FinalFan

Sounds like you are well on your way! But I still hope I can help by throwing my two cents into the mix. First, here is a very simple way to think about Delta V: in terms of what it is, it's how much acceleration you get to do, which isn't always the same thing as "how far you can go". In space, flying smarter beats flying harder. In terms of how to get it on your rocket, there are just two factors: "how efficient is the rocket?" (Isp) and "how much of my rocket is fuel?" A 1000 ton rocket with 900 tons of fuel has the same delta V as a 10 ton rocket with 9 tons of fuel, if the engines have the same Isp. Secondly, it seems you are well on your way to discovering your own solution for your Mun rescue, but as it happens I just finished a reenactment of my very first attempted Mun landing. (It turned into my first Mun orbital mission, because I was scared that I would not have enough fuel to get home.) Well, as it turns out this can in fact do a Mun landing, and have tons of spare fuel with only minor modifications, namely using the lifter rocket to help circularize and deorbit on the Mun (either destroying it or stranding it as an orbital hunk of junk) instead of sending it back to Kerbin for recovery which is what I did at the time. And this is without even having a Mainsail, let alone TwinBoar! (I hadn't unlocked it when I originally made the vessel.) This post was originally done from my phone but now there's a link to the mission reenactment post at the start of this paragraph. If you read my post, you probably noticed that the rocket was almost uncontrollable at high speeds in the lower atmosphere. You won't have that problem if you use the design below! This was due to some silly aerodynamic choices I made that you won't have a problem with. The gray text is either less important or optional. —Skipper with 64 tons of fuel (two Jumbo-64s, or four X200-32s). Add four steerable fins for stability. (The guy who said a properly built rocket shouldn't need them has a good point but the drag losses aren't really that bad, and it's a quick and easy way to gain stability and extra steering control. Just be careful you don't destroy your fins when decoupling your solid rocket boosters. Speaking of which...) —two Kickbacks for extra thrust (the Skipper is a great engine but isn't strong enough to launch this thing on its own), and don't forget to use nosecones! Any type is fine. —(Alternative version: four Kickbacks with fins for steering. This will be very overpowered but the extra thrust will let you get to orbit with even more fuel remaining. The challenge will be not going into too high of an orbit! That's what the fins are for, to help you steer during the SRB stage, which would otherwise be almost impossible after you pick up speed. If you want to go straight to the Mun without entering a low Kerbin orbit to prepare yourself, this would be a nice choice.) —(2.5m to 1.25m adapter, and a decoupler, then) Terrier upper stage with 4 tons fuel (one T800) and landing legs —decoupler to separate engine and fuel from the rest that will be recovered on Kerbin. Be sure not to decouple this before you are all done with your rocket and ready for reentry! Then a heat shield; then a Mk1 crew cabin (with solar panels attached); then a Science Jr. materials bay, then a cargo bay with an experiment storage unit in the middle and two goo containers next to it (it's okay that the storage unit sticks out); then put two radial parachutes on the sides of the cargo bay or the Science Jr.; then the Mk1 command pod (make sure it's attached to the cargo bay and not the experiment storage unit); then the small round battery (Z-200), then the nose parachute. (Actually, the storage bay and science container are optional. And I am pretty sure the two side parachutes are also optional, but I would feel safer with them.) Add a radio antenna—even the most basic one should be okay for the Mun. The upper stage alone should have around 2000 m/s delta V which is enough to circularize on the Mun, land, and return to Kerbin. If you can get to the Mun and still have help from the lower stage then it should be no problem to rescue your guy. The only drawback is that you might possibly leave the lower stage as junk orbiting the Mun depending on how much fuel you had left on it. Sorry for my brain dump, this is sort of stream of consciousness. I will clean it up in a few hours. [edit: you've already done the whole Mun mission, but I decided to rewrite it anyway.]

