Dave Kerbin

Getting ready to go to the Mun and just tidying things up. There are two piles of debris close to Kerbal Space Center, left there by Arend 2 (a pair of solid booster shells) and Baldwin 1 (almost the entire rocket broken into pieces) as shown below on the left during the launch of Eratosthenes 1. I went through each piece of debris from the tracking station and hit the recover button (it's not cheating if I can send a crew to clean it up) to get rid of it. The final piece of debris left on record is the lander from Fleming 1. Since it was out of physics range when the return capsule entered the atmosphere its orbit never degraded (stuck on rails). In comparison with the capsule which was pushed up by the decoupling the lander hardware was pushed down in a 28km PE orbit. Cleaning it up was simply a matter of focusing on it so that it could break up in the atmosphere. I'm now back to a 100% clean solar system.

Fleming 1 I've dried up most of the science on Kerbin (if I could find the badlands that would be 55 but I can never find them) so it's time to go farther. I understand that BTSM now has antenna range - each antenna has limits to how far away it can transmit science from and still be received by KSC. That won't be an issue for the first mission beyond Kerbin's immediate vicinity as I will be landing a probe on the Mun and return samples of Goo exposed there. This time around my booster designs are coming across a big square. Part of this is because I haven't unlocked an engine with more thrust, another is that I simply needed 3 tank rockets early on for the mounting space and I've just sort of stayed with them. I'd like to think that if I used some part clipping and the tail section piece (I don't remember if that's even in BTSM) that I could smooth out those square edges - they should naturally be curved to form a smooth rocket in a manner similar to many Soviet designs. The gravity turn is executed immediately after the first stage booster is discarded. This second stage is intended to take the ship to within 300 m/s of a stable orbit and carries it's own monopropellent supply. A difference from the first placethrough is that .23.5 now ensures that monopropellent is drained in relation to staging, so I don't need to close the valves on the final stage's tanks to prevent them from being used during the ascent. I did encounter a small oversight for the next part of the ascent. On the one hand when I cut off the 2nd stage engines for the coasting phase I found that they had run out of fuel at that exact same moment, leaving me on target and ready to engage the third stage orbital/injection engines. However the circulization burn shows that I needed 385 m/s, putting me slightly over budget since some of that should have come out of the 2nd stage. A bigger issue is that I didn't correctly take into account the much lower TWR of the 3rd stage engines. As a result my burn timing is off and the resulting orbit will actually pass as low as 68.9km. On the bright side my course projection to reach the Mun show that I will save over 100 m/s of delta-v over the injection portions budget. I also notice that the display is a little different, I think I must have clicked one of the conic options in PreciseNode. It looks fine, in fact I actually find it more useful this way to visually see my PE without even reading the number so I'll keep it for now. Making the burn confirmed that it makes it easier to visually tell how close my PE was, letting me cut my engines based on sight and get a PE of 13km. Arriving at the Mun some information is recorded in high orbit before arriving for capture after which a additional experiments can be done in low orbit. A good deal of fuel has been saved so the transit stage will be able to provide some delta-v for the descent. One other thing the transfer stage has provided is electrical power. Prior to starting the landing the batteries in the landing stage need to be activated. They'll provide several more hours of operation without having to carry the weight of the batteries that brought the probe the Mun in the first place. The landing site chosen is a flat looking area in the midlands which should pose little danger. With the fuel situation good a very soft landing is made at 1.4 m/s. Goo is exposed and the newly acquired Double-C is activated. With all of the experiments completed the probe lifts off back into Munar orbit. Fuel is plentiful so only battery life is of interest. With PreciseNode installed it makes setting the time parameter of a maneuver much easier (dragging the maneuver node frequently has side effects and is hard to do accurately). The result is a very nicely aligned escape trajectory. To return to Kerbin after leaving the Mun's SOI a PE of 35km is set with a short burn, however it's thrown off a bit because I didn't reorient the ship before decoupling the unpowered return package. The seperation force pushes the return package PE up to 41km. Instead of returning to Kerbin is 3 hours it takes 10 hours and 5 passes through the atmosphere before it finally loses enough velocity. The automatic parachute engages at 6km for a soft landing. Recovery of the probes payload provides a healthy increase in science that I have not decided how to spend yet. Should I try to make an early manned Mun landing, or go with a more mundane orbital gravity mapping of the Mun and some exploration of Minmus first and proceed with a Mun landing that would be mostly a copy of my previous playthrough?

