Loskene

A little nod to the quirks of cryogenic engines would be... I don't want to say cool. For bonus points have icicles form on the nozzle rim when you shut it off

Right click the picture and select copy image address (this will give you the direct link to the image file, sometimes called "copy image location" depending on browser), then paste it here and it'll auto-embed.

Your mileage may vary with this depending on configuration, but I've found that if the root part is inside the fairing (like the payload's probe core or whatever) it's safe to root strut the fairing base to it. This seems to hold it steady, but yeah usual caveats apply, test important launches before committing.

haha, I see you've already found out why autostruts come recommended with serious caveats then. Self-solving problem I suppose, they let you know quite viscerally when you've gone too far. Docking complete, station now initiating hula dance with the devil.

Ah, and the honeymoon begins. Don't worry, you'll be back using normal struts in no time. Autostruts were really only meant as a band-aid over the landing gear problems so try to use them sparingly, if at all, and avoid "heaviest part" like the plague.

Usable volume, structural stability, having to fit neatly alongside other components in a narrow-diameter fairing, and a few other concerns dictated by the technology and knowledge of spacecraft operation at the time. Someone had to figure all this stuff out first. Start with a rough idea of what you want based on what the mathematics say, then refine your theory with practice. The eventual "car headlamp" shape of re-entry capsules like on the Soyuz was developed in response to the spherical capsules of earlier missions like Vostok only being capable of ballistic entries due to their shape. The flatter leading surface and an offset centre of mass could be used to control the capsule's lift/drag and G-force experienced by the crew by rolling the capsule as it plunged through the airstream.

Gotta fuse 'em all, huh

Digging through the screenshots folder from my 1.5 career save, and I find a bunch of neat launch and orbital timelapse footage from a Duna orbit mission I did with a large interplanetary ship made of Tantares parts. The reason it's so big is because I was playing with USI life support and a bunch of other mods that upped the difficulty, so I had to build and sequentially test a system that could realistically support crews for hundreds of days at a time. Cuts into the delta-v budget a little, y'know? Well seeing as I was doing a couple of KSP videos anyway I thought this wouldn't take too long to edit into a nice short. I did say I was working on that high speed autopilot-stable all terrain rover video last time, but that one'll take longer because I need to record B-roll to cut into it. Probably vacuum or low-G optimised variants with low thrust, high efficiency nesting jets for grip, filmed on Minmus or a Joolmoon. Anyway If you want a sneak preview you can check out the first draft below. While the editing is less complete this version will have the most raw footage in it compared to what'll be left on the cutting room floor at the end, so it serves as a decent proof that this little rocket rover is stable over long distances. In this case from the Dessert runway to the nearby coast for a dip. Might stay unlisted though because oooo copyrighted music.

I wish I still had my screenshot of the time I somehow planted a flag on the sun.

I think it's really up to your preferred playstyle whether you want to go micro or macro, there are equally viable options and opposite but equal challenges involved in both. I like to build large, mainly for the air of realism without going full realism overhaul, and so one essential mod I use in career mode is USI life support, specifically for its habitation mechanic that forces you to build appropriately spacious craft for long duration missions. It all scales very nicely by crew count and expected return time. I'll put an example craft from my old 1.5 career in a spoiler below, of a simple mission to orbit Duna and return home safely, meaning sending life support and most importantly comfortable habitable volume to sustain a crew of just 3 for more than a year or two. Because of the mass penalties imposed by the life support and sanity concessions, the vessel size balloons from what would normally be a pod-on-a-terrier kind of mission to a full blown interplanetary mothership with tight delta-v margins. The ship had to be launched in 3 sections, the main command, science and power module which could also serve as a station (since it's bloody expensive and I wanted my money's worth), the propulsion module to get it there and back again, and finally a Soyuz to bring the 3 kerbals aboard and also serve as a lifeboat and their return capsule for the duration of this soviet-themed Duna exploration. I could've left the Soyuz in Kerbin orbit to save mass, but when docked it provided free habitation time with the extra volume and even after refuelling the ship with a tanker launched to Duna at the same time, I still couldn't fully guarantee capturing back into Kerbin orbit afterwards. In fact it was so tight on the return leg I had the crew bail into the Soyuz and undock upon reaching Kerbin SoI, so that the mothership would be just barely light enough to capture into a loose orbit. Worst case scenario I'd've had to recover it from Kerbol orbit at some point, but having the Soyuz saved me a salvage mission, or nearly caused one, who knows. You can see by the ratio of fuel tanks to equipment it's not got the best mass fraction, I was limited by the launchpad tolerance and didn't want to do more launches to fuel it, it already took 2 after orbital assembly, plus the cost of the tanker sent to Duna meant the mission was really making a dent in the budget. Going all the way to Jool without getting top tier parts and KSC upgrades would be quite a challenge under these circumstances I think. Definitely worth looking into for anyone who's never tried life support before, make sure whichever one you pick has habitation though, food/water/oxygen alone doesn't give the same effect. Edit 2: I just found I have old launch and orbital timelapse footage from this mission and one of the earlier stations that I never did anything with, and it's pretty decent. Might as well slap together an edit and see what we get.

