Ruthgar

I only do the rollback when something fails/falls off my ship while it's on the launchpad. I use quicksave just because of all the lovely little quirks KSP has, like the one that happened today when I went to get a drink while my Duna lander was on the way out of the system, engines/rcs/sas all off, no timewarp as I did have a maneuver node soon. Get back to my computer a minute later to see all the arms of my lander gyroscoping in opposite directions. 30 seconds of trying to stop the parts spinning later I watched the pieces of the ship rip themselves from the core of it. Then there's the times that my guys get out of the ship and somehow managed to tip it over even when it's sitting stable on flat ground. So yeah, as far as quicksaving goes I just use it as a backup against the random quirks of the game, and as a backup for the periodic saving the game does to the main file (had a few crashes where my quicksave was actually several minutes later (largest was about 30 minute difference) than the auto-save). Case in point, earlier this week when I had 6 million in my budget, I launched MULTIPLE missions going to well everywhere outside of Kerbin SOI. The total price tag on this venture was around 5.5 million, and I had multiple, MULTIPLE partial failures on the missions where I would lose solar panels, mono tank here or there, even one of the engines on the final part of a transfer vessel. The greatest failure I had was when my manned Duna mission was heading for a rendevous with the transfer/refueling ship. Now, while I calculate and plot all of my intercepts and transfers myself, I do use mechjeb for executing the maneuvers, which allows me to save fuel. And I needed to save fuel on my Duna mission, I had gotten into orbit with just under 400 units of fuel left which resulted in about 150 m/s of delta/v I used 100-110 of it going toward my final rendevous with enough left for the deceleration burn that should park me about 50 meters from the transfer ship. HOWEVER I was doing this on the night side, with no lights, no big deal, done this plenty of times, plus I can see the docking port highlighted I can do this. What I did not take into account was the position the ship was in. Just as MJ was starting the final burn, my landing gear and main clamp-o-tron on the bottom of the lander plowed into the main fuel tank/engine of the transfer ship. Luckily the lander actually has 2 clamp-o-trons and I was able to rendevous with the remaining tanks, dock up, take the fuel from the tanks that no longer had engines to refill the lander, jettison what would unbalance the lander thrust, towed the remaining tank to ike, landed there, took off again, redocked, and started my transfer back to kerbin burn. Now due to the damage my lander had taken (lost a few landing gear, a clamp-o-tron, and some external components on the tanks such as batteries a few rcs props etc...) I had to balance the weight of my ship by keeping some tanks opposite of the damaged side empty. So here I am, using my lander to push some fuel tanks with me back to Kerbin, having to keep my thrust limited to 35-45% or the rcs and reaction wheel would not be able to cope with the imbalance (without 'ballasting' my lander tanks they could only handle 5% thrust) Managed to get this crippled lander back to Kerbin SOI, get into a orbit that would impact minimus later(dumped the spare fuel tanks then) burned at pe to drop ap below Minimus orbit then burned again at ap to encounter kerbin for a polar landing that the ship barely survived (each of the arms of the lander are twisted 10-20 degrees as it was sitting on the ground). The things is, I had done a quicksave just 15 minutes prior to the accident before I lifted from Duna. I could have avoided this entire 'mess' by reloading after destroying my transfer ship. I didn't because this wasn't from a quirk of the game, a problem in one of the mods I use, this was something that I had done, so I lived with that consequence, and managed to get back to kerbin. SO yeah, I don't disable rollbacks or quicksave, I just don't use them aside from when the game itself messes up. Even when an 800k ship decides to turn itself into a Roman candle 1 second AFTER launch. (thankfully that was my massive unmanned mission to Jool)

But I like my mega min/mun lander that costs me 250-275k to launch. Damn thing also makes me about 400-500k just doing a bunch of repeatables in a single mission. *EDIT* thing also returns about 65-75k in parts

Finally got a ship into Moho SOI with a payload of 2 unmanned probes. One is now in orbit mapping out Moho, and I sent the more damaged of the two down to Moho (Had designed and built these probe payloads without any real testing on them, and sent 5 of them out to various locations in the system, turns out that design is guaranteed to rip off at least one of the 4 solar panels on both of the probes, this time one probe had 3 ripped off) So sent the newly designated lander down toward moho. It did have to pull off a brief hover in the decent as it was desperately low on power and I needed to extend the panel. But the probe made it down to the surface, and was able to send back a temperature reading to complete the moho contract. Unfortunately when I went back to the probe after checking on another mission the physics loading caused the last solar panel to be ripped off. Soon that probe will be silent. RIP my faithful little probe.

