Ultimate Steve

A few issues: The last EPS flew in I think 2018, it has been out of production for a while Aestus cannot throttle, you might need a separate propulsion system for landing to be safe Does the EPS have RCS? If it does, it is likely rotation only as there is no normal need for the EPS to translate, so to dock, upgraded RCS would be needed Just now noticed that you do account for RCS from the Phoenix concept but then pivot to Cygnus and assume everything still applies so I'm not sure how to count this one More minor things that aren't that consequential on their own but the mass adds up: Landing gear Deep space navigation capabilities Deep space communication capabilities A budget for surface science experiments A budget for samples to be returned The surface stays Artemis wants may be longer than the life support that was planned for An airlock, or modifications to allow exiting the forward hatch If the entire spacecraft is depressurized, ensure everything inside is vacuum stable Budget for the gas that will be vented overboard that has to be resupplied for every EVA A ladder EPS was not designed to last weeks on its own and was designed for LEO, not deep space and the lunar surface, some form of thermal protection is likely needed, and it is likely that other design changes are needed for it to function this long in this environment I did a whole paragraph or two about how the numbers don't close for a NRHO landing but then I read your other blog post describing a LLO landing. Under your plan this would require a heavily modified SLS to house the Centaur. At that point this is no longer a cheap quick mission. The VAB would have to be reconfigured, the ML would have to be redesigned, maybe new fairings (which add mass), etc. I will say that given the excess Delta-V the lander has (assuming the above items and the ones I did not list do not eat it up), it might be possible to get away without the Centaur, by using an elliptical Lunar orbit to make the most of the lander's fuel capacity, or underfueling the lander so EUS can push the stack farther, but this is more math than I want to do right now. This, however, leaves us uncomfortably low on fuel, and to be frank, your proposal, at 200m/s remaining, already has me a bit wary. As you noted on the blog, it was later found out that the 1500kg number does not include the service module. As you had previously subtracted the mass of the service module from this 1500kg number, this will increase the mass by a lot, and the service module also has the solar panels on it, so those will need to be added back in. The Cygnus RCS was probably partially or mostly or entirely on the service module, so there's going to be some mass associated with adding it back in or upgrading the EPS RCS The Apolo LM Ascent Stage was about 2150kg alltogether. We have made some advances in lightweight structures since then, and this includes the empty tanks, so I am inclined to believe that your 2 ton 3 man crew section is probably possible, but only if the 2150kg number means "without fuel" and not "without astronauts, suits, and any other consumables." I fear the latter is more likely. 2 tons is incredibly light for something that has to provide that much. There's also higher safety standards to keep in mind, the LM would not fly with today's safety culture. Assuming that ESA would foot the entire bill if they were selected is probably unrealistic. The biggest one: Reusing stuff for situations they were not designed for, and integrating stuff with stuff it wasn't designed for, is hard. Very hard. I used to hear people say that and think they were exaggerating. "Rockets aren't Lego!" they'd say. I couldn't think of why they wouldn't be. But then I joined my university's cubesat team. About half of the satellite is subsystems from the same manufacturer. Integrating those and deciphering the documentation so we can figure out how to get them to work properly has been a multi year long ordeal. To be fair though, a great deal of that is the fact that the team has been all undergraduates, who have maybe a year and a half of programming competence at best before they graduate, assuming they even stay on the team for that long, so brain drain and covid have been huge obstacles. I'm tearing my hair out over stuff that by space standards is as close to Lego as you can get. I can guaruntee you that creating a lunar module out of an upper stage and an ISS resupply craft is not going to be simple. It will not be an integration, it will be a derivation if not practically a redesign. Possibly still better than a clean sheet design, but not by the huge margins that you seem to imply. And even then, as Tater said, this lander is not going to be suited for the lofty ambitions of Artemis. Last note: You can probably look back in my post history and see me doing the same thing talking about Dragon missions to the Moon, an X-37 derived moon mission, and countless other flights of fancy. I was younger and more naieve and I officially apologise for these.

