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Ah! Nice try. How many tanks is that? I had the same idea, with with 2x2 drop tanks and one main tank. First time was a crash with multiple fatalities I admit but I tried again with some fuel conservation factored into the timing of burns etc the second and third times my Kerbals lived. Second time I used a T45 and crash landed at 20m/s tail first and only the capsule survived. The third time using a T30 there was a bit of a snafu with lunar orbit but I caught it eventually (hence mission time) and the ship somehow landed on its nose, which if I am not mistaken means I have completed another challenge, the 'land your ship on its nose' challenge. Screenies of third attempt below 8)

Chutes are an idea, I forgot about those, playing on the Mun. Could save a lot of fuel if used the right way. They are handy if you dont want to hover, if the velocity drops to zero they vanish. Which means that if you are looking for flat terrain you have to spot it from quite high up and get vertically over it at 500m+ and then drop onto it in one go. I know what you mean because I did try chutes before on outer stages to decelerate atmospheric reentry on Kerbin before decoupling the outer stage to let loose a hovering lander stage. But that was before fuel pipes and T45s. Manoevuring a hovering rocket to eliminate drift without chutes is very tricky, I practiced quite a lot as part of some other challenges which include landing at the KSC in the rules. I found having a T45 engine in the mix makes it easier, since if you get the thing vertical (not easy to do) you can cancel gentle drift with WASD, it just uses a lot of fuel to get a good landing (I gather some people also use RCS) and if you are not lucky with the landing site terrain it can break the mission. The mission above I lucked out by hitting the edge of a high plateau, Kibet!

Thanks samstarman5, interesting challenge, trickier than it sounds. It all hinges on the high drag at low altitude on Kerbin which means you dont need as much retro on the Kerbin landing as you would on the Mun though you do have to be very careful about drift on touch down. Was fun.

hi zarakon and Raxael, thanks for describing your adventures with some interesting screenies, I have recorded your flights on the roll call of intrepid pilots who got lost in space while shooting for the sun. Better luck next time, let us know how it goes. Solar orbit is a whole different barrel of monkeys to Kerbin orbit and making the intercept to return for landing while doable is especially tricky with the deep space attitude control bug still operating. However the smaller the ship the less of a nuisance it is so if you had the fuel Raxael, you could get back to kerbin from that position by decreasing the apoapsis slightly so that you catch up on the faster periapsis part and dont slow down as much on the apoapsis. Then when flying parallel you can adjust orbit so you intercept Kerbin. Not sure if that will help any, just thought I would mention it btw zarakon that was one heck of a slingshot by the sound of it, congratulations on breaking Kerbol !

Well I only use stock parts at the moment for beta testing, so I thought it would be tricky which is why I had a go... and to make it more interesting I went for two full 300km+ (100x time acceleration) orbits and landed on the day side both times. I tried my biggest lunar lander and failed because I could not get into orbit with a three tank T45 with ASAS, so learning from that failure I modified the lander stage so that it would work on Kerbin and created the following seven stage monster which will drop a three stage orbiter/lander onto the far side from a 300km orbit using a four stage lifter. I relied on atmospheric deceleration to land the first time and retained the first lander stage to use as landing gear, hovered using second lander stage engines over a flat patch sacrificing the first stage engines on the lander when landing so that the second and third stage engines could remain functional for lift off. Then I took a few screenies, made a lift off to orbit again, waitied for the KSC to go day side, increased apoapsis so that it was 500km over KSC and then retro burned at apoapsis to drop straight down over KSC. I had just enough fuel to adjust reentry point and hit KSC terrain with the capsule and spent third stage of the lander. Please see screenies attached below.

Happy Holidays to all of you too KSP devs and best wishes for the coming year.

Ok this time I tried a bit harder with stock parts and made the munar landing and then lined up a high speed vertical reentry to drop on top of the KSC with enough fuel left to make a small hop over the bullseye and drop the capsule on top of it. Dropping onto the KSC from 3,900,000m is a lot harder now that Kerbin rotates. I took a long time to work out the best timing for the drop, hence the long mission time.

Thanks for the screeny which confused me there for a moment Wernher Von Braun aka Buzz Aldrin fka ThatCrazyPilot, not hard to do, but because you are going so fast away from Kerbin there is little doubt your ship got lost in space. Duely noted. Let us know if you make it back to base. Flixxbeatz, that is an interesting looking station/ship and a good spot for some rays. Logged. I am guessing you didnt get home? Also special mention for sneakeypete who also goes on the v12+ lost in space roll, not sure why I missed him before, maybe I was ninja\'d. btw, I have now modified the OP, which was all out of date. The new challenge is to ... OK to check this is even possible I have done the mission with a stock parts ship. Ran into a bit of a terrain bug on my return to Kerbin though and had a big problem controlling the craft in deep space, seems to be some kind of bug affecting attitude control for multistack ships outside Kerbin + Mun orbit, but wow, what a ride!

