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I completed an IVA Mun landing on a fully stock KSP install just yesterday, inspired by the resurrected ancient IVA thread. I landed on the Mun in IVA mode, with bonus Kerbin rendezvous and docking between my departure / landing stage and the command module. I found that the orbital parameters window that has been part of stock KSP for a few patches now gives just enough information to do all this without using the map screen. I captured the entire mission on video but still need to edit it into something presentable. Would this mission be acceptable for the current challenge, even though I did not use the RPM mod?

Good point. It's the reason I disallow Principia. But still, if you want, feel free to use it and make an equilateral triangle with the Lagrange points. Although I've never run Principia myself, does it support realistic Lagrange points?

The mission Deploy a constellation of communications satellites around Duna. Each of these satellites must be in Dunastationary orbit, which means that their orbital periods must match the rotation of Duna. The constellation must consist of at least 3 satellites, but a bigger constellation is to be preferred. All satellites must be equally spaced around the planet to give optimum coverage. There's just one slight complication: Duna's moon Ike is also in Dunastationary orbit, so you'll have to make sure that your satellites are not disturbed by it. Rules Autopilot mods such as MechJeb and kOS are not permitted Mods such as Principia that change how gravity works in the game are not permitted Most other mods are permitted. I limited myself to Transfer Window Planner, Better Time Warp and KER in my test runs but most other mods are fine as well. When in doubt, please ask There's no limit on the number of launches The entire constellation must be in contact with Kerbin at all times, regardless of Kerbin and Duna's relative positions, with one exception: connection does not need to be maintained while Kerbin is directly behind the Sun, as seen from Duna. Please provide evidence of all maneuvers, either as a photo album or as game footage video. Be sure to include at least one picture for each satellite in its final orbit, with orbital parameters visible To be able to gauge the quality of your constellation, please provide two pictures of the completed constellation, 1 directly after deployment of the final satellite, and a 2nd one at least one year later. During this time period no station-keeping maneuvers of any kind are permitted - you'll have to deploy your sats in rather precise orbits to keep the constellation intact and ensure no sats are disturbed by Ike Scoring Every satellite deployed gets you points, as follows: Inclination > 1 degree: This satellite gets you 0 points, regardless of its other orbital parameters 0.1 - 1 degree: 1 point 0.01 - 0.1 degree: 2 points < 0.01 degrees: 3 points Eccentricity > 0.001: The satellite gets you 0 points regardless of other orbital parameters 0.0001 - 0.001: 1 point 0.00001 - 0.0001: 2 points < 0.00001 (KER will show 0.00000): 3 points Orbital period > 10 seconds off Duna's sidereal rotation period: This satellite earns you 0 points, regardless of other orbital parameters 1 - 10 seconds off: 1 points 0.1 - 1 seconds off: 2 points < 0.1 seconds off: 3 points If either of your pictures of the entire constellation is visually asymmetric, you will lose 20 points. I hesitate to make this specific, as numerically verifying that your sats are equally spaced is rather tedious, but by all means feel free to provide longitudes for all satellites to show that they are equally spaced around Duna. If a satellite is disturbed by Ike during the required one year period of unguided operation, your constellation is disqualified from the challenge and does not get you any points. Your constellation must remain stable during that time. Note 1: The sidereal rotation period of Duna is 3 days 0 hours 11 minutes 57.859 seconds, as given by the KSP wiki: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Duna Note 2: To get precise readouts of these orbital elements, I recommend using KER. Its output tends to be more precise than KSP's stock orbital element window in the lower left corner of the screen. It is also capable of outputting additional orbital elements that can be of use to this challenge.

Brilliant flight! I really liked the accuracy of all your hardware, including the N-1. Shame that you landed somewhat further away from Lunokhod than planned, but I'm sure Alexei did not mind walking for a bit. Also, nicely done with the Blok D disposal maneuver - in my test run I did land almost on top of it! I'll add a leaderboard to the top post and add your score to it.

