Human Person

So ... I hope you haven't given up on Burbarry, guys. I feel like I have to do it again! Here's a pro tipp: get as far away from Kerbol as you can before flipping your Orbit. If you want to do gravity assists, don't even bother with Eve. I know, it's nice and massive but it's also way too close to Kerbol. Flipping your Orbit at Eve isn't going to work, it has to be Jool. Remember Scotts tutorial on changing your inclination? It takes way less delta-v when you're far away from the body you're orbiting. Flipping your orbit is also just an extreme inclination-change.

So ... @cratercracker made a really nice looking logo for this mission (see at the top of the OP), but apparently I'm too stupid to figure out how to make it fit into the signature. I modified it into an octagonal shape (.png format with transparency) which would make a good looking ribbon to put into your signature but no matter what I do, it won't be displayed.

It's a good Idea for finantial reasons, what else? *sarcasm* What else could be a good reason to do anything? However, I believe that the teacher(s) you're talking about are just overwhelmed by the task. The whole concept hasn't been thought through. New concepts of teaching are needed.

Wow, really nice work! I'd like to request a flag and a badge for a rescue mission from a retrograde orbit around Kerbol

I'm curios about the bruth-force-method. My estimate for the delta-v requirement is about 35 km/s, maybe more. for the badge, copy and paste the immage (not the link) into your signature after you succeeded.

He docked a propulsion Unit to my Station in a Minmus-Orbit and flew it along with it's crew of two female Scientists to an orbit around the Mun. Bob is on his way to the station with a Mun-Lander. He's gonna pick up Jeb, they will land on the Mun and return to Kerbin after a quick stop at the Station.

Completing this challenge after setting it up myself. When launching the mission, I didn't believe it would be successful, I just wanted to share my attempt.

You said it, here's a hard one for you!

Wait! The topic was posted back in 2013, why are you guys commenting here?

I tend to decline such contracts when both speed and altitude requirements don't usually uccur during launches (I always do part testing along with other missions, not on its own). sometimes I choose a slightly different ascent profile to meet the requirements, but they shouldn't be too far off. With some expierience, you'll have a good feeling for which contract to choose. So ... I advise you to go on with trial and error, but be careful which contract you accept.

@Cpt Kerbalkrunch The badge is now available. I hope you like it.

@Cpt Kerbalkrunch I can't even express how impressed I am! When you said, you'll do it without using Nervs or Ions, I thought by myself "He'll realize soon that he's gonna need them", but you did it! And the reentry: I didn't know a reentry was possible at that kind of velocities! Your mission report was fun to read, you must be so proud of yourself, you deserve It! I tumbled over this maneuver as well. The second flip of your orbit seems to be even harder then the first one. Now I'm sorry for not having the badge yet, stay tuned, I'll finish and upload it asap.

That's way better than my first attempt

I made a challenge out of it

It was a successful rescue mission see here:

What Jool does to a retrosolar orbit:

I rescued a Kerbal from a retrosolar orbit (a solar orbit with an inclination of 180 degrees)

I thought about it for a while. The problem is: This challenge is so extremely hard, i don't want to create further limitations with my scoring system. A possibly bad score might lead to good ideas being not even arttempted. I'll work on the badge as motivation.

That would be even more impressive. Would it be possible? Sure, but only with a rediculusly large rocket. It took me all of my 21.500 m/s of delta-v to get it done.

It doesn't. but mission duration might be a factor when determining the overall winner! Your signature shows roughly what I'm doing right now.

Look At my tutorial here: and participate in the challenge!

Some imgur links in his post went missing, here’s the ful album with all the images: https://imgur.com/a/YY39z My Ship: One Mammoth Core and 4 Mammoth boosters (All feeding the core as well) push a ship into Orbit, that has 19 Nuclear Boosters, wich detach in pairs asparagus-style. - Launch Mass: 1330 t - Parts: 249 - Cost: 667,686 I chose the Jool-Transfer to be a bit late so I arrive at Jool with quite some extra velocity. I'm not entirly sure if that's the best way to do it but It gave me an encounter to dream about. Here are more details hidden: Now I got my encounter set. At Jool Periapsis, I burn another 500 m/s to raise my (clockwise) perihelion to touch Eve's orbit. Now we're leaving Jools SOI again, preparing to "correct" our relative inclination with our next Target, Eve, to exactly 180 degrees. We're going to do multiple flybys of Eve, burning as close as possible to its high mass to lower our aphelion. You know what, let's forget about EVE. It's too much fiddeling around for me (made a Quicksafe if this doesn't work out), we'll try to do a rendevous with Burberry right away. Note: It's weird being in a retrosolar orbit. Finally, the rendevous with Burberry Kerman. We still have 10.500 m/s of delta-v left at this point. Just look how happy he is: Having done what I have done, I think I might be able to get him back after all. First, I'll head back to Jool. The gravity Jool-assist that was supposed to bring us back into a counter-clockwise orbit did'nt work out as well as planned. I mean: we could get back ... in about 2000 Years. Screw the Jool-Assist, I have 7000 m/s left. Why not spent 5000 of them to turn our orbit aroud? (my Orbital velocity right before entering Jool's SOI is around 2500 m/s. The last pair of nuclear boosters were unintentionally droped right into Kerbol! Great! Success! - Mission Time: 10Y 35d

