king of nowhere

he said that the lander has to come back to kerbin, so returning with the eva astronaut is not an option. i have managed to stretch my fuel to 2550 in orbit, which is just enough to make the full trip. unfortunately, my ship is so aerodinamic, i crashed on coming back because it didn't aerobrake enough. and adding a decoupler after the command module would already be enough extra weight to stop me; I came back to kerbin with 12 m/s left. working on improvements

another question, am i allowed multiple flights? and, do i have to plant a flag on mun, or just touch down? i can skip landing gear in the latter case do the ship have to land back to kerbin, or just the astronaut? in the latter case, i can skip the parachute on the ship EDIT: I take back all the questions. with astronaut complex level 1 i cannot make EVA, so i cannot plant flags, and i cannot eject my astronaut close to kerbin surface and let the ship crash on return. also my plan to have the first ship land on mun and get back to orbit, running out of fuel in the process, and have the astronaut get out of the ship, finish orbiting with the jetpack, and wait a second rescue ship, must be scrapped.

i am one of those that said early career, and indeed i've done it cheap enough, but i did have a level 2 launch complex. trying without will be challenging. do the landings need to be manned or not?

i've been looking for efficient wings for an eve ssto of my own, and I have been hugely frustrated by the lack of available informations. I posted repeatedly in the "help" section and I got very little useful information. most people seem to think i shouldn't even try to look for solid aerodinamic data before designing a plane! so i'll take this chance to ask someone who obviously knows it: what are those magic parts? how do i tell them from the others?

900 is enough for most purposes. I'm not sure it can transmit a full scanner report, and it defeinitely won't be able to transmit all the science from a full science lab. aside from those corner cases, it will be enough for everything else. be careful to time your jool plunge to a moment when you actually have contact with kerbin

Challenge completed. details on the mission report. I did indeed use only 3 missions, and I overstepped the target by a fair bunch

Part 4D (8) The travels of Marco Polonium 2, final part: Eeloo, Dres, Eve, and HOME! reaching Eeloo Getting to Eeloo is this, compounded a thousandfold. I wanted to intercept it on the orbital node, which I knew the planet would reach in approximately 4 years 80 days. And the Marco Polonium 2 was indeed passing through the orbital node in approximately 4 years 90 days. And try as I might, I still could never find a close approach. I could get to 5 million km, and whenever I got below that, it would disappear, and reappear in a completely unrelated part of the orbit. It didn't help that I was trying to find that intercept while orbiting a moon in a highly elliptic orbit (my orbit around the moon, not the moon's orbit). In the end I had to give up on that, give myself a slight nudge to quit Pol's orbit, and from a circular orbit around Jool it was much easier. Still a crappy experience, though. This time, my trajectory was about 50 m/s more expnsive than the minimum calculated, but what the hell, it was difficult enough already to find any kind of trajectory with this crappy encounter system. By the way, I'm now down to the last fuel canister, and since it creates a significant imbalance in my center of mass (it's like one third of the total mass, hanging on one arm), I had to adjust my rockets to avoid swerving on the side The trip was long, but uneventful. Eeloo has no special challenge to orbit or land it. Again, I fixed my orbital inclination with the trick of staying in a very elliptic orbit first, and changing inclination while on the far side. Orbital speed of 5 m/s! A curious glitch where a boulder seems to be floating Eeloo to Dres After Eeloo, since I had plenty of spare fuel, it was time to hit Dres. Now, let me clarify something about Dres. You may have heard that Dres does not exhist, and it is just part of a big conspiracy. Indeed, nobody ever visits Dres. The thing is, Dres does indeed exhist, but people would wish otherwise. Dres ruins people's lives. It is an unremarkable planet. It has some nice canyons, which are nonetheless much less nice than the Mun's one. I still have to drive my favourite rover through Dres canyons, but they look like they don't compare. And it's goddamn expensive to reach. You can ignore its orbital inclination when you get an intercept on an orbital node (indeed, the only places in the orbit where it is somewhat less expensive to get an intercept) but you still need to pay that as injection deltaV. And then, when you leave Dres, you again will have a high inclination compared to anything else. And there is no atmosphere to aerobrake, and it's also too small to use for gravity assists. But if I want to complete my tour of the outer planets, I have to go there. At least I have enough fuel left; even though I discarded the last fuel canister in leaving Eeloo and I only have the main tank left, now that I'm down to 40 tons of mass, the Marco Polonium runs very cheaply. And here I am in Dres orbit, barely below the escape speed. Getting a lander on the planet and up again is so unremarkable I didn't even think to take pictures. I also roved around the surface a bit, visiting 3 biomes. I also fell down one of the canyons, because I was too lazy to take a detour. By now I'm feeling very tired. I've been about this challenge since the end of august, and each time I could have surpassed it, but each time I decided to come back and do it better. Now I have fulfilled all my objectives, and a part of me just wants to be done. I did that this nice picture of scanning a Dres meteorite, though This is the last I've used the lander/rover. I have 800 kg of oxidizer left, enough for about 1500 m/s. In the end, my estimate on how much rocket fuel I would need was pretty much spot on. Dres to Eve, via Duna Since I still had enough fuel left, I decided to take a detour and visit Eve. I was hoping I could reach Gilly, but even barring that, I could at least orbit. But getting from Dres to anywhere is a big mess, because of the aforementioned orbital inclination. An Eve intercept would require at least 2 km/s for injection. How can I lose that accursed speed on the Z axis? By aerobraking on Duna, of course. I can get an intercept for Duna much cheaper than I can get for Eve. In Duna I can enter orbit completely by aerobraking, and this will conveniently match me to Duna's orbital inclination and speed. I can fix whatever remaining inclination from a highly elliptic orbit. Then I can orbit around Ike with a fairly low cost, and when the transfer window comes, I can fall back on duna and use it to slignshot away, again for a relatively low cost. It's much cheaper than going straight for Eve. I have to reiterate, I love Duna. Both times I didn't need to get there, and both times I found going there more convenient than going straight for my target. Thank you, you beautiful planet! I don't care that your surface is ugly, I love you anyway. See, Dres, you should try to be a bit more like him. Aerobraking from a cockpit perspective. The thing attached in front is the lander/rover, which I attached there to keep the ship balanced. Reaching Ike was a bit more expensive than last time, I couldn't find an equally good gravity assist and I ended up spending some 100 m/s between various manuevers. Still, cheaper than starting from low Duna orbit. Now, 700 m/s should be enough to put me in an intercept with Eve Unfortunately, I wasn't able to skip a 300 m/s plane change midway. I'm not understanding it, but somehow all other attempts to reach eve would still cost 300 m/s. I could cheat on inclination to reach Eeloo and Dres, but not Eve? this deserves some consideration. Also, I'm growing increasibngly impatient with reaching the end. At the beginning, I would have strived harder for gravity assists, but now I just want to be done. And here I enter Eve's orbit. Unfortunately, the direction is completely wrong to reach Gilly. I also could not aerobrake (tried it, ship broke up completely), so I had to spend some additional fuel. I could have reached Gilly, at the price of being stranded there. Back HOME! I was left with only 1 km/s, just enough to get back to Kerbin.In fact, it was enough only if I didn't spend any extra. An elliptic orbit is great to leave the planet, but only if you can burn prograde near periapsis. And of course, during the Kerbin transfer window the direction I should have left was completely different. With too few fuel to try tricks, and not enough motivation to look for gravity assists, I decided to brute force the problem. I did my periapsis burn and managed to cross Kerbin's orbit on a node. Then I would just have to wait to reach the planet. I'm gaining 40 days every year, and I'm about 100 days ahead of Kerbin. I will have to wait in this orbit... something like 8 years. In the last one, I will have to make a slight correction. Once more, this #### #### #### close approach engine wasn't any help I am actually on an encounter course with Kerbin, I haven't done any manuever between those two screenshots. Just, in the second I fixed a manuever node a bit ahead of time. In the first I still had a manuever node set so that I would reach Kerbin in three quarters of orbit, and still the #### #### #### engine would not spot my encounter. I could forgive every other bug, but not this one. The other bugs, I'd have no idea how to fix; for this close approach, I myself could easily design an algorithm that does a better job. Kerbin intercept. I had to raise my periapsis to 60 km, or the ship would be destroied. I still broke a science Jr, but at this point I didn't care anymore I forgot to turn off the rockets for a bit, and I was left with 90 m/s and an apoapsis at 8000 km. I could have saved fuel by stopping just after stabilizing orbit, but again, I didn't care anymore. I moved lander/rover to grab what's left of the Tylo/Laythe lander for recovery. Bob grabs the 280 science experiments stored in the container to bring them to ground Detaching for the last time Aerobraking. I lost the wheels to go faster, again I didn't care Home, sweet HOME!!! The Marco Polonium 2 has traveled for 34 years and one month. Which, incidentally, is also my age, within a few weeks. there may be some cosmic significance to this Obligatory massive science screen. I could have gained more if I hadn't been broadcasting all the crew reports (was convenient to keep track of which biomes I already experimented) The exact amount of reputation hopefully does not have any cosmic significance And finally, the end screen. All buildings upgraded, 3 total missions used (counting a big ship assembled into orbit in multiple launches as a single mission, not counting missions that did science on the launchpad without ever flying), 2.5 million funds left. Challenge completed. The end

