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@DoctorDavinci Stage 3 result: 11 minutes 44.59 seconds Note: OrX does not show the correct stage number. This is the stage 3 result despite the scoreboard saying stage 1.

@DoctorDavinci : Stage 2 results: 11 minutes 13.03 seconds.

@DoctorDavinci Thanks for your improvements to OrX: with the updated DLL I no longer have any problems. And with everything working smoothly I am enjoying this challenge immensely! I also significantly improved on my previous stage 1 time: Still 100% powered by the sun. Well, there's a 200 capacity battery but that's only enough to drive a couple of seconds. My car is quite flimsy so I need to be careful when cresting ridges as it does not take landings well. One thing I did that drastically improved driving: I reassigned W and S (the default for driving forwards and backwards) to different keys (in my case, UpArrow and DownArrow). This prevents my car from taking a nosedive during a jump, as W is pitch down in flying mode. Maybe the more experienced KSP racing car drivers among you know about this, but for me this simple setting change made all the difference. I also include an SAS module to counteract roll, while also reassigning "steer left" and "steer right" to Q and E - which means my car steers and rolls at the same time. This seems to diminish the car's tendency to flip during turns. The SAS module also means I can correct the car's attitude while airborne, to prevent the front wheels from landing first (which will induce a forward tumble and crash).

I think I can do better than what I posted, as I drove around the temple for a bit before doing that screenshot, in search of the end of stage. I'm thinking of doing the stage again using the save game method, if that gives a faster time will you update the scoreboard?

Maybe you can use your example as a setup for their mission? E.g., you land on the Mun as an example, but it is their job to bring the crew back home. And you have given the lander sufficient fuel to get back into Munar orbit but no more than that. So now they will either have to figure out how to land a second ship next to your lander, or how to do a rendez-vous and docking.

Some other bugs in OrX: * Sometimes the Holokron does not appear after spawning on the Dessert Airfield and opening Stage 1. When this happens it seems that starting the race is impossible. Reloading, resetting OrX and trying again sometimes solves the issue but sometimes multiple reloads are necessary to get the holokron to appear. * Sometimes my car gets destroyed when OrX places it on the starting position. It seems that in these cases OrX spawns the car beneath the surface. It also seems that some of the pieces of my car get displaced, but if this is OrX or a consequence of spawning beneath the surface isn't clear to me. * If you are thrown out of the car the Holokron disappears. Running after my car and getting in did not return it. I haven't been able to find a way to continue the race when this happened. OrX only allows me to restart the stage but that is not what I would want in such cases. My conclusion is that OrX is not yet mature enough to handle this Dakar challenge, at least not for me and my KSP setup. I might try again using the savegame method.

@DoctorDavinci: Not sure why but the stage 1 finish flag isn't visible for me. I've driven multiple times over the approximate point where the flag should be according to other posts , but the stage does not finish. Meanwhile, the holokron icon seems to have moved over to the Stage 1 start point. I'm using KSP 1.8.1.2694 64 bits on Windows 10 with Making History but without Breaking Ground. Contents of GameData folder (which, if I am not mistaken, gives a list of all installed mods): The route itself is very enjoyable. Needless to say my solar racing car is not the most durable one out there and it was quite a challenge to get it to the finish in one piece. Awesome work designing the track!

I've made a second version of my STS-5T video, this time without watermark. I also think it is a better cut overall. I've removed the previous video form the thread.

I completed STS-5T. With the low Kerbin orbit missions complete I figured that the Munar free return mission would be an excellent stepping stone towards the Shuttle Mun missions, as it provides a Munar challenge without a Shuttle landing there. I've done free return trajectories before, but never with a Shuttle, and never with the intent of landing in a specific spot on Kerbin afterwards. So this took a few tries to get right. But in hindsight it is not that difficult with the help of MechJeb's landing indicator. I also recently bought Making History (on sale on Steam), so I tried out the Munar Excursion Module for the first time. And what an awful capsule it is, without a reaction wheel of some sort! I guess it could be OK if the stock SAS did not insist on burning through the monoprop for no apparent reason. By the way: the new, updated Mun and Minmus look amazing! As a bonus I took a second Apollo stack - callsign Artemis, Apollo's twin in Kreek mythology - with me in the other cargo bay of my Shuttle, that I landed on Minmus. After inserting the Shuttle on its free return trajectory I unloaded Artemis and tweaked its course slightly. It passed the Mun on the opposite side from the shuttle to get a gravity assist towards the mint-green moon. After fighting with the trajectory planner for the longest time (why does the "closest approach marker" jump around like it does?) I guesstimated its course by hand. This turned out quite well: I needed only a single unplanned 20 m/s correction burn to get my encounter. A couple of notes on the video: 1. Apologies for the watermark. I have been experimenting with different video editing software (I've been using Shotcut before, but it has some quirks that I don't like), and I had no idea that it was going to be there, or as in-your-face as it is, until it was too late. I hope you can still see what's going on. Does anyone here perhaps have a suggestion for good free video editing software? 2. I edited the video so that each major hardware component (booster / shuttle / Apollo / Artemis) of the flight gets its own segment. This means that some events are not in chronological order. EDIT: I've removed the video. See my next post for the updated video without the highly irritating watermark. ♬ This is ground control to @michal.don, I've done so many missions. And I want to know if I have earned the badges? ♬

These 4 videos contain my mission reports for STS-5 to STS-8. Together they document the build process of PRECIOUSSS, my space station. STS-5 has the distinction of being the first operational mission of my third Shuttle, Skywalker. The KSC held a public poll for the name of the Shuttle, and while the name Skywalker was nowhere near the top of the list, it was chosen as it "fit within the existing convention of naming the Gemini Shuttles after famous twins". KSC detractors maintain to this day that this was done simply to avoid the poll's leading entry, Shuttle McShuttleface. After the successful test flight of a fully re-usable booster design, KSC decided to also name the boosters. The Pollux booster was named Leda, after the mother of Pollux in Kreek mythology. Likewise, the Romulus booster was christened Ares. This prompted the denizens of popular internet messaging board 4Khan to start a lobbying campaign to have the Skywalker booster named Lord Vader. Which was avoided by the KSC, who named it Queen Amidala instead. As demonstrated in STS-1b, my Gemini class Shuttle has a payload capacity of about 80 tons to LKO, so doing the required minimum for the challenge would under-utilize my Shuttle's payload capacity quite badly. Therefore I decided to make my station rather bigger then required: I made a ring station out of Mk3 passenger cabins. However, since these do not fit in a Mk3 cargo bay, I attached them as external cargo on top of my booster. There's 24 cabins in total, 6 per flight, 3 per booster stack. PRECIOUSSS will be operated as a space hotel as well as a science outpost. The spoke and hub of the station, which contain the required service and science modules, were carried inside the cargo bays of my Shuttles. I used the booster to launch the Shuttle + external cargo into LKO, where the Shuttle docked with the external cargo by means of a specially designed towbar connected to the booster attachment point,. The ring segments were then taken under tow to a 350 x 350 km orbit. There I assembled the station. I landed all Shuttles and all boosters on the KSC runway, except one: the STS-7 booster landed on the island runway as I overshot the KSC. As a bonus, Jeb flew through the ring after the station had been fully assembled. Interestingly, the idea of having an external cargo bay was studied by NASA for the real Shuttle: the real Shuttle, like mine, suffered from the drawback that the actual payload capacity was often underused because payloads were limited by volume rather than by mass. Variants with external cargo on top of the external tank and on the bottom were studied, with the latter (the Aft Cargo Carrier or ACC) being prefered by NASA because it would still allow an RTLS abort. About these videos: these represent my very first attempt at doing more elaborate video editing than simply uploading game footage. The STS-5 video consists of sped-up game footage with some captions. It is longer than I would like, but I hope that, since it documents every detail of the mission, it will still be of interest to people here. The other videos are heavily edited: Since these missions are all very similar, I tried to cut out everything that is a repeat from earlier videos. I hope that with these videos I did not go too far in the other direction, cutting so much that they are no longer clear.

My space station is complete! I've still got to land my STS-8 Shuttle and Booster, so the challenge is not quite over, but I wanted to share my creation with you all regardless. Behold the Perfectly Reasonable yet Extremely Complicated tOrUs-Shaped Space Station, or PRECIOUSSS for short. Yesss... We wants it, we needs it. Must have the PRECIOUSSS! And before you ask, yes, I've tried. My Shuttle is able to fly through it, if I retract the solar panels. However, unfortunately it does not go invisible.

