Indy

Jool Mission 2 report: One Way Trip... http://imgur.com/a/axpO0#0 Mission report inside, but a TL;DR: "Today I learned that you need lots o' electricity to power them fancy Ion engines! Also, don't slap on a few batteries and think everything will be alright, over-engineer the living crap out of it" At least, that's how I felt about it xD

The gold-foil at the top of the satellite is the structural material of a telescope, part of the SCANsat mod, I highly suggest it!

Howdy Folks. I saw everyone making mission reports, and after 250+ hours of blowing up rockets, figured I'd start my own. I'll be breaking it up into different areas of operation, since I've got missions ongoing in several parts of the solar system. I'll be updating them as I explore and develop there. Below will be a list of hyperlinks to the posts that pertain to said area of operations. As of 6/2/15 -Well, I made this first post! Will be updating later with more content, and plenty of pictures as I go along. My current mission is to send a salvo of probes to the Jool system, which I have never explored before, and hopefully recover science from each major body in orbit! Stay tuned! KERBIN >Minmus >Mun DUNA JOOL >>Mission 1: Scanning http://imgur.com/a/m86RY#0 >>Mission 2: One Way Trip http://imgur.com/a/axpO0#0 - - - Updated - - - Mission report 1: Satellite to Jool! http://imgur.com/a/m86RY#0 As shown in the pictures above (hopefully, assuming I did this right), I sent a SCAN satellite to the Jool system to start mapping out Biomes for an inevitable manned mission. I flew all around the system, gathering data from the inner three bodies, finally stopping at Laythe, because I ran out of fuel! Still got some pretty pictures, though!

I don't want to be THAT guy, but perhaps putting on some stabilizing fins towards the bottom? Should help with tipping due to air flow.

I put a scanning satellite, using the SCANsat mod, into the Jool system to map out possible landing sites on some of the local bodies. Managed to grab a nice looking shot, too!

My policy thus far has been to hire the least stupid candidate for the position. I have a good spread of male to female, so I think it's working out alright.

I'm actually pretty happy with their selection of showcased mods. I didn't know some of those (besides the super popular ones) existed, and I'm downloading them and trying them out right now.

Nope, the 20% discount applies to the whole cost of your build IF you bring Jeb back alive. No moar refunds!

For those thus-far who've participated, thanks and congrats, I've been blown away so far by the submissions! If you really want a crap-tastic coin as a badge on your signature, go for it, y'all earned it

Nicely done! Thanks for participating, I too would love to see someone try for under 10,000

Backstory: Scrooge McKermin wants to put Jebediah on Minmus, but he does not want to spend a lot of money to get him there. So, he's crowd-sourcing ideas, looking for the cheapest way to get a Kerbal to Minmus! GOAL: It's fairly simple: Get Jebediah to Minmus for as CHEAP AS POSSIBLE RULES: 1) No mods of any kind, including Mechjeb. 2) As seen from title, all stock parts 3) You do not have to return from Minmus, just get Jeb on the ground. Bonus points awarded to those who bring him back alive. (Bringing him back alive rewards a 20% Discount on all part costs) 4) Take lots of picture! REWARD: If anyone actually does this challenge, I made a pretty (ugly) coin for your sig! I promise I'll work on a better one SCOREBOARD: -Rank, Name, Cost 1) zarakon, 3,762, 3,009 WITH REFUND. Wow. I have no words. I doubt anyone can beat this. 2)waterlubber, 5,353, 4,282 WITH REFUND. I legitimately did not think it could be done, but it was. NICELY DONE 3)ticalc2014, 5,975, 4,780! WITH REFUND. NOICE 4)MadChris48, 6,087, 4,869.6 WITH REFUND. Good God, I didn't think it could be done, congrats! 5)jaddbo, 6,735 NOICE 6) spacecookie, 16,050! Nicely done, also the first submission!

I really, REALLY like that design. I've been trying to get to Duna myself, and all my designs have been huge. This has a simple elegance to it

