Concentric

Got a little impatient, and burned my Jool transfer a few weeks early. See here for details - or alternatively, click the link in my signature under "Current Status".

30 days is far too long to expect Jebadiah Kerman to wait in LKO. Commander Jebadiah Kerman is, at times, an impatient man. It therefore should come as no surprise to anyone that, once the FourJade mission ship was in a 100km circular orbit, he immediately began to plan as early a Jool transfer as he could arrange. Initially, not knowing how long it would take the nuclear engines to burn it, he planned to burn the escape almost immediately - before completing an orbit at 100km circular. Jeb's first plan - flying in the face of the flight plan The engines were fired up to estimate the burn time a little over three minutes before the node - but the burn would be almost 15 minutes long. Jeb managed to keep the throttle on full, despite Bill's complaints about "following the flight plan" and "recalculating to take this into account". He burnt fully half of the 1711m/s maneuver, then cut the throttle and did the recalculations himself. The Laythe lander's nuclear engine also fires: six nuclear engines isn't much thrust for this thing, really. Jeb's recalculation Due to fuel cross-feed, the engines burned fuel from the Vall and Laythe landers rather than from the transfer stage. As such, on the orbit between maneuvers, the crew had to perform several fuel transfers. Fuel cross-feed remained active, and Bob made note to disable it after the second fuel transfer after the escape burn - at which point, the Laythe lander's nuclear engine would be disabled. The second seven minute burn began just before the FourJade ship passed the solar terminator. Control kept a close eye on the ship's periapse, ensuring that it didn't pass below 90km ASL to be absolutely certain that it would not fall into Kerbin's atmosphere. It was determined that had the initial orbit been too much lower, such an incident may have come to pass. The calculations, of course, had not factored in potential atmospheric effects - so this could have changed the trajectory massively. On the way out, more fuel transfers were performed to replenish the supplies of the Laythe and Vall landers, then fuel cross-feed and the Laythe lander's nuclear engine were disabled. Additionally, the mid-course correction maneuver was adjusted so that a Laythe encounter was predicted - the plan being to aerobrake directly into Laythe orbit. Fine tuning could come later. Mid-course correction - no radial burns And now, Jeb, Bill and Bob race outward on a Kerbin escape, with almost 210 days until their next burn. It has been revealed that Bill brought along a pack of cards and considerable innovation in microgravity card games. Perhaps this will prevent Jebadiah's impatience from messing up the flight plan again. Or perhaps one of our kerbonauts will own all the others' possessions by the time they return. We have no way of knowing these things at this time.

Normally, the flag itself is named after the mission and landing site. Things like "First [Duna] Landing" and so on also appear, though only for the first. Typically, the plaque contains a short message referring to the journey - "A parachute only landing", "Less difficult than expected", "The secret is in maintaining altitude", "And there go the solar panels, smashed off as the lander falls on its side" etc. edit: Ah, that's right - the plaque text is in the persistent.sfs. I'll go look some up. Firsts: "First successful rocket return", "Site of first return from Mun orbit", "This is the site of the first successful Mun Landing!", "The site of the first Minmus landing (greater flats)", "Here Jebadiah Kerman first set foot on Duna" "East crater of Mun, second successful Mun-landing" MunTherm: "Here landed the first MoonTherm mission" "MoonTherm's first mission also landed here" MinTherm: "Took surface sample, seismic scan, temperature. I think I may be getting the hang of this" "Biome-hopping is much easier here - must be the lower gravity" "Third landing in this trip - should probably head back. Don't want another fuel disaster" "Solar panels are fragile", "Mountains, yo" At the Minmus flats: "Not Great, but it's no Lesser" AEGIS: "Aegis landed here, let's check the rover!" "Aegis also landed here.... fuel extremely low..." "Bill landed the ion lander from the Duna-Laythe lander test flight here" "Jebadiah Kerman landed here on his return from the first Duna landing" "Rotation, rotation, rotation. That's key to landing on slopes." "Start with a low orbit to ion-land. 10km on Ike is good. Low throttle until the end. RCS boost for finish." "Had to land on the transfer stage... and it fell over and broke some solar panels..." "These things are so damn finicky. Control your vertical speed with great care." "It's kind of like a mini-Apollo mission." "Testing the flight-recorder" "Pinpoint upsidedown IVA landings. Also, many attempts to send a box." Edit2: Argh, how do spoilers tags work? Edit3: Nevermind, figured it out. Spacing sensitive.

