's not going to happen. I didn't even get over 40km, and I quickloaded as I descended. Perhaps Mun orbit would have been possible, but return was utterly out of the question. So, I got Dozer out on EVA to plant a flag, and put him back in to await a rescue mission. Well, it'll give me something else to do. Even so, a (somehow) successful "Land on the Mun without using the Map Screen from Launchpad onwards" mission. And I think I learned a bit more about KSP from this experience, too.

Fiddled about with a Mk1 capsule, and found out a nice, safe, low-tech fire-and-forget return from Mun orbit for a single capsule and Mk16 parachute. Six sepratrons, combined with the decoupler force, are enough to escape from a 30km circular Mun orbit into a 30km periapse at Kerbin, and a 0.33 opening pressure is about at the speed that I'd normally deploy parachutes if I still had control, so with that, there's no need to worry. With this, I might put together an early Mun landing in my next career mode - early meaning "before batteries and solar panels". It'll require careful control with an alternator-equipped engine and some excess fuel... Also, it'd probably need a significant degree of planning. Perhaps not, then. But that return method may see future use, who knows.

I have a few lifter subassemblies that I grab when I don't want to build a new lifter for a mission I've thrown together on a whim. They tend to be relatively overkill for the purpose, and at least one of them is outdated technology in its entirety, but they work fine. I wouldn't necessarily call them "standardised", though - they're just the lifter stages of various missions saved as a subassembly instead. As for action groups: 0 for abort/return 'chutes (though not for all 'chutes), 3 for solar panels, and typically 5 for ladders and 6 for secondary landing gear: for example, RedKing's ion lander's LT5s are on 6, while the main gear (LT2) is on g. The other numbers could be a range of things - engine toggles, decouple/undock clamp, do science and so on.

One burn. Specifically, FourJade's mid-trajectory adjustment burn, so the FourJade ship now has only a little over a year and a half until its Jool-Laythe encounter. I had to redisable fuel crossfeed on the docking ports, because it had somehow turned itself back on and started to drain the Laythe lander component. Also, some messing about with rovers that never really got anywhere, and some fiddling with my most recent spaceplane to try and move its dry centre of mass closer to its centre of lift - hopefully I'll be able to practice and land it properly at some point.

Finally managed to make a new spaceplane design work. In fact, this is the first spaceplane I've managed to get to orbit with any significant amount of fuel remaining (536 liquid fuel and ~630 oxidiser in the tanks at a 70km circular orbit), and the second distinct spaceplane design I managed to get to orbit at all - that is, all my other spaceplanes were based rather closely on my first success. It's not SSTO, though. It's a RATO design that drops the boosters with 'chutes on, and passes out of physics range just before they'd hit the ground/water. This Rocket-Assisted Take-Off method manages to get the plane into the air (just) before the end of the runway, and even gets it up the first 1500m before the boosters fall away. Then, it's a long turbojet climb, and some speed-building at 20km. Once air-intake is running out, the LV-N and the eight 24-77s activate to provide rocket thrust, and the turbojets shut down soon after. Not too long later, the 24-77s shut down to reduce fuel consumption: they've not been active long, but they've already used up more oxidiser than the LV-N uses in the entire trip. Coast to apoapse, applying nuclear thrust whenever it drops into the atmosphere again, then circularise on the LV-N. I docked it to Station Aleph, which will probably come down at some point soon-ish. Perhaps after the FourJade mission ends, I'll make a new spacestation... Anyway, I dumped some of the fuel and oxidiser into the station's fuel tanks, because I had plenty in the plane, and I was only going to deorbit anyway. Then, it was time to return. I attempted to come down at KSC, and even planted a flag there to help target it, but it wasn't to be. I hadn't checked how the plane flew when empty - or nearly so. It was rather uncontrollable, and Dozer was just about saved by the abort/ejection system. Harbus heard you like flags, so he tried to put a flag on the flag, so you could target the flag when you targeted the flag But anyway, a (relatively) successful RATO spaceplane.

Ah... you have to upload your images to an image-hosting website before linking them - the link to their local location on your C: drive is no good to us here. Try CubeUpload, it's simple to use.

This thread in the Tutorials section of the forum has some links to docking tutorials, among others. First, though: do both vessels have Clampotron docking ports? Are the docking ports the parts hitting each other? Are you perhaps coming in too fast? Those are the most basic points on docking. On the main topic, the Hitchhiker module is the only real habitation part in the stock game at this time, though mods provide many, many alternatives. Otherwise, there's only the command pods and science lab.

