Magzimum

Turned out Jeb was just hiding behind the Monolith. When we turned on his personal satellite tracker, we had him back in under 1 minute. Do I win a prize now? Jokes aside, the main issue with this challenge is obviously that a Kerbal from Low Kerbin Orbit is easier to be saved than one at Moho. And if I happen to already have a rescue-ship in orbit, docked to the stranded ship, I don't even have to build and launch one. It's totally arbitrary where this challenge starts. Check out the link that @DoctorDavinci posted.

I like the looks, and it's cool to drop a physical item to the surface as a marker. However, I just wanted to mention that if you run out, you can just start Kerbnet and leave a waypoint. It costs nothing, and is always visible in map mode and optionally on the navball.

Still testing the Eve lander. It can now safely land without any problems - it entered the atmosphere radial-out, with all controls (SAS) turned off. It has no movable control surfaces near the top anyway. It just points that huge 10m heatshield forward all by itself. Next step: Testing the launch. Just my luck that it landed on a 23.6 degree slope. While I am typing this, it is still sliding down the hill at 1 m/s! Stop already, I wanna test the ascent!! (This is all Sandbox, with F12 cheat into Eve orbit - will do the whole thing from Kerbin as soon as Eve simulations are completed) [5 min later...] Bugger. As I eject the parachutes, the landing gear was overstressed, which cascaded into the rocket tipping over, followed by many many many many explosions. Maybe I need more than 4 legs! Back to the VAB!

I do have autostrut (it's 1.2.2.), but it's always a question what you autostrut things to. Autostrut can also be an invitation for the Kraken if you do it wrong. In this case, the best strengthening is probably between parts that are not root, grandparent or heaviest... but something else.

I am working on a "passive" Eve Lander. One that needs no control during descent: No airbrakes, elevons, canards, and no reaction wheels. I decided that it should look like a dart, which is difficult if you put a 10m heatshield on the front. This is the result (actually, v2.0). It totally works, but it is too bendy in the middle. It stayed together a few more seconds, then snapped in half. Moar Struts should do the trick. Bonus points for me because it still fits inside a Mk3 fairing, so it can be launched. Tests on the ascent are next (I'm using the F12 cheat to test this) .

Happy Chinese New Year!!! I wish you all happiness, prosperity and safe landings! For those wondering what's going on: Chinese people use the regular calendar for business, just like most English speaking people, but use a Moon calendar for finding out when to celebrate a party: New Year! And that's right now! We are going into the Year of the Rooster.

Dres. I placed three powerful relays in a polar orbit of Dres, because Dres exists and needs love. Dres easily has the best coverage of relays in the solar system, as it should have.

I am playing a Super Realism Career ™, so all my Kerbals are safe at the KSC, talking about the glorious days of Mun landings several decades ago, while probes are visiting the outer planets.

Well... it is my strong opinion that you shouldn't just visit Dres. You should love it, and show that love with an extravagant mission. Or better: 10 missions

I see several ways out of this problem: 1. Can you post a picture of your rocket? It's possible to get to the Mun with pretty low-tech parts. Maybe we can help on that. I have a gut feeling you use a low TWR, so maybe you're burning a lot of fuel while trying to get out of Kerbin... but I cannot check this right now. 2. Maybe you can send a drone (unmanned unKerballed) to do a flyby of the Mun. You can still do some science while in the sphere of influence (SoI) of the Mun, and transmit that through the antennas. Obviously you need to have the right antennas unlocked, and you will probably need solar power. Therefore a picture of your tech tree would help too. 3. Also, maybe you can harvest some more science from Kerbin? You can gather science from every building at KSC, and from all biomes. Some of the biomes (esp. grasslands, highlands, shores and water) are really close to the KSC. Posting pictures: Press F1 for taking a screenshot. Then go to the folder where KSP is installed, and look up the sub-folder called "Screenshots". Upload that on Imgur.com. Then click on that picture so it's made full-screen on Imgur, then right-click, 'copy link address', and paste that address into a post in this thread. The link should automatically be changed into the actual picture. Happy landings!

Yup. My record to get a Kerbal on top of it is 1 min 07 seconds (from the moment the physics engine kicked in after launch from the Runway). Tested already back in November 2016...

Posting a screenshot of exactly where you found it will help future newbies (and me).

Just a few comments/questions here: So the time to get to the Mun and back to KSC actually counts to your total time? A typical Hohmann transfer to the Mun takes what, 6 hrs? Then you normally gotta get into a nice orbit, and ensure you land near that Crater and Canyon. A normal two-way trip will take therefore around 12 hrs? Since the two-way trip to the Mun and back will be roughly 12 hrs, who cares about the rover design? Even if you crawl along at a puny 5 m/s, you do the entire 35 km course in 2 hrs. So, you can gain max. 2 hrs by doing the entire Dakar in a record time, but you can win around 12 hrs by making a kick-ass rocket like Scott Manley did a while ago (link to youtube). This challenge to me seems more about rockets than rovers. The penalty for not landing near KSC is much too low. The circumference of Kerbin is 3770 km. So, if you land on the other side of Kerbin, your penalty is just around 1800 km, or 1800 seconds, which is 30 minutes. That's small compared to the flight time to and from the Mun. If you increase the penalty, the challenge becomes about precision landing, but still not about the rovers. Also, if we are going to count the time to and from the Mun, can you provide a date/time that we all have to launch? The orientation of Kerbin matters in such things. If you want to do a rally on the Mun, I suggest you make the start/finish on the Mun.

