Cavscout74

That just made my day!

For in flight ones, I use the 2-seat passenger tube on top of a reduced-fuel Hammer SRB with a pile of oversized separatrons firing in the next stage once I'm climbing & pointed in a safe direction. I frequently get them to pass out twice - once on boost & again when the chutes open. I can turn a small profit off of a single passenger in hard career with my design. For suborbital, I basically added a small booster below the in-flight rig to loft it above 70km. I've not actually messed with orbital ones. Never had an issue with either 1.3.1 or 1.4.3 though.

Mostly I launched multiple Jool-bound probes for the approaching transfer window. Resurrected my Nexus reusable launcher for several of them. Also got a second lander probe to Moho & tested a new spaceplane. Nexus V parachuting back to KSC: New spaceplane project - it was a bit short of dV, but flies quite nicely. This was on the way back to KSC: Moho lander on the ground. Mistakes were made on the final burn - notice the scattered solar panel bits in the background. Luckily I had a small RTG attached also, so it will slooowwwwllllllyyyyyy charge the batteries.

The legs are from Probes Plus & the antenna on the other lander looks like the ground plane antenna from the same. The legs are actually part of the "Landvermasser" probe, not seperate legs though. It's built to match the NASA Surveyor landers.

Quite a while back, I had a 2.5m launcher that used 4 Fulcrum engines from Angel-125's MOLE mod for the core, plus a pair of radial boosters. The first launch, I discovered that the radial decouplers were too far down & the seperatrons in the nose of the boosters too far up, resulting in the boosters rotating & destroying one of the Fulcrums. Despite the loss of 25% of my thrust & a rather unstable flight, I still managed to get that load of tourists to orbit & back safely. The second flight of that launcher - after adjustments so that wouldn't happen again - the radial boosters managed to take out 2 of the 4 core engines & I got to test my LES.

Set foot on Duna for the first time in this career. Initial landing was about 5km from a certain easter egg. Jeb & Val didn't feel like being bothered with the trek & Ambera Kerman (Bob's replacement) decided she didn't feel like going. So, Kelrik the engineer took the trip alone with just his trusty wrench. Spent almost his entire jetpack fuel getting there & had just enough left to get a good bit of altitude before becoming the first Kerbal to sky-dive on Duna. Crew vehicle docking with the Duna lander: Landing site & flag planting: Hmm, what's that oddly shaped rock up there? Jetting up to see Well, that was interesting. Second flag planting on top of anomaly, looking back towards the lander Para-gliding back to the lander: Return to orbit & waiting fuel tanker:

So after getting a nice fat asteroid search contract, I've upgraded my launch pad & tracking station & have been launching probes as fast as I can for the approaching Jool window. I've limited myself to 10 days between launches per launch site for vessels requiring a level 2 pad & 20 days between launches for level 3. There is also a Duna window right behind it & I plan on sending this careers first manned mission to Duna & that will require several launches as well. In the meantime, a few noteworthy images from the last 2 days: Survey satellite intended for Vall just clearing Kerbin's atmosphere: Second flight of the 1.4.3 version of my interplanetary probe & relay in orbit, waiting on the transfer window. After emptying the radial tanks, they are jettisoned. Once in orbit around the target body, the upper section is dropped to the surface while the main body remains in orbit to act as a relay. First flight of the 1.4.3 version. After some 1) stupidity on my part, 2) spaghetti-ness on KSP's part, 3) a lot of LFO & some parachutes, I managed to save almost all of the ship just west of KSC. Yes west. See item 1. I actually landed upright, but it was on the side of a hill.

Other than personal parachutes & an new & improved 3-man pod, I'm not sure there's anything worthwhile to 1.4.3 without the DLC. All the particle effects are a mess still - getting better, but 1.3.1 is still better. I don't think it runs any better either - possibly worse, but I don't have any hard data to support that, just my impression. I hadn't noticed that mod before, I may have to check that out.