I am not going to ask you to do a re-run of Lunokhod just to get the data, that would be a waste of time IMO. But for the N-1 the orbital parameters (as given by KSP in the lower left) would be nice, as well as the speed as given by the navball. I'd also appreciate a few screenshots with orbits from the map view. And if you have it installed, KER readouts of the orbital parameters. In other words, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a few screenshots with the KSP user interface enabled.

Brilliant mission! I really like your Lunokhod replica and its lander, and your blok D stage is a thing of beauty. The addition of the various failed missions gives this a very Soviet feel as well. This bodes well for the N-1 flight, I for one can't wait! One request though: I would like to see some telemetry as well. Would it be possible to include some pictures with orbital parameters and/or KER readouts?

I like it! When I tested the challenge I found that building it to scale with stock parts isn't really going to work, especially due to inavailability of suitable wheels. I think mine is more or less to scale but yours is much more faithful to the original. I also really like your lander stage, it's really recognizable. As to building N-1: In my test I used fairings to get the conical shape which worked ok but the scale was off. I since made another one by clipping fuel tanks together at an angle. That approach, however, does not give a good outside finish:

Nice! I like how you incorporated the fuel cell cover. And connecting two of these Soviet style capsules end to end makes for a pretty convincing Soyuz orbital / descent module combo. That looks amazing! I really like the look of those shiny silver spherical fuel tanks. And are those the landing engines with nozzles pointing upwards? Highly detailed model, can't wait to see it fly!

Soyuz 7K-OK (the 1st generation LEO Soyuz on which the 7K-LOK was based) had a similar ring of spikey bits. In this picture it is labeled "long range communications antenna":

The biggest issue that I see with such a mod is that it would need new Kerbonaut animations. It would be pretty strange to see a kerbal descending down a pole like it is a ladder. Although I have never written any mod for KSP, so I can't really comment on feasibility. Other than that I agree with you - ladders will do fine.

My first thought was to use a piston with a command chair on the end :). I think deployable ladders are the closest approximation that KSP has to offer. Unless there happens to be a mod that makes handrails possible, but I very much doubt it. I don't know for sure, but when I was googling this afternoon I came across a description that said its a cover for the fuel cells. Presumably the boxes inside the cover that can be seen in the top view are the fuel cells. However, that begs the question why the fuel cells need such a cover at all.

I wasn't aware of that detail, thanks for sharing it! I did some googling but haven't been able to find much. I found this quote from http://www.astronautix.com/s/soyuz7k-lok.html But that does not add anything of substance. I am looking at this diagram of the LOK: and I am wondering if the light-grey thingie connecting the descent module and the orbital module on the left hand side of the craft could be the boom in question. At first I thought it was an antenna, pre-deployment, but it seems to me to be too substantial for that. Same page has some very good pictures of LOK hardware still in existence, but none show a boom, as far as I can see. As an aside: as awesome as it is that this hardware is still extant, it seems to be in a sorry state, which makes me sad. I also found this pic: https://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/lok-2.jpg The rod on the bottom picture running the length of the descent module looks sucpiciously like a telescoping boom to me. In which case it isn't much more than a handrail for the cosmonaut to hold onto. The other connection between the two modules (on the bottom of the top picture) seems to be an umbilical of some sort. Looking good so far! I love the distinct design aesthetic of Soviet space hardware, and you have done a great job capturing that. Edit: not LOK / LK footage, but I found a documentary on Soyuz 4 / 5, which tested transferring cosmonauts via EVA between two docket soyuz capsules, in preparation for the LOK / LK transfer during a lunar landing. Footage of the transfer itself at 14:11 in the video: There's also this (animation on the left, mission footage on the right): Quality is not very good, but, as wikipedia writes about this mission: All this strengthens my belief that the telescopic boom on the LOK wasn't much more than a handhold. Edit 2: I have found the boom in Asif Siddiqi's book "Sputnik and the Soviet space challenge" but he does not give any details either.

