RoninFrog

LKO crew delivery:

Arrival at Minmus and return to LKO: Return to Kerbin on crew shuttle:

Nice! I like the mountain range belt.

Ok, this post is my committal to this challenge. The missions will be posted here: @Death Engineering, am I doing everything right so far?

@RoninFrog is doing another challenge! So he needs a spot to dump all his stuff so it doesn't clutter the challenge thread! This challenge is the... It is a pretty intense challenge covering the first ten years of the game, with launch mass limits, life support, rocket construction time, and transfer window management. Hm! First, I need to create the save I will be using. "Game difficulty settings: 'Enable Comm Network' ON, 'Re-entry heating' 100%. Advanced settings: 'Part pressure limits' ON, 'Part g-force limits' ON, 'Kerbal g-force limits' ON." Okay, I've never played with part G-force limits and I don't even know what 'Part pressure limits' does, so here goes, I guess! Unexciting screenshot of game settings: Here's a collection of all the crafts launched: So here's what's up next. I need a Standard Launch Vehicle to loft my payloads to orbit. "One prototype of the heavy lifter ... will be ready with payload for launch pad roll-out on Day 40. New lifters will be delivered on a regular, fixed schedule." The schedule is calculated as one launch vehicle every "NPM (Nominal Mass Payload) * 6" days. The first Duna launch window is in 220 days, so if I want to launch two payloads, I will nead a NPM of 30 tons. Now it's time for designing! First two payload designs: First launch setting out for Minmus: Well, that's all for today! Tomorrow I will hopefully land on Minmus and refuel, if all goes well.

Are you only using nuclear engines to circularize, or are you using them to get suborbital also? Just circularization: Try aiming slightly above the horizon, maybe 45° up. The upward thrust will give you a little more time to circularize. Ascent: If you are having problems getting near orbital velocity without sinking back below 30km, try aiming 15° above prograde and make sure you have a TWR of at least 0.4.

Not 100% sure on this, but I think you are going to lose connection when you get to Venus. The trajectory is currently on the night side of Venus, but in half a year, it will be on the day side. I'm pretty sure based on the encounter time that Kerbin Earth is going to be on the dark side of Venus when you get there. You might want to change that, it'd be terrible to have another situation like that first Mun *ugh* Moon landing attempt!

If you have over 1.5 million funds, you probably should be out of the survey contracts. I strongly recommend just declining a whole bunch (maybe 10) of them, and then the survey contracts won't bother your any more.

As I was drawing up some plans for this challenge today, I encountered a couple things I don't quite understand. Resources are not allowed to be transferred to/from the crew shuttle, but are the samples for "Biome Diversity" allowed to be returned on the crew shuttle? If the base is mobile does it score all 6 points for Surface Mobility, or just 3? I am planning on sending an ISRU mission to Minmus first. If the transfer time is less than ten days, can I have zero ore (for life support) aboard until I arrive? In the mission end rules, it says I need to bring all the kerbals back in the end (point 2), but it also says the outpost needs to stay active (point 3). Do I need to bring some kerbals back to the base or something?

But the thing is, comets don't have trails out near Jool! I vote we build it around Kerbin, and then somebody can haul it to wherever they want.

I bet @Matt Lowne has.

...or it's just @cubinator.

I'm pretty sure the moderators can get your IP adress, so you cannot escape.

I'm guessing she's just gonna be another one of the KSC staff in the admin building.

Today, I couldn't decide whether to build a tank or a plane. So I did both. This is the Sergeant, a tank capable of sustained flight and carrying 12 passengers! It takes off nice and easy if you hold S at 70 m/s. Exactly 70 m/s. No more or less. Its landing abilities live up to its looks as it's capable of landing in hazardous terrain: It also gives some pretty awesome screenies around twilight!

I built a tank! I didn't really model it after anything, I just made it up. It's about 22 feet long, 10 feet shorter than the M1 Abrams. Now what is the point of building something in KSP if it doesn't fly? It's a bird! It's a plane! Wait a sec... Nope, it's a tank! Banking around for a landing! With such a low wing area, stalling is a serious threat! Landed! This "plane" can take some really rough landings! Craft file here.

Question, does the plane have to make a 1000 km range to enter? I have one that I'm really proud of but it only goes 500 km, and I'm wondering if it would count.

Didn't change the staging at all here: Of course, it helps if there's only one stage.