Assembled the FourJade mission ship. Abort systems are handy when launches go wrong. A launch gone wrong Returned the crew safely anyway

Docking, am I right? With roughly ten percent of the outward journey left until the transfer window, Commander Jebadiah has argued that it is probably best to get into orbit and assemble the FourJade mission ship at this time. This has been the work of the last few days. First, the Laythe and Vall components were sent up uncrewed into parking orbits at 120km ASL. Then, the transfer ship followed, and the docking began. The Laythe Lander's launch was ordinary, dropping SRBs, LFBs, then drop tanks. Circularising very nearly wiped out the remaining fuel of the lifter stage. It would have perhaps been wiser to put it in a lower orbit, upon later reflection. The Vall component, too, ascended routinely, as in lifter testing. It had far more fuel left in the lifter stage for rendezvous purposes. After the uncrewed components were sent up, it was time to launch the main ship. This was fitted with a launch escape system, so it was pronounced safe to send the crew up within. Jeb, Bill and Bob - our most decorated kerbonauts - climbed into the capsule and the launch began. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly: the LFBs dropped as planned, the thrust-to-weight ratio remained above one... then disaster struck as the SRBs were released: One of the SRBs failed to clear the engines, and was destroyed while in a critical position, taking three of the five engine clusters with it. Immediately, Jebadiah hammered the Abort Launch button, taking the capsule free of the wildly spinning rocket. The launch escape system and parachutes operated precisely as in testing, safely depositing the capsule and crew within sight of the launch pad. After some brainstorming and hasty modifications, the launch was ready to go again. Jebadiah was seen dragging Bob to the capsule for the second launch, while Bill, it is presumed, was reassuring him. "Even if the rocket does go wrong again, the escape system's been so thoroughly tested... I'd put my kids in it, Bob. It's perfectly safe." (A quick note: Bill Kerman has no children, but this is apparently a very reassuring phrase. -Ed.) A slight rearrangement of engine clusters, and the addition of separatrons to the SRBs ensured that should they be destroyed after being jettisoned, they wouldn't damage the clusters. The launch, therefore, worked perfectly well and put the ship into a slightly lower orbit than the uncrewed components. Next, Control brought the Vall component into an intersecting orbit and docked it to the nose of the ship. The docking of the Laythe component was more difficult: a critical burn was missed by more than an orbit, and remaining fuel and monopropellant on the lifter ran out far too soon, putting the component in a slightly eccentric orbit. As it is said, if the component would not come to the ship, the ship would have to go to the component. And so, using the remaining fuel in the final lifter stage, it did so. Once orbits were matched and the distance was less than a kilometre, it was time to remove the final lifter stage, as it would be in the way of the docking port. So it deorbited itself, and docking continued. It is a matter of days before the Jool window. With the FourJade ship completed and crewed in Kerbin orbit, the final stages of planning and calculation for the journey begin now.

An important note: Alt-F5 and Alt-F9 allow multiple named quicksaves and quickloads. You know, for the next time you think that you might want to revert to the state previous to your previous state. Give it a meaningful name and embed the date so that you know which quicksave it is ("LaytheOrbit"? Which one? "20140524Jool-5LaytheOrbit" on the other hand is utterly unambiguous.) Otherwise, this seems very interesting. Must have been quite the engineering challenge. Are you taking the science and dropping the science probes now that you have more than one used and can redistribute them to retain balance?

Testing for FourJade, specifically the ionic parts for Bop and Pol landings.