Hey, so I've designed the calculator on paper and have run numbers through it. It works in binary, which I hope isn't a problem, because that allows me to count up to bigger numbers. I'm about to build in KSP, thought I'd reserve a spot here. -Built and tested, she works! I'll post an imgur album tomorrow, too tired, it's finals week, and I need to get back to studying xD But I promise I'll post pics tomorrow. Here's the theory bit, to explain some: This is a binary counter, so it counts in base 2. There is a long fuselage, with 9 landing legs on each side, parallel to each other. 1 is represented by a deployed landing leg, 0 is represented by a stowed landing leg. You have a row of "active" bits and a row of "imaginary" bits. The imaginary bits act the same as when you were a child doing math. Remember when you would do 9 + 5? 9 + 1 = 10, so you'd put a "1" over the next digit, the ten's place, and bring a 4 down to the one's place, since you had 4 left over from adding 9 + 1. You'd then bring the 1 above the ten's place down, thus giving you "14". Same concept. The second row of "imaginary" bits acts as the floating 1's above the 10's place in your early math days, just as binary instead. The rules are: 1) You put in the first number you want to add, in binary. THEN, you start from the least significant bit and add upwards for each bit int he second number 2) If an active bit and an imaginary bit are "1" in the same vertical column, the next imaginary bit to the left becomes a "1" and the two bits that were active become "0"'s. 3) If there are no active bits below an active imaginary bit, then the imaginary bit comes down to the active bit, making the active bit a "1" instead of a "0". Else-wise refer to (2) And when you run out of conversions / imaginary bit switches, heyo! You're done! I probably over-complicated the wording, but that's how the calculator works xD. On the upside, it can add up to 512!

1) Mission Failure does not equate to total failure. I've learned more from botched missions and crashes than any tutorial or training vid out there. 2) The learning curve is STEEP. It's alright to be intimidated, but don't let that stop you from trying. You learn from experience. 3) Space is sideways, not just up.

Indy's STS Shuttle Flight 2: Pilot Qualifications This was a fun one, doing the rolls while flying was pretty damn fun. The only things I added as a short addition were a MechJeb unit so I could get my ascent and dV numbers right, and two 'chutes on the rear of the ship, in the event I came in on the ground too fast and needed a way to slow down ASAP. If this voids the challenge, let me know and I'll redo it with a non-modified version of the STS-4. Barrel-rolls: 5 (Just because I wanted to) Barrel-rolls with fuel tank attached: 5 Max Height: 129,000 m Landed: YES So unless adding those two things mentioned at the top of this post voids my attempt, I suppose this fits all the qualifications for the Pilot Badges?

Yes sir I do. Shuttle name is the Rodger Young​.

Indy's STS Shuttle Flight 1: Astronaut and Specialist Qualifications Made several orbits at roughly 200km, actually still up in the air. I realize the qualifications asked for a minimum of 70km but my philosophy is "go big or go home". Planning on lining up the shuttle for a landing run near the KSC, never piloted spaceplanes before but hey. This mission was run using the STS-Class shuttle, no additions. Max Altitude: 2040,00m Max Orbits : 3 Sorry for this post's massiveness, could someone tell me what the Spoiler code for these forums is? xD

I began my mission start to my circumnavigation of Duna. Having never built a rover in my entire KSP career, I spent several hours figuring out the wheels, and thirty minutes getting it in the air and landing it. I've affectionately called it the "Prowler", since it sits so low to the ground. I'm only 50km in from the start, so I've still got a while to go

Landed on Duna for the first time (:D:D), BARELY made it home, and now I'm building a permanent orbital station around Duna, already has 4 modules!

I've tried docking at 100,000m in LKO, and I seem to have significant difficulty docking larger objects. Is there any way to make it easier? I've thought about going to a higher orbit, or even going to a low-g thus lower-speed area for construction, like 20,000m above Minmus. Any tips from more experienced players/engineers? I'm kind of making this up as I go, so any advice at all would be useful. I just did a test of orbital speed at 400,000m in Kerbin orbit, and am about to test speeds at 20,000m Minmus orbit.

Same here mate But to get back on topic, another thing I have learned from KSP: I love rockets. No for real, I really love rockets. I'm paying a lot closer attention to news about NASA and space in general.

I docked for the first time today! There were many a nailbiting moment, but I finally did it. Took me almost a week since buying the game, but there it is! Now to add fuel tanks and solar panels...

​Relevant Thought you might get a kick out of that xD

You will always forget to extend solar panels. You will inevitably run out of fuel. Space is sideways not just up. Triple Check your staging.

Finalizing my Early Minmus Base, 6/29/14 See, I started my 'base' with just a mobile science lab, but realized, since it is in such a wide lakebed, that it was a perfect spot for a more defined extra-terrestrial base of sorts. I already had the science lab and radio tower in place, but now I needed a Command Center to organize operations on Minmus (I haven't fully explored it yet) Here's the Command Center, atop my SSR-3-H. I use this booster as my First Stage, Second Stage, and Maneuvering rocket all rolled in one. I took one out of Scott Manly's book and used the cross-fuel concept to have full thrust while keeping the primary, center rocket completely fueled up. Off we go! Good to see Jebediah's enjoying the ride! LZ Douglas in sight, and beginning the retrograde burn After some tweaking, here she is on the ground, with Jeb taking a peek outside. So yeah, thats what I did today. If anyone has any comments or suggestions, I'd love to hear em. I've only had KSP for 5 days, so any information would be awesome! Thanks for reading!