Eratosthenes 2 This is a second manned flight to fill in the parts that couldn't be covered by the first. Thanks to voting the second kernal picked is Kenby Kerman. I'm noticing that there is a strong relationship between votes and how stupid the kerbal is. Fortunately if things hold out the 3rd and final kerbal will have been picked for his courage. The design of the ship is the same except that the GravMax sensors have been removed for this flight. The goal here is a pass over in the poles from orbit and a visit to high orbit. To do this I burn to put the initial AP past the north pole and in high orbit, accomplishing both objectives in a single orbit. Technically it's not even an orbit though, since there is no specific need to burn at the AP to raise the PE high enough to avoid reentry at the south pole. Passing over the pole and taking readings I realize that my polar orbit is very close to passing over the exact north pole, as evidenced by the rapid vertigo inducing camera movement as the auto camera passes over the pole. Reaching high orbit another reading is taken just as the sun begins to fall behind Kerbin. Coming back into the light over the south pole the ship also begins reentry. A final report is taken of the upper atmosphere since I forgot to grab it (a lower atmosphere one was taken during the initial ascent) and then the service module is jettisoned. Reentry and splashdown occur without incident and the pod is recovered with Kenby and his reports. With just over 400 science accumulated I can unlock several 90 point nodes. I unlock Landing which provides the Double-C instrument, ladder segment and probe landing gear. I unlock Advanced Flight Control which gives me a new rectangular probe core that's twice as energy efficient along with SAS, Reaction Wheel and a regular sized monopropellent tank. Aerodynamics gives me the first heatshield, a larger parachute and some various aerodynamic parts. Finally Advanced Construction gives me the Docking Port, size adapters (big to small, small to tiny) and Struts.

Eratosthenes 1 This is the first manned mission of the new program. Thanks to your voting the first candiate was selected and has been undergoing training for this mission. I'd like to introduce the 50% brave Aldrick Kerman. The ship itself has a fair amount of delta-v just for safety sake if I need to bring him home quickly or otherwise recovery from an unforeseen situation. I also have a potential secondary mission to use some of that fuel but it will depend on how long it takes to complete the primary mission of low orbit observations. At this point I don't think there will be enough remaining life support to attempt it as the pod carries only a little over an hour (and I'd prefer to use anything past the 60 minute mark as a safety margin). With Aldrick piloting I have SAS so launching is easy. The second stage is fired up just as the gravity turn starts. I slightly underestimated the average ISP the T15 engines would perform at in the atmosphere leading to the second stage being enough to get all the way into orbit (it was planned that the third stage would provide about 100-200 m/s). In making sure the first launch was a success Aldrick missed the atmospheric crew reports. This won't be a big issue, they'll be collected on the next mission. Aldrick begins making observations from low orbit, spotting the ocean, shore, grasslands, highlands and mountains. Nearing the end of his first orbit he passes over the desert where he makes both a crew report and activates one of the GravMax instruments. There are two of them in case the Badlands are spotted but like everytime they are not. There where a few momentary glimpses of the oddly placed Tundra though no crew reports where made in time. At this point 30 minutes have elapsed and life support is almost half depleted. A second orbit would be risky on life support supply so plans are begin to deorbit. Aldrick is aiming to return to the KSC, since it was the only inhabited area he observed during his entire flight. The return burn finishes up the second stage allowing the third stage to kick in. This is useful as it also simplifies reentry by removing the bulky 2nd stage ahead of time and leaving it far behind (though the last orbital projection before staging showed that it should enter the atmosphere and impact somewhere on the far side of Kerbin). Reentry goes as planned - the RCS thrusters don't seem to mind - and the parachute is deployed at 300 m/s to slow down and land close to KSC. After a soft landing the capsule with an alive and well Aldrick are recovered. I'm not spending the science yet, I'll be making a second flight on a polar orbit. Since that flight should cover it's intended biomes in about 15 minutes I should have time to expand it to high orbit and get an observation there. It will also be a chance to pick up those atmospheric reports too.

It looks like I'll need a kerbal real soon and since Aldrick Kerman is the front runner he just earned his ticket into the space program and will begin training.

I don't think I fit any of those. I plan them out in two ways: I plan them out numerically in Excel in which I keep track of mass, estimated delta-v and thrust requirements. Based on the numbers in Excel I also have an idea of the shape and layout in my head - so for instance if I need a certain minimum number of engines I'll be rounding that up to a number that I feel can be laid out symmetrically which I can then enter into the spreadsheet and see the rest of the numbers update automatically.

