Hremsfeld

I'm honestly not sure if it's what you mean by your RCS being staged right, but put the tanks you want to use first on a lower stage than the ones you want to save. For example, if you've got a three stage rocket, put the tanks you want to use first on stage 2, and the ones you want to save on stage 1 or 0. Or, put the ones you want to use first on stage 1, and the others on 0.

Well, shoot. I saw those videos, which are where I learned to wait for the sun, the proper distance to go to meet back up with Kerbin, and got a d'oh! moment with regards to remote-controlling probes. I'd used the R202 component on MechJeb to de-orbit mostly-drained stages I didn't want cluttering up the space between Kerbin and the moons, but hadn't thought of making it its own seperate craft until I saw those. So, thanks for having an awesome channel, and congrats on finishing your mission, but it'd feel too much like industrial espionage/plagarism for me to take this on, now. That said, wouldn't it have been simpler to calculate Kerbin's period, and make your interplanetary period twice that, rather than mucking about with SMA-issues?

Alright, I made a MIRV-launch system that bombs the dickens out of stuff. I'm uploading the pictures now; I took a bunch, and I'll link the album, but only put the really important ones here. This is all stock, except I did use MechJeb's R202 control system. Please note, that was only for orbital/surface/vessel information, and to allow me to guide the individual devices in. I can't prove this, naturally, though if anyone wants me to set up a video feed, I'll see what I can do. Final stats are: - Takeoff mass of 104.3 tons. To-Orbit, 28.6 tons. Post-release, 25.6 tons. - Six smart bombs (not sure if bombs or guided missiles at this point) - Struck from a roughly 200km orbit, after going around at least twice per device - Each device had a mass of 0.5 tons (used to determine post-release mass) - One hit on each building, and an additional hit on the Launchpad - I have no idea where the second KSC is, unless it's the one on the Mun that got removed. - If there was actually damage, the entire KSC would have been destroyed. 6*50 = 300 OR 6*100 = 600 points for weapons delivery alone, depending on what the devices counted as. 10 points for one strike on Runway 2*25 = 50 points for one strike each on VAB and SPH 3*50 = 150 points for the strike on the Tracking Center and two strikes on the Launch Pad 6*500 = 3000 points for six devices delivered onto structures following a stable Kerbin orbit. Totals: 3,510 or 3,810 points, depending on what each device counted as. That piece wasn't important anymore. MECO. Flame trail and throttle gauge haven't quite realized this yet. Elliptical orbit, let's fix that... Much better. Devices 4 and 5 drifting away, Device 6 standing by. There's always that one kid who's off to the side when everyone else is talking... Well, if you say so. Too short, I need to turn my engine on and get over to KSC again. Wait, why is my parachute- oh. Darn. I'd forgotten that parachute was on that stage. Oops. Well, he IS alive... Inside the atmosphere. Heading towards KSC. Course correction. More course correction. Impact! Last one in the pack this time Sub-orbital trajectory Inside the atmosphere, doing course corrections. Too far! Okay, that's better. Impact! The pack continues to hunt. Or something like that, they're just floating there. Device 3's sub-orbital trajectory Course corrections More corrections Almost there Thanks, Bill. Impact! Next, please! Sub-orbital Didn't need much in the way of course correcting this time, I was just going a bit too Southern. Impact! I should put that in a different language next time. Only two left. Coming in too short, need to push myself out a bit more. There we go. Athari! It seems that part of the device survived impact. The dish is pretty strong. Luckily, the part that survived exploded at roughly the base of the dish a few moments later. And then there was one. The trajectory A bit too high this time... Too far South, too! Not my day. My speed agrees with me. Much closer, still not quite right. Circling around and trying again. Oh, wow, that's almost perfect. Launch Pad, we meet again. I'd say it's more of a Catastrophic Success. Overall, despite four Oops moments, this was a pretty good mission. I could've done more by adding a second, third, or fourth row of devices, but I really didn't want to document all that. For those who want to see the entire album, it can be found at http://imgur.com/a/nVWWE