Thanks very much! I have to confess, though, that I actually had three parachutes, not just one: you can see it clearly in the picture where I'm landed on the Mun. I'm not convinced a single parachute would be inadequate but it's definitely pushing it. (Perhaps you'd lose the heat shield, and I'd want to put the materials bay underneath the passenger bay for more crumple zone just in case. I actually think I've done that before but not with this particular vessel.) I think that once you begin "biting into" the atmosphere you sort of lock yourself in your orientation to a certain extent. Even if your reentry vehicle has a slight preference for going in prograde, if you maintain retrograde while beginning re-entry I think the atmosphere itself will help hold you in place. This is why I was only flipped to prograde after slowing down a lot—if I recall correctly, it started to wobble at about 1600-1550 m/s, having decelerated all the way from 3200 with no problems. (Assuming that your retrograde cross-section is still aerodynamically preferable to any possible sideways orientation, then this blocks the ship from going to the prograde orientation while aerodynamic forces are at their strongest.) This only goes so far, though—if you're extremely top heavy then you may be in danger of flipping despite this effect without strong attitude control. Also, I'd be a lot less comfortable relying on this effect if I didn't have a pilot or probe helping keep the vessel oriented towards retrograde: even if the vessel's attitude control is weak, having a force keeping it on the ideal line helps a LOT because loss of control is usually due to small problems getting made bigger and bigger by positive feedback forces. And obviously it helps everything hide behind the heat shield. I hope this inspires your creativity—and bravery!

As for the largest lander, I too sent an Eve ship to the Mun. I thought it would be more convenient to have it refuel itself most of the way rather than send many refuel missions to LKO—I was very wrong. It weighed 1,833 tons fully loaded, and more like 480 tons on landing. Despite how annoying and expensive launching that many refuel missions to LKO would be, it was even more time-consuming to wait for it to fill up its tanks on its own. But there was also something odd going on where it would mine and refine at different relative rates depending on whether or not I was watching it, so that may have been a factor. Anyway ... here it is: [edit: TinyPic is dead; long live Flickr. Original link for insanity posterity: http://i67.tinypic.com/2430wgn.jpg ] I am pretty sure I have no pictures of my first Mun missions, but I still have the rocket designs. My first Mun orbiter (first Mun flyby, for that matter) was actually designed as "maybe this will be able to do a landing mission, maybe not", and at the time I judged that it was probably able to land but not return my kerbals home. I decided it would be fun to re-enact that mission and see if I could make it a landing mission after all. My first thought on seeing the design again after so long was, "No wonder I had problems with my rockets flipping back then!" Apparently I treated aerodynamics as more of a suggestion than a rule. [ http://i64.tinypic.com/30c3nzm.jpg ] (The main engine is a Skipper and not a Mainsail, partially because a Skipper is enough but mainly because I hadn't unlocked the Mainsail yet.) Even then I had been aware of how blatantly silly it was to have girders sticking straight out of the upper stage, but I considered it unavoidable due to my lack of landing leg technology. In addition to this, I had been entirely ignorant of how much drag the ladders were adding—I had thought physicsless meant dragless. And I had innocently hoped that "only half of the science box showing" meant only half of the drag. (Actually, since they were attached to another box inside the storage bay, I'm still not sure about this one.) The end result of all this and more was that back then I had just resigned myself to the apparent fact that half of my rockets were doomed to flip 360° on their way to orbit. [ http://i64.tinypic.com/j0k6dg.jpg ] However, none of this actually mattered! I suspect I was wrong back then. I didn't know how to calculate delta-V and I probably got scared by the tank being half empty or something. The upper stage has almost 2,000 delta-V by my calculation, and even with all the atmospheric shenanigans the Kerbin stage still managed to not only make orbit but also do most of the Mun encounter burn, while still having enough to deorbit itself for recovery. [ http://i67.tinypic.com/2cylcow.jpg ] Unless I grossly mismanaged my fuel while orbiting I can't imagine that I was unable to land and return. But then again, come to think of it, I might actually have done a few orbital adjustments to fulfill various contracts ... so it's hard to say. But regardless, this thing was obviously more than capable of hitting at least one biome and returning. On the re-enactment, I used the lower stage to get the full Mun encounter, and did it retrograde to orbit so the lower stage would be put in position for a deorbit burn and recovery instead of being shot out of the system. Interestingly, the lower stage could have even circularized on the Mun if I had wanted to. [ http://i64.tinypic.com/2rx86y0.jpg ] Separating from the recoverable stage in anticipation of the capture burn. [ http://i66.tinypic.com/jsk6ld.jpg ] Waited too long to do the landing burn. After this picture was taken, I panicked and switched to straight radial. To be fair, I may well have crashed if I did nothing, but I ended up with probably 30 m/s of upward motion before I cut the engine. [ http://i65.tinypic.com/a4a5c6.jpg ] Landed on the Mun. Let's go pretend we haven't got this science yet! Notice the three basic antennas, because I heard one might not be enough and I didn't have any others. [ http://i67.tinypic.com/4ke8b7.jpg ] Oh wow, I really haven't gotten all this science yet. [ http://i63.tinypic.com/ezq4oi.jpg ] Sadly, I don't have enough delta-V to biome hop and still get a direct return. Good night, Mun! [ http://i64.tinypic.com/2hgd6xe.jpg ] There is a heat shield and decoupler above the tank. I'm tempted to just let the lower stuff burn up while it's still attached, but if the legs don't go simultaneously I could be in real trouble, so I detach as the design calls for after depleting the final dregs of fuel. It turns out there was also a moon in there! [ http://i65.tinypic.com/14w7u6q.jpg ] Whee! Believe it or not, this is actually the only "normal" heat-shield re-entry I've ever done so far. I haven't reached any interplanetary destinations yet and in Kerbin SOI I usually do multiple aerobrake passes to recover the full vessel. [ http://i67.tinypic.com/sxn7g0.jpg ] Apparently its butt wasn't heavy enough, because it flipped prograde, but fortunately not before slowing down to a perfectly survivable speed. It's still quite fiery though. [ http://i63.tinypic.com/2md29us.jpg ] Well, that was fun. The verdict is: the vessel was definitely capable of a full Mun landing mission, but with the way I probably piloted the original one on Kerbin ascent back then, maybe I made the right call after all to chicken out. Total cost of launch, before recovery: 47,880. Wow, those were the days. That's, like, a third of the cost of the fuel alone on the Eve vessel.