Last night I got my first probes around Eve & Gilly. Used the Verona-Formalhauff setup from Probes Plus again, & dropped the Formalhauff in between a few lakes on Eve's surface. I also put a Quetzel science/relay satellite in orbit of Eve & dropped a Surveyor probe onto Gilly. I also lofted a large com relay in polar orbit around Kerbin to be able to communicate with the probes headed for the outer planets. Formalhauff during reentry And after popping the chute: Launch of the Mk 5 heavy comm relay from Woomerang: Mk 5 comm relay in orbit:

The original version of the science/relay orbiter I put around Moho last night is 11.11t with the modded NERV transfer stage. So at least with mods, its definitely Moho-capable for 15 tons - and the transfer stage had at least a few hundred dV remaining IIRC. The non-Moho version is ~2 tons lighter.

From Probes Plus by @akron. It's two pieces - parachute on top & heat shield on bottom for the "Formalhauf" lander - which is the KSP version of the Soviet Venera landers. It's become one of my favorite mods - from the old Surveyor lunar landers to Voyager to Cassini-Huygens & a bunch in between, it's an amazing mod.

For an encore, I got my first orbiter around Moho in this career, along with putting a Surveyor lander safely on the surface. Then a just a few days later, my first Duna Verona probe arrived, dropping a Formalhauf lander before entering orbit around Ike. All probes & landers courtesy of Probes Plus mod Quetzel-ER in Moho orbit: Formalhauf lander above Duna - I didn't realize till now how much the Formalhauf heatshield resembles a miniature Duna This was my first purely aerocapture & parachute-retarded Duna landing. Worked flawlessly. So I'm certain the next round of probes to arrive will all sustain catastrophic failures of some kind.

Surprisingly, yes. Used Skiffs for boosters, radially attached to the decoupler then shifted up where they look right & a cheetah + 2 cubs for sustainer & verniers. Judging when to stage the booster section is kind of a judgement call depending on the payload mass. So far, I've managed not to go below 1g when staging.

The two rescues were in nearly identical orbits - if they'd been any closer, I could've just RCS'd to the second one. But they were just standard LKO rescue contracts - no fancy new vessels involved, no unusual orbits. I stuck with a single landing on the Mun training flight, so I didn't strand them again & require another rescue.

Yesterday was rather boring - double rescue in Kerbin orbit followed by a training flight to Mun - but today is a little more interesting so far. I tested an Atlas-ish launcher. First flight was unremarkable, second took a Mk 1 pod to orbit & the "big" test was to launch a Probes Plus Surveyor lander with small NERV transfer stage to orbit in preparation for a Dres window. I was pleased with the lack of explosions. The booster section still needs work for looks, but functioning is quite good. Atlas-Surveyor liftoff: Sustainer pushing on to orbit: Surveyor in orbit - it was short of dV in the launcher, but I had over 6k in the transfer stage, so no problem:

I managed to strand Jeb & Kelrik near the Munar north pole after I mistakenly thought I had plenty of dV in their lander to hit 2 anomalies. Ended up landed near the second one with only ~200 m/s remaining so I launched a small rover with extra fuel to recover them. As it turns out, it just barely was enough. Circularized at ~9000m, then my return burn left me only 80 m/s & heading for a 900x1300km Kerbin orbit. Lowering Pe to <30km left me with a whopping 11 m/s. I burned it just after reentering the atmosphere, then let the lower stage lose a few parts to heat before staging & subjecting the heat shield to the excessively fast reentry. Happily, everything worked out ok, although landing was just about as far from KSC as possible. Kelrik waiting for the refuel lander, gazing longingly back at Kerbin: Refuelling rover just before it's final burn: Coming around the south pole in VERY low Mun orbit:

@Triop Reminds me a little of the French Leduc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leduc_0.22

I spent a little time experimenting with low to mid-tech SSTO designs. The least unsuccessful one looked pretty cool, flew pretty nice, but is about 1000 m/s shy of the "O" part. Then I launched a few satellites for contracts & followed up with a Mun rover landing. Ended the day with sending off my first round of Duna probes for this career. The "least unsuccessful" SSTO attempt: 0.625m LFO sounding rocket boosting a small satellite to orbit: And finally the Mun remote rover landed at Twin Craters:

What, there's something wrong with that!?!?!? I figured the glowing surface just made it easier to find when coming back from Jool.