Drake 2 With the Goo containers my next objective is easy to see. I'll want to expose 4 of them to the pair of biomes in the atmosphere and Kerbin orbit and then return them safely to the ground. Since I'll be visiting high orbit I might as well record temperature data too. I did some quick figures to see what kind of ship would be needed but quickly found that the Drake class, designed to carry a large quantity of batteries but shelfed due to the stability issues, fit my needs. It also possessed two important attributes, it used decouplers so it limited the amount of weight that had to be returned but at the same time it also used a 3 fuel tank final stage (because it was designed for thrust control). I need the radial tanks as a place to mount parachutes. So the Drake design was dusted off and most of the batteries where replaced with Goo containers, parachutes where added and finally the same RCS control unit added to Chandrasekhar 3 was added to Drake 2. Ascent is straight up and while Drake 2 has the same spin instability as Drake 1 it doesn't impact things since the RCS system can keep it on course. Goo is exposed to the atmosphere on the way up and as the ship enters space the AP reaches 260km and the engines are throttled down. Drifting into high orbit the last 2 Goo containers are sampled and the 2Hot readings are recorded. On the way back down RCS is used to hold attitude and at 80km traveling 1.4 km/s the engines are throttled up again to start braking. At 40km the speed has been reduced to 300 m/s for a smooth reentry and the engines are cut again. The parachutes are already armed (they where staged to arm as soon as the 3rd stage engines lit up since by then the ship would be well above the 6km deployment altitude). It looks like the ship is descending into the mountain range west of KSC. Normally my 6km parachute deployment isn't an issue - only the highest points on Kerbin are that high and my opinion is that if you land there you'll most likely be destroyed rolling down the mountain. As you can see the probe can very close to the mountain, it is just reaching the 6km point for parachute deployment but has already passed the nearby peak. Fortunately the probe misses the peak and the parachutes deploy, though some RCS was used to help keep the probe aligned to minimize the shock when they semi-deployed. With all the weight speed is still 17 m/s with the chutes fully deployed so some engine power is used for a gentle touchdown. I think I received 8 science for returning my first object safely to the ground in addition to the 150 for the Goo and 8 for the 2Hot. The science is invested into the first small engine and fuel tank (completing tier 4) and then Space Exploration for the mercury style capsule.

It would be easier if you figured out why they where wrong instead of assuming there was a bug. The burn times are based on the engines last recorded performance and as long as your ship doesn't change the burn time will be accurate. There are several things that could change or distort the original estimate: If you use staging or otherwise detach parts of the spacecraft during a burn then the mass of the ship changes and the burn time won't match the estimate which was based on the original mass plus the fuel that would be burned. If you add or remove engines during the burn (for example half of your engines have less fuel and will flame out) then it changes how quickly the ship can accelerate which again invalidates the original estimate. You can also throw off the estimate if the starting information is not correct. If you where previously burning the engine at half throttle, or you staged after ending your last burn, then the information about how much thrust and isp your ship has will be not be correct. Those figures can also be thrown off by a ship design that flexes while under burn. You might wonder why the game doesn't simply take the engines thrust stat directly and use it - that's because the textbook thrust of the engine is not always what you'll get in a given design. For example if you angle your engines slightly outward then not all of the thrust is being directed in the direction you want to go and so the real thrust is lower. The same happens if your ship flexes or twists while under thrust, the engines won't be perfectly aligned and the true thrust contributing to the maneuver can be variable. Because you said the burn times are 'completely wrong' rather then just off by a small amount, and because you say this is happening when you are burning for a landing I suspect that you have decoupled some engines or fuel tanks that you used to get into orbit but have not fired your engines since. This means the games information about your engines is out of date - it has no way of knowing correctly predicting the performance of your 'new' ship until you fire the engines with the new load and structural design.

What you want is "Better Than Starting Manned". It's essentially a total conversion mod that changes around the tech tree and some of the available science to create a clear progression. I've described it as "career hardmode" before and that sounds exactly like what you want. To give you an idea I'm an experienced career player and my playthrough of BTSM (just recently finished) took 2 months and I didn't even finish the entire tech tree (I finally completed my goal of a manned mission to Eeloo without having to unlock nuclear engines which are on the 9th tier and cost 16,000 science to unlock). There are many changes including a big focus on electricity (solar panels do not arrive for quite some time and even when they do they aren't super powerful) and a simple life support requirement. If you want you can read a playthrough in my signature (the first playthrough is an older version so it won't be a complete spoiler, but if you want spoiler free avoid it).

Some of the upcoming names are getting hard to pick. The next mission name was a narrow win for Eratosthenes (the tie breaker being that I don't know how many ancient era astronomers I'll be able to fit in so I'll take one when I can) but I can't decide if the one after that should be Fleming or Fraunhofer.