To be clear: Put Rocket A into LKO and empty it of kerbanauts. Send Rocket B out of Kerbin's SOI; Make it have an apoapsis of at least 1Gm = 1,000,000 km further than Kerbin's. Return Rocket B to Kerbin's SOI and establish an orbit. (Stable: Optional) Transfer crew from Rocket B to Rocket A. De-Orbit Rocket A, as close to KSP as possible, without turning your kerbanauts into jelly. No MechJeb, except to view stats. I'm presuming this also means we can't use it to de-orbit any lower stages on Rocket A. No Fuel Bug exploitation. Did I miss anything? By the way, there is a fix available for the fuel bug: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/16439-0-16-0-Hacky-Fuel-Consumption-Bug-Fix

If I could have stayed above 5x time accel, I would have, but I kept getting a message informing me that I couldn't warp faster because I was accelerating. I blame the gravitational pull of Kerbol, but I can't prove that, because my Kerbol Orbital Observation Location hasn't been sending the information when we asked. You'd think having a Kerbal in there would mean you could be sure of getting a response, but no...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: The Really Big Rocket. I am not very good at creative names. I made it so half the SRBs would go off at first, followed by the second half. During the time the second half took to deplete, I discovered that the first pair of liquid-fuel stack (Five FL-T400's each) had depleted. However, dropping them with burning SRBs is an idea only Jeb would do, and Bill was my lucky pilot. I should have combined the drop-SRB and drop-LFE stages, but I'd already taken the screenshot so I stuck with it, a few m/s of delta-v be damned. This was my second attempt with the same rocket design, my first ended in failure when I used all but 300L of fuel doing a Hohmann injection. A Bi-elliptic was therefore declared to be in order. I don't know why Bill's so freaked out, he's going to be perfectly safe in his quest to smack into Kerbol. I waited until Kerbolrise so that I could just go straight out into a bi-elliptic orbit without worrying about any of that pesky "steering" stuff Sitting on a stack of explosions really can't ever be something that doesn't freak you out. Unless you're Jeb. Followed almost immediately by Note within the first minute and a half I've gone through two six-groups of big SRBs and 20 400-capacity fuel tanks. I could probably make it more efficient by replacing the inner gimballing engines with aerospikes, but I know this way doesn't end with engines staying on the launch pad. One minute and 38km later, the second stack is emptied I've now used the outer half of my booster stages, and it's barely getting me out of the atmosphere. Each stack is lasting progressively longer, as you'd expect with two fewer engines each time. Another quarter of my initial booster fuel later, I've added almost exactly 1.5Mm to my apoapsis. This final booster stack will get me almost to my target height. Plus or minus a few dozen m/s, I didn't see the exact point it happened Current fuel load on final booster stack: Got me pretty far out. My final initial-stage engine can easily get me to my target apoapsis I figured an AU sounded like a good distance. Unsurprisingly, it didn't take much fuel to get there. http://i.imgur.com/skrSc.png Passing the Mun: Minmus: Kerbin SOI: At the point I exited Kerbin's SOI, something odd happened. A few moments after exiting Kerbin's SOI, I re-entered it, and nearly instantly re-exited. I was then going to very quickly re-enter and re-re-exit. My next destination was...not exactly where I expected. I'd reloaded the save I made when I had just pushed to an AU before I thought of screencapping my surprise periapsis, but it was roughly 100,000km, and thus too far out for the purposes of this challenge. The "No MechJeb" part of the RBR's name is, you guessed it, because I was going to make a similar version using MechJeb, but hadn't tested it before I saw this challenge. As it happened, Kerbin briefly re-captured an earlier sundiver, which was out of fuel and thus switching to it didn't let me re-enter the atmosphere. Quite a while later, I reach my apoapsis. Strangely enough, he isn't. Must've been a long 791 days. I am clearly a genius and intentionally didn't include any RCS on this beautiful monstrosity. Spinning around therefore takes a considerable amount of time, but hey, I've got plenty of it. Actually, no, that's too close, I'll crash into it and die. And that's bad. One long turn-around later, It's gonna take an extra hour to be 1.5Mm farther from the sun. Yay, orbital mechanics! Almost there...

