Dave Kerbin

No, I already knew I'd get a ton of science so I didn't need to spam every last drop. The reason the pods are all identical is for weight balance (also makes it easy to swap them around), I wasn't sure how stable the cargo ship would be in flight (wobble when changing heading) so I wanted to ensure that the weight over each engine was identical so that the ship wasn't making torque corrections during a burn that could get those stacks wobbling in resonance (the way the drop tank did when I made even the slightest adjustment while burning the crew ship home).

I've used a copy of different return methods for science module. The original method for returning science pods was tested in mission 17 and involved an individual return drone for each science module. That approach proved to be very slow since each one had to be followed through the atmosphere. A second approach was tried in mission 18 where the refuel tank for the reusable lander included ports and parachutes, allowing it to return 3 science pods and a lander can at once. Since that approach worked I expanded it to handle the 9 science pods coming back from Duna plus a lander can. I created 3 similar return modules based around the small fuselage (rather then a fuel tank). Each section contains 3 docking ports for science modules and 3 parachutes. The unit on top contains a top docking port for the lander can and during launch stores a tug. The bottom module includes a battery and probe core, and below that is a fuel tank, LV909 engine and some other support equipment. The whole structure has decouplers and staging so that starting at the top each section can decouple and deploy its parachutes. The whole structure is carried on top of the 30t lifter (it's not that heavy, but I wanted the lifters well tested rendezvous equipment) and there are girders to stabilize it during launch. The tug is very similar to the micro tug, but with a bigger battery and solar panels and with RCS placed closer to the expected center of mass for better handling. The whole thing is brought up to an intercept point with the cargo ship. The tug undocks and first grabs the lander can to go on the top of the recovery ship. After that it grabs the science modules 3 at a time from their stacks and brings them over to the recovery ship where it is easier to place them one by one (after placing one it is a simple translation to line up the placement of the next). It takes about half an hour to move everything over to the recovery ship. The cargo ship and the tug will both deorbit to get burned up in the atmosphere. The recovery ship powers up its engine and a specific landing site is picked out for the best recovery. Drag from the atmosphere ensures we should land somewhere in those nice grasslands west of the mountains. As we descend below 60km the drive section is ejected, we don't need the risk of any debris when we open the parachutes. The probe core and a large battery remain to control the recovery systems. After braking our landing zone looks to be a nice valley. The parachute sequence is started and all 3 sections seperate and deploy in sequence. After dropping another 2km the chutes fully deploy. The module with the lander can rolls over after landing on its head but seems to come away fine. The other 2 touch down at 5.6m/s. Including the science already earned from crew reports and the return of the crew ship we get close to 5000 science, more then enough to finish the entire tech tree with 3700 science to spare. The middle section of the recovery ship had neither a command pod or a probe core so it was listed under debris in the tracking station.

Next we need to get ready to depart. Everyone returns to the command module of the crew ship. The science modules are stripped from the lander and stacked on the cargo ship. The crew ship is refueled and fuel is arranged into the fewest tanks on the cargo ship. We also have to decided what to do with all the fuel. The crew ship will take a full drop tank with it. A small amount of fuel will be used to help deorbit the lander and any other debris. That leaves one full tank and one tank about 25% full, in addition to all of the cargo ships structural tanks being full. After the lander has been stripped the bolts holding on the lander can are disconnected, letting the body drift free. The tug comes around to move it out of the way and then retrieve the can and move it to a more appropriate location for weight balance. A small amount of fuel is loaded into the remaining exposed radial drop tank (which we will need to remove before the cargo ship can leave) and the tug carries it over to the lander body and joins it to one of the science module ports. From here, using the tugs computer, the landers engine is used to carefully deorbit the somewhat unbalanced collection of discarded equipment. The crew ship leaves next. There where some issues with the docking port not responding, the crew ship itself had to be undocked, moved back a bit, and then the drop tank could be undocked and the crew ship moved back in to capture it. A course is plotted for Kerbin and the crew ship takes off. The drop tank proves to be a bit of a bother attached to the front of the ship - no adjustments can be made without the tank rocking hard on the docking port. As soon as the fuel in the tank is used up it is happily discarded. We use about 1400m/s and have close to 2600m/s left. With so much extra fuel the plan is now to capture at Kerbin to allow for an accurate landing instead of the original plan of a direct landing (fly straight at the planet). The crew ship gets about a day past Duna's SOI and then the cargo ship follows. After about 70 days both ships approach Kerbin. They will be arriving very close together so this will have to be managed carefully. Being closer the crew ship is the first to spot Kerbin (tip: you can right click on windows in IVA view and then use the mouse wheel to zoom in farther then you can from the external camera; from the external camera Kerbin is just a dot). As we enter Kerbin's SOI a problem emerges. In my confidence over the fuel situation I never made any course adjustments beyond the encounter and so it was up at 40,000km. That created a major problem, since even a basic capture would now be 3500m/s, 1000m/s more then what the ship carried fuel for. So I took the alternative option where for 2000m/s I could send the crew ship on a 2 hour express trip back to Kerbin. Unfortunately it seems I have a corrupted segment here, maybe I screwed up the recording and that's why I have a 250mb incomplete file. The crew ship itself was going at about 3.5km/s when it hit the atmosphere and it was the fastest landing I've ever done - like having time warp in the atmosphere where it took only seconds to reach parachute altitude. Everything seems to work ok and the crew landed safely, thanks to the drag physics of KSP being able to bring just about anything to terminal velocity before it impacts the surface. The cargo ship was half a day back outside Kerbin's SOI and carrying 5500m/s of fuel, so I not only had some time to setup a partial course change (bringing the encounter to just below the Mun) but lots of delta-v to make the required capture. Without parachutes a direct approach was out of the question. After capture I made an inclination change to level it and then brought the orbit down to 150km with about 50L of liquid fuel left in the tanks. What started out as a huge amount of extra fuel turned into almost not enough (though as longas the cargo ship could make a basic capture I could have brought up a ship from Kerbin to refuel it). Now the science pods and lander can with samples needs to be returned.