Chandrasekhar 2-3 I need some more science and I'd rather not waste money trying to make thrust control work 100% so it's back to plan A. I'll need one more suborbital flight to get the science to unlock RCS instead and then I can go ahead and upgrade Chandrasekhar for proper orbital flight. Chandrasekhar 2 flies like the first one, only I'm directly it a little west so it will pass over the highlands and mountains while in space. With the science from those two biomes I unlock flight control as I maybe should have the first time instead of pushing to far ahead for more battery life. Chandrasekhar 3 is the promised modification that simply adds a monopropellent tank and RCS thrusters. With these modifications Chandrasekhar 3 is easily flown into a polar orbit to grab the Tundra and Ice Cap gravity readings. A desert reading might be possible in terms of orbit but not in terms of power - after transmitting the second batch of data the ship has only 80em of charge left, enough for 8 minutes of operation and just short of actually reaching the desert much less transmitting information. In my previous game I collected a lot of debris in orbit - I only pointed it out a few times but it became almost a certainty that I would pass near some debris while launch and even some interplanetary returns passed within 20 km of orbital debris. So I'm going to try and clean up as much garbage as possible this time. I can't quite reach the AP so I setup and burn the last 8L of fuel about 2 minutes before I'll run out of power. That lowers the ship to a 56km PE, but by then dumping the contents of the monopropellent tank I lower that to 37km with 8.07em left. As it enters the atmosphere the ship slowly breaks up piece by piece. Realtime it took 30 seconds before the probe core exploded but I've sped it up. Apart from the pieces sitting in the field west of KSC I have left no garbage so far. I now have enough science to unlock Science Tech which gives me a bigger battery, pressurized cockpit and goo container.

Drake 1 Drake 1 carries enough battery power to transmit 4 GravMax reports and is staged thanks to the new decoupler. It carries a fair amount of extra delta-v in order to facilitate using thrust moderation to turn and actually needs more fuel and engines then normal for this kind of payload because of the need for the final stage to carry 3 engines/tanks. However issues begin appearing very early in the flight. While Chandrasekhar tipped a bit in the compass direction it was stable along its own axis. However Drake does not appear to be stable (possibly because of the small bit of flex where the decouplers link the stages, possibly because Chandrasekhar was much wider) and has a small bit of spin. In the lower atmosphere this can be corrected with the fins and I struggled to keep it nulled out. By the time I ran out of air for the control surfaces the spin was practically nothing, but even a tiny bit was enough to seriously throw things off as soon as I started trying to turn with thrust - in the second shot the ship should be going to the right but thanks to the rotation combined with the use of imbalanced thrust it is now rotating around. I made an effort to get it into orbit, or at least a useful suborbital path where it would pass over some mountains, but these efforts where not enough. It never reached space, preventing the GravMax from being used in any capacity. Drake 1 final broke up as it passed over a mountain range.

Chandrasekhar 1 With access to liquid rockets but without decouplers or RCS thrusters this rocket represents something of a stepping stone between suborbital missile like probes and true orbital satellites. In theory it has enough power to get into orbit but the technology limitations mean it wouldn't be a very good or reliable way of doing it though as you'll see it comes very close. It is somewhat large for a basic orbiting satellite but then it lacks any way to seperate stages, so there must be enough engines to carry all the dead weight, and in turn enough fuel to power those engines. Basic operation is very simple - all the engines start at the same time, then cut out as their fuel supply runs out. You can see this splits the engines into 3 groups based on how much fuel they have. The layout of the engines, in particular the 3 with the largest fuel supply, is deliberately along the east/west axis to support some experimental guidance. The payload includes the GravMax and enough power for 2 transmissions. A gravity turn is started using the fins but it can only go so far. The gravity turn needs to take advantage of the thinning air but at the same time this reduces the effectiveness of the control surfaces. At launch all the engines are tweaked to 80%, this prevents them from overheating even with the throttle at 100%. As the ship climbs and the fins become useless an experiment is conducted to determine if thrust control can be used for a gravity turn. While far from a perfect control mechanism the experiment proves the technique is viable - for example to lower the nose the engine thrust for the east side engine is lowered for half a second, then as the ship begins to nose down it is put into overdrive to cancel out the rotational velocity before being returned to 80%. Since this was still being worked out the ship overshot it's orbital target with an AP of 138km, the gravity turn was not completed within a good timeframe so even with fuel remaining there is not enough for the 800+ m/s that would be needed to make proper orbit. A circulization burn is made anyway (if only to extend the orbit and ensure good opportunities to use the GravMax), using a very small amount of thrust to help rotate the ship into alignment for the manuever and it comes within 300 m/s of a stable orbit. A pair of GravMax readings are taken of the ocean and grasslands before the ship begins reentry. Since it was nearly orbital the ship enters the atmosphere at over 2 km/s causing it to burn up. There are 2 techs that I want for spacecraft development - RCS for control and decouplers to bring up larger payloads. In order to get RCS I'll need to unlock the capsule and parachute and I have enough science for one of the two major techs. When I designed Chandrasekhar 1 I included the ability for RCS to be added later without the need for additional fuel. It was my plan that Chandrasekhar 2 would have RCS control and be able to enter stable orbit. However with the success of the thrust control experiment I decided it would be more useful to send up a ship with more batteries so that it could transmit GravMax readings for more then two biomes, and that means using decouplers to make a more efficient ship (yes it could be done without decouplers but that would be a giant ugly thing that abused the joints too much). So the next ship will be designed with decouplers to bring up more battery power; I need to cover at least 3 more biomes around the equator and could get some extra science by boosting into high orbit.

