king of nowhere

RDU should be installed by default on the hitchhicker module, so you should have it. if you don't have it, don't see it in the processes (still in the kerbalism window), then sometimes reloading works. if reloading does not work, then you may be able to edit the save file; open it with notepad, look for your craft, see if you can find the rdu and disable it. of course, keep a spare save in case you mess it up. if that doesn't work either, you can just send up another mission - you are still in kerbin orbit, easy to reach - and install some extra solar panels and batteries on that ship, so that it can take the extra expenditure. really, kerbalism is full of bugs. in my latest grand tour with it, i counted 47 different bugs. trying to fix them all is hopeless. if it doesn't crash the game, then just find a workaround.

if you are using kerbalism, then you can hover your mouse over the electricity consumption in the kerbalism window on the top right corner of the screen, and it will say what's consuming electricity. my best bet is some science experiment: many science experiments with kerbalism last days or months, and they require electricity - sometimes other resources. my second best bet is radiation decontamination unit; it draws some electricity, and it also consumes some oxygen.

reviewing your submission now. unfortunately, there was the giant server crash that prevented any work for a long time before. was your full mass roughly 300 tons?

no idea on that. i've always covered them entirely

no, the mod doesn't support that; it will always take the average exposure among all living parts. that said, you don't need shielding for storms. rather, storms are so severe, interplanetary trips are very hard if you are counting only on shielding - though you may be able to get to Duna or Eve on a period of low solar activity. the protection against solar storms is to put some other part, generally a fuel tank, between the sun and the crew cabin. the game checks for that, and models the use of other parts for shielding. again, it averages all the habitable parts of the ship, so make sure there are no living spaces hanging on the sides. for example, here you can see that construction made of short, squat tanks being used as a sunshield. notice how radiation is over 5 rad/h, while habitat radiation is still 3 mrad/h (that's just the background, didn't have the active shield available). notice also how I made the sunshield larger on the sides where i'm hanging those pods, to keep the pods covered. shielding can reduce damage from background radiation, though an active shield is generally better for that. the most important use of shielding is for crossing radiation belts. there is no other way to reduce damage when coming close to jool. for most other uses, shielding can be neglected

if you mean building rockets, the "near future" package of extra parts work with kerbalism. if you mean moving the launchpad to other planets, no idea.

thank you for taking over the challenge!

i don't know of guides, but i can describe the process. you know how higher orbits are slower. you just use that. first, put your first vehicle (let's call it target) in a 90x90 or 100x100 orbit. i recommend leaving some room to lower orbit without entering atmosphere. now launch your interceptor. to save time, you can launch when the target moves out of the desert and crosses over the ocean, the interceptor will reach orbit very close to the target, but it's not necessary. send interceptor to orbit. first thing to do, fix inclination. you have to eyeball it, but you can be fairly accurate. you have to place your view so that the target orbit will appear like a line, and the interceptor orbit will also appear like a line. when you get that view, you will have one of the nodes straight in front of you. i had a picture where i did it on jool you see, the green orbit of jool appears like a line, and i rotate view until also the orbit of the ship looks like a line, that let me see the ascending/descending node. make a burn accordingly. this let you fix inclination to within a fraction of degree. at this point, you must catch up with the target. if the target is in front of you in a 90x90, get into a 80x80, or 85x85 orbit. if you are in front, use a 100x100, or 95x95 orbit. you will be slightly faster/slower than the target, and will gradually get close. when you get within 100 km of distance, you will see the target pointed in the screen, and you will be able to acquire it as target and see it in the navball. you will keep getting closer at each orbit. when you come close enough (if you can get within 5 km, it's better, but you can do this at 20 km too, it will just be more expensive), you burn towards your target. use the navball to establish a prograde speed directly towards your target. i recommend at least 30 m/s if you are at 5 km, 50 m/s at 10 km, 100 m/s at 20 km. This will be fast enough to counteract orbital drifting, you are just flying straight to your target. make corrections as you go, you should come close enough to stop and start docking procedures. if you don't come close enough, when you start to move away from the target, you just cancel your speed relative to the target, and burn straight towards it again. i hope i was clear enough. it's hard without more pictures. i recommend bringing at least 200 m/s of extra fuel to account for docking, because this way is obviously more expensive than the one involving maneuver nodes. in fact, i advise you bring 400 m/s for the first attempts. With practice, it can be done with 100 m/s. it can even be done with less if you are very careful in setting your orbits - say, target in 90x90, you get into a 89x89, this will guarantee you will pass at 1 km from the target at slow relative speed eventually - but it's longer and more boring.

