ApocSurvivor713

I use the structural plates as the floats. In the end, whatever boat you make ends up looking a bit like a hydroplane. I've never actually built a boat with them, but they can withstand a water landing at 90m/sec. Just put one lying horizontally, and attach another to it at an angle. Use 3 or 4 on a body that looks like an airplane without wings and you should be good. Good luck!

Some guy on the KSP subreddit came up with an excellent way to reliably land at the KSC from a 100km orbit. Just wait in a circular 100km orbit until your ship's passing over the southern rim of that big impact crater. When you reach that point, put your periapsis at 1.5km and prepare for re-entry. You may need to adjust speed, but all in all it's an excellent method, and since I found out about it, I've never landed more than a few kilometers from the KSC, whereas I used to land almost always on that big landmass that I think goes by "Krussia" or something. You probably know which one I'm talking about.

Here's my contribution, the Munbus. This is its first time in use. It's a fully reusable personnel shuttle designed to take crews to and back from large Mun or Minmus bases. A small caveat: at the time of its design, I had no large Mun bases. Certainly no Minmus bases, of any size. So the ship waited, perfectly functional, but with no task at hand. Until now. After hearing that .21 would break saves, I realized I had an unprecedented tast at hand. I had 20 Kerbals scattered around the Kerbin system. 8 on or orbiting the Mun, and 12 in stations orbiting Kerbin. I had put them all there, but now I had to bring them back. What vehicle could I use for this task? I scoured my craft folder, looking for vehicles capable of performing at least some of the required rescues. Then I spotted the Munbus. I created a simple ascent stage and launched it off, after checking to make sure everything was there. Even after loosing one of its six booster columns, it made it to orbit. I set off immediately to rescue the Kerbals in my Munar research station. I had enough fuel to reach Munar orbit, dock with the station, and return to LKO. Heck, I probably could have done it five or six times before running out of fuel. After returning to LKO, I refueled, offloaded the station crew, and set off to test the Munbus's landing capabilities, rescuing the crew of my small temporary Mun base. I was able to rescue the crew and return to LKO, but by this time was running on fumes. I still need to offload the Munbus's crew and rescue the station crew, but now the hard part is done. Here's the an album of the station rescue, and I'll add a link to the Mun base rescue later tonight.

I went inwards first, mostly because my rover delivery system had parachutes only and I wanted to be sure it would survive, but also because my launch window for Duna wasn't for a couple in game months. Rover delivery system works fine on both Eve and Duna, and the only thing left to put it on is Laythe!

I've got Gus Kerman running my Mun base right now. He's pretty cool, but kinda dumb. My other favorite is Munford, currently testing an Ion propelled multipurpose spacecraft. He's going to Minmus. Only problem is, Ion engines are slow. I've raising my apoapsis once an orbit for a whole day and I'm still not even halfway to the Mun, much less to Minmus!

Failure to dock, successful crew transfer. I was flying a capsule up to my first space station, to drop off 2 crew members and have fun. Rendezvous went without a hitch, but docking was tricky. I ran out of monopropellant only a few meters from the port. I then bounced off the side of the station. I was thinking I'd have to turn around and head home, then launch a revised version, but instead I used the engine to hold speed (but not dock, I didn't have the patience) with the station, and I transfered the crew that way.

Just before and just after docking, just before and just after landing, before I make an interplanetary burn and after I have an intercept, and definitely every couple kilometers or so when I'm driving my Mun rovers, because they're so easy to flip and crash.

1: Objective. Find what I want to do. 2: Know how. How do I get there? What angles, how much dV, etc. 3: Looks. Come up with a design that satisfies my eyes. 4: Works. Tweak the design's functions. Add panels, fuel, landing gear, etc. Balance CoM and CoL if needed. 5: Launcher. If it's not an SSTO, come up with something to actually get it into orbit. 6. Revisions, revisions, revisions... Tweak the design further so that it looks amazing and functions flawlessly, or close to it. 7. Launch! The mission begins. I'll probably keep revising the design, but for now it's good!

Soylent Green is Kerbals!

I'd like to see a large, atmospheric planet (think like Eve, but maybe a bit bigger) with a small atmospheric moon (think Duna, but smaller) with the moon in a very low orbit. Bonus points if both planets have oxygen.

Not necessarily engineering issues, but definitely life support/comfort/safety issues. For example, every long range (out of Kerbin's orbit) has room for at least 2 Kerbals. So that they don't get lonely. Every large space station gets a gravity ring at some point. There are provisions to return every short range craft to Kerbin, and every long range craft to LKO. If I ever strand a crew (I've been lucky so far) then I'll get them back to Kerbin, if possible, or give them some comfort if not.

When you worry about sending a 2 ton car flipping through the air during a tight turn or hard brake. To clarify, I just recently started driving. Prior to this, my most recent experience with driving was Lunar rovers in KSP. A tight turn with my standard long range rover will send it flying across the Lunar landscape, and if I brake too hard, the rear wheels lift off the ground. This obviously won't happen with a 2 ton car in Earth-normal gravity, but I still worry, for the time being.

I went to Eve first. Mostly for 3 reasons. First, my window for Eve was a lot closer than my window for Duna. Second, it was an unmanned rover mission, and I didn't need to worry about a return mission. Third, I wanted to succeed in my landing. I wasn't sure if my rover had enough parachutes for Duna (it did) and I knew that if it worked on Kerbin then it would work on Eve.

You may be able to pull it off if you use seats. I really have no idea how to help aside from that, but do try to keep it light. You may also want to use drop tanks for fuel. That way, you actually drop weight as you go up. Good luck!

Here's mine. She flies about as well as she looks, but she's more of a proof of concept thing than anything. No RCS thrusters or docking ports means that this version will never go much further than LKO. I've been trying to make her useful, but she can't take the weight of the required equipment. I'm still trying, though!

I am fortunate enough not to have many incidents with the end flight button. The worst was the deletion of my mobile Mun Arch Base. I landed a small mobile base near the Mun Arch. I was playing around with it one day and when I left, I ended the flight. I had to relaunch the whole thing. On the upside, I was able to correct some minor design flaws, and it's still parked there!

I use an interesting deployment method for my atmospheric rovers. It's basically a box made of the large structural panels, with one side attached by a decoupler, and a probe core on the roof, along with some RTGs and sensors, arranged around the rover inside the box, attached by a decoupler. It has parachutes on the outside, and is capable of landing on Eve, Duna, and Laythe (presumably). Here's a picture: http://i.imgur.com/7AzW5tL.png