IncongruousGoat

Shaming you for not watching the launch.

The attitude hold buttons, especially after 1.2 fixed the SAS high-torque jitter/overshoot issues. Before they were added, I would have been indifferent to them, and not seen myself using them. Now, I use them all the time, perhaps even too much (hold maneuver node can be dangerous on long ejection burns).

Receives an oregano seed made of hexagons. Inserts a rubber band.

Sure, you can raise your periapsis above the cannon height... but you're not going to be able to hit orbit because you'll not be able to raise your periapsis above the Karman line. So you still need some propellant to circularize. And, of course, this is discounting issues with shock heating, aerodynamic friction, and acceleration at the cannon end. I don't think this challenge is possible without the use of the debug menu, just because the Kerbal would fry on the way up. They have very low heat tolerance, something I've learned the hard way building lawnchair landers on Eve. Even if you could get through the atmosphere somehow, the EVA pack can only deliver 500 m/s of delta-V, and only at a TWR of .35 or so. There's no way you're going to launch a (very unaerodynamic) Kerbal onto a trajectory such that that's sufficient for orbital insertion, since such a trajectory would simply spend too long in the dense lower atmosphere. If you were allowed to put them in some sort of aerodynamic shell, say a service bay with a nosecone and some fins, then maybe... but you'd probably have issues with how glitchy EVA physics can be. I'll second the request for the challenge submitter's entry.

We haven't had the periodic table around for a while, so here goes... When you can recite this on demand: Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorous, sulfur, chlorine, argon, potassium, calcium, scandium, titanium, vanadium, chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, gallium, germanium, arsenic, selenium, bromine, krypton, rubidium, strontium, yttrium zirconium, niobium, molybdenum, technetium, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, silver, cadmium, indium, tin, antimony, tellurium, iodine, xenon, cesium, barium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, hafnium, tantalum, tungsten, iridium, platinum, gold, mercury, thallium, lead, bismuth, polonium, astatine, radon, francium, radium, actinium, thorium, protactinium, uranium, neptunium, plutonium. Also, when you start doing the math for a proper equation for burn time, accounting for changing mass, on a scrap of paper while waiting for a 6 minute burn to complete.

I have to agree. This isn't so much a challenge as a routine part of space program operations. Unless you mean build some sort of cannon on the surface to launch a Kerbal into orbit, in which case it's impossible, because such a cannon would A: fry the Kerbal from shock heating and B: even if the Kerbal survived only put them on a suborbital trajectory, since the periapsis of the orbit would necessarily be at most at the altitude of the cannon.

Hm. Well, for control responsiveness you might be able to get something by tuning control surfaces. For changing entire control schemes on-the-fly... KSP lets you store 2 sets of key bindings, but those can only be changed from the main menu, and I don't know of any mods that change that. Sorry.

When you say tuning, are you referring to remapping the controls, or changing how responsive they are? Pardon my ignorance, but I've never controlled KSP with anything that has a joystick before.

It's also the only other engine I can think of to use a pintle injector, which in both cases is a big part of enabling the deep throttling. Although, as point of reference, the LDME could throttle as deep as 11%.

Yeah, you're orbiting in the wrong direction. See how the contract specified 180 degree inclination? That indicates a retrograde orbit, which means you would have had to launch to the west from the KSC, as opposed to the usual launch to the east. You may also want to re-design your launch vehicle-launching to a retrograde orbit takes something like 200 m/s more than a prograde orbit due to Kerbin's surface angular velocity.

Thank you! Unfortunately, the contract didn't complete. Trying to actually complete the contract would require a quite different approach using some sort of chair-in-service-bay-with-docking-port affair that would then attach to various landers, so that "one vessel" actually landed on every single body and then returned to Kerbin intact. Of course, this would require a lot of docking and shunting, increase vessel mass by a significant amount, and play hob with aerodynamics on Eve and Laythe due to the need to have a (blunt, unaerodynamic) docking port on top of the cabin, so that a tug can push the cabin onto a lander. Those places were bad enough with aerodynamic vehicles; I don't want to think about how awful they would be with a blunt plate on top of my lander...

Receives half-truths. Inserts a calendar.

Thank you!

Get kOS, make sure you have signal delay turned on in Remote Tech, and re-create the Surveyor missions (or at least the Surveyor mission profile).

I return, again! This time with a grand tour in tow. Nominally, this is a submission to the Ultimate Challenge, but since it also conforms to the rules of the Jool 5 grand tour, I thought I would submit it here as well. Mission thread is here: If there's anything anyone would like clarified, please ask.

And... it's done! Mission thread is here: Man, that was a ride. I think I'm going to play some other game for a few days... If you have any questions, ask away.

It's done. The mission is done. 266 screenshots, 160 named quicksaves, 61 in-game years, 4 IRL days, 15 planets and moons, and only a little bit of panic later, the grand tour is complete. Album and OP have been updated.

I cut your duct tape!

Laythe, Vall, and Tylo are done. Three bodies remain. The end is in sight! Album and OP have been updated.

Duna, Ike, and Dres are done. Now we "just" have to do the moons of Jool and Eeloo. Album and OP have been updated.

Moho, Mun, and Minmus are done, and all specialized landers (except Eve, of course) have been delivered to their respective targets. Album and OP have been updated.

Eve and Gilly are done! OP and album have been updated.

Phew. 5 interplanetary burns, 5 course corrections, and 1 capture burn later, we've officially launched Jeb & massive ship towards Eve. Oh, and put 4 landers on course for their assigned planets and moons (and in the case of Duna made it all the way to capture before the first Eve window). Also, RealPlume was uninstalled. Turns out there's a bug that causes engine FX to not render if the engine in question is the root part. Album has been updated.

Let's see... no. Not without ludicrous difficulty. Whatever this stuff is, it would have to be ridiculously, unimaginable valuable. Like, 1 gram gives free energy for the entire planet for a whole century, factoring in growth. You need to surmount all the problems of mining on the surface of Venus, hauling raw materials/refined product to orbit... but even that isn't the end of it. Because you now need to haul your precious material all the way back to Earth. That's something like 3.5 km/s of burn, if not more. Oh, and remember-you've got to bring the return vessel from Earth in the first place. There's just no feasible way to build it in-situ, given the conditions on Venus's surface. Oh, and to make things worse, Venus's lead-melting pressure cooker of an atmosphere has category 5 hurricane force winds in its upper regions. We can't launch a rocket in those conditions on Earth, not even close. On Venus, given everything else? Definitely not. This isn't even a question of economics or motivation, the technology just is not there.

Right. Enough designing and testing. I've overbuilt things and expanded fuel margins (in one case by an estimated 6 km/s) to my satisfaction-let's fly this thing. The plan here is an extreme divide-and-conquer approach-The Duna, Tylo, Laythe, and Vall landers each have their own individual transfer stages, which they will use to deliver themselves to their respective planets and moons. The Eve lander also has its own transfer stage, as well as what remains of the launch vehicle (which, of course, I completely overbuilt), plus the general lander (for Moho) and a lander can (for Jeb). I'm avoiding doing any interplanetary transfers in command chairs, since I'm trying to conform to the rules for Jool 5 grand tours, as well as the rules for the Ultimate Challenge. Two birds with one ICBM and all that.