Absolutely, go for it! I hadn't really considered doing this in anything but the stock system, but I would be very interested if you'd do it in a 2.5x system. Yeah, we are entering a grey area here what is and isn't a stage. I was thinking of an Eve ascent vehicle of mine: I usually decouple things like ladders and parachutes before ascent, but I would not call that a stage. I'm fine with not calling the landing frame a stage, but I wanted to stress in some way the differences between the Apollo Lunar Module and the LK lander. I wouldn't want people to assume that the LK is just a scaled down LM. My understanding is that the essential feature of hot-staging is that the lower stage assists the upper stage in settling its propellants. I imagine that for Proton, the residual thrust of the engines shutting down is enough to accomplish that. But my point is that most KSP players will stage a few seconds after lower stage burnout, and therefore at a point where the lower stage no longer generates any thrust, and does not help in settling the upper stage propellants. In KSP this is of course irrelevant, but I suspect that that is a recipe for disaster in the real world. Anyway, I'll edit my initial post to describe hot-staging more accurately. Those are some excellent pictures, thanks for sharing! I realize now that I should have said something like "the LK should have only 1 stage with engines". Although that is not 100% correct either, as you mention the "settling motors" - That's the kind of detail that I would love to see people do in this challenge. It's like the retros and ullage motors on a Saturn V: the KSP Apollo challenge does not mention them, but I found it really cool to add details like that to mine.

Ok, you obviously know much more about N-1 than I do. However, I contest your position that the LK did not have two stages. As you yourself state This sounds like a stage, at least how a stage is defined in KSP. And that is exactly what I meant. I am aware of the Blok D braking stage, I just did not want to include it in my challenge rules because it would make an already rather specific set of rules even more specific. I also disagree on this point: Most people press the spacebar after lower stage burnout, and that would not constitute hot-staging. But minor disagreements aside, I going to have to think for a little bit on how to fix this - your comments are obviously valid for the most part. If you have suggestions on how to improve the rules, please let me know.

