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drewscriver ... awesome, Changling is a very remarkable craft and deployment is like something out of a Bond movie! Thanks very much for sharing that with us, at first I thought it must be robotics behind the wing swivel but then I saw your main post and understood it is pylon flexing, those wobbly white ones no doubt. There is something curiously satisfying about a full orange tank in orbit around a distant planetoid, so well done on a big mass for your utilitarial commendation and also current maximalist record for v.22 etc.

Spartwo, thanks for your clarification which presents a dilemma. 70km is a standard set in the rules (because the true edge of Kerbin atmosphere is 69,077.553m. The point about the min PE orbit is that anything more than 1km below that will degrade whereas every orbit with PE over that will not. However KSP measures meters and your PE will not degrade but is not quite up to the rules standard. The standard was set both because it was easy to remember and because it was well clear of the atmosphere. This last factor is significant because some craft have dimensions approaching 100m so it would be fully possible for the capsule to be in space while the tail was dragging in the atmosphere ! So the 70km standard stands and this means the last Sabre mission is an honourable gatecrasher, feel free to lobby the K-Prize committee with beer and nuts in the snug bar of the Dog & Booster. Your Sabre spaceplane looks capable of the K-Prize mission and from what you say had enough rocket propellant to make it, so why not have another go and beat the bouncers once and for all ?

Thanks all for some excellent K-Prize winning mission reports. SparTwo, thanks for your report with your compact and effective looking craft. Did you know that the K-Prize defines orbit as PE above 70km? I noticed your orbit proof screen was below 70km and altimeter was dropping which suggests the PE was lower and that maybe you didn't understand the rule. Please let me know if you did and actually made a full orbit which was not shown in the screenies you showed, alternatively repeat the mission with PE>70km and say so and I will enter your post as a K-Prize winner. pinolallo your FatNose spacecans appear to be effective Kerbal transporters. See OP for honours Cupcake... your craft, video and flying were as unique, stylish and watchable as ever, thanks, and gottalove Father Ted lol, glad to know it had a horizontal take off. Mesklin, all that dV in the Ikar surely goes a long way, your double trip around Kerbin SOI has been logged as a winner. that1guy thanks for your atmospheric Cetus nightflight video. WafflesToo thanks for the badges and your hard rock-et plane video! An effective and workman like probe delivery. Sorry I have taken a while to update, I got caught up in a side venture, playing career while running a "pen and paper" (well keyboard and notepad anyway) economy sim to regulate parts spending. When that produces a spaceplane I will share it.

Orbiter 6 was constructed using Orbiter 5 (see Imgur album in OP) by adding 6 FLT200 tanks, 3 to each side. It needed struts because the craft would break up on decoupling without them due to the wobble of all those nice cheap tanks in a row suspended from an inline decoupler because KSP could not afford radials. After refuelling there were only 799 Kerbils left which would only buy one radial, not much use when you are needing a pair! At one point I thought the craft and Jeb were lost and possibly the game, when in Mun orbit with only 13.4 L of fuel to get back (as below, see Imgur screeny for Orbiter 6). However Jeb left the Mun orbit very elliptical so he could get some biome EVA and other data close to the surface (>60km) for part of the orbit but still get out of the SOI easily. He couldnt get any craters but got the north polar biomes and materials and goo, enough to pay for the mission. Orbiter 6 burned at PE to leave Mun SOI and was adrift without enough fuel to drop onto Kerbin. The solution strangely was planning a slight change of Kerbin orbit to maximise a slingshot from a second encounter with the Mun so that it put the craft just outside the edge of Kerbin SOI, where Jeb was able to acquire Kerbolar orbit data for all experiments on the craft, giving a very big boost to the total science for the mission. From here the required dV to hit Kerbin was also much lower courtesy of the Mun's slingshot boost, so Orbiter 6 was able to make a small burn which returned it to Kerbin SOI to splash down 200km to the south west of KSC, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat!

I added the latest mission to the log, which I will show here as an example, see also the 6th Imgur image for a screeny of "Orbiter 5" in the VAB if you want an example of the desperation an economy sim can bring to KSP! Mission #24 as below, KSP spent all its capital and went 95 Kerbils into debt for a shot at the big time. It paid off when Jeb made high orbit and brought back a full set of experiments. PS also added a rule change, making all liquid refuelling charged at a rate of 0.5k per litre to make an even cost for fuel (including oxidiser) because otherwise there is a big disincentive to invest in larger fuel tanks which is just no fun plus the previous balance was just a little too harsh. On discovering the accounting error KSP were pleased they were never overdrawn in the first place and wrote a very dignified letter to their bank manager to let them know. The log is corrected all the way through for the new rules now as I am using it as a kind of experiment to think about economy balance in general over the course of a career but I am leaving the quoted example above (which no longer applies) in place as a salutory reminder of what can happen if you are careless with fuel !

I am making a report here of a career game I am playing in which there are rules about how much you can spend on building a rocket. The game starts with a credit of 2500K where K=Kerbils (made up name) not 1000's! Overdraft is 10% of highest cash total to date, starts at 250K. If you overdraw past your overdraft you go bust and you lose the game. [*]Credit is earned by science returned at a rate of 50K per science point. eg 9 points is worth 9x50K = 450K [*]Part costs are subtracted from your credit total according to their stock cost value. [*]Parts recovered can be reused for free with the following exceptions. Rebuilding recovered boosters / decouplers costs half their price. Refuelling recovered liquid tanks costs 0.5K / litre, only for the fuel required. Refuel is charged relative to the last mission end state. eg If the tank is half full when recovered you are only charged for half the fuel cost. eg Recovered unused decouplers can be reused with no cost. [*]Recovery is charged at a rate of 10K per item recovered outside KSC, plus 1K for every km travelled to the recovery sites (you need a flag at KSC to measure this). For multiple recoveries count the distance to KSC once and add the distances between items per item. eg 2 boosters 20km from KSC & 2Km apart = (2x items @10K ) + (20km+2km)x1K = 20K + 22K = 44K Recovery from KSC entails no charge. Recovery is charged for the current mission when totalling the mission. [*]Components can be rearranged at no cost, but extra copies are charged per copy. So if you switch symmetry from 3 to 4 you must pay for the extra one. If you dont use a component previously paid for and recovered it is held in reserve ready to use later. With these rules it has been impossible to build big first mission ships and has become imperative to make reusable craft and helpful to recover craft from as close as possible to KSC. It has been a narrow squeak a couple of times but I am continuing with the missions. This is the mission log with running economy totals on justpasteit. It is purely a text summary of the missions and the economic results, research and purchases, refuelling and recovery costs. Should be self explanatory if you've read the rules. These are craft illustrating the way the game has required interesting reusable designs to break even and build capital for larger craft. I am preparing mission 24 and I have not yet made a full orbit or visited another SOI because I cannot afford to, its much more testing than career mode and demands all your ingenuity .

Actually Will The K Prize was inspired by a social meeting with Alistair D Scott, president elect of The British Interplanetary Society and chair of their media group. We had been discussing Kerbal Space Program as Alistair said some of the members of the BIS had been expressing enthusiasm for its educational potential and fun factor, and we also chatted about the future of space planes like Hotol, Skylon and Sabre engine development. It was very exciting to think that Sabre tests were progressing, that gave me impetus to continue the K-Prize through thick and thin. At the start my first thought on the new improved aero version of KSP back in May 2012 was spaceplanes! I waited a few days for someone else to do it as I had already done the Solar Explorer challenge and thought I should let someone else have a go, but noone did so I started it. Scott (Manley aka Illectro) has visited the K Prize at least once (we may have lost another one of his in the great server crash) and kindly contributed one of his interesting and well thought out videos to watch and his seems inspired by the same principles of economy and efficiency which inspired the shuttle and HOTOL and Skylon development, as well as the K-Prize. I hope reusability will become worthwhile in KSP gameplay when the economic sim begins to take shape because its an entertaining challenge to make reusable craft IMHO and an important principle in the future of real space exploration.

