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Big thanks to @cratercracker for making the artwork above. The challenge sounds very simple: Save Burberry Kerman, who is stranded in an orbit around the sun. "What kind of Orbit?" you may ask ... Well, it's nothing fancy: An orbit between Kerbin and Eve, nearly circular, at 180 degrees inclination. Just sign this contract and off you go! See here, how he got there: Don't worry, you don't need the Goliath to get into a retrosolar orbit, you can do it the smart way with gravity assists (I highly recommend a boosted Jool-Assist), But ADDING MOAR BOOSTERS will still be required. To be precise, you should add a whole lot of moar boosters. I tried it myself and managed to rendezvous with him (see my attempt below), but I didn't manage to return him Edit: I did and I'm super proud of myself right now. All balanced mods are allowed. Balanced means that engine configs (TWR and ISP) are stockalike as well as the dry mass - wet mass ratios of fuel tanks. If you want to take on the cost-record, you have to do it with stock parts only. Who recovers Burberry (without turning on "ignore heat" of course) will be showered with everlasting fame and glory and will get an awesome badge! Get the Savefile here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0zxz3obp30lxbz/persistent.sfs?dl=0 Or: launch a manned (and inoperable) vessel, open the debug menu, go to set orbit and insert this: Now Save and Recover Burberry! As always, show what you did with pictures, videos, mission report (mission report alone doesn't count). My attempt with a basic tutorial on how to get into a retrosolar orbit the "kind of smart way" will be found in my next post. The scoring system: There are 2 types od awards to win here: Records and non-record prizes. Records can be beaten while the non-record prizes are given to those who come up first with some crazy/innovative/kerbal ideas, so once you have them, you keep them. Badge: Category I "I tried, but something's wrong" - You set up a close approach with Burberry. Attempting a rendezvous, you discovered the relative velocity is about 20 km/s. @Aetharan, except he knew excactly what he was doing. Category II "Well, it didn't quite work out" - You managed to actually rendezvous with Burberry, but have no clue on how to get him home. The Gamer Alchemist: He took this to the next level by doing the challenge in RSS. However, he didn't do the second orbit flip and reentered earths atmosphere at over 60 km/s (twice the orbital velocity of earth) and I don't let that count as a recovery. Still, very impressive. "It's starting to get real!" - Award @Laie built a massive LV and shared some interesting and useful tips on how to build even bigger rockets. Heaviest LV (46 kt) Hall of Fame: Category III "I can't believe, I just did this!" - You managed to recover Burberry safely on Kerbin @Cpt Kerbalkrunch made the 1st entry without using any nuclear- or ion engines. To make this possible, he used Jool-assists to lower his delta-v requirements. The reentry was close to maximum reentry velocities. He gets the Grumpy Cat prize. @ManEatingApe did it the brute-force way. using nuclear- and Ion stages, he was able to keep mission time, launch mass and cost surprisingly low. "Rearview mirrow" prize. @ManEatingApe made a second, completely different entry to take the cost-record. The mission took literally millennia, good thing Pilots don't get payed per working-hour. "Who's Jesus?" prize, Longest mission Time (2.3 millennia) @Aetharan This time-optimized mission took over 50km/s of delta v packed into a 27.5 Mt monstrosity. "Do it as the crow flies" prize* @MarvinKitFox built an ultra light ion spacecraft to get the job done. The mission took over 36 years and didn't involve any complicated gravity assists. @Clancy Did it with a very lightweight and cheap rocket wich still had enough delta v for a brute-force attempt. @jonny went for the lowest delta-v expenature and did quite a lot of gravity assists (around 30). The light and cheap rocket that didn't use any nuclear- or ion witchcraft had to use only a fraction of the delta-v all the other entries took so far. All these advantages came at a prize of a good century of mission time. Black belt in gravity assists @jonny wasn't satisfied with just one record on a single launch, so he decided to break 2 of them (and nearly a 3rd one, the one he set up himself). He did so by using his sick gravity assist skills as above and a combination of a capsule for reentry and a chair on a rocket to deliver Burberry back to Kerbin. lowest launch mass (39.846 t) @marcushouse completed the mission and made it into a video on his channel. Definitely check that out here! Not only did he only use low-tec parts, he also had a crew-capacity of 3 on his vessel. Lowest Tech Level @marcushouse did it a second time too! Because his second try was a completely new approach and not just am improvement of his first one, he also appears twice on the leaderboard. This time around he chose to do a brute-force-attempt with a lot of nuclear stages and even an ion stage. @linuxgurugamer took his time with a very well planned and executed mission. He burdened himself by using USI Life support, resulting in a very massive ship that required orbital assembly. He did the mission a second time to take the time record. Are You Still Alive?, First orbital assembly 1st entry: Highest crew capacity** (7 (4 with long term life support)) 2nd entry: Time Record (99d 2h 6m 17s) @herbal space program appears to be one of those guys who think everything can be done with a single stage spaceplane, so he proved it by actually pulling this crazy mission off! While people like me are struggling to get a SSTO spaceplane to LKO, he flies it all the way to Burberry and back. Doing that, he also beat the delta v and the cost record. SSTB (Single Stage To Burberry), Lowest delta v expenditure (4149 m/s from LKO), Cost record (8971 funds) Have Fun and don't be shy to also share your failed attempts. * I'm sure crows would fly like that, If they could fly in space with tens of thousands of m/s of Delta v ** The challenge is about rescuing just 1 Kerbal, but let's just imagine there are more.