the most comfortable way to reuse rockets is to send a big enough rocket to enter orbit with a single stage. then you detach the payload, deorbit the rocket, and recover it. I developed this launcher that's the best I can do for money effectiveness. with a payload fairing and a good trajectory, it can bring 25 tons in orbit, at a net cost (considering to recycle the rocket) of around 11k kerbodollars, slightly less than 500 per ton of payload.

I have a mothership with nuclear engines, that use only liquid fuel. It drops a lander that uses normal rocket fuel. Right now, I have more oxidizer than the lander needs, and I can't burn it with the nuclear fuel, and it adds weight. I am regretting not putting in a fuel valve, or I would dump some oxidizer into space to increase my mothership deltaV.

recently i have gone to bop, then from bop to pol, and now i am trying to go to eeloo, and each of those tasks would not be hard, if there was a decent way for predicting orbits. For you see, I know that eeloo will be in the orbital node around year 13, day 1. And I know that my ship is not too far from that. But I cannot visualize it in any way. I'm shooting blind. Sometimes I find a close approach. it says something like 5 million km. then i fiddle a bit with the manuever. and i gradually reduce that until... it disappears. and get replaced by another close approach that's bound to happen in 25 years, at tens of millions of km. I keep getting "close approach" markers at the farthest points from the nodes, where I cannot possibly get an approach. And I'm growing quite angry at it. this has nothing to do with skill, it's a limitation in the game's ability to give informations. So I conceived an easy solution: the ability to set up where you want your close approach. So I would be able to point on eeloo at the orbital node and say "I want to have an approach here", and then the game will always show me the closest approach there, it will show me how close I am to hitting eeloo on the node. It would show where my ship would be when eeloo is in the chosen position. perhaps a nice time interval, "give me the closest approach in a time window between 3 years 300 days and 4 years 100 days from now". that can't be too hard to implement.

