dvader

Sorry for the delay. I haven't been getting the email notifications lately but @ManEatingApe was kind enough to remind me. LIMA is officially done! It worked well the first time so there was no reason to redo it. The ascent was poor, I would have liked a much steeper ascent profile to get out of the atmosphere quicker but it didn't cost too much. I still have about 150 dV in orbit (compared to 300 m/s during practice). The trick is to use the aerodynamic forces overlay and keep the red drag arrow from the Kerbal centred on the craft. Whenever Jeb goes sideways, you just tilt the craft in the airstream so he goes the other way instead. That way you can keep him centred without switching back and forth between Jeb and the craft. I decided to do a powered landing with VICTOR just for fun and almost managed to land intact. I blew the fuel tanks but Jeb is much tougher than fuel tank! There are screenshots here https://imgur.com/a/uZsrkKi here and a video below. I'll submit a PR in a few minutes. Who is next?

I thought I'd just give Eeloo a quick shot and see how far I could go with my 4800 dV. It turned into hours of interplanetary pinball but in the end I made it to Eeloo and back home. Going to Eeloo wasn't so hard but going home was since I had not really planned the trip. I just wanted to see how far I could get. After landing on Eeloo and going up into orbit again, I had 370 dV left. I spent 300 on a Jool intercept and then used the remaining 70 dV for a lot of time consuming pinball maneuvers. It took more real world hours than I care to admit but I finally made it back to Kerbin. This is what I like about the KSP forum. You think you've seen it all but then someone comes up with a new fun and entertaining challenge that just makes you push the limits a little bit more. Well done @Pds314 !

Yes, I haven't checked the calculations but the VAB tells me I get 2182 m/s in the LFO stage (starting with only 14080 Ox) and 5980 m/s in the nuke stage. With the same setup and a single Wolfhound I get 7566 m/s from a full tank. Of course, a single Wolfhound won't be able to lift the rocket so that is a very very best case estimate. I don't know but I did Since it was OK to start with a non-full tank I assumed it was allowed. I don't mind if it isn't though so @Pds314 can decide how he wants the challenge. I also tried a space-plane but with only Kerbalian success. But, I will try again! Next time with propellers.

Great minds think alike . The same rocket but without rotors had 4340 dV left when in orbit. But, I paid good money for that expansion pack so lets (ab)use it! This one got to almost 5000m with rotors and had 4803 dV in orbit (there are 5 nukes in the bottom fairing). I think I've reached almost 10km with rotors before but that might take a lot more tinkering. I still haven't really figured out how to adjust rotor angles and such... I could probably visit many of the small moons with this but I haven't decided what to actually do yet.

Great! Yes, leaving him in orbit might be a good idea. I'm not terribly picky about the landing spot as long as it is in water but it might be safer to save the game before landing just in case some unexpected issues show up (lika a really tall mountain). It is very hard to turn with the craft since the Kerbal slides left or right on the ladder depending on which way you tilt the craft (that's how I keep him centered).

I can do both VICTOR and LIMA if no one else wants to do VICTOR. But, there are not that many missions left so if anyone else wants to take part, now is the time.

In the water is also fine. Being close to land is just a bonus for better screenshots

VICTOR, KILO and LIMA are in orbit(s). KILO is in a high elliptic orbit above Laythe and LIMA is in a 60x60 km orbit. I left VICTOR in a 42x1100km elliptic Vall orbit just in case. I used MIKEs remaining fuel to intercept and (almost) achieve orbit so VICTOR is almost fully loaded and can be used for some emergencies. Both the Laythe and Vall encounters were too much spot on and I had to burn quite a bit not to crash. All probe cores have been turned off and the solar panels are facing the sun. Full album here. https://imgur.com/a/btKYyBe EDIT: I'm not sure why but a lot of "old" commits show up when I create the pull request... It looks messy but I hope it works.

I can also sign up for 15 and 16, putting VICTOR and KILO+LIMA into Vall and Laythe orbits (unless someone else wants to). That should be fairly quick and easy. I used to dislike atmospheres but then I tried landing on Tylo... Atmospheres are great

Wow! 2000 hours into the game and I can still learn new stuff Thanks!

