joshudson

Because it is reasonably difficult. You need to come up with contraptions for course correction.

I never did kerbaled interplanetary because the ladder dance was too annoying for me. Personally I think it would be much better if we had a mod that enabled time warp on ladders (and actually kept the kerbal on the ladder in time warp) and banned the EVA refueling trick. If you want more fuel, pack EVA fuel packs. The various level rules had for most of the rules whatever the stock difficulty setting was for that rule; I don't see a reason to change that. My Order of the Trilobyte badge was earned by sending probes to Jool in easy mode and controlling them from home.

Is what you want a heavy lifter? I can provide.

On Minmus the jetpack has enough delta V to return to Kerbin from the surface. People are still reporting successful reentries with an EVA kerbal.

You only have to get into orbit of the body? Infinite score possible.

I know how to get there IVA only (no map) but I haven't worked out how to get back yet. I get crushed on reentry. I should probably try the inflatable heat shield.

I just want to point out that this has been done (not by me). Youtube:

I might launch a probe core and a bunch of I-beams.

I wanna see that space station in munar orbit in 15 minutes. Is whackjob still around?

This idea comes up from time to time. I'm gonna leave this here.

Any cost-minimization that includes parts recovery just happens to be a piloting challenge.

I have momentarily reclaimed the Diamond Wings. I'm pretty sure somebody's going to figure out how to take it from me, but for now I hold it with just over 1.8t including fuel for the probe's engine. Anybody who wants the Diamond Wings will actually have to work for them. √F5967 was spent so I need 85% recovery to come in under √F5000. I landed on the KSC peninsula so there's no question of getting 85%. I'm about 8km away so I should get 97% or √F1127 back bringing the mission cost to √F4840 https://imgur.com/a/umqxTiH Incidentally the payload has 1987m/s of usable DeltaV.

My submission: https://imgur.com/a/96a6Sw4 I did the whole thing in sandbox; and found it was quite saveload heavy both on launch (only abut 1 in 20 launches of this thing actually make orbit) and reentry (to get close to KSC on so little amount of fuel). Assuming the island with the old airport is close enough for 80% funds recovery, I just barely squeak in under √F5000. The launch cost is √F6165 and I'm claiming √F1217 recovered (sandbox so it won't actually say) so the mission cost is √F4948. After action report: Valentina found the craft highly unstable between 5000m and 12000m altitude and was forced to burn the nose rockets at 100% power most of the time rather than the planned 25% power. This resulted in the available delta V being much lower than planned, resulting in just squeaking into a 72,369x70,782 orbit with the main tank already empty and the nose tank with about one-third of its fuel remaining. After priming the payload and observing the science package was working correctly, Valentina waited in orbit for Mission Control to complete simulations (read: saveload spam) to determine at which point the remaining fuel should be used to land near the recovery facilities. Reentry and splashdown was uneventful but Valentina still finds halo-jumping from orbit nerverwracking. Bonus: the craft has a plausible launch-abort system, although it can't be controlled by a single key.

I'm working on a submission with payload in orbit. I'm not sure how to count mass of payload in orbit because I can't afford the decoupler to separate it from the booster. Previous attempts have left the tank about 1/6th full so the payload in orbit's got the ability to maneuver.

If you can get into Kerbin orbit at all, it's within the rules to launch something else to pick Jeb up.