The objective: Land a Kerbal on the Mun, Soviet style. While the Soviet Union historically did not succeed in getting their N-1 Moon rocket operational, it ranks as one of the most Kerbal rockets ever flown, with no less than 30 engines on its first stage alone. This challenge invites you to recreate this awesome, yet ill-fated rocket and use it to land a Kerbal on the Mun. Leaderboard: @borisperrons: 215 points. Outstanding accuracy in all spacecraft, and a decidedly Soviet stoicism in the face of mission failures. https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/196418-n-1-to-the-mun/page/2/&tab=comments#comment-3856208 The mission: The mission consists of two parts: Launch an unmanned Lunokhod rover to the Mun, perform a soft landing and use Lunokhod to find a good landing spot for the crewed landing Launch a Kerballed mission to the Mun, land near Lunokhod, perform surface operations and bring the crew safely back home Requirements: Lunokhod must be capable of uncrewed operation, and it must be able to function for at least 2 Munar days. It is allowed to put Lunokhod in hibernation during the Munar nights (as the historical ones did), but it must be capable of reactivation after sunrise. The crewed mission must use a Munar orbit rendez-vous, with a separate mothership / re-entry vehicle (LOK) and lander (LK). Challenge Rules: Use your own craft Document your flights using video and / or pictures. Please show all phases of flight and all maneuvers No orbital construction or refueling. There will be exactly two launches, one for Lunokhod, the other for the crewed landing Both DLC are permitted, but using them will incur a points penalty. Visual mods are permitted Mods that add or modify parts are ok but will earn a modded badge. Please don't use unbalanced mods such as those that add engines with unreasonably high ISP or TWR. Mods that add similar parts to the DLC will incur the same penalties as using the DLC. Mechjeb, kOS and other autopilot mods are not permitted. Radially attached boosters that decouple in flight are not permitted. While the real-life Proton rocket, used to launch Lunokhod, appears to have side mounted boosters, this is not the case: its radially attached tanks are an integral part of the 1st stage. No unintended decouplings or destruction of parts, with the exception of parts destroyed on the lower stage during hot-staging. Use of propellant transfer or crossfeed is not allowed. Points: You start with 50 points. Various goals will gain you points, while some circumstances lose you points. Use the Making History DLC: -15 points. A DLC is deemed used if you use at least one part of it in one of your craft. If you have the DLC installed but use none of its parts, you do not incur this penalty. Use the Breaking Ground DLC: -15 points Launch Lunokhod on a rocket that resembles Proton: +10 points. Use hot-staging in at least one stage of the Lunokhod launcher: +10 points. Hot-staging means that you ignite the engines of the next stage a few seconds before lower stage burnout, and decouple after ignition. Soviet rocket engineers liked this technique and used it all the time. Put Lunokhod on top of the lander: +5 points. Make Lunokhod resemble its real-life counterpart: +10 points Make Lunokhod "fold up" during the night: +10 points. The real life Lunokhod closed its lid during the night to minimize heat loss. Land Lunokhod on the near side and in daylight: +5 points. Drive the rover a set distance from the lander: 100-500 meters: 5 points 500-2000 meters: 10 points 2000-5000 meters: 15 points 5000+ meters: 20 points. Use the rover to find a suitable landing spot and park it there. To determine the suitability of a landing spot, use the slope angle. The slope angle can be obtained from Kerbal Engineering Redux, where it is called "slope": 0-1 degrees: 20 points 1-2 degrees: 15 points 2-5 degrees: 10 points 5-10 degrees: 5 points 10+ degrees: 0 points. Launch the crewed mission with 2 crew on board, one of which will land on the Mun. +5 points Launch the crewed mission on a rocket that resembles the N-1. I will take particular note of the number and type of engines used. Historically, the N-1 used the same engines on its 1st and 2nd stage and it used lots of them: +15 points. Hot-stage all stages of the crewed mission up to reaching Low Kerbin orbit. You only get these points if you hot-stage at least once (so no single stage to orbit): +15 points Fire all stages of the crewed mission up to and including the Trans Munar Injection burn exactly once: +15 points. Soviet rocket engineers favoured simple and rugged designs, foregoing restartable engines whenever possible Use a free return trajectory: +15 points Have a functioning escape system. This was the only component of the historical N1 that was proven to work, repeatedly – sadly, it had ample opportunity to do so. In order to get the points you must perform successful pad abort and in-flight abort tests: +20 points Destroy the launch pad, or at least one KSC building, by crashing the rocket into it during the in-flight abort test. During one N1 test flight, the rocket fell back onto the launch pad, resulting in one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever: +5 points. Launch all crew in the LOK, and transfer crew between the LOK and the LK using EVA: +5 points. The real-life hardware did not include a docking tunnel. Don't use the crew's EMU during these EVA. This technology had not been developed at the time: +10 points Build the LOK in three parts: an orbital module, and ascent / descent module and a service module: +5 points Have the LOK resemble a real-life Soyuz 7K-LOK capsule: +10 points Land the LOK descent module on land on Kerbin: +15 points Use exactly one drogue chute and one main chute on the LOK: +10 points Fire retro-rockets prior to touchdown to land softly (for sufficiently low value of “softly” - Soyuz lands like a brick. If nothing breaks, you're fine): +5 points Lose a Kerbal: -50 points per casualty Build the LK in two parts, a descent stage and an ascent stage: +15 points Have all descent and ascent engines of the LK in the same stage: +10 points Land the LK close to Lunokhod. However, having the LK closer than 20 meters to the Lunokhod at any point during the landing is considered unsafe and will incur a penalty: 0 – 20 meters: -20 points 20 - 50 meters: +20 points 50 - 500 meters: +10 points 500 – 5000 meters: +5 points Plant a flag on the Mun: +5 points. These points can be scored only once. Use the rover to drive your Kerbal to a particularly photogenic or special location on the Mun. The idea is to promote going somewhere interesting, with rugged terrain, but to still find a safe landing spot nearby: +15 points. Crash the LK into the Mun (preferably without crew inside) at the end of the mission: +5 points There will be a badge at some point, I'm still working on that. My graphics skills aren't great, so if someone feels inspired to make a badge, pleas get in touch.

