Norcalplanner

What DBowman said. The more required mods there are, the further it winnows the field of contenders. I'd recommend at least three divisions - stockish KSP, RO without any additional realism mods, and then RO with the full masochist suite of mods. Think Jool-5 with all its subvariants. You could even further break it down by some other metric - size of colony, cost of space program, length of time to establish the colony, etc. And if someone goes through the pain of completing a difficult challenge like this, they're definitely going to want a badge/patch to show it off. Speaking solely for myself, I can handle RO with a few other mods, but do not use Remote Tech or TACLS, so I wouldn't do the challenge in its current format.

This comes up quite a bit over in my Grand Orbital Space Station Challenge. One solution is the cheap and cheerful LPC (Low Part Count) Station. An example of how not to do it is my Mega(useless) Station, with room for over a thousand Kerbals - and absolutely no chance of ever being used, since it's down at 1-2 fps just by itself, to say nothing of trying to dock a ship to it. :-\

Here's something I've been meaning to do for a long time. Many impressive stations end up being used a lot less than planned for one reason - LAG. As the part count goes up, the framerate slows to a crawl. Frustration goes up, fun goes down. My Mega(useless) Station is an extreme example of this. At 1-2 fps, I'm never going back to it ever again. To show the simple pleasure of a simple station, I present the LPC (Low Part Count) Station. There are two variants in the album - one uses tri-symmetry and has 19 parts, the other uses bi-symmetry and has 17 parts. While these stations won't win any beauty contests, they're cheap and cheerful. They can make it into LKO with nearly full tanks. If you don't mind drawing down the fuel reserves a bit, they have enough grunt to make it to make it to either of Kerbin's moons or anywhere they can aerobrake, and still have a good chunk of fuel left. Enjoy.

Congratulations, iLikeRovers! You have successfully completed the Grand Orbital Space Station Challenge with a Stock(-ish) Division entry scoring 539,003 points! Well done with a classic ring design. Those Mk3 passenger cabins are turning out to be the effective way to go - I used them heavily in the Mega(-useless) station, which was just too big for its own good. You smartly kept it to a single ring, and actually went through the trouble of launching it with a full complement of Kerbals! Thanks for the animated GIFs in the album - it really added a sense of perspective to certain parts of the mission. Feel free to add the badge to your sig.

Congratulations, Commander Zoom! You have completed the Grand Orbital Space Station Challenge with a Modded Division entry scoring 23,445 points! A very well documented entry. Kudos for combining this challenge with the Eve Rocks challenge. I gave you full credit for having a lander which can take Arch and Alf back to Kerbin - by my estimate, you'll have nearly a thousand m/s of delta V left in the bug when you get near the surface of Kerbin, and a TWR greater than 1. It wouldn't be pretty, but I can see the bug landing in a few large pieces and the two Kerbonauts emerging shaken but intact. Looks like you've got a good workable station for future use - well done. Feel free to add the GOSSC badge in the OP to your sig.

Some good looking entries posted in the last 24 hours. I'm away from my computer at the moment, but should be able to review and score these tonight or tomorrow. Keep 'em comin'!

SpaceY has 3.75m and 5m docking ports.

I was asking a similar question in a different thread. OhioBob posted some results that showed how .3 is pretty much the sweet spot for interplanetary burns: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/114358-Looking-for-info-on-TWR-gravity-losses-steering-losses?p=1813824&viewfull=1#post1813824

Without more information, it's hard to say. Something between Kerb in and Duna would probably be scored the same as a Duna entry. If you're going lower than Moho or beyond Eeloo, then I'll have to come up with some appropriate multiplier. - - - Updated - - - I've done that more than once myself. Moho needs a lot of delta v at a decent Twr, otherwise you just go zipping right by.

Basic orbital mechanics. Advanced orbital mechanics. What the heck Isp means. All the real rocketry things that people debate on the forums and come up with mods for, such as: pros and cons of different fuel types; how vacuum thrust is higher than sea level thrust; what TWR you need at various stages in a rocket's flight; that plane changes in real life are no small matter; and a host of other things that makes me really appreciate what's actually been done by all the nations and organizations that have successfully flung something into space.

His design has 24 legs. Mine had 30, but was a bit of overkill. Looks like the overall design is similar, so he's probably around 175 tons. Works out to 7.3 tons per lander leg, so it seems reasonable to me.