Very nice! I like how you just calmly flew a circuit around the airfield and landed. Looked very much under control, more so than my jaunt to the mountains west of KSC. Frohe Weihnachten auch fuer dich! (I can understand German quite well - I'm Dutch - but I find speaking (or writing) German very hard, so I'll leave it at that. I hope I didn't mangle that too badly) @michal.don: when will you have time to judge our new entries?

I completed STS-2T, the dreaded RTLS abort. It turned out to be much easier than anticipated: this was the first time I tried it. I expected staging to be problematic, as I've had a lot of problems with that in orbit. Although with my redesigned booster staging has gone much more smoothly lately, and redesigning the booster attachment point (now a docking port, for reasons to be unveiled later) has helped as well. Long story short, I burnt all the fuel in the booster after turning around at 50 km, then staged and lit the OMS engines. The Shuttle separated from the booster very quickly and without incident. I overshot the KSC by quite a margin, but some aerobatics and a bit of help from the OMS got me back to the runway, where I landed as normal.

STS-5 end of mission. One quarter of a space station built, Shuttle landed (parked in front of the SPH, at 2:23 it is visible to the left of the screen), booster about to land. It was at that point that I realized I mounted the probe core of the booster upside down... It was a huge relief that I managed to land the bloody thing anyway, and on the first try. Not my best landing ever, but it stayed on the runway and in one piece. Looking back at my landing, I made a rookie mistake by steering straight towards the runway threshold. I should have steered perpendicular to the runway to find the glideslope instead. I also messed up the trim: during the flip I had to re-trim the pitch, but I accidentally messed up the roll trim instead. With a lot of shuttles and boosters still to land for this challenge, I think it is time I dusted off my flightsim gear instead of flying with mouse and keyboard.

Does this satisfy the STS-6T challenge? I modified my booster into a spaceplane in its own right, launched a shuttle with it, landed it on the KSC runway and taxied to the SPH. The booster did not splash down as stipulated in the challenge but in effect does an Abort Once Around (AOA), which was one of the real Shuttle's abort modes. I also did not need to design any recovery vehicles, other than the booster itself. Bonus video: landing the Shuttle itself and parking it next to the booster.

Thanks! I enjoyed making a coherent story of these flights, glad you like it! And congrats on your excellent Shuttle landing! Good to see a final approach with the same steep descent rate as the real shuttle. I also very much liked to see you land both craft in a single take. Although ... landing on an occupied runway ... :p

@Robonoise I suspect you may be missing the point. Your challenge seems to have two requirements that are at odds with each other: On the one hand you are aiming for historical accuracy, which would require a 2-man LM. On the other hand you stipulate that the entire crew should move over to the LM after the explosion. This would mean a 3-man LM. Both of these cannot be true at the same time. Therefore, can you please clarify the required crew capacity of the LM?

I completed the STS-4 / STS-4R missions. I flew STS-4 as a rather complex IFT telescope servicing mission, which tied off some loose ends of my telescope (added a probe core and extension arms to the comms antennas so that they could unfurl without clipping the solar panels) and made it ready for its final destination at the Kerbin / Kerbol L4 point. At the end of the mission, Bill Kerman's MMU suffered a malfunction, which hurtled him out into space after damaging the shuttle. I then launched the STS-4R mission. Its first priority was rescuing Bill, which was successful after just 1 hour and 50 minutes of flying time. It then rendez-voused with the stricken shuttle to rescue the remaining 5 crew member of STS-4. STS-4R then re-entered directly from inclined orbit before landing on the KSC runway. The boosters from both mission were landed as well: STS-4 booster landed on land, far away from its intended impact point. STS-4R booster then tried to land on the KSC but overshot by some tens of miles and splashed down into the ocean, destroying itself after toppling over. I then flew a salvage mission to the STS-4 shuttle still in orbit. This mission, STS-4S, rendez-voused with the stricken shuttle and installed a probe core. The damaged STS-4 then re-entered unmanned, and managed to land successfully on the island runway off the coast of the KSC. The Shuttle was flyable, but it was very close to the edge with the damaged tail fin. I did not think I woudld be able to complete the extra turn back to the KSC, which is the reason for the island landing. Both the STS-4S booster and STS-4S itself were then de-orbited: the booster landed in sight of the KSC, with the help of some newly installed airbrakes, while the shuttle landed on the runway. And finally, I sent the IFT telescope to its final destination, the L4 Lagrange point. Its final orbit has an eccentricity very close to zero, and an almost perfect period of 1 year minus 4 milliseconds. Full mission reports here: https://imgur.com/a/DFs1RDj (STS-4), https://imgur.com/a/lzTQPOR (STS-4R), https://imgur.com/a/aeaSXYQ (bonus material - all booster landings, landings of STS-4S and the stricken STS-4, and the IFT transfer to the L4 point). Some highlights: Servicing the telescope. An old instrument package is removed in preparation for installing an upgrade with a probe core Mission complete, Bill takes this panorama shot. Note the nuclear transfer stage attached to the telescope Rescuing Bill by means of an improvised ambulance consisting of 2 MMUs linked together. Rendez-vous between the two Shuttles. To the right Romulus, with tail fin missing. Space Shuttle Pollux safely landed on the KSC runway with both crews on board. Romulus landing uncrewed after successful salvage mission And finally, some unapologetic telescope porn. I am really satisfied with how it turned out. Note the displaced shutter: that appears to be due to a bug in KSP: during construction the shutter was in the correct place on top of the central cylinder. I may have to do some digging in the save file to get it fixed. The telescope is shown to the viewer before turning away from the Sun to start its observational life. The orbital parameters are very close to their theoretical values.

"MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY. KSC, this is Bill Kerman of Space Shuttle STS-4 calling an emergency. Over" "Roger that, Bill this is KSC CAPCOM1. What is your status? Over" "I am hurtling head over heels through space in my MMU, the bloody thing malfunctioned! One of the thruster quads is inoperable, throttle stuck in full forward position, SAS intermittent. Happened right after we got the transfer stage in place on the telescope as well, we were just packing in. I have lost contact with the Shuttle, cannot see the Dish anymore either. Over" "Bill, KSC. Ok, I am getting you loud and clear. Your MMU malfunctioned and you are flying out of control. You've lost sight of the shuttle. We will send help immediately, tracking is searching for you as we speak. What's your oxygen status? Over" "KSC, Bill here. I've got 6 hours oxygen left. Listen, what's the status of the Shuttle? I think I hit something on the way, must have knocked me out. Over" "Bill, this is Gene Kerman, flight director. Stay calm, we are going to get you out, trakcing has you on radar. We just got word from the Shuttle: they lost a tail fin and an engine. Both crew cabins are intact, so they aren't in any immediate danger. We will rescue them as well but you are the priority right now. STS-4R will launch at the earliest opportunity. Gene out" Bill Kerman, tumbling out of control through space, miles away from Space Shuttle Romulus. Monoprop depleted, SAS inoperable. He has 6 hours of oxygen left. Will STS-4R reach him in time? STS-4 completed all its objectives, and the IFT telescope is now fully operational. On his way back to the Romulus Bill's MMU - left in space by STS-3 to control the telescope and reluctantly pressed into service because one of the MMUs on STS-4 malfunctioned (for real: it refused to undock from the shuttle cargo bay, I think I encountered a bug with the docking ports) - short-circuited and threw him uncontrollably into space after hitting the shuttle's tail assembly. Full mission report of STS-4 tomorrow, I'm too tired right now.

A rare sight at the KSC: both Gemini Shuttles ready for launch at the same time. In the foreground Romulus, ready for its STS-4 maintenance mission to the IFT telescope. In the background Pollux, fresh out of the Orbiter Processing Facility and ready to fly rescue mission STS-4R, should anything happen to Romulus. In another complex IFT mission, Romulus will install a new instrument package with an improved image sensor and a probe core, which the telescope is lacking at the moment. Two antenna extensions and a nuclear transfer stage will be added to the telescope as well. The plan is to then fully check out the telescope before moving it to its final location, far away from any disturbances: the Kerbin / Kerbol L4 Lagrange point. As an aside: as you are probably aware, stock KSP does not simulate multibody dynamics, and hence no Lagrange points exist in the game. I will simply move the telescope to a position 60 degrees in front of Kerbin in its orbit, where the L4 Lagrange point ought to be. The reason I am doing this is that this is the closest in-game analogue to the James Webb Space Telescope that I could think of. The JWST will be launched to the Earth / Sun L2 Lagrange point, but it is impossible to put a spacecraft in the location of the L2 point in KSP and expect it to stay there. You can, however, orbit a spacecraft at the location of the L4 (and L5) Lagrange points.