Not feeling up to Tylo? Do the others, instead. At time of writing, it is 33 days until the Jool transfer window. Jeb has just returned from a testing mission, examining the capabilities of the FourJade ion lander planned to land on Pol and Bop, as well as those of the landerprobes. Soon, the launches shall begin, and the FourJade ship will be assembled in Kerbin orbit. I shall begin this report with an explanation of the FourJade mission. Our examination of the data from a probe previously sent to Laythe and the Jool system has revealed the startling strength of gravity of Tylo - and more importantly, its lack of atmosphere. Our engineers do not feel sufficiently prepared to construct a safe Tylo lander at this time, and while an indepth, multiprobe examination mission could be sent out, Commander Jebadiah Kerman is of the opinion that it would be a wasted opportunity not to send a mission to land on the other four moons of Jool. As such, we prepare. A transfer ship and lifter have been constructed, prepared to carry three veteran kerbonauts to Jool along with the landers. A Mun lander has been given additional thrust and fuel, rendering it more than capable of hovering on Kerbin: this will land on Vall. So, Laythe, Pol and Bop remained. Previous testing and improvement connected with the RedKing mission has created a lander that can descend from Kerbin orbit, land on parachutes alone, then ascend back to Kerbin orbit, and from there, even transfer to the Mun. This lander has been slightly tweaked, and is now the FourJade Laythe lander. Its capsule also serves as an ion lander - and this is what Jebadiah has been testing over the last few weeks. The first liftoff showed a small problem: probe cores had been left off the two lander probes that were also to be tested. Jeb returned, shouted at the engineers for making such an idiotic oversight, and personally supervised the reconstruction. Then, he launched again. The lander probes had limited power generation and charge storage capabilities - not a great combination with their ion engines, to be sure. As such, coordinating the transfers from Kerbin orbit to Mun and Minmus was difficult and tedious: the cause of sleepless nights for several in mission control. Several times, burns were within minutes of each other, and windows were missed due to an overestimation of how long the probes could fire their engines at full thrust. The Mun probe in particular had to make some drastic adjustments to its orbit in the hopes of getting into the Mun's sphere of influence. It eventually succeeded, but its inability to run at full thrust for any reasonable length of time - combined with its already low thrust-to-weight ratio - caused a catastrophic failure in landing. The Minmus probe had its encounter only slightly before Jeb was to encounter Minmus himself, so it got into orbit before him, and landed after. Minmus' gravity was sufficiently low that the probe could land without serious difficulty, keeping its power usage below its generation capability. It later lifted off and came down hard in the Northern oceans of Kerbin. Jebadiah himself had a rather easy time with Minmus. He had previously landed on Minmus using an ion lander of lesser specifications, after all: this one had an additional engine, over twice the charge, a little more power generation capability and far, far more xenon. The landing was more of a refresher course, as well as making absolutely certain that FourJade's ion lander would be capable of landing on Pol and Bop. The return was a two-pass affair: first to bring the apoapsis below one million metres, and second to parachute into the ocean. There was, however, a slight visual glitch with our monitoring. Somehow, it appeared that the ocean - no, the very planet - had disappeared, leaving only a blue light at the core. We warned Jebadiah that we couldn't reliably monitor this final stage of his landing, but he shrugged it off. "Done this more times than you've had hot dinners, Control: anything that could go wrong here, I'm more than qualified to take care of it." He was correct, as it turned out. Though our monitoring was still unable to detect the planet, Jeb was floating in the ocean, perfectly safe. He directed the recovery team to him with his lander's radio and radar gear, and made it home. Soon, the components of FourJade will launch to assemble in orbit. Bill, Bob, and Jebadiah are engaged in rigorous training as I write this, preparing for their biggest, longest, most complex mission to date. Little more than a month remains before FourJade is truly underway.

Attempted to capture an asteroid - failed. But it burned up about half of the remaining time to my Jool window, so pretty soon I should be launching that mission. I'll have to come up with a name for it...