Part 4C (7) The travels of Marco Polonium 2, part 2: Laythe, Vall, Bop, Pol Tylo to Laythe As I was hoping, once in orbit around a joolian moon, it is fairly cheap to move to another. The main expence here was circularizing around Tylo, and then reaching escape velocity again. But it takes only a very small extra to reach Laythe, and even less for insertion. Look how close to circling Laythe my intercept comes. It's maybe 5 m/s to enter a stable orbit, and it can easily be achieved by aerobraking even in Laythe's unforgiving atmosphere. I spent quite a bit of time refining trajectories. I can't count on gravity assists anymore, but I can try to minimize intercept speed. For it was commanded Thy shalt not wasteth any droppe of fuel For greater precision, I split the ejection burn in several apoapsis raising manuevers, as I did for leaving Kerbin Some more spectacular views. Those are the last, as the outer moons are quite ugly At Laythe I gradually circularized with aerobraking, until I entered a 50x100 orbit. In retrospect, I could have dropped my lander from a higher orbit, as my feared shortage of rocket fuel did not materialize after all Whether luck or skill was involved, I managed to drop my lander in the middle of Laythe's biggest island at the second try This had the additional advantage of landing at 4000 meters of altitude, where the atmosphere is only 60% of its sea level pressure. It makes for a much smoother ascent The new, improved Laythe lander flew very nicely in the atmosphere. Despite starting from a wrong angle and having to be steered, it never fought against the commands and it always remained very stable. I got a perfect launch the first time, but I went back and launched twice more, just because this rocket was a pleasure to pilot. And I reached orbit with 270 m/s left, despite starting with the tanks 20% depleted. However, Laythe has oceans, and thus it has 2 achievements for landing: one for landing on land, and one for landing on water. For this, my plan called for deorbiting the spent tanks (remember that this lander was made to drop everything after laythe, to save weight for subsequent trips) in a suborbital trajectory and hope they would count as "landing" My periapsis was 50,1 km. The jolt from the decoupler was enough to send the spent part of the lander in a suborbital trajectory. Thy shalt not wasteth any droppe of fuel indeed. It took many orbits to finally reenter atmosphere, though. The whole process was hampered by a glitch where adjusting the game speed after leaving the atmosphere would raise my periapsis by 200 meters. when you're counting on a 49.6 km periapsis to aerobrake, that's a huge difference. The tanks crashed into the sea. Unfortunately, that was not enough to get the splashdown achievement - which apparently requires for the vehicle to not disintegrate on the spot. After some deliberation, I decided to sacrifice the service probe for it. it had control, and it had a rocket to brake. I kept it around in case it turned out to be useful, and indeed I used it to rescue some launch vehicle that had run out of electricity during assembly of the Marco Polonium. I also used it to rescue the lander on tylo from a low orbit, though I eventually reloaded that. I was reluctant to give it up, but I couldn't think of any situation where it would be necessary - I could recover from blunders with a reload anyway. With this, I discarded two pieces of the Marco Polonium. Two pieces that have done their job, and have done it well, and after all this time flying them around, I'm getting a bit emotional about it Eulogy for the lost ships The Tylo/Laythe lander was born as a one-shot. It was only meant to be used twice, it was meant to be cheap, and it was meant to be light, and it was meant to have a low part count. And yet, it performed admirably. Both times it was used, it flew without a glitch - in Tylo's case, despite having the descent stage attached asymmetrically (you try getting a perfect alignment with a claw). Both times, it ended up spending less fuel than planned - heck, in Laythe's case I was able to save two whole tons of fuel out of 10, though that was achieved by leaving them in orbit for they were not needed. Both times, it rocket-landed on high gravity world on rough terrain, and it didn't flip once. Despite a lack of landing legs. Tylo/Laythe lander was a real pleasure to fly, a unique fact for this career. Lander/rover... well, the best that can be said about it is that it fulfills its tasks and it is very cheap to operate. Even the Marco Polonium itself, when you get down to basics, is just a command module with some engines, with two landers and a bunch of fuel tanks strapped to it. The only reason it does not pull to the side is that it accelerates so slowly, the reaction wheels can compensate (now that the ship is much lighter, I cannot use it at full thrust). Everything I used in this career had some glaring weakness that I was forced to accept to keep up with the constraints. Everything except Tylo/Laythe lander. I said about my reusable launch system that it was the only vehicle I'd import for a regular career. But I was wrong. I will miss flying this lander. When I conceived the Marco Polonium, everything about it had a specific function. Everything was meant to be used in a very specific part of its voyage. Everything... except the service probe. I sent up the service probe because it could be useful at some point. It had one claw, oversized engine and wheels, as its intended task was moving tanks. But there was no real need for it. the tanks are properly secured, and they will only be released to be discarded. Even when I had to detach the post-Laythe refueling tank because i was dropping on Tylo first, I found it better to use a manned ship for the task - communication was an issue. Sure, I did detach the service probe before leaving Kerbin's SoI, and rejoined it with the main ship around the sun, getting some achievements for a "space station" in Kerbol orbit. But I could have used a lander for it. I could have discarded the service probe afterwards. Instead I kept it. Because I though it would be useful. Gradually, I worked out all the kinks from my trip, and eventually it became routine. There was no need for an emergency service vehicle. Still, I kept the service probe. And when I needed something controlled to make a final descent into Laythe's seas, service probe was there. Though it was never designed for it, when I had a need that I could not fulfill with any of my other vehicles, service probe rose up to the task. Rest well, little probe. You did, indeed, turn out to be very useful. Laythe to Vall Getting a Vall intercept was challenging in that, as soon as I was fast enough to leave Laythe, my apoapsis was much higher than Vall's orbit, resulting in higher intercept speed. A good intercept required a different launch trajectory. But I'm quite proud of the result The ejection speed is the bare minimum to leave Laythe, and the injection speed is only 10 m/s. If my calculations are correct (a bit difficult to keep into account elliptic orbits) , that's 25 m/s cheaper than what alexmoon launch planner was calculating as the cheapest trajectory. Now I'm back to using the little lander, and the Tylo/Laythe lander ended up not using some of its fuel, so I again keep my orbits as elliptic as possible to save fuel on circularization Thy shalt keep thy apoapsis as high as thy can, for thy lander consumeth less fuel circularizing and raising again than thy mothershippe The only limitation is the lander's authonomy of 2150 m/s, of which 1700 will be needed to get down to Vall and back... Again, I crashed into Vall's surface many times, trying to find the very last second to brake. Bob admires the surface shortly before crashing landing on it Scanning a boulder Now, since Thy shalt not wasteth any droppe of fuel, I decided I would climb the highest mountain available before taking off. Seen from this perspective, mount triangle (so named because it has a triangular summit. Yep. Aside from some random bouts of creativity bringing me to names like Marco Polonium or Dancing Porcupine, I generally suck at naming stuff) may not seem much, but it is 5500 m high, and the lander landed at 2000 m. It took 5 days to reach the top. The final slope was very long, and I could only climb some 200 meters before I run out of battery. That, at this distance from Kerbol, took one hour to recharge. Unless there was a Jool eclypse in the way...and all for saving 10, maybe 20 m/s. Totally worth it! I reunited with the Marco Polonium with 30 m/s left of fuel. So yes, totally worth saving every scrap I could. Though it's still almost three times what I had left after Ike... Bop Bop is difficult to reach because of its inclined orbit. Hell, no. Bop would be a joke to reach. If this #### game was any decent at calculating closer approaches. So I set up a closer intercept at 2000 km. And then I start moving, very carefully, the cursor. And the intercept would gradually diminish. 1900 km. 1850. And then suddenly it would disappear. No, the distance does not start increasing. It just disappears. And I would see some other "close approach" marker pointing to something 20 orbits in the future that for some reason the stupid game has decided is the closer approach. and it's not even an approach anyway. And in this I know I have an approach just outside of the SoI, but good luck finding it blindly. And a course correction would be more expensive than getting a good launch immediately. The only good thing about it is, the deltaV for a vall-Bop transfer is pretty low (some 400 m/s total), so it's not a huge deal if I end up in a slightly suboptimal trajectory (blasphemy! Thy shalt not wasteth any droppe of fuel!) Anyway, after about half an hour of fiddling with the manuever node, I managed to find an intercept that was 1) exhisting, and 2) cheap. Since Bop has low gravity and orbital inclination is cheap to adjust, I decided to go look for the kraken. I landed some 40 km from it. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to reach it with the rover. the terrain is so rugged, and gravity so low, I kept capsizing and crashing, even though I was trying to go slowly. Add in the ever-persistent problems with getting enough energy, compounded by being close to the poles, and in shaded valleys After needing several hours to make 10 km (most of those time spent reloading) I decided to go with the jetpack lower flag is landing. Upper flag is kraken. The lander is exactly where I got tired and decided to use the jetpack. Pol Getting away from Bop towards another small moon had the same problems of going in. Also, every once in a while Bop and Pol are aligned while closer to the orbital nodes, and this results in a cheaper launch window. I spent 150 days around Bop to wait for it. I opted for a close periapsis because intercept was cheaper, and i stabilized in the most elliptic orbit i could to fix my orbital plane cheaply (at an orbital speed of 17 m/s, I could make a 34 degrees inclination change with almost nothing. it was delightful) Pol would have been hard to land because of its rough terrain, if it hadn't such a low gravity. I landed against a ravine, but it was all right Staying landed, though, turned out a bigger problem, when my lander capsized and actually grabbed my EVA astronaut with the claw. A feat I tried to achieve without success other times I had to chase the lander down all the ravine. Luckily, the gravity is so low, nothing broke (and I had previously retracted the solar panels fearing such an eventuality) It turned out, my initial assessment when I launched the Marco Polonium 1 wasn't too far off the mark. Yes, I run out of fuel, but it is true that after Laythe and Tylo, navigating the remaining moons is quite cheap, and it becomes even cheaper as the heavy lander is discarded. Indeed, I think if I had just a couple fuel canisters more at Laythe, I would have managed to complete the tour without needing to go back and make a new ship. Though perhaps it was for the best, as I could achieve much more this way. I finished the Jool system, and I finished my stated objective. I have 4.5 million funds, which may be enough to upgrade all the buildings already. I could go back home Done during a transfer window, this manuever would see me on Kerbin intercept with 1300 m/s of deltaV. Intercept speed would be 2000 m/s, I'd need to slow down to 900 to stay in Kerbin orbit, then I could slowly aerobrake. But I still have 30 tons of liquid fuel on a 65 tons ship, which should give me about 5000 m/s of deltaV. And I am close to a Jool-Eeloo transfer window. So I'll try to reach Eeloo first, and then if I have enough spare fuel I will even try to reach Dres. In any case, I have managed the initial objective of winning the challenge with 3 missions. Now it's about seeing how far I can overshoot that.