@KingDominoIII Question about the third Mun mission: must the base be returned to Kerbin with the re-entry vehicle, or can you fly it back on its own? I've built this thing: which is about 2 tons, like my rover from LUNEX-2, so it should be trivial to get it to the Mun on my existing LUNEX craft. And it can fly back on its own, re-enter and land. But my question is: is this what you had in mind? Please tell me you joined me in the "I landed on top of the Neil Armstrong Memorial" club! Click on my KSP Apollo badge for details.

My LUNEX-2 mission: I flew exactly the same profile as LUNEX-1, and I landed just a few hundred meters from LUNEX-1 on the Mun. I used exactly the same rocket, with one difference: I moved the lander stage engines to the sides to make room for cargo between them. Despite a few tons of extra payload in the form of a pressurized rover, fuel loadout was exactly the same, as I had quite a lot of fuel reserves on LUNEX-1. I agree with @s_gamer101 on optionally combining the LUNEX-1 and -2 missions (perhaps like the STS-1a and -1b missions in the Shuttle Challenge?). These missions are very much the same. This is also why I did not feel inspired to do commentary on my LUNEX-2 video, as I felt I had said everything that needed to be said about the mission already..

Here's my entry for LUNEX-1: This is my very first video ever for which I did a voice-over; I think it's kind of cringey but I figured I'll never learn to do a proper one if I don't just try it, so there you have it. I did this without parking orbits of any kind. So a direct munshot, direct landing (well, technically I entered Munar orbit momentarily during my braking burn) and direct ascent back to Kerbin, with a landing on the KSC runway. Landing on the runway took a few attempts to get the timing right, as the maneuver node planner is useless if your ship is on the surface. I also took some inspiration from the LUNEX proposal linked earlier in the thread: it mentions that a liquid-fueled booster will be developed, but that a solid rocket is acceptable as a substitute. So my launch vehicle simply consisted of a Clydesdale booster, with a Kerbin departure stage and lander on top, As you can see from the thumbnail, my re-entry vehicle was inspired by another USAF project, the X-20 Dyna-Soar. This is almost fully stock. I have both DLCs but only used Making History for this craft (specifically, the Clydesdale). I also used the suicide burn timer from Kerbal Engineer Redux for the landing. As you can see I have various "cheat" mods like Hyperedit and Vessel Mover installed, but I only used those during testing, not during the actual mission.

This is great! Just yesterday I was watching a Lunex vid by space historian Amy Shira Teitel and I thought "let's make a KSP challenge out of it!" To make things extra challenging, the original LUNEX proposal did not mention any parking orbits, instead proposing direct Moon shots. If I'm giving this a go I will attempt to do just that. Which will be interesting in combination with a runway landing. Amy's video, for those of you interested:

Thanks for linking my lander! However, that one is not a particularly good one. Its main saving grace is that it fits inside a Mk3 Cargo bay. After entry it tumbles out of control without a top heat shield (which did not fit in the cargo bay). It is also about 150 m/s short on dv. Check out https://imgur.com/a/fzHlZ44 and https://imgur.com/a/di5MCog for better lander designs where I used the same design principles. I found that the trick to building small Eve landers is to use aerospikes for the lower stages. The aerospike has the highest ISP at Eve sea level by a considerable margin. Also, an inflatable heat shield is a very good launch platform if you land in the ocean. And the "Posted xx minutes ago" message above each post is a link to that post specifically.

Thank you, that is a great honour!

Thanks! I'd love to hear your more detailed review. In the meantime, I made a short video about my Grand Tour. Enjoy!

