George van Doorn

So, I've been looking for a while to do some KSP Reddit Challenges, but in the past few weeks I've not seen one that I thought I'd learn something from / inspired me. Until this week. Link for this week's challenge: https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/5xurqq/weekly_challenge_revisited_week_34_a_kerbal/ So, the premise is to pilot a rocket to the Mun, land and get back only from IVA, no map view, no external view. While doing this challenge I've learnt a lot, even though I have more than 2000 hours in this game. I had to remove KER, KAC, Precise Maneuver, everything except SVE and its bundled/recommended mods (EVE, Texture Replacer, Planet Shine) Lessons learned: a) Piloting only from IVA is hard (you don't say!) b) The hardest part is not actually landing on the Mun, that was kinda the easiest thing I've done in this mission, the hardest part is getting an encounter with the Mun. I think I've tried that 10 times AFTER I had done a test drive with the map view and all the tools at my disposal. Minute changes in the trajectory would have me not get that encounter the other 9 times. And I could only check the outcome by timewarping, not really ideal. c) If only there was a way to accurately see my altitude, I'd have had no issues with this at all. The altimeter shows me for example, 2. But what is that 2? 2000 km? 200? 20? 2 km??? I didn't know any way of knowing apart from maybe visual cues (how far the planet is). I almost had an (unwelcomed) encounter with the ground but I brought myself back up pretty quickly. d) I had to scrap a few earlier attempts because of my habitual tendendency of pressing "M" to figure out what's going on For the hard mode, I chose the Armstrong Memorial to land on, also to commemorate the recent passing of my mother. It's one of the easiest landmarks to reach on the Mun because it's almost on the equator ( http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/List_of_easter_eggs ), so if you get an equatorial orbit (you can check that from IVA, if your prograde marker is on the navball at the 90 degrees angle, you're in a counter-clockwise equatorial orbit). I trained myself before attempting this so I can recognize (grosso modo) the terrain features nearby and hover around the area with 100-150m/s horizontal velocity until I recognize it visually before landing. So, the landing was a relative breeze. Going back, right after circularization, I was between the Mun and Kerbin, which is the optimal time for a re-entry burn. I must have missed it by a lot because I had to do a few corrections in Kerbin orbit (that's the thing, I can't check the result of the burn until I get there!). Tried to land near the space center but missed it by some 500 km or so, landed further in the ocean, east from KSC. Enjoy: This way I'm also inaugurating my channel (I have a few series in video editing, not yet ready to release them). Used craft: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bkkamex838rh0hu/Mun Precision Lander.craft?dl=0

Finished editing part 2 of my Ultimate Challenge series: Hopefully, I'll be able to entertain you with one new video per day until I produce the whole series. Feedbacks really appreciated. Like, really, I can usually take hard criticism; I'm looking more regarding the production value and less about the rocket and some of my suboptimal maneuvers. The filming has been completed, the rocket was scrapped, the actors (Jeb, Val, Bill, Bob, Scrooge) paid and dismissed, now I'm just editing what I got.

Finally produced the video for the first part of my Ultimate Challenge series: Feedback appreciated.

Hi again @DoctorDavinci. I finally got some spare time and managed to produce the first part of the promised series. Here it is: And now, a day later, part 2: Part 3 - Dres: Part 4.1 : Laythe: Part 4.2 - Vall and Tylo: Part 4.3 : Bop and Pol: Part 5 - Eeloo: I'm gonna keep it unlisted until I finalize the series. I'll probably add the other parts here, not make a new post for each segment. I've already recorded everything and travelled to all them planets, but the editing part is taking me quite a bit of time. Feedbacks appreciated. P.S.: Man, I feel like this challenge shoulda been more popular, your premise really inspired me.

Hey @eddiew what mod is that, that makes your sky look so friggin amazing in all your screenshots? Sorry for the offtopic, but I need to know :P!

Well, I "forgot" many, because, let's be serious ;). I only added Mainsail not to have 13 options in the list :).

Hm.., I'm thinking about a challenge using only Puff engines, see what can be accomplished. To be continued. But first I'd rather wait until the end of the weekend or so, maybe more people will vote and turn the result around.

Offtopic: @TopHeavy11 Good luck with that metallic hydrogen, man! It's what we've all been waiting for (well, sorta...maybe).

Sup guys? Back in the day, when I was reading the engine's description and asking myself wadup with all those numbers next to the engine, I arrived at the "Thud", sounding similar to stud in my mind, so it must be cool right? After reading that description, funny as it is, I asked myself, "OK, how bad can it actually be"? Yeah... it's bad. So I'm basically never using it because there are other (better) ways to skin the cat. Funny enough it has decent kN and Isp on Eve ASL :). Feel free to share your "Yeah...that sucks." experience regarding engines and vote.

Cloud cities FTW!

@JacobJHC I like your video and what you're trying to accomplish. I've done my share of grinding rescue missions, sat placements, but friggin 500? I mean, I did a ship that did something similar to what you want and has about 500 capacity (see below) but I definitely ain't gonna rescue 500 mofos. I imagine it takes more than an hour just to unload them from the ship (for a group photo or something)! Imagine wanting to switch back to the ship with [, ] having 500 kerbals around. My god, dude!

@YonansUmo, look at this for example: You can have stupid drag and still make it to orbit just fine if you "fly safe". Still, you might want to think of the bullet shape and make your rocket resemble that. Why do you think the bullet has the shape that it has? It's very important to add adapters to your parts, don't just put 1.25m parts above 2.5m without adapters. Also reaction wheels, engines with gimbal like the Swivel and some control surfaces, like the AV-R8 winglets at the bottom of your rocket can compensate for a lot of drag and instability.

If you wish a quick solution to your issue and implement what @bewing pointed out, you can add an FL-a adapter between the probe and your (very likely) 1.25m parts below and add a nose cone above the probe (of the same size as the probe). You'll see how chillax it can become.

Settling the argument of periapsis or the mean anomaly notwithstanding, I think it's fabulous, it's fantastic, it's a great idea. So basically you want to arrive at the geostationary orbit and be above a certain point on the planet. Then, once you circularize, you will hold stationary position above that point. You know, there's a new type of sat position contract since 1.2 that asks you to do that. The way I do it is transfer from LKO to the geostationary orbit and ballpark it so that I arrive there kinda above that spot. It's not perfect of course. Then I put the satellite in a slightly lower / slightly higher orbit. Eventually I catch up to that point and then I circularize. Takes a while, your idea would make this geostationary hold easier. So, in absence of that and if you don't wanna do some math on paper, this is the way to practically achieve that in KSP.

Annyionghasseyo (excuse my spelling)! Ya know, there are some interesting mods out there that can make you feel like a newb when exploring. Galileo Planets Pack is one of 'em. So, you say you planted a flag on Eve, huh? Well, one of the planets in Galileo (Tellumo) and its description would make such a great ad:"We increased the gravity by 50%, reduced the atmospheric altitude by 50%. We doubled the atmospheric pressure at sea level! We even added rings and a cute and cuddly little nearby moon! Oh, it's the bomb, you gonna love it!"