With the lander prepared Tomvin can EVA over for his trip to Ike. The original design calculations for the lander show that Ike is very close on delta-v, the mission must be flown correctly or Tomvin might not be able to return. One of the original backup plans in the event that the lander could get into orbit around Duna or Ike but not get back to the cargo ship was for the crew shuttle to undock and go rescue it. Because of the large amount of extra fuel I have I am using a different method to ensure the success of the mission. The lander will carry with it one of the fuel tanks which will be filled to the 25% mark - this will increase the landers total fuel supply by 50%. Setting a course for Ike is quite simple, the cargo ship was already on the same inclination so it's no different then a visit to the Mun. Arriving at Ike a capture is calculated and Tomvin calls in his observations from high orbit. After orbiting Ike at 15km the descent burn in begun to land on the daytime side in a nice big light area. After a short burn the drop tank is depleted and it is cast off. The drop tank will impact Ike farther along. From higher up the landing site looks good, lots of flat terrain. We set down gently. Getting out Tomvin forgets the ladder. He claims he was distracted by a UFO. Since the ladder can't be deployed without someone in the pod Tomvin just uses his jetpack to get back in. With all the fuel in the lander the return trip is very easy. Tomvin arrives back at the cargo ship with almost 90L of liquid fuel instead of the 1 to 5 from the original fuel calculations.

With the crew ship docked we can review the situation. We've saved a lot of fuel by aerobraking and through efficient ejection, circulization and docking. Almost 3 drop tanks worth in fact (the crew ship only used about half its fuel supply arriving, meaning it only takes 1 drop tank to refuel it instead of 2). After some basic orbital readings the first landing can commence. Lemgun, my crack pilot, transfers over to the lander which will descend to Duna. For this leg of the trip the science pods on the lander are still secured with struts so that they can better hold up to the strain when the parachutes open. There is a minor technical issue when the docking port won't release. This apparent bug in the cargo ships computer system will repeat several times during the mission and ultimately requires that a specific item be undocked before the intended part will be released. In this case undocking the crew ship temporarily allows the landers docking port to function. From a tank of 360L of liquid fuel we burn 10L to put us on a long deorbit path that will take us around to the day side of the planet. The lazy descent is so we can spend as much time in the atmosphere as possible, both to collect scientific readings and to aerobrake as much as possible before opening the parachutes. The parachutes are opened only about 800m from the ground while velocity is still 350m/s. Everything stays together thanks to the design work focused on parachute shock. The chutes fully deploy and we slow to 15m/s, now about 200m from the surface. The final landing is powered and we touch down at a safe 6.5m/s. We've found some reasonably flat ground and the lander stays stable which was my biggest concern with this landing. Some science readings are taken on the surface and then Lemgun mounts the ladder and prepares to set foot on Duna. Import jobs that only a Kerbal can do are performed. After waiting 30 minutes for the cargo ship to line up where we want it for an intercept the lander lifts off. We take some readings while in the upper atmosphere but this distraction proves to have some negative effects. We've overshot our AP. We bring up our PE to match the cargo ship but our new orbit now means the cargo ship will overshoot the lander and we'll have to wait for it to 'catch up' by going around the planet. It takes 8 hours for them to come into alignment again and allow the lander to dock. We manage to return with 42L of liquid fuel left - a little better then planned though the Duna landing was already good for delta-v, it's Ike where things will be tight. The final stage of the mission involves Lemgun returning to the crew ship while the lander is refueled and the micro tug goes about the chore of moving all the science pods over to the cargo ship and replacing them with fresh ones. This takes about 22 minutes of play time.

