Scarecrow88

Real time launches to orbit all the time.

Mostly to assist game play - alarm clock, engineer, docking indicator. Only part mod was for a vastly improved looking lander can.

Here's a bunch of mine that I've used in the past, though they have all been retired now and surpassed by newer designs.

This craft serves no real purpose other than to just have a bit of fun. It has very forgiving flying characteristics - turn on SAS, throttle up and stage to fire up the engines and it will take off on it's own with no further input. It glides well, and landing can be held off until the speed is below 35 m/s. In fact it prefers slower landings, as if you try to put it down at excess speed, it tends to veer off the runway. Staging a second time whilst in flight will have it doing what seagulls tend to do. I'll let you find out for yourself. Craft download file

You could look up Scott Manley on Youtube He has produced tutorial videos for most aspects of KSP.

If chutes are deployed it's always recommended that you reduce warp to 1x as you go through the opening altitude to avoid ripping them off. That could be your problem.

When I first tried to design and fly a SSTO to orbit I really struggled too. The problem I had was that I wasn't sure if it was my flying or my design that was preventing me from being successful. It doesn't help that the ascent profile for getting a spaceplane to orbit is substantially different from that of a rocket. If you continue to struggle I would recommend downloading a proven SSTO from the spacecraft exchange thread and flying that. If you fail to get one of those to orbit, at least you know you need to improve your flying skills. Once you can get such a craft to orbit is the time you can try with your own designs knowing that if you then fail with those, it's the design that needs tweaking rather than your flying.

I created some scenarios from beginner to advanced, each containing a variety of available tasks, from flying aircraft, launching to orbit and rendezvous and docking. I am on iPhone at the moment but if no one else has replied by the time I get home, I will see if I can give a more detailed answer. ETA: I see no one else has chipped in, so I will see if I can get you started by describing what I did. First thing is to start a new game save. Give it a distinct name to keep it separate from your normal game saves. I set mine up in Sandbox mode so that I had access to all the parts I needed. In the new game save, you can either build the ships/structures you need, or copy them in to the appropriate ship folders. Put all your vehicles/craft/structures in to their starting positions. To make this easier, you might want to use hyperedit. Once everything is in place, you can quit out of the game. You now need to find the saved persistent.sfs file from this game and copy and paste it in to the scenarios folder in your game folder structure. Once in the scenarios folder, you should rename it as appropriate. You will see the stock scenario files in this folder, and the names you see and use here is how they will appear on the scenario menu in game. You will now need to edit this persistent file. I use Microsoft notepad to do this, but any standard text editor should do. In the first few lines you can amend the title and should add a description. If you have more than one craft in your scenario and want to give the player a choice of which one he controls, change the line scene = n, to scene = 8 This will put them in the tracking station view with the option of selecting which craft to control If you want your scenario to start with the player in control of a craft, change the line scene = n to scene = 7, but note that this will default to the first craft in the vessel section of the file. I have had asteroids occupy this part, so if this happens to you, you will need to delete the data for the asteroid. Other parts that may or may not wish to change, depending on what facilities you want to make available to the player are the following lines, which you will find near the beginning of the file: CanLeaveToEditor = CanLeaveToTrackingStation = CanLeaveToSPaceCenter = CanLeaveToMainMenu = The default values for a normal game save are True, True, True and False respectively. Each should be self explanatory, and the stock scenarios have these set as False, False, False and True respectively. You can choose to set them as your own scenario requires. I think that's about it, and hope that helps.

Just 2 for me. One for testing, and the other for my actual gameplay.

If it was me, I would gather my fleet in Kerbin orbit, and transfer them all to Duna in the same transfer window. Using Kerbal alarm clock mod to alert you to significant events for each ship is really helpful. It's up to you whether you design your ships and base so that they need to rendezvous in space for specific tasks, or whether you can land them on Duna as individual ships and assemble the base on the ground. As for landing site, sending a probe ahead to scout a suitable location makes sense.

I've just built a fairly easy to fly SSTO that has limited cargo space for carrying small satellites to orbit. It doesn't have an over abundance of fuel, but with a standard SSTO flight profile it has enough to achieve a 100km Kerbin orbit. The craft download file and more pictures can be seen here Blackbird SSTO exchange

Simplest/easiest to fly mun and back craft. Imagine that would appeal to newcomers.

This wasn't designed specifically to be a replica of the SR71 Blackbird, but it ended up looking a bit like one, so that's what I called it. As per the title, this is a SSTO craft, that has a cargo bay fitted that will allow small payloads to be carried in to orbit. It also has a junior docking port fitted to the underside, should you wish to use it for transferring crew to an orbiting space station. The craft is quite stable and not particularly difficult to fly, just requiring a standard SSTO flight profile to get in to orbit. I usually go for an Apo of 100k before turning off the engines to coast. This results in an Apo of around 95k by the time you actually leave the atmosphere. There is enough fuel on board if you want to push this a bit higher, but remember to leave enough for your de-orbit burn. Action keys are: 1: Toggle rocket engine 2: Toggle 2 jet engines 4: Toggle pilot's ladder 5: Toggle cargo bay door 7: Toggle nose wheel steering Craft file Take off for next mission Initial climb established Rocket power for orbital insertion Ready to release the payload Payload away Re-entry burn near home Lining up on the runway Home again

That's not really a hangar door, it's a giant plasma screen showing a view of the outside world so that the engineers working inside the VAB have no feeling of the passage of time, which helps stave off tiredness and thus increases their productivity.

The only thing I haven't done yet, but feel that I should have, is a manned return from Eve.

You could always send an unmanned probe. With the right design, you could hop from place to place on the surface until you find what you are looking for.

Edison's maxim: I haven't failed 100 times, I've just discovered 100 ways that don't work.

If it flies like a bucket of rusty nails, you may want to tweak the design a little. The boomerang conundrum - "Getting there is the easy part."

Do you use stock aerodynamics or do you have FAR/NEAR installed? I only ask so that I can put your entry on the correct scoreboard.

Park a probe out near the runway?

I seem to recall somewhere that someone once advocated keeping the time to apo at just under a minute.

Sorry for the delay in updating the scoreboard, but I've been away for a couple of weeks, and I thought from the slow uptake that people weren't actually interested in this challenge. Sorry Tarantulae but the rules do state the return trip must land on the helipad, and to be fair to everyone else who have done that, I am going to have to insist that this particular condition is met. And congrats to Aphobius, our new leader on the stock leaderboard - interesting design.

Totally discounting how difficult some destinations can be to get to, for actual landing difficulty I cast another vote for Tylo for all the reasons previously stated.

Given that there is no atmo on Tylo to fight against, I didn't think there was a terminal velocity to be concerned about.

Its been quite a while since I went to Tylo and I can't remember all the details of my lander. One specific thing I do remember is that it had a few external fuel tanks which were jettisoned on the ascent as soon as they were empty to keep the weight to as little as possible.