unlocking the drills and converters already requires a level 3 r&d, so it's not a question.

to be more accurate about antennas: - all antennas can transmit science, but not the one in the probe cores. those can only be used for control - only some antennas can be used as relays, to extend the reach of other antennas. you can find more specific informations on the commnet article on the wiki and the article on antennas. long story short, having a close by relay satellite can extend the reach of other vessels, but only if it has the right kind of antennas: those that in the antenna article are marked as "relay capable: yes" regarding kerbin reentry, if you have a science-jr, then reentry is very tricky, because that part is very fragile to heat. it can be managed, but only with extreme care. I keep suggesting a higher periapsis and achieving landing in multiple passages. Heck, i'd performed a dozen aerobraking manuevers the last time i needed to land safely a science-jr. regarding manuevering the periapsis, if you burn radial when you are far from kerbin the cost should be very small, less than 1 m/s to raise/lower periapsis by 10 kilometer.

I'm sorry you had some bad experiences. I've started by asking this community, and i always found it very helpful. Let me think how I can provide... - as for a ship, you can get to mun and back (even land on mun, with skill) with the command pod, 4 tons of fuel, and a terrier engine. that will provide all your needs, if you can get it to orbit. So a good ship for the task would have the command pod, 2 solar panels, 1 extra battery, 1 parachute, 1 fuel tank for about 4 tons of fuel, and one terrier engine. that's 7 parts. to get it into orbit you need a bigger rocket, so you can use a decoupler, followed by some fuel tanks and eventually a reliant engine. maybe even some solid fuel boosters if you need some extra. Anyway, you should comfortably be able to get to orbit with your mun ship, within the 30 parts limit. If you want more, in this post I explain how I made a ship to land on mun, take off, reach minmus, land on it, and come back, with the 30 parts limitation and less than 30k funds (though i would not advise you to replicate just that, those ships are very bad to fly; but the orbiter stage, that you can easily copy). - as for trajectory, first you must enter into kerbin orbit. then you burn prograde to a mun intercept (there is a tutorial for that). you will need approximately 850 m/s. after your flyby, you must try to enter the atmosphere with a low angle. you don't want to smash into the atmosphere or you'll burn for sure, you want to just touch it and slow down gradually. for this, you want a high periapsis. some suggested 40 km, but you can even use 50 or even 60. in this case you won't be able to land at the first passage, but each time you pass through the atmosphere will slow you down a bit, until eventually you will land. make sure to always point the ship retrograde while in the atmosphere, that should protect the most sensitive parts.that's my general approach towards mun missions. i never try to land at the first try, i always slow down with several passages in the high atmosphere. it is cheaper than loading a thermal shield. But how to ensure you get a 50 km periapsis? you can burn radial/antiradial (the blue targets) just out of mun sphere of influence. the farthest you will be from kerbin, the cheapest this manuever is going to be. - whenever asking help in this forum, it is highly recommended that you take screenshots and post pictures of what you are doing. I guess part of the reason many posters are giving bad replies is that they are frustrated with you because you don't provide enough information. and in your frustration, you look like you're blaming the very people who tried to help you for your problems. If we could figure out more clearly what you are doing, we'd have a much better chance of telling you what you are doing wrong. - this game is meant to be realistic, and in space, realistic is hard. in fact, it's already much easier than reality. Still, there are several people who are finding it too easy and are looking for mods to complicate issues. We are space enthusiast. We like things this way. And a good game should be just hard enough to really challenge you. See above for people finding this too easy. anyway, you can't have realism without having difficulty. if you do not like making spreadsheets to keep track of your mission plans or detailing every single part of a ship to make sure it can perform its mission, or spend 10 minutes fiddling with a manuever node to try and get a more efficient trajectory, then this may not be the game for you. no shame in that. games are like food, everyone has different tastes - [some people are] genuinely trying to help, and he generally gives good advice I hope I was helpful. When I started this game I already had a pretty deep knowledge of astrophysics (i knew about periapsis, apoapsis, orbital nodes, hohmann transfer orbits, and how to go from one orbit to another, though i didn't expect it to be so expensive fuel-wise), but it still took me a lot of effort - and help from this forum - to figure out how to do some things. I can't imagine how difficult it can be for someone starting without even that theoretical knowledge.

maybe you are not doing a good gravity turn? it must be flown precisely. A good trajectory I aim for is going up until 50 m/s, then tilting eastward by 5 degrees every additional 50 m/s of speed, so that you should be pointing 85 degrees at the 100 m/s mark, 75 at 200 m/s, and 45 degrees at 500 m/s. at this point (sometimes earlier if I am satisfied with the trajectory) I just let it hold prograde. I sometimes can squeeze a bit more of efficiency by turning a bit faster, reaching 45 degrees inclination around 400 m/s, but that's risky as the smallest mistake will send the rocket too low. After 500 m/s I throttle down for a while until reaching a 75 km apoapsis, then I coast. i start the circularization burn around 20 seconds before apoapsis, since the (mostly spent) rocket has a huge twr Or maybe you didn't autostrut and your payload started swinging, making you lose efficiency? Or maybe you didn't use a full fairing but a simple nose cone and your payload still had bad aerodinamics? (mind you, even with bad aerodinamics it is possible to launch 20 tons. with good aerodinamics you can get past 25) If those are not the problem, I don't know what it could be. The design is very simple, a twin boar and two rockomax jumbo

how does that make any less hassle than any of the other solutions to it?

normal, nothing changed

yes, just stock and no mods. there are the breaking ground and making history expansions, nothing else. P.S. i don't see my name on the participant list