I almost had a save of the save but then I hit an unexpected issue. If you raise the Pe to about 500km, you can avoid Laythe (calculated using the power of the quicksave). At Pe, you then raise the Ap a lot to make the cost of reversing orbit lower. Using some energy calculations I get a velocity at Ap of 100 m/s at 600 Mm and 25 m/s at 2.4 Gm (Jools SoI is about 2.5Gm). Assuming 200m/s to reverse direction, about 300m/s to raise the Ap and then lower it again and we get 500 dV. That is more fuel than the main tank has but... there is a full 1.5 spare tank at the top with 270 Lq which should be about 550 dV. But... for some reason I can't use the fuel in the spare tank. I can enable crossfeed on both docking ports but the main engine won't use the fuel and I can't figure out what is wrong. I've tried undocking and re-docking but it didn't help. What, me worry? I will of course volunteer for the mission but if someone else wants to try it, I don't mind at all. It just requires some practice and patience. As long as nothing strange happens with staging or tanks that is... UPDATE: I tried switching docking ports but... it is even weirder. I used one of the small landers as a tug and the main engine will happily draw fuel from the Baguette tanks, through all the docking ports, but it will not use the fuel in the T200 and T400 tanks which are in between... I really don't get it (see picture). Maybe I've been away for too long and the computer doesn't like me anymore...

It is a bit like playing baseball. There is a decent zero RCS retrieval at 4:20 below. The basic idea is to go for a collision course with the Kerbal and then rotate the craft to hit him with the pod at the right time (assuming the pod is not close to the center of mass). You can let the Kerbal "slide" along the craft and then hit him just when he passes the pod. It helped to click "Aim from here" on the Kerbal occasionally to watch his trajectory. At the very last minute, you switch to the Kerbal and grab the ladder. Going slow is essential. @Muetdhiver Why would it be impractical to move MIKE for the Jool corrections? Can't you do the calculations after the rendezvous? (Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, I've been otherwise occupied again and haven't been very active lately. I would have voted for Bob!)

Well done with the debugging! If you want to try launching LIMA, go for an L shaped ascent. Straight up until the first stage runs out and then sideways. The rocket will flip over if you try to do anything in low atmo. I can do it if it sounds fishy. It is a very dumb rocket

Excellent! I ran through a normal caveman yesterday to have a baseline to start from. The main issue is what to do if neither of Minmus or Muns Greenoliths give you the 2G antenna. Reloading feels like cheating since it is esentiallly the same as giving yourself the tech by save file editing. But, without the 2G I'm not really sure how to continue... But, necessity is the mother of all inventions! EDIT: Added an album with everything before the Greenolith hunting starts. The tech tree is finished and I have https://imgur.com/a/AiosOxv

I believe it updates every 6h (from memory) and you have a 5% chance per anomaly per update. Detected anomalies also disappear during the next update if they are not detected again. So, yes, you have to watch carefully all the time. It sounds like a fun challenge. It will get progressively harder and harder. Just imagine finding the Greenolith on Eve with Caveman tech... Maybe it isn't that hard though, no one said it has to be a return mission... I think I might give it a go. If anyone is interested, we could open a separate thread.

2xFOXTROT done! I also added 0.56t fuel to KILOLIMA (no launch). Mission mutex back @ManEatingApe. PR submitted. The FOXTROT was really fun! It took me 5-6 launches before I figured out all the required parameters (for example, wait until the vibrations die out before launching...) but then it worked like a charm. I had almost a full Oscar-B when docking so there is a large safety margin when all things go as planned. A couple of screenshots here: https://imgur.com/a/NfgvDOH The only "flaw" with the craft is that the reaction wheel on the "tug" isn't strong enough to keep it pointing retrograde during a powered landing. Not very eco-friendly Ji... oh... too slow... @Muetdhiver Just one thing. KILOLIMA should preferably go before KILO and LIMA. The 0.56t should be below KILO and the "bigger one" below LIMA for balance. I can volunteer for KILOLIMA+LIMA if needed (and anything else).

@ManEatingApe Sign me up for anything you want. I would especially like to try the FOXTROT since I can still not believe it works Anything else would also be fine. As a side note, I think KILO is now 2.45t and not 3t like before. Should I add an extra 0.56t tank to the KILOLIMA fuel mission just for balance? We don't really need KILOLIMAs extra fuel or the extra tank for anything but MIKEs balance.

I've never used the LES before so I thought this was a good opportunity to... I don't know... abuse it? I managed 8636m before the Kraken kicked in and stopped me from adding more stages. https://imgur.com/a/luy7GxB

I figured out how to do it on GitHub but I'm not sure on GitLab. You basically use the compare tool. It was trickier than expected since the "base repo" box disappears once you try to switch base and head so you have to press the "compare across forks" link above. I'm not sure how you get the local changes pushed to the fork without a local client though. I normally do command line only and I'm a bit sceptical about these modern "web" things. Detailed example here: https://github.com/KirstieJane/STEMMRoleModels/wiki/Syncing-your-fork-to-the-original-repository-via-the-browser

That would be neat and give us a lot of extra fuel to play with in case something goes wrong. Please include a Spark as well for orbital insertion (or it will take for ever). If it complicates things we can put the Spark on the extra fuel and put KILO in the middle but I've already submitted a PR. I lowered the extra fuel so LIMA+Extra fuel is now 3.064t which I hope makes MIKE even more well balanced. It is barely enough for orbital insertion (700dV) but we have a lot of extra fuel anyway. I also added two ants so we can leave KILO in high orbit as long as there's just a few dV left in the extra tanks. It adds some mission flexibility even though I don't think we need it.

