king of nowhere

well, bigger boosters would be better for simplicity and to reduce the workload on the pc, but in the last months i am only doing challenge missions with huge ships, so that even a pack of a half dozen clydesdales in support to a central stack of mammoths is not enough to lift them. so, moar bigger boosters is the more appropriate.

What are those "landing flags" that can lithobrake at 150 m/s without breaking? the slingshot is very nice.

A more cheaty way is to use the alt-f12 menu to set visible biomes. It has the added benefit that you see the night side too. personally i don't feel that specific use is cheating, because it doesn't give you anything that you couldn't get from kerbnet and some bookkeeping, nor does it prevent risk or allow you to do anything you couldn't do without it. It merely saves some time and effort. but everyone decides where the line is drawn in regard to cheating.

hey, I run well over 5000 km on rovers! exploring surfaces can be a lot of fun, and rovers are great if they are properly built. By "properly built" I generally mean "capable of surviving and overturning themselves if they tumble". I can point to my dancing porcupine rover; cruises at 30 m/s, is virtually indestructible at that speed, and it has rockets and isru. it can explore the whole system on its own except laythe, eve, kerbin (atmosphere gets in the way), tylo, moho (too much deltaV to get there from anywhere). and it has a nice cupola as a pilot post, so you can drive in first person. which makes me think of what i could contribute to the thread: a space vehicle must not just perform its function, but also be fun to drive, or you'll get bored.

Wait here, I'm really curious Taranis, Sucellus, Epona; I recognize those names. They were characters in the Fall From Heaven mod for Civilization 4. What are they doing here? Maybe the guy who made the interplanetary mod liked FFH, so he used some names as homage? Maybe the guy who made the interplanetary mod is the same one who made FFH, and he recycled some names? Maybe they are, like, super common fantasy names that any random name generator will spawn?

Part 5: Eve sucks, but it's not too bad In the first part of its trip, Bolt reaches the Eve system and deploys the landers. The monoliths are found on Eve and Gilly. Some difficulties were encountered that forced a ship redesign. 5.1) "Think of it as a learning opportunity" 5.2) From LKO to Eve elliptic 5.3) Eve landing 5.4) Flying over Eve 5.5) Rejoining Bolt 5.6) Driving on Gilly

I am the OP, and the challenge of driving in low gee does not really apply if it's not really low gee. Anyway, the challenge there is a no isru grand tour while finding all the green monoliths. My fuel must last for all the planets, I can't waste it for driving. But it turned out there was no need

yes, but if you want to get a decent simulated gravity (munar gravity is the minimum to comfortably drive a rover) you need to spend a crapton of fuel. At this point, especially on Gilly, it truly becomes more convenient to take a suborbital jump.

I did something i would have considered impossible, or so impractical as to make no difference: drive a rover on Gilly! for you see, i came for the green monolith, and i aimed for it during landing. i didn't take into account how slowly you fall on gilly (30 minutes from the "suicide brake" to actually touch the ground) or how fast the planet rotates, so i ended up quite far. At first i thought about a suborbital jump, or just sending a kerbal by jetpack. but my lander had a rover arm and wheels (it's intended for use on multiple planets, including those where wheels work), so i had to move it closer to a ground feature. it took me ten minutes to get the hang of actually going somewhere. the trick, of course, is to go slow. move slow, accelerate slow. use SAS for stability, but deactivate it to resume touching the ground. once i figured out mobility on gilly, i decided to use the rover to cover the rest of the way. my cruise speed was between 2 and 2.5 m/s, with top speeds reaching a breakneck 4 m/s!!!! (it may not sound like much, but that's one quarter of the orbital speed. it would be like 500 m/s on kerbin). but the planet is so small, it actually took less time to cross Gilly at 2 m/s than it took to explore Eve with a plane at 100 m/s. gilly is a very beautiful celestial body, and i am happy to have taken the time to learn to drive and spend some time on it. I recommend the experience to anyone who likes exploring surfaces.

on every planet there is a single green monolyth, generated at random in a different place for every new game. finding it gives a free tech. to find it, you have to use the kerbnet and scan for anomalies. it's easier to do it than to explain it. finding one gives a free technology. anyway, it's quite an uncomfortable way of getting a tech. just landing and getting all science from the biome is worth more

I was thinking i could move any piece while in orbit. indeed, the counter says "no mass limit". But i just discovered i cannot shift nuclear engines. or really big tanks. even with 4 kerbals around to assist. is there some fixed mass limit that can't be surpassed? is there any way I can move around NERV engines?

there is a very simple method: try to change the angle by slight increments. if the plane goes faster, then it's good. this way you get the optimal angle for the top speed. if the plane is slowing down for some reason, turn it back.

