purpleivan

This is an impressive beast to attempt to put down on Mun, especially as only your 2nd landing there. Can you tell me which "custom parts" violate the rules, so that I can see if the rules can be amended. It might be that they reasonable to include in an allowed parts list, or I might start a 2nd category of "stock-ish".

Sorry... badly phrased response from me. I was referring to your use of infinite fuel to get to the mun, so this particular flight was not withing the rules. There's nothing that I see on the vehicle that's breaking the rules, so a flight of the same vehicle, while not using infinite fuel (e.g. topping up with fuel with launches from Kerbin) would be fine. Sorry about the misunderstanding.

Here is a collection of the screenshots from my KSP gameplay that I've done a little Photoshop work on to turn them into something suitable as a wallpaper image. I'll be posting more images like these here, when I get around to doing them. I've added the images below as a catalogue and as links to larger versions. Monument Thinking of Home

Very nice, even if it's not entirely within the rules. A cool looking vehicle, that's functional and has accommodation for a ridiculous number of Kerbals.

I'm afraid not. The idea is that the whole vehicle has to be launched from Kerbin and then transferred to Mun for the landing. However you can use as many launches as you want to assemble and/or fuel a vehicle in orbit.

That would make it a bit like the Jool-5 challenge on level 3, except all on one planet.

Part 6c. The Party Begins. Once the dust had cleared and the vehicle made safe, Jeb’s crew scrambled for the hatch, each wanting to be the first onto the ladder. Jeb’s experience of similar situations on previous missions gave him an advantage and his boots were the first to make it to the ladder. Finally all four of the crew were making their way down the rungs to the surface. Once on the surface, the job of erecting the flag was Jeb’s as the commander of the mission, but at the last moment he handed it to Malzor, to let him do the honours, which he did with a good hard stab at the purple soil and a muttering of something that had to be bleeped from the TV broadcast. With the flag planting out of the way, Jeb circled the lander to take a look at the rover that had guided them to their small, high altitude landing site. When he reached it he was shocked to find that the lander had set down within half a metre of the little (in comparison with the huge lander) rover. With the sightseeing and surface photo opportunities dealt with, the crew made its way back up to the capsule, stopping briefly on the two main ladder sections to take some†Kabbey Road†style group shots, before re-entering the “Hitchhiker†module. Malzor then closed the hatch, chuckling slightly insanely as he did so. In Part 6d. A Triumphant Return. - - - Updated - - - Part 6d. A Triumphant Return. With the lander prepared for liftoff, the full fury of its 28 engines was unleashed on its landing site, as well as the four landing structures that were detached at launch. With Jumbo-64 fuel tanks being dropped off like rapidly drunk, empty beer cans, the huge vehicle clawed its way upward through the Eve soup. Once the Mainsail and Skipper stages had done their work, the center tank, powered by four Aerospikes, continued the struggle of might against matter. With that stage finished, a pair of Mk-55 “Thuds†carried the vehicle through the upper atmosphere, leaving the final stage , powered by two tiny “Twitch†engines to power the rendezvous with the return ship. Once safely in orbit, the crew took a look at their landing site via the camera on the rover (which had been moved to a safe distance prior to their ascent) to see the mass of wreckage they had left behind on the surface, with the KSP flag standing proudly next to it. After docking with the return vehicle, the partying began in earnest, lasting until the time came for the burn back to Kerbin. On their arrival in Kerbin orbit, the Hitchhiker module detached from the return vehicle and burned the Twitches to de-orbit. The blue hues of the Kerbin sky blended to the searing orange of re-entry, until finally it was time to release the chutes that brought them to a safe return to Kerbin. With this mission, the KSP gained the experience, confidence and large cadre of risk taking kerbonauts, that they would need for their future efforts to thoroughly explore the Kerbin system. Searching for extractable resources, anomalous features and even signs of other forms of life. But that’s another tale. The end.

