SlayerMcGee

Great challenge, thank you, I will probably give it a go. I definitely want to see what happens when this thing hits Kerbin!

Hey Ziv, no cheats, I had 19k units of fuel left in my heavy lifter @ 85kn Kerbin orbit, that was more than enough for all of the rescue missions. I don't think my approach would work for your challenge, because I would have to go just one time to Jool. For this rescue mission, I had to make two trips to get the three stranded Joolian Kerbals. I'm kicking around ideas for your challenge, I'd want to get a lot of fuel to Jool, which is in itself an interesting challenge. I may take your challenge up.... Thanks for the post.

Greetings! Here is my *epic* mission to save all 15 stranded Kerbals in a single launch. Note, all of the fuel I used was taken from what was left over in the heavy lifter, in fact, I only used about 65% of that fuel to rescue all of the Kerbals. I used the following mods: - PreciseNode (for amazingly accurate trajectory planning) - MultipleSavesDA (for multiple named game saves) - TAC Fuel Balancer (for efficient orbital refueling of crafts) - KW Rocketry (for 3.75m lifter parts) - Hooligan Labs blimp mod (for Anwin's blimb and easy-mode Eve escape) - MechJeb and Kerbal Engineer (for instrumentation and design delta-V estimates) - Clouds and night city lights (for the charm of it) - Alex Moon's launch window planner (amazing!) http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ - AlterB's aerobrake calculator (also amazing!) http://alterbaron.github.io/ksp_aerocalc/ This was a great challenge, and by far the most complicated thing I have accomplished in Kerbal Space Program. It helped me acquire a lot of new skills (floating craft design, Eve in easy mode using balloons, Kerbin blimp design, steep incline landings, escape trajectory rendezvous, and KSPI craft design). Incidentally, I was battling the Kraken during most of this mission, I think this challenge really stressed the game engine. For example, when trying to rendezvous with Losy Kermin, I would put my craft on an intercept trajectory to him, and if I accelerated time, he would instantly move 100's of km further away, very frustrating! Ultimately, it took hours of real-time game time to get to him. And my heavy tug would explode into a fiery mess about 1 out of 10 times it docked, and if that didn't happen, it would sometimes eject the Kerbal in the command seat 8km away in an instant! Fortunately, I was able to steer clear of all of these problems in the end. I hope you enjoy my fully documented mission log!

Here is a preview of my upcoming mission, which I just completed (now I need to document the imgur album). I was able to successfully retrieve all 15 kerbalnauts. I used the original scenario file, so I needed KSP Interstellar to get two of the extremely difficult kerbalnauts (which was not possible with stock), mostly stock parts for the rest. I did the entire mission with a single launch, and I was fighting off the kraken nearly all the way, details are forthcoming... but until then, here is a shot of Jeb welcoming the 15 brave kerbalnauts back to KSP.

This is a very interesting challenge, thank you! Without getting too spoilery, there are some very interesting building talents necessary to fetch all these chaps, so I am going to take a crack at this challenge. I'm going to try to do it with only one launch, and I think the only mod I will need is KW Rocketry for the 3.5m parts to build my lifter stage.

This speech works best for *my* KSP experience: This is the actual speech that Nixon *would* have given if Armstrong/Aldrin had crashed or been stranded on the moon. It was written in advance of the moon landing, and was revealed in 1999. More details are here.

Kasuha, really impressive mate, Bob did not look very happy having to stay in free return in the "docking chair"

What an epic challenge! I present to you a full cleanup of all 16 tanks. To keep things interesting, I took a different approach to dispatching each tank, specifically: #1 Drone I crashed into Mun #2 Drone II crashed into Duna #3 Drone I landed at north pole (via Mun gravity turn) #4 Drone II converted into Mun space station #5 Drone I landed at KSC2 #6/7/8/9 Drone I (4x) bring a fiery hell to KSC #10 Drone I crashed into Minmus #11 Drone I destroyed by the spinning orange tank of death #12 Drone I destroyed by pushing it into a decaying orbit #13 Drone II pushed by Jeb on EVA (from low-Kerbin-orbit) into a decaying orbit #14 Drone I accelerated into Kerbol escape #15 Drone I crashed into Sun (Kerbol) #16 Drone II converted to a Laythe space station The only mods I used were Kerbal Attachment System and MechJeb. I struggled to get the KAS system to attach sounding to the orbiting tanks. After much frustration, I modified KAS to add an attachable Docking Port. This made the challenge tolerable for me, since I could now reliably attach my tugs to orange tanks. To add attachable Docking Ports to KAS, add the following lines to the end of the file GameData/KAS/addModule.cfg: ///////// dockingPort2 /////// GRAB { stockPartName = dockingPort2 evaPartPos = (0.0, 0.0, -0.15) evaPartDir = (0,0,-1) physicJoint = true storable = true storedSize = 2 attachOnPart = True attachOnEva = False attachOnStatic = True attachSendMsgOnly = False } Then you will be able to add Docking Ports to your KAS containers and install them to whereever in space. They are heavy (like parachute parts) so once you pick it up, move very slowly and deliberately with your RCS. Thanks for checking out my cleanup mission, details are here:

Claw, really nice work mate, thanks for the album! I really like your claw system for grabbing the probes, how stable is it under acceleration? Does MJ not work because the tank moves around? I should be completing my submission in the next 24 hrs, but I'm not going to get close to your score!

