zarakon

Dot so that I remember to try this one of those rings looks really tiny though

Yep, having your ship mostly made of near-empty solid boosters is how I was winning the original version of this thread, up until people started abusing RCS The challenge is stock parts only, but is it OK to use mods like Mechjeb for automatic staging, or Dynamic Warp to play in slow motion (and alleviate lag issues)?

well i made a micro launcher and probe that can probably get anywhere in the system and back to Kerbin the problem is the hour-long ion burns

KSPX would be nice, since it adds a good number of micro parts

Alright, did it again, with no dumb mistake this time

Well, I made it in 0:48:24 with plenty of fuel to spare (click for full size) Leaving base Sunrise Approximately half way View of the crater Sunset Approaching KSC Landed on the runway (click for full size) But near the end when I was checking my progress on the map screen, my altitude went over 25000 for a moment. Oops!

yeah, the thread got lost in the forum thing, and I don't think DEADBEEF is around anymore

3:28, same plane as before (stock, no mechjeb) in one attempt I actually broke two engines (left and center) by landing way too hard on the gravel runway, and still made it back by around 3:45 with just the rightmost engine

(click for full size) 3:49 all stock

Any chance you could post that craft file? It looks nice

and this must all be destructible

Real rocket engines generally can't throttle all the way from 0% to 100%. Often there is no throttle control at all, just on or off. Real engines can usually only be restarted a limited number of times, or not at all.

Avionics nosecone is basically the same as ASAS, but without the I part of the PID controller. It resists change without trying to actually go back to its original position, so you can still steer the plane. On small planes, it's very effective at preventing oversteering

With 2 ram intakes and some throttle management, you should be able to get that up to almost 2000 m/s and circumnavigate Kerbin at 30+km altitude When the engine flames out, immediately kill the throttle (x) then throttle it back up to slightly lower than it was when it flamed out. You can get a lot more speed and altitude by repeating this until you're running on nearly zero throttle

Here's how I like to do it: First, allow part clipping (ctrl+alt+shift+F12). It can be done without this, but it makes it easier Start by building one in an easy spot: Move it down to the sides, enabling mirror mode: Add nosecones behind if you want it to look nicer

I would say get rid of those scoop air intakes and use ram intakes instead. They will let you fly much higher/faster/farther, especially on Laythe where the air is thinner and there are big distances between islands

Yeah, I got really close to the sun using something like Temstar's. LV-N stage with drop-tanks, followed by an ion stage with drop-tanks. Be aware that when you're really close to the sun, solar panels are super efficient, so you don't need many of them to run an ion engine at full power. I also recommend using DEADBEEF's dynamic warp mod to do this stuff at x8 or x16 speed, because these burns take a loooooooong time

What's going on here? That little engine shouldn't even be able to get that rocket off the ground

Working as intended!

I lost like 5 rockets and tons of Kerbals trying to rescue Jeb from the Mun. It should have been so simple

Spiderweb that I made to use only atomic engines. Was able to land on Minmus (using mechjeb to balance on the skinny engine) and then do a powered+parachute landing back on Kerbin

How do you do this?

Ah, gravity assist from a moon, that would make sense.

Everything I know about orbital mechanics, I learned from KSP So that has led me to a couple questions.. 1. How does an asteroid get "captured" by a planet to become a moon? It seems impossible to enter orbit around a planet without a powered deceleration. 2. The giant impact theory for the formation of Earth's moon says that some large object crashed into the Earth, and the debris sat in orbit until it eventually all coalesced to form the Moon. But how did that debris end up in orbit? It seems that with only an initial velocity from the surface, each piece of debris would either escape the system or fall back to Earth.

It would be cool to see challenges where the objective is not pre-announced. Quicksave/Quickload should probably be disallowed?