OhioBob, thanks for that info. That's the sort of thing I'm looking for. Now the question in my mind is how large the gravity losses are when a craft is 500km or more away from Kerbin and still burning.

Glad I could help! :-)

So I've played this game for a year now, and feel like I have a pretty good idea what I'm doing. Nevertheless, I feel like I need some additional education. For my entry in the Fastest small step for a Kerbal challenge (see here) I was under the impression that there was some value in keeping a higher TWR early in the burn. I kept my TWR above 1 for the first 2,500 m/s worth of ejection burn, and kept it above .75 for another 2,000 m/s on top of that before stepping down to .3 or so. I departed from a 200 km LKO, thinking that I would be minimizing gravity losses compared to the more Kerbal method of pointing directly at the target. The whole point with this challenge is to get there as soon as possible - the craft had around 35 km/s of delta V. I also needed to match a fairly precise ejection angle which was not parallel to Kerbin's orbit. So to get to my questions - is there any good thread discussion or information source for weighing these various factors? Higher TWR over a shorter period of time to take greater advantage of the Oberth effect and reduce gravity losses vs. lower TWR over a longer period of time (and likely at a higher Isp), even though there will be greater gravity and steering losses? Is there a chart somewhere which shows Kerbin gravity plotted by altitude or discusses gravity and steering losses? And with the way the game figures velocity and gravity, is there any advantage to trying to complete most of the burn before departing Kerbin's SOI when doing this sort of speed run? Thanks in advance for any help.

19,633 m/s shortly before leaving Kerbin's SOI. See my entry in the fastest small step for a Kerbal challenge. Foxster may have been faster, since he beat me to Jool, but it looked like his design had a lower TWR, so maybe not.

If you're not using any engines with high ISP, and there are no new significant abilities granted which are OP compared to stock, then I'll consider it a modded division entry. The whole reason for the efficient engines limitation is for when large stations are going to distant locations. If you're just staying in LKO or LMO, then it's not as big a deal.

Well done. How long did you have to burn? My entry had a max of 3x time warp while burning and 2x while staging, so it took me a while.

I like the shadow on the VAB. Of course, if you succeed in beating my time to Jool, I may need to make another attempt... :-)

The Kerbal Administration for Big Overpowered Orbital Machines (KABOOM) is proud to announce their newest ship, the Joolbuster. Jeb piloted the craft from Kerbin to a low Joolian orbit in 82 days, 2 hours, and 7 minutes! Stock except for MechJeb. Full info is in the captions for the pictures. Enjoy.

TheXRuler, The station doesn't have to be newly designed, but if you want it to be scored, it needs to have sufficient documentation on how it was launched and assembled as specified in the OP. Reloading a craft and relaunching a duplicate so you can take pictures you missed earlier is fine by me - it's those without such documentation make me wonder if HyperEdit was involved, which sort of defeats the point of the challenge. :-) On Freight Transport Technologies, it looks like it's on the line between modded and advanced technology division. I see it introduces new nuclear engines - what is their ISP? In general, any modded engine with an ISP over 800 will land the mod in the advanced technology division. On assembly, as long as the station is either launched in one piece or assembled in space, you're good. When I made my giant station, I toyed with the idea of sending the three pieces to Jool separately and then assembling them there, but ended up just doing it in LKO.

Fair enough. I'll pick up a gross of struts on my way home.

Are Claw's stock bug fixes allowed? And what about Kerbal Joint Reinforcement? No worries if they're not, but I'd prefer to keep my part count lower, if allowed.

I like Vall. It has lots of flat landing areas, is conveniently located, and refueling there definitely doesn't feel cheaty at all. Laythe would be my second choice, but I wouldn't do atmospheric scoops - I'd use a combination of parachutes, jets, and rockets to minimize the dV requirements, and would probably site things on that great bay that Brotoro first popularized. Tail-sitter SSTOs are a bit easier to land if you're nervous about your ability to land on unimproved ground.

You can actually launch a pretty big ship in one go if you do it right - check out my Eve Rocks and Jool-5 entries in my sig. KJR is helpful. If you're assembling really big ships, check out SpaceY - they have a variety of 5m parts, and include both 3.75m and 5m docking ports if you still want to assemble things in orbit. Speaking for myself, my usual method is to launch a craft, then send up a tanker to top things off before departing LKO.

Thank you kindly.