I\'d say start small. A single RCS tank, some thrusters, a fuel tank, and some legs. That lander is...pretty impressive looking, but as you\'ve already seen, it makes landing attempts a pain in the ass. An ASAS at that point just seems like dead weight to me, usually mine\'s on the secondary or even initial stage. Hills are also a bit of a bugger, try to land on as flat a surface as you can. 4 m/s is pretty fast to us, but the parts should be able to support it. Naturally, a slower landing is less risky in terms of things falling off, but it gives you more time to make an error that leads to having a Permanent Research Outpost.

Can\'t speak for that, but if you don\'t mind editing your persistent.sfs file, go to whichever vessel you want the three to be in. There\'ll be the info about the craft\'s location, its orbit, and then its parts. In the mk1pod section, there are three lines, crew = x crew = y crew = z Make these say crew = 0 crew = 1 crew = 2 And you should be good!

On the topic of Strange-Things-Found-on-Mun, I found something interesting. I switched to camera mode just to see the sunrise over the Mun, and happened to see something that looked like a graphical glitch. These brave souls were going to meetup with an older, er, Permanent Research Mission for a barbecue, but decided to divert themselves to investigate this anomaly. Having committed themselves to landing, the Kerbanauts report that the object appears to be an arch of some sort, but whether natural or artificial they can\'t tell yet. The burgers will have to wait. Less than 90 seconds before landing, they report that it is a complete archway, likely tens of meters tall, if not above 100. 'Big, strange hotdog-ish archway' remains the description with just over a minute before landing. You can\'t tell in this picture, but Hudsy\'s upset the barbecue didn\'t pan out. Having landed a distance away from the anomaly, the Kerbanauts are giddy with the prospect of climbing up it and jumping off. Except Hudney, but he\'s always been a bit boring. Before trying to land 'a bit closer and totally not on top of the arch at all,' the intrepid trio send their location back to Kerbin, courtesy the Munar Orbital Research and Observation Nexus, to assist in future exploration. The anomaly is located just to the North of a very large crater. The current theory is the object was a tall boulder, until the asteroid that caused the crater hit it and exploded. This is backed up by the extreme proximity to the crater\'s edge. When pressed for how such a relatively small hole could result in such a large crater, Bobsen replied 'Well, the rock hits it, then blasts out the back like a shotgun. Spreads out the impact. It\'s simple!' Everything about finding this was extremely unlikely. First, I\'d come in with a VERY inclined orbit, which I decided to flatten before landing instead of saying 'Yay, the Mun, let\'s land!' Second, I decided to wait until the Western-most part of Mun was in daylight, which resulted in me taking several extra orbits in order to get there. Next, I was much lower than I usually am for Munar orbits in the first place, and wanted to see the sunrise. Finally, I just happened to be getting into the daylit section when I saw it, recently enough for me to have not switched back to Map mode and get ready for landing. If I didn\'t see it, I probably wouldn\'t have landed this close to the edge of a crater, because of the uneven surface. Has anyone else found this thing? Edit: Update! The Kerbanauts have successfully moved closer to the arch, They are now another Permanent Research Outpost, improving Kerbalkind\'s knowledge of the cosmos! They\'re safe, and with all the barbecue supplies they were carrying, they should be able to last until a rescue mission can pick them up. In the meantime, this is a big arch.

Clearly, the best music to play this game to is Yakety Sax. Looking forward to seeing Minmus, got a craft ready to go. All I need to do now is try to figure out when to launch to actually get there in one shot. Fake Edit because I forgot to hit submit: Success! Landed on a frozen lake!