zeppelinmage

That's my feeling as well. For the record, I tried your suggested placement, but the stack didn't rotate enough to clear. I'll accept some minor stack scorching to keep it intact.

I just triple-checked this to be absolutely sure. They are on the correct stages, and fueled. This fixed the issue. Sepratrons fire as designed now, and my asparagus stages properly. (Of course, the fix may also have been due to restarting the game.)

Thanks for the tips, guys. I'll check the order within each stage and see if that helps. I'll also check Kasuha's tutorial.

Staging is clean until the radial decouplers impact the tail connectors. And the sepratrons aren't firing despite being on the correct stage. (Note my staging in the VAB image.) That's the problem I'm trying to solve.

Here's my problem. I have a large asparagus lifter rated for 75 tonne payloads. It lifts fine, until I stage the first pair of boosters. (See images below.) Because of the rather wide motor mounts on the center stack (it's an array of 9 LV-T45s using tail connectors as mounts), I had to "stand-off" the stages. Now,when I stage, the radial mounts impact the tail connectors, causing catastrophic spontaneous energetic disassembly. I've figured a solution to the problem: sepratrons. I've mounted a pair on each stack, expecting them to fire when I stage and add some distance between the lifter and the spent stages. Except... the sepratrons don't fire when I stage. (Yes, I double-checked the staging to be sure they were on the right one.) Thoughts? In the VAB, here's the business end of the lifter: And the staging issue: Notice the inert sepratrons on the grey tanks.

Currently designing manned missions for Moho and Dres - the only planets I have yet to set foot upon. ...other than Eve, of course. That one is going to take a lot more effort.

Here's my first (simple) submission for the K-Prize. Introducing the Earl of Sandwich. Mission profile: - Initial orbit at 80 km - Payload delivery - Station docking at 500 km with crew exchange - Return to KSC Tonnage: 20.61 t Part count: 62 Payload: 2x small satellite bays (single-digit tonnage)

Made a SSTO:

I tried it at one point but for some reason didn't see that performance. (A quick test confirms proportionality.) I probably just didn't select the right limit.

Fair enough! I also think they should be included stock; especially KER.

Thanks Ziv. It was fun, and definitely challenging. Probably the most complex mission I'll be attempting for a while. Kudos on the excellent challenge you have going here. Also, for clarification on my entry on the first page... I did have mods, but only information-type. (I listed them on the mission report.) KER, KAC, Enhanced Navball.

- Yeah, the pics look fine on my laptop, but I understand some may not be able to see them well. (my phone, for example, shows them as black.) In the future I'll do my best to take them in "daylight"... I'm pretty bad at remembering to mount lights on my stuff. - True. Of course, I didn't think of drogues until I was already in orbit and docked. I had limited time last night and didn't want to go though another round of VAB and basically start over again. - I'm terrible at guessing where the thrust limit should be... and since you have to be at 100% thrust all the time for the limiters to work, it wasn't really a solution I considered. The extended burn times worked fine, they were just very time consuming. Thanks! I did take a lot of cues form what others had done here - some great ideas in this thread! I'm not planning a Kethane version. I'm still enjoying Stock; not really considering game-changing mods quite yet.

Done! I posted a mission report here. Submitting this for Jebediah level. Ziv, I did manage to land that lab, so we're good to go. Total mission length: 1267 days Science collected: 7238.7

At long last, I've completed my Jool-5 Challenge Mission! It took me more than a month to do (first launch was on Jan 26), mainly due to RL and other missions getting launch windows in my career save. So, here are the images with captions. Be aware, it's pretty long; 91 images. So, sit back and enjoy. Some numbers: Mothership (fully loaded): DV: 8688 m/s Mass: 400 t TMR: 0.9 Part count: 383 Kerbals: 6 (1x 4-man habitaiton with rotating shifts) # of launches: 4 Mini Lander: DV: 3789 m/s Mass: 6.6 t TWR (Vall): 7.81 Mini Lander (Replacement) DV: 4084 m/s Mass: 8.6 t TWR (Vall): 6.02 Tylo Lander: DV: 6457 m/s Mass: 41 t TWR (Tylo): 2.82 Laythe Lander: DV: 5500 m/s Mass: 26 t TWR (Laythe): 2.98 Mods used: Kerbal Alarm Clock Kerbal Engineer Redux Enhanced Navball

Finished Bop and Pol tonight, just bringing the ship home now. Going to get as much done as possible before I pass out; hopefully I'll at least be able to get the ship to/near Kerbin.