More testing and preparation for the Jool mission. I should probably get onto making a mission thread for that... Anyway, refitted the Laythe lander's capsule to double as an ultra-low-gravity ion lander to handle Pol and Bop, and perhaps more importantly, built a lifter for the current version of the transfer ship. The transfer ship has a ridiculously overfueled ion ship for transporting the crew home, and carries a staggering 10800 liquid fuel for six nuclear engines. That's more than many of my previous lifters. It masses a little over 167t. The lifter I built managed to carry that beast into a 100km circular orbit and still have a little left in the final stage. I think I'll put it into the Spacecraft Exchange soonish. Sure, it's not as big as some folks, but it is unquestionably the largest ship I've ever constructed. It will tug the Laythe lander behind it, and push the Vall lander ahead of it. Still don't feel up to Tylo... perhaps the next time I visit Jool will be with a proper Jool-5 mission. After this time, of course. 165 days remain until the launch window. Oh, and I failed at spaceplanes again. (Please note: "staggering" amounts of fuel are stated relative to my previous missions. Not for direct comparison to extremely large ship builders.)

Planning a Jool mission - decided to extend my Laythe mission into a multi-moon mission. Not a Jool-5, though: I don't feel ready to take on Tylo yet. I already have a Laythe Lander design from RedKing's refinement testing phase, which is capable of a Kerbin landing and ascent back to orbit. I can also fit the capsule with the ability to perform an ion landing, or possibly just bring a separate ion lander to do Pol and Bop. So, today I decided to work on a transfer stage and Vall. The first version of the transfer stage was probably far too big to launch full, and I didn't at the time try launching it empty. At any rate, the Kerbodyne lifter rocket I built was unable to get it out of the atmosphere. So I used an abort system and returned the capsule to the ground safely. I made the next version smaller, and I'll probably see if it is capable of the journey closer to the launch window. Otherwise, it's launching an empty and fueling up. As for Vall, I took the first version of my multistage Mun lander (here) and uprated it some. More thrust and fuel on the ascent stage, and the ability to fire the ascent rockets in descent if necessary. Just the lander, of course - the orbiter was not required. The descent and ascent stages have the same amount of thrust here, provided by three Rockomax 24-77s on each. Using just the descent set, the lander is capable of rising on Kerbin a couple of thousand metres, and settling back down safely, so Vall should be relatively trivial, thrustwise. Additionally, I made three identical tiny ion lander probes which will double as a mini-transfer stage to get the Vall lander from Laythe orbit to Vall orbit. One of these probes is intended to land on Bop, one on Pol, and one on Vall. The Vall one is... a little debatable. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation puts the ion lander probe's TWR at 0.95 when full and at 1.21 when empty, on Vall's surface. I somewhat doubt that it will be capable of such a feat, but it's just a probe. The Pol and Bop probe landers are intended to transfer from Vall orbit to Bop and Pol, land and return to Vall, then dock, and help push the ascent stage back to the main capsule. No pictures, unfortunately. I may make a mission thread for this, and if so, I'll take some then.

Sharing .craft files because I can. Just some links to .craft files of some of the ships I've made and used. I'll link where I used them and an appropriate picture as I go. Note that this is a stock career with a completed tech-tree. RedKing, seen in this thread. The final version of RedKing, intended to get to and land on Duna, then Ike, and then return. The lifter stage as a subassembly is RockLifter. RedKing on its way out to Duna Docking the ion-lander component back up in Ike orbit A Mystery Box, seen here. A sub-assembly box that contains a small rover and a small ionic ascent system. Can land from Minmus orbit, and the ionic ascent system can take up to four kerbals up and down between Minmus surface and orbit. Sign here, please Crew and lander cans not included A Mini-Apollo-like Mun lander: no large parts, separate orbiter, ascent and descent stages. First seen here, final version seen here. The Type-A has no flight recorder, the Type-B does, and has 0.055t more mass. Still under 75t on launchpad, though. Make sure that the Kerbal is in the Command Pod, not the lander can, or the abort system cannot assist with a bad launch. An image of the Type-B on the launch pad The Type-B on the Mun DresIon, seen here. Using a modified version of the RockLifter (see above), this provides a large transfer stage to a five-engine ion lander. The ion lander is capable of landing on Ike and Mun with good piloting, and the transfer stage is more than powerful enough to push it to Dres. While I didn't personally manage to land it there without using it, I'm certain that the transfer stage is not needed to land it on Dres or Eeloo. You can then redock with the orbiting transfer stage and return to Kerbin. DresIon on the launchpad Coming soon: FourJade mission ships.

