McQuacker

I honestly haven't a clue how, but when I select "sort by original filename" it works just fine.

After trying this challenge on and off for the last two years or so, I've finally completed it! So here's my entry fo the Level 1 challenge: Ship info: 415 parts, 2,038 tons on the lauch pad, costs 877,860 units. Kerbals on board: Jeb and Bob. Jeb lands on all the moons, Bob resets his science experiments for him. And cleans the ship. Version and mods: KSP 1.3.1.1891, KER, Trajectories, [X] Science, some visual stuff. Yes, HyperEdit was installed as evidenced by the big "H" for testing landers but was not used during the mission and I couldn't be bothered to uninstall it. Screenshots in the linked album should provide ample evidence that everything was done clean. Science returned: 9,131 Imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/wEMW5 Short strategy description: All is done with one big launch. There are two small landers: a dedicated Laythe lander with RAPIER's and a generic vacuum lander with about 4,200 m/s Delta-V. The vacuum lander starts off with an additional 4,000 m/s booster for Tylo. The mothership has enough fuel to refill the vacuum lander three times; the booster brings it (full) to Tylo's surface. 4,200 m/s is enough to take it back to the mothership. It refuels, flies to Vall and back, refuels, flies to Bop and back, refuels, flies to Pol and back. In between moon visits, Bob resets the science experiments for maximum science yield. All in all it could probably have been a bit more efficient still - my transfers from Laythe to Bop and to Pol were a bit sloppy, and the return from Laythe to Kerbin was horrible. But still, I managed it. Hurray!

Now the ISRU unit has landed on Vall, in an area that (according to my broad-band scanner) has 60+ % ore. The fuel production rate is still minimal and it doesn't have enough electrical capacity to last through the night, meaning I have to restart the drills every morning. I'm starting to dislike this whole ISRU thing...

Still working on it, still failing in new and interesting ways. My newest mission design features a modular ship that so far seems to be fully reusable. Got everything assembled in LKO using the SSTO rocket (five launches) and flew the whole thing to Minmus to gather fuel for the transfer to Jool. Used my brand new antenna-equipped scanner probe to look for the sweetest spot of ore there and still spent six and a half years refueling. Got the whole thing back in Minmus orbit and realized that now I'll have to wait for a new Jool transfer window. Oh, and despite the fact that all parts have antenna's, they still don't link up through CommNet (though they all have a connection to KSC).

Once again, my mission has hit a bit of a bump along the road to success. The entire set-up is based around a reusable ISRU-equipped lander. Last time, I just landed at a random location and was forced to wait over 20 game years on every moon waiting for the tanks to be filled. I decided to try again, adding a pair of resource scanners to my orbital tank station to aid in picking a landing spot. However, when I got this thing in orbit (polar orbit... why must it be a frigging polar orbit?!) I found out that it lacked a proper antenna. Even with the CommNet turned off it won't work (my reasoning being that the built-in antenna of the Hex probe core is powerful enough to connect to the manned lander). Is there an easy workaround for this? Or should I just add one of those massive antennae to the scanner probe and try again?

Well, there is certainly improvement. Jeb and Bob managed to land on Vall but realized they never actually performed a resource scan. They spent the next 20 years on the surface, waiting for the two mini-drills to refill the tank. After a very brief period of excitement, they are now stuck on Pol, with a fuel production rate roughly 1/3d of what they had on Vall. Pol doesn't offer the same opportunities for sand-castle-making and so they are starting to get a bit frustrated. Luckily they don't need much fuel top hop the rocket around the little moon looking for a better drill site, so they should be all right. Looks like this mission will be completed before long, and I have about 80 screenshots already so there will be a detailed mission log!

Made it all the way to Vall orbit before I realized I forgot to add a docking port on the bottom end of my mothership. Back to the drawing board!

So I did a 1-Kerbal Eve return mission in 1.1.3 and I figured that, with the new science box thing, I could do an unmanned return mission in 1.2. However, I'm now realizing that getting an unmanned probe there without losing probe control is not easy. Putting a big antenna on the probe itself is probably not going to work since it will be ripped off by Eve's atmosphere. Putting it inside a materials bay might solve that but I'm not sure if the antenna still works then, and it also doubles the weight of the returning probe. Right now I'm thinking about leaving a small satellite with a big relay antenna in (roughly) Eve-synchronous orbit and putting a small antenna on the probe itself. I'm hoping I can then get into Eve orbit and get the ejection burn accurate enough to get a Kerbin encounter before I lose contact with the relay satellite, since I won't be able to do any corrections on the way. Any thoughts on this?

I never noticed you could manually turn the extra nodes off! Thanks a lot guys - and my humble apologies to Squad for trying to blame them for the results of my own ignorance ;p.

So the new 1.2 fairings have these five floating attachment nodes, automatically creating a support truss between the fairing base and whatever you're attaching it too. It certainly looks nice and works okay, BUT... When you've created your satellite and placed a fairing, all non-occupied attachment nodes remain, floating around. Now when I want to add a new part to my satellite, it's very difficult to attach something to the actual satellite instead of to one of these attachment nodes. Sometimes they're nearly indistinguishable and I only notice I did it wrong when I'm 60km off the ground and try to open the fairing - and half my satellite blows off. Maybe it would be possible to have all remaining floating nodes of the fairing disappear when you attach something to one of them?

An Eve SSTO?! And with Mammoth engines, no less. You should make a showcase thread of just that craft!

