ihtoit

my neighbours must be hating me right now, I'm laughing like a... raucous laughy thing, at 5am!

noooo... hence "altitude" and "parachutes"

nothing wrong with that, you'll be airborne by the time you hit 60.

Ooh, pretty yellow light! Getting bigger... Jebediah wished he'd stood in bed.

....yeah, I'll let you have that

mission lessons learned: get into Kerbolar orbit before Kerbin's orbit carries you outside of the target arc, otherwise you're going to be burning through something like 40km/s just to move your apoapse (you seriously don't have time to orbit round). Oh well. I have plenty time to put a boat into Kerbolar orbit, pick my apoapse kick burn and rendezvous, do yet another crew transfer and get the lads home! Launcher note: this would have been infinitely easier if I'd packed extra LF and gone for the Poseidon's Revenge engines instead of the Super Atomics, I'd've been able to drop inside the arc on the first go. I might do a slight redesign on the rescue can to do that (I'll have to, I got two extra bodies to rescue!), saves me repeating the mission with an improved design - though I may still do that anyway.

check my Starflight One challenge... I'm in the middle of it now, need to launch a rescue boat to rescue the rescuers!

The Mission: I knew I had to design in a lot of delta-V, I went for 47km/s hoping that would be enough... Sorry, Jeb! It'll be gone in a minute then you can get back to your Pon-Farr... Burning for high Kerbin escape... Pretty! Setting the controls for the heart of the Sun... (free carrot for whoever got the reference!) The errant core on its outward arc... A happy encounter with Mun, that just happens to be firing us off in the right direction... ...or not. Bringing the periapse down gave us this - the apoapse is in the wrong place! nearly LOTSOFkm/s burned later, and a very long burn, the apoapse is in the right place (inside the arc of the target body), but we're now orbiting retrograde! So, a bit of time acceleration until we're actually physically inside the target arc, some more burning and we're going the right way again... now we have to slow down for intercept... The Tube... Setting up for terminal intercept, running VERY low on fuel... The first Kerbal is away! Safely aboard... Last two Kerbals waiting their turns... Last Kerbal Out, Captain Bob takes one last look back at the Tube... All safe... and ready to go home! Confirmation of the Tube having been completely evacuated... Just in time, too, as it starts to drift at Ludicrous Speed toward the loving embrace of Kerbol... Rescue is at a safe periapse distance... Just as well, we're out of fuel! SEND RESCUE! Oh, fer... this is going to bite into my score! 7000 for the rescue...

amp it up some more: land two orange tanks. One on top of the other.

oh wow, I'm just gobsmacked here, that thing is a-smeggin'-mazing. Updated leaderboard, and I'll do you a set of wings for being the first to break the 60s barrier.

yeah did that already... KSPInterstellar and MechJeb are pretty much mandatory as both mods are used on The Tube model. I don't think there is any way to beat this using stock-only; a direct-burn rescue trajectory for an intercept in T-1d requires over 50km/s delta-V (I'd say 55 low conservative estimate. I just did the intercept/rescue and ran out of fuel just as I got back onto a Kerbin-crossing elliptical Kerbolar orbit! Now I'm gonna need a rescue boat for the rescue boat... ha! Nine Kerbals to rescue, now...)! Addendum: I'm making a slight adjustment to the scoring.

DISASTER! The first stage of our new Space Colony construction has hit on one or two little snags. For a start, some dimwit forgot to attach the Clamptron Senior to the ass of the beast to allow the attachment of major station parts including science, a docking hub with escape pods, and long-term life support systems. The second crew capsule sent up with constructors including Bill and Bob also carried an unwanted passenger. A computer virus invaded the guidance system, and sent the station core on a direct course into the Sun, right before it jettisoned the entire propulsion system! The last communication we had from the crew suggested that the docking port had taken some damage when the propulsion systems were jettisoned as the rockets were still firing. The last bit of that transmission indicated that they had in fact enough air and power to survive until impact, but radio range of only about 3,000km. Suits and EVA systems are all nominal. The station is on a trajectory that will bring it outside of Kerbin's orbit for approximately 8 days, then it's an unpowered 22 day swan dive into Kerbol. The mission brief is a single ship on a powered intercept, then EVA of each crew member to the rescue ship, then off for a nice leisurely flight back home. The plan: Perform the intercept and rescue, circularise close to Kerbol, then perform a Holmann intercept of Kerbin. With the "hot" nuclear engines available we should be able to do this in a fairly compact ship, even if we're firing them all the way in.

