McFarnsworth

MechJeb is my best friend. Like most on here I can technically do it all manually, but I can no longer be bothered most of the time. All of my missions are designed to go up in one launch. If it can't be launched in one go, it's not worth doing. Luckily a lot can go up in a single launch. I have docked two ships, once. It was so tedious and took such a long time I haven't bothered with it since. I have designed and built a lot of ships, but rarely fly the actual mission. And when I do it's usually a testflight that got out of hand in a shoddily built, poorly optimized craft that ends up on a different planet than what it was designed for. Jeb once ended up on Eeloo instead of Duna with parachutes, a dummy rover, and no landing legs. Planes are just weird in this game, so I haven't really bothered.

My second career mission included a Duna flyby + Ike landing of the main craft while it dropped a probe onto the surface of Duna. No nukes, just a 909 engine. The main craft should still have enough dV to get to Eve, do a Gilly landing and then fly back home. But I'm still waiting on the right launch window before taking off from Ike and messing around with how to properly do a Duna gravity assist.

Stuck on Moho with Bill this time, a few 100 dV short to hit Kerbin.

That ... seems pretty much impossible to pull off. I'd love to be proven wrong though in this case, make sure to take pics.

This. I have a few research bases with rovers and return modules attached to them, several interplanetary craft and a few large hybrid landers/rovers. Apart from basic testing around KSC and in some cases see if i can get it to LKO they're all just gathering dust in the VAB despite the fact that I spent hours designing them.

One word: Patience I don't have the patience to do docking maneuvers and by extension build a space station, or fly an SSTO. So I don't have any desire to try and build either. Interplanetary missions aren't a problem since I can fast forward through the boring parts and I can get a big enough interplanetary ship/lander/rover to LKO in a single launch to get me and my kerbals to most planets and back. Taking off from Eve, Tylo and maybe Laythe could prove a bit much for my current designs.

Halfway through my 2nd career mission. The probe has been deployed on Duna, Jeb has landed on Ike and is preparing to head to Eve. Everything is going to plan, even if the plan is slightly flawed to begin with... Jeb finally arrived at Duna and dropped the science probe while he continued on his way to Ike. As the probe passed by his window while it started its descent into the atmosphere Jeb asked me: "Farns, while building this probe did you notice that you can't decouple or repack the chutes?" "Uh ... yeah, sure. Why?" I wondered. Jeb frowned. "Then why did you give it an engine and enough fuel to return home when the probe can't take off again?" he replied sarcastically. "You could've built a second probe instead to drop on Eve and still save weight. We're passing by there anyway, and I would've saved enough fuel in my ship to land on the Mün before heading home. The Mün, Farns! I've never been there and I call myself a Kerbalnaut! And I haven't even mentioned all the science we're missing out on now. Think of the science, Farns!" he continued, slightly annoyed. "Errr ... oops, look Jeb, this is only a minor setback. We're getting plenty of science as it is and you've still got more than enough fuel left to complete the mission. If we use gravity assists on the way back home you might still get your Münlanding after all." I assured Jeb. "But you don't know how gravity assists work!" he shouted. "How hard could it be? It's not like it's rocket science or anything, right?" Luckily Ike was approaching and we needed to focus our attention on landing in one piece. After setting foot on Ike, Jeb seemed to cheer up immensely.

Sandbox: On Eeloo with Bill in a severely damaged lander awaiting the next launch window back home, blissfully unaware that the dV left in the lander will be cutting it really close. At least the landing legs all broke off, so that helps. Career: On his way to Duna, Eve and their moons to gather science so i can build him an even bigger, faster and explodier rocket.

Instead of doing many grindy smaller missions to unlock new parts slowly, I try to pull off the most ambitious mission I think I can manage with the parts available to me. I get most of my enjoyment out of building rockets anyway, and career mode forces me to come up with some unconventional solutions. First mission: Land on Minmus, fly by the Mun and return to Kerbin. I was only planning on a Minmus flyby, but then I saw Mr. Manley land on it with a nearly identical rocket so I shamelessly copied him. Second mission: Fly past Duna and drop a probe on it, land on Ike, fly by Eve and land on Gilly, and fuel permitting a Mun landing as well before heading back to Kerbin. In theory the probe that gets sent to the Duna surface can get back to Kerbin under its own power as well. I'm currently in the middle of my second mission, much science has been done, fuel levels are looking good and everything seems to be working as intended for once. At this rate I'll probably unlock most if not all of the tech three after three missions. Three really long and complicated missions requiring a lot of planning that probably take up more time than just grinding your way through the tech tree, but that's sort of my point. Unlike an MMO where you can't hope to stand up to an endboss with a low level character, you can spank its ass in KSP with basic parts as long as you're ambitious enough and add enough boosters.

Moonshine I The distillery process for rocket fuel has since been refined and I'm currently using the Vodka III series.

130 hours according to Steam. Most of it building crazy contraptions, not so much flying them.

I don't really know what to call the thing I just built. A VTOL mobile launch platform? A reusable jet engine first stage? Stupidly brilliant? Or just plain stupid? I slapped together the first prototype, estimated it could lift a 100 ton rocket about 12km in the air, and naturally smacked an existing 300 ton rocket on top and hoped for the best. And it actually worked Definitely one to file under "I can't believe that worked!?!" It's very haphazardly put together in case you couldn't tell Spooling up and getting rid of excess fuel Going up ... slooowlyy Sadly it got destroyed while decoupling due to my timing and shoddy design. It also took out a few engines of the rocket, but those weren't that important anyway.

Behold, the Sprinkler! It won't win the thread, but I already had it built and it's errr .... different.

First I built Snowflake: And then, I was amazed that it actually worked as intended.

Mun and Minmus: used for testing purposes, so all of the below Moho: landed an unmanned rover. Eve: 3 crew landing + rover Duna: 3 crew return mission + satellite + rover Dres: 2 crew return mission + rover Jool: 2 crew orbit Laythe: 2 crew landing Eeloo: 2 crew landing + rover, return status pending Haven't bothered with the Jool system much. I want to design a 2 man Tylo lander + rover that's capable of returning before I go back. And something that can manage a Laythe return trip, probably a spaceplane/rocket hybrid. All of these were single launch missions, since I haven't ever done a docking Never tried building a (space)plane either.

I have a fully functional return craft for 5 kerbals sitting on the surface of Duna, because I'm an idiot. My very first Duna mission was a relative success. Everyone was alive and the lander was still in one piece. It was both an inefficient lander and and inefficient landing on my part though so there wasn't even enough fuel left to reach orbit. A manned rescue mission was sent, landed near the original ship, and then for some inexplicable reason the pilot of the rescue mission went on an EVA. Much to his embarrassment he soon discovered there was no way to reach the pilot seat again so he had to join his disgruntled friends waiting for another rescue ship. Years later, another rescue ship was launched, but landed 50km away from the original one. So the original ship was used to hop over the rescue ship. Jeb's flying skills were a bit rusty after years of camping on Duna however so he destroyed it while (crash) landing. Everyone survived however and the second rescue ship brought them all back safely. On the way back the pilot of the rescue ship remarked to Jeb "Too bad you guys didn't have jetpacks, would've been real easy to reach the command pod of the first rescue ship that way". "... uh, yeah" Jeb replied.

I may or may not have stranded Bob and Bill on Eeloo without any snacks, since they had only planned on a quick orbital trip and back at most. Kerbal mission planning at its finest. I removed the chutes from my atmospheric lander and placed my rover at the bottom so it could be used on bodies without an atmosphere. Stuck that on top an untested interplanetary stage/comm satellite, which in turn was placed on top of a poorly assembled, improperly strutted up experimental launcher. One of the SRB's clipped an engine when detaching, but I managed to deactivate the opposing engine before the rocket went into an uncontrollable spin. I decided not to inform Bill and Bob of this incident. Poor construction resulted in my main engines falling off my final ascent stage during the circularization burn, but luckily there were some strapped to the side that were still working. Since shedding this weight made me gain dV I've decided this is a design feature and I had planned it all along. This was also how I explained it to a terrified Bill and Bob after their main thrusters came floating by their window. Despite these initial setbacks I considered going to the Mun, but noticed a launch window to Eeloo was only a few hours off. In typical Kerbal fashion I messed up my interplanetary burn and concluded that the Oberth effect doesn't work as well when your trajectory passes through the atmosphere. This also messed up my rendezvous with Eeloo so lots of dV was spent correcting my error. My interplanetary stage ran out of fuel during the circularization burn around Eeloo so it was dropped and repurposed as a communication satellite. I used its RCS system to further circularize its orbit. When switching back to the main craft the Space Kraken decided to eat my landing legs. Earlier in flight testing revealed that they were too short anyway ever since the rover had been attached at the bottom. So yet again I claimed this was intended as yet again random parts drifted by a rather worried looking Bill and Bob. Landing what was left of the craft proved to be rather tricky. The plan was to drop the lander right before touchdown and put down the legless lander a bit further out. The actual execution of said plan left a lot to be desired however. The lander landed on top of the deployed rover breaking off one of its solar panels and the lander tipped over falling on its side. The rover still works fine though, and I managed to right the lander without any bits falling off. Bill, Bob and I are now wondering if it's possible to get back from Eeloo with a little over 3000dV left, some RCS fuel and full jetpacks?

Ok thanks, that saves me about three parachutes since I was also trying to recover the ascent stage. Or would you be able to maybe add it as an extra achievement? Being able to reuse the whole thing seems to be in the spirit of the challenge. And I was a bit unclear about the probe part, I meant my crew capsule module. It has (just about) enough fuel and rcs left to do a controlled landing.

Right, I've also had a go at constructing a rocket that meets the requirements. Largely coming to the same conclusions as Nintey-Three. Couldn't be arsed to do the actual docking yet but I've got plenty of fuel and rcs to achieve it, just me being lazy. So far it costs $17829 total, and that's with mechjeb, KER and all bonus objectives included (I think anyway) so I think I'm good there. But I'm a bit unclear as to when a parachute becomes redundant. My probe for instance has a single chute, but can technically land without deploying it. My launcher (single stage, decouplers cost money) can come down to earth on three chutes, would adding a fourth one count as being redundant, or would I need to add three more? Also, first post, yay etc...