Where are you getting the 8 from? I counted six with one restart, and we know three of them failed during the startup procedure (and if a fourth one had failed, it would have been an aborted takeoff. Setting the limit assuming nothing else would fail is my second biggest issue wth IFT-1, second to only the failure of the FTS). I think they are justified in doing short static fires in this case. The most complicated parts of rocket engine operation are generally startup and shutdown. There's also the issue of vibrations causing problems as the fuel drains a la N1 but those cannot be discovered when the vehicle is affixed to the launch pad, the dynamics in play are not identical (and would change significantly throughout the flight). That's a situation where problems can only be discovered by flying it or with really really good computer simulations. Absent of this, after sufficient ground testing, an engine that lasts five seconds will probably last a lot longer. Of the six engine failures on the starship test flights (assuming I counted right), three were aborted ignitions, the kind that should have been caught by short static fires, and the kind that, imo, should have aborted the launch, but it is now clear that the engine out limit was not set up in a way to deal with what ended up happening. The other three failures were in flight failures, and they were able to restart one of them (I think that is the first time that's ever happened on a rocket actually). Assuming the rocket had made it off of the pad with those three engines healthy (if the limit had been set to 0, this would have taken several launch attempts most likely) it would have been able to take the remaining 3 engine outs (although it still would have failed when they lost all gimbal control, and later when the FTS didn't work (which is by far the most alarming thing about IFT-1, a few engine outs don't even come close)). Basically, of the six engine outs, a full duration static fire would have, at best, caught two and a half of them (which may have been flight specific issues, we don't know, it could have caught none), at the cost of having to build a massive test stand, and we know what a kerfuffle it was getting the permits to build their fairly minimal launch pad as is, and that was specifically designed to avoid having to do much time and paperwork intensive business. This particular static fire was also as much about testing the new deluge as it was testing the new booster. Given the chance to do a full duration ground test at little to no additional cost, anyone would. However, the infrastructure needed to do that does not come fast or cheap. SpaceX judged that the could get the same data for cheaper in other ways. So far I think that judgement is correct.

Two of the WB-57 views from the OFT got FOIA'd! Engine rich combustion is much more spicy in these views. Cam 0 is probably the most metal thing I've seen all year. Kinda reminds me of the Atlas failure that was featured in Koyaanisquatsi. That was quite the deluge!

Doing a gravity assist chain to get close enough to the sun to burn the ablator off of the heat shield... You never cease to amaze me.

The goal: Launch the stock Kerbal X and fly to the Mun and back using the least fuel. Your score is the fuel remaining in the upper stage tank at the time you decouple it for re entry. The Kerbal(s) must survive landing. No getting out and pushing, no modifying the craft in the VAB, no kraken driving, no including extra stuff in the inventory at launch. You know it, but also no debug menu, no mods that change craft performance, etc. No autopilot mods like MechJeb but if you want to do it to see how low you can go I guess I can put it up as an honorable mention. No assistance from other craft. However, there are still some edge cases, so I've decided to split this up into two categories. Jeb mode is exclusively about piloting. You must launch with three Kerbals with the default inventory, you may not modify the craft with the construction tool, you may not crash or burn up to remove parts, etc. Basically, keep it as close to the default Kerbal X experience as possible. Val mode allows some modifications. You may alter the number of Kerbals carried, and remove things from their inventories (but not add them). You may use the EVA construction tool to modify the ship, but of course you are limited to what is on the ship. You may not modify the ship in the VAB. You may use lithobraking and atmospheric heating to delete parts. Still no Kraken drives or getting out and pushing, though. Additional restrictions: No transferring fuel around. Score is measured as liquid fuel remaining. This opens the door to transferring out excess oxidizer to the lower stage, and given how annoying it is to get an exact amount transferred, I'm going to save us this headache and pre-emptively ban this. Oxidizer and liquid fuel levels must remain proportional. The command pod must reach the atmosphere intact, no abandoning the ship and jetpacking home the last 600m/s. Jeb mode leaderboard: @Ultimate Steve 158 liquid fuel remaining Val mode leaderboard: @camacju 332 liquid fuel remaining @Ultimate Steve 278 liquid fuel remaining My Jeb mode attempt: My Val mode attempt:

Hey, about three weeks! That's not actually a bad cadence so far compared to some of my past projects if I can keep it up! Unlike the my past projects, this is kinda inspired by television stuff, and I want each chapter to be its own mostly self contained story from start to finish with links to the overall plot. When I get going, however, I really get going, so these semi-self contained chapters tend to get pretty long. In addition, this series is intended to cover somewhat heavier subject matter than my other works, and while I'm sure it is imperfect, I have spent some effort trying to give these things the respect and thought they deserve. Anyway here's chapter two, where things heat up, both figuratively and literally! Chapter Two: To The Core

Firstly, do you have a list of the 6000 meter peaks? I kinda want to try climbing them. Secondly, given the ironic nature of it, I think it is probably best to keep it simple and allow planes and stuff, but there could be an alternate "hard mode" version of the challenge where no flight is allowed for certain segments.