Grand Tour Mission report, final part: Moho and Kerbin: https://imgur.com/a/nxiybM2 After ploughing through 56 GB of game footage spread over 27 files, selecting 314 screenshots, uploading all of them to imgur (which refused to cooperate in the usual fashion: broken uploads, random ordering of images and inconsistent interfaces) and adding commentary to all of them, my mission report is finally finished. Compiling this report was WAY more work than I had anticipated, so I hope you'll like it. It is probably too long to appreciate in a single sitting - well, what can I do, this mission was very long as well and I wanted to document all maneuvers. While nominally a JOOL STS-1 mission on the Commander Level, I hope you will appreciate that it was much more than that. Consider it my tribute to this awesome series of challenges. @sturmhauke There's one Shuttle badge that I don't yet have, and I think this mission might qualify. Could you please consider it? @michal.don: I was reminded of a comment you made when I was doing my Kerbin Shuttle missions, back when you ran the challenge: I hope the current mission satisfies your curiosity ;). As we say in Dutch: "U vraagt, wij draaien". This roughly translates to "you ask, we deliver". Some mission highlights: Moho landing Planting a flag on Moho Almost there

I don't know the reasons, as I am not the challenge designer, but when doing the mission for myself I found that I needed only about 1/3 of the allowed fuel. My guess is that the fuel requirements are there to promote use of gravity assists rather than a brute-force solution. As to the fuel on Huygens: I agree with you that you could do the mission with an unfueled Huygens probe, although that would be a little more difficult. Maybe the challenge designer wanted to make the challenge a bit easier for newer players by allowing Huygens to have its own fuel? As far as I have been able to find out, the real-life Huygens probe did not carry its own fuel or rocket engines.

Grand Tour Mission Report Part IV: Eve: https://imgur.com/a/veDvhlY The big one. In this part of the mission I went from Kerbin to Eve with my Longrange Gemini shuttle, with the Eve lander and Moho transfer stage in tow. I left these in Gilly orbit before landing on Gilly with the shuttle to refuel. I then went back to the lander / transfer stage to transfer fuel to them. Afterwards I landed on Gilly a second time to refuel the shuttle itself. And as I had forgotten to bring back extra ore as ballast for the Eve diving bell, I then landed a 3rd time, just to get some ore. Oh well... we all make mistakes, right? After refueling it was time for the main event. I left the transfer stage in Gilly orbit, while putting the shuttle + Eve lander in a highly elliptical Eve orbit. I then decoupled the lander, which entered Eve's atmosphere to land in the ocean under parachutes. I then deployed the diving bell to get Bealan Kerman, the lander's sole Kerbal, to Eve's ocean floor, where she planted a flag and conducted some experiments. By jettisoning the diving bell's ballast she went back to the surface, where she entered the ascent vehicle. The ascent vehicle then lifted off from Eve to get to orbit. Which almost succeeded: I was about 150 m/s short. So Bealan exited the capsule and attained Eve orbit with the help of her EMU. I then picked her up from low Eve orbit with my shuttle, which lowered its orbit by a series of aerobraking maneuvers. This was easily the most difficult landing of the entire Grand Tour. I am very proud that I succeeded in planting a flag on Eve during a shuttle mission, and on its ocean floor, no less! Some highlights: Gilly docking landing Deploying the lander. I had to give it a couple of gentle nudges with my shuttle after deployment to get a good splashdown point. This lander cannot do any orbital maneuvering of its own. Diving bell deployment, right after splashdown. I used an airbrake as a ramp, to get the diving bell over the edge of the heat shield.You've all seen a picture of the diving bell on the ocean floor so I won't repeat that one here. Liftoff! I have found that the large inflatable heat shield makes an excellent launch platform when launching from the ocean. Note various discarded bits and bobs of the lander: since Eve ascent is so hard, it is a good idea to jettison everything that you possibly can. Back in orbit after using the EMU for a bit. I prefer not to have to rely on the EMU, but I did not want to scrub this mission. The lander turned out to be just a little bit underpowered.