Mining rigs must always take up an excessive amount of surface area or they don't look "miney" enough.

Well in real life the square-cube law means building bigger is practically always better in terms of efficiency, capability and redundancy, typically in the context of crewed spaceflight. If you can afford it anyway. The conditions inherent to KSP as a limited simulation with its own particular quirks muddy the waters here and make small a more viable option, so it's really just a facet of how KSP differs from reality.

That's really something you should know before you post a challenge revolving around it. To my knowledge the KSC buildings are the only destructible static objects in the game, meaning nobody's going to do this because there's nothing to do. You're probably going to have to change your rules to seeing who can destroy the most KSC buildings in a single stage or something like that. Plus it's also good practice to actually test your challenge idea yourself to make sure it's possible before you post it here, otherwise this happens. Also things like your tiebreaker rule are going to need more thought put into them. What's to stop anyone hedging their bets and gaming it by filling their craft with 1 more kerbal than the previous entrant?

You can destroy things outside the ksc?

It's not exactly "your" next challenge if one of us comes up with it for you, is it?

Well that's where the centrifuge modules come from, so you must have when you took that screenshot.

Stockalike Station Parts eXpansion (redux) I would've just said SSPE or used the full name myself but here we are.

Mechjeb's Smart A.S.S. module does numeric input for axial control, and all the relative controls have a "hold roll" option which is nice. I swear I install MJ just for that sometimes.

Pre-flight "computer simulation" and bug recovery. Even when I don't plan to use it in a career game to up the challenge (ie force myself to include crew "safety" systems in my designs), I always leave the option enabled in case something happens and it definitely isn't my fault.

They also happen to be more dense than ore tanks and so make great ballast for submarines

Today I've set up a fresh install with enough mods that it won't crash (often), and I felt like designing a rover this time. Specifically a hardened, multi-purpose, extreme environment all-terrain rover. One optimised for travelling at high speeds across uneven terrain for extended periods of time, or low speeds across even bumpier terrain for a very long time. On top of that, it all has to be controllable under mechjeb's rover autopilot from start to finish, so that all I have to do is set waypoints and toggle engines to cover long journeys. This meant I needed passive and active stabilisation systems that the autopilot could handle well to make sure it survived my test journey from the Dessert airfield runway to the coast southwest of it. I then decided to see if it would float, but that's a story for another day. It's nuclear powered, a pair of RTGs, and solar panels to assist, but I could probably do with swapping the jet engines for something with a more powerful alternator, the wheels drain a lot of juice maintaining speed and braking incurs heavy power losses. The life support (12 days supplies and habitation for 2 kerbals with USI) is nothing in comparison. The journey took about half an hour or so realtime at an average speed of probably 35m/s, though it was a whole night and morning in Kerbal time. We had to stop to recharge the batteries fairly often for the speed we were going (limited to 35m/s. It could've gone faster but I didn't want to push the Mk 1 prototype... just yet. Mk 0 did 90m/s on the flats behind KSC) and also to take timelapse shots during the night before finishing the leg to the coast the next day. Longer video coming at some point in the future, who can say for sure, but here's a sneak peek at the "Tell Your Ma I Saved Your Life" system, which can also be used for short hops to avoid hazardous terrain on low gravity worlds: Also some screenshots: I may also design it to be dropped from orbit and do parachute-assisted powered landings. Depends what the various part pressure tolerances are like on eve, and if I can get jet engines that'll work there. If all else fails there is always Karbonite, now that would make this rover really OP

Procedural fairings?

A gravity assist from Jool is probably the most efficient way to lower your Perikerbol (Perikelion?) if you're not worried about time, but I generally just go direct with excessive delta-v and a clean Kerbin-retrograde ejection. You don't need to get it that low just to skim the low orbit region for a science pass.

That's a good idea and I don't know why I never thought of it before. I guess the cluttered translation controls layout (which is done for the benefit of numpadless-keyboards) never really annoyed me enough to go looking for a solution. I haven't got KSP open either right now but I'm pretty sure you can remap every major and most minor controls.

Is that what I think it is?