I'm still working on this challenge, this scenario has made me finally learn how to use Kerbal Attachment System, which is good. Here's a sneak peak at my upcoming mission, regards!

The kraken is finding my craft especially delicious, also, but this is saving me from having to start over: Multiple Saves DA mod (make game saves by name): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/multiple-saves-da/

Tigik, 94 m/s from orbit to Jeb-surviving splashdown, really impressive! I didn't think it was possible until now, you must have lightning fast throttle response!

FYI, I had to load up the RemoteTech2 mod to get the save file to work. Install that and you should be good to go.

If it's any consolation I made the same exact mistake, and my craft cost 16 points!

Awesome challenge, I'm in (but it's a busy week, so I may take a while), thanks for the submission!

Thanks for a great challenge! I now submit my craft, the HMS Minnow, weighing in at 1.582 tonnes without a Kerbal (1.668 tonnes with Jeb aboard). This craft has the tightest tolerances of any craft I have ever flown in the game, I deorbited and and landed with a remaining delta-V of 219 m/s in orbit! Total weight: 1.582 tonnes (1.668 tonnes with Jeb aboard) My edge over the previous designs I have seen above is my use of a non-explosive decoupler to remove my extra fuel tanks. When the decoupler exploded, the resulting forces caused my craft to loose about 100 m/s upward velocity. I instead designed this craft with a Docking Node Jr, with the decouple action bound to key "1". When the top tank is empty, I pitch right, press "1" to decouple, pitch left, and then full throttle. This design change eliminated a full yellow toroidal tank from my earlier working design. Please take it for a spin, here is the craft file. **NOTE**: I included two pics at the end of my album that show that KERBALS ADD NO WEIGHT TO A CREW CAPSULE, as such, I believe that using the external seat should not require adding the weight of the Kerbal to your craft's overall weight. Please discuss... Mission details follow:

Thanks for the feedback on my craft, BTW, I miscounted the solar panels, and I finally found the other 3 octagonal struts, they are embedded between the top T400 fuel tank and the middle T100 fuel tank. When I Alt-Left-Click copied the bottom T400 tank, it copied the three octagonal struts I used to mount the engines, so those three were just dead weight (albeit very little). No worries though, I'm happy with my current placement. Unfortunately, I terminated my craft and reset the game clock, because I am off to my next challenge already (Duna for Less), so I'll have to stay provisional. But, thanks again for the feedback, and kudos on a great challenge!

BTW, I tried to beat Alchemist's craft, but it seems to be the optimal (rocket) craft for this challenge. I couldn't find any way to do it with 5 tanks or one rocket, it seems that it takes two rockets to get an LV-N nuclear rocket into orbit and six tanks of fuel to do the full job. Nice work mate!

OK, I'm back, having read the challenge and with a new (non-winning, but ultra-small) entry: I am keeping on the theme of ultra-light craft design, this craft has almost enough rocket power to reach a 90km Kerbin orbit, I finish off the ascent with the ION thrusters, which I also use to leave the Kerbol system. I use THREE gravity assists to leave the Kerbol system (Mun, Duna, Jool), which save a lot of fuel, I had about 670 m/s delta-V left in the tank on Kerbol escape. Vehicle is 100% stock parts. Vehicle total delta-V: 4509 m/s (rocket) + 4476 m/s (ion) Vehicle total weight: 6.156 tons Craft file is here. Parts list: 2x FL-T400 fuel tanks - 4 points 1x FL-T100 fuel tanks - 2 points 3x cubic octagonal strut - 24 points 3x Rockomax 48-7S rocket - 15 points 1x Probodobodyne OKTO2 probe core - 7 points 3x PB-X150 Xenon Container - 21 points 1x PB-ION Electric Propulsion System - 7 points 6x OX-4L 1x6 Photovoltaic Panels - 36 points Total: 116 points Mission details:

Ahh, I was reading "Kerbol" as Kerbin, OK, thanks for the note, the challenge is back on for me!

Thank you for the challenge, I very much enjoyed this one! I went for an ultra-light ultra-simple stock design, flown by hand, without mods. I used a Mun gravity turn to reduce the Delta-V needed for Kerbin escape (it reduced it by about ~150 m/s, enough for this simple craft to escape with about 6.4 units of fuel left in the tank once a stable Sun orbit was reached. Vehicle total delta-V: 6188 m/s (vacuum) Vehicle total weight: 2.395 tons Craft file is here. Parts list: 2x FL-T200 fuel tanks - 2 points 1x Rockomax 48-7S rocket - 5 points 1x Probodobodyne OKTO2 probe core - 7 points 1x Z-100 rechargable battery pack - 4 points Total: 18 points This design should be new VAB record! Mission details: