zapy

Well, finally I ended this challenge. http://imgur.com/a/ZHKVW I created a top stage of 7 half of the size orange tanks, and a separated lander. The lower stages are placed in a onion style staging (I did't have enough patience to use aspargus for this) that can lift everything to orbit and about 600 m/s to mun transfer. I forgot to place fuel lines, so I had to do the transfers manually. Everytime that a pair of tanks is ended I decouple them to save weight. I place the ship in low orbit arround the mun and decoupled the lander, landed and back to orbit again. then I transfered to Minmus and the same proceeding. Then to Duna, where I performed some aerobraking manuevres to save fuel. Once in circular orbit, I decouple the lander again and I land in low terrain to save fuel with the parachutes. Land, repack chutes and back to orbit, same to travel to Ike. My intention was to return to Kerbin, but I had more than 3000 m/s delta-v, so I decided to travel to Eve. I used gravity assist flyby to Kerbin to reduce speed, then transfer to Eve, flyby and aerobreaking, then I wasted most of my remaining monopropellent to save weigh. Transfer to Gilly and landing there. Finally, take off, transfer to Kerbin, some aerobreaking, plane correction, and landing on KSC. So, Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike and Gilly landing, and Eve and Kerbin flyby.

in an old challenge I reached orbit using only sepratrons:

This is my attempt, the basic design is almost the same for all the challenges, I only add some seats for some of them, another rocket engine for the two that requires to carry extra weight, and balancing thrust, fuel and oxidizer depending on my objective. I based this on an old design I made some time ago to test RAPIER engine. And that's it, all the challenges completed. It's my first time with imgur, so I hope I won't have problems... <iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/dkKfF/embed"></iframe> http://imgur.com/a/FMB3m#0 http://imgur.com/a/l4d68 http://imgur.com/a/eTY6A http://imgur.com/a/UKbJO#0 http://imgur.com/a/fhOe0 http://imgur.com/a/jNwO2 http://imgur.com/a/9PZfh http://imgur.com/a/uzuw9 http://imgur.com/a/dkKfF#4

Personal SSTO I've designed this rocket/plane to use the new R.A.P.I.E.R engine. It costs 16827 and weights less than 4 tons. It's main purpose is to be used to transfer a single kerbal to orbit and back. Although I didn't added, a probe core can be added to pick up a kerbal in orbit and return him to kerbin. If you do a orbit refuel, you can get more than 950m/s DV, enough to leave kerbin SOI After some tries, there's enough fuel to fly for about 30 km after reentry, so is relatively easy to land on ksp complex. The landing system is in that way to save fuel, the 3 landing gears needed will weight 1,5 tons, and in a spaceplane smaller than 4 tons is too much. Still, landing at a precise spot is easy enough. The powered descend at the end of the video is recommended, but not needed if there's almost no fuel left. If anyone wants to download it here's the link. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wv1au4e6s0w2z3j/c7HqgafD3j

Tier 0 (no tech) spacecraft to Mün This is a simple and reliable design to reach the Mün and come back to Kerbin in the career mode without any technology. Consists in 5 layers of SRB using the little trick to decouple them by overheating. The three extra command modules are to provide more control and stability. As there are no fuel lines, you must redistribute the fuel few times during the flight. The outer fuel tanks are used landing legs too. Also, no ladders are present, so you have to use the EVA thrusters to come back to the ship. My intention was to use this in the first fly of the career mode and get as much points as possible, as you can see I got 302, but using this design (with only a 6th layer of SRB) I reached 937 points traveling to the Mün, landing on Minmus, leaving Kerbin system and returning home with about 200 m/s remaining.

This is mine, till now the best, but I think that 1greywind could improve his design a lot only changing small things at their staging without changing anything. I reached a 78x150km. 850 parts, 56 stages, 752 sepratrons, 49.6 tons, delta v=4997 m/s and a final orbit of 150x78km.

Well, finally I ended this challenge. I found it interesting, but very long, and there's still lots of things that can be improved. I Mechjeb should be used to finish this although its not strictly needed. this is the launcher the lower stages are in Asparagus and the upper tanks are for the nuclear engines, although Mechjeb says that has 15 Km/s deltaV, the fuel remaining when I reach orbit are transfered to the nuclear engines, so the real deltaV is more than 34 Km/s, but I only used 27. I start leaving Kerbin SOI and I wait till I passed a the tangent point between the escape pod and Kerbin, in this way my hiperbolic escape trajectory crosses the Bill's one. In that point I burnt for about 7500 m/s to reach the pod faster. That also means that I had to burn retrograde for about 4000 m/s when I reached Bill. Then I tried to rendezvous, but the structure was too weak and after some attempts, I decided to transfered Bill on EVA. After that I used the remaining RCS to brake the ship and then I used the remaining fuel to enter in orbit arroung Kerbol, but the orbital period was extremly long so I continue burning retrograde whit the ion engine, I thought I'll intercept Bill closer to kerbol, but at 285 Gm solar panels doesn't work, so I used the two RTG for reducing my speed more, but that meant more than 16 hours of burn (4h at 4x...). When I reached AP I burnt to get my PE close to Kerbin's orbit. Then transfer to Kerbin and more burns to get in orbit arround Kerbin, then I realised that my ship can't land Bill (too much G force when the parachute deploys), so I built another small ship, I transfered Bill to that one (again on EVA), and I landed, to discover that the landing struts were too short, so the lander was damaged, but Bill managed to get out of it. As I used two ships, the time in the screen is incorrect, so I captured this showing all the ships in the mission http://imageshack.us/a/img547/1065/xp61.png So that's it, two ships, one with 622 tons and more than 27 Km/s deltaV and the other 70 tons and 7Km/s deltaV. Total time: 10 years and 45 days... This time can be improved, in another try I reached the escape pod in 400 days instead of the 577 of this one. Also, you can reduce the return time more than I did (I was tired of waiting...) and the idea of using two vessels can be nice to reduce the weight of the rescue ship.

This is my attempt, I finished tier 1 and 2 in 63 seconds. I need more info about tier 3, but I still have enough fuel to make more operations and dock to a space station...

I tried this thing to see what happens if I put a jet engine over the rover, the results are great, but appears to be an old steam train... This ship has 11 parts (there's a hidden toroidal tank inside the jet engine) and weights 8.23 tons Skunk mode Tier2 500 points (80-11)*10 parts =690 points Speed 198 m/s = 56 points Austerity mode Tier 3 100 points (50-11)*40 parts = 1560 points (198-100)*6 m/s = 588 points Insane mode: The minimalist, 11 parts, 8,23 tonnes and max speed 198 ms = 2500 points This adds: 5994 points.

I think this is the 1st successful ion landing on minmus. This part is only the landing and take off, I'll upload the complete video later. This ship can be built only with stock parts, but I used MechJeb as it's hard to control the lander and also very boring... I also landed with a modified version on Pol, can be used in Gilly and with more modifications on Bop. I also think that can be used on Dres, but not with stock parts (but still using the stock ion engine). http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/844/okjq.jpg/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/10/7r0l.jpg/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/7/qcm3.jpg/

I wanted to share this way of landing, as I can't find anyone who made this before. This part is only the landing and take off, I'll upload the complete video later. This ship can be built only with stock parts, but I used MechJeb as it's hard to control the lander and also very boring... I landed with a modified version on Pol, can be used in Gilly and with more modifications on Bop. I also think that can be used on Dres, but not with stock parts (but still using the stock ion engine). I also launched this with a less than 8 ton rocket, but uploading the video will take a while...