Baldwin 1 Arend was a series of unguided atmospheric rockets simply designed to 'go up'. Baldwin is my first guided rocket and did get a few minutes of math to get a rough idea of how much power it would need to carry, what that would weigh, and what booster arrangement should be used to put it into space on a suborbital path. The arrangement is very similar to Arend 4, only 4 more boosters are added that feature the new wing control surface. There are additional batteries (12 batteries in all) and the instruments have been rearranged to include a GravMax and to try and remove as many redundent parts as possible. It's still weight balanced (with a second 2Hot required) but doesn't follow the earlier model of trying to get it perfect since I can correct for minor changes with the fins. Staging is setup as 4->4->2->2+1, with the large center booster being the +1. The first 3 booster stages lift it to 10km at 174 m/s with the fins providing stability. The final stage runs on 3 boosters until the 2 smaller ones run out, then its a long push on the center booster up to 42km. By now most of the atmosphere has been cleared and the AP is at 80km which should put us in space. Coasting into space I can run three instruments - a single use of the GravMax over Kerbin's shores for 25 science plus the 16 and 8 science for the PresMat and 2Hot. I haven't budgeted battery power for anything else so after transmissions are complete the probe falls back down though there is just enough power left to keep it running up until impact. The impact is rather unusual since despite a lack of parachutes only the probe core, a battery, the antenna and a 2Hot are destroyed on impact. Everything else survives. I unlock the T15 liquid engine and T800 fuel tank and while I've got a good amount of science left I'm not unlocking the first manned pod+parachute yet, I want to work with the liquid engine first and be sure I have a working ship before I start putting kerbals in danger. I may end up unlocking the node with the smaller liquid engine or the stack decoupler first as soon as I get a few more points of science to afford them.

Arend 1-4 Back at the beginning of the tech tree there is an immediate change. The original small solid booster is gone, replaced by the tiny KESTES-1. This little booster has less power and has limiting mounting options - I attach anything under it, and it can't be attached radially. That means my first design is pretty fixed, it's going to be a single booster. I'm using 4 way symmetry in the hopes that it provides the best balance for the physics engine. Lifting off I can't use the 2Hot immediately, it says I'm flying too low. As Arend 1 climbs it slowly starts to tip toward the mission control building but it is still flying too low. At 10km the solid booster cuts out but I'm still not high enough. Finally at around 12km I am flying low and I can take a reading and transmit it. The probe levels off at 16km and falls back to Kerbin in the field outside the KSC. Nothing is left of it. I can unlock the next item which provides the PresMat and small battery along with a new type of booster. This one can't have anything mounted on top of it (built in nose cone) but it can be mounted radially to other things. This is used to build Arend 2 which now has 4 radial boosters, staged to fire in pairs before the original center booster. This design starts to tip even faster, by the time it reaches 12.4km (now confirmed as the start of flying low) it has almost turned horizontal and is mainly relying on upward momentum to climb. I get a low flying PresMat reading but nothing else. 2 solid boosters survive the crash and are now sitting a good distance away from the KSC. Arend 3 tries a short sighted solution to the tilting problem. 6 boosters are used, 4 tied together for the first stage and 2 (mounted east/west) are staged apart so that one can be activated early to try and correct the direction of travel. There are 2 problems with this. One is that the ship doesn't tilt anywhere near as far as Arend 2. The second is that the booster provides too much power and the forced staging delay means the other engine can't cut in soon enough to do anything. The ship is launched into a spin and becomes a write off, the only thing I learned was that it was safe to operate 2 KESTES-1.5 boosters beside each other without overheating. Arend 4 is the last ship in the series. It mounts 8 radial boosters in a square arrangement and stages them with the center as 4->4->1. It tilts over like Arend 1 but not as much as Arend 2. By the time it reaches 12km it is already on the final booster and traveling at 400 m/s though it is slowing down for the moment because the booster doesn't have enough thrust to maintain that speed. As the air thins out it begins to speed up. At 29.9km the flying high point is found and readings are taken. At 37km the final booster cuts out with the probe traveling at 720 m/s. It coasts all the way up to 64km, nearly reaching space before coming back down on the far side of the mountains. Debris from Arend 2 can be seen off in the distance. Nothing will survive of Arend 4 when it crashes. The science is used to unlock basic flight control which gives me fins and the GravMax. I'm pretty sure with some basic control that I can reach a suborbital flight.