With the solar panels retracted for safe aerobraking I always turn off SAS to conserve the battery, hence a lot of tumbling as drag pulls the ship around looking for the sweet spot.

I'm just about to start a new career and I've been making some changes to the file to set difficulty (turning off respawn, quick save, etc). I also want to remove the 3 orange suit kerbals so that my program can be with a new and random set of kerbals instead of the ones I've flown with a hundred times. Is there a way to remove Bill, Bob and Jeb from the roster without putting them on the KIA list? Can I safely just delete them from the ROSTER section of the save file or is there anything in the game that requires them or expects at least one kerbal in the roster list. I guess I could try it just to find out but I'd prefer not to run into an issue several missions into my career.

You've probably lost it. There are two save files, persistent and quicksave. The persistent file gets updated each time you exit and periodically when you see 'auto saving'. The quicksave file is created whenever you press F5 and is the same as persistent. Holding down F9 replaces the persistent file with your quicksave file, overwriting it. What you can do is see if you have a backup of your persistent.sfs. Do you run any backup software that might have a copy? If you are on Windows Vista or later go to your kerbal folder (if its steam then look in your steam folder under steamapps\common) and open the saves folder. You'll find a folder with the name of your career. In that folder right click persistent.sfs and choose properties and click on the previous versions tab to see if you have a suitable backup. Be warned that the answer is likely no. Unless you've changed the configuration Windows does not aggressively store copies of files like that (it is mainly keeping copies of any changed system files and files in the documents folder).

I have a previous .22 career documented here and this will be my .23 career. This career will be done a little differently. I will be playing with some new restrictions and removing some old ones. To nail down some of the difficulty this new save file will have several of the hidden options enabled: Kerbals won't respawn, the revert menu will be disabled, quick save won't work and it won't be possible to delete ships in flight or access the stock craft files. At the same time I'll be relaxing a few rules: With the .23 improvements I won't have any special rules for transmissions. I will also allow nuclear engines with Kerbals since it caused a lot of extra busy work, this time I will be using a mission structure to make it challenging by having interplanetary missions before nuclear engines are even available. I will also be dropping the rules about habitat. As long as there is a pod and not just a chair it is ok. Kerbals must return home, no one gets left behind. I'll also be removing Jeb, Bill and Bob from the save file before starting, it will be all kerbals you haven't met before. Because I'll be playing with all the save/revert options removed it means I will be at the mercy of glitches and bugs. These will be treated as 'equipment failures' to be worked around, Apollo 13 style. While last time I tried to challenge myself with special rules for interplanetary travel this time I want to try to challenge myself by forcing myself to get out there sooner instead of sending half a dozen missions to the Mun. So the kongressional kommittee in charge of the space program's budget has forwarded a list of specific projects it wants to see completed. While some testing of equipment is allowed the kommittee will not support the funding of missions that don't pursue the stated goals. Once a project's goals are completed the kommittee will expect the KSC to move on to the next project. Ships will be named after their project and numbered - for example the first launch would be Reach I and if that failed to complete Project Reach's goals then Reach II would be launched and so on. In some cases a project may need to be put on hold until the required technology is developed. In that case it can be skipped until the required parts become available. Here is the project list. I'll be adding links for each mission report as it is flown. Phase 1 - Looking Up Project Reach Escape the atmosphere (fly above 70km) Reach 1 62 Science Project Leap Orbit the planet more then once. Leap 1 115 Science Project Gander Take a look at the dark side of the Mun. Gander 1 594 Science Phase 2 - Small Steps Project Cheese Plant a flag in one of the Mun’s craters Cheese 1 947 Science Project Mint Obtain a sample of that yummy looking green stuff on Minmus…for testing. Mint 1 2378 Science Project Berry Send a probe below the thick clouds of Eve and report what is there. Berry 1 665 Science Phase 3 - Great Journeys Project Martian Search for life on Duna. Martian 1 4495 Science Project Icarus Measure the temperature on the surface of Moho during the day. Icarus 1 160 Science Icarus 2 210 Science Project Tyson Send a kerbal to determine if Dres is a planet or not. Tyson 1 1446 Science Phase 4 - Inquisitive Minds Project Ice Determine if earthquakes caused the cracks seen on Eeloo by taking seismic readings. Ice 1 555 Science Project Dust Study the formation of the solar system by collecting rock samples from captured asteroids – Gilly, Bop and Pol. Dust 1 1889 Science Dust 2 4154 Science Project Stone Measure the gravity around all of Jool’s moons. Stone 1 560 Science Phase 5 - The Future Project Sunshine View the sunrise with a friend on Moho. Project Garden Determine the habitability of Laythe. Take barometer, temperature and atmospheric readings and collect some liquid from the ocean. Setup a laboratory within Laythe's sphere of influence to study the environment's effect on biological samples brought from Kerbin. Project Bloom Visit Kerbin's sister planet. Return a sample of dirt and liquid from Eve. Questions Or Comments Are Welcome!