0.o I'd never even considered that. I'll be sure to try - with my NEWER, AWESOMERDER AND SHINIER spaceplane

OMG, that's my dream ship right there! My own interplanetary ISRU SSTO made it to Laythe but was about 50 m/s short of being able to reach Vall from there and I abandoned it a couple of months ago. You've really made my fingers itchy to go and try my hand at a better version

Sounds cool! I'm thinking of trying this with Real Solar System.

My "Decade Thrush" fully stock interplanetary SSTO landed on Minmus, the Mun, Duna, Ike, Dres and Laythe so far. I think it would be able to get from Laythe to Vall and then on to Bop, Pol and Eeloo too but my skill at taking off from Laythe is not perfect and I ran out of fuel just above Vall's surface with a speed of about 50 m/s. Still, I think it's rather neat. Here you go: forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/146167-ssto-large-ish-tour-flight-of-the-decade-thrush

Thanks! I'll try again soon, though probably with a smaller vessel - this one just took too long to assemble, and it made the game too slow for my taste.

Ah no, I can get a Tylo encounter with only a small burn. The problem is that it doesn't put me in a stable orbit - I still need to do a burn at either my Tylo or Jool periapsis to get there, with a minimum of about 1,500 m/s - or so I found. What would the correct place for Tylo be then? Say the direction of my entry is at zero degrees, at what phase angle should Tylo be when I encounter it?

Hmm, seems I may need some help. Right now my ship has just entered Jool's SOI with (according to KER, which is having trouble with all the docked modules) about 800 m/s delta-V left in the interplanetary engines. My hyperbolic periapsis is at about 50,000 km, well within Tylo's orbit, and I'm pretty much perfectly in the equatorial plane. However, I can't seem to find a Tylo encounter that will get me in an orbit around Jool without a burn of at least 1,500 m/s. I have previously managed to do this without needing to do any burning at all and I don't see what I'm doing wrong. Any tips here?

Working on my own Jool-5 mission with all four Kerbals landing on all moons, returning as much science as possible (in my career mode game). Just finished assembling the craft in orbit, which took 5 launches. Here's a lovely screenie of the craft in LKO: Almost 400 tons, almost 1000 parts. Image report of the assembly in the following imgur album: http://imgur.com/a/eIHuh. Soon to be updated with the full mission report - wish me luck! (Note: I used HE for testing the separate landers but forgot to remove it before starting the mission. I'll uninstall it before continuing to prevent confusion)

8.4 km/s of delta-V might be a slight overkill. My own Eve sample return mission ( http://imgur.com/a/DLmc6 ) had about 7.7 km/s and managed to reach low Eve orbit from 1100 meters with about 150 m/s left. For small craft a Dart might be preferable over a Vector even for atmospheric ascent because of its smaller mass, since then the mass of the engine takes up a significant portion of the craft's dry mass. But it looks like a viable design nonetheless, I think it should easily fit behind the 10-m heatshield. Just make sure you have some big stabilizing fins on the top end to make sure it doesn't flip during the descent.

And the rest is up there too. Small selection of the rest of the mission: Atmospheric entry on Eve: Landed on Eve with the science equipment: Eve ascent: Last stage: Getting Jeb back into the Returner: Flying over KSC during Kerbin re-entry: Science results:

Here's mine. 68.350 tons at lift-off (including landing struts), reaches a 100km orbit with about 150 m/s left over. I used this one in a single-launch Eve sample return mission documented here: http://imgur.com/a/DLmc6

The next set of screenshots is up! Here I show the ascent from Kerbin, circularization and encountering Eve. FYI, Jeb's already safe back home at KSC, it's just a matter of uploading and commenting all the pictures. Here's a small selection of screenies: Lift-off: Ditching first stage using Flea boosters instead of Separatrons: Orbiting Eve:

Thanks! The lander and the return vehicle were designed separately, only made so that they'd fit snugly in the fairings. After that I used the whole package so that all the big rocket stages would be powerful enough. What do you mean by the mission reports thing? According to my browser this topic is in there already :/

I recently got a complaint from Jeb, who stated that he was getting bored of flying to Minmus all the time. I guess even the vastness of deep space and the serenity of the void lose their charm after a while. Jeb explained to me that there were those of little faith who stated that Minmus was as far as Kerbal-kind was ever like to get, and that a body as heavy and distant as, say, Eve would be forever out of reach. "Never!", said Jeb. "I shall personally go there and what's more, I'll prove it! I'll even bring back some rocks from the surface, so that none of ye may doubt the piloting skills of Jebediah Kerman again!" Next morning Jeb woke up terribly hungover, but unfortunately Bob and Bill had captured his entire ill-begotten rant on video, making it impossible for him to back out now. Luckily Bob and Bill both, after a nice chit-chat with Jeb who didn't threaten them with any form of corporal punishment at all, volunteered to accompany Jeb on this heroic mission. The only problem with their fantastic plan is that the unbelieving Kerbals in the bar the night before were not entirely wrong - the Space Program right now doesn't have anything that's even close to capable of returning home from the surface of Eve. Good old Werner von Kermann soon fixed that though, resulting in the following monstrosity: - The Lander - - The Returner - - The Complete Ship - The mission is to bring Jeb to Eve's surface, let him collect a nice bunch of science while there, and then return him and the samples safely to Kerbin. Bob and Bill will remain in orbit (in a duo impersonation of Michael Collins) to keep the return vehicle running. The imgur album shows several screenshots of the ship in the VAB, captions provided. http://imgur.com/a/DLmc6 Next post will contain the Kerbin ascent!