Yes, direct escape. It was much lower than what I expected as well so I expected some calculation error to pop up somewhere. But, now I've tested it and it was almost spot on . I started with perhaps 1900dV at 63km LLO and burnt 1072 dV when Laythe was roughly in the right place. I actually burnt too much and overshot Kerbins orbit so I had to do some corrections once around Kerbol. I intentionally missed Kerbin the first time around and did a orbit correction to hit the second time (which failed). I paid a bit more attention to the second orbit correction and hit Kerbin with 600 m/s left. Not spot on though so I had to burn a lot to actually hit the atmosphere. The reentry speed was about 4.2km/s and well below your tested safety limit. (I did not have a Kerbal on a ladder but had added 90kg of antennas to make up for it). I used orbital energy for my calculations. Basically an excel sheets with one row for each change in SoI, assuming either prograde or retrograde exits relative to the body etc. Here's a screenshot of the ejection angles from Laythe and Jool. But, if @ManEatingApe has already planned for 2x3t crafts then I guess it is best to go with that so MIKES balance doesn't shift. More fuel is always better than less fuel. The KILO return crafts would get an even more impressive dV with an Ant though It is a very light and capable design.

I've checked my calculations again (but haven't tried it in game). All calculations are under ideal conditions with no inclination, perfect ejections and perfect hits. From LLO 50 km we need 1072 m/s to reach Kerbins orbit (best case). The atmospheric reentry speed then 4.2 km/s which is within the survivable margin of KILO without a heat shield. I can't remember typical in-game speeds but I think it is usually more than that by quite a bit. If we put a 45 Lq tank on KILOs return stage we get about 1875 dV which could be enough for adjustments and imperfections. Another 90 Lq on KILOs second stage (below the nose cone) would be enough to get KLIMA into laythe orbit (~900 dV) and we don't even need the extra fuel tanks. This would get KLIMA down to just 4t total. If I get the time, I'll test a return trip with caveman tools and a max budget of 1875 dV from LLO but it seems at least plausible.

@Pds314 Nice work on the slimmed KILO! I've calculated dV for KILO+LIMA+extra fuel (KLIMA) and it seems like more than enough. Total weight is about 6.5 Stage dV KILO Stage 2 3138 KILO Stage 1 1226 KILO+LIMA 831 831 should be enough to get into LLO with some trickery and 4300 is more than enough to reach Kerbin. I did a quick check in a sandbox and it seems like do not need more than 1050 dV to get an intercept with Kerbin from Laythe even if we aim poorly (plus some extra for adjustments to actually intercept). I don't know what the reentry speed would be but we could use propulsive braking to get down to the survivable 4500 m/s. If I'm right about the return , I think we could slim down KLIMA a lot more by removing 1-2 fuel tanks. Please double check all my calculations and especially the Laythe return cost. I was in a hurry. @The Dunatian I'd be happy with an honorable mention, rogues gallery or such. It is more of a proof of concept than a proper attempt (infinite funding, no science grind, more than one player)

Another option is adding a bare fuel tank between KILO and LIMA and using KILOs engine for propulsion assuming fuel crossfeed across the heat shield is allowed in the settings (I've done that mistake many many times before). It would save us the weight of another engine. @Pds314 Have you tried skipping the heat shield and just using the base of the fairing? I think it has a very high heat rating but you would probably need another reaction wheel to keep it upright. @Muetdhiver If you get grav assists to work, it would be another Caveman worlds first So many possibilities and so little time...

Yes, I was. It was in a very practical position for attaching LIMA at the top and an engine at the bottom I think the weight savings probably wont be much but it might still be worth it. Leaving KILO in high orbit would save us about 600dV so about 0.5t of fuel (?). Adding a probe core, ladder, battery, fuel and stuff to LIMA would eat up most of the savings. We could also save 0.4t by switching the Terrier on LIMO for a Spark but since we need to burn off about 600dV, it would take quite a while with a Spark and a TWR around 0.3. It might still be worth it though.