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Congratulations, LtWhiskers! You have completed the Grand Orbital Space Station Challenge with a Stock(-ish) Division entry scoring 5,724.75 points! I loved the iterative, trial and error nature of your station. It reminds me of some of my earlier station efforts when I "kinda sorta" had a plan, but made sure to put enough docking ports everywhere that I could adapt on the fly. Good job on all that manual rendezvousing and docking, and I appreciated the highly kinetic disposal of superseded station parts. I also enjoyed the cupola IVA shots. Feel free to add the badge to your sig. If you enjoyed the challenge, rep is always appreciated. Well done!

Here's the redo of my earlier launch. Got closer to KSC, but still landed almost 30 km short (on the rolling plain between the mountains and KSC). Now that I know exactly how far to trust (or not trust) the MechJeb landing predictor for a rocket with airbrakes deployed, I can probably get this within 1 kilometer of KSC if I tried it another time or two. Burned a tiny bit more fuel on this attempt, so the revised total is 17,057.44 funds plus whatever percentage of the remaining craft value I would lose if this was career instead of sandbox for being 30 km away from KSC. No photo annotations this time, since the sequence is basically the same. Enjoy.

Parts look great. I'll give this a whirl tomorrow. In looking at the stats, though, it seems like the two impulse engines and the VAD are somewhat OP (almost as much thrust, lower weight, smaller form factor, higher Isp) compared to stock. The impulse and the VAD in particular would likely muscle out the Terrier and 48-7S. If you're really intending them as orbital engines, maybe they could be non-throttleable? I know that some of the Realism Overhaul engines operate that way, and if it could easily be added, it would make it very difficult to use them as lander engines, bringing the balance closer back to stock. (I'm not a modder, BTW, and have no idea how easy or difficult what I'm proposing would be...)

Whoops! The rule on the other challenge was you could recover full value anywhere on Kerbin. I'll do it again and land at KSC. I'll also fly the mission at sunrise instead of sunset and get some better photos while I'm at it.

Here's my entry, the Heavy Lift Challenger. It's simultaneously the best and the worst - best rocket entry, best stock aero entry, and worst overall score. I wanted to show that it's still possible (although difficult) to create a useful SSTO rocket, based off of the general design of a craft I did back in 1.02 for the Stock Budget Cap Challenge. Running KER, KJR, and MechJeb. 15,325 LF x 0.8 funds/unit = 12,260 funds 18,730 OX x .18 funds/unit = 3,371.4 funds Jettisoned fairing cost of 1,378 funds Total cost of 17,009.4 funds

Looks like a nice station. RL has been nuts, but I should be able to review this in the next day or two.

Long time geek into Star Wars, Star Trek, and a lot of other Sci Fi goodness. Old school Avalon Hill wargamer and RPGer back in the day. Degree in music, certification in urban planning. I love games which use the analytical part of the brain and allow you to customize things within the game system. KSP scratches so many itches so well that it has virtually monopolized my gaming time. Discovered KSP via XKCD around .23.5. And in my house, "Kerbal" is a verb - as in, "I'm going to go Kerbal for a while."

Whatever you do, watch your part count closely. Fewer, larger parts plus Kerbal Joint Reinforcement will help keep your station useful. In my experience, lag caused by a high part count is the primary reason that stations are abandoned. Click the first picture in my signature for lots of space station examples.

SpaceY has a nice selection of 1.875m and 2.5m SRBs. The biggest ones are over 100 tons and look entirely appropriate next to a 5m LFO core. Conveniently, the mod also includes a variety of 5m parts. :-)

One of my biggest stock craft was Buster, 8,500 tons on the pad. It was for a challenge to see how fast you could go before leaving Kerbin's SOI in 0.90. No exact figure for LKO since it never circularized, but the first screenshot that shows periapsis above 70 km has the vessel at 1,386 tons.

Editor extensions is a solid must-have in my book if you're going to be doing anything complicated in the VAB, such as multiple layers of onion or asparagus staging. KJR is also worth it's weight in gold.

I'm somewhat sad that I'm travelling and away from my computer at the moment. Not only am I not getting my hands on the new version of KSP, I can't do an entry for this challenge.

I think it's mainly a combination of envy ("why didn't I think of that") and fear ("kraken bait - run for your lives!") that was the Genesis of my comment. Fwiw, my most recent design places a docking port on top of the fairing base, allowing both the ultra-aerodynamic nose cone as well as a kraken-resistant docking mechanism.

Creative use of the claw, but not very scaleable. Somehow I can't see a 100-ton station lurching towards a small spaceplane, with claw outstretched... :-)

My LLES as part of my Kapollo Program. Seemed to work best by orienting to the surface retrograde vector, resulting in my kerbals flying sideways to whatever their destination was.

1.2 to 1.5 is pretty much the sweet spot for my designs, and is one of the most reliable ways of making sure you're not too low when going transonic. Part of it depends on how much the Isp changes the thrust of the engine, which wasn't modeled properly in earlier versions of KSP. For example, the KR-2L is now terrible as a lifter engine, but is still great as a heavy upper stage engine. The Skipper now increases thrust by 14% as it goes from sea level to vacuum.

And just in case people aren't aware, there was some good discussion a few weeks ago regarding nose cones and how effective the various types are. I've become a convert to the "A" tail piece for these sorts of challenges, just because the aero is so stinking good. Second runner up is the advanced nose cone type "A". The old blue nose cone isn't very good in comparison - its only advantage is lower cost. More info here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/122595-Some-rough-test-results-with-different-nosecones?highlight=fairing+drag

Here's the scaled up version of my previous entry. Originally supposed to be a White Collar entry, but I got the cutoff point wrong so it ends up being a Jeeves entry. Yes, it's a bit gamey, but it gets 7,200 units of LF/O into orbit for a cost of 22,067, or 3.065 funds per unit. Enjoy.

I like your landing system - much more realistic than my system of landing on the engine in the water. I may "borrow" it... ;-)

Here's a blue collar entry, the Cheap Fuel 2. It delivers a full FLT-800 with a docking port to orbit, then the SSTO rocket lifter deorbits. Net cost is 5,160, or 6.45 funds per unit of LF/O.

Any problem with slapping probe cores and parachutes on SRBs or other booster stages? Usually it doesn't pencil out to do so, but your rule for 100% recovery value might make such a strategy viable.

Coga19000, I've never used Dang It so I don't have an idea of what sort of value to assign to it. If it makes one of your two SRBs crap out during ascent and you somehow manage to make it to orbit anyway, then that would be worth a lot of points. Springing a slow leak in a fuel tank that's part of a space station already in orbit - meh. If you use Dang It for an entry, I'll note it in the description line, and may or may not assign some sort of points bonus based on what happens due it being active. Sorry I can't give you anything more definitive at this point.

Massive space stations several kilometers in diameter. Capital ships that would really make interplanetary travel and commerce seem feasible. Hangars on both the stations and the ships for holding numerous smaller craft, as seen in so many science fiction settings. All with detail levels that would bring my current computer to its knees.

R7 - because the R5 wasn't big enough. :-) Me like.

My Jool-5 Kethane mission. One launch, 9 Kerbals and a reconfigurable ship that came apart into four small orbital stations, four Kethane scanner probes, two science probes, and one orbital fuel depot. The main ship and the science lab came home with over 100 experiments worth over 16,000 science. Link to a much-too-long imgur album is in my sig.