MegaRouge

Here's my gallery for taking my Starship replica to the Mun and back. https://imgur.com/a/jkRs53R I haven't tried to build a replica of anything before so this was a fun challenge. I tried to be as true to life as I could but I also wanted a functional rocket, so I used 16 vectors on the bottom stage instead of 33 smaller engines that would not give me the thrust to take off. I added landing legs and ladders and stuck a big landing can in the payload bay and set out for the Mun. This rocket flies amazingly well. I build so many giant abominations with hundreds of parts that I can barely get to orbit that flying this felt simple. The kraken liked to destroy Starship when I deployed the landing legs but I finally got it to work and landed, then headed for home. Landing on Kerbin was interesting, as this handles more like a plane than a rocket. I had a very ugly landing with some tumbling involved but managed to get it straightened out for a vertical landing in the ocean. I am sure with practice I could probably land this pretty well. Maybe I will go for the Val level and take this to Duna and back with refueling.

I still can't post images here so this is my gallery of my Val level Eve landing and return mission. https://imgur.com/a/3A9bgXo I launched the transfer ship and lander in one shot with huge boosters on either side. Had lots of DV in the transfer vehicle so no worries about getting there and back, as long as I could get back from the surface. The inflatable heat shield should allow this to work when entry heating is added. I landed in a decent spot at a good elevation, planted a flag and took off. It was SLOW going at first, and the ship took off at a 45 degree angle from the small slope I was on so I was fighting to keep it straight early on. The vector engine in the middle of my stack saved me there. Once I got out of the thick lower atmosphere, asparagus staging kept my center core full and I rose quickly through the upper atmosphere. My top stage had 3000+ DV and I was still not sure I would make it, but ended up in an ugly Eve orbit with over 1000 DV left. Docked with the transfer vehicle and came back home. That was a serious challenge and something I have not done since many years ago in KSP 1.

First time I have posted one of these, it doesn't want to let me insert the images into the post. The text box turns red when I click to enter the image. Here is the album on Imgur: https://imgur.com/a/aznUCdj I had wanted to send a rover to Eve and this challenge pushed me to do it. For the stretch goal, I designed the landing system with inflatable heatshields to support entry heating and to handle both atmospheric landing with chutes and vacuum landing with small radial engines. The heatshields get dropped when the chutes kick in. When on the ground, decouple the entry assembly and drive over it. It worked great on Kerbin but the kraken was not happy on Eve, as driving over the assembly caused the rover to fly into the air and tumble around. I finally managed to get free of it and get some nice shots by the water (or whatever the liquid is on Eve). For the Jeb level goal, I made a small plane with an Aerospike and used the same landing system to enter the atmosphere, then decoupled and flew around. I spotted the highest point nearby and landed on it, for an elevation of 1716 metres. I returned a kerbal from Eve's surface a couple of times in KSP 1, so I might try it here later this week. That will be a serious challenge.

I had the same issue with multiple spaceplanes using Rapiers. The engines worked fine in air breathing mode, switched to closed cycle and worked fine to orbit and also worked fine in orbit, but after re-entry the engines would not work in either air breathing or closed cycle mode. They are burning fuel but producing no thrust and there is no exhaust animation. Note that this was not a problem before the first patch, so I assume this problem was introduced by whatever Rapier fix was in patch 1.