DISASTER! The first stage of our new Space Colony construction has hit on one or two little snags. For a start, some dimwit forgot to attach the Clamptron Senior to the ass of the beast to allow the attachment of major station parts including science, a docking hub with escape pods, and long-term life support systems. The second crew capsule sent up with constructors including Bill and Bob also carried an unwanted passenger. A computer virus invaded the guidance system, and sent the station core on a direct course into the Sun, right before it jettisoned the entire propulsion system! The last communication we had from the crew suggested that the docking port had taken some damage when the propulsion systems were jettisoned as the rockets were still firing. The last bit of that transmission indicated that they had in fact enough air and power to survive until impact, but radio range of only about 3,000km. Suits and EVA systems are all nominal. THE CHALLENGE: Using the provided Save package (just unpack into your "saves" folder), create and execute a mission to rescue the seven stranded Kerbals before the station crashes into the Sun, and return them to Kerbin. Your FIRST and ONLY priority is the crew! The station is fully expendable. PREREQUISITES (all mods available on Spaceport): KSP 0.23 B9 Aerospace (challenge may work without this) KWRocketry (challenge may work without this) Kosmos (challenge may work without this) Firespitter (challenge may work without this) KSPInterstellar (needed for radiators used on the station) The Luvodicus "Pirated Engines" Rocket Mod Pack. This is just a few flags and two highly modded nuke engines - which you might even find useful. (verified in 0.23) (recommended) MechJeb (you need this to load the .craft files provided in various stages of flight) RemoteTech 2 (essential for this challenge) (ALL available texture reduction packages highly recommended! This is my "modded" setup and runs just shy of 1.7GB RAM loaded, it kills 4GB without twitching on full textures) RULES: - No exploits. - ANY parts mod is valid. - The clock is ticking! Game clock is at about 30 days, after which the station will crash into the sun whether or not you have rescued the Kerbals. - ASSUME THE CLAMPTRON PORT ON THE STATION IS NONFUNCTIONAL! - The scenario is set up so that EVAing the Kerbals and suit jetting them into an elliptical orbit for later pickup is not possible. - Jebediah Kerman is not available. He is sitting in a cupola module on the surface, doing Pon-Farr or something. - Challenge time officially starts at T-30d0h0m0s before Kerbolar impact. - Mission is classified a FAILURE if you fail to rescue any Kerbals or if your game clock (MET) passes 291 days 16 hours (7,000 hours) before touchdown on Kerbin. - You may send a ship to retrieve the Kerbals and place them in a stable orbit then a second ship to bring them home, but your first launch *must* remain in orbit as this is your MET subtractor for your score! SCORING: 1000 points for each Kerbal rescued, -1 for each hour Challenge Elapsed Time until your mission makes touchdown on Kerbin. Reporting via link to thread you create here for verbose reporting (to help keep this thread clutter-free; any one answer to this challenge is likely to involve lots of images!), Imgur slideshow or Youtube video. CHALLENGE RESPONDERS: LEADERBOARD: 1. ihtoit, 2041 (good touchdown, but Krakened while unloading for parade) 2. 3. 4. 5.

haha, that could be a contender for the Zippy de Doodah lap challenge!

hehe... ion. Fantastic Leaderboards updated.

ah, ok I'll fix that

Brilliantly chaotic! Leaderboard updated with Special Mention

hammerhead designs are coming in on this one, that's always nice to see Leaderboard updated.

can't be done without pontoons which are not stock - anything landing on water on Eve without some sort of pontoon will shoot through. Ref: KSP Wiki.

that was f***in' insane! Leaderboard updated

dunno, if you're airborne you're not worrying about ground friction hence clear the end of the runway at a higher speed. Easily an advantage. The shorter your takeoff run, the better I reckon.

I use Camstudio, usually... but my CPU has to be like, Arctic cold for it to work properly for a QHD capture...

I don't think this is even possible, unless they've fixed the clip Kraken that sends you off at relativistic velocity through Eve if you drop below mean surface. I don't even get what you mean here. Last accomplished by Dahud Lefthanded in version 0.20 (video), and he didn't manage to take off again (he EVA'd a Kerbal for terminal approach, its ship was crushed and his Kerbal was stranded with only a flag for company. That Kerbal is not ever going home). That said, Jool does not officially have a surface.

ha! Disproved by Heisenberg, love it!

yeah you have to at least pass over the "27" mark on your way out, like the BAT-VTOL run, and *around* the buildings on the first lap, *around* the hangar on the second. In fact, the BAT-VTOL flight is just about perfect.