Today I learned that ore only registers as collected when you load the vessel. In other words, you can accept a contract for mining ore on Minmus, switch to a mining vessel that has been camped out on Minmus for who knows how long, and instantly complete the contract. Three guesses how I came by this information.

Sorry, it wasn't me, so I felt weird about putting it there.

They said it was impossible. That even considering the idea was a crazed fever dream. BEHOLD! (Not me.)

If the forum is representative of the community at large, I think your fear may actually have popular support! (Going by the number of people who say thinks like "waiting for the update to get stable before I change over".)

Like the thread title says, this is just a celebration of the positive aspects. For me, I love the fact that the burn estimate timer IS THERE when you switch to a ship. You don't need to have used your engine in the current session for it to give you a timer. No more "n/a" and no more test burns to check my ballpark guessing as to when to start a burn.

I like some of the ideas in this thread but others are almost terrifying. Science per day? Seems like it punishes you for not timewarping. I wholeheartedly agree that the running and collection and inspecting of already collected experiments is way too clunky, but I'm not sure what could be done to fix the latter while staying simple. I disagree with the proposal to essentially do away with manual-reset experiments. I think it is sort of neat to have a couple special ones that need a hands-on technician (or an advanced lab) to prepare for reuse. But I like the idea of those being given a "one and done" full-value science transmission option. It would add options to no-return missions and make me feel a lot less silly when accepting contracts for goo-equipped satellites. However, I do think there is at least one thing that could be done to help the current state of science activity that seems like it might be relatively easy to do. Add a feature to the storage container to "run all experiments". It is already capable of collecting them, so why not let it run them?

I remember being very disappointed that you can't operate the throttle slider with the mouse, but in retrospect I suppose there are already enough opportunities for catastrophic misclicks.

I was very interested in KSP (don't remember what the impetus was) but resolved to try the demo on account of its price. My goal was to get to orbit and by then I should know if I liked the game. Or maybe I started out with the goal of a Mun mission and then gave up and said orbit was enough of a test. My memory of this is foggy but I'm pretty sure I had a terrible time getting to orbit. Lack of attitude control was probably an issue. But eventually I did it and was finally free to instantly buy the full game. Incidentally, I still have the demo, and recently decided to go back and see what it was like now with experience under my belt. My SRBs spun me like a rifle bullet but I still made a reasonable looking orbit and in fact was able to do a Mun orbital mission with lots of delta V to spare. I wouldn't give up the current game but performance was very noticeably better on the demo ... I should probably upgrade my aging computer.

Thanks. I don't recall changing that setting from default but I did see what it was doing after Ike. I just don't remember since I put a maneuver node over it. I seem to recall it was a fairly cheap capture burn, so I can say with some confidence that it was at least not a disastrous change in delta-V.

