zarakon

I've had a few cases of rockets that would spontaneously explode, but then work fine (if a bit wobbly) after I removed most of the struts.

Billy-Bobnard Kerman

There should be two categories: Kerbin and non-Kerbin Stacking on Kerbin would require much more creativity because you wouldn't be able to use the EVA jetpack to just fly to the top of the stack

Look harder. The Rockomax BACC has been stock since 0.16

Very nice, Bothersome Do those planes have any propulsion, or are they all just gliders? How did you handle launching them from Kerbin, since they don't appear to be friendly to sticking on the top of a rocket? Here are some pics of an LV-N powered all-stock plane I sent to Duna a while ago. Doesn't meet your requirements for the challenge though. It's also big and a bit ugly, but it worked well!

Putting parachutes on all of the main parts will help spread the load out

Max score! 300: 3 Kerbals saved 35: Docking 20: No parachutes 50: All stock 65: No damage 470 (Click for full size)

only if they die boring deaths

His time was 35:31, but you listed it as 25:30

One tip that's not particularly obvious.. If you hold shift and use WASD while placing parts, you can rotate them by small increments. You can use this with your control surfaces to place them at angles such that they counter your nosedive problem

I will also try this when there is a scenario It would be fun to have no power and no RCS on the stranded ship, so that it can't turn at all, and give bonus points for docking instead of just using EVA

and a sustained T:W ratio around 20:1 good luck! I was wondering if, for a given amount of thrust, flying higher might actually be advantageous. You have a longer distance to travel, but you can also maintain a higher speed. But your math does show that lower is better!

23:03 Rocket, stock+engineer (Click for full-size images)

The big difference being that you can't just easily build your own rockets in Orbiter, right?

I never really liked the new rover wheels. Nothing I've been able to make with them comes close to the performance of my old rovers that just used landing gear, rockets, and RCS

It takes you about 350 m/s more delta V and a little bit more time to get into orbit But in this challenge it is worth it because in a westward orbit your surface speed will be about 350 m/s higher for the same orbital speed and altitude, compared to an eastward orbit. You'll complete your circumnavigation sooner. It's not easy to make up for it by simply going 350 m/s faster, because that would greatly increase how much you spend afterward, burning toward the surface to maintain a low altitude For a jet plane it doesn't matter as much since you're limited by air speed (same as surface speed) anyway. At very high speeds though, flying east can make it difficult to stay in the atmosphere, since your orbital velocity can get very high (175 above your air speed). Going west, you'll never have to worry about accidentally flying into orbit, but you'll have to work harder to maintain altitude.

The DynamicWarp mod (search for it) can slow down time as far as 1/128 speed, which is pretty close to being paused

Has anyone made KSP mods to change the scales to match real life? Earth-sized Kerbin, Moon-sized Mun, etc. as well as larger engines and fuel tanks with higher T/W ratios and better fuel mass fractions? Seems like it would be fun to try out

I've got a rocket that can do it in under 25 minutes... but then actually landing at KSC is rather difficult

Ok, so I did some quick checks.. It seems that the "control from here" setting IS already remembered for each craft when switching Target is also saved, except it's a global thing and not a per-craft target. So if you have 3 craft, A B and C, you can target C while controlling A, and when you switch to B you'll still be targeting C. However as soon as you switch to C, that target will be cleared. There's currently no way to keep two craft targeting each other

One method for docking involves switching between the two craft to keep them both pointed at each other. The annoying part about this is that each time you switch, you have to set your target and "control from here" points again. It would be really nice if the game would remember those two things for each craft, as long as you're just switching between other nearby craft.

I was trying to use one Mun lander to visit all of the anomaly sites, so it had a lot of fuel and a low T/W ratio when it got there. Didn't slow down enough, smeared one kerbal across the munar surface. I also lost the whole orange suit team by opening their parachute with physics warp on. Oops.

Probably broke the engine off There were no landing legs back then

Grand tour Orbital probe No debris Grand tour with no debris would be difficult..