Part 6b. The Party Has Landed Prior to their launch from Kerbin, two robotic rovers had been dispatched to Eve to search for a high altitude landing site, which would provide a reasonably large and flat area for the landing, plus a high altitude location for the ascent to orbit. After months of searching, one of the rovers found a suitable site, at an altitude of 6000m and was parked at one end of the plateau to act as a positional marker for the manned landing. On their arrival in Eve orbit, Jeb and his crew acquired the beacon signal from the rover and set about preparing the lander for its descent to the surface. The first action was to transfer all fuel from one of the transfer vehicles to the other, which would later be their return vehicle to Kerbin. Secondly the transfer vehicles were detached and the one which was not required for the return trip was pushed into a slightly lower orbit using its RCS. Finally the time came to fire up the engines beneath them in the lander and at that moment the crew realised just what kind of machine it was they were riding. The massive collection of Mainsail’s, Skippers and Aerospikes blasted furiously during the de-orbit burn, quickly putting them on course for the location of the rover. After several minutes the friction with Eve’s dense atmosphere turned the “Party Boat†into a massive fireball, streaking along the equator. Once the vehicle had decelerated to a safe velocity, the enormous collection of parachutes were released, carrying the vehicle gently down towards the landing site. But the descent was not gentle enough for Jeb to be happy with it, when the aim was to set down a 1200 ton lander, so at the last moment he blasted the engines to bring the vehicle in for the softest of landings. In Part 6c. The Party Begins.

Part 6a. The Eve Party Boat In part due to Malzor Kerman’s oversight in not planted a KSP flag in the soil of Eve, but also due to other kerbonauts desire to visit the strange world, a new mission was started, to send an even larger vehicle to the planet. With the new lander, nicknamed the “Eve party Boat†due to its capacity for a crew of four, the design team of the KSP went all out. It dwarfed even Malzor’s Eve lander and putting down something the size of a large apartment block on Eve was going to be a real test of the crew’s skills. For that reason it was decided to put their most experienced kerbonaut, Jebediah Kerman, in command of the mission. As Malzor Kerman felt he had unfinished business on Eve he persuaded the senior management of the program to give him a break over the flag incident and the unlucky member of the previous mission was added to the crew. The launch of the lander from KSC was an awesome sight, turning daylight into even brighter daylight. After all stages of the massive lifting vehicle were spent, the lander was placed in a 150km orbit of Kerbin. This was followed by the visit of six large fuel vehicles, some sent from the Kerbin Orbital Station (KOS), others launched from KSC. Additionally two transfer vehicles, each equipped with 6 nuclear engines were despatched from KSC to provide the propulsion to Eve. With the fuel tanks full and the lockers crammed with a variety of tasty snacks, including some Kerby Krisps that a launch technician stashed onboard as a last minute prank, the transfer vehicles ignited their twelve engines and they set off for Eve. In Part 6b. The Party Has Landed.

Here's a Dropbox link for the 1080p version. Thinking of Home 1080p

That was quick. Thanks.

I put together a cinematic video that's a "dramatic re-imagining" of my Grand Orbital Space Station challenge entry KOSTAR, a 270 ton station in Mun orbit. Part 2 to follow when I get the time.

I have a poll on this thread (Wallpaper Time) that I started and I'd like to close it.

Here is the Photoshopped image of the poll winner "Thinking of home" wallpaper.

Part 5c. An ascent and return With the mass of LV-T45's and Aerospikes blasting below Malzor's feet, the lander crawled away from its landing site. Stages dropped like flies as the engines pushed against the gravity and dense atmosphere of the world Malzor hoped to leave. With no previous test of an Eve ascent with this vehicle, it was uncertain if it, along with Malzor, would become a permanent resident of the planet, in the form of a debris field at the end of an unpowered descent. After dropping the last of the Aerospikes, Malzor ascended on the last two stages, powered only by pairings of tiny 24-77 "Twitches", but these proved to be more than sufficient for the climb through Eve's upper atmosphere and circularisation of his orbit. Once in orbit the Malzor rendezvoused with the return transfer vehicle, that had been dispatched from Kerbin a few days after his own launch. After docking with it he waited for the return window, then sped for home. With the return to Kerbin behind him, Malzor detached from the transfer vehicle and re-entered Kerbin's atmosphere. At his landing site he waited for the heroes welcome that he was expecting, but no such welcome came. Unfortunately his forgetting to "put up that damned flag", had sufficiently irked the senior staff at KSP, as well as the kerbonauts he had leapfrogged in the roster, that his meeting party was a couple of guys with a pickup truck, that he had to ride in the back of, all the way to the KSC. A said end to the mission that put the first Kerbal on Eve. In Part 6. A return is made to Eve, this time in greater numbers.

