Lunniy Korabl

Yep, you may use them for whatever you like (other than pretending you made them of course). Pol is on the way. Just had to do some research first. I'd spent so much time messing about with Laythe to the neglect of the outer Joolian system. Well, not anymore! Very happy with the lander/motherprobe configuration for multiple orbit insertions. Aerobraked high in Jool's atmosphere to give an apoapsis just beyond pol, then worked inwards after pol, visiting bop, skipping tylo and having enough fuel for a bonus visit to vall. I really love the ice shader from low orbit, it looks heaps better than in the map view. Plenty to work with for now!

Ok fine, I did the thing you wanted. People sure do love that moon.

That Laythe is looking amazing. Very nice job. How did you generate the clouds?

Added a few more. Let me know which one you'd like to see next!

Haha, it does say my favourite planets and moons, I can't imagine making one for Tylo anytime soon! Also, doing the mun would pretty much consist of taking an Apollo photo and swapping the earth for Kerbin, but I'll probably be adding some more interesting places as I visit them. Laythe seems to get all the attention these days, but I've never even been to the outer Joolian moons, so maybe Pol could be next. Didn't realise how small it was until I saw the infographic in another thread. Definitely one for an RCS lander!

I used After Effects, because I like the control of non-destructive image editing, but there's no reason this couldn't be done in Photoshop. Here's the image I used for Duna. I was reading up on the polar icecaps of Mars, which led me to katabatic winds and then on to Antarctic oasis. You know how wikipedia can be.

Thanks! Atmosphere is useful for integration. I hope more moons have thin atmospheres in future updates, both for aesthetics and realism. Just added a Gilly one as well. Maybe next up I'll do a Jool atmospheric probe, though I'll have to design the mission first! I think it's important for realism that all of the ships are from actual missions I've flown.

RCS thrusters are my favourite engines!

I think people have done realtime mun missions in earlier versions. I can see how that could be fun. Interplanetary missions? Good luck!

Yeah, my interpretation was that the side-mounted super draco thrusters are what will make this thing look very different from the cargo version. We've already seen this in recent mockups. That, and a proper docking mechanism. The rest is just marketing hype.

Oh, the irony of the capsule flag!

Bob was not amused... So I sent Jeb up there to keep him company!

I think it's ethical to do unmanned test flights first! Next stop, Munar Escape Systems.

I want for people to stop building massively inefficient rockets where most of the fuel is wasted on launching most of the fuel that is wasted on launching most of the fuel... Seriously though, I'm sure more optimization is in the works. There's no point fully optimizing the game until all the features are in, but I think squad do a pretty good job of making each update run a bit better. I think I read somewhere that the planetary bodies will load dynamically in 0.20, which might break telescope mods but should increase performance. Hopefully there's a decent placeholder system that we can still see through telescopes. That would be rad.

Neither have I, but it was close enough to be able to counteract the torque manually even at full thrust. Interestingly enough, using this design with a 3rd ant stage on top raised the centre of mass such that it was impossible to control at full thrust. Back to the drawing board for Joolian missions!

Well, it's clear now that I've been doing it wrong. Here's a stock Minmus lander for just 1905! It still has the automatic panel, so anyone who wants to fly a more carefully sun-oriented mission could pull off spending 1705, which I believe is a new record. It does require part clipping to get that radial motor nice and central and the decoupler clear of it with the help of a few struts. Since almost all stock spaceplanes use part clipping I figure this is ok. Probe Core 230 Battery 80 Antenna 150 Folding Panel 300 Total: 760 Landing Stage Tanks 225 Engine 240 3 tiny struts 30 Total: 495 Launch Stage Small solid 450 Small decoupler 200 Total: 650 Grand total: 1905 As you can see from the landing shots, the fuel margin is tight, but good enough to tolerate my no-mecjeb no-maths style of flying. Suicide burn required!

I'm very impressed with cheap micro rockets/probes. Instead, I went with the strategy of decouplers are expensive, fuel is cheap and built a bigger rocket with the probe just bolted a onto the liquid 3rd stage. It could be another 200 cheaper, but I kept forgetting to sun orient the tiny solar panel during cruise so eventually gave up and put the cheapest automatic array on there. Anyway, here's the breakdown. This could probably make it to Duna or Eve with a parachute, but for testing I went for the easiest target, Minmus. Sorry for the huge images. Looks like I was ninja'd by a cheaper one too... Probe Core 230 Battery 80 Antenna 150 Folding Panel 300 Total: 760 Landing Stage Tanks 450 Engine 750 Total: 1200 Launch Stages Small solid 450 Large solid 800 2 small decouplers 400 Total: 1650 Grand total: 3610 Lifting off the stick is pretty much dead because fins cost money. The off-centre battery slowly pulls the rocket in the right direction for gravity turn. Second stage really roars through the dense atmosphere as the tiny battery tries its best to tug us into a turn. After very little steering from the solid motors, third stage needs to work pretty hard to make the most of the orbeth effect, but at least we're in the tenuous upper atmosphere. Launch windows are boring, maneuvering at the low orbital speeds of high altitude orbits is more fun and doesn't take much fuel to get a Minmus intercept. Orbits are expensive and boring, let's just aim at that ball of green ice and see what sticks. Ok, maybe too much timewarp is a bad thing, but on the plus side there's plenty of fuel for a suicide burn. Maybe I could have come in somewhere flatter. I have enough fuel to aim for the bottom of that basin, but again that's boring, let's just land already. Nailed it. Just in case anyone was concerned that awesome landing compromised the mission, we can see from looking behind the hill that our antenna is nicely aligned with Kerbin overhead.

I did it with ion thrusters!

For some reason I'm having more fun with rover EDL sequences than the rovers themselves!

What you need is one of these!

"Well, here we are."

Aerobraking woo!

New update is so pretty!

I think I've been to the Mun only a handful of times after Minmus came out. The way I see it, if Minmus were real, NASA wouldn't spend much time messing around in the barren deserts of the Moon when there's a cheaper target with frozen lakes on it either! I also see a Minmus base as a very likely staging point for interplanetary missions. I haven't had a play with the kethane mod yet, but I think that lets you mine fuel on the surface. Should be good fun. I've already landed a large drill-like structure on one of the frozen lakes. Landing bases is a breeze compared to the Mun because the gravity is so low you can use low thrust engines all the way down. Not a big deal with a small lander, but a massive deal with a more massive base.