Big thanks to @cratercracker for making the artwork above. The challenge sounds very simple: Save Burberry Kerman, who is stranded in an orbit around the sun. "What kind of Orbit?" you may ask ... Well, it's nothing fancy: An orbit between Kerbin and Eve, nearly circular, at 180 degrees inclination. Just sign this contract and off you go! See here, how he got there: Don't worry, you don't need the Goliath to get into a retrosolar orbit, you can do it the smart way with gravity assists (I highly recommend a boosted Jool-Assist), But ADDING MOAR BOOSTERS will still be required. To be precise, you should add a whole lot of moar boosters. I tried it myself and managed to rendezvous with him (see my attempt below), but I didn't manage to return him Edit: I did and I'm super proud of myself right now. All balanced mods are allowed. Balanced means that engine configs (TWR and ISP) are stockalike as well as the dry mass - wet mass ratios of fuel tanks. If you want to take on the cost-record, you have to do it with stock parts only. Who recovers Burberry (without turning on "ignore heat" of course) will be showered with everlasting fame and glory and will get an awesome badge! Get the Savefile here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0zxz3obp30lxbz/persistent.sfs?dl=0 Or: launch a manned (and inoperable) vessel, open the debug menu, go to set orbit and insert this: Now Save and Recover Burberry! As always, show what you did with pictures, videos, mission report (mission report alone doesn't count). My attempt with a basic tutorial on how to get into a retrosolar orbit the "kind of smart way" will be found in my next post. The scoring system: There are 2 types od awards to win here: Records and non-record prizes. Records can be beaten while the non-record prizes are given to those who come up first with some crazy/innovative/kerbal ideas, so once you have them, you keep them. Badge: Category I "I tried, but something's wrong" - You set up a close approach with Burberry. Attempting a rendezvous, you discovered the relative velocity is about 20 km/s. @Aetharan, except he knew excactly what he was doing. Category II "Well, it didn't quite work out" - You managed to actually rendezvous with Burberry, but have no clue on how to get him home. The Gamer Alchemist: He took this to the next level by doing the challenge in RSS. However, he didn't do the second orbit flip and reentered earths atmosphere at over 60 km/s (twice the orbital velocity of earth) and I don't let that count as a recovery. Still, very impressive. "It's starting to get real!" - Award @Laie built a massive LV and shared some interesting and useful tips on how to build even bigger rockets. Heaviest LV (46 kt) Hall of Fame: Category III "I can't believe, I just did this!" - You managed to recover Burberry safely on Kerbin @Cpt Kerbalkrunch made the 1st entry without using any nuclear- or ion engines. To make this possible, he used Jool-assists to lower his delta-v requirements. The reentry was close to maximum reentry velocities. He gets the Grumpy Cat prize. @ManEatingApe did it the brute-force way. using nuclear- and Ion stages, he was able to keep mission time, launch mass and cost surprisingly low. "Rearview mirrow" prize. @ManEatingApe made a second, completely different entry to take the cost-record. The mission took literally millennia, good thing Pilots don't get payed per working-hour. "Who's Jesus?" prize, Longest mission Time (2.3 millennia) @Aetharan This time-optimized mission took over 50km/s of delta v packed into a 27.5 Mt monstrosity. "Do it as the crow flies" prize* @MarvinKitFox built an ultra light ion spacecraft to get the job done. The mission took over 36 years and didn't involve any complicated gravity assists. @Clancy Did it with a very lightweight and cheap rocket wich still had enough delta v for a brute-force attempt. @jonny went for the lowest delta-v expenature and did quite a lot of gravity assists (around 30). The light and cheap rocket that didn't use any nuclear- or ion witchcraft had to use only a fraction of the delta-v all the other entries took so far. All these advantages came at a prize of a good century of mission time. Black belt in gravity assists @jonny wasn't satisfied with just one record on a single launch, so he decided to break 2 of them (and nearly a 3rd one, the one he set up himself). He did so by using his sick gravity assist skills as above and a combination of a capsule for reentry and a chair on a rocket to deliver Burberry back to Kerbin. lowest launch mass (39.846 t) @marcushouse completed the mission and made it into a video on his channel. Definitely check that out here! Not only did he only use low-tec parts, he also had a crew-capacity of 3 on his vessel. Lowest Tech Level @marcushouse did it a second time too! Because his second try was a completely new approach and not just am improvement of his first one, he also appears twice on the leaderboard. This time around he chose to do a brute-force-attempt with a lot of nuclear stages and even an ion stage. @linuxgurugamer took his time with a very well planned and executed mission. He burdened himself by using USI Life support, resulting in a very massive ship that required orbital assembly. He did the mission a second time to take the time record. Are You Still Alive?, First orbital assembly 1st entry: Highest crew capacity** (7 (4 with long term life support)) 2nd entry: Time Record (99d 2h 6m 17s) @herbal space program appears to be one of those guys who think everything can be done with a single stage spaceplane, so he proved it by actually pulling this crazy mission off! While people like me are struggling to get a SSTO spaceplane to LKO, he flies it all the way to Burberry and back. Doing that, he also beat the delta v and the cost record. SSTB (Single Stage To Burberry), Lowest delta v expenditure (4149 m/s from LKO), Cost record (8971 funds) Have Fun and don't be shy to also share your failed attempts. * I'm sure crows would fly like that, If they could fly in space with tens of thousands of m/s of Delta v ** The challenge is about rescuing just 1 Kerbal, but let's just imagine there are more.