Part 4B (6) The travels of Marco Polonium 2, part 1: Kerbin, Duna, Ike, Tylo Which planet to visit first? The first dilemma to answer before even turning on the rockets is where to go first: Jool or Duna? Duna is easy to reach, I can use a Mun gravity assist to save some fuel, and reaching Jool is cheaper from it. On the other hand, I have 30 tons of Tylo/Laythe lander that I can't wait to drop off. And visiting Duna when going back also is not too expensive. My first attempt then was to reach Jool directly. This turned out to be the wrong idea, because of the little problem of TWR. Yes, fully loaded with fuel (fuely loaded?) the Marco Polonium 2 has a TWR of 0.11. And adding more engines is not an option. Sure, I can raise my apoapsis first. But to reach Jool I need a 2000 m/s burn, and at least 1000 m/s must be done when on an escape trajectory. That's a 15 minute burn, and no way around it. I tried, and I ended up spending some 2500 m/s for the whole thing. I also studied gravity assists, but unfortunately Kerbin, Duna and Jool are never aligned (I gave up after reaching 15 years). I also checked Eve, but a gravity assist from it would pull my apoapsis up to 20 million km, still a far shot from Jool. Not much to be gained there. So I tried going to Duna First. In this case I can easily raise my apoapsis for 600 m/s and split my mun flyby burn into convenient chunks. I only needed a dozen m/s of correction. Kerbin to Duna One big problem for going to Duna is the 600 m/s for capture. I was trying to find gravity slingshots that would help with it, making a flyby on the first approach only to meet Duna again on the next orbit with a lower intercept speed. And while I was experimenting with that, and trying various ways to help with some aerobraking, I discovered that I can actually get a full aerocapture at the first pass! I dipped down to 22 km, I lost 600 m/s, and I didn't even start overheating anything! I think I'm falling in love with Duna. It's perfect! Its atmosphere is thick enough that you can do aerobraking, aerocapture, and even use parachutes with just a little bit of rocket braking at the end, but it's thin enough that it won't be a huge obstacle when you want to leave. It has enough gravity that you can get a decent kick from a gravity assist, but small enough that going around is cheap. Wonderful planet. I managed to get captured, but I didn't circularize. I retained an elliptic orbit so it would be cheap to go to Ike It's only 20 m/s from there Then I dropped my lander Bob contemplates the sunrise from the window of his lander Landing was no problem, I ended up in one of the lowest parts of Duna. Unfortunately, this makes leaving more problematic, because my lander has such poor aerodinamics that even Duna's atmosphere can be a serious hindrance. I looked around for a mountain on the equator that I could reasonably reach. I ended up traveling 100 km with this crappy rover on Duna. But hey, I put wheels on it because I figured they may be useful, and they totally were! flag is where I landed, at 500 m of altitude. Mount Inadequate is where I took off. I called it Inadequate because, at 3800 m, it's not as tall as I was hoping for. The previous time I did this, I had a 7000 m conveniently next to my landing place, but I was on the other side of the planet. Ok, I admit I cheated a bit here. I run perhaps one fifth of that distance with the rover. Then I got bored, and I decided to skip direcly on the sloped of mount Inadequate with alt-f12. But it's not like I couldn't have done it regularly. I just saved myself four hours of driving Mount inadequate offers 3% less gravity and 30% less atmosphere than my landing spot, but still at 200 m/s I had to turn down the throttle as the atmosphere was fighting against my ship, and keep the speed constant until I went above 15000 m. Climbing that mountain with the rover, I saved myself 15 more seconds of that, and related fuel. The rover has 2100 m/s available. Even if I spent more than usual on the ascent, I still had enough for rendez-vous with Marco Polonium 2, with a comfortable margin. It was time to move to Ike. Duna to Ike With Duna I was able to get aerocaptured. With Ike, I was determined to use gravity assist to reduce injection burn. Which is just 30 m/s, but still, why not? I found a good trajectory. The first flyby raised my Duna periapsis, and after a few more orbits and 3 m/s of course correction I found myself in a second flyby with just 10 m/s of intercept, saving 15 m/s. Well, I also entered with a high periapsis so it would be cheaper to leave, so I may have saved 25, maybe even 30 m/s! Meh. I somehow doubt it will make a difference. I don't remember anymore what this trajectory was supposed to be, and I can't figure it out again. But surely showing this picture will make me look more badass This is my trajectory after the first flyby The only problem in all this is that I had loaded the fuel in my lander to comfortably land on Ike, no more. It's pointless to load the full 2 tons of fuel if I will bring back up most of it. So, as it takes 400 m/s to land on Ike and the same to leave, I loaded around 1000 m/s worth of fuel. I didn't consider how keeping my mothership in a high, elliptic orbit, not to mention orbiting opposite with the planet's rotation (orbiting in the right direction would have required more course corrections), would increase those costs. I ended up rejoining the Marco Polonium 2 with 12 m/s left. Ike to Jool The best way to make a big burn from a moon is to fall back on the planet and use it for a slingshot. It's what I did here Unfortunately, it's a 12 minutes burn (the game says 8, but it's wrong). But if I time it right, I can perform it while my ship is always going in the same direction, without losing too much efficiency I tried this manuever three times, always weighting the ship at the end, to find the best place to start burning. It's difficult to estimate exactly how much I lost for inefficiency of the long burn, probably 100 m/s or a bit less. Here I am transferring fuel in real time and dropping fuel canisters as soon as possible. Doing the sums, I spent 900 m/s for Duna intercept 0 m/s for insertion 50 m/s to get into Ike orbit 1200 m/s for Jool intercept 50 m/s or less for various small course corrections for a total of 2200 m/s, actually cheaper than when I tried reaching for Jool directly. First sighting of Jool Jool and its moons are always stunning Bill also likes them By now I have enough practice navigating the Jool system with gravity assists. With this Laythe assist I get captured by Jool I could save fuel on subsequent manuevers if I managed to aerobrake seriously on Laythe. Good thing I reinforced the ship just for it. To prepare for aerobraking, I retracted the solar panels and I moved lander/rover to a more protected position