A small ion lander that I managed to put on Ike and Mun. Had a bad descent path with Dres, but it should be theoretically capable of it. I might also try it on Eeloo.

Finished up yesterday's mission and sent the kerbals home. Bill retrieved the crew report from the lander can before it ran out of charge, and kicked it up into the air(less void). Then, he got back on the rover and drove it back a touch to reduce the chance of the falling lander can hitting the solar panels. Next, he and Bob got onto the ionic ascent system and lifted off. The Jr docking port would be unable to dock with the one on the bottom of the orbiter because of the position of the seated kerbals' heads, so this would be a rendezvous and space-walk. I hadn't done that before: I'd always docked the ships together before getting crew out for transfer. Got them nice and close - within about 60m and drifting slowly closer - then Bill got out of his seat and went over to the orbiter. After he was aboard, Bob did the same. I already had several "vessel returned from Minmus' surface" instances - the science value would be zero - but I hadn't returned many that were just orbiters. It would be more valuable, therefore, not to bring the landed ion-system back. Instead, I landed it on the site again. The return was straightforward, and I fired the engines in atmosphere at the periapse to make it a direct landing in the ocean. The single XL parachute wasn't really enough to slow the orbiter ship down sufficiently for a safe landing, so the descent was softened with four pillars of nuclear fire and smoke. It's kind of strange how it decides what to destroy... The engines survived, but the tanks directly above them didn't, and the RCS tanks above those did, leaving them sat atop the floating engines as though the intermediate tanks had never been there. Until the engines tipped over and they slid off into the sea, that is. Recovery of the capsule was an okay science load, considering no experiments were sent. Additionally, in the previous mission, there was a failed box sent up. That particular rocket sent up another payload also: four tiny ion probes that look like this: They're made of a Jr docking port, a Z-200, an Okto-2, an inline xenon tank, an ion engine and four OX-STAT static solar panels. Today, I corrected their orbits a touch, putting them in circular 100km orbits. The reason I put them up is for flight planning: using the method outlined by 5thHorseman here, I can now get decent times for up to four interplanetary launch windows at once without having to use external tools or calculations, which is wonderfully useful. Also, they have plenty of Delta-V if I decide they'd be more useful to me elsewhere.

Just noticed the request for the in-game date. I've played more (obviously) than I had last time I posted in this thread, so I'm up to 166 hours. It is Year 8, Day 304 at this time.