it's so weird to read most people posting here are asking about transmission rate. in all my years playing with the mod, i never even remotely cared about trasmission rates. i just let science transmit at whatever pace it wanted; i installed this mod for the life support, the radiation, the challenge. i always had to contend with dozens of bugs anyway, anything that doesn't break the game is not worth worrying about. reading this thread is like looking at a parallel reality with inverted priorities...

fixed

final question before adding you to the board. do you remember the mass and part count when you started? I didn't see that information in the report, and with a ship so complex, i think it should be added

i don't i have the motivation to spend a couple hundred hours just to make a record. especially because it wouldn't require devising any novel solution; i'd just have to do the same i've done before, but stopping to deploy those experiments along the way.

ah, nice one. I thought if there was no connection, those experiments would stop. had no idea you could pick them up and collect their science. just like i beat the previous record by finding a trick to collect surface science from water, you beat me by finding a way to recover deployed experiments. congratulations on pushing the boundaries of what was assumed to be possible. so, how much science can be recovered that way? is the grad slam biome specific, or planet specific? could you recover more by carrying 37 impactors and doing a grand slam on each biome of every moon?

sorry but the numbers don't add up. the rules say "science collected, not transmitted". that, i was explained when i started doing those missions, means that the deployed science experiments are not to be counted. so, stuff like throwing objects at the moons while recording with seismometers should not have been counted. however, that's not where I am having issues with the numbers. those science experiments should not be counted because the science they produce is transmitted, not stored in any ship. So, when your ship return, it should not carry those experiments. indeed, I did deploy some such experiments myself during my last mission, because I forgot some inside a rover I imported from another career and I may as well use them, but they transmitted science; it wasn't brought to the ground. except, that's what apparently happened in your game. you got 146561 (that's the actual number that matters, science brought with the ship) science, which is actually higher than the theoretical maximum should have been. Exactly because, according to everyone's best knowledge, science experiments deployed on the ground with the breaking ground expansion don't produce science that way. How did you get to store that science in the ship, when I'm not aware of any way to do that? I want to understand what happened before validating that. P.S. Maybe you answer in the report, but it's very long, I will read it along the next few days; I want to clear this as soon as possible.

well, nobody forces you to use those crazy overpowered engines in the first place... you could also use them at low power to reduce heat produced, you get low thrust but still high efficiency

the more mods you install, the more it becomes likely that stuff like that happens. and i never, ever got any solution to any of them. my advice is, as long as they are not critical, just deal with them. in the specific case, recreate manually the staging sequence on the launchpad before launching. launch planes from the launchpad - maneuver out of the launchpad proper, then use the grass as a runway. avoid time warping while on kerbin's surface, go to the tracking station if need warping. the thing with the zoom and Z-X being broken looks like a bug i have occasionaly, in that case just reloading the game does the trick. and if restarting the game fixes the thing with the editor, keep doing it. sorry, i know it's not the answer you'd like. but there isn't anybody who can actually fix your bugs, so if you want to play with all your mods you have to play around the bugs. sometimes it's worth the effort, i've done it. In my kerbalism+rss mission, i recorded no less than 47 bugs. 90% of times, the solution was one among "reload the game", "restart the game", "ignore it and include a greater cost into mission planning", "don't do that thing". otherwise, you have to play stock.