It's a bit disqueting seen from the cupola, though In this configuration, I tried aerobraking with a 35 km periapsis and.... got destroied. Badly. Laythe's atmosphere is so strong, I went from 3500 m/s to landing on the planet (those few debris that survived). Later attempts showed that even 48 km are not survivable. And by the way, the solar panels can be retracted, but the batteries cannot, and they are also quite sensitive to heat. I wasn't able to brake more than 5 m/s from that atmospheric pass. From my current orbit I could get in Laythe orbit with about 1000 m/s. I will look for more gravity assists to reduce that. First thing to try is raising the periapsis and see the effect on the next flybys. And while I was looking for ways to reduce the cost of orbiting Laythe, I stumbled upon something unexpected: a cheap trajectory to Tylo Jool to Tylo With only 57 m/s of correction, my next Laythe flyby will put me in a course for Tylo. What sold me on it is the low intercept speed, only 170 m/s to get captured (and a LOT more to circularize, but there's no way to avoid that. My various stages are intended to be dropped in order doing Laythe first, Tylo second, but they can be managed. I will spend a bit more by not visiting all the moons in order, but finding such a cheap trajectory for Tylo vastly offsets any extra cost. Furthermore, the Tylo descent stage is the heaver of the disposable landers, I will be able to get rid of a lot of mass even sooner than I was planning. And while I am in Jool orbit with a low periapsis, I take the chance to drop my lander for a dip into Jool's atmosphere. Val will have the dubious honor of doing a spacewalk inside Jool's atmosphere, if she's fast she won't get killed by it unfortunately, that's a significant deviation of trajectory, and I must rejoin with the Marco Polonium 2 before we get different gravity assists and end up in completely different directions. If I had a couple orbits to wait, I could do it more easily, but as it is, I had to reload because the 1200 m/s of fuel I loaded in the lander were not enough to get back. I needed full tanks, and I spent most of them. But I won't have another chance for a close pass inside Jool, and I won't have another chance of a good transfer to Tylo. 2 tons of rocket fuel will have to go Jool from Val's perspective I had many false starts on Tylo. At first I was trying to land from an elliptic orbit, to save liquid fuel. However, I eventually realized I was running low on rocket fuel. Loading less fuel seemed a smart way to save weight when designing the ship, I didn't consider that with more rocket fuel I can drop my landers from higher orbit, saving fuel for the ship. Now I wonder if I could improve my mission design by planning extra rocket fuel for this, but I really would rather not have to build the Marco Polonium 3 one 20-ton piece at a time. After some considerations (which included crashing into Tylo, landing on Tylo and failing to have enough fuel to leave, crashing into Tylo, crashing some more into Tylo, trying to land from a lower orbit and failing to have enough fuel to reach the Marco Polonium 2, crashing into Tylo, sending the lander/rover to tow the Tylo lander, reloading and sending the service probe to tow the lander, and crashing some more into Tylo, because saving fuel requires the more dangerous trajectories) I decided I would circularize with the Marco Polonium on Tylo and Laythe, because I have a heavy lander. On the other moons I will stay in a high orbit and send down the lander/rover, which is lighter and less consuming. And this required reloading several hours worth of gaming, and crashing into Tylo many more times. Landing on Tylo before Laythe required tampering with my fuel tanks. First i must grab the post-Laythe refueling tank with the lander/rover sorry for the bad lighting, but Jool is too far from the sun to get a good illumination Then I have to detach the Tylo/Laythe lander, and then I decouple the post-Laythe refueling tank And finally I attach the lander to the Tylo descent stage. Being careful to hit the center, because it would be bad if the thrust was off-center. And being careful that the lateral tanks and the thud engines are staggered, or they won't give propulsion and will burn my tanks instead. On the plus side, if the thud is pointing at a solar panel, I can just retract the panel And since I had to change my strategy, I did this procedure 3 times And finally I can decouple the Tylo descent stage and start landing An optimized landing is a complex matter. On one hand, I would like to use the swivel engine as much as possible, because it has higher Isp than the thuds. I also would like to drain the top tank and discard it fast, because it's heavy. But I also need a high TWR to brake before crashing onto Tylo, which requires keeping the descent stage. And finally, I must be careful to not be hit by the descent stage when i release it. Eventually, I set off for starting at 40 km, braking with the swivel alone until I am at about 20 km and a bit less than 1,5 km/s, transfering fuel from the descent stage to always refuel the lander. Then I activate the thud and i start braking hard. When there are 5 units of fuel left in the descent stage i release it, the remaining fuel will send it far from my lander (trying to turn around to release the tank safely costed me too much time and made me crash. Releasing the tank otherwise caused my lander to be hit and destroied by the descent stage. using the thuds earlier was too inefficient fuel-wise). Still braking, I manage to stop my lander at 200 meters from the ground. I didn't take any picture because there was no time. But eventually I managed, and I even saved some fuel over what was planned. actually, when I landed, the ladder was shadowed. I had Bob pose for 3 days while the sun reached the right position for a picture. Still more scenery porn After leaving Tylo, I rendez-vous with the lander/rover, which is still grabbing the fuel tank. Leaving the discarded tank behind like a camper with no sense of civic duty, I then rejoined with the Marco Polonium As you can see, I am down to 3 fuel canisters from the starting 7, plus the "core", non-detacheable tanks. But I dropped a lot of mass with this whole Tylo business, and those tanks I have are all full. Ship mass is now 108 tons, with 62 of fuel for the NERVs. I estimate the remaining deltaV to around 8000 m/s. It's impossible to make an exact estimate because there are the drop tanks, the lander fuel will be depleted... Looking at the deltaV map, it's going to be a close thing. I may have to skip a moon to make it back to Kerbin, but for certain I will be back with enough money to win the no contract challenge. But will I win the "Marco Polonium visits all the Joolian moons" challenge? Next step will probably be Laythe