Decided I wanted to deliver something in a box, so I built a little box out of 5 2x2 panels, with radial decouplers holding 4 1x1 panels to form the bottom of the box. Then, I carefully constructed a cargo to go within, so that it just about fit, put some rockets and control onto it and saved the filled box as a subassembly. Next was the destination. I hadn't landed on Minmus' Great Flats yet, and they were a nice, flat area that was rather nearby. I decided to send Jeb, Bill and Bob there with the box. So, I built a ship for it: Got orbit, matched inclinations, performed a twist-docking maneuver and then set off. You may note a small issue here, if you are careful. I kicked myself when I realised it. Bill and Bob got in the lander cans, and Jeb stayed in the capsule. Then, the box and the lander cans were decoupled. Bob descended first and I immediately noticed another problem: the lander can was upside down. I used the IVA a little to keep an eye on the radar altimeter (forgetting that the Great Flats surface is at "sea level") and the vertical speed, but it was still a little disorienting. Then Bill followed, about an orbit later. This time, I used IVA a little more, to look at the anti-maneuver marker for the descent, and later in the same way as before. Landed very close, within 40m of Bill. This is the point at which I realised my big mistake: the rockets on the box had no way of getting at the box's fuel supply. Yeah. Whoops. So the box was stuck in orbit until I terminated it and sent a replacement. The first version of the replacement had fuel lines and was strapped atop an extremely obsolete rocket which ran out of charge on the way out. The second gave each of the box's rockets its own, independent fuel supply, bringing more fuel than the original had brought, and was sent out by the old Aleph Tank Lifter, because any of my other subassembly lifters was even more extremely overkill. The rocket had a probe core, a Z-4k and two RTGs put on it, so it would absolutely not run out of charge on the way out, and could deorbit itself. In the above image, you can see the lander cans with Bill and Bob in, if you look closely. They're the two little specks on the left. The one on the right is the shadow of the box. (No images were taken of the failed replacement attempt, nor of the rocket that got the successful one to this point.) Special Delivery for a Mr. B. Kerman? Landed the box almost right atop Bob, and noticed I didn't really have very much fuel left. Can you guess what is in the box? If you said "An ascent system", you'd be half-right. I opened the box, set down the cargo and placed the empty box aside. It's an ionic ascent system and a rover, both capable of dealing with two or four Kerbals in extremely low gravity. Bill and Bob took down three reports between them, took a surface sample and planted a flag. (Now that I think about it, one of them is going to have to retrieve the crew report from whichever lander can it was before those batteries die. Should be fine though. I'll just remember to disable the reaction wheel - I've got time.) Then, they got on the rover for a little drive about the flats. Had to disable the torque, and you can't go too fast, but it's a very small rover, so what do you expect. Jeb probably won't be too happy about how the mission went when its time to come back, but he's been having most of the exciting missions lately. It's his turn to sit around in an orbit capsule.

The way I did it was with an Okto-2 and a tiny decoupler under the tiny docking port atop the lander can. I'm pretty sure that some kind of command module is needed, but you could test it with just a docking port. But, well, it's not as though an Okto-2 has much mass, or uses much charge, so it could easily be fit inline there. There are other Okto-2s around on that ship: one above the 48-7S and one above the LV-1. There's also the Hecs at the bottom of the descent stage and the RGU-S in the lifter. So this wasn't a design that didn't already require that level of probe technology. I'm pretty sure it gives you the science for the highest base-value of the visit-path of any given command module that is safely returned to Kerbin, which means that if that value has depreciated below the value of one of the other command modules on the ship, you won't necessarily get the highest actual science value you could have.

More messing about with that new two-stage lander. Reduced the fuel, brought less unnecessary monopropellant, put probe-cores on all the things, landed in IVA, took another surface sample from a previously visited biome and returned. Then I remembered that in the thread where I got the idea to try a multi-stage lander for myself, some were discussing flight-recorders, to get the "landed on" science rather than just the "orbited" when returning the capsule. So, I built the Type-B 2StageMunLander, which was only 0.055t heavier than the Type-A - still under 75t on the launchpad. It did mean I had to do the docking in Mun-orbit on monopropellant, but that was fine. An image of the Type-B on the launchpad The Mini-Apollo twist. Just time-warp a little to get that fairing out. Things went rather routinely and to plan, though there was very little left in the lifter for it to deorbit itself once the ship was in a 100km orbit around Kerbin. The landing itself was rather routine: using the high-beam spotlights made it rather easy to tell the landing location. Bob managed to land it on a slope, in a biome I had yet to land a kerbal, so he took some reports down and grabbed a sample. Remembered to transfer the science over, then decoupled the flight-recorder from the lander-can, leaving it docked to the capsule's nose. The additional probe core on the bottom of the lander can (just above the LV-1) meant that it could deorbit itself with the remaining monopropellant. Then it was a basic return. I decided to decouple the capsule on the way down and leave the engine burning retrograde so that it would crash elsewhere. I also burned off all the monopropellant, before opening the parachute and descending into the ocean. The flight-recorder worked perfectly, but because almost all my previous Mun-landers were one-can-only pieces, the "recovery of a vessel landed on the Mun" was worth no science whatsoever. Well, it doesn't matter - it was only a proof-of-concept. I've found that I've rather enjoyed this multi-stage lander business. Perhaps when I do my next career mode, I'll try to use some then.

