FinalHazard

If you could get the thing to fly straight it would probably be better on some rockets. Also I think if you turn off the battery on the probe you can do without the extra battery, just turn it back on to decouple. To me that feels sort of cheaty though.

1. I am hitting the mun with about 1.8km/s less speed than launch DV so only losing about that, maybe only a tad more due to gravity drag. Also I don't think these rockets would handle a gravity turn very well. 2. Maybe, but that stage takes 5 minutes to burn, which probably nullifies the effect of the extra DV.. running a test now. The end result is 5 seconds worse than my sepratron final stage. I can't get it to fly perfectly straight with the ant and just parts attached on the axis of symmetry (how is that possible?), so it ends up flying a less efficient trajectory. Also you need a battery to allow you to disconnect the final stage for a burn that long, adding to the inefficiency. 3. I agree. my last rocket takes a long time to burn the first stage but speeds up significantly after. the mass should be insignificant on the lower stages. On my upper stages the nose cone mass adds up to -20 DV (so I guess I'll remove them). It will be different for everyone obviously but I think the lower stages definitely need them. The part count isn't helping the real life launch time though.

Success! With some modification of the previous design. 14:53

Oh yea, that was supposed to be mammoths - typo

I believe this should be possible in under 15 minutes. my attempt took 15:34 vessel statistics: mass - 3710.25 tons, 261 parts, 17599 m/s DV according to KER, 8 stages with a burn time of 6 minutes 51 seconds.

Here is my entry, all stock besides KER and KAC: 1913 tons at launch, 342 Parts. The second launch stage wasn't even needed actually. There are 4 fuel pod / solar array modules and 1 habitation/science module with room for 19. Also there are 8 escape pods with RCS fuel for ditching the station from LKO. I cheated on the tug but it could have been done using a small tug if each module had its own monoprop supply and batteries at the expense of my sanity. Build time ~ 2 orbits, 1 hour and 20 minutes. 223 Parts and 230 tons in orbit. Edit: was testing the escape pods and just realized they have no parachutes.. whoops. Though they are capable of reaching the surface with 110 monoprop each. Guess the station needs some KAS parachute retrofitting..

Each modular girder segment has 20 sepratrons, so 180 sepratrons. 24 of the small orange surface attach engines, and 19 spark engines.

Here is my attempt at mun and back, going to need a tiny rescue mission now..

I tested out firespitter and its not quite what I need. It doesn't keep track of the state properly. I think I will make my own module to handle animations like this.

So I have a pretty complicated part with three distinct animations that I created for it. The animations have all been uploaded fine to unity as far as I can tell but I need a way for them to be recognized by KSP. The default animation module ModuleAnimateGeneric follows the event sequence of: state1->animation1->state2->animation2->state1 The animation event sequence that I need is more like: state1->animation1->state2->animation2->state3->animation3->state4. Is this possible using the default modules, chaining ModuleAnimateGeneric somehow? If not is there someone else's module which addresses this? I checked the stock drill for how it works as it appears to have 3 states and 3 animations but the second animation seems tied to the ModuleResourceHarvester, which is not what I want (maybe i can utilize this though, collecting 0 resources?).

I'm actually looking into making one of these. I'm new to modeling/texturing so it might be a while before it's done..

In regards to the rescaling of root parts, is there a way to change which part is root mid flight?

Thank you so much! This was frustrating me for close to 24 hours and I made this account just to thank you.