Better Than Starting Manned v1.56 playthrough This is the start of a fresh career with the latest version of BTSM. My aim here is to try out the revisions to the start of the game and see if I do better now that I know more about the mod. My end game goal won't be as big as before - I enjoy the heavily constrained early game much more then the more sandbox late game. So my goal this time will be to return a Goo sample from the surface of Laythe to help determine if the moon could be colonized by kerbals - not a few scattered scientists in pressurized domes, but a real colony living outside. I've neared 'landed' on Laythe proper, though I have splashed down in the large ocean that covers most of the moon, so that should provide something new and interesting. I'll also be trying extra hard to conserve kerbals. There is voting on to select my 3 recruits who I will try and keep alive. The poll is open for another 6 days or so but I'll be taking the results whenever I reach manned flight which could be soon (though I've learned from my first playthrough and won't be unlocking capsules until I'm sure I can fly them safely).

I plan on keeping it here since it will be the same theme and general constraints. I'll update the first post with a link to 'skip' to the second play through.

This playthrough is over, but a new one is just starting. FlowerChild has been making lots of changes to the early game so I'll be playing through them to see if I am better now that I have experience and I need your help. I want to hire 3 kerbals and try to keep them alive as long as possible without hiring replacements. You can help me choose the 3 brave kerbonauts for my next career by voting here.

I've just finished a virgin playthrough of the mod Better Than Starting Manned. It can be best described as career hardmode with a lot more gaming and progression, you'll have to fight for every drop of science. The mod is still in development and after KSP .23.5 was released the early game under went some overhaul with changes to the tech tree and new starting parts. I'm going to be starting a new playthrough and I need to hire some kerbals because Jeb, Bob and Bill live in my original .22 playthrough. You can help but voting on which kerbals will join my team - I'll be hiring the top 3 candidates. Of course that means they'll be flying the most dangerous early missions, but I'm going to be trying extra hard this time to keep my kerbals alive. I'm going to set it as a personal goal to try and get through this while hiring as few (if any) additional kerbals after the original 3. These are the kerbals that showed up to apply when I created a fresh save file.

Lettuce 1 (Part 5) I tried setting up a return course to Kerbin but got frustrated over an old problem - the maneuver node interface. For the most part I don't have a problem with the design and I'm not looking for all kinds of fancy information but what I do need is for it to respond correctly and predictably to mouse clicks. There are a number of systems (several dialogs in the VAB for instance) where it is obvious there are conflicts between the UnityGUI elements and Squads stuff, meaning that the same mouse clicks get interpretted multiple times. This can vary from minor nuisance (AP/PE nodes are activated) to frustrating like nodes deleting themselves or suddenly changing multiple values at once. The mouse wheel hasn't really helped, since the mouse wheel focus doesn't work consistently either. So I finally broke down and installed PreciseNode. I don't really like any mod that adds a window, despite them being part of the UnityGUI they never seem to fit with KSP and they clutter things up. After I was finished I did load up a training mission and played around with it, finding that I can remove most of the PreciseNode interface and leave just the basics that I want - adjusting Prograde/Normal/Radial and Time while getting rid of the stuff about ejection angles and conics mode. I'm not completely clueless about how to write Unity code so I'm tempted to make an alternate version that provides just those essentials while integrating more seamlessly with the KSP interface. With PreciseNode it's very straight forward to setup a return since I can adjust my node smoothly and can easily move the node forward/backwards even from a zoomed out position. The capture drive provides another 50 m/s before it is exhausted. Now it's down to the return system and a 12 minute burn. Returning to Kerbin is easy from this point, PreciseNode makes it very fast to setup maneuver nodes where I'm really only limited by how precise I want to try burning. On approach to Kerbin I initiate the final stage which discards the side tanks. While I burned most of my fuel getting back to Kerbin (remember that launch window update, it made my fuel much tighter and ended up giving me 300 extra days of life support) by discarding those sections I now double the remaining delta-v to over 800 m/s. There is more then enough life support in the cupola (which was topped off from the containers just before they where ejected). Approaching Kerbin low orbit I make a 700 m/s burn to remove some of my velocity, followed by a minor adjustment to put my PE at 27km. I want to ensure I capture but don't want to go in too hot. I have 20 days of life support so I can easily ride out a long orbit as long as I can capture around Kerbin. There are 2 full tanks of monopropellent on the return capsule that can be used for later orbital adjustment. The heatshield is deployed as normal on Kerbin's night side and reentry slows the ship down though not enough for a landing. It travels up again on a suborbital path to 100 km, through the day side of Kerbin and lands in a bay near the daylight terminator. The mission ends with the recovered spacecraft.