Mission 20 - Duna Transit Both the cargo ship and crew ship will be leaving during the ideal transfer window near day 60. The cargo ship is scheduled to leave several days ahead - this way there is lots of time to capture both ships and prevents a situation where the cargo ship might come into brake in an area near the orbiting crew ship. This way we can wait a day or two after the cargo ship has used its nuclear engines and left before the crew ship goes into orbit and launches to Duna. This is the course for the cargo ship, though the crew ship followed a nearly identical course just a few days delayed. The cargo ship is very stable for turning even with all the parts strapped on. Only the lander gives me some wobble when I adjust my angle. I abandon an empty fuel tank after the first part of the burn and because it has docking ports KSP has decided it is a probe (there is nothing for me to select to reclassify it) and continues to track it as it flies into solar orbit. Both ships follow a standard procedure of making minor corrections after exiting Kerbal's SOI. About half way to Duna both ships make course changes to bring their expected PE under 20km. That will be refined once they enter Duna's SOI. On the map you can see Kerbin's orbit on the far left followed by the empty fuel tank (probe icon), the crew ship (pod icon), the cargo ship (lander icon) and finally Duna. Remember that we have the cargo ship selected so we only see encounters it will have. The crew ship has an encounter where its line crosses Duna's orbit, about 4 days after the cargo ship does. Once in Duna's SOI the PE for the cargo ship is dropped to just over 9km for aerobraking, we will try to get to a 60km orbit. We get an initial AP of 80km, with 43m/s required to raise our PE up to 60km. The cargo ship settles into a 60km orbit and is lined up to match Ike's minor inclination. This will assist with the Ike landing where fuel for return will be tight. The crew ship follows the same approach. After gaining orbit it about 6 hours for a docking window to line up but beyond the wait there is no trouble.