I think it's really too bad the old demo couldn't have been left up behind a wall of disclaimers etc. describing what you just mentioned, until the replacement was ready. (On the principle of "something is better than nothing.") But I appreciate the explanation.

Today my Duna mission truly began* ... and I immediately got a bonus encounter with Ike. Score! Or maybe that was all but guaranteed; I am not familiar with Duna—don't care, I'm happy. I think the encounter will help me bleed speed, too, on top of the fact that if I'm not mistaken the sheer fact of going to the satellite means less retroburning from the eccentric orbit. I already had ample delta-V without all this help, so now I just have to be careful to not be too greedy with the aerobraking. [edit: TinyPic is dead; long live Flickr. Original link for insanity posterity: http://i67.tinypic.com/63t0xt.jpg ] *I had already run a shakedown cruise around Kerbin system, refueled, gone down to LKO, and exchanged tourists for topping off fuel.

And yet, when I turn advanced tweakables off, it goes away.

Well, this is embarrassing! I guess I just hadn't done it often enough to learn it. There were a couple launches in particular, though, where I know it would have come in handy but I recall having to do it manually... Maybe it's part of advanced tweakables? I just turned that on a week or two ago.

I just noticed that docking ports can now be given staging events in the VAB. Nice! Sure, doing it by hand was never THAT much of a hassle, but it's a much appreciated subtle-but-significant quality of life improvement. (If you have to stage via decoupler under strict time pressures you're very much an edge case IMO, and quite possibly Doing it Wrong™.) [edit: Nope, it was there all along in Advanced Tweakables, which I recently activated.]

As a computer tech, please forgive the " have you tried the power button" questions, but you never know: Is the engine activated? Is it set to 100? Is the fuel accessible? (Green arrow not red X)

On the EVA engine, fair enough. I just figure that if someone is going to abuse what is clearly an exploit, that's more on them than on the game. But I respect your perspective. [edit: My second point was poorly articulated. I was trying to say, if you see the manned part of the vessel as in addition to the probe part, that doesn't really answer the probe-only vs manned-only question. I will agree that adding probe control to a manned mission is usually trivial, but I really don't think the opposite can be said. So in that case it's less about "how good is piloting vs. probe control" as opposed to "how much does it add to the cost to add crew to a probe?" And I really don't see how that is relevant to the discussion of whether the crew stuff is OP compared to the probe stuff.] And as far as your claim that the difference in delta-v between a one-way mission and a return mission is "pretty much a gimme" ... I can only say I am very, very unconvinced.

In my opinion you are overstating your case. You are right about retaining control, but I think characterizing the "EVA engine" as "infinite fuel" for the actual rocket is a gross misrepresentation, not to mention that it is an exploit that most people don't use and all can choose not to use. Piloting and engineer repair are highly dependent on how leveled up your crew is, and of course only one can fit in the part you mention. I would add to that the fact that crew return missions inherently increase the difficulty of using them versus probes. You could argue that crew return is optional but that gets expensive fast.

And if someone else built the same spaceplane and sent it to the same spot on Minmus would the same thing happen? Inquiring minds want to know!

I don't see how he could be trying to "prove" it was rare based on his own personal experience. But if the fact that no one asked him to look into it is a problem for you, I can solve that. Hey, @Rocket In My Pocket, I'm officially asking you to do exactly as much investigation into this matter as you happen to feel like doing. Thanks. Happy now? (OK, time to be more serious. Rocket seems to be trying to find out whether the issue can be consistently reproduced in certain circumstances (for example all stock, certain planet, certain vessel) and you can't seriously deny that this would be relevant information regardless of whether the answer is "yes" or "no". And if the answer is "no", that doesn't somehow prove that your personal experience of the issue never happened, and I don't believe Rocket has ever said otherwise.)

"Plan maneuver nodes" is not among the listed powers of pilots. It's just SAS, prograde, retrograde, normal (+/-), radial (+/-), target (+/-), maneuver (aim towards). No offense intended, but are you completely sure you can't PLAN maneuvers in your manned and electrically powered vessel?

The HG-5 is better than the Communotron 16, but neither of them can normally get signal all the way to Kerbin on their own from Eeloo according to the wiki. Are you sure you weren't perhaps getting an assist from a relay antenna that is now out of position? (For instance, a relay probe around Jool)

"across multiple stages" Do you think that is why the burn is 38 seconds long but we're being told to start burning 11 seconds before the node?