The issue I see the OP has is that the tech tree is not balanced or fine tuned for progression by people actually playing the game. Designing the game without playing does not create the right experience. Likewise the collection of stock parts (as well as their arrangement in the tech tree) is limited and if you try to play an economic simulation by hand, the parts cost balancing is apparently pulled out of a hat or something because it makes very little sense eg that larger fuel tanks cost 2x more than smaller ones for the same volume of fuel for example. Its a WIP and roughly balanced, unfortunately the fine tuned play balance which comes from many hours play testing is not in evidence. That is because it is still in alpha, the major systems have not even been written yet. I understand people coming to KSP from Steam and wanting to pick up the game with a career mode and get some game play from it. That is why I want as a player for Squad to pay more attention to playability but you can understand that from their point of view the more time they spend polishing play now at the expense of adding more key systems, the longer it will take to produce a finished game. Also every time they add a new system it will change the play balance, so balancing now is a waste of time and they are pushing ahead to the completed beta and hopefully will balance it carefully then. My biggest concern is that they will get so used to having a bug filled game that once the main systems are all in place they will not take the small bugs seriously and will get fed up and walk away and go take a long vacation, or like Aaron at Malfador Machinations making Space Empires V, just give up on it unbalanced once beta systems are in place, leaving the content to the modders and and start a different very much less anticipated project and give up on the baby he nurtured through 5 iterations due to project fatigue, losing his player base in the process! My advice to HarvesteR and others is to pace themselves, make this a sustainable project so they can stay with it to polish it as sparkly as possible, to which end avoid project fatigue and give themselves proper breaks and holidays a few times a year in between versions so they are not so tired out they they have to abandon game development to get a proper break, if you see what I mean?

WafflesToo designed some badges for the K-Prize, I have included them in the OP with a credit link to his YouTube channel showing KSP vids. He said he might offer sig badges for K-Prize missioneers later. Thanks WafflesToo. Drop by the OP and take a look.

Well its not much to brag about any more but I managed to get 1452 out of this by doing kerbin polar orbit EVAs over all the biomes and Mun polar over 14 of them with Minmus EVA landing and an Ike landing and assorted high low EVA and also several transmitted crew reports. Unlocks a fair bit of stuff though, just enough to unlock all sensors. This is the ZIP for the craft "Bridge 4.craft".

Never believe dV calculators... always try it for yourself

Thanks for your mission report Mesklin and congratulations on winning the K-Prize and Advanced Pilot Precision Award with high dV vehicle Ikar. It will be interesting to see if spaceplanes become useful in career mode once the economic factors are in place.

while controlling the rescue craft, go to map view, right click Jeb and set as target, at one of the two orbit intersection nodes (dotted line with yellow tab) plan a maneuver (left click the orbit line) using the purple axis icons (push or pull them) to turn the rescue craft orbit so it is level with Jebs ie on the same plane then make a different sized orbit with the yellow axis, smaller if you want to catch up and larger if you want to slow down, (adjust elliptical form with the blue axis markers) make the burn following the dark blue navball marker and watching dV indicator on the right of the navball when jeb gets close use maneuver node planner again to plan a maneuver which will bring the orbits together in a way which brings orange or purple intercept tags (one for each craft, so two per colour) into alignment so the distance is under 1km, once done, where the target intercept markers align, plan another burn for timing purposes only, to tell you where to burn but ignore the dV marker and blue marker (else follow the range to target info in the main screen looking for minimum value) either way follow the retrograde target velocity marker on the nav ball (click the nav ball velocity indicator until it reads target) ie the marker showing the opposite direction of travel relative to your target so you can burn when you are close to Jeb and reduce relative velocity to zero, then you will have matched orbits then use your skills to get jeb into grabbing distance of a ladder (use [ ] keys to switch craft/kerbals) leading to an empty capsule (R gives jeb EVA RCS but if you are role playing you will have to bring the ship to him)

