SRV Ron

One can even consider using a turbojet as a rocket with air hogging. This design, with very careful flying on a precise path, can hit 2,400 m/sec at 36,000 meters before burnout with an apogee of 180,000 meters. The turbojet can be recovered after you stabilize the orbit of the payload but is unflyable without its payload.

Try to mount the boosters centered to the decoupler. Brace evenly above and below. Keep in mind that fuel lines also act as braces. Do not be turning your ship when you stage. If done right, the burned out boosters should slide straight down without hitting anything. Sepetrons, if needed, in pairs angled away from the center fuel tanks. And, if done right, you can mount the boosters much closer to the center core. This all slid off with no issues of hitting or rotating. No braces or sepratons were used. The rocket, a low cost test the heavy Poodle escape Kerbal test and radical decoupler while escaping Kerbal. Two for one mission.

First of all, given the difficult task at hand and your limited funds, you can always decline taking the contract. However, if you want to take on the challenge, send the booster there minus its fuel load. Given that it has no attachment points at the base, it can always be mounted upside down on your lander. Do land in the sea since that is much easier then landing on a hill. A lot will depend on the tech unlocked as to how much you will need for the mission. Do use low cost SRB for the first stage and use enough to get to about 10,000 meters before relying on liquid engines. Keep us informed on how it goes once you accept the challenge.

It flashes green for a few seconds when a contract is completed. The number zero changes to reflect the number of completed contract. So, if you have completed 12 contracts, the number 12 would be displayed there.

Will have to do a daylight flight to demo that this ship can reach 2400 m/sec at about 35,000 meters so that only a very short burn is needed to circularize the payload into orbit. The fins act to stabilize lift at high altitude for the speed run to space. The jet section is recoverable but unflyable once the payload is staged.

To annoy the poster that started annoying the rest of us with blue. You can also post in white, but then, it would be invisible unless you had a different color background. If staging, orienting your ship, or engines are not working, check that you are not in time acceleration and that you have battery power.

Sometimes, the same bug occurs when wanting to read the Too Hot thermometer for logging and transmitting the results. The same solution works for that as well.

Try making sure that the SRBs are centered on those decouplers and if you use braces they they are also evenly balance. Finally, be sure you are going straight when staging so that those boosters slide off straight. Otherwise, you will get the rotation that can causes collisions and damage.

Looks like a combo of the seperatrons and the fact that the two engines reach detonation from overheating just after staging. A small fuel can under each big one will eliminate the overheat. Also, if you are not turning when staging, you won't need the seperatrons. Mod example similar to your design.

Testing a recoverable turbojet booster. This design placed the payload to an apogee of 168,000 meters at almost orbital velocity by the time of burnout at 34,000 meters and 2,400 m/sec. However, landing the booster ended up with this glitch that took over 1/2 hour to land. It just flew sideways for no reason Once it got below 500 meters, the landing was normal. The Orbiter, In orbit around Mun Another design to test a how high in 30 seconds you can go. Interesting is what happened when the orange can hit the ground after this rocket used up all the fuel. The force of the orange fuel can exploding bounced what remained up to 200 meters before falling down to scatter fireworks all over the launch pad.

SSTO SSTM

A Stayputnik with two radical parachutes and pair of cheap batteries, the part to test, one small fuel can and engine to launch and get over the water. If set up right, you should be able to recover everything with few exceptions for the splashdown test.

Played with the staging concept. Key is having all SRBs firing but tweaking the fuel to different levels and dumping SRBs as they run out of fuel. Check out the acceleration at launch. I'm sure it can be done better. You do want burnout at exactly 30 seconds for max effect.

The limitation is the SRB itself. Adding more of them in parallel will have no effect on the speed or altitude attempt. Try staging them. With tweaking the fuel, you should be able to get much better acceleration then what is shown here.

SRB was used to mount the decouplers and provide the last boost to escape. It was cheaper then using a bigger fuel can for the Poodle to escape burn. Also, the small fuel can only had 10% of its normal fuel for testing only, seems silly testing an engine with no fuel for it, no decoupler on the Poodle and last SRB. Anyhow, when doing escape Kerbal contracts, it is more cost effective to combine experiments given there will be no recovery of parts expected.

Built this in order to test a heavy Poodle on escape. Added the hydraulic decoupler test as well. Did both contracts at once for a bunch of money and science points.

Place something like this cheap simple satellite into orbit. You need a reusable instrument such as a Too Hot Thermometer to read the data for transmitting. You use it to transmit the temperature measured in orbit to fulfill the contract every time at no additional cost Launch the same SSTO satellite using this SRB to orbit Mun and Minmus to satisfy those contracts.

Ship designed to fulfill the Mun, Minmus Explore contract. it contains a Too Hot Thermometer. This variation will go to Duna and Eve to fulfill those contracts. This will give you plenty of fuel to land and return from Mun with Jeb. (Two Goo capsules can be safely added to the pod for extra science.)

Low cost Mun Satellite orbiter. Mun lander; Interplanetary lander;

Original design before the availability of those big SRBs and contract career; Last boost stage is recoverable as well as the fuel can.

Refine your flying technique. Mun landing and return is quite easy in the demo with this design. You should be able to do the landing and return in a less capable ship using a single stage lander instead of the two stage onion staging example pictured.

An excellent ship in very late career. For early career, you need something cheap and small once you unlock Ox Stat panels and the Stayputnik. SSTO orbiter; Booster to go to Mun, Minmus, and beyond.

Here is a variation for 23.5 and newer. Use the design on the left as using the cupola on the right is unstable in flight. Maybe switch a fuel can from the second stage to the first as I was playing with the new engine part. And in orbit. As always, using the Kerbal school of hard knocks, play with designs. Find out what works and what doesn't. When it does work, tweak the design to get it to work better, more efficiently, and cheaper where possible.

An early version 2 stage to orbit using a Mainsail and Skipper. You can try it and refine the design to be more efficient. (You need solar panels but don't need the fins or the SAS.)

Try to launch when Eeloo's orbit crosses the plane of Jool. That way, you won't have to mess with the change of inclination.