Fledgling 1N-00 A brand new company, the Kessler Microplane Aerosyndrome, has just put its first plane on the production line! The Fledgling 1N-00 is a Supersonic, Low Capacity, Long-Haul Airliner, capable of taking a dozen passengers anywhere on Kerbin. Some other pics: Stats: Passengers: 12 Cost: 8,088,000 Takeoff speed: 75 m/s Stall speed: 40 m/s Cruising speed: 580 m/s Cruising Altitude: 10km Range: 7700 km Picture of cruising stats: This plane does not take very many passengers, but it is cheap. At merely 8 million per plane, you could buy a dozen of them and still be under 100 million. Even though it is a weensy little thing, it still competes with the gargantuan jetliners for price per kerbal, meaning TKA could buy a whole swarms of them instead of buying a gigantic, unwieldy beast as is common in the High Capacity category. The Fledgling 1N-00 is primarily designed for new air-travel entrepreneurships. It is really cheap, affordable for young airport networks. It can circumnavigate Kerbin twice without refueling, so it would do well in an airport network with only a few airports scattered across Kerbin. The long range also means it doesn't always need to refuel between stops, so it has access to remote, rudimentary airports that don't have the equipment to refuel the plane.

Setting something as target will show by how much you miss if your maneuver node doesn't get an encounter. It doesn't really help a lot for the Mun since the Mun is so big and close, but it is useful for Minmus and essential for interplanetary transfers. Also, you can sort of pan the camera by right clicking on a part and clicking "Aim Camera".

Stick on some airbrakes. If the booster blows up, add more. If the airbrakes are overheating, retract them for about 3 seconds. I did a whole bunch of booster recoveries in this thread, if you want some examples of successful booster returns.

Well, if comets are grabbable and not on rails... hehehe...

I landed a spaceplane on Duna! Here it is in reentry. It was right about here that I noticed that if a spaceplane has enough wing area to land on Kerbin, it doesn't necessarily mean it can land on Duna... I think this Duna colonization mission I have recently been doing is the most untested, poorly designed, cobbled together thing I have ever done. 300 feet up, over 150 m/s, and dropping like the brick this shuttle is... Smash! Quicksave... Smash! I was completely at a loss as to what to do. It seemed hopeless. Then I asked Jeb, "You got any ideas?" "Oh you bet!" said Jeb. It was a radical plan. A Jebediah-level plan. The first thing was to stall the plane at 10km up. The next step of the plan was to plummet backwards, straight down, through a cloud of radioactive exhaust! Oh, yeah! This, my friends, is how to properly land a plane in KSP! Holding really stable, and a steady speed at around 37 m/s. Come on, don't anything break! Ha ha! Yeah! Perfect touchdown!

Duna base! I'm really on a roll today! First, a Lantern rover was deployed to find a good spot. I got a spot that is equatorial, flat, low altitude (denser atmosphere), acceptable ore, and a view of Ike. Once the spot was found, the habitation, docking, and power modules were landed via parachutes. Everything was going just peachy. Even though I didn't land close to the Lantern, it was okay since the modules are mobile while not assembled. This part of the base was delivered without a hitch. The hub and ISRU modules, on the other hand, were a disaster. Ten parachutes slowed me down to 15 m/s, but that wasn't enough. Every time I tried it, I would either bust a drill on one end, or destroy a docking port on the other. So, I tried not dropping the landing stage, using the last drops of fuel to slow down. It kind of worked! The ground was really flat, so I managed to land upright on those four girders. But when I tried to tip myself over, I would fall too fast and those blasted drills would always blow up. It was quite a situation. ...and then, I had a totally kerbal idea! What if, instead of jettisoning the landing stage, I jettisoned the parachutes! Yeah! Then, I could use the landing stage to lithobrake! Brilliant! And it worked flawlessly. I jettisoned the chutes about 150 meters up, and then slammed into the ground at around 50 m/s. The landing stage was completely flattened, and it scattered debris all over the area. The base modules fell over on their side, and a few seconds later, the parachutes floated gently down into the wreckage. It was a real mess, but Tomrod did a quick inspection of the modules, and nothing was broken. The reaction wheels weren't enough to right the craft, but fortunately extending the drills worked great! Tomrod trundled on over to the rest of the base, and everything was successfully assembled.

I've seen some really, really huge ships made out of one fairing. It might be doable.