Thanks for your mission report on the Swallow Pipcard a compact economical and clearly effective SSTO and yes Kerbal Engineer, as you decribe it, is properly within the rules. Congratulations on winning the K Prize with a fully deserved Advanced Pilot Precision Award for your precise touchdown on KSC runway. pa1983, thanks for your screenies of the carefully constructed HOTOL, with its characteristicly elegant lines a very interesting recreation of the Skylon predecessor and a capable K-Prize winner as well.

Thanks for viewing and replying. It is actually something I did kind of rehearse a long time ago in a version far far away. Made a video of it, it was much harder to rendezvous then as maneuver nodes had not been invented. Its interesting to compare the two, KSP has come a long way since then.

MohoroviÄÂić Discontinuity aka the Moho. PS if your little toe is turquoise HarvesteR you should probably change shower gels.

Personally I just think the total cost should be higher but spread out, so instead of researching 5 components in one go, you research a component node with one main component and then individual components sprouting from that node. So say you unlock a satellite core node for 300, you can then unlock a solar panel for an additional 100 and a mini fuel tank for 50 and a small rocket for 40 and a circular battery for 60 etc. So in the end the entire node costs you more like 600. So you can then either research the parts you want or you can move up to the next node.

Maneuver nodes should be adjusted by the navball not on the node itself, its too easy to drop them when you zoom out, currently they are really useful but a pain to use. So where the dV indicator is now there should also be the XYZ axese to the right, as part of the HUD not part of the map.

While on the ladder press shift space, then R then press and hold shift.

This is a rescue mission in the career game of a lander constructed before docking ports were unlocked. Having acquired valuable science and having no transmission capability the lander became unable to leave the Munar SOI when it ran out of fuel entering a very low Munar orbit. KSC command shoved it with a defunct satellite and a purpose made tug into Kerbin orbit but it still could not return to Kerbin safely, as its chutes ripped it to pieces without power assisted deceleration. Mission control considered saving only the Kerbals but decided they wanted the science the lander had done as well, so set out to save the entire ship by building a cradle which could safely bring it in...

This version (0.22) or any version?

Yes I think at any difficulty level above easy it should be possible to fail in the final game by going bankrupt. I don't think that science itself should be too much of a problem, the question will be how much you can do with the funds available and how the parts assist you in earning more as well as doing more science. There should be choices, like do I research something which can help me make more money or do I research something which can help me get more science so I can research a part higher up the tree which makes even more money? I think that will be interesting and then the game can set difficulty levels by how much money you get for tasks like satellite launches or space tourism as well as how much science you get for a particular experiment in a particular location. The more I think about it the more awesome it sounds, but I was totally surprised and delighted by science so I am confident HarvesteR will come up with something I will enjoy.

umm well I dont know about good exactly, this was a recent mission which went badly wrong but which I rescued in an ingenious way, which made me very chuffed

Yes when you factor in the money economy acting as a hurdle in combination with science it is going to be quite interesting, much trickier, (especially if they add range dependant recovery costs and recovered vehicle salvage value etc). When you are having to scrape together a few bucks to buy one sensor it will play very differently. Makes me wonder just what methods we can use to earn money. As games go it has the potential to be pure poetry, thanks Harv & Squad, its going to be fun.

Each big Mun crater is a separate biome SpaceSphereOfDeathso you get max points for first readings. You can see in these reports that each of the craters has its own name. I did a two crater hop and return today with temp seismic grav materials goo crew EVA and sample for each with a few duplications and was amazed that I netted over 1000 research points which is my best yet. I havent been outside the Kerbin SOI yet, taking it slowly and playing with the challenges.