Mission 20 - Duna Overview and Assembly The Duna mission has been in development for a long time with various systems tested in real world missions. It will send 3 kerbals to land on Duna and Ike and bring back science samples and instruments from everything they can touch. The mission itself will involve 2 interplanetary spaceships along with a lander carried along. One is a crew ship with accommodations for a long term flight and powered by a conventional engine. The other ship is nuclear powered so it will only be under thrust when Kerbals are far away. This cargo/support ship will carry fuel for the crew ships return voyage, science instruments and the lander to Duna and back. The crew ship has already been tested in full in Mission 18. It uses a convential engine to carry 3 kerbals and has a command pod, where the crew go for launch and splashdown, and a habitat module for them to live in during the extended flight. The core of the cargo ship is a quite skeletal. A central T800 tank has girders to support 3 surrounding tanks. Those tanks carry nuclear engines and the fuel to run them. The top of those tanks contain mounting points for science pods, which have already undergone testing in previous missions. These outer tanks also house the solar arrays and RCS thrusters away from everything else. The central span has docking points for additional fuel tanks - 3 radially, 1 on top and 1 on the bottom. Other support systems are also present on the central span including monopropellent storage, batteries, lighting, attitude control and flight computer. The core of the cargo ship weighs about 25 tons so it can be lifted with the standard 30t lifter created for the Duna program and used in several previous missions. The cargo ship is deposited with full tanks in a 200km parking orbit to await additional attachments. After the lifter has detached itself it deorbits. Next to launch is a fuel ship. I had created another design for this ship, but with the performance of the 30t lifter (and its ability to ferry cargo right up to a renderous instead of just to orbit) I created a larger version of the fuel ship to carry 3 modules instead of 2. It still falls under the 30t weight limit because it ditches the previous renderous module and instead relies on the lifter for everything but the last 100m or so, which is carried out by a micro tug carried on top. The micro tug is essentially a docking port attached to a round RCS tank with 4 thrusters and guided by a tiny probe core and battery with a single solar panel on the back for trickle charging. It was initially a bit challenging to use the tug (the RCS ports are as far from the center of mass as they could be) but after wasting monopropellent on the first 2 tanks I got the hang of it, piloting it more like an RCS-less docking. I also found that small translations could be done accurately by shutting off SAS, making the translation and then using torque to correct my pitch. The first run put up 3 tanks to go on the radial attachment points. I brought the tug back to the lifter for disposal before realizing the lifter didn't have a port for it to dock to. I disposed of the tug using RCS to deorbit and use thrust to deorbit the lifter. The second run brought up another 3 tanks and it's at this point I should talk about the fuel "plan". The fuel plan was drawn up without much data about aero-capture, so I built in a lot of delta-v for 'capture' scenarios. I also built in a minimum 10% safety on all the requirements. The plan for fuel looked something like this: - Cargo ship burns for Duna, using up the fuel in the 3 T800 tanks on the engines with a safety margin that calls for a little fuel from the other tanks too. - A little over 1.5 drop tanks (1 drop tank is equal to 2 T800 tanks) are depleted to refuel those T800 tanks and the 1 empty drop tank is released in deep space (weight reduced by further 0.6t in advance of capture). - Capture at Duna which burns slightly less fuel but enough to use up what remained so that we finish depleting the second drop tank and deplete a third. We've burned 3 of the 5 drop tanks so far if we keep moving fuel into the T800 tanks - The crew ship flies to Duna, using most of its fuel. It docks with the cargo ship and depletes the last 2 drop tanks to refuel itself for the return journey. - The lander goes to Duna, using up its fuel supply. The center T800 tank is depleted to refuel the lander for the Ike landing, leaving only the fuel in the three engine T800 tanks - The cargo ship discards all the drop tanks and returns using the fuel in the three T800 tanks Since I was bringing up 3 tanks anyway I decided to simply add the extra tank to the cargo ship, it could be safely attached to the tank on the bottom. It would obviously add weight but the fuel would counter the weight addition at the cost of slightly longer burns and the need to transfer some fuel during the first burn. With some more experience I moved two drop tanks at once on the first go (they get stacked on the bottom port so there isn't a reason to seperate them). With what I learned the move goes smoothly. The last tank is attached to the top of the cargo ship and the micro tug is refueled from some tanks on the lifter before returning and docking with the cargo ship. At one point the plan called for using the lander as a tug to move around science modules and tanks but that idea was dropped. The only thing left now is the lander. The lander was tested back in mission 17. To bring it to the cargo ship it will be launched a little bit different. It is attached upside down with a microtug linked to a shroud on the engine. This way the lander can be docked without a pilot (the lander can only be flown manually, to save power and weight it has no computer control). The landers delivery micro tug tops up all the monopropllent tanks on the cargo ship and its own tug before removing the shroud. Now all that is needed to leave is to release the aerodynamic caps from the science modules and burn for Duna when the launch window arrives.

I'm finished the Duna/Ike mission with a massive amount of science returned (I think about 5000, which was way more then the 1500 or so I needed to complete the tech tree) and the safe return of my Kerbals. I'm going to start getting it all up, I've got 34GB of footage to go through (about 250mb looks corrupt but I think I got everything I needed).

Mission 15 - Phase 3 Eve Unmanned Exploration: Gilly This is the final leg of the Eve mission which was started way back when I had only visited the Mun and had only about a dozen items unlocked on the tech tree. With both probes deposited on Eve's surface the mothership will launch toward Gilly before discarding the interplanetary drive and fuel tank, transforming into a lander for the tiny moon. Getting an encounter with Gilly was a little challenging. I could get a close approach, but actually getting close enough to enter Gilly's tiny SOI took a lot of tweaking. It didn't help that I was on a deeply inclined orbit and didn't want to spend the fuel to match Gilly. Even with the encounter setup some challenges are already apparent - the probe will have less then 10 minutes in Gilly's SOI to break and enter orbit. The 1000m/s burn to Gilly is started with the interplanetary motor so that we can burn off every drop of fuel we've managed to save over the mission (about 35L of liquid fuel and a matching quantity of oxydizer). Including an additional 3m/s course correct 2/3rds of the way to Gilly we burn 35L + 22L of liquid fuel, leaving us with 68 of 90 in the tank. After some coasting we arrive in Gilly's SOI - we are already very close to what was once a tiny dot. I wasn't sure what to expect, and with a short encounter barely affected by Gilly's gravity I ended up doing two burns. The first burn got me into a longer safer encounter under the effects of Gilly's gravity and the second burn actually brought me into orbit. While I wait for the second burn the probe takes some readings on the conditions at the edge of Gilly's SOI and transmits them back to Kerbin. Finally a 20km x 5km orbit is achieved with 50L of liquid fuel left. As we reach the low point (6km from 'sea' level) in our orbit the irregular surface of Gilly becomes very apparent. Some readings are taken but it seems like we should start considering a landing soon - that black spot in the lower right corner of the picture is the probe's own shadow, visible on the surface of Gilly as we fly over the surface at a relaxed but still dangerous 23m/s. Landing proves interesting. With the very low gravity my normal attempts to break orbit seem to result in me actually gaining altitude (though showing an eventual suborbital path back to the surface). I had to burn toward the sky a few times to get things right. Another issue which I only later understood was that my navball stuck on orbit instead of switching to surface (perhaps because of the altitude, I landed on a peak about 5.7km high). Because of this the navball showed me with almost no horizontal velocity, yet the ground was clearly moving sideways at a good pace. I ultimately braked my sideways velocity by sight and landed after a few false starts where I bounced. On touchdown I must have slid at least 250m at a slow speed. A bounce and then sliding across the surface of Gilly. With the probe 'landed' but still sliding across the surface at about 2m/s I start doing science anyway. My attempt to get the probe in the context of Gilly And that's it for the Eve mission. Next is the Duna/Ike manned mission that has been assembled at the same time the Eve micro probes have been making their exploration.