Ok, you know what, I just looked at my ship again, and I think I can separate the lab out and get it landed. It'll take another launch (despite the need to save $$), but I'm pretty sure I can do it. What I'll do is this: I'll get the whole thing into Kerbin orbit, and land the Kerbals with their science. Then I'll look into separating out the lab and launching a recovery vehicle for it. If it works, I'll add that to the submission. If it doesn't, then it'll be your call, Ziv. In the spirit of the challenge, I'll do my damnedest to fit the rules as stated.

Completely destroying the ship just to return the lab to the surface is not very economical, especially compared with leaving it in orbit for future missions, no? Honestly, the only difference between mine and what you propose is landing the actual lab. I'm bringing it back to Kerbin orbit, which costs quite a bit of fuel on it's own. How about this: Due to budget concerns, Kerbin Command has asked for as much hardware as possible to be returned to Kerbin. It costs a lot to land and re-orbit hardware, so leaving it in Kerbin orbit for future use is sufficient, even preferred in many instances. (note: I originally was just looking for labs in the Jeb submissions. I noticed now that everyone returned 5x instruments, which is where the difference lies.)

Ehhh, not really feasible. The lab is literally the core of my mothership. And I'd rather not install a mod just to complete the mission. I wish I knew of this rule a month ago when I started this.... TBPH, I really don't like being limited by this rule when nobody has yet to return the lab, and it wasn't clear until my mission was very much under way. I'm almost done, really. Should be able to knock out Bop and Pol over the next few days, then I'm coming back with Science. I'm submitting it as Jeb level (it was hard enough as it was), whether you score it as such... *shrug* it's your challenge. Just thought: If budgeting is the issue, the mothership will end up parked in Kerbin orbit. The whole thing is completely reusable, just needs refueling and new landers.

That's... problematic for my mission. The ship is designed for the lab to remain in orbit (no way to land it!), and the Kerbals will bring SCIENCE back to the surface of Kerbin in pods. Indeed, has anyone landed the actual lab yet? EDIT: I just looked over the current Jebediah-level completions, and everyone has done the same. Return Kerbals to the surface, but not the actual science lab.

Pumping fuel did the trick. Thanks!

The engines aren't mounted to radial tanks; they're inline clamp-o-trons. I'll pump fuel froward and see if that helps.

So, I've encountered a problem that I have absolutely no idea what's going on. I have this ship in Vall orbit, roughly 150x150 km. Whenever I engage the engines with more than 0 thrust, it noses over (towards the right in the pictures below.) Now, the ship is perfectly balanced - everything is mounted via symmetry. I was able to get it into orbit with its current configuration no problem. But now it's behaving poorly. I've tried focusing on different ships and back again, and I tried a full game restart. Still the imbalance persists. Any ideas? Notes: * The monoprop tanks are all empty. * the forward orange tank is half full, the other is completely full. * All six nuke engines burn normally. * There is no difference between the pods on the side of the ship. Except the one on the left has a single kerbal in it. The other is empty.

Rescued Billy-Bobwell from a very poorly designed lander in Joolian orbit. I was rather pleased at how close I got the rendezvous. Billy-Bobwell could practically reach out and touch the other ship.

For the record, I'm still working on this. Between RL commitments and an underpowered AMD chipset, it's just taking me a while. Today I finally got my "rescue" craft into Joolian orbit. Next step: rendezvous with the "broken" lander to transfer the Kerbal.

At last was able to bring enough DV along to orbit a probe around Dres.