Reavermyst

hehe all those full fledged games have nothing on a game that's not even 25% done

I think along side this, there should be two things. Difficulty and a scoring system for said contracts. Also, they should consider the "Costs" that would go into the program such as cost of parts, fuel, and supplies. They could go as far as Kerbal salary, but I think that would make the game a tad TOO serious. ANYWHO.... The first bit I want to talk about is Influence. This is pretty much your space programs reputation with the world and "corporate entities," for lack of a better term, and determines just how much money they would be willing to invest in your space program. As you complete these missions, you're scored based on various factors such as Kerbal survival, speed, cost, etc. This score determines just how much more this entity would trust you in future missions. This little detail would open up "factions" of sorts and can even make that second space center a possible competitor in the space race(IE you do bad, they get the contracts and not you). Influence would also influence the Kerbal Recruitment rate. If your space center has a bad reputation, then Kerbals will be less likely to visit that recruitment office. Of course to balance that out, using Jeb, Bob, and Bill would need to be discouraged in some kind of fashion(IE if Kerbal salary was a thing, they would be the most expensive since they're all just simply that awesome). Otherwise, your space program would thrive on just those three to cut costs. Difficulty would determine how hard it is to make money, produce science, and gain/lose influence rates. The easiest difficulty would start your space program out with more money, lower influence requirements for contracts and kerbonaut recruits. The easiest difficulty would mean a higher starting budget, higher rates of influence gained and lower rates on losses, and the influence requirements to open up contract opportunities. The hardest difficulty is pretty much the opposite of this and is designed for the most awesome of all kerbonauts with higher costs to everything, lower influence gain and higher influence loss, and mortal Jeb, Bob, and Bill because the truly awesome don't need to lean on immortal Kerbals to get the job done! ((On an added note, if things like deadly re-entry become official features, having the option to toggle these before starting would be very convenient. But yeah, added depth but nothing too serious to add further meaning to career mode. Also adds a way of FAILING HORRIBLY to the point of having a game over state by having no way of going on missions. Sandbox would be your playground, Career would be your tug towards the reality, not a drop off a cliff into stabby rocks of reality(unless you're hardcore and play on the hardest difficulties for sheer masochistic bliss), but a nice relaxing lounge that lets you use your think muscles a bit more to a void losing your space program to poor funding... or bad reputations because you like lobbing nukes at K2....

You can use a 3 man capsule and put only 2 kerbals in it =D

I like mods, but the game hates me for using them and punishes me with extremely long load times ._. But yeah, I really do hope Unity allows 64-bit capabilities soon. 32-bit games are becoming out-dated.

I was going to try and do this challenge, but right now the game is far too slow for my patience to handle. I can understand longer loading times with mods, but when it takes 30 seconds just to change a tab in the VAB, that's ridiculous.

Probably locked, but hey, the design of your ship is pretty cool looking. Maybe it won't be such a lag fest by launch eh?

seems a good few of us ignored the "must not go into space" rule.

Sadly, I don't think this follows the guidelines for challenges. No need to make a huge fuss and knit pick over it, of course. Though I gotta say, this might be better suited for the spacecraft exchange.

looks like this is obsolete with the new mod set-up

Theoretically, you can get that by finding the one planet with the highest Delta-v requirement and aim for that. So I suppose aiming for an Eve lander would make for a fairly universal set up. So 12,000(11,500 according to the wiki) would be your Delta-v goal for a universal lander according to this chart! That is, if you plan on leaving Eve. Eve has the highest Gravity of all the planets(with a landable surface) at 5 times the gravity of Kerbin. landing would be hard enough, but leaving is a different story. Not impossible, just tough. If that proves to be to high a budget for a reasonable lander, then about 4,000 Delta-v(Over Tylo, but under Kerbin) would be the next best thing!

If they did, I have not a clue on how to do it... nor would I really use it since I honestly don't have a lot of space for it.

You seem to misunderstand. I'm not saying this isn't challenging in terms of difficulty, what I mean by it not being a challenge is that there's no structure. There's no rules, scoring, nothing that would constitute this as a challenge. Now, if it was no mod, then it would be a challenge since there is a limitation in the design! It has been proven to work as Harv(HOCGaming on youtube, not to be mistaken as Harvester) has displayed on his test flight series a working pod racer made of only mod parts, so you wouldn't have to worry about people griping that it's impossible. So your challenge CAN work, but it needs to be structured like one in order for it to be considered a challenge in this sense. As for difficulty, I'm a rocket guy so I would have a hard time with it. The no rules only make it easier, but I'd personally still struggle none the less.

