IncongruousGoat

Assuming that I don't have to justify how this place came to be... Earth-sized, similar composition, and seeded with Earth life. Substantially colder, however (so not much in the way of tropics), with a history of sporadic and widespread glaciation and lots of large bodies of fresh water. Seems like a bit of a random list, but there's something I'm shooting for here. Glaciation tends to leave behind interesting terrain, and the large bodies of fresh water will lead to lake-effect weather. I'm the kind of oddball who hates summer and prefers winter. As such, I'm trying to orchestrate conditions for long snowy winters and short summers. The interesting terrain is just there to ensure that the skiing and hiking will be good. So basically, the effect I'm shooting for is a planet that has at least one place that's got terrain similar to that of the Adirondack Mountains of NY, but colder and somewhat snowier to make the winter conditions more consistent year-to-year. Nor'easters are all well and good as a source of snow, but they're not quite as consistent as lake-effect.

Oh hey. I almost forgot about this thread. And then I clicked. I'm sure it's going to be okay. The thread will get locked pretty soon anyways.

@Mephisto81 Congratulations on completing the challenge! Designing an SSTO that can handle both Kerbin and Tylo is no mean feat, but you seem to have pulled it off nicely, and gotten the rest of the system in the bargain. All in all, very well engineered and flown. You've been added to the Hall of Fame. Feel free to pick up the badge at your leisure.

This is the BFR we're talking about, not Falcon 9. For F9, yes, trying to recover the second stage isn't worth it because the stage wasn't designed to be recovered. For BFR, though, where the second stage is designed for reusability from the outset, stage recovery is necessary to make the economics work out. Not recovering the BFS would mean throwing out 7 (!) Raptor engines, not to mention countless methane/oxygen RCS thrusters, huge carbon composite tanks, and whatever mechanisms are necessary for the payload bay.

An EMH, eh? Somehow I knew that what this story needed was more Voyager references. @Just Jim, I seriously hope that the EMH becomes a running joke. I need more Voyager in my life.

Nobody builds satellites that big, and even if someone did there's a good chance they wouldn't fit into the FH payload fairing. Plus, to get anywhere close to the full payload capacity of FH you need to throw the center booster away, which is something SpaceX probably doesn't want to do. FH is a vehicle conceived way back in the days of F9 1.0, to address a design deficiency that just doesn't exist anymore. It may be cool, but it doesn't serve much of a purpose by existing.

Just to clarify: neither the contract nor the special save are required for the Ultimate Challenge. You can use them if you really want to, but there is nothing in the rules mandating their use, and I will not judge a submission that uses them any differently than I would a submission that doesn't. Previous instances of this challenge may have purported to require either the special save or the contract, but by the time of my original submission this requirement was not enforced, so I've decided to ditch it for simplicity's sake.

Here's one for all the armchair astrophysicists in the room: What's the most efficient way to use the Sun? I've heard the idea bandied about that the Sun isn't terribly efficient as a fusion reactor, but it would also take a lot of energy to take apart the Sun. So, what's the most efficient way to use the hydrogen content of the Sun as a power source? Dyson swarm? Take it apart and make red dwarf stars out of it, then surround those with Dyson swarms? Fusion reactors aren't really practical; the hydrogen in the Sun is almost entirely protium, not the deuterium or tritium one would want for a fusion reactor.

False. You changed the font, compared to all your prior posts in this thread. TUBM prefers snow to rain.

Probably just a matter of perspective. The cameras on F9 S2 use some sort of fisheye or fisheye-like lens to get as big of a field of view as possible, which distorts the feeds.

And not remotely throttleable or reusable. Or a technology SpaceX has any experience with whatsoever. They've made a point of using no solids at all on everything they've built, down to using non-pyrotechnic separation mechanisms. It's unlikely that they'd start now, especially when there exists an alternative. Also, you have to remember that SpaceX were planning to propulsively land Dragon V2, which would have required deep-throttling liquid engines, such as SuperDraco. Oh, and they aren't really cheap either, not at the kinds of prices SpaceX can built liquids at. Solid booster manufacture is not as trivial a process as some people may make it out to be. I will grant you the powerful part, though with the kinds of thrust-to-weight ratios SpaceX can achieve that qualification becomes increasingly insignificant.

I'm guessing it's some kind of standard forecast format for more than just launches. Moonlight might not be terribly relevant to a rocket launch, but it could easily matter to other things the military might be doing.

Yeah, you should. It doesn't look like the addition of that module really affected this leg of the journey, but I've already been more lenient about this rule than I'm quite comfortable being. And hey, look on the bright side - it gives you a chance to fix that ladder problem. Laythe would've been tricky, but it would have really ruined your day on Tylo.

May I recommend sending up a couple of mini RCS tugs? Worked like a charm when I was assembling my big Duna-Ike ship.

The contract might, but the challenge itself hasn't required it since the days when @HoloYolo was maintaining it. However... @Alpha 360 Technically, sending up a transport craft to retrieve the crew from LKO is against the rules as written. I'm going to amend that ASAP though, since it doesn't really detract from the complexity of the mission.

@Kergarin You know, I had a feeling that this mission is why you were asking about 1.2.2. It qualifies, of course. I'll add it to the hall of fame. Any compliments I can give are a bit late at this point, but I was quite impressed when I first saw this. Eve is a tough cookie for completely reusable missions, and your solution is, in my opinion, quite elegant.

Having read through the official changelog for 1.3, I can't see anything that was added that would affect this challenge, so 1.2.2 is fine as well. I might also take 1.1 and 1.0, but tag them as such due to changes that were made. I'm drawing the line at 1.0, though. Too much changed in that update.

Under normal circumstances, I would suggest lots and lots of gravity assists, but in this case that's not quite practical. Maybe @Muetdhiver, resident king of interplanetary caveman missions, can give some advice.

@Alpha 360 Yep, everything seems to be in order. I wish you the best of luck in your attempt.

I'm in the DC area for the summer, and I ended up watching the big DC fireworks show from Arlington. The prevailing wind is blowing westward here, and so many fireworks got set off that the air started smelling like burnt powder from where I was watching, nearly two miles away from the Washington Monument. Heck of a show.

I voted yes, but to be honest I appreciate the moderators all the time. You all do a stellar job.

Nifty! You're all good. Carry on. In fact, I commend you for bringing several Kerbals along and giving them all a chance to join in the fun. I certainly wasn't that ambitious (or kind) back when I did my submission to this challenge.

Could the mission (hypothetically speaking) have been flown with just one pilot doing all the landings? If so, I'll probably put it in the hall of fame. If not, I'll think about a gatecrasher category. The thing about the latter case is that it kinda resembles just flying a few "regular" interplanetary missions, which isn't the point of the challenge.

I can't really accept that. I've gone and clarified rule #1 in the OP, but the gist is that you start the mission with one single big ship in LKO. It doesn't matter how you assemble said ship, nor how many pieces you split it into once you actually start flying the mission, so long as you end the assembly process with one single big ship in LKO. The point of the challenge is to land on every body with a surface in one big mission, not in several small independently-flown missions that happen to share some hardware. I understand you're probably joking, but just to set the record straight: You don't have to land on Jool, because you can't land on Jool, because it doesn't have a surface. You don't even have to enter Jool's atmosphere. Land on Jool's moons? Yes. Land on (or even enter the atmosphere of) Jool itself? No.

I can confirm this is possible from personal experience. I do have to ask, though - why assemble a mothership in Minmus orbit, of all places? Even if you're planning an ISRU-heavy approach, assembling in LKO would still be easier. And also more compliant with the rules. If you've got a legitimate reason to do it that way, by all means, go ahead. I'm just curious.