SubOrbitalGuy

I just tried it, it's possible to get to kerbol escape with 6 small solid boosters and the small command pod: Just build one long rocket, put the pod directly on a solid booster, followed by decoupler and another solid booster until you have 6 solid boosters. Burn solid boosters until AP is about 82 km (4 boosters needed), wait to get out of atmosphere, point in direction of kerbol orbit, use 2 remaining boosters. Edit: You should start your mission while it's midnight so the direction is perfect for escape.

Actually there is 2 more conditions: The orbit has to have an inclination of 0 degrees and it needs to be in eastern direction too, I\'m sure you knew this already I\'m not sure how to orbit above one specific place (on the equator). I would use an initial orbit that is a bit lower (2400 km or something) and then wait for the moment the craft is about above the desired place. Then burn to raise AP to 2868.4 km, wait for arriving at AP and raise PE to the same. Is there a better (more exact) method?

I use the 90 degree heading for a 160 km starting orbit, that way I can use the higher time warp. Burn for mun starts when it just had risen completely above the horizon, for an apoapsis of about 10500 km. If you do it this way it looks like you are very far in front of the mun close to apoapsis but it will catch up and you will be pretty slow relative to it so you don\'t need much fuel.

You can orbit something as close as possible to, but not inside, the SOI of Mun or Minmus on the same orbit (height above kerbin) so you get a static position in relation to Mun or Minmus. I think of these points as equivalent to a lagrangian point. At least it\'s some special place (4 of them) to put something

I think you uploaded the wrong screenshot 'C7-MASSWP01 crashed into terrain.'

The only limit is the imagination ;-) I present to you this small 4 stage (solid booster only) rocket, reached 30,944m on the 5th try: (the screenshot of the rocket was before the first flight, I messed up the staging of the last booster)

Sorry for late answer, first steps you could take to improve your rocket: 1 - Remove the RCS (and RCS fuel tanks). 2 - Replace the rocket booster with liquid engine and tank. 3 - Get some landing struts 4 - Short the first (and second) stage and use gimbaling engines only

You officially reached 0,7% farther than me, kudos to you! I, too, think this is pretty close to the theoretical maximum. I like the other (stock parts) challange, still working on a noteworthy design though.

I can confirm that it\'s damn difficult, I just managed to land 1 (one!) ship on that tower Trying to get a second one on there now. Tanks Panic for the hints!

I like the idea, I just lost 5 ships trying to just land 1 on there, how do you do it, some small hint please?

I tried to land on the launch tower, a small accident happened and the lower part of the rocket got 'stuck' until the fuel ran out:

Not enough fuel in that stage.

edit: sorry misread what you wrote.

It is possible to do it! Was nice to use some manual steering again after some while I took some screenshots of my mission to the moon with your rocket: (I hope the dropbox gallery works for this, if not i can re-upload somewhere else) https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/9478008/1/KSP-moon-mission-blossm13rocket?h=5becce Explanations to each picture: 01: Fuel levels after getting into a nice 159x151 km orbit 02: Getting to the Mun (i always go east, 90 degrees on the navball) 03: Fuel levels after adjusting orbit for Mun intercept 04: Fuel levels after a nice 60x55 km Mun orbit insertion 05: First try landing after getting rid of some orbital velocity 06: First try landing after some more breaking 07: Fuel levels for landing 08: Ready for landing nearly zero velocity and very low 09: SURPRISE: solid rocket booster in the next stage 10: New trajectory after solid rocket booster burnout 11: Fuel level after breaking with last stage 12: Nearly landed on the surface, there there are no landing struts 13: Abort of landing, let\'s head back home 14: Heading back from Mun 15: Fuel level after getting to intercept orbit for landing 16: Reeintry before landing 17: Using parachute to land 18: Savely landet, everyone still alive Some thoughts: The RCS in the first stage are useless because the winglets are good enough, I suggest deleting the RCS (and RCS fuel tanks). Solid rocket boosters are only useful if used very early (first stage), because it\'s not possible to regulate thrust or shut them down, replace with liquid engine and tank. Get some landing struts on there, balancing on a single engine will end with explosion on the mun. It\'s a bit difficult to get to orbit with the 4 engines in the second (?) stage, the 4 engines in the middle. They are a bit weak and changing direction is difficult, and they are underpowered for that part of the flight, i suggest shortening the first stage and using gimbaling engines after that.

This took way to long for me to figure out by myself: If you are building bigger and bigger rockets, at some point the engines will just 'fall off' before launch, just standing on them is too much force it seems. For me this happened starting at 4 stages and about 19 LFE boosters in the first stage. To get rid of losing engines: Use struts to fixate them to some other parts of the rocket!

Hi, maybe I\'m missing something obvious, but isn\'t the easiest method to meet in orbit using the one described by Kosmo-not: using a smaller orbit to slowly get at the exact distance (the km according to his table) and just adjust your AP from there? http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=9726.0 The thing is, even if you time it nearly perfectly, at speeds above 2 km/s you will always miss your target anyway. So using the timing-method you are trying would be good for improving optimizing the liftoff for the first (lower) orbit.

Hi, maybe some people don\'t try because they aren\'t sure what to edit: some help: Go to your KSP directory and open the file \Parts\stackDecoupler\part.cfg there is a line (nearly at the bottom): ejectionForce = 10 Increase this value, using 1000 a pod will lift off a few meters when the part is decoupled. Using 10000 it will go up to about 400 meters. I\'m trying to get multiple stages to work, right now I\'m always losing some parts of the upper stage that I wanted to use later when decoupling the lower part, have to edit some more cfg I guess.

If you are using windows you could try to stitch them together, using the the free tool \'Image Composite Editor\' (ICE) http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/ . If it works, it will produce one very large file, which could be further manipulated/used as input for other programs. There is the possibility to use the ICE-feature called deep zoom, unfortunately it\'s based on MS Silverlight, but it\'s worth a try if no one knows something more practical, I guess.

Finally I made it according to the rules, letting the crew survive 97,027 m, using only stock parts: Uploaded with ImageShack.us It was a very small craft, only 11 parts: Uploaded with ImageShack.us First Stage: 3 small liquid engines, each with 1 large tank. Second Stage: 1 small engine with 1 small tank There was a large tank earlier, the same ship without parachute, i got about 125 km on that one, but with a parachute the large tank was too heavy, killing the crew on impact. This is the best challange, i got 7017 m after about two dozen tries, only 1 solid rocket booster: Uploaded with ImageShack.us It looks like i wasn\'t the first one to have overlooked tha part about not killing the crew, judging the screen of ckellingc posted a week ago.

I really like this constest (and KSP), it made me make an account and this first post This is a good idea, maybe one category for only stock parts ships (because it\'s harder), and one including mods (because it\'s fun to have even more possibilities, without the cheating parts like tires of course). edit: I didn\'t see that the crew has to survive, please ignore the previously stated contribution, have to try again, this time with parashute or some fuel for breaking left in tanks