Hi! Last night I had a really weird dream. I was brought into a group chat on the forums with a long list of people who are really good at the game, to collaborate on a world record low mass "low tour" but not for any design or piloting, but strangely for my video editing??? As I recall from the dream, a Low Tour is pretty much the opposite, or really more of a parody of a grand tour. I don't remember the full extent of the mission, but I remember that the objectives and destinations were kinda nonsensical and all pretty close to home. It was all very semi-ironic. I am unsure if going to space was even required or not, most of if not all of the objectives pretty much only dealt with Kerbin. The challenges that I can directly remember from the dream are: Ascend the tall mountain to the west of KSC Ascend the highest mountain on Kerbin Descend in a submarine to the lowest point on Kerbin Others I have decided to retroactively add because they fit in are: Reach the inside of the control tower on the island airfield Take a dive in the astronaut complex pool Destroy at least one KSC building In the spirit of the above, what would you add to this semi-ironic "Low Tour" challenge? I may start an actual challenge thread if it is compelling enough.

Is this the longest gap between sequentially numbered spacecraft in history?

You know, this is why I love this forum so much. You two have been debating for at least a page with giant posts of several paragraphs in length, and there's been no shouting or insulting. That doesn't seem to happen many other places these days. Good job, keep it up!

On discord we were kinda freaking out as we realized that SECO was about 300m/s short of orbital velocity, but then we remembered that the Livestream value is surface velocity and not orbital velocity, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Granted, KSP 1 and KSP 2 isn't the fairest of comparisons, it is worth noting that not catching a simple and extremely disruptive bug is not something that is unique to KSP 2: v0.8.2 Released 13 th July, 2011 This version is a hotfix for a couple of ugly bugs found with the 0.8.1 release. Note: The 0.8.1 release introduced a few changes to the .craft file format, so it is possible that ships created with versions prior to 0.8.1 might not be compatible with the new version. Bug Fixes Fixed a serious bug where swapping about symmetrical parts would crash the game Pod cannot be dropped if an Escape Tower (PunchOut addon) is attached v0.8.4 Released July 14th, 2011 Bug Fixes Fixed a small but incredibly disruptive bug which prevented engines from being connected to fuel tanks v0.11.1 Released 13th October, 2011 Bug Fixes A pausing glitch that would happen every time the menu was selected. v0.15.2 Released 1st June, 2012 Bug Fixes and Tweaks Fixed an issue with part-to-part collisions that caused unphysical forces and caused some designs to break apart. v0.24.2 Released 25th July, 2014 → Main article: 0.24.2 Summary Fixed a critical issue which prevented opening the right-click menus for several parts. v1.0.2 Released 1st May, 2015. → Main article: 1.0.2 Summary Overlooked an issue in 1.0.1 regarding overheating when splashed down v1.0.4 Released 23rd June, 2015. → Main article: 1.0.4 Summary Hot-Fixed an issue where loading vessels equipped with heatshields from pre-1.0.3 saves would cause the game to crash v1.5.1 Released 17th October, 2018 → Main article: 1.5.1 Summary Hotfix for Aero body lift in flight integrator.

