As people always say, it's the journey that makes life fun, not merely the destination, so here I am sharing with you the moments of staggering stupidity, mind-blowing absurdity, and rare but extraordinary moments of brilliance.
Let's kick this off right with a quick demonstration of my own sometimes staggering incompetence. Here we have Shepster Kerman shortly after saving him during a rescue from orbit mission. You may notice that it is looking a little bit upside down. That's because when I designed the rescue pod, I forgot to put landing legs on it, and was forced to land it on the RCS tanks because lander can's break if you so much as pass gas too enthusiastically. Somehow he survived.
Next up we have this monstrosity.
Don't look at me like that. I wanted a plane that could get some easy science from the biomes near the Space Center. I didn't understand how fuel worked at that point. Or intakes. Or planes in general. I didn't get that science.
Here we have more evidence that I am not a smart man. This was what I built when I got a contract to reach orbit. Fins mounted to the front: Check. Boosters pulling the center of thrust up: Check. Somewhere around here is where Jeb died I think. Possibly from the shame of having to pilot the garbage I put together for him, but most likely because I didn't have a backup save and forgot to put parachutes on his pod. Thanks to his brave sacrifice though, I now have a deceptively long scrollbar on my list of save files. Had to edit the top out because it had a naughty file name. Didn't install any mods until very recently, so all of these older "ships" (I'm being very generous calling them that) were built without the handy vessel info KER provides. Looking back they all seem to share a common trait of having much more Delta-V than they need while somehow still struggling to make it where they were intended to due to poor design and shabby piloting. Jeb can only help me so much, he's not a miracle worker.
This one physically hurts to look at. Scott Manley would probably have a heart attack looking at this thing. Believe it or not, this is the new and improved version. The first iteration had a third row if kickers at the very tip top. I call this Celery Staging. It's what you do when you vaguely remember an efficient launch method named after a long green stalky vegetable, and you know that dropping engines and fuel lines are somehow involved, but you're too dumb to figure it out. Around here is where I spent some time on google researching basic rocket design and learned the explodey bit should not be near the top.
They said that well-designed rockets boosters near the bottom. So I put them near the bottom.
Listen I really don't want to talk about it, but in case you are wondering, yes. I thought it would be a good idea to put winglets on the nose.
Look Mom, I remembered Google is a thing! It was just slightly overbuilt, having two full tanks after I fulfilled the Munar Orbit contract I built it for, so I shot it at Eve with fuel to spare. Could have gotten it back to Kerbins SOI, but didn't quite have enough fuel to put in orbit, and if you think that I was skilled enough at this point to try fancy stuff like gravity assists, you obviously haven't been reading the same thread. This is the point that the Relay Network debacle happened.
Here's my Relay Network. After the initial elation of realizing I had a probe on my way to Eve (and a second probe loaded with science stuff I hastily threw at Duna), I then had to deal with the fact that it was now too far away to communicate with Kerbin's ground antennae, so I decided to setup a relay network so I could keep control of them. I even went online and figured out how to put them into geostationary orbit for the heck of it. All so I could stay connected to my probes. Hours spent learning how in the hell sub-assemblies worked, figuring out orbital periods, rewatching tutorial videos over and over, and I finally got everything slotted into place, antennae deployed, T's dotted and I's crossed. I switch over to my probe and... no control. All that trouble and the antennae I was using didn't have enough power to reach beyond Kerbin's SOI. So I turned off that remote crap so I could control my **** probes and haven't turned it back on since. I'll turn it back on when I have the patience for it again, but I am still just way to vinegary to deal with it right now.
Here's three science containers and a single Science Jr. because the list of things I don't know how they function is as long as a Mohole is deep.
Here I am trying to build an SSTO. It went about as well as you probably think it did. SSTO? was the question. The answer was no. Not even close.
Here I thought I'd be super clever and build a lower stage plane with jets and an upper stage with rockets. I'd only gotten as far as the panthers in the tech tree at this point so my options were limited.
Decided to see if I could go higher with more intakes, so I built this thing. It's the first plane I ever built that somewhat resembles a sensible aircraft. Was disappointed when it still wouldn't go much higher than 10k, even with a completely unnecessary number of intakes.
My SSTO attempts start to get stupid. I then had the divine inspiration to just stand it on end and use it like a rocket like what people who aren't dumb do.
But enough about me being cosmically dumb. The title promised brief glimpses of glory, and glory is what you're going to get...
Next time, because I've been typing for a long time and my neighbor, the sweetest little old lady in the universe, gave me chili. But the tale I'll weave for you next time, I promise will not disappoint. Shock, suspense, anger, shame (lots of that), and elation all wait in store when I regale to you the tale of the Brick Sh***ing Rover (I sometimes put swears in my craft files and I'm not 100% certain on the forums tolerance for them). But for now, I'll leave you with a teaser of things to come.
In case you haven't figured it out yet, subtlety is not my strong suit.