Landed on Ike, Jeb decided to go for a walk......a space walk. Now to get him safely down. I imagine there might be some bumping along the way.

Have just launched in the last gameday 5 separate missions, manned mission to Duna/Ike, Manned mission to Eve/Gilly, unmanned missions to Dres, Moho, and Eeloo. Once the Eeloo ship is aligned to it's transfer point, I'm going to go design/build a ship with multiple small probes for the simple purpose of cleaning up all the space junk up here in Kerbin orbit, though if any of them do have fuel aboard, I will be trying to drain those tanks, doubtful tho.

Would like to point out asparragus staging is used by space agencies in real life, though I can't recall if it's liquid or solid rocket boosters that they do so with. Think it's SRB asparragus staging that they typically do, could be wrong. Also I know there's a mod or two (can't recall the names off the top of my head) that you can use to tweak the amount of science you get. Once I get my manned duna/eve & possibly Jool sat manned explorations done in my current .24 career, I think I'll be loading one of those mods and tweaking the science experiments down to 20% (Current .24 career is currently at 5k science with all techs researched, and haven't done a manned mission outside of Kerbin SOI yet, unmanned missions only have moho, dres, and eeloo left to do)

You can, it just takes a LOT more delta-v.

Do you have 100% completion on all of your science research, not the tech research, that's easy to complete. I mean have you done every single bit of unique research there is to be found? If not, then you haven't finished 0.24 yet

Built my Jool multi probe ship, launched it, docked it to the spare fuel tanks I had floating around kerbin orbit, sent it off. Jool 1 landing probe attempted, 1 probe in orbit, Laythe, probe and lander in orbit, Tylo Probe in orbit, lander on the ground intact, Vall probe in orbit, lander on the ground intact, Poll probe in orbit, lander on the ground intact, went a little over budget on fuel, so I have almost 7k delta v left after ditching the probes/landers for the other satellites, and empty fuel tanks to rendevous with bop.

Update to my ongoing Jool mission, turns out all my mini landers, their probe core is on UPSIDE DOWN......so no guidance help whatsoever using them....manual control all the way......JOY.....NOT!!!!

experience the awesome power of Jool aerobraking for the first time in it's full glory. Went from a 90 day intercept window with Jool's SOI to an orbit that has an apoapsis just outside of laythe orbit. WOW. And only expended 37 m/s of delta/v 33 to drop my PE to 120km, and then 4 afterwards to raise it.

well, Kerbal joint reinforcement mod did the trick, and my Mega Jool mission is underway........why are the orbitable sats and the 1 mini lander they are paired to facing engine to engine...... *sigh* looks like the transfer ship is going to visit all of the planetary bodies inside the Jool SOI. (In case you didn't figure it out, one mini lander was supposed to ride each orbitable sat to rendevous with each planetary satelite)

I try to build reliable rockets and if a design proves usuable & profitable under any conditions, I try to stick with it for as long as possible. Also I don't launch any missions unless I can turn at least a 50% profit on it. For example, my current kerbin SOI lander is designed to go land on minimus, return to kerbin with a stop at the mun to land, go into kerbin orbit, and rescue lost kerbins from orbit. Now an optimum mission package would be science in kerbin space, science in minimus space, flag on minimus, mun science, mun flag, and the kerbin rescue. Don't have the exact numbers, but that should be about 500k total, my lander (because of all the science modules and such) usually returns me 65-80k depending on fuel remaining. Total cost of the mission is about 220k, so after the refund, if I can get a full Kerbin SOI mission package (repeatables only), I can make 350k easy. Yes, could I strip down my rocket and lander and save another 40-50k in price, yes I could, however the rocket/lander is also designed for the testing missions as well, and has been proven to be able to haul almost anything to the testing locations (passed on the large rocket engines on the mun surface test). I've also started to include side mountain docking ports on my transfer stages and when they have plenty of fuel left, I rendevous with one already location in mun/minimus orbit, and dump all but a fraction of the fuel left in the transfer stage (leave enough to deorbit the transfer stage to mun/min surface) This way I have plenty of fuel already in orbit for interplanetary missions, just need to attach a drone pod to them, and send it back to high kerbin orbit to fuel up the transfer ship.