And here is the Progress counter part, the fuel shuttle. Without a live crew we can go a little more toward efficiency over safety. To get more fuel to orbit 2 more solid boosters are used which increases the stress during launch. It also has only half the engines for the orbital module, so burn time is double (start burning at 50s to AP for 100 seconds). This also means a launch escape is impossible (of course there is no crew to save) and any engine failure will result in the fuel shuttle falling back and crashing into the ocean. During the shorter coast period there is also more to get done. In addition to setting up the burn time the craft also needs to turn 180 degrees (this is easy, the craft has a powerful reaction wheel that lets it turn very quickly) before using action group 1 to deploy the solar panels, the high gain antenna and discard the launch shroud away from the direction of the orbital burn. The fuel ship is designed to either dock with an existing space station with its RCS thrusters to bring up supplies, or operate as its own fuel station. This fuel station role is supported by the pair of docking lights to assist other space craft (they come on automatically with action group 1). The fuel shuttle is not designed to survive reentry. It is intended to bring fuel and RCS into orbit and then be disposed of in the atmosphere. On an 80km orbit it has brought up just over 500L of liquid fuel and 160 units of mono propellent. It can also be used in a number of other roles. For example it can be used as a tug to rescue or assist other ships in orbit (as long as they have standard sized docking ports). It can also be used as a range extender for the crew shuttle - instead of simply docking and refueling, the crew shuttle can dock with the fuel shuttle to form a single ship with almost double the fuel the crew shuttle could carry. Minus its fuel cargo the fuel shuttle adds very little weight in this role so the delta-v gain is large - if the crew shuttle had landing gear it could land and return from the Mun using the fuel shuttle as a range extender.

Ok, some off topic stuff I've been making in the past month just because. These are two related ships, essentially a Soyuz/Progress pair in that one is a cheap dependable crew shuttle for 3 and the other is a cargo variation. The main goal of this was to create a ship that was relatively efficient, safe and most importantly aesthetically pleasing (at least to me) in form and function, with some nods to the real world requirements that don't exist yet in KSP. This is the crew shuttle, designed to ferry 3 Kerbals safely to just about anywhere in Kerbin orbit short of the Mun and/or return them to the surface. It is a simple 3 stage design with no asparagus staging. Solid booster stage, liquid fuel suborbital injection stage and final orbiter stage. Point #1 for aesthetics is that it's a relatively short, uncomplicated looking ship. No 30 story maze of boosters. You'll also notice the surface is clean of any sufficient drag inducing or breakable parts (the RCS ports are exposed, but then they where exposed on the Apollo/Saturn launch vehicle too). It can stand up with or without launch clamps. Launch is as easy as turning on SAS and lighting off the boosters. In the event of a failure the short design means the boosters easily clear the body without converging and hitting the crew pod or any other part of the ship. I actually tested that under a number of fuel and flight situations (ranging just off the pad to high speed in a spin). After the solid boosters are done the liquid stage lights up at full power for a lazy gravity turn. Like a lot of Kerbal space ships and indeed ships in the real world (like the space shuttle) it coasts a bit after getting suborbital in order to burn at the AP for maximum effect. With this ship the liquid booster stage runs out at just the right time for this coast, allowing it to be ejected and fall back to Kerbin's ocean on its suborbital path. The crew ship has a safe 1.5-2 minutes to plan an orbit burn which will usuallly start about 25 seconds from the AP (50 second burn), but what do they burn with? Well hidden in the hollow space of that seperator are the engines - 6 of them in total which provides enough TWR to lift off on Kerbin. In fact the TWR is good enough that it can actually function as an abort if the staging is activated too soon and the booster is unhooked before shutdown, lifting the crew pod away from the out of control booster. The orbital burn itself can be made with just 2 paired engines in the event that one or more failed or where damaged during take off. Action group 1 is also pressed, which deploys the solar array, high gain antenna and unshields the docking port. After orbit is achieved the crew shuttle has plenty of fuel left, from 500-800 delta-v in total. It also has RCS and an automated guidance system capable of operating for over 5 hours between solar rechages, allowing an empty crew shuttle to be sent up to retrieve a crew. The crew shuttle can easily dock with a station or link up with a refueler or other platform (for example a mission package could be sent up on a seperate launch and then attached to the docking port in orbit). For docking action group 2 allows the solar panels and high gain antenna to be retracted for safety. For the return we need to worry about reentry heat. Action group 1 packs everything away again before we make a deorbit burn (this can be done with liquid fuel or RCS, the RCS tank carries about 120m/s). Once we are on a suborbital path back to Kerbin the service module is ejected to burn up on reentry (well in KSP it will crash about 1km away from the soft landing) at which point more inner workings are revealed. The service module contains batteries and RCS tanks in the unused space in the decoupler ring. There is still 60 minutes of power left in the pod. The rest of the reentry is done with SAS off, allowing the pods heat shield to align correctly and take the force. After we slow down to terminal velocity the pyros are fired, releasing the protective reentry cover and deploying both the regular and backup chute (the automated control system is also lost at this point, the ship having nothing left to control). Normal landing is soft, though a high altitude landing with only one chute would be rough. Testing showed such a worst case landing wouldn't be too far off a Soyuz hard landing, though according to NASA research from the 60s would be enough to cause minor injuries at least some of the time (block II capsules used on all the Apollo missions had crash couches designed to cushion the crew to these survivable speeds in the event of a solid landing as might happen during a launch abort). Once we set down, either on water or land, action group 3 can be used to deploy tracking beacons to aid in speedy recovery of a live crew.