I have discovered two green monolyths after filling the tech tree. i did not get told that i already have all the techs or anything like that. instead, i am told that i discovered "experimental engines" and "nanomachining". which are technologies that don't exhist in the tech tree. furthermore, those names are translated into my language, so it doesn't seem to come from a mod - a mod would not be translated. so, what's the deal? the stock game has a bunch of bombastic names for non-technologies just for the case of the green monolyth, or what else?

single stage to ocean reopened it. i saw it in the first page. and when i checked the date, i didn't look at the year...

well, of course you can't make anything as small as sojourner or ingenuity with this game. if nothing else, the minimum size for a probe core puts a harsh limit on that

When undertaking the jool 5 jeb level challenge, i sent a ship inside jool to get science from the lower atmosphere, so it qualifies (Part 4A, the linked youtube video). Includes getting the kerbal out of the cockpit to get a crew report

well, depends on how you define "space station"... but since you talk about modules attached horizontally, i do believe my Dream Big definitely qualifies. It is a giant mothership intended to provide life support and supplies during a grand tour. It has 14 docked ships, of which 11 manned, and 10 of those are attached radially. Linked thread has the complete mission report, in particular Part 4 has pictures of the ship in kerbin orbit, Part 6 has the ship at Duna, Part 2 has a detailed account on the ship assembly. Part 9.2 eve has the ship make a high thrust manuever while in a strongly asymmetric configuration (was balanced partly by engine gimbaling, partly by shifting fuel between the tanks) You decide whether it's a "space station" enough for your purpose.

I fail to see a significant difference between the two

and yet, we routinely refer to deltaV as starting from low kerbin orbit, and it's much more practical than to specify "from a 78x81 km 1.5 degrees inclination orbit", so it seems there is an actualy point in using "high" and "low" when you're not looking for precision. I would see no point in talking about mid-orbit, but perhaps someone, somewhere will find useful to use that. but yeah, i agree in not seeing the point. for our purposes, if it's not low orbit, it's high orbit. low orbit is the door to and from a planet. you get in low orbit before landing. once you start, you reach low orbit first. to leave, you start low for oberth effect. and that's a low orbit. and if you're not in low orbit, you're in high orbit. you don't go in high orbit unless you have specific business there. sometimes you park your interplanetary ship in high orbit because it's cheaper to leave, that's it. mid-orbit... what would that even be?

depends on your objective. for single mission deltaV: moho. no competition, by far the most difficult place to get to, cheaply. but if you can spend some, it's easy enough. for return mission: eve. again no competition. if you just want to land a probe it's easy, put a thermal shield and a parachute. if you want to return a crew, you need a big rocket, and to get that rocket though the atmosphere you need to go crazy. for landing safely: tylo. the high cost of rocket braking throws off all my instincts, i always start the suicide burn too late and i end up crashing on the ground multiple time before finally landing safely. but it's still cheaper than moho to get there, and cheaper than eve to leave. tylo is also a killer place to drive a rover on; high gravity, no drag, and steep ravines. I suffered a lot of accidents there. Eeloo deserves a mention for finding an actual intercept, the first time i spent half an hour with the manuever node because its SoI is tiny compared to its surroundings, plus its inclined orbit means the game won't even give you a close marker. but once you have an intercept, the rest is easy. Jool's inner atmosphere should get a mention, but it's actually easier to go there and to return than it is to land and take off from Eve. i have a spaceplane that can do it with jool, i tried it on eve and it got trashed on the way in, and then it couldn't return to orbit. but i guess jool sea level is bound to be harder than eve. Laythe deserves a mention in combination with the kerbalism mod. Kerbalism, among other things, adds radiation belts, and laythe is deep inside jool's ones, so that while getting there is no harder than usual, getting a crew to laythe and running away before the radiations kill them is quite difficult

jet engines. i used one a couple of times when i was playing career for early atmosphere survey contracts. then i learned to make propeller planes. I don't do career anymore anyway, and if my objective is to gather science from every biome of laythe for a challenge, i don't want to worry about fuel. furthermore, if my vehicle is a spaceplane that's supposed to return to orbit and rejoin the mothership afterwards, then two counterrotating rotors and a few rtgs to power them up are maybe 1 ton of weight, leaving enough room for rockets and fuel to orbit. if i have to put a jet engine and jet fuel in addition to everything else, i can forget ever orbiting again. i tried to use docking mode once, but by then i was used to lkijhn, so it didn't stick. but i wouldn't call it a major feature. mission builder definitely gets a mention, i don't even know what it is or what it could provide that i cannot get with the alt-f12 menu

I was just looking for new challenges, when I stumbled over this expanded deltaV map And I thought, wow, that's exactly what I need to make a grand tour more complicated! except, I can't find the mod in question. which is strange, because many people talk about it, it seems quite famous. But both forum search and searching in the mod library gave no results. can someone kindly link me to the mod page? thanks

Part 4: Goodbye Nail, welcome Bolt The ion engine pack is removed and swapped for a nuclear engine pack. Moar fuel is added. The ship doesn't look like a nail anymore, so it's now called Bolt 4.1) Plutonium for the plutonium god! 4.2) Fuel for the fuel throne!

Question: is kerbalism compatible with the outer planets mod? now that I made a grand tour with kerbalism, I am looking for the next challenge, and adding more planets seem like a logical direction to go...

sandbox. not sure where it would fit better in the leaderboard, it certainly wasn't a jeb's level - if nothing else, kerbalism completely modifies the way science is collected there were multiple kerbals per moon, and i had a total of 6 kerbals doing the various landings. i didn't keep track of which one landed where, i may qualify for the part where you land someone different on every moon. no wait, i don't, because the FU Eve only had one place, and i sent down the engineer both times - the mission needs the engineer cause he has to fix the engine. i don't even remember exactly what the other categories entailed