It's a long wait to the next Laythe launch window, which I've planned to be my next interplanetary mission. So, I decided to do a Mun landing with separate ascent and descent stages. Here it is on the pad: The separatrons and decoupler are an abort system. The parachute is concealed under the docking port on top. And here it is finishing the burn up to orbit: Circularised and corrected inclination, then noticed I still had a bit of fuel left in the lifter. Ah, well. I might trim it down for next time. Waited until I was on the day side to disconnect and perform the docking maneuver. A nice picture on the way out: Got a 30km orbit with just over 10 units of fuel in the orbiter. Jeb transferred over, undocked, and fired the descent rockets. The orbiter section had no probe core, and with Jeb in the lander, it was orbiting without control. The lander had considerably more than enough fuel in its descent stage, and Jeb got out, planted a flag and got back in. Then it was time to fire the ascent, on a single LV-1. Got orbit, circularised, and managed to dock with the deadweight orbiter, using all but 1 unit of ascent fuel. Very little of the monopropellant was used, however. Jeb transferred over, as did the fuel, and with a little spin, the lander can was flung away. The return burn used up all the fuel and 10 units of monopropellant to get a 22km periapse over Kerbin - enough to return. The concealed roundified tank went untouched. Once I got to the periapse, I activated the abort system (which was tested earlier in a launch) - decoupling the capsule and firing the separatrons. This was in order to make the return more swift. It was a safe touchdown in the plains, that I didn't bother to take a picture of. Might modify the rocket a touch: less fuel in the descent stage, less monopropellant brought, less fuel in the lifter and a probe core in the orbiter. Still, not bad for something I threw together in a couple of minutes without using any of the large parts. It was kind of like a mini-apollo-style, I guess.

Just recently passed 150, don't think I've yet gotten to 160. So, not long. I've had the game since... December, I think. Around the end of last year, anyway.

I've been using a method of tangents I found somewhere on this forum: take the two planets between-which you are transferring, then look along a tangent to the orbit of the inner planet from its location and in the same direction as it is traveling, and begin transfer when the outer planet lies ahead of you on that line. It's an easy method to eyeball and seems to work pretty well. Before that, I just winged it with a maneuver node and corrected on the way out, so I don't have much background to compare it against. I might give the method 5thHorseman mentioned a try.

I don't think I've ever tried a multi-stage lander on a non-atmospheric body, so I can't say for sure how I feel about them. And the only bodies with atmosphere that I've managed a descent-ascent on so far are Kerbin and Duna - and I needed to stage off bits there. I've also only twice left an orbiter up and rendezvous'd the lander with it for the return journey. It was interesting, but its another stage of complexity that I don't often consider. I guess I'll try the separate descent/ascent stages sometime.

Jeb stole Bill's thunder, and ran a quick ion landing on Mun. I took the DresIon ion lander (seen here) and put it on a quick, small rocket to get it to Mun orbit. Figured out my main problem with ion landing: apparently, to land with low TWR, you need to carefully control your altitude, keeping it roughly constant for a good fraction of your descent. So you shouldn't be pointed flat retrograde. With this, I managed a Mun landing on ions. Low TWR takeoffs seem to involve keeping the time to apoapse increasing slowly until you have a periapse, but this was something I already knew from other ion landings, just more so. No pictures, but the return was routine, splashing down in the ocean and ripping apart Bill's pride (in being my only successful ion lander pilot) only two days after launch. Don't be too down, Bill: you still have twice as many ion-landing successes than Jeb.

Tracked a class A asteroid: it started just about in orbit. Then I attempted to grab it with a claw, but I was evidently moving too fast and instead slammed it out of Kerbin's SOI with the impact. Good thing that was unmanned. Also a few microlift experiments with an Octo-2 and various powering methods. Actually, the LV-1 with a ROUND-8 is pretty good at lifting a lone probe core.