WIZARDS A Tale of Magic and Science Prologue: The Light Heist There are five rules of wielding. Anyone can wield. All known worlds grant different powers. Powers are not inherently good or evil. Power harnessable from a world is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the world. Do not try to wield the sun. There are four ways around (4). Using a lens to focus a world’s power on oneself. Bringing rocks from another world with you. Distilling rocks from another world into pure magical essence and bringing the essence with you. Being present along the line of a planetary conjunction. There are three names you must know. Mia Kerman, cynical but crafty, space transport engineer and non wielder. Lawrence Kerman, sensitive but knowledgeable, space transport pilot and wielding enthusiast. Keenan Kerman, self critical but determined, space transport attendant and wielding amateur. There are two sides of a war past and brewing. The Joolians, practitioners of six. The Kerbans, practitioners of three. There can be only one winner. Chapter One: Fire and Ice Hello everyone welcome to Wizards: A Tale of Magic and Science! This story has been in the works for a long time, just over a year and a half if I remember correctly, things just kept getting in the way. This was originally inspired by two things. One, I had recently seen some of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and two, I was wondering how the Kerbals would handle magic, in particular how they would balance using Magic or technology, as in most stories, one tends to dominate, you rarely see both being used. With those inspirations in mind, I set out to create my own twist on the traditional elemental magic system, set in the Kerbal universe. I came up with this, a slightly dystopian arrangement, where technology and magic are balanced twofold. First, Kerbalkind didn't discover anything was amiss until they reached the Mun, at which point they already had some technology. Second, due to the inverse square nature of said magic, you cannot make general purpose or deep space vehicles using magic and have it still be cost effective, necessitating magic-tech hybrids for specialized purposes, and technology only ships for general purpose use. I hope that I can deliver installments in a timely manner (which, given my track record, is, well...), and I hope that you enjoy the story!

I will say that is a very picturesque launch site, in my mind second only to Mahia. I'm a sucker for islands.

Hello everyone! Good news, KSP 2 0.1.3 improved performance enough that I'm now actually getting above 15fps except for some Kerbin flying situations with reasonably sized craft. Sometimes it dips as low as 6 or 7 but there are some situations where I can get a stable 30 flying around KSC. Weirdly enough the same craft launched again and it goes down to 20 or 15 but that's not important. The important part is that I can play it now without wanting to tear my eyes out most of the time. I intend to do a proper long term save (and possibly a mission report to go along with it, although a mismatch between my willingness to play and my willingness to write has doomed many of my stories and saves so far), but I am likely going to wait until science mode comes out to do that. Frame counters are shown so you can get a good idea of how it is performing for me. The first thing I did in 0.1.3 was make a small plane and fly around the KSC, basking in the greatly increased performance. At takeoff I was managing a stable 30 frames per second and that's when I knew KSP 2 had passed the fun threshold for me. Granted it tanked down to 15 once the rest of the KSC was in view, but considering I got less before... They did not have to go this hard on the KSC. Like any self respecting KSP player, the second thing I did was send Bob Kerman on a one way trip to Laythe to check and see if I could do interplanetary without the game breaking on me. The massive "E" will never not be funny. I wonder what it is made of. Is it iron? For Iron-E, or maybe concrEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEte. Personally I think the reflections are slightly overdone but the game is certainly beautiful, enough to make me tear up in places. New extendable engines are beautiful. I eyeballed the Jool transfer and regretted it as I missed the first time around, thus Bob spent 13 years in space. Jool is gorgeous, and I like how well defined the shadows are from afar. You can even see the great eye of Jool! That is... A bit less gorgeous. The eye is now in "angry mode" and is very closely observing a terrified Bob. Does it seek to learn? Does it seek sacrifice? We won't know until we explore further. After one flyby I time warped through, very nearly sending us plummeting into Jool, Bob begins his Laythe descent. ... And is promptly thrown out of Laythe's atmosphere at a 90 degree angle to the way he came in, on a steep suborbital