you can go to minmus without any of that too. that did the trick. no fairings - i never could afford to pay their tech, but this thing is reasonably aerodynamic anyway. it does require a bobcat engine, but you can get one with a contract without unlocking the tech node. the spark engine doesn't really help, future versions skipped it. no need for gravity assists either. this thing has over 500 m/s more than strictly needed for a minmus mission, which is enough to compensate for all inaccuracies caused by the lack of maneuver nodes.

build better rovers. it's entirely possible to build some that don't roll down

it would probably be a lot easier to just assemble something in orbit. you said you're not good at it, but with some practice you would become. i wasn't good at many of the things I eventually did in the challenge; the challenge forced me to stretch and learn no idea. though i suppose you could just open a new thread and declare yourself the new challenge holder

depends on the decision of challenge holder. he awards it when he feels it appropriate. that said, i'm afraid he may no longer be active... I already picked up the task of keeper for the jool 5 challenge, i don't want to take a second one. mostly because i'd feel crass rating my own submissions.

as you can see in the picture i linked, you build a vertical rocket, then put the docking ports laterally, and dock the boosters on the side that way. you have to go a bit by trial and error to get the right height on the docking ports, but once you do, you can make your standardized set of dockable boosters and use it all the time. sometimes docking stuff like that collapses the whole ship. it would be better to use ground stabilizers, i didn't because i couldn't afford the tech and the extra parts. maneuvering on the ground with just plane wheels is going to be though. you will need plane engines on your tanker to move, one pointed backwards because you will need some way to reverse gear. if you can, better to undock the boosters from the tanker rover a few seconds before docking the rocket. if you dock the booster while it's still attached to the tanker rover, it can cause microclipping that will damage the whole vehicle. you also need some engine with good gimbaling, to compensate for the fact that those extra tanks don't always get docked perfectly straight. anyway, if you can manage orbital rendez-vous and docking without the control station, it may just be easier to get extra fuel in orbit. yes, it is fully possible to make a minmus mission with caveman without docking. however, it's not trivial, especially if one finds orbital rendez-vous without maneuver nodes difficult. and especially if one hasn't unlocked the ant engines and has to use the heavier terrier. it took me a bit to refine the process until i could make it reliably.

how would you plan to use docking ports if you build a rocket on the ground? do you have rover wheels unlocked so you can actually move stuff on the ground? and if you do have that, you don't need to build on grassland. make a rover on the launchpad, then send rovers from the runway with stuff to dock. I made extensive use of this technique in my nanodiamond runs. Some descriptions available with mission reports here (starting from part 7) and here (starting from part 4) unfortunately, the descriptions are all over the place, as i wrote of various new improvements i found in the chapter i found them P.S. if you unlocked the Oscar B, you can manipulate that in eva construction on kerbin with 4 astronauts

makes sense, if you can aerobrake on kerbin. i kinda forget that most people just return from jool in a reentry pod, without trying to keep a functioning mothership.

2300 m/s on vall surface, or on vall orbit? in both cases, the answer is yes. if you are already in vall orbit, it should be easy enough. if you are on the surface, you may need a gravity assist from tylo. in fact, using gravity assists, you should be able to return to kerbin with no more than 500 m/s from vall orbit. the deltaV map has its perks, but to move between the moons of jool, it's completely useless. it tells you how much you'd need to reach the moon from a low circular orbit around jool... why would you want to enter a low circular orbit around jool in the first place? that's an awfully inefficient way to get to a moon. also, this should not go in mission reports, but in questions

If you want long challenges that will keep you busy for some months... Try the no contract career challenge. Do a grand tour. Do a nanodiamond caveman. Try the whirligig world planetary pack. Try a grand tour there. Do a jool 5 with kerbalism installed Do a grand tour with kerbalism installed. Do a grand tour with kerbalism and outer planet mod installed Do a grand tour of the real solar system with kerbalism installed. Do a nanodiamond caveman with kerbalism installed. Do a Duna mission with caveman limitations Do a Jool 5 with caveman limitations Doing the above kept me busy for the best part of 4 years. rss+kerbalism alone took 9 months.