I wanted to take an awesome picture of my tylo landing. unfortunately, the sun was angled such that the ladder used to dismount the ship was in shadow. So I waited 3 kerbin days to get the sun at the right angle. I wonder what Bob would be thinking when they told him to keep posing until the sun moves enough... I could have taken the picture from the other side, without the ladder. But it wouldn't have been the same, wouldn't it?

works for me too. which just saved my ass when i had to quickly transfer fuel before dropping a tank during a tylo landing, and there was no full tank to select to use my own fix

The accursed fuel transfer bug. After you transfer fuel between two tanks, you cannot transfer fuel to and from those tanks anymore, until you take extreme measures like reloading the game or going back to the tracking station. makes refueling a big hassle. but I have stumbled upon a way to deal with it. it works for me, and hopefully it will also work for you. the workaround is simply to select another fuel tank that's not involved in the transfer. Say you want to transfer fuel from tank A to B, but you cannot because of the bug. You press "out" on A, but it does nothing. So now you stop A, and you open tank C, which is already full (keep open A and B). At this point, with A B and C selected, you press "out" on A. And it works. I discovered it a week ago, and it worked every time. thought it was worth sharing

Part 3B (5) Remaking Marco Polonium Optimizing the Laythe/Tylo lander While Marco Polonium failed its task, it behaved well, and proved itself a capable ship. Except for this lander, which was barely adequate. The main problem was the reliant engine. I don't like using a swivel when I can use a reliant. The reliant is lighter and has more thrust. And a well-made ship won't need gimbaling because it will be stable on its own. So I feel a swivel is the noob's option to compensate for the launch system's shortcomings. On the other hand, I won't have the luxury of launching from a flat surface, and with a 30 part limit, my ship will have shortcomings indeed. Furthermore, the swivel has a higher vacuum Isp; even at Laythe sea level, it is equivalent to the reliant. So, the extra weight is compensated by higher efficiency. Even better, the previous lander had huge fins to keep it stable. The swivel will stabilize the rocket, so I won't need fins anymore. I'm actually saving weight. And parts count. And since I can afford some spare parts and Laythe's atmosphere is challenging, I decided to sacrifice 100 kg to put a cargo bay, and put all the science instruments in it. Now aerodinamics won't be an issue. I removed the fixed solar panels and I put retractable ones inside the cargo bay. This reduced weight, improved power generation, and improved aerodinamics. I swapped out the clamp-o-tron in front with a small claw. It looks more aerodinamic, but even in case it was not, it is still much cheaper. (I didn't think of it at first because in my regular career, at hard level, the claw won't allow fuel transfer. But at normal level, it does). The older lander could get to orbit from Laythe with 200 m/s left. Maybe. On a particularly good launch. The new lander got to orbit with 400 m/s left on the first try. Finally, I put a decoupler to get rid of engine and tanks once I won't be needing them anymore. It's all extra weight I won't have to lug around after Tylo. Before After Optimizing the Tylo descent stage Previously, I put lots of fuel in it, to keep a safe margin. Back at the time, I still assumed weight would not be an issue. Now I know better. I removed a 9-ton tank from the design. I also removed all the joints based on the expensive clamp-o-tron junior, and replaced them with decouplers. To launch all the fuel tanks together, I sent them up empty, and filled them with spare fuel when I sent up some components that were light, but part-intensive. Before After (notice: the smaller diameter tank is the reservoir for the small lander) Optimizing the small lander The small lander was performing quite admirably, not much to do. Still, I replaced the docking port with a claw, again saving a lot of money. And I swapped out the fixed solar panels with retractable ones. Now that I got rid of all the fixed solar panels, the Marco Polonium is much more heat-resistant, allowing for more efficient aerobraking on Duna and Laythe. Since there's no way I'll be able to reach Eeloo and Dres, I finally reduced slightly the fuel stockpile, from 10 tons to 8 tons. Optimizing the fuel tanks Originally, I had 10 fuel canisters, each comprising 4 Mk1 tanks. That was unneeded. Each canister only had 1 ton of dry weight, and would provide some 500 m/s of deltaV. I saved some money and weight in docking ports by using bigger canisters, comprising 6 to 10 Mk1 tanks. Optimizing the launch system As I mentioned in part 3, I was reluctant to use fairings because most of their cost cannot be recovered. But they increased useful payload more than they increased cost. I also made sure to send some empty fuel tanks, so that I could always drain my launchers of every drop of fuel. And when I run out of money to launch a big supply dump (those cost some 40k, and 20k is recovered from the rocket), I was able to put together a smaller launcher to fill those tanks that still needed it. As a result, I was able to put 18% more mass into orbit for the same price. Optimizing electricity and control Marco Polonium was suffering electricity shortages around Jool. I could not afford to keep the lab running. I put more solar panels, and I distanced them a bit more from the main body to keep them more exposed to sunlight. Also, the previous time I already sent all my astronauts in orbit by the time I decided to get science from the ksc. This time I didn't, and with the extra science from reports and samples I could afford to unlock large reaction wheels, that are cheaper and use less electricity. Finally, I put more batteries. Overall, this increased cost and mass. But not too much. Before After Marco Polonium 2 Mass: 226.6 tons (up from 192.6) Fuel (not including supplies for the landers): 132 tons (up from 92) Dry mass (again, counting the rocket fuel for landers as dry mass): 78 tons (down from 89) More capacity to discard empty mass Better aerobraking More electricity Target: visit Duna, Ike and all the moons of Jool and return to Kerbin Will it succeed where its predecessor di not?

