Superfluous J

I've done this as well and it basically means you need to build your ship to reach Minmus with empty tanks. If it can do that, it can probably get anywhere. It is a pain to execute. Fun to learn how, but loses its shine after you've done it a few times.

If you're willing to do that, though, a better savings can be gotten by using gravity assists. By going to Eve first, you can - with a similarly ridiculous (though different) amount of work get anywhere in the system. And you don't have to slow down first so it's even cheaper. Note I'm not saying not to do it. I'm saying it's a lot of work. It may be fun work, in which case do it.

Any contract that wouldn't qualify as a challenge due to the poster not being able to complete it, should not be offered in the game. So, Squad, show us how it's done. Deliver 3kT of Ore to Gilly from Eve for under $2M or we'll have to lock down your thread.

Yeah, "abusing the Oberth Effect" makes as much sense as a phrase as "abusing burning retrograde."

Other than the benefit of the Oberth Effect, the two are the same. Is there a mass savings? Yes. Is it worth the effort? Well, that's up to the player.

I watch pretty much everything Scott Manley puts on YouTube. I was aware of the name Matt Lowne and if you asked me before I saw this thread I'd have guessed he does game videos or something.

I thought Eragon was SUPPOSED to be a shot-by-shot retelling of Star Wars, but with a name that made you think of Lord of the Rings. I mean, how else were they going to get people to pony up money for it? And I watched SeaQuest on the antenna back when it was new. Everybody back then knew it was Star Trek underwater. Here's a threefer from about that same time.

Nicely done, especially the glide-in with no fuel after an overshoot.

25+ tons or crew?

Maybe instead of different fuels, have different "flow rates" unlocked. Then when you put your 5 segments on your large booster, you can set the flow rates to burn at different speeds at different times. Controlled either just top-bottom or with the already implemented (but unique to each srb) fuel flow priority numbers. This way you can get your variable thrust without having graphs and whatnot. Then all you'd need is 3-4 bases and 3-4 tanks, and the bases can toggle between gimbaled and not once you unlock gimbaling. ( That's the closest I can get to procedural SRBs using the stock paradigm )

Actually docking ports will attach radially as well. The trouble comes in that attaching something to the docking port "radially" (i.e. not using the nodes) won't allow you to decouple. It's a pretty easy problem to solve in the VAB, but it sucks to discover it at Laythe...

I've allowed it in the past but frankly I'm a bit... squidgy about it. If the rocket car stays on the KSC peninsula and only collects ground science (getting out and hopping for Eva is fine though) then I think it meets the spirit of the rule.

I don't know a way to do it but I do have some information that may or may not help. A Kerbal's XP is calculated on the fly based on what they've done, which is probably why what you're doing doesn't work. In the persistent file you can add or delete achievements to change their XP. Maybe you can do similar in the code?

Think of it as a tip? They may not even get a discount. I don't know.

Players can set docking ports to be like decouplers. As in, you can enable staging and disable crossfeed. So really this boils down to making sure you have them all set up correctly and figuring out a clever way to handle radial attachments.

For an alternate viewpoint, I have no problem clipping moving parts, or clipping ANY parts so long as I could imagine a clever engineer redesigning the parts so they could be put together that way without clipping. Two fuel tanks? No way. Landing gear inside a fuel tank? You betcha.

Very nicely done! I've never had the fortitude to do an ion ship of any kind, but I've had similar issues on low-twr nuke burns at Moho. I've found that Oberth doesn't really help you when you have to burn for multiple planet widths of distance, so found myself doing a slowdown burn in Sun orbit to align both my Moho arrival time and my orbit to be a bit closer to Moho's in size. Considering you could have landed the MOHTERSHIP on Gilly I'll let it pass Well done mission! Cool ship! You crazy. But I'll note it! Sorry. I misspoke above. YOU crazy. And actually while excessively impressive it's not really in the spirit of *pollo. I've not watched the whole video (yet!) but for instance I noticed you had 2 launches.

I was so happy to read So I don't have to even consider the possibility of getting used to the word "moonmoon."

Note, you can't "flyby the sun". Well you can but it takes a bit more dV than orbiting it. You START in orbit of it, as soon as you leave Kerbin. The easiest way to get a close flyby, orbital-mechanic speaking, is to go up to Jool and use it to slingshot yourself as backward as you can do it. you may even be able to use Tylo to go even further. then rocket yourself the rest of the way if necessary. Shouldn't take 2x the dV of a Jool transfer burn I think, though that's 100% a gut feeling. Good luck keeping your probe from overheating

For the record I just forgot about the restriction when thinking up the attached science car Though I like the idea of making it Mun capable as well, driving around KSC, then docking back to the bottom of the rocket and taking the rover to the Mun where it grabs 2-4 biomes there. Just need to find a good place to land where you can easily get 4 biomes. Then leave the rover there for the trip home, making sure to not do science on the way back. I'd say do that on Minmus but we all know how sucky a rover is on Minmus.

Just remember Apollo didn't get that achievement from the Moon landings.

The science car? that's the only thing I see from that. Yes, that would be illegal I missed that part of the challenge. Though maybe I could do some docking port tomfoolery to gather science and then re-dock later. Or just skip the KSC as it's not a super huge ton of science.

Really all they need is a planning node that works just like a maneuver node but is on planet and moon orbits instead of craft orbits. And some kind of rudimentary alarm clock functionality so you can warp to that time.

There are ways in-game, but they're a bit wonky and kludgy. And too much to explain here.

We're just talking past each other so I'll bow out.