trajectory, before smashing into the ocean at Mach 2. The new 0.1.3 drag bug has struck... Fortunately I was able to work around it in this case by re entering with the bottom stage still attached. Eventually, Bob splashes down and then later the sun rises. A bit less grand of a sunrise than I was expecting, and the ocean textures and physics could use some work, but miles better than KSP 1's stock graphics. I only really encountered 2 bugs on this mission. One, the catastrophic drag bug that basically prevents capsule landings for the time being, and two, the engine sounds turning off after a while. KSP 2 isn't quite there yet but the developers have earned my cautious trust for the time being at least. I initially was going to leave it like this, this was just supposed to be a save where I could pop in and test stuff before science mode comes out later, but I felt myself feeling kind of bad for Bob... And you know what that means. It's rescue mission time! This is the Laythe SSTO, which is weirdly the only picture I have of it for some reason. Originally the mission was going to be two parts. A SSTO to rescue Bob, and a mothership to return him to Kerbin. Due to concerns about the aircraft's empty performance (which was probably caused by a control bug rather than the flight dynamics come to think of it), the wet centers of lift and mass basically overlap, making this aircraft an absolute joy to fly, doing spins and flips and loops and bridges and everything in between, while also being Kerbin SSTO capable, and capable of holding up to three Kerbals. In 0.1.0 and .1 and .2 I tried to make actual acrobatics aircraft and all of them felt really stiff, but I wasn't even trying to make this one maneuverable, just spaceworthy, and it cartwheels through the sky without a care in the world. Come to think of it I'm going to rename it right now to the "Skydancer" and I would give it an X designation but I'm going to hold off on numbering things until my long term save starts. Unfortunately, well... It sinks. So I added the empty fuel tanks you see above, for use as pontoons. ...It still sinks. KSP 2 seems to be a lot less forgiving than KSP 1 as far as buoyancy, which I'm alright with but I think there is still something fishy going on as when I added the pontoons, which are empty fuel tanks, it somehow sank faster. And then a few days later I flew it again and it floated fine??? I've decided to not take by chances landing the Skydancer on water, and I have designed another craft to land near Bob and fly him over to the nearest patch of land. Here is the HydroHopper! ...Aaaaaand it sinks too. Falling back on my KSP 1 Alpha knowledge I built the HydroHopper with some radial intakes as they were stupidly buoyant back in ~2013 and maybe the devs have a sense of humor. However I have a hunch that the struts there added more buoyancy than the intakes. At this stage its land performance was actually pretty good although hard to land as usual considering it is a jet lander. 3D modelling devs, continue doing what you are doing, you didn't have to go this hard on the ground support equipment, I just have one request. If there isn't too much of a performance impact, let us walk around inside! There's invisible walls blocking everything off. Parking spaces are oddly huge but that's probably because the mission controllers know Jeb likes to drive his planes to work some days. I attempted to show off my precision landing skills by landing on the launch tower only to find that is has no colliders at all, which is probably to avoid the same controversy as the really old KSP 1 launch tower, which is fine. Eventually I got it floating, but no matter what I did, it always flipped upside down upon landing. I haven't checked in KSP 2, but in KSP 1 the jet engine's mass center was offset to simulate the engine internals, and that might be why this thing has such a high dry mass. After trying a lot of things to make it float upright, I gave up and attached a really long ladder so the ship could be boarded in this state. And ascent is now performed by activating the thrust reverser to take off backwards. The HydroHopper is ready for flight! It still needs a de orbit system I guess... I'll probably just slap a few sepratrons on it. Stay tuned for part 2 of Operation: Bring Bob Back. This is completely unrelated but I'm not the only one seeing the 60 ton monopropellant tank, right? In KSP 1 if I use RCS at all, usually the cockpit RCS stores are sufficient... I can see how someone would use the 1.25m containers especially if they aren't a docking expert yet, but I thought everything 2.5m and above was fairly excessive. I shudder to think of the infernal contraptions that would need 60 tons of monopropellant... Although maybe this is just future proofing for the massive interstellar ships and such. Come to think of it, it kinda looks like an eye... We might need to hold a staring contest with Jool.

