RocketBlam

Just finished my first manned mission to Duna in .25. Everything went fine. I gave myself plenty of fuel in the transfer stage, got to Duna and even got some science from around Ike on the way. Landed on Duna, took off, re-docked with the transfer stage, got back to Kerbin... everything was fine. So I'm coming in to land back on Kerbin. The transfer stage has a lot of fuel left, but I eject it because I don't need it. I've got some fuel in my lander, and of course the chutes will take care of most of it. So here I am in the terminal phase. Nothing left to do but deploy the chutes. No problem. I glance at the chute icons as I hit Space to stage. Hmm, that's weird. They're red. Red... red... what does that mean? Oh, that means they've.... already been deployed. What? I didn't deploy them, except... back on Duna. I forgot to repack my chutes after I left Duna. I am now about 7,000 meters above Kerbin's hard surface with no chutes. The first thing to do of course is panic. I'm playing career mode on Hard... there is no revert, no quicksave... the only thing I can do is land under power and hope I don't screw it up. Thankfully I had transferred some fuel out of the transfer stage into the lander... I always like to have a little extra, mostly for braking, but some just in case. This is the "just in case". I wobbled a lot, but some how, miraculously, stuck the landing under power with no chutes, and didn't even break a landing gear. Hard mode is fun... it's scary situations like this that make it great. Whatever God rules over Kerbin, he was watching out for me.

The Wee Bee. Two air intakes total. 7.412 tons.

There was a point around that time in my game where I had some money in the bank too, and I can't remember what happened, but I spent it and ended up only barely being able to build a Minmus rocket. It might have been that space plane I crashed into the ocean...

Difficulty levels. I like this a lot. I think it was very much needed.

Dude... that new Porkchop graph is freaking COOL. I've always wondered if I could adjust my transfer and use more fuel, or wait and use less fuel... I really like this! I'm not sure I fully understand it yet, but I love where you're going with this.

Giving up the revert feature and the quicksave feature is pretty unnerving, because you make a lot of mistakes that you had been making all along, you just hadn't been paying for them. I like it, though. When I first played KSP, I din't even know the quick save feature existed, so I flew very long, dangerous, risky missions with no quicksave. It was unnerving, but it made it a lot more fun.

I'm an experienced Kerbonaut. I have played since .23, have finished at least seven career science trees (yes, it's my favorite mode), and have landed a manned module on every planetary body except Jool and returned. Yes, that includes Eve. So I started out in hard mode, with no adjustments, and I'm glad to say... it's pretty hard! In this new career game (the eighth?), I have launched probes to Mun and Minmus, and have landed a Kerbal on the Mun and returned him. My current mission is a manned mission to Minmus, and I actually had to strip my vehicle down to be able to afford it. I have about 56,000 credits, and it cost, after stripping, 55,000. God I hope this mission succeeds. Anyway, I think you've nailed the difficulty on the Hard level. It's not any harder as a game, I mean, the rockets are not more difficult to design or anything, but you really have to pay attention to the money.

I'm using Hard, and I'm glad to say, making money isn't so easy. You have to be careful what you do, and don't overbuild your rockets.

What is the Delta-V of your ship? If you can't tell us what the Delta-V is, you certainly can't claim to have the least.

"3rd world countries should not have to be so poor. They only use money because of the way they were set up as colonies. This is the only case in which communism could potentially be a good force, as long as the African governments didn't corrupt it like the USSR did. Note: I am not for or against communism. I'm just saying it would really help in 3rd world countries." What the... ?

So basically it's going to boil down to whoever spams the most air intakes.

Cool. Can you post your .craft files?

So in the case of people who use multiple ships, are the costs of getting fuel to the ships included? I mean, it's one thing to use X amount of fuel in a transfer ship between Kerbin and Laythe, but you have to refuel that ship, right? Getting that fuel off Kerbin costs a lot more than the fuel itself, especially shipping it to Laythe.

OK, this was a fun challenge. Achievements: No solid fuel, Duna orbit, Return to Kerbin. Total cost: 51,474. So I guess the score is 51,474 /4, -10,000 (no solid fuel), -10,000 (Duna orbit) = -7131.

This is what I use them for too... So I did find a use for them. Since the Methane detectors need a lot of solar too, they work well for the probes.

What did you use for the rotor?

Strangely enough, in the 1960's, one cosmonaut almost couldn't get back into his capsule because his suit had inflated and he couldn't get through the door (no word on how he got out in this state). Only by partially depressurizing his suit was he able to get back in. ETA: And... I knew I should have read page 2.

So I decided to see if I could land the KMMU on Duna and refuel, and get back to orbit. It turns out I can, and the engines still perform well even on the surface, with an ISP of about 700. Detaching for landing. Landed. Taking off. TWR: 1.01! It took a while for me to claw my way into the sky. I actually had to burn off some fuel, because with the Kethane tanks filled and full fuel, its TWR is .98.

Actually no. "Columbia" and "Brittania" are examples of a word that ends in "ia", and has the kind of meaning I was looking for. It means, in other words, "Land of the Kerbals". I do have a friend from Croatia though.

It looks heavy. Almost like a... lead... zeppelin?

I made this a while back. It's pretty much the most impressive and pointless thing I've done in KSP.

I ran the X64 version once and it crashed on me, so I've been x32 ever since.

That's a great idea, putting a claw on one side and a docking port on the other. I was wondering how to include a claw in my design without unbalancing it. That allows you to convert a regular docking port to a claw, which is useful when you have some fuel left over in your lift stage and want to get it out. What do you use for electrical though?

Sure, be glad to. From left/top to right/bottom: Kethane Survey Unit FL-A10 Adapter (with Clamp-o-Tron Jr's attached) FL-R10 RCS Fuel Tank (with Thruster blocks attached, x4) Battery bank Probodobodyne OKTO (with 1x6 Solar Cells, X8) Another battery bank Xenon Container ION engine.

This is K.S.S. (Kerbal Space Ship) Kerbia. In every launch we must plan for three things: Going to another planetary body, landing, and returning safely to Kerbin. This design derives from my desire for a ship which never needs to return home. In one vessel, you can visit most of the system's planets and moons, without coming home. The design of the ship is based around the Transfer Stage, which also doubles as a Kethane lander. I have landed many Kethane bases in this game, and they tend to be only useful for refueling from the planet the base is on. I just decided to put the Kethane base on the ship itself. This way, you can land on whatever planetary body you are orbiting, fill up with fuel, return to the vessel and be ready to go wherever you want. With a TWR of .34 on Kerbin, the lander can land and take off from any planetary body in the Kerbol system except Tylo, Eve, Kerbin and Laythe. Technically you can land and take off from Duna, but with a gravity of 0.3 Kerbin G's, it would be a challenge. Wherever you go, if you are out of fuel, you can merely launch one of the Orbital Probes to find the Kethane, then land the Transfer Stage and refuel. When you're done, the Kethane base goes with you, wherever you go. (Really you only need one Kethane Probe, but I included two, for balance purposes). When it is finally time to take all that delicious science home, the lander stage has a parachute for the Kerbin landing. The only mod required is the Kethane Pack. It takes three launches to assemble Kerbal Space Ship Kerbia - one for the KMMU (Kethane Massive Manufactory Unit, a.k.a. the Transfer Stage), one for the Science/Command Module, and one for the two Kethane Probes. If I could have found a way to attach the Kethane Probes to the ship before launch I would have done it, but due to the way they connect to the ship, I couldn't see a way to do it. I can post the .craft files if anyone wants them, but I'm waiting until .25, to get the best/latest compatible files.