merendel

Alternatively you can use construction tugs instead of giving every module its own RCS and control system. I tend to do this even without KAS. Station bits are launched with no control systems unless they specificly need it for some reason. Launcher handles control until it reaches the proper orbit and the tug comes out to grab the part (launcher then deorbits). The tug is basicly RCS jets, mono prop tanks, Power and a probe core with lots of extra reaction wheels to deal with the off balanced thrust/COM its likely to have to deal with. At most this approach adds 1 docking port to the modules part count due to the tug needing a port to dock to in addition to the one that connects to the station although you could use a Klaw if that was really an issue. With KAS like maverick said you could just send a kerbal out to pull off the RCS jets after the fact, just have the tanks wheels and prob core as a section that jettisoned after construction is complete.

My approach would be to aim for intercept after 1-2 orbits instead of a direct from launch. Since your station is at 100km do your normal launch up to AP aiming to get there ahead of the station. Once at AP raise your PE to 70+ and adjust so the station catches up after an orbit or two. Much easier than precisely timeing the launch as its much easier to eyeball. For a first launch of a new craft just go when the station is directly overhead and see how far around the planet it is when you reach AP. On future launches make sure its that far plus a bit more from flyover and adjust to meet up after an orbit or two.

Only way I can see this working is if you put another pod out there to pick up as the burnt out one is not a moveable object.

It can work but you'll probably be ariving a tad early and want to go a bit past minmus's orbit so you linger for a bit. Idealy you want to burn a bit before it comes over the horizon by about 30s to a minute. for the easiest intercept asumeing an equitorial orbit pan the map so you see mun's orbit as a flat ring and see where minmus's orbit crosses it, this tells you where you want to burn from. If you consider those two intersection points 12:00 and 6:00 wait till minmus reaches about 1:30 and burn from 6:00. you'll probably still have to correct a bit at your AP to catch the SOI but you'll be close.

I find it intresting how we come up with different solutions to the same problem. your ground docking to make a biger launcher so you can send more stuff up in a single go. My approach is multipule launches, First sending up a lightweight core thats just engiens, lots of docking port attachments/booms and fuel lines to draw from the docking ports to the engiens. I then send up a lander module that attaches in front of the core, it is setup so it can draw from fuel tanks docked onto the sides. Then I send up as many fuel tank and sience modules as needed over many launches. Those just hang off the back side of the core from the outriger booms. Once I finish assembling it I'll launch it off to duna and the lander will go up and down hiting ike bioms, swaping out fuel canisters and science moduels as they get used. also like you this is post challenge shinanigans hopeing to see if I can get enough points for the rest of the tech tree without unlocking anything.

ya once you get close enough for the hudmarker indicating the crafts position to appear in the world you can doubleclick it to target it. you still dont get close approach markers or anything like that in map view but it does alow you to use target mode on the nav ball. You still have to get yourself fairly close, 80km or so and actualy figure out where in space the other craft is in relation to yourself so its still trickier than being able to target from the map but it gets the job done. Good job on docking pure visual with no RCS or navball assistance. thats just hardcore. its alot easier when you can easily kill relitive velocity a few dozen meters away, poitn both ships at eachother and just give it a touch of gas to dock.

meh docking isnt so bad. since you can still target once the craft get somewhat close its not any harder from inside the physics window than normal. Only hard part is you may not have enough part count avalible to afford RCS but you can get prety good docking without with small stuff like this. The Rendevous itself is mostly just an exercise in patience. Match planes (not hard to eyeball) Match the orbit as best as possible so at least one node (ap/pe) touches the other orbit. raise or lower the other node slightly and let the craft catchup to eachother over time. Cant do the normal aggressive intercept that you can do with normal patched conics and such

well arguably going interplanetary without patched conics would be prety damn impressive, let alone doing it with the dv limitations. So ya there would be some added skill needed there. I'm prety sure I could make a ship that would be able to go to jool draging a string of science packages and farm out bop/pol or something but actualy stoping in the jool system would be hell. cant aerobreak off jool safely, cant gravity assist off lathe/tylo lacking patched conics safely. would prety much have to bring enough fuel to do it the inefficent way.