I've been off a bit and doing some other challenges and have fallen behind in posting updates. I did launch, assemble and send off my Duna cargo ship and Duna Crew ship and they've reached Duna and docked. I've set my game to not auto update (Stream edition) so that it won't switch over to .23 tommorow. Maybe I'll get the energy to quickly finish the Duna mission and post it before downloading .23. After Duna I should have the tech tree complete, and with the .23 update I'll be starting a new career game with the new tech tree/science changes. I'll be taking a slightly different approach. First I've been researching how to modify the game file to enable the various hard mode options (disable respawn, disable quick save, disable revert, disable destroy from observatory). I've just found it too tempting to use various save shortcuts and I end up feeling like I've cheated myself out of some interesting gameplay when things go wrong. The other thing I'm going to do is lay down a specific program plan before I see the new tech tree layout - it will be a series of goals set out by the Kongressional oversight committee for the Kerbal Space Program. For example goal 1: Fly to edge of atmosphere (40km) and return safely; goal 2: Orbit Kerbin; goal 10: Duna landing, etc. I will then try and complete those goals in rough order, without any unbudgeted side trips to farm science (since every death is permanent I will still be looking for ways to test technology before using it, but this time expect far fewer Mun landings). This way I'll be challenged to complete missions with lower tech (without getting into any silly tier 0 stuff that requires perfect flying) - for example tonight I was making some interesting plans for how my Mun launcher, combined with a relatively small amount of the tech tree (no nukes, skippers or mainsails) could put up a 10.5t ship capable of flying to Duna, landing a Kerbal and returning him home and also depositing a science station. Edit: And here is that hypothetical Duna ship (Without launcher. It weighs just over 10t so in theory my Mun launcher could lift it). It could be layed out a little different to make it more stable during launch (change or remove those arms, or add struts near the docking port). Tech tree wise you don't need much - I think only the lander legs are a bit out, otherwise if you have RCS, docking ports and the small lander can you can build it. It also does fast burns - I think the longest burn you need to make is about 120 seconds. After you get into orbit the plan is that you burn all 3 engines (the one on the very bottom and the 2 side ones) to setup the transfer to Duna. That will use up most of the fuel in the 2 side tanks. At Duna you aerobrake and then use a little more of that fuel to circulize at about 60km. From there the bottom portion undocks with the Kerbal inside (make sure the fuel tank is full, transfer from the side tanks if needed). The top portion under control of the Stayputnick stays in orbit while the little lander does a parachute descent (it has 4 chutes for a 2.55t ship, it should easily make a landing using only a drop of fuel to lower PE into the atmosphere and let drag do the rest. During descent a crew report can be filed (there is an antenna balanced on the side opposite the ladder). On the surface the Kerbal makes an EVA report and collects samples and sends another crew report. He then blasts off into orbit. Once in orbit the probe section should setup an encounter for docking (we want to use up any fuel left in the side tanks) and uses its RCS system to dock with the lander (the lander is the target in this case since it has no RCS system). Once docked all the fuel from that tank just above the docking port (the one with solar panels and chutes) is transfered to the lander. The lander then detaches and with the full tank of fuel does a burn to send itself back to Kerbin (there should actually be just enough to actually eject from Duna and perform a powered capture at Kerbin, though we'll just do a straight 'impact' capture at Kerbin by flying right at the planet). With the Kerbal and his samples safely on their way back to Kerbin the probe section ejects the now spent fuel tanks and uses RCS to put itself into a declining orbit (if there is any fuel left it can use that and then eject them) and closes up the solar panels for safe keeping. The probe section descends on parachute like the lander and ideally lands on the two goo containers. However it is designed for a soft roll over and with 2 antenna it can operate from any position with 2 solar panels extended. At this point it has access to any science instruments you've unlocked in the tech tree (I've attached all of them, though realistically you probably don't have the GRAVMAX). So all the Delta V needed to go to Duna, land and return using just a little 350 isp engine.