Lettuce 1 (Part 4) The orbital modules probe is turned on and the lander is launched while still on the dark side of the planet. This is to take advantage of the position and lower the orbit down a bit for a landing on the light side. Landing is straight forward. Because I built this as a two stage lander there is no reason to try and ration fuel if I know I have enough. As I near the surface there is still lots of fuel in the tank so I slow down for a very soft landing. All the ships experiments are run including the remaining Goo container and the Science Jr. The ship doesn't have a ladder so a jetpack is needed to bridge the small distance to the ground. A ground sample and EVA report are taken and then it is time to plant a flag. Since Eeloo rotates, leaving the surface in darkness for some time during an Eeloo 'day', the landers base section comes equipped with a lamp, probe core (apparently without one lights won't stay on) and a pair of RTGs to power both. Hanemone Kerman was the first member of the current 7 member kerbonaut corps, but there where 7 who didn't make it this far. After observing a minute of silence Hanemone uses his jetpack to return to the lander's cockpit and waits for the orbiter to come around. The engines on the lower stage are turned off, this way the throttle can be brought to full and then the staging activated to launch. I need to launch in the other direction, since it is a retrograde orbit. The target marker helps me make my suborbital path somewhat in line with the orbiter, an adjustment is planned to bring them together. Docking is straight forward. I did have a minor panic while setting up the approach when it seemed I was out of RCS - it turns out I had forgotten to open the valves on the landers monopropellent tanks before descending, I had accidently made the landing and initial ascent using only the tiny supply in the lander can itself. Once docked everything of value is transfered back to the orbital module and the lander hardware, minus the experiments, are ejected just like with the Ham class. Lettuce 1 is ready to come home.

Lettuce 1 (Part 3) Entering Eeloo's SOI I take some biometric readings and try to do a crew report. For some reason the crew report function on my Cupola is bugged but I can do one if I transfer over to the lander. One of the goo containers is also used - it really doesn't matter if it's high or low orbit so I might as well get it done now. Capture is going to be close on fuel with a 10 minute burn required to get into a very basic orbit. Because I'm approaching at an odd angle (it will be a retrograde orbit for sure) I'm going to leave the orbit wide on one side to see if I can fix it a bit before lowering into a circular orbit. The pair of external tanks are good for about 700 m/s of delta-v, then it's just the center engine. The ship is now on the capture tank and engine. If I don't even enough delta-v to capture then I'd have to abort since all fuel in the next stage is earmarked for a return to Kerbin. At this point the structure of the return ship becomes more obvious. With the initial capture burn complete I'm in a long orbit of Eeloo. I calculate about 280 m/s of delta-v remaining in the capture stage and it seems about 230 m/s of that needs to be budgeted towards circulizing the orbit. However it looks like it will only take about 2 m/s to complete the adjustment that I want. I don't have an equatorial orbit but it's as close as I can get in a single pass. Arriving back at the PE most of the remaining fuel in this stage is burned to bring down the orbit, leaving 220L in the tank. Some more readings are taken and then the next stage of the mission is started immediately.