Also, because you have to stay within 2.2km of the dropped part, then when it hits the ground you won't be at a particularly high altitude. As such, dropping your low-altitude engines with the science pod is entirely useless and counterproductive. Because you're dropping them from a high altitude, they pass into the "out of physics range from the focused object and flying below 20km ASL in atmosphere" zone and get deleted. Technically, if you're careful, you should be able to take your readings, then descend alongside a science capsule until it is safely on the ground before ascending again, and everything should work out fine - but I can't see how it would be in any way efficient or helpful, and you'd want to have your low-altitude engines available to do it. It's not as though you can't get orbit and then deorbit the science separately, landing it as the focused object.

F1 is the default screenshot key, F2 to toggle the UI. You can find the screenshots in the Screenshots folder (which is not save-specific). If you have the Steam version, you can also use Steam's screenshot function. Also, I don't know what mods you have, but stock re-entry doesn't damage parts at all - you clearly have a Kethane mod, but I don't know whether or not you have Deadly Re-Entry or similar.

Ran a Minmus landing without maneuver nodes. This time, I kept things simple with a small lander that will do the return also, and no docking. Threw a lander together in a minute or so, stuck it atop my light lifter and sent it up. Circularised, then adjusted inclination with a couple of burns, then timewarped until it looked about like Minmus-rise by the map screen. At that point, I went back to the normal view and pointed in the direction of Minmus according to the Navball, so that I could check if it was, in fact, rising. It was, and I could see a blue shiny thing just over the horizon, so I turned prograde and started to burn. I hadn't actually recognised Minmus from this distance before, not that I'd particularly looked. This burn affected my inclination, but it also moved my descending node very close to apoapsis, and very little adjustment was needed to get an encounter. I fine-tuned the encounter about half-way out so that I wouldn't be coming in retrograde. Then, I pretty much immediately burned for landing, still using the last lifter stage. I noticed I was coming close to the Delivery site where I'd delivered a box previously - didn't bother to check what flats they were (the Great flats? Possibly...) - so I modified my descent to come close to it. You can see the site to the right of the capsule in the below image (and also the image after): Wasn't really paying attention for a moment, because I'd noticed that I'd forgotten something - fuel lines. Those tanks on the panels there were disconnected from the LV-1 engine. Additionally, I'd set this lander up not to have any landing gear, and to land on the panels instead - but I didn't know if the tanks or parachutes would hit before the panels... You didn't need those, right Dozer? Came down a little hard, destroying a tank and knocking off a parachute. Left a flag which detailed some information on the mission, then got back in and took off. Straight up to Minmus escape would lower the Kerbin periapse, and then burning Southwards would bring it into the atmosphere. I cut the engines for brief periods to transfer fuel from the outer tanks to the usable ones, but this straight-up escape would be the least difficult in terms of dealing with the imbalance, I felt. The return was not atypical, and though only two parachutes survived, they sufficed to bring the lander down at under 6m/s. I then immediately redesigned the version of the lander that was saved, reducing fuel supply, adding landing gear and remembering the fuel lines. Just in case I get the idea to do something like this again.

Just ran a quick Mun mission using maneuver nodes for docking only with my two-stage lander (see the link in my signature for the .craft file). In the mean time, the FourJade ship escaped Kerbin orbit and is now in Kerbol orbit on its way out to its mid-course correction for Jool. Got orbit, deorbited the last lifter stage, did a twist-dock maneuver, burned at Munrise (immediately after the twist-dock, which was immediately after deorbiting the lifter, immediately after circularisation. So apparently, I timed things pretty perfectly for a mission I sent on a whim). Then got a free-return trajectory, burned into an elliptical retrograde equatorial orbit, transferred to the lander over the solar terminator, undocked and landed. Finally, put the ascent stage up into a circular retrograde equatorial orbit at the height of the orbital portion's periapse, adjusted the orbit to get an encounter in a few orbits time (here's where I needed the maneuver nodes), docked and transferred back. When I flung the lander can away, it was immediately time to burn to escape retrograde to Kerbin - more fortuitous timing. The return and landing was straightforward and direct. Might try to do a Minmus mission without maneuver nodes, next. I'll probably send something that doesn't need to do any docking...

What he's saying is that we, the players, have an indication of the pilots' feelings in a manned mission, due to that little window in the corner of the screen. With a probe, you don't get that. We have no insight into mission control, because we are mission control.

I think this goes here, but yeah, Grand Tours are pretty much always interesting.

Woah... is that one leg or six? It looks like six, but because it's you, I don't want to assume.

So, wait, are those things on the sides of that massive RCS component actually upside-down Clampotron Sr. docking ports? And you didn't notice until docking in Duna orbit?