Part 5b. A Kerbal on Eve After a flight of 200 days, Malzor entered orbit of the planet that he had been watching grow from a purple spec in space, to the world that now dominated the view from the navigation window. A burn was made of the transfer vehicle's engine to de-orbit the combined vehicle. The transfer vehicle, which had insufficient fuel for the return to Kerbin, was detached and went through the fire of re-entry along with the lander. Much to Malzor's relief, all parachutes opened correctly and with the lander hanging level below them, he drifted gently towards the surface. On touching down, the parachutes were cut free, leaving the lander standing proudly on the surface of Eve. Minutes later Malzor opened the hatch of the Mk1 Lander Can and stepped out onto the ladder. After the long descent down the ladder sections, he finally placed a Kerbal bootprint on the surface of Eve. With the distance from Kerbin being so great, Malzor was responsible for monitoring his scheduled activities on the surface. He took the obligatory press shots of himself standing in front of the lander, including one some distance away from it, during which he remembered that he'd left the controls set to "auto return", so raced back to it, before it could zoom upward leaving him stranded. This first error was followed by another that would haunt his career, which was that either due to his excitement of finally being on Eve, or his urge to "get out of this hellhole ASAP" he forgot to place the KSP flag on the surface. Not realising his error,, Malzor decided it was time to leave and ascended the ladders back to the hatch, slammed it shut and prepared the ship for its ascent from the surface. In Part 5c. Malzor heads for home.

Part 5a. Malzor's Folly With attempts to design a lander capable of a return mission to Eve, crawling towards that goal, a young kerbonaut named Malzor decided to accelerate this process by volunteering to fly the next design, untested, to Eve. His fellow kerbonauts at first laughed this off as a stunt by their inexperienced colleague, to push his way up the flight roster, expecting him to come up with a last minute excuse not to fly such a high risk mission. But no such last minute excuse came and Malzor was launched into Kerbin orbit on top of the largest launcher that the KSP had designed to date. On reaching orbit the fuel of the combined transfer vehicle and lander was topped up for the trip to Eve. However before launch could take place, a fault was discovered with the fuel transfer lines in the lander, that would have prevented Malzor's ascent from the Eve surface. Fortunately a sister vehicle was in the later stages of construction at the time and with the made fix to its fuel lines made, it was launched for a rendezvous with Malzor. After a tortuous docking of the two huge vehicles (allowing fuel transfer to the replacement vehicle) its pilot for the launch, Herman Kerman and Malzor went EVA to inspect the new vehicle and to shake hands before Malzor's departure. With the two pilots having swapped vehicles, the faulty one, at the hands of Herman, detached from the Eve bound craft and de-orbited. Malzor took a final look at his old ship from the navigation window before setting his new one on course for Eve. In Part 5b. Malzor lands on Eve.

"Wow, Kerbin's green. Better check plugins." A true story.

I think I need to withdraw my entry from the challenge as I put the wrong, i.e. non stock RTG's on it by mistake. I have the Near Future Electrical add-on in my install for a cinematic I'm working on, and must grabbed the PB-AS-NUK part from that instead of the stock PB-NUK. I only found out when someone on another thread noticed it in the IMGUR album I posted there. I'll update my vehicle at some point and re-run the flight with all stock parts.

Ion drive vehicle heading for Eeloo.

Argh... you're right of course about the RTG, I missed that. I put the vehicle together for a challenge and I always build stock vehicles for those, but I've also made some cinematics and those larger RTG's must have been in one of the parts packs I installed for use in one I've started to put together. In my rush to build the vehicle I must have just grabbed the RTG that my attention landed on, instead of the stock one. I wish there was a convenient way to separate stock from non stock parts in the VAB.

So the winner is "Thinking of home". I'll probably be working on the image this weekend.

Bob choosing to ignore Jool while ascending from Vall in the Jool 5 challenge.

Ok... today is the last day for any votes.

I'm a bit confused about the rules for this challenge. Is the idea to Hyperedit an ion powered craft to somewhere in Mun orbit, then de-orbit, land on the Mun, then return to an orbit between 60 and 100km from the surface? Back in 0.25 I made a manned (with a Mk 1 Lander can) vehicle that went from LKO to a landing on Mun then returned to a landing on kerbin. Just want to make sure of the rules before I take a crack at this. I also did a trip to Dres in a similar vehicle.