That looks like it would be a PITA to voltron. remember no rover wheels in the first tier so you'd have to somehow build a transport that uses jet/rocket propultion and plane wheels. well either that or pull a cupcake and assemble it with a vtol jet skycrane although not sure if even he'd pull that off useing jr ports. And only 15k science you say... I checked how much science there is avalible in the kerbin system with the science we have avalible in this challange with no upgrades. location singlerun(maxing all experiments) Minmus 3914(5407.5) Mun 5016(6930) Kerbin 1269.2(1753.5) plus a little for low flying thermomiter Basicly tad over 10k if you only do a single run in every location or nearly 14k if you totaly max out every instrament everywhere. Realisticly your not going to be able to hit that high water mark unless you wana do 50+ missions plus alot of flying/driveing around kerbin. You've gota do at least 1 interplanetary mission, probably a couple.

Intresting although I could easily work withen the part limit with a higher weight limit. You can loft a decent amount of fuel on just a few parts when you can use the biger tanks/engiens. Can always send up smaller partheavy modules (science/power packages) on a dedicated launch to link up with the drive sections. Personaly I think I could max out the rest of the tree just upgradeing the RND although it would take a long time. The bigest issue is the number of launches it would take to send craft anywhere considering max payload is only 2-3 tons with t1 buildings. Could link things togeather with JR ports if you send up a truss wired up with fuel lines to hang fuel tanks off of and were creative with locking/unlocking tanks to keep things balanced. I think my picks in order of priority would be RnD, Launchpad (weight limit up), Tracking center (patched conics). a 4th would be a tossup between more parts, manuver nodes, or a second RnD. I can live with 30 part limits if I can put a large enough tank under what I need to send up. I can live without manuver nodes, they nice but extra Dv can cover for that with patched conics. I can even live with astronaut complex alowing for Eva's by being clever and sticking an external command seat in a utility bay and moveing the kerbal pre launch. a 3rd RnD is intresting just for the final tier of parts opening up extra options. if I had just 1 RnD unlock and nothing else I'd probably grab comand seats ASAP and load bob into a service bay and send him biome hoping on minmus. Send up a couple of fuel pods(resorce transfer ftw) for the maned probe ship to refuel off of and you could unlock a good chunk of the remaining tech tree in a single pass. He can grab and reset experiments from inside his gheto command pod.

Honestly pretty much any engine does a decent job moonlighting as a heat shield. I've got quite a few craft that fry important bits off if they go in nose first but are just fine if I can keep em stable falling in backwards. The mammoth is just aptly named and you can hide alota craft in its shadow but I've had just as much success at rideing a tarrier down with a 1.25m craft

Well... you could go with the standard approach for surface mounting stack only items. Stick it on a cubic strut, surface mount the strut then gizmo it to hide the strut. Not sure a side mounted stack node would help you all that much. I know past versions of KSP had some weird quirks with that, the 6 way hub a prime example, although I havent actualy used that thing in 1.x so not sure if they managed to work that out. Prety sure it was an issue with the core engien so my hopes wouldnt be high.

and now I'm glad I did the Dv calc's the hard way, punching in dry/full mass and ISP for each stage into the equasions several of my final craft files have notes with weights and dV estimates in the craft description area. Still contemplating a bonus round aiming for the rest of the tree if I ever have the time.

I dont know whats scarier. that you actually built that thing or that it apparently worked.

There's really only so many ways to make orbit with 18 tons and 30 parts to play with Cant really lob more than 2-3 tons of payload up, higher mass fractions require launchers too large or complex for the low tech constraints. Heck even if we had access to higher tier nodes alot of things are out, dont think I could even get a refinery into orbit for example.