Can it be a drone? Does the plane have to survive? Does it even have to touch the ground (or can we record our time as it shoots high over the island at mach 100)? If it has to land and survive, can it still lose parts on impact with the ground (i.e. partially blow up, but at least 1 part survives)? Do the wings have to generate lift (with high speeds you don't really need wings). Can we drop tanks/engines (i.e. use stages)? Where exactly does the clock stop? Also, your own entry isn't visible (anymore)...

End Planetary Discrimination Now! #loveDres

Here's what I did in my 2nd career (the first was a bit of a joke and went bankrupt): Mun Minmus Duna Duna & Ike Eve lander & return (attempt #1) Eve lander & return (attempt #2) Eve lander & return (attempt #3) Eve lander & return (attempt #4) Eve lander & return (attempt #5) - finally nailed it. Jool Eve is hard, but not impossible if you can already get to Duna and back. Don't let all the good advice discourage you from doing something ambitious!

@Pine, I don't see any reaction wheels on your rover (but then I don't recognize all the parts either, so perhaps there is one). Reaction wheels can help a lot to straighten a rover when it becomes airborne on a low-gravity planet/moon.

Mk1 engines. When I found out about the Rhino and Mammoth... *hides under the table, while whispering "Moar Boosters!"*

3. Use canards to control the depth of the submarine. With the high density of the water, a few canards make a big impact. Ore tanks (full) and lots of metal girders/beams is all that I can think of to make the submarine's buoyancy neutral. I don't see much point in making it sink. Zero buoyancy is good enough. 4. If you build a submarine, you could also add a small but nimble rover to ferry Jeb to the return-vehicle. You can either put the rover on top of the submarine, and carry it with you, or leave it on the dry land and return to it. With a rover on the surface, your landing zone for your return vehicle becomes much larger. (And also your design challenges for the submarine-rover-combo become much more complicated ). 4. Alternatively, you could land your return vehicle first, on an area with lots of water (reload if you land IN the water). Then land splash-down the submarine afterwards, and boat around towards the return vehicle. Obviously this limits the freedom of the sub, but makes the mission a little easier to design.

I made a big rocket and put 5 Kerbals onto it! They went to Eeloo... And then the same 5 went to Moho... No ISRU, all stock. (They made it back to Kerbin safely too...) (I may write a longer mission report at some point... not sure).

A pretty simple suggestion really. I struggle to review my stored experiments in the Experiment Storage Unit. On long missions it is not uncommon to have >50 experiments stored, and I don't enjoy toggling through them all to find out if I already had done a particular experiment. It would be nice if they were presented in a table or list, rather than popups. I'd be surprised if nobody suggested it before, but I cannot find it. If there is perhaps already a better way to view the stored experiments, I am all ears.

I don't really have a 'system' other than that the names usually describe pretty well what's going on. The missions are so varied, and I create so many ships/planes that I found that a good descriptive name is important. "Jool-5 Mk4" was the ship that did the Jool-5. "Dres Resort" is a resort that I placed on Dres. The "Dres Hopper" and "Dres Elcano rovers" (same shameless self-promoting link) also joined the fleet to Dres. "Eve Splasher" was a drone that did a splashdown on Eve. The "Eve Lander" had the same planetary destination, but kept its feet dry. "Moloo Eeho 2" is currently en route to Moho, after having visited Eeloo. "Distant Relay" is also still en route to leave the Kerbol system forever with a bunch of relay dishes bolted onto it (I'm hoping 10 of them are enough to keep the lines open). "Stunt plane" really does what it says on the tin. "Contract trash"... eeh... I forgot what it did, but its name suggests I could forget about it.

Note that I did not vote in the poll (pole) because I disagree with all three options in question 3. Also, I create my own story and would not want any story line forced upon me in the game. I'd like it however if there are some more expanded scenarios with a (background) story. My answer to question 3: 3. when you finished the career did you Continue with the same career. Loved it so much that I kept going to achieve more of my personal targets within the same career game (e.g. Jool-5 and Dres Awareness missions, now heading to Eeloo and Moho).

Judging by the picture you linked to (thanks), the batteries should be recharging. If they are not, perhaps your data was not fully transmitted yet? It could be that the data transmission was stopped due to lack of charge, and will keep on consuming all available electric charge until it is fully transmitted. This can take hours or days, depending on the amount of data (which depends on the type of experiment). You can check this by warping forward. If you warp forward several days, at some point the batteries really should start recharging. It may be possible to take screenshots too on Xbox, but I don't know how. On PC, it's done by pressing F1 (and then retrieving the picture from the 'screenshots' folder in the KSP folder). On Linux computers you may in addition also press the "print screen" button which opens a window that asks you what to name this screenshot file, and where to save it. However, it's worth investigating a little - first to be able to post better pictures to ask better questions - and later to show off your amazing spaceships!

I still think that life support should have 2 different units: Air (oxygen) and snacks. The reason they should be separate is that air can be recycled rather easily, with small units and low mass, relatively early in the tech-tree (let's say around the same time as your first solar panel). Renewable snacks should be much later in the game: While oxygen has been generated in space for decades, the first lettuce that was actually edible was only grown in 2015. I don't think this will make the game more complicated. All crewed parts should have some basic life support in them, so that you can support Kerbals for several days/weeks/months without needing any additional parts. This means you can get to LKO, Mun and perhaps even Minmus without new parts (although the Mk1 capsule shouldn't be sufficient for Minmus, in my opinion). But once you're ready to build stations or send crewed missions to planets, you are probably ready for a little additional learning curve.