Lettuce 1 (Part 2) As I said before I originally came up with some mission parameters before I went asteroid hunting. With the passage of time the next launch window for Eeloo was a bit different from the last - I found that the new window required a bit more fuel but was a bit faster. Checking I found that I still had enough fuel though it would cut down on my safety. On the opposite side I would obviously have enough life support though in hindsight I might have removed a small amount. The ship is lined up for a long 1974 m/s burn. The 2nd stage booster is only going to last for about 3 seconds and after that we need to rely on the 6 Poodle engines of the orbital section. Pushing 600 tons it is going to take almost 15 minutes. As you can see the orbital module has 6 main tanks around the center tank (easily identified by the orange tanks they are composed of). 4 of those tanks are small and will be used in stage for this inital injection burn. The 2 double size tanks are going to be kept longer. They will complete the injection burn, be used for mid course plane change and finally should have a little fuel left to aid in capture at Eeloo. That's important since they also have the life support supplies for the outbound trip. By dropping them just as the capture burn starts we can avoid paying an additional fuel cost to carry them into Eeloo orbit. The length of the injection burn does pose some issues - even at 100km the ship eventually dips to 63km as it cuts across the upper atmosphere. The first pair of tanks are dropped within a few meters of the lowest altitude reached during the burn. The second pair are dropped much later as the ship is climbing out of Kerbin orbit at an altitude of 336km. The burn was started during the day, passed into the night side and then completed on the day side. For this reason both tank drops need a bit of gamma correction to be seen. Now in deep space a plane change must be executed to encounter Eeloo which will cost another 309 m/s. I didn't really get a good angle for the picture, the maneuver being plotted here is not braking, rather it is adjusting the normal - I'm tilting the course upwards to intersect with Eeloo. One interesting thing I've discovered in the Cupola and look forward to verifying in the other capsules is a neat trick with the navball. Normally you can run into trouble finding the blue maneuver marker because there is no guard as to which direction is the closest to it. With the other markers you have a retrograde counterpart so that you can always see at least one part. Well if you go into IVA view in the Cupola you'll that there is a maneuver retrograde marker, making it easy to line up. At 256 days into the trip I'm closing in on Eeloo and make some minor course corrections to bring the PE down. I also moved around some life support in advance of reaching Eeloo, shifting as much as I could from the tanks that will be discarded into the tanks that will be kept. This will cut down on the amount of work I'll need to do once I enter Eeloo orbit and need to prepare to discard them.

Lettuce 1 (Part 1) This mission will complete my goal of a manned expedition to Eeloo. I got stuck for a while trying to figure out the best way to do this mission in terms of how multiple ships might be utilized and how they would transfer supplies (docking 2 big ships 100 million km from home is not straight forward, nor is pumping fuel on a large, multi-engine, multi-stage vessel). I figure out some requirements, namely delta-v for each portion and a suitable amount of life support for the outbound and return trips (taking into consideration that the return trip might be longer then planned). Then I went and did some asteroid missions before coming back and finally just designing the mission as a single ship. The launch platform itself is massive at 5000 tons. This is the biggest ship I will launch in KSP, I have neither the computing power or the launchpad space for something bigger at the moment. The payload itself is very similar to a stretched Ham interplanterary rocket and utilizes the upgraded return module tested in Kiwi (this replaces solar power with RTGs that can stay with it during reentry). With the first stage on screen (and within the ~2.5km physics range) it slows the game down to 40%, making some buttons and controls sluggish. Activating SAS requires holding the T key long enough for it to register. Hanemone Kerman, my first successful kerbonaut, will fly the mission. Launch parameters are programmed and the engines are fired lifting the massive rocket off the pad. At 18km the ship has already started a gravity turn and must discard the depleted first stage. Whether it is the lower frame rate or the combined heat of so many Mainsail engines the first stage is not merely ejected it is lit on fire, resulting in a chain reaction of explosions among the discarded stage. It also seems to overload the audio system. We are aiming for a 100km orbit. With a successful gravity turn that won't be a problem and at 50km the engines are cut with 6 minutes of drifting expected before they can be lit up again to circulize. There is still 4400L of fuel available for the 116 m/s burn, though it will be moving a lot (that fuel is divided between 19 engines and 875 tons so it's much less then it sounds). A little over half of that fuel is burned to complete the orbit. Now in orbit with about 80 m/s of delta-v left in the booster we can begin plotting a course to Eeloo. Since the booster is still attached we can keep the valves closed on the orbital stages monopropellent tanks - no point in wasting them when we need to turn this big ship.

Radial size is up to you, it's possible to build interplanetary ships in many sizes and shapes. Granted it is sometimes easier to get them into space with large radius parts, but that is dependent on having engines like the Skipper or Mainsail. All of these ships are designed to go to Duna (the first was from .22 when you had to return the entire experiment and included an Ike side mission, the last is from the total conversion mod Better Than Starting Manned which is basically career hardmode).