Well both KnightWhoSaisNi and Ignite A Light deserve a mention in the roll call of honourable failures. It has become a lot harder with the new orbital dynamics. Getting that close to Kerbol Ni is a feat in itself and deorbiting the moon Ignite is, well... awesome! I have not tried exploring outside Kerbin - Mun since early v12 because there was a jinx on the spaceship, some kind of bug where the center of gravity was off when it went into solar orbit but I have built a new ship for v13 and will try again another day. I will have to think up new conditions for the skill titles to suit the new physics.

Fuel pipes in v13 have changed the game somewhat... all stock, Mun 'landing' (OK - controlled crash) and back to KSC terrain. The trick was orbiting the moon while the boys ate their packed lunch, until the moon was on the sunny side of Kerbin, so Jeb could see what he was doing. I give you... The Moonraker. Point of interest, screeny A, 9 fuel tanks fuelling 21 engines. ^.^ See B also 4 tanks 5 engines! The fuel from discard stacks can fuel the rest of the engines so you use the engines but keep the fuel tanks above them full. Reduces vertical stage count.

now thats what i\'m sayin, landed on the mun, took off and made it back to KSC terrain... oh yeah! stock

Yup I have done this with all stock parts a few times now, the hard part is landing close to KSC... This series of shots is from the mission that landed closest to KSC so far.

Damonjay, done. What about ... solar sails ... ? Are they doable do you think ?

Hi Arc, very interesting mission summary and well done on getting back to Kerbin. Fascinating looking ion ship you have there, looks like it works well. You are for sure a Star Pilot Dude.

Gid up here on the back o\' the pick up truck Omnivore ol\' buddy, we\'re gonna have us a ticker tape parade... yessir!! Good shot. Thanks for the screenies.

You are right thorfinn v0.12 isn\'t the end its a new beginning. Slingshots should make close passes to the sun and returns to Kerbin feasable. You dont need to reach solar orbit speed to pass close to the sun, you just need an eccentric orbit, and most of us seem capable of high degrees of eccentricity! Besides there is no such thing as 'too far' if you have enough boosters!

Grats to sagamore for reaching the sun, though it doesnt look like that ship is going home any time soon! Good luck Damonjay, hf, would be interested to know how it goes.

Congratulations on your crew\'s safe return to Kerbin Spiz102. Nicely done if I may say so. 1189 days! Cool 8) Adding you to the roll of Star Pilot Dudes who have succeeded in completing the challenge.

Let us know how it goes Spiz, small ships have their own special kudos, even if the mission fails your name will be immortalised on the roll of gave-it-a-go-but-got-lost-in-space-ness.

Like your landing struts Nova. Currently I am trying the controlled crash landing method, which may not be elegant but its very Kerbal! Its amazing what you can get away with if you have enough ship between the command module and the ground.

Good effort Nova, worthy of recording on the roll of lost missions. Have another go EDIT I am working on a vertical lander, I nearly had it too, but I fluffed it at the vital moment and with just seconds of fuel remaining I could not quite get the ******* thing to hover over the pad itself, think I had the ASAS angle slightly off center, so I only got another wiley landing in the middle ring. Still, I will try again another day. I was lucky to get that close first try. The turnaround reentry ship is in the screeny. And the ship itself below 'Batman 1'

Don\'t I know it! I guess the ideal vertical lander would need ASAS and RCS which makes it heavy and shortens flight time. But first you need to slow it down because flying by the seat of the pants with a terrain based target is very tricky, I suppose you could gamble everything on a disposable chute connected by decoupler, use that to slow the ship right down on reentry and then you get half a minute to hover and use RCS to position the ship to land. OtherDalfite, strange, is that reproduceable? What were the conditions? Worthy of a bug report if it is.

Comradephil and DeltaBravo well done, star pilot dudes! Thanks for the screens. Grats on the first post shot One Winged Angel and thanks for the screens. You are now a cool star spud. Oouuch on the second! Too bad 'dead or alive' only works for bounties. Its pretty annoying when a long trip goes pear shaped in the final seconds, but then that is part of the game with a challenge like this. I would guess it was the 6 SAS which did it, if the screenies represent the landing stage accurately. I ran tests on the Podule 3 reentry stage in a post above to check it would land OK before going to the sun and back. I think I am becoming a Kerbal nerd... but that lands OK over land only, with an engine and empty tank crumple zone using a stock chute deployed at the opportune moment (about 1100m v125m/s, aligned to trajectory). That allowed me to cut out the SAS and final decoupler entirely but then I had to fly it manually for every burn which was a bit tricky. I must have got close to 2000m/s delta v out of the lightweight single tank reentry stage and needed every bit of it, though I am thinking it could go smaller! Good luck with your next attempt Angel, I am hoping you get the launch pad, it is embarassing as the thread author to be putting myself at the top of the ticker tape parade, makes me look like a conceited ass! 8)

Yes One Winged Angel, as far as I know noone has hit the pad yet from a sunshot. Did you hit the KSC terrain from a sunshot?