Spence1012

When I decided I wanted to land and return from Moho for the fun of it and did it on the first try without testing anything. The interplanetary tug still could have taken me to Jool and back if I wanted. It sits in high Kerbin orbit waiting for my next mission to wherever. Perhaps I should give my guys on laythe some more jet fuel to have fun with..

Ok! Sounds like a very Kerbal way of doing things! And yes, I know that the gains from the decouplers would be small because they're on the outer stages, but it's something and is better than adding more fuel/engines if you're a bit short. Yes, in this case it wouldn't work due to the absurd part count. Also, I didn't know you were gonna a rocket design like this. This design is ridiculously large but there's no reason it can't work! I love insane designs but I won't be able to go truly over the top myself until this game can use multiple CPU cores. Also, those little engines would indeed have to be used in stupidly large amounts to lift that, shooting your part count through the roof, assuming you can cram that many on. The fact that you wanted that whole science-y thing on the top just didn't click with me. I believe I wasn't posting designs relevant to you. Sorry about that if that's the case.

I made a return capable vehicle for someone else but KSP broke on me and I can't load ships in any of my saves so I'm starting over It had 13k m/s of delta v assuming you drop your parachutes and landing legs on takeoff OR put them on one of the first stages to drop. If you're not super efficient with that, about 12.5k m/s dV. It weighed about 85 tons IIRC. I'll try to make another in a new save (extracting a new download of KSP now) if I can get all the necessary parts sometime soon.

I had something pretty large (can't remember.. real specific I know:P ) whizz by me once but that's about it. Scary part was that I was orbiting Kerbin prograde in a little station and it was orbiting retrograde, so all I saw was this flash while on EVA that scared the crap out of me because I was looking right at the direction it was coming from. Basically went like "Hey, why is the distance on that thing decrea- OH MY GOD!!!" Must have passed within 100-150 meters or so. Needless to say, I bumped my orbit up by a few thousand meters. Thank goodness there was no collision. That would have killed my mini station. EDIT: DAT DEBRIS FIELD

That is indeed true. I thought I mentioned that but I probably forgot That could end really bad without struts. Also, I fiddled around with designs, and I got one with 11k m/s of delta V and it only weighs about 35 tons (give or take, very approximate conversion in my head.. lol) It doesn't have any fancy science stuff (that stuff should be added on outer stages to minimize delta v loss) you need but it's a start! It's a Kerbal on a seat, a probe core, some batteries, an SAS module for torque, some solar panels, and the rocket. It's not strutted down and doesn't have any landing legs or chutes but the actual rocket leaving the surface should be something like this with a bunch of decouplers to get rid of landing legs + chutes. Each of the outer tanks has 4 of the little 48-7s engines attached to cubic struts. They're really light and are awesome I think. They weigh much less than an aerospike. However, for the center large tank, there's only 3 of those engines. Also, ladders and stuff need to be added, but they shouldn't add much weight. EDIT: I played around with adding some aerospike boosters on the outside for lols, and look what I managed This should be plenty to return from Eve at sea level. The different looking fuel tanks are the Novapunch 6m long 1.25m tanks. They have the same fuel to weight ratio as stock tanks, I believe. This tank's equivalent could be accomplished with a couple of stock tanks easily. Also, those TWR ratios are for Kerbin. All of the TWR ratios are above 1.24 for the main lifting stages that have to deal with the thickest atmosphere. However, this design with MOAR BOOSTERS will need a behemoth (well, compared to what you need for the first one) rocket to get it there fully fueled. The lander is 85 tons, not counting landing legs, chutes, and science equipment, which mostly won't be present after lifting off, but will still need to be brought there (duh) Hope this gives you some ideas

