Soralin

One thing I've had to do when I've missed my target with interplanetary transfers (which is every time so far), is to go and look up the length of a year for the planet you're trying to get to. Then, mark the time that the planet reaches your apsis, add the length of the year to it, and that's the point of time that you'll have to be back there at. For example, say you're heading to Duna, and you miss, Duna crosses your apoapsis at day 100, and you reach your apoapsis at day 120. Well, Duna has a year of 200.4 days, so it will be back at your apoapsis at day 300.4 Between day 300.4 and the current day (120), it's 180.4 days. So, you can thrust at your apoapsis, until the round trip time will take 180.4 days, and you and Duna should both arrive back at that point around day 300.4 Although you'll probably end up having to do some minor corrections anyway to intercept it when you get closer. If it would take too much to alter your orbit to get there in time, you can wait a few orbits for more favorable conditions, or set it up to meet back there after 2 years or something like that. I've found http://kspwiki.nexisonline.net/wiki/Celestials is handy for finding orbital characteristics of planets, if you don't want to watch them and time them yourself.

You don't need a burn, you just need some form of horizontal change in velocity. If you could get the height needed, with the right timing, you could get into orbit by a gravity assist from the Mun.

Fixed, the spoiler tags seem to have problems if you put a ' in the title.

Yeah, getting into orbit is the hard part, thrust too much, and you burn too much fuel, thrust too little, and you can end up falling back into the atmosphere. I was scraping the atmosphere as it was with 10L of fuel left. As for landing, you could try jumping out and coming down on EVA thrusters if you run out of fuel. I was watching my fuel and considering if I would have to do that when I was coming down. Landing in the dark is a bit more of a pain though.

You could always install a fresh version of 0.16 to a different folder if you wanted to do it.

I thought it was as small as you could go too with stock parts, and then I realized, there are some other less commonly used stock parts. The Mk2 to size 1 adapter masses 0.5t, and comes with 75L of fuel. With the reduced mass, and the fuel bug (and both together, allowing me to thrust even slower), that's just enough to land on the Mun, with 1.4L left to spare. Command pod Mk1 - 0.8t Mk2 to size 1 Adapter - 0.5t Toroidal Aerospike Rocket - 1t Total mass: 2.3t, Fuel left - 1.4L

Nope, I just launched it quickly before it had time to tip over. And actually, testing it again now, with just those 2 parts it seems unusually stable on the launch pad, it doesn't budge at all when I try tipping it, and it's not heavy enough to do any damage to it by just sitting on it.

This is about as minimal as it gets. command capsule - 0.8 1 half size small fuel tank - 1.125 1 areospike engine - 1 Total mass = 2.925 And over 88L, nearly half the fuel tank left over. I probably could have made it back to Kerbal even. (At least with some landing gear added perhaps, I blew up when I tried as is)

Well if I can use flight engines, I had an idea to get more engines to Minmus, the Flipship: It's called the Flipship, because the drop tanks are on the top. Although currently it seems to be suffering from some fuel bug, probably from the complex fuel line system, in that I can run the 17 large engines for 7 minutes and only get halfway through the 12 top outer upper fuel tanks, without touching any other fuel source. Edit: uploading this here too, since I can't seem to in the bug report forum.

Woo, Nice.

yeah, I multiplied the whole thing by 7, 3 per tank, 240 per engine, 243 for each of the 7 sections there. Or, 3x7=21 for the fuel, and 240x7=1680 for the engines. The engines are 1200 power each, 8400 power total. 1 point per 5 power does seem like a bit much when you put it next to the fuel amounts like that. Even at 1 point per 50 power, engines would still give quite a bit more points per unit of mass than fuel.

This one would also qualify. The vehicle on top has 7 mass 7 engines, 7 mass 9 fuel tanks, 6 mass 4 engines, 6 mass 2.25 fuel tanks, all full, for a total of 149.5 (plus various struts, landing struts, RCS, the command capsule, etc.) The bottom section has 2 mass 7 engines, 2 full mass 18 fuel tanks, 2 empty mass 2 fuel tanks, and 2 fuel tanks over 7/16 full, for 9 mass each (2 for the tank, 7 for the fuel, which would be 16 when full), for a total of at least 72. Together, it would mass over 221. Hmm, similar to my last one, this one is probably a little heavier, from the stuff that's harder to estimate, and the true weight of both will be a bit more than that, since these are strictly underestimates. Our delivery rocket: More detail in the Knock Minmus out of orbit challenge. : http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/18026-Knock-Minmus-out-of-orbit%21-Challenge?p=247866&viewfull=1#post247866

Hmm, I should try using flight engines, maybe I can get more of them over there that way. Even if the fuel doesn't count, the engines seem to be really overweighted in your scoring system. But I suppose this works: So: 1600 L fuel tank(unused until the end) - 3 points 1200 power engine(unused until the end) - 240 points (engines seem really high compared to fuel here) 243 points x 7 of each = 1701 points 100% thrust - 50 point bonus Total: 1751 I got a little bounce from the landing struts springing back when the engines burned out. Our vehicle of choice to deliver the payload: It moves fuel towards the center rockets, and drops off stacks 2 at a time as it gets empty: Although I really need to redesign it, it's too easy for a separating rocket to hit other rockets and damage or destroy them, I got sort of lucky on my test flight, I had a bunch of other tries where something would blow up, or where a center stack would take damage but not be destroyed, only to later buckle under the load of the engine. Part of the design was simply that I had the capsule in the middle there, I was thinking of moving it to the top of one of those landing rockets, and balancing it out with an SAS on the other side, probably should have gone with that, although it's a pain to try moving a capsule somewhere else with the building interface. Still a good amount of fuel left in those. Boosters hitting the ground. Touchdown. I cut the fuel supply off for these, since if I detach them they tend to get caught up in the struts, I had them directly attached before, since I didn't need to remove them, but they could potentially draw fuel from the main tanks if I left them like that, and per the challenge I wanted to avoid any of that.

Woo, very nice. Yeah, I just tried adjusting my orbit from near the sun, so that the apoapsis was near Kerbin, and then went around a few loops waiting for a timing that was close enough that I could intercept on. Adjusting it from the outer edge of the loop does seem like it would be easier to get the timing right. And save on fuel, considering how absurd my rocket there seems, compared to what you have there.