Performance still not where I'd like it to be but a significant improvement and I can play without extreme annoyance now. I almost want to start my long term save now instead of waiting for science mode. New engines are gorgeous. I can report that the new drag bug also happens on Laythe. Yes, I did send a one way mission to Laythe... Ship was the medium pod, small parachute, and medium heat shield, as well as two small drogue chutes, and upon Laythe entry at ~2.5km/s, it steered sideways and shot off in a complete other direction without losing much speed, and on the second pass it smashed into the ocean also not slowing down much. Looks like the drag system is not as fixed as we had hoped, but for me at least this update has been a massive step in the right direction regarding playablility.

Ah, I built a lot of those out of 2L bottles back in the middle school and high school days! They are fun and it is a great way to get into rocketry, either instead of or in addition to Estes/similar model rockets. If you and your son are interested in building your own at some point I will detail my adventures with water rockets, I'll ping @RKunze here because he (?) seems like he would be interested, and it seems we both know of and possibly were inspired by Air Command Rockets. Kinda long so I'll put the whole thing in a spoiler. Please update us with your continued progress, and keep a mission log so you can look back on it years later! That's something I wish I had done, recorded everything in a notebook somewhere. I tried to do it but I couldn't keep up and it is something I regret not sticking with.

This reminds me a bit of the "Whoops, it turns out that titanium is flammable under these conditions" thing that Dragon had back in the day. It should be simpler, though possibly more annoying, than that to fix, depending on how much stuff they have to rip out to get to all of the tape.

This is kinda a reverse challenge, sorry if it is in the wrong place. Background: A while ago I was on reddit and I saw a post of someone's Kerbal getting krakened out of the solar system. Usually this happens at ludicrous velocities, but this one was surprisingly only going at 150 kilometers per second, almost a reasonable velocity. I started doing the math and realized that it would be possible to use a series of four xenon powered ships to bring him home at an almost reasonable part count, assuming better time warp was used. Unfortunately, KSP's exponential fuel flow calculations prevented this, but if Jeb was going 140km/s instead of 150 I would have attempted it. In either case, he never sent over his save file. The other method I was going to attempt was using Stratzenblitz's high speed mass driver technology to shoot parts out at over 150 kilometers per second and EVA assemble them. However, I could not get stable launches beyond about 80 kilometers per second. This has gotten me wanting to attempt, or at least think about, more extreme rescue missions. Comment below a scenario you would like to see me attempt, save file optional, and I will give it an attempt (I'll teleport the Kerbal there if a save is not provided), or at least work out the math if it proves to be too much to actually fly.