Thanks guys! I quite enjoyed building it, and I am glad you like it as well! I might even do another one: I made a prototype with gold-foil Restock parts for the mirror and that one looks absolutely stunning.

I finished my STS-3 mission. Mission report is here: https://imgur.com/a/CPWhTQF. During this mission I used two mods that I hadn't hitherto used: Infernal Robotics (for the telescope shutter) and DockRotate. The latter enabled me to precisely rotate mirror segments into place after docking. While you can be pretty accurate with the docking alignment indicator, I was unable to get perfect alignment without DockRotate. Update: I also landed the booster. While the plan was once again to land at the KSC, we came nowhere close. Although we at least made it to the same continent as the KSC this time, and more or less under control. So there's definite progress on the booster front. Some highlights: The IKEA Flatpack Telescope, crammed in the two cargo bays of the Romulus Space Shuttle. And the real reason for the name, although coming up with cringe-worthy names and acronyms was part of the fun for me. Placing the mirror segments. Note the mirror segment in the foreground, with the MMU attached. It was supposed to have a docking port in front, like some of the other segments that have already been put into place. Without a frontal docking port I could only extract this mirror segment from the side, then dock with the other MMU from the back (all segments have a docking port in the back) before placing it. When grabbed from the side like this, the segments (which weigh 1 ton each) are very hard to control. Kerbal-handling the biggest piece of the telescope, the Secondary Mirror Attachment, into place. I used both MMUs for this, as it is utterly uncontrollable with just a single one. Moving one of the solar panel trusses into position. It attaches to the back of the telescope, so there's still some way to go. Ironically, this, being the only mandatory assembly step in the STS-3 challenge, was quite routine compared to some of the other assembly steps. With the telescope dish looming in the background, this is my favouite image of this mission. The IKEA Flatpack telescope, fully assembled. i used Infernal Robotics to actuate the telescope shutter. This shutter, made from a 1.25 meter heat shield, protects the delicate instruments in case the telescope is ever accidentally pointed directly at Kerbol. I forgot to include a probe core in the telescope, which is the reason for the docked MMU. With the MMU I could steer the telescope despite the lacking probe core. Among other missing hardware, a probe core will be added to the telescope during the upcoming STS-4 telescope servicing mission. Something will go badly wrong during this mission, which will give rise to a rescue mission. This rescue mission will be my entry for the STS-4/STS-4R challenge. On final approach. I re-entered and landed directly from inclined orbit. It would have been fun to have a time-lapse video of the entire assembly process, but my video-editing skills are non-existent. So I'll leave you with this short clip of the finished telescope.

What better way to spend a day off work than building a telescope? It is nowhere near finished, but here's a preview of assembling the IFT. One segment of it, to be precise.

The International Kerbol-system Explorers Association, IKEA for short, is proud to present to you BILLY: the Beautiful and Immensely Large Light-collecting arraY. Yes, the acronyms are almost as terrible as in real life! Colloquially named the IKEA Flatpack Telescope, from the shape of the packaging of the individual mirror segments, it will enable Kerbalkind to spy on its interstellar neighbours like never before! Some assembly will be required... Design is not yet finalized but I think you get the idea. Each mirror segment fits inside a Mk3 cargo bay... Just. This thing is BIG. Please note that I got this image using the cheat menu, this is not mission footage. Assembling the telescope in orbit will be a major undertaking, so actual mission footage will probably be some time in the future.

Thanks for the badge, and for yet another suggestion to solve my landing gear problem! The telescope is still in development and I am not going into details yet (there's some issues in maintaining alignment during orbital construction that I need to solve first, and some redesign to do to get the components to fit into my Shuttle) but let's just say I got inspired by the JWST and the Giant Magellan telescope ;). As to RTLS: I haven't tried yet, but that may well be a major problem. I'm not confident that booster separation is even possible during an RTLS abort. One obvious solution could be to blow the booster into several pieces with decouplers but I'll just have to see. There's a different RTLS that I have given some thought: it might be possible to do an RTLS with the booster (like SpaceX does with Falcon 9) and circularize the orbit with the OMS system. This would come with a serious payload penalty, though.