I'm going to have to mess with planes more in my current career since I decided to impose launch time restrictions on myself. One day wait between launches that can go from a level 1 pad, 10 days for level 2 & 20 days for level 3. No restrictions on runways though. Hmm, I wonder how an air-dropped sub would work....

@Triop Well that looks interesting, going to have to check this out. I went back & launched my little folding-wing rocket plane from the runway just for fun and, well, Jeb says "Thank you!" for the cockpit ejection system, because this thing is pretty much uncontrollable taking off from the runway. I know the fuel weight is a factor, but I tried again with it almost empty & it wasn't much better. Now I'm really amazed it flew so nice to landing after vertical launch & reentry.

I had a contract to visit the anomaly around the arctic, so I cobbled together a rocket plane with folding wings & stuck it on top of a 1.25m launcher. Stuck Jeb in the cockpit & pushed it out to the Woomerang launch site. By some miracle - or perhaps the kraken was away, busy trying to kill kerbals after falling off a ladder <1m above the surface of Mun - this thing flew wonderfully!!! Got up to ~85k Ap, then glided down, circled back due to overshooting the anomaly, which also put me in good shape for a landing on the ice sheet before using the last 60 m/s dV to taxi into the hills where the anomaly is. Once I stopped, it of course promptly fell over since the gear are mounted so close together. But still - mission accomplished!! Then I went on to test a new Mun/Minmus lander design with another Mun arch landing. Sufficient dV to bring a pair of kerbals from KSC to a Mun landing & return. The bonus is the lower stage of the lander carries most of the batteries & science gear, plus a simple probe core & solar panels, so it becomes a ground station to complete future "collect science" contracts. And that all came off perfectly as well. I'm about due to lose a few kerbals now.

Had my first intentional Mun arch visit this morning, then got my first manned mission to Minmus launched. While they are in transmit, I spent most of my time catching up missions from the Historical Mission pack now that I updated Contract Configurator. Since the beginning ones are all "flying" or "sub-orbital" I just slapped together a simple, cheap solid rocket with fins & probe core & fired it off a bunch of times, but now I'm up to "launch a SM-65A Atlas" & I think I'm going to try my hand at building an Atlas-ish launcher. Update: So much for the Atlas contract - launched something else not thinking about it, & it completed the parameters for the Atlas contract instead of me actually building an Atlas & launching Mun arch flag-planting: Titan MPV headed for Minmus to rendezvous with the lander:

Stage Recovery & Flight Manager for Reusable Stages (FMRS) are the main two I'm aware of, but I haven't used either. If I understand correctly, Stage Recovery just recovers funds, science & crew from any dropped stage that has sufficient parachutes and/or sufficient fuel for a powered stage. FMRS jumps you back & forth in time to manually recover the dropped stages, then jump back to the core ship to continue the mission. Stage Recovery thread: FMRS thread:

Most of my unmanned stuff - survey, comm relay & science sats - are made to go anywhere, so they typically have some solar & a small RTG or two. I can't remember which mod it's from, but I have a small, low-cost & mass RTG that puts out ~0.1 ec/s, looks kinda like somebody cut a slice off the top of a stock RTG. I stick them on just about everything once they're available, but still hang on to at least a pair of 1x6 panels. Now once I start getting into ISRU, I tend to build for wherever they're going, and don't waste mass on solar if they're going far too far out. I'll just stick with RTG's for routine power & fuel cells or nuclear/fusion reactors for the drills & convertors.