Ok, that's basically the same idea I had with the design. As I mentioned, it would be nice to put all of the parachutes and landing legs on decouplers so you can ditch them on launch. Those parachutes add up quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if you had several tons in chutes on that craft. Although the delta v savings won't be huge since they're on an outer stage, it will help your TWR, allowing you to bring a a little bit more fuel and get out of the atmosphere a bit quicker (just don't overdo it and waste fuel by pushing too hard against the atmosphere!) Also, I think you could lose the SAS modules or at least go down to 2 of them by placing them individually. Although they're very convenient, it's extra weight! I think the 6 of them will add up to about 1 ton combined. Just use the capsule's torque for that design plus the possible 2 units if you want the extra torque. However, to get back from sea level with a reasonably sized rocket, I think you just have to do what I mentioned and use a probe core as the center of the craft, a seat for the Kerbal to sit in, and an SAS module to provide torque because the probe core has very low torque. You save about .5 tons with that. You could even use a Clamp O Tron Jr instead of the regular one to save that little extra bit of mass that would actually make some sort of difference in the final stage. You will at least gain something with .03 tons in savings, since the final stage only weighs a couple tons. As tiny as these revisions sound, it's things like these that you have to do to keep the size reasonable. Other than that, I'm without much more to offer as advice. I think we need someone else with a new approach to this. Successful Eve sea level return crafts are not commonly found/built. EDIT: Just noticed your edit. I hope you can make this happen once you're up to it! This is a tedious design process.

I pulled it off without even having to have a mothership. I went insane building that thing, but my ship made it back to Kerbin and did a powered landing since I launched from about 50m less than the highest point on Eve on a tiny little mountain peak that I was only able to hit because of Mechjeb's landing prediction tool. I could have done it without mechjeb, but at least I did the piloting on my own! The lag from the launch vehicle hurt my eyes.. Heck, I was still getting the occasional stutter and about 20 FPS from the LANDER. Never again.

As others have said, Intel is best for KSP. I have AMD for other uses and it is a bit noticeable compared to what I see youtubers experiencing as far as lag goes. Also, I have an FX 8320 as DeathFromBelow has/had and it does well until I start going nuts with 5m Novapunch rockets or 500+ parts. I have a golden chip that runs at 4.3 Ghz UNDERVOLTED. (P95/Cinebench/game stable, for what it's worth) I could probably do 5 Ghz on near stock volts at that rate but I'll take 4.3-4.5 Ghz @45*C all day However, I think an Intel chip is the best option for the time being (until multi core support happens). Other than that, make sure you have 8 GB or RAM and a decent, mid range GPU like an HD 7850 or GTX 660/760 if you want something that will be amazing for someone on a budget. I have a GTX 660 Ti and it barely breaks a sweat at 1080p. It's more than what you need for KSP, but it can handle any other game, too. I had a 7850 but I had the 1 GB model so I pretty much 'had' to ditch it because I'm running 2 monitors and play games on a 1080p monitor with a secondary 1600x900 that was my old monitor. I have noted that Battlefield 3 and other games do in fact use a fair bit more than 1 GB of vRAM, about 1.3 GB of usage from what I remember seeing in GPU-Z. I didn't want to have issues with something dumb like lack of vRAM. Plus, I got the 660 Ti for $165. Personal stories aside, if you're going to be building this sometime soon, you would do best with an Intel i5 (don't buy an i7 or 16 GB of RAM unless you do editing or find one or the other for the same price as the lower end component. it won't help KSP performance at all), a mid range GPU that should cost about $150 or less if you get a 7850, and 8 GB of RAM. Just make sure you get quality components elsewhere in your system. Notably, don't cheap out on the power supply. A Corsair CX 600 is a great entry level PSU that shouldn't explode on you (many cheap ones will). I used to recommend Antec, but I had one explode in my face and screw up my system in some very subtle ways. Notably, I lost onboard sound and had to get a cheapo sound card at Best Buy. Antec is supposed to be good, but after seeing sparks and light come out of that PSU I don't feel comfortable with them anymore. If you have more money, look at a Seasonic or higher-end Corsair PSU. Seasonic is about the best you can get.

Mine is part count. Darn AMD 8 core chips just don't have enough single threaded performance to deal with uber rockets I can get a smooth launch at like 500 parts I think but beyond that it just chokes. Guess 4.6 Ghz isn't enough Counting on that multicore support coming sometime near full release of the game. I should be able to launch ridiculous rockets at 20 fps, in theory. However, I've made it to every planet with the stock parts (except moho and tylo) and back IIRC. It seems like I'm really good at designs and more often than not my first attempt of a design is plenty to get to where I wanted to go. I just am running out of stuff to do in this game. I have a maxed out tech tree and have bases and missions going everywhere from Laythe to Duna. Plus, Tylo and Moho are boring IMO. At least on Laythe I can fly around in a jet and explore as much as I want because I have a giant jet fuel tanker on wheels with the Romfarer Lazor system attached that lets me transfer fuel.. I've probably got enough jet fuel to keep Jebediah messing about on Laythe for years

Nice indeed. I would love to see the Mun mission too.