Part 4A The travels of Marco Polonium First objective is Duna. With a low TWR, measures must be taken to make effective manuevers. First Marco Polonium raises its periapsis a couple of times, then it gets to Duna with a Mun gravity assist Injection burn is minimal, then orbit is lowered with aerobraking. But not all the way. I leave a high periapsis so it will be cheaper to get to Ike later. it will require a bit more fuel on the lander to rendez-vous with the mothership, but the lander is light and has minimal consumption. Nuclear engines are efficient, but still to move Marco Polonium they are drinking plenty of fuel. I've already discarded 3 fuel canisters out of 10 available. But when i reach Laythe and Tylo i will be able to drop the heavy lander. Duna landing is ok. For taking off I drive up to the highest mountain in sight, the lander/rover has awful aerodinamics and i'd rather have less atmosphere to deal with. Ike insertion. I didn't take screenshots. As worlds, Duna and Ike are quite ugly. Also on Ike i don't circularize orbit. I send the lander with half fuel, to save a bit of weight. Landing also is ok. Then I wait for the Jool tranfer window Again I use a gravity assist, this time by falling back towards Duna and making the big burn at periapsis The cupola adds one ton of useless weight, all for getting those kind of visuals Totally worth it! I use a gravity assist from Laythe to avoid the insertion burn, and also a lot of apoapsis lowering Too bad I could not find a way to make it work with Ike too (Duna has too small SoI, apoapsis would still be outside). At this point I would like to further lower my apoapsis, but another gravity assist from laythe would put me in a collision course with Jool. I tried raising my periapsis with Vall, but the gain was so tiny, it was not worth the course correction manuever. So, I just finished getting a good trajectory for Laythe by rockets. It still costed 400 m/s to lower the apoapsis and 600 m/s to get captured. I'm getting quite nervous by this time, my fuel stockpile is running low. Even if I will shed a lot of weight after Tylo, it won't matter if i have no fuel left. Landing on Laythe required finding the only island on the equator. It was accomplished with the tested strategy of saving and reloading a lot of times Laythe atmosphere is much harder that i expected. I was expecting something like Duna, where you are basically free of it after getting to 25 km of height, but Laythe brakes you noticeably even at 45 km. And my lander has pretty bad aerodinamics. While I can get back in space without problems, I don't have enough deltaV to rendez-vous with Marco Polonium without lowering its orbit. which would make going to Vall all the more expensive. With only two fuel canisters left, I give up this attempt. I will get to Tylo, maybe even to Bop and Pol, but I certainly won't ever be able to come back to Kerbin. It's clear I both overestimated how much range the nuclear engines would give me, and I underestimated how much deltaV it would take to accomplish all the trip. Navigating around Jool is all small manuevers, 500 m/s here, 300 m/s there, it's easy to think they are negligible, but there are a lot of worlds to visit, so they add up. Gravity assist can help some, but if you need to actually stop and orbit each planet, there are limits. And shedding weight from the Laythe/Tylo lander came too late to help. But I got plenty of money. I could send supplies to finish the trip. Yes, I could. But I will explain better with a joke A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer are sleeping in a hotel when fire erupts. The engineer takes the fire blanker and smothers the fire The physicist makes some hydrodinamic calculations, then improvises a tube that he attaches to the water tap, extinguishing the fire The mathematician wakes up, sees the fire, sees a fire extinguisher on the wall. He declaims "the problem admits a solution!" and goes back to sleep I am much like the mathematician here. Yes, I could easily send extra fuel and finish the trip. It would be easy. And since it would be easy, there would be no challenge in it, and it would not be interesting. On the other hand, I have figured a few places where the original design could be improved. I could get more mass on each launch if i used fairings properly. The landers can be improved. The trajectory can be improved, at least to some extent. I am convinced that the objective of launching Marco Polonium with only the Mun/Minmus money, exploring enough worlds to get enough money to finish the challenge without launching anything else, is doable. So I set off to remake Marco Polonium

And here i thought my attempt to finish the no contract challenge with a grand total of 3 missions was hardcore. you make me look downright amateurish. very impressive. I wouldn't want to fly any of your ships, and i've flown my fair share of unmanageable cheap junk in my career.