purpleivan

I had a challenge entry a long time ago for the shortest time to Eeloo and as a result had a probe speeding past the surface at 31km/s at an altitude of less that 4km, although it was ASL as I didn't have KER installed back then, so expect it was a km or two either side of that.

I've managed to get a successful re-entry and landing at 6734m/s Higher speeds could probably be achieved by stacking heat shields in order for them to fail in sequence, as I was able to enter at 8000m/s and survive down to 35km before my one shield failed. Here's the video.

My attempt was in 1.1.3 (don't have 1.0.5 anymore). I assumed that 1.0.5 was the latest version when the challenge was set. I just completed a 2nd attempt at the challenge in an attempt to push this particular envelope. Unfortunately it was a spectacularly fiery and instantaneous failure. This was the state of things a fraction of a second after entering the atmosphere at 12,300m/s, unfortunately another split second later both the detached rocket section and the main vehicle exploded. I recorded a video of the latter part of the burn into Kerbin, that I'd hoped would document a triumphant return... at least Jeb wasn't on the business end of it. I have a save of the vehicle before I made my acceleration burn so I'll make some more attempts, applying less delta-v to see what the limit is.

I had a crack at the challenge this morning and I have an entry with a max speed in atmosphere of 5831m/s Like HoloYolo said, a quick and fun challenge Pics of the flight are here https://imgur.com/a/PuZmE There a lot more speed to be had too (and ablator... only used about 20% of it) as my trajectory was not optimal and I didn't start to burn early enough, so still had about 30% of the fuel in my final stage remaining. I'll probably have another crack at this sometime over the weekend and see how fast I can get.

My first pic was taken two days after buying the game and was of the first satellite I put into orbit around the Mun. It was another week before I dared to send a Kerbal to the surface of it.

I've no idea why I didn't notice that... can't for the life of me understand what was making me think it was the correct time to make the burn. Of course trying to make a burn over a relatively short distance four days early would make the info from TWP pretty much useless. Thanks for pointing out my embarrassing mistake

I included "mining camps" with the intention that these were launched as part of the challenge entry, rather than using infrastructure that is already in place (pretty standard for challenges) otherwise it would be possible to rendezvous with a bunch of conveniently placed fuel stops, to make a trip to pretty much anywhere in the system. I've now made the wording of the rules clearer that this is the intention. BTW... one option would be for you to launch a fuel store into Kerbin orbit from the ISC, then rendezvous your expedition vehicle with it to top up before heading to Mun and Minmus.

This is making me think about taking another crack at my "Plan - B" challenge, but aiming a little further than Mun this time. I still really want to airdrop my rocket at the KSC2, but I might have to give up on that as your launcher delivery method looks so much more reliable.

Took a slimmed down version of the Eve Redux, named the Eve Aero to the purple planet for a return mission. The image of the launch appears to show that the pilot has gone on vacation, but this was due to game remaining focused on the base section, that contain the ISRU components and an empty lander can, rather than the departing ship. Not what you want when taking off from Eve, but thankfully swap active ship keys came to the rescue. Gilden is now sitting happily in a near 170km orbit.

Sent a slimmed down version of the Eve Redux (the Eve Aero) for a return mission to the purple beast. Launched it back up into orbit this morning and even managed to avoid the tumbling that its predecessor suffered from.

Well everyone knows those suborbital launches are whisper quiet aren't they

Here's my design, although fundamentally it's the same concept as Foxster's (lots of liquid fuel and nukes). The TWR at launch is horrible at 0.11 but it does in theory match the specification. One question though... what would you be transporting that weighs 35t but has no fuel and needs to be sent in one piece?

For the Eve Party Boat (a 4 man Eve return lander) I attached a pair of big nuke powered tugs with 6 LV-N apiece . This was back in the days of v0.24 though. They didn't provide 10k dV but the lander they were transporting was 1200t I might have a go at putting something together that better matches your specification.

I launched the less than svelte Eve Redux (minus the guide fins at the top and the parachute packs) a few weeks ago from 1100m and it provided some 5200 dV at sea level (9800 vacuum) It wasn't particularly aerodynamic and I tumbled twice in the ascent forcing me to cut the engines each time, once between 27 and 29km and again between 60 and 85km (managed to get a few squirts of thrust during this one though). The final orbit was at 120km

I use a pretty standard nuke powered tug to haul my vehicles around the system. My first step was to use these to put in place mining and orbital storage of fuel at Minmus and Ike. Station component in flight to Duna Tug at Ike Mining base that was delivered to Ike using the tug Fuel storage section headed to Minmus I even used a couple of modified versions of these to push my Eve return vehicle there and used one of them as the return vehicle.

I'm fully expecting that I've just done something stupid, but my first attempt at using TWP in New Horizons is giving me what appears to be a completely incorrect maneuver. I set TWP to give me a burn from Aptur to Serran but the time for the burn is clearly far too early. To help show what I mean I've put a couple of screenshots of the instructions output from TWP in the map view. Any ideas appreciated.

Did this as part of the Old Control Tower Expedition challenge.

Proof of it working fine... sent up the first module of a space station around Kerbin and took a quick trip to Aptur.

Installed the New Horizons planetary pack this evening and took it for a quick spin and I'm liking what I'm seeing

Ah... that would be Kopernicus that I'm missing then (didn't notice it listed as a dependency). All working fine now... thanks.

There's probably a really simple reason for this but after installing New Horizons I'm only seeing the stock planetary system. Here's what I did. Downloaded the latest version of the mod v2.0.0 Created a copy of my game install and extracted the New_Horizons folder to the GameData folder in the copied install structure. Following this I ran the game from a new shortcut to the 64bit version of the game in the new folder structure. So far it's just the stock system that I'm seeing. Is there anything in addition to installing the mod that I need to do access the changed to the planetary system?

Interesting... looks like you're set for fuel. You might want to get the An-225 out as the challenge is for manned missions Looking forward to seeing what you get up to.

For straight forward news the BBC website is very good, but in my experience the "magazine" sections of the website including BBC future are often complete drivel.

Not a lot of work done for this, but a fun little title image for the Time for Plan B challenge.

The Eve Redux firing it's outboard engines to begin the descent to the surface.