Definitely a ways of approaching it if you understand how to apply your mathematics in KSP, but I suppose your videos would assist in that if he really wants to go the no-mod route! And if he does so, I'll be pretty impressed! Well, not that I'm easily impressed enough by the very notion of folks being able to do these things with math. I can barely opperate a calculator to convert the distance between Alpha Centari and Sol down to Kerbal standards of measurement!

Maybe this should be moved to the Spacecraft exchange as this is by no means a challenge.

Wet, look at the date of this Challenge..... August of last year... I think you're late for that party, not to mention you probably had a later version than .16(major changes since then)

Yeah, I'm with Kahlzun on this one. There's little number of players who actually kept the previous versions on their drives for this challenge to be considered feasible. I didn't get KSP until .19 so, the only ways for me to get that is to either beg someone who does have it or pirate it. Honestly, I'd rather just pass on this challenge completely than do either of those...

Proof of concept is needed. If you're schedule is too busy to test your own challenge to make sure it's reasonably possible, then you shouldn't post the challenge to begin with. Sci-fi ships are typically made to look cool, not be functional machines. The contrasting tech between these concepts and KSP, make the probability of creating a functional craft slim to none.

If you want to make things easier, weight wise, there is a mod that gives emptied variants to the fuel tanks. Pair that up with Kethane and KAS or the Quantum Fuel Transfer mod and you should be good to go!

This would be tricky to accomplish but doable! The main trick is to have plenty of Delta-v available for both your launch stage(s) and your orbital stage(s) to put your craft on a similar orbital direction and to match the inclination. This means turn Westward and fight gravity on your way into orbit which will take a lot more Delta-v than your typical eastward launch. If you're up for the challenge, you could try to match inclination during your launch, but in my honest opinion, it'll be simpler to pop a maneuver node down and do it in orbit. It takes a lot more Delta-v to do so, but it's easier to accomplish on a mental standpoint. You don't need to worry about the eccentric orbit of your target, in fact, that makes it even easier! All you'd have to do is circularize your orbit on the same inclination(preferably in a much lower orbit), then pop up a maneuver node to figure out when the object will be at or near it's periapsis in order to conserve fuel for your transfer. From there, it should be the same old rendezvous scenario! As Chris mentioned, don't be afraid to get mechjeb to make these maneuver nodes for you. It'll save you lots of time and even help you determine where the Ascending and Descending nodes are really located in your orbit which is extremely important in determining the correct time and direction of your inclination burn. Shoot, if you just want the issue resolved regardless of HOW it gets done, you can let the auto-pilot do all the hard parts! But that's entirely your call. (Note: my sense of direction may be terrible, as I can't tell if the red line on the navball means north or south. If The red line is north, then flip my directions around! I got it right the first time, then ignore this!)

I've done this sort of thing with the Remote tech mod. One hub station in geosynchronous orbit over KSC and 4 relays in 300Km orbits separated by inclination increments of 45 Degrees It's not EXACTLY the kind of thing the challenge is looking for but I'm still happy about it xD

This is happening in a fresh install

nautical terminology has always been associated with space(in a basic sense), and the anchoring system is mainly used to work with the Airships to Jool mod which allows you to keep an airship from floating in a random direction when performing specific tasks like picking up heavy loads and refueling reusable SSTOs(in style of course!) But anyway, I've been facing an issue with KAS making my ships move very strangely. whenever I move the navball, my ship shifts on it's vertical axis slightly before making it's move. When ASAS is enabled, the machine shakes violently and in turn increases my drag exponentially. I ended up spending well over 5000 Delta-V just to get into LKO! No for reference, I have my orbital launch down to a science, so I wouldn't expect it to be a big deal. Now the reason I'm targeting KAS for this is because the moment I removed it from my game, everything went back to normal. Any theories on why this would happen?

Yeah i got a stick, but I rarely use it since it interferes with my mouse controls with other games and is a pain in the butt to plug in. I don't havea lot of room to move around to plug things in easily...

There's a lot of questions for this challenge. SRBs don't seem to show up on Mechjeb's Delta-V meaning I could take a SRB to high altitude and expend a little less than 3k Delta-V for the orbit turn. should SRBs be outlawed? Also, What is the target orbit? Everyone is going for whatever orbit they can get rather than a target that would even the playing field. Extremely skilled pilots can get into a circular 85km orbit and use less Delta-V because of that. others, however, would likely waste Delta-V on correction burns

be sure to save the video or make screenshots! Not eveyone will be able to watch!