Part 4, Eve! I did forget to mention that I have been using the debug menu to get around a setting I wish I had changed, I forget what the setting is but it is the one that allows you to plot maneuver nodes and such if you don't have a pilot on board. I could just change that difficulty setting but I keep forgetting to. That won't affect today's mission, however, as for such a ballsy mission, we need the man, the myth, the legend himself: Jebediah Kerman. We will also need a significantly beefier spaceplane. This is the Elutheria, named because I am naming my craft in alphabetical order and I needed something that starts with E. It is capable of carrying a payload of 6-8 tons in the nose section as long as it is significantly aerodynamic. I would have added angle of incidence but I completely forgot. The payload is called Darmstadtium, after an element on the periodic table. It stood out to me because after doing a test on my knowledge of the elements, it was one of the few I had never heard of, and I resolved to never forget it again! This launch cost 41,207 funds, putting us down to 29,251. Once in orbit, the fairing is separated to reveal the Eve ascent vehicle Darmstadtium (which the spellchecker doesn't even recognize as a word!). Far lighter designs are possible, and I suspect those lighter designs would be cheaper than what I have here, but they also require a ton of babysitting. I in no way claim that this 10,000 fund machine is the cheapest way off of Eve, but it almost couldn't be simpler, just point and shoot and let the margin do the rest. The non reusable fairing does hurt a little, though. Bill transfers the winglets over to a more reasonable location on the Elutheria so that it isn't unstable for re enetry and landing. Re entry and landing proceeds normally, with the caveat that it was weirdly unstable, likely due to the dihedral on the winglets (EVA construction tool wouldn't let me place them on straight), mismatch between the winglets, or possibly the fact that there is no longer a nose cone. Recovery netted 31,043 funds, putting us back up to 60,294. However, we still need a way to get it to Eve. On the second flight of the Elutheria, we will do just that. It looks incredibly goofy and for that I have no defense. It is incredibly goofy. The launch cost 37,835 funds, and the payload, containing Jebediah Kerman, is called Fantastique. Due to the draggy nature of the payload, we had trouble getting all the way to a rendezvous. The spaceplane had about 30m/s left and we were flying past the target at about 30m/s. To leave enough fuel for de-orbit, it was decided to allow the Fantastique to complete the rendezvous by itself. And, docked! Jebediah will now proceed to Eve. After a transfer, Jeb captures into an elliptical Eve orbit. Near apoapsis, the inclination is corrected from about 40 degrees to about 11 degrees, the most we can efficiently do. Periapsis is adjusted, and the aerobraking passes commence. Initially I was going to barely clip the atmosphere and go sideways for maximum surface area, but it turns out I could go a lot lower hiding behind the heat shield. Perplexingly, the parachute held up to the heat. This is where a large chain of goofs started, I forgot de orbit motors for the payload, so I resorted to centrifugal separation, which put my periapsis down to about 80 kilometers. As a result, my landing site was pretty random. I didn't have any pics of the successful re entry so here is a pic of one where, after the docking port burned off, the control point switched from MechJeb to the vertically seated Kerbal and it tried to steer 90 degrees. Unfortunately, due to me forgetting de orbit motors, the descent happened on the night side above water. I had planned for a land landing, but I was under the assumption that water would also work. The parachute sets us down nicely. Unfortunately, we are too far up for Jeb to actually get out... But hey, close enough. We also don't have any electrical generation capability, as that costs money. As the MechJeb unit uses power, we cannot stay on the surface for very long. I did quicksave and timewarp ahead to see a cool sunrise, though. At this point I am sorry to tell you that this challenge has lost its legitimacy. As it turns out, jettisoning the heat shield causes Jebediah to launch out of his EVA seat and he cannot get back in. More distressingly, it turns out that ducted fans do not work underwater. Not even reduced thrust, they don't produce thrust at all. Instead of redoing the whole mission I elected to use a few seconds of hack gravity to jettison the heat shield safely and get out of the water. After that, it was back to normal gravity, and Jebediah began his battery powered ascent. I actually messed up here, as I was distracted by laughing at an AI generated version of Obama singing a Gloryhammer song. I realized that I had passed my apogee and was falling at about 50m/s, so I immediately fired the booster. So, some Delta-V was lost, but this mission has tons of margin. The ascent profile is launch straight up to get out of the atmosphere with the hammer. Then, the upper stage burns mostly sideways once the drag is minimal and gets almost all of the way to orbit. Weirdly I had some issues where neither SAS or Mechjeb could keep it pointed straight, so I had to manually fly it, and I got the inclination wrong and wasted a lot of fuel trying to correct it, but we still ended up almost in orbit. The EVA jetpack was used for the final push to orbit and to complete the rendezvous. At that point, we plotted a burn back home, but due to our inclination, we had to wait around four years for a window we had sufficient propellant for. Capture was done entirely via aerobraking, and adjustments to inclination and periapsis were done near apoapsis with the main engine. After several passes, I arrived back at the Elutheria, with the intent to re-dock and land. However, well... For some reason I thought the Elutheria had a docking port. Surprise, it doesn't! So I left Jeb and the Fantastique in orbit, and landed Bill. I did not move the winglets for this one, to see if I (Mechjeb) could fly it, fully expecting to have to quickload. Due to many factors, I significantly undershot the landing site. I probably could have made it to the foothills on the west side of the mountains, but I decided to conduct a water landing for safety. Remember, this thing has that blunt nose and is about as aerodynamic as a brick. Smart A.S.S. is doing a great job at keeping this unstable aircraft straight. After leveling out, I gradually adjusted the pitch setting to stall just as I hit the water going about 30-40m/s. A And with that, a successful low cost mission to Eve and back! The recovery gained 30,743 funds, for a total balance of 53,202 funds. We did expend at least ten thousand in parts alone for the Eve lander, not counting the fuel to get both modules up there and to get to Eve and back, so this is our first major non recoverable expense of the challenge. However, it must be remembered that there is a significant amount of stuff in orbit we can either refuel and use again (Darmstadtium and Baumgartner), or recover once we don't need it any more (the stupidly expensive science experiments). No idea what I'm doing next, but what is likely to be the most expensive landing has been completed! Probably going to be Jool-5 or Duna or Moho next depending on what I feel like.

I think the duck test is applicable. If it looks like space and feels like space, then it is space enough for my purposes.

In aerospace, cost does not have very much to do with raw material cost and technological maturity. It depends some, but other factors dominate. I was going to say simplicity in there as well, but I now know better than to call the SLS SRBs simple. They are very complex, but in a different way from liquids. There is far greater cost impact from the following, in no particular order: Economies of scale (small production rates = high costs) Handling costs (Moving a giant explosive skyscraper around land and sea is not cheap) Facility costs (Have to build buildings safe enough for your explosive skyscrapers) (Have to build and upgrade launch facilities for your explosive skyscrapers) Regulatory costs (Have to prove your buildings and transportation architecture are safe enough to parade your explosive skyscrapers through populated areas) Employee costs (More employees is more expensive, more experienced employees are more expensive, and if you don't have the wow factor attracting employees for less, that's expensive) All that infrastructure has employee costs too, for maintenance and stuff Effective use of time (If you have 1000 employees and some finite amount of work, it can either take a year or ten years depending on how good your employees are and how well their time is utilized) (And then you are paying 10x much in salaries for the same product) Any number of other factors "Solids are simple and cheap!" is the simplification told to the mainstream public in every book about space ever, and all else kept equal, that is probably true. However, rarely is all else kept equal in the real world.

