Trebuchet-Launch

Here's my try, after a few minutes in Painter:

I just did the most amazing thing, completely by accident. On my very first mission in 0.24, I was doing a little suborbital flight to get some cheap mission completions. After reaching 5000m I was drifting and decided to pad my science by having Jeb make an EVA report, reasoning that with the vehicle moving ballistically, Jeb wouldn't drift away from the hatch enough to prevent me from getting him back in. How wrong I was - he had a lot less drag than the vehicle, and was quickly whisked away. The amazing part? Jeb survived. I activated his EVA pack and managed to pilot him back to the free-falling spacecraft and climb back aboard. I didn't even know you could manuever so well with the jetpack in atmosphere....

I've been taking time and enjoying career mode step by step, but now that I have a small station up, Jeb is commanding it, with Bill and Bob as the first rotation crew.

I had the exact same sort of trouble (and solution) on my first career Mun mission. I'd designed something that could land and do science, and get back off... but didn't have enough oomph to return, and was stuck in such a low orbit that the "get out and push" method wasn't feasible. Bumping it into a Munar escape with a big huge claw made of the early girder blocks and then maneuvering it home... OUCH. But I was determined to (1) get that science and (2) get Jeb back...

I actually have one reason I like that there's no "real" science in Sandbox mode: it makes it easy to verify whether something is done in a career mode or sandbox mode save. All you need to do is take a screenshot of a working science experiment as proof. I just built my first (small) space station in career mode, for instance, and even if it takes forever to transmit down the science from the Science Jr rather than lug it back down to Kerbin, I'm still going to do it!

I've been doing things incrementally... two suborbital flights, two orbital flights. Learned how to collect science (not quite so obvious how that works, but: one pod observation, one EVA observation, and then all the experiments once too? Seems about right..)

A few days ago I added a new science module to my LKO space station. As I was making final approach I realized I had a problem: it only had one docking port, and no engine/RCS on the module itself. The station only had RCS. I gently lobbed the module at the station and caught it on a docking port. That is expert docking. Docking two large modules on engines alone is pretty good practice for that, though.

I docked an unpowered science pallet to JebLab-Kerbin by gently lobbing it at the space station and then using the space station's maneuvering jets to orient the docking ports correctly to 'catch' it. This was very difficult and nerve-wracking but ultimately successful. I also tested a new 3-man orbiter. After an unmanned flight with a probe core on top of the 3-man capsule, I was satisfied enough to do a manned test flight. However, I forgot to replace the probe core with a parachute. Fortunately, I had enough gas left to do an emergency powered landing (after letting the atmosphere eat most of my speed). I ran out of fuel a bit high, but fortunately the engine and tank helped cushion the capsule enough. No Kerbals KIA on the flight... or in the VAB afterwards, despite the best efforts of Commander Shepson Kerman to locate the engineers responsible for sending his crew into space without parachutes.

Finally succeeded in developing a reliable heavy-lift vehicle in the current version, and began lobbing large fuel depots into space for later moving into various orbits. EDIT: Also, a super-heavy nuclear tug for moving them. However, my initial tug lacked a docking port to connect to the fuel depots... derp. So, to avoid radioactive contamination of Kerbin, and given that it had no other use without the port, I sent it on a mission to the stars.

Build a vehicle with a whole mess of Hitchhiker modules and slam it into the station on a retrograde course. Poof, they're gone.

Build a vehicle with a whole mess of Hitchhiker modules, add lots of parachutes, and return them to Kerbin en masse.

A Kerbal version of the old SolarQuest game would be better.

I'm redesigning the nuclear transfer vehicle I use as a tug after the last series of tests.

Yes, as it turns out, the monyafeek is light enough to be hurled into both Munar *and* Kerbin escape by four sepratrons when launched from the Mun. Fortunately, a rescue craft was available to retrieve Jeb and return him safely home. EDIT: The concept was to land on liquids and then just be hurled off the Mun by the sepratrons into suborbit; the Kerbal would then bail out and attain orbit by EVA backpack. EDIT2: Furthermore, the ultimate idea is to use it as a kind of rescue vehicle. While four sepratrons is overkill on the Mun, it might not be on Tylo, and the extremely light nature of the monyafeek - plus the ability to build it ejector-style into a rover - makes it a useful concept for a rescue rover. If built into a rover with its own landing system, you can land it on the target world first and have a rescue craft already pre-positioned in case your landing is a bit, uh, rough.

Minimalism in lander design (inspired by the "monyafeek" of Anathem)