You can easily reach Duna/Eve without Mainsails, Skippers or Nuclear engines. For example I did a one way trip to Eve to place two landers (one for the ocean and one for the land) on the surface and a third probe on Gilly using very little tech and a launcher with a payload capability of only about 10t. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53159-Science-leads-to-wonderful-things-%28Last-update-Eve-landings%29?p=720063&viewfull=1#post720063 Your post also got me thinking of what a budget trip to Duna and back would look like, I'll probably post that in my thread too.

If you have a pod with more then 1 seat you can use the crew tab in the VAB to remove some of the crew leaving empty seats. Or the low tech way is to just have some of the crew EVA on the launchpad, you can recover them later since they are already 'landed'. If you don't have a pod with more then 1 seat, but have a probe core, you can build a ship with both a capsule and a probe core, and using the crew tab remove the pilot and let the probe core fly the empty ship to your stranded kerbal.

As people are saying it looks almost like there is something small stuck in the docking port. From my own experence I have one suspicion - when you turned on symmetry you may have accidently ended up with two docking ports overlapping each other on either 2 or 4 of the side mounting points. I've encountered that unintentional duplication/clipping before with the hub part. Is there any kind of shimmering on the docking port, particularly when you move the camera? If so there is almost certainly a part clipped inside the docking port that is interfering.

Undocking other parts eventually worked. I had to specifically undock the last part to be docked and then undock the lander before redocking the part I took off. If I undocked a different part or docked and redocked the other ship before trying I couldn't get the lander to undock.

I've fully exited the game and restarted, doesn't seem to work. Not running any mods. I may have to try getting an earlier save to see if it works there.

I'm aware of the bug that sometimes makes it impossible to dock because a port is not in the ready state, it can be fixed by correcting the save file. However I've got a different kind of docking bug. I have a ship with many docking ports and one of them has a lander attached. When I tried to undock the lander the 'undock' button doesn't do anything. It depresses but the ports don't seperate. I know I could dock and undock the lander before (it was not attached to the ship during launch), and other ports still work, but that one seems to be stuck. In the picture the lander is on the left. I can undock the fuel tank inbetween the lander and the main ship, but even then the lander remains stuck to the fuel tank. I tried finding the docking port in the save file and even changing a few entries but without success. If I knew what I was supposed to edit the docking status to I might be able to narrow down the docking port entry by detaching at the fuel tank, which leaves only 9 docking ports to try (6 for the 3 science pods, 2 for the fuel tank, 1 for the lander)

I've been trying around Jool since I've never made a manned landing on its moons. Laythe seems quite possible (I could load up a Tylo quicksave and have enough dV to change course and land) and I may settle for it. Despite repeated tries I couldn't land on Tylo with my normal 10 part ship no matter how many tricks I tried to subvert the dV requirements (I setup a 'free' Tylo intercept using aerobraking and less then 10m/s), I always came up about 500m/s short resulting in a very hard crash. If Tylo had gravity closer to Duna I would have tried burning all my fuel and then using an EVA to make the final landing. I do have one alternative design that might bend things enough to make Tylo possible, I just need to get the launch parameters right.

So you only have to land, you don't need a plan to return to Kerbin? (or is that hardmode)

A suggest that occured to me looking at the second to last screenshot, 'if I didn't tell you, you'd never notice'. How about a service compartment alternative for the Rockomax Brand Adapter (the Large to Small cone adapter). In my past sandbox I had two early workhorse craft, a Soyuz style crew ship for delivery 3 kerbals to LKO and a 2nd Progress style craft, which was essentally my Soyuz but with extra space for fuel instead of a decoupler and an adapter in place of the command pod. I always wanted that adapter piece to actually store things, like supplies for my crew so that it would match the Progress model.