After my successes (with minor problems (losing 1-2 solar panels)) of my multi probe rockets to duna/eve, I've gone ahead and scaled up for a Jool mission, 5 orbital mapping probes, 8 mini probes for landing attempts (yeah 1-2 will go into Jool just because) and scale up of engine thrust to accomadate. Now, I used essentially the same design for eve/duna, 2 probes, and exact same rocket design, which including all the parts (probes included) was about 80% rocket parts, 20% struts, this Jool monster is now roughly 40% rocket parts, 60% struts, and the thing still folds in half within 90 seconds (compared to initial launch of 12 seconds). So yeah, time to install the kerbal joint reinforcement mod

Yeah, for a Gilly rover, you need a version of the Armadillo from the Armageddon movie (RCS thrusters to KEEP YOU ON THE GROUND) Though, you don't really need a lander for gilly, just park your ship close to it, and either use your 'Armadillo' rover, or just your suit rcs to go down there. *edited* If fact I believe one of my manned landings, I did just that. Brought the ship to a relative halt ( not in orbit, just stopped ) above gilly 150-200 meters got out, rcs'd down to the surface, planted a flag, eva report, soil sample, waited a few minutes, waited a few more, then decided the ship wasn't coming down fast enough so I just rcs'd back up, got in saw that the ship has only accelerated to about .3 m/s in the 8-10 mins I had been out of it, and went back to kerbin.

Who else can say that they were responsible for making sure Neal and buzz were able to get back from the moon. For my anniversary flight to the memorial, made sure to thank all three of them on my flag and not just buzz and neal

I will take the part testing contracts if I can work them into another mission I have going on, or if I can get several test contracts that will work cheaply on one of my dedicated test vehicles. Current record is 8 test contracts done with my jet with each test having different start requirements.

Got a little fed up trying to get the science contract for science experiment in space around gilly, had my probe down to an orbit of just 2k from the surface, so I decided to put the probe ON the surface. Here's a picture of the probe after it landed 10 minutes ago. Strangely enough the picture from 10 minutes ago, and one taken now, look exactly the same. Wonder how many years it'll take for the probe to finally fall from that angle. *edit* PS. Just noticed the probe's SAS was still on, which was causing the defying gravity ability it had.

Decided that the next kerbal to lose his ship in orbit would get to visit the 'special hell' of space rescue. Yes, that is an external command seat that the rescued Kerbal is now sitting in, and..... managed to safely ride down to a somewhat lopsided landing. Side note, a Kerbal in an external command seat is considered to be EVA, so this is an easy way to get any atmospheric eva reports you are missing. Side note #2, an external command seat does not count as a 'ship' for getting the rescued kerbal contract credit, so have him hop into your lander before retrieving the craft.

I have found jets to be the best for testing at altitudes between 1 and 40 km as you have better control of your speed and altitude.

To top off the end of this mission, Jeb went and rescued another stranded Kerbanaut, then messed up his attempt at landing on the launchpad.

Banished.....er sent one of my rescued Kerbals on an extended mission to the Mun I did give him an important mission tho. To keep some old friends of all of us company. It is a day later than I intended, but thank you Neil, Buzz, Michael, and everyone else that helped those three get there and be a part of making one of all of our dreams a reality.

My preferred type of lander uses either a tri or quad set of engines, each with their own fuel tanks mounted to one central tank with fuel lines running from it. From the central tank hangs the sci modules, and capsule, anything that will be left at the desitination I usually attach to the bottom of the capsule, so that it can be dropped once the lander is down, and if necessary the lander then lifts out of the way. For larger items that won't safely fit in the clearance the landing legs give, I have successfully mounted items to the top of the lander, detached them, and used RCS to get them off of there. Best advice I have is find what works best for you. Well, I'm off to send some probes off to Duna, or at least attempt to do so.

Yeah, I've developed a few general purpose ships & 1 plane, whose sole purpose is to get.....shall we say very interesting modifications installed onto the basic structure, and just activate them when the conditions are met. Not so bad with the actual rockets, but my plane......yeah there's been a few interesting tests done, as I have a small rocket fuel tank mounted on the top fuselage where I attach any and all rocket engines that need to be tested in flight below 30k that way I don't have to actually build a specifically engineered rocket just to meet the test conditions. Ever activate an offcentered Kerbodyne KR-2L advanced engine mounted to the top of your plane while forgetting to throttle back................ Wasn't fun. Though my test plane is something of an engineering wonder, the damn thing has way more lift than it needs and keeps going above the max altitude the air scoops will work at. Ah well, the Wonder Thump is fun to fly. And testing usually only costs me 1-3k in fuel, and I can usually make 100-200k with enough contracts at once. BTW, here's a picture of the WT with the KR-2L still mounted from the last test.

Nice, I wish you lots of luck.