Holy crap. I pulled off an Eve return but I launched from the highest mountain on Eve at like 7km+ above sea level in .21 that needed about 75% of the delta v. This is ridiculous. You gain a lot of delta v by losing mass in the final stage. Start there, if possible, or remove stuff if if you don't ABSOLUTELY need it. Also, attaching your parachutes and landing legs to decouplers (with struts everywhere to hold them down!) will allow you to ditch them on take off, saving some delta v. You might even want to rethink the lander and have a Kerbal on an external seat attached to a probe body with an inline reaction wheel part underneath that. All of that is still less mass than a 1 man lander can by around half a ton. It should let you get a lot more out of the final stage. You could also shoot for a smaller lander using the little 30 kN rockets. I think it's the Rockomax 48-7s. You can attach multiple of those on each fuel tank via those little cubic structural pieces, if you need the extra thrust. They're pretty efficient and only weigh .1 ton each, compared to something like 1.5 tons for an Aerospike. So, you can save a ton or thereabouts if you can find a way to strap 6 of those little rockets onto the same fuel tank. I did a similar thing but with 3 of them for a small Minmus transfer stage on a little 1 man lander. However, I can't see the top of your rocket so I don't know the whole design. Post another picture of the very top please! I would say get the Hooligan labs balloon mod, but your sig says you play stock and hate mods... Sorry to say you might go insane with this one! I don't recall anyone that's returned from sea level in the short time I've been lurking here/interested in this game. But, if I were you, I'd get the Kerbal engineer plugin. It allows you to view stats like delta v and TWR in the VAB, and nothing else really. I don't think that counts as a mod. To me, it's just helping me make use of information more easily. It will let you see whether your craft will even take off on Eve for certain, as well as how a certain part swap or removal will affect delta v. You'd be surprised at how much a little mass reduction changes things! However, that's your call as to whether that would count as a mod/deviation from stock. Doing this totally stock is a better achievement, no doubt. Anyways, I'd love to see if you can make it!

I got my Bill, Jeb, Bob, and Nednard (that name.. ) back from a science mission that landed on the Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Vall, Bop, Pol, and Eeloo using a mothership and a small 3 Kerbal lander with ~5k m/s delta V that could do all the landings no sweat. Took me many more hours than I'd care to admit but it was worth it. I only managed around 4000-5000 science I think because I forgot thermometers and that sort of stuff Also, I forgot to collect a little bit of science along the way. I'm so close to maxing out the parts tree. Best part is nobody died and Jeb got sent to my Mun base bright and early the next morning. Some Pics: This one below shows Jeb enjoying himself on Pol. Also, found one of my favorite messages from the Crew Report system. EDIT: it appears I may have catastrophically failed at posting images... i'll check on that. that's what I get for being new and not checking FAQs and stuff Got it! Thanks Vanamonde for pointing out that I had to use the BBCode

I would personally love to see more science, as well as some fixes with how science points are earned. It seems you can exploit the system a bit now, or so I hear. (correct me if I'm wrong) I would also love to see that second gas giant with Eeloo as a moon of it. Last I saw, this was planned. I'm being optimistic and hoping the devs are hiding their progress on this Whatever they end up doing will probably be great, as usual, though.

I got "You look up at the sky and see something zip past" while walking on Ike.

You didn't have enough boosters on the rocket!

Half as smart as expected is pretty generous. Most of the guys I get just scream their heads off the entire flight/mission. Whether that's from being a 'tard or from being a total wuss is another discussion though.

If you want, you could wait until you're out at Apoapsis and get out and push the capsule retrograde with Jeb's jet pack. Seriously. I think Scott Manley did a video on this a while ago. After a few runs for pack fuel back to the capsule (make sure you don't run out and leave him even more stranded ) you should get your periapsis back in the atmosphere if it's an eccentric orbit. If it's, say, 1 million meters up or thereabouts for both apoapsis and periapsis it could take a long time. Still could be faster than a rescue mission though! Anyways, my Jeb is sitting on the KSC Runway. He's been having fun piloting my version of the Magic School Bus around and pulling off some insane stunts with it the last few days with 12 other horrified Kerbals strapped onto detachable "pods" that will save them in the event of the plane having a flameout or some other horrible disaster. I got within about 50m of hitting a mountain while inverted (flying upside down) in that thing. It's a school bus with wings and fuel strapped to it. Picture that.