So, apparently, all that tweaking was good for something after all. Who knew? Simultaneous missions are fun. Anyway, all this tweaking has been pushing away from the original intent of RedKing: a single-launch complete Duna system mission. So, I sent another, this time with the fully tweaked Duna (not Laythe) lander, the five-engine ion lander-capsule, and 100% more interplanetary mission experience (and infinitely more manned interplanetary experience: from 0 to 1). It launched the same, finished its circularisation on monopropellant and burned almost all the transfer to Duna using only leftover fuel in the lifter. I'm pretty sure that with a slightly better launch profile and a really good window, RedKing could get to Duna and aerocapture without using the lander's fuel at all. Lowered periapse using Focus View to ensure it was on the proper side of Duna, then settled in for a multipass aerobrake. The below is from the pass just before the landing pass, I think. A nice, neat landing using all of the parachutes and a little softening with the aerospikes. I lowered the opening altitude of the larger three parachutes a touch - not that I'm sure I needed to. I did need to run the landing more than once, though. With a three-leg landing gear layout on a tall lander, if you're rotated wrongly when landing on a slope (Duna, for example), then you fall over. The landing happened to be soft enough that none of the landing gear broke: Bill tested them when he got out to repack the capsule 'chutes, plant a flag and take a confirmation sample. Then it was time to launch and test the ion-lander on Ike. This version had ten OX-L 1x6 solar panels, four RTGs, five ion engines and 3200 xenon, along with a little over a thousand electrical charge in batteries. First, though, the launch. 'Spikes on, gear up, beginning gravity turn rather early... got the apoapsis to about 95 using the 'spikes, then coasted out of the atmosphere and switched to the LV-N. Bill only dropped the outer tanks when they emptied, as the LV-N had other uses than just returning to Kerbin. Specifically, taking the ship to Ike orbit and waiting there to redock with the ion lander afterwards. The above was not the final orbit before landing. I tried it, but it wasn't working. Recalling some advice about ion landings, and modifying my previous faulty recollection: I lowered the orbit (to 10km circular), then burned at the maximum throttle that did not reduce charge stored, and only went full throttle towards the end. I also boosted the landing with the capsule's monopropellant. Success! Bill managed to be first to get somewhere for once. That's what happens when you continually measure your achievement against Jeb, Bill. Well, Bill made it down safely, did some science and planted the flag. Next, docking back with the LV-N and burning for home. Well, actually, next was launching back into orbit, but careful throttle discipline and deliberately going for a high suborbital start managed that handily. Bill and the Ion lander got into a 50km circular orbit and awaited the probe-piloted LV-N's arrival. It was a matter of an orbit or so, so not too long a wait. Docking when one thing has no RCS isn't too difficult: I pointed them at each other and let the probe do the approach and adjustments. Then, an escape burn. I burned to escape Ike, then timewarped to a good moment to burn the return. While I wasn't looking, Ike came around again, and slingshotted Bill out of Duna's SOI! A lucky break, that - while I'm pretty sure that having an apoapsis below Ike orbit meant that slingshots would always be outward, I hadn't planned for it, and perhaps it could have pulled Bill's periapse into Duna's atmosphere! I set up a maneuver around the other side of the sun to get an encounter with Kerbin. While Bill drifted towards that, Jeb was running his own mission - the one linked above. Anyway, after Jeb escaped Dres, I timewarped to Bill to burn the maneuver. There wasn't quite enough left in the LV-N to finish the maneuver, so Bill undocked, turned about and fired up his ion engines again. That periapse was about two days before Jeb's Kerbin encounter on his return journey, so so long as Bill returned straight to Kerbin or put himself in orbit after the first pass, then everything would be fine. Direct aerocapture returns from Duna and Dres are somewhat heated. Bill put out the solar panels to celebrate his return from being the first Kerbal on Ike - and also, the only Kerbal to successfully land on ion engines. He can hold that one over Jeb's head probably for the next year or so. This will probably be the last launch in this mission thread: RedKing has been proven as a Duna vehicle, and any further launches can only be considered tangentially connected to it.