Update, finally found part 3 of Brad's series and it is very impressive. Finishing the tech tree in 2 launches with craft that cheap is a feat I will probably never match. I will however reiterate that my goal here is not to finish the tech tree, but to land on and return from everywhere.

I don't think so, actually, as so many of his craft are expended. Not factoring in reusability he would be in the lead though. He is focusing on launch count rather than cost. Just the first stage engines alone on his second rocket are worth more than my total funds burn to date when counting my orbital assets. Granted, the second rocket is also capable of going to many more places that we never saw because no episode 3 as far as I can tell. In other news, I've decided to do Eve next, my logic being that as the big landers have to be expended, it is wise to do them as soon as possible as they will cost the most and I won't be recovering the full cost. Like, if the mission costs 70k and I recover 50k of that, I should do it ASAP so I still have enough to start the mission, and it will hopefully leave me with enough to do the other missions.

Part 3, and last update for tonight... Wow, I need to go to bed. Flight 2 of the Clementine, or Clementine M2. Launch cost is 27035 funds, taking us down to 54014. Modifications include replacing the old cockpit with a proper cockpit, replacing the old landing gear with proper landing gear, swapping the payload, and adjusting stuff to compensate for the changed parameters. This flight was piloted by Bill Kerman. The payload was the required 180 units of liquid fuel plus whatever residuals could be managed, an EVA seat, Bob in the EVA seat, a docking port, a battery (unless that went up on the last flight I forget), and a negative gravioli detector (whoo, those are expensive). The destination? Gilly! It is hoped that the sun science, the Gilly science (all of it except crew reports and surface rocks, I believe unless I'm mistaken), the upper level Eve science, the Kerbin gravioli science, and the Eve gravioli science will be enough to unlock all other parts we are likely to need. Cool green sunrise. Interesting transfer here. I had intended to descent to a Gilly tangent near apoapsis and then match velocity, but it ended up being far more fuel efficient to generate a tangency near periapsis and then match velocity there. All three biomes on Gilly were hopped to, using minimal fuel, because, well, it is Gilly. Departure was scuffed as I was eyeballing it, but this mission has a lot of fuel margin. Instead of being smart and using that fuel margin to save money, I'm instead using it to save time and sanity (which I guess is also smart). This would never survive direct aerocapture, so the engine was used to capture into an orbit with an apoapsis at about the Mun's height, and then aerobraking proceeded from there. Docked! Most of the residual fuel was transferred over, and the docking port was left in orbit so we don't have to keep lugging it up each time. Bob was left in orbit as we're just going to have to lug him and the chair back up anyway. Sorry, Bob! Overshot the runway. I really need to replace the rudder, or give this thing some actual EC generation or storage capability, as not having yaw authority is very detrimental to precision landings. The ridiculously narrow wheelbase and tendency for tail strikes don't help either. After many, many attempts, the Clementine was put down safely. She was worth 16444 funds in this state, putting the bank account back up to 70458. There are roughly 24000 funds worth of assets in orbit, mostly science experiments, so we have actually used a surprisingly small amount of money, which is split between fuel usage and misc part losses (the burned off landing gear and the abandoned decoupler and service bay in orbit). The big news, though, is that the mission generated far more science than I thought it would! That was enough to get the tech tree to this state, and I can't really imagine using any of the parts that haven't been unlocked. For completionist's sake I will likely still bring the experiments along to the next destination, wherever it may prove to be, and afterwards I will return them to Kerbin. Part of me wants to use ion engines extensively for the rest of the challenge, but I am unsure if they would be worth it as xenon, which is not recoverable, is 4 funds per unit, meaning a standard xenon tank is 1620 funds in just xenon alone! Alas, it is still likely the easiest way to do Moho without resorting to a bajillion gravity assists. I will probably grab the service bay and re-attach it to the Baumgartner and create a Duna lander that way. Not sure what the best way to get it there is, but after Duna, the only destinations that cannot be done with ions are Tylo, Laythe, and Eve. I'm not that worried about Tylo, but for Laythe and Eve I'd likely need to do stock props and those tend to be bulky, and I don't really feel in the mood for them, so a different solution may be employed. Not sure which one though.